I don’t know about you, but that sounds stupid and dangerous.

It’s much simpler to build a side hustle alongside your day job, hit your freedom number, and then jump ship if you want.

Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Believe it

Write out your Dream Year

One of the biggest things I notice when I speak with people is they DON’T BELIEVE they can live their dream life.

A few years ago I didn’t think my life could be where I am today. The more you write it out, look at it, and think about it, I promise you, you deserve and can have that life.

You need to get clear on what “freedom” actually means to you.

On your phone, voice memo, or old-school pen-and-paper, write out where you want to be on Dec 31 of this year. The more detailed the better.

When you realize you are the author of your life then you realize you can make it a true story.

It’s easy to get what you want when you know what you want.

Let your hate, motivate

Next, write out everything that irritates you about where you are right now.

• My boss keeps interrupting me while I eat my tacos
• My work doesn’t give me the creative freedom
• I hate having to wear business professional clothes (boo Intel!)
• The traffic to work SUCKS

These are all motivational reminders for you to start your side hustle.

Step 2: Set your Freedom Number

Your Freedom Number is the amount of money you need to be earning on the side to quit your day job comfortably.

My monthly Freedom Number was $3,000. Why? Because when I added up my ideal living expenses, that’s what I got.

• Housing (rent at my apartment): $1,000
• Food and travel (tacos/steak/wine and working abroad): $1,000
• Savings and investment: $1,000
• Total: $3,000

The power is finding out your Freedom Number is LOWER than you realize and also SMALLER than you expected. It helps show that your dreams are not as far off as you imagine.

Start with your zone of influence

A mistake I see people make is trying to start a business in a completely unrelated industry to what they’re familiar with. They have a job as an accountant but try to start a business making software for content creators.

Why make it harder on yourself? Use your pre-existing skills, knowledge, and network.

• What do you get paid for in your day job?
• What have you gotten paid for in the past?
• What hobbies or things have people commented positively on?
• Who do you have access to in your network?

And if you don’t already have a network or skills, a day job is the perfect place to gain experience, connections, and save money.

Give up 1 Netflix show a week

I hated my job at Intel. But during my nights, lunches, and weekends, I wasn’t worrying about my job whatsoever. It gave me space to work on side hustles.

Block off 1 hour in your calendar each week to change your life.

Step 3: Make your first $1

The validation stage is about speed. Don’t overthink the design, name, or logo. Just focus on seeing if you can get people to buy your product.

• Make it easy: start with your best friends and family members who might be interested.
• Collect money upfront: the promise of payment is not validation… that’s a polite rejection. Everyone’s “interested” until they have to pay.
• View rejections as a GIFT: every rejection is an opportunity to take a deep dive into customer problems.

Many struggle to make their first dollar because they are so focused on how to make their first million.

Think NOW, not HOW.

Test, then invest

At the start, most people don’t test enough things. Then when they find something that works, they quit and move on too soon.

The solution? Set a constraint on your experiments. I find thirty days is more than enough to get results from your marketing experiments.

Find what works and double down on it; find what doesn’t work and kill it.

Step 4: Be smart with your finances

Live a Low-Cost Lifestyle

I saved money by staying in my aunt’s basement. I even slept on couches for a whole year and rarely ate out.

Most people spend money they don’t have on lifestyles they can’t afford. If you want to build wealth, do the opposite.

Step 5: Keep going

Persistence beats resistance

It took me 10 years (!!) to create the company and life that I wanted with AppSumo.

It’s cliche, but good things take time. Creating your own path takes more than just skill. It demands grit.

Obstacles are bound to arise. It’s your persistence and willingness to adapt that will determine your success.

Enjoy the journey

I didn’t watch the movie Titanic until a year ago because I knew the ship crashed and sank. “Why would I want to watch something where I know the ending?” I thought.

But the movie is actually phenomenal. The whole point was the journey. The same thing goes with our lives.

In my 20s, I allowed my negative emotions from getting fired from Facebook to make me miserable along the journey. I was so fixated on proving others wrong that I didn’t allow myself to enjoy the process.

I was always rushing to have everything figured out. I wished I had just enjoyed being there.

It will be challenging. But the rewards are worth it.

I promise you: who you are, what you have, and what you know right now are more than enough to get going.

The life and business of your dreams are within reach.

Now, get out there and START.

Rooting for you,
Noah

PS. Million Dollar Weekend is the business book I wish I had when I started my entrepreneurship journey.

Prefer to listen? This one’s on the podcast: Spotify / Apple

The post How to Quit Your 9-5 (The Smart Way) appeared first on Noah Kagan.

But before that:

• Rejected by Microsoft and Google (twice!)
• Fired by both Facebook and Mint after less than a year
• And built 20+ startups that didn’t work out

In short… I’ve made A LOT of mistakes.

Today, I want to share 9 pieces of brutally honest business advice to my younger self:

1/ Spend more time picking your partners

In my previous business, Gambit, I always thought of us as a 3-headed dog. Each partner thought we were most important and each of us had our own idea of the best direction for us to go in.

I’ll let you in on a little secret… it didn’t work well.

A lot of entrepreneurs tell me they need a co-founder, and my response is always, “Do you really need a co-founder?”

Because let me tell ya, who you partner with matters A LOT. If you don’t find the right one, it’s a HUGE pain in the ass.

Now, the way I view partnerships is like a “Business Marriage”. If I can’t see myself working with someone for 10 years, I won’t work with them for 5 minutes.

Go on many “dates” with potential business partners. And don’t let finding a business partner be an excuse for getting your business started.

2/ Learn personal finance

I know what you’re thinking. Finance? Boooring. But learning about your money is a game-changer, and it doesn’t have to be anything fancy.

I’ve kept the same simple spreadsheet with my Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth for the past decade.

Finance, at its core, is understanding how much money is coming into your business and how much is going out.

And trust me, nothing is more important than knowing where your money is. If you don’t track your numbers, you have NO CLUE what the bottleneck is.

No numbers = randomness.

Even to this day, we grow AppSumo by focusing on budgets and financial models.

1. If you pay attention to money, you can grow it.
2. If you know how to track a budget, you can improve it.
3. If you aren’t taking care of the basics of personal finance, DO it.

3/ Work-life balance is stupid early on

Early on in your career, being intense is a HUGE asset.

When I was building Gambit, I worked 16-hour days. I remember being up at 3am so I could do a pitch call with a company in Sweden… and at the moment I LOVED it. It was exhilarating to be on the hunt for a new customer.

We were making $150,000 a day in revenue and $15,000 a day in profit (!!) for 3 people.

