How to Start a Business in One Weekend, with Noah Kagan

Afford Anything

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Entrepreneurship, Business, Investing

4.6 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2024

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#485: If you’ve ever thought: "I’d love a business BUT …” I don’t have TIME I don’t have MONEY I don’t have IDEAS I have TOO MANY ideas and I don't know where to start I'm not technical I'm not creative or artistic I'm not good at sales You're not alone. Countless people don't start businesses or side hustles for these reasons. And they're losing thousands -- perhaps millions -- in opportunity cost. How much could you make if you started a side hustle that eventually scaled into a business? Possibly millions. Today's guest, Noah Kagan, is living proof. Noah was employee #30 at Facebook. His stock options, if fully vested, would be worth over $1 billion today. (If you want to do the math -- his stock options came to 0.1 percent of the company, which has a current market cap of $1 trillion.) But Noah was fired just a couple months before his stock options vested. So rather than getting a billion-dollar payout, he got nothing. He sank into a deep depression, eventually recovering with the help of a therapist who counseled him on how to reframe the experience. Then he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He became a serial entrepreneur, building multiple businesses. His most successful venture now makes $80 million in gross revenue, and his personal take-home is $3.3 million per year (which comes from a $200,000 annual salary and $3.1 million profit distribution.) His net worth is $36 million. Not a billion, but still not too shabby. Noah recently wrote a book called "Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours." He sits down with us (in person!) to share: -- how to find business ideas -- how to overcome objections and rejections -- how to scale By the end of the episode, the common objections that you often hear -- like "I don't have time/money/ideas" -- will be quashed. Please enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode485 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Maybe you've always had a business idea, but you don't have time, you don't have money.
0:05.5	Heck, maybe you don't have an idea or you have too many ideas, right?
0:10.0	For some reason, for a variety of very common obstacles, you have not yet
0:16.7	started that side hustle or that small business. If that's the case and then if this is
0:21.7	something that you want to do or that you've been thinking about possibly doing
0:25.1	you are potentially leaving thousands or even millions of dollars on the table in opportunity cost and if that sounds like a
0:31.3	wild exaggeration today's guest is here to tell you that it is not out of the norm. It is in fact highly possible. Today's guest runs a company that he founded that does 80 million dollars in gross revenue.
0:45.6	The company takes home between six to seven million dollars in profit.
0:48.6	He personally earns about 3.3 million of that per year.
0:53.2	So he has a net worth of $36 million and it came from starting a business and he's here to talk
0:58.3	to you about how you can take the lessons that he's learned growing this thing from scratch and apply
1:05.2	that in your life to any business that you want to start.
1:09.4	Welcome to the Afford Anything Podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything but not
1:14.0	everything. Every decision carries a trade-off. Saying yes to something
1:20.2	implicitly means you're saying no to something else and that doesn't just apply to your money it applies to
1:25.2	all limited resources your time your effort your attention anything that you need
1:30.1	to manage what matters most and how do you make decisions accordingly?
1:34.4	Answering those two questions is a lifetime practice. That's what this show is here to
1:38.6	explore. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything Podcast, and joining us today is Noah Kagan.
1:46.3	NOAA was employee number 30 at Facebook.
1:50.5	His stock options were worth 0.1% of the company. Now Facebook is currently valued at $1 trillion.
1:58.0	So 0.1% of Facebook today is worth $1 billion.
	...

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