How to Create a Million Dollar Weekend: Overcoming Fear and Validating Business Ideas | Noah Kagan

[00:00:08] For the past ten years I have been dying for this guy to write a book. I think I've told him at least once a year Write a book already. You have so much interesting knowledge

[00:00:19] Like I still remember when he first came in my pocket as in 2014. He gave me advice I still do it to this day and we talk about that The coffee challenge he calls it and then he gave me more advice that I'm sure ten years from now

[00:00:33] I'm still gonna be doing so he just came out with the million dollar weekend Noah Kagan he was like the 12th employee at Facebook and the fourth employee at Mendon He was fired from both places. He's had an incredible entrepreneurial journey

[00:00:47] but he just loves these challenges and experiments and You just got to listen to him talk This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host This is the James Altucher Show Noah Kagan I have been

[00:01:17] Dying for nine years for you to write a book. Haven't I in the past even begged you to write a book? I feel like I have You said you were gonna quit chess if I didn't write this book

[00:01:26] You said I'm giving it all up unless you do this Noah. I was like million dollar weekend I'm doing it for James. I think you did because I think I have been asking you to write a book

[00:01:35] And I think I'm only vaguely memorized remembering this but I feel like he said now books too hard So now you've done the book million dollar weekend and I love this book I'll explain why it's basically had a how to start a business in a weekend and

[00:01:51] The ideas in this book are what I constantly advise people To do and how to think about business But what you've done is you've put it so well in this book and practically made a formula out of it

[00:02:03] Like I love it because this business philosophy is the only business philosophy people should have like I know your book's gonna be a bestseller because of this like it's great But I want to tell you Chapter two of your book where you mentioned the coffee challenge

[00:02:17] Just two days ago Jay was there. I was giving this advice To somebody else like I use that all the time And I'll let you describe it but the you first told me in 2014 The coffee challenge and I did it right afterwards. I was scared to death

[00:02:34] But like you mentioned in the book it builds your rejection muscle I I've gotten $80 off purchases at Home Depot now because I have no fear of asking for 10% off. So I'll let you describe further but

[00:02:46] Just just describe the the coffee challenge for anybody who heard it in our podcast in 2014. Well, you'll have to hear it again One awesome to see you man. I missed you. I really love your energy your zaniness your chest your

[00:02:59] Insane amazing stories and your writing so it's great to see you when did we let I think we left so I should have had spin and ping pong We're both we're like, you know, maybe it's a Jewish thing where we get into ping pong and chess

[00:03:11] Yeah, yeah, what's chess boxing there should be chess ping ponging chess. Oh, yes the the coffee challenge, you know, I did it A little last weekend. I was in Sarasota, Florida, which is a really cool city And I was buying towels

[00:03:26] Because for the beach and I was like Ah man, how much are these towels and it was like 30 dollars a towel I was like, there's no the downside if I ask for discount is they say no the upside is like get money off

[00:03:37] And so I went to the counter brought these towels. They're American flags And I was like can I have a discount? He's like why I was like, I don't know because I'm asking

[00:03:46] and there's more to that and and he said sure let me give you one at full price one at 30 off and This is something that's probably been one of the biggest breakthroughs from Million Dollar Weekend among a few other things Where people realize like in business

[00:04:00] Everything is just asking in business. It's selling is what I guess what people call what a sell is an ask And if you can practice asking getting rejected Realizing you're okay And then move forward then when you start doing it in business you realize

[00:04:13] Oh, I'm just doing the same thing and it's just a skill like last week and I started a business I followed the book. I was reading my own book And I tried to start a lawn care business and everyone kept rejecting me

[00:04:24] And it was like, oh, this is great Because I'm not going to go spend a lot of time starting a business That no one wants I didn't have to build a website or Shopify. I didn't have to buy ads I didn't have to build a youtube channel

[00:04:36] Then I started asking people. Hey, I really hate docuSign. You know docuSign all that shit. Yeah. Yeah, of course Hate it. Hate it. So I I looked up people who ever emailed me a docuSign in my gmail

[00:04:46] I looked up everyone in the past five years and I just started calling them And texting them and I said hey, I'm I'm gonna build a docuSign alternative What do you think about that? They said, oh I I hate docuSign. I was like, okay

[00:04:57] Do you want to give me a refundable deposit today of 99 dollars and I'll deliver to you within 30 days? But I don't understand like they so these are people who send out docuSigns Like if you have a legal agreement to sign

[00:05:07] So what I'm showing about the coffee challenge and asking I'm I'm showing how Doing the towels and doing it when you buy coffee in a silly stupid way And then I'm I'm showing that the the parallel of using it in business

[00:05:17] So I try to start a lawn care business. Everyone kept saying no Then I thought all right. Well, this is too hard Let me try to find a business that's easier to succeed and become a million dollar business So I thought hey, I hate docuSign

[00:05:30] Then I looked at my inbox for anyone in the past five years who's emailed me a docuSign to sign Anyone who sent me one and I put all those people on a list And I contacted them the same thing I did you know same thing with coffee challenge

[00:05:42] I said hey, I'm starting this kind of business Do you interested in pre-ordering what I'm going to build to see if people actually wanted it? And I was able to get $3,000 in about 24 hours Oh my gosh I'm building it with Garrett and other people are supporting it

[00:05:55] But really now it's like holy shit people are really excited to give this I did get rejected with that but a lot of people also said yes And now I know it's something as I build it We're going to have a customer base for it

[00:06:04] And that that is really the the the essence of business is like finding a problem people are excited to give you money for That one concept Really is defines the book although there's so many different angles and facets on that

[00:06:17] That's why it's worth an entire book. So I've started a lot of businesses But the only successful businesses I've ever started look, I've started businesses where I raised 400 million dollars out the out the gate

[00:06:29] Failure of a business the only businesses I've started for me personally that were successful Were ones where I had a profit from day one like that is so the concept of have a customer

[00:06:40] First is so important again. You could do it the vc way, but like if you really want to Increase your chances of making a million dollars Get yourself a customer because there's so many benefits

[00:06:51] But but the coffee challenge I just want to describe specifically go to starbucks order a coffee Ask for 10 off when they give you the coffee and when they say why Don't give them a reason You make it a little uncomfortable for yourself if you still feel uncomfortable

[00:07:06] You could say I'm I'm doing this book a million dollar weekend. No, okay again I'm reading it If you need an excuse, but you can just even say nothing like I make it hard on myself I say nothing Yeah, I say nothing

[00:07:16] And then they say yes or no and then the whole point that was not the discount That definitely gets missed sometimes the point is the rejection The point is that yeah, you're okay

[00:07:24] The point is you can move forward and do it again and again and all of the most successful people have the most rejections That is so missed But they keep going and by practicing the muscle and the skill of it

[00:07:37] It makes it a lot easier when you're asking someone to give you a dollar or come on your show Or be your girlfriend whatever it is in life And again, this is so valuable like I remember you told you told me And we're talking like march 2014 10 years ago

[00:07:52] Yeah And it's one of the few things I remember from my podcast in 2014 was this one piece of advice But you told me just go and do it right now So I got in the car went into to a coffee shop

[00:08:03] And I was so scared. I literally was shaking. I was so scared and it really does Improve the muscle because now I can do it. No problem. I'll tell you one other benefit

[00:08:13] There was a period when I was single and so I was on a date and I described your technique the coffee challenge And she was like wow, let's do it So we did it at first. I did it and I was rejected

[00:08:25] And then we went to another deli order coffee and and she did it She wasn't like pretty girls get rejected less But it's a great Experience to do on a date actually like it's an adventure that you're having there's a lot of rejection in life and

[00:08:44] Practicing it realizing the pain of it isn't so substantial And I think what what I've even noticed is that the fear is so much bigger ahead of it Meaning yeah, like I've done these youtube videos the the craziest youtube video

[00:08:55] I've done where I stood outside in a private airport and asked to go on people's jets No joke for a month. I'm like why am I doing this aren't I rich? I don't need to do it aren't I like what am I doing?

[00:09:05] And I and I did it and I got on a private jet and I flew to boston I had to buy a regular plane to get home and I that was insane But when I actually finally faced the fear and and faced myself

[00:09:16] Which is what the coffee challenge is and it's a very light one You realize it's not as scary as you seem as it seems It's not as scary and you realize you have more ability

[00:09:25] To do this in other areas that you can actually start getting what you want You're not just getting what you get and the only way you get what you want Is you ask and when you ask sometimes?

[00:09:33] Yes, you're going to get rejected and that's the whole point of the coffee challenge is to get rejected and realize It's okay And and it's important to develop the skill for the other reasons in your book

[00:09:43] Which is like like you describe with this docu-sign business like I have no idea what your business idea is but uh It's just it's hard to write all your contacts and say Can you give me money right now for this idea?

[00:09:58] Like I don't that would be my I don't know if I could do that like despite mastering the coffee challenge Let me let me give you another challenge. Can we do another challenge? Yeah for the next 10 years

[00:10:09] I'll see you in 2034. Yeah, we do a decade. We do our decade show so When we were putting this book together I wrote it with tall ross. He wrote never split the difference A lot of business books are like very recipe

[00:10:22] You know like here's how to do your facebook ads and here's how to do your scheduling, right? And there's so much of it out there

[00:10:29] But then how come there's not just the book that you can say this is the book to read if you want to do a business And what we recognize through literally like Thousands of people lots of hours of work was that the asking is the number one

[00:10:41] Is the number one thing that really holds you back with the other number one There's two of them that are key is getting started. They're like I got to listen to another show of james I've got to read another book. I've got to buy another course

[00:10:52] And so the actual second one and I'll give you the challenge is getting started right now Like what you did is so awesome Is you just got out last time and you went into the coffee challenge?

[00:11:01] The other one is how do you practice doing things right now and you worry less about the house? So I call it now not how and so I'll give you the one maybe you can do it live I think this would be pretty cool

[00:11:10] All right, most people want to be rich being rich is great, right? You can do a lot more things you have a lot more options. You can choose how you want to spend your time

[00:11:17] But the reason you don't become rich is because you don't even make your first dollar So it's called the dollar challenge and all you have to do james right now We'll just do it right now live. Can you get one dollar from someone?

