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- [00:00]
A
We're selling custom Minecraft maps. It's how I made my first $100,000.
- [00:03]
B
You sold Minecraft, you made $100,000. And at one point you made much more than that. Right.
- [00:07]
A
The first, like, net worth milestone I had ever had was a million dollars. I thought, like, that was the whole goal was to, like, be a millionaire. I grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Ohio. My mom made 31, $32,000 a year. I become a millionaire within. Within a couple weeks, literally weeks of her passing, she passed away from stage three lung cancer. I remember getting a call from my cousin and I was on a ski trip for bcg.
- [00:29]
B
Do you think there's a way to be successful without the community?
- [00:34]
A
All the stuff that people told me was going to make me happy. Totally. No, wrong. Every single thing. I did not feel happy from the money at all. And I think community and doing something that you feel is meaningful, I think that is successful.
- [00:59]
B
Today's guest is Nathan May. He grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Ohio and never even left the state until he was 18. Now his company did $400,000 in a single month, and he rents out a huge office space with eight other business entrepreneurs in New York City. This is Nathan May on Money Wise. Welcome back to another episode of Money Wise. I have a guest here, Nathan May. Thanks so much for joining us today. Nathan, how you doing?
- [01:23]
A
I'm doing fantastic, dude. Happy Friday. I'm feeling great.
- [01:26]
B
Fantastic. Okay, what about your life today is fantastic. Tell me about what. What brings you to the episode this morning and why today is fantastic.
- [01:33]
A
Not that many calls and like, stuff like this where I just get to, like, the whole day is just. I get to be playful. That's like, number one thing.
- [01:41]
B
I love that. I love building my life around as many playful moments as possible to the listeners. I know Nathan outside of this podcast as well. And so it's kind of a fun, unique moment for us to, you know, be on a podcast like this, but also just reconnect. It's been a while. I'll see him in New York in a few weeks. And it's just good to be with friends on podcasts.
- [01:58]
A
It's cool, dude. I've never done this, like, with a. With a friend like this before, so I'm, like, excited to jam. We knew each other a little bit, but not like, super, super well. And so, like, in my head, like, I have a. I mean, It's. It's. It's 1pm So I don't have Like a whiskey sour and espresso martini. But theoretically I do. And I want to. I want to jam with you today. I'm. I'm pumped.
- [02:16]
B
That's so cool, man. Yeah, I think a great place to start. Just tell us a little bit about who you are, how you grew up, the way that you've built your life around business building, growing other people's businesses with your agency, but also making money for yourself and kind of the. The why behind Nathan? Who are you?
- [02:32]
A
So my main business right now is an agency. We do a couple million dollars a year. Our biggest month was. Was January. We did about $400,000 in, in January. We won't do that every month, but we're on our way. Business is too old. Two years old. My life did not start that way. I grew up in Ohio. I grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Ohio. My mom made, I noticed something like 30, 31, $32,000 a year. And so I feel like a lot of the, like, last like 10 years of my life has been like, sort of everything has changed. Particularly like the last, like two years. And I'm kind of figuring out, like, how to spend and like, I have friends I never thought I would have and people I get to spend time with I never thought I would get to. And I'm just kind of adjusting and figuring shit out, but. But it's all good.
- [03:14]
B
I love that. You mentioned before our call, we were kind of shooting the breeze together a little bit and you mentioned you, you work in New York, you live in New York. Have you been there your entire career or when did you leave Ohio to the big city?
- [03:25]
A
I left way later than I should have. So is this. I don't know if you knew this. So I, I didn't leave Ohio. I didn't step foot out of Ohio until I was 18 years old. I got on a Greyhound bus.
- [03:33]
B
But you literally never left the state.
- [03:36]
A
We didn't have money for vacations. We didn't have money for. For any of that, dude. My mom was like, she did the best that she could, but she was like, she was a hoarder. So. So we, we were not making a ton of money, but like, every additional, like, dollar that was made was like, she buy crazy stuff, dude. Like our whole basement, I don't know, she thought like, the world was going to end or something, but our whole basement had like Campbell chicken noodle soup cans and like Heinz. Like we had 20 Heinz ketchup because she thought the world was going to like, get nuked or something. She had like. Do you remember Shake Weight at all?
- [04:02]
B
I sure do. Yeah.
- [04:03]
A
Yeah. She had, like, four. She had four shake weights, which is, like, you know, serious.
- [04:08]
B
Did you use them or just they're collecting dust?
- [04:10]
A
No, they're full because you have two hands. Like, how do you do more than four shape.
- [04:15]
B
One runs out of batteries, and you just have another one available.
- [04:19]
A
I guess you just.
