MBA2279 Extended Interview: Nathan Barry - How to Grow a Self-Funded Software Business to $34 Million and Beyond

30:51Right. Cause we'd be like, Oh, I heard that this person's using ConvertKit or like you started to build, build momentum. And so everyone was talking about like, Oh, only grow in a scalable way. And, you know, later I ended up hearing like Paul Graham talk about do things that don't scale. And that put it in, I mean, I was living it out before he wrote that essay, but like that phrased it in a way. Wow. Cause the other thing is all these things that don't scale, you can take and make them scalable, whether it's through, you know, if we're like, if I'm doing a one-to-one demo, right that's not scalable right that is using my time but you know a year later i was teaching a workshop you know a webinar to a hundred people right i'm getting i don't know if it's quite a hundred times the leverage because it's not quite as personalized pretty close you know like um and you've nailed everything now you know the demo perfectly because you've done it so many times one-on-one uh you're you're better as a presenter all that stuff yeah you know what the hot spots These little lines, right?

32:00Like, um, I was at a food blogging conference, uh, just this last week, you know, we had a booth there and we're talking to a bunch of creators and just as you test these things, right. I had this line where I talked about like, I don't have time to run, you know, to run everything. Like time is the most limiting thing that I have in my business, in my business in life. You know, I'm running a full-time business. I've got the side hustle as a creator. I've got three kids, you know, I like all of this. And so then I talk about like, I really rely on automations. Right. And you could see someone's eyes light up when I was basically describing their life.

32:35They're like, Oh, I don't have time either. You know? And I could have led in with like, here's why automations are important, you know? But you learn these, yeah, you learn these, these lines or this position that resonates in the unscalable conversations. And then when you do that in a webinar, like you can't see someone else's reaction. You might get a sound off in the chat or something else, but, um, but you're totally right. And, and I'm going to drill in a little bit more into this because, um, you learn a lot about the language people use, like you mentioned. So you can use it in your marketing, on your sales pages.

33:11Uh, even, uh, if people prefer to hear a 20 % off or two free months, whatever, like all that kind of language you're kind of monitoring while you're doing these one-on-one calls and these demos and these sales calls. so you're doing these these calls you're literally just shooting for them to sign up for a monthly plan not even annual you're just like get them on board i need a customer right do you have a target like are you saying like i got one customer a day are you trying to get 10 a day or like how do you how do you know is it what's enough just as many as i could i think i had a target for how many outreach emails i would send okay and that would be like the baseline okay yeah i'm trying to remember i had heard this mix as you talk um from someone who was talking about direct sales you have to pay attention to what you can control because you actually can't control the outcome and if you set your goals around the outcome that can be really discouraging right especially before your system gets moving right if we're doing direct sales i might reach out to 50 people and make no sales but one of those 50 people i might actually close six months from now you know or like you just you can't control that that timeline so remember uh in this um interview someone's talking about how in their sales process they had two cups on their desk and one cup was empty and the other had 50 paper clips in it or 100 paper clips in it and they every day they would do cold outreach you know like personalize an email as much as like research personalize email send it off and move a paper clip and they because they they knew the thing that they could control they couldn't control how many deals they closed but they can control how many people they reach out to and so they would do that part every day and of course they they work to refine their pitch and you know like keep getting better but really emphasize what you can control and so i i don't remember the numbers but i had some goal around that it definitely wasn't 100 a day it was probably like 20 but that's great information to and a good barometer like hey focus what you can control as long as you're reaching out to people, you know, soon enough they will convert, but they'll never convert if you don't reach out to anybody.

35:24Right. So that's a great little insight. ConvertKit is, in my opinion, probably one of the best SaaS success stories I've seen in the market period, just because of the way you built it, the steady growth you've had. From my understanding, it's been self-funded, correct? Yep. Right. It's been self-funded from day one. You are now doing something close to 34. You publish your numbers publicly on Barometrics. 34 million ARR for a self-funded software company, which is really unheard of. No one ever sees a company other than Basecamp when they started when the computer was invented. No one ever hears about this because most companies get funding, they get investors, they go VC route, or they exit way before they get to this point.

