How To Grow a Million Dollar Business w/ AppSumo CEO @noahkagan

is it possible for everyone in America to make a million dollars if they follow a certain blueprint I've done it and I've seen it everyone else can too this is the craziest part about business don't have to be short you tall Asian business is really listening to problems and then solving the ones people want to pay you money for I think there is this stigma and this belief that you can either be creative or you can be in business and I always think about like painters and artists the most famous painters are definitely not the best but I want to know Noah's story specifically like what happened somebody came in the office you're like that's it I'm done with this I need to was there a moment like that where it became clear to kind of really personalize the story I think I was afraid of who I could become and ruining appsumo this is one of the things I think no one ever really hears about you don't hear about all things that failed so Noah uh I got to know you a lot better Ashley through somebody that used to work for you his name is aan and that's not going to be a surprise and the episode with aan was like straight fire he was just dropping in gems and if people haven't seen or

listened to that they need to check it out right now uh so before we get too uh deep into this conversation can you do me a favor can you introduce yourself tell us a little bit about who you are so there's some context and I'm just going to jump right in well I'm going to start off with what we started before the show I'm dating a Latina who's amazing and if you want to cheat in life like find a great partner find a great self of your own self that you like and then find someone else that uh supports that and uh that's been one of the biggest life upgrades I've had in the past decade uh who am I that's always a funny question right like do you start with business how do we start uh I'd say in the business world I've been figuring it out like most of us out there and I figured out I don't like day jobs and then I figured entrepreneurship is the way that you can control your livelihood and become a Time millionaire then you can also be a cash millionaire and so I started so many different businesses after working at Facebook and working at mint. com I was one of the early people at both those companies uh I tried so many different businesses to eventually find appsumo which is the number one side online for software deals for solopreneurs and it's been a insane ride that uh you know promoting these deals hiring people losing the team going to India or today you know it's uh $80 million business a year Revenue which is unbelievable it all started with $12 you know it's that just to show that anyone else can do that out there and uh I wrote Million Dollar weekend which is my playbook on how exactly anyone could copy it and uh who am I yeah I think I'm trying to live this world a little bit more fun and generous than I found it that's why I'm out here I like that there's a lot to unpack in the few things that you've said so let me go back to aan for a second because I think that's the biggest thing that I have as a CEO when does it occur to you that maybe you're better off having somebody do it for a period of time if I understand your relationship with aan yeah a lot of your audiences is creative people right Chris creative business people yes yeah and I think there is a stigma and re and this belief that you can either be creative or you can be in business and I always think about like painters and artists specifically and the most famous painters are definitely not the best like Damen Hurst I think he's pretty famous right yes guy stuff is it's fine well these are finding words Damian H is one of my favorite artists but we'll let that slide for right now oh God it's stuff right so same with like Warhol but these guys are the best business operators they're very excellent business operators and I think that's a great lesson for every creative business person out there is that you can do both and your question was about that which is yes you can be creative and my favorite book all time is Million Dollar weekend but my second favorite book of all time is the artist way which I think you know if you're a creative you should 100% read that afterwards and it's the reality that uh you know you can be creative but you know you could be creative if you don't have any customers it's hard to make that a living and you don't have to be a starving artist anymore that that's a fake misnomer that's just not true and so in terms of Del it's funny cuz you're asking about delting I'm sharing all these things about examples where you that's not the case uh where you just be an artist by yourself you run it like a business and that comes through delegation that comes through how do I practice hiring people doing the things I don't want to do or can I learn some of those areas so for me with appsumo I found out that I solved the problem people are excited about and that's what you're doing in business you're saying hey I drew a piece of art I made a piece of software I drew I made music and people are excited about this cool that's the fun and hard part and then the easy part is running it and you know it's challenging to stick with it which is a whole another discussion but I got to a point where I didn't want to do it anymore and I think this is not really talked about is you know people say I don't want to do a business because I don't want to do the work anymore great don't I can trade my money for someone else's time and that's not rude people are like oh you're a big meanie I'm like no that's not true like aan had a day job at Microsoft that he was fine about but he always wanted to be an entrepreneur so it was a great deal for him to make a lot of money learning how to run a business that was already working and now he's gone off to be one of the best CEO coaches in the world I hire him myself and so for me it's really recognizing how do you want to spend your time because sometimes people have a business of one and they're super happy about it and great do that and there's sometimes people are like I'd like to make more money and I'd like to just spend my day doing art and you can do that too and that that's how I felt with appsumo where I didn't want to keep running the day-to-day of the business and so I looked for a long time and then it took a long time to train him but to get him a up to speed and running the business which you did a great job of okay there's a point here that I think a lot of people are not

going to be able to understand at all you're doing your craft whether you're running an app company changing the world that way or you're selling creative Services I think so few people link their whole identity and the personality and that business that they just can't even delegate the simple things let alone say here you take the driver's wheel so what was it can you pinpoint one or two things that was happening that you're like I don't want to do this anymore I need to find a solution for this and then I want to ask you questions about what you saw in aan that made you think he's a guy so for everyone out there hiring is like dating Chris like your wife is it your first date you're like okay this is the first person you've ever dated no of course not it wasn't okay well I told my girlfriend that last night and she's like you've never been with anyone but me and I was like that is true you're the first and that's and so what I recommend for everyone out there is thinking about how do I practice leadership and you could practice leadership through hiring someone and I would recommend hiring an assistant or hiring even your friend or hiring someone anyone as a practice of realizing leadership and delegation and that that's a lot of business ultimately right and doesn't mean you can delegate your responsibility or you can they'll magically solve all your problems but practice it and then you'll get better at it so the easiest one is to hire an assistant I like the site hire mymom. com for 20 bucks 10 bucks you can hire an assistant that's an amazing mom I think that's a good practice and I you know that's something I have had to learn as a skill over time now what I think what you're asking Chris and it's a really great question is like when do you know it's time to hire someone say hey I want to go back to my art or hey I want to do the marketing or hey I don't want to do this anymore and so number one when you're asking that question that's a great time to start thinking about it and it's probably a better six months before that because it hiring and dating you have to practice and your first date doesn't always work out now the other way that you can look for it is just looking at your calendar how much your calendar sucks like how much are you spending in meetings or doing sales or doing marketing or doing programming or doing customer support that you don't want to be spending time doing and so that's the second time I would then reflect on you know how do you want to spend your time and then it I think you have to realize to hire it takes a lot of time and the other thing doesn't talked about it does take time for people to ramp up so you have to be patient and I I would say with all businesses one of the things I'm learning in my 40s now is that there is high value in finding people to work with for very long periods of time and given that you like them pay them almost whatever it takes a lot of times my favorite way to pay people is just ask them how much money they want to make and then help them get that amount of money even told me a crazy number 10x what he was making at Microsoft and I was like okay let's get you there let's figure out how you can create so much money for the business that you have to have that much uh and so in terms of when I noticed it yeah it was definitely within those two areas when I was asking the question which I was like I don't want to be running a deal site right now for now and that's a good way to put it for now doesn't mean forever and I just in terms of my time I didn't want to be spending it in that business I was more excited and this is a big thing in business I've got to call it out I was like oh the next thing is GNA be the easy thing it never [ __ ] is man and I wish it was but it's like you know the best way to have a good relationship work on the relationship not get a new wife right you know that you're married and guess what I love this quote it's like you want Variety in a relationship date one person and these things they take time to develop so you have to you do have to stick with the person and you have to also stick with the business because the best business is the one that's working so if you've even gotten like one customer awesome now let's get a second that's why I always talk about the law of 100 like just do 100 videos get make a 100 calls do a 100 days and don't quit too soon because if you have something even working a little bit like my first sale with appsumo outcom 12 bucks yesterday we did 280,000 th in one day I can't believe it that's that was beyond my dreams but you do have to start and then you have to be patient that it does take time whether you're hiring someone else or whether you're doing it yourself you're opening so many threads here my hand is

