How Noah Kagan Makes $30M+ From AppSumo, & Lessons from Starting & Marketing 24 Startups

Success, leads, clues. And so one of the things that I still do to this day, I'm almost 40. I still reach out to anyone I find doing something interesting. I need some traction. You need some traction. Let's get some traction.

Hey, what's up innovators? I'm entrepreneurs, visionaries and disruptors. This is your Traction podcast host, Lloyd Lobo. We're a community of over 100,000 people just like yourself on a mission to help you get the methods, the money, and the madness to explode your business growth. Featuring stories and tactical advice straight from those who've done it before, like Shopify, Twilio, Asana, and many more, this episode is brought to you by Boast AI. Each year, the US and Canadian governments give out billions of dollars in R and D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses like yours. But the application process is cumbersome, prone to frustrating audits, and receiving the money can take up to 16 months. Boast AI gets you access to research and development tax credits and innovation funding opportunities without the headache and red tape. Join thousands of North American companies leveraging Boast AI software to maximize cashback. Check out B oast AI. This episode is also brought to you by Launch Academy, an international tech hub that provides mentorship, resources, network and the environment for entrepreneurs to launch, fund and grow their startups. Since 2012, Launch Academy has incubated over 6,000 entrepreneurs, of which 300 have grown their startups past Seed and Series A and have collectively raised over $1.2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch Academy's programs, check out LaunchAcademy CA.

Today I'm super excited to have Noah Kagan.

What is up everyone? I love seeing all the chatters. If you're participating, make sure you hit up that chat box so I can see your name and where you're from. Exactly.

Hit up the chat, introduce yourself. If you have any questions, type them in the Q and A box. So we take the Q and A at the end, but awesome session here. Geez. I got to know Noah 7, 8 years ago I was a big fan of him because one of the first startups I worked for, I used the Mint marketing plan that you wrote up to take Mint to 100k users or customers and I literally used that to the T to build a couple of my companies and I still use it till today for product launches and whatnot. And I and any founder that asks me like, hey, do you have any marketing plans? I send them the Mint marketing plan. So big fan. Also, Noah has an offer you Want to tell us about it? YouTube.com OkDork what is that?

Yes. So we have. I don't know, there's like almost. There's hundreds of people coming here. So if right now and I'll tell you about marketing and we'll talk a lot about this stuff. My number one priority is growing my YouTube channel. So for someone who subscribes today that's watching, we're going to do it at the end of the presentation. I'll give $250 AppSumo credit. You just go to YouTube.com okdork hit subscribe and we will hook someone up with 250 bucks AppSumo credit by the end of the show.

Awesome. Yeah. So my story was I got to know Noah through his mint marketing plan. Been a big fan of yours. And then I wrote a couple articles on us starting traction Conf. I'm the co founder of Boast AI. We were building technology to automate government incentives for R and D. And my good friend Ray runs launch Academy and we said let's partner together and build a community of founders because we're both service founders. And I wrote a blog post on HubSpot about how we got all the speakers and cold emailed them and our journey to building traction and bootstrapping it. And Noah reached out on Twitter to me saying, hey, I want to hire you as a writer. It's been seven, eight years since and I think our relationship has mainly been on Twitter, messaging each other back and forth and then through email and hopefully I'll see you in Austin.

I think I would love to meet you in person, man. So one thing I want to highlight, so for everyone out there, there's hundreds of people. Oh my God. It's really amazing. Laura, Kevin, Pa Paulson, Jonathan Hadler from Chicago. People all over the world, there's secrets. Success leads clues. I think it's a Tony Robbins quote. Success leads clues. And so one of the things that I still do to this day, I'm almost 40. I still reach out to anyone I find doing something interesting. So I saw and I think that's one of my superpowers is I'm really good observer of greatness. I don't know if my stuff's always the greatest. It's pretty damn good. But I love finding people doing great stuff like yourself, reaching out to them and just connecting and you never know how the world's gonna turn out. And so I've actually found that to be for everyone out there, reach out to anyone that's doing Interesting stuff. The second thing that you did, Lloyd, that I don't know if people give enough credit for you, but if Jim or Monica or Dave Shefferman. Oh, he's from sf.

That's where I'm from. Yes.

If you are trying to build your business, if you're trying to build your brand, if you're trying to grow as a person, one of the best ways is to connect with new people and putting on traction. Conf. Now we are connected besides you writing the blog posts. And so I'd say for anyone out there, can you post a zoom thing? Can you host like a lunch thing? Can you start connecting people? And for me, in my career, that was probably one of the biggest reasons that I was able to be successful from actually hosting events very early on.

One of the first things you told me when you reached out and how we built that relationship, I responded to you, I think, in sub seconds. And I still do that. I try my best to respond to people very quickly. And you're like, wow, dude, you respond really quickly. Let's get on it. And then I think I did write a blog post for Sumo me a few years later. But let's get right into this. So how are you doing in Corona time? You're in Malibu. You left Austin, you said it's super warm. But what was your primary motivation to be in Malibu? You could be anywhere.

I think during coronavirus, when this all started happening, I just got scared. I think like a lot of people, I think where everyone's going through this, like emotional rollercoaster of Corona, it's, I'm scared, it's over, I'm rich, I don't know if I'm have a job. And then it's really unsettling. And so for me, I try to expand my circle of control during this period of time. And one of the things I realized is that if I could change my geography to places that were more fulfilling, more relaxing, more productive, more creative, my life is better. And so about a month into Corona, I started living just at nicer houses. And then I was like, wow, I could drive across the country and live in Malibu. And I will say, man, having 70 degree weather with the beach outside. And like yesterday I just sat on the ocean. I was like, man, this is really peaceful. And if you guys can't do that, if you're like, hey, I'm in a foreign country, I don't have the money or I can't fly. I think one thing that Neville, who I'm living with did, which is really interesting is how do you change your home environment to be even more enjoyable? Because I think sometimes in life we just accept that this is just the way it looks. Like we come into the house and we're like, this is just it. And so I think that's a powerful mindset about, like, how do I change my environment to make my life better?

Let's walk through that journey of Facebook to mint through. What did you do next? How did you get into it for everyone out there?

