How to Become A Billion Dollar Creator with Nathan Barry, Founder of ConvertKit

Like you gotta choose the business model that's right for you. But answer the question of like okay, can this audience that I have Make me a billionaire.

fifteen thousand a month and it's just a single house. So You'll be there by quite a bit. No way, really? What's what's the house worth? Uh I bought it for nine hundred K. That's ridiculous. Dude, that's crazy. Seven hundred and eight.

Uh where is that? Yeah. Uh it's in in Boise, uh like right next to the Boise State University Stadium. Oh, so do you get like basically like football tourists or what are you who who's renting this thing for seven hundred dollars a night in Boise? We're live, by the way, Nathan. We're live.

Great. No for real. Um Who's renting it. So you get like all graduation, everyone coming into you know, tour the university or whatever else. And then um Uh

Just anyone coming into downtown, it's like a five bedroom, brand new construction. Sam, it actually looks Like the kitchen looks somewhat similar to uh The place you just linked me to. So So why haven't you bought it? Yeah, it's a million dollars. It's a million dollar or nine hundred thousand or whatever you said. Under m million dollar house that's making

Twenty fifteen grand a month. Why don't you buy fifty of them? Oh, I I I just bought this one. And so it's not making that yet, but that's what we're like the bookings for the summer. So It's at uh it just did eight thousand four January locked in.

Um and then The summer bookings are coming in at like quite a bit higher. Um like so the January one's you know are last minute and and voice is slow there. But uh Yeah, the summer ones are coming in at

A Nine a thousand dollars a night. Eight hundred, nine hundred or a thousand a night. Um, which is wild. And we haven't even put a hot tub on it yet, so I just bought a hot tub today. And uh

So we'll get that in there. I should be able to charge a little bit more and It's gonna be good. Wow. So Okay, we should start. Uh we should intro intro you. Well yeah, so you're we're all we're live. That might go live. This is Nathan Barry. Nathan Barry Um, I've known Nathan since a gumroad meetup, Sean. I went to a gumroad meetup in like

For real. I I'm not joking. Thousand twelve. Maybe twenty thirteen. Two thousand twelve. Twenty thirteen. Nathan was doing Gumroad. He had this book called Authority. Right? Authority? Yep.

And i I don't even remember what the book was about, just making a living online and but then you also had graphic design stuff and you had a really cool blog and you uh you sold all types of stuff. But I've been homies with you for a while and then You launched this thing called convert kit and I was like, Nathan like The other things working, just do that. At any way. Now it's a business that both Sean and I I think are in the I didn't end up I didn't end up doing it. I there's some mech um mechanics problem with the way we we can get into it. We're an L C and it it gets complicated uh f as like pass through funds and stuff like that. But yeah.

But Sam, you're the I'm in the cool club and basically his business convert kit does like twenty six, I think, million dollars in recurring revenue. It's like a mail chip competitor that's better and and different. Their revenue's all completely live. So if you Google convert kit revenue, you can like tweet their revenue. Twenty nine. Do you regret now that your business is actually kicking ass? Do you feel like I kinda wish this wasn't all super transparent or you know,'cause it's good early on.

Transparency is great early on. It gets you a bunch of people interested. Then when you start winning You know, you're giving more value than you're getting back usually by that by doing that. Yeah, so I think it's uh a great idea if it's for a mission reason and a terrible idea if it's for like a marketing reason. And I actually had two friends who sat me down at one point and they're like Nathan, this is an intervention.

Take down your Like public uh metrics page. And Which uh they were right. Like they had talked to competitors who were like, Wow, this is so helpful like scrolling through and they're like You know your competitors are doing this, right? I'm like I I know. But really it's like

Uh it's a mission thing. Uh The whole mission for the company is to help creators earn a living. And so if we can put this public blueprint out there. That's not just like the snapshot of time where

You know, y you've done it with companies where you're going through and you're like, Oh, they said here they're at ten million You know, you're like trying to piece together The trajectory. We all we all have the same spreadsheets. Um And so

Like actually doing it in real time. means that someone can be like, Okay, I'm at fifty K MR. Churn is absolutely brutal right now. Oh, I wonder what Converkin's turn was when they were at fifty K. Right. And you can go back and you can find the date range and be like, Oh, in this time

Here's all of their metrics, here's how fast they're growing and everything. And so it's like this For anyone who wants it. It's this master class where you have to dig in and and find the data, but you can find everything about our business. And my hope is that it's like breadcrumbs. That every future entrepreneur who wants to recreate how much traffic does that

Do you know? What's that? How much traffic does that page get? I don't know, it's not actually even our page. It's convert kit.bear metrics dot com. Right. It's not even ours, so Wow.

Presumably not that much traffic. So you're for real not using it for marketing if you don't even know how much traffic it gets. Okay, now I believe you. But when you said the mission thing, I have a uh I I have a a system of uh tuning out. Whenever anybody says values, mission, vision, things like that, I'm just like uh by default. I do not believe anything you're about to say for the next thirty seconds. How many, um how many people work there now? Sixty nine. Because when you

W you wrote this blog post to you I forget, I've been reading your blog for so long, I don't remember the years, but you wrote a blog post and you're like, Oh, we're making let's say eight million dollars a year. But we basically had twenty thousand dollars in the bank. Or That's I I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was almost as extreme as that, right? Yeah, so

Uh the company's totally s self funded. There's no outside capital. And so when we hit Like this period of rapid growth. We grew from two thousand a month to a hundred thousand a month. In twelve months.

And Uh, you know, and that was just on fifty grand that I'd put in. We spent All of that money. And so what happened is The company was growing and profitable.

But we were doing like Three percent profit margins? And so we got down to the point where we had I I think like ten to twelve thousand dollars in the bank. And like that was growing. But we were s like expenses were increasing by so much more.

that uh like our day's worth of expenses was getting shorter and shorter. And so that got Uh Super scary. You guys want to know Okay, random story. So uh

I I think you all know Andrew Warner. Um I was at a Mixer G meetup in San Francisco. Like he would do these Scotch knights. And uh

Uh after one of those Like We I think we were walking out of the building and he's like dude You know, it kinda pulls me aside. He's like, Did you seem super stressed? And

And I was like, Yeah, like and I kinda told him the financial situation. We were like Yeah. You're like now paying all these people and you have no money. And uh

Um So I told him about that and and he said, Okay. Here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna wire you twenty five thousand dollars tomorrow. You're going if you need the money, spend it.

Do whate you whatever you want with it. Whenever you feel right, like pay me back. Um, or if you don't need it, like just put it in a savings account. Like just let it be in an you know, like a insurance blanket for you. And then uh you know.

Why it back at some point. Uh we'd hung out in person I think twice before. So I knew him a little bit, and then on the podcast. And what we're gonna say the only thing what? Oh, the the only the thing he said is like if you do decide to raise funding, like convert that into

You know, like I'll be the first person in for that. Um If not, why are the way back to the smart foo! Okay, but the thing that he said, The thing that he said is the only thing

That will piss me off on this is if you ever try to pay me interest on it. Like don't Try to make this alone in any way. And so I held on to the money. It sat in the bank account for like eight or nine months.

Uh we grew our bank account to the point that we had Plenty of savings in the bank and all of that. And I wired the money back and like Uh Andrew is

For ever one of those people where I'm like, Thank you Just'cause he pulled me aside and was like, Did you seem stressed? And He was like Yeah. Let me loan you a security blanket. That's Frankly, that's amazing. Shout out to Andrew. We gotta have Andre and we gotta have Andrew on now just for that story. Uh we've joked about it before, but we should have him on for sure.

Because i it's if he's done it to you, he's probably done like some weird stuff like that to a bunch of people. So that's he's probably had some interesting stories. Yeah, I mean he knows everyone too. So he's he's I'm looking at your guys' revenue chart. There's a huge spike every November. What did you do? Is it like a Black Friday deal or w w what What causes this huge Yeah, we can talk about whether that's a good idea or not. Um So early on, right, when you need cash. Uh the thing that you do in SAS is you push annual plans. Right,'cause you have this uh cash flow problem.

And so we started pushing annual plans as part of our Black Friday sale. you know, to bring forward a bunch of that cash. Um And so we kinda just kept doing that. And then it what it did is it aligned a whole bunch of uh

um renewals. You know, annual payments right around that same time. So it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, right? Until it gets to the point that you're pulling in. Like Four and a half million dollars in a single month. Um you're also getting all the churn at the same time, so I don't know that Like I Like we're not gonna keep doing that. By the way, there's so many things like that in business that I'm like

We're doing this? I can't really say if it's a good idea or a bad idea. I wish I could. Well we're just We're just gonna keep doing it for now. And then like I just kinda feel like it's gonna work out, but I could totally see that like We didn't need to do any of this or that this like long term is hurting us more than the short term gain. What's an example? Um like in my D to C business, I s I was kinda thinking about this is uh

We do this model that like drops new products all the time. Every single week we drop new products. And it's great'cause it causes the sales spike, but it also puts you on this treadmill of New products that you have to release every week and that means you gotta do Photo shoots of those products every week. And then that means that you have to have inventory Whether you sold your previous inventory or not, you gotta buy new inventory. Like most brands, they they don't do that. They only buy new inventory when they're out of the old stuff.

