What’s up Omaha, if you’re in the back or the front join us for the party, if you’re in that side room. We know you are out there, come out and play with us. How are you guys doing today, so a few notes I have for you all. I’m going to say the “F” word a lot, and that word is “FUN”. I might also say the word “FRICK” a few times, we’ll see how that goes.
Here’s what I want to do, I want to get us all ready so at the count of three let’s all just do a big Omaha clap… One, Two, Three. That was good. That was really good, so we got slides, no slides. That was me dancing, how awkward was that? Did anyone like that dance?
Here’s what we’re going to do today, who’s here. I want to know the people here. How many people here are entrepreneurs? Good. How many ladies are in the house? Make some noise ladies. Who here likes corn?, make some noise. I love corn, I just found it’s not like there is no nutrients in it though. Is anybody else surprise by that? Never mind.
So I was really disappointed I’m not going to lie. Everybody have a piece of paper on their chair, no? Everyone should have a half piece of paper. What I want you to do is make a hamburger out of it. You fold it in half. Do you guys need a demo? I’ll do a demo. You fold it in half and then you rip it. If you don’t have a piece of paper that looks like this, I want you to fold it in half. Does anybody not have one? Fold it in half and then rip it, we all do that.
Now here’s what I want you to do on that piece of paper on the half, I want you to write down what you’re afraid of, don’t put your name on it or your phone number. If you’re weird, do it. Write down what you are afraid of, so it could be public speaking. It could be failing. It could be losing your significant other. It could be anything so write down what you’re afraid of and fold it in half. Let’s do that, it takes about ten seconds.
Alright, does everyone get that done? Everyone get that done? No? Yeah, just write one thing that you’re afraid of, do you have a lot of things? Oh wow! One thing that you’re afraid of, people on the side, the ESPN sports center team, di you guys do it too? Does everyone do it? We’re done? Fold that in half. Now I want you to pass it to the right. Pass it to the right, your name is not on it. Pass it to the right, three people. If you’re in that four side, do something else.
Now what I want you to do is open up their fear. Now you could read what they wrote. Pass it to the right. Did everyone opened it up? Open it up, are there good ones out there? Now this is what I want you to do, guys come back with me, so you guys read with their fears. Now pass it behind you. If you’re in the back it sucks, you got to move up front. This is what happens when you’re not in the front. So open it up. Any good ones out there that someone wants to share? Any good ones? Fear of clowns, choking the debt while driving your car, that’s the common one. What’s that? Shark attack.
Okay so, why do you guys think we just did that? What’s that? I don’t know dude, I’m going to stay away from you. So we’re all afraid of things. We’re all afraid of failure. What I wasn’t to ask is which person here is fearless? Who’s fearless? Not one person? Alright come on stage, come with me. Hey why are you going to hate, he’s coming on stage you’re not coming on stage. Put it together for this guy. You can stand up. Stand up, he raises and he did it. Good jobs. Stand up. You’re still up here. What’s your name?
Willis: Willis
Do you know why I ask you to do this? That’s the bad part. So what I’m going to ask Willis to do, that’s a little awkward, but he’s fearless right? Are you the fearless one? Can you take off your shirt?
Well that’s looking good, undershirt? Why not because you’re fearless, you will do anything, oh because I just wanted to prove people that there’s one fearless guy here. Are you going to do it? Take off your shirt, flex your muscles? Yeah, put it together. Willis is in the house.
Here’s what we’re going to do here, I want you guys all because Willis is a bad ass. What is your twitter handle?
Willis: WfJackson and then number 3
Wfjackson3, follow him on twitter. Everyone here, people watching at home, my mom is watching, she know what twitter is, people at the side room. Put it together for Willis, wfjackson3. Follow Willis, he’s a badass.
I got one more of you though, who’s afraid of public speaking? Come on, the girl in yellow. I know. You guys are like, “I’m never raising my hand with Noah”. Come on stage. Come on hurry up. We only got thirty minutes. It’s going to be weird huh. It’s going to be really weird. Hi, what’s your name?
Mandy: Mandy.
Mandy, let’s put our hands together for Mandy. Put your hands together. Stand up. Wow, this is like one of those nightmare. So what do you most afraid of?
