How I Actually Grew To 1M+ Subscribers On YouTube (Noah Kagan) | 114

Nathan: [00:00:00] You grew to over a million followers on YouTube

trying to do a video about our

dream to, and now you haven’t published on YouTube in over a year.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Today I’m talking to Noah Kagan who founded App Sumo and wrote Million Dollar Weekend.

Noah: How can we create content that depending on who our audience is, and they spent months, years literally thinking, what’s the title of the show?

What’s gonna be the plot of the show? What’s the writing of the show? We did that level of detail before we ever really even went to go actually shoot the video.

Nathan: So I’m gonna break down exactly what worked to get to a million subscribers, what he struggled with internally, the personal development that went through that.

Noah: I committed basically just making three videos a week. We kind of said, okay, we have to do something crazier.

Nathan: Do you think you got there substantially faster at three videos versus one?

Noah: What was interesting is that,

Nathan: that’s really interesting

Noah: when you’re trying to be a content creator in any aspect, just pick the platform you use the most.

And I think the 180 in content now that no one’s doing is

Nathan: he set out to grow his YouTube channel to a million subscribers. He did it and then didn’t publish for a year and a half.

Noah: I think what people don’t realize is that when you’re actually a professional content [00:01:00] creator, it’s a job. I can’t tell you the amount of anxiety though, the night before.

Maybe I don’t wanna be knocking on doors or finding out about other people. Just wanna find out about myself.

Nathan: Yeah,

Noah: that makes sense.

Nathan: If you were to reverse engineer the channel again, is there anything that worked really well that you would do?

Noah: Again, this is not something I normally would say, but I

Nathan: That’s really interesting.

It’s good to see you.

Noah: It’s good to see you too.

Nathan: So I was realizing there was a time period where I think we hung out like three or four times, like back to back. You had Sumo Con?

Noah: Yes,

Nathan: and I came out and spoke. Then I wanna say it was two 12 in Denver and then we’re hanging out in Thailand.

Noah: Oh, wow.

Nathan: All like this dynamite

Noah: circle.

Nathan: Yeah. D-C-B-K-K.

Noah: And we don’t hang out anymore.

Nathan: And we hang out. We, I mean, it was like six months ago that we had dinner at, uh, Andrews.

Noah: How much Andrews.

Nathan: Andrew Warner.

Noah: Oh, at Andrew’s house? Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Nathan: Yeah,

Noah: dude, I have a, I have a baby and then I have another baby coming, and I’m sleeping on a floor in my baby’s room.[00:02:00]

And then it’s like I go to Spanish class where you have a Spanish music class, and then I work all day. And then it’s, uh, I don’t how parents do anything.

Nathan: Yeah. It’s hard

Noah: if you’re a parent and you have a business or you’ve run a business or you’re starting a business. I have like so much more respect.

Nathan: Oh yeah.

Noah: I

Nathan: mean, there’s so much to that that, I mean, people talk about like how they grind it out to build the business and then Yeah. Doing it with kids is definitely in a hard mode.

Noah: Yeah. When people are single and they’re like, yeah, man, I’m tired. I’m like, dude, you haven’t done anything. Like, like if you’re single or you don’t have a family yet, like that is your time to do as much as possible.

Right. And if you do have a family. Get a good spouse or get a rich spouse or whatever it takes so that you can make time to ha make it happen. But it’s, it’s a lot, man.

Nathan: Yeah, for sure. That’s actually ties into a lot of what I wanna talk about because you’ve ob obviously built AppSumo got into a very large scale there, and then you went all in on content.

Yes. And it was fun. I was watching that from a distance and so you grew to over a million followers on YouTube and like achieved all of that, had the book come out, everything you’re trying to do and now you haven’t published on YouTube in over a year. [00:03:00]

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: And so there’s a whole story arc there

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: That we should dive into.

Noah: Happy to. It’s been, um, it was interesting. I think it was tied to the book launch.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: And so when I, I had million dollar, we come out, I’m supposed to plug the book, you’re supposed to plug the box and uh, I basically wanted to have an audience that I could say, Hey, here’s a a thing I’m working on, I’d like for you to go find out about it.

Mm-hmm. And so that was probably over two or three years, maybe four years to get to the million number. And then at the book, after the book came out. I think I just kind of questioned like, why am I doing it?

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: I actually know the exact moment I did this, uh, video where I went and stayed outside an airport, a private airport, and I asked people driving in like, Hey, can I come with you on your jet and find out what you do for a living?

And I think

Nathan: I’ve seen that video.

Noah: That video went insanely viral. I think it’s like, I dunno how many views now? Six, 7 million. And I got on this guy James’ Private Jet, flew to Boston, getting home was tough. Um, and interviewed him on the jet. And then I remember when that video came out, I was like, oh, this is gonna bang hard.

And I [00:04:00] remember when the video came out, I was like, I’ve got nothing better than this.

Nathan: Hmm.

Noah: I have nothing better that I’m gonna create content-wise, like in probably for a very long time. And I think that kind of led me to start thinking like, okay, well what am I doing it for? Like, do I enjoy doing it?

Right? Do I wanna stand outside of airports? Um, do I wanna interview some people? Uh, is this really where the the path I wanna go on for the next period of time? And I think I just, uh. Kind of stopped it. Mm-hmm. And I kind of, I, I stopped completely on that and I think I also got more fearful

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: As the book came out.

And then as my publicity or my public came more known, um, I kind of got scared to be home.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: I scared a little bit of like, oh, people know I have some money. People know where I live, or they can find where I live. Um, and I guess I questioned the benefit of, of being so public and what I get for that.

Nathan: Well, let’s go back to the original goal around it, right? Yeah. Because you were setting, at some point you decided, I’m gonna take this seriously.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Because you and I have been around the content game for a long time, and like you’ve been super close friends with, with Tim [00:05:00] Ferris for a long time. And so

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: As you’ve done stuff with him, you know, you’ve obviously had an online persona and

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: And everything from there. But there was a moment where you’re like. Took it seriously, hired a team and like did YouTube

Noah: right? Yeah. Went hardcore to, to grow. And, and I, I can’t, I I did, I did really enjoy it. I enjoy, I think what I’ve, I’ve accepted about myself is that I’m excellent in spurts.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And I think some people, um, and it probably, it varies, but I was very excellent. Like, I wanna get to this million goal and like, let me see if, how hard and fast I can do to get there. Mm-hmm. And that was a few years, or I don’t know how long it actually took. Maybe two years from when we took it seriously.

Nathan: How many subscribers did you have when you took it seriously?

Noah: Uh, 47,000.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: But that was after, that was after 15 years.

Nathan: Right?

Noah: Right. So I started YouTube in 2006.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: Right when it launched. Um, and then it was like kind of messing around with it. And I, and I’ll say what I do think successes and I re, I do regret stopping and we can get more into the details of it, is I was like, how do you find something that works and sustain with it?

Mm-hmm. And that, and that was probably where I think I went [00:06:00] so hard and so fast. Like it was like sprinting.

Nathan: Yep.

Noah: That when I got there, I was like. There’s no awards anymore. There’s no more stickers. There’s no more badges. And so I was, do I want to be interviewing people I don’t maybe care for? Do I want to be standing outside streets asking people how they got rich, or do I wanna be home with my family now or doing other things?

And I, and that, that stuff started outweighing the, the work and benefit of, of doing the work.

Nathan: So when you went all in Yeah. What were those steps that you actually did and who did you talk to?

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. It was very, I would say it was very strategic and it was very specific. And I remember the first person I hired was this guy Jeremy Marie.

He actually has a, a company that has thumbnails now.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: So if you need YouTube thumbnails shut out. I think it’s called Clickables. And I remember I felt so anxious because my first YouTube videos were me shirtless. The, the, I was in, it was during COVID, it was 2020. I was just with my iPhone, just,

Nathan: yeah,

Noah: like, no, none of this fancy gear or even microphones.

And I was just talking about, uh, what I was doing with my business and mm-hmm.

Nathan: Then

Noah: I started doing variety shows on YouTube. [00:07:00] So I had like, um, Harry Mack. Do you guys know this freestyle rapper? No, he’s awesome. He’s so good. He’s one of the best freestyle rappers out there. So I was just doing variety shows and, and I was enjoying the engagement.

I was really enjoying just being creative and, and putting it out there. And then as I kept doing it, eventually Jeremy, he, he reached out to me to work for me for free.

Nathan: Mm.

Noah: He’s like, Hey, I’ll do your Instagram. So he did my Instagram and I was like, well, you wanna just do YouTube with me? And that was where he, I I, I remember the day I was so nervous ’cause I paid him I think 50,000.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And I was like, could you wanna just be serious with me on YouTube and let’s see what we can do to, to make these videos more popular and get more engagement from, from doing this content.

Nathan: And so was it. Just you and him for

Noah: a while. Yeah. Yeah. It was me and him for, uh, a, a long period of time. And then I think we kind of built like a dream team.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: Where, what I didn’t realize, my favorite YouTuber today is probably Brad Owens. He’s, he’s, look Austin, I’ll

Nathan: check him out.

Noah: He’s not someone you’re gonna watch. It’s a, it’s a poker vlog.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And so Brad Owens is just like, he literally goes to [00:08:00] poker casinos and plays poker and you just watch him play his hands and he explains his hands.

