MBA2128 Extended Interview: Ayman Al-Abdullah – How to Scale Your Business by Working Smarter

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business, but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts. So doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And today's episode is a special extended interview episode. Once in a while we like to publish an episode that's a little bit longer where I sit down with an expert. We have an open and honest conversation and my job is to pull out of their brains the information, the gold, the wisdom I believe you would love to hear. Today's extended interview is with Ayman Al Abdullah. Ayman was the CEO of AppSumo. He joined the company when they were making $3 million a year. But but he took that company and scaled it to an $80 million business. This is Amen's specialty, taking businesses from six or seven figures to eight to nine figures and I wanted to bring him on the show because you can hustle your way to a million dollar business. You can have a good product, a good service, something that you offer the audience that they need and you can grind it out and you can put in the hours and you can get it to a million but that just doesn't cut it going beyond a million, getting it to eight and nine figures. So I wanted to sit down with Eamon and understand what it takes, how to do this, how to scale your business by working smarter and not just harder. I'm so excited to share with you the conversation and get into all the details. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. All right. I can't wait to share with you that conversation I had with Ayman Al Abdullah where we touch on so many great topics. We get into his background, what allowed him, in his childhood, in his upbringing, in his experiences in life to live with gratitude and have perspective. What are the things they did right in Appsumo to take it to an $80 million business? What are the things they had to stop doing? What are the important things that you need to focus on? And what are the things that really don't matter as well as is side hustling a thing that actually works? Can you actually side hustle your way to full time revenue and livelihood and lifestyle and so much more? Let's dive into that conversation right now. But I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and give you a few of my takeaways. But for now, let's jump into the conversation I had with Ayman Al Abdullah. Ayman Al Abdullah. How are you doing, my man?

Doing great, Omar. Good seeing you, man. It's been too long.

It's been too, too long, man. And too long in person. That's right. It's been, you know, Covid, that big jerk. So it's good to have you on the podcast. A big reason why I wanted to have you on is because I see a lot of myself in you, but I also see a lot of things that I'm not like that I can't contribute to the audience. Like things that you can really help us with. And I'd like to bring on people that can add more value than I can because, you know, I've gotten to the point in my career where I realize, okay, I don't know it all and I'm going to need to lean on people like you to be able to help us out. So I'm really excited for today's conversation. Like I mentioned in the intro, Eamon, you know, helped Appsumo as a CEO, as a president, take that company to a hundred million dollars. I think when you took it over, was it 8 million? Right.

So I took over when we were doing $3 million in revenue. When I stepped down we were doing over $80 million in revenue.

Okay. So I mean 3 million, I think that most people can take a company, 3 million on their own wits, on their own hustle on their own, maybe even like maybe million, 3 million range, we could say on their own contacts. But I think you would agree that taking it from that to nearly, you know, what is that, nine figures? Nine figures is a whole different ball game. Would you say so?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I sort of equate it to the three stages of business growth. You've got the startup phase, the scale up phase and the grow up phase. And the startup phase is between zero to $5 million in revenue. And that's really where you're like building a product, you're getting it off the ground, you're building the core team and you're really being a product focused founder and you're getting this thing off the ground. But typically around the mid seven figure range, most businesses begin to stall out. And it's because what, what got us here is not what's going to get us to the next level. And that's really where we get into the scale up phase. And so instead of being a product led CEO, we have to now be a people led CEO. And that's a hard transition for a lot of founders. You know, for the most part, code does exactly what you tell it to do. Marketing funnels do exactly what you tell it to do. And so when you write copy, when you do a lot, when you're playing around with websites, it's very different than telling like doing work through people. And you know, people have personalities and they, they require a different level of CEO. And so that's really where I was able to sort of come in and layer in some of those frameworks and those, those things in order to help us get to that next level.

I got so many questions when it comes to these three stages, including, you know, is this for everybody taking it to that level, all that kind of stuff. But before we get into all that, I want to go back a little bit because I'm a big believer that who you come as professionals, as people, you know, I think around the same age, in our 40s. Right. And we, to get to that point in our life, you know, there's a lot of contributing factors and I contribute a lot of the things that I have been able to do from the way I was raised, the way I grew up, my perspective on the world, like I didn't realize when I got to, when I got out in the world, like in college and then beyond university that, like. Oh, like, I. Everybody thinks of this thing, and I think it's totally wrong, or I. I think that this is easy, and everyone thinks it's hard, you know, and it's all. Has a lot to do with that. That kind of. Those early stages in life, I think, especially when you're. You're growing up. You. Your family came from Iraq, correct?

Yep.

And. And it was not like, you know, let's. Let's go because we want to go to Disney World. Right. It was. It was a situation in Iraq at the time where you had to go for safety. Yeah. Walk me through a little bit about you growing up. How old were you when this happened, and how did it impact you as a person today?

Well, what's. What's funny enough is, like, it kind of wasn't our choice. So we were actually on vacation in Canada. Omar. We, like, me and my family, we were. We were on vacation in Canada. We were actually living in Kuwait at the time.

Okay.

And so this is like, you know, 1990. And for those that don't remember, you know, a small war happened in 1990 where Iraq invaded Kuwait. And so when we went back to the airport to go back home, they're like, you can't go back home. Like, a war has started. Right. And so in our mind, we're like, okay, this is going to last a week, two weeks, and then eventually we're going to be able to come back. And it turned out that no, like, there was. There was no going back. We were actually Iraqi nationals, and so all of our bank accounts were frozen, and so we were literally stuck in Canada with a clothes on our back. Quickly diminishing funds, no work visa. And so it became very clear, like, oh, this is actually like, our new home. And, like, we're not going to be able to go back. And, like, we basically have to, like, seek asylum in Canada. And that was like, a very tough time for. For my family.

How old are you?

So this is in 1990. So I was three years old. So, you know, I was three. My brother was one. So, you know, my. My parents were kind of going through this and trying to figure this out. You know, we didn't have. There was no crypto in 1990.

So.

So, like, we couldn't even get money sent to us.

And.

And so we had to, like, rely on the church giving us handouts and figuring out what we could do. And, you know, my dad would go door to door and try to look for jobs. And so I grew up with these stories. And I grew up with what it required in order for us to sort of figure it out in a new land, in a new place where we didn't have any friends and where we couldn't find work.

Yeah.

And. And what it took in order to get to that, to the next level. And yeah, it was definitely a very difficult time for my family. But in hindsight, like all challenging things, I mean, it allowed me to eventually end up in America because eventually, after a year, my dad was able to find a job and a work visa in. In Philadelphia. And so if that didn't happen, if that. That terrible situation had not happened, I might have still been in Kuwait, or I might still be in Iraq when all of the other wars were happening. And so I think, like, you know, to your question about, like, how your upbringing influences you, I think that I. I have a mentality of anytime something bad happens to you, it's only because it's not finished yet. Like, you wait long enough, eventually you're going to see the other side. And eventually everything happens for a reason. And for me, I'm so thankful, ironically, that that happened, because I was able to grow up in America and have an incredible life here.

