Million Dollar Weekend with Noah Kagan – EP 174

Interview with Noah Kagan

Million Dollar Weekend with Noah Kagan

Featured on This Episode: Noah Kagan

✅ What he does: Noah Kagan is an entrepreneur, author, and the founder of AppSumo, a platform that’s become a go-to resource for entrepreneurs seeking affordable business tools. His journey in the tech industry began with roles at Intel, Facebook (where he was the 30th employee), and Mint.com, but it was his entrepreneurial ventures that truly defined his career. Despite some initial setbacks and ventures that didn’t pan out, Kagan’s persistence led to the creation of AppSumo in 2010, aiming to democratize access to tools for entrepreneurs. Today, he’s not just the guy behind AppSumo, but also an influential figure in the startup community, sharing his knowledge through a podcast, YouTube channel, and the OKdork blog.

💬 Words of wisdom: “You don’t need more books, you don’t need more courses, you don’t need more money. You just need yourself and the belief that you can do it, which you can.” – Noah Kagan

🔎 Where to find Noah Kagan: YouTube | Instagram | X | LinkedIn | Facebook

Key Takeaways with Noah Kagan

• Put in the work, and you’ll see the payoff
• The reward is on the other side of a hard thing
• Learning from those who already made it
• Entrepreneurship: The Great Equalizer
• Find what people want and make a business out of it
• Don’t let your livelihood depend on one person
• You only need one customer
• Success is a numbers game
• The best time to start is now
• You don’t have to be a millionaire to build your dream life
• Anyone can learn to be an entrepreneur

Playing It Safe Is Riskier Than You Think with Noah Kagan

The Surprisingly Simple Way to Start a Million Dollar Business with Noah Kagan

Every Big Business Started With One Customer with Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan Tweetables

“Everyone can start a business and you only need one hit. But you need to swing a lot to actually get the hit that's going to win.” – @noahkagan Click To Tweet

Resources

• Noah Kagan
• Noah Kagan on YouTube | Instagram | X | LinkedIn | Facebook
• Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours by Noah Kagan and Tahl Raz
• AppSumo
• Adam Gilbert
• My Body Tutor
• Pat Flynn
• BODYPUMP
• Stellar
• Sam Parr
• Calendly
• TidyCal
• DocuSign
• Tacodeli
• Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins

Tax Strategy Masterclass

If you’re interested in learning more about Tax Strategy and how YOU can apply 28 of the best, most effective strategies right away, check out our BRAND NEW Tax Strategy Masterclass: www.lifestyleinvestor.com/tax

Strategy Session 

The Lifestyle Investor Insider

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Read the Full Transcript with Noah Kagan

Justin Donald: What’s up, Noah? Good to have you on the show.

 

Noah Kagan: Good to be here. Good to see you, dude.

 

Justin Donald: This is awesome. Well, I’ve heard from so many of my friends that we need to have you on the show. So many people here in Austin and people I’ve connected with over the years have had so many great things to say about you. I was just hanging out with my buddy, Hal Elrod, and he was singing your praises two days in a row, mind you. So, the timing, it couldn’t have been better. And I’m leaving the country for a bit. So, this is perfect timing.

 

Noah Kagan: Nice. I love Hal Elrod. Yeah. There’s a lot of people in the orbit so it’s kind of cool that like the constellations come together.

 

Justin Donald: It’s so fun. I love the whole small world phenomenon and how many friends you share. It always cracks me up when there’s someone that lives in my own city and for whatever reason, we haven’t had as much overlap but you talked to 20 friends and they all know you super well. So, I’m excited for more overlap.

 

Noah Kagan: I agree. I always think it’s interesting. You know, you like walk the streets and you don’t know the people and then you get to meet someone like you now and so forth. I’d always think how it puts life in color. It always makes just like a more interesting experience when you get to meet people. And you can do it just like this where I think I was talking to Hal and I was like, “Hal, I would like to go on another show, talk about the book.” And he’s like, “You got to meet Justin.” And I was like, “That’s cool. More color.”

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. Hal and I’ve been friends for probably 22 or 23 years, something like that, and it’s been a long time. So, we’re huge fans and my wife and I are godparents to his kids. Yeah, we think the world to the Elrods.

 

Noah Kagan: I just had an application. We put out applications for my child for godfather.

 

Justin Donald: I love it. Yeah. Congrats. This is like hot off the press. You’re due really soon.

 

Noah Kagan: We’re due in July but it was funny because my buddy really wanted to do it. And I guess in Jewish culture we’ve never had godparents.

 

Justin Donald: Okay.

 

Noah Kagan: But he wanted to do it and I was like, “I’m going to make an application.” He had to do push-ups. He had to talk about like what would he do on dates if the guy shows up late. It’s pretty fun, actually.

 

Justin Donald: I love it. A criteria. You got hoops you got to jump through to earn this. Yeah. This is good.

 

Noah Kagan: A lot of the things we appreciate in life we did have to earn. You know, I think it’s kind of a point of investing in business and all this stuff. It’s putting in the effort and I do think we enjoy that reward more.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. Well, I want to give you a shout-out because before we even started this episode, you said, “Hey, do you have kids?” And we started talking about families and kids and creating healthy boundaries around work and being the family man, a businessman second, right? Family man first, businessman second. And you had said, “Hey, what’s one tip that you have? I have a collection and I’m asking all my friends that have kids, what’s one tip?” And I think that’s awesome. You’ve probably assembled quite the list of tips over time, right?