36:18Was this always your goal? Or were you always, were you trying to say, hey, I'm gonna get to a point and I'm gonna sell it or I have other ambitions. I wanna take this company to a certain point. Or is this a lifestyle business for you? Is this like, I just wanna build this business to fund my building tiny homes and Airbnbs or whatever it is you do. So like, I wanna understand like, did you have a vision for this? and what is it now? Right. Yeah. Early on, the vision was to build a product that had a recurring revenue because I felt like I'd gotten pretty good at information products and the launch-driven businesses, right?

37:03But you'd see a business, right? You might do a product launch and make$25 ,000 or$50 ,000 in a month and then$5 ,000 the next month. And it has amazing leverage, but I didn't want to hire employees based off of a peak month and then be worried if the next launch doesn't go well. I thought if I could get to$20 ,000 a month in recurring revenue, that would be incredible. Now, actually, the first goal was legitimately$5 ,000 a month in recurring revenue because my wife and I were talking about opening a coffee shop at the time. And I thought that the best thing to open a coffee shop, because I knew it was a terrible business, would be if our living expenses were totally covered.

37:46And so living in Boise, Idaho in 2013, if we had$5 ,000 a month in recurring revenue, like we'd be fine, you know? So that's specifically why that was the first goal. But then as it got bigger, it was like, okay, can we get this to 20 ,000, maybe 30 ,000? I remember hearing about someone who's doing, had a SaaS business, actually Amy Hoy, who was doing a business with 50 ,000 a month in recurring revenue. And I was just like, I remember that. That is so much money. And she always talked about how it came from a whole range of customers, right? I know. I thought I could buy a Mercedes every single month.

38:28Yeah. Like all of these things. I mean, because the other thing with recurring revenue is it's replenishing every month, right? Like you don't start at zero on March 1st. uh and so that's amazing so i had those targets and it gradually got bigger i was just looking i gave a like taught a workshop a little earlier today and so i was going through like a bunch of old decks and stuff other workshops that i taught and i found one where i was talking about convertkit and i hit five million dollars a year in revenue it was just interesting because like convertkit's seven times bigger than that yeah basically um um i was like i didn't feel like that long ago that i taught that workshop but apparently it was a while ago around that point i realized that we were building something that could be way bigger and that's when we started to establish like a mission for the company beyond i don't know build something sustainable and we ended up making um the mission for the company just saying we exist to help creators earn a living.

39:35And there's actually a little plaque. That's what that little plaque behind me says.

39:41And the reason for that, like I grew up in an environment, you know, we talked about a lot of the great things about it, but a lot of downsides is that money was super scarce. Like I watched my parents fight about money. Like they ended up, you know, they're causing a huge amount of conflict, making a lot of us kids feel like a burden on them for what, what we cost and, and yeah, I've been there. Yeah. You, I think, you know, that, that world very well. Yeah. And like, there's a point where as an entrepreneur, like that you and I have both learned where making money is a skill and you just want to like preach that from the rooftops.

40:18Like, did you know, this is not just chance and luck. Like you can learn a set of skills and you can build an audience. And then that audience can make you more money than as a doctor or whatever else. And like, and so probably about that point when we were doing 5 million a year for ConvertKit, I realized that I was going to hit every one of my financial goals. Like we were set basically forever. And so then it was saying, okay, what do I want to do with this company? And, and so that's when we established the mission of we exist, help creators or living and we're going to build the tools and training to bring these these skills of making money on the online with an audience to as many people as possible so that like they don't have money be this point of conflict between them and their spouse right huge their kids don't grow up like in that environment of stress and everything else yeah um no there's plenty of other things that can cause problems.

41:23No, but you're totally right. But I grew up where I was, I would never ask my parents for money because I knew there was pressure. I would never ask for lunch money when I didn't want to make lunch or whatever. It was the first day of school. I say to a lot of people like, hey, it's not that I just, it's all about money. But money will not solve all your problems, but it'll solve all your money problems, right? Which is a lot of your problems. If you think about it, a lot of people are not healthy because they can't afford a trainer. A lot of people are not. satisfied with their environment. They want to leave the city they live in, but the cost of living is more expensive in the big cities, whatever it is.