So even though inventory sucks out cash, you know, it's like Well I'm buying it because I there's I'm sold out. We're not even doing that. But on the other hand, it's creating like the I when I look at his chart, it's creating this spike every single week. And I'm like, okay, so that's good. These other three things are bad and like I don't know how to weigh these against each other'cause they're like

In different categories that speak different languages and on different timescales. So it's just hard to hard to know if this is like a dumb idea or or a bad idea uh or a good idea. Um I think The thing to look for in that is Uh something that served you before might not serve you now.

So like that served us really well for a period of time. Because it brought in this cash, you know. And you could tell the team like hey Like payroll's good, we're sat for a long time. Uh and it gives that level of comfort.

And also like in the early days, churn is often high in a business. Just because you don't have very many mature accounts. And so locking that in's really good. But then if you get to this long You know.

Much later in the business, you're like, Look. We're on accrual accounting, it we don't really care. We have plenty of cash in the bank. Like the spike at this time doesn't make a difference. Right. And so just I watch for those things where it's like This served the business well for a while and it doesn't anymore.

Who built the early version? Um so I did all the design and front end development. Um and then I hired uh freelancers to Um, you know, write the rails back end. And then that went okay.

And then it it went much better when I hired a longtime friend named David to come on and like Full time. Uh Build it, but that was two years in. And you and it was making enough

It was making enough money to pay him? No, that was where I paid him out of the fifty grand that I put in. Which was like our our savings and everything.

Return. I mean fifty K and and you're able to get that built and turns into what it is now. Or at least it got you to uh enough revenue to pay people. Yeah. Yeah, and uh I mean it's wild what you can do when

when you're doing a lot of the design and code yourself, you know. So You gotta count that in in the costs. But um But yeah, and then you just find it with That makes it sound easier than it is. But you know, you fund it with growth. Uh simple. Not easy.

Simple, not easy. So Sean, Nathan, he's got this blog post called like how to How to build well. I think it's called the blog post. Ladders of wealth. He's got a this actually this other great blog post called um

The billion dollar creator, I think it's called. Or the billion dollar block. Let's do the billion dollar let's do the billion dollar one. I'm sorry, Sam, I don't know where you're going with that. Well well I just wanna So this whole thing about transparency, so Nathan, I don't think you publicize this. But I'm on this email list. And every month or week, uh probably month, I think.

He sends out Dude, I s it's the craziest shit I've seen. He sends out his entire net worth. And you could see like how much cash he has. how much uh like which stocks he owns of and of how much

Uh like his angel investments. Like you see his entire fine all of his finances. I gotta get on this list. This sounds amazing. Yeah. It's all the content that I wanted to

that I wanted like other people to publish. Like Sam, you talk about Fatfire and like a that's a fantastic subreddit. Um And I just want like more of those conversations. 'Cause I've written a ton about people who have or like how to get from Say like zero to a hundred thousand dollars.

Uh on the internet. Yeah, that's you mentioned my book authority, that's what that was. Um But like once you kinda get to the point where you're making a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand or more online. Like

People don't talk about what you do with their money'cause w you know, if you do that, someone's like, Oh, you know, like There's Sam just bragging about how much money he has again or You know, something like that. And so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna make a private newsletter.

And I just charge people a hundred bucks, like, just to filter out the Yeah. Anyone who's gonna complain about it, I guess, or say that I'm bragging. And then just say, I'm gonna write about all the stuff that I wish I knew when I made like my first Two hundred fifty grand.

Uh online. And so the way that I I described your blog or that email is It's kinda like Face tattoos and cornrows. I think it's super cool when other people have'em, but I don't want it.

Like you know, not not for me, but I I I it's cool when others have a There's only two hundred people on that list. So it's a it's a small group right now. Dude, I don't know, man. But uh Sean, what was your question about it? I wanted to kinda create it. So you have this blog post that's kind of like I know you worked on that for a while.

Uh kind of shaping your thinking here. And um and then we also have Sam who's somewhat bearish on the idea of the creator economy, thinks he's kind of overhyped over over buzzword. And you're Mr. Creator Economy in a way, uh, Nathan. So I think this will be This this might be good.

Um but let's walk. I don't think our opinions are opposites, by the way. I would pr I would say probably our opinions are not opposite. Yeah, but for the sake of argument, let's just uh let's just walk through. So you basically have these four rules of building A billion dollar audience. So um I guess like first, why did you even want to do this uh like kind of like What got you? interest in this and then let's write the four.

Yeah. So the article asks a question, like the whole premise of it, and that is What is the most profitable Uh Place to direct attention.

Right, so everything we do right, we're recording a podcast now, whatever you're doing on on TikTok or if you're a movie star or everything else, right? You have attention. And brands want it, they're willing to sponsor. You know, all this stuff. And so it's like okay. You have the opportunity to point that attention somewhere. What's the most profitable

Way to do that long term. 'Ca you look at people, um You know, maybe who are taking sponsorships. Right. Five grand to you know to sponsor the newsletter or you know, five hundred bucks for a sponsored

Um uh Instagram posts or anything like that. And That's actually not that Profitable.

And then we when you dive in You learn that the most profitable thing to do Is to create your own product. And to drive that attention to something where you actually build equity long term. So it's like a longer yeah uh article talking about that. But like the richest movie stars.

You know, like take Jessica Alba for example. Right. She has made a lot of money from movies. But the bulk of her wealth is from starting a company using You know, being the spokesperson for her own company. Um, and then my other favorite example would be Ryan Reynolds.

Um who You know, he's doing ads for other people and Probably getting paid. A million bucks here, ten million dollars there. You know, that kind of thing. And at some point he goes like forget that.

I'm going to buy my own companies with Mint Mobile. An aviation gen. And I'm gonna be my own spokesperson. So I don't get cash. I get equity.

And so You know, you just watch this process of people doing it over and over again. And that's actually my hypothesis with Convert Kit. Right. I have attention on the internet through running a blog.

Um And a newsletter and all of that. Well how do I want to monetize it? Sponsorships. E books, membership.

A bunch of things. I'm like, nope, I wanna monetize it through Convert kit, building a SaaS company. Like that's my Version. Of the billion dollar creator.

So that's the whole premise of the article and It's like uh So you have a couple examples. So okay, so rule number one is you have to build more than a personal brand. So what does that mean? You give the example of Jessica Alba. Of Mark from Primal Kitchen. So what what is the nuance here? It's like it's not just y your face, your name.

You need to actually create a brand around uh Around your lifestyle or your interest, is that it? By the by the way, Sean, Primal Kitchen is The sugar free ketchup company that I like. So this guy named Mark

He's like Kinda looks like the sixty five year old version of me, but like even more jacked. And he like has a health and health blog and he starts selling ketchup and he sells that for like three hundred million dollars. Yeah, so I mean what Mark did, uh with uh his blog was called Mark's Daily Apple and it was like the leading

You know, like paleo Yeah, kinda health blog in that space. And a blog like that, you know When he was doing this. Two thousand six, two thousand ten, that kind of thing. You can make a million bucks a year off of that blog, and he was.

Right, but You play that forward. Um And that's it's all about him, all about his name. Um, all that right's name is in the name of the site.

But I mean you can build substantial wealth that way. What he did instead is he started Primal Kitchen. You know, Kickstarter this whole brand. by saying like I have the most popular site in the space Let me

You know, make these uh paleo friendly Uh ketchup, mayonnaise, that kind of thing. And then he goes, you know, how big his audience was? Do you know how big his how much traffic had he had at the time? It it wasn't huge, huge. Yeah, a hundred thousand subscribers on the email list, maybe. So hundred thousand was the kind of like trusted audience size. To kick kick off the street. Like even just

Twenty fifteen, twenty twelve. Like that kind of time frame. But yeah, then he sold sells it to craft for two hundred million dollars. You can't sell a blog. To like a blog doesn't sell for two hundred million.

You know, uh Like all of these things. And the crazy thing is he still owns the audience. Right. that kickstarted this whole product. He still owns.

He can sell off the that whole brand talking to him at a at a conference, you know, he's just on to the next thing, figuring out what he wants to do next. He didn't have to sell his his name and wh whole identity with it. Uh, and craft is thrilled with their first. Kylie Cosmetics is probably the biggest one that people know about because you have Tons of attention through Instagram, TikTok, whatever, the TV show, whatever. And uh

Instead of just saying, Hey, I'll you can pay me Because i people will used to say, Wow, you have to pay twenty five thousand dollars for a tweet from Kim Kardashian or N then it that was twenty five thousand, then it went up to like two hundred fifty thousand. Then two million dollars for a Instagram post. From Is it two million dollars? It got it got up to that range where it was like either hundreds of thousands or low millions. to get like a an actual like endorsement post from from one of them.