And, um, I don’t, I think what I appreciate about his approach is like him, you know, he is doing his editing, he’s doing the video. It’s just very natural. And I think with me and Jeremy, we, we ended up building this team and took it very, probably more professionally. Mm-hmm. Probably like how you run kit.com.

Right. It’s like, so we have a strategist, we have Patty Galloway, who’s a strategist. We had a professional thumbnail guy, Sasha. We had a video person that would fly with me everywhere, uh, Isaac. And then we had, um. I think Cam was our video editor out in England, but, and it wasn’t all at once. I think that’s where people get messed up.

It was like me and Jeremy at first, and then it was like slowly adding the pieces to what we think we need to, to keep improving our channel, improving our content.

Nathan: Yeah. Okay. So what did you think that, like, you went on in, on YouTube.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: What was that gonna do for you? What was the story that you told yourself it’s going to enable

Noah: what?

Yeah, I think the real story was that I didn’t feel good enough, or I didn’t feel, I felt like if I could get popular, like, oh, I’m worthy, or if I get more [00:09:00] popular, uh, my success is, is seen by others,

Nathan: mine would be, uh, I wanna be included.

Noah: Ooh.

Nathan: Right. And so there’s that thing of like, oh, maybe that person will ask me to be on their podcast if I have a New York Times bestselling book or whatever.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: But yeah. So those internal stories are interesting.

Noah: Yeah. I think the story for me was, oh, if I can interview billionaires and people. Think I’m special as well, and then now I just don’t care. And now I’m just like, why do I care? You know, I think, I don’t know who, if it was my wife or who it was like, why do you care so much about all these random strangers who don’t know you?

And I think that’s where YouTube, to me, was like a competition against other people doing YouTube and I beat them and then, which I like competing, but it, I think really it was like, can people see me for being special? Where I think I’ve gotten to a point coming back to running appsu.com, putting out my book, which I’m proud of.

I’m just, I’m fine being special myself alone.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: Without necessarily needing, uh, the commentary and stuff. Uh, but, and then we can talk about the future where I do think I’ll eventually go back to it, but there, there was probably like two [00:10:00] phases in the, in the YouTube growth strategy, which was like probably the first half phase.

It was just me and Jeremy. And it was kind of like probably playing around more with the videos.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: It’s like, okay, this is what other people are doing. Like, let’s do a video on my income. Let’s do like the videos that kind of like, I think they go through waves or whatever the popular title is that you can insert.

Nathan: Right. And those were more of the videos of you at your desk?

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: That sort of thing.

Noah: Yeah. It was me at the office and it was awesome. ’cause you don’t have to do anything. You’d be like, Hey, the

Nathan: level of effort is so low.

Noah: I mean, what was interesting is I committed, I committed basically just making three videos a week.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And so it was either two or three years of a video a week.

Nathan: Do you think that, like, that consistency in cadence like you got, do you think you got there substantially faster at three videos versus one?

Noah: Well, no. What was interesting is that the three videos a week, none of them really were getting watched.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And so you just kind of keep churning it out. And I think it’s good to build a habit, but what happened was at the end of the first year. We tried a lot of videos. Like I interviewed j Jordan Belfort. Mm-hmm. The Wolf of Wall Street [00:11:00] that no one watched, that. I rented a house in Malibu during COVID. We got a good deal on it.

No one watched that one. Some of my content was watched. It was, you know, it was, it was thousands of people, which is still cool. Um, but finally at the end of the year, we’re kind of desperate. We’re like, Hey, we’re doing a lot of stuff, but it’s not necessarily moving us forward in terms of the, the audience growth, which is what we were focused on.

We’re focused on subscribers. And so that’s when we kind of said, okay, we have to do something crazier.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: And that’s when we did the Knocking On Doors video. We saw people on TikTok doing it, and it was very fake.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: So we saw it in a, I think this is a really good thing for content and creativity is like looking like, like my wife watches mom influencers a lot.

Yeah. Like these. Does your wife do this?

Nathan: Uh, no. My wife hates Instagram, but

Noah: Okay. My wife loves Instagram. My, my wife loves, she loves, you know. Yeah. For her it’s an outlet. And so I, I, I, you could look at mom influencers to see what they’re doing. Like they’re doing unboxing, they’re doing clothes, and then.

Like, learn that for your own niche. And I think people don’t do enough of that. They kind of just stick in their own niche

Nathan: and Yeah. They’re copying from who’s immediately adjacent to them.

Noah: Exactly.

Nathan: Instead of, you know, like really all you’re trying to do is [00:12:00] hooks and retention and storytelling. And so if you copy that from somewhere totally different than people.

Noah: Totally. Well, I, and I, I wanna talk on this. So we did this, so we basically saw in TikTok some random kid, like, he goes up to some mansion and they’re like, come on in, welcome to my house. And I’m like, that just doesn’t happen. Right? And so Jeremy and I were basically like, let’s go in Austin to the richest houses, knock on their doors and see what happens actually.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: Because you’re, everyone’s always curious about that.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: Um,

Nathan: and so you did it without the pre-planning of like, I know whose house this is, or I’ve like actually texted and figured out like,

Noah: yeah,

Nathan: they’re gonna invite

Noah: me in the first video, which is, is live, you can see rejections, which is great.

Yeah. You can see the commentary in the card. There was only one person that I knew

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: That I was like, Hey, I’m gonna come by your house. And like, do you mind if I like ask you what you do? And he is like, sure. But everyone else was like. There’s a lot. One other guy I knew partially

Nathan: Yep.

Noah: Um, but not very well.

So I was like, and I just kind of came to his door and I was like, Hey, I’m gonna film you. Is that okay? Is it Sure. But everybody else was complete strangers.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: And so you can see the reaction. [00:13:00] Some, I actually saw one of ’em yesterday that I didn’t know. She, she ran mobile park homes.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: But she’s in Westlake and it’s, it’s a house nearby here.

It’s sick. And I go buy it on my bike. One of my bicycle yesterday. And actually doing it for real was like insanely nerve wracking.

Nathan: Oh yeah. I’d be terrified.

Noah: It, it was terrifying. And then, um, you know, mostly it was rejections. And then now, you know, like, it, it was cool to be like, oh, that house, I know who’s there.

Mm-hmm. And this house, I know who’s there. Like, there’s a neighbor in my, where I live now, I’m friends with her. She, she owns veterinarian clinics.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And

Nathan: but you just went and knocked on her door.

Noah: Yeah. I was like, Hey, your house is, is amazing. Like, what did you do to afford it? And so it, it’s a good, it was a good skill to actually build, to be able to do that.

Um, but I think one of, one of the, the bigger concepts that I, I noticed later, especially during the book launch mm-hmm. Because part of my thought was like, all right, I do wanna grow the audience tied to round when the book comes out. Um, was that I don’t think the audience ever cared about me.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And this is, this is an important point.

They cared about the entertainment, they cared about the content. [00:14:00] And so I think there’s other creators like Brad Owens and, and other people where the content is more about them, not about the entertainment aspect. And so when you’re doing something, Hey, I have a book. Hey, I have a course. Hey, I have a product.

Nathan: They’re like, whatever. I’m like, get that out of my way.

Noah: Yeah. I’m

Nathan: just here for this.

Noah: Yeah. I’m here for the show. Mm-hmm. And so I, I think that’s an important thing to be mindful. Like I have this egotistical vanity number of a million subscribers, which. They, some like me, some probably don’t know who I am even, they’re just like, oh yeah, I like this, this version of content of the entertainment part.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: And so I do think there’s something appealing about, maybe not as fast of growth, but the quality of growth,

Nathan: right?

Noah: Where instead of a million subscribers, you have 10,000 or a hundred thousand or 5,000, and they’re like, when’s your next video coming out, Noah? And I wanna like, how’s your wife doing?

Or they, they have an intimate more connection with who you actually are.

Nathan: I think some of the original vloggers, like I think of, um, was it ards? I think, I think is what it’s called. And it’s, but you’re like invested in this family.

Noah: Yes.

Nathan: Right. ’cause it is their life. And, and you see that a [00:15:00] lot in, um, you know, like the farm homestead space,

Noah: which is,

Nathan: it’s a lot of the content creators are very invested in like, the story of their, their

Noah: life.

Totally. Well, I mean, I, I think what people don’t realize is that when you’re actually a professional content creator, it’s a job.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: And it’s, you think that, and, and what you’re watching on camera is just like, Hey, what’s up? Here’s me here, here’s me here. But you don’t see all the cuts, all the takes.

Like I was doing an intro for an app Sumo ad yesterday, and I, I’m not joking, it’s probably 30 cuts, at least you know what I’m talking about. It was 30 like, Hey, what’s up? This is App Sumo. We have Black Friday coming out, da da. And it was 30, probably 30 cuts, 30 minutes for 32nd intro.

Nathan: Right? And your team was like, okay, but do it again, but with some energy

Noah: this time.

We like, that was Jeremy. I always called Jeremy. Jeremy, the, the channel. He was kind of the director. It was Jeremy, one more Marie. Like, it was always like, no, no, one more one. Even this, this, this video that, you know, we, we finally, the videos we were, we were doing weren’t working in terms of the growth we wanted and then in terms of growing the, the subscriber account.

