Noah Kagan joins Sam and Shaan to discuss email marketing and his free email tool SendFox, built because he found MailChimp overpriced and overcomplicated. The conversation covers content creator strategy, how to grow an active audience, delegation and GM management at AppSumo, career and networking advice for people starting out, and personal reflections on travel and lifestyle optimization.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Noah Kagan (guest, AppSumo founder)
Intro and Guest Welcome [00:00:00]
Sam: What’s going on, Sam Parr. I’m in meetings all day and I’m heading out to California in four hours. I haven’t been on this podcast in a minute because I was in Austin — I drove from California to Austin, I hung out with Noah and Neville and a bunch of people, and now Noah is coming to Malibu, or I’m coming to SF for a month, and then I’m gonna go to Malibu for a month.
Shaan: Where are you staying in San Francisco?
Sam: Andrew Chen’s house.
Shaan: Oh right, you told me. I’ve decided I’m gonna get rid of my apartment in San Francisco and I’m gonna live in different cities for one or two months each.
Sam: We’re copying each other. I went bald, so you went bald. I’m moving places so you’re moving places. I need to get glasses, a dog…
Shaan: Yeah, you need a few things.
Sam: We know each other well, but can you tell the listeners who you are?
Noah: What is up, you sexy listeners. Noah Kagan. I’m a cyclist, I’m a chess player lately. I’m making a lot of content on YouTube about everything I’m learning at AppSumo — that’s youtube.com/okdork. I helped start AppSumo, which is the number one site online for software deals. Eight-figure company, been around ten years. I was number 30 at Facebook, number four at Mint.com. And the two other things I like working on business-wise: SenFox.com, which is a free email tool for content creators, and OkDork.com, which is my site about overcoming fear and starting and marketing startups.
Sam: Noah and I have known each other for six or seven years.
Shaan: Wow. You’re five or six years older than him. You’re very similar personalities — a little crazy, bunch of different ideas. Would you say that’s accurate?
Noah: Yeah. And I didn’t like Sam for a long time.
Shaan: Why?
How Sam and Noah Actually Became Friends [00:02:30]
Noah: Sometimes when you hang out with Sam — if you guys have had the chance — you know the thing where he asks, “how much are you making doing that one thing”? It’s like someone asking how big your… dude, I don’t know you and you’re asking something really personal. It’s almost transactional to a level that’s just a little too much versus what you’d expect from a friend.
I think it’s interesting to observe the people or companies that we’re jealous of, or the ones we react negatively to, and try to understand that. Our first experience — I think if I recall — you wanted me to come speak at The Hustle?
Sam: Yeah. What it was — I wanted you to speak at an event, and you asked me to write a blog post for you. I wrote the blog post and then you didn’t publish it, and I was like what the hell. There were just weird vibes I was getting from you. So it didn’t make me excited to want to do anything. And then you sent me like a NutriBullet or some item and I was like, this guy weirds me out.
Noah: Over the years though, I’ve started to appreciate your quirkiness. And it’s probably like me — I’m sure some people listening feel the same way about my style. I think the point for everyone is not to just accept everyone and love everything, but to observe our jealousy, observe our negativity, our criticism, and think about what we’re really saying about ourselves.
One thing I’ve appreciated about Sam: it’s interesting to observe the people in life who actually get what they want, because you don’t see all the things they’re not getting. I really respect how persevering you are, Sam. There are so many people I look at and think, oh, they’re gonna quit soon. With The Hustle, it wouldn’t be anything without effort. You kept going and won’t stop.
I’m not saying everyone needs to be that. It’s about finding the things you’d never want to give up on. Find your hustle, find your AppSumo, find your OkDork — find something you’ll never quit on, and go for it. That’s one thing I definitely appreciated watching your journey from afar.
Sam: You said you didn’t like me, then you mentioned jealousy — were you saying I was jealous of you, or you were jealous of me?
Noah: At the time I just found you uncertain in your motives. And it’s been like six years so I’m not exactly sure. I don’t spend most of my days thinking about you — I mean I do, but…
Shaan: Everyone’s favorite story is themselves. If you ever want to talk to someone, just say “hey, you know what I noticed about you?” and they’re immediately interested.
Noah: Feedback is a whole other thing we could talk about. I just had a weird vibe and I didn’t know what your intentions were. And then other friends of ours were like, oh yeah, he’s a good dude. And he is — I was just missing something.
