220: The Billion Dollar Creator Strategy (From Kit's Founder) - Nathan Barry

2011, I made $63,000. 2013, I made $250,000 as an entrepreneur, right? That's the leverage that comes from audience and attention. Primal Kitchen sells to Kraft for $200 million. So I realized, okay, my constraint is time. I need to be able to create a personal brand in maximum 5 hours a week, maybe 3 hours. So they put together these meet and greets. They were expecting it to be absolutely mobbed like it is for the YouTubers, and nobody showed up. Email is the sexiest it has ever been. So in the last 6 months, I have worked firsthand on launching email newsletters for Tom Brady, Matthew McConaughey, Dua Lipa, Ellen, Morgan Freeman.

That was Nathan Barry, founder of Kit, and he's worked directly with tens of thousands of creators building their businesses all through email. And today we're talking about why attention is the most valuable currency in the world and the 2 questions that turned a blogger into a $200 million exit and Nathan's exact system for building a personal brand in just 3 to 5 hours a week. Let's get into it.

Nathan, dude, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

So as the founder of Kit, you get a bird's eye view on what tens of thousands of creators are doing and what's working in their business.

Yeah.

So I'm excited to dive into that. And I also want to talk about how you've been growing your personal brand over the past year and why that's important for you. I'm really, you know, stoked to get into that. And then you've got some new projects That—

A lot of stuff we're working on.

Yeah, and I'm always curious, you know, where your head's at and what you're working on. So let's dive right in with Kit. You, you know, as I said, have got your finger on the pulse of tens of thousands of creators. What are you seeing that's standing out for you right now with those that are really growing?

Okay, so I'm gonna go two sides of this, one at the beginner side and one at the very advanced side. One that still works ridiculously well, but is just reinvented. Is lead magnets. So everyone says, hey, what works for growth? Lead magnets, that's what worked in, you know, 2012, 2014, or that sort of thing. What works today? And you're like, lead magnets. They might look different. They might be an email course instead of an ebook. They might be like a full video course, or they might be delivered over a comment-to-DM automation on Instagram. But it's still the exact same concept that it's always been, and it's just still really, really works because people are hungry to learn a new skill and they want the shortcut to do it. And so what you see is the investment in really good packaging and copywriting. Yeah. Right? So it's all about how can I get this information from you and that will save me days, weeks, etc. Like just give me the blueprint.

Yeah.

Like one that I did years ago when I was creating content around self-publishing and like building your brand. Was a lead magnet around, hey, 90 days out from your book launch, here's exactly what you should do. And that one was wildly popular because people were like, I don't need more high-level information. Like, just tell me exactly what to do. Yeah. And so if I were doing that today, I would probably be designing maybe 5 to 7 Instagram Reels that have different hooks. Like on Instagram, you're really going to want to look at, you know, what's your visual hook, what's your title hook, what's actually, you know, your verbal hook. Making sure those are great, that all tie into this lead magnet for like, you know, your 90-day book launch plan.

Right.

And then I'm going to have it where sometimes when I post it, it's going to be like, here's the link to go get it directly. Other times it's going to be comment, you know, 90, and I'll DM it to you. And it's still like the crazy thing on platforms before when you would do this, like, like on YouTube or somewhere else or on X, if you're driving people off platforms, they penalize it. The weird thing that's on Instagram right now is if you do a comment to DM system for a lead magnet, they reward it because it's engagement on the post. And so if you're scrolling through someone's Instagram feed and you're like, I don't know, let's say they have 10,000 followers and an average video does 1,000 views for them. You'll see 1,000, you know, scrolling through 1,000, 2,000, and then see one that's 100,000. Chances are that has a comment-to-DM automation on it, 'cause it's delivering up a lot of value and it's getting that engagement. So on the beginner side, lead magnets are still as important as ever.

You know what's interesting too, because the whole purpose of the lead magnet is to collect the email address. And this just doesn't get any headlines whatsoever, and yet it is still head and shoulders above all the other social media, you know, direct response type marketing strategies. And I don't know why it doesn't get talked about enough, but you get to see it because I mean, you know, you're sending hundreds of millions of emails a month through your platform. And why do you think email does not get talked about enough?

