Eps 002 - Interview Foundr CEO

Foreign. Welcome. You're listening to unorthodox, the new Road to Success podcast. I am Ben Shaib, and I'm really excited about our next guest today, Nathan Chan. He is the CEO and publisher of Founder magazine. When he launched Founder magazine, he was on a mission to crack this startup code for himself. And he wasn't interested in hearing from folks who walked the conventional path, as he put it, the path of work your way up from the bottom. So he asked, starting with his request with Richard Branson, who agreed and founder set off to an unorthodox and new road to success and entrepreneurship. Welcome, Nathan.

Thank you so much for having me, Ben, man, that was cool intro music, dude.

Well, I appreciate it, man. I, you know, I have to tell you, Nathan, you know, to get into it before we talk, you know, into this interview, I really want everyone to hear that's listening there to know how we connected. You know, my wife and I were looking for a course on Instagram and really learning how to grow that. And, you know, when we were looking for courses out there, we came across your course, Instagram Domination. And we were just trying to figure out there's a lot of questions that we had. And so we sent a request for some answers and weren't getting the answers on the chatbot. But then what was funny is when we sent an email, it went directly to you, and my wife or I is sitting in bed and you answered and it just floored us. So, one, I just need to tell you how much we appreciate just the time that we've been able to get to know you and the things that you've done. It's just been incredible.

Oh, thank you so much, man. Yeah, dude. Massive fan of your work and, you know, it's been great getting to know you too. And yeah, man, it's cool to cool to be on the other side of the mic for some fun.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So I'm sitting here holding this book, this massive heavyweight book of yours. It's the founder version, one of the lessons the greatest entrepreneurs should take. Tell me, I mean, what got you to do this book?

Yeah, so pretty much one thing I. So what we do at Founders, we produce a lot of content around entrepreneurship and startups and marketing and just everything on what it takes to build and grow and start a successful business. And, you know, we've been lucky enough to interview literally some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation. And. And one thing that we do do a bit is we always look to do fun projects and repackage things and do whatever we can to just produce content in different forms. I get a bit of a kick out of just doing fun projects and also really listening to our audience and listening to the marketplace and seeing what people are asking for. And one thing that just kept coming through was we started off as a digital magazine. We still, to this date, we're actually going to start printing Magaz the next month or so. But a lot of people were requesting for a physical version of the magazine. And I thought, let's do a best of kind of like, you know, like every, every, you know, because we've done so many interviews, you know, every good recording artist always does have, you know, a greatest hits, like two packs greatest hits. And I thought, let's just do founders greatest hits and put it into a beautifully designed coffee table book. There's no such thing as a business coffee table. I just thought it would be really cool and it's just a really great body of work. And, you know, we compiled it all. At first it was just going to be a digital PDF of just our best work. And I, I looked at the content and I was like, nah, this is so good. The content itself is so, so good that, you know, compiling it all together, we have to do something more with it. And you know, I thought, okay, well, let's turn it into, you know, we're really good at producing great content, not just from a, from a, I guess a written form, but also from a visual form. And I thought, you know, let's get this designed. And we got it designed. I was like, no, this is too good. We got to print this thing. And I thought, okay, well if we print it, we don't want to do paperback. Let's do something really classy, really kind of high end. And you know, I said to myself, for coffee table book, you know, that's cool, but would anyone care about that? You know, it's, there's no such thing as a business coffee table book. So pretty much I said, let's, let's crowdfund it. We've never done a Kickstarter campaign. Let's truly validate this thing. And yeah, it was brought to life. Life. And that's why we created it, man. It's been a really, really great body of work. And yeah, it's, yeah, it's, I'm really, really proud of it.

No, no, it's, it's incredible. Incredible. I mean, you put this out on Kickstarter when you launched this thing.

What.

Why'd you choose that path?

Well, I think, you know, when it comes to shipping and launching products, one of the best ways to validate it is to get people to buy it before it they even get it. So to pre sell something, I think that's one of the best ways to validate things. We try and do it quite often. You know, we're going to start building software next year. We'll pre sell that. You know, a lot of our courses, pretty much all of our products, you know, we just pre sell now. And I think just one of the best ways to. To really validate and yeah, Kickstarters. That's all it is, man. It's validating a product.

That's great. So, you know, you have taken an unconventional path to starting your company. I mean, tell us a little bit about that journey and why you decided to do it the way you did.