Sam: What brought us to be friends is our mutual friend Neville Medhora. He was the best man at my wedding, and you have a brother, but if not for your brother, Neville would probably be in that category for you too. You could see how we’re both loyal to one person, and that brings out good qualities in each other.
Noah: Neville said I’m his number one.
Sam: I know you both think that. He says that in bed to both of us.
Email Marketing and Why Noah Built SendFox [00:07:00]
Sam: Let’s talk about interesting companies and businesses. You and I are the same — we’re both pretty big schemers. Not that we do stuff all the time, but we both like to figure out how things work. What are you looking at? You’re really interested in the email space with SendFox. AppSumo’s pretty successful — you don’t have to start new stuff if you didn’t want to. Why SendFox?
Noah: One of my favorite books around the words you use is the Dalai Lama’s Art of Happiness, and I love the word “chose” — I chose to do this. I don’t have to do anything. I want to do things. I don’t need to do stuff, I want stuff.
One of the things that drives me is curiosity. In terms of business, the best business to start is something that solves your own problem. I was using MailChimp, I’ve used ConvertKit, I’ve checked out AWeber — I found them way overpriced and overcomplicated. It took me 45 minutes to set up a MailChimp email. I just wanted something more affordable and simpler. That’s where we built SendFox.
And I think what’s interesting is trying to think about what’s going to happen in the next six months to six years, and how do I be a little bit ahead of everyone else. Let me ask you: do you think there’s gonna be more or fewer content creators in the future?
Sam: Absolutely more.
Noah: The one problem with all these channels — YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, any of them — is that they’re ultimately incentivized to get you to pay to talk to your audience, because they have to make money. Email is the only channel I’ve ever found where you can scale communicating with an audience that you fully control. If SendFox becomes the number one place for people to grow their audiences, that’s a really big and interesting opportunity.
Sam: How many emails do you send a year?
Noah: Maybe six or seven hundred million? I don’t even know. AppSumo probably has a similar amount — hundreds of millions of sends per year.
Sam: Well, I pay like ten or fifteen grand a month to send those. Is that right?
Noah: I think there are two things more interesting to me than the cost. First, I’ve been focusing on total audience — email is a component of your audience. You actually have The Hustle on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, podcast. The total active audience number is what I’m more fascinated with. The second thing about email — the metric that matters most is not list size. It is your active email list size. The amount of people within three months who have opened and clicked your email.
I’ve had 175,000 people subscribe to OkDork in my total lifetime. My active audience is only 55,000. Think about that.
Sam: Yeah, that’s what we do too. We turn people off every three months — we sunset them. We send them an email like, “hey, we’re gonna take you off this list.” Our open rates are really high right now, like 55%.
Noah: Your welcome email needs to be really good. Your thank-you page after they sign up needs to be really good.
Sam: The thank-you page and welcome email are two of the most neglected pieces of marketing.
Noah: I call them the forgotten parts. Your thank-you page, your welcome email, your unsubscribe page — these little Easter egg moments need to be good.
Sam: I get accused of stealing CD Baby’s welcome email, which I didn’t even know about. But when I saw it, I understood why people thought I stole it. My welcome email was really detailed — like really long, explaining what happens when you sign up, pretty funny. If you Google “The Hustle welcome email,” a lot of people have written about it. Just being creative and writing long-form about what happens after people sign up — it works pretty well.
Email Economics: How These Businesses Actually Make Money [00:13:00]
Sam: Let’s say ConvertKit is doing twenty million dollars a year in revenue. I like the guy who started it, and they reveal all their revenue numbers. If they’re doing twenty million — how much do they actually charge? What are their COGs to send all those emails?
Noah: Point-zero-zero-zero-one-five times how many emails you send. So MailChimp, ConvertKit, all these guys charge something like that per email.
Sam: Where’s the profit?
Noah: The profit is in the people who don’t email. It’s basically very expensive hosting. You’re paying a lot of money to host zeros and ones that don’t actually cost anything.
So SendFox is free, and then we have a one-time payment option, because most people don’t actually email. We’re trying to fix that.
More importantly, email companies are interesting businesses to start and also interesting to disrupt. Substack has done amazing coming at it from — hey, email is actually free, we’re gonna make money on the subscription part. Same with SendFox: it’s mostly free, and we’re focusing on YouTubers and podcasters. Who are the audiences that aren’t really emailing enough, or don’t know how to email for their specific audience type?
Sam: What about musicians?
