322: Noah Kagan — Early Stage Founder Hurdles & How to Jump Them
Download MP3Noah Kagan founded AppSumo, which is now a $100,000,000 business. He's been helping founders find their $1,000,000 ideas while building his own businesses in public. Today, you will learn from one of the best. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com. More on that later.
Arvid:Now here is Noah, a man who, besides all of his entrepreneurial skill, is obsessed with one particular kind of food. Noah, you wrote an amazing and very insightful book in The $1,000,000 weekend. I've read it. It's spectacular. It's super instructive too for people at early stages, later stages for everybody who wants something out of, you know, their entrepreneurial journey.
Arvid:I love it. And you mentioned in the book that you're really good at getting started without overthinking stuff. And more importantly that you can eat a crazy number of tacos. And then you talk about your business ideas selling limited edition poster of local tacos and then you write about your taco shirt. Let me know, like, how many of your business ideas are ultimately taco related?
Noah:There's a lot. I I literally just landed. I got back from Mexico. I was on a taco tour. Of course.
Noah:It's not like a marketing thing. It's I don't know. I just they're really good. But, yeah, a lot of our we have a site we just launched called 5taco.com, which is, like, a directory for for software tools like like PodScan. Yeah.
Noah:On AppSumo, our rating system is Tacos, not Stars. That's how it's been for a decade. I don't know. It's just been a it's been a fun thing. I've I like the the taco.
Arvid:I love that you just lean into something you like. You know? That's that to me is, like, one core tenant of successful entrepreneurship. It's like going to do things that you that you like, that you care about, that you need, and then expanding this into your world. And I love this about AppSumo too.
Arvid:I think you you mentioned this in the book somewhere that somebody told you at some point, oh, yeah. It needs to be more corporate. It needs to be less quirky. And then you reflected on that and was like, does it really? Like, you know, can we just do the thing we wanna do?
Arvid:Are we the arbiters of our own choices? Like, how do you deal with this kind of stuff, this kind of external pressure to make things more streamlined that other people think you should be doing?
Noah:Yeah. I I think the big takeaway for a lot of the people is it's supposed to be fun, actually. I I think we create this big scary entrepreneurship monster. Like, oh, I've gotta build it in public, and I've gotta launch on Indie Hackers. If I don't make it on AppSumo, or if I don't make it on Product Hunt and really, it's like, okay, what's the fun problem I'm excited to work on?
Noah:And I and, hopefully, other people are excited to give me money to work on this problem. Like, how amazing is that? And, I think over time, though, we we either have created such a a big scary experience about that or as we've gotten business going, we kinda forget the fun. And, the greatest part about life is that you're in control. So you can start making these changes to say, like, hey.
Noah:I don't like my podcast. Great. Change it. Hey. I didn't like these, you know, like, PodScan.
Noah:Hey. I, you know, I really wanted this thing. Great. Make it. And, I think more people should be enjoying, you know, the the up and down of of this entrepreneurship experience.
Arvid:Yeah. The the realizing that ups and downs are both kind of move moves forward, like, any that is actually a progressive move, not either if it's good or bad, like, in the traditional sense. I think that's hard because most of us come from an employment situation. Most of us are engineers or designers or they work in marketing, they they they are working for somebody. And if you're employed, the the best way to survive is to kind of keep your head down, do the thing you're asked to do.
Arvid:Don't take risks, and then you have to do this mental switch if you wanna be entrepreneurial to and then you say this so much, like, every single chapter in the book is really about you telling people to lean into discomfort. Like, every single time, like, enjoy asking, enjoy rejection. Like, do these make these rejection goals. Like, get as many rejections as you can. All of this stuff is leaning into discomfort, which for an employee, that's that's not what you want.
Arvid:You want success at every single point. So how how do we reframe ourselves or our perception of stuff? Because a lot of people listening to this are just on the verge, right, just on the verge of quitting their job, but they still are afraid to fail in public in front of others. How can we convince ourself that that's a good idea?
Noah:Yeah. I like the idea that confidence is built through evidence. Confidence is built through evidence. And in entrepreneurship, it is the idea that you, through evidence, are building confidence in doing something yourself. And and I don't think you have to actually be risky or, worry about failure is such a negative thing.
Noah:So one, I've always believed you get to your freedom number, which is the amount you need to quit your job, and then you make that decision. Some people keep both. You know? Some people are like, my wife quit her job.com, Steve Chu. He had a 6 figure job that he loved, and he had a 7 figure side hustle.
Arvid:Right.
Noah:You know? Yeah. And when you think about rejection and failure that's why in the book we talk about rejection goals and reframing it maybe as a positive thing. A lot of the things that we are still doing and I see people doing is that rejection or that failure led them to the right place and looking at it as a learning opportunity, right? So when we do things at AppSumo, we launched a coupon recently and it didn't work.
Noah:And then the team's like, okay, well, how come? And it was okay. It failed, and people were kind of disappointed. And then we understood it was more because it was a credit, not a coupon, redid it, relaunched it, now it's working. And that's kind of true for a lot of these, the biggest business in the world.
Noah:You know, you look at them, they're trying, they're trying, they're trying, and each of that is actually getting them to the point. But what people struggle with is in that moment when it's the failure or people see it fail, they're like, oh. But that actually is getting you to the place you wanna be going. And, you know, it's it's what I've seen from success is this mentality of just not yet. It's like, I'm gonna get there, just not yet.
Noah:I haven't gotten there yet. And if you can just kind of keep that for yourself and, you know, know, it's okay to feel disappointed. It's okay to feel frustrated. Right? But everyone loves a hero's journey.