 

Noah Kagan: I did. Let me, here, it’s on my phone on Notes. Oh, so I ask also, yeah, so I asked my buddy, Adam Gilbert, from mybodytutor.com. He said, “Gilbert, don’t break promises,” because I’m also asking for either rules or values like what are your house rules or one thing you wish you would have known? So, he said, “We don’t break promises and then Gilberts don’t quit. So, I like that one. And then we always do greetings and salutations. I like yours, which is saying yes to other things and saying no to the family. That was great.

 

Justin Donald: Credit my wife on that one. She’s a smart woman and sometimes it takes many times to get through to me. So, I’ve heard that a few times before it clicked and I was like, “Oh, this makes a lot of sense,” and I didn’t see it that way. My perspective was this sounds really fun. I want to do it.

 

Noah Kagan: I know.

 

Justin Donald: Versus like, well, if I do this then I’m not with the family. And how often do I want to not be with the family?

 

Noah Kagan: I’m seeing it now, too. You know, like, “Oh, man, I wanted to use the laptop during lunch,” and she’s like, “You just have to be with me during lunch.”

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. Oh, quality time. My wife loves quality time.

 

Noah Kagan: It’s good. I’m practicing, man. I’m definitely, I’m not guilty myself and I’m getting better and better and better about that. And so, I’m looking forward to, that’s kind of like my big project, obviously, the kid, which is being present and doing a great job as a father.

 

Justin Donald: I love it. I think that’s awesome. I think it’s good for us as businessmen to get into an area, an arena that we are not as skilled at, that we are not as comfortable in, that we have to get uncomfortable to learn. And it takes time, it takes practice, it takes reps, it takes falling down. So, it’s not as easy as the calluses that we’ve built and the muscle memory we have from all the business stuff, right?

 

Noah Kagan: That is true. That is true. I mean, it’s also a lot of times in business, also in life, is that others have done it. Like, we don’t have to be so innovative. So, go and find people like yourself in investing or myself in starting businesses or fathers who I admire and learn from them. Like, I hit up I think you know, do you know Pat Flynn?

 

Justin Donald: Yeah.

 

Noah Kagan: So, I hit up Pat and I was like, “Pat, what’s your one advice?” He’s like, “Talk to the belly and rub her feet,” and so I’m like, I don’t know. I’m just like now every night I do my best to talk to my wife’s belly and then rub her feet or rub her belly and talk to it as well. And I’m like, “Thanks, Pat.” Again, I think that can be applied in a lot of arenas, which is like what you’re saying about pickleball.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Noah Kagan: Maybe there’s coaches that can like give me my 10,000 hours or help me level up in these different areas and so same thing with parenting.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Noah Kagan: I always find it strange that my brother’s like, “I’m going to wing it.” “What do you mean wing it, dude?” It’s like, “Isn’t this probably the most important thing you do in life? Like, read some books. Talk to some people. Get some coaching.”

 

Justin Donald: That’s right, 100%. Well, I’m excited to dig in. You’ve got a new book that just launched, and I want to get into that. It’s called Million Dollar Weekend, and I want to dissect that book. But before we get to it, I want to learn about how you got to where you are because you’re a successful entrepreneur. You’ve had I think 7 or 8 different businesses that you’ve started, and many of these have been ideas that were created, like what your book says, over the weekend and turned into a business. But there was a time and a place where you were not an entrepreneur. You started out in the corporate world. You started out as an employee. And I’d love to learn like, what was life before writing a book and being a well-known author or having a New York Times best-selling book. What was that like before you were an entrepreneur, before people knew your name? And then what was that progression into what you’ve evolved to, what your business has evolved to today, Noah?

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. You made me think about my mother when she goes to, she works out a lot at the gym. She loves BODYPUMP. And she goes, “My one son is a doctor. My other son, he’s an entrepreneur, but I think he’s doing okay.” You know, they always have to say that with the entrepreneur stuff. And I think what I used to feel is more shame of who I was and not acceptance of how I’d like to live in this universe. And I love the title of your book, Lifestyle. I come from Silicon Valley where I was very lucky to be around this like elite environment, working for Zuckerberg directly, growing up literally a few miles from Apple headquarters, just like a very special environment. And it was like if you’re not doing everything, working, then you’re failing. And I was like, “I want to live.” And they used to make fun of lifestyle businesses. I’m like, “We’re almost a $100 million lifestyle business at AppSumo.com. It’s a pretty good lifestyle for me and the team and our customers and partners. I think that’s what I always dreamed of. I didn’t know how I was going to get there, though, and I wanted to, I think, the interesting thing is I wanted to trade receiving my W-2 to start giving out W-2s. And I’ll start giving out some, you know, the most of the wealthiest people give out the W-2s and 1099s. But I never knew how I was going to get there. I think I was ashamed I didn’t know how it’s supposed to happen so I just tried so many things over a decade.

 

And I had a day job like no advantages. I think this is a thing that people don’t recognize in entrepreneurship is that, universally, everyone can win. You don’t have to be tall. I don’t even have hair anymore. You can have a lot of hair and win. You could be short and win. You could be a giant and win. It doesn’t matter. That’s the coolest part of business. And the other cool part that I think is amazing is you only need to do it once and only one time it has to work. How crazy is that?

