Brainstorming The Best Business Ideas To Start In 2022 with Noah Kagan

YouTube, Chrome Extensions, and Mint.com Mistakes - January 18, 2022 (about 3 years ago) • 01:19:01

This My First Million podcast episode features Noah Kagan and Sam Parr, joined by Ben Wilson, discussing various business ventures, content creation strategies, and personal growth tactics. The conversation flows naturally, covering a range of topics from cold plunges and pedicures to YouTube growth and chrome extensions. Noah and Sam share personal anecdotes and insights, offering practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Cold Plunge and Self-Care: Sam and Noah discuss their experiences with cold plunges, debating their effectiveness while acknowledging the mental benefits. Noah emphasizes the importance of self-care for men, advocating for practices like baths and pedicures.
YouTube Growth and Monetization: Noah details his YouTube journey, highlighting its organic growth and surprising monetization through a few viral videos. Sam shares his own YouTube learnings, emphasizing the value of everyday content. They discuss the power of TikTok for audience growth and the potential of YouTube as a business. They also discuss the importance of continuous learning, referencing Casey Neistat's YouTube course.
Chrome Extensions and Niche Acquisitions: Sam and Noah discuss the potential of chrome extensions as a business, referencing Grammarly's success. Noah shares his experience acquiring WordPress plugins and a chrome extension, highlighting the importance of finding undervalued assets. They discuss Shopify apps and the challenges of competing in saturated markets.
Mint.com and Vision: Noah, an early employee at Mint.com, shares his perspective on the company's sale and Aaron Patzer's vision. He discusses the potential for greater growth and the importance of identifying large market opportunities. He also touches on other fintech companies like Plaid, Brex, and Ramp.
Work-Life Balance and the Grind: Sam and Noah discuss the balance between grinding and pursuing personal interests. Noah suggests that finding enjoyable work negates the feeling of constant grind, while Sam emphasizes the importance of defining the price of success.
Mud Water and Single Product Businesses: Noah highlights the success of Mud Water, a coffee alternative, emphasizing the power of focusing on one product within a large market. He connects this to the idea of identifying personal problems and turning them into business opportunities, like a "doomsday prepper in a box" idea.
Tracking Progress and Accountability: Sam and Noah discuss methods for tracking personal and professional progress. Noah shares his monthly life review process and emphasizes the value of accountability partners. They also talk about their personal finance tracking methods and investment strategies.
Luxury Purchases and Everyday Joys: Sam and Noah discuss their favorite purchases under $100, highlighting simple pleasures and the feeling of "luxury" in everyday items. They also talk about the value of no-brainer services that simplify life.
Podcast Growth Strategies: Noah offers Sam advice on growing the "My First Million" podcast, suggesting cross-promotion on YouTube, optimizing descriptions and about pages, and strategically growing a YouTube channel to drive newsletter and podcast subscribers. They briefly discuss podcast monetization through licensing deals.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Noah Kagan	So last year, we had our highest day. Black Friday was our highest day, with almost $2,000,000 in that one day.
00:17	Sam Parr	are we ready to roll can we roll bro you gotta take that hat off though I can't see you
00:23	Noah Kagan	alright I was just trying to I wanted to wear a costume of sorts
00:26	Sam Parr	oh there I can see you like that a little
00:27	Noah Kagan	bit more spicy
00:28	Sam Parr	Yeah, you're good like that. I couldn't see your eyes. Do you have an ice bath?
00:33	Noah Kagan	yeah I have a cold have you not jumped in our cold tub
00:35	Sam Parr	so is it called cold plunge
00:37	Noah Kagan	yeah the cold plunge
00:38	Sam Parr	I have one too and what is your opinion of it so far
00:43	Noah Kagan	I like it. I use it about twice a week. I use it Monday morning for coffee; it's basically my wake-up thing. Then I'll use it Wednesdays after my workout. What's interesting, though, there's a book I think called Endurance.
00:53	Sam Parr	yeah I love that book and they
00:54	Noah Kagan	basically I love that book there's a book
00:56	Sam Parr	and I
00:56	Noah Kagan	think what they said was that scientifically it doesn't do anything
00:59	Sam Parr	Yes, and so that's why I have a problem with cold plunge. The actual product is amazing. If you want to be cold, it's a good one; it stays at 39 degrees all the time. However, I'm almost certain that it doesn't do anything. Some people say it impacts your brain if it does anything, but there's still even conflicting research on that.
01:24	Noah Kagan	I think the big thing that I like about it is that it makes me feel tough. Yeah, it makes me feel... it makes me feel good about myself. I'm like, "Noah, you're not tough man, you're weak." And I don't know, I don't really have that self-talk in my head, but I go into this thing and I was like, "Do go do 10." And then when I'm about to get to 10, I'm like, "You could do 15." And then I just feel proud of myself.
01:40	Sam Parr	how long do you sit
01:41	Noah Kagan	In the shower, I'm like, it varies. Maybe like a minute, 2 minutes.
01:47	Sam Parr	Dude, I did 5 minutes at 39 degrees, and it was incredibly painful. That's what it said online to do, so I did it. I was legitimately in pain—like, more pain than I've ever felt just through exercise.
02:02	Noah Kagan	how'd you feel about yourself
02:03	Sam Parr	I felt tough. I felt... I felt tough. Yeah, so I understand why it works, but I'm still looking for peer-reviewed research that shows that it works, and I've not found it. That's why I was asking how you thought about your cold plunge because I heard you had the same word.
02:17	Ben Wilson	I gotta jump in here because I'm a cold plunge spokesman. They're the one sponsor for my podcast, so I gotta... oh wow, ask for their honor here. So the thing I...
02:25	Sam Parr	dude I tell you the cold plunge product
02:26	Noah Kagan	we're we're both it's awesome
02:28	Sam Parr	I have it too but here's the thing
02:30	Ben Wilson	Here's where you're wrong, though. The thing that you're right about is there's no research that shows that it is good for recovery. That's what everyone says they use it for, and that's just not accurate. It's actually better to use heat therapy for recovery than cold. But, like, some of the brain stuff there is more research on, as well as some of the other benefits around mood. Have you heard of this brown fat cell storage stuff?
03:05	Sam Parr	Yeah, but I hear you. I think it kind of works. I'm still... I still need to be convinced.
03:13	Ben Wilson	It's like a workout. The way to think about it is that it's a workout for your nervous system. It improves a lot of stuff that way, but it's just not good for recovery.
03:21	Noah Kagan	I guess I would actually pitch the opposite, Sam and Ben. Lately, I've been really into baths. That's just been my go-to. I throw in these bath bombs that have a little CBD in them. I'll light a candle, and then I'll either put on a podcast or read. But lately, I mean, men—especially men—because women have known about this; they just didn't want to tell us. I literally just came from a pedicure. If men are not pampering themselves... look, if you're working hard—I'm saying if you're putting in the work, you're working out, you're doing the stuff at the job—take a little time for that R&R, man. Go jump in a bath, a pedicure...
03:54	Sam Parr	Or something about it not being relaxing at all for me. I don't want someone digging into my nails. Gross.
03:59	Noah Kagan	can you see that red white
04:00	Sam Parr	and black
04:00	Noah Kagan	oh my god I did the I did the american flag
04:03	Sam Parr	that's awesome
04:04	Noah Kagan	no no it's it's honestly it's fun we're living once on this planet have a good time
04:08	Sam Parr	Alright, let's talk about you. You came on last time, and I personally thought the episode was only going to do okay. I'm telling you, I got tons of people that DM'd me. Ben says that people thought it was pretty good. I thought people thought it was great! But for this one, awesome! You have a list of 1, 2, like 8 bullet points, but there's a ton of ideas here. Oh, and also, people criticized me because I didn't introduce you. So, this is Noah Kagan. Noah runs this company; he founded it and is now the CEO of AppSumo. It's like Groupon for nerds. It's quite large! I think last time you said around $80 million in revenue. Mitchell just said you guys now have 165 employees. That's amazing! You also do content, so you have this sick blog called "OkDork," which I've read for like 10 years. And you have your YouTube channel, which now has 250,000 subscribers, I think, right?
04:58	Noah Kagan	almost 300,000 man it's it's unbelievable youtube.com/okaydor it's unbelievable it's unbelievable
05:02	Sam Parr	That's sick! I remember you doing it years ago, just like on your phone. It was kind of lame. It wasn't lame; it was just like you weren't trying. Then, like, you started trying two years ago, I think, right?
05:15	Noah Kagan	Yeah, that was an interesting journey. When COVID hit two years ago, I was just shirtless at home with my iPhone. I felt good about what was going on and felt like I could help. So, I just started recording on my phone and uploading it. To all the people that are listening, shout out to you! If you want to start businesses, it's like, just do it now, not how. This is something Mitchell and I talk about, which is just to get going. I uploaded that, and from there, now there's a team of, I don't know, maybe six people. We'll spend about half a million dollars on just the team this year, you know, from just me being shirtless in my house talking about how to get your business going and your confidence.
05:49	Sam Parr	The reason why you're able to spend... why you're able to lose money is because you are somehow driving traffic and awareness to AppSumo, which is like your main thing. But does the AdSense or the YouTube ad at all cover the cost?
06:04	Noah Kagan	Actually, it just started. What was fascinating, and by the way, a lot of people know me because I worked at Facebook and I worked at Mint.com. So, it's a little bit of what people have heard about me. This year, let me just pull up our stats right now. Last year, we spent around $400,000. I can look up how much we made.
06:20	Sam Parr	so last year really
06:23	Noah Kagan	Just getting... it's an investment. It's like a lot of these things. Fortunately, we had AppSumo as our bankroller last year. On AdSense, we made $121,840 in our first hardcore year of having a team around.
06:37	Sam Parr	that's really good
06:40	Noah Kagan	It's surprising. This year is actually... but here's the thing: this is going to blow your mind. I think this is a really good lesson for business. We put out 849 videos, and 3 of them basically generated all this money.
06:54	Sam Parr	which ones
06:56	Noah Kagan	Isn't that kind of sad? Either we suck at making videos, or a lot of businesses just keep going, keep going, keep going, but don't...
07:05	Sam Parr	aren't all the channels like that though
07:07	Noah Kagan	I think it's a lot of business like a power law distribution. It's like a few things do a lot of the significance. So, the three videos that made all of the money: the first one was when I went and knocked on doors in Austin. We just released "Ask King Millionaires," but that came out towards the end of the year and drove a lot of our money. I was asking crypto millionaires how to invest $5,000 and then asking NFT millionaires how to invest $1,000. More or less, those three videos made us the year, but that was after almost 150 videos.
07:38	Sam Parr	That's crazy! Do you think you're also past your $500,000? Do you think you'll break even on AdSense this year?
