How To Build A Billion Dollar Business As An Influencer

like you got to choose the business model that's right for you. But answering the question of like, okay, can this audience that I have make me a billionaire? I have one house that's gonna pull off like 15,000 a month and it's just a single house. So you'll beat it by quite a bit.

No way. Really? What's, what's the house worth?

I bought it for $900K.

That's ridiculous.

Damn, dude. That's crazy.

$700 a night.

Where is it located?

Yeah. It's in Boise, like right next to the Boise State University stadium.

So do you get like basically like football tourists or what do you, who's renting this thing for $700 a night in Boise?

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

Great.

No, for real.

Um, who's renting it? So you get like all graduation, everyone coming in to, you know, tour the university or whatever else. And then, um, uh, just anyone coming into downtown. It's like a 5-bedroom brand new construction. Sam, it actually looks like the kitchen looks somewhat similar to, uh, the place you just linked me to. So, so why haven't you bought like floating shelves and the tile backsplash and all that?

Why haven't you bought like 5 more in the same area?

That's my question. Yeah, it's $1 million. It's $1 million or $900,000 or whatever you said, under a million-dollar house that's making $20,000, $15,000 a month. Why don't you buy 50 of them?

Well, I just bought this one, and so it's not making that yet, but that's what we're like, the bookings for the summer. So it's at, uh, it just did $8,000 for January locked in. Um, and then the summer bookings are coming in at like quite a bit higher. Um, like, so the January ones, you know, are last minute and Boise's slow there. But, uh, yeah, the summer ones are coming in at $800, $900, $1,000 a night. Um, which is wild. And we haven't even put a hot tub on it yet. So I just bought a hot tub today. And, uh, so we'll get that in there. I should be able to charge a little bit more and it's going to be good.

Wow.

So we should start, uh, we should intro, intro you.

Well, yeah, so you're— we're all— we're live. That might go live. This is Nathan Barry. Nathan Barry. Um, I've known Nathan since a Gumroad meetup, Sean. I went to a Gumroad meetup in like, for real, I'm not joking.

2012, maybe 2013.

2012, 2013. Nathan was doing Gumroad. He had this book called Authority, right? Authority?

Yep.

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

I didn't end up doing it. There's some mechanics problem with the way—

We can get into it. We're an LLC and it gets complicated as like pass-through funds and stuff like that, but yeah. But Sam, you're in the cool club.

I'm in the cool club. And basically his business ConvertKit does like $26, I think, million in recurring revenue. It's like a Mailchimp competitor that's better and different. Their revenue's all completely live. So if you Google ConvertKit revenue, you'll like see the revenue. $29 million.

Do you regret now that your business is actually kicking ass, do you feel like, ah, kind of wish this wasn't all super transparent? Or, you know, because it's good early on. Transparency is great early on, it gets you a bunch of people interested. Then when you start winning, you know, you're giving more value than you're getting back usually by doing that.

Yeah, so I think it's a great idea if it's for a mission reason and a terrible idea if it's for like a marketing reason. And I actually had two friends who sat me down at one point and they were like, Nathan, this is an intervention. Take down your like public metrics page. And Which they were right. Like, they had talked to competitors who were like, "Wow, this is so helpful." Like, scrolling through and they're like, "You know your competitors are doing this, right?" I'm like, "I know." But really it's like, it's a mission thing of the whole mission for the company is to help creators earn a living. And so if we can put this public blueprint out there, that's not just like the snapshot in time where, you know, you've done it with companies where you're going through and you're like, "Oh, they said here they were at $10 million." You know, and you're like trying to piece together the trajectory, we all have the same spreadsheets. And so, like actually doing it in real time means that someone can be like, okay, I'm at $50K MRR, churn is absolutely brutal right now. Oh, I wonder what ConvertKit's churn was when they were at $50K, right? And you can go back and you can find the date range and be like, oh, in this time, here's all of their metrics, here's how fast they're growing and everything. And so it's like this, for anyone who wants it, It's this masterclass where you have to dig in and find the data, but you can find everything about our business. And my hope is that it's like breadcrumbs that every future entrepreneur who wants to recreate what we've done—

How much traffic does that page get?

Hopefully in another industry.

Do you know?

What's that?

How much traffic does that page get?

I don't know. It's not actually even our page. It's convertkit.bearmetrics.com. Right. And it's not even ours, so.

Wow.

Presumably not that much.

Okay, so you're for real not using it for marketing if you don't even know how much traffic it gets. Okay, now I believe you. But when you said the mission thing, I have a system of tuning out whenever anybody says values, mission, vision, things like that. I'm just like, ah, by default, I do not believe anything you're about to say for the next 30 seconds.

How many, um, how many people work there now?

69.

Because when you, you wrote this blog post 2 years— I forget, I've been reading your blog for so long, I don't remember the years, but you wrote a blog post and you're like, oh, we're making, let's say, $8 million a year, but we basically had $20,000 in the bank. Or that's— I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was almost as extreme as that, right?

Yeah. So, uh, the company's totally self-funded. There's no outside capital. And so when we hit like this period of rapid growth, we grew from $2,000 a month to $100,000 a month in 12 months. And, you know, and that was just on $50,000 that I'd put in. We spent all of that money. And so what happened is the company was growing and profitable, but we were doing like 3% profit margins. And so we'd gotten down to the point where we had, I think like $10,000 to $12,000 in the bank. And like that was growing. But we were like, expenses were increasing by so much more that like our day's worth of expenses was getting shorter and shorter. And so that got super scary. You guys wanna know, okay, random story. So I think you all know Andrew Warner. Mm-hmm.

MixerG.

I was at a MixerG meetup in San Francisco. Like he would do these scotch nights and, after one of those, like, I think we were walking out of the building and he's like, dude, you know, kind of pulls me aside. He's like, dude, you seem super stressed. And I was like, yeah, like, and I kind of told him the financial situation. And we were like, our bank balance was growing, but, you know, you're like now paying all these people and you have no money. And so I told him about that. And he said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna wire you $25,000 tomorrow. You're going, if you need the money, spend it. Do whatever you want with it. Whenever you feel right, like pay me back. Or if you don't need it, like just put it in a savings account. Like just let it be an insurance blanket for you. And then, you know, wire it back at some point.

Did you know him well?

The only thing, we'd hung out in person I think twice before. So I knew him a little bit. He'd been on the podcast.

And what were you gonna say? The only thing what?

Oh, the thing he said is like, if you do decide to raise funding, like convert that into, you know, like I'll be the first person in for that. If not, wire the money back.

What a smart move!

Okay, but the thing that he said—

That's such a good move.

The thing that he said is the only thing that will piss me off on this is if you ever try to pay me interest on it. Like don't try to make this a loan in any way. And so I held onto the money. It sat in the bank account for like 8 or 9 months. We grew our bank account to the point that we had plenty of savings in the bank and all of that. And I wired the money back. And like, Andrew is forever one of those people where I'm like, thank you, just because he pulled me aside and was like, did you seem stressed? And he was like, let me loan you a security blanket.

That's one of the coolest stories I've heard. That's frankly, that's amazing. Shout out to Andrew. We gotta have Andrew on now just for that story. We've joked about it before, but we should have him on for Sure.

Because if he's done it to you, he's probably done like some weird stuff like that to a bunch of people. So that's, he's probably got some interesting stories.

Yeah, I mean, he knows everyone too. So he's, he's—

I'm looking at your guys' revenue chart. There's a huge spike every November. What did you do? Is it like a Black Friday deal or what, what causes this huge spike?

Yeah, we can talk about whether that's a good idea or not. Um, so early on, right, when you need cash, uh, the thing that you do in SaaS is you push annual plans. 'Cause you have this cash flow problem. And so we started pushing annual plans as part of our Black Friday sale, you know, to bring forward a bunch of that cash. And so we kind of just kept doing that. And then what it did is it aligned a whole bunch of—

Renewals.

You know, annual payments right around that same time. So it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, right? Until it gets to the point that you're pulling in like $4.5 million in a single month. You're also getting all the churn at the same time. So I don't know that, Like, I— like, we're not going to keep doing it.

By the way, there's so many things like that in business that I'm like, we're doing this. I can't really say if it's a good idea or a bad idea. I wish I could, but we're just— we're just going to keep doing it for now. And then like, I just kind of feel like it's going to work out, but I could totally see that like we didn't need to do any of this or that this like long term is hurting us more than the short term gain.

What's an example?

Like in my D2C business, I was kind of thinking about this is We do this model that like drops new products all the time. Every single week we drop new products and it's great cuz it causes this sales spike, but it also puts you on this treadmill of new products that you have to release every week. And that means you gotta do photo shoots of those products every week. And then that means that you have to have inventory, whether you sold your previous inventory or not, you gotta buy new inventory. Like most brands, they, they don't do that. They only buy new inventory when they're out of the old stuff. So even though inventory sucks out cash, you know, it's like, well, it's— I'm buying it because there's— I'm sold out. We're not even doing that. But on the other hand, it's creating like— when I look at his chart, it's creating this spike every single week and I'm like, okay, so that's good. But these other 3 things are bad. And like, I don't know how to weigh these against each other because they're like in different categories that speak different languages and on different timescales. So it's just hard to— hard to know if this is like a dumb idea or a bad idea or a good idea.