having a hard time keeping up as I want to fall up on everything that you're saying but here's what I want to do I want to know if there's a story or an inflection point because you're giving us great advice like do this if you're asking these kinds of questions but I want to know Noah's story specifically like what happened somebody came in the office you're like that's it I'm done with this I need to was there a moment like that where it became clear to kind of really personalize the story yeah by the way that's a great question to ask in interviews like tell me the story about it don't tell me like generic things so thank you for recommending that you know with appsumo it was you know I think people imagine that to start a business one you have to have some special ability and that's not true there's a lot of ordinary people that do very well and two they're like well this is just a thing I enjoy doing that can it really be a business and the answer is yes if that's what you want and I didn't start abum to be a big business I wanted to promote software deals because I thought that was a problem that people had I wanted to be a customer I wanted to make 3,000 bucks a month my freedom number that's all I wanted and it wasn't to make a business with teammates or business that made any money necessarily that much more and over time though there's a

plateau in all of our lives and so with appsumo after about four years we're I was a little just frustrated with the business I went to India I walked around India alone for a month grew a beard did a lot of yoga and really it was I think I was afraid of who I could become and ruining appsumo and so I thought the best way to solve that was to get away from it and avoid the hard Parton I think that's kind of the message of my book and really my life for others is like what's the hard thing we're avoiding and it's not as hard as we think and we can overcome it and so I thought if I moved on to another project and avoided appsumo and found someone safe to it to do it they could do it better than I can because I couldn't do it and then maybe this new thing will be easier for me and so it took about a year to find Aon and this is one of the things I think no one ever really hears about you don't hear about all things that failed the same thing is true for aan applied for our marketing position at absum and we rejected him you rejected him same when I applied at mint. com to be their marketing director they rejected me and I think for a lot of people they get rejected once and they give up and just think about it like okay well at least go twice give yourself the second chance you know who knows what the upside of an ask is that's why I teach it uh that's why one things SC things I teach people is like how do to you get better at asking so am to apply for the marketing thing and then we rejected him and then this is the thing that really separated him I asked a friend Charlie I said who's a great person you think could be our CEO that's easy way to hire people his referrals he said this aan guy I looked up my inbox and aan actually made a video do you know about this no I don't tell me the story I want to hear it oh this video it was like an appsumo esque like Sil our brand is very silly and it was like yo dog it's aan you got deals I got deals you want to save money on software I'm it was like this kind of over-the-top infomercial and it was just a little bit different than everyone else and it showed that he was at least willing to work I think a lot of people you are like even this in this chat I'm telling you about things but I'm not showing you things so now talking about the story is showing it and so I recall that aan put in a little bit more effort and then we the way we like to hire out is we test so everyone starts as a contractor so we tested him for you have to get two deals in two weeks and that's still something we do this day and he got two deals in two weeks and then it was like all right Aon you need to make $120,000 a month and don't mess it up and while and we spent about a year ramping him up that was like his uh Bible his Quran his T like to make this $120,000 and it's was really impressive I have to give him a lot of credit with opumo you know once you most businesses are really simple the ones that work are really simple and I think people think they have to be complicated but [ __ ] is very simple find an awesome product negotiate a price send an email and you just do that over and over and find that for yourself find that in your own creative agency business and Aon executed that very well and so for two years he did that and we went off to build sumo. com uh which was email popups we thought that what we were noticing with absum is we do these deals and some of the deals would like bang we'd make like a 100,000 and some deals would make 5,000 and I think it was nice you know one of the things I've noticed as I'm older it's like bringing in New Blood bringing in fresh eyes people who don't know what they don't know uh that are also excited to be there and uh am was very excited in those two years and just he executed everything he did the customer support by himself he did the marketing sales by himself uh there wasn't really much programming but he did all of it and I think that's a core part of all of our businesses at least understanding it before you start delegating it away too quickly then after two years the our the other business was doing well and aan um was running appsumo was making we were making enough money on our new project they were like amen you could do whatever you want and that's where you know things got Unleashed and we'll get into your early history and how seemingly you're unemployable but we'll get to that later if there's time so you find this company app Sumo you run it for four years you hit a point in which you're like I don't know if this is what I want to do maybe I'm not the best person to do this you go for on your walk about to India why India of all places what did that hold for you yeah I felt at some point in absum I wasn't proud of the work we were doing like I didn't like the products we were promoting and I think this is true for most people you trade your nin to-5 for a 5 to n meaning you you do art or you do something creative because you like it and then eventually you're not doing the thing you actually really liked and for me I liked promoting deals I liked being online I like getting attention I like helping and I was doing less and less of that and so if you look online you look at the Beatles who I love and I love you know see jobs and it seemed like when they were at inflection points in their life they went to India it's true so I was at a conference uh you know in I think New Jersey but from this guy named Ryan Lee and I was talking with my buddy Rob and I was just like I feel very I don't really like the work I'm doing I don't like how I'm living I don't like my girlfriend I was like maybe I need to go to India like my Idols did and yeah now in retrospect it seems like an avoidant strategy versus just dealing with things I didn't like work I could have fixed that didn't like my girlfriend could fix that I could have actually just faced the problems but um I think a lot of times in life we do these things to realize that we can do them and we can overcome stuff that we're afraid of so going to India for months is it's an interesting place and shout out to all the Indian people out there it's an really impressive culture and Country but definitely for myself was uh what I needed to realize that I could do these things okay so you don't have to go to India it's awesome if you can go to India but that period for you to just think and be kind of unplugged away change your environment scenery yeah well one you can just go to an Indian restaurant Indian restaurant like I had Indian food last night and the uh the other thing that's kind of crazy about that story was that the month I left there was only four guys at AB suumo Amon wasn't there yet it was the best month we've had in years so the minute you leave things get better is that what you're saying well I think sometimes we're we're holding on so tight to our relationship or egos and our identities or to like how things should be and maybe letting go a little bit and seeing what happens when you let go and letting the team and letting your friends or letting the people around you support you or do their things and Chad Eric and Anton were they did amazing so you got to the point you're like okay I have perspective I can't be this guy somebody else needs to do this you said uh also to prevent you from becoming the person you're afraid of becoming that's a that's probably a whole different podcast there yeah and this guy who submits for the marketing position you're like nah but somebody's like hey uh your friend I think Charlie says you check out this Amon guy you're like wait a minute I remember this guy and so he makes that extra effort and he tells you culturally he's as goofy as the brand is they're like maybe I give this guy a shot and he comes in he starts doing the marketing stuff you give him clear marching orders and then it hits like two years after his initial period is that when it starts to blow up no I mean it didn't blow up nothing I think what ABS success is that we're not we've never we've had definitely inflection points and there's been key moments but we have compounded business time and I don't think this is recognized enough which it's like over and over again we keep improving slowly year after year and aiman I came from Silicon Valley where Facebook it's like if you're not a thousand Xing you're a failure even though you know even 1 Xing is pretty damn good and aiman was much more slow and steady which I I do believe the phrase like easy come easy go so if it comes fast it goes away fast just like crypto and I think that's true for business where if you can like slow and steady keep adding and adding Up and Up Up and Up it really compounds over time and I'd say the other thing in terms of hiring other people you can't pay for caring you can't buy caring so it's very hard to buy someone that cares about what you do but if someone cares what you do that is something really special and I think we've had a good we we've done really well with that abum a lot of the people are entrepreneurs or immigrants or they're currently still entrepreneurs they have I just had a meeting with Nick who he's got a teeth whitening business called Perfect 10 I got to give him a shout out up in Dallas if you need teeth W he also runs our head of growth and so aan really cared

