How Writing Online Will Make You A Millionaire - Nathan Barry

Ali Abdaal 0:00 You wrote 1000 words a day for 600 days in a row.

Nathan Barry 0:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 0:03 What the fuck? [laughs]

Nathan Barry 0:04 [laughs] I'm never someone that's content to go at the same pace as everyone else.

Ali Abdaal 0:09 Mm.

Nathan Barry 0:10 You set the pace, right? Do you want this to take multiple years? Sometimes it should, and sometimes it's best for you. Or do you wanna get it done very quickly? That's been probably the defining factor in my life.

Ali Abdaal 0:19 That's absolutely insane. This week's episode is with Nathan Barry, who's the founder and CEO of ConvertKit, a software company valued at over $100 million. And Nathan's story is absolutely fantastic. He started off working a normal job, realized he didn't particularly enjoy his normal job, taught himself to do design and code type stuff, and started building apps for the iPhone App Store. And then later on, he transitioned away from that to build his software business.

Nathan Barry 0:42 I had these three posters on my wall in, like, my first real home office, and they were the three mantras of create every day, teach everything you know, and work in public. And that was like my equivalent of, of show your work. I guess the way to put it is, it is simple, but not easy.

Ali Abdaal 0:56 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 0:57 And so if you get clear with yourself that like, "Okay, I am setting out to do something that is in fact very difficult and I have to design my day around making sure that this can happen. This has to become my number one priority in my business." Then at that point, you can actually make it happen.

Ali Abdaal 1:13 Oh, by the way, in case you have not yet heard, my book is about to come out. It's called Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You, and it's a book that I've been working on for the last three years. Now, it's being published at the end of December 2023, but pre-orders are actually available. And I know people don't like pre-ordering the book, but if you do pre-order the book and you email me your receipt, you will get completely free access to a live exclusive event that I'm hosting in the first weekend of January of 2024, and this is a live online workshop all about annual planning, goal setting, and reflection. And so I'm gonna be facilitating a group with hopefully hundreds of people from all around the world, and we're gonna be going through how to figure out what to do with our life and how to turn that into goals for the year, and how to build systems and how to be consistent with stuff, and how to make sure that we are enjoying the journey along the way. That is purely exclusively available for people who pre-order the book as a thank you for our little community. So if you wanna check it out, you can check out the book. You can maybe consider pre-ordering it. The link will be down in the video description.

Ali Abdaal 2:06 Nathan, welcome to the podcast.

Nathan Barry 2:07 Thank you for having me.

Ali Abdaal 2:08 Thank you so much for coming. This is gonna be so much fun.

Nathan Barry 2:09 I'm excited.

Ali Abdaal 2:10 Um, so I'd love to start off with your backstory. Um, how did you come to care about making money?

Nathan Barry 2:18 Yeah. Okay. So I grew up in a family where there wasn't a lot of money. Uh, my dad worked in a ministry and, uh, everyone... You know, supported by donations. And so, uh, I actually grew up in a house, or like was born in a house up in the mountains outside of Boise and, and, uh, you know, it was like a, a tiny house before tiny houses were cool. [laughs] Um, now I have a tiny house as my office, and it's much cooler than the one that I grew up in. But, um, yeah. So I watched, like, the struggle of money or the lack of money be, like, kind of a defining factor of childhood. You know, like there was always enough food, but you know, not much more than that. And so growing up, I watched, uh, my parents fight about money. I watched the stress that that caused and then them ultimately divorce and somewhere along there I realized like, "Oh, you can actually make money." I think it was probably, oh, maybe late high school, early college when I first started reading like Jason Fried and DHH from Basecamp, and Jason talked about how making money is a skill.

Ali Abdaal 3:23 Mm.

Nathan Barry 3:23 And you can get better with it, better at it over time. And that stood out to me 'cause it... The point that he was making is you wouldn't expect to sit down at the piano and be able to play like some amazing song without practice. In the same way you wouldn't expect or you shouldn't expect to be able to sit down and, you know, start a company and it to do fantastic. And so really it's a combination of not one skill, but like a thousand little skills, just in the same way that music is, right? You, you know, there's music theory and timing and everything else and, and business is, you know, uh, confidence in sales and marketing and pricing and, you know, all the audience building. And so when I understood that, that making money was a skill that you could get better at with practice, then I was like, "Okay, I'm going to be, you know, the..." [laughs] Like someone else could be the child prodigy in music, like that is what I'm going to be a- absolutely as good as I can at making money.

Ali Abdaal 4:11 Yeah, so even hearing you say that, that making money is a skill, it's... And I, I've, I, I notice myself having a bit of a moment of surprise. I'm like, "Oh yeah, I, I guess it is." Because I guess it's, it's obvious that playing the piano is a skill, but it's not that... It's, it's weirdly not that obvious that making money is a skill.

Nathan Barry 4:30 Well, I think you can't see it, right? I can't sit down. I'm like, I'm like, "Ali, let me, let me just watch you make money." You know? And it, it, it's very indirect. I can watch you play the piano and y- yeah, I could watch you, you know, do scales or, or build up, you know, these individual things and put it together into a song and, and all of that. But, um, the skills of making money are a little bit more abstract, and we tend to assign them to things like, um, "Oh, she's good at sales because she has that natural charisma," right? Or, uh, you know, "He's just gifted with being a good copywriter." But these are all skills that are learned and, and sometimes people are better at them than others, right? If you grew up in a family that, uh, music was all around you, uh, then you might, uh, take more naturally or you might have more of a natural ability towards some of those things in the same way that someone might have more of a natural ability, um, towards sales or marketing or some of these thing, things. But all of them have to be learned. Think about the first time you tried to sell something on the internet, right?

Ali Abdaal 5:32 Mm.

Nathan Barry 5:32 What product... Like how do you do that? When I tried to do it, you know, I'm like, ClickBank, Ejunkie, how do you even get money on-

Ali Abdaal 5:40 Yeah

Nathan Barry 5:40 ... like from a, a person to me? And now there's a lot more tools, uh, for it and it's easier, but it's still something that you have to learn, right? Uh, creating a landing page for the first time, that is a skill, right? If you look at the first landing pages that a lot of content creators make, they're terrible.

Ali Abdaal 5:56 Mm.

Nathan Barry 5:57 Because they don't understand that the, that the headline should capture attention. But once you know that, you never unlearn it. And so now, you know, years later after you've been doing this, you're like, "I don't know, I made a landing page in a half hour."

Ali Abdaal 6:10 Mm.

Nathan Barry 6:10 And of course it captured attention. Like, it, of course it checked all these boxes in the same way, uh, that, you know, using music as the analogy, right? Like, you- your timing is good.

Ali Abdaal 6:19 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 6:19 Because you have learned that. And so I think that's the thing that we miss. And s- and it's hard as a beginner where you're like, it just, it feels so unknown, and there's so many skills, and then someone who's been doing it a long time just sits down and, and it seems so natural because they have re- rehearsed for, in many cases, a decade or several decades.

Ali Abdaal 6:38 Yeah. No, that's such a good point. I think ... So I, I made my first landing page when I was, like, 13 years old, advertising my web design services. We'll put it up on screen if we can find, if I can find that screenshot, 'cause I still have it. It's just so funny. Um, yeah, it was like, you know, "Want a website for your business or your life? Call this number," and I put my home number on it.

Nathan Barry 6:55 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 6:55 It was like, and I made up some name. It's like UAE Web Solutions, like some shitty agency.

Nathan Barry 6:59 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 6:59 Um, but then sort of 15 years later when we ma- when we're whipping up landing pages for our products that are doing sort of millions in revenue, and the team is just, like, looking at me and being like, "Whoa, how did you just do that?" And I'm like, "Oh, I mean, it's just like, you know, you know, whether it's Webflow or WordPress or Kajabi, it's all the same kind of stuff."

Nathan Barry 7:15 Right.

Ali Abdaal 7:15 You just, like, put it together. It's just like, oh, you know, this is obviously the headline, and there's, like, this whole-

Nathan Barry 7:19 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 7:19 ... thing that goes into it. But seeing it as a skill is, I guess, something I've not really, not really considered.

Nathan Barry 7:25 Yeah, and it, it's really, uh, the combination of a lot of different skills, right? If you learn web design, at some point in there y- you probably learned about, uh, user experience and, and did some user research and, you know, you understand, like, the flow of eye tracking and the, like, eye movement over a page. It tends to go in a Z format where people, um, you know, at least in, in, uh, English-speaking, uh, countries tend to read left to right, and then they'll angle down. And so if you want a call to action, you're gonna typically put it ... Like, if I want you to, to do something, that's gonna be in the lower right. And, you know, th- at one point that was something that I learned, and that was probably 15 years ago.

Ali Abdaal 8:01 Mm.

Nathan Barry 8:01 And now it's just very intuitive. And so when I come across a page and someone's like, "Oh, this isn't converting well," it's like, okay, well, let's flip the left and right columns. Let's, you know, let's change this headline. Your ... There's so many design things as well. Design is one of these skills that, um, I feel very, like, blessed to have learned early on.

Ali Abdaal 8:19 Mm.

Nathan Barry 8:19 Because it just applies to everything. And someone's like, "Oh, uh, this page isn't converting." I'm like, "Well, yeah, it's because everything has the same visual weight," right? Let's make your headline a little bit bigger. That subheadline, let's make it a bit smaller. You know, you don't have to use black text for everything, right? Let's go to, like, a 70, 80% gray, you know? And, and you just add this level of quality and polish to it that becomes very natural when, when you do it, and it spreads out through everything. Um, and I see that so often with content creators where they put out this amazing content, especially written content, right? They say words matter. Words are the most important thing. And they are, but how you package them changes how they're perceived, and that's what's gonna drive if someone actually really engages with it.

Ali Abdaal 9:07 Mm-hmm.

Nathan Barry 9:07 So the number of eBooks that I come across where the content is so good and the actual packaging and, and design of it is so bad, and I'm like, you're missing out on probably half of your audience because they'll just be like, oh, you know, the packaging isn't very good, and yes, I am judging a book by its cover or whatever else, and, and I'm moving on. Because if you didn't put that level of care into one aspect of it, the content's probably not that great either.

Ali Abdaal 9:31 Mm. And, and so as, uh, in my team, we s- we still use your Authority eBook that you made, like, 10 years ago as, like, this is what a PDF should look like. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 9:41 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 9:41 'Cause, like, we often, like, package up things as, like, worksheets and workbooks and stuff-

Nathan Barry 9:44 Right

Ali Abdaal 9:44 ... for YouTuber Academy and things, and I'm just like sending them authority.pdf to be like, like th- th- yeah-

Nathan Barry 9:49 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 9:49 ... this is a good PDF. Don't just make it a simple, like, Microsoft, like, Apple Pages-

Nathan Barry 9:52 Right

Ali Abdaal 9:52 ... and print. Yeah.

Nathan Barry 9:54 That was actually, uh ... Apple used to have a product around making, uh, eBooks specifically. And I'm trying to remember what it was 'cause that wasn't done in Pages or something else. It was done in this other product that they've since discontinued 'cause it was, like, for the whole iBook format and all of that. And I found that that was the best design tool that wasn't like, uh, Adobe InDesign or something, you know, like a full-

Ali Abdaal 10:17 Yeah

Nathan Barry 10:17 ... a full thing. But that, that's funny that you [laughs] keep doing that.

Ali Abdaal 10:19 Yeah, no, this

Ali Abdaal 10:20 is good. Um, okay, so just st- sticking on this idea of making money as a skill, um, just for one m- one moment. Um, a lot of people ... So it, it sounds like the, like, the way, the way that we're talking about it is it's, right now it's, it's almost a given that we're talking about having your own business and learning all the skills to making money within your own business. Which I think is also a niche way of thinking about making money because for, like, 99.99% of the population, making money is the thing that's tied to your job.

Nathan Barry 10:46 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 10:46 I wonder, like, h- what are, what are your thoughts on, like, having a job versus having a business? And I guess in your early days, what took you down th- that, the having a business route rather than the getting a job route?

Nathan Barry 10:57 Well, so if you think about the ability to increase your earnings in a job, you're fairly limited, right? The default is you're going to get some, um, cost of living increase, right? 3 to 5% a year maybe. Um, now it won't outpace inflation [laughs] but, uh, you know, or you're going to have to jump roles and level up, right? And, and we've seen lot, a lot of people, and I had that in my own career where the first job that I had was making 60,000 a year as a designer, the first professional job. I worked at Wendy's doing, uh, [laughs] food service and, you know, and did plenty of web design and all that, uh, as well. But in any job, for the most part, your earnings are going to be very closely tied to your time, and you can't really separate those. And so I wanted to get to the point not where I was making 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 a year. I wanted to get to the point where I was making millions a year. And there just aren't that many jobs where you're at that level. There actually are, but not in the same, not in the worlds that I grew up in.

Ali Abdaal 11:58 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 11:59 Right? I didn't grow up in the worlds of, uh, private equity and, you know. I dropped out of, out of school. Like, I did- didn't finish high school, dropped out of college, um- And, uh, and so I wasn't like, "Oh, you know, let's go to Stanford and do private equity or, or s- you know, some finance thing or, or anything like that." And so I was looking for ways that I could earn, you know, far more. And so I think that's where I've taken it on the, um, on the earning side is inputs and outputs are completely d- can be completely disconnected, um, when it comes to-

Ali Abdaal 12:36 So why not just think, "You know what? I've got a 60K job as a designer. I'm living in Boise, Idaho-"

Nathan Barry 12:41 Yep

Ali Abdaal 12:41 ... which is fairly low cost of living is my understanding.

Nathan Barry 12:43 Yep. It used to be. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 12:44 It used to be, I guess. I can, I can live a chill life. I go, go to work, do my nine to five, come home, I chill. Like, why not be content with that lot in life?

Nathan Barry 12:54 That-- I mean, that's a good question. I, I think I've always been a creator. Like, I've always made things. And so yeah, I'm, I'm constantly learning and constantly making and, uh, I, like, I think I'd just get really, really bored. And I actually... I spent two and a half years working as a software designer at this startup, and I had done freelance web design for a couple of years. Uh, and then in 2000-- the beginning of 2009, so at least in the US the economy was down like crazy and all of my clients like stopped hiring except for this one company and they, you know, they were like, "Hey, we have even more work. Actually, do you wanna just come on full time?" And so I joined them and were there for two and a half years. And during that time I watched them raise a ton of venture capital. Uh, I think I was employee 15. It maybe peaked at 70 or 80 employees, and then they did a few rounds of layoffs and, you know, I, I eventually left. Um, but that was something... I remember going through that process and finding that I was losing a lot of the skills that I valued about myself, right? I think it's really interesting if you were to write down like what do you value about yourself? And there's probably some things, you know, uh, like h-how you are as a friend and other things that are like really good. But then, then there's others that are, that you value about yourself that are, um, maybe a little more dangerous, uh, in the sense that they're, they're tied to things that you control less. So one thing that I value, uh, uh, about myself and really valued a lot then is how productive I was and how fast I was. When I worked food service at Wendy's, uh, it was all about speed, right? How can you maintain this bar of quality and go very, very fast? 'Cause when you work the drive-through, there's this big timer over the window, and it's basically the amount of time from when a car starts their order to when they're driving away with their food, right? And we were trying to go... We went under 60 seconds.

Ali Abdaal 14:52 Okay.

Nathan Barry 14:52 Um, and so we'd like call up other stores and be like, "Okay, for the lunch rush, you know, uh, we're gonna get 58 seconds. What are you gonna get?" And they're like, "Okay, we're gonna get, uh, I don't know, 57." You know, you're like trying to compete with them, which is a friendly thing. But we got very, very fast and efficient. And when I did web design, when I went from working per hour to working per project, then I realized that for the first time, the speed and efficiency benefits me. When you work at Wendy's, it's like, "Wow, you're so fast. Let's have a raise from $6 an hour to $6.50 an hour." [laughs] You're like, "I think I worked really hard, and you know, that's not benefiting me." And hourly work, you know, maybe as a web designer it's $50 an hour or something. Um, but when I went to, "Oh, let me charge $2,000 for a project," then I was like, wait, the faster I am at this, my hourly rate increases substantially. And so then I was like, okay, how do I template things? How do I stay super focused in all of this? And then when I went and joined this company, I realized that I was losing those skills because no one else in that environment cared that much about working quickly, especially as the company started to struggle. You know, um, there was that first round of layoffs. People let, would spend time like standing around the pool table, uh, complaining about how they didn't get paid enough. And I was like, "None of us are even working right now," [laughs] you know? And so what I actually did is I realized that I, in my design coding abilities, I realized I had lost the skill of speed, right? And I didn't hone and refine it over the previous two years, and I, I had lost that. I would sit down to work on a side project, uh, at night, and I realized like I wasn't very good at focus. I couldn't... You know, something that used to take me two hours to code out was now taking me three, four, five hours. And so what I actually decided to do is w- one, I decided I was not gonna lose that part of my identity.

Ali Abdaal 16:43 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 16:44 Right? Like that would be a valuable skill. I'm like, no, no, I'm not losing that. And so I ended up switching, [laughs] switching my desk, uh, from one that was like in the middle of a big room, like someone else had left, and so there was one way off in the corner and I got that. And I decided that I was going to be the best employee on that team and I was gonna do it in three hours a day.

Ali Abdaal 17:03 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 17:04 And I was gonna spend all the rest of my time like learning to design and code iOS apps, uh, you know, other things, right? And so instead of moving at the slow pace of everyone else and like just turning into someone that I didn't wanna be, um, I was like, okay, I still need this job. [laughs] But I'm gonna knock out all of my work, make sure, you know, I'm ahead of schedule and everything, and then I'm gonna be in a place where you can't see my monitor and I'm gonna be studying how to build iOS apps.

Ali Abdaal 17:31 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 17:32 And I'm gonna be coding on my own side projects. And I rebuilt that, that speed and that ability to work quickly. And so then six, three to six months later when I left, uh, that company, you know, I had a s- uh, a stable of, you know, iOS apps that were making money and I had new skills that I'd built up. Um, but yeah, that, that's the thing of like I'm never someone that's content to go at the same pace as everyone else.

