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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.
Learn how to get more results with less effort and:
Grow faster over time.
Work less hard over time.
Make more money over time.
Ali Abdaal: [00:00:00] I've been trying to figure out what metrics that matter in our business. If we could measure number of lives changed, that would be sick.
Nathan Barry: As you reach certain levels, you just switch and you make your audience the hero. You are not the hero, you are the guide.
Narrator: Meet the biggest productivity expert on the internet..
Nathan Barry: Today you want to talk about Scaling your business.
Ali Abdaal: Yes.
Narrator: He has changed millions of lives.
Ali Abdaal: We did 5. 5 million revenue last year. I would love for us to go towards 10 million. This is today. It's sort of like we've got the Ali Abdaal company and this is future. You can almost think of it as like a solar system.
You have these planets that are around you. I'd love to get these businesses to a point where the business is the entity that's providing the value. Golden eggs. Goose. Our YouTube videos are the golden eggs, but I'm the goose. So me having a nice time and enjoying the process is really important for the long term sustainability of our business.
Nathan Barry: And this is something that I'm trying to learn all the time. Move fast and break things versus go slow to go fast. Yeah. Because you [00:01:00] have the solar system approach, you can king make on a new business. Yeah. Much faster than anyone else. Oh, that's a really good point. I can shine the Sun on this thing and look at that.
Ali Abdaal: I feel like I've got my money. Bring up podcasts, . Great, great.
Nathan Barry: Ali, welcome to the very first episode in the studio. Thanks for
Ali Abdaal: having me. This is one of my favorite podcasts these days 'cause it's like so applicable to the struggles that I'm going through. That's the goal. Yeah.
Nathan Barry: When I'm recording episodes, my target audience, it's very specifically you.
Mark Manson, uh, Bonnie Christine, there's like just a very short list. And that's where I think about like, would this be useful for Ali? Yeah. Probably one of the most popular episodes I've ever done as a guest on someone's show is the episode that we did together in your studio in London. And that's one that like continually I get all kinds of things on.
So that was a cool episode. Yeah. That was a good one. I think the, uh, writing a thousand words a day. is what everyone's hung up on. Yeah. How, how's your writing? I still
Ali Abdaal: haven't managed it. I did, [00:02:00] I
Nathan Barry: did it for about, I haven't since then , so I did it for
Ali Abdaal: about a month after that episode and I have 30,000 words.
I have all my UC screenshots and stuff, and I had to like make, you know, there'd be days where I was like, okay, I've only got 500 words. So let me put in, you know, captions for my Instagram. Yeah, that counts. And then I just do a load of captions and then I wouldn't do any more captions for, for a few weeks.
Um, but I managed to hit like 1200 words again on the same word count tracker on the flight over here. So
Nathan Barry: nice. I love it. So today you want to talk about scaling your business.
Ali Abdaal: Yes.
Nathan Barry: And, uh, we're going to try out this, this studio. We can, we can get up and diagram some stuff there if we want. What's the problem that you want to tackle first?
Good question.
Ali Abdaal: Where do we want to start? So we did like 5. 5 million revenue last year and I would love for us to go towards 10 million. Probably not by the end of this year, but maybe by the end of next year. Yep. Um, I still feel kind of weird about having like revenue goals because I've spoken to different people about this.
Some people are like, oh, revenue goals are good because then you can work back from it. Other people are like, revenue goals are bad because it's not a good North Star to have because there's [00:03:00] like a zillion ways to make money and actually you should really think about like the service and the impact and stuff.
So like on a broad level, what are your thoughts on revenue goals?
Nathan Barry: I like them. I think it just provides clarity because you were saying, Hey, I'm trying to build a valuable business. And then your team is like, cool. How are you measuring that? You know, or we're just trying to have a big impact and you're like, all right, on one person on 10, 000 people at what, at what scale?
And so I like specificity in numbers all across the board because it leads to a shared context. It's like when I was very first, like negotiating my first salary for a job, I had no idea what a good salary was. I'd freelanced, and so I could think in terms of hourly rates and what was good. I just had no idea.
And so it was actually someone saying like, here's a book on salary negotiation, like, here's what you should expect, here's market rates. And so I think that that shared context is really, really important. And so I set revenue goals. Uh, because I think that it just gives that clarity and shared context.
Now, there's something [00:04:00] in, if you only optimize for that, like the order of the metrics really matters. It's like for ConvertKit, we have two, two main metrics that we care about. The first is helping creators earn a billion dollars through ConvertKit Commerce. And then the second is getting to a hundred million in annual revenue.
And I think it's really important the order that those are in. Because if I said our most important goal is a hundred million in annual revenue, the creators winning may or may not happen within that. But if we get really good at helping creators make money, and we get to the point where it's like, okay, we paid creators a billion dollars, Then I'm pretty confident that a byproduct of that will be our own goals.
Ali Abdaal: That's interesting. Um, so I've been going back and forth about this for years to try and figure out like, what are the metrics that matter in our business? And some people would say, well, is it monthly views? Is it like, you know, like a Lewis Howes thing in School of Greatness is serving a hundred million people a month.
That's like, you know, that's nice. That works. Yeah, it's a good catchphrase. But then like, [00:05:00] views, all of the downsides associated with views. Is it subscribers? Well, no, because subscribers go up, but views don't necessarily go up. Is it email subscribers? Well, no. Eventually I landed on like, it would be sick if we could measure number of lives changed.
Yeah. That would be sick. And so at one point we were thinking about like, okay, what would it take to do that? Like, to have some sort of form where every now and then we're like, Hey. Has Ali Abdel changed your life? If so, fill out this survey and let us know. And then, things like that.
Nathan Barry: Have you actually tried to implement that?
Ali Abdaal: We haven't tried. It's been an idea in the back of my mind for about a year. And it just, the, all of the, Oh, but like, it's hard to measure and stuff. Has just gotten in the way of me actually making it happen.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, cause you would never, you would never measure the full impact that you had. At best you'd measure, 5 percent maybe?
I don't know. It's a made up number, right? But like people who implemented a change that they attribute back to you who actually fill out the form is going to be relatively, relatively low. I think what's interesting with metrics is whether you're tracking an absolute number or a [00:06:00] trend. So for example, a common question people will ask is like, Oh, what's your NPS score?
So net promoter score for this product. And they want to compare like, Oh, your business has a 74 and my business has an 83, you know, and we're assuming that one business is better than the other, but that's a metric that you should not compare across businesses. It's not apples to apples, but it's very good for comparing your own trend because then you're, you're pulling from a similar sample size.
Um, you know, customer based product style and all of that. So I would think of like lives impacted as a metric that's not really useful in the absolute number in the abstract, you know, you impact 59 lives a month and, and, uh, You know, Lewis impacts a hundred, right? It doesn't make sense to compare within that, but it could really make sense to compare a trend against your own data over time.
That could be fun. Who knows if it's the right metric or not, but if we pick that metric and optimize for it, what happens? So I'm curious for you, what would be the downstream effects if [00:07:00] that was the metric you're optimizing for is really people filling out this form.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. Telling you whether or not we would be spamming that form in a little places.
That would be the natural consequence of trying to optimize for that specific metric.
Nathan Barry: Okay. And then what would happen down from there? Do you think?
Ali Abdaal: Well, we'd get people to fill out the form, which would be nice. Um, we would increment a counter on a, I don't know,
Nathan Barry: website somewhere.
Ali Abdaal: Parametrics version of like, yeah,
Nathan Barry: exactly.
You'd make a neat YouTube video about it.