[00:11:29] And I'll help you but let me just leave it at that just right now if you needed to get one dollar as quickly as possible What would you do? Uh, well, I was just gonna maybe this is unfair because I noticed in the book

[00:11:39] You didn't let you didn't let your following your social media following help you I was just going to go on twitter and say For one dollar next wednesday

[00:11:47] I will call you and we can talk about stocks that you do you want to do that? Yeah, I'll do it All right, let's do it I think that's a bigger one

[00:11:56] I in the book I encourage, you know, most people don't have maybe have a social media following of that sorts Even if it's yeah, that's why you didn't I don't want to cheat So what would yeah

[00:12:03] So what I'd recommend in the book and what I recommend for you to do to make it a little bit more interesting

[00:12:06] Is potentially if you have your phone with you can you put it on speaker and who would you who's the first person you call to ask for a dollar? Uh, Jay Well jay's on the call, but who's who's someone second? Uh

[00:12:20] Gosh, I you know, I don't know because I don't really call a lot of people Like I don't really talk on the phone with people. I know that's why it's going to be a little bit interesting

[00:12:28] Uh, like I don't I definitely don't call people that I'm only vaguely acquaintances with Um, let's call one person. So here's the thing for people out there

[00:12:37] As much as asking is a skill that you get better at it's also getting started and realizing to make a million dollars You have to start with one So all you do is call one person right now or text them say hey venmo paypal crypto western union

[00:12:49] snail mail cash Give me a dollar and people realize it's the same thing like holy shit. I just got started And you can tell them hey, I need you as my investor. I need you as my advisor Uh to support me and observe me doing this business

[00:13:02] I did the same thing last week, but I did it on the streets with strangers Yeah, see that like if I call someone and say look first off I'd have to tell them that people are listening to their call Because otherwise who knows what they might say so

[00:13:16] I feel like the phone is not the right And and then if they know they're being listened to they're are going to always going to say yes

[00:13:21] So I feel like that's almost a little cheating too. I'm trying to figure out a way we can do it here live Wow, hon. Why is it cheating? Well the same way I twitter like if

[00:13:30] I would rather do it on the twitter just because then people don't know that their Result is being observed if you know your result is being observed. We know from quantum mechanics that changes the result So if I call someone and say

[00:13:41] 30,000 people or a hundred thousand people are listening to you Uh, reject me or not They're gonna give me a dollar So so two things one if you feel more comfortable doing on twitter I would push you on the phone because I think especially for your

[00:13:53] I don't know for your experience. I think that would be a more dramatic growth for you But the point if you can leverage and this is a key part of the book that we get into is that as you're starting a business

[00:14:03] Use what you have as an advantage meaning if you're like, hey, I'm being recorded. Hey, I'm doing it because of a book Great. Hey, you're my friend. Great people try to start businesses and they make it so much harder on themselves than they have to

[00:14:16] Like I can't do this thing that people will help me with. Yeah, people want to help you Jay do you have a vent? I don't have a venmo account. Do you have a venmo people could send money to?

[00:14:23] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is this free money for me? I'll watch I'll split the but I'm not I'm going to use twitter because again, I don't even Twitter is more strangers anyway. Like if I call someone I know well enough to call

[00:14:38] They're just going to say yes So I'm trying to make it. I actually think it's harder if I do it on twitter. All right, man. Let's find out all right, so Do you want me to even screen? Uh share my screen? Yeah, I'm following you on twitter

[00:14:52] So I want to see what happens. Okay. Good. Um, so post So for other people out there while james is writing this thing What we identified and what's holding people back from million dollar businesses and beyond

[00:15:06] There's a lot of recipes and that's that's definitely what I help encourage people and I show exactly how I've done it at Sumo.com But to get going it's how do you get started where you're getting started over and over again?

[00:15:16] And then how do you get better at asking? So we talked about the coffee challenge This is the dollar challenge and jay. Do I have a time opening on wednesday? I could call someone for an hour So the only thing I would challenge you james is almost yeah

[00:15:32] You don't necessarily even have to give him a benefit the whole point of the dollar challenge Is doing things right away a lot of times people are like, how do I do all these things? Like no just get going

[00:15:40] And for you specifically I think if you're offering something like hey, I'm gonna give you an hour call It changes the dynamic for other people out there It's just like hey, it's too much value

[00:15:49] Yeah, I'm starting of course I would pay a lot more than a dollar to talk to you about it So for people out there, it's hey, I'd love for you to be an investor. I'd love for you to support me

[00:15:56] I'm practicing getting started. I'd like to see what can happen But just you want to be watching me as I start my business journey All right I'm not even going to say that because I wouldn't need to tweet that I'm just going to say um

[00:16:10] Can someone been Venmo me a dollar and I'm doing the dollar challenge so Okay, so I shouldn't offer any value for the dollar. I feel like I should offer some value Like you offered value when you sold the docusign thing

[00:16:27] Right well you called people you knew and you offer offered some value and you thought that value was 99 dollars So what's something of a dollar value I can offer? James. Do you want me to call someone live?

[00:16:36] Let me call my brother live. I'm just gonna because like dude, you're doing this tweet We're making it way too complicated, but for me to do the challenge. I got to do it. Honestly

[00:16:42] I gotta I gotta honestly what you do show me your phone show me your phone Go get your phone. Please I was gonna call my brother because he'll say no Do do do do do do do here? Do you guys want me to call my brother?

[00:17:11] I'm just gonna call my brother while we're waiting for James. Okay. Yeah go for it. All right I've never done this to my brother. Let me see what he does I mean, I felt like broader is there just like yeah

[00:17:22] So I can't really chat. What's going on? All right, Seth I'm on a podcast with my buddy James and I'm doing the dollar challenge I don't know. Do you know about this? No, I don't

[00:17:33] Okay, great. Would you be willing? I'm gonna we're gonna start we're trying to show people how to get started in business Would you be willing to send me a dollar right now? A conclusion was that the complete sentence that was it

[00:17:49] Would I be willing to send you adult water? Please Sure. I can send you dollar. Do you want me to send you a dollar? Yes on venmo at noa kagan Okay, I'll send you dollar. Hold on. I'll be I'll stay on the line

[00:18:06] So I'm trying to what we're showing people It's part of a million dollar weekend is just getting started right now Normally what you tell and tell people is hey starting a business And I want people to be a part of my journey

[00:18:17] So I'd be curious if you could just send me a dollar to support me on my business journey That's okay. None of us know what we're doing anyways Oh, he sent it. He sent it. Thank you, Seth

[00:18:34] All right, so my brother said million dollar weekend one dollar. He's believing in me and I got started right away. Thank you, Seth I'll call you later Love you But now your brother's always going to send you a dollar Yeah, that's the whole point in business

[00:18:48] Let me by the way a lot of people out there be like that's stupid That's silly and yes business should be silly and fun And when you're starting businesses look at who you have in your zone of influence

[00:18:57] Who is in your company? What have you worked on? Who do you know? And people like no, let me go and start something really hard on myself. It's like why you don't have to Yeah, no, I like that so um, james, who are we gonna call? Okay

[00:19:13] Now but I feel like I have to tell them they're on a podcast. Yeah, you say hey I'm on a podcast my buddy Noah. We're doing this thing called a dollar challenge

[00:19:20] I'm gonna probably try to start a business and I want to see if you would be willing to support me and send Me one dollar today Right now. I'm waiting for my phone to rain james. I'm it's better me. It's better be me

[00:19:29] No, you can't call Jay your producer Let's go. I'm gonna I'm gonna call this professor at Georgia Tech. I know Oh god, yes Okay, dialing ringing How's it going? Good good. I owe you an update

[00:19:46] But I want to tell you I'm about to put you on speaker because I'm doing a podcast and I just need your help answering a question I'm gonna start a business. I have no idea what And I'm just wondering if you could send me a dollar right now

[00:19:59] To get me started on this Wait, it's you james. Yeah me Okay, and I want to I need a dollar to start How am I gonna get it to you? Can you Venmo Jay?

[00:20:12] I can Venmo Jay. I'll Venmo Jay a dollar. You want me to do it now? Yeah, Jay's gonna text you his Venmo right now. Jay are you gonna do it right now?

[00:20:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah right now right now. Yeah, it has to be it had the key is it has to be right now So Jay did you do it? I'm doing it right now. So give me two seconds

[00:20:27] Why don't we do this part of the rock pierra? Why are you doing this on the air? I mean, it was a key that it was it was a key that it was on the air

[00:20:34] Okay, that was crucial to this. Yes. We are on the other side. Are you gonna tell me any background? So by the way How much do you think you could have asked before before I said no

[00:20:45] That's a good question. How much do you think I could have asked? And by the way, it's a little bit weirder now You've said this that you want me to send to Jay. That's different only because I don't have Venmo

[00:20:55] How about this you give Venmo and when you give Venmo, I'll send you a dollar. No, no, you have to send the dollar right now That's true, but I am just asking you for a dollar That's the key I know if you don't trust some random

[00:21:21] You know guy from Malaysia That's not how I think of Jay. I think you're more random than Jay All right, now I know it doesn't work until Jay gets the dollar But he'll send a dollar and so

[00:21:35] The thing there is a lot of people would like to be a millionaire or a thousand air have grocery money And really it starts with one right, you know absolute one of common we do

[00:21:43] It's crazy about $200,000 a day in sales, but it started one day with a $12 sale And and again, this is how do you get started today? So in a year or five years 10 years 20 years You'll be further along and it's really a practice. How did you feel doing it?

[00:22:00] I felt a little awkward particularly when so he's a professor So he's always going to think of 6,000 ways to analyze this till it's dead Which is a good thing. That's what I've learned from from him and our long friendship but

[00:22:15] It did feel awkward when he was asking questions like can I send it to you later or like why do you want this And uh that felt Uh, uh, uh, it made me feel a little awkward

[00:22:25] But I kind of did the same thing as the coffee challenge, which is just say I need a dollar now and you don't say anything else And then what did you learn about this experience so far? I would say it's not necessarily what I learned

[00:22:38] And again, I just did it this one time But I could feel that same kind of muscle of being uncomfortable asking for something and I could feel and this is a slightly different muscle and and I could see how Just asking for anything is hard

[00:22:54] And and money money has so much psychology wrapped around it Like it's tricky in particularly when you're asking a friend and you're not telling them why and like it doesn't make sense a dollar

[00:23:04] So so even though it was clearly something fun and like you said I was using the podcast to my advantage So he can't really say no. He's still pushed back And and I didn't want to give a reason I said you just have to do it now

[00:23:17] You can give to be clear for everyone out there. Give a reason right say hey, I'm starting a business Will you be my advisor? It would be my master now you tell me

[00:23:24] I want to make it harder on you james because did you get it j? Yep. Just wanted to get a vod date. I just did send the dollar Made a dollar This for you

[00:23:38] Dude hell yeah, and look here's the thing a lot of people and uh will be like, oh, it's so silly And it's like well How come so many people that want to start a side hustler business haven't started because they haven't gotten started

[00:23:50] And this is the smallest stupid simplest funnest most fun Way that you can do it like hey Will you support me and send me a dollar on my business journey? And I people will be surprised like that once they do it

[00:24:01] They actually get excited to do it and then it's like okay Well now let me get going on my business stuff and then find something. I'm excited to actually start selling people And that it's all the same exact thing

[00:24:11] Yeah, it's interesting. It reminds me of one guy a long time ago Started a Kickstarter where you could buy like a piece of him and anything he makes over a certain amount of time and And I think I gave him like $50 or something like you know

[00:24:27] You kind of scale up to what you can ask for and I look I have always had a You know I used to run a hedge fund so you're constantly asking people for money

