My First Million: Brainstorming The Best Business Ideas To Start In 2022 with Noah Kagan

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

So last year, we had our highest day, Black Friday was our highest day, almost $2 million

in that one day.

Are we ready to roll?

Can we roll?

Bro, you've got to take that hat off though, I can't see you.

All right.

I was just trying to, I wanted to wear a costume of sorts.

Oh, I can see you like that.

Oh, I can see you like that.

Yeah, you're good like that.

I couldn't see your eyes.

Do you have an ice bath?

Yeah, I have a cold.

Have you not jumped in our cold tub?

So is it called Cold Plunge?

Yeah, the coldplunge.com.

I have one too.

And what is your opinion of it so far?

I like it.

I like it.

I use it about twice a week.

I use it Monday morning for coffee.

It's basically my wake-up thing, and then I'll use it Wednesdays after a workout.

What's interesting though, there's a book I think called Endurance.

Yeah.

I love that movie.

Or I love that book.

There's a book.

And I think what they said was that scientifically it doesn't do anything.

Yes.

And so that's why I have like a problem with Cold Plunge, which is the actual product is

amazing.

Like if you want to be cold, that it's a good one.

It stays like 39 degrees all the time.

But it doesn't, I'm almost certain that it doesn't do anything.

And some people say it impacts your brain if it does anything, but like there's still

even conflicting research on that.

I think the big thing that I like about it is that it makes me feel tough.

Yeah.

It makes me feel good about myself.

I'm like, Noah, you're not tough, man.

You're weak.

And I don't know.

I don't really have that self-talk in my head.

But I go into this thing and I was like, do 10.

And then when I'm about to get to 10, I'm like, you could do 15.

And then I just feel proud of myself.

How long do you sit in there for?

It varies maybe like a minute, two minutes.

Dude, I did five minutes at 39 degrees and it was incredibly painful.

That's what it said online to do.

So I did it.

And I was just like, I was legitimately in pain, like more pain than I've ever felt

just through exercise.

How'd you feel about yourself?

I felt tough.

I felt, I felt tough.

Yeah.

So like, I understand why it works, but I'm still looking for like peer reviewed research

that shows that it works and I've not found it.

And so that's why I was asking how you thought about your cold plunge because I heard you

had.

I'm going to jump in here because I'm, I'm a cold plunge spokesman.

They're the one sponsor for my podcast.

So I got to their honor here.

So the thing I would say is, dude, I'm taking the cold plunge product supporting it.

It's awesome.

I have it too.

Here's where you're wrong though.

The thing that you're right about is there's no research that shows that it is good for

recovery.

And that's what everyone says they use it for, is recovery.

And that's just like not accurate, but it's, it's actually better to use heat therapy for

recovery than cold.

But like some of the brain stuff, there is like more research there.

Yeah.

I think it kind of works.

I'm still, I still need to be convinced.

I mean, it's like, it's like a workout.

The way to think about it is like, it's a workout for your nervous system.

Like it improves a lot of stuff that way, but it's just not good for recovery.

I guess I would actually pitch the opposite, Sam and Ben, where lately I've been really

into baths.

That's just like been my go-to.

So like I have, I throw, I got these bath bombs, a little CBD in it, a light of candle,

and then I'll either put on a podcast or I'll read, but that lately, I mean men, especially

men, cause women have gotten, they knew about this.

They just didn't want to tell us, but like, I literally just came from a pedicure.

If men are not pampering themselves, look, if you're working hard, I'm saying, if you're

like putting in the work, you're working out, you're doing the stuff at the job, like take

a little time for that R and R, man.

Go jump in a bath.

I never, I was never about it.

A pedicure though is not relaxing at all for me.

Like I don't want someone digging into my nails.

Gross.

You see that red, white and blue?

Oh my God.

I did the American flag.

That's awesome.

It's honestly, it's fun.

We're living once on this planet.

Have a good time.

All right.

You came on last time.

I personally thought the episode was only going to do okay.

I'm telling you, I got tons of people that DMed me.

Ben says that people thought it was pretty good.

I thought people thought it was great, but this one, you have a list of one, two, like

eight, eight bullet points, but there's a ton of ideas here.

Oh, and we, and also people criticized me because I didn't introduce you.

So this is no Kagan, no runs this company.

He founded it and is now the CEO of AppSumo.

It's like Groupon for nerds.

It's quite large.

So last time you said 80-ish million in revenue and Mitchell just said you guys now have 165

employees.

That's amazing.

And you also do a content.

So you have this sick blog called OkayDork, which I've read for like 10 years.

And you have your YouTube, which now has 250,000 subscribers, I think, right?

Almost 300,000, man.

It's unbelievable.

YouTube.com.

It's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable.

That's sick.

And I remember you doing it years ago, just like on your phone, it was kind of lame.

It was just like you aren't trying.

And then like you started trying two years ago, I think, right?

Yeah.

That was an interesting journey.

When COVID hit two years ago, I was just shirtless at home with my iPhone.

And I was like, I just felt good about what was going on.

And I felt like I could help.

And so I just started recording on my phone and uploading it.

And so, you know, in all the people that are listening to your show, a lot of them want

to start businesses.

It's like, just do now, not how, you know, something Mitchell and I talk about, which

is just get going.

So I just uploaded that.

And now there's a team of, I don't know, maybe six people will spend about half a million

dollars on just the team this year.

And you know, from just me doing shirtless in my house, talking about how to get your

business going, your confidence up.

And so the reason why you're able to spend, why you're able to lose money is because you

are somehow it drives traffic and awareness to AppSumo, which is like your main thing.

But does the ad, does the ad sense or the YouTube ad at all cover the cost?

Actually it just started.

So what was fascinating, and by the way, a lot of people know me because I worked

at Facebook.

I worked at Mint.com.

So that's a little bit of what people heard about me.

So this year, let me just pull up our stats right now.

So the first last year we spent, I mean, I think around 400K, I can look how much we

made.

So last year, just getting it going really, just getting, it's an investment.

It's like a lot of these things.

Fortunately, we had AppSumo as our bank roller.

Last year on AdSense, we made $121,842 in year one.

In our year, first hardcore year of having a team around it.

Pretty good.

It's really good.

It's surprising.

This year is actually, but here's the thing.

This is going to blow your mind.

And I think this is a really kind of good, good lesson for business.

We put out 800 and I think 49 videos.

Three of them basically generated all this money.

Which ones?

Isn't that kind of one that's sad that either A, we suck at making videos or B, you know,

a lot of businesses you keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

Don't aren't all the channels like that though?

I think it's a lot of business, like a power law distribution.

It's like a few things do a lot of the significance.

So the three videos that made all of the money, the first one was I went and knocked

on doors in Austin.

We just released that, right?

We just released it, but that came out towards the end of the year and drove a lot of our

money asking crypto millionaires how to invest 5,000 bucks and then asking NFT millionaires

how to invest 1,000, more or less those three videos made us the year.

And that was after 150 videos.

That's crazy.

So do you think you're going to surpass your 500,000, you think you'll break even on AdSense

this year?

Yeah.

Our goal is not that.

Our goal is around a subscriber growth, but this year I think we'll lose the budget wise.

It looks like we'll lose around $200,000.

Just depends how ads do, but I'm basically not really optimizing around that.

That's crazy.

I did a call with this lady who has a bunch of YouTube channels and she was telling me

it's her and a six person team, I can't say her name, but she said that they're doing

a million dollars a month in profit from YouTube.

Just YouTube.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Just you guys.

I think the thing with YouTube, YouTube is slept on.

Same.

I mean, TikTok is another one.

It's a different type of audience, but you guys have upped your YouTube game yourselves.

I feel like almost every business out there or if you are broke and you are in any country

in the world and you have nothing to do, this is the easiest, freest business anyone can

start.

So keep up to monthly.com has this course with Casey Neistat.

Did you see that?

So Casey Neistat has a course where every day he gives you a lesson on YouTube videos

and I bought it for like $300 and I'm loving it.

It is really, really cool.

What are some of the takeaways for you so far?

Well, so it's only three days in.

But like in the first or second lesson, he just walked around his office.

He goes, I'm going to show you how I find cool stories.

And he's just walking around and he goes, oh, that's a cool idea.

You guys hear that beeping?

That's a truck backing up.

And that ruins like it makes it really hard for me to record throughout the day.

I'm just going to make a video on that or he'll walk by a guy selling fake Louis Vuitton

purses and he goes, oh, that's a cool idea.

Let's create a video on how to buy a fake purse in New York City.

And so he's just like walking down the street coming up with ideas and you're like, look,

I'm going to create these are just small, silly ideas, but I'm going to execute them

really well.

So in the next series, he's going to show us how he's actually going to execute these

small ideas.

That is awesome.

I love that you're still learning.

No, I mean, I think people assume that once you get to certain sizes like you, I would

assume you don't, but I love that you're still curious and you're exploring how to improve

your crafts.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know anything about video.

I've been making videos for my own YouTube just for fun, but I'm trying to learn.

So anyway, it's a cool course.

It was only like $300.

Yeah.

I mean, it is kind of crazy when you think about the things we spend on and the potential

value upside, you can get out of it.

Like the downside, you lost 300.

The upside, I mean, how much could this make you or also from an enjoyment level?

Well, and I was like, I can use the stuff that I'm learning just in the podcast, I

think.

Like what have you noticed or observed in your own YouTube channel?

I know for my first million, you definitely, you guys have been looking to grow it.

It seems like a few things are doing well there.

I think what I've learned is that like things that like don't seem like big ideas, but that

can be kind of boring can do really well.