Ali Abdaal: Yep. And we would then have to keep on mentioning the form and it would have to become part of the ritual of the company. Okay. We're like every quarter, we're like, Hey, by the way, we've got this form. Eventually people might get sick of it or feel weird about it.
Um, you'd have to find a way to bring it up.
Nathan Barry: That's natural and a good fit.
Ali Abdaal: Uh, so if people fill out the form and give us some details of what specific, what specific change they made in their lives, we could be like, Oh, okay. That's interesting. We can maybe talk more about that sort of stuff. So it would help inform idea generation for some of our content, bit of a flywheel type thing potentially, [00:08:00] but realistically we, we can get that data way easier through.
asking the audience, what would you like to see a video
Nathan Barry: on? Maybe those are two very different questions, right? Cause I would like Alie to provide this content for me because I think that will impact my life. That's basically what you're asking when you're like, Hey, what, what should we make content about?
It's a very different thing when you're asking, Hey, what changed your life? It was like, Oh, it was actually this. And I'd love that if you talked about that more, right? You're getting, you're getting feedback from me as the viewer, but in two totally different ways. In one is going to be like the very conscious, active brain.
Oh, I was trying to learn this new tool and I'd love it if you, you did something like that. Like it's, it's very recent. It's urgent. Yeah. Um, it's timely and it's probably shallow. And the, what changed your life? What impact did it have? I bet it's on a much longer time horizon and I bet it comes like much more subconscious and much deeper than, uh, Hey, could you do a video on this software product that I just wanted to learn last week?
Yeah, that's a good [00:09:00] point. I think if you pursue the metric, it would be really interesting. Sometimes when you optimize for a metric, the downstream implications or side effects are kind of boring. You're like, all right, that fizzles out at this point. And it's like, it'd be neat to know, but. That's like a one time pulse test that we'd want to do.
But I think if you truly pursued this metric and the stories and the content that came from it, you'd get to some really, really interesting things. Because it's just a thread that you could keep on pulling.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: And then you could understand much more about how did it impact someone's life. You might have had one video that touched on a portion of it.
And then you realize that that sparked something that then got them to implement these other life changes. And you're like, oh, I can make more videos about those other life changes.
Ali Abdaal: Like I've, I've stopped becoming relatable to most people. So me talking about this sort of stuff, I'm, let's help scale from seven to eight figures.
It's like, it's not relevant to most, like 99. 99 percent of people in my audience. But being able to hear, Whoa, that's Johnny who's 22 years old. And here's how he applied this advice. [00:10:00] And here's how he was able to quit his job and started his business. For normal people, that is way more relatable and interesting and potentially even impactful than hearing me just say, here's how you should do XYZ.
Nathan Barry: You have to switch at different levels. If you decide to keep serving the same audience, then at some point you have to switch from using your story to connect and relate to your, you know, your readers or viewers. And you switch to using their stories. And it's a transition that everyone at scale has to make.
Yeah. Right. I did it. I still use my story in certain ways. Like the keynote I gave earlier today, I used my story, but I used a very early part of it. Right. And so it's just a natural thing. And I think what, like one of our rules that Converca is we want to make creators, the heroes of our brand, right? So if you walk down this hallway in our studio out here, you know, it's a bunch of giant photos of.
Creators on the platform. And so I think you do the same thing where as you reach certain levels, you just switch and you make your audience the hero rather than yourself.
Ali Abdaal: I recently [00:11:00] listened to the audio book for building a story brand by Donald Miller. Yep. And one of the things that really struck with me was like, you are not the hero.
You are the guide. Yep. And I was like, that's it. Yep.
Nathan Barry: Classic back in the day of Campbell hero's journey.
Ali Abdaal: Back in the day I was the hero. And now when we're drafting up a sales page. It sort of feels weird for me to say, Oh, by the way, I'm Ali. Like seven years ago, I decided to start a YouTube channel and then blah, blah, blah.
Back when YouTube was a different platform in like 2017. Here is what I, and way more interesting to say, Hey, yeah, by the way, I'm Ali. I've been making YouTube videos for ages and I teach people how to do this. For example, this person who in 2023 started a YouTube channel and within a year was able to change the life or that person who decided ultimately after making six months of videos that she didn't want to be a YouTuber, but ended up getting a job in the creative industries, which is what she always wanted.
And we, and that changed her life. So. A YouTube channel can change your life. And that's way more interesting for me than to just be like, by the way, I used to be a doctor in case you didn't know that kind of thing.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. And I think that if you get clear on the fact that you're in the business of transformations, [00:12:00] then you can really optimize for that.
And so what you create transformations and you tell the stories of the transformations that you created. Or that you played a role in, right? You're just the guide. Yeah, of course. Um, it's their, their journey, their work to actually do. But like, that's a level of clarity that you can bring to your organization.
Yeah. That's really cool.
Ali Abdaal: And it's, it's, it's interesting hearing stuff like, cause, cause that really connects where I'm like, Holy shit. That's a good insight. Yeah. But for someone that's like, if, if I'd heard this three years ago, I'd have been like, what the hell are these guys talking? Like, it's just so abstract.
Like, come on, you're in the business of transformations. What is like, why is that a useful insight? But right now I'm like, Oh, that connects on so many levels. I get it. Yes. We're in the business of transformation. It makes so much sense. It makes sense. Of course, that product and that product, that product is like, that can change the way of customer success with that.
And like, I knew we weren't collecting as many case studies as we should, because we're in the business of transformation. Yeah, that's good. Thank you. And so that's how you measure it. I feel like I've got my money's worth from being on the podcast. Great,
Nathan Barry: great. There's a few like key insights that have to change at different stages of your business.
Yep. Um, one that you and I have both gone through [00:13:00] is early on you get all of your success by saying yes. And then later on you have to say no. And should we draw this out? Okay. You can do
Ali Abdaal: before and after.
Nathan Barry: Ooh, I like it. Okay,
Ali Abdaal: so before you were like, you're saying yes to everything.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, you have to say yes.
I'm going to write it not as eloquently.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: After you have to say no. Yep. And the hard thing is you got so much success by saying yes continually. Yep. And then now you have to totally switch that habit. Yeah, that's good. Okay, so I think the next thing is, Before it's about your story
Right, that's how we sell that's how we use so many things after it's their story Have you done this before? Are we just
Ali Abdaal: spitballing this? We're just spitballing this. Cause this is cool. I feel like this is gonna be This is fake. This is good shit, yeah.
Nathan Barry: We're just faking it on the fly
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, whatever like your stuff in authority back in 2015 when [00:14:00] I first discovered your stuff was about like hey, I'm Nathan I did this stuff.
I'm gonna teach you how to do this stuff You But now it's like, I mean, I suspect a lot of customers of ConvertKit or Kit may not know who you are, which is cool. Yeah. And I mean, that's happened a lot. So one idea that I think, I think about a lot is how in the early days, often business is about serving the self.
But at some point it stops becoming like once you've made enough money, you're like, who cares anymore? It becomes really, it really does become about serving others. Yeah. And like people say that, Oh, but like, even when you're starting, you should think about value and stuff, but really people start a business because they want to be able to quit their job.
Nathan Barry: They're trying to create their own transformation
Ali Abdaal: and then their transformation
Nathan Barry: story and transformation are similar, but they go, they go hand in hand in different ways.
Ali Abdaal: I was thinking sort of hero to guide. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's the thing we talked about.
Nathan Barry: Man. This is so efficient with both of his writing. That's good. Yeah. We don't have to edit.
Ali Abdaal: Oh, Move [00:15:00] fast and break things, go slow to go fast. Yes. Yes. That's what it speaks for itself. Yeah.
