Billion Dollar Creator

Nathan Barry: It's easy to fall into a trap as just a human of pricing based on effort instead of pricing based on value. All the leverage comes in pricing based on value.

Rachel Rodgers: Sometimes we overthink it. Everything doesn't have to be the most revolutionary thing. It could just be something cool. It could just be a cool brand, or just a different angle to do something that's currently done, but you're doing it in a new way.

Attention is power, and creators harness it better than anyone else. But they're not using that attention to create the biggest impact possible and are vastly under monetized.

Hi, I'm Rachel Rogers. My co-host, Nathan Barry, and I believe you can be a billion dollar creator. Sound impossible? Over the last ten years, we followed each other on our own quest to build billion dollar companies. We've studied creators and seen how entrepreneurs build traditional audiences and use them as a launching pad for a massive business. And it got us thinking, if it can happen for them, it can happen for us. And if it can happen for us, then why not you?

Billion Dollar Creator is a show teaching creators how to capture attention and turn it into real wealth. We will deep dive into brands, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who have done it before and show you how you can apply it to your business as an everyday creator.

Join us weekly as we learn from both the wild successes and the missed opportunities, the grand gestures and the integral mistakes. And through that, help you become an expert at building your audience on your journey as a billion dollar creator.

Nathan: So I came back from sabbatical. I've been back for a week now.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: I am not productive. Like working effectively is a skill. That skill has perished. I'm trying to bring it back, but like my attention span, super short. Sitting down staying focused. It's like why don't we read about airplanes instead? Why don't we whatever else?

Rachel: That matches your tan because you look very tan right now. You do not look like a man who's been working on his computer. But that's real. It's just like I say this to some of my team members sometimes with vacation and friends of mine. When I go on vacation, I don't instantly go into vacation mode. It's usually like a day or two that it takes to like ease out of thinking about my business nonstop. Then by day three, I'm like who cares? Nobody called me. I don't care what happens. I'm free.

Then it's the same thing I think coming back. You have to like ease your way back into work mode. I think the first week you kind of just are like what am I supposed to be doing again? Which is actually the point of the business. The point of the business is to get to a place where the CEO is essentially irrelevant, and you work yourself out of a job slowly, but surely. So I think that's good that you're not productive. It's a good sign. Nothing's falling apart, and you're not productive. These are good things.

Nathan: I want to be productive on things that are not vital for like business operations. What I didn't expect is like the inability to just sit down and crank something out. I've always had that. So if we're going back and forth on the podcast. In the doc, I'm working on stuff, and it took me forever. I wrote like, what, 20 sentences back to you? It took me an hour.

Rachel: Well, there's also thinking that's part of that. You’ve got to think.

Nathan: I like how you're trying to give me credit for all this stuff. I'm just trying to tell you Rachel, I'm just not productive anymore. This is who you've signed up to start a podcast.

Rachel: I was going to ask you what your DiSC is. I'm so interested about like your StrengthsFinders DiSC, Kolbe. Because you seem like someone who is, I would guess, like high C on DiSC, which is detail oriented, very good at execution. That's not my strength.

Nathan: No?

Rachel: Working it to do list is a lot of effort for me. It's not like oh, I can't wait to just tackle that to do list. I'm better at like talking, writing. Once I sit down and actually clear the space, I can do writing for a long period of time. But like talking, presenting, managing people, like that kind of thing. Talking to groups in general is probably where what my superpower is more than anything else. Working on to do list is painful. So.

Nathan: I'm pretty good at working to do lists. I haven't done the DiSC assessment in 14 years or something.

Rachel: Wow. I didn't even know it existed 14 years ago. I only took it maybe five years ago.

Nathan: So, I worked for a company. My first and last real job was working for a software startup. One thing that they did is they made a product that would take your DiSC scores and like give you a, they basically took all these videos breaking down all the possible combinations, and they take your DiSC score and made you this personalized video playlist like explaining your score back to you.

Rachel: Oh yes.

Nathan: That was in 2009. Wow, I nailed it with a 14 years. I was actually correct.

Rachel: I'm sure things have changed since then. Leading a company, I think your personality actually shifts a little bit when you are in charge of managing a lot of people and have to give direction. People don’t understand that. Getting success with your own actions is so easy.

But when you have to make success happen through other people, you know what I mean? This is why we understand why like the coaches on the sidelines at football games are screaming because it's like they know what to do, but they're not out there to do it. They have to communicate it at the right time, in the right way so that it's well received and understood so that the other person can go do it. It's like God, I just want to do it myself. But you literally can't because the business gets too big and it's not possible. So.

Nathan: Yes.

Rachel: It gets complicated.

Nathan: It’s very complicated. But you know, that's what we'll talk about on this podcast. Which by the way, I think we've just been doing the podcast for a while now. So.

Rachel: Yes, let's just go with it.

Nathan: We're just rolling with it.

Rachel: So we should tell people why are we doing this. We should ask ourselves why are we doing this? Why are we doing more things? Why are we adding things to our to do list?

Nathan: Yeah, the to do list that you don't want to work on.

Rachel: That I do not want to do. Unless it's an appointment where I'm showing up to communicate which actually for the podcast. That works.

Nathan: There you go. that's what this is. No, you're showing up to goof off about business. That's mostly what we're here for.

Rachel: Yes, exactly.

Nathan: Yeah. Okay, the show. Let’s see. So I texted you and said Rachel, let's do a show together. The general idea is we have all these conversations between you and I, with our other friends, behind the scenes at conferences, and most people don't get insight into that. So I just think we can share that with everyone.

We can get into this, but we have a bit of a unique perspective from both of us running bootstrapped companies scaling to a pretty meaningful size. Then we also have inside looks into so many other businesses. Both through who we coach or advise, formally or informally, the businesses we've invested in. In your community, you get to see all kinds of stuff. Then I have behind a behind the scenes look into tens of thousands of creators and their business, both we make friends with.

Rachel: Yes. You know who’s lying about the size of their newsletter, which I love.

Nathan: Exactly. There are times, this is actually someone I won't name names, but they were not using ConvertKit. They weren't hadn't switched over from another tool, but we had had conversations with them and talked about switching. So I knew exactly how big their audience was. I just saw these claims on social where I'm like that's not true. I liked look really carefully at their exact phrasing. It was one of those things that could be, it was technically true, the way that they had phrased. One of those like reaches millions of people.

But the way I've been phrased was definitely intended to make you think that their email audience was however big it was. It was like I've seen inside your MailChimp account. I can tell you I know for sure it’s not that big. Now, of course, I just laughed and kept scrolling, and then made a mental note to okay if that person tells me something, discount it. Discount for accuracy 20%.

Rachel: Exactly.

Nathan: I don’t think it’s trustworthy. Yes, there’s actually not as much shadiness in this space as I think you might expect.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. That's the interesting thing. I've heard that from someone who ran software for personal finance. So he could see a lot of people's personal finance stuff. He was saying that people are not people, there's a much smaller percentage of people who are shady than you would expect. So there's some shady folks out there, but maybe not everybody. Not even the majority. Most people just tell the truth, or just don't mention it, just don't talk about it.

But I hope I hope we're getting to a place in the world where we're moving past the all of these different measuring sticks that we use to say I'm better than you because I have 30,000 people on my list, and you have 15,000. Who cares? Because we're starting to get the nuance of it that but do those 30,000 people open your emails? Do they reply? Do they click? Do you actually have engagement? There's so much more that matters than just numbers.

