0:02

What is up you sexy bastards? It. Is

0:04

your boy? Ice cream? sprinkles? A

0:07

rap I can't Lose aka a know

0:09

Kagan who comes up with these names

0:12

that today is the next part of

0:14

our brutally honest series. We've. Heard

0:16

amazing feedback from this and today we're

0:18

shifting from career advice in the previous

0:20

episode which you can check out to

0:22

business advice. Careers. Are like

0:24

dipping your toes in the water. But business

0:26

is where the real cash flow happens and

0:28

you know me. I like the

0:30

hustle. I like the dollar bill. Now. I'm

0:32

German back into my miata two thousand and

0:35

four time machine to know as back to

0:37

the future dose where I'm sharing my best

0:39

business advice. I wish I knew back in

0:41

the day and hey I do believe it

0:43

will help you to in present day. People

0:45

are always hustling to reinvent the wheel and

0:47

create new paths in business. But the best

0:49

path? Has already been figured out. Don't

0:51

try to be innovative nine or ten times, Copy

0:54

nine out of ten in innovate one outta ten

0:56

times. So listen up my sweet letters. Here's three

0:58

gigantic things. You can be taken away. Number One.

1:00

Should. You be following curiosity or

1:03

opportunity. Number. To.

1:05

Find. People who are already saying yes to

1:07

a sale And how do you build a business

1:09

around them? And number three. How. Do you

1:11

get balls rolling and sustain in success

1:14

were integrate those three things plus twenty

1:16

plus more your nuggets along the? If

1:19

you like this episode, any want more brutally

1:21

honest advice about getting started your career? check

1:23

out episode Three Forty Six in this feed

1:25

as well semi feedback at. Know occasion

1:27

on Twitter or Instagram. And. Let

1:29

me know you think these brutally honest episodes.

1:32

It. A spring break at App sumo.com and of

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your member Spring Break if you're too old for

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but you are not to the party and to

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Go check them out and enjoy! Had app

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1:58

a my mailing lists. We. Exclusive enough each and

2:00

every week. Go to know, have taken.com and sign

2:03

up today. I think you're gonna be some juicy

2:05

business nuggets for you to enjoy. Also

2:07

special pre show shuttle asserts that Sabal

2:09

fast as go. I always look forward

2:11

to my run listen to the show

2:13

with No and Death along feel good

2:16

vibes it loads of juicy insights. Thanks

2:18

bro Only from Run Seven seven.run think

2:20

you fat fall for that! Amazing feedback

2:22

and great review and thank you everyone

2:24

you Borgias listeners I love been your

2:27

ear lobes. I want to shout you out

2:29

in a future episode of you've Got a Book is gotta your

2:31

L If you're working on something, let me said you at. All.

2:33

You have to do is the the view on I tunes. Eur spotify

2:36

at what you think of this episode in the show.

2:38

Checked every single one of them letter said he out

2:40

in a future show. So.

2:44

In terms of. What mistakes

2:46

did you make before you

2:48

learned? I think a huge

2:50

mistake was not realising that

2:52

everything I was doing was

2:54

actually meeting me somewhere. So.

2:56

I was swinging all the time. almost made

2:59

too much. and I wasn't just realizing that

3:01

each of them had something to teach me.

3:03

And so as you are doing different things

3:05

in your business, And. It's not working.

3:08

Stop. For second say thank you friend for

3:10

teaching me something interesting about what's going on.

3:12

So I was swinging a lot you know

3:15

I swung each of D Consulting do in

3:17

marketing for college campuses while I graduated I

3:19

didn't injure card or com a discount card

3:21

or which was a swing at a college

3:23

up.org which was another swing which has Craig's

3:25

list for people Edu email addresses college students

3:28

that I swung with entrepreneur twenty seven which

3:30

was just meet up some hangouts of other

3:32

people. And. Then I swung on Community

3:34

next because I wanted a conference for social networking

3:36

and there wasn't one. And co

3:39

that three next than led

3:41

me to mint.com. And. Mint or

3:43

com Let me to do pick flip. Which. Was

3:45

face for games and kick flipped Led me to

3:47

do gambit which is payments face or games. And

3:49

Gambit Them led me to ultimately end up

3:51

doing up Simmer which has become my life's

3:53

work. and so on the swings are

3:56

actually a great learning opportunities if i just

3:58

looked at them as learning moment And

4:00

there's just a lot of things that I hated

4:03

along the way that all were learning moments too.

