455 | Creating Your Entrepreneurial Flywheel | Nathan Barry

22:55And that's really, really valuable. And undoubtedly, you probably have hundreds of skills that you're at the 80 % or better level. And when you add that skill stack up and you put those side by side, there are very few people in the world that have your precise skill stack. Same with mine. I mean, the random bizarro things of CPA and travel hacker and podcast, right? Like it's crazy. And then all these little skills that have been built, like that just doesn't exist. Each of us in our own ways are one of a kind. Many of the people listening to this are one of a kind with that skill stack. and you have to then, like you said, look for, okay, how could I build this into some type of income or side hustling?

23:36You said something that I think might pique the interest of some people, which is like, okay, it's actually pretty easy to do that. But I think for a lot of people, that's the limiting belief that I think catches a lot of people. And it goes back to even what you started the episode with, which is, hey, I think I can raise my income significantly. I'm pretty sure I can always do that. A lot of people don't believe that in their heart of parts. I love for you to talk to that person as someone who's been through this from every stage, really as a member of the FI community. Yeah. So one thing to make clear, I think it is simple, but not easy.

24:10And those are different things. There's a lot of things. This happens in investing, right? Investing is simple unless we make it overly complicated. And so we're out here going, okay, what stock should I pick? How should I, which financial advisor should I hire? you know okay i went from 100 i tipped over six figures now i have seven figures like now obviously i should change everything and it's like no no it's very simple yeah you know a vanguard investment fund functions the same way at 100 000 as it does at a million as it does at 10 million these things can be simple so long as we don't over complicate them and i think that a lot of these side hustles that you see people especially in the creator space they're often quite simple, but they can be very difficult to achieve.

24:53So what I mean, when I say that it's simple, there's kind of three major components. One is you need to have a skill that you are good at. We'll say at least in the 80th percentile. And maybe we'll go four major components, a skill that you're in the 80th percentile at, some sort of unique perspective, right? Where you're saying, this is the angle that I am coming at it with. Anything where, you know, you're saying this is who I am, right? I'm teaching travel hacking, but I'm doing it as a single mom of two young kids, right? There's just something where it's not completely vanilla. You're bringing in your experience.

25:29Or another thing would be sharing your journey, right? I'm trying to build a software company to 5 ,000 a month and recurring revenue within six months, and I'm sharing my journey. That's like, okay. And that was literally your journey. Yeah, that is exactly what I did. For everybody listening. And you put that up publicly. I did. But so that's just a little bit of a twist on it. It says like, okay, this is worth following. The third thing is you need to build the skill of teaching everything you know, of sharing and teaching. Like, Hey, I learned this thing. There's tons of travel hackers out there who learned how to do the, like the basics of travel hacking.

26:00And then they just did it and they didn't tell us all, you know, like that's fairly normal. Right. But there's other step of like, learn new thing, implement and tell people about it. Right. And if you can build that skill of teaching, that's kind of the third component. And the fourth is showing up consistently for a long period of time. And most people drop one of those steps. They either, if we, if we kind of work through them in category number one, a lot of people will see what you're doing, what I'm doing, all these creators, and they go, oh, I'm going to jump straight in and I'm going to be a creator like that.

26:35But they have no marketable skill. They're not a designer, developer, CPA, copywriter, video editor, something. It's like, you got to have that foundational skill that you're actually good at. Otherwise, honestly, I don't want to hear from you. You know, it's like, or you got to be going on a really unique journey. So I would say go and build those practical skills of some kind. I started in design and then I started talking about, you know, marketing and business and on from there. But I'm not like, let me launch and teach business when it's like, hold on, hasn't this guy sold a dollar as an entrepreneur?

27:07Right. The age old you've made more in selling courses than you made in running. Yep. So the second thing of a mistake is on the unique perspective, people usually just make something generic. I see this in people who are trying to make niche sites or they're trying to just rank for search terms or something like that. And all I would say to them is like, breathe some personality into it. Say why you're doing something, who you are, put your photo on the about page, like actually make something happen there. Actually, Pat Flynn has this great talk that he gave at our conference, craft and commerce.

27:40Oh, it's been 2018 or something. And he, he comes on and he's a really polished speaker. And so he comes on, comes up to the center of the stage and he has this backpack that he's famous for and he gets on his backpack and in his backpack, he pulls out a book and he opens the book and he starts reading it. And it's a children's book and it's called llama llama red pajama, which I have read to my kids. yep very familiar and he's you're like maybe even a little too familiar he's reading this book and everyone's like what is going on first he's got everyone's attention like perfectly because that is not what they expected like business guru pat to open with so has a hundred percent attention from the audience and so what he does is he he finishes reading the entire book and first as a speaker i love that he reads the entire book because he could have made his point but he like drags it out so he's like built all the suspense like where is he going with this?

28:32And then he finishes that and says like, you know, like, oh, thanks for listening. Like some nice thing that you might say to your kid or, you know, like one step removed from like, and have a good night. It would have been awesome if he might jump and walk off the stage. Yeah. But then what he does is he plays this video of, I believe it's ludicrous on a LA radio station reading, really wrapping the same book. and it sounds completely different. He's got a beat down and it's something they're just doing like spur of the moment. And Pat's point is that this is the exact same content, right? You could read the same content to your kids in a bedtime story on stage to 300 entrepreneurs, you know, and that's going to have one feel or like here's ludicrous wrapping the same content.