07:45	Noah Kagan	Yeah, our goal is not that. Our goal is around subscriber growth, but this year I think we'll lose budget-wise. It looks like we'll lose around $200,000, just depends how ads do. But I'm basically not really optimizing around that.
07:57	Sam Parr	That's crazy! I did a call with this lady who has a bunch of YouTube channels. She was telling me it's her and a six-person team. I can't say her name, but she said that they're doing $1,000,000 a month in profit from YouTube. Just YouTube! Yeah, it's crazy. Just YouTube.
08:16	Noah Kagan	Are you guys... I think the thing with YouTube is that it has been slept on. I mean, TikTok is another one; it's a different type of audience. But you guys have upped your YouTube game yourselves. I feel like almost every business out there, or if you were broke and you're in any country in the world and you have nothing to do, this is the easiest, freest business anyone can find.
08:33	Sam Parr	I just signed up for Monthly.com. They have this course with Casey Neistat. Did you see that? So, Casey Neistat has a course where every day he gives you a lesson on YouTube videos. I bought it for like $300, and I'm loving it! It is really, really cool.
08:48	Noah Kagan	what if what are some of the takeaways
08:50	Sam Parr	Well, it's only three days in. In the first or second lesson, he just walked around his office and said, "I'm going to show you how I find cool stories." As he walked around, he pointed out various things. He said, "Oh, that's a cool idea." You guys hear that beeping? That's a truck backing up, and that ruins my recording. I'm just going to make a video on that. Then, he walked by a guy selling fake Louis Vuitton purses and said, "Oh, that's a cool idea. Let's create a video on how to buy a fake purse in New York City." So, he's just walking down the street, coming up with ideas. He emphasizes that these are just small, silly ideas, but he's going to execute them really well. In the next series, he's going to show us how he's actually going to execute these small ideas.
09:32	Noah Kagan	that is awesome
09:32	Sam Parr	kinda cool right
09:33	Noah Kagan	I love that you're still learning. Well, no, I mean, I think people assume that once you get to a certain size, like you, I would assume you don't. But I love that you're still curious and you're exploring how to improve your craft.
09:42	Sam Parr	Yeah, I... well, I don't know anything about video. I've been making videos for my own YouTube just for fun, but I'm trying to learn. So anyway, it's a cool course. It was only like $300.
09:54	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I mean, it is kind of crazy when you think about the things we spend on and the potential value upside you can get out of it. Like, the downside: you lost $300. The upside? I mean, how much could this make you? Or, you know, also consider it from an enjoyment level.
10:05	Sam Parr	well and I was like I I can use the stuff that I'm learning just in the podcast I think
10:10	Noah Kagan	How, like, what have you noticed or observed in your own YouTube channel? I know for my first million, you definitely... you guys have been looking to grow it. It seems like a few things are going on.
10:17	Sam Parr	What I've learned is that things that don't seem like big ideas, but that can be kind of boring, can do really well. For example, I bought the lot next to me and I just filmed a video. I said, "Here's just a video of the house," and I walked around with my iPhone. I explained why I think it could be a good investment and why it might be a bad investment. I posted that on my personal channel, and I didn't have any subscribers. Oh, I sent you that video, and it got like 3,000 to 4,000 views, but it also received a lot of comments. I was just amazed that people cared. It was my first video, and I was surprised that people care about little things that are small and part of your daily life that you don't really think about. So, I think what I'm learning from Casey and from my own stuff is that the small things you think about throughout the day, more likely than not, a lot of other people think about them too. They'll find it interesting enough to watch, you know what I mean?
11:10	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I've always thought about that with the restaurants where they sell their cookbooks. People want to see what happens in the kitchen, and you'd be surprised at how many people want to watch it.
11:19	Sam Parr	so anyway it's a cool course do you wanna talk about mud water
11:24	Noah Kagan	I do, in a second. One other thing I'm curious about is what have you noticed? Because I think, I don't know, this is what I'm curious about as well. What have you noticed about the YouTube channel versus your TikTok channel in terms of the audience, growth, and the experience?
11:34	Sam Parr	So, let me tell you about the TikTok thing. I have a TikTok, but I don't actually post on it. I mean, I did once or twice, but it has no views. So, we did this thing—I was texting you about this—where on the podcast, like, three weeks ago, we said we're going to give $5,000 to maybe at least one, up to three people. It's going to be a combination of if we like your videos and how many views they have. We told people to go to our YouTube, chop up the videos, and post it. So far, the hashtag that we asked people to use has gotten 30,000,000 views in three weeks. Yeah, 30,000,000 views.
12:09	Noah Kagan	sounds too easy go on
12:11	Sam Parr	So, these kids are mostly like 19 to 20-year-olds. One kid in college at Michigan is one of the guys I'm going to start talking to. He created a handle called "MFM Minis" and he started posting our videos. He would animate them and has gotten multiple videos with over 1,000,000 views. You know Fat Fire? Yeah, I made a podcast where I talked about how much I love Fat Fire, the subreddit, which I found through you. He made a video about that and it got so many views that Fat Fire made an announcement on their subreddit saying, "We've been overwhelmed with new applicants." We got 30,000 people in one day, all from the TikTok video where Sam Parr is talking about Fat Fire.
13:01	Noah Kagan	alright well that's wild man so do you think most of the business users should try to do this tiktok stuff
13:04	Sam Parr	Or no, I don't... not most, but definitely some. Right now, of everything that I've seen, it's the fastest way to grow an audience, for sure, without a doubt.
13:16	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I guess I've always been hesitant because of the quality of the audience in terms of the level of engagement. Well, it's not even just the young, right? The young are the future to some extent. But it's like YouTube. I feel like the quality of the people that are really into it and are available during your newsletter, they want to comment. I feel like TikTok is just kind of consumption.
13:31	Sam Parr	I think that YouTube is much higher quality. For a long time, even though my whole life was podcasting, I would criticize it. I thought, "This is not that cool." Now I've changed my mind because I get recognized about 3 or 4 times a week. It's because people listen to my voice for 45 minutes, and they feel like they know me. They become kind of intimate with you. So, do you get recognized from YouTube?
13:57	Noah Kagan	I got recognized. Yeah, it was cool. Sometimes I love it, man. I mean, the whole part of the journey is that... like, this weekend I went to a squash tournament - the Houston Squash Tournament. That's all I...
14:07	Sam Parr	was hilarious
14:08	Noah Kagan	And it was because this guy watches, you know, he's at AppSumo.com. He's watching some of the videos, and I was one of the guys from our company. I was like, "Man, that's why I do social media to some extent." It really provides a cool magnet and window... I don't know if it's a window, but a way to just connect with real interesting people.
14:25	Sam Parr	yeah I think it's awesome
14:26	Noah Kagan	but even if it's that not money like it's a great thing
14:28	Sam Parr	Yeah, I think it's badass, so I'm going to continue to do it. Can I... so basically, Noah has the sheet that he sent me. It's got a list of a ton of things. Can I just read off and ask questions? I actually want to ask you about Chrome extensions because I'm like nerding out on Chrome extensions right now. Have you ever even made one?
14:47	Noah Kagan	I've bought one so we have one right now
14:49	Sam Parr	You have one, so on here, I tweeted out. This is a mutual friend of ours, by the way, but I can't say who it is. They were considering buying a company, and it was a Chrome extension. It was two people who were doing $25 billion a year in sales with their Chrome extension. It's pretty crazy! And then Grammarly, you know Grammarly? I think Grammarly is like a $20 billion company at this point. Grammarly does about $800 million in revenue.
15:19	Noah Kagan	that is what I like these sleeper ones that people kinda just like don't really
15:22	Sam Parr	Dude, Grammarly is the best, man! It started with this guy named Max, who I think is from Ukraine. He lives in Canada and he's a hardcore engineer. I asked him at HustleCon, backstage, about how they bootstrapped it and then raised funding. They raised $100,000,000 at a $1,000,000,000 valuation. I was with them backstage and I said, "Dude, that's amazing! So you're like almost a billionaire now?" He goes, "Yeah, it's pretty cool. The business is way bigger than most people realize." He smirked but was really low-key about it. He said, "Yeah, it's cool. The business is going to be huge." It was awesome! So, Grammarly is a good business. What's your Chrome extension?
16:01	Noah Kagan	leo.i0
16:02	Sam Parr	what's it do
16:03	Noah Kagan	So, it's kind of similar to that momentum one, which I think is pretty popular. It's the main one when you open up a tab; it has a nice background. I think that taking a step back on these Chrome extensions, what's interesting about your tweet—which was like, "This Chrome extension makes $25,000,000"—is what are the things that not everyone else is paying attention to that you can acquire for not a market rate? I think ultimately that's how you can have a lot of success in business, but that's specifically for marketing. A lot of what I look for... So when we launched Sumo.com, I actually bought probably about 5,000,000 installs—give or take—of WordPress plugins. I bought some of the most popular WordPress plugins around.
16:39	Sam Parr	no way which ones
16:42	Noah Kagan	I mean, I have to pull up our list now, but the biggest one was Google Analytics. So it was like a 1,000,000 person install. Yeah, so it was Google Analyticator. We bought WP Fonts, we bought Construction Page. So basically what...
16:54	Sam Parr	we did is wp fonts I used a bunch of those
16:57	Noah Kagan	Yeah, so we scraped the data. It's not just copying this because now people are more aware of it. But what you're looking for is, like, can you get structured data? So we went to the WordPress directory, and you could get all their rankings. I got all the rankings and then sorted them by ones that were not updated recently. I said, "Which ones had the most installs that no one's taken care of?" I would just email them and say, "Hey, you haven't taken care of it. I'll pay you for it." Because there's not a market for it, you can get a cheaper price. Then I just sent a blast email to a lot of these people and picked up millions of installs, and that drove a significant amount of traffic to Sumo.com.
17:29	Sam Parr	did you even pay more than 6 figures for any of them
17:33	Noah Kagan	for the Google analytics 1 they had a 1,000,000 so I paid a 100 k
17:35	Sam Parr	wow that's crazy isn't it
17:37	Noah Kagan	that was the most expensive one I've I I could pull up my price on that one
17:40	Sam Parr	But, for the people listening to WordPress, if you don't use WordPress... I mean, WordPress is used by like three-fourths of the internet or half of the top 10,000 websites. They have this crazy database of all types of apps that you could plug in or use. It's amazing! And Sumo was an email capture plug-in.
18:02	Noah Kagan	Yeah, man, I found our list. We had a lot of them. I bought all in one favicon, just a bunch of random ones. Then we would rebrand them and cross-promote to Sumo.com within WordPress. I was thinking I would do the same. The thing was, there weren't really websites where people were buying and selling them. A lot of these guys weren't monetizing; it was just hobbies. So, I think in marketing and business, you have to look for something that's a problem that other people haven't identified. That's also why I bought the Chrome extension. I bought it for, I think, $25,000 for 40,000 active installs on Chrome. But with that one, we could not monetize it at all. We tried paid features, we tried ads, we tried to grow it, and we were not as successful. So, I pretty much lost almost all the money on that one.
