This Is What Billionaires Regret Before Dying - Noah Kagan

I was so impressed to see that you emailed me in 2019 yeah tell me about that you were reading the archive emails back it's just interesting to see who makes it right and uh I think I emailed you as million dollar weekend was coming out talking to the team and I was like oh there's a few shows I'd love to be on and you were one of them uh I think Stephanie reached out and we reached out and then was like yeah it's G to happen I was like oh that's interesting and I saw one of your clips about success bias as the world works I was like I just want to tell him I love his stuff and I think that's such a thing that can copy like reach out to someone just tell them that you've made an impact or that you like what they're doing and so I let me just search my Gmail so I searched Chris Williamson in my Gmail and it was in 2019 January you said hey mate that's how you British like you like to address us and and you said hey I'd love for you to come on the show and I just couldn't believe and then what was even crazi I was reading it to my girlfriend today I said hey I'm busy with my with appsumo can you follow up in March you said no problem you followed up in March I said I'm busy in March can you follow up in two months you followed up every every single time and it's you don't know who's really going to make it but it said a lot about your character that you kept following up and following up and following up and I I always admire people that follow up that's cool that we're we're here I appreciate that yeah man it's come full circle it's only what five years later or whatever we finally we fin I got you in the end you [ __ ] dude it happen yes um no yeah I think look there's a lot of disadvantages to being uh obsessive and compulsive like uh even if it doesn't meet the medic criteria of of that um there are a lot of disadvantages like you you you see things and you don't let things go and it causes you to move slowly like I find um and a lot of the people who also have an attention to detail that's probably over the top um will notice that they leave things on the table because they can't move as quickly as people who are a little bit more blasé you know if you're able to just like move fast break [ __ ] like that whole kind of like Silicon Valley SF thing that's never been me it's never ever ever been me and I've kind of I've come to terms with that now and I've realized where my competitive Advantage lies and it's being thorough and and paying attention to detail and winning in the weeds and other people can win with velocity but that's not the game I I I would need to I don't know just permanently be on like MDMA or something if I was going to do that you know that's the only way I'd be able to get away with it um so yeah I think you know pling to your strengths um whether it's in business whether it's in content creation whether it's in finding a partner you know uh crafting some sort of uh Persona outward brand for whatever it is that you're trying to build I think that all of those things playing to your strengths because that's swimming Downstream like if I was trying to be the move fast break [ __ ] guy things would go badly but for me to be the detail oriented like sprinkling of autism guy piece piss super easy do do you think that's ever held you back or do you think how do you think that's held you back in areas and then how did you get the podcast started if you're someone who takes a long time to do things uh yeah it's definitely held me back but it's very interesting being detail oriented and being obsessive about things results in you being held back in ways that are very invisible being moving fast and breaking stuff causes you to be held back or to fail in ways that are incredibly public you know what I mean so a lot of this stuff will be um I I've basically launched zero businesses since running the podcast even though we reach like half a billion people a year I done any of that because I move slowly and take my time with things and I don't tend to like experiment publicly all that much apart from with the one thing that I do all of my experimentation with which is the show uh when it came to launching the show back in 2018 it took me six months to come up with the name um come up with the name and come up with The Branding and pick how I was going to make it all work so um yeah for for all that perfectionism is procrastination masquerading is quality control and I do believe it all the rest of it there's an uper bound on uh on how quickly certain people can move at stuff and it's just like all right well focus on the weeds instead I think what I've observed as people have it backwards is that we stick too long on things not working and not enough on things that are working and the things that were not working we could find out really quickly maybe a weekend yeah that that's more my style and then once you find the thing that working how do you actually stick with it yeah it's I I was reading this Paul grah essay how to do great work and um I've been pretty obsessed by this idea recently he says that the activation energy needed to start something is significantly greater than the activation energy needed to keep it going 100% but the inverse is true with your results so your results in the beginning of the lowest that they'll ever be and your results toward the end are the highest they'll ever be so for every episode that we put out now it's like 200,000 times what it would have been six years ago right but in the beginning it was also the hardest that it was ever going to be to do so it's the hardest and the lowest return and then as you get further along you've got better consistency and motivation and systems in place and you get more return but here's the kicker that uh Paul didn't write about which is if you're not careful and you don't protect your passion and your motivation through that Journey from going from start to maturation if you don't protect it by not celebrating wins by not having both internal and external Motivation by not having a team that helps to support you by not all of the thing like the motivation stuff if you don't protect it you actually end up getting to a stage where it's the easiest it's ever been it's the most returns that it's ever been but your motivation is the lowest it's ever been because at the very beginning motivation is quite high it's just that the returns and the difficulty are also like low and high respectively so you need to protect that passion or else you end up in this this awful kind of like reverse hell where everything's going great apart from the fact that you don't have the energy or the motivation to keep it going so yeah it's an interesting Arc you started the show did it take you six months from when you had the idea to get the name and launch it pretty much um because I was working on a ton of different I was running a business at the same time and again I wasn't just like I think maybe four months I think it was September or something 2017 and then uh January or February 2018 we launched with album artwork and all the rest but even Tim Ferris did a a podcast about how to launch podcasts which you might remember it was pretty famous ages ago and there's a way that you can hack your way to the top of the Apple podcast charts by releasing multiple episodes within the first couple of days I'm pretty sure the highest ever chart position that we had for like the first five years was the first week even though it was completely terrible plays by using Tim's Playbook so um yeah just it's a lot of preparation in the buildup I guess what I've observed for for myself is that winning is motivating right which it sounds so stupid and obvious and most of the cliche as I'm getting older most cliche things or obvious Paul Graham's got two great ones make something people want how do you know when they want it right but everyone's like yeah yeah makes some people want but then I it's like are you having trouble selling you having trouble marketing yeah because no one wants what you're doing correct I mean dude I must quote that nval thing you're doing sales because you sucked at marketing you're doing marketing because you sucked at product I must quote that to myself like once a week yeah I mean Nal funded uh my last company and that was interesting to work with him the other thing that people hear and I think that's what I'm hoping just to to reemphasize the thing you hear that might be cliche maybe think about how you can apply it for yourself like how do you know if someone wants it maybe they've given you money with my first YouTube video few it was about three years ago my first real one it was just on my phone but a few hundred people watched it and so talking about starting which most people never do which we I think you can do in a very short time and then sticking with it once it's working or once you're seeing some of that inter early validation I think the other thing that that Paul says that I think people hear but don't do and I've done it with million dollar weekend I've done it with appsumo I've done it with mint I've done it with all these things time and time again is how do you do things that don't scale right kind of another annoying one this is stuff that I'm like yeah I know but then people are like well how do I do my ads I was like well have you reached out to 10 people that probably want this product no no no that's not going to scale it's like I know same thing I did with million I literally messaged a thousand people that was my goal can I get a thousand people to be in my launch Team and then help me with giving reviews and feedback on the book and I now you know my whole my whole marketing plan it's literally just a spread with a th lines that's not really sexy right but that works and I already validated that people are excited about the book I got started 2011 with this concept around how do you get things done really really quickly yeah I think um one of the other memes that I wish it caught hold and then it's been sort of bastardized the most someone asked me what's a piece of business advice that you think needs to get in the bin and um leverage despite the fact that I love it has also being completely used and and repurposed in ways that are wrong so people start learning about leverage and they think oh my God my input's going be magnified so I get more outputs fantastic but they then start to forget that there are like high touch advantages to people who are prepared to not use leverage so for instance my background is in club promo when I first launched my podcast in 2018 I've still got the messages in my WhatsApp you used to be able to chunk your address book together into 50 person broadcast lists on WhatsApp and I had 2 and a half thousand contacts from being a club promoter for a decade and a half so I put 50 50 50 50 50 all the way up to 2 and a half thousand and sent every single one of them a message saying hi I've just launched a new podcast it would mean a lot to me if you could subscribe on Apple podcast here's the link and I did that just myself on my phone for like weeks it took weeks to do but that resulted in us getting a ton of reviews at the stop what were you telling yourself at that time cuz I think that's the part people might hear this and a lot of people aspire to to have a business be an entrepreneur which guess what you don't have to be tall like you're fit you don't have to be fit to be successful in entrepreneurship you could be anywhere in the world right like how great is that like you could be born to anything and be successful but I I think it's interesting people never get started so I'm curious what you were going through in your head because a lot of people feel like oh I don't want to bother people I don't want to ask people that's something i' I've learned as one of the things holding most people back they're afraid of asking yeah I uh that that fear or that bar to get over is completely removed by being a club promoter just doesn't exist like we've spent our entire career sending people unwarranted unsolicited messages asking if they're going out on a Tuesday a cold wet Tuesday in the middle of October you're fine with sending people messages you're fine with asking for things Charlie Hooper tried to reverse engineer some of the stuff that I do or he said that I do and he came up with one that I hadn't realized that I do when it comes to networking and one of them is uh I assume familiarity so I'll send him messages that are like there's no hey there's no how are you there's no nothing it's just like the meat and potatoes of what you would send your friend you know it's just uh awesome article you got to read this like just that without any couching and it's there's a degree of familiarity in that um because that's what we used to do with nightlife but I basically my what I'm saying is become a club promoter for 15 years and everything will be fine one one of the things that I love about your YouTube channel you've managed to get yourself into some very interesting situations with some very wealthy people you've spent a lot of time interviewing Millionaires and then worked your way up to billionair as well what are the common traits that you found some of the common commonalities between a lot of the very wealthy people that you've spoken to yeah and I think what's interesting is going back to promoting it's asking I just asked different people if they knew billionaires anyone can ask and it's a skill you can get better at because you did it yourself you asked and asked and asked so when you had your own product your show you asked so one of the things that I would say is it's a similar to what you're already talking about in your show all of the billionaires not not some of them all the billionaires I worked for Mark Zuckerberg Dustin moskovitz Adam D'Angelo Charlie chiver you know gota be around Peter teal a little bit billionaires they all got rich on one thing so if you think about yourself you're like I'm just doing the show and most other people are like diversify and do all these other things like for myself I really only got rich on appsumo I've done a lot of stuff and I've tried so many things you've never heard of and the same thing with these billionaires like I was in FedEx Kinkos and the Paul philler he found in Kinko sold it for 2.4 billion he's like I just did copers for 34 years that's a long time and I was joking uh that guy I bought my house from as a football player he's a kicker do you know I was joking about it this do you know what his day is like his what his day is like as a professional NFL kicker think about his Monday lots of Kicking and then Tuesday and then Wednesday and then okay at night he watches kicking and then Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and