Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en uh so last year we had our highest day black friday was our highest day almost two million dollars in that one day [Music] are we ready to roll can we roll bro you got to take that hat off though i can’t see you all right i was just trying to i wanted to wear a costume of swords like a little bit more spicy you’re good like that i couldn’t see your eyes do you um i uh do you have an ice bath yeah i have a cold have you not driven in our cold tub so is it called cold plunge yeah the cold plunger i have one too and what is your opinion of it so far i like it i like it i use it about twice a week i use it monday morning for coffee it’s basically my wake up thing and then i’ll use it wednesdays after a workout uh what’s interesting though there’s a book i think called endurance yeah i love that and they basically love that book there’s a book and i think what they said was that scientifically it doesn’t do anything yes and so that’s why i have like a problem with cold plunge which is the actual product is amazing like if you want to be cold that it’s a good one it stays like 39 degrees all the time but it doesn’t i’m almost certain that it doesn’t do anything and some people say it impacts your brain if it does anything but like there’s still even conflicting research on that i think the big thing that i like about it is that it makes me feel tough yeah it makes me feel good it makes me feel good about myself i’m like noah you’re not tough man you’re weak and i don’t know i don’t really have that self-talk in my head but i go into this thing and i was 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 about how long you sit and then i get out and i’m like um it varies maybe like a minute two minutes 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 and i was just like i was legitimately in pain like uh like like more pain than i’ve ever felt just through exercise how did you feel about yourself i felt tough i felt i felt tough yeah so like i understand why it works but i’m still looking for like peer-reviewed research that shows that it works and i’ve not found it and so that’s why i was asking how you thought about your cold plunge because i heard you had the same way i got to jump in here because i’m i’m a cold plunge spokesman they’re the one sponsor for my podcast so i gotta oh wow for their honor here so the thing is dude i’m telling you the cold punch products we’re both supporting it i have it too but here’s the thing here’s where you’re wrong though the the thing that you’re right about is there’s no research that shows that it is good for recovery and that’s what everyone says they use it for it’s recovery and it’s just like not accurate that it’s it’s actually better to use heat therapy for recovery than cold but like some of the brain stuff there is like more uh research there as well as like some of the other benefits around um like uh mood and um like have you heard of this brown fat cell storage stuff like that yeah but it yeah i hear you i think it kind of works i’m still i still need to be convinced i it’s like it’s like a workout the way to think about it is like it’s a workout for your nervous system like it improves a lot of stuff that way but it’s just not good for recovery i guess i would actually pitch the opposite sam and ben where lately i’ve been really into baths that’s just like been my go-to so like i have i throw i got these bath bombs got a little cbd in it i’ll light a candle and then i’ll either put on a podcast or i’ll read but that lately i mean men especially men because women have gotten they knew about this they just didn’t want to tell us uh but like i literally just came from a pedicure if men are not pampering themselves look if you’re working hard i’m saying if you’re like putting in the work you’re working out you’re doing stuff at the job like take a little time for that r r man go jump into the pack about it not relaxing at all for me like i don’t want someone digging into my nails gross can you see that red white oh my god i did the i did the american flag that’s awesome i don’t know it’s honestly it’s fun we’re living once on this planet have a good time all right let’s talk about um 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 that dm’d me ben says that people thought it was pretty good i thought people thought it was great but for this one awesome you have a list of one two like eight eight bullet points but there’s a ton of ideas here um oh and we and also people criticized me because i didn’t introduce you so this is noah kagan noah runs this company he founded it and is now the ceo of appsumo it’s like groupon for nerds it’s quite large i think last time you said 80ish million in revenue uh mitchell just said you guys now have 165 employees that’s amazing and you also do a uh content so you you have a sick blog called ok dork which i’ve read for like 10 years and you have your youtube which now has 250 000 subscribers i think right almost 300 000 man it’s it’s unbelievable youtube.com it’s unbelievable that’s sick uh and i remember you doing it years ago just like on your phone it was kind of lame it wasn’t lame it was just like you weren’t trying and then like you started trying two years ago i think right yeah that was it was an interesting journey when covet hit two years ago i was just shirtless at home with my iphone and i was like i just felt good about what was going on and i felt like i could help and so i just started recording on my phone and uploading it and so you know and all the people that are listening to your show i want to start businesses it’s like just do now not how you know something mitchell i talk about which is just get going so i just uploaded that and from there now there’s a team of i don’t know maybe six people will spend about half a million dollars on just the team this year and you know from just me doing shirtless uh in my house talking about how to get your business going your confidence but uh the and so the reason why you’re able to spend while you’re able to lose money is because you are you somehow it drives traffic and awareness to appsumo which is like your main thing but does the ad does the adsense or the youtube ad at all cover the cost actually it just started so what was fascinating and by the way a lot of people know me because i worked at facebook i worked at mint.com um so that’s a little bit of people heard about me so this year let me just pull up our stats right now so the first last year we spent i mean i think around 400k uh i can look how much we made so just getting it going really just getting it’s an investment it’s like a lot of these things fortunately we had appsumo as our our bankroller last year on adsense we made 121 thousand dollars to 840 year one in our year first hardcore year of having a team around good that’s really good it’s surprising this year is actually but here’s the thing this is going to blow your mind and i think this is a really kind of good good lesson for business we put out 800 and i think 449 videos three of them basically generated all this money which ones isn’t that kind of crazy one that’s sad either a we suck at making videos or b you know a lot of businesses you keep going keep going keep going keep going aren’t all the channels like this though i think it’s a lot of business like a power law distribution it’s like a few things do a lot of the significance so the three videos that made all of the money the first one was i went and knocked on doors in austin we just released millionaires we just released it but that came out towards the end of the year uh and drove a lot of our money uh asking crypto millionaires how to invest 5000 bucks and then asking nft millionaires how to invest a thousand more or less those three videos uh made us the year but and that was after a hundred and almost 50 videos that’s crazy do you um do you so do you think you’re all surpassed your 500 you think you’ll break even on adsense this year yeah our goal is not that our goal is around a subscriber growth but this year i think we’ll lose budget wise it looks like we’ll lose around 200 000 just depends how ads do but i’m basically not not really optimizing around that that’s crazy i uh i did a call with this lady who has a bunch of youtube channels and she was telling me it’s um her and a six-person team i can’t say her name but she said that they’re doing a million dollars a month in profit from youtube just youtube yeah it’s crazy just youtube are you guys i think the thing with youtube youtube is slept on same i mean tick tock is another one it’s a different type of audience but you guys have upped your your youtube game yourselves i feel like almost every business out there or if you are broke and you are in any country in the world and you have nothing to do this is the easiest freeze business anyone can so i just signed up to monthly.com has this course with casey neistat uh did you see that so casey neistat has a course where every day he gives you a lesson on youtube videos and i bought it for like 300 and i’m loving it it is really really cool what if what are some of the takeaways well so it’s only three days in and so but like in the first or second lesson he just walked around his office he goes i’m gonna show you how i find cool stories and he’s just walking around and he goes oh that’s a cool idea you guys hear that beeping that’s a truck backing up and that ruins like it makes it really hard for me to record throughout the day i’m just going to make a video on that or he’ll walk by a guy selling fake louis vuitton purses and he goes oh that’s a cool idea let’s create a video on how to buy a fake purse in new york city and so he’s just like walking down the street coming up with ideas and you’re like look i’m gonna create these are just small silly ideas but i’m gonna execute them really well so in the next series he’s gonna show us how he’s actually gonna execute these small ideas that is awesome kind of cool right i love that you’re still learning well no i mean i i think people assume that once you get to certain sizes like you i would assume you don’t but i love that you’re still curious and you’re exploring how to improve your craft yeah well 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 um so anyway it’s a cool cur it’s a cool course it was only like three hundred dollars yeah i mean it is kind of crazy when you think about the things we spend on and the potential value upside you can get out of it like the downside you lost 300 the upside i mean how much does this make you or you know also from an enjoyment level and i was like i can use the stuff that i’m learning just in the podcast i think how much like what have you noticed or observed in your own youtube channel i know from my first million you definitely you guys have been looking to grow it seems like a few things are i think what i’ve learned is that like things that like don’t seem like big ideas but that can be kind