Noah:Everyone loves a success story. And so if you fail in public, people actually like, I saw this guy recently, Stephen DeWim. He like, yeah. I've been failing, and then he's actually now getting more attention about his failing. And now people are rooting for him to succeed, and and I think we a lot of us want that.
Noah:A lot of a lot of people are excited to see that.
Arvid:Yeah. For sure. And and it builds something that that transcends the the success of any individual business. Right? It's like with with you, you had some things that didn't work out.
Arvid:Talking about the the taco situation, you know, like, the shirt also get turned into something, but it's not a $1,000,000 idea, but it's something you did. And, you know, it's part of the journey, and it becomes fuel for other people to kinda be able to relate to you in this in this way. You built this personal brand in front of people that through success and failure just gets better and better and more insightful over time. So that's that's something that I've note I've noticed in all these people building in public, no matter if it works or not. Like, their reputation in the community just keeps on growing.
Noah:Well, it it's funny. I've, posted maybe 2 or 3 times how much money I lose in real estate. I, like, suck in real estate. Yeah. I've lost 100 of 1,000, literally, cash.
Noah:And I think I'm one of the few people that's, like, publicly sharing how much I'm losing. People love it. People are like, yeah, dude. You 1, you suck. But I think people are like, yeah.
Noah:Thank you for sharing that story. And, you know, I I think from a building public perspective, just sharing the story is good and bad. I think the good the the the good is, like, people are happy for it, but, really, the bad makes you relatable. And I think in business, what I'm what I'm observing is we we'll frequent people more, we'll support people more, We like people more. We'll spend more if we know their story.
Noah:And so, you know, even with you, Arvid, like, you know, I've started to see more of your story. You're starting to share more of your story. And then as that comes out there, people are like, wow. I I want him to win. And, I would encourage people to think about you know, it's okay if you share positives and, you know, and some of these negatives.
Noah:Like, I I actually shared my Facebook firing story, you know, maybe 15 years ago. Mostly, it's just therapy, actually. I was I was really embarrassed and ashamed, and I felt really disappointed in myself. And but when I shared it, I think a lot of people felt seen. A lot of people said, hey.
Noah:I've been fired or I've been let go and appreciate you putting yourself out there.
Arvid:Yeah. You just create something for for people to relate to, and you leave evidence of your along the way. Right? Like, by getting fired from Facebook must have sucked, but you can now use it to show, well, and then I did something really awesome. Right?
Arvid:In spite of it or maybe because of it or whatever, you can craft something that other people can latch onto. I think that's the magic. That's the magic of your journey, I feel. Like, you are just so honest, so brutally honest with yourself that it just spills into being honest with others and doing this in public. I I think that's so attractive of the of that whole journey.
Arvid:It's like, yeah. Like, only somebody who is honest with themselves would share this to begin with. Right?
Noah:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the next versions of building in public is kind of I think you're doing a good job of it. I'm always trying to do it. It's what I encourage a $1,000,000 Weekend, which is building with the public.
Noah:So start building it and telling them about it. Like, have them come in the kitchen, have them come to your house, have them come in your WhatsApp group, have them come in your live chat, have them And you're really interacting with these people. And entrepreneurship in its basic elements is helping other people. And you start looking at it as like, man, you had these problems and you're excited to give me money to to help you with that? Like, let's hang out and have a good time doing that.
Noah:And, you know, a lot of these the failures really do get you to the place, and and that's hard when you you're trying to launch these I see a lot of people trying to launch and, you know, I'm trying to launch things that still aren't working.
Arvid:Oh, for sure.
Noah:And, you know, these things still don't work. And you're just like, okay, well, it's not working. Great. Why not? And then let's fix that.
Noah:And then you kind of keep going and going and going. And eventually, you know, we launched BreezeDoc, which is a DocuSign alternative, and it's already on track to be a 7 figure business in 12 months. But that's the within our original team, I think that's our 10th product we've launched in 10 years, and only the 3rd, you know, 3rd or 4th one that's actually worked significantly.
Arvid:Yeah. And and and the magic is to to not stop at 9th. Right? That's that's the thing. Like, you you just should never never stop the experiment, like, because the next one might just be the one that actually succeeds.
Noah:At a hundred you know, the the thing with business that people don't recognize is that it doesn't discriminate. You could be any gender. You could be in Ottawa. You could be in Germany. You could be in Africa, and you can succeed.
Noah:And the other thing in business that's amazing about it, especially with the Internet, you can do it anywhere, but the thing that's amazing about it is you only need one hit. You literally like, Mark Zuckerberg hasn't done anything good since 2004 when he launched Facebook. Like, everything he's done has been bought. Right? He's been bought.
Noah:He bought Oculus. He bought WhatsApp. He bought Instagram. Like but I'm just saying you just need one hit to win, which is an amazing sport. Like, no sport in the world is entrepreneurship.
Noah:Now the thing that most people are doing incorrectly though is that they don't stay consistent. They have a win. Like, hey, I launched PodScan. I'm getting a $1,000 a month. Yeah.
Noah:I'm bored. It's like, get bored is sexy. Not boring businesses. Those suck. But bored is sexy.
Noah:Consistency is sexy. Longevity is sexy. Sustainability is sexy. And if you can either do it yourself or find someone to do it or find software to do it, you know, that's how you you really create compounded success. Like, my millions came because of consistency.
Noah:It didn't become because of 1 year. It came, you know, I think at year 7 for my own personal net worth. And that's something I wanna encourage people is, like, if you've got something going, most people are like, yeah, I'm gonna try something new. It's like, no. No.