29:16Yeah. Right. And so what he leaves everyone with is there are no unique messages. Like it's all been said before. If we're a CPA giving tax advice, like look, it's all been said before. We've written endless articles about five. We've, you know, all this stuff, right? It's all been said before. So he says, there are no unique messages, only unique messengers. And so finding that angle, what is your unique way? And I think that that often just comes down to having your own, like sharing what's unique about your story, why you do things. And then what's unique about your journey and destination?

29:48Where are you actually going? Right? If you're saying, Hey, I am a new software designer and I am teaching everything I know along the journey. And my goal is to get a job at Apple, right? So I'm going to learn everything I can. And I'm trying to get a job at Apple. And who knows if that will take me two years or 10 years, but that's the mission that I'm on. Follow along and learn with me. Right. I would do that. I would hit subscribe on that newsletter because it's not like, you know, here's one of a hundred sites where can learn design. It's like, oh, this person, like I'm connecting with them and their goal and they're also teaching me.

30:26And then, yeah, there's so many things in that, but that's the angle that I'd take. Yeah. I love that. So, right. It's a, there are a hundred sites. There are probably 10 ,000 sites teaching design, but they're all those nameless, faceless, just brands. And I think we figure out real quick, you don't want to follow a brand. You want to follow a person and just having that unique perspective. I did that with travel miles 101. It was, hey, we are regular family guys, in our case, the two of us who founded it, who are looking to take our families on one to two nearly free vacations a year. That was it.

31:00We're not 22 year olds flying around in Singapore suites or in first class, right? That's great. And that's great for many people, but that's not great for us and the millions of families like ours, right? You're not going to get advice that's perfectly optimal. And for someone who maybe has endless amounts of time, you're going to get advice that's practical for you. And I think that's really valuable, right? And like you're saying, another way is build in public. Like that example of the person who's going to get a job at Apple or frankly, you building in public and just being radically honest about, hey, here's the money that ConvertKit's making.

31:36And you had, like you said, a very modest goal at the beginning. And it sounds almost like a fly goal. Hey, we need to make X number of dollars per month. And the way my mind went was, okay, this is enough to cover my lifestyle then. And that's the goal. You know, actually where that$5 ,000 number comes from, that exactly covered my lifestyle. No kidding. Right? I made$60 ,000 a year as a software designer before, right? That's$5 ,000 a month. Yeah. And that would 100 % cover it. And the reason that I wanted it, I think I've talked about this on a podcast before. My wife and I wanted to start a coffee shop.

32:10and I knew that a coffee shop is a terrible business. Yeah. And so you shouldn't do that. And so I thought like as a young married couple, this is something that we're going to embark on and like this could cause us a huge amount of stress. And so what if I could get one of my digital ventures to be at the point where it covered all of our expenses and then the coffee shop just had to support itself. It didn't have to support itself and us. And then maybe we can like embark on this dream without it causing all of this stress or whatever else. We later decided we didn't want to start a coffee shop.

32:39We wanted to get a farm instead and we did all of that. But that was kind of the thing, like a specific goal and then tying the financials to it in a way that would get us stability and let us build and grow and experiment without the same pressure of like, this has to work. Otherwise, we don't have a place to live or otherwise we don't have these other things. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's the intersection of risk and something you said before, which I wrote down is what are these savings going to allow me to do? Right? How important is that? And this would be an example. We're not talking specifically savings necessarily, but okay, if I have this income stream coming in, well, then my coffee shop, my fictional coffee shop doesn't have to earn a$5 ,000 a month profit.

33:22It has to simply break even. And that's a whole different thing when you have to just break even on a coffee shop. That's probably doable, maybe. But again, what are these savings going to allow me to do? And I'd love for you to dive into that a little bit more because it sounds like just the way that that rolled off your tongue before. It sounds like that's something you've thought deeply about. Yeah, because it's all like money is just a means to an end. It is useful. Like I love playing the game of making money. And so it is useful in that sense of this is just fun. Sometimes people are like if I talk about a bigger goal that I have, they're like, why don't you have enough?

33:57And it's like, yeah, I have way more than enough. And I have big plans for the money. But also like this is just fun. and making money is one of my hobbies. But I think often we set goals and we don't know what that means. Okay, if I get to 5 ,000 a month in recurring revenue from my business, what does that mean? And if you get really specific, it's like, oh, that covers all of our expenses. Or maybe, I actually like it when people have a playful relationship with money. I think often we can get too stressed out about it or make perfect decisions or whatever else. When you have good control over both your earnings and your expenses, then why not play around with it?

34:33And so if you're like, hey, I really want to buy a Tesla Model 3 and that's going to cost this amount. Like how quickly with my ability to earn money can I come up with the however you want to think about it? You know, the$40 ,000 or something to buy the car or to cover the payment or any of these things and make it playful. And say like, OK, I'm going to get my side hustle to$1 ,000 or$2 ,000 a month and that's going to cover it. You know, and then I'm going to save up in this way. I think it's just really fun to tie those things together and to think about, okay, what is this money going to let me do?

35:08And then even make some like, assuming your basics are covered and you're like saving and investing in a good way, then like make some non-optimized decisions where you're saying like, oh, I don't know. I'm not a watch person, but I have friends who are right. And so, okay, they're going to spend some absurd amount of money on a watch. And it's like, yeah, but I was like playing this game over here that got me the money. And it just makes everything a lot more fun. And to tie it back, usually to play that side game, you had to learn a new skill, right? And so, yeah, absolutely. Learn SEO to get rankings, to then get the ad revenue.