[00:24:36] For not really delivering that much more value than they can get much cheaper with a mutual fund for instance So it was very hard for me. I was very Poor at raising money I'm a good salesman, but I'm poor at raising money

[00:24:49] Yeah, I mean I think there's different taboos around sales and there's discomfort in asking in general Right all of us feel that and it doesn't go away Whether you're you know, you just you generally you know You keep practicing it and you get better at it

[00:25:01] And it's something that you can develop over time and eventually with business what gets exciting james And I think you've know you know this too When you had your web design company or when I have this book or we have deals on app sumo

[00:25:11] I'm excited to go tell people which I guess you could call sales or asking for people to buy things But I'm like I love what it is

[00:25:18] So I don't think of selling as a bad thing and as we started with the whole show with when I get rejected Which I still get rejected all the time

[00:25:25] I'm like, okay. Well, I've been rejected. I can keep going. It's fine. Right. It's not such a scary thing and you know, it's very interesting because people say Ideas are a dime a dozen execution is everything and there's some truth to that except

[00:25:41] Execution ideas are a subset of ideas and what you're really describing in this book is Good execution versus bad execution. So bad execution might be I'm going to create something that improves

[00:25:54] DocuSign, I'm going to raise a million dollars of VC funding. I'm going to hire a dozen programmers I'm going to create it then I'm going to look for my customers. So that's a bad execution idea

[00:26:04] Instead what you did was an excellent execution idea, which is call people you knew were using docuSign describing your personal Solution to the problems they might be having and and then is the muscle that you've been developing with this one dollar challenge

[00:26:21] Ask them for money in advance. Yeah, and that's a great execution idea You validated the market you validated you'd have customers. You just made a profit before you even start the business and

[00:26:31] You did everything in reverse in what people usually do and that actually is the better execution idea Yeah, I saw a silicon valley tech company and I was laughing at them A week ago they started a business which I thought that I think the problem is really interesting

[00:26:44] Most people nowadays everyone's like AI. I'm like no one cares about your solution They care about their problem and the problem they solved I thought was interesting which is creating Videos of your grandparents before they die

[00:26:55] And I think that's I wish I had more videos of my dad before he passed And so they raised three million dollars They've built this tech now they're out buying google ads and facebook ads and trying to build a social media following

[00:27:08] To finally get this business that I could have started in a weekend Asking three of my friends and I always recommend trying to get three customers in 48 hours Hey, can I film your grandparents on my phone? I'll drive over there and film them. It's a hundred dollars

[00:27:23] I could find out in a weekend if someone wants that business versus The approach that they had a pitch deck and then they had to get a founder from google Because you have to get to someone who said they work at google and that whole business

[00:27:33] You could find that people want it or not And then do all this other stuff that eventually yeah today absumo We have almost a hundred people to run a pretty significant business But that's something that you could find out very quickly if people want it

[00:27:45] And most people just do the founder first approach instead of the customer first approach And you know, that's that's a great example to be honest Someone once pitched me a similar idea and I said walk me through this and she was she's a videographer

[00:27:58] And she was going to raise two million dollars to do something exactly like what you just said And I said to her Just ask some friends first if you could do it

[00:28:07] I don't know what happened afterwards. So but again, there's a wide range of execution ideas. It's not just about Doing some execution and and that that's why that that's a why that's a classic example is because you can do it manually

[00:28:20] So I don't even know if you know this know like oracle sells a database right the oracle database and Their first customers back in like the early 80s their first customers. They would say we have this database. Can we Do you want to buy it and

[00:28:34] General electric or whatever would say sure we'll buy it and then oracle would say well, we have to install it So we have to spend have some programmers over there and install it

[00:28:42] And then they would send programmers there for six months to sit on site and quote-unquote install it That was how they built the product. They were really performing a service But disguised as selling a product and that's how they made their product

[00:28:54] Yeah, I think most people are building stuff or looking for solutions and then trying to find problems I'm trying to find problems and then bring solutions. So even app sumo. This is you know crazy story I just looked it up recently You know today literally, you know

[00:29:06] 80 million dollar business which blows my mind and I think there's a Underlying key message which is you have to get started and then you have to stick with these things You have to not quit too soon But the first deal ever on app sumo

[00:29:17] People PayPal'd me money 12 dollars And I manually emailed them their their promotion code to get Imgur at a discount I manually gmail I use gmail and I just sent him an email. It was like, hey, here's your code I like

[00:29:30] One person's like hey it took a while because it was I had to literally wait for the people to come in And then I emailed them back now. Obviously, there's you know, we have 20 person engineering team to do an api licensing system

[00:29:40] That that's pretty complex, but it just started with me manually emailing them And that's the thing I think people are starting to change their perspectives on because I know you and me and a lot of others

[00:29:49] Have done it the the way that most people do which is I got to build it. I might need funding I got to go do some marketing and then pray that hopefully people want it I've definitely done that a lot and waste a lot of money and time

[00:30:00] Well, tell the app like so app sumo is a is A big business you're the creator of it and you describe how you started it in In the book you just have a chapter describing how you started

[00:30:11] Tell that story because it's really interesting and it involves a lot of the principles that we've been talking about so far Yeah, I'll give another quick example just to kind of keep hammering it home

[00:30:21] I think people think what happens though James is everyone knows this and they'll hear it But they're like but they always say the same thing my business is unique And I'm like, you know what business is unique all of them

[00:30:31] And so you can do it your way fine go try it out But then if when that works and it may or may not there's also another way and that does work And maybe it doesn't work the first weekend, but it can work the second or third airbnb

[00:30:41] You know they started in a weekend and you know how they started they literally There was an email thread for a design conference in sf and they said hey 150 dollars someone can stay on our couch That was the whole business

[00:30:52] And that was the weekend and someone did it and that led them to now create a company worth 100 billion dollars And so it's realizing how do you find something that people are really excited to give you money for it same with app sumo

[00:31:04] I tried so many different businesses over My 20s and none of them really worked amazingly And I was like I just want software deals at a great price and I love marketing and everyone wants more customers How do I do that?

[00:31:14] And so in a weekend I put a paypal button on a website spent 12 dollars on app sumo.com and then I cold emailed A software creator named Alan. He was a college student. I said hey, I love to promote your product

[00:31:24] I love Imgur normally 24. I'll pay you seven dollars for everyone I sell And I'll do all this marketing for you It's like sure there's no cost to him then I posted it on reddit And within the first week we sold 200 of them

[00:31:38] And I manually emailed those codes and that has led now to a business with you know Significant revenue employees and their teammates as we like to call them And so so wait there. I have some questions just about what he said

[00:31:49] So they were selling their Imgur pro for 24 dollars, right? Yes, something like that and You said I will pay you can I sell them for you? I'll pay you seven dollars for each thing. So he didn't mind that he wasn't getting 24

[00:32:04] So the idea for me with the business is that software is zero marginal cost to distribute it to more customers There's some Software maybe if you're doing email where the cost could be higher but the cost is pretty much zero

[00:32:15] So there's not a lot more cost for him to give it out at even one dollar. That's all profit So that was one of the insights I observed within software now the the acronym I always think about when I'm messaging anyone is whiffed. What's in it for them?

[00:32:27] So when you're messaging anyone if you're messaging james, you're messaging j you're messaging me You're messaging a college student What's in it for them? Why the hell should they be excited to reply to you and how do you make it a no-brainer?

[00:32:38] And that's literally the same email we send to this day at absuma We email people we say the same thing promoting you to x amount of people Hey, we'd love to pay you most people are making a hundred thousand dollars as software creators getting featured on absumo

[00:32:50] Is that something you're interested in? And I will tell you we get a very high response rate And there's a lot of software creators every single month that we're able to promote as software deals to entrepreneurs on absumo

[00:33:00] Now on the other side of that the crazier part of the story is I did post on reddit And I did have a paypal button on a website Didn't spend a lot of time didn't spend a lot of money to find out if people really wanted it

[00:33:10] But then I cold emailed the reddit founders And I said hey, we have a mutual friend. Can I take you out to breakfast? Pork store cafe in haydashberry and I'll take you out to breakfast

[00:33:20] And I just want to talk to you about this new thing i'm doing with reddit because Taking a step back here business is all three things. It's three w's I call them

[00:33:27] It's the what which is what problem you're solving that people care about or excited to give you money Two who is that person and three where are they? That's it And I knew that imdre in that product

[00:33:37] There's a lot of customers on reddit because I was that customer and the best businesses are the ones Where you're your customer? Yeah cold email this guy took him out to breakfast and I said hey Working on this business and love reddit

[00:33:47] Can you give me some free ads because you have a ad system coming out now? It's you know, billion dollar business. I believe are pretty significant It's just launching. You know, I can use it. I can be a testimonial

[00:33:56] I can promote it for you and tell others you said sure So he gave me ten thousand dollars worth of free ad space to start and all I did was And then I asked for that ad space again six months later

[00:34:07] And he was like do you want to pay cash now the ten thousand dollars? I was like no because I don't have that much money But they were getting started and I said hey, I'll be a testimonial. I'll promote it I'll tell people about it

[00:34:17] It made it easy for them to do that And so that was another thing that really helped You know get absumo started and again, you know this dollar challenge and getting started The whole point is

[00:34:25] An 80 million dollar a year business started with a 12 dollar sale because I sold it at 12 and I kept five bucks Per sell right so so how many did you sell that first The first week I think we sold first week we did 200 and sales of imjur

[00:34:38] And what I recommend for people is as you're validating businesses on your weekend Three customers and at least if you can a hundred dollars in profit And if it's that hard to do in a weekend for that, it's only going to get harder

[00:34:50] And again try it a different way and when that doesn't work just come back and I'm still here The good thing with this style of execution, which is very important Is that if it doesn't work like let's say you don't sell anything in a week

[00:35:03] Well that might mean yeah, yeah Like you just validated the idea without running it by your whole family and then trying to raise money And then trying to talk people into you know

[00:35:14] Distributing for you blah blah blah like there's so many bad ways to do a good idea But also just might be a bad idea And uh, you could you could just move on to the next idea

[00:35:42] Let me give you another example because I think you know the more examples people can relate to it There's a guy named Jake Jake red milling dollar weekend. He lives up in Dallas He's got three kids and a day job and a wife

[00:35:50] He's busy man, but he's had this dream for two years to have a business And have his own hustle And he's always he told me I said Jake. Why do you want a business? He's like because I don't want to live a what if life

[00:36:02] I was like, oh, that's good. That's really good. I don't live a what if life That's almost the title of a book the what if life. Yeah, he didn't want to live that And so in a 48 hour period Jake's a huge golfer. I don't care for golf

[00:36:15] I care for margaritas. So that's the only reason I'm on a golf course Well, you're you're a Jew Dude it takes so long and golf is expensive. I'm like I like disc golf right? It's free and you get out What's that? What's this golf seriously? Yeah

[00:36:31] Oh disc golf. It's like golf, but you throw a little frisbee and there's these metal baskets They have them in Atlanta. They're all they're all over america

[00:36:38] All right, well, I go to go to go to go to my house. That's as soon as I ever leave my house. So that's a big assumption Oh, yeah, I would agree with that. So Jake is a huge golfer and he's got a lot of golf friends

[00:36:50] And so we worked on different business ideas and the one we used a million dollar process on that was like, wow This is definitely a million dollar opportunity was golf trips Golf trips more or less for dads. And so Jake who doesn't have social media

[00:37:03] I don't even know if he's on any of these places Contacted and validated within a 48 hour period five paying customers for a golf trip to I think called Badlands, I don't even know the golf course. I don't know shit about it

[00:37:15] He sold 500 dollars worth of golf trips and now because he has the money It's easy for him to go plan these golf trips and deliver on it for these people That was deposits were fundable deposits from people in his network as well as referrals

[00:37:28] To be able to see if that's something people are really excited to do and guess what? I think you you said it really well yourself If no one wanted it and he called these people and here's an easy way when you're trying to start a business

[00:37:38] Ask people for feedback She'll be like, hey, I got this business idea Can you give me feedback what you think about it? And I'll give you a framework So you ask them for feedback and you say, hey, do you like golf trips? Oh, yeah, great

[00:37:49] What are you one of your next golf trip? Oh, I don't have one. Okay, so you're listening to them Then you give them an option. Hey, so you haven't had one in a while or you loved your golf trip

[00:37:57] I'm actually thinking of that one. I told you about like I'm actually think I'm going to do it in April It might be about 5,000 bucks And but it'll be this and this and this and this and this What do you think about that?