And um And so then y you know Cool, you can make a lot of money doing that. You're right. You can you can stack up quarter million dollars at a time. But Kylie Cosmetics was a billion dollar brand. So it's like, well Who's to

Who wants to pay me? To promote their products. Well it's mostly like skincare products, makeup products. Or for Kim Kardashian, it's her shapeware. Like you know like Uh and Chloe Kardashian it was like, you know, fashion or whatever. So Chloe launches

True American genes. Sc uh Kim Kardashian launches I think it's called what was it shape his Skims. Skims is like the Shaper brand. Dude. Sean, you are on top of it. Keep going. Kylie, Kylie Cosmetics. Kanye, Yeezy shoes, right Lair's like

Uh they all turned to say who whoever is the m the most willing advertiser Actually you become my competitor and I'm gonna launch my own brand, my own equity and have my own equity in this thing. And there's a guy in the NBA who gets made fun of for this. Which is this guy LeVar Ball. Uh I don't know if you guys know this guy, but Basically he has three sons, all three wanted to make it to the NBA, and this guy's this like loudmouth guy. They got like a reality show around them because

They're sort of like the like you know, basketball version of the Kardashians. There's three brothers and like a uh kind of an overbearing parent who is like are architecting their business strategy. And when they were gonna the guy was gonna get picked second in the draft and Nike offered him a contract and D'cause and instead He created Big Baller brand, uh you know, Triple B, he created his own shoe line.

And like the shoes kinda sucked and like, you know, he didn't have the full business plan. And people were making fun of him for like, Oh wow, you turned down a guaranteed ten million dollars from Nike to like launch this thing. Ten million dollars a year or whatever. And it's like Actually that was the right move. Now maybe his execution was slightly poor, but

That was actually the right move and and A lot of these NBA players would have been better served had they done that themselves. Well, how how's it going now? The shoe thing. So the shoe thing's not going good. Basically the guy they had running it like was like kind of stealing from them, so they fired him. That was like a a black mark on it. The second brother never made it to the NBA. So that was like a little bit of an issue. Um the the first brother kinda underperformed his potential at that time.

Um and actually now that it would have worked'cause the th the youngest brother The one who was like the the the one who's kind of like He's kind of like a Well fuck boy a little bit. He's he's you know, it's like Had a gold, you know, like a diamond grill, had like a Lambo at 15, and was like, you know, he was kind of off the reservation. He actually turned out to be the best one. He's actually a star player.

And if they had kinda built it properly around him, it probably would've done a lot better. So I um Nathan, you'll get a kick out of this. So like three or four weeks ago, we did this thing where we said, We're gonna give five Gs To one or two, three people. Who take our clips, download it, post it on TikTok, and get views. There's this kid. Who did it?

And I don't remember how many views he got, but like our hashtag I think got thirty million views in like two weeks. And this guy accounted for a lot of them. And multiple of his videos got a thousand or sorry, a million views. One video got so big that we drove thirty five thousand new members to the subreddit Fat Fire like And they complained. And I was like reached out to this kid. I'm like, Who are you? And he replies back with like Michael at umichigan.org.

Or something like that, or dot you or whatever it is. And I'm like, Wait, dude, are you in college? And he I he calls me and I FaceTime with him and he's in his dorm room. And He's young. He's in still in college. He's doing his university thing and and he's really cocky. Not in a bad way, but he's like

He's got Hut Spot. And he goes, Man I knew I was gonna do this. I wanted to prove to you guys that I could do it. I want you to pay me money to do this now and I'm gonna do this for other people and we're gonna change the media game. And I'm gonna raise money And I was like, Okay, hold on, dude. Hear me out. And he goes, I'm gonna I'm gonna go raise money for this thing.

Um, do you want to invest? I go, Bro, listen. You do not want to raise money for this. Here's what you should do. You are so talented at this. That don't raise money for this. But get it big and start launching other stuff on top of it. And if you want to raise money, raise money for that stuff.

And own all the He owns this thing called like um I forget what it's called, future, but he's got like eight handles now that have like A million something follow followers. I'm like, No, no, no, don't raise money for this thing, man. Own that forever, and that's your piggy bank and your audience. Raise money for like this other thing that you want to do and funnel it through there. But don't sell that thing because

I raised a little bit of money for my thing, which was like that, and I I don't regret it because I got the outcome that I wanted, but I do regret it because it definitely Han m you're massively handicapped because of it. Yeah. I I think such a good point because you can

have that platform to launch whatever you want in the same way that you know Mark Sisson can use his platform to then go launch the next thing. Right. He probably has contracts that say he can't compete in the exact same space. But he could do a fitness thing or he could do Something else. Right. You have the point.

Well I was gonna give an example. Connor McGregor is doing this pretty brilliantly at the UFC, so like uh U of C gets knocked a lot because of the of they have like low fighter pay, right? Like the the percentage of revenue that they give to their fighters is way lower than other sports. NBA's fifty percent, N F L is like fifty percent, UFC is like I don't know, fifteen or twenty percent. So the fighters are You know, they go out there, they get their, you know, face beaten in and they're they'll they'll make twenty thousand dollars off that fight or forty thousand dollars or eighty thousand dollars and then They only get to do that two or three times a year. So it's like a pretty brutal sport for a low pay.

What Connor McGregor did was Instead of selling the attention try to try to make money as his kind of like service fee. He created a brand around literally every part of his lifestyle. So he's like all right. This thing's gonna get me famous.

But then Okay, what am I famous for? People like my suits at the press conferences. Cool, I'm launching a suit brand. Okay, um I'm Irish. I'm gonna launch an Irish whiskey. Irish whiskey, I think just sold for I don't know if you know Stanley, one hundred million. Yeah, like he walked away with a hundred. Exactly. Then he's like um Cool. Uh I'm super fit because I'm a UFC fighter. My body's amazing. Here's my P90X program. It's called McGregor Fast. You can uh you can buy my program and subscribe to that and you can get fit with me.

Oh, you're getting fit and um guess what else do I do? I recover. Okay, here's a recovery spray that I spray on my leg that's like you know, like makes my leg uh recover faster after workouts. And the guy is literally just selling like Every piece of his lifestyle as a independent brand like uh you know, I think at one point he was thinking about launching a sports betting exchange.

It's like What is the best business like who wants to pay me? Oh, DraftKings wants to pay me? Hm. Maybe instead of DraftKings is McGregor Kings now. And I will I'll launch a competitor. He just he just opened up a bar called the Black Force. Exactly. Oh you know, I had good success with whiskey? What else do we do? Iris Spouts. Okay, I'm gonna

So he bought a bar. Not that the bar is that good. It's like a bar in his hometown and a bar's not gonna make a ton of money, but then he used that bar as the like basically the backdrop. To film. him creating a stout and now he's gonna sell a stout as a n new like alcoholic beverage brand. And uh I it's kind of amazing. The guy's gonna become a billionaire

And fighting is gonna be the lowest part of his income stream is my guess. Which is insane. I bet you I bet you McConnor Uh Conor McGregor, I bet you he goes for it. Well he might make a billion, he might lose a billion I think you could. Uh Nathan. You're worth like

Uh, did you reveal the valuation of your company? Uh we we raised it two hundred million. Okay, so let's just I let's just I don't know what the facts are, but let's just say you you own ninety percent, so you're worth a hundred and eighty million dollars. Do you think that you can ever spin through that? Uh I would have to radically change my lifestyle.

Yeah. I don't think Is that enough? Yeah, that's so much more than enough. I think I spend like two hundred grand a year.

So if that Gives you an idea. If you take away like if you set aside the things like when I'm not buying assets, that's your burn. That's your the actual burn. It's like 200 grand a year. So yeah, it would it would take a lot to. Yeah. To spend through uh Through that.

So d what w we let's go let's go to this wealth ladder thing. Well I d I hold on. There's a point uh so what what Sean was saying about um Uh Like the the trend between all of these people. Is that that's what's in the rule number two of selling products, not attention. And that's the flip, right? So Connor McGregor is a perfect example of this.

Because everyone's expecting people to sell attention. Right, that's the the NAS car logos plastered all over the car equivalent of that. And you're like, Great. Connor's doing that, every celebrity. And so You know, you expect that uh

Um Everyone Like w every influencer's gonna do that. And the wealthiest people are the ones who are like great, I w I'm going to not do that. I'm going to promote my own product.

Um, Connor's the extreme example of like I'm gonna do ten of these or something. Most people are like, Let me do one or two. Uh but that's where you're gonna build this real wealth. Then let's just hit the other rules real quick. So rule number three drive higher customer value through recurring or repeat purchases. So you'd rather have a A product that you can m that has reproach rate versus a one off. That's the big idea there. Yep.