If there are time-sensitive opportunities, go ALL in.

Intensity gets the ball rolling. Sustainability gets the ball winning.

4/ Let your hate, motivate

After I got fired by Facebook, I applied to Yahoo and they somehow gave me a $105,000 job offer. Pretty sizable money for a 26-year-old.

But something didn’t feel right. It felt like going backward and not the right chance to prove Facebook wrong.

I was so angry. Honestly, sometimes I’m still angry and insecure thinking back to those Facebook people.

Find someone to hate. And let your hate, motivate.

Over time, you can change from trying to prove others wrong to start proving yourself right. But almost EVERY very successful entrepreneur had some deeper issue that they were trying to solve through starting a biz.

5/ Follow your curiosity, not the crowd

• I tried building Facebook games. I don’t play any games.
• I tried building affiliate blog websites. They are scammy-ish.
• I tried dropshipping bracelets. Yea, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

None of these are “bad”, but what I ultimately learned is when you chase what you’re curious about you’ll stick with it much longer.

Instead of getting into AI or Crypto or whatever else is hot right now, ask yourself:

• What are the things you’re using day-to-day?
• What problems are you excited to work on?
• What are you genuinely curious about?

Because the point isn’t to “win” business. It’s to STAY in business.

And the best way to stay in business is to go after problems you’re actually excited about solving.

6/ Gifts for business marketing

Gifts are the cheapest way to build friendships. Maybe it’s un-secretly my love language.

I sent a pair of running shoes to Greg Tseng of Tagged, a potential customer. I ended up doing tens of thousands from that one customer.

You want it to be things they see and use regularly. My favorite types of gifts:

• Ember coffee mugs for teammates at AppSumo
• Gave a camera to Ali Abdaal for his date night
• Got Air Jordans for Lewis Howes (I noticed his old ones were scuffed)

It doesn’t have to be expensive. People just want to feel acknowledged.

7/ Make your first $1

I remember the first AppSumo sale like it was yesterday. Seriously, I recall the $12 PayPal email that came in and the validation and momentum from those first dollars STILL gets me excited.

Getting $1 from someone is one of the biggest confidence boosters in business. And the beauty of it is that you can do that today if you are just getting started.

To be a millionaire, you have to start with a dollar-aire.

Think NOW, not HOW. What can you do TODAY to get that first $1 if you are just starting? I promise you it will change everything.

8/ The best biz is the one that works

My conference biz (CommunityNext) was doing $200k a year and potentially more if I took it seriously. But I didn’t want to be known as a networker or event organizer… so I quit. Cold turkey.

A bud Charles Hudson started his own biz that modeled mine, and so did Sam Parr, and both went on to sell those businesses for multi-millions.

I wish I could tell my younger self to stop prematurely quitting things that are working.

It’s challenging to find a biz that people WANT, so once you find it, keep it going at all expenses. You don’t have to be the one to do it. Hire someone else if your biz is working.

Most people stick with losers too long and don’t stick with winners long enough.

9/ Take more swings

As you may be able to tell, when I was young, I tried a lot of businesses (almost too many). Each swing taught me a valuable lesson.

When you’re young, you don’t need your business to be a success for it to be worth starting. The knowledge and skills you gain far outweigh any monetary outcome.

It’s not about WHAT you achieve, it’s about WHO you become.

Everything I tried (and failed) led me to where I am today. So even if you can’t immediately see the fruits of your labor, just know that your swings DO COMPOUND.

Keep starting things. Keep taking swings.

Rooting for you,
Noah

PS. Million Dollar Weekend is the business book I wish I had when I was younger. It contains everything I’ve learned from building eight million-dollar businesses.

Prefer to listen? This one’s on the podcast: Spotify / Apple

The post Brutally Honest Business Advice to My Younger Self appeared first on Noah Kagan.

The short version: Laura Roeder runs Paperbell, software for online coaches, with zero employees, zero meetings, and over six figures in profit. Her support team is ex-Basecamp, runs the monthly sales calls, and drives the product roadmap. Last year she took her two kids around the world. At lunch she told me she makes enough. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I can’t stop thinking about my lunch with Laura Roeder.

She makes over six figures in profit. She traveled the world with her family last year. She has zero employees. She discourages people from posting about their personal lives in their Slack. And she told me that with her business, she makes enough.

That last part is the one that stuck with me. So many of us just want more growth, more users, the if you’re not growing you’re dying attitude. In reality it’s never so dark, and the pursuit of more creates a lack of enjoying the overall balance of life. I struggle with this big time.

Zero employees, zero meetings

The other parts of what she’s doing are very forward thinking.

She was adamant about not having any full time employees. But she hires well. Her support team is ex-37signals (Basecamp), and they are extremely autonomous.

That support team is also responsible for driving revenue. They host monthly sales calls with new signups. And they help drive the product roadmap based on which questions come in to support. Both of those turn a normal cost center into something super powerful.

They also do zero meetings. It’s all async. How relieving and inspiring that sounds. Refreshing.

She discourages family posts in Slack, not because she’s mean, but because her work life is professional. I think this is going to be a bigger trend. As remote became popular, we all overcompensated with baby photos, life updates, birthday celebrations. In reality your friends are your friends. You want to like and respect your coworkers, and it’s okay if they are not your friends.

And she only focuses on a very niche audience. Paperbell helps online coaches run their businesses. That’s it.

Japan for a few months, Brighton the rest

She lived in Japan for a few months, lives mostly in Brighton in the UK, and took her two kids with her the whole way. That is such an awesome way of living.

The startup world makes me feel, at times, like the point is to make money so you can make more money. Then I think about my two daughters. Living, traveling, finding a healthy balance. Versus looking back at my life with followers, money, subscribers, or things that don’t matter on your death bed.

Enough

She said it in passing. She makes enough.

Most of my hyper successful friends are bored or unhappy if they are not growing insanely fast. It’s discouraging in a world where you “should” be at $100M ARR in three months. That’s not bad either. But I love and respect Laura for knowing what’s enough and getting the most out of life.

Laura makes enough. I’m still working on it.

Laura was on episode 349 of my podcast in 2024, Spotify or Apple Podcasts, on how she built a 7-figure business with no employees. This lunch was the update.

The post Laura Roeder makes enough. appeared first on Noah Kagan.

The short version: Pat Flynn was laid off from an architecture firm on June 17, 2008. Today his Pokémon brand has 1.6 million subscribers, a shorts channel with 3 billion views in under a year, and a CAA contract. The rule he gave me: count uploads, not likes. His shorts got 200 to 300 views a day for 34 days. He had committed to 60. Day 35, one hit 750,000.

