# Founder of Eight Companies Explains: How to Take Massive Action (ft. Noah Kagan)

An episode of [SOLVED with Mark Manson](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247526593), 27 Mar 2024, 1 h 13 min.

Audio: https://claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/441/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/episode.flightcast.com/ouhphhfntkn3v6d8b75ak3lm.mp3

Social media messes with our expectations because it convinces us that we should be doing everything, everywhere, all at once. But the reality is that we should focus on doing one or two things extremely well, in one place, consistently over a long period of time. Today on the pod, I talk to Noah Kagan, multi-millionaire and multi-business owner, about the type of consistency and habits that lead to wealth. Noah created his own wealth out of self-belief, learning from failing and being careful with what he gives a fuck about. Noah’s story is compelling as he shares how he found success over decades, by never ceasing to try. If you’re looking for some raw talk to get you motivated to go out and do cool shit, this is the episode to sink your energy into. Enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters • 00:00:00 Introduction: What Don't You Give a Fuck About? • 00:02:43 The Coffee Challenge: Practicing Rejection • 00:03:40 Rejection Goals and Taking Action • 00:15:23 Figuring Out What You Actually Want • 00:18:23 The Journey to Self-Acceptance • 00:19:41 Having Something to Look Forward To • 00:21:08 The Quality of Your Friendships • 00:23:40 Fame, Attention, and Ego • 00:25:58 The Will Smith Slap and Being Human • 00:32:35 The Slow Ramp Up: How Success Really Happens • 00:33:41 Getting Fired From Facebook and Mint • 00:44:40 The Power of Starting With One Dollar • 00:38:47 Leadership, Self-Awareness, and CEO Surveys • 00:51:41 Less Ambitious Goals for Longer Periods • 00:55:33 YouTube, Knocking on Doors, and Asking the Right Questions • 01:00:12 Mark's Failed Man-on-the-Street Video • 01:01:50 The Videos Mark Is Most Proud Of • 01:06:43 Hedonic Adaptation and Managing Expectations • 01:10:47 Owning Your Word: The Subtle Art of Embracing Your Brand • 01:12:30 Closing Thoughts: Did I Give Too Many Fucks? ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://bit.ly/4w46FMH FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] Noah Kagan, founder of eight different companies. Yeah. Million dollar companies. One of the first employees at Facebook. I'm sure we'll get into that. Author of Million Dollar Weekend. We're definitely going to get into that. My first question is, what do you not give a fuck about that most people do? Hmm. Hmm. I think...
[0:25] I haven't given so many fucks about taking myself so seriously. I was going to say, because that's a little bit of a paradox. Like, you live in this risky world of entrepreneurship of... I mean, the whole book is just about taking chances, essentially. And yet, when I talk to you, it's like this kind of constant self-consciousness. Like, oh my God, am I doing this wrong? Is my leg weird? Should I be like this? Yeah.
[0:50] Yeah. So there's got to be like a loophole in there somewhere. Yeah. Because I think people that probably are portraying like, I don't care about what anyone thinks. It's like, well, you're probably putting that publicly. So you're clearly clearing about what people are thinking about you. You're hiding something. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, I think as I'm getting older, I'm definitely being more mindful. Like, why do I care if I have more followers or not? Why do I care? Literally, it's like 7 a.m. I'm responding to a random guy on my Instagram DM that read my book.
[1:19] Instead of being in bed with my girlfriend. Right. And so as I'm getting older, I'm being more mindful about like what actually matters. Yeah. You seem to be almost impervious to rejection. Would you say that's it? Like that's the thing? Because most people are absolutely terrified of rejection. I mean, most people won't start anything. Like forget a business. They won't even start a conversation because they're afraid of rejection. Yeah. Um,
[1:48] Yet it seems like it doesn't bother you. No, it hurts my feelings. Yeah. But it doesn't stop you. It doesn't stop me. That's the difference. Exactly. Like, I had a guy email me, and he's like, every day for 30 days, I'm going to post something. And I was like, I'm going to follow up with you in 30 days. Yeah. Just to see what happens. And I followed up with him as yesterday. How'd it go? I didn't post once.
[2:10] And I was like, and I think what I'm trying to do is just be more optimistic for myself and for others. So it's like, hey, what's going on? I was afraid. Yeah. And then we're all afraid of something. Yeah. And I'm still afraid. But the more I practice the rejection, the more I practice these things, I realize it's never as bad as it seems. And I'm always better than I thought. So for this person that was afraid of posting on social media, he's afraid of his friends. He's afraid of what people are gonna say. I even had this about a decade ago.
[2:37] I was afraid of posting on Facebook because I saw some high school friends. I was like, oh, what are they going to think of me? Yeah.
[2:43] And I did it anyways. And that's the only difference. And everyone can do that today. Right. It's what's the thing you're afraid of. It's never as bad as it seems. And that's that's literally in the book where I talk about the coffee challenge. What is the coffee challenge for listeners? The coffee challenge is when you go to get your next coffee. And I encourage everyone to commit to doing it today. Just do it today. It's easy. You go anywhere to get a coffee. You place your order. Orange mocha frappuccino. You've seen Zoolander. You ask. You ask for 10% off. And you don't do anything.
[3:10] And the point is not to get the discount. The point is to feel the fear, get the rejection, and realize how great you are. Yeah. And everyone who does it is always... I literally got a message today. This guy was like, I was terrified. Yeah. I did it. And I realized like, huh, what else in life am I afraid of asking for? What else in life have I been holding myself back from? A job, a wife, a raise, an employee, a customer. I actually wanted to get into that because even though the book is framed around business and starting businesses...
[3:40] I very much read it as just a guide to taking action. And I think as you know, I started my career as a dating coach. And it's actually funny how much stuff in the book is similar to the stuff that I used to do with guys. You know, I take a guy to a bar. What's?
[3:58] And he's like standing in the corner, petrified, like holding his beer. And I remember like you have this thing in here about rejection goals, like set a rejection goal and try to hit that many rejections. I used to do that with guys. I'd be like, your goal tonight is to be rejected five times. And they'd be like, oh, you know, like, oh, I can't do that. Dude, that's fucked up. I'm like.
[4:19] That's what we're gonna do. And then what would happen? So what would always happen is, the first one was always the hardest. Always. It would take an hour to get him to talk to the first girl. And similar to you, you start with the one dollar thing, we'll talk about that in a second, but just ask for one dollar, right? It's like, you don't need to have this big business plan, just go ask somebody for a dollar. See if they'll give it to you, right? I used to do that, I'm like, just go say hi. Just say hi.
[4:49] My name's Noah. That's it. That's it. You don't have to say you could like turn around and run out the door afterwards. That's all you have to do is just say hi. And, you know, it'd take maybe 30 minutes to an hour to get them to do the first one. But then as soon as they did the first one and they realized like, hey, that wasn't so bad. Or in some cases, they'd have like a really nice conversation with an attractive woman. They're like, oh, my God, why have I been waiting so long? Yes. And then it'd just be like number two, number three, number four, number five.
[5:15] It's like water stuck behind a dam or something, you know, and it's like as soon as you open it, it just all rushes out. I think the question for everyone is what is the hard thing everyone's holding themselves back from? Yeah.
[5:29] And it's never as hard as it seems. And the reward is always greater than it seems. And your example is a silly one as well. Like, you're literally going to go to another human, probably an attractive one, and you're going to say hello. And that's it. And then you could even run off. And you start doing it, you start realizing, like, what other things do I want in life? And if I can start practicing asking for it, maybe I get a little rejection. But the upsides of these things are just unlimited. It's fucking crazy. Like, on the YouTube video, I asked someone to go on their private jet. I don't know if you've seen this video. And he let me on his private jet.
[5:57] Just by asking, I don't know this person. Super sorry to trouble you, man. We're YouTubers, our dream is to get a tour of a private jet. I'm going a little bit late, otherwise I totally would. Would you? Oh, okay, thank you brother, next time maybe? Fuck man, you can't do it. Oh, is there any way? Yeah, fuck it. Are you sure? Have we? Oh dude, yeah, yeah.
[6:15] I actually have the opposite problem now where I'm asking all the time. Like, I have to literally control it. And I just want to start asking people for things. And they're not going to just come to your door. And so you have to put in those reps and the practice to get better at getting these things. And if you ask, you will get. It's a big part of it, too, is that.
[6:30] Most people don't know what they want. You know? They think they want to start a big startup or something, but really it's just like they don't like their job. There's something about getting clarity on what you actually want and what it's worth that then makes the sacrifice easier. Right? It's like, if this is a really important thing to me,
[6:54] then sure, I'll stomach a little bit of embarrassment. I think about the people who stand on street corners and hand out flyers. Yeah. Or walk up to you and you're like, do you want to donate the Greenpeace today? And you're just like, get out of my face.