So for example, I bought the house the lot next to me and I just like film a video.

I'm like, here's just a, here's a video of the house and I'm just walking out my iPhone.

Here's why I think it's, it could be a good investment.

Here's why it might be a bad investment.

And I just posted that on my personal channel and I didn't have any subscribers.

Oh, I sent you that video and it got like three, four, 5,000 views, but like a lot of

comments and I was just amazed that people cared.

It was my first video.

I was amazed that people care about little things that are small that are part of your

daily life that you don't really think about.

And so I think what I'm learning with Casey, what I'm learning with my stuff is that small

stuff that you think about throughout the day, more likely than not a lot of other people

think about that and they'll find it interesting enough to watch.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I've always, I always think about that with restaurants where they sell their cookbooks.

Like people want to see what happens in the kitchen and you'll be surprised what people

want to learn.

Yeah.

So anyway, it's a cool course.

You want to talk about mud water?

I do in a second.

One other thing I'm curious is what have you noticed?

Cause I think I don't know.

This is what I'm curious about as well.

All right, fine.

So what's about the YouTube channel versus your Tik Tok channel in terms of the audience

and the growth and the experience thing?

Oh, so let me tell you about the Tik Tok thing.

So I have a Tik Tok, but I don't actually like post on it.

I mean, I did once or twice, but like it has no views.

So we did this thing.

I was texting you about this.

We did this thing where on the podcast, like three weeks ago, we said we're going to give

$5,000 to maybe at least one up to three people.

And it's going to be a combination of if we like your videos and how many views they have.

And we told people to go to our YouTube, chop up the videos and post it.

So far, the hashtag that we asked people to use has gotten 30 million views in three

weeks.

Yeah.

30 million views.

It sounds too easy.

Go on.

So these kids, it's mostly like these like 19 and 20 year olds, like one kid in college

at Michigan is one of the guys and I just started talking to him and they create, he

created a handle called like MFM minis and he started posting our videos and he like would

animate them and he has gotten multiple videos over a million views.

And you know, fat fire.

Yeah.

I made a podcast where I talked about how much I love fat fire, the subreddit, which

I found through you.

And he made a video about that and it got so many views that fat fire made an announcement

on their subreddit that said we've been overwhelmed with new applicant or new subreddit people

and we got 30,000 people in one day all from the TikTok video where me, Sam Parr is talking

about fat fire.

All right.

Well, that's wild, man.

So do you think most people, businesses to try to do this TikTok stuff or?

No, I don't.

Not most, but definitely some right now of everything that I've seen, it's the fastest

way to grow an audience for sure.

Without a doubt.

Yeah.

I guess I've always, I've been hesitant because the quality of the audience in terms

of the level.

They're young.

Yeah.

Right.

The young is the future to some extent, but it's like YouTube, I feel like the quality

of the people that are like really into it and they're available during your newsletter,

they want to comment.

And I feel like TikTok is just kind of consumption.

I think that YouTube is a much higher quality.

I think podcasts, like for a long time, even though we, like my whole life was podcasting,

I was like, I would shit on it.

I'm like, this is not that cool.

And now I've changed because I'll see, I get recognized now like three or four times

a week.

And it's because they like listen to my voice for 45 minutes, they like think that they

know you.

And so they built, they, people get kind of intimate with you.

Oh yeah.

So it's, do you get recognized from YouTube?

I got recognized.

Yeah, it was cool.

Yeah.

Sometimes I love it.

Man.

I mean, the whole part of the journey is that like this weekend I went to a squash tournament,

the Houston squash open.

I saw that.

That was hilarious.

And it was because this guy watches, you know, he's at AppSumo.com, he's watched some

of the videos.

And I was, I was during the pedicure today, I was one of the guys from our company and

I was like, man, that's why I do social media to some extent.

Like it really provides a cool magnet and window, I don't know if it's a window, but

a way to just like connect with really interesting people.

Yeah.

I think even if it's that not money, like it's a great thing.

Yeah.

I think it's badass.

So I'm going to continue to do it.

All right.

A quick message from our sponsor.

You know, I was thinking about the shortest day of the year earlier.

And while we technically have the same amount of time as every other day of the year, the

lack of daylight makes it feel so much shorter, which is exactly the same kind of feeling as

working with disconnected tools.

Our work days, the same length as always, but before you know it, we spent three hours

just fixing something that was supposed to be automated.

Thankfully, HubSpot's all-in-one CRM platform can serve as a single source of truth for

managing your customer relationships across marketing, sales, service operations with

multiple hubs and over a thousand integrations and easy to use interface.

HubSpot lets you spend less time managing your software and more time connecting with

your customers.

Learn how HubSpot can help you grow your business at HubSpot.com.

Can I, so basically, Noah has this sheet that he sent me and it's got a list of a ton

of things.

Can I just read off and ask questions?

I actually want to ask you about Chrome extensions because they're like, I'm like nerding out

on Chrome extensions right now.

Have you ever even made one?

I've bought one.

So we have one right now.

You have one.

So on here, so I tweeted out, so this is a mutual friend of ours, by the way, but I can't

say who it is.

They were considering buying a company and it was a Chrome extension and it was two

people who were doing $25 million a year in sales with their Chrome extension.

It's pretty crazy.

And then Grammarly, you know Grammarly?

Yeah.

Grammarly, I think, is like a $20 billion company at this point.

Grammarly does like $800 million in revenue.

That is what, I like these sleeper ones that people kind of just like don't really consider.

Dude, Grammarly is the best man.

It started by this guy named Max, who's, I think he's from like the Ukraine and he lives

in Canada and he's a hardcore engineer and I asked him at HustleCon, the backstage, like

that they had bootstrapped it and they raised a funding, they raised $100 million at a billion

dollar valuation and I was with them backstage and I was like, dude, that's amazing.

So you're like almost a billionaire now.

He goes, yeah, it's pretty cool.

Like the business is way bigger than, than, than no, anything like, he like smirked, but

he was real low keys.

Like, yeah, it's cool.

The business is way bigger than most people realize, like it's going to be huge and it

was awesome.

So he's a good business.

What, what's your Chrome extension?

Leo.io.

What's it do?

So it's kind of similar to that momentum one, which I think is pretty popular.

It's the main one when you open up a tab, it has like a nice background.

I think that taking a step back on these Chrome extensions, I think what's interesting about

your tweet, which was like, this Chrome extension make $25 million or these, is what are things

that not everyone else is paying attention to that you can acquire for not a market rate?

Like, I think ultimately that's how you can have a lot of success in business, but that's

specifically for, for marketing, a lot of what I look for.

So when we launched Sumo.com, I actually bought probably about 5 million installs.

I think give or take 500 installs of WordPress plugins.

So I bought like some of the most popular WordPress plugins around.

No way.

Which ones?

I mean, I have to pull up our list now, but the biggest one was Google Analytics.

So it was like a million install.

So it was Google Analysticator.

We bought WP Fonts.

We bought construction page.

So basically what I did is I used WP Fonts.

I used a bunch of those.

Yeah.

I picked the, the thing that it's not just copying this because now people are more aware

of it, but what you're looking for is like, one, can you get structured data?

So we went to the WordPress directory and you could get all their rankings.

So I got all the rankings and then I sorted it by ones that were not updated recently.

So I said, which ones had the most installs that no one's taking care of?

And I would just email them and say, hey, you haven't taken care of it.

I'll pay you for it.

And because there's not a market for it, you can get a cheaper price.

And then I just sent a blast email to a lot of these people and picked up millions of

installs.

I got a significant amount of suga.com growth.

Did you even pay more than six figures for any of them?

For the Google Analytics one, they had a million installs that paid a hundred K.

Wow.

That's crazy.

That was the most expensive one.

I could pull up my price list on that.

Could that, could that Google.

So for the people listening WordPress, if you don't use word, I mean WordPress is used

by like three fourths of the internet or half of, half of like the top 10,000 websites.

And they have this like crazy database of all types of apps that you could plug, use

or plugins.

It's amazing.

And sumo was a email capture plugin.

Yeah.

I found our list.

We had a lot of, I bought all of one Favicon, just a bunch of random ones.

And then we would rebrand them and then cross promo to sumo.com within WordPress.

And I was thinking I would do the same.

And the thing was, is there, there's not like these websites where people are buying and

selling them.

And a lot of these guys weren't monetizing.

It was just hobbies.

And so I think in marketing and business, you got to look for something that's a problem

that other people haven't identified.

And that's also why I bought the Chrome extension.

I bought it for, I think 20, I bought it for 25,000 for 40,000 active installs on Chrome.

But with that one, we could not monetize it at all.

We tried like paid features.

We tried ads to it.

We tried to grow it.

And we were not as successful.

So I pretty much lost almost all the money on that one.

How much, what's the CPM on ads for Chrome plugins, you know?

I don't remember what it was, but it was abysmal.

And it wasn't something that we were able to grow dramatically like I thought we could

like the WordPress stuff was really cheap.

Like we were getting that stuff super cheap back in the day.

That's crazy.

There's this guy.

I think there's this guy who I bet you know, who you definitely know.

I think the same site.

What's the same?

His last name is in search of the B side, bulky.

And he owns this thing called awesome.

What's it called?

It's called awesome corp or something.

He owns WP beginner.

He's like the WordPress underground mafia.

So there's a lot of WordPress blogs and stuff.

Let me explain the story, the story that I know it as.

So basically he's only, he's young.

He's, I think he's from Pakistan and he's only like 28 or something or 29.