DeWitt, Scott, Jim, he's actually in LA. Ooh, someone from Brazil. Two things. Make sure you subscribe to YouTube.com okaydork and we all talk about marketing and things like that. Secondly, I would love for everyone. So do that. Cause I'm gonna give away a gift. But everyone post your URL if you have an Instagram, if you have a website, post your URL on what you do. Because I love seeing what everyone's working on. And then I'll try to cater my discussion and my stories to hopefully help you as much as possible. So post your URL and maybe what you do or what you need help with on that URL. My journey, man, was I worked at. I went to Berkeley. I had no network, no nothing. And I went and got a job at intel, which. Have you ever seen the comic Dilbert? Yeah, that Dilbert was literally my life. It was like, hey, Noah, did you get that report? Are you gonna bring that report? I was like, can you just kill me? Just end all this? I literally, no joke. I brought a sleeping bag and I would position it under my desk and I'd sleep most of the day. And I brought a chair to block the entrance of my cubicle. And so I block the entrance so that they couldn't actually come into the cubicle and see me, which I think is a. Is a very. I don't know if it was common, but yeah, man. I think one of the things that I did in my career that was really helpful. And I think for a lot of people out there, I was always creating things I was interested in on the side. I was always side hustling from the beginning. So at intel, and I think this is relevant because people are like, how'd you get to Facebook? And the YouTube link for Raza is YouTube.com okay, dork. I'm not gonna say it again. For a while at Intel, I did conferences, so I did a thing called Community. Next I did thing called entrepreneur27. And I didn't have a network. I just used these as an excuse. To meet people. And then I was building websites. I built a site called College up, which was a Craigslist for college students. I built ninjacard.com, which I just sold 20 years later for $20,000. I can't believe someone bought that domain. It was bonkers. They're like, buy it for this amount. I was like, seriously? And I got the money. So I did Ninja Card, which was a discount card website. I built a few other things, and it was just. I was always making stuff, and I think that's a really valuable thing that, like, not everything is going to work. And so you do have to find things you're interested in and start now. And then the Facebook job, I basically was planning on quitting intel in October. And I think one of the best ways to get a job is just look at what's on your phone or go to your computer, browse history, and just go apply for those companies, because it's much better to work on something you're interested in. And I just applied for Facebook because I was using it all the time, and I loved it. And when I went there, I said, hey, here's all the products I've already built myself, which I think is the reason I got the job.

Awesome. And then you got fired from there.

What happened? Yeah, yeah, the short story. And if people are curious in the comments or the Q and A, feel free to post it there. But Facebook, nine months fired, six months depressed. I did a bunch of random things. I taught business in Jeju Island, Korea. I worked on a mobile app called scanner.com, s E-A-N R.com I put on those conferences, communitynext.com and that actually was. That was really helpful. So I put on these conferences like you did. Traction. And anyone can do them. It's not exclusive. I didn't have a network. I put on the conference. So think of it this way. If you want to get me to speak at your conference, or if you want to get, maybe not Mark Zuckerberg, but some famous person, you go to them and say, hey, I'll buy 300 of your books. Can you come speak at this thing? And they're like, sure. Now all you have to do is go sell 300 books. And that part's easy. But getting the speaker in the building, the relationship part is hard. And so if you can convince them. So that conference business, which was fascinating to think about because I did these conferences because I was Interested in them, one, they ended up making $50,000 a conference, which was Insane. I couldn't believe we were making that much money, because I wasn't trying to. I just wanted a conference. And the second thing was, because of the conference, I met Dave McClure, who was a pretty known guy in the Valley, and he introduced me to mint.com and that is how I ended up getting the job at Mint. From that. And so I think what's been fascinating about my life is that most of my net worth is from the people I've met. It's from I met Dave, who put me at Mint, and then being at Mint, I created Facebook apps, and my Facebook apps exploded. And then Naval Ravikant, who's now super famous, invested in my company. And that's how I met Naval, because I built these apps that blew up. I don't like when people say blow up or destroyed. I always think it sounds so weird. Murdered. It killed. It blew up. It's like, why aren't they more like positive? Anyways?

What's a positive word?

It blossomed. It flowered. I like it. That was the career. So it was Facebook, Mint, Facebook games. Then we transitioned to Facebook payments for games. And then from there, I think in my career, I think one of the things I'd recommend for everyone is notice the pieces that you really liked in your career or that you're liking to do in your hobbies, and notice the parts that you're just like, ah, this sucks. I've always loved the marketing. I love tech. Like, the first thing I do almost every morning, every after I finished my routine is like, I read techmeme.com. i love techmeme.com. it's like my favorite thing to read every morning. And so I eventually came to Appsumo, which was, I love marketing, cool stuff. I love tech stuff. I love a good deal. Like, I worked on Ninja Card back in the day, and it was like, wow, I can actually see if I can make money doing this. So that's where we got to. That started about 10 years ago.

Awesome. And then you settled in on. On Appsumo and Sumome. So you've launched 24 products. How did you settle on Appsumo and Sumo Li?

Why did.

What made you decide to. This is the one. This is the product. Like, how did you go about that?

Are you married, Lloyd?

I am.

How'd you. She was the one man I met.

Her in, right outside. After high school, we were prom dates. It almost feels like we're siblings. It's bad. That's.

I like that. I think two things. It's the same thing you probably did you date other people before her?

I did, but when you're pre 18, are you really dating people? I don't know this like high school stuff. So we're prom dates and then we've been together like I'm 40 this year, so.

You look great, dude. We're like the best looking 40 year olds I know. So in terms of dating and finding stuff, I've had a belief that any business can be profitable if you can persevere through it. So I think any of the 24 probably could have been businesses if I was willing to really persevere. The reality with that. So my big takeaway for you, the audience for Yoni or Jitin or Serge or Adrian, anyone out there that's watching is your idea can work, but how long are you willing to work on it for? And the reality is most people won't even start. So if as long as you started, you're ahead of it and most people won't keep iterating and keep noticing what's working. And so for me, I tried all these businesses and some worked my Facebook games like they did really well. We were the top Facebook developer. Appsumo was the first one that didn't feel like a job. And it felt. And this is the thing that I think, especially people out there that are starting, like David or I know Kareem is here. Appsumo was the first one that people were asking me for it. So how do you know that you created something people really want? It's like my podcast. I didn't put out my podcast last week. On Thursday, one person complained. That's not good, by the way. Lloyd, I'm trying to give you an example that like, it means no one gives a fuck. So I think that the thing with Appsumo was that it was the first thing I put out a deal and it wasn't what it started. And this is something to think about someone. Ryan from Product Hunt said this to me. Most of the most successful companies today are pretty similar to how they started. Think about that for a second. Most of the biggest and most successful companies today are relatively similar to how they started. So if you look at Facebook, for the most part, it's like you post a photo, you post your picture pretty much, and they connect you. You look at Product Hunt, you post some products, you rate them. Appsumo, we put out a deal, we promote it, people buy it. Google, you search, they have some other things. So I think what I'm trying to say is sometimes it Is pretty simple. And the biggest thing when you are starting some of these businesses is looking at like, how big is the demand? How big are people actually like asking from you versus you pushing it on them? And with AppSumo, just to give you some context, I'll put it into perspective. Our first year we did $117,000 in revenue, which is pretty damn good considering that I was not taking it seriously. I was just having fun. I was like, oh, let me put out this deal. The second year in 2011, we did $3 million in revenue. Wow, that's a fucking big jump. And so it's not bragging. And I'm not here to. I'm just trying to give you context of that is a clear indicator that I could do a lot of different ideas. But there's something there where people are asking for what we're doing. The second thing is that I think the reason we've been able to go from 3 million now to 30 million. What most people make mistakes on when they find something that's working is that they go and try to do new things. That is almost like the number one killer of success. You're like, hey, this is working. Let me do something new. Hey, I have. I love it when I meet entrepreneurs. It's my favorite thing to meet entrepreneurs. Hey, I'm doing this business, but this next business is gonna be my really successful one. I'm sure you meet people like that all the time. And I think the reason we've done well with AppSumo is that we found something, people wanted it. And then we hired Eamon about five years into the business. And Eamonn's superpower is sticking with the business. Amen's success is being very consistent and looking at what is working and how do we. Can we just do more of what's working? And I think the tendency for all of us, especially if you're an entrepreneur, is like, how do I do something new? And I think that's what's helped us get to where we are today.

