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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.
Sahil Bloom: The only way to figure out what that thing is today that's going to be the thing that people look back on in two years and say oh shit, I should have done that. The only way to figure out what that is by doing it every single day and figuring out what it is.
Attention is power, and creators harness it better than anyone else. But they're not using that attention to create the biggest impact possible and are vastly under monetized.
Hi, I'm Rachel Rogers. My co-host, Nathan Barry, and I believe you can be a billion dollar creator. Sound impossible? Over the last ten years, we followed each other on our own quest to build billion dollar companies. We've studied creators and seen how entrepreneurs build traditional audiences and use them as a launching pad for a massive business. And it got us thinking, if it can happen for them, it can happen for us. And if it can happen for us, then why not you?
Billion Dollar Creator is a show teaching creators how to capture attention and turn it into real wealth. We will deep dive into brands, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who have done it before and show you how you can apply it to your business as an everyday creator.
Join us weekly as we learn from both the wild successes and the missed opportunities, the grand gestures and the integral mistakes. And through that, help you become an expert at building your audience on your journey as a billion dollar creator.
Nathan Barry: You actually, we were talking about this. You actually have some connections to Roosevelt Island.
Rachel Rogers: Yes. I didn't even remember it until literally this morning when I was on the plane. So when I was a kid, my father used to work here on this island for many years. It really wasn't that nice of a place to come. He worked at a hospital here. They don't have police on this island, or at least they didn't then. So they had like peace officers.
I googled this morning. I'm what does a peace officer make on Roosevelt Island. It's $53,000 a year. So I was like wow, that's freaking amazing that my father worked here for years. I remember going over that bridge and coming with him to get his paycheck. Because if he didn't work that day, he was like oh, I'm going to need that paycheck. So I would be in the car, drive over with him to get his paycheck.
So yeah, he worked here for many years making $53,000 a year. Now I did not choose this location. The ConvertKit team chose it like before I even knew about it. So I'm just like wow, now I'm back here to talk about building billion dollar businesses as a millionaire, right. Like a full circle moment. So that was pretty dope.
Nathan: Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. You we're giving us a little bit of a hard time because it can be hard to get to Roosevelt Island.
Rachel: Yes. I was that’s a terrible location. No, it's actually got beautiful views.
Nathan: It has incredible views.
Rachel: This hotel is great. But yes, it is. It's a place that not a lot of people know about. So.
Nathan: Yeah, it's fun to have people for the first time.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: One thing that we were talking backstage about what actually even sparked a podcast tour and kicking this off, like doing it brand new. I mean, the show is four episodes in. This episode, we're recording episode five right now.
Rachel: We have a really technical reason, like a scientific reason as to why we decided that we were going to go on tour right at the beginning. Tell them our scientific reason.
Nathan: The very scientific reason is we want to build a giant podcast, and we want to connect with people individually and have actual conversations from the beginning. So just leveling it up from day one.
Rachel: That is not what I was going to say.
Nathan: What were you going to say?
Rachel: But that is actually all true. What I was going to say is because we wanted to.
Nathan: Yeah.
Rachel: Which is cool. But why we wanted to was what you just shared. We wanted to like connect with people and start to install this idea in your mind so that you can dream bigger for yourselves and see that like literally nothing is out of reach for us. That's what I want you to know more than anything else.
Nathan: This idea of you know what you want something to be long term. So kick that off today. Like when we were talking about the podcast, this is actually how some of it came about was we had the idea for the podcast, and we're riffing on it. We're like yeah someday, we could like even do a podcast tour. That would be incredible. Then we realized like wait someday. Just do that now.
Rachel: Just do it now. Exactly. Like if you're going to take on a new project, or if you have a dream or a vision or an idea, approach that vision or idea like it’s the biggest thing ever now, right? Like, give it that energy. When you do, you're going to be more committed to it, and you're going to see better results from it. Instead of being like well, I'm small. So I have to do things small. No, you don't. Right?
Just assume that you're going to be huge, right? Assume that it's going to blow up. How would you approach this project if you assumed that it was going to be a huge success? That's what I encourage you to do instead of tiptoeing your way in. It’s no, no. Stomp all over it, okay?
Nathan: Yeah, I like that. Okay, so you're not just going to have to listen to the two of us tonight. We have a special guest. Sahil Bloom is a good friend of mine. I guess we met two and a half, three years ago. I've just been blown away by how he's created his audience, the path that he's taken. He puts in all of the hard work on writing and all of that, but then he also has this really interesting background and just his experience building businesses.
Since we're talking about who is living out the ideas of a billion dollar creator, Sahil’s someone that I wanted all of you to learn from. So just for a little bit of background, Sahil was a pitcher in baseball, a baseball pitcher in college. That's what I wanted to say. So he has the athlete background, and then he went into private equity.
So he has this fascinating knowledge of the behind the scenes of how businesses work. I always tease him because he's dropping jargon. I'm like Sahil, nobody knows what that means. That's like some obscure finance term. But then at the same time, the thought and detail that he's bringing to building an audience.
So we'll dive into how he grew his Twitter following. We'll save that for another time. You can dive into how your Twitter following to a million followers. You know, his email has over 500,000 people. He has the most incredible connections. Like, I don't even know how this works, but Tim Cook invited him to Warren Buffett's annual gathering. Like hey, let's sit on the floor for that for the Berkshire event.
Yeah, I'm just like that is that Tim Cook and Sahil Bloom? Okay. Sahil’s just my buddy from Twitter. But he's just built this incredible business. We'll dive into a little bit of what he's done to build a $10 million agency off of his Twitter following. So please join me in welcoming Sahil Bloom.
We have this saying on the podcast where we talk about people who are playing chess, not checkers. It's led to a bunch of fun examples that if you listen to the show, you'll hear like Reese Witherspoon and so many other creators who were just like okay, that is brilliant. I didn't understand what happened there until you like see it revealed, and you realize they're playing a whole different game.
So Sahil, you're someone that there's a version of your public persona, and the audience that you're building, all of that, that we're all blown away with. Like the rate of growth, the email list, the Twitter following, and everything else. What's interesting is knowing you behind the scenes, I'm like that is 1/10 of what's actually happening.
So, I'd love you to give people a bit of a breakdown of how you think about using your audience to build a business that has I'm going to throw out it a businessy private equity term, but that has enterprise value, right. That could actually be sold.
Sahil: Yeah. So I would say like just as a foundational premise to all of this, I didn't come into any of it with a desire to build like a creator ecosystem. I was working, Nathan mentioned, I was working in private equity. I was like doing the whole finance dance of like working 80 to 100 hour weeks, and I thought that was going to be my life, honestly. I hated it. I found it soul sucking, and I was putting a bunch of debt on businesses and like crossing your fingers and hoping that it goes well. I just didn't enjoy it.
But it was like the gravity of that type of role and that track that you're on where people have probably experienced this. You kind of start on a path and like people are telling you you're pretty good at it, and your parents like that you're doing it. There's all this like cultural momentum to the thing that you're doing. So you just decide you're going to stay on it.
Frankly, for me, if not for COVID being the shake the system, I probably would have woken up in 30 years and stayed on that path and been like what the hell did I do with my life? I'm sure there are people out there that feel that way about their what they're doing currently.
For me, what it was, was like taking the one tiny step to just start doing the other thing. While I was still working at my job it was on the weekends during the early part of COVID when you were stuck at home, and you had no life outside of it, I started writing. I knew I loved writing. I knew I loved storytelling, but there was never this like grand strategy in my mind that I was going to go build some business off of it.