of boring uh can do really well so for example i bought the house the lot next to me and i just like film a video i’m like here’s just here’s a video of the house and i’m just walking around my iphone here’s why i think it’s it could be a good investment here’s why it might be a bad investment and i just posted that on my personal channel and i didn’t have any subscribers oh i sent you that video uh and it uh it got like three four five thousand views but like a lot of comments and i was just amazed that people cared it was my first video i was amazed that people care about little things that are small that are part of your daily life that you don’t really think about and so i think what i’m learning with casey when i’m learning with my stuff is that small stuff that 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 to watch you know what i mean yeah yeah i’ve always i always think about that with restaurants where they sell their cookbooks like people want to see what happens in the kitchen and you’ll be surprised what people want to yeah so anyway it’s a cool course uh you want to talk about mud water i do in a second one other thing i’m curious is what have you noticed because i think i don’t know this one cares about as well what have you noticed about the youtube channel versus your tik tok channel in terms of the audience and the growth and the oh so let me tell you about the tick tock thing so i have a tick tock but i don’t actually like post on it i mean i did once or twice but like it has no views so we did this thing i was texting you about this we did this thing where on the podcast like three weeks ago we said we’re gonna give five thousand dollars to maybe at least one up to three people and it’s gonna be a combination of if we like your videos and how many views they have and we told people to go to our youtube chop up the videos and post it so far the hashtag that we asked people to use has gotten 30 million views in three weeks yeah 30 million views sounds too easy go on so these kids it’s mostly like these like 19 to 20 year olds like one kid in college at michigan he um he’s one of the guys i just started talking to him and they create he created a handle called like mfm minis and he started posting our videos and he like would animate them and he has gotten multiple videos over a million views and you know fat fire yeah i made a podcast where i talked about how much i love fat fire the subreddit which i found through you and he uh made a video about that and it got so many views that fat fire made an announcement on their subreddit that said we’ve been overwhelmed with new applicants or new subreddit people and we got 30 000 people in one day all from the tick tock video where where me sam parr is talking about all right that’s wild man so do you think most people business used to try to do this tick tock stuff no i don’t i not most but definitely some right now of everything that i’ve seen it’s the fastest way to grow an audience for sure without a doubt yeah i guess i’ve always i’ve been hesitant because the quality of the audience in terms of engagement yeah well it’s not even just the young right the young is the future to some extent but it’s like youtube i feel like the quality of the people that are like really into it and they’re available during your newsletter they want to comment and i feel like dog is just kind of consumption i think that youtube is much higher quality i i think podcasts like for a long time even though we like my whole life was podcasting i was like i would [ ] on it i’m like this is not that cool and uh now i’ve changed because i’ll see i get recognized now like three or four times a week and it’s because they like listen to my voice for 45 minutes they like think that they know you and so they built they people get kind of intimate with you so it’s do you get recognized from youtube i got recognized uh yeah it was cool yeah sometimes i love it man i mean the whole part of the journey is that like uh i would this weekend i went to a squash tournament the houston squash was hilarious and uh it was because this guy watches he knows appsumo.com he’s watched some of the videos and and i was i was during the pedicure day was one of the guys from our company and i was like man that’s why i do social media to some extent like it really provides a cool magnet and window i don’t know if the window but a way to just like connect with really interesting people yeah i think it’s awesome like even if it’s that not money like it’s a great thing yeah i think it’s badass so i’m going to continue to do it can i um so basically noah has the sheet that he sent me and it’s got a list of a ton of things can i just read off and ask questions i actually want to ask you about chrome extensions because they’re like i’m like nerding out on chrome extensions right now have you ever even made one i’ve bought one so we have one right you have one on here so i tweeted out so this is a mutual friend of ours by the way but i can’t say who it is they were considering buying a company and it was a chrome extension and it was two people who were doing 25 million dollars a year in sales with their chrome extension um it’s pretty crazy and then grammarly you know grammarly yeah grammarly i think is like a 20 billion dollar company at this point graham really does like 800 million in revenue that is what i like these sleeper ones that people kind of just like don’t know dude grammarly is the best man it’s started by this guy named max who’s i think he’s from like the ukraine and he’s a lives in canada and he’s a he’s a hardcore engineer and i asked him at hustlecon in the backstage like that that they had they bootstrapped it and they raised their funding uh they raised a hundred million dollars at a billion dollar valuation and i was with them backstage and i was like dude that’s amazing so you’re like almost a billionaire now he goes yeah it’s pretty cool like the business is way bigger than than no and he like he like smirked but he was real low-key he’s like yeah it’s cool the business is way bigger than most people realize like it’s going to be huge uh and it was awesome so grammarly is a good business what what’s your chrome extension leo.io so it’s kind of similar to that momentum one which i think is pretty popular it’s the main one when you open up a tab it has like a nice background i think taking a step back on these chrome extensions i think what’s interesting about your tweet which was like this chrome sensor make 25 million or these is what are things that not everyone else is paying attention to that you can acquire for not a market rate like i think ultimately that’s how you can have a lot of success in business but that’s specifically for for marketing a lot of what i look for um so when we launched sumo.com i actually bought probably about five million installs i think give or take 500 installs of wordpress plugins so i bought like some of the most popular wordpress plugins around oh wait which ones uh i mean i have to pull up our list now but the biggest one was google analytics so it was like a million person yeah so is google analyticator uh we bought wp fonts we bought a construction page so basically would i use wp fonts i used a bunch of those yeah so we scraped the the thing that it’s not just copying this because now people are more aware of it but what you’re looking for is like one can you get structured data so we went to the wordpress directory and you could get all their rankings so i got all the rankings and then i sorted it by ones that were not updated recently so i said which ones had the most installs that no one’s taken care of and i would just email them and say hey you haven’t taken care of it i’ll pay you for it and because there’s not a market for it you can get a cheaper price and then i just sent a blast email to a lot of these people and picked up millions of installs and that drove a significant amount of zuma.com did you even pay more than six figures for any of them for the google analytics one they had a million souls i paid 100k wow that’s crazy isn’t it that was the most expensive one i i could pull up my price could that could that google so for the people are sending wordpress if you don’t use word i mean wordpress is used by like three-fourths of the internet or half half of like the top 10 000 websites and they have this like crazy database of all types of apps that you could plug user or plug-ins it’s amazing and sumo was a email capture plug-in yeah i found our list we had a lot of i bought all-in-one favicon just a bunch of random ones um and then we would rebrand them and then cross promo to sumo.com within wordpress um and i was thinking i would do the same and the thing was is there there’s not like um these websites where people are buying and selling them and a lot of these guys weren’t monetizing it was just hobbies and so i think in marketing and business you got to look for something that’s a problem that other people haven’t identified and that’s also why i bought the chrome extension i bought it for i think 20 i bought it for 25 000 for 40 000 installs uh active installs on chrome but with that one we could not monetize it at all we tried like paid features we tried ads to it we tried to grow it uh and we were not as successful so i pretty much lost almost all the money on that one how much what’s the cpm on ads for chrome plugin do you know i don’t remember what it was but it was abysmal and it wasn’t something that we were able to grow dramatically like i thought we could like the wordpress stuff was really cheap like we were getting that stuff super cheap back that’s crazy there’s this guy like i think there’s this guy who i bet you know who you definitely know i think his name’s what’s his name syed uh his last name starts with the b and he owns this thing called awesome what’s it called it’s called awesome corp or something he owns wp beginner he’s like the wordpress underground mafia he owns a lot of wordpress blogs let me explain the story the story that i know it as so basically he’s only he’s young he’s i think he’s from pakistan and he’s only like 28 or something or 29 and he started this thing called wp beginner which is a wordpress a site on wordpress so if you like how to install blank on wordpress he’ll show up number one it gets like five or ten million uniques a month a ton a ton of uniques a month and using his blogs he would see which plugins would get the most install so he would say like here are all the best like uh forms for wordpress or here’s all the best like font plugins for wordpress and he would just see which are the best he would buy the best ones and then just promote him extra hard on wp beginner and at this point i bet you he makes 50 million dollars a year in all of his wordpress stuff i wouldn’t be surprised i mean i love these industries that like everyone’s sleeping on like i think the that wordpress stuff is really interesting it probably is still a decent category what’s