[7:09] I lived in New York for a long time. So this was a big part. When they had the clipboards in my eye. Yeah, yeah. This was a big part of my life for many years. I actually had a friend who worked one of those jobs in college. And he said it was the most mortifying thing. Like you're literally just shut down by strangers 100 times a day, every day for weeks and weeks and weeks. But I think it's interesting that they're willing to do that because they believe so much in the reason they're doing it. Which I love that.
[7:36] Like which then makes it worth it. Well, I think in your book, Models is still like it's actually coming bringing back up thoughts where and I think this is important for everyone with this whole ask in life and what we want is just how do you feel good about who you are? Yeah. How do you find out who you can become? And it's not so far away. I think there's a lot of materials and courses and YouTube videos that create complications. Yes. And it's like.
[7:59] Can I actually have this life? Yes, you can. Yeah. And it's not some elite thing that, oh, Mark and Noah did it and I can't. I have to like buy these things. No, you just start today. Maybe go ask someone for a raise. Maybe go ask someone for feedback. Maybe try something new out. And I think in the past I've tried extreme things out. Like I tried naked yoga with guys, which is very strange. It's all gay. It's all gay men and you do partner yoga. And then I did like five senses dancing. And then I did, you know, I went and did ayahuasca. And then I walked around India for a month. I did all these more extreme things. I don't know if we need that. Right. Right.
[8:28] And I think it's like, well, what's something today that I can do that makes me feel good about who I am? It sounds like you've gone through quite a internal journey over the last few years. It's been tremendous. I'm wondering if you think you could have written this, say, five years ago. It's the same material I've been, I like figured out a decade ago. I don't think I liked who I was until the past few years.
[8:53] and felt worthy of myself. And the irony in this situation is when I wanted to be famous and I wanted money and I wanted people to like me, and then now that I have those things, it's not what I want and not what I need. Right. Like my girlfriend who's gonna become my wife, Friday. Hey. Thank you. I hope this video's not coming out then.
[9:13] Um, you know, she said something to me last week when, you know, I'm talking about book sales and she's like, who, fuck these people. Like, who are these people? None of them matter. And she's right. And she's like me and our baby. She's like, we love you no matter what. Hmm.
[9:29] Whoa. And I joke, I joke, and there's always truth in jokes. I joke, but like, didn't I make all this money so you didn't have to love me for me? Yeah, right. And I know that's not what people, people are like, what do you mean? But like, that's, I think the facade or these fronts that yes, we do make money because we want people to like, because we make money to feel good about ourselves. And I think at the end of the day, if we can be with another person or be with ourselves, it's like, we just want you. And that was like, ah. It's like, it's relieving, the weight's off. Right. The pressure's off. I don't have to be anyone but Noah. Yeah. And I think with this book,
[9:58] For me, it was my own hero's journey of avoiding the hard work. It was avoiding, can I actually help other people? It was avoiding, am I worthy of putting myself publicly in a way that I think could help other people? And I used to even think that people that listened to me were really stupid.
[10:13] Right. Like if you're an audience. I know. I know. I know. It's like these people are idiots. You know what that is, though? It's because. Yeah. Because I think I'm an idiot. Right. Because I think I'm going to get fired. It's because I'm not a good CEO. It's because I'm not going to be a good partner. And these are all the negative self-talk that all of us experience. I don't think there's like it's just Noah.
[10:34] Yeah. One of the things I've been actively working on probably two to three years now is just positive self-talk. Mm-hmm. And so every time a negative thing comes up, like yesterday, I would literally emo all day. I woke up emo. I did all those morning routine videos you've seen. I did all of it. Yeah. I literally did sauna cold plunge.
[10:49] It didn't work. I did gooey, I think, ooey, Chinese tea ceremony myself. You know, like I did that. I read the Bible, the picture Bible. Okay. You know, and like I did all this shit. I'm still angry all day. And morning routines, man. Yeah, this is overrated. 100% overrated. 100% overrated. And then and then this morning I woke up. I looked at my girlfriend, took a breath and I was like, I'm glad you didn't make a minor thing a major thing.
[11:19] I'm glad I didn't let yesterday's minor that I didn't feel good about the day, which is human being experience, turning it into a major catastrophe. And so then I gave myself some positive self-talk on the drive here. Like, you know, it's good. Good for you, man. Way to go. And I think that's something that all of us can do, like every single day, all day. Yeah. And that's tough. You know, with the book thing.
[11:39] I think by the time I did book number two or three or four, like I kind of learned what the game was. Yeah. And you almost get this distance from your own emotions of like, ah, this is an update. I'm like, don't,
[11:54] Don't believe it. You know, this is bullshit, you know, and then on a down day, you're like, ah, it's a down day. Yeah, no, don't believe it. It's it's also bullshit. So, yeah, that's always true. Yes. Right. You don't need to do this like really intense emotional thing to like for that to be true. It's.
[12:10] We all have good days. We all have bad days. We all have good experiences. We all have bad experiences. We all react maturely. We all react immaturely. And none of those things necessarily say anything about you as a person or your character. You can simply step back and say, oh.
[12:29] This is one of those days. This is one of those moments. And that's OK. It's OK. Yeah. So I think that the idea in life, what you're saying, which I think is really great, is that a lot of these experiences have been experienced. Yeah. And being mindful that there's probably a book or there's probably a walk or there's probably some good night's sleep that help you realize that it's not as bad as you think. Yeah. There's a great David Foster Wallace quote where he says that everyone is exactly the same and that they walk around thinking that their experiences are completely unique and no one can understand them.
[12:58] 100%. 100%. One thing I was curious, because we were talking about earlier, I'd love to come back.
[13:07] It's your show. I'm just serious. But like, how did you want? I don't give a fuck. Yeah. You feel like you have to not give extra fucks now? Because I told you, I was like, I can't have to give fuck. Mark's not giving a fuck. But now I did. I got into game theory. I was like, Mark's fucks are over here. But if I give two fucks, he's going to give two. So I need to give four. No, I'm going to come late to the show. I'm not even going to show up for the show. Because I don't give a fuck. Do you feel like you have to over no fucks? I probably wouldn't even think about it. You know, it's funny. I am naturally a low fuck fan.
[13:35] resonant guy. But the only thing that bugs me is that when I actually do get upset about something, people are like, well, dude, I thought you didn't give a fuck. I'm like, shut up. Shut up. This is not the this is not the time to make jokes about my books. What what triggers your fucks? Your fuckery? Ironically, I am a stickler for being on time and I hate being late. I hate being late. I was actually rushing up here because I was like, oh, shit, it's
[14:05] three minutes before, you know, um, I hate, this is one thing I tell my team all the time. I'm like,
[14:12] It's OK to do something that doesn't work. It's always OK. It's always we can fail. It's OK. It's not OK to be lazy. It's not OK to turn in mediocre work. Right? So if you're going to fail, fail spectacularly. And nothing drives me crazy. And especially with like AI now. This is actually very recent. I actually need to post in our Slack an announcement about this.
[14:38] There have been a number of people on my team who have tried to slip some chat GBT in stuff to me. And it's so obvious because chat GBT is a terrible fucking writer. And everybody on my team is a good writer. So as soon as it's like, I'll be like reading a research summary and it's like great. And then I hit page two and it just goes to shit and says nothing. And then and then at the end, it gets great for like the last paragraph. And I'm like, this is chat GBT. Like.
[15:08] Come on, guys. Yeah. This is not this will not stand. So I give a fuck about stuff like that. I guess those are the two things that like maybe aren't. Obviously, I give a fuck about like friends, family, career stuff. But breathing. Yeah. Breathing.
[15:23] Big breathing this year. Yeah, yeah 24 going all in on breathing and then with the with the all these things I am curious How did you get to figuring out what you want? Because I think that you know in life I do believe it's easy to get what you want when you know what you want Yeah, and what I've seen for million dollar weekend is most people don't believe yeah that it's available for them They don't believe which it is a hundred fucking percent is right. No YouTube Influencer person is gonna convince you with like oh, it's very complicated. No, it's not. Yeah, and
[15:49] But most people don't realize that they can actually get there. I've actually struggled with that over the years. Actually, subtle art, like, really kind of put me into a tailspin of what do I want? Like, I just got everything that I wanted for my entire adult life in, like, the last six months, you know? So, shit, what do I do now? And it took me a long time to figure that out. I think it's a combination of two things. I think one is you have to go through a period of experimentation. Like, allow yourself...
[16:19] to try things and allow yourself to let those things not work or let yourself not enjoy them and just acknowledge that and be like, OK, well, I tried this thing and I didn't didn't enjoy it. It's funny. When I moved to L.A., a bunch of producers were like, bro, you should write a screenplay like.
