Sam Parr sits down with Noah Kagan, CEO of AppSumo, to brainstorm the best business ideas for 2022. They dig into AppSumo’s top-selling product categories, what the data reveals about emerging software trends, the chrome extension and WordPress plugin acquisition playbook, lessons from Mint.com, and strategies for growing a podcast and YouTube channel. The conversation also covers personal topics like coaching, monthly life reviews, psychedelic therapy, and favorite gear purchases under $100.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host, mentioned but absent), Noah Kagan (guest, CEO of AppSumo)
Cold Plunge and Opening Banter [00:00:00]
Noah: So last year we had our highest day — Black Friday was our highest day, almost two million dollars in that one day.
Sam: Are we ready to roll? Can we roll? Bro, you gotta take that hat off though — I can’t see you.
Noah: All right. I was just trying to — I wanted to wear a costume. A little bit more spicy.
Sam: You’re good like that. I couldn’t see your eyes. Do you have an ice bath?
Noah: Yeah, I have a cold — have you not tried our cold tub?
Sam: Is it called a cold plunge?
Noah: Yeah, the Cold Plunger. I have one too. What’s your opinion of it so far?
Sam: I like it. I use it about twice a week. Monday morning instead of coffee — it’s basically my wake-up thing. And then I’ll use it Wednesdays after a workout. What’s interesting though, there’s a book — I think it’s called Endurance —
Noah: Yeah, I love that book.
Sam: They basically say — and I love that book — scientifically it doesn’t do anything. And so that’s why I have a problem with cold plunge. The actual product is amazing — if you want to be cold, it’s a good one. It stays like 39 degrees all the time. But I’m almost certain it doesn’t do anything. Some people say it impacts your brain, but there’s still conflicting research on that.
I think the big thing I like about it is it makes me feel tough. It makes me feel good about myself. I’m like, Noah, you’re not tough man, you’re weak. I don’t really have that self-talk in my head, but I go into this thing and I’m like, do 10. And then when I’m about to get to 10, I’m like, you could do 15. And then I just feel proud.
Noah: How long do you sit?
Sam: It varies — maybe like a minute, two minutes.
Noah: Dude, I did five minutes at 39 degrees and it was incredibly painful. That’s what it said online to do, so I did it. I was legitimately in pain — more pain than I’ve ever felt through exercise.
Sam: How did you feel about yourself?
Noah: I felt tough. I felt tough. So I understand why it works. But I’m still looking for peer-reviewed research that shows that it works, and I’ve not found it. That’s why I was asking how you thought about your cold plunge.
Sam: I got to jump in here because I’m a cold plunge spokesman — they’re a sponsor for my podcast, so I gotta— The thing is, I’m telling you, the Cold Plunge products — we’re both supporting it, I have it too. But here’s where you’re wrong. The thing that you’re right about is there’s no research showing it’s good for recovery. That’s what everyone says they use it for, and it’s just not accurate — it’s actually better to use heat therapy for recovery. But some of the brain stuff, there is more research there, as well as some of the other benefits around mood and brown fat cell storage.
Noah: Yeah, I hear you. I kind of think it works. I still need to be convinced. It’s like — the way to think about it is it’s a workout for your nervous system. It improves a lot of stuff that way, but it’s just not good for recovery.
Sam: I would actually pitch the opposite. Lately I’ve been really into baths — that’s been my go-to. I got these bath bombs with a little CBD in them, I’ll light a candle, put on a podcast or read. Lately, men especially — because women have known about this, they just didn’t want to tell us — I literally just came from a pedicure. If men are not pampering themselves — look, if you’re putting in the work, you’re working out, you’re doing stuff at the job — take a little R&R man.
Noah: It’s not relaxing at all for me. I don’t want someone digging into my nails.
Sam: Can you see this? Red, white — I did the American flag. That’s awesome. It’s honestly fun. We’re living once on this planet. Have a good time.
Introducing Noah Kagan and AppSumo [00:05:00]
Sam: All right, let’s talk about — you came on last time. I personally thought the episode was only going to do okay. I’m telling you, I got tons of people DMing me. Ben says people thought it was pretty good — people thought it was great. But for this one, awesome. You have a list of like eight bullet points but there’s a ton of ideas here.
And also, people criticized me because I didn’t introduce you last time. So — this is Noah Kagan. Noah runs the company he founded and is now the CEO of AppSumo. It’s like Groupon for nerds. It’s quite large. I think last time you said 80-ish million in revenue. Mitchell just said you guys now have 165 employees. That’s amazing.
And you also have a sick blog called OK Dork, which I’ve read for like 10 years, and your YouTube channel now has almost 300,000 subscribers.
Noah: Almost 300,000, man. It’s unbelievable. youtube.com/noahkagan.
Sam: That’s sick. I remember you doing it years ago just on your phone. It wasn’t like you were really trying. And then like two years ago you started trying, right?
Noah: Yeah. When COVID hit two years ago I was just shirtless at home with my iPhone and I felt good about what was going on, felt like I could help, so I just started recording on my phone and uploading it. And for all the people that are listening to your show who want to start businesses — it’s like just do now, not how. Something Mitchell and I talk about. Just get going.
So I just uploaded that. And from there, now there’s a team of maybe six people. We’ll spend about half a million dollars just on the team this year. From just me doing shirtless iPhone videos in my house.
Sam: And the reason you’re able to spend — you’re able to lose money — is because it drives traffic and awareness to AppSumo, which is your main thing. But does AdSense or YouTube ads cover the cost at all?