Yeah, and that that's the thing of if you just look at the most valuable brands, you see that um a lot of them are selling a product that someone buys. Mm many times. Right. Yeah. So you know, if my first million created a idea journal. It's probably not gonna have super high repe purchase rate'cause you're you know, one journal will last you a long time.

versus if we made uh you know the pure money deodorant And pure money deodorant is something that you would go through every two months. then that consumable is gonna be worth more than if you know so product selection is important here. Yeah. And so even just going back to the catch up example, right? You know, you're going through catch up.

Every month. Every couple months. You know, that that's way better than something that uh Lasts forever. Right, billionaires catch up.

Great. Okay. So then last one, uh choose a better business model. So um What what are you what are you what are you pointing out here with choose a better business model? Yeah, so there's a couple things in this. One is Uh well I'm using the example of uh uh Vani Harry who uh has the food babe. Um so she had

Information products business, she's selling cookbooks, meal plans, all that. And then she teamed up with Uh a friend of mine, Derek Halburn. Um, who was also in kind of that online business space. And they went and made uh like a health supplements company.

And so it's completely different. They've made the switch from you know, that business model into uh selling this product that people are buying on a recurring basis that Yeah, the brand can be acquired. But then I think that the other example that's interesting.

Um, I love listening to Andrew Wilkinson on the show. And Yeah, he Did his whole thing. His whole thing is using Uh

A very cash flow positive business, right, in Meta Lab of They're doing agency work. Honestly, it's a very profitable business, but it's not valued that high in the market. And so he's like okay, I'm gonna take low to medium quality revenue and use it to go buy really high quality revenue.

You know,'cause agencies, they're not as recurring, they're not Um High multiple if you want to sell the business. So he's like, Great, I'm gonna go buy Software companies or sorry software companies.

You know and so I'm gonna trade in You know, one set of revenue for another. Um And then uh You see this a lot in software.

Where someone will launch Two like you'll have two versions of the same tool. One's like the WordPress plugin version, where it gets it done and all that. But none of those really turn into like substantial companies. And so the ones that made it.

Or like Optim Monster. Where They built a WordPress plugin, it was okay. made millions of dollars, but like it's not valued like a software company.

Whereas when they go and rebuild uh like Sciad Balk rebuild opten monster. as a SaaS platform. Added more features. You know, they can charge a different pricing model. Um all of that and

And then it's really valuable, right? You get to raise money at Silicon Valley valuations, you get to sell the company at those multiples. Um Even though it's like fundamentally accomplishing the same Uh three people who I think left money on the table. You named two of them. I have a third. Actually you y you might have named all three. Um

Okay. So you talk about Ramit Sethi, who you think, you know, maybe he's making ten million a year in revenue, selling kinda high end courses, his audience is all around personal finance. And you point it out like At the time where he had a bunch of audience and trust in personal finance and was advocating for a philosophy of like, hey you know, low fee index fund style investing, set it and forget it.

Um s you know, saving a certain portion of your revenue. He could have built Wealthfront, which just got acquired for one point four billion, you know, yesterday or something like that. Uh which was like a Robo Advisor doing just that. So Instead of selling courses. could've built a software product. So left

left some value potentially on the table. Um another one is Tim Ferris, right? Tim Ferris has makes a ton of money on sponsorships and ended up making a ton of money through investing in the right startups because of his brand name. But

You know, could he have done what Joe Rogan did uh with like on it supplements, right? Like I think If he said, Look, I tried every supplement and here's my issues with them. So I'm launching the paleo ketchup, I'm launching the nootropic supplement, I'm launching the

the protein powder, whatever whatever he could have picked. You know, I think is is a five hundred million dollar business, given the size and trust of his audience. But it seems like he didn't go that path. So what do you think of that of that? Oh the third was Marie Foley. Uh I think you had her in here.

Uh I and I think you pointed out an Yeah. You you pointed out two things. One is she builds everything in her name. instead of uh building like brands that can be Dissociated from like her person The product is

Her telling you content, her selling you time and consulting or whatever else, her selling you a course. versus her creating a product based on her belief system and you trust her, so you think this product is gonna work for you. So But Listen to this, Sean. You're well, you're not exactly, but you're criticizing these people.

You're doing the exact same thing. So you've got this big audience of people who like and trust you that shockingly trust you and do what you say. But you're building this other thing that people are begging to know what it is. Like Do you think that like Uh

You're you should follow your own advice here? Oh, totally. Um you know, th that's why I like this article. I think it's a it's an eye opener for It pieces together a bunch of like anecdotes and philosophies, and by the time you read it All the way through you're like, Yeah, of course, of course I agree with this. So

I did it in a way with the fund. So for example Podcast. Uh podcast ad revenue. I think our first year I made like seventy thousand or something like that in podcast ads. It wasn't much. It was like a very

The the value of the audience I felt was bigger than the The value of the trust in the audience was bigger than the the ad revenue. And so I bet on that. I was like, Okay, well what if I raised a fund from these people who have been listening? And I'm not gonna take any p I'm not gonna do any pitch meetings. I'm not gonna make a presentation.

I'm just gonna say, Hey, if you trust me from this podcast and you wanna invest alongside me in startups, you can. And so now that fund is like an eight million dollar a year investment vehicle. So if you just take the math on that, right? You get two percent of that in management fee. Okay, that's not that much, but then you get twenty percent of carry. So twenty percent carry means You're basically getting one point six million of startup equity that you're investing per year.

For free. So seventy thousand in ads versus One point six million in startup equity of of which I get to pick the startups and I think those startups can You know, what if that's five X in the next uh you know, seven to ten years? That means each year I'm getting something like five million dollars a year of value.

out of a product created from the podcast. So that's an example of doing it. Example of not doing it is I do a course. Uh the reality is I do the course just because I A, I like teaching and B, I like the instant cash flow from that because I can go buy stupid shit with it.

So for example Uh uh like I wasn't I stopped teaching my course'cause I just got busy doing other shit. And then I really wanted to go like do some random N F T speculation and I was like uh Feel stuping this with my money. What if I just like did a course for, you know, two weeks?

And then that let me go buy a board ape and a crypto punk and whatever else. Okay, that sounds more fun. Um and so I'm like, Yeah, I'm down to you know, teach successions to do that. That seems like a good trade in my head mentally. But I would say that's not actually a good use of time. And then the new thing we're building, the new product. is kind of in that boat, right? W the milk road isn't called

Sean's crypto newsletter. It specifically has A new brand name and it has like staff around it and it's a product that If it works. Can be big. And it'll be supercharged or kind of initially

Initially uh distributed by people who already follow me and like my content. And then the second criticism which Nathan can address, which is like And maybe Rameet would say this. He's like, Well, but I like blogging And I don't know anything about starting like a a per uh a a fintech company.

And what's the what's your reply to that, Nathan? Yeah, I mean I think that's a great answer. And like all these people who I like lightly pick on in my article, they're all friends. And and so That's one where Like you gotta choose the business model that's right for you.

But answer the question of like okay, can this audience that I have Make me a billionaire. Trying to have as many examples of like if that's the outcome that you want. You know, or maybe it's not a billionaire, right?'Cause you raise money or something else, but getting on that hundreds of millions of dollars. um type scale. Then it's like, Okay, well here's the framework that it has to happen.

And if you're Saying like look. You know, these uh we listen to people who have amazing businesses, right? They're Can Complete control of their time.

Making millions of dollars a year. You know, like absolutely no complaints there. So this is all on the case study of like how would you do it? Actually one of my favorite examples Uh I used um Michael Hyatt as an example in this article.

And he replied. Like he sent me an email right after it and said, like, hey We actually discovered the exact same thing. Personal brand entirely. We're selling digital products. We're very tied to our email list. We're doing like sponsors and stuff like that. And we realized like Oh, this business is gonna you know reach some limits.

And so he then built out all these sub businesses. They built out a journal product, you know, other physical products. Um, and realize okay, how can we build W take what we have now and use it to leverage Um you know, other independent brands and like kickstart and launch them.

And so it's fascinating to like use someone as an example and have them come back and be like You're spot on. In describing our business, but you're actually two years. Like you were spot on two years ago, we realized the same thing. We're fixing it and now like everyone will see the result.

A little while from now. And so Uh. Yeah, if if people want this path. You know, that's that's the way to go about it. How big is this how many notebooks does this guy sell?

Uh I don't know that I have The numbers I'm trying to think what he what he put in the article. But it's um His other products are now bigger. than all the things that we know him for.

So in the tens of millions of dollars. That's crazy. Um Alright, what we're saying, Sean? I was gonna jump to the ladders of wealth because I think this is the other kind of nice framework that you have.

So um and this is kind of like I think some people have heard of kind of stuff like this, but I just wanna like lay out the fast version and then we can go into whatever's Whatever's interesting from that. So You have this image of uh Of a series of ladders.