 

Justin Donald: That’s awesome. It’s one of those things where it sounds so easy and so simple but the reality is that simple idea takes a lot of hard work and a lot of hours, a lot of falling down and getting bumps and scrapes. It probably takes a lot of years, but it is if you unpackage it, I mean, the difference between simple and easy, right? It is simple but it does take work.

 

Noah Kagan: It does, and it could be fun. I think that’s definitely not talked about enough. And what most people don’t realize is that it’s literally the best return you can ever make is starting your own business ever. Like, AppSumo was literally started for $50, and last year I took them over $3 million personally, which is insane. And I share that because I put it out publicly with CNBC. They verified it. And I was like, that’s insane whatever return like stock market, oh, your stock you have… I bought Nvidia. My dad bought me Nvidia stock. Great return. Not even close to this. Like, oh, you bought crypto? Doubled. Wow. Doubled. Oh, I’m so happy. Like, your own business, a trillion X. And the thing though that people miss out and I think you said it really well, Justin. You do have to get started, and you have to start and start and start and start because it doesn’t work. And most people like yourself have families. You got day jobs. You’re going international. So, you don’t have a lot of time so you have to really focus on the fundamentals and everyone has a weekend. And eventually, it does work. And the second part that people don’t acknowledge is sticking with it. And we’ve all stuck with different things. Like, I’ve stuck with breathing now for 41 years. I’m huge into breathing. Somehow, I just keep doing it. And I think that’s the same in business, which is find something that people actually want. You’re not going to make a ton of money right away. AppSumo, which is a software deal site, for people that are not as familiar. Our first sale was $12. Yesterday, I just looked. We did 144,000 yesterday.

 

Justin Donald: Wow.

 

Noah Kagan: But that’s 15 years later. So, all you have to do is find something people actually want. And there’s a process I teach at Million Weekend about all these things, and then you stick with it. Now, in terms of, I guess, before and after my life, I got fired twice, once from Facebook and once from Mint.com. And it just made me realize, like, I didn’t want to have my livelihood depend on one person. Like, one person, Mark and Aaron literally were like, “You’re done today.” I was like, “That’s crazy.” That’s crazier than… People are like, “It’s so risky starting your own business.” I’m like, it’s risky to have a day job, especially if you don’t like your day job.

 

Justin Donald: Well, you are early on too. And sometimes early on in these companies, you get equity. Sometimes if you’re cut loose early, maybe you have invested it all. So, I mean, there’s a lot on the line when you’re number 30 at Facebook and number 4 at Mint, right?

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. Facebook one I would have been a billionaire, so that stings. I’m doing pretty well. I’m okay. But the Mint one I only would have lost a few million but I think the same thing for anyone out there is just starting and looking at, okay, what am I already getting paid for? What do I like doing? What’s in my zone of influence that I could actually do today? And this applies whether you are a doctor like my brother or whether people like you and me or maybe in a more variety of like tech or money finances. And it’s an amazing process. And I think one of the things for Million Dollar Weekend, I’ve seen people change their lives is now, not how. And like get started because people are thinking, Justin, “I don’t got ideas. I’m not risky enough. I’m not an extrovert. I’m an introvert. I’m not in this one city. That’s where everything is happening.” It’s like, great. That’s advantages. You can compete where others aren’t. And you could get started right now. And I’m seeing it over and over where people just start taking action today like during the show. And I think that was in terms of my journey. I kept trying.

 

Justin Donald: You know, the interesting thing that I would share…

 

Noah Kagan: Can you hold on one second? I think my wife’s puking. I just need to check on her.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah, sure.

 

Noah Kagan: Being pregnant is hard, my man.

 

Justin Donald: No kidding. No kidding.

 

Noah Kagan: Respect to the women out there. Geez, man, that is a tough experience. Like, starting a business is easy. Like, this is the easy part. Like, go create something, help other people, and then you can live a dream life. Like, being in pain and puking, it’s a lot harder than I realized.

 

Justin Donald: Oh. That’s rough. Yeah, I remember the days of that, the days of morning sickness. I’m glad I did not have to go through that.

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. Men could not handle this.

 

Justin Donald: No, no.

 

Noah Kagan: I mean, she call it all-day sickness. It’s not morning.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Noah Kagan: Dude, it’s like all day but, yeah, I think in terms of my story, man, I think it’s relatable to everyone where I didn’t have some rich family. I had a middle-class family but I started things and I kept starting things, and eventually, something worked but it was so many things that did not. But each thing kind of leveled me up a bit. Like, I did a conference and I met people. I was like, “Oh, I like conferences.” And I did a few more of them in money. I was like, “Oh, this is cool,” and I did it while I had my day job. I was never risky. Only one of my side hustles started working like at Mint, yeah, it was the first one where my games company started working. So, then I quit, which is when I hit my freedom number. Everyone has one. It’s the number where you can actually do the thing you want to do.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. That’s powerful.

 

Noah Kagan: And mine was 3,000.