[16:36] We're going to do a TV show. It's going to be amazing. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay. And then I started writing a screenplay. I got like a weekend. I'm like, this is terrible. I'm not going to do this. But I'm glad I tried, right? So I think a lot of it is just giving yourself the freedom to experiment, to try things, and understand that most of them aren't going to work out. 100%. And I also think there's a lot of wisdom in knowing how much you value something that
[17:05] through subtraction. So like taking something out of your life and seeing if you miss it. Because it's like when everything in our life we think we need. We like convince ourselves like, no, no, I need this. This is really important. But then that was one thing that I thought the pandemic was useful for. It was like, it showed me how many activities
[17:25] I didn't miss when they were gone. And then it showed me some activities, I really missed, that I didn't expect, right? So it realigns like, oh, this is where I should be putting my focus and effort. And how much of your life do you want now? I'm actually in a really good spot right now. Dude, fuck yeah. Yeah, man. Honestly, I think this is the most excited I've been in like 10 years, maybe? Like just about everything, just about
[17:55] work, life, you know, the stuff I'm doing, it's, yeah, I feel really good. I'm in a really good spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, because even hearing that, I'm looking for society, because when we talk about that publicly, what does everyone do? Well, yeah, but. But. Yeah. Why couldn't it be great? And one of my best friends, Tynan's like, it's great and it can get better. Yeah. I'm like, come on. He's like, no, and better. Yeah, yeah. And that's like, I think that is an optimistic shift that we have to practice.
[18:23] I get a lot of those comments on my stuff. I'm sure you do, too. You know, it's like, oh, easy for you to say you're, like, rich and famous and blah, blah, blah. But it's like, the irony is, is that actually, like, one of the most depressed periods of my life, I was rich and famous. So, it's...
[18:39] And I imagine you probably have could have a similar narrative of like you achieved all these things. You made a shitload of money. You built a reputation for yourself and it didn't fix anything. But I think the question is, how do we inspire, help the people that are in that phase? Yeah. Right. And so I think what you said, I think, is the cool part is how do people have more daily, weekly, monthly lives that they're excited about? Yeah. And like one of my favorite phrases that I think everyone can copy is like, put it on the calendar. Yeah. Yeah.
[19:07] Put on the fucking calendar. Like, what are you looking forward to in your week even? Yeah. Right. Like you were every Monday I journal and I'm like, what am I looking forward to this week?
[19:17] Like, and I just write things out. And guess what? If there's nothing, make up some shit. Yeah. Like, it's like, I got to hang out with Mark Manson. I'm going to get married on Friday. Saturday, I'm going to the rodeo. You know, like, like, that's like, that's the thing. That's that's the trifecta. Mark, marriage, rodeo. Rodeo. Yeah. But I do think we we assume conditionally when we get there, we're going to be happy. And it just doesn't it's not the case. You can actually create the happiness now and then grow with that. Yeah.
[19:41] But it is interesting because what I heard you say is that over time, you're like, OK, how am I spending my work? Who am I? My friends. Who is my significant other? And then you've made these changes so that, yeah, now you yes, you have the money and this attention, but also the life is the way you want. Yeah, I think you nailed it with the being excited for something, having something to look forward to. It's funny, my my follow up book, Everything is Fucked.
[20:07] Is really just about that. And that book was part therapy for me because what I realized is that the velocity of my success kind of robbed me of looking forward to things. Like, I didn't know what to look forward to. I didn't have anything in my life.
[20:26] to that was on the horizon to chase, to be excited about, to work towards. Instead, I was like, I had this scarcity mentality of like, okay, you got all that. Like, don't fuck it up. Right? Like now just keep it. And that's a horrible place to be. And I agree. Like you can find that excitement and that, that optimism for what's next. Um.
[20:49] Regardless of where you are in your career, in your life, what age you are, how much money you have, et cetera. But it's so crucial. It's so important. Next question. What do you give a fuck about that most people don't? I think I give a fuck to like a non-normal person.
[21:08] non-normal degree about just the people I have in my life. Okay. Just like, that was the first thing in mind. Just how much I'm like obsessed with like having really high quality, mostly men that we have. It's like a tribe. Naked yoga. Naked yoga, dude. These guys, I mean.
[21:24] No, I mean, I think most people care about their friends. I just think like I've been very intentional about who I've surrounded myself with. And it's not not they're all like multimillionaire people, but they're all just such weirdos. Like I have this guy, Eric, he's like, you got to buy bonk coin. I was like, sure, I'll buy bonk coin. You know, like I just like love this fucking guy. And he's like, all right, we're gonna go spearfishing. I'm like, dude, let's go fucking spearfishing. Yeah. Or, you know, Ian, I was feeling sad last night. He just he shows up. He's like, let's go take a fireball shot and let's go for a mountain bike ride.
[21:50] Yeah. And so I don't know if people are putting the right optimistic people around themselves as much as I care about that. And I think that's really saved me through a lot of the darker, harder times in my life. How are you intentional about that? I think right now I'm capped. I cap it at around 18.
[22:06] And so you've got like a quota. You want to get off? You're going to be off. Yeah. There's like a waiting list. No, I think as I say it, I get there's irony that everyone has friends. I just think that in terms of give fucks, like I give a lot of fucks about who I'm around. You give a lot of fucks about the caliber of the people you're around and then the quality of the friendship. Yeah. In terms of just like talking to them, seeing them, emailing with them, texting with them. Do you think your tolerance for...
[22:31] drama, bullshit, toxicity is very low. Within my friend's stuff, yeah, but then I think it spills over to other things. And so the people I run, it's not just about success, it's just people that inspire me. And I'd say one of the commonalities is optimism. And that they're just optimistic people in different areas. So like my buddy Tynan, we're like really big sauna guys now, sauna and pinball. And so we're just like...
[22:54] You know, I'm 42 with earrings driving a Miata here. That's what I did today, just to give you a heads up, just to give you the picture. But it's just having these people that are doing interesting things in life that inspire me or as I'm doing these things. Like my buddy, Adam Gilbert, he was just like, man, dude, I'm so proud of you for this book. I know you said you wanted to do it and you did it. Yeah. And I think more people, it's like who's around you, right? And that's definitely something I've been hyper selective on and it's really carried me. Yeah. And you can find him in a lot of ways and it takes time, but just being mindful of like,
[23:23] Who is around you is going to inspire you to do those kind of things. Meaning if you're around a bunch of people who have kids, you're probably going to be maybe have kids. The other thing I'd say I don't give as much fucks about. I love being I like attention. I think more than most. I've been really happy about those. The two friends. And I'm happy being public.
[23:40] Yeah, I love it. When someone comes up to me and they're like, dude, I think I, I think I know you, but I don't, I don't, you know, I'm like, yeah, let's do selfie. They're like, really? I'm like, yeah, I like, I like attention and I get it. It's because of my ego. And I'm okay with that. I think other people are maybe like, oh, you know, I want to help people. It's like, I like how people, I just like also be in public. I'm happy with that.
[24:01] I mean, I think some of it is ego. I, I, I've definitely come to the conclusion that it's very personality driven. Um, I particularly learned this hanging around Will, Will Smith. Um, that was such a flex right there. That, that no one can fucking relate to. Yeah. I was thinking about Will Prince William. Okay. Yeah.
[24:19] But no, but like him and his family and his friends, it was interesting because everybody around him is also ridiculously famous. Well, not everybody, but like a lot of the people that he runs with. And it's interesting because he genuinely loves being famous. Like he fucking loves it. Like he...
[24:39] loves going into a grocery store. Like, his security flips the fuck out. But he's like, he's like, oh, Whole Foods, let's go buy something. And he just like beelines and like gets out of the car and goes in. And his security's like, oh, God, oh, shit. Fuck. All right, here we go. You know, and he'll like go into a Whole Foods and get mobbed by 20 people. And he's like so happy. He's like,
[25:00] He's having a ball. He loves people. He loves taking photos. He loves joking with them. He loves smiling with them. He loves hugging them. And I was like, damn. The people around him told me, they said, you know, that's actually really rare. Like most celebrities...
[25:16] are like a little bit paranoid. They kind of resent the public. They, you know, they're scared to go out. Like, he fucking loves it. He loves it. And I've thought about that recently. You know, there are some people in our space that I know –
[25:33] Really resent that aspect, you know being recognized in public people coming up to you in a restaurant Yeah, I think that the two parts for for everyone out there is number one It's just accepting who you are. I think that's what's taking me till 40 almost. Yeah, like okay I like starting businesses. I'm gonna teach other people do it. I like I like being some attention. It's okay Yeah, and I found a partner who's like great go make some videos. Yeah, my my ex was always like don't make any videos Why do you want attention?
[25:58] And that was like kind of the negative reinforcement. Did you have weird things with Will post the whole stuff happened? Because your association and how you, you know. So I got a lot of dumb emails being like, I can't believe you, you know, like this guy or spent two, three years with this guy, whatever. I ended up writing a big piece on my website and sending it out in my newsletter.
