← Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
His private newsletter with 1.5k subs earns $1M ARR
01:00:22
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- [00:00]
Host 1
Did you say you're running 1 million ARR with a thousand person list?
- [00:05]
Nathan
Yeah. If you're going to buy a newsletter, like you want to be really careful.
- [00:08]
Host 2
About it, it's definitely easy to build just like a list that doesn't have any quality behind it and then sell it and hope for the best.
- [00:14]
Nathan
The leverage in the newsletter is that like it comes from you and it's your words and somebody replies. They reply to you.
- [00:21]
Host 2
If you're not in this for the right reasons or you're not going to stick with it more than six months, then just don't even start. It's not worth it.
- [00:28]
Nathan
First question she asks is not how I get the subscribers. It's like, how am I going to monetize when I do have them? And for most people it should be.
- [00:39]
Host 2
Nathan, I'm excited to have you on the show. We, you and I just get together randomly and jump on calls or have coffee and talk through newsletter stuff. So that'd be fun to have you on and just kind of talk newsletter stuff.
- [00:51]
Nathan
Guys, I'm, I'm pumped to be here. Yeah. This is awesome.
- [00:54]
Host 2
Yeah. Do you want to tell people a little bit about yourself so they have some context of who you are and why you're interesting?
- [01:00]
Nathan
Tldr on us. So I run an agency, we're called the Feed Media and we do pay growth for a lot of the biggest newsletter brands. People are spending 50, 100, 300, $500,000 a month on newsletters profitably. And we do that for like, we do all Facebook ads. We do it for two groups of people, like personal brands, people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Puji, Tyler Dank, and then what I call like media or newsletter native media companies, the neuron, the rundown, the points guy, stuff like that. That's my, that's my world.
- [01:30]
Host 2
How did you get into the newsletter space? I don't think I know this answer. So I'm curious.
- [01:34]
Nathan
I'll tell you something crazy. So it's weird, right? Because all my, like everybody in this space is friends, but technically my competitors or whatever, they came from like newsletters. Right. One of them worked at the Hustle and the other one worked at Morning Brew. I didn't do any of that stuff. So I, the way I found about newsletters was I used to run a big mobile app portfolio, like 15, $20 million mobile app portfolio. We raised a bunch of money. We were buying mobile apps from indie entrepreneurs and I thought mobile apps were like, I don't know, like little widgets. It's like, oh, this is, like, cute. It turns out they're super badass businesses. So, for instance, there are these two guys, they have a newsletter, so this will be full circle. But Dave and Joel, these two Singaporean guys, and they had a $12 million a year mobile app portfolio with, like, 50% EBITDA margins, which is wild and crazy stuff. You'd never think about, like, logo makers or, like, screen recorders, like random little iOS apps on your phone they don't know how to code. They had, like, an Indian development team do the whole thing, and that whole team in aggregate was maybe $400,000 on $12 million of revenue. So nothing. It's like 3% revenue. Anyway, so they also had a newsletter. They did a million dollars a year. They didn't write the newsletter, and they did a supplement brand that did like, seven figures. They're just like crazy directors, marketers. And I thought, like, oh, to have a big company, you got a. You got to go to a 16C. You got to go to Sequoia. You got. That's like you got a raise. That's what it means to have a company. And then these guys were just getting after it. And in the same way that, like, mobile apps were badass businesses, I thought they had that newsletter. I was like, oh, I bet newsletters could be that too. They knew about Sean Pury in the Milk Road in Beehive, and that's how I went down the newsletter rabbit hole.
- [03:14]
Host 2
That's fun.
- [03:14]
Host 1
So you, you started working with them. Was that essentially what happened?
- [03:17]
Nathan
My first client was the Neuron, or these two. Two folks. The Neuron. And then, oh, my gosh, this guy Julius. Julius, who writes a newsletter called Bold Push. He. He, like, He's a big LinkedIn influencer, and all he talks about is, like, events and event marketing. So those are my two. My two first client.
- [03:36]
Host 1
That's pretty wild. And here we are now.
- [03:37]
Nathan
It's cool. Yeah, yeah. I, I had some small newsletters too. I, I had a. I never talked about this because it wasn't like a. A big deal or anything, but I had like a, like a tiny crypto newsletter that I sold to the. The Milk Road. And then the feed, which is my agency. So the feed was like, you. You scroll the. The feed like social media. That was the idea. But it, it. It was a, A newsletter. So I used to do. I always was obsessed with founders who had built audiences and how much of a flywheel that was, you know, for, like, Sam Parr, you know, Sam Parker could start any company he wanted. And he has this religious group of people who love him, who would support him in everything he does. And I just thought that was incredible. There's so many people that are like that. Justin Welsh, Alex Becker, a bunch of different folks. So I used to do case studies on these types of entrepreneurs and a lot of them had newsletters. So actually technically, like, originally the feed would have been a newsletter that I think technically would have competed with Growth in Reverse, like back in the day, because I was doing like case studies on like very similar people. And I would look at like, like I, the. I did a case study on like Justin Walsh. And so I, I read your write up on Justin and like, I watched like a bunch of podcasts from Justin. So I was reading your content, like all the time, religiously. I love it.
- [04:44]
Host 2
That's awesome. I didn't know that.
- [04:47]
Nathan
I don't think we've talked about that. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [04:50]
Host 2
That's super cool. Yeah, that is cool. Awesome. And so now you're working with some of those folks and then you've gotten connected to other people that you're working with through those. I know the Neuron is one that you talk about all the time. You actually almost bought it when they were going to sell. So that's a fun story that I'm sure will never be unpainful for you.
- [05:10]
Nathan
Yeah, that sucked. I still think they should have sold it to me. I think I, I think I would have been. I, I like the, the guy who runs it now, he. It's this awesome dude, this guy, Rob Belen. He has, he's a crazy bootstrap company. So they, they've gone. He started in college and I think they do. This is like, what's public. I think they do like 40 or $50 million a year. Something, something really big like that with a bunch of like, Legion and newsletters. And they're all kind of like B2B media properties. They're kind of like an industry dive or stuff like that. So we lost the deal to them. But it was cool. It was cool to see, like, the deal process and there were a lot of, like, I don't know, things I would have done. It would have. The deal would have closed in January and so it would have dramatically changed how I treated this year. But the whole idea was, I mean, I knew everything about the Neuron because we'd done their growth and my buddy Walter did their ad sales and, and so like, we just knew everything and, and, and, and we worked with their largest competitor. The, the rundown as, as well. And so like, it would have been cool. Basically I would have bought it and we would have continued to grow it. And there's some tweaks we would have made to the, to the growth, but it would have been 90% the same. And then I was going to do like the industry dive playbook. So people don't know. Industry dive. It's a super badass portfolio of B2B newsletters. They went from zero to $110 million a year in like 10 years, something like that. Seven, seven or eight years. And then they sold for $525 million in like 2021, 2022. But they would have super B2B stuff like, you know, waste management dive and you know, education dive and they had retail dive, marketing dive, all the different stuff. But their whole thing was they would get like, it wasn't about how many people were on the list, it was about who was on the list. And so they'd have all these CEOs and stuff. And then they do really high priced, like webinars and white papers, like all this deep B2B stuff. So you've got your, your newsletter sponsorships and it's like, well, how do you fully monetize the list even more? So we would have done that and then the other big thing we were going to do. So I'm a huge fan of the idea. I think it's awesome when enemies become friends. So for instance, like, so Sam Par from the Hustle and Austin Reef, they hate each other, right? Because they used to run like competing newsletters and now they're literally best friends. They spend a ton of time together. Sam just moved back to New York City and he was going to buy a place. He didn't win the bid. He was bidding on a place, an apartment in Austin Rees Building so that they could live together and raise their kids together. Like, that's how close they are, which I think is like amazing. So my version of that is Rowan and like the Neuron in the rundown. I don't think they like dislike each other, right? But they're not like, they're not like going skiing together. You know what I mean? They're not like besties. And so Rowan has this incredible AI community that sits behind his newsletter. And Iran did not have that. And so we had like a affiliate deal worked out. So I would have just like done all the work that we do, which is like driving traffic and like converting that traffic to people who buy. But for Rowan's community And I think that would have been whatever, maybe 300 or $500,000 in the first year, which is like, you know, basically straight down to ebitda. Right. Because there are no costs. Right. It's just the team we already have, like, doing what we do for other people. So, yeah. Sucked. I want to. I want to get that deal.
