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As the CEO of Kit, Nathan Barry has a front row seat to what’s working in the most successful creator businesses.
On The Nathan Barry Show, he interviews top creators and dives into the inner workings of their businesses in his live coaching sessions.
You get unique insight into how creator businesses work and what you can do to increase results in your own business.
One of the things Nathan is passionate about is helping you create leverage.
Creator Flywheels let you create many copies of yourself so you don’t get bogged down with the little things in your business. Flywheels will help you reach a place where you can focus on revenue instead of busywork.
Tune in weekly for new episodes with ideas and tips for growing your business. You’ll hear discussions around building an audience, earning a living as a creator, and Nathan’s insights on scaling a software company to $100M.
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Nathan Barry: [00:00:00] Okay, so Ricky, you're talking about going from 1. 3 million and the milestone we were kind of talking about is 5 million, is that right? What would have to be true for us to 10x that number?
Ricky Zhang: Some of these other products that we've got are membership consulting, travel agency, and concierge.
Nathan Barry: What percentage of your audience do you think knows that this service exists?
Ricky Zhang: Less than 1%
Nathan Barry: I had 10 products that I launched as a creator before I had a single product break 50, 000 in revenue. As creators, we're the best in the world at capturing attention. What's the highest ROI place that I could direct that attention?
Ricky Zhang: The real revenue growth comes from s that you can sell to the audience.
Nathan Barry: Hundreds of billions of dollars a year are being spent to pay for that attention, and we as creators get it effectively for free.
Okay, so Ricky you're talking about going from 1. 3 million Right now. And the milestone we were kind of talking about is 5 million. I got the sense from the talk. It sounds like you have bigger ambitions than, than 5 million. Is that right?
Ricky Zhang: I mean, to get to any big ambitions, we'd have to get to [00:01:00] the 5 million mark and beyond.
So I don't like to put a specific number on it, but you know, the idea is to, is to grow this thing. I just want to be able to make the type of grant impact that I kind of have in my mind in terms of taking what travel has meant to me and enabling that for so many more.
Nathan Barry: Okay, so as we're talking about scaling revenue, give me the breakdown of where revenue is at from different sources right now, and then we'll talk about what that could look like
Ricky Zhang: going forward.
We have about 30 percent of advertising from various sources, so website is our primary driver. Um, Google SEO, that's That's, that's a big piece. Um, it's kind of where we started, too, right? We started building our authority on Google, and a portion of that is on YouTube as well. Um, 35 percent from affiliates.
That's a predominant, you know, very, very popular way to monetize in the credit card and points amount space. You recommend a credit card for a given reader or viewer, and if they find value in it and sign up, you get compensated from the banks, and the banks have big marketing budgets, so that's Yeah, so maybe
Nathan Barry: [00:02:00] with this, how do you imagine it changing in the future?
As you, at that 5 million mark,
Ricky Zhang: you talk about the overall pie or these two,
Nathan Barry: the overall pie or what, uh, what, what section of it do you think is going to be contributing the most revenue?
Ricky Zhang: Yeah. To scale. So advertising is going to get small.
Nathan Barry: Um,
Ricky Zhang: traditionally,
Nathan Barry: most creators would assume that advertising is going to be the bigger option.
So talk about why advertising is going to shrink, not as a total number, but it's
Ricky Zhang: going to shrink as a percentage, as a percentage. Yeah. Traditionally, I, I, you know, my understanding is. Advertising AdSense on YouTube, on, on SEO, it's a, it's a It's a baseline, right? But then the real revenue growth comes from products that you can sell, whether it's directing to credit cards or partner products, in the case of credit card affiliates, or products that you yourself build and sell to the audience.
And so, yeah, for me, as we grow this credit card affiliate space, it's It's obviously going to continue to be key just because of the space that we're in. We've [00:03:00] mostly been operating on the Canadian side, so growing into the U. S. is going to be big for us, um, on that piece. And then some of these other products that we've got shown up here are membership consulting, but especially our higher end ones, travel agency and concierge geared towards the higher end segment of the market.