- [04:20]
B
I don't know if I've ever met anyone who has a single Shake Weight, but having four, that's unique.
- [04:25]
A
Yeah, dude. So there was no, like, you know, we weren't going anywhere, man. And so I wanted to get out of there. I want. I wanted to leave Ohio. I wanted to, like, see the world. And so I ended up going to college in Philadelphia at this. This, like, fancy, fancy school, which is different, and threw me this whole other world. I moved to New York right after because everybody did. Everybody from my college. You got to become, like, an investment banker, private equity person, hedge fund this and that. And so I've been in New York on and off since 20. 2018. 2020.
- [04:51]
B
That's very cool. So five, six years now. So you're 25 years old?
- [04:55]
A
I'm 28. Yeah, 28.
- [04:59]
B
I don't know why I said 25. You said something about 25 before the call, and I got those things confused. So tell me about it. I know it's like I'm aging so fast. I just bought some. Some face cream from a buddy of mine who. Who launched a new product, and I'm like, oh, I guess I'm in my. My. My stage of life where, like, I have to think about the wrinkles on my forehead and stuff. That's fun, that's new, and. Never thought I'd say that on air, but here we are. Tell me about your. Your BCG experience and. And kind of like the business reason for why you joined bcg. The. The personal reasons. And then what actually kind of happened. And. And your. Your serendipity, as it were, after. And what. What brings you to today?
- [05:35]
A
Yeah, so I originally wanted to be an actor. So when I got on that Greyhound bus and, like, I. I did it as a trip to New York to, like, audition for, like, nyu Tisch and all these schools, and I did well at that stuff. But my. My mom.
- [05:46]
B
Playwright. Actor. Or, like a movie actor or both.
- [05:50]
A
Stage. Stage. Yeah. I think it's good. You want to be far away from my face. I'm more of a projector. More. More of a yapper.
- [05:57]
B
I'm actually. I'm not surprised about that. Like, I'm like, I, I could see that. I could see. NATHAN MAY ACTOR that makes sense.
- [06:02]
A
Yeah, I love it. But I, I had a business when I was in high school. We were selling custom Minecraft maps. That's how I made my first $100,000 to, we sold them to famous YouTubers and that.
- [06:11]
B
Walk me through that before we actually get to BCG. Because you sold Minecraft, you made $100,000. And at one point you made much more than that. Right. Your first hundred grand came from Minecraft maps and then more. I mean, am I right to say even a million dollars came from that eventually?
- [06:26]
A
Yeah, I would say. I feel like the, I think the million was more luck. But yeah, so, so on the Minecraft stuff. So I, I was a video game addict, which is actually very common among founders. I feel like a lot of people ended up addicted to games or something. And you just kind of, and when
- [06:39]
B
you say addiction, do you mean like literal, like you couldn't stop playing or like you just played video games a lot?
- [06:44]
A
Dude, I had a 2.1 GPA in. I would get home from middle school at like 2:45. I would get onto World of Warcraft or Runescape and I would not stop playing until 2am I referred to sleep, I forget to eat. And a lot of that was because our housing situation was just really messed up. Like it was a horror. Like there was like one path of like in all this shit from like my bedroom to my gaming chair. And I, so I, I, I think about this a lot now. Like, I think I used that in a lot of ways as like a, a crutch, but ended up turning out really good because I got addicted to this thing called Minecraft. And Minecraft people don't know. If you don't know, it's like Legos. You know Minecraft at all?
- [07:18]
B
Yeah, y. Like it's like digital Legos more or less, but like open world Minecraft addiction to building, you know, six, seven figure business from Minecraft. Like walk me through that journey and, and how you actually started selling them at 15. That's unique.
- [07:30]
A
Yeah. So the addiction luckily became really useful because my, my final addiction was like building these like maps and I got obsessed with YouTubers who are building and I got really good. I built dragons and trees and castles, like all kinds of cool shit. And I, I got together with these two other guys and we formed this company basically where we would sell custom Minecraft maps to other people. And at first it was like, what is you Know, some sweaty teenager who wants to pay like a hundred dollars a Minecraft spawn. What ended up being were these famous YouTubers. So here's how we got lucky. It's quite interesting. At the time, all these YouTubers were making most of their money from YouTube AdSense, and people were complaining that YouTube was taking too much money. They went into their own monetization. So they all started opening up their own Minecraft servers, which was great for them because they get to play with their fans. And now their fans are like, oh, well, I could be, you know, in a video with CaptainSparklez or Ali a like, whoa. And so you get this rush of tech. Tens of thousands of people come in and they sell in game benefits. And those benefits, that's 100% margin, you don't have to give anything to YouTube for that. So it was a really great business model. And so it created all this demand for you to have amazing maps and castles, stuff that would make people go, wow. And like, so you could compete and be like the best Minecraft server of all time. The other thing that got very lucky was the Hunger Games movies had come out, and there's this game mode in Minecraft called Survival Games that was basically like you play like a Hunger Games thing. And so now people wanted like 20 maps, 30 maps, different hunger Games maps. And so we just quickly started working with a lot of the biggest YouTubers. We'd sell projects for 10, $15,000, you know, at the. At the peak. And it totally changed my life.
