[00:00:00] Steve: Overnight, the business exploded. All of a sudden, I found myself in charge of a team of 40 to 45 people. And then you fired yourself. Yeah.

[00:00:08] Nathan: Steve Kamb built Nerd Fitness into a 40-person company, and spent five years chasing the wrong goal with the wrong metrics.

[00:00:14] Steve: You can keep playing this position over here that you’re not actually good at, or you can accept reality.

[00:00:20] And there’s actually something powerful, too, about saying like, “”. Oh, I love that.

[00:00:25] Nathan: He fired himself twice, both times on purpose, and what he found on the other side was a return to writing, a better business, and a book called How to Try Again.

[00:00:33] Steve: You wake up every day, “I’m already behind. I have more to do.”

[00:00:37] Instead of trying to get better at juggling chainsaws, maybe it’s okay that you stop juggling chainsaws. Yeah.

[00:00:42] Nathan: If you’ve ever built something successful and wondered why it still doesn’t feel right, this one’s for you.

[00:00:47] Steve: There’s a dream that people want to sell you. When you sign on to Instagram, you see the best version of everybody else, and the story that you’re seeing is not real.

[00:00:54] Nathan: In this episode, Steve walks through a framework for recognizing when you’re optimizing for the wrong thing, and how to make the move once you know.

[00:01:01] Steve: This is not, like, a top secret protocol, but it’s something you will remember. That

[00:01:05] Nathan: is

[00:01:05] Steve: so powerful

[00:01:10] Nathan: Steve, I’ve known you for a very long time, and I’ve watched you build Nerd Fitness to hundreds of thousands of subscribers, millions in revenue, and then you

[00:01:19] Steve: fired yourself. Yeah. What?

[00:01:22] Nathan: Uh- What happened there?

[00:01:24] Steve: Yeah. Uh, so it’s been 17 years-

[00:01:27] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:01:28] Steve: since I made Nerd Fitness my, my thing. I actually demoted myself once- Okay

[00:01:33] and then I fired myself. Oh, okay. So it was two steps.

[00:01:36] Nathan: Yeah. Performance improvement plan. And then didn’t, didn’t meet it, and you

[00:01:39] Steve: were out. Yeah, I had to talk to myself. It got super awkward.

[00:01:42] Nathan: Full HR.

[00:01:43] Steve: It was a whole thing.

[00:01:44] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:01:44] Steve: It was a whole thing. Um, no, essentially what happened was I started Nerd Fitness as a side hobby.

[00:01:50] Mm-hmm. I love… Well, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I love writing.

[00:01:55] Nathan: Right.

[00:01:55] Steve: I didn’t know what to do, but I stumbled across this guy. I had this idea for helping nerds get fit. I Googled nerd and fitness. Nothing popped up.

[00:02:05] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:02:06] Steve: So I bought nerdfitness.com, and- Great

[00:02:08] Nathan: domain …

[00:02:09] Steve: had no idea how I was gonna make money with it or anything, but I stumbled across a guy named Chris Guillebeau-

[00:02:13] Nathan: Yep

[00:02:13] Steve: who was making money on the internet as a writer. Okay, cool. I’ll start writing. And just kinda put my head down. I wrote two articles a week every week. Is that because Chris wrote two articles a week? Every Monday and Thursday, 100%. So shout out to Chris G. Yep. Um, and I wrote those essays and accidentally, you know, built, built a following, and then started to build a business and hired employees and things kept growing, and then I needed to hire more people, and then things grew.

[00:02:45] And then, uh, I kept going, and then during the pandemic, everything shut down.

[00:02:52] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:53] Steve: People couldn’t go to gyms, and Nerd Fitness happened to be the number one search term for online coaching on Google. Oh, wow. So overnight, the business, like, exploded because nobody could go to a gym, and they wanted- Right

[00:03:06] a trainer. So all of a sudden, I found myself in charge of 40, 45, a team of 40 to 45 people. Um, and I wasn’t writing anymore. I was… I started to avoid work-

[00:03:20] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:03:21] Steve: because I realized I was sitting in the wrong seat in my own company. And, like, I kinda sucked the fun out of why I started doing it in the first place- Mm-hmm

[00:03:31] which was to write fun essays about helping people So I said, “Okay, there’s somebody who’s second in line, and hey, I want you to take over and run this business. I’m gonna demote myself to chief marketing officer. That sounds like a semi-important title- Right … and people will like it, and that seems reasonable for my business.”

[00:03:54] And I think I made it about a month as the chief marketing officer of Nerd Fitness and realized like I’m terrible at this too. I’m still managing people. I’m still spending all of my time dealing with meetings, and, um, spreadsheets, and optimization, and A/B split testing, and, uh, rewriting essays for search engine optimization, all of this stuff.

[00:04:14] And I realized that I was, again, sitting in the wrong seat in my own business. I wasn’t doing any of the stuff that I liked. So I made the essentially extreme decision to fire myself from Nerd Fitness. I said, “You’re now in charge. I’m available on Mondays, but for my mental health and my life, I have to go do the thing that I’m actually really good at, which is writing.”

[00:04:40] And that led me down the path to, you know, hopefully write another book.

[00:04:45] Nathan: Yeah. Wow. So I mean, a lot happened in that, and I feel like there’s all these founders who are very attached to founder and CEO, and like those go hand-in-hand. Sure. But they don’t have to. And so there’s a lot of these people that I really respect, like Dharmesh Shah, who’s the founder and CTO of HubSpot, and I’ve known him for, I don’t know, 12, 13 years, and he has no direct reports at HubSpot, right?

[00:05:10] He’s the largest shareholder, uh, ’cause he invested money when it started, all the stuff, right? The largest individual shareholder of HubSpot. No direct reports, does not have any sh- you know, he messes around with code, the future of the company, AI, agents, and all that, right? He fired himself from basically the whole executive team.

[00:05:27] He’s like, “I live over here.” And it- he’s like, “Look, I’m, I’m way happier doing that.” And so I love that you did the same thing, and it worked out. Y-

[00:05:37] Steve: yes, but it took me five years-

[00:05:39] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:05:39] Steve: of sitting in the wrong seat-

[00:05:40] Nathan: Right …

[00:05:41] Steve: before I, I finally accepted it. Mm-hmm. I remember I just moved to New York City and sat down with our mutual friend, Ramit Sethi- Mm-hmm

[00:05:48] and said, “I’m gonna grow, I’m gonna grow this business.” And he essentially said, “All right. Get, get ready to eat shit for about three years- Mm-hmm … and maybe you’ll come out the other side.” So it’s, it’s-

[00:05:59] Nathan: When I feel like at, at that time, everybody was scaling- Oh, yeah … their content businesses. So if we go to these different phases, I wanna go back to the beginning-

[00:06:06] Steve: Sure

[00:06:06] Nathan: when we met, uh, in a little bit, but the stage you’re talking about of living in New York City, it’s like Ramit had a huge team. Derek Halpern was scaling up. You know, so many people were, like, reaching the pinnacle. You know, before it was like, oh, you could make 50 or grand a year or something writing, and that’s incredible.

[00:06:22] It’s like, now people are making millions or tens of millions-

[00:06:25] Steve: Yep …

[00:06:26] Nathan: off of these, uh, basically media companies. And so that’s the world that you surrounded yourself with, right?

[00:06:33] Steve: Yeah, and I think y- we all know this, but our environments shape- Mm-hmm … our decisions and- I think for me, moving to New York, like, as a 29-year-old- Yeah

[00:06:43] everybody has that idea of, “I’m gonna put my dent in the universe.”

[00:06:47] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:47] Steve: And I didn’t probably also listen to myself. I also didn’t have the skill set, um, probably like the CEO of HubSpot who says, like, “I want no direct reports,” and also, “I’m… I can build the right team.”

[00:06:59] Nathan: Right.

[00:06:59] Steve: Or the, uh, the… And the right environment.

[00:07:01] There’s certainly luck involved, and I’ll s- I’ll get into, you know, certainly some challenges that we faced as a business- Mm-hmm … between SEO, ChatGPT, Google changing algorithms and adding more blue links, and all of that fun stuff- Right … um, came after the decision for me to step back and then away.

[00:07:19] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:20] Steve: But yeah, it’s really alluring to say more, more, more, bigger.

[00:07:24] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:24] Steve: Because that’s what people do. And especially in New York City, that’s, that’s kind of what everybody does. Right. How can you not do that? You need to be aspirational.

[00:07:34] Nathan: Where’s your ambition?

[00:07:35] Steve: Where’s your ambition? Right. And, um, you think, like, if you’re not getting bigger, then you’re falling further behind.

[00:07:41] Mm-hmm. If you’re

[00:07:41] Nathan: not growing, you’re shrinking.

[00:07:42] Steve: If you’re not growing, you’re shrinking. Exactly. And, um, you know, there’s actu- like, there’s a topic I talk about in my book, but everybody thinks, like, if you’re not making progress, then you’re falling further behind. Mm-hmm. And, like, the reality is, like, the opposite of progress isn’t stagnation or staying the same.

[00:07:57] The opposite is regress and making things worse. So, like, in that instance, like, a cool small business that is profitable and healthy is, like, an unbelievable place to be, and it doesn’t have to always be bigger, bigger, bigger- Right … because that can introduce some challenges that you might not be ready for, that you’re unable to handle, or society or some aspect of the internet changes, and all of a sudden you catch yourself flat-footed because you have this much bigger ship that you have to turn around.

[00:08:25] Nathan: So I wanna ask about the identity side of it, because I feel like if I were to step back, like, I’ve tied up so much identity in the company that I’ve built, team, like, all of those things, that even if I wanted to fire myself from it, then I’d be like, “Oh, I’d be so tied up in it.” And I talk to people who have sold their companies, and they’re just like, so many of them spend years where they’re, like, list- listless or unhappy in some way because they’re like, “Oh, that was everything.

[00:08:48] I miss having the team, the platform.”

[00:08:50] Steve: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:51] Nathan: You know, that w- like, the founder of that, like, that’s who I was.

[00:08:53] Steve: Yep.

[00:08:54] Nathan: Um, how did you navigate the identity side?

[00:08:57] Steve: Like I said, it took me five years to navigate it. Yeah. Because I, I love people. Mm-hmm. I mean, probably to a fault. Have cer- certainly have people-pleasing tendencies, and I like people to like me.

[00:09:07] But- I like you, Steve. Thanks, man. Really means a lot. Really needed that. I’m gonna tell my therapist about this next week. Yeah, exactly. Um, it took years. Mm-hmm. Because I told myself I had to be in the trenches, and I had to be a great leader, and I had to be involved. Right. So I was burning myself out sitting in the seat in my own company.

[00:09:26] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:27] Steve: Not only that, but, um- I think my identity had certainly been tied up in that idea of being bigger and having this team and hiring all these people But the reality was like, man, I’m a writer. I love writing.

[00:09:46] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:09:46] Steve: The most fun I had at Nerd Fitness was when it was me and, like, a few part-time people, and we were just building small things and, and working on it.

[00:09:55] So I had to accept that You can keep playing this position over here that you’re not actually good at, or you can accept reality, which is this is your skill set. This is what you actually love to do. And there’s actually something pretty powerful, too, about saying, like, “I am not the person for this role.

[00:10:16] Somebody else is better at it than me, and as a result, I can double down on my, my actual strengths, which will, in the long run, end up being better for both myself and for Nerd Fitness.”

[00:10:26] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:27] Steve: You have to, but you have to be willing to d- h- do the uncomfortable work of asking those questions. It’s probably therapy.

[00:10:34] It’s probably journaling. It’s all of the unfun stuff of sitting with your uncomfortable thoughts and saying, like, how do I… What act- what parts of this actually light me up? Yeah, so how did you get to the point where you realized that writing is what lights you up and that all these other aspects don’t?

[00:10:51] There’s no right answer here- Mm-hmm … for what people are doing. I, I think a lot of it comes out of really, really getting to know yourself. Um, I think about this, uh, everybody’s probably read, there’s this great Neal Stephenson essay, the… He’s a science fiction author. And he has this great essay that says Why I’m a Bad Correspondent.

[00:11:10] And he says, “I am unable to respond to emails and go give talks because, uh, I need four hours of uninterrupted time to write. If I have two blocks of two interrupted hours-” Mm-hmm … “it’s not nearly as good. For me, I need four hours.” So some people might be thinking, like, “Okay, I then need four hours to write to be the best writer.”

[00:11:30] Mm-hmm. Um, I talk about this, uh, in the book too, but there’s, uh, Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond novels. Yeah. Every winter, or January, would fly to Jamaica and go to his compound called Goldeneye- Oh, naturally … and he would type on a gold-plated typewriter every morning, and then go swim in the ocean, and then make a cocktail, and then edit his essays, and that’s how he wrote his books.

[00:11:54] Mm-hmm. Meanwhile, you have Agatha Christie, who wrote, I don’t know, something like 60-plus books- … and short stories, sold over a billion copies of her books worldwide. And in her autobiography, she talks about how her friends never knew when she wrote because she would step away- Mm … and write in 30-minute bits, um, 30-minute bursts, and retire to a secret room.

[00:12:15] She didn’t ever have a place to write.

[00:12:17] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:17] Steve: You know, she didn’t know where she was gonna be writing that day. All three of those strategies worked.

[00:12:22] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:22] Steve: But they worked for the right person. And for me, I think with my stuff, I started writing as a means to an end. I don’t know what this Nerd Fitness thing is.

[00:12:32] I’m gonna start writing and kind of figure it out. Hopefully, I can make a business out of it. But once I started writing and fell in love with the research process and, um, curios- you know, chasing my curiosity, all of a sudden, the writing became the point. And I just fell in love with it. And I came to realize that that is not- how I feel about these other aspects of the business.

[00:12:55] I tried them. They were fun little experiments. Some of them went on a little too long for me. But eventually I realized, like, hey man, this is the thing that you’re really good at that doesn’t, I don’t wanna say doesn’t feel like work, ’cause it’s really challenging to write- Yeah … and to write a book. But it’s so helpful when you can be honest with yourself and say, like, if I do the thing that I’m uniquely gifted at, it makes so many other parts of this a lot easier, and you actually enjoy it.

[00:13:21] And as a result, you know, I’m so enthusiastic. When I’m doing something I love, like, man, I will run through a brick wall to make it happen.

[00:13:28] Nathan: Uh-huh.

[00:13:29] Steve: But if I’m not excited about it, like, oh man, I’ll rearrange my bookshelf. I’ll do

[00:13:34] Nathan: anything- You’ll

[00:13:35] Steve: do anything … I’ll do anything other than those things. And after five years of hitting myself over the head with this reality, I finally accepted it.

[00:13:42] Nathan: So I think conventional wisdom is that, you know, you find what you’re good at, and then also what the company needs. And so whether there’s a gap there, if, if the company needs something, you either hire for it or you level up in those areas. Yep. And that’s something that I’ve seen you do in your life so much, right?

[00:13:57] Where, you know, you’re leveling up all throughout. You have a book about this. Uh, and in this case, you’re taking a different approach. Like, how do you know when it’s time to be like, “Oh, I don’t enjoy this ’cause I’m not doing it the right way, or I don’t have the skill, so let me level up in that area,” w- instead of saying, “Oh, let me just do the opposite,” and say, “I don’t wanna do that.”

[00:14:14] Steve: I think it’s really easy to see what other people are doing-

[00:14:18] Nathan: Mm-hmm … and assume

[00:14:19] Steve: that either you can do it or that it’s something that you must get good at.

[00:14:23] Nathan: Okay.

[00:14:26] Steve: And especially with all of us in small business, we all see the opportunities available to us, and we see the holes in our business or the holes in an industry where we can fill a, we can fill a need or, or serve a new set of customers.

[00:14:39] And it’s really easy to then spread yourself or move into that area and to do the next thing and to force yourself to put your head down and level up at that skill and then hire for it. I’ve tried that across all sorts of skills. In some ways, and sometimes it filled me up and it lit me up. Writing is, again, I keep coming back to this, but it’s the thing that, like, I want to get better at.

[00:15:03] Mm-hmm. And when I get better at that thing, everything else gets easier. And then in other areas, I would try to shore up all of my weaknesses so that I could be a better manager and a better leader, and I put all my time into those things. And essentially, I was really just kind of becoming less… a less crappy manager and a less crappy leader and a less good, you know, like, just slightly elevated- Yeah

[00:15:28] version of that, which wasn’t moving the needle, which wasn’t lighting me up, which kept me from doing the thing that I think I could, again, double down on and get better at, all because it’s so alluring to see the opportunity- Mm-hmm … and not have the, maybe the discipline or not being able to try it and then say, “Mm, this doesn’t feel right.

[00:15:50] It’s not for me,” or, “We’re gonna keep our focus on these things.” Right. I’m really like, “Oh, look at all these shiny objects. I have to do all of them.” Mm-hmm. “And then I’ll just figure it out along the way.” Eventually, you know, that, that kind of catches up to you.

[00:16:02] Nathan: Yeah, so this, this trade-off between doubling down on your strengths and what you truly love and shoring up your weaknesses.

[00:16:07] ‘Cause I think we all have things that we’ve started to do, did not enjoy them, decided we should anyway, and then it turns into something that you love. And it’s a- it’s such a hard thing of like what, what is worth pushing through and getting to the point where you’re like, “Oh, actually, the first two weeks in the gym were not enjoyable, but now that we’re eight weeks in- Yeah

[00:16:25] or that sort of thing, I’m like, I actually kind of miss it if I don’t go.”

[00:16:28] Steve: Yeah.

[00:16:28] Nathan: Versus like, “Oh, no, I shouldn’t be doing this.” Yeah, I, I think you really

[00:16:32] Steve: have to know yourself.

[00:16:33] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:33] Steve: Um, I’m a big fan of, you know, creating little, creating experiments and trying- Mm-hmm … thinking, having like a really curious mindset for I wonder if this will work for me.

[00:16:43] Mm-hmm. I wonder if this idea is something that I could get interested in. And it happens to us at Nerd Fitness all the time. It’s people that are like, “I’m trying to lose weight,” or, “I wanna get in shape for something,” and then they start exercising, and a few weeks later they start to look forward to the gym.

[00:17:01] Mm. And they kind of realize, “Oh, like I don’t know how it happened, but I actually look forward to doing my workouts now.” Right. It’s no longer about the end goal. Now it’s like, what am I capable of? And when I take that same principle and apply it back to me and my writing, it’s like, oh, the end goal might have been to build a business, but now it’s, oh, like a perfectly crafted sentence or the weird idea that my brain comes up with.

[00:17:32] Like, there’s some magic happening there that I can’t ignore. If I’m really honest with myself, if I am journaling, having conversations with friends that are really good at their respective things and realizing how much that lights them up, like accepting that for myself and saying like, “Dude, I, I don’t think the sign from the universe is any brighter than it can possibly be right now,” than like this is what you’re meant to be doing.

[00:17:58] Right. And if you double down on it, those weaknesses no longer have to be the thing that you’re focused on. Mm-hmm. This is actually the path forward and how it’s going to make every other part of this engine, your life, better because you’re doing the thing, you’re, you’re exponentially improving at the thing that, that uniquely, that you’re uniquely gifted at.

[00:18:17] Nathan: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Something that I think about watching everyone on the internet is r- right, we know we get to see the most polished versions of everyone else’s life and their business and their huge wins and the launch they just did and, and whatever else. It reminds me of probably my favorite, uh, Jimmy Fallon clip, which is Jimmy Fallon and Emma Stone doing a lip sync battle, and they go back and forth, and it’s competitive and all that, and then Emma Stone comes out with All I Do Is Win and just absolutely crushes it.

[00:18:44] It’s the best clip on the internet. But that’s, like watching everyone else’s life, you’re j- it’s, they’re just, all I do is win.

[00:18:50] Steve: Yep.

[00:18:50] Nathan: And you’re like- Well, I ha- I have had wins, but I don’t feel like all I do is win.

[00:18:57] Steve: Sure.

[00:18:57] Nathan: And so it’s really hard to compare in that, in that area. And when you s- in the book, How to Try Again, you dive in and you’re just like, “Here’s all the failures.

[00:19:08] Here’s, here’s when life, like, completely fell apart.”

[00:19:11] Steve: Yeah. It’s so alluring to, for… There’s a dream that people want to sell you. Mm. Right? When you sign on to Instagram or, you know, you open up which- whatever app is on your phone, that whichever social media platform of, of choice you like to-

[00:19:24] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:19:24] Steve: doom scroll through-

[00:19:26] you see the best version of everybody else- Mm … selling you the one thing that will solve all of your problems. And, uh, in the book, I talk about, I call, like, a doom loop, where it’s like, “Oh, I don’t feel good about myself. Oh, but this person is selling me the one thing. Clearly this is it. This will solve it.

[00:19:44] They have it all figured out. I’m a mess. They have it all figured out.” And then they try to do that thing, and they either give up because it wasn’t made for them, or they try it and they don’t get the same results because they’re in a different life situation. Right. They have kids, they have, um, they just went through a restructuring at work, they have an aging parent with dementia, like who…

[00:20:04] They’re doing all these other things and they’re beating themselves up that they can’t follow- Mm … this great protocol. They don’t feel like they’re winning all the time, and they’re beating themselves up. So I wanted to write this book, and started out by saying, like, “Hi, I’m Steve. Here’s all the things I failed at recently.”

[00:20:23] And the only reason I was able to write this book is ’cause of some of those failures. Um, and, like, we’ll get into it, the… You know, a- a- I realized early on, like I said, five years ago at this point, that I wasn’t the guy to be running-

[00:20:36] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:20:36] Steve: my business, but I wanted to write. And I went to go, uh, work with my book agent and get to work on this next book.

[00:20:43] And meanwhile, while that happens, I get the, I get a book deal that I’m super excited about, and immediately felt imposter syndrome first, which was great. Like, “Oh, God, now I have to write a book. Oh, no.” Uh, that’s, that’s interesting how I’m feeling about the thing that I wanted to be doing. Okay, we’ll come back to that.

[00:21:02] And then I found out I had a skin cancer diagnosis on the top- Yeah … of my head that was, uh, they had to, like, scoop it out of my scalp and then kind of suture my head shut so I don’t have a bald spot. Yep. Um, that’s from having a buzz cut as a little kid growing up, uh- And then, um, Nerd Fitness, we ran into some, some headwinds that were- Right

[00:21:22] uh, pretty dramatic. Uh, like everybody knows, Google is not the Google that it used to be.

[00:21:30] Nathan: Right.

[00:21:30] Steve: And we went from, you know, getting a million and a half hits of free Google traffic a month. And all of a sudden, we were still maybe the number one search term for online coaching, but it was underneath 10 blue links-

[00:21:43] Nathan: Right

[00:21:43] Steve: paid.

[00:21:44] Nathan: All the sponsors.

[00:21:44] Steve: Paid, yep. And then ChatGPT, and LLMs, and Google Gemini.

[00:21:50] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:50] Steve: And w- we watched as 80% of our traffic-

[00:21:54] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:21:54] Steve: went away. It’s like, oh, okay. Cool. The thing I have been building, um, is no longer… Like, that, that avenue is now changed, and we have to make some dramatic changes at Nerd Fitness.

[00:22:07] Meanwhile, all this is going down. I’m working on writing a book on what to do when life doesn’t go according to plan. And, um, I went through a heartbreaking but amicable divorce. Mm-hmm. Uh, all of this happening, like, at the same time while I’m writing a book about life not going according to plan, and what to do after a failure.

[00:22:27] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:22:29] Steve: It sucked. Mm-hmm. All of this sucked, and it all happened, like, pretty close together. And I had to rethink a lot, and it took a lot of courage to share these things- Oh, yeah … and a l- a lot of stuff ’cause I just… I’m, I’m me, and I’m as honest as I can possibly be, and I wanted people to know, like, “Hey, w- d- we don’t have it all figured out.”

[00:22:53] Nathan: Right. ”

[00:22:53] Steve: And the story that you’re seeing on Instagram is probably not real, and it might not work for you. That doesn’t mean that you’re broken. It means that it doesn’t work for you. Like, we need to find a different path that accepts all of the challenges that you’re facing, that doesn’t beat you up for struggling with what- whatev- whatever you’re struggling with, and honors this life that you’re trying to live in a world that is changing faster than anything.”

[00:23:21] Mm-hmm. And as soon as I was able to share these things with my audience, uh, which took months and months of working up the courage to share a lot of this stuff, um, the response was overwhelming positive. People shared their own stories because they now felt comfortable enough to say, like, “Oh, okay, cool.

[00:23:41] Steve’s not perfect. He’s not… Y- he’s somebody that I can relate to. I no longer feel as bad that I navigated this,” or, “I went- Mm-hmm … struggled with this other thing.” It’s been really helpful, or it’s been really encouraging to hear everybody kinda being like, “Hey, man. Like, cool. We’re all in this club together of kinda weirdos that are trying to navigate life that refuses to d- follow the plan that we want for it.”

[00:24:05] Nathan: Right.

[00:24:06] Steve: So

[00:24:06] Nathan: how did the… Well, like, what book did you sell to a publisher?

[00:24:09] Steve: Sure. And then how did that evolve into How to Try Again? Yeah. So the… Well, okay, the initial premise I sold, uh, I talked to my book agent on January 1st of 2020- three, I think Yeah Maybe 2022. Either way, um, I said, “Hey, I’ve been running Nerd Fitness for 15 years.

[00:24:29] What we do better than anybody else is we help people, like, after they’ve given up on a workout plan- Mm … or they’ve bailed on their New Year’s resolution, we help them, we help them restart.”

[00:24:40] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:24:41] Steve: Actually, the word I used was respawn, like a video game term. Video… Oh, yeah. And, uh, David, my book agent, was very polite in saying, “Mm, maybe we don’t use the word respawn.

[00:24:49] Maybe we pick something- … a little more, a little more approachable for

[00:24:53] Nathan: everybody.” Also, to be clear, David Bugay, your agent, is also Andy Weir’s agent from The Martian-

[00:24:58] Steve: Yes …

[00:24:58] Nathan: Project Hail Mary.

[00:24:59] Steve: Right. So imagine- … the guy representing, like, the nerdiest author on the planet telling me, “Mm, maybe this is- “Maybe it’s a little-”

[00:25:04] a little too

[00:25:04] Nathan: nerdy.” “You’ve gone too far, Steve.”

[00:25:08] Steve: Right. So tells me to reel it in. So I said, “Okay, fine. How about restart? This is what we do better than anybody.” Yeah. We’ve trained, we… You know, we’ve had 50,000 customers- Yeah … using the Nerd Fitness Academy, which is this course we had back in the day. 20,000 people have gone through Nerd Fitness coaching.

[00:25:22] Mm. So we know our audience, and we know how people work. We know exactly, like, three weeks in, life is gonna happen.

[00:25:31] Nathan: Right.

[00:25:31] Steve: They’re gonna beat themselves up, and they’re gonna want to give up, or they’re gonna give up on their first thing and say, “Fantastic. Welcome to the club. Let’s do things differently.”

[00:25:40] Mm-hmm. So I sold the book as Restart. I have an audience of nerds. I have this company that I’ve built.

[00:25:45] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:46] Steve: These are the tips and tactics that we’ve used to help 20,000 normal, busy, burned-out people who- Yeah … who feel really bad about themselves because they can’t follow the Instagram influencer. They don’t relate to the 4:00 AM protocol, ice bath- Mm

[00:26:03] whatever. They don’t like… You know, like, that’s not them. They have jobs and f- families and obligations and things. So that was the premise, and then I went through all of these things, and the book evolved from just like, “Hey, after you’ve given up on a resolution, here’s what to do next,” to, “Hey, if you have failed and you feel like a failure-” I want you to pick up this book.

[00:26:29] Mm. I’m… I wrote the hell out of it. Here’s how I’ve failed. Here’s some famous failures in history. Here’s a protocol that you can follow so that you don’t get caught in this loop in your brain of, “I’m a loser, I can’t follow through.” And we’re gonna get through this together, you and me, uh, you the reader, me the author.

[00:26:49] Mm-hmm. We’re gonna find a way to have some fun with it. We’re gonna stop beating ourselves up, and you’re gonna come out the other side with a better understanding so that when the next failure happens, it’s no longer life-altering. It’s no longer-

[00:27:02] Nathan: Right …

[00:27:03] Steve: uh, it’s no longer self-judg- you don’t have to judge yourself anymore.

[00:27:05] You can just say like, “Okay, that happened. We’re gonna, we’re gonna try again, but we’re gonna try again differently, and we’re gonna move through life with this new kinda life philosophy that honors the weird life that we have to live, the complete uncertainty that life is, and the things that make us who we are.”

[00:27:23] Nathan: Yeah. I feel like the first version of the book maybe that you sold, it has more of a you’re in the mud and I’m the guide kind of feel to it. Sure. And the book that I read is like, I am right in it with you side by side, and let me… You know, it’s just, it’s so much more raw and real, and it’s like, oh, okay, Steve’s been through sh- some shit.

[00:27:45] Yeah. I have too. All right, let’s try again.

[00:27:48] Steve: Yeah. And, and I wanted to, I wanted the stories in the book to, to reflect that too, right? Like, I share this really fun story about, um, Ken Burns, the amazing documentarian. Mm-hmm. You know, everybody knows the story. He talks about how he spent, you know, 10 years making, uh, the Civil War and, uh, however many years it was to be, to do these amazing documentaries.

[00:28:09] And he talks about how it takes, you know, 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. Mm-hmm. And he has these y- ar- these amazing archives and, um, and hours of footage that he then condenses into, like, the two hours or the 10 hours of amazing… Like, the most amazing documentary you’ve ever seen.

[00:28:27] You know, never moved to New York City. He stayed in, I think he’s in Vermont or New Hampshire. He’s up in New England. And in the story… You know, I’m like, I’m loving this guy. He’s gotta have a great work-life balance, and he’s, he’s got his head screwed on straight, and all of these things. And I was listening to a podcast with him, and the host said something like, “Ken, you’ve had all these accomplishments.”

[00:28:48] How do you keep such a great work-life balance? And he said, “You’ll have to ask my two ex-wives about that.” And it was just, like, this amazing, honest moment- Mm-hmm … from a guy that was like, yeah, man, one, like, life and relationships are hard.

[00:29:03] Nathan: Right.

[00:29:03] Steve: Two, what you see or, like, the narrative you’ve already decided my life is- Mm-hmm

[00:29:08] isn’t the real picture. And also, like, there are some real consequences or things that come from being the best at something.

[00:29:15] Nathan: Right.

[00:29:16] Steve: Sometimes it’s okay to not want to be the best or be a top performer. Like, everything these days is everything must be top, elite, optimized. Mm-hmm. And in these instances, sometimes it’s totally okay that you’re not optimizing and doing all of the things or trying to be the best at something because there are some very real consequences that come with it.

[00:29:36] So for my book, I wanted to be honest about all this stuff.

[00:29:39] Nathan: Right.

[00:29:39] Steve: It takes a lot of work to write a book. It takes a lot of work to have six-pack abs. It takes a lot of work to build a business or run a marathon. Like, it’s totally okay if some of those things are not your thing. You just have to be able to say, like, “I don’t wanna do that.”

[00:29:54] What

[00:29:54] Nathan: were some other big failures that you put into the book of, like… or the fail- failures from history? ‘Cause there are some- Oh … you have some great ones in there where it’s just like, oh, man, I can’t believe that, one, was ever an idea, or two, you know, someone failed that much before actually- Sure

[00:30:07] finding the thing.

[00:30:07] Steve: Yeah. So there’s a, there’s a traveling museum called The Museum of Failure.

[00:30:11] Nathan: Okay.

[00:30:12] Steve: And I went to it in New York City, and it’s… I think it’s, uh, Dr. Samuel West, I believe. Um, it’s just some of the world’s, like, most greatest failures, flops, and, and frauds. Um, some of the things you’ll… that were in there, I think you’ll be…

[00:30:27] you’ll, you’ll remember. You know, like, a Microsoft Zune player was in there. Oh, yes. Yep. Remember the Zune MP3 player? Yep.

[00:30:32] Nathan: Oh, yeah. Yep. The iPod killer.

[00:30:33] Steve: iPod killer. Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t quite work out that way.

[00:30:37] Nathan: The iPod did get killed- … but by the iPhone- Yes … years later, not by the Zune.

[00:30:41] Steve: Right. And everybody talks about, like, oh, Apple cannibalized its own product.

[00:30:44] It’s like, yeah, but with, like, a more expensive, better product. So actually, it kind of worked out. Like, that was, like, baller move. Yeah. But Apple was also in the Museum of Failure. Mm. They had a, a video game console called the Pippin. I’ve ne- I… Before reading the book, I had never heard of this. I had never heard of it.

[00:31:00] I, I grew up as a gamer. Right. Like, that was my life. Um, and

[00:31:04] Nathan: I never- You have video game references for all, all through all of your writing.

[00:31:08] Steve: And I had- Never heard of it … never heard of the Pippin. Um, Nintendo had the Virtual Boy in there- Okay … which was this red, black and red headset that, like, strained kids’ eyes and was discontinued after a year.

[00:31:19] Um, I think my favorite was, uh, Hooters Air. I just think about this all the time

[00:31:27] Nathan: This is an airline.

[00:31:28] Steve: It’s an airline from the, the restaurant- … that sold chicken wings. Like, think of how many people had to say yes to, “Hey, like, we make chicken wings.”

[00:31:40] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:41] Steve: How hard could it possibly be to run a profitable airline?

[00:31:44] Right? Like, whenever I’m feeling bad about a decision I’ve made or something I’m struggling with or a project didn’t go according to plan, I’m like, “Well-

[00:31:54] Nathan: It wasn’t

[00:31:55] Steve: Hooters Air … it wasn’t Hooters Air. And honestly, like, whoever came up with it and got that across the finish line, like, honestly, more props to you.

[00:32:01] Like, you must be a hell of a salesman. So, uh, it’s funny. Th- this museum is full of these things, and it’s traveling around the world, so it might be in a city, um, you know, I’m not sure which city it is, but it’s called The Museum of Failure.

[00:32:13] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:32:13] Steve: The best part of this museum is on the way out, they had this wall called The Wall of Failure, and it was a kaleidoscope of Post-it Notes.

[00:32:24] Nathan: Okay.

[00:32:24] Steve: Everybody was encouraged to write down their biggest failure on the Post-it Note and put it up on the wall And you look at, it’s multicolored, it’s from one corner to the other, and it was, like, the most uplifting thing I’ve ever seen. Not because, like, Hooters air. I’m not thinking like, “Oh, it could be worse.”

[00:32:41] But rather, like, it made me feel so, so much less alone-

[00:32:45] Nathan: Mm …

[00:32:46] Steve: with the things I was struggling with or the failures I had. You know, there were signs that said three failed businesses, two failed marriages. Um, two… My favorite one was, uh, tried to cut my own bangs. And then you can

[00:33:02] Nathan: visualize it. You’re just like-

[00:33:03] Steve: You’re like, “Yep, I get it.”

[00:33:04] Yeah. And then the last one said, “I farted in yoga.” Like, that poor person probably has never gone back to a yoga class ever again.

[00:33:12] Nathan: Yep.

[00:33:12] Steve: But I’m looking at this wall of failure and it was so uplifting- Mm … because it made me realize that the failures I had or the business struggles I went through was, like, the most human thing- Right

[00:33:23] I could have possibly done at that time. So- Mm … um, failure is something that it, uh, has b- you know, started maybe in draft one or two, was towards the middle of the book. Like what- Yeah … happens after your next failure? And eventually became chapter one. Like- Mm-hmm … welcome to failure. We’re all here. Let’s talk through it.

[00:33:41] Like you said, we’re all in the mud together. Right. We’re gonna, we’re gonna lock arms and we’re gonna crawl through this sludge. Um, I’m gonna tell you some pretty funny jokes along the way that she’ll make you roll your eyes, and we’ll get through this together. And once we kind of fix failure- Mm-hmm … we can then talk about, okay, that happened.

[00:33:58] What do we do? What do we do next?

[00:34:00] Nathan: Yeah,

[00:34:01] Steve: I love that. Okay. So I don’t wanna give away the whole book ’cause it’s totally worth reading. Sure. But the PACT framework. Yes. Like what is, what… When do you apply that and what is it? Sure. So I wanted to come up with something, like, this is not like a top secret protocol.

[00:34:16] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:34:17] Steve: It’s not like the thing that will solve all of your problems, but it’s something you will remember. Mm-hmm. So I, I think of it as you make a pact with yourself. Mm-hmm. So P stands for pause, AKA step one. Like, don’t make things worse. Or-

[00:34:31] Nathan: If you, if you’re digging your own grave- Yeah … stop digging.

[00:34:33] Steve: Yeah.

[00:34:33] Right. There’s that great quote from CS Lewis. I think he says something like, uh, you know, the, if the n- if you realize the next step for you or you’re on the wrong path, the next step, the next correct step is back towards where you came. So for me, I’m like, that’s true, but also actually the next step is to stop walking.

[00:34:51] Nathan: Right.

[00:34:52] Steve: We need to pause first-

[00:34:53] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:34:54] Steve: and figure out like, am I doing the thing- I- is this working? Or do I actually want to train for a 5K again even though I don’t like 5K? Or I’m trying to make this, I’m trying to make Instagram work, which I keep trying to do. Uh, and I’m like, “I don’t like it.” Okay, cool.

[00:35:11] We’re gonna pause. Step two is accept, so A is for accept, and that’s essentially accepting reality. Like, hey man, you have kids. You have a, a life to manage. You have, um… Maybe you have a husband or a wife or a spouse that, um, works two jobs and your time is limited. Like, it’s essentially being honest with yourself, which is so hard, and accepting what’s happening in your situation.

[00:35:41] Um, C is for change. So if you just try, try again the same way, you’ll probably fail, fail again the same way, right?

[00:35:50] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:35:51] Steve: So essentially you’re gonna look back at how you failed in the past with no judgment. Mm-hmm. That was, that was an old version of you. Like, that’s okay. Yeah. But something has to be done differently.

[00:36:01] So how do we look at this like a fun, curious experiment and change something for this next attempt? And then T, obviously the most important word, is for try. Mm. Like, so pause, accept, change, try. And for the try- It’s not just, like, put your head down and do it. Mm. But rather be okay starting ugly, accept the signals life is giving you as you’re trying, and then at the end of your experiment, decide if this is a great path for you.

[00:36:32] Or cool, back to the beginning. Pause, accept, and just navigate this, this framework so that you don’t get caught in this negative cycle in your head, beating yourself up, trying things that are not right for you. You’re actively picking a different path each time, kind of like solving a maze, right? You’re picking a different path until you find the one where you find that strength that you want to double down on and get excited about continuing to do that thing.

[00:36:57] Nathan: I like that framework. I mean, the, the pause and accept, just focusing on that for a minute. There’s so many things that if you understood the full picture of what’s going on in someone’s life, like, you’d be like, “Oh, that’s why you made that decision or, or those things.”

[00:37:11] Steve: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:12] Nathan: You know, like I think about even for my own life, there’s all of these opportunities that I wanna capitalize on, whether it’s, uh, events to go to or business opportunities or ways to scale or get new customers on Kit or things like that.

[00:37:23] Yeah. But I recently had to go through that of, like, the pausing and realizing, okay, a bunch of w- how I’m spending my time isn’t working because of things that my family needed from me. Like what, you know, w- um, what’s going on with my kids, th- where the stage that they’re at and everything like that. And so getting to the point where you’re like, “Oh, okay, I have to…”

[00:37:42] Except, like, I, I can’t change that. Those aren’t things within my control. Sure. You know? It’s like, “Oh, don’t worry about it, we’ll just fix that,” you know, or something like that. You can’t. And so then, like accepting, oh, oh, this season that we’re in, whether it’s for a few weeks or a few years, like, I’m going to have to show up differently.

[00:37:59] Steve: Yeah.

[00:37:59] Nathan: And so then saying, okay, I’m actually… You know, uh, and let me just accept that. I, I can’t force it to be differently. And so then I’m gonna change the way that I show up. Sure. And, uh, you know, I found myself going through the exact same framework and realizing, okay, and here’s the different things I’m gonna try as far as certain interactions or, or a different schedule or, or those things.

[00:38:19] And, like, you just hold it really loosely.

[00:38:21] Steve: Yep.

[00:38:22] Nathan: And I think that’s such an important thing. And it- Well, I

[00:38:24] Steve: was, I was gonna say- Go ahead … not only that, um- I think there are parts of life and times or phases in life, uh, I, I refer to as, like, treading water.

[00:38:33] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:33] Steve: You know, you’re doing just enough to stay afloat-

[00:38:35] Nathan: Yeah

[00:38:36] Steve: so that you can survive until tomorrow. Not that you think help may be coming or not, but sometimes if you’re sprinting on writing a book or navigating something in your personal life, or you have young kids, like, maybe half-assing a workout- Right … or working out once a week is, like, the most you can do, and you’re just treading water on that activity.

[00:39:00] You can do that for weeks- Mm … months, years. Like, what’s the least amount I can do to tell myself, like, I’m not giving up, right? We talk about, oh, if you’re not making progress, you’re falling behind. It’s like, actually treading water instead of swimming in the wrong direction, like, is actually, like, the next best option.

[00:39:16] Right. And you can do that forever. While writing this book, I half-assed my workouts for years I own a fitness company. And I felt okay with that- Right … because, like, this is the amount of, um, this is the amount of energy mentally, physically, that I can give to this right now. I’m okay with that. But I had to accept that I’m not gonna be getting stronger.

[00:39:38] Nathan: Right.

[00:39:39] Steve: I had to accept that I’m not making progress in these other ways, but it’s allowing me to focus on the one thing for me that’s the most important, which was getting this book done, healing, like, taking care of myself- Mm-hmm … and what’s going on in my life. Uh, but you have to accept there are constraints that are actually really helpful to acknowledge and accept, ’cause it stops you from always feeling…

[00:40:01] Like, you wake up every day- Yeah … I’m already behind. I have more to do. I’m a failure or a loser because I can’t… In the book I say, like, instead of trying to get better at juggling chainsaws, like, maybe it’s okay that you stop juggling chainsaws, like, for now. Right. You can come back to it later. But for now, you can’t do it all, and that’s okay.

[00:40:22] Something that I’ve noticed in

[00:40:24] Nathan: a lot of our friends who have been doing this for a long time is sort of this idea of everything old is new again. Like, we built these businesses in order to have, uh, to scale it up to a certain level, to make this money, and then we could do the thing that we really love.

[00:40:39] And so many people end up in a similar place to you where, where it’s like, oh, I am not actually… I don’t actually enjoy the scale side of it, I enjoy the writing side of it. Um, and before we dive into that, what I’m curious about is just talking more about those early days. Oof. Right? Chris Guillebeau. Yep.

[00:40:56] So I was in the same position where I think I’ve read a guest post that he wrote on Tim Ferriss’ blog. So I’d read Four Hour Work Week.

[00:41:03] Steve: Yep.

[00:41:04] Nathan: And then I found this Chris Guillebeau guy, and then I think I read his entire site- … cover to cover as if it was a book- Yep … but it was a blo- it was, like, three years of blog posts.

[00:41:15] Steve: Yep.

[00:41:15] Nathan: And then I saw that he was coming to Boise on his book tour in, like, five days, and I went to that. I didn’t end up… He was promoting the first World Domination Summit-

[00:41:25] Steve: Okay …

[00:41:25] Nathan: which you went to.

[00:41:26] Steve: Yep.

[00:41:28] Nathan: And I didn’t go that first year, but I went the second year.

[00:41:30] Steve: Yeah.

[00:41:31] Nathan: And that’s where I met, you know, where we met you, and James Clear, and Corbett Barr, and, you know, uh, Caleb Wojcik, and just- Yeah

[00:41:37] tons and tons of people. Um, but I wanna go back to that early… Like, what was the point where you realized, like, “Oh, I love to write, and I could actually make money doing this”?

[00:41:46] Steve: Sure. I remember the first six months of writing, I think, and I didn’t even know… I don’t even think I had an, an email list yet.

[00:41:53] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:54] Steve: I had 100… After six months of writing, I had 100 RSS subscribers. That’s how old school this is. Yeah. My bones are grinding to dust over here- … as a dinosaur. I had 100 RSS subscribers. Yep. And then I saw that Chris had a newsletter, and he sent, like I said, Mondays- Yeah … and Wednesdays. Or Mondays and Thursdays, excuse me.

[00:42:14] So I, I switched my writing. At the time, I didn’t love it. I was writing super short articles that were timely about time-sensitive, you know, something that happened that day or that week, because that was the prevailing wisdom- Right … back then. Oh, man. This… Oh, man, we’re… I’m gonna bring this… I’m gonna land this plane, dude.

[00:42:32] Yeah. Don’t you worry. Uh, talking about old is new again. So back then, short form content was the king. Yeah. You had to write short or… ‘Cause nobody had the time or attention. This is in 2009, dude. People were saying nobody has the time, or energy, or attention span to read longer articles.

[00:42:49] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:50] Steve: And then I found Chris, and then I found Brett McKay over at The Art of Manliness.

[00:42:54] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:42:55] Steve: And he wrote long articles full of research, and quotes, and references, and I said I think I wanna try that.

[00:43:03] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:03] Steve: And same Adam Baker, who ran- Yeah … Man vs. Debt, wrote an article called How to Not Suck at Blogging, and I read it and I said, “Oh, crap, I suck at blogging.” And I changed it. I started writing longer articles.

[00:43:17] I put way more of my personality into it. Mm. It was evergreen. It was full of nerdy references, thing that most people wouldn’t understand. And to this day I still remember, I got my first comment from a guy. His name was Evan. I have no idea where Evan is these days, but I hope he’s doing well. Evan was the first, like, random stranger who read my site, left a comment, and said like, “Oh, I really like this article about Legend of Zelda,” or something.

[00:43:41] It’s like, “Okay, we have a reader, and we have people signing up for my newsletter.” And then I kept writing, and when I was writing these longer articles, chasing curiosities about big, deep, you know, long-form content, it started to pick up traction. Mm-hmm. And back then it was links on Twitter actually worked, and- Yeah

[00:44:00] my essays started to get bounced around. Brett from Art of Manliness reached out and said, “Hey, I like your website. If you ever wanna write a guest post for me, let me know.” And you know how it i- right? Like, back then a guest post-

[00:44:14] Nathan: Oh, yeah …

[00:44:14] Steve: was like you made it. You won the lottery. It’s like, okay. I spent, I think, six weeks working on this essay for The Art of Manliness, ’cause I loved that website.

[00:44:24] Oh, yeah. And still do. Brett’s, Brett and Kate are amazing. So I, I write this guest post, and then I woke up one day- And I thought my site had got hacked because Google had just put out, like, their Penguin update or some, some SEO algorithm update, and my traffic, like, 100X’d in a day. I legitimately thought it was hacked, and I didn’t know.

[00:44:48] Yeah. So I asked on Twitter, “Something is wrong with my site. Does it… Can anybody tell me, like, am I being hacked or something?” I don’t, I didn’t know what the heck. I didn’t know what SEO was.

[00:44:58] Nathan: Right.

[00:44:59] Steve: I wasn’t writing for SEO. I didn’t know, but all of a sudden, some of my articles jumped to the front page or the top search term for, for Google, and all of a sudden, traffic was, like, just kind of jumped in there.

[00:45:10] So there was something with my writing that kept people reading. Mm. It was e- when I could write in an entertaining way, as you’ve just read in this book, like, I have to make it entertaining. Yeah. Uh, otherwise, it’s not fun for me. So I make it entertaining and realize, like, “Oh, this is what I want to be doing.”

[00:45:30] Yeah, it kind of feels like homework in some ways. I have to publish on Mondays and Thursdays, but those constraints really helped, too- Mm … for my overactive brain. Uh, and I just put my head down for, like, geez, like, a decade. Mm-hmm. And just focused on writing and the craft of writing and getting better, building that audience.

[00:45:50] And speaking of old is new, back then also, the other thing that was really helpful, going to conferences- Yeah … and spending time with people in person. Yeah. So it felt very much like long form blogs- Mm … connecting with people in real life. I mean, think of how many of our friends came from that first or second or third World Domination Summit.

[00:46:08] Nathan: Oh, I mean, dozens.

[00:46:10] Steve: Dozens. Like- And we’ve all been through it, and we all kind of like, oh, shared experience. So, uh, I, like, old is new, man. Oh, short form content is the only thing that works now. Uh, online, it doesn’t work the same way and- Right … um, everything is AI and work remotely, so, like, don’t worry about getting together in person.

[00:46:30] Mm. Go the exact opposite direction on all of those things. Right. Feels like a return to form. For me, it feels like return to home. Mm. It’s like getting back to doing the things and connecting with people in a, in a great way. Yeah, and that’s

[00:46:43] Nathan: what I’ve noticed is it worked back then and it works now of if you write something that’s really valuable- And it’s not in a generic way, but you put your heart and soul or, or your unique voice into it, then people will say like, “Wow, I learned something I didn’t know.

[00:47:01] I learned it from someone that I like and respect, and I learned it in an interesting way. Like, I’m all in.” Yeah. “Just give me a… You know, however I follow you, whether it’s on a social platform or a newsletter, like absolutely.” And then ultimately people are like, “And you know, I got to meet up in person at a book launch party or at any of these other things.”

[00:47:20] Like, community still really matters, and, um, it’s amazing to see like that still work and that still be rewarded.

[00:47:29] Steve: Yeah, I, I think about this a lot. Even with, I think with, with more and more content, the internet getting flooded with more and more content. We love humans, and we love learning from other humans, and we can tell…

[00:47:45] I mean, at least, I, I think I can tell when somebody really put their heart and soul-

[00:47:49] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:47:50] Steve: into something. Mm-hmm. Like, the people that, like, agonize over, like, the placement of, uh, certain words or phrases. Um, I have a section in the book, I talk about comedy and there’s this great quote from Mike Birbiglia who said something like, “Stand-up comedy is, like, the art of it is making it seem like this…

[00:48:10] Make it seem like something that you just came up with and, like, you’re kind of surprised by it.” But really, like, you’ve been practicing it and you tested intonations and you’ve changed words and phrases because they care that much about the craft. Uh, I’m trying to apply that to writing. And similarly, I’ve seen that…

[00:48:28] I got a chance to attend Craft and Commerce last year. Yeah. And that was the first conference I had been to probably since, uh, World Domination Summit a decade earlier or whatever. Right. And I saw the attention to detail. I saw all of my old friends who are still like, “We’re still here.” Mm-hmm. Whether they’re treading water or working on the next activity or working c- with a completely different set of bloggers or YouTubers or whatever.

[00:48:55] It’s like, oh, like, shared experiences. Other people that have been through the mud.

[00:49:00] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:49:00] Steve: Like, we have some people still in the mud and trying to crawl out. Some people that maybe, like, tried the online thing and it didn’t work, but they still want to come see their friends. Like, that community is so powerful, and for me to show up last year, it was truly, like, life-giving.

[00:49:15] Mm. So y- you and your team put on an amazing conference. Um- Thank

[00:49:19] Nathan: you …

[00:49:19] Steve: it inspired… I’ve now attended, like, five conferences in the past year. And, uh, I, I was saying earlier, it kind of feels like college and like, oh, yeah, people that I haven’t seen in a few months- I now just like, “Oh, hey. Hey, Nathan. What’s up, dude?”

[00:49:34] Like, I haven’t seen you in months, but I saw you yesterday- Right … or the day before. And it just felt like I had just seen you a few days prior. Um, it’s so… I think that’s the only way we’re all gonna get through this is relationships, doubling down on your strengths, and, um, finding that craft, that part that you’re, like, willing to obsess over the details on in a way that, like, you just love.

[00:49:57] You cannot help yourself. That’s me and writing. And I, I, I wish I had just stuck with it longer or rather hadn’t kinda taken that detour. Right. Um, because it worked 15 years ago.

[00:50:10] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:10] Steve: Going to conferences and writing longform. And now I’m going to conferences and writing longform, in book form or newsletter form.

[00:50:19] Nathan: And it works.

[00:50:19] Steve: And it not only d- it works, but I’ve tried to do so many things recently where- Mm-hmm … like, I’m willing to do this so that I can stop doing it.

[00:50:28] Nathan: Oh, yeah. It’s a means to an end.

[00:50:30] Steve: It’s a means to an end, and I just don’t wanna… Okay, fine. I’ll try it, and I’ll do it, but my whole goal is to stop doing it.

[00:50:36] Like, that’s not a great reason to start doing something. But writing, like, the goal is to keep writing.

[00:50:42] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:43] Steve: So many people have asked me, “Oh, you wrote a book. What’s your back, what’s the backend funnel?” Or, “Are you gonna go on a speaking tour?” I’m like, “No. The goal is to write- Write … write more, to write the next book.

[00:50:53] Hopefully, to have an opportunity to do that because I’m getting to do the thing that I love, and that is the means, the end is the means here. Yes, you. Go to Craft and Commerce. Uh, I’ll be there, and, uh, I plan on coming every year, so get used to it.

[00:51:08] Nathan: I love it.

[00:51:09] Steve: Uh, I came last year, and I was like, “Yep, these are my people.”

[00:51:11] And it felt like World Domination Summit back in the day, and I loved it. So if you’re thinking about it, uh, make the trip. Also, Boise is incredible. I had never been. It’s pretty great. Like, oh, I get it. Oh, these mountains- … are so beautiful, and everybody’s hiking, and everybody’s hap… Like, this is great. So,

[00:51:30] Nathan: um, well done, sir.

[00:51:32] That is so special to hear about Craft and Commerce because when World Domination Summit came to an end, we really wanted to make sure that we had… We’re trying to create the successor to that, of, like, this, this place that everyone could come back to, uh, be human, connect with each other, learn, have shared values.

[00:51:53] And so it was so special, like, to see you there, to see Caleb Wojcik there, like, all of these people. Uh, Josh Kaufman is coming. He just told- Yes … said yesterday that he’s coming. Yes. And then, like, we’re even hanging out right before recording this, you know, and, uh, with Sam Vander Wielen, and, and, and she says goodbye before we sit down to record this.

[00:52:10] And we’re like, and we’re all like, “Well, see you in two months,” you know? See you

[00:52:12] Steve: in two months. Um, also, I’ve… Can I tell a quick, funny story about Josh Kaufman?

[00:52:15] Nathan: Yes.

[00:52:16] Steve: Yes. So I met Josh a decade ago. Mm-hmm. Um, James Clear had put together a little writer group back, way back in the day, and I met Josh. I was like, “Okay, this dude is nerdy and a little weird, and I love him.”

[00:52:32] And I came to Craft and Commerce last year, and I was talking with Tim Grahl.

[00:52:36] Nathan: Yep.

[00:52:37] Steve: And had… Who is, I know, a frequent guest on your podcast. Yes, he

[00:52:40] Nathan: is. I think he’s the most-

[00:52:41] Steve: Yep …

[00:52:41] Nathan: most frequent

[00:52:41] Steve: guest. Oh, man. He’s the best, and he lives three minutes from me in Nashville. So I see him all the time. Um, but I was talking to Tim and saying, “Gosh, like, my publisher, like, they’re really happy with the book, but there’s some part of it that just isn’t fitting for me.”

[00:52:55] Mm. And I said to… And Tim said, “You know Josh, right?” I said, “Yeah, I love Josh.” Josh says… Or Tim said, “Josh is the man. Like, he can help. Like, what do you- Mm. And I really struggle asking for help-

[00:53:08] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:53:08] Steve: for anything, which has been weird promoting a book. But, uh, he said, “Just text…” So I texted Josh, and he said… I said, “I, I could use your help.

[00:53:17] Can I get some of your eyes on this book?”

[00:53:19] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:19] Steve: And he said, “How soon can you be here?” So I changed my flight. Mm. On the morning home from Craft and Commerce, I flew home a day ear- and I flew directly to, to hang out with Josh.

[00:53:29] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:53:30] Steve: And while I played video games with his son-

[00:53:33] Nathan: Yep. His son’s name is Nathan.

[00:53:34] Yep. I’ve played video games, played Zelda with Nathan before.

[00:53:39] Steve: Um, while playing video games with Nathan, uh, Josh read my book, and he said, “Oh, I got it. This is you. This is the part where it’s maximum Steve.” Mm-hmm. “This is the part where you’re trying to probably sound a little bit too much like James Clear.

[00:53:56] This is the part where you’re trying to sound a little bit too, like, too much like Mark Manson-

[00:54:00] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:54:01] Steve: too much like Oliver Burkeman or Morgan Housel. But this, these parts and this chapter goes, like, this is it, man. This is your book.” And, uh, it was so helpful to have that 10 years of ex- You know, I’ve known him for- Mm

[00:54:16] a decade, and we’ve spent enough time together, even though we don’t live in the same place- Yeah … so that I could text him at a moment’s notice, and he was like, “How can I help?”

[00:54:25] Nathan: Right.

[00:54:25] Steve: Um, and I’m so, so appreciative for that, and I think I ended up with a better book because of it, because I was willing to ask for help.

[00:54:31] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:32] Steve: Because of had I not come to Craft and Commerce, I don’t know. Tim might not have had that idea. Right. And I never would’ve… I was like, “I’m struggling with these chapters.” And I was like, “I just need a few more months.” And he said, “You’ve been struggling with the order of those chapters for six months, dude.”

[00:54:46] Nathan: Two more won’t do

[00:54:47] Steve: it. “Tim, maybe you accept that you can’t figure it out right now, and you need some help.” Mm-hmm. And accepting that and having the courage to ask was g- a game changer. So I’m so appreciative to Josh, and that is all downstream of coming to conferences in person, connecting with the right people, and being willing to be, I think, vulnerable in some ways and accepting kind of, like, the challenges that maybe you’re facing and where other people are actually really good at what they do.

[00:55:15] Maybe they can help you do

[00:55:16] Nathan: those things. Maybe. Shocking, I know. Oh, I love that. I actually have a very similar Josh story. But from 24 hours ago. And that is where I also have this book that the publisher says, “Yeah, we’ll do a final copy edit. It’s good to go.” And I’m like, “It’s not yet.” And getting people to review it in detail, like that’s a big ask and all that, so I’m very hesitant to do that.

[00:55:41] Steve: Yep.

[00:55:41] Nathan: And, uh, then yesterday I was like- Josh, would you be, would you, would you help me out on this book? And he’s like, “Send it to me. I’ll, I’ll have it done. I’ll read it on the plane.” You have to go

[00:55:52] Steve: play video games with him. That’s the rule. He will also cook you a lovely smoked brisket from the backyard.

[00:55:57] And then, and then you have to play video games, yeah.

[00:55:59] Nathan: Yes. And so that, yeah, I’m excited for him to dive into my book and, give him-

[00:56:05] Steve: Poor Josh, we’re gonna blow him up here,

[00:56:06] Nathan: but. Give him the Josh Kaufman treatment. He’s like, “I’m trying to write my own book,

[00:56:11] Steve: but all

[00:56:11] Nathan: my

[00:56:11] Steve: friends-”

[00:56:11] Nathan: He’s gotta take all these distractions to help other people with their books.

[00:56:14] Yeah, exactly. Oh, Josh, he’s the best. So I wanna, uh, I wanna wrap up on the idea of, like, longevity and endurance. Sure. So you and I have been doing this for a long time. We met 14 years ago. Y- when I came into this world, you were one of, like, the six people that I knew who was, like, earning a full-time living.

[00:56:32] Y- you know, it’s like you, and Chris, and Liam Abatta, and Josh, um- Yep … Adam Baker. You know, like-

[00:56:37] Steve: Yeah …

[00:56:38] Nathan: this, uh, this small group. And we’ve touched on a few of them already, but I’m curious, what are the things that stand out to you most in the how do you make sure that you can be doing this creative work?

[00:56:49] I’m not even gonna call it, like, as a creator, ’cause that implies the business side of it. Sure. But that you can be doing this creative work 10 years, 20 years

[00:56:56] Steve: from now? Yeah. I think you have to either fall in love with the … It sounds so cliche, right? And I don’t mean like chase your passion and follow your dreams.

[00:57:06] Like, there’s no vision board or m- or whatever. I mean, like, we’re all, we all get a chance to try different aspects of- Mm … this online business thing, and that is the experimentation part. You have to be willing to also then realize, like, oh, something about this path maybe feels a little different. Mm. And then not burning yourself out going down that path.

[00:57:28] I had no problem writing two articles a week for a decade. Yeah. Because it didn’t … I don’t wanna say it didn’t feel like work, but I loved getting better at it. I really, really enjoyed it. The, this other part felt like I was, you know, uh, the, the trying to force myself to become a boss of a bigger company.

[00:57:46] Mm-hmm. And spending my time in, like, leadership training and reading leadership books and all of that, it felt like, it felt like a lot of work. Mm. And it felt like I was struggling through all of it. And after years of this, I finally accepted or finally said to myself, like, “Hey, this other part-

[00:58:04] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:58:04] Steve: you could do that for the rest of your life.”

[00:58:06] Nathan: Right.

[00:58:06] Steve: You get the thing that you’re doing, the goal is to, that you get to keep doing it. Um, so you either have to fall in love with maybe there’s some aspect of the business, or you fall in love with, like, I love taking this from zero to one and handing it off to somebody- Mm … that is more capable of it.

[00:58:23] I love that part of it. I think there is some longevity there. Uh, and there … I won’t tell the story, but there is a story about, um- The worst vacation ever that I start my book with about treading water where a guy falls off a boat in the middle of the night. Um, turns out humans can tread water for quite a while.

[00:58:43] And I’m thinking about this longevity here. You know, the goal is to not just to win, but to not lose, right? Mm-hmm. Like, how can you, how can you be around long enough? Back then we were making, you know, a few bucks and writing, but our expenses were less- Right … than our, um, than our cost of living. Um, or rather the, you know, our revenue was higher than our expenses, and we could write, and you could build a little audience.

[00:59:07] And that, I think, is what’s sustainable because you can stay lo- You don’t have to start making short-term decisions. You can think longer. Yeah. So for me, it was like I’m going to take a few years to go write this book because I’m planning for the next 15, 20 years. I’ve… This is what I’m meant to be doing.

[00:59:24] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:25] Steve: I’m willing to tread water on so many other parts of my life, maybe this other business, because I can focus on the thing that will provide that longevity.

[00:59:34] Nathan: Yeah. I think it’s that falling in love with the craft and then surrounding yourself with people who have fallen in love with their craft as well.

[00:59:41] Steve: With their craft. That’s the most important part. And

[00:59:42] Nathan: it doesn’t have to be the same craft. Something that stood out to me once, I was at this entrepreneur, a creator entrepreneur event in Malibu, and it’s this fancy thing, all these investors and, you know, all of that. And people were going around the room, maybe 20 people are all introducing themselves.

[00:59:59] And someone’s like, “Well, I’m a serial entrepreneur,” this and that, “and I’ve got a big YouTube audience, and, you know, I’ve written two books.” Or, uh… Then they’re listing all these things and get around. And it c- gets to Ryan Holiday’s turn, and he goes, “I’m a writer And he just sort of gestures to the next person.

[01:00:14] Yep. And you- And I know his business, like he’s done really a lot of things, but at his core, he is a writer. That is what he wants to do. And he wants to get his message out there to a lot of people. He works with a team so that, you know, he can build a very large email list and all these other things. But at his core, he wants to write.

[01:00:34] And that’s the thing that I’ve seen from, from Ryan, from Mark Manson, from you, is this obsession with the craft of writing. Yep. And just saying, “Oh, so you wrote a book so that you could…” And he’s like, “No, no, I wrote a book because

[01:00:49] Steve: that’s what I’m trying to do.” Yeah. “I wrote a book because I wanna write and I wanna tell these stories, and I wanna impact people in this way.”

[01:00:54] Uh, so I was at a, a s- a similar small group in, I think it was 2020. Mm-hmm. And Ryan was talking about opening his bookstore.

[01:01:01] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:01:01] Steve: But I was also sharing, like, “Man, I’m struggling. I got this team and I wanna do this,” and he was just very plain. He was just like, “Sounds like the decision’s made, dude. Like, what are you, what are you doing?

[01:01:14] Like, go…” Like, he was legitimately confused. I know, yeah. He’s like, “It sounds like you want to write, and you’re not writing, and you have this thing that you don’t want to do, but you’re doing it.” “It sounds like there’s a pretty simple solution here.” And that was February of 2020. Mm-hmm. So, uh, he then went home and obviously opened his bookstore and-

[01:01:34] uh, has been crushing it. Uh- I

[01:01:36] Nathan: think he might have regretted the bookstore for a little bit in the pandemic. And then was like, “Okay, now it’s doing amazing.”

[01:01:41] Steve: Right. Um, but I thought about that a lot, and that group was so helpful. Again, a small group of creative people that care about the craft. Yeah. Right?

[01:01:50] And I took that to heart and came home and said like … Kinda like I said, like, I need to make changes, but then the pandemic, business doubled and was like, “Oh, God.” “Um, okay, uh, well, we’re gonna come back to that later.” But, uh, it was the return to craft- Mm-hmm … and caring about it. Yeah. Like that Mike Birbiglia quote and, um, it’s so, so, so valuable to find other people that most people don’t get the opportunity-

[01:02:13] Nathan: Mm-hmm

[01:02:13] Steve: to find their craft and to care about it enough to be successful We’re lucky, right? I, I feel so lucky that we can be in the room with people that have found it, that feel that enthusiasm, and I feed off of that.

[01:02:26] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:02:26] Steve: And I feel it similarly when I’m doing my craft. And the goal with this is so that I can keep writing.

[01:02:33] Hopefully, it’s been, whatever, 18, nine- 17 years since I started writing, and I hope it’s 17 plus more- Yeah … that I get to keep doing this because it’s truly, like, what I actually enjoy to do.

[01:02:43] Nathan: That’s amazing. Well- It shows in the book, How to Try Again. It’s fantastic, available- Wherever books are sold

[01:02:50] Steve: Everywhere.

[01:02:51] All

[01:02:51] Nathan: right. Around the world. Uh, where should people go to follow your stuff?

[01:02:55] Steve: Yeah.

[01:02:56] Nathan: Read the book, all of those things.

[01:02:57] Steve: So simple. It’s go to howtotryagain.com.

[01:03:00] Nathan: What a great URL.

[01:03:01] Steve: So … Can I tell one final quick story? Yes, let’s do it. Okay. So the working title was Restart-

[01:03:06] Nathan: Uh-huh …

[01:03:07] Steve: through the first two years of writing it.

[01:03:09] And I went to visit my brother in San Diego, and he’s got a lovely niece, and I got sick. She’s, you know, two, is like a walking, walking germ. Uh, so I got sick. I came back to Nashville, lying in bed, couldn’t type, full of, you know, cough medicine, and it just popped into my head. Mm. I was like, I, I knew Restart wasn’t it, but I couldn’t- Yeah

[01:03:27] come up with a title. And then I thought back to t- talking, uh, to, or James, and James is like, “If you can find a title that tells you what the book does-” Mm … and a hook that tells them the, the, the premise of the book. Um, and How to Try Again popped into my head. Mm. So I went on Amazon, and I typed in How to Try Again.

[01:03:47] This sounds very similar to Nerd Fitness. Yeah. I typed in How to Try Again, and nothing popped up. I went to howtotryagain.com, available. Immediately bought. $9. Haven’t even talked, haven’t even talked to my publisher yet. I just bought it. Yeah. And I bought, you know, uh, bought the domain, and then I told the publisher, “Hey, I got this idea for a title.”

[01:04:05] Um, and then I’d like to share so-

[01:04:07] Nathan: Yeah …

[01:04:08] Steve: this is the, the first line on the front of the book is the first line of my book proposal.

[01:04:13] Nathan: Okay.

[01:04:14] Steve: And it, the publishers, it was their idea. A shout-out to St. Martin’s Press. It was their idea to put this on the cover. Um- Some people wake up at 4:00 AM, run 15 miles barefoot, and take an ice bath.

[01:04:25] This book is for the rest of us.

[01:04:27] Nathan: Mm.

[01:04:27] Steve: So this book, um, I wanted the premise to tell you exactly what it does.

[01:04:33] Nathan: Yep.

[01:04:34] Steve: And I wanted the tagline to sell- tell you, like, what kind of humor it is and who exactly it’s for. And, and then I could spend all of my time crafting and working on the, the… what chapters go where- Right

[01:04:45] with Josh’s help. Which words go where, and working my way through it. Um, I’m so proud of it. But if you go to howtotryagain.com, um, it’s available there and literally everywhere books are sold. And I got to read the audiobook, which was a delight. It’s so good. It…

[01:05:00] Nathan: I listened to the audiobook. It makes me so happy- Yes

[01:05:02] to hear you tell your own jokes, laugh at your own jokes and all of that.

[01:05:07] Steve: Thank you very much. I worked really hard on it. I’m so proud of it, and I think it’s gonna help people. That’s amazing. Well, go check out the book. Steve, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, man.

[01:05:15] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment.

[01:05:23] I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for

[01:05:30] listening.

[00:00:00] Mo: This changes everything. I don’t think the creator community knows about this yet

[00:00:03] Nathan: Mo is the author of Give to Grow and the founder of the Bundle Idea Group, a firm that has trained tens of thousands of professionals at some of the most prestigious organizations in the world.

[00:00:12] Mo: There’s four things people need.

[00:00:14] Number one, for every page or significant part of content, you want a cool name for it. The second thing we need are steps. The third thing is science. And then the last thing are-

[00:00:25] Nathan: Oh, interesting. In this episode, he gives us a masterclass on how to do exactly what he’s done. He walks through the materials from the simple things he started with, all the way up to what he brings in to multi-billion dollar consulting companies today.

[00:00:36] Mo: It’s gifts all the way through. The book is a gift, the download’s a gift, the call’s gonna be a gift. Actually, can I give the other secret?

[00:00:43] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:00:43] Mo: Okay. Here’s the other secret that nobody does that’s really important, is-

[00:00:47] Nathan: Mo told me at the end that this isn’t something he normally breaks down publicly, so take advantage of it

[00:00:52] Mo: If you wanna scale IP, you

[00:00:53] Nathan: wanna have a…

[00:00:55] Mo: It’s freaking awesome. Ooh, I like it

[00:01:02] Nathan: Mo, I think of you as the best in the world, and you’ve got this insane client list at Corporate Development Training, all of these things, and your- the IP that you have, and the way that you’ve used that to grow your business is incredible.

[00:01:14] Mo: Mm.

[00:01:15] Nathan: But I wanna go back to when did that start? When was the time that you said, “Oh, I need to go from the training that I’m doing, and I need to actually codify this into something that has real- Yeah

[00:01:24] intellectual property”?

[00:01:25] Mo: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s … It’s a funny story because I had grown up at a consulting firm and left as a senior partner, and been used to selling big things and, and growing the business, and left a- as one of our most senior business developers out of about, I don’t know, 20,000 people or something.

[00:01:41] Mm-hmm. And started my own firm, and was mostly doing, like, one-on-one coaching and things like that. I had a lot of stuff in my head. I knew how to do it, and mostly people through my own network were hiring me. Okay. It was great, and, like, it was paying the bills, and it was fine. It wasn’t scaling. I didn’t know how to scale.

[00:01:56] And one, one Friday, I got a call, and it was from a CEO of a, of a professional service-run consulting firm that we’d been working with. And he said, “Hey, we’ve really enjoyed you coaching, uh, our partners. You know, you’ve coached, like, six or seven or whatever. We’re having a meeting with all of our partners, and we’d love you to bring your mater- Like, you’re mostly just teaching people things, whatever they need at the ti- Right

[00:02:20] but is there a way you could codify your whole system and teach it to all of our partners?” And I, like … Nathan, I had, like, this spark of, like,, “That’s a really good idea.” Like, I- I should do that. I … Why didn’t I think of that? That’s a really good- And I was like, “Okay, yeah. Um, Brad, I, I’d love to do that. When- when’s the meeting?”

[00:02:37] And he said Tuesday. And I like, I thought the answer would be, like, month, day, time. Right. And

[00:02:43] Nathan: it was like-

[00:02:43] Mo: You know,

[00:02:43] Nathan: we got our quarter of the offsite- … coming up in Q3.

[00:02:46] Mo: Exactly. No, and it was a, it was more like Memorial Day or Labor Day weekend. It was one of the two three-day weekends, and it’s Friday at, I don’t know, 11:00 AM.

[00:02:54] We’ve got, we’ve got family coming in town ’cause it’s a three-day weekend. But I felt like, this is so important.

[00:03:00] Nathan: Right.

[00:03:00] Mo: Like, this is the next stage of the business that I somehow just fell into. Like, literally, they’re ready to pay me for it. I can use the money, ’cause we were still getting … We were still, like, man, it was a

[00:03:11] It was lean. And, uh, so I just, I just … Every day I’d work for, like, eight hours that weekend and play- Yeah … drink beer and play euchre at night with our family who came from Indiana, and at the end of that, at the end of that weekend, I had some materials.

[00:03:26] Nathan: Effectively selling professional services.

[00:03:28] Mo: Yeah. And,

[00:03:29] Nathan: uh- You got

[00:03:29] I mean, uh, l- this was the first one? This is what you made over the

[00:03:31] Mo: weekend? This is, this came out of my head- Yep … and I designed it in Pages with some kind of template I found online- Yep.

[00:03:36] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:03:37] Mo: in a weekend. And the, the hardest part was convincing the print shop not to do their normal two-day proof.

[00:03:42] Nathan: Right.

[00:03:42] Mo: Like, I’m like, “No, no. I’m gonna drive down there tomorrow.” “I’ll stand at the printer. I’ll make it easy for you. You’ll open the doors.” Yeah. “It’ll be great, on a Sunday.” But anyway, we, we got this done, and this, this was sort of the beginnings of intellectual property.

[00:03:55] Nathan: So what did you notice the difference from before having your IP codified- Yep

[00:04:00] to after? Of, like, first with that, that Tuesday morning meeting that you went into.

[00:04:05] Mo: Yeah.

[00:04:06] Nathan: But then each of your clients from then on.

[00:04:08] Mo: It was totally different. Mm-hmm. I think any great expert can stand in front of some PowerPoint slides and probably do a, a pretty good job. Mm-hmm. The problem with that is it positions the expert as the lead.

[00:04:21] Yeah. The expert as the thing. It’s in their head.

[00:04:24] Nathan: Right.

[00:04:24] Mo: And even, even PowerPoint sort of … Uh, there, there’s just so much bad PowerPoint and bad training, and, like, you’re in a, you’re in a morass already. When you make IP the paramount thing- Mm-hmm … now you can scale indefinitely. You can … Potentially you can certify others.

[00:04:41] You can sell large corporate contracts. You can develop even better IP- Right … that we, that we can get into. But it, um, it’s a, it’s a transformation because now you can start charging by the person, by the day, by the event, by the impact. Whereas if you’re just a human, you’re almost thrown back into … You know, if you think of your ladders of wealth, you’re almost thrown back a couple ladders if you don’t have IP as the paramount thing.

[00:05:05] Nathan: Yeah, so I feel like there’s so many listeners to the show who maybe are at half a million a year in revenue.

[00:05:10] Mo: Yep.

[00:05:10] Nathan: And they have something that they’re trusted to teach and, and they’re making a big impact on, you know, the clients they’re coaching or the, you know, the services they’re providing. But it’s not scaling.

[00:05:22] Mo: Mm.

[00:05:22] Nathan: You know, or maybe they’re getting to a million, but they’re not breaking through that. What are the things that you would say to them of like, “Okay, here’s, here’s what you need to do-

[00:05:30] Mo: Yeah …

[00:05:31] Nathan: to actually have this scale?”

[00:05:32] Mo: Yeah. Well, let’s, let… We could even put this in your ladders of wealth framework.

[00:05:36] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:05:36] Mo: Um, because I think that they just go together so well. I think in, if somebody really wants to make an impact on the world, and that means there’s an altruistic nature of- Mm-hmm … just having an impact and, and helping people transform and become better, but also having an economic impact on yourself, being able to scale and, and make a lot of money so that, you know, the Walt Disney quote, quote, “We don’t make movies to make money.

[00:05:59] We make money to make more movies.” Yes. Um, that creates scale. So what somebody can do is, they don’t have to do it right away, but step one would be to, you know, to codify your materials in a way that, that you think starts to get to where there’s a system here versus something in someone’s head.

[00:06:19] Nathan: So let’s dig in on that for a second.

[00:06:20] Yeah. Because I think there’s a lot of people who know something intuitively. Yep. And they might, they might have a story around it from their own personal side, you know, all of these different things. And then they’ve said it over and over again, but they don’t have a framework or a diagram- Yep … around it.

[00:06:34] I actually had this experience. I was talking to Dan Martell’s, like, private mastermind.

[00:06:38] Mo: Mm.

[00:06:38] Nathan: So he had maybe, like, 15 to 20 software leaders. These are all people who have built businesses at least 5 to 10 million a year in revenue, uh, and some way bigger than that. And this was their offsite. And I came and I taught a bunch of things.

[00:06:51] And Dan at one point goes, “I, I gotta stop you right there,” and he jumps up and he then goes to the board and diagrams what I just said, puts it in a triangle, labels it, you know, all of this. And he’s like, “Keep going. That was just perfect. You just needed a, a- To be able to see it … a fr- a framework- Yeah … to go with that.”

[00:07:07] And I was like, oh. You know, it, it was unlocked for me of like, wait, what are these things that I’m saying over and over again- Yeah … but I’m not codifying? Mm. I don’t have… I couldn’t sketch it out. I couldn’t articulate it cleanly. And I, so I went back through my work and really mapped out, okay, here’s, you know, the ladders of wealth is one of them, you know, here’s these other ones- Yep

[00:07:24] where I’m getting it down to a very specific framework. Yep. I think about, um, Ramit Sethi. In his material, he would talk about something he calls the briefcase technique, which is really just his way of saying, hey, there’s a pre… Like, I have a pre-prepared plan for you as a potential client that I can reach into my briefcase- Oh

[00:07:40] Mo: and get out. And pull it out,

[00:07:41] Nathan: right. You know, and it has, like, this level of credibility with it. Not really that novel of an idea, but he branded it really well, and now people will remember it.

[00:07:50] Mo: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:50] Nathan: And so how do you go about creating those frameworks that you can actually teach, where you’re like, “Look, all of these important lessons I now have- Yep

[00:07:58] an ownable framework”?

[00:07:59] Mo: Let’s actually skip to the end of the road and show- Okay … what the materials look like now. The

[00:08:03] Nathan: end state, yep.

[00:08:03] Mo: And then I’ll break down the things that are within it-

[00:08:06] Nathan: I

[00:08:06] Mo: like that … to, that’ll answer your question. Yeah. But I think you almost need to see it. So if that first version was me in Pages on a Mac- Over a weekend

[00:08:13] over a weekend, like design- Yep … I’m not a designer, but I picked the template- Prince of Netflix

[00:08:17] Nathan: office or something like that.

[00:08:18] Mo: Yeah. So, like, that’s level one. Then what, what, how you get to great… That, that was good, but how you get to great is you probably wanna either become an expert yourself or hire out a great instructional designer.

[00:08:30] Mm. Adult learning techniques. How… You wanna get to the activity quickly. You want to just train just enough. You wanna be anti-lecture just enough that they can get to an activity. They’re working on activity for 20, 20 minutes, and then the participants are the heroes sharing what they learned. Mm-hmm. You want max, you want 60-plus percent of time with the participants in activities.

[00:08:49] Nathan: Okay.

[00:08:50] Mo: So that, that’s, like, one element. Um, as we moved through, when you have a graphic, a instructional designer, then you can hire a graphic designer.

[00:08:58] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:08:59] Mo: And so this was sort of level two. This was about, I think I spent 50 or $60,000 in graphic design alone. Mm. Maybe about the same in instructional design.

[00:09:07] This is a long time ago, but we call this the trapper keeper era, Nathan- Okay, yeah. … when there was a little snap to the book. But you can start to see, you know, this is, again, this is like 15 years ago. Right. But you can start to see a little bit different experience- Mm-hmm … that the participant’s gonna get here than they got in, out something you designed your own.

[00:09:27] Nathan: Right.

[00:09:27] Mo: I was already ahead of it looks like a crappy Word document. I was a click ahead of that. Yeah. But you do something like this, and it’s a whole nother- Right … level. Instructional design, graphic design. Now, there was probably 100 or $120,000 investment on my end to get it to here. Now, skip forward another 10 years, and I’m skipping like seven iterations.

[00:09:47] Nathan: Uh-huh.

[00:09:48] Mo: Now, when somebody goes through our program The materials are, like, literally just feel that.

[00:09:54] Nathan: Yeah. Like- You’ve got some-

[00:09:55] Mo: It feels expensive … some heft

[00:09:56] Nathan: to it. We’ve got the different modules. Okay, so modules one through 12, and then th- 17, right?

[00:10:01] Mo: Exactly. And so what happens here is … So I was just in South Africa teaching a, a, one of the tier one management- Mm-hmm

[00:10:08] consulting firms last week, and what happens when you get this is now you’re not thinking, uh, PowerPoint.

[00:10:15] Nathan: Right.

[00:10:15] Mo: That’s the lowest level. That feels anybody can- Mm-hmm … slow, throw it together. How many crappy trainings have we gone through where PowerPoint was the key? Also, research shows that, um, uh, when we hand write things, we remember it more.

[00:10:29] Nathan: Okay.

[00:10:29] Mo: So I actually want paper- Right … so that people- So

[00:10:33] Nathan: do you have worksheet stuff in here-

[00:10:34] Mo: Yeah …

[00:10:35] Nathan: when people are filling it out?

[00:10:36] Mo: Yeah, so if we, if we were open this up and, and we were zoom in, everything with an orange box is a, is a- Oh, you’re

[00:10:42] Nathan: ra- you’re scoring things. You’re … Oh, yeah.

[00:10:44] Mo: Yeah. I’m looking

[00:10:45] Nathan: at

[00:10:45] Mo: this.

[00:10:45] You’re filling things out.

[00:10:47] Nathan: For the camera, right?

[00:10:48] Mo: Exactly. It’s

[00:10:48] all

[00:10:48] Nathan: of these details.

[00:10:49] Mo: Exactly. So, A, I want heft.

[00:10:52] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:52] Mo: B, ’cause that signifies value. B, I want beauty.

[00:10:56] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:10:56] Mo: And we’ve … Now we’ve got this just locked in graphic design capability- Right … that’s just incredible. We want … C, we want instructional design.

[00:11:05] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:05] Mo: So even though the orange boxes are not the They’re not the, the bulk of the pages. Right. They’re the bulk of the time.

[00:11:13] Nathan: Yep.

[00:11:13] Mo: They’re bulk of the time in the class. So all those things. Now that … So now that we’ve seen that, to answer your question-

[00:11:20] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:11:20] Mo: there’s four things people will need. Ooh,

[00:11:22] Nathan: I like it.

[00:11:22] Mo: Number one, for every page or significant part of content, you want a cool name for it.

[00:11:29] Nathan: Hmm. Okay.

[00:11:30] Mo: So w- we don’t call a, a high priority relationship list a relationship list, we call it a proteroi list. Proteroi is a Greek word. It means first among equals.

[00:11:39] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:11:40] Mo: What’s interesting about a word you can own, the briefcase technique or- Mm-hmm

[00:11:43] the proteroi list or whatever, is now when somebody talks about it online, it always points back to you. Right. Whenever they use it in real life, they think of you. But if I would’ve called it the, um, high priority relationship list or something-

[00:11:57] Nathan: Just, it’s not memorable and it’s not yours.

[00:11:58] Mo: Exactly. Yeah. So a clever name.

[00:12:00] The second thing we need are steps. So whatever we’re teaching somebody, we wanna, “These are the three steps to do it right. These are the five steps to do it right.” Part of the human brain loves process, and what you’re paying somebody for in transformation is the expert, the best world-class- Mm-hmm

[00:12:18] process. Expert driven or, or recommended process. So we need to break it down into steps. So we have a clever name. I might also go back and say that’s where, like, a, a visual would be helpful too under the clever name, like a triangle or, uh, whatever. Then you got the steps. The third thing I think is really important is science.

[00:12:37] So over 250 peer reviewed psychological neuroscience or, uh, behavioral science studies are a part of every single thing. Hmm. The citations are in the back of every module. So like-

[00:12:48] Nathan: You have to back it up …

[00:12:48] Mo: back it up. It’s not just- Right … what some old bald guy said works.

[00:12:52] Nathan: Right.

[00:12:52] Mo: It’s like, that’s okay, but you wanna have like, “No, this is universal.

[00:12:56] This is timeless. This is how relationships are formed. This is how the thing is done,” or whatever. And then the last thing are really, really tight stories that if you wanna scale IP, you wanna have a certification process.

[00:13:09] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:13:09] Mo: So we’ve had a couple hundred people go through a certification process to teach these things, whether they’re internal at a client or they’re on our team.

[00:13:16] Mm-hmm. And then that’s where you wanna build a certification manual-

[00:13:23] Nathan: showing people how to go through all of that-

[00:13:25] Mo: You got

[00:13:25] Nathan: it … you know, what it means to teach this material.

[00:13:27] Mo: Exactly. And that can just start out as a Google Doc. This did. Mm-hmm. But you can even see the, the great layout is this is the page they see, and this is what they, what you say.

[00:13:37] Nathan: Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s the… So I was homeschooled growing up. Yep. Right? And so there was always, you know, uh, my mom would always have the teacher’s edition of whatever book I was going through. You’ve

[00:13:45] Mo: seen it. You’ve seen these. That’s the teacher’s

[00:13:46] Nathan: edition. This

[00:13:47] Mo: is the teacher’s edition. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[00:13:49] And so what you’ve got when you, when you combine all those four things, you come up with a really unique IP that not only can come across as world-class to par- participant, but you can scale through certified partners- Right … because you’ve documented, like at McDonald’s, this is exactly how you make the french fries.

[00:14:04] Yep. This is exactly how you run the class. Right. Now, that, like, we can talk about how long the certification takes. It’s not easy, all that. We don’t… It’s hard to pass. Um, but anyway, the, the… There’s a system to scaling through IP, and it, and it comes back to always, always breaking down what you know into smaller pieces, and every one of those major pieces needs to have those four things.

[00:14:23] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Okay, so is this something that only works if you’re selling into businesses or, like, large consulting groups? Or is it something that, you know, as you see all these creator businesses, you’re like, “Oh, man, I wish I could come in and I could just show you- Yeah … this

[00:14:37] Mo: methodology.”