Noah: It just started. What was fascinating — last year we spent around $400K. On AdSense we made $121,000. Year one of really having a team around it. Good, right? It’s surprising. This year, actually — here’s the thing, this is going to blow your mind. We put out 849 videos. Three of them basically generated all the money. Isn’t that kind of crazy?
Sam: That’s sad. Either A, you suck at making videos, or B — aren’t all channels like this though?
Noah: I think a lot of business is like a power law distribution — a few things do a lot of the significance. The three videos that made all the money: the first was I went and knocked on doors in Austin asking millionaires for their best investment advice. We just released it, but that came out towards the end of the year. And then asking crypto millionaires how to invest $5,000, and then asking NFT millionaires how to invest a thousand. More or less those three videos made the year. And that was after almost 150 videos.
Sam: That’s crazy. Do you think you’ll break even on AdSense this year?
Noah: Our goal is subscriber growth. Budget-wise it looks like we’ll lose around $200,000 this year. I’m not really optimizing around that.
Sam: I did a call with this lady who has a bunch of YouTube channels — she said her and a six-person team are doing a million dollars a month in profit from YouTube. Just YouTube.
Noah: YouTube is slept on, Sam. I mean, TikTok is another one. It’s a different type of audience, but almost every business out there — or if you’re broke and you’re in any country in the world and you have nothing to do — this is the easiest free business anyone can start.
YouTube Strategy and Casey Neistat’s Course [00:11:00]
Sam: I just signed up to monthly.com — they have this course with Casey Neistat. Did you see that? He has a course where every day he gives you a lesson on YouTube videos. I bought it for like $300 and I’m loving it.
Noah: What are some of the takeaways?
Sam: So it’s only three days in. But in the first lesson he just walked around his office. He goes, “I’m gonna show you how I find cool stories.” And he’s walking around and he goes, “Oh, that’s a cool idea” — he hears a truck backing up and goes, “I’m gonna make a video on that.” Or he’ll walk by a guy selling fake Louis Vuitton purses and goes, “Oh, here’s a cool idea — let’s create a video on how to buy a fake purse in New York City.” He’s just walking down the street coming up with ideas. Like these are small, silly ideas, but I’m gonna execute them really well. And in the next series he’s gonna show how he actually executes these small ideas.
Noah: Kind of cool, right?
Sam: I love that you’re still learning.
Noah: I don’t know anything about video. I’ve been making videos for my own YouTube just for fun, but I’m trying to learn. It’s a cool course. Only like $300.
Noah: I mean, it is kind of crazy when you think about the things we spend on and the potential value upside you can get. Like, the downside is you lost $300. The upside? How much could this make you? Also from an enjoyment level. And you can use what you’re learning just in the podcast too.
Sam: What have you noticed or observed in your own YouTube channel?
Noah: I think what I’ve learned is that things that don’t seem like big ideas — things that can seem kind of boring — can do really well. I bought the lot next to my house and I just filmed a video walking around on my iPhone like, “Here’s why I think it could be a good investment, here’s why it might be a bad investment.” I posted it on my personal channel — I didn’t have any subscribers — and it got like three, four, five thousand views. A lot of comments. I was just amazed that people cared about little things that are small, that are part of your daily life that you don’t really think about.
Noah: What I’m learning from Casey, and what I’m learning from my own stuff, is that small stuff you think about throughout the day — more likely than not, a lot of other people think about that and they’ll find it interesting enough to watch.
Sam: Yeah, I always think about that with restaurants where they sell cookbooks. People want to see what happens in the kitchen. You’ll be surprised what people want.
TikTok Experiment and the 30 Million View Hack [00:16:00]
Sam: I’m curious what you’ve noticed about your YouTube channel versus TikTok — the audience, the growth.
Noah: So I have a TikTok but I don’t actually post on it. I mean, I did once or twice but it has no views. We did this thing where on the podcast like three weeks ago we said we’re going to give $5,000 to maybe one, up to three people. It’s gonna be a combination of whether we like your videos and how many views they get. We told people to go to our YouTube, chop up the videos, and post them. So far the hashtag we asked people to use has gotten 30 million views in three weeks.
Sam: 30 million views? That sounds too easy. Go on.
Noah: These kids — it’s mostly like 19 to 20-year-olds. One kid in college at Michigan created a handle called like MFM Minis, and he started posting our videos. He would animate them. He’s gotten multiple videos over a million views. You know fat FIRE? I made a podcast where I talked about how much I love the fat FIRE subreddit, which I found through you. He made a video about that and it got so many views that fat FIRE made an announcement on their subreddit saying, “We’ve been overwhelmed with new people — we got 30,000 people in one day,” all from a TikTok video of Sam Parr talking about it.
Noah: That’s wild, man.
Sam: Do you think most people in business try to do this TikTok stuff?
Noah: Not most, but definitely some. Right now, of everything I’ve seen, it’s the fastest way to grow an audience. Without a doubt.
Sam: I’ve been hesitant because the quality of the audience in terms of engagement — it skews young.
Noah: The young is the future, to some extent. But YouTube I feel like has much higher quality people who are really into it, available during your newsletter, wanting to comment. TikTok is just kind of consumption.
Sam: I think YouTube is much higher quality. And podcasts — for a long time I would trash podcasting, like “this is not that cool.” And now I’ve changed, because I get recognized now like three or four times a week and it’s because people have listened to my voice for 45 minutes. They think they know you. People get kind of intimate with you.
Noah: Do you get recognized from YouTube?
Sam: Yeah, it’s happened. I love it, man.