Ali Abdaal 17:57 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 17:58 What do you think was it about you that sort of m- made you different from the other people on your team who were content to chill for eight hours a day and complain about how much they were being paid?

Nathan Barry 18:07 [laughs] I just love the juxtaposition between those two things where I'm like- [laughs] It'd be one thing if we were the absolute best team, but we weren't. I've always wanted to get the most out of my time and, and move as quickly as possible. So I was homeschooled, and I grew up, um, w- with my parents really teaching me that I set the pace. So I remember two different things. Um, the first is I was probably 11 or 12 years old, and we lived, uh, up in the mountains, and so I remember just the most beautiful snow coming down in the winter, and I loved sledding. And I'm just... I, I've got, you know, algebra that I'm supposed to work on, and I'm looking outside and s- like, the snow looks so good, and I just can't focus on it. And I think I complained to my mom about it, uh, and sh- and she goes, "You know, you just have a set amount of work to get done. It doesn't have to take an hour or five hours or whatever. Like, you don't have to sit here and do school till 3:00 PM. You just need to be, be here and do school until it's done." And, like, that is the most focused 11-year-old you've probably ever seen, where I was like, [laughs] "Okay, great. Let's get it all done," all of that. You know, my little brother's in our room. You're like, "No, I don't have time for this. Like, I gotta, [laughs] I gotta get my school done so I can go sledding." And I think like an hour or two later, I was out there sledding because I realized that, like, if you cut out all the complaining when you're studying math and all that, [laughs] like, it goes remarkably faster. Um, so that was the first thing where realizing like, okay, uh, it, it's not a fixed amount of time. And the second thing is, growing up, I spent the most time with my two older siblings. And so because I, like, tagged along with them and their friends, all of our friends were older than me. And so that wasn't really a problem through, like, kind of junior high, uh, high school ages. But really once I was just starting high school, they were all thinking about going off to college. And that's when I realized like, oh, this age gap is going to become very noticeable because, um, sure they're only two, three years older than me, but then, like, I'm going to be finishing out high school, and they're gonna be, uh, gonna be gone to college. And so I went back to my mom and I said, "You know, is high school, like, uh, a fixed amount of work or a fixed amount of time?" And so it's basically the same question that I asked her or that she had brought up about, you know, math homework on a snowy day, but applied to a bigger chunk of time. And, you know, she had homeschooled my older siblings who had already finished high school and, and so she said, "No, I have, I have the exact curriculum, you know, that you're going to go through. You can graduate high school whenever you complete this curriculum." And so I remember thinking that we, we would do these drives from Boise to Seattle, which is about eight or nine hours, uh, to go visit family every summer. And that was before iPads and, uh, all of that. And so I remember thinking like, "I'm really bored on this drive, and I'm really bored when I do math, so why don't I just combine these two?" And I would do, um, like a month's worth of math lessons on a drive over to Seattle. And I had one of my older brothers sitting next to me and, you know, whenever I got stuck, he could help me and, and we'd go through that. And so, uh, from when I was 13 to when I was 15, I finished all of the, like, high school curriculum, and then, uh, I graduated just a little before turning 16. Uh, and then I was off going to college and all of that. So really the idea of you set the pace. Derek Sivers talks about this in his book, Anything You Want, how he went through Berklee School of Music very, very quickly, um, because of this one professor that was like, "Let me teach you a semester's worth of music theory in like two days."

Ali Abdaal 21:57 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 21:58 Um, and Derek talks about how, like, the class goes at the pace of the slowest student. And sometimes that's you and sometimes that's someone else and it changes based on every topic, but like averages out it's going to be quite slow. And so I've just always been obsessed with this idea of you set the pace, right? Do you want this to take multiple years? Sometimes it should and sometimes it's best for you. Or do you wanna get it done very quickly? And, uh, yeah, that's-

Ali Abdaal 22:23 Awesome

Nathan Barry 22:23 ... that's probably a defining factor in my life.

Ali Abdaal 22:25 That's so good. I was just taking-- [clears throat] I was... I, I, I feel like I had so many kind of brainwaves as you were say, as you, as you were saying that. I think this, this idea of fixed work versus fixed time-

Nathan Barry 22:35 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 22:35 ... is really important, 'cause if you're, if you're, for example, working at Wendy's, that's fixed time.

Nathan Barry 22:40 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 22:40 Like, you know, the work is always gonna be there. It's not like if you work faster you can then put your feet up, I suspect.

Nathan Barry 22:46 [laughs] Right.

Ali Abdaal 22:47 But actually in most areas, if I think of every job that anyone that I know has or if you're s- if you're a student in school or university, it feels like fixed time but it's actually fixed work.

Nathan Barry 22:59 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 22:59 Like when I was working as a doctor I was, you know, it was fixed time. I was there from 8:00 till 6:00, but it was actually fixed work in that if I could see the patients quickly enough and to get everything done and get them seen, you know-

Nathan Barry 23:09 Yep, all the charts and everything else

Ali Abdaal 23:11 ... bill all of that kind of stuff, all of that stuff is done. Now I have some s- uh, n- I've got, I've got some spare time now and where a lot of my friends in that context were using that spare time or just sort of going at a leisurely pace because they know they have to be there until 6:00 PM anyway and 'cause why not? It's a bit more chill. In their spare time they were like scrolling TikTok or whatever the thing was.

Nathan Barry 23:29 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 23:29 Whereas in my spare time I had a side hustle and so I was like, "Great, I've got an extra 20 minutes that I can like, you know, grind and plan out a new YouTube video or something like that."

Nathan Barry 23:38 Oh, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 23:39 Similarly when I was at university, you know, going through medical school I was like, "Okay, I need to get this essay done as quickly as possible so that I can tinker away on the business I was building on the side where I'm designing a landing page or making a site in WordPress or, and, and stuff like that." And it sounds like that was your approach when you had the day job as well.

Nathan Barry 23:55 Right.

Ali Abdaal 23:55 Like let me get this shit done as quickly as possible so that I can then use the rest of the five hours in the day while I'm being paid to be here to actually learn and improve my own skills and build my own stuff on the side.

Nathan Barry 24:04 Yeah, and I, I think that's so important, uh, but most people don't have that side thing and, and many of them are completely content with that, right? Um, I have a brother who has a great career in finance Super happy with what he's doing and, uh, and all that. And, and just has... You know, I'm over here, like, constantly starting all of these things and all of that. He doesn't care about that.

Ali Abdaal 24:24 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 24:24 I, I think we are both equally happy in life. Uh, and we just have very different, uh, different approaches. Um, and but it's just, it's core to who I am that I'm going to figure out, okay, what can I learn? What can I, uh, implement? And I always try to find the overlap, right? Like, when the iPad came out in 2010, for the startup I was working for, you know, we were designing iOS apps. And so then instead of, like, doing the minimum to, okay, I designed the app. Uh, at the time we were designing in Photoshop, that was enough. You know, I handed it off. That was all that was ex-expected of me. But then I would say, "Hey, why don't I learn how to use Interface Builder in Xcode to be able to implement the UI? And let me take that further and, and learn how to program." So it wasn't like I was at my job then doing something 100% different, um, on the side. I was saying, "Okay, how can I do what's expected of me but take it much further in a way that's going to benefit me long term," right?

Ali Abdaal 25:22 Mm-hmm.

Nathan Barry 25:22 Like, I learned programming skills there that were related to my job but not required that I went on to use, uh, for years. And I sold, you know, $50,000, $75,000 worth of iOS apps that I, you know, that were an amazing side hustle, thanks to the skills that I took further.

Ali Abdaal 25:39 Yeah, I think that's a really good point around... Uh, I think, like, if... Like, I'm, I'm always mindful when I, when I do these episodes spe-speaking to other entrepreneurs and stuff. It can, it can seem as if it's like, oh, starting a business is the only way to be happy.

Nathan Barry 25:52 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 25:52 But it's really not. Like, if someone listening to this or watching this is genuinely happy with their day job, fantastic.

Nathan Barry 25:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:58 You'll-- Like, the, the g- the goal is happiness, contentment, and meaning. The goal is not have a $100 million business. And if you get happiness, contentment, and meaning from the day job, which you really enjoy, and then you go home and do stuff on the side and, like, have hobbies and have work-life balance, then that, that is absolutely fantastic. That is what we're all trying to strive towards in s- in some way or another [laughs] . Um, but equally, I speak to a lot of my, a lot of people I know who have the day job and they're not content.

Nathan Barry 26:26 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 26:26 They're like, "Ugh, I'm feeling my skills are being stifled. I'm feeling like I'm losing a bit of myself. I used to have all these interests when I was a kid, and then they got squashed out of me by the education system," et cetera, et cetera.

Nathan Barry 26:35 Yeah, I'm capable of more.

Ali Abdaal 26:36 Yeah. And those people feel like, "Ah, you know, if only I could have an extra 3K, 5K a month of passive income or something like that. Oh my God, that would, that would be so liberating. It would b- it would buy my freedom."

Nathan Barry 26:46 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 26:47 Right? So there are some people in my team who say, as much as I encourage people to have side hustles, you know, Alison, our head of customer success, is like, "I don't want a side hustle. I just wanna chill. I enjoy my job. I enjoy my team."

Nathan Barry 26:56 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 26:56 "I... You know, I get home from work, and then I hang out with my friends, and I go see musicals in London." And I'm like, "Great." She's, like, one of the happiest people I know [laughs] . But I think it's that thing around, like, if you're complaining about your situation, then-

Nathan Barry 27:07 Right

Ali Abdaal 27:07 ... starting a business might actually be a reasonable, a, a reasonable option if you do feel like your job is not helping you reach your potential.

Nathan Barry 27:13 When I think you brought up something of, uh, you know, even the 1,000 to 3,000 a month from a side hustle. You're gonna get two huge things from that. First, all of that money is on top of what you already made, and so you don't have the same level of expenses that that money has to pay. And so it's actually, like, substantially different, um, you know, as far as the impact that it could make on, you know, your savings or your vacation budget or whatever it is that you value. And then the other thing is the skills that you learn. Like, in most companies, if, if say you're at least 10 to 20 people in the company, um, and then it's, it's especially true as you get into a 500 or 1,000 person company or beyond, right? There's someone else who knows how to do everything, like, tangential to your job. And so you're like, I do my thing and, you know, in my, in my case, right? I do the design in Photoshop, and I can hand it all off. There are talented people who will build a full app from that. And so you just don't have the same level of growth and development because you don't have to, right? Your job is to do your thing in your lane. And the people who say, like, "No, I want to know more about everything that my work touches," and become obsessed with how much can I learn, right? When you realize that your brain is not this, like, as new information comes in, something else has to go out, right? You're gonna do the digital nomad thing, right? You're gonna be like, "Okay, I have, you know, these two suitcases or something," and someone's g- gonna be like, "Here's this." And you're like, "What am I gonna get rid of, you know, to be able to make room for this new thing?" That is not how your brain works. You're going to be able to continue to take on new information. So, um, something that I'm, I'm, uh, learning how to be a pilot right now.

Ali Abdaal 28:52 Mm-hmm.

Nathan Barry 28:53 And so I'm, I'm partway through, uh, flight lessons. And something that, uh, a friend pointed out is, like, once you're a pilot, you're a pilot for life, like, your license is, is, is for life. Now you need to, like, stay current and, and all of those things and, um, do flight reviews. But I think of it the same way with any of these skills. Like, once you're a designer, you're a designer for life. Once you know, like, the principles of great video and, and production and all of that, like, you have that for life. And so I'm 33, and I'm thinking about, like, okay, what are these new skills that I have forever? And so when someone presents me with the opportunity to learn a new skill, then I'm like, "Oh, thank you." Like, uh, like, "This is amazing. What a gift." Because I'm gonna have that hopefully for the next 60 years. And, uh- Yeah, I, I think it's just a different mindset than a lot of people have, where you're just, like, trying to fill the time or finish the day

Ali Abdaal 29:44 Man, that's so good. Today's episode is very kindly brought to you by Huel. Now, I've personally been using Huel regularly since 2017 when I discovered it in my fifth year of medical school. And if you've not heard of Huel, they're a business that creates convenient, affordable meals in a variety of different forms, but all of them are nutritionally complete, so they have the perfect balance of nutrients, carbs, fibers, protein, and fat, and contain 26 vitamins and minerals. And they've now packaged some of their most popular products into their bestseller bundle, so you can try out all the Huel products and see which ones vibe with you. There is Huel Black Edition, which is my personal favorite because it's really tasty and it's high protein, so 40 grams of protein, and all you have to do is add water or milk and you can shake it up and take it with you wherever you want to go. The bundle also has Huel's instant meals, which you make in the microwave. There's Huel Ready to Drink range, which are pre-made shakes in a bottle, which is super handy. And I've actually grabbed a few of these in the airport when I've been between flights while traveling. And finally, you'll also get some of the new Huel bars, which I'm very excited to try out myself. Plus, if you're a new customer, you get a totally free Huel T-shirt and a shaker and pot with your first order. Now, I wouldn't recommend having every meal as Huel because that would get a bit much, but it's a fantastic supplement to a healthy, balanced diet. So often for me, I'll have Huel either for breakfast or for lunch, where the alternative would be to otherwise have a relatively unhealthy breakfast. And so Huel is a great way to make sure that you at least have the basics covered when you are living a hectic and/or busy life. Huel has very kindly been a longtime supporter of the podcast as well, and I actually did an interview with the founder of Huel, Julian Hearn, which was a great episode, and that's in season one of the Deep Dive podcast. So anyway, thank you so much, Huel, for sponsoring this episode. Now, this season is once again being sponsored very kindly by Trading 212. Now, people ask me all the time for investment advice, uh, because they see that I've made money and I've made videos talking about where I'm investing that money. The thing that Warren Buffett and basically everyone who's sensible in the space recommends, which is to invest in broad stock market index funds, which you can do completely for free using Trading 212. Trading 212 is a fantastic app that lets you invest in stocks and shares and funds in a commission-free fashion, and they've got a bunch of features which are really helpful, which is why I personally use Trading 212 to manage a portion of my portfolio. So firstly, they've got this great pies and auto invest feature. So if you're interested in potentially getting into investing, what you can do is you can browse the different pies that different people have created on the platform. So you might get, like, a hedge fund trader who's gone onto the platform and has created a pie of investments, having done a bunch of research and stuff, and that pie might be, like, I don't know, 20% Apple, 20% Tesla, 10% this, 10% that. But it... It's generally way more complicated than that. And you can see the performance of that particular pie of stocks and shares and funds. And then if you want to copy that pie into your own account, you can just copy and paste it directly in, and then you can invest any amount of money and it will automatically split it according to the allocation in the pie. So if you wanted to just play around with 100 pounds and you were like, "Okay, that pie looks good," it will split out that 100 pounds based on the allocations of the pie, which is pretty sick. They've also recently added support for multi-currency accounts. Now, this is really helpful because, for example, if you invest in the S&P 500, which is a US-based index fund, then you won't get hit with all the various foreign exchange fees if, for example, you're investing from the UK like I do. And if you have an invest or an ISA account, then Trading 212 also gives you daily interest on your uninvested cash in pounds or euros or US dollars. So if any of that sounds up your street, then do please hit the link in the video description or in the show notes, and that will let you sign up to Trading 212. And if you use that link, you will also get a completely free share up to the value of 100 pounds, so it's literally free money, so you might as well. So thank you so much, Trading 212, for sponsoring this episode.

Ali Abdaal 32:57 As, as much as I'm all about, like, growth and skill development and stuff, I have encountered situations recently where taking an opportunity would have allowed me to build n- build new skills.

Nathan Barry 33:08 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 33:08 So, so f- for example, one thing that we've been toying with the idea for a while, and maybe we'll talk about this when we talk about billion-dollar creators, is can we build our own productivity app?

Nathan Barry 33:16 Right.

Ali Abdaal 33:16 We've got enormous distribution. Even if we have feature parity with, with an existing productivity app, we can make our own to-do list and drive tons of traffic to it, and it would be great and, and stuff. But then I'm thinking, oh, but that would require either... That would either require me to hire a CTO or to try and learn the skills to become a CTO and figure out how to hire developers or figure out how to work with an agency, and then our costs go up, et cetera, et cetera. And I know I would learn a lot in that process of trying to build a consumer productivity app [laughs]

Nathan Barry 33:45 Right.

Ali Abdaal 33:45 And I know it would be pretty hard, but th- there seems to be in, in my, in my mind this trade-off of like, oh, it's, it's, it's too much effort. Like, it's-

Nathan Barry 33:53 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 33:54 ... it, it would teach me a lot of new things, but, ugh, it just feel, feels kind of hard. Like, does that vibe at all?

Nathan Barry 34:00 Yeah. Well, I think it's... The way that I think about setting goals is around what am I going to learn from this goal?

Ali Abdaal 34:06 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 34:06 Right? So we have a goal at ConvertKit of growing to 100 million a year in revenue.

Ali Abdaal 34:09 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 34:10 Uh, we sit at 40 million a year right now. And so, you know, in my head, there's, like, the little, uh... I don't... Do they do this in the UK? Like, with fundraising, uh, things, they'll have, like, a thermometer-

Ali Abdaal 34:20 Oh, yeah

Nathan Barry 34:20 ... they, like, color in. You know. So I'm like, "Okay, we're 40% to, uh, to goal." And it's not... I don't set the goal because I'm gonna hit self-actualization when revenue, like, tips over at that additional digit. What I think of is, what are the skills that I have to learn to build something to that level? And so we could talk about how, you know, one of the best paths for you to, um, build a business worth $100 million or more is, you know, consumer productivity app. And we could set that out and that's fantastic. But if we break down and go, "Okay, that's the goal. Who do you have to become in order to achieve that goal? What skills do you have to learn?" And if we write those out, y- and it's things that you talked about, right? You have to get very good at understanding, uh, user behavior, how to work with developers, how to hire, how to scale a team, like, all of these other things. And so you list out all the skills and if you're like, "Yeah, no, I, uh... Those skills aren't interesting to me," that person, right? If we look at future Ali who has to have those skills and be in that, if that life doesn't sound interesting to you, then great, move on to a different goal.