That's amazing that you have that perspective in the first place. But, um, there's so many things I want to extract from that, but I want to hear if. If this was your family's experience as well. A lot of people don't understand how hard it is for an immigrant to come to a new country, whether the situation you're in, where it was even planned, or by choice. Like, the best way I can put it is, like, imagine I dropped you in downtown Tokyo in the middle of Japan. There's no Internet. There's no way for you to throw. Figure out things. You don't know the language, you don't know your way around, you don't know how to buy bread. You don't know how to do anything right. You basically have to learn everything all over again. And most of the people that go through this, like my parents, they are college graduates and professionals, and they have to restart their whole life from zero. Right? And people think, oh, this is like, you know, it's hard. Life is hard, and it's hard to start a business. And that could be true. And everybody has their own challenges, trenches. But when I look back on my family's, what they went through, I was like, I have nothing to complain about. Like, I'm gonna. I have so many resources to figure this out. Like, would you agree with this?

Well, what. I. I'm curious, like, what. What was your path? Like, how did you end up where you're at right now?

Yeah. So my parents immigrated from Egypt. They both came this before me or my sisters were born. Both. My mother and my father, college graduates. My dad was an engineer. My mom was a dietitian. Unfortunately, at the time, this is late 60s, they kind of didn't recognize their degrees in Egypt. So, like, my mom had to do her degree all over again. Like, she had to take an odd job. Like, this is a woman that's highly educated, you know, good family, all that kind of stuff. You know, she. She's coming to the States now. She's an elevator operator. She's, you know, busing tables. She's, you know, doing things just to be able to survive and then going to night school. Finally, she gets her degree, right? Yeah. And then after that, she has to get a job as a dietitian. And it's slim pickings because she has no experience in the States. She's just a she in. In the US Size, She's a fresh graduate. And, you know, and. Yeah, the only job she can get is at. At the time, it was a psychiatric ward. It was like a dietitian for a psychiatric ward. This is the first job she only, like, no one wants this job. So that. Give it to the immigrant, right? She's there, right? And she tells the story to me when we're kids, like, at the time, she didn't have a car. Still hustling, right? So she's taking a bus to get there. And as she's approaching to go to the interview, she hears the screams and the. And then the noise from. From the facility. And she's like, I don't know if I could do this. Like, what am I doing here? Like. Like, you know, and she's reevaluating her whole life, but she's like, all right, I. I'm just gonna take it step by step. First get off the bus, then get into the building, say my name, do the interview. I'll just do step by step. And then she went through the whole thing. She got the job. She's like, okay, I'm just gonna take this job. She was in that job for six years, so she can, like, get her chops, get her experience. And she moved up into a nursing home. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm complaining about doing my homework, right? So that's our story.

You know, I'm sure that had a massive impact on how you grew up and how you operate today.

Totally. And I'm not saying that I don't have challenges or doubts or difficulties and we've had chats and things like that, but I feel like one of the things that as an immigrant family is that you don't, you really value opportunity. Like when you have an opportunity, you take it. You know, like if there's a chance, even if it's like below you, even if you feel like oh, I'm going to do this for free, just to learn, you just do it because it's there for you. And I feel like that's another challenge we're going to get into is that as immigrants or people that are families of immigrants, sometimes we get in this yes train where we just say yes to everything. Right?

That's right.

Yeah. So I also think there's, there's, there's.

A built in sense of gratitude just inherently. You know, my wife is Cuban and like she grew up in Cuba and she remembers having a ration card and like you would get two eggs for the family for the week and like that would be, have, have to be split up. So like now when we are able to go to Whole Foods, purchasing whatever we want without needing to look at the prices, like there's just a deep sense of gratitude also because we still have one foot back at home. My, my cousins, my uncles, my aunts, they still live back at home and they're still dealing with these issues. Her family are still dealing with these issues. And so we understand just I, I'm not discounting any of the multitude of issues that happen that and they definitely need to be solved here. But we also recognize that it could be so much worse. And so we do have this, this dichotomy between the world that we live in and the world that we left behind.

Totally. I think the gratitude piece is huge. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet. Yeah, but we'll be with family. You're in a good mood. What's your deal? What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top text and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling.

Only at Metro by T Mobile.

Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people and just.

Kind of moving forward beyond that kind of experience. Growing up, we all, as entrepreneurs or business builders, have a moment where we feel like. Or we tell ourselves, I think I could do this thing. I think I can be in business. Right. What was that moment for you.

Man? I still don't have that moment. You know, it's. It's like I do jiu jitsu on the side, and it's like one of those things where you have a really good day and. And then all of a sudden you just get smashed by a black belt and you're just like, oh, like, I am still a very much a minnow in the waters. And so, to me, I think entrepreneurship is one of those things where it's a constant learning process, and it's one of those where you are constantly getting batted down and you're constantly learning, and I don't think you ever truly feel ready. I think that the second you feel ready, actually, that's probably the moment that you're about to get smacked across the face by a really big lesson.

Yeah.

Every time that I've gotten way too cocky and I'm like, I'm finally figuring this out. I'm about to run into a buzz saw of a bad quarter. You know, like, my. My top engineer is going to quit or we're going to have, you know, our. Our revenue is going to fall off. And so I'm. I'm, you know, back to that. That point I have that you have to maintain that humility and just recognize that we are still very much figuring this out. And I still very much have a white belt mentality when it comes to business. Even though. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I may have taken a business almost to nine figures, but I still very much approach all of my business endeavors with that white belt mentality.

I love this metaphor of martial arts because I do believe there's a sense of mastery in martial arts that you kind of have to have. I have this with podcasting, every time I step up to the mic to an episode, I think about, you know, how can I do this better? How can I refine my technique? How can I make this the best episode I've ever had? Because Honestly, that's really only that matters because you have new subscribers coming all the time and you know, your last episode is really what counts. And I, I like this idea in entrepreneurship, like, you have to recognize the fact that it's never going to be perfect. I got a buddy of mine, Mario Brown, he has this really good saying. He says, especially in the beginning of when you're starting a business, take massive imperfect action, right? And kind of understanding that it's never going to be perfect. You just got to look for progress, not perfection, all that kind of stuff. What, what's some, some of the things that you learned along the way about like fighting that perfectionism and, and making sure that you just like get things done and learn by doing.

You know. I mean, honestly, this is probably one of the things I've learned from Noah. Noah Kagan, the founder of AppSumo, he's really good at this where he's just like, what? Like we have a principle velocity of the dol where it's like just how do we get, how do we, how do we not spend six months launching, but how do we get our first dollar as quickly as possible? Could we sell an idea? Could we get something off the ground? Could we prove whether or not customers even want it? And I think like going back to martial arts or fitness analogy, you know, I used to get really motivated and watch a, A, a Rocky movie and then like immediately I'd go and like go for a run and like, go, go hit the gym. And then like, I'd be so sore and burnt out that I wouldn't go to the gym for four, five, six days after that versus the times where I'm just like, let me just do 20 minutes. And I'm going to do 20 minutes every day for the next seven days. And all of a sudden, a month later, I'm in the best shape of my life. And I think like, for you, if you're able to come into, into the business world with a mentality of let me just get something in front of customers, let me find their solutions, let me solve something as quickly as possible. Instead of a course, could I do a webinar instead of a webinar, Could I sell one on one instead of could I pre sell the webinar? So like at each stage you are doing less and less and getting closer, closer to that velocity, to the dollar. And so instead of spending six plus months building an app, could you make a dollar today by selling an idea?