Yeah, sure thing. So, founded my first business and I started it about four years ago. I started while I was working my day job. Didn't, you know, didn't start out, you know, wanting to build this big business. Now I'm on the mission to build one of the largest entrepreneurial brands in the world that impacts the lives of tens of millions of people on a weekly basis. That's my mission. That's what I obsess about. That's what we all obsess about as a team at Founder. How do we build something of true worth and significance and a household name entrepreneurial brand? But never started out like that. Literally four years ago, you know, I was working in an IT job doing work that I was really not passionate about. I had a real passion for marketing, but I also was really interested in business and always was quite entrepreneurial since a young age. And I thought to myself, what can I do? What can I do to get some experience in marketing? And I thought, okay, well, I'm really interested in business. Why don't I create a business magazine? Because I looked at the landscape of business magazines and I felt there wasn't really a publication out there that I could relate to as an aspiring entrepreneur that was real, that actually shared actually the depths of what took somebody. What it actually took somebody to get where they like you know, to build a successful business. So just with that premise and then a few other things around, I knew podcasts were hot. I just started this magazine literally as a passion hobby project. Man, it was really just for fun. It was really just for fun. You know, truth be told, I didn't have this crazy mission, this big vision that I have now. I just wanted to start it for fun and I fell in love with the process, Ben. I fell in love with the business. I fell in love with this space. And I just really love helping people and I love creating really, just really impactful products and services that help people, you know, as entrepreneurs. Because let's be honest, building a business is tough. And yeah, that's how I got started, man. So we started, you know, we launched the magazine, a digital magazine on the App Store and Google Play Store. And then as time has gone on, we've kind of evolved into a fully fledged media company.

It's incredible. You know, you've interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs. What do you see as a common theme in their path is how yours overlaps? I mean, what are you seeing as common that people could learn from?

Yeah. So I think it's gotta be just this relentless discipline and thirst for improvement. Like, you know, we're talking, you know, I interviewed the other week, you know, the founder of Reddit, you know, it's one of the largest websites in the world. You know, Richard Branson, the other month, Mark Cuban, Sophia Amoruso, Aaron Huffington, all these crazy people. And the one. Well, like two common things I've really, really noticed is, is they have this relentless discipline. They'll never give up. They just, just focus and just grind it out day after day after day after day after day after day after day until they get there. Like, failure isn't an option. They might fail, but they'll keep going. And then the other one is, is just that thirst, that hunger to learn and, and just, just speak to people. I think, you know, the, the most successful entrepreneurs, the ones that I speak to and, and the things that I'm trying to think about and do is just, you know, I might not know the answers, but who can I learn from? Where can I read about it? Who, who can I speak to that is doing something that might help us grow our startup, something that might help grow our business, move us forward. So that just that thirst and, and just interest in, I guess, self development and, and learning, I think is very, very key as well.

Yeah. Have you always been that way?

No, not at all. So it was something that I guess just kind of just developed over time. Truth, truth be told, I never really accomplished or have achieved much before Founder, to be honest with you, man, and never really read books or anything before that or listened to any, or did anything around self development or self improvement. Just something that, you know, I just fell in love with and just really caught this, kind of just, just got really, really. I'm really, really passionate about the space that we serve and the stuff that we do.

Okay, so you said you never had any real success before founder. So what was it? What was that like? You know what I call that hot button, that moment in life that. Or as others put it, aha moment that you just said. You know what? Enough's enough. This is the direction I'm going.

Yeah, I can't remember the exact aha moment, but there were some certain things that happened to me when I was, you know, just before I started or was building up, you know. So one thing I'll never forget was, you know, I was working that IT job and this, this lady who was the director of it, what she asked me to do was she asked me to walk around because I did IT support. And we were getting some complaints that, you know, people in the, in the business didn't have confidence that if they raised a support ticket, the IT team would deal with it. So what she wanted me to do was actually walk around like a, like a double. Like we were two floors, two floor office building, go up and down the stairs, walk out throughout the office and just ask people if they needed help. And I just. Man, I just couldn't deal with that, dude. So I said no. And I'll never forget. Like, I just. She brought me into the office, just gave me an absolute spray, and I almost, like, almost cried. Dude. Man, like, that was pretty intense. And I. And I remember vowing to myself, Ben, that I would, like, this person, like, just treated me like an absolute piece of crap. And I was. I felt worthless. And I remember thinking to myself, I would never let anybody ever have the opportunity to speak to me like that again. I want to be my own master. And, you know, things like that really sit with you, you know that, you know, I want, I want, I want to find work I was passionate about. I wanted to do my own thing. Like, I had this calling, you know, I never forget. Also, one day I was going to work. So it was. It wasn't an aha moment perhaps, Ben, but just a series of things, of things that, that happened to me that kind of shaped me. Like, I'll never forget one day I was walking to catch the train to the city to go to my day job. And I remember thinking to myself, walking up the hill to go to catch the train. Like that I'm destined for so much more. Like, inside of me, I knew somehow that I was destined for so much more, that I was. I was meant to do more than what I was doing. And, you know, I'D go on the train and it would be dead silent. It'd be 7am in the morning. There'd be, you know, 100 people in each carriage, and it'd be dead silent. It was just. No one wanted to be there. It was just. Yeah, just little things like that, man, just. Just ate away at me. And. And I was just. I guess the. The. You know, the. The biggest thing was I just was so frustrated, and. And I just really, really was getting sick and tired of doing work that. That I didn't enjoy. And then, you know, I did a big overseas trip to Europe, and, you know, I went away for, like, six weeks, and I said to myself, yeah, no way. I want to go back to that job. So I got to find work that I'm passionate about as well.

