Encarta | How To Build A Billion Dollar Business As An Influencer

00:00

Like, you gotta choose the business model that's right for you, but answering the question of, like, okay, can this audience that I have

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make me a billionaire?

00:19

I have the one house that's gonna fall off, like, fifteen thousand a month, and it's just a single house.

00:25

So you'll beat it by quite a bit. No way, really. What's what's the house worth?

00:31

I bought it for nine hundred k.

00:34

That's ridiculous. And it can, dude. That's crazy. Seven hundred a night.

00:38

Where where is it located? Yeah.

00:41

It's in in Boise,

00:42

like, right next to the Boise State University Stadium.

00:47

So do you get, like, basically, like, football tourists, or what do you who who's renting this thing for seven hundred dollars a night in Boise?

00:53

We're live, by the way, Faith. We're live.

00:56

Great. No for real.

01:00

Who's renting it? So you get, like, all graduation, everyone coming into you know, tour the university or whatever else. And then,

01:09

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, the place you just like me to. So so why have you bought, like, forty shelves in the tile box watch and all that? Why have you bought, like, five of them in the same area? That's my question.

01:24

Yeah. It's a million dollars. It's a million dollar or nine hundred thousand or whatever you said. Under a million dollar house that's making

01:30

twenty fifteen grand a month, why don't fifty fifty of them?

01:33

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, it just did eight thousand

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for January locked in.

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And then the summer bookings are coming in at, like, quite a bit higher.

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Like, so the January ones, you know, our last minute and and Boise is slow there.

01:55

But,

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yeah, the summer ones are coming in at eight, nine, a thousand dollars a night, eight hundred, nine hundred, or a thousand a night, which is wild. And we haven't even put a hot tub on it yet. So I just bought a hot tub today. And,

02:08

so we'll get that in there. I should be able to charge a little bit more, and it's gonna be good.

02:13

Wow. Okay. We should start. We should intro intro you.

02:17

Well, yeah. So you're we're on we're live. That Michael live. This is Nathan Barry. Nathan Barry,

02:23

I've known Nathan since a gum road meetup, Sean. I went to a gum road meetup in, like, for real. I'm not joking. Two thousand twelve. That sounds maybe twenty thirteen. Two thousand twelve. Twenty thirteen.

02:33

Nathan was doing gumroad. He had this book called Authority. Right? Authority?

02:37

Yep.

02:38

And don't even remember what the book was about just making a living online, but then you also had graphic design stuff and you had a really cool blog and you, you sold all types of stuff But I've been homies with you for a while, and then you launched this thing called ConvertKit. And I was like, Nathan, like, the other thing's working. Just do that. And, anyway,

02:55

Now it's a business that both Sean and I, I think, are I didn't end up I didn't end up doing it. There's some

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mechanics problem with the way we we can get into it. We're an LLC in it gets complicated,

03:07

as, like, pass through funds and stuff like that. But, yeah, but Sam, you're in the conference.

03:12

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 different. Their their revenues all completely live. If you Google convert kit revenue, you have, like, twenty dollars revenue.

03:27

Twenty nine. Do you do you regret now that your business is actually kicking ass, do you feel like, kinda wish this wasn't all super transparent or, you know, because 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.

03:45

Yeah. So I think it's,

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a great idea if it's for a mission reason, a terrible idea if it's for, like, a marketing reason. And I actually had two friends who sat me down at one point. They're like, Nathan, this is an intervention.

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Take down your,

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like, public,

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metrics page.

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And

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which 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, it's a mission thing of the whole mission for the company to help creators earn a living. And so if we can put this public blueprint out there, that's not just like the snapshot in time where, you know, you've done it with companies where you're going through and you're like, oh, they said here they were at ten million. You know, you're like trying to piece together the trajectory.

04:29

We we all have the same spreadsheets.

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And so,

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like, actually doing it in real time, means that someone can be like, okay, I'm at fifty k MRR.

04:39

Churn is absolutely brutal right now.

04:42

I wonder what ConvertKit's churn 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 bread crumbs. That every future entrepreneur who wants to How much recreate? How much traffic does that? Hopefully, another industry.

05:07

Do you know? What's that? How much traffic does that page get?

05:11

I don't know. It's not actually even our page. It's convertkit dot baremetrics dot com.

05:16

Right. And,

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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,

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I have a I I have a system of tuning out whenever anybody says values, mission, vision, Things like that. I'm just like, by default. I do not believe anything you're about to say for the next thirty seconds.

05:43

How many many people work there now? Sixty nine.

05:47

Because

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when you

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you wrote this blog post 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?

06:06

Yeah. So

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companies totally 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.

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And,

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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,

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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,

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but we were, like, expenses were increasing by so much more that,

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like, our days' worth of expenses was getting shorter and shorter.

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And so that got,

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super scary. He just wanna know, okay, random story.

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So,

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I I think you all know Andrew Warner

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Mick surgery. I was at a mixergy meetup in San Francisco. Like, he would do these Scotchnights.

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And,

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after one of those,

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like, we I think we're walking out of the building. And he's like, did you, you know, it kinda pulls me aside. He's like, did you seem super stressed?

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And

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And I was like, yeah. Like, and I kinda told him the financial situation. And we were, like, our bank balance was growing, but, you know, you're like, now paying all these people and you have no money. And,

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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.

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You're going if you need the money, spend it, do whatever you whatever you want with it. Whenever you feel right, like, pay me back.

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Or if you don't need it, like, just put it in a savings account, like, just let it be in, you know, like, a insurance blanket for you. And then, wow. You know, why are you back at some point? Did you know him well? Anything if you

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we'd hung out in person, I think, twice before. I knew him a little bit. What happened on the podcast? And what were you gonna say? The only thing what? Oh, the 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.

08:04

If not, why are they looking back? What smart move?

08:07

Okay. But that's such a good move.

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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.

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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,

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Andrew is forever one of those people where I'm like, you. Just because he pulled me aside, it was like, did you seem stressed? And he was like, yeah. Let me loan you a security blanket. That's one of the coolest stories I've heard. That's Frankly, that's amazing.

08:45

Shout out to Andrew. We gotta have him. And we gotta have Andrew on now just for that story.

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We've joked about it before, but we should have him on for sure.

08:52

Because it is 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, like, a Black Friday deal or what What causes this huge Yeah. We can talk about whether that's a good idea or not.

09:14

So early on, right, when you need cash,

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the thing that you do in SAS is you push annual plans. Right? Cause you have this, 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.

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And so we kinda just kept doing that. And then it what it did is it aligned a whole bunch of,

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renewals. You know, annual payments right around that same time. 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. You're also getting all the churn at the same time. So I don't know that

09:47

Like, I'm like, we're not gonna keep doing. By the way, there's so many things like that in business that I'm like,

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we're doing this. I can't really say if it's a good idea or a bad idea. I wish I could. 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.

10:11

What's an example? Like, in my DTC business SARS, kinda thinking about this is,

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we do this model that, like, drops new products all the time. Every single week, we drop new products.

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And it's great because it causes this sales spike, but it also puts you on this treadmill of

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new products that you have to release every week. And that means you gotta do photoshoots of those products every week. And then that means that you have to have inventory

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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

10:46

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, when I look at his chart, it's creating this spike every single week. And I'm like, okay. So that's good. But these other three things are bad. And, like, I don't know how to weigh these against each other because they're, like, in different categories that speak different languages and on different time scales. So it's just hard to hard to know if this is like a dumb idea or or a bad idea or a good idea.