Well, I think it's— so first everyone always says email is dead. Here's the next thing. And you could graph that over like the growth of email.

You know, I've been hearing that for decades.

Yeah, exactly. You know what's funny is that email is the sexiest it has ever been. So in the last 6 months, I have worked firsthand on launching email newsletters for Tom Brady, Matthew McConaughey, Dua Lipa, Ellen, Morgan Freeman. Email used to be this thing that like direct response marketers understood and then creators understood. And now it's turned into this thing that even the like biggest name A-list celebrities are like, I want an email newsletter. And the reason is because they can get their thoughts out in long form direct to their audience.

Right.

So Tom Brady is, I've not met Tom in person, but I know his manager well. And we met up in Miami earlier this year and he was like, Tom's obsessed with his newsletter. Like he's got a $100 million Fox deal. He's got all of this other stuff. And the thing that he cares about the most is the email newsletter because he can talk about in long form like his thoughts on leadership, on drive, all of these things that really matter to him. And then even in these scenarios where he might be in the news for something, he will then turn to his newsletter and say, hey, let me give you, like that was the soundbite. Let me tell you the behind the scenes story. And you're just seeing that over and over again where people are saying like, you know what? I want a direct connection with my fans and I wanna reach the people that care. I don't, I don't, I wanna cut through all of the noise and I don't want to reach the people who don't care enough to be on my newsletter.

Do you think it's because like a lot of the, say, let's like the A-list celebrities, they're starting to realize the influence that they can have with their following. Yeah. So for example, like when I think of like creators or A-list celebrities or A-list celebrities that have just like leveraged this to the moon, it's people like The Rock.

Yeah.

You know, like with one mention, boom, a company is launched overnight and it's doing tens of millions of dollars in sales. Like that is incredible influence. And I think a lot of those A-list celebrities are like, hey, I want a piece of that. Like that's a lot easier than slugging it out trying to do all these movies all the time. Like I'm still gonna do that, but why not leverage the momentum and the, you know, the celebrity that comes with that? And now it's like this awakening of like, hey, we could launch like companies like instantaneously. But we still need that distribution and that's where it comes back to the email.

Yeah. And that actually ties into the advanced point that I want to talk about.

Hey, real quick, Nathan's dropping some serious strategy here and I know you might be watching this on the go. You may be in the car, on a run, whatever, but don't worry about taking notes. I've put everything together from today's conversation in a free resource kit. It's linked in the description. So just enjoy this and grab the notes later.

This idea that I call the billion-dollar creator. And that is looking at attention as the most valuable currency in the world. Like we think about what is valuable, money, you know, all these other real estate assets. And I believe that attention is the most valuable thing. You know, we can see evidence of this by the fact that brands spend billions or hundreds of billions of dollars a year on advertising to buy attention. But creators, the thing that we do better than anyone else is we get attention for free. By putting value out into the world, people say, I will reward that value with my views and attention, my mindshare. The hard thing is so many creators then say, wow, thank you so much for this attention, this incredibly valuable currency. Let me point it to an affiliate link for a product. Let me point it towards a $29 ebook, which is okay in the beginning.

It is.