and he was also a customer I think those are important points where doesn't you know some customers think we just party all day or it's like no we're pretty much working at a desk like this that's like my day you know I get a chat here which I love but a lot of it's work and ideally it's great work that you like the part of what you're working on um and after two years though aan wow this like an Aman tribute because I do owe a lot to Aman um there's a lot of amazing people in all of our Lives I think that's something to kind of recognize and yeah aan slowly started and this is something where I think he really is better at than me really slowly how do we just keep improving what's working instead of doing new things like I'm a new I was a new things guy I think I've evolved from his influence but he was like this ad stuff is working like I started doing ads and I got it to maybe I was doing about a thousand a day when I left and then by the time a in I came back as CEO which is a story I'd like to share it's kind of crazy um I think we got it up to like a 100,000 a month and then we did affiliate they tried to affiliate and again test it then invest in it he tried affiliate where they just manually with a spreadsheet gave people like bitly links and we're like hey see if this works that worked like it actually people were driving Sals then we did IV affiliate which is like a cheap plugin then we did another thing and now we use impact which is 100 $120,000 a year so what aan did really excellently is that he didn't try to fast grow it he said let's just slowly do 10% a year give or take and because you're not rushing you have you can be more creative and you you're not forced to make money and what are the things that are already working and how do we just keep making it work better until there's no more left of it and I think that's something everyone hears that stuff by this way and no one does it and it's not a it's not a secret right there's no [ __ ] internet Guru claiming there's some like massive you know here's a creative sneaky thing it's like okay you have something working how much more of it are you doing let me give examples even today we have video ambassadors we sponsor video creators we tested it last January now there's a team of six people recruiting sponsoring video creators we tested it worked now we doubled it but that also means there's a lot of things that don't work and I think too many people do so many things that don't work which want there and things that are working they're not fully maximizing that makes a lot of sense okay so slow and steady growth and I can tell a little bit and I'm not professing to know either one of you really well but I can sense the different energy you know aim in is like Terminator Vision slow and steady nothing flashy just do the work and you're a guy was like I got ideas I want to do this I want to go to India I want to start another company you know even in our conversations I got this I got that I'm having a hard time keeping up with you and you're saying now you know what yeah that's all great in Silicon Valley in terms of how they see things but for a lot of businesses just looking at incremental Improvement trying a few experiments and then just quadrupling down on the things that work is a pretty good recipe for success and I think everybody could get their head wrapped around that yeah the problem Chris is everyone can wrap one a lot of people don't even get their first dollar so that's why you know I do run an $80 million a year business and I don't say that as a flex but all of it started with $12 Basics right like getting your first dollar practicing asking people things and then yes there are things you can Playbook you can follow but it's some of the basics that people miss out on yeah that does end up leading to these types of things and yeah there's different energies across different people and there's different ways of running businesses there's not only one way it's just finding the way that works best for you and finding something you're excited to work on for the next 10 years like I can't believe I get to do this stuff this is so cool and guess what everyone else can too this is the craziest part about business doesn't matter it doesn't discriminate you don't have to be short tall you don't have to be Asian you don't have to be anything you could be anything you don't even have to you know in sports you have there's like you have to be an age you have to no entrepreneurship is worldwide and anyone can succeed in it and I think that realizing that it's a skill and an ability and a language that we can all learn is really powering because I think there's times that we're led to believe that oh Noah has some special secret thoughts like no I've just been in the game swinging a lot for a long period of time and yes I do have more experience and strategies now but I've also been in it doing it okay in case people are wondering there's already two uh metaphors that Noah is using Sports and dating so we'll see if there's a third metaphor that keeps weaving itself in there I'm keeping track everybody I'm keeping track I've got another I've got more metaphors man I I'm sure you do I bet you have a million metaphors so we'll just wait for the next one yeah let's do it man I mean yeah different aan was a different approach and it was nice to have Eman you know this is kind of I hate sharing it because it's no one wants to hear champagne problems and the reality though what's interesting is that when aan was running appsumo I ended up kind of retiring and I was making a I think a million or million two million and $3 million dollars give or take per year and it was probably some of the most unsatisfying years of my life not it was which is crazy right you're like dude shut up rich guy like go to Turkey and get it so you're making between $1 to $3 million just sitting on the beach and you're like I don't like my life right now that's what you're saying yeah isn't that crazy yeah I think we all think that once we get money life is like complete life is a lot easier it's much better being rich so like be rich and have problems and being poor and have problems I would definitely I would agree with that but it's nice to find something that you care to work on which we all can do and then we work hard on it and that's the stuff we're proud of in life and we all can do that and a and you know I guess we're fast forward but aan quit one day and I like begged him not to quit I was so afraid of what would happen if I had to do it myself and that that's by the way I share these stories not like he's Rich he's poor whatever he's super good-look obviously you know clearly but ridiculously goodlooking but I what I share and one of the messages that's to me so powerful is that Ordinary People Get Rich and we can all do this these hard things you don't have to be a millionaire you could be thousand area you can even have just weekend money or date money and it's available to everyone I think there's a lot of messages out there about the complications and expensive courses and the complexity that's unnecessary in having success and we just have to face ourselves and that's what business is the best way to learn about yourself I agree you're speaking my language here I want to follow up something um that you mentioned that I find super fascinating so you're like okay I realize maybe I'm not the best suited for this or I need time to reflect and to kind of think about what I want to do with my life you bring a guy in who first didn't qualify but for whatever reason you're like let's give him a shot there's something here and you're like test test in the very absum way test right so you give very clear objectives and this is important for all you entrepreneurs out there to say like here's what you're going to be measured against go do this and then watch them and then keep watching them but the thing that I want to ask you about which I think is a beautiful concept which is ask people what they want to make and design a structure so that they can make it and you said he's asking for like 10x what he used to make without getting into the specific numbers unless you want to disclose that how does one do that because that sounds like a great way to like bring the very best talent to your team can you break it down for me how you can structure something like that the easiest way to think about how to get paid more is create more money people call it value right but really it's money so the way that Aman can approach it you know and this is true for any role right if you don't if you're not getting paid enough and you're like well I'm you can do something about it if you're in Customer Support making 50 and an engineer is making 250 you can do something about it now with aan he was running the entire appsumo business by himself for the first year and I think in year two we added a revenue like a performance variable I'm not going to share his numbers he can share it it's his private numbers I'll share mine but the idea was hey Noah if I can get the business let's just I'm gonna use an example from 5 million to 10 million that creates an extra five million bucks right and let's say the profit that's Revenue let's say profits a million so you're getting a million extra dollars like it's pretty good like you think I could get like 10,000 or 100,000 of that like 10% or 5% like 50,000 yeah and so think about value based pricing I think that's frankly in everything just much easier than worried about the hourly or having negotiations on uh well this is what market rate is don't compete with the market be the market and so if you can make more money for any company it's very easy to justify your worth and now for me as a business operator the most one of my most valuable things that I'm working is people sticking around for a while I have different like my YouTube team quit had a guy quit last week transition costs are very pricey very pricey and so I regret not just doubling the salary for the YouTube team and just making it easy like a no-brainer for them to stay I definitely regret that and that was with aan where it was like every year how much you to make okay let's get you that number uh and then it made it easy for him to want to succeed most people I would say are ambitious like most people want to be smart so give them a destination and that's what I learned from Zuckerberg give them one thing to do don't give them like here's 10 kpis what's the one you want me to do and give them a timeline like you want it buy when okay and ideally what I think is necessary as well is like what are the principles or boundaries that they should be playing the game by all right so with aan it was like don't mess this up like you have and his was I believe 411 so he had his goal 120,000 a month that was every month and his formula the boundaries that he could operate in were 411 which is four deals one freebie one appsumo created product something uh around that and that was a very easy Playbook or operating and as you scale it's more complicated but you need principles to help make sure everyone can operate without you that makes a lot of sense thanks for sharing that with us so for him and many people are actually in sales marketing or running a company the path for financial upside is pretty clear they can literally have an impact on what the revenue is going to look like what if you're in a position where you're hiring someone but their connection to the the revenue isn't as clear how do you build a compensation package for them or do you so I'll share stories I won't call out the people but there's someone at appsumo who says I want to raise I was okay why life's more expensive I know so it is for our customers too we don't just get free money we have to make sure that they're happy and if they pay us then we get more money and so what are you doing so that we can give you more money well I know but I've been here I know that doesn't mean our customers are more happy with us what have you done for them well yeah oh okay well so let's brainstorm what can you do that is creating wealth meaning the customers come back the customers are happier the customers spend more the customers refer more and so getting closer to that is an easy way to justify your salary and I do think what entrepreneurship with