I think the thing to look for in that is something that served you before might not serve you now. So like that served us really well for a period of time because it brought in this cash, you know, and you could tell the team like, hey, like payroll is good, we're set for a long time. And it gives that level of comfort. And also like in the early days, churn is often high in a business just because you don't have very many mature accounts. And so locking that in is really good. But then if you get to this long, you know, much later in the business, you're like, look, we're on accrual accounting, we don't really care, we have plenty of cash in the bank. Like this spike at this time doesn't make a difference. Right. And so just, I watch for those things where it's like, this served the business well for a while and it doesn't anymore.

Who built the early version?

So I did all the design and front-end development, and then I hired freelancers to um, you know, write the Rails backend. And then that went okay. And then it went much better when I hired a longtime friend named David to come on and like full-time, uh, build it. But that was 2 years in.

And you— and it was making enough— it was making enough money to pay him?

No, that was where I paid him out of the $50 grand that I put in, which was like our, our savings and everything.

Seems like a pretty good return. I mean, $50K and you're able to get that built and turns into what it is now. Or at least it got you to enough revenue to pay people.

Yeah, yeah, and I mean, it's wild what you can do when one, you're doing a lot of the design and code yourself, you know, so you got to count that in the cost. But yeah, and then you just fund it with— that makes it sound easier than it is, but you know, you fund it with growth.

Simple.

Not easy. Yeah, simple, not easy.

So, right, so Sean, Nathan, he's got this blog post called like How to Build Wealth, I think it's called. We have another blog post, Ladders of Wealth. He's got this actually, this other great blog post called, um, The Billion Dollar Creator, I think it's called, or The Billion Dollar Blog.

Let's do the billion dollar, let's do the billion dollar one. All right, I'm sorry to say I didn't know where you're going with that.

Well, well, I just want to say, so this whole thing about transparency, so Nathan, I don't I don't think you publicize this, but I'm on this email list and every month or week, probably month, I think he sends out, dude, it's the craziest shit I've seen. He sends out his entire net worth and you could see like how much cash he has, how much, uh, like which stocks he owns of, and of how much, uh, like his angel investments. Like you see his entire, all of his finances.

I gotta get on this list. That sounds amazing. Actually, I might be on that list.

It's all the content that I wanted to, that I wanted like other people to publish. Like Sam, you talk about FatFire and like, that's a fantastic subreddit. And I just want like more of those conversations. 'Cause I've written a ton about people who have, or like how to get from say like $0 to $100,000 on the internet. You know, that's, you mentioned my book Authority, that's what that was. But like once you kind of get to the point where you're making $100,000, $200,000 or more online, like people don't talk about what you do with their money. 'Cause you know, if you do that, someone's like, oh, you know, like there's Sam just bragging about how much money he has again, or you know, something like that. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna make a private newsletter and I just charge people $100, like just to filter out anyone who's gonna complain about it, I guess, or say that I'm bragging. And then just say, I'm gonna write about all the stuff that I wish I knew when I made my first $250 grand online. And so—

The way that I describe your blog or that email is it's kind of like face tattoos and cornrows. I think it's super cool when other people have them, but I don't want it. Like, you know, not for me, but it's cool when others have them.

There's only 200 people on that list. So it's a small group right now.

Dude, I don't know, man. But Sean, what was your question about? Well, I want to kind of walk through the framework here.

So you have this blog post that's kind of like— I know you worked on that for a while, uh, kind of shaping your thinking here. And, um, and then we also have Sam, who's somewhat bearish on the idea of the creator economy, thinks it's kind of overhyped, over-buzzword. And you're Mr. Creator Economy in a way, uh, Nathan. So I think this would be— this might be good. Um, but let's walk—

I don't think our opinions are opposites, by the way. I would, I would say probably our opinions are not opposite. Yeah, for the sake of argument, let's let's just, uh, let's just walk through.

So you basically have these 4 rules of building a billion-dollar audience. So, um, I guess like first, why did you even want to do this? Uh, like kind of like what got you interested in this? And then let's walk through the 4.

Yeah, so the article asks a question, like the whole premise of it, and that is what is the most profitable, uh, place to direct attention, right? So everything we do, right, we're recording a podcast now, whatever you're doing on on TikTok, or if you're a movie star, everything else, right? You have attention and brands want it. They're willing to sponsor, you know, all of this stuff. And so it's like, okay, you have the opportunity to point that attention somewhere. What's the most profitable way to do that long term? Because you look at people, um, you know, maybe who are taking sponsorships, right? $5,000 to, you know, to sponsor the newsletter, or, you know, $500 for a sponsored, um, Instagram post or anything like that. And that's actually not that profitable. And when you dive in, you learn that the most profitable thing to do is to create your own product and to drive that attention to something where you actually build equity long term. So it's like a longer article talking about that. But like the richest movie stars, you know, like take Jessica Alba, for example, right? She has made a lot of money from movies. But the bulk of her wealth is from starting a company, using, you know, being the spokesperson for her own company. And then my other favorite example would be Ryan Reynolds, who, you know, right, he's doing ads for other people and probably getting paid $1 million here, $10 million there, you know, that kind of thing. And at some point he goes like, forget that, I'm going to buy my own companies with Mint Mobile and Aviation Gin, and I'm going to be my own spokesperson. So I don't get cash, I get equity. And so, you know, you just watch this process of people doing it over and over again. And that's actually my hypothesis with ConvertKit, right? Of I have attention on the internet through running a blog and a newsletter and all of that. How do I want to monetize it? Sponsorships, ebooks, membership, a bunch of things. I'm like, nope, I want to monetize it through ConvertKit, building a SaaS company. Like that's my, version of the billion-dollar creator. So that's the whole premise of the article. And it's like, uh, so you have a couple examples.

So, okay, so rule number 1 is you have to build more than a personal brand. So what does that mean? You give the example of Jesse Alba, of Mark from Primal Kitchen. So what, what is the nuance here? It's like, it's not just your face, your name. You need to actually create a brand around, uh, around your lifestyle or your interest. Is that it?

By the way, Sean, Primal Kitchen is The sugar-free ketchup company that I like. So this guy named Mark, he's like, kind of looks like the 65-year-old version of me, but like even more jacked. And he like has a health and health blog and he starts selling ketchup and he sells that for like $300 million.

Yeah. So I mean, what Mark did, uh, with, uh, I mean, his blog was called Mark's Daily Apple and it was like the leading, you know, like paleo, uh, kind of health blog in that space. And a blog like that, you know, when he was doing this, 2006, 2010, that kind of thing, you can make $1 million a year off of that blog. And he was right. But you play that forward and that's— it's all about him, all about his name. All that, right? His name is in the name of the site. But you can build substantial wealth that way. What he did instead is he started Primal Kitchen, you know, kickstarted this whole brand. By saying, like, I have the most popular site in the space. Let me, you know, make these paleo-friendly ketchup, mayonnaise, that kind of thing.

And then he goes, you know, how big his audience was, you know, how big, how much traffic he had at the time.

It wasn't huge, huge. Like, he was no bigger than ours.

Yeah.

100,000 subscribers on the email list, maybe 100,000, kind of like trusted audience size to kick off this.

Yeah. You got to remember, audiences were a lot smaller, like even just 2015, 2012, like that kind of timeframe. But yeah, then he sold, sells it to Kraft for $200 million. You can't sell a blog to, like a blog doesn't sell for $200 million, you know? Like all of these things. And the crazy thing is he still owns the audience, right? The thing that kickstarted this whole product, he still owns. He can sell off that whole brand. Talking to him at a conference, you know, he's just onto the next thing. Figuring out what he wants to do next. He didn't have to sell his name and whole identity with it. And Kraft is thrilled with their purchase.

Kylie Cosmetics is probably the biggest one that people know about because you have tons of attention through Instagram, TikTok, whatever.

Yeah.

The TV show, whatever. And instead of just saying, hey, you can pay me, 'cause people will used to say, wow, you have to pay $25,000 for a tweet from Kim Kardashian, then it— that was $25,000, then it went up to like $250,000, then $2 million for an Instagram post from—

is it $2 million?

It got, it got up to that range where it was like either hundreds of thousands or low millions to get like an actual like endorsement post from, from one of them. And, um, and so then, you know, cool, you can make a lot of money doing that, right? You can, you could stack up quarter million dollars at a time. But Kylie Cosmetics was a billion dollar brand, so it's like, well, Who wants to— who wants to pay me to promote their products? Well, it's mostly like skincare products, makeup products, or for Kim Kardashian, it's her shapewear. Like, you know, like Khloe Kardashian, it was like, you know, fashion or whatever. So Khloe launches True American Jeans, Kim Kardashian launches— I think it's called— what was it? Skims. Skims is like the shapewear brand.