And it's not like one ladder that you just go up up and up. It's basically like If you use if you choose this method of wealth creation, your ladder can be this high. But if you choose this m method of wealth creation, it can go one rung higher, or it can go th two rungs higher or four rungs higher, depending on which one you choose. So here's here's how it works. So it's basically The lowest ladder, the smallest ladder is you're selling time for money. So that's having a job or being a

Yeah, having a job, basically. Then there's your own service business. So this might be like an agency, you're charging by the project, you have some clients, you charge some hourly rate. Whether you're You know, it doesn't matter if you're like making logos for some company or you're a lawyer, you're actually in the same boat. You have a service business with clients, you charge an hourly rate. Then there's

Product size productised services, which is Um Given a give an example of a product uh of productised. Yeah, so the example would be Let's say I charge a hundred dollars an hour to redo the copywriting on your website. You know, and so I'm I'm doing that.

Or I say for a thousand dollars one time you can buy it with a credit card. You know, I will go and rewrite your site. You know or or write you one. whole landing page. Um, and so there's a couple of really important things there.

Uh one, the purchase is being made without me talking to you. Like if I'm charging a hundred bucks an hour, we're probably having a conversation and you're like We're planning that. Um Second thing is it's pre packaged. Uh so you know exactly what you're buying.

Um, and then the the third thing is that the time and money are totally disconnected. So if I get better and better Uh if I hire people, any of that, right? Like I'm not having to sit there for ten hours and do it. Um and so there's a bunch of these skills that they have to learn uh to do the product as service.

An example a simple example. We I think uh Ryan Beagelman came on the pod a long time ago and he talked about drop servicing. Which was a a version of this. So like uh the the example he was given is like There's these products that are like um You pay thirty dollars and I'll draw a picture of you uh you and you give me a picture of you and I'll draw you as a Simpsons character.

Or like you can send this as a gift. So if somebody loves the Simpsons, you can give me a photo of them, I'll draw it as a Simpsons character, you get it. So has all the elements you talked about. It's self serve. You come in, has a predefined price, you just click a button and you pay. Um you get a defined product and product out of it. So we're kind of both clear on the bargain.

And then third, you don't know how long it takes me, you don't know how much it costs me. I don't have to do the work myself, so with a lot of these character services, it's like It just gets piped to a, you know, person in the Philippines who's an artist. They take the gig, they submit it, they get seven dollars.

the the service keeps, you know, whatever, twenty three dollars and uh And it's all done. So that's like an example of a product type service. And uh by the way, isn't there like a Facebook group called Product I Service? Who runs that? There's a guy running that's pretty interesting. We talked about him. Uh uh green. Green or gold. Um

Mm. Greenfelt maybe or something like that. So so what he does is he's got this Facebook group. And uh the reason I like it's so niche, but it's actually pretty valuable for if you're in that niche. So he has his Facebook group called Productized uh services or something like that, productized businesses and um

And what he was doing was he would just show an example. So he'd say, Oh look, this is a real estate agent. And before, here's how it used to work, you know, here's their page, here's their face, call them up, become a client, blah, blah, blah. Th that's not a good example. It's I make w I design websites, I can code anything, you can hire me as a freelancer.

And then he changed it to a product I service, which is you're a real estate agent. You need a website for your company. I make real estate agent websites. Come here, pick one of the The six templates. Push go, I'll give you a website and I'll charge you a fixed fee of$250 or$500.

to give you that website. And so it's basically a way of productizing a um a service. You know what the best name that I've ever heard for that is Jack Butcher, who's our friend, and he has this course. It's got it's a beautiful it's called Build Once, Sell Twice. So good. It's such a good name. I I took the course, yeah.

W did you love it? Uh yeah, I loved it just'cause everything Jack does is done so well. So you know, uh He could, you know, write me a birthday card and I would be like, Wow, I love birthday cards now. It's like do I really love birthday cards or do I just love Jack Butcher? I think I just love Jack Butcher, actually. Yeah, his ability to take something and like distill it down to the absolute essence. Uh and like build one cell twice is that like it's selling products. You know where you're saying, okay.

I can make this thing a single time. And and then sell it as many times as I want. Which everyone talks about the upside of that. Of like oh this is gonna be amazing, right? I can build this and sell it a whole bunch of times. No one talks about the downside. That like It's so freaking hard to do the first like to make the first one.

You know, whereas if I'm building a one off thing. Like using websites, for example. Like, okay, I'm supposed to build a website for Sam, he's paying me two thousand bucks, like I build it out. It's not that hard, I can use my skills to do it.

The product version is like building a website builder. You know, that's incredibly hard. And so you have this like trough. for a long time where you're you're not gonna make money in the short term. But the the like the leverage is incredible.

How old are you now? Thirty one. So you're thirty one. As long as I've known you, we've known each other since we were both like twenty three, twenty four. You've always pretty much been the same where you were pretty calm.

very patient. I would say patient would probably be the best word to describe you. And there's been a lot of times I remember in two thousand and fourteen or something like that, I didn't have much money. But I hollered at my really rich friend and I was like, Man, Nathan is doing like a hundred grand a month like in revenue, this thing's gonna be big. You should try to invest and I maybe I could broker a deal and you

And uh if I did that, then I met uh you pr you probably had a ton. You've also probably had a ton of people who were trying to buy the company for a life changing amount of money. And you've probably had loads of other um So my question is How have you stayed pretty calm and also incredibly patient throughout all this? I patient is something I Struggle with your Sean was telling you about

uh how he launches like a new does a new drop every week and like and I I think that that's rooted in like uh oh, but we need the numbers to go up this week. And like you got caught and I've done I do the same thing where I'm like but it's not growing now. And I and I need to so how have you done so. Patient and long term focused. Well I think part of it is personality. And you're right, that like uh

Patient and relentless are probably two things you can used to describe me back then. Uh and now. But I think A lot of the ideas that are in some of these articles or that that I try to write about

Is really in building this one thing. So I think about Uh. Oh, an analogy that I like is strip malls versus skyscrapers. Let's say we're getting into real estate development.

And we've got a piece of land. And you're trying to decide, okay, what what should we build on it? And so you want to make money quickly, and so you build like uh you know, first little office building or something, you got like a radio shack there. Now you're mate, you got a little bit of cash flow coming in.

You know, you want to expand, so you build another, you know, add on to that. Now we've got a subway and we're we've build it out and we've got a little strip mall or a shopping center. And that's Like we're gonna use up our land. Uh each time we're expanding horizontally. And so we're

You know, launching a new product. The the version of this is the Like the blogger or podcaster, someone who's like, I've got my ebook, my membership site, my Whatever other thing that I'm doing. You know, I keep adding and each one makes a little bit of money. My approach on everything is the skyscraper model of like I'm gonna do one thing.

And I'm gonna keep pouring everything into that and just keep going taller and taller and taller. And make some and so like Convert is my attempt at a skyscraper. And like in the billion dollar creator article. It's all about people I think who are building. Those you've not you've not always done that actually. I think and I think that

That's a good strategy, but I I would actually say it's pretty cool that you've not always done that. And I'll give you an example. But the reason why it's cool is because like you're flawed and you do you you definitely have you're you're even though you're incredibly patient in long term thinking, like maybe It's not rooted in this probably, but like there are some examples. For example Like you've done a bunch of book launches. You've launched like eight or nine things that's that have sucked. Uh you did this great Twitter thread where you Well no, he did this Twitter spread and he goes here sucked. Yeah, he goes, Here's the nine things that I've created that were horrible. No, he had a threat. I I don't know if you used the word suck, maybe he said fail.

Yeah, flopped or something like that. So in that Uh This is something else, right? Like We all want to jump in and build the most perfect product. Uh.

And you can't do that because there's all of these skills that you have to learn. Like that's the point of this Latters of Wealth Creation article. Is that Like business and building wealth is the combination of like a thousand little skills. And if you try to do it all

At once. You know, like you're going to fail. And so that's like in these ladders. The one point that I'm trying to make is that the like You know, mar I put marketplaces and social networks.

You know, and at the top. Of the hardest ladder. And then just below that is Sass. 'Cause if you think about the number of skills that you have to know. In order to do that.

Like, Sam, what was uh the first product you sold online? Um I uh well there was two. It was liquor So I sold alcohol on the internet and then I also created a guide on how to how to find a roommate in San Francisco. Okay, so that guide.

Like do you remember As you were trying to figure out how to collect payments for that, or like how to put together a page. That would sell it. While he was at the Gum Road meetup. Yeah. I ended up using Gumroad because it was so stressful I couldn't figure out I was like, Well I was like I remember going to Shopify I'm like, Well does Shopify let you sell PDFs? How does that work? So one of those things, right? You're trying to figure out how to do

Okay. Okay. How to collect money on the internet is something that you have to learn. And now we're just like We could the we could rattle off a whole bunch of ways. Right, but someone starting out and saying, Hey, I wanna get into this, they don't know how to collect money on the internet. They they don't know how to

Write headlines. They don't know how to collect email subscribers. Why that even matters? Right? All of these things. And so I think the best way to do it is to learn Through a bunch of these. other little products. Right.

So that was like basically what you're seeing all the way along with the ebooks and everything else is me learning all of the skills. The ended up Culminating in being able to build a convergence. Yeah, that's true. And then the other thing is.