So really what I came into it with was like a business mindset from the private equity days. I didn't know the creator economy was a thing. It wasn't really something that people talked about pre-COVID. It hadn't become the hot VC investing term that people wanted to going back. So there wasn't really like a pattern that I could match against. There wasn't like someone that I was going to try to emulate and follow their rise just because I hadn't been in that space.
So I took much more of the lens of just saying how can I create value for people out there? Assuming that if you do that over and over and over again day after day after day you'll be able to receive value in return in some form or function. That was really the pursuit was just I'm just going to show up every single day and create something that hopefully people find valuable. The market will tell me if they find it valuable. I'll continue to do that. I'll continue to get better at it as a result.
Rachel: Can I ask you a question? What did you decide to write about? You knew you liked to write. How did you decide that? Because I think that's one of the things that keeps people stuck is where do I begin, or what do I say?
Sahil: Yeah, failure to launch is probably the biggest thing that everyone experiences. The reason, at least in my mind, is that you think that what you do has to be perfect. The reality is like, yeah. It’s like.
Nathan: No one here resonates with that.
Sahil: No, I mean. The reality is anyone you go find, like it's successful in any endeavor, creator or not. The first version, like the V1 of it, was garbage, no matter what. Like I had done, no one knows this. I've never talked about this. Like before any of the stuff that has built an audience, I had an email list of like 20 family and friends that I would send out an email once a month of what I was reading. Like just books that I had read during the month.
It sort of just over the span of two years that I was doing it once a month, it had grown from like the 20 people I was originally sending it to maybe like 1,000 people, and it was garbage. I mean I recommended good books. People probably liked it, but it wasn't pretty. Like there was nothing about it that was a business. But I flexed the muscle on a monthly basis every single month for a long period of time.
So I’d started to build this like this muscle memory on the bad version of it that then when you're ready for primetime, and the lights turn on, you've already flexed that muscle 100 or 1,000 times over and over and over again. So that's probably the biggest thing is I've now tried to apply that lesson to any new thing I'm going into because I know my bias is to be scared.
Like when I wanted to start doing Instagram or video stuff, I was oh well the video has to be perfect. I need the perfect production quality, or I need the perfect editing. Then you realize no, I just need to take my phone and go like this and say something. If people liked it then I'll start to learn and I'll start to get better at it. It'll get better over time. I have to fight that at every phase of my journey still.
Rachel: Yes.
Sahil: Doing it is a great endeavor because what you learn is that bad becomes good. Like you can actually just get better at something over time and whatever the new thing is.
Rachel: Yes, I think you just have to be willing to be bad, right? Like that's what it is. Just be willing to be bad at something. You should see my early YouTube videos. They're still up there. I don't take them down because I'm I just want to remember.
Sahil: I try to look back. It's really easy to lose sight of progress that you're making on anything because you're in the weeds day to day. You're ultimately zoomed so far in on your own life and on your own journey that you lose sight of any progress you're making. You're like oh man, I'm in the trenches. I just don't feel like I'm getting better at this. My growth isn't what I thought it was going to be.
The best way to get over that is literally to go to something that you created six months ago, and go watch it if it's a video or go read it if it's a piece of writing and realize how bad it is relative to how you feel today. You will marvel at the progress that you've made over that period. I guarantee. I mean it's crazy, crazy, crazy. I highly recommend doing that. I honestly, I try to do that like once every six months. Whenever I'm feeling down on myself, I go back and do that and realize how bad my writing was. It really changes it.
Nathan: A version of that that I'll do is when I'm struggling, like hitting some business problem that I'm really stuck on and it feels overwhelming. I like to go back to the list of the other times that I felt completely stuck. Then I look at the problems that were so overwhelming to me in 2020/2021. Now I'm like oh, I those seem so easy. But that felt crushing. Like how am I going to navigate that?
Then you realize oh, for me then, that was a very difficult problem. Today, this feels like an insurmountable problem. But you get enough perspective to say okay, hopefully a year from now we'll look back on whatever this is and realize okay, I learned how to deal with that. Great.
Sahil: Yeah, I call it mental time travel. It's actually like even just as a gratitude, a point of gratitude, to be able to zoom out from your present state and realize how in awe of where you are today, your younger version of yourself would be no matter where that is. If you went back in time five years, you'd be blown away by the progress you've made at whatever it is that you're working on.
Then similarly 30 years from now, you would give anything to be back in the shoes that you're in today working on the things you're getting to do. So I just find it to be an unbelievable activity for just presence and feeling a little bit of gratitude for the present moment that you're in, to do that quite regularly.
Rachel: Exactly. Like where I used to dream of if I could just work from home and make like 50 grand a year, I'd be thrilled. Like I just want the flexibility of being able to like own my time and work from home. That was so amazing to me. That felt like oh, if I could accomplish that, that would be like the key to life.
Sahil: Now you fly to New York to get to go on stage in front of a bunch of people. It’s like really crazy when you think about the timespan that these things happen on. We all like dramatically overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year. It’s really, really true.
Rachel: Yes, agree.
Nathan: So thinking about the like the concept of this podcast, it's really, as a creator, we're some of the best in the world at building audiences, right? We take that attention, and we get to choose where do we direct that attention. So I want to talk for just a minute about how you've grown your audience.
Then I want to go into where you choose to direct that attention, and like the ROI, the return on investment, that you get from that. But let's start, just take us through a little bit of the last year and a half, two years of audience growth. What are some of the things that have really moved the needle on that?
Sahil: Yeah, my biggest principle was always to like own one thing before moving on to the next. One thing I see people go wrong with is you try to go into ten different platforms at once or ten different mediums at once, or even three or even two. It's just too much. You can't figure it out. You can't really get into the weeds with it.
So for me, personally, like I've never been able to successfully outsource anything from a content standpoint. Like if I try to have someone else run my TikTok account, won't grow. Can guarantee it. Like they can do great videos, they can do all stuff. But if I'm not in there like really understanding the pulse of a platform and how it works, I know it's not going to work.
So my whole approach has been I'm going to really figure out and try to own one platform, figure out how to make it work, figure out how I can like create sort of an autopilot or set of systems around it before moving on to what the next one was. So the first one for me was Twitter, X, or whatever we call it today. It’s going to change. It's going to be like Y&Z here soon.
So did Twitter first. I figured out kind of like short form, punchy writing, really felt like I had a good handle on that. Then people were sort of pulling me into longer form writing. There were people that were oh, I'd love for you to go deeper on this or this that you're writing about. So newsletter was a natural next step of that. It was like okay, I'm just going to go deeper on it.
Then from newsletter, it was okay. The deeper version of that is a book. So that's what I want to go do next and what I want to go pursue. Video started for me only maybe like nine or 10 months ago, and was a natural byproduct of just I love being in front of people and chatting with people and learning about their experiences.
So podcasts, you're creating a whole bunch of video content naturally by going on those that can be converted into cool short form video clips. So figuring out Instagram and how to do it and what works and what doesn't was sort of the next pursuit. So now I'm kind of like focused on really nailing that down and continuing to push there.
The reach of short form video is completely insane relative to written content and relative to Twitter, in particular. I mean if you have something go viral on Instagram, I'm having my friend’s 80 year old grandmother from Alabama like seeing the video that I did. That never will happen on Twitter. You can go as viral as you want. Like, it's just a tiny audience relative to the reach of an Instagram. So that's really where I'm focusing much more of my energy today.
Rachel: Okay. Do you have a team helping you do that now?
Sahil: I have people that do like sort of specific skill based tasks, like video editing. All of the content is created by me. That goes to my point of if I'm not really in it, it's obvious to the audience that I'm not really in it. I am in awe of anyone who can figure out a way to like truly ghost write or have things done for them and still have it come across as authentic. Because for me, it's just abundantly clear to me when something doesn't have like my soul in the content in the way that I needed to. So I've never wanted to outsource that. I'm probably sacrificing growth.