Noah: Yeah, sometimes. I mean the whole part of the journey is like — this weekend I went to a squash tournament in Houston and this guy knows AppSumo, has watched some of the videos. I was there with a guy from our company and I was like, “Man, that’s why I do social media.” It provides a cool magnet to connect with really interesting people. Even if it’s not money, it’s a great thing.
Noah: I think it’s badass. So I’m going to continue to do it.
Chrome Extensions as a Business [00:22:00]
Sam: Can I just read off the list and ask questions? Actually, I want to ask you about chrome extensions because I’m like nerding out on them right now. Have you ever made one?
Noah: I’ve bought one.
Sam: So a mutual friend of ours — I can’t say who — was considering buying a company. It was a chrome extension. Two people doing $25 million a year in sales with their chrome extension. Pretty crazy. And then Grammarly — you know Grammarly?
Noah: Yeah, Grammarly is a $20 billion company. They do like $800 million in revenue.
Sam: I like these sleeper ones people don’t know about. Grammarly is the best, man. It was started by this guy named Max, I think from Ukraine, lives in Canada, hardcore engineer. I asked him at HustleCon — they bootstrapped it and then raised $100 million at a billion dollar valuation. I was with him backstage and I said, “Dude, that’s amazing, you’re almost a billionaire now.” He goes, “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. The business is way bigger than most people realize.” He smirked but was really low-key. Grammarly is a good business.
Noah: What’s your chrome extension?
Sam: Leo.io. It’s similar to Momentum — when you open a new tab it has a nice background.
Noah: Taking a step back on chrome extensions, I think what’s interesting about your tweet was — what are things that not everyone else is paying attention to that you can acquire for not a market rate? That’s specifically for marketing, but that’s how you can have a lot of success in business.
When we launched Sumo.com, I bought probably about five million installs of WordPress plugins — some of the most popular WordPress plugins around. The biggest one was Google Analyticator. We bought WP Fonts, we bought a construction page — so basically WordPress plugins I’d used.
Sam: Which ones?
Noah: Google Analyticator had a million installs. We bought WP Fonts, a construction page plugin — basically ones I’d used. We went to the WordPress directory, got all the rankings, and sorted them by ones not updated recently. Which ones had the most installs that no one was taking care of? I’d email them and say, “Hey, you haven’t taken care of this — I’ll pay you for it.” Because there’s not a market for it, you can get a cheaper price. And that drove a significant amount of traffic to Sumo.com.
Sam: Did you pay more than six figures for any of them?
Noah: For the Google Analyticator one with a million installs, I paid $100K. That was the most expensive one.
Sam: That’s crazy. So for anyone who doesn’t use WordPress — WordPress is used by like half of the top 10,000 websites. They have this crazy database of all types of plugins. And Sumo was an email capture plugin?
Noah: Right. We had Google Analyticator, All-in-One Favicon, just a bunch of random ones. We’d rebrand them and cross-promo to Sumo.com within WordPress. And the thing is, a lot of these websites where people buy and sell plugins — a lot of these guys weren’t monetizing. It was just hobbies. So you’re looking for problems other people haven’t identified, and they’re not priced at market rate.
I also bought a chrome extension — I bought it for $25,000 for 40,000 active installs on Chrome. But with that one we could not monetize it at all. We tried paid features, ads, everything. I pretty much lost almost all the money on that one.
Sam: What’s the CPM on ads for a chrome plugin?
Noah: It was abysmal. It wasn’t something we could grow dramatically like I thought we could. The WordPress stuff was really cheap back then.
The WordPress Underground — Syed Balkhi and WPBeginner [00:30:00]
Sam: There’s this guy — I think his name is Syed, last name starts with B — he owns WPBeginner. He’s like the WordPress underground mafia. So basically he started WPBeginner — a site about WordPress — and if you search “how to install blank on WordPress” he shows up number one. It gets like five to ten million uniques a month. And using his blogs, he would see which plugins get the most installs, see which are the best, buy the best ones, and then just promote them extra hard on WPBeginner. At this point I bet he makes $50 million a year from all his WordPress stuff.
Noah: I love these industries everyone’s sleeping on. That WordPress stuff is really interesting. It probably still is a decent category.
Sam: What’s fascinating though is I tried to do the same strategy in Shopify apps. When we were launching Sumo.com on Shopify I was like, “Man, I’ll just go buy all these apps.” But a lot of the people on Shopify were more savvy — they had recurring revenue, so they wanted 10x their revenue. The WordPress plugins weren’t really making money, so I was getting them for very cheap. The Shopify ones I couldn’t touch.
Our friend Andrew Wilkinson bought a couple of them, rolled them up, and eventually took it public on the Canadian stock exchange — it’s called We Commerce. They do like $30 million a year in revenue just off Shopify apps.
Noah: The Shopify ecosystem was interesting. If you could create something really easily but other people can copy you really easily, and you don’t control the payments — Shopify controls all the money, you have to wait for them to give you your nickels — we were like, let’s get the hell out of this world.
Mint.com, Fintech, and Thinking Bigger [00:37:00]
Sam: You were one of the first hires at Mint.com, right? Employee number four? And Mint eventually sold for like $200 million. At the time that was considered massive. What would you do differently if you were running the show now?
Noah: Aaron was running the show, to be clear. And he was really impressive. I want to talk about this because I think it resonates with your audience — Aaron worked alone in his room by himself for six months building a prototype and then came out and convinced the world to check out this product. I have a lot of admiration for people like him.
I think Mint could have been a much larger role. The VCs were definitely disappointed when Mint sold out. I thought Mint was going to sell for that price — that’s why I left early.