18:46	Sam Parr	what's the cpm on ads for a chrome plug in do you know
18:49	Noah Kagan	I don't remember what it was, but it was abysmal. It wasn't something that we were able to grow dramatically like I thought we could. The WordPress stuff was really cheap; we were getting that stuff super cheap back in the day.
19:00	Sam Parr	That's crazy! There's this guy, like, I think there's this guy who I bet you definitely know. I think his name's Syed... what's his name? Syed... his last name starts with a "B."
19:08	Noah Kagan	syed balaji
19:09	Sam Parr	He owns this thing called "Awesome." What's it called? It's called Awesome Corp or something.
19:15	Noah Kagan	he owns wp beginner he's like the wordpress underground mafia he owns a lot of wordpress blogs
19:20	Sam Parr	Let me explain the story as I know it. So basically, he's young; I think he's from Pakistan and he's only like 28 or 29. He started this thing called WP Beginner, which is a WordPress site. If you search for how to install something on WordPress, he'll show up number one. It gets like 5 to 10 million unique visitors a month—a ton of unique visitors. Using his blog, he would see which plugins would get the most installs. He would say, "Here are all the best forms for WordPress," or "Here are all the best font plugins for WordPress." He would identify the best ones, buy them, and then promote them extra hard on WP Beginner. At this point, I bet he makes $50 million a year on all of his WordPress stuff.
20:06	Noah Kagan	I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I love these industries that everyone's sleeping on. I think the WordPress stuff is really interesting; it probably is still a decent category. What's fascinating, though, is the other side of this, Sam. I actually tried to do the same strategy with Shopify apps. So, I went over to Shopify and we were launching Suma.com on Shopify. I was like, "Man, I'll just go buy all these people over there." What was interesting was that a lot of the people on Shopify were a little bit more savvy, and they had recurring revenue. So, they were like, "We want 10 times the price," where the WordPress plugins weren't really making money. I was like, "Hey, I'll pay 1 cent for every active install you have." So, I was getting them for very, very cheap. But the Shopify ones? I couldn't—I literally couldn't buy them myself.
20:45	Sam Parr	Our friend Andrew Wilkinson bought a couple of them. He rolled them up and eventually took it public. It is currently public on the Canadian Stock Exchange right now, probably with a $600,000,000 market cap. It's called WeCommerce, and they do, I think, $30,000,000 a year in revenue just off Shopify apps.
21:05	Noah Kagan	The Shopify ecosystem was interesting. I mean, it's interesting if you can create something really easily and other people can copy you just as easily. Then, you don't control the payments. It was a whole wild experience in there because Shopify controls all the money; you don't. You have to wait for your grandpa to give you your nickels, and they control the whole thing. So, we're like, "Let's get the hell out of this world." But yeah, WeCommerce looks like 535 Canadian, which is what, like, $100,000,000 American?
21:30	Sam Parr	No, not that bad. Yeah, it's like, "What's the conversion of Monopoly money to USD?" No, I think it's almost one-to-one. What? So, are you bullish? Are you into Chrome... shit, Chrome plugins?
21:46	Noah Kagan	I've pulled... nah, I'm not as excited about that. I think what's interesting is to look at the areas that are either super early on, where savvy people haven't gotten into. For example, one of the older stories for me was Facebook newsfeed ads. So, look for these ad channels or places that not a lot of people are paying attention to. When newsfeed ads came out, no one was doing it, and we went bonkers on it. That was a huge driver at AppSumo for a lot of our growth because it was just so much cheaper. If you're paying in the market, you're going to pay market rate, and that's not how you're going to... what?
22:17	Sam Parr	did you use to get clicks for on facebook
22:20	Noah Kagan	oh man let me pull it up
22:21	Sam Parr	pennies or
22:22	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it's pennies, but it's definitely like dollar email subscribers and then low 10 figures for paying customers. Now, I think AppSumo would have to pull up our dashboard, but I mean, I think we're paying like $60 for a paying customer now.
22:34	Sam Parr	It's so expensive when we start. So, we got to like 200,000 subscribers just through blogging. Then we started doing paid marketing, and I think we paid $1.50 when we sold it. It might have been like $4. If I had to guess now, I wouldn't be surprised if it's $6 to $8.
22:53	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I still think there's opportunity. I mean, the opportunities are always there. It's just that you have to be creative and you have to look. So, like for me, I was thinking about this recently. If I was trying to grow a newsletter, I would probably try to sponsor super micro people on TikTok and YouTube. These are guys and girls that have less than 10,000 subscribers. For example, if your channel has like 966 subscribers, you'd be a perfect person because you have an engaged audience. You're super small, and you don't know how much money you're supposed to be making. The fact that I'm giving you attention is kind of like what I did at Mint.com. We've done this with AppSumo, and Mitchell on our team is doing it with AppSumo currently. I think that's still a really affordable way.
23:26	Sam Parr	let me ask you about
23:27	Noah Kagan	creative way to to get a lot of money
23:28	Sam Parr	ask you about mitt so mint you were like the one of the first hires there right
23:34	Noah Kagan	yeah I was number 4
23:35	Sam Parr	And mint eventually, at the time, it sold for like $120,000,000 or $200,000,000, something like that, right?
23:41	Noah Kagan	yeah one 70
23:42	Sam Parr	And at the time, that was considered massive. It's still a lot of money, but particularly then, it was like it might as well have been a billion dollars. I loved Mitt [Romney, presumably]. It sucks now though... I don't like Mitt.
23:54	Noah Kagan	totally
23:54	Sam Parr	why what would you do differently if you were running the show now
23:59	Noah Kagan	Oh wow! I mean, Aaron was running the show, to be clear, and he was really impressive. I gotta give him props. When he started it, I want to talk about this because I think your audience... I don't know, I've been thinking about this a lot. I think it resonates with your audience. Aaron worked alone in his room by himself for six months, building a prototype. Then he came out and convinced the world to come check out this product. I just have a lot of admiration and respect for people like him. Like, we have an intern, George; he's living in my guest house.
24:25	Sam Parr	I know I met him
24:26	Noah Kagan	he works did did he he's working
24:28	Sam Parr	moved from miami or sorry
24:30	Noah Kagan	Hawaii... From Hawaii to live in... He was living in another room. His desk was an Amazon box. Right now, his desk is my washer and dryer.
24:40	Sam Parr	that's awesome
24:41	Noah Kagan	Right, and he's like... I mean, the thing is, I think with Aaron Patzer, as well as you know, these people, as well as myself, I was living on floors within my aunt's basement. There's something to be said for the sacrifice and the dream. I have a lot of respect for Aaron and George. Even back in the day, with where I was at getting all this stuff started with Mint, I think... I mean, look at how big some of these finance companies are. Look at Plaid, right? We used another company before Plaid was ever a thing, and Plaid is now worth $10 billion. I think some of the stupidest companies that are big, that I don't get, are like Brex or Ramp. They're like credit card branded companies that are worth $10 billion.
25:15	Sam Parr	Why don't you understand that it's pretty simple? They just convince you to sign up for their credit card, and they split the 1% fee with MasterCard on all your spending.
25:22	Noah Kagan	I know, but the fact that that's a $10 billion industry... I mean, it just kind of doesn't seem like there's a lot of value added. But it's almost similar to the Mint thing, which is they took a product that existed, which was this bank information, and they printed it up. So I think Mint could have played a much larger role. The VCs were definitely disappointed when Mint sold out. I thought Mint was going to sell for that price; that's why I left early.
25:43	Sam Parr	why why did you think it was gonna sell for that price
25:48	Noah Kagan	I thought the vision for [the company] is always interesting to think about people's visions. Like, Mark's vision at Facebook was always this big. It's interesting to see different people and how big they're thinking. Aaron thought big, but it was like, "Hey, we're gonna sell credit cards and we're gonna sell people TurboTax." I was like, "Okay, at best, this scenario is gonna sell for half a billion dollars," just in terms of how big that company could actually be. I just did the math to think about, well, I own 1%. So, at max, I'll get $5,000,000 pretax, which post-tax means I'll get $2,000,000. I was like, "Well, I think, you know, in four years, do I think I can generate $2,000,000 for myself?" And so, I was willing to take that bet.
26:25	Sam Parr	Did... that's kind of interesting because I don't think that. I think that big. I mean, I would say like most people would think $500,000,000 is a pretty big exit. What could he have done differently to think bigger? I mean, what would a bigger example be?
26:41	Noah Kagan	And so, let me be clear: I don't care... I don't care what people's visions are, per se. Everyone should have whatever dream they want. If your dream is to make $5,000 a month or $500 a month, I'm not hating on anybody's dream. It was just, I think there's a lot to consider. Look at how big the fintech space is today, right? Like, Plaid alone just almost got bought by Visa for $7,000,000,000. You have Robinhood, which is valued at whatever, $15,000,000,000. So, what Mint did, which was really interesting, was it acquired a lot of customers really cheaply. I think if they hadn't sold out to Intuit as early, there would have been a lot of different avenues that they could have parlayed this audience of young people who are interested in personal finance into. At the same time, though, dude, if someone came to you and you know... you did take that. You did take it, which is a good thing too.
27:26	Sam Parr	was he wealthy
27:27	Noah Kagan	You can make... How old was he? I mean, he was definitely educated, but he had a chance to cash out. I think he cashed out $30 to $50 million. I also think he moved to some remote area in New Zealand, and he's just living there now.
27:41	Sam Parr	Yeah, well, he started like an ambulance company, like software for ambulances or something like that. But like...
27:48	Noah Kagan	Aaron, he's a creative guy. He actually tried to start a sky subway system.
27:54	Sam Parr	that's crazy
27:54	Noah Kagan	So, like in cities, such as Austin, instead of having an underground subway, it would be an air-based subway. I was like, "Yeah, he's just crazy; he's creative." But look, I think everyone’s got to figure out what they want their own life to be like. There's no bad or worse in selling out stuff. I guess lately, I've been just thinking about, with this one life we have here on Earth, how interesting do we each want to make it?
28:16	Sam Parr	Yes, but I will play devil's advocate. It's also about how hard you want to grind. Do you want to? Because I think that in order to make cool shit, I can't decide how I feel at the moment. Actually, for the longest time, I was like, "Dude, in order to make something huge and amazing, you gotta just lock yourself in a room for like 3 years." You just have to grind. Now, my thinking is that you actually only need to do that early on, and then you can somewhat let up. So, where's your opinion on that? Do you have to grind all the time in order to make something happen, or do you think you can have a little bit more balance? Because if you have to grind all the time, that's just exhausting. I only have that so many times in my life.
28:57	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I guess I'm just trying to think of different examples. Like for me, if you would have told me when I started AppSumo, "Hey, you'll be a millionaire, but it's gonna take 10 years," I probably wouldn't have started.