And he started this thing called WP beginner, which is a WordPress, a site on WordPress.

So if you like how to install blank on WordPress, he'll show up number one.

It gets like five or 10 million uniques a month, a ton, a ton of uniques a month.

And using his blogs, he would see which plugins would get the most install.

So he would say like, here are all the best like forms for WordPress or here's all the

best like font plugins for WordPress and he would just see which are the best.

He would buy the best ones and then just promote them extra hard on WP beginner.

And at this point, I bet you he makes $50 million a year and all of his WordPress stuff.

I wouldn't be surprised.

I mean, I love these industries that like everyone's sleeping on.

Like, I think the, that WordPress stuff is really interesting.

It's probably is still a decent category.

What's fascinating though is the other side of the same.

So I actually tried to do the same strategy in Shopify apps.

So I went over to Shopify and we were launching suma.com on Shopify and I was like, man, I'll

just go buy all these people over there.

What was interesting was that a lot of the people on Shopify were a little bit more

savvy and they had recurring revenue.

So they were like, we want 10 X the price where like 10 X price of their revenue where

the WordPress plugins, they weren't really making money.

So I was like, Hey, I'll pay one cent for every active install you have.

So I was getting them for very, very cheap.

But the Shopify ones like I couldn't, I literally couldn't buy almost any of them.

So our friend Andrew Wilkinson bought a couple of them and he rolled them up and eventually

took it public and it currently it's in its public on the Canadian stock exchange right

now probably for $600 million market cap.

It's called WeCommerce and they do like, I think $30 million a year in revenue just

off Shopify apps.

The Shopify ecosystem was interesting.

I mean, it's interesting if you can create something really easily and other people can

copy you really easily and then you don't control the payments.

It was a whole wild experience in there to Shopify controls all the money.

You don't.

You have to wait for your, your grandpa to give you your nickels and they control the

whole, the whole thing.

So we were like, let's get the hell out of this world.

But yeah, WeCommerce looks like a 535 Canadian, which is what, like a hundred million American?

No, not that bad.

Yeah.

It's like, well, what's the conversion of Monopoly money to USD?

I think it's, I think it's almost one to one.

So are you bullish on your into Chrome shit, Chrome plugins?

I've pulled.

No, I'm not as excited about that.

I think what's, what's interesting is like, what are the areas that are either super

early on that like savvy people haven't gotten into.

So like for example, one of the older stories for me was Facebook newsfeed ads.

So look for these ad channels or places that not a lot of people are like kind of all paying

attention to.

When you see count, no one's doing it and we went bonkers on it and that was a huge

driver at AppSumo for a lot of our growth because it was just so much cheaper because

not everyone, if you're paying, if you're playing in the market, you're going to pay

market rate and that's not how you're going to win.

What did you use to get clicks for on Facebook?

Oh man, let me pull it up like pennies or yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say as pennies, but it's

definitely like dollar email subscribers and then like low 10 figures for paying customers.

And now I think AppSumo would have to pull up our dashboard.

But I mean, I think we're paying like $60 for a paying customer now.

Dude, it's so expensive when we start.

So we got to like 200,000 subscribers just through blogging and then we started doing

paid marketing and I think we paid $1.50.

When we sold, it might have been like $4 and if I had a guess now, I wouldn't be surprised

if it's $6 to $8.

Yeah, I still think there's opportunity.

I mean, the opportunities are always there.

It's just that you have to be creating.

You have to look.

So like for me, I was thinking about this recently, like if I was trying to grow a newsletter,

I probably would go try to sponsor like super micro people on TikTok and YouTube, like these

guys that are guys and girls that are like sub 10,000 subs.

Like, like if your channel has like 966 subscribers, like you'd be a perfect person because you

have like an engaged audience.

You're super smaller.

You don't know how much money you're supposed to be making and the fact that I'm giving

you attention.

It's kind of like what I did at mint.com.

We've done this with AppSumo, Mitchell on our team is doing it with AppSumo currently.

I think that's still a really affordable way and a creative way to get a lot of growth.

Let me ask you about mint.

So mint, you were like the one of the first hires there, right?

Yeah.

It was number four.

And mint eventually at the time it sold for like $120 million or $200 million or something

like that.

Right?

Yeah.

170.

And at the time that was considered massive.

It's still a lot of money.

But like particularly then it was like, it might as well have been a billion.

I mean, I loved mint.

It sucks now though.

Like I don't like mint.

Why?

What would you do differently if you were running the show now?

Oh, wow.

I mean, Aaron was running the show to be clear and he was really impressive.

I got to give him props when he started it.

And I want to talk about this because I think your audience, I don't know, I've been thinking

about this a lot.

I think it resonates with your audience.

Aaron worked alone in his room by himself for six months building a prototype and then

it came out and convinced the world to come check out this product.

And I just have a lot of admiration and respect for people like him.

Like we have an intern, George.

He's living in my guest house.

I know.

I met him.

He works.

Yeah.

He's working.

Did he move from Miami?

He moved from Hawaii.

Yeah.

To live in.

He was living in another room.

His desk was an Amazon box.

Right.

Now his desk is my washer and dryer.

That's awesome.

Right.

And he's like, I mean, the point is, I think with Aaron Patzer as well as, you know, these

people as well as myself, I was living on floors to my aunt's basement, there's something

to be said for like the sacrifice and the dream.

And I have a lot of respect for Aaron and George and, you know, even back in the day

with where I was at with Mint.

I think, I mean, look at how big some of these, these finance, look at plaid, right?

So we used another company before plaid was ever a thing and plaid is now 10 billion.

I think some of the stupidest companies that are big that I don't get is like Brex or

Ramp.

They're like credit card branded companies that are like $10 billion.

Wait, but why don't you understand that?

It's pretty simple.

They just convince you to sign up for the credit card and they split the 1% fee with

MasterCard on all your spending.

I know, but the fact that that's a $10 billion industry, I mean, it just kind of, it doesn't

seem like there's a lot of value add, but it's almost similar to the Mint thing, which

is they took a product that existed, which was this bank information and they, they printed

it up.

So I think Mint could have been a much larger role.

The VCs were definitely disappointed when Mint sold out.

I thought Mint was going to sell for that price.

That's why I left early.

Why?

Why did you think it was going to sell for that price?

I thought the vision for, it's always interesting to think about people's visions.

Like Mark's vision at Facebook was always this big and it's interesting to see different

people and like how big they're thinking.

And Aaron thought big, but it was like, Hey, we're going to sell credit cards and we're

going to sell people turbo tax.

And I was like, okay, this at best scenario is going to sell for half a billion.

Just in terms of how big that, that company could actually be.

And I just did the math to think about, well, I own 1%.

So max, I'll get $5 million pre-tax, which post-tax means I'll get 2 million.

And I was like, well, I think, you know, in, in four years, do I, do I think I can generate

$2 million for myself?

And so I was willing to take that bet.

Did a, that's kind of interesting because I don't, I don't think that I think that

big.

I mean, I would say like most people would think one 500 million dollars is a pretty

big exit.

What would, what could he have done differently to think bigger?

I mean, what, what would a bigger example be?

And so let me, let me be clear.

I don't care.

Like, I don't care what people's visions are per se and everyone should have whatever

dream they want.

Like if your dream is to make 5,000 a month or 500 a month or I'm not hating on anybody's

dream, I think there's, look at how many, how big fintech space is today, right?

Like Platt alone just almost got bought by Visa for $7 billion.

You have Robinhood, which is whatever, $15 billion.

So what Mint did, which was really interesting was it acquired a lot of customers really

cheap.

I think if they didn't sell it to Intuit as early, there would have been a lot of different

avenues that they could have parlayed this audience of young people who are interested

in personal finance into a lot of different avenues.

At the same time, though, dude, if someone came to you and you're, you know, you did

take that, you did take it, which is a good thing too.

Like, hey, you can make, no, no, I mean, he was definitely educated, but he had a chance

to cash out, I think he cashed out 30 to 50 million bucks.

And I also, I think he like moved to some like remote area New Zealand and he's just

living there.

Yeah, well, he started like Ambulance Company, like a software for ambulances or something

like that.

But like...

He's a creative guy.

He actually tried to start a Sky Subway system.

That's crazy.

So like in cities, like in Austin, instead of like having an underground subway, it would

be an air based subway.

He's just crazy creative.

Like, but look, I think everyone's got to figure out what it is they want their own

life to be.

Like there's no bad or worse selling out stuff.

I guess lately I've been just thinking about like with this one period of time we have

here on earth, like how interesting do we each want to make it?

Yes, but I will play devil's advocate.

It's also how hard do you want to grind?

So like do you want to like, because I think that in order to make, in order to make cool

shit, I can't decide how I feel at the moment actually for the longest time I was like, dude,

in order to make something huge and something amazing, you got to just lock yourself in

a room for like three years, like you just have to grind.

Now my thinking is, I think you actually only need to do that early on and then you can

somewhat let up.

So where's your opinion on that?

Do you have to grind like all the time in order to make something happen or do you think

that you can, you could have a little bit more balance?

Because if you have to grind all the time, that's just exhausting.

I only have that so many times in my life.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know.

I guess I'm just trying to think of different examples.

Like for me, if you would have told me when I started out Sumo like, hey, no, you'll be

a millionaire, but it's going to take 10 years.

I probably wouldn't have started.

And most of the people that I've seen, like one of my buddies is now making eight figures

as an investor.

It took him probably about 10 to 15 years to get to that place.

And so the reality I was thinking about today, like there's one of our guys who we got pedicures

today.

He's on the sales team.