doesn't get talked about Chris and you're kind of highlighting it is whether it's an employee or is an entrepreneur you can really as an entrepreneur create unlimited upside there's no limit to the amount money you can make and in some jobs a lot of them there is a limit to your upside and doesn't mean you should quit that job means maybe start your own business or find out how do you have more upset in your current company and so with this person at the company she one of the ways you can also do it is there's sites like pave. comom or Radford or Carta and you can get Market comp suggestions or salary. com and just be like well in Austin Texas 50% of people are paid here here's why I'm paid 50% it's like I think that's just a kind of a weak way to get paid personally yeah I think a cooler way to get paid is there's a few approaches but I got this message from a different woman last week we have a lot of amazing women at appsumo and she said hey no we need to talk that's like the worst message you can ever send someone at a company I was like well there she goes and she's one of my favorites I love this person she's so great pay people that are great more don't even worry about it it's like 10,000 or 1,000 in the grand scheme of finding someone new and Hing someone and even aan it took a year to train him and a year for him to really ramp up it wasn't like he magically came in and printed money for the business and I think that's kind of assumed but that's not the case it was two years before he got to a stride and so this woman though what she did what I thought was so cool I thought she was going to quit I'm like well are you really quitting today I really love you like what can I do and my philosophy in business one asked them for their salary but dude be ahead of your people don't wait for them to tell you they're not making enough that means you're not looking out for them and when you get ahead of their salaries they know that you're actually taking care of them and so she did come to me and said hey I know we do raises twice a year we do them April and October a lot of times if you do it and when you're smaller it doesn't matter but otherwise it's just too inconsistent like business is good give us more money business is down you don't take salary away right and be aware by the way y'all when you're running a business you're going to make mistakes in salary and just be okay that that's going to happen and you can change it so she came to me with a I think it was a two-page document Chris showing me everything she's done showing me market data showing me like all the things that are coming up and then the amount of money that she has personally been responsible for being a part of she's not in sales she's not on product and Engineering she's in another group and it made it very easy for to justify like the amount of value she's creating for the business now what most people do is they complain oh you know I'd like more money okay now make it easy for your manager and what they do as well is they don't show you how to get it they're just like well can you tell me how I can get more money that doesn't make it exciting to pay you more how do you make it easy for people to pay you more money and you make it Easy by showing them and asking like hey here's everything I can do and will do I think it seems like paying me a little bit more money is a no-brainer for the business I think a lot of people need to

hear this part so that it's just not me saying it at least you have another person saying it as an employer as a person who has to deal with these kinds of things all the time I think employees start to think well I did my job pay me more and that's probably the wrong approach you're saying that it's an easy conversation when you can tell people your boss your manager here's how I'm making money for the company in ways that you might not be aware of here's how I'm delivering Delight or increasing Customer Loyalty or satisfaction is this something worthy of us talking about so that I can receive more money I think a lot of people especially younger people won't say which generation but younger people just feel a certain amount of entitlement that because I'm here I better receive an annual pay bump because why so can you say it to them dear employee and just tell them how to make more money oh man I was that young annoying [ __ ] frankly I fired a guy that was like me you know and it takes time to mature and everyone should get fired because then you learn about that jobs aren't guaranteed you're replaceable and even these businesses we work at Facebook may not be around in 100 years Elon Musk will be forgotten in a thousand years I guarantee you he'll be forgotten and the idea that you're guarant gued [ __ ] is something to learn really quickly I learned in high school that life's not fair by Mr battalia thank you I got a B+ and you wouldn't give me the a minus he's like nope this is how life is going to be experienced because that's what you earned and if you want more you have to do more like if you want the job and I'll tell it to if you're an employee right be an entrepreneur don't be an employee and be an entrepreneur in the company create more money for the company will pay you more we have a lot of CEOs at appsumo I'm not the only one and there's definitely ways to make it easier for yourself if you're let's just take an example you're at a company and you're blaming the company for not paying you more what are you doing about it how do you take power and put together a presentation showing how you can make moreone from the company and there are areas let's say you're in customer support right like that is a job that's you know you have to think about how replaceable am I especially with some of the AI stuff it it's definitely I would be more aware of that and more thoughtful about it and what a lot of people do 99% is they wait for their boss to tell them like well hey you want to improve here you no be the 1% is someone in Customer Support making let's say 50k saying we should do live chat so I tested it out or I found these options available and what most people do is they just take what they're receiving they don't ask or do the thing that they think will actually benefit the company and I that's you know maybe in let's say large corporations I worked at Intel which is a very large shitty corporation like that may not work you might get promoted you get your 6% raise if that but you can also get fired by Intel and so I've always found it's less risky to work in smaller businesses or start your own and then as you're working with the business recognizing where the money is being created and then try to be closer to that and if you want to make more money you can do it that I think maybe that's the ultimate message like it is available regardless of gender or race or age or height for you to make as much money as you want let's do a hard transition here there's a there's an obvious thing we need to I just got to tell it's not yeah the money is just not given out free none of our customers are excited you know just like hey appsumo team wants to raised we need to give them more money they don't give a [ __ ] they give a [ __ ] about their kid and their agency and the fact they lost a customer and now they're struggling and hopefully this deal is going to help them and then they're spending you know the $100 that they've earned hard on it that's what they care about they don't care that someone in our team is requesting a pay raise and so it's an interesting balance of making sure your customers are taken care of and your team is taken care of it is impossible

to ignore this glowing green book on your desk table I don't know why it's there but it's St there so I have to set you up for the question okay uh I thought I asked Aman A Very controversial question but I'm GNA ask you even more controversial question I said in this day and age in America with all the resources in a developed country with internet and all that you have going on is it possible for anyone to make $100,000 a year and he said absolutely but now I see there's this book it says not only can you not do $100,000 apparently you can make a million dollars in a weekend so here's my question to you is it possible for everyone in America to make a million dollars if they follow a certain blueprint absolutely because I've seen it I've done it and I've seen it and if you would have asked me that even two years ago I'd be like maybe now one question that I would that people need to be mindful of is how quickly will you receive your million dollars it probably won't come in the weekend even though in the next decade someone will do that but it could take a year or two years or three years so you have to practice on how to not give up to soon now let me just share a story from this morning's breakfast I met with this guy named Patty Galloway he's a very famous YouTube consultant you know who this guy Chris you ever heard of him the name sounds very familiar yes anyways this guy is 27 years old from Northern Ireland I still don't know where Ireland is versus Scotland I'm very confused with those two places he's not from Silicon Valley he's from a small town where $30,000 a year is a lot I can't sh how much he makes but it blew my mind and it was very clear the ability for finding something that people are excited to pay you for sticking with it right most people don't I think I was talking this about most people get it backwards they quit too soon and then they don't stick with winners and they need to do the you know they're like just find the winner really quickly and then stick with it that's the formula and so he found through he was very good at Consulting on YouTube and now he has built a very large business for a 27y old without I don't even know if he went to college I don't think he's got a big social media following to begin with at all just from some random place in Ireland and everyone can do that whether you have a social media following whether you went to college no matter what and there's so many especially if you see my YouTube channel there's so many ways of getting rich so many crazy but you do have to start ask people for things and then you do have to stick with it for some period of time is there something more concrete is there a Playbook can you give us some examples of things we can do yeah let me walk you through more stories that I'll that'll tell the Playbook and you know obviously a million dollar week and I shared the exact step by steps and at the website um I have a lot of videos and things of that nature but I've met people recently one of them her name is McKenzie and McKenzie you know similar to most probably listeners has a day job she was working at worby Park Parker making six figures but dreamed of being an entrepreneur and you know a lot of us don't have ideas or don't think we're ready qualified or don't realize that yes we can do it you can do it and she wanted to make connections for people and so she sent an email to friends and family and said hey I want to do a greeting card business anyone want to buy greeting cards for me people did it was validated again what's important is make sure you find something people actually want you're not convincing them you're not making them Buy then all you do is stick with it that's why I love the law of 100 do 100 days do 100 sales do 100 posts do 100 videos and in her first year she sold $50,000 worth