Noah: I think musicians are a market. Most of their money comes from concerts and they’re horrible at notifying fans when they’re coming to town. But I think there’s easier ways of success — go to your own problems, or go to the problems of people around you that you have easier access to. I don’t know much about musicians. It’s not that you shouldn’t go outside your comfort zone, I just think too many people make it too hard on themselves.
Sam: Have you been looking into AMP for email?
Noah: There’s also talk about email dying and all that stuff, but people are using it left and right. AMP has more dynamic and faster-loading emails. But I think the most important thing about email is not the layouts. It’s: how do you build a relationship where people are expecting your email? Where if you stopped emailing, people are like, something is wrong with my day. Until you get to that point, you’re worrying about the wrong problems.
Sam: That’s the hard part — that’s just about creating good stuff. But I’m still obsessed with the AMP thing. What I’m working on is a few ways to hack it because I’m obsessed with storytelling in email. A GIF is a moveable image with no sound. So is most video on Instagram or Facebook — just video with no sound because a lot of times you don’t even click to listen. What I’m interested in is: how can I use AMP to tell a story in an email in a video format? All these other hacks like that are incredibly interesting to me.
What SendFox is Building: Referrals and Smart Campaigns [00:17:00]
Noah: The thing we’ve been building into SendFox are two major components that are lacking in email.
Number one: how do you build in referrals like The Hustle and Morning Brew have? We’ve basically built that in, so anyone can have their own referral engine within email. That was a huge pain in the ass to build, but we got it — and it works. You can check it out at sendfox.com/noah.
The second thing: everyone wants to know how to grow their audience and how to send consistent emails. If you’re not sending something weekly, you get forgotten. In this age of attention, we’re all fighting for it. So we built something called Smart Campaigns. The idea is we pull in all your social information, look at what’s most popular, and recommend: here are the three things you should email your audience this week.
That’s what I do every Wednesday. I just pull my two favorite things from the week and one from someone else, to try to spread joy and build relationships with people I don’t know yet.
Sam: How many people are working on SendFox?
Noah: Two developers, one designer, and David is the GM. Maybe six total.
Sam: Have you seen Hey, the new email service?
Noah: I think it’ll actually be big, but what that company did — 37signals, they have a team of about 50 people, and they make money through Basecamp. They used those profits to fund Hey. I don’t know how many engineers they had on it, but it’s pretty robust already.
At AppSumo, what I’m trying to do is take all our profits and launch more stuff. How are you figuring out how much profit to allocate to these side projects?
Sam: The way I think about it: first, can we make our money back within 18 months? Second, is it at least a seven-figure opportunity? If it’s not, we won’t do it. The reality is the majority of the money is best spent in whatever is making the most money — some of that tension between short-term versus long-term.
With SendFox, we made our money back immediately because there’s only one developer part-time and one GM. As it started becoming more profitable, we said, alright, let’s make sure it’s a seven-figure business. Now we’re asking how do we get this to a hundred, 150 million dollar business.
But our goal right now is growing active audience. We’re at a million active audience — meaning of all our subscribers, we reach a million active customers through them. If we can grow that to three million, that’s our goal this year.
Noah: How long have you had people working on it?
Sam: About two years.
Shaan Joins, and the Multiple Revenue Streams Debate [00:22:00]
Sam: There’s a debate internally — not a debate, but a discussion — that if we would have spent all the money and time we built on SendFox, KingSumo, HallDrop, MeetFam, and all the things we’ve done, and just put it all into AppSumo, the main thing, it would have been a hundred million dollar business today. And the likelihood is — yeah.
Noah: That’s why I’m asking, because I’m going through the same process. I’m like, man, I have this cash cow. And a lot of people listening have the same thing — they have these companies, but we’re degenerates and we can’t not make stuff.
Our greatest strengths are generally our greatest weaknesses. My greatest strength is igniting — I go start something, I’m really quick and fast. My greatest weakness is consistency. I’m a great igniter but not a great consistent source of fuel. So I have to find my fuel: Ayman is fuel at AppSumo, David over at SendFox is fuel. Then I can focus on the igniting part.
Take two examples that everyone knows: Netflix and Amazon. How many revenue streams does Netflix have?
Shaan: One.
Noah: One. Netflix is worth two hundred billion dollars from one $9.99/month subscription. Amazon is worth a trillion and they’ve got three or four significant revenue streams. There are many different ways to eat a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
My ambitions, enjoyment, and fulfillment come from: one, promoting great stuff, which we do at AppSumo. Two, sharing what I’m learning while doing that, which is my YouTube and podcast. And three, making things I want for myself, which is SendFox. Can I just do this until I die? I think that’s what we’re all striving for.