Ali Abdaal 35:32 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 35:32 I think too often we either set a goal, uh, without realizing what's going to be required to achieve it, who we have to become to achieve it Or we go the other way and say like, "Oh, this is what I'm trying to do. I want to get better at this one skill," without a goal in mind. And so I think the overlap of those two things, clearly understanding what's the goal and why, and then who do I have to become to achieve it, r- is what results in, you know, something that you're really, really proud of and willing to work on for long enough.

Ali Abdaal 36:01 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 36:01 'Cause if you're like, "Hey, I have this idea for an app. I'm gonna throw it together. You know, like it should be live in three months, and it should have 100,000 users i- by the end of the year," and, you know, like all of this stuff. Guess what? It's going to not work out that way. [laughs] Like it's going to be 10 times harder than you thought, take 10 times longer, and if you're, were just looking for like the neat way to use your audience for distribution, then you're gonna give up when it gets hard. But if you're like, "Oh no, this is the goal, this is the mission, and I'm very clear on who I have to become in order to achieve that," then you'll stick with it when things get really hard.

Ali Abdaal 36:35 Hmm. There's a journaling prompt I've started using, thinking about recently, which is... 'Cause you know people say that, um, one, one way to figure out what you want is ask yourself, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

Nathan Barry 36:47 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 36:48 And I made a list of that, and productivity app was on the list. But then I asked myself, what would I do even if I knew that I would fail?

Nathan Barry 36:55 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 36:56 And productivity app was not on that list.

Nathan Barry 36:58 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 36:58 Like, uh, but there were a couple of other things of like even if I knew that this would fail, I would still like to do the thing.

Nathan Barry 37:03 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 37:04 Like, I love the idea of building a sort of hour, one to two-hour long one-man stage show, which is like a combination of like life advice meets-

Nathan Barry 37:12 Right

Ali Abdaal 37:12 ... magic 'cause I'm into magic and shit, like hypnosis-

Nathan Barry 37:14 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 37:14 ... and that kind of stuff. That would be cool, and I would learn a lot even if it fails.

Nathan Barry 37:18 Right. You'd be very proud-

Ali Abdaal 37:19 And so like, yeah

Nathan Barry 37:20 ... of that-

Ali Abdaal 37:20 Yeah

Nathan Barry 37:20 ... end product even if a failure is like, like 100 people came to watch it once kind of a thing.

Ali Abdaal 37:24 Exactly, yeah. And like writing a book is like I... Even if not many people buy the book-

Nathan Barry 37:29 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 37:29 ... as long as I've written a book I'm proud of, I'll be, I'll be happy with that.

Nathan Barry 37:32 Right.

Ali Abdaal 37:32 Whereas for the productivity app, I'm kind of like, "Ugh, I wouldn't do this unless I knew it was gonna be successful."

Nathan Barry 37:38 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 37:38 And if I knew, and if I knew it wasn't gonna be successful, eh, it doesn't seem fun anymore.

Nathan Barry 37:43 Yeah, and so in that case, one, that I love that clarity because it points to what you're gonna take away, right? Most people are, are saying, "This is worth doing if I achieve the goal or if I achieve 80% of the goal."

Ali Abdaal 37:57 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 37:57 And what you're saying is, "This is worth doing even if I achieve 0% of the goal, and I actually... Like the true goal is the experience and what I learn." And I think that's how you can find what's most aligned-

Ali Abdaal 38:11 Hmm

Nathan Barry 38:12 ... to what you... The, the one thing I would say is often people don't know... I mean, it's, it's corny, right? But you don't know what you don't know. And so like for me in building the company, I've spent a lot of time getting good at design and code and marketing and all of that. And I'm trying to get good at building teams and setting goals that keep people aligned and... Right? It's an entirely different skill to run a company at, you know, 100 people and, um, you know, whatever, 50, 100 million revenue and beyond from there, uh, than it is, you know, for me to be selling e-books like I was before. And so the shift that has been most helpful for me is to fall in love with the process of building and scaling a company rather than to fall in love with the theoretical destination and whatever that might, uh, whatever that might buy me. And so then when I'm going through something that's really, really hard, then I'm like, "Oh, no, this i- this... The growth from this transition is what I signed up for and what I said that, that I want." And so this is the thing that will make the difference. And then the l- the last thing that keeps me from getting too discouraged in that is I like to write out my problems that I've encountered and sort, just sort of have a timeline of them.

Ali Abdaal 39:26 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 39:27 And then to look and say, "How would, like, current me deal with my past problems?" Right? So for example, the early stages of COVID, right? In March, uh, 2020, you have no idea what's going on. Teams are worried. We were already a remote team, and so we didn't have that, like, shut down the office, um, dynamic. But we had both a crazy amount of growth from people being like, "I guess I'll start an online business," and then also a huge amount of cancellations from people saying like, "Well, no one's traveling, so let me shut down my travel blog so I'm not paying for all of this." It was a very, very hectic time, and it was, it was really stressful. But now that I've been through that and I feel like I'm three years more developed as a leader, I'm like, "Okay, I think I can manage that just fine." Right? And there's plenty of other things that I remember being very, very stressed out about, and now I'm like, "Oh, that, like, that's almost cute how simple of a problem that was." And so that helps me stay grounded when I'm thinking about the things that I'm encountering right now that are so, so stressful. And I'm like, "In two years from now, how am I gonna look back on this problem?" And my goal is that I look back on it and say like, "Yeah, for, for past me, that was a very challenging problem," but current me would be like, "Okay, that makes sense. We're on to, like, bigger, harder problems that we can handle with the same level of stress."

Ali Abdaal 40:46 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 40:46 And so I love using that growth. That's one, one of the things in journaling is just like what are the hardest problems? And so you'd be like March 2020, you know, how to lead the team and navigate through COVID, right? Um, June 2020 [laughs] would be like all of the, um, social justice protests and, um, Black Lives Matter and, and what to do through that, right? And you kind of just level up all of these things that, uh, that you navigate. Even a simple... Right? If you have a- the... You build that, that consumer productivity app. Okay? What happens when it gets pulled from the app store for the first time-

Ali Abdaal 41:23 Hmm

Nathan Barry 41:23 ... because of some random thing, right? You know? I've now had that happen on four different apps at different times, right? And so you're like, "Oh, this is how you do it. This is, you know, how you navigate it," and so... But in the moment, that would be the most stressful thing that you've probably ever dealt with. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 41:36 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 41:37 And so I love looking at that growth and seeing the past progress in the same way that if you're going to the gym and you're like, "Okay, you know, I was doing this, uh, I don't know, deadlift or something, and this was-" ... insurmountable. And now, like, that's what you do for a warmup set.

Ali Abdaal 41:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 41:55 Um, so you're, you're in the day job, you're making your 60K, you're completing the work in record time and a- alongside you're learning how to build iOS apps.

Nathan Barry 42:04 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 42:05 What happens next in, in the journey?

Nathan Barry 42:07 Yeah. I ... The first iOS app that I built to sell was, uh ... I called it One Voice. And, uh, my sister-in-law was working with kids with special needs, like, who had, um, non-verbal autism. And so they could think through ev- everything they wanted to say but really struggled to, to verbalize it. And so there was these, uh, devices that were like ruggedized touchscreen PCs, um, that had terrible battery life and cost an absurd amount of money and, uh, and all of that. But they would use an app on it that had synthesized speech. So they'd select tiles and then it would like build a f- a s- sentence and then it would speak for you. Um, and so she was doing that. And when the iPad had come out, um, Hannah, my sister-in-law, was like, "This should just be an iPad app." Like [laughs] but it's such a niche, uh, product and the money is all made in insurance paying for it. And so like these were priced at $7,000 because that was exactly what Medicaid in the United States would reimburse for it, you know. And you're like, "All right. I understand [laughs] how this works." Um, and so I ended up making this iPad app that was the same thing, right? And so you bought an iPad for whatever, 7 or $800 and you bought the app and, um, you know, it naturally had fantastic battery life and barely weighed anything and all that just because it was on better hardware.

Ali Abdaal 43:29 Mm.

Nathan Barry 43:30 Um, and so I ended up building that app and, uh, selling a lot of copies of it and then... Uh, I wanna say the, the app probably made 40 or $50,000 over, uh, maybe three years.

Ali Abdaal 43:41 Nice.

Nathan Barry 43:41 And that drove a lot of my side hustle. And then-

Ali Abdaal 43:44 And you built that while you were still working-

Nathan Barry 43:46 Yep

Ali Abdaal 43:46 ... at the day job? Sick. That's cool. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 43:48 Yeah. We actually ... I went to ... The job paid for me to go to, uh, like a developer camp, um, that was at the PayPal offices in San Jose.

Ali Abdaal 43:56 Mm.

Nathan Barry 43:57 And they did like a hackathon and so it was like, oh, you join team and, you know, people had their different ideas and you join the team, code with them the whole weekend and meet people and learn a bunch of stuff. And none of the ideas seemed that interesting. And I was there with a, a developer friend from, from work and, uh, so we ... Um, you know, I was like, "Does anything sound interesting to you to join?" He was like, "No, not really." And so then I was like, "Well, I have this idea for an app. Like let's design and build it and code away on it." And so that weekend he helped me with a initial version and I learned a lot and then maybe the next few months, uh, you know, I'd, I'd built more. It actually was the way that I learned to code. I always like to make something specific.

Ali Abdaal 44:35 Mm.

Nathan Barry 44:35 Like I'll do the, the, you know, 100 level like let me just learn the basics and then I'll get to the point where I, I have something specific that I wanna make. And I, I code in every direction till I get totally stuck and then I would go to a friend. Y- there's a few developer coworkers and I would like go over to their house on a Saturday morning and be like, "Okay, I'm now stuck in these three categories." Like and they'd be like, "Oh, okay, here's why." Right? Like I'm trying to do something and they're like, "Do you know about different types of numbers?" I'm like, "What?"

Ali Abdaal 45:05 Yeah. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 45:06 And they're like, "Okay. We've got floats and integers and..." You know, like [laughs] there's like computer science 101.

Ali Abdaal 45:11 Mm.

Nathan Barry 45:12 Um, but it was fun to, to get, have someone help me get unstuck and then I'd be off like coding more and Googling and Stack Overflow and everything else. And, um ... But yeah, I built that app. I built, uh, one that I called Commit which was a habit tracking app. So like on along the like don't break the chain idea. Uh, that ended up being really impactful. I built a flashcards app, um, that did delayed repetition. Um, and those are the three that like I actually sold and got, got traction with.

Ali Abdaal 45:45 Mm.

Nathan Barry 45:46 To the point where when I quit my job, uh, to do freelance iOS design I had ... I was making about $3,000 a month on the App Store from those three apps.

Ali Abdaal 45:56 Wow. How did, how did it feel at the time to be just getting 3K a month from like-

Nathan Barry 46:01 Oh, it was amazing

Ali Abdaal 46:02 ... making money while you sleep basically? [laughs]

Nathan Barry 46:03 Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic and because it was integrated, right? Like the apps that I built helped me get more ... like demonstrate expertise which helped me get more clients which helped me, um, you know, both pay for all my living expenses and learn new things that went into the apps that I built and so it was this like, you know, virtuous cycle very early on where I was like, "Oh, this is all directly related." Um, and I was just doing what I wanted and, and that was also the first time that, uh, I was able to like travel and not be tied to an office job so-

Ali Abdaal 46:35 Mm.

Nathan Barry 46:35 That was a really good time.

Ali Abdaal 46:36 Nice. Uh, when was this roughly?

Nathan Barry 46:39 2011.

Ali Abdaal 46:40 2011. Okay, cool.

Nathan Barry 46:40 Um, yeah, 2011 to 2012.

Ali Abdaal 46:42 Nice.

Ali Abdaal 46:43 Okay. So you had your ... So you've got the day job, you're learning skills on the side building these iOS apps as a side hustle. You then quit the day, the, the day job and you become a, a freelance iOS-

Nathan Barry 46:55 Designer

Ali Abdaal 46:55 ... designer.

Nathan Barry 46:56 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 46:57 What happened next? When did the eBooks start to enter the, the fray?

Nathan Barry 47:00 Yeah. So around the time ... I'd come across a guy named Chris Guillebeau-

Ali Abdaal 47:05 Mm

Nathan Barry 47:05 ... from reading, um, I think he'd written a guest post on Tim Ferriss's blog and it's one of those things ... I feel like this doesn't quite happen as much anymore. Maybe it still does. Where you come across someone's work and then you just like-

Ali Abdaal 47:18 Binge the shit out of it

Nathan Barry 47:19 ... fall off. Yeah, you just-

Ali Abdaal 47:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 47:20 Just everything. You're like e- And-

Ali Abdaal 47:23 Th- uh, this was me with your, uh, podcast and blog-

Nathan Barry 47:25 Oh, nice. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 47:25 ... of course, yeah, about like five years ago. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 47:28 I love it. Um, yeah, where you just uncover everything and so, uh, I started following everything Chris did and he had this ... Oh, I remember like I read everything and then it was like, oh, he has a book coming out. Oh, he has a book tour that he's doing for this book. This ... The book was called The Art of Non-Conformity. And then I was like, wait, he has a book tour. Wait, he's gonna be in Boise on Tuesday. [laughs] Like and so then I went to the, the event and met him and, um- But he talked a lot about building audience and self-publishing. Uh, he had two e-books that I really liked that were for free. Um, the first one was called A Brief Guide to World Domination. Hmm. Chris was always so good with naming things. You know, I just love the juxtaposition. It's sort of like Mark Manson's, right? The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. You know, you're like, ooh, these don't... Uh, the juxtaposition within that title works really well. And so Chris, back in, you know, 2011 or something, is doing A Brief Guide to World Domination. Um, and that was really fascinating. And then he did another one called 279 Days to Overnight Success that was about his blogging journey and basically him going from, uh, starting his audience to earning a full-time living, which he defined as $60,000 a year. I, I th- I think in the e-book he has got ... Like, by the time he publishes it, he's gotten to, like, $65,000 a year. And he put them into, like, these beautifully designed PDFs and distributed them. So a lot of what you're seeing, you know, in Authority and, and all of that is inspired by things I learned from Chris and watched him model. And so he was following the self-publishing path. Build an audience, self-publish an e-book. And, uh, so then I thought, okay, maybe I could do that. But I didn't think I could sell books on that level. And so I thought, what I actually want is more design clients. And so I'm going to write a book and self-publish it on designing iOS apps. Um, and then the goal ... Well, I had two goals from it. Uh, first, get a whole steady string of clients, right? You wanna hire the guy who wrote the book on, on design. Um, and then also if I could make $10,000 in revenue over, like, the lifetime of the book, that would be a success. I didn't wanna do, like, the true li- or the full, like, oh, this, um, this book is just a business card. It doesn't have to make any money. Like, I think that's a cop-out. Hmm. Right? You should try ... If you put time into making something, you should try to distribute it to as many people as possible and, and, uh, make some real money with it. So I ended up, like, building a landing page, writing tutorials, driving traffic from the tutorials to say, like, "Hey, I'm writing this book. Um, sign up to get the wait list." Built that email list on MailChimp. Uh, on launch day, I had 798 people, uh, on the wait list. And, uh, I ended up selling $12,000 worth of the book in the first day. Wow. And so I got hooked on a couple things. One, I realized, like, forget freelance design work. Like, the goal was to get clients. I never took on another design client [laughs] after that, right? I just ... I was all in on self-publishing. Uh, and then the second thing is I just ... I became obsessed with the world of, like, self-publishing and like, okay, what, what can I do with this and what can I do with marketing? And like, I was okay at, at marketing. Like, I knew how to make a landing page. I knew how to do some of these things. But then I was like, uh, what can I do? And really it was, like, email marketing. Like, I thought at the time that, uh, you know, Instagram and Twitter and these other plat- Facebook would be driving most of the, the, of the traffic, most of the conversions. But it was email that drove all of that. And actually in Boise, where I live, there's like this OG internet marketer crew that's there, 'cause ClickBank and bodybuilding.com and a bunch of these companies were all founded in Boise. Hmm. And so you get these people who have been around for a long time. And was talking to one friend, uh, Ron, uh, about this and I was like, "Email is selling more copies than, like, the, than every other channel combined." And he just looks at me, he's like, "Yeah, we've known that since 2003. Like, what do you want, a gold star?" [laughs] Like, I'm like discovering this thing that is blowing my mind. And he's just like, "Everybody knows that." [laughs] Yeah. Like, I, I didn't. And so that kinda, uh, that dove into my love for self-publishing and marketing, and then particularly email marketing. And then actually this, the day after that, I had been using my habits app commit that I'd made to write 1000 words a day. Hmm. And so it popped up and said like, "Are you gonna write 1000 words today?" And I was like, "No, I finished the book. I published it." And I was like, but it had like 84 days in a row of a streak. And I'm like, uh, okay, I'll write a, I'll write a blog post about how the launch went. So I wrote that up, published it. That drove some more sales. It got people paying attention from like a, oh, you know, some random designer can make money selling an e-book. Maybe I could too. And then the next day, the app did what it does and it popped up again and said, "Are you gonna write 1000 words today?" And I was like, well, what ... I, I wrote the book. I wrote all the launch emails. I wrote a blog post summarizing how the launch went. Like, what else would I write? And then I thought, like, I mean, I know web design and, and specifically web software design really well, 'cause that's what I did for years. So I was like, okay, let me write a book about that. Let me follow a similar habit or simi- similar pattern. And so then I wrote a book, uh, called Designing Web Applications. It didn't take that long to write 'cause I wrote 1000 words a day. And so 90 days later I published it. Uh, the email list was up to a couple thousand people at that point. Ended up doing $26,000 in sales of that book in the first- Nice ... in the first day. Nice. 50,000 in the first month. Something that I just realized. Someone asked me this years ago and I didn't have an answer for it, uh, but I just made a little connection of why I targeted one-day sales. Because it's like, okay, why does the first day of sales matter? Especially 'cause I'd have this big spike, 'cause I would offer like a 20% off discount if you bought on the first day and then that would go away, and then there'd be sales tapering off. Uh, Chris Guillebeau in one of his articles talked about how he hit $100,000 in sales in a single day from a course launch. And I think that always stuck with me of like the one-day thing. And I like designed my launches around a single day number. Hmm. Even though I think probably the optimal launch would be over the course of a week, [laughs] you know, or ... But it's interesting, these little like examples that stick with you. Yeah. So I, yeah, always optimized for, [laughs] for a single day number. But the point is that I got on this path of writing and launching eBooks, and just felt like I had discovered something absolutely incredible.

