How To Make $1,000,000 in 48 Hours (COMPLETE GUIDE) w/ Noah Kagan

To build a million dollar business, you first have to make the first dollar. And for a lot of people, that first dollar is the hardest one. I teach people how to have four products that get to 25 sales a day at a $30 price point. That's a million dollar business. Yet there are still so many people who spin their wheels on trying to come up with the perfect idea. And that's why I sat down with my friend Noah Kagan to talk about how to get your million dollar business.

Noah is the king at coming up with an idea, building a tiny audience and testing the idea in the form of getting revenue, of testing an idea to check writers, people who are willing to spend money on something to validate the idea. And in a 48 hour period, you can find out very quickly if you've got a business that has legs. And in this episode, we'll talk about the process for launching, how to reach out to people and get deposits for things that don't even exist yet, and how to know if it's a million dollar business. Two days. Let's go hang out with Noah Kagan. Noah Kagan, good to see you, man. Welcome back.

Great to see you. Thank you for having me back.

Yeah. Last time we were here, I started the conversation by asking, how did you make your money? And you said it was all in appsumo. And you mentioned how at the beginning of appsumo, there were a couple things that worked really well that were kind of popping, but there were also things that weren't working so well and you put all of your energy into things that were starting to pop, which was they wanted software and they wanted it cheap. And it seemed like that was the thesis through which appsumo really took off. Is that a fair summary?

Yeah. It's interesting because when I started appsumo, and this is common for a lot of entrepreneurs, I started a lot of other things at the same time, or close to. I started softwaretaco.com?

I don't know that one.

Yeah, no one does. It was the same problem. I was excited about the problem. I think that's kind of the thing that people don't think about is no one cares about your solution. They don't care about AI. AI is annoying. They care about the problem that maybe this can actually solve. So I wanted to solve getting customers for software creators. So softwaretaco.com was don't go to the site. It was a software reviews which we're actually redoing now, 15 years later. And then I started reward level Dot com. Don't go there either. I can't even explain it. It was basically like lead gen on signup forms for software companies and then eventually appsumo. I was like, let me try this software deals thing with daily deals or bundles. And that was like instant work.

I was at Mastermind just this past week and it came up over and over how all these entrepreneurs have multiple projects going on. And there's a difficulty when you're wired like us, where you have a new idea every six months or every six days in some cases and you wanna start them all. And there is this question about where do you put your focus? And for you it was, well, this one's popping. I'm gonna put all my energy in there, which is, I think, the right way to do it. If you wanna grow, like if you wanna have a multimillion dollar business, you put your energy into thing that is actually popping and moving, not into the thing where there is stuck energy. And that's kind of the thesis of your new book, Million Dollar Weekend, is you get something off the ground, you test it small, and when something starts popping, then you give energy to it. Why do you think so many entrepreneurs feel the temptation to put their energy into things that just aren't moving?

Well, we. A few things. One, we're glorifying the fact that it's not moving. We're like, well, I'm sticking with it. Like, look at, look at Elon Musk or look at Edison or look at James Dyson. James Dyson with a thousand vacuums before one vacuum worked.

Wow.

Well, why don't you just figure that out faster? Right. And even something really technical, you know.

He got divorced over that. Yeah. I mean he, he was so committed to making the vacuum work. His wife is like, I am not going to stick with this. Now he proved out right, he won. Yeah. But those are sort of the exception.

It is the exception, not the norm where we're glorifying. Like it took forever for you to get this thing going. And there's another way to do it that people don't realize. Like, you can find out very quickly whether people want something or not. So two weekends ago I was reading Million Dollar Weekend and I was like, let me.

Do you know the author? Yeah, I can put you in the author.

Sometimes I read my own stuff. I think it's great to like your material. And I wanted to test out businesses very quickly and so I went knocking door to door to see if I could sell my neighbor's lawn care. I was just like, okay, people have lawns. I have lawns. Maybe I can sell it on. No one would buy my lawn care. And I'm like. They're like, don't you. Don't you run AppSumo? What are you doing? I'm like, yeah, I know, but lawn care is what I really care about.

I don't know. It's still fun. It's interesting. I'm dressed in, like, a cowboy outfit, and I printed out a flyer and brought it to their door, and people were just rejecting it left and right. And then I went home and I said, you know, what's another problem that's been frustrating me? And one of the problems that frustrates me is DocuSign. I just really hate this thing. And there's more. There's more to it. But then the short of it was, let me look up anyone who's ever emailed me a DocuSign. So I went to my Gmail and just search DocuSign, made a list of every single person, contacted a few of them and said, hey, you sent me a docuSign. How do you feel about it? Oh, my God, I hate it. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, Templates suck. Pricing sucks. I don't use it that often.

Ah.

So if I had like a docuSign that was simpler and you pay once forever. Is that. Oh, my God, yes. Do you want to put a deposit down today? Sure, sir. What do you want to send people? Send me, like, Apple Cash. You ever use Apple Cash? I don't even know. They're begging to give me the money. And that's what's missed out a lot of times is people are getting going and that as they're swinging, they're. They're saying people. They're like, they're trying to convince people. And if you're trying to convince someone, you are doing the wrong business.

I am known as the million dollar guy, right. I help people make their first million four products. 25 sales a day at $3 price point, million dollar business. I wrote the book so that I would never have to say that formula ever again. And that backfired. But, like, the formula is a really good reason for people to justify, oh, I can go down this path because I just need four products at 25 sales a day. But I still stuck in those early stages when something just won't take off, when there's something that they just can't get moving, and so they spend a year trying to get it moving. And then it becomes 10 years to 1 million, not 12 months to 1.

Million it doesn't get. If you can't get three customers in 48 hours, which that time limit forces you to focus on the problem, which is, is this a problem that anyone cares about? And if you can't, great, now you can find a problem they might care about. That's why I like that three customers. 48 hour block.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to chat with you about today, is that 48 hour block where you just get off the ground. And I actually ran an idea by you recently after our last podcast, because I have this idea for an app that I want to release. And the app is simply, I have this problem that I face every week and the problem is when I see somebody that I genuinely want to spend more time with, we end the conversation by saying we should hang out sometime or we should hang out more often. And then one person might follow up with the other person, but usually you don't, you know, and I've got 10 people I want to spend time with, but when I'm free on Wednesday, I'm like, who am I going to hang out with? And I want to develop an app that just syncs up our calendars and sends invites to each other so that it matches each other's free time. Right.

It's billion dollar. So when you buy the Ferrari with that idea, I mean, what color Ferrari?

It's going to be yellow.

Yellow.

And I'm going to do a YouTube ad and say, here are my garage. This is my brand new Ferrari. And bought it with apps. Buy my course. So I asked you about this and you said, well, what's the simplest way that we could test this? And it was actually kind of annoying how you answered it because you were like, first let's find out if other people will actually use this idea. And so I started testing that and there was a lot of interest behind something like that. And that was like another green light for me to go and pursue this idea. Is that how you think about all ideas? What is the simplest way that I can test this?

Yeah, the essence of the problem. Something. You know, in the book there's a piece that was the number one thing that changes people life called now, not how. And that's not what I expected to be the biggest change for people. But it's like, what can you do actually right now? Because let's take your app idea, which in the past 15 years ago, I still own the domain peoplereminder.com I had a similar idea. Not as, not like yours, but similar, were like how do I keep in touch with people? And most people think you buy the domain. You get a developer on, you know, upwork or freelancer or Fiverr or wherever. Then you have to build a site, then you have to do a landing page or ads. And that's like six months.

Yeah.

And then you're like, oh, well, how do I get people to use this? And you say, no, I need to do the marketing. Can you help me with marketing? I'm like, you don't have a marketing problem, you have a business problem. And the same thing goes with this is that if you want to help connect people, can you use a Google spreadsheet? Can you use pen and paper? Can you actually see if it's something that people will pay? Or people are like, oh my God, yes, I really want you to be doing this because the promise of payment is rejection.

Wait, say that again.

