Nathan Barry Archive

Steph Smith is a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. In 2019, Steph founded Integral Labs. Integral Labs supports top tech companies with technical writing, content strategy, marketing, and analytics.

In 2020, Steph became the Senior Manger of Trends.co. Trends identifies emerging patterns in business months before they become mainstream. In less than a year, Steph grew the number of paying subscribers by more than 400%.

In this episode, Nathan and Steph discuss her proven approach to starting and running a profitable newsletter. They cover everything from pricing models to avoiding burnout.

Topics from the show include:

• How to price your newsletter for explosive growth
• The best pricing model for dramatically reducing churn
• How to make your newsletter stand head and shoulders above the rest

Links & Resources

• Trends.co
• TheHustle.co
• Sam Parr Twitter
• 030: Sam Parr – Growing to 2M Subscribers and Selling Your Newsletter
• Wolfram Alpha
• ahrefs
• JungleScout
• Keywords Everywhere
• My First Million Podcast
• Toptal
• 3-2-1 Newsletter
• Exponential View

Guest’s Links

• Personal site: stephsmith.io
• Steph’s Twitter: @stephsmithio

Episode Transcript

Steph: [00:00:00]
Once you actually take the energy to write an idea down and it’s implanted into your brain, almost like a seed, it starts to grow and you start to notice other things around you that are aligned with watering that seed with different examples, with intentional research, with data, by the time you actually want to write about it or publish it, or even start a business around it, you’ve thought about it in many different ways and giving it time to breathe.

Nathan: [00:00:28]
Today’s episode has been Steph Smith who runs trends.co, which is the paid newsletter from The Hustle. So, they have their 2 million subscribers newsletter and they have their paid newsletter called Trends, which is a little smaller, but drives a ton of revenue. This is super interesting. We get into her approach to growth, to research, she’s actually a chemical engineer who turned into this whole world. So, it’s super fascinating; she’s got a bunch of tips and tricks that she shares around doing research. I love her thoughts on differentiating products. There’s so much more; she gets into business models, everything. She’s one of those people who’s basically running the show at one of the largest paid newsletters. She’s incredible. So anyway, I’ll get out of the way let’s dive in and, made stuff.

Steph. Thanks for joining me.

Steph: [00:01:17]
Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Nathan: [00:01:18]
Okay. So I’ve got to start with the question. what’s it like working for a crazy person and specifically, how are you so good at managing up? And before you answer this question, did in fact come from the crazy person that we’re talking about?

Steph: [00:01:34]
I didn’t see that question.

Nathan: [00:01:37]
And he’s like, Oh, I don’t know.

But you got to find out like how, how she manages to deal on a day-to-day basis.

Steph: [00:01:44]
Well, I think we all are on a spectrum of being so good at executing. Some people are great at executing, and logistics, and processes and all that stuff. And some people are just visionaries and just have so many ideas and it’s crazy to work with them, but in a great way. If you can just give them the space to like, be that visionary and not necessarily depend on them for certain things like processes and logistics.

And so I’ve just learned over time to not necessarily bucket people, but understand what they’re great at and maybe what they’re not so great at. And Sam loves hiring operators. And he he’s hired CEOs or presidents to work alongside him. So I actually think one of the great things about working with Sam is how self self-aware he is because sometimes visionaries or people who are like the idea guy don’t realize that perhaps they’re not so great at some of the other things.

And so I just like to give Sam the space to give his ideas and be the visionary. And it’s funny. Cause sometimes when people first start working with Sam, they’re like, Oh my God, he has so many ideas. Do I have to do all this stuff? And Sam will tell you like, no, don’t do all the things I say.

I just love sharing these ideas and getting things out there, but you have to decide what’s important, what should be prioritized. And so I do think it was a little bit of a learning curve, but now I love working with him because he does actually just give you the trust to make those decisions.

Nathan: [00:03:03]
Yeah, that’s interesting. I think so many people run into that and I’ve had the same thing with our team at ConvertKit where people are like, Okay, you said this, does this mean I need to start working on it? And you’re like, no, no,

Steph: [00:03:14]
Yeah.

Nathan: [00:03:14]
I was just talking and I’m not even as wild and crazy as Sam is on that spectrum. Sam’s off the charts, but it is a good differentiation.

And maybe I shouldn’t be more extreme that way people would know that it’s not humanly possible to do all the ideas and to just ignore most of them.

Steph: [00:03:32]
Well, I mean, Sam will tell you, like right away that he’s just throwing ideas out there. And I think that’s really great because you’re just like, okay, so we’re on the same page. I know how much of this I need to pay attention to. And then he will explicitly say, which I think is also helpful, when he does want you to do something, versus some bosses or some people you work with, it is a little more muddy and it’s hard to tell what’s important. What’s not.

Nathan: [00:03:56]
Yeah. That makes sense. Another thing that Sam was talking about that he wanted you to share more with listeners is, your process around organization and creativity. I imagine at The Hustle, there’s so much going on. There’s tons of content going into the newsletter side, that Trends side, everything.

And, I’d love to hear more about your process for keeping all that straight, making sure you’ve got nonstop deadlines, crazy ideas. And what do you use for organization? Like maybe somewhat on tools, but even more so like.

Steph: [00:04:36]
Yeah. So I think so I will candidly say that on that spectrum where there’s people who are like incredible executor’s and organizers, I’m maybe a little further ...

Nat Eliason is the founder of Growth Machine, a successful SEO and content marketing agency. Nat also teaches the popular Roam course, Effortless Output.

Nat earned his B.A. in Philosophy from Carnegie Mellon University, and has worked for companies such as Zapier, and Sumo Group. Nat co-hosts the Made You Think podcast with Neil Soni.

Nat also writes a weekly newsletter called Monday Medley. Each Monday Medley has ten articles, videos, discussions, pieces of research, or other interesting finds from around the Internet, spanning a broad range of topics.

In this episode Nat discusses the evolution of his newsletter. He shares his strategies on developing online courses. He also explains how to find product-market fit before launching a course or product.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• How Nat made $300,000 from his online course
• What separates a mediocre newsletter from a great newsletter
• The differences between running a newsletter and teaching a course
• How Nat balances work, family, and leisure

Links & Resources

• Shane Parrish
• Farnham Street Sunday Brain Food newsletter
• Tim Ferriss
• Five Bullet Friday
• Azeem Azhar
• Exponential View
• airr
• Building a Second Brain
• Tiago Forte
• Wes Bos
• Derek Sivers

Nat Eliason’s Links

• Effortless Output with Roam
• Nat’s Twitter
• Nat’s website
• The Monday Medley
• Made You Think podcast

Episode Transcript

Nat: [00:00:00]
Build up little channels. There’s a lot to be said for having one thing that drives 10 grand a month. But if you’ve got 20 little things that drive $500 a month, that’s cool too. In some ways it’s a little more resilient because if one fails, you’ve only lost 5% of your revenue versus if the $10,000 a month thing fails, you’ve lost all of your revenue.