29:09	Sam Parr	sure
29:11	Noah Kagan	And most of the people that I've seen, like one of my buddies, is now making 8 figures as an investor. It took him probably about 10 to 15 years to get to that place. So the reality... I was thinking about today, like there's one of our guys who I got pedicures with today. He's on the sales team, and I was like, "Look, you can be as big of a life and a career as you want it to be. It's just like, what path do you want to take that on, and are you willing to put in the work?" But I honestly... I kind of think the opposite, Sam. I don't think of what I'm doing with AppSumo and YouTube as a grind. Like, I'm actually... your podcast, what you're doing now, does this feel like a grind?
29:45	Sam Parr	Most of the time, no. But it doesn't feel great all the time. Some days, I'm like, "I don't feel like being happy." Like, I'm in a pissy mood. Here's an example: Sean, my co-host, who's out with COVID, is late every single time. He's 5 minutes late every single time. Every once in a while, it'll put me in such a bad mood that I don't want to record. On those days, I'm like, "I fucking hate this. I don't want to do this." I gotta snap out of this mood of being a good host. So anyway, it's not always fun.
30:13	Noah Kagan	I mean, I think about my buddy Adam Gilbert. It's like the times that you don't want to show up are when it counts. I think about that a lot of times when I'm like, "It's the things you're doing when no one else is watching that matter." That's like going to the gym when no one wants to do it. Or like last night at 7:30, I didn't feel like doing a podcast, but it was like, "Okay, it needed to get done." I think that, you know, that'll help you separate whether you want to get some of the things in life you want or not. Are you willing to sacrifice, and for how long? I was thinking about this equation: I wonder if there's a time sacrifice equals success equation, plus a little bit of unhappiness. If you could do that for some time, you'll get success.
30:53	Sam Parr	I think it's... the way that I approach it is by asking myself, "What am I willing to pay in order to achieve [blank]?" To me, that's like asking, "What price am I going to pay in order to reach this particular goal?" I ask myself if I am willing to pay that price. Sometimes I am, and sometimes I'm not. At my current stage in life, it's about whether I want to grind for a long time on a software company to achieve a certain amount of money. Right now, I'm like, "No, I don't want to pay that price." Maybe in the future I would, and for sure when I was younger, I would have, but not at this point in my life.
31:32	Noah Kagan	I think with all this stuff, it's better not to be naive and just get going. Well, just find the things that you're curious about. Like if it's, you know, your audio editor Benjie, and be like, "Look, I like making these audio shows. I'm just gonna go for it." Or lately, you know, like I've been really enjoying AppSumo work or doing the YouTube stuff. It's better to just... almost not think about it because I think you'll psych yourself out. Like one of the stories we were talking about on the sheet was this Mud\Water guy...
31:57	Sam Parr	yeah what and
31:58	Noah Kagan	This guy just had, like, a... dude, this is crazy! Yeah, I mean, it's just a stoop. It's basically Indian chai tea. You ever heard of Indian chai? Dude, it's delicious! I love it.
32:08	Sam Parr	yeah you have a really good video of I watched the video of you testing it out and I bought it because of that
32:14	Noah Kagan	Oh, oh yeah, cool. I wasn't sponsored; it wasn't affiliated or anything. It was just this guy with one product, which I always find really fascinating. I think a lot of us get so excited to have like 18 business ideas, but Apple, MudWtr, and a lot of other people are making a significant amount of money just with one thing. So, he was having a... I think he was at an agency, just a regular day job. I think everyone should get a day job or some basic income. What I find fascinating is the question: "What's a problem you have, and what's a big category?" Coffee is one of the biggest categories in the world. I love that he kind of said, "Alright, what's the angle against them?" He created his own version, literally, I think by buying products off Amazon and just mixing them together.
32:55	Sam Parr	how's it going he's not
32:56	Noah Kagan	Like some coffee? What's that? I think he's... I mean, last we heard it was a $60,000,000 revenue, which revenue is always different than profit, as I'm sure you know. But it's just fascinating that he found one product line, did great branding, and just really went hard on that.
33:11	Sam Parr	$68,000,000 is so much money it makes 60 it does 60,000,000 in sales that's crazy
33:16	Noah Kagan	I wouldn't be surprised if it's more. I think when you're thinking about business ideas, number one, what's the problem that we have ourselves? That's always just like the easiest way that I try to solve it for me. Like one problem I had recently was that I'm trying to be a doomsday prepper.
33:29	Sam Parr	same
33:29	Noah Kagan	and I want like a doomsday I want a doomsday prepper in a box same like I just dude bro we had
33:34	Sam Parr	a total episode on that clearly you read tucker max's article we had a total
33:38	Noah Kagan	I did see his I did see his article this is I this is a little bit before because we had our snow pocalypse
33:43	Sam Parr	same and I'm looking at generators already because I know it's I'm afraid yeah
33:46	Noah Kagan	I just got mine
33:47	Sam Parr	what did what how much did you spend like a $1,000 generator
33:50	Noah Kagan	it was a $1,000 generator
33:51	Sam Parr	That's what I'm thinking about getting. Dude, those generators are not that strong. They only charge like four things at a time; they can only be used on about four things at once.
33:58	Noah Kagan	I'm just gonna basically have a generator to a tent and then when the doomsday comes just like come knock on my tent door
34:03	Sam Parr	Dude, I would love a doomsday in a box. I'm so on board! The problem is that a lot of the doomsday stuff assumes that you live in the country. I'm like, no, I need the urban version of this. So, tell me: how do I store water? Should I have a gun or not? What type of generator should I get? What do you use the generator for? All that type of stuff.
34:24	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I mean, I think coming back to what we're talking about, it's like with Mud Water and business ideas. It's just like, one, go to the things that you need help with, right? Then just start thinking, "Alright, how do I do that today?" So, for this doomsday idea, I would hit up Neville and other friends in Austin and say, "Hey, I'm starting to put together a thing. Do you want something like this?" Then, see if I can get anyone to buy into it before I start. From there, if that works, then maybe launch a Shopify site or just start doing YouTube content around that.
34:51	Sam Parr	yeah just wire cutter for the end of the world
34:55	Noah Kagan	Honestly, that's a huge category, especially nowadays. All the stores are out. I think people are a little bit more aware that that could happen.
35:02	Sam Parr	We have this friend named Ryan Dice. Ryan Dice started Digital Marketer, which is a pretty sizable business that does all types of stuff. He owned a conference that he sold for a lot of money. But pre-pandemic, like two years before the pandemic, he owned a website called something like "Survival."
35:17	Noah Kagan	oh yeah
35:18	Sam Parr	It was... I forget what it was called. And who would have known? But had he held on to it towards like COVID times, it would have been sold for so much more because now it's so much more popular. He had this website, and it talked all about articles. It was basically articles and affiliates on which flashlight to buy for the end of the world. I'm almost positive that he sold it for around the 8-figure range.
35:44	Noah Kagan	that's bomb
35:45	Sam Parr	do you remember that site what was it called
35:46	Noah Kagan	I guess I don't remember the exact thing... survival something. So I remember seeing it and I'm like, "Oh, that's shady."
35:52	Sam Parr	me too I thought
35:53	Noah Kagan	That too. It wasn't shady, but now I want it. Yeah, it wasn't shady, it was just... I didn't understand it. I think sometimes I'll dismiss people or dismiss businesses about that, but I think coming back to like business ideas and one-person businesses... Like I was thinking about the crypto space as well, and or just all this stuff. It's like, you don't have money and you can't buy it? You can always just document it. Just go review it, like you said. It's like your idea: be the Wirecutter of these different categories. Be the TikToker or YouTuber or whatever that is.
36:17	Sam Parr	what's the best selling product ever for appsumo
36:22	Noah Kagan	Oh, on a digital side, dude, I'll also tell you another business idea I would love for someone to start. I'm going to pull up our forever list. Hold on, I'm literally just pulling up our back end. The top product of all time, and this is a shocker, probably fonts.
36:36	Sam Parr	or stickers
36:39	Noah Kagan	okay ben do you have a thought
36:42	Ben Wilson	I have no guess
36:43	Sam Parr	No, nothing. Maybe fonts or something involved with photos. Photos or fonts, maybe.
36:50	Noah Kagan	There it is! So, our top sale ever... Last year, we had our highest day. Black Friday was our highest day, almost $2,000,000 in that one day. We paid out at least half of that to creators, which is fucking wild. The top product... oh, this is interesting! The top product was a video editor. There was a lot of video content. So, if you want to get a video editing tool, the second one was photos.
37:16	Sam Parr	what I'm
37:17	Noah Kagan	just looking at the stats
37:17	Sam Parr	Some other interesting trends. Like, oh wow, have you guys ever invested in companies just because you're able to look at the AppSumo stats?
37:26	Noah Kagan	So, that's something we've gone back and forth on. Here's another point: taking a step back, I know a lot of your people want to make their first million and beyond. Here's another product category: tools for agencies. But if you think about what that really is... I can't say the product because it's his private numbers, but basically, it's stuff to help agencies manage their project management. But the real thing, what would you think about?
37:46	Sam Parr	What's a tangential bit? What's another example that you... so like, basically Asana for agencies?
37:53	Noah Kagan	Yeah, like ClickUp... something like a ClickUp alternative. We have a lot of that on AppSumo. But anyway, what's interesting about that is, and this actually surprised me when I came back to work at AppSumo, is: what are the things that you can sell to help people make money?
38:07	Sam Parr	Well, our friend Neville says it slightly differently. He says, "Well, I sell this course and people like it, but really what I'm learning is that when someone gives me money for a course, I'm just putting them to work." He explains that if you really wanted to make a lot of money, you would just do the work for them and charge them money. That's how he explained it, which is similar. So, what are some of the other top ones on AppSumo?
38:31	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I'm looking them up. So dude, the stock photos is a sleeper. I'm shocked at how many people want like stock audio, stock photos, stock video. Secondly is video editing, which if you're not technical, that's probably harder to do. This is the area that blew up a lot last year and it's still going, which is all this GPT-3 auto content stuff. So auto ads, auto writing... like Copy.ai alternatives, yeah.
38:57	Sam Parr	I'm an investor in copy
38:58	Noah Kagan	So, we promoted Rytr and HappyScribe. I'm looking up the other major ones around that. Those are just some of the ones that I'm shocked at how well they've done. But I mean, I think the cool part about Sumo, and people should check it out, is that there are a lot of new products that you can honestly check out to see what's getting popular. Then, you can make some type of alternative or create training around those types of products.