The promise of payment is rejection, saying, oh yeah, why don't you launch it and then I'll use it. Why don't you show me the features and then I'll use it. Okay, well what's holding you back from today? And for me, finding something that people actually want. And going back to your original question, it's easy and hard, and then when you find it, what happens? So many of the times if you have a few customers even you're like, okay, this is working, let me do something new. And now that I'm 40 and I've seen this so many times, and I've done it so many times myself, my favorite businesses are the ones that work well. Yeah, no, no, no. Most people get that backwards. Most people have a business and they're like, well, I'm starting a new business because that one's gonna be easier. I'm gonna go over here. And now all I think about is with AppSumo, our customers are solopreneur creators. How do we keep supporting that? How do we get that core bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And so what I would say for this app idea is one is your what's the size of the market? Because I think that's what people work in. Thousand dollar markets. Cause guess what, it only gets so big. Software. Luckily, that's one of the reasons I got successful, is cause I chose a market that got big. Now with the app idea coming back on it, it's how do I just actually see if this is a problem? People want to pay me for today, right now. And you didn't have to build, you didn't have to say you Need a technical co founder. You didn't have to watch more videos, you didn't have to buy courses and you could find out instantly. And so what happened with you? So people said they were interested.

Yep.

So for me with this kind of problem, can you do it with a spreadsheet where like, hey, I'll remind you every week, or Uber even. Hey, next time you want a car, text me and I'll get you someone. Guess what, you could go drive them.

Yeah, you don't need to build an app for mine. It was like, let's start with a text group or a WhatsApp group. I hate WhatsApp. So it was a text group. What do you have? WhatsApp. I just, I don't need one more app, like one more communication app.

Do you a lot of international friends?

No.

WhatsApp is huge.

Like, yeah, I know. Yeah, I know it's huge overseas, but I want to hang out with people in Austin.

Americanist. And by the way, like, so for people out there that are, that are getting, you know, zero to one is with Noah and then get to a million with Ryan, a lot of it is, it's not that you're not gonna get to the tech. Right. Appsumo started with a PayPal button and my Gmail. Yeah, that's it. Like you literally sent me a PayPal for $12 as my first sale. And then I would manually in Gmail, that's my email list, email you. That's my backend and email list and customer support and operations email you the code for the software. And that's how it went for months. And now there's a 20 person engineering team. And so what people do though is they wanna do the 20 person engineering team without making sure people really even want this stuff.

Right. And then they bridge the gap with I'll ra capital, raise capital or I'll run ads, or yeah, I'll learn a new skill, rather revenue right in the door.

Yeah. Or they're avoiding starting, Right. I talked to a guy, Jake, he's been spending 24 months on the same idea, which is very common. And I think when people, the book starts with frequently made excuses and when you realize it's not so, it's not so unique, you're like, oh, that's solvable. And so in 48 hours, Jake was able to get five customers for golf trips.

But. But the question for me comes up, Noah, when do you know that it is time to grow or to quit? Because I'm completely on board with this thesis of you Test with customers or Dan Sullivan likes to say, you only test ideas on check writers only start a new thing when people are willing to pay for it. Yes, but there is also a fine balance between I'm going to give my all to something that is not that great of an idea. So when you get something off the ground, how are you evaluating whether or not that's the thing that you're going to continue to put your energy into?

Yeah, let me just give examples because I think that that'll show it. So with softwarereviews.com again, don't go to the site or software Taco. I put up a WordPress site. I installed a plugin, I started paying writers five bucks per review. We're writing reviews. And then you could do that in 48 hours. You could do that in 30 days. There was just not a lot of traffic and there was zero revenue. It's like, okay, now. Then I did appsumo, where I put up a PayPal button, had post on Reddit, cold emailed someone, and then literally within a week, it was 200 sales at $12.

And so product market fit. When you know you have something that works is in a very short amount of time, people are excited to give you money. You're not having to convince the other things I've done so many times where when you're having to convince someone. I beat a built a site called Meet Fam. You never used it. It's a Klaviyo competitor. I begged people begged like Nick Bear from bpn, who's a very good friend. I was like, nick, will you please, like, just don't. I can't use it. And what you're looking for is when you're not having to convince them, when you've actually identified something, when people are like, oh my God, you have that. I'll send you money now. I am committed to doing it. And I've done this. I've done the mistake time and time and time again. And so I want to encourage people that there is another way to find that out. I built bet arcade. Six months, $100,000 of software developers. 10,000 lawyer launched it. No one came. Hmm. Is there a way I could have just asked friends, hey, do any of you guys want to do fantasy sports betting? You guys want to send me 10 bucks and you'll do your fan? I'll do a bet. Let's pick one player. I could have found out really quickly that I couldn't get people to do it.

That makes a lot of sense. And the Temptation, of course, is when you run into one of those gaps you try to come up with.

My logo was wrong. My marketing is bad. And when you have people who are just saying, I want the thing when you're describing it, that's a green light to move forward.

Yeah. What? People get backwards. If you think it's actually backwards. People are sticking with losers too long, and they're not sticking with winners long enough. So they're like, this isn't working. I'm going to stick it with it really long versus people who get something going don't stay with it long enough. Like, for me, I would say my millions came from decades, meaning that it took me a long time to eventually find the thing that was really that easily worked, which was appsumo.com and then I would say the success of it, really, in terms of money, besides all the other successes of Time Millionaire and Lifestyle Millionaire, is because I stayed with it, with a team over a very long period of time. And so I'm encouraging people. Don't worry about. You're not. You don't work hard. Everyone can work hard. That's a universal ability. And guess what? You don't have to be tall, even like me. And you are pretty average size. You could be successful. That's the coolest thing about entrepreneurship. There's no discrimination. There's no, like, you were born here and so you're limited. No, it's universal. But most people don't take the time to find something people actually want. And I'll give you another example from yesterday. I did a podcast interview. His name is Sharath. And Sharath's like, yeah, I'm building a side hustle. Great. So I know he spent time on it. I know he's a developer. I know he's thinking about solutions. He's not thinking about problems. And he's like, I do podcast guest research. That's pretty cool. That's a nice. Nice. When people say nice, that's a bad sign. That's a nice product. And he's like, yeah, I got two customers.

Great.

That's great. By the way, he got something going, which is a start. Everyone starts with one customer. I think that's very important.

And the first dollar.

First dollar. And that's why in the book, you have your first dollar.

I gave it to you. Thank you very much.

I said, well, Sherrod, that's nice. Let's talk about that. So if. If I could give you research. That's good, but is there anything else that's even more important? To you and a lot of sales and businesses listening, asking a question, listening to pain and problems are pain and they're also opportunities. And I said, I said, that was him.

Dog Bargain. And so I said to Charant, I.

Said.

Is there anything else you want besides research for your guests? He's like, well, there's actually really one thing I really want. I'm like, I know what it is. And he's like, I want more audience. I was like, of course you do. That's way more important. So you can solve research, guests or podcasts, which is nice to get people to do, but if I can bring you 1,000 more listeners per podcast, how's that? Oh, my God, yes.

Way better.

And so it's just realizing, how do I get to that? What's a process or system where I can listen to people, find people in my expertise, within my influence, and then when you find the thing that works, like myself, we all get distracted. But how can you just stay with that or find systems or people? So you stay with that for extended period of time.

This is interesting to me because you've said several times, sticking with a problem, rather than sticking with a product or sticking with an idea. You said sticking with a problem. And you've said that phrase several different times. Right. And I think it is very easy to identify pain or problems when you have a direct person in mind, the person that you're trying to serve. It is a little bit more mental intensive to think, okay, how am I gonna solve this problem? So how do you bridge this gap between moving fast, like you talk about in the book of asking people for the payment right away, of launching that million dollar business over a weekend while also being thoughtful about how you're going to solve the problem. That's the bridge that I don't yet have. How would you explain that?

Yeah, you have to go. So me and you are now experienced, unfortunately. So you have to go back to the beginner's mindset of someone who has a day job. And most people have, let's say, good day job, 60k, 100k, 120k, and they dream of maybe having some side hustle. And when you've been fired, you realize that you are not controlling your destiny. You're not. Like, I had two people, Mark and Aaron, who chose my fate, thank God.

You mean Mark Zuckerberg and Aaron Patzer.

The founder of Facebook founderman who fired me. And because of them, though, I was like, wow, one person can decide my livelihood. And that's scary. And I want to Be in control of my destiny. And so entrepreneurship, whether you keep your job or not, at least gives you that option. And you have to get one customer and stick with it, that at some time, a few years later, you'll have millions or beyond where you can choose. Keep my day job or no, guess what? Actually want to work from Thailand or I want to go, for me, live half the year in Spain. So those people, though, actually don't have the gap bridging. They have two things that are holding them back when they just don't get started. They just don't get started. They're like, well, I need more. I'm not ready yet. And that's like saying you want to learn how to cook, but you're just like, reading YouTube, watching YouTube videos, or reading, but you know how to cook. You go over there and you put food in a bowl, in a dish, and you learn. But you can read forever, but you'll never learn unless you actually get into it. And the other thing is, they don't ask people. They never ask. And asking is the epitome. It's not even the epitome. It's the basis of all business.