I love this. And this concept is really well explored. A shout out to Greg McEwen, who, who his latest book, Effortless. Um, he's known for his first book, Essentialism and he's, his follow up book was Effortless. And he talks about this concept in detail in the book. I'm reading the book right now and it's, it's all about like, what's the easiest way to do this? You know, and it's a lot of mind shifts that you have to change because as a society we always correlate greatness with hard work and it's going to be a grind and easier said than done and all these kind of quotes. But he's, you know, he talks about like when you overcomplicate something and you're trying to make this grand amazing thing, you're increasing the likelihood of failure, you're increasing the likelihood of things going wrong, you're increasing the likelihood of you being burnt out. There's all these things that, you know, it's a great book to kind of check out. But on that topic, I want to hear a little bit about like an example of what you just said that you guys did in AppSumo that you said, hey, let's. How do we MVP this?

Yeah, I mean, on that note, you were just mentioning like this, this book. I mean, to me, I think like another great example of that is James Clear. You know, he's been running one of the top productivity blogs for 10 plus years and he has a magnitude of blog posts that he could have drawn from in order to create his book. And so it became really easy for him to just take all of the best resonating blog posts, the ones that get shared the most, the ones that have the most comments, the ones that have the most viral tweets, and be able to package them in and into what I consider one of the best business books written over the last five plus years. And so for us at AppSumo, we always brought that mentality, that MVP mentality of how do we do this? We have, we have an internal, we basically codified it. We have a very much a test and invest mentality. And we always test and invest. And I'll give you a great example of this when in 2017 we actually got blocked by can spam and we couldn't send emails for two plus months.

Been there, bro.

And it was, it was because we, I mean to, to, to, to our fault. We didn't have good list hygiene. We would just send out the emails. You know, we had a very antiquated email system and so we didn't have good list hygiene. We didn't realize that like people weren't opening up our emails and that we weren't cleaning them out. So overnight we lost 90% of our potential revenue for the month because we could not contact our customers. And it became really clear to me that we needed to diversify our revenue streams. And we had already an internal referral tool. And so this referral tool was if you shared this link and someone purchased, we would give you $10 in AppSumo credits. And so we realized we're like, okay, we want to launch an affiliate program. Yes, we could go out and get expensive software and have our engineers integrate it and do all of this stuff. But our test invest mentality goes, let's see if this will even work. And so we contacted our top 100 shares and we go, hey, for the next month, we're actually going to pay value $10 per customer you send us rather than give you $10 in AppSumo credits. And so literally, me and Chris Shelsey, we at the end of the month with spreadsheets and we would hand PayPal all of our top refers and then we would compare month over month. Did this have an uplift and could we extrapolate and model that out? It immediately had an overnight success. Immediately people were more motivated than ever. They were like, I want money. I can turn this into like a little mini side hustle. And so our top shares became even super shares. We immediately use that extra funds to be able to fund acquiring the software. So basically paid for the software. We were able to justify the, the integration. And today it's our number one marketing channel is our affiliate program. It brings in multiple seven figures. In fact, I think it brings in over eight figures in revenue on an annualized basis. And it started by with spreadsheets and hand paypaling our top refers.

Walk me through. How much time did it take from you to go from, hey, let's MVP this, let's just do the whole spreadsheet PayPal thing and, and emailing those top affiliates or top sharers to like actually pulling it off. Like, are we talking about weeks? Are we talking about months? Are we talking about days?

At the time we were doing about $10 million in revenue. And so we were following the six week cycles from Basecamp from Jason Freed, just because it felt like that was like the right size for us. We felt quarterly was a little too big. We felt monthly was a little too short. And so six weeks felt like the appropriate time. And so for us, it's Two weeks of prep, two weeks of the emails, two weeks of everything, and then about a month to execute. So from ideation to deciding to move forward with this, it was six weeks.

And would you agree that, you know, because you, at the time, you guys are at 10 million, this is a big ship. And, and your actions will actually make a big impact on the people that are involved. You know, what if somebody has an idea and they're making, you know, $10,000 a year? You know, like, does it need to take that much time? Or does it like, or do you recommend like, you know, get it out there and iterate as fast as possible?

So you're talking about like if you were to start a brand new business.

Yeah. Or maybe you have the side hustle that's kind of like, you know, churning away and then like, like one of the things I found that some of our community members tend to do is overthink things and kind of say like, okay, let me go and do like a rabbit hole research of all the software I can use and all the, and, and maybe that's gonna. Because it's a side hustle that'll take like a month or two. And it's like, you know, why not just try something that is the simplest path that like you mentioned. Do you recommend that or do you.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great, it's a great question. I mean I've, I've gone down that path. I'm like, let me spend the time researching all the software and creating the WordPress site and picking the perfect theme and like asking all of my friends what would be the perfect domain name? Should I pick this domain? Should I pick that domain? And what ends up happening? I end up six months later having almost no revenue.

Oof.

Whereas the businesses where I did three things, I've been able to generate six figures, if not seven figures in revenue by just focusing on three decisions. Number one, who's my ideal client? Number two, what is the problem that I can solve for them? And then what is the product that I'm delivering? And then number three, how am I going to promote it to them? Three decisions can help you build a seven figure business. The ideal client, which is your person, their ideal product, which is an irresistible offer, and then your promotion strategy. How are you going to get in front of them if you just do those three things? You can build a seven figure business. You don't need to worry about an llc, you don't need to worry about a perfect name. You don't need to worry about a website or the tools to deliver that product. All you need to do is worry about those three things. And if you can focus on those three decisions and theoretically you can get that done in an afternoon, you could build a seven figure business that's super powerful.

Because I think just simplifying it to those three things allows us to focus and allows us to understand, okay, this is really what's important. I can kind of not be so great at everything else, but this, these things I gotta nail. I've gotten to know you over the years. I've had some really good conversations with you. Ever since you left appsuma and you've gone independent, you've been helping a lot of companies and a lot of leaders improve their processes, become better teams and take those shifts and those next level jumps. Like you mentioned, once you go past that million dollar mark, it's really about the people. It's all about being a better leader. From your experience, from all the people that you've helped and worked with and spoken to, where do you think is like the area that people really kind of miss the mark or kind of causes them the most trouble as a leader? You know, is it the hiring, is it the managing? Is it pushing your team? Is it they micromanage or they're under managing? Like where, where do most people kind of have the most trouble?

So let's, let's first assume you are a founder that wants to make that transition. Hey, we're doing about mid seven figures. I'm recognizing that I'm the bottleneck for the business and I'm ready to make the switch from being a product led CEO to a people led one. I think the number one issue that most founders make is in making that transition is not even truly understanding their business. And so how does their hustle actually translate into cash in the bank? When you actually ask them the steps it requires to turn their hustle into cash in the bank, they go, well, yeah, I think we like send some emails and like and like, unless you've clearly defined how you make money, it becomes very hard for you to backfill all of your genius. And so for AppSumo, we, we had a very clear process of how we made money. We would go out and we would find incredible deals, negotiate world class offers. That was the thing that we could control because we did, we were really good at that. From there, if we were to do incredible offers, we can't help but bring in new customers. You know, when, when they get an incredible lifetime deal on something like, you know, A SEO tool, for instance, we're gonna. They can't help but share it with their SEO, Facebook and all that. Yeah. And so from there, we're gonna actually make money. And with that money, we can reinvest that back into the business. When we reinvest that back in the business, we can't help but give a better partner experience, which creates more case studies for us to then go back up and actually go and negotiate even more better deals. And so understanding that flywheel, that loop where each step leads, leads to the next, and that's the key phrase, can't help. But when we negotiate incredible deals, we can't help but attract more customers. When you are able to understand that process, it becomes really easy to be like, well, then, how do I hire the world's best salesperson? How do I hire the world's best marketer? How do I hire the world's best engineering team? Because all you're doing is building momentum around that flywheel. And so that's actually the hardest part, is truly first deeply understanding your business and then being able to backfill for the position, because oftentimes you look at your strategy and you're doing a little bit of everything. We're doing a little bit of webinars, we're doing a little bit of drip, we're doing a little bit of Facebook ads. But when you really break it down, the actual way that your hustle turns into cash in the bank is probably one very linear process that should theoretically be turned into a loop.