fascinating though is the other side of the sam so i actually try to do the same strategy in shopify apps so i went over to shopify and we were launching sumo.com on shopify and i was like man i’ll just go buy all these people over there uh what was interesting was that a lot of the people on shopify were a little bit more savvy and they had recurring revenue so they were like we want 10x the price where like 10x price of their revenue where the wordpress plugins they weren’t really making money so i was like hey i’ll pay one cent for every active install you have so i was getting them for very very cheap but the shopify ones like i couldn’t i literally couldn’t buy almost our friend andrew wilkinson bought a couple of them and he rolled them up and eventually took it public and it currently it’s in it’s public on the canadian stock exchange right now probably for 600 million dollar market cap it’s called we commerce and they do like i think 30 million dollars a year in revenue just off shopify apps the shopify ecosystem was interesting i mean it’s interesting if you can create something really easily and other people can copy you really easily and then you don’t control the payments it was a whole wild experience in there because shopify controls all the money you don’t you have to wait for your your grandpa to give you your nickels uh and they control the whole the whole thing so we were like let’s get the hell out of this world but yeah we commerce looks like uh 535 canadian which is what like 100 million americans no not that bad yeah like what’s the conversion of monopoly money to usd no i think it’s i think it’s almost one-to-one um what uh so are you bullish you’re into chrome [ ] chrome plugins i’ve pulled no i’m not as excited about that i think what’s what’s interesting is like what are the areas that are either super early on uh that like savvy people haven’t gotten into so like for example one of the older stories for me was facebook news feed ads so look for these ad channels or places that not a lot of people are like kind of all paying attention to when newsfeed came out no one was doing it and we went bonkers on it and that was a huge driver at appsumo for a lot of our growth because it was just so much cheaper because not everyone if you’re paying if you’re playing in the market you’re going to pay market rate and that’s not how you’re going to what did you use to get clicks for on facebook oh man let me pull it up pennies or um yeah i mean i wouldn’t say it’s pennies but it’s definitely like dollar email subscribers and then like low 10 figures for paying customers and now i think appsumo would have to pull up our dashboard but i mean i think we’re paying like 60 dollars for a paying customer now it’s so expensive when we start so we got to like 200 000 subscribers just through blogging and then we started doing paid marketing and i think we paid a dollar fifty uh when we sold it might have been like four dollars and if i had a guess now i wouldn’t be surprised if it’s six dollars to eight dollars yeah i still think there’s opportunity i mean the opportunities are always there it’s just like you have to be creative you have to look so like for me i was thinking about this recently like if i was trying to grow a newsletter um i probably would go try to sponsor like super micro people on tick tock and youtube like these guys that are guys and girls that are like sub 10 000 subs like if your your channel has like 966 subscribers like you’d be a perfect person because you have like an engaged audience you’re super smaller you don’t know how much money you’re supposed to be making and the fact that i’m giving you attention um it’s kind of like what i did at mint.com we’ve done this with appsumo mitchell on our team is doing it with appsumo currently i think that’s still a really affordable way let me ask you a creative way to get a lot of let me ask you about mit so min you were like the one of the first hires there right yes number four and min eventually at the time it sold for like 120 million dollars or 200 million dollars something like that right yeah one second and at the time that was considered massive it’s still a lot of money but like particularly then it was like it might as well have been a billion i loved mint it sucks now though like i don’t like man totally why what would you do differently if you were running the show now oh wow i mean aaron was running the show to be clear and he was really impressive i got to give him props when he started it and i want to talk about this because i think your audience i don’t know i’ve been thinking about this a lot 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 come check out this product and i just have a lot of admiration and respect for people like him like we have an intern george he’s living in my i met him he works didn’t he yeah he’s working from miami or sorry from hawaii to live in he was living in another room his his desk was an amazon box right now his desk is my washer and dryer that’s awesome right and he’s like i mean the point is i think with aaron patzer as well as you know these people as well as myself i was living on floors look at my aunt’s basement there’s something to be said for like the sacrifice and the the dream and i have a lot of respect for aaron and george and you know even back in the day with where i was at uh getting all this stuff started uh with mint i think i mean look at how big some of these these finance look at plaid right so we used another company before plaid was ever a thing and platt is now 10 billion i think some of the stupidest companies that are big that i i don’t get is like brex or ramp they’re like credit card branded companies they’re like 10 billion dollars why don’t you understand that it’s pretty simple they just convince you to sign up for their credit card and they split the one percent fee with mastercard on all your spending i know but the fact that that’s a 10 billion dollar industry i mean it just kind of it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of value add but it’s almost similar to the mint thing which is they took a product that existed which was this bank information and they they printed it up um so i think mint could have been a much larger role the vcs were definitely disappointed when mint sold out um i thought mint was gonna sell for that price that’s why i left early why why did you think it was gonna sell for that price i thought the vision for it’s always interesting to think about people’s visions like mark’s vision at facebook was always this big and it’s interesting to see different people and like how big they’re thinking and aaron thought big but it was like hey we’re gonna sell credit cards and we’re gonna sell people turbo tax and i was like okay this at best scenario is gonna sell for half a just in terms of how big that company could actually be and i just did the math to think about well i own one percent so max i’ll get five million dollars pre-tax which post tax means i’ll get two million and i was like i think you know in in four years do i do i think i can generate two million dollars for myself and so i was willing to take that bet did uh that’s that’s kind of interesting because i don’t i don’t think that i think that big i mean i would say like most people would think one 500 million is a pretty big exit what would what would he have done differently to think bigger i mean what would a bigger example be and so let me let me be clear i don’t care like i don’t care what people’s visions are per se and everyone should have whatever dream they want like if your dream is to make 5 000 a month or 500 a month or i’m not hating on anybody’s dream um it was just i think there’s look at how many how big fintech space is today right like plat alone just almost got bought by visa for seven billion uh you have robin hood which is whatever 15 billion so what mint did which was really interesting was it acquired a lot of customers really cheap i think if they didn’t sell out to intuit as early there would have been a lot of different avenues that they could have parlayed uh this audience of young people who are interested in personal finance into a lot of different avenues um at the same time though dude if someone came to you and you’re you know you did take that you did take it which is a good thing too like was he wealthy you can make no how old was he i mean he was definitely educated but he had a chance to cash out i think he cashed out 30 to 50 million bucks and i also i think he like moved to some like remote area new zealand and he’s just living there now yeah well he started like a ambulance company like a software for ambulances or something like that but like aaron he’s a creative guy he actually tried to start a uh a sky subway system that’s crazy so like in cities like in austin instead of like having an underground subway it would be an air-based subway oh yeah he’s just crazy creative like but look i think everyone’s got to figure out what it is they want their own life to be like there’s no bad or we’re selling out stuff i guess lately i’ve been just thinking about like with this one period of time we have here on earth like how interesting do we each want to make it yes but i will to play devil’s advocate it’s also how hard do you want to grind so like do you want to like because i think that in order to make in order to make cool [ ] i can’t decide how i feel at the moment actually for the longest time i was like dude in order to make something huge and something amazing you gotta just lock yourself in a room for like three years like you just have to grind now my thinking is i think you actually only need to do that early on and then you can somewhat let up so where’s your opinion on that do you have to grind like all the time in order to make something happen or do you think that you can you could have a little bit more balance because if you have to grind all the time that’s just exhausting i only have that so many times in my life i don’t know i guess i’m just trying to think of different examples like for me if you would have told me when i started out sumo like hey no you’ll be a millionaire but it’s going to take 10 years i probably wouldn’t have started sure and most of the people that i’ve seen like one of my buddies is now making eight figures as an investor um it took him probably about 10 to 15 years to get to that place and so the reality i was thinking about today like there’s one of our guys who i we got pedicures today he’s on the sales team and i was like look you can be as big of a life in a career as you want it to be it’s just like what path do you want to take that on and are you willing to to put in the work but i honestly i think i kind of think the opposite sam i don’t i think of like what i’m doing with appsumo on youtube it doesn’t feel like a grind like i’m actually like your podcast what you’re doing now does this feel like a grind most of the time no but it doesn’t feel great