Dude, Sean, you are on top of it. Keep going.

Kylie— Kylie Cosmetics. Kanye, Yeezy Shoes, right? There's like, they all turned to say, who, whoever is the most willing advertiser, actually you become my competitor and I'm going to launch my own brand, my own equity, and have my own equity in this thing. And there's a guy in the NBA who gets made fun of for this, which is this guy, LaVar Ball. I don't know if you guys know this guy, but basically he has 3 sons. All 3 wanted to make it to the NBA. And this guy's this like loudmouth guy. They got like a reality show around them because They're sort of like the, like, you know, basketball version of the Kardashians. There's 3 brothers and like a kind of an overbearing parent who is like architecting their business strategy. And when they were going to— the guy was going to get picked second in the draft and Nike offered him a contract and Adidas. And instead he created Big Baller Brand, you know, Triple B. He created his own shoe line and like the shoes kind of sucked and like, you know, he didn't have the full business plan. And people were making fun of him for like, oh wow, you turned down a guaranteed $10 million from Nike to like launch this thing, $10 million a year or whatever. And it's like, actually, that was the right move. Now maybe his execution was slightly poor, but that was actually the right move. And a lot of these NBA players would have been better served had they done that themselves.

Well, how's it going now, the shoe thing?

So the shoe thing's not going good. Basically, the guy they had running it like was like kind of stealing from them. So they fired him. That was like a black mark on it. The second brother never made it to the NBA. So that was like a little bit of an issue. The first brother kind of underperformed his potential at that time. And actually now that it would've worked 'cause the youngest brother, the one who was like the one who was kind of like, he was kind of like a fuckboy a little bit. He was like, had a gold, like a diamond grill, had like a Lambo at 15 and was like, he was kind of off the reservation. He actually turned out to be the best one. He's actually a star player. And if they had kind of built it properly around him, it probably would've done a lot better.

So I, um, Nathan, you'll get a kick out of this. So like 3 or 4 weeks ago we did this thing where we said we're gonna give 5 Gs to 1 or 2, 3 people who take our clips, download it, post it on TikTok and get views. There's this kid who did it and I don't remember how many views he got, but like our hashtag I think got 30 million views in like 2 weeks. And this guy accounted for a lot of them. And multiple of his videos got 1,000— or sorry, 1 million views. One video got so big that we drove 35,000 new members to the subreddit FatFire. And they like— and they complained. And I was like, reached out to this kid. I'm like, who are you? And he replies back with like, Michael at U Michigan dot org or something like that, or dot U or whatever it is. And I'm like, wait, dude, are you in college? And he calls me and I FaceTime with him and he's in his dorm room. And he's young, he's still in college, he's doing his university thing, and he's really cocky. Not in a bad way, but he's like, he's got chutzpah. He goes, man, I knew I was gonna do this. I wanted to prove to you guys that I could do it. I want you to pay me money to do this now, and I'm gonna do this for other people, and we're gonna change the media game, and I'm gonna raise money. And I was like, okay, hold on, dude, hear me out. And he goes, I'm gonna go raise money for this thing. Do you want to invest? I go, bro, listen, You do not want to raise money for this. Here's what you should do. You are so talented at this that don't raise money for this, but get it big and start launching other stuff on top of it. And if you want to raise money, raise money for that stuff and own all of it. He owns this thing called like, um, I forget what it's called, Future, but he's got like 8 handles now that have like a million something followers. I'm like, no, no, no, don't raise money for this thing, man. Own that forever. And that's your piggy bank and your audience. Raise money for like this other thing that you want to do and funnel it through there. But don't sell that thing because I raised a little bit of money for my thing, which was like that. And I, I don't regret it because I got the outcome that I wanted, but I do regret it because it definitely— you're massively handicapped because of it.

Yeah. Well, and that's, I think, such a good point because you can have that platform to launch whatever you want in the same way that, you know, Mark Sisson can use his platform to then go launch the next thing, right? He probably has contracts that say he can't compete in the exact same space, but he could do a fitness thing or he could do something else, right? You have the point.

I was going to give an example. Conor McGregor is doing this pretty brilliantly in the UFC. So like, uh, the UFC gets knocked a lot because of— they have like low fighter pay, right? Like the, the percentage of revenue that they give to their fighters is way lower than other sports. NBA is 50%, NFL is like 50%, UFC is like, I don't know, 15 or 20%. So the fighters are You know, they go out there, they get their, you know, face beaten in, and they're— they'll make $20,000 off that fight, or $40,000, or $80,000. And then they only get to do that 2 or 3 times a year. So it's like a pretty brutal sport for low pay. What Conor McGregor did was, instead of selling the attention, instead of trying to make money as his kind of like service fee, he created a brand around literally every part of his lifestyle. So he's like, all right, this thing's gonna get me famous. But then, okay, what am I famous for? People like my suits at the press conferences. Cool, I'm launching a suit brand. Okay, I'm Irish, I'm gonna launch an Irish whiskey. Irish whiskey, I think, just sold for— I don't know if you know, Sam—

yeah, like, he walked away with $100 million.

Exactly. Then he's like, cool, I'm super fit because I'm a UFC fighter, my body's amazing, here's my P90X program, it's called McGregor Fast. You can, you can buy my program and subscribe to that, and you can get fit with me. Oh, you're getting fit. And, um, guess what else do I do? I recover. Okay, here's a recovery spray that I spray on my leg that's like, you know, like makes my leg, uh, recover faster after workouts. And the guy is literally just selling like every piece of his lifestyle as an independent brand. Like, uh, you know, I think at one point he was thinking about launching a sports betting exchange. It's like, what is the best business? Like, who wants to pay me? Oh, DraftKings wants to pay me. Hmm. Maybe instead of DraftKings, it's McGregorKings now, and I will launch a competitor.

He just, he just opened up a bar called the Black Forge.

Exactly. Oh, you know, I had good success with whiskey. What else do we do? Irish stouts. Okay, I'm gonna— so he bought a bar. Not that the bar is that good, it's like a bar in his hometown, a bar's not gonna make a ton of money. But then he used that bar as the, like, basically the backdrop to film him creating a stout, and now he's gonna sell a stout as a new, like, alcoholic beverage brand. And, uh, it's kind of amazing. The guy's going to become a billionaire and fighting is going to be the lowest part of his income stream, is my guess, which is insane.

I bet you, I bet you, Conor McGregor, I bet you he goes broke.

Well, he might make a billion, he might lose a billion.

I think he could. Uh, Nathan, uh, you're, you're worth like, uh, did you reveal the valuation of your company?

Uh, we, we raised at $200 million.

Okay. So let's just, I, let's just, I don't know what the facts are, but let's just say you own 90%. So you're worth $180 million. Do you think that you could ever spend through that?

Uh, I would have to radically change my lifestyle. I don't think—

is that enough?

Yeah. Oh, that's so much more than enough. I think I spend like $200 grand a year. So if that gives you an idea, if you take it, like if you set aside the things, like when I'm not buying assets.

That's your burn. That's your actual burn.

It's like $200 grand a year. So yeah, it would take a lot to, yeah, to spend through, uh, through that.

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

There's a point. Uh, oh, go. So what, what Sean was saying about, um, uh, like the trend between all of these people is that that's what's in the rule number 2 of selling products, not attention. And that's the flip, right? So Conor McGregor is a perfect example of this because everyone's expecting people to sell attention, right? That's the NASCAR logos plastered all over the car equivalent of that. And you're like, great, Conor's doing that, every celebrity. And so, you know, you expect that everyone, like every influencer is going to do that. And the wealthiest people are the ones who are like, great, I'm going to not do that. I'm gonna promote my own product. Connor's the extreme example of like, I'm gonna do 10 of these or something. Most people are like, let me do 1 or 2. But that's where you're gonna build this real wealth.

And then let's just hit the other rules real quick. So rule number 3, drive higher customer value through recurring or repeat purchases. So you'd rather have a product that you could, that has repeat purchase rate versus a one-off. That's the big idea there?

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

Right, yeah. So, you know, if My First Million created an idea journal, it's probably not gonna have super high repeat purchase rate 'cause you're, you know, one journal will last you a long time versus if we made, you know, the Pure Money deodorant and Pure Money deodorant is something that you would go through every 2 months, then that consumable is gonna be worth more than, you know, so product selection, is important here.

Yeah. And so even just going back to the ketchup example, right? You know, you're going through ketchup every month, every couple of months. You know, that's way better than something that lasts forever. Right.

Billionaire's ketchup. Great. Okay. So then last one, choose a better business model. So what do you— what are you pointing out here with choose a better business model?

