Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp.
This is a big deal for me, because the show was started out of Dubai and it was partly inspired by another entrepreneur I used to listen to John Lee Dumas, and he was inspired by Jaime Tardy, who creates The Eventual Millionaire. So it has been a dream of mine for a number of years to get on the show The Eventual Millionaire. My dream has come true. I recorded an episode with Jaime Tardy of The Eventual Millionaire.
Because it's important to me and I wanted to deliver some really good messages, I decided to actually prepare some notes. I am a listener to the show, and I do have a good sense of the types on things she was going to ask me. However, it's a bit like my show, it's free-flowing, there's no particular structure; it can go anywhere. And ironically, all these notes that I made for appearing on The Eventual Millionaire - I didn't use any of them. I thought,
"Well, I've got to use some of these notes..."
There were some really interesting themes I was trying to get out. Most of the chat was about particular launch strategies, how to find enterprise clients...
A lot of these notes that I made for appearing on the show kind of didn't go anywhere, so this is my opportunity to share with you some of the things I've written down for appearing on The Eventual Millionaire. As you can tell in the title, the whole pursuit of the show is to help budding millionaires, or at least try to encourage a millionaire dream in running a business that then makes you a millionaire. What I think I've learned over the 500-odd episodes that I've done on The App Guy Podcast is that there's maybe a slightly alternative viewpoint than just the straightforward counting money to see how much you've made at the end of the day...
I've written these notes to try to pull out some themes, and these themes are taking mini-retirements, working remotely, building up your network of very like-minded people that are fun to work with... I've made a list of some really awesome apps that I've enjoyed, and also corporate life versus the entrepreneurial app life that some of us live. Some of these are the themes that I wanted to get out, and I actually made a note of some little stories as well. I'm going to try and keep this to the next 15-16 minutes or so, so let me see how far we can go through this list of subjects.
The first thing I was trying to get through is the idea of new rich vs. the old rich. I have been a little bit on both sides of the fence. What do I mean here? Well, unbelievably, I've only just read The 4-Hour Workweek. It was a book that I'd kind of come across years ago when it was first out, but never really got around to reading it until recently; I listened to the audio version of it. I can't believe that I kind of missed it when it was first out, because I have been living a life similar to the suggestions in the book - or at least some of the points in the book - without actually realizing it.
One of the big themes of The 4-Hour Workweek is this idea of the new rich vs. old rich, and I was trying to think of some of the examples of what it was like when I was working in corporate London in finance on this six-figure salary that I had, and how I'm richer -- I've actually joined some of the new rich vs. the old rich. Let me explain, and I'll do this in an example.
The old rich mentality was that -- because I was in London, it was enjoyable living there, but I wanted to escape, and of course you're committed to the hours you have to work in the office. I had an office overlooking the Buckingham Palace, I could see the Buckingham Palace from my window, which felt like a great achievement... But I wanted to get away from the whole stress of being in central London, so I would use a lot of my salary on a Friday to take off on a plane, depart from a London airport, fly out to either Italy or France, and then drive for like three hours to get to a place I had in the French Alps. And what I would do is I would spend just a weekend - this is two days - snowboarding. I'd then return and get back around about Sunday - or actually Monday at 2 AM in the morning.
So I had two wonderful, exhilarating days snowboarding. I'd often take my wife, and it was a lot of fun. But I was extremely strapped for time. I was completely time-constrained, so during a season I reckon that I would have had several weekends of doing this, and the cost to me as part of the old rich would have been in excess of $10,000 in travel and the cost of living, and that's without the cost of actually buying the place, buying the chalet in France in the first place.
Ideally, it seemed to be like the sort of thing I wanted to do, however when I left my corporate job I had this abundance of time and decided to do an entire ski season. An entire ski season, which was a dream of mine. I did this for around about $1,000, and that's at least three months or more living in the wonderful resort of La Plagne, which is in the Three Valleys; it's the second-biggest ski area in the French Alps.
The point I wanted to make on The Eventual Millionaire is that even though you may be on a path to being rich, being a millionaire, being part of this old rich, that actually if you calculate the time that you have, then maybe it's easier to be part of the new rich, because you get a much better lifestyle for a fraction of the cost. We're talking about $1,000 for three months, versus $10,000 for a handful of days over the year. And the other part of that theme is that now that I've got a lot more time than I've ever had, then I can actually look after my health. Living and working in a corporate life in a city can be incredibly unhealthy. Actually, a lot of the successful people around me - some of them drove lots of Ferraris and all that sort of stuff, but they were very overweight. At the end of the day, the cost of your health was a lot for the money that you were getting in.
Because I'm now part of the new rich, there's a lot more time for health, and I've got this coach - if you've listened to the past episode recently, I've got the coach of Hugh Jackman getting me really fit, and that's something I would have only achieved on this new path of app entrepreneurship.