Day 30 of Pat Flynn’s daily shorts experiment, the videos were getting 200 to 300 views. A 40 year old man opening Pokémon cards on camera for a month, to nobody.

Day 35, one of them hit 750,000 views. Now a new short on that channel averages a million views in about 12 hours, and a few have done 35 million in three days. The channel is less than a year old and has 3 billion views across platforms.

He didn’t quit on day 30 because the scoreboard he was watching wasn’t views. He had promised himself 60 uploads. That was the whole goal.

“If I’ve gone daily 60 days, no matter what the numbers say, I’ve won. Day 30 comes around, the videos were getting 200 to 300 views a day. I would have probably quit if it was old me. No, 60 days was the goal. Day 35, one of those videos hit 750,000 views. That wouldn’t have happened if I gave up because I wasn’t getting that validation early on.”

Count uploads, not likes. That’s the line I took from a 55 minute conversation with a guy I’ve known for over a decade, and I asked for it selfishly.

The question I actually wanted answered

When Pat’s podcast came out it was the number one business podcast. Now he describes that business as coasting. It still does about $2 million a year, with 1,500 paying community members, but the courses era is over and he says so.

My version of that: my book sold well, the YouTube channel worked, and since my daughter was born almost a year ago I’ve pulled back from spending my day trying to get attention from other people. I’ve been sitting with a question I don’t love. If I’m less relevant, am I less worthy? I think the answer is no. It is still nice to get noticed.

So I asked Pat how he processed it, going from the biggest show to a smaller one to a new thing his kids got him into.

“As an Enneagram 3, I thrive when I see that I’m helping others. But the danger side is that your happiness, your worth, your self-worth, is all based on how other people respond to your stuff. And so you lose control if you’re looking at the wrong things for validation.”

“I’ve changed my mind recently about what it means to win. I’m comparing myself to myself last week, to myself last month, to myself last year. This is my timeline and you have your timeline. And I don’t see the world as a poker table, where if you’re winning that means I’m losing. We can all win together.”

The 60 day rule is what that sounds like in practice. Pick a number of reps you control, and judge yourself on that. The views are a byproduct you get to enjoy, not a grade.

Let go day

Pat learned this the expensive way. In 2008 he was the youngest job captain at his architecture firm, doing project manager work as a senior drafter because he wanted to climb fast. Nobody was building buildings, so there was no money. June 17, 2008, they let him go. He calls it let go day.

“I had been for so long on autopilot on this path that I was told was going to be a successful path, from middle school to high school to college to this job. And despite having done everything I was supposed to, getting the rug pulled out from under me was such a shitty feeling. Like getting gut punched and just being left there.”

He called every engineering firm in town and begged. His dad said go get your master’s. His girlfriend April came to his apartment after work, hugged him, and didn’t say a word. He had just proposed and moved back in with his parents. He watched Back to the Future over and over, hoping to invent a time machine. He got talked into a meeting of people who “made a lot of money” and it was an Amway pitch. He went to a Cutco knife thing. Two or three months went by before he got out of bed with a direction.

I got fired from Facebook in my own dramatic way, so this was the part of his story I wanted in detail. The part that matters is what he kept doing during those months. Every day he called architects around town asking to get back in. Every day they said no.

“If it wasn’t for those denials, I wouldn’t have tried these things. I was forced to put myself into a situation to make decisions that I wouldn’t normally have. I’m not saying quit your job today, but put yourself in situations where you’re going to have to show up and do things that you’re either avoiding or procrastinating on.”

His example is speaking. He told a friend he’d speak at his event, and the date on the calendar made him study the stuff he’d avoided for years. He calls it a hackathon for parts of your life. The 60 day shorts commitment is the same trick pointed at YouTube. A date, a number, no exit.

If he hadn’t been laid off, he told me, he’d still be in architecture, working 10 hour days, golfing every weekend to escape.

What the reps are worth

People tell Pat he has a Midas touch. He hates it.

“No, it’s not because I just touched the thing. I work my ass off. But I learn a quick way of acquiring these skills that are required to do well on these platforms.”

The 60 days did more than find the one video that popped. His production time per short went from 45 minutes to 15. He batches a week of them in under two hours. And every upload gave him data on what to make more of. None of that shows up on day 30 if you only count views.

The same approach built the rest of it. Deep Pocket Monster, the main channel, is at 1.6 million subscribers in four years, with one video a month that runs 45 minutes to four hours and does about a million views in a week. He goes live every Monday for 8,000 to 10,000 people. He had a six figure month from AdSense alone last year, and he charges $40,000 to $50,000 for one ad spot in one video. His live event went from 1,500 people in Anaheim in 2023 to an expected 6,000 in Tampa this year, and he built it after I told him years ago that I just made an event I’d want to show up at. CAA signed him because they think the entertainment side is bigger than the business side.

The shorts only show his hands. His thumbs have a weird shape, so people stop him in public and ask to see them.

None of this was built at the same time. Podcast, then YouTube, then books, then Pokémon, in seasons. Which is a nicer way of saying the number one business podcast was one season, and he let it be one.

I spent $222,038 growing my own YouTube channel, and I wish I’d had Pat’s rule from the first upload. Decide the number of reps before you start, and don’t look up until you hit it.

After reading his book I went and muted a bunch of the jargon accounts on Twitter. Then I went back to work. Count uploads, not likes.

From episode 376 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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The short version: On the last night of a rough RV trip through France I spent over $2,000 on one night at Les Sources de Caudalie, a six-star resort in Bordeaux. The most I’d paid for a hotel before was around $500. Most of what made it worth it cost them almost nothing: corn for the ducks, a crib already set up, a free bottle of wine instead of a $400 minibar, a 3pm checkout. When they canceled our Michelin dinner they still did something about it. The lesson for any business, including a deals business like AppSumo, is consistency across every touch.

Over $2,000 for one night. The RV for the whole week was $2,000.

We got the RV to follow the Tour de France. We saw some of the stages, and it was not horrible, but it wasn’t amazing. No AC, three people on a little bed, a one-year-old who does not like staying put in a car, and on the last night somebody hit us. After two nights in Luchon, where there was a rave at the campground, we said let’s just do hotels. Europe is decently priced, a hundred bucks-ish, nothing fancy.

Then on one of the final nights I balled out, which I have never done before. A six-star resort in Bordeaux. (Bordeaux is a region. There is no Bordeaux grape. I felt like such a dumb American.) My wife didn’t know the price. She said we’re going to stay here for a week. I said I’d have to get a job here.