Mandy: Public speaking.
What’s so scary about it?
Mandy: I have an accent so that’s one of the reasons and speaking is not my thing.
Yeah, it’s scary right?
Mandy: Dancing is my thing though
Dancing?
Wow, next time we can do dance-off. Okay, would you dance over there? So here’s what we’re going to do now. I wrote you a script so you wouldn’t have to think about it. So you just read this and here’s your mic and then conquer your fear.
Mandy: Noah is a really cool guy. I am facing and overcoming my fear right now in front of you all. I am bad ass.
Put it together for Mandy. Okay, did anybody else tingle? I’m like tingling all over. Did anybody else feel that? I need a second. So you guys all have a piece of paper. Does everyone not have a piece of paper? That has a strange challenge on it. One of the biggest things that I’m going to talk about today is how to get what you want and how to get you to want, you have to overcome your fear. The stranger challenge is a small step with that. So you take this piece of paper, the stranger challenge and you get a photo with someone you don’t know and you go to strangerchallenge.com and upload the photo. You guys are going to do it today?
Audience: Yeah.
Yeah? In the back, I can’t hear you.
Audience: Yeah.
Yeah, okay. So check out stranger challenge, any of you? We can all come on the stage. When are you guys go do it yourselves? Start overcoming your fear. It will help you start getting what you want. And that’s what we’re going to explore today. So I started Appsumo. How many of you here know Appsumo.com? How many of you don’t know Appsumo? Alright, get out your phone, Appsumo.com. Check it out. It’s pretty cool.
So I get three common questions that are on Appsumo. Right, we promote great products for entrepreneur and people like you.
The three most common questions I get:
1) Are you single? Yes.
2) How do I start a business? Number two question because I’ve been able to do that pretty well. I’ve also failed a lot but I’ve been able to start a few businesses that I’ve done well and so how to do that is you’re going to have how to make your first dollar, that’s a plug right there.
3) This is the most common question I get. How to deal with failure?
Failure is stopping you from getting what you want. Right? That fear, your friends, yourself, that nervousness when many came on stage which was really impressive. Maybe I shall speak next to you Jeff. So we’re going to work on that today and I think the best way for me to work on that with you is show you how I failed all last year. You guys want to see? No? Maybe, whatever.
So the reason I think the failure is interesting cause when you hear the bio, you hear Facebook, you hear Mint, you hear I have done some businesses that people like and that have done well. But the day to day is really tough and you guys all go through that.
Is there anyone here that does not have a problem in their life? I hear in Omaha, there are no problems. Right, but the point is that we all go through it so I want to share some of mine with you to help you guys feel good about yourself and also be able to get to do what you want.
So as you’re trying to understand your life and get through failure and get what you want, I’m going to give you a framework. Right, it makes it much easier for you guys to get what you want and it’s basically health, wealth and love. That’s it. It’s really, really, really simple. And so all we’re going to do today is I’m going to go through this different phases of my life and we’ll go through your life.
My 2012 Fails:
WEALTH
Wealth, number one, this is a long presentation everyone. There’s a lot of fail in here. So the day might note the 84% numbers? In the back? What do you think it is? Nothing? Can yon be able to guess what 84% is? It’s the percent of everything we do in Appsumo that fails. So do you realize like, if I work in 8 hours and 6 hours of the day I’m failing. You know how depressing that is? Right? So we build so much stuff. This is actually, this is all A/B testing. Out of all A/B tests we do, 84% fail and we’re pretty good at it. So as we were doing a lot at 12 we try a lot of stuff out? And most of it fail. And I think if you guys can understand that failure happens, you could feel good knowing that “Hey, I’m going to fail and I need to move forward, I need to learn from this experience”.
Ten thousand dollars, can you guess what that is? Anybody over in this side? close, anybody in the back? Ten thousand bucks?
Audience: Your sales
Apathy.
No, it’s how much I paid one person to come to Austin to tell me what to do because I didn’t know what to do. So I paid him ten thousand dollars a day just to hang out with me and tell me what to do. This is failure number two, and so the point, you know, there’s time in our life that are hard and we don’t know what to do. And that’s why probably things are tough for you. And you have to understand what you really want. I don’t really know what I wanted. So I need to spend around 23 thousand dollars for a guy to come tell me what to do.