[00:14:37] Nathan: It could work

[00:14:37] Mo: both.

[00:14:37] Yeah. Yeah, it could work both. Yeah. Like, what a mutual friend would be, like Tiago Forte. Mm-hmm. I love Tiago’s stuff. It’s been transformative to me. And, um, so, like, one of the things that, at one point, uh, some of his team members came in, went through our course, partly to learn it, but partly also to think, “Hey, how could we take this content to potentially- What does this look like

[00:14:56] Nathan: done-

[00:14:57] Mo: Yeah

[00:14:57] Nathan: in this way?”

[00:14:58] Mo: Yeah, exactly.

[00:14:59] Nathan: Yeah, so I think about something. One of my side passions is, uh, teaching about flywheels and teaching that in business. And if I wasn’t running a software company, then probably what I would be doing is developing all of this IP around flywheels. Because I- Yep … you know, like many of us, have read Good to Great and said, you know, loved the idea of a flywheel and all of that- Yep

[00:15:21] and said, “Give me more,” and then got the, uh, Turning the Flywheel Manifesto, and then discovered that it’s, like, 2,000 words or 5,000. You know, it’s very- Yeah … very short. Yeah. And it was like, I need more. And so through my own obsession, I created a huge amount of material. Um, but it’s not on this level yet. Mm.

[00:15:37] The, uh, you know, it’s a, it’s a video course. It’s, um, some level of worksheets and all of that. But I can see how to take it from-

[00:15:45] Mo: Yep …

[00:15:46] Nathan: a course in coaching, which is very common in, um, you know, in the creator business world, to this, which is a whole other level. And it lends so much more credibility when you’re like, “Look, here’s all of the material, here’s all the methodology, and here’s the physical workbooks that I can take you through.”

[00:16:05] Mo: Yeah.

[00:16:06] Nathan: It’s not even just about I could sell more or charge more for it, it’s about I, I bet it would create much better outcomes for the client if I take them through a process like this totally dialed in.

[00:16:15] Mo: Yeah. That’s exactly right. Well, and I think also that … I think what a lot of B2C creators don’t understand is how their impact can scale and how- Mm

[00:16:25] their economics can improve in B2B. For whatever reason, there’s, like, so few people that make that jump, and it- Right … drives me crazy. Um, for example, you know, a common, uh, or the, the, about, about, the about amount of money that you can charge for world-class IP, so you’ve gotta get there first, or you could at least start at a lower number, but a common rule of thumb right now is around 1,500 to $2,000 per person per day of training.

[00:16:51] Nathan: Okay.

[00:16:52] Mo: So we’re at the higher end, so let’s call it $6,000 for three days of training. The, the mod- the two binders that we talked about.

[00:16:59] Nathan: Yep.

[00:16:59] Mo: A lot of times we’ll do two days of training up front, then we’ll do several months of what we call small group application coaching, and then we’ll do a day of training on the back end.

[00:17:07] Mm. So if there’s a group of 25 people, we might all get together in DC or London or wherever, and go through … That to- 25 people might go through the first two days of training. That would be this module.

[00:17:19] Nathan: Yep.

[00:17:20] Mo: And then they break up into five groups of five And then once a month they’ll meet about- Mm-hmm

[00:17:26] uh, doing what we call small group application coaching. Coaching’s incredibly good at locking in the behaviors-

[00:17:33] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:17:33] Mo: applying the right framework at the right time, given a meeting they’ve got coming up Tuesday. ‘

[00:17:37] Nathan: Cause then your peers are gonna be like, “Oh, well, actually, in module 14 it covers what- Yep

[00:17:41] you’re talking about.”

[00:17:42] Mo: Yep.

[00:17:42] Nathan: And everyone’s like, “Well, turn in your hymnals. In mod- module 14.” Yeah,

[00:17:44] Mo: that’s exactly right. Right. You know? And our coach is there, right there with them- Yeah … and there’s usually a senior sponsor to say, “Oh, yeah, you should also talk about such and such in the other- Right … practice area because I know, I know that.”

[00:17:53] So anyway, training’s really good at moving a big group of people forward- Mm-hmm … a long ways, but the, the stickiness might not be there as much. The training’s really good for sticky.

[00:18:03] Nathan: Okay.

[00:18:04] Mo: So two days of training, about five months of small group application coaching, and then about a day of training on the back end, and that’s this latter module which reflects back and teaches- Mm-hmm

[00:18:13] the hardest to do things. So about a six-month experience.

[00:18:16] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:18:16] Mo: What that does is, in the client’s mind, it changes this from training to transformation. It changes from project to program. It changes it from fees to investment. And when you do that, then we can charge up to seven, $8,000- Right … maybe 10 per person.

[00:18:33] So a normal statement of work for us is 120, 150, 180, $200,000 per group, per cohort- Right … that goes to the training, and that’s just, I mean, that’s just easier to do than a, a, what, 200 different individual sales-

[00:18:48] Nathan: Right …

[00:18:49] Mo: or whatever. Like, I just think the economics are what … I don’t think people … I don’t think the creator community quite knows about this yet.

[00:18:55] Like, this is a this changes everything thing.

[00:18:58] Nathan: Okay, so you said that it’s easier to sell in that way when you’re selling in bulk and you’re selling B2B. I think a lot of creators might be like, “Ah, it doesn’t feel easier.”

[00:19:06] Mo: Yeah.

[00:19:06] Nathan: Because they’re looking- It’s not in

[00:19:07] Mo: the beginning-

[00:19:08] Nathan: Right … but

[00:19:08] Mo: it is in the end.

[00:19:09] Yeah, keep

[00:19:09] Nathan: going. So how, how do you think about- identifying and selling into these organizations, ’cause it’s a different- Yeah … set of skills to learn.

[00:19:16] Mo: Yeah.

[00:19:16] Nathan: Then I got 1,000 targeted people on an email list, and then I’m gonna get this number to a webinar. Yep. And then I’m gonna get that number, you know, and-

[00:19:22] Mo: Yeah

[00:19:22] Nathan: and we’re going to sell, you know, however many seats of our $1,000 or $2,000, uh, offering.

[00:19:28] Mo: Yeah.

[00:19:28] Nathan: Um, yeah, what does it look like? What does your sales mechanism look like? Yeah. And how do you help creators make that jump?

[00:19:33] Mo: Yeah. I’ve just helped a lot just as friends. Like, we don’t charge for it. Mm-hmm. But what can happen is, let’s say, let’s say I’m a creator, and let’s say I’ve got a 50,000-person email list.

[00:19:43] Mm-hmm. Whatever it is. Might be five, it might be 500, it might be 500,000. But I’ve got some traction. Thing one is I’d wanna package up what we do, probably in our cohorts or our async courses, or whatever we’re doing- Mm-hmm … already. There’s a way to package it up where we, we could get it to, to V1.

[00:20:00] Nathan: Yep.

[00:20:00] Mo: Right?

[00:20:01] And it probably, if you’re a creator, you’d know how to get to this. Right. If

[00:20:04] Nathan: you can make a beautiful website or hire someone to do it, you can make it beautiful.

[00:20:07] Mo: Yeah. Right? You probably have people in your- For sure … network that can do it. The key here is, like, somehow you, you do need to learn instructional design, but you’re probably doing a little bit of that in cohorts or anyway.

[00:20:16] Mm-hmm. Anyway, we figure out what that is. Then, then step two would be, once I’ve got materials that I think can be used at a corporate entity or B2B, whatever you wanna call it, thing two would be to source leads. So the best way to start a business is just tell people you’re starting a business. Like, you’re really good- Yes

[00:20:33] at working in public. I’ve learned that from you.

[00:20:35] Nathan: Yep.

[00:20:36] Mo: Um, your exact words, work in public. And I’ve tried to do more of that. And so what somebody could do is they could literally have a PS or a pre-S or have a whole article that they send out- Mm-hmm … in their weekly newsletter about what they’re learning in starting their own business, right?

[00:20:50] The best way to-

[00:20:51] Nathan: Right …

[00:20:51] Mo: just work in public. And then at the bottom say, “Hey, I’m looking for three pilot clients that I’m gonna give a great deal.” Show an image of what they’re gonna get. Right. Like, show them what they’re gonna get, and say, “If you’re at an organization that would be interested in taking the things I already do individually- Mm-hmm

[00:21:08] to your entire team, then just, just reply to this email- Yep … or fill out this form or whatever.” Then what you can get is, you know, you’re gonna get a lot of people interested. You’re gonna have to have some kind of mechanism to sort through the people that can really make the decision- Right … versus those that can’t and all that.

[00:21:24] Probably mean a lot of 20-minute phone calls. Um, but you’re probably pretty o- get, pretty easily gonna get two or three pilots.

[00:21:30] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:31] Mo: Even if somebody had 1,000 people on their email list, I’ll bet 10 of them are leaders in an organization. Right. 20. They already love you. They read your newsletter every week, right?

[00:21:42] So then just give them a great deal, make a little bit of money, but use it as a way to learn, how does this go? And- How

[00:21:49] Nathan: did the material land? How, what- Yep … objections did they have for the sales process? Yep. Did I enjoy teaching, you know, in that format for those people? Was it

[00:21:56] Mo: fun? Do I like flying somewhere?

[00:21:58] Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’ll even say this, like, when we went from- This V1 to V2, remember I said I- Yep … hired instructional designers and graphic designers for this. It actually didn’t start like this.

[00:22:09] Nathan: Mm.

[00:22:10] Mo: What we did, because we, ’cause the difference between here and here is about 100 X content.

[00:22:14] Nathan: Okay.

[00:22:15] Mo: We actually didn’t start with this.

[00:22:18] We started with crappy Google Docs. They’re just literally printed Google Docs, and I went to a client that had already liked this. Mm. Took One Click up and said, “I’m looking for a couple pilots.” Mm. “I’m gonna give a 50…” I think I gave a 50% off deal. Yeah. By the way, the, the prices were sort of made up, because I didn’t know how much this would be.

[00:22:37] Right. But they were my best guess. I was being authentic.

[00:22:40] Nathan: Yep.

[00:22:40] Mo: So they truly got my best guess, a 50% off deal, and I literally showed, like, “We’re gonna teach with Google Docs.” Mm. “But what I’d ask for you to get half off is for… I’d just like to have about 30 minutes at the end of the class that the participants know they’re gonna give me feedback-

[00:22:56] Nathan: Right

[00:22:57] Mo: what to change, what to tweak, what they loved, and we will have a form, but we’ll white- we’ll flip chart some of this.” And they loved it. Mm-hmm. And they… Literally, there were people that filled out the smile sheets at the end, you know, that scored on a one to five scale, and here’s what I learned, and, you know, the room was too hot, and I like, but I liked the Subway- Yeah

[00:23:14] sandwiches or whatever. But there were literally people said, “This was the best training of any kind we’ve ever had at our organization.” And they were a 3, 4,000 person organization, so they weren’t small.

[00:23:25] Nathan: Right. They’ve done a lot of training.

[00:23:27] Mo: And this was Google Docs.

[00:23:28] Nathan: Right.

[00:23:29] Mo: So that’s when I said, “Okay, I’m ready to write the re- last check to the graphic designer and start.

[00:23:34] Let’s go.” And that’s when we- You had

[00:23:36] Nathan: to test your MVP

[00:23:36] Mo: So we tested it.

[00:23:37] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:23:37] Mo: We tested it.

[00:23:38] Nathan: Yeah. So I’m seeing this iteration as we go of like, first, take all of your ideas-

[00:23:42] Mo: Yep …

[00:23:43] Nathan: and the stories that you tell and all that, and codify it in some way.

[00:23:45] Mo: Yep.

[00:23:45] Nathan: Even if it’s the weekend sprint printed at FedEx Office.

[00:23:49] Mo: That’s exactly what it was.

[00:23:50] Nathan: And then from there you’re like, “Okay, how can I develop this out?” You know, more wor- worksheets. Yep. You know, flush it out more. Test that, right? That’s something that, uh, from the design and software world we do all the time.

[00:24:02] Mo: Yeah,

[00:24:02] Nathan: yeah. Of like, we think we have brilliant ideas, but you never know until you get it in front of users.

[00:24:07] And so get the, in the room, get the feedback. Oh, we did this, uh, this author mastermind that we hosted just two weeks ago. At the end we said, “Hey, if you’ve got a little bit of time, we’d love to spend 20 minutes just, like, we’re gonna host more of these.”

[00:24:20] Mo: How did it go?

[00:24:21] Nathan: How’d it go? What’d you think? What would you do differently?

[00:24:23] Yeah. And we got great feedback. Yeah. You know, and all these things were … When you said like, “Okay, if you were to make one thing better, ’cause we’re gonna do two more of these this year, like, what would you change?” And people are like, “Oh, well, it was great, but oh, you know, I would do this.” You know, and you got like- Yeah

[00:24:36] the great feedback.

[00:24:37] Mo: Yeah.

[00:24:38] Nathan: And then you can iterate from there, and so you don’t have to spend $50,000 up front.

[00:24:42] Mo: That’s exactly right. Yeah. You know? Yeah, and these numbers I’m throwing out, A, it was a long time ago, but B, you can do this on your own. Mm-hmm. Like, somebody could do this on their own. ‘Cause it, because it’s an iterative, I think the barrier somebody can have in their mind is, “Oh, I can’t get all the way to where they’re at now.”

[00:24:57] Right. But we’re also working with the biggest and most prestigious professional service firms in the world. Right. You know, the w- w- the tier one … There’s three tier one consulting firms. We trained 6,000 people at one of them. The top law firms. Mm-hmm. Five of the 10 biggest in America. Uh, Sotheby’s, the high-end art auctioneer.

[00:25:14] Right. We trained the high, the people who call in billionaires to, to consign their Rothko painting. But that was the end version. Mm-hmm. I wouldn’t have got … They wouldn’t have bought this.

[00:25:22] Nathan: Right. You have

[00:25:23] Mo: to

[00:25:23] Nathan: start somewhere. So …

[00:25:24] Mo: But somebody did. Right. And it was a whole lot better than me selling per unit of time at a coffee shop.

[00:25:29] So you just keep, you just keep watching up a, another rung in the le- ladders of wealth, if you will.

[00:25:36] Nathan: That’s right. So-

[00:25:36] Mo: Have I plugged your book enough? You

[00:25:37] Nathan: have. It’s great.

[00:25:37] Mo: Okay.

[00:25:37] Nathan: I

[00:25:38] Mo: love it. More?

[00:25:39] Nathan: We’ll get a few more in towards the end. Um, I’m thinking about this B2C to B2B shift.

[00:25:45] Mo: Yeah.

[00:25:45] Nathan: And so Kit lives … You know, I spent all my time first selling, like, really to consumers o- originally.

[00:25:52] Or, like, maybe you call them prosumers.

[00:25:54] Mo: Yeah.

[00:25:55] Nathan: Right? It’s still in their career. You’re not, uh, it’s not, like, purely on their home life or, or something else. You know, but I was originally selling to individual designers when I was, uh, selling training and books. Um, and then Kit is like it, this in between.

[00:26:08] Like, you’re running a business, but it’s a solopreneur usually and all that. I wanna help people make this leap. Maybe we can jump into some examples-

[00:26:15] Mo: Yeah …

[00:26:16] Nathan: of going, like, full B2B. What would it look like, you know, if you’re providing business coaching to solopreneurs and you’re like, “Hey, let’s actually make this move into doing it to businesses at scale”?

[00:26:28] ‘Cause the things- One, examples, and then two, the other thing is people would think … I, I, I can hear, like, some imposter syndrome- Oh, yeah … kicking in of, like, “Ooh, well, I could help the mom-and-pop shop down the street do that, but I could never-

[00:26:41] Mo: Yeah …

[00:26:41] Nathan: help, you know, this massive, uh, you know, $100 million company do that.”

[00:26:46] Mo: There’s a lot of objections, and let’s just overcome them. One is, um, some people are scared of the contracting.

[00:26:53] Nathan: Mm.

[00:26:53] Mo: I’ve probably heard that more than anything else.

[00:26:55] Nathan: Okay. ”

[00:26:55] Mo: Man, I don’t, I don’t have the right people to do con- … Isn’t it really expensive? I’ve heard it can cost 10 or $20,000 just to get the contracts done- Yeah

[00:27:03] and legal fees.” We had one example that it was $20,000. But I also have an example of a Fortune 5 company- … that just signed our documents without one edit. Right. So y- th- that’s a … You know, to your point around everything in life is a skill that can be learned, especially when we get to the, I don’t know, the ladders of wealth.

[00:27:22] Yeah. There’s … I’m … Now, now it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay. It’s gonna get funny later. Yeah, exactly. We’re gonna have to go through the trough of it’s not funny. And then I’ll keep bringing up your book. But anyway, one of your, one of your main insights in, in The Ladders of Wealth is that making money is a skill that can be learned.

[00:27:39] Mm-hmm. So, if we transfer that to going from B2C to B2B, these are skills that can be learned. Mm. Um, getting through contracting, creating leads, um, finding the right decision-maker in a complex organization. It might be a P&L leader. It might be a learning and development person. Right. It might be the f- In our world, it can be the, the CMO or the CBDO, chief business development officer or chief marketing officer at a big professional service firm.

[00:28:02] They’re, like, 80% of the time the people who bring us in. Well, then what you do is you find the conferences they go to. You can act- you can actually look and see who they are on their website, and their email’s right there in a professional service firm. You can just reach out to them directly. There are ways to take

[00:28:18] A- and I’ll wrap with this, is, like, there’s ways to take everything we learn in the B2C world, funnels, um, overcoming objections on the webpage, how do I build my sales muscle- Mm-hmm … and my, my, my flywheels around referrals and things like that. You can do the same thing in B2B. It’s just, it’s a little bit different, but it’s the same stuff that makes you successful here makes you successful there.

[00:28:40] You just have to figure out how to do it in that new environment.

[00:28:43] Nathan: So, let’s use me as an example. Let’s say … This is not the case. But let’s say- Yeah … that I wanted to dive in and take this flywheels material, uh, and it exists as a multi-thousand-dollar course.

[00:28:53] Mo: Yep.

[00:28:54] Nathan: That, you know, about 100 people have gone through.

[00:28:56] We’ve tested the material and all of that. I can see how I’m, I’m taking that, and I would go to, like, create the physical side of it, you know, more advanced workbooks. But that is all message and position to helping creators build flywheels in their business.

[00:29:11] Mo: Yep.

[00:29:12] Nathan: But the IP doesn’t have to be creator-specific.

[00:29:14] Mo: Yep.

[00:29:15] Nathan: What would it look like if you’re like, okay, in, like, businesses need flywheels. Yep. You know? How would you translate that into the corporate world?

[00:29:24] Mo: I’d probably think of- Two things first, and I’d start there with experiments. I’d think industry and function.

[00:29:32] Nathan: Okay.

[00:29:33] Mo: So maybe I’d ask a question back to you.

[00:29:35] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:29:35] Mo: If you could think of an industry-

[00:29:37] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:29:38] Mo: that works on flywheels, like obviously I … It’s our world, but I think of professional services. Right. Like referrals- Yeah … are flywheels. Like, so that’s an example, but it might n- you might … You may be bent towards software or something. But anyway, I’d think industry, um, and then I would think function.

[00:29:53] Nathan: Okay.

[00:29:53] Mo: So my brain goes to when you think industry and function, think you wanna blend like a little Venn diagram of where is a truly great altruistic fit-

[00:30:04] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:30:04] Mo: with who has the money to spend?

[00:30:07] Nathan: Right.

[00:30:07] Mo: So for instance, it’s a lot easier to sell a high-ticket item like we do to people that are gonna bring in more business.

[00:30:15] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:15] Mo: So at a tier one consulting firm, the average partner pay, or maybe the … Let say it this way. The book of business that they would manage is probably in the 5 to $10 million range.

[00:30:25] Nathan: Okay.

[00:30:25] Mo: Well, if they can just improve that by 10%- Mm-hmm … 500,000 to a million dollars, well, that frames and anchors on our training, which is a whole lot less than that.

[00:30:35] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:30:36] Mo: So back to you. If you were gonna take the flywheels, what industry might be, like, really needing of the content or desirous- Mm-hmm … or, like, they would feel the impact? And then if you think function or role, who in that organization needs it the most?

[00:30:51] Nathan: Yeah. So I, I can think of examples of what I … You know, maybe going what I wouldn’t do and then- Yeah

[00:30:56] what I would. On the what, what I wouldn’t do is, like, we could say, like, you know, let’s implement great flywheels for, uh, coffee shops or restaurants.

[00:31:03] Mo: Yeah.

[00:31:04] Nathan: Right? Because, like, oh, if we get an incremental gain here. Like, there’s not the- The economics

[00:31:08] Mo: aren’t …

[00:31:08] Nathan: Yeah. The economics isn’t in there. They’re not going to s- If they’re paying their team, you know, uh, $20 an hour or 30, you know, right?

[00:31:17] Mo: Yeah.

[00:31:17] Nathan: They’re not going to be able to pay thousands of dollars for training-

[00:31:20] Mo: Yeah …

[00:31:20] Nathan: for that team. And then also there’s not the leverage there if we … You know, if we get you twice as many people coming in through the door through a better flywheel, it’s like, okay, we actually just broke our business. Yeah.

[00:31:30] You know, like, we can’t physically do that.

[00:31:32] Mo: Yeah.

[00:31:32] Nathan: And so- Like, that’s the- So

[00:31:34] Mo: not that.

[00:31:35] Nathan: Not that. And so then you’re going to the, the other side where, you know, the things I’d be looking for are there’s a lot of potential for leverage and scale. So, you know- Yeah … we’re in software, professional services, um-

[00:31:46] Mo: Yep

[00:31:47] Nathan: you know, anything in that, that area. And then looking for a lot of money, like high salaries. And so you might just even look through, um-

[00:31:56] Mo: Yep … okay,

[00:31:57] Nathan: who gets paid at least-

[00:31:58] Mo: Yep …

[00:31:59] Nathan: 150 to $300,000 a year- Yep … you know, in these roles. Yep. And then how can I unlock more?

[00:32:04] Mo: Yep.

[00:32:05] Nathan: Uh, and then the last one that I would look for is, like, an industry that I have some level of experience in- Yeah

[00:32:09] and a, and a passion for.

[00:32:10] Mo: Yeah, ’cause there’s a language, there’s a pattern or vernacular- Yeah … to an industry, and if you don’t speak that, they … It’s organ rejection right away. Right. Yeah, so keep going.

[00:32:17] Nathan: Yeah, so for me, you know, the things that I love, like, I would be in software.

[00:32:21] Mo: Yeah.

[00:32:21] Nathan: Because that’s, that’s my world, right?

[00:32:23] Yeah. And so helping, um- implementing s- uh, flywheels to help software companies, yeah

[00:32:28] Mo: And would you go, then when you think function within software or roles, would you think coders need it or marketers need it, or the C-level SLT needs it?

[00:32:38] Nathan: Yeah, so this is an interesting thing that I think everyone listening would run into where they’re like, “Well, everybody does,” right?

[00:32:44] And that’s a trap.

[00:32:45] Mo: Yeah.

[00:32:46] Nathan: Because- You wanna

[00:32:46] Mo: be focused …

[00:32:47] Nathan: you have to ch- you know, and, like, if you choose and say, “Look, we’re going to help operations executives a- you know, at software companies implement flywheels across” … Like, that’s specific, and we can reach all of them. And if the head of engineering shows up or the sales leader shows up, great.

[00:33:04] Mo: Yeah.

[00:33:04] Nathan: But at least we got in the organization through something that’s very, very targeted.

[00:33:08] Mo: Yep.

[00:33:09] Nathan: Um, so I would focus on, like, probably internal operations, or the caveat to that is anytime you can drive revenue, people love it. And so, you know, that, if you’re, like, on, on sales, like sales and marketing-

[00:33:22] Mo: That’s where they’ll spend money

[00:33:24] they will- It’s find budget. Yeah …

[00:33:25] Nathan: they will find budget because they’re like- Yeah … “Oh, if we implement this, and it has a 10% lift, like, it’ll pay for itself-

[00:33:30] Mo: Yep …

[00:33:30] Nathan: in this amount of time.” And so if there’s three categories, like, the, the worst category, I think, is anything where you’re just- relieving a pain of some kind, uh, or an inefficiency.

[00:33:45] The second and better category is when you can point to exact money saved.

[00:33:49] Mo: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:49] Nathan: And then the third, and the gold standard, is money earned.

[00:33:52] Mo: Yeah. Totally.

[00:33:53] Nathan: Um, yeah. What, what would you add to that or, or what have you, have you seen of examples there?

[00:33:58] Mo: You know, I would just say that this can feel intimidating to somebody that hasn’t done it before.

[00:34:03] Mm-hmm. Like I said, I’ve talked to dozens and dozens of people that wanna make this shift. Few, few make it through, and I think it’s because either the obstacles in their mind are bigger than they are- Mm-hmm … or they just don’t start small enough and keep going. Right. You know, we … You and I have talked a lot, a lot about the, the, the brain thinks in linearly, linear terms, but the things actually grow in exponential- Mm-hmm

[00:34:24] if you stick with it. And so to break it down, I would say, um, just know that you don’t know all the right answers. Right. Maybe you start with sales roles in high-tech software companies. Mm-hmm. Like, that’s what our hypothesis is. Try it out. Right. It might not be right. That’s fine, but lower the bar on perfection and just focus on action.

[00:34:45] Mm-hmm. So come up with the Google Doc version. Uh, share it with some people that are… Usually, the first people to buy are people that are gonna… that trust you already. Right. So tell them it’s an, it’s an experiment. Tell them it’s a pilot. Tell them, bring them into the fold and get their feedback on what, what it originally looks like.

[00:35:02] There’s some science called the IKEA effect, first studied by Michael Norton out of Harvard, you know, all, like, the Mount Rushmore team of researchers that found that people buy into what they help create. Mm-hmm. So actually, the fastest way to get a yes is actually to invite people in to help create it.

[00:35:18] Right. And then you’re gonna get your pilot. Might be it’s, maybe it’s half the people you talk to, but half is really good. It … You know, if you go to six, you got three. And then, um, and then you tweak from there, you tweak from there, you tweak from there.

[00:35:30] Nathan: So that’s where if I have 20,000 people on an email list I

[00:35:33] And maybe, I don’t know, 500 or customers have gone through this. I can email those people and say- Yep … “Hey, I’m thinking of taking my methodology-

[00:35:39] Mo: Yep …

[00:35:40] Nathan: into corporate training.”

[00:35:41] Mo: Yep.

[00:35:42] Nathan: Um, do you have a, you know, who should I talk to? Do you have any connections? Like, if that’s you, raise your, you know-

[00:35:46] Mo: Ask for

[00:35:47] Nathan: help

[00:35:47] hit, hit reply and let me know. Yep. And you’ll probably get 50 or 100 replies. The thing that I’ve been shocked about in all of these email lists that people build is who is actually on the lists.

[00:35:56] Mo: Mm.

[00:35:57] Nathan: Right? And so, you know, there’s going to be people who are the … They’re like, “Oh, well, I actually run corporate training at this- Exactly

[00:36:03] corporate company,” or- Right … “I do this.” And so you … Or, “I know the person who does it,” or like, “Well, my company would probably buy something like that.”

[00:36:10] Mo: Yeah.

[00:36:10] Nathan: And so that … just that hand raiser, and it can be as simple as hit Reply-

[00:36:15] Mo: Yeah …

[00:36:15] Nathan: and I’d love to talk, and then it’s a 20-minute call that you schedule. There you go.

[00:36:19] And, you know, and you’ll learn so much.

[00:36:21] Mo: Well, and that brings me to something almost everybody misses. So this is like a … This is a cheat code for sure, is everybody gets focused on the vanity metrics of how many people I have on my list or what- Right … my open rate is. And those are really important. We should do that.

[00:36:35] But to your point, the quality of the person or the- Yeah … level that we can personalize things or segment, whatever we wanna call it, Brendan Dunn kind of stuff, is really important. So we might wanna have … If we’re gonna, if we’re gonna try a B2B business, we wanna keep, um, growing our email list to the people that, uh, metaphorically could be in the seats of a training.

[00:36:56] Right. Yeah. That’s the majority of people. But, like, here’s an example of a lead magnet, if you will, that is for the people who buy our training.

[00:37:04] Nathan: Oh, okay.

[00:37:04] Mo: So we have s- ‘Cause they’re

[00:37:05] Nathan: two different roles.

[00:37:06] Mo: Two different roles. So if you go to growbigplaybook.com, that’s a, that’s a short little kit form to, to get our normal newsletter.

[00:37:13] Mm-hmm. If you go to winning-more.com-

[00:37:16] Nathan: Yep …

[00:37:16] Mo: winning dash more. You gotta put the w- dash in there, or you go to, like, a horse betting site. But th- this is a download, but it’s … this is about a 10,000-word PDF that tells you exactly how to quantify the value of a business development training. Oh. How to sell internally, what the training and coaching looks like- Mm-hmm

[00:37:33] and frameworks, just like you and I have talked about verbally. Um, how to measure success, h- like, everything about- Right … the change management of going from people think of business development as secondary to going to they think about it as a primary part of their role, and they’re thinking about growth more than they’re thinking about delivery.

[00:37:51] Mm-hmm. This is the change management, the secret change management system that we use, and we literally give it away-

[00:37:58] Nathan: Right …

[00:37:58] Mo: to leaders. So if I’m giving a speech at the Legal Marketing Association conference, or I’m doing a webinar with a partner, I can ta- I can show this on the screen or hand it out and say, “If you want this, just go to winning-more.com,” and set it up.

[00:38:11] Now, when somebody signs up there, tag.

[00:38:14] Nathan: Right.

[00:38:14] Mo: Oh, they’re a decision-maker, so they’re not the person in the class or the pe- the person who buys the class.

[00:38:19] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:19] Mo: And now we can personalize messages. We can reach out to them for one-on-one, all that stuff. I think that that’s- rarely, that, that, like, that’s the most common thing that’s the most important that people don’t do.

[00:38:32] Nathan: Yeah, because they’re so used to the buyer and the, uh, or l- or let’s say the decision-maker and the student being- Be the same

[00:38:38] Mo: person …

[00:38:38] Nathan: the same person. Yeah,

[00:38:39] Mo: yeah. And here they’re not. And- Right …

[00:38:40] Nathan: and so you, you realize, okay, those are different. Yep. And that’s actually, you know, so back when I was working at a startup doing design, you know, I’d look at these design conferences that I wanted to go to, and they would always have one, like, they’d have all the things like here’s where you should go and all of that, and they’d have one little PDF at the bottom, and it would be the how to convince your boss to pay for it.

[00:38:59] Mo: Oh.

[00:39:00] Nathan: And it was such an interesting one, and, and it would just, you click on that- That’s this … that’s that. Yeah, yeah. And you would read it and be like, “Oh.” It’s not, “I want to go to this.”

[00:39:08] Mo: Yeah.

[00:39:08] Nathan: It would give you all of the wording and, and all of that of like- Yeah … here’s how, you know, I’m gonna be able to bring back these design ideas and implement it in our organization.

[00:39:16] Mo: Yeah.

[00:39:16] Nathan: You know, if you only send one or two of us, like, we’ll still, uh, be able to share s- you know, with the other five designers on the team.

[00:39:23] Mo: Yeah.

[00:39:23] Nathan: And … ‘Cause you realize, like, okay, the, the person writing the check and the person-

[00:39:26] Mo: Yeah …

[00:39:27] Nathan: uh, showing up are different.

[00:39:28] Mo: Yeah, yeah. Ooh, I got one more example. I

[00:39:30] Nathan: like it.

[00:39:30] Mo: So, um, when we wrote … We’ve got two books out. One called The Snowball System- Yep … and one called Give to Grow. I probably would’ve written them in a different order, but there’s a long story to it. Okay. But Snowball System’s like the how-to guide. It’s 92,000 … actually 96,000 words. Mm-hmm. Like, it’s a, it’s a monster.

[00:39:47] Tons of, of information. Give to Grow we wrote about half as big, and we tried to make it even lighter and breezier. Yeah. I know you love design. Like, it won an award- Yeah. Oh, yeah … for the design of the

[00:39:57] Nathan: interior of the book. Yeah, it feels easy to read. I’m gonna build momentum as I go.

[00:40:00] Mo: You got it. So what we did here is there are about seven different ways that we invite the reader to sign up for some kind of value add.

[00:40:10] Mm. And one of the … And some of those ways are for the, the person in the seat of training. Some of those are for the decision-makers. So we’re super intentional about this. So literally in the first couple chapters of the book, one of the call-out, like a subsection of a … like an H2, an, a subsection of a chapter is why your teams need to read this.

[00:40:31] Yeah. And by the way, call-out box, if you’d like the team leader guide- Mm … to how to actually take this to your team and walk them through all the learnings in five sessions, just download that here. So again- Yeah … there’s some things in the book, like, like there’s one, one, uh, download that has, like, uh, 50-plus go-to questions for your business development meetings.

[00:40:52] That’s for the person- Mm … that would get training. There’s the team leader guide. That’s for the person who would buy training. Well, somebody … When somebody signs up for the team leader guide, we’ve got somebody that can email them back, say, you know, we automate it, send it to them- Yeah … ob- obviously through Kit.

[00:41:05] But you can watch those. You can offer a call to them. Mm. You can say, “Hey, I noticed that you work for XYZ huge professional service firm. If you’d like to meet Mo or Ryan, somebody on our team, or somebody else- Right … on the team, we’d be happy to set up a call.” So we really quickly move towards offers of helpfulness in a more of a one-to-one way when people sign up for the more, m- more the I’m-the-decision-maker type of assets.

[00:41:28] Nathan: Yeah, so this is a really important thing, because- Lead magnets are like creator 101.

[00:41:34] Mo: Yep.

[00:41:35] Nathan: Right? And so everyone’s like, “Yeah, I have three different lead magnets.” Yeah. “I drive… Whether I’m driving from a podcast episode or Facebook traffic or whatever, it’s all going to lead magnet.”

[00:41:42] Mo: Yep.

[00:41:43] Nathan: Like, the, the 201 level is you can actually learn a lot by splitting out the intent of lead magnet.

[00:41:49] Mo: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:50] Nathan: Right? Exactly as you’re doing. You’re saying, “Hey, this is designed…” It’s like your Facebook ad targeting, uh, where people start to put the, the targeting into the copy itself, where, you know, if you’re not in our target market, you’re not gonna be interested in the ad. And, and so it’s kinda like that, where if you’re not in our target market, you’re, like, you’re gonna skip past this lead magnet.

[00:42:08] And then you can say, like,, “Okay, the people in the seats are going to be interested in this. The decision-makers are gonna be interested in that.” And I can tweak my funnels and all that without even having to ask the question- Yeah … of like- Right … you know, a, a kind of on the nose question of like- It’s just what they

[00:42:20] Mo: wanted

[00:42:21] Nathan: are you a buyer at- Yeah … an organization like this, right? But then I think the, the, like, 301 level is when you start to place certain lead magnets only in certain places. So an example in your book is if you have a lead magnet for the people who buy training, and it’s two-thirds of the way through that book, and you never link to it from anywhere else, you know that that person came- Mm-hmm

[00:42:45] not only from Give to Grow- Mm-hmm … but they have read most of the book to get that. And some people might sneak in other ways. No,

[00:42:51] Mo: but it’s a really good indicator, right?

[00:42:52] Nathan: And so, like, James Clear does this in Atomic Habits, where he has the lead magnets that you end up at from that book. Uh, he tags you inside of Kit as a reader, and then when he reaches out, he doesn’t email four million people and say, “Hey, will you write a review of Atomic Habits?”

[00:43:09] He only emails, through his automations, the people who have, he knows have read at least to chapter six, right? And then the smart thing that he does is he asks them, he doesn’t say, “Go review the book.” He asks them, “How did you like it? Click one to five stars.” If they click one to four stars, he says, “Thanks so much for the feedback If he, if they click five stars, then he says, “Thanks so much for the, for the feedback.

[00:43:30] I’m glad you loved the book. Will you go write a review on Amazon?” So he has filtered out- Oh, that’s so good … you know, all the non-readers and- I’m gonna do this. Right? And then you end up with two groups of people. Right now, uh, we have three groups. We have readers tagged separately, we have readers who felt mediocre about the book, and now we have our five-star readers who are tagged.

[00:43:51] And so when you need… I dunno, let’s, let’s say we’re earlier as an author and we need, um, top review. Like, someone writes a bad review on Goodreads, and we didn’t have that many and so it’s dragging it down. Yeah. Well, now I can email my five-star people and say, “Go, go read this.” In your case-

[00:44:05] Mo: Yeah …

[00:44:05] Nathan: you’re going to have decision-makers- Yeah

[00:44:08] you know, at these organizations, and that’s a small enough list when you’re like, “Oh, man, we’re a little short on… Like, Q4 is looking a little light for workshops.” Yeah. And it’s like, okay, well-

[00:44:16] Mo: Set up a bunch of calls.

[00:44:17] Nathan: Yeah. Set up a bunch of calls with-

[00:44:18] Mo: Yeah …

[00:44:18] Nathan: this exact group.

[00:44:19] Mo: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah, so the analog to James’s method to play it over to B2B might be maybe you’re not asking them for a review of the book.

[00:44:26] That’s a great thing- Yeah … but asking them f- “Would it be helpful if we had a phone call- Right … to talk about how we do training on this topic?”

[00:44:34] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:44:34] Mo: Well, that’s revenue.

[00:44:35] Nathan: Yes, that

[00:44:36] Mo: would be helpful.

[00:44:36] Nathan: Right.

[00:44:37] Mo: Yeah. And that, that’s a thing that’s in, uh… I should say, that’s, uh, the thread through all of our materials and content is every single thing is about being helpful to the other person.

[00:44:48] Mm-hmm. So even though it’s business development or relationship development, and obviously we wanna have commercial success and bring in revenue- Mm-hmm … it’s always done, and every single skill that is taught, is that the revenue or the, the relationship is the paramount thing. Yeah. So if that means you should tell them you’re not a good fit, even if they wanna spend money with you, you tell them.

[00:45:07] Nathan: Right.

[00:45:07] Mo: So the relationship, the long-term relationship is the number one thing. I think that that’s interesting about this whole pivot to B2B is that- Everybody talks to each other. Uh, all the L&D people are in communities. Mm-hmm. In most industries, the marketing people talk to each other, or at least they move around from one company to another.

[00:45:27] So everything you’ve gotta do is about them and being- Right … helpful to them. So even the way you word things to have a call, you don’t say, “Would you like to be on a sales call?” You say, “Would it be helpful if we got on the phone and talked about X?” Mm. And X is not you. X is something for them.

[00:45:41] Nathan: Their problem that-

[00:45:42] Mo: Yeah

[00:45:43] Nathan: you can solve. Yep.

[00:45:43] Mo: And then so it’s gifts all the way through. The book is a gift. Mm-hmm. The download’s a gift. The call’s gonna be a gift. And then we even have … Actually, can I give the other secret?

[00:45:52] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:45:53] Mo: Okay. Al- always. Here’s, here’s the other secret that nobody does that’s really important, is, and this is more once you get going, it’s not right out of the gate, but it’s super important.

[00:46:02] You wanna build … You wanna have public or open workshops for whatever you’re going to teach- Oh … to the B2B, to the client.

[00:46:09] Nathan: Yep.

[00:46:10] Mo: So at this point, we didn’t start out this way, it started out with two a year or something, but now we have six public workshops a year.

[00:46:17] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:17] Mo: On this core training. It’s three days in a row.

[00:46:20] It’s in Atlanta. And if we get a lead from the book-

[00:46:24] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:46:25] Mo: and we realize it’s, it’s a good one, ’cause they downloaded the team stuff, one of our folks will reach out, “Would it be helpful to have a call with somebody from the team?” One of our four account executives, or one of our trainers, or potentially me, if it’s a really, if it’s a really high-end firm.

[00:46:38] We have that call. We’re gonna be 100% focused on adding value. We’re not, we’re not trying to sell anything. But somewhere in, like, a 30-minute call, I like to have four or five times, maybe even six, that I say, that I say, “Would it be helpful if?” Would it be helpful if we sent you our core matri- training materials?

[00:46:57] We’ll send you the actual materials, not an overview like we’re talking about now. Yeah. Would it be helpful if I sent you a book? Would it- Yeah … be helpful if I sent you our new planner that we’ve got coming out on Amazon? Right. Would it be helpful if you send people to one of our public workshops? It’s three days, covers all the material.

[00:47:14] I’ll waive the fees.

[00:47:15] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:15] Mo: That’ll save you … If three people come, it’ll save you 15, $16,000. You pay to get here. Yeah. But we wanna waive the fee so you can see how great it is.

[00:47:24] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:25] Mo: So all the would it be helpful ifs are really important. That one’s the most important. What ends up happening is there’ll be a class of, these days, 30 to

[00:47:34] I think the last one had 55 people in it. They flew in from all over the world. Three people from this company, five from this one, two from this one. Some people pay for it, which makes it nice, that makes it- Yeah … n- it a little, a little profitable on its own. Massively profitable when you think through- Right

[00:47:50] all the people. But having the, having the open session, public session lets people actually come in and see- Yeah … have the experience of it and realize, “This is safe. This is awesome. We need it yesterday. Let’s go.” Well- And that’s what converts.

[00:48:06] Nathan: Yeah. The thing that I’m noticing all the way through is you’ve invested so much in your IP, and that, that ultimately is the product that you’re offering.

[00:48:13] Yep. And then everywhere possible, you’re like the ice cream shop, where you’re just like, “Hey, do you wanna … ” Right. “I see you looking. Would you-” You wanna try this one? “… would you like a sample?”

[00:48:20] Mo: You try,

[00:48:20] Nathan: try this one. And th- you know, and, and you’re like, “Well, I should probably tr- only try one.” And the person’s like, “No, no, no.

[00:48:24] Like, here. Have a … ” Yeah. You know.

[00:48:25] Mo: Yeah.

[00:48:25] Nathan: Try … You know, “Would you like a book? Would you like this? Would it be helpful?” Yeah. And again and again, you’re just g- give to grow. You’re just investing in relationships and value- Yeah … over and over again.

[00:48:33] Mo: Yeah.

[00:48:34] Nathan: And each one of these things are costing you, you know, $10 on the book- Yeah

[00:48:38] $20 on this. Yeah. You know, it’s not, it’s not a huge amount of money. Yeah. But it feels like it’s so, so valuable. In this case, you’re like, “Hey, I’m thinking about coming,” or, “I’m, I’m thinking about buying this for, you know, 25 sales leaders in my organization.” Yeah. And you’re like, “That’d be amazing. We’d love to make that happen.

[00:48:54] But why don’t you send two of them?” You know? Yeah. “Would it be helpful if …” And-

[00:48:57] Mo: Send three people. Yeah. Send … Maybe sell an elderly person, a leader, and somebody that would be more in the- Right … in the actual process of- And

[00:49:02] Nathan: then everyone is like, “Oh, I, I believe so much in this product.”

[00:49:05] Mo: Yeah.

[00:49:05] Nathan: You know?

[00:49:06] Mo: Yeah.

[00:49:06] Social proof, right? ‘Cause, uh, ’cause you want, you want … I- if … What, what we found early on is if one person comes- Mm-hmm … maybe Jane really likes it and everybody respects Jane, but it’s still hard to spend 100 or 150 or- Right … $200,000. As soon as that third person comes-

[00:49:21] Nathan: Oh, interesting …

[00:49:22] Mo: and for that, that- That’s the tipping point

[00:49:23] it seems like th- three, three things makes a, makes a trend.

[00:49:26] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:49:27] Mo: So for a really great prospect- Mm-hmm … we’ll let them send five or so.

[00:49:30] Nathan: Right.

[00:49:31] Mo: It gi- like, gives them 25-plus thousand dollars of value. Right. ‘

[00:49:33] Nathan: Cause your cost of goods sold on that workshop is, like- It’s

[00:49:36] Mo: food.

[00:49:37] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:49:37] Mo: It’s … Yeah, it’s not

[00:49:37] Nathan: much. It’s food in the, in the space.

[00:49:39] Yeah. Right? ‘Cause your trainers- Yeah … kinda function the same way as

[00:49:41] Mo: it. Yeah, but it’s the same space either way- Right … ’cause it’s always at … Yeah. So yeah, to your point, it’s not very much.

[00:49:45] Nathan: Okay. So- Something that I wanna talk about is the day-to-day life of the creator, w- you know, and how you spend your time when you do this.

[00:49:53] ‘Cause I think a lot of people say, like, “Okay, I would love to do this.”

[00:49:55] Mo: Yep. ”

[00:49:56] Nathan: But then I have to be on the road all the time.” Yep. “I would have to, you know … Now I’m going to be in five different cities,” which a lot of them do this as keynote speaking anyway. Yeah, yeah. And I’m like, “Well, you’re already on the road all the time.”

[00:50:05] Yeah,

[00:50:05] Mo: yeah.

[00:50:06] Nathan: Um, but how do you address that, and how does IP help you scale- Yeah … beyond, like, yourself as a leader?

[00:50:12] Mo: Well, a couple things. Um, one is you can have people come to you.

[00:50:16] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:17] Mo: Um, now that might be a little harder, but Michael Hyatt pulled it off.

[00:50:20] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:50:21] Mo: You know, so we both know the, the … We both love Michael.

[00:50:23] We love how he runs his business, raises his kids, all that stuff. You know, he decided after being on the road for keynote speeches a, a ton that, “Hey, I’m gonna do this, um, uh, I’m gonna do this master class type of thing, but just the deal … And I’m gonna sell it corporately, but the deal is you gotta come to Nashville.”

[00:50:40] Nathan: Right.

[00:50:41] Mo: And he just … He had enough oomph that he could do that- Yep … and people would fly to him. Put some constraints

[00:50:44] Nathan: on it.

[00:50:45] Mo: Yeah. 50 people in a room. He almost did, like … They weren’t public trainings because it felt really a, a lot of continuity between one meeting and the next, and there were weekly calls and async stuff and all that.

[00:50:55] Yep. But he had people come to him, so that’s option one. Option two is you can do it virtually. Mm-hmm. So especially for shorter sessions, virtual can work really well. One model, we don’t do it this way, ’cause I think for our stuff in person is, is really important. Yeah. And our, our clientele’s so busy, you almost gotta get them in the room to put the phones aside.

[00:51:14] Mm-hmm. We do a decent amount virtually, but the core is in person. But it … you could also have, like, uh, four two-hour virtual calls to make- Yeah … one day of training. Totally works.

[00:51:26] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:26] Mo: So you could do it that way. Um, you can certify other people-

[00:51:30] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:51:30] Mo: to do the flying. Maybe you as the creator handle the really high-end clients or the first two or three or four.

[00:51:37] Mm-hmm. And you’re on the road then, but you’re quickly bringing somebody else underneath you to be able to actually do- Yeah … the flying around. So, so there’s a lot of ways to do it.

[00:51:46] Nathan: I was thinking about, um, Will Guidara with Unreasonable Hospitality. So he’s, you know, for the pinnacle of the restaurant world, and then wrote a book on hospitality, and, and now he’s doing all these incredible projects.

[00:51:58] But he’s built a brand around Unreasonable Hospitality, and so- It’s an

[00:52:02] Mo: incredible brand,

[00:52:03] Nathan: too … and so-

[00:52:03] Mo: Everybody’s talking about

[00:52:04] Nathan: it … he’s able to have his certified trainers- Yep … go into all these organizations- Yep … and they’re on the road doing it.

[00:52:10] Mo: Yep. Pat Lencioni. And you- There’s a m- Yeah … there’s a lot of people that’ve done this, yeah.

[00:52:14] Nathan: Yeah. And so, you know, if you want the material, right? There’s someone who- Yep … will happily come teach it to your organization.

[00:52:20] Mo: Yep.

[00:52:20] Nathan: If you want Will’s time specifically, like, go to their annual conference or go to- Yeah … Nashville where he lives.

[00:52:26] Mo: Yeah,

[00:52:27] yeah.

[00:52:27] Nathan: Um, and you’ll get that. I wanna talk about Michael Hyatt’s business for a little bit.

[00:52:30] Yep. I think a lot of people from the outside see the business and they’re like, “Okay, cool. He, uh, sells planners,” right? And that’s- Yeah … you know, okay, it’s a physical products business. Like, how’s the mar- you know, all that. Talk about what you’ve seen from, as Michael implemented systems like this and- Yeah

[00:52:47] went for scale.

[00:52:48] Mo: Yeah, and I’m, I’m a little out of date the last couple years, so I can tell you the, from the point I sort of met Michael and the team- Yeah … up to, um, uh, because a bunch of their team went through our classes. Yeah. So that’s how we met, and through Chad Cannon, who, um, was CMO and s- chief sales officer for, uh, chief revenue officer for a while.

[00:53:04] Anyway, Michael’s awesome. Yeah. And his stuff is awesome, and his content’s awesome. And he had been flying around to do different keynote speeches, and then the planner business blew up, like r- incredibly successful, and it’s so well done. It’s so well done. And, um, anyway, at one point he wanted to scale the business more, and they were getting all these people that are using the Full Focus Planner.

[00:53:24] And so there was a moment where they, they … Like, I think his email list was a half a million people or something. Yeah. It was, it was large. But basically, uh, there was some type of message that went out that said, “Hey, we’re thinking about doing this thing called Business Accelerator. Are you interested?” Or something like that.

[00:53:41] Mm-hmm. And the leads just, like, piled up, and I just happened to be talking to Chad at that time. I think at this point he had switched from CMO to chief revenue officer or something similar. And he’s like, “Man, it’s gonna be brutal, but for like six weeks, I just gotta be on back-to-back calls, because we don’t have a sales team.”

[00:53:57] Right. “And we got way more demand than we thought we did.” So he just like, every day, like 20 minutes a call- Yeah … back-to-back. He’s just like- Qualifying

[00:54:05] Nathan: leads.

[00:54:05] Mo: Yeah, just call. And he’s systematizing it in the only way Chad can do, in this brilliant mind, kind of savant kind of way. Anyway, he gets, uh, like 200 people that are really interested in Business Accelerator that were able to pay 10 or $15,000 a year- Nice

[00:54:20] whatever it was, to come to four meetings a year in Nashville. Michael would teach those. You’d be in a room of 50 people. Right. So pretty, pretty lot of s- lot of scale. You had to come to Nashville to do it, yet there was a little bit of coaching you got, uh, as a part of it, but most of the things were at scale.

[00:54:36] Anyway- I don’t know the exact numbers, but I would guess Michael’s business almost, might be a little less than this from that point, but almost 100x’d-

[00:54:46] Nathan: Wow …

[00:54:47] Mo: through Business Accelerator. I might be a little off. Yeah. It might have been, been like 40x, ’cause I’m trying to- Yeah. I know it 100x’d over a period of time.

[00:54:53] I don’t know when- Yeah … this was in the slider. Um, but it was a big- Two orders

[00:54:58] Nathan: of magnitude …

[00:54:58] Mo: deal. Yeah. And Chad and the whole team, but they got that going, and then it was so powerful, the flywheel of word of mouth started. Mm-hmm. And the next quarter there was a bigger cohort. Right. The next quarter, and they ended up with, like, eight or 10 of these 50 person groups.

[00:55:15] Nathan: Wow.

[00:55:16] Mo: To what, 15? I don’t know. It was a bunch. Mm-hmm. And that, and that was a, that was a interesting, little more selling to entrepreneurs.

[00:55:24] Nathan: Yep.

[00:55:24] Mo: So, in some cases the, the decision maker and the client was the same person, but they had a lot of corporate people- Right … in there, too. So, a lot of B2B.

[00:55:32] Nathan: Well, that gives you the id- uh, the idea of the level of scale that all of this can have, ’cause I think people say, like, “Oh, I, I like selling digital products because it has infinite scale.”

[00:55:41] Mo: Yep.

[00:55:41] Nathan: Um, which is true, but- There’s

[00:55:44] Mo: still a grind of- Oh, yeah … we’re opening up the cohort and, you know, it’s like- And

[00:55:48] Nathan: everybody feels that.

[00:55:49] Mo: Yeah, yeah.

[00:55:49] Nathan: Yeah, there’s a lot to it. Whereas, like, a physical, you know, in a physical event and a date has, uh, some real nice scarcity to it-

[00:55:57] Mo: It does … as well. Well, in the

[00:55:59] Go one click deeper into the B2B world, what it’ll let … It won’t be for, it won’t be everybody, but for a significant amount of clientele- Mm … they wanna buy a particular training at a transformative time for the person.

[00:56:12] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:56:12] Mo: So they go from level A to level B. In our world, it’s going from the, the time, whatever words are in the organization, the time where I just had to really good at doing work to where I also have to learn how to win work.

[00:56:23] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:56:24] Mo: It’s usually partner, managing director and partner, SVP, words like that, depending on the organization and the industry. So what’ll happen is, the first time to get that business and tailor it and customize it, even though these materials stay the same, how you deliver the class is a little bit different for each client- Mm

[00:56:42] based on their words, vernacular, needs, priorities. But what happens then is every year a new partner class happens, and they just- Right … call you up and say, “Hey, man, it went great last year. Let’s do another one this year. We got 30 people instead of 22. We’re growing. Uh, we wanna do one in London and one in DC.”

[00:56:59] Nathan: Right. ”

[00:56:59] Mo: Let’s, uh … What dates work?” Like, that’s the whole sales process- … is an email.

[00:57:03] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:57:04] Mo: So I think the, the thing that the p- the B2C folks that are thinking about B2B don’t see is they see the beginning, which is it’s hard to get the first gig. Mm-hmm. By the time you get the 17th gig, it gets really easy, and once you get into one organization, if you do it right, it’s an annuity.

[00:57:20] So you don’t- Right … you don’t get one installment. You get installments forever.

[00:57:25] Nathan: Yes.

[00:57:25] Mo: That’s really valuable. ‘

[00:57:26] Nathan: Cause turns out these companies have, have been around for 20, 40, 100 years- 100 plus … are probably gonna be around- Yeah … for, you know, the next 20, 40 plus years.

[00:57:34] Mo: Exactly.

[00:57:35] Nathan: Right? Yeah. And so you can … Yeah, you’re not having to sell to new people.

[00:57:38] Mo: Yeah.

[00:57:38] Nathan: They’re bringing

[00:57:39] Mo: new people through. You just … You’re part of … You, you switch from CapEx to OpEx. Mm. They just know that every year we’re gonna run the Grow Big program for that group. And then when you get those kind of annuity cohorts, the, the new elected partners or whatever it is, it could be different, um, what happens is you become, like for us, we become the business development- Call it operating system for the organization Right So then when they need a keynote speed at, page at a crack practice or a retreat, they don’t wanna go out and find somebody new- Right

[00:58:05] that’s gonna say something slightly different, it’s gonna be confused. They just call you and say, “Hey, we got this new thing. Do you do this thing?” We’re like, “We do this thing.” Yes, we do. That’s, yeah, that’s what we do. And then you just end up, then y- So when you, especially when you get those every year programs, you just get everything else.

[00:58:19] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:58:19] Mo: It’s freaking awesome.

[00:58:21] Nathan: This has been amazing. I think we could go deeper and talk

[00:58:24] Mo: Let’s do it. Let’s do four hours.

[00:58:25] Nathan: Yeah,

[00:58:26] Mo: exactly. I love this. I just w- I’ll be 90 years old with a cane, and I’ll still wanna talk about this. You will still be talking about all this. I’m so passionate about it.

[00:58:32] Nathan: So you probably have so much online material- Yep

[00:58:35] where you dive into this kind of stuff as well.

[00:58:37] Mo: Yep.

[00:58:37] Nathan: Um, I wanted you to share where people can follow you in general. Yep. Is there anything that, like, in particular where you’ve talked about building IP or this sort of thing more?

[00:58:46] Mo: I usually don’t talk … Like, I, for you, I’ve sort of let people- Oh … peek inside the business.

[00:58:51] Yeah. So, like, this is it. I would say if they love, if they love i- they, this idea, I’d give a couple options. One is our email- Yep. Oh, yeah … uh, newsletter on Kit is at growbigplaybook.com. Yep. That’s probably the best way to get it. Um, I’d also say the book Give to Grow.

[00:59:04] Nathan: Yeah. It’s

[00:59:05] Mo: the- I mean, just so easy

[00:59:06] foundational

[00:59:06] Nathan: principles for all of this.

[00:59:07] Mo: Yeah, yeah. It’s the best 20 bucks you’ll ever spend. So I’d probably say those two things are, are probably the, probably the main things.

[00:59:13] Nathan: That’s amazing. Well, I’m so excited to be here in Atlanta. Thank you for hosting us. Yeah. I’m excited for the event in the next couple of days.

[00:59:18] Mo: Yeah.

[00:59:18] Nathan: Uh, thanks for coming on. Yeah. And then also, uh, I did an episode on your podcast, so. It was

[00:59:23] Mo: so good. Yeah. So either it is going to happen- … but we already recorded it. Oh, yeah, exactly. We don’t know. But if it’s … But check out Real Relationships Real Revenue on everywhere podcasts are, and, and then search for Nathan Barry.

[00:59:37] We did one a couple years ago-

[00:59:39] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:59:39] Mo: that talks more about email newsletters. Um, your audience might already know all that stuff, but I think the one we just recorded is so s- All,

[00:59:46] Nathan: all about money …

[00:59:47] Mo: so good. All about money. How do you think about wealth? How do you about make, about making money? And if this is far out in the future, we’re recording this in 2026, so, um- Sounds

[00:59:56] Nathan: good

[00:59:56] Mo: they’re both really good. Thanks, Nathan.

[00:59:57] Nathan: Yeah, thanks for coming on. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also, just who else you think we should have on the show.

[01:00:13] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:00:00] Russell: It blows my mind if anyone ever got this, that would be a huge success.

[00:00:03] Nathan: Russell is the co-founder of ClickFunnels, which grew to over 100,000 users without a dollar of outside funding.

[00:00:09] Russell: Movement comes when the guide comes in and basically says, “This doesn’t work anymore. It’s over.” Like, “Here’s the new thing.”

[00:00:14] And that’s what gets people to move and to mobilize for something new.

[00:00:17] Nathan: Russell Brunson spent years studying every major movement in history, religion, politics, and corporate. 5,000 of them show up to his live events every year, some with his logo tattooed on their arm.

[00:00:28] Russell: Every single one of the movements, they all had three core things that were essential for the movement to actually happen.

[00:00:32] The first is there’s a person, a guide, and I call this, like, the attractive character. Number two, the guide offered people what I call a new opportunity, and the third thing is- Yeah, I love that.

[00:00:43] Nathan: In this episode, Russell walks through the framework that he used to build the movement, that makes people stop thinking of themselves as customers and start thinking of themselves as part of something bigger.

[00:00:52] Russell: This is one of the things, like, I wish that somebody would’ve told me this when I first got started in my business. If I could start over from scratch now, I would not have-

[00:01:02] Nathan: Russell, I’m so excited to have you on.

[00:01:03] Russell: I’m excited to be here too, man.

[00:01:05] Nathan: All right, so we’re gonna teach about how to turn followers into a movement. Give people a taste of what it’s looked like in your life and business to build movements at scale.

[00:01:12] Russell: Yeah. So for me, it’s funny, um, the first time I ever thought about this was before I launched, uh, my company, ClickFunnels, and I actually was at a, a network marketing event.

[00:01:21] And I was sitting in this room, and there’s, like, 5,000 or 6,000 people, and I was watching something that didn’t make any sense to me. All these people are getting on stage, and they’re talking, and they’re crying, and I was kind of confused. And I’m sitting here for, like, three days of this event watching it, waiting for them to teach content, and, and none of that was happening.

[00:01:37] And the guy sitting next to me, his name is David Fry, David, he kind of nudged me. He’s like, “Do you, do you see what they’re doing?” I’m like, “No, I have no idea what’s happening here.” And he’s like, “They didn’t build a company. They built a movement.” I remember him saying that, I was like, it just clicked in my head.

[00:01:48] I was like, “Oh my gosh,” like, all these people here feel part of this company. It wasn’t like there’s me and there’s this company. Like, they felt like they were part of this, this thing. And, uh, about the times when we were building ClickFunnels, I remember thinking, like, my company is software, which by itself software’s kind of boring, and like, they may- Yeah, it’s like sterile

[00:02:04] yeah, that maybe they’re gonna use it, and it’s a tool, and they’ll be happy about it. But I was like, “I wanna create what they did. How do you actually create a movement where, again, it’s not my company or my software, but, like, this is our, this is our community. This is our so-,” you know, like making it something bigger.

[00:02:17] And so I started trying to study, like, all the movements throughout time that, that had success, right? I was looking at, like, uh, at, like, religious movements and, like, those, and I looked at, like, political movements. I looked at businesses, and, and then I looked at, like, really negative, like how do cults and, and like, you know, things that normally I wouldn’t have looked at.

[00:02:33] Like, how do they do it? And I, I started looking at it, and over time I saw, like, they all had a very similar pattern. And so when we started building ClickFunnels, I started, like, just doing some of these things. And so map out what those things all are, they had a big impact. And I look at, you know, ClickFunnels now a decade later, like, we’ve got, you know, 100,000 plus people on our platform.

[00:02:51] We’ve got, we do events. We get 5,000, 6,000 people to show up. People showing up, like, with our logos tattooed. We got people going crazy. Like, like, people where it’s like they’re part of this thing, right? Yeah. They call themselves… They have their own names. They call themselves funnel hackers, and it’s like it’s so much different than just, like, I have a software company that you could use if you want to, you know?

[00:03:07] And so for me, like, my focus, you know, I have a business partner focused on software. I focus on, like, how do we build this community and this tribe where it’s, where people feel like they’re part of what we’re doing, not- Mm-hmm … you know, just a, just a, a follower or an influencer. Like, it’s, it’s like something more special.

[00:03:20] So that’s kind of what it is, and it’s changed everything. We’ve made, you know, built a huge company because of it, huge community, and I had a chance to serve tons of people as a movement. Yeah.

[00:03:28] Nathan: That’s amazing. And so I think we make it relevant for someone who’s maybe at, like, half a million a year in revenue, and- Yeah

[00:03:35] they’re really earning an incredible living as an educator. Yeah. But then they’re saying, “Hey, I wanna take this to a much bigger scale.” Like, how do you think about, about that?

[00:03:42] Russell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s what this whole thing’s about because again, it’s, it’s like- And I see this all the time, people that are creators or they’re building courses or coaching, whatever, and it’s like, it’s almost like teacher-student, like that’s the, the relationship, right?

[00:03:53] Where it’s like, “I’m learning from this person.” And then the shifting from the movement is like, is like, it’s no longer like this relationship where I’m gonna teach you something, but it’s like, like you’re part of this community. Right. And you can think about like in, I think everyone in their life, there’s certain like movements that they’re part of.

[00:04:08] Like I was a wrestler growing up, and there’s definitely like, there’s wrestlers, like this is who we are. And then, you know, my faith, like we’re, like there’s, like we’re these kind of people. And like, and it’s like if you look at those areas of your life, think about how you look at it differently. Like I don’t, like yes, there’s my wrestling coach and these, these guys who I look up to in the wrestling world, but like, but I’m a wrestler.

[00:04:25] That’s who I am. This is my identity. And like, and it’s like that’s the shift. You don’t want people looking at you as like, “Oh, this is just my coach or my educator,” because eventually there’s another coach comes along, or a different educator, or something like that. And, and so you can make a good living, but th- when you start shifting this where, where like these become your people and it’s your, like bigger than that, that’s when it, it, it gives you the ability to grow, um, faster and better, not necessarily like by just buying ads, but by this community that, that grows organically because of, of who the people are.

[00:04:54] Nathan: I love that. I’m, I’m in. Let’s, let’s dive in. Okay . How do we-

[00:04:58] Russell: All

[00:04:58] Nathan: right. What, what goes into this? You’ve got a pyramid here.

[00:05:00] Russell: We got a pyra- this is not a pyramid scheme, I swear. Uh… We have a triangle. Yeah, we have a triangle. It’s, it’s just a triangle. Okay, so when I was going through all these things, again, I was studying all these different groups, from religious movements to businesses and everything.

[00:05:11] Uh, when I started doing this, I started mapping out like the pattern and I saw that every single one of the movements throughout time that we’re aware of, that we can see and we can study, they all had three core things that were essential for the movement to actually happen. So the first one, if you wanna draw the first one.

[00:05:24] Okay. The first is there’s like, uh, a person, a guide. Like there’s- Okay … um, in my community- Can I, can

[00:05:29] Nathan: I do it, just do a stick figure?

[00:05:30] Russell: Just make a stick figure, yeah. Okay. I love stick figures Um, in my community I call these the attractive character. Yeah. So it’s like it’s the person interacting with the audience, right?

[00:05:39] Nathan: Okay.

[00:05:39] Russell: Um, you don’t see big movements that don’t have a head. They’re just not there. Yeah. Okay. Like, there’s always… You look at Apple, there’s Steve Jobs. Like, we know who that person is. Like, there’s, he’s like someone we’re looking at, we’re following. Like, there, there’s always kind of that, that person.

[00:05:52] Mm-hmm. Um, and so again, I call this like the attractive character or the guide or- Okay … whatever you wanna call it. And my guess is most of the people who, again, are half a million dollars a year, uh, in business, this is probably what’s the core thing that they’re actually really good at. Like, I, I’m an influencer, I got a following, I’m a guide, I’m taking people on a journey, I’m helping them.

[00:06:09] And so that’s kind of the first core element- Okay … that all of them had. Um, and again, think about religious movements. Like every major religion, there’s a person . You know, you got, you got Christ, you got Muhammad, you’ve got, uh, you know, whatever it is, that there’s always somebody that’s at the front of it.

[00:06:21] Business, the same way. Cults, the same way. Yep. Like, there’s always a guide.

[00:06:25] Nathan: It’s like a, it’s a universal thing.

[00:06:27] Russell: Yeah.

[00:06:27] Nathan: And you just accept it and

[00:06:28] Russell: and- Yeah. And it’s for humans ’cause it’s like we connect with somebody, and so there’s always like the leader of the movement. And usually the guide, like there, there’s like they have their origin story.

[00:06:35] They’ve got, there, there’s things like people connect with that like draw them- Mm … and get people to kind of follow the guide. Okay? Okay. So that’s the first one. Number two, the next thing that, um, that every single mass movement offered is they didn’t offer… A lot of people create offers to people and they, they create, uh, what we call an improvement offer.

[00:06:52] Like, “I’m gonna help you be better or faster or stronger.” And no movement led with an improvement offer. Um, every single, uh, movement throughout time in history, the guide offered people what I call new opportunity.

[00:07:05] Nathan: Okay.

[00:07:06] Russell: If you wanna draw a little dude there and have him like holding out something like, uh, on a, on a silver platter.

[00:07:11] So this is what’s, this is like probably the one that’s, um, um, the most confusing for people when I explain this, but it’s like one of the most essentials. Like you think about Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs came, he’s building Apple, so he’s the guide, everyone’s following him. Yep.

[00:07:24] Nathan: And this is a new opportunity?

[00:07:25] Russell: Yes, new opportunity Like when he came out, he didn’t come to his audience and be like, “All right, everybody, you know, uh, I created a CD that doesn’t hold 12 songs, it holds 50 songs.” Like, that would be an improvement offer. Yeah. And people are like, “Okay.” You know? Instead, he comes in there and he s- gives it in front of everybody, all the share- shareholders, the streaming everyone, he’s like, “Hey guys, you know, this is a CD, it holds 12 things.”

[00:07:47] He’s like, “We don’t use it anymore.” And out of his back pocket pulls out the iPod. Boom, you got 1,000. Like, it’s not a better version CD, it’s completely new opportunity, right? Mm-hmm. Same thing with the phone when he did the iPhone. It was, it was not like, “This is the better phone.” This is like, okay, this is all these things, and it’s- Yeah

[00:08:02] it’s a new opportunity. And so a lot of times, especially in the creator economy, a lot of times I see guides and they’re trying to teach somebody like, “Here’s a better way to do the thing.” And I think one, one of the problems is that’s, that’s how business was taught forever. Like, when I was in college, I remember a business class, they’re like, “Uh, if you wanna be successful, you gotta just build a better mousetrap.”

[00:08:22] Like, that’s what- Mm … they taught everybody. Is

[00:08:23] Nathan: it 10% better? Sweet. Great.

[00:08:25] Russell: Yeah. Go and sell it.

[00:08:26] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:08:26] Russell: And but you look at movements are never created on that, right? They, in fact, one of the books, there’s a book called The True Believer by, uh, Eric Hoffer, which is about mass movements, and he talked about how, like, look at the way that governments and, and even businesses work.

[00:08:38] Like, you, you, you start at this level and you slowly start ascending up and you start moving to better positions over time. And he’s like, that’s not how movements are born. The movement comes when the guide comes in and basically says, “This doesn’t work anymore. It’s over. Like, here’s the new thing.” And that’s what gets people to move and to mobilize.

[00:08:52] There’s something new. Like when we came to, to ClickFunnels and we launched it, I wasn’t coming back and be like, “Here’s a better way to build a website. Here’s a faster way to make a website.” I was like, “Websites are the worst thing in the world. They’re dead to me.” Right. “This is the future. It’s called a funnel.”

[00:09:05] It’s like, what’s a funnel? They don’t even know what it is, and they plug in ’cause people love new. They want, they want- Mm-hmm … th- that’s what gets people to actually move. And

[00:09:12] Nathan: you gave them the, the tagline and the wording and all of that where someone said like, “Yeah, I’m gonna build a website for my…” And, and- Like-

[00:09:19] someone in your community-

[00:09:20] Russell: Yeah …

[00:09:20] Nathan: could be like, “A website?” Why would

[00:09:21] Russell: you do that? No, no. Yeah.

[00:09:23] Nathan: That’s so five years ago. Yeah.

[00:09:24] Russell: Like- Eight tracks? I got an iPod now. Right. Like, why would I do… Like, that doesn’t make any sense. Yeah. So those are the first two things. So there’s the guide, there’s new opportunity, and the third thing is the, the guide is always offering what’s called a future-based cause.

[00:09:37] Nathan: Okay.

[00:09:38] Russell: So yeah, if you have somebody there, um, we could have them preaching or actually just looking to the future, uh, thinking about where they’re going. So, um, it’s interesting, when I was writing this, uh, this is a couple political elections ago when I was first starting studying this. And I remember I was writing this, and I was trying to, like, I had identified the future-based cause, and I was trying to think, like, what’s some examples I can share?

[00:10:02] And at the time, uh, I was working on this on my computer, and my TV was on on the side, but the, the sound was all the way down, and it was during the elections. And I’m not a political person, so I’m not trying to get political. Yeah. But I looked over, and it was, uh, Hillary and Trump were the two on the thing.

[00:10:14] Mm. And no sound was on, but I’m looking at it, and I was like, really interesting, ’cause I look over, and I see the campaign slogan signs behind their heads during the debate. Right. And, um, and I look at it, and Hillary’s was very present-based. I think it was like, “I’m with her” or… And there’s a couple things like that.

[00:10:27] Mm-hmm. I was like, interesting. That’s like a, that’s a very present-based thing. And then I looked at, uh, I looked at Trump’s, and it was like, whatever, the make America whatever. It was like a future-based cause. Yeah. I was like, I wonder if this holds true, like, backwards in time. So I went to Wikipedia. I was like, presidential elections from the history of time, and so I went back and I started going, and I was looking at that.

[00:10:45] I looked at Obama. And Obama, his was like, “Change.” Like, so talking about this future-based cause versus- Right … again, I’m not political, who was he running against? Bush or whoever, whatever the other one was. Ah. It was

[00:10:53] Nathan: like- Yeah. No, I can’t even think. Shows how much we care about it.

[00:10:56] Russell: Claim us in the comments.

[00:10:57] We don’t even know. Um, but I found that one, and I went back, and I went back every single election back to the year I was born, 1980. And every single one, it was crazy. I had the, the, the campaign slogans, and the winner 100% of the time ran on a future-based cause, and the loser always had a present-based cause.

[00:11:11] And so if you’re, if you’re coming to your audience in your movement, and you’re like, “Hey, things are awesome here. It’s gonna be great,” like, that does not get people to move. Right. It’s this move, like, this is like, this is where we’re going. Like, painting a vision, casting a vision for people, and showing them what’s possible and where they’re going is the transition, right?

[00:11:27] Like, when we started, again, launching ClickFunnels, like, the future-based cause I started talking about was, was, like, helping people understand, like- Um, like wherever they are in their life, like we’re trying to get you over here. Like, um- That

[00:11:38] Nathan: was the you’re one funnel away.

[00:11:39] Russell: Yeah, you’re one funnel away was, was the thing where it’s like this is- Mm-hmm

[00:11:42] future-based cause. Like you’re one funnel away, we come over here. And it gives people like hope of something new. Um, because hope is what gets people again to move.

[00:11:49] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:49] Russell: And so when you have a business that incorporates these things, and my guess is for most people they’re probably doing at least one.

[00:11:55] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:11:55] Russell: But most that are here, maybe, maybe one and two. But when you have all three, I mean, like that’s, that’s the thing that creates actual movement where people are like, “I’m going to leave the thing I’m doing now because I want to be part of this.” There’s a, there’s a clear vision of what this looks like.

[00:12:09] This is completely new, and this is the person I trust- Mm-hmm … to take me on that journey. And those are the things that, that, that have all the things. So you can think about, again, if you think about any political movement, religious movement, whatever it is, you’ll see it. Like, uh, for Christians you think the guide, you’ve got Jesus Christ.

[00:12:24] New opportunity, right? He’s like, “The Law of Moses is dead. Here’s the new law.” Boom. Your future-based cause. Like, like that’s all that faith is, right? Right. Just future-based cause. Um, but then you can look at, you can look at really, really bad versions of this, right? Like, uh, Hitler in World War II, I was looking at.

[00:12:39] It’s like you have Hitler, right? New opportunity. Like they’re, like the German people are under oppression because of the World War I, all these kind of things.

[00:12:45] Nathan: Yep.

[00:12:46] Russell: And, uh-

[00:12:46] Nathan: Economic conditions and all that. It was prime for him to come

[00:12:49] Russell: in. Yeah. He didn’t come in and was like, “Hey, I’m gonna make this a little better.

[00:12:50] We’re gonna like try to lower the taxes.” He was like, “No, this…” Whatever, the Treaty of Versailles, rips it up. “We’re changing everything. This is the new…” And like people rally behind this. “Let’s go.” And it’s like, “This is where we’re going. This is the future” and paints this vision, and people started moving.

[00:13:02] And so these things can be used really negatively or positively.

[00:13:05] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:13:05] Russell: Which is always kind of scary. It’s a, it’s a very

[00:13:06] Nathan: powerful tool.

[00:13:07] Russell: Yeah.

[00:13:08] Nathan: And then we get to decide how we use

[00:13:09] Russell: it. Yeah. So when, when you’re building your company, again, wherever you’re at it’s just like, okay, how do I start thinking about this differently?

[00:13:14] Like how do I… What’s the language I’m gonna use, um, about how I’m introducing my opportunity? It’s even interesting because- Um, a new opportunity versus, like, an improvement offer. A lot of times the product doesn’t change, just how you, how you position, how you s- how you talk about it, right? ‘Cause me saying ClickFunnels, like, “Hey, it’s a website builder.”

[00:13:31] It is. Yeah. And it’s like, cool, that’s a, it’s a better website builder.

[00:13:35] Nathan: Right.

[00:13:35] Russell: Uh, the, the keyword I always say if it’s, if you tell something’s improvement, if it has E-R in it, like better, faster. Mm-hmm. Like, when you try to pitch somebody on your product, yeah, it’s better than… Ah, you got an improvement offer.

[00:13:44] Nathan: Like, we’re, we’re just solidly in the 10% better-

[00:13:46] Russell: Yeah …

[00:13:47] Nathan: or whatever.

[00:13:47] Russell: So it’s like, it’s all in just, like, the positioning and how you frame it of, like, no, this is actually a new opportunity. And, like, this one seems to, like, takes the longest for people to figure out. Mm-hmm. But when you figure that out and it clicks, um, I always think about new opportunity.

[00:13:59] It’s the difference of, like, um… Let’s say I’m selling a car. It’s like, here’s a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. Like, those are all cars, even though they’re different. Like, new opportunity’s like, no, no, we’re not gonna drive there. We’re gonna jump in a plane. Like, that’s- Mm … it’s a new opportunity. It’s a different way to get the end result that someone’s trying to get.

[00:14:13] So that’s the core, the core pieces.

[00:14:16] Nathan: Okay, so what we’ve got here, the guide. That’s, uh, the, the key player in here. I think every creator has that. Mm-hmm. New opportunity, I wanna dive into that maybe with a specific example for a creator. And then I think the future-based cause is so important of, like, what are people aspiring to?

[00:14:31] And that’s where, like, I am not a Trump fan at all. But, like, you have to, from a marketing perspective, you have to look at, like, Make America Great Again is such- Yeah … a good slogan because it’s-

[00:14:43] Russell: Which he stole from Reagan, which I didn’t know that till I was going through, and that was Reagan’s thing back in- Oh, okay

[00:14:46] whenever it was. He literally, that was his thing.

[00:14:49] Nathan: Well, that’s the other thing, like, the number of times that- … throughout history that someone is just like, “That works.”

[00:14:53] Russell: I know. Copy, paste. If I was running for pol- politician, I would just look at the old ones, like, oh, that was really good.

[00:14:58] Nathan: Right? And you’re like, “Oh, it looks like we’re running on Teddy Roosevelt’s platform here.”

[00:15:02] Russell: It worked before, it’s gonna work again.

[00:15:04] Nathan: So if we make this really tangible for creators-

[00:15:06] Russell: Mm-hmm …

[00:15:06] Nathan: what I’m thinking about is, does someone come to mind who implemented this, whether, like, maybe before they were just, they were an educator- Mm-hmm … and they, they switched into the guide mentality, and does anyone come to mind that-

[00:15:18] Russell: Yeah.

[00:15:18] Um, I thought of, uh, there’s, uh, two guys in my space, uh- Mm-hmm … Ryan Lee and Brad Gibb, and they’re financial planners.

[00:15:26] Nathan: Okay.

[00:15:26] Russell: Um, which is a very- I love those guys, that they’re listening. It’s a boring business. Yeah. Like, okay. Then, you know, and they were like, “How do we turn this into a movement?” So again, they became the guides.

[00:15:36] They became these experts and they, they spent a lot of time developing themselves as that person, right? Um, future-based cause. So over here, they started thinking about, like, what is the end result? Like, why does somebody get financial planning? Mm-hmm. You know? And why do they wanna go and buy insurance?

[00:15:49] Whatever that thing is, right? You think about, like, the end, the end goal. And a lot of people think, well, it’s for stability, or it’s because if they, whatever their thing might be, right? And they w- they spent a lot of time on this, and finally realized it’s, like, the people that, the customers who were putting money into, into their thing, what they actually wanted to do is they wanted to be free.

[00:16:07] Like, they were very much, um, uh, like security-driven. They wanted to have freedom. Like, freedom was the, the core value their people had. Mm-hmm. So they built this whole future-based cause. It was like, live, uh, rise up and live free. Mm-hmm. So it wasn’t like, “Invest some money with us,” and whatever. It’s like, no.

[00:16:19] Right … invest the money. Within 10 years, you will be free. Like, that’s the future-based cause. So we’re gonna rise up, you’re gonna become free, um, free from finances, from all that kind of stuff, in 10 years or less. And so that became this future-based cause. Mm-hmm. So then they’re like, “You should invest with us.”

[00:16:31] They’re coming in saying, “Hey, guys, you come with us. We’re gonna build a plan. Within 10 years, the shackles are gone.” Future-based cause. This is where we’re going, right? And people were so excited, ’cause it’s like, I can see that.

[00:16:42] Nathan: Something that I’m noticing is these future-based causes tend to go abstract.

[00:16:45] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:45] Nathan: Like, w- as an educator, we’re like, “Here’s the concrete.”

[00:16:48] Russell: Here’s the step-by-steps.

[00:16:49] Nathan: Right. And the, you know, rise up and live free, you’re like, that could be about all kinds of things.

[00:16:54] Russell: Yeah.

[00:16:54] Nathan: But so long as you, you … Like, within finance, it makes perfect sense.

[00:16:57] Russell: Yeah.

[00:16:57] Nathan: Right?

[00:16:58] Russell: And usually it, it’s interesting, ’cause, like, a lot of times you’ll find this based on the value of the guide.

[00:17:02] Yeah. Like, what I found is true for m- at least for me and most people I work with, is like, um, whoever the, the guide is, like, the things, the values you have that are kind of out there are the reasons why people are attracted to you, right? Um- And so I think a lot of the times, uh, when you, when you focus on, like, like what are the values of the guide- Mm-hmm

[00:17:21] those, tho- your f- your, your followers are gonna follow you for the same values, right? Like, people who follow me, they follow me ’cause they like my business ideas, they like the fact I’m a family person, they like that I’m married, they like that I’m, uh- Yeah … that I follow my faith. Like, they, they follow based on similar values.

[00:17:34] So you figure out what’s the value that people are following me for, and then based on that, usually the future-based cause comes out of the value, right? Mm-hmm. It’s like, this is the thing that means the most to me. Like, for me, freedom wasn’t my number one value. That’s not why I’m in business. Otherwise, I would’ve retired a decade ago.

[00:17:49] Right. Like, for me it’s creation. Like, I love, uh… Like, I feel like what I do is a, is a calling from God, and so I, I tell people that. So my, a lot of my future-based cause is just, is that I’m explaining to people, like, if you’re, if you’re drawn to this conversation, like, I believe it’s a calling from God, and He wants you to change people’s lives.

[00:18:04] You’ve been called to serve this group of people over here, and that’s what you gotta do. So like, because that’s what I believe myself, I share that, and then that’s why people come to me, ’cause they’re like, “I feel the same way.” Like, “I feel this, like, this weird pull where I c- like,” Right “… I don’t know if I even wanna be in business, but I know I need to help these people, and so I feel like it’s a calling.”

[00:18:20] And so I share that future-based cause with people. That’s what connects them with me because it’s a shared value I have with them. Mm-hmm. And I can build the future-based cause based on that.

[00:18:28] Nathan: The running… I love that, and I wrote down origin story as well, ’cause you’d mentioned that. Mm. Right? It ties in, you know, who are you?

[00:18:34] Like, don’t try to become someone else. Yeah. You know, find those core attributes, your values, your origin story, all of that. Yeah. And you might choose things to amplify or say like, “Oh, actually, that’s a good part of it. I, I should tell people that.”

[00:18:44] Russell: I should tell more people this more often. Yeah.

[00:18:47] Nathan: Um, now if we g- if we take the example of financial planners, how would you frame the new opportunity-

[00:18:54] Russell: Yeah

[00:18:54] Nathan: within that?

[00:18:55] Russell: Cool. So, like, if you look at core finan- like what financial planners are doing, they’re all selling the same thing, right? It’s like, for the most part it’s like, “Here’s insurance.” Like, this is what, this is what it is. So like, when you go like, “And we have insurance” and like, I, I hear… I have friends who are, I have, every one of my friends who does insurance pitches me now when I see them.

[00:19:10] So they’re all like, “Oh, well, our company’s better. We’ve been around for 150 years,” and blah blah blah. “Oh, my company’s better ’cause we’re newer and we can da da…” You know, like, that’s all the, the things that they’re always fighting.

[00:19:19] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:19:19] Russell: Um-

[00:19:19] Nathan: Incremental …

[00:19:19] Russell: the reas- the reality is, like, I don’t c- like I couldn’t care if your company’s been around for 150 years and whatever, even though, like, that’s the thing they’re driving down on.

[00:19:26] So look at Brad and Ryan when they built their future-based cause. They never talk about insurance. Like, I didn’t even know. Like, I invested all my money with them, and so what they brought to me was a vehicle that got the future-based cause. Like, “Hey, we have a process and a system.” Um, and they d- honestly, they kind of explained it, but I didn’t even wanna know it.

[00:19:43] I just, I wanted this, right?

[00:19:44] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:19:45] Russell: And so they came in and said, “This is the way we do it, and there’s a process” And so they have, like, a… They have their, their system and their whatever, but, um, I don’t remember off the top of my head exactly what they called it.

[00:19:53] Nathan: Right.

[00:19:53] Russell: But that’s what it was. W- And, um- When you look at, like, the mechan- you open up, it’s like, okay, you’re gonna invest in insurance, and then from there we’re pulling money out and we’re gonna put it into real estate.

[00:20:02] And then there… And there’s this whole, like- Yeah … their unique mechanism they went and created, right? And had a unique name for it, a unique, uh, framework and that kind of stuff. And so that was the new opportunity. It’s like you can invest in insurance with every other financial planner, or with us you get the…

[00:20:14] Ah, they’re gonna kill me watching this. Like, the, I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but, but it’s something that they package unique. Yep. And yes, insurance is a piece of it, but it’s a whole pro- it’s a whole step-by-step thing that- Mm-hmm … walks them through everything, right? Where it’s different, it’s unique, it’s not the same thing everybody else is doing.

[00:20:28] Nathan: Yeah. I think the big thing that stands out to me is that it’s, it’s not incremental.

[00:20:31] Russell: Yeah.

[00:20:31] Nathan: And so I think it’s a great call-out when you’re putting your offer together- ER … of looking for that. The ER, right? Better, faster, stronger, whatever.

[00:20:39] Russell: Yeah.

[00:20:39] Nathan: Um, but that’s not what we’re going for. Transformational.

[00:20:42] Russell: Yeah, for sure.

[00:20:43] Nathan: Yeah. I like that.

[00:20:43] Russell: Those are the core pieces. And like I said, they’re so simple when you hear them. You’re like, “Yeah, simple, really simple.” But most, when they’re talking about it, it’s like they never share this stuff with people. Mm-hmm. They’re just selling the better version of what everybody else is trying to make a better mousetrap.

[00:20:54] And so because of that they get stuck at a couple of hundred grand a year. Versus, like, how do you get it where people plug into this and all of a sudden, like, they’re sharing the future-based cause with other people.

[00:21:02] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:21:02] Russell: Like, “Hey, I’m one funnel away. Hey, I’m gonna rise up and live free.” They’re telling their friends, like, “Hey, I m- I met these guys and they’re helping me to, like, to, like, live free.