I roll my eyes at these places. People online talk about Amangiri, $3,500 a night and they know your name when you walk in. I don’t need you to know my name. Give me a thousand dollars back and let me show up anonymously. When I hear about them I think of country clubs. Spend two thousand bucks a night to then spend $500 on a soda and four million dollars on breakfast, and it’s going to piss me off. The most I had ever spent on a room before this was maybe $500. Give me a comfortable bed.

But since the baby I’ve been trying to get nicer places, and I wanted something special. We use ChatGPT for recommendations now, and a few people said the same name: Les Sources de Caudalie. So I said okay, let’s see.

They crushed it. They crushed it so much I didn’t want to leave the hotel to go bike riding.

The nice touches

Most of what made it feel six-star was tiny. Every business has a version of these, and it is easier than you realize, even if you’re not making a ton of money.

We pull up in the RV, grass perfect, hedges perfect, trees perfect, and the valet says he’d love to park it. I parked it myself. It had gotten dented the night before and I was not losing another $500. He said okay, then let me get all your luggage. After a week of lugging bags and baby stuff in and out of that RV, that alone was worth something.

At check-in: we have ducks at the lake, would you like some corn to go feed them? How expensive is corn feed? Not expensive. I fed the ducks with my daughter almost every day. We were only there two days.

Every hotel crib we’d ever gotten was so bad we ended up sleeping with the baby in our bed. This room had a legit crib, a bottle warmer, a diaper-specific garbage bag, a customized baby towel, and a baby bathtub, all set up before we walked in. I barely remember telling them we had a baby. There was no survey, no “please tell us all your requests.” This is the middle of wine country, not a baby spa.

A free bottle of wine from their winery in the room, with a proper corkscrew, instead of a minibar that ends up costing $400. The cafe was normal priced, $3 or $4 oysters. My French is bad, I do the sad American thing and apologize constantly, and the staff were unbelievably kind. On top of everything.

Something I try to do at a good restaurant (I think Kevin Kelly said it) is order the weirder thing. So at a winery I ordered the pear cider, and it was the best I have ever had. I told the guy working there, then started looking up whether I could ship it to Barcelona. He came back over. I have an extra bottle. He sold it to me at cost, about 20 euros.

A bird took part of my bikini (a grilled cheese sandwich with meat). We’re getting you another one, don’t worry about it. I asked for a 3pm checkout fully expecting a no. “Sir, we would love for you to leave at three.” On the way out: can we get you water, we already put everything in the RV.

When they screwed up

They have a two-Michelin-star restaurant. I booked it. It was my wife’s birthday and my daughter’s birthday, and I hyped it up, because a lot of the time anticipation is as good as the experience. I told my wife nothing except that we were going to have such a good night. We got a nanny. Most hotels have a nanny service, this one was about 40 bucks an hour, and my cheat code is to ask for someone who is a mom.

We get to the hotel and they say, your reservation for the Michelin dinner is canceled.

My friends. I have never spent this much on a hotel. This is more than the whole RV trip. Can you figure this out, please. I was polite. I did not want to lose my temper. But I booked it. Come on y’all.

It’s not a happy ending. They could not seat us. What they did instead was serve a few of the Michelin dishes in the regular restaurant at no cost and let us hang out with the chef in the kitchen for a bit. Not a perfect fix, but they did something, and I wasn’t going to let it ruin the day.

Consistency is the whole thing

You’re paying more, so your expectations are up. What got me was that it never dropped. Nice room, nice food, nice staff, nice grounds, across every single thing, for the entire stay.

That’s true for a value business too. AppSumo is a good deals business. Are you getting a reasonable response time from support? Is the buying experience decent? Is the product you’re getting actually great? Surprise and delight is a cheesy phrase we’ve all heard. The harder part is making sure the experience holds up across the board.

Two other things from this trip. It was nice to treat ourselves. If you haven’t been to a nice restaurant in a while, or had a nice bottle of wine, or a nice hotel, maybe do it. I’ve spent time asking 80-year-old millionaires whether it was worth it, and I think about that a lot. And if something is not great, you can fix it. We didn’t like the RV, so we stayed at hotels. The trip was rough, so we booked one baller night at the end that we’ll remember. The night before we stayed at a Best Western. That made this one that much more appreciated.

For your business: is there one thing you can do for your customers that would surprise them, and are you consistent on the rest? Corn for the ducks costs almost nothing. Go find yours.

From episode 378 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The post What a $2,000 a night hotel does that your business can copy appeared first on Noah Kagan.

The short version: A summer in Barcelona with a baby, 8 out of 10, and a $50 book by Jack O’Neill (the wetsuit guy) that I found in a rental house in Portugal. His 20 years of making one product better made me question the craftsmanship at AppSumo after a one year sabbatical. Nobody needs permission to cross on green, all of life comes down to effort, and I’m going back to work.

Last weekend, in a rental house in Portugal, I found a $50 book about wetsuits. Tomorrow we fly home to Austin and I go back to work.

It was not the endless summer. We brought our baby to Barcelona and it was harder than I expected. I kept thinking how lucky I was in my 20s: single, no family, nothing to do besides work, try to get rich, and prove people wrong. If you’re a parent with a day job, I have a lot of respect for you. Your dream has to be strong enough against your daily resistance.

It’s kind of crazy. We’re living in Spain, we have a nanny, and a lot of the time we wanted to be back in America. When I tell people we’re in Spain I feel like such an ass. Why can’t I enjoy it more? But it’s okay that it’s been tough. We don’t have to fake it.

I was in the hot tub today with a friend and he brought up a Charlie Munger speech. Munger said, I don’t know a lot of things, but I can tell you how to guarantee you’re miserable: compare yourself to other people. I had some jealousy this summer. I have a friend at a very hot company, making good money, and he looks at the people who joined earlier and thinks, if only I’d been here then. Zoom out. You’re doing pretty damn well. I’m ending the summer in peace with where my life, my business, and my family are.

It’s always summer on the inside

The book is by Jack O’Neill, the founder of O’Neill. Wetsuits, surfboards, the glasses now. It’s called It’s Always Summer on the Inside, one of their old slogans.

He was surfing in San Francisco, freezing, and at an army surplus store he found a type of insulation nobody was using. He put it on, everyone laughed at him, and he was warm in the water. He got a little surf shop and sold them. Moved to Santa Cruz, kept improving the wetsuit. Booties, then the full wetsuit, then dry suits, over a 20 year period. He brought his sons in and went international.