- [08:17]
Host 2
That would have been fun to have, like, that audience to just build the monetization around, which is something that I feel like you love doing.
- [08:23]
Nathan
Yeah, it would have been cool. And I think, like, part of it too is it's like an agency owner. This happens a lot in E commerce. Like, agency owners will become brand owners. I kind of want to do that. Like, I. I like running the agency. I enjoy it a lot, but I want to be like, one of them, you know, I want to be like, you know, actual peers, you know, the people that we work with. And a lot of people come to us and I think we get advice, we do awesome work. But it's different when you also run a publication. I really wanted that.
- [08:49]
Host 2
Um, so that's exactly why I stopped doing service work and went and built my own thing because I was like, well, that was fun, but also, like, you see how well you can grow somebody else's thing, and it's like, can I just do that for myself? Like, see what happens?
- [09:01]
Nathan
Yeah, yeah. So most. I'm always on the lookout. I mean, I. That. That was definitely opportunistic. Like, I wasn't, like, seeking, you know, actively, but I. I think, like, yeah, I think in the next, like, whatever, two to five years, like, I would. I try to buy some.
- [09:15]
Host 1
So you have not yet bought a newsletter or you just tried to acquire.
- [09:19]
Nathan
Yeah, I haven't bought a newsletter, I think the. I think, for a while. So I think people, if you're going to buy a newsletter, like, you want to be really careful about it. It's very easy to buy, like, a list. So, like, the neuron did that. The Neuron bot like, lists. Like, basically lots of AI founders started newsletters. We can get into this. Like, a lot of people do this wrong. They start newsletters and they didn't have the monetization figured out, and they get stuck to this or addicted to this, like, drug. Oh, my subscriber count is going up, or my cost per lead is super low. And they're not thinking about the actual, like, outcome. They're getting distracted by the pretty pink chart, you know, in Beehive or whatever the ESP is. And I think it's important to like, just be honest with yourself. Like, you don't have a business until you actually are monetizing. So a lot of folks never monetized. And then newsletters like the Neuron buy them up for less than a dollar per subscriber. And you know, frankly, a lot of those lists, you know, are not super high quality is something that we, we found. And so I think it's very important to buy a list that is making like ebitda, like actually makes profit or, or if you already have a big newsletter, there's arbitrage, right? So, so, like, they actually made out quite well on those lists because they. The important thing actually, if you're going to buy a newsletter if you haven't started one is like the most valuable thing is actually the sales relationship. If you're selling ads, it's very hard to like build a relationship with HubSpot or some of the companies that are buying ads in the Neuron. That. That's actually the real value of, of the deal. I wouldn't buy a newsletter that did not have that.
- [10:41]
Host 2
Yeah, that's super interesting. Um, it's definitely easy to build just like a list that doesn't have any quality behind it and then sell it and hope for the best. But I think you're right. Like, if people can look past just the number, it's like that's the whole game, right?
- [10:54]
Nathan
People get distracted, I think, by, you know, like, there's a. I, I think we hit a million dollars in AR. When I had maybe, maybe, maybe a thousand, maybe 1500 people on the list. I had no following on LinkedIn. And there's other examples, like, I'm not the only one. Like, there's Alex Shamozi always cites this. There's this woman on Instagram who. She does over a million dollars a year. She has 9,000 followers on, on her Instagram. And I think she's got some email lists and a lot of other stuff. The reason her thing works is she'll get like 100 views, 200 views on her Instagram reels. But her niche is like, she like, works at a hospital system and she is extremely dialed in on the billing between the hospital and the insurance companies, which I don't know a lot about healthcare, but like, it's barely. It's this huge battle. And so like the hospital does work and then they collect from the insurance company. And the insurance company's like, oh, you didn't do this code? Or oh, we're going to pay. You know, there's all this, all this Mess because they want, you know, they want the money for themselves. And so her thing is like, yeah, I have lived in how to navigate that and like, actually get the money that you should have. And so that's worth a lot, a tremendous amount to the right type of person. And so I'm a big fan of like, that's. Maybe that's B2. B10 is A list, but I'm a big fan of like, small but mighty lists. There are lots of lists that are 5, 10. You know, when we did the Jessupuji launch, I mean, that did a quarter million dollars on 15,000 people. Like, small but mighty lists are a real thing.
- [12:21]
Host 1
Did you say you're running 1 million ARR with a thousand person list?
- [12:27]
Nathan
Yeah, so we went from zero to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was cool. So. So we went from zero to a million AR in about ten and a half months. Close to eleven months last year. So we hit it in November, December of 2024. And basically I had a bunch of stuff I had to figure out when I entered this market because, like, uh, everybody else who does newsletter ads, like, they either came from the industry or they had like a huge following. Um, and so I was like, like, what do. What, what do I do? Like, how do I. Like, that's a lot to, to go up against. Um, and so I think two or three things worked really well. One of them once was this newsletter. I, I didn't know it was going to be a good idea, but now I think it's a very good idea. So I, I think like any founder, if you run a B2B company, so you sell, you sell a service, right? That could be an agency, that could be. You could be a lawyer, you could be, you know, whatever, you, mortgage guy, any, any kind of like, service or B2B sass, I think you are being financially irresponsible if you do not have a newsletter. And so what I did, which I didn't know before, is I thought, all right, I want to do a newsletter. And well, who, who do I really need to work with? Like, at each of these newsletter companies, there are maybe like two people. You know, I need, I need like the CEO or the founder, and I need the head of growth or the VP of marketing. That's it. And so like, if maybe there's like 300 newsletter companies that I want to work. Oh, so 300 times two. 600. Okay, can I get 600 people? That. That's like an Excel list. Like, I can go one by one by one. I can Meet those people at conferences. I can email them, I can LinkedIn message them. Like, it, it takes this giant, like, nebulous world. It's like, oh, my God, like, how do I. Do I run ads? Do I cold email? Like, there's all these people I could reach. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You just need the 600. Can you just get 200 of the 600? I can do that. And so that's what I, I started doing. And I basically, I would go, and I think this also is important. I made it a private newsletter. So you had to be, it's kind of cute. You had to be like, like, invite, you know, like, invite you to the newsletter. And I would LinkedIn message people. And I have a bunch of screenshots of this and stuff. Like, for instance, my LinkedIn message, Sean Griffey, who was the one of the three co founders of Industry Dive, you know, big, big deal, big guy. And I just go, hey, you know, I, you know, evening, Sean. Like, I run a private newsletter for newsletter operators who are doing seven, eight, nine figures. You know, it's generally for CEOs and their heads of growth. A couple people like X and Y and Z read X and Y and Z were mutual connections that we had. Or a lot of times I'll do competitors of the person that I'm messaging. So it's like, oh, they see their peers are reading this newsletter. Okay, now I've now elevated the status of the newsletter. Would you mind if I add you? And then I manually add them, they give me their email and then I don't put them, Give them some landing page where it's like, oh, here you go. Do it right. White glove. I do it for them and I add them. Yeah, that's been a great tactic.