Sam: Why did you think it was going to sell for that price?
Noah: Aaron thought big, but it was like — “We’re gonna sell credit cards and we’re gonna sell people TurboTax.” I was like, okay, at best scenario this sells for half a billion. But look at how big the fintech space is today. Plaid almost got bought by Visa for $7 billion. Robin Hood is worth like $15 billion. What Mint did was acquire a lot of customers really cheap. If they hadn’t sold out to Intuit as early, there would have been a lot of different avenues they could have parlayed — this audience of young people interested in personal finance — into a lot of different products.
Sam: Was Aaron wealthy though? Like, how old was he?
Noah: He cashed out $30 to $50 million bucks. And he moved to some remote area — New Zealand, I think. Actually, he started a software company for ambulances. But Aaron’s a creative guy — he actually tried to start a sky subway system. In cities like Austin, instead of an underground subway, it would be an air-based subway.
Noah: He’s just crazy creative. But look, everyone’s got to figure out what they want their own life to be. There’s no bad or wrong in selling out stuff.
Grinding vs. Balance [00:44:00]
Sam: I was thinking about this — do you have to grind all the time in order to make something happen? Or can you have a little more balance? Because if you have to grind all the time, that’s just exhausting.
Noah: If you would have told me when I started AppSumo, “Hey Noah, you’ll be a millionaire but it’s going to take 10 years” — I probably wouldn’t have started. Most of the people I’ve seen — one of my buddies is now making eight figures as an investor, and it took him probably 10 to 15 years.
But I think the opposite, Sam. What I’m doing with AppSumo, with the YouTube stuff — it doesn’t feel like a grind. Like your podcast — does this feel like a grind?
Sam: Most of the time no. But it doesn’t feel great all the time. Some days I’m like, I don’t feel like being happy. Shaan — my co-host who’s out with COVID — is five minutes late every single time. Every once in a while that’ll put me in such a bad mood that I don’t want to record. On those days I’m like, I hate this. I gotta snap out of this mood and be in a good place.
Noah: I think about my buddy Adam Gilbert — the times you don’t want to show up is when it counts. The things you’re doing when no one else is watching — that matters. Going to the gym when you don’t want to. Last night at 7:30 I didn’t feel like doing a podcast, but it needed to get done. And that’ll help you separate whether you’ll get some of the things you want in life.
I think the equation is: time + sacrifice + a little unhappiness over some period of time = success.
Sam: The question I ask myself is, “What am I willing to pay in order to achieve blank?” Like, do I want to grind for a long time on a software company in order to achieve a certain amount of money? Right now, no. I don’t want to pay that price at this point in my life. Maybe in the future. Definitely when I was younger I would have.
Noah: With all this stuff, it’s better to just find the things you’re curious about and get going. If you’re starting to get into audio shows, just go for it. You’ll psych yourself out if you think too much about it.
MudWater and the One-Product Business [00:50:00]
Sam: One of the stories on the sheet was the MudWater guy.
Noah: Yeah, this is a crazy story. It’s basically Indian chai tea. You ever had it?
Sam: Dude, it’s delicious. I love it. And you have a really good video I watched — I bought it because of that.
Noah: And you weren’t even sponsored?
Sam: No, not affiliated or anything.
Noah: I always find it really fascinating — a lot of us get excited to have like 18 business ideas. But a lot of other people are making significant money with just one thing. This guy was at an agency, just a regular day job. I think the fascinating thing is: what’s a problem you have and what’s a big category? Coffee is one of the biggest categories in the world. He created his own version — I think literally buying products off Amazon and mixing them himself.
Sam: How’s it going?
Noah: I think last we heard it was $60 million in revenue. Revenue is always different than profit, but it’s fascinating he found one product line, did great branding, and went really hard.
Sam: $60 million in sales? That’s crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more.
Doomsday Prepper Business Idea [00:54:00]
Noah: When you’re thinking about business ideas, number one — what problems do you have yourself? That’s always the easiest way.
Sam: One problem I had recently — I’m trying to be a doomsday prepper. I want a doomsday prepper in a box. We had the snowpocalypse and I’m looking at generators. I’m afraid.
Noah: I just got a generator.
Sam: How much did you spend?
Noah: Like a thousand dollars.
Sam: I’m thinking about getting two. Dude, those generators are not that strong — they can only run like four things at a time. I’m just gonna have a generator and a tent. When doomsday comes, knock on my tent door.
Noah: I would love a doomsday in a box. I’m so on board. The problem is a lot of the doomsday stuff assumes you live in the country. I need the urban version. Like, how do I store water? Should I have a gun or not? What type of generator? What do you use the generator for?
Sam: Yeah. Coming back to what we’re talking about with MudWater and business ideas — just go to the things you need help with. If you had this doomsday idea, I’d hit up friends in Austin and say, “Hey, I’m starting to put together a thing — do you want something like this?” See if anyone will buy into it before you start. Then maybe launch a Shopify site or just start doing YouTube content around it.
Noah: Wire Cutter for the end of the world.
Sam: That’s it! Honestly, that’s a huge category especially now. All the stores are out of stuff. People are more aware it can happen.
We have this friend named Ryan Dice. He started Digital Marketer and owned a conference he sold for a lot of money. Pre-pandemic, like two years before, he owned a website about survival gear — basically articles and affiliates on things like which flashlight to buy for the end of the world. I’m almost positive he sold it for around the eight-figure range.
Noah: I remember seeing it. I’m like, “Oh, that’s shady.”