[00:38:06] You give them an option and then they'll say, oh my god. Yes Or they say no and if they say no you ask how come it isn't exciting to you And they explain why and then you give them that option again with with solving their problem

[00:38:16] And then you transition them to a depository transition them to a sale So lot and I find that to be The most effective way of finding out quickly whether someone has a problem And guess what if you can't solve their problem, don't sell them

[00:38:28] Don't help them because it's not a problem you can do And he had already figured out he didn't even need to really figure out his profit margin on that because they were just putting a deposit He could then figure out, you know the whole issue No

[00:38:39] So the one thing I would discourage people from is just going and trying to validate a bunch of ideas without understanding If you have a million dollar opportunity and so specifically with jake there's two key components one

[00:38:50] Is the market flat dying or growing so go on google trends Just go see search golfing golf trips. This is this is a brilliant idea by the way So like if basically if the number of people searching for golf trips is

[00:39:02] Going up or going down and you could go to google trends and just see this. Yeah, I'm not going to call my friend out He's one of my best friends, but he loves choosing industries that are dying And every time they fail five years later

[00:39:14] I'm like bro you so for instance he started a newspaper business Then he started a coveted mask business and it's like oh my god Yes, it might be starting for a month. That's great But you're want to look it over

[00:39:24] You know understand in the long-term horizon at least five years is that going to be continually grow and again all this stuff Is super quick and basic. I don't want people spending a lot of time to find out. Okay. No one wants it

[00:39:34] So again, you're just trying to get indicators and so golfing there's a huge golf show Golfing is definitely at least flat if not rising and you can also look at it comparatively So look at golf versus basketball or look at golf versus disc golf

[00:39:46] And maybe disc golf is not doing crap and golf is crushing it compared to it And really the point here is you're going to work hard either way So why not you work on the thing with more opportunity the second part to your point james and

[00:39:58] Before you validate any of this stuff and there's other ways you can do validation if you're scared to call people Is Understanding your business model. So I like to call it the one minute one minute business model because again

[00:40:08] I don't want people spending a lot of time on this stuff is that how many do I have to sell to make a million dollars profit How many golf trips does jake need to sell to make a million dollars profit and what you can do is

[00:40:18] Okay, well, do I need to sell a higher price? Do I have more frequency? Do I need to reduce the cost structures of these things and then at least gives you an indication

[00:40:26] Of what it needs to take to make a million dollars which won't happen in a weekend But it could happen over a few years and you want to understand that before you rush off in the wrong direction

[00:40:34] And something that's not a great opportunity then I will do validation stuff That's really interesting because like let's say he built a thousand dollar margin Like let's say he told everyone it's five. It's five thousand dollars

[00:40:43] But he knew he was going to pay four thousand dollars for everything Then he just selling a thousand doesn't seem like inconceivable in a year not at all I mean in a year would be a lot. That's three a day, but over a three year period

[00:40:55] Yeah, I would be surprised. I'd be surprised if you couldn't do one person a day over three years And the point here is that if you can validate people want it Then you deliver on it and then you keep doing the same thing to grow it

[00:41:05] Most people would just get so how do I scale it? It's like don't even worry about scale You haven't even sold one customer. Well, let me ask you a question How would you market it? So at first obviously he could call his friends

[00:41:16] So that validates that this is something people are willing to pay for like particularly if something's five thousand dollars No one's going to just say yes to just because it's their friends But how would you then market it because marketing costs money? Does it

[00:41:29] Well, how did you let's even take you for example, how did you get the show? How did you get your attention early on? Did you spend money to get your attention for your podcast and your blog?

[00:41:36] I know one of them did no zero. I've spent zero money. I thought marketing cost money What did you do? Well, I I don't know how much was required, but I spent years Being helpful to people on social media

[00:41:50] That's exactly and so and so what happens when you when you Give is that people ultimately want to figure out a way to give back And so once you do offer something that has value that costs something people are happy

[00:42:05] To participate in your business because they've benefited so much from other things you've done So we can even break this down on a more granular level But for you specifically I remember seeing you in tech crunch a lot and I think that's all right for tech crunch

[00:42:17] Yeah, and that didn't cost you money that cost you putting an effort and having some relationships to be able to do that So let's take jake for instance One he's got to deliver the product and once he's delivered the product

[00:42:27] You can just sell to those people again. Hey, you like this trip. Do you want to sign it for the next trip? Now the other two things that jake can do without spending any money

[00:42:34] Or even trying to have to figure out how to be a social media influencer Is he's only got five people through that like how many other people in his phone book?

[00:42:42] Most of us have more people wanting us to succeed and wanting and potentially actually being customers than we realize We're always thinking like oh And look, I love marketing

[00:42:51] I've had a lot of success with marketing at mince and at facebook and at absumo and tidy cow and a lot of these different things But you have more

[00:42:59] Meet on the bone within your own network than you realize and so going through literally everyone in your contact list Literally going through every single person on your linked in and realizing there's probably more customers in there than you expect

[00:43:09] Now the second part again, having spent a lot of money at this point is Who that you've already helped probably has one person that could be your customer So when I was doing this docuSign alternative, I would sell there's a guy sold to named jack and

[00:43:23] Jack we've we pay him to do our facebook ads And so yeah, I hit up people that i'm paying to see if they need this service once jack bought

[00:43:30] I said jack. Hey, who's one person that's also like you an agency owner that you think what that uses docuSign or pay-in-a-doc That would want the service and introduce me to sky name evan Guess who i'm selling evan

[00:43:43] And so again, there's there's a really complicated and there's a lot more sophisticated stuff You can be doing but really just keep doing more of what worked until that stops working And it's a lot longer than people realize

[00:43:52] The basics I suppose also you could you could that last one technique Which is who does one who's one person? You know that I can call you could kind of amp that up a little bit by Making all your customers affiliates. So if if if jack

[00:44:06] If you say to jack, hey everybody who you refer to me who buys i'll give you 20 percent of the margin on that and then The ditto for everybody you bring in yes, you know, so then it sounds a little multi-levelish

[00:44:19] But at the same time you're you're selling something of value I don't yeah You can also even you don't even have to make it complicated with with someone like jake

[00:44:28] Let's take these golf trips jake if you can get two friends to join i'll give it to you for free That sounds freaking cool. I think jake would go You know anyone who's who's committed to going on jake's trip would definitely go do it

[00:44:39] And then as you get going on these things Yes, you know I talk about it later in the book and it's the same playbook I've used over and over in marketing is all right

[00:44:46] What's what's the process I can use now to start doing other marketing opportunities once you've really maximized and done everything there And the way you approach it is you have a goal with a timeline. So for jake, it would say hey in 2025 next year

[00:44:59] I want to have 30 people go on trips Okay, so what are all the ways that I can think of to get people to go on trips? I can I can keep using my network. Maybe that's 10. I could do referrals. That's 15

[00:45:11] I could try blog posting or tweeting all day. Maybe that's five I could try twitter. I could try youtube. I could try uh posting at golf courses I could ask golf coaches and you list out all the different options and you

[00:45:23] Predict how many you think you can sell from them within 30 days And then what I like to do is try them out because it's hard to know What works because what works in one business will not work in another and once you try it out for a month

[00:45:34] And by the way, you can just sort it like all right sort of top down Which ones you think are going to be the most impactful try them out for a month do one a week Or just do one a month depending on your time availability

[00:45:43] And you will clearly see what works and what does not work But the important part is you have a business that works because you know people want it And now the marketing part is like all right. How do I find more people who want it?

[00:45:53] Most people say I have this marketing problem. I don't know how do I do marketing? I was like no one wants what you're doing. That's the problem You're really right and there's lots of things to try like like jake for instance could write for

[00:46:05] any number of golf related blogs five best golf vacation sites And at the bottom he's not doing any marketing all just at the bottom, you know jake runs, you know Golf luxury trips calm, you know contact him at jakes at golf luxury trips calm. Yeah

[00:46:23] And that's the only marketing to do yeah I mean one of the the best people I've almost the best people I've always hired through apps You want to come as well as through my youtube as well as for a million dollar weekend have come with something free too

[00:46:35] There's so many ways of marketing. So let me give you a specific example There's a guy named j yang Just 17 lives at home with his parents And he knows i'm working on a million dollar weekend

[00:46:43] And so he emailed me a presentation showing me why my social media sucks and my email marketing sucks And the exact things he would change about it. There's a 30 page google slide This guy's in high school j is now making I can't still share salary

[00:46:55] But he's making more than most high schoolers if not all of them And that's because he offered something of value He didn't just say hey, can I be your editor? Hey, can I help you with email? No, he showed me

[00:47:05] He didn't tell me he showed me and that's a marketing example If you have an agency which a lot of people are freelancers or agency don't tell your potential customers show them And once they see it, they're like oh shit

[00:47:17] But I think I think it's very important too that he if he wrote to you and said hey, no, i'm a big fan Can I just take you out for coffee? You probably wouldn't respond to that instead He offered you something of value almost practically for free

[00:47:32] And I that the offering something of value is really important like when I was first starting to get involved in finance like this is 24 years ago. I wanted or 23 years ago. I wanted to start a hedge fund

[00:47:43] Or I wrote to all my heroes in the finance world and say can I buy you a cup of coffee? Zero people responded. They didn't even say no. They just didn't respond but then I would I

[00:47:55] I came up with ideas for each person for their business and for their lives said you do and then um Do you remember the three you did?