- [08:58]
B
Wow. So how did that lead to the. Leaving Ohio at 18 and ultimately back to the. The question originally of. Of bcg?
- [09:05]
A
Yeah, So I made a good amount of money from that.
- [09:07]
B
How much total did you leave from that?
- [09:09]
A
I probably personally netted like a hundred grand. And then I invested it in stocks when I was in high school and then in college, and the only ST knew or heard of which was Apple. So there you go. It is a longer story, but, like, it worked out well. And I was very sad actually. Actually when we could talk about that in terms of like, accumulating money but not feeling like I had like a ton of skills. But for the. The BCG thing went college. I did the business school because I thought I did this business thing. Maybe I should do that. I was very lucky to get in this. This Wharton School of Business, and I didn't really know much about it at the time, but I got there and it was one of the most wild places that I'd ever been to. I don't think I'D ever spent more than, like, I remember my budget and, like, middle school and we go to Kohl's, and my budget for, like, clothes would be, like, $150 for, like, the year. And I remember, like, first I show up, I meet one of my best friends, this guy James Allen. He's, like, getting rid of old clothes, and he gives me this, like, Tommy Hilfiger shirt. And the shirt's like, 80 bucks. I look it up and I'm like, holy shit. Like, I've never even, like, I've ever, like, an 80 shirt. Like, I would wear that shirt. I felt like I was a millionaire dude in that shirt. I felt like. I felt like a baller. But so that school was wild. I had, like, Spanish class with Nick Biden. Like, the. The Trumps were there when there's all these crazy. I'd never seen anything like that. And all those people valued was Wall street consulting. You had to do those things if you wanted to be, like, high status. So I was like, okay, I want to, like, be cool. I want to do the right thing. And so it pushed me into the consulting stuff. I loved it. There's lots of things I didn't like about it, but that. That job changed my life.
- [10:34]
B
What about your life changed? Why did. Why did it change your life?
- [10:36]
A
I remember I got the internship for that company in, like, 2018 out in LA. And did you know a lot about these, like, consulting firms at all? Yeah, yeah.
- [10:45]
B
Like deloitte and. Yeah, McKenzie and all and. Yeah, yeah.
- [10:48]
A
The experience of an intern is crazy. They. With a wine and dine. I remember on my. My project was out in San Francisco, and they took us to the French Laundry for dinner one time, which is, like, one of the most prolific restaurants up in, like, Napa. Sonoma valley. It's like $800 a person. And dude, like, my. Like, just to give you a sense, like, I still felt very poor at the time, and, like, I was going to, like, info sessions for, like, Goldman Sachs, and I didn't even want to work in investment banking because they would serve, like, free chip, like, like that to, like, the crazy. I was like, what is this? This is wild.
- [11:21]
B
Yeah.
- [11:21]
A
And when I got that job, I felt like. I remember back then, like, I think you. You would make, like, a hundred thousand dollars your first year. And in my head, that, for me was like, I can never go below that. Like, no matter what happens to me, I'm gonna be okay. Like, I'm not gonna have to go back to Ohio. Go back to, like, the way that I grew up and that for me was like, almost like a mental, like, things are gonna be okay moment for me. I. I still have. I don't have an up yet, but I have my first. I actually have. So in the back here, there's like, I have menus framed from, like, that internship because it was like, Specialized saved it. I was like, I'm. Remember this rest of my life, and I have the first paycheck I ever got from bcg. I'm going to frame that up and put it somewhere too.
- [11:58]
B
Yeah, that's cool. So now fast forward to what you're doing now. You own an agency of your own, and you're managing millions, probably eight figures at least, of ad spend for large media companies. And so tell me kind of more about what you do and the way that you think about money when some of the people building audiences that you're, you know, really owning that operations for spend, you know, eight figures for their own growth. Walk me through your thinking on that.