11:11

I think the thing to look for in that is,

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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 is good. We're set for a long time. 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 is 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'd watch for those things where it's, like, this served the business well for a while, and it doesn't anymore.

11:53

Who built the early version?

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So I did all the design in front end development. And then I hired freelancers

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you know, write the rails back end. And then that went okay.

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And then it it went much better when I hired a longtime friend named David to come on and, like,

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full time,

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build it. But that was two years then. And you and it was making enough it was making enough money to pay him.

12:18

No. That was where I paid him out of the fifty grand that I put in, which was like our our savings and everything.

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It seems like a pretty good 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 enough revenue to pay people. Yeah.

12:37

Yeah. And,

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I mean, it's wild what you can do when one you're doing a lot of the design and code yourself, you know. So gotta count that in in the cost. But,

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but but yeah, and then you just fund it with that makes it sound easier than it is. But, you know, you fund it with growth.

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Simple. Not easy. Yeah. Simple not easy. So so Sean Nathan, he's got this blog post called, like, how to how to build wealth. I think it's called we have another blog post

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ladders to wealth. He's got this, actually, this other great blog post called the billion dollar creator, I think it's called, or the billion dollar blog. Let's do the billion dollar let's do the billion dollar one. Or I'm sorry to say, Sam. I didn't know where you're going with that.

13:16

Well well, I just want to say. So this whole thing about transparency. So Nathan, I don't think you publicize this. But I'm on this email list.

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And every month or week, probably month, I think he sends out, dude, I 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, like, which stocks he owns of and of how much

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like, his angel investments. Like, you see his entire

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all of his finances.

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I gotta get on this list. This sounds amazing.

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It might be on that one. It's all the content that I wanted to that I wanted, like, other people to publish. Like, Sam, you talk about fat fire and, like, a that's a fantastic subreddit.

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And I just want, like, more of those conversations, because I've written a ton about people who have or, like, how to get from

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say, like, zero to a hundred thousand dollars,

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on the internet. You know, that's you mentioned my book authority. That's what that was.

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But, like, once you kinda get to the point where you're making a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand or more online,

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like, people don't talk about

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what you do with their money, because, 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, then I just charge people a hundred bucks, like, just to filter out the the,

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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,

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online. And so The way that I I described your blog or that email is it's kinda like face tattoos and cornrows.

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I think it's super cool when other people have them, but I don't want it.

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Like, you know, not not for me, but I I I I it's cool when others have them.

15:04

There's only two hundred people on that list. So it's it's a smaller group right now. Dude, I don't know, man. But, Sean, what was your question about

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through the the the framework here. So you have this blog post. That's kind of like I know you worked on that for a while,

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kinda shaping your thinking here.

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And, and then we also have Sam who's somewhat

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bearish on the idea of the creator economy, thinks it's kind of overhyped over over buzzword.

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And you're mister creator economy in a way, Nathan. So I think this would be this this might be good.

15:34

But let's walk I don't think our opinions are opposites, by the way. I would I would probably our opinion. They're not opposite. Yeah. For the sake of argument, let's just, let's just walk through. So you basically have these four rules of building

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a billion dollar audience.

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So,

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I guess, like, first, why did you even wanna do this, like, kind of, like, what got you interested in this? And then let's walk through the four. Yeah.

15:56

So the article asks a question, like, the whole premise of it, and that is, what is the most profitable

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place to direct attention. Right? So everything we do, right, we're we're putting a podcast now, whatever you're doing on on TikTok or if you're, movie star, everything else Right? You have attention. And brands want it. They're willing to sponsor, you know, all of this stuff. And so it's like, okay.

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You have the opportunity to point that attention somewhere. What's the most profitable

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way to do that long term? Because you look at people,

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you know, maybe who taking sponsorships.

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Right?

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Five grand to, you know, to sponsor the newsletter or, you know, five hundred bucks for a sponsored,

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Instagram post or anything like that. And

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that's actually not that profitable. And when you dive in, you learn that the most profitable thing to do is to create your own product

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and to drive that attention to something where you actually build equity long term. So it's like a longer,

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article talking about that. But, like, the richest movie stars, you know, like take Jessica Alba, for example.

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Right?

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She has made a lot of money from movies,

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but the bulk of her wealth is from starting a company using you know, being the spokesperson for her own company.

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And then my other favorite example would be Ryan Reynolds,

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who,

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you know, right, 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.

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I'm going to buy my own companies with Met Mobile and Aviation Gen, and I'm gonna be my own spokesperson.

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So I don't get cash.

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I get equity.

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And so, you know, you just watch this process of people doing it over and over again. And that's actually my hypothesis with ConvertKit,

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right, of

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I have attention on the internet through running a vlog,

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and a newsletter and all of that. How do I wanna monetize it, sponsorships,

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ebooks, membership,

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a bunch of things. And I'm like, nope. I wanna monetize it through ConvertKit, building a SaaS company. Like, that's my

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version

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of the billion dollar creator. So that's the whole premise of the article, and it's like,

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So you have you have a couple examples. So, okay, so rule number one is you have to build more than a person brand. So what does that mean? You give the example of Jessica of Mark from primal kitchen. So what what is the nuance here? It's like it's not just your face, your name, you need to actually

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create a brand around,

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around your lifestyle or your interest. Is that it? By the by the way, Sean primal Kitchen, is the

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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,

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And he, like, has a health and health blog and he starts selling ketchup and he sells that for, like, three hundred million dollars.

18:41

Yeah. So, I mean, what Mark did,

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with,

18:45

I mean, his blog was called Marks Daily Apple, and it was, like, the leading,

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you know, like, paleo,

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kinda health blog in that space. And a blog like that, you know,

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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.

19:02

Right? But

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you play that forward,

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and that's it's all about him, all about his name,

19:09

all that Ray's name is in the name of the site.

19:12

But, I mean, you can build substantial wealth that way. What he didn't said is he started primal kitchen, you know, Kickstarter this whole brand

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by saying, like, I have the most popular site in the space. Let me, you know, make these,

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paleo friendly,

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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 he had at the time? Or It it wasn't huge, huge. Like, he was no bigger than ours. Yeah. A hundred thousand subscribers in the email list, maybe. So hundred thousand was kind of like trusted audience size

19:42

to kick kick off this Yeah. You gotta remember audiences were a lot smaller. Like, even just twenty fifteen, twenty twelve, like, that kind of time frame. But, yeah, then he sell sells it to Craft for two hundred two years.

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You can't sell a blog

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to like, a blog doesn't sell for two hundred million.

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You know,

20:00

like all of these things. And the crazy thing is he still owns the audience. Right? The thing that that kicks out of this whole product, he still owns, and 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 an whole identity with it, and Craft is is thrilled with their purchase. Kylie Cosmetics is probably the biggest one that people know about because you have tons of attention through Instagram,

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TikTok, whatever. Yep. The TV show, whatever.

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And,

20:31

instead of just saying, hey, I'll you can pay me is it people will used to say, wow. You have to pay twenty five thousand dollars for a tweet from Kim Kardashian or then it that was twenty five thousand, then it went up to, hundred two 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, an actual, like, endorsement post from from one of them. And,

20:56

and so then, you, you know, cool. You can make a lot of money doing that. You know, right? You can could stack up quarter million dollars at a time,

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but Kylie Cosmetics was a billion dollar brand. So I was like, well, who wants to who wants to pay me?

21:09

To promote their products. Well, it's mostly, like, skin care products, makeup products, or for Kim Kardashian. It's her shapewear,

21:15

like, you know, like,

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and Chloe Kardashian, it was like, you know, fashion or whatever. So Chloe launches

21:21

true American jeans.