Nathan: [00:00:26]
In this episode, I talked to Nat Eliason. We talk about a bunch of different things ranging from his newsletter, the course that he’s running, you know, earning a crazy amount of money from the course, his thoughts on paid newsletters versus courses. Really just how he approaches life. It’s kind of a meandering episode as we go through those details.

I love the way that he’s not trying to grow and optimize everything. And then also the way that he’s taking internet money and bringing it into like tangible, real world life experiences, connection with friends, things like that. So it’s a great episode. I hope you enjoy it. And, actually before we dive in, I’d love for two things.

One, if you’re listening to the podcast and you just clicked through from random clips or things like that, and you haven’t subscribed, go ahead and subscribe in iTunes, Spotify, and, you know, wherever you listen to podcasts, really appreciate that. And then the other thing is, I realized I’ve never actually asked for reviews and it turns out reviews help, you know, with rankings and more people to discover the show.

So I would love it if you would go on iTunes in particular. Is iTunes a thing? Apple podcasts, I guess you go on Apple podcasts in particular and subscribe and then write a review or just a rating. That’ll help more people discover the show. So thanks for doing that. And let’s dive into the interview.

Alright, Nat, thanks for joining me.

Nat: [00:01:40]
Yeah. Thanks for having me, excited to be here.

Nathan: [00:01:41]
Why don’t you just kick things off by talking a little bit about the newsletter that you have, and I’m actually curious, you know, how long ago you started.

Nat: [00:01:51]
Yes. So my name is Nat. Hi, in the world of newsletters, I started my newsletter, which is called the Monday Medley or often just the Medley in may of 2015, no 2016.

Nathan: [00:02:08]
Either way it’s been awhile.

Nat: [00:02:10]
Yeah, it must be only 2016, cause I’m coming up on five years next week. I think it’s next Monday is the five-year anniversary.

So, I’ve been sending it out every single Monday for five years straight, which is kind of absurd. I actually, I have no idea how I haven’t messed one up in that time, but here we are.

Nathan: [00:02:34]
At 200, what was that, 260 weeks?

Nat: [00:02:37]
Yeah, it would be what, 260? Yeah, three times five. So it’s a lot of newsletters.

Nathan: [00:02:42]
That is. So what made you start the newsletter? Were there particular people you were following? And you’re like, “Oh, I want to be like them.” Or was it solving a business problem for you?

Nat: [00:02:52]
Yeah. So I was originally following sort of the standard advice of emailing every time an article came out. And that was working fine. And this was for my personal site NatEliason.com. and I was emailing for every article, but it’s like too many emails. Cause I was writing like a couple of posts a week back then, and I didn’t like having to like write a specific email for each article. And it felt like there wasn’t that much like extra value with being on the newsletter besides getting updates on posts, which people can do if they were just like on Feedly and subscribe to the RSS feed or whatever.

So, I saw Shane Parrish start his, brain food kind of newsletter for Farnam Street. And, Tim Ferris had launched his like Five Bullet Friday, around that time too. So the Medley started as very similar to those two where it was like, you know, here’s like something interesting. I read this week. Here’s like a video I enjoyed just kind of like a little, link dump.

And it was kind of that way for two or three years probably. And then it transitioned into kind of a different vibe where I got a lot of inspiration from Azeem Azhar and his Exponential View newsletter, which is like really, really good. And I just loved how, like, he wasn’t really just sharing stuff that he found interesting.

He was kind of like going in depth on each thing. And what I liked about his was I felt like a lot of the link dumpy newsletters were, they didn’t feel very like high effort or very high value. And it was just like, okay, like, here’s kind of like a dump of things, but you can kind of get that from Twitter or elsewhere, plus like everyone was doing it right.

It wasn’t that special anymore. So I was trying to think of how I can make it higher value. Azeem’s was such a great model because he was like going into detail on each thing. So I shifted in that direction first, where it was like, okay, here’s, you know, five, six, seven things from this week that are interesting.

They’re kind of lik...

Ann Handley is the founder and Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs, a marketing and training education company with more than 600,000 subscribers. She is a well-known public speaker, and has been writing a newsletter called Total Annarchy for the last three years.

Ann is also a Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, and Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. 

Ann was named a top thought leader by Forbes and one of the seven people shaping modern marketing by IBM.

In this episode, Nathan and Ann discuss:
 - Tiny-house offices
 - How to connect with your audience and grow your email newsletter
 - How to grow your social media following by mastering the algorithms

Links & Resources

• Jeremiah Owyang
• Nat Eliason
• James Keller
• ClickZ
• FanBridge
• Rally

Ann Handley’s Links

• MarketingProfs
• Personal site: annhandley.com
• Ann’s Newsletter: Total Annarchy
• Twitter: @annhandley

Episode Transcript

Ann: [00:00:00]
The notion of voice is essentially how you sound. It’s important to read things out loud. It’s a thousand little choices that you make all along the way that over time, grow your voice and add up to something that’s wholly unique. Find those small moments. Those small moments are the things that become a big differentiation for yourself. 

Nathan: [00:00:27]
In this episode, I talked to Ann Handley. Ann is the Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs. She’s been around the content marketing online business space for a long time, since 1999. She’s been writing a newsletter for the last three years on a lot of really interesting things. She’s also a really well-known public speaker.

So in this episode, we talk about a whole range of things like what she thinks of the multiple rises of email newsletters over the years. The trend email is dead. The balance between email and social media platforms. We get into algorithms. We talk about really a whole range of things. Probably my favorite is when we get into talking about style and voice and how you write, how to make things fun. Her newsletter is called Total Annarchy.

Annarchy, it’s spelled like her name. And so you can see if that gives you an idea of the way she likes to write, the energy and passion that she brings to a business and marketing topics. So, anyway, with that, I’ll get out of the way and let’s dive into the show.

Ann thanks for joining me.

Ann: [00:01:28]
I am delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.

Nathan: [00:01:30]
So I want to start with something that has nothing to do with email newsletters, and it is just a shared love that you and I both have that I discovered in research and that is for tiny house offices.

Ann: [00:01:41]
Oh, really?

Nathan: [00:01:43]
Yeah, so I’m in my tiny house office that I built a year ago. I got it finished just before COVID which was good timing. If I understand correctly, you had a tiny house office built, like six or seven years ago.

Ann: [00:01:55]
Yeah, this is it. Yes. I was, it was, turned out to be a prescient move because who knew? This is very, so I’m in my tiny house office right now. It’s in my backyard. and yes, I built it, oh, six or sevenish years ago, something like that. And I built it at the time as a sort of place where I thought I can come and do my best work.