all the time like some days i’m like oh i don’t feel like being happy like i’m in a pit like here’s an example shawn my co-host who’s out with kovid he’s late every single time he’s five minutes late every single time every once in a while it’ll put me in such a bad mood that i don’t want to record and on those days i’m like i [ ] hate this i don’t want to do this i gotta like snap out of this mood and be in a good so anyway it’s not always fun i i mean i think about my buddy adam gilbert it’s like the times that you don’t want to show up is when it counts like i think about that a lot of times when i’m like it’s the things you’re doing when no one else is watching that matters and that’s like going to the gym when no one wants to do it or like last night at 7 30 i didn’t feel like doing a podcast um but i’m you know it was like okay it needed to get done and i think that you know that’ll help you separate whether you want to get some of the things in life you want or not like are you willing to sacrifice and for how long and i think that i don’t know i was thinking about this equation like i wonder if there’s a time time sacrifice equal success equation plus a little bit of unhappiness and if you could do that for some period of time you’ll get success i think um it’s it’s the way that i the question i ask myself is what am i willing to pay in order to achieve blank so like to me that that’s like what am i what i’m what’s what price am i going to pay in order to get to to this particular goal and i ask myself am i willing to pay that price and sometimes i am sometimes i’m not so like at the current at my current stage in life it’s do i want to grind for a long time on a software company in order to achieve x amount of money and i’m like no i don’t want to pay that price at the moment maybe like in the future i would and for sure when i was younger i would but not at the current point in my life i think with all this stuff it’s better to be not to be naive and just get going well just find the things that you’re curious about like if it’s you know you your your audio editor benji and be like look i like making these audio shows i’m just gonna go for it or lately you know like i’ve been really enjoying appsumo work um or doing the youtube stuff and it’s better to just not almost not think about it because i think you’ll psych yourself out like one of the stories we were talking about on the sheet was like this mudwater guy yeah what and this guy just had like a dude this is a crazy yeah i mean it’s just it’s basically indian chai tea you ever heard of indian chai dude it’s delicious i love it yeah you have a really good video i watched the video of you testing it out and i bought it because of that oh oh yeah cool and um i wasn’t sponsored it wasn’t affiliated or anything it was just this guy with one product which i always find really fascinating i think a lot of us get so excited to have like 18 business ideas but apple uh a lot of other people uh are making a significant money just with one thing and so he was having it i think he was at an agency just a regular day job and i think everyone should get a day job or get some basic income uh and then he i think what’s fascinating was what’s a problem you have and what’s a big ass category and like coffee is one of the biggest categories in the world and so i love that he kind of said all right what’s the angle against them and he created his own version literally i think buying products off amazon and just mixing himself together how’s it going he’s not like some coffee what’s that i think he’s i mean last we heard it was a 60 million revenue which revenue is always different than profit as i’m sure you you know uh but it’s just fascinating that he found one product line and did great branding and just really went hard on 60 million is so much money it makes 60 it does 60 million in sales that’s crazy i wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more i think what you know when you’re thinking about business ideas number one what’s problems that we have ourselves that’s always just like the easiest way that i try to solve it for me like one problem i had recently it was like i’m trying to be a doomsday prepper same and i want like a doomsday i want a doomsday prepper in a box like i just do bro we had a total episode on that clearly you read tucker max’s article we had a talk i did see his i had to see his article this is this is a little bit before because we had our snowpocalypse same and i’m looking at generators already because i know it’s i’m afraid it’s like yeah i just got mine uh did how much did you spend like a thousand dollar generator it was a thousand i’m thinking about getting two dude those generators are not that strong they only charge like four things like they can only be used on like four things at a time i’m just gonna basically have a generator to a tent and then when the doomsday comes just like come knock on my tent door dude i would love a doomsday in a box i’m so on board the problem is is that a lot of the doomsday stuff they assume that you live in like the country and i’m like no i need like the urban version of this so like tell me like how do i store water how do i uh like like should i have a gun or should i not have a gun what type of generator what do you use the generator for all that type of stuff yeah i mean i think coming back to what we’re talking about it’s like with mud water and you know business ideas it’s just like one just go to the things that you need help with right and then just start thinking all right well how you know how do i do that today right so you if for this doomsday idea i’d go hit up you i’d hit up neville i’d hit other friends in austin and say hey i’m starting to put together a thing do you want something like this and see if i can get anyone to buy into it before i start and then from there if that works then maybe launch a shopify site uh or just start doing youtube content around that yeah you just wire cutter for the end of the world honestly that it’s a huge category especially like nowadays like all the stores are out i think people are a little bit more aware that that can happen we have this friend named ryan dice and ryan dice started digital marketer which is like a pretty sizable business that does all types of stuff and he owned a conference that he sold for a lot of money but pre-pandemic like two years before the pandemic he owned a website called like survival something oh yeah it was i forget what it was called and had he who would have known but had he held on to it towards like covet times it would have been sold for so much more because now it’s so much more popular but he had this website and it it talked all about uh like article it was basically articles and affiliates on like which flashlight to buy like for the end of the world and i’m almost positive that he sold it for around the eight figure range that’s remember that site what was it called i guess i don’t remember the exact thing survival or something so i remember seeing it i’m like oh that’s shady me too i thought it was just it wasn’t how i won it yeah it wasn’t shady it was just i didn’t understand it i think sometimes i’ll dismiss people or dismiss businesses about that but i think coming back to like business ideas and like one-person businesses like i was thinking about the crypto space as well and or just all this stuff if like you don’t have money and you can’t buy it you can always just document it just go review it like you said it’s like your idea be the wire cutter of these different categories be the tick talker or youtube or whatever that is what’s the best selling product ever for appsumo oh on the digital side dude i’ll also tell you another business idea i would love for someone to start i’m going to pull up our forever list hold on i’m literally just i’m pulling up our back end the top product of all time and this is a shocker probably five yes or stickers okay ben do you have a thought i have no guess no nothing maybe fine let me see something involved with photos photos or fonts maybe there it is so our top sell ever uh so last year we had our highest day black friday was our highest day day on black friday which we paid out half of that uh at least half of that to creators which is [ ] wild the top product oh this is interesting top product was a video editor so a lot of video content so if you want to get a video editing the second one was photos what i’m just looking at what are some other interesting trends like oh wow have you guys do you ever invest in companies just because you’re able to look at the appsumo stats so that’s something we’ve gone back and forth here’s another well taking a step back i know a lot of your people want you know to make their first million and beyond here’s another product category tools for agencies but if you think about what that really is so i can’t say the product because it’s his private numbers but basically stuff to help agencies manage their project management um but the real thing well one of the things about what’s a tangential bit what’s another example that you so like um so like like basically asana for agencies yeah like click up like something like a click up like a click alternative we have a lot of that on up soon but anyways the point that’s interesting about that is and this is this actually surprised me when i came back to work at appsumo was what are things that you can sell to help people make money well our friend neville uh has says a slightly different he says well because neville has a course and he’s like well i sell this course and people like it but like really what i’m learning is like when someone gives me money for a course i’m just putting them to work and if you really wanted to make a lot of money i would just do the work for them and charge them and that’s how we explained it which is similar but uh so what are some of the other top ones on appsumo yeah i’m looking them up so dude the so one photos stock photos is a sleeper i i’m shocked at how many people want like stock audio stock photos stock video secondly is video editing which if you’re not technical that’s probably harder to do this is this is the area that like this blew up a lot last year and it’s still going which is all this gpt 3 auto content stuff so auto ads auto writing so like copy dot ai alternative i’m an investor so we promoted writer happyscribe i’m looking up the other major ones around that those are just some of the ones that i’m just like shocked at how well they’ve done but i mean i think cool part about sumo and like people check it out is like there’s a lot of new products that you honestly can just check out what’s getting popular and then make some type of alternative or make training around those types would you ever invest in stuff based off the appsumo data oh you know i’ve actually invested differently so we’ve talked about this over the 11 years of the company like hey they’re doing well instead of us taking a split