4:05

You know, I did the payments for Facebook games

4:08

and I learned about the power of

4:10

partners, right? Like who are you really

4:12

marrying? When we talk about business and we're like I

4:14

need a co-founder I'm like do you really want a

4:16

co-founder if you don't find the right person? It's gonna

4:18

be a big pain in the ass or as my

4:21

grandma Mima would say they need to talk us So

4:24

that was a great learning opportunity where me and the

4:26

partners each thought we were more important than each other

4:28

and it turns out We're all the most

4:30

important just maybe not all together and so that was

4:32

a great learning moment Another part from

4:35

gambit as well even just breaking down

4:37

more specific examples was it was a

4:39

really great sale cycle So the business

4:41

model matters so specifically with gambit

4:43

It was a really cool business model where we

4:45

built this payments engine and literally you plug it

4:47

into the games and instantly we made cash So

4:50

from a business model perspective is really

4:52

powerful to realize about getting paid upfront

4:55

being close to the money is important

4:57

But there's also an opposite side of that which

4:59

was some of the sales cycles for larger clients

5:01

like Zingas of the world Disney of the world

5:03

play them of the world storm into the world

5:06

could take six to twelve months a Lot

5:08

of ass kissing they would put us in we'd

5:10

start getting rich and then they would take us

5:12

out two weeks later And it really

5:14

helped teach me in business the value of what's

5:17

most important to my customer And if you're gonna

5:19

do a long sales cycle, it's got to be

5:21

a long reward Short

5:23

sales cycles quick reward and those

5:25

were really valuable lessons along the

5:27

way that kept teaching me different

5:29

pieces Same thing from the conference

5:32

stuff that I was talking about earlier as

5:34

I was doing entrepreneur 27 as I was

5:36

doing these conferences I was looking up through

5:38

some photos on Flickr. I know y'all don't

5:40

know about Flickr anymore I had hair when

5:43

there's Flickr and I was like, holy shit.

5:45

I did wine meetups. I did chess meetups

5:47

I did ping-pong meetups. I met

5:49

you know, the founder of Firefox and I was

5:52

connecting with Michael Arrington from pet crunch and

5:55

You Know those swings were really great at getting

5:57

me just to be around other interesting people. And.

6:00

So I your lot of people Noah were you have

6:03

an audience now and I love my audience. I love

6:05

each of you. You're all my favorites! But.

6:07

It was starting the same way that everyone elses the

6:09

don't have an audience by going out there and and

6:11

trying to meet people. Maybe. One hype

6:13

piece of business advice brutally honest that

6:16

I think I did correctly that I

6:18

would do again is really follow your

6:20

curiosity and really go after problems you're

6:22

excited about. When I ceased opportunities when

6:24

I chased, let's say today Ai are

6:27

furious. Goes Crypto or Lazarus era shopify

6:29

are you know, like And I don't

6:31

think it's bad. I definitely have chase

6:33

but when I've chased the opportunity I

6:35

flamed out. And when I chased my

6:37

curiosity and when I taste the problem

6:40

solving I stuck with. So. Content

6:42

creation, him, blogging and all this parts

6:44

was hugely advantageous. My love doing it

6:46

and I've stuck with a twenty four

6:48

years. Whereas and I did face or

6:50

games can like wanted to get the hell out

6:52

of mint.com or I would you know as I

6:54

chased payments for these games same kind of vain

6:56

or as i chase affiliate side and built free

6:58

calls to.com. It. Was really easy to give up.

7:01

And. So I've just be mindful. the proms you're

7:03

chasing acknowledge the chase and be okay with it

7:05

and really be thinking. It's. A chase and

7:07

I'm just here learning business skills. It's a cheese

7:09

and using repetition to improve my skills to get

7:11

me to the point of what I want. Now.

7:14

On the other side of the taste was really

7:16

great proms as excited about. When. I got

7:18

the job at face because only because I

7:20

was using Facebook a lot in my consulting

7:22

business h of T to do marketing college

7:24

students. And I was using it to like

7:27

communicate with people and saw like man I love this

7:29

site so if I'm it's either going to be quit

7:31

my job, it in full surround business or go work

7:33

here. So same thing with mint.com where I was like

7:35

oh my god I love this let's go do this

7:37

one. Now in your own life

7:39

when I encourage you to reflect on is

7:41

what are you using data day. Or.