Nathan: I think it's actually what it turns into is less about like someone saying I'm better than you or something like that. Really what we do to ourselves where we're like oh, I put in this much effort, and I'm not getting anywhere. She put in what I perceive to be a quarter of the effort, and it's getting 10 times the results. I suck, and maybe I should quit and whatever else.

So it's no one out there is saying I'm better than you. It's really that I think a lot of creators are self-sabotaging and feeling frustrated because they're comparing to someone else who's getting more. So it's sort of an inverse like you expect someone's like oh, they're maybe they're looking down on me because they're way more successful. First, they're not even thinking about you. Second, It's really about the stories that you tell yourself instead of the reverse.

Rachel: I agree. I completely agree with that. Yes. Okay. But we were talking about why we're doing this podcast.

Nathan: Yep. Okay. So giving people an inside look and conversations. I think another thing, there's always things that I want to speculate on of like. So maybe one side is discuss like what's going on in the industry, the news. Not like politics and the election. I don't care about that. But what I'm thinking about is like what's changing in algorithms and industries and what's working and all of that.

But then another side is sort of speculating on what if different people adopted different business models? Or if we ran this creator’s business, what would we do? If someone else ran one of our businesses, what would they do? Then also giving this inside look into what's happening. Yeah, so that's one thing that I'm excited about. What are some other things that you would want to cover on the show that we're just dreaming up right now?

Rachel: Yes. Well, I think it's, I mean I'm excited to have some guests on the show. It's not going to be every week. But I think it'll be cool to unpack people's different business models and what's working for them. Showcasing diversity of entrepreneurs so people can see people of all different industries, identities, experiences, and what's happening for them. Because I think, like you said, we make up stories. Oh for me in my situation, or with my experience, or in my industry, it's not possible. So I think showing people what's possible and in a variety of ways.

It takes away our excuses that there's a ceiling, right, because that's a made up thing. There is no ceiling. You get to just decide where it is. You get to keep moving it if you want to. So I'm interested in that. Then I think it's kind of like what you're saying. I guess it's less so speculation and more I just have opinions and things to say.

Nathan: No. Rachel, you have opinions? I have not seen that side of you.

Rachel: I know. I'm very quiet. People don't expect me to express strong feelings. But yes, I have opinions about things that I'm excited to talk about that and debate that, right. That's always fun and interesting. Also just to bring up like different scenarios. Like things that happen in business and to debate it. That's always interesting. It's still, I guess, the lawyer in me that still enjoys debate and arguments.

Nathan: Okay, so on that note, we're going to have audiences. We both have well established audiences that are going to be colliding together with this this show. You brought up the fact that there's the lawyer in you.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: Let's cover a little bit about that background. Yeah. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? How did you become a lawyer? Then what made you move away from that world?

Rachel: Yes. So I grew up in Queens, New York. I always wanted to be a lawyer since I was like eight years old. Just saw people. Like I saw, my mom would watch crime dramas, which I am now obsessed with. That's my guilty pleasure. But she would always watch crime dramas or courtroom dramas. There was always some lawyer involved representing the little guy. I loved that. I wanted to be that lawyer, defending the person and justice and all of that. So that was like my very eight year old view of being an attorney.

So that's why I decided I was going to go to law school, literally at that young age, and then just went the whole path. There were times where I was am I still going to do this in college, but I did. I went to law school, and then started my own practice because I graduated during the recession. So that I became an entrepreneur just because of the recession.

Otherwise, I would have never been an entrepreneur. I was never interested in having my own business, like at all. I just wanted to help people really, and I was going to work at nonprofits. My sister was like you’re not going to make any money. How are you ever going to pay off these loans? So yes, so that’s where I'm from. That's my background.

Then I just practiced law for a while and then discovered through running a business that I was good at it, like shockingly. I was good at getting clients. I was good at selling and managing a team. Well, I was bad at it first, and then I got good at it over time. But I loved all of that, like the running of the business I loved more than practicing law.

Then eventually people just started asking for business advice because my business was growing. My clients would ask me for business advice. So a friend of mine was like you should probably charge for that. So I did. So that's what led me to entrepreneurship.

So now I'm the CEO of Hello Seven, which is a company that is focused on providing business coaching and training and community to diverse entrepreneurs and helping them scale their business to seven figures. I also wrote a book called We Should All Be Millionaires. Just a very subtle opinion, very subtle title. That's me, very subtle.

Nathan: Understand.

Rachel: I have 50-11 children, a husband, and yeah, that's it. That's me. That’s a quick intro to me.

Nathan: I love it. I was realizing I think the first time I came across your work was from my sister-in-law who, I don't know what your this would have been. More than seven, six or seven years ago probably. My sister-in-law who is the photographer was, I think she bought your Business Bodyguard contract.

Rachel: oh yes. Small Business Bodyguard. Yes.

Nathan: Yeah. So you had put together, and you can correct everything that I say wrong in a second, but you'd put together this package of like all the contracts that you need, explaining what they are. Here's how to understand.

Rachel: That was my first digital product.

Nathan: Yeah. Wait, okay. So when did you launch that and how did that come to be?

Rachel: That was 2013. It was really because I would talk to all of these attorneys. Well, first of all, it was two things. One, I had two babies back to back. So they were 19 months apart, and I got very busy very quickly. So I was like how can I make money without being on the phone with clients or without doing legal work? Because it's kind of like you work for the money. you’ve got to put in hours to make money.

So I was I'm already maxing out on my hours, but I'm not making that much income. So I wanted to figure that piece out. Then I will talk to just a lot of entrepreneurs who needed me but couldn't afford me. So I was like why don't I just package it all up?

So I wrote like this 200 page guide to like choosing the right business entity, contracts, copyrights, trademarks, like all of that stuff, and then included templates that I would actually use in my law practice. So yeah, it was a big hit. We made a lot of money from that. That product made me a million dollars over three years from 2013 to 2016/17, and then then I stopped selling it. But yeah, it made some good money.

Nathan: I love it. What's crazy is thinking about like that being your first transition from trading time for money to like having the leverage of disconnecting those two things. Then you're like oh from there to a million dollars in three years is pretty epic.

Rachel: Yes. Then also it created all this visibility for my practice. So I got a ton of new clients in the business as well. So I wound up hiring some attorneys to work for me and building the team and my law practice before I discovered I actually hate practicing law. Don't ever want to do it again.

Nathan: Yes, so now you've got a phenomenal business doing eight figures a year in revenue. We got some big things planned. We'll talk about all that. I guess I'll give the high level what I do. So actually, so 2013 is interesting year because that's the year that I started ConvertKit. So.

Rachel: That’s funny.

Nathan: That was a pivotal year for both of us. We didn't know each time.

Rachel: Yes. Right, yes.

Nathan: It was a pivotal year.

Rachel: Actually, I think I didn't know of you because you would write about, you had a great blog.

Nathan: I was writing about the eBooks and design and all of that. Yeah.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. That's what I was like deep diving on and trying to learn on time learning so that I could immediately use it to create this digital product. So I did know of you, and I definitely followed your blog back then. But you talked about a lot of technical stuff. Like tech is not my thing. Because I feel like you had an eBook on something related to like coding or design.

Nathan: Yeah, software design.

Rachel: Yeah, which I probably should have read because that would probably be useful to me in my business now. But yeah, so also one thing I will say about you is I think you're very clear and concise writer. That is so rare.

In law school, they drill into your brain that you have like word counts when you write legal briefs. You have to be very clear. You have to be very persuasive in a short period of time. This is your set of facts. You’ve got to tell the story. It could be a complicated story. You don't get more words. So you have to learn how to be really concise and spin an argument.