Definitely. How did you validate AppSumo? You had an interesting story with Imgur.

Yeah. So with Imagerman, I'm still a big Redditor. I've been on Reddit since 2006. I love the site and I had the idea for AppSumo. The reason and most ideas, I think one of the best ways that you guys can get ideas, if you have like a marketplace or if you have anything look outside your industry, I don't think it's really easy to get inspiration Inside the industry. So for me, I was looking at Mac Heist. Mac Heist was this site. It's funny, they're defunct now, but Mac ICE did these bundles of software for a few hours or a few days, and it was $50. And I was like, huh, what if I did that for, like, web software, right? Dropbox and LinkedIn and FreshBooks and Mailchimp. I was like, what if I did it for that? And that's where I got the inspiration. So I said, how do I test it really quickly? So in a weekend, me and this guy Muhammad, who was in Pakistan for $50, I built a website with him and I hit up the Imgur guy and I just. I think what's interesting about how we approach people, this is an email that. Don't ever send these emails to people. Please don't send these emails. Hey, Lloyd. Hey, Noah. Can I help you with anything? Yeah, how about you just not email me that email and waste my time so I don't have to delete it so quickly? I would have been more helpful than wasting the two seconds where I had to use my keyboard shortcuts to delete your ass. So it's much more appealing to email Alan from Imgur or email me saying, hey, Alan, I see you're selling imgur Pro for $29 a year. What if I sell a hundred of them for you and I pay you $7 for everyone I sell? I'll send you $700 in cash. That sounds pretty damn great. And so I think what I'm trying to highlight there is that it's not that I knew. I didn't know Alan. I didn't know Imdur, I didn't know anyone on Reddit. But I approached him in a way that made it exciting for him to want to respond to me. So Alan responded saying, yeah, sure, it sounds great. You'll give me $7 for everyone you sell. And then I went to Reddit and I just hit up the founders. I didn't know them either, but they were pretty small at the time. And I said, hey, there's really popular. Can I get some free ads to promote it to the audience? And I did take him out for breakfast, so it was a very valuable breakfast. His name's Chris Slow. He's still a great dude. And Chris gave me free Chris Low.

Get traction Last a couple years ago.

Chris Lowe, really very good dude. He's where I'm at. He's helped me get to where I am today. That's the thing. I hate the phrase self Made because there is absolutely nothing self made, right? Like you can't even be born self made unless you're born in a. I guess you could be born in a lab, but for the majority of us, we're all two parent made. And the same thing with success. Success has a lot of people with you on that journey. And so if you are alone, you should probably go figure out some communities. Maybe it's the traction community. We have a OkayDork.com group which is a Facebook group community. But go find people to be around to help out and to help you. And so Reddit gave me free ads. We ended up selling about 200 of them. And I said, if I can sell at least 100 of these, I'm going to keep doing this business. Because I had other ideas at the time. Like I knew I wanted to help small business owners. And this is going to sound rude and I don't mean it to sound rude. I was tired of kissing ass. I was really tired of kissing a lot of ass, Lloyd. And in my previous businesses, like the Facebook games and the Facebook payments for games, I just was like kissing so many people's asses, man. I was like, hey, can you please use this? I was like begging them every day, please use my software, please. And then they would use it and then they'd say, yeah, get out of here, you're a bum. I want to have power. I want to be in control. And I realized that I wanted to work on business that was like oxygen to people doing something like imgur and promoting. I was like, oh, wow. If I can bring people customers, they will always need me and I don't have to beg them. And I want business. It should be a relationship. It's not I need you, you need me, it's we need each other. And so with AppSumo, I was like, wow, I can bring people customers, I can get the tools I want without having to pay full price. Like, I still ask for discounts and deals. And that's where it led me to the path like, wow, this can be the business. When I sold the hundred of them and do something that something I just really wanted, I was like, even if I wasn't doing it myself, I would be the customer.

So you bootstrapped it. You've not taken any outside funding. Customer driven. How did you figure out your pricing model?

So that's actually, it's a great question. And the thing with pricing, I'll tell you some stories, but there's two things with pricing. I would say this is the most valuable thing I've ever heard about pricing. You should not think your pricing is set in stone. And a lot of people that have SaaS or starting businesses or like, oh, my God, if I do this pricing, it's forever. It's. You're not marrying your pricing, you are dating it. I can't tell you how many times we've changed our pricing@Sumo.com and with AppSumo, our price. I will say this, though. Our pricing of Appsumo is the reason it went from a six figure business to a seven figure business. That's crazy. That is the only reason it went from six to seven. And so how did we do that exactly? We were doing these bundles. So it was like we have Productivity bundle or Design bundle or Mac bundle, and it would be $50. The value of the items in the bundle was literally worth about $2,500. So for $50, you get 2,500. And people literally couldn't grasp how valuable it was. So Andrew Chen, who's our only advisor in the company, made a spreadsheet. He said, no, right now you're doing one deal a month with five products, selling it for 50 bucks, and you're making $10 a deal. So you're making like $5,000 per month, which is. I was pretty happy about that. My goal, and I think everyone in all of your businesses, so from Annabelle to Kelsey, all of y', all, you need to really just figure out your goals. A lot of people are like, I want a million dollars. It's like, for what? It just sounds cool. There's a lot of other things that sound cool that are easier to do. But I think my recommendation there is figure out what you really want. What is your goal? My goal when starting Appsumo was to make $3,000 a month and go to Asia. That's it. And So I made $3,000 a month and I left. I think I went to Argentina. Where did I go? Maybe I went to Thailand eventually. But the thing with pricing is, as I was describing, the story was we had this pricing that would these bundles that were $2,500. So Andrew made the spreadsheet in one column. He did. Here's where you're at now. And he said, if you just took the five products in the bundle and sold them separately, and instead of $2,500 in value, it's like 5, $500 in value. 50 bucks. And now you could do five deals a month instead of one. It looks like your profit's gonna be a Lot stronger. And so then the next month we did, and it was just instantly more successful. It was instantly more profitable and more scalable. Cause now instead of one deal a month, we could do five deals a week that we're making the equivalent amount of money. And I think the big takeaway for a lot of people out there is keep changing your pricing as well. I think making some basic Excel, Google Docs, spreadsheet critical, literally critical to the success of your business. How many people, by the way, put the number 5 if you've bought from AppSumo before in the Q&A chat. Hit number 5 if you. Holy crap. Wow. All right. That was quick. You guys are amazing. I love every one of you. All you guys are amazing. Fuck, yeah. So I think with AppSumo, I think what's interesting for the audience, not about us, because it's never about us. It's always about you. It's about you, Lloyd. It's about Eric, Mitch, Alex DeCarvolo. Oh, Alex, good to see your name. One thing I will highlight and we'll talk about the pricing. I think I care more about our customers now than I ever have. I think if anyone out there, Bryce or Mitch, Kevin, Henrique, I think that's how you say it. If you are trying to build any level of success. And this is something I've really gotten even more hardcore about lately, all you really have to do is help individual people. And I know that sounds almost too simplistic, but let me just break it down in another way. I'm trying to grow my YouTube channel, and I thought if I just put out videos, I would get famous and I put out videos and it would just be, oh, you put out a video, you get a million people, and that's it. But I've had a different way of looking at it now. Like, I've had the 180, and I said, if I can get a million people results and affect their life positively, then there'll be a million people who want to watch what I have to say.