Business Fails.
Number three, all this time read it out loud or can you guys read? Oh, read it out loud, it’s really good. Ah, I’ll title it “Tell Appsumo to go freak themselves, my respect for you and your company has disappeared and pray to God, nobody ever asked me what I think of Appsumo and the special people that run it.”
So do you guys know what date this was? Come speak, yes. Who said that? Who said Christmas? Yeah that’s exactly right. Take next slide.
We ended up, get this, you want to know about the stars aligning? Our email system is all custom-built and it’s all automated. We emailed out an email selling a product with Steve Jobs in it selling topography on the day he died. Who will do a collective, “Awww”? No that was a brave one. I don’t even know what to do.
So the point being those we emailed almost a million people saying “Hey, you should buy this, Steve Jobs loved it” on the same day he died. Can you imagine how bad we felt? Bad.
Ego Fails.
I was bragging to people cause my ego gone the way last year about how it didn’t go in the grocery store for six months. My assistant did, Amanda, she’s amazing. I don’t really need the assistant. I didn’t need to brag how I didn’t want to do all these things but that was I thought I was at that point of my life.
When name is on a product, that’s you and so my name is on the product. It was basically how Appsumo grew and I was very just focused on money and every time in my life that I focused on money, I’m always less happy and depress and I always make a lot less of it.
So I put out a product showing how we grew and all I said, do you know how much money this product made? It made a $100,000 in profit. And I was like “That’s awesome”. But I actually didn’t notice if you look at like the talk interviews. People hated it but I was so consumed just making that money that I just ignored it completely at that time.
Right, so we changed a lot and now we’ll go through. It’s not all downer stuff don’t worry. But we went through some tough times and there’s failure number six.
Hired a lot of people because I thought to be cool to brag and have a big office and say that you know what, how many, how big your team is. How many of you have heard that question. How big is your team? Who cares? What do you really want? What do you really want?
So we made a big team and then there’s a lot of other failures. Do you guys want to hear more failures or that’s enough? We stop at that? Let’s speak it back up here okay?
Failure happens but it’s about understanding that failure is going to happen and what you can learn from that experience. Like Dave, the presentation was a little off for you guys and girls, women and men, right? Yes? It was a little off. And Dave was a good person. And so Dave is now going to learn for his next presentation to be more aware of the audience. And so you guys have to then say, “When that failure happens, it’s about the next step that is most important.”
So what did we do? We cut down the team in Appsumo. We didn’t want all these people there. We just wanted a core team. So Eric, Anton, Daniel, Noah, Steven, Chad. We just cut it down to all the people we really wanted to be there.
I started Appsumo not to be a business, not to make money, I really just found cool products that I wanted to promote. That was the whole point. But then you start getting and you hear A/B testing, lean metrics, all these other stuff. It’s very consuming and exciting when you’re making money and growing. But this is just me working at my friend’s place, because I just wanted to work on it. So we went back to that. We went back to the roots of why are we doing this? And all I want to do is promote cool stuff. So I just want to be back on just working on cafes, having the people around me that I wanted to have around me.
This is Chad, we tried on three or let me just say Chad on three. That’ll be cool cause he’s watching, I think live. And it will be awkward for him. Will you do Chad on three? Yeah? One two three, Chad. That’s going to be weird for him. Chad is my business partner. I sometimes wish he is a woman so I could marry him. Is that weird? That’s too much, too far for Omaha. Pull it back. That’s okay.
Okay. You guys just let me know, I’ll fix it real time. I have so many jokes. Here I finally had a partner. I had a business before at Gambit where we did literally like 20 million dollars on our first year, maybe 30. And I was with two other people that were good people but we worked horribly together.
Do you guys all know maybe the guy next you or the lady next you? How many people have worked with someone that they didn’t really want to work with? Yeah. You can point at them now. Close your eyes and then point at them so we don’t know, right. And I finally found someone that I just love working with and that I went to him and I said “Hey I’m depressed a lot at 2012 and I don’t feel like working” and most people would say “Oh, we’ll get back to work stopping your lazy ass”.