then he kicks for 10 seconds on Sundays yeah and I he loves kicking and he's a great person I think it's finding the thing that the world wants and that you enjoy doing that you can do ideally I'd say 10 years 20 years most of the billionaires I'd say the second Point once they found the one thing that's working they stick with it for an extraordinary long period of time extraordinary right almost none of them got rich in in one way like very quickly I I generally believe if it's coming if it works quickly great but if it the the business gets built slowly it goes away slowly but it compounds time and time and time so I think that's a huge thing that doesn't get talked about because it's like these guys aren't getting rich overnight they're getting rich in 20 years the other thing a few other things that I've noticed is that they're working in billion or trillion dollar markets right and a lot of it let's even take appsumo we're we're you know almost $100 million year in Revenue doing software deals that's yes we're skilled yes we've stuck with it 15 years but also software went from there was 10 software products available now in 15 years later there's tens of thousands of not hundreds of thousands of software products so we were in a good wave and so being mindful okay YouTube If I started in that that might get bigger so can you look at Google Trends can you have your own intuition like how can you look at some data to get that indication and so social networking there wasn't any Zuckerberg right kinker uh Kinkos there wasn't copers and things like that uh basement Larry janeski you know there wasn't as many anyone doing basements and his his funny line that I loved was we showed up on time and sober so professional Blue Collar work and you know energy Traders and all these different things that I've interviewed they worked in areas where you can make that amount of money and I'm noticing like a funny example you can think about at home is physical therapy or massuse I have a mass she comes to my house shout out Claire she gets paid 140 a session which is great it's like how many sessions does she need to do to make a million that's a lot of backs right okay well maybe she'll hire people great or then maybe she'll create the platform great or maybe she'll create software that can go to local businesses as well as online businesses and so I think you have to be mindful of the the opportunity you're thinking in uh for the market size now I'd say lasting from millionaires I don't know if all them are very happy I'm pretty happy being a multi-millionaire I'm really happy to be a multim and I think when you hear people I would be a billionaire none of these billionaires were like we want to be billionaires they were very excited about problems and I I I wouldn't say I don't have data I didn't survey like you're happy or not happy because it's also subjective but I don't know if a lot of them seemed really content with life I got to interact with one of them and I won't I won't call him out but he like H it was just some crazy [ __ ] and I was like wow this guy's got a lot of things going on and I well the reason I left Silicon Valley the reason you know for me doing a lot of things is like I wanted to I want to live I'm not here just to make so much money that I can have the nicest Cemetery grave y right like okay yes I want a karaoke machine at my CER grave I think that'd be really fun really think of how cool that would be you come over and like party with me it's like d got to feel it but I would say a lot of them seem to regret that they didn't balance the time with their families cuz on your you know death people know this stuff but we get very fixated on how much money what's like how am I comparing to this other person uh when you know my girlfriend who's phenomenal she she doesn't care she's like I just care about who you are and I think a lot of the people a aing sometimes for billion are so obsessed with that miss out on the overall balance of for themselves for their family for their friends because they're so obsessed with the work dude so much to go through there that's that's really that's really great okay so um first off the doing one thing going narrow and Incredibly deep the very very correct that there is this you've got something going on now it's time to diversify after having done it for a small amount of time um that does that really really Mega wealth and mega mega success I don't look at many people unless you're a personal brand and what you're doing is kind of bestowing like you're if you're Shaq right or like if you're bestowing your uh seal of approval on multiple other businesses but you're still only working on you right it's still it's not Shaq giving himself a monik or like becoming a you know a Caped Crusader at night or something like that it's still just him so that's very interesting the the consistency thing and being prepared to play long-term games as well makes complete sense finding a very large ocean one that's L hopefully getting bigger I think you know the podcasting audience is growing at around about 30% between 20 and 30% a year is something like that so if you just hold on to your market share guess what yeah you get to grow at 20 to 30% per I I would think with that question specifically are you seeing a market that's going to be bigger and others don't realize it's going to be bigger mhm when I started appsumo I I was always fixated on the problem most people when they're stting business are fixated on Solutions AI don't care like crypto don't care what does it solve for the actual end person and ideally it's yourself as a customer but also others and what are you seeing that if this problem actually helps someone can there be a lot more people in the future that you can help and so when I started appsumo I went to my mentor and I was like hey I got this idea software deals I think it's cool I I like and all these businesses have the problem getting customers I can solve that he's like yeah it's not going to work and the only way you can find out is with a customer and very quickly I tested it people wanted it and I was like oh so I think it was inspired by Mark Manson but it's like find something that other people are doubting or not sure get validation of it if you can very quickly and then later I would say if you stick with that it can prove to be a very successful business because if there's Market opportunity and there's Market awareness there's market prices there's Market everyone's then try to get in it you follow MH so you have to find the thing where it's like a lot of my best marketing is I found things before everybody else found it and I took full advantage of it well they're going to find it eventually yeah I mean when I after appsumo I think six other people maybe 10 15 copied me they were like oh software deals that's cool I'll just copy him and then none of them took it seriously I think that was among a few other things they took it as a hobby right it's like okay I'm going to learn to swim but I'm going to swim maybe once a week that's fine I'm swimming every day if I'm trying to get better you're going to become a professional there's a difference between an amateur and a professional there's difference between like major leagues and minor leagues and a lot of the time it's just that are you putting in the effort and the focus on the one thing and I've tried tried it like I you know when I was doing social media launching my YouTube channel I tried every platform Instagram Tik Tok LinkedIn YouTube Twitter blogging and I was like it's really hard to win all of these even podcasting Y and it's like let me just pick one that I feel like the work I'm doing has proportional to the results in terms of the views I'm getting relative to the effort and i' I've always talked for me it was law of 100 so I was like how do I do 100 videos before I quit because I think we all know we quit too soon everyone has so I'm curious for your journey as well how you've not quit I think that's most I enjoy it man you know I I did this long before anybody listened like if you look at the graph of the show's growth over time it's flat for three and a half years three and a half years in we'd had Peterson on the show so it's still flat comparatively to then only 18 months ago did I do Rogan and it was if you look back to the point at which I go on Rogan it's like that it's so small we did more plays in December of last year than in the entire first three and a half years of the show um we accumul more subscribers in one month than we did in the entire last three and a half years of the the first three and a half years of the show 85% of the audience found us last year and we were at half a million Subs at the beginning of last year and 85% of them found us it's just the the compounding and this is going back to that Paul gra thing that I was talking about before as time progresses each unit of your effort will be worth so much more and that's why the stick with it muscle is something that's very important but the easiest way to stick with it is to enjoy what you're doing or to do it it regardless of what the exter external accolades are if you would do this thing for free you will win because the person that loves walking will way out walk the person who has to walk every single day oh my god I've got to get myself up and go for another walk again that guy just want he try and stop him he just wants to walk uh so for me yeah I found the intersection of of having conversations learning and curiosity and that was the show so have you ever given up too soon or wish you would have stuck with something because everyone has everyone like my podcast I started it crushed and then it wasn't at 100,000 downloads an episode bailed out bailed out and I gave up for six months and I came back and now I'm at 7,000 an episode and I would beg for 30,000 and I'm happy with that and I focused on other things but it was a good reminder of like same thing with appsumo same exact thing with you we first year 300,000 second year 3 million then we were flat and then last year was 76.7 Million right and what's crazy is we've had and it's you know the partners are happy customers happy team is Happy what's amazing though we have days now that were the same as years yeah crazy and so I I think one of the things that I've been really reflecting on my leadership style and business strategist is less aggressiveness I know that's counter intuitive what most people talk about and sounds like I'm not saying this is necess silar approach but if you're less aggressive it's more sustainable well you you can jog for longer than you can Sprint right and psychologically that is that is the way you're you're dealing with this stamina bar inside your mind that you don't know how you don't know where it is it's like playing a computer game but you don't know where the bottom is and you're just thinking I just presume that you need to do the thing that you're doing for another 10 years just presume that you always need okay could I keep doing this for another you presume again you say it's so cool presume God that's good yeah I know all right so h on so this is the thing and I think this is such a powerful moment most people just don't start most people are like I like to have a podcast I'd like to have an e-commerce business I like to even have a wife and so for me what I've noticed is like what's the thing you could do right now like everyone could put out a show and for me it sounds similar to you I love doing it like I've been putting out stuff since 2000 before the internet was around right I think you're what how old 23 how old are you 35 okay so I was going to say before you were born but you just look young yeah and so I've just been doing it because I like it people are like why' you do this I enjoy it but it is there is definitely some there getting started and then finding a way maybe it's l 100 so you do 100 episodes but doing it ideally finding something people want and then finding ways to stick with it so 90% of podcasts don't make it past episode 3 and of the 10% that do 90% of those don't make it past episode 20 so by making 21 podcasts you're in the top percentile of all podcasters ever in history and so you're doing your podcast and I think these are the kind of stories more people need to hear same with my YouTube channel when I was doing my YouTube channel when I first put first video was 300 views I was just shirtless in my room on my phone second video same thing I I think I put a shirt on and then it was like th views and I just kept sticking with it I was like I just like this and I was playing around with things and I did three videos a week for every single week for a year and then finally at the end of the year I was like okay I I want to get more subs and I'm doing the same what everybody else is doing but I want to try different and so we did a 180 we were just like let's go crazy and knock on doors but I think the fact that we're like we're going to do at least 100 videos this whole year definitely kept us going so I'm I'm curious for you besides we enjoyed it what were you telling yourself these first three years and I think that's the part that people don't really want to hear but that's what they need to hear to be honest I wasn't telling myself much I I was hungry to to establish myself in a world that I respected so I respected a lot of the people that I was on I was in the wake of so I respected the rogans and the Petersons and the [ __ ] and the Sam harrises and the alander Boton and the school of school of lives I respected them and I they gave me so much they improved my life so much they helped me to understand myself that I figured well look if I can even if I'm a thousand miles behind them if I'm moving along that same sort of a track it's definitely going to benefit me and if it's going to benefit me it's almost certainly going to benefit some non- insignificant minority of other people as well so let's just keep on doing this thing and um then yeah before you know it kind of everything catches up it's very strange and it must be the same with you too like when all of the things that you wanted to have happen kind of occur and like you go holy [ __ ] like is this what arriving feels like have I arrived how full of myself am I to think that I'm AR how how like like uh UNC congratul am I to think the thought am I the sort of person that has the thought am I the sort of person that thinks have I arrived like and you it's just this infinite regress of like self molestation but yeah it's like um it's very interesting it's very very interesting I've been reflecting on this like the the trajectory of of Journeys and stuff and where people stop and where people keep going and things an awful lot but you know the the thing that you touched on at the