7:44

What problems are you excited to work on?

7:46

And. I think that such a great way to spend your

7:48

life. What? Are the things you're using Data Day

7:50

that you would like to be more part of? or

7:53

what proms would you want to spend your life on

7:55

and i i i do think i've made really good

7:57

decisions because of that and it's lead mean a path

7:59

where at now my job is to promote

8:01

software products or promote how people can start entrepreneurship

8:03

or make content and figure out how people can

8:05

consume and take action on that content. And those

8:08

are all problems that I've been really excited to

8:10

be doing. Learn personal finance. This is,

8:12

you know, we'll talk about relationships and another brilliant

8:15

advice, but if you can just learn about your

8:17

money better, like such a game changer, you know,

8:19

back in the day, and I still use the

8:21

same spreadsheet, which is assets, liabilities, net worth. And

8:24

then if you can start looking at other

8:26

businesses' P&Ls, and there's a lot

8:28

of companies these days, like Buffer, who share a

8:30

lot of their P&Ls publicly. I think

8:32

Bear Metrics also used to share a lot of the

8:34

finances of these different companies, or you can go to

8:36

indyhackers.com, but just learn about your own

8:38

personal finance and learn about business finance. So I

8:40

went to college for business in undergrad, I didn't

8:43

learn shit there. But starting a

8:45

business, the experience of business, and understanding the

8:47

finances of business really teach you

8:49

that, holy shit, taxes are crazy, so

8:51

how do I minimize that? Maybe you create an LLC. Holy

8:54

shit, my day job is fixed, right? There's

8:56

a limited cap on that, so maybe I

8:58

need to create other ways of optimizing my

9:00

revenue streams. I'm running this business

9:02

and it's not super profitable, well, that's interesting, what's

9:04

really going on there? And so just having a

9:06

deeper understanding of personal finance and business finance is

9:08

something that I definitely did well. And maybe, let's

9:10

separate this talk in things I did that I'm

9:13

glad I fucking did and things that I highly

9:15

regret in business. In business, I'd

9:17

say find someone to hate. I

9:20

know this is, I'm an optimistic, joyful person,

9:22

which is a learned skills, but I definitely

9:24

have frustrations. But I would say the

9:26

hate and anger of Facebook really had a good decade,

9:29

I got a good decade of squeeze out of that

9:31

one. So find someone to hate, let

9:33

your hate motivate. And I reflect

9:35

on the business that I approached in

9:37

my 20s, and I

9:40

wonder, candidly, how did I not give up?

9:42

I was joking earlier this morning about how I

9:45

applied for a job at Yahoo, it was a

9:47

six-figure job, after Facebook, and I remember thinking, I

9:49

just can't do it. Like, one, Yahoo's dumb

9:52

for hiring me, let's just start there, we

9:54

even use Yahoo nowadays. But I just can't

9:56

do it, I'm so angry, and I need

9:58

a chance to show my. that I

10:00

can prove them wrong. And I

10:02

would say in my 30s, especially in my 40s, proving

10:04

myself right. But find an enemy

10:06

to really motivate you. And maybe it's not

10:08

this hate part, but I will tell you

10:11

that fucking got me going in business where

10:13

I was just like, I'm gonna keep going

10:15

until I finally prove them wrong. And

10:17

what you realize in that business experience, because you

10:19

need to have something to motivate you. Like when

10:21

people ask, what motivates you? I was like, myself,

10:23

because I'm fucking angry. You can even hear my

10:25

voice how it brings up a trigger in me.

10:28

And over time you realize that these people

10:30

don't care that you hate them or that

10:32

you motivate them. And over time

10:34

you realize that maybe you wanna be motivated out

10:37

of excitement and optimism. And that's how it will

10:39

shift over time. Or who you're working

10:41

with, the problems you're working on, the things you're

10:43

spending time on. And you will get that shift.

10:45

But find that thing that really is inspiring for

10:47

yourself that you're excited to get up early in

10:49

the morning to check it, you're staying up late

10:51

to working on it, and you're motivated around it.