Yeah, I agree.

It's the basis of business. You know, Ryan Levesque wrote a book about it. The billionaires I've interviewed, my show, almost all of them subtly say sales. And when they say sales, what they really say is asking. And so in terms of a weekend one, it's because people will extend the amount of time. Everyone has heard this law, but if you give yourself just 48 hours, you realize that, oh, wow, if I have kids and a wife and a day job, I don't have a lot of time, so I have to do it. And when I have just 48 hours, I'm gonna focus on just the thing that matters. Like, I did this docusign alternative business. I was, like, landing page ads. I only have 48 hours. And guess what? You're gonna sleep during those hours. You're gonna be on the toilet. You're gonna be eating right. And so you don't even have that many hours. You really have maybe, let's say, 10. So do you have time for that? No. Okay, so if I'm really doing a docusign business, how do I just find out if that's something people really want? So you have to get started right now, which everyone can do. You don't need Shopify. You don't need a domain. You don't need a coder. You don't need any money. And Then you have to ask people. And the ask is the, is the essence. If this is something people really find painful. And what I have always found is be your first customer. The first customer is always you. Second customer is someone else. So for me, I'm an absolute customer. Doesn't mean I always know what they want now, as we've, as we've grown the business. But in business, I find the best ones that I've always stuck with. I've quit a lot of them because I wasn't the customer nor did I care about the problem. And then, you know, in terms of getting going, you're asking like, how is it so important there? It's because you have to find out there's something people want because then guess what? Monday you have your day job and then you have to wait till the next weekend to get back on it. So if it didn't work, great, you have another chance. And if it did work, guess what? Next weekend you can keep it going.

Yeah. My longest standing mentor, his name is Travis, he likes to ask this riddle to entrepreneurs. He says, which would you rather have? Would you rather have the greatest skill set of selling that the world has ever seen, or would you rather have a mine of gold that you could mine at 10 cents on the dollar?

So this trick riddle, most people say, I'd rather be the best salesperson in the world. It's a skill set that I can use forever. But the right answer to it is, well, if you can mine gold for 10 cents of what it's worth, then you can sell it without having to be a good salesperson. It's like if you find the thing that people actually want at a discount, you can be the provider for it. You can make all the money that you want as long as mine the mine until it's empty. And the reason I bring this up is because it is easy to ask people where they are in pain and how you can solve that if you are humble enough to ask them. Whereas most people will sit there and think about how do I solve this problem? Or what is my big idea going to be. But if you can ask enough people where there is pain and where they would like to be a solution, it's pretty easy to be able to connect the dots there and come up with a solution that people are willing to pay for. Now, in your examples, you're often coming up with things that are low $. We'll say you brought up the lawn example. You bring up apps, discount apps for, you know, 30 to 100 bucks. Does the same principle apply if you are getting a business off the ground at a premium price point. And do you have a feeling about a superior model versus I mean, it makes sense to me to ask if I'm going to charge a few thousand dollars for something. It takes a different level of humility to come down to be very curious on the one to one interaction if I'm selling a $30 item. So how do you, how do you think about that?

So asking is everything. Even if you don't, you know, that's what we focus on. Chapter two. Even if you don't use it to start a business, you can get a wife.

You know, think about it. You have to ask.

You do have to ask. Yes, that's true.

You have to ask. You can get a raise, you can get a customer, you can get a friend, you can get a guest, you can get an employee. And it's a skill that can be practiced. I think that's a thing that people think of when you say asking. You say you have to be humble. No, you don't. If I think it's good for you, I don't have to be rude about it. But I'm like, hey, man, Ryan, you have a YouTube channel.

Yeah, I do, yes.

And if, you know, it sounds like you're doing this YouTube channel, I see you put out a lot of videos of me doing. Sounds like you would like to have more audience. Is that something that.

Of course.

And so how are you currently getting audiences? We can do this, but how are you.

Yeah, I put out a ton of content, I promote it to my audience, try to make the best content possible, try to optimize for the algorithm.

And then how come it's important for you to grow the audience?

I'm really proud of what we put out and I want as many people as possible to see it. And I find that when we grow the audience, the business grows too.

And so what do you. You sell your. Your books maybe, or you sell programs?

Yeah, book our events.

And so where's your audience? Let's just say YouTube right now at.

Yeah, where's my audience right now?

Yeah, like size wise, ballpark.

Oh, 130,000.

Which, by the way, is awesome.

Thanks.

That's. Most people don't.

I know Noah Kagan, but I'm. No, no, but.

Well, by the way, we can talk about how bad Million Subs is, right? I'll tell you a funny story later. But you have 130,000. If in this year I was able to get you to 130 to a million. Subs like what would that do for your business?

I would probably grow at least 300%.

So how much is that worth to you in value?

$7 million.

Damn, that's pretty good.

That's a lot.

So it sounds like if I can get you an extra 870,000 people, you'll get an extra $7 million for your business.

I would assume so, yeah.

So is that something where if I presented you with an option that I'll fully run your YouTube strategy and do everything for you, you'd pay me just 10% of that, so it sounds like $700,000 and then you could put a deposit down today of a thousand and then if you get good results in 30 days, we can then continue it.

It's a damn good offer.

So do you want to put a deposit down and I'll actually help you deliver on that?

Yeah, if you can show me results you've done for other people. Yeah, of course.

Well, not even for other people. And so that's a rejection right there, which is show me results of. So ideally you've done the results and I can show you my own channel. So that's why I would say confidently, importantly here you talked about high end offers. It's high end value for high end problems. So right there is a great example which is you have to tie it to. Is this a pain point that really matters? And it is, because I can see what you're doing. I can see you doing YouTube. It's not a surprise that you're doing it. Then you have to say, well, what does it get you to improve it? How much is that worth? And then from value based pricing, take a little bit of it. In the book, I call it, listen, option transition. So just a simple one. I've seen this work in other ways too. So that was an example where I know what's important to you. I can tie it to money and then I can see if you actually pay for it in a ideally no risk way. No risk way. Now, another person, Jake, who lives up north Texas, he lived with me for 48 hours, which was strange.

Did he launch a million dollar business in that 48 hours? He did. Yeah, he did. Good for.

He took two years avoiding it though. He took two years talking about his buddies. Two years texting people. Hey, two years annoying his wife in two years. Like two years. No, this is. Dude, this is the common way.

I'm laughing because I, you know, I've seen this a hundred times. Yeah.

Hey, I've been thinking about this idea, hey, I hate my job. And the problem sometimes, especially most people are intelligent. I would say most successful people are ordinary. I think that's a mistake. Most people think, oh, they have some special skill. No, they started. Yeah, and they started and they started and they started and they stuck with it. And most people just never get started. And so Jake, he is a golfer. I'm not a golfer. He's got golf friends, and so he's always had this idea of doing golf trips. He went. Got these golf guys do these golf trips where they bro out kind of like you're the brotherhood thing. But they do it with golf and whiskey and cigars and country music or whatever. They do polo shirts, shout out to golf people, man. And it's a huge industry, I think the golf industry. I don't know how many billions the golf industry is, but it's billions. Billions and billions of dollars. He went on one trip and was like, I want to go to another one.

That's an interesting opportunity. And so there is a process, right, where you get good at starting, you get good at asking, which is why Jake hasn't done shit in two years. Then you have to understand a little bit of like, how much do people spend on golf? Is there a million dollars for you to make? Because I think you teach people to get to a million. If you're in a small business or small industry, that there's no way you could do it. Like, say you're a physical therapist and you're massaging people at home. How many backs do you have to rub to get to a million?

A lot of.

A lot of back. So, okay, well, if I'm rubbing backs, it won't work. But maybe if I hire people to run backs, or maybe if I create the platform, and that's where you can see that the opportunity grows with the size of that. And so for Jake, it was like, all right, well, if you sold these golf trips and they're about $5,000 each. 5,000, that's. I think that's a lot for 200.

People to have a million dollar business.

Million dollar revenue. I'm talking profit. I'm talking like money that Jake and take home to the kids. And so it's like 5,000 to sell them, plus the golf, plus hotels, plus food, plus cigars, plus whiskey, plus a chef. And each sale he would make 2,000. So you do a quick model, and I show people how to do it. And he was 2000. That's not bad. What is that? How many sales is that? Maybe 500 people, 500 people to make a million bucks. Pretty doable. All right now Jake, now let's go to the fun part. Let's see if this people are excited about. And this is again, it was all within 48 hours. So if you break it down, I think the 24 hours with Jake was like confidence and a lot of businesses confidence, it's feeling worthy of receiving stuff. And to receive stuff you have to ask.