They would literally, like you'd write something, and they'd make you go through it. Word by word, you'd just like remove words you don't need. You don't need to say about there. You'd cross it out and go line by line. So you just become such a good writer in law school. I feel like you write as if you went to law school. I think you write very clearly, very concisely. You make good arguments. So that's one of the reasons I liked your blog. I still read your blog.

Nathan: Yes, I need to write for it a little more often than I do. But yeah, I love writing. My favorite thing to write about is something that I don't yet understand. Where I can observe things in the world. I think it works a certain way, but I can't quite tell you why. I give you 25 examples, but okay, what's the underlying principles behind it? Why do those examples work? If I can't quite explain it to you.

It's basically a combination of something I care about and feel like I understand but then can't teach it. So that proves to me that it don't understand it. Then I like dive in and write a 3,000 or 4,000 word essay that I do exactly what you're talking about. Where I'm cutting out everything that I think doesn't like flow onto it well.

It still ends up long, but it's like almost this mini eBook trying to explain something. So yes, I've got, I guess, three of them now. I'm trying to think the Ladders of Wealth Creation was the first one that I did where I'm like why do some people make money and others don't? What are the skills that go into this? I think I have to explain this.

Rachel: Yes, that is the question. Yes. That is the question. I love that. That article was so good. You know it was good because it created all this conversation on social media, which is always what you want when you write something.

Nathan: Yeah, and still I see people like sharing it. I wrote it four years ago or more, and it gets shared all the time and has lost traffic coming back to it. So that one's fun. The other ones are the Billion Dollar Creator. All of these will dive into on the show in detail. Then I did one creating flywheels recently. It's basically yeah, I'm going to take this thing and fully explain it.

So that's what I love to write about is something that I'm personally obsessed with and think I understand but can't quite explain. Then it's like all right. I'm going to write on the topic and research it until I can have a 3,000 word treatise on it that people are like oh, that is the definitive answer to like how this works.

Rachel: Yes, I think we just made it clear to everyone this show is going to be pretty nerdy, but in a good way.

Nathan: No, with us? We have a software designer and developer and a lawyer who are going to talk business. It'll be a little bit nerdy. But I mean, that's the like inside baseball look. I think that'll be fun to give people is this is what actually goes on behind the scenes. You're not going to get the like you just need to really envision that success and be in your cold plunge. I don't know what else people say.

Rachel: Oh my god, the cold plunging. So much cold plunging. I was talking to an entrepreneur recently about something that they were selling for $10 million. Like this beautifully designed thing. They have a very successful, probably nine figure business if I had to guess. Like he was like expressing nervousness about being analyzed and whether somebody would like this thing.

I was just oh my God, it just stays the same. Like those feelings don't go away whether you're making six figures, or seven figures, eight figures, nine figures. It's the same journey. It's just on a new level and you still get nervous about what you're creating and putting out the stuff in the world.

You have wins and you still have misses. You have things that you launch or that you try that you're like well, that didn't work. I think people think that it's just like this rare air. It's just nonstop winning and just swimming through wealth like Scrooge McDuck, right? It's just no. It's just pretty regular, but with more resources, which is nice.

Nathan: Yeah, there was a conversation. I had two conversations around money, which money is something we'll talk about a lot on the show because not enough people talk about it. Or they do it in a way that's either performative. Like people go between either performative talking about money or secret and opaque. You can't.

Rachel: Not useful basically.

Nathan: Yeah. Neither end is useful. What I want to do is just have like candid and transparent conversations about money. One of those, there's two I can think of where people kind of gave me very similar advice that there was just that candid feedback. One of them was ConvertKit was building up like our cash balances. We got to the point that we had a million dollars in the bank. On one hand is a huge amount of money. On the other hand, it was like four months of expenses.

Rachel: Right, right.

Nathan: I was asking the SaaS Slack group. There's like 20 software founders in there. What do you do? There's a million dollars in this bank account. What should I be doing? How should I be structuring it? All this stuff. I remember this other CEO, Ian, just kind of chiming in like hey Nathan, a million dollars is a very normal amount of money to have in a business checking account. It took me time. I'm like it's not normal. Don't you see? Count them. There's seven digits.

Rachel: Come look.

Nathan: Just the way he said that it was like oh, right. Like we've just gotten to that scale. We need cash flow to operate. The money's going to come in and out. That actually doesn't change. I didn't get a call from the banker to be congratulations sir. You now have, let me welcome you to the secret room where all the magic actually happens. It's no, that's actually pretty normal. It's just like more of the same as you scale.

Rachel: Exactly. It's like where is the confetti falling from the sky? I've unlocked some next level, haven’t I? It’s like no, not really.

Nathan: You're going to have to get the confetti yourself. Of that million dollars, you can spend $27 on Amazon and bring your own confetti. But the other conversation was with a friend Mark Chernoff who is a really talented blogger and creator. We were talking about investing.

He and his wife, Angel, had been running a creator business for a long time, saving and investing very diligently. I remember talking to him about like investment opportunities. What do you do once you get this more money? How do you like, sure index funds and all of that makes sense when you have like hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what if it's a million and then 5 million?

He just goes the Schwab account or the Vanguard account functions the same with 500 grand or 5 million or 50 million. He's you just set something up that makes sense. It doesn't matter. Like to Vanguard, you're even, I don't know what he had invested. I’d guess like 5 million at the time. He's like to Vanguard, that is still a very tiny account. So just all these things that we expect to change down don’t. Then we expect there's a level of complexity.

When we move to that level of complexity, and if we assume that there, then we almost create it. Then you're just making poor decisions. Because now like your business operating capital is not in one checking account. You have it split up between all of this stuff. Or on the personal side, you're like I need a wealth advisor. I need an executive coach. You probably have like a ton of things you're listing out.

Rachel: oh totally. I did all of that. Like the financial advisor. I tried the Profit First, which I'm just going to go ahead and say I hate. All right, y'all. I'm just going to be honest. I know for a lot of people it works. But for me, I just don't want 50,000 accounts. Like it's just annoying to move money around constantly. I guess I think you can build the discipline if you need to or whatever. I don't know. We could nerd out on Profit First at some time.

But I definitely did all of that. Then I really researched investing, learned a lot about it. I learned some things from you in particular around investing that really like unlocked my brain oh my God, that's how that works. That was awesome. That's in your Money Newsletter. Quick plug for that. Y'all should get that for 100 bucks.

Nathan: Because I like to talk about money. Turns out.

Rachel: Yeah, exactly. Such a good deal. But anyway, I did all of that. Then I realized, I actually know what to do. I actually don't need a financial advisor. I don't actually need to give them 2% of the value of my account on an annual basis.

Then when I started researching what I would invest in versus what my advisor had invested in, I liked what I invested in better. The numbers were way better. Then I started talking to friends, and they're yeah, I just do all that myself. I'm like you know what? I'm going to do the same. I felt so empowered.

Now it's like I also don't want it spread out because I just want to see one pile of cash sitting. You know what I mean? I don't want a bunch of accounts with tiny amounts in it. I want one big account with a nice pile. Watching it grow and being like oh every time you check it.

So then it's so simple. It's literally just don't touch it. That's all you got to do. Just put it in, don't touch it. Don't mess around with it. If it goes down, just look away. You know what I mean? That’s all you’ve got to do. It’s so simple. Then we way over complicate it. So yeah, I agree.