Rachel: I think you can SOP your soul.
Sahil: You think so?
Rachel: I know. I really.
Sahil: If you figure out a way, let me know.
Rachel: I really do think you can, but I do, I agree with you that you have to sort of figure out your formula. I think a lot of business owners think that if I just hire this person, it's going to solve my problem. It doesn't really work that way. You have to solve the problem. Then once you have the process for solving the problem, you can hire the person to run that process.
But if you're just I'm just going to hire Joe Schmo, and they're going to fix it for me. They are not. It’s probably going to be a fail. It usually doesn't work that way. But if you figure out how to solve it, you install somebody. Then it works that way.
Sahil: The challenge, the nuance with personal brand that I will say is like for a true content creator, if that's what your primary thing is going to be, the creative work, no one is going to take your personal brand as seriously or have as much love with the content as you will because it's your face. It's like your name and your face that’s on it.
No one is going to take that as seriously no matter how much you pay them, or what you what skin you put in the game for them, all of those things. It's still your face at the end of the day.
Rachel: I disagree with you again.
Sahil: Tell me. I would love to be proven wrong here so I have a reason why I can do this.
Rachel: Well, it makes it worse. I've got to disagree. But I think that if you have a mission that you're on that you're trying to accomplish, you can find people who have a heart for that same mission. Over time, right, like it's not like you're going to hire them today. They're on the same mission and then they're going to go out there in speak in your voice. But over time shadowing you, learning from you, creating like brand voice guidelines and all of those things. They can learn how to speak on behalf of the brand.
I think there's a difference. Like there's a difference between Rachael Rogers voice and the voice of Hello Seven. They're not exactly the same. They're a little bit different. They're similar, but they're a little bit different. So my team can definitely speak on the Hello Seven brand. They are very passionate about the mission. They are so hyped. They will yell and fight me over the mission. Right?
So I think you can find those people. It's not easy, and you don't find them necessarily on day one. But I think the more clearly you express what your values are, the mission that you're on, why you're doing this work, the more you can recruit people to this mission army that be almost as passionate, maybe more passionate in some cases than you are.
Sahil: That makes sense.
Rachel: I used to think what you think. But I think, over time, finding the right people helped me to realize oh no, those people are out there. We just haven't found them yet sometimes.
Sahil: The zoom out you did to mission and values level had it click in my mind.
Rachel: Awesome. I'm glad I could help you out.
Nathan: There's more life coaching with whoever wants it. Robert will have the mic later. Yeah, I think the level you're taking your audience is fascinating. But what's most fascinating to me, because I've seen a lot of creators, and running ConvertKit, I've had a front row seat to the growth of so many creators. There's a standard playbook that works really, really well for monetizing audiences. You do not follow that playbook at all. Right?
I think most people, they see what you're doing. They're okay, yeah. So he makes his money through sponsorships. It’s like yes, there's revenue driven from sponsorships that you reinvest in audience growth. But then there's this whole other side that most people don't know of these agency businesses.
We were talking about this when you and I did another event together of turning cost centers into profit centers by following the Amazon model. So why don't you give people a behind the scenes look on the agencies that you run, and then how you use your audience to grow those?
Sahil: Yeah. So as I was starting to build the business, I quit my private equity job. I was going to go all in on doing this thing that I was working on and the platform that had been built. This is mid-2021. Basically, what I decided was that I didn't want to make money in the way that I thought most creators were making money at the time, which was like courses, products, sponsorships, ads, etc.
The reason I didn't want to do that, at the time was I was coming off of a track that had a very clear 20, 30, 40 year career arc and horizon. The creator economy was so new that that didn't exist. There was no concept of how you're going to do this for the next 20 or 30 years of your life. The idea was oh, I can make really good cash today off of doing ads or off of doing courses or whatever it was. I knew that there was a path to like making money now, but could I do that for ten, 15, 20 years? I didn't think so.
So my concept was I want to figure out a way to actually build sustainable enterprise value and cash flow in businesses that are built sort of adjacent to the thing that I'm creating. The whole thing was based on this broader principle I had that distribution was the power. It was being decentralized rapidly.
Like if you think 50 years ago, distribution was massively centralized around people who commanded the airwaves, which was big TV, company. Like all the all the ads were owned by like P&G and Johnson and Johnson. Like these massive conglomerates owned all of the airwaves in the ad space. They were the only ones that commanded attention. So commerce followed that. Those were the companies that made money.
Rapidly, because of social media and the things that were happening, commerce was being decentralized to all the people that own distribution. That was originally some of the early creators and some of the celebrities that were able to do it with their brands. But in a permissionless world, that could be any of us. You go out and create whatever you want. You can have a micro audience of 10,000 people and go create commerce around that micro audience.
So I wanted to do that. I wanted it to be business based with things that were operating without my time involvement on a daily basis. I'm not particularly good at managing people. I didn't really want to go like manage massive teams around all of these things. I wanted to partner with incredible people who spiked, their skill set was like off the charts in that area, so that I could focus my energy on the things where I feel like I'm off the charts around some of the creative things I was doing, around being in front of people, spending time with people, etc.
So the first sort of venture into that was looking at what am I or people like me spending money on, on a monthly basis? How can I turn that from something I'm spending money on into something that I'm profiting from? Because I know that if I'm spending money on these things, there's a whole hell of a lot of other people that are spending money on this exact same thing.
So one of the first examples of that was like video editing services. I was spending five grand a month for people to edit clips for me and turn them into short form video clips. I was sending referrals to this like random agency that was doing it for me, and they were paying me 250 bucks or something for every referral I sent for clients that were then paying them five grand a month on an ongoing basis for long periods of time.
I was like well, shit. This doesn't make much sense. We don’t need to do this anymore. So I told the guy. I was like hey, do you want a partner? And he was like well, I don't know what you mean. Whatever. I was like all right, see you.
I had a friend who I had been musing on ideas with for a while who had just come off two successful agency businesses he had built eight figures and exited. He was looking for like his big thing that he was going to do next. So we came up with this idea of building effectively a creator led holding company where we build and scale, started with services businesses, but it'll be much bigger than that eventually, that have sort of a creator that sits on top that is the distribution engine.
So rather than having to spend money on Facebook ads or Instagram ads to scale these businesses, you use the creator for distribution. We offer services that all of these people need. So video editing was one of the first ones. We did a short form clip agency business with Codie Sanchez, and Sam Parr as the creator partners for it. Basically, they are involved and then our business runs and operates the entire thing in the back end. They are a partner in it.
Rachel: So it's like influencer marketing, but more intense. Like one influencer who drives all the audience.
Sahil: Yeah. Partner with one person who has like a very real resonance with that end market that you need them to. So Ali Abdaal we partnered with for YouTube production business recently that we launched. He has a massive audience of people that want to make YouTube videos like him. So when he goes and says, “Hey, if you want to make YouTube videos like me, but you don't have the time to do it, I have this agency business that will work with you and make these videos that are beautiful, like mine.”
A lot of people sign up, and we bring in 2 million monthly revenue of leads in the first day from him launching it. The whole game then becomes how do you go actually service that and have the back end systems to do it, which is what my partner is really good at. So very quickly, that went from being, I mean in six months since we launched it, we’ll hit over a $10 million revenue run rate at 40 to 50% net margins on that business by the end of this year.
Rachel: That is brilliant. So instead of like Facebook ads is checkers, right? Chess is saying let me actually just partner with the influencer who has all the audience that I would need to reach anyway and just be done with it.
Sahil: For them, it's an incredible business because they have to do nothing other than just promote it. Drive a few leads, and they get a check every single month for doing literally not, there's zero involvement in the operations. It's entirely run by our team on the back end. It's an unbelievable business for them.
It's a great value proposition because they get to go talk about other businesses they're building and involved with, which is great for their brands in a lot of these cases. For us, we get this diversified pool of a bunch of agency businesses.
So the knock on agency businesses is always oh yeah, but it's concentrated. You have one of them, and you're doing like web design, but it's just that one. So now we'll have ten by the end of this year. We have seven today across a bunch of different verticals. There's design businesses, video clips stuff, the YouTube is like longer form. We have a podcast business launching soon. It'll become this diversified pool of cash flow streams that create a really, really interesting overall business profile.
Rachel: Yes.
Sahil: I think the coolest part about it now that I'm most excited about is the long, long game, the real chess to it is agency businesses have an amazing cash flow profile. They bring in cash up front, and then you pay people over the course of a month as you deliver services. That means that you have this huge pool of growing cash flow that you can go and invest in more high upside opportunities, things that actually create real enterprise value.
Long term agency businesses, if they trade at two to three X revenue on the high, high end, if you go create a software product, you go create an actual physical product that you can go and grow, they can trade it many, many multiples of that in terms of the actual enterprise value. So we can take the cash flow from the services businesses, which is a nice recurring cash flow engine, and go invest it in these moonshot kind of call option upside like opportunities that can create hundreds of millions of dollars of potential value on the back end.
So the way I think of it is like using finance terms, you have like the bond, which is paying you this cash flow from the services business, and then you have the cash flows being turned into a call option on the upside opportunities from these new things. So that's what I'm most nerding out over, over the next 12 months is the opportunity to go and figure out what are those call options and how are we going to go and pursue them.
Rachel: Question. Were you friends with all of these influencers? Or did you have to approach them and just pitch them on this idea?
Sahil: Yeah, fortunately because I had been like in this world for the two or three years before, that was the real advantage of this partnership with my friend Hunter who I launched this business with. He was unbelievable with the actual business and operations. I had the network and the space to go and actually launch with different creators.
So partnering with Ali was I was going on Ali’s podcast in London. I flew over, we did the podcast, and we had dinner together after. I was like hey, I have an idea for you that you could make money on. Literally a month later, we went live with the business. He's making great money off of it, and it's a big scale business today.
Rachel: I think it's also good enough pitch that it can be a cold pitch and still work if you can get that relationship.
Sahil: Now that we have actual evidence on the board of it working, we're having people reach out to us wanting to do business because they know that we can launch these things quickly. They know it's high quality. We're servicing customers well. The actual brand is now being built to the point where there's pull from the market.
People always ask oh, well what's the moat? Honestly, it's really freaking hard to run these businesses at scale. There aren't that many people that have my partner's skill set to be able to do that well. There's a lot of people that can do it at like 50k a month of revenue, 100k a month of revenue. It's really, really hard when you start talking about a million a month because you just have so many customers that you're needing to service. Now we have a COO. We have GMs at the individual businesses. Like there's just a big apparatus.
Rachel: It’s a lot more team. Yes.
Sahil: In six months having to scale that up, he's just been working 16 hour days for the last six months to get it rolling. But probably by the end of this year has created 50 to $100 million of enterprise value across it based on where it'll be profit wise. So, a pretty good ROI on his time even there.
Rachel: What role does your audience play in this business?
Sahil: So it depends on the business. I am a consumer of almost all of the products that our businesses produce. So I'm naturally promoting all of them. Our short form video clip agency I'm using to grow my own platform. So every time I'm posting that and people are DMing me asking who I use for videos, that's the immediate response on all of those similar with the YouTube one, which I'll roll out soon. Then strategy, like over at the higher level, the relationship strategy, partnerships, etc.
Rachel: Your face is not attached to these businesses.
Sahil: My face is not attached to any of them other than as a user. Other than as a user.
Rachel: That's my favorite part.
Sahil: Yeah. Yeah, that's by design because we do have a creator partner that really is the face of each one of, and it's their business. Like they were hugely involved in the design and how it looks and the feel of it and wanting it to match their brand.
You go and look at Hey Friends, which is the business that we launched with Ali for YouTube. Go look at the website. It's like so beautiful and aligned with his brand that's kind of like light and airy and sort of like flirty. It's just like his personality came across in the brand. That's really important. That's important for them because they're putting their neck on the line with these businesses. They need it to feel like it's part of them and not just like some random thing that they're suddenly doing.
Rachel: Yeah, awesome. I love it.
Nathan: One thing that was interesting to me watching you promote these services, these different businesses, especially early on, there was a little bit of time where you're, it felt like you were kind of dipping your toe in the water. You had some behind the scenes clients or other things, but I've watched you do like a carousel on LinkedIn or something.
Then it would end and say subscribe to my newsletter. Then if you went one more, it'd be like oh and if you'd like these graphics that were designed, this is the agency that did it. So it was very subtle and like bottom of the funnel. Like you buried it a little bit. So what was interesting is someone who got all the way to the end and then saw that was oh, yeah. It was a very targeted lead. I thought that was interesting how you approach it.
Now you have done the big launches for the agencies as well. But yeah, what was the thinking behind kind of burying the lead and making sure that it's the high quality?
Sahil: I've never gotten comfortable with selling to my audience. This is like a bad thing about me. Yeah. My whole thing has always been I actually don't want to sell anything. I want my book to be the first thing that I ask people to buy and to a fault. So like I don't do brand deals I have a pretty large Instagram account now. Brands constantly want to pay me to do whatever post or thing, and I just don't do it. Like, if I buy your product and I use it, I'll talk about it. Otherwise, I'm not going to do it.
So I was always really apprehensive about it was really the genesis of it early on. Then I realized that people actually really wanted to know more about the things that I was using or involved with or doing because they were aligned with the ecosystem I was building and what I was trying to do.
You and I did a launch together for a newsletter growth agency. We announced it, and in a day, it brought in like 500 grand a month of lead volume or something like that. Like crazy, for a high ticket service, like a $5,000 a month service that much. So that kind of stuff started to blow me away. I started to realize that you shouldn't be afraid of selling. If you're proud of the thing that you are putting out into the world, you can never be afraid of selling
Rachel: Correct because you realize the result that you're providing for people and how you're helping people. So you want to share that more because the goal is to help more people. So if you hide it, then there's more people that are not getting that result that you can provide. So.
Sahil: It's like the whole thing that people criticize, like shameless self-promotion, but if you're not willing to promote yourself and you're not proud of the thing you're putting out, why should you expect anyone else to be willing to promote you?
Rachel: Exactly.
Sahil: I've had to coach myself on that. So I’ll continue to take lessons from you.
Rachel: This reminds me of James Clear though because he did the same thing. I remember being at an event with him. He had like a list of, I don't know, probably a million people back then. His mailing list was so huge because he was so consistent with creating content. I remember there was like some group discussion. It was like a mastermind thing.
All these women in the group were give me the list. I will sell to them. What the hell are you doing over there? He wanted to wait. He was doing the same thing that you're doing. He wanted to wait until his book came out because he wanted to have this like epic launch of his book.
I don't think that not selling them anything. Like I think if you sell them something else, we talked about this. Like, that's not going to stop them from buying the book. I think they get value from you, they're going to want to buy the book even more. So that’s my thought process.
Sahil: You sound like you have Nathan in your ear. He texts me once a month. He's like hey, when are you ready to roll out new email sequences for selling email course?
Nathan: Sahil, I'm just trying to help you get paid.