end which I was really fascinated to get into is billionaires and whether or not they say that wealth is worth method you've sat down opposite these guys that are worth an awful lot of money what do you see in their eyes when you talk to them it's the things unsaid and one that stood out was power affiliate found in Kingo sold 2.4 billion what's Kingo FedEx right you know FedEx has stores yes the ones you go every single one of those stores was a king Co okay so that was the brand before FedEx right fine okay so back in the day my my father came to America sold copers so I'm familiar with the copers and businesses and uh yeah so all these stores that had copy machines around because that was the way you printed things back in the day and so one of the things he said and that kind of saddened me a little bit was he's like I was stressed for every year of 34 years I was like oh that doesn't sound really enjoyable and is there is there other ways and there are other ways but that was definitely telling the other people out there I would say John Paul Mitchell John Paul Doria you know Paul Mitchell Hair Care Patron tequila he was one of the few where I really I really idolize him I love that guy doesn't have a computer doesn't have a computer on his desk nothing and he seems very kind to himself and to others and I felt really inspired by his story where his whole thing was and he was homeless twice the story is kind of crazy right the things that I really took away was I felt like one he didn't try to do a lot of stuff he's like let me find something I really believe in just one thing if you think about he really has two products hair care and tequila that's it that's it both billion dollar business he sold P Trump for three and a half billion the other thing he said that I thought was really telling and interesting was selling is the most important skill for him selling and he says I love to be in the reorder business so I try to find a product that's the best and at the time now it's obvious but again we come back to non obvious obvious things there wasn't a $30 bottle of tequila mhm now $100 bottle of tequila is like the norm and he said have to reorder it and to your original point to to my experiences with appsumo I'm the customer YouTube I'm my Watcher my book I'm the reader he tried the tequila Patron he's like holy [ __ ] there's nothing else like I love it and this is the part again that people never hear these parts of the story he spent two years without a lot of sales he just believed it though he's like this there's something here with it and I think you have in same when I worked at Facebook we saw the early data of people going insane on this even though externally people didn't know how big we were going to be and so I think you have to have some early like like success or win to feel like okay I like it and people seem to like it I'm going to stick with that because I think what happens is people find something no one wants and they stick with that probably too long and so with him it was after two years finally I don't know if it was the Oscars or some finally huge celebrity thing finally like okay now people know about it and they're like wow Patron tequila I think seven years later then it finally sold I had a conversation with Dean Phillips who is a Democratic candidate for the presidency this year he's also the guy who found beler vodka and uh talente gelato both of them yeah uh and with Bel vodka they were pretty flat pretty flat believed in it believed in it believed in it and then one morning he puts on MTV and Jay-Z's there with just bottles and bottles and bottles of Bader and everything just goes completely berserk after that yeah you can definitely increase your chances of luck right if you but it's not sitting at home waiting for it or looking in the mirror trying to manifest it like there was John Paul deya selling it and selling it and selling it and so I that he talked about the reorder business rather or he selling a oneoff or something that like a podcast like maybe people want to keep listening to it and then I would say last thing that I admired about him and I I'll contrast it with another person as well the day he sold his company he donated 50 million bucks and I think a lot of people were like H you know I'm going to donate or I'm going to do these things and it's kind of [ __ ] it's not authentic and it reflected to me how genuine he is about being just a kind person and I felt like he to me in my interview with him and the hour and a half I got to spend with him at his house it was just like wow what a person who seems to be content he's got enough and I think most of the other billionair I've met I don't know if it's ever enough and it's like well you're just going to never be fully content with life and I don't know I think that's something I've worked on in the past few years just like is this enough money yeah do I have a great enough girlfriend not great enough she's amazing I have an amazing girlfriend you know like do I have enough attention right otherwise it's this external chase that just can never end We're Never Satisfied and definitely some of these other billionaires I I don't want that I appreciate them sharing their story but they seem like it has never been enough it seemed like they never spend enough time with their family and I even got some I get text from them and I'm like oh I sent a show to my girlfriend she's like holy [ __ ] what are the biggest regrets of rich people the family it's almost always the family it's like I just wasn't there with my family so they got divorced the kids don't really interact with them or maybe they ideally do um and I also say there's some level a specific buire it's just like It's never enough and he's still out there chasing it and I think that level of dissatisfaction which is helpful in being an entrepreneur an entrepreneur is someone who says hey I have a problem I can do something about it great eventually though you might need to be satisfied that the problem is solved or that you can be content with dissatisfaction and satisfaction there's there's an idea that I came up with that it turns out there was already a name for uh which I [ __ ] hate it when that happens they're all thought of I'm forging new cognitive ground here let me explain the world of psychology um so I called it the vestigial pattern bias and it was already called the Ein Stelling effect so do you know why quiry keyboards are quiry why they have that those letters at the top it's not the fastest uh I don't recall so when typewriters were first made if you have letters next to each other that are commonly used they can often stick if you try to use one then the other they'll stick and both will fire when you only meant to hit one so what they did was they tried to create a map of the keys where letters that were commonly used were not together so much and that would free this up so this is It's called path dependency right it's the same reason why um railway tracks are now just like locked in like at what point are we able to change the width of railway tracks from whatever they were originally so there's actually a myth this isn't true and I propagated some disinformation uh there's a myth that the the size of the Space Shuttle is the width of two horses asses and it's not true it's not true sorry like I must apologize to the internet my point being the path dependency is there is a pattern that existed before and you're kind of locked in as you move forward I think that there's an equivalent here with um people that want to improve and grow their business that especially when you begin you're the guy that puts a thousand people in a spread sheet or you're the guy that splits up two and a half thousand people into 50% broadcast list and sends stuff out individually to them you're the person that follows up every other month for six months to some guest that doesn't know who the [ __ ] you are like that is a very specific skill set and it's very very useful in the beginning but it is a fuel that holds you back when you get later down the line the tools that go you here won't get you there yes and letting go of that is particularly difficult because you think well you have proof especially if you come from a workingclass background especially if you come from that spit and sist I'm from the northeast of the UK you know a 30,000 wage there is like a you've done really [ __ ] well so these are people that earn their stripes these are people that just you know roll the sleeves up and get back to work then realizing that the skill set is now to relinquish all of that to tell other people to encourage other people to teach other people to be able to do that on your behalf is it's a completely new skill set completely new skill set what happens when you arrive I I I resonate that so much uh in my 20s I was really angry and bitter I got fired at Facebook I got fired at mint.com and I'm like holy [ __ ] this is great motivation like that's great Fuel and at some point though you know all my content I say is for the underdog and someone said to me like I don't think you're an underdog you're not the underdog anymore no no maybe I still like that message in some way but then I I also think it's from going into therapy having relationship coaching have a business coach have a CEO coach journaling you know whatever it is for each person finding readjusting maybe that Vision readjusting like okay maybe I don't need to stop proving them wrong maybe I can just start proving myself right maybe I don't need to prove anybody else anymore and I can just think about what makes me proud and then maybe a lot of it for all of us which we can all do it's probably something we're a little scared of and then think about what that is and be like okay let me go into that a little bit and see what happens and so you are right with these people were hey we're dissatisfied hey some daddy issue even or whatever it is that leads them to the success I think that's beautiful how you put it maybe reevaluating like is this still serving you in this next phase and you know let's take Zuckerberg as an example he didn't start Facebook to be like I'm going to create a take over the world he's like I'm just going to build something in a weekend see if I can change my life and meet some girls and then as it worked he was like oh [ __ ] my vision changed now I'm going to take over the world yeah and then now his Visions changed where I'm sure it's something else it's interesting to think about the arriving heart and about the what does it mean to let go of what used to fuel you like that's very I think a lot of people have this concern uh and I hear this quite regularly I did this live tour uh toward the back end of last year which was fun I did Dubai the UK Ireland Canada us we were everywhere like 17 shows in 28 days or something it was really fun and one of the most common questions that people asked a couple of them um how do I know if the thing that I'm about to pursue or thinking about pursuing or pursuing is the right thing so um like optionality and multiplicity of options is a challenge and I get swamped with the Paradox of choice basically is is that one and then another one that was really common was um I'm scared to gra congratulate myself too much because if I do I'm worried that I'm going to kill my drive and my motivation to keep going forward uh and I used to have that in my experience I'd be interested to know your thoughts if you are the sort of person that's sufficiently driven that also has the ability to do that level of introspection your drive is like a nuclear reactor inside of you that just isn't going to stop and by the time that you've got to the stage where you can ask that question because you've achieved maybe a bit of success or or Comfort or whatever the habit and the consistency and the momentum is just you're freewheeling downhill at 100 m hour now you're like I try and pump the brakes but it doesn't really work and if I take my phot off the accelerator guess what we still go quicker so uh yeah those were those were two interesting things but I think the uh the fear of being thankful being grateful it's like this is my Edge my Edge is my my bitterness my resentment my desire to prove people wrong my Underdog Story that I continue to tell myself this is where I get my fuel from this is what pushes me forward I don't think that it's it may be what gets people started but it it doesn't seem to be what keeps healthy people going I would I would agree I I think you can end up in the same destination it's just more how do you want to feel along the way and in myself uh I'm I'm like the worst person in the world to myself I think we all are actually for for the most part and one of the things I reflected on turning 40 recently was like wow I could have gotten here just in a lot friendlier of a way like it didn't have to be literally oh you're guilting about you drank too much or why is this business fail or why do this girl suck or how come you're not doing better here and it's like who are you talking to and so one of my buddies taught me this thing a few years ago it's like anytime a negative thing you criticize yourself just say a positive thing right afterwards and it's silly it's silly a lot of stuff even a million dollar week it's like kind of little silly things but you start doing it and I'll start doing it on the stupidest stuff and then I've noticed now I don't think about it anymore but when I try to usually guilt myself it doesn't come up and I'll do silly like I'm mountain biking and I remember I went over a rock and I was like good job and I was like who the [ __ ] said that like where did that come from what are you a disapproving [ __ ] like PE coach yeah but it's dude this is for all of us man like oh my dad or my person would be disappointed in me who who is there who's that voice you know like the surrender experiment I don't know if you've read that yes by Michael Singa gang gang Buster book I love that one and it's just noticing this these negative things that we're criticizing which doesn't mean we can't acknowledge it like hey you did something wrong like I wrote an article that I sent to nearer all and he said hey it sucked and I was like yeah he's right but I didn't have to be mean and take myself down in that moment it could be yeah he's right I think I get be better here that was great feedback thank you near and then I went and made it better and he's like good article and I was like yeah I know it is good because I I put more effort into it I'm proud of it and I think we can if we're all more mindful of that in just even small moments like cooking or as we talking to other people or I was on a show yesterday and I was like I don't know if I did my best and guess what that's okay I can get better and I can ask