[00:21:10] In 10 years from now I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be debt-free.” Right. Like, that’s the, that’s the message that gets amplified, right? Uh, that’s the one where they’re at a party with their friends and, and they’re telling them like, “Oh, I met this g- I, I’m following this guy, and he’s got this thing, and I’m d-…” You know?

[00:21:23] And like, that’s what- Yeah … that’s what s- creates that, like, the viral rip- like, the viral effect, whatever you wanna call it, that it creates a movement. ‘Cause if you try to, you try to rely 100% on your own efforts to grow a moven- movement, it’s hard to grow.

[00:21:34] Nathan: Right.

[00:21:35] Russell: If you try to do this 100% based on ads, it’s gonna be really, really hard.

[00:21:37] It’s like really identifying and figuring that out is then when people come in and then- That’s how

[00:21:41] Nathan: you make it spread … it’s

[00:21:42] Russell: a movement, yeah.

[00:21:42] Nathan: Yeah. And it’s one of those things, like, your ultimate product has to be good. 100%. Right? W- and we have to be creating a transformation in people. But there’s so many things, like, there’s so many fundamentals in life that you have to get right that- Mm-hmm

[00:21:53] you can help people with any one part of this. L- you know, the, whether it’s their finances, their fitness, relationships, any of those things. Like, you can get them into a pretty incredible future-based state that they would love- Yeah … to tell all their friends about. Yeah. Um, and you just have to package it correctly.

[00:22:08] Russell: And then especially when they start getting some success with the product you’re offering them, and then people are like, “What are you doing?” Like, well, you know? Versus like, “Oh, I’m, I have this, uh, a, a new financial planner.” And they’re like, “Oh, I know what a financial planner is,” and then just dies. Yeah.

[00:22:18] Versus like, you know, “I’m gonna be… I, I’m three years in. I’m gonna be, 10 years I’m gonna be debt-free.” Right. “Like, how did you do that? Tell me how you did it.” “Well, I got this guy.” Boom. Mm. And brings them in.

[00:22:27] Nathan: Yep. I like that. I’m gonna put transformational here. That sounds good. Um, I… Transformation was too long, so we went with transformer.

[00:22:35] We’re

[00:22:36] Russell: just going, we’re transforming.

[00:22:37] Nathan: With the, that’s the new opportunity. Um, okay. This is fantastic. Now, you have other things drawn right here.

[00:22:44] Russell: Yes.

[00:22:44] Nathan: We’ve got, we’ve got a podium, we’ve got a, a stair step. Like- All

[00:22:46] Russell: sorts of really cool stuff.

[00:22:48] Nathan: Where are we going here?

[00:22:49] Russell: Okay. Um, so again, this is the core, like, underlining premise of the entire thing.

[00:22:54] Like, again, as I was studying the step for Real Quick Funnels, I’m like, okay, these are the core things I’m gonna be weaving in. But then there’s, like, the tactic. Like, well, how do you, how and where do these things-

[00:23:03] Nathan: Right …

[00:23:03] Russell: start showing up, right? Um, okay. We both draw on doodles. Do you wanna draw a dude right here?

[00:23:08] I’ll draw a dude right here.

[00:23:09] Nathan: All right. So we’ve got- A customer right here

[00:23:13] Russell: Not just any customer, though. This is, like, your dream customer. So the dream customer is gonna have blue hair, I think.

[00:23:20] Nathan: I like it.

[00:23:21] Russell: But, uh, this is one of the things, like, I wish that somebody would’ve told me this when I first got started in my business.

[00:23:25] I remember I was probably, man, four or five years into my business, and one mo- one morning, I woke up, I was laying in bed. I remember laying there, and I was like, “I wish I had a boss so they could fire me, like, if I didn’t go in the office today.” But I didn’t, it was me. Right. And I remember, like, driving to the office that day.

[00:23:41] I was like, “Why am I so miserable?” And I was like, “I don’t love my customers.” Mm. And what happens, I just created a product and started selling it, and then people started coming to do it. Like, ’cause I didn’t think about any of this stuff initially. And so people started buying it, and, like, the people who bought it weren’t who I would- would’ve chosen to serve or to work with.

[00:23:57] Mm. And it was just, like, it was such a horrible thing. And I remember, um, because I was going through this whole process, and I was like, “If I could start over from scratch now, like, like, I would not have picked these customers.” Mm. And I think part of, like, the messaging I put out brought the wrong customers in.

[00:24:10] And so I remember getting to the office that day and sitting there like, like, “Who, who would my dream customer actually be? If I could pick that person, like, if I could draw them out…” And, uh, and so I did, I did some quals, like, thinking about like, hey, if for the men I wanna serve, like, I was like, they, they used to be an athlete in a past life, but now they’re, like, retired and they, they’re looking for more.

[00:24:26] I’m looking for somebody who’s, who’s driven, who’s, uh, who’s had some success and, and, uh, maybe coach somebody g- and you have that feeling of, like, he had some success, and he wants to give back more. And, like, I m- I listed all these different attributes, and I remember I went to Google Images, and I typed in all of…

[00:24:40] Just copy and pasted in and clicked submit, and all these faces popped up. And I was scrolling through, I’m like, “Ah.” And there was this guy, I was like, “That’s the guy.” And I clicked on it and I printed it out, and I wrote Mike on top of it, and I put it on my wall. I’m like, “There’s Mike.” I’m like, “That’s, that’s the guy I wanna serve.”

[00:24:52] And then I was like, “Who are the women I wanna serve?” And I, same thing, I was like, “Well, I want…” And I made all these attributes, went to Google Images, posted in there, scrolled through, I found this picture, and I was like, “That’s her.” And I printed it out, I wrote Julie on the top and I paste it. So I had Mike and Julie were, like, my dream customers, and I knew what was important to them.

[00:25:08] And I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna rebuild my business.” So I literally, I just stopped talking to my dream customers. We didn’t have any con- they’d already bought products, but I was just like, “I’m not gonna… We’re just not buying more ads. We’re not gonna try. I’m gonna build this new thing.” And what was crazy that came from this exercise is, like, I realized that everything I was selling right now, Mike and Julie would never have bought it.

[00:25:26] And I was like, the thing that I wanted to create, I was like… In fact, it was, it was, um, my first, not, like, a real book, my first book I put together. Yeah. I was like, I wanna show people, the thing I wanna geek out about is my split testing. I’m like, we split tested every page, every… I have so much cool data, and if I show my current customers, they’d be like, “Why are you showing me this?”

[00:25:42] But I was like, Mike and Julie would freak out about that. So I took all my split test that we’d done, 108 different split tests that we had won. I put them in a book, and I, like, again, I sent an email to my existing customers. I’m like, “Who wants to buy this book?” And we sold, like, three. I’m like, “Ugh.” From, like, probably 60,000 subscribers, I was like, “Ugh.”

[00:25:56] I’m like, “Well, I’m gonna put it out there.” And we started buying ads and doing stuff. And what was crazy, because I created the bait that would get my dream customer, and I started putting it out there. The people who started buying this book were different people. I didn’t realize it at first. And I remember at the back side of that, we did an event.

[00:26:10] We had 100 people come to it. And I remember in the past, if I did events, I’d kind of hide in the back ’cause I was like, “Ah, I don’t know if I wanna see my c- I don’t wanna talk to these guys.” This time I went out there, and I was like, every one of these people I would hang out with. Like, they were, like, my dream customers.

[00:26:21] We’re geeking out about these nerdy thing. And it was like, those are my dream customers. And so I always lead with that because you can attract people easily. You put out the right message, you’ll get the right people.

[00:26:30] Nathan: Right.

[00:26:31] Russell: But understanding that, spend time figuring, like, who do you actually wanna serve?

[00:26:34] Who’s a person that, like, even if you made $0, you would still wake up every morning pumped to serve them? You need to figure out that first. Like, that’s, that what makes all the rest of the stuff actually work, so.

[00:26:44] Nathan: The trap that I, I think you’re talking about and that I see people fall into is they see…

[00:26:48] They say, “I have message number one, and that brought in X number of people, and message number two, and that brought in Y number,” you know? Yeah. Or A- X plus 10% or whatever. Yeah. So the second message is the better one.

[00:26:59] Russell: Yeah.

[00:26:59] Nathan: And what you’re saying is like follow that to its logical conclusion. Are those the people that you wanna be in a mastermind with?

[00:27:05] Russell: Yeah.

[00:27:06] Nathan: You know, serving, like, answering support tickets for, staying up late. Life is

[00:27:09] Russell: short. Right? If you’re serving the wrong people, it’s not a happy existence.

[00:27:12] Nathan: That’s the thing. Someone asked me- Yeah … like, uh, why I haven’t sold Kit or why I don’t want to. And I’m like, “I get to spend all my time- That’s what I do, yeah

[00:27:20] serving my dream customers,” right? It’s like, it’s all of my favorite people, you know, all these authors and creators and, like, just love hanging out with them.

[00:27:26] Russell: Yeah.

[00:27:27] Nathan: Uh, but you can absolutely get into the other markets where there’s plenty of people who have tried to buy Kit over the years, like, tried to, uh, become a customer-

[00:27:34] Russell: Mm-hmm

[00:27:34] Nathan: or have, and then they’re like, “Okay, now you need to go build all these things.” And I’m like, “I don’t, I don’t, like, I don’t want to.” And they might be like, “There’s great revenue there,” but it’s like, ah, it’s not-

[00:27:44] Russell: Yeah …

[00:27:44] Nathan: it’s not compelling, and it would take us in a totally different direction.

[00:27:46] Russell: For sure. You even, you know, off-camera, you told me about a feature that you didn’t even wanna build because you didn’t believe in it for your customer.

[00:27:51] Like, even though everyone… Like, it’d probably make you a ton more money, but you’re like- Right … “That’s not what… My dream customer should not be doing that. I disagree with it.” Right. Therefore, you didn’t do it, which is, like, super cool, but.

[00:28:00] Nathan: Yeah, I love that. Okay. Yeah. So we have the dream customer. Okay.

[00:28:02] Russell: Where do we

[00:28:02] Nathan: go from

[00:28:03] Russell: there? So now I look at this. I think about, um, we talked about politics earlier, future-based cause, but I think about this, like, when you come out there and you become this guy who wants to go and speak to people, like, you’re not the only voice. Mm-hmm. There’s, there’s… If, if you’re in the weight loss i- industry, there’s 500,000 people shouting from Instagram and YouTube, like, from the top of their lungs, like, campaigning for your dream customers.

[00:28:25] And so we just draw a person here, like, as if they’re campaigning-

[00:28:27] Nathan: Okay …

[00:28:27] Russell: for the dream customers, and just realize that they’re competing with a whole bunch of other people, right? And

[00:28:32] Nathan: so- Do they, do they have a sign?

[00:28:33] Russell: Yes, they do need a… Just give them a big old sign.

[00:28:37] Nathan: Here’s the sign. Their, their arm got long enough to hold the sign.

[00:28:41] Russell: I love it. Um, I was thinking about this during political season, ’cause we’re, we both live in Boise, so like when you drive down the street in Boise and you see all the signs, the signs are like the person’s last name with the year. Yeah. I’m like, like-

[00:28:52] Nathan: I know what year it is.

[00:28:53] Russell: Who did you spend? Like, who did you hire?

[00:28:55] Like, please hire me. Like, like, what is the future-based cause that’s gonna get this dream customer to move towards you, right?

[00:29:01] Nathan: Right. What tr- It’s- Yeah, what transformation are you creating? What, what new opportunity, all of this, and it’s like, and your thing is like- … Barry 2026. And you’re like-

[00:29:09] Russell: And there’s like 40 different names down there.

[00:29:11] I’m, I’m driving down, I’m like, “I don’t know what any of you guys believe. What, like, what’s in it for me?” Like, oh, we could make so much money if we just became political marketers. Anyway, I, I kinda wanna- That’s … I kinda wanna run for, like, a big political office just to win, but I don’t wanna- … I don’t wanna do it.

[00:29:24] Like, okay, you can have it back. I mean, the, the, you know- I just want to prove to you that marketing works. Um, okay, so here’s the thing, and so when I started thinking about this with, with, um, with my business, right? When we started going after our dream customer. So for me, it’s like, uh, these are, uh, impact vision-driven entrepreneurs who, um, who feel called to change the lives of customers.

[00:29:40] Like, that’s who my dream customer is. When I looked at my avatar, um, that was the thing. So I’m like, what is the messaging that’s gonna cut through all the noise to get these people to come to me? And it comes back to some of these things here, right? It’s like, it’s a blend of, like, your future-based cause, your new opportunity.

[00:29:54] And I remember, we, we didn’t have this for a long time, and it was, um, uh, I think it was our second or third event, our Funnel Hacking Live event. I was in ClickFunnels writing the headline for the event, and uh, the way I write headlines, I, I look at, uh, swipe files of other people’s headlines and stuff, just to get ideas.

[00:30:09] And there’s a guy, one of my, you know, one of the, the legends in the advertising space named Gary Halbert, and he had this headline he wrote one time. It said, um, “You’re one sales letter away from being rich.” I was like, “Oh, that feels really good.” So I remember at the top of my, top of my, uh, the page, I was like, “You’re one funnel away from being rich.”

[00:30:24] And I was like, “Yeah.” And then I was like, like, my dream customers, like, yeah, they probably wanna make money, but most of them, like, that’s not their driving force. Like-

[00:30:32] Nathan: It’s in, in pursuit of something else.

[00:30:34] Russell: Yeah. I would’ve got some people to come to me. Mm-hmm. So I like deleted that. I was like, “You’re one funnel away from more impact.”

[00:30:38] And I was like, there’s a segment that’s the right thing. Mm-hmm. But some people, maybe not. Like, one funnel away from firing your boss. One funnel away, and I had all these different things I kept trying. I remember deleting them all, and then I was sitting there, and the headline said, “One funnel away…” dot, dot, dot.

[00:30:48] And I was sitting here, I looked at it and I was like, “Oh,” like, that’s my campaign slogan. If I was gonna be campaigning for my dream customer, like, you’re one funnel away. Like, what does that mean for you? Let them fill

[00:30:57] Nathan: in the

[00:30:57] Russell: blank. Yeah, let them fill it in.

[00:30:58] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:30:59] Russell: And so that became my, my big rallying call.

[00:31:00] So one funnel- My handwriting’s way worse than yours. That says one funnel away.

[00:31:09] Nathan: One funnel away. I like it.

[00:31:09] Russell: But that became like the rallying call for all my people, like, “You’re one funnel away,” and like- Mm-hmm … and trying to get them to start coming to me, and helping cast this future-based vision, right?

[00:31:16] Of like, this is for, this is for you. It’s like, um, you know, and again, depending on when my dream customers are coming to me, they’re, everyone’s at a different time- Mm-hmm … point in their timeline, right? Uh, you probably have the same thing with K- people coming, I don’t have any newsletter. Right. It’s like there’s a different message for them.

[00:31:29] So it’s like you’re one funnel away from, from freedom, from whatever your thing is. But then other people who’ve got a bigger business, like there’s a different thing. And so-

[00:31:35] Nathan: How do I break through a million in revenue? Yeah. And it’s like, well-

[00:31:37] Russell: You’re one funnel away …

[00:31:38] Nathan: you’re one funnel away. Right.

[00:31:39] Russell: And so for me, like this became the rallying call.

[00:31:40] But if you looked at my social- Mm-hmm … when we first came out, like it was me telling my one funnel away stories. I was like, “I remember when I was broke, and I tried this- Oh … and this and this- Yeah … and then this Potato Gun DVD. This was the first one I put together that worked, and I made some money. Like that was my first one.”

[00:31:54] Mm-hmm. I share that, and then the beginners who are like, “Oh, I’ve been in that same spot.” Mm-hmm. And that one funnel away story resonates with them. But then a different r- reel or YouTube video, whatever, I’m telling a completely different story where I’m talking about like, “Hey, I was growing my company.

[00:32:05] We were stuck at a million dollars a year for like five years in a row. I couldn’t figure it out. And then we created this funnel. This is how we launched it.” Mm-hmm. “And we told it, and we went from a million to 10.” Right? And then that, there’s a different segment of dream customers who hear that, and they come in.

[00:32:17] Other ones talk about impact, ones where like I was able to like be at every one of my kids’ wrestling matches because I evergreened a funnel. Right. And I was one funnel away from spending time with my kids and never missing a single practice. And then like, so it’s just like every variation of like how this lived out in my life as the guide- Mm-hmm

[00:32:32] and then sharing those stories over and over consistently, we’re just, just grabbing different segments, these dream customers. They’re like, “That’s the vision. That’s the future that I wanna be only part of for myself.”

[00:32:41] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And then you w- you end up with almost endless stories.

[00:32:44] Russell: Yeah.

[00:32:44] Nathan: Because you can tell all of your stories, and then as you create transformations with people, you can tell their stories.

[00:32:49] Russell: Yeah.

[00:32:49] Nathan: And you just keep coming back to that one thing.

[00:32:51] Russell: Yeah. It gets better. It’s, it’s interesting, like, um, I’ve had people tell me like, “I don’t have that many stories. I’m gonna get bored after a little bit.”

[00:32:57] And it’s like- Mm-hmm … the goal, like you said, is 100%, it’s like there’s value in you telling your stories, but there’s way more value in you telling your customer stories.

[00:33:03] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:33:04] Russell: And then there’s even a third tier to that, is like, um, so like for me, for example, it’s like I’ve got a million stories of me building funnels.

[00:33:11] I stopped telling most of my stories back in the day ’cause it gets annoying, keep hearing mine. We had so many s- so many s- uh, students, so I started sharing those, like you said. But what was interesting is like, like a good example is, uh, Brandon and Caleb Poland. So they came into our world. Uh, they built a couple funnels to help women overcome weight loss.

[00:33:27] And in those funnels, I think at the time, uh, before they sold the company, they had like 1.3 million women had joined their list. Oh, wow. They had hundreds of thousands of success stories and things like that. And so then almost my, the stories I share, it wasn’t just like Brandon and Caleb, it was like the success stories of their students.

[00:33:41] Of like, of like- Yeah … these people’s lives were changed because they did the… You know? So it’s like, it’s going like three levels deep. And when you get there, it just, again, it just keeps bringing more and more of these people into, into your world.

[00:33:51] Nathan: Well, we live in this world where- Like all the entrepreneurs that we’re serving are people who may have started down the path of business ’cause they’re like, “Look, I need to create this transformation in my life.

[00:34:01] I would love to not be stressed about a mortgage or whatever else.”

[00:34:03] Russell: Yeah.

[00:34:04] Nathan: But they pretty quickly meet that bar, and then they’re all about the transformation that we’re creating. And so when your messaging is about that-

[00:34:11] Russell: Yeah …

[00:34:11] Nathan: you know, and the future of his cause and all that, it’s like think of the impact that you could have on 10,000 people or more.

[00:34:17] Russell: Yeah.

[00:34:17] Nathan: Then, yeah, everything gets so much more clear. Yeah. And it’s just, it’s so much more compelling.

[00:34:21] Russell: It makes, it makes business so much more fun. Yep. I was gonna say, come back versus like, uh, what’s the aver- ad copy for the next thing I gotta write, versus like-

[00:34:28] Nathan: Right …

[00:34:29] Russell: let’s talk about these cool… Anyway, it’s just more fun.

[00:34:31] Nathan: But I think that, so the thing that’s most interesting to me about this-

[00:34:34] Russell: Mm-hmm …

[00:34:34] Nathan: is not only that it’s, you know, about the new opportunity and, and that, that new future, but that you actually made it way more compelling by making it more general. Yeah. By letting people fill in their own things. Like, if you were to go with probably a bunch of the political slogans, like going back to-

[00:34:52] uh, Trump or Reagan or whoever, right? Make America great, or It doesn’t say anything about how. Yeah. And it lets people fill in the blank. Yeah. Which is interesting on a… From a marketing perspective, almost always specificity or niches are better. Yeah. And so this is a j- like, an interesting place where it’s like, actually specificity is not better.

[00:35:13] Russell: Yeah. You could let the… You cast the vision but let them plug it in.

[00:35:16] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:35:16] Russell: Yeah, I, I mean, I was thinking about that with, um, when the year that Obama won, his, uh, his campaign was change. Mm-hmm. And it was the same thing. It’s like, it’s like everyone, everyone just wasn’t happy where they are, which I don’t think people are ever happy where they are.

[00:35:28] Right. Like, that thing was simple, but everyone had a version of like, “Oh, I think what he mean, when he wins, change means this,” or, “I think it means this.” Or, “I think it…” They, everyone had their version what they thought change would mean. Again, which is why he won. I think it’s very similar here, is like, if you were to ask every one of my clients, like, what one funnel away meant to them, it was different, you know?

[00:35:43] They probably gave- And probably different, different times of their, of their life too …

[00:35:45] Nathan: 50

[00:35:46] Russell: different answers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

[00:35:47] Nathan: so the other thing that I noticed about it as a slogan is you don’t outgrow it.

[00:35:52] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:52] Nathan: Because you always want, like, it’s human nature, we, we want things to change. We want forward progress.

[00:35:59] Russell: Yeah.

[00:35:59] Nathan: And so yeah, you’re one funnel away from not being stressed about your mortgage. Mm-hmm. Well, two years from now, I might be one funnel away from actually being able to feel like I can be present at my kids’ soccer games. Yeah. Right? And that

[00:36:10] Russell: goes

[00:36:10] Nathan: from there.

[00:36:11] Russell: Yeah. And also, it’s like, the big thing I think is, like, also living this yourself because, um, I told you we had some up and downs the last couple years, and in, and, uh, I rallied my team, like, last December.

[00:36:20] I was like, “You guys, the message I’ve been preaching for the last decade of you’re one funnel away, so are we. Like, like, we’re one funnel from changing our future of what we are as a company.” And it’s, I, I mentioned to you earlier, in January, we launched a new challenge called the One Fu- or the One Common Club Challenge, and that was a funnel.

[00:36:34] And it launched, and it crushed, and it’s like the first thing we’ve done. Like, we’ve had a lot of, again, funnels that we’ve been trying the last couple years, and that one hit again. And, and I told my team after, I was like, “I told you guys, like, we’re one funnel away just like everybody else.” Right. Like, different levels and scale, but it’s like the exact same thing is true.

[00:36:48] And so, like, if you’re living it, then I can go back to my audience then and then be like, “Oh, like, we should rally and do it again,” you know, and like re-motivate them. So yeah, if, if you crystallize it, you don’t outlive or i- it doesn’t matter where, where in the, the continuum you are, it’s still just as relevant.

[00:37:01] Yeah.

[00:37:01] Nathan: I love that. Okay. So where, where do we go from here?

[00:37:05] Russell: Okay. So people hear the, the rallying call of the, the leader. They decide to come and follow you. The first thing you gotta do after somebody comes, uh, into your world is you have to give them an identity shift. Yeah. So let’s draw a little person here.

[00:37:15] I can draw a blue- Yeah, you- … blue cape on him.

[00:37:17] Nathan: Uh, okay. What, what, what’s this person doing? Just-

[00:37:19] Russell: This person’s, uh-

[00:37:21] Nathan: Are

[00:37:21] Russell: they just right here? … looking this direction. How do you make stick figures look a direction?

[00:37:24] Nathan: Well, I tried on the other sheet, and I wasn’t sure- … that it, you know.

[00:37:29] Russell: There you go. That’s pretty cool.

[00:37:30] Nathan: That, that’ll work.

[00:37:30] Russell: And I’ll give him a huge old cape.

[00:37:33] Nathan: I like it. I like it.

[00:37:34] Russell: Yeah, they’re flying.

[00:37:35] Nathan: And then this, this is our leader. So I’ll label that. Cool. Okay. And this you, um, label identity shift?

[00:37:42] Russell: Yeah.

[00:37:43] Nathan: Okay. We’ll go-

[00:37:43] Russell: So this is our dream customers. The dream customer heard your message, followed the leader, and this is what people do, is like you get somebody hears the message, they come on Instagram, they follow you, and then you kinda let ’em, let ’em go.

[00:37:53] Nathan: Yep.

[00:37:54] Russell: And then you’re like, “Now they’re gonna follow me passively for a long time. Maybe they’ll buy something somewhere in the future.” What we try to do is like as the customer comes into our world, it’s like how do we give them an actual identity shift? Um, and there’s so much behind this. We go deep in the psychology of it.

[00:38:06] But the biggest thing is like if th- you can shift their identity, this is what we… I, I mentioned earlier like I don’t want them thinking that this is my business and they’re a customer of it. I want them thinking that this is us. Mm. This is who we are. And so this is something I kinda stumbled upon. Uh, the very first webinar I did to sell ClickFunnels, uh, I created a framework called funnel hacking.

[00:38:24] And I was like, “Here’s the funnel hacking,” and I kinda showed this thing. And then what was crazy is in the comments, uh, after the event, people would start doing it, and then they’d go in our, in our, uh, Facebook group, and they’re like, uh, “What’s up, funnel hackers? Hey, I’m funnel hacking.” And they started, they started…

[00:38:37] Like, that was the word they started using first. I was like, “Oh, that’s kinda catchy.” And they started calling themselves funnel hackers. And so then I, I went immediately and I had my designer make a T-shirt that said funnel hacker. Right. It had three dots underneath it. And so I, I wore the shirt and on a Facebook Live, and people were freaking out like, “I want a funnel hacker shirt.”

[00:38:51] So, like, we started shipping them out to people and, um, and then I was like, “Wait a minute.” I was like, “What if everybody who came into our world, um, we…” Almost like a superhero. Like, superhero puts on a cape. Like, how do we make it so it’s like they’re coming in normal as one person, we get them to put on a cape where they’re identifying with this thing that’s bigger than them.

[00:39:09] Uh, and so we had it set up when someone joined a ClickFunnels account, we’d ship them all a T-shirt.

[00:39:12] Nathan: Well, so I remember something specific. I’ve gone through your onboarding.

[00:39:15] Russell: Uh-huh.

[00:39:16] Nathan: And what I remember, ’cause from a software perspective, I’m trying to study everything, right?

[00:39:19] Russell: Yeah.

[00:39:20] Nathan: It would be if you went through the onboarding and completed these specific onboarding steps-

[00:39:24] Russell: Yep

[00:39:24] Nathan: then you got a T-shirt. Yep. And so it was like it was almost in the identity shift, like you made them do work.

[00:39:31] Russell: Yeah.

[00:39:31] Nathan: And now it was work that would make them successful, create this new opportunity, adopt the pro- like, all of those things.

[00:39:36] Russell: Yeah.

[00:39:37] Nathan: But it was like, “Oh, man, I, I earned that.” “I didn’t get that for free.”

[00:39:39] Russell: I earned this shirt, yeah.

[00:39:40] Nathan: Yeah, exactly.

[00:39:41] Russell: And it was such, it was such a big thing, and so we shipped the shirts out. And I remember we did it for two or three months, and it gets expensive, ’cause you’re printing a shirt, shipping it.

[00:39:47] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:39:48] Russell: And they didn’t pay for it. They just- they had this type of trial, but we’re sending them a shirt.

[00:39:51] I remember my accountant’s like, “Oh.” He’s like, you know. You know how they are, like, “Oh, this is just like wasting money. Why are we doing this? This is so stupid.” These

[00:39:57] Nathan: founders.

[00:39:58] Russell: Yeah. And I was about to cancel it, and I remember somebody, I don’t know who it was, I wish I could go back a decade and find it, but they sent me a message.

[00:40:05] And, uh, it was this guy, and he’s like, “I joined ClickFunnels,” whatever, “three or four months ago.” He’s like, “I’ve never logged into the software,” but he’s like, “I got the T-shirt, and I feel like I’m part of this tribe and this community.” Mm. And he’s like, “I’m never gonna cancel because, like, this is like my…

[00:40:20] This is who I am now.” Nice. And I re- I was like, “Oh, my gosh,” like, “That’s, that’s so interesting,” right? Uh, so I was like, “No, keep on shipping them.” And I think we’ve shipped, I don’t know- Probably, probably close to, I don’t know, half a, half a million or more shirts we’ve shipped out. Wow. I get pictures of people all the time who are like, uh, my friend’s like, “I’m in Bali,” and there’s some dude riding a bike wearing a Funnel Hacker shirt, and they send me a picture.

[00:40:40] “I’m at the gym in, you know, in Dubai,” and there’s three Funnel people walking. It’s like, you know, “I’m on a plane.” Yeah. And so like, it, you give it, and it’s like literally like a u- like a uniform. Now, a couple things we learned. Um, so I started sharing this with, with, um, with my dream customers when they were in it, and one of the first people who did it was, uh, Brandon and Kaden Poland, and so their…

[00:40:57] They, they shifted the name of their company because of this, ’cause they’re like, their company at the time was called Tool Time Trainers. That was her last name. And, um, and she’s like, “No, that’s not an identity. That’s, that’s me. That’s a business about me.” She’s like, “If I’m trying to get, like, people- Yeah

[00:41:09] I gotta change it.” So they changed it to Lady Boss, and then they made shirts, and they tried a bunch. They were, they were, they made a lot of money selling swag and merch and stuff, but one of the things they, they found that I had done not knowing, is ’cause my shirt said Funnel Hacker, and they tried a whole bunch of ones, and the ones that just said Lady Boss, uh, were the best, and they said the reason why is ’cause it’s an I am statement.

[00:41:27] I am a Funnel Hacker. I am a Lady Boss. I am a… And so if you can, if you can have something like that where, like, it’s the self-identify, like this is who I am. Mm-hmm. That worked better than some fancy quote or some funny thing or just some brand. Or just your company logo. Yeah, if I had ClickFunnels, like, I am…

[00:41:40] Uh, ClickFunnels is them. Right. Where it’s I’m a Funnel Hacker. This is, this is beyond- It’s identity … I happen to use the software, but this is who I am. This is the, the thing.

[00:41:47] Nathan: So I’m thinking about, like, what we’ve done with Kit that has worked the best in shirts or things like that. Mm-hmm. W- we’ve put, like, values statements on there.

[00:41:55] Um, two that w- we’ve done a lot of is, like, create every day and teach everything you know.

[00:42:01] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:01] Nathan: And those people wear all the time and, and they love and all that. We have not done anything related to… Like, a Kit creator is not branded in, in some way. Creator is the term we use the most, but that’s universal.

[00:42:14] That’s not specific to Kit.

[00:42:15] Russell: Yeah.

[00:42:16] Nathan: Um, so maybe first, like, how important is it to have that I am- The identity? … identity statement?

[00:42:23] Russell: I think it’s big. I mean, I look at- Yeah … even the other businesses we’re launching, like, uh, we have a bootstrap business that’s like Bootstrappers. We have, uh, a personal development business, and, um, they call themselves the Round Pegs in Square Holes.

[00:42:34] Like, like, it’s, it’s things like- Mm … that where they can self-identify with, like, this is who I, this is who I am. You know what I mean?

[00:42:40] Nathan: Yeah, so in that, like, we’ve done a lot with the phrase I am a creator.

[00:42:45] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:45] Nathan: Especially back, like, 2018, 2019, when that wasn’t a common phrase. Now I feel like it’s so common-

[00:42:53] Russell: Uh-huh

[00:42:53] Nathan: that it’s not own-able.

[00:42:55] Russell: Yeah.

[00:42:56] Nathan: I don’t know. Does anything come to mind of, like,

[00:42:58] Russell: how you position? You should, you should run an au- you should run something like a survey to your audience and get them even, like, like, “Hey, guys, what would you call yourselves that’s- Mm-hmm … is different?” Again, I, I always think about if some are easy, ’cause, like, bootstrap to Bootstrappers is, is an easy one.

[00:43:11] Right. Um, Funnel Hackers was, was more like- You know, the, the community dro- drove it. Round pegs in square holes is, uh, is I just, um, uh, heard that quote. Uh, Steve Jobs did not make that quote, but he’s… Everyone thinks he did it because it was the- Yeah … the Mac commercial about round peg lives in a square hole.

[00:43:29] Um, we had one of our, um, for our higher end coaching program, uh, one of our guys gave, gave a testimonial on video, and I remember he was talking about it, and he’s like, he’s like, “This program is not easy. It’s hard.” He’s like, “But if you’re one of the 1% crazies, this is perfect for you.” And I was like, “1% crazies”.

[00:43:44] Right. So our identity for our coaching program is the 1% crazies. Mm-hmm. So everyone gets these T-shirts that says, “1% crazies,” and they’re all like, “We’re the crazies” and like, and it came from just a testimonial from a member who said something. Right. And that phrase was like, “I am one of the 1% crazies.”

[00:43:56] But again,

[00:43:56] Nathan: it’s identity based. Yeah. Like, the, the round peg, square hole, it’s an identity-

[00:44:01] Russell: Yeah …

[00:44:02] Nathan: uh, based thing, so always looking for that-

[00:44:04] Russell: Yeah …

[00:44:04] Nathan: in a sense. Seth Godin has this line where he talks about, um, in your tribe, right? A movement, tribe, all of that. Um, it’s people like us do things like this.

[00:44:14] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:15] Nathan: And so it’s like- Ooh, I love that … okay, well, what’s the, you know, what are the common traits? And I think for our audience with kids- Our customers are the people who are deeply invested in their community, right? Yeah. They’re building valuable businesses, and it’s not just valuable for, for them and their family, but it’s like we’re creating a b- a business that provides real tangible value.

[00:44:36] Like, we’re investing in our audience. So it’d be finding something, like that’s not it, but finding something that-

[00:44:41] Russell: Yeah …

[00:44:42] Nathan: can play on the identity there.

[00:44:43] Russell: Yeah, everyone wants to come up. Like, big part is like going back to your dream audience and they’re getting the testimonial- Mm-hmm … of the guy saying that.

[00:44:48] It’s just like, ah, like they already… Your people already feel that identity. I was telling you before, I heard a pod- a YouTube video, uh, this weekend where the guy was like, “My kit newsletter,” it’s like he’s already identified. It’s not an email newsletter, it’s like his newsletter, it’s his kit newsletter.

[00:45:00] Right. Like he’s, your people are already identifying with you. Um, I would just like listen to what they’re saying and try, to try to find something that can turn to an I am, boom. Mm-hmm. And then it becomes an identity. And then, and then you wrap it in, like our event’s called Funnel Hacking Live. That’s where funnel hackers come together.

[00:45:12] Right. You’re

[00:45:12] Nathan: reinforcing-

[00:45:13] Russell: Yeah …

[00:45:13] Nathan: all these points.

[00:45:14] Russell: Yeah, it keeps coming back together. And then, uh, you come to Funnel Hacking Live and like, again, we, uh… There’s so much swag that we give away. Like every presentation I give, there’s a T-shirt that goes with it that’s an identity thing. Oh, wow. Like, like we did a whole thing about building funnels, and we get the, uh, again, I, uh, I build funnels shirts.

[00:45:29] It’s like, boom, then I, I build funnels. Then we did, uh, when we released our, our email, uh, marketing stuff- Yeah … uh, we called them follow-up funnels. Like, I build follow-up funnels, and people are like, “I build follow-up funnels.” And it’s like, it’s always like trying to like reinforce the identity, the sub identities.

[00:45:42] Um, and then my mi- in my mind, it’s like they’re superheroes. They go home and they’re like, you know, they’re in their normal day thing, and then when they go build on a computer, they, they go to the closet, put a Funnel Hacker shirt on, and sit down like, “Now I can… I’m a super- my superpower’s on. Now I can build a funnel.”

[00:45:53] The shirt’s

[00:45:54] Nathan: on. Noise canceling headphones

[00:45:55] Russell: are on. Yeah, everything’s different now. The music is, uh…

[00:45:57] Nathan: I love it. So they’ve made that identity shift.

[00:45:59] Russell: Yeah.

[00:45:59] Nathan: Now we’ve got stair, like where, where are they going?

[00:46:01] Russell: Yes.

[00:46:02] Nathan: What’s up the stairs?

[00:46:03] Russell: Okay, so this was interesting. So people came to our community, they started doing this, they became funnel hackers.

[00:46:06] We did a couple events. Um, and then with, with people, especially, especially like people that are plugging into a movement, the future-based cause, like it has to be, it needs to become tangible, right? Yeah. There’s a quote from, uh, Napoleon Bonaparte. It says something like, uh, like man, like- Uh, like people will, uh, what’s the quote?

[00:46:27] Something about people would give their entire life for a scrap of ribbon. Like they- Mm … they want an award. They want something, right? And so our third big event, we were doing this, and um, I remember actually I did a podcast interview with a guy who was, um… He’d been in the music industry before, and so he’s like talking at his desk and behind him he’s got all these like records on the wall.

[00:46:45] Yeah. I was like, “Oh, that’s so cool.” Like, uh, he’s like, “Yeah, this is from my,” I don’t know, “Emmy, Grammy,” whatever. This

[00:46:49] Nathan: album went platinum. Yeah. That one.

[00:46:51] Russell: I was like, “This is so cool.” I remember thinking in my head, I was like, it’s not fair that like, like there’s something for, for every profession there’s awards, but in entrepreneurship there’s nothing.

[00:46:59] I was like, “I wish we had an award. I want a record.” And then I was like, what if we created something? And uh, anyway, came up with the name Two Comma Club, ’cause way back in the… There was a newsletter I was subscribed to like 20 years ago called the Two Comma Club. I found that dude and I was like, “Hey, can I buy your domain from you?”

[00:47:13] He hadn’t been publishing, so yes, I bought the domain from him. Uh, we trademarked it and then, uh, I was like, “Hey, w- let’s figure how to get records built,” and we called it Two Comma Club. So two commas and a million dollars. So someone passes- Yeah … a million dollars, let’s give them this record. And at first I didn’t, um, I didn’t really know- what was gonna happen from that.

[00:47:32] Um, and I didn’t know if anyone on our platform had even done it yet. Like, I, I was like, “I have no idea.” So, uh, my partner, Dave, at the time, I was like, “Hey, go, like, you know, go through the database and find out, like, how many people have processed over a million dollars on ClickFunnels and, and let me know.”

[00:47:45] So it took him a day or two to come back. He came back, he’s like, “79.” What? Like, that blew my mind. I didn’t reali- I thought maybe there’d be three or four. Yeah. But, like, 79. I was like, “That’s a big deal.” So our event was coming up, so we called all 79 people and we’re like, “Hey, you gonna be at Funnel Hacking Live?”

[00:47:57] Like, no, like, “You have to come. We have something for you.” They’re like, “Okay.” So these people all came, and then before the very first, uh, or, uh, on day two or whatever of the event, I was like, “Hey, we have something special we wanna do. No one knows about this yet,” and I pulled out this award. Boom, a big old record with two commas in it, and, uh, I was like, “This is, like, for us entrepreneurs, like something to strive towards.

[00:48:17] This is what it looks like.” And, uh, I kinda told the story behind it. ‘Cause for me, like, when I got started in business, there was this guy named John Reese who had made a million dollars in a day. Mm. And that, like, that, like f- like North Star for me to move towards, like he made a million dollars in a day.

[00:48:30] If I can make a million dollars in a year- Right … it, it gave me belief it would happen. If he

[00:48:33] Nathan: can do it in a day, I can do it in a year. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, there’s so many examples where someone shares their numbers in a way, and you’re like- I could actually … it’s like frame breaking. Yeah. I had no idea that that was possible.

[00:48:42] Russell: Yeah.

[00:48:43] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:48:43] Russell: So we do the event, and so we bring out this award. Boom, two commas on it. Yep. And, um, and I was like, “Just so you guys know, there’s 79 people in this room that have won it.” Everyone’s like, “Wait, what?” And then we call the first person’s name, and he gets up and he comes out, and it’s like their peer sitting next to them, and they see someone come up, they’re like, “What?”

[00:48:59] We give the first one, I get a picture with him. The next person, we do it, and it took us, like, I don’t know, an hour and a half to do this. I thought people were gonna just, like, wander away. Nobody budged. They were all sitting there. And, uh, for the entire time, do these awards, and people are freaking out.

[00:49:10] And then we- ‘Cause if

[00:49:11] Nathan: you’re in a room of what was it, like 1,000 people,

[00:49:13] Russell: a couple- Yeah. I think 1,500 people or

[00:49:14] Nathan: something. 1,500 people, and like you’re s- you’re like-

[00:49:16] Russell: One at a time, so we-

[00:49:17] Nathan: Oh, the person who was sitting in front of me. Oh, the person who’s two rows over. Yeah. You know, you’re like, “Wait, you as well?”

[00:49:22] Russell: Yeah. So our audience had all suddenly, everyone had this belief like, “Oh my gosh.” Like, “Hey, dude, I can too.” “It’s not just Russell on stage or the speakers on stage.” Right. Like, “My peers are actually doing this too.” And I asked people afterwards, I was like, “What was that like for you?” And they’re like, “All I could s- like the whole time I’m sitting there, I’m like, next year I’m gonna be on that stage.

[00:49:36] Next year I’m gonna be on the stage.” And sure enough, a year later, we do this again, and like 350 people won it. Next year was like another f- you know. And, uh, to this point, we’re like seven or eight years into this, uh, about once a day somebody wins a two comma award, and it’s just like, just- Wow … it keeps happening.

[00:49:50] And people tell me, like, uh, “I didn’t use your competitor because I wanna win that award. Like, that, that means something to me.”

[00:49:56] Nathan: Right.

[00:49:56] Russell: You know?

[00:49:57] Nathan: And so for anyone who’s not following, the, the two two commas is when you get enough figures in there, right? Mm-hmm. It’s a one followed by a comma, three digits, comma.

[00:50:06] Another comma. Two commas. Three more digits. And so, e- you know, if you’ve built a one comma business, congratulations, you’re somewhere between $1,000 and $9,000.

[00:50:14] Russell: Yep.

[00:50:15] Nathan: Right? But two commas means you broke $1 million. Yep. Which has gotta be this insane… You know, people are like, “I can m- I can earn a living.”

[00:50:23] Yeah. “But, like, I could never do that.”

[00:50:24] Russell: Yeah.

[00:50:24] Nathan: And now you’re saying it’s happening like almost every day. Yeah. And I can see it- You know, the, the dream customer is like, ‘I want that.’ The person who’s on the journey who’s like- Mm-hmm … ‘Oh, this is hard. Let me keep going ’cause I want it.’ The person who’s in the middle of it who says, ‘Actually, I’m gonna switch to a competitor and do something else,’ and they’re like, ‘But I’m at 800,000.’

[00:50:41] I really want that award . I wanna win that award.

[00:50:43] Russell: And what’s interesting too is like, I, I always joke about this, but people are like, “So what’s your role at ClickFunnels?” I’m like, “I’m the belief cheerleader.”

[00:50:48] Nathan: Mm-hmm. ‘

[00:50:48] Russell: Cause if… You know how it is. If someone believes that they can do something, they usually do it.

[00:50:52] The hard thing is like, oh, it doesn’t work for me, and like the belief. Right. And so like this for me became the belief engine where people are like, they see. Mm-hmm. Every event, we still, we’re doing another event, uh, in five months from now, and the owners are doing the event ’cause we canceled our event, but I’m doing an event just for these guys saying, “Come and get their awards,” ’cause it’s like it means so much to them.

[00:51:07] Mm-hmm. And people see it and our community sees it, and it’s like, “I can do this,” and they double down, and redouble down, and keep going. And so that’s what this is. Yeah. Now, I got a couple stairs here.

[00:51:14] Nathan: Okay. I

[00:51:14] Russell: like that. ‘Cause what happens after two or three years, everyone’s getting this, and all the people are like, they won one, and two, and three, and they’re like- Like the future’s gone now.

[00:51:21] Like they, they accomplished it. Oh. And they’re- Yeah … they’re kinda like, “Well, what do we, what do we do now?” I was like, “Well, what happens when you get past 10 million?” I was like, “The Roman numer- numbers X.” And so we made it the next award, and we called it Two Comma Club X, and there’s a big X in it. And, uh, and so they’re like, “Oh.”

[00:51:36] They all freaked out again. Everyone, they doubled down. And then, uh, first year we had… That we re- opened this award, we had, um, 17 people. Next year it was, like, 35 people. And just, it gave them, again, the next thing to start chasing, to go for that, that little scrap of ribbon. ‘Cause all these people started sending to there.

[00:51:51] And then the, uh, next year we had people g- they got multiple of these. Like, “What’s the next thing?” So then we made a big one that was, like, where there’s four records, and each record counts as 25. When you put them together it’s, uh, it’s 100. Okay. And so then they went there. So people kept going, and we’ve got tons of people now that have won.

[00:52:07] I think we’re, like, 3,500 that have won this. Anyway, it kinda goes up, up through there.

[00:52:11] Nathan: I love the idea of always having something that you’ve gotta, you know, move towards and all of that. How many people have won the…

[00:52:18] Russell: The big one?

[00:52:19] Nathan: The big one.

[00:52:20] Russell: You’ll know. You see them in the background of all their videos, ’cause they always wanna show it off.

[00:52:23] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:52:23] Russell: Um, so ag- they get the big one when they get the first record. So 25, they get the first one. Then every time they get another record- Oh, that’s smart … till it fills it. Yeah, ’cause I was like, this is a big jump from here to here. Right. And so we did that. 10

[00:52:32] Nathan: to 100.

[00:52:33] Russell: So you can tell, if you see it on someone’s video, look in the back how many records are actually in there, where they’re at.

[00:52:37] Wow. But people who have qualified for the first version, um, I think it’s, like, 70 or so people that have gotten that. Right. So it’s, it blows my mind. I thought if anyone ever got this, that would be a huge success. And then just- Right. … pe- people grow with you and they, ’cause they’re part of this whole thing, so.

[00:52:50] Nathan: So, okay, so I’m gonna put milestone awards up here.

[00:52:53] Russell: Yeah. So think about that, your version. Like, what do you have? Like, you’re taking people on this journey, this future-based cause. Like, what are the milestones that get them to where they’re going? We just did, we have a certification program. Mm-hmm. We sold certification, did okay.

[00:53:03] When we shifted and we started building this path of, like, all right, uh, in fact, we have a One Comma Club award for certified people. And then we’ve got a bronze badge, and we have a silver badge, and we have all these different things, and just, it’s what moves people through the thing. I mean,

[00:53:14] Nathan: it’s the fundamentals of e- every video game.

[00:53:16] All the… Right?

[00:53:17] Russell: Gamifying it. And what you’re

[00:53:18] Nathan: saying here, you’re just like, you’re like all politics- … all video games.

[00:53:22] Russell: All of it works. We just blend it into our creator business and hey, it, it worked really well.

[00:53:26] Nathan: It worked really well. Okay.

[00:53:27] Russell: Yeah. All right. I want you to draw a big arrow here. Okay. Um, because- Uh, I’m sure a lot of you guys have probably studied the hero’s journey.

[00:53:34] Like, I love it. Yeah. I’m obsessed with it. And what’s interesting, the hero’s journey is great in that there’s a journey the hero’s already always on, right? Which is the journey of achievement. They’re trying to achieve something. Okay. So this is like in any movie, we always know the hero’s trying to achieve something.

[00:53:48] Like Frodo’s trying to get to Mordor to throw the ring in. Rocky Balboa’s trying to win the world- Yeah … like, there’s always, this is the, the journey everyone’s aware of, right? Um, but the reason why people, like, the, the characters are the best, it’s not this hero. They’re, um, uh, my friend, uh, Michael Hauge wrote a book called The Hero’s Two Journeys.

[00:54:03] He’s a Hollywood, uh, producer and scriptwriter, and he said that the, the magic in a script is not the hero of achievement. Everyone knows that’s happening, but the second one is the more important journey, which is called the hero of tran- or the, the journey of transformation. Okay. Who does the person become along the way?

[00:54:17] And so if we draw another arrow down here, ’cause this is like everyone’s trying to get, that’s trying to make a bunch of money. They’re trying to win the awards, and, like, that’s good. That’s the achievement that people want, especially, you know, your dream customers wanna move towards those things. But ideally over time, you’re trying to make somebody become.

[00:54:30] So I’d say journey of transformation. And it was interesting ’cause as we started getting people, uh, going from one comma to two comma to Two Comma Club C, like these different awards, um, it was actually, uh, Al Tramozzi, you guys probably know him. Yeah. One of the biggest creators in the world. He’d won all these things, and then he was like He’s like, “What’s next?”

[00:54:47] And I was like, “I don’t really know.” And he’s like, “You know what I would want?” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, he’s like, “I want to give a million dollars to, to charity.” He’s like, “Do you have an award for that?” I was like, “I will before our next event.” And so we created an award, uh, we call it the Two Heart Award.

[00:55:00] Um, and so there’s two hearts in it, and it’s for somebody who’s donated a million dollars to charity. So he, him and, uh, Alex and Leigh were the first ones to win that, and now I think we’ve had eight people who have done that now. So our audience now, like, yes, they’re trying to do this, but also at the same time we’re, like, trying to make them givers and, uh, and, you know, along the way.

[00:55:17] And it’s cool ’cause- With that impact, yeah … ’cause this, like, this is my favorite award at the event, ’cause you see people come up and it’s just, like, wow, that person, yeah, they did, they, they achieved something, but, like, they’re a great person at giving back. Well, and

[00:55:26] Nathan: that, that brings it back to the movement, right?

[00:55:29] That you’re trying to create.

[00:55:30] Russell: Yeah.

[00:55:30] Nathan: Because then this is all about- Status and s- It’s all- Yeah … all about, you know, this, you know, that dream customer and all that. But then you’re saying, like, look, it’s ultimately about impact, and so let’s systematize-

[00:55:43] Russell: Yeah …

[00:55:44] Nathan: that transformation and the impact that we’re having long term.

[00:55:46] Russell: Yeah. This is, like, again, what creates this, you know? Mm-hmm. It’s this foundation, and then it’s, like, thinking about this process. Like, who’s your dream customer? What’s, like, what am I gonna say to get them into my world, right? And then from there I can give them an identity shift so they’re gonna stay with me, they’re gonna be part of this.

[00:55:59] And then what are they trying to achieve in this future-based cause? Let me make these milestones so that they have, they know if they’re succeeding or not, right?

[00:56:05] Nathan: Right.

[00:56:05] Russell: And then along- And they

[00:56:06] Nathan: see people around them succeeding.

[00:56:07] Russell: Yeah, giving them belief of it. But then help them understand, like, I couldn’t care less if you won any of these.

[00:56:12] Mm-hmm. What I care is that you become this kind of person. Even if you want the money, like, I want you, like, this is, this is when all is said and done. You create that, which again comes back to future-based cause. And, like- Mm-hmm … just all these things, and it makes people stick so much better than just, “Here’s how to make some money.

[00:56:23] Here’s how to lose some weight,” or whatever it might be.

[00:56:25] Nathan: Yeah. So I’m thinking about this, and we’ve talked about doing milestone awards at Kipp for a long time and we’ve never, like, pulled the trigger on- … figuring out exactly what- You totally

[00:56:33] Russell: should.

[00:56:33] Nathan: What to incentivize and, and all of that. Um, are there other companies that you’ve seen do something similar to this, like, so that we can give- Like another example

[00:56:42] Russell: Um, tons of my clients now.

[00:56:44] Nathan: Tons of your clients. Yeah. As you teach this.

[00:56:46] Russell: The company that makes this, I should buy stock in them, ’cause there’s so many people making records and things like that. Um, rehab, they do this, right? They’re bringing these things to pull people through. Right. You think about this in- Here’s your, your

[00:56:55] Nathan: coin.

[00:56:56] Russell: Mm-hmm. Your,

[00:56:56] Nathan: you know.

[00:56:57] Russell: You think about it with, uh, donations, like, uh, charities. A lot of times you come to a charity, and like, “Oh, he’s a gold donor. He’s a silver donor. He’s…” Like, it gives people status as they’re moving- Mm-hmm … mov- moving through things, you know? Like, um, any of the… Like, a lot of these legacy companies that have been around a long time, you look at them and they’ve got some version that’s built into- Right

[00:57:12] what they’re actually doing.

[00:57:13] Nathan: And then I guess simple examples would be, like, YouTube. Uh, you know, they’re past 100,000 subscribers- Yeah. … there’s your plaque. A million, and then 10 million.

[00:57:20] Russell: Yep.

[00:57:21] Nathan: Uh, and then, and again, it’s a status thing, right? Someone will… You’ll see it in their ads. It’s on the, it’s on the wall everywhere they go.

[00:57:26] They’re just like, “Should you trust me, that I know what I’m doing?”

[00:57:28] Russell: Yeah. The plaques say so.

[00:57:32] Nathan: Yeah, exactly. Uh, Shopify does it with, I believe, number of orders.

[00:57:36] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:37] Nathan: And so if you pass 100,000 orders or a million orders,

[00:57:39] Russell: silver, gold. You guys could do subscribers easy. You could do so many- Yeah … you know.

[00:57:42] Nathan: Subscribers is a little hard, ’cause it’s like you want people to clean your list at the same time. Yeah. That’s

[00:57:46] Russell: a good point, yeah.

[00:57:46] Nathan: You know? Um.

[00:57:47] Russell: That’s a great point, actually, yeah.

[00:57:48] Nathan: But, like, an example, you know, our commerce product, um, has good adoption, but it could be way better.

[00:57:53] Russell: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:53] Nathan: And so if you did a whole campaign to get people to sell through Kit Commerce-

[00:57:56] Russell: Yeah

[00:57:57] Nathan: then, like- Well, incentivize that. Yeah. You know, and you can incentivize it monetarily or you could incentivize it with status. And going back to the Napoleon quote, like- They might care more about the little ribbon.

[00:58:08] Russell: 100% they do. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:11] Nathan: That’s amazing. Okay. As we zoom out, is there anything else in here that’s really important or, or that you’re, you know, wanna hit home?

[00:58:18] Russell: I think, and this comes back to, like, the future-based cause I share with my people. Mm-hmm. Like, if you’re happy just selling stuff and having transactions, that’s great, and, like, you can build an, an amazing life on that. But, like, for me, like, that’s what my business was for a long time until it was like I felt like this, this role wasn’t just a role.

[00:58:35] Yeah. Like, it was a calling. Like, I, I believe, um, I believe that there, that for every person on this planet, especially ones who, like, who get, who are drawn into this whole world of, like, entrepreneurship and business building, like, like, that, that feeling that makes you want to do this I think is a calling.

[00:58:50] I believe it’s from God. You can believe whatever you want. And the calling is not for you to make money. God doesn’t care about any of this. What he cares about is that there’s a group of people that you with your information and your stuff, you can change that, that, those people’s lives. And when I actually believe that, like, I’ve been called to change these people’s lives through the stuff I’m doing, that’s what made this fun, as opposed to, like…

[00:59:08] ‘Cause this is work. This is not, like, an easy transaction. They buy, they leave. Like, we’re building community. We’re doing events. We’re doing… Like, this is, this is all-consuming, right? To create a movement, like, this is not just like a, like a part-time thing. And so if you wanna go all in and it, it comes back to, like, do you believe this is something bigger than just yourself?

[00:59:24] If so, like, it’s worth putting the time into, ’cause, like, the transformation of people, like, what happens in this journey for you as the, as the leader, as the guide is insane, and the people’s lives you could change is, is second to none. But, um, it comes back to, like, if you j- if you’re doing it just for the money, you’re gonna stop somewhere ’cause it’s too hard.

[00:59:40] Yeah. But if you’re doing it ’cause, like, you really feel called to do this and you wanna change the lives and the world for the group of people you’ve been called to serve, like, this is the path to do it at a level that, that I think is the highest level we can do.

[00:59:50] Nathan: Yeah. That’s amazing. You have so many great frameworks.

[00:59:53] Thanks for coming and teaching this one.

[00:59:54] Russell: Yeah.

[00:59:55] Nathan: Uh, where should people go if they wanna follow more of your content, learn more of your frameworks- Yeah … use ClickFunnels, all of that?

[01:00:00] Russell: Um, well, if you wanna read… If you want, I, I wrote a book. Yep. Expert Secrets is that book. It goes deep into this. So you can find the book on Amazon or expertsecrets.com if you wanna go really, really deep in just this and really understand it, see tons of examples.

[01:00:10] Um, other than that, just follow me on Instagram or wherever, on Russell Brunson, and that’s where I’m at.

[01:00:14] Nathan: Sounds good. Thank you.

[01:00:15] Russell: Yeah. Thanks, man.

[01:00:16] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit Subscribe, and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also, just who else you think we should have on the show.

[01:00:30] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:00:00] Nir: I interviewed billionaires and I’ve interviewed people who are broke. Everybody has limiting beliefs. But limiting belief saps your motivation and increases your suffering.

[00:00:07] Nathan: My guest today is Nir Eyal, the author of three bestselling books, including Beyond Belief, which just hit the New York Times bestseller list.

[00:00:14] Nir: The formula for burnout is two factors: high expectations coupled with- Wow. Unbelievable, right?

[00:00:21] Nathan: It was fascinating to see the most science-backed person I know talk about how your mindset and the beliefs that you have matters for everything you do in life.

[00:00:28] Nir: Beliefs can change how we feel based on what we expect to feel.

[00:00:32] So if you believe that placebos are effective, turns out they can have a huge effect on your performance.

[00:00:37] Nathan: He spent six years tracking down the research behind what actually separates people who persist from people who quit.

[00:00:43] Nir: But a lot of that positive thinking stuff actually is harmful. Manifesting and visualizing, the research is not so good on that stuff.

[00:00:51] Nathan: Today, Nir walks us through the science, what it means for creators who are trying to build something that lasts, and the specific practices he uses in his own work and relationships to stop suffering through the hard parts.

[00:01:01] Nir: What has affected my day-to-day life more than anything? It’s that… And you can do this about anything and any situation in your life.

[00:01:11] Nathan: Nir, we sat down at breakfast yesterday and you said that you weren’t jet lagged at all, which is crazy ’cause you’d just flown in from Europe the night before and you’re on your way to Asia. But it wasn’t that, you said that you don’t believe in jet lag.

[00:01:26] Nir: Well, I don’t believe in the symptoms of- Okay. I don’t believe I have to suff- that, okay, let me be precise.

[00:01:31] Yes. I don’t believe I have to suffer from the symptoms of jet lag.

[00:01:35] Nathan: Yeah. So I wanna dive into belief in this. Yeah. And that’s just the first introduction. Your, your new book is Beyond Belief. Uh, you just hit the New York Times list. Congratulations. Thank you. Now, w- talk more about that. What does it actually mean to separate, you know, suffering from the symptoms versus experiencing it in different ways, and how does belief play into that?

[00:01:54] Yeah.

[00:01:54] Nir: So what most people don’t understand is that sleep and the grogginess of sleeplessness actually are highly susceptible to the placebo effect. Hmm. That, uh, y- the, the p- the cognitive performance levels, we know that, um, they’ve done these studies where they take people inside a sleep lab, and, uh, they give one group of people, uh, a bad night’s sleep.

[00:02:13] So they intentionally wake them up with slight little shocks, but they’re, but n- not, not to the point where they’re actually out of bed, they just tap them in some ways that they give them a bad night’s sleep. And then if they tell them when they wake up- That they had a good night’s sleep

[00:02:26] Nathan: We looked at the data

[00:02:27] Nir: Yep, we looked at the data You had a great night’s sleep Completely lie to them-

[00:02:30] and tell them, “Actually, you had a great night’s sleep,” they perform better on cognitive tests. And the opposite is also a similar phenomenon where if people have a great night’s sleep, but you tell them that they had a bad night’s sleep, they will perform worse on cognitive tests. And, uh, so there’s all these things that we struggle with, whether it’s insomnia, whether it’s anxiety, ADHD, uh, IBS.

[00:02:54] All of these, th- many of these, of these, uh, conditions are highly susceptible to the placebo effect. And so what I learned in writing Beyond Belief is that we should use these a- as tools even if they’re not truths. And so what I do for, for my own jet lag, it doesn’t prevent waking up at night beside the jet lag, but it definitely, uh, uh, affects your cognitive performance the next day.

[00:03:15] So the first thing you said to me is like, “Wow, you seem so awake. How come?” Well, I took a placebo that morning. Uh, in fact, you can buy placebos on Amazon that say placebo pill on them, and you will see five-star reviews that say fast-acting relief for these placebo pills. Uh, it turns out recently that we’ve learned, most people don’t know this, you can actually know that something’s a placebo.

[00:03:35] You don’t need the deception at all. It still works because we expect it to work. So this is one of the powers of belief, so that’s what I do. I take a placebo to get over my jet lag, and it’s amazing. I feel great. Okay, so I always thought,

[00:03:47] Nathan: o- one, that the placebo effect was real, right? That is, is fairly well understood at this point.

[00:03:52] But two, that you had to know that it… Or like, you had to think it was, uh, you were taking the actual thing. Yeah,

[00:03:59] Nir: yeah. So this is what most people don’t realize about the placebo’s effect, th- ’cause it’s fairly new research, that it’s called an open label placebo or an honest placebo. Okay. And this work was done by Ted Kaptchuk, where he took people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome, he brought them into his lab, and he said, “Hey, I’ve got this, this treatment, but it’s a placebo.”

[00:04:16] And it said placebo right there on the jar. And he told them, “It’s a completely inert substance. However,” and here’s the important part, “it has been shown to help some people with the effects of IBS.” In this study, that placebo pill performed as well as the leading pain medicine for IBS. Hmm. The prescription pain medication.

[00:04:36] In fact, after the study, some people t- came back to Dr. Kaptchuk and said, “Dr. Kaptchuk, that placebo pill was amazing. How can I get some more?” So that kind of, kind of blew this myth out of the water that you don’t have to, it doesn’t have to deceive you in order for it to be effective. Why? Because of the power of belief, that one of the powers of belief is the power of anticipation, that, that beliefs can change how we feel based on what we expect to feel.

[00:04:59] So if you believe that placebos are effective, turns out they can have a, a, a huge effect on your performance.

[00:05:05] Nathan: This, I always relate everything back to Friends as a TV show. Uh, and there’s a line where they’re like, “They don’t know that we know that they know that I know,” and it feels like one of those circumstances where it’s like the placebo doesn’t work But if you believe that it works, then it does work.

[00:05:20] And so y- you know, you go through these- Yeah … layers and you’re like, “Oh, I guess that actually makes sense.” Okay, this will

[00:05:25] Nir: really blow your mind, okay? So over the past 50 years, the placebo effect has gotten stronger.

[00:05:30] Nathan: Okay.

[00:05:31] Nir: So why does that happen? And, and this is a huge problem for pharmaceutical companies.

[00:05:35] You know, if, if a, if a drug company has to, uh, make a new, they have a new, uh, drug that they’re trying to bring to market, they have to do testing to prove that it’s not only effective, it has to be more effective than the placebo effect, or else it doesn’t get approved.

[00:05:51] Nathan: Right. So it’s a

[00:05:51] Nir: huge problem for phar- pharmaceutical companies because as the placebo effect got stronger and stronger, the medicines have to get more and more efficacious.

[00:05:57] So that’s a big problem. Why is the placebo effect getting more effective? Because more people have heard that the placebo effect works, which it absolutely does. So I used to think placebo effects mean it’s fake, it’s not working. Right. That’s not true, that the placebo effect is real. Uh, it is highly effective, and we should use it a lot more because it doesn’t have side effects.

[00:06:20] There is the nocebo effect. If I, if you expect something, uh, to, to hurt you, then you will feel those symptoms as well. For example, when I go to the doctor and I have to take some medication, I don’t want him to tell me or her to tell me about any of the side effects. So I intentionally tell them, “Don’t, don’t tell me about the side effects.

[00:06:33] I’ll tell you if I get, have side effects.” It’s ’cause you have the opposite, the nocebo effect. But, um, we should use placebos more because they, they don’t have side effects unless you expect them, and relatively cheap, right? So what do I, what do I use for my placebo? I take, uh, a tiny amount of creatine.

[00:06:49] Okay. Because some cre- some studies have shown… Now, I don’t take enough to actually make a difference, but thinking to myself, “Oh, okay, this has been shown to improve cognitive performance, and so it’s gonna help me get over my jet lag,” it does.

[00:06:59] Nathan: There’s so many layers to this. Uh, how much has the placebo effect increased over time?

[00:07:05] Is this, like, the tiniest percentage points, or is it actually, like, a substantial over the last 50 years? It’s substantial enough for

[00:07:09] Nir: drug companies to call it a big problem. And so they’re trying to figure out a bunch of different ways to- It shows up in their earnings reports of, like, this is actually- Well, it, I mean, fewer medications get approved because- Yeah

[00:07:18] of this, of this hurdle that they have o-

[00:07:19] Nathan: overcome. When that half, requiring that outsized impact is such an interesting thing because, yeah, it’s just beyond what, what you would expect. Now, I guess what I’m wondering is what other areas in your life do you apply this? ‘Cause, you know, jet lag is just one of them.

[00:07:37] Mm. But there are so many more.

[00:07:38] Nir: Yeah. So, so not only is there the, like, physical form of a, a placebo, which what is a placebo? A placebo is an expectation that affects illness, not sickness. So sickness and illness are two different things. I didn’t know this. This is, uh, uh… This was a surprise to me, that sickness and illness are two different things.

[00:07:54] Sickness is in the body, illness is in the mind. Okay. It’s in the brain. Um, and that doesn’t mean that pain isn’t real. It doesn’t mean that we’re making it up. That’s not what we’re talking about. It’s that pain is always in the brain. All pain is real, but all pain is also in the brain. Where else could it be?

[00:08:09] Pain isn’t here. Pain isn’t in your back. Pain isn’t… Pain is registered and processed in the brain separately from suffering. So pain is signal, suffering is the interpretation by the brain of that signal. Just data. Uh, there’s, you know, where, where did the placebo science even start from? We, we kind of discover the placebo effect when in World War I, soldiers would come to a medic on the battlefield and say, “Medic, medic, my buddy…”

[00:08:36] They would be pulling their, their buddy, saying, “You gotta help my buddy. My buddy’s been shot.” And the medic would look at them and say, “Soldier, you’re missing an arm.” That the soldier dragging his buddy didn’t realize that his arm was completely blown off and didn’t feel it. Mm. So the brain has this amazing power to tune out certain signal, certain data.

[00:08:56] In fact, you’re doing it right now. We all are. That one of the things that I didn’t realize is that, you know, we think we see reality clearly, and we don’t. None of us do. That right now your brain is processing 11 million bits of information right this second. The light entering your retinas, the sound of my voice in your ears, the, the ambient temperature of the room.

[00:09:12] Your brain is processing that information, but your conscious awareness is only, uh, is only processing about 50 bits of information. So 11 million bits, that’s War and Peace every second- Yeah … twice, versus one sentence per second, uh, that’s in your conscious awareness. So you can actually, through different placebo mechanisms, whether it’s a physical pill, whether it’s a placebo shot, whether it’s a belief you intentionally believe even if you’re not sure if it’s true, so it has no physical manifestation, what you’re doing is essentially refocusing that keyhole of attention wherever you want.

[00:09:48] Mm-hmm. And what you pay attention to, what you expect, determines what you feel and how you see the world.

[00:09:54] Nathan: Hmm. Okay. That’s fascinating. I wanna apply this in, in more areas. In all of your research for Beyond Belief, what are some of the things that came up to you, like, “Oh, this is the most surprising” or where you’re, where you’re like people would have the most impact- Mm

[00:10:07] from reframing that mindset?

[00:10:10] Nir: I mean, where do I start? Th- th- this, this line of… So it took me six years to research this book because there’s so much fascinating research that I didn’t believe. Mm. Talk about belief. It was too crazy to be true. For example, um, I, I went down this rabbit hole of, of, uh… Well, I’ll t- I’ll tell you about this guy I met.

[00:10:31] Uh, his name is Daniel Gissler, and he’s a commodities trader in his, in his late 50s. Super, uh, no-nonsense, uh, numbers guy. Yeah. Super analytical. And one day he, uh, he has this freak accident, and he, uh, shatters his, the bones in his ankle, and he has to get surgery. About a year later, it’s time to remove the pins in his bones that were put in during this, this, uh, procedure, and in that time, he stumbles across a YouTube video explaining a technique called hypno-sedation And he learns to hypnotize himself to the point where he can undergo a 55-minute surgical procedure where scalpel is cutting into flesh, where metal screws are wrenched from bone- Right

[00:11:15] and he does this completely awake and with zero anesthesia, not general anesthesia, not topical anesthesia. There’s no anesthesiologist in the room. I’ve seen the video. And what’s so remarkable is that this isn’t remarkable at all, that tens of thousands of people have undergone surgery without any form of anesthesia.

[00:11:33] They don’t do it in America, but Switzerland, France, Italy, it’s actually not that uncommon.

[00:11:37] Nathan: Okay.

[00:11:38] Nir: Yeah. And, and people have learned how to do this. Uh, and it’s an ancient practice, and there’s nothing magical about it. It’s not woo-woo at all. It’s something, in fact, all of us can do. I don’t wanna do it, let’s be clear.

[00:11:50] Right. But the fact that somebody can do it means that we all have this hidden locked potential. And so what we should be asking ourselves, I think, especially for creators, is, you know, why do we quit, right? I- if we know that the number one source of failure, the number one reason we fail at something is because we quit.

[00:12:09] It’s not because of intelligence, it’s not because of resources, it’s not because of skill. It’s because we just give up, right? You know this with your creators. Who are the most successful? It’s the ones who persevere- Yeah … and just keep trying and trying and trying. Well, why do we quit? We quit because it hurts.

[00:12:22] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:23] Nir: It’s hard.

[00:12:24] Nathan: We’re suffering somewhere in

[00:12:25] Nir: there. We’re suffering, right? And that suffering is not from out here. Suffering is up here. And so if Daniel Gissler can undergo 55 minutes of surgery without anesthesia, maybe we can make one more blog post or another YouTube video or- … or push on that goal or take that exam or work on that relationship or build that business.

[00:12:44] There’s so much we can unlock when we learn how to control our suffering.

[00:12:48] Nathan: Okay, so you had a distinction there between pain and suffering. So if we go to the experiments and the studies around, uh, being operated on, I broke my femur as a, as a kid when I was 11, and I had the rods put in. You know, I couldn’t imagine- Yeah

[00:13:06] you know, doing that without- It’s incredible, right? It’s terrifying … um, without that. So in that, is he still experiencing pain but not the suffering associated with it? Or is it in a way that he can turn off those nerves or whatever else and com- and not even receive those pain signals? So what, uh,

[00:13:23] Nir: hypnos sedation allows people to do, and I’m not advocating for hypnos sedation.

[00:13:26] Right. Let me just be very clear. Yeah. I’m not saying… That’s not, uh, the, the… I use it as an illustration- Yeah … because it is real. There’s a lot of woo stuff out there that that’s what actually took me six years, six years to write, is that trying to figure out the what’s real, what’s validated by studies.

[00:13:39] I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m not woo-woo. I like, I- Right, you’re a science guy as they come … there’s 30 page… Yeah. There’s 30 pages of citations in the back of the book to peer-reviewed studies, including ones about hypnos sedation. Mm-hmm. And it is real. People can do this. And what Daniel told me and what, what other people who have learned hypnos sedation tell me is that, um- You still feel the signal.

[00:13:58] You f- he told me that he could feel the tugging and the pulling. He could feel stuff happening there, but it wasn’t registered as excruciating suffering that most of us would think if we had to go under the knife during, during a procedure like that. Uh, except until the end. It was fascinating. So to demonstrate this point, actually, this is a perfect illustration of how this works.

[00:14:18] Daniel told me that the only time he felt suffering, the f- the kind of intense, uh, signal that, that most of us would, would think of d- if, if we went underwent surgery with anesthesia, was when he heard the doctor say, “I’m almost done.” And when that happened, he started to move his keyhole of attention away from where it was during hypnos sedation when he was under- Mm-hmm

[00:14:44] this, this, this hypnotic trance. He moved it back into reality, back into the present moment. Right, into

[00:14:50] Nathan: what was being done

[00:14:51] Nir: to him. And it was too soon because he had thought, “Okay, almost done,” like a few more seconds, but really the doctor m- made a mistake, and he said, “I’m almost done with the surgery, not with the sutures.”

[00:15:01] And so the whole… The most painful part of the procedure, Daniel said, was when he had already exited the trance, the meditation that he’d put himself into, and he could feel the sutures. So his lesson was don’t go out of hypnos sedation till it’s really, really, really over. But it just demonstrates, and, and it’s, you know, it’s, it’s not him lying.

[00:15:18] It’s not him gritting his teeth. You can actually see on the blood pressure monitor, on the heart rate monitor, his heart rate was perfectly stable. His blood pressure stayed stable. So it wasn’t just that he was faking it. Physiologically, he wasn’t experiencing the kind of stress response you would expect from, from that kind of pain.

[00:15:35] Nathan: I’m

[00:15:35] Nir: fascinated

[00:15:36] Nathan: by

[00:15:36] Nir: this. Pretty cool, right?

[00:15:37] Nathan: You brought up the creator angle and the work that we do, right? And it’s so… Creativity is so mindset-based, and the stories that you can tell yourself and, and everything else. You can get into these incredible creative flows where you’re just like, “Wow, I can’t believe I created all this.”

[00:15:51] And I was gonna say just as easily. Far more easily than that, you can get yourself into the creative funk where- Right … you can’t even… You, you can’t do anything, and, and it’s such a vicious cycle. What I’m curious about is how you bring this i- the ideas from Beyond Belief into your creative process- Mm

[00:16:09] to be able to show up and create consistently.

[00:16:11] Nir: This was the, the greatest gift I got from writing this book is that- Mm … and how it changed my life. So I, I don’t suffer anymore in the creative process. It’s still hard. Yeah. It’s, um, it’s not easy, but my mindset has completely shifted. So I’ve written three books, um, thousands of articles.

[00:16:32] I’ve been published in The New York Times and The Atlantic and all over the place, and It’s always hard. Like, all I wanna do when I’m writing is check sports scores or stock prices or Instagram or do anything but the writing. I write, I wrote four sentences. I think that justifies an Instagram scroll.

[00:16:47] You know? Well, you know, you, you laugh. That’s exactly- Oh, yeah … what I used to say. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I would say, “This is hard. I’m bored. Uh, is anybody gonna like this? Uh, I’m f- you know, I’m, I’m, I’m feeling a little tired.” Mm-hmm. What I was doing was judging the signal, right? I was judging the, the data that was entering my brain as suffering, as bad, right?

[00:17:10] So what changed my life in terms of my creative work is the story I was telling, is the belief around what I expected that that signal meant. So when I was feeling bored, fatigued, uncertain, stressed, and all I wanted to do while I was writing was go check email or the news or stock prices or sports scores, was I changed my limiting belief of, “If this is hard, I need to take a break,” to, “This is what it feels like to get better.”

[00:17:44] That’s my liberating belief. So what we need to do, this process involves identifying those limiting beliefs, and we all have them. We all have limiting beliefs. I’ve, I interviewed billionaires, and I, people… interview people who are broke. Everybody has limiting beliefs. We just can’t see them, but they’re there.

[00:17:58] So it’s identifying those limiting beliefs, doing what’s called a turnaround on those limiting beliefs, and then having a new liberating belief that you are going to collect evidence that is also true. Okay. So my new liberating belief, and I say this to myself 10 times a day, “This is what it feels like to get better.”

[00:18:15] So w- what that’s, what’s that do, that, that is doing is reinterpreting that same exact signal. So I’m separating the pain, the signal, the data from the suffering. And when you do that, you unlock your hidden potential.

[00:18:28] Nathan: Yeah. This is what it feels like to get better. Mm-hmm. That’s such an interesting reframe.

[00:18:33] You could apply it to so many other places, right? I’m sitting there at the gym, I really don’t wanna do rep 8 of 10. There’s nobody, there’s nobody watching. You know, I can, I can set down these dumbbells right now and go away. You know, I don’t want to feel pain. I don’t wanna suffer. But that reframe of like, “Well, this is what it feels like- Mm-hmm

[00:18:52] to get better.” Mm-hmm. Is that something you’ve been able to apply all across the board?

[00:18:56] Nir: All over the place. And I have different liberating beliefs that I a- apply in various areas of my life, like things that… You know, it’s funny, I did a webinar the other day, uh, for people who, who read the book, and, uh, thankfully, I’m, I’m very fortunate.

[00:19:10] I, I have a lot of people who’ve read my past books and- Mm-hmm … came, and one of the questions was, “Nir, you look so much happier. Are you happier?” And yeah, I am, but that’s not the goal. Hmm. Like, I don’t wanna be happier because happiness, if you think about it- is a fleeting sensation. Okay. Right? We’re not evolved to be happy, and I think the chasing of happiness, and this is, I think this applies to anybody with goals and ambitions, especially creators, of when I get my YouTube plaque, when I reach a million followers, when I get this, w- then I’ll be happy.

[00:19:41] And that chasing of happiness, I think, is, is really toxic because we’re not meant to be happy. Uh, you know, if you think about it, if there was a, a, a tribe of Homo sapiens who was totally contented, you know, totally chilled out, they were happy all the time, if our ancestors would’ve come across them, what would they have done?

[00:20:01] Killed them, taken their stuff. That’s right. They would’ve killed them and probably eaten them, right? Right. Because we need that relentless ambition. We need that, that fire in the belly. That’s what helps us find diseases, uh, cures for diseases, uh, build great companies, uh, overturn dictators, right? We need that disquietude to get us to do stuff.

[00:20:21] So it’s not the chasing of happiness that should be the goal. It’s the decreasing of suffering. Okay. That’s my goal, is that I still want that ambition. I still want the drive. I still want that, that mission to make the world better. But it doesn’t have to be suffering. And when you can do that differently, when you can, when you can look at that same signal that I used to think was the reason to quit and now becomes the reason to persist, the game completely changes.

[00:20:50] And that is, turns out, in our control, that many people think, “Well, that’s just my personality. That’s how I see things. That’s what I can do, and I can only do what I can do.” Every single thing I just said is another example of a limiting belief.

[00:21:01] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:21:02] Nir: It’s not a fact of nature. It’s not one of Newton’s laws of physics.

[00:21:06] It’s all up here. It’s just a limitation.

[00:21:08] Nathan: So I’ve known you for, what? Eight years now probably. We met at an A5000 event where you were speaking on your book Hooked, and you were talking about, you know, the science of, uh, uh, attention and all of these things and, and retention. And you’re the most, like, science-backed “Here’s the research,” all of that.

[00:21:28] So I think a lot of people would expect the things that you’re saying to come from someone who’s like, “You know, I just went and meditated and this is what I feel now,” you know? Yeah, yeah. And, like, to come from that angle. And instead it’s coming from the person who’s like, “This is, you know, like, all the hard science on it, and it actually, uh, it actually works.”

[00:21:47] And so I think that’s the thing where… I guess what I’m thinking about is how you’re applying this in other areas in your life, ’cause there’s gotta be so many things. Yeah, yeah. Every area of my life. It’s,

[00:21:59] Nir: like, it’s far r- it’s so far-reaching. Every area of life. A- and it’s funny you should say that, ’cause my, um- Like, I think of my ideal customer profile- Yeah

[00:22:07] as ambitious skeptics. Yeah. So I don’t know. Like, if you’re really into the, the, the quantum healing vibration fields, like, don’t read my book. It’s… You’re not gonna like it. Yeah. Um, because it turns out that a lot of that positive thinking stuff actually is harmful. Do you know that? That, like, manifesting and visualizing, the research is not so good on that stuff.

[00:22:28] Wait, it’s har- I would expect- Active harm … from everything that you’re saying before that that would be helpful, and we just have- This is not positive thinking. Okay. This is not magical thinking. It’s very, very different. What’s the difference between these? So positive thinking, magical thinking, uh, manifesting, visioning, it’s all about outcomes.

[00:22:44] Nathan: Okay.

[00:22:45] Nir: That’s the focus. So I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna, uh, manifest abundance. I’m gonna manifest a beautiful house, and n- I’m gonna have that beach body. The New York Times

[00:22:53] Nathan: bestseller list. Well,

[00:22:54] Nir: the outcomes, exactly. And there was some fascinating research. Gabrielle Oettingen did this research, where she took people and asked them to do these exercises, these manifesting, the vision boarding, the, the outcome-focused, um, exercises.

[00:23:08] And what she found was, when she connected them to blood pressure monitors, that their blood pressure dropped. They became more relaxed. And then in follow-up studies when she surveyed them, they not only were less likely to achieve their goals, they were less likely to take the steps to achieve their goals.

[00:23:25] Because their brain was registering, “Hey, this is on autopilot. I’m vibrating, and now the universe is gonna vibrate back the things I want.” So it’s not that necessarily those tactics are wrong.

[00:23:34] Nathan: Abdicated responsibility.

[00:23:36] Nir: A big part of it, right. Now, for some things, that can be helpful. For things that are truly outside your control, you know, there’s a saying, “Let go and let God.”

[00:23:43] For things that you cannot control, not a bad idea. But your, you know, your financial outcome, just praying for abundance, and God give me this, and vibrations give me that, no, you know, God helps those who help themselves. There’s a lot of wisdom there. So you don’t wanna short-circuit that. So what you wanna do, you wanna do what athletes do, right?

[00:24:01] I- I’m saying visualization doesn’t work. It’s that it’s incomplete. What do athletes do, right? That’s where… This is a great example of how the self-help industry took something that’s true and made it false. Athletes do in fact visualize, but what are they visualizing? They’re not visualizing getting the trophy and the medal.

[00:24:17] They’re visualizing, what am I going to do physically, and most importantly psychologically, when something gets in my way? And this is where people don’t… wh- where they, they miss on a huge opportunity. So as a creator, if you can sit down and not think, “Oh, I have a goal to get this many emails and this many followers, and I’m gonna be famous, and I’m gonna write a New York Times bestseller,” that’s all outcomes driven.

[00:24:40] What you should be visualizing is, what am I gonna do Monday morning when I really wanna go check my phone and scroll? Instead, I’m gonna go sit at my desk and create and do that hard work of making stuff. How am I gonna deal with I don’t wanna? Right That’s what you should be visualizing. How will… Like, literally, how, how will you do that?

[00:25:00] So for me, you know, I used to be clinically obese, and the way I lost the weight, a big part of it was I didn’t sit there and meditate on, uh, I can’t wait to have a six-pack. No, that’s not gonna get me any closer to my goal. What I did was visualize, what am I gonna do when I go to a party and someone offers me a piece of chocolate cake that I really want?

[00:25:18] What am I gonna do with that craving, with that desire? What am I gonna do when, uh, I feel bad saying no when someone’s offered it? Right. That’s what you wanna visualize. Dealing with that discomfort is the right way to, to accomplish these goals.

[00:25:29] Nathan: So you’re visualizing when I encounter the circumstance where my, uh, my goals are going to be challenged, and my identity is gonna be challenged and all that, what am I going to do?

[00:25:39] Nir: Right. What am I gonna believe in that moment that’s gonna change what I see, what I feel, and what I do? Those are the three powers of belief, the power of attention, anticipation, and agency. So if you can literally practice in your mind what’s causing me suffering in that moment, and isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

[00:25:54] So something that, like, like I said, you know, this is what it feels like to get better. That applies still today. I still have to manage my weight, right ? Like, I still have to take care of myself. And so yeah, you know what? If I’m a little hungry, but I want that thing, but I need to, you know, I need to watch.

[00:26:07] I don’t wanna eat that junk food. Now I have a, a different relationship with that discomfort. Yeah, I’m, I’m a little hungry, and you know what? That’s what it feels like to get better. It’s not… It used to be, oh my God, I’m hungry, and if I’m hungry, well then that’s terrible, and I, I, I’m not g- You know, I would start spiraling with anxiety- Right

[00:26:23] around what’s just data, what’s just information. As opposed to, okay, just information. How will I interpret in a way that serves me rather than hurts me?

[00:26:30] Nathan: Where else do you apply that in the creative process and in your business?

[00:26:34] Nir: In my business, I think the best example is with relationships. Right. That, um, I used to kind of think that people are annoying.

[00:26:43] That like Right? That like, uh, why don’t people see things my way? And, uh, I know I’m right, so like, what, now I have to like negotiate with you to tell you I’m right, and like prove it to you and all that? Like, ugh. And, um, that’s a, that’s a limiting belief that, that people are annoying or that like- Right

[00:27:03] uh, why don’t people see things my way? Or that, uh, uh, people issues are hard. Or that, you know, that, that Janice in accounting is giving me a hard time, or whatever it might be. Those are all limiting beliefs because it’s just data. It’s just data. So, uh, I’ll give you a, a, a family example, uh, not, not from a business example, but I think it relates.

[00:27:22] Yeah. You can substitute anybody who causes you suffering in a business context as well. Uh, this, this is what happened, uh, with my mom a few years ago. I was, uh, it was her 74th birthday, and I wanted to buy her some flowers. The problem was that I was in Singapore, and she was on the other side of the planet in Central Florida where I grew up.

[00:27:39] And so I wanted to get her some flowers, but I had to call the florist there and figure out how to get them delivered on time, and I stayed up till 1:00 in the morning, and I finally did it. I ordered the flowers. I thought, okay, she’s gonna love it. Uh- I went to sleep that night, I patted myself on the sh- on the back and said, “Good job.

[00:27:55] You’re a good son.” And I called her up the next morning and I said, uh, “Hey Mom, happy birthday. Did you get my flowers?” And she says, “Yes, I did. I got the flowers, but just so you know, the flowers that you sent, they showed up half dead. So don’t order from them anymore.” To which I said something like, “Well, that’s the last time I buy you flowers.”

[00:28:15] And, and that went over about as well as you’d expect. Yeah. Not so good. And, um, after the call, my wife was on the call as well, and she, she heard this whole conversation, and she turned to me and she said, “Nir, would you like to do a turnaround on this?” To which I said, “No. I do not wanna do your touchy-feely, hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo.

[00:28:34] I need to vent,” ’cause that’s what we’re supposed to do, right? When someone upsets us, we’re supposed to get it off our chest. We’re supposed to tell them how we feel. We’re supposed to… You know, we’re not supposed to keep our feelings inside, right? But that’s not what the research shows at all. That in fact, the research shows that when you vent, you’re doing nothing but reinforcing an effigy of somebody.

[00:28:52] Okay. You’re just reinforcing their beliefs. When you tell someone off to, you know, somebody else, if they’re around or not, not around, you’re just reinforcing your beliefs, ’cause we don’t see people as they are. We see people as we believe they are. And so I had enough good sense to not do that, and instead I, I used this, this technique called inquiry-based stress reduction.