of the sales what if we took equity instead um and i would have liked i mean dude think about this we’ve promoted hoppin they’re eight billion dollars we promoted udemy mixpanel optimizely mailchimp fresh i mean if we took some splits it would have uh be a different trajectory for our company but it’s just not something we’ve done uh i do it differently i invest in the companies uh that we use in our company sure like uh so like uh like what atlassian i went and invested so when we were building shopify apps five years ago i was like i don’t know if our shopify apps are gonna work but i’ll put ten thousand dollars in shopify stock when it just started so if our apps suck i think the shopify thing will probably work and that shopify stock now is like 60k um but atlassian hubspot i bought a lot of hubspot stock once we started transitioning a lot of our team to hubspot but i think what i just think about is like where do i have an advantage or understanding that other people may not yeah i how many products have you guys promoted on appsumo like hundreds or thousands thousands i mean we’ve been 11 years i think right now on appsumo we have 11 000 products um yeah it’s definitely gone a little wild uh has become a software marketplace that’s crazy but uh 10 493 products so when we um like years ago or a couple years ago we had zoom was one of our advertisers and this was before they went public and the ad crushed it it was so good and we were like damn dude people love this product they love zoom and we ended up buying stock right before or right at ipo and it like knocked it out the park i think there is like interesting stuff where you can where you can see like in you you can see interesting information because you’re like wpbeginner because you’re like appsumo because you’re like the hustle and you can see inside of the stuff yeah it’s like and for everyone out there it’s like where do you have an advantage like where’s maybe you’re in discord all day so you know what the nfts are going to be popping maybe it’s going to be out there on twitter world so you know like the different stocks or different people that are talking about different things i think just finding some advantage or like area that you can get uh you know an unfair competitive advantage what other ideas interest you i’m trying to think about just like uh the stuff lately i mean that’s interesting is basically like three or four areas one i mean i still think software is gigantic what specifically there’s just so many what specifically i mean for me content creation is definitely the area that i’ve spent a lot of time in so like i would love software on like how do you figure out which topics are gonna be popular like we spend i don’t know how many people hours probably like 10 hours a week just to figure out which video to make each week and so there’s got to be a more uh optimized way to do that i think with appsumo it’s the same kind of idea like we have a team of i think around four people that full-time just try software all across the internet what their only job yeah they’re they’re called like ldrs i don’t even know what their titles are anymore they don’t tell me uh but their little job is like go to product hunt go to google go to twitter go to all these like beta lists go to all these different sites try the different software all across the internet and then see which ones are worthy to get you know blasted on appsumo.com and so that that feels like that should actually be a software solution so i think a lot of it is just like what are the things we’re doing manually that we could automate so for me topics is big finding products for appsumo is big um i’m super excited about you know i think a lot of people are crypto space uh one of the things i’m looking for is like how do you scrape twitter and reddit and find the new next thing before everyone else so kind of like a google trends or like a discovery thing for these crypto nfts how do you do that now i don’t got it i mean it’s just too hard manually right now what i do is that i text my friend who basically just spends 16 hours a day doing nfts i’m like which one are you buying so like a few days ago i bought a hippo that’ll work did i tell you about i bought i bought a five thousand dollar was it how much was it i spent on that i think i said no it’s only almost two thousand dollar hippo but it’s part of a casino so if you as the casino makes money if you own one of the nfts you get a cut of the casino rake so sean it feels like a scam john created an email list the other day and he called it the milk road i don’t know i don’t know if it’s daily or if it’s weekly but sarah’s been getting it and loves it and it’s all about crypto and he tries to talk about like the latest and greatest from a trustworthy point of view and it’s it’s pretty great the milk road is awesome that’s a great idea the milk road what is he recommending i haven’t read it yet because i don’t like crypto but sarah’s been reading it and like he’ll just say like people are tweeting out like so the weird thing about crypto and nfts is like it’s on twitter it’s like in uh groups that like you have to be like on the inside to know what’s legit and so there’s like these like stupid discourse groups dis uh discord groups and uh like these weird tweet twitter folks where you gotta like know who to follow and he’ll be like blank is tweeting about blank that’s interesting because of and then he’ll explain and so it’s kind of interesting i think what i think was interesting about a lot of these side hustle ideas and we put together like top ones around crypto if you’re poor meaning like if you want to be in a crypto but you have no money like there are a lot of ways to do it uh and one of them is just documenting a lot of this stuff right like you could start a newsletter just like researching and putting out like hey here’s things that are interesting that i’m seeing about it and eventually that’s how you do become an expert in these different areas how many the other go ahead no how many coaches do you have in your life oh right now uh not as much so i have a ceo coach so there’s a guy i’ve been working with named ken coleman out of the bay area uh what’s what’s this is that torch or is it he’s just an independent so ken’s like old school like he’s not tweeting he’s not on youtube uh he’s just been around silicon valley in a lot of these different kind of companies and a lot of his stuff is very like um like really obvious euphemisms like leaders noah leaders lead basically yeah he’s great man he’s great uh who other coaches and then i have like a ceo advisor so this guy named raj who works at indeed he’s phenomenal he’s a little bit more operational so i go to him with different people that were um i’m like yo here’s things i’m seeing today what do you think i should be doing about it and so him i have a hebrew coach right now i’m looking for a squash coach i’ve been really getting into squash it’s actually that’s kind of been a harder coach to find so i um you like you’ve always been into coaches and you’ve always done less i’ve always done lessons and so like you’ve always you’ve always had like flight lessons or like oh yeah i think you used to do boxing and so after we started boxing’s on friday so after i talked to you i started hiring coaches and coaches are pretty sick so i’ve got a bunch of them now and they are badass it is absolutely upped all my most all my coaches are fitness related but like if i do want to learn something i always hire a coach now it’s 100 the way to go dude i’m glad that’s cool to hear that man so you have your fitness coach well for your box i have like a boxing yeah and like we like and so he’s because i’m like trying to fight and like prepare for a real match and so he’s like helping me and then i have a fitness coach as well and then for a little while i did my body tutor but i have a different nutritionist now so yeah i like i’m all about coaches i think where for people especially if you don’t have money to do something like that it’s it’s more also like how do you get someone to hold you accountable right at the end of the day like one of the things that i’ve found really was just having an accountability buddy so if you’re trying to start a hustle if you’re trying to be healthy um if you can’t afford a coach like that’s an easy way to find someone to just help you make sure that you you’re going on your bed what do you use like maybe it’s in your the hustle facebook group what do you use to track all your all your stuff that you have going on like you have two or three or four coaches at any point you’ve got your work you’ve always got [ ] going on do you have some weird way that you track all this i track all of it i think the i mean i just have most of my stuff is just automatic so i don’t really have to track it meaning that like every friday like my calendar is is pretty much as automatic as possible and i think i’ve talked about this in the past like it’s coded right so every friday at 10 a.m is boxing so that’s just automatic and then generally flying is going to be every other week and that’s yellow so that’s one of my learning and then hebrews on thursdays therapy is wednesday every other wednesday at 11. that’s yellow so yellow is my learning category i do squashy steamy where we play squash and go to the steam room uh that’s not really with a coach but i think if you can have more things on autopilot so you don’t have to think about it then you don’t have to track it the only thing i think i actively aggress not aggressively but i’ve tracked for 15 years as my personal finance what do you use so every single i use a spreadsheet everywhere if you go to i think on yeah okay door.com where’s my money uh it’s literally just like what’s my assets what’s my liabilities uh and then what are some action items i want to take in the next 30 days do you when when you’re tracking any of that do you count privately held stock as anything um and then we can talk about appsumo kpis because there’s some interesting stuff how we track there and then the youtube tracking so more business related stuff in my network sheet i only track the cost basis so i don’t track like how do you have a valuation no no so i’d literally just track how much i invested in it so i invested in like circle invested in buffer just an lmnt huckberry um i only invest in companies i use i don’t invest in anything i don’t use um and so i just tracked that like i put ten thousand dollars in and that’s just what it is i don’t track like the appreciation on that at all buffer’s an interesting company so buffer when i was when so a lot of people who listen to this show are young when i was like younger when i was younger when i was 24 25 buffer was the most badass company because they did this thing where they revealed all of their revenue and at the time that was like revolutionary um like some small-time bloggers were doing it but buffer started doing it but their company has totally stalled