Uh, more luxury travelers, more founders and entrepreneurs type. Um, that's going to be, you know, a big piece that we look to grow the product revenue from that. So I imagine the pie more shifting into. These, um, travel agency concierge product side and the affiliates remaining large and the, the advertising one getting squeezed over time.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. So I think most people would assume that as certain channels grow, well, I think you'd actually assume that the biggest buckets are going to continue to drive the most growth, but what you're saying is actually this little 13 percent slice, that's what's going to have the biggest growth from here.
Is that right?
Ricky Zhang: Yeah. That's, that's our projections because for us, the advertising got us, we You know, it got us this much this far along the way, and it's been pivotal for us in those [00:04:00] early stages 2017 till now, but ultimately it's its growth trajectory is capped,
Nathan Barry: right?
So one thing that I've learned studying the creator economy, right?
So I run ConvertKit, which is a Email marketing platform for creators. We power about 500, 000 creators businesses newsletters and all of that Including some of the biggest creators out there from like a Andrew Huberman to Tim Ferriss, James Clear, um, so many others. And so we get to see this like behind the scenes, look into the, the biggest creator businesses.
And one thing that I've noticed is that the creators that really scale beyond this 1 million mark, they all figure out something different to direct the attention to. If we think about a creator business, really what we're doing is as creators, we're the best in the world at capturing attention. And getting people to pay attention to us, whether it's through an Instagram, real, a blog post or something else.
But you actually have a lot of control over where you direct that attention from there. And attention is insanely [00:05:00] valuable. Like if you think, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars a year are being spent to pay for that attention. And we as creators get it effectively for free. And so then you think, where are we directing that?
And what you're doing here in that breakdown of revenue is going, okay, What's the highest ROI place that I could direct that attention? And I think what you're finding is your own products and services. And this is what I found across hundreds of creator businesses at the scale is that always it's some version of your own products and services.
So what does it look like to go from, you know, your products and services that are making, is it about 200, 000 a year in that concierge service? What would have to be true for that to be 2 million a year for us to 10x that number?
Ricky Zhang: Well, it's time to dial up the marketing and sales engine, basically. It's time to really get the messaging out there in terms of the fact that this product exists, which I'd say we've been [00:06:00] weak at thus far, right?
We've kind of launched it and spread it around within our circle of, like, my circle of founder friends. And there's some word of mouth, but we haven't really, you know,
Nathan Barry: What percentage of your current audience do you think knows that this service exists?
Ricky Zhang: Less than
1%.
Like, it's not on the website. And just to be very transparent here, we just hired our first full time web developer.
Nathan Barry: I mean, this is an amazing opportunity, right? Because you're saying, hey, this area that has the biggest channel of growth is not well known. This is something that I've run into with ConvertKit, where You know, as we're building new functionality or rolling it out to creators, it'll actually look like, Oh, this is my favorite thing, but how many people in our own audience are using it.
And it's often things like that, where you're like, I run the numbers. It's like six and a half percent or something. And you're like, okay, we have so much room to grow from here. Just promoting to our existing audience.
Ricky Zhang: I feel like it's a common story I've heard among creator entrepreneurs, right. As they discover the fact that products can scale, um, you know, [00:07:00] But it just, there's a, there's a time delay between knowing that and then acting on it and letting the audience know and increasing that level of awareness.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. So who in your company is directly responsible for growing this number? That's
Ricky Zhang: a good question. Um, probably our, probably Peter, our new director of product that we hired in start of April.
Nathan Barry: That's awesome. Yeah. So that's something as you're scaling a team as a creator, like I love that you have an answer for that, right?
And I love that it's a recent hire because this is, I can see you ramping up to this next stage. But as you know, as content creators and then creator entrepreneurs, we really, At least what I did is I stayed in control of many of these numbers and initiatives and all of that. And it wasn't until I hired people and gave them the clarity of this is what you're in charge of.