Nathan Barry: These are all examples of basically what got you here. Won't get you there. Yes. In their habits that are so hard to let go of because you're like this worked mood, and this is something that I'm trying to learn all the time.
And so as I'm over here, I'm like, obviously we should move fast and break things and it's like. I don't know about that. What's an example of, of, uh, like this pivot that you're making your business?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. So, uh, when it comes to creating new products, so move fast to break things, we have an idea, let's create a YouTube course and just come over to my house.
Post it notes within three days, the landing page is up. We're collecting sales and we'll build the ship as we sell tickets for the ship. Oh, shit. We've got 350 people in this community. Let's just make it up as we go along and mash up everything with duct tape. Now it's more like, okay, we actually have a reputation.
We don't want to screw things up. [00:16:00] We can pretty much guarantee that we're like we know we're good at driving leads. This is not going to be a surprise. So let's design for what it would look like if 500 people were actually in this cohort. What I find as well as with a small team or with just me in the early stages.
It's very easy to change direction here. It's very hard to change direction. And also people feel bad about it. And then people feel unstable and uncertain. And like, I just spent six months working on thing X and I was scrapping thing X. And I'm like, Yeah, gonna break things, right? No, I feel so demotivated that we just scrapped my work for the last six months.
I'm just like, oh. If we'd just taken a little bit more time to figure out what the right thing to work on actually was. This was actually, ooh, this was maybe about efficiency and this was about effectiveness.
Nathan Barry: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: This is about doing things right, whereas this is really about what are the right things to do in the first place.
Nathan Barry: I like that. Let's put down, um, I guess it'd be just you and the team. Mm Cause there's a lot of things that go into that. So one thing you were talking about is I [00:17:00] guess you offering a different time horizon. It's kind of in right. Move fast and break things versus go slow to go fast.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. Maybe this is a sort of on the level of weeks versus years.
Yeah. I like that. That's nice. Yeah. One thing I do often think about now is what does the 20 year version of this look like? Whereas what I thought back in the day was like, how do I get the video out this week to get the sponsor deadline this week?
Nathan Barry: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. It's true. Right. So you would sit down and say, okay, I'm going to make a plan.
Yeah. For the whole arc of my YouTube channel over the next three months. Right. Yeah. All of this over the whole year. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Um, in a way this was do more and this is do less. It's
Nathan Barry: true. Yeah. Which ties into saying yes and no. Yeah. But yeah, I think we should write it down. Well, so in that, something that I talk about on the show is building strip malls versus skyscrapers.
And so early on, you're testing different things. Did this work? Did this work at all of that? And the tendency. That people have is they say, okay, so if I got to 3 million in revenue or say a million in revenue with three things, [00:18:00] then if I want to get to 2 million, I should add three more things. And the truth is you should find one of them with it works
Ali Abdaal: and build a sketch.
Yep. And
Nathan Barry: so that's the, the
Ali Abdaal: do less. That's, that's, that's so true. A lesson that I've really learned is, I guess, relates to this is, is the power of focus and when you focus on just one thing, whereas I think in the early days when you don't really know what's going to work, you try a bunch of different things, throw a spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
And this one is more like quadruple down on what's working. That sort of idea.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. It's interesting because if you take the advice, right, everyone says to focus. And so if you're over here and you're like, oh, I focus. The likelihood of focusing on the wrong thing is extreme. Right? Like I have this thread that I did on X where it goes through the, my first 10 products and it was like product eight that actually made a bit of money, product nine that made enough money that you could like pay rent off of it
Ali Abdaal: and
Nathan Barry: product 10 that [00:19:00] became ConvertKit.
I think it's the experiment versus double down.
Ali Abdaal: I feel like when I was here in this mode, I was thinking quite bottom up. Whereas here, I'm thinking quite top down.
Nathan Barry: Okay, explain bottom up.
Ali Abdaal: So bottom up as in, what did I do last month? And therefore, what can I do next month? This is, where do I want to be three years from now?
And therefore, what's my 2024 goal? How do I work backwards from there? How to work backwards from, like, the longer term future. Whereas this one is like, you're in experimentation mode, doing more. It's like, oh, that video from two weeks ago, that worked really well, so let's do another one. Let's do more of that.
Let's do more of that thing. It's like, really building from My existing base where it's so if someone had asked me, what's your mission vision values? Seven years ago. I'd have been like, what are you talking about? Right now people ask me what's mission vision values? I'm like, oh, what a good question. I haven't thought about that in three weeks.
Let me let's think about it again You know that kind of thing
Nathan Barry: wouldn't do it. It's even in your forecasting, right? Because you're saying Like if I did a hundred thousand in revenue, then here's my plan to get to a hundred and fifty thousand revenue Yeah, it's how do we go from here to here? Yeah, Ray versus that's casting [00:20:00] this vision You Along with bottom up top down.
It's how you think of it.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. Well, this is sort of work backwards and this is sort of move forwards or something to that effect. Yeah. Move forwards versus work backwards. Where
Nathan Barry: I was thinking is how you know how to move between these. It's easier in hindsight, right? As we've got teams and all of that, but if someone's listening and they're at that two or three people on their team or 500, 000 in annual revenue, You know, like are they fully over here?
What habits do you need to take from here? How do you bridge that gap?
Ali Abdaal: I had a good chat with Ryan Dice a couple weeks ago, and he had a fairly simple framework Um, his view was that like sort of for a new product, you're sort of in this mode I mean, I'm sort of retrofitting what he said onto this model But for a new product you're onto this mode Then when you get to about 30k a month with that product So about 300 K a year, you then give it a chance to be a quote, proper business, [00:21:00] and you give it a head of growth and a head of product.
And then once you get to a million a year with that particular product line, it then needs a general manager. And now you're squarely in like legit business territory where you now think about playbooks and SOPs and blah, blah, blah. And I thought that was interesting. It's like, you know what I mean? All models are flawed, but that as a model, I think works up to 300 K for a single product line is like very much this territory.
Beyond a million, it's probably more this territory and somewhere in the middle, messy middle is like the transition between the two. And crucially, it's like this is sort of startup energy, sort of big company energy. And so a lot of big companies will try and make smaller teams of like two or three people, little squad to go and operate in this startup mode.
And take something from zero to one so that the team can scale it from one to 100.
Nathan Barry: So I wonder, maybe let's write it down, like up to, is it 300k per
Ali Abdaal: product? Yeah, I think it's pretty much. So this would be maybe like 1 million.
Nathan Barry: But the business line is interesting because it does, it does change, right?
There are things that we've launched at ConvertKit that very [00:22:00] much fall into move fast and break things. This podcast studio and stuff like that. We got the keys to 30 days ago. We did a full, full remodel. That's cool. Paint new acoustic glass, everything else. And that was entirely move fast and break things.
Yeah. Like Hayley and our team had. Like UPS was showing up to your house like five times a day. And
Ali Abdaal: it's fine because it's a self contained project, but you wouldn't do that for something that's affecting like all the creators on your platform.
Nathan Barry: No, not at all.
Ali Abdaal: Like a rebrand, let's say. That's been a long
Nathan Barry: thought out process.
I still don't know how, like where you find that, that line. We've got some general guidelines and it's not like someone's going to come up at exactly 500 K. in annual revenue for that product suddenly, and then be like, oh, I'm gonna switch. But what are the things that you'd want to maybe change first? I think actually it's kind of an order, right?
Of saying yes versus no is probably one of the first [00:23:00] things. You're not gonna say no to everything. Yep. But you're gonna start to be a lot more selective.
