Bonus Episode: How To Build Career Momentum with Noah Kagan
01:00:08 Share

Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

It's like the best time to start a business and start doing anything that you can because you have time and you don't have there's not much downside. So like in college, I started like a discount card business. I started a consulting business. I started a Craigslist for college students. Most of these things failed. But I think especially early on, take a lot of risks, as many risks as you can, because you get older, we get boring and we get safe and we get scared of losing.

And I think especially when there's less to lose, go out there and be bold. Hey friends, welcome back to Deep Dive. If you're new here, my name is Ali. And in each episode, I chat to authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people about how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to apply to our shared journey of trying to live our

best lives. This episode is a little bit different. It is part of the off season between season two and three of the podcast. And this is actually an interview that I did with my friend Noah Kagan from way back in 2020, before the official launch of this podcast. Noah is one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs that I know. He started out

as employee number 30 at Facebook before getting fired by Mark Zuckerberg. And we kind of go into that story, which is kind of interesting. He was then employee number four at Mint, which became a ridiculously successful company. And he's now the CEO of the Sumo Group of Apps, which is itself an eight figure business. Noah is also writing a book about entrepreneurship and he shares loads of really interesting things about entrepreneurship and business and stuff like that on his own YouTube channel, which will be linked down below. In the conversation, we discuss a bunch of things, including what he learned from being fired by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook,

We talk about how he actually went about building this eight figure business and how it's all working now. And we talk about some of the things that you can do to get a headstart on your career. So I hope you enjoy this throwback interview with Noah Kagan. Let's go for it. Noah, welcome to the channel. How's it going?

It's going great. I'm super excited to talk with you. Yeah, this is going to be fun. I wonder if we could start by if you could just talk through how your career has gone so far, I guess, from leaving school, what you've done, and maybe we can talk about lessons that we learned along the way. And then we'll dive into more productivity and talk about some of the books that we enjoy. I know you're a fan of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which I read two days ago, and it made me cry so many times. So definitely want to talk about that. Dude, super excited about that. Yeah.

Yeah, man, it's been a journey. And I'm curious for you to share your journey as well. I don't know which parts you haven't shared with your audience. My journey, when I graduated college, I went to UC Berkeley. I didn't know what a BA or BS was. I guess people, bachelors of science. And I was like, I don't really know. I just knew that in college, number one, I was like super active doing things in college.

And I just knew that I've always loved technology and I love computers and I love sales and those things. And so I think college, especially, I know that's a lot of your audience. It's like the best time to start a business and start doing anything that you can because you have time.

And you don't have, there's not much downside. So like in college, I started like a discount card business. I started a consulting business called HFG Consulting. I started a Craigslist for college students called collegeup.org. Most of these things failed, but I think especially early on, take a lot of risks, as many risks as you can. Because you get older, we get boring and we get safe and we get scared of losing. Like I'm like, I don't want to lose my money. And I think especially when there's less to lose, it's like go out there and be bold.

Yeah, I think so. For me, I started my entrepreneur journey when I was, I guess in America, you would call it middle school. I think I was around 12 at the time and I taught myself how to code by following tutorials on Drupal.

W3 schools and things like that. And then I started freelancing my services out on rentacoder.com. And I would try and undercut the market because I was just a kid. I could get by with $5 for a project. And even so, like the Indians would still manage to undercut me. And I was like, why? How is this happening? And so that was how I got my start. And through middle school, we call it secondary school in the UK.

Every year, me and my friends, we would come up with a new business idea and every year they all failed. But we learned a lot from each kind of iteration of those business ideas. And so for me, like when I got when I was in my first year of med school, that was when the next business I started started to do well. Just one thing to highlight. So literally this morning and starting last night, I made a list of every business I've ever started.

Oh. And it's over 20. And so I finally, I'm worth over a million dollars. And it's not bragging. And I just want to give people context. But that's after 20 years of trying over 20 different businesses. And I think when I was younger, I was like, I'm not a millionaire by the time I was 30. We had this idea called 30 by 30. You want to have $30 million by 30. And it's tough.

And I didn't realize how many things I've been doing until I finally became a millionaire. And so I call it the 10-year rule. So if you can find something and work on it for 10 years, you will become a millionaire, if that's your goal. Or if you're trying to be a musician or if you're trying to be an artist or if you're trying to be a writer, as long as you do 10 years of it, you will get whatever level of success you want. But I just didn't realize how long it does take. And even for yourself, I think one thing that you said that I want to highlight that's so great is

You solved your own problems. Hey, I'm good at this web stuff. Hey, I'm good at this medical stuff. And especially in college and when you're young, just get started right now.

Yeah, absolutely. That's the classic advice I give everyone that it's so easy to spend so much time thinking and reading and stuff. But getting started is like, is, you know, the first step. I wonder if you can tell the story of how was your time at Facebook? Like employee number 30. That's pretty early on, isn't it? I mean, I think they're around 50,000 employees now. So yeah, I would say like I was literally just in a previous conversation. Mark hated when you hyperlinked periods.

And he was really interesting. This is a guy that at 21 or 22, I was there and Yahoo offered us a billion dollars. So Ali, if I offered you a billion dollars to never YouTube again, drop out of medical school and then you have to start a new career right now, what are you going to do? Oh, that would be tricky. I'd probably take it, to be honest. A billion is a lot. It's quite a lot. I would definitely take it and figure out something else to do with my life. I think one of the things that people don't appreciate enough about Mark is that he's had to make good decisions for 20 years.

Great decisions. It's been around since 2004. For 16 years, anyone can have a company for one year do well. But for 16? And so I think what Mark did well and what was interesting about that experience, I started saying earlier, he would notice on a help page if a period was linked. And he would fix it or he would tell the team, you need to fix it. And so I think his attention to detail was unparalleled.

But I think something that's even more important that's not really talked about or recognized from Mark, he had a vision that was so appealing and so big that I dedicated my life to working there. And I think that's what's missed in a lot of people trying to start businesses or some of these companies not doing as well. Mark said, we are going to connect every single person in the world. And he did. But he said that in 2005. And he said that when he rejected a billion dollar offer.

And that says a lot about what he was trying to accomplish. And I think there's something there when what do the people do when they already have so much money they don't have to work anymore? And so what I always encourage people is how do you just do that work now? Like, it's so obvious that you love making YouTube videos. I don't know. Maybe you're like you really hate when I watch your videos.

I'm like, this guy is not natural because you're putting in the work, which I think people don't realize, but you're enjoying it. And I think there's something there about find the thing that you do if you have a million dollars in the bank. And guess what? By doing that, you'll actually get the million dollars in the bank. Yeah, this is actually something that I've been asking a lot of doctors and medical students for the last kind of six years since I got into medical, is that if you won the lottery, would you still want to be a doctor? And the story that I tell is that like of medical,

In the past, like, actually, I think it's, yeah, in the past eight years of asking this question, about half of the people have said they would leave medicine completely. And the other half have said they would still do it because it's fun, but they would go part-time. And then the next question is, okay, why don't you go part-time from today? And the answer is always, well, I've got bills to pay. I've got the mortgage and stuff.