People are looking for outcomes.

They're looking for results.

Yep.

And in your businesses that everyone that you guys are doing, whether it's consulting, whether it's SaaS, whether it's E comm, whether it's digital products, all you really have to do is individually help someone get a result and you will be set for life. And I think with AppSumo, now more than ever, like, I'm individually looking to say, hey, how did this tool help you out? Hey, can I put out a YouTube video that will help you get some result in your business. And I think less. Oh, let me just put this out and put some ads. And hopefully I'm rich. Which I think is the sexy. I find it almost more sexy to helping people individually. And I think that gets lost a lot of times, especially online, because the beauty of online, it works around the clock. You don't have to be there. I could be in Malibu. I could be in Thailand, which I'm hoping to go to later this year, or it could be in Israel or Tokyo, wherever, or Austin, Texas. The second thing with pricing, coming back to the original point, because I want to make sure we answer that, is that it does evolve. So when we started AppSumo, it was like you can get one year of a product for this amount. Then we did five years and then we did lifetime. And so we're evolving that again in the next week or so. We're launching a marketplace. So if anyone out there is creating software or courses or books or templates to help other entrepreneurs, you can go to appsumo.com and submit your product and we will promote you. We'll do our best to help promote you and help other entrepreneurs. So on the top of appsumo.com, there's a submit your product. So if anyone out there is creating things to help other entrepreneurs or software, go there and submit it. And we'll be opening up the marketplace so anyone can sell their tool on Appsumo.

Let's go into one of my favorite topics and a lot of people want to know, building an audience. And there's all kinds of ways to do that. But I find at least for traction, and for us at Boast, email has been the biggest driver. The more personalized you are with email, the bigger your email list is, the more sends you do. Email drives a lot.

Walk us through your journey of building.

Building your email list. And you're saying, I think you said you have 61, 61,000 people on the email list or more.

We have a few different email lists. My personal email list is for OkayDork.com my email list size is 170,000 people. But I think you don't hear people talk about email lists anymore. I don't. I guess I don't hear about it as much. So what I focus on for my email list is my active audience. So I use sendfox.com so it's not good for SAS companies. It's phenomenal for content creators. So if you're looking to do a weekly newsletter or You're a content creator, we built it, it's free to use sendfox.com and we only, we pretty much show you your active audience. So that is the people that actually care about what you're saying. Because I think what's interesting about business is that if you have I could give you my email here, I'll just give you my email. It's Noah kaganmail.com that is my personal email address. You can get a lot of email addresses, but to get someone to reply or get someone to open or get someone to buy from you, that's the value part. And I think people are just still so consumed on hey, I got 10 emails today. It's of those 10 subscribers, how many of them opened your email? How many have clicked or how many have bought a product? And those. That's actually what you need to be aiming for, which is your active audience. So yeah, my active audience is 61,000 today. My journey with email, I didn't do it for many years. I started blogging in 2000. It's now 2020 today. I didn't do any email. And in 2010 I was doing all this advertising to our deals on Appsumo. I was running a bunch of ads and I was doing, I got on Lifehacker, we got featured in Tim Ferriss, we got all these things and people would come to the site and then I was like, they came. And when an E commerce site, e commerce SaaS, any digital product business, good conversion rate was 3%. That's great. If you can get 3 to 4% conversion rate, normally it's 1 1/2%. So that means that 95% of people come and don't do anything. And I was like, man, this is really annoying that I'm doing all this stuff and not. And I have to go do it all over. I have to restart the wheel every time. And so that's where I think Heaton Shaw was like, yo, why don't you get their email address? And that changed our business again from six to seven figure business by saying, huh? Instead of having to go and find them hunt every single time, we actually can farm and do that. I always. One thing that blows my mind, Lloyd, is like restaurants, it's so hard to get me to come in your restaurant, especially nowadays. But like, why don't you get my email address to help get me back? And I think every single business can use email as a way of building relationships and scaling.

Definitely. What are your sort of top tips for building an audience even beyond Just email, right? Like how you. Yeah, let's say you went and got a list or 10,000 people signed up, or a thousand people signed up. What are the key steps for keeping them engaged? How do you build that relationship? Because it's not like they'll want to buy from you or be engaged on day one. It's almost like dating. You don't walk into a bar and ask somebody to marry you.

We're in the attention age right now. I think every single person, if you are trying to do something online, should have a public presence. So you should have either an email list, a blog, or a YouTube channel. You should have one of those three. I think the other channels, I don't find them as controllable or as scalable. And there's a. We can have a longer discussion about that marketing, because I do think it's fascinating. But every single person should start documenting their journey publicly. Every single person. Because I think it improves your communication skill. You meet cool people, it'll actually help build your business. And it's a cool way to also reflect on how you've changed over the years. So I would say my biggest takeaway from email, and we can talk about how to grow it if people are starting out. If people have email lists here, by the way, if you have an email list or you don't, that's fine. Put how many people are actually on your email list in the comments. I'd love to see the sizes of different people's emails. List doesn't matter the size. It matters that you have some and that you're actually helping people. So this is. Okay. Awesome. Keep them coming. If you're at zero, I want more zeros.

Who's the 30k? Wow, somebody's competing with you.

Okay, that's great. I want people to beat me. I'm not here to win. Well, I'm here to win, but there's. Everyone can win. Sylvie's at zero. All right, so if you're at zero, go to sendfox.com and sign up for a newsletter today. Jillian, you're so funny, dude. Meyer. All right. Okay, good. Email's dead. Yeah, email's super dead. Yeah, stay out of it. Leave it all to me. If email's dead, why does every site ask for your email address still? There's many different things about email, but I think you're asking how to build relationships. I think there's two key pieces that I've observed. Number one is consistency. So the way that I do it is every single Wednesday, whether rain or Shine, we send an email. And the way that we've structured our emails is one is about me. So in my email, if you go to OkayDork.com, sign up, the first part is our best piece of content from the week. So we look at whatever got the most engagement, and we put that at the top of our email. The second part of the email is about someone else. So every week I try to water someone else's garden. Either someone I want to meet, someone's article I just think is great and that's made new relationships. But I also just think it's been. It's doing good on the earth. And every single Wednesday, rain or shine, we do that. And so I encourage every single person out there should be emailing at least once a week. And what I've realized personally is that if you don't know what you want to email, then just write about that. Hey, I don't know what I'm gonna email this week. But here's what I've been thinking about. The more important part is consistency. The second critical part of email is your autoresponder. So your autoresponder is the emails that people get when they sign up for your mailing list. And everyone does it really crappy. It's unbelievable. It's like coming to your restaurant. You have Lloyd's restaurant, Lloyd's falafel shop. And you're like, oh, you want to, like, your best dish is your falafel. Your worst dish is, like, your protein shake, which I'm going to start drinking now. And you're like, when they come into the falafel shop, they're like, what should I get? And you're like, I don't know. They're like, I'll have the protein shake. And they're like, hey, this falafel shop sucks. I don't want it. I don't want it anymore. And the reality with an autoresponder is that it's an opportunity when someone comes into your store or your universe that you can show them your best, best material. Imagine that, like, every first date is the best date ever. That's what you get to do when you have an autoresponder. And so for me, on my autoresponder, it's, here's my best content of all time. That's my first email. Second email is a $10 AppSumo gift card. If they're a new customer, I think the third email is I promote them. So I say, hey, if you have a business Leave a comment here and I'll do my best to promote you. Then I think the fourth email, it might be like, check out follow me on LinkedIn. And so I actually updated that about every six months. But those are the two things I would say for building an email list. Now, growing the email list is a whole nother story.