Even their ads. Beautiful 1980s ads with a lot of text and one image, a naked woman putting on a wetsuit, and the line: it’s always summer on the inside. It pushes the edge. Ads today are about optimizing everything to the thousandth AI-tested version. The fundamentals haven’t changed. Have you made a great product people want, and can you make an ad unique enough that people say, dude, that’s cool? A great ad for a shitty product doesn’t work. Both together is such a cool combo.

His story was never about revenue targets. It was curiosity and solving problems he was excited about. I bought the book and sent it to a friend who surfs. I don’t surf at all.

Then I looked at AppSumo. Our integrity, our honor, the craftsmanship and quality of the work we’re doing. I really question it. How am I building my asset? How am I making it better and better and better?

The light was green

Today I was waiting to cross the street. The light turned green and the other people just stood there. Are they going to go? Well, it’s green. So I went.

That’s what I see in business, in investing, and in our lives. We look to others for permission, which you don’t need. I do it too. This guy’s not buying crypto, should I buy crypto? See where you want to go, check if it’s good to go, and go. Numerous times this year I told someone, I want to do this thing, and they said, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. That is literally what people told me when I started AppSumo 15 years ago. I tell people that too, and I wonder how much it discourages them.

Last night I spoke at Backstory, an English bookstore in Barcelona. Most people asking a question already know the answer. I used to tell people “that’s a stupid idea.” I’m right and they’re wrong, obviously. But who the fuck am I to say?

This kid Daniele makes YouTube videos for Italians who want to work abroad. A year in, five customers paying $100 each, and he asked if he should keep going or quit. If it were me and I’d spent a year on something and made $500, first I’d be proud of myself. Five people paying is real validation. Then I’d quit, 100%, unless I could see it gets bigger, or I enjoy it and don’t give a shit what it makes. But who am I to discourage him? So I asked, what do you want? He said, I want to keep doing it. Then we can do that, man.

The older I get the more I realize it’s really hard to change our own minds, and even harder to change someone else’s. A lot of people buy a book to get validated that the direction they’re already going is the right one. Are you waiting for approval on anything?

All of life comes down to effort

The bookstore thing happened because a friend told me my book was there. I went in to ask if I could sign it, they asked if I wanted to speak, I said yes and followed up with Victoria from Backstory. The high school talk before it happened because a teacher, Martina Guzman, hit me up on Instagram. I teach at a really cool school in Barcelona, want to speak here? I’ll buy books for the kids. She’s a hustler. She showed up last night too.

You want to get rich, put in effort. You want a relationship, put in effort. If you’re putting in the effort you’re going to get it. If you’re not, either say okay, I don’t want it that much, or put in the effort. My dream to not have a day job and to prove people wrong was so strong that I never stopped until I got there.

I’ve had about a one year sabbatical. AppSumo has had a lot of challenges this year and a lot of opportunity to promote cool products. I feel called to go back and see where I can help. That feels right.

Summer, 8 out of 10. Wasn’t the best ever, wasn’t the worst ever. The highlights were time with my daughter and time with my wife. Her happiness is the baby, my happiness is her, so I need to make sure the baby is happy. Cycling. And being out here made me appreciate America. Team America and Team Europe, both good. One tip: don’t take a baby in an RV to the Tour de France.

You have four months left in the year. Go make something you’re super fucking proud of and excited to tell people about. The things I’m most proud of are always the hardest. Tomorrow I fly home and get back to work on mine.

From episode 379 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The post A $50 book about wetsuits made me want my job back appeared first on Noah Kagan.

The short version: After a year of paternity leave I came back as AppSumo CEO at the start of September. Revenue is down, return buyers aren’t coming back, and we’ll probably lose money in September and October for the first time. The fix is three things for October (deal quality, the business model, the deal page), one named owner for each, and return buyer rate as the scale I watch.

Three Sundays ago I did not want to go to work on Monday.

I’m back as CEO of AppSumo. My daughter was born last year, I took paternity leave, then asked the team if I could just stay on it. I checked in here and there, but I was more or less out for a year, and I finished it off in Spain. We got home at the end of August. I came back to work at the beginning of September, and holy schnikeys, it sucked.

Revenue is down. Our return buyers are telling us, through conversion rate and return buyer rate, that they don’t want to come back. September and October we’ll probably lose money, which is a first. There are market changes and team changes, and a lot of it is self-inflicted.

We’re making the same mistake. We get excited about revenue and targets and KPIs, and we lose track that the foundation of this business is trust: promoting products people get a great deal on. We stop being clear on what quality means, we put out stuff that’s debatable, and then it’s the cycle. This is the second or third time the company has done it. For me it feels like the 18th. Holy shit.

A year ago I emailed every AppSumo customer saying we were going to fix deal quality. I don’t think we did.

The listening tour

I came back with a lot of opinions about what’s wrong. Instead of acting on them I ran a listening tour. No set meetings. I posted on Reddit asking for all the feedback, then set up unstructured meetings across the company to validate or disprove what I believed. I’d recommend it for a company of one or a company of anything.

Two things came out of it.

We have a lot of smart people. A few dummies, but a lot of smart people. I just got off a meeting with Matt Bean, who started in operations and now helps run product management. That’s the ethos here: you get a chance. Caitlin Hempstead has been here a while, I only met her recently, and she is sharp.

And the company runs by committee. Nobody wants to be accountable and nobody wants to be wrong, so nothing has an owner. We build processes and systems, and nobody stops to ask whether it’s the right system, or realizes that systems have to get reviewed constantly. The outreach we did in 2020 to get meetings with partners just isn’t working in 2025. We’re still on lifetime deals, which is hard to make work when AI costs are this variable. Same deal pages, same business model.

Three things, three owners

The beachhead is deal quality. Deals are everything. So for October the entire business is working on three things: deal quality, the business model, and the deal page. One month cadence. Essentialism applied to a company.

Each one has a name on it. I own the deals. Oh shit, now I’m accountable. Garrett, the finance guy, owns the model. Caitlin owns fixing the process. Someone owns the deal page so the people who buy convert.

The v1 outcome, and you’re getting a sneak peek, is four tier one products and 20 tier two products a month, each tier with a revenue target, scheduled for December. Then we work backwards from there to the beginning. It’s pretty insane how bad we are in some areas. Some areas we’re good.