And so like from very early on, I was like, okay, this is the future that I want to avoid. I don't want to be in this position where I've done this six years of med school. I've done all these years of training and I'm now a doctor. My answer to that, if you want the lottery question would be something different to exactly what I'm doing now. And so that was the thought process that started me on this path of trying to set up businesses and passive income and financial independence and all that kind of stuff. Because medicine is fun, but I don't think anything is fun if you do it full time. And so that's the future I'm trying to mitigate against.

Would you rather do YouTube full-time or medical full-time if you had to choose? If I could only choose one, probably YouTube full-time just because you get a lot more freedom. But ideally, I'd like to do both kind of part-time. I don't think I'd want to do YouTube full-time. I feel like it would lose some of the charm if it becomes like a full-time job.

I remember I was at a dinner party in New York years ago and I met this girl and whenever I'm meeting new people, I try to avoid asking what they do. I try to hold out as long as possible. I make it a game. I'm like, oh, you're going to ask me? You lose. And so we ended up talking and she's like, oh, I'm an ice cream maker. I was like, oh, that's such a cool job, cool career. And I was like, oh, how much ice cream are you eating a day? And she's like, I haven't eaten ice cream in two years.

And so I thought there was something kind of an interesting story in that, which is sometimes if you do something you love so much, you don't even end up liking it. So I think generally find the thing that makes you money that you enjoy, but also keep these hobbies. Because for me, the hobbies, it keeps my stimulation going. Like I'm into chess. So you can play me chess.com. Oh, nice. Yeah. We should totally have a game sometime.

Oh, well, my username is okdork. I don't know if yours is public. Yeah, I think like last time I had a session on chess.com was I think in 2015 or something, but I'll have to check my account. I'll add you as a friend on that. So you were at Facebook for a bit and then you left Facebook and then you joined Mint after that? Was that the trajectory? Yeah.

No, I got fired. Oh, okay. What was the story there? If you're talking about it, because I wasn't going to bring it up because I was like, this might be a bit of a sore spot, but since you bring it up. No, I think a few things. So one, I think chips on shoulder create successful people. I think if you have some, like you have to have some purpose.

So for me, with this whole coronavirus thing, I have literally felt compelled to help people start businesses or do their marketing. Or I've been calling myself a confidence cheerleader because I'm so excited about all the stuff happening for people that want to do work like the action takers. And so I felt called into that with my Facebook experience specifically. I think there's a different component, a few different things there. But I don't think I think they were right to fire me. I think if I was Mark and that team, I would have fired me, too. And it created a chip on my shoulder that has continued.

compelled me to go do other. So I think the thing there to think about, because it's not about my story, what's the lesson for you? So I think the lesson for you is a few different things. Number one, are you invaluable to the company? Not everyone should run a business. Not everyone should do YouTube. It's a lot harder than it seems. It's easy to watch you put out a video, but they don't see the hours and the retakes and the cuts and all the effort and the years to get there. So you don't have to run a business. But if you're going to go work somewhere, number one, are you invaluable? Meaning if they try to replace you today, how much would they be set back? That's number one.

And number two, I think if that's not the case, I think for everyone out there like you've done, Ali, which I commend you on, is how much are you creating control in your life? Because what you've done is you said, hey, if the medical thing doesn't work out, I control this income from Ali Abdul YouTube channel. And so like that's why I try to encourage people. We put out a course. It's seven dollars called monthly one K dot com, which is like, hey, if you want to do start a business and get a little more control in your life, that's what you're doing.

That's what I recommend. We also refund the money once you make it back. I don't want to make any money from it. But so the thing with Facebook, again, I think be invaluable to the company and figure out like, all right, if I can't control this, what things can I start doing to control? And I also, I think at that time in my life, I had to mature. I wasn't mature enough to actually be successful there. And I think what's interesting is what happens when your identity gets taken from you? Yeah. Yeah.

I remember the day I was in a coffee shop. Matt Kohler, who's now a billionaire, and Sri fired me at this coffee shop in Palo Alto. My cell phone was a Facebook cell phone, so they took that from me. And so I had to go to the store and buy a cell phone. And then I bought a pack of cigarettes. And I lived in a house with all Facebook people.

And so I went to the house, packed all my stuff out, and I moved to my friend's couch. I used to work at Intel before that. And I just moved into my friend Johnny's couch and smoked cigarettes. And I basically sulked for a long period of time.

How did you get yourself out of that? So I think with how to get out of that, number one, you should sulk. Watch Netflix eight hours, drink a little bit, smoke a little bit, just get depressed for a bit. And the reason I say that, Ali, is that I think you have to hit rock bottom before you can start coming up. And so how to start doing, and so you're like, I was literally sleeping on a couch, didn't have a lot of money, but all of my friends worked at Facebook. Everyone knew I worked at Facebook and I just got fired. And this is now public. So I think a few things happened. Number one,

You need to get your confidence back up. You need to feel self-worth. So what I did right there is just make your bed. Okay. So what do you mean? If you're sleeping on a couch, fold the sheets. Oh, okay. Actually, make your bed. Put them on the corner. Make your bed. Why? Because you can control that. I couldn't control Facebook removing me or not. That was their decision. But I can control the bed. I can control the gym. So start even just doing a push-up. Because guess what? You need to do things that give you confidence. Number three, go help one person.

And so what I mean by that is look on your phone or look in your network, look on LinkedIn or look at your schoolmates or look at your teachers or look at your parents or look at your religion and say, let me just reach out to someone and help them for free. And I think when you start teaching like you do with YouTube or you help and you realize you impact one person, you start realizing for yourself, like I am worthy. The next thing that I would do, there's two other things I would do. Look at your network. You have a bigger network. Everyone has at least 500 friends and you

Within those 500 friends, someone probably has someone that can help you. So look within your network and start asking for help. Like I always tell people to do the coffee challenge. I don't know if you heard me talk about this. What's the coffee challenge? So the coffee challenge is where you go anywhere you buy something, generally at a cafe, and you ask for 10% off. Oh, yes. I have heard you talk about it. I remember one time you mentioned this on a podcast and I broke out into a sweat literally just thinking about it. And I was like, oh my God, what is wrong with me?

Yeah, it's intense. You ask for the 10% off and your heart is like this. And then you get rejected or maybe you get accepted and then you realize you're still alive. And the reason I think that's, I literally think asking is one of the most powerful muscles that anyone can develop. And when you ask, that's ultimately what you're doing in almost everything in life. You're saying, hey, I'm asking for this job. I'm asking for this relationship. I'm asking for things. And the more that you can become overcome fear,

for practicing that, things become easier. So start asking your network what you can help with. One last thing that I want to say that really helped me with Facebook, after the Facebook experience, there's a few more things, but especially if you're younger, go and start connecting people. Go and start building up your audience. So sendfox.com is a free newsletter that we created, and it's something that I just wanted. And so 20 years ago, it was in 2000, so it was when I started blogging on okdork.com. Oh, damn. That was a long time ago. It was before you were born, Ali. Just kidding. But...

