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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.
Rachel Rodgers: One of my friends has a TV show. He said, “The thing that I wish creators knew is that they are better than the people who produce TV shows at creating content. That YouTube creators and people writing great content, that we are actually better at it than the people getting paid huge sums of money to produce it, who have been doing it for a long periods of time.” He's like, “That's what I wish every creator knew.”
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: Rachel, you look way fancier than I do. I entirely missed the memo about dressing up for this podcast. What's the story? What do you got going on that's more interesting than life at home at the moment?
Rachel: Yes, I don't usually get dressed like this. I usually look more like you. T-shirt, like, that's how I work. But I was on Tamron Hall today, the TV show. The topic was against all odds. So I was just sharing my story of going from being low income to building an eight figure business and sharing some tips. It was great.
Fun fact, completely unrelated, my best friend was also on the show today. We got booked separately for the same show. Yes, it was so fun. So his dressing room was across from mine. We took hilarious photos. He was the segment right before me, also against all odds, right? Talking about him renovating this like 300 year old house that he bought that he has a whole TV show about that's going to launch soon.
So yeah, it was very interesting day. Tamron Hall is amazing. I also was really fascinated. Because TV personalities, you meet them, but you meet their team first. So you go on set, and you're meeting different people in her team. Like, there's so much handling. They just take really good care of you as a guest.
But I was really fascinated by like how all of her team members, it just you can see the culture, the moment you interact with the first team member. Everybody was just super fun, personable, very warm, and engaging. Like, it was beautiful. It got me excited about my own team and the culture that we have.
So I don't know. It just was a good reminder that like your team is going to be seen first before you. When you have a really strong culture, it's that through line is consistent, right. Whether they're talking to you or one of your team members, no matter which team member it is, it all feels the same way. That's the goal. So that was interesting.
But she is such a boss. It was great. But it also was like You have five minutes to say a thousand things. So you've got to talk fast, spit it out, then you're off. It's like three hours of prep time for like five minutes. So it just went live. I'll put it up on my Instagram. But it was pretty cool experience.
Nathan: I love it. Have you done media training? Is that something that you would do before an appearance like that to condense the story that much? Or how do you think about that?
Rachel: Yes. I wish I have now that the segment is over. I've never done media training. I have a publicist. I asked her should I do media training, and she said you don't need it. So I think when you are somebody who's used to speaking publicly, used to speaking to large groups, you're just accustomed to it. I have done a lot of media, but most of it was during COVID.
When I launched my book, I just did a ton of like news. I've done GMA. I've done a lot of things. So I've have a lot of experience doing that. But it's different because when you're in your house, you can control the environment. You have your notes up on the screen. Like you're in your zone because you're in your home or in your office.
When you go into a whole other environment, all these people talking to you and like there's a lot going on. There's a studio audience, and you're talking to her. Then there's the notes and the prep beforehand. There's things on the screen while you're talking. Like it's so much. It's a much more dynamic environment.
Both Robert and I, it was funny because you know her producers prep you. They're like okay, you're going to hit this note then this then this bah, bah, bah, bah. Right? So you're all prepped. Then the first question she has is completely different. Absolutely not the things that we talked about ahead of time, and you're like caught off guard. You're like you got to just think quick and think on your feet.
Which actually I was trained to do that as a lawyer. So I think it transfers over. I do think if you're not comfortable in front of a camera, media training for sure. That's a live show too. So there's no retake. So you’ve got to be on point.
Nathan: We’ll just fix that in post.
Rachel: There's no fixing it. But it was it was really fun. They promoted my book. They gave a copy of my book to everybody and the audience is great. Every time I do one of these media appearances, like the book sales shoot up to like two or three X what we usually sell in a week. So it's a great way to do it.
Then there's, just so people understand like the business model behind it. There is an advertisement for my most popular program and like the program that is the entryway into our world in the back of the book. So people read the book. They see there's a way to work with us. They go to the link. They wind up becoming customers. Or sometimes people just watch something on TV and then become customers without even reading the book, but that's sort of the pathway. So it's a marketing strategy.