[26:19] not defending the slap per se, but just being like, dude, he's human. And just like us, he has insecurities and flaws and issues in his life. And like, I never pretended, like if you actually go read the book, it's all there. Like it's all in that book. Like he has a long history of insecurity around the women in his life. He has a long history of violent outbursts at inappropriate times.
[26:48] Given the nature of that book, like I'm just forced to see him as a normal human being. Like I would tell people, I'm like, okay, imagine a good friend of yours that you've been hanging out with a lot, got drunk in a bar and hit somebody and it was completely inappropriate and they were totally in the wrong and they got thrown out of the bar. Would you stop being friends with them? No, you'd just be like, dude, what were you thinking? Like, come on, get your shit together. Yeah.
[27:15] And you, you know, take them home and hang out with them the next weekend, right? Like, it doesn't...
[27:21] It's not like a thing. But it's weird given the nature of the fame, the setting. It's funny. I was thinking about my book and the story for all of us is that we're all going to make fuck ups. Yeah. Business and relationships, maybe not at the Oscars in front of the whole world. But these different things. And I think that come back to the coffee challenge. You do it and you're like.
[27:46] okay, this wasn't, this didn't feel good, but I can do it again. And eventually, yeah, things will work out and things will get better. And I think that's nice not to drop him. And I appreciate your perspective on that. I'm a big fan of, of being nonjudgmental, um, as much as possible. And especially these days, right? Like it's, I think we're a little bit too judgmental as a culture. We write people off too easily. Um,
[28:14] You know, it's like even a simple tweet that we don't like or a political view we don't agree with. You know, it's just like, oh, my God, I can't be around this person. This person's horrible. It's like, really? No. Are they really? Like, no, they're not.
[28:31] Yeah, they're just human. Maybe they're misinformed. Maybe you're misinformed. Like, who knows? Yeah, it was the early days of esports. I was like really big into the early days of esports. Back in like the early 2000s. I played a lot Quake and Unreal and I used to go to these tournaments and actually won a little bit of money playing them. And it was funny because, you know, all the guys competing in these tournaments were like 18, 20, 21, 16. So.
[28:55] you'd be online with them, playing against them, and people just talk so much shit, so much shit to each other. And they get really worked up, like really upset. And so every single tournament, there was always some beef going on between this guy and that guy, or this team and that team. And people were like, we're gonna kick your ass at the tournament in August, like, no, like physically. Like, you know, we're gonna find you in the lobby and beat the fuck out of you.
[29:21] And so there was always this like drama and beef and it's like, oh, man, the tournament's coming up and like so and so is like going to fight this guy in the parking lot and all this stuff. And then the tournament shows up. And first of all, it's a bunch of fat nerds.
[29:37] like haven't, haven't left their, their basement in like six months. And, uh, second of all, by like the, by within six hours, everybody's hanging out at McDonald's together, like laughing, you know, like getting along, being friends, having a great time. There's something about being behind a screen that just, it makes it easy to dehumanize people and, and take the single worst aspect about them and assume that is their entire identity.
[30:03] It's definitely the judgmental part. And I think a lot of times what I'm reflecting on for myself in terms of giving fucks or not is what am I lacking or feeling in myself? What's really going on with me? Like, I see this person who's got more fame and I'm like, what is really going on with you? No. Like, is there ever an amount that you're going to feel good? It's like, no. Okay. So let's work through that. Yeah. And let's be understanding of that. And then once you have that for yourself, you're like, have more fame, go, you go get, become a billionaire, get, get more subs, get 10 wives, whatever it is, you know, that you want. And I think that's true for all of us. Yeah.
[30:30] Like it's, it's accepting, okay, what is this really teaching me for myself? It's the, the variation in human value systems and beliefs. And I mean, humans are so adaptable. They're just so insanely adaptable. It's crazy. And especially as someone who has spent a lot of his adult life, like researching human behavior and human nature and relationships and psychology, like it's the older I get, the more I'm just like.
[30:58] Yeah, dude, just do whatever works for you. It's none of my fucking business. Like, I don't, I don't, I'm not going to pretend to know like what's right for, for you. Um, and I, but I think that's, um, particularly if we judge ourselves harshly, we have a tendency to want to fit everybody else into our particular box. And, um,
[31:22] There's like a one to one relationship with like how hard we are on ourself versus how hard we are on others. And I think if we can like ease off ourselves. I mean, I see it with Million Dollar Weekend. I'm seeing people literally like, I made I made one sale. Like someone literally emailed me this morning. Fifteen dollars. Yeah. I'm like, fuck, yes. That's awesome. Let's go celebrate.
[31:38] And they're like, ah, you know, I'm like, that's it. That's it. And you know what you do tomorrow? You do another one. And then you do it over enough time. You're like, holy shit, it's actually working. I'm like, yes, that's it. But I think we have this really intense criticism if it's like not all or nothing right away. At least that's been my own experience. And what I see now, it's like positive self-talk, give yourself props and just stick with these things over some period of time. Yeah. Simple but difficult. Right? It's like...
[32:02] It really is just making a $15 sale over and over and over again, year after year after year, scaling like 5% to 10% a year over 10, 20 years.
[32:14] You know, that right there is like a $10 million business. Right. So so like. Yeah, I think you're actually a great example of business success that people don't think of it in a process, which I do think there is a process, which is you started blogging. I think you had an e-course or digital book earlier. Yeah, I had a couple e-books and then I launched my first course in 2009.
[32:35] Yeah. And I think that's the whole thing people are missing. They're not starting. Yeah, they're thinking they're not ready and they're ready today. They can literally do it right now. Just like you did. You post a blog, post another blog, post another blog, post another blog, launch a course. One course doesn't work. Eventually, of course, works. Yeah. Then you write a book models, which I've read. I've also read Wilson's book. I didn't read the second year book. The second fucks. I gave a fuck about that one.
[32:57] But I think the thing that people are missing out on is that like by taking action, you're having courage, you're getting confidence and that's leading you to these places. But you'll never get there sitting on the sideline. Yes. And people don't see that slow ramp up. Right. So it's like there's hundreds of blog posts over. Yeah.
[33:13] five, six, seven years, right? Like, it was funny actually when Subtle Art came out because in the publishing world, I was a debut author. This was like the first thing I ever did, right? And so I would go to these like literary festivals and publishing events and cocktail parties hosted by Penguin or whatever. And all the people in the industry are like, how does it feel? How does it feel to be an overnight success? And I'm like, dude,
[33:41] I've been grinding on the internet for eight years. Like, there's nothing overnight about this. Exactly. Yeah. What did that ramp up look like for you? So you... Fuck, man. The ramp's been long, dude. So you famously got fired from Facebook. Yeah. 2004? 2005. 2006. I joined Facebook 2005, fired 2006. Okay. Joined Mint 2007, fired 2008. Okay.
[34:10] Are you just unemployable? I'd like to be employable. I'm actually impressed when the people, we have job applications at AppSumo, and I was like, there's no fucking way they'd ever hire me here. I'm like, there's no way these people would ever hire me. I think my journey felt frustrating. It felt very depressing. It felt lonely. It felt...
[34:28] I wanted to prove I was still so angry. I think I'm still angry, which is kind of weird to put out loud. I'm trying to move into the love phase where I'm not so trying to prove people wrong. I'm just trying to prove myself right. And so for the 20s, it was like...
[34:42] you know, living at my mom's house for a few years, living in my aunt's basement for a year, living on floors for a year. And I was just trying to like find a way to feel worthy. Yeah. To find a way to prove that like, these people that fired me, like I can do it, I can be it. And it wasn't happening. It was like, it was happening or it'd get taken away or it'd happen and I would sabotage it, it would happen or I'd start drinking. It would happen and,
[35:05] I think at 30, I moved here to Austin, I left the bay. And I think that was a geographical nice shift of what do I really care about? I was like, I wanna be where it's cheap, good looking people, friendly people, better weather. So that then, I think that shifted me to start moving into the life of like, okay,
[35:21] This is how I want to be living. This is what I actually this is cool for me. Like what matters to me. And I think probably where I felt like the success maybe started aligning to how I felt about my insides is probably around 40. Wow. But around 30, I was like, I've the free line of promotion is my jam. Yeah.
[35:39] I've always been doing it, but like, is there a way to make it a business? And then it actually started working. And I think at that point you create your own jail. So one of the lines that my buddy said I really love is you don't trade your nine to five for a five to nine. Right. Kind of like you. You create this book because you wanted a book and then you created this own like, oh, fuck. Yeah. I have my own prison of it. And in my observation from you externally, it feels like you're releasing yourself. Yes.