I started blogging. And so I think what's important there is that start building up your brand, start building up your audience because no one can take that away from you. So start a blog or, you know, on SendFox.com, start a newsletter. And so I started doing that and I started hosting events. So I actually just put on a conference. So I think the part there is look at what you not just your network, look at what you're special. Look what makes you special. And so for me, I was like, I worked at Facebook.

That's pretty special. There's only like 100 people that can say that at that time. So I said, well, what if I put on a conference and what if I started hosting things?

So I didn't have a big network. I didn't have any attention at that point. But I put on basically conferences where I hit up these people and said, hey, I work to Facebook. Would you mind coming and speaking at this thing? And so I did the thing called Entrepreneur27.org where I just started putting on events and then I promoted them. And I started doing that. And then I did a thing called CommunityNext.com, which I just invited. I just asked people like Guy Kawasaki and Max Levchin from PayPal and the Hot or Not guys.

and I put on a conference and actually ended up making $50,000 because I wasn't trying to make any money. And so the point that I'm saying there is that I think especially if you're just getting started in your career,

Start building those relationships because I can't tell you now like Ramit Sethi or Tim Ferriss Guy Kawasaki a lot of these guys I just helped promote them and connect with them really early on and if you're young people are way more open To having you connect with them nice. Yeah, that's pretty great advice occasionally I got I get people asking hey

what would you tell yourself kind of 10 years ago when I would have been like 15 at the time? And honestly, the thing that I would tell myself is, you know, dude, start a personal blog, start writing at the very least book reviews of all the books that you're reading. If you see a good movie, just write something about it just to build up that habit of writing. And I,

I really wish I'd been doing this for so much longer than I have because it's just such a superpower when you have a blog that's 10 plus years old and you can see the progression of posts and you build the audience over time. And then like going back to all the business stuff, once you have a pre-existing audience, it's so much easier to do everything than to start from scratch. It's much easier to garden than to hunt.

Garden than to hunt. What do you mean by that? Well, a garden, it takes time and you have to plant a seed. But then you get a lot of vegetables and it's guaranteed. It's right there in your house. But it takes time to actually get that where a lot of us, we just go out and hunt. And we're like, oh, I hope I find something out there. And I'm just going to go ask for things right away. And you're going to hope for it right away, but you may not get it right away. And so I think that's what you were highlighting is like start planting your seeds now for things that you can enjoy later. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So we've got this live blog going on the side and we've got some questions in from the audience if you're up for it. Question number one is from Adam Al-Ghazali who says, how do you deal with feeling behind in life career-wise? Is that anything that you struggle with, feeling behind? I suppose being fired from Facebook is pretty far behind most of your friends at the time, especially if you were living with other Facebook people. Yeah, I think everyone has a different label for it. I think some of the phrases, I've had two experiences. One, I was on the streets of Argentina once

And I remember being in the center of the street thinking, what am I doing with my life? I was 25. And I was like, what is the purpose of all this? And I just felt really lost. And then recently in the past three years, I haven't really done a lot of work, Ali. I've actually felt really discouraged. I haven't, I think the word that I think of is not behind, but unleashed.

And I know Tony Robbins says unleash the power within. But I just think, I don't know. I think it's have I found my calling? Have I found my purpose? And so for Adam, I think the one thing I would do is, well, I would actually do two things. So number one, look back what you did as a kid that you just really enjoyed. Was it reading? Was it bicycling? Was it writing? Was it photography? And then number two, look at what you've been doing in your spare time for free. And so...

I think what we do is in our heart, I know this is going to be woo-woo, so I'm not a woo-woo person, so just let me put that out there. But in our heart, we know, man, like for Noah, I love sharing content. I love talking with you. I love sharing different things on my YouTube channel or with AppSumo. I love this. But in my head, I said, that's just another talking influencer. They're stupid. That's another talking influencer. You don't know anything. Noah, you actually, like your stuff's not helpful. You're not enough.

And I did that for three years. And I think and that's our head kind of fighting our heart. And yeah, you're shaking your head because you probably agree. And we're embarrassed because I thought about I literally thought, oh, my high school friends are going to watch, you know, the Noah Kagan on YouTube and they're going to think, oh, he's stupid or look at he's got pointy ears because I got pointy ears. Oh, yeah, you do. I do kind of like Spock. And I'm self-conscious. I'm human. I bleed real blood.

But eventually, when you go into that heart and you start really following your gut and that heart intuition, that is when you don't feel behind. So I think that's number one thing I would say for Adam is just really listen to what you've been doing and go back and revisit it. Revisit chess. That was important for me. Revisit sharing and worrying about not less about everybody else, but just more about yourself. The second thing I think Adam said is behind. So to be behind, is that a comparison? Yeah, it sounds like Adam is comparing himself to potentially his peers.

To his peers. And so I think comparing is helpful, right? So jealousy, I love jealousy, right? Because jealousy is a compass of something that you either want or don't want in life. Like I have a friend who is making more millions than I was, which is, it's ironic because I still drive a Miata. So I don't even use this money. But I think the idea is it's not about where you're behind or not. It's maybe this is giving you clarity about what you really want or where you want to be. And I always think of life as like a Google map. And what you do in a Google map is you try to have to really spend a lot of time and say, where am I going?

And then figuring out your route is actually pretty easy. So I would just think if you're behind, what I would encourage you to do is instead of worrying so far ahead and worrying about others, maybe use jealousy to compass, figure out. So it's now almost May 1st, 2020. Just decide where do I want to be at the end of May 30th and what would make that epic? Another thing that I've done recently that's been honestly a game changer, I made a list in my day of what makes my day fulfilled.

Okay. Interesting. Because I was like, if you think about it, actually, let me ask you this. What makes it for you a great day versus just an okay day? Just riff with me on it. Yeah. Okay. So a great day for me would be one where I get home from work and I feel like I've accomplished something at work. I've had good banter with the nurses and the other doctors. And so there's been kind of like a social element to it. I think the days that I enjoy less are the ones where I'm just on my own in the doctor's office doing paperwork because that's just boring because there's not much kind of human contact.

I think a day is good when like often if I filmed a video for the day or if I've done the things that were on my to-do list then I think oh that was a good day and I can go into bed happy but on days where I kind of procrastinate and just end up scrolling through Instagram I feel like wasted my time what am I doing with my life yeah one of the things that we can highlight for Adam is I have a thing called Geby and it's something I put in there but I think

part of it is if you're behind how can you just start out at least your morning strong and I think there's a lot of books that do it and they're all maybe more complicated than I want to consume so get me to me is basically what I do every single morning and I'll show you some of it but it's basically gratitude exercise breakfast and you and I do this every single morning I actually use strides app it's a free app oh yes I had that downloaded ages ago

Oh, I love strides. It basically is like every to do that I do today. I just it basically is my Gabby. So it's like, how do I start my day off strong? So I don't feel behind. So gratitude every morning I write down one thing I'm grateful for. And I just put in my notes. I don't do any complicated app for that. So today I was grateful for my stepdad.

And then yesterday I was grateful for piano. And the day before I was grateful for bathrooms. Just like funny stuff. Okay. And then exercise. So I try to do 250, I don't try, I do 250 pushups a day. So just what exercise are you going to do? So I use PushFit. Okay. It's a free app. And I just do a bunch of pushups.