Moving on then -- I guess I kind of reflected there, in the ski season I have taken 15 mini-retirements over the last seven years... That's 15 mini-retirements. Now, I never actually called them mini-retirements because I didn't know what I was doing; I just wanted to take a break now and again, and given that I'm doing podcasting and app development and working remotely, it felt like it was quite an easy thing to do.
So yes, I've taken mini-retirements to the French Alps, and Dubai, and Indonesia, I spent a lot of time in Bali... And these are usually 1-3 months at a time. I've had the wonderful experience of undergoing Chinese gong bell meditation, learning how to surf, given the snowboarding days, and living and learning different cultures. One of the things I wanted to bring out with The Eventual Millionaire is the fact that when you are free from the constraints of a corporate life, then you can actually have these mini-retirements, which in themselves are things that you would never achieve whilst on the corporate ladder.
Moving on, I guess still on the theme, but more about the corporate life versus the digital life, part of the attraction for me at the time living in the corporate world was to be surrounded by millionaires. I actually personally used to work with the grandson of Winston Churchill - pretty cool name; quite a rich guy. I would spend a lot of time with the City folk. I actually joined the local golf club that was quite exclusive to get into, and my whole purpose was to be surrounded by millionaires.
What I've grown to learn is that actually they're the wrong people to be surrounded by. It felt like these were the wrong people, these were not my kind of people, which is an ironic thing to say... But since doing the podcast, since networking, since being in the app space especially, what I've learned now is that there are so many more like-minded people out there that are much more fun to be around, that are much more inspiring, that are much more helpful, helping YOU achieve your goals.
Very, very few of these people that I used to know would help me personally achieve the goals. They were more interested in the types of suits that I was wearing, the name that I had, rather than what sort of projects am I getting involved with and how they could help me. So that moves me on to my other subject I wanted to bring up, which sadly I never got a chance to when speaking on The Eventual Millionaire, which is the network that you build up in this space.
We know that it's one of my big themes that comes out time and time again from this show - the importance of a network. I've been able to massively increase my network and meet some of the most inspiring and interesting like-minded people. Many of those I've met virtually, but some of them I've met in person, as well. I was going to give some stories of past episodes where, for instance, I had a really wonderful episode with the founder of Hang With. He's a guy that got some money for his app from 50 Cent. He is on the board of The Developer Alliance, which has 60,000 members. I had a wonderful episode with him, and we do have quite a few back-and-forths on the e-mail, as well. He's part of a network that I've been able to get involved with... Much more interesting. Stories of building an app using 50 cent's money - that's pretty awesome.
Also, I did have an opportunity to meet, for instance, my friend Andreas, who has inspired me to go to Bali, and I've done that for the last couple of years. Also, he introduced me to the coach of Hugh Jackman, which is someone who's changed my life for the better in terms of my personal fitness now. So the network is incredibly important in terms of your goals and your enjoyment out of life, and certainly your business life, and I was going to speak a little bit about that.
And of course, some of the interesting projects that I got involved with over the years have led me into lots of different places. There was a guest I remember building a meditation app; we worked together, and he ended up going for several weeks off to meditate in the jungle, out in the Amazon. These are the types of people you get involved with. Compare that to Winston Churchill's grandson, who was good to have a beer with, but I can't imagine him meditating in the jungle of the Amazon.
And other like-minded people that have also been on the show, that I've really enjoyed getting to listen to and getting to know. In one of the past episodes there was a guy who crashed a wedding. He was trying to fund his app project, and he managed to get his ideas after crashing numerous different weddings and started up an app. He had to subsidize -- he had people living in his house, getting money through Airbnb... So really wonderful stuff.
In terms of wrapping this up then, given that I did want to try and keep this to under 30 minutes, there were some apps that I was going to talk about as well. Some of the apps that have been truly remarkable... I mean, who can believe that now we have access in our pocket to these supercomputers that are really groundbreaking.
I'm thinking of all the wonderful people I've met using the app Slack. It's an app that has been around for a number of years, and a lot of people have mentioned it on my show in the past. I am in some really interesting groups... One of the groups I'm in is a group called Digital Nomads, and I can remember a time when I was looking for accommodation in Bali, and a very friendly entrepreneur went to go and check out the place I was planning to book... I was a little bit worried, because I hadn't been to Bali, certainly not for many years. And he went out and checked the accommodation for me and said, "Look, it's pretty cool. It's very close to the city, and there's a lovely digital hub just down the road." He was so great. So apps like Slack can help you bridge the gap to meet like-minded people in the space that you want to be in. There's so many of these wonderful Slacks. Of course, I have a related Slack that I'm an owner of as well, called iOSStack. There should be a way to join that on the website TheAppGuy.co.