Noah:No. No. No. No. This is great.
Noah:Run up the score on this. Like, I I just met a guy. He's got a 2 and a half $1,000,000 business doing maid scheduling software, Zen made. Yeah. Yeah.
Noah:I was like, how how fucking cool is that? What well, 1, it sounds boring as hell to me. Like, it's a
Arvid:good thing to worry about.
Noah:It's awesome. There's so many ways to get rich. So many ways. And you eventually will find that way if, you know, if you if you get there. Not if you get there.
Noah:You will get there. But once you get there and you find that there's at least a few customers, I always tell people, 3 customers, 48 hours, then stick with it or find someone else that can stick with it instead of you. And, you know, I I think there's gonna be a few people, if not one, that'll listen to the show, Arvid, and be thinking, okay. That's me.
Arvid:Yes. And that
Noah:that's what that's what gets me excited.
Arvid:Well, I I I bet a lot of people are currently listening and thinking, 3 people in 48 hours, but I hate talking to people. I don't I don't like to hear no. Right? That's the thing. Like, most people condition I think also, like, through the educational systems we step through in our life, we are conditioned not to give false answers or give answers that are questionable, always to do do the right thing.
Arvid:And we're conditioned not to speak when we don't know something, and we don't want any kind of conflict. So that is quite the opposite of the reality when you wanna talk to people. Right? When you have to talk to people to learn, to sell, to convince, to to just get feedback from. So how can we overcome this?
Arvid:Like, I struggle with this still, and I I do customer discovery calls every single week. I talk to people that use my product, and I try to figure out, well, what's your job to be done? How we can how can I help you even more? And sometimes I talk to prospects. What do you need?
Arvid:And all that. And every single time like, it's weird. I have interviews like this with you, and it's super easy for me. But the moment I have to talk to a customer who I don't really know, right, it's like, should I? Or should I just, like, cancel the call or whatever?
Arvid:How can I overcome this?
Noah:Yeah. When you do these customer calls, have you made sales on them?
Arvid:Occasionally. Yes.
Noah:And what's happening there?
Arvid:Well, I asked them if they need it. I asked them if they wanna buy it, and then they occasionally do. And sometimes they don't, then that's fine too. I learned something either way, but it it's still it's it's just a I I know cognitively, it's it's super necessary to talk to people, and I know how to get something out of them and and amp them up. I've talked to enough people to be able to kinda vibe with them on a call because I also understand their problem.
Arvid:But it still is always this it's kinda like stage fright for me. Is it for you too? Like, do do you feel that, or is it is it something different?
Noah:No. It it's uncomfortable. That never goes away. You know, but you're a developer. Yeah?
Noah:Mhmm. When you wrote your first line of code, I'm guessing it's very different than your most recent line of code. And that's the same thing with asking. Right? That's why, literally, I have a whole chapter dedicated to, like, how do you get better at asking?
Noah:And it's not something that, you know, the first time you do it, you're perfect at it, but it's a skill. It literally is a learnable skill that, as you talk to people, I'm guessing what'll happen for you, Arvid, is let's take PodScan. You start talking to a lot of people, and you notice that when you talk to maybe a business owner or or someone who has a book or someone who has another show or whatever it is, you're like, holy crap. When I talk to, German people who live in Mexico who have agencies, they love my product. And so you'll start finding the person to talk to, and then as you talk to them, it'll change the dynamic.
Noah:So, you know, a few things that I would I would also say in there. How you ask makes a difference. So when I I've done these videos where I knock on people's doors and ask them what they do for a living. And when I first started it, I would say, hey. So what do you do for a living?
Noah:And they're like, why do you have a camera, and who are you?
Arvid:Right.
Noah:And fast forward, you know, I've been doing this for a few years now, and and now when I go up to their house from the YouTube channel, I say, I love your house. Tell me about the architecture. This is just such a cool house. We're doing a documentary here in Newport Beach. Oh my god.
Noah:Let me tell you. By the way, what what do you do for a living? Oh, I sell strawberries. Mhmm. Really?
Noah:Tell me more. And so same exact thing, but I've I'm practicing it to ask. Now number 2, I think people are not proud of what they've made enough. They're not proud of what they made. And so what I mean by that is it's not that you have to make it perfect, but are you proud of what you're doing?
Noah:Are you excited that what you've created, whether it's podscan.fm, whether it's breeze.com, which is our DocuSign alternative, or even $1,000,000 Weekend? I'm excited if I think someone's trying to start a business to get them to to I'm trying to help them if I think I can really solve a problem because I'm very proud of what I created. Like, I went to Barnes and Noble 2 weeks ago, and there's a guy in the business section. And he's I I just got to him. Like, hey, man.
Noah:Are you looking for a business book? He's like, yeah. You know, what kinda what are looking for? He's like, yeah. You know, I'm kinda getting a business.
Noah:I don't have any revenue, but I'm trying to get started. I was like, actually, I wrote this book right here on the shelf, and I sold him the book. You know? And, but I think it was also because I'm proud of what I've created, and I truly think it'll it'll solve his problem. So I think that that's part 2.
Noah:And I'd say the last thing is you can practice it with the coffee challenge. It's what I've talked about in the book, which is how do you practice it in a very safe, kind of sterile environment? You ask for 10% off when you buy coffee. And a few people do it. That's the thing.
Noah:A lot of people read the book, now it's selling well, people are changing their lives from it. And a few of the people will go to the coffee challenge, and every time they realize how more powerful they are and how the ability of asking for a raise, for a husband, for a wife, for a job, for employment, whatever that is, they can do it. And the fear that we've created around these this ask and and bugging people is really never as bad as it seems. And the upside of these things, like getting a job, having your own having your own business, having a wife, getting a raise, the upside of these asks is amazing. So using coffee challenge as a skill that you can just use to practice asking.