Ali Abdaal 54:22 A couple questions on this. So I, I, I remember now, one of, one of the early blog posts I came across that you wrote ... Well, it wasn't early for you, it was early for me discovering your stuff, was when you'd written for, like, an absurd number of days in a row.

Nathan Barry 54:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:34 Can you remember how many that was?

Nathan Barry 54:35 The, the chain got up to six- uh, 600 days in a row.

Ali Abdaal 54:38 You wrote 1000 words a day for 600 days in a row?

Nathan Barry 54:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:41 What the fuck? [laughs]

Nathan Barry 54:43 [laughs] Well, first, 1000 words-

Ali Abdaal 54:45 Wow

Nathan Barry 54:45 ... is not that much.

Ali Abdaal 54:46 It's, yeah, it's not that much, but it, it's, it, it feels like, feels like a lot.

Nathan Barry 54:51 I mean, it come out ... It was like, on one hand ... So 1000 words a day is probably two and a half pages.

Ali Abdaal 54:55 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 54:55 Right? And I remember Tim Ferriss talking about this. Chris Guillebeau talked about it.

Ali Abdaal 54:59 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 54:59 The way Chris Guillebeau phrased it, he had this, like, it's really easy to ... What did he say? It's really easy to write a book every year, write 50 blog posts, and another 50 guest posts. Uh, what else? Like, a couple long form writing projects, maybe some magazine articles. He, like, just lists out all the stuff, and he's like, "It's really easy to do that in a single year." And everyone's like, "What? It takes years to write a book. It takes years to do all this." And he's like, "If you just write 1000 words a day." And we talk about, like, habits compounding over time and, you know, these small things adding up, but 600,000 words is an insane amount of content.

Ali Abdaal 55:37 That's absolutely insane.

Nathan Barry 55:39 And I mean, that, that one habit built my entire career, right? Because that's a whole lot of email newsletters. That's ... It turned into three self-published books, 'cause later I wrote Authority. Actually, I had this time period from September ... So September 2012, I published the App Design Handbook. December 2012, I published Designing Web Applications. And then April 2013, so, like, in this, like, seven-month period, uh, I, I published Authority. And so I wrote three books in that period of time, 'cause I was just churning out content.

Ali Abdaal 56:11 Mm.

Nathan Barry 56:11 Um, grew the email list, right? That one habit just was, was absolutely insane for me.

Ali Abdaal 56:19 This episode is sponsored by Kajabi, and they've actually got something really valuable for all of our Deep Dive listeners. Now, if you haven't heard of Kajabi, it's basically a platform that helps creators diversify their revenue with courses, and membership sites, and communities, and podcasts, and coaching tools. So it's one of the best places for creators and entrepreneurs to build a sustainable business. We started using Kajabi earlier this year, and as soon as we started using it, we were like, "Oh my God, why haven't we been using this product for the last three years?" It's got everything you'd possibly need for running an online course, or hosting an online community, or building an online coaching business, and it essentially makes it really easy to run your entire online business. From payments, to marketing tools, to analytics, Kajabi has everything that we creators need all in one place. And actually, you don't necessarily need a huge audience to generate a sustainable income. A creator on Kajabi can, for example, make $100,000 by converting just 350 customers a year, depending on your price points. And in fact, there are creators on the platform that are making millions of dollars every year with fewer than 100,000 followers across the social media platforms. We've been using Kajabi to host all of our online courses since the start of 2023, from our $1 part-time YouTuber foundations to help people start off on their YouTube journey, all the way up to our $5,000 package for the part-time YouTuber accelerator, which gives you access to me and my team. And Kajabi does not take any cut of what you earn. Creators keep and own everything. The way Kajabi makes money is through the monthly subscription fee, and even though we generate, like, literally millions of dollars every year from Kajabi, we're still only paying them a couple of hundred dollars a year. And actually, in their lifetime, Kajabi have paid out over six billion dollars to creators. That's billion with a B. And over 1000 creators have become millionaires through products on the platform. Now, back in May 2023, I did a keynote at a Kajabi in Real Life, Kajabi Heroes event in Austin, Texas, and in that keynote, I talked about the exact steps that I used to grow my business from zero to over two and a half million dollars per year from course revenue alone. Now, people paid for the pretty expensive tickets to watch this keynote at the Kajabi Hero live event. But as an exclusive deal for Deep Dive listeners, Kajabi have very kindly offered to provide the recording of that keynote completely for free to anyone who listens to this podcast. So if you're interested in getting completely free access to that keynote, just head over to kajabi.com/ali. That's kajabi.com/A-L-I. And that'll be linked in the show notes and the video description as well. And you just enter your email address, and then you will get the recording of that keynote completely for free, whether or not you ever become a Kajabi customer. So thank you so much to Kajabi for sponsoring this episode.

Ali Abdaal 58:30 What did it look like? Like-

Nathan Barry 58:32 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 58:32 ... practically speaking ... Okay. So I'll give you some context. Um, our mutual friend, Sean McCabe-

Nathan Barry 58:38 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 58:38 ... had a course somewhere about writing in Ulysses.

Nathan Barry 58:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 58:42 The writing app. And I watched that course many years ago, and I was like, "I wanna write 1000 words a day." This was when I discovered your stuff. I did it for like three days, and then I, I, I dropped off. And, like, two months ago, I rediscovered Ulysses on my iPad, and I set the, the target. Like, I, I put all of the folders into one folder so I could track that folder.

Nathan Barry 59:01 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 59:01 And I set a target of 1000 words a day. And when I do write and I'm typing away, I find myself effortlessly hitting 1000, 'cause it's actually not that many words.

Nathan Barry 59:11 Right.

Ali Abdaal 59:11 And when I write my newsletter, I'm like, "Oh shit, this was 2000 words. Better cut some of it down." And I'm curious, w- what did ... For you, what did this process of 1000 words a day look like? What, what app were you using? Where were you writing? How did you figure out what you were gonna write about? Like, where did the inspiration each day come from?

Nathan Barry 59:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 59:26 How did that work?

Nathan Barry 59:27 Well, it was weirdly ... Like, the requirement was that it had ... The app I wrote it in had to have really good word tracking, [laughs] because that was the-

Ali Abdaal 59:33 Yeah

Nathan Barry 59:33 ... your word count. Um, and so I used Scrivener because that was the app at the time that was the best at having, like, individual, uh, pages almost-

Ali Abdaal 59:45 Yeah

Nathan Barry 59:45 ... but then would be summarized well. Um, it could be compiled total. And so Scrivener let you set a goal. Like, "Hey, I want this book to be 35,000 words."

Ali Abdaal 59:57 Mm.

Nathan Barry 59:57 And it would tell you both your daily progress and your total progress against that across all of the, like, pages down, downside. So you could organize it and categorize the whole thing. Um, so I wrote in Scrivener. I, uh- Would... If I'd wr- when I was writing a book, I would write an outline for it. And then I would take that outline and make folders and empty pages for each title within it, and I would put an asterisk at the beginning of the title if I, like, hadn't written anything meaningful for it. So I would kind of just skip around and be like, "Oh, click on this. I don't have anything to say about that today. Click on this. Oh, here's a few notes that I would add to it," and like, "Oh, there was that article," right? So I'm just kind of compiling things. And then I'd find one where I was like, "Oh, I have something to say on this," and I would, like, click in and, and write a whole bunch, um, as much as I could on that one topic and then, um, keep going from there. And so that... It, it was kind of sporadic in that sense.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:52 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:00:53 But, um, you know, it eventually built out a full book. And then I'd have another section for my marketing copy, right? Like another folder at the very end, 'cause I knew I had to write launch emails and landing pages and all of that. And like, that absolutely counts towards my 1,000 words for the day.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:08 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:01:08 Everything counts. And there'd even be some days... Like, I, I don't like editing.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:13 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:01:13 And so I would count... I was like, "Okay, this is an editing hour." And that to me was equivalent to 1,000 words, you know? So I'm like, "I'm gonna force myself to edit and chop down and all of that, and I'm gonna get credit for my day's worth of writing." Um, the other thing that I would do is try to make it easy just in Apple Notes to, like, throw out ideas of like, oh yeah, okay, this is what I should write about later. Um, and it's a classic writing, uh, technique, but to end... Oh, who talked about this? Someone famous. End in the middle of a sentence. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:45 It was someone famous.

Nathan Barry 1:01:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:46 I've cited them in my book, but I can't remember who it was.

Nathan Barry 1:01:48 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:48 Was it like Hemingway or something?

Nathan Barry 1:01:49 Probably. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:01:49 It was like... Yeah, something like that. [laughs] Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:01:51 Twain, Hemingway, or-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:52 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:01:52 ... uh, Einstein or Lincoln or whoever it was.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:55 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:01:55 No, I'm just kidding. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:01:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:01:57 Um, Gandhi. No. Uh, and so I, I would just do all of those, uh, classic things. And usually when I would sit down and have nothing, nothing to write about, like if you just force yourself to write for like... and you get through that first 10 minutes, then it's totally fine.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:13 Okay.

Nathan Barry 1:02:13 The other one is Seth Godin has a quote where, um, basically about writing, you should write like you talk.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:22 Yep.

Nathan Barry 1:02:22 'Cause no one... You know, you don't have talker's block, right? That, you know, if you're just trying to talk to yourself. And so using now transcription stuff is really good. And so, like, just talk on the topic. Um, I'll do that when I'm in the car. I'll just start a voice memo and then be like, "Okay, what do I have to say about audience building?" You know, or like whatever the topic is. And then I'm like, "Uh, okay, and then what about this? And here's a story." And it's all, like, nonsense, but then you transcribe it and you go through and you're like, "Okay, that's a whole thing to write on, so it's this." And-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:50 Hmm

Nathan Barry 1:02:51 ... um, and then that, you know, you rewrite it and you get the stories and the structure and, and all of that. But it's, it's pretty straightforward. You just have to force yourself to do it.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:01 Right.

Nathan Barry 1:03:01 But the, the habit compounds in a ridiculous way.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:03 This is good shit. I'm f-

Nathan Barry 1:03:05 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:03:05 I'm feeling so inspired right now.

Nathan Barry 1:03:06 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:03:07 'Cause I feel like i- if I, if I could... I- if I actually sat down and wrote 1,000 words per day, that would be the single thing that would drive me most towards, like, literally every single goal that I'm working on.

Nathan Barry 1:03:18 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:18 And even goals that I don't even know I have right now, because they're all around-

Nathan Barry 1:03:22 Content creation

Ali Abdaal 1:03:23 ... sharing my thoughts, content creation-

Nathan Barry 1:03:24 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:03:24 ... like writing, making videos.

Nathan Barry 1:03:27 Well, and getting clear on-

Ali Abdaal 1:03:28 It's all about writing

Nathan Barry 1:03:28 ... all of these, all of these ideas.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:31 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:03:31 Right? Something... We talked about these flagship essays that I like to work on. I have three. Um, Ladders of Wealth Creation, Billion Dollar Creator, and then the Creator Flywheels. These are all on things that I generally know to be true or like, I'm like, "Yeah, this is how wealth is built," but I can't quite explain it. And so through writing, I get obsessive about how do you explain this? Why? Why does this work in a certain way, you know? And then it turns into this thing to get to where I understand the concepts well enough that I can truly teach it. And that's what I, what I love with writing, is finding all the things that you intuitively know to be true or observe in the world, and then someone's like, "Okay, why is that?" And you're like, "Uh, it, it just is." [laughs] You know?

Ali Abdaal 1:04:20 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:04:20 And, and that really takes you into... Like, writing forces you to unpack that. And then one of my mantras in life is teach everything you know, because that turns into... We have this idea that only experts can teach. And the, the main principle behind my book, Authority, is that we don't, uh... people don't teach because they're experts. We perceive them as experts because they teach, right? It's chicken and egg, and we have it backwards. Um, and so in that, if you step into a world where you're like, "Okay, I'm just going to teach what I learned today," then you build the habit and you write it down, and someone's like, "Okay, I'm, you know, following this web designer who is brand new, but they're on a journey to get a, a job at, you know, a web design agency. And they're just, every day they're sharing and teaching what they learned, and they're doing it from a beginner's mindset." And often you can learn way more from that person if you're following, like, two steps behind them-

Ali Abdaal 1:05:13 Mm-hmm

Nathan Barry 1:05:14 ... than following the super advanced expert who forgot how... like, who cannot relate in any way to the problems that a absolute beginner is facing. Um, I thought about that w- when learning, learning to code in Ruby, which is what ConvertKit is written in. I really struggled to install Ruby, but all the tutorials were like, "Why would you..." You know, they all assumed that that was done, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:05:39 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:05:39 And then I came across someone who was a beginner who had said like, "Okay, I just got this done. Here are the, all the roadblocks that I thought. Not, like, the ideal path, but this is what I actually ran into and how I solved it." And, you know, I was learning from someone who was, like, two steps ahead of me.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:52 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:05:52 And they actually gave me the answers, and I followed them, uh, their content for a long time. So anyway, writing, teaching, it all comes back to that.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:00 It's all the same stuff, yeah. Teach everything you know. Um, the, the book Show Your Work by Austin Kleon-

Nathan Barry 1:06:05 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:06:05 ... was a big, um... That was the thing that made me start my first blog in, like, 2016.

Nathan Barry 1:06:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:10 'Cause I'd been toying with the idea of like, I really wanna have a personal blog, but I was like, ugh, blocked by, like, oh, I'm, I don't know anything. Why would anyone follow me? Et cetera, et cetera. Show Your Work was just like- ... share what you're working on.

Nathan Barry 1:06:19 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:06:20 And at the time I'd, you know, I'd been four years into building this medical school admissions company and website design, and I was like, I mean, I have learnt some stuff along the way about, like, how I started the business and all this stuff. I was like, "Great, I'm gonna do a blog post about that." And that was the precursor to the YouTube channel that happened a year later.

Nathan Barry 1:06:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:35 So I'm, I'm all about teach everything you know.

Nathan Barry 1:06:37 I love it. Um, yeah, my... I used to have three mantras on my wall. And by the way, I love looking at your books 'cause you have Show Your Work, uh, in, in the Austin Kleon section of-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:46 [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:06:46 ... of your bookshelf. Um, but I, I had these three posters on my wall in, like, my first real home office. Uh, and they were the three mantras of create every day, teach everything you know, and work in public. And that was like my equivalent of, of show your work. And then the posters, I should bring them back. It's been years since, uh, I've done it. But, yeah, up in the... Like, kinda small up in the corner they say, "The secret to growing your audience is to..." And then the big thing is, "Work in public. Create every day. Teach

Nathan Barry 1:07:18 everything you know."

Ali Abdaal 1:07:18 What do you, what do you mean by work in public?

Nathan Barry 1:07:21 Well, it's the same idea of, of showing your work, right? Like, what is the thing that you learned today that you could share with other people? Or so many people say, like, "Okay, I, well, I created my... I wrote my ebook," right? "I published and launched it." And someone's like, "Oh, sweet, I bought the ebook from you. I bought... Um, I'm learning app design from you." All of that, that's super useful. But most people don't take the next step and write the blog post about, like, "Here's how I did the launch, here's how much money it made, and everything else." Which is actually, like, the least difficult part. [laughs] You know? Everything else, doing the thing was way harder than explaining how you did the thing and how it went.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:58 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:07:59 And so working in public in that case was publ- the blog post I published the day after I wrote the App Design Handbook that said, like, "Okay, I made, you know, 12 grand. Uh, here's the launch sequence, here's what drove sales." Some of the... There was some overlap, right? Some people who I wrote the... Some people who were designers wanting to learn for the app-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:22 Hmm

Nathan Barry 1:08:22 ... or were wa- Some people who wanted to learn app design were the same people who wanted to read, like, about how the launch went.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:30 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:08:30 There was definitely overlap. Not, not 100% overlap, but there was some. But then it brought in other people who wanted to learn about self-publishing who were like, "Oh, this is possible. Oh, and then I know someone who wants app design," right? And so it was marketing in a sense, even though it wasn't, like, architected from the beginning to be great marketing. But I think that process all the way along of, uh, teach everything you know, work in public, those are the things that make a big difference. When I started ConvertKit, I really embodied that work in public idea when I said, "Hey, I'm gonna build a, a software company. I'm gonna do it, um, you know, only with $5,000 of my money. It's going to be sold or l- like, funded by customers, and my goal is to get to 5,000 a month in recurring revenue within six months." And I called that the Web App Challenge, and I blogged every, uh, week about here's how I chose a name, here's how I hired a developer, here's the problem that I'm facing. Okay, pre-sales are ready to go. Who wants to buy? You know, like... And I shared all of that. And I think it made a huge difference because people were like, "Oh, here's someone going on a journey that I wanna follow."

Ali Abdaal 1:09:34 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:09:34 Right? Unfolding in real time. So not only did I get more attention, but I also got a lot of very, like, talented, experienced founders saying like, "Hey, if you ever need help with anything, like, give me a call." So, um, Amy Hoy did a deep dive with me on copywriting for the landing page, which I then turned into a blog post, right? It's like, here's what I wrote. Here's how Amy and I did all... I think I even included the recording of the Skype call, um, that we had done. I'm like, here's how we came to the landing page and, like, all these concepts and, and everything.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:08 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:10:08 And I was just sharing what I learned every week, um, and sharing that journey. And that has been core to everything in ConvertKit. Like, even today, we have a real-time dashboard that shares all the revenue metrics for ConvertKit, um, that anyone can look at, right? That, that's working in public.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:24 One thing that I was thinking about as you were saying this, I'm like, writing is the key. Um, if I could do this 1,000 words a day, that would... You know, I'm, I'm all about teaching everything I know and creating every day and working in public, all that sound... All that stuff is amazing. Fully, fully vibe with that. But whenever I sit down to write... So, so for example, we did our book launch, and there's a lot that I have in my head that I'd love to share about, like, how things went and how we're tracking metrics and all this, all this kind of stuff. But then I'm thinking it's, it's so niche. It's like I could be making a video called 10 Productivity Tips instead-

Nathan Barry 1:11:00 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:11:00 ... which would get like a zillion more views than, like, a blog post that's going deep on this thing that I've learned that I would love to share, but it's just like, ugh, if I'm gonna spend time on, quote, "content creation," I should spend that time on content creation that benefits the YouTube channel, which is massively leveraged-

Nathan Barry 1:11:14 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:11:14 ... compared to a blog post. Any, any, any thoughts on this?