Yeah. So there's a couple of things in this. One is, well, I'm using the example of Vani Hari, who is the Food Babe. So she had information products business, she's selling cookbooks, meal plans, all of that. And then she teamed up with a friend of mine, Derek Halpern, who was also in kind of that online business space, and they went and made like a health supplements company. And so it's completely different. They've made the switch from, you know, that business model into selling this product that people are buying on a recurring basis that, you know, the brand can be acquired. But then I think that the other example that's interesting I love listening to Andrew Wilkinson on the show. And, you know, he did his whole thing. His whole thing is using a very cash flow positive business, right, in Meta Lab. They're doing agency work. Honestly, it's a very profitable business, but it's not valued that high in the market. And so he's like, okay, I'm going to take low to medium quality revenue and use it to go buy really high quality revenue. You know, because agencies, they're not as recurring, they're not high multiple if you want to sell the business. So he's like, great, I'm going to go buy software companies or start software companies, you know, and so I'm going to trade in, you know, one set of revenue for another. And then you see this a lot in software where someone will launch two, like you'll have two versions of the same tool. One's like the WordPress plugin version where it gets it done and all that. But none of those really turn into like substantial companies. And so the ones that made it are like OptinMonster, where they built a WordPress plugin, it was okay, made millions of dollars, but like it's not valued like a software company. Whereas when they go and rebuild, like Syed Balki rebuilt OptinMonster as a SaaS platform, added more features, you know, they can charge a different pricing model, all of that. And then it's really valuable, right? You get to raise money at Silicon Valley valuations, you get to sell the company at those multiples. Um, even though it's like fundamentally accomplishing the same, uh, same goal.

3 people who I think left money on the table. You named 2 of them. I have a third. Actually, you might have named all 3. Um, okay. So you talked about Ramit Sethi, who you think, you know, maybe he's making $10 million a year in revenue selling kind of high-end courses. His audience is all around personal finance. As you pointed out, like at the time where he had a bunch of audience and trust in personal finance and was advocating for a philosophy of like, hey, you know, low-fee index fund style investing, set it and forget it, you know, saving a certain portion of your revenue. He could have built Wealthfront, which just got acquired for $1.4 billion, you know, yesterday or something like that, which was like a robo-advisor doing just that. So instead of selling courses, could have built a software product. So left, left some value potentially on the table. Another one is Tim Ferriss, right? Tim Ferriss. Has— makes a ton of money on sponsorships and ended up making a ton of money through investing in the right startups because of his brand name. But, you know, could he have done what Joe Rogan did with like Onnit Supplements, right? Like, I think Tim Ferriss has a huge trusted audience. If he said, look, I tried every supplement and here's my issues with them, so I'm launching the paleo ketchup, I'm launching the nootropic supplement, I'm launching the, the protein powder, whatever, whatever he could have picked. You know, I think is a $500 million business given the size and trust of his audience. But it seems like he didn't go that path. So what do you think of that? Oh, the third was Marie Forleo.

What was the third?

I think you had her in here. And I think you pointed out, and you pointed out two things. One is she builds everything in her name instead of building like brands that can be dissociated from like her person. The product is her telling you content, her selling you time and consulting or whatever else, her selling you a course versus her creating a product based on her belief system. And you trust her, so you think this product is gonna work for you.

So, but listen to this, Sean, you're, well, you're not exactly, but you're criticizing these people. You're doing the exact same thing. So you've got this big audience of people who like and trust you. Shockingly trust you and do what you say, but you're building this other thing that people are begging to know what it is. Like, do you think that, like, uh, you're— you should follow your own advice here?

Oh, totally. Um, you know, that's why I like this article. I think it's a— it's an eye-opener for— it pieces together a bunch of, like, anecdotes and philosophies, and by the time you read it all the way through, you're like, yeah, of course, of course I agree with this. So I did it in a way with the fund. So for example, podcast, uh, podcast ad revenue, I think our first year I made like $70,000 or something like that in podcast ads. It wasn't much. It was like a very, the value of the audience I felt was bigger than the value of the trust in the audience was bigger than the ad revenue. And so I bet on that. I was like, okay, well what if I raised a fund from these people who have been listening and I'm not gonna take any, I'm not gonna do any pitch meetings. I'm not gonna make a presentation. I'm just gonna say, hey, if you trust me from this podcast and you wanna invest alongside me in startups, you can. And so now that fund is like an $8 million a year investment vehicle. So if you just take the math on that, right? You get 2% of that in management fee. Okay, that's not that much, but then you get 20% of carry. So 20% carry means you're basically getting $1.6 million of startup equity that you're investing per year. For free. So $70,000 in ads versus $1.6 million in startup equity, of which I get to pick the startups. And I think those startups can, you know, what if that's 5x in the next, you know, 7 to 10 years? So that means each year I'm getting something like $5 million a year of value out of a product created from the podcast. So that's an example of doing it. Example of not doing it is I do a course. And the reality is I do the course just 'cause I, A, I like teaching and B, I like the instant cash flow from that 'cause I can go buy stupid shit with it. So for example, I, I, like, I wasn't— I stopped teaching my course because I just got busy doing other shit. And then I really wanted to go like do some random NFT speculation. I was like, ah, I feel stupid doing this with my money. What if I just like did a course for, you know, 2 weeks and then that let me go buy a Bored Ape and a CryptoPunk and whatever else? Okay, that sounds more fun. Um, and so I'm like, yeah, I'm down to, you know, teach 6 sessions to do that. That seems like a good trade in my head mentally. But I would say that's not actually a good use of time. And then the new thing we're building, the new product is kind of in that boat, right? The Milk Road isn't called Sean's Crypto Newsletter. It specifically has a new brand name and it has like staff around it. And it's a product that if it works, can be big and it'll be supercharged or kind of initially, initially distributed by people who already follow me and like my content.

And then the second criticism, which Nathan can address, which is like, and maybe Ramit would say this, he's like, well, but I like blogging and I don't know anything about starting like a, a per, uh, uh, a fintech company. And what's the, what's your reply to that, Nathan?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great answer. And like all these people who I like lightly pick on in my article, they're all friends. And, and so that's one where like you gotta choose the business model that's right for you. But answer the question of like, okay, can this audience that I have make me a billionaire, trying to have as many examples of like, if that's the outcome that you want, you know, or maybe it's not a billionaire, right? Because you raise money or something else, but getting on that hundreds of millions of dollars type scale, then it's like, okay, well, here's the framework that has to happen. And if you're saying like, look, you know, these— we list people who have amazing businesses, right? They're in complete control of their time, making millions of dollars a year, You know, like absolutely no complaints there. So this is all on the case study of like, how would you do it? Actually, one of my favorite examples, I used Michael Hyatt as an example in this article and he replied like he sent me an email right after it and said like, hey, we actually discovered the exact same thing. Personal brand entirely. We're selling digital products. We're very tied to our email list. We're doing like sponsors and stuff like that. And we realized like Oh, this business is going to reach some limits. And so he then built out all these sub-businesses. They built out a journal product, other physical products, and realized, okay, how can we build— take what we have now and use it to leverage other independent brands and kickstart and launch them? And so it's fascinating to use someone as an example and have them come back and be like, you're spot on in describing our business, but you're actually 2 years You were spot on 2 years ago. We realized the same thing. We're fixing it. And now everyone will see the result a little while from now. And so, yeah, if people want this path, that's the way to go about it.

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

I don't know that I have the numbers. I'm trying to think what he put in the article. But it's— his other products are now bigger than all the things that we know him for. So in the tens of millions of dollars. That's crazy.

Um, all right. What were we saying, Sean?

I was gonna jump to the ladders of wealth cuz I think this is the other kind of nice framework that you have. So, um, and this is kind of like, I think some people have heard of kind of stuff like this, but I just wanna like lay out the fast version and then we can go into whatever's, whatever's interesting from this. So you have this image of, uh, of a series of ladders and it's not like one ladder that you just go up, up and up. It's basically like If you use, if you choose this method of wealth creation, your ladder can be this high. But if you choose this method of wealth creation, it can go one rung higher, or it can go two rungs higher or four rungs higher depending on which one you choose. So here's, here's how it works. So it's basically the lowest ladder, the smallest ladder is you're selling time for money. So that's having a job or being, yeah, having a job basically. Then there's your own service business. So this might be like an agency, You're charging by the project. You have some clients, you charge some hourly rate, whether you're, you know, it doesn't matter if you're like making logos for some company or you're a lawyer, you're actually in the same boat. You have a service business with clients and you charge an hourly rate. Then there's productized services, which is, um, it's given, give an example of a product, uh, of productized services.

Yeah. So the example would be, let's say I charge $100 an hour to redo the copywriting on your website. You know, and so I'm doing that. Or I say for $1,000 one time, you can buy it with a credit card, you know, I will go and rewrite your site, you know, or write you one whole landing page. And so there's a couple really important things there. One, the purchase is being made without me talking to you. Like if I'm charging $100 an hour, we'll probably have a conversation. You're like, we're planning that. Second thing is it's pre-packaged. So you know exactly what you're buying. And then the, the third thing is that the time and money are totally disconnected. So if I get better and better, if I hire people, any of that, right, like I'm not having to sit there for 10 hours and do it. And so there's a bunch of these skills that they have to learn to do the productized service.