Sam: Me too. It wasn’t shady — I just didn’t understand it. Sometimes I’ll dismiss people or businesses like that, but coming back to business ideas and one-person businesses — if you don’t have money, you can always just document it. Review it. Be the Wire Cutter of these different categories.
AppSumo’s Top-Selling Products and What the Data Reveals [00:61:00]
Noah: What’s the best-selling product ever for AppSumo?
Sam: I’ll pull up the back end right now.
Noah: Ben, do you have a guess? Maybe something involved with photos? Photos or fonts?
Sam: There it is. So our top sell ever — last year on Black Friday, our highest day — the top product was a video editor. So a lot of video content. Second one was photos.
What are some other interesting trends… Oh wow. Do you ever invest in companies based on AppSumo stats?
Noah: That’s something we’ve gone back and forth on. Here’s another product category though — tools for agencies. If you think about what that really is, it’s stuff to help agencies with project management. Like an Asana for agencies — click up, something like that. We have a lot of that on AppSumo.
But what’s interesting, and this actually surprised me when I came back to work at AppSumo — what are things you can sell to help people make money?
Our friend Neville has a course and he says, “Well, I sell this course and people like it. But really what I’m doing is putting them to work. If you really want to make a lot of money, just do the work for them and charge them.”
Sam: What are some of the other top ones on AppSumo?
Noah: Stock photos is a sleeper — I’m shocked at how many people want stock audio, stock photos, stock video. Second is video editing. And then the area that blew up last year and is still going — all this GPT-3 auto-content stuff. Auto ads, auto writing. Copy.ai alternatives, things like that.
The cool part about AppSumo is there are a lot of new products you can check out to see what’s getting popular, and then make some type of alternative or make training around those types.
Sam: Would you ever invest in stuff based off the AppSumo data?
Noah: I’ve actually thought about it. Over the 11 years we’ve talked about — instead of taking a split of sales, what if we took equity? I would have loved that. We promoted Hopin — they’re eight billion dollars. We promoted Udemy, Mixpanel, Optimizely, Mailchimp, Freshdesk — if we took equity splits it would have been a different trajectory for our company.
I invest differently though. I invest in the companies we use in our company. When we were building Shopify apps five years ago, I was like, “I don’t know if our apps are going to work, but I’ll put $10,000 in Shopify stock.” That Shopify stock is now $60K. Atlassian, HubSpot — I bought a lot of HubSpot stock once we started transitioning our team to HubSpot.
Sam: How many products have you promoted on AppSumo?
Noah: Thousands. We’ve been 11 years. Right now on AppSumo we have 10,493 products.
Sam: A couple years ago, Zoom was one of your advertisers — before they went public. The ad crushed it. And you ended up buying stock right before the IPO.
Noah: Yeah. I think there’s interesting stuff where you can see — because you’re WPBeginner, because you’re AppSumo, because you’re The Hustle — you can see inside the stuff. And for everyone out there, it’s like: where do you have an advantage? Maybe you’re in Discord all day so you know which NFTs are going to pop. Finding some area where you can get an unfair competitive advantage.
Software Ideas and the Content Creation Problem [00:71:00]
Sam: What other ideas interest you?
Noah: Three or four areas. Software is still gigantic. Content creation is definitely the area I’ve spent a lot of time in. I would love software that helps figure out which topics are going to be popular. We spend I don’t know how many person-hours — probably 10 hours a week — just figuring out which video to make each week. There’s got to be a more optimized way to do that.
With AppSumo it’s the same kind of idea. We have around four people whose full-time job is to try software all across the internet — go to Product Hunt, go to Google, Twitter, beta lists — try the different software and see which ones are worthy to get blasted on AppSumo. That feels like it should actually be a software solution.
I think a lot of it is: what are the things we’re doing manually that we could automate? Topics is big. Finding products for AppSumo is big. I’m super excited about the crypto space — how do you scrape Twitter and Reddit to find the next thing before everyone else? A Google Trends-style discovery thing for crypto and NFTs.
Sam: How do you do that now?
Noah: I text my friend who spends 16 hours a day on NFTs. I’m like, “Which one are you buying?” A few days ago I bought a hippo that’s part of a casino — if you own one of the NFTs you get a cut of the casino rake.
Sam: Shaan created an email list the other day called the Milk Road. I don’t know if it’s daily or weekly, but Sarah’s been getting it and loves it. It’s all about crypto and he tries to talk about the latest and greatest from a trustworthy point of view.
Noah: The Milk Road is awesome. That’s a great idea.
Sam: What is he recommending?
Noah: I haven’t read it yet because I don’t really like crypto, but Sarah’s been reading it. He’ll say like, “Blank is tweeting about blank, and that’s interesting because…” The weird thing about crypto and NFTs is it’s on Twitter and in Discord groups you have to be on the inside to know what’s legit. He helps explain.
Sam: I think what’s interesting about a lot of these side hustle ideas — if you want to be in crypto but you have no money, one of the ways is just documenting this stuff. Start a newsletter just researching and putting out what you’re seeing. That’s how you become an expert. And eventually you can charge for it.
Coaches, Accountability, and Tracking Life [00:78:00]
Sam: How many coaches do you have in your life?
Noah: Right now, not as much. I have a CEO coach — a guy named Ken Coleman out of the Bay Area. He’s just been around Silicon Valley for a lot of different companies. A lot of his stuff is very like, “Leaders lead” — really obvious euphemisms. He’s great.
And then I have a CEO advisor named Raj who works at Indeed. He’s phenomenal, a little more operational. I go to him with specific situations. I have a Hebrew coach right now. I’m looking for a squash coach — been really getting into squash. That’s actually been harder to find.