It’s, you know, small enough that it’s just me in here, me and my, and my little dog who’s here with me now. Little tiny porch on the front and a hard wire internet connection. And that’s it. So I built it as a place to really, as I said, do my best work as a place to write, essentially that was just sequestered from everybody else that, that I couldn’t hear anybody breathe back here. It was just, you know, a hundred percent perfect. And then, you know, fast forward COVID happens. And suddenly my tiny house is now thrust onto the international stage. It’s, you know, now the backdrop for all of these online programs that I’m doing, which is fine.

Just that I kind of had to clean things up a little bit. So, so yeah, its kind of been forced into that, the white hot lights of the internet suddenly and the tiny house it’s doing its best back here, but this is not necessarily what it was before originally.

Nathan: [00:03:13]
Yeah. So it started more as like sort of the writing shed, backyard office kind of thing. And now it’s the working full-time.

Ann: [00:03:22]
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, so MarketingProfs, my company, we’ve always been a hundred percent virtual, so I have a, an office in the big house where I lived. A lot of people think I live in a tiny house. I do not live in a tiny house. It’s a tiny house office only. So I live in a regular size house and I have an office there too.

And, and I use that mostly, you know, like in the, in the deep winter, it, this place is not insulated. As you can tell by the plywood background here again, this was supposed to be just for me. I didn’t understand that this was going to be, who knew it was going to be a subjected to the internet on a daily basis at this point.

But yeah, so it’s, it essentially built it, you know, for me, this is a place to, to come back when I really just needed some space and some quiet. It actually turns out to be probably, like the best investment I ever made. As a writer, it’s just been such a gift to have this place back here.

And you know, even in pre pandemics times, that was true. But especially now, because it does feel like it’s a world away from anything going on, not just in my house, but in my town and my state and my community, anything beyond it, you know? So it’s kind of nice just to have this one, place that as a writer, as a creator, you can feel like, all right, it’s all mine.

Oxygen is back here, you know?

Nathan: [00:04:43]
I like that. Yeah, for me, I, my tiny house office is just across the backyard, from my house and, and I have three little kids, and so getting outside the house, my old office is now our one-year-olds room and like, he can have that space. I can have this space and it’s perfect. So I think we’ll see a lot more people that build out tiny house offices or, you know, backyard things.

It’s a good trend.

Ann: [00:05:12]
Yeah, exactly. And in really creative ways too, like my friend Jeremiah yang has it is a digital consultant. he speaks a lot about, you know, what, what’s next, the future of, of digital. Of the digital evolution essentially. and he put an Airstream in his backyard that he retrofitted with, you know, as, as an office.

So, you know, there’s all kinds of diff...

Dickie Bush is a full time Portfolio Manager based in New York City. He is a graduate of Princeton, where he received a degree in Financial Engineering and played on the football team.

Dickie writes a weekly newsletter called Dickie’s Digest where he shares thoughts and links on growth of all kinds, including personal, intellectual, physical, network, economic, and other forms of growth.

Dickie is probably best known as the founder of Ship 30 for 30, an online cohort based course where he teaches writers how to write better, grow their audience, and show up consistently.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Dickie runs Ship 30 for 30
• How to build an online writing habit
• How to shorten your feedback loops to improve your writing
• Tactical tips to build a following on Twitter

Links & Resources

• James Clear
• The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole
• 30 Days to Better Writing by Sean McCabe
• ConvertKit
• Jack Butcher
• Tim Ferriss
• The Nathan Barry Show 031: Mario Gabriele – From Lifelong Obsession to Thriving Business
• David Perell
• Andrew Wilkinson
• Sahil Bloom
• Julian Shapiro

Dickie Bush’s Links

• Ship 30 for 30
• Substack: dickiebush.substack.com
• Twitter: @dickiebush

Episode Transcript

Dickie: [00:00:00]
One that accelerated my growth, every morning, Monday through Friday at 9:00 AM, you’ll get a question to reflect on where a lot of the replies become interesting pieces of advice. Right? I’m playing with one right now that I said, “Give the best advice you can in just two words.” It had 3,000 replies.

The Twitter algorithm. When people respond to something, it shows up in more feeds.

Nathan: [00:00:27]
In this episode, I talked to Dickie Bush, who works in the finance industry, but has this wildly successful side hustle teaching writers how to write better, grow their audience and show up consistently, called Ship 30 for 30. This episode we get into a ton of great stuff, how to grow your Twitter list, how to stay accountable.

We deep dive more than any other episode on the Twitter algorithm, what works, what doesn’t, some of it is pure speculation. Some of it are things that have been pretty verifiable. There’s a lot of good stuff. I think you’re going to enjoy it. I particularly love how Dickie has put together these flywheels that he’s refining each time he does a new cohort of the course. There’s a ton of momentum here. He’s just absolutely going to blow up. And it’s really, really impressive. So with that, let’s dive in. Dickie, welcome to the show.

Dickie: [00:01:15]
I appreciate you having me. Look forward to it. 

Nathan: [00:01:17]
All of our listeners are very active on Twitter. And you can’t be active on Twitter in the circles that you and I run in and not see your Twitter growth. I see Ship 30 for 30 growing, like crazy everyone, you know, posting essays and all of that. Before we dive into all of that, there’s something that I actually didn’t realize until prepping for this episode yesterday.

And that’s that everything we see online is just a side hustle for you. Can you talk about, at a high level, what you do day to day, and then, how you balance that with your wildly successful side hustle. 

Dickie: [00:01:58]
Sure. So what I do, full-time, I’m a macro portfolio manager and the way I kind of describe it as my day job is to predict the global economy and how that unfolds. And there’s only so many charts and numbers you can look at on kind of a daily basis from seven or 8:00 AM to five or six. And so my writing online and kind of journey, and that has been just a, a way to kind of step back from kind of the madness of, of markets and economies and things like that.

And explore just little interests to me. And that has evolved relatively quickly, over the last, you know, nine months.

Nathan: [00:02:38]
Oh, I’m glad you said the nine months time. I, cause that that’s roughly what I’ve noticed as well. What was that inflection point where you decided you’re going to really focus on building an online audience and, you know, start writing online?

Dickie: [00:02:54]
I guess a little bit of a backstory it’s probably longer than nine months. So I started writing online in January of 2020. With just a weekly newsletter. So I came into 2020 saying, I’m consuming all these podcasts and books and articles and just interested in learning. But my notes would end up in the back of a Notion notebook kind of into the void where, you know, there was no upside.