[00:29:10] Uh, it’s a technique developed by Byron Katie, uh, several decades ago, but, but she was really challenging, uh, the channeling a technique that’s thousands of years old, that comes all the way from Aristotle. And what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna turn around your beliefs. And so this is what I do every day.

[00:29:24] Uh, that I do this process. It becomes easier the more you practice it, and here, here’s how it goes. The first step is you write down your belief. Okay. What’s this belief that it… I th- I think is causing me suffering? So why was I upset at my mom? Why was my mom causing me suffering? Well, clearly she was being too judgmental and hard to please, right?

[00:29:44] That’s what I believed as a fact, that she was clearly being too judgmental and hard to please. So then you have to ask yourself four questions. The first question is, is this true? Is this belief true? Yeah, of course it’s true. Nathan, I just told you what happened, right? Obviously my mom, right? You, you’re on my side of this, right?

[00:30:00] No, 100%. Totally. She was, uh, being way too judgmental. The second question, sounds like the first. It’s a little different. Is it absolutely true? So first question, is it true? Second question, is it absolutely true? Absolutely meaning there is no other possible explanation. She was, uh, the, on- it could only be that she was being judgmental.

[00:30:21] Well, when you put that absolute part on it, okay, maybe, maybe not. Maybe, maybe there’s another explanation. I don’t know what it is, but maybe there’s another explanation. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll put that away for a second. The third question is, who am I when I hold onto that belief? What, who, uh, how do I feel?

[00:30:39] Who do I become? I become short-tempered. I become not that nice. I kind of become this 13-year-old version of myself, which I don’t really like. Fourth question is, who would I be without that belief? If I had a magic wand and poof, that belief disappeared forever, how would I feel? Who would I be? I instantly felt lighter just at the thought of that.

[00:30:59] I realized that I could be more myself without that belief,

[00:31:03] Nathan: right?

[00:31:03] Nir: So in four questions in about 30 seconds, I realized that the thing that I thought was a fact wasn’t a fact, it was just a belief, that it wasn’t really serving me, and that I could be better off without it. Now, most people hearing this would say, “Yeah, but you haven’t met my mom,” or-

[00:31:18] “You haven’t met my coworkers,” “You haven’t met my boss,” right? “That wouldn’t work for me because of XYZ.” That is your brain doing what it ha- it has evolved to do, which is that your brain hates changing its mind. Your brain hates changing its mind. Why? Because it’s served you in the past, right? These limiting beliefs, you keep them around even though they’re limiting your potential because your brain doesn’t care about you being happy.

[00:31:41] Your brain doesn’t care about you flourishing. Your brain doesn’t care about you getting a million subscribers. It doesn’t care about any of that. Your brain has evolved to keep you alive. That’s its number one priority. And so if this belief worked for you before, just keep believing it. Keep doing it. So what this…

[00:31:55] the, the next step of, of, of this process asks you to do is not necessarily to change your mind. It’s to collect what I call a portfolio of perspectives, and you can do this about anything in any situation in your life, whatever is causing you suffering. Uh, that, uh, I’ve been meaning to start that channel that hasn’t, uh, happened.

[00:32:12] I’ve been meaning to try this, uh, th- that, that workout program I haven’t started, that goal that keeps coming back year after year on my New Year’s resolution that isn’t getting done. There’s always a limiting belief there. So here’s what you do. You take that belief of why something is causing you suffering.

[00:32:26] Uh, I don’t have enough time. Uh, uh, people like me don’t do this kind of thing. I’m not creative enough. Uh, it’s too late. I mean, the list goes on and on about all the, the reasons we give ourselves, all these limiting beliefs. So you take that limiting belief, uh, which I had was my mother’s too judgmental and hard to please, and you turn it around.

[00:32:45] You ask yourself, could the exact opposite also be true? So what’s the exact opposite of my mother’s too judgmental and hard to please? My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please. How could that be true? Well, she did thank me for the flowers, and she was just saying a statement of fact, right? That the flowers weren’t so nice.

[00:33:04] Does it have to be that I was judgmental? No. It could be that maybe she was just trying to protect me from not getting scammed by this, uh, florist. So now I have two beliefs. Let’s see if there’s a third. Another opposite of my mother is too judgmental and hard to please is I am too judgmental and hard to please.

[00:33:19] So how could that be true? Well, I had rehearsed in my brain that if I was gonna do something nice for her, I deserved this effusive praise that when I didn’t get- For staying

[00:33:31] Nathan: up late at night making- Yeah.

[00:33:32] Nir: Here I did this nice thing and, and, and she She, she was supposed to tell me that I was a very good son and I had done a very nice thing

[00:33:38] Nathan: You had visualized what was supposed to happen I had an

[00:33:41] Nir: expectation that didn’t materialize, and so when that didn’t happen, I lost it, right?

[00:33:47] So who was being judgmental? I kinda was, wasn’t I?

[00:33:50] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:33:50] Nir: Okay, there’s a fourth one. I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself. Ooh, that one actually j- turned out to be the most true, because what happened, when I had put all this time, money, and effort into doing something nice and it didn’t work out the way I’d, I’d wanted, I felt incompetent.

[00:34:07] I felt crappy. And this is what’s called a misattribution of emotion, that when we feel bad inside, we look for the first person we can find to blame it on, and that’s exactly what I did. We do this all the time. So now I have four beliefs. Now, which one’s true, Nathan? Which one’s false?

[00:34:25] Nathan: I mean, there’s truth in all of them.

[00:34:27] Exactly.

[00:34:28] Nir: They’re all kinda true, perhaps. But more importantly, who cares? Who cares? One of those beliefs, in order for me to be happy, my mom had to change, and you can substitute anyone you want. My boss has to change, my coworker, my client, my… the, the, the, the market, the economy, wha- whatever. That has to change so I can be happy.

[00:34:48] Nathan: Right.

[00:34:49] Nir: You don’t know my m- mom, Nathan, but let me tell you, that’s not gonna happen. She’s not gonna change for me to be happy. That’s not, that’s not how it works. So I didn’t have to keep that belief anymore. That one kept me trapped in a cage that I had built myself, this belief cage that she has to change, she has to apologize so that I won’t feel bad.

[00:35:07] The other three beliefs, I could do something with those. I could relieve my suffering in that relationship and increase my motivation to work on that relationship, so that’s what is the difference between a limiting and a liberating belief. A limiting belief saps your motivation and increases your suffering.

[00:35:21] A liberating belief gives you more motivation and decreases your suffering. So with that first belief, I didn’t wanna have anything to do with my mom until she apologized. With those other three beliefs, I could have the motivation to keep working on that relationship, and I didn’t have to suffer through it.

[00:35:35] Right. Same relationship, same data, same history of what had happened. Doesn’t mean I need to be her best friend, doesn’t mean we have to, like, play in the park every day, but I don’t have to suffer anymore. Right. And so when you ask what has affected my day-to-day life more than anything, it’s that there’s no more people problems, because we don’t have people problems.

[00:35:54] We don’t have relationship problems. We have belief problems.

[00:35:58] Nathan: Hmm. So if we apply that, I’m, I’m thinking about the limiting beliefs that we heard over the last day and a half of running this mastermind. You know, we’ve got 15, 16 of the top authors in the world, and it was so… Everyone was so open and vulnerable, sharing, um, what they were working on, the wins in their businesses, the struggles that they’re having and all that, and you heard a lot of limiting beliefs.

[00:36:22] Mm. What were some of those that, maybe the themes that came out that you’re like, “Oh, man,” you know, you wanna just take and be like, “Oh, if I could help you reprogram that”? Yeah.

[00:36:32] Nir: Yeah, and, and I think this is so important for people to hear, that we think that successful people don’t have these limiting beliefs, and I’m telling you, I’ve met some of the most successful people on Earth, and they have just as many limiting beliefs- Yeah

[00:36:45] as the rest of us. Because limiting beliefs are like your face. You can’t see your face. We all have a face. Yeah. But you can’t see your own face. You can see your hands, you can see your feet, you can’t see your own face. Interestingly, you can see other people’s faces, right? You can look at them and, and y- you know all their limiting beliefs.

[00:37:00] You… It’s easy to judge others for their limiting beliefs, ’cause you can see them, but you can’t see your own limiting beliefs. They’re always hidden to you. Why? Because they feel like facts, right? The most common limiting belief I hear from har- high performers is, “I’m behind.” How many times did we hear it- Yeah

[00:37:14] over the past few days when we’re meeting with people who have millions upon millions of followers? They’re in the top .00001% of creators. “Ah, I’m, I’m behind. Somebody’s doing better than I am.” And what’s implicit in that, that’s bad. I should suffer because of that. Ugh. Why do we need that? We don’t. And I think part of it is that another limiting belief, a, a limiting belief stacked on a l- another limiting belief, is that, “Unless I’m suffering, I can’t be productive.”

[00:37:44] Nathan: Okay.

[00:37:45] Nir: Right? That… I hear this sometimes.

[00:37:47] Nathan: Yep.

[00:37:47] Nir: Uh, probably the most common limiting belief is there’s no time. I don’t have enough time to do that. After that- I- … it’s, I’m- I

[00:37:52] Nathan: have that one all the time.

[00:37:53] Nir: We all feel it. We all feel it. But, by the way, I still have these. Why do you think I wrote this book? I’m full of these limiting beliefs.

[00:37:59] But if you can systematically have a response to that limiting belief, you know, “Okay, I hear you there,” that voice in your head that tells you there’s no time, it’s too late, you’re behind, whatever. Y- to hear it, acknowledge it, and say, “Okay, it’s just signal. It’s just data, and I don’t have to act on that. I can interpret it differently.

[00:38:14] That’s up to me whether that pain causes suffering.” Um, to have that toolkit is super powerful. So, so, uh, to have, to see it in other people, that, uh, “I feel like I’m behind,” and they keep that fire stoking, thinking that it causes them motivation, that it makes them more likely to, to persist. And I think that’s the recipe for burnout, because we have a formula for burnout.

[00:38:40] Like, w- there are studies that have now found w- how do you… Uh, uh, what, what type of jobs make someone burn out? And it’s not what, what I thought. I thought that burnout is caused because, you know, you work in a sad job. You’re a mortician or you’re a veterinarian, you have to put cute puppies to sleep or something.

[00:38:57] It has nothing to do with your job. It has to do with the environment you work in. The formula for burnout is two factors: high expectations coupled with low control. That is literally the formula for burnout. Now, what’s interesting, high expectations with high control, no problem. People rise to the occasion.

[00:39:13] That’s when we’re actually doing our best. It’s when we have high expectations and low control that we have higher rates of anxiety disorder, depression, and burnout. So when you have that mentality of, “I’m always behind, I’m always behind, I’m always behind,” you can’t control who’s in front. Ever Right It’s uncontrollable.

[00:39:32] So you have higher and higher expectations with less and less control. Same goes with our time, right? If you’re working in an environment where people are constantly pinging and dinging you, and you have no control over your time, it feels miserable. This is why people burn out, because they have no control over the most basic part of our day-to-day living, how we spend our attention and time.

[00:39:50] Nathan: Yeah. I’m thinking about that all across the board because th- well, those, the expectations that you have. So you’re saying high expectations, low control. Mm-hmm. Is that when someone else is placing

[00:40:03] Nir: those on you? Is that yourself? Both. Great question. That’s exactly right. This is, this is the thing. We think that we’re controlled by external circumstances.

[00:40:10] Right. And the psychology literature is amazing on this. So there’s what’s called an external locus of control and an internal locus of control. So external locus of control is things happen to me, my life is determined by the economy, and AI has taken all the jobs, and there’s a war, and all this stuff.

[00:40:25] That’s an external locus of control. An internal locus of control is someone who believes that they can affect their circumstances. What’s fascinating is that, one, people with an internal locus of control do better in just about every metric. They make more money. They have more friends. They contribute more to the community.

[00:40:40] They have fewer instances of mental health issues. All the good things happen to people with an internal locus of control. What’s even more interesting is that even when you have every right to say that you are downtrodden, discriminated against, that your circumstances put you at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid, even then, when it’s a fact that you are in circumstances- Right

[00:41:02] that externally have, have put you where you are, it still behooves you to believe you have an internal locus of control. You still do better in life when you have that, even if it’s false- Right … even if it’s a false. Because the key here, the, the… If you were gonna summarize my work over the past six years, it’s this: beliefs are tools, not truths.

[00:41:19] Beliefs are tools, not truths. So we have to have a certain level of, of evidence for fact, but beliefs are not facts. Right. Facts are things that are objectively true. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on evidence. So this goes back to our placebo discussion. It behooves you to find all the agency you possibly have in a situation, but also to acknowledge, “Okay, here’s the things that aren’t in my control.”

[00:41:44] You can’t control geopolitics. You can’t control, you know, the weather. You c- there’s a lot of things you can’t control. So to have that accurate assessment of, “Here’s what I can’t control, and I’m not gonna worry about it. I can’t worry about who’s in front of me on, on subscriber count, but I can worry about here’s what I can control.

[00:42:00] I can put my butt in my chair and do the work.” Like, that’s the first place to start. Something that comes up a

[00:42:05] Nathan: lot- in these conversations is what are you optimizing for? Mm. And, you know, you get in a mastermind setting and everyone’s saying, “You should do this, you should do that,” and you realize, oh, the people giving advice are optimizing for completely different things.

[00:42:17] Mm-hmm. And there’s nothing wrong, like, with what each of them are, are doing. But I’m really curious for you and your creative business, w- what are you optimizing for, and then what decisions has that led to- Mm … as far as, you know, team, how you spend your time, uh, how you make your money,

[00:42:33] Nir: all of that? The most important thing to optimize for is not money, it’s not fame.

[00:42:38] Certainly not fame. I think it’s persistence.

[00:42:42] Nathan: Mm.

[00:42:42] Nir: Because if the number one reason that we don’t meet our goals is that we quit, the antidote to quitting is persistence. And that turns out to be the most important trait. There was a great study that just blew my mind where they, um, uh, this, this biologist Kurt Richter, uh, in the 1950s he took a rat, he actually took many rats, and he put it in a cylinder of water much, much larger than this one.

[00:43:05] He, and he wanted to see how long the rat could swim for. So he sat there with a timer, and he timed, “Okay, how long can the rat swim before it gives up?” Turns out about 15 minutes. Then he wanted to do another study to see could he increase the rat’s persistence. So he took a new group of rats. The old ones had died, obviously.

[00:43:24] He took a new group of rats. He put them in these cylinders. This time he stood there with a stopwatch, and when the 15-minute mark approached and he saw that the rats were starting to struggle, he reached in, pulled out the rat, dried it off, let it catch its breath, and then plunk, back into the, into the cylinder it went.

[00:43:41] Now, he did in fact increase the rats’ persistence, but by how much is absolutely incredible. The rats started at 15 minutes, and after that intervention where he was, the rat was shown that salvation might be possible if the rat just kept swimming, if it didn’t quit, if it persisted, something might save it, something good might happen to save it from this situation, from this di- dire situation.

[00:44:05] The rat didn’t swim t- twice as long. The rat didn’t swim three times or four times as long. The rat swam 240 times longer. It went from 15 minutes to 60 hours of nonstop swimming. Wow. Unbelievable, right? Yeah. Just crazy. I mean, uh, that, that’s mind-blowing that that kind of intervention could, could do that.

[00:44:27] So what’s the lesson for us? What changed in the rat’s behavior? Like, how did that happen? The experiment was the same. Nothing changed in the environment. Uh, nothing changed in the rat’s body. The rat sudden- suddenly didn’t become super, a super rat and become stronger. The only variable left is that something changed in the rat’s mind.

[00:44:45] That’s something that was always there. The rat could always swim for 60 hours, but suddenly their mind, something in their mind flipped, and now they became suddenly way, way more persistent. Well, what changed? A belief. Right. They had a belief that if I keep swimming, I might get saved. That’s what we need.

[00:45:02] As creators, we are quitting, most of us, at that 15-minute mark. It’s too hard, there’s no time, uh, I’ll never catch up, I missed my window, right? That’s quitting at the 15-minute mark. But each and every one of us have locked inside of us, we just don’t realize, we have that 60 hours, and we unlock it through deciding what our beliefs will be, the ones that serve us and the ones that hurt us, the limiting ones versus the liberating ones.

[00:45:28] Nathan: When I see that time and again where I, a creator will, or a want-to-be creator will say, “I’m gonna build an audience. I have something to teach the world,” and all of that, and it, “I tried and it didn’t work out.” Yeah. I’m like, “Oh, tell me about how you tried.” And it’s like, “I worked on it every weekend for two months in a row.”

[00:45:48] And you’re like, “And then, and then what did you

[00:45:52] Nir: do?” No, that’s what I do.

[00:45:53] Nathan: Yeah, it’s so true. But they, you know, ’cause they’re feeling like it’s a total failure. You know, y- at that point they, they might have spent 100 hours- Yeah … right, doing this. Yeah. And the thing is, I have yet to meet someone who showed up and worked on their creative s- uh, pursuit every day for at least a half hour or an hour for two years and did not find some level of success beyond what they expected.

[00:46:18] That’s,

[00:46:19] Nir: it’s such a great point, and, and successful people, you know, are losers in a way if you think about it, because successful people lose more than unsuccessful people. Unsuccessful people, they try something, it doesn’t work, “I’m done.” “I lost once.” Right. Never again. They lost once. Successful people, the most successful people I know, the billionaires that I know, they can give you 1,000 ways that they have tried and failed- Right

[00:46:41] because they keep trying again and again. So again, the key is persistence. It’s not intelligence. I, I know a lot of very successful people. You know a lot of successful people. They’re not the smartest people in the world. I mean, they’re smart. They’re not, they’re not dummies. But I know professors who are way, way smarter on raw intelligence who are less successful in business.

[00:46:57] In fact, you know, there’s kind of a joke in Silicon Valley that, you know, Silicon Valley will never hire the smart kids who were A students in college who went to go to McKinsey and BCG. They tend to make actually terrible entrepreneurs. Why? Because they’re almost too smart, right? Like, if you’ve worked at McKinsey or Bain or BCG, uh, or Goldman Sachs, you think in probabilities.

[00:47:14] You’re thinking about, “This is probably not gonna work out,” and then you don’t do it because you can’t see those opportunities. Whereas the, the B and C students, if they have what’s called entrepreneurial alertness, they can see things that the rest of us can’t see, right? That, that in a way you don’t wanna be too smart in that way.

[00:47:30] Nathan: I love that the thing you’re optimizing for is persistence and perseverance, because that is the missing ingredient in all of these creative… And so many people reach the point where they’re at, you know, a quarter million a year in revenue, half a million a year, or they’ve got enough of an audience and they hit that plateau and they don’t push through.

[00:47:47] Right. Uh, and so this is completely different. Um, what’s the next thing that you’re working on? Where are you going from here?

[00:47:54] Nir: Uh, right now I want to tell the world about what I- Yeah … uh, what’s changed my life when it came to, uh, changing my limiting beliefs. I mean, it’s made me so much better off, uh, I, because I can now persist in areas that, that cause me suffering.

[00:48:09] I have better relationships with my family and my friends and my business colleagues. I, uh, I’m in better shape, uh, physically ’cause I go exercise when I say I will. I, I, uh, I can stay more consistent with my work. So, uh, there’s no area of my life that hasn’t been touched by, by these behavioral sh- or these, uh, belief shifts.

[00:48:26] So that’s what I’m working on next, and then at some point I’ll, I’ll probably write another book. I have- Yeah … a ton of ideas still.

[00:48:31] Nathan: What I love that idea, and the thing that’s gonna be stuck in my head after this interview, and I hope it’s stuck in every listener’s head, is when you feel that pain, especially if it’s, if it’s towards the pursuit of getting better, you say, “Ah, this is what it feels like to get better.”

[00:48:43] Right.

[00:48:43] Nir: Or whatever mantra is meaningful to you. And I have many, right? ‘Cause there’s… I, I have a dozen that I’ve created over the years that, that do that turnaround and give me a, a, a l- a more liberating belief. So another one I use all the time is, “It doesn’t get easier, I get stronger.” Right. That’s a big one, because I kept expecting that if I was really good at this, it’d be easy, right?

[00:49:05] Like, it’s not supposed to be hard. No, it’s always gonna be chaos. It’s always gonna be difficult. You’re just gonna get stronger and stronger.

[00:49:11] Nathan: Yeah. That sounds so good. Nir, thank you so much for coming on. Everyone should go check out the book, Beyond Belief, everywhere books are sold. You hit the New York Times list.

[00:49:19] It’s incredible. Thank you. Uh, it’s been fun to watch your journey over the years, and I’m excited to get to talk to you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else you think we should have on the show.

[00:49:39] Thank you so much

[00:49:39] for listening.

[00:00:00] Nathan: Today I have two legends of the publishing industry. We’ve got James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, which is the best-selling book of the last decade. It sold 30 million copies.

[00:00:08] James: There are four things that you want as an author. You want to have the best earnings possible, you want to have the widest distribution possible, you wanna have creative control, and then you wanna

[00:00:19] Nathan: have- And Madeline Mackintosh, who is the CEO of Penguin Random House US, where she’s published over 1,000 books.

[00:00:25] Madeline: The author and the publisher’s job is to sell the first copy, then the book has to start selling itself.

[00:00:30] Nathan: What are some of the things that make the biggest difference for authors for these books to keep selling?

[00:00:34] Madeline: One of the answers is the probably most frustrating one, which is that- That’s

[00:00:39] James: amazing.

[00:00:40] Nathan: Now, James and Madeline have co-founded Authors Equity.

[00:00:43] James: ACX and Audible kind of screw self-published authors, and so we can improve your royalty there. On the print side, it’s basically the same. The

[00:00:50] Nathan: traditional model gives authors between 15 and 20% of what their book earns. Authors Equity inverts that. James and Madeline walk through exactly who this model is right for, how they select books, and what the publishing industry has refused to fix for 30 years.

[00:01:03] Madeline: With all of the choices that are out there, how do you break through with this book to find your set of readers? You don’t

[00:01:10] James: wanna, like, bury the best stuff. You want them to read the first 5,000 words and be like, “Damn, this is so good, I have to tell somebody about it.” And the thing that has surprised me the most is-

[00:01:24] Nathan: I am so excited for this conversation, ’cause I’ve got two legends in the publishing space. So Madeline, you’ve been in publishing for three decades, seen so many major transformations, been the CEO of Penguin Random House US. You’ve, uh, on the board of another major publisher. You’ve done so much, now founded a, a publishing company.

[00:01:43] James, we’re just now celebrating 30 million copies of Atomic Habits, which is pretty legendary. Come a long ways since, uh, you know, we were planning out the book in, uh, like a cabin in McCall, Idaho. Yeah. Yeah, you

[00:01:57] James: were there at the beginning.

[00:01:58] Nathan: It’s been, been a lot of fun, but I wanna dive in. Madeline, for you, what are some of the biggest inflection points that you’ve seen in publishing- Yeah

[00:02:05] over the last few decades?

[00:02:07] Madeline: So, uh, th- just to, to give a sense of when I started in publishing, it was 1992. There was no… R- really, there wasn’t internet, there wasn’t email, um, and the, um, and mainly the, the two formats that you talked about a lot were hardcover and paperback, and mass market paperback was the, was the biggest deal.

[00:02:30] Um, obviously, that’s not the world that we live in now. Um, in about the mid-’90s I was still an editorial assistant, but I got curious about what was happening with technology, ended up moving to, um, a company then called Banham Double Day Dell, which is now part of what is the very much larger Penguin Random House, and I worked in quote unquote new media.

[00:02:52] So that was initially figuring out, um, what’s a website and how could a publisher show up on the web? Then soon enough, I got to move to the sales department because retailers were starting to also think about- Mm-hmm … the web. So that meant sitting in a, in a conference room with, um, with Jeff Bezos and his first eight employees, uh, figuring out exactly what kind of a, a beast were they, and how to set them up so that we could sell books to them.

[00:03:22] From there, I so kind of rode that e-commerce wave, then, um, then at a certain point, I moved in to be the audio publisher.

[00:03:31] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:03:31] Madeline: Um, and that was really before the big audio boom, so people thought I was kind of nuts to do that. And then, um, I really made the nuts move ’cause I moved my family, um, my husband who’s a novelist, and our two young children, we moved to Luxembourg so that I could work for Amazon on taking the Kindle international.

[00:03:53] Did that for a couple of years before then moving back to Random House, and that was before we then, um, merged with Penguin and became Penguin Random House. So that was a, that was a, a large, um, a, a very broad span of time, but also j- just, uh, very significant transformations where there were these points where people were really panicking- Mm-hmm

[00:04:15] about what, you know, what will e-books mean to, to publishing? What will audio mean to publishing? Um, at a certain point, p- I think this is before my time, but I think people panicked about mass market paperbacks too. Right. It turns out that, um, that format changes don’t really matter that much, um, that you can take the book and make it, um, put it out in any different kind of format that the consumer wants, and actually that’s not that, that big a deal.

[00:04:46] Um, that has generally been, um, been additive to, to the business. What is a much bigger deal is the transformation of sales channels, and so really the advent of the internet, um, and then obviously, um, social media and the complete atomization of attention span, those are much bigger challenges, and those are really the ones that, um, the publishers and authors have to think about today.

[00:05:12] Nathan: Yeah, so you’ve seen all of these transformations throughout the industry, and everyone thinking you’re crazy as you’re jumping on the very beginning of each one of those, right? Going to audiobooks when everyone’s like, “I, I don’t know what this is. It probably won’t turn into anything.” Now for many authors it’s 50% of their sales or more.

[00:05:28] Um- Now, or at least a couple years ago, people thought you were crazy again as you left Yes … you know, one of the largest publishing companies- Yeah … in the world. And you’re like, “I’m gonna go start my own.” Yeah.

[00:05:39] Madeline: They really thought I… I th- I thought my, my family thought I was a little crazy too. Yeah.

[00:05:42] Everybody thought I was crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:44] Nathan: Uh, what was the thing that prompted that? Like, what made you say- I, I- … “I’m gonna go do this”? Yeah,

[00:05:47] Madeline: I mean, really in a, in one way it was an accumulation of insights over time where, um, particularly for one of, one of our co-founders is Nina Von Mulka, and the two of us were often the people who were faced with…

[00:06:02] She was also at Penguin Random House, and we were often the ones sort of faced with trying to figure out, okay, as each of these major transformations is happening, what does that mean for the contract between publisher and author? What does it mean in terms of, um, some of these, what are the strategic implo- implications for how publishers and authors work together?

[00:06:23] So, um, so we had shared many of those insights over time and, um, and finally I just got to the point where I said, “I no longer really believe in what I’m selling- Mm … to authors and to agents. I feel that I’m really more sharing their perspective in this negotiation than I am theoretically what mine is.”

[00:06:43] And so I, I sat in a coffee shop one, um, one particular morning, I remember, and sort of sketched out what, what a different model would look like. And luckily between Nina and Don Weisberg, who was a longtime mentor in the industry, um, he also was leaving his job at Macmillan, and the three of us said, “Let’s, let’s do this.

[00:07:07] We don’t really know how to do this, but let’s figure out how you start a company and how, how that would, um, would work.” And then, um, at a certain point after that, we got to present that idea to James.

[00:07:22] Nathan: Yeah. So James, I wanna hear how you came into this, this picture. And you, ’cause you started in a small role and then said, “Let’s- Yeah What’s going on?

[00:07:28] I, you know, I

[00:07:29] James: was one of the early meetings that, uh, Madeleine and Don Nina had, and, um, I, I think I came across, you know, your radar because I was asking for a lot of the things that you were trying to solve for. You know, like, I was one of those authors who wanted this. And I … You know, traditional publishing, um, it’s a setup that I think worked well for a long time, uh, but that was, like, pre-internet, and we’re very obviously post-internet now.

[00:07:52] And the enormous shift that everyone has seen and felt for the last 10 or 15 years is that the author owns the audience now. They, they have a direct connection with them, and the author’s power has grown basically every year, uh, since then. And if you talk to people who are in, have been in publishing for a long time, they’ll kind of lament the fact that in the ’80s or the ’90s, we could sort of make a book a bestseller.

[00:08:14] We could influence which books, you know, were gonna be hitting the list and doing really well because we had this, such strong relationships with where the audience was, which at that time was through all the retailers. Um, and then they’ll say, “You know, we can’t really make books a hit now like we could before.”

[00:08:29] And I always push back and say, “Well, it’s not totally true. You can make a b- a book a hit. It’s just the author that does it now.” You know? It, it’s having a million followers on social media. It’s having a big email newsletter. It’s … You know, it’s the people that have the platforms are now the ones that drive the sales.

[00:08:44] And, um, everyone has known this to be true, but the industry has kind of resisted it, right? Like, all the incentives, if you’re the publisher and you’re keeping most of the money, you’re not just gonna overnight be like, “Well, you know what? You’re right. Why don’t you go ahead and keep most of the money now?”

[00:08:57] Um, and so it took, it took a startup to come in and, and change things. And I kind of debated how … I mean, you know, you have, you and I have, like, these similar entrepreneurial brains, right? You start to see a problem and feel it, and then you’re like, “All right. How can I fix this?” Um, and so I debated, should I just launch an imprint or spin out some kind of partnership or whatever?

[00:09:17] And then once I met with Madeleine, um, it was, it was very obvious, oh, this is a much better version of what I have in my head. Um, and it just kind of became this fortuitous circumstance where I hope that in 30 years I’ll look back and just think, “Man, I was so lucky to just be The Hot Book at this time,” um, and it was just this kind of perfect confluence of, of things coming together.

[00:09:38] Nathan: Yeah, so let’s dive into the model because it’s fundamentally different. Yeah. Uh, you know, everyone says, “Do you want to traditionally publish, or do you wanna self-publish?” And I’ve, I’ve self-published three books. I have not yet traditionally published a book. And so I … You know, I was thinking, “Okay, the next one that I do, I want the reach,” you know?

[00:09:55] And I d- I’m okay giving up some of the earnings. And then in talking to James, y- you know, he’s like, “You know, you don’t- Like that’s a fal- false di- di- dichotomy. Well, that

[00:10:03] James: is … What you just described is the tension that authors have felt for the last- Yeah … decade, which is, okay, do I wanna keep most of the money and I self-publish, but then I give up the distribution?

[00:10:12] Um, or do I want to go traditional and I get my book to be everywhere, but, uh, they are gonna make most of the money? And, um, finally, for the first time ever, I think, now that authors equity exists, authors no longer have to choose. Mm-hmm. Um, and, you know, Madeleine can speak to that more, and probably unpack the traditional model too a little bit.

[00:10:31] Madeline: The thing to understand about how the traditional, um, just business model works, is that there are a series of, um, really pretty low royalty rates. Um, those royalty rates depend on was this book sold, in which format it was sold in, which channel, which country. It’s very, it’s very convoluted, and it’s- It can even

[00:10:51] James: depend on the price, right?

[00:10:52] If the book is discounted- Yes … significantly- Absolutely … the royalty rate changes. It’s … Yeah. Absolutely. It’s a lot of complication. And it’s

[00:10:57] Madeline: so complicated that really … that this is why I’ve realized a lot of people in the industry, um, are just not that, uh, that good at understanding really the math of it all.

[00:11:11] Um, and the w- the very, um, rational response that agents and authors who have leverage in a negotiation, their, their response to the fact that the royalty rates are too low is that they push for as high a guarantee as possible so that those unit royalty rates essentially- Don’t matter … d- don’t matter.

[00:11:33] The problem with that is then, you know, say you theoretically win the jackpot, a publisher agrees to, to spend an extraordinarily high advance on you, obviously in many ways your interests are aligned. There … You have somebody who’s clearly excited enough about the book that they’re willing to invest that much.

[00:11:51] Um, they, they want the book to sell a lot of copies. Um, but then when it actually comes to the process of making decisions on the, the march towards the market and moving forward, for example, figuring out how, how to spend marketing money, anything that involves spending money, that is just coming completely out of the publisher’s pocket.

[00:12:14] And since they’ve already now spent a lot of money on the advance, your, the author and the publisher’s interests are not necessarily going to be that well-aligned.

[00:12:24] James: Like, if they’ve already spent a million dollars on the advance, and then you’re like, “Hey, we wanna do a $400,000 marketing campaign,” that’s

[00:12:30] On the one hand, they want their investment to pay off, but on the other hand, they’re kinda like, “We’ve already put a lot of money into this book.” Exactly. There’s the tension of- Exactly … do we wanna do that?

[00:12:37] Madeline: Exactly. Yeah. And the, um … And, you know, it can come down to what paper we use, what, you know, uh, any, any of the many decisions that are involved.

[00:12:47] You end up with authors and publishers who are not really aligned financially, and also not really aligned in terms of transparency. Um, when it comes to making decisions. So the contrast with that is that what, um, what we do is we, in one way approach it very traditionally. We assume this book, this author should absolutely have a fantastic editor, they absolutely should have a fantastic designer, absolutely the, the physical specs of this book should be, um, should be attractive enough to be able to grab attention when it’s on the, the bookstore table.

[00:13:26] Um, but w- so we believe in those very theoretically traditional levers, um, but w- and we do the funding of it. So the difference is that I will consult with you as the author, Nathan, and say, “Okay, um, uh, here is a candidate for your, for your editor. Here’s a candidate for your designer. Here’s what it’s going to cost us to hire these people.

[00:13:50] Um, let’s now talk about do we wanna hire a publicist or not?” And- Right … you, you can share what that conversation was like.

[00:13:58] Nathan: Yeah. So I wanna dive into the publicist thing in a second, but, um, the key thing is that the royalties are just inverted.

[00:14:05] Madeline: Yes. Sorry. And so- Very, very important detail …

[00:14:07] Nathan: so in this case, instead of making maybe 30% as the author and the publisher’s making 70%, it’s flipped.

[00:14:15] And so then I’m not having to, not having to choose. And then the other key thing, and so I’m saying this as, as an author, you know, going through the author’s equity process and publishing with you all right now, is exactly as you said, we’re totally aligned. So the, the expenses come out at the top- Right

[00:14:30] and we split that, right? That’s before anybody gets paid. Yeah. And so the dis- the discussion that we had two weeks ago was, okay, do we spend $40,000 on a publicist to try to get press and more reach for this book, with the goal of selling some number of copies? We don’t know. We’ve gotta abstract a few times to be like, “Okay, what press can we get?

[00:14:49] How will that reach? How will that convert?” We don’t know. Or do we wanna spend it directly on advertising? And I have never heard of an author make paid advertising direct to a book successful until talking to you all. Yeah. And the problem is because it’s always done by the author with their 30%.

[00:15:10] James: Yeah, if you pay it out of your share, you don’t have enough money to make- It doesn’t-

[00:15:13] it profitable to-

[00:15:14] Nathan: You, you have … They, these authors end up doing this whole funnel on the back end where they’re selling some other product and it’s about everything but the book.

[00:15:21] James: I think what you’re really getting at is you’re, we’re trying to create a model where everything is aligned. Yeah. Right? And I think just a couple comments on that.

[00:15:27] So first, under the traditional advance model, it, it’s totally backwards. Like, you … The way to make the most possible money under a traditional deal is you get a huge advance, they pay you a million dollars, and then you sell one book And that, that’s how you maximize your earnings. Um- Earnings per copy

[00:15:41] earnings per copy. Yeah. Uh, the better you do, the more books you sell, the more your earnings per copy go down. So you’re actually, uh … The more … I think the way you’ve put it before is, the better the book does, the more the, um, publisher is rewarded, and that’s disincentivizing to the author. Right. Right?

[00:15:58] Like, in most industries, the higher your performance gets, the more your rewards increase, right? If you, if you win the Super Bowl, you get a bonus. If you g- get voted to the All-Star team, you get a bonus. And so, like, we should be incentivizing high performance, not, um, you know, discouraging it. So I think that’s, that’s the first inversion of the model.

[00:16:17] And then the second thing is, if you’re gonna go with a, an advance model, then you’re kind of incentivized to place a lot of bets. Uh, you know, people sometimes equate it to a venture capital portfolio or something like that, and that is, that is the game that publishers are often playing. Um, but if you place lots of bets, then that means you’re playing a game of scale, and it’s just hard a lot of the time for scale and quality to go hand-in-hand.

[00:16:41] And when you’re publishing 500 books or 1,000 books a year, it’s just gonna be parts of it that feel like manufacturing, you know? And a lot of authors say that. I, I feel like I was kind of, you know, put through the processor or, um, you know, like, I got attention for my launch, and then they moved on to the next thing.

[00:16:58] Um, and that, that’s a very common refrain, and it’s just … I’m not, I’m not saying there’s, like, bad people in publishing or anything, but it’s just kind of the reality of we’re making a lot of books, and we gotta move on to the next one. And so you want this model … As an author, you want a model where everything is aligned, the incentives are aligned, everybody wants to win together, and we can all grow the pie together, and you get this, the best possible process for making the best possible book.

[00:17:24] There is, there is nothing in publishing that will beat making a better book. That is, that is the single highest thing that delivers the most value to everybody involved, including the reader, by the way- … which should be the person who’s getting the most value, um, is how can … what can we do to make the best possible book?

[00:17:40] And if you’re not gonna try to make the best book in your industry or your category, I … in my view, it’s not worth it. Right. It’s not worth the time. It takes two, three, four years to make a book. Um, you should only do it if you have the best possible standard. And so the author’s equity model is to try to align all of those stars.

[00:17:58] Yeah. You know, to say, “Okay, let’s reward people based on the value they’re providing.” If the author is genuinely the one providing the majority of the value now, which I would argue they are, they should get the majority of the profit. Um, and let’s also find a way for all of us to win together. And at the root of it, let’s try to design something where it’s the best possible process for making the best possible book, because that’s what’s gonna serve people and help people the most.

[00:18:22] Madeline: Yeah.

[00:18:22] Nathan: I love that. So there’s some very specific additional pain points that you’ve encountered in publishing that you wanted solved, and thankfully Author’s Equity is like, “Yeah, we can solve many of those.” What, what are a few of those?

[00:18:33] James: Yeah, I… We’re t- we’re trying to… I basically look at, you know, I’m no different than a lot of other authors, right?

[00:18:38] You look around and you’re like, “This kinda feels a little bit broken,” and I think we’re looking at all the things that feel a little bit broken and just try to check off each one of those. Mm-hmm. You know, like in traditional publishing, you get paid, you get your royalties every six months, and that’s paid on a three-month delay usually, so you get paid very late, uh, for the sales that you make, and Author’s Equity pays every 30 days.

[00:18:57] Um, or in our businesses, a lot of the decisions that we make are around social media campaigns or, “I’m gonna mention the book in my newsletter this week.” Like, you want… You’re used to posting on social media and getting feedback instantly. How many likes did it get? How many impressions did it get? Um, but- I’m willing to

[00:19:13] Nathan: wait one hour for the data.

[00:19:14] Right, right. Yeah. I

[00:19:15] James: wanna, I wanna see live updates. Yeah. Um, but in publishing, they’re like, “You’ll see numbers in six months with your royalty statement.” And you’re like, “I can’t, I can’t make bus- business decisions like that.” So, you know, we can get you numbers much faster, so that, you know, that’s another big win.

[00:19:28] So there are just all these little things about publishing. International royalties is another interesting one. You know, like I… My audience is worldwide. I write in English, and I have people read my newsletters and my books in English all around the world. So why is my English book going through another English-speaking publisher in the UK or Australia or some of these other territories, who then is taking their cut, and then it goes through the US publisher, and then I get my cut after that?

[00:19:57] It gets watered down. And so Author’s Equity has said, “Yeah, that… We’re not gonna do it that way. We’re gonna distribute directly in those territories,” and the resulting earnings for our authors internationally are significant improvement over what you would normally see.

[00:20:10] Madeline: And I w- I would just add a slight nuance to that, which is that, um, in some cases, we will talk to, uh, if we have world rights, we’ll talk to a publisher in the UK or, um, or in another country, and they’re, they’re so aligned with us and so excited and so passionate about really hustling at a local level that it does make sense to- Right

[00:20:35] license the rights to them. But in many other cases, it just makes sense for us to sell directly to retailers in, uh, on a worldwide basis.

[00:20:45] James: And there are a number of things like that. You know, that’s… I just named two or three, but there’s, there are lots of little pain points like that that could be better, and then there also, of course, are the really big pain points, like who is keeping the majority of the profit, and is the team aligned- Right

[00:20:56] and how do you get the best editor? That, that’s… Okay, so this is another pain point. Now you have me going. Sorry. So I’m, now I’m on a roll. Um, uh- Usually what happens is you have a book idea, and you come up with a p- proposal, and then you and your agent shop it around, and you get offers from seven or 10 different publishers or whatever.

[00:21:14] And then you look at those offers and you say, “Okay, who offered the most money?” And then you convince yourself, “Well, that’s the team I really wanted to work with all along.” Um, and you get whoever the editor is at that imprint. Um, and that’s fine. There are lots of good editors out there, and it can work out well.

[00:21:28] It worked out well for Atomic Habits. Um, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this person specializes in that kind of book, or is the right person for that type of book, or for you, you know? Like, you wanna … Your editor is an important relationship. Like, you wanna feel connected to them. Um, and so Author’s Equity has kind of flipped that model and said, “We’re gonna select, hand select custom teams for each book.”

[00:21:50] So based on the topic and the author that comes to us, we will hand select an editor for you, a cover designer, a publicist if you want that. Um, and it’s a collaborative process, right? Like, the author is … It’s an author-centric and author-driven business. And so, you know, if you have something you’re looking for in an editor, we can help you find that.

[00:22:09] If you have a particular design that you want on the cover … We even have authors who they have their own design teams, and they want to design their own cover. Like, that, that’s fine. Um, so I think the, kind of at the root of it is we really want to trust the authors, and we have opinions, right? Like, we have our, our expertise and our best practices on ways that we think you can sell the most copies possible.

[00:22:32] Um, but at the end of the day, it’s the author’s choice, and I think many authors have really appreciated having that level of control. I thought that I was gonna be pitching most authors on, “Hey, come with us. You’ll make twice the money.” Uh, but really what a lot of people like is the fact that they can drive the process.

[00:22:50] Madeline: It’s also … I … What I’m picking up on also is that when you think about pain points in the, in the industry- Mm-hmm … so pain points for any author, any publisher, um, and for any retailer frankly, it’s how with all of the, the choices that are out there, how do you break through with this book to find your set of readers- Mm-hmm

[00:23:11] and get them to go into the bookstore and buy this book given all the choices they have? And we are very clear we don’t have the, the answers to this. We, we would love it if all of our authors had the answers to that. They don’t necessarily. But what our approach to the partnership means is that we really are both coming together and putting all of our ideas on the table, hashing them out, trying to think about, is there a different way we could try to do this?

[00:23:39] How … You know, have, have you tried this? Have you tried this? And, um- Uh, the, what gets us really excited sometimes in a conversation with a prospective author is realizing, wow, there’s stuff we can learn from them. Yes, we can share all of our expertise based on decades of being in this bus- business, but, um, but there’s something, you know

[00:24:02] Th- this one really understands TikTok. Mm-hmm. This one really understands newsletters. This one really has a really interesting thing that they’re doing at a local level in real life. Um, that’s a kind of electricity that usually doesn’t get to happen because, as James said, if you’re, if you’re at a big place, even if you have a team that is completely populated by geniuses, um, they’ve got a lot of books they’ve got to churn through.

[00:24:31] Right. And so there’s … I, I feel very strongly that in, in a market that is all about scale, that focus and, and boutique can really be extraordinarily powerful.

[00:24:45] James: Uh, just something to add to that. I, um, I think that our willingness, our, the Author’s Equity team’s willingness to learn from authors- Mm-hmm … and, and our desire to create situations where there can be knowledge transfer, you know, we, we host dinners for authors, we host retreats for authors, and there’s lots of sharing around the table of what’s going well for your book launch, or how did you write your title, or things like that, I think that’s a testament to the team and the type of people that we have.

[00:25:09] You know, we just have people who are very … They’re excited, they wanna learn, and, um, you know, they’re very competent. They’re really good at what they do, and you put that mix together and it leads to really good things. I get … This is how I’ve been describing it to authors. You can tell me if you like this or not, but I, what I’ve been saying is, you know, Madeleine was in a very unique position as CEO of the largest publisher, and publishing often gets critiqued as, like, a business that’s run by English majors or, you know, whatever.

[00:25:35] Um, and that’s fine, like the stereotypes exist for a reason, but the truth is, in any large organization where there are thousands of employees, like, there are some all-stars in there. And sometimes you just kinda feel like you’re stuck like a cog in the machine, you know, or you’re, you’re … You have a lot of energy, you’re really creative, but then the ideas get squashed down by a committee, or it just kinda gets voted out in some portion of the process.

[00:25:57] And there are really talented people in publishing who just haven’t been able to realize their full potential yet, and, um, by virtue of your career and your position, you kinda know who, who they were. So I d- I just tell the authors, like, “Madeleine knew who all the straight killers were, and then she just went up to them and, like, tapped them on the shoulder like, ‘Hey, do you wanna stop dealing with this- Exactly

[00:26:14] and just come over to us, um, and we can, like, let you run?'” You know? And, like, I, I just say, like, “Unleash the all-stars.” Yeah. You know? Like, that’s … It’s true for authors. You know, you get these authors that are like a force of nature, and great, like, let’s let them run and do their thing. But it’s also true on the publishing side.

[00:26:29] Like, we have some really talented people on the team, and now they can, you know, be fully unleashed.

[00:26:35] Nathan: Yeah, and that’s been the experience as an author. We … You know, we’re … It’s- Having the acquiring editor be different from the person doing the co-… Like, you can put the best people on it- Yeah … and, uh, then if s- one role isn’t working out, we can say, “Hey, let’s actually get someone else in for this next stage of the book,” or whatever it is, right?

[00:26:53] We used a different editor for the very first development draft of the book, got to a, a stage that we were like, “Okay, this is pretty good, but I think it needs something else,” and then brought in a different editor to say, “Okay, let’s actually rework it from there.” And I loved having that flexibility to find the

[00:27:08] Madeline: exact right person to work with.

[00:27:10] Yeah. The, the role of the in-house editor in corporate publishing is really tough because they, you know, um, the … Really what they are expected to do is both be s- a star at acquiring books, a star at, at, uh, managing their relationships with agents, a star at being an in-house cheerleader and a project manager.

[00:27:34] And if you do all of those things, you probably don’t have much time left to actually work with the author on the page. Yeah. It’s really, like,

[00:27:40] James: three different jobs. At, at least. There’s just …

[00:27:42] Madeline: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so that’s where, um, part of what I could see is that a lot of the people who were most skilled at working with authors on the page were the ones who are no longer actually operating inside, um, inside houses- Yeah

[00:27:56] and so they’re available to work on a contract basis. I wanna

[00:27:58] James: make just one more point. We’ve, uh, we’ve talked a lot about, um, the traditional model, how Author’s Equity inverts that, you know. So the summary is traditional model you get the advance, but they keep, publisher keeps most of the money. Author’s Equity, no advance, but you’re gonna keep most of the upside.

[00:28:11] Um, and the issues with scale and alignment and, you know, the author being in more control of the process, I think those are all very strong reasons for why a top author in particular would choose Author’s Equity over a traditional deal. But I also wanna make a comment about self-published authors. Yeah.

[00:28:29] Because, you know, a lot of our friends are entrepreneurs and self-published authors, and so I, I thought about self-publishing Atomic Habits for, like, a year. Um, I debated whether to do it or not, and, um, the story in my head was, “Well, I’ll only be on Amazon and Audible, but how much am I giving up really?”

[00:28:45] You know? Like, isn’t that 90% of the sales? Like, what… And now actually we’ve had some very interesting transitions of books that were self-published and were successful on their own, and then have since moved to Author’s Equity, and now we have real data for what you’re giving up and what the difference can be.

[00:29:00] So, like- Books like Don’t Believe Everything You Think, uh, The Simple Path to Wealth, uh, The Almanac, Naval Ravikant, all three of those books already had sold hundreds of thousands of copies on their own- Right … and then chose to come to Author’s Equity. I always feel like that’s a very interesting signal because none of those guys, Eric, Joseph, JL, they, they didn’t need us.

[00:29:20] They were already doing fine. But, um, what you’re able to see, like if you take The Simple Path to Wealth, for example, we’ve essentially doubled his weekly sales. Um, and it’s because it is now in retail outlets. You know, he’s selling in Barnes & Noble, he’s selling in retail outlets throughout the country.

[00:29:36] Um, and as a book goes omni-channel and it’s available everywhere, it’s kinda like each little book is a billboard. Yeah. And the online sales have also lifted. So the Amazon and Audible sales also went up after it was available elsewhere. Um, yeah, there’s, there are lots of things about that, and I, you know, some of these self-published to, um, Author’s Equity published transitions, there’s, you know, I won’t get into the weeds too much, but there’s, there’s a lot to cover there.

[00:30:02] But we have seen a lot of success with that, and the thing that has surprised me the most is that most of these authors are basically making the same per copy as they were before, uh, on their own. Maybe it’s a little bit less, but it’s … They’re coming out way ahead with the increase in volume, and, um, I did not think that was possible.

[00:30:22] Um, I thought that surely they would have to at least give up earnings, but in fact, uh, in audio, you’ll definitely make more with us than you do- Yeah, your audio deal is, is- It’s notably better. You … ACX and Audible kind of screw self-published authors, and so, you know, we can improve your royalty there. On the print side, it’s basically the same.

[00:30:42] Um, you know, most self-published books are making 5 to 5.50, uh, on the, the print side from Amazon. That’s what they’re taking home per copy. Depends on factors like pricing and all that, but that’s a good estimate, and, like, we’re right there. Um, and so, uh, if you blend the average take-home, uh, a lot of the self-published authors are basically making the same, and they just get this extra volume with us.

[00:31:04] So that’s been, that’s been interesting to see, too. Um, I think … I’m, I’m obviously very excited about the model, right? I think there’s good reasons for self-published authors to move over. I think there’s good reasons for traditional published authors to move over. I have learned that people make this decision for many different reasons, and, you know, it’s not gonna be a perfect fit for everybody, and it is a highly selective model, too.

[00:31:24] We can’t, you know, we’re not gonna be publishing hundreds of books every year. There’s limits to slots. Yeah, how many books are you publishing

[00:31:28] Nathan: in 2026?

[00:31:29] Madeline: But- Um, about 20 under the Author’s Equity imprint- Yeah … and then we have two, two different, um, uh, romance programs, one called 831 Stories, the other called Luxe, and those are, um, are both run in a slightly different way.

[00:31:44] But the Author’s Equity titles are about 20 a year. I,

[00:31:47] James: I think the … My feeling is there’s, you know, there’s good reasons for traditional, uh- There’s … I’m very excited about it. There’s good reasons for, you know, self-published authors to move over. There’s good reasons for traditional published authors to move over.

[00:31:58] But it’s also a very personal decision. You know, it’s not gonna be … Different people prioritize different things. Um, but there are, there are a lot of exciting things about the process, and I think I, I kinda summarize it as, like, there are four things that you really want as an author, and I think Author’s Equity is the first time that you can simultaneously get all four in one place.

[00:32:18] Um, you know, you wanna have the best earnings possible. Um, you want to have the widest distribution possible, so usually you have to give up the earnings on the traditional side. You have to give up the distribution on the self-publish side. Uh, you wanna have creative control, um, so th- whether that’s better rights or just, you know, the ability to control your work and how it’s, how it’s made.

[00:32:36] And then you wanna have the best possible process for creating an amazing book. Um, and I think this is, this is the fir- I’m so excited about the model because I think it’s the first time you get all four in the same place.

[00:32:47] Nathan: So we were talking about this at the mastermind that we’re hosting, right? This is why we’re, we’re all hanging out in Franklin, Tennessee, and there’s a, a category of author that should not publish with Author’s Equity because you are giving up the advance.

[00:33:02] Madeline: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:02] Nathan: And so as I understand it, it’s the person who doesn’t know how well this idea will sell.

[00:33:08] Madeline: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:08] Nathan: So can you talk about that of, of the person who either, you know, could really use the advance so they can then go spend two years writing the book, or they’re working on something that’s maybe a cultural moment in time or whatever else where you’re like, “Who knows if this is going to be a hit and take off or-” Yeah

[00:33:24] uh, you know, sell a few thousand copies and that’s it.

[00:33:27] Madeline: Well, uh, and speaking first in terms of from our perspective of what are we, what are we considering in making our own decisions about whether to offer, um, a- offer a deal to an author, uh, one of our key questions is, is this a book that we believe it’s at least possible that we could sell more copies in year two than in year one?

[00:33:48] Right. So as a, as a small company, as a startup, we do have to think about, um, avoiding cases where it’s just like, wow, it’s a two-week opportunity. We’re gonna- this author’s gonna be on all the morning shows. They’re- … you know, it’s gonna be like, uh, um, a, a rocket ship for a couple of weeks, and then it’s gonna come back down to Earth and nobody’s gonna care.

[00:34:10] That’s a really terrible, um, scenario for us as a company. Um, we also have to think about is this an author who’s going to be a good partner to us? So we’re really, we’re not providing … We’re not a service provider. We’re really business partners together. And so is this somebody who we’re leaning in because not only are we excited about the book that they’re going to do, and not only do we think there’s a market opportunity for that book, but also we really feel like this is somebody we wanna work with.

[00:34:42] This is somebody who knows something about the market out there that we feel like we can learn from. We’re going to enjoy teaching them what we know, and that together we’re going to be able to make good, rational decisions related to any- you know, how, how the, the money’s spent, where we invest, et cetera.

[00:35:01] James: We only win if they win, right? Right, exactly. We win together. And it’s, um … That’s been one of the most fun parts is we have a lot of really great authors, and, um, it’s amazing to learn from them, but it’s also just fun to be a team together. And everybody needs to, everybody needs to be excited about coming together- Yeah

[00:35:17] uh, to make it happen. I mean, if the, if you got friction and the personalities are abrasive or whatever, like it’s not … That, that’s not fun for anybody. No. You know who… I had someone tell me once that there are four types of relationships in life. There’s win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, and win-win. Mm-hmm.

[00:35:32] And the only one of those four that is sustainable is win-win. Um, and this is why I look at, you know, traditional publishing deals and things like that, and it, it kind of feels like you’re almost- Right … the publisher’s trying to get as much of the pie as they can, and then you figure it out after. You’re a first-time author, and you’re just happy to get a deal, and then you’re like, “But this doesn’t feel like a win anymore.”

[00:35:51] And so of course the relationship doesn’t persist. And I, I’m kind of at the point in my career where I’m like, “Why would we wanna do anything but create relationships that are win-win?” You know, like, let, let’s all come together and, and rise together, and I think this model does that really well.

[00:36:05] Nathan: I think that’s, that’s a good point to jump into the books themselves, right?

[00:36:09] We’re h- we have a lot of authors listening who are like, “Okay, how do I make a great book that’s going to sell more in year two than year one?” And so you have this position from, you know, watching thousands of books, from coaching, you know, all of your author friends, everybody who comes to you with questions and, and all of this.

[00:36:25] And so what are those things that you’re most looking for that are the signs that say- Okay. Yes. This book has a good shot of accelerating over time

[00:36:33] Madeline: I mean, it’s, it’s the, the, um, easy to say, but hard to achieve- Mm-hmm … stuff. But it’s, and this in my mind ap- uh, applies whether it’s nonfiction or fiction, is this a, is there a unique problem that exists in the world that this book is extremely good at solving?

[00:36:53] So the reason that can apply to fiction is I’m bored, or I need inspiration, or I need to be entertained. Um, does this novel do a really, really good job of doing that better than the other options that this consumer might have, either from other novels or watching Netflix? Mm-hmm. Um, so the… You can look at a l- in the nonfiction space, you can look at a lot of different categories that, um, yes, maybe there’s a, a universal need, like a lot of people have, have, uh…

[00:37:28] are interested in making more money, or being healthier, or managing their relationships better. But, um, there also are a lot of books in those categories and a lot of words spilled. And so we’re looking, really taking the perspective of the reader when we’re, when we’re looking at a book to, do I perk up?

[00:37:50] Mm-hmm. Does, like, does this get my heart racing, or am I kinda already bored and, and not, you know, and ready to move on, and this is just a proposal? So it’s, um, a lot of that, the, the answer I’ve just given you, it’s the same kind of answers that, uh, that any, um, any traditional book publisher is also going to say.

[00:38:10] We’re all looking for the same kind of books- Yeah … that are going to, that we believe are going to be able to stand out in a crowded marketplace. What’s different for us is then the idea of, okay, do I also want to grab ahold of this author, and together we figure out how to then bring it to life.

[00:38:29] James: I have a couple things I would add.

[00:38:30] I feel like, um, first I, I, this is focused mostly on nonfiction authors, right? Like, I, I don’t know anything about writing romance or novels or whatever. But, um- As a nonfiction author, I think you really want to be building an audience of some sort, and that is for two primary reasons. The first is, yeah, of course, it makes you more attractive to the publisher and it makes the launch much easier if you can email 100,000 people or a million people.

[00:38:55] Like, yeah, obvious, that’s obvious to everybody. But, um, the real reason that I think it matters is because you force yourself to run your content through a filter. By, by growing the audience, whether that’s making a podcast each week or posting on social media or putting out a newsletter or writing articles, whatever it is, you’re, you’re forcing yourself to put a certain number of reps in.

[00:39:16] And, you know, like in my case, I wrote 120, 150 articles about habits on my blog for three years before I got a book deal. Um, and, you know, it turns out not many people write 100 articles about habits, and you’ll learn a lot along the way. And if you try your best 100 times, well, you’re going to… Not every time you’re going to hit the mark, but you’re going to have 10 or 15 pieces of content where you say, “This is my best stuff.

[00:39:39] Like, this is what really resonates.” And I was able to take those 10 or 15 or 20 things and help make them the backbone of the book. At the time, I thought I had written about half the book. It turns out I had only written about 10%, and a lot of it needed to be reworked and massaged and extended and holes needed to be filled in.

[00:39:54] But it was a very strong starting point because I knew what ideas resonated. So I think building an audience, the primary reason is not just because of the numbers and the reach. The primary reason is because it forces you to make your ideas better. Mm-hmm. Um, and so I really like it when content has been run through a filter first, and you can trust what your best ideas are.

[00:40:14] So I think that’s step one. Um, then after you know the topic that you’re going to write about, maybe you have a blog about finance or, you know, money. Maybe you have, you know, a blog about habits like me or a podcast on, you know, self-help or whatever it is, whatever the topic is for you. You have some category that you’re pretty sure, okay, this is what the book is going to be about.

[00:40:33] You know, this is, this is my thing. Like, I always knew that it was going to be a habits book. I didn’t know what the title was or what shape it was going to take, but I knew that was my, my content. I think the biggest piece that the hardest thing to find, um, is if you’ve been making content for a long time, you probably have lots of ideas, and that means you can fill out the chapters.

[00:40:52] But do you have the vessel that is gonna carry the book? Do you have the, the, what we often call the packaging or the what do you see on the cover, the title, the subtitle, et cetera? You can take lots of examples. So like, um, take Mel Robbins’ book, Let Them Theory, is super hot right now, right? So let’s use that as an example.

[00:41:09] Really, a lot of the core principles of Let Them are things that or the Stoics wrote about. They’ve been around for 1,000 years. You know, don’t focus on what other people are doing, focus on yourself, focus on what you can control. Like, you know, if somebody misunderstands you, let them, and so on. But the unique vessel that carries the book is this concept of, you know, if somebody misunderstands you, let them.

[00:41:28] And then also, rather than focusing on what they’re doing, let me do something else. And that is a very compelling little memeable package- Mm-hmm … uh, for this timeless idea that’s been around for a long time. Um, and so I would say that what you really want is a universal problem that you have a unique angle on.

[00:41:47] Um, you know, I, I feel like there’s a chapter in Atomic Habits where I talk about deliberate practice. It could have been a book about deliberate practice where I mention habits, but instead, it’s a book about habits where I mention deliberate practice, and I think the difference in how those two books would sell is, like, enormous.

[00:42:07] Because if you don’t know what deliberate practice is, I gotta take 30 seconds and unpack it for you and explain it. Mm. But just by virtue of growing up in society, uh, you know that having good habits is favorable and having bad habits is unfavorable. Like, I don’t need to explain any of that. All I need to convince you of is, hey, if you’re only gonna read one book about habits, Atomic Habits is the one to read, and that is a totally different sell.

[00:42:30] And so I think I would– could boil that down by just saying you want to find what is the timeless desire that is always gonna be there that you’re tapping into, but you need a new, unique vessel for delivering the information around that timeless desire.

[00:42:46] Nathan: So taking this and making it very practical- Mm-hmm

[00:42:48] ’cause I’ve had this conversation with you about my own book- Yeah … where, what? A year, a year, year and a half ago, I, uh, brought you a book called The Audience Shortcut, and it was all about how to achieve what you want in life through having the right people paying attention. Had worked on the packaging of it, you know, all of this stuff, had maybe written half or a third of it.

[00:43:08] And we sat down, uh, in Las Vegas, of all places, and um, and I was like, “Here you go. What do you think?” You ran through it, and then you came back. Like, we talked through it a bunch, how to improve it, and we were making all of the tweaks and, and making it better. And then you came back uh, the next day or a couple days later with a 20-minute Loom video and said, “Don’t write th- that book.

[00:43:29] Write this book instead.” Mm-hmm. Talk about what went into that, and you can be as specific as you want or- Yeah … or as high level.

[00:43:35] James: I, well, this other book, the book that you’re working on now- The Ladders of Wealth … The Ladders of Wealth, is a timeless topic. You know, people, I mean, w- I feel like one good filter that people can use for their books when, uh, they’re working on something is can you find three to five books that have already sold over a million copies that are adjacent to what you wanna do?

[00:43:54] Like, you know, in my case, I would’ve said Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Power of Habit, you know, books like this that you look at and you’re like, “Okay, they’re already a success.” I got my own version that I’m putting out. I’m, you know, doing it my own way, but it’s nice to have a couple examples of that where you can say, yeah, people really want to hear about this topic, and now you’re gonna add your unique lens or your unique angle to it.

[00:44:16] Um, I can’t really name any books about audience- Right … that have sold a million copies. I, I don’t… Maybe we can try to come up with some, some version of it, but I, I can’t really name any. I can name a lot of books about wealth that have sold a million copies. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, Psychology of Money, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Total Money Makeover.

[00:44:32] Like, you just go through the list and you’re like, “Okay, this is a category- … people really care about.” People buy this. Yeah. Um, and you had something unique, which is the ladders of wealth concept. Also, isn’t that one of your most popular articles? It’s my most popular article. It was the most popular article.

[00:44:45] The most

[00:44:45] Nathan: thing, popular thing I’ve ever written. Like, this is- And you had this moment where you’re like, “What are you doing?” Well, Mark,

[00:44:49] James: Mark Manson had the same thing happen when he worked on Subtle Art. Uh, he was like kind of struggling with the title, and then he told his agent like, “This is the most popular article on my website,” and she was like, “What are you doing?”

[00:44:58] Like, “Make this the title.” You know? Like, this is… Don’t, don’t overthink it too much. Like, this is what people wanna hear from you on. So usually the big categories are pretty obvious, habits, money, you know, whatever, things like that. But, um, the hard part is not identifying the category or the desire. The hard part is coming up with a nice unique angle that makes sense, um, for addressing that category.

[00:45:20] And I really liked the ladders of wealth concept, and I felt like, all right, timeless category, bunch of examples of books that have sold millions of copies. I really like the concept. And you had a lot to say about it. Also, a lot of what you say about the audience book can feed directly- Yeah … into this.

[00:45:35] Like, it fits fine in this chapter. It, it- Right … just let it live there. Um, and so that’s kind of one of the secrets of, of writing these books is you, you can sort of say whatever you want on the inside. Um, you can find ways to like work your best material in, and that was, that was a big portion of the process for me with Atomic Habits.

[00:45:56] I… The first year of working on the book was just me figuring out, how do I get my best ideas stacked up front- Right … in the book? Um, you know, how do I get 1% better every day? You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, and every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

[00:46:13] I knew those are three of my most popular articles of all time, and I had all three of those ideas in the first like 26 pages. Um, and the idea is- It takes so many hurdles for somebody to buy a book. It’s so hard to sell one book. Like, you, you gotta be on a podcast, and they see you there, and they see you in the bookstore, and they see you at the airport, and then they’re reminded of it on Facebook, and then they click, and they finally buy.

[00:46:35] And it comes to their house, and it sits on their desk for six months, and then they crack it open, and they read, you know, 14 pages, and then their kid’s crying, and they gotta put it down. And you don’t wanna, like, bury the best stuff, you know? Like, you want them to read the first 5,000 words and be like, “Damn, this is so good.

[00:46:51] I have to tell somebody about it.” Um, and so I was trying to figure out how do you, you know, how do you do that? So anyway, a lot of, a lot of ideas there, but I think those are some of the things to consider if you’re trying to frame your book up in a way to make it successful.

[00:47:03] Madeline: And one thing I would say also that is different about what I think of as good publishing versus a sort of more of a, a service model or of what an author is going to get if they’re going on their own, is you want there to be a push and pull of ideas.

[00:47:20] And, um, no matter how brilliant the author is, no matter how perfect they are on the page, um, there is value in just chewing through it together to really hash out. Like, is… Who do you think the readers are for this book? Here’s… I, I just read this manuscript, and here’s who I think, I think it is. Do you agree with me?

[00:47:43] Don’t you agree with me? Okay, if, if we, if there’s a gap there, then what do we need to address better, either in terms of the content or the positioning or the title or the subtitle or whatever it is? And know that that’s where there is real value in having, um, a team of people who are coming together to work on a book as opposed to just kinda going your own, um, online or going to, into a system where you’re not gonna really get that much feedback because people don’t have time for you.

[00:48:15] Nathan: Yeah, I think that’s so good. And James, something that you had said to me was in, in your, like, “Here’s why you should write about this,” um, ’cause I had everything tied to audience related to Kit and things that I’m known for. Um, but you did a… You went on X on my account and searched minimum favorites- Mm-hmm

[00:48:32] from, from my username, you know, to find, okay, what are the- What were your most popular

[00:48:37] James: tweets?

[00:48:38] Nathan: Yeah, and they were… Your, your point was that they were all about money. Yeah. Or, like, nine out of 10, you know, basically- Mm-hmm … were all about money. And so seeing what resonates. Something that I’ve seen you do, um, Sahil has done really well, is take these ideas that you know resonate and you know are going to go viral, maybe, like in Sahil’s case, uh, the graph of time that you are gonna spend with your kids- Yeah

[00:48:58] by age, right? You know that’s gonna resonate. He’s- He had already

[00:49:01] James: posted on social media five times, and it went viral every time. Right. Um, and so yeah, like I… In my opinion, that graph is probably too late in his book. Mm. It should be, uh, it should be earlier. Um, you know, like, uh, you take your m- list of most popular tweets, um- That would, let’s say that eight of the top 10 are about money Right

[00:49:19] you know those lines resonate. Now, I’m not saying you gotta fit all eight into the first 15 pages, but some of those sound bites should be early.

[00:49:25] Madeline: Right.

[00:49:25] James: Um, that also is really good content for when you do interviews. Like, I… The first time that I was on CBS This Morning, I’m prepping for this morning show, and I’m, like, kind of nervous, and the way that I decided to script it out or try to figure out what am I gonna say in this short four-minute interview was I took my top tweets, and I started dropping them into the questions and thinking about, “All right, if I don’t say anything else, let me try to get this sound bite in.”

[00:49:46] Right. And I, I think I had, like, three things that I really wanted to make sure I said on air, um, and I got those in, and it ended up being a really good segment. And, you know, if you can… This is the point I was making earlier about it’s a great reason to build an audience, is you force yourself to run the content through a filter.

[00:50:02] You can trust that stuff. You know? You, you, you know that, okay, this clicks with people, so let’s lead with some of the best stuff.

[00:50:07] Madeline: Yeah.

[00:50:08] Nathan: That makes sense. What are some of the things that make the biggest difference for authors in year two and beyond for these books to keep selling?

[00:50:15] Madeline: One of the answers is the probably most frustrating one, which is that the book has to be good.

[00:50:21] James: Yep.

[00:50:21] Madeline: Um- That’s the, that is the answer … that, that’s the answer. Um- There

[00:50:25] James: are strategic things you can do, which we’ll talk about- Yeah … but that is the- Um- And, and as

[00:50:28] Nathan: we’ve been working on The Letters of Wealth, that’s the thing that both of you have said, is like, “Here’s the date. Here’s what we’re working towards, and what matters most, this date doesn’t matter at all.”

[00:50:37] Yeah. “What matters is the book being great.” Tim

[00:50:38] James: Urban, Tim Urban told me one time, um, that online, the difference between A-plus work and A-minus work is, like, enormous. It’s not like, you know, an A-plus is, like, a 99 out of 100, and an A-minus is, like, a 93. That’s not how it works online. An A-plus is, like, a 9,000, and an A-minus is, like, a 93.

[00:50:55] And so taking the time to really get it right, to truly… You’re only gonna write the book once. Make it the best it can possibly be. Now, you know, of course, that’s tricky. Like, you don’t want to use it as a crutch to just endlessly edit and kind of over-knead dough and work it too hard and all of that.

[00:51:09] But, um, my little rule is, as long as I’m working, as long as I’m working on it, I should be patient. If I’m not working on it, then I’m just waiting. Right? Now, now you’re just, like, you’re just researching and spinning your wheels and whatever. But as long as it’s moving forward, let’s stick with it until we hit the highest standard we can.

[00:51:25] Madeline: Yeah. There’s a, um… Seth Godin puts it, same idea, but he says the author and the publisher’s job is to sell the first copy. Th- then the book has to start selling itself. Mm. And, um, and so that plays out in lots of different ways. Part of it is that, um, you really, you want booksellers to want to keep that book- on tables- Right

[00:51:51] over the long term. And, um, booksellers don’t operate nonprofits. Those bookstores- … um, whatever their size is, they… inventory costs them money. They are going to, um, to buy the books that they believe they can continue to sell. And so, um, that matters obviously in terms of when you’re selling the book in at the time of publication.

[00:52:14] But the real win is if you have these thousands of different booksellers around the country, whether that’s an independent or a Target or a Barnes & Noble or whoever, that they are continuing to give you visibility that, that goes on. Um, the… another way to think about it is, and it’s particularly helpful doing this with the nonfiction, it’s over the course of the year, there are different retail promotional opportunities.

[00:52:44] They’re, they’re all pretty obvious, but there’s, there are the, um, there’s Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, there’s summer reading, there’s, um, there’s graduation, there’s holiday giving at the end of the year, and then there’s New Year, new you. And so you can think about those as different pulse points that will…

[00:53:01] little, little ways that you can keep, um, creating or reboosting momentum for the book. Um, James, you’ve done this really well for years and years and years. So do you wanna talk a little bit about how you’ve approached this- Yeah … for Atomic Habits?

[00:53:14] James: I, I think it’s tapping into that. The… I, I would say the two things are pretty related, but, uh, tapping into that seasonal buying energy when, you know, in late November, early December, people are buying gifts anyway.

[00:53:26] So the conversation changes from, uh, “Hey, buy this book,” to, “I need to buy something. What should I get them? Oh, I’ll get this book for them.” Um, and that’s, you know, such a different, um, psychology in the, the buyer’s mind. Um, and also these giftable holidays that you mentioned. So I think if you can combine those two things, you can start to stack your, uh, promotional efforts to coincide with, like, these tail win- these natural tailwinds that you get.

[00:53:51] So, like, I really, I only do… I, for a long time, for the first couple years after Atomic Habits came out, I would do, uh, two interview blocks a year. I would do interviews in early April, and then those would all come out, like, April, May, right around graduation season, and so that would give Atomic Habits a lift as a graduation gift.

[00:54:08] At the same time, I would mention it, you know, at the top of my newsletter, “Hey, if you’re looking for a gift for a graduate in your life, you know, here, Atomic Habits is on sale here.” Um, and you start to stack these things together. You could do a little social push. All the energy’s kind of happening in this concentrated window.

[00:54:21] Right. And then I would do a second, um, interview block at, like, the end of November, early December, and obviously January is a very big time for habits, and so all those interviews come out right around the new year. You get this natural spike, and you kind of add to that. So it’s sort of like when is the rhythm of this book gonna rise anyway, and can you just add fuel- add fuel to the fire.

[00:54:41] And, um, you know, I think this is something you do for Ladders of Wealth. We look at that and you’re like, “Okay, you know, it’s often kinda hard to choose what do you buy for your dad or something.” And great, all right, Father’s Day is coming up, and you could mention in your newsletter or on social media that week, “Here are three testimonials from dads who really love this book.”

[00:54:57] Right. You know? Like, you can specifically pull those people from your audience or put one person in there and, you know, it… You start to shape the way that people think about your book, and if you do that for a couple years over and over again, then people are like, “Oh yeah, this is a good Father’s Day gift,” you know?

[00:55:13] And then you can start pinging the gift guide people on Substack or the, you know- Yeah … whoever’s putting together that, and you’re like, “Hey, this is, uh, you know, can you include it there?” Or whatever.

[00:55:21] Nathan: Yeah. I love that. Okay, the topic that I wanna wrap up on is a, a hot topic for a lot of authors, and that is the New York Times list.

[00:55:28] Madeline: Mm. So as you’re

[00:55:29] Nathan: planning a launch, I feel like our, our friends writing books are in two camps. One where they’re like, “Uh, this is my identity for you know, I have to hit the list, otherwise I’m going to have a meltdown.” Uh- “I’ve failed.” “I’ve failed.” Yeah. “Uh, this will change my speaking career, you know, I’m charging x amount now.

[00:55:49] If I have this, these words after my name or in my bio, I can charge, you know, two or… X or, or more.”

[00:55:55] James: And I think even if most people know that that’s maybe not true in the extreme sense, if you don’t hit the list, there’s a feeling of disappointment.

[00:56:01] Nathan: For

[00:56:01] James: sure.

[00:56:01] Nathan: And then there’s the other side where people say, like, “I can’t control it.

[00:56:04] I’m only gonna focus on what I can control.” Uh, and you end up with very different behaviors- Which also sounds

[00:56:08] James: good and is more rational, but if those people hit the list they’re gonna tell everybody they know

[00:56:12] Nathan: about it. 100%. So there’s, you know. So, like, w- what’s the advice that you give? And I mean, you get to see all these books.

[00:56:18] You two are thrilled when the books that you publish- Yeah … hit the list. Sure. And so it obviously matters. But how, how would you advise authors to- The question

[00:56:25] Madeline: is if it do- it, does it really matter commercially or does it just matter psychologically? Mm. And I think absolutely psychologically. There’s…

[00:56:33] Just because there are not that many different, um, Boy Scout badges you can- Right … you can get, and this is, like, the ultimate cool Boy Scout badge. Um, but just for, for anybody in the audience who’s not that clear on how the best-seller list works, how… And we’re talking about the best-seller list because it’s the New York Times list, and that is essentially the, the main one that exists in the market now.

[00:56:58] Um, it is, um, it is very quirky. It is not- Scientific. It is, there is an industry weekly report of, um, how many units sold. Um, those are reported by all retailers to an organization that creates a report called BookScan. That’s scientific. That says you sold 10,000 copies or you sold two copies, and there’s no guesswork, there’s no algorithm, it’s just a tabulation.

[00:57:28] That is not what The New York Times list is. The New York Times has a, a self-selected, sort of like the formula for Coke. It’s a, it’s a mystery. They have, uh, a subset of retailers across the country that report the sales into them. Um, they are… They give different weight to the channels of sales. So if a book does really well in the independents, that’s going to be weighted differently than the number that comes in from Amazon.

[00:57:58] Um, they are trying to, um, to avoid any chance that somebody’s trying to game the list by buying a bunch of copies themselves, so they’re looking for, um, for anything that might look like a bulk sale. Um, sometimes that means that they misinterpret things that are genuinely organic demand. Um, the most, um, perhaps absurd and frustrating experience that I had with this was We publish a fabulous book, um, in partnership with The New York Times.

[00:58:32] It’s with New York Times Games called Puzzle Mania. It’s a beautiful four-color, hardcover, very giftable book. And, um, the … We have a weekly meeting with the, the creative team at The Times that we’ve worked with on these books, and it happened to be that the weekly meeting that we had with them was when the, the list got reported.

[00:58:55] And they … Definitely, like, we knew based on the numbers, like, there were n- there was no ga- there were no games going on- Right … and we were not trying to game the system. It’s just that the organic demand for this book for its first week and week after week after week was just crazy good. So really by all rights, it should’ve been number one or number two on the, the advice how-to list, um, on The New York Times last, that week.

[00:59:21] We’re on a Zoom call with The New York Times when Craig, my colleague, who’s the first one who gets the list, I see it in his face. He, he gets the, the email, and he’s just like, “Sorry, I have to interrupt and say we didn’t make the list.” And the expletives that came out out of our creative partners at The Times, who were very frustrated that this book was not on the list, and if you look, um, which we all then did, at a, the fine print, um, in the bestseller section, it says that all books that are games or puzzles, um, do not get to count towards the list.

[00:59:56] So it’s just … I mean, that’s, that’s silly, and it’s a little bit like the royalty rates. These are things that, that are rules that get built up over time, and it’s great if you hit The New York Times list. It’s, like, a wonderful thing that then you can say forever, but it is really not something you can control.

[01:00:16] And so putting all of your, your hopes and dreams on something that can’t be controlled, um, is a little silly, and it also can, uh, can sort of take your eye off the ball of what is really the most important thing, which is just how do we reach the greatest number of readers, full stop.

[01:00:35] James: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think what I would add to that is you kind of

[01:00:38] I think about it as you sell enough copies to be in the conversation. You know? If you sell, you sell 10 or 15,000 copies- Yeah, you can control … then it’s like, okay, great, you’re in the mix. Maybe you’re gonna be on the list, maybe not. It’s their decision on, you know, where they put you and whether that you make it, but you’re just trying to give yourself the opportunity to, to make it.

[01:00:53] Um, and it’s frustrating if they don’t pick you, but that’s, you know, that’s kinda how it goes. Um, I think the most accurate list in the industry is the Amazon Most Sold chart. Uh, because all of these lists, the, The New York Times list or whatever, it’s, it BookScan, they’re usually divided out by format, so they’re only looking at, like, hardcover sales, or they’re only looking at e-book sales or audio sales.

[01:01:15] Well, I, I, I’m selling in all three formats. Like, I wanna know who’s selling the most units overall. And, um- The Amazon most sold chart is the most accurate representation of that because it’s all print sales, all Kindle sales, and all Audible sales bundled into one number, and then just whoever sold the most units over the last week, that’s where your ranking is on the, um, on the chart.

[01:01:39] Now, not all audiobooks are sold on Audible, not all e-books are sold on Kindle, not all hardcovers are sold on Amazon, but it’s a big enough aggregated number that I think it’s the most accurate representation. There’s no other single source that is combining all those into one number. Uh, and so if we actually want to see who’s selling the most books, I think look at the Amazon most sold chart.

[01:01:58] If you want the highest status marker and to be able to brag about it, then it’s like, who’s number one on The New York Times?

[01:02:04] Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. There is, uh, so much more that we could dive into, uh, but this has been a fa- a fantastic conversation, and I just wanna say for anyone considering publishing with Author’s Equity, you have a very limited number of books that you can take on.

[01:02:17] It has to be ones that you really, really believe in. Yeah. But you want authors who wanna bet on themselves and who have these books and content to invest in it long term, that you want them to reach out to you. Where, where would you like them to, to reach

[01:02:30] Madeline: out? Um, they … The easiest thing is info@authorsequity.com.

[01:02:34] Perfect.

[01:02:35] James: We do actually read the emails.

[01:02:36] Madeline: We do read the emails. I, I-

[01:02:37] James: I was saying we should put a counter on the website at the beginning of each year and be like, “We have 25 slots le- left,” and then- … each time we sign an author, it’s like, “24, 23, 22.” But, um- I, I … Yeah,

[01:02:47] Madeline: exactly.

[01:02:48] James: It’s, uh … People publish books for many different reasons, and different things make sense for different people, but I think if you are a top author and you have a large audience, and you can look at the numbers and say, “You know, I’m pretty confident, like, I’m gonna be selling tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies,” and especially if it’s a book that has a long lifespan.

[01:03:08] Mm-hmm. You know? It … Once you start to stretch, if you only look at things with, like, a three-year lens, then you’re like, “Okay, maybe the advance is better. Maybe I’m gonna sell more copies. I don’t know.” But if you have a book that you think, “This is a pretty timeless topic, and, like, people are probably gonna be interested in this in 10 years or 15 years,” if you stretch it out 20, 30

[01:03:26] I mean, it just … The numbers become … You end up giving up an insane amount- Yeah … um, under a traditional structure. And, you know, like I said, people make the choice for different reasons. It’s not a, a great fit for everybody, and I don’t want anyone to feel pressure about it, but, um, I’m really excited about the model because I think it’s

[01:03:42] Right now, I think it’s a one of one- Yeah … option. Um, hopefully we’ll put enough pressure on other publishers that there will be more like us, but, um, it’s a unique opportunity right now, and I think it’s, I think it’s a good thing for the industry.

[01:03:54] Nathan: That’s amazing. Thank you both so much for coming on.

[01:03:56] Thanks for having us. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show.

[01:04:11] Thank you much for listening.

[00:00:00] Bryan: Track the outcome and make decisions somewhat focused on that, and you would be in the top .01% of your market.

[00:00:06] Nathan: If you’re struggling to break through the $1 million ceiling in your business, this episode is for you. Because today I’ve got two million-dollar founders joining me on the podcast. Grant Baldwin built the Speaker Lab into a multi-million dollar coaching business.

[00:00:17] Nathan: Brian Harris has scaled Growth Tools past $2 million helping coaches grow their businesses.

[00:00:22] Bryan: We just focus on, first, make offer great and have a high-ticket offer. Like, start by needing the fewest clients possible, ’cause that eliminates most sales and marketing problem. And the second one is-

[00:00:31] Nathan: In this episode, Grant and Brian get into what actually unlocks that first million in a creator business.

[00:00:37] Grant: AI’s creating a new season, and whether that’s positive or negative is kind of ultimately up to you and, like, what you decide to do with it.

[00:00:43] Nathan: Relationships will matter more than ever. Data will matter more than ever. We cover how to position an offer so the right people find you, why tracking customer outcomes beats any sales or marketing tactic, and what Grant saw when he asked himself whether he still wanted to run the company he built.

[00:00:56] Nathan: First, the focus and elimination is key to breaking through a million. Second is obsessing over the outcomes. Like, actually track the outcomes. And then the third is…

[00:01:09] Nathan: Guys, welcome back to the show. It’s… We have had w- a rare episode with multiple guests. Mm-hmm. And now you guys are the repeat guests.

[00:01:17] Grant: Have you ever had… You’ve had repeat guests, but have you ever had- Yeah … the same duo back? Ooh.

[00:01:22] Nathan: It’s the first time.

[00:01:23] Bryan: Wow. Okay. We’re the first repeat duo.

[00:01:25] Grant: This is how Yeah.

[00:01:26] Bryan: This feels like when you- Maybe … when people brag about their book- We were trying to get that this time … on Amazon, where they’re the number one in, like, the 17th category. The, the

[00:01:33] Nathan: the most obscure category.

[00:01:34] Bryan: Best

[00:01:34] Nathan: seller.

[00:01:35] Bryan: We’re the best seller.

[00:01:36] Nathan: But I think people loved your episode because you were talking behind the scenes about scaling creator businesses to a level that most people haven’t seen.

[00:01:45] Nathan: Or if they’ve seen it, they’ve only seen it from someone that’s, like, a household name in the creator space, where, you know, an Ali Abdaal or Alex Hormozi, who’s very loud and out there and saying, like, “I’m very successful. You should, you know, copy this format.” And I feel like you guys took the… have taken the leverage that a, an online business, a creator-type business gives you, and then built just a fundamentally great business behind it, rather than the typical, um, I don’t know, very loud and in your face style.

[00:02:17] Grant: Yeah.

[00:02:17] Nathan: Was that intentional to build a… I guess, to me, it seemed much more traditional style of businesses with this leverage, or is it just… Yeah, how did that come about?

[00:02:27] Grant: I think some of it is, um, like a preference. Mm-hmm. Like, I think, uh, I heard one time someone say they would rather be the owner in the box that nobody knows than be the star player on the field that everybody wants to be around.

[00:02:37] Grant: Mm-hmm. And I think, um, I think for me personally, like, uh, probably similar to all of us, I think we’ve all spent enough time together over the past decade or so of we all like, we like being around people, but we’re also not trying to be the star of the show. Yeah. And so there are certain businesses or models that, that it almost necessitates that or requires you to be out front and to- Mm-hmm

[00:02:56] Grant: you know, beat your chest or, or beat the drum or whatever that may be. And so I think, um, I know for me, like as, as we’ve grown the business, is going, um, how do we build the business in a way that doesn’t require that? Okay. I don’t wanna be the dancing monkey. I don’t wanna feel like I’m on the treadmill.

[00:03:10] Grant: And I think part of the fun of entrepreneurship is everyone gets to build the business in a way that makes sense to them. Mm-hmm. Like, it, there’s not a right or wrong way to do it. Like, everyone gets to design the game and the rules in a way that, that suits them. So from the beginning, I was really intentional.

[00:03:24] Grant: I, I would tell our team regularly, like, “This is not the Grant show.” Mm-hmm. “This is not the Grant show,” meaning, like, if it requires Grant to do it, I’m not interested. Um, from like a, you know, star of the show, face of the whole thing, ’cause it also just makes everything we do less valuable ’cause I’m the, the, the bottleneck to the whole thing.

[00:03:42] Grant: Mm-hmm. So yeah, some of it was, like, a, a preference standpoint, and some of it, uh, is I think it’s a, some- a business that’s not solely dependent on one person is largely a healthier business, I would argue too. Yeah.

[00:03:53] Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. Brian, what about you?

[00:03:55] Bryan: I’m just an introvert. So

[00:03:57] Grant: I don’t

[00:03:59] Bryan: really wanna be the loud guy out front.

[00:04:00] Bryan: Yeah. But these businesses, these content-driven businesses, I mean, they kinda are that. These teaching-based businesses, there is a face. Mm-hmm. Um, but from day one, probably via something you wrote very early on, the idea of putting my name as the title of the business was not interesting.