Ali Abdaal: Yes. Your story to that story is like at this point, like, I mean, if you're doing. 300 K. You're definitely starting to get like case studies and testimonials and stories of transformation for any product.
So you can't get 300 K a year without
Nathan Barry: without that impact people
Ali Abdaal: in some way,
Nathan Barry: unless your story is really good. And you happen to have good distribution early on. But otherwise,
Ali Abdaal: otherwise, yeah, in the process of that, you go from being the hero to being the guide because you're the one who's facilitating those transformations.
Yeah, I think at some point you start realizing the value of goals. But it's like early on it's like who cares if you've got a goal of 10 million It's like it's it's so easy to make money on a spreadsheet, but it's hard to make money in real life Oh, yeah,
Nathan Barry: I mean part of it is that your spreadsheets start to become more accurate Yeah, because you know, we're like I'm gonna do this.
Yeah, and then over times you're like that
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, forecasting actually starts to be reasonable. Yeah, it's based
Nathan Barry: on something.
Ali Abdaal: At the point where you start hiring people. It's like You move towards this approach, well [00:24:00] by virtue of the fact that you now have a team You then, in a way, you need, you need more clarity.
You kind of need to go slow to go fast. A team, a team slows you down. In the end, you get more, uh, more leverage from having a team. Having a team means that you're probably thinking on the timescale of years. Because they probably want some job security. I don't know
Nathan Barry: why they want
Ali Abdaal: that. No, exactly. It's like everyone should be
Nathan Barry: an
Ali Abdaal: entrepreneur.
Because you have a team and now you're like, you know, let's focus on things that are working because we need revenue. It's like you actually end up doubling down on what's working. Right. Yeah. And you end up then realizing that, Oh, actually it's way, it's really hard to do a lot of things because of the overhead tax and the communication tax associated with each new thing you take on.
So you end up realizing you have to do less.
Nathan Barry: Is there something, yeah, like communicating really well is so important over here. I don't know. It's less important over there. Yeah. It's not poor communication over here, but it, I'm trying to think of the, it's in your time spent. [00:25:00] Uh,
Ali Abdaal: there's some dynamic there.
Yeah. This is a lot about courage and this is a lot about clarity.
Nathan Barry: Ooh. You even got the, like, yeah, I was like, Oh, there's something there.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: I like it.
Ali Abdaal: This is, you know what? I'm going to put myself out there. I'm going to stick my neck out. I'm going to do the thing. Yeah. This is okay. Well, the thing's working. So now everyone on the team just really needs clarity and where I want to go and where the business is going.
Nathan Barry: And that's where. That doubling down and doing less is so important.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: Because again, we've ingrained habits over here that served us so well and will cause so much paid if you keep using them. Yes,
Ali Abdaal: exactly. This is almost like grind mode. And then this is sort of like sustain mode over here is when most people get interviewed on podcasts where they start opining about work life balance.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, exactly. Whereas
Ali Abdaal: if you interviewed people at this day, if you ask them what they did in the early stages, like, no, yeah, like work life balance is not a priority.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, I would say probably nine out of 10 success stories that I hear of someone talking [00:26:00] about work life balance or, you know, I just like to, to take it easy and just focus on only the right things.
Those all came from people who were in grind mode and then now, yeah. And that's why, like knowing what phase someone's in relative to you is so important for what, which advice to take.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's the law of equal and opposite advice. The law of equal and opposite advice is that for a certain person, the exact opposite advice will be relevant to another person.
So if someone is just starting off a business, you should say yes to everything. If someone's you, you should say no to everything. Yeah. Burn the midnight oil. Make sure you take a vacation every month.
Bias to action. Bias towards thinking. Focus on how to get revenue right now. Focus on how to sort of sustain revenue forever
Nathan Barry: because then it becomes about you're huge trying to make something work in here You're trying to say how do I? [00:27:00] Show up consistently for a long time. Yeah. Oh, this is about compounding.
I don't know what this is.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah increment increment versus compound This is like a minute. Yes. I got another subscriber. Oh,
Nathan Barry: yes another
Ali Abdaal: video. Oh I've got golden eggs goose Okay, Stephen Covey talks about this in seven habits of highly effective people Your goose is your production capacity and your golden eggs of the production The way we think about in our business is our youtube videos are the golden eggs But yeah me and I like i'm the goose
Nathan Barry: right
Ali Abdaal: and so me Having a nice time and enjoying the process and being fed and being happy It's really important for the long term sustainability of our business Because the youtube videos that I produce are the golden eggs And so the team kind of knows that like, we need to take care of the goose.
If Ali doesn't feel like filming a video, we don't, we shouldn't force him to film the video for the sake of a sponsor deadline. Even if it is ConvertKit who's sponsoring the video. It's like, we can always push the deadline back because Ali being happy with the business is actually really important for it to be sustainable.
Whereas here it's more like, [00:28:00] Oh, I should, I've got, I've got half an hour before my night shift starts. Let me just crank out a video. Right. Because I need to get the golden eggs out.
Nathan Barry: Yep, that makes sense. Um, there's an economist who writes the blog Marginal Revolution. Tyler Cowen? Tyler Cowen, there you go.
Yeah, the question he asks is what's the production function of, like you as an individual. Yep. And it basically points to that, um, what's the golden goose? What's the factory? What is the machine that creates these things? And so yeah, we're really going from The one off thing to the flywheel, the system, the factory, any of those things.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. There's something like systems are important here. Systems are not that important there. No, they're not. It's almost like execute and systemize. I think it's probably scattered versus flywheel.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. Let's just throw in there scattered versus flywheel. Nice. Um, and we'll end on that. Nice. We made a good list.
This is solid.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. This was completely unintentional, but that's how it goes. Um, should we say bye now? Yeah, let's do it.
Nathan Barry: But I'm pretty proud of it.
Ali Abdaal: I like it.
Nathan Barry: I think it's good. [00:29:00] Look how it looks in the shot too. Oh, that looks nice. That looks very classy. We even have our slightly different, you know, our gold versus silver markers.
I like it.
Ali Abdaal: And the gold goes nicely with this as well. Yeah,
Nathan Barry: exactly. Spawn. Not, not, all we need is a copy of Feel Good Productivity in the background. Did you not bring a copy with you? No, I did not. I'm sorry. I apologize. I didn't pre stock the studio. Yeah, we just went down a really fun rabbit hole. Which people are going to love.
Ali Abdaal: Let's talk about, um, this whole, this whole, like, mini holdco thing I've been thinking about. So if I draw another Yeah, so I had a good chat with Ryan Dice and also Andrew Wilkinson who runs Tiny Sort of this idea of having a holding company with multiple Profitable businesses seems kind of cool. Yeah.
Okay. So let's do before and after. So this is, uh, today And this is future question mark. So, so today it's sort of like, we've got the Ali Abdaal company, and then within [00:30:00] that we have a content team and we have a kind of commercial team. And within our commercial team, we have sales and marketing, S& M, lol, uh, SIA, customer success, ops.
We have our two products. There's our YouTube course, which has three products in it, Foundations, Academy, and Accelerator. And this is our productivity lab. Um, a mistake that we made is that we, we hosted, like all of this stuff is hosted in the same circle workspace, which has now become highly confusing for our customers.
Um, because they're like, wait, I signed up for YouTuber Academy, but it says Productivity Lab. I signed up for Productivity Lab, but like, there's a YouTuber thing, what the fuck's going on? I unsubscribed from certain emails, and I'm not getting the customer emails. And it's just, oh, we didn't, oh, oh, okay.