Being back as CEO comes down to three things anyway. Clarity: where are we going. A model or budget that gets us there. Ownership: who is in charge, what outcome are they responsible for, and by when. Founder mode adds urgency on top. This is my livelihood. If AppSumo goes out of business my daughter doesn’t get diapers. That’s an exaggeration, but I can take more risk and make some of the harder decisions because I founded the company. Not reckless risk. Get that in, Jason.

One of the old CEOs, every six months I’d ask what he was working on, and he’d say: foundation. Five years of foundation, and the business grew. Instead of scaling super fast to $100 million ARR, how do you keep doing the core better and better? We missed some of it. We’re going to catch up rapidly.

Three Sundays

First Sunday, depressed. So many problems, I didn’t know how to organize them, I didn’t know what we were going to do.

Second Sunday, I felt like these are problems I can actually work on. Then I started, and there was resistance. Resistance is good. It means people are smart and challenging you instead of blindly following. But I was still like, dude, we’re not going to make it through.

Third Sunday, this week: oh, it’s starting to happen.

When you’re losing weight you can watch the scale. In business it’s harder to see progress, so you need a metric. Ours is return buyer purchase rate. If they come back, they had a good experience.

So I’m writing three or four bullets for December 31st. I go to the site and it looks good. Lifetime deals, some non-lifetime deals, awesome products from awesome founders. I look at the business model and, man, we’re profitable again, dialed in for where the market is now. Come December, if you go to appsumo.com or Reddit or Twitter, you should be like, oh shit, AppSumo has awesome fucking deals again.

I can’t sustain this level of work. Be present for my daughter, work all day, come off work and be present for my daughter, then find a few minutes for fantasy football or a bike ride. I barely have any of that. And I’m enjoying it.

My word right now is leadership. We need fewer managers and more leaders. A leader takes initiative toward something and makes it better, a lot of times without permission. This is the problem, this is the priority, I’m going to make it better. Listen, get input, size it, then decide. If I’m wrong, I can fix that. Making no decision is usually worse.

If it’s Sunday and you’re not looking forward to Monday, that’s your opportunity. Pick your three things and put a name on each one.

From episode 380 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The post I’m back as AppSumo CEO. It sucked. appeared first on Noah Kagan.

The short version: Six weeks back as CEO and the last two were the closest I have ever come to thinking AppSumo could go out of business. Return buyer conversion is down about 40% in a month, and we did that to ourselves by adding to the menu until nobody trusted it. The fix is simplicity: one month at a time, three things only (deal calendar, budget, deal page), no set meetings, and I answer every Reddit thread myself. Last week was the first week I wasn’t as stressed.

Return buyer conversion at AppSumo is down about 40% in a month. I have run this company for 15 years and never once questioned that it would exist. These past two weeks I was like, holy shit, this is a real challenge to the livelihood of the company.

It’s easy to blame the market or Biden or Trump. Most of it is our own mistakes, and some of them we identified two years ago. We were hesitant. Timid. We didn’t make the harder choices early on how AI evolved, how vibe coding evolved, how partner sustainability needed to evolve. Customers voted with their wallets.

How did the company known for curation lose it? Revenue targets and the American obsession with growth. When you have a good burger recipe, you don’t keep adding to the menu. You open more restaurants. We kept adding to the menu until people said, I don’t know what’s on your menu, I don’t trust your menu. I agree with them.

I knew the salary and nothing else

I’ve been back a month and a half. I have no set meetings. I went to the org chart and asked people, who here should I talk to, who’s doing interesting things? Then I spent the month asking questions. Walk me through your day, walk me through your week. Over and over I’d go, huh, so why do we do it that way? “I don’t know, that’s just the process.” Okay. I took notes and did not try to take action. That part was important. Recurring meetings are the scary ones. Do we have the meeting to have the meeting? Our monthly town hall gets cut to 45 minutes to see what happens, the Million Dollar Weekend move: do the thing, get a data point, make next month’s better.

The embarrassing version: for the past few years I trusted the sales leader and never talked to anyone on the team. We have a person who does sales operations management. I knew their salary and had zero idea what they did. I met with them. They manage our pipeline. I kind of get it now.

Two weeks ago I was in a sales meeting with 10 people and asked, what’s AppSumo? Everybody had a different answer. To me it’s highly curated, awesome software deals for marketing agencies and solo entrepreneurs who have businesses. Ten answers means the CEO hasn’t been doing the job, which is chief repeating officer.

Triple B

So I took the whole company down to one month and three things. Historically the target was 32 deals a month. I don’t care about the number. How many quality deals can we get on the calendar? That one question turned down everything else, and Ayman, our former CEO and one of my good buddies, is now the bouncer on what gets in.

For October I said we’re doing Triple B. Not Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, though holler at me if you love that show too.

One, the business. Dial in the deal calendar for the upcoming month.

Two, the budget. How many quality products can we do, what does that model look like, and what budget supports it?

Three, the brand. The deal page. We thought we’d do a hundred billion this year (joke), then we forecasted down, then forecasted down again. Call it $50 million net revenue. That means the page where we sell deals is a $50 million page, and I wasn’t a fan of our recent updates to it.

Those were the only three things the company did for the month. People love stupid acronyms, and I’m not saying copy Triple B, but having something everyone can repeat, and then helping everyone ignore everything else, is how momentum starts.

Since we dialed it in: Taco Day crushed. We launched Motion, a video AI product, and it did hundreds of thousands in its first week, one of the top deals ever. The new deal page went from design in two weeks to coded in week three, live by the time you read this. Caitlin and now Sean are driving the BD team on quality.

What I got wrong even inside the simplicity: I was so focused on which products we launch that I missed the deal itself. Ayman was the one hyping on this. The quality of a deal is the price, the rev share, and the type: forever deal, bundle, one year, percent off. November’s goal is a final partner menu. The deal is the flywheel at the center of all our gravity. What’s the core in your business?

Who’s awake

War is clear plans, clear people to execute them, and everyone knowing what we’re doing. I look around AppSumo and ask: who’s awake? Who’s improving the business and making things happen, versus who’s maintaining? I think about it with my wife too. If she’s tired, how am I leading? In your career, your family, your dating life, are you a leader or a follower?

People at AppSumo weren’t excited, and I was like, there’s nothing exciting we’re doing. I talked to Jordan, who runs our product videos, and asked if they’re valuable. Honest answer: no. So I said, Jordan, make videos you’re proud of. He messaged me later that it was one of his favorite meetings this year. Bro, let’s fucking go.