[00:04:16] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:16] Bryan: Um, so that alone is, like, a interesting little mechanical decision that can keep you away from being the person out front.

[00:04:24] Bryan: ‘Cause Alex and Ali and all these people, even James, uh, you know, having the name of the business be your, yourself, um, sets it up to be a particular thing. Not that you can’t work around that, but-

[00:04:33] Nathan: Right …

[00:04:33] Bryan: that’s never been all that appealing.

[00:04:35] Nathan: There are some of those structural decisions- Mm-hmm … that, that make a big impact, and I think people don’t spend enough time thinking about the roles.

[00:04:42] Nathan: And so you assume, okay, I wanna run a content business. I, I’ve learned the, the magic of an audience and the leverage that comes with that, and like, wait, we can sell digital products or coaching or any of these things and have incredible gross margin. We were just talking about, you know, the guests we recorded just before this is, uh, Will Guidara and Bryan Canlis, who are, like, legends in the restaurant space, you know?

[00:05:04] Nathan: And we live at opposite ends of the- Yeah … business difficulty, gross margin you know, like- They’re

[00:05:10] Bryan: real business owners.

[00:05:10] Nathan: They … Everything has to go very, very well for their tight margins and, you know, we have a lot of, of leeway in selling digital products. Um, but in this- There’s just, there’s so many different styles of business that you can operate, and we don’t spend enough time thinking about, “Oh, do I wanna be the owner in the box?

[00:05:31] Nathan: Do I wanna be the, the coach who’s responsible for the, you know, success of the season, or do I wanna be the player who has to carry the game?”

[00:05:40] Grant: But especially in the beginning of, of any business, I think m- the reality is, is even if we go back a decade for any of the three of us, like you’re not thinking that far ahead.

[00:05:48] Grant: No. You’re just going, “How do I get to next week? How do I keep playing the game?” You know? Right. And then I think it’s, it’s possible that you just get so far in, and especially if you are largely a personal brand, it’s hard to unwind that. Mm-hmm. It’s hard to transition that to be something different. Um, but a lot of it’s that, you know, that Stephen Covey line of beginning with the end in mind of, of what’s…

[00:06:10] Grant: If I stay on this path, what’s that, what’s the outcome of this, and what kind of business is this gonna be in three to five to seven years if I keep doing, you know, this same thing? And is that something that like, oh, yeah, if this is the path I’m on and it leads to that destination- Mm-hmm … cool, let’s keep going there.

[00:06:25] Grant: But if you look at that and you fast-forward to someone who is several steps ahead of you and is doing that, and you’re like, “I don’t know that I would want their life,” then, like you gotta start to change course sooner rather than later.

[00:06:36] Bryan: Well, and I think all this assumes you know what you want, and I feel like it’s going to…

[00:06:40] Bryan: Like going to college, it’s like, “I think I might wanna be a doctor.” Yeah. Then if seven years in you realize like, “Actually, I hate this”- Right … it’s really hard to change. So for me, it took a lot of experimentation, and I even figure out, e- even feel like in the last year or two I’ve started to, to learn not what I consciously am thinking about a thing, ’cause I can look at different people and, like, like the idea of doing it that particular way, but, like, what actually works with the way I was uniquely wired, and for me, that’s just taken experimentation to figure out what that is.

[00:07:09] Bryan: Um, like the idea… I like the idea of being the owner in the box.

[00:07:13] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:13] Bryan: But turns out I really like being on the front line making things, and, like, if all I did was that, I would quit. So you got Elon, you got Bezos, and you have Richard Branson, and all of them, three of those work fundamentally differently on the day-to-day.

[00:07:27] Bryan: All of it can work, but I don’t know, for me, it’s been 15 years of experimentation of what’s my best way of doing it and what works best with me and is exciting and lights me up. Um, yeah.

[00:07:39] Grant: And even though, like, I think we have a better idea today than we did 10 years ago-

[00:07:43] Bryan: Yeah …

[00:07:43] Grant: it may look vastly different 10 years from now in terms of, like- Mm-hmm

[00:07:46] Grant: what you’re interested in, what your ambition is, what your season of life is. Family, marriage, kids, you know, all of that factors into how hard do I wanna be going, how hard do I wanna be charging, and what do I want this thing to look like? Um, you know, we… E- I, I give him a hard time ’cause he would ask me regularly over the years, like, “What do you want?”

[00:08:04] Grant: I was like- … “I don’t know. Leave me alone.” Stop asking me. You know? What do you want? You know? You don’t know, either? Great, you know? All I know is I want you to stop asking. Leave me alone. Um-

[00:08:13] Bryan: And then one day you came home with a vision statement, and I was-

[00:08:17] Grant: I mean, multiple

[00:08:18] Bryan: times- So

[00:08:18] Grant: funny … I’d float out a vision statement, and he’d be like…

[00:08:21] Grant: I’d be like, “I poured my heart into this.” And he’s like, “Nah, that ain’t it.” You know? I think there’s only one that he’s like, “Okay, that resonates.” You know? You

[00:08:27] Bryan: finally came. Like a year ago, you came in

[00:08:28] Grant: the room-

[00:08:29] Bryan: But like- … like, “That’s the one.”

[00:08:29] Grant: But it’s, it… I think it is. Like, it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar, you know?

[00:08:33] Grant: Yeah. And so sometimes figuring out what you want is- Mm … oftentimes looking at other people who are a few steps ahead and going, “If I continue on this path and it looked like that, would I want that?” A- and sometimes you don’t even know until- Yeah … you’re, you’re in it, you know?

[00:08:48] Nathan: So if we think about the, maybe the avatar that we’re speaking to in this is the, the creator who is somewhere in that maybe 300,000 to 900,000 in revenue.

[00:08:58] Nathan: It’s probably bounced around. W- was blown away when they hit 300,000. Mm-hmm. Like, “Wait, I can do this?” Totally. You know, and the 500,000, “I’m making doctor-level money, and I didn’t spend eight years in, you know, med school.” Like it’s, it’s incredible. And then at some point you realize, “Wait, I feel like I can have a bigger impact.

[00:09:17] Nathan: I feel like I can reach more people, and I… There’s a ceiling somewhere in here, and I can’t break through it.” Mm. What I’m curious for both of you is what it… Well, let’s talk about the, kinda that first year that you each broke through a million in revenue. What, what happened then, and, and what led to it?

[00:09:34] Grant: Um, you know, well, one caveat there I would say is some of this ties into, you know, what do you want. Mm. Um, there’s people who are doing 300, 500, 900 a year, and um, I was talking to someone last week, and they were doing that in a different industry. I said, “You can do that for the rest of your life.” Right.

[00:09:51] Grant: “And there’s nothing wrong with that.” So again, some of this de- determines, like, what, what do you want, you know? But I think, um-

[00:09:57] Nathan: Yeah, to be clear, like you’ve won

[00:09:59] Grant: Yes Yeah If you can set your expectations right there- If you just wanna wash, rinse, repeat that for the next 10, 20, 30 years or whatever, there’s nothing wrong with that If

[00:10:06] Nathan: there’s 100 grand a year going into index funds, like- That’s

[00:10:09] Grant: great

[00:10:09] Nathan: you are, you are set

[00:10:11] Grant: You… Yeah. You’re, you’re winning the game- Mm-hmm … you know, if that’s what you define it as. Um, I think for us, we had, like, one of the things that made a big breakthrough, um, was we had a whole bunch of contractors, a whole bunch of part-time people- Mm-hmm … and, um, we had, like, a part-time marketing guy, and, um, n- we…

[00:10:31] Grant: He, this guy, this part-time marketing guy was getting ready to leave, and we were getting ready to… Needed to hire a full-time marketing guy, and this was gonna be our first true W2, and we were right at about a million dollars or so revenue. And, um, he had referred me to this guy, and so I interviewed a couple different guys, and I was like, “Oh, man, this is the, this is the guy we need.”

[00:10:50] Grant: But it was gonna be a six-figure salary. Mm-hmm. He wanted a big profit share. And it was just like I knew it was worth it, but all… at the same time, you’re like, “Golly, this is, this is a big investment.” Um, but that guy was one of the best hires, you know, we ever made and- Mm-hmm … made such a huge difference in the growth.

[00:11:08] Grant: But I think that was one of the big shifts was people and hiring- Yeah … and just going from a bunch of hodgepodge contractors that were good enough and could get the job done to go, “Okay, let’s hire talented people, high caliber people that can grow and are all in on our thing,” which is just an investment.

[00:11:27] Grant: And so I don’t think, you know, nobody’s gonna hear that and think, “Well, I’ve hired good people. I’ve never heard that before”- Right … you know, but there is, like, there’s so much truth to that adage and how, um, how much of a difference that that can make and at the same time, like, how difficult that is.

[00:11:44] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:11:45] Nathan: Yeah, it’s a big thing of making the step function higher, where- Totally … it’s not, “Here’s the person who I can pay 30 bucks an hour to- Yeah, yeah … you know, 20 hours a week.”

[00:11:54] Grant: Yeah.

[00:11:54] Nathan: It’s like, “Oh, no, I’m actually bringing in a professional who in many areas knows more than I do.”

[00:11:59] Grant: Very much so. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:01] Bryan: For us, it was just simplifying.

[00:12:04] Bryan: So I think at the- Mm … time, the year or two before breaking a million, we had six products.

[00:12:09] Nathan: Okay.

[00:12:09] Bryan: And the year we broke a million, we cut five of those six and focused on one. Um, like, there’s some weird… It seems intuitive that if one product took you to 200,000- Mm-hmm … $300,000 a year, the best way to do it, especially in these audience- Mm

[00:12:23] Bryan: driven businesses, is launch more things to those same people.

[00:12:25] Nathan: Yep.

[00:12:26] Bryan: Um, but man, that’s a trap, um, especially if… Well, multiple the, multiple caveats, but especially if your, if your product is a low-ticket product because the amount of traffic you have to drive from that- Mm-hmm … just goes up exponentially. Uh, but when we just cut the vast majority and focused on the one product that for us was the one that had the highest success rate and cut everything else and focused on one thing and doubled the team down and all the attention down and all marketing down on that one thing, just everything got easier, and the fewer cycles needed to generate a customer- The easier it is to generate customers.

[00:12:59] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:59] Bryan: Um, so for us, that made a huge difference. I think we even wrote multiple blog posts about it back then. Just talking to other people, they got stuck at a similar point, and when they just started eliminating things, eliminating people, in some case, contractors or full-time people that are just dispersed amongst all these different products.

[00:13:15] Bryan: Generating… There’s like a, a trap when you have these audiences, ’cause you think you could sell anything.

[00:13:20] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:21] Bryan: And we drastically underestimate how hard it is to put together a really good offer, position well. And when you have an audience of 5, 10, 15, 20, 100,000 people, you can sell anything to them. Mm.

[00:13:33] Bryan: It doesn’t mean you know how to sell it, though, at all. Uh, and if you go down that road five or 10 years, you exhaust the audience with a whole bunch of these mediocre products, and don’t know how to sell to cold people at all. So for us, like, I mean, I think it wasn’t some gigantically strategic thing other than selling three products hard, selling six products harder.

[00:13:51] Bryan: Let’s just sell one product. Maybe that’ll be easier. But in retrospect, it just simplified the whole business down, and we had probably mostly accidentally found product market fit with that product, and learned how to talk about it- Mm-hmm … in a way that people at the time were very interested in. So just getting rid of all the other ones where we didn’t really know the answer to those questions yet.

[00:14:08] Bryan: People on our list would buy it, but people that didn’t know us would not. Um, just simplified things quite a bit.

[00:14:14] Nathan: That’s something that I see over and over again, to the point that I’ve made illustrations on it of like, build a skyscraper, not a strip mall. Yeah. Because I see creators time and again, exactly, they’ll say, “Okay, I made $400,000 with this product to these 20,000 people.

[00:14:29] Nathan: And so then if I sold this product to the same list, maybe it’s not the flagship, so then I’ll make another 200,000 off of that. And then product three will make another 100 or 200,000. And before we know it, we’ve piecemealed our way to a million dollars and that will work.” And it almost, it almost always works-

[00:14:47] Bryan: Mm

[00:14:49] Nathan: in year one.

[00:14:51] Bryan: For a little bit.

[00:14:51] Nathan: For a little bit of time. It almost never works in year two and beyond.

[00:14:55] Bryan: Yeah.

[00:14:55] Nathan: And y- yeah. I j- I just see it endlessly.

[00:14:59] Bryan: It feels like there’s two big things that seem intuitive, and they’re just wrong, like they rarely work. Mm-hmm. One of them is create more products, and the second one is charge a lower amount of money.

[00:15:10] Bryan: ‘Cause if we lower our price- Mm … it’ll be easier to sell. Never works that way.

[00:15:15] Grant: Yeah.

[00:15:15] Bryan: The second one is if we sell more things, then we’ll value ladder people up, and again- Mm … good luck. Like, if you’re Alex Hormozi or some elite level marketer, go for it, like maybe you can crack it. Yeah. Maybe. But any normal mortal can…

[00:15:28] Bryan: Like, it’s just, it’s so rare- Mm … to stair step somebody from a $10 product to a $500 product to a 10,000. Like it just is extremely difficult to do. And just overwork. Mm. I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes I made, was undervaluing… I think overvaluing sales and marketing skill, and overdeveloping there, and undervaluing how, how much weight having a really good offer carries.

[00:15:53] Nathan: Okay.

[00:15:54] Bryan: Meaning, like, think about it, like, you can cut down a tree with a dull ax. You don’t need a sharp one to do it, you just work harder. And, uh, like, for the first decade, I feel like that’s what I did. Just harder and harder and learn more and try better and more effort. And it works. Like, you can get places, but you’ll be exhausted in the process of it.

[00:16:11] Bryan: And usually your products are crap, too, because you spent all of your effort on the front end and no effort on the back end ’cause you don’t have effort to give there. Um, but you could just take time, slow down, need less, develop an amazing offer. Like, actually have the offer itself solve an acute pain, an acute crisis in your market.

[00:16:30] Bryan: And then your sales and marketing skill can be a lot lower because people actually need the thing and are actively looking for the thing. So I think I’ve… I made both of those mistakes over and over and over and over again, just having too many things and overdeveloping sales and marketing skill and needing too many clients.

[00:16:44] Bryan: Like, if you need 10,000 clients to win or 1,000 clients to win or even 500 customers to win, there’s a whole set of activities you need to do to get that. You need 50,000 people to know you exist, and that’s a lot of humans. But if you need 10 clients to win or 10 customers to win, that’s just not that many folks at all, and your sales and marketing skill can be a lot lower.

[00:17:03] Bryan: So if I were to gonna start over from scratch… In fact, we’ve rewired the business over the past three or four years just to focus on need less people and sell less things, and that lowers the bar. It lowers, like, the amount of humans you have to have in the company that are doing sales and marketing or the amount of your individual time you’re having to spend on sales and marketing, ’cause I, I didn’t get in this to do sales and marketing.

[00:17:23] Bryan: I got in this to, like, actually help people.

[00:17:25] Nathan: Right.

[00:17:25] Bryan: But then almost all of these businesses become… Like, it’s a bummer that creator business has become a euphemism for people that make content. And if content is your product, cool, but if it’s not, you should be a creator who makes products for people. Like, those are the things that actually do things.

[00:17:40] Bryan: Um, and all your content should lean to that if that’s your marketing channel of choice. Um, but it took me… It took a long time to see the… see that and spend way less time in sales and marketing and way more time with humans, actually helping them.

[00:17:54] Nathan: So you talked about simplifying your offer, which is something that’s easy to say.

[00:17:57] Nathan: I wanna know, like, what did the offer-

[00:17:59] Bryan: Mm …

[00:17:59] Nathan: and the messaging behind it look like before and what did it look like afterwards?

[00:18:03] Bryan: So we’ve found our way… Maybe I’ll… I can give you a link and you can put it in show notes or- Yeah … wherever it goes. Um, m- the most simple way we’ve found to do this, we call it the positioning statement, and it’s to treat it…

[00:18:14] Bryan: M- most often, we solve problems we’ve experienced, or you solve a, a, a problem that you’ve helped a lot of other people do. So we have a client named Ernie. He helps grocery store owners increase the profit margins. He’s never owned a grocery store, but he’s helped hundreds of them, so that’s cool. But most of us, 80% or more, are just helping people with things that we used to struggle with, uh, whether you’re in…

[00:18:33] Bryan: had a terrible marriage, now it’s great, do marriage counseling or be a marriage coach or launch a marriage book or whatever. Pick your, pick your topic. Um, so what we’ve done is… W- the exercise we walk people through is helping them catalog for you when was the last time you were in that crisis. So if you, you know, you’re a, a personal finance coach or do something in that market- When was the last time your personal finances were a disaster?

[00:18:55] Bryan: And go back to that moment. Like, literally name the date, the, the date, the month, and year if you can. Go back to that moment, and you have two options when you go to sell the product. You can try to convince people to want what you have- Mm … or you can find the people actively searching for it right now.

[00:19:14] Bryan: So let me give you this example. We were with some clients about a year and a half ago. We had a lady named Kirsten there. We’re all going around sharing, like, “What do you do?” And she said, “Well, I used to describe what I did. My old positioning was I help women who are anxious and overwhelmed not be those things.”

[00:19:29] Bryan: And, like, three other ladies in the room raised their hand and were like, “Oh, I do that, too.” And if you’re wanting to know how to position your offer, and you say what you do, and three other people say, “I do that, too,” it’s not well positioned. Like you’re all at the farmers market with the exact same sign.

[00:19:41] Bryan: Yeah. Nobody knows who to pick from. She said, “But now I tell people…” And this is on her website or in ads or emails or pick your marketing channel. “Now when people ask what I do, I tell them I help women who just found out that their husbands have had a porn addiction their entire marriage recover their marriage.”

[00:19:57] Bryan: Mm. And, like, the room gasped. And you can imagine, like, a woman who’s just had that experience, she’s texting her friends. She’s meeting with people at church. She’s googling trying to find, like, literally what does she do? She’s struggling with shame and doubt and guilt and anger and looking up divorce att- She’s doing all of the things.

[00:20:12] Bryan: So when she encounters Kirsten, Kirsten doesn’t have a sales problem at all. Like, she can just tell that lady, “Hey, I’ve been exactly where you were. I was married for 35 years before I found out. And now, pause. I hear you. I see you. That’s really difficult, and now our marriage is better than ever, and I want you to walk with me as I walk you through what to do with that.”

[00:20:30] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:30] Bryan: So positioning your offer, going back to Kirsten, the exercise she went through, was looking back to, you know, June of tw- 2006 when that happened to her. What pain were you experiencing? What did you want? And generating all of your marketing messaging around that. Not, not looking back now to that point, but when you were in the bottom of the pit, what happened?

[00:20:49] Bryan: What did you want? And what did you do to get there? And using all of your marketing language talking to that person in that spot. Because all Kirsten has to do is find 10 or 15 ladies like that a year, and she’s making multiple six figures. She doesn’t have to have all this crazy stuff, all these bells and whistles.

[00:21:05] Bryan: She just had to find those ladies, and those ladies are looking for her. Like, they’re- Yeah … actively searching. Anybody in crisis, whether your business just got shut down or you went bankrupt or a divorce attorney called or you’re in personal finance crisis. Like, positioning your offer to people that are in crisis looking for help right now just solves most, most of the sales and marketing problems.

[00:21:23] Bryan: Um, and it starts with how you even look at your offer- Mm … and how you look at what you do. So looking at it as an actual… It, it’s morphine to the pain that somebody’s in right this second, um, is the starting point.

[00:21:35] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:21:35] Bryan: Yeah.

[00:21:35] Nathan: I mean, that’s a huge shift. Grant, you’ve sold tens of millions of dollars worth of products at this point and taken a lot of people through the speaking programs.

[00:21:43] Nathan: Did you have similar things as, as you- switched up positioning and, and all that Yeah There’s gonna be a lot of iterations of it over the years.

[00:21:50] Grant: Yeah, I think we, I think one of the things that helped us a lot with growth is we largely only ever offered one program. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so it’s just solving one specific pro- problem for one specific audience, and that was one thing that we would tell speakers, is they’re going, “I could speak about anything and everything, and who do I speak to?

[00:22:04] Grant: I speak to humans. I speak to people.” Yeah. Anyway, yeah. “I speak to everybody.” Mm-hmm. Which is not exclusive to speakers. That’s true for anybody. Yeah. You know, just going, how do I spread the net as far and wide as possible, versus going, no, no, here’s this very, very specific unique crisis you went through, and I’m uniquely equipped to help you solve that problem.

[00:22:18] Grant: Mm-hmm. And so it’s counterintuitive, but the more narrow, the more focused you are, the easier it is to actually find the right type of people. So we, we would always tell speakers, and this is true for just entrepreneurs in general and, and, and, um, uh, content creators, is going, you want to be the steakhouse and not the buffet.

[00:22:35] Grant: The steakhouse, not the buff- buffet. Mm-hmm. Meaning, like, if we’re all looking… You know, we’re going out for lunch, and we’re looking for a good steak. Like, we could go to a steakhouse where it’s like that’s what they do, or we could go to a buffet where steak is one of 100 things that they offer, and they’re all mediocre.

[00:22:47] Grant: Mm-hmm. Um, so being the steakhouse is the thing that, uh, kind of attracts the right type of people, repels the wrong type of people. The tricky part and the irony is that over time, one of the things that we started to struggle with is the business got to a size where that focus and that concentration almost became a liability because we became like this one-legged st- stool, and we solve one problem for one audience.

[00:23:10] Grant: But that’s not everybody. Mm-hmm. And I don’t know that we did a good enough job regularly enough to iterate and pivot and maybe broaden it, not massively- Mm-hmm … but to, uh, a little bit or kind of go to some adjacent categories or, or subjects or topics. And so, um, yeah, that concentration and that, that focus on one end can also become a risk and liability on the, on the other

[00:23:39] Bryan: end.

[00:23:39] Bryan: Mm-hmm. You know who did a great job, or is doing a great job of that is Chandler. I feel like they’ve gone after… I went to his website the other day, and it’s fiction and nonfiction and memoirs, and it’s- Yeah … all books.

[00:23:49] Nathan: Right.

[00:23:49] Bryan: But subverticals within the books. But anybody that’s $7 million needs to ignore all that vertical crap.

[00:23:55] Bryan: Oh. Like, that is all a gigantic distraction.

[00:23:57] Nathan: Right. So you’re talking about Chandler Bolt with- Yeah … selfpublishing.com. Yeah,

[00:24:00] Bryan: yeah. Yeah. They’re doing good. Underneath that umbrella of self-publishing books- Mm-hmm … all the subgenres of books. Each one of those have millions and millions of people who have vastly different things they even want inside of it.

[00:24:11] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:12] Grant: I think, uh, you know, one other part to that is there’s something about just doing the same thing over a really extended period of time. Meaning, like, it, it is far too easy to hop from one shiny thing to the next shiny thing. Mm-hmm. And let’s do, um, you know, crypto, or let’s do AI, or let’s teach this thing.

[00:24:30] Grant: And you see

[00:24:30] Nathan: people who ride that wave, and

[00:24:31] Grant: you’re

[00:24:31] Nathan: like-

[00:24:31] Grant: 100%, yeah … weren’t

[00:24:32] Nathan: you the crypto guy last week? I thought

[00:24:34] Grant: you… Wait a second. Is this the same guy? Okay. Um, but I think there’s something to, you know, what, what’s Nathan up- He’s still doing email, you know. Right. Mm-hmm. What’s Chandler? He’s still doing books, you know?

[00:24:43] Grant: So that longevity of just- Mm … showing up, doing the same thing builds a lot of, you know, track record and, and connection and rapport of people going like, “All right, they’re still teaching the same thing. They probably have an idea of what they’re doing.”

[00:24:55] Bryan: I think that’s y’all, the Speaker Lab’s number one superpower is you’ve done the same thing for 10, 15 years.

[00:25:02] Grant: Yeah.

[00:25:02] Bryan: And it took us a minute to figure out-

[00:25:04] Grant: Mm …

[00:25:05] Bryan: what, what that was. Just had to experiment to find with it. Find it. But four or five years ago, like lock in. I’m like, “All right. We’re just gonna be here for a couple decades.”

[00:25:11] Grant: Yeah.

[00:25:12] Bryan: I mean, go Dave Ramsey. He’s been talking about personal finance- Totally … for 30 years.

[00:25:15] Bryan: He’s answered every question that anybody’s ever thought of on the topic.

[00:25:18] Grant: Yeah.

[00:25:19] Bryan: And he’s absolutely saturated the whole market.

[00:25:21] Grant: But that’s also an example of if he just was doing that-

[00:25:25] Bryan: Mm …

[00:25:25] Grant: they would not be with, at the business that they are today, and so they are in all these other adjacent categories, helping people beyond just personal finance or with other niches or verticals of, of personal finance.

[00:25:36] Bryan: I’d be cur- I, I, I, I doubt that. I think they’ve let… I think they get too shiny object syndrome. But that’s what I’m saying. And they’re doing a bunch of random stuff that make no sense over… And they’ve given up the personal finance space. But that’s what I’m saying. Like other people like Bob and all these people have come in.

[00:25:50] Grant: But, like, that’s where, like, it depends what- Yeah … if they just were doing the personal finance, you know, would they have the level of success that they have today, quote, unquote. But also it kind of depends, like, what does he, what does he want? That’s right. Yeah. You know? Mm-hmm. Um, so which my understanding, I don’t know, I’ve met Dave once.

[00:26:07] Grant: Don’t know him personally, but my understanding is he’s always wanted to be the Dave Ramsey that he’s known as today. Yeah. And there are people in this online space that they want to. So at some point, if you’re just… Y- you take a Gary Vee. What Gary Vee started as is he just talked about wine. Right. This very specific type of beverage, and then that wine led to social media.

[00:26:26] Grant: Now he talks about anything and everything, but it started with wine. Um, and so the same thing as, you know, Amazon. Amazon sells anything and everything they can ship to you, but it started with just books, you know? Right. Nike started with just, you know, a very specific type of running shoe. And so oftentimes it starts very, very narrow, and then it broadens, but any of those…

[00:26:45] Grant: Amazon could have just done books. Nike could have just done specific type of running shoes, and they would’ve been fine. But it kind of comes back to that what do they want, you know? What does Phil Knight- I keep asking you. You won’t tell me. I don’t know. I don’t know. But

[00:26:58] Nathan: if you guys know, if someone could tell me-

[00:27:00] Nathan: that would make things a lot simpler.

[00:27:01] Grant: Yeah.

[00:27:02] Nathan: So- Yeah. I mean, the thing that I notice in both of you is that, like, breaking through a million, the most important thing was a single product and a single offer. In getting to that level of clarity

[00:27:14] Bryan: Yeah. Just absolute focus.

[00:27:16] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:17] Bryan: But not, like, I don’t think an action item from that can be, “Let me go away and decide right now what my thing is.”

[00:27:22] Bryan: Like, maybe you’re somebody who has single-minded focus like Grant from the beginning, or maybe you’re like me and you need to experiment for five to 10 years- Right … to figure out what it is, and I see those people. You know, we got friends who we know well who’ve been around just as long as us, and they’re still experimenting 15 years later, and it’s like, “Great.

[00:27:35] Bryan: Mm. Keep going.” My favorite entrepreneurial question is, what’s a problem so interesting you would gladly bet the next 20 years of your life on solving it?

[00:27:43] Nathan: Mm.

[00:27:44] Bryan: And, like, just take whatever time you need to figure that out. Like, we got friends who, whose kids are graduating college, and I, I’ve, uh, taught our youth or our young adult group at church, like a bunch of 22 to f- 24, uh, 24-year-olds the other day, and I was like, “Guys, I love y’all.

[00:27:58] Bryan: Like, I’m just sick of adults. Like, we got so much baggage and so much stuff going on. Like y’all, like, literally y’all can do anything.” And they’re stressed and worried, and they’re looking- Yeah … at friends who think they know what they’re gonna do, and the friends don’t know what they’re gonna do. It’s like, “Y’all just get to experiment for the next five to 10 years or, or longer.

[00:28:12] Bryan: However long it takes. There’s no… Like, you don’t have to rush into this at all because once you find your thing, you can just ride that for a really long time.” So for me, it took a while to find the thing, and now it’s like, all right, there’s the thing, and I can just let all the creativity, instead of going horizontal with all the new things, just let it go within that thing and come up with all kind of creative ideas with inside of it, um, and solve really cool, new, interesting problems that people haven’t solved before.

[00:28:38] Bryan: Like, that’s wildly fascinating.

[00:28:40] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:41] Bryan: Um, I care more about that than the topic, but if you don’t pick the topic and focus on a thing, then you’re just gonna keep on starting stuff that doesn’t do work. That

[00:28:47] Grant: also kind of raises the question of, like, like a chicken egg thing. Is it, you know, the, the audience or the topic that you’re…

[00:28:53] Grant: That came first or the thing that you’re obsessed with? ‘Cause like you mentioned, it may be I’m, you know, uh, with young adults, have gone, “I’m just obsessed with young adults who are in college who are trying to figure out what they’re doing with their life,” you know? So it’s like, what are the problems that that audience has that I can help solve for them?

[00:29:08] Grant: And a lot of this is, like, speaking to, uh… I know, like, what, what helped start the Speaker Lab was what I wish I had when I got started. Mm. Of going, “Man, I’m looking for… I wanna be a speaker, but nobody’s out here teaching this stuff, and surely there’s other people like me that are in the similar spot,” or creating the email software that- Mm

[00:29:24] Grant: you wish you had when you were getting into the game, you know? So creating the, you know, the solution, whatever that may be, for either the person that you once were or for that, that segment or that audience of, like, I’m obsessed with them. How do I make their life better?

[00:29:38] Bryan: However you get to it, you gotta get to it, ’cause otherwise you do weird stuff.

[00:29:41] Bryan: Like you just-

[00:29:42] Grant: What, what, what examples of weird

[00:29:43] Bryan: stuff? Like, especially, like this… Somewhere between 500,000 and 2.5 million, it just depends on how good you are at marketing, honestly. Mm. You’ll hit it, where you have this, like, bastardized suite of things- Yep … that don’t really coherently make sense together.

[00:29:58] Bryan: Uh, but they’re generating a business at all, and, like, you can’t maintain them all. They’re way too spread out. You don’t even have the skill set to grow them beyond. You really need to pick one and hardcore cut the rest and hardcore optimize on it. Uh, but if you don’t know the problem you uniquely solve, or you could phrase that question different ways, but ultimately, what is the thing you’re trying to accomplish?

[00:30:16] Bryan: Are you… Like, for us, we’re trying to make it nearly impossible to fail for coaches to grow their business. Mm-hmm. But the number one small business problem is growth, like revenue- Yeah … specifically, across all small businesses of every vertical, in-person, uh, digital, online. So like, we wanna solve that for that particular group.

[00:30:31] Bryan: So how do we do that in the simplest way possible for them? And that just answers a lot of questions for us of things we’re not even interested in at all, and takes a bunch of stuff off the, the table. And it… At the end of the day, the thing that wins is the best solution to the problem will win, if it’s substantially better than all the rest, ’cause word of mouth takes over on that.

[00:30:51] Bryan: Mm-hmm. If you’re 5% better, then it’s hard. But if you’re 100% better, 200% better, it… And, and if you go a couple decades in that direction, you just will be- Yeah … because not many people are playing that game at all. Most founders, at least anecdotally, I can’t read the hearts of humans, but the clients I coach, I know really well, and myself and my team, it’s really easy to play the make the business big game.

[00:31:12] Bryan: And that’s just… Like, even if in your own selfish best interest, you’re trying to play the make most money possible game, it’s not the best way to make the most money possible. The best way to make the most money possible is have the best solution to the problem that’s ever been invented.

[00:31:23] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:23] Bryan: And you’ll win the market, and you’ll win the money as a result of that.

[00:31:26] Bryan: But you have to be, like, completely obsessed on what problem are we solving, what’s the next bottleneck, and solve it over and over and over and over and over again. Like, I’m curious about your space right now with, like, Lovable.

[00:31:39] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:39] Bryan: It’s a fundamentally different way for non-tech people to build wildly complex tools.

[00:31:46] Grant: Right.

[00:31:46] Bryan: And the other day I’m using it, and I just speak into existence. It’s like Genesis 1 in the Bible, “Let there be app,” and there’s app. Five minutes later. I mean, I’ve employed… I mean, you’ve employed way more than me, but you know, multiple six-figure engineers.

[00:31:59] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:59] Bryan: This is better and 100 times faster like that.

[00:32:03] Bryan: That changes MarTech and SaaS completely. Even the interface. Yeah. Like, I wish I could say, “Hey, I need a, um, I need a new cart abandonment campaign,” or maybe, “We wanna launch a new product, and, uh, two years ago we sent these emails out.” And Nathan sent that blog post the other day with this kinda launch sequence.

[00:32:20] Bryan: Why don’t you go hunt up the best subject lines we’ve sent over the past five years, pull those out, merge it with those two sequences, and draft it all up and send it to a sub-segment of, like, my most engaged people so I can do the little beta launch, and five minutes later have all that done. Yeah.

[00:32:32] Bryan: ‘Cause that fundamentally changes… Like, as a user, I don’t care what the interface is. Mm-hmm. But that’s way better. Like, I would rather not click and point and do things. I would rather just, like, brainstorm off the top of my head and the thing exist immediately. And that’s a fundamentally… And somebody will do that.

[00:32:47] Nathan: Oh, yeah.

[00:32:47] Bryan: It’s only a matter of time. Somebody will do it, and they’ll win the market. Um, hopefully it’ll be you. Hopefully it’ll be… But, like, that will exist. So obsessing on… Like Oprah, she killed her show at the top of her game. She had the whole… It was like, be like Joe Rogan shutting down his podcast and going to start a pool company.

[00:33:04] Bryan: Or something. It’s like, like what? Like, it’s shocking Right … um, because she thought it was in her best interest of her people to serve them better. So like if we obsess on that, I think it’s Elon’s superpower.

[00:33:15] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:15] Bryan: And a unique way he’s wired of he’s like single-minded focus on best solution. Um, and then be okay at marketing versus amazing at marketing and all your products suck.

[00:33:26] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:26] Bryan: And then you’re just really great at going into business quick. Um, so yeah, I don’t… You just… If you do that, it optimizes all actions that direction.

[00:33:34] Nathan: Okay, so you’re talking about how SaaS has completely changed.

[00:33:38] Bryan: Mm.

[00:33:38] Nathan: And, and I think this is gonna be true and relevant to creators as well, where it’s like, “Congrats, you have your downloadable”- Yeah

[00:33:46] Nathan: “e-book that you’re trading for an email address.” Nobody cares. You know? Like, you have to actually… The, the amount of value you have to provide as the bare minimum now has gone up 10X-

[00:33:56] Bryan: Yeah …

[00:33:56] Nathan: even before you’re charging. So the, the hypothesis that I have for Kit is if all interfaces can be copied, prompted into existence- Yeah

[00:34:07] Nathan: there’s an element of brand trust, and do you ex- Like, is the deliverability there? Is the-

[00:34:13] Bryan: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:13] Nathan: Will th- this company… Like, should I trust them with my business? We were joking before we started to hit record, you know, as both of you have been around Kit since the very early days, when you like sign up and the very, like the absolute basics don’t exist.

[00:34:28] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Like, you, like you couldn’t schedule an email.

[00:34:31] Grant: Nope. Just send now or nothing. Hey, Nathan, is this a feature that’s coming soon or am I just missing this? Nope, we don’t have that. Yeah. Send now.

[00:34:40] Nathan: So like a bunch of our vibe coded stuff that, you know, we all make-

[00:34:43] Grant: Yeah …

[00:34:44] Nathan: is going to be at that basic level.

[00:34:46] Nathan: But it… For now. It’ll get way better. My hypothesis is that the thing that ultimately matters, and you can build a moat around, is the relationship with the subscriber and the data about that subscriber.

[00:34:56] Bryan: Mm.

[00:34:57] Nathan: And so what we’re doing is we’re compiling everything possible that we know, and making it through our app store and all our integrations, so that you have the deepest view of exactly who is in your list, um, in…

[00:35:12] Nathan: that you could ever want. And so what our product does now is it tells you the follower count of everyone on your email list. It tells you their bios, lets you search it with AI, lets the agents go through and say, “Hey, you want… Your ideal customer is this. Well, four of them signed up for your, your newsletter last week.

[00:35:27] Nathan: What would you… Would you like to draft welcome emails? Would you like to get them on a call?” All of those things. ‘Cause our hypothesis is that when we have that centralized data for the creator, that that has a real moat around it. And ultimately, all of our businesses are built around that relationship with the audience.

[00:35:44] Bryan: Mm.

[00:35:44] Nathan: I’m curious what reactions you both have to that.

[00:35:47] Bryan: It’s hard to… Like, I used Lovable at the end of January, and I don’t know if I’ve ever had an experience quite like that. Mm. ‘Cause I tried it a year earlier And it was good, but it would get lost really quickly

[00:35:59] Nathan: And it was basically you could just… You could make a landing page or something at that

[00:36:02] Bryan: level We got, like, fairly advanced dashboarding, but then as you try to add stuff, it just got weird.

[00:36:06] Nathan: Mm-hmm. And

[00:36:06] Bryan: I was like, “All right, this is a pain in the butt.” But then late January, I don’t know, the models updated some… I don’t keep track of that stuff all that much, but-

[00:36:12] Nathan: Yep … and

[00:36:12] Bryan: I was like, “This is a fundamentally different thing now, really.” A- it actually got hard. I’m coming back to relationship. It got hard, and still is.

[00:36:21] Bryan: Like, I don’t… I can’t imagine the future much now. I’m like, I don’t- Right … I… This breaks so many things that I came up with.

[00:36:29] Nathan: Yep.

[00:36:30] Bryan: Like, example, this would be a fun AI thing. Uh, we were doing that. I, I was tr- we were trying to do an integration between Circle and something else on our- Mm-hmm … internals. I forget what the integration was, and I’d been deep in the Lovable rabbit trail.

[00:36:43] Bryan: I was like, “Ah,” usually we go to Zapier, and the marketing team would do it, but I was doing it, so let me just go to Zapier, and they have a co-pilot feature that’s kind of an AI thing that’s okay, but a little janky. But I would just talk to it. It’s so fun just talking to things. So I talked to it, and it starts working.

[00:36:55] Bryan: I was like, “Hmm, let me go to Lovable and see if I can just build the API connection direct while it’s working.” So I opened up another tab and gave it to Lovable. Fifteen minutes later, a direct API connection with a little custom app that Lovable hosts and everything is there. An hour later, Zapier is still working, and th- that has never existed.

[00:37:13] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:37:13] Bryan: Like, that, that is shocking. So I go to Zapier, and their rep had been emailing me ’cause our, our Zapier bill is $800 a month or something. Like, “Hey, there’s different things you can do.” So I went to our usage chart, and there were five Zaps that made up like 95% of that bill. So we just went and, you know, a two-hour afternoon project and made direct API connections between those five apps, and we just don’t need Zapier for those at all anymore.

[00:37:37] Bryan: And it cut our Zapier bill from $800 a month to 50 to $100 a month, and the hosting cost of that stuff is, you know, under $20 a month.

[00:37:44] Nathan: Right.

[00:37:45] Bryan: That’s just shocking. That’s truly shocking stuff, and I’m sure that exists in arbitrage all over the place. So, I mean, that little two or three-day window, I, I was just kind of confused.

[00:37:56] Bryan: Like, I- What is

[00:37:57] Nathan: even the future?

[00:37:57] Bryan: I don’t know what to do. Like- Right … what does this mean for anything? And I, I got to a similar spot as you of if my view of life is even remotely correct, then the one thing that has to, like as AI grows and using it for counseling, using it for all the things, and many of which are really cool, really cool usage I, I love and it’s exciting, the thing that it has to create is more relational need because it’ll force us into more isolation and more…

[00:38:25] Bryan: Like instead of going to a counselor or a, you know, minister at church or whatever you would get help and support from, you’ll go to talk to ChatGPT, and it’ll affirm you with a whole bunch of stuff. Um, so all that to say, I don’t know how you can go wrong by doubling down on relationship more and more and more, like real, genuine human connection in whatever way makes sense for business.

[00:38:44] Bryan: Um, so relationship between you and the client, like I… It can’t replace that ’cause it’s not human.

[00:38:49] Nathan: Yep.

[00:38:50] Bryan: But I, I suspect it can replace literally everything else. Every mechanical function is just a matter of time. Um, so for us, what’s that look… what that’s looked like, and we run a coaching business. We walk beside people for a long time, helping them accomplish, like, very difficult things that tools alone can’t solve.

[00:39:09] Bryan: Tools have to be a part of it, but relational… ‘Cause people’s number one competitor is quitting. Right. Yeah. It’s either quit or not quit. If we can get them not to quit, they will win. Mm-hmm. And ChatGPT, uh, uh, it’s hard to imagine how it’s gonna help them do that in any variations. So we’ve just started adding more and more personal things, like we do…

[00:39:27] Bryan: We cut all of our recorded training, and we do it all live every week. We teach four classes simultaneously every week. We have six live office hours every day. Um, we just started a thing called speed matching, where we mask people to do list swaps, and we do it every day, and there’s 20 to 30 people on, and they’re matching and swapping three to four lists, like, every time.

[00:39:43] Bryan: Mm-hmm. Uh, we do in-person events once a quarter now we just added. Just, like, more and more how can we get humans in a virtual room or real room with each other constantly. So relationship with lists, but, like, how can you take it… Like, how, like, actual human connection. It can’t do that.

[00:40:00] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:00] Bryan: But I, like, even Claude Computer launched four days ago.

[00:40:04] Bryan: As in, nobody’s done that yet. It can just control my computer as me. I had it open up our entire Circle account where we do… It’s where we do all client interaction. It opened up the past 50 client posts that hadn’t been answered by a coach, looked at all the other types that had been answered by a coach, and within 30 minutes it opened up them all in tabs, drafted responses that were nearly perfect.

[00:40:24] Bryan: Like, I, like, I don’t know. That’s a different thing. I don’t know. No APIs, no connections. Right. It just uses my computer to do that. So that, that’s shocking stuff. But optimizing for a relationship has to be… Like, I don’t know how that’s not the overwhelming- Right … thought. And all… Everything else is commodity/free in the not so distant future.

[00:40:43] Bryan: Yeah. Especially in our world, online. Like, I, uh… Yeah. So how can you do that? It can’t do that. Everything else is… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s disorienting and dizzy the speed it’s moving now. And I feel like just in the last three months it’s sped up drastically.

[00:40:56] Nathan: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Ev- everything changed in December when the latest- Mm.

[00:41:00] Nathan: Like, Opus 4.6, the latest models came out.

[00:41:02] Bryan: Yeah.

[00:41:02] Nathan: It went from being pretty good to absolutely incredible.

[00:41:06] Bryan: Which is exciting, and there’s an arbitrage in this next year or two-

[00:41:09] Nathan: Right …

[00:41:09] Bryan: of doing a… Like, I, I mean, 25-year-olds should be pumped right now. Yeah. I mean, I would be g- I’d be working 80-hour weeks coming up with everything I could possibly…

[00:41:17] Bryan: There’d be a Zapier arbitrage project going in- Mm-hmm … trying to take their business and building direct connections, or there’s a bunch of that kind of stuff that exists- Right … like, right this second. You’re in a uni… It’s like the App Store in 2012- Mm-hmm … when iOS launched. Like, that exists right now in a really, really cool way.

[00:41:30] Bryan: And I think a lot of these SaaS industries and are… Like, a lot of these things will be flipped upside down with interfaces and the barrier to entry so low, and it’s really exciting and disorienting at the same time. But relationship, like, you can’t beat that.

[00:41:43] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:43] Bryan: And that’s the cool thing where we’re at in our age and our experience and other people listening, like, if you get people- Like right now, using these tools to deploy against, like, actual relationship and solving problems, like that’s a unique thing that the 20-year-olds don’t have.

[00:41:58] Bryan: Like, they don’t understand, like, real-life problem solving for the most part. Um, but that’s exciting. How can you do that?

[00:42:03] Nathan: Grant, any thoughts on the future and, you know, whether we should have an

[00:42:06] Grant: existential crisis? Yeah, let me look into the magic crystal ball here. Um- Yeah, I think the, uh… Like, in our group chat, one of the things we talk about is, like, we’re…

[00:42:14] Grant: The three of us are really deep in this. Mm-hmm. And so comparing notes, what are you using? How are you doing it? Here’s this new thing that I did, and here’s this new use case, and here’s what I saw someone on Twitter do. And, um, on one hand, it’s like, yes, it is incredibly exciting. On the other hand, you know, um, are we the 1% of the 1% of the 1%?

[00:42:33] Grant: So, um, you know, if I’m the owner of Kit, am I going, “Holy crap, is this gonna take over my business?” Or are there gonna be enough people that are gonna be like, “Cool, I can whip up my version of Kit in a weekend on Lovable,” you know? But how many people are gonna actually do that, or to what degree, or… I don’t know, it’s just kind of like the, the downscri- downstream consequences of all of this, it’s just hard.

[00:42:57] Grant: Uh, I think- Yeah … that’s part of what you’re saying is, like, it’s hard to know for any of us. Right. You know? Like, we can look at this now at the end of March 2026 and go, “What’s it gonna look like three…” We’re talking about, you know, three months ago when Opus 4.6 came out. Mm. What’s it look like three months from now going forward, or six months or, or nine months?

[00:43:14] Grant: Um, so it’s… Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s slightly ex- it’s exciting and concerning and, you know, all of the above. Um, how are you thinking about it? Like, it, it… In an education training content space, it creates some opportunities. Does it create excite- excitement or anxiety or- Yes … concern for you? All of the above?

[00:43:37] Grant: All of the

[00:43:37] Nathan: above. Well, I, I think about, uh… Like Je- Jeff Bezos talks about focus on what doesn’t change.

[00:43:43] Grant: Yeah, yeah.

[00:43:44] Nathan: And so he… You know, the example on Amazon was people are always gonna want lower prices, faster delivery- Faster shipping, yeah … like all of those things. And so my hypothesis is basically that relationships will matter more than ever, that data will matter more than ever, and that those have to be incredibly accessible.

[00:44:02] Nathan: Um, so I, uh… It’s really exciting, but at the same time, to what you were saying, Brian, I don’t feel like I can predict the future.

[00:44:10] Bryan: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:10] Nathan: You know? And, and we’re so used to seeing solutions that are 10% better than the previous one. Yeah. Or you’re like… Something that we would all rave about would be 30% better.

[00:44:20] Nathan: Yeah. You know, and now we’re seeing things that are genuinely 10X or breaking the paradigm.

[00:44:24] Bryan: Yeah.

[00:44:25] Nathan: Um, like, you know, it, it actually feels like magic.

[00:44:29] Bryan: Hey, what problem do you think Kit solves? How do you think about that? Yeah. What’s the fundamental thing you’re trying to solve?

[00:44:36] Nathan: I mean, f- if you go all the way back, it’s helping people earn a living and build a valuable business.

[00:44:42] Bryan: Yeah.

[00:44:42] Nathan: If you come downstream from that- Mm … it’s like doing it through an audience- You know, of, of people who know you.

[00:44:51] Bryan: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:52] Nathan: And so then you go one step past that, and it’s, we help you reach more people and make money from those people.

[00:44:57] Grant: One thing I think was interesting, um, we do this annual houseboat trip that you’ve ignored us on for many, many years.

[00:45:03] Grant: I noticed that

[00:45:03] Nathan: the invite didn’t come this last year.

[00:45:05] Grant: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been- It’s ’cause I just

[00:45:06] Bryan: gave up. We said just put Nathan on the Do Not Invite list.

[00:45:08] Grant: Yes. We’ll see you, we’ll see you in Montana. Montana’s way closer. It is. It, that, that has worked out. Uh, that’s become a new thing. So, um, uh, but we were, last year or year before, there was a guy that came, and very successful in the online space, and they had built a big business, and then the business had m- major issues and just kind of imploded.

[00:45:28] Grant: Mm-hmm. And, um, one of the things I remember him saying was, “We bought into the myth and the lie that we were just growing year over year over year, and we thought it would always be like this.” Mm-hmm. And very interesting to, like, think about from that perspective of, you know, AI’s a major shift. Mm-hmm.

[00:45:47] Grant: But there’s always gonna be minor shifts happening underneath us, and the importance of evolving and changing. And so even, uh, uh, um, I was thinking about when we were in Montana this past fall. We were on this, this fishing trip, the three of us were on with a group of other guys. And I remember one night, it was you and me and this other guy, uh, having this conversation, and he…

[00:46:04] Grant: You were kind of talking through the lens of, “Hey, Kit’s my life’s work. I wanna be doing this forever.” Yeah. Um, you’re deeply committed and passionate to it. And for him, he was kind of talking about everything is always for sale. Mm-hmm. And everything just has a… But, but he was talking about it through the lens of every business, every industry has a shelf life.

[00:46:19] Grant: Everything has a season. Yeah. And it’s not that one’s better or worse than the other. Again, you kind of decide what makes sense for you. But I thought that was a valid, you know, and interesting point of, from both of these guys of saying, um, just because you’ve had growth doesn’t mean it’s gonna continue to grow.

[00:46:34] Grant: And just because it’s, you know, you’ve had some type of success doesn’t mean it’s always gonna be like that. And so, I mean, this, you know, the idea of seasons can apply to anything- Mm-hmm … of, you know, marriage or relationships or health, and seasons that are strong and seasons that are a mess. Um, and so AI’s creating a new season, and whether that’s positive or a negative is kind of ultimately up to you and, like, what you decide to do with it.

[00:46:56] Nathan: Yeah. Okay, we have some really good threads going. Mm-hmm. We, I wanna come back to seasons, ’cause you’ve changed seasons in your business. Uh, so we’ll put a pin in that and come back to it in a second. I wanna- Do we need to

[00:47:06] Grant: do a part three?

[00:47:07] Nathan: We might need to. Part

[00:47:08] Grant: four?

[00:47:08] Nathan: We’ll see if the view- Can we just co-host

[00:47:10] Grant: with

[00:47:10] Nathan: you from now on?

[00:47:10] Nathan: Yeah, exactly.

[00:47:12] Grant: Is that where we’re headed?

[00:47:12] Nathan: Can we get some new graphics up here to just- That would be- … very grand. Starring- Yeah.

[00:47:18] Grant: Featuring Brian and Gran.

[00:47:20] Nathan: So when we were in Montana, uh, Brian, you were talking about the changes that you made in the business, and the one that stood out to me was talking about the…

[00:47:32] Nathan: First was narrowing in on helping your clients do one thing, which is basically grow. Mm-hmm. Instead of all the things you could help them with. Mm-hmm. And the second one was you’re changing the number of playbooks that you offered. How many playbooks to help clients grow did you have before and then what did you cut down to?

[00:47:49] Bryan: We had way too many. Um, we had around 100-ish.

[00:47:53] Nathan: Yeah, that’s what I remember.

[00:47:53] Bryan: Um, somewhere in the 90s, yeah. Um, because the theory was each person is starting a unique point- Mm-hmm … and let’s just craft a path for each human as they come through. And just, I mean, from early stage, one thing we’ve done, for better or worse, probably been to our own detriment in some ways, is just track success rate, and it’s really hard to do actually.

[00:48:15] Bryan: Mm-hmm. Uh, like it’s actually an interesting problem of its own to solve. Like how do you know if somebody’s being successful, and how do you measure that,

[00:48:19] Nathan: and etc.? And I think probably 95% of businesses don’t track that metric, which is kind of crazy.

[00:48:24] Bryan: You get depressed really quickly. If you think your stuff’s good, go track success.

[00:48:27] Bryan: It’s not, I promise you. It’s not. That’s

[00:48:30] Nathan: true.

[00:48:30] Bryan: Yeah. And y- y- you’ll get disenfranchised with product types. Mm. Like if you think you sell a book to help people, don’t measure success rate. Don’t even measure open rate or finish rate- Right … or any of that stuff because it’s really, really low. Or courses or memberships, like again, you know, .01% of people will find success, but you’re, you’re not…

[00:48:45] Bryan: Almost an immeasurable success rates. Um, so that led us to coaching, and, and then as, uh, as we started like cutting everything else, which took a, a little bit of time to do that reasonably responsibly, we just started focusing on, okay, what are the things that have worked for us? Because we can’t teach a thing we haven’t done.

[00:49:00] Bryan: Um, and let’s codify those. And then as people come in, let’s look at where they’re at, where they wanna go, and look at the components we’ve learned and try to map a unique path for them. And we still do that to some degree, but, uh, I like the Basecamp guys. Like they have- Yeah … I, I don’t know how they described it, or maybe I’m using their words, but they have opinionated design.

[00:49:19] Bryan: This is a way that we do project management, so this is the way you can do project management, or you can hire… You can use another piece of software that allows you to do whatever. But their software is opinionated, and I found that, like when people hire a coach, that’s actually part of what they want anyway.

[00:49:33] Bryan: Mm-hmm. They want their opinion. You were talking about your flight instructor. You’re like, “Just tell me what to do, actually.” Right. Like, I don’t want an opinion. Just yes is the answer. So we kept it way too open because we thought there were so many different paths to get there and, and that’s not untrue.

[00:49:47] Bryan: But as we started cutting those and just focusing on two fundamental playbooks, the success rate went up. Mm-hmm. The ability for us to train coaches and get them up to speed quicker went up. It allowed their coaching to get better and allowed the… Like the clients don’t care. They actually don’t care about much of anything as it relates to sales and marketing content.

[00:50:05] Bryan: No content, have a list, don’t have a list, YouTube, not, ads, social, Instagram, TikTok. They don’t care about any of those things. Like we have specific things we give them, and I tell them on day one, like the win for you is you get clients. The win for me is you tell your friends about us, and everything else is negotiable.

[00:50:22] Bryan: Um, so I don’t care if you learn, I don’t care if you get a dopamine hit, I don’t care if you go six months and you haven’t like got excited about… Like I… Like those things don’t matter. What matters is, fast-forward a year, do you still have a client acquisition problem? Mm-hmm. So that’s been our optimization point.

[00:50:37] Bryan: Fundamental problem, their business grows. What’s the simplest path to get there? So we went from all these, you know, we covered four or five different channels, marketing, you know, ads and content marketing, and some cold outreach type stuff. And now we just focus on first make offer great and have a high-ticket offer.

[00:50:56] Bryan: Like start by needing the fewest clients possible. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause that eliminates most sales and marketing problems. Not all of them, but that lowers the bar drastically. And the second one is borrow other people’s audiences to get exposure versus trying to go buy it or earn it or build it over time.

[00:51:09] Bryan: ‘Cause all those, as the years have gone on, have gotten… all have gotten substantially harder to do. And a great arbitrage right now, for the next long time, is other people that have audiences need content, so just be their content. So we’ve simplified everything down to just those two things. What’s a great high-ticket offer that solves a real crisis that you have experience and, and can help at least one person with?

[00:51:31] Bryan: Need 10 of them a year to have a six-figure business. And then to get in front of those 1,000 or so people you need to find those 10, just borrow the people’s audiences. Give your best stuff away to other people, and that’s worked fantastically well, and gone from 90 plus playbooks to two. So we’ve been able to just get really, really, really good and super nuanced and weeds-y.

[00:51:50] Bryan: Mm-hmm. It isn’t just our experience anymore because if your brain works like mine and thinks like mine, great, that’ll work for you. But if your brain works fundamentally differently and you have other lies and everything you have to overcome, like my stuff won’t work for you. So as we practice that with hundreds and hundreds of people- Mm

[00:52:05] Bryan: we found a lot of the edge cases and nuances and have just like really gotten good at those things. Um, so similar to product, similar to marketing channels. If you have a whole bunch of them, you’re just mediocre at all of them. If you’re trying to teach a wide variety of things, like just really difficult to master and to do really, really well to a high success rate.

[00:52:21] Nathan: So what I’m noticing in that is first we’re talking about niching down in the audience that you choose and then the products that you offer down to a single product, and then what you’re even doing is saying, “Great, now once they’ve purchased, I’m actually just going to niche down from 90 different ways that I can help them achieve their outcome to two.”

[00:52:40] Bryan: Yeah, and think about that competing with AI, ’cause like typing… At least right now with the current models, you type into GPT and it’s like, “Bro, can you talk with fewer sentences?” Like this is just a lot, like a lot. Right. And nobody wants more information, especially now. Now is unique as compared to 15 years ago.

[00:52:54] Bryan: Maybe 15 years ago, we really wanted a bunch of information, but now it’s overly saturated. What we want, and especially the higher ticket you charge, but I think just across the board, give me the simplest path by a trustworthy person to get what I want. Every detail is fairly negotiable. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause as a person in crisis, I don’t even know what I don’t know anyway.

[00:53:11] Bryan: Right. Like, I don’t really have much of an opinion if my marriage sucks. Is it reflective listening or do I need to like… Do I need to go… There’s a million things I could do. I don’t know. If you’re great at that, tell me and I’ll do whatever that is, and I’d rather it be three actions as opposed to 300 actions.

[00:53:25] Bryan: So just like the Bezos things, the, the quickest… Like quicker is better.

[00:53:29] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:30] Bryan: Same thing in training and coaching, like the shorter the path, the better.

[00:53:33] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:33] Bryan: Um, so the more information is not the goal. The goal is a high success rate, and if you optimize for that- I haven’t seen the scenario yet where you get to more modules and more lessons and more things.

[00:53:44] Bryan: Biochemistry. It like always brings it down. But that’s har- that’s… Like, just like doctors have to practice, you have to practice in this stuff. And I think that’s a disadvantage, of course, of membership people, they don’t have the feedback cycles.

[00:53:54] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:54] Bryan: Like, when you coach, man, like you’ll know very quickly when your stuff sucks.

[00:53:58] Grant: Right. ‘

[00:53:59] Bryan: Cause you’ll be staring the human in the face, and they’ll be viscerally mad at you that it didn’t work. And you’ll have to figure something out real time, and you get those visceral feedback cycles to know what to improve on and what to work a different scenario, a different example, or a different template, or a different suggestion for, and you’ll get better way quicker at your thing.

[00:54:13] Bryan: Mm-hmm. So yeah, not more, just simpler path to success- Yeah … for every person that hires you, no matter the format of, of product.

[00:54:22] Nathan: Grant, what you were delivering to, at the Speaker Lab, it… Was that a similar thing of narrowing down? Or w- I’m curious also if you tracked success rate and if that was something that you did in the business.

[00:54:32] Grant: Yeah, we started a couple years ago, and part of the challenge with speaking is, and this is probably true in a lot of different spaces, but it had to be self-reported. Mm-hmm. Right. So we would find sometimes- Yeah … where someone would go out, they would do, um… Like, I remember a couple times I’d, I’d talk to someone or I’d meet someone at an event, and they’re like, “I went through your program a couple years ago.

[00:54:48] Grant: I quit my job. I’m a full-time speaker.” And you’re like- … “Would’ve loved to have known that,” you know? But I, I… Most people aren’t, you know, they don’t think to, “I should go back and tell them,” you know? Right. “And give them a heads-up, ‘Hey, it worked,'” you know? Mm-hmm. So what we found was we were having to go to people proactively and just, “Hey, is it working?

[00:55:04] Grant: Can you tell us?” And so we would track a… We had a form where people would fill out, and it, it created a spreadsheet where we could track how many gigs were people doing, um, uh, how many, how much did they get paid for that? And it was also a fun internal metric that we could celebrate of like, wow, you know, in the past X number of months we’ve had, you know, speakers that we’ve helped have earned over a million dollars from speaking.

[00:55:24] Grant: Right. And it was a… Now, it was, again, self-reported, so it’s probably ideally a fraction of what it actually was, but it’s something. Yeah. You know? And so, yeah, it’s a way to, like, tangibly track that and celebrate it. But to your point, when you track it, you also find that like, oh, it’s way low- Yeah.

[00:55:40] Grant: relative to the number of people, you know? Way low it would be,

[00:55:42] Nathan: yeah.

[00:55:43] Grant: And so, um, which is, you know, you, you try to, like, balance the, all right, part of this is the nature of the beast. This is gonna be the case. And part of it is going, how much of it is the nature of the beast, and how much is ’cause our thing is just not good enough?

[00:55:55] Grant: Um- Yeah … and, like, if it’s really optimized, what would it actually be? What should it be? Um, what’s even realistic? Um, and is it possible to push that? And I know that, like, for you as a… I think you’re more of a product-minded guy, and so you’re going- How do we get 100% success rate, you know? And I think for me, I’d go like, “That sounds like a lot,” you know?

[00:56:16] Grant: But I think for you, like that, that’s what you’re wired to like figure out how do you solve that, you know? Um, and so again, some of this comes back to even the full circle of what do you want, of going, “No, I want to make the best possible product to… that’s going to get 100% success rate. And if that means I need to, you know, tinker with it to the nth degree,” but to get that, that sounds awesome.

[00:56:37] Grant: That sounds like a fun challenge worth solving. Um, and someone else may hear that and be like, “I don’t… You know, that’s… What is the good enough that I can go with,” you know? Um, and again, it’s not that one’s better or worse than the other. It’s just kind of deciding- Yeah … what makes sense for you and what you’re wired for.

[00:56:52] Bryan: There’s a, I’ll totally butcher this, is at the end of Good to Great, maybe in the appendix, it might be the last chapter. It’s gotta be on the last page or two. And, um, Jim is telling the story about his re- I think his re- one of his main research students that helped him produce that book. Again, somebody go read it and fact check it.

[00:57:11] Bryan: But at the end, he said, the guy’s like, “Jim, what if I don’t want a great business? What if I just want a good business?” And Jim was like… A- and this guy had spent hundreds of hours helping produce this study, so this guy knows, he, he’s not an outsider. He’s seen all of the fruit of that and everything. And Jim’s answer was something along the lines of nothing in all of his research has, has shown him that it’s any more work or any more time to build a great company versus a good company.

[00:57:39] Bryan: It’s just different work and different time. And I think that stuck with me of like, “Okay, well, if I could spend the next 40 years of my life working and building things of some nature, if you get to choose same work, same time, um, you have a great thing versus a good thing, I, I think I’d rather pick the great thing.

[00:57:57] Bryan: Let’s do the work needed to do that thing.” So… And there’s something in, I think innate in all of us that when we build something and it’s good and we look at it and we’re like, “That’s really cool.”

[00:58:06] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:06] Bryan: Like you clean out your garage after it’s been a mess- Yeah … and you just open the door like, “Yeah, that’s really good.”

[00:58:10] Bryan: You know, you clean out your car. You gotta go find- Go to a place

[00:58:11] Nathan: that- … find someone and be like, “Hey, the neighbor’s walking by-

[00:58:13] Bryan: Check it out … come look at the

[00:58:14] Nathan: garage.”

[00:58:15] Bryan: Yeah, so it, no matter what, this could be a huge, hugely pivotal company thing, a document you make. Like I made a, I wrote a memo last week to a client that was in the fear loop, like bad, and I hadn’t been able to get him out of it for two years.

[00:58:25] Bryan: I couldn’t figure out what to do to get him out.

[00:58:28] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:28] Bryan: And as I’m writing it, I know, I’m like, “This is like, this is fundamentally exactly… We need to pull it up above the waterline and show it to him.” And at the end of it, I went back and reread it a dozen times ’cause I was just like, “This is really good.”

[00:58:40] Bryan: Like it- Yeah … it’s just proud of making a thing. And it’s not even a public thing anybody will ever see, you know? But there’s something innate in us, at least in me, that I think all of us can feel when we do it. Like when our kid, you know, is on stage and plays the instrument and they’re just really good at or they have the basketball game.

[00:58:54] Bryan: You’re like, you’re proud of your child. Um, so if you could spend your days making great things or spend your days making good things, like let’s do this one, and let’s like call all of us to make better stuff. And my hypothesis is if we do that, we can, like, get way less good at sales and marketing, and not be great marketers, but be great people at making products that help people, because that is an…

[00:59:17] Bryan: Like, there’s so few people. This is surpri- not that there’s nobody, but there’s so few people actually playing that game. Like, that there’s just one Elon who’s ruthlessly optimizing for end result, and has done it for- Right … you know, t- 30 years now. It’s kind of sad that there’s one of them. Not that other people aren’t, but, like, man, like, pure product people who are trying to make great things.

[00:59:40] Bryan: Uh, the, the Basecamp guys, I was listening to Jason Fried interview the other day, and he talked about, um, making the envelope as thin as possible, and he called the business the envelope. He’s like, “I want the envelope basically not to exist.” Mm. Its sole goal is to contain the product, which is the letter inside of it.

[00:59:55] Bryan: And, um, you know, again, different strokes, different ways, all that stuff, but I think for me, a thing as I’ve gone longer and longer is like, man, as little of this business stuff as humanly possible is more as, like, the great thing that actually just helps humans.

[01:00:07] Nathan: All in on product.

[01:00:08] Bryan: Whatever that is. Yeah.

[01:00:09] Bryan: And everything el- And truly, ultimately at the end of the day, like, you could do or have seminars on culture and seminars on all this stuff, or you could just, like, rally a team around making a thing and that generates good culture. Mm. ‘Cause you’re not, like, doing all the trust falls or whatever crap you got going on, which is fine.

[01:00:22] Bryan: Like, do that stuff, but, like, if the thing you’re rallying around… Like, what if that needs to exist ’cause you actually aren’t focused on a problem?

[01:00:29] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:29] Bryan: And their heart is not in it, and they’re in it for the money and the bonus and the comp and all that stuff, and not for actually serving human good in whatever area you’re actually trying to help people in.

[01:00:37] Bryan: Like, what if that generated all the culture?

[01:00:39] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:39] Bryan: Uh, so I’d rather do that, like, just optimize for that thing, than any of this other stuff.

[01:00:44] Grant: Sounds like in Montana this year we’re not doing the trust fall. Yeah. Geez.

[01:00:48] Bryan: Are you

[01:00:48] Grant: gonna have it? Fix that one. The few- Hey, guys, we can’t do it this year. Brian doesn’t like it.

[01:00:52] Grant: Because Brian, he went on

[01:00:52] Nathan: a podcast, he had a rant, and we’re

[01:00:54] Grant: all- Yeah, Brian hates trust falls. Sheesh.

[01:00:58] Nathan: So I, you know, I’m hearing a few things of, like, first the focus on elimination is- Mm … key to breaking through a million. Second is obsessing over the outcomes, like, actually track the outcomes, which almost no one does.

[01:01:09] Nathan: And then the third is really learn to iterate on the product that creates those outcomes.

[01:01:14] Bryan: Yeah, at minimum, track the outcome and make decisions somewhat focused on that. And you would be in the top .01% of your market.

[01:01:22] Nathan: Right.

[01:01:22] Bryan: Like, literally, I’ve, I’ve never been in a single business conversation where really at the end of the day the question was, how do we make the product better so more people will hire us, ever.

[01:01:30] Bryan: Mm. All the questions start with we missed our revenue goal, what are the marketing- How do we do more sales and marketing? … sales things we need to hit the goal? It’s like ra- it’s rare to get

[01:01:38] Nathan: to the product conversation. You know, what’s interesting is I feel like I’ve known you… Oh, how long have we known each other?

[01:01:43] Nathan: Like, 14, 13 years at this point? Yeah. Like, it’s been a long time. Yeah. Um, and I’ve known you primarily or originally as a sales and marketing

[01:01:51] Bryan: person.

[01:01:52] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Right? And so as you’re making this shift here, and I feel like you’re always asking, okay, how do I make- sales and marketing easier and more effective.

[01:01:59] Nathan: You know what to, you know, and then you keep then as you move, move more and more, you’re like, “You know what makes it way more effective is- Just don’t need it … a great product.”

[01:02:07] Bryan: Yeah, really. I mean, it really, that’s- And a,

[01:02:08] Nathan: and a great business model, right?

[01:02:09] Bryan: Totally. Yeah, I mean, that, that is, I’m getting optimized out of sales and marketing.

[01:02:13] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:14] Bryan: Not that that’s not needed, like there’s a pl- you need to know how to take your thing to the market and get humans to know it exists. Right. So there’s a place of it. Turns out, like the amount of effort needed there if you’re just halfway trying over here, over a period of time- Mm … is not that high.

[01:02:27] Nathan: Yeah. I’m curious what mistakes you feel like you both made that, you know, you’d wanna like throw a flag out there and be like, “Hey, if you’re on this journey, maybe you could avoid a few of these- Yeah … in that path to a million or even beyond, right, as you scale to 2 million, 3 million, 5 million a year.”

[01:02:44] Grant: I think one of the challenges is, is thinking longterm- Mm

[01:02:46] Grant: um, and thinking strategically. Like it’s just so easy to what’s the next launch, what’s the next, you know, product thing that we can just spin up just to either make a buck or to- Right … I had two people who asked me, you know, about this feature, so therefore we should spend all this time, you know, creating this thing.

[01:03:01] Grant: Um, and so yeah, really intentionally thinking longterm, um, both from a place of the, of the customer and the, and the product and, and how you’re solving that problem for the, the customer, but also again, what do you want? You know? Like, um, I- What was that question? Hang on. Hang on. We’re coming full circle.

[01:03:19] Grant: All right. There’s a theme here. Gather around boys and girls. But me, like for example, um, uh, you know, we, we’ve kind of touched on this at the beginning. Um, we all like enjoy being around each other. We’re all kind of introverted. Um- Yeah … I think I’m safe to say on both of you. And so for example, um, you know, we’ve had people who’d say, “Oh, as speakers you, you should host some type of mastermind.”

[01:03:39] Grant: And I was like, “Yeah, I just don’t wanna do that.” “I don’t wanna… Are there gonna be people there?” “I’d rather stay home,” you know? Uh, and so again, it’s, it’s not that one’s better or worse than the other, but like when you look at all the different things of courses or coaching or consulting or speaking or books or, you know, any number of the things, it’s going what is a way that makes sense for the customer in terms of what’s the best possible way to solve this problem for them?

[01:04:01] Grant: But then also what do I, what do I actually want to do, you know? I don’t want to host a mastermind, you know? And there are people, uh, someone threw out the idea like, “You should have people like come over to your house.” And I was like, “I don’t want people at my house,” you know? “I don’t want you two at my house,” you know?

[01:04:15] Grant: Is that why I wasn’t invited? A little, a little- I’ve stayed at Brian’s house … that’s why we come to your house. Um, but again, you, again, you get to design it in a way that makes sense for you. So, but that means you just have to think strategically, you know, both in the, uh, not just short term, but in the long term of going is this decision leading to the type of outcome and the type of business model that I wanna have.

[01:04:35] Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. What was the mistake in there?

[01:04:37] Grant: I think when you’re just trying to do like a, a short-term thing, so like if you’re just- Thinking short term … yeah, just trying to like spin something up and going, so for example, we’ve done, um, uh- There was one, uh, some little offer we did that we’re just like, it was…

[01:04:52] Grant: I mean, it was probably an element of just like a money grab, you know, of just like, “Hey, let’s spin this up and offer this.” And then, you know, a couple months later you’re like, “Well, we did all this work. Now what?” You know? Mm. Now you’re like back to the drawing board. And I don’t wanna be that business that’s just trying to spin up the next thing, you know, every-

[01:05:07] Nathan: Well, what’s interesting is the businesses that we operate function on leverage, like incredible amounts of leverage.

[01:05:14] Nathan: You can have a team that lives anywhere.

[01:05:16] Grant: Mm.

[01:05:16] Nathan: Reach customers that live basically anywhere.

[01:05:19] Grant: Yeah.

[01:05:19] Nathan: You can write one email, and it’s the same amount of effort if it goes to one person or 100,000 people. You c- If you’re doing group coaching- Mm … you know, there’s an element of leverage. Like, in all these things, our product fulfillment, there’s leverage everywhere.

[01:05:31] Bryan: Yeah.

[01:05:32] Nathan: Which means that we can justify certain activities that we wouldn’t normally do. So if you have an audience of 50,000 people, and you’re like, “I’m gonna spin up this product, and I’m gonna do the huge amount of work to make a new product.” But that’s fine, because I’m selling it to all, with, you know, an, a launch sequence to 50,000 people, and so it makes a bunch.

[01:05:52] Nathan: And it, I think it lets us get sloppy.

[01:05:53] Bryan: Yeah.

[01:05:54] Nathan: Where what you actually should have done is take the product that you already had- Yeah … assuming we’re past this learning and experimentation phase, and say, “How do I take the leverage of selling one thing that’s 10% better than it was three months ago, and sell that to the 50,000 people and do a better job of it?

[01:06:12] Nathan: Or how do I get in front of more people?” Yeah. And so, yeah, there’s a lot of business fundamentals that we can get sloppy on, because we’re in such a great space.

[01:06:21] Bryan: For me, there were a handful. One, um, in retrospect… None of these, most of these aren’t obvious. Mm-hmm. Just experimentation. And, and most of these I could make a solidly convincing case that you should do them, and turns out they’re really stupid.

[01:06:35] Bryan: Uh, one is spending more than 20% of my time in marketing and sales, and specifically- Mm … in content production. Um, like, if your s- if your business isn’t ads or direct revenue generated off the content- Mm … and you spend more than 20% of your time in it, like, I would highly question that. Like, are, what’s your business?

[01:06:52] Bryan: You should spend time there. Um, second one is, this one was a near… It’s been the only near death blow in 14 years now of business, and it was offering a refund-based guarantee in a highly relational product. Um, so we did, for two years we did refunds if you didn’t hit a measure of success in a short time period with our coaching- Mm

[01:07:16] Bryan: and that was an extremely bad idea. I could be convinced… I don’t know if I could be convinced now personally, just due to the trauma during that time period. But to do it with, like, less relational products like books and courses and memberships- Mm … and stuff like that, I think there’s prob- Or even in agency land.

[01:07:29] Bryan: I would totally do it in agency land, where you control the variables or the vast majority of them. But in coaching, where it’s literally long obedience in the same direction over 6, 12 plus months to get- Mm … a very hard to achieve result- What you need when somebody’s not winning is to drive them deeper into a relationship, not the exit hatch.

[01:07:46] Nathan: Right.

[01:07:46] Bryan: Um, so that one was tough. The, the third one-

[01:07:49] Nathan: Well, and just to dive in on that for a second. Yeah. It sounds like such a good thing to do. If you believe in your success rate-

[01:07:54] Bryan: Yeah …

[01:07:55] Nathan: and you believe in your product, then, well, of course. Sounds obvious. We believe in it so much that we have a money-back guarantee if we don’t help you achieve- Yeah

[01:08:03] Nathan: this outcome. But what you’re getting at is it actually… W- what I heard in that is it makes the product worse. Because as I go through it, you’re coaching me towards this outcome, I’m… We’re three months in. Well, we’re getting some traction, but it’s really hard. You told me it’d be hard, but it’s, like, really hard.

[01:08:19] Bryan: Yeah.

[01:08:20] Nathan: And then we’re coming up on the, the money-back guarantee.

[01:08:23] Bryan: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:23] Nathan: Do I dive in and, like, do everything it takes to make this successful- Yeah … which you told me I need to do, or do I go, “Oh, let me put in less effort and see. You didn’t do… provide what you needed as a coach, so actually I’ll just take my money back”?

[01:08:36] Nathan: Oh. And we become misaligned.

[01:08:37] Bryan: Oh, it’s total misalignment. Like, or the interest or the op- It’s like gyms. They’re not optimized for you to get fit. Mm. They’re optimized for you not to come. Like, literally, if you came… If every Planet Fitness member came to Planet Fitness is they would shut down- Right … from overwhelm.

[01:08:49] Bryan: Their, their business is for you not to come. They charge you just enough money to get your money and make you not come. ‘Cause if all of you showed up, there would be no m- machines or weights for you to work out on. Yeah, and the refund thing is, phew, boy, it is brutal. It creates horribly framed clients- Mm-hmm

[01:09:04] Bryan: who in, uh, that, who don’t push through the trough or the dip- Yeah … as Seth Godin calls it. Like, when you g- Like, it… You will get to a hard part in any hard to achieve result. What happens when you get there? That’s the entire question.

[01:09:15] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:15] Bryan: Um, and if you frame everything up when you’re fulfilling coaching to tell them about that dip, talk to them about it ahead of time, get them before they get there, get them so much momentum when they get in it, it’s still hard.

[01:09:25] Bryan: They still might quit. But if they have acceleration coming out of it, like, they’ll get through the other side. But boy, if you tell them, “You can have all your money back, and it’s our fault if you hit the dip,” like, they’ll take you up on it and blame you the entire time, no matter what. Right. It’s like…

[01:09:39] Bryan: And that’s br- that is brutally hard. We’d never had a reputation problem ever until those two years. Mm. And then as we exit out of that, no reputation problem again. And that’s our… That’s me, totally. Yeah. Totally my fault. But that would say stay… If you’re in coaching, never ever offer a refund basic- You can do guarantees, actually, but they should push you deeper into a relationship, not further away from relationship.

[01:09:59] Bryan: Um, I could keep going. I got a, I got a blog post I’m working on on top dumb mistakes I’ve ever done. And those are a couple of them.

[01:10:05] Grant: When, when I got started as a speaker, I remember, uh, there’s a mentor of mine who, who said, like, you- as speakers, like, you’re just looking forward to the, the 1% of, like, I stand on stage and I speak and- Right

[01:10:15] Grant: people clap for me, and they laugh at jokes. That’s- That’s awesome … that’s 90% of the

[01:10:17] Nathan: business,

[01:10:17] Grant: right? You know, that’s awesome. And he said, like, the, the reality is, is like, that’s, you know, 5% of the business. Mm-hmm. And you have to… He said you have to fall in love with the process. Mm-hmm. And so the idea of, you know, from like a health or fitness or nutrition space, like, we all wanna, like, stand in front of a mirror and not cry and-

[01:10:32] Grant: feel good about ourselves, but the reality is, like, you have to fall in love with, like, getting up early and lifting heavy things- Yeah … and eating kale and not cookies. And, like, all these things, you’re like, “I want the end result,” but that, what you just described, is not fun. That doesn’t sound good at all, you know?

[01:10:46] Grant: So, um, you can probably tell, we worked out this morning, uh- I can tell. We, you know- Oh, yeah. … it’s pretty obvious. The pump stays for a little while. Um, but it… Where am I going with that? But it’s one of those, like, I mean, even this morning, there’s times where you’re just like, “I don’t wanna get up,” you know, get up at 4:45 to go lift, and you’re lifting things.

[01:11:04] Grant: You’re like, “Are there lighter ones? Where are the pink ones?” “Uh, this, this is heavy. This is hard.” You should’ve found a pink

[01:11:09] Bryan: band this morning.

[01:11:10] Grant: That was, that was cute. This… It was so much simpler. Like, I don’t know why we’re not doing that. Um, but, like, if you want to be in shape and you wanna stay, um, you know, uh, not cry when you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, like, you just have to do the hard thing.

[01:11:21] Grant: And if you are building a speaking business or course business or a coaching business or a, a SAS or whatever it may be, like, there’s just a lot of parts that just suck really, really bad. Mm-hmm. And so you just kinda have to fall in love with the process of going like, “This sucks, and it’s still worth it.”

[01:11:36] Grant: It’s like marriage, you know? Like, we all have really good marriages, but it doesn’t mean marriage is perfect, and so you just have to know going… We attended a wedding a week or two ago, and you’re watching these children get married. And you’re like, “You don’t know what you’re getting into.” Oh, yeah. “Oh, it’s gonna suck,” you know?

[01:11:51] Grant: But, like, you just have to know, like, yeah, but we’re in it. Mm-hmm. And that’s fine. Like, yeah, I’m gonna do whatever it takes. I’m gonna push through the trough. I’m gonna push through the dip. I’m gonna push through the suck ’cause I know it’s worth it to, to stick with it.

[01:12:02] Nathan: Well, and that’s the thing that I’ve really respect about both of you and your businesses is the amount of time that you’ve done it, right?

[01:12:09] Nathan: And so it’s not just how we’ve all built businesses where, uh, it’s more than our personal brand or the style that we’ve done it or the teams we’ve done it with. It’s like, no, we’ve been at this for a very long time. And there’s a lot of different, as you brought up earlier, there’s a lot of different seasons that come-

[01:12:23] Bryan: Mm-hmm

[01:12:23] Nathan: within that. And so we get to be the examples of like, hey, look, there’s staying power- Yeah … in obsessing over these problems and serving these people.

[01:12:30] Bryan: Yeah, the shelf life is just the owner’s in- attention.

[01:12:33] Nathan: Right.

[01:12:33] Bryan: I don’t think there’s shelf life in these fundamental problems. It is like, do you wanna keep doing it?

[01:12:37] Bryan: If so- Mm-hmm … you can. Like, there’s always a way. Uh, but if you get sick of it, that’s okay, too. Right. You can just quit. You can move on. Like, that’s- Mm-hmm … perfectly s- perfectly fine. Let me share one more mistake- Yeah … real quick before we move on. Um, I think I stopped getting my hands dirty way too soon.

[01:12:52] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Okay.

[01:12:52] Bryan: I think I listened to delegation, and I listened to a lot of that, and there’s, there- there’s, there’s some little paradox here of- The number of… Like, we run a coaching company, and if you’re a human at the company and you don’t coach at a coaching company, you’re probably at the wrong business.

[01:13:06] Bryan: Mm. You’re probably in the wrong business. Like, if I’m l- I, I was actually watching this, uh, famous pastor guy about a year ago, and I remember watching him, I was like, “I really like you a lot.” But then I had this thought in my head, very judgy thought, and it was like, but if you aren’t working with married couples when you get down, like, if you don’t have a, a marriage counseling session to go to on Tuesday, I would be really sad.

[01:13:25] Bryan: If you’re really just a great public speaker-

[01:13:27] Grant: Mm …

[01:13:28] Bryan: like, that’d be a bummer, because you’re teaching from theory, not practice. Like, your hands aren’t dirty. And I, I literally, that whole conversation happened in my head and I was like, “Ah, crap.” Like, the percentage of my time spent helping people do the thing- Mm-hmm

[01:13:41] Bryan: really low. So we’ve started changing internally. We’re not all the way there yet, but we’re close. Like, 80% of everybody’s time, everybody’s time, should be spent helping people- Mm … or the envelope needs to get thinner. Like, why, why do we need that? Like, can we get rid of that activity? Can AI replace that activity?

[01:13:56] Bryan: Can we just… More time, hands dirty, hands-on. And you can feel it in strategy meetings or planning calls or Zoom calls when, when people are talking about a thing- Mm … they can kind of remember from three years ago. And that’s another… To call back to base camp, they did this a few years back, uh, Jason and the other guy.

[01:14:14] Bryan: Yeah. Said they were gonna stop giving advice on startups ’cause it had been 20, 30 years since they had started the company. They’re like, “We don’t know anymore.”

[01:14:21] Nathan: Mm.

[01:14:22] Bryan: I was like, that- I respect that … major respect to that. Like, yeah. So, like, ke- I would keep my hands way dirtier. Mm-hmm. Like, more, more important than product market fit is product founder fit.

[01:14:33] Bryan: Like, it needs to match you or just keep, keep an experimentation phase as long as it takes to find that thing that you want to be hands-on with. Um, and then stay there and be, be hands-on with that. So I think I backed away way too quick, especially in a coaching company whose job is to actually help people.

[01:14:49] Bryan: Um, so I would change that, if I could go back.

[01:14:51] Nathan: Yeah. I think that’s so important because as you build a team of any kind of scale, which many creators listening to this are, then you’re like, okay, you have to delegate. And we say all this, right? And you, you gotta measure and you gotta move up a level. You have to trust your team and- Yeah

[01:15:05] Nathan: um, which is all 100% true.

[01:15:07] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:08] Nathan: But you can get in a position where you don’t understand the actual experience of the product you sell. You don’t understand your customers. You don’t understand how the market has shifted. And that was… On the flight over here, I was reading Eric Jorgensen’s new book.

[01:15:20] Nathan: Which

[01:15:20] Grant: flight? You have a couple to get here.

[01:15:22] Nathan: On the, uh, on the short- Six connection. On the short- Oh, okay. I’ll just clarify … Atlanta to Nashville flight. Got it. Which I wish there was a direct flight. Uh-huh. Uh, I was reading Eric Jorgensen’s, uh, The Book of Elon. Mm-hmm. Where he’s just got Elon, in his own words, you know, talking through this, and that man is operating at a scale so far beyond what we can even imagine, and is, like, in the details.

[01:15:47] Bryan: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:48] Nathan: And to him, it’s like, it’s a sign of respect to his team, of, like, asking… You know, they’re not like, “Oh, you don’t trust me? You’re second guessing what I’m doing?” He’s like- No, I believe in you so much, I’m fundamentally questioning, like, do you have… You know, is this how the physics work? Is this what, you know…

[01:16:03] Nathan: Can we eliminate more of these parts or any of those things? And I think you have to be in the details, and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t belong in your company.

[01:16:10] Bryan: And there’s some paradox in that.

[01:16:11] Nathan: Yeah. ‘

[01:16:12] Bryan: Cause nothing wrong with delegation, nothing wrong with having a couple of levels-

[01:16:15] Nathan: It’s necessary

[01:16:15] Bryan: in the business as the business grows. Yet Elon, when there’s a problem, he skips all of that- Mm-hmm … all of that s- infrastructure, and goes to the frontline engineer and stares at the problem with him, and they problem. He doesn’t get a report to the report to the report up to him. Mm-hmm. He just goes to the problem and problem solves it with him, and that…

[01:16:33] Bryan: Like, it isn’t like he goes and, and says like, “Hey, I wanna learn how everything works.” He knows how it works because every day he’s continuing going to the front line. Mm-hmm. So he just by nature knows how it works because he’s helped design it, and is in the act of problem-solving process. His hands are dirty.

[01:16:48] Bryan: Mm-hmm. Sleeps on the shop floor when there’s an existential threat. It’s like that. And if you’re not willing to do that, like, I don’t know. Like, are you in the right business? Mm-hmm. I, I would question, like, if you found product founder fit yet. Yeah. If you just don’t have an inherent drive to do your version of that.

[01:17:02] Bryan: Not exactly that, but… And in these creator businesses in the sub-$1 million range, like, there’s not that many of you anyway. Uh, but optimizing for getting out of helping people or out of whatever the active part of the business is. Like, I love that you do this show ’cause it keeps you in… Like, if you’re not doing email marketing-

[01:17:19] Nathan: Right

[01:17:19] Bryan: and using Kit, your product will be worse.