Nathan Barry 1:11:19 Well, so, uh, I've heard Nick Huber talk about-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:22 Hmm

Nathan Barry 1:11:22 ... the way he thinks about things on Twitter, uh, at different stages of the funnel. Right? So his business, um, is... Well, he now has a whole bunch of businesses all around real estate.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:33 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:11:33 Right? And self-storage and all of that. But what he was primarily thinking about is there's some tweets that are more general. He takes like a, um, antagonistic a- approach to Twitter, right? He's, uh, trying to get some level of outrage or, uh, agreement or that sort of thing. Um, but so he'll have these top-of-funnel tweets that are about life and work and family and, and these other things that will really spread. And then further down, you know, the middle of the funnel, he's thinking about, um, okay, what can I share about business? Um, you know, lessons learned that are broadly applicable. But it's people who care, um, from here. And then the bottom of the funnel he'll share like these... I, I've learned a lot about, like, real estate tax depreciation and all of this stuff from these really in-depth detailed threads that d- Get read by the right people, right? He's putting out content that, I mean, I've been running a business for a decade, and, uh, I didn't know a bunch of these things. And so he's going way down the funnel and writing these very niche things, and he's not worried about that attracting at the top of the funnel. And so he's, he's going through and saying, "Okay, what do I do at each stage of the funnel?" And because the funnel ultimately for him at the time that he was saying this was, um, like getting in-investors, limited partners for his real estate investing fund. Um, now he has a whole bunch of other businesses as well. Uh, but getting people who know that he knows this stuff inside and out, they wanna hire one of his companies to help with one of these services, like that is insanely valuable. But it takes these people knowing that he exists, and so that's the approach that he takes. So some things... This should get millions of views, this should get tens of thousands of views, and then this niche content, if it gets 1,000 views from the right people, that's insanely valuable. That's one way to think about it. The other way is, I gotta write 1,000 words today. What is interesting to me to write down?

Ali Abdaal 1:13:37 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:13:37 Like, what would be fun? If I'm then weirdly obsessive about, like, a book launch and how it all went, great, write about that. We're just trying to check the box that we did the writing. The writing doesn't have to be the highest quality or the most valuable, 'cause it's also a little bit arrogant to know that or to think that you're going to create... What you create today is the best possible content that you could create. We're not trying to create the best content. We're just trying to create consistently, and then we'll let, like, the future figure out what is actually worth paying attention to. And especially because things are going to be pieced together from 10 different sources, and you never know what your team's going to be like, "Oh, this thing, it's going to be super valuable." Or say book number two comes out, right? And you're like, "Shoot, what, what does make a good book launch? I don't know. I wish I'd written that down [chuckles] when I was right in the middle of it."

Ali Abdaal 1:14:33 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:14:33 We run team retreats at ConvertKit, and we've run, oh, 10 of them now, something like that, twice a year, every year. And the thing that drives me crazy is when I make a, a small mistake on a team retreat of something that I got right in a previous retreat. It could be a transition, it could be how we set up, um, uh, like for an all-team meeting, some of those. So I have a giant SOP and playbook for what makes a great team retreat. That does two things for me. I don't repeat the same mistakes, and then two, when I bring someone else in and they're like, "How do we run team retreats?" I'm like, "There you go." Right? So if you launch or if you write this book launch article, yeah, I'm gonna read it and absolutely love it, and there's going to be, you know, business audience nerds-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:18 Mm

Nathan Barry 1:15:18 ... on our level who are like, "Thank you for writing this. I learned so much. I... You know, I'm plucking this other thing," and a bunch of people just won't care. But then even think book number two, team member comes along, and you're like, "Here's how we do book launches," and you're not sitting down and explaining it to them for an hour because you disconnected your knowledge from your time. And so I think it's hugely valuable to write. And, uh, when you write 1,000 words a day, you're, you're producing so much content that, great, write the 10 productivity apps you video script tomorrow. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:15:49 That's a great point. I love, I love both of those approaches. Um, what is interesting to me about this? I think, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:56 One thing I've been thinking about a lot is, I'm sure you have this problem as well, fe-feeling, feeling overscheduled.

Nathan Barry 1:16:03 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:03 Like, there's always just random shit in my calendar where I'm like-

Nathan Barry 1:16:05 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:16:06 ... the key thing that I actually care about is to be able to learn and synthesize and share-

Nathan Barry 1:16:11 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:16:12 ... and write and make videos because that's, like, my jam, and I'm finding myself doing all this other stuff that does not involve doing those things. And I've realized recently that even, even just, like, flying somewhere to give a talk is taking time away from, like... It's not really the core thing I care about. The core thing-

Nathan Barry 1:16:30 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:16:30 ... I care about is to be able to write stuff and put it, put it out there on the internet. And so because my writing time is so squeezed, I'm, I'm im- I'm now thinking ROI for every single thing that I, I write, and that takes me into this territory of like, well, I could write about topics A to Z that I'm interested in, but actually instead I'll write about topic Y that I don't really care about, but I know it's gonna get the views because I only have-

Nathan Barry 1:16:52 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:16:52 ... 20 minutes today to do any sort of writing at all, and the views are what drive the business, and the business supports the team salary, and it just becomes this thing where I've created a prison for myself-

Nathan Barry 1:17:02 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:17:02 ... through overscheduling in the calendar for shit that I don't actually fundamentally care about that stops me from doing the thing I actually care about and I would, I would love to do, and then the commercial incentives are all, like, fucking all this up as well.

Nathan Barry 1:17:14 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:14 Any thoughts? How do I... [chuckles] Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:17:17 Yeah. W-what was on my mind as you were saying that is some of my favorite things that I've written have been when I don't fully understand it or don't quite know how to articulate it yet, and I've pursued input from other people, right? Like the Ladders of Wealth Creation article, uh, has a lot of input from James Clear on it because it was like, "Here's this thing that I'm trying to articulate," and-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:39 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:17:40 ... we were at a friend's, uh, bachelor party for, for a weekend, you know, and it's a whole bunch of business friends, and so we're all, like, nerding out-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:49 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:17:49 ... on essays that we're writing and [chuckles] that kind of thing. Um, different vibe than maybe a traditional bachelor party.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:53 Yeah, I was gonna say, that sounds like a great kind of bachelor party. [chuckles]

Nathan Barry 1:17:56 Yeah. [chuckles] That, that is exactly the kind of bachelor party that I'm into.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:59 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:17:59 Um, but we're talking about these things, and he w- he's just asking really good questions and filling in examples, and he's like, "Well, why is that? Why... Like, how else, how could we visually describe that?" Um, and that pursuit of an idea with someone else I think is really interesting. So as you're talking about like, "Oh, I'm going off to, like, deliver this talk, and it's not furthering my, like, writing and, and ideas and learning goals," my first thought is, "Well, who else is going to be there?" Who would you love to not just catch up over, over coffee, uh, coffee, but like say, "Hey, here's... You know, I'm nerding out on flywheels for creators. Like, you wanna grab coffee and talk about that for an hour?" Right? Because I'm trying to... Like, this essay doesn't quite work, and, um, that kind of thing is really, really interesting. So I would try to combine that. And then I think broadly the point that you're making of, like, what is the ultimate engine that drives your business, and how do you spend your time there? And you're saying, like, writing and idea generation is the ultimate thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:04 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:19:05 And so make sure that that is the, the core thing on your calendar. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:09 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:19:09 ... 'cause ultimately, if you stop making YouTube videos, if you sto- stop sharing ideas with your newsletter-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:14 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:19:15 ... the rest of the business stops.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:16 Everything else dies, yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:19:17 Yeah. It, it... To be clear, it has so much momentum that it will-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:21 It'll take a while for it to die.

Nathan Barry 1:19:22 It'll take-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:22 But it'll still die

Nathan Barry 1:19:22 ... but it will die. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:19:23 Yeah. [laughs] Absolutely. Should keep paying our ConvertKit monthly. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:19:27 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:19:28 Monthly dues.

Nathan Barry 1:19:28 At some point you'll be like, "Wait, this isn't making as much money as it did." [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:19:30 Every time we look at our software bill, I'm just like, "Oh, okay. Yeah." [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:19:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:34 Like, 40% of it is ConvertKit. Like, fair enough, we make way more money from ConvertKit than we spend, so-

Nathan Barry 1:19:40 Yep

Ali Abdaal 1:19:40 ... it's totally fine. Um, that's a good way of thinking about it. It just, it just comes down to 1000 words a day. 1000 words a day, 1000 words a day would literally change my life.

Nathan Barry 1:19:50 Yeah, it's crazy.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:50 1000 words a day would change the life of anyone listening to this. If they've gone an hour and 18 minutes into this podcast. If you're actually listening to this, you actually write 1000 words per day, it was just... Damn.

Nathan Barry 1:20:01 You know, so even saying that, right, I did it for 600 days in a row. Uh, I actually ended up getting shingles after that, and so that's... Sometimes people ask, like, "Well, why aren't you at, like, 1200 days in a row now?" It's like, well, I ended up getting really sick, and took me like six months to recover and all that.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:18 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:20:18 But I guess the way to put it is it is simple but not easy.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:22 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:20:24 And so, yes, writing 1000 words a day will absolutely change your life, and that is a very simple thing. But it is not easy to do, and you have to design your day and your week around that habit, and that has to become one of the non-negotiables. And that's something that honestly I've struggled with, right? As I go back and forth between, you know, building a team and scaling and all of that. I know that all of my goals would be furthered by writing 1000 words a day, and I still write fairly sporadically right now. Like, I haven't rebuilt that.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:53 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:20:53 And I think it's because we say things to ourselves like, "Ah, this should be easy." And because we're conflating simple and easy. It is very simple, and it is not at all easy. And so if you get clear with yourself that like, "Okay, I am setting out to do something that is in fact very difficult, and I have to design my day around and my week around making sure that this can happen, and this has to become my number one priority in my business," then at that point you can actually make it happen.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:21 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:21:21 But if you're like, "Ah, this, this will be really easy. I'll just knock it out and then move on," uh, then you'll get to the point where you can't build up any meaningful streak, and you won't get the results from that.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:30 Any other tips? Any mistakes you made along the 600-day thing that, you know, I've... I feel like, I feel like I wanna commit to that. Okay, I'm, I'm, I'm, I am going to commit to this-

Nathan Barry 1:21:39 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:21:39 ... with writing 1000 words a day, and I wanna get ahead of any kind of... [laughs] What are some, some obstacles I might run into? And also, are you doing this on weekends as well and-

Nathan Barry 1:21:47 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:21:47 ... after work and-

Nathan Barry 1:21:48 I did it seven days a week.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:48 Okay.

Nathan Barry 1:21:49 Right, like, if it's, if it's that important to you.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:51 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:21:51 The idea is for seven days a week, why not?

Ali Abdaal 1:21:53 Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Barry 1:21:54 Um, the first thing I would say is when you run out of ideas, a lot of people worry that they're going to run out of ideas, and so they say like, "Oh, I might as well not start." Generally what I find is the more that you write, the more that you have to say. Because you find these threads and you, uh, unravel them. The next thing is if you... Even with that, if you're still running out of ideas, think about things that... Think about the content that you're gonna consume that's going to help you, uh, find new ideas.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:26 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:22:28 So, like, if you get out of your usual podcasts-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:30 Yep

Nathan Barry 1:22:30 ... and start to listen to other things, right? Or the business biographies or... And you have these prompts, right? You're like, okay, what would... Uh, you know, if you're reading, like, John D. Rockefeller's biography, you're like, "What would Rockefeller do if he ran ConvertKit?" You know, and you're like, "Oh, interesting. Well, he'd probably have all these backdoor deals, and he's probably acquiring other companies." [laughs] And you know, like-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:50 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:22:50 ... oh, blah, blah, blah. Somehow he creates a monopoly, and I, I don't know how it works, but, you know, it's a fun exercise.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:54 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:22:54 Right? So you can have these prompts to dive into. But, like, I, uh, listened to Ryan Holiday on Jocko Willink's podcast. Um, I don't normally listen to Jocko's podcast, but I love Ryan's work, and so I was like, "Great, I'll listen to this." And it was a really interesting take. But Ryan said this thing about, um... He was talking about how Tim Ferriss, in the early days of, like, Audible really getting traction, started buying up the r- the audio rights to a bunch of books. 'Cause you had this weird moment in time where Audible was getting traction and publishers did not value audio rights.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:28 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:23:29 So, like, Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA, sold the publishing rights to his book as you normally do. Uh, the publisher didn't want the audio rights, so then they sold it to somebody else, and then it kind of bounced around, and then they were going, like... He, he was like, "I don't like this," and so he asked, "Can I buy them back?" And so for like $10,000 or something, he bought back the audio rights to The Personal MBA. Uh, published it himself through Audible. Audible had this crazy distribution thing where, like, the more copies you sold, the higher percentage you got of every copy sold. And it ended up, it got to the point that at one point Josh was making, like, 50 to $60,000 a month, uh, off of exclusively the audio version of The Personal MBA.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:11 Nice.

Nathan Barry 1:24:12 Tim Ferriss understood this and started going around buying the audio rights to any book where the audio rights weren't valued. So, um, you have The Obstacle Is the Way on your shelf. Uh, Tim Ferriss owns the audio rights-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:25 Oh, does he? Oh, I didn't know that

Nathan Barry 1:24:25 ... to The Obstacle Is the Way. Um, and he did this for a whole bunch of books.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:30 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:24:30 And-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:30 He did it for, like, the Seneca Letters, one of the Stoicism letters.

Nathan Barry 1:24:33 Letters from a Stoic.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:34 Yeah, that's the one. Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:24:35 Um, yeah, so he, he's done it for really a lot, 'cause there was this moment in time where audio rights were Radically undervalued for-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:43 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:24:43 ... um, what they got. And so it made me think, like listening to that episode, one, I had been around, like I knew Tim and I knew Ryan back then. And so I remember talking to... Like I remember hearing that and seeing it all unfold. Um, but what it made me think of is this phrase of like, "Who's playing chess when other people are playing checkers?" And now that's turned into a prompt for me of like, okay, where, where in my business am I playing checkers when I should be playing chess? And then what other, like stories can I share on my podcast or, or other things where, uh, someone is operating at that level? And like, I wouldn't-- Like that is now a, a consistent thing in my journal, that phrase. What would it look like to play chess here? You know, who's playing chess when others are playing checkers? Um, and I only got that because I listened to a podcast outside of my normal, uh, like my normal flow. So when you're running out of ideas, um, I guess two things on that. When you're running out of ideas of what to write about, switch up where you're consuming information. And then the second thing is try to have these consistent prompts that you come back to that lead you to interesting places. And so two of mine are, what would this person do if-- like to tackle this problem? And then another is, you know, what would it look like to play chess rather than checkers? And if you end up with a stable of like 15 or 20 of those, then you can go like problem or story and then prompt, and that will, uh, result in some interesting thoughts, some of which hopefully will be worth publishing.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:16 Um,

Ali Abdaal 1:26:17 so you write 1000 words a day, but presumably you don't publish 1000 words per day.

Nathan Barry 1:26:20 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:20 What does the... Yeah, what does the publishing segment look like?

Nathan Barry 1:26:25 I, I mean, it's entirely, uh, up to you. You know, I would just pick something and stick with it. I think publishing a newsletter once a week and then, um, or an essay. Sometimes newsletters are, are a little too low quality, and I'd rather people focus on like flagship content. I struggle with that back and forth of like staying consistent versus being really, really high quality.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:46 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:26:47 Um, I would just say pick a frequency and stick with it. Uh, and it has to be... Uh, you want it to be a point where you're not too frequent so that you can't hit your quality bar.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:05 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:27:06 Right? Some people are like, "I'm gonna write every single day." And then I'm like, "Well, you're not Seth Godin." [chuckles] You know? You don't have that like level of input of ideas and, and all that. So I think once a week is a good consistent cadence. It forces you to stay on topic and explore.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:22 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:27:22 Um, but then you need something that you're really pursuing, right? Like, uh, some thread that you're trying to pull on and unwind or like a book that you're writing-

Ali Abdaal 1:27:34 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:27:34 ... or, or like a meaningful project. Um, otherwise it, it, it'll fizzle out.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:40 Um, so I've got about four different book ideas that I want to-

Nathan Barry 1:27:43 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:27:43 ... sort of pursue.

Nathan Barry 1:27:44 Me too.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:45 And [clears throat] I love the idea of... I was speaking to Mo Gawdat about this, who wrote Solve for Happy, and he, he has about six different book ideas. And he says each day he does 2000 words a day. He said, "I just pick whichever one takes my fancy, and I just-

Nathan Barry 1:27:57 Yep

Ali Abdaal 1:27:57 ... tickle away at it." Do you do something similar where you're like-- Or would you recommend that? Or do you think it's, it's helpful to have just one thing that you're working towards?

Nathan Barry 1:28:04 I think it's-- No matter what you do, it's important to have a way to capture the ideas-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:07 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:28:07 ... that are sparked. 'Cause sometimes, like I have four different book ideas, I think, and they sort of overlap. Like, is it this book? Is it that book? And, you know, what order should they be published in?