10:54

Another thing I would say, I don't know

10:56

if it's maybe more of a mix is that I would

10:58

just be intense. I think there's

11:00

times for different intensities where I

11:02

would just be insane on this work. So when we were

11:04

doing Gambit, I kid you not, I was probably working 16

11:06

hour days because a lot of our customers were in Europe,

11:09

and it was awesome. We got $150,000 a day in

11:11

revenue. We

11:13

were doing it at our peak. It was about $15,000

11:15

a day in profit for three people. A

11:18

lot of money. And I was

11:20

good with that intensity. And I think

11:22

the reflection on that business advice is that

11:24

if there's opportunity, sometimes it is time sensitive

11:26

and you have to run with it. And

11:29

there's also a business advice on the

11:31

other side of that about having consistency

11:33

and sustainability in your success. So

11:35

if there's intensity, run with it. And I think

11:37

maybe what I'd reflect on from a business perspective

11:39

is that it's intensity to get the ball rolling

11:42

and then it's sustainability to get the ball winning.

11:44

Another business advice, give gifts. Gifts

11:47

are the cheapest way to get people to like

11:49

you. I did a gift to

11:51

get a customer named Greg Sang. He ran tag.com.

11:54

I don't know if it's still around, but they were

11:56

like the shit back in the day. And I remember

11:58

he was a runner. So I sent him. running

12:00

shoes. Such a stupid ass way

12:02

to like get him to actually pay attention to me,

12:04

but that eventually led him to do a deal which

12:06

ended up making us tens of thousands if not hundreds

12:08

of thousands of dollars from some shoes. So

12:10

I think gift giving either before, during or

12:12

after your interactions with people and really just

12:15

be observant. From employees and teammates which I

12:17

see at AppSumo and what I see from

12:19

almost the world is we just want to

12:21

feel acknowledged and a gift is a cool

12:23

way to acknowledge and really see someone else

12:25

and I think in business it's very undervalued and it

12:27

doesn't have to be expensive. Like if you don't have

12:29

any money then make content as a gift. Make

12:32

a research as a gift. You can do

12:34

things like that but if you have even

12:36

$100 you can send someone parachutes. My

12:38

things about gift giving is you want it

12:40

to be something that they use regularly and

12:43

see regularly. So cups, coffee mugs

12:45

like an ember coffee mug I think is a cool

12:47

idea. It's something unique. I got my buddy

12:49

Lewis House some New Air Jordans they were about a

12:51

G but it was just like wow he's gonna be

12:53

like damn that's a little going for a thousand bucks.

12:55

Like it's just a cool thing to send to someone.

12:58

As well Ollie of Doll. I love Ollie of Doll.

13:00

I go get his book Feel Good Productivity. He was

13:02

so unbelievably helpful advice and just support around a million

13:04

dollar weekend. So I sent him a gift for him

13:06

and his fiance. I sent him a

13:08

cool camera that they can do for date night. Again

13:11

gift giving highly underrated.

13:16

We've got a sponsor. I've got a gift some love too

13:19

and no they didn't even pay for this. I just love

13:21

their product so much and want to give them some love

13:23

and encourage you to check them out. It is LMNT or

13:25

as some people call it Element. It is

13:27

electrolytes. It is salt. I use it almost every

13:29

single day and definitely every single time I am

13:31

cycling you probably have seen these guys on Tim

13:34

Ferriss. You've probably seen it with Lance Armstrong. Noah

13:36

Kagan. Holy. We have

13:39

a free pack with

13:41

free shipping. That's my

13:43

favorite prices at drinklmnt.com/Noah

13:45

Kagan. That's drinklmnt.com/Noah Kagan.