39:21	Sam Parr	products ever invest in stuff based off the appsumo data
39:24	Noah Kagan	Oh, you know, I've actually invested differently. So we've talked about this over the 11 years of the company. Like, "Hey, they're doing well. Instead of us taking a split of the sales, what if we took equity instead?" And I would have liked... I mean, dude, think about this. We've promoted Hopin; they're worth $8 billion. We've promoted Udemy, Mixpanel, Optimizely, Mailchimp, Fresh. I mean, if we took some splits, it would have been a different trajectory for our company. But it's just not something we've done. I do it differently. I invest in the companies that we use in our company.
39:57	Sam Parr	sure like like like like what
40:01	Noah Kagan	At Atlassian, I went and invested. So when we were building Shopify apps five years ago, I was like, "I don't know if our Shopify apps are gonna work, but I'll put $10,000 in Shopify stock when it just started." So if our apps suck, I think the Shopify thing will probably work. That Shopify stock now is like $60,000. But Atlassian and HubSpot, I bought a lot of HubSpot stock once we started transitioning a lot of our team to HubSpot. I think where I just think about it is like, where do I have an advantage or understanding that other people may not?
40:26	Sam Parr	Yeah, how many products have you guys promoted on AppSumo? Like 100 or 1,000?
40:33	Noah Kagan	a 1,000 I mean we've been in 11 years I think right now on appsumo we have 11,000 products
40:37	Sam Parr	fuck
40:39	Noah Kagan	yeah it's definitely gone a little wild as we become a software marketplace
40:43	Sam Parr	that's crazy
40:43	Noah Kagan	but 10,493 products
40:46	Sam Parr	So, when we... like, years ago, or a couple of years ago, we had Zoom as one of our advertisers. This was before they went public, and the ad crushed it. It was so good! We were like, "Damn, dude, people love this product. They love Zoom!" I ended up buying stock right before or right at the IPO, and it knocked it out of the park. I think there is interesting stuff where you can see... you could see interesting information because you're like WP Beginner, because you're like AppSumo, because you're like The Hustle, and you could see inside of this stuff.
41:18	Noah Kagan	Yeah, it's like... for everyone out there, it's about finding where you have an advantage. Maybe you're in Discord all day, so you know what NFTs are going to be popping. Or maybe it's out there in the Twitter world, so you know about different stocks or different people talking about various things. I think it's just about finding some advantage or area where you can gain an unfair competitive advantage.
41:35	Sam Parr	what other ideas interest you
41:38	Noah Kagan	I'm trying to think of it... Just like the stuff lately. I mean, that's interesting to me. It's basically like 3 or 4 areas. 1. I still think software is gigantic.
41:45	Sam Parr	what specifically there's just so many what's that specifically
41:49	Noah Kagan	I mean, for me, content creation is definitely the area that I've spent a lot of time in. I would love software on how to figure out which topics are going to be popular. We spend, I don't know how many people hours, probably around 10 hours a week just to figure out which video to make each week. So, there's got to be a more optimized way to do that. I think with AppSumo, it's the same kind of idea. We have a team of, I think, around four people that full-time just try software all across the internet. What their only job is... they're called like LDRs. I don't even know what their titles are anymore; they don't tell me. But their job is to go to Product Hunt, go to Google, go to Twitter, go to all these beta lists, and try the different software all across the internet. Then, they see which ones are worthy to get, you know, blasted on AppSumo.com. So, that feels like it should actually be a software solution. A lot of it is just about what are the things we're doing manually that we could automate. For me, finding topics is big, and finding products for AppSumo is big. I'm super excited about, you know, I think a lot of people are in the crypto space. One of the things that I'm looking for is how to scrape Twitter and Reddit to find the next big thing before everyone else. So, kind of like a Google Trends or a discovery tool for these crypto NFTs. How do you do that now? I don't know.
43:07	Sam Parr	got it
43:07	Noah Kagan	I mean, it's just too hard manually. Right now, what I do is text my friend who basically spends 16 hours a day doing NFTs. I'm like, "Which one are you buying?" So, a few days ago, I bought a hippo.
43:18	Sam Parr	did it work
43:18	Noah Kagan	Did I tell you about the time I bought a $5,000... was it? How much was it? How much did I spend on that? I think I... no, it's only almost $2,000 for a hippo. But it's part of a casino. So if the casino makes money, if you own one of the NFTs, you get a cut of the casino rake.
43:33	Sam Parr	so sean it
43:34	Noah Kagan	feels like a scam to me
43:35	Sam Parr	Sean created an email list the other day, and he called it "The Milk Road." I don't know if it's daily or weekly, but Sarah's been getting it and loves it. It's all about crypto, and he tries to talk about the latest and greatest from a trustworthy point of view. It's pretty great - The Milk Road is awesome. That's a great idea!
43:54	Noah Kagan	the milk road what is he recommending
43:56	Sam Parr	I haven't read it yet because I don't like crypto, but Sarah's been reading it. He'll just say, "People are tweeting out..." The weird thing about crypto and NFTs is that it's on Twitter. It's in groups that you have to be on the inside to know what's legit. There are these stupid discourse groups, Discord groups, and these weird Twitter folks where you have to know who to follow. He'll be like, "Blank is tweeting about blank. That's interesting because of..." and then he'll explain. So, it's kind of interesting.
44:28	Noah Kagan	I think what's interesting about a lot of these side hustle ideas is that we put together the top ones around crypto. If you're poor, meaning if you want to be in crypto but you have no money, there are a lot of ways to do it. One of them is just documenting a lot of this stuff. You could start a newsletter, researching and putting out, "Hey, here are things that are interesting that I'm seeing about it." Eventually, that's how you become an expert in these different areas. How many... the other... go ahead.
44:52	Sam Parr	no no how many coaches do you have in your life
44:56	Noah Kagan	Oh, right now, not as much. I have a CEO coach. There's a guy I've been working with named Ken Coleman out of the Bay Area.
45:03	Sam Parr	what's what's the what is the what firm is that torch or is it
45:07	Noah Kagan	He's just an independent. Ken's like old school - he's not tweeting, he's not on YouTube. He's just been around Silicon Valley in a lot of these different kinds of companies. A lot of his stuff is very... like really obvious euphemisms. For example, "Leaders know, leaders lead."
45:25	Sam Parr	he's basically like a dad
45:26	Noah Kagan	He's like, "Yeah, he's great. Who are the coaches over here?" Then I have a CEO advisor, a guy named Raj who works at Indeed. He's phenomenal. He's a little bit more operational, so I go to him with different people and say, "Yo, here are the things that I'm seeing today. What do you think I should be doing about it?" I also have a Hebrew coach right now, and I'm looking for a squash coach. I've really been getting into squash, but that's actually been a harder coach to find.
45:52	Sam Parr	So, I... you like, you've always been into coaches and you've always done lessons. I love coaches, man! Lessons. And so, like, you've always had flight lessons or like...
46:01	Noah Kagan	oh yeah
46:02	Sam Parr	but I think you used to do boxing and so after we started
46:05	Noah Kagan	boxing's on friday still doing it
46:06	Sam Parr	So, after I talked to you, I started hiring coaches. Coaches are pretty sick! I've got a bunch of them now, and they are badass. Most of my coaches are fitness-related, but if I want to learn something, I always hire a coach now. It's 100% the way to go.
46:25	Noah Kagan	dude I love I'm glad that's cool to hear that man so you have you have fitness coach well for your boxing
46:28	Sam Parr	Like a boxing [coach], yeah. And so he's... because I'm trying to fight and prepare for a real match, and so he's helping me. Then I have a fitness coach as well. For a little while, I did My Body Tutor, but I have a different nutritionist now. So yeah, I'm all about coaches.
46:47	Noah Kagan	I think for people, especially if you don't have money to do something like that, it's more about how do you just get someone to hold you accountable. At the end of the day, one of the things I found reliable is just having an accountability buddy. So, if you're trying to start a hustle, if you're trying to be healthy, and you can't afford a coach, that's an easy way to find someone to help you make sure that you're staying on your path.
47:05	Sam Parr	do you use
47:05	Noah Kagan	like maybe it's in your the hustle facebook group
47:08	Sam Parr	What do you use to track all your stuff that you have going on? Like, you have 2, 3, or 4 coaches at any given time. You've got your work, and you've always got things going on. Do you have some weird way that you track all this?
47:23	Noah Kagan	I track all of it. I mean, most of my stuff is just automatic, so I don't really have to track it. Every Friday, my calendar is pretty much as automatic as possible. I think I've talked about this in the past; it's color-coded, right? So, every Friday at 10 AM is boxing. That's just automatic. Then, generally, flying is going to be every other week, and that's yellow, which is one of my learning categories. Hebrew is on Thursdays, and therapy is every other Wednesday at 11. That's also yellow, so yellow is my learning category. I do squash and steam, where we play squash and go to the steam room. That's not really with a coach, but I think if you can have more things on autopilot, so you don't have to think about it, then you don't have to track it. The only thing I actively—not aggressively—have tracked for 15 years is my personal finance.
48:10	Sam Parr	what do you what do you use
48:11	Noah Kagan	so every single I use a spreadsheet
48:13	Sam Parr	every one does
48:14	Noah Kagan	So if you go to, I think on OkDork.com, "Where's My Money," it's literally just: 1. What are my assets? 2. What are my liabilities? 3. What are some action items I want to take in the next 30 days?
48:25	Sam Parr	Do you, when you're tracking any of that, count privately held stock as anything?
48:33	Noah Kagan	And then we can talk about AppSumo KPIs because there are some interesting stuff how we track there. And then the YouTube tracking. So, more business-related stuff. In my net worksheet, I only track the cost basis.
48:45	Sam Parr	well but but
48:46	Noah Kagan	so I don't track like
48:47	Sam Parr	how how do you have evaluation
48:49	Noah Kagan	No, no. So I literally just track how much I invested in it. I invested in companies like Circle, Buffer, Element, and Huckberry. I only invest in companies I use; I don't invest in anything I don't use. So I just track that. I put $10,000 in, and that's just what it is. I don't track the appreciation on that at all.
49:08	Sam Parr	Buffer is an interesting company. So, Buffer, when I was younger, around 24 or 25, was the most badass company because they did this thing where they revealed all of their revenue. At the time, that was revolutionary. Some small-time bloggers were doing it, but Buffer started doing it. However, their company has totally stalled, hasn't it? Like their revenue...
49:34	Noah Kagan	that's a tough one like $25,000,000
49:36	Sam Parr	every single year for like the last 3 years
49:39	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I invested in them because I love Leo and I love Joel. They're very innovative. At the time, I think what people don't give like Zuckerberg and some of these people credit for is how do you stay relevant and consistent? Same with Tim Ferriss. How do you stay relevant for 15 years? It's very easy to come out hot, but to actually kind of have that stuff...
49:56	Sam Parr	how does zuck do it
49:57	Noah Kagan	You know, for anyone out there, well, I think for anyone, it's just like you have to stay consistent with it. You have to kind of keep staying on that edge, a little bit uncomfortable. I think with Buffer, they basically... my guess is that they hit a market saturation of how valuable that is for people to pay for their tweets.