An example, a simple example, we, I think Ryan Beagleman came on the pod a long time ago, and he talked about drop servicing. Which was a version of this. So like the example he was giving is like, there's these products that are like, you pay $30 and I'll draw a picture of you, and you give me a picture of you and I'll draw you as a Simpsons character. Or like you can send this as a gift. So somebody loves the Simpsons, you can give me a photo of them, I'll draw it as a Simpsons character, you get it. So it has all the elements you talked about. It's self-serve, you come in, has a predefined price, you just click a button and you pay. You get a defined product, end product out of it. So we're kind of both clear on the bargain. And then third, you don't know how long it takes me. You don't know how much it costs me. I don't have to do the work myself. So with a lot of these character services, it's like it just gets piped to a, you know, person in the Philippines who's an artist. They take the gig, they submit it, they get $7. The service keeps, you know, whatever, $23 and, and it's all done. So that's like an example of a productized service. And, uh, by the way, isn't there like a Facebook group called Productized Services?

Oh, yes. Who runs that?

There's a guy running that. It's pretty interesting.

We talked about him. Uh, Green—

Green—

Greenfeld maybe or something like that.

So, so what he does is he's got this Facebook group and the reason I like it, it's so niche, but it's actually pretty valuable for if you're in that niche. So he has this Facebook group called Productized, uh, services or something like that, productized businesses. And, and what he was doing was he would just show an example. So he'd say, oh look, this is a real estate agent. And before, here's how it used to work. You know, here's their page, here's their face. You call 'em up, become a client, blah, blah, blah. And he is like, or, or sorry, that's not a good example. It's, I make web, I design websites, I can code anything. You can hire me as a freelancer. And then he changed it to a productized service, which is you're a real estate agent. You need a website for your company. I make real estate agent websites. Come here, pick one of the, the 6 templates, push go. I'll give you a website. Uh, and I'll charge you a fixed fee of $250 or $500 to give you that website. And so it's basically a way of productizing a, um, a service.

You know what the best name that I've ever heard for that is Jack Butcher, who's our friend, and he has this course. It's got, it's a beautiful, it's called Build Once, Sell Twice.

So good.

It's such a good name.

I took the course. Yeah.

Well, did you love it?

Yeah, I loved it just because everything Jack does is done so well. So, you know, he could, you know, write me a birthday card and I would be like, wow, I love birthday cards now. It's like, do I really love birthday cards or do I just love Jack Butcher? I think I just love Jack Butcher, actually.

Yeah, his ability to take something and like distill it down to the absolute essence and like Build Once, Sell Twice. Is that like it's selling products, you know, where you're saying, okay, I can make this thing a single time and then sell it as many times as I want. Which everyone talks about the upside of that, of like, oh, this is gonna be amazing, right? I can build this and sell it a whole bunch of times. No one talks about the downside that like it's so freaking hard to do the first, like to make the first one, you know? Whereas if I'm building a one-off thing, like using websites for example, like, okay, I'm supposed to build a website for Sam, he's paying me $2,000, like, I build this out. It's not that hard. I can use my skills to do it. The product version is like building a website builder, you know, that's incredibly hard. And so you have this like trough for a long time where you're not going to make money in the short term. But the, the like leverage is incredible.

How old are you now?

31.

So you're 31. As long as I've known you, we've known each other since we were both like 23, 24. You've always pretty much been the same where you were pretty calm. Very patient. I would say patient would probably be the best word to describe you. And there's been a lot of times— I remember in 2014 or something like that, I didn't have much money, but I hollered at my really rich friend and I was like, man, Nathan is doing like $100 grand a month, like, in revenue. This thing's gonna be big. You should try to invest. And maybe I could broker a deal. And you would— and, uh, if I did that, then I met you. You probably had a ton. You've also probably had a ton of people who were trying to buy the company for a life-changing amount of money. And you've probably had loads of other, um, opportunities. So my question is, how have you stayed pretty calm and also incredibly patient throughout all this? I— patience is something I struggle with. You're— Sean was telling you about, uh, how he launches like a new— does a new drop every week. And like, and I, I think that that's rooted in like, uh, oh, but we need the numbers to go up this week. And like, you got caught. And I've done this. I do the same thing where I'm like, but it's not growing now. And I, and I need to— so how have you done so patient and long-term focused?

Well, I think part of it is personality. And you're right that like, uh, patient and relentless are probably two things you can use to describe me back then, uh, and now. But I think a lot of the ideas that are in some of these articles or that, that I try to write about is really in building this one thing. So I think about, uh, analogy that I like is strip malls versus skyscrapers. Let's say we're getting into real estate development. And we've got a piece of land. And you're trying to decide, okay, what, what should we build on it? And so you want to make money quickly. And so you build like, you know, first little office building or something, you got like a Radio Shack there. Now you're making a little bit of cash flow coming in, you know, you want to expand, so you build another, you know, add on to that. Now we've got a Subway, and we're, we've built it out. And we've got a little strip mall or a shopping center. And that's like, we're gonna use up our land each time we're expanding horizontally. And so we're launching a new product. The version of this is the blogger, podcaster, or someone who's like, I've got my ebook, my membership site, my whatever other thing that I'm doing. I keep adding and each one makes a little bit of money. My approach on everything is the skyscraper model of like, I'm gonna do one thing and I'm gonna keep pouring everything into that and just keep going taller and taller and taller. And make something. And so like ConvertKit is my attempt at a skyscraper. And like in the Billion Dollar Creator article, it's all about people I think who are building those skyscrapers.

But you've not always done that, actually. I think, and I think that that's a good strategy, but I would actually say it's pretty cool that you've not always done that. And I'll give you an example. But the reason why it's cool is because like you're flawed and you do, you definitely have your, even though you're incredibly patient and long-term thinking, like maybe It's not rooted in this probably, but like there are some examples. For example, like you've done a bunch of book launches. You've launched like 8 or 9 things that, that have sucked. Uh, you did this great Twitter thread where you— well, no, he did this Twitter thread.

I go, here he sucked it.

Yeah. He goes, here's the 9 things that I've created that were horrible. No, he, he had a thread. I, I don't know if he used the word sucked. Maybe he said failed.

Yeah. Flopped or something like that. So in that, This is something else, right? Like, we all want to jump in and build the most perfect product. And you can't do that because there's all of these skills that you have to learn. Like, that's the point of this Ladders of Wealth Creation article, is that like business and building wealth is the combination of like 1,000 little skills. And if you try to do it all at once, you know, like you're going to fail. And so that's like in these ladders. The one point that I'm trying to make is that the, like, you know, I put marketplaces and social networks, you know, at the top of the hardest ladder. And then just below that is SaaS. 'Cause if you think about the number of skills that you have to know in order to do that, like, Sam, what was the first product you sold online?

Um, I, well, there was two. It was liquor, so I sold alcohol on the internet, and then I also created created a guide on how to, how to find a roommate in San Francisco.

Okay, so that guide, like, do you remember as you were trying to figure out how to collect payments for that, or like how to put together a page that would sell it?

That's why he was at the Gumroad meetup.

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

So yeah, all of those things, right? You're trying to figure out how to do Like, okay, how to collect money on the internet is something that you have to learn. And now we're just like, we could rattle off a whole bunch of ways, right? But someone starting out saying, hey, I want to get into this, they don't know how to collect money on the internet. They don't know how to write headlines. They don't know how to collect email subscribers, why that even matters, right? All of these things. And so I think the best way to do it is to learn through a bunch of these other little products, right? And so that was like basically what you're seeing all the way along with ebooks and everything else is me learning all of the skills that ended up culminating in being able to build ConvertKit.

That's fair. Yeah, that's fair.

And then the other thing is, like, if I say I only focus on ConvertKit, like, that's not fully true because I like to have contrast in my life. I think that's something that helps. And so like we started off, you know, riffing on some real estate stuff. And the reason that I like it is because You spend all your time sitting in front of a computer. And so doing something tangible like Airbnb or something in the real world, like to me is the opposite. Because I get to actually go see a real property, I get to, you know, visit in person, it's a totally different experience. My friend Sean Blanc says, if you work with your mind, you should rest with your hands. And that's, I like that idea of like just doing something that's the opposite. And so I think if you give yourself these little indulgences of like, uh, buying a house and Airbnbing it, or starting like a one-off paid newsletter that you run on autopilot, or Sean, what you're doing where you're like run out and make a course and then you're like, okay, that was fun. I think that can be a creative outlet that then helps you focus on the main thing rather than saying like, oh, I'm gonna go create 10 main things.

When you've been creating ConvertKit, um, let's say that either you've sold the company and you still want to like do interesting things, or you're 21 or 25 years old and you want to start something. What interesting opportunities or problems that need to be solved have you discovered where you're like, I can't do that now, but it'd be pretty cool if someone like, someone could totally get into the blank and do blank.

