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I'm joined by Noah Kagan, CEO of AppSumo. We talk about how to build products people love, how he lost $1M for not listening to customers, how to find the best business ideas in 2024, and more.
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🪄 The CastMagic team reached out to me and wanted to give you a free month of Castmagic with the code Greg100. You can check out https://get.castmagic.io/l953mvcu8yiv to learn more about how to automate your content with AI using CastMagic.
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Episode timestamps:
00:00 Why you should test your business ideas first
00:43 The importance of differentiating your brand
00:43 The importance of differentiating your brand
02:07 Best opportunities for entrepreneurs in 2024
06:41 Using content creators to grow your business
08:28 The impact of AI in the workplace
10:15 Platforms to streamline the hiring process
12:40 Why you don’t need to innovate everything
18:43 Tips for hiring A-players
22:55 How Noah lost $1M
27:08 How Greg built the largest real-time stock market
29:43 How to build million-dollar businesses in 2024
33:50 Dealing with rejection in business
37:55 How to decide if a project is worth pursuing
45:58 How to find the best business ideas
Creators & Guests
What is The Startup Ideas Pod?
This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).
📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com/
X: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg
LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/
Free 5 day course on using the ACP method to turn strangers into customers via internet audiences and communities over here https://www.communityempire.co/
Greg Isenberg [00:00:00]:
Dude, I was going to tell you that the COVID of your book is so good.
Noah Kagan [00:00:07]:
Thank you. It can also double as a flashlight. You can also throw it in the back of your jacket as a bike protector if you're biking. The funny craziness thing about the book cover, it's not by chance, and my publisher did not want to do it. They actually sat me down with a top guy at Penguin and was like, we don't want to do this. Are you sure? And I said, yeah. And what was really interesting, if you go look on Amazon or a bookstore, there's no green business books, which is kind of funny, given that a lot of business is about money. They think it's taboo or bad luck.
Noah Kagan [00:00:39]:
But we tested it, and I also like the color myself.
Greg Isenberg [00:00:42]:
Yeah. And it's green is like, go. Green is money. So it has a lot of good going for it.
Noah Kagan [00:00:50]:
Well, I was thinking about this with Appsumo, where when I started 14 years ago, I was like, star reviews are kind of boring. Let's do taco reviews. And somehow we still do it. And I think with all of our businesses, how do you have a little fun with it? Or where you look at it, you're like, oh, it's kind of a little bit different. And I think over time that we do tend to get normalized because it's like, all right. That's why a lot of the shows look the same, and that's why all these backgrounds on YouTube, everyone's got the same fake plant. And so just kind of being mindful, how to differentiate a little bit. And the green definitely is a part of that.
Greg Isenberg [00:01:24]:
Well, I'm happy you're here. Million dollar weekend is the book, and so you're Mr. Million dollar idea now. So it's only fitting that we spend about an hour talking about some of your million dollar ideas.
Noah Kagan [00:01:43]:
I just literally did another million dollar business.
Greg Isenberg [00:01:46]:
Same.
Noah Kagan [00:01:46]:
More. You sent me this question stuff, which was good. I like how you sent it to me, like, ten minutes before the show, like, hey, come up with really great ideas.
Greg Isenberg [00:01:55]:
I mean, dude, if it wasn't you, I would send it, like, two weeks in advance. But it's you.
Noah Kagan [00:02:01]:
Thank you.
Greg Isenberg [00:02:01]:
You're a fountain. You're a fountain of ideas.
Noah Kagan [00:02:04]:
The easiest and best problems are always the ones you have yourself. And that's why I always come back to. So you asked for some of the opportunities. One, look for tools to replace teams. Like, there's a tool on Appsumo called Cast Magic. I think in less than a year that had a million ARR so they replace producers for podcasts where the software automatically creates all your show notes stuff. They launched and done super well. But these other tools that I think are going to be super big are what are tools to place outdated, kind of bloated software or more expensive software.
Noah Kagan [00:02:34]:
So one of the easy ones I think is going to easily get its ass kicked is Google Analytics. I don't even know how to use Google Analytics anymore. It's like, and then you have to change code and then you got to pay a bunch of money to these agency people who dm you on LinkedIn. So the other thing that pissed me off, and I saw in our bill on Appsumo, and this is another way to look at problems, look at your bills, was docusign. It's like non locked in software that's pretty basic at this point. It's almost a commodity, but they're still charging hundreds of dollars a month. And so in 48 hours, I was able to sell $3,000 worth without using any social media or any of my email list and in presales to a docusign alternative for life, which will launch in 30 days on Appsumo. And then I believe I'll bet a million dollars it'll make a million dollars in a year.
Greg Isenberg [00:03:20]:
Wow. So what is the state of SaaS right now? Where are the opportunities in SaaS? Is it to basically look at the docusigns of the world and be like, I'm going to outcompete them in pricing? Or is it looking at replacing teams and thinking about how do I use AI to create new SaaS?
Noah Kagan [00:03:39]:
Using AI, it all starts with the customer. And that's where most people I see on Twitter getting wrong. And people, especially if you're an engineer, right, you think, all right, what's a solution? Now I can use with this new cool tech, and no one cares about your tech and no one cares about your solution. They care about their problems. And so that's what I always come back to, which is what are the problems that people are either spending money or time on, ideally yourself, and then what's tech? Maybe that can assist with that. So you can go to Appsumo. It's a really interesting insight into what's popular in software or what's becoming popular. So I'm just looking at the website today as well.
Noah Kagan [00:04:14]:
We're seeing a lot of no code platforms still super popular. People are looking for more solutions around that. Chat bots that just do it for you. You see them now and it's going to be exciting. Where do you ever use these bots? And they're so annoying. It's just like the bot is so annoying. I don't want to make a joke here, but there's going to be bots of the future. Sure.
Noah Kagan [00:04:35]:
And I definitely think we'll see where you're not sure who you're talking to and that's just an obvious one people are going to think of. But again, with all these things, I would try to think about who do I have access to or who is it easy for me to then sell these types of products to? And for me, I like selling to solopreneurs and small business owners like myself.
Greg Isenberg [00:04:51]:
And is that because you're one of those people? So you just find it easier to sell to one of those people?
Noah Kagan [00:04:56]:
Yeah, because I know what's a good price for myself. There's calendar for like $10 a month or $20 a month, and you don't use it that often. And the text, frankly, overblooded. So we launched tidycal.com maybe two years ago, and that's doing $3,000 in profit a day at $29 for life. And the economics make sense and we do have a team that keeps supporting it. But if we stopped, I'm pretty sure it would stay around the 3000 if not $2,500 a day in profit. And it's a great entry point into the appsumo ecosystem, which is why we build our originals products. I'm looking at the team pulled together other ideas.