- [15:15]
Host 2
Well, and then when you send out the newsletter, you actually, at the top say, welcome to blah, blah, blah. And like, there's four or five really big names that have joined in the last week. And it just, like, solidifies the reason I'm reading this newsletter. I'm like, oh, yeah, so is Tyler Dank and, you know, Nathan Barry or whoever reading this newsletter? And I think that's such a smart move, too.
- [15:34]
Nathan
Yeah, I, I, I feel, I think I stole that from something I can't remember. But I, I like that part of style. And a lot of people email about that. And, and like, for somebody's, like, listening to this, like, I don't have, like, my newsletter is, like, super ugly. Like, there's no, there's no design it's like, it's literally just like an email from me. Like, but, but, but I think that's by. I think that's an. I think that's a good thing thing. Like, like, like, if you, like, sell like a high ticket or like health TV product or service, like, people want to hear from you. And I, I think the mistake. So if you were going to go do this, I think everybody who has an existing company should go do this because. No, nobody does it, by the way. So I actually. So this is important to know. Okay. Why is this better than, like, cold emailing people? Well, number one, Sean Griffey's not going to get on a sales call with me. Like, that's not. Sean doesn't know me. It's like, who's Nathan? I don't, I don't care about this. Right. So the barrier to entry for a newsletter is, is significantly for people who do get on sales calls with me, typically if you're a B2B business owner, you have, like, all right, you get on call with somebody, let's say they don't close, you know, you're not going to have a chance to get on another call that person for maybe another quarter. So maybe there's like four times per year you could potentially close somebody. Right. For you for your product or your service newsletter. Right. And then so you have this huge list now. And then if I want to reach out to people, I have to individually reach out to all them. So a newsletter kind of solves all that. Right. Like, the, the friction is extremely low. Anybody would join. And now I'm building trust. And I, every time I hit publish, I have a chance to potentially get on a sales call with somebody. And I write one thing and it reaches every single person that I would potentially want to work with. That's like, I think why it's so valuable.
- [17:10]
Host 2
Well, and the content is like case studies of what you've done or like these badass stories from people you're working with. And so you're like, you're showcasing your clients, which is amazing. I'm sure they love that. You're also showcasing the value you provide and, like, what you can do. And then you're just kind of putting it all together in a newsletter and delivering it nicely to them.
- [17:29]
Nathan
Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't delegate it. Like, Like, I got on a call with. Do you know Eric Siu at all?
- [17:35]
Host 2
Yeah, he.
- [17:35]
Nathan
He runs like, a big SEO agency called Single Grain. And he, he's. He's really good friends with, he's been around forever. Yeah, they, they've been around. Yeah, they're, they've been around for a long time. They're, they're, they're cool like, they're like buddy, buddy. They, they live near each other in nla. They're, they're like a cool like agency owner pair. Eric's doing this for his company and I think the mistake that Eric is making is like he's delegating it to like his content team. I think that's the worst thing that you can, you can do. And there's no disrespect to anybody's content team. Like the leverage in the newsletter is like, it comes from you like the founder and it's your words and somebody who replies. They reply to you. Not like a member of your content team. I think so. I think that's the other important thing. Like that is not a part of the business that I would ever delegate and I don't recommend anybody.
- [18:18]
Host 2
And so with the. Because you have more than 600 subscribers now, so you've opened it up a little bit in terms of that initial list.
- [18:25]
Nathan
Yeah. So then, so the stuff that I have to figure out now is like, so we opened up a little bit. So like for instance, like Brad Wolverton who used to leak content at the Hustle, like did like a write up on us and so we like opened up, you know, for that. And so a couple hundred people came from that or we do other small things like that. Like you and I did that summit with Beehive and we open it, I opened it, that newsletter up to people who attended that summit. It is becoming more. So this was a double edged sword in my business, which is like, so we did a very good job of like, I hope, I don't know, building rapport and like, let me just give a bunch of information like, like, like stuff that I think other people would charge for. We just gave it away for free. And I think that's very important to do. And we did that. And all the content we write is for people who are already doing six, seven, eight, nine figures. I do not write beginner level level content. And that's good for the agency. Issue is, well, we've not really built any like distribution or audience with like somebody who is just starting their newsletter, trying to get their first hundred subscribers or trying to get at their first, a hundred thousand dollars with their newsletter. We've done a very bad job of that. And I had this buddy, this buddy Rowan who runs the rundown tell Me that we went out, we all went out with this guy Walter together to SF like last October and Rowan was like, dude, what are you doing? Doing? Like, you need to be like writing content on LinkedIn. Like, this is the whole thing. You gotta do this, this, this. I was like, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And so that's what I've been trying to do more of. You know, the what not like acquiring the neuron meant is like now I have to like, figure out new ways to grow the business. Certainly the agency will continue to grow, but like, I want to start to stack other things on. And so like, part of doing that, I think like requires that we, I hope, like really cool stuff that like, if you're just starting your newsletter will be really useful.
- [20:12]
Host 2
Doesn't that dilute the like, the coolness and like exclusivity of like being on your private newsletter?
- [20:18]
Nathan
Yeah, so it's still like decently hard to get on it. Like, like we did a, we got a feature with creator Spotlight, like Beehives newsletter. I open up for that and I'm going to probably later like close it up again. I think what I got to figure out is so right now everybody gets the same content. I actually think that's not going to be the case in like a month or two. I think like advanced people will get my private newsletters and then everybody else will get like more kind of like regular business as usual content. But I do have to solve for that. And this is kind of like me like, like I'll figure this shit out. I don't know, like, I'm looking at what other people do and like, and stuff and try to figure that out. But yeah, I still think it's such.
- [20:57]
Host 2
Like a valuable way for anyone getting started who wants to like build a service business or even just like a small niche business to like start that way. I think it's such a smart move.
- [21:07]
Nathan
I think it's the easiest thing to do. Like, and I, you know, if you were like a creator or you want to start a newsletter and get to, let's say just, you know, 10k a month even I think ads can help. But I think there's this whole, like, I think it's wrong. It's very hard to build a big business just selling ads because you really to like be interesting too. So. So there's two ways to do it, right? Like you can you go over some fine, a little bit right now. Like you go and you could have ad sold for you for like the Beehive Ad Network. And I think Kit does some of that stuff too. Right. There's basically networks now where like you can have HubSpot or Nike, whoever, as a sponsor and you don't have to worry about, you don't have to hop on sales call. It's just like done for you. The problem with that is that if you sell your own ad inventory, you might get, you know, a 20 to $40 CPM depending on your, on your niche on average. And there's plenty of newsletters that break that rule. But um, well, that's good because that means like so $30 CPM is basically every single time somebody opens, you make 1 1,000th of that or 3 cents, right? So you know, you can see a path where like, oh, I get 10,000 people, you know, 5,000 open, you know, whatever newsletter. I think the math is like if you have a 20 or 30,000 person newsletter and you have a healthy open rate, you know, you can get to like 5 to 10k a month. But like the, if you do the networks, your CPM is not $30, your CPM is like $5. And so that's like interesting. Like you can generate revenue, but if you want to do something where the newsletter, right, it replaces your full time income, you need to go direct sold, which means you need to like get to a certain size. And so I think it is far easier to do ads and something else. So you had, you had CJ on. I was messaging CJ about this and at the, at the very end of the podcast he was like, he mentioned the media mullet. I was like, ah, yes, amazing. I'm getting it out there because I've always thought that like it can be media in the front, like a product in the back of some way. And so it's mullet, the medium.