Like if I say I only focus on Convert, like that's not fully true because I like to have contrast in my life. I think that's something that helps. And so like we we started off You know, riffing on some real estate stuff.

And the reason that I like it is'cause you spend all your time sitting In front of a computer. And so doing something tangible like Airbnb or something. In the real world, it like to me is the opposite.

Because I get to actually go see a real property, I get to Alright. You know. Um V visited in in person, it's a totally different experience.

Uh my friend um Sean Blanc says Uh If you work with your mind, you should rest with your hands. And that's I like that idea. Of

Like just doing something that's the opposite. And so I think if you give yourself these little indulgences Of like Uh buying a house and Airbnb being it. Or starting like a one off paid newsletter that you

Run on autopilot. Or Sean, what you're doing where you're like run out and make a course and then you're like, Okay, that was fun. I think that can be a creative outlet that then helps you focus on the main thing. Rather than saying like Oh, I'm gonna go create ten Main things.

When you've been creating convert kit. Um Let's say that either you've sold the company and you still wanna like do interesting things. Or you're twenty one or twenty five years old and you wanna start something, what interesting opportunities Or problems that need to be solved have you discovered where you're like

I can't do that now, but it'd be pretty cool if someone like Someone could totally get into the blank and do Blink. Yeah, okay, this is Uh honest but a terrible answer to your question'cause of then I'cause I also did it.

Right. Um is As we were doing email marketing. You know, and running the newsletters for like James Clare and Tim Ferris and everyone else. Um The thing that I wanted to do was then get into commerce of like okay.

We have this whole side of it, right? Where Uh we're sending all the emails, have the connection to the fans. Now I want to build um The Like the credit card processing and and I wanna get a cut of everything that they sell.

Um And so then I realized like oh And that was always the answer. Uh actually if if someone was like if you weren't doing Convert, what would you do? And I always said I'd go start a gum road competitor. And then

The nice thing is there's that synergy there. So it's like okay. I went and started a gumroad competitor called Convert Commerce. It's in the same product. So it's like Uh.

Both a realistic answer and probably not very satisfying for you because it's gumroad totally different. Gumroad has been around for a long time now. Up until recently, they pretty much had never done anything to change it. Um and No one is competing with them. But

There's a downside. It doesn't make that much money. Like I actually don't know what it makes anymore, but as of a couple or a few years past Like he would tweet out his revenue and like it was really hard to build a business where he was making like four percent of someone's like ten dollar PDF. You know what I mean? Well that's why you have to build a build a better business model.

Right. And so if you look at something. And say w how could we improve that business model? The thing that I saw in that is like okay. Uh what if We had another product alongside it that we sold.

And right, so if we're convert it, we make money off of Uh your email subscription. And so I now have these two things that go hand in hand. And so Uh the commerce side is really good because now

like we're able to for every one of our customers, right, who's selling products, we're able to make a little cut of that. And they don't feel like they're paying us anything extra. 'Cause it's just a bit of a credit card processing fee. Um and then it also reduces our churn. Because anyone who's selling through Convert Commerce.

Um Right, they're now Like Convert is paying them. R rather than uh the other way around. And so we saw a radically low return.

So I'd argue that like Gumroad by itself or Yeah, the gum road competitor that I wanted to start by itself. You're right. It's not that good of a business model. But when you pair it with Convert and make the creator marketing platform. This is turning into a sales pitch. But you get the idea that I'm trying to make of it's the like the the combination of those two things.

That then makes it a fantastic business model. And so you have to look at okay. This is working, I wanna go after this, in whatever space it is. And then take a step back and say, Okay, what are the flaws in the business model? What other products do I pair it with? What other audience do I target it against?

You know, any of those things that actually makes it a compelling business instead of like A an average business. And Do

Do you uh actually are you still hands on with Convert kit or are you I know you're the CEO, but do you have someone helping you run it or are you still the guy in charge? No, I'm uh way too hands on. Uh.

The thing that people don't tell you in startups is that like The growth that you see? is a whole bunch of stacked S curves, you know, of like you figure out things that work and it takes off and then it levels out and you gotta figure out the next Uh plot or like the next uh Stage of growth.

And so I'm Uh Very hands on. Like we've had a few executives leave over the last year. Uh just a lot of change and so

I'm like Completely in it. Recruiting new executives. Uh working with the team to design the next version of the product and

So yeah. I'm not the the like uh case study of what you should do for the perfect execution on You're not the four hour work week. I I'm not the four hour work week. Yeah. Do you grind?

I mean I know you got like Eighteen kids. Uh three. I just'cause as long as I as long as I remember you, I think your oldest are like you had your oldest when you were young, and so I always would tease of like what do you have, like forty kids now? Um you've always had a couple. And uh But you you are you grinding right now or do you have

Is it a forty hour work week? Uh it's uh it's right now it's a lot more than a forty hour work week. But it's interesting of trying to structure that around Like kids. Yeah, of

It it's a lot of like Waking up early. You know, or like this weekend. Uh we're headed out for our team retreat, like meaning of a Up in person, so I'm leaving Saturday morning.

So like this morning when my kids woke up early, I like We went out of the house and like spent two or three hours together. You know, before'cause I know I'm gonna work. All day and And then be gone all next week. So

I Yeah, I don't work a crazy amount, but At least like fifty to Fifty five hours a week is probably what I aim for. So I don't know if that counts as grinding, but it's definitely not not relaxing.

It's in the middle. Yeah. In the middle, I think, of grinding and not grinding. Um What do you think, Sean? Uh I think it's great. I you know I think convert kit I'm a user, so I uh and I I complain to Nathan all the time. I'm like I'm paying too much for convert kit. Uh he's like and you do complain about that. And he was good and I just point out how much money you make. Yeah, he was like, um But you know, email's like making you all this money and I'm like, Yeah, but I just feel like email's free and like this should be free. And I was like I was like, Can I just get this for free? And he's like, Well, you know, like let me know what you think is you know, he's very patient with me and

It was sort of like, you know, because I was like I was like I don't know I'm look I told Ben, I was like, Ben, go find like what we should use instead of convert kit. And then kinda like search for a couple of products and then he was like, Well, you know, like they're all kinda worse. But there are some cheaper options. You want worse but cheaper? And I was like oh fuck, I gotta choose worse but cheaper. Wait, what's your what's your what's your bill every month? I think I pay like four hundred dollars a month, maybe more, I don't even know. Uh That's what you're and how much money do you make a month from? Well see, it's not about that, right? Like it's more I those are two separate things I feel like. Because because the email directly doesn't make me that much money.

Uh it's like through the email, I build the audience, and then through the audience, if I launch a product or a course or whatever, yeah, that makes a bunch of money, but that's separate work I gotta go do. It's a separate set of costs that go into that. And so uh we actually did, we were like, Oh, should we switch? And then I kind of respect it that Nathan wasn't just like Uh oh whatever it takes to stay you know, here you go free. I was like, uh, okay. The fact that he didn't do that tells me like he knows the value of his thing.

And um as much as I hate that I'm you know not getting this like Free discount or whatever. I respect that and so I stuck with it. Nathan, are you Mormon? No, I'm not.

Dude, you got to get the big Mormon energy. I mostly just hear it from you, Sam. You've never heard that from anyone else. I mean, you live in Idaho. You you you had kids at twenty one. Like You're you work hard, you're honest. It seems like you don't party. You got hardcore Mormon energy. When you drink Mountain Dew all the time. Yeah. You got hardcore.

Uh No Sean what I was gonna say. Is uh But What what's funny is

So like Tim McGraw and Arnold Schwarzenegger both have converted newsletters and they pay full price. And they don't ever give me shit about it. But then it's the it's like the internet influences where they're like, I should get this for free. You know, and I'm like No, so it's a fascinating because we've had that a lot over the years, right? Of people saying, like, hey, what discount can you give me? Do you know how famous I am? And kinda what's fun is

Getting into Uh I separate them from internet famous and actual famous? And the more we've gotten into the actual famous space, the more it's been easy to say like No man, here's the value that we provide. And I think I was giving you a hard time because You had just done a thread like

Two weeks earlier? About your paid newsletter. It was making like fifty or a hundred grand a month. I can't remember if I like linked you to the same thread, but that's what I wanted to do in the Twitter DMs. So How big is how how big is Arnold's list? Oh, we can't say those numbers. But he's r uh still relatively

Small whose whose list is bigger? His his list or my list. My list is not very big, but I I think it could be the same thing as Arnold. No way. That bitch. No. You don't have a favorite little Uh like business model synergy.

That weekly? So he was on like it's fun like as he goes around and promotes his newsletter, right? Because he goes on like Jimmy Kimmel and is talking about his email newsletter, which is It's always fun. Uh yeah, I go on indie hackers, dude.