[36:02] Well, there's, that's a good description of it. Yeah. Where it's like, I watch your content and there's no one making you do it. And it's like, why is Mark doing it? Cause he fucking wants to. Right. People are like, why do you do? Cause I fucking like it. Yeah. Like I get to meet my idols and I get to learn from people and learn marketing and have fun and connect with people. Like, yeah. What else am I supposed to do here in this planet? And then I ended up being afraid of AppSumo. Hmm. So it started doing really well. It's kind of the same with the book. Like,
[36:25] As I was putting AppSumo together, it started making millions. I didn't pay myself a lot. I was scared I was going to ruin it like my dad did with his businesses. So I left and I hired someone else to run it. He quit one day. He just calls me and quit. And while he was, this is the craziest part. While he was running AppSumo, his name is Eamon Al-Abdullah, I was making $2 to $3 million a year.
[36:45] And I was feeling so, which sounds like such a bitch thing. And I'll just clarify. It sounds like such a bitch thing. I was probably the most unsatisfied I've ever been with life. Wow. And it's not the money is nice. I wasn't really spending it, but I just wasn't being challenged in a way that I felt proud of myself. Right. And that's the whole secret for everyone out there. That is the secret. Yeah. Find the things you're proud of for yourself. Not for Mark, not for Noah, not for your parents, just for yourself. Well, it's funny because I think money can be a vehicle.
[37:10] to do something that makes you proud for yourself. But people mistake the vehicle for the thing, right? So they think that it's like, oh, if I just make a million dollars, then I'll feel good. And it's like, well, no, no, you need to make a million dollars doing something that makes you feel good. Yes. That's the key, yeah. I teach the freedom number, which is like, how do you make the least amount of money possible to do the thing you actually want?
[37:31] Yeah. And then guess what? By doing that, you'll make the most money possible. I like that. And as you talk about, it's way lower than people think. It's way more achievable. Mine's $3,000. I mean, now my lifestyle is crazier. I think it's like $25,000 a month. For me, it seems crazy. I think that's a lot. But coming back to the experience, and I think the point for others out there is that aim and quit. And I think there's these moments where how do you either have someone quit on you or force yourself into the thing that you know in your head?
[37:59] I think we all know this voice. Do you know what I'm talking about? There's a voice in our head that's like, I probably should do this thing, but I just don't want to because I'm scared. Yeah, I probably should do this thing. But what's going to happen if it doesn't work out? And that's the thing to do. Yeah. For everyone. And the rewards on the other side of it are always better. And so Eamon quit. I came back and then I this is around I was 38, 39. I was like, I'm going to totally fuck all this up.
[38:24] I'm going to totally fuck all these people up. Yeah. I'm going to ruin all this business. Yeah. And I definitely started fucking everything up. I know you want a happy story. But I came back and I like changed everything. I fired people. I was like super egotistical around these things. And I think you said something earlier, which is true, which is humans and life is more resilient and it's never as dramatically bad as we think. Right.
[38:47] But over the past three years, I think in terms of making it, I feel like I made it where as a CEO, if you would, we did, I do CEO surveys for my leadership team every quarter. And it's basically like, do you trust the team? Do you trust the vision? Do you trust Noah? And it was like red.
[39:03] Red, which is amazing, right? Because it can only get better. Hopefully. Yeah. And so, you know, every quarter I have the same survey and I say, give me feedback. What's going on? And so in the past three years, I was in a meeting with Alona, who's our COO on Monday. And she was like, yeah, how are you doing as CEO? And I was like, I'm a fucking CEO here. Yeah. And she's like, fuck yeah, you are. And she's like, I love that for you.
[39:27] Which I kind of hate that phrase. But it's been my own journey. And this is the point I teach and what I encourage is that we all have a journey. And you get to be the star. You get to be the Will Smith, the Mark Manson, the No Kagan, the you in these journeys. And I think business is the coolest one. And so in terms of making it for myself and feeling all this stuff, I think I've just embraced the things that are going and accepted myself with it. Like that I'm not always going to be great. That I'm going to be in a meeting.
[39:53] You know and be emo that I'm gonna maybe say the wrong thing and it's okay I can fix it the next day. I can keep practicing and getting better and better I definitely feel like a lot of leadership is understanding your own weaknesses So that you can build your team around compensating for them, right? Like knowing what where you're really strong and where you can kind of Carry your weight with the organization and then where you're weak and it's like, uh, I need I
[40:20] Yeah. I need to make everybody else like everybody already knows. I need it. I need them to know that I know so that we can like build systems to kind of compensate for, you know, whatever our weird tick is. Yeah. Let's go back.
[40:34] To the Facebook and Mint jobs. I'm curious, how did you get hired at those companies so early? And then what caused the firing in each case? So I think the technique that I would recommend for everyone out there is how do you, you know, hiring is all about probability. It's probability. It's what is the likelihood you will succeed at this job? And so what you want to do is increase your probability to 100%.
[40:57] that you will succeed in what they're doing. And so with Facebook and mint, I was always building my own things. Didn't mean it did well, but I built college up. No one's ever heard of these businesses. College up.org. It was Craigslist for college students. Okay. Ninja card.com discount cards for college students. HFG consulting was a marketing thing for college students. And then I put on conferences. So one, I was just active and I think it's good to show that you're in, take initiative.
[41:21] Second thing, when I applied for Facebook, I didn't have any connections. I had a day job at Intel. I didn't have like middle class family. Like I had two parents or three with a stepdad. But I didn't have any other advantage. So what my did, what my two advantages were in this, I would recommend people's one, just be active doing things. Right. And apply for jobs of things you like. I was using Facebook all the time. I was using it in my marketing. The second thing is when I went in for my job, I brought a lot of mock ups.
[41:46] So I showed them. I think this is one thing I think about in business and sales and marketing show people. Don't tell people. Yes. Show them. So I brought mock-ups. I was like, Facebook needs to do events. Facebook needs to do maps. And I brought mock-ups. And to be clear, I'm not a designer. It's like pen. Yeah. Right. Or I think I might've used Microsoft paint.
[42:04] at the time. So when I'm in there, they're like, this person's taking initiative, this person understands the customer, this person can do the work. So that's what happened at Facebook for me to get the job. And there was nothing else. Otherwise, I mean, I was just a desk job at Intel. I want to add, too, that we've been talking about these small business ideas, ask for a dollar, sell cookies for $15 or whatever. And it sounds so small and pedestrian when we talk about it. But as somebody who hires,
[42:31] That stuff stands out. Like, if somebody puts on their application, like, I have a side hustle selling cookies to my neighbors and it makes $1,000 a month or whatever, I'm like, okay, damn. That's worth more than, like, a Harvard MBA, in my opinion. Well, someone applied for a job with Absinthe. There's no shade on this person. But he was here and the skill was here. And that's fine. We all have gaps. Yeah.
[42:56] What are you doing about it? Are you reading a book? Are you taking a course? Are you doing meetings? How can you show that you're taking that initiative to close that gap in your skill level? And yeah, at Facebook, it was just my own interest in getting that job. And the same thing with Mint. And this is for everyone out there. When I applied for the job at Mint, I didn't even apply. I just was doing events. I was doing these conferences. And so I met Dave McClure. He's like, check out this Mint thing. And I truly think, go work on problems and businesses that solve problems you're excited about.
[43:25] Find things you're excited to have a solution for. And so I saw Mint, it was called My Mint, and I was like, this is fucking sick. This is just so sick. And they were hiring a director of marketing, and I was like, yeah, let me do it. And Aaron's like, you've never even done marketing. And so this is, by the way, I'm gonna share a thing. There's been studies that when men and women apply for jobs,
[43:45] Women only apply for things that they're all qualified for while men are just like, yeah, I'll figure it out. And I'm encouraging both sexes to go and apply. Yeah. Like, don't limit yourself because you're not fully qualified. And with Mint, I went to Aaron. I was like, can I have the job? He's like, dude, you don't even know how to do marketing. I was like, you're so right. Let me do this, man. Let me do this, Aaron. And again, in business, I always think of the phrase no brainer. How do I make it a no brainer for Aaron to just hire me? I said, let me put together a marketing plan for free.
[44:14] I'll spend all the time on it. You don't do anything. I'll show it to you. If you like it, you can pay me to execute it. And that's it. And there's no risk for you. You just you get a free marketing plan either way. I think I probably put in around 70 hours, give or take. And that plan is still online. And I went back to Aaron. I said, hey, here's here's your goal. Hundred thousand users within six months. Here's the customers. Here's the exact marketing techniques I'm going to execute on. You can pay me to do it. What do you think? He's like, yeah, I'll pay. So this comes back to.
[44:40] the probability that you're going to be able to do the job. The best way to show an employer that there's 100% probability that you can do the job is to go fucking do the job before you're hired. If you want to be in sales, bring them a customer. You want to bring marketing, bring them a plan. The other thing I want to highlight that you commented on is people trivialize or they reduce, marginalize things that can be significant. Right? So when you think about when I talk about getting a dollar, which is what I encourage. I literally in the book give everyone a dollar myself.