Sam: Shaan is joining us now. Shaan just got out of a — can you say where you were?
Shaan: Something more important than this. Depends when this is gonna air. I’ll share probably later.
Sam: Okay. So we’re talking to Noah about a bunch of different stuff. Noah, can I ask you something? I did a pod recently where I talked about delegating and hiring CEOs and general managers. I’ve learned how to do this through reading, through talking to David Hornik, through learning from you indirectly. What was your process for doing that, because you have three or four GMs now?
Delegation, GMs, and the Seagull Theory [00:28:00]
Noah: There are three GMs right now: HallDrop, AppSumo, and SendFox — David does SendFox and KingSumo. Taking a step back: how many CEOs do you think there are at Amazon? People who were CEOs of their own businesses, now running divisions?
Shaan: A lot.
Noah: Exactly. If you can figure out how to take people who want to start their own businesses and align their incentives and motivation within your business, that’s how you create a trillion-dollar company. Amazon has done it well. Alibaba. Rocket Internet has done it wonderfully. Koch Industries.
In terms of delegation, I think one of my superpowers is observation of greatness. Any time you notice anything impressive, reach out to that person. That’s it. And over your lifetime, figure out how to get around that person. That will give you a much easier path to greatness.
Garrett, the lead developer on SendFox — he built a WordPress plugin that I bought for a hundred dollars like six or seven years ago. I said, can I pay you 25-30 bucks an hour to fix it? He was so impressive. After a year I told my business friend Chad, “this guy is fire — we just need to hire him full-time and let him do whatever he wants.” That’s pretty much what we’ve done. He works on SendFox and his output is remarkable.
With GMs, ultimately it’s: find the people who blow you away, who want to run their own businesses. Then give them a challenging goal, give them some boundaries, and leave them alone. That’s the simplest and most complicated thing to do.
Sam: Can you elaborate? I’ve hired a president of my company and it’s pretty great — I get all the stuff I don’t want to do handled by someone who likes to do it. Where I struggle is I still get into his way. I’m like, “hey, this sucks, you need to fix it this way, this way, and this way.” Are you doing that with your people?
Noah: Let me correct you — they’re not your people. The people you work with.
Sam: Yeah.
Noah: That’s a big difference. If you want people to be leaders, they have to lead. They can’t ask for permission to do it. One of my favorite lines that I say at least once a day: someone asks me something and I say, “who’s in charge?” They say, “me.” I say, “yeah, exactly. It’s you. Don’t look at me — I don’t know.”
The way I’ve been looking at myself lately is: where’s my excellence, and where can I do the best job of coaching? Let me be specific. With OkDork, I’ve hired a team of four people to help build out my brand and spread the message of overcoming fear and starting businesses. These people went through the gauntlet to get the job. My job is to help them get what they want. There’s that Zig Ziglar quote — if I can help them get what they want, I can get what I want.
I learned this when I got rejected from Microsoft. I had an internship — you know how most interns get the job? I was one of the few that didn’t get it. But I did learn something in that job interview I’ve never forgotten. They said, “here’s the best way to lead: you give him the football, you tell him where the end zone is, you say here are the boundaries — how you want to score is up to you.”
What I’ve also learned over the past two years: I don’t want to be a seagull. You know seagull theory?
Shaan: No. What is it?
Noah: You come in, you’re just chirping at them, and fly away. You come in, crap on everything, and fly away.
Sam: Were you doing a lot of seagull theory?
Noah: For a few years, yeah.
Sam: Did you coin that?
Noah: I mean… I’m going with it.
I think it’s like how do you lean in, Sheryl Sandberg style, and step into these challenges — because am I coming and complaining? Am I being more of the problem when I should be bringing more solutions?
In terms of coaching: with Ayman running AppSumo, I feel more like an advisor now, in a very effective way. It’s a really fine line. Ayman wants to do something recently, and I’m like — do I just let him do everything and resent it? Or do I say, no Ayman, you must do it my way? My dad used to say “my way or the highway” when I was a kid and I was like, you’re giving an eight-year-old that choice?
I think it needs to be somewhere in the middle. The worst thing you can do to someone you hired is demotivate them. I’ve done that twice — to Ayman and to Chad — and they both said it to me, and I felt really bad about it. I want them waking up and loving what they’re working on.
With Ayman, we have goals and budgets, and then the question I ask is: how can I be most helpful? If he’s driving the results, I don’t give a damn how he plays the game, as long as the score looks good and it’s within the boundaries.