of greeting cards it's marym maker. com I got to give her a shout out because I'm so proud of her and that's anyone else can do that too now in terms of the Playbook of let's maybe break down some of these elements there's really starting building and growing and within 48 hours which the reason I have a weekend is because I have through tens of thousands of people realize when you have a very limited time you'll focus on what matters and what matters is actually solving a problem people want and if they don't want it great you get learning and you could try again the next weekend because I can tell you Chris 20 even now it's probably almost 30 different businesses I've tried that did not work right you only need one hit in life to Succeed in Business which is so cool just one and you that's it and so the things that are important is starting and asking so starting really how do you just start right now the number one takeaway from the book so far that from surveys and research is now not how this is the biggest breakthrough for everyone which is what can you do right now on the phone while you're in your podcast listening or while you're watching YouTube can you post on social media saying hey does anyone can I does anyone want to buy my art what else can you do right now can you call someone say hey do you want to buy like a air purifier I might want to start an air purifier website you can do that right now and the more you realize you don't need domains you don't need more courses you don't necessarily need more books you don't need to spend any more money and you can find these things out even if you have a very small Network you can have very big wealth of very small networks and so you got to start right now and the second part is asking so she did a great job and asking is this big scary thing oh my god I've got to bug someone no she said hey friends I'm trying this idea can I get your feedback what do you think about it and I always talk about the coffee challenge where what something I came up with where practice asking and getting rejected and realizing it's not so scary the point you go and ask for 10% off when you get coffee Starbucks ideally so they reject you they say no and you realize hey I got rejected I'm still alive I'm a strong person look at my muscles go you let me go see what else I can ask for and asking and selling have very negative connotations but if you find something people want and you've been practicing it on something silly it actually makes the whole experience very fun frankly and easy so she got good at asking she just asked her friends for feedback I got this idea now the next two parts that are key I would say is making sure you're in a million-dollar market right you can work very hard on something that no matter what you do you won't make enough money and so fun example of that is I was I had a massuse come to the house for my girlfriend it was $140 and I was like do you know how many massages she has to do to make a million bucks that's a lot of backs right but if she did a coaching and then she worked on hiring other massas she could actually probably do that in half the time or if she then ultimately found that was working and created a software platform she could even do it in less than time but she had a start you can start and again my point with that though is thinking about the size of that market like there's only so much money you're going to make with your own hands doing backs and there's nothing wrong with that it's great if you started a business there but if you want to make more money just thinking about how big is that opportunity because you don't I've run really fast up in the wrong direction really fast I have a website free calls to. com don't go there and I worked a lot on it and the most that ever made was 50 bucks it's a Voiceover IP affiliate site right it's like this shitty thing but again A lot of times in business think about it as reps it's like practice you're practicing and practicing and if it doesn't hit that's okay but you're still getting the Reps in and you're learning something and now again you know you have to make sure the ideas are in markets that at least are a million dollar and I've met interviewed a lot of billionaires and I've worked for them the there's a lot of differences but one of the key ones is they're working in billion dollar opportunities now in terms of ideas a

lot of there's this is in the book and it's totally broken down but how do I come up with an idea Chris I got no ideas or then you have this other problem which is people are surprised about I got too many ideas all these are avoidance techniques which I'm an expert in avoidance that's where I went to India I know avoidance my therapists I quit my therapist who said I avoided and uh you know in terms of ideas is this I'll give you three ways to do it in three minutes very quickly anyone can do it just think about your day and break it down to morning afternoon night and just think about things that were annoying or problematic like even today like Chris thinking about your day like anything that took a long time anything that bothered you anything with your girl anything that happened to you that was like ah that was a little bit annoying what do you think what's the first thing that comes to mind shoot let's say breakfast my day started a little early today and I wasn't able to eat my protein shake this morning how come you didn't wake up on time or early enough social media last night or this morning I got up at 700 I should have jumped straight into the shower gotten ready and then had my protein shake but that was one problem I had this morning but I also knew it's like I have a like warming up my brain like now I'm going to get up you know and so the Social Media stuff makes me wake up I'm like okay put this down let's go okay yeah and then you had breakfast what you eat for breakfast I didn't eat breakfast today okay you wanted to eat a protein bar what kind of protein bar or what kind of breakfast do you like yeah usually a protein shake or protein bar to get my protein you know because of that muscle that we've been talking about bro you got them Gams this gain season coming okay and then you got a girlfriend or wife do you get her flowers how's the relationship in the morning do you see her do you give her a kiss didn't see her I spoken to her is that normal depends on what day yeah because of our schedules yeah like she'll do yoga she'll drop my kid off at school and then we usually get together for lunch okay so even in okay so let's just even like I know people are like what the hell what's going on here right those are three there's three businesses in what you just brought up so every problem inconvenience annoyance is an opportunity so first thing was you wake up and check your phone Chris would it be cool if every morning I had a report for you of the coolest [ __ ] on social media that I printed out for you or I emailed you that's customized for you again that be pretty cool be clear so let me back this up I'm just telling the opportunities I heard now you check to make sure there's a million dollars there and then you follow through with validation and see if people actually want it and I'm not going to build [ __ ] spend a lot of time I only got 48 hours so one social media is not bad but maybe you want it curated maybe you want a customized newsletter that I make just for kristo maybe just for second thing we talked about your breakfast sounds like maybe there's an opportunity to make your breakfast even easier like hey Chris like protein bars oh [ __ ] like what kind of protein bars do you eat what kind of breakfast do you eat how do you think about your breakfast is it a lot of energy thinking about your breakfast how much do you spend on breakfast business is really listening to problems and then solving the ones people want to pay you money for I know it's so complicated and people are like no tell me the complicated stuff I'm like the complicated stuff is people are selling you and if you have a very limited time and you're not spending money you can actually solve the thing that matters now the third one is your sounds like your girlfriend she's dropping your kid off at work you're not seeing her in the mornings sounds like there's an opportunity to how do we improve your relationship sounds like you guys have a 10 out of 10 relationship but maybe I can do flower delivery for you maybe I can have notes that you can write for your girlfriend and I send you monthly notes that you can write hey have a great morning I'll see you at lunch maybe there's a lunch delivery service that's literally from like what a two-minute chat and the look you could say hey none of these matter but what I'd recommend is you can pre-sell anyone to see if they'd actually pay you like so in these three ideas is there anything right now today you'd feel comfortable giving me a deposit for on a you make it refundable no worries there's the ask right there oh there it is so we're asking and we practiced it on a stupid ass coffee so if I have to ask a friend that has a problem that I can help do they mind supporting me on this endeavor and a lot of times in business we want to make it harder on ourselves because then we don't face the rejection reality that people may say yes they may say no and more often they're actually gonna say no they're gonna say yes than we realize our friends want us to succeed our Network and there is other parts of the Playbook which is like how do you scale it and all this other stuff that's stuff's easy but finding the thing that people really want and getting three customers in 48 hours is the golden ticket to creating your own life and as much money as you want to make that was like a mini brainstorm Workshop right there everybody look at your life and again Chris people are going to laugh people be like that's that was too easy like no way it's like that was just one way of doing it I just asked Chris about his morning we didn't even get to afternoon right you can also look at your credit card bill I love that one I was sponsored by Tim Ferris inspired by him you can also look at hey what have I avoided doing what am I not doing around my house in life guess what that's a business for others and for yourself that's a good one what is the credit card one you look at credit card and what do you do with a credit card oh my God those are great business opportunities so we use that appsumo DocuSign and I hate DocuSign we don't need it very often it's subscription for something you don't use very frequently and all this stuff saw on the bill and then I was like ah I love being my first customer doesn't mean it's guaranteed to work right you still have to go validate with pre-selling and if you start thinking about it way people get their mind blown when they realize everything is pre-sold to them they're like no I want to see it before I buy it okay did you see your flight did you see that airplane before you bought your plane ticket no but of course the plane's there how do you know the plane's there because oh I guess I don't know concert ticket I bought a concert ticket to Drake did you buy it the day of or a month before no I bought it a few months before how' you know Drake is going to show I don't know and if it doesn't sell pre-sale guess what great you can tell them hey it sounds like you don't want it great let me find something you do want okay here's where