How to get to your minimum viable income


Hi Reader,

Happy Tuesday! This week's newsletter is a little more random links and musings than usual, but sometimes that's fun!

Here are a few things happening:

1. I just got back from a weekend vacation in northern Idaho. We've still got a lot of COVID cases here so it was hard to stay socially distant, but we pulled it off and had a really relaxing time.

2. The Authority launch went really well at just over $10,000 in sales (I was expecting $5,000 since most people on my list have already purchased it).

3. It was a perfect stress-test for ConvertKit Commerce, which is now out to about 300 creators who are testing it and building products. We're now releasing to about 100 creators per day and plan to continue accelerating that. You can join the waitlist here.

That's it for updates! Now on to our regularly scheduled programming...

FROM THE PODCAST

Minimum viable income

We recently did an episode where we walked through a step by step plan to find your path to your "minimum viable income", the amount you need to make from your business as a creator. I think it's helpful for a beginner creator or a side hustler who wants to see what it would take to go full time. I'd recommend checking it out on YouTube since we do have some visuals for this one. Let me know what you think!

WHAT I'M READING

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

I recently finished this book, and it is one of my favorite memoirs I've read. Noah shares stories from his childhood in South Africa during the end of apartheid. It's compelling, funny and fascinating. The audio book is especially good since he does all the voices, accents, and languages. I highly recommend reading it if you're interested »

RESOURCE TO SHARE

Paperbell

Laura Roeder, founder of the scheduling software MeetEdgar, has created a new platform for coaches. It has everything you need to run your coaching business, and the design is simple and intuitive. If you know a coach who is just getting started, or needs help organizing their business, Paperbell is a great resource. Check it out here»

____________

That's it for today. Talk to you next 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
Selling ice cream in the park

Hey Reader, What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? You’ve probably seen some version of this question before. It’s a good one, though sometimes the answer isn’t immediately obvious. That’s why I like Graham Weaver’s 8 questions for what to do with your life. Graham founded the private equity firm Alpine Investors, and he teaches at Stanford. In Chapter 2 of my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth, I credit him with a principle he shared with his MBA students called "worse first",...

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...