- [12:24]
A
So we're the largest agency for, like, newsletter. Gross. We work with a lot of, like, cool personal brands. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jay Shetty and Tyler Dank, all kinds of cool folks like that. And like, big AI media companies, all kinds of folks like that. That changed. So a couple things are interesting about that. I was a bcg. I was unhappy with the work. I looked at the partners. They were, you know, if you become a partner at BCG, you'll be 32 years old. You'll make about a million dollars that year, and the most Senior partners make 3 to 5 million dollars. And I looked at their life and, like, the. The lack of time they got to spend with their kids, with their friends, like, how much their 30s were dedicated to flying around the country to clients and just grinding. And I. I looked at that and I go, I. I don't want that. And I remember. I remember, like, okay, I thought back, I did this exercise, like, when was I happiest? When was the happiest time in my life? It was not like I became a millionaire when I was 22. I felt all these highs in my life. It was not any of that stuff. It was when I was, like, broke on Minecraft, like, with these guys we were doing these builds with, not sleeping, not eating, because I just felt like I was in it. I felt like we could take on the fucking world, dude. Like, it just felt like we were unstoppable. And I thought, oh, what was that? Like? It was. It was like an agency, basically. I was like, well, what if I did a business kind of like that again? And the, the first thing I remember. So this came out of my job after bcg. I was helping build a big mobile app portfolio. We were buying apps from indie entrepreneurs and these guys had scaled to 1 to 5 million dollars a year. I thought the way you build a business was you go to a 16Z, you go to Secor, you raise a bunch of money. That's how you build a business. You had people dropping outta, you know, Baruch, making millions of dollars a year. That wasn't even on the, on the radar for me. I was like, this is crazy. You can just like go out and do things. And two of those guys were these guys, Dave And Joel, these two brothers. They had a 12 million doll mobile app portfolio. They did not know how to code and they were making $12 million. This is before AI all this year they made $12 million with an app. They had this like Indian developer team that did everything. They pay that Indian developer team maybe $400,000 a year on $12 million of revenue. Right? That's your whole cost infrastructure. It was crazy. They had a newsletter that did a million dollars a year. They had like an E conversation with all this stuff. So I didn't know how to code, but I was like, oh, dude, they have this, this newsletter that's pretty interesting. I could write, I could do a newsletter. And so I start this little newsletter and I just copied this company called the Milk Road. Because I was into crypto at the time. Like they're the biggest crypto newsletter. And Dave and Joel knew about Sean Pury and the Milk Road. They go, that's a good newsletter. You should look at that. I was like, oh, I'm going to do that. And we scaled up a little bit and ended up making a couple grand a month. Nothing big. We ended up selling it to the Milk Road and I ended up rolling into like, I hated the mobile app stuff. Like, I hate it. I'm not good at like talking to engineers and stuff, but I love marketing. Marketing would operate in the little Facebook ad account. Felt like video games. It just felt like Call of Duty and like World Warcraft all over again. And so long story short, I ended up doing growth for newsletters because I really enjoyed the growth part of the app stuff and I had had the newsletter. We got very lucky that some big newsletter companies were like up and coming. Like right when I got started. That was like another like life changing thing for me.
- [15:23]
B
That's so cool. What's your Relationship with money, like right now, then what's your actual checking account look like on a given, you know, on a given day? Your personal spending and how would you compare it now versus the, the story you told in Ohio where you know, there was, you know, shaker weights and stuff at laying over the house. Like, what does that, you know, juxtaposition look like from then to now?
- [15:43]
A
So in terms of like net worth and stuff, I have low single digit millions. Like I'll, if I could end this year at like, you know, 4 million to $5 million of net worth, I would be pretty happy with that. I think that's fairly.
- [15:54]
B
And is that mostly liquid cash or is it, you know, built up in illiquid assets and investments?
- [16:00]
A
I keep no cash and I don't have a ton of expenses. So my mom, this is, my mom was like a hoarder. I have noticed, like, I actually really don't like buying things. And I think deep like that somebody got programming where like ownership is like bad. If I'm going to, if I own stuff, I'm going to become a hoarder. So I don't really spend like a tremendous amount of money. I keep about $15,000 in my checking account in my Wells Fargo.