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Kim Kardashian launches. I think it's called what was a

21:27

skims skims. Is it like the shaper brand? Dude, Sean, you are on top of it. Keep going. Kylie, Kylie cosmetics.

21:34

Kanye, Yeezy shoes, right there is like, they all turned

21:38

to say who whoever is the the most willing advertiser

21:42

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 LaVrar Ball. 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 is like loud mouth 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 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 in Adidas. And instead,

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he created

22:18

big baller brand, 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, 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?

22:48

So the shoe thing is not going good. Basically, the guy they had running it, like, was, like, kinda 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.

23:01

The the the first brother kinda underperformed his potential at that time.

23:05

And, actually, now that it would've worked, because the the youngest brother, the one who was, like, the the the one who's kind of, like, he was kind of, like,

23:12

a fuck boy a little bit. He's, you know, he's, like, had a goal, you know, like a diamond grill, had like a Lambo at fifteen 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.

23:23

And if they had kind of built it properly around him, it probably would have done a lot better. So I, Nathan, you'll get a kick out of this. So, like, three or four weeks ago, we did this thing where 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

23:41

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 or anything like that. And they complained.

24:01

And I, like, reached out to this kid. I'm like, who are you? And he replies back with, like, michael at you michigan dot org. Or over to something like that or dot u or whatever it is. And I'm like, wait, dude, are you in college? I mean, like, he calls me and I face time with him and he's in his dorm room.

24:18

And he's young. He's in still in college. He's unis university thing. And and he's really cocky. Not in a bad way, but he's like, He's got Hotspah. And he goes, man, I knew I was gonna do this. I went 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. 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.

24:41

Do you wanna invest? I go, bro, listen.

24:43

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 wanna raise money, raise money for that stuff

24:56

and own all he he owns this thing called like

25:00

I forget what it's called future, but he's got like eight handles now that have like

25:04

a million something follow followers. I'm like, no, no, no, don't raise money for this thing, man. Own that forever, and that your piggy bank and your audience, raise money for like this other thing that you wanna 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 it 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

25:24

hit your massively handicapped because of it.

25:28

Yeah. Well, and that's I I think such a good point because you can

25:31

have that platform to launch whatever you want in the same way that you know, marks this and 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.

25:45

Right? You have the when you

25:48

what's this? I was gonna give an example. Connor McGregor is doing this pretty brilliantly in DFC. So, like, Do you have seen gets knocked a lot because 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 is fifty percent NFLs, 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 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.

26:20

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, alright. This thing's gonna get me famous,

26:34

but then okay. What am I famous for? People like my suits at the press conference Cool. I'm in launching a suit brand. Okay. I'm Irish. I'm gonna launch an Irish whiskey. Irish whiskey, I think just sold for, I don't know if you know Sandliss.

26:46

Yeah. Like, he walked away with a hundred. Exactly. Then he's like,

26:49

cool. I'm super fit because I'm a UFC fighter. My body's amazing.

26:53

Here's my p ninety x program. It's called MacGregor Fast. You can, you can buy my program and subscribe to that, and you can get fit with me. Oh, you're getting fit. And, 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, recover faster after workouts.

27:10

And the guy is literally just selling, like, every piece of his lifestyle as a independent brand. Like, you know, I think at one point he was thinking about launching a sports betting exchange. It's like, what is the best business? Who's wants to pay me? Oh, Draft King's wants to pay me?

27:25

Maybe instead of Draft King's as MacGregor Kings now, and I will I'll launch a competitor. He just He just opened up a bar called the Black Ford. Exactly. Oh, you know, I had good good success whiskey. What else do we do? Ira Stautz. Okay. I'm gonna so he bought a bar Not that the bar is that good. It's like a bar in his hometown. I think a bar is not gonna make a ton of money, but then he used that bar as the, like, basically the backdrop

27:46

to film

27:47

him creating a stout. And now he's gonna sell a stout as a new, like, alcoholic beverage brand. And, it's kind of amazing. The guy is gonna become a billionaire

27:56

And fighting is gonna be the lowest part of his income stream is my guess, which is insane. I bet you

28:02

I bet you, McConner,

28:04

Connor McGregor. I assume he did for you. Well, he might make a billion. He might lose a billion.

28:10

I think he could. Nathan, you're you're worth like,

28:14

did you reveal the valuation of your company?

28:17

We we raised it two hundred million.

28:19

Okay. So let's just I let's just I don't know what the facts are, but let's just say you own ninety percent. So you're worth a hundred and eighty million dollars. Do you think that you could ever spend through that?

28:30

I would have to radically change my lifestyle.

28:33

I I don't think

28:35

Is that enough?

28:37

Yeah. Oh, that's so much more than enough.

28:39

I think I spend, like, two hundred grand a year. So if that gives you an idea. If you take a 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, two hundred grand a year. So, yeah, it'll it'll take a lot to,

28:52

yeah, to spend through,

28:54

through that.

28:56

So do what we let's go let's go to this wealth ladder thing. Well, I'd I I saw that. There's a point.

29:03

Okay. So what what Sean was saying about,

29:08

like, 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 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 NASCAR logos plastered all over the car equivalent of that. And you're like, great. Connor's doing that every celebrity.

29:28

And so, you know, you expect that,

29:32

everyone, like,

29:33

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

29:40

Connor is the extreme example of, like, I'm gonna do ten of these or something. Most people are like, let me do one or two.

29:46

But that's where you're gonna build this real wealth.

29:50

And 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 could that has repeat purchase rate versus a one off. That's the big idea there.

30:03

Yep.

30:04

Yeah. And that that's the thing of if you just look at the most valuable brands, you see that, a lot of them are selling a product that someone buys

30:11

many times.

30:13

Right. Yeah. So, you know, if my first million created a idea journal, it's probably not gonna have super high repeat purchase rate because you're one journal will last you a long time versus

30:23

if we made, you know, the pure money deodorant

30:25

and pure money deodorant is something that you would go through every two months. Then that consumable is gonna be worth more than, you know, so product selection is important here. Yep. And so if you're 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,

30:44

lasts forever.

30:45

Right. Billionaires catch up. Great. Okay. So then last one, choose a better business model. So,

30:51

what what do you what are what are you pointing out here with choose a better business model?

30:55

Yeah. So there's a couple things in this. One is,

30:59

well, well, I'm using the example of,

31:01

Vonihari who is, is the food babe.

31:04

So she had information products business. She selling cookbooks meal plans, all that. And then she teamed up with, a friend of mine, Derek Halburn,

31:13

who was also in kind of that online business space, and they went and made, like, a health supplements company. And so it's completely different. They've made the switch from you know, that business model into,

31:24

selling this product that people are buying on a recurring basis that, you know, the brand can be acquired.

31:29

I think that the other example that's interesting,

31:31

I love listening to Andrew Wilkinson on the show. And,

31:35

you know, he did this whole thing. His whole thing is using

31:40

a very cash flow positive business, right, in Metalab,

31:43

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

31:52

low to medium quality revenue and use it to go buy really high quality revenue. You know, because agencies, they're not as recurring. They're not,

32:00

high multiple if you wanna sell the business. So he's like, great. I'm gonna go buy software companies or start software companies know, and so I'm gonna trade in, you know, one set of revenue for another.

32:11

And then,

32:12

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.

32:25

And so the ones that made it are like Optin Monster, where they built a WordPress plugin. It was okay.