But uh when Like a business model thing that's funny is when one converted customer links to another. To grow their list. So like when Tim Ferris Linked to

Uh Arnold's list and said like hey You know, go sign up for Arnold's list. Yeah, out of the forty thousand subscribers. And and it's just like Our cut just goes. Uh you know, it's just one customer just referred to the other, but now

Dude you gotta write a blog post like The best way to grow your list, partnerships. Here's like a list of like interesting people to partner with Uh I have a VP of growth opening. Uh do you want to come down to the work for Morning Brew actually, as we discussed last episode. Yeah, last episode. Morning Brew offered me a job too. There you go. It's actually like a great power move is to just offer uh staff writer jobs or staff jobs to CEOs of other companies just to like flex on them. Hey, you know, I heard things are tough. Um

Just so you know, we're we're always there's always a home for you here. So listen to listen to this C of MailChimp. Like the like A month into starting the hustle. Um I like we had written blog posts, whatever, and we were I was trying to hire writers and I saw this awesome article and I And I don't remember where it was.

But the author was Nelly Bowles. I think her name is B O W L. B O W L E S and now She's like a really famous New York Times person. And I think

Like even when I found her, she was a actually at the New York Times, but like had just done a one off piece for the small magazine. And I emailed her, I'm like You are so good. Would you love to interview for a position at my company? Like we're looking for bloggers. And she was like That's cute. But no, thanks. And uh I will never forget that. She told me that's cute. I have got I have I have held this grudge against her. For years. Because she said it's cute.

For years. You can just imagine like the little pat on the head and the hair tossel that went with like you know, like It kept me up at night like so many I was like I've got I how am I gonna get revenge? And I don't have a good way, but that was like eight years ago. He needs to like get revenge on. It's like Nelly Bowles. I definitely have I've you know, like what they say like I got like a bunch of champagne bottles with people's names on it and whenever I get back at'em I'd crack that champagne bottle open and drink it. Like yeah, I want some people's heads on my desk, that's for sure.

We have money to get on that list. Uh not much, turns out. Not much. Just don't call me cute. Just be like, you know, comment on one of his Instagram uh you know videos and just be like Uh awesome for a beginner. You're still at it. Awesome. We uh we have a buddy who is like the nicest guy in the world. Like uh you know, we'll give you the shirt off his back. And uh nice to everybody, kind to strangers, kind to animals, kinda everybody.

And you go into his house and on his fridge He's got this like clipart. Of a brand name of a another company's logo with a Target and like kind of like a red target, like a sniper. Um, and he's got three of them on his fridge. And I remember going over like, What's this about? And he's like

Oh yeah. Uh he's kinda like, you know, those are my those are my competitors. I just Every day when I come to the kitchen I just want to think about, you know, just sort of killing them basically. I was like, Whoa, there's a a a dark side to the uh to Mr. Nice guy here. Do you have one of those, Nathan? I would bet anything, Nathan, does not have anything like what we're talking about. He's got You are so wrong. I bet you that he he will I don't know if he'll admit it. I bet you he hates MailChimp.

Oh. I have weird feelings about MailChimp because I have so much respect for them. And like Dude, you have respect to them like the guy who killed John Lennon has respect for him. It's called a love knife. You love him so much you want to kill him. That's like what it is. Mm.

So you have to separate the businesses like the business from the people. So I think that's true. Like one time uh I was at a conference And Ben Chestnut was speaking. And so I emailed him and was like, Hey man, will you I don't know even know why he said yes. But it's just like uh like Big fan of what you've done. Like

All in all fairness we're a competitor trying to take as much business from you as you can. But would you be up for sitting down and talking? And he said, Like, Yeah, I have a flight at this time, so I'm checking out the hotel. So like meet me in the hotel lobby. You know, and we'll chat for thirty minutes. Gave you the wrong hotel. Love it. Great power move, Ben Chestnuts. Set me on this wild beast chest. Yeah, it's like that's you missed your flight, but you never had a flight.

But no, he like he sat down with me and told me all about how they launched their free plan and all this stuff. And then the they were uh Ink magazines. Uh, company of the year. This is the Inc magazine, like Inc. Five Thousand event. And so the editor in chief. from Inc. Magazine comes up while we're talking and he's like, Hey Ben, great talk, all of that.

And uh Um He Ben goes, Hey, do you know Nathan? He's trying to kill my company. And like as he introduces me to the editor in chief of Inc Magazine and

Anyway so I have time for the just like Assaulted him right there. For the record, Nelly, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do anything. Is this the same Sam, is this the same person that you had the interview, the famous interview with at the New York Times or the New Yorker or whatever it was, and like the interview did not go well. It did not go well. I forget the No, that was uh Aaron Griffin. And She like came to interview me and I don't even know why, but she was fishing for stuff and she's like so like

What do you do in the weekends like listen to Joe Rogan? That's what she said to me. I'm like, What? Like, no, like he doesn't even like That's Monday to Friday. He doesn't even have a podcast. What are you talking about? Yeah, and and she was like, Well, like'cause you're like a tech bro and I'm like First of all Most of New York Times revenue is digital. You're a tech company, so you tell me what your tech friends do. And uh

So anyway, yeah, that thing goes. Did you storm out or or how did that end? Some something like Yeah, I j I was just like I don't know what to say. I'm outta here. Yeah, I I It it didn't it didn't end well. Uh those interviews. I've only ever had one of those. Um And I don't remember who it was with, but where you're like, Okay.

I I I think we're done. Well, you can just tell that they're like looking for some angle and all the questions are weird and you're But why would anyone hate you? Because you're kinda perfect. Yeah, it's like I like this. I've got there's a lot of the shower. Did you see this clip? A stupid son of a bitch. You know, what's infl what do you think about inflation? And Biden just like In that moment was just like lost it. He was just like Yeah.

Great. Stupid son of a bitch. That's how I imagine Nathan like breaking character in like one of these interviews. Ha So okay, Sam, I have a question on this then.

Like, do you think that being so nice in all of this and and like everyone likes me holds back my uh Growth as a entrepreneur and you know. Uh Internet celeb wanna be internet celebrity. No, because um, A, like you're happy and it's working. So I think that's like the goal. And B, you actually have dropped it a couple times, so Uh you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but basically you didn't like what Sahel at Gumroad did.

And you called them out and it was pretty uh It was pretty vicious and I knew that do you know this, Sean? No, what did he call him out for? Dude, he just like publicly kind of bitch slap Sahel and So Uh so I was around uh Sam was talking about, I was around Gumroad from the very beginning.

Uh I think I was the first independent Or w at one point they told me I was the first independent seller to cros ten thousand dollars in sales on Gummerit. So like From the very, very beginning. Um

And uh anyway, so friends with tons of people there. And Like spent a lot of time at their office and all of that. And a huge friend of Sahill's. But at one point he Like got burnt out on the company. They had an offer to to buy the company.

He didn't take it. he laid everyone off instead. Like it it wound down and and like ultimately failed. But the thing is with a platform like that, they don't Like fail and disappear. They just like fail and coast and still like the software still works and all that.

And then he came back and told this totally different story of like Uh here's how I You know, like V C is evil and I'm running the company like in this totally new way. Um, here's how I run it in Five hours a week with

Like Two contractors. And that was frustrating, but I didn't say anything. But then when they went and raised new money And didn't give any they they got all the VCs to write off their equity.

They got all of the team members to be like, Hey, it's a failed company, like give up your equity and all that as part of it. And then went and raised a bunch of new money. And didn't Uh go back and give the original team members.

Like that pissed me off. Because it was like I know exactly who built the software. You know, like'cause I sat next to them as we were talking about it, you know, San Francisco and Like I know they don't have any equity and I know that you didn't take care of them. And now you're like telling this new story and everything. So

Uh yeah, I guess Sam and I do make some enemies on the interview. I was I don't know Sahel. Uh he seems like a nice up guy from my limited interactions with him. But I was like, Well if Nathan's saying that, it's probably true. Yeah, and you know, you could separate your reputation the person from like the decision. I've made a bunch of bad decisions. Uh but I don't think I'm a bad guy. And Yeah.

And and so, you know, I I would separate the two like'cause he you know Probably a nice guy. I I don't know him super well either. But um But you're right, like you know the the way he kind of got Twitter famous in a way was to come out and tell this story of like

The kind of like it was like a fail story that worked. It was like We were the hot thing. We raised money. We had all these expectations. People bet on us. It didn't work. Um, and so now we're in this new mode and I've seen the light. It was sort of like, you know, I got baptized and now I believe Um that this business should be done this other way.