 

Justin Donald: Okay. And I talk about that a lot. And it’s funny, you got to be careful because lifestyle creep kicks in and if you’re not careful, it’s going to surpass it. You’re going to be there and then all of a sudden you’re not. But I do think it’s important to find that number and get there as quickly as you can because it gives you a lot more peace of mind around starting a business when it’s not life or death that way. You’ve got the finances still covered. I mean, for me, I needed breathing room when I started my first big business. I started several smaller businesses, but we started a big business that is a single-family home maintenance company called Stellar. But because I had financial freedom, it became really easy to jump in and not have to worry about anything else. And some of the other businesses that I had started, I did need to worry about it. I didn’t have my financial freedom yet. And so, I think that decisions that were made were out of this framework of, “Can I afford it? Can I not afford it?” or I was clouded by finances versus, “Hey, you’ve got that solved.” Now, it becomes a lot easier to be creative, to kind of put more chips in, to push them in.

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. And these businesses that do get larger all started with one customer. That’s why in the book I talk about getting your first dollar and people can Venmo request me at Noah Kagan and I’ll be your first and then go get your second. And then people like, “Well, yeah, these million dollar visit,” like they all started the same way. Your cleaning company, Stellar, had one. Who’s your first customer? Do you remember your first customer?

 

Justin Donald: My first customer, well, it depends on which business.

 

Noah Kagan: Stellar, the home cleaning one.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. So, it’s a single-family home maintenance company. And so, we had a smaller operator that we took on that I’m likely not supposed to use names, but just institutional investors. We ended up getting some pretty big household names that came on pretty early on. But our first one was a smaller client and someone else had kind of messed up some of their jobs and we swooped in to be able to kind of clean up the work that they had done, thinking that we might have an opportunity with them.

 

Noah Kagan: You know, I guess I used to think, and this is true for everyone out there, that the things that we’re actually good at, can we embrace it and accept it? And so, I was always starting and the same thing with AppSumo, started another business while I had a day job. I was consulting for a dating company. And I think people miss out on the problems. Everyone’s got problems. This is the best business to solve because at least you have a happy customer, which is yourself. And I wanted to solve this problem I kept hearing over and over, which is how do you get people customers? And specifically, I wanted to focus on software for small business owners like myself. That was something I was excited about.

 

Justin Donald: And you came from that space too, right?

 

What’s that?

 

Justin Donald: You came from that space. I guess yours was kind of B2C but…

 

Noah Kagan: Well, I think when people get started and this is the thing, you’re not going to become a millionaire overnight. But if you follow the work, if you follow Million Dollar Weekend, also read Lifestyle Investor once you get all the money, you will become a millionaire. I am seeing it. I know it works. And the reality, though, is that you’re not getting the million overnight but if you can find some people who want and then stick with it long enough, you will get $1 million. And it was interesting with AppSumo and now putting that together, that process into a book, I’m seeing these people like it’s been crazy. This guy messaged me on Reddit. I did an AMA there and he’s like, “Yeah, I’ve read the book and I messaged 14 people about my health coaching business I’ve been curious about and I’m always excited about.” I have three paying customers today. I was like, “Hell yeah.” Or someone read the book, this guy David, and I don’t know him but in the book, I talk about law of 100, which is just like, how do you not quit too soon? How do you not give up too soon? And he just built a website that you can track the thing you do 100 times, and they launched it.

 

Justin Donald: I love it and I love that you’re willing to be a first customer. I think that’s really cool that you’re just like openly, “Hey, you start your business. I’ll be customer number one.” I think that’s awesome.

 

Noah Kagan: I’m not getting enough of these requests.

 

Justin Donald: And by the way, that’s disappointing.

 

I actually get it a lot.

 

Justin Donald: You’re offering it up and you’re not getting it because and it goes to the point that we talked about earlier that most people overthink it. It’s like, well, all the lights down the road have to be green before I go. I have to have this whole plan and everything has to go perfectly versus it’s all going to change anyway. You think it’s going to be one way and then you go do it and you’re like, “Whoa, it’s totally different and there’s all these problems I didn’t know about.” And you only can solve them because you actually move forward and did it and got your feet messy, got your hands messy.

 

Noah Kagan: Well, I think what you asked, which is interesting and the reason I do the dollar thing is because most people never get to a million because they never get one. And after one, you get two. And then you get three, and then after 2 or 3 or 4, you get 3 or 4 or 5. The thing that’s really interesting about for all of us is that as you get started, that’s where you get confidence. And each of these things levels up. So, like at Intel, I was like I hate a cubicle. Not going to ever do a job like that again. At Facebook, I learned how to build products. And then I started conferences. I was like, “Oh, I kind of don’t like conferences, but I like building web products.” All right. Mint, marketing. I like this marketing thing. Then I built these games and I was like, “Oh, I hate games.” And I did payments for games. We evolved. But again, you’re never going to learn to swim sitting outside the pool. So, you have to start and then you get a little scared but guess what? After you do it, you have success. You can swim. And then doing the payments company, I realized that they didn’t care about payments. They cared about customers. So, like all that was the culmination that led to the beginning of AppSumo in 2010. But if I never started trying things and figuring out, is there a formula for this, I would have never figured it out. And most people just think they’re not ready and they are. And they think there’s a guru or some secret stuff. There’s processes, but you don’t need more books, you don’t need more courses, you don’t need more money. You just need yourself and the belief that you can do it, which you can.

 

Justin Donald: And it’s tough if you’re just dipping your toe in because if the water’s too cold, you’re not going to get in the rest of the way. You should just jump right in, right? Get your whole body in, go after it, and see what happens. And if it doesn’t work out, you can reiterate it, you can evolve it, you can try something different, but you might as well know for sure, get a definitive yes or no.

 

Noah Kagan: Well, it’s like pickleball. I know you’re a semi-pro. You’re going pro here.

 

Justin Donald: I’m working hard to get good.

 

Noah Kagan: You know, the business is a language and a skill that you can be fluent in, just like pickleball.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Noah Kagan: Your pickleball today, how different is it than the last time when you first started?

 

Justin Donald: Infinitely. Yeah.

 

Noah Kagan: It is. And so, when people can start looking at business as a gym, as a skill to develop that you practice it. All right. I’m going to ask a customer for a dollar today. I’m going to post on social media right now, “Can I help anybody with their lawn care? Can I help anyone with their cleaning? Can I help anyone with their personal finance?” And they’re like, “Oh, it didn’t work. Let me ask again. Let me try again.” Eventually, as a skill like pickleball, you get better. And you know, there’s just common things I see. I saw a guy send me an email and he says, “Hey, I saw that there’s a competitor in my space. Should I not do the business?” I’m like, “It’s practice. Just keep practicing.” It’s like saying there are no more restaurants in your city because one opened up.

 

Justin Donald: Yep. Competitors in every space. If there aren’t, there will be. It’s just a matter of time. And generally, when you’re starting a business, you are a competitor. You’re just thinking of a better way to do it. You’re solving different problems or more problems.

 

Noah Kagan: Totally true. And I think a lot of times if you haven’t heard of the competitor, that’s an opportunity. And that’s also figuring out maybe it’s your own flavor of it. Like, for me, I never personally read a business book that I could have given myself. When I was starting at Intel, 23 years old, 22, that’s like if you want to be an entrepreneur, here’s the book. It never existed. So, I was like, well, I’m going to test it. This is what we teach in the book. Let me test it with a blog post. Blog post went viral. Like, huh, one day I think this will do really well as a book. So, I had confidence. It’s the same thing as well.

 

Justin Donald: That’s awesome. So, you had AppSumo. I think you said you started in 2010. It was just you. You grew it over time. Give us an idea of where it was versus where it is today. Where are you in sales? Where are you in the number of employees? I’m sure it’s like two different companies, right? A night and a day.

 

Noah Kagan: There’s a lot of inflection points in our journey and everyone’s got it and everyone can do hard things. I think that’s what this book taught me recently is that we all can do a hard thing, and the reward is on the other side of the hard thing. So, AppSumo, I started it just kind of as a joke. It wasn’t started like and I think people miss out on this, like, “I got to have $1 million. It’s got to be…” It’s like, “Dude, chill out. Like, go help one person. It’s fun.” So, I just started at my buddy, Neville’s place. I was starting in San Francisco in a basement. And then like once a month, I would start doing these bundles of software deals, and I got inspired by Mac. There’s Mac software deals at a site called Mac-I, and I was like, “I’ll do it for web software.” So, the first year and I think this is probably the most important point of that story is, one, I tried other businesses with the same problem that did not work. So, I tried a software review site called Software Taco. That didn’t work. I tried a co-registration software thing. That did not work. But the third one I tried, which was AppSumo, worked really well. And that’s what I teach people like you don’t have a lot of time. You have to find if these things work and that makes life easy. First year, we did 300,000 and it was me and a customer support person. And then my CTO at the time joined ten months in and he worked for free for a year.

 

Justin Donald: Wow.

 

Noah Kagan: Just to be a part of it.

 

Justin Donald: Well, even 300,000 year one is incredible.

 

Noah Kagan: It’s insane.

 

Justin Donald: It is.

 

Noah Kagan: It’s insane. And I say that not as a brag at all, but I’ve tried so many other things I had zero.

 

Justin Donald: Right. And that’s huge because you didn’t let the beat down of that deter your desire to figure out one that did work, right? I love that.

 

Noah Kagan: Well, I think what most people don’t realize is that this dream life they’re imagining is possible. I didn’t believe it. But if you can kind of have like a little bit of a belief. And for me, the fear of a job was so strong, the fear of having to spend a lot of my life doing things I don’t want was so strong…

 

Justin Donald: Going back to the cubicle.

 

Noah Kagan: I was like, “I’m never going to go back to that.” And so, that’s what kept me going. And I think a lot of times I’m getting rejected and this is the part, I’m still getting rejected. I’m still getting rejected all the time. But you’re only seeing the ones that happen.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. And you had made a comment earlier about, hey, if you just keep chugging along, you’ll be able to build up $1 million. I actually want to just comment real quick. It’s actually not even that hard. You don’t even have to get to $1 million. Something that one of my favorite stats is that before I was a millionaire, I had financial freedom. And it does not take $1 million in the bank to do it. Now, you can. You can work up to that. It doesn’t take $1 million business to do it. But if you do it right, you can and you can work up to it. But the point here is you got to start. You just have to start and you got to get around people that are doing it so it’s not weird and you’re not the only one. And you can glean ideas from them and processes and protocols and the whole works. You can start thinking more like the people that are getting the results that you desire to have. But for them, it’s a regular, everyday part of their life.

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. It’s interesting that the norm is that and I love your point. You could be a time millionaire for a lot less than a million bucks.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Noah Kagan: So, for me, with AppSumo, that part, yeah, first year was 300,000. It’s pretty much me. Last year, I think we finished the year around $80 million gross sales and there’s about 100 people on the team.

 

Justin Donald: That’s incredible.

 

Noah Kagan: 15 years later, bootstrapped.

 

Justin Donald: That’s incredible. And never having taken any VC money?

 

Noah Kagan: No, not at all.

 

Justin Donald: Okay. That’s a beautiful thing.

 

Noah Kagan: I didn’t want another boss.

 

Justin Donald: Fifty dollars, right?

 

Noah Kagan: The only boss I have is my baby mama. That’s the only boss I have.

 

Justin Donald: That’s good you recognize that.

 

Noah Kagan: I would say the other thing that’s a nuance of our story because people might think it’s not relatable and I’m like it’s accessible worldwide for free. Everyone can start a business and you only need one hit. It’s the only sport with one-hit wins. But you need to swing a lot to actually get the hit that’s going to win. And I would say the nuance in AppSumo that people need to be mindful of is you have to be in billion or million or trillion-dollar opportunities. And what I mean by that is people are working really hard on small markets, which is fine. And the example that I thought of recently was my masseuse. I had her come over to massage my girlfriend. It’s $140, which is pretty expensive, but pretty nice to have someone come to your house. I was like, “That’s 7,000 backs to be $1 million.” That’s going to take you a lifetime.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Noah Kagan: But if you start thinking about the market size or the market opportunity, maybe if she hired people, if she sold coaching, maybe some of your blueprint that she can mirror from you and that changes the scope of the opportunity, software maybe. Then you start thinking like, “Okay. What market am I actually playing in?” Because I’d say for AppSumo, I had some percentage, significant percent of our success is that software just got bigger. I just played. I put my surfboard in a really huge wave that was just doing really well.

 

Justin Donald: Well, and it’s also the wave that is the future, right? So, I think one of the things I talk about is finding invisible deals. So, this is the third commandment of my Ten Commandments. And it’s finding these invisible deals. Well, what are they? Well, we don’t know what they are, but we can guess what they are. We can pay attention to what the millennials are doing. What are they doing now? How do you see them spend time and shop and work and figure out what that trend looks like? So, sometimes the ideas, and not always, but sometimes the idea is catching it early enough before it’s mainstream and then it becomes mainstream. Right? But if you’re already playing in a space that has a big wave like software, we already know software companies have some of the highest valuations out there. We already know that the tech-enabled anything is kind of the wave of the future. So, software, technology, something with some sort of recurring revenue, you can game it to a certain degree if you know the sandboxes you want to play in that have more sand.

 

Noah Kagan: I like that. The two comments I would make, I’ll give some examples, but also play in the sandbox you understand. If you’re just doing it for practice and reps, great. But I see so many times people are like, “I’m going to build a social media following and AI, and I’m going to try to launch something later.” And it’s like, “Okay. Have you built any social media?” “No.” “Do you, do you use a lot of AI?” “No, but it seems really hot.” I’m like, “I think you can do it so do that. And what’s your day job? What have you gotten paid for in the past? What do your friends do?” And so, you can do it another way. There is an easy way but people want to make it harder on themselves because they think they have to and they don’t. I mean, just to give you some examples of what I believe will be million-dollar businesses, I think what you said, Justin, and the way I heard it and I agree is it has to be non-obvious and become obvious.

 

Justin Donald: Yes.

 

Noah Kagan: Like when I started AppSumo, there was ten software products online. Ten. Now, there’s 100,000. So, the idea there is like, can you see even? And I try to just think six months. People are sweating like six years. I don’t know. I did just do a ten-year guess of my life, which is pretty fun this morning. Like, where do I think I’ll end in ten years? In 2034? I was like, “Well, normally, I haven’t thought that far ahead.” But in business, if you can think six months, where will it be? And so, to that, I saw literally yesterday, Sam Parr, who was on your show. He launched Samslist.co. I don’t think it’s going to be a billion because I don’t think he’ll run it that way, but a million-dollar business. And it’s basically a Yelp just for accountants and tax people. And what I love about it is that, what are the problems that suck for you? And even for myself I hate like right now I’m trying to change tax people. I have a bookkeeper. It’s super annoying. Great. That’s a business opportunity. The other one that we’re building at AppSumo, and again, these are all things that now we understand and we’re the customer, which makes it more interesting. And I’m just more interested, we have a deeper understanding and it’s easier for us to succeed in it is DocuSign. And we were like, “Why are we paying monthly for DocuSign? We don’t even use it that often.” So, we’re like, “Can we pre-sell it?” So, I sold $3,000 worth to my friends, to people who sent me DocuSigns, and then now, because I know people want it, we spent the last I think it’s been about three weeks building it because we know we have customers. And so, we’re launching it next week.

 

Justin Donald: That’s awesome.

 

Noah Kagan: And I’m pretty sure that’ll be $1 million, if not larger business.

 

Justin Donald: So, what are all the services of AppSumo?