42:00So your mission to help people alleviate themselves from this burden of financial stress, which is one of the worst stresses in the world, because we've all experienced it at some level. I want to say all, but I know you and I have growing up or even in our businesses, sometimes be like, am I going to be able to, especially in those early days in ConvertKit, pay my server costs. I'm able to do all this stuff, you know, and that's like the worst stress in the world. So I think it's one of the best gifts you can give the world is to give them the tools to never have to worry about that stress, which is huge.

42:32Yeah. And so that's what we've been building. And we also just changed our ambitions, right. For the company. Cause I realized like, wait, if we can build this to 5 million a year in revenue and we believe in our product, then let's build it bigger. And so that's when I set a goal of building it to a hundred million a year in revenue. Yeah. Um, not cause like, well, I'm going to achieve self-actualization when like it tips over, you know, from 99 to a hundred or something like that. You never know. That's true. It could absolutely happen. Um, but basically thinking like, if we really believe in our product and what we're offering, then like, absolutely.

43:06And let's find out what we're capable of. Right. Because I don't know. I'm the kind of person that, you know, if you have a goal, I don't know, like, uh, I've been working on getting better at running, you know? And so like, if you can run a 5k at seven minute miles, I'm like, yeah, can I, can I beat that? You know, can I do 650? Can I, you know, like any of those things. And so it's the same thing of like, look, other people can build businesses this big. Why not? Why not me? And so that's been the ambition. and now what we're building is trying to make a platform that's uniquely great at helping creators in a living and so like all the ways possible you know we built uh like the ability to sell digital products yeah we've built integrations with absolutely everyone possible all of that of like how can we make it so that we have the best place on the internet for you to earn a living as a creator and that that's basically the north star now love it absolutely love it i'm gonna ask you a very earnest question um how how much of the journey has been pull pushing the boulder up the hill and how much of the journey has been pushing it down a hill like at some point did you feel like okay this is actually not as hard as it used to be and now it's getting easier and easier to hit my goals or has it been hard the whole way or easy the whole way yeah it has not been uh even so hard or easy the whole way there was definitely a point maybe about 25 to 30 people in the company who had been with us for so not hitting that head count but like 25 to 30 people that had been with us maybe for at least six months um so people had a little bit of tenure with us where most problems that came up, there was someone else who was the frontline for it.

45:08Like I stopped bringing my laptop everywhere I went because, you know, there were three other engineers who were more qualified to bring the app back up or make sure that something bad didn't happen than I was. Right. Like that was a very important moment. And for us, it happened about that. We scaled very quickly from 15 to 30 people. um so it was somewhere in there um that that happened actually from three to 30 people was like a i don't know a nine month um uh ramp up i guess a year probably a year um so that that made a big difference the other thing company growth people think of it as being like linear or exponential like a hockey stick i actually think that most companies if you really looked closely are they're all s curves they start flat they hit an inflection point and they take off and then they level off again and that level off might be still a little bit of growth um but usually so what worked before stopped working yeah or they i actually think what a lot of companies do is they find something that works and it takes off and in their excitement to find the next thing that works, they stopped doing the thing that was currently working.

46:25Yeah, I'll put off the gas. I may or may not be guilty of that one. But so if you look at like this collection of stacked S-curves, then as you're figuring out how to get through this, the flat spot and into the next inflection point, like a lot of those things are really hard. Or you have to invent something new. Like we've probably reinvented Kinberg in a few times. We're actually in the process of reinventing the company right now as we've planted seeds from things that are really taking off and change the business. So the feeling that you don't want, and this comes at times, is when you're working really hard and not getting any results.

47:09Yep. And I've definitely had seasons of that. Right now, we're in a season of working really hard and getting great results. and I guess maybe the ultimate goal is to not have to work that hard and get great results and that can happen too and I think there's also a stage in the company that I'm at that I'm trying to navigate of really separating myself from the business so that people can make you know more and more decisions without me like so that I'm not a bottleneck and so that's that's a lot to figure out uh as well so yeah it's it has been unevenly challenging um but like i feel us i can see in the numbers and everything else this like the next phase of this like inflection point starting to take off that you know we're definitely kicking off the next s curve and uh that makes it really fun yeah especially when you're working on new things in the product and you know that that's what people need and what they've been asking for or where the market's heading, I think I can definitely resonate with that.