35:42And that's where you actually won. And the short-term payoff is that you got the watch that you wanted to buy. Yeah, that's cool. And even down to, again, the skill building, right? So you talked about short-term rentals, which I assume means Airbnb, though it's not exclusive, but you undoubtedly have many skills from your day job, if you will, that almost certainly helped in marketing your Airbnb. I'm just, I'm taking a leap here, but some type of even just rudimentary copywriting, obviously you are at a much higher level than rudimentary, but that has to help marketing. Are there algorithms to get your short-term rental to show up higher?

36:20I suspect most people, and this is the key, it's not even whether you've done this, frankly, but most people wouldn't even know to ask the question. Right. Whereas you do. Well, if you've made videos and you've tried to do something on YouTube, you've understood there's an algorithm behind it, right? And that is intuitive to anyone who has spent time in that space. And if you look at Airbnb, you're like, wait, this is a marketplace just like YouTube. And you realize every marketplace has an algorithm behind it. And when you've played in three or four marketplaces, it's super obvious. And you're just asking the question, hey, what are the ranking factors in this algorithm?

36:53And you want to know. like tell me the rules of the game and i will play it to the best of my ability but a lot of people don't even realize that there's a game being played and so once you've played this well in one or two marketplaces you realize the skills carry over to these other ones you just immediately walk into something you're like it's an algorithm you know just tell me the ranking factors let me you know read some tutorials and all of that and i will play the game according to the rules set out but a lot of people are like i don't know i just i put up a listing on airbnb i released a YouTube video.

37:24I've got a podcast, you know, here are the things I don't know what makes it tick. So I guess I'll just keep creating, which is not bad when in doubt, just keep creating. That's a good baseline. But yeah, if you've, if you've been exposed to marketplaces, then, uh, I was going to say manipulating them. It's not really, it's not manipulating them. It's just playing the game according to the rules they set out becomes fairly second nature. Yeah. Agreed. And it is important what you just said a minute ago, which is goes back to number four on your list, right? showing up consistently for a long period of time.

37:53So clearly that's almost like it is necessary for everything else you need to create. But yeah, like you're saying, okay, this is the, uh, the definition of insanity for some people of, right? Like if you just keep creating and your podcast is getting the same seven downloads every time for 500 episodes in a row, well, you probably need to do something additional right at that point. But I think clearly by any definition, producing content consistently, it's just, it's essential. And most people, I think a lot of people give up too early. And I suspect you've seen that a lot. Yeah. The way that I've heard it phrased and I quote back again, again, is show up every day for two years.

38:34Because so many people try a new side hustle and they're like, okay, I tried this. Maybe it's a blog, maybe a YouTube channel or whatever else. I worked super, super hard on it for three weekends in a row. Or when I felt energy towards it, I got a bunch done. It's like, that's not going to do it. Like all of these things to give you an idea. So ConvertKit right now is a business that makes$36 million a year in revenue. Okay. Two years in. So I worked on it every single day for two years. And at that point it made$2 ,000 a month in revenue. Holy cow. For two years of work. Two straight years. Right.

39:07And you did burn the boats, right? You left your, that was your job at that point. I was a content creator. Right, right, right. Okay. So you had multiple, let's say side hustle. Yep. So I was independent and And I'd spent two years both being a content creator, writing books and selling courses and all of that on Top of Design, and then also running ConvertKit. And so that's the thing. I made a decision. We talked about burning boats. I didn't burn the boats, but I shipped them off. I didn't leave them there. Because I basically said, I cannot effectively do these two things at once. And they're both suffering.

39:39And so I'm going to stop doing the thing that makes money, which in this case was running my newsletter, writing books on design. I'm going to go all in on ConvertKit. And I'm going to use my savings. In this case, I took$50 ,000 in savings that I'd built up from before. Again, what will the money buy you? And a lot of times in my life, the money buys me the ability to invest in the next thing. And so I took that money, put it into Convergit. We were at$2 ,000 a month in revenue. Instead of just working with freelancers, I hired full-time employees who were 100 % dedicated. Quick aside, I've got a friend who says, if you're hiring freelancers and you're paying for half of their time, you're getting a quarter of their attention.

40:18they'll do the job for you and they'll do it well. But if it's something that you need to build a software startup from the ground up, it needs people all in on it. And so hiring full-time employees and saying this is all that you're doing, that really made the difference, right? And so that was a go all in moment. And in that next year, we grew convert it from 2 ,000 a month in January to 98 ,000 a month in revenue 12 months later. And the year after that was from 98 ,000 to 500 ,000 a month. and then it's been up from there. But it was that, you'll see these graphics or memes or whatever else of like the hockey stick or something.

40:54It's like most people quit here where there's basically no perceptible improvement. And that was ConvertKit two years in. The logical thing to do based on, you say, well, past performance is not an indicator of success. Like looking at past performance, the logical thing would be to shut down the business. But I felt like there were things that I hadn't tried yet. You could still iterate on. and then that ended up scaling. So even the show up every day for two years, had I quit at the two-year mark, I would not have the business that I have today. Wow. And that would have been perfectly defensible, right?

41:26I mean, by any measure, anybody you talked to would have said, okay, yeah, you gave it the old college try, more so, more than that, right? And it just, it didn't work out. That's amazing. So right, you went from like a$24 ,000 annual run rate to a 1.2 million or thereabouts. And it sounds like it was 2016, the year of inflection. Or 2015? 2015. 2015. Okay. Yep. That is incredible. Was there any true point of inflection? Like just for, I don't know if this is going to be honestly very helpful for any other entrepreneur. Was there one nugget? So the three things that I did, or four things, I went all in with my time.