Shaan and Sam React to Noah’s Brand [00:37:00]
Shaan: I’ve been following your blog for a long time. One of the ways I got good at marketing is by stealing your stuff. If somebody out there wants to get good at marketing, especially content marketing — go read the stuff about how you built Mint and how you built your personal brand. Go look at the meta of what you were doing. Look at some of the spreadsheets you linked out.
There’s usually a fine line, and I always have this skepticism when somebody spends so much time telling me how to do something — well, how much of your time are you actually spending doing that? Are you one of those people who gets rich teaching other people to get rich?
The thing I liked about you is there are some people who have actually done it. They’ve actually grown stuff from scratch to scale, several times. They’ve fallen over and failed. But they just like to talk, they like to share, they like the feedback loop. And they’re legit. So go back to the archive, go read the OG stuff — it was really good.
Noah: Thanks, man. I think what I’ve accepted about myself — when I was filling out a form recently for relationship therapy starting next week, she asked my occupation. I always write “engineer” because that’s what I always dreamed of being. But I deleted it this time and wrote “marketer.”
Marketer — that’s when therapy starts. “So you wrote engineer. You’re not an engineer. Let’s not forget about that relationship.”
Anyway, I think I’ve just always been a promoter of greatness. I’m looking for it, sharing it, exploring it in myself.
Three-Part Marketing Framework: Goal, Customer, Core Messages [00:40:00]
Noah: The thing I’ve been doing recently that’s gotten me really fulfilled is my YouTube at OkDork. And there are three things in marketing that I’ll share.
Number one: a singular goal. Facebook did it. AppSumo has done it. But in my own world, I’m kind of having a bunch of goals: here’s our TikTok goal, here’s our Instagram goal, here’s our email list goal, here’s our organic traffic goal. I’m asking: what is our most important goal? Just pick one for some period of time, and guess what — that’ll raise all other ships.
Number two: who is my audience? Who do I really want to help and communicate with? On one hand, I want to connect with nine-figure and ten-figure CEOs — I don’t think there’s a lot of content on how to go from seven to eight figures or eight to nine. But that audience is really small and they don’t really need as much help. We’ve realized our audience is guys 25 to 40 who have tried to start a business, haven’t had success, are afraid of failing, and need a little bit of help. Our audience resonates with words like “rat race,” “freedom,” “self-doubt.”
Number three: what is your unique strategy of success? What are your core messages? My friend he sat me down and said, “you have so many messages, just pick three.” So: challenges to overcome fear, Million Dollar Weekend, and behind the scenes of an eight-figure company. Those are the three I’m gonna be known for.
The “challenges” piece: I always tell people to do the coffee challenge — ask for 10% off when you buy coffee. You’re going to be afraid, you’re going to learn about yourself, and you’re going to grow. The behind-the-scenes piece: not a lot of people have that experience, and I can do that. The million-dollar business piece: how do you actually start a million-dollar business in a weekend — I’ve done that many times and can share it.
And then the execution strategy: I’ve been very successful by just doing a lot of stuff until something works. But I will be even more successful by slowing down and being more thoughtful. Our unique strategy lately: post everything unlimitedly on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn — throw it all out there. Then based on what works, aligned to our core messages, that’s what we go deeper on. That’s what we write the blog post about, do the interview about, do the YouTube video about. Higher likelihood of home runs.
Shaan: How old are you?
Noah: I look and feel 32 but in terms of our society’s physicality I’m about 38. I’m 38 okay. What year were you born?
Sam: I’m 32 and I look and feel 38. So you do look 30 though, bro. I’m trying to go the other way.
Career Advice: What Would You Do If You Were 21 Again? [00:47:00]
Shaan: So if you were 21 again — no network, no name brand, starting from scratch — you don’t have to go the same pathway. What path would you go down?
Noah: Honestly? I’d copy my path. I didn’t know what the hell to do so I tried a bunch of stuff to figure it out. The only Delta I would change — let me tell you exactly what that was.
At 21, I’d gotten my degree from Berkeley and was like, oh, BS — Bachelor’s of Science, cool. Everyone follows that stream, right? When you graduate from college, you go get a job — Intel, wherever. I was like okay I guess that’s what everyone’s doing. But I’d always wanted to start my own company.
Two things I did really well when I had that day job at Intel: I used it as my investor. And then I started a lot of businesses. If you have no idea what to do, two things: one — go to SenFox and start a newsletter, send an email once a week for 52 weeks. Or go on YouTube, take the Ryan Holiday challenge, and post a video for 30 days. Start there.