13:48

My favorite flavor is

13:50

raspberry and I hate raspberry. Like

14:01

if you haven't gotten a dollar, $3 million we cannot give

14:03

you a dollar, but I still get excited making a first

14:06

dollar. What I'm learning and noticing about

14:08

business in general is that most people never get the

14:10

dollar, and then when they get the dollar, they're looking

14:12

for a separate dollar, and I'm like, no, just look

14:14

for dollar number two. And so

14:16

how I've shifted my perspective over time is like once

14:18

you get the first dollar and you get the second

14:20

dollar, like stick with these things. That's a powerful one

14:23

that maybe you're not really recognizing, which is get the

14:25

first dollar, and then get a second dollar and a

14:27

third dollar. Don't try to get brand new dollars in

14:29

a separate category. Just keep working around that. Another

14:31

business advice I'm seeing from a lot of other people

14:34

is that they have a day job and they have

14:36

a network and an X skill. They're trying to get

14:38

their startup and their business in Y network and Y

14:40

skill, which is a very hard

14:42

thing to cross over, and we see these

14:44

stories about it, which doesn't mean it's impossible,

14:46

but it's just more challenging. And

14:48

so a lot of people have day jobs and they're like, I wanna

14:51

be a content creator. And it's like, it's the same as your day

14:53

job. It's the same, it's a job. And so

14:55

instead of making it such a big jump from

14:57

totally different industries, can you start smaller on this

14:59

stuff? And if you wanna be in content

15:01

creation or if you wanna build stuff for content creators, this is

15:03

like the exact thing. I wanna build stuff for content creators. Do

15:05

you make content? No. Do you know a lot of

15:07

content creators? No. Okay, that's

15:10

gonna be hard. Doesn't mean you can't do

15:12

it. It's just gonna be a little harder. So how do

15:14

you approach that for yourself in a small way, just

15:17

like getting a few pieces of twigs? One

15:19

of the thoughts I was having was like in my 20s, my

15:22

regret was I was just trying all these businesses

15:24

and in my 40s, I'm saying no a lot

15:26

more. So I'm selling most of my real estate.

15:28

I think it's really thinking about the lifestyle you

15:31

want to live. And in my

15:33

20s, I think it's like, oh, you're supposed to do

15:35

real estate, you're supposed to have a job, you're supposed

15:37

to live these things. And to me, I felt frantic.

15:39

And so I have regrets of how frantic I felt.

15:41

And then it's kind of pulling back from that franticity

15:44

and really dialing in and thinking more

15:47

about what's the life I wanna work backwards from.

15:50

I'll tell you one of the things in business that was the most

15:52

helpful was getting cheated on. I

15:54

was working at Intel and I got cheated on. and

15:58

my mom put her arm around me and she's like, it's gonna be okay.

16:01

And everything ultimately actually is always okay. But

16:04

what that sparked me to do was really just map

16:06

out, like I think I wrote 30, 90, 365, 10.

16:11

And it was just working backwards from where I

16:13

wanted to go. And I still think one of

16:15

the best books of all time is Stephen Covey,

16:17

seven habits of highly effective people. It doesn't say

16:19

successful. And that was a great reminder of

16:21

working backwards from where you wanna go. I think

16:23

I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, make a lot

16:25

of money, live my life away. I just didn't know how I

16:28

was gonna get there. And so actually being a little more concrete

16:30

with that, saying, all right, how do I get $1,000 in a

16:32

year? And I remember by 30,

16:34

I wanted to be a millionaire, which I think I got to

16:36

that. I wanted to have my own house, I did not have

16:38

that. I wanted to have a wife, kids and dog did not

16:40

have that. But at least it gave me somewhere to shoot for.

16:43

So working backwards from some of your goals. You

16:45

know, some of the business advice, I was very

16:47

good at getting focused on something to accomplish, maybe

16:50

to a fault. So Zuckerberg taught me

16:52

about focusing on one goal. And so the good about

16:54

that is I would get, we talked about working backwards,

16:56

I would get obsessed to get to the goal at

16:58

all costs. And then I would kind of

17:00

stop right after I got the goal because I was so

17:02

fucking tired. And I was like burnt of these different areas.

