My Interview with Noah Kagan 🚀

Boostly podcast. We're in season eight, episode 20, and today was probably one of my most favorite podcast interviews to date. Noah Kagan from the Sumo group, he's got AppSumo, Kingsumo, Sendfox, and I reached out to him a couple of weeks ago to say if he fancied doing this live video with me, he was kind enough to get back and say, yep, we'll do it. So that's what we did tonight.

The short of it, man, my life and career has been about evangelizing and marketing and so kind of followed my interest to join different companies, like working at Facebook as one of the first people and kind of explored a lot of curiosity around, like what products do I like what products are coming up. And you know, I built a company with a lot of great people called appsumo.com, which is the number one site for software deals. So if anyone's looking to start a business online or already running an online business, go sign up for a free newsletter.

If you could do me a big favor just to start off with, just explain how sendfox is different to mailchimp and what the sort of similarities and what sendfox is and why, what it is, why it's being created and just sort of give people an idea. Because the reason why I asked is that this week we've been talking about email market. We've been talking about quite a lot because so many people don't do it and we've always had mailchimp. But mailchimp have changed a lot recently. A lot of people are sort of looking for alternatives. So yeah, I thought it'd be a nice place just to quickly start, have a little chat about send.

The reason that email marketing is so important so I'm going to tie this in, is that if you have an Airbnb and you've had guests over a period of time, email marketing is a great way in general to either get them back or potentially sell them other things. So for right now, if you're an Airbnb and you don't have, you're empty. Wouldn't it be nice if you could communicate directly with your past customers? Say, hey, do you want to pre buy for the future? Or B, maybe you can actually offer them something else. Is there a physical product? Is there a food? Is there another, you know, another service that you can recommend? And so email marketing, what I found is I've been doing Internet business world for 20 years and I found that this is the only place and only way that you can communicate at scale with your audience. And so we've built with AppSumo and an eight figure business just off of email. And so for me, I was on Mailchimp just like you, and I'm paying, you know, 3, 400, 500 bucks a month and it took me like an hour to create every email. And so I think the best way to run a business, the best way to run an Airbnb, is just make the Airbnb the way the one you'd want to go to. And so we got tired of using mailchimp and so we said, well, what if we could just build it ourselves? And that's what's become sendfox. So the things that matter to us right now is that I don't want it to be very expensive. So right now it's just, it's free to start or one time payment of 50 bucks for forever and two. What we're really trying to focus on is just encouraging people to communicate with their audience weekly. So how do we make a tool that makes it very easy for you to create content or material so that you're communicating with your customers or potential customers regularly? I think that's a huge mistake that a lot of people miss out on. If you have an Airbnb, maybe they're not visiting you weekly, so maybe monthly makes more sense. But I think what I've been saying a lot lately and what I think people need to think about is attention is worth more than money. Attention is worth more than money.

I first came across your tactics and tips. I can't remember if it was a YouTube or a podcast or a blog post, but there was one that you spoke about. It was all about how to speed up your computer. And I was saying before we went live that one of my favorite productivity tips I've ever picked up is from yourself. Because it was as simple as speeding up that mouse cursor on your MacBook. It's so simple to do. So many people don't do it. And you know, by simply doing that, I was able to 2x the productivity because things were able to move around quicker. Now, with yourself, how did, when have you always been curious about productivity and like hacking things and just making things go quicker, smoother, faster for yourself? And the second sort of question is, apart from the mouser cursor trick, what other like sort of little tips can you, can you share and pass on to people that may not be aware of this?