42:03I said, okay, this is all that I do. Next, I chose a specific niche. So we were like email marketing for people who need email marketing services, content creators kind of. first I showed authors that didn't quite work. The messaging wasn't right. It was getting a lot of beginners. And then later I, like after a month or two, I shifted it to professional bloggers. So I said, we're doing email marketing for professional bloggers. And I got a lot of people back then in even 2015 being like, can blogging be a profession? It's like, yes, I can look at these. You know, but then there are other people who were saying like, I am a professional blogger.

42:36If there's a tool made just for me, like, great, let's go. Then the next thing that I did It is a lot of direct sales. Because you can't list everyone on the internet who needs email marketing services, but you can list every professional blogger, especially if you go in a specific niche. And so what I would do is say, okay, we've got a handful of customers. We had a paleo recipe blog that was really popular. We had a men's fashion blog that was popular. We had like a interval training fitness blog that was popular. And so I basically drew a little circle around each one of those. Okay, let's expand slightly.

43:08who are 10 other people like this person and that gave me a very i could list them out and i could reach out to them with direct sales and say hey is there anything frustrating you with mailchimp and everyone always had frustration there's always frustration that's why i started the company you know so it's a good lead-in and then that could turn into sales sales conversations and the last thing that i did that made a huge difference is i said hey we have a concierge migrations program, which is a really fancy way of saying, I will open up your MailChimp and WordPress and everything on one screen and your new ConvertKit account on the other.

43:43And I will copy it all over for you. I'll FTP into your site and change everything. And it was crazy low revenue work or like dollar per hour was probably five bucks an hour because you're spending all this time for a$50 a month account. But what I realized is that every account that I got was making the next sale the tiniest bit easier. And so then that built momentum. And so we ended up going from January at 2000 a month to April at 5000 a month. June was 10 ,000. July was 15. September was 25 ,000. Like you could see it compound because word of mouth really, really kicked in. But it took, do you know the analogy of a flywheel?

44:24I do from you, actually. But why don't you, because I literally have your creator flywheels article open on my browser right now. Why don't you illuminate everybody? Because this is fantastic. And it's something Jonathan and I have been talking about behind the scenes. Oh, yeah. So I love talking about flywheels. And my first exposure to a flywheel was in the country of Lesotho, which is landlocked inside of South Africa. And I was there working with an orphanage and we were installing a well. And so, you know, we drilled this or had this company come in and drill a well. and it's like, okay, what pump do you put on top of it?

44:55They don't have reliable electricity there, at least not at the time. And so we didn't want an electric powered pump that would make their source of water go in and out. So the first pump, if you think about an analog pump, would be something you might see at a campsite, right? A long handle coming out, you pump it up and down. Every time you pump, you get a spurt of water. If you keep the pumping going, then you'll get a consistent amount of water. That would be a lot if you're trying to have like a hundred kids rely on this thing. And so this engineer that we were with installed a flywheel. And what that is is a large metal wheel that sits on top of it.

45:28It's really hard to turn at first. Like when we had that going, my friend Luke and I were on either side of it and we're like trying, like we're bracing and leaning into it to get it to turn. And we turn it together and the first rotation is super slow and hard. And the second rotation is a tiny bit easier and easier and easier. And pretty soon he steps away and I'm spinning it with two hands and then one hand. And then I can keep the momentum going with one finger. And so what it's doing is kind of following these three basic rules that I define for a flywheel. First is that instead of the up and down motion of a traditional hand pump, this is circular.

46:04So there's no start and stop to the momentum. The conclusion of one series of tasks or whatever rolls straight into the next. The second thing is that each rotation gets easier with time. And the third law is that each rotation produces more. and if you think about that laws two and three combined are pretty fascinating because you're like wait i'm going to be putting in less effort over time and getting more results like this is too good to be true like what are you selling me yeah but if we go back to my direct sales example for convert kit it was brutal to get those first accounts right it was so much work people are like who uses this product why should i use it do you have this feature it's like no no no but if You can convince one person to do it.

46:47And you're like, hey, I'll switch your entire site for free. I know a thing or two about email marketing. So I'll like consult and advise on this. And we have this like really difficult turn of the flywheel to get$50 a month in revenue. And so we're making$2 an hour. This is not good. But flywheel turned. Now the next time I learned, okay, now here's someone else who uses it. I optimize my systems a little bit. When someone goes, who uses this? I'm like, oh, Joel uses it. And they're like, oh, I know Joel. well, if it's good enough for him, it's probably good enough for me. And so it gets a tiny bit easier.

47:18And pretty soon, right, each rotation flywheel is producing more and more. And that's what we did. And I've seen this play out across so many different businesses over time, we get into a ton of creative examples or whatever else. But these flywheels is really how you build something substantial. And the most important point from a like show up consistently perspective is that you should expect it to be very difficult at first. Getting the business off the ground to get meaningful results is like you and your friend braced against the flywheel trying to get it to turn that one time. And that should not be the sign of like, well, this isn't for me.