Other apps - I'm thinking how I use Google Translate, and Google Translate has really come a long way. When I was driving around Bali - it was four of us on a moped... Yes, you can actually get four people on a moped - myself, my wife and my two kids. We were in the middle of nowhere and had a flat tire. Now, nobody around me could speak English at all, but I did manage to pull out Google Translate, and we had a verbal conversation, back and forth, where they were speaking the local dialect (Indonesian) and it would translate it to me and I would translate it back, and it would speak back to them. I just found that fascinating that we have that ability in our pocket to have a global translator. It certainly helped me get through the ordeal of breaking down and not having anyone to turn to who spoke English. We managed to get the bike fixed, and sort everything out, so that was a wonderful experience with Google Translate.
And then just the creativity of the people in the app space and the apps that I've come across. I was recently enjoying an app called PartyQ. It's to overcome the whole problem we've got now, which fubbing - there's this new word called "fubbing" I hadn't heard of, which is in a sense is phone snubbing, that's what it's short for. It's those situations when you go out with your friends and everyone's just looking at their phone and not interacting. What this app enables you to do is you have a facilitator ask very interesting questions among the group. Every time I've used this app, it's really got the whole table together; people are putting down their phones, they're engaging, we have a good laugh, we find out some really interesting things about our friends...
So I just love the fact that -- that app would never exist on a desktop; it has to be in the format of an app, and it could only work as an app, and it's overcoming some of the problems we do see with iPhones and Android devices, this whole phenomenon of fubbing and becoming a little bit detached from reality... It's helping come back in that. Those are some of the things I wanted to talk about.
In the final three minutes I have for you today, I did make a note of some of the past episodes I wanted to refer to in case they come up, with The Eventual Millionaire in mind. Clearly, I've just done an episode, 522, that talked about the 15 biggest app entrepreneurial and life lessons that I've learned over the 500 episodes, so I was going to refer to that. But more importantly, there were some other episodes that I had here that are relating to really interesting millionaire-type stories. The recent episodes include 518 with Josiah Humphrey, who took $3,000 (just him and his mate) and built a company that has millions in revenue and over 400 people around the world are employed by his company Appster. So that's clearly a success story.
Also, David James, it was an interesting episode - episode 516, where he (like my story) quit investment banking, but then he went on to create an app and has millions and millions of users using it every year. Also, the success of Alex Austin, episode 509, where he talked about pivoting his company and creating Branch, which is a hugely successful company in the app space. Or Mait Muntel, episode 492, where he created Lingvist, and went from zero to half a million beta testers, and it was his first startup. He was part of the team that founded the GOD particle.
I love the story of James Abbott - I guess he's part of the new rich - where he sold everything in a day on eBay and left and went traveling around the world and then set up a hub in Thailand that I'm hoping to go and see this summer. Brian David Crane - another wonderful interview where we actually interviewed in the middle of the rice fields; that's episode 485. A very popular episode, Dmitry Dragilev (502) on how to get free press. Anthony Martin, episode 490; he went from his dorm room to millions with his business. Angela Yu, episode 474; she went from being a doctor to an app developer, entrepreneur and teacher of app coding. Really inspiring.
Adam Farah, episode 453, who went from leaving his banking career - again, you can see a theme. I love people that have left corporate jobs and taken a big risk. He's built a career now in the AI personal assistance space. And of course, the hugely successful Breanden Beneschott, episode 450, who went from a dorm room to 100 million dollars a year at least in revenue. A huge company. And of course, Roberta Lucca, who achieved global fame with the game that they were behind called Surgeon Simulator. That's episode 427.
Those are some interesting episodes I wanted to refer to, that I made a list for The Eventual Millionaire. So those are the three things then I've gone through in my preparation. Now, the thing I forgot to mention is that the recording of The Eventual Millionaire was recently, this week, as the time I'm recording this, but it will not go live for another six months, so it's not until December. Can you believe that? December. So you'll have to wait until December until you hear the actual recording of The Eventual Millionaire. But it's been a dream come true coming on that show, and I wish you all the success with what you're doing.
Do remember to leave a review for the podcast. Again, I do read all the reviews. Do remember to get in touch with me about potential future guests, because I am going to be doing some hard work with future guests coming on this show, and now is the time to influence that for the remainder of the year. So if you have a burning desire to learn something or to meet someone in particular, listen to them on the show, then do let me know. If you've been to an event recently where you've seen an inspiring speaker, let me know, because I want to interview these people. And tell me what you think of the mission statement for The App Guy Podcast. Does this meet your needs and what you get out of this show?
Thank you for listening, and I look forward to getting a guest interview next time... But for now, sayonara!