I think it's actually, I'm very interested in strategies outside of just funnels and ads. I think that these kinds of things, at least for my audience, I feel like it works better than just ads and all of those kinds of things, funnels everywhere. I mean, there's a time and a place for all of it, but I think there's some other great ways, like sponsoring events, which is something we're both doing. There's so many different ways to market that we need to think beyond just the funnel and the ad.
Nathan: I like it. Yeah, it's interesting thinking about all the different books you see, like these little calls to action. If you're reading Atomic Habits or something, it'll have additional little links off to a resource or something like that. I know behind the scenes, and I see this in a bunch of books now, that's the author saying hey, when you bought that from Amazon, I didn't get an email address. I have no idea. 500,000 copies sold, I can't email you, right.
But if you download this resource, or use this calculator, or this checklist, or something else then I have an opportunity to contact you. You can be a part of our community. So I'm always interested in like the behind the scenes of how those things actually work. Do you have a sense of how many people have joined your ecosystem directly from the book that wouldn't otherwise?
Rachel: Oh, I think many. I don't know exactly the number, but it's definitely in terms of our mailing list, definitely tens of thousands on our mailing list. In terms of people who have joined in our community, I would say hundreds, but I don't know the exact number. We should survey them. I mean, we send a survey to our audience every quarter, but I don't know if we've asked the question where did you first hear about us? That would be interesting.
One of the other pieces to this too, because you want to be strategic, right? Not every single media thing is worth doing. So we literally have an equation like that we sort of do the math on to say this appearance requires me to fly to New York, be away from home for a day. There's like hair and makeup prep, all this stuff that has to happen.
So let's say it’s a one day away from my life or my business, how many new club members could we get? How many new people in our audience will we be in front of because we did this exercise? So for like a whole day away, we want to see like a significant number of new people coming into our community as a result.
So if it was like some really, really small thing, unless it was like a niche that was like everybody in there was one of our people, it doesn't make sense to do it. But getting on a show like this, national TV, definitely feel very aligned with the host, it just makes perfect sense. Then you have a video that you can put on your website, and people can see it and have another example of connection with you.
So I think it's important to think about it strategically. Like if you're going to do media, don't just do everything. Do the things that make the most sense, get you in front of your people, and create that opportunity for you to create that connection and that relationship.
Nathan: So was that almost like a calculator? Right? Could your chief of staff or someone on your team be like okay Rachel, here's the opportunity. I didn't bring these other five to you because they didn't meet the bar, but here's what I think we'll get out of it.
Rachel: Yes, that's exactly how it works. It's like there's a formula to say if it's going to take X amount of hours, how many club members we need to see from that to feel that it was worth it to do that thing? Sometimes it's just a feeling. Like Tamron Hall, as soon as I heard it from my publicist, I'm like hell yes. Just because for no other reason than I want to meet Tamron.
So some things are like that, but other things you do have to evaluate because it's like a longer trip or it's several days away. Speaking gigs are like this, lots of things like this. So I just think it's important for people to do the math on their time and their investment and make sure they're, because we do all these marketing activities that we don't measure the return on them. So making sure you're actually measuring. Doing less better. Like I don't have to do all the activities, but what specific marketing channels makes a lot of sense where I can get the biggest return
Nathan: I like that. Okay, so I have to ask. How many club members is that threshold that gets Rachel on a plane for a day?
Rachel: Well, I feel like that's proprietary. So I'm not going to share that. That's our special secret algorithm. But yes. You want to get like, let's say, hundreds. You want to have more than, ten for example, and it's really like doing the math and saying okay, what's the return? What is the return in dollars to the business on spending the CEOs time in this way? And to train yourself to like make sure you're spending your time on the things that matter the most.
Nathan: Yep, I like that. Okay, so the thing that I mainly want to talk about in this episode today is based off of a comment that you made in episode one, I don't know when, but you just said like chess not checkers as like a throwaway comment. I just latched on to that and thinking about who are the creators that are playing chess when everybody else is out here playing checkers?
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: I think we should make it a recurring segment on the show. But when you're talking about that, I immediately thought of a couple different creators, but the first one is Tim Ferriss. So I was listening to Ryan Holiday on Jocko Willink’s podcast. He was talking about something that I had had kind of a front row seat to, but had forgotten about.