- [16:22]
C
Real quick, pause. Because this is important. If you're running a company, you already understand leverage. You apply it everywhere in your business. Most founders, they treat health like it's a rounding air, inconsistent training, reactive eating, good weeks, bad weeks, start, stop, repeat. That was me. I didn't need motivation because I had plenty of that. What I needed was structure. I needed systems, better energy, lower body fat, more muscle. Something that actually stuck and not some 12 week sprint that I would abandon when things got busy. And so I hired a coach and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Training built around my schedule, nutrition that survives travel, clear targets, clear metrics, daily accountability, no guesswork. And so today's sponsor is brought to you by Daily Body Coach. They are premium online coaching for entrepreneurs and executives who want their body keeping up with their business. It's run by an exited software founder who's already a Hampton member. And yes, a bunch of Hampton members already use it. Everything's personalized. They're coaches, they're available seven days a week. And the habits they help you build survive board meetings, late nights and back to back travel weeks. This isn't about looking good on the beach. It's about being strong and sharp in your 40s, 50s and 60s. So if you're serious about it, go to dailybodycoach.com Hampton dailybodycoach.com Hampton I keep
- [17:35]
A
about $75,000 in my business bank account. Everything else goes back into the business or into my own personal brokerage. I'm a huge saver. In fact, my little media mafia group of friends, we talk about this a lot because not only do I try to save every dollar I make, I take leverage on that. So, so I've got maybe a million dollars in leverage on my stock portfolio because it juices your returns a little bit. And over actually 10, 20 years that's worth millions of dollars. That's I'm trying to get to 10 million liquid. And I think that's like more than enough.
- [18:06]
B
And is that 10 million? The, the, your. I guess we'll call it a threshold number. Your number where you're at 10 million, you don't need any more, that's going to make you happy and you can, you know, effectively not grow any more from there and be good for the rest of your Life. Is it 10 million?
- [18:20]
A
I think so. So I put this into ChatGPT and I was having it, I was like, what? Let me figure out what I could spend, right? What's the most I think I could spend if I've got everything I want and da da da and all this. And it came up with like, you know, if I had like a personal trainer, if I ate out at restaurants like this many times a week, I don't want like, you know, a ton of fancy stuff, just like. But all that together would be something like 15 or $16,000 a month. So roughly $180,000 a year in spent. When you gross that up for taxes, I need something like 9.6 or $9.7 million liquid. And then what I would point is I would sell about 2% of my stock each year and that would have long term capital gains taxes, right? So only, only 20%. And I would have dividends for, for the other like 1% or 1% dividend yield which also has dividends are taxed at a much lower rate that would get me to roughly 180k of spend. And I think that is a point at which I would feel like truly like safe. Like you know, I don't have to like worry, worry about anything.
- [19:17]
B
And you mentioned the media mafia a couple times and you told me ahead of the episode a little bit about that. Tell the listeners kind of what this group, this community is that you have outside of your business and then what you're building with that group and tell me a Little bit more also about Hampton. It sounds like you're really involved with a couple different communities, and I'd love to know a little bit more about what those mean to you personally, how they're helping in the way that you grow your business, in the way that you just conduct your life. Just walk us through Media Mafia and all those things.
- [19:48]
A
Media Mafia is like, a community of, like, my close friends. There's like seven or eight of us. We all, you know, have companies that do millions of dollars a year. We generally use, like, content like. Like media to help get clients. I think, like, Sam is. I can't remember Sam or Austin or somebody is the one who, like, started calling, like, Media Mafia. It was, like, cool. How this came about was the group is awesome, by the way. We. We have an office together. Like, we. We share like. Like what's working each other's businesses. Like, we have, like, deep conversations, like when. When fucked up shit happens. Like, it goes in the text chat and we're like, kind of triage and like, help people. Like, it's a really close group of, like, my. My good friends. One of the reasons I. I really wanted this. So when I started my company, I did it out of. I flew back to Ohio. It cut all my expenses. I lived in, like, a furnitureless apartment. I just reduced risk. But I felt alone during that. And I have noticed when looking back at my life, every single major accomplishment I've had, I actually think I'm pretty dominant. I don't think I'm like, that unique or smart. But I think what has been very helpful to me is there's always been a person who I'm around in, like, a very dark moment that slingshots me into something that ends up being really good. So, like, when I was in seventh grade, I told you I had, like, a. Whatever, some really shitty GPA. I weighed 200 pounds. I was, like, significantly overweight. I lost 70 pounds in one year. It's because my buddy Morgan Lye, we'd run up and down our respective basement stairs like, this has happened again and again and again for every major part of my life. I recognize to get to the next level of business, I need that again. I need people. I need to be around people. And I got introduced to my buddy Matt Epstein over the phone while I was in Ohio. I decided I need to fly back to New York. I flew back on January 1st. Like, I need to make friends in real life. Matt and I started co. Working together out of a gym in New York City called Chelsea Pierce. Fitness. Eventually, like five or six of us, we grabbed this kid, Seamus Madonn, who's now making like, you know, almost 200k a month. 200k plus a month. He's 20 years old. We found him like three days after he dropped out of college. Like he got into our group and we just built our companies together in this gym. That's how it all came together.
- [21:39]
B
That's so cool. It sounds like you're more or less at this precipice in your own company building where you're building something really unique and really successful, but you haven't quite crossed to the other side yet. What's that like? Is that exciting? Terrifying? A little bit of both. I mean, walk me through how that feels being kind of right at the. At the cusp of. Of that threshold number you mentioned earlier. And you're building your business to that.