[00:48:04] Yeah, well like okay. Let's take jim kramer. Okay, you know, he he is a writer a big finance writer and and he has the tv show mad money I gave I said here's 10 ideas for articles that if you write these articles

[00:48:16] I definitely would subscribe and i'm sure a lot of other people would for the street com And I always added no need to get back with me I just would love to see your viewpoint on these articles and

[00:48:26] And I knew from my research that these were good topics for articles at least one of them would be interesting So he wrote back within five minutes and said this is great Why don't you write these articles and start writing for the street com?

[00:48:37] And that's the first time I got paying gigs writing And then I wrote to another guy. Yes, so good I I wrote to another guy and I said I understand, you know what your head so this guy was a hedge fund manager

[00:48:49] I understand what your hedge fund is, you know, I read your phc thesis. I understand what you do Here's here's 10 software packages that I know that I've been trading personally that I wrote the software

[00:49:00] And and they work and I know it's your style and I'd be happy to explain it to your Programmers and stuff, but they'll they'll get it easily and no need to get back with me and He Instantly wrote back and said this is great And then you know

[00:49:16] He got to know me a little bit more and he allocated the first He was the first person to invest with me and I started a hedge fund So marketing doesn't always cost money

[00:49:26] I you know the the thing I would say though is that things evolve so app sumo I think we have a 20. I don't know the exact final number, but it's 25 people and monthly We're spending in varies depending on the month like black friday november

[00:49:37] We spend about a million dollars in marketing so on ads and affiliate And promotional designs and giveaways this year. We gave away seven apple vision pros But we spent almost a million then and an average of spending 350 000 to half a million dollars a month

[00:49:51] But it started with zero And so I I like people spending no time and no money very quickly Before they even have to start getting distracted that they need money to be successful because that's just not great

[00:50:02] But you could like once you do let's say you start getting profitable and you want to scale and you think marketing would do that Totally you could use you could use your techniques in

[00:50:12] You could you could a do something for a very short amount of time like okay? I'm going to make this ad I'm going to make five different ads for facebook And if one of them work, that's the one now you double down on and and then you understand

[00:50:25] Then you have to figure out some of the math like okay I spent 50 dollars on facebook ads over six months. I made 60 dollars from those particular customers came in that way So it's worth it. So you start small and experiment and then double down

[00:50:37] So so a lot of this approach that you're having is how can you do experiments to To figure out what to double down on exactly so the phrase we use internally It's part of the opsemo culture is test and then invest

[00:50:49] So it's still how we apply things today for example A year ago nick and erica on the affiliate team affiliate's been a huge driver for opsemo Said hey, why don't we sponsor video creators? And that was that was inspired as well from our advisor moody who's like

[00:51:03] Hey, you're doing affiliate which is cool But like video content is like really really rich and it really it lives longer potentially for for what we're doing Why don't we test sponsoring video creators?

[00:51:13] And so we sponsored a few of them we paid them like a thousand bucks and we gave them 15% And we didn't go build a full ass thing of like how do we track them and how do we pay them? Let's just see if it works and really quickly

[00:51:24] These videos are fun for us to watch and we're able to make our money back very quickly I believe within A month we made our positive if not sooner That is such a great idea like and so once you test it now

[00:51:36] There's a team of five people doing video ambassador sponsorships and management And so it still applies at this day, but let me be clear. There's other things that we've tried We tried starting a newsletter called mind your business that didn't work We've tried didn't that work

[00:51:48] It was too much a deviation and distraction from just getting people to join the app sumo newsletter trying to start a new newsletter And we didn't probably resource it enough, but it's like, okay. We tried it didn't work

[00:51:58] We've tried instagram can't get it to work twitter not working tiktok not working And so you can also go see our marketing. We don't put a lot behind it

[00:52:07] We double down on just and this is probably a key nuance james that I think people miss out on and they They think they're special and everyone is special everyone is But they keep doing the things that aren't working

[00:52:17] And the power is stopping that and really doubling down with video ambassador ship Or for us it's like the deals like at absolutely everything is a deal So let's really double down on the that column ldr's but the team that finds deals and the beta links

[00:52:30] They test the deals and the account executives and really making sure the operations team So when we do a deal, we're like, wow, this is a banger of a deal At the end of the day and so

[00:52:39] Again, it can still apply whether you're starting or whether at a large size You don't have to risk it all like we have some new ideas. We're trying and so instead of risking at all How do we test it in a month?

[00:52:47] Find out if it works or doesn't and then you can go invest a lot more into it Yeah, and and And I always love the fact too that once something works a little

[00:52:57] You could start being creative about other ways the same concept could work. So take take jake as an example Let's say he's sold a thousand Golf luxury trips now you can go To golf clubs and hotels and golf club manufacturers and either sell ad space or

[00:53:16] Or have a little store where you say, you know for all your people who are going to luxury golf trips.com you could have a little store for them And and and then you can say, huh this worked with the golf vertical

[00:53:28] Now what other verticals can this work with? What do people well people like older people take history? Platform for trips like you know absumas started as bundles of software

[00:53:38] And that evolved into individual software deals and that evolved to us having our own course about how to start a business Which led to million dollar weekend You know, but the biggest point is we got started and that will lead you on your journey

[00:53:48] The other the other point I've got to highlight for people is the best business The best is the one that works The best business is the one that works and this is something in my 20s. I was really kept chasing the new thing

[00:54:01] And then my 40s. I'm like, I'm just chasing the thing that works Okay, what do you mean? Because in my 20s it was like, oh, this is working like with absumo even let's let's take absumo in my early 30s too

[00:54:10] Absumo is working. Let's start a software business software business is working Let's start a marketplace And it's like all along if we just kept focusing on absumo instead of trying to start all these other new things Maybe absumo would be even bigger than it is today

[00:54:23] But it would have been it's a lot more successful and frankly easier to execute with the thing That's already working versus the brand new stuff And that's something that I had to learn from experience That that is a really good point. Um, I think too often

[00:54:37] People get nervous and try to start many things simultaneously That could work in the if you're in the experiment phase where Okay, I'm going to try this for a week. I'm going to try this for a week I'm going to try this but once you have something that

[00:54:48] It's like what the ads we were seeing before once you see something that works That's where you double down Well, it's like yeah, I would just comment there that like you can't learn to swim putting your toe in

[00:54:56] You know, you have to be in the water and you have to give it a shot and then you make the change The other thing I would say for like, you know, let's not get too into it

[00:55:04] But with chess the way you can get to a 2000 or 2500 rating is sticking with it and just slowly I'm one of my new approaches with business is unambitious goals And this is counterintuitive but the point that I've recognized that you know, there's compounded interest in investments

[00:55:20] There's compounded business moves and compounded business moves is do something with very Small gradual improvements over a very long period of time will add up to significant success And so the absolute our growth rate is 7% a year. That's what I'm trying to grow 7% It's very unambitious

[00:55:37] And look you could sometimes do that with kind of like incremental additions to the business not new businesses But like what we're talking about he could advertise for golf clubs or whatever or whatever and Uh And you're right with the here's the question

[00:55:51] Do you double down and this is actually an important thing for for skill acquisition too Do you double down what you're good at or do you try to get better at what you're weak at? So same business But like let's say

[00:56:06] I can't think of an example in business right now. I can give an example for absumo that we made a I wasted like at least a million dollars cash and probably more in salaries So you have to understand most of the most successful businesses are very simple

[00:56:22] Like even let's say youtube you upload a video Yeah, google you search it has some results airbnb. You search. It's got an apartment absumo's core is finding a product that will help a solopreneur Negotiating a price sending an email. That's it

[00:56:38] And in terms of doubling down well, we thought hey we have 600 deals on the site If we can 10x that we'll 10x the business And so our strength though was really just finding high quality deals really really specifically

[00:56:53] Super high quality deals that we can get a great deal on And then we 10x the the store from 600 to 13,000 products So our weakness we thought was we don't have enough inventory if we just have tons of stuff and our algorithm We'll figure things out

[00:57:07] And the team hated it the customers hated it the partners were okay with it And then I spent a million dollars on black friday giving it out to people to say hey come list your product on our site and It was a complete failure

[00:57:20] Like our nps of our customer rating went down partners were upset because now the products are getting shown the team was against it and Last year Was just because they were like shitty deals that were then posted on the site Yeah, totally

[00:57:33] It was you know at 13,000 the quality And what people expect from us wasn't there And so then we had to literally revert that back to now there's 651 products on absumo And that was trying to double down on a strength that we didn't test

[00:57:46] So we could have tested going from 600 to 1000 And very quickly you can see like how does customers respond? You can and by the way, you don't even need data have customers on your whatsapp have them on your phone number

[00:57:56] Have them in your slack group have them in your discord and ask them. They'll tell you I think that's something that I didn't do a good job of frankly It besides the numbers the rest of my numbers didn't make sense

[00:58:06] So it's like you really want to go from strength to strength meaning what are you strong at make that stronger And how do we find even more great deals and really double down on that? I wonder and this is just like a side thing. I wonder in which

[00:58:20] acquisition like skill acquisition or or I wonder in which kind of areas of life It's better to find your weaknesses and build those stronger or just to double down on strength So for instance, you're learning how to play tennis and you're and your forehand's great

[00:58:37] But your backhand sucks Do you spend more time making your forehand even greater because that's the way you win is usually with the forehand Or do you try to be all around and make your backhand great? So That's the two approaches right there

[00:58:49] And I would say there maybe focus on your weaknesses. And so I wonder what makes It different from in business The way I've looked at in business I used to feel really self-conscious and embarrassed that I was really good at starting companies I used to think like, okay

[00:59:04] I can move really really quickly before catch fear catches up And I used to be such a so afraid of that And then I realized like why don't I just embrace that and other people

[00:59:14] Like let's take Lauren or Anna or Amy who's like doing customer support do that and they actually enjoy it Or finding someone like Sean who loves excel models and doing strategic analysis have him do that

[00:59:25] I'll stay the hell away from that now and then I'll put myself only in the places that I'm really excellent And really double down on promotion Instead of try you don't think there's more value in you trying to get better at what you're weak at

[00:59:37] So you could have a more holistic view of the of the whole business I think especially when you start a business If you're the first employee, it's good to understand everything. It's good to do like when I started out

[00:59:47] Simo I was the support person. I was the marketing person. I was the salesperson I was the developer I was the operator I was everything And I understood it and and the clear caveat I have to make is that I meet a lot of people who say

[00:59:59] I'm going to hire a marketer or CEO or salesperson to save me And that is going to be a huge huge fail What you have to do is have an understanding and then you could find that person It's not most times you're not going to find a miracle

[01:00:13] In that instance now with business. Yeah, I don't know in tennis Maybe it can work if you try to get all around But what if you just had like literally the fastest serve in the planet and maybe your other game is okay, but no one returns your serve

[01:00:27] You know, I haven't done, uh, you know, I'm not a great 10. I'm okay in tennis player But in business I've just found Let me understand at least lightly everything but really focus on for me. It's marketing and promotion And that's where I'm doubling down on a little bit

[01:00:39] I would say leadership as something I've worked on in the past two years But all these other areas like I'm okay being ignorant I want to be around people who are way better than me

[01:00:50] One thing I want to get to is and you talk about this in the book and this is an important topic Ideation like you're you're talking to a lot of people who already have ideas

[01:01:10] Like I want to set up a golf trips thing and I want to solve a problem on docuSign And then you could validate it But what about the person who really does seem to be a little weaker than

[01:01:22] You know coming up with that initial idea or they're a little anxious about that or whatever Yeah, there's there's you know, literally the book starts with excuses frequently made ones and everyone's got the same ones

[01:01:32] And realizing that you're not so unique in it is also empowering to realize that it's solvable Right that it's been solved like most these problems have been solved and so When people say they don't have ideas, it's just they're afraid of starting

[01:01:44] And they're afraid of what happens when they actually do get started And that's why I encourage people to think about what can you do right now? Can you post something on social media for yourself? Can you ask someone to mow their lawn?