48:18And you start to realize, oh, wow, like I can see the future. No, but also I've known these people for so long, the people I'm serving, I understand where their needs are. And it's just a matter of how quickly I can offer that. One of the things I want to say to you, Nathan, because I would say I'm a late comer to ConvertKit. We joined ConvertKit Webinar Ninja four years ago, the$100 MBA. We just joined maybe a year ago, moved our list over there. But I remember you pitched me ConvertKit at the time. And obviously at the time, I was just like, oh, I can't move my email list. I think it was with ActiveCampaign.

48:57And I was just like basically hiding from you. and and then and then i was like let me give it a look because i wasn't happy with what i was using at the time and i realized how much innovation you guys made since i last looked and it was maybe like 18 months two years so yeah and ever since i've been with you guys there's so much um innovation happening inside the app some of the stuff i use some of those i don't need but um what i love about it is nothing is half baked. I, I, you know, I run a SaaS company. I, the company is run on like a stack of like, I don't know, 40 different apps. Right.

49:38And I would say half of them are guilty of having like half of their features. They don't really do what they're promising. Right. And I think one of the things that you do really well with ConvertKit is that you just do what really matters. Like I always say when people ask me, why do you use ConvertKit? It's like, well, it just does what I wanted to do really well. And it doesn't do anything I don't need. And it's not confusing and it's easy kind of to navigate, which is important because if you have a team, it's not, I'm not only using it, everybody else is using it. I need to make sure they know how to use it and all that kind of stuff.

50:10So I just wanted to take a moment to say that I know that that was deliberate. And I think that's a great way to build a product, which is like, we're going to put out important features that really matter and we're going to do it well. Even if it takes us a little bit longer, you know, even if we don't launch a new feature every month, Some people think they have to launch a new feature every month or something like that in their product. But just to piggyback off that comment, I want to ask you, like, as your team grows and your velocity can go faster, are you conscious of the fact that, hey, I don't want to push out too many things that are maybe not as polished as it used to be?

50:49Yeah, there's an idea from a guy named Ryan Singer. Yeah, Ryan Singer. designer for base camp um and he talks about a product footprint and being very deliberate about like understanding which features increase the footprint of your product versus which ones like go taller or deeper you know whatever like go vertical versus horizontal and i think a lot of companies are really eager to check off more boxes in the feature comparison against vendors and so they're just going horizontal as fast as possible they're like how do we become the all-in-one you know let's let's add uh yeah hubspot uh you know i think from going back to the early days like i think in infusion soft was yeah that was that was the hubspot of our day everybody's like i got an infusion soft account it does everything it's like oh yeah and then you're like okay try how to use it.

51:49You know, cause like they went horizontal as much as possible in order to check all of these boxes. And then you end up doing, you know, you don't do anything very well. And I think companies do the math and say like, Oh, we can do this because they're basing it off of how much time it takes to build the feature. But what's what you actually have to keep in mind is how much time it takes to maintain the feature. And I don't know about, you know, You know this very well. The more you have, the more bugs, the more issues, the more complications, the more UI changes they got to make because they don't get it.

52:24Yep. Yeah. And then there's also actually, there was a talk. Who was it? I think it was maybe one of the founders of Stripe talking to one of the founders of Intercom. And they were talking about at some point you can build at their scale, right? You know, hundreds and hundreds of engineers and all that. you can build software faster, build features faster than your customer base can even comprehend to implement them. And I was like, Oh, that's fascinating. Um, and so it's just like, there's a lot of constraints that you don't think about. And we were always very, very deliberate about increasing product footprint.

53:02So like people for a long time would ask like, Oh, are you going to process payments? It's like, Nope, Nope, not going to do it. Cause it's a huge, like the moment you increase product footprint there, it's a huge change. And, and so we waited until we were certain that we could like go, you know, if we're going to add all of that, can we go more than an inch deep? Can we actually build that part of the product to its full height? So it, you know, I imagine like a, um, like a neighborhood or something, you know, and you've got your features that are these fully built out houses. And then some of them are like, yeah, you did something there, but it's like a tree house.