32:33

Made millions of dollars, but, like, it's not valued like a software company,

32:38

whereas when they go and rebuild,

32:40

like, side bulky rebuild optin monster, as a SaaS platform,

32:44

added more features, you know, they can charge a different pricing model,

32:48

all of that. And

32:50

And then it's really valuable. Right? You have to raise money at Silicon Valley evaluations. You get to sell the company at those multiples,

32:58

Even though it's, like, fundamentally accomplishing the same,

33:01

second goal for these. Who I think left money on the table. You named two of them. I have a third. Actually, you you might have named all three.

33:08

Okay. So you talked 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 personal finance,

33:18

had he pointed 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,

33:27

you know, low fee index fund style investing, set it and forget it,

33:32

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. Which was like a robo advisor doing just that. So instead of selling courses,

33:44

could have built a software product. So left left some value potentially on the table.

33:49

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

33:56

investing in the right startups because of his brand name,

33:59

But,

34:00

you know, could he have done what Joe Rogan did, with, like, on it supplements? Right? Like, I think Tim Ferris has a huge trusted audience. And 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 Nutropic supplement. I'm launching the the protein powder, whatever whatever he could have picked,

34:19

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?

34:29

Oh, the third was Marie fourth. What's the third? I think you had her in here.

34:33

And she I think you pointed out an yeah.

34:35

You pointed out two things. Similar interesting. She builds everything in her name instead of,

34:40

building, like, brands that can be dissociated from, like, her purse

34:44

the product is her telling you content, her selling you time at 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

34:59

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.

35:15

But you're building this other thing that people are begging to know what it is. Like, do you think that, like,

35:21

you're you should follow your own advice here? Oh, totally.

35:24

You know, that's why I like this article. I think it's it's an eye opener for

35:29

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

35:38

I did it in a way with the fund. So for example,

35:42

podcast,

35:43

podcast

35:44

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

35:52

the the value of the audience I felt was bigger than the

35:56

value of the trust in the audience was bigger than the the ad revenue.

36:00

And so I bet on that. I was like, okay. Well, what if I raised a fund from these people who have been listening?

36:04

And I'm not gonna take any I'm not gonna do any pitch meetings. I'm not gonna make a presentation.

36:09

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, you know, seven to ten years? So 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

36:58

and 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 chip with it. So for example,

37:07

like, I wasn't I stopped teaching my course because I just got busy doing other shit. And then I really wanted to go, like, do some random NFT speculation. And I was like, feel stupid doing 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. Yeah. That sounds more fun.

37:23

And so I'm like, yeah, down to, you know, teach successions to do that. That 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? The milk road isn't called Sean's Crypto newsletter. It specifically has

37:40

a new brand name, and it has, like, staff around it. And it's a product that if it works,

37:45

can be big, and it'll be super charge or kind of initially initially

37:50

distributed by people who already follow me and like my content.

37:55

And then the second criticism, which Nathan can address, which is, like, and maybe Ramit would say this. He's like, well, but I like blogging, and I don't know anything about starting, like, a,

38:05

a fintech company. And what's the what's your reply to that, Nathan?

38:09

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.

38:15

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

38:23

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, because you raised money or something else. But getting on that hundreds of millions of dollars

38:35

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 we listen to people who have amazing businesses.

38:44

Right there, can complete control of their time, making millions of dollars a year, you know, like, absolutely no complaints there. So this is all in the case study of, like, how would you do it? Actually, one of my favorite examples,

38:56

I used,

38:57

Michael Hyatt as an example in this article. And he replied,

39:01

like, he sent me an email right after it and said, like, hey,

39:05

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.

39:14

And we realized, like, Oh, this business is gonna, you know, reach them limits.

39:19

And so he then built out all these sub businesses. They built out a journal product, you know, other physical products

39:26

and realize, okay, how can we build

39:29

take what we have now and use it to leverage,

39:32

you know, other independent brands and, like, Kickstarter and launch them. And so it's fascinating to, like, use someone as an example and then have them come back and be like, you're spot on

39:40

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

39:51

yeah, if if people want this path, you know, that's that's the way to go about it.

39:56

How big is this? How many notebooks does this guy sell?

39:59

I don't know that I have

40:01

the numbers. I'm trying to think what he what he put in the article, but it's,

40:05

his other products are now bigger

40:08

than all the things that we know them for. So in the tens of millions of dollars.

40:12

That's crazy.

40:14

Alright. What were we saying, Sean?

40:16

I was gonna jump to the ladders of wealth because I think this is the other kind of nice framework that you have. So,

40:22

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 this. So you have this image of, of a series of ladders.

40:33

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 method of wealth creation, it can go one rung higher, or it can go two rungs higher, or four rungs higher depending on which one you choose. So here's here's how it works. And it's basically the lowest ladder, the smallest ladder is you're selling time for money. So that's having a job or being,

40:58

yeah, having a job, basically.

41:00

Then there's your own service business. So this might be like an agency.

41:03

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 and you charge an hourly rate.

41:17

Then there's product side productized

41:20

services, which is,

41:23

it's giving a given example of a product of product access. Yeah. So the example would be, let's say, I charge a hundred dollars an hour to redo the copywriting

41:31

on your website.

41:33

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.

41:45

And so there's a couple of really important things there.

41:48

One, the purchase is being made without me to you. Like, if I'm charging a hundred bucks an hour, we'll probably have a conversation. You're, like, we're planning that.

41:56

Second thing is it's prepackaged.

41:59

So you know exactly what you're buying.

42:01

And then the the third thing is that the time and money are totally disconnected.

42:05

So if I get better and better,

42:08

if I hire people any of that, right, like, I'm not having to sit there for ten hours and do it. And so there's a bunch of these skills that have to learn, to do the product by service.

42:19

An exam a simple example. We think, Ryan Beagelman came on the pod long time ago, and he talked about drop servicing,

42:25

which was a a version of this. So, like, the the example he was given is, like, There's these products that are like,

42:31

you pay

42:32

thirty dollars and I'll draw a picture of you. 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 SIM's character. You get it. So it has all the elements you talked about. Self serve. You come in as a predefined price. You just click a button and you pay.

42:51

You get a defined product and product out of it. So we're kinda 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, and it's all done. So that's, like, an example of a product type service.

43:21

And, by the way, isn't there like a Facebook group called productizers? Oh, yes. That. There's a guy running. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. We talked about him.

43:30

Green. Greenfeld.

43:34

Maybe or something like that.

43:36

So so what he does is he's got this Facebook group. And the reason, like, it's so niche, but it's actually pretty valuable if you're in that niche. So he has this Facebook group called productized,

43:47

services or something like that, productized businesses.

43:50

And,

43:52

And what he was doing was he would just show an example. So he'd say, oh, look, this is a real estate agent.

43:56

And before, here's how it used to work, you know, here's their page, here's their face, you call them up, become a client, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, or or sorry.

44:04

That's not a good example. It's I make what I design websites. I can code anything. You can hire me as a freelancer.

44:11

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.

44:18

Come here, pick one of the six templates,

44:21

push go. I'll give you a website.

44:23

And I'll charge you a fixed fee of two hundred fifty dollars or five hundred dollars. To give you that website. And so it's basically a way of productizing

44:30

a, a service. You know what the best name that I've ever heard for is Jack butcher, who's our friend, and he has this course.

44:38

It's got it's beautiful. It's called build once sell twice.

44:42

So good.

44:43

It's such a good name. I I took the course. Yeah. Well, did you love it? Yeah. I loved it just because everything Jack does is done so well.