[01:01:54] Can you put something up on etsy or craigslist or facebook marketplace or wherever you are in the world and do that right away That those are available businesses instantly now a few things to consider

[01:02:03] I have a cousin. He's in the air force and he emailed me some ideas He's he has a dream to get the hell out of the air force and have a business

[01:02:10] And he said hey, I had this idea and i'll just share it because I think it's fine You wanted to do baby clothes that can age with the baby Right because right now you buy baby clothes at one month and six months and 12 months and all that stuff

[01:02:22] And i'm like I love it. What can you do right now to find three customers? He's like, oh, I there's a parents group. I'm gonna message each of these people great In the interim though he googles it and he's like oh someone else already did it

[01:02:35] I was like, oh, so you're telling me that just because someone else opened a restaurant. There's only going to be one restaurant per city It's like no no no well, of course there's more okay

[01:02:45] Well, so there there's different types of restaurants or there's maybe your baby is air force baby clothing and our service baby clothing and there's just for a different type of baby and so there's room for a lot of people How to close the age with the baby?

[01:02:57] I don't know dude. He's got to figure that out. I'll tell you it's much easier to figure out a problem once you know that There's people that want it

[01:03:03] Versus the other way around that's what a lot of people do is oh, I figure out a way for baby clothing to grow And then go to people and be like hey, do you have this problem? They're like, I don't know I don't care

[01:03:13] Let's find out they have it and guess what when you have money and customers It is much easier to be resourceful and entrepreneurship a lot of it is how do you be resourceful

[01:03:19] Now let's come back to your original question. How do you come up with ideas? All right? Let's just do I'll give you three ways Everyone just go do these right now today one

[01:03:28] Call it breakfast lunch and dinner open up your phone. We'll even do a live experiment here Breakfast on dinner. It's two three fifty where you are What is one thing that annoyed you or bothered you in your breakfast today? I didn't eat breakfast today

[01:03:44] And you know as as no as I get older the less I eat the better Okay, and then do you so my encouragement and what I'm helping people to think through is like

[01:03:53] What in your day and break it down to morning afternoon and night that you found irritating? So what is something in the morning afternoon james that that bothered you or you wish you had or Frustrated you

[01:04:04] I'm almost a poor person to ask because I don't really do that. I don't really have any problems I don't really do that many things so like I honestly don't know what bothered me today if anything

[01:04:18] Okay, I'm not even trying to be difficult. I I no, it's okay That's I did podcast that I enjoy all day and I I read and I play chess and And I work on different businesses I'm involved with and it's all good

[01:04:34] Okay, so for other people out there, I'll even give myself as an example So today ran out for lunch I didn't have lunch because I didn't know what to even order for lunch

[01:04:42] And I actually find that to be a real challenge. Oh, that's interesting write that one down Hard to figure out for lunch another thing my grass. It's missing a huge section this morning. I go outside. I'm like, oh man That's been there for over two weeks Damn it

[01:04:55] So again, if you think of it in what is frustrating you the best businesses are the problems you have yourself So that's one way just think about it insurance today number two is james

[01:05:03] You can look at this is the tim ferris one which I love which is look at your credit card bill Like what are you spending money on that either is annoying you or is an opportunity

[01:05:12] And I think those are one of my I've definitely started a lot of businesses I hate painful price for software AppSumo.com I don't like that. I have to sign up for hello sign or docu sign. Guess what? I'm going to create an alternative

[01:05:22] So that is a way to just at least get inspired And recognize that there's a way to create businesses around that and then the last thing and james I'll give it let's try one more. Let's try one more. Those are two. All right

[01:05:31] What is something that you've been what's been on your to-do list are that you've been meaning to do That you have not done for at least a week I haven't written in at least a week And what's held you back from writing

[01:05:46] Because I've been focused on other things Like for instance studying chess or I've had a lot more business related meetings lately And is there anything that would have saved you time so you could have had more time for writing which sounds important to you?

[01:06:01] What would have saved you time well I could have stopped playing chess as much and wrote during that time I don't know. That's a problem. That's not that's a general that's not a general problem

[01:06:16] Different but what i'm recognizing for people out there is that what are you avoiding doing is a business opportunity? Or if you wish you had more time Maybe you need an assistant james or maybe need better scheduling or maybe you need someone to help you with time management

[01:06:28] Yeah, j My podcast producers are supposed to schedule me. He's lousy at it. No No, it's good, but maybe j maybe j needs tidy cal.com That's a tool we created because we hated paying full price for Calumly

[01:06:41] And so again what i'm doing is that these aren't going to be magic bullets where you're going to oh, shit This is a billion dollar idea. It's ways to come up with ideas

[01:06:49] Make sure they're million dollar opportunities and then validate them in a really quick amount of time to see if Some people want guess what if it doesn't work just go back and try it again next weekend so so By me asking those questions

[01:07:00] I'm asking them to myself to solve a problem for myself And that's something you encourage in the book But I can ask that to other people to find out their pain spots

[01:07:08] Like I can go to a dentist and say what's your pain spot and get it and he's like, oh, I don't have enough customers I'm not big on social media. And then that's an idea. Yeah, so two. I actually have a business like I know you'll buy

[01:07:19] So now you said you had no business ideas or like I got nothing all I do is Eat and do yoga and meditate and play chess and do business deals

[01:07:26] So you're a 2000 chess player. I know we're not gonna talk about chess because I used to talk about it too much But it sounds like from what I'm a 2200 at heart, but let's

[01:07:35] I know dude at heart. I'm 25 years old, but my you know, gig, you know genetic age. I guess it's 41, but let me again Listen to people and if they have a problem and you could solve it. That's a business So you said that you're a 2000 ish chess player

[01:07:51] It sounds like if you could get to 2250 It's really important to you. Is that is that correct? Yeah, because I'm writing a book about this journey. I can't write it. So I solve this problem And that's great. And so

[01:08:02] Do you see where I'm gonna go with this? No. Oh great. Ooh even better and so What's your approach to going from just very briefly what's your approach from going from 2000 to 2250 high level Studying and getting coaches and getting coaches. How do you find these working with coaches?

[01:08:18] Well, I have one coach that I work with who I like a lot and how much you paying him Uh, it's barter. I help him with business. He helps he helps my chess And how long do you planning to when do you think you'll be a 2250 player?

[01:08:35] I thought it was going to take six months and I'm already on my second year of this And so it sounds like it's a very big problem and important to you How come what would it be like to actually be a 2250 player?

[01:08:45] So by the way here, you sell a little bit of the future So what would that I'm listening by the way? So listen option transition I'm going through the same exact thing

[01:08:52] Again, we're finding a business idea. This is the cool part. So James, it sounds like what would that feel like to be a 2250 player? How would you feel? I would feel that I

[01:09:01] For all the people who said I was delusional that a I proved I could do it and B I could start writing this book about the adventures I've been on since starting this So James, it sounds like if I'm able to help you

[01:09:16] And I have this brand new way Go from your 2000 to 2250 in six months guaranteed And you get or you get your money back completely. It sounds like that would be extremely helpful to you absolutely

[01:09:29] Okay, so I'm not even going to get into the business because I'm not a chess player Don't sell something you can't sell or you can actually help the person But right here I've identified a key pain point that you're that's actually a business for you

[01:09:39] Right, that's a business opportunity. So how can you get rapid chest speed development from people who like yourself or rich That have money to pay for it And then you work backwards to see like, okay, that's a business idea

[01:09:50] Now can I go see the market validate it like I just did potentially and then move forward with that So I would say that's a really interesting business, which is like rapid chest development for rich people Yeah, and the the issue okay, maybe I'm making an excuse here

[01:10:05] The issue is like I'm really and I have an Extraordinary advantage on learning a I've done a lot of studies of Learning and meta learning b I've talked to all the best coaches in the world The best sports psychologist in the world the best neurologist in the world

[01:10:21] The best players in the world the best coaches and the chess coaches in the world I have so many access to so many resources and It's almost an impossible task to determine what the best methods are to improve So two separate pieces

[01:10:36] I'm identifying the business idea like what's the problem right? I get that yeah, and so I think that that's number one number two in terms of how to solve it You need either for me. I'm not a chess expert, you know

[01:10:45] I'm a depending if it's blitz or just classic like a 1400 rated player 1300 No, you're better than that. You're better. I'm a 1700 on like I've been playing more three minute games It depends on like how much I'm practicing and studying

[01:10:57] But my point though is that if you have something that like when I identified for yourself, holy shit Maybe there's other people like me and maybe there's not it sounds like there's not that many So would I go try to validate that business? Probably not

[01:11:08] But that was just one way I showed you that there is a business problem that you have that you probably could You could start as a business, but what I recommend it probably not Yeah

[01:11:19] You know it's interesting because I don't really spend a lot of money on a lot of things like I don't I'm almost not a good I hear what you're saying because like several businesses that I've started have been because

[01:11:31] I was good at a skill set and it was a problem that I knew lots of people had so like building websites or or You know creating good information resources for information even that I wanted to learn more about so

[01:11:46] But just like right now I just have my goals are very simple. So I don't have that many Issues No, you don't have issues, but let me just ask like what's it worth to you? For you to go from 2000 to 20 to 50 by the end of the year

[01:12:00] Oh, I would pay quite a bit like how much would you pay? Well, just let's say my bartering time if I add that up I you know in just in terms of compared to like any sort of consulting fee I would charge I would probably

[01:12:13] It's probably worth like close to a million dollars to me So that sounds like a million dollar business You can find one customer That's all you need Yeah, I was looking at My friend has a company called howdy.com. It's it's hiring

[01:12:31] Developers in South America for more affordable than hiring American developers and she's and she which is crazy. They have 185 placements Right and now that sounds like nothing, but then each placement they make $2,000 on a month You're like, holy shit. That's almost half a million dollars a month