17:04

And so it's great to have one goal, but make it

17:06

a more achievable goal that you can, if you, when you

17:08

hit it, you can sustain that

17:10

for a longer period of time. What

17:12

I learned at Mint was the best marketing is a

17:14

great product. And it was so

17:17

exciting to work on it for myself because I

17:19

loved the problem. And the marketing

17:22

was just easy. You know, Aaron, the

17:24

founder came over two days ago for some tea at my

17:26

house. And he was just like, I've never seen one market

17:28

like you did. And I wonder from time, like if I

17:30

didn't do it in the marketing or I hired someone else,

17:32

like what would have happened for Mint? Would it have been

17:35

where it is? Maybe. And so I do think there's a

17:37

balance. Like if you make a great product and tell no

17:39

one, you know, I think that's the fantasy people trick you

17:41

on. Like, oh, if you make a great video or make

17:43

a great song, you make a great software, you make a

17:45

great book, like people just tell others about it. But

17:48

if no one knows about it, I think that's

17:50

gonna be a lot harder. And so to make

17:52

your marketing easier, find a business and

17:54

find a problem that people are excited about. And it

17:56

makes the marketing fun and it just a lot more

17:58

easier to be effective. One thing about

18:00

the thing about businesses, I started doing

18:03

these conferences and work backwards from the

18:05

customers who have the money. It doesn't mean

18:07

rich, it means people who have the money. And so when

18:09

I was doing my conferences, Community Next, I

18:11

remember the first conference, I went and looked at

18:13

who was sponsoring other conferences. This is the same

18:15

thing I talked about in Million Dollar Weekend, where

18:17

I went and studied other books, I went and

18:19

talked to other authors, I went and looked at

18:21

other covers, I did a lot of testing. And

18:23

so how do you work backwards from things that

18:26

are clearly working or people that are already spending

18:28

money? So I remember hitting up people

18:30

at Yahoo, people at other businesses, and they

18:32

were already saying, like, yeah, I spend money.

18:34

So work backwards from these customers that are already

18:36

spending money. It made it a lot easier

18:38

because I knew they were already saying yes

18:40

to the spends. Another thing in business advice

18:42

that was super helpful is agree on the outcome of success

18:44

of your customer. So what I mean by that is, as

18:47

I was doing these sponsorships, one of the things I'd be

18:49

asking people is like, how do you measure your success? Like

18:51

if this is the best money you spend all year, what

18:53

would make it worth it for you? And it was interesting

18:55

because there was a lot of different things. Like some people

18:58

say, I just want leads, meaning people. So just give me

19:00

15 people to sign up for my service and makes it

19:02

worth it. Other people will be like, I just want exposure.

19:04

Those are great because I didn't care. And

19:06

so be mindful of your customer

19:08

success and align on that. And the same

19:11

thing with people you hire. I'd say another

19:13

piece of business advice, I didn't think I

19:15

did enough of my 20s, is really about

19:17

leadership. Self leadership and

19:19

external leadership. And so self leadership is just making

19:21

sure you're leading in a way for yourself that

19:23

you're proud of. And external leadership is

19:26

how are you hiring people? And so especially if

19:28

you're just getting started, hire a cleaner at your

19:30

house. Really not, yeah, that's leadership.

19:32

Silly, but it's hiring someone, it's agreeing on a money, it's

19:35

making sure they're responsible, it's making sure they follow a checklist,

19:37

it's making sure that you're checking in on them. I

19:40

would say that is a skill I developed definitely more

19:42

in later 30s, as AppSumo got

19:44

started, but something that you can do today,

19:46

you can get an assistant on hiremymom.com or

19:48

on Fiverr or on Freelancer or on Upwork.

19:52

And all of business is a problem that people want

19:54

solved and then finding other people to help you really

19:56

run that business. A lot of these things people

19:58

are trying to make you feel that it's not a problem. It's over complicated,

20:00

I don't think that's the case. So

20:02

yes, work on your leadership skills. One

20:04

of the things I didn't used to do video chat interviews

20:06

with people when I hired them, and I

20:08

remember I did one with a person, I was like, holy shit, I gotta

20:11

do this, because this guy was really creepy and I was scared of him.

20:13

And I was like, shit, I should have hired him. So

20:15

like, damn, do a video interview. I

20:18

would say a good business tip for everyone is just practice

20:20

fucking selling and getting good. And what

20:22

is a sell, it's an ask. Selling,

20:24

it's actually negative connotation these days, but

20:26

everyone's selling you something, and influencers are

20:28

selling you or Amazon affiliate link, or

20:30

someone's selling you their product, or

20:33

someone's trying to sell you on a relationship. And really it's

20:35

an ask. And this is something that I've

20:37

been thinking about, which is how do you just get better

20:39

at asking? Right, and it's chapter two

20:41

in the book, A Million Dollar Weekend, which is

20:43

practicing this. And so asking for a

20:46

sponsor of a conference, asking someone to attend

20:48

a conference. I remember asking someone

20:50

to email out to their audience, to their

20:52

Yahoo Groups newsletter, like, hey, I got this

20:54

conference, can you email it out to other

20:56

VCs? And when people

20:58

say, how do you ask better? It's not even how

21:00

you ask, it's just that you're asking and then you

21:02

practice it. And so I would say in

21:04

your own life, can you practice for a raise? Can you

21:06

practice asking for a discount? Maybe on your bills, maybe on

21:08

a coffee. And the more that you do

21:11

these things right away, the more you realize that it's been

21:13

holding you back, but it's also what's gonna set you free.