And Chad, do you know what Chad said to me? He said “Take care of yourself, I’m going to do it”, I got you” and that meant a lot to me. That was, it’s one of the best points in my life. Can anybody guess what this graph is? Anybody else guess this sign, I’ve been neglecting you, I’m sorry. My love life? Who said that one? So man yeah, we’re still in the wealth section. We’ll get love. What about this side of the room? Anything else? Conversion growth? Anything else? Rocky? It’s actually just, I just made a map, there’s nothing. It’s just graphs. Anybody else in the back? I don’t even know what that means.
So this graph on the blue line is our revenue, for Appsumo. Do you know guys what the red line is? No, it’s my happiness and when I focus so much in just making more money, like when we start making a lot of money, I made up my happiness graph okay. I know there’s guy that “how do you got to believe that happiness?” “I don’t get it, I don’t get it, that’s so confusing”. I made it up.
The point being though that I recognized in myself that I am the happiest when I’m just doing what I want and I’m having fun. And every time that the money just started growing and I wanted to just focus in making more money, my happiness went down. And so being aware of that alone, made it better and so I can focus with just on having fun and making the amount of money that I just need to make. That’s it. Focus on having fun. The money will come as well.
When you’re doing your business, just focus on one thing. That’s what I learned at Facebook. And Mark did it already well. Everyone here’s on Facebook, most of you, when you focus on making, how to make your first dollar, try to help 3 people, that’s all we think about. That’s it.
So that singular focus helps the whole team unite around a purpose to help people start businesses and so the message for you guys is that, in your businesses, you have multiple goals and your personal life and you have multiple things going on. How do you simplify down to a purpose that you really want? Because I’ll tell you, when you unite everyone around one common team, it was very powerful.
HEALTH
Alright, let’s move on to my health. This is last year, this is how I looked. I thought it would be funnier. Fine, that’s how I looked, so I was Kind of chubby huh? Like slab on the side, what’s that? So everything is connected. If your health is off, if you’re tired all day, you don’t have the energy, how are you going to work? Right? How are you going to be good to someone else if you don’t want to hang out with them because you’re tired?
And so I hired this dude. This is Adam, my bro, and so last year, basically my ex-girlfriend, she called me a lazy ass. She called me, can I say the ass word? That’s okay? Yeah, so she, we both, we’re on a bike ride, I’ll just tell you the story, we’re on a bike ride, I’m riding and she’s like you suck, you’re fat, you drank last night, you’re lazy and so we literally broke up on this bike ride.
Why is that the funny part? Okay, yeah, we broke up on a bike ride and you know and there’s things like you have that bad moment and then next day though, you know what, I was like “She was right”. She was right, I was lazy and my life wasn’t where I wanted to be, and the only reason why I started being that way because I’ve made the changes and help a lot a lot.
And so I hired Adam and Adam has been the most loyal person to me, he and Chad and few other people had been really helpful and so we worked together on my eating and on my exercising. So you guys should evaluate that with yourselves and we will do that in the end. That’s how I look at now. I know ok, it’s narcissistic, whatever. But it’s pretty good. I look at that kind of hot.
LOVE
I was home one night, and I‘m making, this is like spaghetti squash, stringed up with some zucchini, I was eating healthy and it made me feel better, right. I had more energy. I wasn’t tired after lunch and I just started crying, I just started crying at home and I just felt very alone. You know, you don’t have anyone to connect with. I was always living with a girl and now for the whole last year I’m by myself and it’s very difficult, very uncomfortable.
I just started cooking and then eating healthy and being alone by myself and I think that’s very hard for us. We distract ourselves with alcohol, with the events and with other people and if we actually sometimes, sometimes, we actually sometimes take time by ourselves, we’ll become a lot stronger and better but it’s uncomfortable. I’m just crying at home alone. I grew a beard, that’s what you do when you’re sad. That’s a fact actually; it’s in Wikipedia. So I grew up beard, that’s the Appsumo office, you can see our fat sumo behind us.
