Hey Reader,

“You don’t own a jet, right?”

That question was not directed at me.

I was speaking at Main Street Summit recently, a conference for founders running $5 million to $50 million businesses, and I’d ended up in a group of people talking about airplanes. Three of us were pilots.

A man walked up who everyone else seemed to know.

Halfway through the conversation, one of the pilots turned and asked him about the jet.

“No,” he said. “It annoys me how expensive it is, so I go back and forth between fractional, charter, or flying commercial.”

So I’m thinking, Okay, this guy is worth a lot of money.

Later the two of us got talking, and he said, “Hey, I want to let you know that I’ve followed your journey since 2012, back when you started bootstrapping.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

“You talked about how to validate an idea, and so I did that and started an electronic medical records company. We bootstrapped it to about $50 million a year in revenue before taking a secondary round and scaling beyond $100 million a year with great profit margins.”

"You didn't have a co-founder, so I figured I didn't need one either."

He tried a bunch of different ideas before ultimately landing on software for the medical industry. He bootstrapped it for years and eventually hired a CEO to run things for him.

Then he sold the company for $1.25 billion dollars.

“I just wanted to say thanks for the inspiration,” he said casually.

In my head I was just like, What? I’d never heard of this guy before in my life.

You really have no idea who your work is reaching. When you put things out on the internet, you never know who’s reading. And you may not find out for a long time.

Then it happened again with Joseph Nguyen, an author who sold a million copies of the book he self-published. He did it in just two years. Joseph rarely does interviews, so last year I asked a friend to introduce us. We ended up hitting it off and recorded an episode of my podcast (the episode comes out December 17th).

After we stopped recording, he told me that he’d followed everything I’d put out since 2017.

“Wait,” I said. “I asked for an intro to you because you’re this reclusive, insanely bestselling author.”

He’d been reading my stuff the whole time.

A number of years ago, Jason Feifer, host of the podcast Build for Tomorrow, came on my show. He told me he started his podcast without knowing what would come of it. He just wanted to make something to push himself.

Years later, he was getting into bed on a cruise ship where he was hired to speak. When he checked his email, he saw a message from Marc Andreessen where he said Build for Tomorrow was his favorite podcast.

Not long after, a foundation started funding his work, and Jason sold a book deal.

In each of these cases, we eventually got to find out who was listening to our work—although it wasn’t until a decade or more after the fact.

You won’t always know who’s paying attention, and you won’t always hear about it right away. But the work you’re doing has an impact that reaches farther than you know.

We often think about content as a way to scale our reach and maximize our time, both of which are true. But it’s also really high impact. You never know who’s out there following your work and thinking, “That could be me. Maybe I can do that.”

For 14 years, a guy was out there reading my posts and building a company he’d go on to sell for over a billion dollars—and I didn’t even know he existed.

You might not see the impact your work is having right now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t having one. So if it ever feels like nobody’s paying attention, keep telling your story. You never know who’s reading.

​

PODCAST

AI Can’t Copy This: Why Every Creator Needs an Origin Story

If you had to give one last talk to the world, what would you say?

If you’re not sure, you might not be doing the work you’re meant to do yet.

Philip McKernan, author of One Last Talk, has worked with Olympians and World Cup athletes. Partway through our episode, Philip coaches me live, and my anxiety about promoting my new book went from a 5 to a 0.

We get into:

• Why fear-driven ambition can become exhausting
• How to recognize the gifts you naturally undervalue
• How to promote your work without feeling like a burden
• Why your origin story gives people a reason to choose you

​Watch or listen to episode »​

PODCAST

How to Build an Email List That Makes Money

My episode on the Bossbabe podcast with Natalie Ellis is out now.

We talked about how to increase revenue per subscriber on your email list, the automations that make a creator business profitable, and flywheels that keep your audience growing.

I shared what’s working for the most successful creator businesses on Kit, including how some creators make seven figures a year with fewer than 5,000 email subscribers. We also got into whether AI is killing lead magnets. I had so much fun recording this one.

​Watch episode on YouTube »​

Have a great week!

—Nathan

P.S.

Last weekend Josiah played his last soccer game of the season, and we cooked over the fire. If you’re a parent who can’t get your kids off iPads, I recommend handing them a box of matches.

My friend Lars was in town too, so we went flying.