I think in business in general too it’s we overcomplicate things. Like adding too many things to something or over complicating the messaging. It's so funny when you go back to like old notebooks, or you look at old things that you did. You're like oh, that worked. Why did we ever stop doing that? Let's just go back to that thing we were doing five years ago that worked really well.

Nathan: Yeah, the entrepreneurial desire that when something works to then go find the next thing. I'm the genius that came up with this thing that worked. So let me go come up with another, use the same smarts to come up with something else that’s probably going to be even better. It's like no, you genius. Keep doing the thing that works. It’s tried and true.

Rachel: I can't tell you how many coaching calls I've had that are exactly like that. Where they're like well, I did this launch, and it worked really well. Now what should I do now? I'm like so the launch worked really well? Yes. You were really happy with the numbers? Yes. Okay. So why aren't we just doing that again? Why are we changing it?

They're oh, yeah you're right. I could just do that again. I'm like a run that play again. Keep running it until it stops working. You know what I mean? Why are we creating something else? It's because entrepreneurs need hobbies. That's why. We need to find other things to do, like podcasting. You know?

Nathan: There you go.

Rachel: We need hobbies to you like to overanalyze those things, or to just take a brain space because I think just sometimes we're just wanting to either be creative or just bored because that's the thing. An eight figure business is a boring business. If it's not boring, there's probably something wrong. Well, there's always something wrong. There's always something to fix. But like business gets more and more boring as, I imagine, you climb and grow.

I mean, what makes it fun and exciting I think is team. Like having a team and working with a team and creating an awesome team culture and like all of that is fun, but I feel like the actual mechanics of the business, you don't need massive change to make it go anymore. You can still have creative ideas, but you shouldn't be launching every idea that pops into your head right? Then you're just creating mess and busy work and distraction. But one thing I will say though is I think we were in the middle of your intro. I don’t think we ever got to it.

Nathan: Okay, so another thing. This show is going to stay on track. We’re definitely disciplined. Okay, my intro. So as you mentioned, I come from the world of software designers. We talked about. I got into this like content creator world following people like Chris Guillebeau and Tim Ferriss. I'm trying to think who else. Amy Hoy was someone I followed a lot in the early days.

So I wrote a book called The App Design Handbook. Because I'd been building iOS apps on the side. Like the iPad came out. I built apps for that. Then I was doing freelance design. I got this idea that I would write the book on designing iOS application. Then people would hire me as a freelancer to design their apps. Like you want to hire the guy who wrote the book on it.

Rachel: Makes perfect sense.

Nathan: I think that strategy would definitely work. It didn't work for me. The reason is that I thought if I can get a bunch of client gigs and make $10,000 over the entire lifetime of the book, like that would be a success. So I launched it. I built like pre-launch list, 800 people, a little landing page, all of that. Launched the book, made $12,000 in the first day and then never took on another design client. That book went on to sell probably $400,000 worth over its lifetime.

Then I kept writing. I had this little app that I built that would help you build a streak and just ask you are you going to write today? So I kept going, and I wrote another book and then another. So yeah, I made about a million dollars, probably just shy of a million dollars, over the next three, four years on selling digital products.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: Then I wrote about the whole thing. I would launch a book, and I think this is where a lot of people found me. They didn't care about the design world necessarily. But I would launch a book, and then I’d be like here's what I did, and here's how I ended up.

Rachel: You'd unpack your whole launch.

Nathan: Yeah. I wouldn't do it from I'm up on the ivory tower telling you this is what to do. Here's the perfect strategy. Just here's what I learned. Here's what I did, take it or leave it. I hope some of it was useful.

Rachel: Right. Here's what worked. Here's what didn't work. That's always the best. Those articles are so helpful to know. I think everyone is looking for honest people that they can learn from. Like people who are honest, who are transparent, who don't just share wins, but also share losses and when things don't go their way, and are not trying to claim that they have it all figured out. It's more like I'm figuring it out as I go, just like all of us.

So, I think that's a reason for this podcast. I actually had a conversation with some clients recently. One of them said, how do you keep your mindset positive? Like when things are hard, things are difficult in your business, or you're just going through a rough patch for whatever reason, Something's not working, and you keep trying things. How do you stay in a positive place and not just throw in the towel during those seasons? Because for every business, even the largest companies in the world, goes through those seasons. So how do you stay positive when you're in those seasons?

I said well, I just like to keep things in my ears or reading things that are positive. Reminding myself that even though I'm not winning right now, somebody out there is winning, which means that winning is possible. Let me hear what they did. Just be encouraged by what they're talking about. Then I'm going to go try it myself.

So we had that conversation. They were like oh, that's brilliant. Just always listening to either a podcast or watching a video or watching somebody's webinar or reading a book. Something that's encouraging and inspiring. Then I realized I've been kind of lazy about creating encouraging and inspiring content. I've gotten very much just like on my laptop, talking to my team, and no one else.

I think that's part of the reason why I wanted to do this too is so that I can help to create content like that, that helps people, inspires them, lets them know no matter what season you're in, you can still get back to winning. It’s always short term as long as you keep going. The only, I think, failure can happen is if you just give up. Even that, right? You can give up on one thing, but launch something else. That's all part of being a creator.

So I feel like we need each other. We need conversations like this to like stay inspired, to know we're not going through it alone. You know what I mean? To keep us out of that.

Nathan: Yeah, that's one of the things that I'm most trying to work on. Like if we talk about personal development for a second. One of the things for me is to be able to like manage my anxiety and stress when stressful things are happening.

Because I can let something going on in the business or the market or something like fairly outside of my control start to get to me. That's one of the things that I like most want to work on now. Is to be able to observe something out there and go oh that's interesting. Make notes of how that might affect things in the future, and then set that aside for when it might be relevant.

Instead of being oh, let me just hold on to that in the back of my mind for like the next week. Then maybe have my wife ask me like three or four times in the next week, what's wrong? Oh, I read this tweet that has me thinking about. That's not useful. So that's something that I'm personally working on is being able to have that consistent execution, even in the face of things where you're like okay. Yeah, that didn't go well, or that is concerning, but it's not worth me being worried about.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. I love things outside of my control because I'm like oh well. Can't fix that one. Moving on to things I can. I don't know. I don't know if you get like 40 plus, and you're just I don't care about those things anymore. I feel like there are these milestones like every five years.

I think the first time I felt it on a really big level was 35 where I was just wow. I feel like I'm free from all these things that I used to care about and obsess over. Now I don't care. Then I've got to 40, and it's a whole new level. I don't think I really felt it fully until I was like approaching 41 that I got to that place of wow, I used to freak out about things like that. Somehow I don't care.

Nathan: You can coach me on that. So I can get some of mine.

Rachel: Exactly. We’ll work on that.

Nathan: Welcome to Nathan and Rachel's therapy show.

Rachel: Yes. So we have some things in common, like we have eight figure businesses. We have kids, several, many some would say.

Nathan: Three each.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: I think we established this already, but I forgot. Are they similar ages? Mine are almost 12, nine, and three and a half.

Rachel: Yes. I have 11, also almost, 12, 10, and five.

Nathan: Okay, yeah, so we’re pretty similar.

Rachel: Yeah. Then I have a bonus daughter who is 23 now, which is wild because she's been in my life since she was five. So that’s crazy. Time flies. So people always are like you have a 23 year old and a five year old? I'm like well, I have three that I birthed, and then I have my bonus child. So yes, four total. That'll keep you busy.

So yes, this is not the show where if you're looking to like be like well, I have kids. So I can't build this thing. Not if you're talking to me and Nathan. We are building and having lots of kids while we do it. It's great. It all works out.