hasn’t it like their revenue that’s a tough one like 25 million every single year for like the last three years yeah i invested them because i love leo i love joel they’re i mean they’re very innovative at the time i think what people don’t give like zuckerberg and some of these people credit for is how do you stay relevant and consistent same with tim ferriss like how do you stay relevant for 15 years it’s very easy to come out hot but to actually kind of have that stuff um how does zuck do it you know for anyone out there well i think for anyone it’s just like you have to stay consistent with it and you have to kind of keep staying on that edge of where you’re a little bit uncomfortable um i think with buffer there’s they basically my my guess is that they hit a market saturation of how valuable that is for people to pay for their tweets yeah i’m looking at it like maybe it’s not as valuable it’s gone down since 2019. yeah i mean i think they have here’s the interesting thing they’ve gone down but canva is a 40 billion dollar company and it’s pretty much the exact same thing canvas canvas is the same thing as buffer are you on drugs what are you talking about canva is amazing canva it’s the same thing it’s how do i create content that i can then share or post in other places but i think where they evolved past buffer which buffer was like i’m gonna help you make your content for twitter twitter or facebook which really didn’t make a difference and then canva was like well what if we can help you make these templates that you can just use in social media but as well through a lot of other categories and so i think that’s kind of like market size is where they i think iterated better than but not iterated but picked a better market same as appsumo we got lucky with this one canva is going to be software canva is going to be one of the most valuable uh publicly traded companies i think in the world when they go public dude have you seen their numbers they’ve just crossed a billion in revenue and it’s like doubling really canva is killing it man they’ve raised money at a 40 billion valuation because they grew their revenue from 500 million to a billion in a year and it’s on a tear man canvas amazing that is bonkers man what’s crazy is the founders are husband and wives and they bootstrapped it for a long time and so the husband and wife trio or a couple is worth like 15 or 20 billion dollars right now good for them it’s not good canva is a crazy story we’re gonna have to cover canvas last time because they’re growing like a week i have no idea how they grow so fast one one thing i did want to come back on sam i was talking to mitchell on the back end um one thing i do in tracking that when i’ve told people i always find it pretty interesting is like i do monthly life and reviews i told you about this every month yeah it’s actually been i mean it’s kind of dude so every month and this i’ve done this now for about seven years and it’s basically an email i sent to tynan nick gray and my buddy jimmy and leo and you basically just review your past month and you i actually started sending it to like my brother my buddy johnny and a lot of a few other close friends but it’s pretty fascinating to track what’s happened in a month and um it’s been fun to go back super like years ago to see what was happening in my life but it’s also interesting to be like okay look at all the photos from the month what happened in the month what can i understand about myself and then what do i want to have upcoming in this in for me january what do you but i think that’s been one so what i’ll what i’ll do reveal in that email i’m going to copy that so you you have yes so i don’t share my photos but basically what i’ll do is i’ll pull up my photos uh from december look through december to the end and i’m like damn a lot of hap a lot of stuff happened versus what i think happened i’ll start the so let me just start the december one i put december was a [ ] month uh six out of ten it may not be my greatest but maybe it was actually better than i think and then i’ll start the email with what are the things i said i was gonna do december and how did i do against them so a few of them was like at peace with my drinking and my i was not at peace with my drinking i said i’d go to a niners game which i did lock in my 2022 bucket list which i did and then i’ll just try to do like a little bit more of a stream of consciousness reviewing of how the month actually went about themes work travel family i’ve tried it with categories and i’ve tried also just free flowing there’s not whatever works for you i think the important thing here is having like a group of people that you can send it to that don’t even have to give you feedback like they don’t you don’t need their opinion but it’s just like here’s my life how’s your life and if you want opinions you can ask would you ever make that point and also this is way too raw to make public it’s um such good content i would love to like the research oh this i mean i’ll send you i’ll send you the december one just don’t share it but it’s just like well i’m just saying like i’m i’m thinking like would i do that as a blog it’s pretty cool the end of year reviews for a lot of people the reason why i started thinking about syed recently that guy the wp beginner guy is because he has this end-of-year review and i always love reading his end-of-year review i didn’t really i’ll look him up um some of this stuff has like we did this like wild therapy out in mexico on the beach which was just like psychedelics and some of this stuff is just really sensitive uh yeah i don’t know if i’d want to make it public i’ll send you let me ask about that really quick and then we’ll wrap up but did that stuff make a difference just don’t doing psychedelic therapy which i don’t i told a story about how i almost did it one time but i got kicked out of the group did it get kicked out this lady used to work at lehman brothers she was like worked at the banks that like helped destroy america at one point and she got mad at us for talking about money too much and like she was saying how like her medicine needs to be free for the world but was making me pay two thousand dollars and i was like lady you realize how like country or how like hypocritical you are like you’re talking about like how capitalism ruins everything but you’re like you worked at lehman brothers and like you’re making me pay you two grand to do drugs with you like come on like don’t act like your [ ] don’t stink and she kicked me out of the group so i didn’t get to i didn’t get to actually do it with her you couldn’t have your self-improvement yeah i didn’t she didn’t let me do drugs with her um i do want to and mitchell mitchell is messaging me he’s like yo you got to do your favorite purchases or websites wait but tell me really quick did the therapy work so i’ve done a lot of different therapy like i’ve done ayahuasca which i put i put that article out that went viral and if you read that yeah i if i remember correctly the takeaway was like it was cool like it made somewhat of a difference but like it wasn’t that great no it’s definitely impactful it’s just intense i mean i think what you know there’s a lot of different ways to eat a reese’s peanut butter cup i always think um the it was lsd therapy i think the main theme that i took away from that specific experience well a theme in general for me is like how much should we have life be super predetermined like i want to go make this much money or i want to go on this vacation versus how much should we just let the day like unfold and uh i think that’s where that was definitely a theme i was trying to just understand i think the big theme from that specific experience was like how do i let more joy in my life right like my word of the year is smile like i was gonna have an intent yeah like to have an intent or something there and for me smells just like yo i just enjoy it right we’re all gonna die someday just like enjoy the grind enjoy getting to chat with you today which you know i was like this is probably the highlight of my day i have a buddy coming at 6 30. but i was like i really want to talk to sam today like i’m looking forward to it so that was the main theme for from that experience i think there’s a lot of ways to learn about ourselves i think you know mdma or lsd therapy regular therapy journaling there’s a lot of different ways you know whatever is calling people at the right time what are your uh all right mitchell was telling telling he also told me this or he wrote it in the thing about best stuff to buy for under a hundred dollars you and i are the same in that we buy lots of crap just because like we’re up we’re both obsessed with gadgets um by the way you sent me over so i told noah’s gonna go camping and he sent me over this massive tupperware container with like all these gadgets there was candy in there that expired in like 2012. like i went camping is any of the gadgets in there yeah i went camping and i used your lantern and i used like one of the flashlights and a headlamp and uh i saw i found some swedish fish or something like that but it like expired like years ago i’m more of a sour patch kid guy now that’s what it was sorry it was sour patch kids it was it was like it was it was that type of candy yeah um different purchase i don’t know i was trying to pull up some of the different things that i’ve bought that i’m like man i like these and i use them a lot um the coal plunge i didn’t buy it it was expensive as [ ] it was like five grand um but in my opinion if you want to be cold it’s a pretty cool gadget i like it i just i guess the question is that like i think retail is 5k i p so this i think you’ll appreciate this i hit them up and i said hey i’m a social media influencer which i find ironic oh my god i i say it as a mockery i didn’t actually say that i was like hey i’m interested in your product can i actually just pay cost and then i’ll promote it because i figure like i want to support them as a business so i think for people out there that want to get free crap like just pay cost you get it a lot cheaper and you can promote it if you like it that’s good um i like it but i don’t know is it worth 3k probably not i like my i’ve been using the bathtub in the hot tub a lot more often yeah come over here come on do a longer workout oh dude here’s the thing that i think people are sleeping on but some people are using it have you used apple air tags i just got one they’re pretty great dude they’re like secretly amazing like i throw it in my luggage and in my backpack so if it ever gets lost in like travel or someone ever jacks my backpack there’s like a little secret tag in there dude i’ve been using tiles for years but the tiles are only okay the air tags are what’s the difference i never use those just the interface and how loud the beep is oh that’s it yeah just that just those two things they’re pretty dude you can actually uh i haven’t messed with 3d