I love this concept of just, like, really challenging yourself and asking yourself the hard question, what am I doing every day that's actually bringing in cash? Like, what is actually helping my business grow? Um, if you're honest with yourself, I've done this a few times over the course of the years, and I, I've. I had to admit, like, maybe 60% of what I do every day doesn't really move the needle. And, and, and what I, what I realized is that, okay, about half the things in that 60%, I don't really need to do anymore. Like, I could just stop doing, and nothing's going to happen. Nobody's going to die. Right.

That's right.

And. And then another quarter were things that, like, I'm not really that good at. I'm just kind of like, forcing myself through it, you know, and, and I can easily get somebody on my team already to do. And one of the things that unlocked. When I spoke to you, you said it kind of like, at a throwaway comment it was like we had a coaching session and, and you just kind of said it as like a side comment and it just kind of switched something in my head. And I realized I have people on my team that can do things that I didn't hire them for. Like, like there's things on my plate. Like, I have a laundry list. Like, man, I want to do these things and this is going to really grow our company and it's going to make it all happen and all that kind of stuff. But then I gotta hire people for this, I don't have the money for it right now, blah, blah. And then when you kind of had this comment about like, you know, I'm sure that you have talented people that can do something outside their job description. And I was just like, wait a minute, some of these things I can. Like. One of the examples I, I actually shared in a recent episode is we want to relaunch our YouTube channel and we want to kind of make it happen. I just don't have the time to, to do that myself. I don't have the time to even fire. Find somebody to hire them to do it. And when I heard that comment from you, I was like, oh, wait a minute. I have somebody very capable to learn how to be the producer of this kind of thing and put the SEO and the channel together. She just needs to know how to do it. So like, I bought her a course. She Learned SEO for YouTube and she went off on her way and she, she's a project manager's whole thing, right? And you know, we have a customer service. Sorry, we have a customer success manager who does onboarding calls. She's great on camera, Jenny. And we're like, okay, great, Jenny, you want to do the first video? And she was like, yeah, let's do it. And it was just like, shoot. Like, I, I don't have to do this and how much my goal.

That's amazing.

I gotta thank you for that because that was really an unlock for me. And I think that these are one of those, those are some of those unlocks you talked about where you just can't hustle your way anymore. You gotta start managing people, empowering people, all that kind of stuff. Which, which leads me to where I want to go next, which is as somebody who's trying to. Even if they're not a million dollar business yet, but they're just trying to work smarter and not harder all day so they don't like die at the end of the day. I've been there where my health suffered Because I was just, if I just work a little harder and I put in more hours, I know that I could break through. What are some ways for people to kind of see things differently, start thinking about work differently?

I'm reminded of this story about this teacher that she was frustrated with the lack of lesson plans and examples when she was searching online of how to create her own lesson plans. And so she actually went on and basically consolidated all of these lesson plans that she found online. And then she basically scratched her own, her own itch. She had created an incredible lesson plan for her students and she just so happened to had shared it on social media. And a couple of her teacher friends asked, hey, can we buy this? And she's like, yeah, sure, why not? Like, can you share it with us? Sure, why not? And she's like, hey, like, maybe I should throw this online. Maybe other teachers would want it. Maybe other teachers were in the same shoes as I am. And last I checked, she's making $45,000 a month, which is what she was making a year previously. And so this is now her full time thing is creating lesson plans for other teachers. And so she's not doing any extra work. Like teachers work incredibly hard. She's doing the exact same thing she was doing before, but she creates leverage with what she's doing. So instead of doing it just for herself, she's scratching her own itch. She's selling the solution to others is a framework from Charlie Hone. Right? Scratch your own itch, sell the solution to others. And so in regards to how you're able to create, like working smarter, not harder. It's not even about working smarter, not harder. It's actually doing the same thing, but doing it with leverage. How are you able to take what you're doing and be able to do it on a whole another scale? And I think that oftentimes understanding what you're doing and how could other people benefit from it? So instead of doing, instead of, like, you probably have a million webinar checklists, Omar, you probably have a ton of podcast checklists. And so you're doing this on A1, on one basis for yourself. How many people would benefit from your, your years of experience as a podcast host or as an incredible webinar host, like, I know I personally would, gladly I'd throw money at you right now just to have your internal sops on how you, you, you start a podcast, how you get going, how you research on a guest, or how you get a webinar going, and how you make sure that, that converts to sales. You're not doing anything different. This stuff already exists on your computer. I would argue the amount of seven figure businesses that are, that are living on people's hard drives is infinite. It's just about taking that same work, repackaging it and putting it online and making sure that you are doing the exact same thing, but doing it at a whole nother level.

I just want to break that down for a second because that was gold for many reasons. One, the story you talk, talked about with the school teacher, she didn't say, I need to make money. I want to make $45,000 a month. I need to reinvent myself. I'm gonna become a life coach. She didn't do that, right? She said, what am I? What, what value do I already have in my possession, right? Let me leverage what I already have. So for those who are listening right now, think about what are you already doing? What are you already good at? Maybe you're in a career right now. Maybe you're like, let's say you're a bank manager, right? There are people that want to be bank managers, right? How did you get there? Right? Help people become bank managers. All right? And I say this because in my experience, business is hard as it is, okay? It's hard to have a successful business. Don't make it harder on yourself where it's harder for you to produce the product, right? So it's, I, I always like to recommend this because it at least gets you some experience as an entrepreneur selling something that you know very well. You, at least you're confident in that area. This is why when I started the Hundred Dollar MBA show, it was, it was just like two years off me leaving my teaching career. I, I started a podcast where I teach because this is what I know. Like, I, I can't compete with Tim Ferriss and Jordan Harbinger and, you know, John Lee Dumas, who's constantly on fire, right? Like, the guy is like unstoppable. Like, how am I going to compete with these people, right? And the only way I knew I could compete is I'm probably a better teacher than all them. I have a master's in education. I taught in the classroom for five days a week, five classes every day for 13 years. I was a teacher trainer. Like, I know how to convey information and teach people. Let me just do what I know, what I know how to do so that I don't make it harder on myself. And in fact, it's what helped the show propel itself. So it's like, I love this little nugget you're giving here where it's just like, leverage what you already have. Stop trying to make it hard on yourself. So 100%. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

100%. And I love. I love what you were talking about, Omar, where you're like, look, I am. I am a teacher by trade. I have masters in education. Like, no. Like, how many other podcasters in the business space have that? Zero. Maybe, like, maybe one other person. Like, that is unique, a unique skill set to yourself. And obviously, oftentimes we overthink our business ideas. And I think it's so important to just, like, what is the stuff that I wish if I could wave a magic wand, I wish it could exist already and just go and do that. Just go and scratch that own itch. And so being able to understand what are those things and just get into the habit of building, getting the reps in. Spend a month to 90 days and just getting your products out there will help you develop the skills of entrepreneurship. Be like, how am I going to promote this? Where am I going to sell this? How am I going to get this in front of customers? How am I going to continue to refine it? And you develop those skills over time. Entrepreneurship, I mean, you talk about Eamon. When did you think I'd get ready to do this business thing? I mentioned that I still feel very much that I'm a white belt because I am very. There's so many levels to this. Like, how do you get better at product creation? How do you get better at promotion? These are all skills that you have to develop over time. I mean, you've been in business for how long now? Like, what was your first product, Omar, if you were to think about it.