To take this leap, you'll go from, maybe you have a job, using myself as an example, my last my first salaried job was as a software designer at a company in, I left in 2011, making $63,000 a year. When I learned about building an audience and all of this stuff and like teaching and giving away information for free and building an email list and self-publishing books, 2011 I made $63,000, 2013 I made $250,000 as an entrepreneur, right? That's the leverage that comes from audience and attention. So that's an amazing path to start on. The crazy thing though is realizing, wait, if this attention is so valuable, what is the most valuable thing that I could point it towards? If it's not an ebook or some of these things that will make me $100,000, what would have to be true to make significantly more off of this? I was doing some research and I was like, wait, is there a creator, is there a blog, anyone out there who has taken that attention and made a billion dollars or more? And I found actually a lot of examples. And so one, there's a blog called Into the Gloss, which then turned into Glossier, which is a multi-billion dollar company. Another example is Mark Sisson. He had a blog called Mark's Daily Apple. It was about the paleo diet, paleo recipes, you know, healthy lifestyle, living, all of that. And he was probably 2013, 2014, he was one of the biggest names in the space. And I estimate that he was making like between $1 million and $2 million a year, which is an insane amount of money now. In 2013, that was just like wild to be making that much online. But that was through his own products and affiliate links and advertising. Now what he did is he said, well, hold on, what if instead of recommending other people's products, I had my own? And people kept saying like, Mark, I love your paleo-friendly salad dressing. Recipe, but like, can I just buy it? And so he was like, okay. And he started a company doing that. And it's called Primal Kitchen. And he ended up being able to get all of this distribution because he had this audience. So like, I don't know if this is exactly how it played out, but this is how I imagine it, right? Like if you're selling a direct-to-consumer product, like, you know, salad dressing or avocado oil or mayonnaise or whatever, you wanna get distribution in, stores, right? Whole Foods and all that. Well, they're not gonna be like, great, we love your product, like nationwide rollout. They're gonna test it in the store. And so this is the power of an audience, right? Where, you know, you're talking to the buyer at Whole Foods and they're like, hey, we're gonna test this and we're gonna try it in one store and we'll see how it goes. And it's like, cool, great. Just let me know.

Let me know the location.

Which store? And they're like, oh, you know, this one in Austin. It's like, great, thank you. Perfect. Goes to his email list, says, you know, within 50 miles of Austin, let me email those people and say, hey, amazing news. I need a huge favor from you. Will you go to this address and buy our product? And send me a photo of it in the store. Like, yeah, we're so excited, right? So people go and do that and turns out it sells out. So you have that next meeting with the Whole Foods, just, you know, buyer and say, you know, it's like, So how'd the test go? You'll never believe it. Like we sold out. No, we did it. It's a miracle. People must love the product. Yeah. What's next? Oh, we're gonna roll it out in 5 stores and we're gonna try some different locations around the country and just see, make sure it's not like just an awesome thing. And you know, I imagine Mark was like, oh, amazing. Great. Let me know how it goes. And by the way, which store? Right? And so fast forward, you know, another 2 years or so, 2, 3 years after launch, Primal Kitchen sells to Kraft for $200 million. $1 million. Crazy. There's like a bunch of things in this, but if you look at what's that attention worth, pointed at one thing, it was worth $1 million, $2 million a year.

Yep.

Taxed at ordinary income rates, which, you know, might be 30, 40% or more. And then, but if you point it at a product, right? Something that people are buying, it has enterprise value, all of this, then that was worth $200 million taxed at long-term capital gains, right? So he's paying even way more money. Way less taxes. And so you're like, wait, Mark pulled off 100 years of value creation by asking the question, well, really two questions. What is the most valuable? I have all this attention. What's the most valuable place that I could direct it? And two, how can my existing audience serve me in accomplishing these goals and ultimately be a shortcut in all of that? So we can dive into that a bunch more. But that is the thing that I see across all of these successful creators. That they are really thinking about is what attention am I getting and where can I point it?