Yeah.

And I never, you know, a lot of my career I think I was trying to feel more worthy through business. And it takes time and doing things, helping people, feeling and did. Eventually I'd say I feel pretty damn great about myself.

You just said, you just said something very profound was the idea of you were trying to feel worthy through business. Of course. And I just, I just played that out in my head. About the times where I feel scared or the times that I feel not worthy is usually the times I'm trying to scale. So that's when, that's when I sell the hardest. Those are the times I run the most ads at like a loss. Like I'm trying to force my way into feeling good about it. The absolute opposite of that is asking one to one. Right. And at the beginning of a business, and I preach this to, to our members, there is no replacing at the beginning of a business. The one to one ask.

So you're coming around to it.

So here's a good example. We have one of our portfolio brands, sells a high protein, low sugar snack. It's a Rice Krispie treat. It's delicious. I'll give you one. It's called Sinless snacks.

Sounds great.

Fricking bomb. I'll give you one before you leave. And they just launched this new product and at the beginning he is just his full time job is asking people if they like the product and if they'll leave a review. There's no replacing that. You can't scale that. You can't build a big process for it. And within a couple of weeks he's doing 100 sales a day. Right. And that is, that is, that is in striking distance of a million dollar business within a few weeks of this product getting off the ground.

Amazing.

Because there's, there's just no replacing at the beginning that one to one ask, that one to one interaction. And I think most people are not willing to just take the step back to go through that process of having the one to one interaction, asking people what they want, asking people if they'll leave a review, making some sort of a small offer. And I'm just playing with this idea of when I have felt the most empowered. I have no problem doing that one to one ask when I have been scared or when I have felt like I have doubt about my idea. I go out and just try to scale with impersonality. Meaning like I'm just trying to run ads to meaningless clicks on the Internet and trying to optimize for conversion. Right. And then I will feel worthy about it rather than dropping down and actually just doing the one to one interaction. You did this like.

Yeah. I mean that was really nice how you. I think you shared. Felt very vulnerable and honest. And I would say a lot of what I've noticed from Million Dollar Weekend for myself, but and also everyone who goes through their own business. It's, it's, it's a, it's a journey of confidence. It's a journey of believing we can do these things that maybe we thought we couldn't do. Like, I never thought I'd live this life. Like, I have a girlfriend, like a really amazing girlfriend. I have a woman, she's a woman friend, you know, I don't know what you call him. Girlfriend, woman, friend, who's phenomenal. I have a book where I gotta work with my idol, Tal Roz. He's my idol and I gotta work with him on a book that made me feel that, wow, I'm afraid of this. But I actually ended up facing the book and did it. Then I get to run a business, I get to live half the year. It's like, wow, I never thought I could live this. And I think that's true for most people. It's like, what's the life they could have lived? And it's probably also closer than they think, is what I believe. Like this life that you dream is closer than you think. But you have to start and you have to face a little of this discomfort and am I worthy? Can I do it? And the answer is yes. Most very ordinary people are doing things and realizing it's not some online guru who has some special ability. The only difference between most of them, like you, me, and maybe some of the people out there is that we just started and we started and we started and we started and then we stuck with it for some period of time.

So you know that you've ever heard that phrase that in hell you meet the person that you could have been but didn't become?

Yeah.

Is the dumbest fucking saying in the whole entire world. Right? It's the most unhelpful phrase ever. Because if you buy into this idea that hell is being the person you could have been. It means that there's always like a better version out there that you always have to chase, which I think is just horrible for your confidence. Whereas when you flip it, find all the reasons that you can be confident. Like you just listed off all the things that your life has led to. Like you got to write a book, you got to work with your mentor, you got to build this business. These are all things in your past that you can be confident about that you can build upon for the next thing and for appreciation. Whereas I think most people are looking at the outside world or they'll look at Noah Kagan or Ryan Moran and say, I need. They have now I have a gap. There's. But the perception is they've accomplished these things. And so I need to take these big leaps of progress in order for me to feel worthy enough for me to be an entrepreneur. And I think it's just the most unhelpful thing when you are starting your business because all of the start happens when you are doing the one to one interaction and doing something small. And then you grow what starts to pop. Otherwise you get into that trap where you're thinking about it for three years, you and you never get it off the ground.

Yeah. Jake said to me, he said, I said, how come you wanna do this business? He's like, I don't wanna live a what if life.

And he's like, I wanna be a good example to my kids.

Yeah.

I was like, wow, wow. And you know this asking, when you've done something that solves a problem, it turns it from an ask to, to me, I think the word I would always think of is duty. Like I. And when I did this book, you know, even though I've worked at Facebook, I helped start Mint, I've done seven plus million dollar businesses. I'm still self conscious.

We all are.

We all, everyone is, everyone is. And then you know the secret to it, the answer to that was I just went and helped one person, Jake delivered at my house. And when I actually had to have Jake live with me, which is strange, with a girlfriend, woman friend, I'm like, she's like, who's this guy in the backyard? I'm like, it's Jake, don't worry, I don't know him. And then I walked Jake, I didn't know him, and walked Jake through the book step by step. And I was like, oh, I don't know if this actually works. Oh shit, it did. Okay. Dollar Challenge worked. Coffee challenge, where you have to ask for 10% off on your coffee, you get rejected and you move forward. Oh, wow. Oh, Jake's calling his friends.

Oh, my God.

He's actually gonna do it. Oh, shit. They actually gave him money. And then I checked in with Jake Monday and Jake's like, yeah, I've got around 15,000 in sales and I've got five people come into my golf trips. And most people never make a million because they never make a dollar. And most people, most every person is missing that. All these entrepreneurs that are even the ones they idolize, they started pretty basic in a very short amount of time, relatively. Meaning, like, look at Zuckerberg. That was a weekend and he didn't even come up with this stuff. He copied another person. Airbnb, they sent an email that said, hey, come rent our couch. $100 billion business today. But it was just this one sale. AppSumo.com, $12. One sale from posting on Reddit.

Yeah, you're giving me another realization of so much confidence. Happens when you just collect the first dollar and people put off the first dollar for years sometimes. We completely rebuilt our processes that we put our members through to where now if they're super early in the process, we have them prelaunch product before they even have it ready and just see if anybody will buy.

Yeah.

And you have in the book a couple of templates of firing off emails of just asking people if they will buy or going out to people and saying, hey, I'm going in this direction. I'm starting this business. Do you know anyone? Do you know anyone who would be interested in this? And there's, in today's world, you can put up a Facebook post that says, I'm thinking about going in this direction. Is there anybody that you know who would benefit from this? You have a thousand contacts in your phone and a thousand contacts in your email inbox of just saying, hey, I'm going in this direction. Do you know anybody? If you do those things and no one buys, you've saved yourself two years. Great. But if there's a pretty good chance that someone is going to say yes or no, someone. So my question is, at what point do you know that you have something that becomes the million dollar business so you can prove a concept that you can sell something in a weekend, when do you know that you've really got something good?

In the weekend.

In the weekend.

In the weekend. That's the whole point, is that you're don't run very fast in the Wrong direction. That's the whole point of the weekend. So let's take Jake. Jake had other ideas. He wanted to do a. A coffee company. Okay, fine. Coffee company. You can win. It could work. He had a idea, another idea. I thought this was actually still really good Toy rentals for kids. So you know how your kids get older, but you have all these crap toys. You can like, mail them off.

Oh, yeah.

I was like, great idea. But he was excited about golf trips. Now, what you have to make sure of is to really just. If we had to break it down to two elements, there's only two things. One, is there a million dollars of cash that you can get for yourself in this business? Maybe not today, but in the next year? Two years, three years, four years. Like, is there a million dollars of spend that's going to be there or that will be there, number one. And number two, is this something that people are actually excited to give you money for? That's it. If you think about it, that's it. If you want to get a million dollars, you need to make sure there's a million spend and make sure that something people are excited to spend that money on with you. And so with Jake this week, in a weekend, literally within 48 hours, he had $15,000 of commitments. And then now a month later, he got the money.

And if he sticks with it, which he got distracted, which I think is another kind of common thing that people are a little afraid of success, which is not talked about enough.

Then if he could just stick with it for the next few years, he will have a million dollars.

So what I heard you say is that if the market size is big enough and you've proven that you can get people to say yes, and there's margin there, that is your green light.