Noah Kagan [00:05:31]:
This is interesting. So zapier competitors, so integration platforms as a service. So I think there's still a lot of room around. How do all these separate software products talk together again for everyone out there who do you already have access to or audience of that you can then easily try to sell these to? Because I think so many times people build it and they're like, well, I'm going to go on Twitter now and be like Greg and Noah and then hope customers just magically come or I'm going to spam dm them. And that just doesn't work. Or if it does, it's going to take a very long time.
Greg Isenberg [00:05:58]:
Or what they say is, and I'm sure you get this often, is people will reach out to creators like us and they'll be like, hey, my product is perfect. I just need a creator. I just need a creator. And usually that's not the magic bullet.
Noah Kagan [00:06:16]:
Yeah, I like the idea of the even for yourself. So people are like, well, how do I think of a business idea or problem so you're a creator and you're an investor. What are the things that you're spending your time doing today?
Greg Isenberg [00:06:28]:
I mean, for know, you mentioned cast magic. I just had lunch with Ramon from Castmagic and I'm coming from lunch. I just finished my sandwich, rushed here and he's got a great told. I was like, how'd you get your first customers? He goes, appsumo. And he was saying like, yeah, I'm looking at creators as a channel to grow. And while I think that, yes, if he had a creator, if you were behind it, let's say it could grow a lot faster, I think there's something to be said about being constrained and building your own media, building your own community, and not being just like how you don't want to be dependent on vcs, you don't necessarily want to be dependent on creators. But yeah, going back to your question, it's like, what am I focusing on? Tools like cast magic, I think are really interesting tools that could save me time, make me more productive and unlock the potential. I mean, I've got 65 people on my team right now, so if I could make them more productive and make their lives easier and happier, that's worth it for me to explore.
Noah Kagan [00:07:44]:
I think with this AI stuff, what's interesting, it's like, hey, how do you use the software so I can fire you? There's like an unsaid thing about that in different businesses where we have an operations team where they get the copy and it is more complicated to get. How do we write good copy? How do we get a video for a partner? And we're like, all right, let's use some AI. And it's like, well, that means I'm going to have to fire Susan. We don't have a Susan. But if we did, it'd be like, I don't want to fire Susan. So it's like atms and a lot of evolution technology. Like 20 years ago, the Internet just came around, which is crazy, right? And you think about how many trillions of dollars have been generated by the Internet, and then you have to think, okay, with AI, what's that same new level of doors opening up? And I can either be on one side and be a victim of it, or I can be a little bit more empowered and think about how to take advantage of it. And it's kind of like you look at salary, there's a reason some people make ten times more than others because they're creating ten times more value.
Greg Isenberg [00:08:33]:
I saw an article, I think it might have been in the Wall Street Journal that said that Gen Z feels that accountants are uncool and therefore are not applying to CPA schools and accountancy schools. And now they're having to raise the average salary for accountants and sort of people in that field. And all I was thinking about when I was reading that is the most uncool jobs are going to be the first ones to get replicated by AI.
Noah Kagan [00:09:04]:
Or software of some sort.
Greg Isenberg [00:09:06]:
Yeah.
Noah Kagan [00:09:08]:
I think your point is great is that that's also an opportunity. Yeah, right? Like, hey, people are having a hard time finding accountants. Like, either one, create an accounting school or some way to get them excited, maybe paying them twice as much, or find a way to create an opportunity to have software that can replace that. Yeah, shit like this. Like, taxes suck. Most accountants suck. Hiring still, how is hiring not solved?
Greg Isenberg [00:09:30]:
It's insane. Hiring is so hard. It is so hard. It keeps me up at night.
Noah Kagan [00:09:37]:
I've been using the site hiremymom.com, and I hired this woman. She was an EA for a professional sports team CEO. And I was like, wow, she must be great. She quit after two weeks. And it's obviously me. I'm the problem here. But the point being is that hiring in general, how do we not have just an easier way than. I'm like, I need this person to come help us out with stuff.
Noah Kagan [00:09:57]:
There's just a lot of interesting opportunities out there to like, okay, what's the opportunity? A lot. It's just finding out who has money to some extent and what they're willing to pay for or if they're willing to pay for. Know, I had trouble finding a video editor for my YouTube channel. Right? Like, I had to post a thing and I have to sift through things and I have to do all these calls and still kind of like, I think there's now YouTube video job boards, but to be able to have, like, uber for video editors or some systems that can make this stuff a lot easier that I would easily pay money for.
Greg Isenberg [00:10:28]:
Yeah, I think AI is definitely going to help there automate some of that. If we have all the data around all these people with their bios on LinkedIn and their bios on Twitter, and you know how long they've been there and the average tenure at this company, how could you use AI to reach out to people systematically and then connect the owner of the business or the manager with this person? So there's a lot that could be automated there. You also got me thinking, I'd never heard of hiremymom.com which, by the way, is this brilliant domain. I didn't even need to go to the website to know what they did.
Noah Kagan [00:11:02]:
Mom's rock. Yeah, exactly.
Greg Isenberg [00:11:05]:
Mom's rock 100%. And I think there's a huge opportunity to take businesses that have product market fit and have an angle. For example, support shepherd already exists for remote workers, but hire my mom is like a niche of support shepherd. Or there's another web called gosquared away. Have you heard of that?
Noah Kagan [00:11:28]:
I think we use them at Appsumo. Is that the ones that are veterinans?
Greg Isenberg [00:11:32]:
Military?
Noah Kagan [00:11:33]:
Yeah, we hire them military. Yeah. That's actually been really good. There's opportunity everywhere we use howdy.com. Have you seen them?
Greg Isenberg [00:11:41]:
No. What's that?
Noah Kagan [00:11:42]:
So they hire south american developers and employees, but they do all the vetting and they just make it stupid. Easy for you to have full time, dedicated staff in areas. So on our appsum originals products, we're testing them out. Here's the opposite question. What are you not doing in AI? Is there anything you're just like, I like doing this manually the old school way.
Greg Isenberg [00:12:05]:
Yeah, this is going to sound crazy, but writing. The only time I write using chat DPT or AI is what I've been doing with. I have a lot of typos when I write and college dropout, whatever. Grew up in a french speaking place, so my grammar isn't awesome. So what I do is I basically write my tweet or write my blog post and then I put it into Chat GPT and I say, do I have any spelling mistakes? And list it all out there. That's what I use it for. But I don't use it for writing at all. Yeah, I don't use it for writing at all.
Noah Kagan [00:12:42]:
Do you have other cool use cases? I'm going to be transparent. I'm not a big fan of chat GBT. I feel like everyone's eating it so hard. And sometimes I think when people go hard in one way, I'm like, how do I go the other way? Let's go pen and paper, baby. Which, by the way, I just talked to someone who read million dollar weekend. Her name is Mackenzie. I got to give her a shout out. Marymakery.com if everyone's going one direction.