- [22:04]
A
I think it depends on the day, dude. Like, I like of days where like I wake up and the, the. The morning goes super raw and I'm like, I'm the man. I can do anything. And then like, whatever. I have like a bad car, something at one and I'm like, I suck. Like this, this isn't gonna work. Da da da da. And, and what's nice is like with this group, like, dude, we all have that. Like everybody's riding the same wave and like you're fucking. You're doing the sine wave at different times, other people, but you get to see the highs and lows everybody else. And, and it makes it feel like it's not so bad. It normalizes that stuff. And so I would say, like, largely in the moment, if you caught me on my most stressful days, I feel like I know the business is going to be successful. I worry about, like, how much of me that requires. I don't go on a lot of dates right now. I don't go to the gym as much as I should. And I worry about, like, all my eggs. Like, all my time is spent on this thing. I worry about not maximizing for something like these other. Or is it my life? I'd be 30 in two years, man. Like, I want to, like, I want to be dating. And so that is on my mind and I need to get to a place where I'm allocating time to that. At the macro level, I'm extremely happy. I get to like, spend time around, like, people I never even thought I would meet. I get to like, hang out with these guys. And like, that is incredibly motivating. Like, I'll Give you an example, it's like good and bad. They came up with this idea in the text chat where once a month everybody puts at the very end of the month. So in 13 days from now, their revenue and their profit, every, every single one of us in the medium off it in the text chat. And then there's a leaderboard of revenue and profit. When they first started doing that, I was like, dude, this is kind of toxic. I don't think that's like really healthy. But it is so motivating and it's so transparent. And I've just become such a big fan of like community. Extreme transparency on like numbers. I feel safe with this group.
- [23:46]
B
That's cool, a little off the cuff, but given you work with audiences in media. I was talking to another founder earlier today and I think with this shift of AI right now and technology, there's just going to be so much more community driven IRL events that really do drive the conversation and to your point, even make the successful more successful or even the non successful given some of these like catapulting opportunities. Like, hey, shake the right person's hand, be in the right place at the right time and your, your life will get 10 times better. How do you think when you look at some of the businesses you work with and some of the rooms that you're sitting in in the media mafia, but in also just your agency, how are people thinking about audience in real life? Audience building, online newsletters, social media, you know, business growth in general. But how does community and actual IRL community really drive some of this success and outcome right now?
- [24:42]
A
I went to this newsletter conference thing. You and I were both there. You'll remember this. And then there's a woman who had the IRL is. Is is greater than URL hat on.
- [24:51]
B
I remember that.
- [24:52]
A
Fuck yeah, I like that. That's, that's, that's my mantra this year, man. I'll give you some examples. So I'm trying to rapidly take the people that I'm like meeting online and bring them in person. And the office that we all have together is super conducive to that. So for instance, I don't know if you know Austin Reefer now, but the Morning Brew guy, he came in a couple weeks ago. We have cool people like that because there's seven of us. Like if one person invites two people to the office a month, that's 14 extremely interesting people every single month that you get to meet in real life. That is like the pinnacle, like extremely high leverage. And so like For Austin coming in, he didn't come in through me. He came in through. Through Joshua, through Josh Suggs. And he gets there and he has the same reaction that many people do, which is like, dude, this is crazy. Like, all of you guys are working here with your teams. This is wild. Maybe individually, each of you are mildly interesting, but, like, together. This is like a bear on a bicycle. This is like pretty. This is pretty unique. And so then he was like, we should come to a Shabbat dinner. Like, you know, us and Sam and like a bunch of. And show and tell.
- [25:49]
B
But that's you is the show and tell.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like meet. Meet these children. Yeah, basically. That kind of stuff happens so much. And, like, I'm just trying to get as much of that as I possibly can because I love, like, people who get to meet. I moved here. I live in Union Square right now. I live across Union Square from my best friend. This guy will want. I did that purposely because I want to be able to walk to my best friend when I'm stressed out on Tuesday at 8pm and I don't want to deal with work for a second. I can text him and be like, hey, dude, you. You want to play Mario Kart? Yeah. Hell yeah, dude. Let's play Mario Kart. I walk over there, dude, we play Mario Kart. I feel great. I go to sleep, I wake up, you know, I. I take on this stressful day again. Two nights ago, I said at Hampton dinner thing. And so this is. I mentioned the Minecraft thing. You do. This is crazy. Talk about, like IRL chat that I'm sitting next to a guy, we start talking and his business is a Minecraft business, and we start going, going, going. And it turns out that we were doing Minecraft build team stuff at the exact same time. He was on a competing team, dude, and he just joined Hampton like two weeks ago. And I'm like, we're having such a deep cut conversation, like individual people that we both knew when we were 15 years old, like building random Minecraft shit like on the Internet. It's crazy, dude. And that is like such a. A drug, the meeting of people and feeling like you're part of, like, something. I'm like, I want like a big hit of that, like every day. I'm really enjoying that part.