Ali Abdaal 1:28:19 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:28:20 And so the, the biggest thing is get the ideas down on paper and then, you know, either edit it yourself or hire an editor. Someone else will come along and be like, "Oh, no, no, no. This story-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:29 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:28:29 ... is actually the thing that we're going to use here. We're gonna flip the whole thing around." Um, that's a... Like the order of The Ladders of Wealth Creation article was very different after James got his hands on it and was like-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:40 Mm

Nathan Barry 1:28:40 ... "No, no, no. The... Like read the whole thing, [chuckles] you know, but like let's, uh, let's represent it like this." So I would be in the camp of just write if that's what works for you. Unless you're so scattered that it's not working for you-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:53 Sure

Nathan Barry 1:28:53 ... and then like force yourself to, to stay consistent. But otherwise, like as you're writing one thing, make sure that like the documents and the structure for the other thing exists-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:02 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:29:02 ... so that you can be like, "Oh, this does belong over here," and you have a place to put it, and so it's not, not lost or wasted.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:08 Sick. This is so good. Okay, I'm gonna commit to this. 1000 words per day. That's, that's the thing. That is the one. Um-

Nathan Barry 1:29:17 Oh, one other... You were asking for tips.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:18 Yes.

Nathan Barry 1:29:18 One other thing is there are days that you can't, for whatever reason, or shouldn't write 1000 words, right? Where, you know, it's like, okay, I'm gonna go, I don't know, like with my, uh, partner, I'm off to go do this thing. I'm gonna be entirely focused on time with them or whatever. And some people are like, "Well, what do you do?" It's like, oh, just write more on the bookends. You know, build up and be like, "Hey, uh, you know, for this holiday weekend, I'm not going to write. And so I guess for the preceding week, I need to write 1500 words a day to get ahead."

Ali Abdaal 1:29:52 Nice.

Nathan Barry 1:29:52 And, and plan ahead like that, and then al- also look at your calendar and say like, "Oh, it's going to be really hard to hit, uh, to like to write on these days because of whatever is happening, and so I'm gonna make a plan for it right now."

Ali Abdaal 1:30:06 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:30:06 Ultimately, like, you know, I'm gonna get up earlier that day. I'm going to, uh, write in advance, you know, any of those things.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:13 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:30:13 And there were days that I like forgot to write, and instead of being like, "Oh, I broke the chain," and all of that and getting upset about it, I would just write double the next day.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:24 Hmm. Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:30:26 So like the, the goal is 600,000 words in 600 days, not, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:31 Not literally 1000 words a day.

Nathan Barry 1:30:32 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:33 Okay, that's nice. Yeah, 'cause it gives you the flexibility while also being able to maintain the chain, as it were.

Nathan Barry 1:30:38 It also helps you think of it like a job, where it's not day by day. It's like the, the big picture. You know, if it was like, "Hey, I have to keep this factory moving all the time, like, with this level of output, you know, but we wanna take this week vacation," no problem.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:53 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:30:54 Just increase the output by 50% for the preceding week or two weeks-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:58 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:30:58 ... and you're good to go.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:00 Easy. [laughs] That's so good.

Nathan Barry 1:31:01 Simple, not easy. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:31:02 Simple, not e- exactly, yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:31:03 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:31:03 Simple, not easy. Um,

Ali Abdaal 1:31:06 what do you... What are your thoughts on a personal blog broadly? And I ask because... So I like your website. I like nathanbarry.com. It's... It feels personal. It's good vibes. I'm unsure what to do with mine. I... My website aliabdaal.com, uh, it started off as a bit of a personal blog.

Nathan Barry 1:31:26 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:27 It's now morphed into, like, well, this is good lead gen for the business and so-

Nathan Barry 1:31:30 Yep

Ali Abdaal 1:31:30 ... we should get ghostwriters to write a shit ton of articles about how to grow on YouTube, because then that links to our YouTube, of course. But then it sort of loses the charm of, like, a personal blog, and I like the personal blog from an artistic sense, even though it may not make sense... may make less sense from a commercial sense.

Nathan Barry 1:31:45 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:45 I wonder what it... Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Nathan Barry 1:31:48 I don't have that exact problem because I have ConvertKit and nathanbarry.com fairly separate.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:52 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:31:53 You know, they, they link-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:53 Like ConvertKit is more of a publication, like they-

Nathan Barry 1:31:55 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:31:55 ... blog the stuff you write.

Nathan Barry 1:31:56 And it's clear that other people are writing, you know, the-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:58 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:31:58 ... vast majority of that content. Um, now if you're trying to split it and it's like, okay, you know, one, one thing to be like, "Oh, we'll spin out another site," it's like, well, but then I'm gonna have to build domain authority for that new site.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:10 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:32:10 And you're like, "Uh."

Ali Abdaal 1:32:11 Exactly, yep.

Nathan Barry 1:32:12 Don't do that. From an SEO perspective, I would think of it, of it like maybe you have these, like, flagship, um, guides-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:21 Hmm. Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:32:21 ... that are really going deep on... and going to rank very, very well for-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:27 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:32:27 ... you know, how to grow a YouTube channel. These, these high-intent search terms that are gonna be worth a lot of money to you.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:36 Yes.

Nathan Barry 1:32:36 Right? This will turn into a $500 course purchase. This will turn into... You know. And someone's trying to, trying to do that. And I'd build those funnels really carefully. And then, like, I wouldn't do the ghostwritten, um, one-off random things to rank.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:52 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:32:52 Because I think Google rewards the flagship articles much more.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:55 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:32:56 Get tons of ghostwriting help on those, right? Like, make them amazing.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:00 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:33:00 It should be the brain dump of your ideas, and then have a great editor, like, really go through it, so this is something that you're really, you know, really proud of and can link to and keep updated for years.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:11 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:33:12 But I would keep the personal stuff going. I, I think that's something that's missing from the internet right now-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:16 Hmm

Nathan Barry 1:33:16 ... is, like, the classic, "This is what I'm thinking about, and I'm just following that." I, I wish I did it more.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:23 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:33:23 Um, I do a decent amount in my newsletter, but, um, yeah. Like what's... something that I'm trying to do is, like, scale it back just, just like one notch on the level of polish, so that not everything has to be a fantastic essay or something else. Like, I want that more raw feeling-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:42 Hmm

Nathan Barry 1:33:42 ... and less marketed. But that's just because that's what I want to exist on, on the internet.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:47 Yeah, same. Hmm. Like I, I really like discovering a personal blog.

Nathan Barry 1:33:52 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:53 And it's so nice. Um, yeah. One thing, what, what, what [laughs] one thing I'll say I, I like less about yours is the fact that your podcast blog posts-

Nathan Barry 1:34:01 I know, me too. It drives me crazy.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:03 And I'm just like, "Oh, I, I just wanna read the Nathan Barry, like, archives. I don't want a 078 interview with Sahil Bloom." It's like-

Nathan Barry 1:34:08 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:34:08 ... I would love for that to be separate.

Nathan Barry 1:34:10 There's a bunch of those things that-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:11 Yeah. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:34:12 ... I'm like, "Uh..."

Ali Abdaal 1:34:13 And I have the same issue with mine, it's like latest articles, it's like they're all podcast episodes. I'm like, "Ugh, that's, ugh, it's not, it's not the, it's not the vibe."

Nathan Barry 1:34:19 Yeah, and it, it's like what I want, which of course I have people on the team, so I could j- I'd just pay to do it. Actually, it's kind of a weird thing. I have a lot of people on the ConvertKit team, and I don't really have people on the-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:32 Team Nathan

Nathan Barry 1:34:32 ... on Team Nathan.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:33 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:34:33 And so you end up with this like, oh, you know, they ma- like it's... the WordPress install is in like the ConvertKit WP engine server, and so they make sure it's updated and all that. [laughs] But it's like-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:42 Yep

Nathan Barry 1:34:42 ... they have other things. Uh, but yeah, I want the site to, like, be like these are the flagship essays, these are the recent random musings, you know? I want it to be the kind of site that it's easy to get lost in.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:55 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:34:55 Of where you just, like, go down the rabbit hole and binge it all and, um... But yeah. It's-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:01 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:35:01 I, I would definitely... What I want more people to write about is what they're most interested in, and then, like, the behind the scenes, the content. Like, I can get the 10 productivity app tips a handful of different places.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:15 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:35:16 But, like, I wanna read the, like, obsessive book launch things or, like, here's how... Like I loved, uh, Thiago Forte's content about how he built out his-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:26 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:35:26 ... garage studio. You know? And it's not like, "In theory, this is how you should do it." It's like, "This is what I actually did." Um, and so I just love that, like the, the show your work kind of things.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:37 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:35:38 Um, 'cause I wanna follow, I wanna follow the person more than I wanna follow the advice.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:44 Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the, one of the issues, and I think, I think maybe this sort of, the, the Nick Huber funnel that you, you mentioned solves this. But one of the issues is when, and I, I guess every media outlet has this issue, where it is the, the BuzzFeedy 10 productivity apps-

Nathan Barry 1:36:02 Yep

Ali Abdaal 1:36:02 ... stuff that will get the clicks and get the views from a mainstream audience.

Nathan Barry 1:36:06 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:08 Even though that's the stuff that's just, like, objectively less interesting. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:36:12 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:12 And the more interesting stuff does not get those views, but maybe... And I like, I like the way you phrased it, sort of views from, I guess, quote, "the right people."

Nathan Barry 1:36:20 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:20 If you're trying to attract an audience of... Like if I want people like you to read my blog, someone like you is not gonna read my article about 10 productivity hacks, 'cause like why would you? But if I said, if it was a, an in-depth look at how my book launch went and, like, the numbers behind it and the screenshots and how we tracked things in Fathom-

Nathan Barry 1:36:35 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:36:35 ... and then the graphs and shit, like you would read that.

Nathan Barry 1:36:37 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:37 And you're the sort of person that I would like to be part of my newsletter because like-

Nathan Barry 1:36:40 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:36:40 ... you're Nathan Barry. It's like the, the... Yeah. It's like the, the, the people who are executing at a high level Will read niche stuff, not, whereas the, uh, there, there, there's just this sort of separation like the mainstream world. And it sounds weird to, to kind of say this because I don't want, I don't want people listening to this to think that I'm ungrateful for the audience, audience and stuff. But it is just like someone like you or someone like Tim Ferriss would read a very different blog post-

Nathan Barry 1:37:05 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:37:05 ... compared to a random person in the audience who doesn't have their own business, for example.

Nathan Barry 1:37:10 Well, and the great thing is that you can segment audiences, right? And I think that people don't do that enough.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:14 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:37:14 Right? I've written a lot about how to earn a full-time living as a content creator. That's a topic I'm very passionate about. At some point, I feel like I've written enough about that.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:25 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:37:25 And there's enough written on the internet, uh, you know, by the like 0 to 60,000 or 0 to 100,000. W- The gap that I felt like was there in the market is like, okay, you've done that. You now have... If you understood audience building and leverage and marketing and everything else enough to get to 100,000 a year in revenue, I bet with the right steps you could get to 500,000 a year. And what I wanted to write about is, okay, what happens now? You're now making $500,000 a year, more than you ever thought possible, more than anyone else in your family, more than, you know, all of these things. What do you do? 'Cause there's real problems that come with that. And I wanted to write about that topic, but I knew that's not what you write about to a 50,000 person, 30,000 person email list.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:11 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:38:12 And so what I did is I said, "Okay, I'm gonna create my own paid newsletter." It's only paid so that there's a little bit of a barrier to get into it. I don't really care about the money from it. But, uh, I called it my Secret Money Newsletter, and I said, "It's 100 bucks one time to get on the list." Rather than committing to, like, writing every single week, I made an, an email course. And so I started it when I had like six emails written out, and you'd get one every Friday.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:38 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:38:39 And then whenever I felt inspired, I'd add another one.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:41 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:38:41 It's now 17 emails long, and people just get all the emails, and they wait at the end until I add another one, and then it'll be 18 and so on, so on from there. But it let me write to a different audience without the caveats.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:57 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:38:57 'Cause I just said like, "Look, if you're making less than 200,000 a year, this is not for you. If you thought for even a second about is $100 worth buying this thing, this is not for you." Uh, and it's been so much fun because I segmented my audience, and now I'm talking about like, okay, what are your favorite things you've ever splurged on, right? Like, uh, a VIP tour at Disneyland for like your family and friends. One audience would be like, "That is absurd that you spent $4,000," you know, or whatever. You're spending $500 an hour for someone to help you cut the lines at Disneyland. But then some other person is going to be like, "This is amazing."

Ali Abdaal 1:39:33 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:39:33 Like, how do I, you know, [chuckles] how do I book that? What other tips do you have? And even little things like there's people in my life, um, who have helped me reframe things around money in a really important way, and I wanna be able to pass that on. Um, like my friend Mark at one point was talking about, um, investing. Like I assume that once you get to a certain level, then like investing gets really complicated. You have to have like financial advisors, and you have to, you know... You like, you have all these new opportunities, and so it means all this stuff. And he's like, "Look..." We were talking about it, and he'd built up, uh, I think his, his Vanguard investing account to about $5 million from his creator business, just continually, you know, for a decade, putting in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, just funneling all his profits in. And I was like, "But don't you have to do more complicated things?" He's like, "No, the Vanguard account functions the same at 100 grand and 500 grand and five million. Like it just works the same. Like it, it doesn't matter." It's like, "Well, isn't that a ton of money to keep in Vanguard?" And he's like, "No, think of the grand scale." [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:40:37 [chuckles]

Nathan Barry 1:40:37 Like they're like $5 million doesn't even register for that, you know?

Ali Abdaal 1:40:41 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:40:41 They probably have-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:42 Like billions of dol-

Nathan Barry 1:40:43 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:40:43 ... billions-

Nathan Barry 1:40:44 Billions of dollars-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:44 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:40:44 ... in single Vanguard accounts.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:46 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:40:47 Uh, and another moment when ConvertKit first got a million dollars in our checking account, right, to operate the business and the, you know, all that we'd, we'd saved up to th- that point. And I asked in this software founders Slack group, um, like, "What do I do? What fans... Like what do I need to set up?" This is all that. And this guy Ian, who runs a really successful, uh, SaaS company, just said like, "Nathan, a million dollars is a very normal amount of money to have in a checking account for a business." And I was like, "What? But don't you..." And then I realized like, oh yeah, that's just how businesses operate. So there's, there's these conversations around money that I wanted to be able to write out, and I wanted to do it in two ways. I wanted to do it where I can create something once and it continues to work for me forever, so I'm not on a content treadmill and where people are like, "Nathan, where's this week's essay?" Or something like that. Uh, and then the second thing is I wanted to do it to a niche enough audience that they would care about and value the same things, and I wouldn't have any of the like, "Here's Nathan bragging about something related to money."

Ali Abdaal 1:41:50 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:41:50 Right? And so I think that tool of like an email course or a private section of your, of your blog or something else is really great for that because you can explore what you care about, niche it down to only the people who care about that. And those are also my favorite replies, right? Like, uh, I'll write one on like of my favorite splurges once you have money.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:13 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:42:13 And then I just say like, "Hey, what are your favorite splurges?"

Ali Abdaal 1:42:15 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:42:16 And people will reply and say, "Oh, this one time I... We took another couple on this, uh, like... What was it? Like a, a bikes and barges cruise throughout, like a river cruise throughout Europe where you like rode your bike all day from one city to another ex- like stopping, and then you like got back on the, you know, river cruise boat and stayed there for the evening, and it like repeated over and over again." They're like, "It was an amazing experience." And yeah, it cost, I don't know, $10,000 or, or some really meaningful amount of money, but they're like, "But it was amazing." So I love reading all of those stories and getting the replies, and I feature the replies in future editions, um- Of the, the newsletter. And so it makes this little community. So that's the way that I handle it, of like being able to write the niche topics that I care about and just segment it to a niche audience.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:05 That's really good. I'm gonna sign up to the Secret Money Newsletter one.

Nathan Barry 1:43:07 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:43:07 Um, yeah, 'cause I, I, I heard some- I heard or read somewhere, might've been one of your podcasts. Is, is this the same newsletter where you, where you reveal like personal income details and all that kind of stuff?

Nathan Barry 1:43:18 Yeah, I have, um, about once a year I have like a update of this-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:23 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:43:23 ... is my net worth and where I invest everything and-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:26 Interesting. Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:43:27 ... 'cause I wanna write about that stuff. The other thing is I want to read back all my own previous stuff, right? I write a year-in-review blog post for the last, I think tw- I think I'm 12 years in-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:37 Nice

Nathan Barry 1:43:37 ... of writing. You know, you just nathanbarry.com/ like 2012-review.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:42 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:43:42 2022-review. You'll get there. And I'll even pull up stuff. Like I wanted to show someone a photo the other day and I was like, "Ah, I know the URL structure of my blog, so I can get to that really quickly." But those are written for me because I'm like, oh, what was I struggling with in 2013? What, what did I value in 2017? Where did I g- go, right? I'll go and look through all of that. Oh, there's the kids when they were really little. There's, you know, all these different things. And so yeah, I'm just creating content for me and trying to have that archive. I just also put it out on the internet because I guess I'm weird like that.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:13 That's cool. That's very

Ali Abdaal 1:44:15 cool. Yeah, 'cause I've been doing these videos for the last five years or so about how much money I make on YouTube each year.

Nathan Barry 1:44:19 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:19 And they're getting more and more absurd and I'm kind of like, "Ugh, I don't know if I wanna continue doing these." In a way it does sort of paint a target on my back to some degree because people might think that business revenue is equivalent to personal money in the bank, which it's-

Nathan Barry 1:44:31 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:44:31 ... really not. And, and it's like-

Nathan Barry 1:44:32 You don't need to get like kidnapped outside your flat or something like-

Ali Abdaal 1:44:33 Yeah, that sort of thing. I don't want that to happen, especially if I get married and have kids and things. Um, but I like, I do like the idea of being public and-

Nathan Barry 1:44:40 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:44:40 ... transparent about stuff like this.

Nathan Barry 1:44:43 There is a point that it, that it becomes entirely unrelatable. Um, and so that, like I, I wonder the same thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:51 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:44:51 Um, like for ConvertKit, you know, we're public with our metrics.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:54 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:44:54 But our business has gotten a lot more, uh, complicated or sophisticated and so now like our public dashboard only shows, you know, one revenue line-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:05 Mm

Nathan Barry 1:45:05 ... and we have three and, you know, and, and then I'm thinking about like, okay, is this still serving the same, the same journey? So the-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:13 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:45:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:14 Sometimes they, yeah. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:45:15 It's, it's a balance. Um, and I don't know. And especially 'cause you're right, people don't understand money. They're like, "Okay, oh, you made $5 million off of this. That's absurd." You know? "So you probably took home like $4 million." And you're like-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:29 You're like-

Nathan Barry 1:45:29 ... "No."