[45:10] Yeah, it's me. You gave me a dollar. And in the book. Thank you, by the way. You're welcome. You're welcome. Because it starts with a dollar. And the reason we do that is people don't realize the power of starting. And they trivialize that success. Oh, to start a million dollar business, you start with a million customers. No, you just start with one. Yeah. Like Airbnb, one of my favorite examples is a hundred billion dollar business. They started with an email to a conference.
[45:31] Hey, we have a couch. Does anyone want it? One sale, I think it was $150. Wow. That's $100 billion company today. But people are thinking, oh, no, there's all this other stuff. No, no, no. It literally just starts with one customer, with $1 today. And then that, over time, can build up to billion, trillion, different sized companies. It's the power of...
[45:50] Compound, not compound interest, but just compounding. Compound time. I think they're, I'm trying to think more through this and I don't have a great phrase, but it's compound success. Yeah. So it's finding something people are excited about. Right. And then how do I just find ways either myself or paying another person to stick with it? And you take that first dollar...
[46:07] reinvest it, improve. Then you go get $5, take that, reinvest, improve. And it's like, you just run that a thousand times and you end up with Airbnb or whatever. I mean, you end up with the subtle art. I'm not giving a fuck or I mean, or app sumo.com, which is, it's still unbelievable to me where we're at. Like I, I,
[46:25] I think yesterday's revenue was like a quarter million, which is, which is, yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But then, and oh, I can't do that. I literally started with a PayPal button and a $12 sale. Yeah. It was PayPal. And my whole backend was Gmail.
[46:38] All right. You were back in. My tech stack was Gmail. Yeah, my developer was this guy G, you know. And I think people don't realize it can be that simple. Like, I was on CNBC yesterday. Just, it was okay. Yeah. And they're like, how long does it take for a business? Like, how long should it take for you to know if a business works? I'm like, a day. A day.
[47:00] He's like, oh, no, no. But how long? I'm like, a day. Yeah. And I've done so many things where people did not want it. But there's something there about your writing. And I'm sharing both stories. Your writing are my business. You just you start it. They don't want it. OK, I'm going to start again. I'm going to start again. I'm going to start again. I'm going to start again. And that keeps leading you up to the point when you launch a book eight years later. Yeah. It's one of the things I the pieces of advice that I give a lot of people who are blogging or these days starting sub stacks or newsletters is I say, look, your first audience is going to be friends and family.
[47:29] And if they don't read it, you're fucked. You're completely fucked. So that's your first test is like, will my friends and family actually read this? And will they come back and read it again? Yeah. If they come back and read it again, because everybody's going to read it once to be nice. The question is, you know, post number four, five, six, seven.
[47:48] Do they come back and read it again? Second test is, do they show it to other people? Hmm. I would even add a third. Is that do you like it? That's part of it. I want I'm my biggest fan lately. Yeah, probably in the past more as my positivity and I've worked on it. I watch my content all the time. I like read this tweet. I'm like.
[48:06] Did I really write that? Not like to jerk off to myself in the mirror, but like literally I'm like, wow, it's not a bad thing to be proud of ourselves. Totally. It's a bad thing to be like arrogant and cocky and rude. I don't think that's appropriate, but to be proud of yourself is great. I think with any content,
[48:22] You have to like it first. If you don't like it, the audience feels. They know. They can tell. And they won't like it either. Like, it will feel off. It will feel inauthentic. Well, relating this to the business experience. So we launched a thing from the book called lawof100.com. And the idea is, like, just do 100 pieces of content. Yeah. Because it's so easy to, like, ah, this sucks. But just do 100. And then over time, if you get a little better at 100, you can make a good decision to quit.
[48:45] Because so many times in our life, I know I have, and I'm guessing others have too, we've quit before we wanted to, or we would quit, ah, if I just would have stuck with it. So finding a framework to say I'll quit at 100. But here's what's interesting about it. So some guy read the book, David Kennedy. He bought the domain, he built the site in a very quick amount of time, and then I bought it off him for $2,500. And now we have a free site, lawof100.com. I cannot beg people to use this site.
[49:11] Like, I'm like, hey, we've got 100. Go check it out. You can do 100 things. Do 100. And people are like. Nobody wants to do it. No one wants it. Yeah. Great. Because now I'm not going to spend the next six years kissing people's ass, begging to convince them to use something they don't even want. Yeah. But it got me practicing. OK, they I built David built it. We worked on it a bit. No one's really using. OK, cool. So last Friday.
[49:32] I do free office hours once a month on YouTube, just to hang out with the audience. I was like, none of you guys are using this. Yeah. Which is okay, great, tell me why. I don't know, I don't have a thing for 100, I don't have anything I'm trying to do, okay. Guys, here's another problem I'm noticing. If I wanted to sell Liquid Death, or if I wanted to sell AppSumo, if I want to sell something in under a minute, how can I sell something super quickly, besides Venmo or PayPal?
[49:58] It's just, I don't know. There's nothing. Yeah. For free. Like, there's nothing for free if you want to sell something in under a minute. And I was like, does anyone else have that problem? They're like, oh my God, yes. I'd love to test and validate, seeing if I could sell something really quickly. Not Shopify, not Gumroad, nothing. Just like under 60 seconds I can sell, get a customer. Mm-hmm.
[50:15] I'm like, and people like, oh my God, this, I have this fucking problem. And I was like, pay me. It's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I, I, I, my friend jokes. He's like, dude, no, a baller's got a ball. And I love balling, not balling in richness, but I like starting. I like hustling. So I said, everyone who wants this product, send me $10 right now.
[50:32] I got $500. Wow. And David, instead of building something for the next six months that no one's using, people were begging to have that product right away. So this week, David is delivering on what we told them, what they wanted and what we told them we would do.
[50:45] And so that's what people are doing backwards a lot of times in these businesses. They're not recognizing even a dollar is great. Yeah. And they're not finding problems that people are excited to read about from a content perspective or purchase from another business perspective. You know, I get emails all the time. Less these days, but back in the day, I used to get them all the time of like, hey, I'm starting a blog or I'm a new writer. Like, can you give me feedback? Can you read my stuff? Can you mentor me? And my response was always the same. It was.
[51:09] write 50 articles, and then come back and ask again. And nobody ever came back. And it was, I like to think, I mean, the cynical way of looking at it is just that nobody did it. But I like to think that
[51:23] There are some that did do it. But then after 50 articles, they realize there's nothing Mark can tell me. I don't need it. I've already found this other thing. I've worked my way to this other topic that's working for me. I like to hope that, at least. It's going to get people the benefit of the doubt.
[51:41] I do think people are going to be shocked with consistency. Yes. I noticed, and this is a thing I'm trying to encourage people the opposite of, because I think it's a big mistake, is these big ambitious goals. I think people need to be less ambitious for longer periods of time. Interesting. And that's something that I've really embraced where, like, when I was starting AppSumo, I was like, billion dollars, 100 million emails, trillion, da-da-da-da-da. And then what happens, it's like you're sprinting.
[52:05] And you're just always fucking sprinting. Yeah. And then it's like, yeah, it's going to be hard to sustain a sprint unless you're one of those guys from Nike. You know, those guys are really impressive. Like, yeah, but it's hard to do that. And then success happens in decades. And so when we're not an overnight book success in year one, but great. Did you just write one article this year? Then next year, get two. And so with AppSumo, our growth goals are 7%.
[52:28] Nice. 7%. Like, in Silicon Valley, we have advisors. And I think it's good to get coaches. I'm a huge fan. They're like, dude, if you're not billing, you're totally failing. I'm like, bro, we make $100 million. I make $3 million a year. This is insane. Yeah. Like, we're all very fucking happy over here. Yeah. Our customer's happy. Our partner's happy. And we can do this until I die. And so with other people out there, I'm seeing them with Million Dollar Weekend, where they're like, I'm going to post every day this whole year. It's like, why don't you just post once this month?
[52:55] And the next one, just do another one and another one. And just to keep doing that over a time period, eventually these things will work out. Yeah. My goal for the book is a thousand Amazon reviews. That was my whole goal. And I failed. I don't know if I failed because it was. I mean, it's only been out for like two weeks or something. And I think that that was what I learned from that. It was like, hey, I want to get a thousand people to leave a review within 30 days of launch. And after 30 days launch, it's 798. Yeah.
[53:20] Okay. And so it wasn't some like, I need to sell 100,000 books to feel worthy. It was like, can I just help 1,000 people? Right. And I didn't hit in 30 days last week. That was when the deadline was. And I was like, you know what? It's okay. I mean, it's still 789 people. It's still 789. And I think that's the whole point, right? Like when you have these crazy-ass goals, you're like, I didn't hit 1,000. This fucking sucks. Trash. It's like...