[01:17:21] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:21] Bryan: But if you’re actively using it and finding the dumb stuff, ’cause there’s, there has to be plenty of dumb things. Oh,

[01:17:26] Nathan: yes.

[01:17:27] Bryan: And if you go use A Lovable and you’re like, “This is magical. How in the world?” Like, it took me 27 clicks to send this newsletter.

[01:17:31] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:32] Bryan: And I would love if you do all of that. You have no… Like, just go do it all yourself so that you get to see what every creator goes through. And it’s like, if I could eliminate these 27 clicks by just talking to the thing, you’re gonna get that feature launch in three days, and now it’s gonna fundamentally change every client experience that ConvertKit customers have.

[01:17:47] Bryan: Mm-hmm. Like, that feedback loop is, is huge, but you have to fundamentally like email marketing or you won’t do any of that. Right. Yeah. And if you’re optimizing for, like, getting out as quick as possible… Like, we all came up in an executive assistant heyday or virtual assistant heyday-

[01:18:01] Nathan: Yes …

[01:18:01] Bryan: when the goal was delegate every task you possibly can.

[01:18:05] Bryan: But it disconnects you with the real user experience in a way that, like, I, I substantially discounted, and I think it hurt us for a long time.

[01:18:12] Nathan: There are these times where we want to obsessively solve problems or we’re like… Or, or we’ve talked about experimentation as a season, and we’ve talked about this, like, focus to scale.

[01:18:22] Nathan: And then we’ve all been at this game for a long time, and so there’s nothing wrong with those different seasons where you’re like, “Okay, it’s time to, time to do something else,” whether that’s a different business, whether it’s to exit this. Grant, as you’ve looked at the next phase of The Speaker Lab, I’m curious how your thought process was of- Um, like what?

[01:18:40] Nathan: 13 years in to the speaker life?

[01:18:42] Grant: Yeah, 11, 12. Yeah. Something like that.

[01:18:43] Nathan: A long time.

[01:18:44] Grant: Yeah. Yeah, we, um, uh… And I think, you know, several things that you just said there, Brian, that when I got started, um, speaking, I was like, man, I, I had a lot of people starting to ask me, like, “Hey, I wanna be a speaker. How do I do that?”

[01:18:57] Grant: Mm-hmm. And so I was in the weeds speaking, and then also starting to teach people, “Here’s what I’m doing right now. I just did a gig. Let me tell you what, what’s working.” Well, you know, as the business got bigger and bigger, I was doing less speaking. I didn’t wanna be on the road as much. Mm-hmm. And so, I mean, fast-forward to today, and like I haven’t done a keynote in years, you know?

[01:19:15] Grant: And so now we’ve had a, a lot of coaches and people who are like actively speaking, and I’m pointing to them. This kind of goes back to like I don’t want it to be the Grant show. I’m going, “No, no, this is why we have an Eric or Dan or whoever of- Yeah … this is why they are on the front lines teaching the thing.

[01:19:28] Grant: But to your point, like it’s been a minute since I’ve been on a stage. It’s been a minute since I’ve been doing the thing. And so, you know, to, to, you know, your point and your question of, we got to a point where last year we kind of hit a ceiling in growth. And I wouldn’t say I was burned out, but I was just, I was just kind of tired and going like, “I, I’m not as obsessed about this problem as I once was, and I don’t really know what to do or where to go from here.”

[01:19:55] Grant: Mm-hmm. And so, you know, we were kind of thinking through some of the different scenarios and options of like, what do we do? Do we sell this, or do we just crash this into the earth? Or like, you know, what are the, the scenarios or options here? And, uh, we made the decision a couple months ago to actually start to just wind down the business.

[01:20:12] Grant: Mm. And feel like it, it… I was no longer as obsessed with it, with the solving the problem, and going, “I think I personally had done all that I knew to do.” And so we were kind of on that path. We’d since, um, sold the business to a, a couple of employees. But I think it goes to, um, uh, for me and, and figuring out how I’m wired of going like, “What, what, um, what is the thing that I’m passionate about?

[01:20:40] Grant: What is the thing that I wanna be doing? And is this the thing that, um, I’m currently doing? Is there a different way to go about doing it?” And, you know, where do we go from, where do we go from here when you get to a point in your business? And I think we’ve, you know, we’ve all been that, to that point of going, is…

[01:20:55] Grant: Like a, a good reflective question I like to ask is like, is this a season or is this the way it is? And if it’s a season, like, okay, you can ride that out, and you can accommodate that and get through that. But if this is the way it is, then something has to change. Um, and so, uh, yeah, that was definitely like a introspective, um, uh, journey for me of just figuring out, like what- Mm-hmm

[01:21:18] Grant: what do I want? And it’s, uh, as simple of a question as it is, it’s really freaking hard to answer and, and get clarity on.

[01:21:25] Nathan: Yeah. I mean, it’s that, like we’re talking about you have to obsess over the product and the customer and all of this and to get to the next level. And so when you get to the point where you’re like, “Actually, I don’t- Those aren’t the things that I wanna obsess over

[01:21:35] Grant: Yeah.

[01:21:36] Nathan: Brian, I’m curious, as, you know- Mm … uh, you and Grant hang out a lot and all that, and you had to have a front row seat to this transition. Like, what are the things- Yeah … that you noticed that if another founder, another creator is going through that, like, types of questions that you would suggest or what would come up?

[01:21:52] Nathan: Or just anything you noticed in that transition.

[01:21:54] Bryan: In the hard part of last year for him, I asked him at some point, ’cause as the growth was slowing, you know, there’s a whole set of questions you ask there. And, um, they were working through internally, and I asked him at some point, I think this was, like, November, December, I was like, “Hey, this is fixable.”

[01:22:08] Nathan: Mm. ”

[01:22:08] Bryan: Do you wanna fix it? ‘Cause, you know, you for sure can fix it.” Right. “Like, it is a thing you can work through. You can get on the other side, and you can be healthier and better- Mm … and more profitable than ever. But, like, this is what those set of activities are. We’ve run them one time. They’re not super pleasurable

[01:22:24] Bryan: But, like, there’s things you can do. Like, and it totally, totally works. And, uh, like, do you wanna do that?” And he was like, “No.” I was like, “Cool. Great.” Like- It’s

[01:22:32] Nathan: clarity …

[01:22:33] Bryan: go execute. Yeah. And it was like- Yeah … that was re- I think I’ve majorly respected that, and I think a lot of creators need to hear that. Like, if you’re 10, 15, 20 years in, maybe 5 years in-

[01:22:42] Nathan: Mm-hmm

[01:22:43] Bryan: and it’s like you’re not in love with the problem anymore, you’re not in love with the customer anymore, and it’s just really, really hard, you can just shut it down.

[01:22:51] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:52] Bryan: You can just say, “Eh, I’m done,” and just shut the thing off. And I think, I don’t know of another example of that. And y’all have sold to employees and all that.

[01:23:01] Bryan: Like, it wound up with a really good ending to it, but, like, I know very few people who have just walked away- Mm-hmm … and said that, and had enough emotion- like, healthy emotional detachment. For me, me and Grant were wrestling with this together over those couple months. I think I have too much identity in my company to just shut it down.

[01:23:22] Bryan: Yeah. And most people I observe and most clients I’ve worked with, there’s way much, part of who they are is that thing.

[01:23:27] Nathan: Right.

[01:23:27] Bryan: And if it were to be gone, it’s, it’s what a lot of people that sell experience actually. They sell the company, and all of a sudden, now what do I do? And there’s a whole- Like a full-on

[01:23:34] Nathan: identity crisis

[01:23:35] Bryan: existential crisis. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was a huge part of them, and I think Grant might be slightly psychotic, because I don’t think he has any of that. Or you’re really good at hiding it, one of the two.

[01:23:45] Nathan: No identity crisis that

[01:23:47] Bryan: came along. It’s like no identity tied into business. I think that’s hard to do, actually, and Grant’s done it really, really well.

[01:23:53] Bryan: So I think there’s just permission to, you can just end it. Mm. Like, that’s okay. Um, and it was liberating to me. Like, I don’t wanna end my thing. Like, I’m, I’m in. But, like, there’s a place in my mind of like, hmm, okay. Well, if there comes a point, there’s at least a data set of one now of somebody that did that in a really healthy way.

[01:24:07] Bryan: Um, didn’t hide it, didn’t not talk about it, but moved on to the next thing. Right. So that’s, that’s really cool.

[01:24:13] Grant: Yeah. I think even when we were in Montana a couple months ago, you know, one of these guys we were talking with, I, uh, was chatting with him a couple months ago. And I was telling him kind of similar of just going like, “I don’t know where to go from here.

[01:24:25] Grant: I’m not really sure, you know, what to do next.” And he was telling me about, I think it was someone, a friend of his in the concrete business, and he said he just got to a point where he just didn’t want to do it anymore and, and he just closed. And I was like, “That’s a thing?” You can do that? You can do that, you know?

[01:24:39] Grant: But by contrast- Yeah … I remember, um, like over the holiday break there’s a, um, I think, like, an email newsletter or something I’m on, and a lady was building, like, a, a big media company or something. And I kind of loosely followed it from afar. Totally different industry or space, but, um, she sent out an email of saying like, “Hey, I just had to file bankruptcy.”

[01:24:58] Grant: Mm. “And, like, none of my employees are getting paid and none of my, um, vendors and partners and customers-” Mm … “Ev- everybody’s screwed in the process,” you know? And I was just like, “Well, we’re nowhere near that, but I don’t want to get to that point.” Right. You know? Like, there’s just far… I think there’s far too many, um, entrepreneurs who think, you know, “I am, I am so chained to…”

[01:25:19] Grant: I heard someone describe it like you, as an entrepreneur, you’re on a road trip with a bunch of people in the car, but you’re the only one that’s handcuffed to the car. Mm. And you’re stuck, you’re trapped, you know? And so- Everybody else,

[01:25:29] Nathan: they’re like, “We don’t actually like where it’s going.” Yeah. “This

[01:25:31] Grant: car

[01:25:31] Nathan: is

[01:25:32] Grant: kind of a piece

[01:25:32] Nathan: of junk.”

[01:25:32] Nathan: And they, like- “Whatever.

[01:25:33] Grant: They can all leave.”

[01:25:34] Nathan: There’s

[01:25:34] Grant: something, there’s something to be said for sure of the people who are like- Yeah … “I’m… You know, I got, I mortgaged my house. I sold out my 401. Uh, I did everything to, like, make this work. I’m all in.” And, like, that’s awesome, and there’s been seasons where I felt like, “Yes, I will do those things if that’s what it takes to make this happen.”

[01:25:50] Grant: And I got to a point where I was like, “I don’t feel that way.” Mm. “And I also don’t want to, um… Like, we’re not gonna file bankruptcy.” Yeah. “And we’re not gonna get anywhere near that, and I’m not gonna jeopardize, you know, the healthy spot that we’re in financially, you know, for our family.” Um, and so what, what are the other outcomes?

[01:26:09] Grant: What are the other options, you know? Versus feeling like you’re just stuck, you’re just trapped. Mm. You know? And I think a lot of, a lot of entrepreneurs feel that way and don’t feel like they have any choice, either from a financials perspective or from an identity perspective. And, like, all those things are, like, real factors, you know, for sure.

[01:26:25] Grant: Mm. And, like, the identity thing of going, “Uh, well, now what? What does that mean?” You know? And, you know, people ask you, “What are, what are you doing now?” And, like, you’ve always had your token answer.

[01:26:35] Bryan: Mm.

[01:26:36] Grant: And so now, you know, what, what does that look like or what does that

[01:26:39] Nathan: mean? Now you’re unemployed and podcasting- I’m unemployed

[01:26:41] Nathan: at 11:00 AM on a Monday. It’s, it’s not

[01:26:43] Grant: too bad actually, you know?

[01:26:44] Bryan: I want to summarize this, because I want to make sure everybody’s tracking with the story. You’ve had a very successful business. You’ve been in the- Mm … Inc. 5000 many years in a row. Very profitable. Big team. Same topic for 10, 15 years. And then you had a hard year in ’25…

[01:27:04] Bryan: or ’24, ’25, in that- Mm … p- period. You’re looking at the problem and you’re like, “Actually, I don’t even want to solve it this time. I’ve solved it in the past, versions of this, but, like, the problem is no longer, for me, like, majorly intrinsically driving. I’m not doing the thing actively myself.” Like, I think I just wanna move on.

[01:27:22] Bryan: So you said, “I think I’m done,” and then a period of time played out, and then you wound up selling the company to employees. Like, that’s really cool.

[01:27:31] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:31] Bryan: Like, the business never crashed. The thing never fell apart. It’s still profitable, still operational, still helpful.

[01:27:39] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:39] Bryan: And you were so healthy with your dynamic with the company, you’re able to walk away from it and actually leave it in better hands.

[01:27:47] Bryan: So anybody listening, you can do a version of that.

[01:27:50] Grant: Yeah. And I, I mean, I… Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Um, and yeah. I mean, we had, like s- um, some hard months, but, like, we… The whole time we were in business, we never lost money on an annual basis. But the, um… I mean, I do remember the conversation at the gym where you’re like, “Do you wanna fix this?”

[01:28:07] Grant: Mm-hmm. And I would totally agree that, like, every problem in business is fixable, you know? Right. And it’s very… I think you, you talked about it from, like, a marriage perspective of going, you know, if you look at your marriage and if you’re in a bad spot, you go, “Do you want to fix this?” Well, if you want to fix this, if mentally, emotionally you’re connected and you’re all in, you’ll figure out a way.

[01:28:25] Grant: But if you’re like, “Eh, I don’t really wanna fix this. I wanna move on,” like, it, it doesn’t matter what the solution is, you’re not gonna do it anyway. Right. You know? And so yeah, I think I was at a point of going like, “No, I think, I think I’m good.” Like, I’ve had a really good run. And so I don’t feel any winding it down.

[01:28:39] Grant: I don’t feel any regret or sadness or second-guessing- Mm-hmm … or woe is me. I feel like, man, we had a really good run. We generated, you know, a lot of revenue, a lot of profit. We helped a ton of people. We made a big difference for our team members and our employees. We did more, you know, in our little business than a lot of businesses do, and I feel enormous gratitude for that, you know?

[01:28:58] Grant: And at the same time recognizing, like, we had a great run. What’s next, you know? Yeah. It’s kind of like, um, you know, uh, Steve Martin going from stand-up comedy to playing the banjo, you know? It’s like, well, those things are different, you know? But he just- Are you gonna

[01:29:12] Bryan: play the banjo?

[01:29:13] Grant: I don’t think so.

[01:29:15] Bryan: Flute? I’m- More of a clarinet guy. Piccol-

[01:29:17] Grant: piccolo. Piccolo? Whatever.

[01:29:19] Nathan: One example of that is, uh, Daniel Radcliffe who played Harry Potter.

[01:29:22] Bryan: Mm.

[01:29:23] Nathan: He is now d- he has this one-man show that he does- In Bro- yeah … to, to a small theater. Mm-hmm. He’s, like, super eng- like, he passes out props to the audience members- Yeah, yeah

[01:29:31] Nathan: to get them to interact and all of that. Yeah.

[01:29:32] Grant: And,

[01:29:33] Nathan: like, you can add up… He’s not making that much money off of it because- Yeah … it’s not that big of a theater. You know, at least compared to movie… But he’s like, “No, I’m done doing that. I… Like, this is what I wanna do right now.”

[01:29:43] Bryan: And he has enough. Like, I, I wonder how much of what we do- Mm

[01:29:48] Bryan: is based on we need more money.

[01:29:51] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:29:51] Bryan: Versus, like, is that what you should be doing?

[01:29:54] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:29:54] Bryan: Like, if you didn’t make money your number one optimization point, and what if you had enough now? Like, what would you do? Not if you had $100 million in the bank, ’cause that’d probably jack us all up even more. But, like, now.

[01:30:06] Bryan: But what if you had right now was enough? Mm. Like, what would you fundamentally do different? And I love, I love that. I love Jewel. She tells a story on Rogan several years ago. She was homeless, sleeping in her car, playing, like, eight hours a day at a coffee shop on La Jolla Beach. And, uh, then she got known.

[01:30:21] Bryan: Like, people started hearing her, and some DJ played her song on the, on the radio. And all of a sudden, like, every day, another record label limousine would pull up trying to give her a deal, and this record label pulled up, gave her a million-dollar deal, and she turned it down as a homeless person sleeping in her car.

[01:30:36] Bryan: And wound up signing a deal a few months later and getting a great gig, because they were gonna own the catalog or however- Yeah … record labels work or whatever. But, um, man, there, there’s a part of that that, like, man, if money isn’t the number one thing-

[01:30:46] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[01:30:47] Bryan: and helping people is, and producing great stuff is, the money comes.

[01:30:51] Bryan: And I think it comes in way cooler ways. Like Radcliffe doing that is, like, my desi- my esteem of him just goes through the roof.

[01:30:57] Grant: Yeah. What was the quote, you just talked about this on, on the podcast, the comedian who was getting heckled, and he said, “How much money you have? 100 money.”

[01:31:04] Nathan: Oh, yeah.

[01:31:05] Grant: Uh- And, but his answer- It’s Jimmy

[01:31:07] Nathan: Carr

[01:31:07] Grant: yeah, his answer of, “If I had more money, it wouldn’t change what I would… I would still be doing-” Yeah, his definition of rich. You know? Yeah.

[01:31:14] Nathan: Mm.

[01:31:14] Grant: Which is a great answer, you know? Yeah. Of like, “If you, if you could do this thing for free, would you do that?” Um, uh, and, “If you had infinite money, you know, would you keep doing that same thing?”

[01:31:23] Nathan: Yeah, that’s good. This has been super fun to dive into the journey and- Mm … and all of that, and see, like, the full range of it. I appreciate you guys sharing that because I’ve had a front row seat to it- Mm … for both of you. You guys have had a front row seat to, uh, me as I’ve grown up and all of this. One thing that I did ask, uh, you to bring, and I was curious if you have them, is, uh, uh, if there’s any books.

[01:31:40] Nathan: Mm. ‘Cause we have this ability to, like, grab a book and dive into someone’s mind, and we’ve quoted lots of books that have had an impact on us, but any books that come to mind on that journey that have been particularly helpful?

[01:31:51] Grant: I mean, the, the one I, I had in mind was actually one we, we’ve kind of loosely referenced here, but the guys from, um, 37signals basically- Yeah

[01:31:57] Grant: you know. It’s an older book, 15, 20 years old, uh, Rework- Mm … um, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Um, but they just talk about, like, counterintuitive ways to run a business- Yeah … and how to think about entrepreneurship. And, you know, again, it’s 15, 20 years old, but it still, it still holds up. Uh, in terms of just- Do it on your terms

[01:32:15] Grant: yeah, just, uh, and again, goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of, like, you get to design the rules of the game in a way that makes sense for you, you know? Mm-hmm. And so if you wanna build a SAS company, you get to choose. You don’t have to build it like, you know, fill-in-the-blank company did.

[01:32:29] Grant: Um, and so yeah, that’s a, a great one. I love that. Brian, what about you?

[01:32:33] Bryan: Got two. One is Stop Guessing by Nat Green.

[01:32:37] Nathan: I’ve never heard of that one. I like

[01:32:38] Bryan: that. Oh, it’s great. Like, I’ve never… Yeah, I literally one day, I was like, “I gotta teach the team how to problem solve.” So I start trying to like, “All right, how do I problem solve?”

[01:32:47] Bryan: Oh, crap, I don’t know either. I just guess and- Yeah … maybe my rate is 5% higher than the, than the normal person. So I Google problem-solving books, and the first one on the list was this book, Stop Guessing, and it is, it, it is awesome. Um, he tells a story in the very beginning. I’ll try to make it short, but he tells a story of this manufacturing company.

[01:33:06] Bryan: I think they make toilet paper. And the marketing team have developed a new version of double rolls or something, 24 in a pack or something like that for the first time. Uh, and it sells extremely well, but this warehouse can’t keep up with production because the, the machine that wraps the toilet paper, you can’t turn it up past a five out of 10 on the speed knob, or it just, you know, shakes and throws toilet paper off the line.

[01:33:29] Bryan: Literally, they’re having to work triple shifts, and even then can’t keep up, so they’re gonna have to start limiting volume of paper they sell because their machine… And they can’t take the machine out to put a new machine in because they’d have to rip the whole warehouse apart. It’d be a multi-month process, cost $10 million, et cetera.

[01:33:44] Bryan: Uh, so they bring these manufacturers in, and the, the manufacturer of the machine in, and the consultants in, and all this stuff. This is the opening story of the book. You… Like, go read this story ’cause it will… When you talk about simplicity, it has fundamentally, like, rewired my brain, um, in such good ways.

[01:34:00] Bryan: So they bring people in, they’re studying it, they’re giving quotes, and all these different super complex solutions. There’s actually a line now we quote internally and into clients sometimes, and it is, “Refuse complex solutions.”

[01:34:10] Nathan: Mm.

[01:34:11] Bryan: And if you do that long enough, the utterly simple solution always appears.

[01:34:15] Bryan: It’s al- And it’s… It actually takes legit faith because you can’t imagine what a incredibly simple solution would be to these persistent problems, like these complicated and long-standing problems. Uh, but once you see a few cycles of it, you always know it’s there. You just gotta wait and, like, actually make those things go away.

[01:34:32] Bryan: So found out they didn’t buy the $10 million conveyor system. They didn’t shut down the line. They didn’t stop sales and marketing. Um, this consultant comes in, Matt Greer, and the writer of the book. He d- My favorite part is he doesn’t solve the problem either, but he’s talking with the different people, understanding the issues, looking at the machine and all this stuff.

[01:34:46] Bryan: And finally one night, like the overnight mechanic guy is sitting there looking at the machine in the middle of the night, like trying to figure out, “What is the problem with this thing?” So he shuts down the line for a minute, and he gets a ladder, and he climbs up on top and looks down into the machine, which you can’t do when toilet paper’s running through it because you can’t see anything in it.

[01:35:05] Bryan: And he, he’s looking at it, and it’s running fine at, like, a three out of 10 on the speed scale. But as he turns it up to a five and a six, it starts vibrating a little bit. And as he turns it up to an eight, every now and then he could see something kind of like poke out a little bit. He’s like, “What is that?”

[01:35:18] Bryan: So he turns it up to a 10, and by the time he get to a 10, the whole machine’s rattling. Whatever this thing in there is, is like poking in and out and all this. So he shuts the machine off, takes the side panel off, and he kind of gets his hand up in there and, and pulls out this little one-and-a-quarter inch bolt.

[01:35:35] Bryan: And somewhere along the way, this little bolt had fallen off of… Somebody had dropped it in there, whatever. Turns out the only reason they couldn’t keep up with tens of millions of dollars of demand and had to run three shifts and were about to spend $15 million was a 50 cent bolt had fallen off, and whenever the s- at, like, five out of 10, the bolt didn’t stick out.

[01:35:55] Bryan: But at six, seven, eight out of 10 on the speed thing, it would stick out and grab the shrink wrap and throw the whole thing everywhere. Took the bolt out, slapped the side panel on, turned it a 10 out of 10, and the line run, run, run per- r- run perfectly well And the whole book is outlining like, all right, how do you do that?

[01:36:10] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:36:11] Bryan: And it gives you a little bit of a framework and process, uh, to do that, to find utterly simple solutions to these highly persistent problems. They give a frame of most of us solution guess, we don’t problem solve. An example he shares is like if a light bulb goes out in your house, what do you do?

[01:36:26] Bryan: You go get another light bulb and put it in. That’s a guess, ’cause you guessed- Yeah … the problem was the light bulb first, which is fine actually. It’s a very reasonable thing to do. But if you do that in business or in other areas of life that have these persistent problems where your solution guessing hasn’t solved it, you need another approach, and the book kind of outlines a really cool way to methodically go through some of these.

[01:36:45] Bryan: And as we’ve done that in business, like it’s been wildly cool- Mm … to find these like incredibly simple, uh, solutions to these complex problems. So anyway, the book kind of goes through that. Stop

[01:36:55] Grant: guessing. Rework is really neat.

[01:36:58] Bryan: Stop Guessing, Not- I like

[01:37:00] Grant: it.

[01:37:00] Bryan: I like it … Great Book.

[01:37:01] Grant: You said you had a second one?

[01:37:02] Bryan: The other book is called Wealth, Riches, and Money by Craig Hill. It’s one of those books if you look at, looks super janky, self-published from the ’80s. Probably is all of those things. Uh, but there’s a coup- two, two things I’ve seen myself and clients I work with, other founders struggle with the most is our view on money, and it comes out in ways that doesn’t look like it’s about money at all.

[01:37:23] Bryan: But, um, but it is great for tearing that down. Like I realized for myself about a year ago, a year and a half ago now, that my nu- I didn’t… This was not intuitive, not conscious, not obvious to me. Maybe everybody else it was, but, but my number one optimization point was money in business and life.

[01:37:41] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:37:41] Bryan: If I were to strip and like get to really transparent mode, if I hit revenue goal, everything was great.

[01:37:48] Bryan: If I missed revenue goal, everything wasn’t great. And a lot of little distortions that never made it quite that clear. I would say the right words and probably halfway mean them, but this book made it really evidently clear. Like, yeah, no, money’s your number one idol in life. Like your number one optimization point is that.

[01:38:05] Bryan: Um, and that sent me on a journey over the past year and a half of just trying to tear that down. Like money’s g- money’s fine.

[01:38:10] Nathan: Yep.

[01:38:11] Bryan: You fuel good, but how… Like God’s only gonna give you as much as you can handle without detaching from him, and then it stops. Or the worst thing he could do is keep giving you the thing that’s killing you.

[01:38:24] Bryan: Like th- like fundamentally, those are the two things. So, um, for me that became really evident, and this book helped with that, and kind of gave some alternate ways of thinking about money. One of which maybe to share real quick is not getting… And this maybe goes to Grant’s current transition, is not getting overly married to the channel that the money’s coming from right now, that the s- the daily cash flow is coming from.

[01:38:50] Bryan: Um, I would attribute the source of cash flow as it comes from God. Get married to that, and then if the current cash comes from this business or the current cash comes from this business or this passive income stream, cool. But know- Like, it can change, and that’s okay. Like, the source doesn’t change, but the channel that comes through has changed.

[01:39:06] Bryan: So get married to that, not this. Or you’ll find out really quickly if you have a money idol or if you’ve made money your number one optimization point, ’cause let the channel stop and see what happens. Sell the business for $100 million. Great. See what happens. Have the business shut down ’cause it, you, it, it didn’t sustain.

[01:39:21] Bryan: See what happens. And I, I’ve had versions of all of those personally, and it reveals really quickly where my trust is, and it is in those dollars coming in every week and every month. And if that stops, what do you do? And what does your stress level and your anxiety level go to? Or even if business is going really well, but the bank account balance goes from this many zeros to one less zero.

[01:39:40] Grant: Mm-hmm.

[01:39:41] Bryan: Or even the digit at the front goes from an eight to a four, what happens? And if the anxiety goes up, the stress goes up, the fear goes up, like, it’s a… For me, I’ve noticed, and with clients I’ve noticed, it kicks the fear loop into just high gear. And when fear goes up, like, literally your prefrontal…

[01:40:00] Bryan: your frontal cortex shuts off, your amygdala comes on, and your problem-solving and creativity goes to crap. Um, and it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So that book helped me kind of work through some- Mm-hmm … dynamics of that in a really, really good way. And that’s still a work in progress for me.

[01:40:14] Bryan: I still, f- fear with that is my number one trigger. You wanna get me with going on fear and shutting down and everything, like, get the money, and- Hmm … boy.

[01:40:21] Grant: Yeah.

[01:40:22] Bryan: Those, those buttons are still there. And will probably be like a recovering alcoholic or anybody recovering from any kind of, you know, abuse or whatever, is, like, those are always things to keep on guard for me.

[01:40:30] Bryan: Um, so yeah, that’s another, another book that helped me. We

[01:40:32] Grant: could have a money episode sometime. We’ve had multiple- Yeah.

[01:40:35] Nathan: We- …

[01:40:35] Grant: calls, the three of us-

[01:40:35] Nathan: Yeah …

[01:40:36] Grant: and we’re talking about money.

[01:40:37] Bryan: Mm.

[01:40:37] Nathan: Let’s do it. We’ll do a part three where we dive deep into all of that. So you guys- Yeah … can be the only guests to come back for the third time.

[01:40:43] Nathan: Let’s go.

[01:40:44] Grant: That’ll be good. So we have a

[01:40:44] Bryan: punchline to the book.

[01:40:45] Grant: We just try to… I saw this on a, a total side note. Yeah. Uh, Nate Bargatze, saw him a couple months ago. Yeah. You saw him, right?

[01:40:50] Nathan: Yeah, I saw him as well.

[01:40:51] Grant: Excellent. Um, he had an opener who tells a big story. Mm. Great story, and then he says, “If you wanna hear the ending, I’m gonna be performing at such and such comedy club in a couple weeks.”

[01:41:01] Grant: Ooh. And you’re like, “Oh.” That was good. That was really good. That was good. Yeah. So, yeah, he didn’t finish the story. Oh, that’s

[01:41:07] Nathan: brutal.

[01:41:07] Grant: It was. It

[01:41:08] Nathan: was good. Uh, well, at least we closed all the… most of the loops that we opened, so- Yeah … there you go. Well done. Um, normally I’d ask, like, you know, where should we go to follow what you’re up to?

[01:41:16] Nathan: I actually don’t know the answer for you, Grant. Like- Uh,

[01:41:18] Grant: grant@grantbaldwin.com. Shoot me an email. Yeah.

[01:41:20] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:41:20] Grant: And, um, yeah, happy to answer any questions or- That sounds good … help however I can.

[01:41:25] Nathan: Yeah. Brian, growthtools.com?

[01:41:27] Bryan: growthtools.com/nathan. I’ll put the… We talked about earlier the positioning statement and how to work through that.

[01:41:31] Bryan: Oh, yeah. I’ll put a, a video lesson of me actively teaching that and some templates and examples of that, so anybody that wants to work through, offer, wrestle with that, and really get down to core stuff, I’ll just share some resources so y’all can go do it.

[01:41:41] Nathan: Sounds good. Yeah. growthtools.com/nathan. I have my own personalized URL on your site.

[01:41:45] Grant: Grantbaldwin.com/n- Nathan’s… Ugh. We don’t know where that joke is going. Guys, thanks so much for coming on. You bet, man. Thank you.

[01:41:54] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else you think we should have on the show.

[01:42:08] Nathan: Thank you so much

[01:42:08] Nathan: for listening.

[00:00:00] Brian: People think it’s a magic trick. It’s not. It’s a system that we’ve built.

[00:00:03] Will: Too many people think they’re done with something prematurely unless you’ve looked at the same thing over and over and over again and said, can it be better? Can it be more fun? Can it be more awesome? Then eventually you get there.

[00:00:14] Nathan: Will Guera spent over a decade running 11 Madison Park, the restaurant voted number one. In the world, and he just released the field guide on it as well. Joining him on the episode is Brian Canlis, who ran the restaurant Canlis in Seattle for nearly two decades. One of the most respected, fine dining institutions in the country.

[00:00:30] Brian: The message of hospitality, how much it connects to industries all across the board, because essentially it’s about treating humans with creativity and intention.

[00:00:39] Nathan: Two things make this episode really special. First, will and Brian have been friends since college, and you just feel it in the stories they tell and the chemistry they have and everything else.

[00:00:46] Nathan: The second is they’ve actually never done a podcast episode together.

[00:00:50] Will: You will never see a newsletter or a post from us that’s, Hey, there are five seats left at this event, buy now.

[00:00:57] Brian: It’s not always about selling something. It’s not about, Hey, come listen to us. It’s so important to us that it gives more than it takes.

[00:01:07] Nathan: So what I’m curious just to start with is how did you two start working together?

[00:01:11] Brian: We met 28 years ago. During freshman orientation.

[00:01:15] Nathan: Oh wow.

[00:01:16] Brian: Before class, before school even started. Yeah. At Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. And we kind of hit it off maybe unevenly.

[00:01:27] Will: You mean that you liked me more than I liked you?

[00:01:29] Brian: No, that I was friends with a girl. That you had a crush on.

[00:01:32] Will: Yes.

[00:01:32] Brian: And therefore you saw me not only as, of course, a physical threat naturally, but an emotional threat as well.

[00:01:39] Nathan: Competition on so many levels

[00:01:40] Brian: and that didn’t last long at all.

[00:01:43] Will: That girl ended up being my girlfriend.

[00:01:45] Brian: Yeah. He

[00:01:47] Will: just, to be super clear

[00:01:48] Brian: and I was actually dating somebody else, so it wasn’t, you just misread the whole thing.

[00:01:53] Brian: We really enjoyed working together all through college. It was funny, we, my social circle was, there was like a Venn diagram between our two circles and they crossed over with just us in it. So all my friends and all my community and all my activities. Was completely separate from Will and vice versa.

[00:02:16] Brian: And yet we, I

[00:02:17] Will: feel like we need to unpack that. Brian was in chess club and was in Razi and uh, Bible study and all of that, and I was in a band and had the party house and, and all of that stuff. And so our friends were, we’re very different friend groups, but we went to Cornell where there’s five colleges and um, we both went to the hotel school.

[00:02:44] Will: We both grew up in restaurant families and we took pretty much every single class together through all of college. And when studying with Brian, it made homework not feel like work like we have always since the day we met, had this ability to enjoy work,

[00:03:07] Brian: to work and have fun at the same time. It’s always been that way and we’ve loved it.

[00:03:12] Brian: Our first big project we did together was we had to open a restaurant together, like a student restaurant for one night.

[00:03:19] Nathan: Okay.

[00:03:19] Brian: Where we’d hire the staff and write the menu and come up with the concept. And it was a home run. It was a, it was a hit. We had so much fun. It was sold out. And I remember looking at him and being like, we, we should do this.

[00:03:31] Brian: Like we, we love working together. But then of course after graduation, I had to, I paid for school with an ROTC scholarship, so I got shipped out to Alaska, to, I was in the Air Force. You went off and started your own career. We lived in opposite sides of the world. I didn’t think we, we would know if it would ever happen, and then a season came in 2014 where I went through a divorce and needed like a break from my own city.

[00:04:00] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Because you were in Seattle?

[00:04:02] Brian: Yeah, I was in Seattle. You were in Manhattan. And I moved to New York City for four or five months. We called it a friend internship, where I wanted to stay professional and stay active, but I just wanted to get outta town and have a break. And I helped you open the Nomad, the Nomad Bar.

[00:04:22] Will: We had a hotel in New York City called The Nomad, and we were expanding it and Brian came onto the team to effectively be one of the top people in expanding it. So he came on for four months, but into a pretty senior role.

[00:04:32] Brian: And it was so fun. And what’s made it even more fun is the artist that he hired to do the Art on the Walls is now my wife of 10 years and the mother of four children.

[00:04:43] Brian: So I met my wife in that process and once again, we fell in love with working and playing together at the same time. Right around that time, the Welcome conference began.

[00:04:55] Will: Wait, hold on. I think it’s important to. Explain what Brian’s career has been.

[00:05:00] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:05:01] Will: And I’m gonna do it on your behalf so I can

[00:05:03] Nathan: inval

[00:05:04] Will: celebrate it however you want accordingly.

[00:05:05] Will: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:05:05] Nathan: I love it.

[00:05:06] Will: So Brian, up until eight months ago, was alongside his brother running the restaurant Canlis in Seattle. They were the third generation owner operators of this restaurant, which is, in my view, and this is not as a friend and partner to him, but

[00:05:25] Nathan: just as an industry expert,

[00:05:26] Will: as an industry, someone who knows a lot about restaurants, um, one of the greatest restaurants on the planet.

[00:05:33] Will: And that was his kind of life, which was in many ways paved out before you and not so much of a choice necessarily, although you made the choice to join it.

[00:05:45] Brian: It, it did surprise me that I did enter the family business. That was not the plan, and that I kind of stumbled into it after the Air Force and then fell in love with it.

[00:05:55] Brian: Hmm.

[00:05:56] Will: And so his break to come work with me in New York was a break from the family business, which anyone who’s ever been in a family business can,

[00:06:05] Nathan: it’s a big deal.

[00:06:05] Will: Can understand that that’s actually a big deal.

[00:06:07] Brian: Yeah. And my brother and partner was completely supportive of it. He was like, yes, just go, I got this.

[00:06:13] Brian: Go pursue that. And goodness, that was a fun summer. You fell in love with We double dated. He was dating Christina while I was dating Mackenzie and the four of us dated all that summer. And it was fun. I mean, he was the, he was the boss, but we were friends. There’s this one night at, at the Nomad where you were having some relational anxiety with your dating relationship with Christine.

[00:06:37] Brian: You can

[00:06:37] Will: tell this story. I’m, I’m, I’m fine with it

[00:06:40] Brian: Will shows up at the bar and I, I’m the only manager that night on duty and it was slammed. I mean, we were slammed the second we opened. It was awesome. And Will shows up and he’s like, we need to go right now. And I was like, what do you. Are you out of your mind?

[00:06:56] Brian: You are like, we need to leave right now. And I was like, I’m the manager. He’s like, I’m the owner and we’re leaving. I was like, all right. He’s like, just 10 minutes. And so we start walking around the block and I was like, dude, what? All right. What’s going on? And he was like, I told Christina I loved her. I was like, dude, that’s, that’s huge.

[00:07:15] Brian: That’s amazing. Like, I love Christine like. And she didn’t say it though. It’s like, what do I do? And you were, you were like on the edge of you were like, maybe do we break up? Is it over? Do I move, you know, to a different state?

[00:07:31] Will: I mean, that’s a hard moment.

[00:07:32] Nathan: Yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:07:33] Will: Anyone who’s ever been in that situation knows that that’s when you need the people that you love and trust.

[00:07:38] Brian: What did she say

[00:07:39] Will: to you next

[00:07:39] Brian: to you? Did Shehan solo you or did she say, I know

[00:07:42] Will: she so, or like, I forget what she said. I, I, it like, thank you was Thank you. It was like, I do know that it was not I love you too. It wasn’t,

[00:07:49] Brian: it wasn’t what you hoped.

[00:07:50] Will: Yeah. I’ve gotten that since from her.

[00:07:52] Brian: Ah. But so it was, it was awesome.

[00:07:56] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:56] Will: Anyway, to fast forward the story. We started the welcome conference. I was running my company, he was running his family restaurant. I sold my company just before COVID. Mm-hmm. Wrote Unreasonable Hospitality. Started to build a business around that. Me and my family decided to move to Nashville. He and his family were really contemplating leaving Seattle, leaving the family business, not to work with me, but just for their family.

[00:08:24] Will: It was feeling like the right stuff. Yeah.

[00:08:26] Brian: It was time. And when I became a restaurateur, I was single in my twenties and the, the T-shirt fit like it looked good in the mirror. 20 years later I had four young kids and I was like, is it’s a

[00:08:37] Nathan: different

[00:08:37] Brian: level. I’ve done this for 20 years. I loved it. I loved my family, I loved the business.

[00:08:41] Brian: I was like, what if the next 20 years looks totally different? Mm-hmm. My wife and I got excited about a new fresh start and we said, let’s hop in the minivan and drive to Nashville.

[00:08:52] Nathan: And so what was the, the vision for the business that you were working on together?

[00:08:56] Will: The agreement was let’s work together for a year.

[00:09:00] Nathan: Okay.

[00:09:00] Will: We are friends first and we wanna make sure that if we work together, it doesn’t compromise the friendship. Mm-hmm. And so we’re coming up at the end of the year, but it was just, Hey, let’s see where we can take this. And we’re coming up on the end of the year, so we’ll, we’ll circle back when we have that meeting.

[00:09:14] Brian: Let’s, let’s date, let’s not get married. Let’s, we’ve both been in significant partnerships. Like, we don’t have to rush into this. Let’s just have fun for a year. What’s it like? You’re growing this brand new company outta this book that I famously told him not to write. Like I was like, the world doesn’t need another book Will like, and he’s like, no, I’m gonna write a book.

[00:09:35] Brian: Then the damn thing sold a million and a half copies. So it was exciting to see what was happening and how the world was connecting with this message of hospitality. And I have hospitality in my blood and bones and love being an evangelist for how. Powerful and meaningful. It is not just in the hospitality industry, but in industries everywhere.

[00:09:56] Brian: And that’s what he was doing. And I thought, I wanna come be a part of that thing. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:02] Will: And so I’ll tell you where the business is now. Okay. What we do and how we decide which things we choose to do as things evolve. And I think it’s important to caveat it like that because for both of us, our careers were very, very linear and required, pretty relentless focus on single goals, right?

[00:10:32] Will: Like when I was growing up, I wanted to get to Cornell, then I wanted my own restaurant, then I wanted four stars for the New York Times. Then I wanted to be number one in the world. And every decision that was made was in pursuit of that singular goal. Now we. Earned the right to not have to be so singularly focused and rather can look at the opportunities in front of us and choose which ones to take.

[00:10:57] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:58] Will: So what we do now, there’s kind of four buckets. I do a lot of speaking, obviously work on new books. The Field Guide just came out a couple months ago, which is our, our second big book in the series, produce for the Bear, things like that. Then we have our gatherings business where we have the welcome conference, which we’ve been running together for

[00:11:21] Brian: a dozen years.

[00:11:22] Will: Yeah, about 12 years now, which is like our TED style single day conference in New York City at Lincoln Center, which has become the most important conference, I think, in the world around hospitality. It

[00:11:33] Brian: started in a basement in the East Village where we couldn’t give the tickets away.

[00:11:37] Will: Yeah.

[00:11:38] Brian: And now it’s a couple thousand people and it’s just a magical day of people celebrating hospitality, learning, getting inspired.

[00:11:46] Will: The gatherings business grew from welcome. The first year we ever had complaints at Welcome was after like probably the second year after the book came out. ’cause there, I’m the host, it’s not an Unreasonable Hospitality conference. And people came expecting more from me about the book and were upset that it, that I was just introducing other people.

[00:12:09] Will: And so we launched the Unreasonable Hospitality Summit here in Nashville, which is much smaller a couple days. It’s more workshop conference, practical and,

[00:12:19] Brian: well, it’s fun. There’s music. Yeah. And there’s,

[00:12:22] Nathan: yeah.

[00:12:23] Brian: You know, we eat and we celebrate and we have a good time.

[00:12:26] Will: Um, we love the gatherings we host.

[00:12:29] Will: Mm-hmm. And I think it, one of the things we had to decide as we started this business was, I mean, you meet with a lot of content creators, whether it’s authors or whatever. And you’ll get a million different pieces of feedback on the different ways to grow your company online courses, this, that, you know, like YouTube shows, whatever it is, there’s a million different ways to, to grow your business.

[00:12:56] Will: What we recognized early on was we needed to identify what our superpowers were and begin our growth through leaning into those superpowers. And we each come from careers spent hosting other people. And so in person events is really where we kicked things off. Um, and then anyone out there who’s trying to think through how to grow their business, that’s, mm-hmm.

[00:13:24] Will: One of the first things I would advise people to do is, what are your superpowers? Start there. That doesn’t need to be the extent of what you do, but at least start with the things that’s a foundation you’re naturally gifted in, in doing so. Second bucket gatherings. Third bucket are the workshops. So I can go and speak to a company for an hour.

[00:13:45] Will: We have a couple people on our team, extraordinary people who just travel the country doing day long workshops and they will, and they’re leading people through the work, leaning people through, yeah.

[00:13:58] Brian: Kind of putting hands and feet to all of the ideas in our regional hospitality. But how do you put those to action in your company groups of 20 to 120 people

[00:14:07] Will: and there’ll be like minor league baseball or Land Rover or hospital systems and kind of companies across industries.

[00:14:16] Will: Um, and then the final bucket is the creative studio, which we started doing consulting and we found consulting to be quite frustrating actually. Um, we care too much.

[00:14:29] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:14:29] Will: And I, I learned you can’t be a con good consultant unless you

[00:14:34] Brian: don’t

[00:14:34] Will: care. Convince yourself to care less.

[00:14:36] Brian: Yeah. Because you come up with these great ideas and then, and

[00:14:38] Nathan: 10% gets implemented.

[00:14:40] Will: Yeah.

[00:14:40] Brian: Yeah. And then you also can’t control the execution of them. You,

[00:14:44] Will: and then you just become kind of the worst if you care too much. ’cause you get frustrated with the people that are

[00:14:48] Brian: paying

[00:14:49] Will: you, paying you, which is not a good dynamic. So we switched to the creative studio, which is, we, we really go into projects very, very early.

[00:14:59] Will: We only engage with the people at the top of the hierarchy on the other side so that ideas don’t get watered down. And a need for different people to prove their worth in the organization by putting their stamp on something. And, um,

[00:15:14] Brian: and we create,

[00:15:15] Will: and it’s been really fun. So we’re, we’re leading the creative direction for the new A is baseball stadium in Las Vegas.

[00:15:20] Will: Oh wow. Or the Creative studio can do other random things. We did a new approach to playing cards with our friends at Theory 11, um, which, or a blend of playing cards and conversation decks and. Um, we’re probably gonna be leading the design of a new flagship office building for one of the leading financial institutions, just to try to imagine how hospitality can redefine what going to work looks like.

[00:15:47] Will: And

[00:15:48] Nathan: the thing that stands out to me, it reminds me of something I heard Jason free from base camp, say once about like learning to play the drums. And for a long time he was playing the drums. He is holding the drumsticks really tight. And that sounds a lot like, you know, the set path where you’re like, from Cornell to here and you know, his instruction was just like, you gotta loosen up.

[00:16:05] Nathan: Yeah. The magic won’t come until you hold the drumsticks really loosely. And I see you guys like holding them loosely and seeing what comes and you’re like, that does sound fun to go design a new baseball stadium or to a hundred percent. Dive into that and just see where it takes you.

[00:16:18] Brian: Yeah. We’re we’ve been wonderfully surprised at the message of hospitality or even unreasonable hospitality, how much it.

[00:16:28] Brian: Connects to industries all across the board. Right. Because essentially it’s about treating humans differently, right? With with creativity and intention. And every business on earth is dealing with humans. Mm-hmm. Right? It’s not, hospitality doesn’t have to be this word that is stuck in the shoebox of the hospitality industry, but it is all these different organizations and they’re the ones coming to us with these ideas saying we wanna create something totally new a, an experience that’s never been done before, looking through these eyes.

[00:17:01] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:02] Brian: Be it a baseball stadium or a hospital, or a government agency, or a library or, and what a joy that’s been to experience after a career of serving a couple hundred people every night at 5:00 PM to now potentially serving thousands at a time with these ideas.

[00:17:21] Nathan: So from consuming a lot of content, uh, that you all have put together and reading the book and all of that.

[00:17:27] Nathan: Well, I’ve heard a lot of your unreasonable hospitality stories, like if we anchor people in the physical experiences that you all have created, like Brian, I’m curious, one of the unreasonable hospitality stories that you know, or moments that you’ve created that’s like a really special for you in person.

[00:17:42] Nathan: And then later I want to go to how you all do this in the digital side or, um, you know, in the new business,

[00:17:47] Brian: there’s three boys in my family. I’m the youngest, the next brother up was my, is my partner business, was my business partner. The oldest one is the black sheep of the family. He is a Anglican priest.

[00:17:59] Nathan: Okay.

[00:17:59] Brian: And he lived in, he lived in Scotland for a dozen years and we would go visit him all the time and in his parish, uh, part of the job of being a minister for the Church of Scotland is you go and you bless the barrels of whiskey before they get sent out. And he got to know all these distilleries and fell in love with whiskey.

[00:18:18] Brian: And so therefore we fell in love with whiskey and we would travel and drink and it was just the greatest. And at one point we brought home this barrel, which is not an easy thing to do, to bring an entire barrel of scotch home. It was a spring brink, 19-year-old, and it was so special. And we got it through this unconventional means where we actually didn’t have to pay for it.

[00:18:41] Brian: So it was, it had no price, but it was a very valuable barrel, and it was in our basement, and we built this spot in our wine cellar to hold this gorgeous barrel, but we didn’t know what to do with it. And a local billionaire came in, had dinner and said, I want a glass of the greatest whiskey you have in your cellar.

[00:19:02] Brian: And we’re like, well, it has to be that one, because it’s so rare. It’s one of a kind and it’s very valuable. And so we charge them a couple hundred dollars for an ounce, which is about the right price for that. What that is. And we all felt gross and dirty about it because we were selling something that was given to us as a gift.

[00:19:18] Brian: Mm-hmm. So it’s like, what? Wait a minute, how do we, that doesn’t feel right. So that’s the only ounce of that whiskey we’ve ever sold, ever was that single one. And from then on out, we looked at the mission statement of our restaurant, which was to inspire people around hospitality, um, to inspire people that it’s worth putting others first.

[00:19:39] Brian: And we decided we would only give away this incredible scotch for free to anyone who was willing to take the risk to be vulnerable and say out loud how they hope to grow as a human. I know this sounds nuts. Yeah. And so we started this with our staff, where on New Year’s Eve, we’d give everyone together.

[00:20:01] Brian: We’d bring the barrel upstairs, we’d sit in a giant circle, we’d come in a couple hours early, and anyone who was willing to share out loud, Hey, this is how I want to grow as a person. We’d pour them a glass of this great whiskey and everyone would cheers and then we’d all hurrah. We had this saying that we would say, we’d all yell it together out loud and this would go on for a full hour, hour and a half.

[00:20:24] Brian: That story started getting out among our guests and guests started asking, Hey, can we drink from the barrel? Yeah. Or like, yes, it is free and you have to be willing to share out loud how you hope to grow as a human. And so they would, entire tables would then come downstairs into the cellar, gather around the barrel and share out loud.

[00:20:45] Brian: And I had guests in tears. I had people renew their vows. I had, uh, it’s amazing if you put intentionality around vulnerability.

[00:20:56] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:57] Brian: What would happen. And that grew into this gorgeous tradition of guests coming to our restaurant simply to say something out loud. To people they loved, and for that to be witnessed and to toast each other so much so that we went through an entire barrel of whiskey.

[00:21:16] Brian: Now we’re on our second one. Uh, but that’s the kind of moment and even to empower your own service team to say, Hey, you guys are, this is a special moment. You wanna come downstairs and drink one of the greatest scotches in the world.

[00:21:32] Will: The reason I think that’s such a beautiful example is a lot of the stories that get celebrated about unreasonable hospitality, these over the top, very showy things, these gestures, and yet unreasonable hospitality at its core, is about doing something to take an ordinary transaction and turn it into a memorable experience.

[00:21:59] Will: The quote. That I use all the time because I think it’s just the best about hospitality comes from Maya Angelou. People will forget what you say. They will forget what you do. They will never forget how you made them feel. Canlis serves delicious food, and yet I can say with profound confidence that if someone goes to that restaurant and experiences that they may not remember a single thing they ate.

[00:22:23] Will: Mm-hmm. But they’ll never forget the feeling they had sitting around that barrel. One of the beautiful things about hospitality, regardless of what you do for a living, is that you can help people put the world on pause for just long enough to find appreciation in a moment and through what they did, which is equal parts, unbelievably simple and unbelievably complicated.

[00:22:51] Will: They gave that gift to people. Mm-hmm. And I think no matter what you do for a living, yeah. You might not have a wine cellar with. Barrel of whiskey in the basement, but you can look at the product you serve and ask yourself, how do we imbue more meaning into this exchange? That’s why I love that story.

[00:23:09] Brian: What’s really fun is when there was only about an inch or two left in the bottom of the barrel. It’s right when Will won the award for no one restaurant in the world. And we’re like, well, what are we gonna do? There’s as a fun, congratulations. If anyone needs the barrel right now, it’s him and his team to figure out how they’re, what are they gonna do next?

[00:23:29] Brian: How are they gonna grow? They, they just reached the apex. This goal. Yeah. So we threw that barrel in the back of a truck and drove it across America and surprised him. You were genuinely, you actually did not know. I had no idea. Uh, they, they do an annual all team meeting where they close the restaurant and they bring their entire staff together for a day.

[00:23:47] Brian: And we showed up

[00:23:49] Nathan: with the barrel,

[00:23:50] Brian: my brother and I, carrying that barrel through the front door, popped it in the middle of his meeting. And poured for their whole staff and said, now you all need to share out loud what’s next. And it was just beautiful and so fun. And I love that that barrel is still in your heart somewhere.

[00:24:07] Will: Yeah.

[00:24:08] Nathan: That’s incredible. I mean, anytime that you can get people to connect on that level and share something deep and meaningful,

[00:24:13] Brian: it’s always worth it.

[00:24:14] Nathan: Yeah. And I love that you exactly as you said, like systematized it, it turned it into something that people could participate in. ’cause you have these stories where it’s a one-off thing or it’s like, yes, you, you had to be there, but you were able to create it.

[00:24:28] Nathan: You had to be there moment that mm-hmm. People could come to over and over again

[00:24:31] Brian: for years.

[00:24:32] Nathan: Mm-hmm. The, I think the hardest thing for me as I read all of your content and listen to both of you, you know, on podcasts and all of that, is how do you take this and translate it to the digital world, which you’re in the middle of, of doing now, is you build a different style of business.

[00:24:48] Nathan: You know, like as you’re building an email list and you’re going on podcasts and you’re doing all of these things to serve an audience. And so I’m curious, like what comes to mind as you’re thinking about bringing that level of hospitality to this new business

[00:25:01] Brian: in the digital world? I think you always have to give more than you take.

[00:25:05] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:06] Brian: Otherwise, the customer, the guest, the fan, or whoever it is, they sniff out if that ratio is, is reversed.

[00:25:15] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:25:16] Brian: And so when it comes to either Instagram or a post somewhere, or the newsletter or whatever we’re sending out, it’s so important to us that it gives more than it takes. It’s not, we’re not, it’s not always about selling something.

[00:25:30] Brian: It’s not about, Hey, come listen to us. Come like, look at me, look at me, look at me. It’s how can we shine a light on you? Like, how can this benefit or bless or encourage you? And so. Because digital is not face-to-face and you don’t have that ability to create relationship. I think we have to be extra cautious to always make sure whatever, however we interact in the digital world, uh, it is an act of hospitality, is an act of making them feel cared for and seen.

[00:26:07] Brian: Not one that we are selfishly have this secret agenda to get them to click or buy or come or, um, only if that serves them to click and buy. Like, and that’s a filter that we talk about a lot, that we’re not gonna put anything out there in the world unless it’s giving more than it’s taking.

[00:26:26] Will: The way we think about hospitality generally is like one size fits all, one size fits some and one size fits one.

[00:26:33] Will: So what is it about your approach you’re taking to everything you do that isn’t intrinsically hospitable? That’s one size fits all. How can, through simple pattern recognition, you elevate the experience for people that follow certain behaviors. That’s one size fits some, and then one size fits. One is just learning one thing about one individual and doing something really fricking cool for that person.

[00:26:56] Will: Mm-hmm. What Brian’s talking is one size fits all, which I mean, I forget exactly what it was, but I think we sent out 30, 35 newsletters before we ever tried to sell anything or asked for anything, and that was with intention. Even now, you will never see a newsletter from us or a post from us. That’s. Hey, there are five seats left at this event, buy now, or prices go up tomorrow.

[00:27:31] Will: Like we have a really, really low tolerance for anything that feels schlocky or salesy or overly markety. Like if, if we’re trying to sell you something, it will be in a note that tells a story, teaches a lesson, and then at the very end we may very subtly try to push you towards something because otherwise it, it, the exchange is lopsided in our direction and that’s not true to who we want to be or what we think right looks like.

[00:28:03] Will: And so that’s one size fits all hospitality. Um, one size fits some hospitality, and I’ll give you an example from our world and then also from another world. Um, a lot of people reach out through LinkedIn. Um, more people than I could ever respond to. Those are people taking a risk and, and any creator with any reasonable following is, has been on the receiving end of a note that says, I’m not sure this will ever reach you, but

[00:28:36] Nathan: Right.

[00:28:38] Will: Which is such a beautiful sentiment. And, and by the way, the notes that follow after but are filled with vulnerability and sharing and these long notes and people writing these long notes with the knowledge that someone might never even read them. And there’s someone on our team that just responds to every single note because if someone reaches out to you, they deserve a response.

[00:29:03] Will: Um, I think that is an expression of hospitality.

[00:29:07] Nathan: I think two of the most generous, uh, writers and creators that I’ve ever spent time with are, um, Seth Godin and Derek srs, both of whom will respond to pretty much every single email. That they receive. Now, they might not want that shared that they actively do that, and we don’t, we’re not trying to

[00:29:26] Will: generate,

[00:29:27] Nathan: and his

[00:29:27] Brian: email address is.

[00:29:28] Nathan: Yeah. But, but having that approach where they’re just like, look, if someone wants to reach out, it might be a three, a three word response or something like that, or like a, I keep going or, that’s inspiring, you know, whatever it is. But just that, like, that little way of pouring back into anyone who’s willing to reach out, I think is very powerful

[00:29:46] Will: given everything you have going on in your life.

[00:29:48] Will: Mm-hmm. Like where I am individually right now, what Seth is doing, I can’t, I can’t do it myself, but that doesn’t mean

[00:29:54] Nathan: someone,

[00:29:55] Will: it can’t be done.

[00:29:55] Nathan: Right.

[00:29:56] Will: And so like, there is always a yes. Mm-hmm. You just need to be willing to invest the energy, time, creativity, resources to find it. When I talk about one size fits some though, I, and, and by the way, this looks very different pending circumstance, but when this is something we really walk people through in the field guide.

[00:30:17] Will: This idea of pattern recognition of these recurring moments. Um, every single business has these things. Whether you ever meet someone in person, whether you weather, like engage with them as as a human, these things that happen over and over and over again. And if you can identify these patterns, decide in advance how you wanna respond every time one of these things happens and implement a system such that that response is easy to deploy and happens consistently, I think you can create magic for people all the time.

[00:30:53] Will: Um, the best example of this is Chewy

[00:30:58] and

[00:30:59] Will: what they do, and I, we talk about this often because I think it’s so deeply inspiring, but, um, if you have a dog, you go into chewy.com, you set up a subscription dog, food comes to your house the beginning of every month. You never forget to order dog food again.

[00:31:12] Will: Think about dogs they pass before you’re ready for them to pass. When that happens, the first thing you think to do is not to go online and cancel your dog food subscription, which means that a couple weeks later, a new bag of food’s gonna arrive, rip, open the scab all over again. Then you’re gonna reach out to Chewy.

[00:31:29] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:30] Will: To cancel it. This is a recurring moment for them,

[00:31:33] Nathan: right?

[00:31:33] Will: Someone in that organization had the wherewithal to say, this is a moment. How do we respond in a more magical way? And what they do is the same every single time. They obviously cancel the subscription. They can’t take that last bag back for health code reasons, but they credit it to your account.

[00:31:47] Will: They apologize for your loss. And then two days later, at minimum, they do even more than this. But at minimum, a bouquet of flowers arrives at your house saying, we’re so sorry for your loss. They’ve never met you. You never will meet them. The thing about dog people, they’re very likely to get another dog.

[00:32:04] Will: And if you ever buy dog food from anyone else ever again after having received those flowers, you’re a fricking serial killer.

[00:32:13] Nathan: Right.

[00:32:13] Will: Brian used these words before because they are so fundamental to how we think. When you identify opportunities at the intersection of creativity and intention, you can, you can show up for people in remarkable ways all the time.

[00:32:35] Nathan: Well, so with the Chewy example, I’ve actually seen that firsthand because a team member at Kit had that moment happen where their dog passed away. The last thing they think about is, oh, you know what, now I need to go cancel my subscription. And when they wrote in to say, Hey, I need to cancel the subscription.

[00:32:52] Nathan: ’cause the our, our dog passed away, the customer support person at Chewy said, would you mind sending us a photo of your dog?

[00:32:58] Will: And they did the painting.

[00:32:59] Nathan: And they did the painting.

[00:33:00] Will: Yes.

[00:33:01] Nathan: And so then, you know, some number of weeks later, a, a hand painted painting of their dog showed up. And like that’s another level where you’re just like, are you kidding me?

[00:33:11] Will: Well, by the way, that’s also inspiring because I love when someone is already doing something well and then someone in the organization says, how do we make that even better?

[00:33:19] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:33:19] Will: And so they’ve been doing the flower thing for a long time, sometime in the last few years. The painting doesn’t happen always for everyone, but Right.

[00:33:25] Will: It happens sometimes. And

[00:33:27] Brian: well, and you know, whoever that person is at Chewy who gets to do the painting or gets to be the person who makes that moment facilitate

[00:33:35] Nathan: it. Yeah.

[00:33:37] Brian: What a gift that they granted this whole thing is sad. But they’re delivering joy and they’re delivering healing, and they’re delivering redemption.

[00:33:48] Brian: And what’s magical about these moments that you set up when you recognize the pattern and you come up with the system of hospitality is all boats rise with the tide, the mm-hmm. The, the guest or the customer feel so invested in and known and cared for. The employees enjoy it. ’cause now they’re just not awkwardly canceling someone’s description, but now they get to actually do something that brings life back.

[00:34:13] Brian: Um,

[00:34:13] Nathan: well, yeah. Your job is, you’re just like, yeah, I canceled. Yeah. You know, I dealt with more people whose pets died, and you’re just like, wow, I kind of hate my job.

[00:34:20] Will: Yeah.

[00:34:21] Nathan: And then you flip it around and you’re like, I got

[00:34:22] to

[00:34:23] Will: create, create. And I also, and, and you were probably on the receiving end of profound appreciation for the person you sent them to, which always fills your tank

[00:34:29] Brian: and you’re creating guests for life.

[00:34:31] Brian: Mm-hmm. Like, um, it works for profit, it works for culture, it works for retention, it works for customer loyalty. Mm-hmm. And that’s what’s exciting, that we’re starting to discover. Like we in, in the restaurant business, we’ve known this and now all these other industries and we’re learning about it too.

[00:34:48] Brian: We’re not, we didn’t invent this. Uh, but it’s so fun to see everyone else come along and say, Hey, this really works.

[00:34:57] Nathan: Mm-hmm. One of my favorite questions as we launch back in is what would have to be true? And I love that question ’cause it, you know, if you’re talking to a team member about building software or running, you know, can we build this feature, uh, and have it live by, uh, May 1st you’re like, Ooh, I don’t know.

[00:35:16] Nathan: And it gets them into this mindset of, I’m not sure, here’s all the things. And if instead you ask, what would have to be true to have this live, uh, May 1st, or what would have to be true for us to carry the barrel of whiskey into the restaurant and be ready to premiere a film that we finished at, you know.

[00:35:36] Nathan: That was just took place over the last few days. Someone’s like it, it switches entirely into this brainstorming, not, not physically impossible, but

[00:35:44] Will: we, we love working with magicians.

[00:35:46] Nathan: Yes.

[00:35:47] Will: We work with magicians on a lot of what we do and have for years and a long time ago, we did a, a course at 11 Madison.

[00:35:58] Will: That was a magic trick. And working with the magicians to, to create it. They’re like, oh, wait a minute. What if we did this?

[00:36:06] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:07] Will: And I was like, oh my God, that would be amazing. How do we do that? And they’re like, well, I don’t know. But if you like it, then we’re gonna figure it out. One of the things that anyone who’s worked with me for any measure of time has heard me say constantly is don’t ruin a story with the facts.

[00:36:26] Nathan: Okay.

[00:36:28] Will: Which means stop asking how something can be done. Just decide what you want to do. And then once you’ve decided that that’s the thing you wanna do, then just figure it out.

[00:36:39] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:40] Will: Because let’s be honest, my guess is nothing that anyone who is listening to this right now does is actually hard.

[00:36:48] Nathan: Right. We’re not trying to break laws of physics.

[00:36:50] Will: It just requires being willing to try harder.

[00:36:53] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:36:54] Will: And too many people rely too heavily on facts or what has historically been possible in deciding what they want to try to do next.

[00:37:05] Nathan: First, before we go there, when I’ve heard you talk, bring up the ma uh, magicians before working with them, you talked about the coat check experience.

[00:37:13] Will: Yeah.

[00:37:13] Nathan: Can you share that? Because that’s something what stood out to me the most is, uh, seeing all of these points in the journey.

[00:37:21] Will: Yes.

[00:37:21] Nathan: In the customer journey and just saying, how can we make each one magical?

[00:37:24] Will: Well, you know, and I think. Brian at Canlis did something with valet.

[00:37:31] Nathan: Okay.

[00:37:31] Will: Parking.

[00:37:32] Brian: It wasn’t me.

[00:37:33] Will: No.

[00:37:34] Will: Canlis restaurant. Yeah. Did something with valet parking. Tell that story.

[00:37:37] Brian: We don’t give people a valet check number.

[00:37:41] Nathan: Okay.

[00:37:41] Brian: So we just remember your car and it’s a system where when you’re done with dinner and you come to the front door, your car is warm and waiting for you. And people think it’s a magic trick.

[00:37:52] Brian: It’s not. It’s, it’s a system that we’ve built that actually my grandfather built it in the fifties. Uh,

[00:38:01] Nathan: so it’s not even, oh, we use AI to do whatever.

[00:38:03] Brian: No. It’s like, no, it’s just a matter of caring. Mm-hmm. And it’s a matter of being very intentional. And so a dozen year, oh, now, like 15 years ago, we were doing checks for coats.

[00:38:15] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:16] Brian: And it’s like, wait a minute. We can remember a car. We can’t remember a coat. And there’s something called the peak end rule, which is in one of your books. And it’s this idea that one of the most important moments that establishes what a guest remembers for their experience is their very last moment is, is the end.

[00:38:36] Brian: And we have this magical car that shows up and then we started doing coats that we’re always warmed by the fire with no ticket when the guest comes to the front. So not only is their coat waiting for them and it’s warm, then they turn around and their car’s waiting for them. They could have had cold food and mean service and they were like, this was amazing.

[00:38:57] Brian: And it’s funny, we pour thousands of hours into the tiniest details in the food and the service and every little thing you touch, and the number one thing that I hear about our restaurant is the coats and the cars at the end of the night because they can’t believe

[00:39:16] Will: that it is magic. You said it’s not magic, but it is magic.

[00:39:20] Will: And that’s the thing, like mad,

[00:39:23] Brian: that’s how all

[00:39:24] Will: magic is. I, I don’t want to, I I feel bad telling you this on a podcast. Magic is not real. Brian, emotionally processed. This magic is not real. My, but the, my favorite quote, I love magic so much is, is a pen and teller. Mm-hmm. Sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would deem reasonable.

[00:39:49] Will: Mm-hmm. Every magic trick is just someone working really, really hard,

[00:39:52] Brian: really, really hard

[00:39:53] Will: to create a moment of wonder.

[00:39:56] Brian: We, we, we had a large restaurant company call us and say, Hey, could we hire you to consult? We wanna do your valet system and we have a large checkbook and we’re in and let us know. And we said, oh, uh, good news.

[00:40:11] Brian: It’s free. And I’ll tell you in about 30 seconds. And he was like, what do you mean? And I said, well, this is how we do it. And I, and I told him, and it’s, and he’s like, oh, we. We can’t do that. Um, because it’s a matter of training your memory, memory. It’s a matter of caring. It’s a matter of all night long.

[00:40:29] Brian: The valets are obsessed with remembering, and that’s all they do. And they go in and outta the restaurant all night long and they see who’s on check and they have a system of writing down notes and, and he’s like, wait, there it is not a computer program. It’s not a camera system. It’s not a, it’s like, no, it’s just working really hard and training a new valet at Canlis spends about two months just training their memory to get ready for being a valet at Canlis.

[00:40:54] Brian: So where, where?

[00:40:55] Will: And they

[00:40:55] Brian: said, no, we

[00:40:56] Will: can’t do it. Where we did things is like we tried to implement more systems to support this mm-hmm. That didn’t rely on the inherent like skills of an individual, which I, I do believe is where things become institutionalized, right. Is where it’s no longer requiring an individual to be unbelievably passionate where you can actually.

[00:41:15] Will: Compel them to be more passionate through just experiencing the joy of accomplishing something magical. And so the coat check thing in our restaurant, we had a host that would go around the dining room all night updating where people were at in their meal. And that would be reflected on the screen at the front.

[00:41:31] Will: And if it got to green, it meant you were on your check. That meant that your coats would go from a coat room down the hallway to one that was right next to the front door that had space heaters inside. Then they would be more closely looking at that table waiting for them to get up. Thankfully, there was about 40 feet between that table and the, and the front door.

[00:41:52] Will: And they would be there the moment they saw that table get up, they’d go into that smaller coat room, take out the heated coats and just be standing right there. It wasn’t hard anymore. The system just took a little bit more effort to design such that it would be easy to deploy in the moment. And I think anyone can do this.

[00:42:11] Will: Right? Right. Like,

[00:42:12] Brian: and it’s fun. So, and the hosts. Who used to just look at a number and go to a courtroom and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah are doing this transactional moment. Now they get to be magicians, right? And guests get to their eyes, pop open, they’re like, how did you know this is so special? And so the hosts get to, they love it because they get to pull off a magic trick.

[00:42:33] Brian: And so once again, it all boats rise with the tide there. The guests love it. The employees love it. Everyone loves it. And it costs nothing to implement. It just takes creativity and intention.

[00:42:43] Nathan: So what I’m curious about is that mapping process where you map all the points in the customer journey, especially if we take this to, uh, it could be an event, your newsletter, uh, you know, software like Kit, like listening to you all.

[00:42:55] Nathan: I’m like now thinking about all the moments where we’re like, here you go. And we don’t have anything special for our receipts. We don’t have any, you know, all of these, these touch points. And so how do you go about doing that on the digital side and finding these moments or these transformations that.

[00:43:10] Nathan: Any creator or software company could implement

[00:43:13] Will: well, but it’s the exact same. Mm-hmm. I mean, if you actually look through every touch point, every moment of interaction between your, you and the people you serve, whether they’re in front of you or whether you’re engaging with them digitally. Yeah. There are opportunities around every turn to make those moments a little bit more.

[00:43:33] Will: Awesome. I mean, we just, I’ll give you like a really, really small example. Um, when Brian joined the team, we engaged in a pretty comprehensive website. Revamp, not even a revamp. We built a new website.

[00:43:49] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:43:49] Will: Brian did an amazing job building a beautiful website that really outlines our entire ecosystem. And once it was done, then we looked at every little piece of it and said, how do we make it more awesome?

[00:44:01] Will: And so there’s the mo. This is like so small and so silly and really. Irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, but it just shows you that raindrops make oceans like enough. Small changes in culmination can be transformative. When you put your email in to sign up for a newsletter, this big confetti thing goes off on the screen, just like a moment of celebration, right?

[00:44:26] Will: Like you can just make things more fun, more playful, more awesome, and too many people think they’re done with something prematurely. Like unless you’ve looked at the same thing over and over and over again and said, can it be better? Can be better? Can it be more fun? Can it be more connective? Can it be more awesome than eventually you get there?

[00:44:48] Nathan: I’m realizing an example of this is there’s a VPN software called Tunnel Bear that I use, you know, when traveling and all that. And so their mascot, as you would expect, is this very cute bear. And when you go to log in it, you click onto the email field using field, and it’s eye, the bear’s eyes look towards the field.

[00:45:07] Nathan: And so you’re like, oh, that was kind of a cute little interaction. Put your email should go to the password and the bear covers its eyes. Yeah. So it’s not looking at your password. That’s fine. That’s And you’re Oh, that’s like, it’s this moment of delight

[00:45:17] Brian: Yeah.

[00:45:17] Nathan: That some engineer designer made once, it probably took them a few hours and now it has brought a little bit of delight Yeah.

[00:45:25] Nathan: To hundreds of thousands of people.

[00:45:27] Will: And does that in singularity impact anything about people’s perception of the business? Maybe, maybe not, but enough little things like that over the course of the entire user experience ultimately, right. Definitively does.

[00:45:40] Brian: But it is essential to map and break down each touch point.

[00:45:45] Brian: And we, we, we do that work with clients. We, we built a tool on our own website that you, it’s free to use where you map every tiny

[00:45:54] Nathan: mm-hmm.

[00:45:55] Brian: Guest interaction that you have from the second they go online and have their first interaction, whether it’s the website or a phone call or an in person. And then in excruciating detail, what is every single way that that client interacts with your product?

[00:46:12] Brian: Whether it is the touch of the door handle as they pull it open, it’s the feeling of the carpet under their feet, right? It’s what is the hot long does it take to get hot water in the bathroom? If they go to wash their hands, what does the soap smell like? So we will do every tiny, you’re so

[00:46:27] Nathan: many, like I would’ve said, they enter and you’re like, you’re

[00:46:30] Brian: going so much further than that.

[00:46:32] Will: They get outta the car, they walk through the thing. They pull up in the door. They walk through the door, they’re creative. Every

[00:46:36] Brian: single one’s a touch point. And then we would identify which ones are negative, which ones are positive, which ones are kind of neutral. And then go through creative exercises on what does it look like to be creative and intentional to elevate maybe a dozen of these touchpoints this year.

[00:46:54] Brian: I mean, we, at one of our restaurants, our touchpoint map would be in the one fifty, one sixty, a hundred seventy, like a lot of touchpoint. And a goal would be this year we’re gonna elevate five or we’re gonna elevate 10. Mm-hmm. And you empower your people to brainstorm and get excited to collaborate on latching, on to watch, touch a single touch point and what does it look like to elevate it.

[00:47:18] Brian: And when you break it down into these tiny, tiny steps, then suddenly it’s not so overwhelming when you look at the prospect of increasing the, the satisfaction of the client experience.

[00:47:33] Nathan: Right. ‘

[00:47:33] Brian: cause you can just increase one tiny bit at a time.

[00:47:37] Will: Like what happens if you are growing a social media account when you get a new follower?

[00:47:42] Will: If you’re willing to like be relentless and crazy and tracking that sort of thing, you can do something remarkable for that person when they choose to.

[00:47:49] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:50] Will: Give you a follow. What happens with your newsletter list, and I’m just thinking about this now. We should, we should mess around with this in the next week.

[00:47:58] Will: When someone makes the choice to unsubscribe, what’s that language? What’s the path to subscribing? Like how you say goodbye is just as important as how you say hello. What?

[00:48:07] Brian: We should have a Boys to Men video.

[00:48:09] Will: Yeah.

[00:48:10] Brian: Get sent to them so it’s so hard to say goodbye.

[00:48:14] Will: Yeah. But serious. Like

[00:48:15] Nathan: yeah,

[00:48:16] Will: that kind of creative process is fun,

[00:48:18] Nathan: but I’m thinking through every part of it, right?

[00:48:20] Nathan: Of when someone comes to your website, there’s, maybe there’s a cookie banner they have to accept or dismiss that some lawyer told you you have to do. Yeah.

[00:48:27] Will: Right.

[00:48:27] Nathan: And they put in their email address and then what’s on your thank you page? ’cause that, and you know, it’s usually just check your email to say, yes, you actually wanted this.

[00:48:35] Nathan: What’s in that email? What’s in the fault? Like all of those things.

[00:48:38] Will: Yep. There was a meditation app that I signed up for at some point. And like many of these apps annually, it just resubscribed to you. Right? And then you don’t even realize you’ve been resubscribed until you get that little thing on your phone that says, you’ve just been charged 99 bucks or whatever.

[00:48:57] Will: And I got an email from them a week out saying, Hey, in a week you’re gonna be resubscribed and it’s gonna cost this much. And we just don’t want that to come as a surprise. If you’re going to pay us that money again, we wanna make sure it’s because you chose to, not because you forgot to cancel. And so this is your opportunity to cancel.

[00:49:19] Will: And if you do, thank you so much for your business. Mm-hmm. And if you don’t like, here’s to another amazing year of working together. That is a beautiful example, right. Of unreasonable hospitality in this space. And some might argue that that’s financially reckless. Because more people are gonna cancel than had you duped them into re-upping, right?

[00:49:41] Will: And yet, I think whenever you do what is right for the person on the other side of the table, you are ultimately gonna be more successful in the long term. But that clearly happened because someone in that company said, Hey, how do we wanna be better in this part of the experience?

[00:50:00] Nathan: Let’s tie it into culture.

[00:50:01] Nathan: ’cause all of this comes from, you know, you can sit as a, as a founder, as an executive and brainstorm some ideas. But what you’re talking about in your restaurants and the business you’re building now is how it plays through and it becomes instilled in the culture all the way through. What are the things that make the biggest difference for building a team that thinks in these ways and will spot way more opportunities than you ever could?

[00:50:21] Will: Well, I think you need to empower people to challenge things, to question ideas. You need to create space, like organized time to actually do the work. Um, back in the day, the reservations office in a restaurant is the messiest room in the entire building.

[00:50:44] Nathan: Okay.

[00:50:45] Will: Um, the dining room is obviously beautiful and clean.

[00:50:48] Will: The kitchen normally is beautiful and clean. The reservations office is like the restaurant’s equivalent of a junk drawer because like

[00:50:59] Nathan: That’s so true.

[00:50:59] Will: You know what I mean? Yes. Right before service, if there’s something in the dining room, it needs to go away. Exactly. By five 30, that’s

[00:51:07] Nathan: where it goes.

[00:51:07] Will: It just gets dumped in the reservations office.

[00:51:09] Will: And so it’s like a bunch of people working in this rather confined space. Um, and when a new reservationist joined our team, there’s probably seven to 10 days of training by the end of their training. And they were given, I forget what it was, a hundred dollars, $200 budget. They had to do something to materially improve that space.

[00:51:33] Will: Mm-hmm. And so this is someone who’s had the job for three or four days, right? And they need to figure out something to make that space more organized, nicer to work and whatever. It wasn’t done so that the office would be better. It was done to very clearly at the very beginning of someone’s employment, say Your ideas matter.

[00:51:58] Will: We want you to contribute. You have so many people don’t creatively contribute to something because they don’t feel the confidence or the empowerment to do so,

[00:52:07] Nathan: or their ideas will be welcome or heard.

[00:52:09] Will: Yeah. And so when you force it, you’re telling them your ideas matter so much so in fact that I’m requiring you to give them.

[00:52:17] Will: And then when someone does make the junk drawer less junky, they’re celebrated by their peers for having done so, which then elevates their confidence and ensures they start doing more of that. I think you can systemize collaboration and empowerment and sometimes making something mandatory is a beautiful thing.

[00:52:38] Will: Mandatory it, it almost has like a bad connotation. I think making good things mandatory is a beautiful thing for a culture.

[00:52:46] Nathan: It makes me think of, at Kit, we have a rule that when you join, like you only have fresh eyes once.

[00:52:52] Will: Yeah.

[00:52:52] Nathan: And so in your first 30 days, we want you to go through the entire product outta the customer would, and share your feedback and experience because we have so many touchpoint.

[00:53:00] Nathan: And when I go through the product, you know, there’s lots of things where I’m very, very proud of it. And I just, there’s so many more where I just cringe and I’m like, oh man, we still need to fix that. You know, all of the stuff. And so time and again, you know, as we hire new team members every, you know, every other week or so we get one of these posts of a Google doc or a notion like, here’s my whole experience, here’s what I noticed, here’s what I set out.

[00:53:20] Nathan: And sometimes if they’re an engineer working product. They’re like, and I was able to fix one of these. We really celebrate that.

[00:53:26] Will: Yeah.

[00:53:27] Nathan: But I always make sure, you know, in Slack there’s thousands of messages that go by from a big team, and I always make sure to chime in and reply like individually in the doc and all of that to every one of those first products.

[00:53:40] Nathan: A

[00:53:40] Will: hundred percent.

[00:53:41] Nathan: Because I want to set, like, this is a, I was thinking about what gets status in an organization, like giving feedback. This is how our product could be better, you know, as a new employee or as anyone. Like, that should be a high status thing. That should be a rewarded, celebrated thing. And so, you know, even if it, if all I can do is take 10 minutes to make sure I read it and then leave three or four comments like that reinforces that.

[00:54:04] Will: Well, yeah. If you, if you implement a culture where you’re asking people for their feedback and you’re not there to respond when they give it, you are effectively, like extinguishing, you’re worse off

[00:54:12] Nathan: than if you’ve

[00:54:13] Will: never asked. Well, like they just lit a candle. You’re blowing it out before it could grow into a bonfire.

[00:54:17] I,

[00:54:17] Brian: I don’t know if you remember this when I came to work at the Nomad. So I started like kind of undercover boss ish. I started as a, as at the lowest level as a busboy.

[00:54:26] Will: Okay.

[00:54:27] Brian: And we didn’t really tell people who I was or what I was doing yet because the, what place I was gonna open wasn’t ready yet. And I needed to understand the systems and the culture and Will gave me this little notebook.

[00:54:38] Brian: And he’s like, you’re gonna have, ’cause you’ve run your own restaurant for 15 years, a lot of feedback that you’re going to want that’s gonna drive you nuts or whatever. He goes, I care about everything you’re gonna say, but I want you to just write it on the, on this book for 30 days and don’t speak it to anyone because A, you don’t understand us yet.

[00:55:00] Brian: You understand your place and some of the things that we do that’s different, you might learn why we do it differently. Um, and then you and I are gonna have a drink and we’re gonna sit down and we’re gonna go through your notebook in 30 days. And we did. And it was awesome. And sure enough, a third of the stuff I wrote down, I ended up crossing out because I was wrong.

[00:55:21] Brian: ’cause I, their way is better. And those different, and that’s something that I’ve done now. I dunno if I’ve told you this. Hmm. With every new manager that came to Canlis who came with all this experience, I was like, your fresh eyes are such a gift. Mm-hmm. Here’s your notebook. 30 days, write everything down.

[00:55:38] Brian: Um, and then you’re gonna cross out some of it. ’cause you’re gonna learn that we do it differently for a reason. But some of the stuff, you’re gonna have great idea. And those little notebooks have been,

[00:55:47] Will: I love

[00:55:48] Brian: that. Transformative in, in our restaurant. I

[00:55:50] Nathan: think there’s something giving the physical notebook.

[00:55:52] Nathan: Yeah. It’s not, ’cause what I’m doing is like, you know, put it in a Google Doc or something

[00:55:55] Brian: like that. And you put the date on the calendar. Right. Like, we’re gonna have lunch. Like, you, you, you said it then it’s not this, sometime in the future I’ll care about your feedback. No, no, no. It, it matters and you follow through.

[00:56:06] Will: But I don’t remember that. God, I’m good. No, babe. No, but you know what it is, what’s so beautiful about it is you are right. Fresh eyes is a superpower. Mm-hmm. And by the way, it’s, there’s perishable inventory. You only have it for so long. Once you lose it, you’ll never have it again. And yet the worst thing is someone, especially when they’re coming into some leadership role,

[00:56:33] Nathan: right.

[00:56:35] Will: Talking too much before they’ve actually given themselves the time to absorb the culture. And my last company, we

[00:56:40] Nathan: did this, so let’s implement

[00:56:41] Will: it. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the worst. They’re, Simon was telling me Simon Sinek, that I think Chanel or Cartier, I can’t remember. But if you join the team there as an an executive, you’re not allowed to talk in a meeting for six months.

[00:56:56] Brian: That’s kind of awesome.

[00:56:58] Will: A little bit for Yeah. And you, and you understand why. Just learn. Just stop. Can you actually learn how we do things? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Before you try to change it. Um, and so the Notebook is a great way of honoring those two opposing ideas and not losing the value of either.

[00:57:12] Nathan: So I wanna go to this idea like building an audience that’s going to be longtime loyal fans, because I, I think we get so caught up in the world of content creation on, just on the numbers, how many Instagram followers do you have?

[00:57:24] Nathan: Oh, 50,000. How many on your newsletter? 37,000. You know, we’re trying to, trying to add a thousand or whatever. Or I’ll hear people say like, I only have 500 people on my newsletter. And I’m like, oh, so does that make you nervous every time you hit send? I’m like, no, it’s 500 people. Well, if it was 500 people in a room, would you be nervous before you got up in front of me?

[00:57:42] Nathan: Like, oh no, that’s actually a lot. But we’re so caught up in just the numbers that we, most, many creators I talk to don’t think about it as the 500 or the 50,000 individuals on the other side of that. And so I’m curious if, as there’s anything that you’ve done as, as you’ve gone into the. You know, the content creation and online audience world to like personalize and humanize that and then think about, okay, these are people we wanna have a relationship with for many, many years.

[00:58:11] Will: I feel like I went through that for a while. Yeah. About a year ago where I wanted more. Mm-hmm. Just bigger numbers because I looked at other people and I was like, well, why do they have more followers than I do? Or why do they have more subscribers?

[00:58:26] Nathan: Brian Holiday has a million subscribers, why don’t I have

[00:58:28] Will: Exactly.

[00:58:29] Will: Seriously. Um, and then I talked to people and there are different advisors who said, Hey, this is how you grow your audience. And, and what I found is most of the things that people were telling me we needed to do to grow our audience were things that felt inauthentic to me.

[00:58:46] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:47] Will: And I see it all the time where.

[00:58:49] Will: And I, I’m not shaming anyone who does any of these things. Maybe this feels authentic to you and that at the end of the day is the only thing that really matters. But there’s all these little games people play, like they give you three quarters of the story, and if you want to hear more of the story, comment this below and then I’ll send it to you.

[00:59:08] Will: And the more engagement, the dah, dah, dah, that all just feels inauthentic to me. And we will never do anything that feels inauthentic just to get more followers. And I, I think what we found is, in the grand scheme of things, we don’t have like crazy big numbers, but our engagement is extraordinarily high because we’ve kept the promise to people, we will always show up for you in the way that we, that we promise.

[00:59:37] Will: Yeah. We’re gonna engage with you in these formats in the same way that I’d engage with you if you were sitting across the room. Mm-hmm. From me and. Like, I think there’s little ways that you can engage people as individuals, but I think the most important rule is who are you? How would your friends describe you?

[00:59:58] Will: And engage with your audience as that person.

[01:00:01] Brian: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:02] Will: And don’t try to trick people into following you or trick people into engagement, because that might yield short term benefits. But I really do believe in the long term it, it never does.

[01:00:13] Brian: No. An engaged audience always trumps a large audience. Mm-hmm. A friend of mine, his name is Scott Heminger, has a company called Seattle Ultrasonics and he’s basically turned a chef knife or a ultrasonic toothbrush, you know, z that thing into a chef knife.