Because it happened in the early days of, not early days of Audible. Like they'd been around for a long time. I think maybe just before they got acquired by Amazon or right around that time. There's this weird thing where authors were noticing that they were selling more audiobooks or as many audiobooks as print books.
Rachel: Yes, I've noticed that.
Nathan: Is that true for your book?
Rachel: Yes, definitely.
Nathan: Yeah. So it's especially true now, but there was like this tipping point. Publishers didn't care about audio book rights.
Rachel: They don't count them. They don't even think about them.
Nathan: Yeah. So becoming really popular. The other thing that was happening is Audible, as like sort of this outsider in the space at the time, had this really interesting royalty scheme where the more copies you sold, the higher percentage you made of every copy. I think it started at something like 30%, which is great. That's better than what you'd make through a publisher. But then it went up, I want to say it went up to like 85% that you make, that you take home.
Rachel: That's amazing.
Nathan: I remember talking to Josh Kaufman who wrote The Personal MBA.
Rachel: I love that book.
Nathan: He had had something happen where he had sold the rights to the publisher, done the normal book deal. Then the publisher had sold off the audio rights to somebody else as they're entitled to do. Then they didn't really want to exercise it. So they were selling it to a third party. It was just like Josh goes can I buy those back?
Rachel: Yeah, like how much?
Nathan: I want to say it was $10,000 that he paid for the audio.
Rachel: That’s wild. So cheap.
Nathan: Yeah. This was like 2013/2015, somewhere in there.
Rachel: Right. It wasn't valued the way that it is now.
Nathan: Yeah. So Josh went on to make, I know, there were months that Josh made over $50,000 just on Audible.
Rachel: Amazing. What a great investment. My God. I love it so much right.
Nathan: Right. Yeah. Bet on yourself, right? I think this is a great book. You don't value the rights. I'm going to get that back and publish it. I think that's the, like Josh made an amazing move. Probably the best investment he'll ever make. You know it's 100X, 1,000X return. I don't know. Like it's going to be crazy. But that's the normal creator thing. What Tim did is really, really interesting to me. Because Tim saw this moment, and he started buying the audio rights to other people's books.
Rachel: Wow.
Nathan: I think the first one he bought was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, or one of those stoic books where for somehow the audio rights were available, he bought that. Then Ryan Holiday had something similar where his audio rights were not valued super highly. So Tim actually owns the audio rights to Obstacles the Way. Tim bought that from publisher.
I think, I need to find out from Tim, but I think he bought the audio rights to like six or seven of his favorite books, and then just had them self-published, put those out there. But that was just one of my favorites of seeing an opportunity and jumping on it.
Rachel: Yes, I feel like there's so much opportunity specifically in publishing because it is such an archaic business model. When you publish a book and you work with a publisher, you're like do you care about selling these books? What's it, like what is the strategy here? What are you actually doing to sell? This is your business.
Their model is essentially like a VC, just making bets. Some are going to take off and make the money for years and years to come for the next however many decades, and then most of them are not going to see much of a return unless the author is going to put the effort in to sell them, which is what I did.
I just went I all in on marketing my book, and we sold a lot of copies. But I think most people's like authors don't realize that they need to market it. So they only sell a couple. Then if it doesn't take off and if it's not a hit, the publisher kind of doesn't care, and they're just not going to put that much effort into making it a hit. More like it has to just naturally organically become one unless the author is going to go hard. So those are your options.
But that is so brilliant to say like oh, I can see that audio is becoming a thing. I'm going to just make this bet. Probably he bought all of those rights for pretty cheap.
Nathan: Yeah, I don't think it was a lot of money out of pocket.
Rachel: Amazing. So fascinating. I'm so curious. Like I wonder if Audible has approached him to buy those rights back? Or like what's the next step in that? Or does he just own them forever?
Nathan: Well, I think he owns them forever.
Rachel: Well, yes. But I'm be surprised if nobody's made him an offer for them.
