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Nathan Barry

I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.

Featured Post

The Audience Shortcut: How one idea drove $228M in sales

Hey Reader, I’m excited to share something I’ve been working on for over a year: My new essay, The Audience Shortcut: How the Right People Paying Attention Changes Everything. This is the core idea behind how I went from a string of failed startups to building a $45M/year company with no outside funding. It’s not about going viral or gaining millions of followers. It’s about getting the right people to pay attention—and how that changes everything. In this essay, I share the exact framework I...

Dan Martell's Scaling Credo

Hey Reader, There are 50 things you do in a given week, but what are the 5 that actually matter? Most creators I know are drowning in their own to-do lists. They're posting on seven different platforms, running three different courses, testing five marketing channels, and wondering why nothing seems to gain real traction. The harsh reality is that 80% of what we do doesn't move the needle. We're busy being busy, but we're not building the business we actually want. The antidote to this chaos...

Nathan Barry Speaking at Craft + Commerce 2025

Hey Reader, Here's where we're headed: Soon, AI will write podcast scripts optimized to hook attention and deliver perfectly timed punchlines. AI voices will narrate them. AI avatars will perform them, A/B testing whether audiences prefer a 25-year-old woman, a 50-year-old man, or the podcasting baby. AI will cut the clips, write the titles, and push everything to every platform. And then AI bots will consume it all, share it, comment on it. We'll have content that’s: Created by AI Performed...

Hey Reader, Most creators I know are stuck because they're trying to figure out steps 2 through 47 before they take step 1. This hit me during a conversation I had with James Clear recently when he mentioned the ABZ Framework from Shaan Puri. It's so simple it almost feels too obvious, but that's exactly why it works. "You don't need to know your full ABCs—just your ABZ: A is where you are today (most people don’t have this). Then you need B: the next step to move you forward. Lastly, you...

Hey Reader, Running multiple businesses with different audiences is like running a marathon with ankle weights. 12 years ago, I wrote an essay about building an audience where I talked about learning this lesson the hard way. I've been thinking about that piece lately. The core idea still rings true over a decade later—maybe even more so today. Multiple audiences create invisible friction. Back then, I was running OneVoice (a product for kids with special needs, such as non-verbal autism, or...

Hey Reader, I got a question from a podcast listener recently, and it's one I’ve heard a few times: "Nathan, why are you selling courses if you have a successful business? Why start and manage a personal brand? I'm always curious why massively successful business owners dive into content creation vs pour more time into their main thing… as running a brand takes multiple hours per week." It's a good question. When you're leading a company that's growing well, conventional wisdom says to double...

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Hey Reader, How much ability do you have to influence the decisions of the people around you? Something I've been thinking about lately is status in organizations. If you think of your company, who are the people in it that are the most well-known? Who are the ones with the greatest influence? The people others pay attention to. Sure, those with the most seniority or tenure may immediately come to mind, but I bet you can think of others who are respected despite not being high ranking...

silhouette of woman sitting on beach during sunset

Hey Reader, Do you ever feel pulled in multiple directions and unsure of which goals to pursue? I found myself in this exact situation recently, trying to balance expanding Kit Studios to new cities, scaling Kit's app store, designing new features, writing a book, and building my personal brand. During a session with my coach, Dan, he asked me a question that cut through all the noise: "If you knew for sure you couldn't accomplish all of your goals, which would you most regret not achieving...

An iPhone rests on a patterned surface.

Hey Reader, It’s crazy to me that a college student and a billionaire own basically the same phone and laptop. For all the inequality in the world, access to technology in the developed world is a remarkably level playing field. No matter how much money you have, you can't buy a better phone than the latest iPhone. Even these insanely powerful AI tools are available at democratized prices of roughly $20/month. Think about what this means for you as a creator: The tools that were once...

Hey Reader, I've been thinking a lot about LinkedIn lately. A few months ago when I started exploring it more seriously, I noticed something surprising. Many of the biggest creators on the platform were people I already knew or who were already following me. Some were even Kit customers. When I'd reach out to someone new, they'd often say, "I use Kit!" or, "I've been following your work for years." That's when it hit me: my network is 10x stronger than what I actually do with it. You may not...