44:50

So, you know,

44:52

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.

45:01

Yeah. His ability to take something and, like, distill it down to the absolute essence.

45:06

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 all bunch of times. No one talks about the downside

45:24

that, like, it's so freaking hard to do the fur like, to make the first one, you know, whereas if I'm building a one off thing, not 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 this 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, leverage is incredible.

45:52

How old are you now?

45:53

Thirty one.

45:55

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

46:05

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. Should try to invest and maybe I could broker a deal and you would and, if I did that, then I met you you probably had a ton. You've also probably had a ton of who were trying to buy the company for a life changing amount of money and you've probably had loads of other,

46:38

opportunities. So my question is How have you stayed pretty calm and also incredibly patient throughout all this? I patience is something I struggle with. Your

46:48

Sean was telling you about,

46:49

how he launches like a new does a new drop every week and, like, and I I think that that's rooted in, like, oh, but we need the numbers to go up this week.

46:57

And, like, you got caught and I've done this I do the same thing where I'm like, but it's not growing now. And I'm, and I need to so how have you done so patient and long term focused?

47:07

Well, I think part of his personality, and you're right, that, like,

47:10

patient and relentless are probably two things you can use to describe me back then, and now.

47:16

But I think

47:17

a lot of the ideas that are in some of these articles or that that I try to write about

47:21

is really in building this one thing. So I think about,

47:26

What analogy that, 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 wanna make money quickly. And so you build, like,

47:39

you know, first of the office building or something. You got, like, a radio shack there. Now you're you got a little bit of cash flow coming in. Know, you wanna expand, you build another, you know, add on to that. Now we've got a subway, and we're we've built 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.

47:55

Each time we're expanding horizontally.

47:58

And so we're, you know, launching a new product. The the version of this is the like, the blogger podcast or someone who's like, I've got my ebook, my membership site, my whatever other thing that I'm doing.

48:10

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 makes it and so, like, ConvertKit is my attempt at a skyscraper. Like, in the billion dollar creator article, it's all about people I think who are building those skyscrapers. You've not you've not always done that, actually. I think and I think that That's a good strategy, but I would 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 your your even though you're incredibly patient and long term thinking, like, maybe it's not rooted in this probably, but like there are some examples. For example,

48:52

like you've done a bunch of book launches You've launched, like, eight or nine things that's that have sucked. You did this great Twitter thread where you well, no. He did this Twitter.

49:03

Yeah. He goes, here's the nine things that I've created that were horrible.

49:07

No. He he had a threat. I I don't know if you used the word suck. Maybe he said failed. Yeah. Flocked or something like that. So in that,

49:15

this is something else. Right? Like, we all wanna jump in and build the most perfect act.

49:20

And you can't do that because there's

49:22

all of these skills that you have to learn. Like, that's the point of this ladders of wealth creation article is that

49:27

like business and building wealth is the combination of like a thousand little skills.

49:32

And if you try to do it all at once,

49:35

you know, like, you're going to fail. And so that's, like, in these ladders,

49:39

the one point that I'm trying to make is that, but, like, you know, I put marketplaces and social networks, you know, and at the top of the hardest ladder. And then just below that is SAS. Because if you think about the number of skills that you have to know in order to do that,

49:55

like, Sam, what was,

49:57

the first product you sold online?

50:01

50:02

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.

50:11

Okay. So that guide, like, do you remember as you were trying to figure out how to collect payments for that? Like, how to put together a page that would sell it. That's why he was at the gum road meet up. Yeah.

50:22

I ended up using gum road because it was so stressful. I couldn't figure it out. I was like, well, was like, I remember going to Shopify. I'm like, well, does Shopify let you sell PDFs? How does that work?

50:32

So one of those things, right? You're trying to figure out how to do

50:36

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

50:55

And so I think the best way to do it is to learn through a bunch of these other little products.

51:00

Right? So that was, like, basically what you're seeing all the way along with ebooks and everything else is me learning all of the skills that ended up culminating in being able to build a conversion.

51:11

Yeah. That's true. And then the other thing is, like, if I say, I only focus on ConvertKit. Like, that's not fully true because

51:18

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 because, you know, you spend all your time sitting in front of a computer.

51:30

And so doing something tangible, like Airbnb or something in the real world, like, to me is the opposite. Because I get to actually go see a real property. I get to,

51:40

you know,

51:43

the visit in in person. It's a totally different experience.

51:47

My friend,

51:48

Sean Blanc says,

51:50

if you work with your mind, you should rest with your hands.

51:53

And that's I like that idea.

51:55

Of, like, just doing something that's the opposite. And so I think if you give yourself these little indulgences

52:01

of, like,

52:03

buying a house and everyone 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 course, and then you're like, okay, that was fun.

52:14

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.

52:22

When you've been creating ConvertKit,

52:25

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

52:35

or problems that need to be solved? Have you've 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 blank.

52:46

Yeah. Okay. This is, honest, but a terrible answer to your question because of the night, because I also did it. Right?

52:52

Is as we were doing email marketing,

52:55

you know, and running the newsletters for, like, James Clare and Tim Ferris and everyone else.

52:59

The thing that I wanted to do is then get into commerce. I was like, okay, we have this whole side of it, right, where, we're sending all the emails, have the connection to the fans. Now I wanna build,

53:10

the, like, the credit card processing, and and I wanna get a cut of everything that they sell.

53:15

And so then I realized, like, oh,

53:17

And that was always the answer.

53:19

Actually, if if someone was like, if you weren't doing ConvertKit, what would you do? Now I always said, I'd go start a gumroad competitor.

53:25

And then the nice thing is there's that synergy there. So it's like, okay. I went and started a government competitor called ConvertKit Commerce. It's in the same product.

53:33

So it's, like,

53:35

both a realistic answer and probably not very satisfying for you because it's not They're totally different. Gumroad has been around for a long time now. Up until recently, they pretty much had never done anything to change it.

53:48

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 pass, 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.

54:05

You know what I mean? It was Well, and so that's why you have to build an build a better business model, right? And so if you look at something

54:12

and say, how could we improve that business model?

54:15

The thing that I saw in that is like, okay.

54:18

What if

54:20

54:21

had another product alongside it that we sold? Right? So for ConvertKit, we make money off of,

54:26

your email subscription.

54:28

And so I now have these two things that go hand in hand. And so,

54:33

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. They don't feel like they're paying us anything extra because it's just a bit of the credit card processing fee. And then it also reduces our churn because anyone who's selling through ConvertKit commerce,

54:51

right, they're now, like ConvertKit is paying them

54:54

rather than,

54:56

the other way around. And so we saw a radically lower churn.

54:59

So I'd argue that, like, gumroad by itself or, you know, the gumroad 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 ConvertKit and make the creative marketing platform, this is turning into a sales pitch, but you get the idea that I'm trying to make

55:14

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,

55:22

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,

55:37

an average business.

55:41

And do do you actually, are you still hands on with

55:46

ConvertKit or are you

55:48

I know you're the CEO, but do you have someone helping you run it, or are you still the guy in charge?

55:53

No. I'm,

55:54

way too hands on.

55:56

The thing that people don't tell you in startups

55:59

is that, like, the growth that you see is a whole bunch of stacked s curves, you know, of like figure out things that work, and it takes off, and then it levels out, and you gotta figure out the next,

56:09

plat or like the next

56:11

stage of growth. And so I'm,

56:14

very hands on. Like, we've had a few executives leave over the last year,

56:19

just a lot of change. And so I'm, like, completely in it, recruiting new executives,

56:25

working with the team to design the expiration of the product. And so, yeah.