[01:12:50] that they make and so Just because you only have one customer at a million that can be a substantial business But my you know, how do they compete? How does she compete with like fiverr or something like that? They lands at work

[01:13:01] They have the developers work in their offices. So they're the ones actually finding the developer. They work in an office They have benefits versus fiverr You're finding individuals that are freelancers. So these are people actually that work for it

[01:13:12] So we're evaluating using a metapsumo my point though is that you don't need a lot of customers to make a million dollar business Yeah, I think with your chest one. I think there's something interesting there if someone's out there

[01:13:21] Go study it figure out if there's a way to do it And then how do you make it a no brainer to test it with someone like James? Yeah, I mean, I guess essentially that's what I'm doing with of course

[01:13:29] I have a coach that I think is the best possible coach for me to have to get better So we'll see. I mean Just this specific thing I I actually beginning to think it's my mindset

[01:13:41] That's more of a problem than anything else, but that's a whole other story. We could that's a rabbit hole Yeah, I mean your original question was how do you come up with business ideas and it was like We just found one Yeah

[01:13:52] And then I'm wondering though if you can go through that same process with other people though to see what their pain points are to start a business where you know that

[01:14:00] That you might not be interested in dentistry, but you realize that no dentist knows how to make a social media presence So that becomes a business and so you you survey an area Where you think there's a hole and and you find the business opportunities there

[01:14:14] Yeah, I have to give the caveat. I think in business. It's good to get reps in right? So just like going to the gym. It's good to practice Yeah

[01:14:22] But I found for myself and a lot of people that the most successful stuff is the things you actually care about yourself And that you're interested in yourself I agree like there was this period in where I try I had like a lot of different ideas for businesses

[01:14:35] So I want I really wanted to make a dating site But I knew nothing about dating sites and the fun and we made nine of these different types of dating sites And they just all Failed and then the final site that I had come up with

[01:14:51] Was a site to make a social media site about finance And and no news because I hate news and finance because I think that's all bullshit And I and my business partner said, uh, you know, we just did nine failures. Let's not do this

[01:15:06] But let's just try this one other thing and this is something I knew a lot about And so we we did it in a few weeks. We launched it and within Uh a month we had a a million unique visitors

[01:15:18] And and by the way before we launched I found a company to put ads on every page So I had customer i-profits day one because again, I knew the industry so I knew who to talk to

[01:15:29] So it's you're right like the thing I was an expert in was the easiest business for me to start Everyone's one no way from a yes Everyone's no one no away from succeeding and the fact that you you said, all right

[01:15:42] I like the idea. Let me keep trying and trying and trying eventually you find the thing and then you can make that work A lot more and most people are giving up too soon And look if you like dentistry or you like doing facebook ads

[01:15:52] I would go think about what have I done in the past that either I I did for free and I liked Or I've gotten paid for in the past and how do I revisit that? I think for myself, I always felt hey, I like promoting and marketing

[01:16:03] Can I really make a business out of it? It's like, yeah, just embrace that I fucking like that and that's okay And that's what now my whole career is it's promoting on youtube or promoting in the book or promoting absumo

[01:16:14] Man, I'm so glad you wrote this book because hey again This now I can just now I don't have to spend a lot of time with people who I give advice to about business

[01:16:23] Because I could just say just read this book the million dollar week. It's it's exactly what I would advise and It really is like you you really hit the nail on the head on so many just basic issues

[01:16:33] I wonder why more entrepreneurial oriented books don't do this. Why do you think they don't do this? I think a few different reasons one They a lot of the authors got rich from authoring or from courses. They haven't actually gotten rich from business

[01:16:48] So that that's one reason I don't you know A lot of these guys on youtube or podcasts that are very popular. I'm like, what's your business? Can I ever see it? Can I ever hear about it? Oh, no, you don't have one

[01:16:57] Or you tell me you make hundred million dollars, but no one can ever see it. You can't prove shit No, thank you So I think most people haven't actually done the real work and I'm still doing it right I'm still running a business

[01:17:07] And then the other thing I've noticed from business books And I read a lot and just because you read doesn't mean you're a great writer But I consume this material because I always wish I knew it earlier on In either a like rich dad poor dad

[01:17:18] Which is a mega mega mega bestseller. I read it and I was like, okay I want the rich dad. What do I do? Guess what? It doesn't tell you shit It just gets you in the mindset that you should go buy real estate

[01:17:26] But that's all it does or you have these books that are hyper focused on recipes So you have either too far a theory or too far of a recipe which is

[01:17:35] Okay, if you want to start a business you you get a landing page and you run some ads and you see if people click on it And then you get once you get that then you can start your Shopify

[01:17:43] And the reality is it's the blending of the two which is I found out Most people almost all of them who haven't had success never got started And they were afraid of asking

[01:17:52] And so really blending in those those skills in a fun way and then leading them into the I would say recipe portion of the book Which is how do you validate the million dollar opportunity and then move to the scaling part in the end of a book

[01:18:03] Which I can't believe this is 27 dollars or whatever the price is when it comes out for people that you know to make a million dollars and beyond For a very affordable price But you know, you're you're right

[01:18:15] It's really interesting because there's one thing your book does that the other two approaches don't do And I'm and this has nothing to do with the entrepreneurship aspects of it

[01:18:23] So like the first one you say too much theory and the other one is like too much of a formula Both sides of that equation don't deal with mindset and psychology

[01:18:33] And what a lot of your whether you realize it or not what a lot of your techniques do is remove The psychology component, which is good Like you you you solve the psychology component and and

[01:18:43] What I mean is there's a lot of psychology to business you get rejected all the time. So you feel bad Maybe you do something for a year and it doesn't work and you feel bad maybe

[01:18:53] There's like you say there's a lot of psychology of excuses and failure and and there's even a psychology when you win Like you you have to deal with winning is the whole psychology. I mean, I think two two key components

[01:19:06] You know out there to think about is that I've been doing this Like I've started million dollar business over and over and over again mark zuckerberg only did one And by the way, you were there at the beginning of I was at the beginning of facebook

[01:19:17] But the point is One I've done it time and time again. So either I'm very lucky or there's something happening where I figured out things that I can share The other also you see thousands of businesses in your in the app sumo store

[01:19:28] Or whatever you go, I'm sure 10,000 people have gone through the course millions of people have read the article in tim ferris Which the the post was based on the beta launch team of the book was 1,300 people that I've gone through the book and I've worked with them individually

[01:19:40] So it's something I've done over and over and over again That's what's led me to feel literally the expert in the world About teaching this information which for me, I was surprised if I could even do it and I was like, can I

[01:19:50] And then the other thing is that in business you only need one hit to succeed You only need one sure You only need once just one dating website or one video

[01:19:59] You know, I put out I talk about the law of 100 which is committing to doing something a hundred times I put out 98 videos give or take until my finally it's like not working

[01:20:09] And I did this video called knocking on millionaires doors and asking them how they got rich that finally worked Now is the first of you. It's like oh now all my videos are kind of like that

[01:20:17] Now by the way, I think I think that video created a whole genre like now Yeah, all over tiktok. Hey, what do you you know? You look rich. What do you do? Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of kids

[01:20:28] Doing that now and now I have to evolve right which is good. I'm cool that they you know I'm everything is a copy of something else

[01:20:34] So I'm you know, we were inspired by you know, Daniel Mack who did it for cars and some of these other guys that didn't before but they were faking it and Yeah, it's been interesting to See that this book can actually work

[01:20:46] And then noticing that like I asked people like why haven't you started? Oh because you know, I don't have enough ideas and those things all boil down to the same two things Which is haven't started and they're afraid of asking and I think with all this stuff

[01:20:57] How do you make it fun? Right, like you don't have to be a millionaire But I think everyone should be an entrepreneur or at least try to be an entrepreneur whether so like me I got fired

[01:21:05] And I was like, holy shit like they can take away my job just like that They literally you know my livelihood where I was living. I lived in a facebook house I got kicked out basically and I had to go move to my friend Johnny's couch

[01:21:16] And so I was like never again Am I gonna let someone else control how my future is and being an entrepreneur? Whether you like your day job or not at least getting started on that will create that option available for you

[01:21:27] Yeah, like again, like you give these challenges that are fun That are kind of good ways to practice the actual psychological muscles needed to be an entrepreneur None of these other books the theory books or the formula books do that

[01:21:38] That's what that's what I love here because this is the real advice how to be an entrepreneur And it's important like you said It you know a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs But they look at mark zuckerberg and say oh, I better raise 500 million dollars and

[01:21:53] Do all the learning how to do software and like take that as that's a great example Zuckerberg started in a weekend Yeah, that's what he copied. He didn't even come up with the idea. He copied the winkelvosses And he had a and so not only that which

[01:22:05] But but sorry to interrupt like go for it one thing that struck me with his business in recent years Is for some reason He has forgotten how he began like he said he's going to put You know billions of dollars into creating a virtual reality metaverse

[01:22:21] That's the exact opposite of how he started facebook and of course Of course that failed that that whole endeavor on his part like it's a complete failure. So It's interesting

[01:22:32] Yeah, I mean he started in a weekend right so he saw someone else that worked which was called connect you So I met the winkelvosses and they're they're interesting And he copied them and launched it himself after trying two other things wire hog

[01:22:44] And then he had another site a thing called face smash that did not work Launched in a weekend sent an email to his own influence or to his own dorm And that is how it got started

[01:22:55] And that's available. That's not just for zuckerberg. It's for anyone out there that wants to get started Yeah, no, that's great. And uh, and I like how they did start He did start with just the people, you know, it's like when I launched my the finance site

[01:23:08] I was mentioning earlier I first thing I did was I wrote to all the finance bloggers that I've been regularly recommending in some of my articles and they all then started recommending it to their That's so cool readers. So

[01:23:20] So that's why I feel like I really resonated with your book because I've had A lot more failures and successes, but the successes all had the elements of your book in it Whereas the failures did not pay attention to the advice in your book. So

[01:23:34] I mean it also should be a fun experience. I think what happens in business is we create these you know We create this like oh my god, I've got to have a great idea and I've got to be all this big scary stuff

[01:23:44] And it's like, all right. Chill out. Have fun Like me having a day job seemed really shitty and risky. That seems so scary Like staying at intel if I stayed at intel for 30 years, like I'd probably I don't know man if I would have committed suicide by now

[01:23:56] But like that to me seemed like a nightmare versus like the idea that hey if I started business I could spend half my year in spain, which is what I do Right or hey, if I don't feel like working this week and taking off. I can

[01:24:07] It's not always gonna be like that The other and the other side of it is that you have to assert but you have to stick with it And that's very tough for people to have families and day jobs is because their day job pays them

[01:24:16] You know 50k or 200k and then they start a side hustle and they make 50 bucks a first month, which is amazing But you got to figure out, you know, I like law of 100 But whatever it is so that each month you kind of just stick with it

