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.
How my passion project became a time drain
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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 to build a flywheel. Podcast recording flywheelI needed to figure out how to produce great content consistently without it taking over my life. So my producer Kara and I created this Podcast Recording Flywheel:
Instead of recording every week, we plan ahead and batch record once a month. Four guests fly in, we record all episodes in a day and a half, including dinner with everyone. Then we have a debrief meeting where we identify every friction point and create specific fixes for next time. Two problems were killing the experienceThrough these debrief meetings, we identified specific friction points that were eating up time and creating frustration. Friction Fix 1: Markers This sounds ridiculous, but we'd spend the first 10 minutes of every recording session fighting with markers that wouldn't write on the blackboard. They'd dry out mid-sentence, and I'd look unprofessional fumbling around while my guest waited. We tested dozens of different markers until we found ones that work consistently every single time. One small fix that eliminated 10 minutes of friction per recording. Friction Fix 2: Intros My team wanted higher-quality introductions for better retention and to create trailer clips. I'd try to riff something on the spot and stumble through it, but I'd butcher the script and feel embarrassed in front of my guests. The solution changed everything. We put a teleprompter on one of our six cameras. Now, my producer Kara takes notes during the episode, works with a custom AI system she’s built to craft the perfect intro, and at the end, I read a flawless script off the teleprompter. Instead of feeling embarrassed, guests are blown away by how smooth and professional the process looks. The results speak for themselvesThese weren't huge changes. Better markers and a teleprompter setup. But we're not just improving things once. We're continually improving our flywheel, and the results compound. Just like the results generated from the flywheel also compound. The podcast went from something that consumed my time and energy to something I genuinely look forward to. I can produce a weekly show that I'm proud of with guests I love spending time with in just a day and a half per month. That's the power of systematically reducing friction. This is just the beginningFriction reduction is just one piece of a larger framework I call Creator Flywheels. When you remove the right friction points and connect your activities in the right way, your flywheel starts working for you instead of against you. The power of flywheels is that when done right, each rotation gets easier and easier while producing more and more results—whether that's followers, clients, or revenue. This lets you:
This works for any creator workflow—whether you're writing newsletters, recording videos, building courses, or running client services. The key is knowing how to connect everything you're doing into a flywheel that compounds. On Thursday, I'm releasing a new video where I break down this entire framework. We've worked really hard on this one, and I'm excited to share it with you. You'll see exactly how flywheels work, why they start difficult but become increasingly valuable, and how to build your own. I'll send it to you as soon as it's live. PODCASTHow To Actually Grow Past $1M As A CreatorWhy do successful creators still struggle to hit seven figures? Barrett Brooks is back on the podcast to break down the five traps that keep creators stuck. Barrett is a coach to creators with millions of followers and he sees these mistakes repeatedly:
Hear the other two traps and the full breakdown in the episode. Watch or listen to episode » X POSTStart your next project with a giant scroll of paperI came across this X post by Yancey Strickler, which shared an idea he learned from his friend Rob Kalin, the founder of Etsy. When Rob starts a new project, he uses a massive piece of butcher paper as his workspace. You begin by putting your first ideas in one corner, and as the project develops, the scroll becomes a timeline of your thinking process. Yancey documented three years of his work this way in a really beautiful time-lapse. It's need to see how ideas evolved on paper rather than being scattered across digital notes. 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.
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