56:29

I'm not the the, like,

56:31

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.

56:39

Do you grind? I mean, I know you got, like, eighteen kids.

56:45

Three. What are you kids? I know. I I just because 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 teas of, like, what do you have, like, forty kids now?

56:57

So you always had a couple.

57:00

And,

57:01

But you you are you grinding right now, or do you have is it a forty hour work week?

57:07

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,

57:13

like, kids,

57:14

you know, of

57:15

it it's a lot of, like,

57:17

waking up early you know, or, like, this weekend,

57:20

we're headed out for our team of treat, like, meeting of a up in person. So I'm leaving Saturday morning. So, like, this morning, when my kids woke up early, I, like,

57:28

we went out of the house and, like, spent two or three hours together,

57:31

you know, before because I know I'm gonna work all day and and then be gone all next week. So,

57:37

Yeah. I don't work a crazy amount, but at least, like, fifty to

57:42

fifty five hours a week is probably what I aim for.

57:45

So I don't know if that counts as grinding, but it's definitely not, not relaxing.

57:50

It's in the middle.

57:51

Yeah. In the middle, I think, of grinding and not grinding.

57:55

What do you think so? I think it's great. You know, I think Convert I'm a user. So I, and I I complained to Nathan Tom. I'm like, I'm paying too much convert kit. He's like You do complain about that. And he was good. And I just point out how much money you make. Yeah. He was like,

58:10

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 he's very patient with me, and I was sort of like, you know, because I was like, I was like, I don't know. I told Ben I was like, Ben go find, like, what we should use instead of ConvertKit.

58:31

And Ben kinda like search for a couple 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.

58:38

And I was like, oh, can 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.

58:48

That's what you're and how much you make a month? 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.

58:58

It's like Got it. 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. Separate work I gotta go do and the separate set of cost, they go into that. And so, we actually did. We were like, oh, should we switch? And then I kind of respected that Nathan wasn't just like,

59:16

whatever it takes to stay, you know, here you go free. Right. I was like, I was like, Okay. The fact that he didn't do that tells me, like, he knows the value of his thing.

59:25

And,

59:26

as much as I hate that I'm, you know, not getting this, like, free discount or whatever.

59:31

I respect that, and so I stuck with it.

59:34

Nathan, are you Mormon? No.

59:36

I'm not. Dude, you get that big Mormon Energy.

59:42

I mostly just hear from you, Sam.

59:44

You've never heard that from anyone else. I mean, you live in Idaho. You you you have 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. More advice. Do all the time.

59:58

Yeah. You gotta

59:59

avoid the caffeine.

01:00:02

There's Sean, what I was gonna say is,

01:00:05

that

01:00:06

what what's funny is so, like, Tim McGraw and Arnold Schwartz. Now you both have ConvertKit 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 inmate influencers where they're like, I should get this for free. You know? And I'm like, no. So it's it's 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,

01:00:31

I separate them from internet famous and actual famous. And the more we've gotten into the actual famous space, It's the more it's been easy to say, like Yeah. No, man. Here's the value that we provide.

01:00:40

And and I think I was giving you a hard time because you had just done a thread, like, two weeks earlier

01:00:46

about your paid newsletter that was making, like, fifty or a hundred grand a month. I can't remember if I, like, linked you to the same but that's what I wanted to do in the Twitter DMs. So How big is how big is Arnold's list?

01:00:59

Oh, we can't say those numbers. But he's

01:01:02

still relatively

01:01:03

small. Who's who's list is bigger? His his list are my list. My list is not very big, but his is bigger. I think it could be the same segment as Arnold. No way.

01:01:11

That's bitch. No.

01:01:13

You don't have favorite little

01:01:15

like business model synergy.

01:01:19

Weekly?

01:01:25

So he was on like, it's fun, like, as he goes around, promotes his newsletter, right, because he goes on, like, Jimmy Kimball and was talking about his email newsletter, which is is always fun.

01:01:34

Yeah. I go on indie hackers, dude.

01:01:37

But,

01:01:38

when

01:01:41

Like, a business model thing that's funny is when one ConvertKit customer links to another to grow their list. So, like, when Tim Farris

01:01:48

links to

01:01:49

Arnold's list and said, like, hey, you know, go sign up for Arnold's list. Yeah. Adam, you're like forty forty thousand subscribers.

01:01:56

And and it's just, like, our cut just goes up. You know, it's just one customer just referred to the other, but now,

01:02:02

anyway, it's a fun Dude, you gotta write a blog post, like, the best way to grow your list, partnerships.

01:02:08

Here's, like, a list of, like, interesting people to partner with.

01:02:13

I have a VP of growth opening. Do you wanna come come join me to talk right? Morning brew, actually, as we discussed last episode.

01:02:21

Yeah. Last episode. Morning brew offered me job too. There you go. It's actually like a great power move is to just offer

01:02:28

a staff writer jobs or staff jobs to CEOs of other companies. Just to, like, flex on them. It's okay. You know, I heard things are tough.

01:02:38

Just so you know, we're we're always there's always a home for you here.

01:02:42

So let's just listen to this. The CEO of Mailchimp.

01:02:45

Like, the, like,

01:02:47

a month into starting the hustle.

01:02:50

I, like, we wrote a blog post, whatever, and we're 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 Nellie Bulls. 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

01:03:08

And I think, like, even when I found her, she was at actually at the New York Times, but, like, had just done a one off piece for this 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.

01:03:23

But, no, thanks.

01:03:24

And, I will never forget that. She told me that's cute. I have I have I have held this grudge against her.

01:03:32

For years

01:03:33

because she said it's cute.

01:03:35

For years.

01:03:37

You can just imagine, like, the little pat on the head and the hair tussle that went with, like, that's cute. You know? Like

01:03:43

It's definitely up at night. Like, so many I was like, I've got I hope I'm gonna get revenge. And I don't have a good way, but that was, like, eight years ago. Sam's, like, Arna Stark before bed. Every night, he says a list of the names of the people he needs to, like, get revenge on is, like, Nelly Bulls.

01:03:58

I I definitely have I've, you know, like, with this, like, I got, like, a bunch of champagne bottles with people's names on it. And whenever I get back at them, like, crack that champagne bottle open a drink, Like, yeah, I want some people's heads on my desk. That's for sure. We have a buddy.

01:04:12

Get on that list.

01:04:14

Not much. Turns out. Not much.

01:04:17

Yeah. This is don't call me cute.

01:04:22

Just be like, you know, comment on one of his Instagram

01:04:24

you know, videos and just be like,

01:04:27

awesome. It's awesome for a beginner.

01:04:29

Just so I can move on. Yeah. You've Or I've like the

01:04:33

You're still at it. Awesome.

01:04:40

We, we have a buddy who is, like, the nicest guy in the world. Like, you know, we'll give you the shirt off his back. And,

01:04:47

Nice to everybody, kind of strangers, kind of animals, kind of everybody.

01:04:51

And you go into his house and on his fridge, he's got this, like, clip art picture

01:04:57

of a of a brand name of a another company's logo with a Target and, like, kind of like a red Target, like, a sniper

01:05:04

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. 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 wanna think about, you know, just sort of, like, killing them, basically.

01:05:18

And I was, like, whoa, the, a dark side to the, to Mr. Nice guy here.

01:05:24

Do you have one of those Nathan? I 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

01:05:37

Mailchimp.

01:05:39

Oh, see.

