Hey Reader,

When I meet two people at the same stage of building their business, I can usually tell within the first few minutes which one is going places.

A friend of mine recently opened a Peruvian restaurant. It's fast casual, similar to Chipotle, and from the very first conversation it was clear he was building this business to franchise. He knew that before the doors had even opened. That's different from someone opening a single great restaurant that they hope does well.

Both are fine outcomes. But they're two distinct trajectories with very different goals.

It's no surprise the goals you set substantially define the outcomes you end up hitting. But I think it goes deeper than that.

The goal does more than define the destination. It informs the path you take to get there—which includes skills you build along the way. So in a real sense, the goal you set changes who you become.

Amor Towles is another example of someone who set big goals from the start. He had a successful career in finance, but really wanted to write novels. When he left to become an author, he understood the writing had to be phenomenal, but he also knew that wasn't enough. So he brought a finance-level of drive to the launch and networked with indie bookstores he could find and built relationships to help promote the book.

The first book he launched succeeded beyond his expectations. His second, A Gentleman in Moscow, spent 59 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It's now sold over 4 million copies, and has been adapted into a Paramount+ series. It would be easy to set out to write a book he was proud of and just see what happens. But he wanted his writing to spread and reach people, so he engineered that outcome and made it happen.

There's a well-known parable about a fisherman that I've written about before. A banker on vacation watches a fisherman come in early from a short morning trip. He spends the afternoon napping and then plays guitar with his friends in the evening. The banker asks why he doesn't fish longer and work to expand the operation. "You could eventually sell the business."

"To do what?"

"Retire," the banker explains.

"Why?" the fisherman asks.

"So you can fish in the morning, nap in the afternoon, and play guitar with your friends in the evening."

The fisherman just smiles.

It's a satisfying story, but I think it misses something important.

Even if the banker and the fisherman end up in the same place, they're fundamentally different people when they get there.

Now, maybe you don't want to be a banker, and that makes total sense.

But it's worth thinking about how the goals you're setting will not only determine where you end up but who you become.

What is the journey you want to go on? Who do you want to meet? What skills or traits do you want to develop along the way?

We talk a lot about how we want to spend our time, and where we want to be, but it's worth spending some of that time thinking about who you want to become.

​

PODCAST

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Secret to an Audience That Never Leaves

I sat down with two of the best hospitality minds in the world on the podcast.

Will Guidara ran Eleven Madison Park when it was voted the best restaurant in the world. Brian Canlis has spent nearly two decades running Canlis, his family's fine dining institution in Seattle.

Their approach to hospitality extends well beyond restaurants. We dig into the systems behind unreasonable hospitality, including Will's 95/5 rule for managing time and money, how a free barrel of whiskey built lasting customer loyalty, and what it looks like to bring that same care into digital spaces and creator businesses.

​Watch or listen to episode »​

ARTICLE

“I skipped the podcast tour and went all-in on newsletters for my book launch."

If you're launching a book, there's a good chance you're gearing up to do a podcast tour. But a great tactic people don't use often enough is writing a guest posts for other email newsletters.

I'm still planning to go on podcasts for the launch of my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth, but I definitely also want to write some guest posts for various email newsletters.

If you have an email newsletter and would like me to write a guest post about building wealth for your audience, hit reply and let me know.

​Read article »​

—Nathan

P.S.

I spent last week in NYC at our brand new Kit Studios. It's our best one yet and I can't wait to share it with you in a couple weeks!

Check out the insane number of boxes delivered to the studio while I was there: