Billion Dollar Creator

Nathan Barry: [00:00:00] In this episode, we get very tactical on how to grow to 1 million and beyond in 2025.

Paula Pant: We have 75, 000 email subscribers. I've been worried. I've been stressed. Our revenue has dipped.

Nathan Barry: Something I see over and over again with professional creators is that usually their new subscribers are coming in a lot slower than before.

Paula Pant: We've made pocket podcast. But really the, the overwhelming majority of our revenue has come from course sales. That's the thing that has always worked.

Nathan Barry: What's your confidence level in hitting 800k in course sales?

Paula Pant: Man, that's a tough question.

Nathan Barry: What's going to give me a ton of confidence? Goes back to a lot of fresh people coming into the audience.

The thing is that I would focus on as you pursue this million dollar goal, get really specific on the audience. Because I think one way to solve this revenue problem is

Paula Pant: So now I feel like there's a much more clear plan. For how to boost our revenue.

Nathan Barry: I love it. It's great. Paula, welcome to the show.

Paula Pant: Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me back on.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So the last [00:01:00] time we recorded this, we were in front of what? A thousand people at VinCon.

Paula Pant: Yes. That was, that was an incredible experience. That was also on my birthday. So that was a wonderful birthday treat to get to spend it, uh, with, with you and with this audience

talking about my

favorite topic.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Which is,

Paula Pant: Business, content, content creation, um, all of this.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So you've been a content creator for a long time. I feel like you and I got started at, you know, very similar time. When did you first start creating content and then when did you go full time?

Paula Pant: I started creating content in 2011 and I, uh, at the time was a blogger.

Um, I blogged for five years and in 2016 I had a large enough audience that I realized I had the capacity to go full time, but in order to do so, I would have to drop all of my freelancing clients. So 2016 was when I dropped the freelancing clients, went full time as a content creator with, with no freelancing and, um, started a podcast.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So what was the [00:02:00] revenue back in 2016? You know, how are you making money in all that?

Paula Pant: Yeah, so between 2011 to 2016, um, I made my money as a freelance writer, but a lot of my projects as a freelancer came through the attention that I got from, um, being a blogger.

Nathan Barry: So you're using services to monetize that attention.

Paula Pant: Exactly. Exactly. In 2016 that was when I directly started monetizing by selling products to my audience rather than to third parties who found me through my content.

Nathan Barry: Right. That makes sense. And so What were those first products that you sold?

Paula Pant: Uh, so the first and primary product is an online course. It's called Your First Rental Property.

So as the name implies, it's aimed at beginner rental property investors. Our whole goal is to get you from zero rental properties to your first.

Nathan Barry: I love that. Okay. So you're, you're creating a lot of personal finance content. Um, give the, the really quick spiel on afford anything and, and like the [00:03:00] angle that you take.

Paula Pant: Sure. So afford anything is a brand that, uh, embraces the idea that you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make carries a trade off and that applies not just to your money, but to any limited resource that you need to manage, like your time, your focus, your energy, your attention.

And so truly it's a brand about how to. make the most of your limited resources. Um, and in that regard, it's a brand around smart decision making and critical thinking and thinking from first principles told through the lens of money. In fact, the name of our newsletter is First Principles. Yeah. I like

Nathan Barry: that.

Okay. So yeah, you mentioned the newsletter, the podcast, what are some of the numbers from an audience perspective of like, you know, downloads, newsletters, subscribers, just so people can frame like the size of a audience that we're talking about.

Paula Pant: Yeah. So we have on kit, we have 75, 000 email subscribers at around a 40.

Okay. Thank you. 40, 41, 42 percent open rate right now. [00:04:00] So is, is that good by the way? Is that, is that decent as an open rate? Yeah. Especially at that

Nathan Barry: size. Right. So open rates, uh, some people will say like, Oh, I have an 80 percent open rate. And I'm always like, how, how big is the list? And they're like 300 people.

And I'm like, okay, yeah, that, that makes sense. Right. And as you get up into these. you know, 20 to 50, 000 subscriber ranges, unless you're like very actively clean the list, you know, you're going to see those numbers drop 40 percent is really solid. Oh,

Paula Pant: thank you.

Nathan Barry: That's what I aim for. Uh, for my newsletter is basically that, that 40 percent mark, but your newsletter is twice the size of mine.

So,

Paula Pant: Oh, wow. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, so we have 75, 000 subscribers at a 40 percent open rate. Um, we, in terms of the podcast to have over 30 million downloads cumulatively, Cumulatively, um, since we started, we're, we're averaging probably around 400, 000 downloads a month, I'd say.

Nathan Barry: That's awesome.

Paula Pant: Um, and the YouTube channel has 50, as of the time of this recording, 53, 000 [00:05:00] subscribers.

Um, so the YouTube channel is where we're putting a lot of our effort. Um, but it's, uh, it seems to be the slowest, the slowest growing, you know, the hardest to crack that algorithm.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. That makes sense. That's also, I mean, for this show, we're spending a lot of time on YouTube and, and just thinking about, I mean, you and I were talking beforehand, that's so much of where a podcast is going.

Right. Is one of, you know, podcasting's fatal flaws is that it doesn't have a discovery algorithm, right? Like, yes, there's the top charts and things like that, but it's hard. And so that's why people relied on distributing clips on social so much. But YouTube is interesting because people watch long form content or listen to, you know, often they have the video, you know, YouTube in their pocket playing in the background, but they consume long form content on YouTube.

And podcasting is taking off like crazy on YouTube,

Paula Pant: right? You know, there's a great chart. It was made by another kit, uh, enthusiast Brian Feroldi. And, um, I draw it out. Yeah. [00:06:00] All right. All right. So credit for this goes to Brian Feroldi. Um, but he, uh, has this chart of like discoverability and loyalty.

Okay. And so you've got certain platforms that are really high in discoverability, but really low in loyalty, like Tik Tok. And then you've got other platforms that are low in discoverability, but high in loyalty, like podcasting.

Nathan Barry: Yep. Email is. Yeah, exactly.

Paula Pant: And newsletters. And so what I've done with Afford Anything is I have spent almost all of my time and attention here.

Uh, in the, the high dis, high loyalty, low discoverability zone. Right. Um, what's great about YouTube is YouTube is right in the center. And so I think there's a lot of, uh, you know, it kind of captures the best of both [00:07:00] worlds, you know? And then there's sort of an open debate as to like X and Instagram, where, well, sometimes they

Nathan Barry: change a

Paula Pant: bunch.

Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Barry: Especially with X as people are playing with. As the team there behind the scenes is playing with the algorithm, it changed a lot. One thing that I really like is having a combination of both of these, right? Where like, I think of it as a hub and spoke approach where, you know, my newsletter is going to be the hub and then I'm going to have these spokes come out that I'm investing in.

Like for me, uh, YouTube and X are kind of the biggest spokes that come out where I'm trying to. Go get new people on YouTube and X and then bring them back to, uh, the newsletter at the core.

Paula Pant: Cause

Nathan Barry: then it also allows me to, when it has to come out on YouTube, I can take my biggest fans and direct them to the YouTube video.

And then guess what? They watch through, which YouTube goes, Oh, I guess. [00:08:00] Okay. So we could probably talk about algorithms and all of that for a long time.

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: But I'm curious more of your business, right? We're standing here at the whiteboard, like, all right, we can plan out anything. What would be. you know, at the end of this hour, if we were able to brainstorm something for your business.

Paula Pant: So I would love to talk about the fact that my, uh, business has, and here, I'm going to, I'm going to keep drawing. Should I? Yeah. Do you want

Nathan Barry: to talk it out? Like, should we map the revenue? Yeah. I can start up here. Where do you want to?

Paula Pant: I'll even show just at a very, very high level, um, I'm going to do this on the fly so you can see my terrible art skills.

So I would say, broadly speaking, the trajectory of my business has, it was initially sloping up and to the right, and then it kind of plateaued. And then, all right, in terms of newsletter subscribers, this is what the chart looks like. Okay. In terms of revenue, The chart looks like that, you know, so,

Nathan Barry: okay, [00:09:00] so this is interesting.

You're actually representing two different styles of charts. One is cumulative and one is, right, is, um, you know, net new or net for that period. Exactly. So we would represent those, I guess we're hanging out down here, right? If we're going. Yeah. You know, a bunch of bar charts, you know, you, you have something like this and, and, you know, we're trying to then bring it back up.

Right. But it's important to look at because people will do something where they'll say, my subscribers are still have this trend,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: Right. But that's a cumulative graph. That's a

Paula Pant: cumulative graph. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And so it's really important of saying, okay, who's new coming into the audience? Because if we were to graph subscribers in a net graph, right, you know, by new per month, right?

Um, you might see something, it might trend quite

Paula Pant: similarly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're exactly correct.

Nathan Barry: So let's, uh, maybe run up here just to get a sense. revenue over [00:10:00] time. Um, what have you noticed if we, if we just go by year starting, what makes it 2018?

Paula Pant: Yeah, I'd say 2018. So 2016 is arguably when I went full time with, with the, uh, as a content creator and 2018, was when we did our first full launch of our flagship course, our signature course, which is your first rental property.

And that is a cohort based course at a relatively high price point. We launched it initially at a thousand dollars and currently it's thirteen hundred.

Nathan Barry: Okay. Yeah. Okay. So if we were to map this out, let's say, I don't know, you got 1 million Up at the top and then, um, I, I guess we'll just say, you know, zero down here on this axis.

Um, what are we at as far as, uh, where was 2016? Like close to zero?

Paula Pant: Uh, no, 2016, [00:11:00] it was probably around. 200, 000 ish, somewhere in there.

Nathan Barry: Put that down there. Uh, 20, 2018. So

Paula Pant: 2018, which is when we start, when we actually did our first launch of your first rental property, 500, 000 ish.

Nathan Barry: Okay. And then, uh, Yeah. Yeah.

1920,

Paula Pant: 21. Some. So our first million dollar year was somewhere around there.

Nathan Barry: Yes. 2020, you

Paula Pant: think? Yeah, sure. Let's, let's put it at 2020. I can't guarantee that that was a precise year, but it was,

Nathan Barry: yeah, in that time period.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And so what started happening, um, was 2021 also pretty high?

Paula Pant: Yes. 2021 was also pretty high.

Nathan Barry: And then 2021

Paula Pant: might have been our highest actually. Yeah, that might be the peak. Yeah, I think 2021 was right

Nathan Barry: at a million.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And then 2022.

Paula Pant: Ah, okay. So here's where the story gets a little bit complicated or a little bit different. So 2022 and 2023, the second half of [00:12:00] 2022. And the first half of 2023, I intentionally took a one year sabbatical to go to grad school.

And that was not a financial decision. That was just a bucket list thing that I'd always wanted to do. Um, there was a particular program that I really wanted to go to. So I, I quite intentionally took a, took time off. So 2022, we only did one launch rather than two and we made probably about half the revenue.

So roughly around 500, 000 that year. Same thing, 2023, again, we intentionally only did one launch instead of two and we made, I'd say ballpark about 500, 000 that year as well.

Nathan Barry: And then 2024

Paula Pant: is trending a little bit less. This is the part that concerns me 2024, which is my first full year back after having gone on that sabbatical.

We do nothing different. If the year trends as it has, [00:13:00] I think we'll close out this year at between 300 to 400, 000. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: So that's, I'm going to, we'll put that there and then we'll do the dashed line.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Right. So that's interesting. Right. So we'll say we're trending 350.

Paula Pant: Yeah. Perfect.

Nathan Barry: Perfect. So that's where you, what Everything up until this point, this graph makes sense,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: Because going full time scaling, scaling more, you figure things out. Um, maybe in here, you know, these are ballpark numbers, but, um, you know, maybe you optimize more in the business. Here's a very deliberate move. We're like, okay,

Paula Pant: yeah.

Nathan Barry: Prioritizing something else, which is an amazing thing to do as a creator where you're like, Actually, these numbers don't always have to go up, like, let me spend my life the way that I want to.

Paula Pant: Exactly. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: So these two make sense. And then 2024, it's like, all right,

Paula Pant: yeah,

Nathan Barry: we're going big. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, this,

Paula Pant: yeah, this isn't

Nathan Barry: [00:14:00] exactly,

Paula Pant: exactly. It was supposed to intentionally go down here and then it was supposed to go back up,

Nathan Barry: right? Yeah. And this is something that I've heard a lot where a lot of creators.

Um, that maybe got their start somewhere, uh, really anywhere in here in the 2016, 2020 range. Um, and then hit it big in 2020, right where, you know, maybe they had a cohort based course that did half a million or 2 million in revenue or something and they had this steady increase then found this like big dip and in maybe late 21, 2022 and a lot of it had to do with Uh, I think a couple of factors first, their audience wasn't growing to the same extent.

The total, the

Paula Pant: cumulative total,

Nathan Barry: the cumulative total was still large, but the net new was small.

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: And they were thinking a lot about launches based on conversion rate of the whole list. I have a hundred thousand [00:15:00] subscribers. It converts it this much. Here's the sales, but they weren't really thinking about it like, Oh, of the a hundred thousand.

They have now been through all of that 100, 100, 000 have been through four plus launches of the same product, right? Right. There's not the same like steady stream of net new people coming in. The second is that COVID We were all inside and we're like, what am I gonna do? Yeah, I guess I should learn something, right?

Maybe I'm done playing video games or watching TV or bending out flex All right, let me actually make the most of this time and let me go learn How to level up my finances, you know, a new skill.

Paula Pant: When Tiger King is over. Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Barry: We watched all of Netflix. Let me do something meaningful with my life now.

And so, um, you know, we don't have that same, that same intention anymore.

Paula Pant: Yeah. Well, certainly after, after the reopening in 2021, uh, I, like most people wanted to go outside, you know, the, the touch grass, as they say, like, you know, the [00:16:00] last thing having spent a year and a half looking at a screen, a lot of us, myself included, did not want to look at a screen anymore.

You know,

Nathan Barry: As you think about this arc and from your own experience and talking to other professional creators. Are there other factors that you can think of beyond, uh, you know, the audience is not growing at the same rate, and then also the COVID. Yes.

Paula Pant: So the other major factor is, uh, is the. interest rates.

So my course, of course your first rental property during the zero interest rate policy era, which is called the ZURP era, um, which is really dates. Even it predates this chart,

Nathan Barry: but it got wild in here. Yeah. During

Paula Pant: this entire era when interest rates were zero or near zero. Um, and so you could get a mortgage at 2 percent or 3 percent or four, four, you know, If it was high four or five percent, um, a lot of people were really interested in buying rental properties and in home ownership [00:17:00] generally because, uh, mortgage interest rates were so low.

Now in 2024, mortgage interest rates are seven and a half percent and home prices spiked in 2020

Nathan Barry: and have not really come down exactly in the market, but

Paula Pant: exactly, exactly.

Nathan Barry: So I think Thank you. As we're trying to be creators that endure, we're saying, Hey, this pursuit as a creator, it's not something that we're doing for a year or two to see what's up.

Right. We're going to do this for multiple decades. Right.

Paula Pant: Yeah. I intend to be Betty White. I'll be 99.

Nathan Barry: I love it. Back

Paula Pant: in the kit studios. You know?

Nathan Barry: We'll have one in New York by then.

Paula Pant: Oh, amazing. Excellent. By the time I'm 99, you heard it here first.

Nathan Barry: By

Paula Pant: my 99th birthday.

Nathan Barry: Yes. We celebrated your 40th together.

Paula Pant: Exactly.

Nathan Barry: In New Orleans. We can celebrate your 99th. So as creators that endure, you [00:18:00] have to pay attention to these broader trends, right? Because we look at our businesses. in the, you know, the micro environment, what's happening with subscriber growth, what products did we launch and all that. But it's like, okay, what, what are, what are people paying attention to?

What are the things like mortgage rates, you know, that actually affect this? And if our product portfolio is very heavily skewed towards something around like buying rental properties, then what are these other trends? And I could see that across, you know, a lot of other content, right? Like if you're making a If your content is around paleo recipes,

Paula Pant: right,

Nathan Barry: right.

And something happens in pop culture to make paleo as a, an interest go way up and then it flatlines. Well, your audience growth is probably going to flatline, right? So you have to pay attention to those bigger waves,

Paula Pant: right, right, exactly.

Nathan Barry: There's kind of two things to go from here, right? We're halfway through 2024 and you don't want to have.

If I understand it correctly, you don't want to have 2024 [00:19:00] and where it's trending.

Paula Pant: Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Barry: You're not resigned to that date.

Paula Pant: Yeah, no, I'm uh, we, we've still got, it's currently August as of the time that we're recording this. So we've, we've got some time to pull it around.

Nathan Barry: Yep. Absolutely. And then there's also this goal for 2025, uh, where we want to go, what would be a good revenue number for 2025?

Paula Pant: 2025, I'd like to hit a million. Okay.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. If you think about a few different factors here, what let's really look to 2025 and then we'll see what comes out. for 2024. So if I'm looking

at 2025, what are the factors that you think are going to Make you hit a million in 2025.

Paula Pant: So what we have seen historically is that the bulk of our revenue has come from Course sales, you know, and you know, we we make some money. We make us some ancillary money on Sponsorships on the podcast You know, we've made pocket change on affiliate offers, um, but [00:20:00] really the, the overwhelming majority of our revenue has come from course sales.

And that I think is where, that's where my focus is because that's where I, that's the thing that has always worked. Um, and so we're building a new course.

Nathan Barry: Okay.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: So, I, Are you going to continue selling the existing courses? Yes. Like what's the course, uh, what courses will you be offering in 2025?

Paula Pant: Ah, so, um, let me, let me add a little bit of context around afford anything in order to explain the answer.

So afford anything, it's a personal finance brand and I use the acronym FIRE, but with two I's, um, to describe kind of topically what our content is based around. F is for financial psychology, increasing your income. The next I is investing, stocks, index funds. The R is real estate. And then the E [00:21:00] is entrepreneurship.

Nathan Barry: Okay.

Paula Pant: Do you remember the word that got you out of spelling bee?

Nathan Barry: I was homeschooled. I didn't do spelling bees. I just read everything. And so. My problem was I knew endless words and I didn't know how to pronounce them.

Paula Pant: Because

Nathan Barry: yeah, there's so many words. I'm like, I've only seen that in a book. I've never heard some say it out loud.

Paula Pant: I, I used to say ETC for et cetera.

Nathan Barry: I

Paula Pant: didn't know you were supposed to say et cetera. I always read it as ETC. So I said that verbally. I was

Nathan Barry: like, is that ETC? Exactly. Okay. So as we're looking at fire here, right in the afford anything world, then So you're, you're thinking about basically as I understand it, you're structuring content and then courses around these pillars.

Exactly.

Paula Pant: Exactly. And so one thing that even before our revenue declined, even, even back in our heyday of 2020 and 2021, one, two, three, issue that I had long noticed [00:22:00] that, um, is that we are primary, our only product revolves around real estate. It revolves around this particular pillar, but it doesn't have anything to do with these other pillars.

And there are two, when you kind of take a look at you're

Nathan Barry: vulnerable to the mortgage rate, like to a macro trend, because you weren't diversified in. The, the content that you're making money from.

Paula Pant: Exactly. And not just that, but also the product that we are offering appeals to a subsection of our audience, but not the entire audience.

So of the 75, 000 people who are on our email list, a subsection of them. are interested in real estate. And we actually do have a segment that is specifically people who have raised their hands and opted into being joining a very real estate specific segment. And that's about 18, 000 people. But all right.

That means that when, every time we launch, we are hyper targeting 18, 000 out of the 75, 000 on the email [00:23:00] list. So then the bulk of the people on the email list are not, or I guess they're called newsletters these days. Um, the bulk of the people on the newsletter are, are, you know, they're interested in financial psychology or they're interested in learning how to make more money or maybe in the stock market.

And we're, we don't have a product that we offer them. So even in our heyday, Um, I recognized that was an issue and there were two directions I could go knowing that that was an issue. I could either lean entirely into real estate and make that the central brand, um, which is what a lot of people were encouraging me to do, or I could, uh, develop additional products for the rest of these pillars, which is what I actually want to do.

Um, cause I don't want to be a real estate brand. I want to be comprehensive, fire.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Okay. So as we bring that back to then courses, what, what courses are you offering in 2025?

Paula Pant: Ah, so I'm building a new one right now. I've actually never [00:24:00] publicly stated the name. So here's, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna break, we're gonna break this here.

So the name of the new course is. Your next raise.

Nathan Barry: Okay. I like that. So there we're touching on the increased income.

Paula Pant: Exactly. Exactly. And in terms of the why now, um, you know, 2024, we're living in a period where we have been hit with high inflation, you know, and there's a lot of people feel like their salary has not kept up with inflation.

Um, groceries are more expensive. Insurance is more expensive. Everything feels more expensive. And they don't, a lot of people feel like, okay, my salary has not kept up. How do I ask my boss for a raise? And so I think that there's Uh, a demand for this, particularly in this moment going back

Nathan Barry: to those macro trends,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: Right. There's something of like, okay, what [00:25:00] demand can I create within this audience or what waves are already coming through that I could surf, you know, and I like, it's sort of a wind at your back versus, you know, creating this on your own.

Paula Pant: Exactly. Exactly. That makes

Nathan Barry: sense. Okay. So, um, when are you planning to launch this product?

So the later this year, later this year, and then, um, so you'll still have your first rental property.

Paula Pant: Yes.

Nathan Barry: Right. Is there, are these the main,

Paula Pant: yes, those, those will be the two main revenue drivers.

Nathan Barry: Um, all right. And so, you know, if we're breaking down a million in revenue, our core sale is going to be 80 percent of it.

Do you think?

Paula Pant: I would bet so. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Okay. I don't podcast.

Paula Pant: Yeah. Podcast sponsorships right now. We're bringing in 200. I think we might end up with like 225, 000 this year. Um, so we'll say ballpark 200, 000. Um, I don't have any reason to believe that that will substantially increase.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Paula Pant: I think that

Nathan Barry: is there another category that makes up more than 50 K or [00:26:00] is it

Paula Pant: No, not really.

So it's

Nathan Barry: really going to be these, these two. So we're saying we're going to hit effectively 800 in course sales and 200 in podcasts. You know, straight 80 20. That'll work.

Paula Pant: Exactly. Exactly.

Nathan Barry: Okay. So then really this, what's your confidence level in hitting, uh, 200k

Paula Pant: in podcast? Uh, high, very high. Yeah. 90, 80, 90

Nathan Barry: plus percent.

Yeah,

Paula Pant: exactly. Okay.

Nathan Barry: So let's not spend any time there because that's, That's going to happen. So what's your confidence level in hitting 800K in course sales? And then we'll unpack why.

Paula Pant: Man, that's a tough question. 50%? 80%? Yeah, let's give, let's give me a 50 percent confidence level. That sounds good. We can dig

Nathan Barry: into that.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: All right. So 50 percent confidence level. Let's focus on that. What makes you say 50%? What, yeah, what, what's the uncertainty?

Paula Pant: So. In the heyday of your first rental property, I remember exactly [00:27:00] our single best launch, we had 505 students enroll. Okay. And I think the price point at that time was 1300.

Okay. So that's, um, that was like a six. It's basically a 600, 650, 000 launch. That was, that was the, I mean, that's when we look at the range, that was the top end of the range. That was the absolute best. And that was, I think 2021, if I'm not mistaken.

Nathan Barry: Okay. So the best ever is about 650 K. Yeah. And then what's your lowest launch?

Paula Pant: 99, 000.

Nathan Barry: Okay. Yeah. Where you're like trying to get one more person by this. Yeah. Which to be clear, 99, 000 is a lot, but when you're,

Paula Pant: We

Nathan Barry: know you can do better and

Paula Pant: we have salaries to pay. This isn't, uh, it isn't just all like, I'm not like Montgomery Burns on the Simpsons, just like using it to support my, my bastion of, uh, hounds, you know?

Nathan Barry: Yes. That's something that I [00:28:00] think listeners to this podcast understand well.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Cause we'll throw out numbers like a hundred K for this, 500 K for that. And some people will listen and be like, Why are you not happy with these numbers? And you're like, no, no, you know, we're running a business, right?

There's a lot of, we have salaries. Yeah.

Paula Pant: We have health insurance. We have, um, you know, I offer a retirement plan, right? You know, to my employees. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Right. Yeah. As you're

Nathan Barry: taking care of people and

Paula Pant: all that. Exposed. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: That's what the E stands

Paula Pant: for.

Nathan Barry: The expose.

Paula Pant: Exactly. Um,

Nathan Barry: okay. So, um, Our highest and lowest launches.

Obviously, if you do a single launch, you know, that's 650, we're going to coast our way off of the other products.

Paula Pant: Yeah. I don't see that happening. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And so

Paula Pant: let's dig into that. Again, 2021, we, mortgage interest rates, I know I keep going back to this and I don't want to like blame society.

Nathan Barry: No, but like these macro factors really matter.

Paula Pant: [00:29:00] You know, 2021 mortgage interest rates were. Rock bottom low and so there was so much enthusiasm around buying rental properties because why it was perfect

Nathan Barry: timing

Paula Pant: Yeah, you had exactly

Nathan Barry: a product audience and timing Yeah. And you nailed all three parts of that Venn diagram. Do you think your next raise and your first rental property, are they going to be split evenly in revenue?

Or do you think that, you know, we'll have another, like a 60 40 split or?

Paula Pant: Let me just think through this out loud. Um, the, okay, your first rental property, I do think we can get it above a hundred thousand per launch. Um, let's say that we can improve that to. 150, 000 per launch multiplied by two launches a year.

So let's say we can bring in 300, 000 for your first rental property. That means the other 500k would have to come from your next raise and part of the [00:30:00] question mark That's happening in my brain is I don't know what we're gonna price your next raise at So if we to hit this goal want 500, 000 to come in from your next raise How many, how many people do we need?

And at what price

Nathan Barry: point you have, what are the price points you're trying to decide between

Paula Pant: the ballpark in my head was like somewhere in the 500 range. Although there was part of me that was also thinking maybe I should start a little bit lower and

Nathan Barry: well, let's go with 500 and let's work with that. So that means we need to sell a thousand to get to that, right?

Yeah. Uh, so we need 1000. sales. When we're looking at this, well, let's look at confidence again. Your, your first rental property, 150K per launch twice. Confidence level of that can happen.

Paula Pant: I would give myself a 75 percent confidence level there. Um, and the reason that I say that is a few, a few fold. Number [00:31:00] one, this, this 99K that, that was this year, that was 2024.

Mm hmm. And a, there was In 2024, the shock of interest rates having just spiked so much. So recently, you know, people hadn't normalized to the new interest rate normal yet. So I think that really hurt us. Um, the other thing, and so this is part of my direct circle of control. Um, my launch. strategy, my launch planning was just not as strong, you

Nathan Barry: know how to do it better than,

Paula Pant: yeah, you know, like the 2021 launch, that was like, we had a lot of tailwinds.

Um, but also we put a lot of effort into a really well mapped out strategy, like launch strategy, you know, in terms of the emails that we were sending out and how we were targeting each one. And, you know, like,

Nathan Barry: that's another thing that I've noticed is As creators go on this [00:32:00] trajectory, it's often you start to learn, you know, you are figuring out what works.

You're testing it. You really learn what works.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And then, you know, next one you're like, okay, I've got all the best practices, but somewhere in here of the launches, not only are you starting to tire out that audience because you don't have as many fresh people in it. But also we tend to run the same launches on autopilot a little bit and we might reuse sales copy that worked, but it might not be as relevant, you know, in, you know, this year as it was last year.

And so I've noticed a lot of that of. Like, you know, launch four, launch five of a product.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: People will often not even, they won't have the same energy behind it.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Right. You were like, Oh, I did Instagram lives every day along here, or, you know, I taught live webinars and this next time I'm like, maybe the live webinars didn't add as much in direct sales.

And so I back off of those. But what comes through to your audience is just less enthusiasm from you over the launch and that translates into fewer [00:33:00] sales.

Paula Pant: Exactly, exactly. And so that, that is, that was also a big part of the, our, our low in 2024 in terms of that was our lowest cohort, um, ever. But yeah, you know, we, we had all of these headwinds.

And in addition to that, um, we ourselves just didn't put that much effort into launch strategy, launch planning emails. We didn't do any webinars for it. We just, we didn't like. A lot of the emails that I wrote, rather than that email being like, uh, today, today, the goal of today's email is X. A lot of the emails that I wrote for that one, I was like, you know, here's something that's been on my mind that relates to real estate.

And you know, so it was just, uh, really off the cuff.

Nathan Barry: Yep. Not as structured.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Okay. So even as we mapped this out, you know, implementing, you know, like better launch strategies and, uh, and all of that stuff. Pretty good confidence that we can get to the 300k. As we go to the [00:34:00] 500k, I think if we really focus on that, if we're talking about making a thousand sales, what, what goes into like high confidence that we can hit a thousand sales?

Or maybe what's the, you could even, could invert it and say, what, what makes you skeptical that a thousand sales?

Paula Pant: I don't need to sell anyone on the benefit of getting a raise. That part is obvious. So I think what I would need to convey is why I'm the best person to teach this and why an investment of, let's say the price point is 500. Why an investment of 500 would. Have, have a, you know,

Nathan Barry: that ROI would have that

Paula Pant: ROI.

Nathan Barry: Like, yeah, so it's like really in that sales pitch.

Paula Pant: Yeah. Like people would need to know that they're not just flushing 500 down the toilet and think further thinking through that out loud. All right. What would. [00:35:00] As an audience member, if someone were to come to me with, you know, all right, I would think that I was flushing 500 down the toilet if either I thought that I had an employer or an employment situation that just made getting a raise impossible.

And so spending 500 is just throwing good money. No

Nathan Barry: matter how good I am, it won't result in a raise.

Paula Pant: So either I would have to, as a audience member, either I would have to think that I'd have to feel like I was in that type of employment situation, or It would be the opposite. I'd have to feel like getting a raise is just so inevitable.

Um, that why do I need to bother? Yeah. Why do I need to pay to learn

Nathan Barry: this? So you're targeting the in between, which is someone who believes that a raise is possible, but it's going to take the right work.

Paula Pant: Exactly.

Nathan Barry: So in that, I mean, we're getting it as a bigger race

Paula Pant: as possible, but it's going to take the right work.

Nathan Barry: So yeah, the audience clarity. [00:36:00] I'm trying to think of how I would map it out, but it's that middle cohort. I believe I can get a raise, but it's going to take work and the right tactics. So one thing that I'm noticing in this is we've started to narrow our target audience from everyone who is employed into people who have these characteristics and maybe even people who are in these industries.

Right. Right. So something that we need to do, going back to this. What I'm thinking about is what's going to give me a ton of confidence in hitting a thousand sales goes back to this. I want a lot of fresh people coming into the audience, right? And so now as I'm thinking, how do I get a lot of fresh people coming into the audience, right?

The total list size growing. Well, I should be clear on what the right people are because it'd be terrible if I had a tick tock go viral about. How does save money on lattes? I don't know. Yeah. And then that got [00:37:00] email subscribers and then I launched this and it went, went nowhere. Right. What would be excellent is if I found, okay, these industries, I, you know, I'm the best at getting people raises in these industries, people in these demographics.

And then we start to say, okay, I am targeting even if we were crazy specific women between the ages of 35 and 45 who work in marketing, right? Because if I. And you'll have to look through your case studies and your material and all of that. But then I'm not, someone's not coming in and reading a generic article about, you know, how to get a raise.

There's a thousand of those written on the internet.

Paula Pant: Right?

Nathan Barry: But like, this is what gets people raises in marketing. Mm-Hmm. , this is right. And, and as you get really specific on the audience, that clarity, then it drives your sales pitch. And then you can really think about, okay. where on the entire internet do I go and get people, you know, cause of [00:38:00] this gap that are really trying to get a raise within this very specific niche.

Paula Pant: Does that make sense? Right, right. Exactly.

Nathan Barry: Well, I'll go to my own example, right? Teaching software design,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: If I'm teaching design in general, it could be graphic design, logos, software, anything. But then as I narrow it into software design, that's a little more specific. But then if I get into designing iPhone applications, there's a very specific set of podcasts that I can go on, um, uh, places I can guest post, right?

And then people say, Oh, that is exactly for this type of thing.

Paula Pant: Right. And

Nathan Barry: so I think the more narrow you go in your target market, Um, not only does your sales copy get more clear, but it's way easier to attract new people.

Paula Pant: Right. Right. So how would you do it? So for something like your next raise, where I guess we're going for knowledge workers in the private sector.

Okay. [00:39:00] Um,

Nathan Barry: that's still a huge, but we're starting to narrow things down. How would you narrow it down further? Here's our little person. This is our target.

Paula Pant: Knowledge workers in the private sector. Well, I haven't tested this, but my, my gut says either beginning or mid career.

Nathan Barry: Okay. Um, I'd push back on the beginning career because you have a 500 price point, so you can't be like ultra beginning,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: So you got to think about when, when does that kick in.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Um, yeah. But maybe we'll just say mid career for now. Mid career.

Paula Pant: Okay, mid career. Let's say maybe like ages 30 through 50 ballpark.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, have you had any clues in your audience or could you pull your audience of what their industry is? Actually, that's a new kit feature.

You could plug in a poll and say, you know, what, what industry are you in? And that might be interesting. And then you could segment off of that.

Paula Pant: Okay. Cool.

Nathan Barry: Because it sounds like there's not an industry that, you know, as I'm [00:40:00] throwing out examples, you're not like, Oh, it's this,

Paula Pant: right? Right. Yeah. It's, it's more, there are certain industries that it's not, and the industries that it's not are, you know, I think these would primarily be government jobs, but any job that has a very fixed rung of, you know, employees.

You make this much based on this set of circumstances and there's there's no room for negotiation

Nathan Barry: you know one other thing that you can do in all of this is There's a creator named Brennan Dunn and he had a course for freelancers very specifically called double your freelancing rate.

Paula Pant: Ah, yes, and

Nathan Barry: I've heard of him found that You know, so he's teaching a lot like that would be in the entrepreneurship category, right?

right where he's teaching a lot of how to position your proposals how to establish credibility, all of those things. Right. And he found that across the categories of freelancers, he had very different results, [00:41:00] designers, developers, copywriters, et cetera. The same material would work for all of that, but someone would see developer examples and be like, Oh, I'm a copywriter.

This isn't for me. And he's like, no, no, no, it, it works for that.

Paula Pant: And

Nathan Barry: so what he ended up doing is tracking in his newsletter, right? Cause if we go loyalty and discoverability, we've got very loyal people who we gradually know more and more about, right? As we run the industry poll, other things, he started tracking what industry or what freelancer type they were.

And then he would change the testimonials that he would show every testimony he collected, he would categorize by freelancer type,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: And then he would match that up in his automated emails, right? This is launched. He's running multiple times,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: And so then he would say, okay, I'm going to write about, you know, how to get a raise in our example.

And then I'm going to map you know, their industry to a [00:42:00] testimonial in that industry. And then people are seeing like, Oh, this is made just for me. So in his case, someone's learning about, you know, like writing great proposals and that's growing into a sales pitch, but the testimonial called out copywriters because the person reading it is a copywriter.

Paula Pant: Right. It's interesting because what you're talking about is increasing segmentation. Yeah. The frustration that I have had with segmentation. Um, in the past has been, um, the, as we've segmented, we've created more and more content that's been seen by fewer and fewer people. Oh yeah. So again, going back to the launches that we've run in the past for your first rental property, um, there's some stuff that we have sent out to the entire list, but a lot of, a lot of what we've sent out, we have sent out specifically to the real estate community.

subsection. And even within that, for a little while, I eventually gave this up cause it was too much work. But even within that real [00:43:00] estate subsection, we had further segmented into, are you interested in Airbnbs versus are you interested in long term rentals? You know, we had further subsegmented into that.

And then we were just spinning our wheels, creating all of this content for the Airbnb segment on the list is 3000 people. So I'm like, why am I putting this much work into a piece of content that's going to be seen by 3000 people, which is, you know, relatively speaking, a very small proportion of the overall

Nathan Barry: list.

Okay. So there's two different things as you're talking, that made me think of segmenting versus personalizing. And so segmenting what we're doing. Is if we have a single audience. And then we split them into three groups. We're sending a hundred percent different content to each of those groups. And that's what you're describing of like, I got to write all of this and then I got to write all of that and I got to write all of that.

And

Paula Pant: triples the workload and each piece is seen by a [00:44:00] third of the people.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Uh, yeah. Our effort versus results graph is inverted.

Paula Pant: Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Barry: Personalizing. is something a little bit different. It's related. You need data, right? But personalizing might be sending the same email and it just changes itself based on who it's going out to.

There might be something that's entirely dedicated to real estate, right? But you might have an extra section that's that is just for the real estate people. Like you might say, Hey, Here's a, a high level article on, on real estate, but then there's a sections just cause you know, they are going really deep into it, um, that you might add to the email, right?

Cause you can put an if statement in your email that says, Hey, if they're the real estate segment, add this

Paula Pant: in.

Nathan Barry: Or for example, what we were talking about with testimonials is

Paula Pant: we

Nathan Barry: could say this will always be a testimonial and

Paula Pant: we'll [00:45:00] just

Nathan Barry: decide which of the five to show based on what we know about them.

And that's something what's really cool in kit is you can go and create, um, snippets. And so then you could have this series of snippets, which are pieces of content that you write separately, and then you can just tell it which one to insert in. And so you might have a snippet that is all of your, in Brendan's case, he would have a snippet that's all of his.

Copywriting testimonials

Paula Pant: and

Nathan Barry: it's just set up to automatically drop one of them in based on that. So then you end up creating this library that works for you instead of making tons of one off content. Right? There's two sides of this equation. If we're, if we're thinking about the audience growth in one side is I'm just going to say pre and post, but [00:46:00] if this is when they joined your list, subscriber, not a subscriber,

Paula Pant: and

Nathan Barry: we can think about personalization and choosing a niche and all of that in both equations.

So if I get really specific before they're a subscriber, then I'm thinking about what's going to attract. The right kind of person in my audience, where do they hang out online already? Where, whose podcasts can I go on as a guest? Because to hit this number, we're going to have to have a lot more audience growth.

So you're going to have to be less inward focused on your community and more outward focused. How do I bring the right new people in?

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: So getting really clear here, well, getting really clear here, uh, on who it is will help you understand where to find them. And how to attract them. And then you can use that knowledge, you know, post them joining your list.

What happens is, you know, now I can talk to them differently based on the goals that they [00:47:00] have, what industry they're in, et cetera.

Paula Pant: Right. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm thinking about the personalizing, it means I'm, so I'm thinking through the workload. So the workload involved is. First, identifying, you know, which of these categories we're going to focus on, then developing out.

a library of content for each of these, which is still, you know, it's a little bit of, yeah, but, but yeah, it's certainly, I guess it's better because the library circulates, um, kind of like in the way that people, I don't think they do this anymore, but, uh, used to build out like a library of content that just circulated on Twitter,

Nathan Barry: right.

Paula Pant: You know,

Nathan Barry: well, maybe let's focus a little less on this. And I think what I want you to get really clear on. is who, maybe you write out four or five avatars or something, but who is the ideal buyer of your next race and get really clear on that. And then think about this equation [00:48:00] of what, you know, where do they live on the internet?

How do I reach more, many more of them, et cetera. Cause I think one way to solve this revenue problem is, is a lot of new subscribers.

Paula Pant: Hmm.

Nathan Barry: Right. And, and so it's, who are we trying to reach? How do we go find them? And then, you know, like once they're on the list, then we can think a lot more about, okay, how do we convert them better?

Right. What's the higher quality launch that we can do? How can we message to them specifically?

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: But if I were putting these problems in sequence, I would really focus on. How do I get clear on who I'm serving and really go out and find a lot more of

Paula Pant: them? But yeah, no, I, I see it. The industry podcasts for people in the es- esthetician industry,

Nathan Barry: right?

Right. You start to say, okay, I'm actually just here to help mechanical engineers get a raise, right? Or I'm here to help finance professionals get a raise and you'll be more broad than [00:49:00] that, but you could take all of your, general tips that work. Right? And you could write a guest post.

Paula Pant: Mm-Hmm.

Nathan Barry: on, on an industry publication that doesn't talk as much about how to get a raise 'cause they have their own course or whatever if they're all about how to get a raise.

But if it's the software product managers, right, there's a blog for software product managers and you say, Hey, I will write for your community about how exactly software product managers should get a raise, which is 80%. your overall content because the principles are the same, right? You just made sure to find two stories and interview one person in that exact industry.

And so now you're able to go out into like, pull people in, uh, from a specific niche and get in front of new audiences that normally you wouldn't. And you're not in a crowded market anymore because no one is talking about what you are in this sub niche.

Paula Pant: Right, right, right.

Nathan Barry: The craziest example that I saw of this is [00:50:00] we had a migration to kit come through the other day and it was someone who was doing, um, like fitness and mobility for dental hygienists.

Paula Pant: Oh.

Nathan Barry: And I was like, this is the most narrow niche I've ever seen. But then I was thinking about it and I was like, Oh. There's got to be some weird right I bet you end up with some weird wrist pain and you know,

Paula Pant: yeah, yeah exactly You're holding your body in very specific ways. Yeah,

Nathan Barry: and so if you think about it and you're on your

Paula Pant: feet Yeah, yeah,

Nathan Barry: if I'm doing personal Like personal fitness right for everyone giant market.

How are you ever gonna stand out all that but if I'm doing it for dental hygienists

Paula Pant: Mm

Nathan Barry: hmm. Oh Okay Every single blog and podcast that talks about it every you know, I'm like, okay, how do I go in? where people are taking these classes in person.

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: How do I come and teach a, you know, a class of 50 dental hygienists about this?

How do I, you know, and some professor is going to be [00:51:00] like, uh, yes, please come in, you know, Tuesday at 10 and teach this. It becomes so much easier to reach my target audience when I go specific

Paula Pant: like that. Right.

Nathan Barry: And to be clear, Um, you have a very large established brand, so you don't have to say, all right, forget it.

Scrap afford anything. We're not for all of these people. We're only for this narrow niche. You don't have to do that. You can just choose, you know, four or five niches that you want to go into

Paula Pant: and

Nathan Barry: then tailor your message. We did this when growing kit where first it was like, you know, email marketing for professional bloggers.

And then we started to go very specific and we're like, all right, for coaches, for fitness bloggers, for, and we would make sales pages that were 90 percent the same, but the testimonials were different. The copy was a little different. And it was written, you know, just for authors and people were like, wait, there's an email marketing platform that's built just for authors.

It was like, authors and coaches and, you [00:52:00] know, but like in our marketing, it was very, very narrow,

Paula Pant: right? Well, I'm specifically seeing, um, a gap here when it comes to people, people who work for large companies, which I think are generally kind of underserved by con by general, by content creators, because there's a lot of content creators are Entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, freelancers themselves.

Yeah. So they write what they

Nathan Barry: know.

Paula Pant: Yeah. Exactly. Which means there's this huge subset of the population who work for, for mid sized to large companies who aren't really served by a lot of content creators.

Nathan Barry: So it's interesting about that. Yeah. So now we're getting into some industry things. We're getting into a company size.

Exactly. How large of companies are we talking here? Like 500, thousands of employees? I'd

Paula Pant: say anything 500 and up, you know, because then that's enough people

Nathan Barry: that you don't know everybody. I'm thinking about headlines that would get someone to click.

Paula Pant: Uh huh.

Nathan Barry: What's the [00:53:00] name of a company, like let's say something out there that would be a thousand employees, anything come to mind?

Paula Pant: A company that would be around a thousand employees. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: I mean, some of these are way bigger, you know, but

Paula Pant: yeah, cause yeah, cause you can immediately think of the biggest companies

Nathan Barry: like KPMG or, you know, like these big consulting, but say that's it.

Paula Pant: Okay.

Nathan Barry: Right. If we're going there, they're much bigger than that.

But it was like if the headline was how to get a raise at KPMG.

Paula Pant: Um, right, right.

Nathan Barry: Like if I

Paula Pant: work there, I'm probably cooking that Ben and Jerry's, you know, or a distributor who serves Ben and Jerry's like the cookie dough distributor that serves Ben and Jerry's.

Nathan Barry: So what's interesting is you could then, this is not very scalable, but you could write an article that's so targeted that you could then have someone on your team DM it on LinkedIn to everyone who age.

Right. All of that. Who works at that company.

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: Right. And the article might be, again, 90 [00:54:00] percent the same advice, 10 percent personalized to the audience. And so, you know, I'm not sure what, uh, targeting meta lets you do, right? How narrow it lets you get. But if some of these companies are big enough. 10, 000 employees

Paula Pant: meta

Nathan Barry: might let you run an ad just to people who work at that company or you might be able to get directionally close to it.

And what's interesting is when you go very narrow like that, it actually, it feels like it excludes people outside of it. But then Um, it, it doesn't because people see that and go, Oh, well that's not me, but right. Right. It's like, I don't work at KPMG, but I work at Ernst and Young. Right. Right.

Paula Pant: Right. I don't work at Ben and Jerry's, but I work at Van Leeuwen.

Nathan Barry: Right.

Paula Pant: You know? And so

Nathan Barry: you get some of these. Haagen

Paula Pant: Dazs. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. And so people will try to find, if you go abroad, people will say, Oh, that's not for me. If you go specific, they'll often try to find how it's relevant for them.

Paula Pant: Right. [00:55:00] Yeah.

Nathan Barry: I guess if I could give you a few things that I would focus on as you pursue this million dollar goal in 2025, they would be, first, I would think about the quality of the launch,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: What you talked about here, you know, the differences between like a great launch and one where you're kind of on autopilot.

Paula Pant: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: The second thing is I would get really specific with who you're trying to serve.

Paula Pant: Hmm.

Nathan Barry: Whether it's industry or something else, like create five avatars of these are the people that are going to be the best fit for the, your next raise a course, because then we're going to get really specific in who we serve and that will drive copy and everything else.

And then the third thing is I would really think about where those people, where those ideal customers live on the internet. And I would aggressively go [00:56:00] out and find them. Because if we can go, if we can grow that audience, thinking again about the net new subscribers versus the total subscribers, if you can get tens of thousands, even say 10 to 20, 000 totally new people to the community who are in the right target demographic, then this launch is going to do really, really well.

Paula Pant: 10 to 20 K highly targeted new subs.

Nathan Barry: Yep There you go. You fit it in Okay, how does that resonate

Paula Pant: that makes a lot of sense? It it makes a lot of sense. It also makes me think I need to Pull somebody on to the team whose job is entirely to like project manage this

Nathan Barry: You know or someone who's whose focus is Purely on subscriber growth of the right people.

Yeah, and like what metrics could you put around that? That's a bigger conversation that Yeah, cuz

Paula Pant: this cuz it sounds like a really good plan. It also sounds like [00:57:00] Like the primary objection that's coming to my head right now, it's not really an objection But it's it's just thinking through how to do it The primary thing coming to my head right now is I'm already creating so much content right and project managing so much else You Um, with two podcasts a week, with, uh, trying to scale up, uh, YouTube, et cetera, et cetera, that to really do this well, the, the targeting and the personalization, I would need to bring someone on the team, um, and their first assignment would be watch this video, you know?

Um, but yeah, I would have to pull somebody on the team whose job was to project manage exactly this. Which I'm willing to do, but you know, yeah, who is that person? How do you find the right person?

Nathan Barry: What I think I would do, we went down some good paths with segmentation and personalization of like exploring those ideas.

I would pull back on that because I think you're identifying, like that's a lot [00:58:00] of work

Paula Pant: and

Nathan Barry: it's hard to do and it's hard to get right.

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: Um, I would think of it at a higher level of, what does it look like to just get very clear on these avatars of who we're serving and then just naturally bring that through all of our content?

Paula Pant: Right?

Nathan Barry: So when you go to plan out the podcast episode or a guest post or something like that, you're just thinking, okay, does this serve, you know, Sally, my fake avatar of a person that I've identified or even real people, right? If in your polls or like, Send something out to your list and say, Hey, you know, I'm going to be creating a lot of content about how to get a raise.

What what's your biggest struggle with learning to get a raise or with like with getting your next raise? What's your biggest objection fear? Any of that here? Reply and let me know. And then you get to the real people and you start to see, okay, this person who replied, let me go find them on LinkedIn.

What did they like? What industry are they actually in? Like insert to understand your audience. And then maybe [00:59:00] even get to real people. And, cause that, that lens,

Paula Pant: I

Nathan Barry: just think you're, you're teaching such a broad topic.

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: That you have to find a way to make it specific. Uh, and if you do that, you'll drive, like the conversion rate will be so much higher because people will say, Oh, there's no way I could buy this other course or this other content out there.

Uh, you know, I have to buy from Afford to Anything because, they're teaching to me specifically.

Paula Pant: Right. But

Nathan Barry: they get my industry.

Paula Pant: Right.

Nathan Barry: All right, so we've covered a lot. Let's, uh, sit down and, uh, you know, just kind of talk through some action steps and look at our pretty drawings. I'm noticing a decent amount of hesitation on aspects of it.

Yeah. Where are you feeling hesitation? Where are you feeling excitement?

Paula Pant: I think the biggest level of hesitation is, is the clear level of workload that's involved in everything that you've just outlined. Um, not, it's not that I'm not, I'm obviously happy to work, [01:00:00] but it's, It's just that I am so maximally tasked already and so, um, I'm already putting in long hours.

I'm already kind of doing the grind that this, I think it's a great plan, but I think it requires growing the team. Now, that said, I am happy to grow the team. In fact, that big goal is to grow the team. Um, the challenge is simply It's, it's the eternal to grow the team. You need revenue.

Nathan Barry: Yep. That chicken and egg situation.

Yeah, exactly.

Paula Pant: So that to me is the biggest hesitation right now. There's probably some degree of shyness that has come from all of those years, starting in 2018 when we were heavily segmenting and segmentation was just, again, you're doing triple. It can be a huge

Nathan Barry: amount. Yeah. Say it. Triple

Paula Pant: the work seen by one third of the audience.

You know?

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. And so. I think it's good that we went down that path because it's something that's easy to get [01:01:00] into and it can be powerful, but as you're calling out, it's so much work. And so I really like, I'm not going to do it because it would make the graphic not look as pretty, but I want to like draw a big X through the segment and personalize because what the way that I want you to see it is instead, how do I get clear on who my target customer is.

So that I can go find them out in the world. Like the, something that I see over and over again with professional creators who have been doing it for years and years, and I've had some kind of a dip in revenue is that usually their new subscribers are coming in a lot slower than before. And so the thing that I'm always trying to push them on is go back out into the ecosystem.

And like often people will switch in the early days. They're. 90 percent of their time is about reaching new audiences and 10 percent is engaging their current audience. And then usually around this time it's flipped and they don't realize it.

Paula Pant: Where [01:02:00]

Nathan Barry: 90 percent of their time and content is going to their existing audience and only 10 percent is about reaching new audiences.

And so what I want you to do is to really take Those personas that you figure out and like find who in your audience can you most help and then all right? Who's like them out there and to really not focus a lot of time on like the nitty gritty of segmentation or all that? but instead to to take this persona and Like go out into the world with it and say okay Because we're reaching 70 80, 000 people right now,

Paula Pant: right?

Nathan Barry: We could, you know, five to 10 times that is definitely possible. We're not, we don't have a total addressable market problem talking about personal finance, right? Right. Right. Much bigger. And so you have to find. What are the avatars? How do you reach them? Where are they hanging out? And what copy resonates with them?

Paula Pant: Right. Right. I like the idea of five avatars. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I also like the idea of, um, using polling [01:03:00] to figure out, all right, you know, of the existing audience. All right. Tell me, what's your company size? What's what industry are you in? How big is your company? What are the biggest hesitations, you know, what are the biggest challenges that you face in terms of getting a raise?

And then also using the beta cohort to, uh, to refine those avatars as well as to generate some case studies.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. That sounds good. Well, there's some clear next steps there. And I'm going to be really curious. You'll have to text me, send me an email with. You know how this works and how it unfolds because thank

Paula Pant: you.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, you've you've built a great business That's impacted really a lot of people and I'm excited to see you Like continue to be like a beacon for how you like build and create and endure for a long time.

Paula Pant: Oh, thank you

Nathan Barry: So if people are saying, all right, I want to, you know, get a raise, I want to learn about real estate, you know, any of these things, where should they go to follow you?

Paula Pant: Oh, well, you can subscribe to my newsletter hosted by kit, uh, at afford anything. com slash newsletter.

Nathan Barry: Sounds good. Thanks for [01:04:00] coming on.

Paula Pant: Of course. Thank you for having me on.

Nathan Barry: If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search billion dollar creator and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and drop a comment.

I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.