Yeah, so we can't actually email you about the thing, because you actually hit the unsubscribe, and not the Manage Preferences button, which you should have pressed, you know. And we had like dozens of people do it. And you're the one trying to hide the unsubscribe link. Like,
Nathan Barry: I'm doing it to serve you. Yeah,
Ali Abdaal: exactly.
It's in white text, [00:31:00] but like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what, uh, Ryan said it was interesting. He was like, you can almost think of it as like a solar system where you, Ali, the individual are like the sun in the middle of the solar system. And you have these sort of planets that are around you. One planet is let's say Ali media, which is your content arm that you're never going to be able to sell because it's a content arm.
Then you have your YouTuber Academy limited. As its own mini business. And then you have your productivity lab limited as its own mini business. And then over time you can do kind of the different companies and eventually you get a sort of hold co where the Ali Abdaal international hold co, all of these report profits up, right?
And then for some of these, you know, for like a software play, maybe I'll only have 20 percent equity, but for this, maybe it'll be like 100%. And maybe for this, we bring on an external CEO and maybe it's there for 80%. Ali media will obviously stay at a hundred percent. [00:32:00] This thing could be 30 percent and you build these sort of mini businesses or businesses around the Son of Ali Abdaal who is able to sort of shine light onto all of these different businesses But then ideally if you think about your youtuber Academy your to your youtuber Academy once it gets beyond a certain point Like let's say 1 million plus It should have its own head of growth right and it's own head of product And the job of the head of growth then is to find lead generation sources outside of Alibaba Media.
Right. And the job of the head of growth for Productivity Lab is to find ways to get leads, again, outside of Ali making a YouTube video about it. Here you're kind of instead of, you know, this might be operating at a 60 percent margins because whatever these companies, if they're using paid acquisitions might be 30 percent and that's actually totally fine.
And you can then incentivize people with like equity or phantom equity. And eventually what you're doing is you're building this thing where then X number of years from now, if vid IQ decides to, or if Kit decides to buy the [00:33:00] YouTuber Academy, because it's trying to get into YouTube, you can now sell this.
Whereas you wouldn't really be able to sell it if it's sort of within this and it's all within the same CRM it's all within the same website and like this sort of Separation of businesses into a hold code, you know It's gonna be more expensive initially because you'll need a separate growth that we have growth You're gonna have to file quadruple the number of accounts.
So your accounting bill is gonna go up but in the long term This leads to more wealth and sustainable asset creation that can then be sold And yeah, maybe you have like a sort of the HR company that's like you, you centralize certain services like legal finance, HR, admin, maybe media buying, maybe video editing, but everything else is decentralized.
What's your take on the solar system model versus the hierarchical org chart, no single company?
Nathan Barry: Yeah, I like it. The, what I'm thinking about though, is the types of companies that live with
Ali Abdaal: them.
Nathan Barry: Like these are very similar. Companies in very similar ventures right now. [00:34:00] And so what I want to know is where do they go from here?
Right? Like, I mean, they're, they're similar enough that they're smashed into one at the moment. And so knowing where you're trying to go from there longterm really dictates it, right? Is there, where does this cap out? Does it cap out at 3 million a year in revenue? 20 million a year? Yeah. What would have to be true for this business to make 25 million a year revenue.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, I think sort of instinctively, I think this caps out at about 10 million Revenue, I think this probably caps out and maybe like 20 Based on what I know of other companies in the space This let's say is a software arm. And so this Could be a hundred mil valuation or something this sort of idea And so then if this sells maybe it sells for like, I don't know 3x multiple or whatever Yep, and if this sells then well, maybe it's I don't know 10 million revenue, but like sells for 100 million You Exit.
That's sort of how I'm thinking. If that makes sense.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. I think, I think that makes sense.
Ali Abdaal: There's a [00:35:00] limit to how much money you can make. Which is brand deals. And it's directly tied to me. Yeah.
Nathan Barry: You're right. That there's this like step function level of complexity. And you, you decided to cross that bridge and then, you know, the number of tax returns that are the other things, you know, like email marketing gets more complicated.
I really liked the idea of each one needing to drive its own leads. Beyond a certain point. You're like, Hey, I'm going to promote you to this level. But then going back to our other ideas, right. You need to get to, as they start to make these shifts, right. You know, this business goes from telling, you know, individuals, like your story to getting really good at transformation.
Yeah. Um, you know, it's interesting. Dan Martell is someone who's gone through this a lot. He sold several businesses, uh, in the software space. And then his SAS Academy coaching business. He scaled to I think a little over 10 million a year in revenue, 10 to 15, maybe. And then he recently left it entirely.
And so he's gotten to the point where [00:36:00] I think he still promotes it from his content and media, but he's not the engine behind it. He's not providing the coaching, no one's signing up because of his name. He's fully abstracted that.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. That's where I'd like to get to with YouTuber Academy and Productivity Lab.
And. Now basically any venture that we do right because I think for me the thing that right now I'm like, I want to be making videos and writing books forever. Yeah, but I don't want to be necessarily promoting a YouTube course and Productivity membership forever and so like very happy to promote those things in the short term But I'd love to get these businesses to a point where the business is the entity that's providing the value to transform the lives of the students or the customers And the fact that I'm associated with it is just part of the backstory.
I think Michael Hyatt did a good job of this with his full focus planner. So that business does like, yeah, incredible. It's like so many people use that planner, but have no idea who Michael Hyatt is. That's a, that's a great place to be. Yeah.
Nathan Barry: I actually wrote about, uh, Michael in the, but no, our creator, [00:37:00] uh, essay that I originally wrote as an example of, he built so much around his personal brand, you know, this was four or five years ago.
And, you know, saying like, Hey, he's going to be capped because of that personal brand. And afterwards he sent me an email and he was like, Hey, you're spot on. This is exactly like, I noticed the same thing like 18 months ago. And so here's everything that I've done to, you know, to basically build full focus planner into a much bigger business.
Now his daughter is the CEO of it. She scaled
Ali Abdaal: it amazingly. Like that to me is, feels like, you know, when I'm, when I'm in my fifties, I'd quite like to just be paid a few million bucks a year to coach people. And some of them would be my own companies and some of them would be other companies. It's just kind of fun.
People rock up to my house. We have a coaching session. There's a, uh, a great entrepreneur
Nathan Barry: that I've had on the show at Matt Schnuck. Oh yeah. He's a friend of mine. Yeah. He loves coaching. He's a student of all the best coaching practices and everything else. And what he's realized is that a better business model is not to be paid as a coach.
It's to have a [00:38:00] whole bunch of companies and coach those leaders where you own all the equity, right? Or substantial amounts of equity. But that makes me wonder, are you optimizing more for cash flow or enterprise value?
Ali Abdaal: I'm not sure. Uh, so I was talking to Andrew about this. He said, screw enterprise value, optimize for cash flow.
Um, right. What Ryan said is, No one gets rich off of, off, off of cash flow , they get rich off of exits. Mm. Um, to me, I feel like philosophically I vibe more with cash flow. Yeah. Um, a big exit is not really gonna change anything for me. I like doing this stuff. Right. The cash flow is just kind of nice, but hey, I wouldn't say no to big exit.
So like, I dunno, like what do you, what do you reckon?
Nathan Barry: Well, so Andrew says, you know, focus on cash flow, not enterprise value. But he aggressively uses cashflow to purchase enterprise value. Andrew loves cashflow, right? And he's setting up all his businesses to cashflow. If it's the Berkshire Hathaway model, and they want all that cashflow.