Arvid:I love I love your perspective on asking as something with unlimited upside. Downside is kept at you get rejected. Like one of one of many rejections you will face in your life, but upside is unlimited. And I think you you talk about this in the the kind of the growth and the marketing chapter, the the last couple pages of the book as well. Like, you just have to try different things, and sometimes it takes a while for them to actually kick off.
Arvid:And then it happens, and then all of a sudden, all the steps that you put into place before, they just accumulate or accumulate more value and more opportunity for you along the way. That's kind of what I what I find that asking is not just asking a person. It's kind of also kinda allowing yourself to ask for opportunity. You know, that's kind of what I hear under underneath all of this. It's just kinda enabling yourself to to feel like you deserve it.
Arvid:And then you you can actually go out and ask it because like, you know, asking for it, it requires permission sometimes from yourself. Yeah.
Noah:And you
Arvid:have to give yourself that. Right?
Noah:You know, like, the yeah. It is. That is. You know, I I like thinking about it as, can I help this person with their problem? Like, all business, whether you're creating software, whether you're a service business, whether you're real estate, all these things are what's a problem that this person has, and can I actually help him or not?
Noah:And some of the best asks or sales is when you say, I can't actually help you. And people are like, really? I'm like, yeah. That's not something I can really do for you. I think you should use this other product.
Noah:And that is something that everyone can do. And, you know, if you're an indie hacker launching on indie hackers or you're starting to build in public, I do think what's highly un highly missed out, probably one of the biggest misses, is really messaging and connecting with people 1 on 1. And so, again, if you hate people and you're trying to get rich behind your keyboard, it's possible, but just do it in the DMs. Yes. I was like, don't do this video chat shit.
Noah:You know? Like or do video chat without the faces. Just do it on audio Or have your AI bot talk to their AI bot. Yes. I I will, you know, I I will tell you.
Noah:I've seen like, there's a guy, Pat. He's featured on the back of $1,000,000 Weekend. He literally just called I don't recommend this because I think there's easier ways, but he called DM ed people. He was like, hey. I've done a lot of YouTube video editing and consulting.
Noah:Like, your videos kinda suck. Can I help you with them? Just in Instagram DMs. And now he I think he had last I talked to him, this is a month ago, it's probably bigger now, but he was at $25,000 a month YouTube consulting business. He's not doing a lot of calls.
Noah:He's not doing a lot of like, oh, I've gotta go out and do no. He just kinda messaged people 1 by 1 and I think people are looking to make it too hard on themselves. Like, Like, if you have a 100 followers on Twitter, you have enough to build a business.
Arvid:Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Because you you have access to everybody on Twitter. You're just you're just one conversation away from it.
Arvid:Right? Like, with these DMs in particular. Yes. Yeah.
Noah:Yeah. I
Arvid:think A lot of people look
Noah:go ahead. I would just highlight one of the things that you said, Arvind, I think is a good point is you're looking for people to raise their hand that you can potentially help them. So, hey, y'all. I'm working on this idea. Has anyone ever had this problem?
Noah:Or here's an image screenshot. You can use Canva. You can use Google Slides. You can use all the different AI tools from AppSumo, whatever. Hey.
Noah:Here's someone I'm working on. Does anyone have this problem? And then look for people raising their hand. Yeah. And from there, you can actually then just directly follow-up individually with those people and say, hey.
Noah:You had it sound like you had this problem. Do you wanna preorder it? Like, I I did that for our Breeze doc product. I posted in I'm in a WhatsApp group in Austin. Everyone's in a WhatsApp group.
Arvid:Me too.
Noah:Or Discord. You know? And I posted, like, hey, y'all. I'm working on a DocuSign alternative. I hate DocuSign.
Noah:Does anyone here else hate DocuSign? And a few people raised their hand. They're like they just did the emoji hand raise. And I just DM ed them. I said, hey.
Noah:Working on this product, like, here's what it's gonna be doing. Do you wanna preorder it? And it was interesting because people were like, yeah. I'm hella excited. I'm very excited, and then they didn't actually wanna preorder.
Noah:I was like, okay. Great. How come? Well, I you know, I don't like being a beta user. Okay?
Noah:Hey. I wanna see it out there. Okay? But the reality was that I also asked other people in other groups who did preorder. Yeah.
Noah:And that was a that led us to then eventually launch it with a lot of confidence that now it's on track to be a 7 figure business after we had significant preorders.
Arvid:That's so cool. Also, what what I just really wanna point out here, you're you're asking why not. I think a lot of people stop at the no, and then they start to, like, justify internally, I was a bad customer, and I shouldn't talk to them. Nothing to gain from this guy. Not gonna pay me money, but they're gonna pay you something way more valuable than that whatever amount of money a sale could have done at this point.
Arvid:Right? They give you reasons. They give you insights. They give you feedback.
Noah:Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you the phrase I use that crushes. It's you can just you just you say this, like, hey. I just wanna learn and most people are happy to reply to you about why what they wanna explain, how come they're not making that decision for you. You.
Noah:And either, A, you can solve that problem or, B, you now have some better understanding of the right customer, the right problems that you can use. The other thing that's kind of crazy about business, Arvid, you know, so I launched this book and I'm I, like, had a exclusive webinar for my email list. I don't you know, I said, hey. Free. Just come hang out.