And so I started kind of exploring, how can I start to have a forcing function to learn more about the things I’m doing? So I just started writing a weekly newsletter. I had seen people do it and you just curation and et cetera. So that was kind of my foray into it. And I did that for about 35, 40 weeks, and started writing on a blog, exploring dabbling in some things that I was interested in, but in July, I’d probably published 30 or 40 newsletters in a row, a couple of blog posts, but just felt like I was kind of stuck and had so many ideas that I wanted to explore, but didn’t have the medium to do it. When my feedback loop was slow, I was on the weekly cadence, but it was inconsistent, et cetera. And so coming into August, I started just tweeting more and getting through these ideas. And I’m sure we’ll talk more about Twitter. It’s kind of an idea refinery, right? You can just get these ideas clear the junk that’s in your head to find out what you really want to talk about.

And so that was, you know, that was kind of the inflection point was when I made a new Twitter account in August and said, “I’m going to start to share these ideas that I think I want to talk about.”"

Nathan: [00:04:27]
As much as I want to ask there, but you said you made a new Twitter account. You just started more from scratch and kept, you know, forked off of an old one. What did you do there?

Dickie: [00:04:34]
So that one, I had a Twitter I’ve had Twitter since 2014, 2015, you know, big lifetime, just been involved with the product and loved it. And. There was a little bit of, okay, I’m going to pivot this. I had four or 500 followers at the time, had done some kind of thread curation and things like that. But my follower graph, I think was a little bit not damaged, but Twitter’s algorithm.

If you went on my account and said, who are this person similar to? It was all inactive accounts from high school. And so I just wanted a fresh slate too, kind of start over. And so I made the new account and said, Hey, I’m maki...

Jason Feifer is the Editor in Chief at Entrepreneur, an American magazine and website that carries news stories about entrepreneurship, small business management, and business. 

He also hosts a podcast called Build for Tomorrow, and he is the author of a forthcoming book titled Build for Tomorrow, Not for Yesterday.

Jason is a unique blend of individual creator and polished corporate employee, so he offers a balanced perspective on work and content creation. In this episode, Jason and Nathan discuss:

• How to package your work
• How to pitch your content and get press as a creator
• Time management for creators balancing full time careers

Links & Resources

• Entrepreneur
• Boston Magazine
• Men’s Health
• Fast Company
• Maxim
• James Burnett
• Marc Andreessen
• Pessimists Archive: @PessimistsArc
• Louis Anslow: @LouisAnslow
• Andreessen Horowitz
• Joel Weber

Jason Feifer’s Links

• Personal site: jasonfeifer.com
• Jason’s Podcast: Build for Tomorrow
• Jason’s forthcoming book: Build for Tomorrow, Not for Yesterday
• Jason’s Instagram: heyfeifer
• Jason’s Twitter: @heyfeifer

Episode Transcript

Jason: [00:00:00]
You make the thing that you want to make. You believe in it, and you don’t give up on it, and you spend years doing it. And if you’re good at it, and if you were right that this was a thing that was worth making, people will find it because good really does rise up. It happens slowly, but it does happen.

Keep going. 

Nathan: [00:00:23]
In this episode, I talked to Jason Feifer. Jason’s the Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur. And we dive into a bunch of different things.

One, how he splits his time as an individual creator and, you know, running a very successful, very popular magazine. How he blends those things. He’s got a newsletter, he’s got a podcast, he has several podcasts. He’s working on a book, all of those things. So how he prioritizes his time. All of that.

The monthly cadence that he works on, I found really interesting. We also dive into how to package your work. We talk about why he changed the name of his podcast and the research that went into that. Then finally we wrap up by talking about PR and how to get press as a creator, how to think about pitching each individual publication, the work that you need to do to actually get covered a lot of good stuff.

So let’s dive in.

Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason: [00:01:15]
Thank you for having me.

Nathan: [00:01:16]
So I want to dive in, you’ve got two very different things going on. They’re actually, I mean, they’re closely related, but, two different worlds, you know, with everything you’re building on your own audience. And then of course, as Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur, I’m curious just how you spend your time, as I would think the Editor in Chief is a very time-consuming thing. Then you’re building an audience. You’ve got two young kids, you know, you’ve been doing it all through a pandemic. And so I’m curious what, you know, what a day or a week looks like, in Jason’s life. 

Jason: [00:01:51]
it looks like panic. It looks like absolute mass panic. That’s how I feel. Panicked. Okay? So first I’ve made this, I made this realization a couple, more than a year ago. I can’t remember when this took place for me, but I realized that I needed to maximize how my brain works, like work with my brain.

Right. Which is to say, when am I best at doing various things? And then let’s make sure that I’m doing those things at that time, because if I can write a full, like 2000 word story, in, let’s just say two hours, which sometimes I can do, that’s going to happen in the morning. If I try to do that at 5:00 PM, it’s going to take four to six hours.

So why on earth would I waste my time doing tasks when I’m not primed for them? So I clear out the for if I can manage it up to noon, but that’s almost impossible. So really can I safeguard the first hour and a half of my day for writing? And then what I do with that hour and a half depends upon the needs that are most present for me.

So for example, sometimes it’s writing a magazine story. Sometimes it’s writing a chapter in my book. Sometimes it’s writing a podcast script and this is dictated by the deadlines that I have. And then the rest of the day, I’m trying to manage everything that needs to be managed. I’m answering a lot of questions.

I’m getting on a lot of calls, but I will, Oh, I, if I can. If I can do it, which I can’t always do, but I can do it. Then I will not book anything back to back. I will always block out like a half an hour in between. And that’s because things are coming at me and they’re coming at me for lots of different projects.

And it’s hard. You can, you think that you can switch gears really fast between one project and another one company in another, as I’m sometimes doing, because I have my own company and then I’m also working with Entrepreneur and I mean, I, I mean, I’m employed by Entrepreneur. and so I need that time to make those shifts.

And the days that I hate the most are the ones, well, first of all, where I lose that time in the beginning, but also where I’m back to back and I never have time to catch up on any of the inbound because that’s when I’m working late into the night.

Nathan: [00:04:13]
Yeah, that makes sense. Are there other things that you’ve found? Right. So writing in the morning is something and I can absolutely relate to that where like 3:00 PM. Nathan is, he’s actually just legitimately terrible writer. He wants to do anything, but Write, are there other things that you’ve found of like blocking off days of the week to focus on.

You know, one activity or one business or anything like that.

Jason: [00:04:35]
I don’t, I have too many constant demands to be able to block out full days. I would love to be able to do that. So instead, I tend to think about things in terms of goals for a week. So I know for example, here’s, here’s an example. I know that my Build for Tomorrow Podcast comes out on the last Thursday of every month and it’s a monthly show, which I know is not a great cadence.

Yes, yes. I’m aware, but it is such a deeply researched, highly produced show. It is, it is a months worth of work that goes into every episode. And for reasons that we can discuss I’ve decided that that’s okay because the. Ultimate goal of a podcast. Isn’t always just to have a bazillion listeners of the podcast.

Sometimes it can se...