them like hey did you like the show what did you guys think give me feedback actually thought good H interesting yeah so that's definitely something where uh years now maybe past three years is just like any negative that you say about yourself just at least try to say positive right after it's okay to have a negative thought you can't change that that's not going to go away but the more you recognize the positive in us which we all have way more than we realize you just do that over and over and over and over and over again you're like overall eventually you're like pretty good person does a lesson that the internet seems determined to not learn which is people with success aren't allowed to be unhappy with their lives and it blows my mind because I I completely understand and still me you know looking up at like you look at a Rogan or whatever who's a friend and you go this guy's got his [ __ ] it we're having a nice conversation I can open the door um Spotify briefly a couple of about a month and a half ago added a new new piece of functionality onto their platform they added stories uh which are these vertical scroll clips that people could swipe through when they landed on a Channel's account on Spotify so you'd have that little circle kind of like you do on Instagram and when you pressed it AI would have gone into the episode and found maybe a 90c Salient section and you can swipe through and it would tell you stuff what it also did was it was the first time ever that Spotify made follow accounts public so for about 2 and a half to three weeks you could click on this little circle and it would come up and it would show the follow accounts of all of the all of the like everybody on the planet so I see this and immediately just light up every WhatsApp chat that I'm a part of with like can you see this on your account and some people did some it' been rolled out to some people and not to others so we paid some like Vietnamese VA to scrape the top 500 shows and put them all into a spreadsheet and then they removed the the functionality but Rogan is in a different Universe to everybody else just for context his shows 26 times bigger than mine just by followers alone it's a complete other other world but you would look at somebody like Joe and you go he owns his own comedy club and he's got this beautiful house and he's got the biggest podcast in the world and everybody knows his name and he moves culture and he does it like whilst having fun and he can take mushrooms and he can smoke weed and he's got the like and if he was to complain about something that he was dealing with psychologically or the side effects of some of the the fame or the success or whatever it's like champagne problems right uh all right mate yeah yeah difficult for you like such and such can't pay their bills this week and you're totally right like the material conditions of that person can be perfectly illustrious right and yet their inner experience can be not only as bad as somebody who's down there but they also have got the layered guilt on top that they don't even have any material concerns to use as an excuse and I've been fascinated by this by this problem like champagne problems or Titanic problems is another one yeah yeah I mean I I regret that I was so unhappy along the way to get here that I made it so much harder on myself and so much more disappointed in myself and could you have done it without that I don't think so there it is I don't know man I don't know it definitely motivated me feeling that so many people doubted me like I fired once and I fired twice and realized that unless I'm going to be an entrepreneur then no one else is going to take my livelihood away again you know Mark did it once and then Aaron did it at mint and I thank them because it did lead me on a path it's hard to replay the entire game but I do recognize like did I need to make it so hard on myself all along the way and and now in the 40 stage which I remember being 20 thinking about 40y olds and I'm like dude shut up old man you know let me just hustle my ass off and grind I like okay try it out do it your way I think my what I'm noticing as I'm getting older is that my Baseline is generally more content and I'm and what's crazy is I'm having the exact same problems not not I'm creating problems but like someone quits this person doesn't work out this customer didn't happen this partner's upset whatever it is but my understanding and way I'm responding to it has changed and evolved and so my Baseline overall of contentment is higher and then my swings of oh my God I'm doing partying and I'm whatever it's happening going to the Playboy Mansion which was crazy you know Ron JY was there you know Ron JY of course yeah the Hedgehog yeah I got kicked out of the party but I was like Ron JY you're my dad what were you doing that got you kicked out of the playbo party oh well okay I'll tell that story but the swings were just so much crazier it was like that is a high versus like you know then I'm feeling bad about myself I'm going to India right like I don't know what's going on my life I feel like India is the place you get answers from obviously oh that party uh I started a business doing payments for Facebook games remember like Farmville all those annoying things yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so we were building the games and my dream was to move to Argentina and build those games so nval funded me went to Argentina realized I hated making games then Tim Ferris came and hang out I mean it was just a story and then I moved back to America to here cuz my partners were going to quit and we're like let's just build something that we need and so we built payments for games and one of the payments was signing up for like affiliate offers like sign up for Netflix subscription like all these different uh affiliate leads and so if you were in the top three affiliate sales with one of the ad networks that you got to go to the Playboy mansion and so we worked our asses off to go to the Playboy Mansion it was there was just three of us and our intern you imagine as an intern shout out sonho he had a great year that year and uh yeah we got a bus ride and uh I had sex in The Grotto I was like you got to just do it take to all the boxes man yeah and then Ron Jeremy was there and I was so drunk performing you pump for pump next I grew up on him so I go up to him and I'm so blessed oh man and I'm like Ron jery you're my dad you're my dad man you raised me and he's like where the [ __ ] are you and I was just like I was like oh sorry dude I'm I'm wasted he's like yeah yeah he's like get the [ __ ] he's like trying to talk to the chicks and then I got into a argument with a Playboy bunny I don't even remember what it's about but I got kicked out I still had a great time still a great time still got to say I go to the play Mansion still got to go see like the zoo they have there and all that I haven't told this story ever uh that was an experience hell yeah and so that's like a high then I remember going back to the hotel room and having a really bad argument with my girlfriend I can imagine that that would have been an issue yeah um so the the the're looking back and it's that Insight that the resentment the pain the bitterness is really really potent fuel to get you started but it's pretty toxic to keep you going but I really don't know how you have proof that this is an effective strategy and letting go of something that you know Works to be like oh yeah like you know I did the I covered every um email I ensured all of the stuff I was every single slack message I made sure that I was on top whatever it is like the level of attention to detail or the level of bitterness or whatever it is that you do and then to go and now it's time for me to transcend or you know grow out of that somehow uh I that's really hard but aubre Marcus when he released his book and this is at the announcement I think for hitting the New York Times list maybe like four or five years ago and he gives this speech and it sounds very similar to something you were talking about he said I spent so much of my life terrified what I was going to become and whether I was going to be right here right now God how much time did I waste afraid I wasn't going to be right here right now if I could change the only thing I'd change about my whole life would be fearing less that I wouldn't get right here the place that I was going anyway I wouldn't change all the mistakes and mishaps I needed those but all the constant worry that I wasn't going to make it that took me out of enjoying the moment it took me out of enjoying these experiences smiling or eating my lunch or doing whatever I was doing know your mission have faith you're going to get there wherever you go it's going to be all right just find ways to get out of your head holy [ __ ] balls that was great shout out Aubrey man phenomenal thank you auy phenomenal yeah it's thinking that the failures aren't so bad we ourselves are not so bad one of my best friends tinan and again here's a hack in life just be around positive people I know it sounds silly but in your town if you're around people are like hey you can leave here hey you can do anything you want maybe it's online I don't know if that that was the case but I know for tinan he's always saying Noah your life is awesome and it can get better and he's tell me all the time and it's like that's a great person to be around and so noticing George Mack has this idea of sofa friends and treadmill friends so some friends after you spend time with them you need to go in line s and other friends after you've spent time with them you want to go and run on a treadmill and you should aspire to have as many treadmill friends tread good tin and uh get a TI in your life yeah and I mean the other thing I done I mean I record my conversations with him so I'll listen to him back yeah and that's whether you put it out publicly or just for yourself it's been helpful I I think one of the transformative because I'm trying to I loved your post about success because it's easy when people are successful but they don't have a lot of podcasts of all the people who failed yeah right like those don't it's not it's okay what are you going to maybe you'll learn from that too and so I'm trying to reflect like where was this transformative moment I don't think there was one definitive like okay it changed everything but if I had to summarize and try to boil it down is when I stopped avoiding when I stopped you know my my old therapist would say the only way in is through and so I quit his therapy and I found a new one but afterwards I don't like I like the only way through is around how about that like what's the shortcut is there a long cut no one ever talks about the long cuts and the long cut which is the I would say the right cut for me is I trans formed my life to feeling more content and at peace with inside was what are the hard things I'm really avoiding in life and I was avoiding I was avoiding work I was avoiding what's the wor thing I really want to do in work that I can do but I'm scared of and that was being back at appsumo because I was I basically took three years off and I was just making all this money not doing really anything and the guy the guy who was running it quit so that was kind of a forced thing where I was like oh I have to face this so that was then getting back to being a CEO and ruining and messing up the company for two years and finally last year it's like oh [ __ ] okay maybe I can the thing I was most afraid of and I thought was scary I can overcome and this is true for everyone like what's the hard thing we're avoiding next is relationships okay I would like to have a partner I'd like someone to like me I'd like to like myself but then my behavior was partying and my behavior was like going on trying to hookups it's like all right well that's not what you say you want to do your behavior is not aligned to it what's the hard thing hard thing is taking yourself seriously not say you can have fun but okay you want to have a partner partner let's take that seriously let's get a coach woman Stephanie rig she's amazing um she's on Instagram she's great stuff really practical working with her feeling more worthy through that practice of just talking with her about it doing things that made me feel good about myself like there's a simple question does this make me feel proud of myself doing drugs or not doing drugs sometimes yeah but no mostly it was not doing it I'm like wow I'm feeling better and better and then you know two months later I found a partner it's like oh is that a coincidence but no it's like because the discomfort in a moment of not doing the thing that was easier led me then to find the thing that was better and I I think it was just like this and you know the work myself the relationship and all these things like even million dollar weekend it was like I can't write a book that's going to help people even though I've done it time and time and I've helped all these people and then finally facing it and doing it I was like ah and I think that's kind of message of myself the book we all can do it whether you're from a small town in New in North England right or wherever we all can face these hard things and we can all live these great lives it's just are we willing to face it and I think most people can it's just like okay what can you do today to face it and how start that right now the magic you are looking for is in the work you're avoiding I know but I just want to get around it yeah and eventually you can you can but I think when people I think the question you said earlier is so interesting because I don't think about am I reaching my potential anymore I don't doesn't even cross my mind I don't wonder if I'm am or not I could you so this is a really good question and I'm glad that I get to talk to you about it can you transcend that con concern about whether or not I'm reaching my potential or can you move it to one side and dispense with it if you haven't done something that gives you a sufficient amount of validation externally from the world what I've noticed is that there's never enough you know I was in therapy with a a new therapist and he's like when is it enough and if you had all that Fame what's going to change nothing so we have to change something else and so what I've recognized for everyone out there is what's something that matters to you maybe it's a podcast maybe it's a relationship maybe it's writing a book maybe it's being a good father and then so part one is something you want whatever everyone's got their own desires and part two is putting the work on it and what is when people say put the work I I like what's the work can you tell me the work is like doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it and all