This is the metric that you need to move. And you tell me what resources you need to do it, that we started to have real traction. [00:08:00] And so in this case, right, you have a head of products who is going to be building this out. They're responsible for that growth. And so now you have some nice. Probably some healthy tension coming in because they're going to come to you and say, Hey, I need all of this promotion to happen in order to hit goals.
And you're going to be able to say, okay, well, are we like hitting our customer satisfaction goals? Like I don't want to ratchet up the promotion until the quality is exactly where we want it. Right? So you have a little bit of attention there and he's like, Oh, I'll nail the quality. I'm ready for the promotion.
Ricky Zhang: Yeah, except it's tension between him and the director of content. Not, Oh, that's even better. So that's, uh, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the move, right? It's bringing on team members who are accountable for specific things within the business I had in the slides there. I never got around to it, but one of the big transformations was, you know, instead of me obsessing over everything in the business and making sure it's looking good, uh, instead, my only, is finding the right people who are [00:09:00] accountable and held to the standard of making sure everything's looking good themselves.
And then they have those conversations within them to, you know, make the various pieces of the business work together.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. I like that a lot. One of the things that I've noticed is in a lot of these creator businesses, they usually have one product, sometimes two, but often it's one that turns into this like monolith or the skyscraper that's built up.
And it's very different from what a lot of, I would say like intermediate to professional creators do if you imagine an analogy of like you're going down the street in a city and you see a strip mall, right? There's a radio shack. There's a subway. I don't know a bunch of businesses in that one place and they all, you know, the buildings are all about the same size, right?
One story. Most creators build businesses like that where they're saying, I'm going to make affiliate revenue over here. I've got. products, right? I've got a book, a couple of different courses and they're building [00:10:00] this strip mall of a bunch of different things and it ends up building a really successful business.
I've watched people scale that to, you know, hundreds of thousands of a year a year and even into one, maybe, maybe 2 million if they do it really well. But everyone that I've seen scale to probably 5 million and beyond, right? Picks one of those things. Sometimes it's a course. Sometimes it's a productized service.
Um, or something else. And they say that is going to be the skyscraper that we build. And they build the funnels and the systems and processes around that one thing as tall as possible. Rather than what you would commonly expect, which is, hey, I've got a whole bunch of one story buildings, let's build them all into two story buildings.
And that's how we'll double the business.
Ricky Zhang: Yeah, that's, that's been a big lesson from, from lately, right? Because we have on that chart, there was like four products and we have treated it in a, in a strip mall fashion for a while. Yeah. And we've come to, you know, find that that may have been to our detriment or at the [00:11:00] very least not positioned us for that.
I think it was the right thing for the
Nathan Barry: phase.
Ricky Zhang: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: Cause if you imagine coming in, you don't know anything about, you don't know what's going to work. You don't know if you're anything like me. I think I had 10 products that I launched as a creator before I had a single product break 50, 000 in revenue.
Right? And so if I had picked, you know, product number four in that and said, ah, this is going to be the skyscraper. I'm going to go all in on building this and like dug a giant foundation and I don't know how far we can take this analogy, but you know, um, and built that up and then people were like, Oh, that has no value to us.
We have no interest in buying that, right? That would have been a total waste. And so I think building the strip mall to begin with is the right way to go. But then, when you want to scale, you have to choose the one or two things to scale.
Ricky Zhang: A hundred percent. So that's the plan.
Nathan Barry: I like it. Talk to me a little bit about, and everyone about, some of the skills early on.
As a creator, maybe that you had [00:12:00] to learn that you didn't expect that you had to learn. And then we'll get into some of the skills, uh, much more recently.
Ricky Zhang: Sure, well it, to me it kind of mirrors the, the path that I've been on since the start, right? Like at the start the, the types of skills I was really looking to, to build were in the, very much the, the creator mold.
So how to write, how to edit, how to use WordPress. How to edit CSS to make a website look nice. Um, and I consider myself like pretty accomplished at that. Right, because I just have to like Google stuff and figure it out and test it and try it. Until it works. Um, filming videos, you know, Filming videos on airplanes, if you guys fly and film, that's a, that's a real deal.