21:15

And I got better at it. I

21:18

just kept asking for all these things that now

21:20

I've got to tone down, and I'm asking for

21:22

too much sometimes. So I think

21:24

that was really great. I'd say especially in my

21:26

20s, there

21:28

wasn't as much social media around, but I would

21:30

say what I can see more people doing better

21:32

in business is prioritizing their time in business. If

21:35

you think about your week and you wanna change your

21:37

life in your business, how much time you're actually dedicating?

21:39

Like, look in your calendar and how much time is

21:41

actually allocated around it. And if you go up one

21:44

hour and one Netflix, you can really change

21:46

your life this week, today. And

21:49

that was something that I did really well and

21:51

where I was very motivated to get out of

21:53

a job. And that led me to

21:55

work in the mornings, work on nights, work on

21:57

weekends. And I remember

21:59

distinctly. speaking at Techstars Boston, I

22:01

think it was like their first class, and I

22:03

was talking about mint, but I got

22:05

kind of excited about these Facebook games. And I remember giving

22:07

my speech, and then during my speech, I was like coding

22:09

in the audience. And

22:12

the important thing for you is have somewhere to go,

22:14

have a dream in your business life, have a dream

22:16

that you want to work backwards from. And

22:18

then really, as you're doing your day-to-day, week-to-week

22:20

activities, really think about, okay, what's my opportunity

22:23

cost here? Like if I get this thing

22:25

going, when I get this thing going, like

22:27

I could do that, and then in the

22:29

next literally 30, 50 years of my life,

22:31

I'll have an awesome life, or I can enjoy

22:33

this crappy Netflix show. And

22:36

that was something that highly motivated me because I wanted

22:38

to get out so badly that I was willing to

22:40

swing on all these things. You know, as I

22:43

talk about my business experiences in my 20s, a

22:45

lot of it was close encounters of success, but

22:47

there was just so many great learning moments across

22:49

all this stuff, from conferences to coffee meetings to

22:51

brain pickings. You know, it was like, I pick

22:54

your brain, to blogging, to starting so many things

22:56

now, to how I was starting so many things.

22:58

I was just kind of saying yes to almost

23:00

everything. And if you think about it at a

23:03

high level, one, I feel good about that I

23:05

kind of kept going because I think a lot

23:07

of us, it's easy to want to stop. I

23:10

think if I had to summarize it, it's like in your

23:12

20s or just if you're earlier in your business journey,

23:15

say yes to everything so you

23:17

can say no to what matters. Say yes

23:19

to everything so you can say no to what matters.

23:22

And I would say yes to all this stuff and

23:24

all these people. And then eventually

23:26

over time as you understand yourself and how you want to

23:28

live, you really just start dialing in what really matters. And

23:30

you're like, okay, I'm going to say no to this stuff

23:32

now because I know what matters now. And

23:34

it takes time to get to that level of wisdom. I

23:37

think other business thing I'm seeing, brutally honest, people try to

23:39

do something brand new when they have things that already work.

23:41

And they already have so many things in their network

23:44

and in their zone of influence that they're just not

23:46

leveraging or their skills are not leveraging. Like there was

23:48

a guy who emailed me and it was such a

23:50

cool email. He said, hey,

23:52

I have an email list about

23:54

Porsche, vintage Porsche prices. I was

23:57

like, that is the most niche thing I've ever heard.