[53:42] Some 98 people are excited about what just happened. And then there's more people. And just day by day, let's just keep helping more people. What do you give too few fucks about? Oof. I need to think more about my fuckery. What do I give too little fucks about? Organic food?
[53:59] All these fucking people, organic food, overpaying for goddamn meals. I don't know how you go to a meal here. I don't know how people without entrepreneurship afford life out here. They don't. They don't. I went to get passport photos because we're getting married. You have to do for residency because she's not American. Dude, they charged me $84 for it was like four, no, eight photos for $84 for passport photos. I give a fuck about overpaying.
[54:24] That, yeah. Okay, we found it. You give too many fucks for over. I give lots of fucks. I love a good price. I give a few fucks about fancy cars. Any fucks about that? No, but too few. So too little. Too few. It implies that it's something that you should give a fuck about more, but you don't. And we'll get to the too much. Yeah, no, you got me excited on this over. I was like, fuck.
[54:48] I was triggered right there. We can start there. What do you give too many fucks about? What do you think you should give fewer fucks about, but you're just like, ah. Yeah, definitely overpaying. Yeah. Well, you've got the right business. Yeah, we have a deal site. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our whole thing is about good value. Yeah. It does bother me when I see people giving advice, and I'm like, get advice from people that have done the thing you want, not people that will tell you the things you want to hear. Yeah.
[55:13] So I think that still bothers me. Let's take a little diversion into YouTube because you and I are both, we're both like old school content people. And both of us have really gotten into YouTube lately. Yeah. Just because we love it. It's fun. It's exciting. What has your experience been like? Our audience is business underdogs.
[55:33] And it helps them. I was doing all these videos where I'm like asking people on the streets, and going up to houses, and going up to boats. Those videos are just fucking tremendously anxiety driven. Like I have like, it's basically a month every time before I do it. I was gonna ask like, first of all, how many people do you have to approach? A lot. And add. That does not sound fun. And yeah, what is that process like? Like how? In those videos? Yeah, like is it? I think it's how everyone is feeling in their lives, but maybe in just different scales. Like I basically spend the whole month
[56:02] aren't you rich? Like, why are you doing this? Like, who are you proving to it? A lot of it's also judgmental, by the way. I'm going into people who look rich. Most of the richest people, like the guy who had a private jet that's worth nine to 10 figures, was in a Miller High Life sweater.
[56:18] Miller High Life. And he's got a dirty car. And it was an M3. It was not a crazy M3. And it's like, it's interesting how much we're judging that this person on Instagram or in person must be successful when most of the flashiest people, most of the richest people are not flashing. They don't want to. But yeah, it was a lot of realizing. I think the empowerment of that is that the power of asking. You literally can go up to a restaurant owner.
[56:40] Or you can go to someone who you rent your apartment from. How'd you buy this apartment? And start realizing there's so much that they'll be excited to share and teach you. And I think that was probably the underlying thing I think most people can take away, which is go ask people. Like I live in a multi-million dollar house. People come to my house.
[56:56] I don't know how they don't fucking ask me like, dude, what'd you do? There's weird propriety around money. Like it's not polite to ask. Cause a lot of people get uncomfortable with stuff like that. Asking is a skill. Yeah. And it's a skill you can practice and get better. So for instance, when I, the whole reason is I did a hundred videos that no one watched. So we had to do something different and that's how we started knocking on doors. Right. So if you go to someone's house and when I started doing, I'd be like, hey, um, how much do you make? Right. What do you do for living to afford this house? They're like, who are you? Fuck you.
[57:25] And I keep, I keep waiting. I'm waiting for the day someone does it to me. Yeah. I'm kind of waiting that there'll be, someone's going to do it at my house. Come to my house. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll be like, go fuck yourself. But yeah. Oh dude. Yeah. With my girlfriend and you know, our child and everything. I'm like, don't you open door to no one.
[57:41] Like I'm like binoculars on. I got my gun. You know, Texas AR-15 outside the door. Yeah, you're in the right state. We are. That sort of thing. On average, how many doors do you have to knock on before you get somebody who will like actually sit and talk with you? It depends in the neighborhood. Okay. So...
[57:57] Newport Beach, California, eight out of 10. Wow. It's getting so many yeses, we pushed it. So we're like, let's get a house tour. OK. So not only are we going to find out what they do, we're going to see if they'll let us in their house with me, a film guy, and a producer, and just walk around. That's sick. So two things that were crazy about it, specifically these videos, people are getting rich in so many cool ways. And I do these rejection goals. I'm going to like, all right, let's get at least 10 noes. And then they kept saying yes. It was problematic.
[58:22] But we go to this lady Jan's house. It's on the cliff. It's probably a $15 million house. And it's just the power of asking. I knock on the door. I was like, hey, I love you. And so how I ask, I shifted. I love your house. Houses on this street are just unbelievable. So we just wanted to come compliment you and say hello. Oh, thank you.
[58:37] Yeah, we're doing a documentary for YouTube about Newport Beach and your house is just so amazing. Like, is this how awesome is this to live in it? And she's proud of herself. She's like, and not in a room. She's like, she's like, my family comes over. This is such a nice house. Like, look at this view. I was like, Jan. Yeah, we love it. We were just we were admiring it from before. Can you what you guys do? Because it's so expensive here. Yeah. To be able to afford a house. Oh, actually, my husband sold strawberries.
[59:00] We were in the strawberry business. No way, really? Strawberries? What? No, come on. Like, strawberry. She's like, yeah. When he was in high school, he had a fruit stand. And that fruit stand, by him staying with it over a long period of time, he was able to sell it, and now we were able to buy this house for our family. A lot of our audience is trying to just learn what to do with their career. So, yeah. Know what's really important in life, your core values. You know, if you're successful, you've got to give back.
[59:26] But I think the thing I encourage is asking is a skill you get better at. Yeah. So as you shift it, it's different. People are more likely to answer things than you realize. We create these narratives that they don't want to help us, that this girl will say no to us, that I can't get that raise, that they won't be my, that's our own story. It's not theirs. And I do think it's so cool how people are getting rich in all these different ways. In Newport Beach, it was veterinarians, doctor clinics, architecture. But what's crazy about that, in the content I've created, you have to find things that are repeatable.
[59:54] I think that's the whole like a holy grail of content is like, what do I like that people want? And I can do it over and over. When I go on shows and talk about things, almost everyone's interested in the billionaires. No one cares that I stood outside an airport for 48 hours. Like they're like, OK, cool. But like, tell me about that rich billionaire and what about them? Dude, I tried to do a man on the street video.
[1:00:12] Oh, last year. And we went out to the Venice boardwalk. And first of all, I just got shot down over and over. And like people, it was the sort of thing like I'd walk up, I had a mic and I'd like start walking towards the person and they would just like literally turn around, walk the other direction. I was like, oh my God. What was the video about? I wanted to do a video around like what's something that you've always wanted to do, but never had the courage to.
[1:00:35] And then you would help them do it? Yeah. Oh, dude, if they would have just gone up to the mic. Yeah. Well, it was, first of all, nobody wanted to talk to me. And then the few people that did talk to me, they just kind of like froze and stuttered and said like, oh, I don't know. And it was absolutely exhausting. Over two hours, I probably tried to talk to like 15, 20 people. Maybe I think two stopped and talked to me.
[1:00:56] And neither of them had a clear answer. You can have a great concept on paper. Just the way you lit up and you're like, oh, that sounds awesome. I thought you were going to take that transition moment. Yeah. And internally, that's how the team was too. Like, this is a banger idea. This is so sick. Then once you get out there and start doing it, it didn't translate totally to real life or the camera. And also, after about two or three hours, I just looked at my producer and I was like, I fucking hate this.
[1:01:24] Like, this is absolutely awful. I'm so, I'm like, talk about, yeah, anxiety, just dejection. I'm friends with some of the guys in Yes Theory, and I, like, texted one of them. And I was, because they did a bunch of man on the street videos. And I texted him. I was like, how do you do this shit? He's like, oh, bro, it takes days. Like, days to find the right person. Days for a 10-minute video. Yeah. What video on the other side of that?
[1:01:50] are you most proud of? There are two. So we've done, we did like five, internally we call them coaching videos. So we did five coaching videos with five fans or six fans actually, where basically I took fans who have some sort of problem in their life and kind of coached them through the problem. They were very hard.
[1:02:08] Like logistically, they were expensive, emotionally difficult, just tons of energy, tons of shooting. But one of them that did well, we worked with this guy out in Atlanta, just really shy dude, like never kind of gets out of his shell, never gets out of his comfort zone. And we just put him through the most ridiculous social situations over and over again.