Noah Kagan [00:13:06]:
So she's a greeting card business. $50,000 her first year paper. It's interesting to think maybe what are some of the businesses or things like that that are harder to go away? Even with all the tech that's coming, even with AI, you probably have to eat food at some point.
Greg Isenberg [00:13:19]:
I mean, you're writing a book, right? You decided to write a book when you could have written, like, you have ten chapters or whatever. You could have written ten blog posts. Like, you went the opposite way.
Noah Kagan [00:13:30]:
Well, I think that's what I think about books where I wrote in your pre doc, which I thought was great in terms of opportunities or trends or niches, I don't know, all some of the same to me, which is like, everyone's going into podcasting and youtubing and twittering, but to write a unique book does take a long time, right? It does take a long time, and there's not as many of them out there. So just something that I did that, thank God, four years ago, which led me to where I'm at today with this book. But I think in general, I don't think everyone. Andrew Chen said something years ago. He's like, you don't have to innovate a lot. You just have to do one thing. Because I think we imagine, like, well, I've got to innovate the book, and then the marketing, it's like, most of that stuff has been solved. Just find one part of the ten to innovate.
Noah Kagan [00:14:10]:
I've really embraced that over the years.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:12]:
Yeah, I think that's really smart. I'm working on six companies right now, so you might listen to this and be like, practice what you preach, but focus and just getting something. Focus on one thing. Get it to product market fit. And until you get that to product market fit, just like, don't think about anything else. So that's how I think about building multiple companies is like, I'm working at one at a time, basically.
Noah Kagan [00:14:40]:
Do you know Portlandia? You ever watch Portlandia? Yeah, there's a great clip where they go to the cell phone store. I watch it a lot, and he's like, so the phone's free? He's like, yeah, it's free after you pay $99.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:53]:
Exactly.
Noah Kagan [00:14:54]:
So I think about that focus. Like, yeah, of course I'm focused. Just like, I do what? And then I focus on the next. Then I focus on the next.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:59]:
Exactly.
Noah Kagan [00:15:00]:
Or it's like, it's tough in this lifetime.
Greg Isenberg [00:15:03]:
It's like Zoolander. When he goes, I can't turn. What do you say? I can't turn right or I can't turn left. That's me. Oh, man.
Noah Kagan [00:15:11]:
Hold on. What are these six businesses you're doing?
Greg Isenberg [00:15:13]:
We got boringmarketing.com, which is an AI tool that we built for ourselves to build SEO, optimized, pages and content. And that business is going to throw off two to $3 million of free cash flow this year, which is crazy. We just started it last year. I haven't publicly announced it, but whatever. Boringads.com. We have been sort of applying that same playbook, but through ads we've got, you probably need a robot.com, which is one of the biggest AI communities on the Internet, which is cool. We've got LCA, which is our innovation agency. So we work with, like, Dropbox and Shopify and Fortnite on future proofing their businesses.
Greg Isenberg [00:15:59]:
Got that. And we've got a bunch of other businesses.
Noah Kagan [00:16:06]:
Wow. Okay.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:07]:
Yeah. Well, what's your question?
Noah Kagan [00:16:09]:
There's 65 people across all these different things.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:12]:
Yes, exactly.
Noah Kagan [00:16:13]:
Wow. Nice. And then the majority right now that boardingmarketing.com is like the bread and butter.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:21]:
I wouldn't say it's probably about 2020, 5%.
Noah Kagan [00:16:26]:
And is it equally distributed, by the way, why is it bread and butter? Wouldn't it be like tacos and meat or like steak and wine? We need to update some of these phrases. Totally.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:36]:
Bread and butter is, you would think, like, when you sit down at a restaurant, you get bread and butter. It's the first thing. Right.
Noah Kagan [00:16:42]:
But it's not the best thing.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:43]:
It's not the best thing. And it's not the main thing either.
Noah Kagan [00:16:46]:
Right.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:47]:
The main thing is a steak and potatoes.
Noah Kagan [00:16:49]:
Well, dude, it's so funny. You guys are bootstrapped, right? And it's all bootstrapped, like your money and stuff. I was googling yesterday, like, what the hell is a bootstrap?
Greg Isenberg [00:16:57]:
What is a bootstrap?
Noah Kagan [00:16:58]:
It was like a longer explanation than I can even share here because I don't really know, but let me look it up. But it was like, we all say bootstrapping, but it was something like, not as obvious. And I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Greg Isenberg [00:17:07]:
I learned it actually goes back to.
Noah Kagan [00:17:08]:
Like, the 18 hundreds.
Greg Isenberg [00:17:10]:
Oh, really? I'm guessing that's bootstrapping gold or something.
Noah Kagan [00:17:14]:
Bootstrapping is any tester metric that uses. I know this is in statistics. Yeah. Bootstrapping is a self starting process that is supposed to proceed without external input. Tall boots may have a tab handle at the top known as a bootstrap, allowing one to use one's finger or a boot hook to help pull the boots on. The saying to pull oneself up by one's bootstrap was already in use during the 19th century as an example of an impossible task. That's interesting.
Greg Isenberg [00:17:41]:
I actually like that. I'll stick with bootstrapper, but bread and butter, you're out.
Noah Kagan [00:17:46]:
Nice, dude. Han. So you have 65 people across all these things?
Greg Isenberg [00:17:50]:
Yeah.
Noah Kagan [00:17:50]:
Wow. A lot of things. Well, how do you focus, not focus across this stuff?
Greg Isenberg [00:17:55]:
So we have gms and ceos for each of the businesses.
Noah Kagan [00:17:59]:
And how'd you hire these people?
Greg Isenberg [00:18:01]:
Well, that's what keeps me up at night. That's what keeps me up at night. A lot of the folks are like, for example, the CEO of boring marketing is a friend. And I know people say, like, don't hire friends and stuff like that. Well, it's like you trust your friends. There's a reason why you're friends with your friends. I say hire friends. I say hiring your friends is a great idea.
Greg Isenberg [00:18:28]:
Just through my personal network has been most of the hiring.
Noah Kagan [00:18:31]:
Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's been definitely, at Appsumo, one of our biggest. We've hired a lot of these advisors. So we go and look at who did the thing at this company that's ahead of us, and then we pay that person a lot of money per hour, and then we hire a more junior person who cares probably a little bit more about Appsumo. And then it's kind of a nice merge versus some of these elite people that we think, one, they're not as good, and two, they're too expensive.
Greg Isenberg [00:18:55]:
That's interesting that you do the advisory thing. I went for lunch with someone recently who I really respect, and he was suggesting to me, he was like, you should pair your team with a bunch of advisors and just pay them monthly. He's like, no brainer. So I'm curious.