I mean, if I go way back, I used to sell my Halloween candy when I was like, nine years old.

No, but maybe online. Like, what was your first?

I used to have an arbitrage business back in 2001. I used to sell rare Air Jordans.

There you go. And so, like, what you were learning, like, how do I actually collect money online like that? Like, it wasn't. It was probably pretty difficult back then. How am I getting this money to transfer? How am I getting this in front of customers? Like, those are all skills that you developed over time that allows you to now run a very complicated SaaS business. You would not have been able to do that had you have not been selling air Jordans in 2001.

That's a good point. That's a real good point. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet. Yeah, but we'll be with family. You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal?

I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got 1 line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I left love and a five year price guarantee on my top tuxed data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling.

Only at Metro by T Mobile.

Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available if with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.

This next topic, next question. This next kind of thing I want to talk about might change somebody's life right now. That's listening. In my experience, my own businesses, in the people that I've helped, I find that the one thing that causes the most stress in your business, in your life, causes you to fail, causes you to go out of business, is running out of cash, is running out of funding for your business. Whether that's your revenue, whether that's whatever money to make it keep going and keep it growing. I find that anytime I look back in my career as an entrepreneur, those are the most stressful times in my life where like I have no idea how I'm going to pay these bills, the revenue is not what it's supposed to be. All that kind of stuff. It's like the worst situation you want to be in. What are some habits that you can recommend to people to never be in that situation where they run out of cash or run out of, you know, basically oxygen for their business?

Yeah, you know, I tell people all the time, you can recover from bad strategy, you can recover from a bad hire, you can recover from execution, you can't recover from running out of cash. When you run out of cash, the business is over. It's the one thing that'll put you out of business. And so if there is one thing that you should be watching like a hawk, it is your cash position, it is your cash flow. I mean, the amount of e commerce companies that I know that went broke taking a Profit. And I know that's a complicated concept but like if you buy inventory and you run out of cash and you have no money to purchase ads, how are you going to get customers the following month? Because all of your, all of your cash is tied up in inventory. And so deeply understand your numbers. And so number one, don't get cocky. Lehman Brothers, I mean a team of financial, the financial, the best experts in the world, they were around for 100 plus years, they were gone within 100 days. So that's. Number one is don't get cocky. Number two is know your number. Solid. Like imagine Omar, you get on a plane, you're ready to go on vacation with your wife and the pilot walks in right in front of you, looks to the left and goes, holy shit, look at all these dials. You'd be like, get me off this plane. Yeah. So know your number. Sell. Understand your dashboard. Make sure you're getting cash flow projections. Make sure that you're understanding if you're running an E commerce business, when, what is your inventory lifecycle? How, how long does it take to turn over your inventory? And so deeply understand your numbers. And then lastly, stop looking at your P and L. Your P and L is just an opinion. It does not tell you exactly how much cash is coming in. And so really operate your business on a cash flow standpoint and really operate it on your operating cash flow. And so if you could just do those three things, don't get cocky. Know your number. Solid. Understand your dashboard and operate with cash flow rather than your P and L. You're going to do a much better job of making sure that you are operating a successful business. And I'll leave you with one last one, a little bonus. One similar to your personal finances. Be really conservative with your budget. You know, like at AppSumo we had a lot of margin for how we would grow and so we wouldn't over hire, we wouldn't spend too much on marketing and we would have a lot of margin. Margin is like margin of error. And so if you have a huge margin it allows you to beat your numbers without overspending. And then you can be a lot more flexible versus like if you're running on operating on a paper thin margin, it becomes a lot harder. You lose sleep, you start making poorer decisions. And so I would be a lot more conservative with your budget, but then be a lot more aggressive with your goals and making sure you have a difference between those two.

I love it. I love it. And you touched a little bit about E Commerce. You Know, I ran an E commerce store, custom tailored clothing for men back in 2009 when I was, when I was in teaching. And it was a pretty big business. And uh, but it, E commerce is a totally different business than other like productizing or knowledge or SaaS or coaching. And it's very easy to run out of cash. I got to a point one time where we're doing great, you know, but the, the, the, the cycle of collecting cash and actually fulfilling orders is actually quite long because we were custom tailored. You'd have to buy a lot of inventory, you have to keep it on hand and all that kind of stuff like you mentioned. And I realized I was in a, there was two months in a row where I like, things were really tight and it was scary. And I decided I need another cash flow in the business that's more predictable. And we started selling VIP memberships where basically it was like a poor man's Amazon prime. But basically people used to get exclusive releases and they would get like certain models in different colors that other people wouldn't get and they would pay us 100 bucks a month. 100 bucks a month. But I only had like 30 people that are paying me that. But they were like my biggest fans and they loved our products and whatever and they were happy to do that. But it gave me a little bit of buffer and it gave me a little sense of like, okay, I need to kind of slow down a little bit. So if you're in E commerce, like just watch it because it creeps up on you. And I thought I was a smart guy until that hit me.

Totally. Yeah. I mean we talked a little bit earlier about like the skill stacking and like being able to develop those skills. I would say E commerce is like actually one of the most complicated businesses to run, you know. And like you see these get rich quick schemes where it's like, oh, you can launch a Shopify store overnight that'll make seven figures. And it's like the experienced entrepreneur goes, let me see your profit. Yeah, let me see your cash flow. So you could run a seven figure business and be losing a hundred thousand dollars a year. And so, you know, to your point, and so I, I love, I think Nathan Barry actually has a framework around like ladders of wealth where like some of the easiest businesses to run are like, yeah, like a trading service is an hour for hour business. Develop those skills first before you do something more complicated like running E commerce or like starting a SaaS. Like those are much more comp, like understanding, churn and like, understanding, like net revenue retention, like, these are very complicated things that's hard for you to do if you don't know the fundamentals of business. You don't know how to read a P and L, you don't understand your cash flow projections. And so, you know, sell an ebook, start small. Get good at understanding how to make money online. Use those skills to stack up over time. Because at. When you're running an E commerce business or when you're running a SaaS business, it's very complicated. You're always having to look multiple quarters ahead. And to use Keith Cunningham's framework, you have to be planning breakfast while you're cooking dinner. Yeah.

And.

And so you're. It's very complicated. And so you have to understand where you are in terms of your skill set and stop, like jumping the levels.