And one of the things I want you to consider is look at who you surround yourself with. Look at this audience. You guys are all very positive, uplifting, working on things that are interesting, right? Think about who you hang out with, that are friends, think about your lovers, and think about the meetings you go to. Right? Have you ever gone to a meeting? And the meeting, whole meeting, you’re like this zoning out? Yeah? Yes? No? Who here has done it? Say yes, 1,2,3.
Audience: Yes.
Exactly, exactly, so I spend a lot of time last year on meeting people and the whole time I’m like, “Oh, what’s for dinner? Oh God,” And so you have to think about the people you’re surrounding yourself with: your relationships, your friendships and also the time, I’m spending all these having coffee meetings with people, right, like people want to do interviews, I’m like “Sure, let’s just say yes to everything”. But it wasn’t what I actually wanted to do and so think about who you’re surrounding yourself with.
And this picture, it’s really, really weird. It’s me running and it is awesome where I live and about a month of running by myself, and I realize, are there runners here? Have you ever run with someone faster than you? No? Never? Never, okay. I’m running by myself and I saw someone faster than me and I was like man. When you run with someone faster than you, guess what you do. Yeah, that’s the moment I internalize that thought.
So think about your business partners, are they making your lives better? Are you running faster with them? And your relationship, are they helping you grow? Cause I wasn’t and so I spent a lot of last year cutting that out. Removing the people, the relationships, the girls I was dating in my life, that were making me feel better, and they made me feel needy. The people in business that were really adding the Appsumo, we let them go and all the business meetings that I go to, just weren’t that fun or helpful or interesting that I didn’t get anything from, I stop doing it.
If you want to book about energy and maximize your energy, the Powerful Engagement is a phenomenal book. That’s a phenomenal book and it’s mostly, it’s not about how much time you have but how you maximize your energy levels. So this is how things started getting better. Just say no. just stop saying no to coffee meetings, coffee meetings, coffee meetings, how many times can I put it? Coffee meetings. This is interesting because people are going to be offended when you start taking care of yourself and prioritize yourself because they are going to want you.
So you got to say, “No.” You got to start saying what do you really want, and it’s definitely not coffee meetings. Unless they’re people that you feel better around. So what did I do? I started walking on myself. This is David Data, he’s a book called “The Way of the Superior Man” I stared reading, I started going to workshops like his. I’ve never spent, it was 3000 dollars, I’ve never spent, the most I’ve spent in my life is my Lasic eye surgery it was $3,500. I spent $3,000 to just go work on myself because that’s an investment. I wanted to feel better, I wanted to get better.
This is me in India, I went to go to find the rock Steve Jobs sat on and it was just me doing what I wanted, maybe not the beard thing. I just went to India by myself all of February and I just walked around. That’s my bro, Seth. I started surrounding myself with the people that I always feel good after I leave them, I miss them when I’m hanging out with them anymore. Do you guys notice people on your life? You know who I’m talking about. Just to wonder to hang out with him like “man, I feel good about who I am”. They’re get me. They make you feel better about you, my brothers, one of them, Adam, John Ross, Chad, Appsumo team.
So what can you do today? Let’s start, I like action, I like things happening now, right, instinct gratification… Here are some of things that helped me.
I think there’s two ways to make your lives better and get what you really want.
One, you got to know what you want, for the two things that are going to help you do that or do something today that make you feel better, right? So am I having fun?
Notice the words you use. Have you emailed someone and say “How are you?” did you ever use that on your emails? I’ don’t use it on my emails because I don’t care how they are. That’s rude, right? No, it’s just I don’t care but the people I do care about, I say “How are you?” or there’s a girl I like and this morning she said “I miss you” and I said “I don’t miss you right now because I’m talking to you.” And that’s really weird. I felt really bad.
But the point is that now, I’m being honest with the words and other people will trust me, I like what they say more, they like it more. “GEBY” this is something when I was feeling really sad last year, I did it helped me out, every morning, I emailed Adam about the body tour, what I’m grateful for, three things, and I don’t want to see like hot water for sometimes.
Think about how water, it’s pretty cool. Right? Or it doesn’t suck at all, right? Microwaves are cool, it could be anything. So GEBY is gratitude, exercise, breakfast and one thing that I’m going to do for myself. I feel so awesome right now, I’m not trying to be rude, I just, I feel good, finally. And so this helped me when I wasn’t feeling that good because it helped me think through my day and say, “Hey, what do I want to do today great?” Cause a lot of last year I woke up thinking why am I even alive today. And why am I even alive, what’s for tomorrow?