the things we're most proud of ourselves in are always the hardest like what stuff you're proud of I'm I would bet a lot of money are proud of the show M and why because you you did it when no one was watching you stuck your ass with it and you kept going and going and yeah now there's some resorts for it but I think even if it wasn't as big I think you'd still feel proud because you did things that was something was challenging yeah and I think that's true for most of the things that all of us recognize that we never said that's our potential or not we're just we're proud and so how do we build up more of an internal validation mostly again it's things you want and things that you've worked hard on but this again this comes back to that question can you take pride in internal validation without external validation so it's the Nal quote where he says uh it is easier to achieve our material desires than to renounce them and uh you know to say um I don't care about driving uh beat up Toyota Corolla because my last car was a Ferrari it's way easier to do that it's way easier to say you know I'm really happy to settle down with my girlfriend and and do this thing after you've been pumping at the Playboy Mansion you know I have a I have a friend uh who was a pickup artist for a long time and I remember asking him a question about dude you're really into this pickup Artistry thing it's just a revolving door of chicks right and you're like this you're really really passionate about this thing he's like yeah yeah I am my future wife better be thankful for all of this I like please explain to me how you have somehow laid at the feet of your future wife all of the efforts for you to spray it across the north of England at the moment he's like well you know when I'm with my future wife and walking down the street with our two and a half kids and a golden retriever I don't ever want to look at two Brazilian chicks and think I want to know what it's like to [ __ ] two Brazilian chicks I want to know ticked off all of the different things that I've got to do all the way down and although that I think was quite largely just cope reverse engineered cope there's something true in it which is we need to prove a lot of the time we need the world to tell us that we are enough before we can say it to ourselves and maybe some of the billionaires that you spoke to are really far down that Spectrum where there is basically no amount of world saying yes well done that they get to before or maybe it would be a trillion or 100 trillion or whatever you're poting yourself it's for thems they never get to a point where they can say it fors it's like I'm I'm with my partner now and she's amazing I don't question having more because I have enough and I do think yeah try things you have to try things out it's like yes you can marry your first boyfriend yes you can do those things and it could work too but try things out in life experiment find the job that I tried a day job that sucked try to work for other people got fired it's like I gotta find another way and so at this point I don't yeah it's weird I don't think about finding another person or that oh man I'd love to have sex with more people I'm like I'm really getting deeper with this one person there's a I don't know if it's Esther Pell or ber Brown it's like if you want Variety in relationships you heard this quote if you want a variety in relationship date one person it's good it's good I know when I was single I was like well that's good and there's truth in that right we think we need more of these experiences and I think it's good to get them but sometimes you find something and you have to like if you hire someone but you've never interviewed other people it's hard to know how good they are and I think with a lot of these experiences we talk about let's take iasa or doing anything like I did iasa a few times years ago influenced by Aubrey talking with him about it and I think the whole point of iasa that I learned afterwards it's not even about iasa and the crying and the puking and stuff like that it was like wow that was kind of hard and I could do it that was the takeaway not whether yes I recognized things about my stepfather and things about my my biological father and other areas but ultimately I was like wow I could face something and we all can and then we can overcome it it doesn't matter whether you're already a millionaire or whether you're a zero Aire right but it's that you can do these things and I don't think people I don't know I don't know if people recognize that they have more ability than they can do and that's why when they ask that question I think they know the answer when they like do you ask yourself are you Reaching Your Potential yeah pretty regularly really yeah I'm still pretty rough with myself about falling short of some arbitrary rule that I've met like some bar that I should have got over some something that I should have done um it's better than it was but there's still a lot of that to be be deprogrammed but I'm also in therapy so you know that's that that's helping I mean that's that's another interesting thing that that people just there is a lot of fear around uncertainty and we don't know we don't know what's coming next and we don't know if we can deal with it and we don't know if we're going to be good enough we don't know if we're worthy of love and acceptance and we use observable metrics in place of hidden metrics so the best aable metric in the world is money single single numerical value which can be translated across the entire world almost instantly oh you've got $5 million I know what that is in Yen I know what that is in pounds I know what that is in Euros best it's the best game in the world but people will often trade observable metrics to Hidden metric and a hidden metric would be something like Peace of Mind quality of relationships amount of sleep that's a big one like all of these things bringing the hidden into the observable is something that I'm trying to do an awful lot now like am I trading my sanity for Accolade am I trading my peace of mind for status or am I trading my the the the thing that you're saying especially from your old clip which I loved about success that also helped to get you where you are of course and so how do you continue maybe you don't get to do that and that's okay too there do you know Joe Hudson no I love Joe Hudson he has a course called connection course phenomenal he's got a great show to um art of accomplishment and one of the things that I've taken this course with my girlfriend is that and that's okay that's just that phrase and I say this phrase all the time hey I don't know this answer that's okay hey what helped you do what you're doing maybe isn't how you're going to do in the future that's okay and so I wonder for you it doesn't have to also be you're going to solve it immediately that was one thing I was thinking about this morning about a lot of success is patience and not just patience in time it's patience with oursel like what Aubrey said like hey probably going to work out let's be a little patient and not make it so hard along the way so I wonder I'm curious how you're going to evolve yeah me too uh it's it has been significantly better uh which I guess speaks to just how like unrequited I was for a very long time I felt like I wasn't I was built for more I felt like I was built for more and I hadn't fulfilled my potential and that I should if only I had worked harder taken that chance done the thing being less afraid being being more Brave being more courageous whatever it is that I needed to do if only I'd done that thing I would have got the outcome that that I wanted and that was that was like a very sort of powerful you're not you're not doing enough good enough whatever it might be really really strong motivation for a long time and then it's interesting when you get to the stage where you go okay well how much is enough because that's a question and this sort of comes back to the people that have achieved success or accumulated wealth or whatever um they can suffer with all of the same mental maladies that the person at the Bottom Rung of the ladan as well but the difference is they look up and there's only two more rungs so they're like hey if the answer isn't there or there where the [ __ ] is it and that's something that again this sort of champagne problems idea is why I'm kind of obsessed with it at the moment that the lack of sympathy that everybody myself included gives to oh you know such and such a rich person complains about the fact that the food was cold in first class on the way from Dubai to to Houston or whatever you know like was it called oh but it's like I understand I understand why that's such a like ludicrous position to be in but if we assume that people who have money and Status aren't necessarily always happier than the average person in fact what got them there might be exactly the reason that they aren't happier than the average person if if people took more of a balanced view about how they perceived the downstream effects of wealth and of status and of attention I think that it would disabuse a lot of people who think that they want that of presuming that the answer is on the other side of it they presume that once they get there it's solved that's what I thought like once I get rich I'll be happy and that's not the case and what I've noticed is someone like yourself where you start the show cuz you love it and you create this prison that you maybe don't love and then you end up revisiting the reason you started it and you're like oh I love it again it's so funny man right and that yeah that's that's part of the journey and there's nothing wrong with that there's not a right or wrong way to to do it I I would say it's nice to be rich and have problems than poor and have problems correct because at least there's a little bit more options or if you're if you have some money or you have your own business which everyone can do at least you can maybe hire someone to talk to you about it or maybe you can not do meetings for weeks or months or years yeah and you you've spent an awful lot of money on coaching you mentioned that earlier on yeah how much money have you spent on coaching um collectively with myself and the team at least a million at least a million dollars in coaches and what things have you worked on so an hour before this meeting I was with our CFO coach so she's the former CFO and the coaches I hire they've done they' they're looking ahead and they've been ahead I like people who've been in the game that I want that I would like to be at so she was a CFO at MailChimp I think everyone's pretty familiar with MailChimp you know they sold for 12 billion and so she's advising us on our vpa finance quit again problems still happen no matter what how you want to respond to them I think I my 20-year-old self was very emotional and reactive now the only difference I'm still can be reactive but I pause and then I respond so so she's a a coach that we hire I have a therapist and that's what we've worked on really about pausing and I rate myself every single week last week was a four I got a little triggered so I ran myself on my consistency and my emotional Behavior one through five every week and why and just having that every single Friday is helped far out of fight seems good four was not bad but someone in my I do YouTube office hours for the book launch and this this guy was complaining about appsumo rev share and I'm like you don't even know where rib and I was just like and then I paused after I triggered and I was like oh I don't want to behave like that MH and that's okay means I did that but that means that next week I can improve it before it's not bad that's it's much better than the past um so that's therapy and so therapy I've worked on pausing and responding I've worked on being alone I just don't like being alone I like being active and so you know it's not to say I should go force myself to live in a cabin in a woods but on a Saturday afternoon and it's noon how can I just be happy being with Noah how can I just okay I'm going to read The Wall Street Journal I love the journal or just go for a bike r or just be at home and it's okay not to have to distract myself and that led me then to feel more happy just being with myself uh I have a CEO coach Aman Al Abdullah he's the former CEO of appsumo and so a lot of my strengths historically has been like zero to one like I love starting that's a million dollar weekend how do you start something quick time Aman's superpower is consistency aon's like what's working okay make it work better like even a month ago I went to aan I said aan we've got this tidy calow product I don't know if you're tidy cal It's a cly alternative so it's $29 for Life instead of $20 a month I'm like aan this thing is doing super great it's blowing up David and the team that are running it is doing awesome we're going to do something new he's like all right so you have the thing that's working really great and you want to do a new thing you think you want to do a new thing or maybe just keep doing the thing that's great make that work better I was like there's your money I'll send you your I'll send you your pay your invoice right away so he's a lot of um you know I think higher to your higher to your weaknesses and so he's a lot of says I have a business coach then so he's more strategic I have a business coach so that's Dan putt from reboot.com from the leadership team of appsumo where I'm like what the hell are we doing this quarter and he's like well if you don't know do you think the rest leadership knows and I was like No And so then literally the next day this was two weeks ago next day we put together a one pager which was like what's the one what's the exact thing we're doing in q1 so that we know the leadership team knows and the rest of the team knows and a lot of that is just him exploring how I'm feeling about the business like how things are going in my personal life a lot of business is a projector of who you are correct like you with the lighting before the show got on right it's a projection of Chris's preferences about how things go and your business is going to reflect good or bad who you really are not good or bad but just reflects who you are yeah there's a very interesting uh signature that trickles down from whoever's at the top of a business down so we um we it's so funny running running nightlife stuff um because the owners the organizations tend to be very flat so the owners are still very close to the ground floor of whatever's going on and we would be able to walk down the street and without looking at the company on the back of the hoodie that the person was wearing just by the way that they were dressed we would be able to work out oh they're from G Illuminati