Um, editing, right, I used to spend ten hours a day editing a video. Just to get those first few videos out on the channel. So that whole range of creative skills and then, you know, toss in, you know, customer customer success and hosting a meetup and event logistics. So whole wide range of skills that kind of go into the overall [00:13:00] mix of having a creator business.
And then after that. The next switch that was flipped was instead, instead of me doing all of those actions myself, starting to think about people, right? Communication and, um, identifying talent and attracting the right type of person into the company. For me, communication is the key skill that I really have to really pick up on that maybe I didn't expect at the start, which is once you get to the phase of looking for the right people to bring in, it's really important.
Having them work together, having them feel good about their work, right? Having them feel, um, like they've, like, when they've accomplished something that they're recognized for it, that they're valued for it. When I need to give them some, some feedback that it's done so in, in the right way. I've really had to hone that skill over time in order to build the foundations for 30.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, that's amazing. And team of 30 is entirely different than running a team of five or even 10, like exactly as you said in your talk, right? 10 to 12, you can [00:14:00] rely on some of these, Hey, we're all here for the same reason. Uh, we have similar goals. Let's just do good work. And 30, you get into a whole bunch of other things of, you know, uh, leadership and systems and all of that.
But I have this idea that has really been defining for my life that making money is a skill. And it's really the collection of a thousand small skills. But if we think about, there's a lot of things in life that we totally accept our skills. And there's other things that we're like, oh no, that's just natural talent or that was luck.
Right? Like, oh, Ricky, you're just lucky that you built the business to this size. You know, or that, you know, someone else built a level of wealth. Which I don't believe at all, by the way. But, uh, who in here plays a musical instrument? That's it. We've got a decent, decent group. I don't. If I were to sit down at the piano and assume that by default I could just play something amazing that would wow all of you, like that would be a pipe dream.
That's not [00:15:00] going to happen without a huge amount of deliberate practice. And I think business is the same thing, right? It's a huge amount of deliberate practice and a lot of skills that you're going to have to learn over time. And so if we think in, um, you know, to play the piano, right, I need to learn timing and music theory and so many other things.
Well, in business, you've got sales and all of this, right? Uh, sales, copywriting, you, you list out video editing. You know, there's so many things in a creator business that you have to do. And so I want to put up this graphic that I have around the ladders of wealth creation, which it's an essay. If you just search my name and the ladders of wealth creation, you can read it.
And it has the graphic and everything on there. But the way that I've broken it down is really these four different ladders and the skills that you learn along the way. And so those are a time for money, your own services, business, productized services, and then selling products. [00:16:00] And if you've ever had that friend who was like, Hey, I'm going to build the next Uber for this, or the next Facebook for that.
And you've been like. I don't think that's going to work, but I can't really tell you why. The reason is, they probably have skills from the very bottom ladder, right? Time for money. They're good at showing up consistently, and you know, maybe they have skills in an industry. And they're trying to tackle a problem that is all the way at the very top of the most difficult ladder, right, of taking on a marketplace or a social network.
What's really important to understand as a creator is that there's a series of skills that you have to learn as you go. And if you want to skip way ahead, let's say that you want to go from having a full time job at a company to taking on, you know, launching, um, a software company, there's a huge amount of skills that you have to learn along the way.
And you can choose to learn them all in one giant [00:17:00] jump across ladders, or you can work your way up. And so in this, right, if you were to work on your own, you learn how to show up consistently, you, you know, do a good job, but as you go into your own services business, you're going to have to do things like know how to build clients, how to close clients face to face, right?
How to maybe as we move up the ladder, you need to hire your first employees. How do you do that? These are all things that in hindsight are easy. Um, But when you're doing it for the first time, they're very daunting. I remember the first time that I filed paperwork with the secretary of state in order to form a limited liability company to even be, you're like, how do you even do this?