I’m sure some of you guys have felt that at times. I think a lot more people feel the way than they admit. And now I just want more days, now I’m grateful because I’ve cut out a lot of those things and I’ve remove angers. And I try to use small winds every day. Do I need close the good will, it’s very easy get rid of stuff, remove weight, and make you bag little wind every morning.
Do you guys have morning songs? Mine is by Rocket Summer. It’s kind of like ninth grade email music. I cried in the morning since five so and then I put on the mascara. It’s weird so get a morning song. Get a new habit today. Can you do five push-ups tonight? One of the things I’ll tell you, guys want to hear something that, really, it’s so weird, all I do know is when I walk around like outside, I was just waving and say hi to people and smile and that connection with other people is amazing. You feel so alive. So if you’re not feeling good one day, go outside, do smile challenge. See if you can get one person smile at you.
That’s an Omaha thing? Good. Great. That’s an Omaha trait. Good. Remove one bad habit. Add a background image to your phone. You guys all have smart phones here. On your lock screen on your back or add someone that makes you feel good every time you look at it. Why not? Say you have a goal. Say you have a lover. Say you have somewhere you want to go someday. Remind yourself over and over about that. And lastly, call one friend that just make you feel good or just tell him. Whenever you’re thinking about that person just tell him. So this are the things that are little today that you can get it going.
This is my background screen. I was feeling low about myself and it made me feel tough. That is legitimately why that’s still my background screen because I just wasn’t feeling good about myself and I said “alright, let me look at this screen, stupid”. That’s what I thought. You look kind of tough. He’s like a cowboy so this is my background screen.
Check out your background screen. There’s something you could tweet. When times are tough, or you’re feeling off or nervous, or you’re lonely and depressed, that is your moment of growth. That’s when you’re getting closer to the things you actually want. It’s more destructive with work and people and money and things that were getting further away from that. When you’re feeling uncomfortable, when you’re feeling lonely, that is that moment of growth.
So you guys have another half piece of paper? Everyone have it? I want you guys to take actions today. Get your paper out. Get your paper out.
I want you to write wealth, health and love.
On the scale of 1-5, where are you in your life? And this will help you identify what area you want to work on.
Wealth, 1-5, do I have the job I want. Am I at the company that sucks? Am I feeling fulfilled by my work? Do I like the purpose of our work?
Health, am I exercising? Am I eating healthy? Does anyone not have a piece of paper? And you’re not going to share this. Don’t worry about that.
Then Love, the relationships I have on my life, friends, co-workers, significant other. Hey, you should do it. You guys should all do it. It will help you. This is the hardest one.
These are deeper things that if you actually put your mind to, you’ll start getting those changes, maybe not right away that’s why you do the small winds. But this is the part we’ll help you start getting what you want. That’s why the speech is called “Asterisk,” which is everything so let’s take, we’ll take fifteen seconds.
Everybody do it? Perfect, so take that piece of paper. Put it in your pocket and remember that. Maybe put it in your computer, maybe make that your background screen. This is a chance for you guys to now go home today and say “Hey, which part of my life do I want to start making better?” I’m going to wrap it up. Do the stranger challenge. Get a little uncomfortable. Meet someone new here today, you all have that piece of paper. You go meet someone new. Push yourself and see you’ll actually find out, you’ll start getting what you really want. Thank you very much.
* * *Audience Q&A* * *
Give it up one more time for Noah guys! Noah, do you want to answer a few questions? You have an awkward re-entry right back on the stage. Give a round of applause for an awkward re-entry. Sorry men. But we have time for a couple of questions. If you guys have some of those questions.
Now, I’m curious, you know, looking at your presentation which is awesome is, I think a lot of people see that and they say they can do that after they have an accent, after they have a certain amount of dollars in the bank etc. Can you talk about how can this be accomplished with that kind mentality even while you’re in at throws of making something happen or building something. Adapting that mentality today. Some people can say, “Okay, you know be more happy when I have X amount of dollars in the bank after I’ve had that success until then I can have that perspective until then, it has a way to taking that now. I know you make some notes, those ten bullet points but in other thoughts.”