47:55See ya. It should be like, yeah, that's the way these things work and you got to stick with it and build momentum. Yeah, I love that visual. And it really, like you said in there, this is compounding. I mean, those of us in the fly community - It's leveraging compounding, really. We're just using different terms to describe it. Exactly. But yeah, the visual makes it great because, right, we can all picture, okay, just looking at a compound interest calculator or like literally the doubling of the penny or whatever, or, hey, if you're getting 10 % on$1 ,000, well, it starts slow, but then you start seeing that 10 % using the rule of 72.

48:29I mean, this is going to double. And then it's, okay, it's 2 ,000, it's 4 ,000, it's 8 ,000, 16, 30, boom. That is the example of this, right? And it's so funny because I think I heard you on another podcast talking about examples. Like you said, you have tons of these creator examples. I think you were mentioning the podcaster Lewis Howes. And I might have it wrong, but how he reads a review at the beginning of every episode, right? And it's funny because Jonathan and I used to do that at the end of each episode. We used to give away for the review of the week, we gave away a free t-shirt. and I mean frankly like we got we have almost 5 ,000 five-star reviews on Apple podcast and obviously the podcast has been around for a while it's been really successful it's not like orders of magnitude out of the ordinary but that's more certainly more reviews than we would have gotten and it really helped and I mean honestly Nathan we went away from doing that because it was kind of a hassle to give out the t-shirt and blah blah blah and like you can always come up with an excuse but I heard you say that recently I'm like well damn I need to go back to like that's an example of a flywheel that I literally worked for me and I went away from for no reason whatsoever.

49:39There's so many things that we do where we find something that works. And then when we do that, we go, wow, that's amazing. I'm so glad I came up with that thing that works. What else could I find that works? And you're like, maybe the thing that worked. I've done this so many times in ConvertKit's growth that we don't even have time to get into all the examples. But it's pretty common to fall into that trap. But yeah, using the reviews flywheel as an example, our goal is to get listeners for the podcast. We understand that a contributing factor in the podcast ranking algorithm, right? Because we're playing in a marketplace is reviews and listeners.

50:18And so we need to get more reviews. How do we do that? Okay. Well, first I need to talk about it and ask for reviews, right? So that's the start of our flywheel. I'm telling people where to go to offer the review. The fact that when they leave a review, that's going to help me in the algorithm, which is going to help me get more listeners. Then when those listeners are listening to the show, then I'm saying, Hey, write a review. And here's a review from, you know, Joe in Indiana, right? And so someone goes, I'd like to be the next Joe in Indiana and get a shout out of my favorite podcast. So maybe I'll write a review.

50:47So you have this true flywheel where it completes the loop where reviews get listeners, listeners get more reviews and reviews get more listeners. And so you're just going around and around. And this flywheel, I'm trying to think, is it getting easier with time? It's definitely producing more with time, right? Because you're having even more reviews to choose from. More listeners to the show makes getting guests on the show, it contributes to a lot of different factors. Right. I think the holistic flywheel gets easier, not the actual review flywheel, but that's not what you're going for, right?

51:20No, but I mean, it could be like when you first do it, you might be like, and our review of the week is the only review that we got this week. Right, this one star review. Which you might call it out, right? That would also be entertaining if you're like, and Joe from Indiana said this show is a complete waste of time. So if you agree with me, you know. The host is an idiot who says um and ah a lot. Definitely got one or two of those. Yeah. But yeah, it makes the entire thing flow more easily. So yeah, once you... understand the concept of flywheels and you start to look for them everywhere, even in your own task list.

51:53Like what are the things that I do as a scattered set of tasks? Or what are the things that I am pretty good at aligning into a linear set of tasks where I'm like, hey, I'm producing a podcast and these are the steps that I do for every podcast. And then what would have to be true for me to complete that and tie the two ends together and put it into a loop where it flows one into the next and gets easier with time. And that's really where it comes into a flywheel. Yeah, I love it. I mean, that is, it has been a game changer for me. and the way I think about it, because honestly, I haven't been that focused on growth.

52:23I just, I'm doing my thing here. I'm producing content. But when you're creating something and you're creating something that resonates with people, when you actually think about it, you're doing a disservice to the community. And I mean, in a grandiose way, the world at large by not trying to spread the message. And I think that flywheel concept is great. So I'm going to take a little pause here and say, okay, I want to, I want to reinstitute this, right? I mean, I'm talking to you. You use this example. I realize I'm not doing it. Let's start again. So we're going to start up the review thing again from here on.

52:54I'm going to do a review of the week. Each podcast, obviously, we're recording this a little bit in advance, so I'll try to get this going in quick order. But we're also going to double it into the way that you send it to me as you send a screenshot of your review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and you need to be on my newsletter. So choose a v.com slash subscribe and just hit reply every single week. When you hit reply to that, it comes to me. I read every single one of these, send me a screenshot of the review, and I'm going to pick one of them a week and we're going to read it on the podcast.

53:24So I think, Nathan, does that count as a double? I don't know if we'll call them flywheels per se, but I think that's the kind of thinking that people need to really institute. Okay. I really want people on this newsletter because I think it's useful and I'm creating something that I think is really valuable and I wish I could get more people on the newsletter. Yeah. And so one addition that I'd make to that flywheel is I would then put an automated email in your newsletter to make sure that they're subscribed on the channels you care about, right? YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, et cetera, and ask them to write a review, right?

53:58So now I can hit it from two sides. I'm on the podcast saying, hey, go and subscribe. They're like, oh, right. So someone does that. But then maybe they forget to write a review or they're right. I'm listening in the car while I'm driving. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm totally going to write a review. Maybe they remember step one of like, go subscribe, but then they don't write a review. Well, guess what? A couple of days later, there's an email that shows up automatically. It's like, here's a link to click directly to write a review. So like, here we go. We're getting podcast listeners. We're getting reviews.