Okay, fair enough. Um, and some people really like that. They thought it was very transparent, all that good stuff. But it was weird that like, you know, a year or two later Like, oh I'm raising new money at a hundred million dollar valuation. It's like wait, you're back on the that train, like Weren't you kinda saying like, you know, all the things that were wrong with that model and like

Championing Yeah, championing the the the the freedom that you were getting and the choose your own destiny and getting off the rat race, like Maybe I read it wrong, maybe I was just skimming and I missed the point, but like it that did seem strange to me. And then like you're saying, Nathan, like It's kinda weird to Kind of po To do that whole thing in public when a whole bunch of people

Bet on you, lost money on you. And um And are not participating in the like, you know, future. And so that would leave a bad taste in people's mouth, I think. So, you know, I think it's fair points, um You know and I'm sure

I'm sure he's got his side of the story about why it's not bad and why it's not that and all those things. So you know Fair enough, but he's not here, so I'm just gonna say my side and Seems like that'll be the final word. Uh I mean tons of credit to to Sahel afterwards because he Like he owned up to parts of it and and we had a good conversation about it. And he actually

Then when he launched his book. Um he actually included Convert Kit in the story in it, which I was Was really surprised. So

Uh as far as people who don't hold a grudge, I think uh Sahel's one. Not Sam. He's not Sam. I think He's grudges too. And in fact I actually manufacture grudges, so like There's just one guy I always call my rival, and uh I'm sure from his post perspective, he's either like, Who is this? or he's like Wait, why are we rivals? We we got a lot

We got along just fine. And in my head, this is like somebody I met in c uh when I was in college. And um The guy he's got like a super r ultra will rich dad, like billionaire dad. And uh

I always used to joke like if I ever played basketball Uh, there usually wasn't like another Indian guy like playing basketball. So if there ever was, like the running joke in my group of friends in college was Well, Sean, we know who you're guarding. Like you have to guard him and you need to win your matchup here. Like your honor is on the line, basically. Like we need to know who's the better Indian basketball player on the court right now. And it was just like this running joke. And so that got extended once we I started a business with my college friends. They were like, Well

Seems like this guy is like You know, your rival. And I and I played into it and we kind of made it a thing where the guy would be like, you know, hanging out with Richard Branson on his island, and we were like Just trying to create a chip on our shoulder underdog story is like, you know, I'd be sleeping on my air mattress that I was planning to return to Target to like save money because our business wasn't doing any good. And s if you saw this other guy like, you know, sipping pina coladas with Richard Branson, it just felt like oh

Those are the haves and we're the have nots. And so I was like manufacturing these little feuds. Or like um W I remember we did a uh we when we bought Bebo back We were gonna relaunch it and I gave the scoop to this girl who was like really nice journalist to me. Um she was somebody I'd met. She seemed really nice and I was like, Hey, you do you want the s the story? Like I'll give you the story about like what we're gonna do and how it all played out.

She's like, Yeah, great. So we she comes over, I do the interview, it's like Literally, you know, we're playing patty cake. It's all good. Article comes out the next day and the headline is like some vicious it's like Remember Bebo? Ha. Yeah, that you know, that flop is back again. It was just like w it was like Oh my god. It was like

Disgusting Burry lunches the he told me the theme with his bad breath and I was like what in my head that's what it said. Yeah, if you like spinach, go eat some of the stuff that came out of Shog's teeth. It's still probably there. So I felt so backstabbed. Just straight knife. And I remember just being like so I never had the interview where I walked away. I had the opposite where I Felt completely betrayed. And I text her, I was like, yo. What the fuck? Cause actually the article was fine. Just the headline was completely brutal. It was just making fun of us and saying like. Get a load of this fucking schmuck. And um and she's like, sorry, like the editor writes the headlines and he just thought that that's what would get more clicks. Like I don't have any say in that. And I was like

Oh. So fuck you and your profession, uh was like you know, where I landed on that. Um that I think that was my only feud. Actually my other one where I called uh What's her name? Uh the Jake Paul of journalism was probably the other one. Taylor Lorenz.

Yeah, like I think that I actually think It's great fuel. I mean like I joke to my wife, I'm like I'm fueled on like carbonated water and like grudges. Like I think uh gr gr grudges I think are like the greatest fuel ever. Like isn't that like The whole thing about being like a chip on your shoulder, like just call it what it is. My macro diet. Yeah. I'm just like Yeah, like I gotta make sure I get my rage in that day. Otherwise I just don't feel like myself. It's like alright, gold. I just love firing people. Um So anyway, I think it's good. I think Rage is great.

That's the key takeaway from this episode. People listen to like a Lloyd. Can we go manufacture some grudges? Somebody yells every day. I do. Like it uh well and Sean when when we first met Ben Levy, or y I met him for the first time, you were like Well you know, Sam's a little bit Challenging. Don't take it personal if he kinda fires off. Uh yeah, Ari Gold is actually a great it great analogy because there's no

There's no um Uh What's it called? Like there's no hate behind the words, right? Like I'm y I'm yelling, but I love you. Like it has nothing to do with How I how much I like you or how good I think you are. I'm just yelling'cause I'm yelling. And uh

So I tried to give him the heads up, but you were so Zen. Uh this was post post exit Sam is a completely different guy. He's uh You know You're not already gold anymore. It'll come back. In due time. Um

Dude, Nathan, thanks for coming on. Happy uh Happy you you're able to make it. I yeah. I bailed on you last week, sorry, and I'm happy that we made it work this time. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's always fun. What yeah, you want to where people promote

Like what Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, um okay, so if people want to follow me online, uh I'm I'm currently trying to grow my Twitter audience.

So you should go follow it there. Uh, I'm trying to see if I can go from I'm at fifty thousand thousand. Yeah. Uh Nathan Barry. Uh in Barry's B A R Usu.

Usually when you try to the audience you should uh tell'em the name of the of the thing. You know, I only want the most dedicated fans who like really No, I'm just getting Thanks for the advice. Shove that in your ladder. Ha ha You know what we didn't discuss?

One time, Sean? Nathan. renamed the company Convert Kit to something else and he didn't realize it, but it meant like something like it was disrespectful to Hindus, Hindies. Hindi what's the plural. Yeah, you heard the first time. And it was disrespectful to them and he made this huge name change and they changed the company back to Convert Kit after like twenty four hours. Wait, what was it?

What was what was the Okay. What I I I speak anything about what is I mean surface. But in sea culture it means like selfless service and like the highest form of Yeah, it's a It's so it it's a whole thing. Like I'm doing it.

I'm doing a service for you. I don't I don't find that offensive. That's not offensive. Yeah, there were uh a lot of people who did find it offensive. And so yeah, if we talk if we talk about mistakes turns out I'm not as easily offended at owning a trouble. So uh Hindus didn't find it offensive. And I actually got a lot of people who were like Uh That's like thought that it was awesome or something like that. Um

But uh everyone who is from the Sikh culture. They were like Sorry, yeah. m much different meaning, uh there. So anyway, that was a five hundred thousand dollar mistake. But uh I owned up to it.

That's a whole thing for another day. Yeah. The the ni the convert kit? Good name. The other thing, like seven or whatever you said, not a good name. Hindu maybe Hindu Worship. That doesn't seem like the right name for an email. Yeah, it's a great name. That's such a good name.

Well, so maybe it was a five hundred thousand dollar mistake that will turn out to be a multi million dollar win. Do you still do you still have the domain?'Cause we should just launch like a um prayer uh service or like you know like a a philanthropy uh thing for India under that name. I have some Indian startups that might want that name. I do have the domain. There's actually two startups. One that wrote by combinator and one other Uh that I have asked for it at one point, but I paid three hundred and forty thousand dollars for the domain, so

I'm I'm kinda hanging on to it. Four letters. I don't even know how to spell that word. How do you spell that word? S E V A. Right? Yeah. But um it sounds like a bottle water.

Something that you're gonna like send emails from. So I think it's a smart move. My uh I got in trouble this morning because I wrote uh sorry in in the Milk Road uh edition that went out this morning. Uh, one of the things we covered was like, Oh, the Fed the Fed had this meeting about interest rates and how that's affecting like the markets. And uh

And I was like basically I put a picture up of the committee that meets the Fed Open Market Committee. And it's basically like a bunch of old white people. And I was like, you know today, you know I I had a bunch of different openers that I scrapped. One was like, here's a picture from a nursing home I visited recently. Oh wait, no, that's not right. That's the Fed Open Market Committee. And I scrap that. And I said something else and then I was like, you know, at today's elderly white people committee And I like I had a strike through and then I was like no at the Fed open market committee. Uh people got mad at you. It's like a C's candy and um

Yeah, people were like, you know, the skin color has nothing to do with it. And I was like, Yeah, of course. It's a joke. And it has everything to do with my joke. And like just the picture's funny. And like, wait, I thought we could make fun of the Fed with no repercussions. Like that the there's like certain things that are really safe to punch at and uh The Fed seems like one of the safest, you know, the Fed You know, the the the Senate. Like w Who's who's defending their honor? I don't I don't understand. Who are you? Is your mom on this? Is your grandma on this panel? Oh yeah, some people got mad at me. I was like, Y you should go ahead and unsubscribe because uh

My filter is a lot looser than that. Um Dude, Nathan, thank you. This is awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me. We'll have to do it again sometime. And we'll have to hang out in uh Austin when you get this new property. We'll come and and do a workout on the You know, on the ranch.

Come on, let's go. Okay. It's good.

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