printers too much but tynan he puts out a dude tynan’s gear list if you don’t check out tynan.com’s gear list definitely one of the top gear lists ever like t-y-n-a-n-com so his gear list is awesome he has like a lot of usb stuff and like what’s the smallest charger to be using um but he what you can do which is crazy on etsy this is a really neat hack you can buy a 3d printed thing where you can put an apple air tag and then secretly attach it to any of your bikes so if you’re a biker for like 15 bucks you can buy a secret thing that attaches to your water bottle and no one will ever know it’s there so you have a tracker on any of your expensive bikes oh that’s sick but does the air so the air tag only works so if it’s in within bluetooth of a iphone of any iphone that i think that’s where there’s a little bit of like controversy but it’s any apple device that’s good all right i think is the internet connection or bluetooth mesh i think i thought it was bluetooth which is kind of like [ ] up if you think about it bonkers right dude well i mean there’s these stories where like someone put it on someone’s car and then they’re tracking them home i think that’s obviously like that’s messed up but i think just the technically like it’s just a fun tool to start playing with and just start experimenting with all right so what else have you gotten dude you know what i’ve gotten really into tea why i’m like i don’t know man i’ve been into like chinese tea so i bought um a snow peak bottle it’s called snow peak is the brand it’s like super uh good for like travel and stuff and then i buy um it’s called a guy wan i can’t believe i’m talking about this publicly i don’t know just so nerdy it’s like what creepy white dudes do um i mean you want these guy ones you have like a little chinese tea ceremony and it’s really inexpensive you can go to aliexpress buy it for like 10 bucks um and i bought it a travel one actually so you have one for home which you can buy an aliexpress for like literally 10 bucks or from keith titanium you can buy a guy one that’s for camping that’s like 200 bucks uh so when i travel i’ll bring tea around and i get it from this place in the bay area called old waze tea is that well yeah oldwaystee.com that has definitely been something i’m uh way more hyped on and i’ve definitely been drinking a crap ton more tea this year um a good thing that i bought recently which i’m almost positive you have as well what brand chair do you have i think this is an autonomous same we have the exact same one so uh so basically these chairs that i was looking at they’re like fifteen hundred dollars like a fancy chair like are they really an aeron i think it’s called uh it’s like 1200 to 2gs they’re really expensive and so autonomous is a new startup that’s making chairs and desk supplies and it’s basically as good i think as the really fancy one but for like 350 bucks yeah these are definitely affordable one thing one thought i’ve had sam is like what have you bought in your life that you’re like man this is luxurious i was trying to think of things that i’m like like i bought this levi’s jacket because it’s getting cold in austin it’s got the little fur it was 89. and i probably looked for a coupon and i’m like yo this is like i look like a cowboy like a real cowboy this is obviously kind of a joke um and so i was just trying to think like what are other items in my life where i’m like man i can’t believe how rich i am even though it’s not that expensive and definitely that jacket isn’t exactly dude amazon oh you have these amazon basic moccasins i got those because of you actually yeah they’re sick dude those are 20 bucks i’m like i walk around my house i’m like who’s the king who’s the gig i love that um one thing that we do at my house is we do costco socks and we’ll buy like 50 pairs and just never match socks again and then at the end of a at the end of like half the year or so we just throw away all the the socks and get new ones because like if they wear out or if because i i hate matching socks and so i hate you know like it’s just stupid why do i gotta like spend all this time like putting them in a ball together like just give me like a huge bin where they’re all the same and i’ll just grab two it’s stupid matching socks is stupid i’m i i take a stand against that and so anyway i just don’t match socks anymore and so that’s my splurge is i uh i spend like 200 a year and i just get fancy new socks also another thing that i do that’s pretty amazing is i do the same that same thing but with x aficionado underwear so like you know like dude you know when you put underwear on and there’s like a pair that’s always like the last to be used because like the band is all stretched out or you just like don’t like it or it’s like stained or it looks ugly like you’re just done about it so i just threw all those away and i only bought one style one color but like 30 pairs and i spent like 500 dollars to do it because x aficionado underwear is like 20 to 25 a piece did i only wear saks underwear i think it’s the same kind of same kind of thing but it’s got the whole little ball holder stuff yeah i like those too i like sacks they’re a good brand and they don’t stretch out as fast but they still do wear out a little bit i definitely feel pretty luxurious in them do you ever mess with lululemon socks yeah i’m all about anything lululemon dude little lemon socks like these no-show socks because they always other all the others always get holes in them i’m always just like frustrated about that but the lululemon ones um home what other stuff you bought they’re like yo this is rad and i do want to spend at least five minutes i know we’re gonna end here um i wanna spend five minutes like how do we grow your podcast let’s like brainstorm like i know something you’re aiming to do so let’s do one two one of these items and like i don’t know well let me all right let’s do that now let me tell you the numbers now so in december we did uh uh right about two million views um i think or two million downloads uh of which like i think 600 000 was on youtube and the rest so 1.4 million was just people going onto itunes or spotify okay so what’s your those are what’s your current goal do you have a goal this year around the the audience or podcast yeah i think three three million uh consistently getting at least three million downloads a month would put us in like the top like five business podcasts in the in the country what what’s been the biggest thing that’s helped you grow it this is like the way i’m just trying to brainstorm with you what’s helped you get the biggest delta and new subscribers so one of the shitty parts about podcasting is that i’ve done a lot of growth stuff it’s been crazy hard to grow it and so the biggest thing that’s done well is we’ve just invested more time and more energy into good content so sean and i like prepare we research a ton our our chemistry has gotten better so that’s just like one big category of just like improved content the second thing that we’ve done that’s starting to work really well is we’re buying ads on other people’s podcasts and so we’ve learned this strategy from jordan harbinger jordan harbinger has 15 million downloads a month of course he’s in like a big category it’s just like culture i think is the category he’s in and he basically spent nine hundred thousand dollars in his first year buying ads on other people’s podcasts and that’s how he got big hmm okay um you should sponsor okay my podcast or i’ll just put you i’m i mean you’re coming on next week for free here’s a question sure yeah i mean how many downloads did you get i think it’s about 10 000 an episode dude so like we’re a little bit bigger than that now but like just getting to 10 000 is really hard podcast do you agree are podcasts the hardest thing you’ve ever tried to grow that’s why i backed out of it that’s when i went to youtube dude it’s so hard but it’s super sticky like every podcast that we launch is going to get at least 50 every episode we’ll get at least 50 000 views i think all right here’s like one simple thing that i don’t know why you don’t do on your i think one of the ways to think about one it’s always easy to get people to come from medium to medium so podcast sponsoring means they come from one show to the other super easier how come you don’t promote your podcast or newsletter on youtube well not so like the newsletter but what do you mean the podcast well no no so think about it as like a gateway drug so someone on another podcast is highly likely to go to a different podcast because you already know that they’re behavior-wise so sponsoring podcast is a great one getting on other people’s shows is a great one but you’re getting like you had a video recently where you got uh how i retired over 20 million by age 31 had a has 140 000 views but in the description there’s nothing that says check out my newsletter of my podcast yeah that’s stupid we should do you’re right that’s low-hanging fruit that we should have solved for i would think that’s a pretty easy one and then on your about page on youtube you don’t link to the podcast really are you sure it says website well it says website where does that go yeah i mean i guess that’s okay it says website twitter instagram facebook i might want to actually just put the link for podcast i would also consider i mean this might be more of a stretch but i would consider do you strategically try to really intentionally grow youtube and or tick tock pick one of those probably youtube and then really think of that as a way to get people into your newsletter which is like the first step to getting them onto your podcast no it’s been the other way around uh like lately we’ve been going my first million has become like almost its own brand i think yeah here’s what i think is gonna happen i think in the future like in within one to three years me and sean in hubspot i think what we’re going to do is sell the podcast or do some type of licensing deal there’s like no reason for me to think this other than this is just like a crazy prediction i think that we’re going to do some type of crazy there’s a world where we would do a crazy licensing deal i’m hoping that’s a public company so i’m not actually just so everyone knows i’m just [ ] guessing like i’m not this is not based on anything hubspot maybe would do a thing where in three or five years we do some type of licensing deal with like spotify or whatever you know kind of like to call her daddy uh podcasted do you know what that podcast is call her daddy yeah so they did a licensing deal for 60 million dollars over three years and i think there’s a world where we would do that uh with like spotify or uh one of the other big public uh platforms and i think that’s i like that as a creative at home but why did you say getting people to uh come on to your to to like grow the youtube channel or tick tock it’s not worth it or not as important you were like yeah it’s not good like what do you mean there