Noah:I'll hang out with you guys for an hour. And on this webinar, I'm like, hey. Who here has bought the book? And it was about 80% of the people. And so I was like, what's wrong with the 20% of you?
Noah:But here you know, for for people out there, you have to keep repeating your your messaging. You have to keep positioning and showing your product multiple times, so many times. And I'm this is my own, you know, audience I've built up over decades, and it was it's always a nice reminder that whether you're doing PodScan or AppSumo or whatever, you know, you're building out there, you have to say, hey. Here's something I worked on today. Here's something I worked on today.
Noah:Like, one of the the things we're doing every week now is on Wednesdays, we're saying, hey. Here's a crazy thing that's coming out in our newsletter tomorrow. This is what we're you can see it on our Twitter how we're doing this, and it's it's really good. This is now, like, I think it's 2 or 3 x ing our daily email sign ups on Noah Kagan. And it's like, oh, I thought everyone's already on the list.
Arvid:No. You have to
Noah:keep asking your customers. And if they say no, hey. I just wanna learn. Or if you send an email for people to buy things and they don't buy it, great. Ask the opens or the clicks who didn't purchase.
Noah:Like, hey. You seem like you're interested. What happened here? And they'll tell you. Then you could fix it or you learn and improve for the future.
Arvid:Yeah. That that is a really, really important point. Like, everybody's on their own journey. Right? Their own temporal journey.
Arvid:People are wherever at like, they they may have started last year. Other people have started 10 years ago. Some people are gonna start next month. Right? Whatever whatever you want them to do or whatever your audience wants to do.
Arvid:And you will always be exposing whatever you do to this massive group of wildly, differently, differently timed people. And I'm I'm doing this every year or so. I ask people, hey. Do you know I have a newsletter on Twitter? And I do a poll.
Arvid:And every year, it's the same same results. Like, 30% say, yeah. I know. 20% say, no. I've never heard of that before.
Arvid:50% say, oh, I've been subscribed for years. Like, it's always the same amount of numbers. Like, it's the same distribution. Never changes. There's always new people coming in and old people graduating away to to somebody else that they follow.
Arvid:Like, you have to constantly just expose what you do to people. You're the only person that cares as much about your stuff as you do. Right? Everybody else cares about their their stuff.
Noah:Well, you and your mom, I would say. My mom cares a lot about work. I think all of our moms care a lot.
Arvid:Right. You know what?
Noah:I think there's there's, again, coming back to kinda maybe some themes that we're talking about in this conversation, it's also just swings. You know? Like, if you increase your swings, you increase your probability of success. And having an email list does make it easier. Right?
Noah:Like, you have your own communication channel with, you know, audience that can be eventually customers. But I I think there's been some people, myself, you know, Mark Liu, yourself, other people who are like, Yeah, I'm swinging. I'm swinging. I'm swinging. And then there's some admiration, but also for you, you get these learnings.
Noah:So again, for people out there, one, get your own email list, use, you know, SendFox or Beehive or ConvertKit or whatever, Gmail. It's free. And then be swinging, and, eventually, you find something like PodScan where I guess for you, I'm I'm curious with that. Does that feel like product market fit? Like, how does PodScan feel to you?
Arvid:It's it's it's almost there. Like, I'm I'm currently trying to really get my ICP ducks in a row. You know? I know that you you said something earlier. It's funny.
Arvid:It's not Germans living in Mexico being agencies, but it is definitely podcast booking agencies that I I found to be, like, the most resonant in those conversations. It's like VAs or people who help people like yourself be booked on shows. Right? Like, the any anybody that has has a profile and wants to go on a podcast tour for their book, they they get an agency, and that is one of my main customers. The other people build businesses on top of data.
Arvid:So I have 2 very distinct customers. I'm trying to figure out which one I really wanna dive into right now because building a data platform is a lot of fun and that makes a lot of money on the enterprise side. But building for all these podcast agencies where people really need it and have an actual job
Noah:to be done, That's kind
Arvid:of more of a a vibe fit for me. So that's that's where I'm currently at, but I'm I'm almost there. Like, revenue is growing. Usage is growing. The product is not exploding, so that's good.
Arvid:You know? Like, it's it's it's going places. Compared to the other things I did before, like, the 2, 3 projects that went nowhere, they're still somewhere, and they're running all by themselves, but I'm I don't put much effort into that because, obviously, I have something here now. So, yeah, that's that's the difference. Honestly, now that I've read your book, it's the market size as well.
Arvid:Like, you know, you have this little exercise in there where you look, is it a $1,000,000 idea? And And you look at what am I what is my average sale price for an item and how many people are in the market and you multiply these two very simple numbers with each other. And if it's bigger than a1000000, then it's a $1,000,000 idea.
Noah:Turns out I
Arvid:should have done this for the things that I did prior because they're probably not there. With pots with Potscan now easy. It's an easy 40, $50,000,000 business if I just look at the agency side, let alone the enterprise side for the potential data platform. So, you know, it's, it's pretty simple math, but I should have done it much earlier.
Noah:That is awesome. Yeah. No. I'm a happy paying customer. It's, you know, and and how long have you been running it?
Arvid:January 2024. So it's, half a year almost half a year old, maybe.
Noah:I just was at a Dynamite Circle conference, and one thing I think people can be patient with is just that think of your business like a your child. Right? And if you have a baby, you, you know, you probably don't expect a baby to walk after a few weeks. You know? And, you know, you go to puberty at, I don't know, 12, 13.
Noah:I don't know. I think that's around it. And and that really is is true for your business. Right? Like, okay.