The second thing I did was connect with people very aggressively. I asked anyone I knew for anyone they knew who was really smart. That’s how I met Tim Ferriss, Warren Hoffman, Dave McClure, James Hong, Max Levchin, Ramit Sethi. I basically put on events, hosted lunches, organized conferences. I didn’t know anyone, but I wanted to bring smart people together. If you don’t know any smart people, find one smart person, say “you should meet this other smart person,” and go hang out with both of them. You could do Zoom if you’re remote or don’t have connections.
One thing I’ve really observed lately: every person I’ve hired that’s been most impressive has done two things. They’ve offered something for free — something of value I wanted — and they did it without being asked. Those people are the most impressive. And now they’re like, “hey, I want to meet this person, I want to do this thing, I want to grow here.” Most of them are now working with me.
The only difference I would have chosen: find someone ten to twenty years ahead of you who is doing the things you’d like to do in ten to twenty years, and be obsessed about figuring out how to make them excited to want you in their life.
Sam: You want to hear something crazy, Shaan? I launched my company — a good company, it’s been good for me — because Noah had a blog post about organizing conferences. It was called something like “how I made 90k hosting a conference.”
Noah: “How to Make Money Organizing Conferences.” Because I didn’t know I was going to make money from it.
Sam: I saw that and I was like, I have a book club, I’ve been hosting these meetups, but I don’t make any money from them. I should make money off this. And I have personally made millions of dollars from conferences because of that blog post. And more importantly — or maybe equally importantly — I’ve met virtually all three people in this call because of that. I met Neville because of that. Neville, the best man at my wedding — because of that blog post.
Noah: I love that.
Sam: What you described — hosting events, which is similar to posting content — I did the same thing and it made me millions of dollars and I met all my best friends.
Noah: I think the only other thing: build your brand in some way, even if you’re not trying to be a personal brand. Practicing writing is a skill you can use in sales, development, design — almost literally forever. The connections are also incredibly valuable. The reason I’m probably a multimillionaire is because I’ve been able to meet, help, and connect people.
And the third thing: I was starting a lot of businesses. When you’re earlier in life, your cost of living is so low that you should take a lot of risk and try a lot of things. When I was at Intel I was doing college consulting, I did a thing called Ninja Card, I was putting on paid conferences, I was doing Facebook apps and games and making money — but I was also working weekends, working lunches, working nights. And after two and a half to three years, my side hustle finally became my main hustle.
Catching Waves: Facebook Games Era and Platform Thinking [00:55:00]
Sam: Did any of those Facebook game things feel a little scammy to you? Like get-rich-quick stuff?
Shaan: I wouldn’t call that era that. There are a whole bunch of friends who caught their first big wave when the Facebook platform opened up. Sulei — his big wave was a Facebook app called Superlatives. You know, which of your friends is most likely to end up in jail, goofy stuff like that. And the Lowell apps guys — the fastest-growing company in the world at the time. You’d launch a product and get to ten million users in a day and that just breaks your mental model of the world.
So two things: the people who went there were the types who sniffed out interesting spaces before they were proven out. If you’re that type of person, you’re gonna end up in a lot of those situations. Second, you get this crash course on hyper-growth and marketing in a way you can’t learn otherwise.
The guy who sold tbh to Facebook recently — I saw a tweet from him yesterday. He’s a first-time social app founder, and early on he’s like, “we’re gonna build a platform for intellectual conversations.” Gets 23 users, five percent retention. By his fifth year, same founder is like, “let’s just have people vote on who’s hot.” Result: ten million users, forty percent retention.
The only way to really get good is by putting yourself out there. When you start a YouTube channel or build a Facebook app, and you see that the apps that grow are the ones that tap into people’s core needs — they want to know about their friends, they want to take quizzes about themselves — it’s the person on the sidelines who’s like “all that stuff’s dumb” who’s missing the point. You get rewarded for giving people what they want, not what you want people to want.
Noah: I think you need to pick: are you trying to make money, or trying to learn? Because when you’re young sometimes you’re like — well, this won’t make me money. But there’s a lot more long-term dividends if you just focus on what you can learn.
Shaan: But wouldn’t you say that when you’re trying to make money, you end up learning the most? Because you’re trying to do something hard and you have to learn what actually works. If you just say “I want to learn,” a lot of times people take a very passive or intellectual approach. That’s different from saying “I want to make money.”