And I was like, look, you can be as big of a life and a career as you want it to be.

It's just like, what path do you want to take that on?

And are you willing to put in the work?

But honestly, I think, I kind of think the opposite, Sam, I don't, I think of like what

I'm doing with the AppSumo and YouTube.

It doesn't feel like a grind.

Like I'm actually, like your podcast, what you're doing now, does this feel like a grind?

Most of the time, no, but it doesn't feel great all the time.

Like some days I'm like, oh, I don't feel like being happy.

Like I'm going to, like here's an example, Sean, my co-host who's out with COVID, he's

late every single time.

He's five minutes late every single time.

Every once in a while, it'll put me in such a bad mood that I don't want to record.

And on those days, I'm like, I fucking hate this.

I don't want to do this.

I got to like snap out of this mood and be naked.

So anyway, it's not always fun.

I mean, I think about my buddy, Adam Gilbert.

It's like the times that you don't want to show up is when it counts.

Like I think about that a lot of times when I'm like, it's the things you're doing when

no one else is watching that matters.

And that's like going to the gym when no one wants to do it.

Or like last night at 730, I didn't feel like doing a podcast, but I'm, you know, it was

like, okay, it needed to get done.

And I think that, you know, that'll help you separate whether you want to get some of

the things in life you want or not.

Like are you willing to sacrifice and for how long?

And I think there, I don't know.

I was thinking about this equation.

Like I wonder if there's a time, time sacrifice equal success equation plus a little bit of

unhappiness.

And if you could do that for some period of time, you'll get success.

The way that I, the question I asked myself is, what am I willing to pay in order to achieve

blank?

So like to me that like, what am I, what, what's, what price am I going to pay in order

to get to, to this particular goal?

And I asked myself, am I willing to pay that price?

And sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not.

So like at the current, at my current stage in life, it's, do I want to grind for a long

time on a software company in order to achieve X amount of money?

And I'm like, no, I don't want to pay that price at the moment.

Maybe like in the future I would, and for sure when I was younger, I would, but not

at the current point in my life.

I think with all this stuff, it's better to be naive and just get going.

Just find the things that you're curious about.

Like if it's, you know, your, your audio editor, Benji and be like, look, I like making these

audio shows, I'm just going to go for it.

Or lately, you know, like I've been really enjoying AppSumo work or doing the YouTube

stuff.

And it's better to just not, almost not think about it because I think you'll psych yourself

out.

Like one of the stories we were talking about on the sheet was like this mud water guy.

Yeah.

And this guy just said like a dude, this is like coffee.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just, it's basically Indian chai tea.

You ever had an Indian chai?

Yeah.

Dude, it's delicious.

I love it.

Yeah.

You have a really good video of, I watched the video of you testing it out and I bought

it because of that.

Oh.

Oh yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

And I wasn't sponsored.

I wasn't affiliated or anything.

It was just this guy with one product, which I always find really fascinating.

I think a lot of us get so excited to have like 18 business ideas, but Apple mud water,

a lot of other people are making a significant amount of money just with one thing.

And so he was having a, I think he was at an agency, just a regular day job.

And I think everyone should get a day job or get some basic income.

And then he, I think what's fascinating was what's a problem you have and what's a big

gas category.

And like coffee is one of the biggest categories in the world.

And so I love that he kind of said, all right, what's the angle against them?

And he created his own version.

Literally, I think buying products off Amazon and just mixing themself together.

He's not like some coffee.

What's that?

I think he's, I mean, last we heard it was a $60 million revenue, which revenue is always

different than profit as I'm sure you, you know, but it's just fascinating that he found

one product line and did great branding and just really went hard on that.

$16 million is so much money.

It makes 60 million, it does 60 million in sales.

That's crazy.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's more.

I think what, you know, when you're thinking about business ideas, number one, what's problems

that we have ourselves?

That's always just like the easiest way that I try to solve it for me.

Like one problem I had recently was like, I'm trying to be a doomsday prepper.

And I want like a doomsday, I want a doomsday prepper in a box.

Same.

Like I just, dude, so we had a total episode on that.

Clearly you read Tucker Max's article.

We had a total.

I did see his article.

This is, this is a little bit before because we had our snowpocalypse.

Same.

And I'm looking at generators already because I know it's, I'm just like, how much did you

spend?

Like a thousand dollar generator?

It was a thousand dollars.

That's what I'm thinking about getting to.

Dude, those generators are not that strong.

They only charge like four things.

Like they can only do four things at a time.

I'm just going to basically have a generator to a tent.

And then when the doomsday comes, just like come knock on my tent door, dude, I would

love a doomsday in a box.

I'm so on board.

The problem is, is that a lot of the doomsday stuff, they assume that you live in like the

country.

And I'm like, no, I need like the urban version of this.

So like, tell me like, how do I store water?

How do I like, should I have a gun or should I not have a gun?

What type of generator?

What do you use the generator for?

All that type of stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, I think coming back to what we're talking about, it's like with mudwater and

you know, business ideas, it's just like one, just go to the things that you need help

with.

Right.

And then just start thinking, all right, well, how, you know, how do I do that today?

Right.

So you, for this doomsday idea to go hit up you, I hit up Neville, I hit up other friends

in Austin and say, Hey, I'm starting to put together a thing.

Do you want something like this and see if I can get anyone to buy into it before I start

and then from there, if that works, then maybe launch a Shopify site or just start doing

YouTube content around that.

Yeah.

Just wire cutter for the end of the world.

Honestly, that it's a huge category, especially like nowadays, like all the stores are out.

I think people are a little bit more aware that that can happen.

So we have this friend named Ryan Dice and Ryan Dice started digital marketer, which

is like a pretty sizable business that does all types of stuff and he owned a conference

that he sold for a lot of money.

But pre pandemic, like two years before the pandemic, he owned a website called like survival

something.

Oh yeah.

It was, I forget what it was called and had he, who would have known, but had he held

on to it towards like COVID times, it would have been sold for so much more because now

it's so much more popular.

But he had this website and it, it talked all about article, it was basically articles

and affiliates on like which flashlight to buy like for the end of the world.

And I'm almost positive that he sold it for around the eight figure range.

That's bonkers.

You remember that site?

I don't remember the exact thing, survival, something.

I remember seeing it.

I'm like, yeah, that's shady.

Me too.

I thought that too.

But now I want it.

Yeah.

It wasn't shady.

It was just, I didn't understand it.

I think sometimes I'll dismiss people or dismiss businesses about that.

I think coming back to like business ideas and like one person businesses, like I was

thinking about the crypto space as well and are just all this stuff.

If like you don't have money and you can't buy it, you can always just document it.

Just go review it.

Like you said, it's like your idea.

Be the wire cutter of these different categories, be the TikToker or YouTube or whatever that

is.

What's the best selling product ever for AppSumo?

Oh, on the digital side?

Yeah.

Dude, I'll also tell you another business idea.

I would love someone to start.

I'm going to pull up our forever list.

Hold on.

I'm literally just, I'm pulling up our backend.

The top product of all time.

And this is a shocker.

Yes.

Probably fonts.

If you had a fonts or stickers.

Okay.

Ben, do you have a thought?

I have no guess.

No.

Nothing.

Maybe let me see.

Or something.

Something about photos.

Photos or fonts.

Maybe.

There it is.

So our top sell ever.

So last year we had our highest day.

Black Friday was our highest day.

Almost $2 million in that one day on Black Friday, which we paid out half of that, at

least half of that to creators, which is fucking wild.

The top product, oh, this is interesting.

Top product was a video editor.

So a lot of video content.

So if you want to get a video editing, the second one was photos.

What?

I'm just looking at the stats.

What are some other interesting trends like?

Have you guys, do you ever invest in companies just because you're able to look at the apps

in most stats?

So that's something we've gone back and forth.

Here's another, well, taking a step back, I know a lot of your people want, you know,

to make their first million and beyond.

Here's another product category, tools for agencies.

But if you think about what that really is, so that I can't say the product because it's

his private numbers, but basically stuff to help agencies manage their project management.

But the real thing here to think about for businesses.

What's a tangential bit?

What's another example that you, so like, basically a sauna for agencies?

Yeah, like, click up, like something like a click up, like a click up alternative.

We have a lot of that on AppSumo.

Got it.

But anyways, the point that's interesting about that is, and this is, this actually surprised

me when I came back to work at AppSumo is, what are things that you can sell that help

people make money?

Well, our friend Neville has, says it a slightly different, he says, well, because Neville has

a course and he's like, well, I sell this course and people like it.

But like really what I'm learning is like, when someone gives me money for a course,

I'm just putting them to work.

And if you really wanted to make a lot of money, I would just do the work for them and

charge them.

And that's how he explained it, which is similar.

But so what are some of the other top ones on AppSumo?

Yeah, I'm looking them up.

So dude, the, so one photos stock photos is a sleeper.

I'm shocked at how many people want like stock audio, stock photos, stock video.

Secondly is video editing, which if you're not technical, that's probably harder to do.

This is, this is the area that like this blew up a lot last year and it's still going, which

is all this GPT three auto content stuff.

So auto ads, auto writing.

So like copy.ai alternatives.

Yeah, I'm going to invest.

I'm going to put it writer, happy scribe, I'm looking up the other major ones around

that.

Those are just some of the ones that I'm just like shocked at how well they've done.

But I mean, I think cool part about Sumo and like people to check it out is like, there's

a lot of new products that you honestly can just check out what's getting popular and

then make some type of alternative or make training around those types of products.

Would you ever invest in stuff based off the AppSumo data?