[00:16:00] But um, we did that whole day of shooting. So we basically looked up the richest houses on Zillow. That’s kind of how we figured it out, which ones to go to. And we’d knock. And German’s like, I come back, I’m like, oh man, I’m so stressed. I’m so nervous. Like, I can’t believe I did all that. And Jeremy’s like, you need to go out tomorrow and do more.

We don’t have enough content. I was like, oh man. Oh man. But I, when we put out the video, you, we kind of knew it was gonna do exceptional. Mm-hmm. We knew it was, it was something different.

Nathan: Did it take off right away?

Noah: Immediately.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And it was an immediate thing where a lot of people reached out. Um, we celebrated, ’cause we, our goal that year, I believe is to get to 250,000 subscribers.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: We were at like 150 or, no, no, we were at, we weren’t even close. Maybe we’re at like 70 by that point of the year, but it’s like, we wanted to get to two 50 and it was like, no, we were gonna get there. And then with this launch it was like, we can get to that, we can get to that number. Yeah. But, and I, I think that’s, it’s a hard, it’s a hard to give people the formula of, of on one sense.

It’s like, if you’re doing something, it’s not working, try something different. But I do think there’s also [00:17:00] something there about like. Going slower, potentially. Mm-hmm. If I had to do it all over so that I would want to continue today, or I’ve thought about how do you do maybe content as a series, so more of like a Netflix show where it’s like, I’m gonna do six months of shows and people know it’s gonna come, and then I’m gonna take a break for six months and I’ll do six months again.

Nathan: And maybe there’s some update videos that come out in between to be like, here’s what I’m up to, or something like that. But it’s not the same level of lift of you’re not sprinting for two or three years straight.

Noah: I was sprinting hardcore and, and now I don’t have the capacity where to fly to Maine to interview the, the boat guy or do a private jet flight.

’cause then my wife, who’s gonna watch the baby at night.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: Uh, so it’s also not in the current life mm-hmm. Phase I’m in. And I, and I will say I, you know, so we did that video and all these other ones we should talk about, but now I’m almost intimidated. I’m scared, like,

Nathan: like it’s too big of an act to follow.

Noah: It’s too big to follow in my, for me. Right. I have this weight of it. Do I really wanna do it? And if I put out anything not as good, it’s gonna like disappoint people or disappoint [00:18:00] myself. Um, and do I really even want to be spending, like, how much time is required to put out that level of content,

Nathan: right?

’cause you know, both. Yeah. You know what it costs. I think about that with like, whenever James Clear publishes the next book and you’re like, I mean, I would have so much of like, wow, is it going to be on that level? Or like Mark Manson following up, um, the Subtle art with his next book. Right. And, you know, you can make as great of a book as possible and it’s not gonna like capture the magic just perfectly like the first one did.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: So it’s hard to follow.

Noah: It really isn’t. And I think part of it with our team, the downfall we can, we should talk about the other videos and how we ended up doing more of those. But I do recall that like, I think Cam, our video editor out in London quit. To go work for a different YouTuber. And I think that kind of like deterred me and part of my joy was the team.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: Right. It was like Isaac, who, he came over yesterday, but like Jeremy, the video editor, the thumbnail guy, Sasha Cam, the guy George, who’s like our random Chinese intern, like out of Hawaii. And it [00:19:00] was, it was part of like just the team aspect almost. I enjoyed as much as creating the content.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: And, and I think when they, when Cam left, it kind of, I was like, do I like the videos or do I like the team?

Nathan: Right.

Noah: And it, it, it’s not, it’s not a clear answer, right. Like I did like the content at the time, but now doing it, uh, it’s very hard to get like, okay, do I wanna go interview more people I don’t care about?

No, not particularly. Not that, uh, do I wanna go knock on doors or do these things? Not, not particularly.

Nathan: Yeah. So let’s dive into the other videos. So what were some of the other ones that that took off?

Noah: I mean, so once we found the format that worked, which was. Find, what’s the question that people are like, oh, I, I gotta click to know what the answer is,

Nathan: right?

Noah: And everyone wants to know like, what does that person do for a living? And so where are those rich people at that you could find out? And so we basically, and I think this is what we’ve done in our, in my company as well, which is if you could find anything in business as product market fit, just go ex, go as hard as possible on that.

So we basically did knocking on doors. I think we put out three or four more of those videos. We did Newport [00:20:00] Beach, we did LA Knocking on Doors. We did I think one or two more in Austin. So basically it was working, so it was like,

Nathan: right, keep doing it,

Noah: keep doing more of those videos

Nathan: because also you’re not gonna run out of cities.

Noah: There’s a lot of houses, there’s a lot of do. I mean, I can’t tell you the amount of anxiety though the night before. And I would just question why am I doing it? Is there a point to this? Um,

Nathan: views we’re doing,

Noah: it was for sub, I did it for the subs. And you know, I will say, uh, uh. I think we’re going back and forth, and I’m going back and forth on this.

I’m proud of what I look at at the channel, and I’ve looked at some of the videos and I was like, wow, I can’t believe you did that. I’m really proud of you. I’m really proud of myself for, for going through some of the harder work to, to make the content. We did like, uh, the private jet terminal one I mentioned earlier.

Nathan: So on that one you were just hanging out outside. Outside the FBO.

Noah: Yeah. Outside of private terminal. And then I just, as cars drove in, the hack I used, which was effective, is I had a clipboard, so it looked like I had papers. So I looked like I worked there. So they would stop for the car. Yeah. Stop me. Stop for me.

Nathan: Right. ’cause they’re also showing up to an airport. They’re expecting, you know, some level of [00:21:00] security. There’s gonna be a gate, there’s gonna be a code, there’s gonna be a

Noah: guy. Yeah. So I think the fact guy had papers there. The guy, they would stop and, and say, Hey, you know, and, and this is something I think is a good skill, which is like, how do you get people to talk to you?

How do you get people to maybe listen to you? How do you maybe get them to maybe do something with you?

Nathan: I mean, it’s copywriting, right? Where you have to say the first sentence. To get them to listen to the next sentence to so that you can have enough time to explain I’m not completely crazy. Yes. And like you’re not gonna regret continuing this conversation.

Noah: It, it’s funny ’cause it has been a little bit of time since I’ve, we’ve made a video, but I think people didn’t realize like how much effort we put into a video. Right. It was like hundreds if not thousands of ideas to pick one video. Right. People just think it’s like, oh yeah. You know, they were at it. Oh yeah, go to the airport, just stand outside and see if it happens.

And it was like, I dunno if that was a month of planning, but it was definitely maybe longer to Okay. Making the video to actually having it happen.

Nathan: So what goes into all of that planning? Like someone has an idea. Yeah. And then are you brainstorming a bunch of different

Noah: when you’re making [00:22:00] content? Look at it like Seinfeld or look at it like any Netflix show you really like, they don’t just go and be like, alright, you’re gonna stand here and act and then you’re gonna act here.

What they do is that they bring in amazing writers and they think, how can we create content that, depending on what our audience is, and they spend months, years literally thinking, what’s the title of the show? What’s gonna be the plot of the show? What’s the writing of the show? And that we did that level of detail, like pages of details before we under ever really even went to go actually shoot the video.

And so we were very confident. Think of it like any show like Seinfeld, if you read some of their books, they fired their writers every season. I dunno if you know that.

Nathan: I did not know

Noah: that. Yeah. So it was basically Larry and and David. Not Larry David, it was Larry and Seinfeld, Jerry Shit, it’s two first names, but it was Larry and Seinfeld.

Who basically just replace their writers every year because they’re like, gimme your best stuff. Okay, you’re fired. Gimme your best stuff. Now you’re fired. Right? And so it was similar to that where we would bring in a lot of people, we hired Patty Galloway, we [00:23:00] run a lot of different, um, people to suggest content, and then we’d just pick one, maybe sometimes two videos a month.

And then it was like really trying to fight and think through like, okay, what’s creating the content that our target audience? And I think that’s an important point. We never made videos, uh, that were like, if you can hold your, like Mr. Beast, like stupid gimmicky videos, that was our v our videos were can we inspire young entrepreneurs to go get started?

Like the underdogs is what we would call them.

Nathan: Yeah. ’cause you went straightforward what people want, which is money. Right. And they wanna have a successful business. And so looking at your top videos, it’s just like, here’s how this person who sold this business for $3.2 billion did it Right. Or that sort of thing.

And so revealing those secrets, was there an element where you’re. You were like playing around with the different video types before you realized like, oh, we just need to address money very, very directly.

Noah: No, I, I, I liked making that content. I think that was. What I enjoy. That’s what I like reading on. I read the Wall Street Journal every Saturday [00:24:00] morning and it’s like, that’s the stuff I like reading and I liked talking about.

Um, I think when you’re, this is pretty common knowledge when you’re making content, it’s just really trying to find what’s the content I can do over and over and over and over that my, my audience will respond well to. It’s like you watch some of these shows, like what, what, what’s it called? Crying River on Netflix.

What, what’s the women shows that they love? It’s like Angel River and you know what’s gonna happen? The guy’s gonna die. New guy comes into town, the the hunk is there, the old good looking people are there. And I’m like, I asked my wife, I’m like, you like it? She’s like, I love it. And it’s the same show right over and over.

And so we found. I knew my audience was these underdogs, these people that want to be inspired, that wanna take action and wanna do business, but I don’t know what the content that I can do repeatedly that they’re gonna engage well with. And so we found that knocking on doors was one of the, the verticals, which is that person with a nice thing.