Now let's dive into that because a lot of people are interested. Except Noah Bloom, who has 280,000 folks.

Still interested in growing.

Yeah, yeah, let's. Let's dive into it. And then I have some rapid fire questions, but let's.

I can stay a little longer too. I just, I had a kickoff, dude. I left Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall street guy came over and I was like, hey, I gotta leave to come hang out with the traction conf people.

But one thing is interesting. My last name is Lobo, which means wolf. And how did you know? I grew up in the Middle East. You called it Lloyd's Falafel Shop. So that's interesting.

You have a Middle Eastern tang to you. Awesome.

Yeah. So let's dive into building an email list. What are some things we can all do?

So if you have five, everyone's, oh, I'm just getting started. I'm at a thousand. Every company starts with one customer. And I think this gets forgotten. Appsumo had our first customer and now we have thousands of customers. But it starts one Traction comp started with one signup and now it's at many. And so don't be discouraged where they're at. 1. I have a video on YouTube called how to get your first hundred email subscribers. So if you're at zero, my suggestion is don't spend any money on any software, don't buy any ads. The first hundred subscribers should be people. And I know you want some secret. They're like, no, tell us the secret one, though. Tell us the secret stuff. Do that one first and once you've gotten the hundred through that, do it more that way. And so how do you get the first hundred is you post on your social media, post on your LinkedIn, you post on your Twitter, you post on your link, Facebook post on your Instagram, you're posting your stories. And you do that every other week. Because most people on social, the reason that email's so great is that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, they want you to pay to talk to your people. With email, you don't have to pay anymore to talk to your people. You have them. And so that's the beauty of it. And so number One, use your network. So update all your bios on your LinkedIn, update your bio on Twitter, update your bio on Facebook and then post on those places regularly on your stories. Do it right now. Hey, if anyone's out there, that'll do it right now. I'll call out your URL. So if you can post on your Twitter or if you post on your Facebook, if you poked on your LinkedIn you, you post on a story, post below your URL about it and I'll just call it out and we can all give you some love. We'll all go check it out and sign up for you. Second thing. Yes, it's too much damn work. No, I know. You should just buy ads and pray. That's my new business model. Buy and pray what's really worked for us.

No, I'll tell you. So we used to do in person events a lot. Big conference in Vancouver, founder dinners every other month. Webinars were just not a thing. We do it once in a while. And then I was involved with Saster as well. I know Jason Lemkin quite well and I saw, I got the heads up that everything is shutting down when Saastr didn't happen and he's been sort of mentor to me and so we knew this wasn't coming. So we proactively reached out to all our speakers and scheduled out Every Thursday at 11 Pacific a webinar with each one of our speakers and people are not our speakers. So we have webinars scheduled through the end of the year. Every week we're adding 5, 600 people because they're coming to the site now it's on our site at Boast AI, it's on Launch Academy site, It's all on our partner site as well. Like we've partnered with Founder Institute, with DCS Ventures, we've partnered with everyone and just co promoting it. But the links are ours. So everyone's signing up now we've got 900 people. I guarantee you 600 of these people are not in my email list and they're going to go back up and then. So that's worked really well. I think maybe interview somebody live and get them to sign up.

If you're at zero, you don't need to be. I think people are wanting fancy and this kind of stuff. But Lloyd, you're a little bit ahead which is great. So I think from 0 to 100 you got to just do manual work, update your email signature, tell all the people in your network, text your friends. That's step one, step Two, I think is like, how do you go from like 100 or 1,000 to 10,000? And so I think that's the interesting kind of approach. Things that have worked really well. Giveaways. Giveaways are amazing. I'm still surprised how much people aren't doing them. Half the audience is not good. They're not qualified in terms they don't care about you, but the other half is qualified. And the two things I would say with giveaways that have worked really well for us is do partner giveaways. So partner up with other people. So partner up with Lloyd and both you guys do a joint giveaway because then you expand the pie of the audience. Or secondly, a way to do it is, is get companies to give you products for free. So if you like a microphone or if you like the oura ring, which I do love, if you like Premier protein or like, here's. I'll show you another one. These are my favorite shoes. They're called Suaves. They're really great for traveling. Really light, really flexible. Look at that. So I hit them up and say, hey, I like you. Can you give me some shoes for free so I can do a giveaway? And you do the giveaway. People find out at the shoes. They sign up for your newsletter and that's when. So I'd say that's been one ads. I'm spending right now $10,000 a month on Facebook ads for okay, dork. So that's. Ads have been working. I think there's a lot of different things you could do. What is it the lead gen stuff where you like, give away a free ebook. So what I did is I write, I blog a lot. I've been blogging since 2000. So I posted on my most popular three blog posts. @ the top of each blog, it's, hey, I made a special PDF of this blog post. So give me your email for it. Sumo.com pop ups. The. There's just a. There's so many articles and stuff like that. Like you go to Sumo.com, we have a blog post like 60 Ways to Grow your email list. I think the thing that people are missing out on, I don't think there's not enough ideas. Do I think there's some hacks? Like, if I was starting at scratch today, I probably would try to leverage famous people if I could, or people that I would want to meet. Hey, Noah, like, you got to work backwards. How do I get who has my audience and how do I steal it from them in a way that they're excited to let me have them. And so you, Lloyd, we have a relationship. You're like, hey, Noah, come on. And then it's like, how do I get Noah excited to want to share something? So an easy way to do it. I'll tell you, if you made, like an Instagram video for me, that's, hey, you made, like, a really cool ass video. You're like, you edit it. Yeah. It takes work or money. And you sent it to me like, hey, man, we made this really great video for you. I think your audience might like it, but don't expect anything. I probably would post it. And I think more people don't do enough of that. And so it's. You got to get the person excited to share it with their audience. Not just, hey, I interviewed you. Can you make sure you tell everyone so I can get your audience? Which no one's excited to do.

I made a cool poster for you. You're standing by behind the gym bag, flexing your muscles.

Oh, did you? Where is it?

Yeah, I sent it to you. I'll send it to you. The recap after. It was funny. But anyway, what tools do you recommend for giveaways? I'm going to dive into this because. Dive into this later because I think for traction, we have a huge audience and we definitely be doing giveaways. We've got every major tech CEO speak at our conference. We should. I think it's something that. That we should absolutely look into.