I mean the secrets that I will share with you guys you’re going to die. Right. I’m going to die. Before the ending, it’s like Titanic, we all know. Right, so there’s always going to be something, we’ll always have kids, we always have things going on and so there’s two pieces of it. Sometimes you have to just keep momentum going and it’s easy to keep it going and that’s why I tried to give you guys quick fixes of hacks that have helped me but the bigger ones like health, wealth and love.
That’s with me a year of depression. And maybe the depression is really strong but it’s a year of like yah, it’s going to be tough and take some time. And so what I personally do is I have a repeats of my calendar. So I have 15 minute segment every single day about certain activities and things I want to make a difference in and I think if you, there are two things that will help you with that. So one, you need to know what the end looks like. Does that make sense for you? You need to know” hey, here’s what I want to be at the end, the destination” so I can start drawing my map and every day you get a little closer with that destination. But you have to know that there’s something sexy at the end, otherwise, you are not going to work through it.
Audience: And that was awesome man, two questions. One, did I see a three in the side here like cut in the side, you had and if so, what is that about and then I got another question.
Did you guys guess what this is? Pacman. Pacman, I’m just chasing some dots.
Audience: Cool, thank you for that.
That helped everyone here today. Make all your line better.
Audience: Similar to the last question I’ve read an article somewhere recently where depression rates are among highest in entrepreneurs and that really resonated with me cause people are out, on their own quite a bit of time and I’m trying to figure the step out. I was wondering if you had any further comments about, you know, depression, and what entrepreneurs face and stuff like that and you know how people could help each other out as a community.
Yup, so I wrote an article on Okdork, if you’re depressed, you think you’re depressed, okdork.com, search depression and it’s basically, I was speaking in Connecticut a year ago and I was depressed, and I was like “how do I get out of this depression?” so I just started writing, all the ways that I could do it and it kept me depressed, it made me more depressed but it seemed to help other people.
Do you want to know exactly what made me less depressed? Do you want to know just the exact answer from myself? Oh my God! PG13 girl, PG 13. Yeah, it was. That was a piece of it, I’m not going to talk about that but that was a piece. No you did. So that was honest right? She did.
So probably three things have changed my depression. One, I think when you’re not working what you really want to work on is a good sign that there is something wrong and you guys all know the answer. If you worries on me, don’t want to work on, you know, don’t need someone else tell you. If you’re asking other people, that’s probably a sign as well.
So number one, I started working on what I wanted to work on and right now, how to make your first dollar, and help to start businesses, every day I feel good. It fulfills me seeing other people get what they want. That’s very fulfilling for me. Secondly, I started going to therapy. So, I go to psychoanalysis once a week and it’s a $180 which sounds like a lot for forty five minutes, I Groupon’ed it, so it was fine.
Where is Aaron, I use living social, okay. No I didn’t, it’s too expensive. So I started spending time investing in myself and exploring why am I doing certain habits, why am I doing certain patterns, how do I really wanted to be. For someone is completely on bias that does not give a freak. So that really helped me nice, I still go every Tuesday.
And then lastly in relationships, I had a, lingering, there’s two girls, and I just couldn’t let them go. I couldn’t let it go and about, in March, I went to meet them again after about a year and yah, I faced the fear and I was like “Wow, I spent all year working on myself, investing on myself, going to tough times and when I finally saw them again, I was able to let it go. And literally, after that moment, and some of the “s” word. I felt like the way I wanted to feel.
Audience: You talk about like how money made you unhappy. How do you like Appsumo is the company that allows you to buy thing, how do you figure out like pricing schemes for things like how to make your first dollar.
Let me share two stories, I think, well I’ll share two stories that will help your all, right? I got fired by Facebook. I don’t know if you know that, that was everything in my life. That was like Facebook and then my girlfriend my family and all these other people and so it was my identity and it got removed, right. They took it from me and they were rightfully so and that was very depressing. It was very hard for me because it was everything that matters and then I tried to understand why am I so upset?