Oh, you know, I've actually invested differently.

So we've talked about this over the 11 years of the company, like, hey, they're doing well

instead of us taking a split of the sales.

What if we took equity instead?

And I would have liked, I mean, dude, think about this, we've promoted Hoppin.

They're $8 billion.

We've promoted Udemy, Mixpanel, Optimizely, Mailchimp, Fresh, I mean, if we took some

splits, it would have a different trajectory for our company, but it's just not something

we've done.

I do it differently.

I invest in the companies that we use in our company.

Sure.

Like Atlassian, I went and invested.

So when we were building Shopify apps five years ago, I was like, I don't know if our

Shopify apps are going to work, but I'll put $10,000 in Shopify stock when it just started.

So if our apps suck, I think the Shopify thing will probably work.

And that Shopify stock now is like 60K.

But Atlassian HubSpot, I bought a lot of HubSpot stock once we started transitioning a lot

of our team to HubSpot.

But I think where I just think about it is like, where do I have an advantage or understanding

that other people may not?

Sure.

Yeah.

How many products have you guys promoted on AppSumo, like hundreds or thousands?

Thousands.

I mean, we've done 11 years.

I think right now on AppSumo, we have 11,000 products.

Oh.

Yeah.

It's definitely gone a little wild as we become a software marketplace.

That's crazy.

10,493 products.

So like years ago or a couple of years ago, we had Zoom was one of our advertisers.

And this was before they went public and the ad crushed it.

It was so good.

And we were like, damn, dude, people love this product.

They love Zoom.

And we ended up buying stock right before or right at IPO and it like knocked it out

the park.

I think there is like interesting stuff where you can see like, you can see interesting

information because you're like WP beginner because you're like AppSumo because you're

like the hustle and you can see inside of this stuff.

Yeah.

It's like, and for everyone out there, it's like, where do you have an advantage like

where are you?

Maybe you're in discord all day.

So you know what the NFTs are going to be popping.

Maybe it's going to be out there on Twitter world.

So you know, like the different stocks or different people that are talking about different

things.

So you're just finding some advantage or like area that you can get, you know, an unfair

competitive advantage.

What other ideas interest you?

The stuff lately.

I mean, that's interesting.

Me is basically like three or four areas.

One, I mean, I still think software is gigantic.

What's specific?

There's just so many.

What's that?

What's specific?

I mean, for me, content creation is definitely the area that I've spent a lot of time in.

So like, I would love software and like, how do you figure out which topics are going

to be popular?

Like we spend, I don't know how many people hours, probably like 10 hours a week just

to figure out which video to make each week.

And so there's got to be a more optimized way to do that.

I think with AppSumo, it's the same kind of idea.

Like we have a team of, I think around four people that full time just try software all

across the internet.

Their only job.

Yeah.

They're called like LDRs.

Like, I don't even know what their titles are anymore.

They don't tell me.

But their little job is like, go to product hunt, go to Google, go to Twitter, go to all

these like beta lists, go to all these different sites, try the different software all across

the internet and then see which ones are worthy to get, you know, blasted on AppSumo.com.

And so that feels like that should actually be a software solution.

So I think a lot of it is just like, what are the things we're doing manually that we

could automate?

So for me, topics is big, finding products for AppSumo is big.

I'm super excited about, you know, I think a lot of people are crypto space.

So one of the things that I'm looking for is like, how do you scrape Twitter and Reddit

and find the new next thing before everyone else?

So kind of like a Google Trends or like a discovery thing for these crypto NFT space.

How do you do that now?

I don't.

I mean, it's just too hard manually.

Right now, what I do is that I text my friend who basically just spends 16 hours a day doing

NFTs.

I'm like, which one are you buying?

So like a few days ago, I bought a hippo.

Did it work?

I bought a $5,000.

How much was it?

How much did I spend on that?

I think I, no, it was only almost $2,000 hippo, but it's part of a casino.

So if you, as the casino makes money, if you own one of the NFTs, you get a cut with a

casino rake.

So Sean, it feels like a scam to me.

Sean created an email list the other day and he called it the milk road.

And I don't know.

I don't know if it's daily or if it's weekly, but Sarah's been getting it and loves it.

And it's all about crypto.

And he tries to talk about like the latest and greatest from a trustworthy point of

view.

And it's pretty great.

The milk road is awesome.

That's a great idea.

The milk road.

What is he recommending?

I haven't read it yet because I don't like crypto, but Sarah's been reading it and like

he'll just say like, people are tweeting out like, so the weird thing about crypto and

NFTs is like, it's on Twitter.

It's like in groups that like you have to be like on the inside to know what's legit.

And so there's like these like stupid discord groups and like these weird tweet Twitter folks

where you got to like know who to follow and he'll be like, blank is tweeting about blank.

That's interesting because of, and then he'll explain.

And so it's kind of interesting.

I think it was interesting about a lot of these side hustle ideas and we put together

like top ones around crypto.

If you're poor, meaning like if you want to be in a crypto, but you have no money, like

there are a lot of ways to do.

And one of them is just documenting a lot of this stuff, right?

Like you could start a newsletter just like researching and putting out like, Hey, here's

things that are interesting that I'm seeing about it.

And eventually that's how you do become an expert in these different areas.

How many?

Good.

How many coaches do you have in your life?

Oh, right now?

Not as much.

So I have a CEO coach.

So there's a guy I've been working with named Ken Coleman out of the Bay Area.

What is that?

What firm?

Is that torch?

He's just an independent.

So Ken's like old school.

Like he's not tweeting.

He's not on YouTube.

He's just been around Silicon Valley in a lot of these different kind of companies.

And a lot of his stuff is very like, like really obvious euphemisms like leaders know

a leader's lead.

It sounds like he's great, man.

He's great.

And then I have like a CEO advisor, so this guy named Raj, who works at Indeed.

He's phenomenal.

He's a little bit more operational.

So I go to him with different people that were like, yo, here's things that I'm seeing

today.

What do you think I should be doing about it?

And so him, I have a Hebrew coach.

Right now I'm looking for a squash coach.

I've been really getting into squash.

It's actually, that's kind of been a harder coach to find.

So you like, you've always been into coaches and you've always done less and you've always

done lessons.

And so like, you've always, you've always had like flight lessons or like, oh yeah, but

I think you used to do boxing.

And so after we boxing is on Friday, still do it.

And so after I talked to you, I started hiring coaches and coaches are pretty sick.

So I've got a bunch of them now and they are badass is absolutely up.

Most all my coaches are fitness related.

But like, if I do want to learn something, I always hire a coach now it's 100% the way

to go.

Dude, I love, I'm glad that's cool to hear that man on so you have your fitness coach,

well, if you're boxing, I have like a boxing, yeah, and like we book it like, and so he's

because I'm like trying to fight and like prepare for a real match.

And so he's like helping me.

And then I have a fitness coach as well.

And then for a little while I did my body tutor, but I have a different nutritionist

now.

So yeah, like I'm all about coaches.

I think we're for people, especially if you don't have money to do something like that.

It's more also like, how do you just get someone to hold you accountable?

Right at the end of the day, like one of the things I found really was just having accountability

buddy.

So if you're trying to start a hustle, if you're trying to be healthy, if you can't

afford to coach, like that's an easy way to find someone to just help you make sure

that you you're going on your path.

What are you like maybe it's in your the hustle Facebook group.

What do you use to track all your all your stuff that you have going on?

Like what?

Like you have finance two or three or four coaches at any point, you've got your work,

you've always got shit going on.

Do you have some weird way that you track all this track all it.

I think the I mean, I just have most of my stuff is just automatic.

So I don't really have to track it, meaning that like every Friday, like my calendar is

is pretty much as automatic as possible.

And I think I've talked about this in the past, like it's color coded, right?

So every Friday at 10 a.m. is boxing.

So that's just automatic.

And then generally flying is going to be every other week.

And that's yellow.

So that's one of my learning.

And then Hebrews on Thursday's therapies, Wednesday, every other Wednesday at 11.

That's yellow.

That's a learning category, I do squashy steamy where we play squash and go to the steam room.

That's not really with a coach.

But I think if you can have more things on autopilot, so you don't have to think about

it, then you don't have to track it.

The only thing I think I actively aggress not aggressively, but I've tracked for 15

years is my personal finance.

What do you so every single I use a spreadsheet.

So if you go to I think on, yeah, OK, Dork.com, where's my money?

It's literally just like, what's my assets, what's my liabilities?

And then what are some action items I want to take in the next 30 days?

Do you when when you're tracking any of that, do you count privately held stock as anything?

And then we can talk about AppSumo KPIs because there's some interesting stuff, how we track

there and then the YouTube tracking.

So more business related stuff in my net worksheet.

I only track the cost basis.

So I don't track like how, but how do you have a valuation?

No, no.

So I literally just track how much I invested in it.

So I invested in like Circle, invested in Buffer, invested in L and T, Huckberry.

I only invest in companies I use.

I don't invest in anything I don't use.

And so I just track that like I put $10,000 in and that's just what it is.

I don't track like the appreciation on that at all.

Buffer is an interesting company.

So Buffer when I was when so a lot of people who listen to this show are young.

When I was like younger, when I was younger, when I was 24, 25, Buffer was the most badass

company because they did this thing where they revealed all of their revenue.

And at the time that was like revolutionary.

Like some small time bloggers were doing it, but Buffer started doing it.

But their company has totally stalled, hasn't it?

Like their revenue.

That's a tough one, man.

Because it's like 25 million dollars every single year for like the last three years.

Yeah.

I invested in them because I love Leo.

