2023 Review: The year I learned to fly


Hey Reader,

I’m excited to share my 2023 annual review with you.

In 2023, I fulfilled a long-term dream of learning to fly, bought my own airplane, started a new company, bought another company, captained a 50 foot sailboat in the Caribbean, took a sabbatical, added more $7.5 million in annual revenue to ConvertKit, and had a whole ton of fun.

Let’s dive in.

Click below to read my annual review:

Read my 2023 annual review here »


SPONSORED BY THRIVECART

ThriveCart: Elevate Your Sales.

New designs and templates are being added to ThriveCart all the time, and I’ve got to say – I’m a fan.

Their cutting-edge platform allows you to craft great-looking and intuitive cart pages that boast stunning visuals as well as deliver tangible sales results. You’ll get a template library with tons of options to suit your style, coupled with detailed customization tools like countdown timers, badges, seals, testimonials, and more.

And, with ThriveCart Learn, you can effortlessly distribute your digital offerings and even develop online courses within a secure online setting. As an exclusive offer to our subscribers-

Grab our exclusive $100 off offer here »


EVENT

HeyCreator Summit

I’m excited to announce that I'm speaking at HeyCreator Summit 2024 next week. It's a five-day, online event starting January 22nd that features some of the best creators in the world.

Not only will I be speaking, but you’ll also hear from Justin Welsh, Rachel Rodgers, Pat Flynn, and more. The best part? It’s 100% FREE. Don’t miss this chance to gain valuable insights and connect with other creators.

Get your free ticket »

ARTICLE

Read my annual review

Here’s the link to my annual review again:

Read my 2023 annual review here »

Feel free to leave a comment.

Have a great week!

—Nathan

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.

Read more from Nathan Barry

Hey Reader, If I could solve only one thing in my business, that would have the biggest impact, what would that be? This is the question every great entrepreneur obsesses over. Rather than trying to do everything at once, you look for the bottleneck and focus on solving that. There’s a book called The Goal by an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s a 1984 business novel that business systems nerds love. However if you’re not a business systems nerd you probably… won’t love it. It’s...

A hundred dollar bill against a plain light background.

Hey Reader, Have you ever spent money on something and immediately felt guilty afterward? Will Guidara spends his money foolishly on purpose. And he thinks you should too. He once bought an entire barrel of whiskey and put it in his basement. He also put a skee-ball machine in the office. Is he going to get a monetary return on either of these things? No. But that’s kind of the point. He calls it the 95/5 rule: Manage your money and time like a maniac 95% of the time (no expense is too...

Potential vs realized leverage

Hey Reader, Have you ever spent a whole day on something almost nobody saw? It's painful when the whole reason you worked hard was because you wanted to reach people. If you teach a workshop in person, you reach the 20 people in that room. But if you record that same workshop once, you can keep teaching for years on autopilot. This is the concept of leverage, and it's something I talk about in my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth (you can pre-order it now). A lot of people will look back...