So can I make recommendation to you?

Yeah, definitely.

So giveaways are great. So we built kingsumo.com, which is free, so you guys can all use it. Yeah. Kingsumo.com Totally free to run giveaways. There's a paid version, but you don't need to. You don't need to pay for it. The other thing I would think about, so I did. I love marketing. I love this world. I love marketing. I love finding great things and sharing them with everyone. And what's interesting about marketing is where is the audience? And where is the easiest way to attract the audience? So right now, in my experience, the number one way that I've been finding to attract audience has been on YouTube to attract a new audience, not my existing audience. I think there's Google SEO and then there's ads, there's Instagram, and there's some of these other places. But I found that YouTube and Google SEO are still like the two biggest channels for free. No money, no honey. To expand the scope of your audience. So I would Be curious, Lloyd. How can you take the content from the conferences and package it up in ways that's unique and differentiated, that expands the pie of your audience? Like when I was doing podcasting, as I was talking about earlier, I get like almost 10,000 downloads an episode, which is pretty high, but it never grows. And I spent a year doing every single marketing tactic I could ever do. Like, I get on, I got Bo Jackson. I tried, okay, let's try a different episode. Let's try a series. It did not work for me. And it's not to say it can't work. But then it was like I took that same content, I put it on YouTube and it gets 5,10,000 views.

How do you convert those folks into your email list though? That's the hard part. We didn't spend any time on Traction. Record the video, we edited it, we posted on YouTube, whatever.

It doesn't do anything.

Yeah.

Do you watch, let me ask, do you watch that video?

There's some videos I really watch. There's views. Like some videos have a thousand, few thousand views, some have 40, 50. Like Neil Patel has 50, 60,000. Some videos have views. But I just sitting there, we haven't really spent any time on it. So what is your hack there?

Yeah, so I'll give you a hack. So there's two things that are missing right now. Number one, what's your goal?

My goal is to own the audience, right? Meaning, like it's on YouTube, but I want them to be engaged with the brand.

That's not a goal.

What is the goal then?

A goal is I want a hundred thousand YouTube subscribers. I want five million in revenue. I want. So what's your goal?

So my goal from that would be, I don't know if there's a way or if this is a too lofty of a goal, but I would love to use YouTube to add another 50,000 email subscribers. And we're already at 60,000 email subscribers. But I would love for YouTube to take traction to 100,000 email subscribers.

Alright, so now we're getting somewhere. Everyone pay attention. This is the part that matters. Everyone in your business has to have a goal. And if you don't have a goal, then you're probably not going to have success. I would actually say that very clearly. Like without a goal in business, you are not going to have success. What my point here with Lloyd, you with Lloyd, which is really, this is critical, is that if you get, you want a hundred thousand email subscribers, you're at 60,000, you want to get 100,000 number two is by when.

So let's say in the next six months.

Okay, so you want 40,000 people over the next six guys, this is the part that people might be zoning out on. This is the part that's literally of everything we've talked about. This is how I've gotten all the things I've gotten, because I pick a goal, I pick a deadline, I pick a target, which is 6,000 people a month that you need to get. And now the question is, this is where I think you have to be. This is where the marketing parts really important to get 6,000 new emails a month. Is YouTube the best way for you to do it?

Probably not.

I don't know.

So doesn't feel like it to me.

It doesn't feel like it. So right now on Facebook, I'm spending A$72 per email subscriber that's not even active. That's just a paid per subscriber. So to get 40,000 of them, if you want to just buy them straight up, you could just buy them. That's $68,000. So you could do that. That's one. So my point, though is now that you have a goal and now you have a target, we can start working backwards from, all right, I can get 3,000amonth from ads. How many can I get from YouTube? How many can I get from blogging? How can I get from Zoom webinars? How many can I get from Instagram? Maybe? And then you can start figuring out which channel is actually the most effective in accomplishing the goal. So let me give you another example. So I picked a goal this year for my personal brand to get a million active audience a month. So what that means is that each month I want to be able to reach a million people, which is crazy. I know that's only one small town in China, but that's a lot of people to me. And I thought that was funny. We are doing it, and each week we're looking Google Analytics, how much Google traffic, how much YouTube traffic, how many Instagram followers, LinkedIn followers, how many Facebook followers, how many Twitter followers. And at the end of the month, I was like, man, this is really hard to control. This is so fucking tiring. And, like, Google's up this week, Google's down this week. That Instagram is growing, like our Facebook group from 1,000 to 4,000. And it's okaydork.com group if you're not on it. YouTube, it went from like 40,000 to 50,000. So the thing that was a really Fascinating takeaway for me is your goal needs to be controllable, because I couldn't really control Google SEO that much. I can control how many blog posts I do. And so what we discovered was that if we picked one goal for something controllable, everything else just works out. So what we ended up picking was YouTube. It was like, which channel do we have the biggest upside in that is controllable for us? And so it was really fascinating because once we decided that this year, and our goal this year is to go to 250,000 subscribers, it made everything so much easier. And now each month, this month, we have to get 11,000, 668. But do you think? I think it's almost interesting that I know that number. I could have also made it up. You guys don't know. But I do know the number. And the beauty of there is that it's controllable. I can figure out how to accomplish that to get to my 250 and look, if I ended 100,000, still pretty fucking amazing. And so it's something to think about in goal setting, which is like, where you want to go. When do you want to get it by? Is that the right goal? Because maybe not. And then what are the best ways to accomplish it? So for our YouTube strategy, I can try to take a screenshot if you want, and show you how we're thinking about it. But basically we took the 12,000 number, give or take, and we said, all right, how many videos do we need to do to get to 12,000? We're like, alright, we'll do 15 videos and each video is going to do 200 subs. So that's 3,000. That means I'm still 9,000 short. So then you start having to work backwards. All right, if I need 9,000, how many am I going to get for my old videos? All right, that's 3,000. So now I still have 6,000 left. And then you can be creative about how to get it. So now we're doing collabs. So, like, I'm gonna go on. I went on Jordan Belfort show and then he came on my show and then we're trying newsletter sponsorships. So I promoted Morning Brew and Morning Brew promoted me and I promoted Mr. Spoils, Mr. Smoles promoted me and I promoted the Hustle. The Hustle's promoting me and then we're trying, like, interview famous people that interview famous YouTubers. So we interviewed a famous YouTuber and then we make this really crazy video. If you go to YouTube.com okdork, you can see these famous YouTubers and we make this, like, crazy interesting video with them. And so it's figuring out how to make it. Yeah. Predictable and scalable and frankly, just easier to win.

Awesome. Let's dive into some. Some rapid fire stuff. Is that okay?

Yeah, dude. I want to answer everyone's questions and.

Then there's not a lot of questions here that we're not taking. So that's good. So that means people are engaged in the conversation, which.

Yeah, for everyone out there. You guys posted URLs. What is the number one thing holding you back from success right now? You guys showed up. You didn't show up just to watch. I want you guys to show up and take action today.

My mom doesn't love me.

Mayer's doing a lot of jokes.