And so I get some exercise in. And this is what helps me start my mornings and my days great. Breakfast, so today I had some healthy blueberry stuff. And you. And so I think part of you, it sounds similar to me, which is what are you doing for yourself today? And you know that when you do a video, you feel great. And so that's what I was kind of starting with that makes a day fulfilled is

I think people, especially young or old, we can be more intentional about how to make a great fucking day. And so just think about what makes a day great. Is it a video? For me, this kind of conversation, I'm going to be glowing the whole rest of the day. On the point of this making list of things that fulfill you, I came across this in some blog post like last week. And I was like, okay, I'm going to take this seriously. I just kind of started writing down a list of all the things in my life that I really enjoy.

And I kind of got about 20 things down on the list. And I realized that the whole doctor side of it wasn't really on the list. It was more things like making videos or listening to a particularly good audio book or playing board games with friends or doing practice. I'm trying to teach myself music theory with piano and guitar and stuff. And those are the things now that are bringing me more fulfillment than my job. And that was another kind of signal in my head that, okay,

maybe this because I think one thing that I sometimes struggle with is because having gotten gone through so much of medicine the story in my mind is that if I were to take a break from that potentially then I don't know I'd be throwing away all this effort or I'd be stepping out into the void but in terms of the things that fulfill me I think that was a helpful exercise for me to realize that okay cool if I could design my kind of ideal day these are the things that would be in it and so how can I work towards a future in which that's possible

What called you into medicine to begin with then? Because it seems, is that, do you have to revisit that or is that in question now? I think, so the thing that called me into it was, honestly, I didn't really know what else to do. And when you're my ethnicity and you get decent grades in school, like the default path is you just do medicine. I was like, all right, I might as well do medicine. I, I,

I was torn between medicine and computer science because I'd been doing the whole coding thing and I'd been doing stuff in PHP and I was like, oh, doing computer science would be cool. But when I was making this decision at the age of 17, I had the thought that it would be much cooler to be a doctor who can code than to be just a coder. And I also had the thought that six years at university is more interesting than three years at university because they say that university is the best time of your life.

And so that was why I chose to do medicine. It wasn't really a calling as such. It was more like, okay, best option. I'm not really sure what to do. Let's just go for it. And I'm super glad that I did the degree and the job is quite fun, but I don't think it's what I want to do for the rest of my life, at least not full time. Hence the whole kind of YouTube channel and all this other kind of business stuff that I've been trying to do and learning from you and your podcast. So how are you going to move forward with that, man? That's a big thing. Because I

Yeah, from August, I'm going to be unemployed essentially, because after two years of being a doctor in the UK, at that point, you then apply for a residency program in whatever specialty you want. And I wasn't really sure what specialty I want to go into. And I was from speaking to loads and loads of consultants, i.e. senior doctors at work. Most of them were saying that, look, there's no rush to get through the training pathway. The nice thing about a medical career is that you can always take a break and then you can come back and you don't really lose anything.

And so the plan before the whole virus situation hit was that I wanted to spend a year just kind of traveling the world and doing that thing because I've never really done solo travel. I've been listening to Rolf Potts' podcast, Deviate, and like all these interviews with people like traveling the world and traveling with just one backpack.

And I was thinking that would be a much more interesting story. And going to Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, that was what was going through my mind. I was like, okay, this kind of crossroads that I'm at, it's do I go down this traditional path of being a standard doctor or do I do something more adventurous? And the more interesting stories, definitely. I don't know, putting on a backpack and trying to travel the world, as cliche as that sounds. So one thing, you're a Redditor too, like me. You seem like you do Reddit. I dabble here and there.

One of my favorite subreddits is called One Bag. Oh, I haven't seen that subreddit. Oh, it's phenomenal. So basically you just go to reddit.com slash r slash one bag and it's just people's one bags and what they pack for this travel. So I think that it's super inspiring and you see a lot of, oh, what's like the shorts to wear? Like I like wearing like a Lululemon stuff because you can wear it for a lot of days without smelling. Or these new Lululemon shorts, they're pretty good. Nice.

But I think that's interesting for you, man. Like that book, that book changed my life. And we both talked about how we cried from it. It's one of my favorite books all time is a thousand. Is it a million miles in a thousand? Yeah, I think it's a million miles in a thousand years. Yeah. Yeah. By Donald Miller. And I think the two things that stuck with me is to live an interesting life. You just have to do interesting things. And I know that I hate when people say stuff like that to me, but it's like you just and he's such a Christian author, which I'm not a Christian, but I still love his messages and

And I think they're positive. And I think the second part about living an interesting life is just to do interesting things. But the second part that's just as powerful is how do you just be around interesting? And some people might be geographically limited. Like maybe the people are in Ohio or they're in some other foreign country. And the Internet is a great way. Like I think almost 80 percent of my best friends I've met online.

Which used to sound sad, but now it's just like the thing everyone does. Yeah, you start making friends on Twitter and then you hang out in real life and you're like, oh, we have so much in common. How about this, dude? Like Andrew Warner is actually, he's listening and he runs Mixergy. He is the reason AppSumo actually got started. And I met him because I was doing those conferences. And I think the beauty of just getting going and starting with something, starting with your writing, starting with your photography, starting with your video is the relationships you get to make, the people you get to meet. And for me, my blog, I haven't made that much money blogging, like directly blogging.

maybe a few thousand over 20 years, but the relationships and the fulfillment of that is amazing.

So one thing I'm curious just to come back at before the book and you traveling the world, what are you going to tell your parents? Because I'm wondering, was it your parents that were like, you're going to do a doctor and you're going to go do this thing? No, not really, actually. So my mom is a doctor, but she never really tried to push me into it. She just thought I would be more likely to do maths because I was a bit of a nerd. And nowadays, what she says is that I think she's quite like a traditionalist. She says that, look, you can travel the world and all that, but finish your training first and then do all that stuff later on.

Whereas my theory is more that I'm single at the moment. I don't- I'm not tied down by kids' responsibilities as such. Traveling the world for a year when I'm 25, 26 is unlikely to be something I'll ever regret. I'm not gonna be on my deathbed thinking, "Oh damn, I wish I was a fully qualified doctor for one year longer than I actually was." I have a friend, I won't name him,

It starts with a J. But you get trapped in work life. You get trapped and as you get older, you start making some money and then you start having bills and then you're like, I want to do this thing but I got to pay the bills and I want to do this thing. And so I think especially earlier on, like you're doing is really commendable. And it's one of the things that a lot of people say they want to do afterwards. And so one phrase for myself and why I've been so more vocal on my YouTube channel and with my content on my podcast and my email list is that I think it's really interesting. The phrase that goes in my head is called no apologies.

And so I think for you it's the same thing with the doctor piece. Yeah, I'm a doctor so I'm supposed to go to this thing and I'm supposed to do this thing. We apologize to the world. Yeah. And we apologize to, oh, if I put out this video I have to apologize. And so I think it's interesting for every single person like Tarun or Jake or Tyler or Naveen, if we didn't have to apologize for anything we did, obviously don't kill people or rob or do anything stupid, but my question is if you didn't have to apologize and you could really just follow your heart,

It's not what I thought we'd be talking about. What would you want to do? And so for me, one of my fantasy lists this year is I want to live in a van. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so yesterday I rented a van and I'm going to go live in a van for three weeks. Oh, amazing. Yeah, man. And so I think there's two things there, which is number one, you got to have stuff to look forward to in life.