Noah: I think there’s passion and interest and curiosity, and then there’s opportunity. I’ve chased opportunities to make money which have been fleeting — they’ve been profitable but fleeting. And I think when you’re in your 20s you should do those. Just do the things that are hot and exciting if you want to make money. Then in your 30s you start reflecting more: mortality is real, what’s really important? And you come back to finding how do I work on problems and things that I want created in my own world.
For me that’s: I want to be on the ground level helping people overcome fears, start businesses, and market their businesses. I love seeing the underdog succeed.
Observing Greatness, Spotting Ali Abdaal [01:02:00]
Noah: I love seeing companies like MeatFox who got promoted on AppSumo and now have a business around it. Or PhoneWagon. And this guy Ali Abdaal — he’s amazing. He’s a doctor YouTuber. People are like, I don’t have enough time. This guy is a full-time professional doctor making high-quality 3D YouTube videos every week, engaging an audience. It’s very genuine — I really enjoy it.
Shaan: Can you spell his name?
Noah: A-L-I A-B-D-A-A-L. You have to think about the reverse of that: how do you become someone that people want to meet? How do you make things or do things that others want to connect with?
I found him because he blogged “hey, here’s some cool stuff I found this week” and our podcast was in it. I was like, okay, who’s giving us a shout? Then I checked out his YouTube channel and I was like, wow, this guy’s amazing.
In my newsletter every week we have an S section where we promote other people. One of the stupid obvious things no one does: go help a bunch of other people and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to connect and get a lot of what you want.
Sam: I heard a quote yesterday and I gotta jump in four minutes. “Your rewards in life will be in exact proportion to your contribution.”
Shaan: That’s interesting. I don’t know if it’s totally true — you can definitely make money with a fleeting Facebook app. But it’s a way to live by.
Happy Body Book and Quality of Life Wins [01:06:00]
Sam: Before we wrap — four weeks ago, Shaan told me about a book called Happy Body. Then I was with Neville and Noah last week and I was like, “yeah, Shaan told me about this book I’m gonna buy it.” And Neville was like, “I have it upstairs.” He gave it to me. And then Noah was like, wait what’s this book? I think he ordered it. I’ve been doing those exercises — I feel great. Have you guys been doing them?
Shaan: I just got the book yesterday so I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Sam: On this podcast I said I had scoliosis and like thirty or forty people reached out to me saying they also have scoliosis. So I started doing this book to help fix it. My back feels so much better.
Shaan: I never had back pain so I wasn’t doing it for that. I read the philosophy and was like, I vibe with this. This makes sense to me. I don’t feel like I’m being sold to. This seems like one of those fundamental truths about how your body works and how you should tune it. I started doing it, but I haven’t been doing all the exercises — I’ve been swimming a bunch instead.
Sam: Before this podcast, Noah took his shirt off and showed me his body. That’s what real friends do.
Shaan: Noah, what has been the best decision, purchase, or change that’s lifted your quality of life on a day-to-day basis, in recent memory?
Noah: I’d say three things.
One: buying my Tesla. It’s not about the Tesla specifically, but I think we’re conditioned that materialism is evil. It’s more about: are there ways we can use money to make our lives better? I’m asking, what else in my life could have that same effect?
Two: journaling. I’ve been using Bear app — a notes app. I journal five days a week and it’s been really helpful to understand myself better, learn my interests and motivations and fears.
Three: observing where I’m living and how much my space affects my energy. I’ve been renting Airbnbs, and I’m going to be moving because there’s something about your space and how much it can impact you professionally and personally.
Guys, I gotta go. I love you. Shaan, let’s stay on. Noah, let’s have you come back and actually talk about some business ideas, because this has been awesome.
Sam and Shaan Debrief: Nomadic Living and Car Decision [01:13:00]
Sam: You know, a lot of what Noah said was really relevant to me. The things he talked about — he spent 15 years building up this audience, putting out great content that helps people, distilling his wisdom. I also want to try to teach it to somebody else to help me learn it better. That’s the vibe I get from him. That’s what I find most enjoyable in my life. Those were pretty universal — just tactics to get stuff done and get stuff out there and be an action person.
Shaan: I wish we’d gone more into business ideas because I think he’s a real idea-starter. Maybe we have him come on and do just ideas — could even release this as a double episode. Ideas plus interview.
Sam: He’s moving to San Francisco for a month. Staying at Andrew Chen’s house. We could definitely do that.