Yeah. Okay. This is, uh, honest, but a terrible answer to your question. Cause then I, cause I also did it. Right, um, is as we were doing email marketing, you know, and running the newsletters for like James Clear and Tim Ferriss and everyone else, um, the thing that I wanted to do was then get into commerce of like, okay, we have this whole side of it, right, where we're sending all the emails, have the connection to the fans. Now I want to build, um, the like the credit card processing, and I want to get a cut of everything that they sell. Um, and so then I realized like, oh, And that was always the answer. Actually, if someone was like, if you weren't doing ConvertKit, what would you do? And I always said, I'd go start a Gumroad competitor. And then the nice thing is there's that synergy there. So it's like, okay, I went and started a Gumroad competitor called ConvertKit Commerce. It's in the same product. So it's like both a realistic answer and probably not very satisfying for you because it's not like totally different.

Man, Gumroad has been around for a long time now. Up until recently, they pretty much had never done anything to change it. And no one is competing with them. But there's a downside. It doesn't make that much money. Like, I actually don't know what it makes anymore. But as of a couple of years— a few years past, like, he would tweet out his revenue and like, it was really hard to build a business where he was making like 4% of someone's like $10 PDF. You know what I mean? It was—

it was— that's why you have to build a— build a better business model. Right? And so if you look at something and say, how could we improve that business model? The thing that I saw in that is like, okay, uh, what if we had another product alongside it that we sold? And right, so for ConvertKit, we make money off of, uh, your email subscription. And so I now have these two things that go hand in hand. And so, uh, the commerce side is really good because now We're able to, for every one of our customers, right, who's selling products, we're able to make a little cut of that. And they don't feel like they're paying us anything extra, 'cause it's just a bit of the credit card processing fee. And then it also reduces our churn, because anyone who's selling through ConvertKit Commerce, right, they're now, like ConvertKit is paying them rather than the other way around. And so we saw radically lower churn. So I'd argue that like Gumroad by itself or, you know, the Gumroad competitor that I wanted to start by itself, you're right, it's not that good of a business model. But when you pair it with ConvertKit and make the creator marketing platform, this is turning into a sales pitch, but you get the idea that I'm trying to make of it's the, like the combination of those two things that then makes it a fantastic business model. And so you have to look at, okay, this is working, I want to go after this in whatever space it is, and then take a step back and say, okay, what are the flaws in the business model? What other products do I pair it with? What other audience do I target it against? You know, any of those things that actually makes it a compelling business instead of like an average business.

And do you actually— are you still hands-on with ConvertKit or are you— I know you're the CEO, but do you have someone helping you run it or are you still the guy in charge?

No, I'm way too hands-on. The thing that people don't tell you in startups is that like the growth that you see is a whole bunch of stacked S-curves, you know, of like you figure out things that work and it takes off and then it levels out and you got to figure out the next, like the next stage of growth. And so I'm very hands-on. Like we've had a few executives leave over the last year, just a lot of change. And so I'm like completely in it recruiting new executives. Working with the team to design the next version of the product. And so yeah, I'm not the, the like, case study of what you should do for the perfect execution on—

You're not the 4-Hour Workweek.

I am not the 4-Hour Workweek.

Do you grind? I mean, I know you got like 18 kids.

No, 3.

I know, I, I just— because as long as I, as long as I remember you, I think your oldest are like, you had your oldest when you were young, and so I always would tease, like, what do you have, like 40 kids now? Um, so you've always had a couple. And, uh, but you, you, are you grinding right now or do you have, is it a 40-hour work week?

Uh, it's, uh, it's right now it's a lot more than a 40-hour work week, but it's interesting of trying to structure that around like kids, you know, of it's a lot of like waking up early, you know, or like this weekend, uh, we're headed out for our team retreat, like meeting everyone up in person. So I'm leaving Saturday morning. So like this morning when my kids woke up early, I like, we went outta the house and like spent 2 or 3 hours together, you know, before, 'cause I know I'm gonna work all day and, and then be gone all next week. So, uh, yeah, I don't work a crazy amount, but at least like 50 to 55 hours a week is probably what I aim for. So I don't know if that counts as grinding, but it's definitely not, not relaxing.

It's in the middle.

Yeah.

In the middle, I think, of grinding and not grinding. Um, what do you think, Sean?

Uh, I think it's great. You know, I think ConvertKit, I'm a user, so I, uh, and I, I complain to Nathan all the time. I'm like, I'm paying too much for ConvertKit. Uh, he's like, you do complain about that. And he was good.

And I just point out how much money you make.

Yeah.

He was like, um, but you know, email's like making you all this money. And I'm like, yeah, but I just feel like email's free and like this should be free. And I was like, I was like, can I just get this for free? And he's like, well, you know, like, let me know what you think is, you know, he was very, very patient with me. And it was sort of like, you know, cause I was like, I was like, I don't know. I told Ben, I was like, Ben, go find like what we should use instead of ConvertKit. And Ben kind of like searched for a couple products. And then he was like, well, you know, like they're all kind of worse, but there are some cheaper options. You want worse but cheaper? And I was like, oh fuck, I gotta choose worse but cheaper.

Wait, what's your, what's your, what's your bill every month?

I think I pay like $400 a month, maybe more. I don't even know. Uh, That's what you're—

and how much money do you make a month?

Well, see, it's not about that, right? Like, it's more— those are two separate things, I feel like, because, because the email directly doesn't make me that much money. Uh, it's like, got it, through the email I build the audience, and then through the audience, if I launch a product or a course or whatever, yeah, that makes a bunch of money, but that's separate work I gotta go do with a separate set of costs that go into that. And so, uh, we actually did— we were like, oh, should we switch? And then I kind of respected that Nathan wasn't just like, oh, whatever it takes to stay, you know, here you go, free. I was like, I was like, uh, okay. The fact that he didn't do that tells me like he knows the value of his thing. And, um, as much as I hate that I'm, you know, not getting this like free discount or whatever, I respect that. And so I stuck with it.

Nathan, are you Mormon?

No, I'm not.

Dude, you got that big Mormon energy, man.

How often do you hear that?

I mostly just hear from you, Sam.

You've never heard that from anyone else? I mean, you live in Idaho, you, you, you had kids at 21. Like, you're, you work hard, you're honest. It seems like you don't party. You got hardcore Mormon energy. What do you drink, Mountain Dew all the time?

Yeah, you gotta avoid the caffeine. Uh, no, Sean, what I was gonna say is, uh, that what, what's funny is So like Tim McGraw and Arnold Schwarzenegger both have ConvertKit newsletters and they pay full price and they don't ever give me shit about it. But then it's like the internet influencers where they're like, I should get this for free, you know? And I'm like, no. So it's fascinating 'cause we've had that a lot over the years, right? Of people saying like, hey, what discount can you give me? Do you know how famous I am? And kind of what's fun is getting into, I separate them from internet famous and actual famous. And the more we've gotten into the actual famous space, the more it's been easy to say like, no man, here's the value that we provide. And I think I was giving you a hard time because you had just done a thread like 2 weeks earlier about your paid newsletter that was making like 50 or 100 grand a month. I can't remember if I like linked you to the same thread, but that's what I wanted to do in the Twitter DMs.

So how big is Arnold's list?

Oh, we can't say those numbers, but he's still relatively Small.

Whose, whose list is bigger, his, his list or my list? My list is not very big, but his is big. I, I think it could be the same size as Arnold.

No way, that bitch.

No, you know what, a favorite little, uh, like business model synergy, that Weekly. So he was on, like, it's fun, like as he goes around and promotes his newsletter 'Cause he goes on like Jimmy Kimmel and is talking about his email newsletter, which is always fun.

Yeah, I go on IndieHackers, dude.

Yeah, yeah.

You and me both.

But when, like a business model thing that's funny is when one ConvertKit customer links to another to grow their list. So like when Tim Ferriss links to Arnold's list and said like, "Hey, you know, go sign up for Arnold's list." It added like 40,000 subscribers. And it's just like, our cut just goes up, you know, it's just one customer just referred to the other. But now anyway, it's a fun—

dude, you got to write a blog post like the best way to grow your list partnerships. Here's like a list of like interesting people to partner with.

So I have a VP of Growth opening. Do you want to come?

He works for Morning Brew, actually, as we discussed last episode.

Yeah, last episode, Morning Brew offered me I'm offering you a job too. There you go.

It's actually like a great power move is to just offer, uh, staff writer jobs or staff jobs to CEOs of other companies just to like flex on them. Hey, you know, I heard things are tough. Um, just so you know, we're always— there's always a home for you here. So listen to this.

Like the, like a month into starting The Hustle, um, I like, we had written blog posts, whatever. And we were, I was trying to hire writers and I saw this awesome article and I, and I don't remember where it was, but the author was Nellie Bowles. I think her name is B-O-W-L-E-S. And now she's like a really famous New York Times person. And I think like, even when I found her, she was actually at the New York Times, but like had just done a one-off piece for this small magazine. And I emailed her and I'm like, 'You are so good. Would you love to interview for a position at my company? Like, we're looking for bloggers.' And she was like, 'That's cute, but no thanks.' And, uh, I will never forget that. She told me, 'That's cute.' I've got— I've, I have held this grudge against her for years because she said it's cute. For years.