I was inspired several months back because my son and I got into a rhythm of watching a particular YouTube creator. His name was Ryan Trahan, and he had a series called 50 States in Just 50 Days. And the premise is in the title. He's gonna travel to all 50 states and he's doing it with no air travel. In each state he stays in, he stays in a different Airbnb. So the whole episode is like he rates the Airbnb and the whole experience, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then throughout the show, he's also like doing little things like he's gotta go make a Target run or a Joyride run because he has this candy of his that he created called Joyride. So he's gotta do a Joyride run and then he has like these other traditions that he does. And we just got into the habit of watching every single day. But what was so brilliant was that, you know, if it were one video, it would have gotten maybe, you know, for him, like a million plus. But over time, it's like this snowball that just kept building and more and more companies got involved. And he ended up raising money because along the way he was raising money for St. Jude's. He ended up raising tens of millions of dollars. His initial goal was $1 million. And then it just ballooned and it took on a life of its own. I, as the business owner, I'm looking back, I'm like, This is freaking genius because there's so many layers to what he was doing and how he was directing his audience's attention. One, he's directing it to like all these epic Airbnb homes. So they of course are like, you know, book solid. Number two, he's directing it to go and get his Joyride candy because he's showing like pictures of kids who have bought the candy that have, you know, submitted them online. And then 3, he's raising money for, you know, St. Jude's. And then all the while he was picking up millions of subscribers along the way because word was spreading. It was just a beautiful example of like leveraging an audience to do good and to grow his business. And I just think today, you know, we have the greatest opportunity as creators to be able to, you know, capture attention and to be able to direct it in all these different ways. And that's what's fascinating about the time that we live in. And when we talk about like, you know, there's the new school ways, like, you know, with social media and all the different platforms that they're popping up. I just saw Vine is like back again, you know, like, you know, so there's always like all these different platforms popping up, but email still tried and true. It's still like the bread and butter of being able to communicate with an audience.

Yeah. I mean, all of these things keep going, you know, the examples that we were talking about, we threw out some big names, right? If you're doing millions or tens of millions or more, off of these things. But this idea of going on a journey and getting attention and using that to drive your business forward is really, really powerful. Like I saw an Instagram series the other day. I think it was like a 15-year-old kid. He's like, hey, it's day 3 of me trying to make $1,000 this summer with my power washing business. And he's like, you know, and he's like getting views and content and it's spreading more in his town. You know, by like day 45 of that. Yeah. He, you know, has learned so much more of how to edit videos, what gets a hook, and he's gotten getting more and more jobs because people are saying like, oh, well, I'll hire this kid. I want to hire this kid to power wash my driveway, right? And all those things. So you see even all of these small businesses, traditional businesses, all of that be able to leverage content creation and going on a journey and all of these things in order to grow their business. And so it absolutely works at the largest scale and it works really well at these small scales.

So email, still the best way to stay in contact and communicate with your audience?

Yeah, it's this direct connection with the people who really care. And if you think about these other channels, they have distribution, right? They have algorithms, so only the best, only the most engaging, most viral content surfaces at the top, which on one hand is amazing because it's this meritocracy of someone saying, oh, my content's not spreading. I'm sorry, your content's just not good.

If it's good, it'll get seen.

If the hooks are good, the titles, all of this, right? But on the other hand, you're like, hey, I worked really hard to get these 10,000 followers and they're not, seeing my stuff and I don't want to have to have the perfectly scripted, edited, whatever thing to get in front of them. Like maybe I wanna tell like a long-form story. It's like, well, email is this perfect balance of it because the negative thing about email is it has no distribution. Like there's no discovery algorithm, there's none of that, but that's also the benefit. Right. Right. So there's nothing between you and reaching those people. And so that's why you see so many people turning to email. And so what I love is just this balance of saying like a hub and spoke approach. Where you're basically saying the hub of my business is email. The hub of my relationships with my audience is email. And then I've got a few of these spokes. It might be Instagram, it might be LinkedIn, you know, that has distribution. And that's where I'm going to find new people and then I'm gonna bring them back to my hub.

I just wanna give people a quick example and then I wanna shift gears and talk about you and your personal brand. A mutual friend of ours, Nicole Burke, I was catching up with her and I was asking about her book launch. And I said, you know, how did everything go? She's like, it went pretty well. I said, so what was your big needle-moving strategy to sell a lot of books? And she said, well, essentially I did like one webinar and I did a series of posts on Instagram with, you know, DM automation that added people to the webinar. So she's adding them from these Instagram posts to the email list for the webinar. It was roughly like a week and a half, 2 weeks. She drove 30,000 people.

Wow.

To that webinar.

I was like, dang.

And didn't cost her a dime.

Yep.

Then she had roughly 11,000 people show up to the webinar, delivered great content, then offered her book, sold 4,000 copies of her book on day one. And I took a moment and I was just, step back. Like, I've been in this game a long time. 23 years, Nathan. 23 years I've been online. And she, just welcomed 30,000 people to her email list. That would have cost me on a low end at $5 a lead, $150,000.