That's just something me and my friend Adam Gilbert from MyBodyTutor.com, we talk about that a lot. What are you looking forward to this week? This conversation was on my highlights for Sunday. On Sunday, I was like, I'm looking forward to talking with Ali. So what are you looking forward to? And if you're not, just go make something to look forward to. And the second thing is have these fantasy lists of things that you're like, man, I think this would be an amazing adventure. Because especially as you get older, it goes fast. Someone asked me yesterday how old I am.

And I was like, I think I feel in my 30s, but technically I think I'm 38. And it just keeps going. And so in this period of time we have alive, it's what things are really excited to go do. So I really, I commend you, man, because it's hard to go against the grain. It's hard to be like saying, hey, everyone else is going this way. And Ali, you're choosing to go left. Yeah, that's something I think about a lot. Have you come across the YouTube channel Yes Theory?

No, what is this? Oh, it's amazing. It's a life-changing YouTube channel. Basically, it's these three guys that travel around the world and their whole mantra is seek discomfort. Like they would do insane challenges like travel to a country and without any money at all and rely on the kindness of strangers to kind of get by. And they have these amazing adventures from going up to random people on the street and kind of introducing themselves and just

kind of having a good time and they i think last year they challenged will smith to bungee jump off a helicopter and he accepted their challenge and they had this like massive like thing going and their whole spiel is about this thing of stepping outside your comfort zone and that being where growth happens and just super positive vibes i think you'd really like it i'm gonna check it out two things two things there is number one what's one thing uncomfortable or discomfort or action you could do for yourself today

And I want the audience to comment on some of those things. The second thing, and I'm curious for you, in our lifetimes, I think it's really fascinating what we're most proud of and when we've grown the most. Again, what are we most proud of and when have we grown the most? And so I'm curious for the audience, what's one thing you're going to do, but for Oli, for yourself, what are you most proud of so far in your life and when have you grown the most? And I think there's a point to both of these. I'll go afterwards. Okay, so I think we're getting some answers in from the audience. So for me...

I think the thing I'm most proud of is probably the YouTube channel because it was the thing that's been the most kind of difficult in inverted commas and just the amount of grind that it takes over a very long period of time. And at the start, you're shouting into the void and no one's listening. But over time, as the flywheel turns, it starts to gain momentum. And so seeing how, I don't know, like proud is an interesting word that I don't often use because it sort of implies pride.

It's a prize that I'm taking credit for the thing that's happened whereas I know it's mostly down to luck and privilege and circumstances and I just try to not squander the good hand that I was dealt but I'd probably say the YouTube channel. And then when do you think you've grown the most? That's a good question.

Honestly, so there was one experience I had a few years ago where, so every year at the medical school at Cambridge, we put on a pantomime and sell tickets and all this sort of stuff. And I was involved in the pantomime in my fourth year of med school. I was part of the singing troupe. But then in my fifth year, I got a random message from a guy saying that, hey, Ali, I'm going to be directing the pantomime this year. Would you like to direct the show with me? And I had no acting experience, no theater experience. Like I knew nothing about theater in the slightest. I thought that

thought that this is like an amazing opportunity to step massively outside of my comfort zone. And so I said yes to that. And this guy was amazing. Like he was something he was, he's been into theater for years and like knew what he was doing. And I very much had imposter syndrome. Like I had no idea what was going on, but through that, um,

I think the main thing that I learned, honestly, is that I was so worried at every rehearsal. I was thinking to myself, everyone's looking at Will, the other guy, and he's amazing. And people are looking at me and thinking that I don't know what I'm talking about. And then I realized actually that everyone is just worried about themselves. They're worried about screwing up their own lines and how they're doing. They're not looking at me and thinking that guy's got no experience. They don't even know I have no experience. And so it was a big kind of gotcha moment for me that was like, oh, wow, all of this time I've been worrying about what other people are going to say about the fact that I don't know how to do this thing.

but actually no one cares and that was very liberating and I think that was that experience catalyzed me spreading out into more kind of content on my YouTube channel because initially it started off as very much sticking to my lane just talking about medical school but then I was like you know what I can just branch out to the things that I enjoy people generally are worried about themselves if they learn something from it then fantastic and if not then I don't think anyone's going to care and so

I think that was the experience that's probably made me grow the most. So just to highlight for what you said for the audience is that the things we're proud of are generally, one, we wanted them. And I think that's actually the hard thing to figure out in our lives. And our wants change, but figuring out what you want. So you wanted freedom from this doctor job. That's what you, sounds like you really wanted. And the second part is that it's hard. Like I've gotten things, like I just got some investment. I just, teachable.com, they sold and I got some money and I was like, I don't really have to do anything.

Which, you're not proud of that. Like I'm proud of them, but we're proud of the things we actually had to work for, which is kind of a little counterintuitive, or it's not as obvious potentially. And so I think that's what's interesting about proud and the growth part, what you said is you were uncomfortable. And being comfortable, it's easy to watch this show

It's easy to read the comments. It's easy to read the book. It's hard to get on stage. It's hard to ask for the coffee challenge. I would love anyone, if they're down to do the coffee challenge, to post it in the comments what they do and more importantly, not whether they get the discount or not, but what they learn about themselves. You know, I think Dr. Jovic, one of your people was like, they're doing a YouTube challenge. They're doing 100 videos inspired by you. I think I would challenge them to do that or go to sendfox.com. That's one of my sites we have. Start a weekly newsletter. And I challenge you to do that, sendfox.com. Do your newsletter for 365 days or even just once a week, 52 times. And I

think people will learn a lot more about themselves doing things that using that discomfort as a compass to maybe some directions of growth. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's just bash through some more questions from Talal. He says, how do you find what you're good slash talented at, i.e. innate skills, unfair advantages that you have? Yeah, it's tough. And I think, what would you say yours is? I think mine is that I enjoy all this kind of computer stuff. And therefore, any time I spend doing computer nerdy stuff is time, like,

It doesn't feel like work. Another advantage that I have is I've got the brand of being a doctor and having gone to Cambridge University, which has some kudos among students around the world. So those are probably my two biggest things. I think there's a few pieces that you highlighted, and I think that's the right answer. So number one, just look at what you're doing in your free time. And so what you're gravitating towards, if it's music, if it's art, if it's computers, there's probably something unique there about finding your skills in that. Number one, number two, that I really like is ask questions.

your friend. So ask someone that you respect. Don't ask someone that's a bum. Ask someone that you're like, hey, I admire this person. Ask them like, hey, what do you think my unique talent is? And guess what? They'll probably tell you and you'll be like, oh, yeah, you're right. And three, I think you also try a bunch of things out to find out what you don't like. Yeah, that sounds legit. Here's another challenge to do. Just go text and help one person. So what I mean by that is just text someone right now. Go on WhatsApp, go on Instagram, go on your text phone. I'll do it right now.