53:41It's like a toilet. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't actually go build something substantial. And so like waiting to do something until I, you know, that you can really invest in it and, and build that up. And so that's what we did with ConvertKit commerce. And, you know, now you can do paid newsletters and sell digital products and everything else. Um, so I, I think that's, that's so important to like only building what you can build well, and then most importantly, what you can maintain. I love it. It's awesome stuff. Nathan I've taken so much of your time we reached the top of the hour but I want to wrap up with a question because I know that you do a lot of different things outside of ConvertKit like you share on Twitter you know you have some investments with your real estate and Airbnb you led your work woodworking I followed your journey when you built this tiny home that you're in right now are you ever worried that you're gonna want to build I'm not worried maybe the words of the word maybe you have ambitions to build the next ConvertKit, another business as big as this?

54:42Or are you the kind of person's like, I got a line in a bottle. I don't know if I could do this again. I'm just going to stick with what I got. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't like the early stage of building a business, especially like a SaaS business where, I know you know this well, where you're like about to close a customer and then they're like, oh, do you have an integration with whatever? And you're like, no. And they're like, well, MailChimp has integrated. and you're like, yes, MailChimp's been around for 20 years. Like they've, you know, those early days where you just hit these obstacles.

55:16I'll zap it for you, okay? I'll put it there. Yeah, I'll make a Zapier integration for you. The number of times I'm like, yeah, exactly. I'll pay for you, Zapier account, whatever it is. That early momentum's really hard. And I really like the scale that we have now of like, if we build something, then like 45 ,000 people can use it right away. And that's amazing. And Dan Martell has a new book that just came out called Buy Back Your Time. It's really good. But he talks about how the biggest risk to your business is not competitors. It's not that your product goes stale or any of these things.

55:54It's that you lose interest or burn out as a founder. And so I think a lot about what are the things that keep me excited and keep me interested as a founder. My friend, Sean Blanc has this saying, he says, if you work with your mind, you should rest with your hands. And so there's a lot of that, that you see me doing. I live on a farm. We have nine acres. We have chickens and pigs and goats, and I have a wood shop. And, you know, I'm really doing things. Like if I have an idea or something separate from ConvertKit, I'll play with that. because I think it helps to give me a break and some space from like grinding it out in my core business the whole time.

56:41And I used to feel, I used to feel guilty about that. Cause like I have really big ambitions for ConvertKit and I'm trying to scale this as much as possible. And I have this 70 person team that I'm like, everybody's working super hard and I want to be right there at the front, you know, and everything else. And I think when Dan phrased it this way of like, look, you burning out or you losing interest is the single biggest risk to these people losing the job they love or this product that, you know, like you decided to sell it off. And then some PE firm being like, Oh, you know, I think we'll take a different, different direction or whatever.

57:14And customers losing, you know, losing something they care about. That just made me think like, okay, I've got to, I've got to be really deliberate about protecting my energy and excitement and motivation. And so that both means taking some time away from the business. Um, and then also like making time to pursue the things inside of ConvertKit that I find are like really exciting. And so I'll do things like I'll, I'll hire a couple of people and carve out an idea and, you know, that I just want to know, can it work? Um, so I think that's a lot of what we're doing. Like inside of ConvertKit, we've got, um, two different businesses or two different, I don't know if they're features or businesses or what.

57:57One is a sponsorship network. And so we're toying with this idea and we actually just passed a million dollars in sponsorships that we've sold for creators. You know, it goes back to like paying creators.

58:11Like, can we spin that up? And so we got a team, we're trying it out. It's still early, but you see all the signs of it working. And we're looking for what are the ways where this community of creators on ConvertKit can benefit each other. So we can sell sponsorships across like 15 or 20 creators with much more easily than they could sell a single sponsorship by themselves. And then the other thing that we're launching is something that we call the Creator Network, creatornetwork.com. And that is a way for creators to recommend each other. Like going back to the experience that, you know you and i had at uh in las vegas you know at those early conferences right like that that early network matters so much so much and so like how can we productize that how can we build it into the feature set so that when someone joins my list i'm like you know recommending like uh i don't know i think about like justin jackson who was in the community early on right like if we're talking about these we're building newsletters on similar topics that's the wrong answer nathan you recommend me okay justin can find his own subscribers they're just kidding poor just that's exactly um but like that whole you know like if we can partner together and grow faster yes that's what i'm excited about i love basically about how can we build network effects into uh this business and help creators grow i want i want to share something i hope you're okay with this, but I'm going to share something that for our listeners, Nathan runs a$34 million SaaS business.