Right.

And she did it for free and then sold 4,000 copies of her book and it became a bestseller in its category. This world that we live in is unbelievable. Like when you take a step back and think about like what an opportunity we have as creators, to be able to build the audience and then, you know, direct that attention just like you talked about. And so I want to ask you, when it comes to your personal brand, you've built this unbelievable company in Kit serving tens of thousands of creators every month. Why go build your personal brand? Yeah.

So first, it's where I started. Like, I came into this whole online world through teaching, having a newsletter, all of that, right? Kit was just my My method, 'cause I wanted a better tool. And so I went out and built that. So it's been in the DNA all the way through. But I was really thinking about this question of like, okay, if I can get attention and then direct it to something insanely valuable, like for me, getting customers on Kit is worth a huge amount, right? 'Cause they stay forever. They recommend each other on Kit. They bring their friends, you know, as their newsletters grow, you know, they end up paying more for the service. It just compounds in a huge way. And so then I'm thinking like, okay, what, well, what's the best way to get attention? Do people want to follow brands or do they want to follow people? They want to follow people. Like very much so.

People are more interesting.

Yeah. It turns out, not a logo, which is good news for you and I. Yeah. Right. And so I was thinking about that of like, okay, I have a lot to say and a lot to teach. This is where I've been coming from of, you know, the skills that I've used to get to this point, how to build an audience, how to build a creator business at scale. There's things that I, you know, that I love talking about and it can all tie back to Kit in a really interesting way. And so I realized like, oh, I can get all of this attention around how to build an audience, how to build a business, and I can do it much better as an individual than I can as a brand. And the brand is still doing everything. You know, there's a whole marketing team there doing amazing things. But let me augment that and then let me bring that attention back into Kit. Instead of the creator going out and searching for like, what's my billion-dollar creator idea, the product that I can sell that has recurring revenue, you know, and meets all these criteria, I already have that.

Yeah.

Right? And so now let me go pursue it in that way. So like another example would be, I have a book coming out, I have to finish it. We're in the final editing stages. It's called The Ladders of Wealth. It's based on an essay that I wrote maybe 6 years ago or something like that. It's the most popular thing I've ever written. I was thinking about, is it worth taking time away from Kit in order to write and publish this book, right? This is a multi-year journey to get this out. What I realized is, one, I love the, like, teaching and sharing the information. I think it's so important. But then two, it packages my work and information in a way that the rest of the world expects. But if I wanted to go on a popular podcast or the Today Show or something like that to talk about a software company, they're like, ah, why now? Why this? Why now? Like it just doesn't, like it's probably an instant no. But if you're an author with a book coming out who wants to talk about that and teach that to the audience, they're like, yes, absolutely. We do this all the time. A book packages up ideas into it. A simple format that our audience understands, like, yes. And so I realized that going back to my roots as a content creator and packaging up ideas in the format that the world expects and all of that is one of the best marketing vehicles to get attention, which then I can direct the attention to whatever I want, which in this case is growing Kit.

Where did you begin when you were thinking about, okay, I wanna, you know, kickstart the personal brand again, and what has been most effective for you in growing that personal brand?

Yeah, okay, so one of my favorite topics is flywheels. You and I have done webinars on this, we've talked about it. And so I always think of what is the core driver in a flywheel? And so—

Well, just explain for everybody, what is a flywheel?

Yeah, so if you think about most people do things in a very scattered process, right? Whereas you're working on random things as it comes up based on your inbox or, you know, your ADHD brain. And Then like the professionals set up linear processes, right? SOPs, and they say, when we launch a podcast, here's the steps that happen. And that's, you know, A to Z linear. A flywheel is a business process or really anything in life that loops or back around on itself, where it takes this momentum, instead of ending, it takes the momentum and brings it back around to the beginning.

What's an example?