And there, I don't know what it is in Canada, but in the U S like you have to have a registered agent. And that sounded so official. I see a few head nods. Like how do you even do that? It just means an address that they can send notices. But as you work up these ladders and you build these skills, then you can earn more and more along the way.
And [00:18:00] so, like Ricky, I want to, what are the skills that you think you most need to learn from where you are right now to 5X the business?
Ricky Zhang: So as, as CEO now, my, you know, I'm no longer grinding. I'm no longer doing the granular day to day things in the business or, you know, trying my best not to, right? Trying my best to allow the team to step up and take ownership of their responsibilities.
My core duties these days are ideation, so big picture ideas, coming up with ideas that will serve the business, and Clearing and creating the space to have those ideas. Um, in addition to, you know, a few other duties like maintaining our key relationships and Steering the strategy of the company. So for me, I really do want to grow into this big picture thinking ideation skill, like the ability to avoid being sucked into the day to day as much as possible and just remain at the very basic Very highest levels thinking about what, [00:19:00] what are the biggest levers we can pull to move the, move the business forward?
What are the biggest opportunities out there? What are the biggest unsolved problems where we're well positioned to move in and solve and, you know, increase our revenue from there. That's kind of been my focus for the past past year or so, as we've really brought in a higher caliber of people to take ownership of the day to day things in the business and where I look forward to having room to grow and flourish into further.
Was there a leap that
Nathan Barry: you had to make? You know, as a creator, maybe a little earlier on, that was a difficult skill to build or a skill that you wish you had gotten, uh, you know, maybe you learned it two years ago and it would have been better four years ago. You know, one of those things you have to focus on early.
Ricky Zhang: I think the hardest one is probably like team management and being comfortable with that transition. And I kind of, I'd say looking back, Stumbled and, you know, Eventually found, found some level of success there, but I can't say that it was done with the [00:20:00] greatest intentionality along the process. So going back to the phases, right, the transition from a solopreneur to a small lean team, even that was, it was just a little bit flying by the seat of our pants, right?
It was a little bit. Hey, who do we know in the community or within our circle of friends would be like, would have raw ability and would be willing to help us do this one cool idea that we had and isn't doing something else and just would be cool to work with. And then Josh and I would have a list of like three or four people and then we'd reach out to them and then they're like, yeah, I'm in.
So that to me is like an example of, um, like, I also don't think it could have transpired any other way because I had to go through that in my first, first instance, uh, instance of building a team. But looking back now, I certainly wish I had gotten better at that faster.
Nathan Barry: You know, the team leadership is such an interesting thing.
I am, like, very naturally an introvert. I'm the person that would go to a conference, talk to no one. Um, by the way, one helpful thing about building an audience [00:21:00] is that then you, people want to talk to you, and it makes it way easier.
Ricky Zhang: Yes,
Nathan Barry: fellow
Ricky Zhang: introvert.
Nathan Barry: It's totally underrated, right? It's great. Other people will do the work to start the conversation.
I'm thrilled. But I remember our first team retreat for ConvertKit. We had 21 people on the team. This was in, uh, 2016, maybe? And I remember us all sitting around in this giant living room in a cabin and thinking, like, Wow, it's so great that we're here all together. Someone should probably kick off something.
It looks like we're all waiting. Oh, me! Oh, they're waiting for me to lead this thing! Oh, shoot, okay, alright. And it was a total skit, like, First a mindset shift and then a skill to realize like, Oh wait, I actually am not just like a coder or a designer behind the scenes anymore. Like I need to actually lead a team and that was a skill that I had to really build.
Ricky Zhang: Yeah. Yeah. I'd totally echo that. Um, maybe not, maybe not so like [00:22:00] that stark moment at the team retreat, but you know, there was, there was a moment when I, or a process, right. A phase when I really had to come to, come to, you know, Come to grips with the reality that, you know, okay, I'm now responsible for the livelihoods of, you know, eight, 30 people.
And that's a big responsibility. That's a, that's a big weight. And I really had to do the mental work, do the personal work, do the inner work to rise to the occasion.