- [27:11]
B
Tell me more about Hampton. You mentioned it a couple of times. What's Hampton and what does it do for you and your own life?
- [27:16]
A
Hampton's poly, dude. I feel first Hampton, I think pretty early on, I Think when it launched like 2022 or something like that. Hampton, boom. You got a little hat here, actually.
- [27:26]
B
Nice.
- [27:26]
A
Hampton is a community for founders. And it's, it's in, I mean, you'll know, right? But it's in like a bunch of like in person cities. So it's in New York, it's in like Austin, it's in, you know, Miami, a bunch of different places. So I knew about it for a long time. I actually had a community already before I joined, which is our group. We all joined together. And I think part of that is we realize like, wow, look at. In just the matter of months, like we have not known each other for a super long time. Like this group and I like, just by like bonding together and like hanging out and like talking about like shit that doesn't go well or our parents or what motivates people to like eat glass and like start a company. Like, that is so useful for tactics, right? But one, like learning things I can bring into my business. Number two is mindset. Like, I realize it's normal for things to be really hard. That helps me keep going. And like realizing like most people who are founders are like usually motivated by some like fucked up thing that happened to them when they were like 10 or 15 years old. Like, that is deeply motivating in a way. Like, oh, it's okay. Like, this is normal. That has helped us tremendously. And I just see Hampton is like an extension of what we built in the media mafia. But like, I don't know how many people are in New York, like 400 or something. So there's like seven of us. I'm like, okay, I can like 40x, you know this like feeling I'm getting from like my little group, like, sign me up, you know, like, I'll do that.
- [28:38]
B
Yeah, that's cool. Where are your, I guess your folks at now? You mentioned your mom growing up. Is she still in the picture or do you guys still stay in touch?
- [28:45]
A
We don't. She passed away when I was 22, February 9th of 2020.
- [28:49]
B
I'm sorry.
- [28:50]
A
It's all right. Actually, I thought about this a lot. I think one of the reasons why I'm. Why I'm drawn to community is because of my relationship with my parents. I'm not very close with my parents. I wasn't close to my mom. I mean, terrible when she pat. I mean, it's your mom. At the end of the day. I remember I was working at BCG and I wasn't like super happy. The first, like Net worth milestone I had ever had was a million dollars. I thought like that was the whole goal was to like be a millionaire. I had become a millionaire within. Within a couple weeks, literally weeks of her passing. I remember she passed away from stage three lung cancer. And I remember getting a call from my cousin and I was on a ski trip for, for bcg and like I couldn't get on a plane. I couldn't tell anybody because it's like we were driving home that morning so there. I didn't want to like tell the team that I was with. I just had to, I learned at 6am and like cry in the bathroom for hour. And then I just had to like sit with it. And I remember thinking all the stuff that people told me was going to make me happy. Totally. No, wrong. Every single thing. The. I did not feel like happy from the money at all. In fact, because I didn't have a skill, I didn't have a business. I felt like I had the Minecraft thing when I was young. I got lucky by putting it into stock. I had no, I couldn't recreate it. I felt that was the best thing I'll ever do in my entire life. I didn't feel particularly close to my like BCG people and now my mom had passed. So I felt like it's just me. Like that's it. I think that that has caused me dramatically like recalibrate what is important to me. I quit my job. I went all in on like startup. I was like, if I, you know, man, I came from this Ohio thing, like, if I'm gonna do it, like, and like make it like I need to do it, like I need to get after it. Like I need to take risk and finding people. I crave friendship. I get, I get lonely really easy. I'm like a little golden retriever. And I think a lot of that is, is because like the people who have like helped me in my life, it's always come from like a friend. That has always been like how my life has like progressed, like finding somebody who's like been meaningful to me. And amazing things have happened after that.
- [30:38]
B
Do you think there's a way to be successful without the community that it sounds like you've built around your own life?