You could just imagine, like, the little pat on the head and the hair tussle that went with, like, 'That's cute,' you know?

Like, It's kept me up at night, like, so many— I was like, I'm good. How am I gonna get revenge? And I don't have a good way. But that was like 8 years ago.

Sam's like Arya Stark before bed every night. He says a list of the names of the people he needs to like get revenge on. It's like Nelly Bowles.

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

We have a buddy.

Get on that list.

Uh, not much, turns out.

Not much. Yeah, just don't call me cute.

Um, just be like, you know, comment on one of his Instagram, uh, you know, videos and just be like, um, awesome for a beginner. Just like move on.

Yeah, you've created— you're still at it, awesome.

We, uh, we have a buddy who is like the nicest guy in the world. Like, uh, you know, we'll give you the shirt off his back and, uh, nice to everybody, kind to strangers, kind to animals, kind to everybody. And you go into his house and on his fridge he's got this like clipart picture of a, of a brand name of another company's logo with a target and like kind of like a red target, like a sniper. Um, and he's got 3 of them on his fridge. And I remember going over and be like, what's this about? And he's like, oh yeah, he's kind of like, you know, those are my, those are my competitors. I just, every day when I come to the kitchen, I just want to think about, you know, just sort of killing them, basically. I was like, whoa, there's a, a dark side to the, uh, to Mr. Nice Guy here.

Do you have one of those, Nathan?

I would bet anything Nathan does not have anything like what we're talking about. He's got—

you are so wrong. I bet you that he, he will. I don't know if he'll admit it, I bet you he hates Mailchimp.

Oh, see, I have weird feelings about Mailchimp because I have so much respect for them and like, dude, you have respect to them.

Like the guy who killed John Lennon has respect for him. It's called a love knife. You love him so much you want to kill him. That's like what it is. It's like the guy who, like, killed the Pope. That's what you're going to do.

So you have to separate the businesses, like the business from the people. So I think that's true. Like one time, uh, I was at a conference and Ben Chestnut was speaking. And so I emailed him and was like, hey man, will you, I don't know even know why he said yes, but it's just like, uh, like big fan of what you've done. Like all in all fairness, we're a competitor trying to take as much business from you as you can, but would you be up for sitting down and talking? And he said like, yeah, I have a flight at this time. So I'm checking outta the hotel. So like meet me in the hotel lobby, you know, and we'll chat for 30 minutes.

Gave you the wrong hotel. Love it. Great power move, Ben Chestnut.

Set me on this wild goose chase.

Yeah, he's like, you missed your flight.

He never had a flight.

But no, he like, he sat down with me and told me all about how they launched their free plan and all this stuff. And then the, they were Inc. Magazine's Company of the Year. This is the Inc. Magazine, like Inc. 5000 event. And so the editor-in-chief from Inc. Magazine comes up while we're talking and he's like, hey Ben, great talk, all of that. And, uh, um, he— Ben goes, hey, do you know Nathan? He's trying to kill my company. And like, as he introduces me to the editor-in-chief of Inc. magazine. And anyway, so I have tons of—

what would it look like if you just like assaulted him right there?

Sam's got a reservation now. He's still thinking about like killing Nelly Bowles with a love knife or whatever.

For the record, Nelly, I'm not gonna I'm not going to do anything.

Is this the same person that you had the interview, the famous interview with at the New York Times or the New Yorker or whatever it was? And like, the interview did not go well.

It did not go well.

Was this with her or was it with someone else?

No, that was Erin Griffin. And she like came to interview me and I don't even know why, but she was fishing for stuff. And she's like, so like, what do you do on the weekends? Like, listen to Joe Rogan. That's what she said to me. I'm like, what? Like, no, like he doesn't even like— That's Monday to Friday. He doesn't even have a podcast. What are you talking about?

Yeah.

And she was like, well, like, because you're like a tech bro. And I'm like, first of all, most of New York Times revenue is digital. You're a tech company. So you tell me what your tech friends do. And so anyway, yeah, that didn't go well.

Did you storm out or how did that end?

Yeah, I was just like, I don't know what to say. I'm out of here. Yeah, I— it didn't— it didn't end well.

That's so good.

Uh, those interviews. I've only ever had one of those, um, and I don't remember who it was with, but where you're like, okay, I, I, I think we're done. Where you can just tell that they're like looking for some angle and all the questions are weird and you're just like, yeah.

But why would anyone hate you? Cuz you're kind of perfect.

It's good that you bring that up, Sam.

Like, no, I'm just kidding. Like, it's like, well, I got a lot of followers. Like, it's true.

So I'm not sure what the problem is. Yeah.

He's like, I like to I've got— there's a lot of bad things. Like, it's like the shower.

This clip of Biden, uh, the other day when he called the journalist was like on the way out. Did you see this clip?

A stupid son of a bitch.

Yeah, he's like, you know, what do you think about inflation? And Biden just like in that moment was just like lost it. He was just like, yeah, great, stupid son of a bitch. That's how I imagine Nathan like breaking character in like one of these interviews.

So, okay, Sam, I have a question on this then. Like, do you think that being so nice in all of this and like everyone likes me holds back my growth as an entrepreneur and, you know, internet celeb— wannabe internet celebrity?

No, because A, like, you're happy and it's working. So I think that's like the goal. And B, you actually have dropped it a couple of times. So you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. But basically, you didn't like what Sahil at Gumroad did. and you called them out and it was pretty, uh, it was pretty vicious. And I knew that. Do you know this, Sean?

No.

What did he call him out for?

Dude, he just like publicly kind of bitch slapped Sahil and like, for what? It was crazy. What was the point?

So, uh, so I was around, uh, Sam was talking about, I was around Gumroad from the very beginning. Uh, I think I was the first independent, or at one point they told me I was the first independent seller to cross $10,000 in sales on Gumroad. So like, from the very, very beginning. And anyway, so friends with tons of people there. And like, spent a lot of time at their office and all of that. And a huge friend of Sahil's. But at one point, he like got burnt out on the company. They had an offer to buy the company. He didn't take it. He laid everyone off instead. Like, it wound down and like ultimately failed. But the thing is, with a platform like that, they don't— like fail and disappear. They just like fail and coast and still like the software still works and all that. And then he came back and told this totally different story of like, here's how I, you know, like VC is evil and I'm running the company like in this totally new way. Here's how I run it in 5 hours a week with like 2 contractors. And that was frustrating, but I didn't say anything. But then when they went and raised new money and didn't give any— they got all the VCs to write off their equity. They got all of the team members to be like, "Hey, it's a failed company, like give up your equity and all that as part of it." And they went and raised a bunch of new money and didn't go back and give the original team members. Like that pissed me off because it was like, I know exactly who built the software, you know, like, 'cause I sat next to them as we were talking about it, you know, at their office in San Francisco. Like, I know they don't have any equity and I know that you didn't take care of them and now you're like telling this new story and everything. So yeah, I guess Sam, I do make some enemies on the internet.

And when you said that, I was like, well, I don't know Sahil. He seems like a nice enough guy from my limited interactions with him. But I was like, well, if Nathan's saying that, it's probably true.

Yeah. You know, you could separate the person from like the decision. I've made a bunch of bad decisions. Uh, but I don't think I'm a bad guy. And, oh, me too.

I've made a lot. Yeah.

And so, you know, I would separate the two, like, because he, you know, probably a nice guy. I don't know him super well either, but, um, but you're right. Like, you know, the, the way he kind of got Twitter famous in a way was to come out and tell this story of like the kind of like, it was like a fail story that worked. It was like, we were the hot thing. We raised money. We had all these expectations. People bet on us. It didn't work. Um, and so now we're in this new mode and I've seen the light. It was sort of like, you know, I got baptized and now I believe, um, that this business should be done this other way. Okay, fair enough. Um, and some people really liked that. They thought it was very transparent and all that good stuff. But it was weird that like, you know, a year or two later it's like, I'm raising new money at $100 million valuation. It's like, wait, you're back on the, that train? Like, weren't you kind of saying like, you know, all the things that were wrong with that model and like freedom. Yeah, championing the, the freedom that you were getting and the choose your own destiny and getting off the rat race. Like, maybe I read it wrong, maybe I was just skimming and I missed the point, but like, that did seem strange to me. And then like you're saying, Nathan, like, it's kind of weird to kind of to do that whole thing in public when a whole bunch of people bet on you, lost money on you, and, um, and are not participating in the, like, you know, future. And so that would leave a bad taste in people's mouth, I think. So, you know, I think fair points. Um, you know, and I'm sure, I'm sure he's got his side of the story about why it's not bad and why it's not that and all those things. So, you know, fair enough, but he's not here, so I'm just gonna say my side. And seems like that'll be the final word.