Noah Kagan [00:19:09]:
We do it across.
Greg Isenberg [00:19:10]:
Yeah, tell.
Noah Kagan [00:19:10]:
That's exactly what we. So we have. I'll just break out the people and it depends on where you're now. It's almost everyone in leadership gets a person. So, Anna, who runs people? We have Christine, who's the chief people officer from Duolingo. Moody Glasgow was the CMO of Zapier and Glassdoor. He does marketing. There's a guy named Colin Gardner.
Noah Kagan [00:19:29]:
He does revenue, so he did outdoorsy or rv share. One of have. There's Rajatish Mukherjee. He's more like an operations. So he's kind of at a high level. Alona, who's the COO, she has someone who worked at automatic as an advisor. And now we're thinking, even with other people in the company, how do we help them get more advisors? Because it seems like it's been for like a $500 an hour or $1,000 an hour, and the way we found most of them is we looked at for who worked at those companies, and then I just asked for a referral. It's pretty straightforward.
Noah Kagan [00:19:59]:
And almost all of them came through referrals where it's like, hey, you seem to know this person on LinkedIn. Can you introduce me to them? And if they say no, or they say, I don't know them, you can also ask, well, who else do you know that could be this role? And that's created a lot of these people? I would highly recommend it.
Greg Isenberg [00:20:14]:
Do you go to them, like, hey, I'm willing to pay $500 an hour, or do you ask them? That's what you say, okay, yeah, well.
Noah Kagan [00:20:21]:
We say, we want to pay you. I think the best way to pay people is ask them how much they want to make. I have people I work with, and I want to make a million dollars. I was like, great, let's get to you to be a millionaire. And there's people. It's nothing wrong. I just like giving people what they want. So we do offer, like, hey, we want to pay you for this.
Noah Kagan [00:20:36]:
And with the different advisors, they do have different rates, and it's also a different amount of hours. So we have the CFO from Mailchimp, Jenny Bloom, and so she has an hourly, and everyone's got their own hourly, but we found it invaluable. And it's kind of a cheat code, because these people already know a lot of the things. Like moody. Yesterday, he asked us in the marketing leaders meeting, he said, what's appsumo? When you tell someone at a bar or you're at dinner, and someone's like, what's appsumo? Every single person had a different answer. And it's like he's asking the strategic, bigger picture, bigger leverage questions that were just so tactical, I would say. So it's being with someone who's done it numerous times to be able to really coach us.
Greg Isenberg [00:21:18]:
Yeah. And I think the answer a lot of people have, us non bootstrappers have is it's like, oh, I'll just raise money from well known people, but I'd rather not investors. I'd rather people who are operators and who are in the game versus writing checks for a living.
Noah Kagan [00:21:37]:
Yeah. For a million dollar week. And I was interviewing with a show yesterday, and they're a software business, and it is great. They're doing their own content. That worked with me@mint.com. It's worked with us at Appsumo. It's what I was teaching the book. And these guys are saying, yeah, we've got to do this because our investors want to do it.
Noah Kagan [00:21:56]:
And I asked them, I was like, well, what do your customers want to do and what do you want to do? And they're like, oh, not that. And so I think that was definitely where my apprehension of taking funding on. I was like, why don't you make your customers your investors? I think definitely see maybe in terms of trends, I wonder how that's going to evolve.
Greg Isenberg [00:22:11]:
Well, you have a good story around how you lost a million dollars not listening to customers. Can you share a little bit about.
Noah Kagan [00:22:19]:
Yeah, there's, I heard Chris Williamson talk about this, where there's a success bias, where just because you do something good, you think you know everything, right? And you forget also maybe how the beginnings are, and the beginnings are always the same, right? Find something people really want and you deliver it to them. And then you do that again and again and again and again. And you go on Twitter and everyone's got this playbook they've shared, and then you realize they're selling you a course. It's like, hey, here's how I bought a real estate business. Here's how I did my marketing. Oh, by the way, in the bio, there's a link for a life mastery course 297. And I guess I'd say as an operator in the trenches running an ecommerce site at Appsumo, I stopped listening to the customer really well and listening to the team. And we have about 600 products on Appsumo software deals at any time.
Noah Kagan [00:23:06]:
And a lot of them are like the latest ones, like, as you said, cast magic. And so we thought, hey, if you ten x it, because you see on Twitter that Ten Xing is the way that we ten x our business. And so I very quickly ran in the wrong direction. We had to hire more people on sales, on operations, on the marketing, and then the engineering team built all this stuff for that. So I'm only talking about cash million that I lost, not in terms of the salary, that's probably another million. And so we went from 600 to 13,000 products within six months on the site. And our revenue stayed the same, but our profit went down, right, because now we have different margins. So some products have better margins than others.
Noah Kagan [00:23:46]:
So we went from normally like a 50% margin, give or take. Now we're down to like a 30% margin. And our customers were livid. I saw on Twitter and they'd email me and that was interesting. The team at Appsumo was mad because they're like, we don't want to do this. And the partners were mad because they're not getting as much exposure. And then I decided to also spend a million dollars cash to promote that. We have all these new products on Appsumo, and that was a great, painful, expensive reminder around, how do you test things before you go invest in them? And I think everyone thinks their ideas are unique and their approaches are unique.
Noah Kagan [00:24:17]:
And the reality is probably not. Probably not. I would say open AI is kind of unique, but even that, we've had chat bots 1015 years now. It's a little better of a chat bot, and it can do a little bit more than Google search, but it's not like crazy. And so how do you test this stuff out? So I could have easily tested from 600 products to 650 and saw that the team was like, this is stupid. The customer said it was stupid, and the partner said it was stupid. And so in all of our businesses, we're going to fail. And frankly, the more you fail, the more it leads you to somewhere that actually works.
Noah Kagan [00:24:45]:
And we've had a lot of that, too. But now it's going back to the basics of how often are you talking to your customers, how often you listen to your team, how often are you talking to your partners? And then as we have these crazy ideas that we know are always right, how do we test them before we then double down and really invest in them?
Greg Isenberg [00:25:00]:
So we had this website that we put up. If you go to meetdispatch.com, you can check it out.
Noah Kagan [00:25:07]:
Meet. Meet. Is that like a dating site?
Greg Isenberg [00:25:10]:
No, it's like a dating site. If you want to meet designers for your team, it's basically on demand. Designers?
Noah Kagan [00:25:17]:
Oh, dispatch.
Greg Isenberg [00:25:19]:
Yeah, exactly. Up to 60% off. And we put up a website really quickly. Okay. And it, my opinion wasn't really converting that much, but that was just based on my own gut and feel. I just saw some slack messages. I was like, you know, when you build something and it scales really quickly, you're just like, it just instantly scaled to a seven figure business. And we never updated the web page.