 

Noah Kagan: So, AppSumo is Groupon for geeks is kind of our old thing. Now, it’s more of a software marketplace for solopreneurs. It’s probably the easiest way to think about it so you can get software deals for tools you need. So, instead of paying $29 a month for Calendly, you can pay $29 for life and have TidyCal.com. That’s an opportunity in a nutshell. Right now, it’s really cool. Like, every week we launch new products. So, it’s a lot of up-and-coming or undiscovered software tools. So, even if people don’t buy it, they can like, okay, what’s trending? What’s happening like AI writing tools, super, super popular, a lot of like databases, a lot of video stuff. And so, for people out there that have small businesses, they can act like a big business but at small business pricing with all of our stuff is pay once and you get it forever.

 

Justin Donald: Oh, I love that. By the way, I don’t know why I’m not using AppSumo. I’m going to buy this right when we’re done.

 

Noah Kagan: Now, so AppSumo is the marketplace. So, I think sometimes we got to work on our branding. We basically find the latest and greatest tools, get an insane price, and then promote it on AppSumo.com. We should probably sponsor you.

 

Justin Donald: I like it. Let’s do it. That sounds fun. Well, this is, I mean, our audience is, this is totally speaking our language, right? We’re gung ho in this space and finding apps that make us better, faster, smarter, more resourceful. So, I love that. A question for you. For those of you that are listening, you have no idea what I’m looking at, those of you that are watching this show, you can tell exactly what I’m looking at. You got a big old taco in the background, which I love because my favorite food, at least I think that’s a taco. My favorite food are, just a favorite way to start the day, breakfast tacos. Tell me, what is and I noticed in your bio that you love Tacodeli. We’ll give a nice shout-out to Tacodeli. I’m friends with the owner. Great guy. What is it about tacos that makes you want to have that on your background? Because I love it.

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you. Shout out. Do you know Roberto? The other guy? I love Roberto. I’ve tried to invest in him for like 20 years.

 

Justin Donald: That’s because they don’t need the money.

 

Noah Kagan: I know.

 

Justin Donald: The place is printing money.

 

Noah Kagan: I know and I just admire him as an entrepreneur. I really admire him.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah, I play pickleball with them, by the way. He and Roberto is really good at pickleball.

 

Noah Kagan: Ooh, maybe I come pickleball with you all. All right. Well, we’ll talk about that afterwards. I think the concept for me is more, how do you have fun with business? So, like at Million Dollar Weekend, for instance, while we’re working on the book, make a product that you’re excited to tell people about. I put a certificate degree for people. That’s because it’s like I’ve never read a book where I get a certificate at the end. Or in the acknowledgments section, you can write your own name in because you read a book, you’re like, “I helped that person.”

 

Justin Donald: That’s awesome.

 

Noah Kagan: They bought the book.

 

Justin Donald: I love it, man. That’s so cool.

 

Noah Kagan: So, I think that the taco thing, if you go to AppSumo.com, to our site, this is an interesting thing too because once you get something going, you’re generally doing something new, and you’re okay to take risk because there’s not much to lose. It’s not even a risk. But you’re doing things where you don’t have as much opinions. And so, when I started AppSumo, I just put tacos instead of stars.

 

Justin Donald: I love it.

 

Noah Kagan: I just thought it was funnier, and I was like, yeah, that’s just cool. Like, if it’s good at AppSumo, it’s always taco ratings. And in our businesses, how do you have fun with it? Because that’s also what people talk about. You know, they want to taco about it. Haha. So, if you put these little like it has to be authentic. Like, if someone went and did a bunch of taco things and they’re not, I eat just a tremendous amount of tacos. So, it’s kind of like, yeah, that’s me. And everyone should figure out what works for them. Maybe it’s to be more serious. Maybe it’s, I don’t know, barbecue. Or maybe, like, they would never do a certificate but they have really amazing graphics. And I think that’s what I was sharing earlier in my own journey, which was I think I used to be ashamed that I like starting businesses and meaning that I get fired or I’m like starting and I’m starting and I’m starting. Eventually, now, I just wrote a book. I was like, “Well, let me just because it seems like that’s actually what people really want help with.”

 

Justin Donald: I love it. So, tell us about the book.

 

Noah Kagan: And I’ll show how I’ve actually done it successfully.

 

Justin Donald: Because this is awesome. Just the concept of it is great because you’re basically saying, yes, you too can start a business. You can do it over the weekend. And if that business works, great. If not, reiterate and find another idea that does. But you started many over just a weekend. So, tell us the impetus for the book and I guess any key points that you want people to grab from it? Because I’d love to have people get your book. I think we need more entrepreneurs in the world. I think that we’re solving problems for society as entrepreneurs. I think the marketplace for entrepreneurship is what solves problems.

 

Noah Kagan: I think what’s amazing about entrepreneurship is that it’s literally one of the best tools to create your dream life. Like, where are you going this week?

 

Justin Donald: Going to Riviera Maya.

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah, living these dope *ss lives. And your point at earlier too, you don’t have to be a millionaire to do it. Definitely, makes it a lot easier. And I was never really taught. And I don’t think people are really encouraged to enjoy money. Like, 99% of content is make it. 0%, except the fake people on Instagram, is how to enjoy it.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. Totally. And I think there’s a few books on it. Die With Zero, one of the only ones. Right?