Veni Kunche runs Diversify Tech, a newsletter-based business all about helping people who are underrepresented break into the tech world. After working as a Software Engineer since 2003, her main goal now is to help make the tech industry inclusive.

Veni’s got a really interesting business model: a mix of sponsorships and also a job board, taking advantage of the robust community that surrounds her newsletter.

Nathan and Veni cover everything from how she transitioned from working in tech to starting her business. They dive deep into the mistakes companies make when seeking to hire a diverse team, and and what they can do differently.

Veni also shares real numbers. Listen to the end to hear:

• How much she’s making per month from her newsletter.
• How her revenue has changed over the last year.
• How the pandemic has affected her sign-ups.

Links & Resources

• Black Tech Pipeline
• Techqueria
• Out in Tech

Veni Kunche’s Links

• Diversify Tech
• Business & Ally Newsletter
• Personal site: veni.dev
• Twitter: @venikunche

Episode Transcript

Veni: [00:00:00]
Companies write job descriptions, they’re writing for mainly men in tech. Also they’re writing for younger people. Oh, we have ping pong. We have pool at our office. Those are the benefits. My community don’t even care about that. What they care about is focused on how the company will support them in their career.

And so those are the signals that they’re looking for.

Nathan: [00:00:26]
Today’s interview is with Veni Kunche who runs a newsletter-based business called Diversify Tech, which is all about helping people who are underrepresented break into the tech world. She’s got a really interesting business model of a mix of sponsorships, a job board, which I think is a business model on newsletters that we don’t talk about enough when you have that community.

There’s a great opportunity there. Anyway, it’s a great episode. We cover everything from how she got started, transitioning from tech to starting her newsletter. We dive deep into companies who are looking to hire a diverse team and mistakes they make and what they can do differently, how transparency really matters.

So there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Towards the end of the podcast, she gets into sharing the exact numbers behind the business, how much she’s making per month, how that’s changed over the last year. I think you’re going to love it.

Let’s dive in.

Veni, welcome to the show.

Veni: [00:01:16]
Thank you so much for having me happy to be here.

Nathan: [00:01:19]
So I thought I’d just start. If you could tell listeners a little bit, what is Diversify Tech and, you know, at a high level, like what’s the business model behind it.

Veni: [00:01:30]
Yeah. So Diversify Tech is a curated newsletter, primary purpose is to connect people who are underrepresented in tech with career opportunities. So I share scholarships that are available, jobs, events that are happening, around the U.S. so the main purpose is to connect, people who are underrepresented, to these opportunities.

The reason I started it is because when you’re underrepresented, when you’re in your workplace or in your college at college, or wherever you feel where you’re alone, and you don’t really have a network, of people like you. So I wanted to bring something where I could be that resource for people.

Nathan: [00:02:19]
Yeah, that makes sense. So when you were working as a software developer in tech was this an idea that you were thinking about for a long time and you’re like someone should make this, and then you realized that that someone was you, what was that? What was that leap?

Veni: [00:02:37]
So actually like, had no intention of starting something like this. It was, I actually just wanted to start a business. I didn’t know what that was. so I was a staff engineer for quite some time and I didn’t quite fit into the corporate world. I kept switching jobs a lot, so I was like one day I was like, you know what?

I think I want to try something on my own. So I started exploring how does one start a business? How does one? And I, you know, I learned that, you know, it takes quite some time to figure out who your customers are, customer market fit, you know, all of that. And as I was learning, I was also volunteering for the women who code chapter in DC here.

And, as I was volunteering, I connected with a lot of women in tech and that’s when I realized that there are a lot more, floods than I thought, and blah, and everybody was trying to find each other kind of, to feel connected and to kind of talk through this, you know, our issues. and I started doing just online office hours.

So I was like for 30 minutes, I would just get on Google Hangouts and talk with people. And I got connected with so many people from across the U.S. just by offering that. And then that’s when I realized, okay, everybody’s. It’s facing similar issues and we’re all discussing the same thing over in Oregon.

So I thought, Oh, why don’t I start a newsletter where I can reach more people. So prior to Diversify Tech, I started a newsletter called Code With Veni, and I was like, Oh, I’ll share what I’m learning. And I will also, you know, share what other women in tech are doing. and you know, it was more supposed to be like inspirational and, you know, that’s how it started.

And after a year of running that I started getting requests for sponsorships. People want it to sponsor the newsletter. People wanted to post jobs. Uh that’s when it finally clicked that I was like, Oh, I’m starting trying to start a business. And I think I actually started, okay. So that’s what it is like, Oh, once I started getting, receiving his foundation of, so I was like, Oh, this could be my business.

So that’s when I was like, then I kind of pivoted off of good with many. Cause I didn’t want the branding to be just me. So, and then I also wanted to include not just women, but everybody who’s underrepresented in tech. So that’s when I kind of like Diversify Tech from that. 

Nathan: [00:04:54]
It’s always fascinating. How, when you build an audience, sometimes like the, the business model will just come, you know, or the business will just come and you’re like, I don’t know what it is. And then over time, someone’s like, Oh, could I do this? And you’re like, I mean, I guess so like, sure. Yeah.

Let’s talk sponsorships. That’s a great idea. Let’s you know, and then I imagine people are like, great, can I sponsor with my job listing, you know, or something like that. I’m trying to get it in front of a more diverse community. And so it was that where like the job board came in,

Veni: [00:05:25]
Yes. As I started growing the newsletter sponsorships kind of, didn’t make it like, but sense because the demand was higher than I, because I send the newsletter every week, you know, I can’t have that many sponsors showing a...

Venture capitalist Li Jin left Andreessen Horowitz to start her own firm, Atelier Ventures. She started Atelier to fund a specific vision of the world: a world in which people are able to do what they love for a living and to have a more fulfilling and purposeful life.

In addition to being an investor, Li is a prolific writer and podcaster, producing not only a newsletter but also writing articles for major publications.

Find out whether you should really be writing content every week, or whether your effort is better spent on longer-form, epic articles. Should you be publishing in your newsletter, or in publications like Harvard Business Review?

Li and Nathan don’t just talk about content, they also get deep into business models for your newsletter business, with Li sharing her perspective as the founder of a venture fund. Don’t miss Li’s unique combination of deep investment knowledge and artistic creativity!