Rachel: Exactly. I think he's struggling actually. So I think he does need your help. But I do think, I just want to point out the audience building, right? Being consistent. You built your audience over what two years?
Sahil: Yeah, just about.
Rachel: And like, what, just writing Twitter posts every day for like the first year?
Sahil: Yeah, basically just showing up every day.
Rachel: Exactly. Even doing it kind of terribly for a little while, and then getting a little bit better. But that consistency, we all want to have oh, I dropped my thing. It instantly is sold out, and I have a waitlist of interest. The way that you do that is by showing up beforehand and providing value and content and just being consistent. Like consistency is key.
So just forcing yourself to show up and do it badly every day for a little while so that way when you're ready to launch something, boom it takes off. I think you can even be selling something making a little bit of money and consistently growing your audience at the same time. You can do it at the same time. That's what I did because I needed money on day one. So I couldn't wait till day 30 or day 120 or anything like that. But you can be showing up consistently. The value of that is so, I think people just like tell us the secrets. It's like oh, I'm so sorry. The secret is work.
Sahil: Yeah. I wrote 300,000 words.
Rachel: You actually just kind of show up and do the thing. That's it. There's no other secret. Just show up and do the thing.
Sahil: Yeah, I mean, and it's figuring out what is the thing that's going to be different about what I'm creating?
Rachel: Which is the only way to figure that out is to show up and do the thing.
Sahil: Like the thing on Twitter when I was first starting out was I was one of the first people that use Threads as like a format that started to take off, and it started to grow. I was just showing up every single day doing that over a long period of time.
Now people look and they're oh, it's dead. You can't do that. Well, there's something else right now. I don't know what it is, but the only way to figure out what that thing is today that's going to be the thing that people look back on in two years and say oh, shit, I should have done that. The only way to figure out what that is, is by doing it every single day and figuring out what it is.
So every time a platform rolls out a new feature, you can bet I'm going to be trying it and using it a bunch. Like Twitter, I know they're doing long form posts, and they're promoting it, or they're trying to get into video more. So I'm going to be showing up daily doing those things because that's my bet on the future is like one of these things is going to be the thing that people wish they started two years ago.
Rachel: Exactly.
Sahil: if I just start, I know that I'll be one of those people that's there and that was around it. So I completely agree with you.
Rachel: One of the things that annoys me is when people are like indignant about I'm not trying new things, right. So like Threads came out recently, which is a new social media platform from Facebook and Instagram. The brilliant thing is like you can port over your Instagram followers to this. So it was really smart.
So anyway, it came out. Then all these people are I'm not joining another social media. I can't be bothered, right. As if that's something to be. I'm like cool, but this is an opportunity to be early. If you haven't built an audience yet, this is a place where you can actually, like you can be heard, right, because there's not so many people there. It's not so saturated. So if you get on there and just show up every day and start figuring out what works there, that's an opportunity. So sometimes you got to just jump on things and see what happens. Who knows? It could be a waste of time. There's no guarantee, but it also could be something that takes off.
So you’ve just got to be open to trying things. Just another aside that annoys me since I'm going on a rant is when people are like I'm not buying another course. I'm like okay, so you're done learning? Why are you indignant about being done learning? You should just be quiet about that. Don't tell nobody. Do not share that on social media. Okay.
Because listen, like we've got to be open to learning new things and trying new things. If there's somebody who's figured it out and I can learn it by watching five hours of video and paying 500 bucks for their course, that's smart. Even if you bought another course five minutes ago, right, like that's smart to invest in your education. So I hate when people are indignant about stuff like that. It's like just show up and learn and try new things and be open to figuring it out.
Sahil: I mean, if you get one tiny insight from that $500, you don't think you're going to make $500 off like one reel? It’s like you don't have to learn something from every single minute of the five hours of video. It’s like one insight that changes how you think about something. I mean, like the way that even just sitting here. Like you were talking about the values and the mission. I'm like you paid $500 for that one tiny insight that you just get because it might be it.
Rachel: You owe me $500. Venmo me.
Sahil: You would.
Rachel: Venmo me.
Sahil: Yeah, I will. The other thing is really pay attention to people and relationships that you're building around what you're starting to do. When I was first starting, there was like a group of people that were all trying to write and create at the same time. We were all trying to build platforms. None of us had a big platform at the time. We were all just writing and creating and in the trenches on that every day and like sharing what we were learning and supporting each other, etc.
Now those are the people that we're partnering with to launch these businesses. Like Sam Parr was one of those people. He didn't have an audience at the time. He was working on The Hustle. Like it was a different thing. Or Ali, like friendship that was built there. Codie, like she was just starting out. Now those are the people that we’re launching multimillion dollar businesses with. It was started as like a stupid DM conversation that led to something interesting.
So the people that you're interacting with now when you're just starting out that are like tiny and are really like crawling through the mud with you, those might end up being eight figure relationships that you go and build something really cool with.
They will only become that if there's just a mutual sharing of value. Not like a quid pro quo transactional, you do this, I'll do this for you, etc. But like genuine relationships that are built on the ground last for so, so long. Because you were in the mud with those people. Like that shared struggle of trying to like pound your head into a wall over long periods of time when things weren't going well, it lasts forever when you felt that with someone.
Rachel: Yes, it's so true.
Nathan: Yeah, I think the connections, this is what I'm always talking about coming to events or masterminds or meeting other creators because every step function in my career has come from conversations, partnerships, insights from other creators. So spending the time on that.
Rachel: Yeah. Sometimes it's not even like the conference talk. It's like literally over coffee, somebody says something to you, and you're oh my God, that just solved all my problems.
Nathan: The text thread that you form afterwards. Any of those. Those are good.
Rachel: Yeah.
Nathan: Now. So the premise of the show is that attention is insanely valuable. Creators capture it better than anyone else. We get to choose where we direct it. Most of us are not choosing the highest ROI activities. So I love your example because Sahil, you're running a different playbook.
So one thing I'm curious about is as you watch the space, either from the creative side of the private equity side, who are some creators that you're thinking of who you see a running, like a really interesting playbook where they're actually taking their attention and turning it into $100 million of equity value or a billion dollars.
Sahil: She's already very rich and successful, but Kim Kardashian and the private equity fund that she's partnering to launch, I think, is maybe the most brilliant value play that I can imagine anyone doing with attention. This comes from my private equity background that I feel like I understand the math of this, but a lot of people dunked on her and dunked on them for doing this when it launched. They're like oh, she doesn't know anything about finance.
The stupidest dumb take I can imagine having about that. Because what she does understand is people buying things, and everyone buys the things that she wants to support and gets behind. Private equity funds have been raising money with the thesis of creating value for the companies that they invest in for the last 30, 40 years. It was mostly bullshit.
Most of them, it was marketing. They put together a nice deck, and were oh, we're going to create value. What value meant was we're going to send in a bunch of like high price consultants to the company. They're going to make some spreadsheets and do all this stuff. We're not actually going to do anything for the company. We're just going to like hope that it continues to do well. But it sounds good to your investors to say that. Kim Kardashian buys a company and gets behind whatever the product is. She can dramatically alter the trajectory of the sales.
Rachel: Yes, she’s adding actual value.
Sahil: Create actual, actual value in real dollars that are going to transfer to the bottom line. As a private equity fund, they raise a billion dollar private equity fund, which is what they're targeting. If you go and triple that fund, which is like it's a good return for a private equity fund, it's not astronomical.
They take 20% of the profits because that's the economics of what one of these fund makes, there's $400 million of carried interest that gets distributed out to the partners, which she's probably at least like a 40 or 50% owner of off of one fund. So doing a few good deals she can go make 200ish million dollars of like low tax dollars that come in because of the carried interest tax loophole too that exists.