Nathan: Yeah, and I think Audible and the publishers and Amazon and everybody else, I think they're focused on the next books coming out. They're going to push for okay. Well one, they got really smart. Like that was a moment in time opportunity where you could buy that at those, that was a mismatch price. The market now understands oh, audio rights are worth a lot. Audible, this is now flipped. Where Audible will come in, and be bidding for a book deal and say we'll buy the audio rights. I don't know. Someone else can have the print rights. We don't even care. Right? The print rights have turned into the throwaway as it has gone the other direction.
Rachel: It's fascinating to see.
Nathan: Yeah, these things normalize, and like the market corrects. I just love the example of someone saying like something being poorly priced based on the opportunity. Yeah, and saying okay, cool. I will use that for my rights, like Josh did. Tim's taking it way further and saying like okay, I'm going to buy as much as I can.
Rachel: Yeah. What are my favorite books that I feel comfortable promoting a lot in my content and then buy those. So he has the audience. He does the promotion. So he can drive a lot of sales. But, of course, there's natural sales as well. So that's brilliant.
I actually have a deal with Audible for three books that are going to come out later this year. I don't remember exactly. I don't remember the details of the contract, but one piece that I do remember is that I get the print rights. After a certain time period, I can print the books myself. So I love that because my plan is to print them and make them available for sale in the printed version, and I know how to sell books. So I feel like it'll do well, and it'll generate some additional income for us.
Also a book is a calling card. A book is a way to bring people in. So it's another great opportunity. It's on three different topics. So it's almost like three different, like if you had different landing pages to hit audiences in different ways who are focused on different aspects of entrepreneurship. So I'm excited to see what I can do with that, and I'm getting paid to create them.
So yeah, there's definitely interesting things happening in the audio space. Audible is also, the three book deal that I have with them is so they can create Audible originals. They're starting to do that with creators to say like I want you to come in. They'll take a speaking gig, or you can create an original audio book that's like a short, and they'll produce that. They're also producing their own podcast. So they're going beyond books now in the audio space.
Nathan: You just made me think of two other examples of chess not checkers. One is what Audible is doing because they can pay way more because they have an entirely different business model than the other publisher.
Rachel: They did pay way more. I will say that.
Nathan: Let's just be clear, I got paid.
Rachel: Quite well. We love that Amazon money.
Nathan: So in that, right, if I'm a traditional publisher, and I'm bidding on a book then I'm thinking okay if I sell X number of copies then we'll make this amount of money. I invest this much into it. Here's what I'll earn back, the advance I paid the author, etc. There's one equation there.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: What Audible was able to do is to say we actually have an entirely different back end monetization. We're going for subscriptions, for credits. We know that once you've been hooked on the credits for three years, and you go to cancel. If anyone's like a software nerd or a cancellation flow nerd, look at Audible’s cancellation flow. It is absolutely masterful.
Like in all of these subtle psychological ways, it's like oh yeah, totally. Yeah, you can cancel. Did you want to use the four credits you have left that you haven't used it? Okay, cool. Yeah. Why don't you stay as a member and use those credits? Oh, and keep getting more and more.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: The less you've been using Audible, the more you have like oh, I have 27 credits. I don't want to give that I've now. Then you go further and you're like I do want to cancel anyway. Then they go okay, no problem. But just so you know, you lose access to the 47 books that you already have in your library. You didn't listen to this one. Do you want to listen to that one right now?
So they end up hooking you on this really, really well. So when you're talking about doing an Audible original, Audible is not like doing the same math the publisher’s doing. They are running entirely different economics with their like okay, if you could only get Rachel's new book through Audible and you have to become a paying subscriber then this is potentially worth a fortune to us. The lifetime value could be $12 to $15 a month for ten years.
Rachel: Exactly.
Nathan: Like hell yes, we'll pay up to get this advance.
Rachel: Well, so what's interesting about that too is like a book, if you think about it as a loss leader, right. You get paid to create it, but honestly, when you market it yourself, I spent so much more on marketing the book than I earned from the, and I had a six figure deal, and it still was not enough to cover the marketing for it.
So you think of your book as a loss leader, that's what Audible is doing with me. I'm a loss leader for them. They're going to pay me to create these Audible originals. They feel that I have enough of a following that I'm going to bring a whole bunch of new customers to them. Then those customers are going to stay long term. They're going to pay a subscription long term. So they might come in just to listen to my new Audible originals, but they stay because they're doing Audible originals with other people and other content, and they start to build up a book library in there.
It's so fascinating to see that like they what they paid me, which was very good money, is such a drop in the bucket for the amount of customers I'm going to bring them and that are going to stay long term. They're going to make whatever they make annually, for let's say, the next ten or 20 years. So it just makes a ton of sense to spend that money and create those Audible originals. Brilliant. Love it.
Nathan: Yep, I love it. So the way to think about it and apply it to creator business is if you ever see someone able to spend more than you can. That would be Facebook ads, even in say, Google ads, right. You can see the ranking basically. Who ranks the highest, you know they're paying the most per click, broadly speaking.
So you're like how is that possible? Right, I make ten dollars per customer per month. My math says I can pay a dollar per click right. How is someone else over here paying five dollar a click, $20 a click. That's insane. Go study like their lifetime value and their back end flow and everything else because chances are, they're making money in an entirely different way than you are because they're playing a different game.
Rachel: Exactly, getting very creative. That's so true. Like whoever can spend the most on the marketing can win. Even the media that we talked about. Like not every entrepreneur, especially if you're early on, you might not be able to afford to because they do, a lot of these shows will cover your cost of travel, but sometimes they don't. It depends on their budget. It really depends.
So my travel costs didn't get covered. So the flight, the hotel, the whatever, wardrobe, any of those things that come into play for the expense. It's like can you start spending money on marketing in a different way or in a more strategic way? What can you afford to spend versus what you can't? That determines so much about how quickly you're able to grow.
Another example is sponsorships. I've never done that before. I'm doing it for the first time this year. But buying a sponsorship at an event where it's like thousands of your specific ideal customer. It’s more targeted than Facebook ads, in my opinion, where I was like okay, I get to get in front of 2,000 people and affect them in a certain way and make sure that they know about me.
You can just spend that money just for brand awareness, even if they don't immediately become a customer. Just getting them talking about it and knowing you exist can be part of the value. So I just think it's important that we get creative and go beyond just the most obvious ways to market or to grow your business or even to develop your business model and just look at it from a different angle see what's possible.
Nathan: Yep. I love it. There's one thing I want to go too quickly for chess not checkers, and that's Sahil Bloom. But all I'm going to say is he's coming on the show for our live episode in New York, which we're recording in like three days. So that'll be the next episode that airs, and people can tune in there.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: The person I actually want to talk about is someone, anyone who knows me will be like really, again? That is Taylor Swift playing chess not checkers with her launch of her new show in theaters. I expected, right, she did a fully produced version of 1989. Right? It's fairly normal. After a show finishes then you can go watch it right. You can watch Hamilton on Disney plus. That's normal.
Rachel: Exactly.
Nathan: What I was surprised by is that she launched the Era's Tour in theaters while the tour is still happening.
Rachel: That is also very interesting.
Nathan: Yeah. It's coming live, what, October, November? I should know this.
Rachel: I don't know it. But it's brilliant because it's using the momentum of the show that is still happening right now. Also, I think the timing is strategic because I think she just finished the US tour. Now she's going overseas. So it's like after people have purchased tickets, and she sold out stadiums, now in the US you can go to a movie theater to see the show. So I think the timing is really smart.
Nathan: Yeah, one of the things that stood out to me is how she's cutting out the middleman. In like theater distributions, there's typically three roles, three companies the producer, the distributor, and then the theater itself. So you look at small production companies are working with a big distributor like Disney. So in a classic example, I guess Pixar is owned by Disney. But Pixar is the producer, Disney's the distributor, then you get AMC or whoever else is the theater, and they all take a cut.
But what's interesting with this is that Taylor went straight to the theaters. So for this show, one, she's the producer. She spent a bunch of money. The estimates were $15 to $20 million to make this whole thing. But she's filming a show that already happened. It's not like she said okay, I need 60,000 extras to come in. It's like no, no, these are just fans. We're already doing the show. So she is the producer. That makes sense.
But she says forget it. I don't need. I have enough leverage and enough pull, I don't need someone else to distribute this. I'm going to go negotiate all of my own deals with the theaters.