The other thing I did well at AppSumo early and stopped: talking to customers. Now Octolens pipes anything posted anywhere about AppSumo into a Slack channel, and I reply right away. Even if I don’t know the answer, it’s “let me go see what’s going on.” Being quiet is where it goes wrong. And I’m getting ahead of it the old way, posting designs and asking for feedback. We have a new form product, FormRobin, $19 for life, and I said anyone who leaves a comment with feedback gets it free. 10 or 20 people did.

I don’t blame customers for being frustrated. We’ve been okay, not great. We bump prices, products have had issues, our marketing is uninspiring at times. We were cashing in trust we built over the years. I can already feel the sentiment turning. People are saying, oh, they’re awake. The lights are on and someone’s home.

I have a very clear picture of where I want to be in 18 months and a real sense of urgency, because it is not guaranteed we get there. That’s a design review tomorrow and a “let’s meet tonight” for the person working on the product. It’s not founder mode. Running this fast for months isn’t sustainable, and the goal this year is stability so 2026 is set up right. But see if you can get there in half the time.

December might be an entire maintenance month, stolen from LMNT’s three weeks on, one week off. What do customers think sucks, what do partners think sucks, what does the team think sucks? Reviews that get weaponized. Partner onboarding that takes weeks. All on the list.

We’re still at war. Tomorrow the town hall runs 45 minutes, and the next Reddit thread about us gets answered by me, today.

From episode 381 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The post AppSumo is at war. Return buyers are down 40%. appeared first on Noah Kagan.

The short version: Black Friday is about 20% of AppSumo’s revenue and this year it was down 30%. I told the team to stop posting the daily “missed target” updates, because when things aren’t going your way you either don’t have a plan or you’re not working the plan. Ours has three phases: stabilize (30 deals a month, 50/50 rev share, 10% NOI, I approve every product), expand (bundles: one sellout, two flops, then seven or eight thousand sold on Black Friday), and grow (find the 10x bet without building a year of something nobody wants).

Black Friday is our biggest sale of the year, about 20% of AppSumo‘s revenue. This year we were down 30%.

Every morning the team posted the same update. Didn’t hit the sales target. Next day, didn’t hit the sales target. These were already the lowered targets for the month.

I told them to stop posting it. You won’t always win, though I kind of think you can. But reading it every day was demotivating, literally the opposite of motivating, which is my greatest fear as a leader. The targets are somewhat artificial anyway. Zoom out and deal performance is getting better, refunds are getting lower, sentiment, marketing, AOV, all getting better. The end result isn’t there yet. Our business is quite simple: find an awesome product someone made somewhere in the world, get a good deal on it, and promote the hell out of it. We’re still profitable and we have a great team. Let’s not panic over a number we set in a different month.

Every time things aren’t going your way, it’s one of two problems. You don’t have a plan, or you’re not working the plan. This is ours.

Phase one: stabilize

This year we ran 70 plus deals in January, partners closed, people quit, and AI costs were hard for us to price and hard for partners and customers. Stabilizing means a number of deals a month we can do healthily, which is 30. Standard terms, standard pricing, and rev share that now goes to 50/50 on performance so partners are sustainable. A 10% NOI target. This phase probably runs into Q1 of 2026.

The good part was coming back with fresh eyes. I went to support and said, show me what you do. Partner ops, show me what you do. You ever sit in a restaurant and wonder if anyone who works there eats the food? Our partner contracts got roasted online, and I read them and didn’t understand them either. It used to be, give us a few codes and we’ll take care of everything else. Now there are three forms for financials and about ten for marketing. So go be the customer of your own business, even if it’s a business of one. No product goes on the site now unless I use it and approve it. I’m the bouncer at the AppSumo bar.

We also moved from quarterly planning to monthly, three weeks on and one week off, three priorities a month. November was business, budget, and Black Friday. December is deals, budget, and bets. It feels like getting back into the habit of winning.

Phase two: expand

I have never thought our business could go away more than this year. With AI costs, a lifetime deal is very hard to do. We had a nice run for the first 13 years when there were no costs. Maybe 5% of companies will ever do a lifetime deal. Phase two is offerings for the other 95%, for a customer who is a marketing agency, a solopreneur, a freelancer, a creative with a team under five, and who doesn’t want subscriptions.

So we tested bundles. First one: some partners gave us codes free, some we paid, I priced it at $35 so it would sell out, and it sold out in five hours. We thought we could run that all day long.

Second bundle, really good deals, about 2,000 sold in an hour, and then sales dropped off a cliff. One partner ran a temporary authorization on credit cards, which we normally don’t allow. Another took the product away if you canceled, after you’d already paid. Partners were frustrated, support was overwhelmed, backlash. Third bundle was a Mac bundle. Another flop. The deals aren’t good, the pricing is weird.

How long do you keep trying something that isn’t working? There’s a guy, Shaggy, always happy, always trying stuff. Now he’s doing Christmas lights, it works, and he’s running up the score on it. I said the fourth bundle was the final test.

We got five awesome partners: Reclaim from Dropbox, PikaOS, Bolt and Emergent for vibe coding, and Hostinger. Sean, our CRO, added the FOMO: instead of a flat $69, an early bird tier at $49, then $59, then $69. We launched Friday morning, a little early for Plus and VIP customers, and it took off. We sold seven or eight thousand. We’ve had a lot of L’s this year. This was a relief. And it only worked because the credit card thing and the partner-removing-access thing from bundles two and three were on the checklist this time.

Bundles are now a dish on what we call the partner menu, probably twice a year, Sumo Day and Black Friday, and we’re paying partners to be in them. Other dishes we’re testing: discounts for life (40 to 50% off forever, recurring revenue for the partner, small cut for us), case studies in the newsletter, and limited edition lifetime deals where there are only a hundred so you read the email.

Phase three: grow

80% of the company is on lifetime deals, 10% on expansion, and the other 10% is where the business can substantially grow. The core will grow 10 to 20% by doing the work. The question is what’s the 10x bet.

Three filters: does it have 10x upside, do we want it ourselves, and what’s the actual problem. I’ve built things many times and then gone to convince people they want them. We built a Klaviyo alternative called MeetFam that did your email automatically. I went to friends on Klaviyo and said move over, we’ll do it for you. Nah. Couldn’t get them to use it for free. We built Customer Finder, an AI email outreach tool. Zero people used it. We took it offline.

So December is talking to partners, talking to customers, looking at data. If we can’t get to 100% confidence, can we get to 20 or 30%, so we don’t spend a whole year building something no one wants? Validate before you build. That’s the whole point of Million Dollar Weekend, and I still have to remind myself.