So you do one of those then you do another one that's a bigger fund. It’s a $5 billion fund, and you go and double or triple that. It's, I mean, the clearest path to making a billion dollars of any creator that I've seen is doing something like that, especially with no dollar upfront investment. Like she doesn’t, other than investing a little bit of her own money in the fund if she wants to, you're just borrowing other people's money to go and make a whole bunch of yourself.
It's an unbelievable business model. It's why there's all these rich white men that have made tons of money doing private equity. But it's disrupting that in a big way because she's realizing, and she'll be the first of many people that I think go do this, that it's an incredible way to leverage the distribution power that she has.
Rachel: Yes, exactly. She has more distribution power than Good Morning, America, you know.
Sahil: More than most people in the world. I mean, like if Leonel Messi went and did this or there's plenty of people that could go and do something like this. I think she actually will have opened the floodgates on this if you look at it in hindsight in 10/15 years.
Rachel: Right. If you think about okay so where did she start? She was well, she has her show, right? If you take that, but she has a large following on social media. I remember people talking about her getting paid a million dollars for a post, to post about some product. That's the whole point is, and that might be something that even some of you do right now, right? Where you are getting paid to do brand deals, and they pay you some small amount of money.
What we're saying is get paid in equity, right? So instead of just promoting that product, say oh can I get an ownership share? I'll actually promote it all year long or for the next five years in exchange for equity in the company. Right? So as the company value goes up and as you continue to add value by sending customers their way, right, the value that you own from that company goes up. That's how you make money a whole lot faster than just getting paid per post.
Sahil: Yeah.
Rachel: That's what she's doing basically, at scale.
Sahil: She's doing it at a massive scale. I think it becomes really interesting because you can think about doing that at a much smaller scale. There are going to be people that go and do that with a $10 million fund. You can go buy a small business. If you go and triple the value of that fund or whatever it is, there's a lot of money at us a smaller scale with a smaller audience where you can go and do that.
There's plenty of businesses you could go buy, like interesting consumer businesses, where if you have the niche that you could sell that into and go and create a bunch of value around. You can do that large scale P model that she's doing on a micro PE scale and benefit from the exact same insane economics that exist.
Rachel: Exactly. The New York Times had an article a couple of weeks ago about baby boomers wanting to retire. They own all these businesses that their kids don't want to take over. All they want is to get the hell out of it, right, because they want to be done working and go enjoy their lives. So that's a huge opportunity for people to go buy those businesses, right? Now get that equity as well.
Especially if you already have an audience. Now you can buy a business that makes sense, that you can marry with the audience that you have, and send customers there, and then you have an instant increase, right. Then, of course, you can continue to grow it over time. So there's so much opportunity. That's the whole point is don't just look at okay, I can create a course or I can sell this service, but what other plays are out there, right? It's time for us to get more sophisticated so we can build more wealth faster.
Sahil: Yeah. Also just start treating your business like an actual business and not like a personal bank account. So many creators, I think, suffer from this where it's their bank account. So every time they think about dollars going out of it, you're like oh, you feel the pain. I mean, I feel that. You spend money on something, you're oh.
When you separate it and you just think of it as a business, you unlock a whole lot of psychological benefit from just realizing that you can reinvest in it. If I'm going to reinvest it like my last month on ConvertKit’s Create Sponsor Network where they place ads in your newsletter. They sent me like $70,000 or something for my newsletter ad revenue, which is great.
I think I reinvested like $50,000 of it back into growing the newsletter into future stuff, pre-tax because it's just coming through my business. I don't have to pay taxes on it if I'm going to go and reinvest the entire thing back in because it exists in a business bank account. You're just like playing a completely different game now.
So rather than like taking it out and having to pay 50% taxes because I live in New York, I can just reinvest it back into growing the business and the overall engine of it. So that's another thing is just start treating the business that you're building like it's a real business and start optimizing around those different ways that you can actually reinvest at a really, really high rate of return.
Rachel: Yeah, you're talking about delayed gratification, right. So I think you can enjoy some of it, but also taking some and reinvesting it for the future so that you can build something so much bigger, faster, makes sense.
Rachel: You can't invest that money at a 20% return anywhere in the economy right now. So your business is the best rate of return that you can reinvest it into. So why wouldn't you want to invest it there? You're effectively investing back into yourself which has the highest rate of return possible. You're not going to go put it in treasuries at 5% or put it in the stock market at God knows what. It's like the best place that you can be reinvesting the money is back into your business to go grow so that you're building a longer term future.
Nathan: One thing on that, of the investing in yourself, Rachel, you said something earlier of pay me an equity, which I think is a really important point. But I want to get back to something Sahil that you said earlier, which is you were talking about this business that you are getting paid a small referral fee from. You said hey, let's partner up. Let’s do something with equity. They were mmm, no.
I think a lot of creators have that experience where they realize the value of what they're delivering is higher than what they're getting paid. They ask for equity. I think nine times out of ten, the answer is going to be no. So the shift that I would make on that, it's not you pay me in equity or you pay me in equity, it's I'm going to pay myself in equity. Right?
So that's where you go out and you create that business. You're investing in yourself. You're putting money back in because people aren't going to realize the value of your distribution. If you realize if the distribution is higher than how other people are valuing it, then I'm going to point that at my own business where I own 100% or I've teamed up with a great operator who's running it. So we each own 50% or something like that.
But just know that most of those conversations around pay me in equity is going to result in a no. If you believe in yourself, then the next move is okay understood. I'll pay myself inequity.
Rachel: Yeah, the whole I mean, what is really about is like cutting out the middleman, right, at every point. What are all the middlemen? How can I cut them out? And I'm that guy now.
Sahil: Yeah, it's also when you say pay me inequity. I think most of these like more unsophisticated operators that you would be working with, it just gives them a headache. Even when you say it to me, like oh the tax ramifications and like that businesses was in the UK. I honestly, I don't know what it would have even entailed.
So the other thing that you can go to is okay, if you're not going to do equity, before you go and launch your own thing around it is ask for just a lifetime revenue share. Just say if this is a recurring customer that you just got, you’ve got to pay me 20% of every dollar that this person generates for you in perpetuity.
That's effectively. I mean that’s like an eave. It’s like any bait, it's like a profit margin that they're going to make on that client that they're paying you out. That works functionally the same way where you're getting like a recurring check from this thing that becomes passive for any new customer that you bring on.
There are brands that actually, like Athletic Greens does that. Like there are people that do that, that have been really successful with scaling their business around it. It's incredible for creators because if you know you're going to actually convert customers and create value for them, it's an amazing way to do it without some of the headaches, logistical headaches that can come from taking equity.
Nathan: On the logistical headaches note, I was talking to a few creators earlier today, and they were talking about how the bigger the business grows, the more work it is. Then imagine okay, if I double revenue, I'm already working 50/60 hours. I'm already stressed. If I double revenue, I'm going to have to be even more stressed.
So I think a lot of people self-sabotage in their goals because they're saying oh, that's what that future might mean. But I'd love to hear from both of you on how you think about scaling the business, and it actually taking less and less of your time. Sahil in your case, right, you're involved in more businesses than most people I know.
Sahil: I've got my venture fund too. You forgot about that.
Nathan: I didn’t mention the venture fund. You’re like you have a whole bunch of time that you're spending writing a book and all these other things?
Sahil: Yeah, I probably only spend an hour a week on the businesses.
Nathan: You mean that collectively on all?