59:51When he launched this idea for the creator sponsorship network, okay. He did not say, I'm going to dump$50 million or whatever, or that's a bad number, but like, let's say I'm going to dump$500 ,000, build an interface, make sure it works, make sure that the network is like all automated. I actually reached out because I'm a big believer in sponsoring newsletters. That's how we grow the show. We sponsor all these different creators that you have in the network. And I reached out to your team and I'm, I saw what you did. Basically you just like, it was over email. There's just guys like, Hey, got on a call.

1:00:30Tell us about what you're trying to sponsor. What kind of creators you're looking for? They emailed me back a bunch of sponsors that, uh, that would be, are a bunch of creators that I could sponsor. These are the creators and this is what they're all about. And this is their open rates. And this is, I was just like, I'm doing this over email. I'm like, this guy knows how to MVP, right? Because a lot of us, we think, oh, no, one's going to buy something like that. No, at the end of the day, if it fulfills my needs, if I get the right sponsors, I get good value. If I get the right creators that I could sponsor and I get, you know, I get the conversions I'm looking for to grow my show, I'm happy.

1:01:09It doesn't matter if there's a UI. In fact, it's more white glove. I get to have a conversation with somebody on this team. I get to learn about the creators. I get to understand what are my chances of them opening the emails. And for me, I wanted to pass on this lesson on the show because you have full ability to throw money at this problem. You have full ability to say, here we go, let's throw some money. But you're fiscally responsible, even though you're making a lot of money, you're saying, Hey, before I start creating an interface and creating a UI and creating a little tab menu inside of everybody's account so they can start doing this, I'm going to first just MVP.

1:01:45This gets CPL can do this quote unquote off platform, right? Do it on, on email, get the ball rolling, get a proof of concept where you have a million dollars made for your creators now. Okay. Let's take that million bucks or the profits we made from that and help, help build out an interface and i just gotta say um even what is it eight nine years later you're still mvping your new features which is amazing i love that yeah because you can launch all these things and you know i think people think about it as i might be right or i might not on this first version you know like did i build the right thing let's say i'm 90 confident i built the right thing and uh you know and we'll iterate from there i'm like 90 confident that the first version will be wrong and so i am like i don't know we have this idea and i'm like great let's let's try it out let's see what works there's so many things that we thought oh it's going to be this way didn't end up being that way you know but as you build you like iterate over time then you learn so much and you have all these conversations.

1:02:58And I think that you can both, you can fall into this trap on both ends of the spectrum. When you're just getting started, you can go away and build and then try to come to the market and be like, look what I have. And everyone's like, oh, that's nice. I don't care, you know, and move on. Yeah. Or once you have a certain level of success and you can throw money at a problem, then you can pay people to go away and build something and come back. And the market's like, what's that oh yeah no we still don't care and so you have to get in there in conversations with customers and see like is this a viable product yeah and then if it is then build it and one of the things i learned in my journey of the last eight years of webinar ninja is in the beginning i thought oh i'm like the ultimate user i know exactly what people want because i'm like i built this for myself blah blah that becomes a whole lot less true as the years go by.

1:03:49I'm the worst person to ask what is good for our users because I don't need anything explained. I know exactly what I want. I know exactly how to use it. And I realized, oh, when we were doing our product meetings and we're doing, the first thing I have to say to everybody is like, where's the data to prove this? Have we done interviews? Have we gathered information from our intercom to find out what people are requesting? This sounds amazing, but let's first poll somebody on our next webinar if they want to see this in our software like because and i have to resist the urge of saying man it's brilliant i want to see that in the real world because um i'm the worst person to ask now because i'm way beyond it's like you're asking somebody uh you know who uh is a woodworker or or a shoemaker you know like um you know what do want to see in a shoe like they've seen every shoe in the world they know exactly what they want and it's going to be way out there's we like so fashion forward but like that's not a shoe that's like a mini car or something like that whatever the point is is that that you know like we are just the wrong people to ask at this point have you do you feel the same way yeah i try to use convertkit as much as possible myself so i notice the things in real time and like can smooth out all those rounded corners but you just have to you also have to spend so much time talking to customers because people use it in ways that didn't expect or like the market changes like what works in webinars what works in email and all of that is just different than what worked eight years ago totally and otherwise we'll be stuck like preaching the same systems and the the like same techniques and then building the same features for those techniques and like the market will leave us behind so yeah talking to customers that's why i love conferences this whole thing is like an ad for go to conferences and meet people in real life because restrictions matters so much totally totally and the network is so true and throughout this conversation we talked about how many of those people helped you along the way when no one does it alone whether it's that chat with hinton shaw like how you had to get to know this guy in order for you to have that chat all that kind of stuff so nathan thank you so much for your time i love this chat As you continue the episode, guys, I'll talk a little bit more about what ConvertKit's all about, how you can get started for free.