- [23:00]
Host 2
Yeah, yeah, it's the mullet.
- [23:01]
Nathan
Who wrote about that? Was it Mario?
- [23:04]
Host 2
I have no idea.
- [23:04]
Host 1
I know just the way you made it sound very melody.
- [23:08]
Nathan
That's because it is, it's supposed to be like that party in the front business in the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think everybody should have a media mullet. And a media mullet is basically, I think it's, I think it's good to say things that people can visualize. It's kind of silly. But you should have ad supported newsletter in the front, back here, you know, Right, right here. And then what you want is you want party in the back, you want party of high LTV products that sit in the back. So if you look at every big newsletter business. The ones who really succeed are doing this. The Hustle had ad supported newsletter in the front, they had trends $300 per person, community in the back. That had something like 15 to 20,000 paying users. It was something like a 5 to $7 million AR business. It's. I think Sam has said that like maybe three or four people were staffed on that business. Right? So, so sure, maybe that was comparable to the size of the Hustle ad sales. But when you actually look at the profit trends versus the newsletter business to be, I think they had like five or six salespeople and like five growth people. And so writers, they're paying 100, you know, $150,000 a year. My guess is the newsletter business was probably like a 20% margin and that's because they were in growth mode. So I don't want to like, you know, plenty of newsletter business have 30, 40% margins. I think the SaaS or the community business, I think that was like a 90% margin business, if I had to guess. And so it's very important to have that Blockworks. Jason Yanowitz. Right, that's newsletters and podcasts in the front. But then they've got events, they've got an agency business, basically like consulting business for crypto. They've got like an enterprise like data platform that sits behind there. Right? So all these kind of businesses, the Van Trump Report, right, this is a guy who makes $20 million a year with like two employees. They do subscription content on agriculture. Like so. So like you want something highlighted in the back. And so like, even if you're a creator who has, you know, 5,000 followers, think about like, what skills do you have that you could teach somebody? Because 5,000 people on your list, you know, if you're niche down enough, like can you get like one person, two people to pay you just $250 a month to start for your time? Like can you sell your time in some way? And I think that is probably the most valuable thing you can do because you don't necessarily need to go to the agency route after that actually selling your time to 5, 10 people. Now you intimately understand your newsletter subscriber. And when you want to launch a digital product, like a course, an accelerator, whatever, whatever you want to do afterward, you're getting paid to do your own customer research. And so I think that's one of the best places to start.
- [25:32]
Host 2
Yeah, and you're, we're also like glossing over the fact that yes, Sampar and the Hustle they had, like, that huge sponsorship business, and then the trends on the back end was. Even if it was just, like, the same income, like, bringing in the same amount of revenue, the people that were in Trends are now, like, dying for him to restart that because it was such a good product and they loved being part of it. And, like, I see it all the time, like, randomly log into my Facebook account. I'm like, people are trying to get Trends back going and, like, talking to people. I mean, like, how do we get this started again? And it's just, like, he built such a raving fan base around the back end of that, and you don't get that just by selling sponsorships. So I think there's that too.
- [26:09]
Nathan
I was talking to Justin Gordon, the. That guy. We did a run together in New York, like, two months ago. He smoked me. I don't know if he's, like, a crazy fast runner, by the way. He's so fast.
- [26:22]
Host 2
I see him on Strava all the time, and I'm like, I'm never running with you, because I will die.
- [26:28]
Nathan
He's. He's crazy. I've run with a couple people. I try to do that. Like, oh, if I'm gonna meet somebody, like, oh, let's, like, also go on a run. That's, like, kind of fun. He was the only one where, like. And not. It wasn't even close, like, but by a long shot. Like, I had to be like, hey, man, could we, like, walk for a little bit? Like, is that. Is it chill? Is that all right? He's really fast, but he's got a big community of founders. Like, dude, you should, like, we're talking about. Maybe you should just, like, restart Trends. And it's. It's wild, by the way. Like, I don't know people. I was never in Trends. I never got to see the inside, but I've seen, like, the outcomes of that. Like, Cody Sanchez, who now, like, you know, does over $10 million a year with her business. Like, she started in Trends, basically. Like, there's all these, like, juggernaut people who. When you look back, they. They were in Trends. And that. That's. That's pretty cool.
- [27:17]
Host 2
Yeah, that is pretty cool. I think there's something about building that community on the back end. It's just, like, it goes with you. No matter if you sell your business or what, like, people are still wanting that back. So.
- [27:28]
Nathan
Yeah, you want to be. You want to be known. Well, not. Not well known. I think that's important.
- [27:32]
Host 2
Well, cool. So I know you have this whole thing about like the four types of people who should start newsletters. You want to share that? You mentioned that in your little list that you sent over, so I'd love to hear what you think about that.
- [27:42]
Host 1
Yeah, your. How do I choose frameworks where we're interesting? I'm curious to learn about those.
- [27:46]
Nathan
I want to know what you guys think too. Like, so we, so we just did this accelerator with Beehive and the way we did it. So we had, we had 250, 300 people join and basically 100 of those were team members of like the biggest newsletter companies I invited for my newsletters. We had like the Hustle, we had New York Times, we had Morning Brew, we had the Gist with Superhuman. We had like all the, all the, all the big folks. And then we had 200 spots that were either people who went to the summit or who just like raffled. And, and that was cool because it was the first time I spent a, in a long time. I've spent like a significant amount of time around people who are like, trying to get their first 1,000 or get to the first 100,000 DOL. And yeah, I think a couple of my learnings from that. I think there are like, yeah, three or four types of people for whom a newsletter tends to work the best. There's so many cases where somebody can succeed. But I was saying, like, on average, like the most likely to succeed are four. So one I think is any creator should have a newsletter. Like, if you're trying to build an audience on X or LinkedIn or YouTube or whatever, trying to figure out ways to pull down that audience to your newsletter is one of the most important things that you can, you can do that. The number one channel for Alex Hormozi, for like, the revenue that he makes. It's not like Reels or YouTube or any of that. It's, it's, it's his, it's his email list. 100. And like, he's, he's a big steward of like building that out. The second group, I think I don't know this group as well, but are journalists. So, so we've all kind of seen this, right? Like, there's a, like, there's a lot of distrust in like traditional media houses. So a lot of journalists. We just started working with this guy, Oliver Darcy, who used to be like a big time journalist at CNN in Brookaway and runs an incredible newsletter called Status. And like, it's just crazy to see like, how people love his content, like how sticky that is with people. And so I think if you're like a well known like writer, like do your own thing is like a move right now. I think the third is business owners. Every founder in B2B should have a newsletter. And I think the fourth is like if, if you're like newsletter curious. I think there's a, a much more predictable path of how you avoid the like, oh, I got to five or 10,000 subscribers over three years or, or got there with ads and spent a bunch of my money, but I never got that money back. Like how do you avoid those situations? Because that's actually what happens to like 70 or 80% of those people. And I think it's version of that, the bucket of those people who are thoughtful trying to monetize as quickly as possible. So like if I was going to start, you know, a new newsletter, I would like a budget because I'm trying to pay with my dollars instead of my time. You'll pay for your subscribers one way or the other. You'll pay with them with your time or you'll pay with them with, with your dollars. I would set a three to six month timeline where like I'm going to whatever, spend $15,000. That's my budget for this newsletter initiative. And I'm going to try to as quickly as possible get a couple of sponsors and sell some kind of like product or service. Like that's, the people who do that, I think are the ones who do quite well. And that's like, hey, I'm coming to this with like not a big audience. If, if you have an existing audience, even if it's 5 or 10,000 people and you are B2B or able to monetize that at a B2B level. So for instance, like there are you know, people who sell, for instance like fitness coaching or like, you know, other types of transformation around jobs, investments, life transformations like losing weight or like looking better, dating better, where you can sell things that are a thousand dollars or more that can completely work with a small audience or even no audience sometimes. But, but if you're not in those categories, right, like then you, you either need to like, you need to have a big audience if you're trying to grow organically, you know, like I, I, I think the, I looked at a bunch of creators like Justin Welsh and Dicky Bush and all these folks and like I think the average is like people convert 10 to 20%, you know, their audience down to the newsletter. And you know, I love this, you put together this graphic that was like, all the people you study, like, what was the average time it took them to get to like, 50,000 subscribers? And it was something like. Was it like a year and a half, two years, something like that?