Links & Resources

• Andreessen Horowitz - Software Is Eating the World
• LiveJournal: Discover global communities of bloggers who share your unique passions and interests.
• Myspace
• Zynga
• The Nathan Barry Show 028: Packy McCormick – How Much Are 30,000 Subscribers Worth?
• Evernote
• Harvard Business Review - Ideas and Advice for Leaders
• The Nathan Barry Show 023: Tiago Forte – Building a Second Brain & Lessons From a $1M/yr Newsletter
• The Nathan Barry Show 017: David Perell – Mastering Twitter to Grow Your Newsletter and Make Money

Li Jin’s Links

• Newsletter: Li’s Newsletter
• Website: Atelier Ventures
• Podcast: Means of Creation
• Twitter: @ljin18
• LinkedIn: Li Jin

Episode Transcript

Li Jin: [00:00:00]
What are your goals and what is the content that you’re creating and why are people subscribed and reading it? The business model needs to fit what your content is, who the audience is, who the creator is, what the platform is. All of those things need to be aligned. Direct user monetization is totally in vogue in the form of donations, ad hoc payments, subscription payments.

It’s always charging the user for something. 

Nathan: [00:00:28]
Today’s episode is with venture capitalist Li Jin. So Li was at Andreessen Horowitz, and then she recently left to start her own firm, Atelier Ventures. We talked about a lot of things that I find interesting, like business models for your newsletter, for example, should you monetize through a paid newsletter sponsorships or what she does through running a venture fund?

We get into whether you should write content, you know, consistently every week, or should you publish it once a quarter and put out these incredible long form posts we get into writing about, or excuse me, writing for publications like Harvard Business Review versus your own newsletter. There’s so much good stuff in here.

So I’ll just get out of the way and we’ll dive right in.

Li, welcome to the show.

Li Jin: [00:01:14]
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me, Nathan.

Nathan: [00:01:17]
Okay. So I want to dive in and just immediately talk about revenue models, all of that, because you have this tweet that I just loved, that it was like dying, laughing when I saw it. And the gist of it is I have a paid newsletter. It’s my monthly LP update. You were talking about how either those business models is everything else.

And I imagine saying like me, why don’t you launch a paid newsletter? So could you talk through how you think about, you know, your business and what you meant with that week?

Li Jin: [00:01:50]
Yes. So I joke that my LP update, which I send out quarterly as a email is basically my paid newsletter. And I think it’s, it’s basically a riff on the joke that we used to make about a16z, which is the firm that I used to work at the VC firm that I used to work at. We used to joke that it was a media company that monetized through venture capital because a 16, Z as a firm is so prolific in creating content.

They have a podcast, actually, a network of podcasts, the blog. they have a series of different clubhouse shows now as well. they just do a ton of different media and content creation activities. And so people used to joke like, Oh, this is actually a media company that happens to monetize through venture capital.

And I think of myself now as kind of a miniature version of that, where I’m a solo. Content creator. and I monetize through venture capital. Like that is my revenue model. I have a venture capital fund that I raised last year, called . And that is, you know, my day job. That’s where I spend the majority of my time.

And then the content that I put out into the world, It’s free. It’s, it’s mostly free for founders to consume. It’s really designed to help them build companies, and to guide them and their strategies. And I don’t monetize the content at all. And the way that I monetize the content is through investing in the best companies that come as a result of the content creation.

So, yeah, that was, that was the Genesis behind, the tweet. And so the LV newsletter, I mean, the LPs are like the investors in the fund and that’s how I monetize it.

Nathan: [00:03:33]
Yep. That makes sense. And I think once you have this attention, Then there’s so many ways that you can monetize it. I was talking with Trey, remember who wasn’t a past episode. we were talking about how people have alluded to Nike being like they’re just an ad agency who happens to realize that the best model to monetize is through, you know, shoe and apparel sales, but really their core strength is advertising and marketing.

And so I think there’s plenty of examples of people who have, like, the. Have this audience and then an unconventional way of earning a living.

Li Jin: [00:04:09]
Yeah, precisely. And I think to build on that. Like there’s a lot of examples of newsletter writers who do a similar thing where they’re operating a syndicate. Like I think Packy who you’ve had on the show has a syndicate that he invests in deals through. there’s other newsletter writers. I know that angel and fast Lenny Rachitsky is a very active angel investor too.

So yeah, a lot of them are sort of blending different business models because newsletters are such a great vehicle to, to build an audience. To get reader attention, to communicate your thoughts into the world and kind of mind-meld with a lot of really interesting folks. And then the best way to monetize that might not be through a straight up subscription or pay.

Well, it might be having upside in the businesses that they built. and I think. Content creators are having that rea...

Mario Gabriele is the founder of The Generalist. His mission? To bring the most interesting tech writing to your inbox, every week. And he’s not doing it alone, either: Mario works with a team of contributors to deliver new ideas from some of the most original minds in venture capital and tech.

In this episode, Mario talks about how and why he left a career in venture investing to build The Generalist, and his lifelong obsessions with writing and technology. The Generalist is not only a really successful newsletter, it’s a thriving business, too! Tune in to hear how Mario did it.

You’ll learn about approaching and collaborating with the people you only dream of working with. Mario talks about how he went from merely admiring certain writers’ work to joining their “club” in 18 months!

Mario also shares the most reliable way to advance your career, and the safest ways to accelerate it. There’s a lot of good stuff in this conversation!

Links & Resources

• Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology.
• Exponential View by Azeem Azhar
• The Nathan Barry Show 028: Packy McCormick – How Much Are 30,000 Subscribers Worth?
• Acquired Podcast
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
• Webflow: The no code platform for web design and development
• Pico - Signup and payment tools for the internet’s most passionate communities
• alexdanco.com – subscribe weekly at danco.substack.com

Mario Gabriele’s Links

• Personal site: The Generalist
• Twitter: @mariodgabriele

Episode Transcript

Mario: [00:00:00]
I just really love writing very, very much. And so, as soon as I got the width that like, maybe I could make this a real thing, then suddenly like a flip switched in me where I was like, all right, I have to go as hard as possible and feel like the value was accruing directly to me. As soon as I was like fully on my own thing, I suddenly felt like, Oh man, I’m unchanged to go after this. 

Nathan: [00:00:30]
In this episode, I talked to Mario Gabriele. Now Mario runs an email newsletter called The Generalist, which is focused on tech venture capital and investing. He comes from the venture capital world himself, and then he really brings forward all of that into the newsletter. A couple of things really impressed me about Mario. One, he really collaborates, well, he’s got something called the S–1 Club, which is where they do tear downs of filings that companies make before they go public. And he really brings in other creators and they write them together. He also has something called RFS, which is Request for Startups and he brings in other venture capitalists and operators and everyone else to share startup ideas.

So he’s got this interesting mix of his own Content, Community Content, and he’s built it not only into a really successful newsletter, but also a thriving business. So it’s a lot of good stuff. Let’s dive in.

Mario. Thanks for coming on the show.

Mario: [00:01:25]
Thanks for having me, Nathan.

Nathan: [00:01:26]
Okay, so you have this line. I think you said it on Twitter and a few other places that I just want to start with. You said, it sounds ridiculous to announce your dream is to build a great newsletter and then you go into like, you know, but that’s what I’m doing, you know, my love of technology and writing and everything else. So maybe just start with why, like, why did you want to start a newsletter?