1:06:13If you want to learn more about Nathan's journey, and I highly recommend following him on Twitter because he's super, super open book about the finances of his business, the struggles he's going through. And one of the things I love about him is that he's not afraid to say my product's better than my competitors. And he'll pin himself against competitors and say, hey, why are you going with these guys? when we're better. And that tells me that somebody who believes in their company and is putting their mouth where their money is. Thanks so much, Nathan. It was awesome. Thank you so much for being here.

1:06:49Yeah, thanks for having me. If I were going to give an alternative title to today's episode, it would be Sic Parvis Magna. And that's Latin for greatness from humble beginnings or small beginnings. Nathan didn't start out with a lot, but he was determined. He was resourceful. And being a friend of Nathan's, he's always been an inspiration to me because of that. I can relate to that. I didn't grow up with a silver spoon either. And he was proof that you could do it. You can break through and have huge successes regardless of where you started. So I'm here to tell you, if you didn't go to an Ivy League school or have rich parents or whatever it might be, don't see it as a disadvantage.

1:07:24See it as motivation. Also, if you didn't grow up with much, you're a really resourceful person. You know how to make a lot from a little. You know how to make the most out of what you have. In fact, to this day, one of the metrics that Nathan evaluates his success in his business is how much the business earns per employee or per team member. Meaning, if I can find the best talent, train them, cultivate them, manage them, and get the most out of them, my company will win. I'll make more money per employee than companies that are twice, three times, five times my size. That's beyond being thrifty.

1:07:59That's being smart, being productive, being efficient. And yes, he had bumps along the road. He had difficulties. We couldn't cover everything, but I could tell you, I followed his journey. I know him. It wasn't always explosive growth. Every business has its challenges. Even with growth, you know, being able to meet demand is a challenge in itself. They say it's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem you got to solve or you're going to lose out on an opportunity. But one of my favorite takeaways from the conversation is he understands he has to balance his role in the company, in serving the company, leading, staying interested, staying active, while also serving his own needs, his own life, his own family, his own ambitions.

1:08:42Because when you suffer, when you're not doing well inside, when you're not feeling your best self, if you're not enjoying your life, you best believe that's going to affect the business. It's going to affect what you're doing, affect your team. A few times in my career, I learned that the hard way. But this was a great reminder to take care of yourself along the journey. You can't be a sacrificial lamb. You got to make sure that you feed the business, feed yourself, feed the people around you. When I talk about feed on it, I talk about money and food. I'm talking about even just energy, positivity, happiness, being delighted with what you do.

1:09:12Be mindful of this because it could cost your business. Thanks so much for listening to the$100 MBA show. I hope you loved today's episode. Go ahead and share it if you did. Go over onto your favorite social platform and send them over to 100mba.net. Let them know that you just listened to the Nathan Berry episode and tell them what you think. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. No one builds a business alone. Not only does it take a team, it takes a network, right? You heard Nathan and I chat about that conference we went to and how all the people that are at that conference, we still support each other.

1:09:43We helped each other. We were each other's biggest fans. But we also helped each other out when we had difficulties or challenges. I mean, even recently, a few months ago, I had a big question when it came to email. I reached out to Nathan. then he basically gave me his team at my disposal. So he was just like, here's my team. Here are the people that work on my team. They can help you out directly and advise you how to move forward. I was so grateful, but also conscious of the fact that that's years in the making, building that relationship and taking the time to really value these relationships.

1:10:16And that's just one, right? That's just one situation, one person. Over the last 20 years, I've built countless relationships, not thinking, oh, I can cash in this relationship on a rainy day, but knowing that the journey is just better with other people. It's easier. It's more fun. It's a delightful experience when you're doing it with others. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

1:10:56Thank you.