um i well what we’ve found is that i think it’s better to grow to send people straight to the podcast because if they if they click subscribe then they’re notified whenever there’s a uh four minutes they’re notified whenever there’s a new episode you know what i mean no yeah but don’t you think like like the amount of people available on the youtube that are like hey i want to hear more about this then come on i mean think about how much like joe rogan got found because of youtube well and the second answer to that is i mean we’re trying it’s [ ] hard if we’re trying i’m like the efforts if you look at our youtube page look at our videos like the effort’s there like they just don’t get that many views all the time it just it’s taking a long time i mean how many views look at our youtube how do you think it’s going in my opinion recommendation do you want recommendations yeah i would say it’s going okay at best okay so i think what you what you’re doing is you’re uploading podcast to youtube you’re not actually creating content that people watch on youtube right so if you look at it at our channel like youtube okay dork the content is like made for youtube so the two things that i would i would tell your team here’s what i would recommend you to do over the next like three months look at your ctr like the click-through rate of all these different videos and that’ll basically show you if you’re picking the right topics and then i as well your thumbnails what’s the baseline uh if you can hit a five percent ctr you’re you’re doing very well you’re doing very very well so like would you say three to five is decent i mean three is decent i think you want to get to five you want to be like hitting a really high number so like our recent like uh awesome videos are hitting five um so i would i would basically just start tracking your ctr your click-through rate on these things and the second thing you want to this is just the the start with this stuff is that i think this is a way of explaining the pie that people find out about you and then they’re like oh in your description about page go to the newsletter go to the podcast which i would just update your top 10 videos here you don’t need to do all of them but do them moving forward the second thing is your your average view duration so the the saminaj one had it’s a two hour video there’s a reason it got 26 000 views it’s because it’s long as hell and i’m guessing your average view duration was like 20 minutes how many does that have 20 000 26 000 wow where you know the serial killer got busted through 23 me one i don’t know how that’s relevant to people making a million it’s not put that on your own channel bro come on don’t blame me for all this stuff i’ve you’re who’s in charge i don’t know anymore well anyways i think the second thing is just look at your average view duration do the same thing just look at a line graph so like how are we trending and and don’t worry about super optimizing just where like each month or so can we try to get both those numbers moving in an upward direction and the other thing i think you were able to do that what’s that anything else we should do i mean your your thumbnails aren’t i’m pretty sure we’re using your thumbnail guy yeah it might be the thumbnail guy but you’re like how much are you actually spending to make a great thumbnail so like every one of our thumbnails now we go and do custom photos so at 4 30 i’m literally it’s the third time going out with a photographer to take a thumbnail for the same video dude that’s so much work isn’t it isn’t that crazy there’s so much work to make it like a youtube video i just dismiss it as like oh you’re just [ ] around it’s so much more work than i thought yeah to be good i mean i’m not gonna say some cliche [ ] anything great is worth working do you feel like an idiot though on the side of the street doing this space where you’re like hands on your head and you’re like freaking out about the 2022 stock market now it’s gonna go down well i think i mean the other thing with no it’s honestly enjoyable and i find it kind of like a science it’s like a game where like it’s a game where you in a sense like how do i win this game and doing that it gives me an advantage so hell yeah i want to do it and i find it enjoyable i think you know topics you should also just kind of consider the topics you’re putting out on youtube like how much do authors make it’s not something that i think people are really like gonna immediately stop and drop everything to watch but like solana billionaires right now crypto and nft and stuff like that and how to get rich is always popular on youtube we’re just like whenever we talk we’re just going to chop we just chop [ ] up so like it what we could do is like have pre-planned topics that we think would go get popular on youtube it’s just a little bit harder to do that naturally in a conversation but i think we can do but yeah our goal like i’m predicting the future we’re gonna get to like the 3 million range by the end of the year and once there um i think we’re going to be end up being like one of the big i think we’ll be like in the dave ramsey tim ferriss category inside the next year and a half here’s a oh yeah we can end it one thing i find fascinating is there’s people who are huge on youtube that no one knows but a lot of people know who tim ferriss is kind of something i’ve just been reflecting on what does that mean well he’s been in the game forever and he also what entered the game when the world was smaller so like in the niche of like tech and startups there and and this whole like make money online thing there weren’t that many people on it and there weren’t that many people who were famous for it and he was definitely one of the first that was famous for it do yeah i mean yeah that’s interesting the world gets bigger it’s also getting known your niche like i have a friend who’s popular in the spearfishing category how about right i think what’s that he’s got like few hundred thousand followers on tick tock he’s got a full-time business now it’s called sick cast cast it’s called [ ] group for nerds i want to be a spearfish influencer this guy is cool as [ __ ] man if you ever want to go spearfishing but i think what fascinates me about him is like he’s on tick-tock he just does this you know you talked about this in the beginning where you documented your house he likes spearfishing and he likes fishing and so he just started videoing it put on tick tock got like i think he’s how many followers you have on tick tock in i think he’s got like 200 000 cast and spear 289 that 285 000 followers he texted him yesterday i don’t see his revenue but he’s got a you know not a seven figure but a pretty healthy business selling spearfishing gear now i think instead of getting big at tim where maybe people are responding i want to be known or i’m an expert i’ve got imposters and i’m just like do the thing you’re already excited about document that and i think people will be shocked that they can make a lot of money doing it like my brother he does insurance claims for hospitals are talking about this no so when you go to the hospital you get a bill and the hospital has to fight with the insurance company about how much to pay yeah so he reviews the bill to optimize to make sure that the the insurance company pays the full amount okay cause he can be like no they didn’t need to do this procedure they need to do this and now he’s so i think one of the things is what do you have in your day job that you can make a business out of and so he’s exploring how to help individuals optimize well not optimize but reduce their medical bills so if you got a medical bill and it’s like five thousand or one thousand ten thousand he’ll review it for free and then maybe take a cut if he’s able to reduce the amount of money that that’s actually a great idea there’s this company called buyer.co and our my friend started it and it was called negotiating as a service and they would negotiate anything on your behalf and take a percentage of the savings and the company sold to ramp so if you go to buyer.com it redirects to that web the company you said you don’t like ramp and uh it’s not that i hate them there’s something to do and buyer the guy he started he’s like i sold out too early but i didn’t have any money and it was like a cool way to make money but um he was like i this could actually be great i would do like a negotiating negotiating as a service and have um my health bill be one of the big ones uh another great company is called do not pay and they’re doing this but for uh a variety of different things oh yeah i saw them i like do not pay yeah do not pay the the robot there’s also like vendor.com then there’s like a similar one you give me your bills they negotiate and they just take a cut of whatever they see dude i love those services i love notebooks win-win no one’s down like quickbooks or uh not quick in uh turbo tax mint yeah turbo intertext a little it’s like oh it’s free it’s free it’s free guess what if you really want it it’s paid for they don’t like but they don’t take money from you they just take a percentage of your refund yes which i like yeah that’s fair so i did want to say though dude honestly for your show because other people out there are trying to do it i think obviously you said go on other people’s shows podcasts i think optimize these lower these other platforms we’re going hard on the thing the tic-tac thing definitely has worked but has it driven people i think ultimately is it helping me with my goal is it driving people to the podcast unfortunately i have no idea that’s another shitty part about podcast is it’s hard to know what works because i can look at my charts and see how many downloads we have it won’t tell me how they heard about us it’s not like google analytics where i can see like the person who bought this came from google because they searched blank on this type of phone have you done uh url genius no we’ve done chartable is that the same thing well url geniuses i think we use this on our show sometimes it’s app.urlgene.us it’s deep linking so it’ll link deeply into the podcast on spotify i don’t know if it does itunes as well and then you could track i think how those clicks are actually looking so you can put that on tick tock or put that out on the the youtube world i didn’t know about that all right i’ll look into that um all right samuel we’re gonna wrap up i love seeing you dude thanks for doing this you look good dude thanks for having me did how many people reached out from the last one it got ben messaged me he said it got 65 000 or 70 000 views really yeah dude you guys are man i told you the first time i ever came on your show i had like an ex this girl i went on a date with was like i can’t believe you’re on the show yeah he messaged me he said he got 65 000 views or downloads all right i think this one thank you for having me man this is excellent all right we’ll talk a little bit talk soon you