A very simple one would be for content ideas, right? If you're trying to decide, you know, what am I gonna write in my newsletter this week? Then you could brainstorm all of those ideas on your own. And that'd be a scattered process. You're like, oh, taking out your notebook and writing it down. Or you could add a step in your flywheel where you're generating ideas from your audience. So the more subscribers you get, you're having them reply to you and say, hey, what's your biggest struggle related to learning, in my case, how to design iPhone apps, right? That was the original thing. Then I can document those ideas and I can write about them, send them to my audience and use that to get new subscribers. Which then gives me more people answering that question. Right? So basically the more people who come in my audience, the more ideas I generate for content, the more content I create, which gets me more people. Right? So it's this compounding effect. So when I was thinking about my personal brand, I realized my biggest constraint was time because old me in 2012, 2013 could spend 100% of my working hours on building a brand and an audience and all of that. 2025 version of me has a 100-person software company to run and they're gonna be pretty, like, they're all in on the strategy, like, love what you're doing, but please don't abandon the company to go do that, right? And so I realized, okay, my constraint is time. I need to be able to create a personal brand in maximum 5 hours a week, maybe 3 hours, or like, it's gotta be a very small—

It's gotta be super efficient.

Yep. And it has to meet my bar for quality. And so that led me to the podcast first. Because I thought, okay, I need a format where I can create content that's not gonna take a lot of time and it needs to generate ideas that can then spin off into newsletters, Instagram stories, everything else. And turns out you and I riffing for an hour on a podcast, we're gonna generate a bunch of things. And I can have a team then go, oh yeah, Nathan, when you told this story, like, that's a whole newsletter issue. We just answer 2 more questions about it, right? And so the podcast ended up being the anchor of it. Then the next change that I made is instead of recording a weekly podcast and constantly doing that, I batch recorded monthly. Yeah, it was actually inspired by an OG in the space, John Lee Dumas with Entrepreneur on Fire, because he had a weekly— he had a daily podcast. Yeah, that he recorded in 1 day a week and he would like cram all this in. And he was the master at batching all of this. And so now I have this process where I only record in person because I wanted that direct connection. I wanted, you know, so many episodes are with customers and people I'm fans of and all that.

There's a different energy there too.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

And so I have, I either go to a city, like I just went to Austin, recorded 3 podcast episodes in a day, or I have people fly into Boise where we have a studio. And so we'll record, a bunch of podcasts. We'll do a dinner with everyone. And then I don't think about my podcast except maybe answering a question from the team for another 30 days. And similar to you, I'm 12 episodes ahead right now. And so I was actually just talking to someone who's like, hey, when does that episode we recorded drop? I'm like, yeah, actually not for 3 months. We're a little too far ahead right now. But it's turned into this thing where basically with a minimal time commitment, I can produce something that's very high quality that I'm proud of. And it generates all of the ideas for everything else. And so then with a team, I'm able to do it.

So for you, the podcast has been a big driver.

The podcast is the core driver in my content flywheel.

In the machine.

Yep. And so I always think about it in terms of what— you can do everything, right? You can go in all these different directions, but what is the thing that's going to like spawn everything else? And so the podcast does that. And so now I just have to make sure that in the episodes, you know, in an hour episode, I cover enough ideas that then my head of content can turn those things and say, hey, okay, Nathan, I now have 3 ideas for Instagram Reels that you're gonna record the next time we do a batch recording session. Right.

What has moved the needle for you this year in perhaps getting the podcast in front of more people, getting more downloads of the podcast, increasing email lists of listeners listening to the podcast, joining your email list. What's been a big needle mover for you this year?