Greg Isenberg [00:25:46]:
And then I came in there, bull in a china shop, going to the team being like, we need to redo our website. And I wrote this copy, which I'm reading it. Yeah. And now we're testing to see if it converts more. But my team went to me and they were kind of like, dude, you got to take it one step at a time. What we should have done, it's so different. And it was a lesson for me. It's cool to bet boldly, but you want to have a plan.
Greg Isenberg [00:26:19]:
You can't just press the nuclear button when you have something working.
Noah Kagan [00:26:24]:
Yeah, I mean, I literally wrote a book on it. Not the book, but actually Dylan Dolphins, one of the books. I'm curious, though. So one. You're so much cooler than I realize. We've never really gone deep or deep ish. I love that you're doing all this stuff. I think this is super cool.
Noah Kagan [00:26:36]:
Most of the people that have had, I'd say, the most success to me, have also tried the most things. And then they find the thing that works and they stick with it for a long period of time. How do you decide when to start something new? And maybe can you share more of the things that you've done that no one knows about or. That didn't even get much traction.
Greg Isenberg [00:26:52]:
Yeah. Well, I think there's one thing I did with my team that not many people know I did, which was when I was in my late teens and early twenty s, I built a network of the largest financial communities on the Internet. So we built a business called Wall Street Survivor. And Wall street survivor was the largest real time stock market on the Internet. And it was right after 2008 when people's net worth went down 50% because of the crash. And we were kind of like, wouldn't it be cool to have play money and turn buying in the stock market into a game? And then we did that for ourselves. And then we powered all the big brokerages like Scott Trade and TD and every newspaper who ran a challenge, a stock market challenge. And then we said, hey, wouldn't schools want to use something like this? And then all of a sudden, 80 plus percent of the top us business schools would pay us to power their finance curriculum.
Greg Isenberg [00:27:54]:
So that's something I did that not many people know about.
Noah Kagan [00:27:58]:
Is this still yours, this wallstreetsurvor.com, or do you sell it?
Greg Isenberg [00:28:01]:
We sold it to a private equity group.
Noah Kagan [00:28:03]:
Can you share? How much?
Greg Isenberg [00:28:04]:
Well, actually, the company, we took it public in Canada. Then we privatized it because it was getting promoted by stock market like manipulators, penny stock traders, because it was essentially a penny stock. We spent $2 million to make it go public. Then we spent $2 million to privatize it. So that was crazy. I've never talked about that publicly. And then we sold it to a private group.
Noah Kagan [00:28:35]:
And do you know how it's doing it all and roughly how much you sell it for?
Greg Isenberg [00:28:39]:
I would say it's an eight figure profitable business. The team is probably 50 or 60 people. Now, I'm not going to disclose how much I sold it for, but it wasn't a home run, but it was certainly a single.
Noah Kagan [00:28:56]:
It depends where. I mean, it sounds like a double or triple to me. I mean, I think what's crazy, and I've seen it with this book and with my YouTube channel, is just how many different ways you can get. Right? Even on the web. Right? Like, it can be non web, totally. It could be books, it could be local businesses. But even within the web, there's just so many categories, even in content creation. Right.
Noah Kagan [00:29:14]:
I think you've probably seen Kevin Aspiritu, the epic gardening guy. He's been a longtime buddy. And I really do think it's finding something that people want, but also really, I think what doesn't get talked about is sticking with it. I'm sure you've tried things that, like, boring marketer, did that hit right away, or is it like, you had to try a long time for it to.
Greg Isenberg [00:29:33]:
Like, our version of an MVP is an audience or community. So when we started boring marketing, we created a Twitter account called Boring Marketer at Boring Marketer. And our whole thesis was, if Cody Sanchez is the queen of boring businesses, who's going to be the king of boring marketing? That was the thesis. And so we started just tweeting about it cost zero to create a Twitter account. So we just basically started tweeting about this concept of boring marketing. What are boring ways to grow your business? And then we started tweeting about SEO, and then we started tweeting about AI SEO, how to do it. And then people really, all of a sudden we had 510 15,000 followers. And then we were iterating on this tool to go and implement while we were validating.
Greg Isenberg [00:30:24]:
So we always start with the audience or the community.
Noah Kagan [00:30:27]:
Have you ever built from day one with the customer or sold to a customer at all or done validation without? Because I think what I always am hesitant on is, like, building up an audience and then they don't actually want to ever buy anything or spend money on something.
Greg Isenberg [00:30:41]:
Yeah. So that is a fear of mine, which is like, is this audience the same people who are going to be customers? So I have this funnel that I talk about, which is like, it's called the ACP funnel audience community product. So I usually start with an audience, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, build up. It also allows you to be clearer about how to position it, what it is I'm building, and then I usually convert a small amount of those people into a free community. And those people that I convert are generally people who I think are going to be customers. So those people I'll either put in like a WhatsApp group, an imessage group, a free school or something, circle, whatever. And those people I'm iterating with in real time.
Noah Kagan [00:31:29]:
And what has been your approach about what you sell to them?
Greg Isenberg [00:31:33]:
My approach, I think my approach is honesty and transparency, which is like, I'm one of you and I'm interested in, let's say, boring marketing, and I'm going to share my learnings and add value. And hopefully you're interested in this too. And it turns out if they're interested in it, they're also assuming that in this example, these people have purchasing power. Assuming they have purchasing power and they're your ideal customer profile, then this funnel works pretty well.
Noah Kagan [00:32:03]:
I guess I'd like to approach similarly, but ideally I'm the first customer, or at least problems that I'm interested in. And then I like making sure there's validation with other people before I want to build up an audience of something I'm not sure of. But I like the idea of getting validation early, whether it's on a marketplace, whether it's through your preselling, or whether it's through landing pages and then building that product out for those people and the audience at the same time. Different approaches to get to probably similar destination. I think the other thing that you highlighted, which I got to call out, and this is something I've noticed, especially with the book, how do you get your customers more engaged with the business? Right? There's normally like a separation, I think has happened. And it's the same thing with, if you think of celebrities, remember celebrities, where we literally could see them on tv and People magazine, and now every celebrity has a podcast, right? And then they have like social media where you can dm them and leave a comment and maybe they'll reply back and you post that reply back as a comment for yourself as social media. And so it's a great reminder for me, and I've done it with appsumo, done it with million dollar weekend, done it with things I've done over the past decade. It's like, have people a part of the process.
Noah Kagan [00:33:06]:
And I love that you're saying, yeah, just be honest. For the book, I did a referral program. Like, hey, if you had a launch team for the book, I was like, all right, bring one person. So there's 1300 person launch team. And I said, if you could bring one person. I'm going to do a dedicated office hours. I'll answer anything you have in business or whatever you want to talk about, just for you and your friend. Six people did it, right? So it was awesome, though.