01:05:40

I have weird feelings about Mailchimp because I have so much respect for them. And, like

01:05:46

Dude, you have respect them, like, the guy who killed John Lennon has respect for him. It's called a love knife. You love him so much. You wanna kill him. That's like what it is.

01:05:55

It's like, the guy who, like, killed the pope. That's what you're gonna do.

01:06:00

So you have to separate the businesses, like, the business from the people. So I think that's true. Like, one time, how's that conference and Ben Chestnut was speaking. And so I emailed him and was like, hey, man. Were you

01:06:10

I don't know, even though why he said yes. But it's just like, like, big fan of what you've done.

01:06:16

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 me the wrong hotel. Love it. Great power move, bend chestnuts.

01:06:33

Set me on this wild goose chest. Yeah. It's like, that's cute. You missed your flight. He never had a flight.

01:06:41

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, Inc magazine's

01:06:49

company of the year. This is the ink magazine, like, ink five thousand event.

01:06:53

And so the editor in chief from ink magazine comes up while we're talking. He's like, hey, Ben. Great talk. All of that. And,

01:07:01

he Ben goes, hey, do you know Nathan? He's trying to kill my company.

01:07:04

And, like, as he introduced me to the editor in chief of ink magazine. And, anyway, so I have time to respond. What would it look like if you just, like, assaulted him right there?

01:07:14

Sam's crying. It'd be jail. Reservation now. He's just still thinking I feel like like killing Nelly balls at the love night or whatever.

01:07:22

With the record, Deli, I'm not gonna not gonna do anything. Is this, 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.

01:07:35

It did not go well. Is this from her? I forget this. No. That was, Erin Griffin.

01:07:40

And she, like, came to interview me, and I don't even know why, but she was fishing for stuff She's like, so, like, what do you do in the weekend? It's like, listen to Joe rogan. That's what she said to me. I'm like, what?

01:07:52

Like, no. Like, he doesn't even, like, that's Monday to Friday. He doesn't even have a mic. That's what he's talking about. Yeah. And and and she was, like, like, because you're like a tech bro and I'm like, first of all,

01:08:04

most of New York Times revenue is digital. You're a tech company. So you tell me what your tech friends do. And, and so, anyway, yeah, that thing goes. Did you storm out? Or or how did that end? Some sometimes Yeah. I was just like, I don't know what to say. I'm out of here. Yeah. I I it it didn't it didn't end well. That's so good.

01:08:21

Those interviews. I've only ever had one of those.

01:08:24

And I don't remember who it was with, but where you're like, okay. I I I think we're done. Where you can just tell that they're, like, looking for some angle and all the questions are weird. And you're, like, why would anyone hate you? Because you're kinda perfect.

01:08:36

It's good that you bring that up.

01:08:43

So I'm not too sure what the problem is. Yeah. He's like, I like this. I've got there's a lot of bad things. I like this. It's like the shower. So this clip applied in, the other day, whenever he all the the journalist was, like, on the way out. Did you see this clip? A stupid sum of it. You guys, like, you know, his inflow 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.

01:09:06

That's how I imagine Nathan. Like, breaking character in, like, one of these interviews.

01:09:13

So, okay, Sam. I have a question on this then. Like, do you think that being so nice in all of us and and, like, everyone likes me? It holds back my,

01:09:21

growth as a entrepreneur and, you know, internet wanna be internet celebrity?

01:09:26

No. Because,

01:09:28

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, you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but basically, you didn't like what Sahill at gumroad Yeah. Did. And you called them out, and it was pretty,

01:09:43

it was pretty vicious. And I knew that, do you know this, Sean? No. What did he call them out for? Dude, he just, like, publicly kinda bitchslapped saw hill. And,

01:09:52

like, it was crazy.

01:09:56

So,

01:09:58

so I was around, Sam was talking about. I was around gumroad from the very beginning.

01:10:02

I think I was the first independent

01:10:04

at one point, they told me it was the first independent seller to cross ten thousand dollars in sales on gumroad. So, like, from the very, very beginning,

01:10:13

And, 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 South Hills, but at one point, he

01:10:22

like, got burnt out on the company. They had it offered to to buy the company.

01:10:26

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.

01:10:40

And then he came back and told this totally different story of, like,

01:10:44

here's how I, you know, like VC is evil, and I'm running the company, like, in this totally new way.

01:10:51

Here's how I run it in five hours a week with, like, two contractors.

01:10:57

And that was frustrating, but I didn't say anything.

01:11:00

But then when they went and raised new money and didn't give any they they got all the VCs to write off their

01:11:06

equity

01:11:07

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 they went and raised a bunch of new money and didn't

01:11:16

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, because I sat next to them as we were talking about it, you know, at their office in 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,

01:11:34

yeah, I guess Sam, I do make some enemies on the end now. You do. And and when you said that, I was like, well, I was I don't know Sahhill.

01:11:41

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

01:11:50

person from, like, the decision. I've made a bunch of bad decisions,

01:11:54

but I don't think I'm a bad guy. And Oh, meets you. I've made a lot. And

01:11:58

Yeah. And so, you know, I I would separate the two, like, because he, you know, probably a nice guy. I I don't know him super well either, but,

01:12:07

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,

01:12:15

the kind of like it was like a fail story that worked. It was like

01:12:19

we were the hot thing. We raised money. We had all these expectations. People bet on us. It didn't work.

01:12:25

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

01:12:32

that this business should be done this other way. Okay. Fair enough. And some people really like that. They thought it was very transparent, all that good stuff.

01:12:40

But it was weird that, like, you know, a year or two later, it's like, oh, I'm raising new money at a hundred million dollar evaluation. It's like, wait. You're back on the that train, like, weren't you kind of saying, like, you know, all the things that were wrong with that model and Like, free yeah, championing the the the freedom that you were getting and the choose your own destiny and getting off the rat race. Like,

01:13:00

maybe I read it wrong. Maybe I was just skimming and I missed the point, but, like, that did seem strange to me. And then, like, you're saying Nathan, like,

01:13:07

it's kinda weird to kind of

01:13:10

to do that whole thing in public when a whole bunch of people bet on you, lost money on you, and

01:13:17

and are not participating in the, like, you know, future.

01:13:20

And so that would leave a bad taste in people's mouth, I think. So, you know, I think that's fair points,

01:13:26

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 bad 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.

01:13:39

I mean, tons of credit to to South Hill afterwards because he

01:13:44

Like, he owned up to parts of it and we had a good conversation about it. And he actually then when he launched his book,

01:13:50

he actually included ConvertKit and the story in it, which I was

01:13:54

really surprised.

01:13:55

So, as far as people who don't hold a garage, I think, saw Hills one of them. Not Sam. He's not Sam. I think

01:14:01

He's I I am. I don't grudges. And in fact, I actually manufactured grudges. So, like, there's this one guy. I always call my rival and,

01:14:10

I'm sure from his point of perspective, he's either like, who is this? Or he's like, wait, why are we rivals? We we got a lot. We got a lot of

01:14:17

And in my head, this is, like, somebody I met in, when I was in college.

01:14:21

And,

01:14:23

the guy's got, like, a super ultra rich dad, like billionaire dad,

01:14:27

And,

01:14:28

I always used to joke. Like, if I ever played basketball,

01:14:31

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, college was, well, shall we know who you're guarding? Like, you have to guard him and you would need to win your match up 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. 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,

01:14:53

seems like this guy is, like, you know, your rival. And I and I played into it, and we kinda 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 try to create a chip on our shoulder underdog story. It was 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 if you saw this other guy, like, you know, sipping piña coladas with Richard Branson, it just felt like, oh, those are the haves and we're the have nots. It's always like manufacturing these little feuds

01:15:23

or like,

01:15:24

I remember we did a a 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.