24:00

like Miata prices, but no one really cares

24:02

about that. His name is David Whitlock, and

24:04

he said, yeah, you know,

24:06

I've had these Porsche prices, and he

24:08

chose a Freedom number, and I won't share

24:10

his, but then in one day, he just

24:12

shot an email to me. He hit a 1,600 person mailing

24:14

list. I mean, most of you guys can get 1,000 person

24:17

mailing lists over some period of time. Of

24:20

course, people, and he said, hey, I have all this data

24:22

on Porsche prices. Does anyone want to pay for it? It's

24:24

$400 for my database. Just sent it

24:26

out, did a test. He started right away really quickly.

24:29

I don't know if you want me to share his numbers, but it's almost $10,000 from

24:32

one quick test email to a

24:34

very small niche audience. I

24:36

think that's just like such a cool story of, you

24:38

know, you start, you swing, you try, you keep going,

24:40

you start, you swing, you try, you keep going, and

24:43

it really gets you to these amazing places in business.

24:45

I think what I would end again on this is,

24:47

I think we think it's someone else out there that's

24:50

supposed to have these things or someone else in business

24:52

that's better than us, and the reality is they're not.

24:54

They're different than us, and they have skills that we're

24:56

not good at, and we find them to compliment us,

24:58

but we don't have to think that we're not able

25:00

to get to these different places. It may

25:02

not happen immediately. It may not, but

25:04

I promise you, if you stick with the business

25:06

stuff, if you follow a million dollar weekend processor

25:08

and other variations out there, you just keep going,

25:10

like you will get to the spot, I promise.

25:13

I think it's very interesting to work on things you

25:15

just hate. I did

25:17

that a lot. Like we built this better arcade

25:20

site, and I just remember hating my partners. It

25:22

was a sports gambling website, which now is like

25:24

DraftKings, but just like, don't work on things you

25:26

hate. It's too short, but I was like, and

25:30

I spent six months just being afraid, and I

25:32

wish I would have been more confident that hey,

25:34

this is not right. I don't like

25:37

this. I don't like these people, and feeling more confident to

25:39

leave that sooner. The other thing I

25:41

would say, what's interesting about that is that everything

25:43

has two sides. So that business led us to

25:45

build Gambit, which was a payment, which

25:47

then exploded. And then Gambit, even

25:50

though it didn't work out, we were very close

25:52

to then leaving Gambit to starting a Stripe product,

25:54

which Stripe didn't exist. And so

25:56

even though the thing you have you might hate, it's

25:59

teaching you something, and it's really. really leading you to a

26:01

place that I think you can stick with. There's

26:03

a lot of value in business. I think business, there's

26:05

two parts of it. It's finding something people really want

26:08

and then sticking with it for an exceptionally long period

26:10

of time. And I think what most people are getting

26:12

backwards in business is grit and sustaining is taught as

26:14

a virtue and something to do. And

26:16

what happens though is they're sticking with losers too long.

26:19

They're not finding the winner and sticking with it long enough.

26:22

And I think around 30 is

26:25

when AppSumo got started and I

26:27

thank God with all these lessons

26:29

from partners, from marketing, from starting,

26:31

from asking, from a goal,

26:34

from all these different attributes. It

26:36

was like getting AppSumo to 14 years later, which is kind

26:38

of crazy, it's really 14 years. And

26:41

the places you will go. So

26:43

that was a rambling of a bunch of different ideas

26:45

around business for myself. And maybe

26:48

leave it with, why not you? Why

26:51

not you? That

26:55

is a wrap. I hope you loved the episode as much as we

26:57

did making it for you. Remember to

26:59

check out the incredible lifetime deals that

27:01

we've talked about during screenbreak at appsumo.com.

27:03

They're limited edition only. Also

27:05

check out my brand new book, Million Dollar Weekend. You

27:08

guys have already heard about this a ton. I've talked about it a

27:10

ton. But you know in business, they say, what do they say? You

27:12

have to repeat the same thing a thousand times for people to finally

27:14

do it? Yes. Million Dollar

27:16

Weekend, go to milliondollarweekend.com. Go check it out.

27:19

Next text a friend you love them. Finally a couple of shout

27:21

outs to the amazing team who helped make this happen. Thanks

27:24

to Jason at podcasttech.com for

27:27

doing all the magic on these shows. Thank you

27:29

to Jeremy, Cam, Sylvie, Jay, Diego and Memo from

27:31

the Dorking for all the magic y'all do. Have

27:35

a burrito day. What's

27:37

your favorite? Asian Fish.