Noah:How do I fix my pricing? It's like, dude, it's it's like your 4 months, not you. I'm just saying that I think if people can look at that same nurturing and time frame like, okay, I need to get it to 18 years old so it can go be its own adult. Yeah. Right?
Noah:So I'm, you know, I'm on year 15 of AppSumo, and I think, finally, I'm like, oh, my my kid's in school all day, and, like, I don't have to worry about it. I can do some other things because there's a team and then there's structure and there's KPIs and there's organization around it, but that's also, you know, being patient to really develop our businesses over a longer time frame.
Arvid:I love that. I think, like, just having patience with the business, with the market, with people, the adoption of the business, with understanding even your market, and with yourself as a founder that you don't have to solve every single problem immediately, like you can give yourself time. I think that's important. Man, I I was I was looking I found a very something very funny earlier today. I was I was in the book again.
Arvid:I was looking at the numbers. And somewhere you mentioned, like, $65,000,000. That's that's kinda where where AppSumo was at that point. And then I looked at the the actual, you know, the just the flap, and it says 70 on here. So between the printing of the book and the printing and, like, inclusion of the flap, there's a $5,000,000 difference in just revenue of the business.
Arvid:I I just I just love that. That's just such a I I did do this, and then they do that, and then next steps happen, then it's just a progressive move forward. So I I found that really funny.
Noah:Yeah. The publisher wanted me to use lower numbers.
Arvid:That's a whole other thing that I that I'm super excited about, the the launch of the book, man. That was such an amazing job that you did there, and obviously, the team around you did. Like, I I I thought I I was first off, I got a I got a box. So I did this this book. Is cool.
Arvid:I got the box. There's a dollar in there, which I framed that somewhere in my hallway here. I walked past that every single day because, it's it's such a gesture right on so many levels to to receive a dollar. From somebody. Right?
Arvid:It's and as an entrepreneur, I I felt like 10 times as much excitement, I guess, as a normal person would feel to get a dollar. But you you have such a it was such a clear message that came in that, and then there was a lot of swag in the box. The book was in there. It's it's signed and all that. It was such a cool move.
Arvid:You did the launch party where you met where you hung out with all these other really cool authors and entrepreneurs. That was a spectacular event. How do you feel about that? I
Noah:I felt proud. Yeah. I felt proud of myself. You know? And I I would you know, honestly, there's a lot of times where I'm very I think a lot of entrepreneurs are very hard on themselves.
Noah:Like, I'm not a millionaire yet, or I don't have this much users, or my my product market fit, or my Twitter is not growing, or my TikTok business. It's like, I think more of us on a daily basis could benefit from positive self talk. Myself, probably number 1. You know, like, be your best cheerleader as much as your own positive critic. And a few things I think the audience can learn in their own product launches is the amount of intentionality and strategy that went into that.
Noah:And just to give it a context, so I spent maybe give or take 3 years writing the book just to give you know, and it was validated, right? Kind of exactly what I teach in the book is how I run AppSumo and all these things where it's like I tested a blog post, then I tested a course, then I tested tweets, and then I tested it with beta readers, then I tested it with someone living at my house, then I tested it with WhatsApp. So I was like, okay, this product works and it's product market fit. And then I spent, and this is an important part, about a year setting up the launch. And now most people, I think, are doing a launch, and they're like, okay.
Noah:My product finished. And and what they're doing is they're running a mile. And on the last lap, which is kind of the most important one, they're like, I'm I'm
Arvid:a little tired. Right.
Noah:And and I would agree. Right? And so there's ways of working on that, but it's like that's the time to really finish strong. And I was I like that phrase, like finish strong. And so I hired a a CEO of the book launch, and I think you should find people dedicated to important pieces of your business.
Noah:So, you know, you my YouTube channel has a CEO, and AppSumo has day to day operator CEOs even on the, I guess, technical CEO. And then the book launch had a CEO. And that definitely supported me to be able to be like, okay. I need you to help me execute towards our goal, which was to get a 1,000 reviews on, the launch. Now a few things for people doing their own launches, whether it's mostly, you know, a lot of indie hackers out there, work backwards from success.
Noah:People are trying to be way too creative. You know? Like, you don't even have to be creative to win anymore. You just have to put in a little bit of effort. Like, winning is so easy these days because everyone's so lazy.
Noah:Everyone just is so uncreatively lazy, and you could be lazy success successful. You just have to put a little bit. And so with the launch, you know, work backwards from your goal. And as we were doing things, it was noticing, you know, kinda like pod skin. Okay.
Noah:Hey. I launched it. There's a bunch of people trying it, maybe kinda being curious about it. But holy crap. If they're on a book tour, they're paying.
Noah:If they have something to go promote, they're paying. If they're looking for so I actually it's funny you say that I, and we'll talk about post launch launch. But I started thinking, holy crap. I should probably be seeing, like, where people who are similar to me are going on shows, so maybe that could be my future launches. So I'm starting to add alerts around that, and that's interesting for you to notice who your customers are.
Noah:So same thing with our launch. As we were getting going, we started sending out some of the books with a dollar because I thought it'd be fun, and people started posting it. And so we've kinda literally completely focused on that, maybe 3 weeks before the book actually launched. I was like, holy shit. People like you and and influencers within we we were targeting kinda like 3 categories, like entrepreneurship, real estate, and finance.
Noah:And, personally, I like people like you who are normal humans. You're not like Joe Rogan. Joe's normal human too. He goes to the bathroom like all of us, but you're just accessible. And I actually enjoy connecting and and promoting and, like, working with people like yourself.