54:24We're getting subscribers and we're hitting it from all sides and everybody's happy. I love it. I love it. And I think for me, one of the cardinal rules of business is cutting down on friction. That's what I call it, right? Especially online business, cut down on friction. You think about how much friction there is between listening to a podcast and getting somebody to take any action on a computer. It's really hard. There's so much friction. But if you send an email, they're sitting at their phone or at their laptop, there's a lot less friction, especially if you give them the link to here's where you go and give a review on Spotify or Apple podcast.

54:59And it's just there, right? It's just you've served it up for them and you've cut friction. And the reason why we're kind of in a funny sense talking so in depth about choose a buy here is like, this is really valuable. These lessons are really valuable for anybody who's starting an online business or any type of business. It's how do you make this easier? How do you cut friction? Because honestly, people are really busy. You think about your business all the time and you think people live and breathe it. They don't. I'm here to tell you they absolutely do not. They don't think about you except when you make it easy for them and you provide them great content and you make their lives easier.

55:33Right. And when you can do that, okay, people do want to go to bat for you, but they don't want to have to, they have to find it. Like what I just did, right, Nathan? I just said, okay, go leave a review, but I didn't give you any instructions. So what about if we set up at choose a by.com slash review, right? And I'll give exact instructions. We'll have this by the time this goes live, there'll be exact instructions on how to leave review at multiple different places with the exact links, maybe some screenshots, et cetera. Well, that makes it a lot easier. Somebody can remember that we'll even set it up.

56:05So it's both slash review and slash reviews, because that's another one of my cardinal rules is don't make it plural if it's singular. And oh, God, like because people can't remember that. But now you can remember either of them slash review or slash reviews. Like those are the kind of things as a content creator you need to be thinking about. That's really good because something else with these flywheels that you can do is take a step back and how are you going to improve it with every rotation? How are you going to make it turn more easily? And we haven't even gone through rotation of the flywheel fully when you just made some pretty meaningful improvements to it that anyone can adopt where you're right.

56:39That is a messy place, you know, to give instructions to, but you can give someone such a crisp URL and optimize that. So that's the kind of thing. Someone might say, Hey, I'm going to implement the reviews flywheel. I've got it going. And maybe their pitch isn't that great. Maybe there's no reward. There's some of these things, but they started and they did it with those first few reviews. And then each cycle they're like, Oh, oh, right. Brad said I should have a reviews page. Okay, done. I'm going to implement that the next iteration. Okay. After this, I've tested different giveaways. Is it just the reading of the, of the review?

57:11Should I offer a t-shirt? Like let's try different things and see maybe we track it. Hey, reviews per week. And I'm monitoring this and I'm seeing, okay, which incentive gets more reviews and you don't have to get it all right. The first time you can start with the very simple, like lumpy version of the flywheel, and then it gets polished and spins faster and faster and then drives more results. I love it. I absolutely love it. Yeah. The flywheel concept is so important. And also just, just testing, but not getting caught up in that analysis paralysis. I think so many people think it has to be perfect the first time.

57:45It doesn't. We're both saying it absolutely does not. It can't be, it won't be. You will look back on what you created a year ago, not less five years ago, obviously, and probably be somewhat embarrassed about it. And that's fine. It's fine. You get better. That's part of the game here. So super important. But Nathan, I wanted to go back to something we were talking about before. So two things. And one of the worst things you can do as a podcaster is ask two questions, but I'm going to set up both of them and then we'll start with one. So you said, I have big plans for the money. Now you're talking about, obviously you have a significant net worth.

58:17It's tied up. A lot of it, I assume, and we don't have to get into the details, but a lot of it, I assume, is into the ownership of ConvertKit, which is most likely illiquid unless you've somehow sold off some percentage. But at some point, that will be liquid money, I assume. So big plans for the money. And then we also talked before, and you asked me about, hey, what have you been doing differently since you read Daiwa Zero? And I didn't double back and ask you. And I want to, let's start there. Okay. Oh, there's so many things. So first, happy to talk about the liquid illiquid aspect of it.

58:49ConvertKit has a private market valuation of over$200 million. So it's substantial. The valuations in the SaaS world have come down a bit from the craziness that they were, but they're still amazing compared to other businesses. So I'm like left with this problem of kind of an interesting dynamic of at one point of like a liquid net worth of about 2 million and an illiquid net worth of like 150, which is a A little lopsided, maybe in a portfolio. If someone had that, it was like, hey, I've got 99 % of my money in Apple stock and then 1 % over here in cash. Is that good? You'd be like, maybe let's rebalance slightly.

59:27It's not quite the same when it's your own company and there's a lot of factors in that. But one thing that I did is I ended up putting together a secondary round where our team members who all have shares in the company can sell stock. and I wasn't going to participate in it because I felt like I had enough liquid net worth. I liked the rate that it was growing, how I was getting cash out of the business, what the other investments, the Airbnb portfolio was doing and all that. But then I thought a lot about, time value of money might be a too generic way to think about it, but that, okay, if I sell some ConvertKit stock now in the secondary sale, it's available.

