profile

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.

Wastebasket
Featured Post

Why I keep a wastebasket for ideas

Hey Reader, In the early days of growing Kit, we were trying to figure out how to grow. Webinars, a blog, a podcast—we had seven or eight different marketing initiatives all at once. It was chaotic. We were constantly starting new things, never sure what was working, always chasing the next idea. That kind of chaos can look like productivity. You're trying things, staying busy, moving fast. But it's also exhausting—especially for your team. And it splits your attention across so many things...

The Nathan Barry Show

Hey Reader, I was thinking about this story I remember Alex Hormozi shared on the My First Million podcast a few years ago. He said that Russell Brunson had given him some key advice that changed his career. Alex was running six successful gyms, sleeping on the gym floor, generating incredible returns on his marketing. But Russell told him: "You're in a level 2 opportunity with a level 10 skill set." Alex was applying world-class execution to a business model with limited upside. Russell...

Kit feature: Discover creators in your city

Hey Reader, How quickly can you explain your business model? When a creator I was talking to recently spent several minutes trying to explain what their business does, I knew they were in trouble. They were trying to carve out an entirely new market category while simultaneously creating a completely custom delivery method. Two innovations at once. Not surprisingly, they were struggling to scale. They couldn't explain their offer clearly, potential customers were confused, and they felt...

Hey Reader, Imagine someone bought your business tomorrow. What's the first thing they would change? Maybe they'd raise prices. Or fire that team member who's been dragging things down. Would they automate the task you've been doing manually for years? Hire for the role you keep saying you'll fill eventually? When I ask creators this question, they usually know the answer immediately. They don't even need to think about it. The answer is already sitting there, waiting. You probably know what...

Hey Reader, "I will write 1,000 words every day." That's the commitment I made in 2012 that changed my life. I ended up writing 100,000 words in 100 days and went on to write 266,000 words in a year. I wrote every day for nearly two years before finally breaking the chain. Writing consistently continues to be one of the most important habits of my career. So when my coach asked me what I'd regret not doing the most if I imagined my life 5 to 10 years from now, my answer surprised me: writing...

Double-Axis Reality

Hey Reader, Would you rather improve your fitness or spend time with family? This looks like a reasonable question, but it's actually a false dichotomy. The question assumes you have to choose between two things that aren't actually in opposition. You've heard of false dichotomies, but there's a subtler version of this trap that I call the Single-Axis Fallacy—where we accept that both options exist but wrongly assume that having more of one means less of the other. The reality is that fitness...

Video: The Flywheel Concept That Will Change Your Business

Hey Reader, Remember when you first started your business and it felt like a game? You couldn't wait to wake up and work on it. But some days, you dread waking up because everything feels overwhelming—the opposite of what you started out to build. I just released a new video I've been working on that shows you exactly how to get back to that excitement using flywheels. Here's what I break down on the board: The 3 laws that make flywheels work (in real life physics and business) How one...

Podcast recording flywheel

Hey Reader, Remember when you first started your business and it felt like a game? You couldn't wait to wake up and work on it. Now it's just constant stress and putting out fires. I felt this way about my podcast. I love having deep conversations with creators I admire, but the weekly production was taking over my life. As the CEO of Kit, I spend most of my time building and growing the company—I couldn't dedicate entire days every week to podcast recording. Something had to change. I needed...

video preview

Hey Reader, If you're reading this, you probably have years of expertise in your field. You see inefficiencies everywhere that you could fix. Creating a course or consulting service to share what you know feels like the logical next step. But here's what happens when you start building: You spend months crafting your course or service, polishing every detail. Then you try to find people who want to buy it. This approach puts you in the position of convincing people they have a problem rather...

Farmer to horse: “You won’t lose your job to a tractor, but to a horse who learns how to drive a tractor.”

Hey Reader, What happens when AI gets better at what you do? You've probably heard people say, "AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI will." I actually think AI will take your job. And mine too. But more on that in a minute. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that there are no more long careers. Careers used to last a lifetime. Now they might be more like 10 months. So how do you make yourself valuable at work? More essential? No matter what role you're in, you need to think...