I never blame the economy. It’s such a weak excuse. It’s Trump, it’s Biden, it’s Putin. No. Everyone is still eating. Everyone is still paying for Netflix. Your service isn’t desirable, and you and I have to figure out what is. That’s been my mentality since 2006. When 2008 happened I barely noticed. I went and focused on my customers.

I named this one Horizon because I was in Tucson on a bike trip with my buddy Anton and saw the sunrise. Revenue decline this year has been probably the worst we’ve had, profits some of the worst, and it’s still a healthy business. New site design, new deal page, a team that’s leaner and better than ever. It’s not easy to stay on it when you’re losing, and we’ve lost and won for decades.

The daily miss posts are gone. What replaced them is a plan with three phases and a month with three priorities, and this morning that means 30 good deals for January.

From episode 382 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The post AppSumo Horizon: stabilize, expand, then grow appeared first on Noah Kagan.

The short version: My word for 2025 was calm. I got eight months of sabbatical, then went back to AppSumo in September and had the most stressed stretch in 15 years of running it. The passivity was the problem, at work and at home. My word for 2026 is lead, and my exact goals are below: a net revenue target, TidyCal to $1 million a month in GMV, one post a week, 100 hours of Spanish, no phone from 5 to 7, 12 dates.

My word for 2025 was calm. I got it for about eight months. Then I went back to work in September and had the most stressed stretch of my 15 years at AppSumo. The closest the company has been to going out of business. The most brand devaluation we’ve ever had. The most pissed partners, customers, and team, across the board.

Calm was a good word. It was also, I can see now, a permission slip to not lead.

The sabbatical ran from when my first daughter was born in July of 2024 until this September. A total luxury. No responsibility except being with my family. My 2025 list was short on purpose. Sell AppSumo (came off the table fast). One podcast or email a month (did it). Drink less than 182 days (failed, and I’m bringing drinking back). Spanish, date nights, family trips, done. If you only have one or two things to do in a year, you can shock yourself.

Meanwhile AppSumo had a lot of headwinds, and most of them were self-imposed. I never like blaming the economy. The market just tells you the truth, and it’s your job to listen or get ahead of it. We made good decisions too slowly. We were timid. We didn’t fire some people who should have been fired. I was on sabbatical for most of it.

The epic stuff wasn’t epic

Spain was the trip I couldn’t wait for. I met my wife there. The plan was to live there half the year. It turned into a rough four months: my wife got pregnant, the help was inconsistent (she lied and said she used to work for Ronaldo), and Barcelona didn’t have much for a baby. Then the Tour de France in an RV. A rave at one of the campsites, someone hit the RV the last night, no AC, a baby who does not want to be in a seat.

I didn’t want to come back to Austin. I wanted to avoid work and avoid my problems. And being home has been the epic part. My wife, our routines, our friends, my kitchen, my sauna. Two pinball machines I’m not allowed to play because it wakes my daughter.

Two days ago I biked through a cemetery on purpose. One guy had his face on his tombstone, which is awesome, I want my face on a tombstone. There are no final outcomes. You don’t go to Muhammad or Buddha at the end and get graded. Your god is probably your wife or your husband, and they decide if you had a good life. That’s where you’ll be, so you might as well decide where you’re going while you’re here.

Falling down at work

My daughter falls a lot. She cries, gets up, does it again, and eventually gets it. I used that every week this fall.

Our business is lifetime deals, and in a world of AI costs that’s hard. So we tried bundles: one year deals sold as a package. The first one crushed, $100,000 and 2,500 sales in five hours. Sean’s idea, and we all thought, okay, we’re geniuses, we’re going to get rich again. The second bundle was a huge flop. The third bundle was a huge flop. Black Friday was going to be the final one, and we sold seven or eight thousand. It wouldn’t have done that well without the failures on two and three. It’s hard to know when to quit. Putting a time block on it helps.

I didn’t have space to plan this year the normal way, so while walking my daughter I dictated to ChatGPT: you’ve heard me all year, what should I work on? It came back with bangers. Energy management over time management. Fewer goals, finish your cycles. Say no faster. AppSumo runs 30 consecutive days without me. Cut the refund rate in half. One hobby with no output, no monetization, no audience. It said my unfair advantage is taste, distribution, and empathy for founders. Spicy.

My word for 2026 is lead

I’ve picked a word every year for 10 or 15 years. On a bike ride this one came fast. Lead.

It’s the Million Dollar Weekend idea: you ever wanted something and didn’t say it? Complained about something and did nothing? My buddy Dan Andrews from the Tropical MBA podcast talks about leading in your family, and it got me. Am I complaining silently about my wife? Or do I notice she’s going to want something and help direct it? A lot of passivity and a lot of resentment come from a lack of leadership. Leading doesn’t mean dictating or not listening. It means helping go in a direction you think is good and bringing the people you want along with you.

My exact goals, three max per category, because past that you don’t do any of them well.

AppSumo: a specific net revenue target (revenue is down, no joke), and make TidyCal a million dollar a month business in GMV for customers. Coaches, consultants, and therapists already use it to get paid and run their businesses, so we’re building it into a business operating system. If you’re paying $500 a month in software and want to be making $5,000 a month, that’s who it’s for.

Work: one thoughtful post a week, probably on Twitter, and one podcast a month.

Personal: 100 hours of Spanish learning, not classes, I don’t have the brain left after family and work. One bottle of water a day, because one good trigger drags a lot of other good decisions behind it. Cook one new thing a month. I just made kimchi and pho broth.

Family: a Mexico babymoon. Finish work at 5 and no phone until 7. My wife says get off the screens. 12 date nights, even a lunch counts.

Handing over the outcomes

The lead word has a work version too. If the company has a net revenue goal, how does it show up in each leader’s pay? I worked on it with Ayman, our former CEO and an advisor. Business development managers get comped on deals that perform and penalized when a deal closes down, so they’re the detectives figuring out which founders will deliver what they promise.

These past few months I’ve been micromanaging everything, and I’ve liked it. Now that targets, budget, and revenue are clear, the job is to hand the outcomes to people and see who delivers. Then coach them up, or find the people who can.

More people quit this year than ever, and the team is around 45. We’re aiming for at least 10% net operating income and taking strong bets on TidyCal and on non-lifetime deal types, with a launch in January. That’s the plan. The numbers, as they come in, go to the 114,000 people on my newsletter, no schedule, only when there’s something worth sending.

Calm got me a good year and a company in trouble. This year I lead, at home first, and the first test is tonight at 5 p.m. when the phone goes away until 7.

From episode 383 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The post My word for 2026 is lead (and my exact goals) appeared first on Noah Kagan.