Yes. And if you cannot get three in 40 hours, it does not get easier. And I liked your point about your members like pre selling. And everyone will say, well, my stuff is different. It's like everything is different. Elon Musk, he's pretty popular. He is the king of pre sales. Cybertruck took six years from his pre sale.

Yeah.

Model 3 took 10 years from pre sale.

Yeah.

By the way, all of your airline tickets are pre sold. All of the events you ever buy are pre sold. All of the hotels you ever buy are pre sold. Concerts are pre sold.

That's a really good point, Noah.

Almost everything you do is pre sold. But you're like, well, no, I know it exists. How do you know it exists? And to your point about looking at your contacts, everyone. If you pull out your phone and you go in your contacts, go on your favorites, go on your email, you have these people. If they say no, great. You saved a shit ton of time and money to find something that maybe they do want next versus spending all this time and money to find out something they didn't want.

It's a really good point that almost all things are pre sold. Like I'm even thinking about this is as silly as this is. But everything that I buy on Amazon is technically pre sold because it takes two days to get to me.

But you can show someone something. You can. So Jake with his golf trips, we went on Google Docs free everything. I like to do it free and fast. And so we put out a picture of the golf course. I don't bad lanes or some golf course. I don't know anything about golf. Yeah, put a picture of cigar, put a picture of a food, wrote a little description. You can use ChatGPT if you're lazy. And then he put $5,000 price. And so when you go to someone like, hey, here's what I'm thinking of doing. Yeah, makes it really easy. Same as Amazon. Here's the what Ryan's book looks like.

Right? And then if they buy it, great. If they don't, good, let me go find something else they don't. Rejection can lead you to answers. Rejection can lead you to learning. But the fear of it just holds you back from ever getting to where you want to go.

Yeah, that's a new frame for me to think about that. Basically everything is pre sold. I'm gonna steal that one from you, dude.

I stole that from someone else. Just hope you guys realize that like everything is a like especially in business. This is a common entrepreneur thing where they, they have an idea for like these metal mugs. They Google metal mugs. Someone else did it. Not going to do. That's an avoidance. Let's just see if you can sell three mugs today. Really? Yeah. Let's just go and see what you can learn. Be an experimenter and guess what? Experiments fail. Be a scientist. When you do a scientist, you fail stuff.

That's how you get closer and that's you get closer.

Guess what? It didn't work. Cool. Now I can try. Maybe it's metal glasses or maybe it can be baby clothing or whatever it is that you're interested in that you think others will. I got to come back on Million Dollar Weekend for a second. I have a million subs on YouTube, email list AppSumo Da da da da da. All these different advantages. One, just because you have platforms doesn't mean you have advantages. I put out a YouTube video, 12,000 views. So that's a whole reminder that if you don't control communication with your audience, the platform does. And you have to get an email list, period. In any business, 12,000 views and I'm a million subs about it. That means that I have to pray to the YouTube gods or pay them or create some magical content that eventually lets me talk to this audience that I've, I've earned. Right. That I've earned their attention, but I can't do it.

So email list or someplace where you can control the conversation.

Yeah, Wherever it is that you have direct contact, maybe it's even phone numbers. And so taking $4 million weekend, it.

Could be a discord group, a slot group, like someplace where you can have one to one interaction.

So with this book, you know, the two things I think were interesting is I'd say the same thing you're seeing. What I'm doing with Millionaire Weekend is how I run a business. I validated. I posted an article 13 years ago on Tim Ferriss's blog that went viral called how do I start Million Dollar Weekend Businesses Featuring Chihuahuas. It went viral, millions of views. And I was like, oh, that worked. Then I wrote a course about that article that went super viral. Then I did content around this stuff. It's like, okay, I'm validating that people are excited for it. So I'm not surprised if the book does well because I've tested it and tested it and tested it. I wasn't ready to write a book or had the time until more recently. The other thing, the point I wanted to make to you is yes, I could go do ads, I could go do all these things. But you know how I got a thousand people that my goal for the book is a thousand reviews. I literally just messaged a thousand people.

Like, it wasn't. People were like, oh, this is Noah's assistant. Yeah, it's Noah's assistant named Noah and his name is Noah Kagan too. It's just. And I messaged people that were on my mailing list or that were on Twitter that were LinkedIn. I said, Hey, I have this book coming out. I'd love for you to be a part of my launch team. You'll get this, this, this, this, this, this. What I ask is you preorder copy and you leave an honest review when the book comes out. How's that sound? And I said, Game on.

Question mark.

And I personally, not, not, I don't think that's arrogant, but I just manually emailed a thousand people and now I had a thousand person launch team on Slack that I'm communicating with every single week about the book. And I think that's a separate point for businesses that are growing, which is like, put your kitchen in the restaurant. Put your kitchen in the restaurant.

It's so funny that you did this because you're out there, you have an audience of a million people. You could just say, buy the book, go review it and it would probably have a great launch.

Probably be fine, right? You'd probably be fine.

But you went out and built an intentional, I call a hot list of people who raised their hand and said, yeah, I'll do it. Right. And a thousand. More than enough to do damage. Right. If you put a thousand reviews on just about anything and you kick off that launch, it's a great marketing strategy to get something off the ground that is way more than you need in order to really seed something special. We see that if people do that with a hundred people, I got nothing. I got no audience, you know, 100 people. Or if you put enough content out there, you'll have 100 people that raise their hand and get onto a launch list. And then at least you can ask that group questions like, would you want this? But I think it's the willingness to just be in the dirt at the beginning and realize how few people you.

Need one by one.

You don't need millions of people in order to have a million dollar business. You need a handful of people who really care in order to do damage. And if you do a good job serving that group of people, they know everybody else who wants it. Now, you made this really interesting comment that you sort of glanced over, which is you think most people are afraid of success, they're afraid of when it works out and that most more people need to talk about that. I have gone back and forth on this, like, are we really afraid of success or are we afraid of failure? But you seem to have a con, a conviction about this conviction. So tell me, tell me what you mean.

Let me just share a story. So there's a woman who read Million Dollar week. Her name's MacKenzie. I just met her recently and she worked at Apple. Like, why don't you stay at Apple?

It's coming.

And she worked at Warby Parker, like the glasses thing.

Yeah.

And.

Let me show. I'm gonna share the story by example. So she was, she's always Dreamed of being an entrepreneur. She's like, I just at least wanted to take the chance on myself and see what happened, what could happen. I was like, great, I'm proud of you. So while she had her day job, she then sent an email to her friends and colleagues and said, you know, my I love connection, and I'm really into design and business strategy. And the thing that I'm excited about is greeting cards.

I love it. I fucking love it. There's so many. And especially if you've seen my YouTube channel, there's so many weird ways of getting rich. That's the coolest part. I'm always fascinated by urinals, the little urinal cakes. I can't wait. I'm trying to interview that guy, the.

Guy who invented urinal cakes.

Dude, it's a billionaire.

Probably.

Billionaire, right? You can get rich in so many weird ways.

They're delicious. Yeah.

A little bit of cinnamon, a little whipped cream. Anyways, so she sends an email, doesn't create some complicated stuff. Done all this stuff.

People buy it. People are like, oh, yeah, I'd love to support you. And I'm excited to do this for her company or for other things. So people buy it. Great validation. And, you know, you can look at alternatives to see. I don't think just because someone else does it, it's validation. You have to validate, but you can see other things for the opportunity. Hallmark, pretty big company.

I want you to keep going. But you just said something really important, which is that you have to validate it 100%. Right?

This is so easy.

So here's like, the example that I'm playing around in my head, right? So, like, I have a company that sells supplements. Supplements. It's like, it's tough to be like, I have made a supplement. Do you want to buy it? Right. If you validate it first in the form of a study, a personal test, testing it on 10 friends, running your lab work. Now, I know the pain point that I can address something with that is a. I just didn't want to gloss over that point of like, you have. You have to validate it first. Please continue. But that was really important.

You're 100% right. Where people are like, well, this other person did it, so it should work. Okay. Yeah. Try it out. See how that goes. And then they run off very fast in the wrong direction. So with her, she had her own validation. And there are other companies, Hallmark American greeting cards that seem to be pretty popular now. Fast forward. I got to catch up with her a few Weeks ago. Her name is Mackenzie. I said, her site is marymakery.com. and I was, in my head, I'll be very candid, I was like, she sold $100 of cards, which is so great. And I said, how's your year been? You know, you've been working on this business, you quit your job now and all these things. She's like, yeah, you know, I sold $50,000 worth of it, but I'm start a new business because this is not. I was like, excuse me, squeeze me, squeeze me. And I was like, what? $50,000 of a greeting card?