Yeah, the first thing is I have a bit of an interesting approach in that I'm not trying to get a larger audience. I'm trying to get the right audience. So there's this idea that I've really been fascinated by the last few years of building an audience versus a crowd. Because we often look at view counts on Reels or follower counts or email lists. You know, we see the numbers and we're like, oh, 50,000 people, 100,000, this Reel was seen by a million people. And we think like, oh, that must have turned into amazing business opportunities. Or we hear other examples of like a million turning into nothing at all. I think it was VidCon. You know, it's this like meet and greet for YouTubers and their fans and all of that. I'm sure Ryan Trahan has been there many times. Had thousands of his fans show up. As short-form video was taking off and TikTok was growing like crazy, they thought, oh man, we need to do stuff with the short-form creators. They're getting millions and millions of views. Their fans will want to show up in the exact same way. And so they put together these meet and greets. They were expecting it to be absolutely mobbed like it is for the YouTubers and nobody showed up. Everyone was baffled by this. Like, wait, the view counts are way higher. Why aren't there people? You realize in that sense they built a crowd. It was just about numbers. Whereas YouTubers had built an audience. It was the right people paying attention. It was people who actually cared. And so I think about that a lot for me and my brand. I'm trying to get professional content creators, people who are taking this seriously to follow my stuff. So it's not about, like, I might have a podcast episode that does 1,800 views on YouTube. And, but I will get texts from, some of the biggest creators in the space saying, oh yeah, in like halfway through when your guest dropped this thing, like Nicole was on. Nicole Burke, she did this amazing episode on how to grow on Instagram. And it's like a masterclass. She's at the whiteboard, like diagramming. She's like, here's the types of posts that you should do, all of that. And I got so many texts from very talented, like high-level friends who, you know, are just like, this episode was incredible. And so for me, it's like, how do I make the content that the right people pay attention to? Which results in sort of this dichotomy, 'cause on one hand you measure, in this space, you typically measure success based on views, right? Did YouTube pick up this video and make it run or not? I still pay attention to that. It's really important, right? Did you get your titles right? Did you, you know, all this stuff. But I'm also thinking about, am I reaching the right people? And so one of the success metrics is basically, did my friends text me and say, this episode, like here's something that I'm implementing in my business. It's hard because in that case, you know, like the team that works with me on YouTube stuff, they might say, hey, go create this like beginner-focused video because it'll get a whole bunch of views. And I'm like, you are 100% right and I'm not going to do it because there's tons of beginner content out there and my audience that I'm trying to carve out a niche in is reaching like the professional and expert level people 'cause there's not a lot of content for them.

It takes discipline though, don't you think?

Yeah. So I guess what's moved the needle, paying attention to the fundamentals, right? How do you hook attention and how do you retain attention? And obsessing over those things.

What have you found to be effective in both those areas for you?

Well, so there's an episode that just came out on my show with this guy who runs an Instagram growth community called Cut30. He broke it down of like, hey, here's exactly how you do hooks and here's Here's what's really important to it. Everyone always thinks about the title hook or like what's the title, what was said, but the visual hook is really, really important. Like what was actually on screen at that moment that got me to retain attention? So that makes a huge difference. I think the packaging really matters. I used to just sit down and record a podcast episode and be like, and just dive right in. And those are really fun. And the core listeners will enjoy those and love those, but they won't spread. Unless I get the packaging right. Like, what is the promise of this episode and what am I delivering? Right? So in Nicole's episode, the package— we sat down beforehand before we recorded and we like dialed it in. Like, this is what we're going to teach. It was not a traditional interview. It was like, okay, let's make this a masterclass and here's what we're going to diagram up with the board and all of that. And so the promise is like, Nicole is in 60 minutes is going to teach you the Instagram secrets behind building a $6 million gardening brand. And you're like, yes, please, sign me up. Right, and that video has gone on to do like 15,000 views, whereas normal for me on my channel would be like 2,000 views would be the average. It's been getting really clear on what's the promise, and then did we deliver on that promise as early as possible in the video.

I wanna wrap up and I wanna talk real briefly about opportunities that you see for creators. What should creators be paying attention to in the next several months and perhaps even the next year?