it gets for the complicated oh go ahead you want to say something yeah so for your point about the credit card bill I saw that doc sign was complicated and I went and looked up anyone in the past 5 years that emailed me a docy sign and I contacted them I put them on a I call it the dream 10 make it easy but you I did dream 30 it was 30 people who messaged me at do DocuSign and I just contacted him text WhatsApp DMS phone calls active and I pre-sold and so in 24 hours I got a lot of NOS but because we've been practicing it wasn't so scary and I also got some yeses I've seen this also in agency businesses I got an email so I made $33,000 in 24 hours this two weeks ago and I didn't use any social media no email us no nothing I saw someone a month ago who sent an email saying hey my friend is a photographer and she'd love to take photos of people if you're interested just reply to this email most of these big billion dollar businesses started as an email or a side hobby or something that's silly and not something so serious and I think that's mistaken and overlooked a lot of the time just let me get this clear you look at your credit card you look for things you pay for that you that annoy you and you're like let me try that as a business idea is that the credit card concept is what am I paying too much for that bothers the [ __ ] out of me like I hate stripe I pay too much for stripe yeah I hate doc you sign pay too much for Doc sign but that's just like I mean I can't even try to let me pull up my credit card bill for like right now but again you can these are just thinking about things that anything that's a bothersome or is an avoidance are all businesses or things that you desire that don't exist all businesses right so you look at things you've avoided you look at your credit Cod Bill to see if there's anything that's expensive you think about your own day and for ab suumo I mean I was the first customer I wanted software deals on tools for solopreneurs right and I was like how can I find out very quickly if this is what other people want too okay so while you're pulling up your credit card bill I want to tell you where our

audience gets stuck what you say makes too much sense to me it just and so creative people they want to live a harder life than they need to so yeah so I did look at my day but I really want to do this weird thing that nobody really wants that's what I want to do and I'm I believe I have a vision of the future this is the whole convergent vers versus Divergent thinking like oh everybody's so logical I don't want to be that logical no I want to do something so weird that people haven't thought of but I know they all need this thing I can't tell you how many people in my life are like this whether they're self-described creatives or not they're like here's this thing that nobody's ever thought about but I'm GNA do this thing because I'm not even sure anybody wants it they don't think it like that but that's how it comes out how do you help those people so walk tell me a person yeah like who's a person don't say their name maybe if you don't want to but like tell me who the person you're thinking of and like walking through what they're currently doing maybe at a high level and quickly so it's going to be hard for me to say it without them knowing exactly cuz they're doing such strange things that as soon as I say they're like oh he's talking about me right now but let me try to abtract it and see if I can help you understand the mind of the creative person please so instead of doing say branding or Identity Design work they create some weird sub Niche that is hard to understand and no one's looking for so they think that's my ticket and it's not validated by any Market because they can't sell it they have even a hard time explaining what it is that they do how can you help them it's a mindset problem I believe yeah it's a mindset you can't help someone who doesn't want to help themsel I can't convince someone that it's different that's not my job is to help the people who want to help themselves and so what I recommend for everyone is if what you're doing is working don't listen to me right if you want to scale and you're at a place where you've tried something and it's not worked or you want to try something and you need a playbook to do it listen to me and so what I've noticed is that people get very pot committed using poker terminology meaning they have a thing no one's buying it but they're stuck on it and the problem Chris is that we've glorified failure I tried this thing for 10 years and it didn't work but I know that this other person tried for 10 it's like why don't you try the thing that works and then stick with that for 10 years but we've glorified you know Edison glorified James Dyson even maybe a little Elon you know Elon took six years to deliver this truck 10 years to deliver the model 3 okay it's going to take a long time for it to work but both those examples take them as an example both of them had a billion dollars of pre-orders pretty clear that if he finished whatever weird ass icon he was doing that there's demand for it now what I encourage people to do is experiment so if what you're doing and you're really excited then Chris by the way everyone's already committed to their own plan so I know as I've gotten older I just say I'm glad that you're trying stick with your plan and if it's not working that's good at least you're doing something you're at least getting momentum going but why don't we experiment and try emailing someone right now that's been a previous customer or you think could be a customer and asking them if they would pay for it no oh that's a little uncomfortable it's a little hard and maybe even do it for free let's even do there I don't always recommend that because just because it's free doesn't me people will pay in the future but hey I want to do this idea where I take photos for families would you pay for that or can I do it for free and then I think you'll be a little surprised and so don't make it an All or Nothing play I don't think that works don't quit what you're doing because most people are very fixated on their own plans but at least experiment and see what happens and I think most people when they start taking action right now and when they actually try to do something people want they're surprised about the results and I will tell you when you find something that people are excited to have help on from you like you know I have a designer shout out at Baldo or you know I have a book marketer like these people like it's so nice when like a Baldo this is a crazy story this guy makes a lot of money down in Brazil he saw that I tweeted about uh my website and he just sent me a mockup he's like hey I know you kind of complained about your website and I just sent he sent me a mockup just because he wanted to and wanted he wanted to practice and that has led him now to build all these original products the absolute Originals it's all led by him just try maybe something a little different and I think if you don't if you experiment it fails great what can you learn and if it works great you're going to learn something too and it's working which you know it sounds like for a lot of these people you're saying it's not working you gave a really practical answer I just want to reiterate that for everyone who's like wait what was the answer here so you're not discouraging people from their hairbrain ideas you're like okay you're committed to it anyways you're po committed so you're like you know you might try some things and the best thing that you can do if you're not 100% sure is to validate it through the market via pre-sale just find out if somebody's willing to take it for free and sometimes believe it or not the things that people offer me for free I don't even take that's how bad the offer is so if they can't take it for free you you have a pretty clear indicator that this may not be something you want to go on for about seven years unless you have a billion dollars in the bank or a billion dollars worth of pre-orders so would they pay for it and if you can get enough market validation and I love this whole idea you got 48 Hours get three customers test your idea see if it works and then decide then if you want to invest more time and energy did I get that right yeah I mean it's cool to be a you know well-fed artist these days and it's available to everyone right and I think there is a balance and there's definitely this balance of life like what do you want to do on this planet versus what this planet wants to reward people for and you could do it your way and that's fine and it maybe it works but you also have to be mindful of the people who want to spend money on these things and it's exciting I will say it's very exciting getting validated on the idea you have like when I got my first $100 on this DocuSign alternative two weeks ago and I was showing people that it works even though yes I have all this money and blah blah I was like super excited I was like hell yeah [ __ ] you fear like failure rejection which still happens wow someone Believes In Me like I'm going to believe in myself maybe I can do these things and I'll tell you with art there's this woman Carrie Coffield she I think she was like corporate training as her day job and she just loves being an artist so she did the same thing and I've seen her paintings I told her I'll be her fifth customer and she just asked her friends and then she just posted uh her painting in her hair salon and look it's not going to make a million dollars immediately but it's like this practice of starting and doing and sticking with it that over some time what's the differ between Carrie Coffield and Andy Warhol not much Andy just found an area of art that worked for him and then he did it in a very extended period of time and I think that's the reality for everyone out there with art specifically and designers and people like that there may be a few more differences but I don't want to get into an art debate with you there there's nuances yeah there's definitely nuances cuz you touched on two of my favorite artists but we'll get into that later so whatever happened to McKenzie oh yeah she you said that she did $50,000 in her first year uh do we have a status update with her like this greeting card business that was last year oh was last year yeah but what's crazy and this is a common trap is what we talked about earlier it's this plateau and she's like she just got to 50,000 which is unbelievable right and now she said hey I want to do a new business uh oh exactly what you were telling me what you were asking me about earlier and she said hey no I want to do this new business where I design people's presentations said oh that's interesting and again I'm not here to judge right I'm just here to ask questions okay how come you want to do that it seems easier okay so this one's easier but you have nothing on it this one you've already done 50,000 you have momentum on it what makes you think it'll be easier okay how do we experiment doing the thing that's working and this other thing that you want to do like keep that on the side and not put so much pressure to move ship you have something working either do it yourself or find someone else to do it and again she was very excited to her Google Slides presentation design consulting firm oh it's so much easier and a lot of times the best experiences are learned not through a book you're