One thing he mentioned: he talked about his space and buying a nice car. I just spent three weeks in Austin. I think I’m gonna give up my place in San Francisco. I’m gonna spend four to eight weeks in different cities and see what happens. I’m gonna buy a car — I don’t know what type — but I’m gonna buy a nice car and drive all over the country.
To the listeners: if you want to rent my apartment, I’ll give it to you for six months, it’s four grand a month. I live in Glen Park, it’s a lovely neighborhood. It’s furnished and I have a home gym here. Message me on Twitter if you want to rent it, otherwise I’m gonna give it up.
Shaan: You should charge a premium. “Sleeping in Sam Parr’s bed for $8K a month.”
Sam: I wasn’t gonna make money on it, just cover expenses.
Shaan: A couple years ago I made a similar decision. I was sitting in San Francisco and was like, why am I just here all the time? Life is so big. I told my girlfriend — now my wife, but at the time just dating — “let’s go live in South America for the next six weeks. I’ll just work from there.” And the way that San Francisco works is like an arbitrage: you can Airbnb your place and you could literally live for free somewhere else in the world.
So that’s what I did. Five or six weeks, we lived in Buenos Aires. And we lived there like a local — not like an expat. Not like a vacation. Okay, what’s the coffee shop we should go to? How do we get groceries? Way better experience. I planned to do it every year, but then one year we were getting married, then we had a kid. I think now that my child is almost a year old, we can go do it again.
Sam: My logic is I’m only going to places I can drive to, for two reasons. One: COVID. Two: my dog. He’s old, I wouldn’t want to leave him behind, and a lot of places have like a three-week quarantine for dogs.
Shaan: You could get to Canada, you could get to Mexico.
Sam: I would move to Mexico City in a heartbeat. Have you been there?
Shaan: I’ve never been. But everybody says the same thing — it’s amazing. I was there when Trump was just getting elected, talking about the wall. I was in a hipster neighborhood and asked my barber, “what do you think about this Trump wall thing?” He goes, “I don’t give a damn about what he says. Build the wall — it’ll keep you guys out. I don’t want to go to America.” And I was like, you just broke all these stupid stereotypes I had in my head. Thank you.
Sam: I would totally want to live there. But COVID — I’m nervous about going right now.
Shaan: Before COVID it was Zika. Which people didn’t really care about, but it’s the scariest thing if you’re about to have a kid. You could become a carrier for a year and pass it to your baby. That killed our plans one year.
Sam: I think I’m gonna do Canada. Somewhere remote.
Shaan: Why would you do remote Canada when it’s like Montana? Which is also cool. But I get it, it’s a change of pace.
Sam: What car should I buy? Should I do this in an F-150? A Subaru with off-road tires?
Shaan: You could do a Tesla SUV. Or you could do the F-150, but that’s kind of cramped and not ideal.
Sam: A Cybertruck or Tesla would be horrible for a 3,000-mile trip, right? You’d have to pull over every 300 miles.
Shaan: The superchargers are pretty fast. The new ones go like 600 miles or something crazy. Definitely do it in something that is not your usual car.
Sam: That’s what Noah said that inspired me. I’m not gonna penny-pinch — I’m gonna buy the nice stuff that I want.
Shaan: That resonated with me too. I’m always doing the penny-pinching thing. I need to step that up.
Ideas Preview and Closing [01:22:00]
Sam: Want to go over anything else? I have a bunch of ideas that I added to the list, but I feel like we should do a full episode about them.
Shaan: I have a bunch too. They range from interactive email to ideas around privacy that fascinate me, to a Coronavirus hygiene certification — someone’s got to create the organic-label equivalent for “is your restaurant COVID clean.”
Sam: I’m gonna read you some quick notes I had here. One: Scott Galloway being super wrong about something. Another: scams I found interesting — I have four examples. Another: WikiLeaks for creeps, because Chris D’Elia turned out to be a creep. And one: how the 37signals guys are marketing Hey — I think it’s pretty interesting how they’re going about that. And then a bunch of startup ideas around baseball cards.
Shaan: I am interested in all of those, particularly the Scott Galloway one and the Hey thing. I just downloaded it. Have you used it?
Sam: No.
Shaan: I’ll tell you: if you didn’t like Superhuman, you may not like this either. But I just started the onboarding — ten minutes in and I’m like thumbs down so far. Though I really like those guys, so let me try it. I haven’t given it a fair shake yet, but the onboarding so far: not sold.
Sam: I’m in the same boat. But I understand why many people will like it. Okay, we should jet.