- [31:46]
Host 2
Yeah, I mean, it's a. It's gotten so much faster over the last couple of years. I was just looking at this the other day. If you started back in, like, 2014, it took like eight years on average, and now it's like 24 months is like the average to 50k, which is just wild because now you have things like recommendations. People are getting more savvy with paid ads for newsletters. There's just all kinds of boosts you can use and refine and all those things. So if you really want to grow that number, it's totally possible these days, and it's just gotten so much faster. But my caveat with that is, like, if you're just starting and you don't know if your content resonates or, like, who your audience is or that kind of thing, like, I am a huge proponent of waiting until you have, like, at least a thousand subscribers, if not a few more, until you start running paid ads. Because otherwise, who are you sending it to? Who's what, what content are they getting? Are they going to enjoy it? Because if you. If you burn that trust, like, early on, it's kind of hard to get them back later. So. Yeah, but it's. It's a whole, whole can of worms, I think.
- [32:46]
Host 1
And how you're going to monetize, too, will play a big part. Like, if you don't know how you're going to monetize this audience, then there's no point in sinking a bunch of time and money into it.
- [32:54]
Nathan
The. Yeah, it's. The first question you should ask is like, it's. I think, first question she asks, not how I get the subscribers. It's like, how am I going to monetize when I do have them? And for most people, it should be choose ads and then one other thing from, like, products or services, digital products or services. Services can be coaching and consulting. Right. Not just like, I'm an agency or I do your taxes, I'm an accountant, or something like that. Because that needs to be the, like, okay, cool. If I'm going to monetize with the consulting, like, I need to, I want to be able to get one client by the time I have 1500 subscribers. So that now you have like a, like a goal that, like, actually a goal that translates into revenue getting to 1500 subscribers, not automatically Translate into revenue, Right? Getting the first consulting client or getting the first ad sponsors. What translates into revenue?
- [33:40]
Host 2
Okay, so you have four types of people who should start a newsletter. Who do you think should not start a newsletter?
- [33:46]
Nathan
So if you are impatient, you need to be in one of those four buckets and you need to, like, you need to create a sandbox that's like, how do I find out in three to six months if this will work? The answer could be no, that this particular idea doesn't work. My sale to Milk Road was like, it was an okay amount of money, but wasn't giant amount of money. And like me doing the case studies for the. The feed and, you know, we got some subscription revenue, but it was like a couple thousand dollars a month. It was. It was not meaningful. And so like, oh, I was like, oh, why don't I just turn that in an agency and I'm writing all these people with personal brands and newsletters. Why don't I just go work with those people actually instead and charge 4,000 or $5,000 a month instead of, you know, charging a regular person, you know, $10 a month. You. You need to set that. That sandbox. Even if the answer is no. Because if the answer is no, that's okay. It just means you now have. You could go choose another idea, and you haven't. Not. You've not wasted too much of the most viable thing, which is your time. The worst mistake you can do is spend two years on an idea that you should have spent six months on. So I think that's. That's the thing. If you're impatient, if you are very patient and you know the game that you want to play, for instance, you know, if you are. There's an awesome guy who is on our first cohort who is doing crazy well with a relatively small newsletter called the Secret cfo. He writes. He's like a CFO at a really big company, and he's totally anonymous. He makes a killing on his newsletter. It's only like 40 or 50,000 people he's in. He's like, CFO. My life is CFO. I am committed to this niche. I am never changing anything. Then you get to be more patient, right? Because like, you, you know your game, but most people don't know the game they want to play, right? Like, you're just tasting from the. The tasting menu of the universe, right? And that's okay. You don't want to, like, you know, if. If you. What's a good example? Like, if. If you. If you go down to, like, the East Village in New York City, and there's so many amazing restaurants. Like, you don't want to just go back to the same old ramen shop. Like, there's amazing sushi place nearby. And something else. Like, you want to get an answer and then you want to move on. Maybe the better example is like a bar crawl, right? You want to actually move and taste a bunch of the different cocktails or validate that. This is my favorite bar of all time. This is what I'm going. You want to be careful with it. I don't know. Did I answer your question? I'm not sure if I did.
- [35:52]
Host 2
No, it makes sense. And I would have said the same thing. Like, if you don't. If you're not in this for the right reasons or you're not going to stick with it more than six months, then just don't even start. It's not worth it.
- [36:02]
Nathan
But the thing I'll say is, like, the. I don't necessarily mean it as the right reasons. I think it is. And people can have their opinions. But, like, I think it's totally okay to be an opportunist, you know? Like, I have a buddy of mine, Josh, who's in. He's Washington Square Park, a couple of blocks south of here, like, right now. He is 23 years old. He makes $200,000 a month. 23. Selling street interview ads to DDC companies like AVI and Jones Road Beauty and like, all these different companies. He's been doing this business for a year, The Wall Street Journal, actually today. He just did a Twitter post, actually, literally. Right, Josh? This is so cool. I got a notification for this, Linda, the right before I hopped on this call. This is him. I don't know if you can see it. There's Josh. He's in Washington Zero park right now. Oh, and the Wall Street Journal is about to. To go interview him for his business. Josh is like, Josh didn't, like, exit the womb passionate about, you know, like, street interview ads. Like, he was an opportunist and he found a really good niche and he burned the boats and he quit. He had a job at an internship at Blade. He quit that. He dropped out of colleges last semester, and he went all in, slept on couches, and he built this business over the last year. That's okay. Like, you can be an opportunist, but if you're going to be an opportunist, like, you need to ration your time and be smart about quitting stuff that isn't Going to work. I think that's, that's more about what I'm.
- [37:29]
Host 2
Yeah, well, and I wouldn't even necessarily call that an opportunist. I would almost say, like, he's an extra experimenter. Like, he's trying a bunch of things. He's going to test, like, see what works, see what sticks with him. And I'm sure over time he's going to find something that he wants to stick with for more than five months or six months or whatever. And so I think that's actually a smart move, especially when you're young.
- [37:48]
Nathan
Yeah, you need to commit to being like a founder. I think maybe that's the better rule. I think Naval said this, but it's like, startups fail, founders don't. So if you committed to the identity of, I'm somebody who starts stuff, it's okay to try crypto newsletters and then try one that's in penny stocks, then do one that's for creators, like, jump around. But commit to five years of going to start things until something works. Otherwise, like, you know. Yeah, yeah.
- [38:15]
Host 1
We haven't talked at all about, like, really about paid subscriptions or paid newsletters. Is that, is that a path any of your clients go down or that you go down or have considered going down, or what's your overall kind of feeling on. On that monetization revenue stream?