Ali Abdaal 1:45:30 "No, no one did." [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:45:32 No.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:32 I wish. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:45:33 That is not how it works at all.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:35 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:45:35 Um, so yeah, there's definitely a point where you would stop. And one thing that I would say, 'cause I've struggled with this, just to make clear-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:47 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:45:47 ... is you don't owe this to anyone.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:49 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:45:50 Right? There's a point where if you create content for a long period of time, people will start to treat you like you owe them that you continue to create that content.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:59 Yeah, true.

Nathan Barry 1:46:00 And you don't. Like do it for as long as it serves you in that way and you can change. And people will be like, "Oh, Oli, why are you not releasing that video anymore?" Like, you know. And you're just like, "Look, it wasn't interesting to me. It wasn't serving me or the, or the business. And, you know, if you need that roadmap, look at the last six years of this video that I put out."

Ali Abdaal 1:46:21 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:46:22 Um, I, I also wonder about, uh, this has kind of been, uh, a struggle for me on like how much lifestyle things to share of-

Ali Abdaal 1:46:33 Like here's my fancy house. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:46:34 Yeah. Here's my fancy house or, uh, if you charter a plane to go somewhere, right? Or, or, um, you know, who knows? Private tour at Disneyland or like all of these things. A fancy car. You ... It's a weird thing where I like don't, on one hand don't feel like sharing any of that stuff. But on the other hand, if you do share it, like it drives, um, like lots of attention, right? Like my friend Dan Martell, uh, just bought his own plane.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:02 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:47:02 Right? And he doesn't live that far from me. Like right, you know, it's like a 10-hour drive.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:07 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:47:08 You know? But like commercial flights, it's ridiculous to, uh, to get there where he is up in Canada. And-

Ali Abdaal 1:47:13 It's in like Kelowna.

Nathan Barry 1:47:14 Kelowna, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:15 I've been try- trying to plan a trip there, but it's a fucking nightmare to get to.

Nathan Barry 1:47:18 It's really, really difficult.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:19 Yeah. I wanna get him on the podcast and I'd like his-

Nathan Barry 1:47:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:47:20 ... his, his new vlog and all this stuff. Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:47:22 Yeah. It's so much good stuff. And so I imagine, I haven't talked to him about this, but I imagine when he bought the plane, you know, there's a whole thing of like, "Oh, should I share this?" You know? Like that puts... That's a different level of wealth.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:36 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:47:37 But then on the other hand, in sharing it, he's getting a whole bunch more attention 'cause there's someone scrolling through Instagram like, "He owns a plane? Who is this guy?"

Ali Abdaal 1:47:43 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:47:44 Right? And they dive in, they find his stuff, and they end up like using his, his advice to grow their business and, and all that. So that's something that I struggle with a bit-

Ali Abdaal 1:47:55 Hmm

Nathan Barry 1:47:55 ... is at what level to share that. 'Cause on one hand, I, um, like live a pretty simple, straightforward life on a farm in Boise.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:03 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:48:04 Uh, and then on the other, like there's things that I spend absurd amounts of money on, and I'm, I, I absolutely love it. And so it's like, oh, you know, like do I need a marketing photo like that, you know?

Ali Abdaal 1:48:14 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:48:15 Uh, not that I have a Lamborghini, but if you did that or like a Ferrari or something, right? You could get a lot of marketing mileage out of that.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:21 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:48:22 And I'm like, "Ah, I don't know." So you gotta figure out what, what your brand is and, and what you wanna share.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:27 Yeah. Yeah, at one point I was doing like ... You know, I did a, a, a tour of my apartment in Cambridge.

Nathan Barry 1:48:34 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:34 Which was cheap. It was like £1,500 a month rent. Uh, or yeah, or the, or, or the rent equivalent. And then I moved to London and I moved into a fancier one and I was like, "Okay, let's do a clickbait title." And even though I was renting, we, we called it like my, my $2.5 million apartment tour.

Nathan Barry 1:48:51 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:51 And there was something about that. I was just like, "Oh, this feel... Oh, God." And like now this place is even more expensive than that, but I've not mentioned it once.

Nathan Barry 1:48:59 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:00 I haven't really talked about the price unless someone specifically asked me on the podcast and I like- The idea of being... I like the James Clear approach, kind of. The James Clear approach is basically, "I wanna be known for my ideas."

Nathan Barry 1:49:11 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:11 "I don't want pe- I don't want, I don't wanna be known for my face or, like, my lifestyle or anything like that."

Nathan Barry 1:49:14 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:14 Even though he's making s- fuck tons of money. Um, but at the same time, I do like, I do like... I, I vibe with your thing about the whole transparency side and sharing-

Nathan Barry 1:49:22 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:49:22 ... and, you know, the fact that, like, Dan, if, you know, Dan Martell talks about how he, how he has a plane, I'd be like, I'm way more likely to follow his stuff, and I'd be interested because I'm like, "Oh, shit." I, I'm not thinking of that as him bragging. I'm thinking of it-

Nathan Barry 1:49:36 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:49:36 ... "That's really cool. That's inspiring." But I know that there are lots of people out there... Like, I speak to my grandma, I was chatting to her yesterday and she was like, "Oh, Ali, please talk about... Stop talking about how much money you make." And I was like, "Oh, but it's inspiring to people," and I've... So many people have said to me that, like, because of that video, they started a YouTube channel, and she's like, "Yeah, but, you know, everyone else out there is just sort of feeling... They're not feeling inspired, they're feeling, like, hurt because they-"

Nathan Barry 1:49:56 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:49:56 ... "haven't achieved that." And I'm just like, "Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know."

Nathan Barry 1:50:01 Yeah, and it's challenging, right? 'Cause you don't know and you can't control how someone's gonna react to your content and whether someone's going to say like, uh, like, "I feel envious of that," or someone who goes, "Oh, I could do that."

Ali Abdaal 1:50:15 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:50:16 Right? So years ago, actually before I published The App Design Handbook, I was wanting to write, and I had like kinda start and stop and, you know, working on this e-book. And then on the same day, these two guys, uh, Jarrod Drysdale and Sasha Grief, published e-books, self-published e-books to small audiences about design, and it was pure chance they launched both of these on, uh, Hacker News on the same day. Sasha had this like... It was like a design case study where he walked you through how it went, and he sold it for, I think, $6. And then if you wanted to buy, like, the one with the Photoshop files with it, it was $12. So we had these two, two prices. And Jarrod sold his book for $39, and it was just that one price. And it was fascinating to see both of these happen on the same day, and it was like, you know, you're like looking at them ranked on Hacker News and you're like, "That's, that's interesting." And then Jason Cohen, who's the founder of WP Engine, invited both of them to come on his blog and say, like, "Write a, write a guest post about your pricing model, how your launch went, and like why your pricing model is better than the other person." Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:51:29 That's fun.

Nathan Barry 1:51:29 Uh, and so it was great fun. And so I read both of those. He published them like one after the other. I read both of them and thought a couple things. One, you can make money self-publishing. Two, these guys are just like me. They're designers with small audiences, you know, self-publishing a fairly niche product. Compared to like reading about Jason Fried who's like, "Oh, look, we made 500 grand self-publishing. You should too."

Ali Abdaal 1:51:55 [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:51:56 And so it really resonated with me, and I've heard a lot of other stories of people saying like, "Okay," like, "I'm paying attention to the story, and, like, there is a Black woman like me who accomplished that. There's this person who lives in my country who accomplished this thing," right? And seeing that representation, and I think that's just really, really cool 'cause you can see it and go like, uh, "That could be me." And so I really like the idea of sharing the stories ultimately and being like, "This is the scale that it could get." Right? Like, you could build a business to $5 million a year, $10 million a year, and it's possible 'cause that's the power of audiences. And that, that's why I love telling all this because otherwise people don't realize how far it can go. But then it's a trade-off. Uh, you know, you just don't know how people will respond. Um, I haven't really heard of examples of people having truly negative outcomes, you know? Like-

Ali Abdaal 1:52:58 Yeah, the Tim Ferriss blog post is scary, but other than that. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:53:00 That's true.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:01 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:53:01 That's true. And that is, right, that is another level.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:04 That's like, that's like, that's a whole s- five levels up from [laughs] where I am-

Nathan Barry 1:53:07 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:53:07 ... for example.

Nathan Barry 1:53:08 But if you think about it, I don't know how many copies of his books Tim has sold, but if we go to James Clear, for example-

Ali Abdaal 1:53:13 Mm-hmm

Nathan Barry 1:53:13 ... right, he sold 15 million copies of Atomic Habits. Um, he has, I think, the largest single author newsletter on the internet.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:22 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:53:23 Um, and that's, that's pretty wild, [laughs] you know?

Ali Abdaal 1:53:26 It's pretty cool, yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:53:26 But, but he doesn't seem to ha- Like, he st- seems to stay much more in the background.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:30 Yeah, but also, like, most people who have read Atomic Habits probably don't know what he looks like.

Nathan Barry 1:53:34 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:35 So his, his, like, profit per unit fame is quite strong.

Nathan Barry 1:53:40 Yeah. You know, so we host a conference every year called Craft and Commerce, and so we've had a lot of big names. You know, James has spoken at it and Seth Godin. And, um, one year we had, um, Casey Neistat come out to speak, it was 2018, I think, um, 2019, somewhere in there. So he was like pretty close to the peak of his, like, vlog-

Ali Abdaal 1:54:03 Mm

Nathan Barry 1:54:04 ... popularity and, and all that, putting out a ton of content. It was before he kinda like switched up his, uh, his stuff and took a little bit of a break. And so he arrived at the airport in Boise, Idaho, and, like, someone on our team went and picked him up and all that, and even... Like, he was starting to get mobbed, like, in the... You know, just like waiting curbside in Boise, [laughs] right? People are like, "Casey, Casey," you know, [laughs] like trying to get his attention and all of that. And, uh, you know, so watching like that level of recognition, him, uh, getting recognized very randomly and, and, uh, that level of fame was one thing. And then, uh, the next year, Mark Manson came out to speak, and this... He, uh, The Subtle Art w- had, like, sold an absurd number of copies, was, you know, top five New York Time list con- uh, continually. And Mark attended the entire conference. Like, not only was he at the speakers' dinner, but he and his wife were... Like, they went to workshops. They, they just... Like, Mark's a very chill guy.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:05 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:55:05 And, uh, they loved it, and then he got up and gave his closing keynote And I think a bunch of people went, "I had lunch with that guy. [laughs] That's Mark Manson?" But it's the difference between YouTube, where your face is on everything-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:20 Mm

Nathan Barry 1:55:20 ... and you have that level of fame, and the book where you're like, "Oh, I could think that's an amazing book, and I have no idea what Mark looks like."

Ali Abdaal 1:55:27 Mm.

Nathan Barry 1:55:28 Now, what I wonder is over the last year or so, at least as I've noticed it, Mark has a lot of stuff, a lot of content that he's putting out with his face on it. And so I'm always curious. Uh, I, I wonder what thoughts you have on it of, like, that... Is Mark giving up something? Like, he had the level of fame and name recognition-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:47 Mm

Nathan Barry 1:55:47 ... that maybe so many people want without the face recognition. [laughs] But I don't know. Maybe he wants-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:52 Mm

Nathan Barry 1:55:52 ... to get recognized on the street. Um, maybe there's another type of content that he wants to truly have his face tied to it. What do you think?

Ali Abdaal 1:55:58 Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I, I, I had dinner with him in, in LA a couple months ago, um, and he was very kind enough to offer a, a blurb for my book, which was, which, which was very nice. Uh-

Nathan Barry 1:56:08 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:56:08 ... super chill guy, very friendly.

Nathan Barry 1:56:09 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:10 Um, it w- it, it was interesting how... 'Cause b- because I kinda said to him that, like, he, he is where I k- I aspire to be in terms of, like, the book stuff.

Nathan Barry 1:56:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:21 And that the book still sold stupidly well, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and he seems to be trying to be a YouTuber, and-

Nathan Barry 1:56:27 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:56:27 ... succeeding fairly well at being a YouTuber. And he s- and he kinda said that, like, you know, with all the traditional media stuff, the Hol- Hollywood film and everything, that it's... it, it reaches more people, it's more fun, and it makes more money to just make YouTube videos.

Nathan Barry 1:56:43 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:44 I was like, "Okay, that's interesting." [laughs] Um, and he was kind of saying to me that, like, don't peg your self-worth on, like, whether you hit the New York Times bestseller list or not because you'll do it.

Nathan Barry 1:56:53 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:54 Maybe, maybe not. Like, you'll change your Instagram bio and your Twitter bio, and life will move on, and it'll just be-

Nathan Barry 1:56:59 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:56:59 ... a minor blip, and you won't really care. But it's like the work is the thing.

Nathan Barry 1:57:04 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:04 And so I was like... That was... It was quite reassuring.

Nathan Barry 1:57:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:08 But I don't know how he feels about being recognized in public and stuff. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:57:11 Yeah. I don't... Do you get recognized in public very often?

Ali Abdaal 1:57:14 Yeah. Uh, like a few times a day if I'm roaming around London.

Nathan Barry 1:57:17 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:17 I quite like it, 'cause that feels like a, a good level. It's educational content, so people are, like, nice about it.

Nathan Barry 1:57:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:22 And, like, it's only really nerds who follow my stuff, and so, like-

Nathan Barry 1:57:25 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:57:25 ... chances are I'd, I'd wanna talk to them about, about something. Um-

Nathan Barry 1:57:28 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:57:28 ... but I wouldn't want it to be, like, in an entertainment kind of-

Nathan Barry 1:57:33 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:57:33 ... sort of genre.

Nathan Barry 1:57:34 Where, where there's, like, a line of 100 people trying to get to you, and you're-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:38 Yeah

Nathan Barry 1:57:38 ... like, trying to be like... [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:57:40 Yeah. Um, I think it's all, yeah, different, different genres as well. Like, who's it? Um, MKBHD, Marques Brownlee, was, was talking about how he w- uh, you know, he was at this YouTuber event with, like, Lele Pons or someone like that who... And he sort of... She, uh, she walked out the airport, and there was, like, a mob of, like, 100 people, like, just waiting. He walked out of the same airport. No one recognized him.

Nathan Barry 1:58:02 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:03 And he's got, like, 50 million subscribers. He's, like, the world's biggest tech YouTuber.

Nathan Barry 1:58:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:07 But also, the, the sorts of people that walk... that watch his channel are not the sort of people that would, like, to line up outside someone's-

Nathan Barry 1:58:11 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:58:11 ... hotel room to figure out, "Oh my God, Marques is, is here." So I think there's-

Nathan Barry 1:58:14 What outfit is he wearing today?

Ali Abdaal 1:58:15 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Nathan Barry 1:58:16 You know? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:58:18 Um,

Ali Abdaal 1:58:19 ladders of wealth. The ladders of wealth creation, a step-by-step roadmap to... What's it? To building wealth. Um, yeah, so I guess the first one is... Yeah. I, you know, there's, there's these four different things. I wonder if we can just sort of talk through these in turn, and just love for you to riff on these, 'cause this is a great-

Nathan Barry 1:58:36 Yeah. So in the ladders of wealth, I break down, like, four different ladders. Then you can climb as high as you want on any ladder, but they are... I guess some are, some are ultimately taller than others. Um, so to run through them quickly, time for money, uh, your own services business, productized services, and then ultimately selling products. And as w- as we think about skills, the skills that you have to learn are pretty different on each ladder. So time for money, you might think, like, what skills do you have to learn for that? But it, it, you know, going back to the job at Wendy's, there's a lot of people who did not learn the time for money skills. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:59:12 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 1:59:12 Those are, like, being able to follow a process, doing what you're told, showing up to work on time, showing up to work sober. You know? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:59:20 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 1:59:20 Like, some of these, these things that, uh, we might take for granted, but, like, for a lot of people, y- you have to actually learn that, to be reliable and to be consistent. And so in that ladder, you're gonna start with, like, an hourly job. Um, you know, it could be landscaping, could be Wendy's, could be something else. Uh, and then later move up to a salaried job. And you're gonna have a pretty big range within that, right? There's plenty of salaried jobs that would be on that ladder that could get to $200,000 a year, m- you know, maybe even as high as $1 million a year that, that could be within that. Um, the next ladder I think is where things start to get more complicated, right? That's, like, having your own services business. At the basic level, you're talking about operating as a freelancer, right? Um, and so that's where I'm just, you know, trading time for money. Both these first two ladders are time for money, and, and there's a, a one-to-one relationship there. And, and so, but in the services business, I have to know how to form a company, right? I have to fire the f- uh, file the paperwork with the government. I have to know, okay, I gotta work with an accountant. I can't just use, like, TurboTax or some other software, right? There's some more stuff than that. Um, how to, how to write contracts, you know, all of those things. So the first rung on that ladder is really, like, hourly work. "Hey, I'll design your website for $50 an hour. I'll show up for this amount of time." You know, or, "I'll mow your lawn for $25 an hour," anything like that. The next lad... The next rung on the ladder is when you start to charge by the project, and this is where things get interesting because now you have this big disconnect, or a possible disconnect, and a, a leverage point, and you've separated time for money. Instead of, "I'll, I'll design your site for $50 an hour," it's, "I'll design your site for, uh, $2,000 no matter how many hours it takes."

Ali Abdaal 2:01:11 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 2:01:13 And now we've introduced leverage and you understand, uh, leverage. A lot of people are like, "Oh, leverage is good." And I have to remind them, like, leverage is neither good nor bad. It just is. And it just amplifies what already is going to happen.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:26 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:01:27 Right? So if I am investing and I borrow money, that gives me leverage to be able to invest more. That means that I'm going... You know, if the stock goes up, I'm going to make more money than I would have otherwise, and if the stock goes down, I'm going to lose more money than I would have otherwise.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:41 Sure.