Uh, I mean, tons of credit to, to Sahil afterwards because he, like, he owned up to parts of it and we had a good conversation about it. And he actually, then when he launched his book, um, he actually included ConvertKit in the story in it. Which I was really surprised. So, uh, as far as people who don't hold a grudge, I think, uh, Sahil's one of them.

Not Sam. He's not Sam.

I think he's not Sam.

I hold grudges too. And in fact, I actually manufacture grudges. So like, there's this one guy I always call my rival. And, uh, I'm sure from his perspective, he's either like, who is this? Or he's like, wait, why are we rivals? We got along just fine. And in my head, this is like somebody I met in, uh, when I was in college. And, um, the guy's got like a super ultra rich dad, like billionaire dad. And, uh, I always used to joke, like, if I ever played basketball, uh, there usually wasn't like another Indian guy like playing basketball. So if there ever was, like, the running joke in my group of friends in college was, well, Sean, we know who you're guarding. Like, you have to guard him and you need to win your matchup here. Like, your honor is on the line, basically. Like, we need to know who's the better Indian basketball player on the court right now. It was just like this running joke. And so that got extended once we— I started a business with my college friends. They were like, well, seems like this guy is like, you know, your rival. And I played into it and we kind of made it a thing where the guy would be like, you know, hanging out with Richard Branson on his island. And we were like just trying to create a chip on our shoulder underdog story. It was like, you know, I'd be sleeping on my air mattress that I was planning to return to Target to, like, save money because our business wasn't doing any good. And if you saw this other guy like, you know, sipping piña coladas with Richard Branson, it just felt like, oh, those are the haves and we're the have-nots. And so I was like manufacturing these little feuds or like, um, I remember we did a, uh, we, when we bought Bebo back, we were going to relaunch it. And I gave the scoop to this girl who was like really nice journalist to me. Um, she was somebody I'd met. She seemed really nice. And I was like, hey, do you want the story? Like, I'll give you the story about like what we're going to do. And how it all played out. She's like, yeah, great. So we— she comes over, I do the interview, it's like literally, you know, we're playing patty cake, it's all good. Article comes out the next day and the headline is like just some vicious— it's like, remember Bebo? Ha, yeah, that, you know, that flop is back again. It was just like—

it was like, oh my God, disgusting. Sean Curry launches this as he told me the—

he told me the plan with his bad breath And I was like, what? You know, like, in my head, that's what it said. Like, it was like, as—

yeah, if you like spinach, go eat some of the stuff that came out of Sean's teeth. It's still probably there.

So I felt so backstabbed, you know, not— no love knife, just straight knife. And I remember just being like— so I never had the interview where I walked away. I had the opposite, where I felt completely— and I texted her. I was like, yo, what the fuck? Because actually the article was fine. Just the headline was completely brutal. It was just making fun of us and saying like, 'Get a load of this fucking schmuck.' And, um, and she's like, 'Sorry, like, the editor writes the headlines and he just thought that that's what would get more clicks. Like, I don't have any say in that.' And I was like, 'Oh, so fuck you and your profession,' uh, was like, you know, where I landed on that. Um, I think that was my only feud. Actually, my other one where I called, uh, what's her name, uh, the Jake Paul of journalism was probably the other one.

Taylor Lorenz. Yeah, like, I think that— I actually think it's great fuel. I mean, like, I joke to my wife, I'm like, I'm fueled on, like, carbonated water and, like, grudges. Like, I think grudges, I think, are, like, the greatest fuel ever. Like, isn't that, like, the whole thing about being, like, a chip on your shoulder? Like, protein, healthy fat, you want to, like—

grudges is, like, my macro, my macro diet.

Yeah, I'm just like, yeah, like, I gotta make sure I get my rage in that day, otherwise I just don't feel like myself. It's like Ari Gold, I just love firing people. Um, so anyway, I think it's good. I think rage is great.

That's the key takeaway from this episode, people.

Listen, you do need like a Lloyd.

Let me go manufacture some bridges.

Somebody yell out some rage every day.

I do like it. Well, and Sean, when, when we first met Ben Levy, or I met him the first time, you were like, well, you know, Sam's a little challenging.

I just had to give him the heads up. Don't take it personal if he kind of fires off. Uh, yeah, Ari Gold is actually a great, great analogy because there's no There's no, um, uh, what's it called? Like there's no hate behind the words, right? Like I'm yelling, but I love you. Like it has nothing to do with how much I like you or how good I think you are. I'm just yelling because I'm yelling. And, uh, so I tried to give him the heads up, but you were so zen. Uh, this was post, post-exit. Sam is a completely different guy. He's, uh, you know, you're not Ari Gold anymore.

It'll come back in due time. Um, Dude, Nathan, thanks for coming on. Happy, uh, happy you're able to make it. I, uh, I bailed on you last week. Sorry. And I'm happy that we made it work this time.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's always fun.

What you want to promote your, like what? Yeah.

Yeah. Um, okay. So if people want to follow me online, uh, I'm, I'm currently trying to grow my Twitter audience. So you should go follow me there. Uh, I'm trying to see if I can go from, I'm at 50,000.

What is it?

100,000. So, @NathanBerry, uh, and Barry's B-A-R-R-Y.

Usually, usually when you try to grow your audience, you should, uh, tell them the name of the, of the thing.

You know, I only want the most dedicated fans who like really— no, I'm just kidding. Thanks for the advice, uh, Sean.

I'll add that to your ladder. Shove that in your ladder.

You know what we didn't discuss, and I don't— we don't have time now, but One time, Sean, Nathan renamed the company ConvertKit to something else and he didn't realize it, but it meant like something like it was disrespectful to Hindus. Hindi. Hindi. What's the plural?

Yeah, you had it right the first time.

And it was disrespectful to them. And he made this huge name change and they changed the company back to ConvertKit after like 24 hours.

Wait, what was it? What was, what was the name? Okay. What? I, I'm, I speak Hindi, but what is it?

It means surface. But in Sikh culture, it means like selfless service and like the highest form of worship. So it's a whole thing.

Yeah, it's like, I'm doing a service for you. I don't find that offensive. That's not offensive.

Yeah, there were a lot of people who did find it offensive. And so if we talk about mistakes—

Turns out I'm not as easily offended as that. I got in trouble.

So Hindus didn't find it offensive. And actually, we had a lot of people who were like, that's like thought that it was awesome or something like that. Um, but, uh, everyone who was from the Sikh culture, they were like, sorry, it had a, uh, much different meaning, uh, there. So anyway, that was a $500,000 mistake, but, uh, I owned up to it. So that's a whole thing for another day.

By the way, that the, the, the ConvertKit, good name. The other thing, like Seven or whatever you said, Not a good name. Like, so I think—

Hindu Worship?

No, like—

That doesn't seem like the right name for an email.

Yeah. ConvertKit's a great name. That's such a good name.

Well, so maybe it was a $500,000 mistake that will turn out to be a multimillion-dollar win.

Do you still have the domain? 'Cause we should just launch, like, a prayer service, or, like, you know, like a philanthropy thing for India under that name. I have some Indian startups that might want that name.

I do have the domain. There's actually— 2 startups, one that went through Y Combinator and one other, uh, that, uh, have asked for it at one point, but I paid $340,000 for the domain. So I'm kind of hanging on to it.

It's a 4-letter domain.

4 letters.

I don't even know how to spell that word. How do you spell that word?

S-E-V-A, right?

Yeah.

But, um, it sounds like a bottled water, dude.

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

My, uh, I got in trouble this morning because I wrote, sorry, in the Milk Road edition that went out this morning, uh, one of the things we covered was like, oh, the Fed, the Fed had this meeting about interest rates and how that's affecting like the markets. And, uh, and I was like, I basically, I put a picture up of the committee that meets the Fed Open Market Committee and it's basically like a bunch of old white people. And I was like, you know, and today, you know, I had a bunch of different openers. That I scrapped. One was like, here's a picture from a nursing home I visited recently. Oh wait, no, that's not right. That's the Fed Open Market Committee. And I scrapped that and I said something else. And then I was like, you know, at today's elderly white people committee. And I like, I had a strikethrough and then I was like, no, at the Fed Open Market Committee.

It's like a rural McDonald's at like 7:00 AM.

Uh, and people got mad at you. It's like a See's Candy. And, um, yeah, people were like, you know, the skin color has nothing to do with And I was like, yeah, of course it's a joke and it has everything to do with my joke. And like, just the picture's funny. And like, wait, I thought we could make fun of the Fed with no repercussions like that. There's like certain things that are really safe to punch at. And the Fed seems like one of the safest, you know, the Fed, you know, the Senate, like who's defending their honor? I don't understand.

Who are you?

Is your mom on this? Is your grandma on this panel?

To some people got mad at me.

I was like, you, you should go ahead and unsubscribe because, uh, my filter is a lot looser than that. Yeah.

So, um, dude, Nathan, thank you. This is awesome.

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

Come on, let's go.

Sounds good.

Challenge accepted. Grudge initiated. All right. See you. See you guys.