How do you validate your ideas? A lot of. Some of this we covered already. Let's dive into the rapid fire. If people are interested in staying another 15 minutes, then we'll dive into some of these as well.

Raising money. Yeah. Kelsey Rankin. If you're spending tires in support, I have a support person. Email me noahsumo.com, i have a support person. I can help. All right, keep going. Rapid fire questions, guys. I'll stick around. I want to answer your questions. This is the most important thing for you.

Awesome. So I'm going to dive into some rapid fire questions. Answer them real quick. How do you keep your email list clean?

I think email list size was cool a few years ago. Like how many? I have a hundred thousand. I think what's more cool is having a bunch of people that care about what you have to say. So I would actually try to get your email list as high quality, engaged people as possible so that every email you get, they're always opening. So if your open rate is less than 30%, you're doing something wrong. If your open rate is less than 30%, your audience does not like you.

The industry average is like 20, 25 anyway.

Yeah. And if you're so that's my point. That means 80% of people don't care what you have to say. So you're doing something wrong. That's a fact. How do you keep it clean? Don't email everyone who's not doing anything. There's a, you know, sendfox.com, we've built it in. I think you could do it at mailchimp, a convertkit. I think the other thing is that if people aren't engaging with your emails. Very simple thing. And I did this when my email list was smaller, my first email was reply to this email and tell me what's one thing I can write about for you today. And that's a great way to get engagement with every single subscriber. And unless you're at a thousand subscribers opens, and if your email list is not getting a thousand opens per send, you should be interacting with every single person on the email list until they do.

Awesome. How do you evaluate whether a niche market is profitable?

It's a fact that every the top five tech companies today. Name the top five tech companies. The top five tech companies all started niche, but for some reason everyone out there thinks that they're going to be the non tech tech, the non big ass company. They're gonna do it their way. So the fang, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google. I don't know why Netflix is in there. They all started niche. So my suggestion for everyone else out there is how niche are you? I would actually say you probably need to go more niche. Are you male or female? Are you age specific? Are you like career specific? Are you geographic specific? So when I started appsumo, I said I'm only focusing on startups in the Bay Area because that's who I am and that's who I was. And now we've brought it to more entrepreneurs globally. But a lot of people go way too specific. Oh yeah, Microsoft as well. And so I think if you can be more niche, the better. How do you understand if there's profit in an industry? I think every single business. And you can challenge me on this and I will prove it to you. You can start any single business in a weekend. I call it the million dollar weekend, which is 48 hours, three customers and make a hundred dollars. And if you can do that in any industry, I believe you can create a million dollar company from that.

The next time we meet Noah, we should do that weekend challenge. Let's.

I can, I'd love to do it. I can start any business that anyone talks about. Like you can bring it up. There's a larger audience, even 200 pretty big. I'm happy to prove any single business that you guys, if you guys have any business ideas, shout them out in the Q and A or the questions or the chat and I'll show you how I.

We'll do a leaderboard. We'll do a leaderboard.

Yeah. Let's just do it now. Let's just do it now. If you guys have any business ideas, my Maxine Cunningham, my morning routine, I just posted on YouTube. It's called a Maker Morning, about how I do my morning routine.

Awesome. The next one is one simple tactic every budding entrepreneur needs to master.

Man, I have a few, but I'll just do one. I would say fear. I think if you can overcome the fear of rejection, you can do anything. And I always tell people to do the coffee challenge, which is go, next time you buy anything, ask for 10% off. And I just did it two weeks ago when I was buying some pizza and she's, what do you want it for? I was like, just because. And it's scary. I was scared even though I've done this many times. And I think if you can practice getting rejected and living and keep persevering, you can succeed and get anything you want in life.

Awesome. There's an interesting question. How do you convince investors to invest their first million into a startup?

I think the easiest way to convince anyone is have something that is undeniable. And so what I mean by that is When I started AppSumo, I said to myself, it's going to be much easier to recruit a developer if I already have a business making money versus, which is what this person's asking. Hey, developer, I want to start this idea. Do you want to come do all this work for free and maybe I'll give you something. So I think the same thing goes for investors. Hey, here's what we promised we're going to do versus, hey, we're making all this money, having all this success. Here's if you put a million dollars in, here's what you're going to get out of it. It's much more clear, clear. And so I've always left. I've always leaned towards this side of it, which is make it undeniable that million dollars is going to turn into 10 and you are the desired one.

Let's dive into some emotional aspects of building a company because we talk a lot about growth, the things you can do, Facebook group, social media, email list, et cetera. Let's dive into this. We're in Covid. There's a lot of chaos. How do you thrive in chaos and find positivity, confidence, and joy during some of the toughest times many of us will ever live through?

I would say my personality loves chaos, so I struggle with stability. It's not stability, but consistency. Like when it's not chaotic and it's just okay, that is like that to me is fear. I'm afraid of that, and I'm actually working on that right now. I think the things that I've observed in coronavirus that have helped me succeed is number one, figure out what you can control because you can't control the weather. I can't control all the news reports. I don't read the news anymore. So that's been helpful. I removed a lot of the noise. Like I was in these text groups, I'm in these text groups with these guys and they're like, oh, today corona is this and that. I was like, is this helping me anymore? And I was like, it's not. It's just discouraging me and distracting me. Same with social media and all this stuff. So I think number one, expand your zone of control. What can you control? Secondly is that if, especially if it's a struggle time, do whatever it takes in the morning to get some wins. So what are different ways? I call it a maker morning. Things that you could do in the morning that are fully in controllable and you could win. Make your bed, do five push ups, journal, learn something. Either watch this video like you guys have showed up for today or read a book and just doing that every single morning, which is what I do every single day. Even if I don't have a great day, I'm like, at least I did something today and I feel good about myself. And then the second. So those are number one, expand your control to build wins. I would say the thing that's been interesting for me is I feel like Korona is the greatest equalizer in the history of our universe. If you have been down or if you've been challenged or if you are limited, this is your chance. This is the chance of. I've never seen wealth get moved around so quickly. Restaurants have closed, mass sales have up, Shopify is crazy. Tesla stock, who knows what. This is your chance. If you're waiting for it, it's right now. Because when this thing finally settles and everyone's back to their day jobs, the opportunities are harder. And so for me, I would say one of the key things that you could do is create. I don't give a fuck what you create. Create a newsletter. Sendfox.com create a YouTube channel. Create a conference just like Lloyd did. Create a SaaS business. Do consulting. But create. Because I will tell you, when I've been creating, I've been creating YouTube videos. Like a few days ago I didn't feel really good and then I did a video and I worked like yesterday I worked on an outline for two and a half hours. I was really proud of myself. I felt really good about myself. I didn't even care if anyone watches it. I'd like people to watch it. But it made me feel really fucking great. And so I'd say create. And then the last piece of this equation about how to. I'd say create joy during coronavirus. I'll tell you that there are days I have down days. I'm human. I'd like to believe I'm, you know, imperceptible to it. But the thing that the last piece is that if you are not feeling great today, there's two. Two solutions. Oh, do you want me to say, yeah, go ahead. No, I'm going to leave it there. You have to buy my course. I have a course for 999 where I'll tell you the solution. I actually do have a course called monthly1k.com. If you're looking to start a business, it's $7 and we give you the money back. That's monthly one. No. But if you are not feeling great. The two solutions that I found that have worked consistently during this time period, and I've loved this. I hope corona never ends. Never. I love it because it shows what matters in life. The two things that have really helped me, number one, go for a walk. So if you're at home because you're stuck at home all day, I'm stuck at home. Either get a nicer house, which you can't do, it's fine. But go for a walk, get that blood flow, and get the fuck. Change of scenery. Second thing, and this is obvious, but sometimes you need to get reminded. Go to sleep.