Yeah, I think that you really want to figure out what you care about and what you can work on for a long time. One of the hardest things— I feel like everything as a creator is a double-edged sword. One of the best things is that you can have a front row seat to the way that everyone else builds their business and what's working and, you know, all the content that everyone under the sun is putting out and all that. And the other side of that is that it can really get you distracted and chasing a whole bunch of things. And so the people that I see find the most success are the ones who are creating content that is most authentic to what they deeply care about. And then choosing just one channel and really going after it and say, hey, I'm gonna master just this one thing. And it almost doesn't matter what channel you pick so long as it matches what you care about and your audience is on there. So instead of jumping from like a podcast to Instagram to LinkedIn to, oh, I guess the X algorithm is fixed, like let's go back over there. It's like, stop, just pick one, you know, one channel, one year, like focus on it for a period of time and you will find results so long as you pay attention to the metrics. The crazy thing is, all of these channels from email to Instagram to LinkedIn, they give you really, really good metrics now. Yeah. Like Instagram in particular, they will tell you exactly who's paying attention, where they're dropping off. YouTube is the same way.

Yeah.

Right.

They want you to create content that retains, like that hooks attention and retains it. And so they're trying to give you every possible tool that you need in order to do that. So pay attention to it and use those.

It is fascinating. You begin to learn. Like just how effective you have to be. I had a reel that went mega viral, 4 million plus views. And the great news is it went viral and it did add subscribers or followers. We had over 11,000, you know, got added from that reel, which was amazing. But the truth bomb of it all is when I looked at the retention graph, even though like with a mega viral reel, I had lost 51% of the audience by the 7-second mark. Yes. So mega viral reel and 51% 51% of the audience is gone by 7 seconds. Like, it's so crazy how, like, attention just, like, is so fleeting. It just goes to show, like, the more we spend time paying attention to those metrics that you're talking about, the better we can get, and the more audience we retain, and the more watch time, and therefore the more it spreads.

And then bring them back to your email list. Yes. Because then those 11,000 people are going to stick with you and to follow you and pay, you know, they're going to start to become a fan of you.

Yeah.

Rather than you might have entertained them or educated them for 7 seconds or 45 seconds, but you're just someone in the feed.

Right.

But then if you get them with a few more reels and you get them on your email list, then they're like, oh, wow, I really learned something from Stu. Totally. And then that evolves into Stu helped me implement this tactic in my business. Yeah. And then later it's Stu changed my life. And it probably just started with this little clip that got their attention briefly. It's crazy.

Thank you so much for coming, spending time. Yeah. What has you excited right now?

I love building. I love making content, building products. Probably the biggest thing I'm excited about is some stuff we're building at Kit of just helping you deeply understand who is in your audience. Because I think sometimes we throw out numbers like, oh, this YouTube video only did 1,800 views. You know, and then you're like, wait, 1,800? Yeah. That's like not a basketball stadium, but like basketball arena, but it's half of one, you know? Or you'll say like, yeah, I have a small email list, like 50,000 people. And you're like, cool. So that's like, you know, a Taylor Swift concert, maybe like, you know, so we forget how many people are in there. And so we're building a lot of stuff around helping you understand who is within those 1,000 or 50,000 people. And that's really fun. And then I just, I love making things. So whether it's out on the farm with my kids or products or new videos or podcasts.

Amazing. Where can people go to see some of those projects and those? Because I know you're building the— is it like the, like a basketball court and a rink back there?

We built a pickleball court.

That's it.

Now we're building a hobbit hole. My 11-year-old is obsessed with building a hobbit hole. So that's, you know, pouring concrete, framing up walls, the whole thing.

That's so funny.

Life on the farm. I, you know, I taught an 11-year-old how to drive an excavator and he's a pro now. So The Nathan Barry Show on YouTube is the podcast and then Nathan Barry on Instagram and then NathanBarry.com to sign up for my newsletter. And that's where you get the weekly newsletter about everything I'm doing.

Dude, thank you so much. Appreciate you, man.

Yeah, thank you.

Was Nathan Barry. If this episode shifted how you think about building your audience, I want to encourage you to hit subscribe because we got new episodes coming every week. Now, if you want to learn more about Nathan, I put together a free resource kit with his info, show notes, and his system for building your audience in just a few hours a week. Scan the QR code or grab the link in the description. Now next week we got McCall Jones and she's Russell Brunson's go-to charisma coach. We're talking about why being professional on camera is actually killing your sales and how she 12x'd someone's click-through rate in just 4 calls.

You don't wanna miss it.

I'll see you next time.