not going to learn you can only learn to cook so well reading you have to be in the kitchen that a third metaphor promised you I promised you I'd get to three I got more you got me there and your publicist is saying uh did you just tell people not to buy a book when you're about to launch your book you know my job is not to sell the book necessarily my job is to be proud of what I created make sure it's something people want which I validated this book on and then ultimately like I've done it time and time again so I feel like it works and then people like MacKenzie have gotten it to work doesn't mean there's not going to be problems along the way and then there's a guy named Pat who got it to work and Jak's gotten to work and Rico's LG has gotten to work and I know it works that's why I feel confident because I see it and with McKenzie if she wants to go do this other thing I'm going to be there to support her and ideally I'm like do this Consulting thing fast so you can come back to the thing that's working and as I've gotten older coming back to the aiman principle the best business is the one that works I'm going to call it the a in principle from now so you just keep doing it over and over and the more boring your success is that means it's working so don't get bored of the success embrace it or find some way to enjoy it or find someone else who will I suspect McKenzie is a creative person and doing the same thing month after month year after year is the kind of her definition of hell this is why creative people have all kinds of problems things are working I don't want to do it anymore I want to do something different so you want to run away from money and success is that what you're saying and that's the plight that most creative people suffer from that's a human problem is it yeah that's why we don't I don't know if I already said this but that's why we don't watch the same Netflix movie over and over like how many times you watch the same Netflix show not often but there are some movies I watch Like A Lot on repeat what's an example think the Matrix Blade Runner Dune pretty good but yeah in general for another movie but the majority of your consumption of content is probably new stuff you're not watching the same YouTube video that really helped you over and over again but that's also really interesting about all right well how do we apply that in our own business how can you maybe twist it up a bit how can maybe hey what parts of the business do you actually want to spend all day doing because the reality Chris is for everyone out there if you reflect on your life there's something that you have stuck with what was it about that worked teeth brushing easy example you're like well I like my teeth smelling good you got to do twice a day by the way you're not doing twice it's gross why do you do it twice a day I don't know because I did it in the mornings and I like smelling my teeth and okay well what about that can we copy for your business well my business I really like make for Mary makery her website I just like making the cards I don't want a fulfillment awesome [ __ ] fulfillment oh I really want to be on more shows or I want to go to great that's just coming back to the original question okay let's just spend that all freaking week doing that and you could find someone to do fulfillment your website design and the thing that was crazy looking at her website I coming back on it is that I can tell she's not focused on it because there's so much cool opportunities that I can tell she's not thinking about it every day she's thinking about all these other things and that's something that she'll have to experience and learn for herself which is hopefully quick and then I do think she'll come back and be like wow look Hallmark and American greeting cards are like worth nine figures or 10 figure businesses greeting card can be a giant business and by the way it doesn't have to be a [ __ ] giant business it could be enough to her to make grocery money be a thousandaire or for her to live whatever life she wants uh and I just find if you find something people are excited about figure a way that you can make it sustainable like I aim for 10 years and when you think in that time span one if it fails right away you're also kind of okay you're like [ __ ] it didn't work that's okay I'm doing it for 10 years like right now my YouTube channel is pretty [ __ ] like a lot of people quit and we're testing people out and all stuff but I'm think you know what I'm gonna do this 10 years it's okay if one month's not perfect and for herself I think when she dials into that business it's like wow there's a lot more things I could fix on this website I think it's lost its new car smell appeal and now they want to get a new car but I'm going to mix metaphors with you if you're in a home and you get bored of the home you don't just tear the home down and move you give a new coat of paint you rearrange the furniture you put some plants you change the decor you upgrade your furniture and that's how you make you add value to your home you do uh the Landscaping stuff and you might add an extension or something or an ad is Adu you know you might do that right that's more of the metaphor like you have a business idea it's working don't abandon it just like a relationship if you have a good woman or a good man like you're not trying to break it up you're like how do I get more of this how do I go deeper with this all right I need to leave the house like go on vacation for a weekend you come back and you're like damn like I don't know I love my house I'm here every day thinking like I can't believe I get to live here and that's how it can be for your work as well like why spend like I don't know at least half your life doing something you don't like that seems crazy to me I'm

glad you brought the dating thing back because you said something at the beginning of the podcast I'm like what you if you want more variety date one person and you never explain what that means because I'm like what the oh my God I love that I think it's from one of these uh famous women and psychologists or you know here's what's interesting by the way there's like Benet Brown and Esther Perell they're the most famous but are they actually even the best psychologists no they're the best business marketers of psychology same thing for all creatives it's another example of it they're very good but just to show another example right just because you're good doesn't and again it depends on what you're trying to optimize for I think that's a great question now in terms of variety if you ever go on dates like I was single two years ago and I was dating a lot and I think what what's important to think about is what is my goal what do I really want and how does my behavior align to that goal so I wanted to be in relationship married and have kids and all that stuff but I was just hooking up and like doing dumb dating stuff so it was like I wanted this but I'm not I'm behaving this so it's not actually aligning and my friend Dan Andrews from tropical NBA said that quote to me and kind of made me realize when you go on all these dates you say the same freaking story over and over my dad's from here yeah you know I'm from santose California you know like all this crappy boring stuff and there's no depth to it but then when you're with one person and you go through hardship when you're one person and you have a flight delay when you're with one person and you can finally experience a lot of you can share things that you never felt comfortable sharing because you don't know you didn't really know the person um it's the ultimate I would say having a great partner besides the variety because you're really getting to be with some amazing it's like one it's the ultimate life upgrade if you can be optimistic and then work towards finding someone that really compliments you and accepts you for who you are as well as ideally you accept yourself and I would say uh that has been one of the game changers for me in the past two years so you find Variety in sticking with one person but going through different adventures with that person versus having a shallow adventure with like 10 or 15 different people exactly I think when we can you know when everyone is in their lives and maybe they get a little Restless just pausing just pause for one second and be like hey I'm feeling restless okay what how come I'm feeling restless here and a lot of times maybe because things are pretty going pretty damn well and we can just take a step back and be like not bad Chris not bad Stephanie not bad Mark I'm just making up names not bad no it's going pretty well and just pausing a little bit versus having to react and then feel like we're going to sabotage it or it can't last my one of my best friend tinan and again here's another life upgrade just be around optimistic people that'll make you more optimistic he always says the same line I texted him this morning he's always like life is so great and it's going to get better that was very optimistic yeah and I'm like shut up dude you know I come from I think Jews in general very cynical people we are you know we're taught to question things like in the I'm not religious but it's like ah why did the Bible do this why did the Torah it's like and I think there's you know the Holocaust all these different you know generational traumas in different cultures too and so it's nice to be around people that are like no dude it's really good actually like even tinan when I was pretty low I would say a year ago today literally I was pretty low and I remember him sitting in my kitchen with me he flew out to comfort me it's nice to have friends like that and he's like dude just zoom out of your life zoom out like go to the skies everything's pretty dope like yeah this moment might feel a little sucky but like zoom out to the clouds you got pinball machines at home which I do I have Godzilla which is the number one rated pin machine in the world I love it wow I've got like a hot tub I have a garage right like I have friends that are really amazing guys and a few girls but really a lot of guys like you have you're healthy you can walk you're moderately above average good-look okay yeah some things aren't great but overall pretty damn great and having that perspective and also that support uh was extremely helpful we all it's hard to do it all this stuff alone so it's nice to have people in your corner but that was definitely a beautiful moment with him you can shout him out tin. com there we go I have to