That's the hard one for me.

It's hard, man, because, like, I have a therapist. And my therapist is if I'm not being productive, I feel like I'm wasting my day. And, like, then I don't feel like my day is worth it. I've come to a belief that fulfillment is everywhere. Fulfillment is all the time. It's every moment. This moment is fulfillment right now, if we allow it. But we. And this is my mentality. I'm like, no. Fulfillment's my next million. Fulfillment's my next relationship. Fulfillment's my next experience. Fulfillment's the next house. And I'm like, maybe it's just fulfillment. It's like listening to interesting conversation or putting on the ocean or just closing your eyes. And I would say a lot of times when I'm not feeling great, I get a good night's sleep. I come back the next day, and I'm like, all right, let me see what I can do today.

Awesome. Great advice. Last few ones. On the rapid fire side, how do you build a network of successful people who inspire you? Shit.

I'm gonna literally put up. I literally. This is what I spent three hours working on yet yesterday about how to build your network. I'm gonna share the high level stuff.

Yeah.

Drop a link or the video's not out. The video's out. And we are gonna give away the $250 AppSumo credit to one of the subscribers. Don't let me forget if I forget. So number one, if you want to be inspired, there is literally Noah Kagan, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, these smartest people online have literally unlimited information on YouTube. Unlimited. I'm gripping myself in there. Okay, give me a break.

That's great, but.

So they're on YouTube. But here's the key. You've got to take notes. You got to take notes. So don't just watch Noah talk. Don't just watch Lloyd host his thing. Don't just watch Warren Buffett take notes about it. Because that for me is how I actually learn it. And then guess what? Share it on your sendfox.com newsletter or share it on your blog or share it on your YouTube. Who cares if no one watches it? It's how you learn. Like literally yesterday, you can go to Okie door to come. I shared this relationship book I read. That's how I learn. I write it down. So I would take those notes and post them. And let me give you a few other tips about how to build your network. But impressive people are available 24, 7. Number one, ask impressive people to introduce you to impressive friends. That is the number one most missed thing. And I did. I still do that. People are like, oh, you must not do that. That's why the things I'm doing and telling you are where I'm at now and where it keeps me, where I'm going and where I came from. I didn't say that very eloquently. So when I moved to LA a few weeks ago, I emailed and texted a few friends saying, who is the one person I should hang out with here? And that's how I've been meeting interesting people here. Number two, reach out to the up and comers. So to get a hold of me is hard. It's not that I'm better than you or anything, that stuff. I just don't want to do it. And I have. I'm not even busier than you. You might be busier than me, probably. But the point is the up and comers are available. And so I've reached out to people like Ali Abdul, who's now becoming a big. He's a big timer to me, and I love this guy on YouTube. Or Harry Dry from marketingexamples.com up and comers are accessible, but the other part of reaching out to up and comers and meeting, being around them, you should also think about how can you help downwards. So Every Friday on YouTube, I do office hours for free. I respond to a lot of emails or Instagram messages and so forth. And I reply to a lot of the YouTube comments because I don't think you can ask people above you for help unless you're willing to help people below you. Tip number three, do interesting shit. So build your personal brand. So instead of being like, how do I meet interesting people? How do you become so interesting? They want to meet you. I'll leave it at that. Number four, geography matters. We talked about that in the beginning of the show, so move your ass. Number five, take notes and share them publicly. It's a great way. So one of the most famous books of last year was 0 to 1. Do you know how that book got started? Blake Masters was sitting his ass in class, just like you're sitting in this class. He took a bunch of notes and he put it online and became a book with Peter Thiel.

That's it.

There's a few other ones, but those are the ones.

That's awesome. I might actually come to Malibu and spend a week there.

Bro, come say hi.

Rent a place right next to you.

Come say hi. I'd love to hang out with you in person. We have a guest room. You could stay one night here.

Awesome. I'll do that. And if I pay my way, probably a few more nights.

No, we already have two people in this house. You can't have more than two CEOs. Awesome.

Parting thoughts. What did you wish you did more of looking back. What do you wish you did less of?

I think there's a lot of things that I've done that I wish I would have just stuck with. Like, I started this podcast and I had 30,000 downloads an episode, which was top. And then I stopped because it wasn't a hundred thousand. And if I would've just stuck with it, it would be a hundred. Same with YouTube. I did it and it got till I was like, oh, it's not overnight success. And I stopped and then I went back and looked at those videos. Those videos actually were really well done and pretty viewed. I wish I'D just stuck with things more. And if I can't stick with things more, hire people or figure out ways to make it sustainable, which is what I'm working on now. What do I wish I did less of? I think what I'm doing less of now, which I'm enjoying, is things I think I'm trying to hang out with less people. I'm trying to find. I'm trying to just enjoy the moments that we're having.

Fantastic, Noah. It was great. We're 10 minutes past the hour. Audience is super engaged. Let's do the offer again. Subscribe to YouTube.com okdork yeah.

Yeah. What is the one thing you're gonna do for yourself today? And whoever has the best thing they're gonna do for themselves today, you are going to get the $250 appsumo.com credit. Oh, man. This is the part I love. Yes. Go for a run. Send Lawson's yoga. Sandeep asleep. Motorcycle ride. Go for a walk. Yes. I like that people are actionable. Rewrite my personal brand. Get high. Okay. It's legal. Ask for yes. I like Bryce. Bryce is going to ask to do the coffee challenge. Ooh, Kareem mine. I love you, dog. He's going to take a tennis lesson. We got to play some strokes. I was into squash before they canceled everything. Oh, man, you guys have some really strong things. It's hard to choose the winner.

Pick one.

I'm gonna say Jessica Divine. She's going to stick to her evening routine. An alarm top to go to bed, meditation list. Three things I'm grateful for and actually do it. Unlike every night the past two months. Jessica and everyone else out there, I'm watching you, make sure you guys go do your stuff, get the results. You guys can have everything you want. And everyone else out there, I love you guys. I'm. Oh, Bay Area.

Nice.

Elaine. Isn't this cool to see all the things that everyone else is doing? Could everyone see this? I don't know if they can see all of them, but, man, all you guys are doing so much amazing things. That's what's most important. My job here is to, you know, give you some of the strategies, but also inspire you with Lloyd to go take action for yourself.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Noah, I'm going to come see you in Malibu. I'll figure it out, dude.

You're seriously welcome. I'd love to see you in person. I need some traction.

Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the Traction podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star review and you can find more information and all the resources mentioned in today's episode at Boast AI. That's B o a S t AI Blog.