And if you actually help one person, one, it makes you feel more confident. But think about what would I help someone? And what you would help with is probably your unique skill that you have an advantage in. Nice. All right. We have a question from, let's see, from Anirudh Rajesh, who says, what's your best message to current high school students? What advice would you give to high school students? Ooh, high school students, man. What's up? Yes. I don't know, man. High school was a weird time for me. I was like, I was with like my,

Like I was with my elementary school friends. Then I was with the jocks and then I was with the nerds. And I just remember I was very emo, man. I was very like I smoked cigarettes and I like wore my Boy Scout uniform to school because I thought that was cool. And so...

It was a weird time. I think high school as well as college, I think that for me, I would just think of life as a buffet and try a bunch of dishes out. So try Boy Scouts, try online businesses, try reading clubs. And I tried a lot of things out. And the second thing I would say is that I was very lucky that I got born in San Jose, California. Represent the 408 area if anyone's out there. But I was lucky that my classmates...

One of them sold their company for a billion to Cisco, Meraki, that's the company. Some of them now are VPs at the public companies. And that was the expectation.

And then me, going to work at Intel, was like, "Oh, he's gonna work at Intel out of college." And then running a company that's, we're an eight-figure business at AppSumo.com, which is amazing. And we love our Sumo-lings and the customers. And that's the norm. And so the point I'm trying to really highlight for everyone out there is, if in your high school, think about who you're surrounding yourself with. Because if you're spending time with my jock friends, they're nice guys, there's nothing with them, but they're now, and this is not as a knock on these professions, but it was never my aspiration, it was, they're electricians and they're plumbers.

And that's great. I don't actually, everyone should do whatever job they love. That's part of one of the things that really matters to me. Like I want everyone to love their work. But I knew that I wanted to be in tech. I knew I wanted to be in building big companies and being an entrepreneur. And so I tried, and I surrounded myself ultimately with people that did that. Like my best friend, he's like a senior developer at Stripe.com. And my other friend was one of the early people at Lyft.com. And so these are guys that I went to high school with and I try to spend more time with them

and less with the people that were cooler. My friends are cool, but like just the ones that were cool only in high school. Nice. That's pretty good advice. Yeah, I think I would fully agree with that. I think in school, in college, in university, you've just got so much spare time on your hands. And I don't think we really appreciate this when we're going through it. But when you start working,

especially if you're working like a normal kind of a normal job like nine to five it ends up never being nine to five you end up at work until seven if not later every day you end up having so much less time on your hands and so when you're at school i think really take advantage of all of that just ridiculous amount of free time you have and occasionally i i get messages from people being like hey when i get home i do my homework and then it's time for bed and that's just unfathomable because if you get home from school at like say five you do your homework for let's say two hours you still got between seven and eleven to just kind of do whatever you want

And high school is the time where, for example, I learned to code. I taught myself design. I took on lots of these different hobbies that now looking back, I'm so glad I went down these rabbit holes because at the time it didn't seem like it would be particularly helpful or just like, oh, this is cool. I'm making like $10 here and there making a website. But now like those skills compound on themselves so much over time. And you feel really glad that you spent that time in high school. Having said that, I did spend about four hours a day playing World of Warcraft for three years. Happiest time of my life, but...

Now you can make a living doing that, though, which is kind of wild. Yeah, that's true. That's true. One thing I want to highlight, though, I thought about this with Twitch because my friends work at League of Legends and so forth. And we see people that are Twitch people that make a million dollars. That's only the top 10. And so I think the thing that's interesting there is that you can follow your passion. So I think people are asking, how do I find my passion?

Try a lot of things out and find out the stuff that you're excited to keep doing. And so with the Twitch stuff, if you're not able to make it in the top 10, there's still a lot of opportunity to start businesses or get jobs in gaming.

Right? Like you can start a marketplace for gamers or you can sell books for teaching people how to game or you can do gaming parties. There's a lot of opportunities if you're not in that thing. But for me, I think where I've done success in my career by my own self, I think success is a horrible word, by the way. Yeah. It's a dirty word because success is what we tell everyone else. Yeah. Oh, Ali is successful.

This person is successful. And I think we have to decide our own metric of success in this life. I think that's almost one of the most important things. And so for me, it's like when I've chased money and opportunity, I've been less fulfilled. I've sustained it and I've made less money when I just said, hey, I really love doing these things. I don't really care how much money ends up making. I've made the most money.

Yeah, my theory for it as well is like, the first question is, is this thing fun? And if it's fun, then I'll probably do it. If it's not fun, but makes money, then I probably won't. I think early on, I was more open to doing things that weren't fun, but that made money. But now I realize actually, especially once you've got some level of success, it just makes so much more sense to just do the stuff that that fills you with joy as corny and hippie as that sounds.

I think that's exactly it, man. Cool. We've got a technical question from Tovia Woods who says, what platform would you recommend for blogging or would you just making your own website? So I think especially early when you're starting out, I don't spend any money. That's one of my big premises. Don't spend money until you start making money. So what's crazy, YouTube is free. It's free.

So, I think what I would recommend for someone starting out, like I personally, I host on HostGator with a blog. I use WordPress.org. What I would do if I was starting today to build my audience, I would do three things. I would do YouTube, Instagram, and I would do SendFox.com for the newsletter. Here's the most important thing, though. You have to do it at least once a week for a year. And you can't even think about stopping until after a year. Then you could start thinking about what you want to do with it. And I think what most people do, and I always joke about my mom, my mom does a watermelon diet. She eats watermelon for a month. Okay. And...

Of course, she can't eat watermelon for the rest of the year because that's just not healthy and you're going to end up dying. You're a doctor, you know that. And what you have to find is you have to find something that's enjoyable so you can sustain it.

And so generally with content creation or building your brand or building your audience, I would say Instagram is interesting, especially for photos. I'm not a photo person. I'm not really even a video person. I'm more of like a words person or a conversational kind of raw person. I'm not a high production like your videos are production. My YouTube stuff is like just more me chatting. And so I think find the medium that works better for your style. Maybe it's audio, maybe it's written, maybe it's photos.

and then commit to it weekly for one year. And then after a year, I promise anyone out there will have, as long as you stick for it for a year and you do it weekly, you will have some results.

Yeah, no, I fully agree with that. Sometimes I get emails from people saying that, hey, can you critique my email newsletter or my blog post on my YouTube channel? And they've put out three videos. And I usually reply with some kind of nice variant of, OK, ask me again in a year's time once you've made 50 videos. And then my advice will start to make sense. Because when you've just made three, you're still very much on the steep end of the learning curve. You'll learn so much just by doing it. And you'll learn far more by just churning out more and more videos than you will by me giving you specific targeted feedback about your existing ones.

So I think at the start it's just about showing up and doing the thing, yeah. So two things with that. One, I-- one of the phrases I think about is "don't call it in." I think people are like, "I'm gonna put up a YouTube thing and just get rid--" You can't call it in, you have to show up. But let me-- I'm curious for you, man, when you started YouTube, like, just like Tovio or-- I think people were like, "Look at Ali, he's got--" Yeah, but he started now, just like any of you can. He has-- any of you can go to YouTube and hit that upload button and start promoting it. But what was your plan when you started it? Did you say-- what was your mindset? My mindset, like, I've said this in my very first video, I said that I'm just gonna try this and see what happens.