1:00:03It's basically a bunch of longtime friends of ConvertKit who are like, hey, if any of your team members ever want to sell, we'll happily buy it. Interesting. So I thought, okay, if I participate in this, say I sell a million dollars worth of stock and I get this windfall, what would I do with it? How would it change my life? My wife and I talked it over and we're like, it actually wouldn't be that. There isn't something that we want to change. We already have our farm, which is our dream property. We bought it for 520 ,000. Years later, it was probably worth about a million. It costs a decent amount to operate, but we're pretty DIY type people and all of that.

1:00:34So there wasn't something that there'd be a substantial change on. of getting the money now versus say in three years or five years from now. But going to the Die With Zero book, I thought about my parents. And for me, having the money at age 30 versus 35 versus 40 didn't feel like that big of a difference. But for my parents and my wife's parents, it seemed like a pretty big difference. Like money now was a big factor. My parents had divorced and remarried, and then my wife's parents were still together. And so we basically had like six parents. all of whom were in various stages of like very close to retirement, just work for two or three more years to like, I'm not sure what the retirement picture is going to be like, you know, and you basically get that whole spectrum.

1:01:19And what I realized is that that would be hugely valuable to be able to push all of them over into retirement now, not like three years from now or something else, but like today that matters. And so what we ended up doing is selling about$2 million worth of stock. That was 1 % of the company and finding things to invest in. I bought a couple more properties, put more money into index funds and all that and set that up where it was then a retirement fund for all of them paying out. I just used the gift tax rules. So I didn't even use my lifetime exemption. I, at the time it was 16 ,000 per person per year that you could donate or gift.

1:01:57And so my wife and I combined to a couple, you know, then results in whatever the math is, 70 some thousand. Yeah. It's four times that in essence, right? Because you could, because a lot of people, let's just slow down on this because a lot of people don't know this. So right. Each year you're allowed to gift$17 ,000 per person in 2023. And usually each year it's kind of indexed a little bit. It often goes up maybe$500 or a thousand thereabouts. Yeah. It gradually climbs. So what that means is that let's take my wife's parents, for example, right? I can give my father-in-law$17 ,000 and my mother-in-law$17 ,000.

1:02:32My wife can give her father$17 ,000 and her mother$17 ,000. So people look at it like, oh,$17 ,000, that's not that much. But when you go times four, that's substantial. And so it wasn't like enough that it covered all of their living expenses or that sort of thing. But basically what happened is at the end of one tax year when we did this, we gifted roughly$70 ,000 per couple. And then we tipped over into the next tax year, like two months later and gifted another 70 ,000. And then what we just said is, Hey, every January, you're going to get this, like whatever that limit is, you're going to get this and you can count on it forever.

1:03:09I have the investment set up. Like I set up the fire plan for you and that was worth it. You know, that, that was amazing. And so they, my step-mom decided it still work as a nurse she really enjoys her job and like wants to contribute towards her retirement goals and all that so it wasn't it wasn't quite enough that it like tipped everybody over fully into retirement but my father-in-law left his job immediately uh sorry i actually get emotional thinking about this and i'll explain in a second why but he left his job immediately rather than staying the additional two to three years that he planned to and he absolutely loves that like happiest retired person you'll ever meet.

1:03:46Amazing. And then the thing, the thing is, um, my, my mom and my stepdad had a lot of things like a lot of struggles with money and that sort of thing. And my stepdad had a lot of health issues. And I think what happens is we always think we have all kinds of time. And you think about that in the intersection between time, money and health. Right. And what we, we learned a few months later is that he was out of health. and so he ended up actually passing away six months later and he passed away knowing that my mom was 100 % taken care of yeah and I can't think of anything better to have spent the money on and so in the grand scheme of things on one hand it's a lot of money, on the other hand it's not that much money and from a Die With Zero perspective yeah it's the best money I've ever yeah i've ever spent oh man i have i have chills i i mean nathan that is extraordinary i mean the gift truly a gift on every level yeah and the gift of time right i mean think about what you did for the six of them and yeah it's just incredible it is it is extraordinary i mean honestly you should be just so proud of yourself because most people are selfish let's be honest right like most people wouldn't do that.

1:05:08Or think about all the ridiculous, what are the signals I'm sending to the team that I'm selling some of my, right? Like all this BS, but you know what you did? You did something extraordinary and you changed people's lives. You should be just so proud of yourself, man. That's incredible. And obviously I'm sorry for the loss, but goodness, what peace of mind you gave him. Right. Going all the way back to the beginning of this episode, we're talking about like, what can you buy with money? And again, when someone says like, why are you trying to earn more? Don't you have enough? You know, like, why are you taking another sponsor on a podcast or why are you, you know, who knows what, right?

1:05:39Maybe you're launching a course or anything jumping from one job. That's good to another job that pays 25 ,000 or more. Like, why aren't you content? What's your problem? You know? And it's like, well, what can you do with this money? Like you can have a huge impact and like not even mentioning like the personal growth or the new opportunity or the new challenges. And so that's, that's stuff that I really, really enjoy. Now you had another part of your question, which is like, what have I spent money on. Yeah. Just the fun stuff. If there's anything that jumps to mind. I don't think anything can top that answer, obviously, but regretting all my choices, asking two questions in one.

1:06:14You know, there's a couple of things. We ended up buying the property next door to us, which is another, ours is four and a half acres. It's another four and a half acres. Like rented out the house as an Airbnb. And so it pays for itself, but you know, it costs a lot to remodel it and get it going and all of that. So that was one of my favorite purchases. partially even just not even having to land like the other property borders a major road and so we built this giant berm all the way down and so i don't hear the road anymore that's amazing and like great use of money you know my kids they wouldn't have gone over near the road anyway because it's like another property in between but still like just that little thing like there's not a five lane road that anyone's gonna go near so that's a fun one another one the vip access at Disneyland.