Sahil: Yeah, collectively on all of them? Yeah, I don't do calls. I mean I've been really judicious about my time on these things. Because I know the highest leverage use of my time is creative activities. The highest value I have to all of these companies is my platform becoming larger, having more relationships, more insights into what the future of all of this stuff looks, and more leads that I can drive to all them.
It's not me being on calls, doing sales things, focusing on operations. I'm bad at that probably. I would hurt the business. if I was spending 10 hours on it, honestly. They're like get out of the way. Dude, you don't want to be involved in this. So that was like the radical Insight was it's totally disjointed from my time that I'm actually spending in the businesses because there's incredible people that are actually doing the things they are very good at on all of them.
That was by design. I was I don't actually have desire to take on an operation 80 to 100 hours a week, every week for seven years. Like, I don't really want to do that anymore actually, I have a young son. I have a 16 month old son that I love hanging out with every single day and going on walks with. That is my designed life. So I wanted to figure out a way to go build a billion dollar business without having to spend 100 hours a week working on it, which is probably going to be difficult, but I think it's possible. So I was I mean, I was just very, very clear on that from the upfront.
Rachel: I mean, I put in a lot of hours to get started. I also put in a lot of hours learning how to be a leader and learning how to manage people, but now I have the exact same answer. Like I, basically, in my business, it's true, right? The biggest value that I can provide is continuing to build and grow the brand.
So we have operators in our team. We have a whole team of leaders and it's 25 employees who run the day to day of the business, and I'm basically treated as talent, right. I come in, I do a call. I come in, and I do media, I do the podcast, right. So I'm mostly doing that and also showing up for calls for my clients because I still enjoy doing that. But yeah, it's just you're sort of like the talent. Like I come in, I do the thing, and I leave, you know.
Sahil: The separation of inputs from outputs is like the most liberating feeling in the world when you first experience it. I had never, in my days in finance, everything was yeah, you're going to work a ton of hours, and you know what you're going to make off of those hours. Yeah, you're going to make more and more each year, and that number is going to go up. But it's never going to be truly dislocated, the inputs and the outputs.
Figuring that out to where you can say okay, the game is actually not about generating the most possible output. The game is about generating the most output per unit of my input. Then I can decide how much input I want. If my input is my son is only going to be under 10 years old for a few years, and I want to actually not have that much in the way of input.
Then once he's off in school, I can go much more into a whole bunch of businesses that I want to get involved in and spend more time on. But figuring out what that is, where is your unit of time generating the highest amount of output. is an exercise everyone should try to spend time on.
Rachel: Exactly. Efficiency, it just comes from building the team. The sooner you do it, the sooner you get better at it. Then the sooner you are able to stay up here. Because if you're in the day to day, you can't see the opportunities. But if you're up here watching everybody else in the day to day, you're wait a minute.
So actually, every time I have an idea, it doesn't actually create more work for me, I just go to my team, and I say hey, I have this idea. Who should we assign to do it? Right? So someone gets assigned to that project. Then we do it. So it doesn't actually need to create more work for you.
Actually, one of the people I was going to mention is Pinky Cole. She talks about how every time she has an idea for another business, she says yes to it, which I'm girl, you got more energy than me. But she says, right, I just hire somebody to run that business, which is exactly what you're saying. You just you hire an operator.
So she has American Sesh. She started with Slutty Vegan, right? That was her restaurant that she's known for. She just got investment that allowed her to open other restaurants in more locations. She has several in New York that she just opened. But then she's got her personal brand, she has a book that's coming out, she has a Netflix show that she's working on. Now she's also getting Slutty Vegan products in frozen food store. So she's playing a lot of different games.
Then she has the American Sesh, which is another business that she created. So just so much opportunity, if you're willing to like say okay, I have an idea. I'm going to invest in it by giving the money, the profit from it, initially to someone to run it, and then I'll wait for my money right so that I can have somebody running that, get that going. Now I have a really massive upside from each line of business. So that's another great opportunity. But I have a lot of ideas. I don't do most of them because I'm oh is too much.
Sahil: A lot of them are distractions. A lot of them are distractions.
Rachel: Not all of them are good.
Sahil: It's like a great example of just all of these things, like all the examples of billion dollar creators that you're hearing about, that you'll continue to hear about on your show. They're all like someone that thought differently about the system.
Like there's this case study that I shared recently of it was a Stanford business professor gave her students kind of group activity and every group got $5 and two hours to go make the highest ROI that they could on that money. Most of the groups went out and did like a pretty simple thing. They went and like bought something for $5, and then tried to basically trade it for different things and trade up and then sell the eventual things to make more than five. They made like a decent ROI.
Then a couple of groups said well, we have two hours of time. Let's just go make as much money in two hours as we possibly can. So they went and got restaurant reservations at fancy places, and sold those restaurant reservations to people that wanted them. They made a pretty good ROI.
The group that one did something really interesting, which is what they realized was the actually valuable thing was the ten minute presentation they were going to get to give at the end in front of this class of Stanford Business School students. So they went and called up a bunch of tech companies and asked who wanted that ad slot, ten minute ad slot. They made $650 to buy the ten minute slot on the show.
So they made an astronomical ROI. It was like an amazing, amazing case study of they just avoided the distraction, which was the $5. It had nothing to do with the entire challenge. It was just a distraction. They focused on okay, what is the actual highest value asset that we have here? It's this ten minutes in front of a group of Stanford Business School students. Then they reaped value from it at an insane, insane level.
So it's such a cool case study to me of just thinking differently. Whatever system you're in, there's always going to be a distraction that you need to avoid. There's always going to be a really interesting high value asset that you just haven't figured out yet. So if you can just look around and spend more time with observing and find that high value asset, there's unbelievable returns to be made.
Rachel: Yeah. Particularly if everyone starts talking to you like oh, this is not what you should be doing. That's probably what you should be doing.
Sahil: You're on the right track.
Rachel: The more they tell you no, the more you're like this is it.
Nathan: One of the things I'm curious around with how you spend your time, video is really important for all of us but I feel like you two are much better at it than I am of growing an Instagram following. I'm talking about hiring a team. How do you do think about the leap to, I feel like Gary Vaynerchuk was the first one to do this, of just have a social media person or a videographer follow you around and create all of this content? Is that something that either of you are thinking of hiring for your team?
Rachel: No. Because I don't want somebody following me around. I really don't.
Nathan: Not in a creepy way. In an employed by you way.
Sahil: Just like this.
Rachel: No but I was on a run the other day in my neighborhood. You know, we have golf carts in our neighborhood. There was a guy running with some giant weight on his back or whatever that he was pulling. Doing this like intense run, shirt off, sweating, like whatever, right. Then there was this woman in a golf cart behind him filming him. I was like this is mortifying. In front of all of his neighbors. I'm like embarrassed for him. Also, she looked mortified, like the actual person filming him.
Sahil: There's always a wife or girlfriend mortified by the thing that they're having to do in those situations, for sure. I think my wife's probably been there.
Rachel: But I actually think, the way that I think about this, there's another version of this, right? Like, I don't actually want somebody filming me When I'm sitting in my house, or like every time I drop a gem, right? Like every gem doesn't need to make it onto the internet. But what we do is just film every event that we do.
So every time we do a live event, or if we're like going somewhere, going to be like doing a speaking gig or something like that, there's always video and a videographer that's hired for that purpose. So we, because of that, have a ton of raw material that can be turned into clips and content on video, which is exactly what my team is going to be doing over the next couple of months.
So we just have, if you think about it, like we have years’ worth of videos that we have created just from all different settings, including online created videos. Like everything doesn't have to be in person. So I think you can just say if I go to enough events a year and then just bring a videographer for those events, just from one event, you can get three months’ worth of content from it. So I don't actually think you need someone to follow you 24/7. I think they just follow you sometimes when you're doing something significant, you can get enough content from that.