I know that my first 100 videos are going to be absolutely terrible, so the plan is to just make 100 videos and then start getting good at them. And I said that, worst case scenario, this will be a good memory to look back on and my grandma will enjoy watching the videos. I've got that from my very first vlog. And actually, so when I made the decision that, you know what, I'm going to start vlogging, I had all this stuff going through my head about what sort of gear do I need, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But...

through kind of all of the kind of books and podcasts and stuff I've listened to, I knew that was the wrong way to go. So I literally took out my iPhone, flipped it over and lying on my bed, I spoke to the camera. And then that night I put it into Premiere, uploaded it that same evening. And that was vlog number one. And I think had I worried about making it good,

I would have never done it, but just putting something out there builds the momentum, builds the flywheel, and then you get going. So one of my favorite quotes that I think about is momentum begets momentum and it brings on stuff. So how did you keep going though? Were you getting results? Were you getting a lot of views right away? Was it like, oh my God, because you also said that you're like, you had to detach from the view count. So I'm curious how you sustained it now over the years. So at the start, I was very much focused on the view count. I'd be refreshing the YouTube studio or the YouTube app at like 18 times a day and be like, oh, I,

I've now got 71 subscribers rather than 70. Oh, we've got two subscribers today. Sick. This is a great day. I just be doing that multiple times a day. And then after, after doing this for a few months and I started hitting a thousand, 2000 subscribers at that point, I realized that looking at, at the metrics just doesn't make any sense. And actually what I should be doing is focusing on the process of just trying to churn out these two videos a week and just not worrying about the views at all. And this is something that I still struggle with today. I, I,

I want to make videos talking about fiction books that I've read. But every video I've made about fiction books in the past is tanked compared to a video about productivity or something like that. I read a lot of fiction. I read a lot of fantasy. This is what I like. And so I want to have the freedom to make those videos without worrying about what these stats on YouTube Studio are going to say. There's actually a theory. It's called the sex cash theory. Oh, I've never heard of it. No, what is that? So...

I don't know where I heard about it or who it came from, but it's like Leonardo DiCaprio. So he did Titanic, made a bunch of cash and

And then he does like some indie film like Basketball Diaries because it's sexy. And so I think there's something there as a creator where you have to do the videos that bring in the audience and bring in the traffic. And then you also have to do the experimental stuff, which could be something that happens in the long term, but also is just like a little sexier and a little bit more creative. I think one thing that you sparked in me, man, that I think is really powerful, especially for the audience, like Adam is asking some questions and Sophia is what would you work on for free? Because when you started this channel, how much were you getting paid? Oh, absolutely nothing. Nothing.

I think that's something that's really been fascinating for me as I've gotten more into the content creation is that I think what people don't realize, like they see these views, they don't realize how much work really goes into it. Yeah, to be an influencer is just as much work as almost any other job. So I think you have to figure out what would you work on for free? So whether you're getting paid a lot or a little, you're like, well, I'm still enjoying this. I'm gonna still keep going. Yeah, I'm big on the phrase of trying to monetize your passions.

And I know that some people rail against this on Twitter. They're like, oh no, it's not that every passion has to be monetized. I'm not saying that you have to monetize every passion. I'm just saying that if you can monetize somehow the things that you're doing anyway, then life just becomes more interesting because then you get paid for doing the stuff that you enjoy doing.

I don't know if you feel this as well, but I often find that, for example, when I was learning the guitar and I would be sitting by myself learning guitar or actually when I was towards the end of high school, I started learning close up magic. So I'd be doing magic tricks and stuff. And every magician who starts off, you know, starts doing tricks in front of their mirror or in front of their webcam. But when I started performing in real life, so I used to volunteer at the local hospice and do magic tricks for them once a week. And then I had this paid gig at a restaurant and it was really scary and completely failed at it.

But just having that mindset of, okay, I'm now taking this out into the real world. I'm showing it to people. I'm putting it out there. It completely changed the game because it's so easy to focus on kind of the moves and the shuffles and the coin rolls and stuff that no one cares about because you're doing it in front of your webcam. But as soon as you start putting out publicly...

It just, A, it makes it more fun because you've got this other element to it. But B, it really focuses down the things that you're weakest at and the things that you need to improve for it to actually make a difference in the world. Why I say that is that when it comes to monetizing your passions, I think trying to make money off of baking cakes. Yeah, sure, definitely.

If you want to bake a muffin, then that's absolutely fine. But if you want to bake a muffin and then try and sell those muffins, it just adds another dimension of fun to the whole process. Yeah. If you're trying to rise up and maybe you don't have the job you want, maybe you don't have the career you want, maybe you're trying to figure out your passion, look at the person that's probably doing the thing that you admire. And I'll be very specific. Go work for them for free.

And so how do you work for them for free? Let's just take Ali. Ali is telling you about close up magic. Ali is telling you his YouTube channel is important. Ali is telling you he's working on other businesses. I would email Ali or me or whoever's life you imagine is living the life that you want to learn from and email them value.

So what is value? Email is saying, hey, Ali, I know that this is important to you. Plus, your channel has changed my life. Here's three things I think you should be doing that maybe will help you. I'm happy to do that for free if you'd like me to. If not, no hard feelings. P.S. Keep doing amazing work. And so that is what like the people I've hired at our company, like Mitchell, who helps me with all of the OKDork.com stuff. He volunteered at my I do a charity bike ride.

He volunteered. He's like, hey, I know you're doing a ride. I want to just help out for free. And then from that, now he has a full-time work that he loves and he gets paid really well. And so I think it's interesting. And then you go work for those people. Maybe you're like, man, I hate these people or I hate this type of work. But at least it helps you understand what you don't like so you can get to the things you do like. So have you got a process that you go through to set goals? And I'm asking selfishly. I guess you're familiar with the Jason Fried and DHH approach to goals. Like the whole Basecamp spiel seems to be that

We don't really like setting goals. Goals are arbitrary. Why would you bother taking this number that you've made up out of thin air? Why would you take that seriously? And instead, they seem to say that it's more about just focusing on just trying to make a good product and have fun while you're doing it and serve the community and stuff. And I find that I resonate with that quite a lot. I've got this business mentor who always encourages me to set numerical goals for my YouTube channel.

And I always feel that, oh, what's the point? My goal is to hit a million subscribers by 2020. It seems very arbitrary. How do you think about goal setting? Because I'm really not sure on this front. Okay, so where are you in the UK right now? I'm in Cambridge. You're in Cambridge. It just sounds so cool when you say it, man. And if I was going to say, Ali, go to France, how would you figure out how to get to France?

