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 to start a creator business from zero
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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 than serving people who already know they need help. I know someone who went from 0 to $1M in revenue in five months by flipping this approach. He'd spent years as a restaurant founder, operator, and investor. Instead of creating a generic restaurant management course, he started with the audience he understood best. Restaurant operators already spend money regularly on consultants, training, and systems to improve profitability. He focused on teaching skills that make money to people who have money. He identified the specific operational challenges he'd solved repeatedly in his own businesses, and then he launched group coaching for this exact group. He hit $1 million in revenue while working just 10 hours per week. He still maintains his restaurant investing because the business doesn't consume his life. Here's the framework that made this possible:
Talking to potential customers can feel like it's going to slow you down. You want to get started building. But these conversations tell you exactly what people will actually pay for and how much they'll spend on it. The restaurant consultant didn't have to convince anyone that improving operations was worth the investment. Restaurant owners already knew. He just had to prove he could deliver better results than their current approaches. Have conversations with people in your target market this week. Find out what keeps them up at night and what they're already spending money trying to solve. Don't start with the product you want to build. Start with the problems people are already trying to solve. — This was my answer to a listener question on my podcast. They asked me to map out a creator business for someone brand new. Check out the full podcast episode where I answer more questions like it. PODCASTThe Most Important Advice For Creators in 2025In this Q&A episode, I’m joined by Haley from the Kit team to answer your biggest questions on creator businesses, newsletters, and software. We explore how non-technical founders can find a solo SaaS idea, what it really takes to map out a creator business from scratch, and how to spot blue ocean opportunities as you grow. You’ll hear me talk about:
Watch or listen to episode » CASE STUDYHow Andrew Huberman scaled to 1M subscribers with KitThis case study shows how neuroscientist Andrew Huberman grew from 6,000 to over 1 million email subscribers using Kit. His team built automated systems that grow the list without constant promotion:
The case study walks through exactly how they set up these systems while Andrew focuses on creating content. VIDEOBootstrapped to $12B: Mailchimp’s Ben Chestnut on Life After the ExitBen Chestnut, the founder of MailChimp, gets pretty real in this interview about what building a business actually looks like. Ben bootstrapped MailChimp from a web design side project to a $12 billion acquisition by Intuit without taking venture capital. He talks about the tough early years, how the Serial podcast accidentally put them on the map, and the constant need to reinvent every few years. His transparency about the whole process is rare among founders. 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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