Sahil: Yeah, I think I'm mostly in agreement. I would say the way I think about it at least is like different stands out. I'm always looking for ways that like my content that I'm creating can be a little bit different than what exists out there. I think like with video, the reason it's enticing to me to do something, like not on a 24/7 basis ever, but to do more like actual like sort of real life shooting is it just looks different than the traditional like talking head stuff that you see on Instagram.
Rachel: There's more connection when people see in your setting.
Sahil: Yeah, you're actually real. The liminal moments of just random conversations you're having where you actually drop a knowledge bomb on somebody casually or they drop one on you. It's really interesting. A lot of people would find value in it and learn from it, but it's not captured. You can't capture the essence of that in a performative setting, like doing a podcast because it feels then like it's rehearsed and that the person has a line or a bit that they're going to drop.
Rachel: I disagree with you again.
Sahil: I love being proven wrong, so please.
Rachel: Well, I think you can have really authentic conversations in a podcast setting, but I get what you're saying as a whole.
Sahil: Yeah, I just think it's different. When you see people do a really good job of that natural organic shooting, like you have seen people like on a golf course just like walking around and talking about something. Or like even like Alex Hormozi has done some of it, like just day in the life stuff. Sometimes you're like you feel cringy at it.
Then sometimes you feel like it hits. You're like oh wow, that was a cool conversation they just had with a fan or with someone that asked a question or something. You feel like you see a more like raw, real, live insight. But the reality television shows a really did drive incredible connection with these celebrities that's on a very different level than if they were just acting on a TV show.
Rachel: Yeah, something you just said is like the willingness to be cringy, I think, is very valuable. I don't think people understand that. Like, if you're not willing to just embarrass yourself a little bit, that's where you find those gems and like what's hitting for people. That's the stuff that helps you to stand out. You're is this standing out in an embarrassing way, or is it standing out in a cool way?
Like, for example, I'll give you a quick example. My sister and my best friend don't like my socks that I have on that don't match my outfit, but my niece does though. She's Gen Z. So you listen to the Gen Z's when it comes to fashion. But they were like what is this? This is weird. I'm like yeah, that's the point. It's like a little bit weird. That's the vibe that I want. You know what I mean?
So it's everybody doesn't have to get it as long as you get it. That actually helps you to stand out and then creates a conversation piece or an opportunity to connect. So I think that that's so crucial. I will say you're helping me to realize that two videos that I did recently on my golf cart, people are obsessed with it. They're like oh, I love you driving around your golf cart talking to you. I'm just like oh, I'm just talking because I just finished a run, and I'm on a high. Now I have things to say but it has.
Sahil: Usually people too, like on the cringe thing. Usually when people say something you did is cringe, they're just being haters. Like, yeah.
Rachel: Yes. They were hating on my socks, but they're cute though.
Sahil: I'm talking more about in terms of like content, not like family and things like that. But like when people are oh, I hate that cringe content that's so and so’s putting out. Usually it's because they're jealous or envious of the other person.
Rachel: Yes, hating.
Sahil: Like, I don't have time for that. You shouldn't have time for that in your life. Like if someone is saying that about you, or hey so and so said your thing is cringe that you put out, like screw you.
Rachel: Do y'all know how many people hate me? There are like actual Facebook groups I'm told of people who are just let's hate Rachael Rogers in the Facebook group.
Sahil: Usually, that means you're doing something right.
Rachel: I mean, I'm like the way that I am so unbothered. Because I know the people that I am reaching, I'm changing their lives, right? I'm helping them accomplish what their goals are. So if I'm going to sit here and stress about somebody who doesn't like me, that stops me from focusing on the thousands of people that I could be helping right now. So just allow people to not like you. It's okay. Like, you'll be fine. They don't need to. Not everybody needs to, you don’t even like everybody, right? It's okay.
Nathan: Yeah, I love that. So I guess to wrap up the conversation around how you're producing social media content, one thing that I'm hearing in it is there's a spectrum between my Instagram Stories is just me with my phone or only you reels if they're produced out of podcast all the way to a cameraman following me around all the time.
You can do things, like you're talking about, at events or when you're traveling or you're like okay this is going to be a bunch of time with me with clients or something else where it's going to spark good content. I'm going to book somebody for that. Or like you're saying, Sahil, of having a, you want more of that lifestyle content. You're thinking about what people are experiencing as they scroll through. It's four clips from a podcast then there's something that's actually.
Rachel: Like you're making your eggs. Well, he's always in the cold plunge. I don't know if y'all follow him. What's up with the cold plunge?
Sahil: I spend all my days. I almost brought it actually.
Rachel: Just like be in the cold plunge while he’s on the podcast.
Sahil: It’s hard to get me out of here to do it.
Rachel: But it does stop you, right, because if you're watching everybody else is just straight to camera, if you see somebody in the cold plunge, you're like what is he doing? You know what I mean? Let me unmute this one.
But I think you could also do something just very strategic and say I'm going to hire a videographer to come one day a month. They're just going to follow me as I like drive to drop my kids off. Then I'm going to be making eggs, and just talking to them while I'm doing that. It's just captured some kind of conversations and different moments throughout the day. So I think there's ways to do that, that are not as painful as somebody in your business 24/7.
Sahil: And not as expensive.
Rachel: Yeah.
Sahil: I mean one of the big.
Rachel: And not as obnoxious.
Sahil: Yeah, just you don't have to, I've never, I spend money on high end edits, low end edits, and then I'll do like my own face on there, just like my phone holding it up. I have never seen any data on anything I've put out that proves that like when I spend money on the higher end edits that it performs better, reaches more people.
So that's very empowering when you're starting out is just to realize it actually doesn't matter. Like great content is great content, great insights are great insights. Whether they're like highly edited and beautiful and like an amazing 4k film crew that follows you around, or whether it's filmed on your phone like turned around sitting in a cold plunge. If you deliver like a cool insight that people find value in, you can do really, really well with those things.
Nathan: I love it. Okay, we're going to end there, but I want to leave you all with one last thought. Rachel and I were talking about with this podcast this idea of starting a tour, like starting with the big thing that we wanted to be at eventually and just start that from day one. It sparked a conversation of well, who chose you to be able to host this podcast or have these people in the room?
I was thinking about it. I was at an event. I was at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego years ago, five, six years ago, and Michael Stelzner was up there giving, in front of 3,000 people. He was giving a talk on the state of social media, right. Not the State of the Union, the state of social media. He gives this talk every year, and I was thinking about it. I was hold on, who decided that Michael Stelzner is basically the president and gets to give the state of social media.
He did a great job with talk and all that, but I was just thinking what? Did a council appoint him? Was it a Supreme Court? What, Congress? But he was self-appointed. Right? He chose himself.
So I think as we're having all of these conversations, we're thinking about what it means to build a business like with the ethos of a billion dollar creator. Like it requires choosing yourself. It requires going down this path of saying yeah, I'm the one who's going to do this thing. I'm the one who's going to start these businesses. I'm not waiting for someone to come pitch me the idea. I'm not waiting for someone to give me equity that I deserve. It's like no. I'm going to pay myself in equity. I'm going to choose myself.
That's the thing that I want to leave you with of, that's the shift that you make, of realizing this is where I want to be five years from now, 10 years from now. I'm going to start on that journey today. I'm going to bet on and choose myself.
Rachel: Yes.
Rachel: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Billion Dollar Creator. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe, share it with your friends and leave us a review. We read every single one. If there is a company you want us to profile on Billion Dollar Creator, send us a message on social media and we will consider it. Thank you and we will see you next time.