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.
Stay flexible. Stay agile.
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Hey Reader, When things are going well in your business, it makes sense to double down and invest in doing more of what’s working. You’ve seen this with creators running YouTube channels that are doing well. All of their peers have large teams of people supporting their content creation, so the natural thing to do when you come into some money is hire a large team. On the surface, it seems reasonable: if content is how you make your money then hiring more people would help you make more content, which would mean you make more money, right? That’s what Ali Abdaal thought. He wanted to make more videos, so he hired more writers. Eventually, he had four people writing video scripts. But instead of getting 4X the output, he got a managerial mess. What makes things more complicated is when you’ve hired people as employees. Even if you decide they’re no longer a good fit, it’s much more hassle to fire someone on your payroll than to stop working with a contract. You might think growing your team will get you more of a certain result you’re looking for. But that doesn’t always end up being the case. You might think your business will continue to reliably work the way it does right now for many years to come. But an unexpected market shift—or a pandemic—can quickly throw everything off. Be prepared for things not going according to plan, and be prepared for things not to last. Rather than jumping to hiring 10 full-time employees because you think things are going well, start with 3 full-time employees and hire 7 project-based freelancers. If things go well with the freelancers, give them another project. If subsequent projects go well, then consider converting them from contractors to employees. Stay flexible. You might look back on this time when you thought you were on solid ground to realize you were standing on a knife’s edge.
PODCAST$500k to $10M per year: Coaching conversation with Paula PantAt FinCon we were joined by Paula Pant of Afford Anything to dive into her business. We talked through several examples of creators scaling their businesses and what we can learn from them. My favorite part was when Paula let Rachel and I brainstorm ways to massively scale her already very successful creator business. It was so fun and I'm excited to see what she does next. Watch or listen to episode » X POSTVV (A Film by Zora)In a world of copycats, Jack Butcher is doing original work. I love when people put in the effort for high production quality storytelling. CONVERTKIT FEATUREConvertKit Marketplace: New templates are in!The ConvertKit Marketplace continues to grow We have more and more email templates designed by creators for creators in our network. In addition to free email templates, you can now buy and sell premium templates.
Go browse and see what's new. All free or paid templates will be added to your account with just one click, so you can customize and make them yours. BOOKThe Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana KingIn this rags-to-riches story, a Russian immigrant and small-scale fruit peddler named Samuel Zemurray built an immense banana empire using unorthodox business tactics. By acquiring vast plantations in Latin America and controlling every aspect of the supply chain, Samuel used his unique understanding of market dynamics to exploit opportunities as they arose. If you’re looking for a gripping narrative that offers insights into the complexities of the business world and human nature, this one is worth adding to your reading list. 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.
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...