I love Joel there.

I mean, they're very innovative at the time.

I think what people don't give like Zuckerberg and some of these people credit for is how

do you stay relevant and consistent?

Same with Tim Ferriss.

Like how do you stay relevant for 15 years?

It's very easy to come out hot, but to actually kind of have that stuff for anyone out there.

Well, I think for anyone is just like you have to stay consistent with it and you have

to kind of keep staying on that edge of where you're a little bit uncomfortable.

I think with Buffer, there's they basically my my guess is that they hit a market saturation

of how valuable that is for people to pay for their tweets.

And then people are looking at their revenue now, by the way, it's gone down since 2019.

Yeah.

I mean, I think they have it.

Well, here's the interesting thing.

They've gone down, but Canva is a $40 billion company and it's pretty much the exact same

thing.

But what's the difference?

Canva is the same thing as Buffer.

Are you on drugs?

What are you talking about?

Canva is amazing.

Canva?

It's the same thing.

It's how do I create content that I can then share or post in other places?

But I think where they evolved past Buffer, which Buffer was like, I'm going to help you

make your content for Twitter, Twitter or Facebook, which really didn't make a difference.

And then Canva is like, well, what if we can help you make these templates that you can

just use in social media, but as well through a lot of other categories?

Dude.

And so I think that's kind of like market size is where they, I think, iterated better

than, but not iterated, but picked a better market.

Same as Absuma.

We got lucky with this market.

Canva is going to be one of the most valuable publicly traded companies, I think, in the

world when they go public.

Dude, have you seen their numbers?

They've just crossed a billion in revenue and it's like doubling.

Really?

Yes.

Canva is killing it, man.

They raised money at a $40 billion valuation because they grew the revenue from $500 million

to a billion in a year and it's on a tear, man.

Canva is a...

That is bonkers, man.

Wow.

Canva is crazy.

What's crazy is the founders are husband and wives and they bootstrapped it for a long

time.

And so the husband and wife trio or a couple is worth like $15 or $20 billion right now.

Good for them, man.

Good for them.

It's nuts, man.

Canva is a crazy story.

Canva sometimes because they're growing like a weed.

I have no idea how they grow so fast.

One thing I did want to come back on, Sam, I was talking to Mitchell on the back end.

One thing I do in tracking that when I've told people that I always find it pretty interesting

is like I do monthly life and reviews.

I told you about this?

No.

Every month?

Yeah.

It's actually been...

I mean, it's kind of...

Dude, so every month...

And I've done this now for about seven years and it's basically an email I sent to Tynan

Nick Gray and my buddy Jimmy and Leo.

And you basically just review your past month.

And I actually started sending it to my brother, my buddy Johnny, and a few other close friends.

But it's pretty fascinating to track what's happened in a month.

And it's actually been fascinating because in terms of tracking, it's been fun to go

back super years ago to see what was happening in my life.

But it's also interesting to be like, okay, look at all the photos from the month.

What happened in the month?

What can I understand about myself?

And then what do I want to have upcoming for me in January?

But I think that's been one.

So what all do you reveal in that email?

I'm going to copy that.

So you have photos?

So I'll just tell you.

So I don't share my photos.

But basically what I'll do is I'll pull up my photos from December, look through December

to the end, and I'm like, damn, a lot of stuff happened versus what I think happened.

I'll start the...

So let me just start the December one.

I put December was a fucking month, a six out of 10.

It may not be my greatest, but maybe it was actually better than I think.

And then I'll start the email with what are the things I said I was going to do in December

and how did I do against them?

So a few of them was like at peace with my drinking and I was not at peace with my drinking.

I said I'd go to a Niners game, which I did, lock in my 2022 bucket list, which I did.

And then I'll just try to do a little bit more of a stream of consciousness reviewing

of how the month actually went about themes, work, travel, family.

I've tried it with categories and I've tried also just free flowing.

There's not whatever works for you.

I think the important thing here is having like a group of people that you can send it

to that don't even have to give you feedback.

Like they don't, you don't need their opinion, but it's just like, here's my life.

How's your life?

And if you want opinions, you can ask.

Would you ever make that public also?

This is way too raw to make public.

It's like such good content.

I would love to like to read this.

I mean, I'll send you, I'll send you the December one.

Just don't share it, but it's just like, well, I'm just saying like, I'm thinking like,

would I do that as a blog?

It's pretty cool.

The end of year reviews for a lot of people.

The reason why I started thinking about Syed recently that guy, the work, WP beginner guy

is because he has this end of year review and I always love reading his end of year

review.

I didn't really, I'll look him up.

Some of this stuff has like, we did this like wild therapy out in Mexico on the beach, which

was just like psychedelics and that some of the stuff is just really sensitive.

Yeah, but I don't know if I'd want to make it public.

I'll send you this.

Let me ask about that really quick and then we'll wrap up, but did that stuff make a difference?

Just don't do in psychedelic therapy, which I told a story about how I almost did it one

time, but I got kicked out of the group.

Why did you get kicked out?

This lady used to work at Lehman Brothers.

She was like, worked at the banks that like helped to destroy America at one point.

And she got mad at us for talking about money too much.

And like she was saying how like her medicine needs to be free for the world, but was making

me pay $2,000.

And I was like, lady, you realize how like how like hypocritical you are.

Like you're talking about like how capitalism ruins everything, but you're like, you worked

at Lehman Brothers and like you're making me pay you $2,000 to do drugs with you.

Like come on, like don't act like your shit don't stink.

And she kicked me out of the group.

So I didn't get to, I didn't get to actually do it with her.

You couldn't have yourself improvement.

Yeah.

I didn't, she didn't let me do drugs with her.

I do want to end Mitchell's, Mitchell's messaging me is like, yo, you got to do your

favorite purchases or website.

Wait, but tell me really quick, did the therapy work?

So I've done a lot of different therapy.

Like I've done ayahuasca, which I put, I put that article out that went viral on a

V-rated article.

Yeah.

And the takeaway was like, it was cool, like it made somewhat of a difference, but like

it wasn't that great.

Um, no, it's definitely impactful.

It's just intense.

I mean, I think what, you know, there's a lot of different ways to eat a Reese's peanut

butter cup.

Why I always think the, it was LSD therapy.

And I think the main theme that I took away from that specific experience, well, a theme

in general for me is like, how much should we have life be super predetermined?

Like I want to go make this much money or I want to go on this vacation versus how much

should we just let the day like unfold?

And I think that's where that was definitely a theme I was trying to just understand.

I think the big theme from that specific experience was like, how do I let more joy in my life?

Right?

Like my word of the year is smile.

Like I think it's good to have an intent.

Yeah.

Like to have an intent or something.

And for me, it's just like, yo, just enjoy it.

Right?

We're all going to die someday.

Just like enjoy the grind, enjoy getting to chat with you today, which, you know, this

is probably the highlight of my day.

I have a buddy coming at 6 30, but I was like, I really want to talk to Sam today.

Like I'm looking forward to it.

And so that was the main theme from that experience.

I think there's a lot of ways to learn about ourselves.

I think, you know, MDMA or LSD therapy, regular therapy, journaling, there's a lot of different

ways, you know, whatever is calling people at the right time.

What are your...

All right.

Mitchell was telling, he also told me this or he wrote it in the thing about best stuff

to buy for under $100.

You and I are the same in that we buy lots of crap just because like we're both obsessed

with gadgets.

By the way, you sent me over, so I told Noah's going to go camping and he sent me over this

massive Tupperware container with like all these gadgets.

There was candy in there that expired in like 2012.

Like I went camping.

Do you use any of the gadgets in there?

Yeah, I went camping and I used her lantern and I use like one of the flashlights and

a headlamp.

And I saw, I found some Swedish fish or something like that, but it like expired like years

ago.

Oh, I'm more of a sour patch kid guy now.

That's what it was.

Sorry.

It was sour patch kids.

It was, it was like, it was, it was that type of candy.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I was trying to pull up some of the different things that I've bought that I'm like, man,

I like these and I use them a lot.

Let's start with the cold punch though.

The cold punch.

I didn't buy it.

I was gifted it.

It was expensive as shit.

It was like five grand, but in my opinion, if you want to be cold, it's a pretty cool

gadget.

I like it.

I just, I guess the question is like, I think retail is five K. I, so this, I think you'll

appreciate this.

I hit them up and I said, Hey, I'm a social media influencer, which I find ironic.

Oh my God.

I say that as a mockery.

I didn't actually say that.

I mentioned your product.

Can I actually just pay cost and then I'll promote it because I figure like I want to

support them as a business.

So I think for people out there that want to get free crap, like just pay cost.

You get it a lot cheaper and you can promote it if you like it.

That's good.

I like it, but I don't know.

Is it worth three K?

Probably not.

I like my, I've been using the bathtub and the hot tub a lot more often.

You have a hot tub.

I didn't know you had a hot.

Oh dude.

Here's the thing that I think people are sleeping on, but some people are using it.

Have you used Apple air tags?

I just got one.

They're pretty great.

They're like secretly amazing.

Like I throw it in my luggage and in my backpack.

So if it ever gets lost and like travel or someone ever jacks my backpack, there's like

a little secret tag in there.

Dude, I've been using tiles for years, but the tiles are only okay.

The air tags are, what's the difference?

I never use those.

Just the interface and how loud the beep is.

Oh, that's it.

Yeah.

Just the, just those two things.

They're pretty, dude, you can actually, I haven't messed with 3D printers too much,

but Tynan, he puts out a, dude, Tynan's gear list.