Noah Kagan [00:33:29]:
I was like, great. That's something people didn't want. And then I share that back, like, hey, seems like you all didn't want it. Tell me more. Yeah, I guess it's like I don't have any, really friends. I'm kind of in an area by myself, so I didn't have someone I could even think of referring. That's why I'm a part of a group. Oh, okay.
Noah Kagan [00:33:44]:
Or every week, I share updates of what's been going on from our marketing. And I shared, here's all the shows I'm coming on this week. Obviously, Greg Eisenberg. I'm coming. Hang out with him. And then I shared as guys, I don't know if you know this, but here's all the shows I'm rejected from. Here's all the diary of a CEO. How I built this.
Noah Kagan [00:34:03]:
Rejected me. They didn't respond. This woman, Kathy Hellers, rejected me three times, which I'm like, okay, twice. I get three times. Now you're just being mean. But they love it. They love it. Even my whole Facebook server, I got fired.
Noah Kagan [00:34:14]:
I'm still talking about that 20 years ago. Because the takeaway for anyone out there, whether you're a content creator or a business creator, in all these aspects, just include the community and the audience in the process. Yes, I know. With half student, I still text the first customers. Not every day, because I think that's creepy, but that's part of the thing. And even with this book, the customers, I'm talking to them. Hey, here's what I'm writing on. What do you guys think about it? And working with them in the process?
Greg Isenberg [00:34:38]:
Yeah, I think they want to hear your wins, and equally, they want to hear about your losses. I remember, by the way, you know what hurts even more about not getting onto a podcast is getting invited on a podcast, recording the podcast and them not releasing it. So that happened to me with Harry Stebbings, 20 minutes vc. He invited me to the podcast. I go on the podcast. I'm so excited. By the way, this is in 2018, okay? I needed this podcast because I was funding my business like myself. We had run out of money.
Greg Isenberg [00:35:17]:
2018, I don't know if you remember, there was, like a bit of a flash crash in tech stocks. I was running a social app, and social at the time, everyone was like, well, Facebook is going to copy you. Facebook is going to copy you. No one wants to do social apps. I get invited, I open my inbox, I see Harry Stevings invites me onto his show. I'm like, this is the number one vc show in the world. Thank God I've made it. I go on the show, I'm like, I do it 30 minutes.
Greg Isenberg [00:35:45]:
I think I nail it. I'm, like, celebrating with friends afterwards. I'm so excited for the episode doesn't ever air. And then after a month, I sent him a message. I was like, what happened? And he's like, oh, we're not releasing the episode. And I think that the Ouches people, that earns trust with your community, with your audience, with your 100%. Right.
Noah Kagan [00:36:10]:
One of the things, I mean, what's been interesting with this book and seeing people read it is that the more that you can get, okay, that there's going to be rejection as part of this process. And frankly, it's a learning opportunity. It's like, okay, this person didn't want it. Why not? This person wanted it. Great. And the more that you can get a little bit uncomfortable with that, get comfortable being a little bit uncomfortable, you just keep going and think about how many other people have said yes. But what most people do is they get rejected by Harry or one person, and they're like, well, I guess this is not it, right? And if you can figure out, not even figure out if there's fun ways to do it. Like the coffee challenge.
Noah Kagan [00:36:40]:
Challenge is something I've always talked about where you go ask for discount, get rejected, you move forward, and you're like, this is not so bad. And I think sharing that has been good. The other thing I would say that you highlighted, besides starting a lot of things, right? You've started so many things, right? So you actually have a skill. Now that you get going, you're not waiting to be ready for it. And though you stick with it a long time, like, how long did it take for boring marketer to make a million? Like a year, two years, three?
Greg Isenberg [00:37:06]:
Just under a year. Yeah.
Noah Kagan [00:37:07]:
Wow, that's fast.
Greg Isenberg [00:37:08]:
That one's fast. We had product market fit right away, but how many examples I could share of things that we invested a million dollars plus. And we're going after it and going after it and so much time. It's tough to kill a project, right? It's really tough. Especially when you feel like you're so close, dude.
Noah Kagan [00:37:36]:
I feel like that's such a thing where you don't have product market fit. You just add more features until it fits. It's tough, though. It could work that way. Right? We use these exceptions as the norm. Like, oh, well, slack did it twice, right? Yeah, but that's just literally two of the examples where I always think of it as, like, putting stickers on a Honda. It's still slow. Just make a faster car if you want a fast car.
Noah Kagan [00:37:57]:
And I've noticed with all of my successes, they have started fast. That's a weekend, if not sooner. And then the ones where I'm like, okay, I need more research. I need to build more. I need to talk to more people. This is a unique one. We try to build a Klavio competitor called Meet Fam. Spent, like, 612 months building it.
Noah Kagan [00:38:15]:
I couldn't beg a friend to change over. I was like, please. But this is an automatic clavio. You don't have to do anything. They're like, yeah, just kind of have it set up. And I have this guy that runs McClavio and with appsumo, I was like, all right. I got a deal on Imgur, threw it on Reddit, and people bought it right away, $12 at a time. It's like, that's it.
Noah Kagan [00:38:36]:
And it sounds the same thing with boarding marketer and some of these other approaches that there are other ways of doing it where you can find out faster of what people are actually excited about.
Greg Isenberg [00:38:44]:
Yeah, I agree. I think people stick to the examples of, like, they're on their last dollar, and they figure it out. My friend Nikita Beer was like this. I don't know if you know that story, but he hit me up, like, summer, I don't know, 2017 or something. And he had been iterating on social apps for, like, seven years, and it wasn't working out. So he was like, yeah, I'm going to close my company. Do you know anything about getting out of an office lease? And I was like, oh, whatever happened to that high school anonymous teen polling app? And he was like, oh, I haven't launched it. I'm going to launch it in a few weeks.
Greg Isenberg [00:39:25]:
I think maybe it was on his last straw. He didn't even know if he was going to launch it. And that became, like, his claim to fame, right? TBH Gas, which is essentially the same app. If he would have quit that summer, he wouldn't be Nikita beer. But I look at that, and I'm like, I don't want to put myself through that stress personally.
Noah Kagan [00:39:50]:
He would still be Nikita either way. I just think that that's glorifying the wrong behavior. There's this whole ten x thing and burn the boats thing. And I think, think you can do it that way, but you can also do it an easier. I've only started all my businesses while I had a day job and more. What I've realized is that there's a lot of smart people in day jobs that don't want to be there, but they think they have to be like Nikita and like, okay, kids, we're going to have Cheerios every day or whatever it is that you eat. And you have to have this crazy risk where it's like, no, start a bunch of things. Did you have a day job? How did you get going? Or did you start making businesses right away?