Mario: [00:01:52]
Yeah. I mean, honestly it wasn’t, something that was necessarily in the back of my mind for a long time, it really sort of happened organically. and I think work is often like this where for a long time, you’re not really sure exactly what you’re doing. And then. When you sort of find something that actually feels incredibly right, you can sort of trace back all the little things along the way that brought you there.

And so for me, that was really two main, explorations. One was that, you know, from a very young age, I’ve always really enjoyed writing. and so I did a lot of that in school. and then after I’d left university, I started to take night school classes and fiction writing at NYU. Starting in 2012, I started to like write a novel every morning, getting up early, you know, spending an hour before work, just sort of like practicing, practicing, practicing.

And it was just sort of this hobby I had. And then simultaneously where I was really building a career was in technology. so. You know, on the operating side, at a few companies and then on the investing side in sort of a few venture firms and, starting The Generalist really was just a way to.

You know, I express that hobby in a slightly different way. I had folks be like, all right, cool. You’re spending all this time writing. Like what, why don’t you write a thing or two about, about your actual work? and so just started as sort of a side project on the weekends and then bit by bit, it just was absorbing more of my thought.

More of my excitement, more of my energy. And it started to really feel like it was pulling me in this direction. And, once I felt like it might be possible for writing to become. My life’s work and be a viable career, which had always been sort of the reason I hadn’t tried to go full-time as a novelist.

You know, even though, you know, unless you’re JK rallying, it’s pretty impossible. newsletters felt like a way I could do that and really write the stuff I wanted to write, and make, make a living out of it. Hopefully.

Nathan: [00:04:09]
Yeah. So, it’s, we’re recording this in February, 2021. When was it that you started The Generalist?

Mario: [00:04:16]
So I start, I wrote the first ever post in August of 2019. And honestly was sort of an accident that I started it as a newsletter. I had just been seen seeing people like switch over to Substack over Medium. This is before I had heard the gospel of ConvertKit. So, yeah, I was just like, cool.

I’ll do this instead of Medium, like whatever. and then. That first post, even though it was very small circulation just led to so many interesting conversations and people started to sign up. And so it suddenly became like very clear why you should make it a newsletter versus a blog. and then I would say the other sort of critical point was in August of the following year. I went full-time on it. And the growth since, since then has been like significantly different, I would say, just like being able to put more time into it.

Nathan: [00:05:15]
Yeah. So, there’s a few things that I want to dig into there, but, I think there’s all these creators that we look up to and admire, right? The newsletters that we read, that YouTube chann...

Sam Parr founded The Hustle, a top-flight newsletter that he grew to almost 2,000,000 subscribers… and just sold to HubSpot! Tune in to hear the whole story of how Sam grew a successful newsletter to seven figures per month in revenue, and the roller coaster ride of selling his small business.

Despite his success with a paid newsletter, Sam has lots to share about what people are doing wrong when they launch a Substack. Plus, he gives Nathan ideas and tactics for growing a new, local newsletter that focuses on Boise.

In this wide-ranging conversation, you’ll also hear about the art of writing quickly, whether writing your newsletter is something you can (or should) delegate, and whether running a solo newsletter is even the right business for you in the first place.

Links & Resources

• HubSpot - Inbound Marketing, Sales, and Service Software
• Product Hunt – The best new products in tech.
• DailyCandy - Sweet Sorrow
• Thrillist - Find the Best and Most Under-Appreciated Places to Eat, Drink and Travel
• Fool.com: Stock Investing Advice - Stock Research
• James Clear
• Gumroad
• Glossier - Skincare & Beauty Products Inspired by Real Life

Sam Parr’s Links

• Subscribe to The Hustle Daily
• Trends by the Hustle - Your next business idea, delivered weekly
• Twitter: @theSamParr

Episode Transcript

Sam: [00:00:00]
I think they’re making the wrong mistakes. The first example is pricing. Most people charge way too little, but if you actually want to make a living at this and provide value, you’ve got to charge more money. How are you gonna make a living if you’re charging $4 a month? That’s really, really hard.

So charge way more. People tend to like that stuff more. If they paid money for it, they usually appreciate it. 

Nathan: [00:00:25]
In today’s episode, I talked to Sam Parr from The Hustle. Now Sam and I have been friends for a long time. And he’s got some pretty wild news in that, HubSpot just acquired The Hustle. There’s a lot of crazy things that went on with that, but, we dive into the story there. How long due diligence took everything else.

It’s a long ranging free-form conversation. But we hit another things like, my new local newsletter that I’m starting. He has some growth ideas and tactics that he shares there. We get into what he thinks people are doing wrong when they’re launching Substacks, which is pretty wild since he has crazy revenue.

I think, you know, there are over a million dollars a month in sponsor revenue and getting pretty close to that in paid memberships revenue for The Hustle. And we get into growing the newsletter to almost 2 million subscribers. There’s so much good stuff. I’ll warn you. It’s a very rambling conversation, but we have a great time.

So I hope you enjoy it.

Sam, thanks for joining me.

Sam: [00:01:18]
What’s up, man?

Nathan: [00:01:19]
So you would have been friends for a long time. It was hung out in a lot of different circles. You’re wildly popular on the internet today, not today, over the last couple of months, a couple of weeks. 

Sam: [00:01:30]
Not as popular, popular as you.

Nathan: [00:01:32]
Exactly. I don’t know, but you just sold The Hustle and we were talking right before we hit record and you’re like, dude, just hit record so that we can have the whole conversation for everybody. On the first question I was asking is how long did it take from when, when HubSpot reached out to the deal actually closing,

Sam: [00:01:53]
About 90 days. Well also, had you ever sold this business before?

Nathan: [00:01:57]
I have not, I can’t say what business I acquired, but this week I acquired a company. it just closed. 

Sam: [00:02:06]
Was it a big deal?

Nathan: [00:02:07]
It was a medium deal.

Sam: [00:02:09]
Okay. That’s great. Well, we,

Nathan: [00:02:11]
If you bucket deals into small, medium and large, it was a medium deal. So.

Sam: [00:02:15]
Well we, We, like, I didn’t know. I mean, I had been part of a company selling before as a shareholder and like a investor, an advisor, a very, very close advisor, but I still didn’t know. I didn’t know like what closing meant. I didn’t know what signing meant. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. And so I didn’t, I didn’t know what a LOI was.

I didn’t know. I mean, I had heard the words, but I didn’t really know like what that implied. And they reached out to me around September or October. They cold emailed me and we had been recruited or, you know, buyers have talked to us for a long time. And like the first couple of times I took them really seriously.