I was upset about the money. I love it now it was taken, I was like all these guys now literally have r rates stub mansions. They’re have court seats of the Lakers, all these stuff. And so I took some time and what I actually did that made me feel better was I wrote down, I work with someone and I said, “With that money you would have gotten, what would you have bought?” okay? What would you have bought? And I was like I kind of have everything I want. Right, I have the scooter. I can afford all the tacos I want. There wasn’t anything moneywise, so it wasn’t actually the money. And that actually help me get through it that was a big insurance.
Secondly you asked about Appsumo, so we have worked, I’m from Silicon Valley we are more of a technical company. We build actually complex algorithms for pricing. All of last year we just try to maximize revenue. It didn’t really care much on what we’re doing. I even look at some of the products until afterwards, I cannot believe I put my name on that. And so literally we would price test everything. To a really impressive degree.
We’ve got all the money but that wasn’t the point, like if you’re trying to figure out pricing as a play. Here’s how you decide your pricing, am I stealing from the company? So think about yourself or anything you bought recently that you’re like I cannot believe it was only this much. Like who here are paying for Spotify premium? You guys all feel that way. If you know someone saw Spotify premium, talk to them, like I cannot believe its ten bucks for this song, rocket summer, check them out.
So that’s number one and number two I just try to price something, so we actually turn up all our algorithms. We turn up all of our A/B testing and we just did it the way we want to do it. That’s it, so the pricing the product and how to make your first dollar, three hundred dollars. Do you know how I figured that out? I just chose a number but I found them like dude, for three hundred dollars to start your own business, or dollar dinos or monthly plan, like that’s ridiculous. You’re actually getting something you would want and that’s what we do it. You just got to choose the price that you feel is good.
Audience: I’m just curious like how do you know that’s fine and I get it I’m like curious how you get people like it was kind of sound like sleazy and like, you know you’re paying for advice and I understand that there’s a value add. I just didn’t know if it was like something you actually thought about.
I think if you’re trying to price things, one of the easiest, are there any lawyers here? It’s okay don’t be embarrassed, c’mon. You’re smart, fine. How much is your hourly?
Lawyer: It’s free
Does anybody need a lawyer? Do you need clients?
Lawyer: Yes
What kind of client?
Lawyer: Startup
Any startup need a lawyer to help? So he’s offering free legal advice which may not be good, it’s up to you to decide. You can use Google as well. Do you guys go connect? There you go. He said you’re right here, can you raise your hand? So let me help you with pricing. Lawyers, our lawyers in Appsumo, KHRG charges $300 an hour, okay? So if I’m trying to figure out pricing and I save them an hour a week, how much is that? I’m saving them in terms of dollars
Audience: $300
300, times up by 52, 15000, so if you charge them 110 for that, they’re getting a steal, 15 hundred bucks. Did you guys follow the math? You got to charge them that people want to pay for it and if you’re going to save all that money for something you’re creating then that’s a steal
Audience: Hi, so I have a two part question. No, it’s easy, but you have to agree to be honest before I ask. So here’s my question, are you content and is that a good thing? Your answer…
You guys want me to be honest or lie? I don’t hate but I like just happiness because what does that mean? What does it mean to be happy? Right? And so the word I like to use is fulfilled. And so I think it’s like yoga, if you guys do yoga, you can never get perfect, even if you think you’re there you can go to the next level. And so in terms of fulfillment, in terms of health wealth and love, I feel amazing around those things but the thing you have to recognize is even when you get to that point, you have to keep doing what you did to get there to keep going, and so it’s a never ending process.
One of my favorite stories, in college, I went to Berkeley. So in Berkeley in freshman year I joined the marketing club and they made me put up flyers all year. So I’m putting up flyers all year and every time I put a flyer like sons of bitches, sons of bitches and I said when I’m president, no more flyers, no more flyers ever again.
Four years later, I’m president, more flyers. It was just more flyers, It never ends, so it just never ever ends, when you think you’re there, is the beginning and I think part of my promise is that sometimes I want to rest. When you get sloppy and lazy and that’s when the assistant who was an amazing person, it encourage me to be lazier and so now I have figure out where that balance is in my life that makes me happy, maybe more fulfilled.