Noah:I find that more effective. I find it more fun, easier. And so we kind of went all in to make these boxes that we looked at other people that have done it and we looked at other people who launched it and we're like, okay. Well, how does it work for us? And what would be something exciting that if you got it, you're like, holy shit, a dollar and a green pen and a handwritten note and a signed book versus you know, I will say, you know, I get people mailing me their books, and it's like, here's a book and a letter from the publisher about why I should read it.
Noah:It's like, alright. Alright. So I think we we admire or we respect when someone's at least putting in the effort. We're like, well, if they put this much effort into the sending me a box, maybe they put this much effort into the book too, which we did. And I would there's a lot more things here, but I'd say the other thing that's just as important, if you find something that works in your business, do more of it.
Noah:And that's the most annoying advice I'll give people today. But what I mean by that is I did this launch that was like, hey. We have bundles. We have, we have a webinar we'll do, and it it did really well. People enjoyed the launch.
Noah:So we're doing a second launch. And I think that's the the thing for all of our businesses where if you post it on indie hackers and you got a bunch of customers, post again. If you send emails via LinkedIn or if you contact people via WhatsApp, do it again and again and again. And so we're doing a 2nd launch in November, based on a debrief. So we do this at with all of our businesses, which is if you do any campaign, debrief it, like, what are you gonna do again?
Noah:What are you not gonna do again? And what's new? And so now we and this is what we do at AppSumo for now a decade. So all the things we've done, it's like, okay. They're that like, you're really compounding your learnings and the same thing with this launch.
Noah:And so, yeah, I I was proud of the launch. I was proud that I said I wanted to do something, which is the book, and I was proud to get it out there. And, you know, I'm excited for people like you and others that that get it and take a few sparks away that that really get them going on their own journey.
Arvid:Yes. Sparks indeed, man. You you have sparked so many businesses into life by just being present in people's social feeds and in their their bookshelves and all that. I think you're doing a massively important and impactful job with what you do and how you do it is is super impressive. And I'm I've I feel super fortunate to, a, have gotten the book and the dollar.
Arvid:Right? And but to have read it and to have understood something about myself, about how I approach stuff, and to know that the people who read this book will understand that about themselves and learn something in the process as well. I I really, really, highly recommend this. I don't usually do this. So Wow.
Noah:I Thank you.
Arvid:It's really spectacular. Thank you so much for being on and and sharing all of these insights, both in the book and today. It was, quite a pleasure to to hear just the thinking. Right? The the approach to thinking, the decision making behind that kind of stuff.
Arvid:That's that's the kinda secret sauce that you don't get often. We got
Noah:it today. All these advice the advice that we all hear, Aravid, is, like, do things that don't scale. Like, that's literally the thing to do. That's literally.
Arvid:It's the boring stuff, but it works. Right?
Noah:It works. So, like, how do you sell PodScan? Like, you reply to my DMs, and now I'm a paying customer.
Arvid:Yep. You
Noah:know? And that's literally the same thing with the book. I posted, hey. I'm working on a a book. We kinda wanna launch a launch team.
Noah:I posted on Twitter. People started DMing me, and I just there wasn't no there was no bot. There's no anything secret. It was literally me saying, hey. I'd love for you to join the launch team.
Noah:Do you mind preordering my book? And here's some of the other things you're gonna get with it. And I literally did that to a 1000 people over months. That was the secret. And then we added this really cool launch team that, you know, was giving feedback on the book and I was helping them on their businesses and, you know, really connecting with people.
Noah:Whether you wanna, you know, be introverted and do it over a DM or via email or via video chat or in person, it's a nice experience to to kinda delight people too. You know, it's it's so easy. The bar is so low to reply to a DM. The bar is so low that you give someone a little discount. The bar is so low that you mail them something to their house.
Noah:And if you can just do a little bit, like, really, you can have everything you want in life.
Arvid:Yeah. That's that's my biggest learning from all of this. Like, both my own experience in entrepreneurship and reading your work and following you and being in the newsletter and all that is that people are at the core of everything and building relationships with people trumps every other activity over time. Like, you have this kind of delayed effect sometimes. Sometimes it takes them a couple years to warm up to it.
Arvid:But once that happens, the the cumulative outcome of all of the all of these together just trumps every single other thing you could possibly do. I I really believe in that too, which is why I'm doing public stuff and which is why you are so successful being in public in front of people. Right? It's relational. We wanna build relationships.
Arvid:Like, actively, we want that. And it you kinda have to want it to to build something. You do.
Noah:I bet a guy yesterday, he's got, you know, I don't know, maybe a $10,000,000 business. He's like, I wanna have a a popular YouTube channel. I was like, why? You're rich and private. Like, that's great too.
Noah:Yeah. And so, you know, I've I've been doing the public thing since 2000, before you were born, Arvid. And
Arvid:that's not true, but okay.
Noah:I don't know. I'm teasing you. I I like it, man. I I even if it hasn't like, directly, I'm not selling something on my YouTube channel, it puts me in places where I'm learning how to write. I'm learning how to think.
Noah:I'm meeting super interesting people. You know, it's becoming a way that you can kinda connect with such cool people. It's like this new business card. They're like, oh, yeah. I I I know you.
Noah:I've seen your stuff, at all different levels, and you can connect with you know, I think people are not connecting enough. Like, there's so many cool people out there on the Internet, especially the ones up and coming that are exciting to
Arvid:Keyfru answers. Right? That's what you call them in the book as well.
Noah:And I'm still connecting with these people. I you know, there's a guy, Joe Gannon, Jay Yang, who actually joined our team. There's people I don't know. Just, like, across it, I met this guy, Kyle Gotcamera. He's doing health videos on YouTube.