So whether it’s a car or a jet or a house, uh, how do we find out what they did to get it? And so I think that was one vertical. And then the second vertical content-wise [00:25:00] was, um, we wanted to know if we, we had this idea for a video. And, and basically the way your content is, is like you should find your one thing and do it over and then experiment.

But what most people do is they experiment too much. They make that their, their primary thing instead of the content that works. So our experimental video was asking old rich people if they regret it.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: So it was a compilation video. So I went and found, I asked all my friends, I’m like, do you have an old rich grandparent?

And, and it was like, I literally went to the senior questions

Nathan: from Noah are always,

Noah: yeah. It’s a strange text you’ll get, you’ll get them some time. So we went to like a senior citizen’s home. Mm-hmm. And there was this like World War II veteran and. It was like, how’s your life? He was like, yeah, pretty good.

I was in Normandy. I was like, oh, okay. That’s crazy. Um, he like, yeah, I loved my wife and now I’m alone in this room. Um, you know, just kind of living out my life. And I was like, oh, okay. And so we put together this compilation video and it did okay, like asking rich people what they regret. And then we realized like, oh wow, there’s something there about interviewing people at [00:26:00] like the end of their life or at a very high stratospheres of wealth.

And then, and then that became its own pillar content where we’re basically asking. Old older people, how they got rich and if they have regrets.

Nathan: And so what, like what were some of those videos that did? Well,

Noah: the video that I still get texts today, like two years later, was interviewing the founder of FedEx.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: So, uh, not FedEx, Kinko’s,

Nathan: Kinko’s,

Noah: founder of FedEx. I think he passed away. But, uh, the founder of Kinko’s, which was, was, it was personal for me because my father was a copier salesman.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And so Kinko’s was, I dunno, as a kid. Yeah. And I, like, we love copiers in my family. And, uh, the, the, the, the thing that was challenging, it was never easy to get to the people we wanted to interview.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: So it was never like, I wanted to interview like Dave Portnoy and like, he’s like an impossible one. Or now, um, Joe Lamont js, I think from ESL investments. Okay. He’s one of the richest people that no one knows. You know, Joe Lamont,

Nathan: I don’t,

Noah: he’s insanely, they’re one of the richest people I think on earth that no one knows, but he’s been doing interviews lately.

But anyways, these people were [00:27:00] all random. So the, the Kinko’s guy. I went on a, a date with a girl and she’s like, oh yeah, I took a college class with this guy who’s a rich old guy. Maybe you’d wanna talk to him.

Nathan: And that was the connection.

Noah: That was the Kinko’s founder. And so I went to his Manto ranch. He had like this mansion out there, and he was, it was, it was Paul Ley and it was just such a gentleman.

And, um, we just asked, I asked like, what do you regret in life? Like, how was your relationship with your kids? What’s it like to have private jets?

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: And, um, still to this day, that interview resonates where he would tell he, I said, well, what does wealth do? He is like, wealth to me is that my kids still wanna hang out with me.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: Wealth to me is that my kids, no matter how things have gone, they still wanna come and spend time with their father. And that still resonates. And I, and that was, it was such a special interview to be able to, to chat with him.

Nathan: Yeah. I love that. Okay, so if you were to like reverse engineer the channel again.

It seems like access to people is a very important thing. Is there anything that worked really well that you know, or that you would do again of like, okay, this is how I’m gonna deliberately pursue getting to these [00:28:00] people? It sounds like the Kinko’s one is a little, I mean, it’s, it’s chance on one hand that you didn’t know that the day was gonna turn into that, but then on the other hand, most people wouldn’t be like, take that little spark and be like, let me pursue it and I we’ll get on a plane and I will meet this person and won’t get off and stuff.

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. I mean there was that, that inner, that trip as well. There’s a lot of momentum in life and I think, I think that’s what’s been hard, not doing content for a year. It’s like I promised myself I would do one podcast a month and then tweet. F freely. And so I’ve stuck with that, which has been good.

But if you’re, if you’re looking to go after, once you find your, I would just go back to those two topics. Mm-hmm. I would go knock on doors or we used to, we go into like the Formula One meetups where people bring out their McLaren’s and all these crazy cars and those guys like talking about their cars and, and what they did for a living.

So I’d basically

Nathan: just, and that’s in, in a setting outside their home. It’s,

Noah: yeah. They feel comfortable being on camera with a stranger.

Nathan: Right.

Noah: Um, and then for the interviewing the older, wealthier people, um, I basically, I just had, I had a list ongoing and I, and this is not something I normally would say, but I manifested some of [00:29:00] them.

Mm-hmm. And I think there’s something there where people will start knowing you for doing these, like billionaire interviews. Um, people will start coming to you like, so I interviewed this billionaire. Uh, construction guy, um, that I met from a guy named Rob on Twitter because I put out like, Hey, does anyone know anybody who’s done well with this blue collar?

Nathan: Right.

Noah: And Rob was like, oh, you gotta meet Larry. And so I would have a list and then also just be putting it out there. But it was, it was very random as those things would happen. But I would, I was pretty intentional to see if there’s any connections. Like I wanted to meet the BET network founder, you know, bet the, the channel, she’s, she’s a billionaire, but it was, and she has a book coming out, so it’s also trying to find a reason why they wanna talk to you.

Nathan: Right. Because there’s these windows where it’s like, for five years straight, no one wants to talk to anyone, and then they’re in promotion mode and all of a sudden,

Noah: so getting it in that, in that window, I, I think it’s also finding something that you enjoy doing. Where I did notice after I interviewed a lot of these billionaire founders, it was like, so how did it happen?

Well, like I found an idea and I worked hard and I

Nathan: was like 25 years later.

Noah: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan: It

Noah: like

Nathan: kind of worked.

Noah: And then, [00:30:00] and I kind of think now to myself, like, I’d rather just be on App Sumo specifically. I’m like just doing the work.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: I’m not interviewing other people. I’m not really, it’s ’cause you’re in town, I’m coming on your show.

But like, normally I wouldn’t be coming on anyone else’s show. Um, I’m just heads down working. It’s either that or with my family. Mm-hmm. And so interviewing those people for me, I guess I, I didn’t admire as much as I admired the people doing the work.

Nathan: Oh, that’s interesting. Of the content creator versus the

Noah: creator.

Nathan: Yeah. The the one who’s building the business. I wanna come back to that, um, in just a second. But thinking about pillars of content, you said something that a lot of people find one thing that works really well and say, that’s amazing. Let me go find other things that work really well. And what I hear you saying is like, no, no, no, that works.

Do it. Again and again do these variations of it. I really like the Instagram creator, so I think have a good version of this where they find the same category of content they can do over and over. So like Tim Grl, who’s a good friend of mine, he’s a very good book editor and [00:31:00] he especially likes fiction.

And so he has a series on Instagram now called Fix the first page where he grabs a random book off the shelf, opens it up, and he is like, and he rates like, how good is this intro? I

Noah: love that

Nathan: and all that. But it’s a format that you can do over and over again, um, and you’re never gonna run out of books to fix the first page.

Love that. Right. But so you had a couple formats there. What would you say on like trying to find. These formats that you can repeat.

Noah: It was hard. There’s a lot of failure at the

Nathan: end.

Noah: Well, you know, you have kids. I have kids and my daughter fell a few days ago. Mm-hmm. But just walking and, you know, then she got up and walked again and then she fell and then she got up again and walked and fell.

And then now eventually she’s gonna be a walkable human. You know, like all of us. And I think what people, you have to wanna do it. You have to, and then I think if you find some results from it, you’ll, you’ll keep going, but you have to realize you’re gonna fall.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: For instance, a few of the ones that, that totally flopped, lemme give you ones that I even deleted from the channel.

Um. I like fishing. Yeah. I’m really into fishing. And I [00:32:00] found this guy who makes a million dollars a year doing fishing.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: And so I was like, oh, I could do a video about him, meet him

Nathan: and get to go fishing

Noah: and expense it. Um, so his name’s Stan’s Fam on YouTube. The guy’s awesome. Went fishing, crushed it.

We had a lot of good fish and you know, flew with the team out there, got the hotel rooms, all this, all this investment. And I think I got like 5,000 views. Okay. And so it was just like such a flop. And it’s challenging ’cause you’re like, well this is the content I wanna make,

Nathan: right?

Noah: This is, or like the interviews, like the fed, like the Kinko’s guy.

I would’ve paid him to interview him. And so it’s a, it’s a hard balance of like, well, those are the ones I wanna do, but the audience doesn’t want it. Um, or we did another one where, you know, this, this thing called like, sell me a pencil. Like you, it’s a famous sales thing. So I, you see talkers do it and, and it works.

And I don’t know. But I, I went onto the Venice Beach boardwalk and I had sell me a pen, I’ll give you a thousand dollars. And I had like a sign and all this stuff, and. I mean, I, I stood out there for hours, which is really shit, you know, I’m [00:33:00] already rich, to be clear. Right. Like, I don’t need to get YouTube famous.

Nathan: Right,

Noah: right. It’s just a, it’s just for my ego. And I liked creating, I really do like the creating aspect. I liked, I did like engaging with some of the community, but I’m standing out there all day. They’re the weirdest people in the world, you know, like it’s the best

Nathan: board. It’s a Venice

Noah: speech, you know, like feel her nuts.