Two nights ago we were doing this dating game. It's called we are not strangers. And it's a card game where you and your wife ask different questions. And so one of the questions she asked me, Mark, was, what do my shoes say about me? And she's like, well, you don't like tying your shoelaces? And I was like, what do you mean, I don't like tying my shoelaces? And so she's like, yeah, you never tie your shoelaces. And so what I realized is that ever since I was a little kid, I've been really into efficiency. So, like, one of my favorite things in elementary school was the hypotenuse. It was the shortest distance between two points. I was fascinated with, like, how to get to school the fastest way. And it's something I've reflected on in my life. And so, yeah, I think it's just more efficiency. It doesn't mean just because you're efficient doesn't mean you're effective, which is a very important thing in business. Efficiency and effectiveness. It's like, are you going very fast while you're. This is a Gary Halbert quote, which I love, which was, it's not great to be going very fast on a canoe up the wrong stream. So you don't want to be going fast up the wrong stream. But for me, it's been very important to be going fast and trying to be effective. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of productivity stuff that, you know, people are like, how do I make more money? How do I get more done in life? And if you kind of start looking at what's. Where am I spending the majority of my time time, and how do I optimize that that trickles down so that it's a huge multiplier effect and so I can go through. Do you want some examples of, like, probably the top, top five things that everyone should do? One of the number one thing for me is learning how to type faster. So most people, if they're not typing probably around 100 words a minute, then you're gonna be as less efficient on everything else you're gonna be do subsequently. I can tell you about apps and I can tell you about, you know, our business is based on promoting tools, but you can't even use the tools, then you're taking too long. So two ways to go improve it. One is called keybr.com k e y-b r.com and the second one is ratatype R A T a type dot com. Those are the two places totally free that I'd recommend people going and learning how to get to at least if you're not at 80, you should be focused on getting to 80 and get out. Don't do that chicken typing. Number two is your trackpad. I think that's something that you were talking about earlier is that if you're using a Mac, you go to System Preferences, click on Trackpad and then the point and click section. Make your tracking speed the fastest. This is the interesting thing. Whenever I use someone else's computer now, I can always be like, dude, it's so slow. Like what are you trying to do anything today? Are you just like giving up hope? So that's number two. Number three is a stupid one because people may not realize this stuff, but your computer and your phone or it's not about necessarily that, but wherever you're spending the majority of your time, if you're on an old phone, if you're on an old iPad, if you're on an old tablet and it takes a long time for it to load times, how long it takes to load times every day, times the whole year. So again what I'm really trying to people to think about is think about where you spend the most of your day if most your day is on a computer. Get a faster one if most of your day is using some certain software. Learn the key.

So many people are looking at podcasts and what would your advice would be maybe to say a hospitality owner right now, a bed and breakfast owner, small hotel owner, rental owner, who would be potentially thinking about maybe looking at a podcast. Is there any super quick ways that you've seen that someone could get started, do you think now more than ever, because we're recording this on Zoom. Everybody's doing Zoom. The quality of the video, people are just putting bonsai instead of quality, which is maybe flip of what it was back end of last year. Do you just advising people now just to get something down and get it out there. Because like you're saying you can repurpose it in so many different ways.

If you were a bed and breakfast owner, I would not start a podcast. A podcast is for your most loyal fans and it's not. I say I don't like the word fan because I don't want people to be below me. But it's for the most. Like I love Mark. I always appreciate Mark's opinions on bed and breakfasts. He's always bringing on great guests. I want more Mark. And so the thing I would think about for a bed and breakfast, especially right now, this is such a great time for bed and breakfast. Why because you're like, holy shit, I'm really dependent on this Airbnb website or VRBO or Facebook marketplace, I'm very dependent on someone coming. And secondly, if, you know, airline, if there's another 9, 11 in a different country or there's another virus, wow, I'm going to be impacted. So I think the opportunity right now is not about a podcast. It's more how do I diversify my revenue within this sector? So if this happens again, I don't really care. Right. And so you're like, well, what can I do as a bed and breakfast? So I don't think it's hosting a podcast yourself, but could you potentially host people who want to do podcasts in your area at your bed and breakfast? So maybe you don't do a podcast, but if you have anyone in your area, if you're in London, if you're in Houston, if you have extra space in your Airbnb or in your hotel, maybe you can use that space more creatively so that if no guests are coming, you can still have people that maybe are using it. Maybe you can have it as a YouTube recording studio. Hey, I know you're doing videos. Why don't you come over? We have a great place. I'll cook you lunch and you can maybe mention you recorded this here. Hey, everyone, diversify your income because you're fucked. Thanks, asshole. Like, that's not helpful, because I'm struggling right now. And so I said, hey, let me just show you live. And so in one hour, what I did is I just did two things. I posted in a few text groups, WhatsApp groups, and on my Facebook. Does anyone need anything delivered in this area? That's one thing I posted. And then the second thing is I posted, does anyone need any gym equipment or bikes? Why did I post that? Because that's what I need. And I think the best way to start any side hustle is to try to figure out how to serve yourself first. And so I just posted, hey, does anyone need gym equipment? And people went crazy. I can't. I wish. And honestly, I was shocked because I think when most people are trying to diversify their income or start a side hustle, and I want to talk, I want to come back and explore. If you have a property that's an Airbnb, even like mine or yours, and yours is, I'm guessing, more empty than usual, what can we do about it? But let's start with the side hustle. So with the side Hustle, what I did is I said, I didn't go out. And this is where people get number one mistake. Most people go out, buy stuff or build stuff and then say let me go out and find customers. Let me go see if I can hopefully find a miracle. And what I like to do is say let me find customers because now that I have the money, delivering on that is easy. So it turned out that people were like, yo, give me gym equipment. And people like probably 10 to 15 people immediately were asking for it. And I said all right, which gym equipment are you looking for? I want this, I want that. And then I just tried a bunch of different ways to deliver on it. I called local gyms to see if they'd sell me their equipment. I called hotels, I called national distributors. I knew that someone posted that their friend's friend has the equipment. And so I ended up buying $500 worth of gym equipment and I made and I sold $620. It.