- [30:44]
A
It depends what you think successful is, dude. Like, I think. I know. I'm sure there are many people who are worth. I know some of them. There are people who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars who are deeply unhappy. I remember when I was in college, one of my good friends her father was the right hand person to one of the biggest investment banks in the country. You know, hotshot, 40, $50 million, nice house, they had horses, all this stuff. Great, awesome. They were divorced. He did not have a close relationship with his daughter. He was working 60, 70 hours a week. That's not successful in my view. And so I think that success generally comes from two things. Feeling successful. It's like, am I of service? Am I of like value to people? And that doesn't have to be like businessy shit, dude. In my, in my opinion, like, dude, you're, you're, you're, you're a dad, right? Your father? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude. Being like a fantastic father is like being of service to people. It's like putting your mark on the world and like, like doing something. And I think the other thing is being around people who share your values. I think that like, like my, my dad is an immigrant from Bolivia, has very little money whatsoever. He and his wife and his kids, they're the happiest fucking people on the planet. It's like an open door policy in that house. I remember going, you know, when I was a kid a couple times and like did. They're dancing until 12am on like a Friday. There's like grandmas and aunts and people coming out in and out on like the weekend. Like they live in a neighborhood that has a lot of other Hispanic people. Like they don't have any money and they're so happy. Why? To me, like, that's a huge irony. And then when you get really wealthy, what do you tend to do, right? You, you get a big house, you get a big yard, you put space between yourself and other people. You, you create unhappiness for yourself. I think like community and doing something that you feel isn't meaningful. I think that, I think that is successful.
- [32:24]
B
I think that's, that's a great paradigm to, to live with. I mean, it's. Success does look different to a lot of people. But I do think the whole idea of like the grass is greener when I get 10 million or 100 million or a billion. Like, well, it depends. If you build your life deliberately around what actually makes you happy, then yeah, more money can make you more happy. But I think a lot of people think money is the happiness. And it's an interesting kind of paradigm that we spectrum rather that we explore in this podcast. Well, Nathan, I don't have any other thoughts for you right now, but I think this has been a really good episode. When you think of like, what's next for you? Is this agency you have kind of the way that you build that $10 million business, or do you have any fun business ideas in mind that you haven't launched yet?
- [33:07]
A
Ooh, that's a good question. I have a couple things. Like, I. So I'm a big fan of like, Focus. So this agency, I think for the next like five plus years, number one thing I'm gonna be putting my, my time into, I think we can get really big. I feel really good about our team stuff that's like, really fun for me right now. The community stuff like, like in, in person in New York City. So this is cool. I mean, I want to hear how you feel in like three months because you, you're just. Well, I guess you've had a podcast, right? But you're, you're now doing this podcast thing. I have found. I don't know if you know this. We do a podcast with your other company that you, you work for. Yeah, I get so much happiness from that. Like, I sit down with somebody for an hour and a half. We do, we do whatever, 26 of them per year. I have like a two hour long conversation with somebody and like cover like their, their business and their finance and shit. But the stuff that is cool for me is like, I always do the last 20 or 30 minutes is like DMCs, like deep, meaningful conversations. I asked about, like, their parents and, and like, like, we'll get like deep with stuff that like, I would say brings me equal happiness to the agency. The podcast makes no money whatsoever.
- [34:06]
B
Yeah.
- [34:06]
A
And so I'm like, dude, I want to do this for like five years. And like, I just like more of that. I just really enjoy chasing these, like, conversations with people. I, I think it makes me feel closer to people. I think it makes me feel like what matters and it teaches me about myself. That stuff I like a lot. I, I think whatever I do next will be less about like, oh, bootstrap and save every dollar and you crush your competitors. And more like, I want to, I want to hang out, man. You know, and I want to make somebody espresso martini or, or a daiquiri or a, a jungle bird. Let's just hang. Yeah, I like that stuff.
- [34:35]
B
I think the big irony about how much AI is changing the landscape right now is that the future will look a lot more human than the past. And I think people will start to break out of this, you know, glued to a screen paradigm where they'll start to remember or realize for the first time the meaning and value they find with shaking someone's hand in real life or sharing a coffee at a restaurant. I mean, getting out into the sun and touching grass. I think we've been bottled up behind screens for, you know, some of us decades, many of us for at least five to 10 years in our careers. And I think as AI starts to, to really automate a lot of work and you know, Elon Musk would even say like a future work optional state of, of, you know, middle and upper class people will start to really go back to friendships, IRL, community, human stuff.
- [35:25]
A
100 agree. Dude, it's like I feel like trends like, like ricochet. So like when I was in high school or college, like tight jeans were like cool. And now you want to be like, you know, you want to have these baggy kind of bell bottoms. You want to flow with it. And I'm sure tight jeans will be cool again in like 10 years. Dude, IRL's coming back.
- [35:40]
B
IRL's coming back. Well, Nathan, this good. I appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for joining money wise and we'll talk soon.
- [35:46]
A
How are you brother? Thanks for having me.
- [35:47]
B
Thanks.