[01:24:27] And then for me 13 years later. Thank god, you know, I get to make really To me amazing amounts of money doing what I love like how cool is that and that that's available for everyone No, I agree like having a job

[01:24:39] Again, I don't want to criticize everyone who has a job. There's a lot of reasons people take jobs But and I've written about this sport before it's very Fragile as opposed to nesim clubs concept of anti fragile like like you said you lose your job

[01:24:52] You lost your house. You lost your friends. You lost your opportunities to make a you know Millions of dollars being an early employee of facebook. It's depressing So It's it's a different experience. You have to deal with people you don't like

[01:25:04] Like if you don't get along with your boss, you still have to deal with them Oh my god, dude My uh, I won't I can't call it out, but I have a friend Every day she's like I hate being with my manager. He's always talking so much

[01:25:16] He uses foul language And he's just he always talks so long It's like, huh Well, you can take your power back It's not going to happen overnight But by creating your own business At least you can have that option whether you want to have this job or not

[01:25:31] And by getting started today, you can eventually have that that available for you That's a good point like and and you mentioned what it's it's it's worth mentioning

[01:25:40] Like I was a full-time employee when I first started my first business because I had zero dollars in the bank like zero I lived off my paycheck completely every month and that was it and I stayed at my full-time job

[01:25:55] For a full 18 months after starting my first business before I was made the leap Hell yeah, because because you want to manage risk a little bit in your life too You don't want to be if you if you jump the first day and you don't have any money

[01:26:07] That's scared. That's I I wouldn't be able to sleep at night like that's scary. So I had to work really hard and Uh, uh, that's important. The other thing I want to mention too is a very I just realized a very subtle thing

[01:26:19] That's very important in your book With your docusign example or jake scoff trip example You have to ask for money Like it's not enough that they say No matter what they say they could say a hundred percent chance. I'm gonna buy this just show me what you got

[01:26:37] 100% chance you gotta ask for money. That's the only way to validate the idea because There's many examples of people saying oh, yeah, if you made that I'll buy it Can I can I just buy it again? So this is someone who rejected me from the the docusign example

[01:26:49] But let me just read a little bit I thought it was so interesting because I said hey, I'm gonna start this docusign And she goes I hate with a lot of a's my docusign subscription

[01:26:59] I just need like 50 cents. I'm so infuriated. I don't use them. I'm so angry about it, right? This is what she sent me Uh, because I posted in a whatsapp group. Hey, I'm gonna start a docusign alternative

[01:27:10] This is to a small group in austin. Is anyone interested and she she messaged me about this I said we're building an alternative pay once no subscriptions And I said yes, I hate these things. I hate the same thing on my side

[01:27:21] She said please and I said I got you with the flex and then she sent me hugs and I did a smiley face Then I said hey, I'm trying to get a few beta customers tonight. It's part of a 48 hour build a business challenge

[01:27:32] Here's where it gets interesting She goes well, I don't need any signatures tonight But I can fake it if it means I can cancel docusign. Ha ha cool down to deposit 99 for life It's 100% refundable if not delivered and I and if you love it

[01:27:46] And if not delivered and you love it within two months meaning it's 100% refundable I didn't think you need a signature asap. Ha ha her I guess I I need to see the feature sets to make sure it'll work for for me first

[01:27:58] Okay, this is rejection. This is her saying she's like serious, but not actually serious Even though you've already said within two months of delivery. It's refundable. Yes, and it doesn't have a feature set Yeah, and then I said well what so again

[01:28:10] This is why we practice the coffee challenge. This is why we practice the dollar it's not to oversell It's not that I'm not trying to teach people convince people that don't want something That they want it. That's not the point

[01:28:20] You want to see if it's a problem see if you have a solution for them and see if they'll actually give you money If they don't try to understand that

[01:28:26] And I and I said well it says you need to see what features. Okay. Well what features are critical for you to do a deposit tonight I'm trying to balance building and be clear

[01:28:35] I'm trying to balance building a ton of features and also making sure I'm building something people want And I said she said I want to insert text and signature fields for different people sounds great We can do that. Is there anything else? And she stopped responding

[01:28:50] Yeah, and and by the way this is a concept I learned from This professor I was speaking to earlier on the phone who sent me a dollar marik He's written a book about entrepreneurship. That's very good and

[01:29:03] He talks about an experience he had where he had every he basically has said to me There's a lot of reasons why people say yes Um, they might just want to get you off the phone. They might just want to

[01:29:16] Be nice to you and have a pleasant relationship You know They might want to get on to some other tasks. They need to say yes to you first So

[01:29:26] But there's really only one reason why they all say no, which is they simply don't want the product and that's okay too That's okay. Great and for Someone like her there was I had four no's but I also had 24 yeses

[01:29:39] And so that's why I practice getting rejected. That's why I practice where it's I'm not scared Because I practiced it and when she said no I said okay great. Thank you. Is there any reason? No

[01:29:47] Okay, you're not responding I'll follow up with her once the product's out. I'll sell her again Sure, I'll try to But that's also then I went to other people my neighbor said no to me even though I went back three times

[01:29:56] He said he hates his docusign, but he's like I just won't be a beta customer. I said all right And then other people that said no, I also then say ask for referral Is there someone you know who would refer?

[01:30:06] He didn't refer anyone and that's okay too, but at the end of the day, you know 24 hours later $3,000 in deposits from 24 people That is great Well, look no, uh, you you live what you preach And I'm absolutely sure at some point in the past 10 years

[01:30:23] I begged you to buy a book but I cannot remember the specifics of that book is dedicated to james altich I don't Do you know the dedication street? It's not my family. It's not it's james altich are like this book No, it's not

[01:30:35] I'm not saying I convinced you to buy a book. I'm just saying I wanted to a book that you would write So I never felt you know, I never felt ready for it. I think that's kind of fascinating

[01:30:44] I felt scared and I felt like an imposter like who am I to to write a book on this and You know, it took me many years to feel comfortable and it took me facing my the hard parts in our life For me

[01:30:54] This was putting this together and seeing if I could do it and help people and then now I feel like hell Yeah, I can and and I think that you know, this is a I would say this is a personal development book wrapped in a business

[01:31:04] I think this was personal development for you writing this book having getting getting your confidence up on that in this aspect 100% I felt very self-conscious. I you know, that's why I hired tall Ross. So I didn't have to do it

[01:31:15] You know, I paid this guy a ton of money So I could avoid facing the hard part and then when I finally faced it and worked on it with him And I worked with thousands of people with this specific material after

[01:31:24] Uh, you know many years I was like, wow this works and I can do it and that that's the whole book for everyone It's what's the thing we're a little bit afraid of that we think might be a little scary and then we face it

[01:31:33] We overcome it and we realized wow that was cool. I'm proud of myself. What's next? Yeah, and look by the way tall is a very good Whether you call it ghost writer or co-writer like he really captured your voice. He captures Chris boss's voice and uh

[01:31:47] Don'ts with the difference never spoke the difference and uh, he just did another book with chris boss, which I haven't read yet but I will and uh He seems very talented. I I like his stuff he's

[01:31:58] You know, there's a difference between a uh and a writer and an author Right and he was very big on how do we make sure there's very powerful stories? And there's a very unique message and if we're gonna do it

[01:32:09] Let's make the best book in the category and that was that was definitely a very strong approach versus versus a lot of people like I write a book and uh Here's a little recipe and here's another thing and it's it's you know, a professional versus an amateur and

[01:32:21] I think in a lot of aspects. I'm trying to find the people around me again My weakness is writing. I'm not a strong writer, but I have good ideas I'm a good promoter Let me go find that person to compliment going back to what we were saying earlier

[01:32:31] Well, that's just it you you have very unique ideas. You have very unique personality of lots of stories And that's why I always wanted to see a book of your stuff But now now I've got it

[01:32:43] And look I look forward to the next time we get together we'll play chess and ping pong You know, by the way, I just had a memory we we last played ping pong We last saw each other in 2016 and it was the oddest thing

[01:32:55] We were playing at spin in new york city and I passed out Do you remember that like I I I've never done that before like I literally I was standing

[01:33:04] I was talking to somebody you work with and then the next thing I know is i'm on the floor and everybody was like looking at me And I don't know why that happened, but that was like the only time in my life. I've ever passed out

[01:33:13] Dude, that was wild But and then the last time we played chess was in austin. I was in austin and uh, we went to your apartment or someone's apartment And played some chess and you were not you were not a 1400 player

[01:33:25] I would put you more at like 1700 1800. Can I tell you a crazy story about chess? Huh, of course dude. I played chess with jayme fox Have you played with jayme fox?

[01:33:37] The most celebrity like person I played chess was I played a couple hours with the jizzah from the wu-tang clan How was that? Oh, he's a good chess player. He's like maybe also like 1700 1800. Oh wow. Yeah, jayme fox crushed me actually

[01:33:50] No way a buddy of mine richard was like, hey you can come to jayme's house and oh he likes to play chess So I was like, I want to bring my chess board and so he had like a party

[01:33:57] This is like I think it was his daughter's birthday People are drinking everyone's partying and at 2 a.m. They're like hey jayme's free if you want to play chess with them and I was like

[01:34:07] So you could actually go on my instagram from I think a year or two ago and see me playing And I think I was like dude, I can't believe so good Oh my god, I don't need to get a rematch on him

[01:34:17] Did you play with a clock or you just played a game? Yeah with the clock I think we're doing either five minute games or 10 minute games. He was so he knew what he was doing. Yeah jayme fox man respect

[01:34:27] All right, I'm gonna have to figure out how to play him at some point if you go to la let me know I can connect you with the guy. Uh, I'll help you out. I'm going to la tomorrow by coincidence. No, I'm just kidding

[01:34:37] Oh, okay. Well, no dude, that's also funny. That's my usual technique by the way No, but that by the way, that's so smart like when I was doing this business I was telling you about

[01:34:46] This one person was like, hey, can you send me an invoice and I was like, of course I have invoices I don't know. I haven't sent it in voice in five years, dude. I don't know what an invoice is anymore

[01:34:52] So I go google spreadsheet look up invoice free template make one up put it invoice number 1402 Send it to him. Send me the money or this other person's like, hey, send me a payment link

[01:35:03] I was like what the hell is a payment link? I was like, of course, I'll send you a payment link I google what's a payment link and it's it's like a paypal thing where they could put their credit card info in

[01:35:10] Then I just go to my PayPal get a link send it to him got the money and so I love I love what you just did right there I think that's subtle almost, but it's really powerful like okay solve it Yeah, that works that technique works really well

[01:35:22] So, um, well Noah look, I really hope we get together sooner rather than later And I'm so excited for your book. I'm telling everybody about it particularly right here on the podcast telling 100,000 people about it and uh

[01:35:37] Good luck with it. But let definitely let's get together soon. I'll come to austin or I'll go to spain wherever you have it To be and we'll hang out. I love that man. I'd love to hear more about how you're doing