Nathan Barry 2:01:41 So in our web design example, um, maybe it takes me 10 hours and I end up making the equivalent of $200 an hour. Maybe it takes me 50 hours and I make far less and I should have, you know... Um, so that, that's the first thing. And once you disconnect time for money, then you start to get leverage. And then the last rung on that ladder, on the, uh, services ladder, is really like managing a team.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:09 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:02:09 And that's a whole new set of skills. And then you can get even more leverage. So at each of these two ladders, you can make a lot of money and you need to learn one set of skills, or I guess different sets of skills, and you can get increasing amounts of leverage. And then really as you move across, uh, to other ladders, then, uh, like productized services, I think it's really interesting. I guess to, to run through them quickly, the productized services are interesting because you're, you're trying to take something that was totally flexible-

Ali Abdaal 2:02:39 Mm

Nathan Barry 2:02:40 ... and you're saying, "Let me standardize it more and more so I can move more people through the process. I can have... It's easier for team members to provide this value." Like, uh, Hey Friends, for example, is a good example. What did you... If you could explain really quick, how you-

Ali Abdaal 2:02:53 Yeah. So Hey Friends is, is an agency that we're building, um, with, with a couple partners. Basically, it's... If, if people sign up and they pay large amounts of money, like I think starting at $14,000 a month, then, uh, the agency will do all of the work to-

Nathan Barry 2:03:08 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 2:03:08 ... make them banger YouTube videos that kind of look like mine, i.e., they're talking to a camera, talking head educational videos where all... Like for example, Nathan, if you wanted to do YouTube through Hey Friends-

Nathan Barry 2:03:18 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:03:18 ... all you would have to do is show up and talk to a camera for like a handful of videos. We would do the titles, the thumbnails, the ideation.

Nathan Barry 2:03:24 Right.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:24 We would say, "Nathan, we've analyzed all your work. We've figured out your style. We've figured out your goals. These are the videos we want you to film." You would just record to a camera, send us the files, and then our team would do all of the work in turning them into sick videos with great editing and good vibes and deal with all the analytics and everything. And so that is a productized service in that we have basically converted my process for making videos into a standardized playbook-

Nathan Barry 2:03:47 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:03:47 ... that team members can follow. We'll plug in your goals and your brand aesthetic and everything into that, and then we can then sell it out at a discount compared to what it would be to create that completely from scratch.

Nathan Barry 2:04:01 Yeah. Yeah, so it's no longer perfectly bespoke, but i- in a lot of ways it benefits from the fact that it's not, 'cause you're, you're t- being able to take the wins that you have across clients and, and things you learn in the process and, and, and go from there. So what's interesting about productized services is that you usually go from selling them, uh, one-to-one, right? Like I'm not taking you out to coffee and then saying like, "Oh, here's all we can do," and like that is one skill set that you need to learn in a services business. But as you go productize, it's like, oh, now I need to disconnect the sales. I need to be able to sell through a sales page. And so for that, I, I have to learn copywriting and design and maybe WordPress or ConvertKit landing pages or whatever else to build up, like to make that sale without my time.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:47 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:04:48 And then on the, the services as- aspect of it, we're trying to standardize as much as possible there so we have as much leverage. So in each case, we're like, it goes from very connected, and then we're just gradually trying to disconnect, okay, how the service is delivered, how it's sold, and we're getting further and further apart. 'Cause in each case, that allows, uh, for more leverage.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:07 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:05:08 And then as you take that further, right? Um, Hey Friends is a, is a recurring offering, right? And that, oh, that's another point of leverage, 'cause wait a second, I sell this one time, and so long as I keep delivering value consistently, then they're going to stay on. I'm not having to make a new sale every single month. And so that's a huge thing. And then, then the final ladder is really where you're going to, to pure products. And so that could be something as simple as an e-book like we've talked about. Uh, it could be like a WordPress plugin. Uh, even at like a, an Airbnb-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:40 Mm

Nathan Barry 2:05:40 ... is a, is a product that you've made, right? It's disconnected. Um, and so like WordPress, Shopify, uh, Airbnb, all of that are products inserted into an existing marketplace, right? Like I own several Airbnbs and I don't think about how do I market them.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:56 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 2:05:57 I think about how do I make my listing good, and then Airbnb takes care of all that deal flow. So that's an easier product to make than a product where you have to like create and package and sell and then continually market and have your own, um, uh, you know, continual sales to-

Ali Abdaal 2:06:12 Yeah

Nathan Barry 2:06:12 ... to scale that up. So that, that, you know, things get harder and harder on the ladder. And then ultimately, I think that, um, uh, software as a service is one of the most difficult things, uh, to do, but also one of the highest value. Because when it gets implemented into a company, it sticks around for a very, very long time. And then, you know, you see them get ridiculous multiples and all that. And then ultimately, I think the hardest thing to build and the highest possible leverage is like a marketplace or a social network.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:42 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 2:06:42 Where... And what's funny is a bunch of people start there, right? They're like, "I have this idea for, you know, a dog walking service," and blah, blah, you know, and you're like, "That, that's a two-sided marketplace." And so you have the skills that you should be operating like on ladder one, rung one, and you're saying like, "Let me dive all the way in and try to tackle the, like the absolute top of the last ladder."

Ali Abdaal 2:07:05 Hmm.

Nathan Barry 2:07:06 And that's why, uh, people really struggle because they, they try to bite off way too much, and they, they try to make a leap that requires learning, you know, 50 skills instead of-

Ali Abdaal 2:07:18 Yeah

Nathan Barry 2:07:18 ... iterating through one skill at a time.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:21 Yeah. I, when I, when I first read your, read, read this essay, I, I th- I thought it mapped quite well onto what I was doing with my life.

Nathan Barry 2:07:29 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:29 So, like, I started off trading time for money when I was, like, 12 and doing, like, private tutoring for, like, £4, £5 an hour.

Nathan Barry 2:07:36 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:37 Um, then I moved into selling services, which was like web design services, where I was charging by the hour. Um, and then moved into charging by the project-

Nathan Barry 2:07:45 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:07:45 ... and didn't really make m- very much money from it. Then slowly started dabbling with the product thing. So my first proper business that wa- that was successful was a sort of med school admissions business where I was doing selling in-person courses, teaching people how to get into med school. And initially I was doing them all myself, but then we sort of turned it into like a, a, a process that, like, I could hire people to follow. And then I built a sort of software medical school question bank because I knew how to code and com- combined forces with my brother, and then that was a product with some level of recurring revenue. And then the YouTube channel came and the courses on the, on top of that. And so now it's like almost everything we do, we try and do in the products camp. Um, and I don't like going back into productized service.

Nathan Barry 2:08:28 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 2:08:28 It's like Hey Friends was nice because we didn't have to do anything for it. So t- to us it was like basically a product. But the team is managing, managing everything. And we do have a bit of a service-based offering for our YouTuber accelerator, which is a little bit servicey, but that's more like a product, but just like good customer, customer service. And so now I-- it's just like having gone through the, the three different ladders and onto ladder four, it's like that is where the true gains are to be had. Um, yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:08:56 Yeah, depending on the goal. Like, I actually was fairly against, uh, services as like an ideal business.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:01 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:09:02 But I think the more that I've gotten into that world and paid attention to it, there are some very, very f- like truly fantastic services businesses, uh, at both crazy scale and, uh, much smaller. Like I always thought it hit some limit.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:16 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:09:16 Um, but after seeing like behind the scenes of some of these services businesses that are doing like 10 to 20 million a year in profit-

Ali Abdaal 2:09:23 Ooh

Nathan Barry 2:09:23 ... then you're like, "Oh, okay." So what's really interesting about that is a lot of products, you end up with a low average revenue per user. So if we take your, um, like productivity consumer app.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:37 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:09:37 If we want that-

Ali Abdaal 2:09:38 It'll be a low average revenue per user.

Nathan Barry 2:09:39 Yeah. So you might be making $100 per year per user.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:42 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:09:42 Something like that, right? That's very different than if we're charging $10,000 a month for, um, an agency service, right? That's $100,000 per revenue, uh, average revenue per user. And so it takes really a lot of individual app subscriptions [chuckles] to add up to, you know, even a handful of the agency subscriptions.

Ali Abdaal 2:10:04 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:10:04 And so it really depends on your goals, right? If you're trying to maximize enterprise value, basically the, the equity value of what you could sell this for, then you might really focus on the app side. But if you're trying to maximize, you know, cash flow both short and long term, then the agency could be a much better model.

Ali Abdaal 2:10:22 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:10:23 And then especially realizing, um, that they're not mutually exclusive. This is something that Sahil Bloom is very good at, right? Where he's saying, "Oh, I'm gonna start this and this and this." And he asks the question like, "What would have to be true for me to be able to run multiple agencies without that being a huge drain on my time?" Right? Like for him, protecting his writing time is the most important thing, uh, in his business. And so he's like, "Great, I just can't run any of the agencies." Right? And he and I have an agency together, um, called Paperboy, which is a newsletter growth agency, and we collectively, like he and I each spend maybe an hour or two a month on it because, you know, we hired a CEO. And so when we mapped it out from the beginning, it was like, okay, well it has to be true for us to focus on our core thing, have it feed into it, um, and then still provide this really valuable service. And so it's all, just all on how you design it.

Ali Abdaal 2:11:16 One thing that you've been, uh, writing and I guess thinking about a lot recently is, um, the billion dollar creator, and I think that relates to the idea of sort of flywheels when it comes to creator stuff. I wonder what, what, what is all this stuff? [chuckles]

Nathan Barry 2:11:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:11:31 What's going on?

Nathan Barry 2:11:32 So the, the idea behind the billion dollar creator, which is another one of these essays that I wrote, is if you have attention, which creators are so good at getting attention, like you get to point it somewhere. And so what's the highest ROI place to point that attention? A simple example, you know, most creators are saying, "Okay, let me sell an ebook. Let me sell a course," uh, affiliate products, and we're blown away, right? That you can make $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, a million dollars off of an audience and like this is amazing and mind-blowing. But as people who are always trying to push the limits and know what's possible, we're like, "What, what else could we do?" And what I wonder is could you build a $100 million business? So an example that I love is this guy Mark Sisson, who he created a blog, uh, called Mark's Daily Apple, uh, maybe 2009, 2010, uh, time period. And if you think about when the paleo diet, um, started to really become popular, they, they were focused on, uh, recipes and content in that niche. And he built this blog to the point that I think it was making over a million dollars a year, which is just absolutely incredible. And you might think like, okay, that's the pinnacle of what you can do with a blog. And what Mark ended up doing is he said, "What else can I offer to this community?" And so he thought like, wouldn't it be really nice if you could have a, um, like a mayonnaise or a ketchup or other things that match the paleo diet. And so he started his own company making that called Primal Kitchen and, you know, got his recipes, manufactured all of that, and s- used his audience, you know, of a couple hundred thousand people on an email newsletter in this niche to like drive his first sales. And then as it went from there, he was trying to get distribution to grocery stores, and I don't know the exact details, but I imagine what happened is things like, like getting into Whole Foods for the very first time. They're like, "Um, sure. We'll see if people buy this. We'll like give you one bit of placement in this one store in Austin, right?" Well, what he does is you just go into [chuckles] your email tool, say like, "Okay, let's target everyone who lives within 50 miles of that store." And then you're like, "Why don't you go buy, uh, this," you know, "Hey," or like, "Great news. Primal Kitchen products are now in this Whole Foods location. Go buy it in person." Right? And then a week later, you talk to your Whole Foods rep, and you're like, "So, uh, you know, how'd that little test do? You put it in, like, a couple stores. How'd that go?" And they're like, "It went incredible. Like, people, it sold out instantly." "Really? Oh, that's, that's fascinating. I love that, uh, the product is resonating," [chuckles] you know? And it's like, well, now use your audience to kickstart that, so they can spread throughou- they get more distribution and expand from there, um, using the power of audience. The short version of the story is in two years, uh, they sold Primal Kitchen to Kraft Foods for $150 million.

Ali Abdaal 2:14:24 My God.

Nathan Barry 2:14:25 And so when you think about, okay, if you have all of these people who are, like, close fr- or, like, big fans of a topic, you can direct that attention to affiliate products, courses, eBooks, that kind of thing. Or in the case of Mar- Mark Sisson did, he's like, "No, I'm going to create a consumer product that... at massive scale." And it's like, okay, a blog can be worth, you know, hundreds of millions of... Um, uh, Emily Weiss created this, this blog called Into The Gloss about fashion, right? And so that was a topic that she cared about and like, okay, a fashion blog, what could that be worth? Probably a decent amount. But it ended up being the thing that kickstarted her company, Glossier.

Ali Abdaal 2:15:07 Oh, that's her company?

Nathan Barry 2:15:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:15:08 Oh.

Nathan Barry 2:15:08 That's, that's her com-

Ali Abdaal 2:15:09 It was in Common Garden, I saw it yesterday.

Nathan Barry 2:15:10 [laughs] Yeah. Right? Can a blog build into something worth a billion dollars? Yes, if you think about things in the right way. And so you have to focus on products that, um, you know, have built a lot of value or, uh, can be sold to many, many people, are often purchased in a recurring way.

Ali Abdaal 2:15:29 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:15:29 Uh, if we go to the celebrity world, like if you think Ryan Reynolds, he's someone who's like, "Um, I'd rather not get paid 500 grand or a million bucks for a TV commercial. I'd rather buy a company like Mint Mobile or Aviation Gin and then use my marketing acumen and, you know, face to promote those and have all the equity value."

Ali Abdaal 2:15:50 Mm-hmm.

Nathan Barry 2:15:50 And, you know, he sold Aviation Gin, I think, for 7 or 800 million. Uh, Mint Mobile, he sold for 1.3 billion to T-Mobile, right? And so he's not like... He's not doing basically a paid sponsorship to be on a TV commercial. He's like, "Nope, I'm gonna do it where I get to capture the full equity value." And there's example after example, and people focus on them in the celebrity world.

Ali Abdaal 2:16:12 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:16:12 But it's happening nonstop in the creator world in the same way, and that's a topic that I'm absolutely obsessed with. And I guess just to give one more example, that's what I'm doing with ConvertKit, right? I can take my, uh, podcast, my content, my network, all of that, and I could focus it on books and courses, and that's a great way to make 500,000 or a million dollars a year. Or ultimately, I can channel all of that into building ConvertKit as a software company that's now at 40 million a year in revenue and, you know, uh, worth a few hundred million. And then, like, my goal, that's the, the premise behind The Billion Dollar Creator, my goal is to build that into a company worth a billion dollars. Um, and it's just the same thing. What's the best ROI place that I can direct that attention?

Ali Abdaal 2:16:57 Wow.

Nathan Barry 2:16:58 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:16:59 It's absolutely wild. Um, the interview I did with Dan, uh, Dan Priestley on this podcast came out a couple of days ago, so I was re-listening to that. He is sort of a serial entrepreneur here in the UK.

Nathan Barry 2:17:10 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 2:17:10 He's, um... And he's also very bullish on the... He was like-- He was saying to me, "Ali, look, you can screw around with courses all you like, but if you, if you owned a business [chuckles] that-"

Nathan Barry 2:17:22 Right.

Ali Abdaal 2:17:22 "... If you owned a business outside of your YouTube channel business and directed traffic to that, or even owned a minority equity stake in a business and directed traffic to that, and that business then exit, exits, in one transaction, you could make the same amount of money as you would make in a lifetime of selling courses."

Nathan Barry 2:17:36 Correct.

Ali Abdaal 2:17:36 And I was like, "Oh, yeah, I know, I know that's right." But to me, it-- that just seems like... You know, if I, if I look at someone like Sahil, it's... He, he's, he's got the background in private equity and, like, investment banking, all that shit. And for him, it probably seems easy to be like, "Oh, I guess I'll just build a business and hire an operator and stuff." To me, that's such a black box-

Nathan Barry 2:17:56 Right

Ali Abdaal 2:17:56 ... where I'm like, I don't know anyone who could do that. But I, as I'm saying that, I mean, like, it wouldn't be that hard to find out. I could literally spend a day just, like, going through people I know and who follow me on Twitter and be like, "Hey, wanna do this thing? Wanna hop on a call?" Get some advice from the people that I know, put out a message to my newsletter and be like, "Hey, who wants to partner up in building one of these things?" Like-

Nathan Barry 2:18:14 Right

Ali Abdaal 2:18:14 ... it would be very doable. I don't know why I'm not doing it. Just feels, feels scary, feels hard, feels like a black box. Don't really know. I'm very comfortable-

Nathan Barry 2:18:21 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:18:21 ... in the courses business.

Nathan Barry 2:18:22 Well, there's a timing thing as well.

Ali Abdaal 2:18:23 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:18:24 Right? It would be very easy for someone to listen to the, what we're doing here, and maybe they have, say, 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, 100,000. Right? Something that, that is a very meaningful milestone and a, and a huge audience. Like, I always... Someone's like, "Oh, 100,000 isn't big." I'm like, "Look at, like, the largest football stadium."

Ali Abdaal 2:18:41 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:18:41 Like, that's 100,000 people, [chuckles] you know? Um, it'd be easy to look at that and go, "Okay, forget courses, forget all of these other things. I am going to go build the next Primal Kitchen."

Ali Abdaal 2:18:53 Mm.

Nathan Barry 2:18:53 "I'm gonna go build, um, the next Mint Mobile or whatever." And that would be jumping, like, three ladders, attempting to jump three ladders simult- in, like, a single leap.

Ali Abdaal 2:19:03 Yeah.

Nathan Barry 2:19:04 And that is a pretty sure way to, to fail, right? And so instead, what you're doing, you're iterating through all of these things, right? You have learned to build a team. Five years ago, I don't think you knew how to build and manage a team.

Ali Abdaal 2:19:16 Nope.

Nathan Barry 2:19:17 Right? And so you got to do it in a little bit lower stakes environment. You didn't take all of your savings from the YouTube channel and say, like, "We're gonna pour this into an app."

Ali Abdaal 2:19:25 Yep.

Nathan Barry 2:19:26 And we spent a million dollars building out this app, and it totally flopped because we did- I didn't know how to build and manage a team, right? And so- A part of The Ladders of Wealth