Nathan Barry: Yup. That's important. Okay. So I promised that we'd get into some big thinking and start to build that muscle and skill. Um, one thing that helps me is to think about, um, other people, other businesses that have done something in a similar space and think, could I copy that?
And sometimes that will get me into a different area. So if we think about the services that you're bringing to the market and scaling up, who are the absolute biggest players in the space doing something [00:23:00] similar?
Ricky Zhang: So the points guys probably like the big, the big name, right. In a points and miles. Um, well they're, they're pretty much just on an affiliate model so that they monetize on, do you know what their revenue is?
I don't know about revenue, but it's, it's up there, you know, it's up there probably in the nine figures, a
Nathan Barry: hundred million plus, I believe they exited to private equity at some point and have scale. They did a,
Ricky Zhang: they did a double exit. Oh, yeah. So they've been, I think they exited pretty early on and then, yeah, just scaled under that.
Nathan Barry: So when you look at that, we're talking about 5 million, 10 million, and here you have an example right in front of you in travel of 100 million plus, like we don't actually know. The other thing that we, we know from our business models and the experience that you've had so far is that they're primarily on affiliates and that's a relatively low, um, revenue per impression.
Ricky Zhang: So that's been the big thesis that I've really come into this space with, right? That's, that was [00:24:00] one of the big, um, big ideas I had in that decision point of, do I want to build something bigger? It's this idea that coming into the late 2010s, um, with the whole creator economy becoming more of a thing. Um, I thought that there was room to do different, do stuff differently where we do, um, Have our affiliate model.
And we do kind of, you know, continue to compete in the affiliate space, but obviously there's been bigger players ahead of us, um, who, who've walked that path, who've really, you know, done a good job of, of, um, of dominating the market. And so the room to do something differently was to build our brand, build our products, build our product ecosystem, right.
Our series of products for travelers along different stages of their journey, uh, to come into, uh, all powered by world class content production.
Nathan Barry: And the thing about the world class content production is it gives you a CAC advantage. Now that's a weird term. CAC is Customer Acquisition Cost. And so all of these businesses are spending, you know, many dollars [00:25:00] per lead.
Tens of dollars or more for every lead. And these are leads that you can get, I was going to say for free. It's not for free because you're spending a lot of money to produce the content. And so you have to amortize that across the leads that you get. But that gives you this customer acquisition cost advantage over, you know, your other competitors, other travel businesses in the space that maybe, uh, aren't content businesses, maybe their software or services businesses or something else.
So as we think about the points guy or some of these other businesses, one of my favorite questions is what would have to be true if we said, okay, we're going to build the next, the points guy. It's like, oh, we couldn't do that because this, that, or the other thing. Or we're going to launch this new, uh, program, uh, community membership for our creators, uh, in the next 60 days.
It's like, well, we can't do that because of all of these reasons. And it's easy to fall into that negative thinking. That's why I love the question, what would have to be true? Because it flips it around. Okay, [00:26:00] what would have to be true to build a business the size of the points guy in the next three years?
The next five years? Like, pick a time frame. That's awesome. Does anything come to mind of like, okay, you're starting to list out what would have to be true for that?
Ricky Zhang: Yeah, well that's some of the work we've done internally is to ask questions of that ilk, right? Um, we need to serve more Americans, is what we need to do.
Nathan Barry: So you need to significantly, you need to go from almost entirely a Canadian market to 50 50 Canada US? I mean
Ricky Zhang: Y'all, y'all live here in numbers. So, you know, like there's, there's more Americans. So whilst we take a lot of pride in serving Canadians to a world class degree and like we will continue to do that, right?
For us, it's about also scaling that to bringing that same experience to Americans who are looking to travel aspirationally and maximize their points and bringing that, not, you know, bringing the, the, the credit card affiliate opportunity, but also the, um, the products that we build, because ultimately travel [00:27:00] is.