50:13	Sam Parr	yeah I'm looking at the revenue it's not as valuable to it's gone down since 2019
50:18	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I mean, I think they haven't... Well, here's the interesting thing: they've gone down. But Canva is a $40 billion company, and it's pretty much the exact same thing. What's the difference?
50:27	Sam Parr	Canva is the same thing as Buffer? Are you on drugs? What are you talking about? Canva is amazing! Canva!
50:33	Noah Kagan	It's the same thing. It's "How do I create content that I can then share or post in other places?" But I think where they evolved past Buffer, which Buffer was like, "I'm gonna help you make your content for Twitter or Facebook" (which really didn't make a difference), and then Canva's like, "Well, what if we can help you make these templates that you can just use in social media but as well through a lot of other categories?" So I think that's kind of like market size is where they, I think, iterated better than... not iterated, but picked a better market. Same as AppSumo, we got lucky with this market.
51:00	Sam Parr	Canva is going to be... software just got... Canva is going to be one of the most valuable publicly traded companies, I think, in the world when they go public. Dude, have you seen their numbers? They've just crossed $1 billion in revenue and it's like doubling. Really, Canva is killing it, man. They've raised money at a $40 billion valuation because they grew their revenue from $500 million to $1 billion in a year. And it's on a tear, man. Canva's amazing.
51:27	Noah Kagan	that is bonkers man
51:28	Sam Parr	Canva is crazy! What's crazy is that the founders are a husband and wife duo, and they bootstrapped it for a long time. So, the husband and wife couple is worth like $15 to $20 billion right now.
51:40	Noah Kagan	good for them man
51:41	Sam Parr	It's nuts! Good for them. Canva is a crazy story. We're going to have to cover Canva next time because they're growing like crazy.
51:47	Noah Kagan	she wanted to
51:48	Sam Parr	I have no idea how they grow so fast
51:51	Noah Kagan	One thing I do want to come back on, Sam. I was talking to Mitchell on the back end. One thing that I do in tracking that I've told people, and I always find it pretty interesting, is that I do monthly life reviews. I told you about this.
52:02	Sam Parr	every month
52:03	Noah Kagan	Yeah, it's actually been... I mean, it's kind of a routine. So every month, and I've done this now for about 7 years, I send an email to Tynan, Nick Gray, my buddy Jimmy, and Leo. You basically just review your past month. I actually started sending it to my brother, my buddy Johnny, and a few other close friends. It's pretty fascinating to track what's happened in a month. It's been fun to go back to see what was happening in my life years ago. But it's also interesting to look at all the photos from the month, reflect on what happened, understand more about myself, and then think about what I want to have upcoming in January.
52:37	Sam Parr	what do you
52:37	Noah Kagan	but I think that's been one
52:38	Sam Parr	so what I'll what I'll do reveal in that email I'm gonna copy that so you you have
52:42	Noah Kagan	Photos... So, I'll just tell you. I don't share my photos, but basically what I'll do is pull up my photos from December and look through them from the beginning to the end. I'm like, "Damn, a lot of stuff happened," versus what I think happened. Let me just start with December. I put, "December was a fucking month," 6 out of 10. It may not be my greatest, but maybe it was actually better than I think. Then I'll start the email with, "What are the things I said I was going to do in December, and how did I do against them?" A few of them were like being at peace with my drinking, and I was not at peace with my drinking. I said I'd go to a Niners game, which I did. I locked that in on my 2022 bucket list, which I also did. Then I'll just try to do a little bit more of a stream of consciousness review of how the month actually went, about themes like work, travel, and family. I've tried it with categories and I've also tried just free-flowing. There's not one way that works for everyone. I think the important thing here is having a group of people that you can send it to. They don't even have to give you feedback; you don't need their opinion. But it's just like, "Here's my life, how's your life?" And if you want opinions, you can ask.
53:49	Sam Parr	ever make that public and also
53:51	Noah Kagan	this is way too raw to make public it's like
53:56	Sam Parr	such good content I would love to like to read
53:58	Noah Kagan	this shit I mean I'll send you I'll send you the december one just don't share it but it's just like
54:02	Sam Parr	Well, I'm just saying, like, I'm thinking, would I do that as a blog? It's pretty cool. The end-of-year reviews for a lot of people. The reason why I started thinking about Syed recently, the guy from WPBeginner, is because he has this end-of-year review, and I always love reading his end-of-year review.
54:18	Noah Kagan	I didn't really see... I'll look him up. Some of this stuff has... like, we did this wild therapy out in Mexico on the beach, which was just like psychedelics. And some of this stuff is just really sensitive, yeah. But I don't know if I'd want to make it public. I'll send you the...
54:34	Sam Parr	Link right back really quick and then we'll wrap up. But did that stuff make a difference? Just doing psychedelic therapy, which I told the story about how I almost did it one time, but I got kicked out of the group. Did it? Why did...?
54:44	Noah Kagan	you get kicked out
54:46	Sam Parr	This lady used to work at Lehman Brothers. She worked at the banks that helped destroy America, right? And she got mad at us for talking about money too much. She was saying how her medicine needs to be free for the world, but she was making me pay $2,000. I was like, "Lady, you realize how hypocritical you are? You're talking about how capitalism ruins everything, but you worked at Lehman Brothers and you're making me pay you $2,000 to do drugs with you?" Like, come on! Don't act like your shit doesn't stink. And she kicked me out of the group, so I didn't get to actually do it with her.
55:22	Noah Kagan	you couldn't have your self improvement
55:24	Sam Parr	yeah I didn't she didn't let me do drugs with her
55:28	Noah Kagan	I do wanna end mitchell was mitchell was messaging me he's like yo you gotta do your favorite purchases or website
55:32	Sam Parr	but tell me really quick did the therapy work
55:35	Noah Kagan	So, I've done a lot of different therapy. I've done ayahuasca, which I put an article out about that went viral. If you read that article...
55:40	Sam Parr	If I remember correctly, the takeaway was that it was cool. It made somewhat of a difference, but it wasn't that great.
55:49	Noah Kagan	No, it's definitely impactful. It's just intense. I mean, I think there are a lot of different ways to eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. What I always think about is LSD therapy, and I think the main theme that I took away from that specific experience—well, a theme in general for me—is: How much should we have life be super predetermined? Like, I want to go make this much money or I want to go on this vacation. Versus, how much should we just let the day unfold?
56:13	Sam Parr	and
56:14	Noah Kagan	I think that's where... that was definitely a theme I was trying to just understand. I think the big theme from that specific experience is: how do I let more joy in my life? Right? Like, my word of the year is smile.
56:24	Sam Parr	like I I used to have an intent
56:26	Noah Kagan	Yeah, like to have an intent or something in the year. For me, "smile" is just like, "Yo, just enjoy it." Right? We're all gonna die someday, so just enjoy the grind. Enjoy getting to chat with you today, which... yeah, I was like, this is probably the highlight of my day. Well, I have a buddy coming at 6:30, but I was like, "I really wanna talk to Sam today." Like, I'm looking forward to it.
56:41	Sam Parr	it can
56:42	Noah Kagan	So that was the main theme from that experience. I think there are a lot of ways to learn about ourselves. I think, you know, MDMA or LSD therapy, regular therapy, journaling... there are a lot of different ways. You know, whatever is calling people at the right time.
56:53	Sam Parr	What are your... Alright, Mitchell was telling me this, or he wrote it in the thing about "Best Stuff to Buy for Under $100." You and I are the same in that we buy lots of crap just because... like, we're both obsessed with gadgets. By the way, you sent me over... So I told Noah I was going camping, and he sent me over this massive Tupperware container with all these gadgets. There was candy in there that expired in like 2012. Like, I went camping...
57:21	Noah Kagan	any of the gadgets in there do you use any of the
57:22	Sam Parr	Yeah, I went camping and I used your lantern. I also used one of the flashlights and a headlamp. I saw... I found some Swedish Fish or something like that, but it had expired years ago.
57:33	Noah Kagan	I'm more of a sour patch kid guy now
57:35	Sam Parr	that's what it was sorry it was sour patch kids it was it was like it was I'm it was that type of candy yeah
57:43	Noah Kagan	Different perch... I don't know. I was trying to pull up some of the different things that I've bought, but I'm like, "Man, I like these and I use them a lot." Let's do the cold.
57:49	Sam Parr	Plunge though... The cold plunge, I didn't buy it. I was gifted it. It was expensive as shit, it was like $5,000, but in my opinion, if you want to be cold, it's a pretty cool gadget.
58:02	Noah Kagan	I like it. I just... I guess the question is, at like, I think retail is $5,000. I pay, so this... I think you'll appreciate this. I hit them up and I said, "Hey, I'm a social media influencer," which I find ironic. Oh.
58:12	Sam Parr	my god
58:12	Noah Kagan	I say that as a mockery. I didn't actually say that. I was like, "Hey, I mentioned your product. Can I actually just pay cost and then I'll promote it?" Because I figure I want to support them as a business. So I think for people out there that want to get free stuff... just pay cost. You get it a lot cheaper and you can promote it if you like it. That's good. I like it, but I don't know, is it worth $3K? Probably not. I've been using the bathtub and the hot tub a lot more often.
58:36	Sam Parr	yep those are I don't even know yet
58:38	Noah Kagan	come over here come over I'll do a workout
58:40	Sam Parr	oh my
58:41	Noah Kagan	Dude, here's the thing that I think people are sleeping on, but some people are using it. Have you used Apple AirTags?
58:47	Sam Parr	I just got one they're pretty great
58:48	Noah Kagan	Dude, they're like secretly amazing. I throw it in my luggage and in my backpack. So if it ever gets lost during travel or someone rejects my backpack, there's like a little secret tag in there.
58:58	Sam Parr	Dude, I've been using tiles for years, but the tiles are only okay. The AirTags are...
59:03	Noah Kagan	what's the difference I never use those
59:05	Sam Parr	Just the interface and how loud the beep is. Oh, that's it. Yeah, just those two things.
59:13	Noah Kagan	They're pretty cool, dude. I haven't messed with 3D printers too much, but Tynan puts out a great gear list. If you don't check out Tynan.com’s gear list, definitely do so. It's one of the top gear lists ever, especially in terms of useful items. His gear list is awesome; he has a lot of USB stuff and information on the smallest chargers to use. What you can do, which is crazy, is on Etsy, you can buy a 3D printed item that allows you to put an Apple AirTag in it. You can then secretly attach it to any of your bikes. So, if you're a biker, for about $15, you can buy a discreet attachment that goes on your water bottle, and no one will ever know it's there. This way, you have a tracker on any of your expensive bikes.
59:53	Sam Parr	Oh, that's sick! But does the AirTag only work if it's within Bluetooth range of an iPhone?