And so then eventually, like some girl, I, I wasn’t this, I think this video got taken down, but some girl was like, I’ll kiss you for the pencil. And I was, I was single all the time. I was like, okay. And then she got the pencil and she got a thousand dollars. Um, but then my friend was like, that was embarrassing, and I took the video down.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: And so, um, that, that format did not work. And so, you know, there was a lot of different ones. Like I was, you know, well here’s my marketing plan for the year, here’s my income statement. I think one aspect of it, um, is finding something that you have a unique edge on.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: Right. Like, you have kit.com, no one else has kit.com.

So what is, what is something within your sphere, sphere of, uh, availability that, that other people can’t replicate, uh, that you could do over and over and over again?

Nathan: [00:34:00] Yeah. What comes to mind for me would be like a behind the scenes and what’s working in the newsletter space, right. So something that where the, from the seat that I have, I get to talk to everybody who’s running all of the, you know, a hundred thousand or a million subscriber, multimillion subscriber newsletters.

And so figuring out a format. That would work for that because it’s like they all use the platform so I can

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: You know, depending on what they’re Okay. With me talking about.

Noah: Well it’s been interesting where I, I was just thinking of different examples. So I watch a lot of fantasy football.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: I love fantasy football.

So probably my that, that and poker vlogs. Um, I watch fantasy football analysts and they all copy each other’s formats and the format crushes. It’s like, here’s your, I dunno if you know fantasy football, but it’s like, here’s your waiver wire, here’s the art, the running backs to start this week. Here’s your quarterbacks to start this week and here’s players you need to drop or that are gonna go to nuclear.

And they all do those four videos every single week.

Nathan: Okay. And

Noah: every video works. And so it does take time to find which content piece is gonna be working for your [00:35:00] audience. Mm-hmm. So for apps, let’s take an an opposite example on App Summa World, uh, Mitchell, who’s been running our channel does interviews like this and it’s kind of trying to replicate my interviews.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: Like, oh, I’m gonna interview someone. And so we’re interviewing our target customer, like agencies and SaaS owners, uh, how they grew their businesses. And it’s just such a mix if it works or not. Right? We have not found a, a formula that works, but we’re, but a, a different format, which is product walkthroughs.

Mm-hmm. Like, Hey, here’s kit.com, uh, or here’s Yapper Yapper. So is a product on smo, here’s Yapper. We’re just gonna walk 10 minutes. How this product, if it sucks, is it cool? What’s the deal? And now we can, that video though, we can see people are now resonating with it.

Nathan: Right.

Noah: And so it’s like. I, I think that the answer is you don’t know what’s gonna work.

You can try to understand like what’s working in other categories or what’s working in your category. You have to try a bunch of ’em and eventually you’ll find 1, 2, 3 that you can do on a weekly or monthly basis.

Nathan: Yep. That makes sense. It makes me think of the, like, uh, you get these recipe videos on Instagram [00:36:00] where someone you know is watching a viral recipe and then they go and make it and then they tell you like, does this suck or not?

Um, and there I’ve seen like probably a dozen creators follow basically the exact same format doing that.

Noah: You watch a lot of recipes

Nathan: apparently, like, oh, like okay,

Noah: what are you baking at home and you baker or something? I’ve bake, I’m a baker. I just baked the cheesecake. You know, I love

Nathan: cheesecake.

Noah: Do.

That’s the best. Should buy a

Nathan: slice. Yeah. What kind. I come to town and you don’t even get me a

Noah: cheesecake. I didn’t bring a cheesecake. It’s a mango cheesecake. It’s pretty good. I didn’t see a viral tick. But they’re copying a lot of the same kind of, yeah.

Nathan: Well, and what’s interesting about that is that they get to use the hook from the video that already went viral, right?

Because they’re commenting on that. And so it’s like,

Noah: oh, as the opener.

Nathan: As the opener, which you’re just like, feels kinda like a cheat code. Um,

Noah: I think that that’s great. I mean, what you got me inspired thinking about is that if I ever go back to doing more YouTube content and having more public stuff, I think I would try to do one eighties, like what I did with my initial content.

And I think the 180 and content now that [00:37:00] no one’s doing is just like insanely raw, right? Like now in the world of ai, perfection and like overproduction and

Nathan: your studios are beautiful,

Noah: everybody’s studio’s so

Nathan: good. Right? Because you and I can throw money at this. Right, exactly. So that, that’s easy.

Noah: Exactly. And so maybe the answer is just like, go back to as gritty as possible, like there. Mm-hmm. Do you know the workout guy, Sam something? Sam Shankman. You know, this guy Uhuh, it’s like, I think a few million subscribers and it’s just him on his phone and he doesn’t do a lot of production. There’s no edits, there’s not a lot of cuts.

Right. Um, there are some edits, but there’s not a lot of edits. And it’s just like, Hey, I’m gonna the gym, here’s what I’m eating today. Here’s what’s happening today. And it’s just a guy talking a lot. And I think there’s something there where it builds a better relationship with your audience.

Nathan: Right.

Noah: And it’s just so different that I think people are gonna pay more attention to that than kind of the same standard production that, that a lot have.

Like, I, I liked your angle, which is like, is there a way to make it work where you have, like Tim Ferriss or Ryan Holiday who use your product

Nathan: mm-hmm.

Noah: Like you’re doing like, like a workshop with them and filming that. Like, is that, is that the angle,

Nathan: right? Yeah. And I gotta figure out [00:38:00] that thing that’s repeatable.

’cause something that you talked about is really an what sounds to me like an element of burnout. From the channel where you’re like, oh, I don’t wanna spend, I mean, how much time were you spending on it? Was it like 20 hours a week?

Noah: 40

Nathan: hour? Like,

Noah: oh, lot. A lot. I mean, I was also running AppSumo and Right. I was, I wasn’t married with a kid.

Mm-hmm. Uh, but yeah, somewhere 20 to 30 hours a week plus, you know, a lot of the days I, I’d fly for filming. So if, if there’s someone like Kinko’s or I interviewed the founder of Qualcomm, or we went to Maine, or we went to Florida, or I did the streets of, I did the streets of Switzerland, or I did the streets of Monaco.

Um. That it’s just a, it’s, it’s a job, right? It’s a job at some point. Uh, I, I get, what I was thinking about though is that you’ve been doing content and creating for a long time. Like how do you stick with it?

Nathan: I mean, it’s trying to find a format that, that is enjoyable, relatively easy. Like, something that I found is I enjoy the podcast way more if it’s in person.

And so I just made a rule that I only do in-person interviews for the podcast, and that made it really easy. Um, [00:39:00] I mean, it makes it harder logistically, but it makes it easier from, uh, decision making.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: You know, and then it’s just like, cool, what city am I going to be in? Who do I wanna, uh, spend time with an interview?

The other thing that makes a big difference is batch recording. So now that we have a studio in Boise, I will fly people out once a month. Instead of recording weekly, I’ll fly people out and once a month we’ll do a dinner and record with usually four people. And then I spend a day and a half instead of.

Half a day every week. It’s a day and a good idea. Half a month.

Noah: That’s good idea. You enjoy it.

Nathan: Yeah. I like that a lot. But I think in your case, I mean, you, you went to the point that you, you achieved all the goals that you set out to do.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: And then you didn’t upload for what are 18 months now?

Noah: Yeah, it’s been a while.

I’m scared. I’m scared to upload. Like, is it gonna be good enough? Like will people respond, will people remember me? Uh, do I want to even upload?

Nathan: Right.

Noah: Right. So there’s a lot of, like, a lot of psychology things to work through. Do I care to upload, like, I’m feeling so good about myself, I just feel so [00:40:00] good.

Like I’m, I, I’m a good husband. I like being back at ABS Sumo, uh, moderately healthy, you know, and I’m like, what do I do? I wanna do it

Nathan: right.

Noah: Where I, I think before it was like a, maybe an insecurity that, that was driving it. Not, not entirely, but definitely one part of the motivation.

Nathan: So a lot of the timing.

You stopped uploading about the time that your daughter was born, right?

Noah: Yeah, exactly.

Nathan: Okay. And so that, that was just a big life change then. Obviously you don’t have the same level of time to commit to it

Noah: then. No. Now what’s needed to be at the level of, of success that I was experiencing? Mm-hmm. I, I think what’s been interesting is, so I do, I remember, you know, San Par?

Yep. And so Sam Par, I was doing a weekly newsletter for five years. Mm-hmm. Uh, via no kagan.com. I was just sending my new newsletter every week. And then Sam Par sent a newsletter once every few months. And I was, and I, I was like, you can do that. That’s allowed. I was like, I thought there’s rules that you have to be consistent.

And he is like, no, no. When I have something to tell him, I tell him.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: And then, so I think it just made me reflect the whole part of, um, what do I [00:41:00] really wanna be doing? And so I like tweeting. So I tweet whenever, when I have someone to email out, like, we have a Black Friday thing for Epic. I’m gonna email out.

And then I do the podcast once a month. And I, I thought like, I could do this for, I literally could do this forever and I want to, and this is what’s been interesting. So on the, my podcast. I don’t do interviews anymore. I just talk about myself. That sounds weird, but I talk about myself and then lately, the past maybe two to three months, all I’ve done is given like the most raw, it’s not vulnerable, but most raw, uh, insights into like how fucked up app Sumo is and like how challenging some of these different problems we’ve had are.