And this is her passion, right?

She loves connections.

Okay?

And so it's maybe not that there's different fears of success. So mine was a sabotaging fears where I was trying to be like my father. So his was like, he made all this cash and like tons of money and then blew it on drugs. And I was like, well, I can do that.

But it's no, you know, we replicate our. We replicate our environments. You replicate even your relationships. A lot of times it's what you saw in your parents relationship. We look at the models and so I was trying to avoid that, but a lot of times you end up being that. And so that was my fear. So for man, like 10, not 10 years, but almost 10 years of AppSumo was like, save all cash after we invested in the business, like, everything goes in the bank. Zero risk on that. So I think right now, today, I think we have like $12 million cash just sitting there.

I'm like, I mean, there's worse problems to have.

No, no.

God, Allah, Muhammad, all of you, thank you. But it's like, I'm still worried about doing that. Right. Even years later. We're now probably not as likely, but I don't know.

Right?

Isn't that kind of like.

Yeah, yeah, I get it.

We all have our different nuances. That's a fear of success. I don't. You know, maybe that's not the right phrase for your success because people just are like, yo, just fucking give me success. I would love to be afraid of it, really. That's what most people want. But I do think it's also common that people are like, mackenzie, where she got here and she's like, well, I'm going to do now PowerPoint slide design.

Huh?

Here's how I'm processing what you're saying. I think money is like alcohol. It just amplifies who you are. Right. So we often think that money will solve our problems. Money will solve your money problems, but it will amplify your other problems. So if you are a drug addict and you give somebody a lot of money, you're probably gonna buy more drugs, right? If you are a lonely person and you give somebody a lot of money, they're probably gonna be more lonely. They're probably gonna spend more money on the things that they already give fuel to. So when you say fear of success, I hear amplifying problems. I hear if you have more fuel to amplify the things where you are not free, then those problems are going to get worse. And so if you take somebody who.

Is doing well in a business and they are neglecting their health and they are putting more money into a business and their health gets worse, they will blame the success for the reason that their health is getting worse. That's what I hear when you say fear of success is that there's more fuel to amplify the problem. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs will hit a resistance point in which their other problems are starting to drown out their ability to put more energy into the thing that is working. And so they say, I'm going to start something else. And that's where the shiny object syndrome comes in. So that's how I'm processing this idea of fear of success.

There's a book by George Leonard, which it's called Mastery. It's not the Robert Greene version, it's by George Leonard. It's an older version that people can still find. And one of the things that was most fascinating about his book of Mastery, and I think it replies to Business and Life, is how do you deal with plateaus? How do you deal with a moment where it's not working so well? And what do you do? You generally will be like, well, I've. I've hit my peak. Yeah, I'm like, $50,000 is not the peak, by the way, it's the beginning. But if you can sustain over that plateau, if you can say, okay, instead of going to the brand new thing, which this is, what I would have done in my 20s is like, well, this is over. Let me try a new thing, which is what I did. I did conferences, moved off of that. Then I did this business that, you know, right. And with her, it feels easier that this new thing is going to be easier. But as I'm now in my 40s, what I've recognized is the best businesses are the ones that work. The best businesses are the ones that work. So for her, you have. You did $50,000 in your first year that's so amazing. What could it be if you only did that for the next year too? And she's like, yeah, I know, but like, I really think this design thing is going to be big. And so she's going to go on her journey, as I like to say, and see what happens. And what I recommended to her though is what if you experimented? And this is what we do at appsumo, Test and invest. Even to this day, this is exactly how we apply things at Appsumo. We test before we invest. So before you go and run off in the wrong direction, which maybe it is the real answer, this thing is working. And appsumo, we've gone off in the wrong direction. Like, okay, we have appsumo working. Let's go build software that is a new audience for Shopify customers. Why don't you build software that gets you more customers to appsumo, which is.

What we do now.

And so how do you test it? So what I encourage her to do Is test for 30 days. Just trying to improve your e commerce site. Don't do this other business. Just go 30 days more. See what happens at the end of 30 days. And most times in business, what I've noticed is that you stop doing the things that were working for her. How much have you emailed the people that bought before? Oh, I haven't emailed them in a while. I know. Just keep going back to the things that are already working and do more of those. The second thing is that when you're doing a new thing, you lose your focus and she has something working, which is the hard part. Easy, hard. And so I go to her website and there's like sold out buttons everywhere. You go to the best sellers list, there's all these sold out. There's now. And now she's adding all these. She has a subscription option, she has a custom option, she has a corporate option.

It's like now it's complicated.

Just go back, go back to the basics. Maybe you do a limited edition cards. What are the one cards that people are selling a lot? I think it was like, like bachelorette cards. Oh great. It's same as appsumo. We were doing bundles but that was a lot of work. And it was like, what if we just did individual deals instead of a bundle? Holy shit. That 10x the business. And so for her, if she just. The whole point though is not which tactic or strategy it is, but it's the focus on the thing that's working.

Yeah, there's often when something isn't Working to find a new tactic or strategy that will complicate the business even further. And the answer is to actually come back to basics. And this is the point that I think a lot of people don't understand. This simple business where you're going one to one or you're like, you're following this playbook where you're just like scraping it together, building an audience of 100 people. I thought it's so fricking fun because everything is fresh and new and it's popping. You're getting all of these ideas and that's the point that people are resisting. They're resisting just going to the very simple business where you're getting the feedback and you're getting the reviews and you're getting the first sales. And if you nurture that, it can stay really simple and really fun. But when people take their eye off, oh, I have this thing that is working now I need to learn Facebook ads. Now I need to learn copy. Now I need to learn SEO. Now I need to learn this. Then you just become a very stressed out entrepreneur and what do you do? You crave for the days when it was simple and it was new. And so what do you do?

There's no meetings, there's none of this.

Right. So I actually want to go back to the beginning of the thing that I'm avoiding now, which is just coming back to basics and connecting with my customers one on one and building processes that serve them. But if you stay in that zone, you end up building a million dollar business.

Yeah. Success is boring. Success is boring. When it's actually working. It's boring because you're doing the same thing over and over and the result is working.

Yeah.

And then you're like, well, this is working. And we have the psychological. I'm not a therapist. I go to a lot of therapy, but it's like, it's working. It's boring. You're like, oh, this is just boring. Like, I'm used to the hunt, the thrill, the newness. But for me, I've really, and I think it's an age thing. I'm embracing patience. Like, it's working. So just be patient. It's working. Just keep doing it. Now. I've enjoyed that things are working. And if you look at, if you look at a pro athlete, I think it's really interesting to compare. Like most pro athletes, what do they do? You don't see them like trying to shoot half court shots. They're doing layups. I bought my house from an NFL player. He's a kicker and I always think about him. His name's Dustin Hopkins.

He plays for the Browns.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know Dustin Hopkins, he saved our season this year.

Oh, he crushed it this year.

Yeah, we traded a seventh round pick for him from San Diego and he frickin crushed it.

Dude, Shout out.

Saved our season.

That guy's the man. Yeah, he sent me a holiday card. I was like, dude, he's so. He's.

Just tell him thank you. Like he. Him and Joe Flacco.

Dude, Flacco crushed as well. Thank you guys. Imagine. But the point I would say is imagine. I think about this a lot and I need to text him about it. Imagine his work day.

I guess I'm be kicking today, think about his work.

Monday, kick, kick, Tuesday, kick. Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning routine, then kick. Yeah, I have an afternoon break, then I kick. And then, you know, evening I'm watching film about probably kicking, you know, like, I don't know, like, is there any soccer movies that are famous? I don't know. Anyways, that's all he does all day, right? And that. And then. And then, not only that, his whole job is 15 seconds on a Sunday. Now think about it for ourselves. We're like, oh, I have something new in 15 seconds. I quit.

That's. Myself included. Myself included. Even with this book, I'm like, what's it gonna be like when the book's out and there's nothing else to do? Who'd you just keep doing the same thing. One of my favorite speeches ever, I was telling somebody is Art Williams. You know Art Williams?

I know that name.

He's a billionaire from insurance and he has his videos from 1980s or 19, early 90s. And the whole speech is called do it. And the whole. You don't have to necessarily watch the speech, but he's just like, you find something working.

Is that from Zoolander? Do it, do it, do it. No, that's Starskin Hutch. Starskin Hutch. I blew my reference there.