01:00:00	Noah Kagan	Of any iPhone, I think that's where there's a little bit of controversy. But it's any Apple device.
01:00:05	Sam Parr	that's that
01:00:06	Noah Kagan	has internet
01:00:07	Sam Parr	connection alright
01:00:07	Noah Kagan	I think inter is it internet connection or bluetooth mesh
01:00:09	Sam Parr	I think it... I thought it was Bluetooth, which is kind of like... messed up if you think about it. Bonkers, right?
01:00:17	Noah Kagan	Dude, well, I mean there's these stories where like someone put it on someone's car and they're tracking them home. I think that's obviously... like that's messed up. But I think just technically, it's just a fun tool to start playing with and just start experimenting with.
01:00:31	Sam Parr	alright so what else have you gotten
01:00:33	Noah Kagan	dude you know what I've gotten really into tea
01:00:36	Sam Parr	why
01:00:37	Noah Kagan	I'm like, I don't know, man. I've been into Chinese tea, so I bought a Snow Peak bottle. It's called Snow Peak; it's the brand. It's super good for travel and stuff. Then I bought something called a Gaiwan. I can't believe I'm talking about this publicly. I don't know, it's just so nerdy. It's like what creepy white dudes do.
01:00:58	Sam Parr	I mean you wanted that
01:00:59	Noah Kagan	These guys have a little Chinese tea ceremony, and it's really inexpensive. You can go to AliExpress and buy it for like $10. I bought a travel one, actually. So I have one for home, which you can buy on AliExpress for literally $10, or from Keith Titanium, you can buy a camping one that's like $200. When I travel, I'll bring tea around, and I get it from this place in the Bay Area called Old Ways Tea. Is it? Well, yeah, oldwaystea.com. That has definitely been something I'm way more hyped on, and I've definitely been drinking a crap ton more tea this year.
01:01:31	Sam Parr	A good thing that I bought recently, which I'm almost positive you have as well. What brand chair do you have?
01:01:37	Noah Kagan	I think this is an autonomous
01:01:38	Sam Parr	We have the exact same one. So, basically, these chairs that I was looking at, they're like $1,500, like our fancy chair.
01:01:48	Noah Kagan	are they really
01:01:49	Sam Parr	An Aeron, I think it's called. It's like $1,200 to $2,000. They're really expensive. So Autonomous is a new startup that's making chairs and desk supplies, and it's basically as good, I think, as the really fancy one but for like $350.
01:02:04	Noah Kagan	Yeah, these are definitely affordable. One thought I've had, Sam, is like, "What have you bought in your life that you're like, man, this is luxurious?" I was trying to think of things that I'm like... I bought this Levi's jacket because it's getting cold in Austin. It's got the little fur and it was $89. I probably looked for a coupon, and I'm like, "Yo, this is like... I look like a cowboy, like a real cowboy." This is obviously kind of a joke. So I was just trying to think, like, what are other items in my life where I'm like, "Man, I can't believe how rich I am," even though it's not that expensive? And definitely that jacket is an example. Dude, Amazon... oh, you have these Amazon Basics moccasins. I got those because of you, actually.
01:02:39	Sam Parr	yeah they're sick
01:02:40	Noah Kagan	Dude, those are $20. I'm like, "Who’s the king? Who’s the king?"
01:02:45	Sam Parr	I love that one thing we do at my house is we buy Costco socks. We'll purchase like 50 pairs and just never match socks again. Then, at the end of about half the year, we throw away all the socks and get new ones. I hate matching socks. It's just stupid! Why do I have to spend all this time putting them in a ball together? Just give me a huge bin where they're all the same, and I'll just grab two. Matching socks is stupid. I take a stand against that. So anyway, I just don't match socks anymore. That's my splurge. I spend like $200 a year, and I just get fancy new socks. Also, another thing that I do that's pretty amazing is I do the same thing but with Ex Officio underwear. So, you know...
01:03:38	Noah Kagan	if you like dude
01:03:39	Sam Parr	You know when you put underwear on and there's like a pair that's always the last to be used? Because the band is all stretched out, or you just don't like it, or it's stained, or it looks ugly... you're just not about it. So I just threw all those away and I only bought one style, one color, but like 30 pairs. I spent about $500 to do it because Ex Officio underwear is like $20 to $25 a piece.
01:04:00	Noah Kagan	Did I only wear Saxx underwear? I think it's the same kind of thing, but it's got the whole little ball holder stuff.
01:04:06	Sam Parr	I like those too. I like Saxx; they're a good brand, and they don't stretch out as fast. However, they still do wear out a little bit.
01:04:12	Noah Kagan	I definitely feel pretty luxurious in them do you ever mess with lululemon socks
01:04:16	Sam Parr	yeah I'm all about anything lululemon
01:04:18	Noah Kagan	Dude, Lululemon socks, like these no-show socks, because their no-show socks always get holes in them. I'm always just frustrated about that. But the Lululemon ones... what other stuff have you bought there? Like, "Yo, this is rad!" I do want to spend at least 5 minutes— I know we're going to end here— I want to spend 5 minutes brainstorming how we can grow your podcast. I know that's something you're aiming to do, so let's do one or two more of these items and... I don't know.
01:04:40	Sam Parr	Let me do that now. Let me tell you the numbers. In December, we did right about 2,000,000 views or 2,000,000 downloads, of which I think 600,000 was on YouTube and the rest, so 1,400,000, was just people going onto iTunes or Spotify.
01:05:04	Noah Kagan	okay
01:05:04	Sam Parr	so what's your those are the
01:05:05	Noah Kagan	what's your current goal do you have a goal this year around the the the audience or podcast
01:05:10	Sam Parr	Yeah, I think 33,000,000 consistently getting at least 3,000,000 downloads a month would put us in like the top 5 business podcasts in the country.
01:05:22	Noah Kagan	What’s been the biggest thing that’s helped you grow? This is like the way I’m just going to brainstorm with you here. What’s helped you get the biggest delta in new subscribers?
01:05:29	Sam Parr	So, one of the challenging parts about podcasting is that I've done a lot of growth strategies, and it's been incredibly hard to grow. The biggest thing that has worked well is that we've invested more time and energy into creating good content. Sean and I prepare and research a ton, and our chemistry has improved significantly. That's just one big category of improved content. The second thing we've started doing that is working really well is buying ads on other people's podcasts. We've learned this strategy from Jordan Harbinger. Jordan Harbinger has 15 million downloads a month. Of course, he's in a big category, like culture, I think. He basically spent $900,000 in his first year buying ads on other people's podcasts, and that's how he got big.
01:06:14	Noah Kagan	Okay, you should sponsor my podcast. Or I'll just put you... I mean, you're coming on next week for free.
01:06:19	Sam Parr	well I'll sponsor him for sure
01:06:21	Noah Kagan	yeah I mean how
01:06:22	Sam Parr	many downloads and episodes do you get
01:06:24	Noah Kagan	no I think it's about 10,000 an episode
01:06:26	Sam Parr	Dude, so like, we're a little bit bigger than that now. But getting to 10,000 is really hard. Podcasts... do you agree? Are podcasts the hardest thing you've ever tried to grow?
01:06:37	Noah Kagan	I that's why I backed out of it that's why I went to youtube
01:06:39	Sam Parr	Dude, it's so hard, but it's super sticky. Like, every podcast that we launch is going to get at least 50,000 views. I think every episode will get at least 50,000 views.
01:06:47	Noah Kagan	Alright, here's one simple thing that I don't know why you don't do. I think one of the ways to think about it is that it's always easy to get people to come from medium to medium. So, podcast sponsoring means they come from one show or the other. It's super easy. How come you don't promote your podcast or newsletter on YouTube?
01:07:02	Sam Parr	well not so like I want to hear about the newsletter but what do you mean the podcast
01:07:05	Noah Kagan	Well, no, no, no, no, no. So think about it as like a gateway drug. Someone on another podcast is highly likely to go to a different podcast because you already know that their behavior-wise is down. So sponsoring podcasts is a great one, getting on other people's shows is a great one. But you're getting... like you had a video recently where you got Howard [who] retired [with] over $20,000,000 by age 31. [It] has 140,000 views, but in the description, there's nothing that says "Check out my newsletter" or "my podcast."
01:07:32	Sam Parr	yeah that's stupid we should do you're right that's low hanging fruit that we should have solved for
01:07:36	Noah Kagan	I would think that's a pretty easy one. Then, on your About page on YouTube, you don't link to the podcast.
01:07:43	Sam Parr	really are you sure
01:07:44	Noah Kagan	Yeah, it says "website." Well, where does that go? I mean, I guess that's okay. It says "website," "Twitter," "Instagram," "Facebook." I might want to actually just put the link for the podcast. I would also consider—this might be more of a stretch—but do you strategically try to really intentionally grow YouTube and/or TikTok? Pick one of those, probably YouTube, and then really think of that as a way to get people into your newsletter, which is like the first step to getting them onto your podcast.
01:08:09	Sam Parr	No, it's been the other way around. Lately, we've been going for it. My first million has become almost its own brand, I think. Here's what I think is going to happen: I think in the future, within 1 to 3 years, me, Sean, and HubSpot, I think what we're going to do is sell the podcast or do some type of licensing deal. There's like no reason for me to think this other than this is just a crazy prediction.
01:08:32	Noah Kagan	I think
01:08:33	Sam Parr	That we're going to do some type of crazy licensing deal. HubSpot's a public company, so I'm not actually... just so everyone knows, I'm just guessing. This is not based on anything. HubSpot maybe would do a thing where in 3 or 5 years we do some type of licensing deal with like Spotify or whatever. You know, kind of like the "Call Her Daddy" podcast did. You know what that podcast is, "Call Her Daddy"? Yeah, so they did a licensing deal for $60,000,000 over 3 years. I think there's a world where we would do that with like Spotify or one of the other big public platforms. I think that's...
01:09:09	Noah Kagan	"Like that as a creative..." Hold on, but hold on. Why did you say getting people to come on to your... to like, grow the YouTube channel or TikTok is not worth it or not as important? You were like, "Yeah, it's not good." Like, what do you mean there?
01:09:22	Sam Parr	Well, what we have found is that I think it's better to grow by sending people straight to the podcast. Because if they click subscribe, then they're notified whenever there's a new episode, you know what I mean?
01:09:40	Noah Kagan	No, yeah, but don't you think like the amount of people available on YouTube that are like, "Hey, I want to hear more about this," is significant? I mean, think about how much like Joe Rogan got found because of YouTube.
01:09:49	Sam Parr	Well, the second answer to that is, I mean, we're trying. It's fucking hard. We're trying. I'm like, the effort is there. If you look at our YouTube page, look at our videos; the effort is there. They just don't get that many views all the time. It just is taking a long time. I mean, how many views? Look at our YouTube. How do you think it's going? In my opinion, I...