It’s not Abso iss not totally fucked up, but like we’ve had a lot of problems. Mm-hmm. Uh, I just came back being involved in September after paternity leave and just sharing what’s going on. Like, I call, I’ve been calling it like Absu at war and this is the first podcast in, I dunno, a few years. People have been like messaging me a lot.

Like, oh, like Grant Baldwin, who I know you’re friends with.

Nathan: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Noah: And it’s like, Hey man, that was, that was good. And so I was like, oh, this is interesting.

Nathan: It is like. [00:42:00] It’s easy to get caught up in the, you know, view counts or subscribers or something else. But the, did your friends text you about This is a really interesting, like you can’t really quantify it.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: But there are some of those where, you know, you get like three or four texts where someone’s like, Hey man, that some version of like, that was really good that spoke to me. I’m dealing with the same thing. And you’re like, oh, I think we’re onto something here.

Noah: And so I think there, there is something, if I wanted to be more public and I needed more YouTube stuff, I would just re record that, right?

So I just put a camera, a camera, I put a camera and I’d have my mic. But I, I kind of just like that it’s, it’s almost private in a sense. And it’s like, this is what I wanna share publicly and, and I feel good about versus it’s a slippery slope. You start putting it out there and then you get some feedback and then you wanna make it better and then you,

Nathan: right.

Noah: I, I think you have to be awake. Like, one of my favorite books is from Tim. Tim, recommended is awareness.

Nathan: Okay. I don’t know that one.

Noah: Uh, by Anthony DeMelo. And it’s one of my favorite books in the past decade specifically. ’cause it just tells everyone to wake up. And the whole idea is like, are you just awake to the life you wanna live?

Nathan: Hmm.

Noah: [00:43:00] That’s it. And I, I think going down the YouTube path and having to build a team, and I think that is for some people, um, whether you wanna be like at the Mr. Beast level or like a Brad Owens, uh, level, where you’re just like vlogging your poker hands. And that works. And I think for me, I, I’m really enjoying this, this series and this phase of like, podcast month, email, whenever, and then tweet, uh, as I see fit.

Nathan: So is there a version of YouTube that you see like, fitting in with your life going forward?

Noah: Possibly, yeah. I, I can see myself coming back to it. Mm-hmm. And it, I think, I’m trying to, sounds weird. I’m trying to accept myself.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: I’m trying to accept, I’m accepting in a good way that I don’t have to feel guilty.

I’m not making videos right. I mean, that’s a very easy thing to, I’m not making videos and there’s. I, I just don’t, I don’t care right now. And I, and I’m looking at it as more, there’ll be a, a period where I wanna do another series. Mm-hmm. And I think the fact, if I could have it more time blocked, like, Hey, I’m gonna come out and do six episodes next year, and then have that, I think that would be, uh, I think more directional what I, what I’ll do in the future.

Nathan: [00:44:00] Yeah. That makes sense. It makes me think of, um, Tim’s show from. Forever ago we did the TV show.

Noah: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Nathan: Like with the Tim Paris experiment, is that

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: You know, but it was only like six episodes. Right. Episodes or something. Yeah. But highly produced, you know, all that. He, he dove in it and did it and, you know, it didn’t, it didn’t come with his obligation.

And maybe he would’ve done more if it got picked up by treadmill network.

Noah: Like the, the content machine is just an unlimited treadmill.

Nathan: But he was able to do this thing

Noah: one

Nathan: time. Yeah. And anyone who, you know, was either friends with him, or in my case, a fan of his work from back then is like, oh, we know that.

Exactly.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Right now people are, are not gonna know what that is. But, um,

Noah: maybe not, but I think I, I, my first, first thought, but

Nathan: you made the thing.

Noah: Yeah. My thought was comedians and cars getting coffee where it’s like, Hey, I’m gonna put out a seasoned, it’s 10 episodes and that’s all I’m gonna do. And, and that’s okay.

Nathan: And when the time is right, I might do it again.

Noah: Yeah. Like I, I tried another content avenue, which was like, live workshops. Okay. So a few months ago I was in, I was in Barcelona for the summer, and then I, I spoke [00:45:00] at a kids’ high school that I, and I really, I was like, man, I’m having so much energy, I’ll do this all the time.

So then I found a bookshop and that had my book and I was like, Hey, can I speak? And I was like, oh, no, I don’t like this. Or, and then it, it was maybe the format that I did. And so it’s just re retrying it. And so it’s finding a content medium, so maybe it is in person, which I think is almost more unique these days.

Um, that works for you and you can do it potentially for, for a long period or in a, in a, in a boxed period of time.

Nathan: Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. I wanna go back to the idea of making content about the thing

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Versus actually doing the thing. Right. Because a lot, um, because I, I think about this a lot of like, yeah.

I enjoy making content.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: I enjoy running a software company and there’s an element where I, I think that building a brand and the content is definitely going to elevate Kit, but there’s a core part of it where it’s like, should I just be heads down [00:46:00] and just

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: You know, be doing sales and marketing and, and, uh, product development for Kit.

And so I’m curious how you think about that of the time spent on AppSumo versus the time spent

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Building the audience and it like, did they help each other out in the way that you expected, or how do you think about that now?

Noah: Well, me and you both came from that though. Yeah. So I think before we had software business companies, we had Per personal brands.

Nathan: Yep. Oh yeah.

Noah: Right. I, I know, I don’t know if you ever thought, I don’t think of it as a personal brand. I just was public.

Nathan: Right,

Noah: right. It’s never been like, I need to build no king and brand. Like, I don’t know. It’s just me living and sharing. And so,

Nathan: but you’re right. We both did that before, like a company with a team and all that was successful.

Noah: Yeah. I mean, just to share on the other side of this, so at AppSumo we’re promoting software deals, and so we go to these companies and all the companies today, I was like, what’s your marketing channels like, besides AppSumo, what are you gonna use to grow? And it shockingly, shockingly, the majority of ’em are all really focused on influencer marketing.

Nathan: Mm.

Noah: And [00:47:00] so the problem with influencer marketing is that you have to kiss, you know, in a 21 year old’s butt from, you know, that’s like, you know, oh no, I’m too busy and I can’t, won’t do it. And so it’s nice if either you can do it or someone else in your company can do it. Mm-hmm. And so. But that’s why I would say at AppSumo, our feature product instead of myself is can we make videos about products and have that be a content pillar that we can use to grow our audience?

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: Uh, because right, right now it’s, it’s not gonna be me. I don’t want to, Mitchell is transitioning out and so we think this is, I, I think this is gonna be the way that that builds up our brand. I I would say historically though, having a public persona or having a public presence, not persona Yeah. I think is invaluable.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: It’s just been so cool. Um, the people, the experiences, the, the accessibility to things. Like, like today, I, I’ll, I’ll DM someone like I was DMing this guy Daniel Nguyen, he made a company called Bolt ai and he’s like, oh dude, I like, I I read your book and I dunno if he read my book, but like him or another guy read the book.

Nathan: Yep. [00:48:00]

Noah: And I was like, what do you mean? How do you know you’ve read the book? It’s like, uh, I think that part was surprising. And it’s only from just being public.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: So I, I think there’s, there’s a lot of benefit in, in your business as well as non just direct business that, that’s been beneficial from that.

Nathan: Okay. So let’s talk about building that content, like building that content engine as a business.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Or really to drive revenue to your business. Because I, I think of attention as a currency. Yeah. It’s a very, very valuable currency, but you get to decide what you direct that towards. And it could be to, um, any range of things.

It could be to e-commerce products, it could be to advertising, affiliate marketing, whatever else. And so you’re saying, Hey, I have this very valuable business and if I get attention, it’s worth more to me than other people. And so if I direct that to AppSumo, in my case, right. Directing it to Kit, but building internal influencers is really, really hard.

That’s

Noah: really tough. It’s really

Nathan: tough. Like, have you, is there anything that you’ve found that works for that? There are companies have done it well. I think HFS did it really well with their YouTube [00:49:00] channel. Um. I, I’m trying, there’s not that many other people that have

Noah: been the company I was thinking about that.

I, I, they’re, they’re, you know, Huckberry anybody with them? Yeah.

Nathan: I don’t know them personally, but I’m a fan of their

Noah: brand. They’re your talent. It may be interesting to chat with them, but I like what they’ve done with their content where, uh, their two verticals, one of ’em is all their content is they, they do deals on guy, guy clothing.

Mm-hmm. Guy Gear. And so one of their content pillars is basically like, go to a random country and like have an adventure.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: Which is all their branding. It’s like go out and hunt an adventure. And so they have like a lot of Japan videos. They have like random, all these random countries and those videos are getting hundreds of thousands of views and it’s like Huckberry branded,

Nathan: right?

Noah: And they’re all wearing Huckberry gear. So I think that has been really interesting. Then they do their, uh, everyday carry EDC stuff in your backpack. So you go to their studio and then you just bring your stuff and that’s, they just on repeat have different people come through to, to do that content.

Nathan: That’s what’s interesting about both of those formats. The, the adventure one. You’re like, could I see myself doing this? For the next 10 years. Hell yes. Yeah. You [00:50:00] know, ’cause you’re like, that sounds like a great time. And then, you know, on the everyday Carry, it’s a format where, like they say, if you want to grow on YouTube as a podcaster, the best way to do it is to interview famous YouTubers.