Nathan: Yeah. Another thing that we have in common is we both grew up in low income environments and have very strong personal drives to make money. Like there's a lot of things that we lived through. It's like I don't need to go through that. I don't need my kids to go through that.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: Yeah. Like a chip on my shoulder.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. It's very motivating. I think sometimes too I think when people say I don't care about money, I'm like really? You must never have worried about where your next meal is coming from or had your lights turned off or just experienced some of those things like insecurity around housing, food, all the things.

If you haven't experienced that, and you say you don't care about money, it's okay. Well, I see why you say you don't care about money. But if you do experience that, you understand how important money is. Like money is not, it's not about the money. It's about the well-being it provides. It's about what it provides for family.

Even the freedom from stress so that you can focus on your family and enjoy your family's company, instead of being stressed when you're together, worried about whatever, how you're going to put the next meal on the table. I know that's what my parents were dealing with. I was like okay, I'm going to figure out how to make money. You know those guys that do that, they just go up to people's houses, knock on the door, and be what do you do for a living? That was me as a kid. Like just roll up to people.

Nathan: You'd see someone. That house is nice. How'd you get that?

Rachel: Yes, exactly. See somebody's driving around in a Rolls Royce. Yo, what do you do for a living? So as a kid, that was me. I was constantly observing what are these people do for a living? How do they have money? What's their jobs because I want to do that job so I can make some decent money.

So I was very interested in money, even as a child because I saw that as the solution. Oh, if I could just write a check for the Con Edison, like the electric company right now, our lights would go out and my mommy wouldn't be sad. We wouldn't be sitting in the dark. So that the solution. So yeah, that can be very motivating.

Nathan: So did you have like an early entrepreneurial venture? Or were you getting jobs early? How did you go approach that?

Rachel: The first entrepreneurial venture that I remember, I feel like there might have been another hustle at the park. I can't remember exactly what it is. But the first one that I remember is in high school. I used to write people's essays for class. I was a freshman in high school.

Nathan: Always been a strong writer.

Rachel: The seniors in high school that didn't want to do their work because they just had senioritis. They were over it. They're just write this essay for me so I could pass this class and get out of here. So I wound up in a class with a bunch of seniors. I talked to one person. I think they approached me, or maybe I don't know. I don't remember.

But once I had one deal going where I was getting paid to do their essay, I was homicide. Then they told their friends. So the power of referrals. So I had a whole thing going with a bunch of people and was writing their essays in high school and getting not enough money.

Nathan: What was the going rate for an essay? Did you quickly raise your prices as demand increased?

Rachel: I think I started at $30. It was like $30 to $40, which is a huge sum of money to like a freshman high school student. Back then I was like this is awesome. I think I took like one person’s, because I was already writing an essay on the topic. So I basically had the information, and I could just write repurposes it.

Nathan: Right. You didn’t have to do original research.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. So then I was I think I did somebody's for 18. Then I was mad that I did it. Then I had a guy that was interested in dating me at the time. So he was kind of like my muscle, one time somebody tried not to pay me. I was hey, can you go see if you can talk to them?

Nathan: Go collect my $18 for this essay.

Rachel: I gave them the essay. They passed, and they didn't pay me. Or like they paid half and then they never paid the second half or whatever.

Nathan: Oh, yeah. Did you collect a deposit? This sounds very lawyerly.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. I first of all always required money up front. It's like why did I know that then? Then you get older, and you kind of don't do that. It's not smart. But yes, so that was my first thing. But it got really stressful. As I got more clients, I was up all night writing essays, and my mom started to get concerned. So I stopped doing it. Then I just got a part time job at a pet store.

Nathan: Much more normal. You're doing ghost writing before it was trendy on Twitter.

Rachel: Let's call it that, ghost writing.

Nathan: There's something interesting in there. There's a way that people expect the world to work. I think anyone who doesn't understand business or there's someone who goes into like a clothing store or something. The markup on these clothes is 50% over manufacturing costs. Like that's crazy. They're ripping people off or something like that.

Anyone who has ever come close to running a business understands there's a crazy number of other costs. These are the margins when it goes well. What happens if your containers don't come for months because of supply chain issues or whatever else?

But what's interesting about what you did is you're selling one essay for $30. You're like oh I did the work already. I did the research already. So I can sell the next one at $18. I see a lot of people thinking that, like cost plus. The effort it took me plus 10%. Instead of, at some point you make the switch.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: Right. Because if you'd follow that mindset with the Small Business Bodyguard, like the first one would have cost many thousands of dollars. Actually, it kind of did because you did it for clients one off.

Rachel: Right, exactly.

Nathan: But then you get to the point where you're like oh, let me just make it cheaper and cheaper over time. It's like no, the value is still there. It's just interesting. It's easy to fall into a trap as just a human of pricing based on effort instead of pricing based on value. All the leverage comes in pricing based on value.

Rachel: Exactly, 100%. This is something I learned quickly as an attorney because hourly pricing was like sort of something that was obviously very well established in the legal industry. But there was a new thing that people were talking about value based pricing and pricing according to like the work, right? Like valuing the whole work and the value of it instead of just hours. That was a huge debate. So that was something I learned early on related to pricing.

But yeah, that was my. I think there's so many lessons you take from it that you don't even realize are in there that are like working, that are giving you information that you're using. So I feel like that is what I want people to do more than anything else is just take some kind of action, any action, even the wrong action. Just try something because then you learn from it. It like propels you to the next thing, or it works. In which case great. One of two things will happen.

Nathan: One thing I'm wondering about is you talk about hourly rates as an attorney. It makes me think of status. What status games you end up playing that are useful for gaining status and harmful for maybe your end business goals?

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: So in the world of practicing law, is there a status game around oh, he charges $200 an hour, but she charges $400 an hour? Is that because those are not quite public rates, right, but we know. I know in the law firm that I work with what each of my six different attorneys who do various things, what they each cost, and when I want the associate to do it versus when I want the partner to do it.

Rachel: Exactly.

Nathan: Yeah. Is that is that a thing like across firms and that you'd even be aware of?

Rachel: For sure. Yes, definitely. It's kind of well I can charge this. So it's people are impressed because people will actually pay this higher hourly rate for your time. I think it's true in coaching as well. It's actually something that I've struggled with because now that I have this eight figure business, sometimes people come to me and they want like one on one coaching of some kind. I've kind of priced myself out of it.

Because if I take a day away from my business, what I have to charge for that is pretty significant to make it the value greater than the value that it would be to like to spend the time with my team training them or to spend the time working on something related to my own business. So it's interesting how that happens too like in business coaching and really anything right? Do you remember when it was really popular, and there's probably still websites that do this, where you could buy an hour of an expert's time?

Nathan: Yeah.

Rachel: That's a total status thing too. Do you charge $5,000 an hour? $10,000 an hour? $500 an hour? What's the value of an hour of your time? So there's so many.

Nathan: How do you want it to be perceived? What's interesting to me is you can end up in this game where the higher hourly rate both makes you more money in the short term and increases your status, and further traps you in this low leverage path or medium leverage. If you're charging $500 an hour, I'm not going to say that's low leverage. You're doing just fine.

But the high leverage thing, like in your case, to fully opt out. You're like hours. I'm not playing that game at all. I'm going to productize my legal advice, and I'm going to make a million dollars over the next three years off of it. But it doesn't have the same. Like you have to stop playing this hourly status game that the legal industry is common for and just opt out of it entirely, which is probably before it works is a low status move.

Rachel: Yes. It's also scary because you're spending. Like it cost me $15,000 to design Small Business Bodyguard. I wanted a really good designer. The design really mattered to the function of it.