Just like directionally. Oh, I'd go on Google Maps and figure it out. Okay. So I think what the 37 Signals guys are saying is, let's say you're in America and you want to get to Mexico. They're like, just drive south. And eventually Mexico's down there. And if you don't hit it, just keep going south until you do. And so I've observed three systems of setting goals. And I think each of them can work. So I think there's the object-oriented system.

goal, which is what is my objective? So I want a million subscribers. So for AppSumo, our company, we have a revenue goal. We want to get X millions of dollars in revenue this year. Very objective. And you'd have sometimes have to have a destination. Mexico. Revenue goal.

So then I think there are process, I think there are progress goals. So a progress goal is, so another example is like my mailing list. So like sendfox.com slash no on my mailing list. I don't care if I get one new, so and what's important about goals is they have to matter to you. So a progress goal is I don't care if I get one new active subscriber a month or a thousand. It doesn't change for me the value. So a progress goal to me is, is it progressing? And I get five, I'm happy. If it's negative, I'm not. And so that's a progress goal. And the last one is the system goal.

So a system goal is I'm going to go to the gym three times a week. That's it. That's my system. There's not a progress, but I will be there three times a week. And so I think each of those goals work in different scenarios and different things. So I wouldn't say absolutely that 37 Seconds is wrong. I think in business, I think you have to know how things are performing or progressing. So we generally do our whole system in there. We call it a GMO.

But I think there's other goals where you don't want to have that. Because for me, like YouTube, if right now I'm at 50,000 and if I said I want 100,000, honestly, it would kill my motivation. And I don't care if I get 100,000 or if I get 51,000. I'm just enjoying what I'm doing. So it's more of like, all right, I want to put out three videos a week or two videos, whatever that is. And each one is a different tool at a different time. Okay.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's the system's goal is very much how I think about my YouTube channel. The only thing we're aiming for is to get one video out a week or two or three, depending on the week. And if we can make these videos a bit better over time, if the numbers can be trending in the right direction, then that's all that really matters. And I don't really have a sort of

subscriber count goal because as you said, I think it would take a lot of the fun out of it because I feel like if I did set out to get a million subscribers by 2021, I'd be doing things that prioritize getting views and that might not necessarily be the same stuff as what I'm interested in. So for example, if that was a goal, I wouldn't do any books about fiction. I wouldn't do any videos about fiction books because it doesn't tie in with that particular goal.

But I guess I do have goals in other domains. Like, for example, if I'm setting out to do like a new business venture or something, I have this bar in my head that I want this thing to make at least $500 a month. And I do what it takes for it to make at least $500 a month. And beyond that, if it makes $1,000, $2,000, at that point, I don't really care, provided it hits that $500 a month thing.

And I think, I suppose, that's to the extent to which I have that sort of goal. Yeah, I think that's great, man. I'll tell you, for me, when I launched my podcast three years ago, I set a goal before I really knew anything. And I think what's really important, and this is really important, it's really easy to get what you want, but it's hard to know what you want. I'll say it again, and I'll say it the opposite way. It's really hard to know what you want,

But it's really easy to get it when you know it. I believe every single person out there that's watching and listening, I believe in every single person here can do it. But I think we need to spend more time thinking about what we actually really want. Because then you're like, one year for AppSumo, I wanted a million email subscribers.

And I knew in my heart, I was like, I don't give a shit. And so I would spend more time exploring what do we really want? Journaling, writing, thinking, talking. And the second thing, so in terms of that, is that like I told you my podcast, I wanted 100,000 downloads an episode. And by the end of the year, I got 30,000 downloads an episode. And so I quit. Really? Oh, I quit. I quit.

I gave up because I wasn't at 100,000. And about seven months later, I said, I really enjoyed the podcast, but because I put that pressure on the goal, it killed the motivation for it. And so it's not to say not to have that. So I started up again about seven to nine months later. My downloads now are at 10,000 an episode. I would beg for 30,000.

And I changed my goal to say, just put out one episode that you love a week. And now I don't look at my stats and I love doing the show. It gave me the opportunity to hang out with Owen and with you and talk to the audience and share this stuff that I know fulfills me. And so I think goal setting could be dangerous because guess what? 30,000 is actually a top show. But now at 10,000, I'm just as satisfied. But if I would have just stayed consistent and adjusted my expectations...

Maybe it would be at $50,000 now or it would have been at $100,000. I think what we imagine, we don't realize how long this is going to go on for. We didn't think like the shows are going to be going or the work. Like AppSumo and Sumo Group, our company, I did not think I'd be doing this 10 years later. I thought I would make $3,000 a month and live on the beaches of Thailand. Nice.

So I think the point is find the things that you could do for 10 years. Because as I said earlier, the 10-year rule is true. Are you familiar with Marques Brownlee, the tech YouTuber, MKBHD? What about him? Yeah, so he was on the Y Combinator podcast for some reason. And they were interviewing him. And he was basically talking about the 10-year rule. They asked him, like, what's the secret to your success? And he was like, in fairness, I don't know, man. Just pick something and work on it for 10 years. And then it's probably going to be successful. I was like, damn, that's such good advice. Yeah.

Just pick something, anything, and just work on it for 10 years. As people like Gary Vaynerchuk would say, it's all about patience in the long term. Start a newsletter or start a podcast or start an e-commerce store or start a digital store. There's no rules. That's what's cool about the internet. There's no laws yet. Yeah. Like you can't, no one's stopped on YouTube and it's free to host videos. Yeah. And I think especially those of us who are in quite like traditional fields, it feels like for a lot of things we need permission, right?

And that's one of the biggest things that I've learned that actually no one's like we don't need permission. If you want to do the thing, then just do the thing. One of the things I've always said about entrepreneurship is that an entrepreneur cannot be satisfied. And what I mean by that is that if you're satisfied, you probably don't have any problems that you want to solve. Because if you believe that there is content out there that was as good as sharing the thing about notion or productivity or how to study better, which is what you've done, you would have never started it. You weren't satisfied.

And I think that's saying it's also without not being satisfied, you're saying, well, do I need permission to start this?

Who do I, because we're trained, we're literally, our parents, our schooling, everything is, you need permission for this class. You need this structure. You need this acceptance. You need to raise your hand. Like one of my favorite books about this is called Teaching as a Subversive Activity. It's an older one. And if you haven't had to read that one, it's phenomenal. It's like, how would schools be if they weren't treated like factories? And so it shifts a lot of the thinking around that. And I highly recommend it. But I think for everyone out there, it's no apologies without permission. Nice. Yeah.

And just get going. Awesome. Thank you very much, Noah, for taking the time. This has been a lot of fun. And where'd it go? Yeah, it just completely flies when you're talking about cool stuff. And guys, like all the stuff that we've talked about, all the books, all the apps, all of the things, the different challenges that Noah was talking about, all of this stuff is on that Notion page. And there's a link in the video description along with links to all of Noah's stuff. Sign up to subscribe to his podcast. It's very good.

subscribe to the email newsletter and the blog. It's just all like generally good insights for if you want to start a business, if you're going to grow a business, like all of this sort of stuff. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time, Noah. Oli, thank you for having me. Every single one of you out there, I love you. Go to do something for yourselves today. It's been a pleasure. This made my day. Thank you so much, man. All right. We'll see you later, guys. Bye-bye.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. So yeah, thank you very much for listening. I'll catch you hopefully in the next episode.