Right. And you would see this with, um, uh, Colin and Samir.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Right. As they have all these popular YouTubers on, or, um, uh, I’m spacing on other names, but Right. The same, same idea, but this everyday carry video, you could bring in people who have their fans who would wanna talk about it into your format.

You can make the same thing over and over again.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: But it’s unique. So I love both of those formats.

Noah: Well it’s, it’s been fascinating to the original initial question. You’re like, if you have a company already, how do you build up? You know, we have maybe a two-prong approach where we have a dedicated, I’m guessing similar to you, you have a dedicated, like ambassador program.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: I know. Um, the guys from Beard Brand do that too, where like, you go out, you find people, I, I think the untapped thing in brands is international. I think that’s kind of been an angle that’s been really good. Like my, you know, my [00:51:00] wife and I, we speak Spanish, but like, Germany’s huge, right? Go get it.

Italian people, like, there’s less competition, right? So if you get ambassadors there, but that’s one way of doing it, which is like, how do you find less busy, less, you know, gone after people and in international country’s been easier. Um, so that’s one part of it. But then the internal stuff, we just, I don’t think we’ve ever really figured that out.

Yeah. In, in inside. ’cause we, we, we’ve been making product videos for years and they all, no one watches ’em besides just a very limited amount of audience. And so we’re really trying to experiment now. Can we craft that in a way. That, that gets a larger reach. ’cause what ends up happening is if someone could do it themselves, like why wouldn’t they just go make their own channel?

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: And so I think what we’re, what I do wanna experiment with it with is like, can I find someone I like, like Mitchell who, who was inside the company, like, go outside the company. I’m gonna sponsor you, but just do whatever you want. I have no idea how well that’ll work, but the, I I think he’ll go create something special.

Like, you know, Nat Eliason used to work with us and Justin Mayers used to work with us. And so it’s [00:52:00] like, is there a way to build a better relationship with them where ongoing they’re doing whatever they want, but they’re like, oh yeah, I, like, I used to work at AppSu and I like AppSumo.

Nathan: Yeah. As they’ve gone on to do

Noah: other things, so like, help them mm-hmm.

Achieve their success. And then it’s like, there’s still like Eon Aldo is a great example of it. Mm-hmm. So Eon was our former CEO, um, he left 2021. So give or take five years. That guy talks about AB Sumo every day. Oh yeah. That’s all he, he’s like, you know, and so it’s like, oh, how do I create more people like him where he has a good experience in the company, but he wants his own show.

Mm-hmm. He wants his own company,

Nathan: but it still ties back in some way.

Noah: Yeah. And so

Nathan: it’s your AB Sumo Mafia and so the PayPal Mafia.

Noah: Yeah, there’s a li We have a a little one. We’ve also been around a long time, so I wonder with Kit as well, where there were things like, you know, Daryl or some of the people that have been with you that can go out, build their own brands or something, and then kind of still have the association.

Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. If we were to, this is putting you on the spot, but if you were to like try to come up with content formats for Kit, that would work.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Is there anything come to mind?

Noah: [00:53:00] Um, is the goal is like views and subscribers kind of thing that eventually

Nathan: Yeah. From, from the right target audience.

Right. From from creators.

Noah: Okay. What, what’s worked so far with your, what’s like your most popular on your channel or on Kids’ Channel?

Nathan: Uh, there’s certain interviews they’ve done really well on my channel, like Jay Klaus. Um, that one did a hundred thousand views, um, which is the channel’s only 15,000 subscribers.

Right. So, okay. That’s outsized. Um, on Kits channel, it’s the conference talks, but I feel like those are more the in, you know, that’s James Clear and Seth Godin when they happen to be on our stage giving. Okay. Uh, giving a great talk. I don’t think some of the product breakdowns how to do things, but that’s like pretty, pretty niche for us.

Noah: Okay.

Nathan: I don’t think we found something that,

Noah: how big was the Seth Go and James Clear one.

Nathan: I think those are each a million views.

Noah: How much did you pay those guys this week? Just ballpark. Uh,

Nathan: yeah. Under a hundred thousand dollars each time.

Noah: Is it worth a million views for a hundred thousand?

Nathan: I don’t know.

Noah: So that, that’s one content format, right.

I would say, Hey, I’ll pay you a hundred thousand [00:54:00] dollars and then you put ’em on a stage.

Nathan: Yeah. I mean, James, it helped that we’ve been friends for a long time. Yeah. And I think that was the first, like, that was be like, I think maybe Atomic Habits had just come out.

Noah: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan: Right. Um,

Noah: I, I guess my, but what I look, what we, the team, like what brainstorm around is like what’s already working.

Mm-hmm. And so who else out there is at that level? Like who else is, you say James, like Ryan Holiday.

Nathan: Yep.

Noah: Maybe Tim, um, who’s like, who’s maybe the younger generation, maybe Colin Samir. I mean, they’re kind of older, but who else is like a younger generation

Nathan: in that realm? Yeah, I would have to figure that out.

But I like the, the idea, you know, if you’re going to pay someone a salary to go do all this and create, write some of these concepts, like how could you maybe even just pay the individual person?

Noah: Yeah. I would just go find the list of. I’m trying, like Rose Han is like a more in personal finance space.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: I think I’d probably categorically look at like, who is the audience you want? But are they watching finance videos? And then Right. Find those speakers, give ’em a hundred k. Either put like, have a conference again and then you have 10 [00:55:00] speakers or do 12. So you have one a month.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: So 12 speakers, you spend $1.2 million.

Right. A hundred thousand each. And then maybe the audience even pays for it or it’s they apply or it’s free or it’s just for kit members. And then you have a banger video for 12 months. Mm-hmm. And you just do 12 a year.

Nathan: That’s interesting. And then it serves the purpose of filling your conference speakers and

Noah: you have a great conference for your, for your audience.

I think that would be one angle I would consider. Um. And so Kit, the, the customer for Kit, again, it all comes back to like, who’s the buyer and the, and the viewer. So the cus customer for Kit is like a creator. Like who, who are you guys hosting today?

Nathan: Yeah, a content creator. So let’s say a podcaster, someone running a newsletter or a YouTuber, right?

And they want to bring their audience to email.

Noah: I’ll just, I’m just brainstorming.

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: I think one thing that’s really interesting is like, behind the scenes of like, uh, the setups. It’s a little more technical,

Nathan: but it’s a format you could do over and over

Noah: again. Yeah. I think it’d be cool, like have, you know, like, I’m looking, I’m copying another one.

Do you know cos you know Cosmopolitan?

Nathan: Yeah.

Noah: Um, Kara, you know, Cosmo like the 73 questions. So they go to [00:56:00] like, I think it’s mostly women. They go to their door and be like, I have so many questions for you. And they follow ’em around. So you could do that with creators in their studios. Mm-hmm. So you kind of knock on their door, they open their door and you’re like, Hey, like walk me through your studio.

How’d you think about the setup? How’d you like, how’d you just kind of like your own f your own twist?

Nathan: Right? Like that’s a version. That’s interesting. ’cause like Ryan Holiday for example, I’ve been out to his bookstore, his studio that’s right next door to it and all of that. And he gave the full tour and we had a great time.

Noah: Did you film it?

Nathan: No, because I wasn’t thinking it

Noah: through. That’s okay.

Nathan: That’s right. But that’s the version that Yeah, you could absolutely film that and ask a bunch of questions.

Noah: Yeah. And you kind of make your own. It was like, oh it’s, it’s Kits like thing like, you know, like ad, you know Architectural Digest.

Yeah. They have their open house where you come to celebrities houses. I love those. Those are so good. And so is there something some similar parallel for you guys?

Nathan: Well, what’s interesting is. You could do that with Ryan Holiday, with Huberman, with a bunch of these other people. Like, show me your studio, show me where you work.

And people would love that content. And implicit in it, you don’t even [00:57:00] have to say it explicitly of like, these are our customers, you know? And so there’s this big trust transfer that happens with it.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Um, that’s really interesting

Noah: that, that, that’d be fun to watch. Um,

Nathan: yeah, I mean, that, that’s the content that I would watch, so, yeah.

Noah: Yeah. I think that that was a little bit of the disconnect as we were doing the content I I was creating, it’s like, has zero relevance to AppSumo.

Nathan: Mm.

Noah: Like, Hey, I knocked on a door, we found out this person. What did some of these people, it’s like architects or one person sold strawberries. That’s how she became a multimillionaire.

Strawberry fields and, and you’re

Nathan: over here in software.

Noah: It’s like, oh. So I have software deals at AppSumo. You know, if you’re agency, how, if you’re an agency or a small business owner and you’re looking for software deals, uh, and so I do think you have to consider, like, it’s great that if people are aware of it.

Um, but is it really the audience that’s gonna come in and like, take action related to the business that you’re running?

Nathan: Right.

Noah: So I’m trying to think what other I, I don’t know. I think it’s like coming up with a lot of them. Um, Patty, Patty really is good if, I don’t know how expensive he is these days.

We got him pretty [00:58:00] early.

Nathan: Mm-hmm.

Noah: Um, but he’s running the Philadelphia Eagles Channel.

Nathan: That’s a big channel.