I do love Zoolander quotes. We can do that. But he was just. The whole speech is about just doing it. And then when it works, you do it. And then after it works, you keep doing it. And then after that you do it again. And that's the whole speech. There's more to it. Does a good story about it, but it's like, do it and do it and do it. And I think if we can either do it ourselves or find people around us that we can pay to do it, that is how you are going to get success in this life.

So I'm going to throw. I want to end by throwing a wrench into this argument.

Dude, wrench it.

So you keep bringing back the example of appsumo. Appsumo is the business that worked. Appsumo is the thing that after trying a bunch of things, it worked. Now it's a super successful company. But you also have a big YouTube channel and now you're doing a book launch. These things feel like new things that you started, but they're all successful. So either you don't believe your own thesis or there is something about when you decide it's time to start something new that is additive to what I've built in the past. And that's what I'd like to hear you unpack. So you've got multiple things that have been successful after you've had this big winner that you're known for. Really big YouTube channel, successful book launch. So what's the through line between all of those where you have multiple projects that are all successful?

You're not seeing all the ones that aren't successful. You're not seeing it. Have you seen haldrop.com?

Nope.

Have you seen sumo-market.com?

Can'T say I have.

Meat Fam, which we talked about. Sumo Me. No one's using anymore. Or now it's. We sold it, so people are using it.

You know, all these different things I've done that you've never seen, and you're only seeing the ones that it worked right away. And so I stuck with it. Huh. Let me show you. But before you.

Before you keep going.

The aha I just had is that. And I don't care about the failures.

But you do. Right? Like, and the things that I failed at, no one cares.

No one knows. And no one cares. They care about themselves.

I can't think about them so much. What are people gonna think about if they find out that this thing failed? Yeah, no one cares. I literally only know you for your successes. Right. And I don't care about any of the failures.

You know about Email Badge.

Can't say I've heard of Email Badge.

Shorty, sms, Keep Going, Sleek Bio.

These are all projects that you started and failed. Jeez. Yeah.

So some of these are from the team that we worked with. So David and Garrett and Abaldo. So we have Tidy Cow, which you probably have heard of. Sendfox, which you might have heard of. You know, I think the point I'm trying to make with the successful stuff is that you want to find that it's success early on and then double down, triple down, stick with it for a very, very long period of time. And this is a big thing I've changed my perspective on. I think most gurus give wrong advice is what I've observed is that 10 exit go for rich people. It's like if you found something working, just stick with it for a long period of time and don't be ambitious.

Yeah, right.

A lot of my success, I would say now is because we've just stuck with it.

That's it. Well, you said the last time you were here, well, what about like 10% growth? A little bit.

Just a little bit.

And what happened to the businesses that just grow slowly over time that compound to become ridicul successful, we want to have the thing just like booms out of nowhere. Those are the exceptions.

I always think about easy come, easy go. If you've made it fast, it goes away fast. If you've made it slow, it stays slow. Meaning if you can do it over a long time, it's not going to go away as quickly. Now with this. And let me break these down and pull back to like day one, right? Because there's a success bias. Like I'm already. And success is relative. It's about how you determine it. I'm successful for myself. When I launched my YouTube channel, which now is at a million. I launched it with the phone. I launched it with the phone. You can go back on the channel two and a half years ago. Hey, what's up? I'm in my house, not in my garage because I didn't have one. And 800. You've been to my. Have you ever been to my old house?

No.

Okay. It's 800 square feet. It's. It's a dump. Walls are cracking, floors cracking. Just flooded during the. The ice storm. And I just filmed it in my living room after I was working out shirtless. And I was just like, hey, here's what AppSumo and me are doing with our cash and our plan for Covid. I put it out, I think 300 views, that was enough for me to feel there's some validation that besides, people want to watch it, I like it. And then I did another video the next week. And then three years later. Now the videos cost 20 to 30 thousand dollars to make. And there's, you know, cameras and studios and there's a, you know, thumbnail person and there's a research producer and there's all these people. But. But that's because we started and then each time, you know, I call it law of 100 people might call it. I put out 100 videos and stick with this before you quit too soon. Same thing with the book, 2011. I put out an article because I wanted to promote appsumo on Tim's site. People went crazy for it. Oh, that's interesting. I've put out a lot of articles. I put out thousands of articles on NoahKagan.com Very few, maybe four. Four have gone viral. Like that Tony Robbins article, Ayahuasca article, fired by Facebook article, and the Tim Ferriss article in 20 years of writing. Right. And so that article went viral. Then monthly 1k. I launched a course around it. You don't have to get the course. It's more or less the book. Then I was like, oh, I did this course. Then I kept starting my own businesses. Some work and some don't. Okay, what's happening here? And then with this book, it's now, I think a 1300 person launch team where I've personally talked to all these people. I've had someone live at my house. I've had weekend cohorts for six months. It's like, yeah, I feel now at this point as I'm promoting these things, I'm like, yeah, I have confidence it works. Same with appsumo in a weekend launched it. Same with my other businesses. I did another one. I think there's something there and this is maybe an element for people to think about. The ones where I just tried something really quickly to see if it would work, kind of did really well. And they were simple. So another business I did was I was building these annoying Facebook games. Remember those back in the day?

Oh, I do remember those. Yeah.

And my partner Andrew, who lives here, he was like, yo, these games suck. We all hated the games, but like, we hate our payments provider even more. What if we replaced them? Let's build our own. This is before stripe. Let's build our own. We built. And we just like built it in a weekend and we instantly made more money on our games. And then I asked Andrew Warner, I was like, who's someone else who builds games? He's like, talk to this Chad guy. Called up Chad on Thanksgiving, hey, we built this thing. Can you put in your games? It'll make you 25% more money. He's like, it's Thanksgiving. I was like, I know, I know, I know. But you want to make more money and it's Thanksgiving. You could afford better Thanksgivings. Chad used it on Monday. Now Chad's My business partner. Fifteen years later, he lives here in Austin. But it was quick. So I think the two things I've recognized is that you can do it quickly, and most of the best businesses are actually pretty simple. When you have a business where you're like, let me explain it to you. If you have to say that phrase, it's probably not going to work. But if you can say, hey, appsumo software deals for entrepreneurs or Groupon for geeks, okay, I get it. Payments for Facebook games. Get it. Like. And I think there is something there where it can be done quickly. And if you can explain it quickly, you have a good chance of succeeding.

So what I'm hearing you say is, in the case of the YouTube channel and with the book, these took a lot of time, but they started with very simple ideas. Like, the launch of them was very simple.

It was simple and it was. It was clear demand. I think that's the thing that people miss out on. They're trying to solve marketing problems when they have a business problem of a problem no one wants.

Right.

Like, I launched the article that. It did take me some time to write it, but I put it out, and it was like, Instantly, people were like, tell me more. And I think that's an interesting thing in business is how do you survey to get pain? How do you talk to people to get paid? How do you notice what they're talking about, then make sure they want to pay for it and satisfy that demand? And that's exciting in this world that you're literally helping them with their problems and you get paid for that.

It is a fun game. You can crack that.

Think about what we're actually doing. It's like, hey, I want help with this problem. Like, software creators have problems with marketing. I love marketing, Han. I bring you customers money and attention and feedback, and then you get paid, and I get paid on this. And our customers get good deals. Like, and this is my life.

Another example is when the Browns don't have a kicker, and they desperately need a kicker. And I call Dustin Hopkins, and he comes and saves the season. Dude. DH yeah.

Coming through. He's such a good guy, such a good family man.

I'd love to meet him if he's still here.

They're not here tonight.

Now. Damn it.

Okay, well, I kicked him out of that. Well, no.

I kicked him out of that. No, he. Well, he charged me a ridiculous price, and I said yes, and now I love it. It's one of the best things I've ever spent money on.

This Is this is really fun for me because I'm processing this, what this means for our members. So I'm listening to you talk about the book and I'm thinking about what this means for the people who are like literally starting million dollar businesses. It's what I do. It's my bread and butter. And the hardest part is that early phase when they're getting something off. And we sort of cracked this nut by getting them to pre launch. But as I'm hearing, you process through this strategy of getting something off as quickly as possible. Like what can we do to make that even faster? And it's things like if we can get you to make a Facebook announcement and put people onto an email list and then go through your contact list and ask all the people if they would want something. And you build a list of two to 250 people and then you actually talk to those people and you get feedback from those people and then those become sales and reviews very quickly. That builds the snowball for a product to get to 25 sales a day and then repeat that three more times. And I'm just thinking about how much faster we can get something off the ground if we just get them to do the little stuff at the very beginning. I think that cuts out all of the noise of what products should I sell, what's my launch strategy, what's the best channel for me to market on, how much should I spend on ads. And it's like you're missing it. These, these are problems that don't exist yet. Let's go through this process of vetting. If we have a million dollar business and we can do that over two days, we can do that over a weekend, we can do that in 10 hours of just getting something off the ground and getting feedback in the form of revenue, getting feedback in the form of people who are saying, I want this enough to pay for it. And that just comes down to can you communicate the problem clearly enough to be able to serve somebody? And if so, the market is big enough. You have a million dollar business.