God, that's incredible. Now I have the question that probably everyone is wondering, have you talked to her since lunch? And Founder?

No, no, she. She left a long time ago. And. Yeah. Nah, I moved on. She. She ended up getting fired or kind of. And, yeah, now I don't know what she does, but, yeah, no, no beef, man. Just. It is what it is. She probably had some pressures, you know, we have pressures in, you know.

No, no, I understand. But, you know, it must. Yeah. Must give you a sense of pride, though, knowing what you've been able to accomplish coming from there.

Yeah, it does. And you know what, to be honest, Ben, sometimes it's easy to forget that stuff. It's actually very easy to forget that stuff because I'm so caught up in the grind right now, man. I'm so focused on the future, that sometimes it's easy to be. To forget where you've come from and forget that wasn't that long ago and to be grateful for how far you've come.

Yeah. Well, I hope you sharing the story again kicks you into another. Another level for you and the group.

Thank you, man.

So. So tell us a time where you experience failure in launching Founder, or some of the biggest struggles that you've had and how you've overcome it and what it's really meant to you.

Yeah, so I've had quite a few failures. We've had failed launch products, but probably a good one would be. When I first started Founder, we were sued for trademark infringement by one of the biggest business magazines in the States. I can't say who it was, but one of the biggest business magazines in the States, and they were suing us for trademark infringement. So the name of the magazine actually wasn't always called Founder. It was called something else. And so in the first four months of starting, I had to actually, yeah, I got. I got served by, you know, FedEx, got a FedEx package in the mail and served. And I was to appear in court in Dallas State, Texas on a certain date. And, you know, I had to change the name. And that was really. That's a really difficult, traumatic time for me, man, because, you know, starting the business, I had no money and you know, you know that being sued is pretty scary stuff. And yeah, for me, it was just like one of those things where it's just like, just had to push through. Like there's nothing else I could do but just push through. And, you know, the way I overcome that one was by having a great mentor that helped me work through the lawsuit. I think having incredible mentors is very, very key. Having having people that can support you that have been on the journey that you're about to go down or built a, you know, a sizable business or whatever it is, whether it's business, whether you want to build a successful business or not, whether whatever it is you want to achieve, having mentors and, and coaches and people that you move forward and draw from their experiences is very, very key. So, yeah, that was a really, really difficult one. Yeah. Look, there's been times, you know, in the past year or so where we've been really trying to grow and scale founder. It's been quite difficult, to be honest, Ben, because I've never done that before. So I've had to go out and, and, you know, I've had to go and, and find people that have scaled similar kind of businesses to us, you know, digital property, digital media companies, or, you know, education businesses and, and really just trying to, you know, draw from their experience. I think there's something very, very powerful in learning from other people's mistakes or learning and tapping into other people's experiences that have been doing things that you want to do and. But they've been doing it for, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30 plus years. If you can get that cut through, that's how you get that shortcut, man. That's. You can get there faster. And yeah, that's been incredibly key for me. But, you know, because I've never built a business before, this is my first business. There's just so much learning. It is insane. The steepness of the learning curve, especially to build something, if you want to build anything of true significance and worth. One of my mentors told me it takes around seven to 10 years, and I agree with that. I Think that's, you know, that's kind of what I'm looking at. We've been doing founder for about four years. I'd say legitimately three, three even legitimately two and a half years. So, you know, I've got at least another five to seven years of just grinding it out and just really, really just, just doing great work. So it's, yeah, it's. If you can get there faster, man, you, you want to learn from other people for sure.