And there's no reason to, like, this is the thing. Like, I have family. Like, I'm the business person in my family. Like, just me and my uncle are entrepreneurs. And, and we have like 47 cousins or something like that. Right. So, you know, Arabs. So the point is that they come to me and they're like, hey, I have this business idea, I want to do it. And like, most of the things that they share with me are like, highly complicated, that require like, like their idea of businesses like Costco or like, you know, like these huge businesses that like, I'm like, what? Hold up. Like you. Have you ever had a lemonade stand? Have you ever, like, you know, sold something on ebay, like a shirt of yours or a pair of shoes? So one of the things I recommend, and I have a audio course on Himalaya called start your first online business is exactly what you said is like, start with something that, you know, package it to a product. And the reason why I'm just going to break down what you said. You said like, start with an ebook, right? You're like, sell an ebook when, believe it or not, you might think, oh, that's nothing, it's just like a, you know, it's just a digital asset. It's not really a sexy business, but it's actually something. It's actually an actual business. Why? Because in that process of selling an ebook, you learn a ton. You might work with some freelancers and you learn how to manage a team. You might run some ads to sell it, and you learn how to market and you learn your marketing channel, understand your audience. You have to optimize your landing pages so you understand, like copywriting. There's so many skills you're picking up by just selling this little thing that you might think it's insignificant, but at the same time, like, I can point to like 10 people I follow on Twitter that are making six, seven figures selling an ebook like, this is not a joke, you know?

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I know multiple seven figure businesses that are built on the back of an ebook. And it's like, and, and to your point, it sounds basic, but it's not easy, right? When you're thinking about, when you're thinking about, yeah, your marketing channels, you're thinking about your funnels, you're thinking about your ideal customer, you're thinking about working with designers, you're thinking about taxes and payroll, and you're thinking about all of these things for something that feels so simple, like essentially a glorified PDF. Yeah, but those, all of those skills directly translate to you being able to launch an E commerce business or launch a SaaS business. And like, they are all transferable and they are all stackable that allow you to get closer and closer to being the entrepreneur that you want to be. And if you want to launch a Costco, you'll be in a much better position to do so.

True. It's very true. And I'll give you another side of the equation. I sold an ebook called the DIY Webinar Guide before I started Webinar Ninja. And I worked so hard on it and I launched it and it flopped. I got two sales. One of them was a chargeback. The other one was my buddy John Lee Dumas, who bought it just because he wanted to support his friend. Right. I got two sales and I worked four months on this thing, right, with Nicole and all this stuff. But the thing that, the biggest gift I got from that experience is I learned how to create a product people don't want. I learned people don't want to know how to build a webinar. They want a software to do it for them. And I was like, oh, of course. Right. And it was, it reminded me of that quote of Ben Horowitz in the Hard Thing about Hard Things. Great book. He says you sometimes you gotta create a bad product, create a great one to realize, oh, damn, people don't like this, you know, so it's all good. Like you said, the experiences are all great. So, yeah, 100. I love that we got into this topic.

Ask any entrepreneur to pull up their namecheap account. Show me all of your domains and you will see a graveyard. Show me your expired domains. Yeah, you will see a graveyard of business failures. And it's so common amongst most successful entrepreneurs to have a graveyard of domains, a graveyard of half started businesses and they never to. All you see is the webinar ninjas. The business is doing incredibly well. They don't see the ebook that did two sales because it didn't get a lot of fanfare, it didn't get a lot of notoriety.

Right.

You know, and so you learning like how to create a product that maybe just didn't work, maybe you understood like, hey, actually like how do I get in front of more customers?

Yeah.

How do I, how do I market this? How do I pre sell it? How do I do all, all of those skills are, are required in order for you to be building a successful business. And so yeah, if you're, if you haven't started, I mean, start with something basic, get it off the ground and really answer those three questions. Who's the ideal client? What's the irresistible offer? And then how am I promoting it to them? And if you can answer those three questions, I mean, there's no reason why you can't be making six figures.

Yeah. And I would say go with what is most comfortable for you in, in terms of like your skill set, what you can add the most value in all three of those. So if you love to podcast, let that be your marketing channel. If you like to be analytical and run ads, do that. Like, yeah, some people just feel like they have to go against their own.

Nature or like pick a skill and nine times out of 10, it's the school you're already getting paid for. Right. If you're doing Facebook ads for a company, do Facebook ads as a side hustle. If you're already a video editor, do, do TikTok reels for successful podcasters and YouTubers. So if you already have a skill, if you're a writer, become a Twitter thread ghostwriter. Like you already have skills. Package that up. It'll be very easy for you to get your business. What are people already paying you for? How do you do that in a more entrepreneurial way?

Yeah. And just to piggyback off that, one of the things that I learned early on when I left teaching and I was full time entrepreneur is like, I need to build a network, I need to, I need to meet people, I need to talk to people, I need to make friends. It's a big reason why Nicole, I moved to New York because that's what New York is all about. Everybody, no one moves to New York to have a relaxed lifestyle. Everybody's hustling and chasing their dream, right? And they're all trying to figure out how to do it, and they're talking to people and they're hustling and all that kind of stuff. So an example you mentioned, one of the first things I did was a business consulting firm. I built WordPress websites for people. That was how I was making my money in the beginning. And I needed to get more clients because it was kind of like feast or famine. And I. One of my, like, neighbors, he's like two blocks away from me. He met. We met at a meetup and he rose. His name is Justin Beaumont. Shout out to Justin. He. He has a company called Prose Media, which basically he writes articles and blogs and things like that for his audience or his clients. And I was like, well, I'm on the other side of that. And I was just like, dude, I'm willing to give you some sort of kickback if you can just send me anybody who needs a website, who's asking you to write blog posts. Because he says, yeah, I get a lot of people say, oh, can you write me some blog posts? And I asked them, okay, what's your blog? And they're like, oh, I don't have one yet. Right. So think of the synergies you can make with your network. And that's why it's important to get out there and meet and, you know, skip the Netflix and go to the. Now that Covid is kind of tapering down. You know, go to those meetups, go to those, you know, co working spaces that saved my life, man. Like, just meeting people. What was your experience with that?

Yeah, I mean, 100. I mean, I think entrepreneurship is. It's such a small circle, and it really is. And like, you. You mentioned, like, you were able to use that referral as your promotion engine. And we talked a little bit about James Clear and how, like, collaborative his product creation. Like, entrepreneurship is not a single player game. It is 100% a team sport. And the more that you are able to recognize that it requires you either interacting with your customers, interacting with your peers, and being able to build that network, whether from a promotion standpoint, whether it's from being able to ideate on what problems I can solve for them, whether it's just having a workshop or having a network to be able to call on. Be like, hey, like, Cody Sanchez is incredible at social media. I can hit her up and be like, hey, Cody, let me get some. Let me get some tips on how to grow my TikTok or how to grow My Instagram, it becomes so much greater, and you're able to multiply your efforts so much higher than if you were just sitting in your room operating on yourself. I will say, Omar, I. I do feel like, you know, Covid really accelerated this. The network is no longer about moving to New York. It's about where are these communities are online. And so I would say Twitter right now is really like the proverbial New York or the proverbial Silicon Valley.

Totally.

Where, you know, sliding into DMs is the equivalent of grabbing coffee. And so there's no reason, regardless of where you're living in the world, for you not to be building your presence online and really get known for your skill set. So if you are an incredible notion template creator, you can become known as being the notion person on Twitter or on YouTube or on TikTok. Like, I have no idea how many friends I literally have only met via Zoom. You included, Omar. Until we met in person, by the way. For those I know, like, our industry doesn't have a lot of super tall men. Omar, you're like, what, six, seven?

Like, six, five. Yeah.

You look six, seven.

Yeah.

Like, he's like one of the few giants in our industry. And so, like, when I first read, I, like, I knew you for years on Zoom.

Yeah.