ask you two questions before we go one is because of the book when does the book drop and what is the premise of the book I think I can infer what the premise of the book is but I'd rather have you just say it uh what do you thinking it's the book is called million dooll weekend it's available everywhere worldwi where books are sold AKA Amazon. com or buy it in your local bookstore I think that's super cool and I can't wait for people to send me photos please take action send photos at no Kagan anywhere I would love uh what do you think it's about Chris I think it's about the principles that you've learned helping to launch and doing campaigns that have made you a million dollars on a weekend and the same principles can be app to wherever you're at whether you have $12 or $100,000 yeah I would say have you ever read Marie con so that's exactly right it will help anyone make a million dollars I promise that if they follow the formula they will get it have you ever read Marie condo's book The Magic of tidying up no but I'm very familiar with muray condo oh it's a fire book it's so such a banger I love it now I think this book is similar to that and that's what I try to make it mindset as well as tactics and I think most books in business are either one or the other and they don't do a good job combining it but really what the book does is how does it help someone realize who they can become and in that same time realize what kind of Life they can live and it's generally way cooler than they can imagine and then it's actually available to them and that's what the book is about because I know it worked for me and I'm seeing it work for others not just the money like the money is you're still who you are but it's finding out who else you can become and how like wow it's definitely special for the people that want to at least lean in a little bit to some of the things that maybe they've been afraid of or things they've actually really wanted deep down anything else you want to share about the I pulled out my credit card bill oh you did okay tell us about that and then I have to ask this one question before we run out of time here D the final question the final countown um all right my pelaton membership 47 bucks I bought caviar because I was like I guess that's what rich people do but no my girlfriend's pregnant so she wants Sal in row so that was $125 um my took my buddy for his birthday clay shooting that was 25 bucks for the ammo um I bought a guy a gun for his birthday that same guy I also got scammed buying that gun because I bought it on a fake site so I had to buy it twice um pregnant clothing you know I bought I try to get my girl you know some super nice like thoughtful mom clothes so like let me just even go through that credit card bill so Mom clothes are pain the butt to get and then the women grow out of them so how come there's not returnable or rentable mom clothes business idea uh this gun thing how come there's not crypto I think and by the way let me just preface all this every business has been done don't worry about it think about it as a practice and an experiment and you're just getting a rep in because what'll happen is you have your idea for your business you Google it oh this one person finally took the idea that I was going to make me Rich it's like you didn't even know that idea 10 seconds ago don't worry about them just think about as an experiment and practice doing this the process so you can keep doing until you find a thing that works and most times if you haven't heard of it that's an opportunity so again I'm sharing that because a lot of people say oh well I've already heard of something like that I know but if you haven't and you don't know about it yet that means it's your opportunity so yeah this gun thing I would do crypto Insurance because I got scammed on that um the clay shooting what I was actually thinking with the clay shooting was like more guy experiences like how do you have guy trips so like this clay shooting in Austin was like super cheap and it was a really nice thing to do for birthdays so like how do you have birthday packages like hey $100 I'm going to take care of everything cuz like you have to find a place you have to have maybe food then an activity and it was it's not bad but that's an interesting idea like birthday parties for guys um pelaton membership even kind of a silly one I'm like huh I don't use that all the time could we maybe have something is there something else there where people can come work out at my house and use my I have a gym at home you can use my home gym I don't know if I want strangers in my gym but maybe there's that like Airbnb for Home Gyms or is there a way to do other types of monthly Fitness memberships and again all this is to find out like you can when you start looking for problems AKA businesses they're everywhere and then when you start actually taking in the now the one you want to do and just do the first one on your list don't worry and do it as a practice round you're like holy [ __ ] this is actually working I can do these things and this is just me you know quickly looking at one of my credit cards you spitballing those Business Solutions I think will spark a lot of what people are like okay he connected the dots for me just out of curiosity the five things you just randomly came up with which one do you think is most viable a lot of times I like to think what would I be excited to work on and then who do I have in my network kind of coming back to the elements we talked about I think the mom one is cool but I don't know I think I'd have to hit up friends and be like who's a mom do you know any moms I like the guy's birthday ones I think that's kind of cool uh I think it would be hard I think that would actually be hard to convince people to pay for birthday plans or pay for birthday events because you're like hey do you want to use birthday events like [ __ ] so in terms of viability maybe the I don't know the Airbnb home memberships uh in terms of viability again I think they're all viable I think you have to go and talk to customers to find the truth I think all of them are actually really interesting what I what I want to do is either the guy's birthday or maybe the home gym stuff that would more likely validate that got it things that appeal to you things that you think hey I could use this why not be excited then when you're asking someone to be a customer you're not asking them you're ex you're it's not I've never thought it was an ask I think it was a duty and I'm excited I'm like hey I think this is really going to help you with what's going on in your life yeah okay we're almost out of time I have to ask you this question here I'm on your YouTube channel it's like what multi-millionaire entrepreneur is running an80 million company the one that I know about is still on YouTube making videos this is kind of fascinating you have over a million subscribers on YouTube and then I watch a series of videos where it's like asking millionaires how to make a million dollars this is a good idea for people who are poor like there ay on the street I just curious but you're actually you're a millionaire yourself rich I don't yeah exactly so what's the hook and I don't see rich like as a rude thing it's just like I I'm literally a multi-millionaire which my safety lately has become more of a concern for our family I think what's interesting about a lot of these YouTubers is there's and this is a business opportunity and it still blows my mind on YouTube you can make up any title you want and I think there's so many fraudsters out there and husters and charlatans it's unbelievable like oh I'm worth $100 million from what oh you run you have a cool business where it's so full of [ __ ] it's unbelievable it drives me crazy literally now in terms of YouTube for myself I've been doing content online since 2000 before you were born Chris I know you're older than that I like it I love it I love getting attention I love my ego getting Juiced I love helping people I love replying to comments I like being creative it's fun helps appsumo with my branding out there people are like who's this noag guy kind of see him I like him and then I talk about appsumo and then they go over to their website and check out AB suumo now in terms of some of the content we've done it was you know law of 100 which is like we tried a lot of content stuck with 100 pieces and finally towards the end of that uh one of the videos did really well which is this knocking on doors asking millionaires how they got paid a million dollars advice for Yumi I think the thing for content in general out there is for us to think about what is our unique thing that others can't copy because now there's a lot of kids being like hey knock on doors and there most of our videos are fake they're very fake there I think a few I've seen actually legit because when you knock on someone's door they don't want to answer and when they you're saying yours are legit yeah you see me get rejected a lot that's part of the fun of the video except in Newport Beach those people were extremely friendly when I knocked on their doors I like doing it I think what I've noticed with YouTube specifically you have to get started today with whatever platform only do one platform if you want to win on social win one everyone's trying to win many just do one well I want to do both fine don't win it's okay I don't care doesn't change my life I just found that if I only did YouTube it worked really well and after YouTube and our system of doing these videos was working consistently then we now start doing you know maybe some Twitter and some of these other stuff and then think about as you're doing it what's the unique thing for you like no one else can be Chris doe right and there's a lot of videos now where it's like let's do a podcast video which is fine but how do you make yours unique and but you have to get started and get it going and then Evol EV you know evolve to that place but I think people will spend so much time trying to prepare to be ready for that but it's really getting it going seeing if there's any validation on it like I put out my first video with my phone I'm not selling these people like expensive courses or I don't know super expensive books it's like yeah this book is it's a cool thing that I'm proud of I wish I had and I could share it the other thing I would say with YouTube my last video has 12,000 views so when you're working on someone else's platform they're controlling your audience so get an email list convert kit I use senf Fox you can use MailChimp have an email list so you can communicate directly with your audience because when now with YouTube I'm at their Mercy to have to make content to be able to talk to my to the people that I've earned their attention over the past few years so my goal Chris is to be around here for the next 10 years on this YouTube stuff I like it I want to do it for the next 10 years so the fact that we're having a little bit of complications internally where people quit and we're trying out these new people and there's you know it's not clean yeah just being patient and not you know being more optimistic that yeah we're going to fix if not it's okay we're doing this for a while my guest has been no Kagan he's uh the CEO and founder of appsumo which I love by the way because who doesn't like a deal on software and things that you use oftentimes when I miss out on the deal I'm like God I pay more for Less right now which is ridiculous so that's clearly a value delivery vehicle for whoever is able to grabb these deals but his book by the time you hear this podcast or see this you'll it'll have dropped it's called million-dollar weekend he's given us a lot of really practical things for me to think about and I'm just saying this as a person who teaches and coaches other people I'm taking things from this conversation and we want to turn around and say hey uh what are things are you trying to avoid or your clients's trying to avoid those are business opportunities for you I mean there are many more nuggets from the episode and you'll have to watch the entire thing if you want to grab it all you maybe like me and filled up two pages of notes here that's what done it's been a pleasure talking to you thank you for doing this with us thank you for being you and doing your work man