01:15:34

She was somebody I'd met. She seemed really nice. And I was like, hey. Do you want the 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.

01:15:48

Artificial comes out the next day, and the headline is, like, just some vicious. It's, like, remember Bebo?

01:15:55

Yeah. That, you know, that flop his back again. I don't know. It was just like, it was like Oh, my. It

01:16:01

was like, disgusting,

01:16:03

very large as he told me the he told me the old plan with his bad breath. And I was like, what? You know, like, in my head, that's what it said. Like, it was, like, as Yeah. If you like spinach, go eat some of the stuff that came out of Sean's teeth. It's still probably there. So I felt so backstabbed, you know, not no love knife, just straight knife. And I remember just being like, so I never had the interview where I walked away. I had the opposite, right, felt completely and I texted her, I was like, yo, what the fuck? Because actually the article was fine. It just headline was completely brutal. It was just making fun of us and saying, like, get a load of this fucking schmuck.

01:16:38

And, 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,

01:16:48

so fuck you in your profession. It was like, you know, where I landed on that.

01:16:52

That I think that was my only feud. Actually, by the one where I called,

01:16:56

What's her name? The Jake Paul of journalism was probably the other one. Taylor

01:17:01

Lawrence.

01:17:03

Yeah. Like, I think that I actually think

01:17:05

it's great fuel. I mean, like, I joked to my wife. I'm like, I'm fueled on, like, carbonated water and, like, wretches. Like, I think,

01:17:12

grudges,

01:17:13

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, protein. It'll be fast. Like, you wanna, like, grudges is, like, my macro. My macro fat. 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.

01:17:32

So, anyway, I think it's good. I think rage is great.

01:17:36

That's a key takeaway from this episode of people. Same, you do need, like, a Lloyd. Let me go manufacture

01:17:41

somebody you counsel every day.

01:17:45

I do. Like, it I well, and Sean, when when we first met Ben Levy or I met him the first time, you were like, Well, you know, Sam's a little challenging. I just ever give him a heads up. Don't take your personal if he kinda fires off. Ari Gold is actually a great great analogy because there's no There's no,

01:18:02

what's it called? Like, there's no hate behind the words. Right? Like, I'm I'm yelling, but I love you. Like, it says nothing to do with how I how much I like you or how good I think you are. I'm just yelling because I'm yelling.

01:18:12

And, so I tried to give him the heads up, but you were so zen. This was post Post Exit Sam is a completely different guy. He's,

01:18:20

you know, you're not Ari Gold anymore.

01:18:24

He'll come back in due time.

01:18:26

Dude, Nathan. Thanks for coming on. Happy,

01:18:29

happy you you're able to make it. I, I bailed on you last week. Sorry, and I'm happy that we made it work this time.

01:18:36

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's always fun. What yep. You wanna know where people from, like, what? Yeah.

01:18:42

Yeah. Okay. So if people wanna follow me online, I'm I'm currently trying to grow my Twitter audience. So you should go follow it there.

01:18:49

I'm trying to see if I can go from I'm at fifty thousand. Hundred thousand. What is it? Hundred thousand. So

01:18:55

At Nathanberry,

01:18:57

in Barry's b a r Usually?

01:19:00

You should tell them the name of the of the thing.

01:19:05

You know, I only want the most dedicated fans who were like really No. I'm just kidding.

01:19:10

Thanks for the advice.

01:19:11

Sean. I'll add that to

01:19:14

your ladder.

01:19:16

You know what? We didn't discuss. And I don't we don't have time now. But one time, Sean, Nathan,

01:19:21

renamed the company convert to something else. And he didn't realize it, but it meant like something, like, it was disrespectful to Hindus, Hindi's

01:19:29

Hindi with the plural.

01:19:31

Yeah. You're the first time. And it was disrespectful to them, and he made this huge name change, and they changed the company back to ConvertKit after, like, twenty four hours. Wait. What was it? Well, what's what's that?

01:19:44

Okay. What I I'm I speak anyway. What is It means service. But in sea culture, it means Oh, like, like, selfless service. And, like, the highest form of worship. Yeah. So

01:19:54

it it's a whole thing. Yeah. I'm doing a I'm doing a service for you. I don't I don't find that offensive. That's not offensive? Yeah. There were, a lot of people who did find it offensive. And so, you know, if we're talking about mistakes,

01:20:06

turns out I'm not as easily offended. Owning a I got in trouble. So,

01:20:10

Hindu didn't find it offensive. And I actually had a lot of people who were, like,

01:20:15

that's, like, thought that it was awesome or something like that.

01:20:20

But, everyone who is from the sikh culture they were like Sorry. Yeah. It had a a much different meaning

01:20:27

there. So anyway, that was a five hundred thousand dollar mistake, but,

01:20:31

I owned up to it. So

01:20:34

that's the whole thing for another kind of way

01:20:36

that the the the convert kit good name. The other thing, like seven or whatever you said, not a good name.

01:20:42

Like, so I think.

01:20:44

Hindu worship.

01:20:46

No. Like, That doesn't seem like the right name for a email. Yeah. Inversely, it's a great name, but such a good name.

01:20:53

Well, so maybe it was a five hundred thousand dollar mistake will turn out to be a multimillion dollar win. Do you still do you still have the domain? Because we should just launch like a,

01:21:01

prayer,

01:21:02

service or, like, you know, like, a a philanthropy

01:21:06

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 went through Y Combinator and one other,

01:21:14

that

01:21:15

have asked for it at one point, but I paid three hundred and forty thousand dollars for the domain. So

01:21:21

I'm I'm kinda hanging on to it. Is it four letter of domain? Four letter. Even wanna spell that word. How do you spell that word?

01:21:27

S e v a. Right?

01:21:29

Yeah. But, I mean, sounds like a bottled water.

01:21:33

Something that you're gonna, like, send emails from. So I think it's smart move.

01:21:38

My, I got in trouble this morning because I wrote, sorry, in in the milk road, addition that went out this morning. 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.

01:21:50

And,

01:21:51

And I was like, basically, if I put a picture up of the committee that meets the Fed open market committee,

01:21:57

and it's basically like a bunch of old white people.

01:22:01

And I was like, you know, and today, you know,

01:22:04

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 wait. No. That's not right. That's the Fed open market committee. And I scrapped 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. Sorry. A rural McDonald's at, like, seven AM.

01:22:24

And

01:22:26

people got mad at you. It's like a sea's candy. And,

01:22:29

yeah, people were like, you know, the skin color has nothing to do with. And I was like, yeah, of course.

01:22:36

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 led the There's, like, certain things that are really safe to punch at. And,

01:22:47

the Fed seems like one of the safest. You know, the fed,

01:22:50

you know, the the the Senate, like, who's who's defending their honor? I I don't understand. Who are you? Is your mom on this? Is your grandma on this panel

01:22:57

too soon? Yeah. Some people got mad at him. I was like, you you should go ahead and unsubscribe because,

01:23:02

My filter is a lot looser than that.

01:23:05

Yeah. Dude, Nathan, thank you. This is awesome.

01:23:09

Yeah. Thanks for having me. We'll have to do it again sometime. And we'll have to hang out in, Austin when you get this new property, we'll come and and do a workout on the, you know, on the ranch.

01:23:20

Come on. Let's go.

01:23:22

It's good. Chad, let's accept a grudge initiative.

00:00 01:23:44