Sam: You’ve always been into coaches — you’ve always done lessons. After I talked to you I started hiring coaches and they’re pretty sick. It’s absolutely upped my game. Most of mine are fitness-related, but if I want to learn something, I always hire a coach now. 100% the way to go.
Noah: I’m glad that’s cool to hear. So you have boxing, fitness —
Sam: Yeah, boxing — I’m trying to fight and preparing for a real match. And then a fitness coach. And for a while I did My Body Tutor but I have a different nutritionist now.
Noah: Where for people who don’t have money for a coach, it’s more like: how do you get someone to hold you accountable? Having an accountability buddy — if you’re trying to start a hustle, trying to be healthy — that’s an easy way to make sure you’re doing what you said you’d do.
Sam: What do you use to track all your stuff? You’ve got two or three coaches at any point, work, always got stuff going on.
Noah: Most of my stuff is just automatic — I don’t really have to track it. Every Friday at 10am is boxing. That’s just automatic. Flying is every other week. Hebrew is on Thursdays. Therapy is Wednesday, every other Wednesday at 11. Squash and steam room — that’s not really with a coach.
If you can have more things on autopilot so you don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to track it. The only thing I actively track — and I’ve tracked it for 15 years — is my personal finance.
Sam: What do you use?
Noah: A spreadsheet. If you go to okdork.com, “Where’s My Money” — it’s literally just what are my assets, what are my liabilities, and then what are some action items I want to take in the next 30 days.
Sam: When you’re tracking any of that, do you count privately held stock?
Noah: In my net worth sheet I only track the cost basis. I don’t track the valuation — I just track how much I invested. I invested in Circle, Buffer, LMNT, Huckberry — I only invest in companies I actually use. I put in $10,000 and that’s just what it is. I don’t track the appreciation at all.
Sam: Buffer’s an interesting company. When I was like 24, 25, Buffer was the most badass company because they revealed all of their revenue — at the time that was revolutionary. But their company has totally stalled. Their revenue’s been like $25 million every single year for the last three years.
Noah: I invested because I love Leo and Joel. They’re very innovative. But I think what people don’t give Zuckerberg and others credit for is how do you stay relevant and consistent? Tim Ferriss — how do you stay relevant for 15 years? It’s very easy to come out hot but to actually sustain that over time.
With Buffer, I think they hit market saturation of how valuable that is for people — paying for their tweets just isn’t as valuable as it used to be.
Sam: Canva is a $40 billion company and it’s kind of the same space.
Noah: Canva is the same thing as Buffer?!
Sam: Are you on drugs? What are you talking about? Canva is amazing.
Noah: Canva is the same thing — it’s “how do I create content that I can then share or post in other places.” But where they evolved past Buffer is they moved from “I’ll help you make your content for Twitter or Facebook” to “what if we can help you make templates you can use in social media and across a lot of other categories.” They picked a better market.
Sam: Canva is going to be one of the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world when they go public. Have you seen their numbers? They just crossed a billion in revenue. They raised money at a $40 billion valuation — grew revenue from $500 million to a billion in a year. The founders are a husband and wife and they bootstrapped it for a long time. The couple is worth like $15 or $20 billion right now.
Noah: Good for them. Canva is a crazy story. We’re gonna have to cover Canva.
Monthly Life Reviews [00:90:00]
Noah: One thing I do in tracking that people always find pretty interesting is monthly life reviews. I’ve done this for about seven years. It’s basically an email I send to a few close friends — Tynan, Nick Gray, my buddy Jimmy and Leo, my brother — where I review the past month.
I’ll pull up my photos from, say, December, look through them, and realize: damn, a lot of stuff happened versus what I think happened. I’ll start the email with “December was a blank month, six out of ten.” And then I’ll start with what I said I was gonna do in December and how I did against those things. A few of them: I wanted to be at peace with my drinking, I said I’d go to a Niners game — which I did — and lock in my 2022 bucket list — which I did. Then a little stream of consciousness reviewing how the month actually went. Themes: work, travel, family.
The important thing is having a group of people you can send it to who don’t even have to give you feedback — you don’t need their opinion — but it’s just “here’s my life, how’s your life?” If you want opinions you can ask.
Sam: Would you ever make that public?
Noah: It’s way too raw. I mean, we did this wild therapy out in Mexico on the beach — psychedelics — and some of this stuff is just really sensitive.
Sam: Let me ask about that quickly. Did psychedelic therapy make a difference?
Noah: I’ve done a lot of different therapy — I’ve done ayahuasca, and if you read that article I put out, the takeaway was it was definitely impactful. It’s just intense.
I think the big theme from this specific experience — it was LSD therapy — was how much should we have life be super predetermined, like “I want to make this much money, I want to go on this vacation,” versus how much should we just let the day unfold? And the main theme was: how do I let more joy into my life? My word of the year is “smile.” I want to just enjoy it. We’re all gonna die someday. Just enjoy the grind. Enjoy getting to chat with you today, which I was legitimately looking forward to.
Sam: I think there are a lot of ways to learn about ourselves — MDMA or LSD therapy, regular therapy, journaling. Whatever’s calling people at the right time.
Favorite Purchases Under $100 [00:98:00]
Sam: What are some things you’ve bought that you’re like, “Man, this is rad?”
Noah: Mitchell was telling me about best stuff to buy for under $100. The Cold Plunger — I didn’t buy it, it was like $5,000, so expensive. But if you want to be cold, it’s a pretty cool gadget. Actually, I hit them up and said, “Hey, I’m interested in your product — can I just pay cost and then I’ll promote it?” For people who want to get free stuff, just pay cost. You get it a lot cheaper and you can promote it if you like it.