If you don't check out Tynan.com's gear list, definitely one of the top gear lists ever,

like in terms of like the TYNAN.com.

So his gear list is awesome.

He has like a lot of USB stuff and like what's the smallest charger to be using, but he,

what you can do, which is crazy on Etsy, this is a really neat hack.

You can buy a 3D printed thing where you can put an Apple air tag and then secretly attach

it to any of your bikes.

So if you're a biker for like 15 bucks, you can buy a secret thing that attaches to your

water bottle and no one will ever know it's there.

So you have a tracker on any of your expensive bikes.

That's sick.

But does the air tag, so the air tag only works so if it's within Bluetooth of an iPhone?

Of any iPhone.

I think that's where there's a little bit of like controversy, but it's any Apple device.

That's crazy.

That has an internet connection.

All right.

I think, is it internet connection or Bluetooth mesh connection?

I think it, I thought it was Bluetooth, which is kind of like fucked up if you think

about it.

Bonkers.

Right?

Dude.

Well, I mean, there's these stories where like someone put it on someone's car and they're

tracking them home.

I think that's obviously like, that's messed up.

But I think just the technically, like it's just a fun tool to start playing with and

just start experimenting with.

All right.

So what else have you gotten?

Dude, you know what I've gotten really into?

Tea.

Why?

I'm like, I don't know, man.

I've been ended like Chinese tea.

So I bought a Snow Peak bottle.

It's called Snow Peak is the brand.

It's like super good for like travel and stuff.

And then I buy, it's called a guy one.

I don't, I can't believe I'm talking about this publicly.

I don't know.

It's just so nerdy.

It's like what creepy white dudes do.

I mean, you are these guy ones, you have like a little Chinese tea ceremony and it's

really inexpensive.

You can go to AliExpress, buy it for like 10 bucks and I bought a travel one actually.

So I have one for home, which you can buy an AliExpress for like literally 10 bucks

or from Keith titanium.

You can buy a guy one that's for camping.

That's like 200 bucks.

So when I travel, I'll bring tea around and I get it from this place in the Bay area called

old ways.

Tea.

That is definitely been something I'm way more hyped on and I've definitely been drinking

a crap ton more tea this year.

A good thing that I bought recently, which I'm almost positive you have as well.

What brand chair do you have?

I think this is an autonomous same.

We have the exact same one.

So basically these chairs that I was looking at, they're like $1,500, like a fancy chair,

like an Aaron, I think it's called.

It's like 1200 to two G's.

They're really expensive.

And so autonomous as a new startup that's making chairs and desk supplies.

And it's basically as good, I think as a really fancy one, but for like 350 bucks.

Yeah.

These are definitely affordable.

One thing I'm thinking, one thought I've had Sam is like, what have you bought in your

life that you're like, man, this is luxurious.

I was trying to think of things that I'm like, like I bought this Levi's jacket because

it's getting cold in Austin.

It's got the little fur.

It was an $89 and I probably looked for a coupon and I'm like, yo, this is like, I look

like a cowboy, like a real cow.

This is obviously kind of a joke.

And so I was just trying to think like, what are other items in my life where I'm like,

man, I can't believe how rich I am, even though it's not that expensive.

And definitely that jacket isn't exactly dude, Amazon.

Oh, you have these Amazon basic moccasins.

I got those because of you actually.

Yeah, that's sick.

Dude, those are 20 bucks.

I'm like, I walk around my house and I'm like, who's the king?

Who's the gig?

I love that.

One thing that we do at my house is we do Costco socks and we'll buy like 50 pairs.

And just never match socks again.

And then at the end of a, at the end of like half the year or so, we just throw away all

the, the socks and get new ones because like if they wear out or if, because I, I hate

matching socks.

And so I hate, you know, like it's just stupid.

Why do I got to like spend all this time like putting them in a ball together, like just

give me like a huge bin where they're all the same and I'll just grab two.

It's stupid.

Matching socks is stupid.

I take a stand against that.

And so anyway, I just don't match socks anymore.

And so that's my splurge is I, I spend like $200 a year and I just get fancy new socks.

Also another thing that I do that's pretty amazing is I do the same, that same thing,

but with X aficionado underwear.

So like, you know, like, you like, you know, when you put underwear on and there's like

a pair that's always like the last to be used because like the band is all stretched out

or you just like don't like it or it's like stained or it looks ugly.

Like you're just not about it.

So I just threw all those away and I only bought one style, one color, but like 30 pairs.

And I spent like $500 to do it because X aficionado underwear is like 20 to $25 a piece.

Did I only wear sacks underwear?

I think it's the same kind of same kind of thing, but it's got the whole little ball

holder stuff.

I like those too.

I like sacks.

They're a good brand and they don't stretch out as fast, but they still do wear out a

little bit.

I definitely feel pretty luxurious in them.

Do you ever mess with Lululemon socks?

Yeah, I'm all about anything Lululemon.

Dude, Lululemon socks, like these no show socks because they always, all the other no

so I always get holes in them.

And I'm always just like frustrated about that, but the Lululemon ones home, what other

stuff you bought that you're like, yo, this is right.

And I do want to spend at least five minutes.

I know we're going to end here.

I want to spend five minutes like, how do we grow your podcast?

Let's like brainstorm.

Like, I know that's something you're aiming to do.

So let's do one or two more of these items and like, I don't know, let's do that now.

Let me tell you the numbers now.

So in December, we did right about two million views.

I think or two million downloads of which like, I think 600,000 was on YouTube and the

rest.

So 1.4 million was just people going on to iTunes or Spotify.

Okay.

So what's your, what's your current goal?

Do you have a goal this year around the audience or podcasts?

Yeah, I think three, three million consistently getting at least three million downloads a

month would put us in like the top like five business podcasts in the country.

What's been the biggest thing that's helped you grow it?

This is like the way, oh, I'm just going to brainstorm with you here.

What's helped you get the biggest Delta and new subscribers?

So one of the shitty parts about podcasting is that I've done a lot of growth stuff.

It's been crazy hard to grow it.

And so the biggest thing that's done well is we've just invested more time and more energy

into good content.

So Sean and I like prepare, we research a ton, our, our chemistry has gotten better.

So that's just like one big category of just like improved content.

The second thing that we've done that's starting to work really well is we're buying ads on

other people's podcasts.

And so we've learned this strategy from Jordan Harbinger.

Jordan Harbinger has 15 million downloads a month.

Of course he's in like a big category.

Just like in culture, I think is the category he's in.

And he basically spent $900,000 in his first year buying ads on other people's podcasts.

And that's how he got big.

Okay.

You should sponsor.

Okay.

My podcast.

I'll just put you, I mean, you're coming on next week for free.

Well, I'll sponsor.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, how many downloads do you get?

I think it's about 10,000 an episode.

Dude.

So like, we're a little bit bigger than that now, but like just getting to 10,000 is really

hard.

Podcasts, do you agree?

Are podcasts the hardest thing you've ever tried to grow?

That's why I backed out of it.

That's why I went to YouTube.

Dude, it's so hard, but it's super sticky.

Like every podcast that we launch is going to get at least 50,000.

Every episode we'll get at least 50,000 views, I think.

All right.

Here's like one simple thing that I don't know why you don't do on your, I think one

of the ways to think about one, it's always easy to get people to come from medium to medium.

So podcast sponsoring means they come from one show to the other, super easier.

How can you don't promote your podcast or newsletter on YouTube?

Well, not like I want to talk about the newsletter, but what do you mean?

The podcast?

Well, no, no, no, no.

So think about it as like a gateway drug.

So someone on another podcast is highly likely to go to a different podcast because you already

know that they're behavior wise down there.

Sponsoring podcasts is a great one.

Getting on other people's shows is a great one.

But you're getting like you had a video recently where you got Howard retired over 20 million

by age 31, has 140,000 views.

But in the description, there's nothing that says check out my newsletter or my podcast.

Yeah, that's stupid.

We should do you're right.

That's low hanging fruit that we should have solved for.

I would think that's a pretty easy one.

And then on your about page on YouTube, you don't link to the podcast.

Really?

Are you sure?

It says website.

Well, it says website.

Where does that go?

Yeah.

I mean, I guess that's okay.

It says website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.

I might want to actually just put the link for podcast.

I would also consider.

I mean, this might be more of a stretch, but I would consider.

Do you strategically try to really intentionally grow YouTube and or TikTok pick one of those

probably YouTube and then really think of that as a way to get people in your newsletter,

which is like the first step to getting them onto your podcast.

No, it's been the other way around.

Like lately we've been go for my first million has become like almost its own brand.

I think.

Yeah.

Here's what I think is going to happen.

I think in the future, like within one to three years, me and Sean in HubSpot, I think

what we're going to do is sell the podcast or do some type of licensing deal.

There's like no reason for me to think this other than just like a prediction.

I think that we're going to do some type of crazy.

There's a world where we would do a crazy licensing deal.

I'm trying.

HubSpot is a public company.

So I'm not actually just so everyone knows I'm just fucking guessing.

Like I'm not.

This is not based on anything.

HubSpot maybe would do a thing where in three or five years we do some type of licensing

deal with like Spotify or whatever, you know, kind of like to call her daddy a podcasted.

You know what that podcast is called daddy?

Yeah.

So they do a licensing deal for $60 million over three years.

And I think there's a world where we would do that with like Spotify or one of the other

big platforms.

And I think that's like that is a creative at home, but why did you say getting people

to come on to your to to like grow the YouTube channel or to talk is not worth it or not

as important?

You were like, yeah, it's not good.

Like, what do you mean there?