That is an incredible lesson right there. So if someone's looking for a mentor to, you know, find their new path to success, it'd be, how did you find yours? Where would you suggest people go?

So I have a series of different mentors. Like I have one mentor that's a business coach effectively, and I pay him for his time and he's like an incredibly smart guy. He's, you know, built one of the largest software companies in Australia, but he knows online really, really well. And you know, I pay him a significant amount of money every single month to catch up with him for his time. And, you know, he's, he's a very, very smart guy. He spent a lot of money learning from billionaires. So for me to learn from him, you know, he has $100 million plus company and top line revenue. For me to learn from him is incredible. So, but I pay for his time. So you have that option. You can pay for somebody's time and you know, you can find really affordable coaches. You can use Coach Me, which is a great resource where I think you get a coach for like maybe $200 a month and you get unlimited access to them, which is incredible. And you get around all sorts of things, productivity, leadership, executive level coaching, all sorts of stuff. So you can use a service like Coach Me, you can use even services like Clarity fm. So, you know, we're looking to build quite a large scale educational platform. So I went to Clarity FM and I found, you know, one of the co founders of Skillshare, which is a massive course platform, a commercialized course platform. And I spoke to him, picked his brain for an hour and it cost me like 200, 300 bucks. So, so you can, you can definitely pay for people's time and you know, with, you know, speaking to that person, you know, I'm going to catch up with him again. So, you know, that, that co founder. So you can definitely pay for people's time to find mentors. You can also, you know, you know, so I have mentors on that aspect where I pay people for their time. But then also I have mentors that I guess I've met through networking and serving first and asking later, which is something I think very important. If you want to do anything around networking, building your network and surrounding yourself with smart people, I think you always should look to serve first and ask later. So as an example, I just did an interview with someone who I would kind of consider a mentor. Not a hardcore one, but I definitely can go to him of advice for any time. He's put a very, very big business. And, you know, I interviewed him for the podcast. He just launched a book, you know, and he's helped me out with a lot of things around founder and leadership growth and team building and, you know, building a compelling vision and for your company and all sorts of things around that and goal setting. So, you know, it works both ways. I think that's the important part when you're looking for mentors. First of all, rule number one is you have to have something to show. I think that's really, really important. You have to have something to show. And, and I think your shot, the thing that you have to show could be your hunger. If you have that thirst, if you have that relentlessness that people can feel that's contagious, then people will want to naturally help you. So if you go to somebody and you've got something to show, where you've got a product or you've got a service, or you've got a business, or you've got a prototype, or you've got a beta of something that you're working on, and you've got this level of enthusiasm, hunger and thirst, someone will naturally want to help you. And as long as you're respectful with that person's time, then there's no reason why you cannot get mentors. But then also you have to be really, really, you know, mindful that you want to serve first and ask later. So always try to look to serve first and ask later. So do something for that person where you don't expect anything in return, or do something for that person and then know that you may be able to in the future ask them for some advice or do something that, you know, you, you can, you can get some value and you've given some value at the same time. I think that's how I look at getting mentors and, and just, yeah, just, just really, really just meeting great people, networking, helping and, and then seeing where things go.

That's incredible advice, you know, that serve first and asking later. Why do you feel that a lot of people don't do that.

Well, because in. I think it's just human nature that, that a lot of people just want to look at what they can take from you. There's a lot of takers. And I don't mean to say that in a negative connotation, like, it just is what it is, man. I don't think it's ever going to change. Like, I just think there's a lot of people out there where they look at, you know, for example, you know, founder, and they go, oh, wow, these guys got a million followers on Instagram. Let's just ask him for a shout out. Like they were asked every single day. Like, you know, like, can you shout us out? I'll return the favor in the future. Or, you know, we get 20, 30 pitches a day. You know, we want to be in on the, in the magazine or the podcast. And this is why, you know, like, so I think, I think it's just human nature that people, yeah, especially I think it's kind of, kind of one of those things where it's just if no one tells you, you don't know any better either. So like, if someone says to you, and I'm sure you get this all the time, Ben, oh, let's catch up for coffee, like just a rant, like, know someone that you might not know. And they say, let's catch up for coffee. I'd love to pick your brain on growth and sales. And you might be thinking, well, okay, well, you know, this is how much I charge for my time. But a lot of people don't understand that it's actually quite selfish to ask somebody for their time to pick their brain. So it's one of those things where, you know, unless you're in the receiving end, you don't understand. I think there's a lot of things around that education piece that the people just don't understand. And I think it's just a really good practice to have that if, you know, it's really good karma, man. If you always look to add value to anyone that you cross your. Crosses your path, then, you know, you will you will you. It'll come back to help you in a big way. And, and that's what I've always done ever since I've started founder and built this, you know, because keep in mind, you know, I don't come from a wealthy background. My parents were, you know, my mum was a nurse, my dad was a teacher. I never knew any entrepreneurs when I started four years ago. So I've had to build up this, this really incredible network from scratch. And it's all started from just really looking. Honestly, if I meet someone asking how can I help, or if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know. And then helping them, and then maybe one day I can get help from them. And just if you always look from it from that standpoint, I think it's a good way to approach it. But unfortunately, there's just a lot of naivety about it. If no one tells you this stuff, you just don't know and you just kind of, you just selfishly think, oh, yeah, I'd love to catch up with Ben. You know, he's super smart guy, he can help my business. Why not? Let's just ask, you know, what's the harm in that? You know?