1:07:02Oh, tell me about this. I've heard about it. So basically it's expensive. I think it's like four grand in addition to your Disneyland tickets. Right. So it adds up, but then you, they give you a private tour guide. You can take up to 10 people total. I'm actually taking, uh, we have a team retreat in a couple of weeks near a Disneyland and some team members are staying afterwards. And so I'm taking a bunch from the team who want to go and it'd be fun. But then you just skip all the lines. That's really that people are like, what's the advantage? It gets you all this. There's other things, but ultimately you skip all the lines.

1:07:37Oh, that's so cool. It's great. Yeah. That is money well spent. I've never done that to that degree, obviously. But again, my daughter is this rollercoaster enthusiast and I mean the fast pass or things like that, like each park has their own name for it. But in essence, you're cutting probably 90 to 99 % of the line depending on the ride and the park and such. Yeah. So it's basically like, imagine having a fast pass or better to every single ride. Like some of them, you end up in the fast pass line. Others, they take you in through the exit. So you just don't even wait at all. It just kind of depends on the ride.

1:08:06But yeah, it's, it's pretty fun. So those like experiences, things I love. And the last one would probably be sailing trips. Oh, I took a sailing class a couple of years ago and can now captain, you know, a sailboat. And so like trips in the British Virgin islands, like my family and another friend's family for a week on a 45 foot catamaran, like those are, they're spendy, you know, like we'll spend 15 grand or something. Flights are free when you use the airline miles to get there. We do our cooking on the boat. And, but that kind of thing is just incredible. That is wild. And you know, it's funny, it still is skills when you think about it, right?

1:08:43Like you learned how to sail. You told me before we hit record that you're learning to get your pilot's license now. So I mean, we got a air, sea, land here, Nathan, uh, in every way, but I mean, that's awesome. Talk about just a cool thing and it makes you more interesting, frankly, like not Not for nothing, but it makes you more interesting. And not that you're not interesting as it is. If I'm going to be a content creator, I might as well throw some sailing or some aviation stuff in there. Yeah. But yeah, I love, we talked about skills like again and again through this, but I love learning new things and I will continually spend money on experiences and skill building and all of that.

1:09:18And then I'm going to find a way to combine them all together and have a lot of fun and make more money and have more experiences. Hell yeah, I love it. Yeah, it is amazing. this through line of skills. That's what it comes back to. It comes back to all these things that you've talked about for the last hour and change here is you have to create, you have to try, you have to test, you have to learn things, you have to be unique. All of these things are important. You don't, and this is important, you don't have to be the best in the world at something. You don't. You just need to have that unique perspective.

1:09:50You need to be a little bit different. You need to be maybe a step or two ahead, maybe, depending on what your niche is, of the people that you're talking to. They're not looking for the best in the world. They're looking for a story that they can relate to. And if you can be that story, if you can make something interesting, you can create content, you can create a business, you can do anything. And it's amazing. I mean, Nathan, we're living in a golden age of this. Yeah, we are. It's so fun. Dude, thank you for having me on the show. I think this is some of the most fun I've had on a podcast episode in a long time.

1:10:20And I do a lot of these. Oh, that's so cool. I'm so glad. That's really kind of you. Yeah, that is incredibly, incredibly kind. Yeah, this is, I mean, what a great conversation, right? That's what's fun about just connecting. And I think that's what I try to do with all of our guests, right? It's regardless, obviously I've met you a couple of times we've hung out, but we haven't talked in four or five years, right? It's not like we're like long lost friends, but it's just when you have conversations, when you dive in, when you're interested, when you ask interesting questions, like this goes back to what we've been talking about also is like, it's just, it's fun to connect with people.

1:10:52And I think a lot of us maybe lost sight of that over the last couple of years. It's obviously been a tough couple of years. And I'm really like just fortunate and blessed to be able to do this on the podcast with, you know, interesting people that I want to talk to. It's great. Yeah, I love it. Awesome. Well, my friend, thank you again for coming on. So convertkit.com is where everybody, if you're an aspiring content creator, this is what I use now, again, for all three of my sites. I'm moving my third one over today. I just emailed one of your colleagues. So it's phenomenal, truly phenomenal.

1:11:22But Nathan, if people want to reach out to you, is there a best place, Twitter, something like that? Yeah, I'm most active on Twitter. So just Nathan Berry and Berry is B-A-R-R-Y. And then my newsletter, I write every Tuesday about these random topics. So NathanBerry.com and you can subscribe right on the homepage and, you know, get all my musings about basically everything we've talked about today. From like money to flywheels to content creation to whatever I happened to find interesting that week. Heck yeah. And I'm looking at my newsletter in my inbox from yesterday. So I'm certainly on your email newsletter list.

1:11:57Yeah. So Nathan Barry at Twitter and NathanBarry.com. Awesome. Again, thanks, buddy. I really appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe. and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com slash subscribe. And it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there.

1:12:33And I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in-real-life community, we have Chooseify local groups in 300-plus cities all around the world. So head to chooseify.com slash local, and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20-plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI, or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways.

1:13:11Choose a Vi episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the Fi community. And even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up. And it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence? What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life? And then Choose a Vi created a financial independence 101 course that's entirely free. just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.