Greg Isenberg [00:40:25]:
I've just been building businesses right away. I mean, I started off like, my dad had a store, and I was a cashier at the store. Well, actually, I started off breaking boxes, literally. And that was tough work to be doing that. And then I graduated eventually to be, like, assistant cashier and then cashier. And I learned that I really didn't want to be in retail. And on the side of that, I was, like, building websites and loved this Internet thing. And I was just like, wow, it's so much more fun to be building digital stuff than breaking boxes or bagging product.
Noah Kagan [00:41:05]:
I would say for a lot of people out there, it sounds like we've had similar earlier careers. But, yeah, you can have a day job and maybe like it or don't, but at least have that option where you start your own business. For me, I kept getting fired and I was like, well, shit, man, I got to take control of my own destiny instead of letting one person choose my livelihood. And so on my third job, it was like, well, I'm going to start building these side hustles and find a system that can eventually work so then I can quit that side hustle when I make enough money. But I would say the underlying thing, I was calling it out again. Sometimes it just takes a long time, it takes compounded time to really get the results of these businesses once they start working. For Appsumo, we did similar to you. It worked right away.
Noah Kagan [00:41:43]:
It was like, first year, 300,002nd year, 3 million. But then it was flat for a few years, like 4 million, 4 million, 5,000,004. Then it started picking up again. The market got better. We stuck with it. We doubled down aiming the old CEO, doubled down on things that worked. And then last year, $80 million. It's crazy.
Noah Kagan [00:42:03]:
It's a bootstrap business. Unbelievable. And we've made a lot of millionaires, and a lot of people have products like cast magic have gone on to do amazing things. And that's what we're here for. But part of that is we got started and we stuck with it. And I think people stick with it. Like Nikita, which is like, you're sticking with something not working. Or maybe he saw some data that was, but why not just find something that does work and then stick with just that for a long period of time? That's what I've seen, especially on the YouTube channel, too.
Noah Kagan [00:42:25]:
These billionaires, they all took 20 years. I was looking at all of the ones I've interviewed and the ones I've worked for. It's about 20 years, give or take on average, for them to make a bill. And it's like, people aren't a billionaire in like a month from crypto. They give up. I bought a lot of shitty nfts. I kept getting scammed, and it was like a hobby. But I think so many people are like, I'm not rich off nfts this month.
Noah Kagan [00:42:45]:
Give up. But there are a few people who are like, hey, I really am excited about nfts. I'm going to stick with it. Like, I invested in moon pay this guy Ivan out of Miami, and they're sticking with it. And I could see them ideally in a few years. It produces a great results. But some of these things, it just doesn't do all of the results at once. And so why don't you compound year over year with slow, consistent growth? That's definitely been my approach with appsumo coming back in the past few years.
Noah Kagan [00:43:09]:
And I feel like we can sustain longer. Like, with boring marketer, it's like 1 million and then 2 million and 3 million. It's like, keep because I do believe in that phrase, like, easy come, easy go. And if you build it really slow and they come really slow, then they're going to stay really slow. But again, you have to make sure it's something that people want, not like Nikita or I guess, risk it all. And at the end, God does his work.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:35]:
I also think it's easier now to build and test. And so I think I wouldn't recommend for most people that they put themselves through the stress of, hey, let me go. Dedicate 510 years of my life to go and take this moonshot swing. Unless you're passionate about a particular space and you want a billion dollar plus outcome, for us, we're happy not having billion dollar plus outcomes. Totally happy we're not looking.
Noah Kagan [00:44:02]:
I was stoked with a million. I talk about the freedom number in the book, which was I quit my job when I made 3000. And I think everyone should think about their freedom number when they can finally do what they want. It's interesting because we think about these people like Edison or James Dyson where they're like, I built a thousand light bulbs and the thousandth light bulb worked. Holy shit. You know, so I think know he's in the dark a lot, so he probably wanted a light so he could do work. Right? So solve your own problem. And I think what doesn't get talked about with that is you do have indications that people want things, so it's easier to stick with it.
Noah Kagan [00:44:37]:
I've noticed with content it's like law of 100. So make 100 content because otherwise you're going to quit too soon. And the same thing with when I was at Facebook, we saw the retention and growth data even though others didn't know it. We're like, holy shit, this is fucking exploding. But no one else knew that. And I'm guessing the same is true with Edison and Dyson where it's like, wow, there's something already working a little bit that's giving them confidence. Same with business. Like find something people are excited about and then, all right, at least you have some indication that you can stick with that for some period of time because something's working there or will work.
Noah Kagan [00:45:08]:
Where I do think people are like, it might work and let me hope for it. And I never wanted to approach business in that way.
Greg Isenberg [00:45:14]:
So to find business ideas, the only way you find business ideas is basically you go through life and as life happens, you kind of observe things and you write it down.
Noah Kagan [00:45:26]:
I'm not thinking about business ideas as often, obviously, with a book. I'm thinking about them more just to share with others and give them away. I just think there's like unlimited ways to make money and I've chased opportunities. So when Facebook Games opened up that platform, I had a day job at mint doing their marketing. But I was like, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to get the hell out of here. And so I don't play games. I don't like games, but I can make some apps.
Noah Kagan [00:45:49]:
So I copied the most popular app in one category that had the least competition, which was a soccer app, and I made a hockey app and I chased it and it went viral, a million users in a week. And then I launched a bunch and then naval wanted to fund me and other people, which he ended up doing. But it was a business that I did not care about. I'm not interested in games. I didn't play games. I didn't like Farmville. I hated all those. So.
Noah Kagan [00:46:13]:
And then I did another business where I did payments for those games, and that made a lot of money. But I, again, hated all these people. Or maybe they hated me, I don't know. But I think it's like, find something you're excited to work on for ten years. I like making content. I've been doing it for 20 years. I'll do it for another 20 because I love it. Even if not a lot of people watch, or a few, because I like watching.
Noah Kagan [00:46:30]:
And I think the same thing with these business ideas. I want software deals like on Castmagic or on Cleanshot, which is on appsumo right now, or an Alfred app, which I got a long time ago, or remember the milk, or whatever new tool is out there. I get excited by that. And I think more people can think about, all right, what's a business that I'd be excited and then make sure that others want that too. So for today, I'll tell you two ideas that I really, really need. Frankly, I need food delivery in Austin. That's healthy. They have it in Barcelona.
Noah Kagan [00:46:57]:
It's called the healthiest BCN. And for $10 a day, they'll bring to your house, like very healthy food that you can customize. $10 a day. Super good price.
Greg Isenberg [00:47:05]:
Okay, when you say healthy food, are you talking about prepared food or just like.
Noah Kagan [00:47:09]:
Yeah, it's fully cooked and it's not warm when they bring it, but it's pretty warm every single day.