And I was like, Oh my God, like, I’m going to dress up nice and fly out to their office. And I’m going to show them all this school stuff. And then after awhile I was like, I just didn’t take it seriously. And I just said, I would send them like, I would like write up like a one pager and I would like tell them all the reasons basically why they shouldn’t bias where, I mean, I was like, look, we’re really good at this.

We are horrible at this. the reason why you should buy us as this, the reason why you should not bias as this, if you are, the, the, the expectations for pricing is around this. If you want to talk, call me and like, it was a pretty straightforward thing. And, they liked that. And most people don’t, most people don’t like that.

And so they emailed me and then we, we, the deal was announced, like the last day of January and they emailed me in October.

Nathan: [00:03:47]
So I feel like that’s pretty quick.

Sam: [00:03:49]
Is it? It certainly doesn’t feel quick.

Nathan: [00:03:51]
You mentioned on, on your podcast, that due diligence was. I think hell was the phrase.

Sam: [00:03:59]
It is so bad. It’s so bad for a bunch of reasons. But first of all, I sold to a public company.

Nathan: [00:04:06]
Yeah. 

Sam: [00:04:06]
I’ve never sold a company for $300 million, but I have a feeling selling for 300 or 500 or actually have been the same amount of work as for what we sold, which was less than 300 million. it’s a ton of work.

And the difference between my small company, it was that I didn’t have a team of like, I don’t ha I had like one woman named ed who works on accounting and finance. And then I had outsourced a lawyer, you know, like an outside law firm. I had an outside tax firm. And then I had me and I had to do a lot of this in private.

You can’t really tell employees. And it was very, very hard. They basically, I ha...

Codie Sanchez runs the amazing newsletter Contrarian Thinking, whose topics include passive income, generational wealth, contrarian investing, and learning from strivers who think big.

Her motto is “Question everything and stack income streams”, and that’s exactly what we talk about in this episode. Not just “how to build a newsletter”, but one of Nathan’s favorite topics: how to build wealth!

You’ll learn how Codie went from journalist to investor to partner in a fund, and how she runs her 100,000-subscriber newsletter plus other companies besides. Codie talks growing a newsletter from 100 subscribers to 1,000 and beyond, but that’s not all.

Tune in and find out:

• Why Joe Rogan’s deal with Spotify was a huge mistake.
• Getting people to promote you… without sounding thirsty.
• How to build an all-star team for your growing business.
• Whether ads or sponsors are a better way to monetize your newsletter.

It’s a great show!

Links & Resources

• Unconventional Acquisitions
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
• Joe Rogan
• Howard Stern
• Mr. Beast
• Noah Kagan Marketing & Business Blog - OkDork.com
• Sam Parr CEO at The Hustle
• Jonah Goldberg - The Dispatch
• Charles E Gaudet II » Predictable Profits
• Contrarian Cashflow

Codie Sanchez’s Links

• Newsletter: Contrarian Thinking by Codie Sanchez
• Twitter: @Codie_Sanchez
• Instagram: @codiesanchez

Episode Transcript

Codie: [00:00:00]
The funny thing about audience is money doesn’t care if people care about you. So capital as a leverage source, doesn’t care about relevancy, your dollar, as long as it stays in the market. And you keep reinvesting will have compound interest. The thing about audience is, it can be a depreciating asset. If you don’t pay attention to it, if you don’t upkeep it just like you would a house, then your audience is going to think that you’re not relevant.

Nathan: [00:00:32]
Today’s episode is with Codie Sanchez. Now Codie has a fascinating background where she started in journalism and there, she was covering a lot of things in Mexico and on the US-Mexico border. So she has crazy stories from that. And then she goes into investing, right? Like it goes to Goldman Sachs and Vanguard and goes to the whole investing world.

And then now she’s in not just investing, where she’s a partner in a fund, what was the investing in cannabis companies, but she’s also running a newsletter, with over a hundred thousand subscribers, which is pretty crazy. And we get into how to monetize the newsletter, how to grow it, her take on the creator economy, so many other things. So it was a great conversation and let’s dive in.

Codie, thanks for coming on the show.

Codie: [00:01:19]
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Nathan: [00:01:20]
So you and I have we talk newsletters and everything, which we will, but first we have a shared love for the same topic, a topic that some people love to talk about. Like we do, and other people dance around and think is weird and awkward and everything else. And that is building wealth. Like you and I both love this topic.

Why is it something that you, what about so much on all your social channels and your newsletter and everything else?

Codie: [00:01:44]
Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I nerd out about this. It might be just because I’ve been in finance for 72 years, but, more than that, I think if you want to. Control the art, you have to control the resources behind the art. And so I’ve always loved creating, I mean, similar to you in multiple different ways, whether you’re creating a business or a newsletter or whatever the case may be.

I like the act of creating and if you don’t have the financial resources to actually do the creative, and then there are all of these pressures that get put upon you, and I don’t think you get control of the art. And so that would probably be one of my main reasons. And then secondarily, I just think financial freedom without financial freedom, you don’t have any freedoms. And so that’s sort of one of the building blocks, I think, crucial for people to get.

Nathan: [00:02:29]
Yeah, that makes sense. So, one thing that you talk about quite a bit is leverage and finding leverage on, you know, as a tool for building wealth, maybe explain some of your thinking behind that and how you’d like to encourage your readers for your newsletter and, you know, companies you invest in to find leverage.

Codie: [00:02:46]
Yeah, well, we were kind of talking about this before, you know, I thought I was like brilliant and some of these ideas, and then I realized that like the internet also now has caught up and some of this stuff is more normalized, but, You know, when I thought about leverage, I thought about it with four parameters.

And that was first you had labor, then you had capital. Then you had code. Then you had audience. Now Naval Ravikant talks about the first three. he doesn’t mention the fourth and the fourth I think is really, in my opinion will be sort of the next frontier, the creator economy, and leveraging your audience in order to get different revenue streams.

Because audience is really fascinating in that it’s like an annuity, meaning that it can cashflow consistently, but instead of annuity—only having one revenue stream, you know, they pay you out based on the investment that you make—audience can have have a billion revenue streams. And so anyway, when I think about leverage, I don’t think about it as a financial way.

Lots of people think about leverage. Like you loaned me a dollar and I take that dollar and go do something else with it. but the world we live in today that was old school leverage, you know, that was the leverage that created. Basically the biggest Titans of industry in the US: the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds—they were all created right after banking was established.

So the banks came out, capital was created. These guys made a ton of money, and then you had code come out, software, right? Robots in the form of software and the next biggest billionaires were created. That’s the Jobs, that’s the Elon Musk, etc. And now in the next realm, I think those with audience will be the next sort of wave of billionaires that are created.

And they’re all enabled based on code to some degree. but I think that’ll be the next evolution. So if you are able to understand leverage in a modern day format meaning not just human capital, the most inefficient form—labor like you and I working for living and renting out our time—and not just money like me and the fund, having a bunch of other people...