- [38:29]
Nathan
Yeah, I think paid newsletters are really hard. Really, really hard. So as part of traffic, how much can I can say about this? We've talked to a lot of the big newsletters that are paid, and I think a lot of them, a lot of them have made organic work. So there are two scenarios in which I've seen a paid newsletter work really well. You, you have a giant hyper fan audience. So this would be like if Rowan wanted to. Rowan, who runs the rundown, he has 600,000, 700,000 followers. He interviews Mark Zuckerberg once a year, like, gets invited all this AI shit in SF all the time. He could start a paid newsletter because of his scale and because he's so well known. The journalist version of that is like Oliver darcy at, @ CNN, who now runs Status or like. Or which is a newsletter publication. Or like, oh, gosh, what's the one? The. The ankler, which covers like the business of Hollywood reporters. The journalists who write for that, They've been writing for that, like, they're known in those industries. That's why executives and people are willing to pay for that content. The other scenario is you, you got to break the news. You Got to be someone or. Your analysis is so darn thoughtful. This is the only place people can get it. And so, like, a great example of that, you know, might be like a. I would say like a. Like a write with AI, but by Nicholas Cole. Like, it really thoughtful. Like, how do you actually use AI to, like, you know, make more money in your business or, you know, prompts that will, like, help you out, but I think it's hard to do it. And when I say breaking news, actually. So this is a. Maybe I should tweak what I said. People who, like, break stories. So, like, Oliver actually maybe is an example of both. Like, he broke. I think a lot of the stuff, like, I think RFK had some, like, affair, you know, with some. Some person. And that was a huge breaking headline. Oliver was the one to break that. And then, like, the New York Times and everybody else picked that up from Oliver. He gets the scoops. So if you're first, right, You. You have to be first or you have to be best. And ideally, you have a large audience. That is when subscription works. The cases where I've seen it work at a smaller scale, like 100 to $200,000 a year would be like. There's this guy, I can't remember his name. We cover him in the. In the accelerator, but he gets into, like, LEGO investing and teaches you all about, like, how to invest in Legos. And he makes, like, $150,000 a year in that space. So it's like the things I said, plus, like, okay, how do you map all these things to a framework? There's generally four things people are doing. They were doing some type of life transformation, so, like, lose a bunch of weight or something like that. They're doing some type of investing thing. So that's like MarketBeat has, like, a big paid subscription. They do $40 million a year. Probably 5 of that is through their subscription. They're, like, investing in stocks, all that shit there is. Oh, my gosh. What are some of the other ones? There's jobs. So, like, become better at my job status. Is subscribed to a lot of people in the media industry because having that breaking news is actually really impactful for strategy and, like, what other people would go and write about. So people pay for that. And then the last one. Oh, niche hobbies, which is like the Lego thing.
- [41:35]
Host 1
What about entertainment? Is there a place for entertainment in a paid newsletter? Have you seen that work anywhere?
- [41:40]
Nathan
I bet it's hard. That's my. That's my. I think it's Hard. I think it's like entertainment, like media, like business, I think would work, but just like, unless you were breaking crazy stories and doing like investigative stuff, you know, like, you know, Taylor Swift, you know, I don't know. Is he going to break up with whoever. That big, chunky Travis Kelsey that she dates? Travis Kelsey? Exactly, exactly. That was getting my second guess after big, chunky football guy.
- [42:04]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [42:07]
Nathan
I think that would work. But, like, I don't think, like, People magazine could do like a paid subscription in a good way. I mean, Maybe they get 100,000 people because they've got whatever 100 million who like visit People magazine. But it's not going to be like a needle.
- [42:21]
Host 2
And so when you say it's not. It's not going to work, you just mean it's not going to get to a scale where it's like large enough to maybe run paid ads on a regular basis or that kind of thing.
- [42:29]
Nathan
Yeah, yeah. It's really. It's really hard. Most of the people who scale paid subscriptions scale it organically now. I think paid is very tough. Some people are making paid work, but it's. You got to play the long game. It's like you. You require a subscriber for about as much as you make on that subscriber in the first year. And so where you start to actually make money is like year two, year three. That's a long game, right? That's a long game to play. What do you guys think? I mean, have you seen killer subscription newsletters work? I mean, I think the big audience thing, like, Lenny Richetzky has done this very well. Stratecheri has done this very well. There's examples.
- [43:06]
Host 2
But does Ben Thompson of Stratecheri even run paid ads or does.
- [43:09]
Nathan
No, not paid. So that's the organic thing.
- [43:11]
Host 2
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Especially with, like, a lot of the paid subscriptions and paid newsletters are on substack and you don't get many good analytics. So it's really hard to say, like, is this working? Is this not working? Did they actually come from a paid ad? Did they not?
- [43:24]
Nathan
Yeah, we're trying it, by the way. So, like, you know, we have. I think we've done a good job of like, we've done it multiple times now where there were multiple ad monetized newsletters that we have scaled to above $100,000 a month and spend profitably. Then we went to like, affiliate, and we worked with this big affiliate company called Rev Ventures. They own a newsletter called the Points Guy. They've Never worked with an outside agency. They were very skeptical. We have skilled them. You know, they. They spend now in the top 5 of newsletters per month. And so, you know, we'll see. Where I want to go next is like, oh, can we go solve subscription and also like niche B2B, like where you want to get executives and like really qualified people on the list. So that's kind of what we're working with, like five or six pretty heavy hitter subscription newsletters right now. But we've just gotten started like in the last like two or three weeks. So I'm kind of like, I'm giving a bunch of problems, but I try to solve it and see what we can do.
- [44:18]
Host 2
If someone were starting a B2B newsletter today, what do you think the biggest opportunity that is not well known is?
- [44:24]
Nathan
Tools. I'll say two important things. So industry dive again. $100 million plus revenue company. A lot of the industries they entered, they were not first or the second or the third newsletter to enter those industries. What they cared more about was like, is this industry highly regulated? So they care about news because shit's like changing all the time. Or do people spend a lot of money because then, oh, advertisers spend a. In order to get like a paying customer from our newsletters? Or do people meet at like trade shows and conferences? Because then we can go, oh, we go find our advertisers, we can go find our executive readers. Like all those are really critical ingredients in B2B. And B2B is. I think most newsletters are an execution game. You do not need to be first. Like, the rundown is just. And this is no disrespect to Rowan because he's an incredible operator and they write amazing content and Rowan is winning AI. I mean, nobody in my opinion is close to Rowan in the AI space. But the rundown is like Morning Brew but for AI. And so, so it's. It's like, it's an. It's an execution game. It's not like, you don't have to be the only one doing something. Yeah, this stuff that would be important in B2B. Oh, shoot. There was something I wanted to say. I forgot it. Wait, what was it again?
- [45:33]
Host 2
I was just asking if there's like a good, like.
- [45:36]
Nathan
Oh, oh, yeah, I've got it. Okay, so, okay. Where I think people are not spending a ton of time are tools. So like, like, so one of my buddies worked at Figma and when they went public like three or four, whatever weeks ago, I can't Remember when it was, he was sending us all these text messages. He's all the, all the sales guys at Figma were like trading text and it's like so that IPO was huge. There are salespeople who made $1 million, $10 million, like some of the top salespeople made like $15 million in that IPO. Just, just like employees. Right. Because they got Stock you know, five years ago in Figma. It's like a, I can't even remember a $10 billion plus company or something like that. Why isn't there a newsletter? Maybe there is a newsletter that's like we teach you everything. Figma, you know, like that's the best for like figma. Like pick whatever your giant tool is, you know, like that, you know, replit, Replit or whatever. You know, it could be any of those things. I think being the barnacle like on a giant tool like that would be really valuable.
- [46:35]
Host 2
Yeah. Because then you could eventually maybe even sell to that company and then there you go. They already have the content and the distribution and everything.
- [46:42]
Nathan
Exactly, exactly. You could do hiring, you know, for instance, so there's like there's a newsletter. I don't know if I'm supposed to say. Although they do talk about it. They talk about publicly. Yeah, yeah. So there's a newsletter called Fit Insider and it's these two guys who sold a fitness like gym company and so they're really well known amongst like, like operators in that space. So they have a bunch of like high profile people who read their newsletter. You know they, if you go look on their LinkedIn like they're doing hiring services because they have a bunch of cool fitness wellness, you know, operators on their, on their newsletter. And so like that now they've turned that into like a B2B service. Well like oh wait, what is Figma going to have? It's probably going to have a bunch of like cracked designers and like full stack engineers. Oh, okay, cool. If you take the best people on that you could do a high like there's a bunch of different optionalities you could do just by focusing on a tool. Because that tool is basically implies. Right. You've got a bunch of designers. So yeah, I think there's cool stuff.
- [47:35]
Host 1
There's a lot of people who do courses for tools like how to learn with Obsidian or Notion or you know, stuff like that even Canva to some degree. But yeah, you don't, you're right, you don't really see a ton of I guess tool specific newsletters for that. That kind of market. And that could always branch into kind of courses or memberships or communities.
- [47:53]
Nathan
Yeah, it's important to know your options. Right? So the. So what is tools technically set inside? It sits inside the second thing I mentioned, which was jobs help me do better at my job. That's like a category of newsletters you want to be in. And so, like, okay, well, what's a real example of that, Ms. Excel makes millions of dollars every year selling information on how you become, like, cracked at, like, VBA and, like, pivot tables and, you know, vlookup and index match in Excel. And, like, people pay for that. Oh, well, what if you were really good at Excel, but, like, you wanted to pair tool with a niche? Well, there's a company called Wall Street Prep that has sold a bunch of courses on how you become, like, an investment banker or get really good at modeling in a private equity context. And they were doing that to consumers. Well, then they said, oh, well, actually, let me take scale plus niche and actually go from B2C to B2B. So now if you go work at Goldman Sachs, the people who train you are not Goldman Sachs people. Wall Street Prep comes in and Goldman pays them to train you. So this is why it's important to understand the menu, because. Okay, jobs. Okay, jobs, tools. Do I go B2B? Do I go B2C? Do I go high? Ticket high? Like, you want to have this, like, mapped out in your head so that you know all the places on the board that you can go with your newsletter. Wow.
- [49:02]
Host 2
Brilliant. I love it.
- [49:03]
Host 1
Smart.
- [49:05]
Host 2
This is awesome. Um, I know we're at the top of the hour, so we can jump off here shortly if you have to run, but. Awesome.
- [49:11]
Nathan
I just have time. I mean, are you guys busy? You got stuff going on?
- [49:14]
Host 2
I don't.
- [49:15]
Host 1
I don't. I don't.
- [49:16]
Nathan
I don't want to. I don't. I don't want to trick you and, like, keep you captive.
- [49:19]
Host 2
No, no, no, it's good. So, okay, so wait, dig into this FIGMA idea a little bit more. So you're saying, like, if you were building out, like, I don't know, send out one awesome tip for figma a week or something. Like, what do you even envision that looking like?
- [49:32]
Nathan
Yeah, so I think what I would do is probably tutorials, guides, and, like, how to do something really, really well in figma. So. So as an example, there's a guy, there's a. So, okay, let's say, how do you get the audience? Probably the best place to get audience for Figma, because it's a visual thing, is to do reels on Instagram, because that's discovery, right? Reels sends you to new audiences with videos, not posts. But reels or do that on TikTok. Well, you can show like doing an amazing, like, I don't know, let's. Let's say you're doing it around like mobile app design and there's some like, really cool, like, you know, swivel or some really amazing, like, paywall design that works really, really well. And it's like, that's like really pretty or onboarding sequence. Okay, cool. People are. That's like going really viral because it's like beautiful and designers interested in that content. I was like, hey, if you want like this Figma template, I just made it for you. So not to think about the hex codes, you know, think of the animation. You have to think about, like all this stuff you think about. I have the template sign up to my newsletter, it's in the description. Or if you're on Instagram, because you can use manychat, comment, the world word, you know, animation, or Figma, and I'll send it to you. Email gate the template. Now the person's on your Figma newsletter and you've sent them the template. And now maybe your content is like, sending templates. Maybe it's that plus, like, tips on like, becoming a better, you know, designer. Maybe that can extend beyond just like tactical, you know, Figma stuff. So I'm not a designer, so I don't know a ton about this. For instance, like, if you are, I'll give an example for, you know, for Excel. Like, like, I used to be a consultant at this company called bcg when he's like, fancy, fancy strategy consulting places. And like a big thing on our training for Excel is like, yes, it's important to be good at Excel, but when you're building a model, it's actually really important to like, map out on a whiteboard what are the inputs for your model and like, the data you needed to get to get. And how does that tie to, like, how you bubble up or predict revenue or the size of a market before you get into the model. So I don't know, like, like that's an example of like, it's actual qualitative thing. Like a skill thing contributes to, like, your ability to be good technically. I'm sure there's some version of that in the design world. So you could start to like, map that out. What are all the things the designer needs in their tool? Belt to be good beyond just the choose these colors, do this animation, think about this widget.
- [51:40]
Host 1
It's like theory before actual practical skill to some degree.
- [51:45]
Nathan
Yeah, yeah. And people want both, right? So like, like on LinkedIn, you know, I'll do posts where I'm like an example of what we are talking about right now. This is like kind of meta, but like there's like doing things right and then there's choosing the right things to do. So doing things, rights. Like, I've perfected my welcome email and all this stuff. And all this stuff. Oh, what? I'm in the wrong niche. I'm in a niche that's actually really hard to monetize. Choosing the right thing to do actually first would be really, really important. So you want that kind of like, what's the framework? And they also want really like tactical stuff. So like when I write, you know, we wrote a big case study on like the $200,000 launch with Jesse. And so I, I literally just showed people, like, here are the emails that we wrote. Did the revenue. You want to have both of those things. Tell people how to think and then tell people what to do. Show people what to do. I think those are all very important.
- [52:32]
Host 2
No, I like this idea. This is brilliant because I was not expecting you to go down this path. When it, when I was said like, what's the B2B play you would do? And you said tools, I was like, that's interesting. Tell me more. But makes sense. I mean, it's kind of like what Ms. Excel did just in a different.
- [52:46]
Nathan
It's a pretty niche down. Right? I mean, you, you, you know, I saw, I talked about this on a different POD thing, but like, I was scrolling Instagram like three months ago now, and I saw this, this like ad for like a paid ads agency that worked dog e commerce brands. I clicked through because I like to look at people's funnels. But in my head I was like, dude, this is terrible. Like, this has got to be the tiniest business. Like, what a terrible idea. And then I go to LinkedIn and you can click the little insights thing on LinkedIn. It will tell you how many employees people have and whether they're going up and whether they're going down. And it was like 25 employees, like up and to the right. I was like, crazy. But that, that's. So if you think you are not niched down enough, you're probably wrong. And it makes sense, right? Because like, okay, if you're a designer, like, I'm sure there's a bunch of different design tools. Like, you want the person who will give you figma. If you're the e commerce company and you have like a dog food brand, like, do you want, like, somebody who just does all general, like DTC or Facebook ads? Or do you want the guy who, like, his whole life, all he thinks about, he wakes up every single day and all he thinks about is like, how do I get people to buy like, wet dog food for like $30 a month? You know what I mean? Like, you want that guy. You know, that's why people pay Josh $200,000 a month. Like, Josh doesn't do podcast ads. And, you know, static graph is all this thing that he wakes up, he stands out in the 80 degree heat, and when it's the, the, the, the winter, he flies to Miami or LA and does it. Or he goes underground at the subways and he does the ads. Like, that's the guy for street interview ads. Like, you. You want to be that? That's. That's what you want to be?