Noah:He came over to my house. We went in the sauna. I don't know. Like Cool. It just, like, have fun out there.
Noah:And, you know, I would say the public part, it doesn't have to be for everyone. You can get really rich with small audiences or or no audience at all. And, you know, finding the that's the thing that works for you. And I I've enjoyed the the public part. I'll probably do it forever.
Arvid:Yeah. Feel the same way. And you just have to be curious. And you can be curious in public, and you can be curious in in private. You just have to have curiosity for other human beings.
Arvid:Right? That's really what it is.
Noah:Yeah. I mean, I saw this business that I thought was just so cool. It was like my dental alert, something like that. It was a it was a, it was a dentist who wanted to expand his revenue outside of just looking inside someone's mouth. And so he created this platform.
Noah:Let me see if I can find the the website. And the idea there was he'll for a $100 a year, he'll give you dental advice. Just like you can send him anything, and he'll give you a dentist advice. And then he also writes reviews on all these toothbrushes. Nice.
Noah:This guy doesn't he's not building in public. And he's building you know, I don't know if it's at a 6 figure business yet or not. But to me, I was like, oh, what an interesting business. Like, you have some skill. You're interested in entrepreneurship, and then now you can actually create like, the coolest part of entrepreneurship is, like, unlimited upside.
Noah:You can literally create businesses that have unlimited upside. And in most of these other activities, like a dentist, like, you have to open new practices or you have to look at more mouths. And that, you know, you could create a website where now it's, like, around the world, he can help you with dental or he can create a platform. So doctors and dentists and chiros can now, you know, run businesses off his platform.
Arvid:Yeah. That's that's kind of and you have the you have this one one little part in the book too where you're trying to take what works in other fields and you transport it into your own industry. That's exactly what this is. Right? You just, kinda connect.
Arvid:And and, again, it goes into connecting people. Right? It it goes into educating people but also connecting people. So it kinda boils down to very, very clear messages here. Man, I really appreciate you chair sharing this.
Arvid:And, I know a lot of people now are at a point where they wanna know more about you and wanna learn more from you and, you know, follow you. Where do people wanna go or where should people wanna go if they wanna learn more about you, your journey, and the things that you build?
Noah:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Definitely check out $1,000,000 Weekend if they're looking at starting a business or they they wanna build some confidence in themselves. I do have a podcast.
Noah:You can search Noah Kagan on the podcast world. And, yeah, I have a newsletter, noahkagan.com. So I sent an email. Lately, it's been, like, just entrepreneurship stories, at noahkagen.com. Like, this week, we shared how how Jay Yang, the high schooler, is making a $150,000 a year, by doing free work, which is a pretty pretty wild story.
Noah:I was the the guy's impressive. I'm glad he, like, he keeps me around.
Arvid:That's that's right. Yeah. I I was I was excited to to read that. I haven't yet read it because we're recording just around the time that it's coming out, so I'm I'm quite excited for that too.
Noah:And I I think for the indie hackers, you have a lot of creators on your show. I think you have a lot of people making software. We have 2 ways that we help people promote for free. So 5 taco.com. So if I I actually submitted your product.
Noah:It's a directory of solopreneur tools. Totally free. It's a way to get exposure. It's definitely starting to to take off. So submit your product at 5taco.comandappsumo.com, you know, software deals.
Noah:So if you've either created a tool or you are looking for tools, especially as a solopreneur or just getting started or like good deals, AppSumo dotcom.
Arvid:Man, thanks so much for everything you do for the community. Really appreciate it.
Noah:Thanks, man. Yeah. It's fun.
Arvid:Well, thanks for being on the show as well. That was a spectacular conversation. I really, really appreciate you coming on. That was, extremely insightful and quite enjoyable. Thank you.
Arvid:And that's it for today. I will now briefly thank my sponsor, acquire.com. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a really solid SaaS product. You acquired all those customers, and everything is generating really consistent monthly recurring revenue.
Arvid:That's the dream of every SaaS founder. Right? Problem is you're not growing. For whatever reason, maybe it's lack of skill or lack of focus or applying lack of interest. You don't know.
Arvid:You just feel stuck in your business with your business. What should you do? Well, the story that I would like to hear is that you buckled down, you reignited the fire, and you started working on the business, not just in the business. And all those things you did, like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach, They really helped you to go down this road, 6 months down the road, making all that money. You tripled your revenue, and you have this hyper successful business.
Arvid:That is the dream. The reality unfortunately is not as simple as this. And the situation that you might find yourself in is looking different for every single founder who's facing this crossroad. This problem is common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn't look different every time is the story that here just ends up being one of inaction and stagnation.
Arvid:Because the business becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually completely worthless if you don't do anything. So if you find yourself here, already at this point, or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option, and that is selling your business on inquiredot com. Because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move. It's certainly better than not doing anything. And acquire.com is free to list.
Arvid:They've helped hundreds of founders already. Just go check it out at try. Acquire.com/arbit, me, and see for yourself if this is the right option for you, your business at this time. You might just wanna wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from now or a year from now. Just check it out.
Arvid:It's always good to be in the know. Thank you for listening to the boost of founder today. I really appreciate that. You can find me on Twitter at avidkarayervikahl, You find my books and my Twitter course tattoo. If you wanna support me and the show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get the podcast in your podcast player of choice, whatever that might be.
Arvid:Do let me know. It would be interesting to see. And leave a rating and a review by going to rate this podcast.com/founder. It really makes a big difference if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in other people's feeds. And that's I think where we all would like it to be, just helping other people learn and see and understand new things.
Arvid:Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day. And bye bye.
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