[1:02:29] And we had like, his best friend was with us, who was a blast. And we were like, put this guy in a chicken costume, we made him go talk to people in the mall, we like made him pretend like he was a flat earther and was like handing out flyers to people. Yeah, the poor guy. I can't imagine how torturous it was for him, but it was funny, because after, by the end of three days, he was like impervious. You know, like by the end, we got to the end of three days and he was cool, like he didn't give a shit. Like did not give a single fuck. And so the last part of the video is that he had to put on a chicken suit and go,
[1:02:59] convince a stranger to go skydiving with them. It was amazing. And that video, it's a really fun video. So much work went into it. So much like getting the narrative right. And then we had to add kind of like some educational moments and then like shooting those educational moments. Like it is a...
[1:03:15] totally zany, crazy video. But I'm really proud of that one. And then the other one that I'm really proud of, we kind of did on a lark. Like one of the people we were coaching, she was a Korean-American woman. She was trying to start a business. And it involved going to Korea and like buying a bunch of ceramics there and bringing them back to the US. And so it kind of became clear at a certain point that to make it a good video, like fill out the story, we probably needed to go to Korea. I was like, God damn it, dude. This is...
[1:03:42] That's not what I thought I signed up for. Like Korea is going through a pretty severe mental health crisis. And if you look at the data, the mental health stuff is very different than the U.S. mental health stuff. You know, U.S. has its own mental health crisis, but they look completely different and the cultures are completely different. So I was really curious, like, why is that?
[1:04:01] So we went over there. We did kind of this Anthony Bourdain style, me and Sol, like going and talking to people. I interviewed a couple of psychiatrists, an expat there, and just like really dove deep into the culture and like why this was going on and turned it into this like really beautiful 25-minute documentary type thing. And the audience loved it. Everybody was like, do more of these. That's rad. Yeah. I got to go to Bill Gates's house when I worked at Microsoft as an intern.
[1:04:27] And I remember asking him, like, did you, did you think that you were going to get here? Yeah. And I don't think anyone can think that. I don't think they can picture. And like, I'm in my house and it's nowhere near as nice as Mark's. Let's just be clear. You don't know that. You don't know that. No. But I go in my house and I'm like, this is so fucking cool. I can't believe, I can't believe they let me stay here. But the reality is that. Who's they? I know. The landlord. The landlord. The landlord.
[1:04:52] But the reality though, and this is the important part for everyone, is that that started with Mark 15 years ago. Right. That started with Noah 15, 20 years ago that you can get to this place. Yeah. But you're never going to get there if you don't get started. Yeah. When subtle art was number one everywhere, for some reason, a really common interview question that I got was, did you expect this? And my reaction was always...
[1:05:12] Does anybody expect, like, if I expected this, I would be the hugest asshole. I would be so fucking narcissistic. Like, dude, nobody expects this. It's, you just hope the next thing is going to be slightly better than the current thing. And you just repeat that a hundred times.
[1:05:32] I like thinking to myself, like, what am I going to thank myself for today in the future? Like, what am I going to today? Today, now, today, date. In five years, whatever. Like, dude, I'm so glad I'm having a kid. Like, that I'm going to stay healthy. Yeah. And maybe drink a little less. Yeah. Maybe a little bit more. It's like, okay, cool. Do it now. And I'll be thanking myself in five years. Liz Gilbert has this awesome framework where she doesn't see herself as, like, a single person through time. She sees herself as, like, every moment in time is a separate Liz. And so, she will, like, thank her past Liz's for doing things for her. Yeah.
[1:06:01] And then she will like whenever there's something she doesn't want to do, she's like, well, future Liz is going to thank me for this. Yeah, maybe I should do it. Have you not grappled, but how have you processed the notoriety and the change of your attention over time? That was something we were chatting about. You mean the attention I receive? Yeah. Just like how have you experienced all that and how do you...
[1:06:23] Like you have insecurities about it. I guess I was curious how you're processing all of it. There's definitely a hedonic adaptation effect that happens where like a video that got 100K views 10 years ago, I'd be like, oh my god, 100K views. Now it's like, oh, that's a poorly performing video. So your brain adapts very quickly.
[1:06:43] So launching Everything is Fucked was very difficult, even though it was number one on the New York Times, is about to hit a million copies, like all this crazy, like they had a massive preorder, did all these. Like I remember my agent telling me, she said, if this book came out in a vacuum, like just a random author put out this book, it would be one of the biggest successes of the entire year in the publishing industry. But because it came after Subtle Art, everybody was kind of like, oh, yeah.
[1:07:13] You know, so there's a brutal adaptation that happens very quickly. It's like whatever big number you hit, that becomes the new normal. And anything below that feels like a loss. I think that's the hardest thing to deal with mentally.
[1:07:28] with this industry, with being a creator. You love the growth, you want the growth. I mean, it's the same in business, right? It's like- You want every year to get better? Yeah, it's if you have one year where you're down 7%, that feels like you took an L, right? You know, even though you're still up 300% than five years ago or 10 years ago, whatever it is. I think over time I have gotten better at accepting that and processing it. You know, you can't win everything. You still like,
[1:07:56] You still have to love it and stand by it. In terms of attention, I don't know. I think I've just gotten better, again, to bring up Will. One of the biggest lessons I took from him was that fame and attention is just another system to be managed. So he is so famous that...
[1:08:18] He has people on his team whose sole responsibility is managing his exposure to the outside world. They like plan schedules and days around managing that. His hotels are booked based on that. His restaurants are booked based on like, dude, there's secret back doors fucking everywhere, by the way, that that celebrities and like statesmen and politicians and stuff use. Like you can pull up there. Like most.
[1:08:42] big famous restaurants and hotels have some secret backdoor entrance that nobody knows about. Just a quick little factoid there. That's cool. Yeah, it's really cool. But I learned that. I was like, it's just, you can manage it, but you have to manage it. It's a system, like any other system in your business, you have to plan for it, you have to create contingencies, train up a team to be responsible for it. And so I see, very much see it that way, as like understanding
[1:09:09] When I'm going to be in a place where I can probably be recognized, being mentally prepared for that. And then also just getting really good about saying no to things I don't want to do. You know, it's like it's some speaking gig or an interview or media, you know, go on some TV show. And it's just like default is no. No.
[1:09:28] Unless there's some special reason to do it. Yeah. Did you have like an ego death? Do you mean ego death in like a... Kind of like a spiritual sense of experiencing no self? Or do you mean ego death is just like a deep humbling? Not even a humbling, but necessarily maybe a boasting. Right? Okay, maybe I am the king of all fucks. I've actually had a very tenuous relationship with...
[1:09:58] the giving a fuck and the whole concept and everything. It's funny. Like, I think I'm so naturally contrarian.
[1:10:05] And I think, too, that the book blew up. I was still so young. I remember having this conversation with my editor. I was like, I don't want to be known as the fuck guy for the rest of my life. Like, I have so many other things to say. And it really weighed a lot on me. And so I think there were a number of years where I really resisted it. And I tried to kind of push in the new territory or try out different ideas or talk about different things.
[1:10:28] And most of that kind of backfired, both in terms of audience response, but also just in terms of like, I didn't really enjoy it or it felt stressful. It wasn't fun. Yeah. You know, I took I took most of 2022 off. I was extremely burnt out. And since coming back.
[1:10:48] One of the things I decided is I'm only going to do things that are fun, which is why I'm not doing Man on the Street videos. It's funny. I went back and I read 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, like classic business book. Went back and reread it. I read it when I started my business in like 08. I was like, you know what? I'm going to go.
[1:11:06] review it, like just give myself a refresher. And like one of the first things, one of the first laws, it says one of the best things that can ever happen to a business is that it owns a word or phrase. And it was like, if you are ever fortunate enough to be in a situation where you own a word or phrase,
[1:11:23] ride that shit until the day you die. And I was like reading this and I'm like, man, I'm an idiot. So here we are on the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast. And I'm asking you what you give a fuck about what you don't give a fuck about. Because it is it's such a useful lens. I think that that is the process of me putting my ego aside of like, look, dude, you don't get to be this this Uber genius who just comes up with a new brilliant concept every other year. You know, it's like this is your hit.
[1:11:52] It's a beautiful lens to help people analyze their values, their personality, their belief systems, where they're putting their energy and focus. It's an extremely useful lens for so many people.
[1:12:07] just write it, just enjoy it. So that's what I'm here doing. I love that. Yeah. Thanks for coming on, dude. Yeah. It was a blast. Thank you. And the book is great, man. And it's, it's like, honestly, if you do want to start a business, it's a must read. And even if you don't, it is a great primer on just taking action. Yeah. Like just do the fucking thing.
[1:12:30] Thanks, man. It is funny because you do these shows and it's fun to talk about all this stuff. And then I go home and I'm like, am I giving too many fucks? Did I give too many fucks on that show?

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