Actually — and this is something I think people are sleeping on — have you used Apple AirTags?
Sam: I just got one. They’re pretty great.
Noah: Dude, they’re secretly amazing. I throw one in my luggage and my backpack. If it gets lost in travel or someone jacks my backpack, there’s a secret tag in there.
Sam: I’ve been using Tiles for years, but those are only okay. What’s the difference?
Noah: Just the interface and how loud the beep is.
Sam: That’s it?
Noah: Yeah. And you can actually — I haven’t messed with 3D printers too much, but Tynan — his gear list at tynan.com is definitely one of the top gear lists ever. He has a lot of USB stuff, what’s the smallest charger to use. But you can buy a 3D printed thing on Etsy where you put an Apple AirTag and secretly attach it to any of your bikes. For like $15 you can buy a secret thing that attaches to your water bottle holder and no one will ever know it’s there.
Sam: Oh, that’s sick. But does the AirTag only work within Bluetooth range?
Noah: It works off any Apple device nearby — that’s kind of the whole network. I think that’s where there’s a little controversy — someone put one on someone’s car and tracked them home. Obviously that’s messed up. But just as a fun tool to start playing with, it’s pretty great.
Sam: What else have you gotten into?
Noah: Dude, you know what I’ve gotten really into? Tea. I don’t know, man. I’ve been into Chinese tea. I bought a Snow Peak bottle — great for travel — and I bought what’s called a gaiwan. I can’t believe I’m talking about this publicly. It’s so nerdy. It’s like what creepy white dudes do. You have this little Chinese tea ceremony. It’s really inexpensive — you can go to AliExpress and buy one for like $10. Or from Keith Titanium you can buy a camping version that’s like $200. When I travel I’ll bring tea. I get it from this place in the Bay Area called Old Ways Tea — oldwaystea.com. I’ve definitely been drinking a lot more tea this year.
Sam: What brand chair do you have?
Noah: I think it’s an Autonomous.
Sam: Same. We have the exact same one. These fancy chairs I was looking at were like $1,500 to $2,000 — a Herman Miller Aeron. But Autonomous makes chairs and desk supplies basically as good as the fancy ones but for like $350.
Noah: One thought I’ve had is: what have you bought in your life that you’re like, “Man, this is luxurious”? I bought this Levi’s jacket because it’s getting cold in Austin — it’s got little fur, 89 bucks. I’m like, I look like a cowboy.
Sam: Amazon basic moccasins — I got those because of you. They’re sick. Those are $20. I walk around my house like who’s the king.
Noah: Oh yeah.
Sam: One thing we do at my house is Costco socks — we’ll buy like 50 pairs, all the same, and just never match socks again. At the end of half the year we just throw them all away and get new ones. Matching socks is stupid. I just don’t match socks anymore. That’s my splurge — I spend like $200 a year on fancy new socks.
And then I do the same thing with ExOfficio underwear. You know when you put underwear on and there’s always that pair that’s the last to be used because the band is stretched out or it’s stained? I just threw all those away and bought one style, one color, like 30 pairs. Spent about $500. ExOfficio underwear is like $20 to $25 a piece.
Noah: I only wear Saxx underwear.
Sam: Same kind of thing but with the little ball holder. I like Saxx — they’re a good brand. They don’t stretch out as fast but they still wear out a little. Definitely feel pretty luxurious in them.
Noah: Lululemon no-show socks — the others always get holes in them, but the Lululemon ones hold up.
Growing Sam’s Podcast — Brainstorm Session [00:109:00]
Sam: I want to spend like five minutes brainstorming how to grow the podcast. In December we did about two million downloads — of which about 600,000 was on YouTube and 1.4 million was on iTunes or Spotify. My goal this year is three million downloads a month consistently. That would put us in the top five business podcasts in the country.
Noah: What’s been the biggest thing that’s helped you grow it?
Sam: One of the shitty parts about podcasting is that I’ve done a lot of growth stuff and it’s been crazy hard to grow. The biggest thing has been we’ve just invested more time and energy into good content. Shaan and I prepare, we research a ton, our chemistry has gotten better. That’s one big category.
The second thing that’s starting to work really well is buying ads on other people’s podcasts. We learned this strategy from Jordan Harbinger. Jordan Harbinger has 15 million downloads a month, and he spent $900,000 in his first year buying ads on other people’s podcasts. That’s how he got big.
Noah: You should sponsor my podcast. Or — I mean, you’re coming on next week for free. How many downloads do you get?
Sam: About 10,000 an episode.
Noah: Are podcasts the hardest thing you’ve ever tried to grow?
Sam: That’s why I backed out of it and went to YouTube. It’s so hard. But it’s super sticky — every episode we launch is going to get at least 50,000 downloads now.
Noah: Here’s one simple thing I don’t know why you don’t do on your YouTube. You had a video recently — “How I Retired Over $20 Million by Age 31” — had 140,000 views. But in the description there’s nothing that says “check out my newsletter or my podcast.”
Sam: That’s stupid. That’s low-hanging fruit we should have solved.
Noah: And on your About page on YouTube, you don’t link to the podcast.
Sam: Are you sure?
Noah: It says Website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I’d actually just put the direct link for the podcast. And I would consider — this might be more of a stretch — but really intentionally grow YouTube and use that as a way to get people into your newsletter, which is the first step to getting them onto your podcast.