No, absolutely. So can you share with everybody and our listeners here what is a personal habit or daily routine that's contributed to your success?

A really good one, I think. And it comes with that relentless discipline is having, like, and I know this is a simple one, but just anything you need to do, if it's not in your calendar, you know, it doesn't get done. So I use my calendar to schedule absolutely everything, even work, even deliverables, like where I gotta be, absolutely everything. I live and die by my calendar. So if it's in my calendar, it gets done. And that's just a personal habit that I have every single day that allows me to be effective. And then also, I think a really good moral, and it's actually one of our values at Founder is if, you know, we're determined to deliver, if we do what we say we're going to do, I think there's, there's so much weight in, you know, if you have a, you know, let's say a quarterly review with your team and, you know, you, you have all these outcomes that need to happen. You actually go and execute on those outcomes and you do what you say you're going to do. So, you know, we, at the start of this year in January, we set out all of our goals for Founder. We might not do every single one of those things. We're going to do 80, 90% of those things. So we do what we say we're going to do. Yes, strategy can change up slightly, but for the most part, every single day, I'm always doing what I say I'm going to do.

Oh, so that's, you know, I think that is a lesson for everyone to learn. It's following through what you say you're going to do now, I think, you know, thank you for mentioning the calendar because that's probably my biggest weakness is not calendaring everything and having seven kids, that could be very difficult. So thank you, thank you, thank you for that reminder. So as we're wrapping up, any favorite books, speakers, podcasts you really enjoy, ready start following?

Yeah. So in regards to podcasts, I'm really enjoying Russell Brunson stuff at the moment. We're really starting to get into sales funnels in a very, very big way and it's something we're working on mastering as a team. Founder. Really loving How I Built this by npr, which is a great podcast which interviews some really incredible founders. And then I'm also really liking Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman, which is a really good podcast as well. Yeah, I'm really studying a lot of Russell Brunson stuff at the moment as well. Any books he puts out or any content podcasts. And yeah, that, that's kind of my wheelhouse man of what I'm focusing on. I, I'm also part of a group called EO Entrepreneurs Organization which I really, really enjoy. A lot of stuff that is going on within the Melbourne chapter is, is incredibly powerful. I'm consuming a lot of stuff they have going on there. So I quite like Verne Harnish's book Scaling Up. I think that's an incredible book. Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss was a life changing book for me and so was Rich dad po Robert Kiyosaki. They were life changing books.

Great, great. So if our listeners wanted to get a hold of you, learn more about you and founder and the things that you're going, you know, things that you're doing and you're launching, how would they do that?

You can just go to founder.com f o u n d r dot com. So it's founder without an E. You can just go to founder.com.

Great. Well Nathan, you know what? I love spending time with you on the phone. Thank you for taking the opportunity to be with us here on this podcast. And if you were to challenge anyone to do something unorthodox, what's the first thing you would challenge them to do today?

I would challenge you. If you looking to start a business or you're looking to achieve a goal for your business, like let's say you want to get to a million dollars in top line revenue in the next year for your business. I challenge you to tell one of your best friends that and put 500 to $1,000 or whatever it is a ridiculous financial wager on the line to and get that best friend to keep you accountable. And if you don't hit that goal, they get to keep the money.

Oh, that's. That's a good challenge. That's a good challenge. That one was great. That was great. While you're listening to Unorthodox, the new road to success with our guest Nathan Chan from founder.