they're from Voodoo which was our company from like the Posh kids one there from this one there from that and we would just be able to tell because there was this signature that that kind of came from the top down and it was the same in the marketing copy it was the same in the way that the events were run it was the same in the way that the DJs were booked it was the same in the way that the entry pricing was done there was some companies like us that would be over complicated in some ways with we'd have tiered pricing and we'd have all of this extra stuff that would be put in then there'd be others that wouldn't even remember to increase their pricing then there would be some that were cheap and there was some that were expensive and so on and so forth so there's just it it really is is it James clear that says uh running a business is a vehicle for personal growth disguised as a wealth making Enterprise I think it's the best way to learn about yourself is starting a business and I always think of you got me thinking about toilets obviously yeah I have a super nice toilet by the way like rich life Japanese yeah the Toto it's like a $6,000 toilet okay best everyone should get one get rich at least still you can get it this toilet okay point being though is that like I like going to bathrooms or restaurants and businesses and then you're kind of like ah how much attention do they pay to I don't think it has to be all the details of a screw necessarily that that's not me but like huh this is what they think about their business and so I'm always fascinated when people meet people from appsumo they're like hey I met some guy today was like I met Mitchell from appsumo he's great I was like I know I love Mitchell too he's like my little optimism Angel and it's interesting about the the people around and you know the the way we represent the business represents us I think business is a great way to learn about ourselves for the coaches I guess if I had the theory and the way that I've approached it is what are the areas for myself and really anyone that I like to improve and just go pay someone for their 10,000 hours you could pay someone 500 bucks 250 bucks 1,000 bucks an hour for th for literally 10,000 hours of experience so I have a marketing adviser money Glasco CMO of glassor and zapier and a lot of the times it's and I thought about this because it's a lot of the stuff I don't want to hear CU if you thought you could do everything you wouldn't need an adviser you wouldn't need a coach and I think there's some people like ah don't do any coaching it's like all right every sport team ever in the world has a coach and we have teachers all through school but when we get out we're like no I'll get I'll figure it out okay how does that make sense well this a difficult a couple of the reasons why I think coaching is sometimes hard for people the cost is upfront but the returns are down the line it's very difficult to verify it's very difficult to verify whether or not this person actually is going to give you the sort of returns that you want out of something um there's no coach do me you know Yellow Pages yeah uh rating for this stuff it's always by word of mouth and referral and bits and pieces uh and if you do end up getting burned or disappointed perhaps by one that then starts to sort of smear the rest of the coaching world so I I understand why people are reticent about doing it um I should be better at it I should be better at leaning in um what would you hire so by the way I think no matter what we just we self we self-preservation hire we self- preserve no matter what coach we hire I had a business coach I won't shout him out cuz it was horrible uh but it was $10,000 a day and he this guy like I don't know he's polyamorous and just all this woo woo weird [ __ ] you know sleps with all the people and I remember afterwards because I was so lost and I just want someone to tell me what to do yep and the main thing I took away from him he's like no you know this this $23,000 cuz I hired him for two and a half days he's like that $23,000 you gave me could have been in your pocket and that was his that was my takeaway where I wanted something and meaning that the money in my business is mine right so I need to be mindful of how we're using it maybe I'm giving it to him maybe I'm giv it to others but I think in almost every single time whether you have a coach you like or don't like you're learning you're learning something ideally you're doing it with someone who's done the thing and they're like yeah I've done it I can ideally share you how you to do it and you're getting it through referral too yeah I think one of the areas that people get into again assuming else I'm kind of obsessed by at the moment is believing that our situation is unique particularly unique no no no no but you don't you don't understand me the way that it's put together for me is that you would not do you would it would take 10,000 hours just to begin to understand this you know and it's because I had this idea on the on the live talk where if there was a cookie here on the edge of this couch and I decided I was about to make the decision whether or not to eat it inside of my mind when I look toward that cookie this Unholy war begins between two different versions of myself and there's battle plans and platoon and someone's got a dragon and there's a catapult and stuff and then the better version of myself succeeds and I don't eat it to you know Live Another Day if you'd seen me do that what you would have seen is some bloke stare at a cookie for a while and then turn away looking hungry and sad our inner experience of ourselves and our external observation of other people are so asymmetric that everyone else looks like a rational agent and we look like a wavering idiot permanently you vacillate 10,000 times a second but that person just seems like they go about their day from thing to thing and even if they trip over they kind of meant to do that too like and because of that we it's obvious why it's it feels like our issues are so personally cursed to us it feels like a a designer disease meant just for us it's only me that has this very specific way of lambasting myself or speaking to myself it's only me that has this very specific fear about relationships or about changing or about moving or about leaving or about disappointing my parents or about whatever it is because nobody else and it's like it's because you are only ever going to experience your unconscious it also gives them an excuse if they're unique it gives them a reason to say well if I'm unique and it's so hard then it's obviously not solved but if you know like my book starts with frequently made excuses why because when you realize that most of the things that you've you've avoided are actually very solvable like oh [ __ ] it actually can be solved I can stop having to be a victim in the situation what are the frequently made excuses I don't have any business ideas I don't have I have too many business ideas which is not totally number one uh I don't have a technical co-founder I don't know how to do marketing I don't have money how do I use AI those are definitely I think that's top seven I'd have to look through the book for the other three and these are ones that are super common by the way quick shout out I've also hired a health coach you know there's health Co there's literally coaches for everything and figuring out which coaches you need and you know I've had a squash coach boxing coach but I used get any better at squash oh for sure yeah for sure yeah shout out you squash in Barcelona um but my my body tor.com and so I worked with him for years and now how I interact with food how I interact with my self feeling about food has been changed permanently from that experience it's fun it's fun to think that there are people out there who have answers to the questions that you think are unanswerable well I remember with appsumo so one of my best friends is Andrew Chen he's like a super he's been on the show oh Andrew yeah Andrew's best yeah and so I love Andrew and he's very strategic and he's always been helpful and I remember with appsumo I'm trying to innovate our HR stuff and I was trying to innovate our sales stuff and I was trying to innovate in our programming trying to innovate in our marketing and he's like why don't you try to innovate just one thing most of that [ __ ] is figured out and find one thing to innovate on and the other nine you could probably just copy other people who've solved it for instance even in a silly example Jenny who's our CFO adviser she's like I've already got job WS you don't have to write your whole brand new job wck you can use chat GPT for it but she's like here's the the criteria that I look for when I'm hiring a vpa finance I was like it's a lot better than trying to be Innovative from scratch yeah yeah yeah what what coach would you hire today uh someone for the business I think um I need to build out the I I hesitate even calling it an organization because it's not it was just supposed to be me talking on on the internet you start talking to people and then it accidentally becomes a job and then before you know it you're like oh there's I've got like 16 [ __ ] reports I have 16 direct reports so like our organization is this very very flat two-dimensional octopus with 16 [ __ ] legs on it and then a couple more that trickle out trickle off some of those legs so for me I'm like I can't we can't keep we can't keep doing this and there's only one person that's the Hub in the middle of all of the rest of it I'm like all right so what do I need do I need a CMO do I need a CEO do I need a chief of staff do I need a CO do I need a right hand do I need an enforcer do I need someone that's do I need a second YouTube strategist do I need a third YouTube strategist do we need someone that does copy what about somebody that helps to sit on top of you know what I mean and again it's the belief that you're situation is sufficiently unique that nobody else could would be able to understand there are no no of course not and in some regards the world of you know like independent Creator is relatively new but there are also going to be an awful lot of rules and procedures that you can just be like yeah but I mean it's very similar to X established business that's been around for 50 years and there's the Playbook from that and we just [ __ ] turn this thing slightly and it slots in straight away yeah what's the voices in your head like um frantic sometimes but I meditate a lot as well so it goes away uh excited encouraging um like there's a degree of trepidation which is another thing that's kind of interesting before you've got to any until you kind of raised yourself up out of some mid quadrant of like where almost everybody is maybe Beyond where most people quit but still where most people end up the pressure is still like in some ways a little bit lower because you go well you know if this thing doesn't work or if you don't really sort of fulfill stuff nah what does it matter but when you go like oh this could really be a serious shot at something very special here I genuinely believe that we make the most beautiful podcasts on the Planet we've made the most beautiful podcasts that have ever been recorded and I want to keep doing that and I want to keep being worldclass at the things that we do but that comes with it its own degree of pressure right this is no longer little leagues this is now oh you you said that you wanted to become one of the best in the world at doing this thing do you realize the price that you need to pay to be able to do that do you realize how hard you're going to have to work do you realize how much attention to detail you're going to have to pay and all the rest of it so one of my end of year reviews or one of the questions that I've got asked for myself for this year is can you be world class and have fun at the same time uh I love that that's something that I'm thinking about an awful lot like I want to still dot every eye cross every te but I want to have fun along the way because you know and this is one of the beautiful things about people reflecting like yourself opening up about anger in TW in your 20s or or opening up about fear during the process of of writing his book that you get to see you get to see the pitfalls that other people nearly tumbled into and by looking at that you go hm that kind of sounds a lot like how I feel and maybe if that's how this person that's five or 10 years along the road from me says and if I can kind of imagine me as them well maybe I can find a way to bring some of that learning and wisdom down into the present and then maybe even avoid maybe I can mitigate what they do and you know their their insights can help me to expedite my growth and my and my progress so yeah that's uh that's what I'm thinking about this year can to be worldclass and have fun at the same time you got me reflecting and thanks for sharing it you know I think sometimes people think the kitchen's clean and a lot of times the kitchen's messy what they see is the kitchen they see the dish but they don't see what's really going on I mean or like couples I can't tell you there's couples that I'm like I want to be like them divorced they're horrible together maybe it's bad but you don't really know what's going on in uh in these different experiences and you know one the thing that every single person can do is get out your phone you know watching YouTube or podcast just scroll up on your photos go back up or down and almost everybody I think if they do it at least how I felt was like wow I'm proud of myself I think if you actually just scroll back and like look at all the cool [ __ ] that I did yeah and just look at where you are today and I think if we can give oursel a little bit of kindness and Grace in that and even just see the photos like you you know just go back and be like I went and looked at my old house and I think this house represents me represents where I was where it's 800 square feet it's literally falling down it just had it got flooded a few days ago from this the freeze and I was like I don't care and I went back and I've seen it in the photos and stuff I was like oh wow I'm proud of how far I'm come I'm proud of the house I'm in now and how who I think I am today not necessar what others think but who I think and that that does take time and I think we also just can if you see your old photos you're like wow I'm already making progress even it doesn't feel like it yeah I always said and Elon Musk with neuralink may make this happen but I'd love for that to be a way for you to go back in time in your own mind not to go back in time to a different place but to be able to revisit the texture of your own existence from 10 years ago or 20 years ago and think what