But it's not because they're living lavish lives. They're using that cashflow to just buy, [00:39:00] buy
Ali Abdaal: more
Nathan Barry: stuff, buy more things that have enterprise value. They might say, hey, we're using that cashflow to buy more things that drive cashflow.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: Uh,
Ali Abdaal: It's a different, but, but I guess for Andrew, what he says is that his goal is to buy and hold forever rather than to exit in the same way, like, you know, Warren Buffett's think, and I think I vibe with that philosophy, but then I've drunk the base camp Kool Aid for 10 years.
So that's all about cashflow rather than enterprise value. Yeah. Um,
Nathan Barry: I have as well, though they, they walk that line. Well, but I think what's interesting. about creator businesses in particular, is this ability to scale enterprise value quickly on something that is not necessarily the core business.
Because you have the solar system approach, you can basically king make on a new business much faster than anyone else. And it might be a business that you love. It might also be something that was a fun idea. You wanted to exist in the world and you're happy selling it. Right. Ryan Reynolds is Doing this all the time where he's like, all right I can [00:40:00] shine the Sun on this thing and look at that and you know, I love the business But
Ali Abdaal: yeah,
Nathan Barry: you give me enough hundreds of millions and I'll sell it.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, I think if there's a like I was talking to my brother about this. So he runs a SAS I was asking him, you know, would you ever sell and he was like, well if the price was right then? Yeah, of course I would but if the price is not right that I wouldn't because I'm I'm happy either way That's kind of a nice way to think about this If someone wants to come in and buy the YouTuber Academy, and they're going to do a good job with it, like if you wanted to buy it, I'd be like, sure, if the price is right.
If not, it's totally cool. I like, I like the idea of continuing to run it. And yeah.
Nathan Barry: But I think, you know, I asked the question, it has, you know, an either or, if you're optimizing for cashflow or enterprise value. And it's helpful to know if someone's like, oh, enterprise value, because I want to exit, you know, all of this.
Yeah. But it's not a, like two ends of the spectrum. Yeah. You know, like most things in life that we're like, You can be high growth or profitable. I was like, well, no, we actually have like growth and [00:41:00] profitability is two separate axes and you can graph it all around from there. So in your case, you can have both, but knowing that you might want to sell it, you want the option to sell it definitely defines how you build the business.
Ali Abdaal: Yes. Plus I also think, um, Sort of building to sell, uh, will, uh, level me up in business more so than, uh, And not trying to do that because you have to just be more disciplined with the way you do everything If you're actually genuinely building to potentially sell And so even if you never sell it's like it's still a better run business in theory
Nathan Barry: What what I think is build a business that people would absolutely love to buy and they never sell it.
Yeah, that's nice Yeah, I like that approach. And so I mean that's the approach that i've taken with ConverKit, you know, we have a sales team That can sell without needing to pull me into a call or me to tee up a relationship or something like that Yeah, right because it's the exact same thing you're trying to do here.
Yes, exactly You And then it just makes for a way better business. Yeah. So I, I mean, I love this model. I think it's absolutely right. I don't have strong opinions on how you structure [00:42:00] the HR legal or when you make those things. I would just take this further and say, okay, this to me feels like the drawing of 12 months from now.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: Sounds about right. Yeah. 12 to 24. And so we start to think about, okay, what's the five year and 10 year. Then what else is in there? Like what's an idea of something that would be really cool to do, but it's so far out there that you can't actually consider it right now.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. I mean, I'd love to have a space like this.
It's way bigger. That's sort of like a coworking space meets library, meets coffee shop, meets a production studio, uh, in a place where I decided I'm living. Cause I'm a bit unstable right now where, you know, anyone who's ever been a student of ours can rock up and we do events. That's physical premises.
We work single location business. It's something I'd love to do further down the line, just not right now.
Nathan Barry: When you're ready to do it, we can co launch it together.
Ali Abdaal: Nice.
Nathan Barry: Because I want these studios all over, all over the world. Oh, nice. Yeah, that'd be super cool. Yeah. But, yeah, so something like that.
Ali Abdaal: [00:43:00] Something like that. I
Nathan Barry: mean, that's, in my opinion, not a good business.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, it will be more like a hobby. Yeah, hopefully at least breaks even. Yeah, I
Nathan Barry: mean, that's my thing with these studios. Someone's like, how do you make it break even or make money or all that? They're trying to figure out like what you charge per hour and all that.
It's like, no, no, no. Step one, have a giant subscription software company. Yeah,
Ali Abdaal: exactly.
Nathan Barry: Step two, burn a relatively small amount of money on this cool thing that you own.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, that's kind of how I'm thinking about that. Another thing I'd really love to do is in the same way that ClickFunnels is the software To implement the thing that he teaches, which is the funnels.
I would love to build the like productivity software that implements stuff around like visioning and goal setting and time tracking and like, I'm not like the next notion, but just a very like, this product will help you figure out what you want to do with your life, turn it into goals, make sure you're on track with those goals.
So that everything that I teach on my personal development side and the media then has like. [00:44:00] tool that allows people to implement it in a nice way. And that's an idea that we're exploring with my business partner. And we've got these two software ideas that are in progress and maybe that'll be the third stuff like that would be really cool.
Nathan Barry: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: We're also toying with the idea of like, Hey, if we're generating enough cashflow in this, can we just reach out to the people who run, I don't know, things three the to do the to do app and be like, you guys have been doing this 15 years. Do you want to sell it to us? Like we'll keep running it. We think it's really nice.
Like again, Andrew Wilkinson approach.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. And that, I mean, bringing Andrew into it, it reminds me a lot of what James Clear and Andrew have done together with Adams. Yeah. You know, it's basically like James's methodology that should be an app.
Ali Abdaal: That's really cool. I like the idea of doing stuff like that and just sort of playing this general infinite game of I'm always going to want to teach.
That's my jam. But like the game of entrepreneurship is kind of cool and like building businesses and buying businesses sometime like launching cool products. And maybe shining the light on them initially and then letting them have their own teams and coaching those teams. It just seems like a fun, fun thing to do for part of the time.
Nathan Barry: Hey, actually one quick thing. [00:45:00] What are the skills that you think you most need to learn in order to execute on this?
Ali Abdaal: Oh, that's a really good point. The biggest one that comes to mind is management by metrics.
Nathan Barry: Okay.
Ali Abdaal: Like really getting a handle on like, these are the growth levers. These are the growth engines, the fulfillment engines of these different businesses.
Here's what, what it looks like mapped out. Therefore, these are the metrics that matter and therefore being able to find the right people to work to those metrics, hold them to account sufficiently. Yeah, all of that stuff is a skill that I currently suck at and would love to improve it.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, my biggest struggle in that is giving someone clear direction and metrics.
and then leaving them alone to let them succeed or fail. And they will, I'm like, Oh, but if you did it this way, it could be better. And you like, you never actually, they might've gotten to that same thing
Ali Abdaal: on their own. Yeah. There's a friend of mine, uh, Dan Priestley, who says that it's a lot less stressful owning eight businesses than owning one business.
Cause if you own one [00:46:00] business, you want to get involved. If you own eight, you're like, Oh, I'll just get the weekly report and I'm chill. And then if the GM needs me, they'll call me in to do a sesh. And if they don't, yeah, I'm just, I'm just looking at the numbers week to week, running my little empire from my Google sheet and I can spend all my time with my kids.
Right.
Nathan Barry: Well,
Ali Abdaal: the thing
Nathan Barry: is you said week to week, which is just a simple statement, but it would need to be quarter to quarter. Right. Cause you got to change going back to earlier. You got to change the time horizon that you're operating on. Cause week to week, the numbers might do all kinds of stuff. Um, yeah, but yeah, I think those are, those are good skills.