01:10:07	Noah Kagan	would say do you want recommendation do you want recommendations
01:10:09	Sam Parr	yeah I would say it's going okay at best
01:10:12	Noah Kagan	Okay, so I think what you're doing is uploading podcasts to YouTube. You're not actually creating content that people watch on YouTube, right? So if you look at our channel, like YouTube, okay, Dork, the content is made for YouTube. The two things that I would tell your team, here's what I would recommend you do over the next three months: Look at your CTR (click-through rate) of all these different videos. That will basically show you if you're picking the right topics. And then, as well, your thumbnails are...
01:10:36	Sam Parr	the baseline
01:10:38	Noah Kagan	if you can hit a 5% ctr you're you're doing very well you're doing very very well
01:10:43	Sam Parr	so like would you say 3 to 5 is decent
01:10:46	Noah Kagan	I mean, 3 is decent. I think if you want to get to 5, you want to be hitting a really high number. So, like, our recent awesome videos are hitting 5. I would basically just start tracking your CTR, your click-through rate on these things. The second thing you want to focus on is that I think this is a way of expanding the pie. People find out about you and then they're like, "Oh, in your description, about page, go to the newsletter, go to the podcast." I would just update your top 10 videos here. You don't need to do all of them, but do them moving forward. The second thing is your average view duration. The Hasan Minhaj one had a 2-hour video. There's a reason it got 26,000 views; it's because it's long as hell. I'm guessing your average view duration was like 20 minutes.
01:11:25	Sam Parr	how many does that have 20,000 26,000 wow
01:11:29	Noah Kagan	Where, you know, the serial killer got busted through 23andMe. I don't know how that's relevant to people making a million.
01:11:35	Sam Parr	it's not
01:11:35	Noah Kagan	put that on your own channel
01:11:38	Sam Parr	bro come on quit don't blame me for all this stuff I've
01:11:41	Noah Kagan	you're who's in charge
01:11:42	Sam Parr	I don't know
01:11:44	Noah Kagan	Any more? We okay? Well, anyways, I think the second thing is to just look at your average view duration. Do the same thing; just look at a line graph. So, like, how are we trending? And don't worry about super optimizing. Just focus on whether, each month or so, we can try to get both those numbers moving in an upward direction.
01:11:58	Sam Parr	any other thumbnails
01:11:59	Noah Kagan	able to do that what's that
01:12:01	Sam Parr	anything else we should do
01:12:02	Noah Kagan	I mean your your thumbnails aren't really
01:12:05	Sam Parr	how much dude I'm pretty sure we're using your thumbnail guy
01:12:09	Noah Kagan	Yeah, it might be the thumbnail guy, but you're like, "How much are you actually spending to make a great thumbnail?" So, like, every one of our thumbnails now, we go into custom photos. At 4:30, I'm literally... it's the 3rd time going out with a photographer to take a thumbnail for the same video.
01:12:21	Sam Parr	Dude, that's so much work, isn't it? Isn't that crazy? There's so much work to make it like a YouTube video. I just dismissed it as like, "Oh, you're just fucking around." It's so much more work than I thought... yeah, to be good.
01:12:34	Noah Kagan	I mean I don't know I'm not gonna say some cliche shit anything great is worth working on do you
01:12:37	Sam Parr	I feel like an idiot, though, on the side of the street doing this phase where you're like hands on your head and you're freaking out about the 2022 stock market and how it's gonna go down.
01:12:45	Noah Kagan	Well, I think... I mean, the other thing is, no, it's honestly enjoyable. I find it kind of like a science; it's more of a game. It's like, "How do I win this game?" Doing that gives me an advantage. So, yeah, hell yeah, I want to do it, and I find it enjoyable. I think, you know, you should also just kind of consider the topics you're putting out on YouTube. For example, "How much do authors make?" It's not something that I think people are really going to immediately stop and drop everything to watch. But topics like "Solana billionaires," crypto, NFTs, and "How to get rich" are always popular on YouTube.
01:13:16	Sam Parr	But dude, we're not making a position out of specific content. We're just... whenever we talk, we're just gonna chop... we just chop shit up. So like, what we could do is have pre-planned topics that we think would go popular on YouTube. It's just a little bit harder.
01:13:29	Noah Kagan	to do
01:13:29	Sam Parr	That naturally [comes up] in a conversation, but I think we can do it. But yeah, our goal... like I'm predicting the future: we're gonna get to like the 3,000,000 range by the end of the year. And once there, I think we're gonna end up being like one of the big... I think we'll be in the Dave Ramsey, Tim Ferriss category inside the next year and a half.
01:13:50	Noah Kagan	Here's a thought... One thing I find fascinating is that there are people who are huge on YouTube that no one knows, but a lot of people know who Tim Ferriss is. It's something I've just been reflecting on. What does that mean?
01:13:59	Sam Parr	Well, he's been in the game forever, and he also entered the game when the world was smaller. So, in the niche of tech and startups, and this whole "make money online" thing, there weren't that many people on it. There weren't that many people who were famous for it, and he was definitely one of the first that was famous for it. Do you know what I mean?
01:14:19	Noah Kagan	Yeah, I mean... it's interesting. As the world gets bigger, it's also about getting known in your niche. Like, I have a friend who's popular in the spearfishing category. "How popular?" I think... what's that? He's got like a few hundred thousand followers on TikTok. He's got a full-time business now. It's called Sick Cast... no, it's called Cast Cast Groupie.
01:14:35	Sam Parr	for nerds I wanna be a spearfish influencer
01:14:38	Noah Kagan	This guy's cool as shit, man. If you ever want to go spearfishing... What fascinates me about him is that he's on TikTok. He just does this, you know? You talked about this in the beginning where you documented your house. He likes spearfishing and fishing, so he just started videoing it and put it on TikTok. I think he's got like 200,000 followers on TikTok and YouTube. I believe he has around 285,000 followers on his "Cast and Spear" account. He texted me yesterday. I don't want to say his revenue, but he's got a pretty healthy business selling spearfishing gear. It's not a seven-figure business, but it's still impressive.
01:15:09	Sam Parr	hold on
01:15:09	Noah Kagan	So I think instead of getting big at Tim, where maybe people are saying "I want to be known" or "I'm an expert," I've got impostor syndrome... Just do the thing you're already excited about. Document that, and I think people will be shocked that they can make a lot of money doing it. Like my brother, he does insurance claims for hospitals. Are you talking about this?
01:15:23	Sam Parr	no so when you go to
01:15:26	Noah Kagan	The hospital sends you a bill, and then the hospital has to fight with the insurance company about how much to pay. So, he reviews the bill to optimize it and make sure that the insurance company pays the full amount.
01:15:34	Sam Parr	because he
01:15:35	Noah Kagan	Can be like, "No, they didn't need to do this procedure. They need to do this." And now he's... I think one of the things is, what do you have in your day job that you can make a business out of? So he's exploring how to help individuals reduce their medical bills. If you get a medical bill and it's like $5,000, $1,000, or $10,000, he'll review it for free and then maybe take a cut if he's able to reduce the amount of money that you owe.
01:15:56	Sam Parr	That's actually a great idea. There's this company called Buyer.co, and my friend started it. It was called "negotiating as a service," and they would negotiate anything on your behalf and take a percentage of the savings. The company was sold to Ramp, so if you go to Buyer.co, it redirects to that website. The company you said you don't like... Ramp. And it's not that I hate...
01:16:17	Noah Kagan	it much
01:16:17	Sam Parr	It's not that I'm doing really well. The guy who started it, he said, "I sold out too early," but I didn't have any money. It was a cool way to make money, but he was like, "This could actually be great." I would do negotiating as a service and have my health bill be one of the big ones. Another great company is called DoNotPay, and they're doing this but for a variety of different things. Oh yeah.
01:16:38	Noah Kagan	I saw them
01:16:39	Sam Parr	I like do not pay
01:16:41	Noah Kagan	Yeah, do not pay the robo. There's also a site called Vendor.com. Vendors is a similar one; you give them your bills, they negotiate, and they just take a cut of whatever they save.
01:16:48	Sam Parr	dude I love those services I love no brainer services
01:16:51	Noah Kagan	win win no one's down
01:16:52	Sam Parr	like quickbooks or not quick in turbotax mint
01:16:56	Noah Kagan	Yeah, TurboTax. A little... it's like, "Oh, it's free, it's free, it's free." Guess what? If you really want it, it's paid. I feel like TurboTax is kind of like...
01:17:02	Sam Parr	but they don't take money from you they just take a percentage of your re refund
01:17:09	Noah Kagan	yes
01:17:09	Sam Parr	which I like
01:17:10	Noah Kagan	Yeah, that's fair. So, I do want to say though, dude, honestly for your show, because other people out there are trying to do it, I think, obviously, you said to go on other people's shows and podcasts. I think you should optimize these other platforms.
01:17:22	Sam Parr	we're going here to know thing the tiktok thing definitely has worked
01:17:27	Noah Kagan	but has it driven people I think ultimately you see is it helping me with my goal is it driving people to the podcast
01:17:31	Sam Parr	Unfortunately, I have no idea. That's another shitty part about podcasts: it's hard to know what works. Because I can look at my charts and see how many downloads we have, it won't tell me how they heard about us. It's not like Google Analytics where I can see, like, the person who bought this came from Google because they searched [for] blank on this type of phone.
01:17:48	Noah Kagan	have you done url genius
01:17:51	Sam Parr	no we've done chartable is that the same thing
01:17:54	Noah Kagan	Well, URL Genius is, I think we use this on our show sometimes. It's app.urlgenius.com. It's deep linking, so it'll link deeply into the podcast on Spotify. I don't know if it does iTunes as well. Then you could track how those clicks are actually looking. So you can put that on TikTok or put that out in the YouTube world.
01:18:12	Sam Parr	I didn't know about that alright I'll look into that
01:18:15	Noah Kagan	alright samuel we're gonna wrap up love seeing you
01:18:17	Sam Parr	dude thanks for doing this you look good dude
01:18:19	Noah Kagan	thanks for having me
01:18:20	Sam Parr	Did you see how many people reached out from the last one? Ben messaged me. He said he got 65,000 or 70,000 views.
01:18:27	Noah Kagan	really
01:18:28	Ben Wilson	yeah
01:18:29	Noah Kagan	Dude, you guys are... Man, I told you the first time I ever came on your show, I had like an ex. This girl I went on a date with was like, "I can't believe you're on the show."
01:18:36	Sam Parr	yeah he messaged me he said he got 65,000 views or downloads alright
01:18:40	Noah Kagan	I think this one thank you for having
01:18:41	Sam Parr	me man
01:18:41	Noah Kagan	this is excellent alright
01:18:43	Sam Parr	we'll talk in a little bit talk soon

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Brainstorming The Best Business Ideas To Start In 2022 with Noah Kagan

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