Sam: It’s been the other way around lately. My First Million has become like almost its own brand. Here’s a crazy prediction — I think within one to three years, me and Shaan and HubSpot are going to do some type of licensing deal. Like Call Her Daddy — they did a licensing deal for $60 million over three years. There’s a world where we’d do something like that with Spotify or one of the other big platforms.
Noah: So you were saying it’s not worth it to push the YouTube or TikTok growth?
Sam: I think it’s better to send people straight to the podcast. If they click subscribe, they’re notified whenever there’s a new episode. And we’re trying YouTube — it’s just hard. The effort’s there. They just don’t get that many views all the time.
Noah: How do you think it’s going? Recommendation — I would say it’s going okay at best. What you’re doing is uploading the podcast to YouTube. You’re not creating content that people watch on YouTube.
Here’s what I’d recommend over the next three months. Look at your CTR — click-through rate — on all these different videos. That’ll show you if you’re picking the right topics and if your thumbnails are working. If you can hit a 5% CTR, you’re doing very well. 3% is decent, but you want to get to 5%.
Second, look at your average view duration. The Sam Sulek one — it’s a two-hour video, got 26,000 views. I’m guessing your average view duration was like 20 minutes. Don’t worry about super-optimizing. Just look at a line graph — each month or so, can we try to get both those numbers moving upward?
Sam: Anything else?
Noah: Your thumbnails — you’re using your thumbnail guy, right? How much are you actually spending to make a great thumbnail? Every one of our thumbnails now, we go do custom photos. At 4:30 today I’m literally going out with a photographer for the third time to take a thumbnail for the same video.
Sam: That’s so much work.
Noah: It is so much work. I’m not going to say something cliche like anything great is worth working for, but — do you feel like an idiot on the side of the street doing this pose where you’re like “Freaking out about the 2022 stock market!”?
Noah: Honestly, I find it kind of like a science. It’s a game where in a sense — how do I win this game? And doing that gives me an advantage. Hell yeah, I want to do it.
Sam: Topics too — “How much do authors make” isn’t something people are going to immediately stop and drop everything to watch. But “Solana Billionaires” or crypto and NFT stuff, or how to get rich — those are always popular on YouTube. We just chop stuff up, so we could pre-plan topics we think would go well on YouTube.
Noah: Our goal is to get to the 3 million range by end of year. And once there, we’ll be in the Dave Ramsey, Tim Ferriss category within a year and a half.
Finding Your Niche and Closing Thoughts [00:118:00]
Sam: One thing I find fascinating is there are people who are huge on YouTube that nobody knows outside YouTube. But a lot of people know who Tim Ferriss is. What does that mean?
Noah: He’s been in the game forever. He entered when the world was smaller, in the niche of tech and startups and this whole “make money online” thing. There weren’t many people who were famous for it, and he was definitely one of the first.
Sam: The world gets bigger. But also getting known in your niche — I have a friend who’s popular in the spearfishing category.
Noah: How about right?
Sam: It’s called Spearcast or something. He’s got a few hundred thousand followers on TikTok. He’s got a full-time business now — Cast and Spear. Actually it’s Spearit Group or something. Let me look — Cast and Spear, 289,000 followers. I texted him yesterday. He’s got a healthy business selling spearfishing gear.
Noah: I think that instead of trying to get big like Tim Ferriss where people respond to you as some kind of expert — just do the thing you’re already excited about. Document that. People will be shocked that they can make a lot of money doing it.
My brother does insurance claims for hospitals — he reviews hospital bills to optimize how much the insurance company pays. He’s exploring how to help individuals reduce their medical bills. If you got a bill for $5,000 or $10,000, he’ll review it for free and take a cut if he’s able to reduce the amount.
Sam: That’s actually a great idea. There’s this company called Buyer.co — my friend started it. It was called “negotiating as a service.” They would negotiate anything on your behalf and take a percentage of the savings. The company sold to Ramp. The founder was like, “I sold out too early, but I didn’t have any money.”
I’d love a negotiating-as-a-service company with medical bills as one of the big categories. Another great one is Do Not Pay — the “robot lawyer.” And there are similar ones like Vendor.com where you give them your bills, they negotiate, and take a cut.
Noah: I love those services. Win-win. No one’s down.
Podcast Growth Wrap-Up and URL Tracking [00:124:00]
Sam: I want to say though, for your show — and for other people trying to grow a podcast — obviously you said go on other people’s shows. Optimize other platforms. The TikTok thing has definitely worked, but has it driven people to the podcast?
Noah: Unfortunately I have no idea. That’s another shitty part about podcasting — it’s hard to know what works. I can look at my charts and see how many downloads, but it won’t tell me how they heard about us. It’s not like Google Analytics where I can see the person who bought this came from a specific search.
Sam: Have you done URL Genius?
Noah: No. We’ve done Chartable.
Sam: URL Genius — it’s app.urlgenius.com. It’s deep linking. It’ll link deeply into the podcast on Spotify, and you can track how those clicks are actually looking. You could put that on TikTok or YouTube.
Noah: I didn’t know about that. I’ll look into that.
Sam: All right, we’re gonna wrap up. I love seeing you, dude.
Noah: Thanks for doing this. You look good, man.
Sam: Thanks for having me. How many people reached out from the last one?
Noah: Ben messaged me — he said it got 65,000 or 70,000 views.
Sam: Dude, you guys are — I told you. The first time I ever came on your show I had a girl I went on a date with message me like, “I can’t believe you’re on the show.”
Noah: He said 65,000 views or downloads. I think this one’s gonna do even better. Thank you for having me, man. This was excellent.
Sam: All right. We’ll talk soon.