Something that I've done is I've listed out the skills that I need. And then I'm just aware of that because then going back to earlier, right? Things we, we, we say yes to everything. We say no to almost everything, but when you're deciding, well, hold on, is this something I should say yes to?
Ali Abdaal: Hmm.
Nathan Barry: I'm now in the habit of like, no, no, no, no.
Maybe yes. Okay. I look at my list of skills and I'm trying to learn, does this thing that I'm tempted to say yes to help me learn a skill that [00:47:00] I know is going to be vital for this next phase? Okay.
Ali Abdaal: That's fantastic. I've never thought of it in that way, but I'm going to steal that idea. That's good. Who do
Nathan Barry: I need to become
Ali Abdaal: in order
Nathan Barry: to
Ali Abdaal: execute this vision?
For off the top of your head, what would you say are other skills that I might, because this is sort of an unknown, unknown, sort of a bit of a black box where I'm like, okay, well, yeah, the management, the scorecards thing, metrics thing, but is there anything else that comes to mind?
Nathan Barry: I don't know how to ask this exactly, but like your understanding of P& L and Balance Sheet and like what makes.
Like financial growth engines in a company. Do you feel like you understand it well? Or it's hard to know. Yeah. It's hard to know. I'm actually a six out of 10 on that, right? I mean,
Ali Abdaal: you know, there's no
Nathan Barry: way to.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. I like, when you said that, I think I'm like, I think I understand it well enough for what our current business is.
And if you gave me the PNL of like, I don't know, Procter Gamble, I'd be like, what the hell is going on? Probably.
Nathan Barry: I think what would be interesting is to go to a bunch of, you know, our mutual friends and say, Hey, would you, it can be totally sanitized or whatever else. But just take me behind the scenes of the financial operations of your companies, [00:48:00] because then you're going to notice things like, hold on, how is your operating margin, you know, 50 percent on this business?
I thought that style of business could never get above this. What things have you done there? Nice. And so you find people who will be transparent about those things.
Ali Abdaal: Nice.
Nathan Barry: And then I think, uh, actually one of the last episodes we did on this show, uh, with Barrett Brooks, we talked a lot about firing. Nice.
And that is such a hard thing, really hiring and firing and performance management accountability. But it's just, I'm someone who will build the same team. And if you're trying hard and loyal to the business and all of that, we're going all the way together. And it's just, there's going to be a point that's going to really hold you back, especially where you hire someone to be the GM of this business.
They grow it. 10 percent when you know, it could have grown 50 percent over that time period. And I'd be like, Oh, but this is a nice person. They've got a [00:49:00] good heart. Yeah. And so realizing that you're actually holding the back of their career growth.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: You're probably not giving them the feedback that they need.
Um, Like they, they really need that sink or swim, especially at that like executive level. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: I think another thing that I know I want to learn more is, as you mentioned, this is how to be a better coach. Cause I sort of do it somewhat instinctively, but I know that there are coaching methodologies and stuff, and there's a way to improve that skill.
Um, because in this future, I am like the coach to a bunch of these different businesses and of course they have their own coaches and stuff, but I'd like to learn how to be a better one of those. Yeah. I
Nathan Barry: think the simplest thing. I say simplest and hardest is to just stop giving advice and giving opinions.
And so when someone on your team comes to me, this is what I struggle with, but I'm really trying to work on is when someone says, Hey, I've got this problem. What should we do? Especially when the answer seems obvious to me, I'm like, Oh, you should do [00:50:00] this. No, do not do that. What you do is to say, Oh, that's fascinating.
Say, what do you think we should do about it? And you just leave it at that. And then, uh, Dan Martell actually has a version of this that he calls the one three, one rules. And it's basically that his rule is you have to come up with one clearly stated problem. Someone's like, Oh, we're struggling with growth.
That's not a clearly stated problem. Like get it very clearly stated. You know, over the last three months, we were unable to grow our organic traffic. You know, hold this. Okay. What are your three solutions that you're considering for this? And then what is your one recommendation? That's good. And then you just got guided through someone and like solving their own problems.
That's great. Cause that's the mistake that, that I make where I'm like, here's this, you know, one of our channels is broken. Um, we have a product problem or whatever else. I'm just like, Oh, here's the answer. And then let me go back up here. And the person's like, Oh, thank you. And they get this [00:51:00] idea that like, Oh, Nathan has the answers and I don't.
Yeah. And what you really want them to do is. I either have the answers or I can get the answers by going and tackling the problem with the right people.
Ali Abdaal: How do you balance that between, uh, sort of you being like the visionary of the business? Um, like I think about this in the context of, let's say with our YouTuber Academy, we've got one of our team members who is in charge of like the thousand dollar product.
Now, I'm sort of the visionary of the business right now, and I have some pretty reasonable ideas, I think, about like how we can change the offer for that product. Yeah. But I don't want to give those to her. I want her to come up with what she thinks we should do. But then also, sometimes the team will push back and be like, I get what you're trying to do, but like, we actually need your direction on this, like, how do you balance that sort of?
Yeah, I think of it
Nathan Barry: in terms of altitude and time. If you're setting the vision for the entire company, or, you know, a long time horizon, you should absolutely do that. Like paint a future state. Yeah. [00:52:00] And so you're saying this is where we're trying to go. This is the experience that I want creators to have as they go through it.
And then to make sure to stay at a high enough altitude. So we're not getting into the copy on the sales page. We might talk about the feeling that we want someone to have as they buy the product and first sign up. Yeah. In this future state, the number of skills that you have to actively not use, you know, like I'm good at designing presentations and I spent way too much time designing and you're like, what are you doing?
This is, you know, very low value, but like I spent a decade as a designer. So,
Ali Abdaal: yeah, I mean, I just got a demo of ClickFunnels and I'm like, I'm like, Oh, on the flight home, I'm going to tinker with line height and letter spacing because padding and the right amount of white space is the difference between looking bad and looking good.
And it's like, I should resist that urge.
Nathan Barry: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: And so I think it's. Sitting down and helping someone really understand the problem and your experience around it, but not implementing
Ali Abdaal: the solution. [00:53:00] Question for you. Um, so how do you, uh, how do you manage your time? I guess for me and my calendar, it's like, okay.
Wednesdays are filming days and like Tuesdays are team meetings. I kind of like having, and like Thursdays are sort of for like course stuff that are like live sessions and podcasts and things like Monday and Friday are sort of empty, but I also want to make the time to coach my team. And so like, how do you fit in that time to coach your team while also doing like the podcast, the personal brand, the whatever, you know, being CEO of a big business,
Nathan Barry: uh, poorly.
Ali Abdaal: Okay. Yeah.
Nathan Barry: My time is a mess. Cause I ended up building towards specific events, whether it's a board meeting or a conference with hundreds of creators coming to town or whatever else. And I ended up working towards that. Um, rather than having like this operating at a higher altitude. Um, so the things that I do is I don't take any meetings on Tuesdays and Fridays and that's a company wide thing.
I'll happily jump on a call, [00:54:00] uh, to jam through like we're kind of specific topic, but there's no scheduled meetings. And then I also really emphasize the check ins with my leadership team. and resist the urge to get involved in things that had a deeper level. It was really hard. Um, because I've had a bunch of time that I haven't had a full leadership team.
Like I was the VP product for ConvertKit for the last seven months. And, uh, we just hired in someone named Katie. She's amazing. And now I can meet with her and stay out of,
Ali Abdaal: you
Nathan Barry: know, the details. Um, so I think the trick is having enough consistency, so that you can like, or enough stability so that you can build that consistency.
Um, which if you have turnover in your leadership team, that's really hard.
Ali Abdaal: And what did the check ins with your, with your leadership team look like?