[01:00:30] Nathan: Okay.

[01:00:31] Brian: And it uses the same technology and you can just cut through anything. It’s terrifying ’cause it does the ultrasonic vibration. Yeah. Anyhow, it’s an amazing product. He was just on a, a YouTube channel show with 16 million views, and he was like, this is the one that’s gonna sell all these products.

[01:00:49] Brian: Mm-hmm. And then he was on one the next day that had like 750 view. And anyway, the 751 moved, four or five x the product because those people are so into, um, they’re so engaged and they’re so, and he was just like, ah, the numbers. Um, it’s, it’s who the people are and why they care about me and why they care about something that is so much more than a giant audience a lot of the time.

[01:01:19] Brian: And so that’s, we’re trying to get the right people mm-hmm. At the right time and to care about them in an authentic way, uh, where they feel cared for more than just numbers.

[01:01:33] Will: And how do you feel about that? I’d love your thoughts.

[01:01:35] Nathan: Well, I think of. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure this out of like the numbers versus the, uh, attention and the intention behind that.

[01:01:44] Nathan: And so I think about an audience versus a crowd. And so like on social media you’ll see, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of followers and not really that connection. ’cause maybe you’re just entertaining them. It’s just a, a moment in time. And you’ll see these small accounts with a thousand or 5,000 followers where people will show up in person, they will take action to do this.

[01:02:07] Nathan: Yes. And so I think a crowd is anyone, it’s just, it’s the numbers. Yeah. And an audience is the right people paying attention. And so I always try to be. Very diligent about that, of like, okay.

[01:02:17] Will: I think community probably comes somewhere. Yeah. Beyond audience.

[01:02:20] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:21] Will: There’s a crowd, there’s an audience. Then you’re actually building a property

[01:02:23] Nathan: community.

[01:02:23] Nathan: The community is where they’re learning from each other.

[01:02:25] Will: Yeah.

[01:02:26] Nathan: And if you were, you know, your role as, as the facilitator and the connector, but if you were to step out, it would continue to,

[01:02:32] Will: but even like, I I, I would even say in a community, they don’t necessarily need to be learning from one another. They just feel in community amongst the others that I, where I belong, like this one person or idea that people are following just gives them a sense of belonging and an identity around that idea.

[01:02:53] Will: They feel a connection to it. Right. We all,

[01:02:56] Nathan: we

[01:02:56] Brian: all wanna belong.

[01:02:58] Nathan: It’s all

[01:02:59] Will: No, but that is true. Everyone wants to feel a genuine sense of belonging to something. Yeah.

[01:03:03] Nathan: And that’s what the, the whiskey barrel, what’s so powerful about that is you create, you systematized a sense of belonging. Mm-hmm. Right?

[01:03:11] Nathan: Where people felt like, oh, I am here with people who. They themselves want to improve. They just witnessed me stating an intention of how, of what I’m going to do. Yes. I now have accountability. You know, I probably didn’t go to a very fancy restaurant with random people I don’t care about. I went with people who yes, really matter to me and they got to witness that intention and we belong together.

[01:03:33] Nathan: And there’s just, I’ve had many moments in my life like that, but never in a way that someone else was able to systematize magic. And I think that’s what’s so, so powerful about it.

[01:03:43] Will: Another way we found to singularly celebrate and connect with people in our audience or community, which is also a system.

[01:03:52] Will: ’cause I really do believe in systems mm-hmm. Is one of the most important parts of our social media strategy is something we called Unreasonable Hospitality out in the world. Um, I think the more stories of unreasonable hospitality you hear, the more inspired you are to create stories of your own. Um, and.

[01:04:14] Will: I think it feels really cool to see a story that you have authored. Shared,

[01:04:23] Nathan: right?

[01:04:24] Will: And so, I don’t know, three years ago I just went on Instagram and I said, Hey, I’m inspired by stories. Every time I hear of one, I want to create more of them myself. Send me your stories and I’m gonna read them here. And it’s one of the temples of my entire social media strategy.

[01:04:41] Will: People send in stories where they have been either on the serving or the receiving end, and I read them, celebrate the person. Mm-hmm. I read their, I literally take out a piece of paper, read it, and then talk about what lesson I learned from it. And

[01:04:55] Brian: well, and now with Kit, with our welcome sequence.

[01:04:58] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:04:58] Brian: We’ve added that in where we say like, Hey, we build this newsletter based on stories that we hear from y’all. Just hit reply to this email and share your stories, which we never did that before. When we welcome people into the community. And the engagement on that. People love it. Like they want their voices heard, like people want to matter and they do.

[01:05:20] Brian: Like, that’s how we get our content.

[01:05:21] Will: Well. And then in the comments it’s like, all right, here we are, another edition of Unreasonable Hospitality out in the world. This one from Nathan Berry, dah, dah, dah, right? And then you have people in the comments being like, go Nathan, or like, dah, dah, dah, dah. And then I’ve literally been traveling and I’ll someone will be like, Hey, you shared a story about my friend.

[01:05:40] Will: And like affirmation, personal celebration is a beautiful thing. And if we can use a platform to celebrate individuals who are doing great things, and when you see this is true in any culture, creating a culture of praise is important. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, to praise someone when they go above and beyond expectations, but because if we all work for a team and you get celebrated for doing something, well now I want to do that thing too because I want to be on the receiving end of that.

[01:06:08] Will: And um, I just think like you can come up with so many little. Weighs in just to celebrate great people. And in doing so, perpetuate the, the very message that you’re out there trying to,

[01:06:23] Nathan: yeah, so I think of everything in terms of flywheels, like how do you have a self-reinforcing loop that feeds on a self, and, and the more that it, it, each loop that it goes through, it gets easier with every, every rotation.

[01:06:35] Nathan: It, uh, produces more results and all of that. And so what you’ve described is, is a flywheel where, you know, you’re starting off by telling your own stories and showcasing, you know, the stories that you’ve come across, and then that’s inspiring people to implement it. And you’re like soliciting like that back, which gives you more content to create and share, which gets in front of more people, which gets more stories sent in.

[01:06:59] Nathan: And, and it also gets more attention to it, right? Because if you highlight, you know, I’m inspired by you, I implement it, and then I send in my story, you highlight. Well, I’m now going to share it to everyone else.

[01:07:12] Will: Yeah.

[01:07:12] Nathan: Because me telling my story of how we applied, this is one thing. You telling my story, I’m like, I’m gonna shout that from the rooftops, you know?

[01:07:21] Nathan: Yes, yes,

[01:07:21] Brian: yes.

[01:07:21] Nathan: And so that gets more people in there. And so I think a lot of people are doing this manual work to try to grow their audience and all these things. And then when you’ve discovered a flywheel like this and you’re like, oh wow, we can do the same thing over and over again of recurring temp pole in your content.

[01:07:36] Nathan: Yes. Like you talked about. And you’re like, it becomes way easier, it reaches more people and it builds meaningful connections.

[01:07:42] Will: But you’re doing it because it’s the right thing Yes. To do.

[01:07:47] Nathan: Yes.

[01:07:47] Will: It like, forget about content. Mm-hmm. And newsletters and social media. Forget about everything. And let’s just go back to like the fundamental message of our work.

[01:07:57] Will: One of the things that we spend the most time talking about is this adage. In the world of economists, which is what gets measured, gets managed.

[01:08:10] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:08:11] Will: That people invest their time into things where they can clearly see an ROI.

[01:08:17] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:17] Will: Like if I do this, it’s going to work and this way, and it’s become this thing and I’m gonna get more followers and this is gonna be the ultimate result and I can measure it for, here’s the thing, with hospitality, it is much harder to measure.

[01:08:29] Will: We made a choice at some point to stop investing in things just because you can measure the impact of that investment, but to invest in things just because they’re the right thing to do. Mm-hmm. Or we believe that if we do that it is authentic to who we are and to the message we’re trying to share. And we think it’s gonna make the world a little bit of a better place.

[01:08:49] Will: I really do believe that, and I’m not telling you not to be strategic, I think being strategic is so unbelievably important, but you can tell the people that are making decisions based on strategy and strategy alone. And those that are blending passion and strategy at the same time. And if you do something because it’s true to who you are and it’s the right thing to do, generally over the long term, the return will be significant.

[01:09:15] Nathan: Hmm. Yeah. And I’ve seen you be very disciplined in so many parts of your business and measure a lot of things so that you can then do these things. Talk about the 95 5 rule.

[01:09:26] Will: Yeah. The 95 5 rule is how we manage all of our resources, money, time, which is manage it like a maniac 95% of the time, such that the other 5% of the time you can spend it foolishly.

[01:09:41] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:42] Will: And what I mean when I say that is, is two things. One, you need to earn the right to spend that last 5% foolishly. If we look at the resource of money, you don’t have money left over to spend foolishly if you’re not disciplined in holding onto as much of it as possible. But I also say earn it because you better earn it.

[01:10:02] Will: Because if you’re not spending that last 5% foolishly, I think you’re being financially reckless. But

[01:10:08] Brian: what do you mean by foolishly?

[01:10:10] Will: Foolishly? I mean, in the

[01:10:12] Brian: thing You don’t mean like going to the casino.

[01:10:14] Will: No.

[01:10:15] Brian: Yeah.

[01:10:16] Will: Oh, I mean, no, no, no. I don’t mean going It’s research. I mean like doing the things that, like if that barrel of whiskey wasn’t free, buying an entire barrel of whiskey and putting it into the basement.

[01:10:28] Brian: Well, no, I mean just to the cost of Yes. Yeah. Or the fact, fact underst there were

[01:10:33] Will: so expenses.

[01:10:33] Brian: Yeah. Or the fact that we have a ski ball machine in our office. Yeah. Uh, and how like joyful and fun that is. Or we’re gonna go and do a special day. Like the, the freedom to bring joy, to treat your own employees with surprises and gifts.

[01:10:50] Brian: The, the freedom to go, go on a trip with your like,

[01:10:53] Will: or at our events, I mean, we dream weave the heck outta people at our events. Because it’s in those investments, the ones where you can’t necessarily measure the return on those investments, that I think the return is the greatest, where you can actually create the kind of memories that will last where you can earn the loyalty that takes a long time to erode.

[01:11:16] Will: Um, but what I was saying before is I don’t, I think it’s financially reckless not to be doing some of that foolish spending because it means that you’re so focused on today dollars that you’re not nearly focused enough on tomorrow dollars.

[01:11:32] Nathan: Yeah. Okay. The last thing that I wanna ask about, and this is kind of a selfish question because it’s about my business, but I think it could be a way that translates to so many people in the audience is as like, Brian, you’ve, you dove in really heavily to set up the newsletter on Kit and we’ve worked super closely.

[01:11:49] Nathan: I wanna know, with your relatively fresh eyes to the platform, what are the things that you’re like, oh, like what are the opportunities that you saw there? Oh, if Kit did this, like these were touch points that either were great, though you don’t need to spend time celebrating us. ’cause we wanna learn. Like what are the things that you’re like, oh, this is an opportunity for magic to be created, or this is a touch point that could really be elevated as we try to make the best platform that we can

[01:12:15] Will: be.

[01:12:16] Will: Like really critical.

[01:12:19] Brian: You know, I, so I’m not a, I mean I’m a restaurant Yeah. Guy by tr I’m not a tech guy. And I feel often, um, like the tool is so powerful. Mm-hmm. Um, it took me a long time to realize like, I’m also a, a creative and I love design. I had no idea how powerful your design tool was until I had to watch several videos and then meet with one of your people and then like, ask chat, GBT.

[01:12:48] Brian: It, it, it was hard to learn how powerful it was coming from a non-tech background. Um,

[01:12:56] Nathan: yeah,

[01:12:57] Brian: so I, I want, I, I, I think the product is so good, but I want it to be more accessible to people who aren’t super smart. Mm-hmm. Like myself, or, um, more intuitive on how to use the design tools or build forms, or actually forms is really, that’s a pretty good tool.

[01:13:20] Brian: Or, um, like sequencing or building automations, or it feels like this, uh, this very complex, very powerful machine, um, that I want like a, a cheat guide u user manual for the non-techie types.

[01:13:39] Nathan: So what it made me think of is. Doing more training is a very natural thing that software companies would do. And they’re like, oh, we need to make the interface better here and we need to do more training there.

[01:13:48] Nathan: But that’s not like an unreasonable hospitality approach. But what we could do is, you signed up, you’re gonna, we could say, oh, you know, you’re a few days in and you don’t have an email template yet. We designed one for you, which would get you, and you’d be like, what?

[01:14:03] Brian: Okay.

[01:14:03] Nathan: And whether you like it or not, or you want tweaks to it, you’d be like, wow, an actual person made that for me.

[01:14:08] Nathan: Like, that’s cool. But then ultimately you want to, you know, learn how to fish yourself. And so we’re like, we designed one for you and here’s a video showing how we made your template.

[01:14:19] Brian: Yeah. That’s what that would do both. Yes. Like, um, what’s that? What are those videos that you send me that are like, personalized to me?

[01:14:27] Brian: That what’s the, what are those things called? It’s like,

[01:14:29] Nathan: oh, like a loom video.

[01:14:30] Brian: Like a Loom,

[01:14:30] Nathan: yeah. Or,

[01:14:31] Brian: yeah. So like the looms have been an amazing service. Mm-hmm. Because this one of your team members saying, here’s exactly what I did and how I did it. Uh, and they’re coaching and teaching me, and that’s mm-hmm.

[01:14:41] Brian: Such a gift.

[01:14:43] Nathan: I’m just thinking about all of these things, like there’s, there’s little bits of polish to add everywhere, but I’m trying to think of what a few of these moments that you could create where someone goes, like, where you’re saying everyone hits this, everybody needs the coat at the end of the night.

[01:14:57] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Everybody needs to build their landing page, but how you turn it from a like, cool, I checked that box into a, something much more remarkable.

[01:15:06] Will: I mean, it, Brian ran this whole process. Mm-hmm. And so I’m, everything I’m about to say is only based on the conversation I just heard.

[01:15:14] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:15:16] Will: This is almost agnostic to Kit, but Kit Falls in the bucket of companies this applies to, which is there’s so many tools out there for people right now where people are overwhelmed.

[01:15:28] Will: Mm-hmm. By the opportunity in those tools. Um, I mean, AI is the biggest thing right now where like people know that you can do so much, and most people, infinite things have no idea where to even start. And I, I think it makes people, this has nothing to do with kid now.

[01:15:45] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:46] Will: It can make people feel dumb when they’re not able to fully realize the power of something that they have purchased.

[01:15:55] Will: And so how do you open up people’s eyes such that they’re using all of the thing

[01:16:04] Brian: Yeah. In a way that isn’t shaming or in a way that is like celebratory of them to, or

[01:16:10] Will: fully consuming either

[01:16:11] Brian: or like taking this risk of Oh my gosh. So you’re trying to build a sequence, like let’s do this. Um, yeah. Like even the video content, I, I think there could be like, there’s so good and there’s so many more that I want that are like coaching and walking me through it.

[01:16:28] Nathan: Yeah. When that’s where you’re getting back to the, the quote that you started with of like, people remember how you made them feel and you might feel, make them feel like they accomplished a task at the end of a hard day. And that’s probably where most people are, but you know, if you made them really feel like, oh, I, I made something that I’m really, really proud of.

[01:16:48] Nathan: Yeah. Or I felt,

[01:16:50] Will: and I had a lot of fun along the way.

[01:16:52] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:16:53] Will: I don’t, I’ve never watched one of these videos.

[01:16:55] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:16:55] Will: So I can’t opine. Are they like the most fun videos ever to watch?

[01:16:59] Nathan: I think they’re the most practical videos.

[01:17:02] Will: So they,

[01:17:03] Nathan: so there’s a big opportunity there.

[01:17:04] Will: And by the way, they should be practical.

[01:17:05] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:06] Will: And they should also be really fun,

[01:17:07] Nathan: right?

[01:17:08] Will: Like, I just think like everyone should be investing more time into making work fun.

[01:17:13] Brian: Or like, during the, the very beginning, the, the onboarding or answering all these questions, if there was a random question that said, what’s your favorite candy bar? And it made no sense, and then you went to the next one.

[01:17:23] Brian: But then on like launch day or the day that,

[01:17:26] Nathan: right.

[01:17:26] Brian: I send out. Uh, my very first newsletter, put a packet of Skittles in, in, in the mail and say, Hey, well done the kit team. And it’s a, it cost you a buck, you know, little tiny things that make the person feel celebrated or seen that says, Hey, you did something.

[01:17:45] Brian: Like you built your first newsletter. You sent out your first,

[01:17:48] Will: yeah. What do y’all do when someone hits a hundred thousand subscribers, or,

[01:17:51] Nathan: that’s a big conversation that we’re trying to figure out right now, actually is like, YouTube does a plaque, you know, and so we don’t do anything right now. And, um, we’ve been debating like, do we do a plaque?

[01:18:03] Nathan: Do we do, is it just a

[01:18:05] Will: don’t do a plaque?

[01:18:06] Nathan: Yeah, don’t do a plaque.

[01:18:08] Will: No, but there’s like something, I mean, I, I think by the way, it’s Skittles, like what he just said. I love that idea. That’s a really fun idea. Like, it’s just the little things like,

[01:18:18] Nathan: because it’s personalized. Yes.

[01:18:20] Will: Yeah. And it’s just like, Hey dude, good job.

[01:18:24] Will: Or whatever. If you get a, a significant milestone. You should. The idea of asking one of the coolest things about a magic trick when you go see a magic show is when they do something at the very beginning of the show and you completely forget about that thing. And then it comes back later in the show.

[01:18:40] Will: If you’re asking people questions when they’re being onboarded and they’re so overwhelmed by that process, they completely forget about that stuff, then they might have made

[01:18:49] Nathan: them laugh. Like, why do you wanna,

[01:18:51] Will: okay, whatever. A year and a half later when they hit a big milestone, then you’re using that information.

[01:18:55] Will: That’s when it becomes magical.

[01:18:57] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:18:57] Will: Or um, and by the way, like don’t wait for the crazy big moments to celebrate. Celebrate. ’cause people want to feel like they’re getting somewhere. And even the smallest milestones can be opportunities for celebration.

[01:19:17] Nathan: Yeah, that’s powerful. I love that.

[01:19:18] Will: If we keep on going, we need to start charging you, so let’s stop.

[01:19:23] Nathan: Exactly. Well, this has been a

[01:19:25] Brian: plus five packets of Skittles. Next answer.

[01:19:29] Will: Do you love Skittles?

[01:19:30] Brian: No. Actually, what

[01:19:32] Nathan: is your favorite candy?

[01:19:36] Brian: I think it’s a fifth Avenue.

[01:19:38] Nathan: There you go.

[01:19:38] Brian: It’s nearly perfect. Or a whatchamacallit. Oh yeah,

[01:19:43] Will: yeah.

[01:19:44] Nathan: I can’t, I I,

[01:19:44] Will: I love a Snickers bar and an Hermes wallet

[01:19:50] Brian: delivered in a Ferrari.

[01:19:51] Nathan: Yes, exactly.

[01:19:53] Will: Do they taste better than a stickers bar in the glove compartment of a new Ferrari?

[01:19:58] Nathan: Oh, that sounds good. Guys, this has been so much fun.

[01:20:00] Nathan: First of all, thank you for using the platform and bringing the magic that you all do to the world, and we’re proud to play a, a tiny part in helping you guys do that.

[01:20:08] Will: And so fun to be here, man. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank

[01:20:10] Brian: you.

[01:20:11] Nathan: Um, people want to go sign up to the newsletter, check out everything that you’re doing.

[01:20:15] Nathan: Where should they go?

[01:20:16] Brian: Just go to the website, unreasonable hospitality.com.

[01:20:18] Nathan: Sounds good. And the field guide is out now.

[01:20:20] Will: The field guide is now out available wherever you buy books. And, um, we’re really proud of how that came out. That was, you talk about going through every detail of an idea and figuring out how to make it more awesome.

[01:20:35] Will: We made the process of writing a workbook far more challenging than it needed to be, but we’re pretty proud that we’ve created something that I don’t feel is even, I don’t think, feels even a little bit like work.

[01:20:47] Nathan: Yeah,

[01:20:48] Brian: it’s fun. And there’s a fun Easter egg or two in there.

[01:20:50] Will: Yeah,

[01:20:51] Nathan: I like it. Well, I hope you two create more content together, because you’ve got a pretty magical partnership and it’s fun to share with the world.

[01:20:57] Nathan: So unreasonable hospitality.com. Thanks for coming on the show.

[01:21:00] Will: Thanks Ben.

[01:21:01] Brian: Thanks Nathan.

[01:21:02] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Berry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else do you think we should have on the show.

[01:21:16] Nathan: Thank you so much for listening.

[00:00:00] Nathan: All healthy is over a million subscribers. What’s worked the best for driving growth

[00:00:03] Sean: in terms of what’s worked really well for us? I always recommend

[00:00:07] Nathan: Sean Devlin spent years at optimism helping build a portfolio of email first brands to millions of readers before founding his own.

[00:00:15] Sean: A lot of our initial growth came from cross pollination, from other newsletters, and obviously you could do this in swaps with other newsletters too.

[00:00:21] Nathan: He built nice news to over 800,000 subscribers before he was acquired by Encyclopedia Britannica in his latest newsletter. All healthy 1.3 million subscribers. And an incredible 52% open rate.

[00:00:32] Sean: It’s important to determine what it is that your goals are for the newsletter to start, and if we want to group it into three categories, we can group it into engagements, monetization, and retention.

[00:00:43] Nathan: If you have an email list and you want people to actually look forward to opening it, you’re gonna wanna stick around for this one. What works best for monetization?

[00:00:50] Sean: For monetization for us, we’re.

[00:00:56] Nathan: Sean, welcome to the show.

[00:00:57] Sean: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

[00:00:59] Nathan: So I wanna dive right in.

[00:01:01] Sean: All right.

[00:01:01] Nathan: What’s one format change that anybody could make that would make their subscribers more addicted to opening their emails?

[00:01:07] Sean: So I would start with analyzing your existing format for your newsletter. Okay.

[00:01:13] Sean: What does your newsletter look like right now? Why are people engaging with your newsletter? What’s resulting in forming habits in your readers and keeping them coming back, and then building on that. So. For all Healthy. We have a couple sections that are specifically included to form habits in our readers.

[00:01:31] Sean: One of ’em is actually called Healthy Habits. It has Habit in the name, the other one’s called Final Thought, and these are sections that are further down in the newsletter with the goal of getting people to obviously form a habit of actually reading the entire newsletter too. Mm-hmm. But you can include something further up too.

[00:01:45] Sean: Then for Healthy Habit, um, these are two sections that don’t even have CTAs. So the whole goal is basically to get people to build a habit of actually just reading them and getting value outta them. Healthy Habit is just a tangible recommendation of something you can do that day to live a healthier life.

[00:02:00] Sean: Um,

[00:02:01] Nathan: what would an,

[00:02:01] Sean: what

[00:02:01] Nathan: would an example of that be?

[00:02:03] Sean: Yeah, so an example would be, um, like Make Tomorrow Easy. So you’re getting your clothes, your workout clothes, or choosing your outfit in advance or getting your lunch ready beforehand or something like that. And then right after that we have final thought where we have a quote alongside an image.

[00:02:20] Sean: And our goal for that is to kind of choose something that’s relatively unexpected. So we’ll choose something like, um, from a podcast or from a book and really try to provoke thought in our readers. Yeah. And ultimately that section is trying to kind of like evoke some sort of emotion. Maybe it’s like awe or inspiration.

[00:02:37] Sean: Our goal with that is ultimately to kind of get them to feel something. And I like to say that you might not remember everything that you’re reading in a newsletter, but you’re gonna remember how you felt when you read it. And that feeling is what’s gonna result in you coming back the next day, the next week.

[00:02:51] Sean: So that’s kind of what’s resulting in that return behavior. So we really lean into that with those sections. And I mean, for your newsletter it could be something wildly different. You could do a fact or something that happened that day in history and intention and insight or recommendation. I think the goal is for it to feel like it kind of like.

[00:03:09] Sean: Fits with the format of your newsletter and doesn’t feel like a random add-on, and it’s providing value and is integrated in a way that makes sense.

[00:03:17] Nathan: Yeah, I like that. I’m thinking about James Clear’s newsletter. Yeah. Where you know, his 3, 2, 1. He’s ending with that one question for you. Exactly.

[00:03:24] Sean: Yeah.

[00:03:25] Nathan: And so he is probably, I haven’t talked to him about this, but he’s probably wanting someone to walk away with this feeling of like, oh, I’m.

[00:03:31] Nathan: Smarter or more introspective, or it’s something like that.

[00:03:33] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:34] Nathan: You know, uh, like thoughtful.

[00:03:36] Sean: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:03:36] Nathan: The feeling coming out of it. Whereas another example would be Anne Helen Peterson has a section in her newsletter called, it’s just a link that just says, just trust me.

[00:03:45] Sean: Hmm.

[00:03:46] Nathan: And that’s always, you know, something fun or insightful or, or something like that.

[00:03:49] Nathan: Um, where you’re like, oh, just trust me. You don’t even have any context, just click on it.

[00:03:54] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:54] Nathan: And, uh, Marissa Lavell, who runs from Boise, which is a local newsletter that she and I, uh, co-founded, she borrowed that just trust me format and it’s always something funny.

[00:04:05] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:06] Nathan: Or all that. And so going back to a feeling

[00:04:07] Sean: mm-hmm.

[00:04:08] Nathan: Right. You’re going to read from Boise either about the news or history or the events. And the last link is the Just trust me. And it’s the highest click link in every issue. And it delivers. Yeah. Every single, like every single time you’re like, oh, Marissa, I’m glad that I trusted you. Yeah. And you click that link.

[00:04:23] Nathan: ’cause it brought me joy.

[00:04:25] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:25] Nathan: And so then it reinforces this idea that from Boise is about. Joy and happiness and lighthearted. Um, so I love that. Right. You’re, you have a set format that is designed to create a feeling.

[00:04:37] Sean: Exactly. Yeah. No, I love that approach. And we, we’ve tried similar six sections of that where the goal is obviously to get clicks or engagement mm-hmm.

[00:04:43] Sean: But also to provide value in a unique way.

[00:04:46] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:04:46] Sean: Yeah.

[00:04:46] Nathan: What do creators get wrong about email formats?

[00:04:50] Sean: I would say. I, I think personally what I get wrong is I lean into certain metrics, like open rate and click through rate. Okay. And think about it maybe in more of a short term viewpoint. Mm-hmm. So for open rate, that could look like AB testing, five subject lines and one maybe being a little bit more offbeat or mm-hmm.

[00:05:10] Sean: Framing it as a question or incorporating an emoji. And then let’s say that one wins and that’s sent to the entire audience, but it happens consistently over the course of a week or something like that. I mean, it can be a little annoying if your subject lines are framed as a question every single day, right?

[00:05:24] Sean: So I think it’s kind of finding that balance in terms of tone and approach and making sure you’re representing your newsletter the way that you want to, or for click through rate. It could be you include something that maybe. It feels a little bit click Beatty. Mm-hmm. But it ends up in your audience clicking it and like, on a performance basis.

[00:05:42] Sean: I mean, you’re looking at the click that you’re like, oh wow, it performed really well today. Like the, the newsletter performed really well, but did it leave a good taste in your, your subscriber’s mouth? Right. I think it’s important to be thinking about the long-term relationship with your subscriber, not just looking at those metrics more near term.

[00:05:58] Nathan: Yeah. It’s interesting thinking about clickbait. Which we describe as a negative term. Yeah. Right. Of like, oh, you don’t want, that’s a clickbait headline, but it’s only a negative thing if you don’t deliver.

[00:06:07] Sean: Yeah.

[00:06:07] Nathan: Like if you bait me into clicking on something. Exactly. And then it. It pays off. And as a, as a reader, I’m like, oh, had, had you framed that in a boring way or a generic way, I wouldn’t have clicked it, but I’m so glad that I did.

[00:06:21] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:21] Nathan: So thank you for, it’s not like we’re phishing or something and now you’ve got me on the hook. It’s like, no, thank you for, um, getting me to engage with that. Like, my life is better, my insights are better, whatever. Because of that.

[00:06:33] Sean: Yeah.

[00:06:33] Nathan: So were there things that you’ve maybe pushed the envelope on but then made sure that you could follow up?

[00:06:38] Nathan: And actually deliver the value with it,

[00:06:40] Sean: for sure. Yeah. I mean, we’ll lean into that in terms of like phrasing for certain wording where it’s like, mm-hmm this one’s our favorite. Or maybe you missed this. Mm-hmm. To get someone to click. But ultimately, to your point, you need to make sure you’re providing value to them.

[00:06:51] Sean: Right. And they’re happy with where it is that they land and they’re not like, what is this? It’s like sponsor or something like that.

[00:06:57] Nathan: So if I understand it correctly, all healthy is over a million subscribers. Is that right? Yeah.

[00:07:01] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:02] Nathan: And you have pretty crazy open rate numbers. Yeah. Like I always see people grow these big lists, but then the open rate declines.

[00:07:08] Nathan: Mm-hmm. And I’m like. You don’t actually have that much engagement.

[00:07:11] Sean: Yeah.

[00:07:11] Nathan: Talk to me about one, what is the open rate, and then two, how do you, how do you still manage to have that? I have an open rate on that many subscribers.

[00:07:19] Sean: Yeah. So for us, open rate’s really important. Mm-hmm. I mean, our newsletter is a five minute digest our.

[00:07:24] Sean: Core goal is to get people to open and read. Mm-hmm. We’re not focused as much on just getting someone to click, so developing that relationship with them is really important. Our open rate is north of 50%. Yeah. Around hovers, around 52%. And I think we’re able to do that just ultimately by providing value to our readers every day.

[00:07:42] Sean: And they come to expect a specific format with the content that we’re sending. And we still have kind of like some element of surprise sometimes with changing things up in terms of the sections that we include. So it’s this balance of providing value every single day, um, getting trust from our readers.

[00:07:58] Sean: Mm-hmm. And then that results in them coming back.

[00:08:01] Nathan: Yeah. So a daily email, is it five days a week or seven days a week?

[00:08:04] Sean: It’s seven days a week.

[00:08:05] Nathan: Okay. So

[00:08:06] Sean: daily’s like a roundup though.

[00:08:07] Nathan: Okay. So it’s,

[00:08:08] Sean: yeah.

[00:08:09] Nathan: And I think people’s worry is that if I send emails that often

[00:08:13] Sean: mm-hmm.

[00:08:14] Nathan: I’m going to have higher unsubscribes, I’m gonna wear out my readers, I’m, I’m gonna not.

[00:08:20] Nathan: I’m not gonna get high engagement and I’m gonna cap my growth because the unsubscribes will always be a percentage, and the growth is a fixed, fixed number. How do you think about that? Why a daily email

[00:08:30] Sean: for us? Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely something that we’ve considered in terms of the frequency. Mm-hmm.

[00:08:34] Sean: And we, we explicitly call that out in the footer, like, do you want less emails? Click here. So our Sunday email is more of a weekly roundup. Mm-hmm. People could just get it once a week if they wanted to, but. We try to really cast a wide net with the topics that we’re covering with all healthy. So we’ll cover everything from, I mean, nutrition, to fitness, to relationships, to mental health.

[00:08:53] Sean: And because of that, it’s wide ranging and there’s value, and people find the content interesting each day. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, I mean, you don’t have to be opening and reading it every day, and

[00:09:03] Nathan: it’s not like, oh, we,

[00:09:05] Sean: yeah,

[00:09:05] Nathan: we missed episode four of the season and now. Exactly. Yeah. The rest of the season doesn’t make any sense.

[00:09:10] Sean: Exactly. Yeah. So for us, I mean, obviously it’s great to be able to monetize our audience every day too, so there’s value in that. And I think it really depends on the content that you’re sending. If it is relatively niche, it probably doesn’t make sense to be sending it every day. And if you’re looking at your unsubscribe rate and it’s skyrocketing when you send a particular type of email or frequency, right, then maybe reevaluate from there.

[00:09:32] Nathan: You brought up monetization. Mm-hmm. So how does all healthy monetize, and then also, like, there’s other newsletters in, in the network, right? You’ve, you’ve scaled nice news, you’ve scaled a bunch of other, uh, newsletters, like what works best for monetization for this style of newsletter?

[00:09:46] Sean: Yeah, so for monetization for us, we’re in email sponsorships.

[00:09:51] Sean: So in terms of what’s worked really well for us. I always recommend that people think about how your newsletter sponsorships are incorporated in a way that feels seamless and provides value to the reader too. In terms of obviously the sponsors that you’re including, you wanna make sure you’re partnering with brands that are aligned and actually provide value to your readers, but also.

[00:10:11] Sean: Of course you’re like labeling that this is a sponsored section. But sometimes when it stands out so much to the point where it’s just like drastically different in design and it’s something that like feels very like different from the rest of the content that’s included, people can form the habit of just skipping over it.

[00:10:26] Sean: Mm-hmm. So we find a way for it to feel really cohesive and integrated well. And then obviously like there’s value there. What we do in terms of tone of voice is we make sure it’s written by our editorial team in a way that kind of co is cohesive and seamlessly is integrated. And we also try to take an editorial approach with the content.

[00:10:43] Sean: So as an example for a sponsor that we have called Native Path, which is a collagen supplement, we’ll talk about, um, kind of how collagen impacts bone density as an example. Mm-hmm. And then we’ll dig into that a little bit and then link out to learn more. Or a hydrogen water sponsor, we may be talking about.

[00:11:02] Sean: What does the science actually say about hydrogen water? Like, why is everyone talking about this? And then get them to click to learn more. So that approach just feels more, it kind of draws the reader in, gets them interested in the content, and then gets them to click. And we’ve noticed, obviously engagements increase, but also conversions, like total conversions can increase ’cause you’re just getting the audience interested in something and then getting them to engage from there.

[00:11:23] Sean: So that approach has worked really well for us too.

[00:11:25] Nathan: Yeah, I’m thinking about that. Most sponsorships, like let’s say that, uh, we had a, a newsletter about the creator economy or something and Kit was sponsoring.

[00:11:36] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:36] Nathan: Most would come in and be like, sponsored by Kit. Here’s why Kit is so great. Go sign up by, go become a Kit customer.

[00:11:43] Nathan: And what I hear you talking about is, you know, instead it’d be like, why email is important as part of your. Creator tech stack. Mm. And then it’d be thoughts on that, maybe some quotes from, uh, you know, John Isha or someone like someone that’s trusted within that community. And then it’s like, oh, go learn more.

[00:12:03] Nathan: And this is brought to you by Kit.

[00:12:05] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:05] Nathan: Is that right? Of taking this editorial approach instead of the sales approach?

[00:12:08] Sean: Yeah. Like kind of getting that initial interest in the topic. Mm-hmm. And then providing a solution to something. Rather than just like starting with the solution, like, this is why you need this, and you’re like, need what?

[00:12:18] Sean: I didn’t.

[00:12:19] Nathan: I didn’t know that I cared.

[00:12:21] Sean: Yeah.

[00:12:22] Nathan: So it’s, I guess I could see that, that content. Maybe the first thing is sparking curiosity, right? Yeah. Of having the headline of the section or you know, you have to open this loop that then you’re able to start to close and you don’t even have to fully close it.

[00:12:35] Nathan: Like something I’ve seen work well with newsletter sponsorships is when they’re really just trying to get the click through. Then ultimately retarget those people later.

[00:12:44] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:44] Nathan: And so you, you don’t even really care about making the sale on the page that they click to? Yeah. It’s like we, we got people who are now interested in our target market, you know, they’re within our target market, interested in our topic.

[00:12:56] Nathan: And then as a brand we can follow up later with retargeting or with, you know. We’re probably not running one ad in all healthy. Right. We’re running a series over a series of months, and so

[00:13:08] Sean: mm-hmm.

[00:13:08] Nathan: There’s a lot of opportunity to make the sale long term.

[00:13:10] Sean: Exactly, yeah. And that’s our ideal partners. They’re not just looking at that one placement and conversions from that one placement.

[00:13:16] Sean: Obviously they’re analyzing it, but they’re looking kind of more holistically. Yeah. And then in terms of of placements that we have, I always recommend having more than one. Type of sponsorship inclusion. So we have a primary, we have a secondary, obviously more ad inventory equals more dollars, but allows you to charge different price points.

[00:13:33] Sean: Yeah. Maybe test something on more of a performance basis. And we have a section that’s called quick picks two. Okay. Which allows us to, it’s like more short form, we can test a performance sponsor in that section, actually get, uh, kind of a higher volume of engagement too.

[00:13:45] Nathan: So I’ve seen a few people do those where they might say like, here’s my.

[00:13:49] Nathan: Um, five favorite things like the, the, and three of them there. There’s five in a list, but two have an asterisk next to them. Yeah. That ends has a note of like, you know, sponsor partner or something like that. Is that kind of the, the style?

[00:14:02] Sean: Yeah. We just do one that’s sponsored. Mm-hmm. And it’s not every day.

[00:14:05] Sean: So it doesn’t feel too, yeah. Too heavy, but yeah, that’s the approach.

[00:14:09] Nathan: Okay. And then from a monetization perspective, what can you say about what sponsorships in the newsletter cost, how you structure them? Like if someone is saying, Hey, I’ve gotten to. Let’s say 50 to a hundred thousand subscribers in my newsletter, and I wanna start to take on brand deals and mm-hmm.

[00:14:24] Nathan: And, uh, sponsorships. Like what, what advice or direction would you give them? And then we can get into more specifics of. You know, monetization strategies.

[00:14:33] Sean: Yeah. I mean, obviously it’s always great to be able to just have flat rates that you’re charging your sponsors and you can just do it based on A CPM.

[00:14:41] Sean: Ultimately, they’re looking at performance on their end. Right. And I always recommend starting at a more reasonable rate just based on the inventory that you have available and then building up from there. I mean, if you have, if there’s scarcity, you can start charging more and more. And then depending on the partner, it could make sense, even if they’re really kind of opposed to or not interested in something that’s flat rate.

[00:15:01] Sean: You could test how to. Ccpc. Mm-hmm. And certain sponsors click exceptionally well. That example I gave from Native Path, they’re on A CPC. For us, it actually performs better than if we were to do flat rate. So it depends on the approach and the sponsorship you wanna take on. But being flexible early on I think is really important.

[00:15:16] Sean: And then building from there based on the inventory you have.

[00:15:19] Nathan: So a lot of creators might get a couple of brands that come in and say, oh, your audience is the perfect fit for who we’re trying to reach. So we’re we’re willing to pay this high amount, let’s say. I dunno, $2,500 or $5,000 for a flat rate sponsorship.

[00:15:32] Nathan: And I won’t do the math on CCP M, but just assume that’s a good A, a good CPM. And so then the creator gets attached to that number and they’re able to sell two or three more at that, but it’s sporadic.

[00:15:45] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:46] Nathan: Maybe have their own product that they’re promoting in there sometimes. And I think what I hear you saying is it’s best to not be attached to the high price.

[00:15:54] Nathan: Instead, maybe be at a lower price where the brand is saying, wow, we got a crazy return on investment. Can we book out a bunch more? And then you’re getting to where the demand is really, really high. You’ve got four or five sponsors that are all performing really well and their ad teams are like, how can I buy more?

[00:16:13] Nathan: And you’re like, well, we’re actually Q2 is already booked out.

[00:16:15] Sean: Yeah.

[00:16:15] Nathan: Um, than it is to say like, to command the highest price and have these openings where you’re like then starting to have to really. Push to close them, is that right?

[00:16:25] Sean: Exactly. Yeah. ’cause if you have limited inventory, it allows you obviously to increase the rates.

[00:16:29] Sean: And for us, I mean, we’re a daily newsletter, so someone is gonna probably ask, Hey, do you have remnant inventory available? I’m like, sorry, we don’t have any inventory available. Right. We’re booked out a hundred percent. That allows us to charge higher rates. And then also it has to perform well enough for them.

[00:16:44] Sean: For them to, to come back. And you want it to be a recurring relationship?

[00:16:47] Nathan: Well, and that’s the thing that I think creators get wrong, is they, they, most creators that I talk to, they want a CPM. Uh, based relationship. And most brands want some, uh, like paper for pay for performance model.

[00:17:00] Sean: Yeah.

[00:17:00] Nathan: And so they’re naturally at odds with each other.

[00:17:03] Nathan: But what the creator doesn’t realize is that the brand is evaluating it based on performance regardless. And so it’s not that one is better, like, better than the, than the other. Like ultimately they converged to the same thing.

[00:17:14] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:15] Nathan: And it just shows up in how many repeat buys did this brand make? And so the like.

[00:17:23] Nathan: Yeah, I, I guess what I think is creators should be way more open to a cost per lead or a co, uh, cost per click or cost per conversion model, because that ultimately aligns with, with the brand. Um, and just test both.

[00:17:37] Sean: Yeah, I agree. And I think that. I understand the hesitancy in terms of like mm-hmm. A CPA or CPL model.

[00:17:43] Sean: And that’s something we, we try to avoid in particular for brands when we’re uncertain what the performance is gonna be if we haven’t tested something before. But once you have those baselines that you can work off of, then you understand like what makes sense for the brand and what makes sense for you, what the likely engagement’s gonna be, and then you can price it accordingly.

[00:18:01] Nathan: What about getting. Once we have that baseline filled, you know, it’s like, Hey, we’ve got our slots. It might be a blend of a few different deals with a few different advertisers. What’s worked the best for being able to drive up those rates over time?

[00:18:15] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:16] Nathan: Probably ultimately drive up the performance over time for the advertisers.

[00:18:19] Sean: Yeah.

[00:18:19] Nathan: You know, but you know, as a creator, I’m like, look, I’ve got a hundred thousand subscribers. I’m making a good amount. I’m not gonna increase my cents per week. You know, either because I physically can’t ’cause I’m already at seven, or, you know, I’m at my limit as, uh, what I can produce. But I wanna earn more per impression.

[00:18:36] Nathan: What are the things that make the biggest difference?

[00:18:38] Sean: I mean, for us, I mean you mentioned like booking out for the quarter. Mm-hmm. We typically do it. I would love to book out further in advance, like for, for even annually, but it can work well booking out more short term. So like mm-hmm. Our April for instance, is full and now we’re trying to book people out for all of Q2.

[00:18:53] Sean: Yeah. And then it allows us to, to reference kinda the inventory that we have available and then try to kind of fill the slots and make it feel like we don’t have. I mean, hopefully you are in that position where you just don’t have as much inventory, so you’re then filling at a higher rate. I think having like those consistent partners that you’re booking out on a quarterly basis or monthly basis is gonna be where you’re the, allow you to have the most success because you have kind of that consistent, like every other week this brand is performing and we’re

[00:19:19] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:19:19] Sean: Expecting that we’re including them based on our, our rates that we have right now.

[00:19:24] Nathan: Yeah. And so that makes sense to me, but I’m wondering about. What things I could, should do in the newsletter itself or in deeper partnerships with the brand? Like what you know for the like, Hey, we’re at a $20 CPM is what it ultimately.

[00:19:40] Nathan: However, it’s it’s build, it ultimately is equating to this $20 CPM, and I want, I really want it to be a $22 CPM. Got

[00:19:47] Sean: it. Mm-hmm.

[00:19:48] Nathan: Like, what do I, how

[00:19:49] Sean: do you drive that up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, ultimately you have to find ways to increase performance. Mm-hmm. So if you’re bringing in new audience, that can be really beneficial for increasing engagement.

[00:19:58] Sean: Also, testing out different things. I, me, I mentioned taking that editorial approach with the, the copy, maybe leaning into that, trying different approaches for. What it is you’re covering, the angle that you’re taking, the placement type, uh, maybe you throw in something that is shorter form to drive more engagement in addition to the main sponsorship that you have.

[00:20:18] Sean: So testing things out, and ultimately they have to see that performance on their end for them to be willing to pay more.

[00:20:23] Nathan: Right.

[00:20:24] Sean: So hopefully you’re growing your newsletter and that justifies the increase in rates too.

[00:20:28] Nathan: Yeah, I like that. I’ve also seen creators go through and say, Hey, you’re sending these clicks that I’m giving you through to a generic landing page.

[00:20:35] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:35] Nathan: Can I. You know, can we, can you make a custom landing page for me that has a quote from me talking about the product

[00:20:42] Sean: love

[00:20:43] Nathan: that you know, and has some of this handoff?

[00:20:44] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:45] Nathan: And really, I mean, it just comes down to, I guess, probably two things. One is standard conversion rate optimization that would like work whether you’re running meta ads or anything else’s.

[00:20:55] Nathan: Like does your headline match the thing that they clicked on originally? You know, you’re bringing people to through. But then the other thing is taking responsibility for the performance. I think the more the creator says, it’s not just my responsibility to hand over 200 words worth of space, you know, and, and 300 pixels or whatever.

[00:21:16] Nathan: It’s like, no, I’m, I am taking as much responsibility as I can for the sales that are ultimately driven, and then as a result, I want to get paid more for it.

[00:21:26] Sean: Mm-hmm. I think thinking holistically like that is important because it has to be successful for them. And if you’re driving them to a landing page that isn’t converting, then you’re not gonna be able to continue to work with them.

[00:21:37] Sean: So it’s great when you find partners that are open to that feedback and have the flexibility to be able to implement ideas and suggestions that you have.

[00:21:46] Nathan: I like it. Okay, so I wanna go to newsletter design and structure, right? Because. People can get tired of a certain format or, uh, or they can fall in love with a format and keep coming back to it.

[00:21:59] Nathan: But as you’ve worked on different newsletters, I’m curious what’s like, do you have rules of thumb or things you keep coming back to on like how the newsletter is designed and laid out and that sort of thing? Or ones that you see and you’re like, Ooh. You know, gut feeling is like, don’t do that.

[00:22:14] Sean: Yeah. I’ll say it depends on the goal of the newsletter, Uhhuh.

[00:22:18] Sean: Like there are ones that I’ve launched in a previous life that are like, legitimately like just a trivia question. So you’re just trying to drive traffic to web or just like, okay, trying to drive traffic to an article in that place. In, in that, um, case, you want it to be obviously super short form and you don’t want it to be like.

[00:22:33] Sean: You don’t wanna provide all the content, uh, to them in the newsletter. ’cause ultimately then they’re not gonna engage. We take a modular approach with our current template for all healthy and we took a lot of the learnings that we had from Nice News and applied it to all healthy. Mm-hmm. And what’s worked really well for us in terms of like the beginning of the newsletter and when we have intro texts, were establishing that relationship with the reader and then kind of drawing them in further and then having.

[00:22:56] Sean: A few featured stories. Um, and then from there, kind of having some sections that the, like I mentioned, healthy habit and final thought that the reader comes to expect, but also throwing in some new sections here and there, um, which allow us to kind of have this, this balance of predictability and surprise.

[00:23:12] Nathan: I like that. Are there any newsletters that. You don’t work on that, you follow that, you’re like, Ooh, they, they particularly do things well, or you’re like, all right there, there’s real craft behind it. Or I, I wanna build a newsletter, you know, on that scale or get ideas from

[00:23:26] Sean: Yeah. Um, I mean, in the health and wellness space, I’m like always thinking about that.

[00:23:30] Sean: I love, even if it is just. Primarily text. Mm-hmm. I think finding ways to have the content be seamlessly incorporated, it works really well. So I love like Pump Club and Fit Insider and some of these that are a little bit more kind of industry specific, but. I mean, it really depends on what you’re trying to get your audience to do.

[00:23:48] Sean: So if the format is allowing your reader to stay in the inbox and continue to read, then yeah, something’s working well, if that’s what you’re trying to do. And then if the format is resulting in them clicking to go to web, if that’s what you’re trying to do, then it’s working well. So it, it kind of depends on your, your goals from the beginning too.

[00:24:05] Nathan: Anything that you’ve seen that’s really novel where you’re like, Ooh. I’ve been in the newsletter game for a long time and here’s someone doing something that you’re like, that’s different. It may not be right for my goals, but like that’s an interesting use of, of email.

[00:24:16] Sean: Yeah. I would say in terms of finding that balance between the two, I really love, uh, the Washington Post has a newsletter called like The Seven, and they.

[00:24:25] Sean: Incorporate CTAs in a way where it’s like they’re providing a good amount of content in the inbox still. So it’s kinda like building that habit with their reader. It’s all just about clicks. Exactly. But then they do the CTAs in a way for their featured stories that feels like it’s really compelling, like you want to click to read more.

[00:24:39] Sean: So it’s this balance of like, I’m sure they’re monetizing on web and then we’re up converting people from there. And then also they’re getting people to engage in the inbox. So I think it’s difficult to find that balance between the two. I think they do it really well.

[00:24:51] Nathan: Yeah, I like that. All right, let’s talk growth for a minute.

[00:24:54] Sean: Okay.

[00:24:54] Nathan: Because you, you don’t get to a million plus subscribers without having a few things figured out on growth. Obviously, you’ve gone. Um, broad appeal with your newsletters, which makes it easier to get to tens of people. Right? Like if someone’s building a business newsletter to over a hundred thousand people, that’s very hard to, and that might be equal difficulty to like a food newsletter at two or 300,000.

[00:25:18] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:18] Nathan: Right? Where the broader, the appeal, um, the cheaper you can acquire tra acquire traffic, larger target market and all of that. But what’s worked the best for driving growth? And maybe we could talk at different scales like. Zero to a hundred thousand subscribers and then we could dive into the, you know, a hundred to 500 and then beyond a million.

[00:25:38] Sean: Yeah. So I will say we were in a unique position with all healthy in that. We were a part of a wider optimism portfolio. Our parent company at the time, there were a good number of brands in the portfolio, so a lot of our initial growth came from cross pollination, from other newsletters and tactics. That worked really well for us there.

[00:25:55] Sean: And obviously you could do this in swaps with other newsletters too, but, or paid placements too. Uh, we would incorporate, I mean. Explicit sections to get health and wellness in your inbox and then, um, guide to landing pages to up convert from there. Mm-hmm. But then once we had kind of those core subscribers that were extremely engaged, we then kind of scaled beyond that and then included pieces of content that were our highest engaging pieces of content.

[00:26:17] Sean: And then in order to click to read that piece of content or to get access to that piece of content, kinda like a lead gen flow, you have to input your email to, to get access or from the click initially you’re being subscribed from there. So that allowed us to really scale early on. Um, and the. Now a lot of our tactics are via paid.

[00:26:33] Sean: In particular meta is where we’re really scaling spend and we’re using kind of some of those same flows in terms of lead gen. So we have guides that we’re doing for all healthy around a particular topic, like how to undo sitting all day or how to, um, how to, like things you need to throw away in your kitchen.

[00:26:50] Sean: Like something feels really compelling and aligned with. Like topically what it is that we’re covering anyway. And it

[00:26:55] Nathan: sparks that curiosity where I’m like, well, hold on. What should I throw away?

[00:26:58] Sean: Yeah. You’re like, wait,

[00:27:00] Nathan: now I wanna know where’s the guide.

[00:27:01] Sean: Exactly. Um, so that approach has worked really well for us.

[00:27:05] Sean: Mm-hmm. Because obviously like we get a lower CPA, but also want someone subscribes, they then they have to click in their inbox to be able to access what it is that we’re sending to them. So you get that initial engagement. If someone’s not clicking, we’re filtering them out. So we’re able to still kind of like.

[00:27:20] Sean: Keep on board the people who are actually engaged. So we’ve leaned into that a lot. And then through our sister publication Super Age, we’re doing a good number of quizzes too. Okay. We’ve done a quiz around like how long you’re likely to live, and then we’re asking them a ton of questions. So we’re getting a lot of data points up front.

[00:27:35] Sean: Relatively low CPA and then sending them the results via email. They’re engaged in the inbox immediately. So I think thinking about flows that aren’t just like, sign up for my newsletter, click here. They’re signing up, which can work really well too. Um, it’s allowed us to get a lower CPA and sometimes even higher engagement.

[00:27:53] Nathan: Yeah. Okay. So let’s dive in on meta ads in particular. Like what, what do you think of as for each of your brands? Like a good. CPA that, you know, for acquiring a subscriber, what do, what do you target there and then what are the things that have helped the most to, to drive that down?

[00:28:09] Sean: Yeah. I mean, some of the flows that I mentioned in terms of lead gen have helped us drive that down.

[00:28:13] Sean: Yeah. Like for nice news, we were hovering around like a dollar CPA mm-hmm. For the typical flow, which was like. Driving traffic to a landing page to get good news, and then you’re inputting your email explicitly to get that in your inbox. Currently we’re sitting like less than 50 cents for CPA A. Okay.

[00:28:29] Sean: And sometimes, I mean, depending on the campaign, that can even be like 30, 40 cents. So that’s relatively low. I know people are willing. Yeah, that’s very willing to spend a lot more for subscribers. But I will say that obviously some of those subscribers. Or just trying to get their quiz results or just trying to get this particular guide and then they aren’t as engaged.

[00:28:46] Sean: So you have to filter people out. And it’s worked really well for us also too, because we have the ability to share kind of cross network, so we can even lower that CPA further if we’re sharing it with another newsletter. Um, or having an integration like Spark Loop or partnership with another newsletter can allow you to lower that CPA too.

[00:29:03] Nathan: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I’ve seen people really build those optimized flows where it’s usually exactly, you said a quiz or a lead magnet on the front end. It’s not. The main call to action isn’t get healthy tips seven days a week. It’s like very specific pain point solved. And then, you know, it flows into that.

[00:29:21] Nathan: And then usually the cross promotions, uh, whether it’s through something like Spark Loop or you know, that you manually put together where it’s like, Hey, I’ll cross promote your newsletter. You’re paying me if they end up becoming engaged over here, or the offers portion where. Maybe there’s a brand, like one of your sponsors, you know, whether it’s the water brand or someone else, right?

[00:29:43] Nathan: That’s in that opt-in flow, um, and helping to recoup some of that. And then more in the creator space that you see is a lot of like a direct upsell into a product. Mm. You know, if someone has a 10 to $50 product that is tightly aligned with the lead magnet. You know, I’ve seen like coaches do something where maybe you’re downloading the industry checklist, you know, or the five biggest mistakes made in X industry, and then it’s like, Hey, do you wanna pay for, you know, pay a hundred dollars for an audit Where?

[00:30:17] Nathan: We’ll go and audit, see, like, give you, you know, a half hour coaching call of like, are you making these same mistakes? And um, and I’ve seen that work. Well, especially for, especially for someone who’s doing a low volume of leads, you would never wanna offer that, you know, thousands of leads. Mm-hmm. But if you’re a coach and you, you know, you’re like, look, if I did 10 of these a week, that’d be amazing.

[00:30:37] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:37] Nathan: Then I, some funnel like that can work out. And then you have a, you’re either. To a much lower CPC, ccp CPA or CPL cost per lead because you’re making up that money relatively soon to the funnel.

[00:30:51] Sean: Yeah, exactly. That’s what we’re trying to lean into more now is like lowering that subscriber payback period.

[00:30:56] Sean: ’cause it’s just, I mean, it’s amazing when you can get that that back immediately,

[00:31:00] Nathan: right?

[00:31:01] Sean: Yeah.

[00:31:01] Nathan: Compared to when you’re like, well, let’s see if this person opens. Consistently over, if they’re this likely to open consistently over the next six months. Yeah. Then we’ll make

[00:31:11] Sean: it back, back on and click on a sponsor here.

[00:31:12] Sean: Yeah. Yeah. To get a little bit more granular. Right. In that regard. Yeah, so I think it’s helpful to think about, I mean, depending on what it is that you’re offering, finding something that monetizes that, that individual faster or engages with them. Maybe you have a set onboarding flow, right? That’s like your top engaging content for that individual.

[00:31:29] Sean: They don’t necessarily know that that’s what you’re sending them, but it gets them then to drive to web mm-hmm. Or they see something different than the average subscriber that is gonna result in, um, getting that money back faster.

[00:31:39] Nathan: Yeah. Okay. I’m curious about these. I, I spent a lot of my time in niche newsletters.

[00:31:44] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Right? Where someone might have 10 to a hundred thousand subscribers, but a very high revenue per subscriber because they’re talking about marketing or engineering or some, some like very focused topic. So it’s interesting for me to talk to you where you’re in the broad appeal and you’re like, Hey, how do we, you know, nice news, right?

[00:32:03] Nathan: As a premise. It’s just like,

[00:32:05] Sean: like, could be anyone. Yeah.

[00:32:06] Nathan: Could be anyone. Yeah. Right. Do you like happiness? Would you like to be happier and see the good things in the world? Yeah. Um, I’m curious if there’s anything that you’ve learned from the broad appeal newsletters that you would recommend for the, like narrower niches where you’re like.

[00:32:24] Nathan: They’re not two separate worlds. You should, you should dismiss all of this over here. Here’s how you should mm-hmm. Incorporate it. Mm-hmm.

[00:32:29] Sean: Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, in terms of user acquisition, I think it’s like much more lenient for us. Mm-hmm. Where we’ve done like joint giveaways with different people and because our content is so general, there’s a high likelihood or high probability that people are gonna be interested in, in living a healthier life or right.

[00:32:47] Sean: Having positive news in their inbox. So that approach can work really well. Um, I think you obviously, like if you are more niche, you just have to look at where your audience is. Mm-hmm. And try to target them outside of just casting a super wide net. Um, yeah, so I don’t know if that’s directly applicable necessarily for, for user acquisition, but I mean.

[00:33:06] Sean: For monetization. I mean, we’re still thinking through the lens of like, we’re trying to provide content that is valuable to our audience. So we’re trying to find partners that our audience is genuinely interested. And I think that translates to, I mean, you need to be partnering with brands that is provi are providing value to whatever it is that you’re, you’re covering and why you’re audience is reading your newsletter each day.

[00:33:25] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And thinking about individual tactics you mentioned. Um, using partnerships a lot to grow the newsletter, which helps, right? That you’re like, oh, well we’re within, within our own company, we have, you know, large newsletters already, we can cross promote. Um, ’cause it’s not really this angle of like, well, if they read one newsletter, they won’t read anymore.

[00:33:45] Nathan: It’s like, no. If they’re, you know, you might have like, someone who reads nice news could happily read all healthy Right. And cover different angles on it. So the cross promotion there makes sense. But something that I’ve seen a lot of creators do. Really effectively is the, the collaborations or the newsletter swaps.

[00:34:02] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:02] Nathan: And those work well within niches because it doesn’t take, if you have 10,000 subscribers and someone else that you’re working with talking to has 15,000 in a related niche, like it doesn’t take that much results for it to be worth it for me to write like a great guest post for them.

[00:34:18] Sean: Yeah.

[00:34:18] Nathan: If I get 200 subscribers, like,

[00:34:21] Sean: okay,

[00:34:22] Nathan: that was, you know, like.

[00:34:25] Nathan: A couple hundred high value subscribers that would’ve cost me, you know, four or $500, a thousand dollars potentially to go acquire in meta depending on, on the niche. Um, and so I see a lot of creators do that. But the thing that I feel like they mess up is they do like. Two, one-off partnerships where they’re like, oh, I did it with this person and that person.

[00:34:46] Nathan: And you’re like, did it work? They’re like, yeah, it worked great. So whatcha gonna do? I don’t know. I think I’m gonna try meta ads. I think I’m gonna go do this. And you’re like, you just described to me something that you, that you could replicate that worked multiple times.

[00:34:56] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:57] Nathan: And so go do it.

[00:34:58] Sean: Find a way to replicate

[00:34:59] Nathan: it.

[00:34:59] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. Go do it 50 times, like mm-hmm. Um, there’s a book I’m reading. I think it’s just called The Book of Elon, uh, by Eric Jorgensen, which is about, it’s just quotes like Elon’s life pH, uh, philosophy and, and all of that, all in his own words. Um, and, uh, one thing that the book talks about is what happens if you scale this up right?

[00:35:22] Nathan: To, to think in first principles or, um, to like pressure test ideas. Like, okay, well if we, if we did two, everyone else is like, oh, we could do 10. Okay, well what would have to be true to do a hundred? You know, and then you’re like, oh, okay. We could reasonably. Is there enough total addressable market to do a hundred partnerships with other newsletters?

[00:35:44] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:44] Nathan: That are interested in our content? Yeah, probably.

[00:35:47] Sean: Yeah. And how do you find that way to scale it? Yeah. Because I think for us, we probably should be leaning into that more in terms of, and you mentioned guest posting. That’s a great way Rather than the typical swap of like, let me include you, your newsletter in this placement.

[00:35:58] Sean: You include me. In this placement, which can obviously work well too, but you can only scale that so much ’cause you’re not including like a hundred newsletters and individual sent. Right. Uh, so yeah, finding ways to, and we’ve done actually something, I mean in this vein where we will have like a spotlight on an individual in our newsletter.

[00:36:14] Sean: Mm-hmm. And I’m sure it’s worked well for you in like the podcast space where it’s like you have a guest arm, they then reference that like. Share with their community that they were on your podcast. Yeah. Similar for that spotlight section for us, we feature them, we request in return, if they’re open to sharing that with their community, like finding ways to kind of scale it in a unique approach in collaborating with different individuals can work well.

[00:36:33] Sean: Mm-hmm. Rather than just kind of the typical swap. And I’ll place you here, you, you place me there.

[00:36:38] Nathan: Right. Yeah. It made me think of what you’re talking about with remnant inventory.

[00:36:42] Sean: Hmm.

[00:36:42] Nathan: As well of like, you could fill all of your ad slots and a third of them are paid. Because you’re able to sell those deals and all the rest are, are those, um, swaps that you’re doing?

[00:36:53] Sean: Yeah.

[00:36:54] Nathan: Because more growth is going to get you, uh, a bigger audience, which is then going to make you, you know, it’s like if fuels the whole flywheel, like if I’m saying, Hey, I have 10,000 subscribers, can we partner? You’re gonna be like, um. I have a million that’s not quite gonna work, you know, so I’m gonna be able to partner with people in the like, call it five to 25,000 subscriber range.

[00:37:15] Nathan: But then as I grow to 25,000 subscribers, I can partner with people in the 15 to 50,000 range and, and up from there. So growth fuels everything. And so, yeah, I think what you’re talking about is not only doing the swaps to fill the remnant inventory, but then also say like, Hey, let’s. Figure out any way that we can make this really valuable.

[00:37:35] Nathan: Might be more that we’re doing on social, or I might be like, what else can I do to help grow your newsletter or help promote your brand as a creator, because that’s gonna make people more eager and excited to partner with you.

[00:37:47] Sean: Yeah, and it could even be centered around just providing value to your point.

[00:37:50] Sean: Mm-hmm. Where it’s like they’re providing content to you that’s really valuable. You’re providing content to them. That’s really valuable. Then, I mean, growth is sort of like icy on the cake,

[00:37:58] Nathan: I think. I guess the, the way I was talking about it more is about the swaps.

[00:38:03] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:04] Nathan: But you could even just say, you know, all these creators, they write a newsletter every Tuesday and they’re like, they might be running out of content, and you’re like, Hey, can I.

[00:38:15] Nathan: Come teach this. I get paid to do this for workshops and for keynotes and all that. Can I just teach my best stuff to your audience for free?

[00:38:22] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:23] Nathan: And a lot of people would be like, yes, please. Yeah. You know, you’re like, well, what value did you deliver to the creator? They don’t have to write that week’s newsletter and it’s gonna be really good.

[00:38:31] Nathan: Yeah. You know?

[00:38:32] Sean: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:38:33] Nathan: And so, especially if you’re friends with people, um, that’s gonna be much more likely to, to work where they’re like a combination of like, yes, you’re taking this work off my plate. Maybe I’m doing you a favor in some way, but like your content is good, so I wanna get in front of my audience.

[00:38:48] Sean: Yeah, I like that.

[00:38:50] Nathan: I’m thinking about flywheels. Um, ’cause what I want people to do is really to, to dive in, like, to pick one growth mechanism. Like if you’re amazing at meta ads, then like do that and obsess over how to get your CPA down and um, you know, bring the, like decrease the cash conversion cycle and, and all of these things.

[00:39:13] Nathan: Or if you’re like, if you’re right at partnerships, then like, do that for a long time. And so I’m curious if there’s other flywheels that you’ve implemented inside of all he or nice news that you’re like, oh, I see. The more we do this, the better results it gets and the um, the easier it becomes.

[00:39:29] Sean: Mm. Yeah. I mean, if we wanna talk about kind of like content creation Yeah.

[00:39:33] Sean: As a flywheel too. I mean, we. In general, I think that talking about like if this is something you’re good at, lean into it. We try to like have that philosophy with our entire team. We’re a really lean team. It’s me and two people on our editorial team. Okay. And we have some freelance writers too. But my goal is to make sure that everyone’s focused on what it is that they do best.

[00:39:53] Sean: And all the content that we’re producing or everything we’re doing is being utilized the best way possible. So we have, um. We use a platform called Feedly as a news aggregator. We’re pulling all the content in based on specific sources and what we want to pull from, and then selecting from there, importing it into Airtable, using Airtable as like a CMS.

[00:40:13] Sean: Also as a, um, like, um, a. Collaboration tool.

[00:40:17] Nathan: Okay.

[00:40:17] Sean: Um, like a project management tool too. Kind of having everything live in there and then from there determining kind of when we’re sending content, um, deciding to send date and working backwards from there and having really kind of set workflows and then also translating that content to different platforms too.

[00:40:33] Sean: So everything’s an Airtable. We can then. Decide if that content’s living on social media. We have this like integration with AI that ranks content in Airtable that could potentially work well on social, which platform it could work on. Translates that content then for that format. And then, uh, from there we have the ability to kind of like edit and, um, populate it on different platforms and then kind of have everything live together there.

[00:40:56] Sean: And then it allows our team to really focus on what they do best in terms of actually writing and producing content.

[00:41:02] Nathan: I mean, I’m just thinking about the volume of content that you have to produce. And so the fact that that’s done three of you and some freelancers.

[00:41:09] Sean: Yeah, and I’m actually not even producing the content I’m doing.

[00:41:12] Sean: I’m doing like sales and partnerships and growth and other things. So yeah, we have, we do have freelance writers too, so that really helps. But it allows, I think, because it’s such like a refined process. Mm-hmm. We, I think it’s important to like. Prioritize and focus your time on what it is that you do best and what you have to be doing versus what someone else could be doing.

[00:41:32] Sean: And it’s obviously easier said than done, but we have, uh, freelancers in the Philippines that help with like certain campaign management tasks they help with. Mm-hmm. Um, customer experience, like replying to emails with different templates that we’re using or flagging certain things if we need to make sure that we see them.

[00:41:46] Sean: They help us with account management for sales and partnerships in terms of like getting assets and approvals Yep. And things like that. So it’s like those are things that like we can create a process around that. It’s not. Something I need to be doing. I think a lot of time can just go, especially as sole, sole individual creators, it’s like you’re jumping from task to task to task, and it’s just not productive.

[00:42:04] Sean: So finding ways to kind of like on a given day, you understand this is, this is what I’m working on. You have the ability to kind of like time block and prioritize your time. And then if there’s something that like you’re currently doing that you can have AI or a virtual assistant do, create a process for that and figure out a way to do it

[00:42:21] Nathan: right.

[00:42:22] Nathan: Yeah, so I’m trying to figure out the, the key leverage points in like the editorial process. Was there something that you implemented where you’re like, okay, this actually on, like, had the, the most leverage or made a big unlock?

[00:42:34] Sean: Mm. I mean, I think using Airtable for everything has been really helpful, where everything’s living in the same place.

[00:42:41] Sean: Um, we actually incorporated with our CMS, the ability for the content to translate from Airtable directly into the template. So that saved a lot of time. Um. Yeah, I think that was, that was a big one for us. And then we have the QA process, obviously in the inbox to make sure everything looks perfect, but we’re not having to kind of manually like copy and paste things.

[00:43:01] Sean: That’s helped.

[00:43:02] Nathan: Okay. And then you mentioned you have AI to help you determine what content was it? What content would do well on social and which platforms?

[00:43:10] Sean: Yeah, so that is more kind of like translating content to different formats, but we actually are training a cloud bot right now that’s gonna do just that, where we are currently meeting as a team to analyze performance for content, whether it’s for sponsors or for other pieces of content that performed well, didn’t perform well every other week.

[00:43:28] Sean: But we’re pulling that kind of like relatively manually and analyzing it and hypothesizing as to why we feel like something worked well or didn’t work well. So leaning into AI to make those kind of, or do analysis for you and make recommendations from there, I think could be really valuable. So that’s something that we’re, we’re gonna try to lean into in terms of content performance or sponsorship performance.

[00:43:48] Sean: So it has more data points and obviously we’re still from there determining what makes more sense, but it’s just a tool that we can use.

[00:43:56] Nathan: Are there other places that you’ve implemented AI in the workflow?

[00:43:59] Sean: Yeah, we use it for, I will say that our editorial team doesn’t use it for all these things, but we’ve explored using it for different things.

[00:44:06] Sean: So like we can use it for top editing if we need to. We use it for like creating outlines, uh, for content. We use it for like ideation for preheader text or subject lines, things like that. Based on what’s worked well, we use Mid Journey for like illustration creation.

[00:44:22] Nathan: Okay.

[00:44:23] Sean: Yeah. Um, I. I’m sure there are other things I’m not thinking of that we use it for on the

[00:44:27] Nathan: illustrations.

[00:44:28] Nathan: Have you been able to get that all in the set style so it like matches your brand guidelines?

[00:44:32] Sean: Yeah, so initially we had designers create the illustrations and then from there it kind of allows us to replicate that style and format without needing to have a, a designer do it every time since we’re such a, a lean team.

[00:44:44] Nathan: I think that was, has always been the challenge historically with image generation, with ai, it’s like it’ll make something great and you’re like, great, now make one like it, but with this instead, and it’ll be like, here’s something completely different. Yeah. No, you know,

[00:44:56] Sean: mid Journey is a lot better than GPT,

[00:44:58] that’s

[00:44:58] Nathan: for sure.

[00:44:59] Nathan: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so now I think a lot of people have written off

[00:45:02] Sean: Yeah.

[00:45:02] Nathan: That because they had, you know, maybe a rough experience, uh, originally. Sure. And so I, I’d encourage everyone to go back to Midjourney or these other tools and, and there’s just so much better control now around. Make this, but in exactly the style of the last 10 that you made?

[00:45:20] Sean: Yeah. For illustration creation or, or something else. I think for us, we think of AI as like a tool to enhance what it is that we’re doing. We’re obviously not like replacing content creation in general.

[00:45:30] Nathan: Sean, I’m curious if you have any hot takes on the newsletter industry or newsletters in general since you see so much both in your own business and you know, in everything that all your friends are doing too.

[00:45:39] Sean: Yeah. For me, I would say, I think some people don’t think as much about the design of their newsletter and the importance of the design of their newsletter and how it’s presented. Mm-hmm. But for us in particular, in the health and wellness space, and even in the positive new space in a prior, um, life, I realize the importance of having really quality design, whether it’s like, okay.

[00:45:59] Sean: Logo mark, word mark, the colors that we’re using, how it’s incorporated in the design so it doesn’t feel just like a generic newsletter. And I think it helps build trust, it helps with engagement and, um, returning behavior retention. So I think people. Sleep on the importance of design of their newsletter.

[00:46:17] Sean: And that’s something we’ve really valued like from the beginning with every project that we’ve done.

[00:46:22] Nathan: So in the, the spectrum between plain text emails, like the content is all that matters and let’s heavily design everything. Mm-hmm. What I see you doing is saying like, look. These aren’t two separate ends of the spectrum.

[00:46:35] Nathan: Like we can actually put these, like, this is a multi axis problem. It’s like, let’s have super high quality content.

[00:46:40] Sean: Hmm.

[00:46:40] Nathan: And let’s design it really, really well. And with that we’re gonna stand out. Whereas a lot of people are just like, eh, you know, I threw some AI generated content in a generic template.

[00:46:50] Nathan: And why, why are people unsubscribing? I don’t understand.

[00:46:53] Sean: Yeah. It’s hard to like have trust in, in something that feels like it’s very generic or produced by. Like someone who doesn’t typically produce newsletters. Yeah,

[00:47:03] Nathan: exactly.

[00:47:04] Sean: Yeah.

[00:47:04] Nathan: What’s something that well-designed newsletters do in the first 10 seconds that most newsletters never do?

[00:47:10] Sean: Yeah. I would say for the first 10 seconds, I mean, I think it’s important to establish trust with your readers. Mm-hmm. A connection with them and then draw them in to read further. So for us at all, healthy, we have our intro text is the first thing that someone’s reading that is written by the editor.

[00:47:27] Sean: It’s. Our tone of voice, it’s reminding the reader that there’s a human on the other side of the email. So we’re, it’s an opportunity for us to be like, really voicey reference something timely. Even maybe click out because it can, it’s the first thing someone’s reading or kind of reference something further down in the email to ultimately draw them in.

[00:47:45] Sean: And I also think it’s important to think about the header of your newsletter and how that looks. A lot of people might just like slap a logo on it and call it a day, but it’s kind of setting the emotional tone for your newsletter. So something even as subtle as like color can make a big difference. And for us at all, healthy.

[00:48:04] Sean: I mean, we keep it relatively simple, but another newsletter like Dense Discovery, they have a full fledged. Illustration artwork alongside a quote to

[00:48:12] Nathan: Okay,

[00:48:12] Sean: bring, uh, to open things up that really draws you in and gets you to wanna read more. Or you could do something like a mission statement or a tagline, kind of reinforcing why someone’s opening and ultimately hopefully enticing them to continue to, to read from there.

[00:48:28] Nathan: I could see that quote having like the instant payoff where it’s like, I don’t have time to read the newsletter. Yeah. But I know there’s a good quote there and. I guess I’ll keep reading and go from there, right?

[00:48:37] Sean: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:38] Nathan: Like, you know that there’s going, even if you only have 10 seconds to allocate to this email, you’re at least gonna open it to see if, to see what the payoff is, and then go from there.

[00:48:49] Nathan: Whereas others, you’re like, I. I, there probably will be something good buried within this newsletter that I’m gonna be glad I, but I don’t have time to go find it within that.

[00:48:59] Sean: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think it depends on the format and approach of your newsletter too, but the goal would obviously to not have it be getting someone in the habit of just reading that quote and then leaving.

[00:49:07] Sean: You have to kind of find a way to, to draw them in further if that’s your goal.

[00:49:11] Nathan: Is there anything with newsletter content about open loops where, you know, you see this in TV shows or something where they like. Leave you, you know, they wrap up what they’re doing and you’re like, oh, the episode’s gonna end here.

[00:49:22] Nathan: And no, they actually start a new thing and it, you’re like, right as, and they end it here.

[00:49:26] Sean: Hmm.

[00:49:27] Nathan: Is there anything where, I don’t know, you create open loops early in your newsletter where it’s like they want to keep reading or we’re gonna come back to that. I see speakers on stage this as well, where you, you they conclude one story, but lead a question that then like keeps you engaged because you’re like, oh, they’re gonna.

[00:49:44] Nathan: What happened there, you know, is the payoff going to be there? And so I’m, yeah, I’m wondering if either you’ve seen anyone do it well or you all do that to be like, Hey, there’s something further on that you’re gonna

[00:49:52] Sean: really love. I love that idea. I mean, for us, honestly, we only really use the intro text as a tool to do that Uhhuh.

[00:49:57] Sean: Um, but I think that’s a fun, a fun incorporation where maybe even like in a featured story or hinting at something else that’s further down or depending on the right. Format of your newsletter. Maybe it’s easier to do that and draw them further down or have a cliffhanger at the end for something that’s tease, something that’s coming for the next send too.

[00:50:14] Nathan: I guess the ideal newsletter would have the immediate payoff. That makes me feel really glad that I clicked in. Mm-hmm. Or the feeling of like, I’m, I’m at home. Right? We’re delivering on this promise now that I’m in the newsletter. And then also the thing towards the end that is like, but I gotta make sure to stay for that.

[00:50:34] Nathan: You know, the, just trust me link or the, um, you know, the, the question in 3, 2, 1 Thursday or, or those things. It’s like, I might skip over a few little bit of this if it’s not interesting, but I’m gonna at least make sure I get to this point. It’s hard to like bookend that and make sure you have. You’re delivering especially seven days a week

[00:50:52] Sean: on both

[00:50:52] Nathan: those things.

[00:50:54] Sean: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. We try to do that with the, the sections I mentioned. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s tough depending on the frequency and approach for it to feel organic and, and natural.

[00:51:03] Nathan: So we’re in the state of email is doing really well and we’re excited about it and all of that, but people might be listening and be like, I don’t feel like my email is doing super well.

[00:51:11] Nathan: So I’m curious if you have like a top three things that you fix if an email’s underperforming.

[00:51:16] Sean: Yeah, I think it’s important to. Determine what it is that your goals are for the newsletter to start, and then work off of that. It’s like, what does underperforming even mean to you? And if we want to group it into three categories, we can group it into like engagements, monetization, and retention.

[00:51:33] Sean: And if we’re focusing on engagement, like let’s say your goal for your newsletter is to drive traffic to web, then analyze your existing format. If it’s a longer form newsletter, you’re providing all the content to the reader in the newsletter. They’re probably not gonna wanna click out. They don’t need to click out.

[00:51:49] Sean: Right. So incorporating a section like quick picks where it’s like short form, enticing, some sort of like tease to get someone to click could work well. Mm-hmm. Or evaluating even the entire format of your newsletter. Maybe it needs to be shorter form may, maybe you need to reevaluate how you kind of have what the SEC sections and structure are of your newsletter as a whole.

[00:52:08] Sean: And then kind of build from there. If we’re talking about monetization, I mean obviously start with focusing on your, um. Section your sponsorship section mm-hmm. And figure out what’s working well. I talked about some ideas there in terms of like making it seamlessly incorporate, making it in your tone of voice, taking an editorial approach, um, that can work really well.

[00:52:26] Sean: And if we’re talking about retention, so maybe you have like a paid subscription model or maybe you’re just, your goal is obviously to keep people reading every day. The offboarding user flow. Ask them why they’re leaving. Try to understand how you’re not providing enough value to them if they’re willing to provide that feedback to you.

[00:52:43] Sean: And then, let’s say for us, since we’re sending seven days a week, it a lot of times could just be based on the frequency. Like it’s too many emails. Okay. If that’s the issue in our footer, let’s have the option to like explicitly call it out, too many emails, click here, give them the option to just receive the email on Sunday instead, rather than have it every single day.

[00:53:02] Sean: So try to understand kinda what the issue is at hand and then find fixes for it and then evaluate and see if that’s working.

[00:53:08] Nathan: Yeah, I like that. Uh, I like the personalized approach. ’cause the great thing with email is you can automate so much stuff. You can set up these systems or a specific link that does.

[00:53:17] Nathan: You know this, this task, and then you can personalize to each individual subscriber. Is there anything that you do kind of at this scale of personalization? Because you can do it, but you know, then when you have a million plus subscribers like I. Do you personalize based on behavior of what they click or their interests or anything like, anything like that?

[00:53:37] Sean: We’re starting to a little bit more. Mm-hmm. It’s interesting ’cause like on the most recent survey we had for our audience, it was like only, I think it was 6% of people said that they’re like, would like AI recommended curated, um, yeah, like things, which is funny ’cause I feel like AI could curate probably better than our, our

[00:53:53] Nathan: like

[00:53:54] Sean: editorial team to an extent.

[00:53:55] Sean: ’cause it understands what it people,

[00:53:56] Nathan: at least the individual subscriber

[00:53:57] Sean: Exactly. Of

[00:53:58] Nathan: like, oh, I can.

[00:53:58] Sean: Yeah.

[00:53:58] Nathan: For this one person, I can tell you, here’s exactly everything you’ve clicked on. Yeah.

[00:54:01] Sean: Here’s

[00:54:02] Nathan: what you’re likely to click on

[00:54:02] Sean: again. Exactly. So I think we’re finding that balance in terms of like. The reason that people are engaging with the newsletter in the first place is ’cause they are interested in kind of the opinions and the voice of whoever it is that’s producing that newsletter.

[00:54:15] Sean: So leaning into that a little bit more and like sometimes people value the fact that like everyone’s getting the same newsletter that day. Right? But at the same time, there could be a certain section that is more curated to that individual based on their interests. And then ultimately it’s probably gonna end up engaging better too.

[00:54:30] Nathan: Yeah, I’m thinking about like on my newsletter. I followed pretty much the same format pretty consistently, but I haven’t taken this level of analytical approach and like been really thoughtful of like, am I delivering for the reader? And it’s more like, this is what I’m interested in and I hope you are too.

[00:54:48] Nathan: You know? Yeah. But I’m just even thinking about formats where mine probably follows, like I have the intro, which is like a mini essay, and I’m writing a decent amount about that. Like that might be 200 to 500 words. And that is kind of the bulk of the newsletter. And then I have, um, usually a couple of the things I’m linking off to and always the podcast episode.

[00:55:12] Nathan: Um, but I feel like they might be providing, it might be too repetitive. Like as you’re talking, I’m like, okay, from a design perspective, how could I change up the format of the podcast episode since that’s a recurring thing that that comes out. Or maybe look, make the. The individual recommendations I’m making of like, check out this book or this YouTube video, um, or this new kit feature, right?

[00:55:34] Nathan: Making those look differently. Um, and so I’m wondering would you just experiment with that and like try it out week to week? Would you ask for replies? Would you put a poll in there? Like what types of things would you do as you experiment to say like. Hi, dear readers. Do you like this?

[00:55:49] Sean: Yeah. You know, I think it’s, it’s all the above.

[00:55:51] Sean: I think. I mean, first of all, make one change at a time, obviously, so you’re, it’s hard to analyze if you’re making multiple changes. Good point. At the same time, so let’s say you’re not sure about a particular section or you’re like. Evolving that section, changing the format of it, test it out for a certain period of time and see how people are, um, engaging with it.

[00:56:09] Sean: Yeah, do a poll, ask for feedback, talk with, uh, with users, or do a survey too and try to get an understanding of if it is working well or if it’s not. Um, yeah, I mean, we love surveys that all healthy will do them quarterly and ask, and it allows us to get a lot deeper. In particular, if it’s a section that like.

[00:56:26] Sean: Doesn’t require a click. I mean, it’s hard to like ab test it and understand what it is that’s working best.

[00:56:31] Nathan: Yeah. You just don’t have it. There’s no, like on the web you can know, oh, here’s what the cursor did over this. Yeah. Or the, the user lingered here at this. And it’s like, we know open for the most part and we know click.

[00:56:43] Sean: Yeah.

[00:56:44] Nathan: Also for the most part.

[00:56:45] Sean: Exactly. Yeah. And if it is something that you’re truly trying to get someone to click on, then I think it’s a great tool to AB test. And 50%. Of your audience, one version without that section or without that CTA or whatever it may be. And then 50%, the other version, that’s easy.

[00:56:58] Sean: But then if it is something that isn’t more focused on engagement like that than doing surveys or trying to get feedback from them is, uh, works best.

[00:57:06] Nathan: Yeah, I like it. Sean, this has been a ton of fun. You have a unique insight into the creator economy and newsletter space and all of that. So it’s been fun for you to share, like, Hey, here’s behind the scenes at millions of subscribers.

[00:57:18] Nathan: Here’s what works. If people wanna follow you, check out more of what you’re doing, uh, where should they go?

[00:57:23] Sean: Yeah, I mean, follow me on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. I’d love to explore what it is that y’all are doing. And yeah, I think that’s probably the best place to connect with me.

[00:57:32] Sean: And then would love to, to chat.

[00:57:34] Nathan: Sounds good. Thanks so much for coming on.

[00:57:35] Sean: Thanks for having me.

[00:57:36] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to

[00:57:43] Nathan: like the video and drop a comment.

[00:57:45] Nathan: I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else do you think we should have on the show.

[00:57:50] Nathan: Thank you so much for listening.

[00:00:00] Nathan: 16 of the smartest authors in one room and learning like what’s working in book marketing and launches and everything else,

[00:00:06] Haley: it, it’s insane.

[00:00:07] Nathan: I co-hosted a private mastermind with James, clear author of Atomic Habits, and we invited some of the top non-fiction authors in the world to Nashville to share what’s actually working when writing books.

[00:00:16] Nathan: We talked about book launch tactics that most creators never try, what they’re testing on Instagram right now, including trial reels and the posting strategies that are actually moving the needle.

[00:00:24] Haley: They were testing content in TikTok and then if it did well on TikTok yes, then they would move it over to Instagram.

[00:00:29] Haley: Mm-hmm. It was like a good testing ground for virality.

[00:00:32] Nathan: So there’s a couple people who have very large Instagram accounts and it was interesting hearing them talk about. How they used on Instagram to reach new audiences. There were so many crazy things, but one thing that really stood out to me was how much prep goes into an appearance on a world class podcast.

[00:00:49] Nathan: I would’ve assumed that someone’s doing like 15 to 20 hours of prep for the most important podcast they’re going on. It’s like, Nope, 80 hours.

[00:00:56] Haley: 80 hours.

[00:01:02] Nathan: So this episode is going to be us sharing our favorite moments, takeaways, all of that from getting 16 of the smartest authors in one room and learning like what’s working in book marketing and launches and everything else.

[00:01:15] Haley: Okay. Before though, before we go into that, be honest, we’re gonna tell, we’re gonna tell everybody who came, right?

[00:01:22] Nathan: Yeah,

[00:01:23] Haley: yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean,

[00:01:23] Nathan: it’s on Instagram.

[00:01:24] Haley: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Be honest. Who did you fan Boy over or in Fan Girl Over? Who is your one person that you Fanboyed fan

[00:01:31] Nathan: over? I would say Will Guera. Unreasonable Hospitality is such a good book and he also, we did an episode on the show. He was fantastic. His business partner Brian, uh, came to, uh, to the podcast as well, and they have great energy and their stories are so good and just the experience they’ve created for so many people running like the best restaurants in the world.

[00:01:52] Nathan: That was pretty great. Mm-hmm. Another fun moment you can talk about this more was the hotel staff like Fanboying over the back. The like number one person in hospitality is staying at their hotel

[00:02:04] Haley: at the concierge. She was like, what do you do? How did you get him to come here? Like, what do you do? Um, but yeah, they really loved the, the, it’s required reading for every single person at this hotel.