were the sort of things that captured my attention what was the normal Rhythm and Cadence of my daily existence like what did I think about well I think it's also crazy because is that the stories change over time we changed the N our own narrative by the day of it or when you ask me or in a year I'm like well the story was actually this it's like was it or am I shifting it to create the narrative that's working best for me in my life oh dude I mean that's you know who Sam ovens is you must do sounds familiar he had consulting.com sold that to ran Doris he now does school.com Kar with them um big online marketer guy anyway I was at some like neurod Divergent degenerate uh retreat in the middle of the desert what does that mean neurod Divergent like like a drug autistic group of degenerate people um and we were all just catching up and it's some creators some business people it was really cool to be honest and uh I'd known about Sam for a long time and I knew what he did and we got chance to have a catch up and I asked him about why he'd stop making content and he'd been pretty prolific at at he had he used to have this like 40th floor Penthouse apartment with a motorcycle in it overlooking Florida ceiling glass maybe it was in New York or some big city like that and he said he'd found that the story he was putting out publicly was one that he'd begun to feel the need to live up to privately that he' created this narrative about being the guy with the motorcycle in the window and about this is what I do and whatever whatever Alex Becka is a good example you know who Alex is yeah so Alex who just hi Ross hi Ross um he's been the sell all of my possessions and go live in an apartment with like just a a mattress on the floor guy he's now even got rid of that he's sleeping on the floor and now he's the like Fitness guy and now the whatever whatever guy and I do think a lot about um because everyone's doing this everybody has a public facing Persona you know everyone's got a social media account my mom has one my dad has one of of some regard and um feeling the need to live up to the public Persona that you are putting out there in private first time I'd ever heard anyone say I'm still thinking about what that means to me now and like been you know [ __ ] in this really interesting reflection on it for six months U but yeah I that was very formative very very unique Insight I thought it was very useful yeah it's maybe my girlfriend I remember the first time she came I met her in Barcelona and we spent half the year there and I remember have like a multi-million dollar house and I've got to share it cuz I've lived so cheap and so crappy for 20 years that finally I got a sick house that I keep I keep I can't believe it every day I'm like this is so cool and I remember bringing her to the house and I was like oh yep she's gonna fall old me baby look at this you don't have to worry about who I am inside look at my external avoidance like money Fame motorcycle in the window scooter I've seen you on that going around e the um Neo yeah yeah yeah yeah I have a a white vesa my other one got stolen from my front yard [ __ ] that was dude from front yard Jesus um and I remember she came in the house and I was just like and I nothing she didn't say [ __ ] and I remember you know this is the when we just started dating and then a few months later I was like you're the first person ever to come into the house and was not impressed and she's like I wasn't it's a nice house and I I like all the you know the the stuff it's cool like it's nice but I just care who you are the best part about the house is you I like that sucks you know I've worked so hard to avoid that yeah and now i' say in these past few years I think that's finding a partner who's also just looking for me she's not looking for me to be anybody else so interesting and that that's been a you know in terms of a game Cher from a baseline level it's being with her as a game changer yeah because you don't have this sort of if I lose it what if anxiety that's sat behind you and if you'd gone like Dan Bill's arean route and everyone was kind of just there for the experience she just cares who I am and I and that enables me to feel I can just be myself do you ever feel resentful that the efforts and fruits of your labor uh monetarily isn't more sort of like wide-eyed sorcery do you know what I mean CU I think there's a part I sometimes think about me me and some of my other friends as well and I think that there's a part in men that wants that look at my resources I've acquired like you kind of want there to be a bit of like you know p dropping results from that yeah I mean I think we want our fathers to acknowledge us a lot of the time and I remember I went to my dad and he was on his he was kind of dying and he was dying he was just drinking beer and I was like hey I made a million dollars he was like okay cool man good job I was like that's it and then you know I think over time I was thinking about my YouTube videos where you know we get videos get a million views but my favorite video still I don't even know I think it has like 10,000 views and it's about a fisherman this guy named Nick from Florida and he's a milli millionaire fisherman and I just loved that he makes money fishing and I wanted to make a story about him and I I think that's kind of the lesson where you get going and you find the thing you enjoy and yeah there's a balance of what the world wants right because if you only do what you want and no one wants it like that's you're not going to have a business you're not going to have any audience but I was proud of that and I think with with MAF that's my partner as I'm more with her it's just being more okay with myself and yeah I think I would have liked to have money and I I thought when you get money straight up this is real talk I thought when you get money like all these people come and all the girls come and all this stuff come and it just didn't right it's still just you alone in a house and yeah you can have partying and you can have distractions but it's still just you by yourself and that's amazing lucky that I had that chance or I could I thought it was Happ great it didn't and then it's like all right well I'm still myself I have to find a way to enjoy this life on this planet that by the way no one knows what the [ __ ] we're doing here no one and anyone who tells you otherwise full of [ __ ] and yeah the money didn't fix who I was it definitely now is easier cuz I'm feeling good about self um and the journey was yeah I think all these cliche [ __ ] as the more I get older the more I'm like yeah the cliche [ __ ] is all true Bill O'Reilly's got this quote where he says money is like gasoline on a road trip you need enough to keep going but you're not doing a tour of gas stations either that's good Bill O'Reilly said that yeah oh man that's good stuff yeah I know but yeah nothing ever came there's no party no one ever cares everyone cares about themsel right and and it's been nice I think part of this you know this book tour stuff even it's been special how it's created kind of an excuse to go hang out with people an excuse to connect with people and talk about different ideas whether it's selfworth whether it's starting a business which really is what you said about from Aubrey like it's a great way or James to learn about yourself and all the business has been that like how am I interacting with other people how is it when someone leaves me like my dad left me or someone that's a teammate leaves me and just chances to you know prove to ourselves who we can be who we can be and I I think that's not talked about where people it's like people can be a lot more they realize but they have to realize that it's even possible and then they have to get started on it you've said starting a business isn't risky working a day job that sucks is risky why is that the case you know when you your original thing the number one question you said you got from people is how do I know I'm realizing my potential if you ask that question you're not realizing your potential you ask the question and so for me being at Intel in a cubicle with gray walls having to be dressed up going at 8: a.m. felt risky that this is the next 40 years of my life knowing that there's probably something else I could be doing that I really want to do and it's listening to that voice or that as my I have a Latina girlfriend listening to that feeling and acknowledging it and then maybe embracing a little bit of that fear leaning into it and doesn't mean you have to quit the job I never quit jobs to go start a business I thought that was risky it's starting it at nights weekends whenever to get it going and then when it works then quit it but I I've seen this guy there's a guy named Rick and this is the thing I I think is not recognized there's so many ordinary people getting rich I think people think it's like some special ability and you have to be tall or you have to be no ordinary people get rich but they start and most people just don't and there's a guy Rick and I remember we'd be in these meetings at Intel all we did was meetings I didn't do [ __ ] at this at this job I don't know how they're still in business and Rick I always was like man you are so more you're he's so much smarter than me he's more impressive than me but he was afraid of finding out who he could become and all he could do it at night and I I he talked about he's like yeah there's other things I probably want to do but I've got soccer practice at 5 and I want to be there for my kids which is great but that means you spend a third of your life doing what you didn't want to do and so how do you start planting seeds like I planted seeds 14 years ago that I'm finally I am really truly enjoying today and it felt risky to really spend that 10 20 30 40 years in an area it's like I don't want to be here and what's crazy though is on the other side there are Engineers Intel who [ __ ] love it they're like I'm building chips which is great and so it's finding that thing for yourself so you're not feeling like hey I'm going to spend 10 years and then finally enjoy life itself 60 that to me seems [ __ ] crazy which is what my you know kind of what we tell most people to do James Smith my business partner in the drink says if you're succeeding at a job that you hate imagine how good you'd be at one that you love and that's that's you know so many people especially where I went to University there's a lot of sort of recruitment you know these guys who are on a 20 20 grand uh 25 Grand base salary with pretty good bonuses and it's sales it's like hardcore sales they're doing recruitment for it or construction or whatever it is and you know they're not placing super high net worth individuals here but they like grinding they're doing the thing and uh they're [ __ ] destroying it mostly because they were trained by me and my business partner in in NTI but also because they're very very talented and we found these kids that are just driven and they want to do things but lots of them like love the money hate the job I'm like dude like the money is the easy thing like you can replace that skill like think about how you hate the thing you do and you're driven by the thing you get you still get the thing you get but the thing you do would be something that you loved as well imagine if you had double drive like Nitro boost in Too Fast Too Furious well there well it's sounds like with you in your podcast there's no reason for you ever quit because you enjoy it and then doing that on a business I I think one of the things from from the the YouTube channel and million dollar weekend was how many different ways you can get rich and I think people think there's like some secret door there's some secret course it's there's just not but it's about getting started on the podcast putting out the episode it's about asking someone to be a customer finding something people actually want and then guess what if you do it you enjoy it too you can do this as your career I don't know if people realize that's possible I I I I you know I see these people I'm like no it doesn't have to be this way and you could change it today yeah it's hard to think because so much of my life has been around people that are self-employed that have done you know online fitness coaching or then business coaching for online coaches or selling courses or or being doing whatever right so many people were failure Renegade self-employed people over and over and over again until they found something that worked and sometimes some people didn't but it was so obvious to me that that was just a route that was available um that I never really questioned it as as something and yeah if there that I I didn't think about that I didn't think that some people believe that there is a secret doorway in between them and being Their Own Boss yes in between them and starting their own business and like there's nothing like hey guess what if you [ __ ] love dogs if you absolutely love dogs there is a dog walking business that you will adore every single second off and you'll crush and you'll care more about the dogs than the competitor who's just doing it for the money and all that you'll do all day is spend time with awesome animals that you love and you'll make great money on your own terms doing something that you get to choose and then maybe you'll hire some staff and then they'll love the dogs as well and then maybe you set up a sanctuary and then maybe you get to be able to contribute to a charity as well and maybe you can take you take in dogs and maybe it becomes a kenel and maybe you even roll this out and it becomes the the premier dog care franchise or that sounds exting and even if you don't want to make it big like the Michael that eth Revisited even if you don't want to like go full I don't know how to bake a cake anymore as the lady that started a bakery thing you get to spend every day with dogs and a question would be if it's so easy why isn't everybody else doing it and that question is both the question and the answer to the question you know what I mean like that is the selection effect that's stopping most people from doing it because most people think if it was that easy everybody would be doing it but you don't realize that the fear that you feel is precisely the selection criteria that's stopping everybody else from doing it as well yeah one of my favorite quotes my buddy Adam is like you know discomfort is your compass so maybe noticing where there's a little fear and then thinking about well if I went into that fear what would happen and where would I be on the other side of that fear and you know I love doing a Fantasy year sounds like something you're doing on the review but if you had to end this year where would you like to be and then you could