Something global, right? And we're, we're able to deliver those solutions and travel success for people, no matter where they live, because we understand, uh, fundamentally how the points and credit cards work and how to maximize. So that's one of the biggest levers actually for us. It's one of the biggest, like things that will need to be true in order to get to where we need to be.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. So then if we take it one step further, let's say that the next iteration of this business is actually going to be 70 percent us, 30 percent in Canada. And of course, we're growing the absolute numbers in Canada substantially while maintaining that ratio. What would have to be true to achieve, you know, 70 percent of the business being in the U.
S.?
Ricky Zhang: Well, we'd need to hire a bunch of US writers. We'd need a website with a, with a different browsing experience to, you know, create the right type of, um, visitor experience no matter where you live. We would probably need to, I mean, we, we need to sharpen up, you know, [00:28:00] I think I'd say we're, we're pretty strong, but we need to sharpen up and dial in a hundred percent our.
Knowledge base when it comes to us. So a lot of that type of internal work and getting the right resources in place, assembling the team to make it happen. Um, and then it's just a matter of kind of scaling both the organic, yeah. Scaling our content machine.
Nathan Barry: A lot of blocking and tackling. So that makes sense.
The thing that I would really encourage, and we talked about early on is metrics. I would clearly define the right metric for that. And then I would put people directly in charge of making that metric happen. And
Ricky Zhang: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. Do you have that already? Big
Ricky Zhang: realization as of late? That's a big, um, big pillar of professionalization.
That's right. On our agenda for the quarter.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. And then in your weekly meetings, you're reporting on each of those metrics. Alright. This has been a lot of fun. As we wrap up, you've got an audience full both here in the room and then watching virtually of, uh, professional creators soon to be professional creators.
Is there anything that you'd leave them [00:29:00] with of. You know, advice as you go back a few years in your journey for someone who wants to follow in your footsteps.
Ricky Zhang: For me, it just comes back down to clarity of what it is you're looking to do, right? Um, I, I didn't have that for a long time, and therefore I just kind of meandered and flew by the seat of my pants for a while.
And as soon as I have more clarity, I'm able to know exactly what actions need to, need to be taken to get to my desired end goal. And that even continues to this day, because, yes, I wanted to build something big and something that, you know, You know, uh, makes a big impact, but what exactly does that mean?
I'm still continuing to find more and more clarity over time there. So the sooner that you can, um, yes, it's important to grind, but it's also going to be important to carve out some time for clarity bricks, right? Time to think, time to really think about yourself and what the thing you're doing, your relationship with it and what it is that you want it to kind of bring into your life.
What's the level that you'll want to get to? Because that's just going to determine your goal setting and thereby all of the actions you take.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, I love that. [00:30:00] I think the thing that I'd leave you all with is to really think about the skills that you're learning in the process, right? The creator business can absolutely be a grind.
It has been for me, has been for Ricky and in those times where you're like, should I keep going? Is this worth doing? I would just think about a problem that you faced a year ago. Just rewind the clock a year and think about some of the stressful things you encountered and then think about your abilities today.
to deal with that versus a year ago. I was thinking through, and I was going back a year and like the things that were stressing me out so much. And I was like, I wish that my problems today are that simple. Like to me today can absolutely crush those problems that, you know, were devastating to me a year ago.
And so I think about that of the skills and the resilience that you're building as you tackle these problems. And as you grind it out, And give yourself that perspective that you realize like, Oh, you're, you're a different person. [00:31:00] You're so much more capable now because of this grind that you've gone through.
We just tackle harder and harder problems as we go. And that's why it feels like it never gets easier. So really pay attention to those skills that you're deliberate about learning and then just notice and be grateful for the resilience that you've built along the way, because you're in an industry that is just.
Absolutely phenomenal. We have a better opportunity than ever to provide great value to the people who pay attention to us and earn a great living. And so keep at it. It's one of those things that show up consistently, create every day, and you're going to build an incredible business. If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search billion dollar creator and go ahead and subscribe.
Make sure to like the video. And, uh, drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.