- [54:21]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [54:22]
Host 1
Wow, that's epic.
- [54:23]
Host 2
I like it. I like it.
- [54:25]
Nathan
Yeah.
- [54:26]
Host 2
You're making me want to start a figma newsletter. If anybody's good at figma, reach out. You can write it. I'll help you grow it. Let's go.
- [54:35]
Nathan
I guess, you know, you should take, like, percentages.
- [54:38]
Host 2
I know, right?
- [54:38]
Nathan
Have you guys thought about, like, how do you guys think about growing your businesses? And the podcast, how do you guys think about that?
- [54:46]
Host 2
Great question. I don't know. The podcast TBD right now is just fun. It's fun to have conversations and, like, it turns into other things and like, getting to know people like you and CJ and, you know, Caitlin Burgoyne more. So it's just a good time to create more content. I think people really enjoy the podcast just because they get to see you and hear how you think, and it's almost like you're a new dimension. Totally. Yeah. It's like your newsletter where you like writing these case studies, but you're just like, talking to people and it's just like more of a trust builder. I don't know. I don't see it getting huge. Huge. But I think it's just like a fun, like, consistent, ongoing play to have, so.
- [55:22]
Nathan
Oh, and that's the right way to think about it. Right? It's like, I like. So we. I launched a podcast with Beehive called Personal ipo. And like, the smartest thing for me to do actually probably in the short term would have been to, like, do, like, a newsletter podcast. Because it actually doesn't. Like, you're saying, like, small, like it's a bad thing, but. But actually, like, you're small because, like, if somebody. You are so hyper specific to the right person, like, if somebody. Anyone who has a newsletter should, like, listen to this podcast. Right. You actually want to be there. My process with, like, personal IPO was like, I want. Like, I may want to do newsletters and other stuff. Like, other things I could build onto the business in the long term that I don't even know. I don't even know. They're unknown. Unknowns. I don't even know to think about them. Well, I should have. One thing that I do that is broader and is tam. And so personal ipo, it's still specific because it's like, we talk to founders like Sam Par, Dicky Bush, Justin Welsh, these people who. It's basically the feed, like the original newsletter, but like a podcast, who have built, like, incredible businesses and have a personal brand, but it's much broader than just the newsletter stuff. Because I. I don't. I don't know what I'll do in, like, 10 years, but. But I think it's good to, like, have some type of asset that I've built that is like that and to be working on that now. That's why I think.
- [56:33]
Host 2
No, I think it's a good one. I listened to the Sampar episode. It was good. I enjoyed it.
- [56:36]
Nathan
Yeah, he's fun. He's. He's kind of like. He's so many good stories. Like, I don't know. It's kind of just like winding up like a doll, and you just, like, let him go. I don't even need to be here, you know? Like, I just say some words. Like, everyone's. When they just.
- [56:53]
Host 2
It's the most entertaining doll.
- [56:54]
Nathan
So good.
- [56:55]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [56:55]
Nathan
Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, it. It was what? Like, he's so. He's so good. Like. Like, we've talked to other guests, and all the guests have been awesome. But, like, when I was with him then, it was kind of like, oh, man. Like, I. You could just. You could talk for five hours. Like, you just. There's. You're so. I think Sean Perry calls it generative. Like somebody who can just take one thing and build on it like, 10 different ways. He's like. He's the most generative person I've ever spent time with. It's. It's. It's insane.
- [57:20]
Host 1
I mean, that's why his podcast is what it is in Part. Right. Like, he's just. I very rarely will, like, laugh out loud to a podcast, but when him and Sean start laughing and they're going off on tangents, and it's just. It's. Yeah, you can't help but help. A chuckle. And then that just keeps me hooked as a listener.
- [57:37]
Nathan
So. He's so real, you know, which I think is hard to, like, I always remember. I think think this has happened multiple episodes, but he's like, you know, he'll be talking about a guest. He's like, let him. What is it? What did the kids say? Like, let. Let him bake. Let him bake. And she was like, no, no, no, dog. Come on. Let him cook. Let him cook. And he's all these fun, like, you know, like, I don't know, Samisms. Yeah, it's cool. Like, it makes me feel better because really, their whole podcast is this way, is like, they. They have these uber successful people on. Right. And it turns out. And we're. We're kind of doing this with personal ipo, it turns out, like, oh, man. Like. Like they make mistakes or, like, they up in this thing or this thing isn't going well. And it's. It's not that you wish for those things, but it's kind of like, oh, I. I feel like I up all the time. So it's to hear, oh, this person, I think is, you know, up here. Like, they're just like me. Like, that's such a important thing. I'm a big fan of this phrase. Like, it doesn't matter what. It doesn't matter what ideas are true. It matters what ideas serve you. And the idea that, like, whether it's true or not, that, like, somebody who's, like, really, really made it deals with the same struggles, and it's just been. The game is actually staying in the game for as long as possible is the, like, things you do. That is an extremely helpful thought to have. And I. I get that thought. I get that feeling from that.
- [58:43]
Host 2
Yeah, yeah. And they leave in all, like, the things that other people would cut out, like, the mistakes and, like, the weird things that they say, and I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [58:50]
Nathan
It's good.
- [58:51]
Host 2
Cool. Well, this has been fun. I'm gonna go not talk with my bronchitis and. And hang out. No, this is a blast. I really appreciate.
- [59:01]
Nathan
Don't forget to pee on it.
- [59:05]
Host 2
So before we started recording.
- [59:06]
Nathan
Oh, no, it's a jellyfish thing. Yeah, yeah.
- [59:09]
Host 2
Before we started recording, I was saying that I went back to the doctor yesterday and they were like, we can't really do anything. And I was like, no, there's gotta be something that you can do to make this go away. And Nathan was like, just pee on it like a jellyfish. It's like, oh, my God.
- [59:23]
Host 1
Of all the things.
- [59:24]
Host 2
Of all the things.
- [59:25]
Nathan
It's always worth it.
- [59:29]
Host 2
Yeah. Well, on that note, where. Where can people find you and learn more about what you're doing?
- [59:35]
Nathan
Yeah. Find me on. On LinkedIn, Nathan, man, I. I write what I. What I hope is. Is really tactical stuff on building a business with a newsletter and personal ipo. We talk about. We take big people like Sam Parr, Dickie Bush, Justin Walsh, Jesse Puji. We're gonna do, you know, Alex and Austin, all these different people. And we talk about finances, funnels and feelings. So, like, we help you build your business and we. We get into the feels, which is fun. So, Heidi, go check it out.
- [60:05]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [60:05]
Nathan
Awesome.
- [60:05]
Host 2
Yeah, it's a great show. I'm excited to listen more. Thanks for coming on, Nathan. This was fun.
- [60:09]
Host 1
Yeah, thanks.
- [60:10]
Nathan
This is great, you guys having me.