Nathan: I remember the look of the website even 10 years later. So yeah.

Rachel: It looked good. The branding was hilarious. Because I wanted to make it clear like this is a different type of thing. It's fun. It's not dry. But anyway, spending that $15 grand on that designer was terrifying, okay. I was what am I doing? This could like feed my family for the next like five months or take care of my rent and everything for the next five months, or pay this designer.

So you have to make these investments and these bets, which is really scary in the moment. But then when you look back, you're like I was so smart. No, I wasn't. I was shocked. I just had courage, enough courage to do it. But yeah, those moments, those moves are scary, but those are the ones that can really pay off, I think.

Nathan: Yep. I like it. It makes me think of something that we were talking about a couple weeks ago of like revenue per employee. It’s something we both obsessed over at different times because companies in the world of not wanting to share income or specific revenue numbers, people talk about like how many employees. How's business going? Oh great. I've added 10 employees.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: You're not saying like great, I added a million dollars a year in revenue. You're like oh, I added this number of employees. Because for whatever reason saying you added a million a year in revenue is like braggy, tacky, I don't know what. But saying you hired all these employees, that's like, I don’t know. You're doing good for society or something.

Rachel: It reminds me of people like that go to Harvard. They're oh, I went to school in Boston, you know? They don't want to say Harvard because it sounds too showy. I'm like well, if you went to Harvard, say you went to Harvard.

Nathan: It's funny though because I think they expect that everyone knows. To give you an idea, I was homeschooled. I grew up in the mountains outside of Boise. I met someone wants who was like oh, I went to school in Boston. Who did that, like I went to school in Boston, in the way that they know that you know and all that. I didn't know. I had no idea.

So I was oh, where'd you go? They're like oh, you know. Then they had to say it. You could just say it got super awkward because they had to say I went to Harvard. I was like why didn't you just say that? I had no idea. The thing that all of society knew about how you just underplay going to Harvard, I had no idea.

Rachel: Okay. Not to take us down another tangent, but that is hilarious because it highlights something that is so interesting about building wealth, right, and like making money or having success of any kind. It's like everyone's rooting for you when you're the underdog and everything is against you, and you don't know what you're doing. You're figuring it out. You're like having maybe small wins along the way. Everyone's rooting for you.

Then you win. There's no defined win, but there is a certain point where things shift in how people are responding to you. You know what I mean? So you're oh, I've won according to the world, according to life. So you win. Then once you win, then everyone hates you. Everyone's like oh, you're such a show off. Right?

So you can't say you went to Harvard because you've won too big now, or you can't say you've made a million dollars because that's too much. It's so funny. It's we're all rooting for you along the way. Then once you get there, it's we want you to win until you've actually won. Then we hate that you've won as a society.

Nathan: Yeah, there's, I know it’s in New Zealand. I'm not sure where else, but the phrase tall poppy syndrome. It’s basically if anybody rises above, you cut them down. The tallest poppy gets cut down. I've seen it play out in a bunch of different scenarios. But it's basically that idea of oh, we're all in this together. But then you rise above, and it's like oh you think you're better than us? You think whatever else.

There's so many people where in society right now, wealth is treated in such a weird way where everyone wants it and simultaneously hates the people who have it. It's just interesting. I think you can't have that mindset without a lot of subconscious self-sabotage. Where it's easy to say you hate the billionaire's or whatever, but a lot of people are even now into oh, I hate landlords.

Rachel: Right, business owners.

Nathan: Yeah. Right. Oh, here's this greedy business owner who is charging this markup on their products. I don't think it's that much of a markup because everybody's paying it, and no one has a cheaper price. Like if it was a crazy markup, someone would come and undercut them.

But in that, on one hand, you're like oh landlords are terrible. They're gouging on rent or whatever else. Then over here, I'm just really struggling to get my finances together and to understand how to build wealth and all that's. When you spend a lot of your energy undermining and talking against the very skills and behaviors that you need to learn in order to get ahead.

I think it's really hard to separate those two things, if you have those mindsets. There are lots of shitty people out there who have tons of money. But I don't know. There's a lot of negative energy that just hurts you more if you spend time there.

Rachel: Yes, I agree. I had a really interesting conversation with Rachel Cargle, who's an activist, and Sonya Renee Taylor, who was also an activist and author at ROI about this exact. Like is it okay to make money? Because I think people struggle with that. Am I going to become a bad person if I make money?

I think what we're grappling with right now is like we're trying to, I feel like we're in this place. I don't know if we've ever been there before, where we're trying to make the moral more equal. Like we're all trying to be, not all of us, clearly not all of us. Some of us are trying to be good people. I think we struggle with okay.

Nathan: At least the other people on this call are trying to be.

Rachel: So it's like how do I reconcile my desire to make money and also the harm that can happen from capitalism? Or the fact that there are terrible wealthy people, and there are also good, really good, wealthy people too. Right?

So, I think that's something that we can talk about on this podcast and grapple with because I think is it is a question that everybody has on their mind right now. How much is enough? What do you do with the money once you have it? Then what does the world look like when there's a more diverse group of people who are all making money? When people of color are having highly successful businesses and there's diversity with wealth, more diversity with wealth.

Then it's brings up all these questions of what you can do when you have access to those resources rather than somebody else. It's always like this other that has access who is making decisions. It's what if we get the power for ourselves? What does that look like? So I think it's important to have these conversations and grapple with these questions because you're right. They can affect our mindset for sure.

Nathan: It’s like the mindset and the information that you get access to it along the way. If you imagine someone who, I don't know. They're a billionaire or worth a huge amount of money. They went to Harvard. All their kids will go to Harvard because of some giant donation that happened.

I imagine that that person. Well first, they're probably a business owner because most, I think it's like 70% or 80% of billionaires right now, are first generation. They built their wealth. It’s a huge thing. Turns out, people are really bad at keeping wealth. It's usually gone after a couple generations.

But there's a lot of conversations that that wealthy family is going to have with their kids, both spoken and unspoken, over time that then give those kids a huge advantage. Not just in the money advantage and everything else, but it's like oh, this is how the world works. Even the basic things that someone who's financially savvy and upper middle class. Just saying things hey, you could use a first time homebuyers loan to buy a triplex, live in one unit, and rent out the other two.

Like if you did that, well first, if you had enough money to be able to get a 5% down payment on a first time homebuyers loan, which that's a lot of money. But if you made a move like that at 23 years old, that would turn into it an insane amount of money at 40 or 50 and give you the stability and cashflow, and this understanding of the world.

So I think that's one thing I want to do with this podcast is if you didn't grow up in an environment where people were having those conversations around you and you're like oh, this is how it actually works. No, you shouldn't go buy that car for 20 grand. You're actually halfway to a payment on this property that could change your life. Like we can actually have those conversations. Because that's a big way. But we're not going to go around giving money to all of our listeners, but we can go around giving.

Rachel: We have money, but not that much.

Nathan: Not that much money. We probably don’t have more listeners than money.

Rachel: That yes, exactly. It's so funny. Sometimes I'm like 10 million, 20 million, 30 million is still closer to zero than a billion.

Nathan: Oh yes.

Rachel: So much closer.

Nathan: There's two things in there. I can't remember the numbers, but it's, I shouldn't quote this live. But a million seconds is a week and a half or something like that. A billion seconds is like 35 years.

Rachel: Oh my God. That helps to put it in perspective.

Nathan: Yeah. Then the other joke is what's the difference between a million and a billion? About a billion dollars. About a billion is the difference.