Well, what we have found is that I think it's better to grow to send people straight to

the podcast because if they click, if they click subscribe, then they're notified whenever

there's a new episode.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But don't you think like like the amount of people available on the YouTube that are like,

hey, I want to hear more about this than come.

I mean, think about how much like Joe Rogan got found because of YouTube.

Well, and the second answer to that is, I mean, we're trying.

It's fucking hard.

If we're trying, I'm like that the efforts, if you look at our YouTube page, look at

our videos like the efforts there, like they just don't get that many views all the time.

It just is taking a long time.

I mean, how many views?

Look at our YouTube.

How do you think it's going?

Yeah.

Do you want recommendations?

Do you want recommendations?

Yeah.

I would say it's going okay at best.

Well, I think it's interesting.

You've had a few that bang, right?

Like you did your like the Hasan Minhaj guy.

So I think what you what you're doing is you're uploading podcasts to YouTube.

You're not actually creating content that people watch on YouTube, right?

So if you look at our channel, like YouTube, okay, Dork, the content is like made for YouTube.

So the two things that I would tell your team, here's what I would recommend you to do.

Over the next like three months, look at your CTR, like the click-through rate of all these

different videos.

And that'll basically show you if you're picking the right topics.

And then as well, your thumbnails are baseline.

If you can hit a 5% CTR, you're doing very well.

You're doing very, very well.

So like, would you say three to five is decent?

I mean, three is decent.

I think you want to get to five.

You want to be like hitting a really high number.

So like our recent like awesome videos are hitting five.

So I would basically just start tracking your CTR, your click-through rate on these things.

And the second thing you want to be, this is just the start with this stuff is that

I think this is a way of expanding the pie that people find out about you.

And then they're like, oh, in your description about page, go to the newsletter, go to the

podcast, which I would just update your top 10 videos here.

You don't need to do all of them, but do them moving forward.

The second thing is your average view duration.

So the Hasan Minhaj one had, it's a two-hour video, there's a reason it got 26,000 views.

It's because it's long as hell.

And I'm guessing your average view duration was like 20 minutes.

How many does that have?

20,000?

26,000.

Wow.

Where, you know, the serial killer got busted through 23 million.

One, I don't know how that's relevant to people making a million.

It's not.

Put that on your own channel.

Bro, come on.

Don't blame me for all this stuff.

You're who's in charge.

I don't know anymore.

Well, anyways, I think the second thing is just look at your average view duration.

Do the same thing.

Just look at a line graph.

So like, how are we trending?

And don't worry about super optimizing.

Just worry like, each month or so, can we try to get both those numbers moving in an

upward direction?

Any other things?

And I think you were able to do that.

Was that anything else we should do?

I mean, your, your thumbnails aren't really how I'm pretty sure we're using your thumbnail

guy.

Yeah.

It might be the thumbnail guy, but you're like, how much are you actually spending to

make a great thumbnail?

So like every one of our thumbnails now we go and do custom photos.

So at 430, I'm literally, it's the third time going out with a photographer to take a thumbnail

for the same video.

Dude, that's so much work.

Isn't it?

Isn't that crazy?

There's so much work to make it like a YouTube video.

I just dismiss it as like, oh, you're just fucking around.

It's so much more work than I thought to be good.

I mean, I don't, I'm not going to say some cliche shit.

Anything great is worth working on.

Do you feel like an idiot though on the side of the street doing this face where you're

like hands on your head and you're like freaking out about the 2022 stock market and how it's

going to go down?

Well, I think, I mean, the other thing with, no.

It's honestly enjoyable.

And I find it kind of like a science.

It's like a game where like, it's a game more even than a science, like how do I win this

game?

And doing that, it gives me an advantage.

So hell yeah.

I want to do it.

And I find it enjoyable.

I think, you know, topics, you should also just kind of consider the topics you're putting

out on YouTube.

Like how much do authors make?

It's not something that I think people are really like going to immediately stop and

drop everything to watch.

But like Solana billionaires, right now crypto and NFT and stuff like that and how to get

rich is always popular on YouTube, but we're not making specific content.

We're just like, whenever we talk, we're just going to chop, we just chop shit up.

So like it, what we could do is like have pre-planned topics that we think would go

get popular on YouTube.

It's just a little bit harder to do that naturally in a conversation, but I think we can do it.

But yeah, our goal, like I'm predicting the future, we're going to get to like the 3 million

range by the end of the year.

And once there, I think we're going to be end up being like one of the big, I think we'll

be like in the Dave Ramsey, Tim Ferriss category inside the next year and a half.

Here's it.

Yeah, we can end it.

But one thing I find fascinating is there's people who are huge on YouTube that no one

knows, but a lot of people know who Tim Ferriss is kind of something that I've just been

reflecting on.

What does that mean?

Well, he's been in the game forever.

And he also entered the game when the world was smaller.

So like in the niche of like tech and startups, they're, and this whole like make money online

thing, there weren't that many people on it.

And there weren't that many people who are famous for it.

And he was definitely one of the first that was famous for it.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, that's the world gets bigger.

It's also getting no near niche.

Like I have a friend who's popular in the spearfishing category.

How popular?

I think what's that?

He's got like a few hundred thousand followers on Tiktok.

He's got a full time business now.

It's called.

Sick.

Cast.

Cast.

It's called cast.

Roupon for nerds.

I want to be a spearfish influencer.

This guy's cool as shit, man.

If you ever want to go spearfishing, but I think what's what fascinates me about him is

like he's on Tiktok.

He just does this, you know, you talked about this in the beginning where you documented

your house.

He likes spearfishing and he likes fishing.

And so he just started videoing it, put on Tiktok got like, I think he's how many followers

they have on Tiktok and YouTube.

I think he's got like 200,000 casts in spirit, 289, 285,000 followers.

He texted me yesterday.

I don't want to say his revenue, but he's got a, you know, not a seven figure, but a

pretty healthy business selling spearfishing gear now.

So I think instead of getting big at Tim where maybe people are like, I want to be known

or I'm an expert, I've got an imposter syndrome, just like, do the thing you're already excited

about, document that.

And I think people will be shocked that they can make a lot of money doing it.

Like my brother, he does insurance claims for hospitals, I tell you about this.

So when you go to the hospital, you get a bill and the hospital has to fight with the

insurance company about how much to pay.

So he reviews the bill to optimize to make sure that the insurance company pays the full

amount.

Because you can be like, no, they didn't need to do this procedure.

They need to do this.

And now he's so I think one of the things is what do you have in your day job that you

can make a business out of.

And so he's exploring how to help individuals optimize that, well, not optimize, but reduce

their medical bills.

So if you got a medical bill and it's like 5,000 or 1,000 or 10,000, he'll review it for

free and then maybe take a cut if he's able to reduce the amount of money that that's

actually a great idea.

There's this company called buyer.co and my friend started it and it was called negotiating

as a service and they would negotiate anything on your behalf and take a percentage of the

savings and the company sold to ramp.

So if you go to buyer.co, it redirects to that website.

The company you said you don't like ramp and it's not that I hate him or something.

And buyer, the guy who started it, he's like, I sold out too early, but I didn't have any

money and it was like a cool way to make money.

But he was like, this could actually be great.

I would do like a negotiating negotiating as a service and have my health bill be one

of the big ones.

Another great company is called do not pay and they're doing this, but for a variety

of different things.

Yeah.

I saw that.

I like do not pay.

Yeah.

Do not pay the robot.

There's also like vendor.com.

Vendor is like a similar one.

You give them your bills and negotiate and they just take a cut of whatever they say.

Dude, I love those services.

I love no.

Yes.

Win-win.

Win-win.

No one's down.

Like QuickBooks or not quick in TurboTax.

Mint.

Yeah.

TurboTax a little.

It's like, oh, it's free.

It's free.

It's free.

Guess what?

If you really want it, it's paid.

But they don't take money from you.

They just take a percentage of your refund.

Yes.

Which I like.

Yeah.

That's fair.

So I did want to say though, dude, honestly for your show, because other people out there

are trying to do it.

I think obviously you said go on other people's shows, podcasts.

I think optimize these other platforms.

We're going hard on the tick-tock thing.

The tick-tock thing definitely has worked.

But has it driven people?

I think ultimately it's helping me with my goal.

Is it driving people to the podcast?

Unfortunately, I have no idea.

That's another shitty part about podcasts is it's hard to know what works because I

can look at my charts and see how many downloads we have.

They won't tell me how they heard about us.

It's not like Google Analytics where I can see like the person who bought this came from

Google because they searched blank on this type of phone.

Have you done URL Genius?

No.

We've done chartable.

Is that the same thing?

Well, URL Genius is, I think we use this on our show sometimes.

It's app.urlgene.us.

It's deep linking.

So it'll link deeply into the podcast on Spotify.

I don't know if it does iTunes as well.

And then you could track, I think, how those clicks are actually looking.

You can put that on TikTok or put that out on the YouTube world.

I didn't know about that.

All right.

I'll look into that.

All right, Samuel.

We're going to wrap up.

I love seeing you.

Dude, thanks for doing this.

You look good.

Dude, thanks for having me.

How many people reached out from the last one?

It got, Ben messaged me.

He said it got 65,000 or 70,000 views.

Really?

Yeah.

Dude, you guys are, man, I told you the first time I ever came on your show, I had like

an ex, this girl I went on a date with was like, I can't believe you're on the show.

Yeah.

I got 65,000 views or downloads.

Thank you for having me, man.

This was excellent.

All right.

We'll talk in a little bit.

I feel like I can rule the world.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.