Nathan Barry: Yeah. So we do, uh, there's a broad weekly revenue meeting that I go to, and that's just, uh, I'm mostly a fly on the wall, but I'll jump in with questions and, and all of that.
So it's the teams [00:55:00] talking about their growth channels, uh, performance week over week, any of that accountability. Cause even though we operate on a longer time horizon. we know that we can make an impact in short cycles. And so we, there are numbers that we measure weekly. Uh, and then, uh, after that I'm on a longer 90 minute call with my executives.
And so then we're diving into the problems ahead of us. You know, anything with the rebrand announcement that we want to work through. Um, uh, setting strategy, those kinds of things. So those are the two most important meetings of the week. And then, um, the other thing is with Kara, who runs all the marketing for my personal brand is being able to, well, what I want to get to is an hour a week with her.
It's been more sporadic as we've been all around, but she has this ability. Like we just sit down and the first thing she asks is like, Hey, uh, what interesting things are going on? You know, any lessons learned? She has like three or four prompts that she'll ask me and I'll be like, [00:56:00] I don't have anything.
Oh yeah. Yeah. There was that thing. And before I know it, we've mapped out content for like three different newsletters and different ideas because of the questions that she's asked.
Ali Abdaal: Nice.
Nathan Barry: And, um, and then she's also mining the, you know, the podcast episodes, the content that we're doing and say, Hey, You know, these were interesting moments.
I think we could write more about this. Do you have more to say? At the 57 minute mark on the conversation with Alie, you said this. You know, it's a passing comment, but do you have more thoughts about that? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. And I'll dive into it. And then she'll say, okay, that is, oh, that belongs in the Flywheels course.
Or that's a great newsletter issue. Or hey, let's do a full podcast episode on that topic.
Ali Abdaal: That's a really good idea. Because as you're saying that I was thinking like, um, one of my team members, uh, she's, she's our, our sort of head of head of the content team. And so she manages like our YouTube person or social media person, a website person, et cetera.
But I don't really meet with her. And I just should [00:57:00] want once a week for an hour to just talk about these sorts of ideas because then that sort of, uh, that fodder then can potentially feed into YouTube ideas or social media posts or like email newsletters and the whole shebang. And
Nathan Barry: Yeah. All of those things.
Cause it ends up being this flywheel where you get someone who's very aware of everything you're producing, right? The podcasts that you're going on as a guest, all of that stuff, and then asking you pointed questions about it because the number of throwaway comments that you make or like ideas that pop in your head, but they're half formed.
Then turns out like a week later, you're like, Oh, if prompted, you're like, yeah, I actually have way more to say about that. I think we made a good episode. I think so. The inaugural episode. In the new studio. Also, this shot just looks so good. I know. I'm just like, well, every time I look at it, I'm like, nice.
Well, maybe as a way of wrapping up, I'm curious what some of your takeaways are. And what you, what you plan to put into action.
Ali Abdaal: Okay. Nice. Um, okay. So what are the action steps? Number one, talk [00:58:00] to Inez, uh, to do this, um, content, uh, chat one on one. We'll name it something. But yeah, you know, the content chat, the, the, the weekly CC or whatever.
Um, I think that's an easy one, but that's very recent. The effects, we literally just talked about it. I think like what I'm taking from the solar system thing is that sketching this out and hearing your take on it. is making me feel much more confident with it because this is the future I want to work towards.
Yeah. And so even like last night I was thinking, you know, should productivity lab. com be the landing page or should it be aliabdol. com slash productivity lab? And it should obviously be productivity lab. com. Yeah. Like those things become clear. Whereas here it's like, well, I mean, it's like, no, it should definitely be productivity lab.
com. Um,
Nathan Barry: so we were talking about the skills. that you need to learn for the next phase.
Ali Abdaal: Yes. So I think I need to, I need to write down my list of skills. That would be a good thing to journal on, on the flight home. And [00:59:00] I'm going to start getting coaching with Barrett, um, about stuff. And also, um, Daryl about stuff.
Um, both will be, both will be interesting. Two new coaches from this event. Um, I think. This stuff is all sort of happening already. If I can nail this coaching, figure out specifically what skills to work on, have the weekly one on ones with Inez and just sort of know that this is the future that we're working towards.
I think that will automatically take care of a lot of, a lot of this.
Nathan Barry: I think you're right. The one thing that I want you to do in addition to that is to put it on a timeline so we know, like there's an order of operations in this. And so you start to say like, let's go five years out and we're like, all right, we're going to achieve this solar system model.
At a basic level, uh, 18 months or two years out, and here's the steps. So maybe across the bottom of the timeline are the skills you need to pick up and, and [01:00:00] what sequence do you think you need to learn them? And then across the top is how you're going to, you know, what, what order you're going to put this in.
Yeah. You know, HR might not be the first thing that you strategize. The first thing might be stripping out the, the two circle accounts, right? And separating those memberships. And so just put it in sequence. And then your team can follow along. Cause going back to the idea of clarity,
Ali Abdaal: you
Nathan Barry: can now paint a picture of this is where we're going
Ali Abdaal: and
Nathan Barry: here's the order.
I think it should happen, but what do you think? And then you can give them ownership in executing that plan, you know, and uh, the timing that it happens. Cause they might say like, Oh no, actually let's do this in the other order. For that reason.
Ali Abdaal: And how granular should I be with, with the timeline, monthly, quarterly, weekly?
Nathan Barry: I'd say quarterly.
Ali Abdaal: Okay.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. I mean, just going to, there's a business that all, or there's a reason that all publicly traded companies operate on a quarterly cycle. It's just because it's often enough that you [01:01:00] can make meaningful changes, but, uh, spaced out enough or long term enough that you have to stay at a higher altitude.
Ali Abdaal: Yep. No, that's pretty good. And I think also what this conversation is, um, revealing to me, especially on that skills point is that I, I could just message people like Andrew and just be like, Hey, can you just screen share me? Like what, what does it look like when you're managing all these different companies?
And I'll probably be like, Oh, okay. That's just filled in a big unknown unknown that I didn't even realize was there. And so speaking to people and like 17 of these businesses around his personal brand. It's like, when you can put
Nathan Barry: it out there and say, Hey, these are the five skills that I'm most interested in learning in this order.
Who can help me with that? And if you put the post that on X, there's, you know, you'll get a whole bunch of people who are like, this book was really helpful or blah, blah, blah. But then you'll get someone, you know, an Andrew or someone like that, who's like, yeah, happy to show you how I handled this at this massive scale.
And you're like, I had no [01:02:00] idea you were even in my audience, you know, that
Ali Abdaal: kind of thing.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. That'd be
Ali Abdaal: cool. That's great. Cause it's like, it's like, I feel like over the last few years, Tim, my team has always been saying, Ali, we need more clarity for me on where we're going. And I was been like, but like, what more clarity do you need?
I mean, we were making videos and doing courses, like how hard can it be, but like just having this as like, Oh, okay. This, this feels like a very nice sort of medium term future to work towards.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. And so basically paint an end state. And then have a timeline towards that end state and hold it loosely, but, uh, that'll give so much clarity.
And then you just find yourself referring back to it all the time. Cause I was like, why are we doing this? Yeah. Oh, because this is where we're trying to get. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: This is the solar system fig jam file or whatever. This yeah. And fig jam is perfect for it because you can. Yeah. Move things around and stuff.
Oh yeah.
Nathan Barry: Love that.
Ali Abdaal: Thanks man. Awesome. Good session. Thanks for coming on.
Nathan Barry: 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 drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video [01:03:00] were.
And also who else we should have on the show.