Rachel: Exactly. Yes. So it's okay. So to answer the question, it's okay to make a million dollars y’all. It is totally okay. Yeah. You're nowhere near Jeff Bezos status. You know what I mean? It's okay. What you're creating is stability for yourself and others where you can hire people. There's so much good that can happen with one person making a million dollars, you know.

Nathan: Yep. I would say nine times out of 10. There are exceptions, but I believe nine times out of 10 when someone is making meaningful income or wealth, they're doing it through creating value for other people. So you're actually making the world better. You're helping someone else. You and I both teach and make products and all of that that people are very grateful for because it helps them make a lot more money.

Rachel: So that's true. That’s true.

Nathan: It's not as a sense of like a zero sum or a fixed pie. Instead, it's like no. I just make a small portion of what I help other people make.

Rachel: Yes, I agree. I mean I don't know that I agree with your nine out of 10 ratio. I might argue that, but yes, I agree.

Nathan: Where would you put it? Five out of 10? Seven out of 10?

Rachel: Yeah, I don't know. Five, six, you know what I mean? I'm not that optimistic.

Nathan: Tune in for a future episode where Rachel and Nathan go through the Forbes 400 list and categorize did they create value?

Rachel: But you know what? I was thinking about. I've been watching Beyonce’s tour. I went to one of her stops a couple weeks ago. It was an amazing concert. Just absolutely incredible display of creativity. But each one of her tour stops, she has her nonprofit, B. Good, which is doing this like they're calling it Black Parade where they're doing a luncheon for Black owned businesses in the same city that she's having the tour at.

So like all of these businesses are coming. They're giving out grants to these businesses and having like conversations with. Like the Atlanta stop was with Tyler Perry, right? So you're getting to see amazing speakers that you would not otherwise get access to in this intimate setting. So I was just like that is so cool. I want to do something like that. It's inspiring.

So I think when we see people who have a lot of money but also are doing a lot of good in the world, it's very inspiring. It just shows you like you have more than you can give more. We can only give right when we have enough. Right? So I think that's an important part of the equation for sure. Definitely part of both of our motivation. You give a lot to charities and are very committed and have been long for a long time. So am I. So yeah, so yeah. See. We’re two examples. That's what we can say for sure.

Nathan: You can be a decent human and make money.

Rachel: We can't speak for those other people.

Nathan: Oh man. Let's see. So I guess, what other things should we cover? We should probably wrap it up pretty soon. If we target like an hour long episode in general?

Rachel: Yes. Yes. So we were going to talk about two things that we're obsessed with right now. So why don't we do that real quick? Then we'll wrap up this first episode.

Nathan: So business side and personal side.

Rachel: Yes. Yeah. So what's one thing that you're obsessed with businesswise right now?

Nathan: I'd say, I'm going to cheat and go with two because I couldn't decide. Network effects. So how something gets more valuable, the more people join it. It’s kind of an interesting thing. In the in the email world, everything's been isolated. Let's say you and I are in a mastermind group together. We've got a couple other friends. I use ConvertKit and someone else uses MailChimp, and someone else uses, I don't know, HubSpot or whatever else. We can trade business tactics back and forth, but it doesn't really matter that we're on different platforms.

But now with like ConvertKit’s Creator Network, Substack has their recommendations, and on from there. Like if you're on one platform, you can't recommend each other. So it's sort of like the iMessage blue texts versus the Android green text.

Rachel: Yes, exactly.

Nathan: Like some lines dividing, and it's fascinating watching it play out because email has existed for 20 plus years without network effects. Social networks have had them, email has not. Now all of a sudden they're here. So I'm obsessively studying okay, what makes one network win over another? How do you build a strong network quickly? What gets adoption? What else can we build beyond subscriber recommendations? So yes, I'm nerding out on that.

Rachel: Really fascinating. One thing I like I can see like with the Creator Network, that is such a brilliant thing that you've just added to ConvertKit that adds so much value. When I think about the people that I serve in my community who one of the biggest issues is that they don't have a network. So this creates an instant opportunity for them to have access to other people's subscribers, right? Like for them to get in front of more people without thousands of dollars in ad spend, tens of thousands of dollars in Facebook ads, right?

So, I think that that's a great equalizer and a huge opportunity. So I highly recommend ConvertKit always to my community. Not just because I'm an investor, but also because I do think it is the best tool. But also this Creator Network is amazing. So network effects is very interesting. I love it. I think it matters too for community. We have a community, The Club, and like the more people that are in it, the more it can increase in value in a lot of ways too.

Nathan: One thing that I want to see more creators do, especially those that are teaching. Like have their own communities and are teaching creators. So I think of like you, or Pat Flynn, or Jay Clouse, or Mariah Coz, or any of these people have like amazing groups of entrepreneurs or creators is to use something like the Creator Network and pair them up with each other.

Because then someone comes in. It's like, “Oh, Rachel, I bought your course. I'm part of your community. I'm figuring out how to take the information and apply it to my business.” Maybe you're pairing people up in small group and saying hey, you should learn from each other. But then you go oh, you should like directly partner and grow fast together. Then that person would be like wow, I added 100 subscribers last week. Thanks to who Rachel connected me with, who Pat connected me with.

So that's, I mean, it's only been, I don't know, a month and a half since we fully launched the Creator Networks, two months. But I'm excited for more people to do that. Because I think that the person who bought your material will forever credit you as the teacher or the one who made the connection with like that growth and business success. When the person to person connection matters so much, but you're like hey, you all want the same thing. I'm just going to pair you up and point you to the tool to do it. So.

Rachel: Yes, that’s awesome.

Nathan: I'm very obsessed with network effects. Then the other thing, which we'll get into in future episodes, is flywheels.

Rachel: Oh yes.

Nathan: That's one of the topics that I could talk about forever, which I won't get into the slightest right now. Because it’s a giant Pandora’s box.

Rachel: It's a giant Pandora's box. But listen, my whole team, all we talk about is flywheels. Like we're obsessed with our own flywheel. We're always like oh, it's because of this spoke on the flywheel. We're all nerding out about flywheels.

Nathan: Careful. Don’t open Pandora's box.

Rachel: I will not open it. We will dig into it in the future.

Nathan: What are you obsessing with on the business side?

Rachel: So I'm obsessing over metrics, and really just looking at revenue per employee is the new metric that I'm using to kind of measure our success. Because there's a certain point, you get to a certain point. Then revenue is one piece of information. Expense is another piece of information, but like what actually measures the success of the business?

I think revenue per employee is pretty important because it speaks to the productivity and are we working on the right things, right. It's also about culture. Because if you have a high amount of turnover, your revenue per employee is going to be low.

That is something that we have definitely experienced at my company. Where we started to grow, and then people didn't necessarily want to grow with us, right. Like they liked it the way it was before. They didn't like that we're growing so much. Now, things change because we grow a lot. So we did have a lot of turnover at one point.

I think that's why I'm obsessed with culture in general and like measuring the success of our culture. So that and ENPS, which is like employee NPS. So we send that out to our team. It's anonymous survey so that we can like measure our success as a company, like providing a great place to work. Yeah, like every time that number comes back now, and it just keeps getting higher. I'm so giddy. I'm like yay. It used to be, right?

It's so funny. It would always be like my clients and what my clients are saying mattered to me most. Now it's like that my team is worried about my clients, which is how it should be. Of course, I care about my clients. I want them to be happy. But it's like making sure the team is happy is how I ensure that the clients are taken care of. So that's my current business obsession.