literally create i i a few years ago I wrote like Beyond Rogan show and you write all these crazy fantasies and you're like I think when you realize that it could be true at least gives you the belief that you could be in these different levels and it sounds like you and and myself were both born pretty middle class is that no no no very very working class working class okay I was gr middle class and so you kind of think oh I guess I'm stuck here and then you start seeing other people maybe you listen to your show maybe you realize other things like huh maybe there's some other levels of what I can do and what I I've noticed from so many people who aspire to be millionaires and for me I Aspire never to have someone control my livelihood and take away that which you can when you have a job and that if you want to be there what's the thing you can do today to actually make that happen they don't ever make a million because they're like how do I just get $1 they're like what about this what about this don't worry about any of that what can you do today can you help one person today in a service can you post one podcast can you post one video and I've even done it myself just to show it like the best way to sell anything is to get happy customers or prove it so uh two weeks ago I let people I didn't use any social media which by the way you can cheat use social media use your email list use your contacts in your phone and I let I said give me some business ideas from the audience and I'll go do them I'll prove it so I tried knocking on doors and just asking people if I can mow their lawn I just went door Todo in Austin Texas can I MA your lawn no who are you no this is hard is there an easier way yeah that's the whole point if it's not working great let's find some people who are excited for you to service them on because just because you want to do it doesn't mean people want to pay you for it that's a big misconception but find some people are excited to pay you for so then it was like well what's another problem I have paying for software I hate I don't like subscriptions that's what app simulates so I started contacting people that anybody who emailed me a doc sign you know docu sign I looked through my Gmail and I was like well I hate docu sign I hate subscriptions and I hate using it let me look at anyone who's ever emailed me a docu sign and contact them so I just called people I called my accountant I called people who used to work at appsumo called people I used to pay for called um being friends with you must be a [ __ ] nightmare don't ever answer my call it's like Noah's outside what's he doing this time oh dude he's got a bucket in a sponge pretend he's not oh he's seen us he's seen us [ __ ] sake well and you know to be clear you know my neighbor I asked him o lawn he said no and then I went to him and I pitched this idea and he said no and you ask like what's holding people back it's fear and it's the fear of failure it's the fear of rejection it's the fear of who they can become and we make these things so [ __ ] scary oh my god dude oh my God they say no it's over like I'm not I'm worthless I'm not good enough I'm not having my potential or if you practice it and they say no you're like that's it there's so many gurus like how do you scale but there's so many business books out there why aren't people everyone getting it and because these fears have stopped them and when you practice it so I always coffee challenge you heard of my coffee challenge stuff that's ask for a free coffee ask for a discount oh discount I I so were you anything to do with the 100 days of rejection thing uh we it was it the Asian guy there's a bunch of people have talked about rejection therapy this is the one that's that I I use to talk about in the book that I found the most life changing because it's Universal what is it and so we talk about the fear of starting we talk about the fear of success talk about the fear of asking and so you can go out today and anytime you buy a coffee or you know new tonic or whatever don't do it for your brand but other businesses in person you ask for 10% off that's it you just go up and you have to commit before you go in and anyone who's watching if you want to change your life today commit to this just one thing it's simple it's silly it's easy and either people will say well I'm experienced in sales great that'll be easy for you or I'm really afraid great that'll Empower you to feel good about yourself and when you go and ask for the discount you say I want 10% off they'll say why you can say oh no Kagan million dollar weekend or you can say nothing make it hard on yourself and the beauty of it is they'll they'll reject you and you realize the fear that we created about these things about what they thought about these strangers about this doesn't matter and the reality about our ego and separating it out from this horrible experience is that wow it wasn't so bad huh what else can I ask for what else have I been afraid of that maybe it's not so scary and you do it in small silly ways even today I was driving home I do you can even do it in a very easy way compliment the compliment challenge ask someone hey where'd you buy that shirt compliment them hey I like this guy in the car next to me I said hey I like your shirt where'd you get it and he's like he smiles he's so happy and he goes I got it from Goodwill he's like $7 he was so excited about it again it's putting yourself out there in a ways where you maybe get rejected realize it's not so bad and then you can move forward and the more that people build up this confidence things it's the same thing that we were talking about like starting the business is the best way to feel more confident about yourself you're helping other people so with this DocuSign business my neighbor he rejected me and I asked him again he rejected me and I asked him a third time he still rejected me but I didn't take it as him reject in me it's just this is not helping him right now and out of the 27 people I contacted that day I didn't make them buy anything I didn't say hey I'm doing a video I need you to do this I said hey here's something I'm excited about I think it's a million dollar opportunity or Beyond doc sign's 11 billion doll business which is crazy I didn't realize it's so big tell me about your problems I listened to them they told me their problems interesting I'm creating an alternative what do you think about that oh my God yes great would you be willing to put down a deposit today it'll be ready in 30 days I mean 3,00 in 24 hours it's coming out February 19th so coming back to your original question why aren't people doing because they think it's harder than it is and they're afraid of themselves and so how do we do it in stupid Silly Ways maybe it's getting a dollar maybe it's complimenting someone maybe it's asking for a discount on coffee doing it and it doesn't mean you ever don't I don't get afraid but it does mean that it gets easier and easier and easier and you get more confident and confident and confident and then you realize holy [ __ ] all this is just me putting myself in a little bit of discomfort which ultimately it becomes fun at some point it doesn't become rejection such a bad thing it becomes a good thing yeah it's overcoming the fear of rejection or of asking for anything it's kind of like a superpower it probably is I've got the 100 days of rejection therapy uh website open here borrow a $100 from a stranger request a burger refill ask for Olympic symbol Donuts deliver pizza for dominoes have a tour in a grocery store Warehouse play soccer in someone else's backyard speak over Costco's intercom get the number one spot in Best Buys Thanksgiving line send stuff to Santa Claus through FedEx uh take an unregistered exam give $5 to five random people be a live mannequin at abber crumby borrow a dog from the Humane Society give a weather forecast on live TV it's going to be difficult to do see I feel like these are all extremism like I I thought I had to do this extreme like go do this tons of things I and again I think it can work but I think for for business there's like a few you can just do over and over and over like I I was telling someone a few weeks ago I I wanted to do all these rejection and like discomfort challenges so I did naked yoga and it's just like okay yeah I just don't want to be naked with a bunch of other guys doing like where we push each other I'm not sure if this is me overcoming it's not overcoming fear it's just it's uncomfortable I don't want to do it yeah but what I I think the bigger concept for most people out there is how can you get started right now and stop avoiding the self stop avoiding who you can become and the second part I would say is how do you practice asking in a controlled way that you can repeat over and over again and get more comfortable with it and realize this whole thing there's a guy Stetson he he was watching I was talking with him and he did it and I always ask same question what did you learn about yourself he's like I made it so much scarier than I was and I realized now there's so many more things that I can get what I want instead of get what I'm getting because I'm asking for it whether it's you want your you want cheese off your pizza or you want a wife or you want to raise or you just want someone to be your first customer or be your first podcast guest have you read No More Mr Nice Guy by Dr Robert Glover a while ago yeah he was on the show a couple of weeks ago so I'm still kind of digesting everything that he he taught there and it a lot of the stuff is in that as well and there a lot of guys have been listening to the show lots of girls as well but especially for the guys I think there's a degree of like extra embarrassment around being a man who's not doesn't have The Bravery to maybe go out and and and do this sort of a things it's like emasculating right it's like like I should be not not only am I not doing this thing but also there's something weak or fragile around being the sort of man who doesn't there's an extra layer of expectation perhaps wherever that comes from you know childhood or or Society or quite rightly yourself preservation I mean you're afraid because you're scared yeah right and maybe that could protect you in the past but now if you could face that fear what can it also get you and again I don't think it has to be such an All or Nothing mentality not saying that's what you're saying and you don't have to do it in this big dramatic way correct but practice it in simple ways like compliment and ask where they got it from or ask for Discount coffee and then you realize you could go up to another person and say hey I think you're really interesting like tell me who you are and then wow that's an ask that eventually maybe you'll get and so same with you know dating same with customers all these things and I I think when people realize it's not as scary as it seemed they realize there's much more out there for themselves than they expected hell yeah Noah Kagan ladies and gentlemen million dooll weekend the surprisingly simple way to launch a seven figure business in 48 hours where should people go they want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do this is uh million dooll weekend.com at Noah Kagen everywhere it's funny I've been telling people it's a business book wrapped in personal development hell yeah so it's like what you know and I dedicated the book to everyone willing to take a chance on themselves and I think everyone can do it everyone can be an entrepreneur everyone can not be an employee or RIS have a risky day job and realizing that there there's just more there man and you can live whatever kind of life you want to live but you do have to start and you have to stick with it just like your show and then eventually those compounded returns pay off and then five years later they'll reply to your email and come on your podcast yeah man I think that's a you know you never know who you know one of the things I love about being public is you never know who you're going to run into so think about how you're interacting with other people and you know with this book and in general it's like one thank God I wasn't super rude to you back in the day I don't think I I read my responses I was just saying hey I have a priority my priority was appsumo and that's great I'm I'm okay with that but being nice to other people and then also noticing who can you text when you need help who can you call when you need help and most of the time it's because you've helped them yeah so I I I think about it especially now a lot like you know how am I being mindful to help the other people out there because it we're in a selfish World a couple of my friends that have been cancelled said to me you know who your real friends are because they're the ones who pick up the phone before you ring them and when the cancellation Hammer comes down they're the ones that ring you and they like what can I do how can I help how can we make this better as opposed to you being like dude I'm struggling oh yeah man I saw that I'm so sorry what can we it's like very interesting dude I appreciate you I think this is I think this is really really great I'm glad that it's taken five years I'm really glad really glad that we managed to get this done I I love the uh embodied vibe that you've got going on you've genuinely obviously done a ton of inner work and I hope that you continue to to be a good role model there should be more like integrated successful business people it can be both it doesn't have to be all or nothing doesn't have to be flowery like psychedelics and and like you know wishing wishing for your money to come to you and it doesn't have to be hard noos like nose to the nose to the grindstone stuff yeah and I think one of the things I I reflect on is I've done so much to get to this point like with the therapy with the coaching with being alone that's been something to work through and I think we also remember to keep doing the work keep doing those things like keep showing up for therapy keep showing up for your coaching keep showing up for whatever it is that's helping you get to these places and being mindful like is it still serving you if not okay you can change it but I think it's very easy to be like I'm feeling great this time see you therapist don't need to go to the gym anymore don't need to do that therapy yes right we oh I'll Coast now and uh you know I think it's still showing up in these things and still keep reinforcing the S the positive self talk and just being okay with it like hey if it's not great right now guess what you can improve it it's okay hell yeah no I appreciate you thank you man good to see you if you're new to the channel here is a selection of videos I've picked out to get you started go on press away