Before we ever met in person. And so, like, we talk about the Metaverse already worked together. Yeah, it already exists. Like, you and I, like, knew each other virtually, and so there is zero reason why. Yes, meeting in person is great, but there's your reason why you couldn't start building your network online tomorrow.

Totally. I mean, I just think of a recent example. I got to know Arvid Call, who is big on Twitter. He's. He Zero to Sold is one of his books that he wrote. And he talks about how he sold his business or built his business bootstrapped and sold it. And I just got to know him. I. I never met him in person, but we were just going back over Twitter. I bought his Twitter course. I loved it. I realized, oh, his audience is a great audience that I want to get in front of. I asked him, hey, do you take sponsorships? And now we sponsor his show and his newsletter to grow the podcast. And we're going back, like, we've done business, we've had a few laughs, and I've never met him in person. And it's just like, pretty crazy.

People talk about, like, oh, like the metaverse. The metaverse already exists.

Yeah.

Like, we live. We are living virtually and then meeting later on in real life. Totally. And so your online presence, how you're interacting, the Twitter dms, your zoom interface, the webinars, the things that you show up, your podcast interviews, that exists well beyond someone meeting you in person.

I love it. As we wrap up Eamon, I want to talk about your recent shift, leaving Appsumo. This is a big shift in your career. You know, like, you're killing it. There's, you know, you had a lot of autonomy, you're working with a good guy in Noah, you had a great team. What are the steps that kind of led to you deciding, I need to do something new. I need to do something for myself?

Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit earlier around the three phases of a company's growth. The startup phase, the scale up phase, and the grow up phase. And, you know, AppSumo did $80 million in revenue the year I stepped down. And we were doubling year over year over the past previous years. And I was recognizing, like, look, we're about to enter nine figures. We're about to enter the grow up phase. You know, and the grow up phase is very different than the scale up phase. You know, in scale up phase, you're all about company and team creation. At grow up phase, it's all about legacy and getting to that next stage. And so I was just recognizing we were approaching that next phase. And so I hit up no. And I'm like, hey, no, I think it's time that I step down. I think it's.

How was that conversation?

You know, I think it wasn't really just a single conversation. I think it was multiple conversations. You know, I think at first, maybe it caught. No, like, my. My mentality always was like, look, I'm gonna stick around as long as it takes for us to find a CEO. And I think, like, maybe at first, like, Noah thought, like, I was immediately stepping down, and I was like, no, that's not the case. Like, I love this team. I love appsumo. I'm willing to stick around as long as it takes. You know, I would have stuck around for. For as long as it took in order for us to find the CEO. And so I think once that dust settled, it became like, okay, well, how do we make sure that, you know, the team is taken care of? How do we make sure that appsumo is taken care of? How do we make sure that we have a smooth transition? How do we create some marketing around the. The search? You know, we put out $100,000 bounty to look for the next CEO. And so, you know, it created a lot of fanfare. And so, yeah, it was, it was a series of multiple conversations. And I think because Noah and I have a great relationship and because I made sure that, hey, like, it was as smooth a transition as possible. I mean, Noah and I are still great friends. I'm still deeply involved with appsumo. And so, you know, you know, I, I think that it's what was best for the business, what's best for me. And I think that, you know, it's, to me, it's, it's, it was, it felt like it was time and I was very proud of what I had accomplished at Epsimo. I'd been there almost seven years and I felt like it was time, hey, like, I was perfect for appsumo at the phase that it was in and it was time for someone else to step in and really take the baton and take it to the next level.

That happened. What were the first steps that you took to say, like, okay, I'm a free agent now. What am I going to do with my life? Like, what were some of the things that you maybe journaled about or. Yeah, what decisions did you make really?

So even prior to joining AppSumo, I was in between. Do I go and start my own thing? Because I had started businesses prior to previous to appsumo, I was at Microsoft. I had started businesses prior to joining Microsoft that I had sold. And so I'm like, do I get back into entrepreneurship or do I go and join a startup? And I ended up making the decision to join the startup, but even then I was already prepared to go and start my own business. And I always reference Dan and ian from tropical MBAs framework that they call it the Thousand Day principle, where it takes a thousand days to really get a business off the ground. And so if, if you feel like you are ready to make the leap in entrepreneurship, and as you're well aware, Omar, entrepreneurship, it's requires a risk. I think, like oftentimes we glorify side hustles. I don't know if I really truly believe in side hustles, to be honest.

Wow. I think like they get into that in a second. Go ahead.

Yeah. You know, I think they're amazing. I think they're amazing for you to learn skills, but in turn, and I understand the sentiment around grow your side hustle until your, your income.

I've never seen it.

I've never seen it. And like, it's very rare. It's like it's the unicorn of entrepreneurship. Right. And so it's as Rare as an IPO in the entrepreneurship space. To me, entrepreneurship is a risk.

It's.

You're starting a new life and you're birthing a new life. And it's essentially the same as, as creating a baby. You can't create half a baby, right? You have to go full force. And so full baby. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta go full baby. There's no other way. And like, like a baby, it requires constant attention and it requires constant. Because if you're not constantly like watching the baby, the baby dies. Similar to the side hustle. If work gets crazy, if life gets crazy and it's very easy to just go back to the nine to five, it's very easy to like, I got a paycheck coming on Friday, I can let the baby die. Because whereas if you make the leap, I think that that's really the only way you can truly do entrepreneurship. And I think the only way you can do that is number one, do you have the skills that we discussed? I think you can develop the skills as a side hustle and I think you should, right? Sales promotion, product creation, you should develop those skills. But if you're ready to truly become an entrepreneur, you're going to have to make the leap and it's got to be a full time and you got to burn the boats. And I think, like, understanding, like, look, it's going to take a thousand days, going to take about three years for you to really get it. You may be able to shorten it if you've got more skills. Like if you're Omar, Omar, could I do it in 10 days? But being ready for a thousand days I think would be. Is valuable. And so I was always ready for entrepreneurship. It was always in my blood. It's all. I was always ready to go.

I love it. And just to echo what you're saying, that was my experience. Like, I side hustled from 2001 to all the way to 2012 when I was teaching. This is like my career. And I built businesses on the side. I had successful businesses, things like that, but it never replaced my income. I had to take a leap. I had to take a risk and say, I don't know if I can, you know, bridge the gap. The thing that helped me a lot is I just dropped all my expenses, personal expenses, so I can have a bit of a Runway and have a bit of savings and just, and just go for it. And I said, worst case scenario, just like live with my mom or something, I don't know. But the point is that There is a, there is a leap of faith. There's a, there's a risk involved. And the one I love, Jim Rohn's quote, quote, where he talks about risk and he says it's all risky. You know, having a baby is risky. Getting married is risky. Buying a car is risky. You know, it's all risky. Right. So like, you might as well do what you want. But again, I, I would say that if you're side hustling, you're learning skills, like you just said, that's a good kind of place to kind of see if this is something for you. Maybe entrepreneurship is not the thing you like. It is a good way to kind of test it out. And then from there, you know, you're going to have to plan your exit strategy and realize that it's not going to be pretty. I can't, it doesn't make sense. You're making paid, you know, you know, six figures or whatever in your career and you're gonna try to match that lifestyle. It took you 10 or 12 years to get to that lifestyle, you know, so, you know, it's gonna take some time.