Greg Isenberg [00:47:15]:
Well, do you remember $10? Do you remember Sprig? I don't know if it came. You were in SF when that happened.
Noah Kagan [00:47:21]:
They didn't have it in Austin. I know, Goggin, but no, they didn't bring it to Austin. I don't know if they brought it to Austin. So Sprig was just like, there's all these for me. I've been looking for a solution for, or right now in Austin. I need a house manager, which sounds kind of crazy, but I have a painting on the ground, my grass is dead, my umbrella broke off. And it's not that I'm too good for it, or I can't do these things. I'm just a little occupied with my girlfriend.
Noah Kagan [00:47:46]:
Absumo this book YouTube. And I don't want to do that, but to try to find someone and interview someone and have them come over once in a while is a pain in the ass, and then I have to trust them and hope it works out. So again, that's a great opportunity. And there's probably other people that are busy with their houses, too. Now, what I've been thinking about, though, with these businesses is that they're all, I think, really good opportunities. What do I actually want to do, though? And for me, again, what I said in the beginning, I am only focused on businesses that are working that I'm already in. So we talked about docusign. I think I mentioned that I don't want to use docusign or hello sign or any sign, and I don't want to pay a subscription.
Noah Kagan [00:48:24]:
So I validated that people wanted it and now I can deliver it to those people. And that is something that now our team will then take over. David and Garrett and Marnie will take it over and then really scale that. Those are more. I think in the past I would try a lot more things or just do stuff that I'm like, okay, cool, I'll do it and then throw it away. But now it's more intentional, especially as I'm getting more, I think you probably too. I'm way more sensitive on time, and I want to not do meetings before noon. And I want to be present for my girlfriend and our future family.
Noah Kagan [00:48:52]:
And being an entrepreneur, I think you recognize it. Well, it is a lot of work. And now I'm actually working more hours now than I ever have. But I'm also more excited now than I've ever been. And that's available for everyone. Have cool shit. You're looking forward to cool stuff. You want to be doing, like these things.
Noah Kagan [00:49:07]:
And being an entrepreneur as well, I can have more time to also be off, which I feel very grateful about. But for everyone out there, you also have to start like you want to be a content creator. Post a thing today. You want to make products like Greg, go make an audience. Follow Greg's formula. You want to start a business my way, great, do it my way, but at least get started today.
Greg Isenberg [00:49:23]:
Yeah. And I think it's also important for people to follow what other people are doing, understand their models. And it might be a mix of a Greg and anoa, right?
Noah Kagan [00:49:35]:
Oh, that's a nice mix.
Greg Isenberg [00:49:36]:
That's a beautiful mix. I love that mix.
Noah Kagan [00:49:39]:
It's a good looking kid right there. Put us on some AI baby generator. No, because I think what happens, Greg and I think that's a great point is they see Greg's model and they copy, and it doesn't work. And it's like, well, you're not understanding how Greg got to these decisions. Like, appsumo used to be bundled software deals, and then we went to individual daily deals. And it's not just because that's what Groupon did, it's because we literally had to go understand that. We looked at the economics of bundles. Andrew Chen put it together.
Noah Kagan [00:50:03]:
Here's a bundle economics. Here's individual deal economics. Here's how advertising could now be implemented in each of those and what that return will look like. And it was just, you know, I think sometimes we have to ask people, like, how did you get to those decisions? And maybe it works for you, maybe it doesn't, but you go try it and you're like, okay, this doesn't work. Let me try something else.
Greg Isenberg [00:50:22]:
No, I appreciate you coming on. I'm ready to run through a wall right now.
Noah Kagan [00:50:30]:
This is what I'm talking about. Go find stuff you're excited to tell people about. I think that's a big problem. People are like, I don't know. I don't want to promote things. Well, then your product sucks or you're not excited about it, or you don't have customers excited about it. But for me, this book or appsumo or this new docusign alternative, we don't even have a website or a name yet. So if you got an idea, let me know.
Noah Kagan [00:50:49]:
But people, people want it. I want it. And I'm like, yeah, now I get to go make a business and spend life doing that. I think we're all figuring out in this planet, so have some fun while we're doing it. That's definitely what I would like to get that out there.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:01]:
Amen, brother. Million dollar weekend. Is it available for purchase yet?
Noah Kagan [00:51:05]:
No. I don't know when this is coming out. The book drops January 30. So it is a business, right? I ran this, like, a tech company where how do I test different things? How do I make sure there's validation? How do I run the marketing? So I think if people are liking how they see the promotion and the materials of the book, I think people will get good results for themselves.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:23]:
I'm reading it, so I'm looking forward to it. And this will come out January 25.
Noah Kagan [00:51:32]:
Sweet.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:33]:
Perfect timing.
Noah Kagan [00:51:34]:
And then I sent you a vip box, by the way. So I sent you a million dollar weekend vip box. Oh, wow.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:39]:
Thank you. I appreciate that. I didn't get it yet, but I will look for it.
Noah Kagan [00:51:45]:
We just sent it two days ago.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:46]:
I know.
Noah Kagan [00:51:46]:
I don't know. Yeah, it's not as fast as email.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:50]:
I'm a digital guy, bro.
Noah Kagan [00:51:52]:
I know. But also media mail in America is a lot cheaper, right? Like there's this, like FedEx. Overnight it was like $50. But media mail is like $3 for the books and some other goodies for.
Greg Isenberg [00:52:00]:
You said like a true bootstrapper.
Noah Kagan [00:52:05]:
Dude, I'm flying to Spain where we spend half the year. And the flight, it's like $700 for economy, but 5000 for first class.
Greg Isenberg [00:52:13]:
Just book it on points. Book it on points.
Noah Kagan [00:52:15]:
Yeah, we're going to do the points. We're going to do the points, which. That's a whole nother thing. If you're a bootstrapper, create an llc, get points. You can expense things, but I think the bigger thing is just enjoying the money we do make, right? If you're going to make some and enjoy it. So, yes, I will most likely use points, but if not, pay for the upgrade.
Greg Isenberg [00:52:33]:
Yeah. And by the way, last time we spoke, you were looking for a girlfriend. So now you have a girlfriend?
Noah Kagan [00:52:39]:
I have a woman, man. Yeah. It's a woman friend, and she's phenomenal. We met in Barcelona. So we're going to go back there and we actually have a baby on the way, so we're going to go. Every time I talk to you, something new, dude, what's next?
Greg Isenberg [00:52:56]:
I love it.
Noah Kagan [00:52:57]:
You know, that's funny. Somebody asked me that, too. They're like, what's next? And I'm like, honestly, just more of know, being a good father, being present and what's working. Just keep doing more of that.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:08]:
You're full of know. Follow Noah Kagan for surprises. Million dollar weekend. Thanks for coming on.
Noah Kagan [00:53:15]:
Thanks for having me, man.