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.
Show up every day
|
Hey Reader, It's December 30, so people are probably asking what resolutions or goals you have for 2026. And maybe you’ve started to answer. You say that you want to launch a full course by March. Or start posting daily on social media (text, images, videos—everything). Or maybe you say you want to start writing 1,000 words a day like I did. What a lot of people do is they start January strong because they’re feeling motivated and committed. You make it a full month with your new habit and then February 1st arrives and you miss a day. Then another. By the 5th week of the year, your resolution is dead. Of course, sometimes you do actually stick with something. In my case, I set out to write 1,000 words per day and actually stuck with it for over 600 days. I still think it was one of the most important things I did in my career. But I eventually broke the 600+ day chain. The bar was too high to maintain when life got challenging, and I spent time wondering if I'd failed somehow. There's a quote I often think about: If someone watched you for a week would they believe you’re serious about your goals? Most creators don't fail because they lack talent. They fail because they stop showing up. The creators who don't end up making it are those that give up about a year to a year and a half in. Right when the initial motivation fades away and sadly before the compounding benefits really kick in. But what if you lowered the bar? Instead of posting everything everywhere every day, send one social post per day. Even if it's just text. Instead of launching a full course by March, what if you defined success as writing for 15 minutes every day on your course outline and seeing where that takes you? Instead of 1,000 words per day, just write every day. Any amount counts. I'm living this right now. This approach helped me rebuild my writing habit and finish the draft of my new book, The Ladders of Wealth. I track showing up to write on the Streaks app. I don't care if I write 100 words or 1,000 words. As long as I write something, I mark it complete. The most important thing is consistency. It's better to write 100 words daily for a year than 2,000 words once. That's how you get the compound benefits. This week, as everyone else sets goals they'll abandon by February, do something different. Pick one small action. Make it so easy you could do it on your worst day. And then actually do it every day. A year from now, you'll be the creator who's still going while everyone else gave up. The creators who succeed are rarely the most talented. They’re just the ones who didn’t quit at month 18. Find a way to show up every day. PODCASTBuilding a Creator Business That ScalesSince we took Christmas Day off on my podcast, here's a recent episode where I was a guest on Chris Donnelly's show. We talk about the Ladders of Wealth framework and how to move from lower-ticket products to higher-ticket offers. There's also a section on why email remains valuable for creators and how the flywheel concept changed how I think about building leverage in a business. If you're working on turning an audience into sustainable revenue, there are some practical frameworks here worth considering. We'll be back with a new episode of The Nathan Barry Show on January 1st. ARTICLEWhy this executive left a job she loved to work at a bootstrapped company18 months ago we hired Katie Swett Miller to run product at Kit. She left Square to join our much smaller company and it's been a whirlwind journey ever since! This profile covers what convinced her to take the risk and join Kit. She's had a tremendous impact since day one, not just on the product itself but on how we think and collaborate as a company. She makes people feel heard and has become a trusted mentor within Product and an essential partner across every team. If you're curious about what it's like to work at Kit, her story gives you a good sense of the culture and what we look for in people who join the team. X POSTWhat If Everyone in the U.S. Drove Like Waymo?A neurosurgeon named Michael Schulder did a deep analysis of Waymo's safety data using the raw CSV files they released. Waymo has essentially solved intersection crashes, with 95% fewer injury incidents than human drivers in the same locations. If every vehicle in the US performed like Waymo, we'd prevent 33,000-39,000 deaths annually. It's a really interesting breakdown of what autonomous vehicles could mean for road safety. Have a great week and happy new year! —Nathan P.S. Do you have a big goal for 2026? Hit reply and tell me about it. |
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.
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...
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...
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...