So I don't think anyone talks about, I don't think anyone talks about this. They all talk about the side hustles and get that to grow. And I think people get disenfranchised with entrepreneurship and recognizing like, look, it's going to require a leap of faith. Yeah, it's going to require a risk like entrepreneurship is. Yeah, it's going to take time.

I mean, surgeons take 10 years to become surgeons, you know, like, so I mean, at least, at least you could do is a thousand days. So now you made that decision. You're, you're working for yourself, you're helping other businesses in that phase that you're, that's your sweet spot, you know, take them, taking them to that, to that nine figure point. How's it been for you? How's it, how's this transition been? How has working with your clients been running your own thing? Is there things that you loathe are the things that you miss? What, how's it going?

I mean, it's going amazing.

I love it.

It's phenomenal. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it allows me to stay close to the trenches and work with incredible founders and incredible CEOs and help them navigate the issues that I wish I had, I had someone like this when I was going through these problems, you know, and so being able to be that trusted advisor and be able to, to actually Walk them through the best practices. You know, I had a, one of my, my founders the other day called me and he's like, look, my, my CTO and co founder just quit on me. And like being able to just be, yeah, super painful and like being able to be there for him going through that process and we immediately came up with a game plan. We immediately were able to find an interim CTO for him. We're immediately able to retain top talent. And so going through that process and being in the trenches with him while, while still being like one, like it's a very stressful position being as you're well aware, being CEO and so like being able to help him without also dealing with the stress is a great dichotomy for me because I'm able to give them the support that I wish I had when I was the CEO. Navigating tough, tough issues and be able to have that watchtower view of several different industries. Be able to bring best practices and help them navigate the tough things that allow them to break eight figures, nine figures and beyond.

How do you balance, you know, this is new for you in terms of like, you know, helping these. I mean you've helped informally but you know, you're so sought after. I recently referred you to a friend and you know, you're sold out and you're well booked up and you have your calendar booked and you have everything that's which is great. But how do you, how do you balance that with building your business and your brand and, and now you have to put in some time to like making it, you know what I mean's business looks like or the brand or the name or whatever the marketing. And how do you balance that?

Yeah, as I mentioned, I am, I am booked out through the, really through next year and, and I mean yes, I could be taking on more clients if I opened up my calendar even more. But to your point, I'm purposely holding back. I'm making sure that it's not full time, well, full time workload. I'm making sure that I am carving out the time in order to focus on what's next, focusing on the future, focus on building the brand because I recognize the longer term vision. And so I am not currently doing a full time workload with just the coaching. I recognize that there's other elements to the business similar to what you were mentioning. There's just administrative components to it, there's the brand building component to it. And so car making sure that I only carve out a certain amount of time for my clients and make sure that that's taken care of and that's paying the bills and that's being, you know, being handled. So that way I do have the time in order to do the things that are more long term and more strategic in nature. No different than when I was CEO. You know, it's very easy for you to get sucked into the day to day, and then all of a sudden you have zero time for strategy. You have zero time to hire the team that's necessary to get to the next level. And so if you are not compartmentalizing your calendar and realizing, look, Mondays for hiring, Tuesdays for strategy, Wednesdays for execution, Thursdays for profit and cash, Fridays for psychology. If you're not compartmentalizing and blocking off your time, it becomes very easy for you to just respond to shiny object syndrome or get pulled into a million different meetings rather than recognizing like, look, I've set priorities for this business, including the business of myself, and I'm going to make sure that I have that time allocated to be thinking about the future.

That's. That's actually full circle because we started the conversation talking about, you know, our families get. They said yes to everything. And you've had to discipline yourself to say no to money, say no to clients, so you can make time for, for, for the growth of your business, working on your business, not just in it. And this has been a pleasure, man. I'm so glad that we made the time to make this happen. You're one of my favorite people because you're genuine. You're not something like, it's what you see, what you get. You don't try to be something you're not. You're a great listener. When we've worked together, you're a great listener and you kind of understand that you have to. A relationship has to go both ways. Like, you got to understand what this person's needing and you're responding to those needs. But just as a. As a person, you're just. You're just gold, dude. I love, I love speaking to you.

Well, the feelings mutual, Omar. We definitely have to hang out in person very soon.

Come down to Australia. It'd be a little awesome to see you for sure. Yeah, yeah, I see you. I see you in Italy and everywhere else. Come on, man.

It's just one more. One more flight. Not a big deal.

Exactly. It's just. Just a nap and you're there.

There you go.

There you go. Thanks, buddy. Really appreciate it.

Likewise. Likewise. Thank you so much, man. Really appreciate being on here.

Take care. I absolutely loved the conversation I had with Ayman Al Abdullah. I've known Ayman for years now. We've worked together, we've done deals together. I work with him in Appsumo and the guy really walks the talk, right? He really does what he's actually explaining or sharing with us. As you mentioned, you know Appsumo is a deal site. It's like Groupon for nerds, right? This is not an earth shattering idea, but the implementation is gold. Knowing what to focus on, doubling down on what works for your business, what makes you money, this was the biggest thing I've learned just by knowing Eamon and as well as speaking to him on this interview. You don't need to do everything to get your business going. You just need to do the important thing, the things that actually work. Some of us, we put our foot off the gas trying to try other things instead of just doubling and tripling down on what does work, what is getting us customers. Find out how you got your customers in the first place. Reverse engineer it and do it over and over again. Optimize it, improve it. This is why I think it's really important to ask your customers how they found out about you. Why did they buy? A quick email to your customers that signed up in the last 30 days can save you a ton of research and a ton of time wasted on doing the wrong things. What did you think of this interview? Let me know. Let Eamon know. Eamon is at aymanlabdul on Twitter and I'm of course at the Omar Zenhome. That wraps up today's lesson. If you love this show, if you want more of the show, if you want some of the gold that we have in our archives, make sure you hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app. It's the only way you can get access to over 2,000 business lessons in our archives. It also ensures that you don't miss an episode. Make sure that the episode is all ready for you when you open up the app. And while you're at it, leave us a rating and review. I'd love to hear what you think of the show before I go. I want to leave you with this. Before I actually got on the mic and spoke to Ayman and had this conversation, I was just kind of reminiscing and asking myself, how did I meet Aamon in the first place? And I kind of had to go backwards. I was like, okay, so I know Aamon through Noah, who is the founder of Appsumo and I met Noah through John Corcoran, who I met through Corbett Barr. How did I meet Corbett Barr? Oh, I actually met him in person at a conference called New Media Expo back in 2014. So essentially, I would have never had the chance to sit down with Eamon or meet him or get to know him or consider him a friend. If I didn't get out there, if I didn't go to conferences, if I didn't make it a point that, hey, as comfortable as I am in my home with my circle of friends or with my family, I got to meet new people. I gotta go to conferences, I gotta go to meetups so that I can make meaningful connections, so I can make new friends that are interesting, that can broaden my perspective, that can help me along the way. So it was a reminder to me and a reminder to you because I think we forgot about that because we had to not do it because of COVID But now that, you know, restrictions have eased a bit, we may want to consider hey, when's the last time I've been to a conference or a meetup or a dinner where I've met brand new people? A little homework for you for this week and beyond. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Gas, snacks, tolls.

This trip is draining my wallet. Yeah, but we'll be with family. You're in a good mood. What's your deal? What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top text and data detour to Metro.

Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile.

Just bring your number. $31 monthly, $25 after with autopay not available if with Metro or T Mobile.

In the past 180 days. ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.