Nathan: I like it. Yeah, I'm also a big fan of revenue per employee. I track it, it’s not a metric you track on a daily basis. That wouldn't make any sense. but I track it on like a quarterly basis and see how we’re trending. I've tracked it for years, but being able to see here's this climb. Okay I made a big hiring push for this particular project. So revenue is increasing, revenue per employee is decreasing. So I always graph them together.

But I think it saves you from getting into that business owner trap of focusing on headcount. There's a software company here in Boise called TSheets. The founder would always talk about how quickly they were growing in terms of headcount. They'd say oh we're going to double headcount this year. People are like wow, that's amazing. I'd always be that's terrible. Why would you?

Rachel: That sounds terrifying.

Nathan: We're going to double revenue this year. We're going to double revenue while maintaining 30% gross margin. Fantastic goals. I love it. Double headcount? Then your whole team would be like okay, we've got to double headcount. Instead of focusing on growing revenue, they're okay how do we get better at recruiting? Which is important, but in a vacuum, that's a great way to kill a business.

Rachel: Oh totally. 100%.

Nathan: So, I love one revenue per employee conversations happening more and more because then you're like okay well, what can I automate that? Then speaking of being a good business owner. If you have a high revenue per employee, you can pay really well. You can pay profit sharing or bonuses, like any of these things.

Rachel: Really good benefits.

Nathan: Yeah. If you have a low revenue. Let's say you have a revenue per employee of $100,000 a year. Guess what? You cannot pay any employees $100,000 a year. Can't do it. The math just doesn't work.

Rachel: Exactly. That's what people don't understand. Like that profitability is so connected to your ability to provide a maternity leave, like a great maternity leave policy. Things like that, they all cost money. So making money is crucial to be able to provide all of those things. So yes, it's so interesting how there's so many ways in which as a business owner, especially because people will respond to you like wow, that's so impressive.

You have to not get too impressed with yourself. You have to check yourself and be like am I obsessed with this number because of ego? Or is does this actually matter? Am I getting caught up? Because everybody does at one point or another. You just want that thing that's going to like really stroke your ego. It's the best when you don't get it because then you're like yeah, you needed that. You needed that wet blanket to the face to come back to reality.

So, yes. Headcount sounds like one of those numbers that's like I think I've definitely been guilty of that. I was so impressed with myself that I had so many employees at one point. Yes. Okay, so what about personal obsession? What are you obsessed with personally right now?

Nathan: Yeah, currently I am working on my pilot's license. So I'm trying to learn to fly a small airplane. There's things that you're like oh, I'm naturally good at this.

Rachel: Yes.

Nathan: I don’t I think I'm naturally good at flying a small plane. I'm going to get good through a whole lot of time and effort. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. Boise, where I live, is kind of in the middle of nowhere. The closest major city is Salt Lake at five hours one direction or Portland at six hours another direction. So having a small plane is going to be pretty nice to get around. But I've been studying a lot. Passed my written test two weeks ago. So now hopefully just another month or two, and I’ll have my license. Probably two or three months. I should be realistic.

Rachel: That sounds absolutely terrifying.

Nathan: You're I will never fly with you, and that's okay.

Rachel: Oh my God. My husband has motorcycles, and that stresses me out, you know? So yeah, I'm not an adventure junkie at all. I like my risks like that I take from behind a laptop. It's business risks. I'm into that.

Nathan: You're like I'm going to risk this 50 grand on this investment, and we'll see if it works out or not.

Rachel: Correct. Exactly. I don't like physical embodiment risks. You know what I mean?

Nathan: That makes sense. That's the way that you and I are different. I like flying. What are you obsessing over on the personal side?

Rachel: For me, I'm obsessed with longevity. I've just kind of gotten into, the I'm starting to wade into that world because I'm just really interested to know. I've had family members and friends get diagnosed with diseases or die suddenly, and I'm just kind of getting to that age where I'm okay, I need to start thinking about the future here. Like having less stress, taking better care of myself, what does that look like?

So, I've started like reading and following different people and listening to podcasts about it. There's one comment, and it's very complicated. You can definitely, I think, go down a really scary rabbit hole with longevity trying to control everything. But I think the key to it is building muscle. Like if you want to be healthy as an 80 year old person, if you have a lot of muscle in your body, you're going to be able to like ward off a lot of diseases, stay very healthy, whatever.

So now I'm like working out twice a day. I go for a run in the morning and then I go to the gym. I used to make fun of those people that do that, that run.

Nathan: Now you're turning into one.

Rachel: I am that person now. That's what I did this morning. I got up at five, went for the run, got my kids off to school, and then went to the gym for an hour and weight lifted. So yes, I used to be a Pilates person. But now, I'm like all about building muscle for the future. This is like my investments in my longevity bank.

Nathan: You're working out twice a day. I'm working out twice a week, you know. We’re basically the same.

Rachel: Exactly the same.

Nathan: Two times per unit of time. No, I did actually, after working out on my own for a long time like kind of sporadically and not that effectively. I did start working with a personal trainer twice a week, and maybe like three months ago, four months ago, made a huge difference. I should have done that a long time ago.

Rachel: Yes. Yes, accountability. I'm telling you it works for a lot of different things. I basically live with my personal trainer because my husband is super into working out. So he goes to the gym every day. So I just like get in the golf cart with him and go, right? Like so if I just do that then I'm good. So I have like my accountability partner is live in.

He does not get up at 5:00 a.m. and walk, but he did today though. He did came for a walk with me this morning. But he turned around sooner than me. I was like I'm going to keep going. He's like I'm done. So I just want everyone to know that’s still better than him because I went a little longer.

Nathan: We’re going to use this show to categorize many reasons that you're better than him over many, many episodes, don't worry. We will make a highlight reel of just all the clips, and then we’ll send it to him.

Rachel: Oh my God, that sounds terrifying. I love it.

Nathan: Does your partner care like, or is involved in your business at all?

Rachel: Yes. Yes. He's the CFO. So he pays the bills.

Nathan: Oh, he’s very involved.

Rachel: Yes. So that's what he was doing in our household. He managed the money in our household. I was like hey, could you come do that for the business? Because I keep forgetting to pay bills because I'm just doing a thousand things, you know? He was yeah, I can do that. So now everything's so organized. I like that a lot. I don't have to think about it. Just make the money come in, and he disperses it all.

Nathan: That’s good. My wife is not. Doesn't have any interests or care, which in a lot of ways is really good for my ego. Because if like something amazing happens, She's great about celebrating it with me or anything like that. We hit a big milestone. Then also she's like who cares? It's really great for our savings balance because like I'm fairly frugal, and she's way more frugal than I am. So like it makes it easy to save money and invest and all that.

Rachel: Yeah, my husband's definitely the frugal one. I am not. I must say. I could certainly be more frugal.

Nathan: Well, we’ll do an entire episode on favorite things to splurge and all of that stuff. We should probably leave it there for now. This show is going to be every week. We're going to hang out and chat. Sometimes it'll be with a guest, sometimes just the two of us. Sometimes we'll be off doing other things, and one of us will interview a guest without the other.

But I think just regular conversations about what it means to build a business and the behind the scenes look and a creator economy and what's happening and everything else. So it'll be good. All right, as the YouTubers say, like and subscribe, and then we'll see you next week.

Rachel: See you next week.

Nathan: Bye.

Rachel: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Billion Dollar Creator. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe, share it with your friends and leave us a review. We read every single one. If there is a company you want us to profile on Billion Dollar Creator, send us a message on social media and we will consider it. Thank you and we will see you next time.