 

Noah Kagan: Which is a banger of a book. I love that book.

 

Justin Donald: Heck, yeah.

 

Noah Kagan: And I think entrepreneurship is just such a cool way to learn who you can become.

 

Justin Donald: No doubt.

 

Noah Kagan: It’s just such an amazing way where you’re really starting things. You’re asking people. That’s what I teach in the U.S., one of the key things. There are so many business books out there. There’s even this place called Harvard. You may have heard of it.

 

Justin Donald: And the place that a lot of people think is a university, but it’s really kind of just an endowment of, you know, it’s more of a money management vehicle that really doesn’t have to pay much, if anything, in taxes. Is that the same Harvard we’re talking about?

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. We are.

 

Justin Donald: In educational arm.

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. I mean, this whole starting business stuff is just such an amazing way to, one, create a dream life that people can actually live, which I believe they can, realize it’s not as far away. I think people don’t realize that your life that maybe you’re a little frustrated in or it’s not as good as you want, it’s probably better than you think, to start. Let’s just start there. And, two, this life where like I spent half a year living in Spain, it’s not that expensive. My apartment there with my girlfriend is €1,050. That’s cheap. My house here is more expensive. So, you can live there, super cheap, and you could do a podcast business. You could do a service business. And the idea that you have to do it like, “Oh man, I’m a financial advisor.” You don’t have to financial advice. You can hire these other people, trade your money for their time. And I think entrepreneurship, everyone can do it. Everyone needs to do it. Because if you have a day job and you have a family, if that day job goes, what happens? So, I definitely create the entrepreneurship. So, if it’s selling things on eBay or Etsy or Facebook Marketplace, wherever that is, services, software, whatever, at least you have that option.

 

Justin Donald: And start as a solopreneur and then build something bigger from there, right? Get proof of concept and then build a business, build people, build systems.

 

Noah Kagan: Yeah. It is fun. I mean, it’s such a cool way to learn. I think a lot of times in companies and day jobs, you learn how to be in a day job and you don’t even learn skills necessarily external to your day job. You learn how to do a function for that company. And when you start your own business, I start AppSumo, I’m like doing customer support. How do you do a website? How do you program? My first website of AppSumo, which was $50, it was a PayPal button and my Gmail. That was our whole tech stack. And the other thing I got a highlight from Million Dollar Weekend is that, the thing, if there’s Harvard and all these books and courses and all this stuff on entrepreneurship, then how come everyone can’t do it? That’s the riddle. And the two things that I identified after myself and literally 10,000 of other people, they don’t get started. Like you, like you started, you started, you started, you started, and eventually, some things work. And the second part that’s so critical is asking, the second just unknown thing that no one really touched upon. And yes, there’s a process that people need to follow but how do you get comfortable asking? Come on my show. Be my wife. Be my customer. Come work for me. But that’s an interesting one to, actually, hey, I need you to come be an employee. Are you going to find the best people if you don’t ask? Because if you don’t ask for things, you’re not going to get it. And the more that we can practice these things, which are all skills that we can all get better at, just like pickleball. It’s all skills to get better that you can start turning yourself into actually a fluent, moneymaking speaker.

 

Justin Donald: That’s awesome. I love it. So, where can people learn more about you and where can they find your book?

 

Noah Kagan: Million Dollar Weekend is wherever books are sold. I have it at milliondollarweekend.com is probably where you can learn about me. First chapter for free. I think you guys are giving out, like one of our, like, resources that has a lot of tutorials but everything on milliondollarweekend.com or @NoahKagan anywhere online.

 

Justin Donald: I love it. I love it. What would you say is just the one thing that you want to make sure our audience here today leaves with?

 

Noah Kagan: Venmo request me for $1 at Noah Kagan. And my point here is if you made it to the end of the show, which most people don’t, you’re one of the chosen. I think the question I keep wondering for the audience is as I talk is who’s the one person that’s going to do it? Because it’s available. All you have to do is do it today and get started right now. And that’s why I say just Venmo because fine, give $1. And then you realize like, “Oh wow, maybe I have been holding off something I can do and I actually can create this dream life.” So, I would start with that $1 for me and then see what else you can do today.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. You’ve got a customer built in that builds some confidence, right? I love that. Well, I really enjoy having guests on that just have such a unique take on life, a different background than what most people have. I feel like you’ve done some really cool things here, Noah. I really want to thank you for your time and also thank you for just injecting some fun, some creativity, some humor, which I think we need more of in life, right? You do a great job of that. And I really like to end every podcast episode I do with a question, just one simple question to our audience. So, if you’re watching this, if you’re listening to this, the question for you today, which is the same as I ask every single week is this: What is one step that you can take today to move towards financial freedom and move towards a life that you truly desire, one that’s on your terms, not by default, but rather by design? Today is really easy because you’ve got a bunch of low-hanging fruit from Noah. So, pick one thing that you learn from Noah and move forward. So, yes, I highly recommend, buy his book. We need more entrepreneurs in the world. Million Dollar Weekend for all of us. It’ll be really cool to see what we can create, especially from our audience. I know that there are a lot of people here that either, A, need to start their first company or, B, need to start another company. And we can worry about pulling you out of that company later. We talk a ton about that in our community. So, thanks so much, Noah. And I’ll check all of you next week.