Noah: It’s a big channel, but it, and it’s also just really interesting content. They do. Like what do they eat in a day? Like how do they travel, um, behind the scenes of stuff. I mean, the content is just so interesting.

Right. I wonder, I wonder who else is on your creator? Like, just look through your customer base. Like who’s, who’s some of the interesting creators you have, not maybe in the younger or female, or what are some of the other

Nathan: Yeah, I mean there’s, I’m trying to think of people that aren’t like super famous.

’cause you have to be able to get in their time. Like, we have Dua Lipa on the platform, but she’s not gonna create content with us. Right. Um,

Noah: you sure?

Nathan: I guess I haven’t asked.

Noah: Yeah, I would ask her. That’s cool. I mean, does, are you allowed to say that she’s on your platform? Yeah.

Nathan: Oh yeah.

Noah: Yeah, do a, do a leap of song.

You know, like, I’m with kid, I don’t even know her music. I’m, so all I know is The Beatles. You know, that’s the last band. That was good. No, I, I, I mean, Dua Lipa would be super, like, why do you even have kid? Why does she have kid?

Nathan: I mean, she has, yeah, she has a newsletter. She has a book club. [00:59:00] She has like, she’s doing the whole content creator thing.

Noah: That sounds like a pretty interesting one to do.

A,

Nathan: I guess the thing is, it’s also, uh, thinking through these, there’s some things where you just have to have a specific ask to make.

Noah: Yeah. ‘

Nathan: cause like Matthew McConaughey is on a kit, but I don’t know what to ask, you know, like. I’ve been on calls with him or all of that, but I don’t know what to ask him.

Noah: No, I think you can figure that out.

Nathan: And so

Noah: I think you could,

Nathan: but if you had this format, he’s

Noah: a kind of interesting guy. Yeah. Yeah. So you

Nathan: figure, but you, this format where it’s here’s what we do, it’s totally where we do the tour. You know, the 73 questions or some,

Noah: yeah.

Nathan: Some format like that. Like, Matthew, would

Noah: you, people will watch Matthew on a toilet, you know, like I would, and so I think the que you can figure out different, like test different variations of your format.

But like, could be the studio, honestly, I’d be curious like why they’re doing it. Like, hey, what’s a beneficial for you? Like, how do you do your content? Um, maybe it’s even, maybe it is tangential stuff. Like why does this like matter?

Nathan: I like it,

Noah: I think, huh. Who else is there?

Nathan: Uh, that’s

Noah: public.

Nathan: That’s, I mean, everybody’s pretty public.

That’s the nice [01:00:00] thing about it is like it’s powered by Kit somewhere in there. Oh,

Noah: sweet.

Nathan: Um, Tom Brady has a newsletter that he’s very into, so we’re trying to do a, uh, behind the scenes with him ’cause he’s like actively writing his newsletter. So yeah, that would be,

Noah: yeah, I see him doing his YouTube channel.

Nathan: Yeah, the YouTube, he’s very into the YouTube channel. Um, there’s a bunch of YouTubers, like Veritasium and um, a whole bunch of ’em. So there’s really a lot. But I think you’re right, it’s diving deep in who our customers are and finding a format that we can do over and over again where we’re making a specific ask and saying, Hey, can we, um, you know, using Andrew Huberman as an example, can we come to your studio?

And

Noah: yeah, there’s something there.

Nathan: I think a lot of the energy that you brought that, that I’ve known you have for years and that you really brought into the content creation of like this full on sprint.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: And um. Like going all in with the energy that you have now? Uh, when we hung out at Andrew Warner’s

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Like six months ago, you showed up with just like, I was like, did Noah go Zen? Like, like Noah [01:01:00] as a dad is

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Is very different. But it also feels like you’re, it feels like the fuel that you use to drive yourself is different than it was a couple, couple years ago.

Noah: Yeah. It’s been evolving. I mean, I, I’m Mike, I was talking with Mike Posner who was like the, the music, he is awesome dude.

And, and he was telling me, he is like, you know, if you could talk to someone five years later and it’s like, how’s it going? It’s like I’m still the same. Mm-hmm. You know, maybe something needs to change. And I think who I was five years ago was not the same who as I am today. Like, I wanted to prove myself.

I wanted more views. I wanted the subscribers. And, uh, I think if I ask myself what I really want, you know, I wanna, I wanna have a nice day with my family. Mm-hmm. I wanna feel like I created something at work. I wanna feel a little healthy. Um, and I think related to like making content and stuff, it’s, can I do it in a way that, that, that just serves me?

Mm-hmm. Which is Twitter, which is a podcast and a newsletter whenever I get around to it.

Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. Um, on the, you mentioned Twitter.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: What’s been working there to drive, like the tweets that you’re doing? Are you firing off random things? Yeah. Do you have things that have gone like crazy viral, like

Noah: [01:02:00] Yeah.

Nathan: What’s the, some central threads there

Noah: when you’re trying to be a content creator in any aspect, just pick the platform you use the most. Mm-hmm. And I, I think what people do is they try to do all the platforms. I only did YouTube, so when I grew big on YouTube, I didn’t do anything else. You wouldn’t see me on TikTok.

You would not. And it’s like, eventually we did start testing TikTok, but it was like all in one platform. And so with Twitter, I basically just use it all day long. I do love Twitter. And so the content that I’ve noticed works is counterintuitive long stories. So I did a, and I used ai, so I used Chacha Petit to basically be my, like my guy quit to go work for Hermo.

And so I was like, okay, you’re now my new, uh, intern. Yeah. Uh, and so, and then you can’t quit, you know, I’ve got you lost in a box. Good buddy. And so I basically was like, here’s stuff that’s gone viral. Um, what are counterintuitive stories? So like real estate, um, losing money and it’s not a good investment generally.

People talk about that a lot. Mm-hmm. So I was like, okay, I lost money in this Airbnb. Help me write it out. Right. And here’s, here’s my numbers. And so I think if you can show a picture, if I can show numbers, [01:03:00] um, is there a way to create like more of a narrative versus, you know, like quippy things? And that one, I think it was like a million views

Nathan: and so this counterintuitive long stories.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: And so,

Noah: so how do you use AI to basically be like, what again, it comes back exact. If you’re trying to professionalize it, which I’m not on Twitter. It basically, what are all the stories out there that are, that I can think of, uh, that are, that like everything possible in my life that I can then, then talk about on Twitter and then basically picking one and then really spending a lot of time to make it, make it great.

Nathan: So are you brainstorming all of these stories? You’re like, this happened that happened

Noah: if I was trying to, if you Twitter following and make money on that? Yes.

Nathan: Okay.

Noah: That’s exactly what I would do. I basically then try to make sure there’s a, I don’t think you have to do one a day. I think that was what was shocking on YouTube.

I thought YouTube have to do two videos a week, and I did that and it ended up being two videos a month is what really grew the channel.

Nathan: Yeah. You went quality over quantity.

Noah: Exactly.

Nathan: Yeah. That makes sense.

Noah: And so I think for everyone it’s just finding the, the medium. It’s finding your format, finding your cadence.

Like, Hey, can I sustain this? I don’t know if I, I don’t know if I wanna [01:04:00] still go today. I, I, I do regret a little bit that I burnt out kind of hard on that. Mm-hmm. Or I got, uh, I woke up. I woke up and was like, maybe I don’t wanna be knocking on doors or finding out about other people. Just wanna find out about myself.

Nathan: So my hope is that you come back to that content and in the format that’s like, that is super authentic and true to who you are now.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: Because I think there’s a lot of people who have followed you along the way and as you shifted from like pure entertainment and people are following up for the entertainment, I think there’s a version of it where people wanna come with you in that journey.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: And I hope that you’ll,

Noah: thank you.

Nathan: Give them that gift of showing up back to YouTube. It might be in the once a month or once a quarter,

Noah: something there. I might, you know, I, I, I’ve been posting a little bit more about being a dad and people are like, yo, I’m a dad too. I’m like, you guys are dads now.

Like the audience that I’ve been doing it 20 years. And so I guess a lot of ’em are dads. And so there’ll be some variation. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah, after I, I settle and I have a 1-year-old and I’m having another one coming, so it’ll be a little bit of time.

Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And for right now, you’re all in on AppSumo.

Noah: [01:05:00] Yeah.

Nathan: That’s what you’re focused on.

Noah: Yeah.

Nathan: So you talk about that on the podcast, where you’re giving behind the scenes of what it, what war at AppSumo looks like.

Noah: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s really good content if maybe we packaged it. But right now I think just doing the podcast is enough. Yeah. Not enough.

But I think I’m gonna do a podcast. Maybe I’ll make it into emails and Twitter, but for now it’s just like, it’s like my creative outlet that I don’t have to professionalize or scale or get more audience on.

Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome. Well thanks for hanging out.

Noah: Thanks for having me.

Nathan: Uh, what would you like to plug?

Where should people follow you? All of that?

Noah: No, just go, go call your mom. You know? Call your mom. Buy an ice cream, get pistachio.

Nathan: Uh, always pistachio.

Noah: What’s your favorite flavor?

Nathan: Uh, I would say salty caramel.

Noah: Whew. That’s a good choice.

Nathan: Yeah. That’s good dude. Always good to see you.

Noah: Good to see you too.

Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry Show.

Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else do you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for [01:06:00] listening.