[00:02:18] Haley: It was required reading for them to read. Yeah,

[00:02:20] Nathan: that’s really cool. Hospitality. And then,

[00:02:22] Haley: yeah,

[00:02:22] Nathan: just waltzing in one day to stay at the hotel. Yeah.

[00:02:25] Haley: Yeah. She was just like, you must have the coolest job in the world. Um, but yeah, that was funny.

[00:02:31] Nathan: That’s awesome.

[00:02:31] Chelsea: It was fun watching him watch everything too. You know, it’s like he can’t, I don’t think he can’t turn it off, you know?

[00:02:37] Chelsea: I’m

[00:02:37] Haley: sure. Yeah, he was, he was just like a pure, pure joy.

[00:02:40] Chelsea: Yeah,

[00:02:41] Haley: it was great. Okay. Chelsea, I know yours now. I wanna see you in

[00:02:43] Chelsea: the day. You do know mine. Um, mine was James Clear who co-hosted the event with us. Uh, James, it was actually funny, my LinkedIn banner was a quote from James forever and then I changed it this week because I felt like it was a week before

[00:02:58] Nathan: the event.

[00:02:59] Nathan: I was

[00:02:59] Haley: like, oh my gosh. Right

[00:03:00] Nathan: before you met Hung

[00:03:01] Haley: I was like, I don’t wanna be a clear fan

[00:03:03] Chelsea: girl. Wow. Before the event, it was that you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

[00:03:09] Haley: Oh yeah. Okay.

[00:03:09] Chelsea: Which, if you know me, systems,

[00:03:12] Haley: it feels very, feels very much like

[00:03:12] Chelsea: you very on brand for me.

[00:03:13] Chelsea: Accurate. I like

[00:03:14] Haley: it.

[00:03:14] Chelsea: Um, so yeah, James got me back into reading after finishing a couple degrees and I was over books and Atomic Habits came out and kind of reignited that habit for me. So that was exciting.

[00:03:26] Nathan: I like it.

[00:03:27] Chelsea: What about you?

[00:03:28] Haley: I’ve met her before. I had met her before, but I, I’d probably say Jen Hatmaker because I read, I mean, I listened, let’s be honest.

[00:03:37] Haley: But, um, I listened to, um, her book for the Love and she just has a very iconic voice too. Yeah. Um, and then her newest book that, uh, just came out, which is called Awake, was just wonderful and spending more quality time with her was really fun. Um, ’cause I’ve just, I’ve been a consumer of her content, if you will, for a really long time.

[00:03:59] Haley: And, um, so I’d probably say Jen Hatmaker. The other thing is that I love about her in particular is she kept saying, she has, um, words that she says, like, tickled, you know, I’m just tickled about that. Yeah. You know, and like I have found myself, she, another one she said today, I said it on three calls today.

[00:04:16] Haley: I said, yeah, I’ll noodle on that. And that’s because she said that multiple times and I was like, I’m taking that. Yeah, I’m taking that. So. I feel like I’ll just pick up, uh, anything that she says. Um, but probably Jen Hatmaker.

[00:04:29] Nathan: Yeah. There were so many good people.

[00:04:31] Haley: Yeah. There were

[00:04:31] Nathan: One thing that was fun about the format is on, well, we did dinner, a happy hour dinner and all of that the night before.

[00:04:38] Nathan: Basically just let people get to know each other. Ease into the group. ’cause I think a bunch of people said, like, I actually don’t know that many of these people, which is interesting. We knew Mo many of them already. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean we, we and James invited everybody. And so, um, you know, I felt like, okay, I know most all of these people, but a lot of people were like, I’m going in knowing very few people.

[00:04:59] Nathan: Um, so just let everyone get to know each other. All of that is a great group. And then on the morning of the first real day, the thing we kicked off with was everyone sharing one tip or strategy, something that’s been working well for them. And it just immediately got, you know, all these type of people talking about things at a very high level.

[00:05:16] Nathan: And you’re like, okay, wow. The, the brain power in this room and the accomplishments are, are pretty great. Mm-hmm. So I thought we’d kick it off just sharing. A few of the things that stood out to us, uh, that was shared in the group.

[00:05:28] Haley: Are you gonna kick it, kick us off.

[00:05:29] Nathan: You want me to go first?

[00:05:30] Haley: Yeah. Yeah. Kick us off.

[00:05:31] Nathan: All right. Uh, one that stood out. So there’s a couple people who have very large Instagram accounts. Mm-hmm. Like million, uh, many million follower accounts. And it was interesting hearing them talk about how they use trial reels on Instagram to reach new audiences.

[00:05:48] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:49] Nathan: Because it very, you know, for anyone who doesn’t know the trial reel is Instagram taking something and saying, we’re not showing it to any of your existing followers.

[00:05:55] Nathan: We’ll put it out only to, uh, new followers. And I think people, you know, might be like, oh, I’ll do one of those a week or something. But these top accounts were like, look, we’ve kind of saturated our existing followers and we’re actually getting shown to our same followers a lot, so we want to grow more.

[00:06:09] Nathan: We have to go outside that. And so they’re posting really a lot of content to trial reels. And then they were saying they don’t repost it. So if it does really well reaching this new audience. They don’t press the button to convert it to the main feed. They leave it running over there in trial reels and they post a slightly different version, uh, to the main feed.

[00:06:29] Nathan: And that way they get the benefit of those two posts and the audiences will never cross, which I thought was really interesting. Instagram won’t show the same thing. Um, I guess even if it did, you should be like, oh, I’ve seen this video before.

[00:06:41] Haley: What’s interesting though, about this particular one is that I actually feel like we got in the, just for the format, for the sake of the format, one person would say a thing that was working for them, and then if people wanted to jump in, they could be like, oh, I’ve had a similar experience.

[00:06:56] Haley: Or if we wanted to dig into that particular thing and ask questions, people would ask questions. And so for this one, some people did repost it to their feed mm-hmm. After it did really well and some people did not. Mm-hmm. Um, but I thought that, that, that, just for sake of, you know, setting the stage, we did dig into some of these things.

[00:07:15] Haley: Yeah.

[00:07:16] Nathan: Sometimes people would share for a minute or two and be like, oh, that’s interesting. People take notes.

[00:07:19] Haley: Yeah.

[00:07:19] Nathan: And other times it would turn into a 15 minute discussion

[00:07:21] Haley: mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:07:22] Nathan: Of people building on it and say, oh, I love that. Here’s the version that I do.

[00:07:25] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:26] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:07:26] Haley: Yeah.

[00:07:27] Nathan: What about you, Hailey?

[00:07:27] Nathan: What was one of yours?

[00:07:28] Haley: Ooh. Probably, you know, I think this is interesting because obviously we work at Kit or own kit, some

[00:07:37] Chelsea: of us,

[00:07:38] Haley: some of us in the room anyways. Um, we have forever. We have talked about the use of opt-in incentives to grow your list. Mm-hmm. Um, and one of the folks in the room completely kind of threw that to the side and they now do what they call tiny offers.

[00:07:57] Haley: And so rather than giving away free incentives to go their, their, their list, they’re, and I’m not saying that they’re not a hundred percent, like every single one of their opt-in incentives is gone, but they’re doing tiny offers and so it’s like. $59 or $47, um, for a really, really high value op incentive.

[00:08:14] Haley: And then they’re using that to further convert high ticket offers. And so it shows, it’s a, it’s a, a show of extreme high intent if they’re willing to spend $47. Um, and I thought that was really interesting ’cause I hadn’t heard of anyone doing that. Um, I hadn’t heard of anyone doing that quite as prolific as they were doing it.

[00:08:32] Nathan: Yeah. And it kind of split the room because I feel like a bunch of people heard that and were like, oh yeah, of course. And they had their version of it where they were like, charge early. It gets to this smaller but very targeted audience. And then the other half of the room is like, I’m sorry, what lead magnets are out.

[00:08:48] Nathan: And like

[00:08:48] Haley: Yeah.

[00:08:49] Nathan: You know, and obviously it depends on what you’re, um, building towards the person who is sharing it. Originally they’ve moved from like a low

[00:08:57] Haley: mm-hmm.

[00:08:57] Nathan: Like a more of a beginner audience to like serving a much more advanced audience. And so they’ve had to like reallocate. So

[00:09:03] Haley: their lowest ticket item, I think.

[00:09:06] Haley: Is like $6,500.

[00:09:07] Nathan: Mm-hmm. For their main offer.

[00:09:08] Haley: Yeah, for their main offer. And so this is an incentive into that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:12] Nathan: And then in their ads, they’re able to. Recoup a bunch of their ad spend on this, like 50 or a hundred dollars tiny offer. Um, and I thought that was, that was really interesting.

[00:09:23] Chelsea: Um, well, you have a book coming out.

[00:09:25] Chelsea: That was one of the most exciting things for me being in the room as somebody that is helping with that strategy and everything that we’re gonna do to launch that. Um, I think one of the things that was interesting is being really intentional about how you’re asking people to promote your book. Yep.

[00:09:41] Chelsea: And making it as easy for them as possible. People are busy, you know, you’re not just sending a whole book and say here to whoever you know, will you read my book? It’s, you know, having them opt in. Yes. I want, or, you know, I would like to read your book or sending them specific sections for what makes the most sense for them.

[00:10:00] Chelsea: Um. Yeah, just trying to make sure you curate a team that’s really gonna support you and give you the feedback that you need.

[00:10:06] Haley: The two things that I think were really tactical about this particular one was doing unscalable tactics and then having a really strong street team.

[00:10:17] Chelsea: Yeah.

[00:10:17] Haley: And so the unscalable tactics component of this was, um, writing letters to every single person or like a handful of people.

[00:10:26] Haley: Yep. Um, very wil guera, like, you know Yeah. Like unscalable tactics above. Yeah. It would write, going above and beyond. Um, and then highlighting. Individual chapters or parts in a specific chapter that was specific to the person that you were sending it to. And so I’ll just make up an, an example here, I guess is, um, Sahil Bloom’s book, the Five Types of Wealth.

[00:10:47] Haley: He has, um, a chapter like for parents, you know. And so if that particular person was in that season of life, he might highlight that particular chapter and then put in, you know, like a sticky note or something along those lines. And that was a very unscalable tactic. Um, and so that was one that came from that, I think.

[00:11:04] Haley: And then the other one was, um, a strong street team.

[00:11:10] Chelsea: Yeah.

[00:11:11] Haley: You know, and there were several people, you know, everybody what seemed

[00:11:15] Chelsea: like

[00:11:15] Haley: pretty everybody. There was a New York Times bestseller.

[00:11:18] Nathan: Just about,

[00:11:18] Haley: just about, yeah. Most, most people. Um, and so the street team was a huge, strong component, like mm-hmm.

[00:11:25] Haley: Part of that, um,

[00:11:26] Nathan: and they developed those teams early on. Like that was, you know, we’re taking all these notes from my book launch coming up, and it’s like, okay,

[00:11:32] Haley: yeah.

[00:11:33] Nathan: They had people by city and they, they had all of these different things and then very specific asks of what they wanted their, their street team to do.

[00:11:39] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:40] Nathan: But, um, building on the, the example from, from Sahil, which he’s talked about this publicly, so I feel totally fine, fine sharing it, but he talked about how important it is to have visuals in the book that can be shared easily on Instagram or wherever else. And so he would specifically have somebody he was sending out the book to everyone was saying basically send lots of like, give away lots of copies of your, of your book, but make sure to do it to people who opted in.

[00:12:07] Nathan: So don’t just like. Mass e mass mail to the PR address for our creator. Like it has to be, Hey, would you read this? But then what Sahil would do is he’d find something like in his book, he has this graph of time spent with your children by age and how, like you spend tons of time with your kids when they’re little and then it really drops off.

[00:12:28] Nathan: And so all the parents, you know, that’s what was highlighted. And yeah, the specific ask was like, read this and if you enjoy it, will you share this? And so often it’d be those photos that got shared and a bunch of other, uh, authors, you’d get some version of. Um, I did that as well. Like my book is very visual and that worked super well.

[00:12:46] Nathan: Yeah. And then other authors being like, yep. About six months after publishing, I was like, oh, I should have been made a book that was much easier to share a snippet of or much more visual.

[00:12:56] Haley: Yeah. Um, this is not something that was shared, but I did just think about it and I think it’s a great idea.

[00:13:01] Nathan: Go.

[00:13:01] Haley: I can’t wait.

[00:13:02] Haley: My friend Hannah, who I actually met through the Creator Leaders group Yep. She did all of the, um, drawings for Cody Sanchez’s book, main Street Millionaire.

[00:13:13] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:13] Haley: And she has a very large audience. And so when you think about your street team, like how easy it would, would it be for you to go out and create those, those drawings or visuals in your book using AI now?

[00:13:24] Haley: Um, but AI doesn’t have an audience. Hannah does have an audience. Mm. And so she actually didn’t have the capacity to do all of the drawings in the short amount of time. I actually loved it. She told this story on LinkedIn recently about how Cody had dmd her in Instagram and was like, I love, I, I love your work and I’d love to include you in my book.

[00:13:41] Haley: And she responded and she was like, there’s no possible way that I could do this in the amount of time. And Cody responded and said some version of. What would have to be true for you to prioritize this project? And so Hannah went out and she found like five different collaborators that did very similar work that she did.

[00:13:57] Haley: And so, but collectively across, you know, set what the five of them, they had an audience of well over a million. And so they were all then sharing Cody’s book, you know, the animations and the drawings in Cody’s book. And so that’s just like who you could consider her part of Cody’s Street team. Yeah. You know, because she was obviously a part of the book, but yeah.

[00:14:16] Nathan: One that stood out to me is how deliberately people think about Instagram stories.

[00:14:21] Haley: Oh yeah, that was an interesting one.

[00:14:22] Nathan: Like I, I just do some things and I post some stories and I’m like, oh, this should probably be on stories. Really? The rest of you harassed me about like, I can’t believe you went to this event and didn’t post anything about it on stories.

[00:14:32] Haley: Yeah.

[00:14:33] Nathan: It’s actually a sarcastic remark, like, oh, you finally posted on stories. Good job.

[00:14:37] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:38] Nathan: Um, just as picture

[00:14:39] Haley: sounds, right?

[00:14:40] Nathan: Yeah. But everyone was saying basically people with these huge accounts, like a million to 5 million followers. They don’t post like, just as things happen.

[00:14:51] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:51] Nathan: They pump, they mostly post sets of three stories and basically their reasoning was if some, if someone, if you’re gonna pop up in someone’s stories list, you want them to interact with each of the stories.

[00:15:04] Nathan: And if you get to, you know, five or 10 or, and I do this too, you see someone who posted 17 stories in a row and you’re like, skip.

[00:15:10] Chelsea: Yeah.

[00:15:11] Nathan: Because you’re there might be good stuff in you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So they will post three stories. Then nothing for 24 hours and then three stories again.

[00:15:19] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:19] Nathan: And so it’s like this package thing that’s showing up every 24 to 36 hours rather than a constant drip of

[00:15:27] Chelsea: here’s what’s going on in my life.

[00:15:28] Haley: Sticking on the Instagram theme, one of our guests had a very viral and like public experience on tv. Mm-hmm. And so they had a clip that’s 12 from 12 years ago that still gets millions and millions of views and it’s pinned, uh, to their Instagram like page. And I thought that was really interesting because a lot of people are moving so fast with the time.

[00:15:52] Haley: And so that clip or iterations of that clip still today in 2025. 12, 15 years later still draws um, attention at the same rate that it did when it actually happened. And so don’t be afraid of leveraging old con, we, everybody talks about like leveraging and repurposing content, but like 12 years, that’s a long time.

[00:16:12] Haley: Right. Um, but that is really the first step into like, or first kind of open gate into her content for a lot of people. So yeah. I thought that was really interesting. Are we posting thing? Are we something Chelsea? Can Nathan post anything? I dunno

[00:16:24] Chelsea: if people would recognize. 12 years ago, Nathan,

[00:16:28] Nathan: I was four,

[00:16:31] Haley: a hundred percent.

[00:16:33] Chelsea: But there was a lot of conversations about repurposing content. Yeah. There was, don’t make things harder on yourself than you need to be. Figure out ways to, you know, create that flywheel of using concept platform.

[00:16:43] Nathan: Yeah. That came up a

[00:16:43] Chelsea: lot. Yeah.

[00:16:44] Nathan: And actually looking at the library of all your past talks, um, and saying like, you have a ton of material here, posted a bunch of different ways.

[00:16:52] Nathan: One thing that stood out to me about a few of the TV appearances that people talked about. They would make another video about something else and use a clip as B-roll or a hook or something from the TV appearance. ’cause it gave instant credibility. Oh

[00:17:07] Haley: yeah.

[00:17:07] Nathan: And then they’d go on to make their separate point.

[00:17:09] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:10] Nathan: And so when you see, you know, like, oh, here’s this national TV appearance. And then you can make content about whatever you want.

[00:17:16] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:17] Nathan: Um, and you’re like, oh. I mean, from an Instagram perspective, it’s like, okay, what’s your title hook? What’s your visual hook? And it’s like, well, that is a pretty good visual hook of you.

[00:17:25] Nathan: Right. On national television.

[00:17:26] Chelsea: Yeah.

[00:17:27] Haley: Yeah. Okay. Still sticking to this Instagram theme, because I think this is, is relevant to the conversation. Uh, we talked about trial reels being a good testing ground, but several people, which I thought was really interesting. And this is again, one where the room was totally split, but several people talked about instead of posting or testing content in trial reels, they were testing content in TikTok.

[00:17:49] Haley: And then if it did well on TikTok Yes. Then they would move it over to Instagram so they weren’t even messing around or playing with trial reels. I’m sure following these conversations, they absolutely will. Um, but several of them that were not playing around with TikTok are gonna start testing the ground and sharing that content on TikTok, see how well it does there.

[00:18:04] Haley: Mm-hmm. And then move it over to Instagram, which is where they certainly feel like is a. Um, their deeper audience lives and exists on Instagram, but access to new audiences, obviously. And it’s just, they said, I think they said it was like a good testing ground for virality.

[00:18:20] Nathan: Yeah. And just the quality of the idea and the packaging and the delivery and all of that.

[00:18:24] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:24] Nathan: And I think, ’cause on TikTok what people find is they can just post as much as you want. It feels like much more of a, I was gonna say a slot machine. And it is in that sense of like, put it out there and see what happens. But like a very, uh, like merit based. It’s just like, how good does this stand on its own?

[00:18:42] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:42] Nathan: Whereas often if you’re posting Instagram or somewhere else, it’s like, how much does my audience already like this and resonate with it.

[00:18:49] Chelsea: I was thinking about the idea of a book launch too, and we’ve been talking about like a podcast tour for you and what it’s gonna look like to do, you know, however many, and someone was talking about their 15 minute podcast

[00:19:02] Haley: Oh.

[00:19:02] Chelsea: Appearance, that this was a very idea, idea. I thought that was really good as well. Mm-hmm. Um. So they were saying basically, instead of doing these hour long whole podcast where you say the same thing over, you tell your whole story over and over. They’re 15 minute appearances. You block ’em in a couple days.

[00:19:19] Chelsea: You tell the people what you’re gonna talk about, what questions to ask me, and then you just have a really snappy 15 minute conversation. Yeah. And you’re able to get through the points that you need to and be on all these appearances without spending 60 hours in.

[00:19:33] Haley: What was interesting about this one was how, how in, um.

[00:19:37] Haley: How the audience took, like essentially the rules, how they followed the rules. Yes. And so the rules were you have 15 minutes, there’s no fluff, there’s no like chit chatter in the beginning, and here’s exactly what you’re talking about. And, uh, they said that, you know, the, the podcaster, whatever, whoever it was.

[00:19:55] Haley: And also what’s important to note on this one is they were micro creators. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. And so they were people that had smaller audiences. So they actually went out to their audience. They said, we are going to be doing this book launch and we’d love to have these small micro appearances on your podcast.

[00:20:12] Haley: And so they were super excited because they normally wouldn’t have had access to someone like this. Right. And so rather than capitalizing on one large audience, they spread their time over several small audiences was like, which I thought was a really smart idea, and really activated the street team.

[00:20:28] Haley: Mm-hmm. Um, it was just like one additional tactic on, on. Leveraging those micro creators because they’re strong in numbers. Yeah.

[00:20:35] Nathan: Well I thought it was so clever, uh, first making the appearance on the podcast an incentive. So that was the street team, and it was like, in most cases it was, Hey, if you sell at least 10 copies of the book or 20, something like that, there’s a criteria.

[00:20:50] Nathan: Then you’re eligible to be selected to have the author appear on your podcast. Doesn’t matter how big your podcast is, it’s like this reach. And so then people would apply, you know, meet the threshold and then apply, and then they get selected. It’s like, oh wow. I, this person that I love their content, I’ve learned so much from them.

[00:21:07] Nathan: Uh, I now get to interview them on my show and there’ll be credibility that I have forever. So that was one thing that was really clever, you know, being able to use that as a reward. The other thing that I thought was clever is the way they packaged it, of like teaching people how to make this a great episode.

[00:21:22] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Because like, if I did it, it’s like, okay, great. There’s now 20, 15 minute in interviews with Nathan, like, okay, why are these little things scattered around? But what they, you know, what the team said is you can add your commentary, the lessons you’ve learned from this author, and you can interweave the actual interview with the author.

[00:21:43] Nathan: Mm-hmm. So you can tee it up, don’t ask background questions or all that. Like, you can say that, and then you put in the, the 15 minutes with the author and then

[00:21:51] Haley: Yeah.

[00:21:51] Nathan: You know, three minutes of takeaway. Now you’ve got a, a full 30 minute episode that’s uniquely yours. And, you know, not the copycat of, we’ve all heard the authors on the podcast where they just hit the exact same talking points over and over again.

[00:22:04] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And this made something unique.

[00:22:06] Haley: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let’s take a pause really quick. Okay. And let’s lean into a little bit of a debate. And I would love for you to put in the comments wherever you’re watching Instagram, who knows what this is gonna become, but put in the comments what your vote is.

[00:22:20] Haley: Okay. This is because the next thing we’re gonna talk about is audio book strategy. Right? So here’s the debate. This is an internal debate that we have, uh, and I love to ask people about it, um, because we all have varying different opinions. Mm-hmm. Let’s say that you listen to a book. Do you say that you read the book If, or is that I listened to the book.

[00:22:40] Haley: Mm-hmm. So if you listen to a book on audiobook, audible, does it count as reading Audible? Does it count as reading it? Yeah. So if someone says, have you read? A cord of Thorn and Roses. We’ll stick to fairy smut. Have you read aar? Are you gonna say Actually, we’ll, we’ll stick to one. That’s true for Nathan.

[00:22:57] Haley: Nathan, have you read Fourth Wing?

[00:22:59] Nathan: I have, and I have read it. Not listened to it.

[00:23:02] Haley: Okay. Okay. Um, Chelsea, have you read Fourth Wing?

[00:23:05] Chelsea: I have not.

[00:23:06] Haley: Oh gosh. You know the answer to that. What’s fine with you? I know. Um, okay. So

[00:23:10] Nathan: But as an example Right.

[00:23:12] Haley: But

[00:23:12] Nathan: as an example. Yeah. Um, with. Unreasonable hospitality. Yes. I would say I have read Unreasonable Hospitality.

[00:23:18] Haley: But you haven’t,

[00:23:19] Nathan: but there’s people on the, you’re lying the team who’d be like, Nope. You listen to it. It does not count.

[00:23:23] Haley: Yeah.

[00:23:24] Nathan: I’m like, I consume the information. What more do you want from

[00:23:26] Haley: me? So please vote in the comments.

[00:23:28] Nathan: Does listening count as reading?

[00:23:29] Haley: Does listening count as reading? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:23:32] Haley: Moving on to the, the valuable, uh, part of this is one of the participants. I thought this was really interesting because, um, their book Outsells their audio book Outsells the physical book. Yeah. Which is out Becoming

[00:23:45] Nathan: Out Sells Digital Outsells, Kindle Hardcover and paperback.

[00:23:50] Haley: Yes. Combined, which is becoming.

[00:23:51] Haley: Increasingly more common.

[00:23:53] Nathan: Yeah. All these people aren’t actually reading books.

[00:23:55] Haley: Yeah. Well, what, what made,

[00:23:58] Nathan: sorry, did not bias the boat right

[00:23:59] Haley: there. Yeah. But what made this one more interesting is, um, there are guests, well, we’ll say that come in and actually provide, like, like read a section of the book. Um, and so I thought that was really interesting.

[00:24:15] Haley: But, uh, because she’s, they’re looping in more people, uh, into the audio experience.

[00:24:19] Nathan: Well, the example was do doing a, uh, memoir. Yes. And then, you know, you’re telling your stories and all this and you’re reading it, but then having. People, like the actual humans who played a part in that story go and read their section.

[00:24:33] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:33] Nathan: And that making it like this, uh, you know, three dimensional audio experience in that way. They also mentioned that it took a few more takes, you know, for someone who has not done like a hundred podcast episodes are more, and you know, to deliver it well,

[00:24:49] Haley: yeah. But just, but thinking through this, I.

[00:24:52] Haley: Admit that I am a listener of books. Okay. Um, actually that’s not true. I whisper sync, so I go back and forth, but Okay. I’ll say 90. You

[00:25:01] Nathan: only do that,

[00:25:02] Haley: whatever, 90. So you guess I read it exactly. 90% of it I am consuming through my ears, not through my eyes. Um, but I think that’s an interesting component because I think that’s gonna become more and more, uh, more and more common.

[00:25:14] Haley: And, uh, so, you know, everybody there was very interested, uh, in that part for, for that particular guest. Uh, they were all very interested in that because that was a huge component of, uh, their strategy as of what had made their last book so successful.

[00:25:27] Nathan: Yeah. And I think we’re seeing more people make unique audio experiences.

[00:25:32] Haley: Yeah.

[00:25:32] Nathan: Um, this came up at a, at a dinner conversation in a smaller group, but people were talking about how important it is they believe for the author to read the book themselves.

[00:25:40] Chelsea: Yeah.

[00:25:40] Nathan: Like, you’re gonna get. You know, six or eight hours or whatever of mm-hmm. The words come through. It should be in your voice as well.

[00:25:47] Nathan: You want, what if

[00:25:48] Chelsea: they have a really odd voice?

[00:25:50] Nathan: Is this your way of telling me that I shouldn’t read my own audio book?

[00:25:53] Haley: I was trying to find the right segue into this, and here we are. So, okay. Well this is, this is a real thing though, because once upon a time, I did a couple of e episodes of a podcast for a project that I worked on at Kit called Creator Sessions.

[00:26:06] Haley: Right. And so we did a podcast version of this, like YouTube show, and I remember nobody likes to hear their voice. Yeah. It’s kind of gross. Yeah. Nobody likes to hear it. In fact, I, I just heard Dermot Kennedy, who’s my favorite artist, his new album just came out way to the Woods, FYI. But he just. He, I just heard him say that he never, ever, ever listens to his music.

[00:26:25] Haley: He can only listen to him doing a cover. That’s the only thing that he can listen to him doing. But everybody hates the sound of their voice. Mm-hmm. Right. All that to say, I listened to this podcast episode and I was like, oh my gosh, I kind of like the way that I sound. And I was like, I was like, did you guys like doctor this at all?

[00:26:42] Haley: And he’s like, yeah, obviously. And I was like, oh

[00:26:44] shit.

[00:26:47] Chelsea: Yeah. Like, you could’ve just give that to me, just

[00:26:51] Haley: so you know. Yeah. And I was like, for the first time ever in my life, I liked the way I sounded. Yeah. And it’s because it wasn’t how I sounded.

[00:27:00] Nathan: I feel like the only two acceptable ways to answer that question are No, not at all.

[00:27:05] Haley: Yeah.

[00:27:05] Nathan: And yeah, we did a little bit and here’s exactly what you can do in the future to recreate it.

[00:27:10] Haley: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:27:12] Nathan: But, uh, yeah, obviously is

[00:27:14] Haley: Yeah, a little harsh.

[00:27:16] Nathan: Ego shattering.

[00:27:17] Haley: Yeah. Ego shattering. Yeah. Um, so anyways,

[00:27:21] Nathan: uh, let’s go to, we can jump around to tactics and all of that, but, uh, I wanna go to what’s something that you heard someone do of like a, it could be a level of preparation or

[00:27:32] Haley: Ooh,

[00:27:32] Nathan: attention detail, all of that, that you’re like.

[00:27:35] Nathan: Oh wow. The, like there basically, we’ll call this segment. There are levels to this game.

[00:27:41] Haley: Yes, there are levels to this game. Okay. I, I, this was actually probably one of my most, my favorite conversations that we dug into. And the reason why it, I knew it was good and I knew that everybody loved this conversation because this was.

[00:27:54] Haley: Kind of during someone’s hot seat, and then someone made this suggestion and then the entire hot seat go was commandeered like by those parts. And they were like digging in asking a million questions. Now I think like six of the guests, six or seven of the guests had been on a diary of a CEO.

[00:28:10] Nathan: Yeah. Or Mel Robbins, or like

[00:28:12] Haley: Yeah.

[00:28:12] Haley: Make some really big time podcasts. Yeah. And so the particular conversation was centered around the amount of preparation that goes into preparing to be a guest on a podcast, but more importantly, um, the. Difference the amount of, how, how would we say it? The, the, um, variance of things that, the stories that they tell across the different podcasts that they go on.

[00:28:40] Haley: So for example, uh, the, a lot of times, and we know this to be true now, Nathan, not to put you on blast here, but like I’ve heard your same stories. We’ve worked together for a long time, but I’ve heard them a lot.

[00:28:50] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:28:50] Haley: And sometimes you get into the habit, it’s easy to get into the habit of saying the same story on every podcast that you go onto.

[00:28:56] Haley: So this particular guest was saying only 20% of her content is the same.

[00:29:00] Nathan: Right.

[00:29:01] Haley: 20%.

[00:29:02] Nathan: And the other 80% is unique to that show and has

[00:29:04] Haley: been

[00:29:04] Nathan: prepped. Mm-hmm.

[00:29:05] Haley: And they, and prep it Extreme, extreme prep in, in an effort to make it essentially like, is this a viral clip? Mm-hmm. And it’s practiced and it was like, what, 80 hours of preparation is what I think was sharing.

[00:29:17] Haley: Yeah. It was between 60

[00:29:18] Chelsea: and a hundred hours,

[00:29:19] Nathan: depending

[00:29:19] Chelsea: on the show

[00:29:19] Nathan: preparation for a podcast appearance. So that,

[00:29:24] Haley: how many hours did we prep for this one?

[00:29:26] Nathan: For this one, uh, hours. Ultimately six minutes. It’d be in decimals. That’s why we have our laptops with it. Um,

[00:29:36] Haley: yeah.

[00:29:37] Nathan: But it, it was just this moment where it was like, oh, and you could see like half the room was like, there are levels to this.

[00:29:42] Haley: Yeah.

[00:29:43] Nathan: And these are like podcast appearances Yes. That have done millions of views. Mm-hmm.

[00:29:46] Haley: Yes.

[00:29:47] Nathan: And so you’re like, oh, wow. And so then this woman who we won’t name specifically though, I don’t think she would mind, but she was basically saying, yeah. And I know how to tell every one of my stories. With a, a different hook specifically.

[00:30:00] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:01] Nathan: And, you know, and then she just rattled off. She’s like, oh yeah, hooks are easy. She rattles ’em off and everyone’s like, hold on. And they’re like writing down all of her

[00:30:07] Haley: hooks. Yeah. There was one that I loved though, that it took six times. She went on six different podcast episodes. It was never used in a clip and it was always edited out, but she kept trying to make that one a thing.

[00:30:19] Haley: And so finally it was the sixth time and it turned in to be like one of the most viral, uh, clips that, that, uh, has been shared across any of the podcast episodes. And I loved that because it was like, she didn’t, she didn’t get up. She’s like, I know this is gonna hit.

[00:30:32] Nathan: It was like a comedian working their material.

[00:30:34] Nathan: Yeah. At all the little, you know, comedy clubs and then be like, okay, that’s the way that I tell it. That works.

[00:30:38] Haley: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, we can talk about this, but because so many of them had been on Diary of a CEO, many of them talked about that experience. Right. And so those episodes during the recording are, are.

[00:30:50] Haley: Four hours. Yeah. Six hours and a half hours. Hours was, it was three to four hours. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, there’s oftentimes for you to, like, they’re obviously editing it down and they’re trying to, you know, make the most viral and compelling and easy to listen to episode. Uh, and so they had a lot of times to p practice that particular clip, but,

[00:31:06] Nathan: well, that was the thing that I, I assumed that they just sat down, had a long conversation that was really well researched and that got to good stories and that that spread.

[00:31:14] Haley: Yeah.

[00:31:15] Nathan: What we learned is a lot of these top shows are recorded for the clips.

[00:31:19] Haley: Yes.

[00:31:19] Nathan: So they’ve gone through the back catalog of everything you’ve put out on social, what are the most viral things you’ve ever said over the last five years.

[00:31:26] Haley: Yeah.

[00:31:26] Nathan: And then it’s not even, they try to weave the conversation to get to that story.

[00:31:31] Nathan: They just ask you the question.

[00:31:32] Haley: Mm-hmm. They

[00:31:33] Nathan: just

[00:31:33] Haley: tee it up to magic. They have magic editors. Yeah.

[00:31:35] Nathan: They just tee it up so that you deliver your viral clip and they tee it up for another one. And I was like, oh, that’s. Fascinat.

[00:31:42] Haley: I mean, are we surprised by this? Mm-hmm. We like, know Grace. Our, our friend Grace Miller, who Nathan obviously just had his episode come out.

[00:31:47] Haley: She’s the, uh, director of experimentation and failure for Diary of a ceo EO. Yeah. So this doesn’t surprise me in any way, shape, or form, but I think that it’s like a conversation. Uh, I thought that was a really, really interesting, I just, I wouldn’t have guessed.

[00:32:00] Chelsea: Yeah,

[00:32:00] Haley: I wouldn’t have guessed. So it’s

[00:32:01] Chelsea: not just as a guest prepping to be on shows, but as a host Yeah.

[00:32:03] Chelsea: Doing your research know

[00:32:05] Haley: and

[00:32:05] Chelsea: how you’re gonna get,

[00:32:06] Haley: someone said this to me, I actually don’t even know if this was at the event, honestly, but someone was like, if it feels like magic, it’s probably magic. Right? It’s like they’re not sitting down and just having this naturally free flowing conversation.

[00:32:18] Haley: There were so much preparation that went into it, and so it might feel like it was just a viral clip that went because, you know, but it was practiced meticulously. And I thought that was really interesting because that’s just like a level of preparation that’s like Kobe Bryant level preparation. Yeah.

[00:32:30] Haley: And, um, they’re going viral for a reason. Mm-hmm. Because they’re practicing their craft. Well,

[00:32:36] Nathan: and that’s the thing of. Realizing, oh, these people aren’t just naturally good on camera, or like, you’re gifted and charismatic. It’s like, no, you have refined this. Yeah. And you have practiced it over and over again.

[00:32:48] Haley: Yeah.

[00:32:48] Nathan: To a level beyond, probably like five times. I would’ve assumed that someone’s doing like 15 to 20 hours of prep for the most important podcast they’re going on. It’s like, no, 80 hours.

[00:32:58] Haley: Where would you find 80 hours? Chelsea’s like can confirm

[00:33:04] Chelsea: he does not have

[00:33:05] Haley: 80 hours. Absolutely not. He does not have 80 hours.

[00:33:08] Chelsea: Unless this is

[00:33:08] Haley: one. Unless it’s while he’s flying or something, you know, and his like, plane is flying itself, you know, and then he’s

[00:33:13] Nathan: turn on the autopilot and then just rehearse your hooks.

[00:33:15] Haley: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:33:17] Nathan: My favorite thing, when this person was rattling off their hooks, she said one and everyone was, she was like, blah, blah, blah.

[00:33:22] Nathan: Here’s the, you know. And then everyone was like, waiting for the story. Oh. ’cause we’re all, we’re all like, and how

[00:33:28] Haley: we were

[00:33:28] Nathan: hooked. Oh, that was, that was you. She’s like, no, that’s just a framework for a hook that you can use. Yeah. You know, there’s no story to follow. Like, oh,

[00:33:36] Haley: flawless execution there.

[00:33:38] Flawless.

[00:33:38] Nathan: Okay. What other moments or stories when you realize like, oh, people are playing on a different level than what I expected? Mm.

[00:33:45] Haley: This one might be kind of the opposite actually of, of what it is that we’re talking about, which I thought was really interesting. I kind of wanna expose this person. Um, but I feel like it’s a great, um, I think it’s a great comparison.

[00:34:01] Haley: Like, you know, it’s, yeah, it’s soft and dark, whatever. What’s the

[00:34:07] Nathan: soft and dark? Those are not opposites.

[00:34:09] Haley: No, no. Yeah. Oh yeah. That’s hard. So I think a good opposite to that is, and I’m gonna expose who this one came from, is our friend Jefferson Fisher, because Jefferson Fisher’s stuff in a lot of, like, his, his growth on Instagram and social media has been insane.

[00:34:29] Nathan: Yeah. Zero to 5 million?

[00:34:31] Haley: No, he has 6.2.

[00:34:32] Nathan: Well, but zero to 5 million in two years.

[00:34:34] Haley: Okay. Yeah. It, it’s insane. And he’s obviously, come on your podcast and I’ve had the chance to, you know, go, I, I invited myself to dinner with him last time and um, I was very excited about it. But Jefferson is exactly who he is in person as he is online.

[00:34:51] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:34:51] Haley: And I think the thing that makes him so compelling is that he is not putting on. Any show and people can kind of feel that, right? He’s, he, I actually, he said, he said, I’m different from y’all. He said, I talk slow. I think slow. And, and, and he didn’t say that. He said, exactly. And I was like, I was like, that’s great.

[00:35:13] Haley: Oh my gosh. I’m obsessed with you.

[00:35:14] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:35:15] Haley: Um, but all that to say, that was just a vast It was, it was, it was very different. Mm-hmm. From other people’s. And that is what his secret sauce actually is. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s the, it the fact that it’s in his car mm-hmm. It’s under produced. And so sometimes you just find what the magic is.

[00:35:33] Haley: Mm-hmm. For you, for you. And that’s what ends up working for you. And so sometimes people would be digging into this like, deep, deep, deep, you know, like work and Jefferson’s like, I’m just talking in my car. Yeah. You know, I’m just,

[00:35:46] Nathan: you know, and he, he says that, and it’s totally true. But also speaking of levels to this game, right?

[00:35:52] Haley: Yeah.

[00:35:52] Nathan: As a trial attorney. He has done thousands and thousands of hours in very high stakes environments in a courtroom.

[00:35:59] Haley: Yes. Yeah. Yes.

[00:36:00] Nathan: You know, convincing 12 people Yeah. That they need to side with this client or, you know

[00:36:05] Yeah.

[00:36:05] Nathan: Whatever that is. And so you often see people who are very good, who had very important skills in one area, and then translate to the creator world.

[00:36:13] Nathan: Yeah. And, and they, they come in at the top of the game. Um, but it was interesting. There was another creator that I thought was interesting who doesn’t have social on their phone, like at all. And it’s like, wait, but you post all the time. Oh.

[00:36:28] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:28] Nathan: And they were like, uh, I, yes, I do post all the time, or my account posts all the time, and they record all the videos and they just record a video, send to their team and say like, this is a story.

[00:36:38] Nathan: This, and basically talking about how at that, you know, half a million plus followers. There’s interesting things happening on social all the time. It’s not just even that you’re scrolling other people’s feeds. It’s like the comments and the interactions and the famous people following you on your own feed can draw you back in every like two or three minutes and they’re like, it’s honestly not a great way to live.

[00:36:58] Nathan: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so I interact with it on like a weekly basis.

[00:37:00] Haley: Yeah. This person was protecting their mental health. Like really? Yeah. They were protecting their, their space, their mindset. And it’s funny because then there were other creators in the room that were like, I’ve posted, I’ve edited. Mm-hmm. I post, yeah, I do absolutely everything.

[00:37:14] Haley: I engage with every, I surprised same.

[00:37:16] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:17] Haley: Um, and I loved it. Mm-hmm. I love both versions of it, to be honest. The point is, is that they, they all know what works, what works for them.

[00:37:24] Chelsea: Yep.

[00:37:24] Haley: And I could be wrong, but you’ll have to remind me if this is actually true. I feel like we can say this person’s name, but maybe you told me this, James Clear.

[00:37:33] Haley: For a long time had his assistant have his password to social media. Is this right?

[00:37:39] Nathan: Uh, he said this on stage at craft commerce, I believe.

[00:37:41] Haley: Okay. Okay.

[00:37:41] Nathan: Where,

[00:37:42] Haley: so we can’t talk about it. Yep,

[00:37:43] Nathan: yep. Um, where during the work week, his assistant changes his social media passwords and then doesn’t give him his passwords back until he completes his work taking

[00:37:53] Chelsea: notes,

[00:37:55] Haley: change Nathan’s

[00:37:56] Chelsea: passwords.

[00:37:57] Haley: That’s so good. That’s

[00:37:58] Chelsea: so good.

[00:37:59] Haley: Yeah. But

[00:38:00] Chelsea: yeah, I did think it was interesting how many people that have millions of followers or you know, somewhere in there are like, no, I’m the one posting writing and editing. Editing and editing all of it. Yeah. They are doing it. And you’d be amazed at how much that doesn’t happen.

[00:38:14] Chelsea: So that was really cool to hear.

[00:38:16] Haley: Okay. What about the fun AI things that people are doing? That’s like obviously a, everybody’s talking about it, right? Mm-hmm. Ai, we, should we talk about it? I don’t know. I feel like we could, let’s do, yeah. Okay. What about the fun ai things that people are doing?

[00:38:30] Nathan: One that I liked was someone was saying they had an almost like an AI checkpoint.

[00:38:36] Haley: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:38:36] Nathan: Where it was basically like, here’s, here’s how I want to show up in the world. Uh, these are my values, these are, this is my writing style and all of this. And so everything they would post, they would, you know, go and ask Claude in this custom project, like, does this match how I wanna show up in the world?

[00:38:55] Nathan: And be like, yep, totally. Except for these two things. Mm-hmm. You know, you told me you want incorporate those, and it’s like, oh, right, okay, let me go out and do it. And so many people use generative AI to generate things, but I thought it was such an interesting aspect to have, you know, sort of the, the checkpoint and like.

[00:39:11] Nathan: Answer the question, am I showing up authentically in line with how I said I wanna show up?

[00:39:15] Haley: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because then it would come back and it would say, you say that you wanna show up in this way, and then it would give you actually feedback on how that does not.

[00:39:23] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:24] Haley: How you’re not showing up in the way that you said that you wanted to.

[00:39:26] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:26] Nathan: And I, I do a version of that where, you know, if you, if you ask ai, is this good? It’ll be like, yeah, it’s so good. Great job. You’re the best writer. It’s so complimentary. And you’re like, I am the best writer. Wow.

[00:39:37] Haley: Wow.

[00:39:38] Nathan: But then if you say, Hey, what are the logical fallacies, or like the flaws in my argument, it’ll be like, oh, well actually, you know, and it’ll just then tear apart your writing and you’re just like, oh, I feel terrible now.

[00:39:48] Haley: Yeah.

[00:39:48] Nathan: But it’s so good to get that feedback. Mm-hmm. Because. Then you become a better writer, better communicator. Mm-hmm. It will spread and reach more people. Mm-hmm. And so I love that idea that a checkpoint or using it for very critical feedback,

[00:40:01] Chelsea: and this person does have a team too, or suggested that you could use this for your team too, to make sure that they’re running it too, if they’re writing any copy for you.

[00:40:08] Chelsea: Yep.

[00:40:08] Haley: Something else I thought was really interesting was how many of these authors leverage speaking into their Monet monetization strategy. But specifically what was really interesting about this is the various different rates that people charge for speaking and the psychology that goes into setting your speaking rates.

[00:40:27] Haley: And so, um, and the

[00:40:28] Nathan: range was something like 20,000 to $250,000 per time. Exactly. And so you had the whole range. There were a lot in the. Call it 50 to a hundred thousand. Yeah. That was probably where the, the bell Curve averaged out.

[00:40:40] Haley: Yeah. And so there were several people that were like, oh, I’m worried about going up to that next tier.

[00:40:45] Haley: Right. And so, um, I think we can say who said this one? Yeah. But this one came from James Clear, and you could imagine that he warrants a pretty high speaking fee. And what he said that he did, which I loved this, is that he would do five speaking engagements at a specific rate, and then he would raise it Yeah.

[00:41:02] Haley: And then five engagements at the next rate, and then raise it. And so he just continued to set that bar to see where he basically, how what his ceiling he was he testing?

[00:41:12] Nathan: Mm-hmm. He just

[00:41:12] Haley: like, yeah,

[00:41:13] Nathan: let’s find

[00:41:13] Haley: out. And so he figured out what his ceiling was and he tried to raise it and it, it, it,

[00:41:17] Nathan: he got fewer bookings.

[00:41:19] Nathan: Yeah. And he was like, oh, all right.

[00:41:20] Haley: Yeah.

[00:41:21] Nathan: And it, when that came up, people were like, but if I do that, I won’t get, you know, if I raise my rates, people won’t book me anymore. And this is like a, a key part of my income and how I grew my audience. And he was like, then you just bring your rate back down slightly,

[00:41:34] Haley: Uhhuh, and he, you know, he, but then you also, you figure out where your rate was, should be.

[00:41:38] Haley: Right? Yeah. And I think what’s interesting too is like, let’s, let’s be candid about this, right? There were a couple of people, if we’re, if we’re saying there’s three tiers mm-hmm. There are people in the room that are tier one and we’ll call tier one, you know, 50 to 80,000 or 50 to 50 to a hundred thousand.

[00:41:52] Haley: And then there were people in the room that were like a hundred to 175,000. And then there were people in the room that were 175 and above. Right. And so they were basically saying is you’re trying to go from tier one to tier two to tier three. And so they didn’t wanna move up from tier two to tier three because then they’re competing with the people in tier three.

[00:42:11] Nathan: Right.

[00:42:12] Haley: And so it was a really interesting, like the psychology of it, you know? Mm-hmm. As they’re saying, well, I don’t wanna move into that tier because then I become Mel Robbins tier.

[00:42:20] Nathan: Right.

[00:42:20] Haley: And then I’m competing against and

[00:42:22] Nathan: someone’s trying to decide, well, if I’m gonna pay that much money, then I might as well go book Exactly.

[00:42:26] Nathan: A Mel Robbins or a James Clear or someone like that.

[00:42:28] Haley: Yeah. All that to say it was very interesting because everybody in that room really could probably demand a tier three rate, but the psychology of them thinking mm-hmm. That they couldn’t is what really limited them from getting that, right. Mm-hmm.

[00:42:41] Nathan: And I’ve heard that, you know, if you hear people talk about like, oh, charge more, you’re worth more than that or everything else, it’s like you get into mindset and all of these things.

[00:42:50] Nathan: And James’ solution was so simple. ’cause he is like, give every five talks, raise your, raise your price by five grand.

[00:42:56] Chelsea: Yeah.

[00:42:56] Nathan: You know, or whatever the number is for you. And you’re like, oh

[00:42:59] Chelsea: yeah. And he said that ahead of time. So he wasn’t thinking about it in the moment of questioning about it. And so even

[00:43:04] Nathan: when he was, yeah, in the moment when he is like, oh, maybe I, I don’t know if I’m worth this or will I get more gig?

[00:43:09] Nathan: He’s like, no, I made an agreement with myself that I would raise it. And if I. Don’t get any gigs in the next three months, then I’ll drop it slightly.

[00:43:15] Haley: I mean, we, we’ve talked about this, but like, I just got my first paid speaking gig and I still can’t believe that they paid me.

[00:43:21] Nathan: Can we talk about how much they paid you?

[00:43:22] Nathan: No, because I,

[00:43:23] Haley: okay. We can talk about the fact that I’m officially a higher paid speaker than Nathan.

[00:43:30] Nathan: It’s true.

[00:43:30] Chelsea: Let’s

[00:43:31] Haley: talk about that. Um,

[00:43:32] Nathan: and I was like, that’s, no one’s ever paid me that much to speak.

[00:43:35] Haley: Yeah. But, but it’s in my point is, is that I don’t have a huge social media following and I was not speaking on behalf of Kit.

[00:43:43] Haley: I was speaking on a totally separate topic. Mm-hmm. And so for somebody like me, I have no audience, no meaningful audience. Right, right. Outside of my relationship with kid, I guess. Um, and I was, and no website and I was able to land a pretty decent speaking rate, honestly. Mm-hmm. And so I’m still surprised by that.

[00:44:00] Haley: And so the psychology of that, in my mind, I’m like, if I could get this. You can get 10 times that.

[00:44:06] Nathan: Yeah. I think another angle to talk about is just a few of the people in the room who are really impressive. Um, one person is Madeline Macintosh, who is a CEO and founder of Authors Equity. So she and James, you know, of co-founded Authors Equity Together, which is this new publisher and they really have the perfect blend between self-publishing and traditional publishing and, and all of that.

[00:44:31] Nathan: And I knew she was impressive. Like, uh, I’ve talked to her a good amount because Authors Equity was publishing my book. It was just, you realize there’s levels to it where like, oh, she was the CEO of Penguin Random House us. And so it’s like, wait, you actually got to the top of one of, if not the largest publishers in the, in the United States, and then said, oh, I can’t change it from the inside.

[00:44:53] Nathan: I’m gonna leave and start my own public, you know, and change it from the outside.

[00:44:56] Haley: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:56] Nathan: And there was this other moment where someone, you know, they’re asking all these questions about like, oh, well you, how do you get distribution? And they’re like, well, it’s through. You know, Simon Schuster provides our distribution into all these physical retailers, and someone’s like, well, what if.

[00:45:08] Nathan: Simon Schuster sells and that deal goes away. And she’s just like, well, I’m on the board of Simon and Schuster. So, you know, you’re like, oh, there’s okay.

[00:45:15] Chelsea: Yeah, I think I actually wanna change my fan girl answer. I didn’t made know going into it that Madeline was gonna be who I was most excited about.

[00:45:22] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:45:22] Chelsea: And she’s incredible. So I think leaving it, I was so impressed by her.

[00:45:27] Haley: Yeah. You wanna talk about my worst nightmare with Madeline? I’ll tell you.

[00:45:31] Nathan: Let’s do it. You brought it up, so,

[00:45:33] Haley: okay. Fair. Um, I’ve never, I would say I don’t make mistakes like this. I haven’t made a big mistake like this in a long time.

[00:45:42] Haley: And, um, we had very limited time. I’m getting nervous just thinking about it. Um, we had very limited time, uh, to record an episode with Nathan and James and Madeline. Yeah. And now I am dangerous with video equipment. We’ll say, you know, I’m da meaning like, I know my way around. I can put something together, but it’s not my full-time job sort of thing.

[00:46:03] Haley: And I don’t do that professionally. Right. I, I’m a little out of practice in that. I ha I’ve done this on the road before. All that to say Nathan, James, and Madeline, they’re 25 minutes into a really great,

[00:46:16] Nathan: the future of publishing, you know,

[00:46:17] Haley: conversation.

[00:46:18] Nathan: So good.

[00:46:19] Haley: Like, I mean, they’re really good. And I look down at the Zoom recorder and I see that there is not a red light blinking.

[00:46:27] Nathan: We’re not recording audio.

[00:46:30] Haley: I. My nervous system has never been so stressed out. And I was like, I’m gonna have to interrupt Nathan.

[00:46:37] Nathan: Well, also, like James has to get to the airport.

[00:46:39] Haley: James has to get run a very tight timeline. Yeah, we’re on a tight timeline. I’m gonna have to interrupt this. And I’m like thinking, I’m like, Hailey, you’re gonna interrupt Madeline James clear and Nathan’s finally recording with them.

[00:46:50] Haley: You’re gonna keep it cool. You’re gonna keep it cool. And I just, I was like, Hey, team. And I’ve never been so mortified in my entire life. Now I knew it wasn’t recording. And both Nathan and Nathan’s like, I’ve got the backup audio on my phone. And I was like, no, no you don’t. No, we’re sorry guys. We’re starting over.

[00:47:05] Haley: And James like, just test the audio. And my brain, I’m like. Okay, I’ll just test it. And I

[00:47:11] Chelsea: knew you were very calm, cooled about it. Like

[00:47:15] Haley: Yeah.

[00:47:15] Chelsea: It, I would not have known that you were dying inside.

[00:47:18] Haley: It was the most mortifying thing that has happened to me in a very, very long time. I don’t, not one that you wanna screw up.

[00:47:28] Nathan: Yeah. That was, uh, that was a rough one. It, you know, we had enough time to record, we were definitely cutting it close and then starting over 20 minutes or 25 minutes in. Yeah, we, we tightened it up a little bit.

[00:47:38] Haley: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:39] Nathan: And then I think James was like, don’t worry about it. I like to get out of the car at the airport and just walk straight and not have to pause at all.

[00:47:47] Haley: Yeah.

[00:47:47] Nathan: You know, I don’t wanna have to wait in line and all of that. I don’t want to sit at the gate. So, and he texted it later, you know, he is like, what did he text? It was like three things. He’s like, uh, made it on the plane. There was a fantastic event. Tell Hailey, don’t worry about the issues like that happens.

[00:48:04] Nathan: And it had the perfect moment where. I walked straight through security, I walked straight onto the plane. Like I only had to pause briefly as I want.

[00:48:12] Haley: Yeah, that’s crazy. Um, I, I listened back to the audio today and I, I, I couldn’t even listen to it because it, it gave me hives thinking about it. I was like, I can’t hear myself.

[00:48:23] Haley: I can’t hear myself. The, uh, oh God, it was so bad.

[00:48:25] Nathan: So stressful.

[00:48:26] Haley: Yeah, so stressful.

[00:48:27] Chelsea: On that note, James was, both of were so lovely and passion, they’re like compassionate about it and we’re just like, it’s fine, don’t worry. Uhhuh. And also the entire group was, the entire group

[00:48:38] Haley: was, was, oh, the entire group was the best.

[00:48:38] Chelsea: So nice and just like really wonderful people.

[00:48:42] Nathan: Uh, okay. There was another funny moment.

[00:48:44] Haley: Oh no.

[00:48:44] Nathan: Where?

[00:48:46] Chelsea: Probably with Hailey,

[00:48:47] Haley: IM sure. I was like, was it me? What did I do?

[00:48:49] Nathan: Well, there was the time when you knocked glass. I spilled my wine glass knocked over the wine glass. Yeah, it balls on the, like granite countertop makes so much noise.

[00:48:57] Haley: Yeah.

[00:48:58] Nathan: And somehow it doesn’t break. Mm-hmm.

[00:48:59] Haley: It did not break. The, the funnier part about it though is it was a fresh glass of rose that went a hundred percent down my leg and in my shoe. So my sock, just my left sock

[00:49:10] Nathan: just has a little

[00:49:11] Haley: sopping wet with really nice rose.

[00:49:14] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:49:14] Haley: So, um, that was not ideal. Yeah.

[00:49:18] Haley: You know, it just like poured into

[00:49:19] Nathan: your shoe, you know, it wouldn’t be an event without a ha moment like that. Yeah.

[00:49:24] Haley: Uh, yeah.

[00:49:24] Nathan: Uh, but where I was going is there was an author, you know, I was talking about what were the most impactful things in your book launch and all of this. And there was an author there who had recently hit the New York Times list and they said, um, they, they had a whole thing where they were like, email is still undefeated.

[00:49:42] Haley: Oh,

[00:49:42] Nathan: and then when I talk about email strategies, like you can email way more often than you think. Like the bulk of the sales came from email and that’s a common trait that we had from around the room. But the funny moment is like a little while later, someone was like, oh, well you know, on Creator network you can do this and this and that and you can cross recommend and it works so well.

[00:49:59] Nathan: And I always love it when you know, our customers are doing the selling for us Uhhuh and he, and he goes, yeah, I’m not on Kit. And like the room erupt and they start like mass shaming. So we have like the top authors in the world shaming this other author for not using Kit, and we’re all just sitting back like, no, no, do your thing.

[00:50:19] Chelsea: Yeah, I didn’t say anything. I’ll watch, I’ll watch.

[00:50:22] Nathan: And they’re like, this would be, if you use Kit, you could have done this. And you, in your launch you could have like had, yeah, when you did your newsletter tour, they could have clicked one button and opted in. You’re like, this is great.

[00:50:32] Haley: Yeah, keep going.

[00:50:33] Haley: Same, keep going. It’s all about curating the right room. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I loved that. That was fun. Oh, I, we should, we could. Talk about the venue. Mm-hmm. Because the venue was just give the venue a little bit of a shout out.

[00:50:45] Chelsea: Yeah.

[00:50:45] Haley: We did it at this insane, amazing venue called South Hall Farm and in, in, just outside of, uh, Nashville and Franklin and their team was insane.

[00:50:57] Haley: Amazing. Did a great job. Yeah. So, so wonderful. But it’s like a 500 acre regenerative farm. And so everything was farm to table, so the food was exceptional. Mm-hmm. The service was exceptional. The venue, like it was beautiful. And we also had the most perfect weather.

[00:51:12] Nathan: It was

[00:51:13] Haley: great. Yeah. You had the best weather.

[00:51:14] Chelsea: It was perfect.

[00:51:15] Haley: Yeah. Not a bad, I had the sexiest room.

[00:51:18] Nathan: You had the gr a great room except for those couches. I don’t know what was up with those couches.

[00:51:21] Haley: They should reconsider those couches. They. We’re not the ideal, uh, for the podcast scene. They were not the most ideal.

[00:51:30] Nathan: The dining table setup I thought

[00:51:31] Haley: was great.

[00:51:32] Nathan: Worked great.

[00:51:32] Haley: Okay. Chelsea, one of the ones that you and I talked about afterwards was, um, how creators or authors were leveraging their local bookstore. Mm-hmm. You love that?

[00:51:40] Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Yep. I did. You know, like I said, one of my favorite parts about this was getting to hear everything that we’re gonna use for your tactics, for launching your book.

[00:51:48] Chelsea: Um, and so are we

[00:51:49] Haley: gonna use Hearts on Fire down the street? It’s a romance. It’s a romance bookstore.

[00:51:54] Nathan: Ladders of Wealth.

[00:51:56] Haley: Shout out Hearts on fire. Yep. Um, but seriously, they keep going.

[00:52:00] Chelsea: Um, but on that note, uh, using your local indie bookstores or just indie bookstores across the country, actually, um, to support them and also spread, you know.

[00:52:10] Chelsea: The word about their books through these indie bookstores.

[00:52:13] Haley: This is a good one to, we can totally give credit where credit’s due in this one too. The two people that do this really, really well are Tory Dunlap and James Clear. And both of them have, um, their local bookstore, uh, in their hometown. And what was great is James talked about, um, for his bookstore, and I don’t remember the name of it, but we could probably add it in the comments, but for his bookstore, it works out great for them and it works out great for him because he has all of his books shipped there and then they do all of the distribution.

[00:52:39] Haley: He can go down and he can sign and, you know, sign the books. And then every time if he does, you know, he’ll do author signings in that local bookstore fairly often. And so, I can’t remember the exact number. Do you remember what it was? It was like how many books they have sold?

[00:52:52] Nathan: Oh, it was Acra something Crazy number.

[00:52:54] Nathan: ’cause he, for all his speaking engagements, he’s like, yeah, just buy books for every attendee and do it from this, this bookstore.

[00:53:00] Haley: Yeah.

[00:53:00] Nathan: And then, uh, Tory Dunlap was talking about the same thing of having, I think she picked four or five indie bookstores around the country. That she particularly wanted to partner with, and so she would have them by the books.

[00:53:10] Nathan: Um, and then she would, you know, also, you know, make sure they had signed copies and, and all of that.

[00:53:16] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:17] Nathan: There’s another fun one where, uh, will Guera was talking about, uh, a partnership that they did for Unreasonable Hospitality of getting the book in all of these, um, in all the airport bookstores.

[00:53:30] Haley: Oh, yeah.

[00:53:31] Nathan: Oh, and then he would specifically go around each time he’s in the airport. Right. You’re on book tour. You’re in the airport a lot. Like he would sign the four copies that were there, and then you’d take a photo and be like, all right. You know? Yeah. Whatever the Hudson books or, you know, next to Gate 34 at Nashville.

[00:53:45] Haley: Yep.

[00:53:46] Nathan: And then people, he had examples of people. Realizing they were close, like seeing that Instagram story, realizing they’re close to the airport, buying a refundable plane ticket, going through security, buying the signed copy of the book, taking a photo and sending it to ’em like, you know, 30 minutes later and be like, I got your book.

[00:54:02] Nathan: Also, I’m not traveling anywhere today. Let me refund my ticket and then go back out through security.

[00:54:06] Haley: One of the things that I really loved, and this is just like to kind of summarize some of this is. You know, sometimes you have this perception in your mind that it’s easy for people.

[00:54:18] Mm-hmm.

[00:54:18] Haley: You’re like, you’re Will guera.

[00:54:20] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:20] Haley: You’re James Clear, you’re Sawhill bloom, right? Yeah. And the thing that I loved is how they’re, they were all grinding.

[00:54:29] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:30] Haley: Right? Like they were all doing, like, you know, when he talked about Sawhill doing things, unscalable things

[00:54:35] Nathan: like

[00:54:35] Haley: you, you think

[00:54:36] Nathan: individually mailing

[00:54:37] Haley: out Yes. Himself actually.

[00:54:39] Haley: Even better to, to elaborate on the Sawhill story is that his publisher, he wanted to gift a lot of books and he ended up buying those books himself because they wouldn’t essentially allow him to gift that many books. And he knew innately that that was gonna be a huge component to his launch, building out his street team.

[00:54:59] Haley: So he did all he he grinded.

[00:55:02] Yeah.

[00:55:02] Haley: And sometimes you have this perception that, okay, it’s Sawhill Bloom. He has a huge social following. It’s Will Guera. He has a huge social following. The reality is, is that these authors are all doing really hard things mm-hmm. To make their books a success. And not saying that, you know, everybody’s not doing that, but they’re doing it and it’s, yeah.

[00:55:23] Nathan: Well another example of that is, uh, Madeline had a lot of stories since she’s published over a thousand books,

[00:55:29] Haley: Uhhuh,

[00:55:29] Nathan: you know, and, and been in the industry for so long. She was like, look, so many of these authors. Who we read and they’re like so gifted. Like, uh, she brought up Amore Tolls.

[00:55:38] Haley: Oh yeah.

[00:55:38] Nathan: Right. Who wrote a gentleman in Moscow and, and, uh, rules of Civility and others, like these fantastic books that I love.

[00:55:44] Nathan: And she was like, no, he built like bookstore by bookstore. He went into every single indie bookstore, built a relationship with them and ’cause I, I think he was in like finance or he had some corporate career, he was like, I wanna be a writer. And so as part of this transition, as you’ve written in the books, he just, he, he was grinding it out.

[00:56:02] Nathan: And I, I, you know, I read a gentleman, Moscow, I’m like, this is incredible. Like, this is the kind of thing that someone should just, you know, you write that and it just sells on its own. It’s like, no, it really doesn’t. It takes. The hard work over many years to build it up.

[00:56:14] Haley: And I mean, if we talk about James Clear in that light, right?

[00:56:16] Haley: We’ve talked about this a lot of times you’ve taught on it as well. Like you were actually with him and you built this out. But you wonder, you’re like, okay, atomic Habits is a great book, and so you would assume that people are gonna naturally go rate it five stars on Amazon. But did they do that on their own or did they do that with a very slight push that was built right in a strategic flywheel leveraging kit?

[00:56:38] Chelsea: Yep.

[00:56:38] Haley: Um, right. Like we were encouraging people, or the backend systems, that tactics that he had built we’re encouraging people to actually rate the book five stars. Um, and that is a huge component in his strategy. And so it’s not just luck. Luck. That

[00:56:51] Nathan: is a clever one. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll talk about that.

[00:56:53] Nathan: That’s something that, uh, we actually have an automation for this inside of Kit that you can mm-hmm. Can copy in. But inspired by James, um. Where basically what he does is inside of Atomic Habits, there’s various things, additional chapters, um, you know, places to go deep in it, like lead magnet type things where if you put in your, you know, in the book, you put in the RL and then go to that to download the resource.

[00:57:15] Nathan: Mm-hmm. So then what he does is he only links to those from in the book. And so then he tags someone who signs up for that as a reader. So now he doesn’t just have an email subscriber. He, he knows this person has at least read, you know, to to page 74 in the book. Yeah. Where, where that was. And then he waits a little bit, he has a follow-up sequence because you want people not just to buy the book, but you want them to read it and you want them not just read the book, but you want ’em to finish it.

[00:57:39] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:40] Nathan: And so then the follow-up sequence is where he’s reminding them, you know, through other content to come back and, and finish the book. And then after a little bit of time where he’s like, you’ve probably finished it by now, he sends an email and doesn’t say, will you go rate the book? He says, how did you like the.

[00:57:57] Nathan: One to five stars. Each of those being a little image that you can click on and it’s a link. And so depending on what they click, if they click five stars, he says, thanks so much. I’m glad you loved it. Would you post that to Amazon and Good reads? Yep. If they click one to four stars, he says, uh, you know, I’d love to hear more about what you didn’t like or all that.

[00:58:17] Nathan: And that goes to internal feedback.

[00:58:19] Haley: But the better part about that one is, is that he says, what do you, I love this part because he’s like, what don’t you like? Or What feedback do you have? And that’s a whole deliverability hack, right? Because he is getting them to actually respond to the email. And reply and reply, which the reply is a, it’s a great deliverability hack.

[00:58:35] Haley: So all the negative response, he’s getting them to take action, which is further. So, which is

[00:58:39] Nathan: Benefits

[00:58:39] Haley: him. Yeah. Benefits him even more.

[00:58:41] Nathan: And then the positive response, he is like, amazing. I’m glad you loved it. Go tell the world. And so you end up at this flywheel where, you know, the more book sales you have, the more readers.

[00:58:49] Nathan: The more readers, the more five star reviews, the more five star reviews, the more sales. And you know, that’s how he sold well, a, a part of selling 30 million copies of Atomic Habits.

[00:58:59] Haley: I mean 30 million. I loved this though, at the event, um, I had bought a bunch of books. I bought a book of pretty much everyone that was there.

[00:59:08] Haley: So, you know, I don’t know, I just thought it would be cool.

[00:59:10] Nathan: Yeah, it ended up I saw a lot of people taking the social content.

[00:59:14] Haley: Yeah.

[00:59:15] Nathan: Like recording a video of the books all laid out.

[00:59:17] Haley: Yeah.

[00:59:17] Nathan: And it’s interesting from a little like a status thing because it was their book in amongst

[00:59:23] Haley: Yes.

[00:59:24] Nathan: All of these others.

[00:59:25] Nathan: ’cause everyone. I, I’ve talked to probably 10 people who was like, who were like, I cannot believe that you invited me to this.

[00:59:32] Haley: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:32] Nathan: And we’re like, I can’t believe that you came. You

[00:59:34] Haley: know, that was a very last minute edition. Actually. I had them all sent to our teammate Alyssa, who lives in Franklin. I had them all I sent to Alyssa’s house because I was like, I just feel like we should have all their books.

[00:59:43] Haley: Yeah. Right. So I’m glad I did that very last minute. Um, but, um, the, the thing I loved was that James, he’s like, I haven’t even seen the one that says 30 million copies on it. He’s like, I don’t, I don’t have a copy of my book that says 30 million. Could you fricking imagine Nathan? Well, maybe, maybe, maybe.

[01:00:03] Haley: Ladders of Wealth. Yeah. Crushes it and sells 30 million copies.

[01:00:06] Nathan: Visualize it. We’re we’re manifesting a million. Yeah.

[01:00:08] Haley: That’s the, okay. We’re manifesting a million. Yeah. But, uh, 30 million, like good night.

[01:00:13] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:00:13] Haley: Good night. But all Okay. It wasn’t magic. It, the book is so good.

[01:00:19] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:19] Haley: But I think like when I, every single person, like talking about people playing a different game.

[01:00:25] Haley: They were playing, they’re, they’re, they’re building the systems that is making them as successful as they are, which was just, it was, like I said, it was kind of, I did not belong in the room. I loved that I got to put the room together, but I promise you, I, I, I did not belong in the room. And there were a couple moments where I was like, wow, I’ve, in the room, same,

[01:00:48] Nathan: very much the same.

[01:00:48] Nathan: But they were all, they were all so grateful. Like they were the number of text, email, they never made us

[01:00:52] Chelsea: feel like that at all. You know, it was just

[01:00:54] Nathan: like, they were all just like, thank you so much for creating this space. Yeah. Uh, some of them were like, I only get invited to like, marketing conferences. I love that.

[01:01:02] Haley: Yeah.

[01:01:02] Nathan: I’m in the room with all of my, my, uh, peers as authors. So I think that also goes to another point, the number of people that reach out to you and I and said when the book comes out

[01:01:13] Haley: Yep.

[01:01:13] Nathan: Here are the five ways I can help. You know, or like, you better tell me, you know?

[01:01:17] Chelsea: Yep.

[01:01:18] Nathan: How I can email or, you know, promote the book launch or any of that.

[01:01:21] Nathan: And it’s just such an important. Thing of this, like invest in the community, give, like we could have, we know all those people well enough that we could have sent an email and been like, Hey, book is launching, you know, in a month, can I come on your podcast? Can you send emails for me? Or all of that? And it’d be like, they’d be like, yeah, sure.

[01:01:38] Nathan: I only get asked that like 10 times a week, but you know, we’ll try to slot you in with everybody else.

[01:01:44] Haley: Yeah.

[01:01:45] Nathan: And. The promotion for the book or, uh, getting them to talk about kit was not the goal of the event.

[01:01:53] Haley: No.

[01:01:53] Nathan: But you realize that like investing in them, their businesses, their relationships mm-hmm. Made them be like, okay, so how can we help you?

[01:02:00] Haley: A hundred percent. Yeah. Okay. I love to talk about failures too. Mm-hmm. And let me tell you, a failure, not a failure, it’s just like a miss. I think. So we had in this room it was. Ex pretty much exclusively nonfiction authors. Yeah. We had a couple of people that fell that were a slightly outside

[01:02:16] Nathan: little memoir.

[01:02:17] Haley: Yeah. And, um, all that to say, we talked a lot about this with Madeline actually, is that there’s the nonfiction world and there’s the fiction world, and both groups do incredibly, they do things really, really well. Right. And so this world, the nonfiction world, they’re typically pretty dang excellent marketers.

[01:02:37] Haley: Mm-hmm. Right? So they’re very good at the growing the thought leader business where then you have the nonfiction world. And the nonfiction world is insane at like book talk and grassroots marketing. This the fiction world, the, sorry, the fiction world Yep. Is insane at that grassroots book talk sort of thing.

[01:02:52] Haley: And the two of them I wish. And for the next one, we’ll, we’ll do something where we actually bring together a few nonfiction and fiction authors, right? Because then you’re learning from someone that’s doing something slightly different. And I love to do this in the creator world as well, where we’re saying, okay, you’re a food content creator and you’re a, you know, a business coach.

[01:03:10] Haley: Like, let’s help you learn from one another. Because there’s often a lot of things that we’re all like in our own lane, doing our own thing. Mm-hmm. And we forget to look, you know. At the strategies tactic. Yeah.

[01:03:21] Nathan: People who said like, ’cause it started like, oh, what could nonfiction learn from fiction or all of that.

[01:03:27] Nathan: And then a few people were like, actually you should really learn from is the romance authors.

[01:03:31] Haley: Ooh. Yeah.

[01:03:31] Nathan: Because the volume is so much higher, like units sold, they’re, they also tend to be very digital first, you know, of. Tons of Kindle sales.

[01:03:41] Haley: You know what was shocking to me is how many people in the room didn’t know what smut was.

[01:03:45] Haley: Tori Dunlap and I are like, let me tell you Nathan also, ’cause as I said, you know, maybe not smut, but fourth wing. There you

[01:03:53] Nathan: go. Yeah,

[01:03:53] Haley: you go. And

[01:03:54] Nathan: I also like, love when Madeline was like, yeah, you all have good book sales numbers, but like romance, you know, are these categories Uhhuh? Like they put sales numbers put all of you.

[01:04:03] Haley: Yeah. Sarah Jane Mass. Like, and you know, like I said, her being on call her daddy like very recently, come on. I mean, I,

[01:04:08] Nathan: we also tried to brainstorm what James clear’s call her daddy would be like, for some reason that didn’t, didn’t take off yet. No,

[01:04:15] Haley: no.

[01:04:15] Nathan: It’ll happen.

[01:04:16] Haley: Um, but so true. Yeah. I was very, I loved my contribution to the, to the group.

[01:04:20] Haley: I was like, well, let me, I got you. I’m gonna bring one value add and it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be smut. It’s gonna be smut. Tori was right there with me. Yeah. She, she led the charge though, so yeah,

[01:04:30] Nathan: she was all about it. Something else that stood out to me was the whole conversation around year two and beyond.

[01:04:36] Nathan: Because a lot of these people have, you know, launched their first or their second book, it’s sold well, maybe had a big spike on the New York Times list and then started to drop off. And they all wanna talk about, okay, where do you go from here? And basically everyone that has had sales that have, you know, endured or stayed consistent.

[01:04:52] Nathan: Never stopped promoting the book.

[01:04:53] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:54] Nathan: And they went to theming it around specific events, like, how can I tie my book to high school graduation? Mm-hmm. How can I tie my book to Mother’s Day, father, you know, whatever to

[01:05:04] Haley: Yeah.

[01:05:04] Nathan: Um, you know, the new New Year, uh, to Christmas. Anything that’s like giftable.

[01:05:10] Nathan: Then they’re just promoting relentlessly. Mm-hmm. And they’re like figuring out a way to put their book into a bunch of different places.

[01:05:16] Haley: I just remembered one that I loved that we forgot to talk about, um, is the experience of reading a book in a specific place. So one of the authors posted, like on social media, it was like every, he kept posting, he wanted people to be reading his book on the beach.

[01:05:32] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:32] Haley: And like he wanted to create that team. That’s the

[01:05:34] Nathan: vibe of the book.

[01:05:35] Haley: Yes.

[01:05:35] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:05:36] Haley: Yeah. It’s the vibe of the book. So the, the social media posts that went out that we’re constantly sharing or like anytime somebody, and it just became the identity of the book is to read it in a place that provides you, brings you extreme amounts of peace.

[01:05:50] Haley: Mm-hmm. And so that is something that lives on in a totally different way. You’re like, oh. I’m like, oh, I saw my friend Chelsea reading this book on the beach. I’m gonna read this book on the beach. Yeah. You know, um, loved, I helped

[01:06:01] Nathan: shape the identity of the book.

[01:06:02] Haley: Yeah.

[01:06:02] Nathan: Which was kind of crazy to think about.

[01:06:04] Nathan: ’cause in that example. It was after the book was released.

[01:06:07] Haley: Yes.

[01:06:08] Nathan: And there’s these broader themes where you’re like, of course they would fit in with that, but it wasn’t a deliberate thing until starting to notice this trend. And then it’s like, okay. Let’s take the spark of something and let’s make it a whole thing.

[01:06:18] Haley: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:18] Nathan: And that’s driven a ton of sales and, you know, it shaped this

[01:06:22] Haley: identity. And for many of the authors in the room, their, their books were very evergreen. You know, like Jefferson Fisher’s book, the next conversation is never gonna go out of style. Right. I can promise you this world needs the help of learning how to have hard conversations more easily.

[01:06:38] Haley: Um, but all that to say, that was an interesting part in the conversation because, um, many people were like just riding the wave of that one book. James still hasn’t written a second book. Right. So hasn’t, but he’s built in all of these systems to continue to support the growth of that book. And I think actually it was James that was talking about graduation, you know, you’re going off into the real world, uh, child.

[01:06:58] Haley: Mm-hmm. You should probably build some habits, you know? Um, but yeah, no, that was a, that was an interesting conversation too, thinking about everyone’s different mindset around how they promote and continue to promote these evergreen books. Um, or if their book maybe feels less timeless.

[01:07:13] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:13] Haley: Um. Where they think or how they think about promoting it.

[01:07:17] Nathan: This event was such a hit. Yeah. That we were immediately like, okay, we have to do more masterminds. And we’ve done quite a few and they

[01:07:23] Haley: Yeah.

[01:07:23] Nathan: You know, but we wanted to make a space for it. And so that’s something that we’re doing deliberately in New York where in, you know, Kitsu, Boise and Chicago, you can host things here and, and they’re, but they’re not made for events.

[01:07:35] Nathan: Mm-hmm. And so with New York, you’ve got me to splurge for the, the big, fancy expensive space.

[01:07:41] Haley: And I love spending other people’s money,

[01:07:44] Nathan: particularly mine.

[01:07:45] Haley: Yeah.

[01:07:45] Nathan: Um, and our idea is that we wanna host a lot more of these things. We wanna partner with specific creators where they could bring in an audience, we could bring it as well, we can co-teach, facilitate this

[01:07:57] Chelsea: uhhuh

[01:07:57] Nathan: and just create this community.

[01:07:59] Nathan: ’cause really all we did, I mean, I don’t wanna downplay the amount of work, but we didn’t.

[01:08:04] Chelsea: Yes. Let’s say we, there’s a,

[01:08:08] Nathan: it’s not like we planned a conference worth of programming or all of that.

[01:08:11] Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:12] Nathan: We curated a great group of people. Brought them to an excellent venue and then said, Hey, what’s on your mind?

[01:08:18] Nathan: What do you wanna learn? We curated the programming around that and really leaned on the people in the room. Mm-hmm. And so it’s a format that we can do over and over again. Really a format that any creator could do where they could say, look, I have friends who are at my level, uh, or a little bit beyond, um, and I want to, um, you know, I wanna learn from them, so let me book a space.

[01:08:39] Nathan: We all split the cost in some way and let’s make this happen. And that’s something that, you know, James and I did early on with our mastermind and it was fun. Now, I don’t know, seven, 10 years later,

[01:08:50] Haley: I was gonna say was the last time that y’all did a mastermind with you and your group of guys?

[01:08:56] Nathan: 2017, probably nine.

[01:08:59] Nathan: Yeah, probably eight or nine years ago.

[01:09:01] Haley: Yeah.

[01:09:01] Chelsea: Was it that photo on the bridge that James hasn’t aged a single day?

[01:09:05] Nathan: No. That was the first mastermind that we,

[01:09:07] Chelsea: Nathan has aged 10 years.

[01:09:09] Haley: Dramatic. He was a teen and now he’s mad.

[01:09:13] Nathan: Yeah. I did show Chelsea that photo and she’s like, James, looking exactly the same,

[01:09:16] Chelsea: is drinking the

[01:09:17] Nathan: fountain of Youth.

[01:09:19] Haley: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:09:21] Chelsea: That continue.

[01:09:22] Haley: Yes. Sorry.

[01:09:22] Nathan: Yeah. Uh, no, that was, that was the whole thing.

[01:09:26] Haley: As far as New York goes, there’s nothing more. Um, I, when I think about my role, and sometimes it’s, it’s hard to like quantify my role sometimes, but I, there’s nothing better than bringing people together in a room, whether it’s craft and commerce or a small scale event, like a mastermind like this, or it’s at another event, right.

[01:09:45] Haley: You’re just creating a dinner or something like that. Um, the unique thing about this particular event is that it is hard. To get a room full of New York Times bestsellers together. Right, right. Because there are very few people that are at that level. And so I think a really good takeaway is you find someone, to your point, you find a group of people that are all at very, you know, your stage and maybe one or two levels above where you’re at.

[01:10:10] Haley: Um, and you all get to work on this shared goal together. And I mean really that’s how you and James’ relationship was established in the first place. And look where y’all are at now

[01:10:20] Nathan: when I think that’s an important thing to call out. ’cause most people would say like, well of course you can do that because you’re friends with

[01:10:26] Haley: Right

[01:10:26] Nathan: people at this, at this caliber.

[01:10:27] Nathan: And it’s like, that’s not where we started. Right. We had nothing going on. And we just said, Hey. We have similar goals, we’re equally driven. Let’s, let’s make something together and then, you know, like build our businesses together.

[01:10:40] Haley: Yeah. And this is pre Atomic Habits, James. Yeah. You know, and

[01:10:43] Nathan: by like six years.

[01:10:44] Haley: Yeah. By, by a lot. By a lot. So, no. Okay.

[01:10:47] Nathan: This ties into actually my, um, strategy for city league sports.

[01:10:53] Haley: Okay. What,

[01:10:54] Nathan: I’m so excited for you to see what happen. Where are we

[01:10:56] Haley: going with this,

[01:10:57] Nathan: this transition? I am not very gifted when it comes to soccer and volleyball. I did not play either sport in like high school or anything like that.

[01:11:05] Nathan: And I often wanna play on teams that are better than my skill level

[01:11:09] Haley: uhhuh. And

[01:11:09] Nathan: so you’d say like in that, like, oh, you don’t belong here. The way that you belong is you curate the team. If you register the team, do all of the work, recruit everybody and all of that. They’re like, like on my soccer team, they’re like, you’re not good enough to play on this team.

[01:11:25] Nathan: But like, we’re all really grateful. Like none of us would be here. None of us

[01:11:27] Haley: would’ve put this together.

[01:11:28] Nathan: Would’ve put it together. And so they’re, yeah, of course Stanley gets to play, you know, on the volleyball team, you know, I can recruit all of these college athletes to come play with me. Uhhuh teach me how to play the game, and no one is like.

[01:11:39] Nathan: Why are you here? How do we kick you off the team? Mm-hmm. They’re like, I’m so glad you put it together. Now will you please get better?

[01:11:44] Haley: They’re investing, they’re, well, you know, it’s funny because I do talk about this every once in a while because my friends think it’s weird that you like to play volleyball.

[01:11:52] Haley: They think it’s weird that as an adult man, you wanna learn how to play volleyball. And I’m like, I think it’s awesome. But all that to say, um, I am invested in you getting better at this point. I am invested in you transitioning behind the 10 foot line and keeping the ball in front of you on a quick attack.

[01:12:07] Haley: Like that is, I am invested in it. And it sounds silly, but it really is true. It’s like I am, I am several levels above you. Yes.

[01:12:17] Chelsea: Several is generous, I think too.

[01:12:19] Haley: Yeah. Several. But, but no, I’m invested in your growth. Yeah. And

[01:12:22] Nathan: yeah, and, and I think the same thing is true for masterminds or events or something like that.

[01:12:26] Nathan: I’ve seen it over and over again where a creator will, you know, maybe they have 10,000 followers and they’re like, I don’t belong in the room of the people with 50,000 followers or revenue, or whatever the number is that you’re using.

[01:12:37] Haley: Yeah.

[01:12:38] Nathan: But they get in the room and they provide value because they’re the ones who curated it.

[01:12:43] Nathan: Mm-hmm. And so they’re the ones who pulled everybody together. And everyone, basically, two things happen. One people say like, yes, I’d love to come because of the other people in the room. You may not have the name pull yourself, but the people that you brought and you know, do. And then the second thing is, in your journey, you now have all of these other people, like my roster of, uh, you know, D one college athletes, uh, who are then invested in your journey.

[01:13:08] Nathan: And they’re like, oh, we wanna help you with your book launch, with whatever else. And you end up in this. It’s the, the cliche of like, you know, you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with. And so it’s like, okay, be really deliberate with how you curate that and it works. Very.

[01:13:21] Haley: That was my goal.

[01:13:22] Haley: I was just trying to get all the people in the room. I was like, how can I have all these people help me?

[01:13:27] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:13:27] Haley: On Nathan’s dime.

[01:13:30] Nathan: That’s right. All right, Chelsea. What? That

[01:13:31] Chelsea: actually was a really good analogy, so, okay. Thank you. I’m glad we went there. I was just gonna say too, also get on the plane, right?

[01:13:37] Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Like if somebody invites you somewhere. We had somebody fly in from what Belgium just for the day, even though they’re already a three time New York Times bestseller and you know, and then they flew back to Hong Kong or something the next day because they’re on a book tour and just like, get on the plane and go if you’re invited or you know, you just never know what you’re gonna learn.

[01:13:57] Chelsea: And you know, they sent us such a nice message of being like, this was so wonderful. I’m so glad I came and

[01:14:02] Nathan: we’re like, you flew for 24 hours to be here.

[01:14:04] Haley: Yeah, yeah.

[01:14:05] Chelsea: To be here for 48.

[01:14:06] Haley: Would you let Nathan fly 24 hours to go? Are we going

[01:14:09] Chelsea: back to Dubai again? Is this.

[01:14:13] Haley: I am not

[01:14:14] Chelsea: gonna

[01:14:14] Haley: say it. You

[01:14:14] Chelsea: said it.

[01:14:15] Haley: Now that I know

[01:14:16] Nathan: the value of being in the room.

[01:14:17] Nathan: Yes. All right. Chelsea, who’s approved in charge of my schedule Yes. Has just given Hailey permission to

[01:14:24] Haley: push

[01:14:24] Nathan: me all around the

[01:14:24] Haley: world. The entire reason why I hired Chelsea, I hired Chelsea, is to further manipulate Nathan. Let’s be honest. Yeah, exactly. So, um,

[01:14:33] Chelsea: control. Control. Mm-hmm. Control

[01:14:36] Nathan: now that this episode is fully off the rails.

[01:14:38] Haley: Yeah, exactly.

[01:14:39] Nathan: Any closing thoughts?

[01:14:40] Haley: Uh, let’s leave it at what Chelsea said, like get on the plane, be in the room, and if you can’t be in the room, create the room. Mm-hmm.

[01:14:47] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:14:47] Haley: Right. Because you can put in the effort to put together a stacked soccer volleyball team. Um, so if you can’t, if you can’t be in the room, create the room.

[01:14:55] Haley: Mm-hmm. And, um, I mean, that’s my favorite thing is, is creating an experience for other people. So, um. Sometimes you’re just not gonna get invited. And

[01:15:06] Chelsea: yeah,

[01:15:07] Haley: you can make the room,

[01:15:08] Chelsea: make it yourself.

[01:15:08] Nathan: I love that. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment.

[01:15:17] Nathan: I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else do you think we should have on the show? Thank you so much for listening.