Yeah, there's so much. There's literally a place called Harvard. There's so many places to spend money to learn how to start a business. There's Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley. I mean, there's so many books and so many courses. And you know what I like about us is we're operators. We've done it and we're doing it. And if there's so much out there, by the way though, how is it that everyone who wants it hasn't Gotten it.

What's the problem? There's so much information. There's literally billions of hours of fake Internet gurus that you could watch. And if there's so much out there, then you have to think, well, something else is missing. And the missing thing is, people, just don't start today right now. Don't worry about the how. That's one of the main phrases now, not how. So, like, and even in stupid ways, something's on the ground, like your yoga mat just right now. Pick it up. Don't worry about how to pick it up. Just go get it right. You want to get a customer, just get it right now. Don't worry about the website. And then the second thing is, how do you practice asking? Just practice asking. Like. And I think one of the easiest ways we talked about earlier is just ask someone for feedback. Don't make it a big scary thing. If you think you're helping them, say, hey, I'm working on today. I'd love to talk with you. I can get your feedback. Of course, all your friends want to help you. Your network wants to help you. And I've seen it with cookies. I've seen Jennifer Jones have a cookie business. I've seen this woman, MacKenzie, have a greeting card business. Or it could be Jake with golf trips, or I started a DocuSign alternative business because I just ask people, so if you can practice with a coffee challenge, if you can practice asking for feedback, then as you get to the business, tactics or recipes as we like to call it, that stuff becomes kind of the easy part.

I will say this can backfire with kids. I have tried to train my children to be very good askers. Uh oh. And this has backfired at times.

What's going on?

Well, I have to say no a thousand times a day when they want a second dessert. And then they negotiate with me because I taught them how to negotiate. So this can backfire. Be careful how you only use this for good, ladies and gentlemen. This is power.

Yeah. I mean, people realize everything is an ask, right? Like, I had a bill last week where they had an extra charge. And I was like, my glasses. I bought these Ray Ban glasses for filming.

Yeah.

To have the smart camera in it. But it didn't work the way I wanted. And I messaged them, I said, oh, no, you can't return it. I said, hey, one, I'm a social media influencer. I don't know if you know that I'm going to influence people not to buy your glasses, but the first gen were much Better. I didn't say anything like that. I just said, hey. And again, I think with asks is it doesn't have to be so antagonistic where you're against them. And it's like, hey, I really like the glasses. I'm like, 10 days outside the return window.

I asked.

I just asked again. The second time, they said, sure, we can do it. And you can never get the things you want in life if you don't ask for it. You're just going to get the things you get.

That's right.

I'll throw one more story in here because this is fun.

Heavy.

So my kids happen to be obsessed with wwe.

Yeah, dude, when we were kids, we were obsessed with wwe. Were you obsessed as a kid?

Yes. And it's golden era again. I mean, it's bigger than it's ever been. It is golden age. Bigger than Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant.

You know, the Vince McMahon.

Yeah, well, he's. He's out now.

He's out.

He's out. He's kicked out by Dustin Hopkins. Kicked him right out. So not really. That was a bad joke. I'm done. But my kids love WWE, and when my daughter was 7, smackdown came to Austin, and I said, esther, you have a birthday party for one of your friends scheduled on this day. We go to that, or we can go to smackdown. I want to go to smackdown. Freaked out, awesome, Cool. I'm taking her to smackdown. I take her to smackdown. She's never been in a stadium before. So we walk in, 10,000 people there, and she is completely overwhelmed. Completely overwhelmed. The noise, the sounds, the lights, the screaming, fighting. She's just. This is not what I imagined it was going to be like. She, dad, I want to go home. You know, we're 10 minutes into smackdown, and she wants to go home. And I'm like, do you really want to go? If we leave, we can't come back in. We leave, come back. She's crying, I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go. So we leave. There's a sign, no entry. We leave. We walk. 30 seconds down the road, she bursts into tears again. I ruined her night. I want to go back in.

I'm so sorry I did this.

You cannot get back in. There's security there. I said, okay, I'm gonna ask. So I turned back, I opened the door, and I explained the situation. We got a little overwhelmed. Is there any way you can let us back in? No, we cannot let you back in. Okay, well, the situation is we got a little overwhelmed. We had tickets. We were looking forward to it. I know we can't get back in, but is there any way you can let us back in? No, we cannot let you back in. We have a no entry policy. Totally understand you have a no reentry policy. Do you ever make exceptions for people on your no reentry policy? No, we never make no exceptions on our no reentry problem. I totally understand that you don't make exceptions on your no re entry problem policy. Is there any chance you would make an exception? And I just kept asking and finally I said, thank you for your help. Is there a manager that I can talk to? And she said, I never do this. Never do this again, but go ahead in and go to your seat. It wasn't antagonistic. There wasn't a battle. I just kept asking. And if they had kicked me out, it would have been fine because I had nothing to lose. But it was this lesson to me and my lesson to my daughter that if you ask and you're polite, and of course if it's a customer, you don't ask over and over and over and over and over again. Okay, maybe. But if you ask sometimes you get. And everybody's okay with that. It. But if you don't ask, you don't get.

I love that. The upside is you can get something. And the downside is what? A moment, a second, a fraction of a second of a little maybe discomfort, if at all.

Maybe slight discomfort.

And that's a person says no. That's it. Great story.

So WWE's in His glory days. No, it's great to see you. I love hanging out with you, man. There should be an app that allows us to hang out more frequently. Dude.

And you follow up. Or. Or we AI bot just hang out with each other.

Oh, I gotta launch it over a weekend now. Great to see you, dude. The book is Million Dollar Weekend. Get it on Amazon.

Leave it a review.

Most of you know how the game works. Leave a review. Go buy it, go tell your friends this is a good one. And then use it to build a million dollar business. Good to see you now. Thanks for being here. You can test your million dollar idea in about two days. It requires reaching out to people who are your target audience, asking if they want to buy it, and then getting that thing off the ground. From there, it's all about getting consistent sales for the thing that you have and releasing additional products until you have a million dollar business. That's what we specialize in. @capitalism.com. i'm Ryan Daniel Moran. With capitalism.com thank you for watching and I'll see you next time. And now a quick word from Tristina Tim, one of our members from the capitalism.com community.

We joined the incubator because we knew the things that we didn't know. So we didn't know E commerce at all. And we needed that, that we needed somebody to tell us where to go and what to do. Right now we are on track to hit the 3 million mark this year. However, I think next year is just going to double that. We have so many plans for the future and just executing the plan that the incubator brought us, it was fantastic. It was step by step, what to do, how to execute it, and then if we did fumble the ball, we had somebody there to help us through it and walk us through our plans for the future. Of course this year we have 3 million and then next year 6 and we're hoping to get to 10 million within the next three to four years. Freedom is everything to our family. I homeschool and I love that our family can wake up together every morning. Nobody's running off to school, nobody's running off to work. If I had to work, work at like a 9 to 5 job, there's no way that I could also homeschool. I get to set my own hours and they're not as many hours as a normal job would be. So that's really fantastic. But again, freedom is everything for our family and I don't. It's strange that our kids don't know any other way. Mom and dad are home every day. I would describe the capitalism community as family. When you go get so many tips, tips from people, we give tips. And I think that we're going to start to work with a lot of our fellow community members and everyone really is rooting for everybody else. Nobody is like in competition at all. Like everyone is everyone's biggest cheerleader.

If you found value in this podcast and you're ready to go Deeper, here are three resources where we can help you. One, you can grab my book 12 months to 1 million on Audible or Amazon. It has over a thousand reviews and it's the playbook to building a seven figure business business. Second, you can join our community of entrepreneurs who are following a plan to build a 1% net worth by building businesses and investing the profits you can get plugged in@capitalism.com 1. And third, if you're looking to go deeper and build a seven figure business that you can sell, you can work closely with us inside the capitalism incubator and you can get on the waiting list and find out what we do over@capitalism.com Inc. That's capitalism.com income.