Rachel: Brilliant.
Nathan: So she gets to cut out the middleman, double dip, however you want to phrase it. Actually, I said double dip. That is a terrible phrase. That implies that like she's getting more than she's owed.
Rachel: Than she’s owed.
Nathan: Yeah, she's just like you didn't do anything. There's no reason that I would pay a distributor when like I can just do your job. I love it when creators say like nope, I'm going to take my fair share of the thing that I made, and cut out whoever it is taking all of these little cuts along the way.
Rachel: Well, it's exactly like taking your costs and turning them into profit centers. Instead of hiring your own producer, hiring somebody on your team that's negotiating your distribution in your name allows them to do that. So it just, it makes a ton of sense.
Beyonce did something similar with Homecoming because that was the Coachella show that she did, where she turned that into a Netflix deal. She sold the rights to that to Netflix, but she is the producer as well because she owns Parkwood Entertainment that produces everything that she does. So she's never paying a producer because she owns production. Otherwise, that would be a line item. It would be an expense she'd have to pay. So she created her own production company so that she earns money on producing her own stuff, and also has a lot more control to.
So it's just another example of cutting out the middleman. Really fascinating. It makes so much sense. Now in the day that we live in, like there's so much that we figured out we can do all of these things ourselves. It's funny.
One of my friends, I might have said this on the show already, but one of my friends has a TV show. He said, “He said, “The thing that I wish creators knew is that they are better than the people who produce TV shows at creating content. That YouTube creators and people writing great content, that we are actually better at it than the people getting paid huge sums of money to produce it, who have been doing it for a long periods of time.” He's like, “That's what I wish every creator knew.”
So it's like if you can take that skill set and apply it, now you can cut out everybody. You don't have to pay anybody else to produce the things that you want to produce. All kinds of entrepreneurs now are producing their own TV shows on YouTube.
We've created our own sometimes radio shows or podcast networks, which is like a radio channel. So much is possible. It’s very interesting to study these and then apply it to like okay, when I'm starting out creator, what does that look like? We're all cutting out the middleman in one way or another already. So we can look for more ways to do that.
Nathan: One thing that stood out to me is how you're talking about people creating their own shows. There's the idea, and you just have this going on Tamron Hall. There's producers. It’s a full TV and the amazing set and all of this stuff. You think about like oh, I could never do that.
But what are you thinking is like the amazing set that always looks the same, that's probably the cheapest part. That's an office space that's five grand a month or something. You're paying an interior designer to make it amazing and match your brand and all that. That's a one-time cost. So the thing that makes it feel the most professional is actually quite achievable. But for whatever reason, we think like oh, I could have a home studio, but I could never have.
Rachel: Right. Well, like everybody's buying those. Well, not everybody, but a lot of well-paid content creators are buying those led walls. That's exactly what she has in her studio. It's an LED wall or you can put all kinds of things on the screen behind you. So lots of other people are buying that wall.
Somebody told me the price. Maybe it's $30,000 to buy that wall or something. It's not even that expensive as a one-time expense that you're going to produce your show in front of. Then you get to just change the wall. You can create all kinds of things and put it on the wall. So you don't even have to redesign anything. It's just creating digital art that you're putting on the wall. So it's interesting. Yes, I feel like we're like okay, what are these TV shows doing? How can we do that?
Nathan: I love it. Okay, last example that I have of chess not checkers is Reese Witherspoon with Hello Sunshine. So I just came across this because actually a friend of both of ours, Ayman, sent it to me because I was asking what are other examples. This one blew me away. I'll comment on it from someone who recently learned about the scope of this, and I'm sure some listener will be like I'm a mega fan and like fill in all these details.
Rachel: Exactly. This one is hard to top. I don't think I've seen an example that is more genius and impressive than this.
Nathan: Yeah. So Reese Witherspoon, famous from all kinds of great movies, TV shows, morning show on Apple Plus. So what she did is she created a book club. Okay. Lots of people have book clubs.
Rachel: A lonely book club seems so simple. Doesn’t seem like.
Nathan: Is that a billion dollar move? The book club really a billion dollar move? Reese is like watch me.
Rachel: Exactly.
Nathan: So what she does from here is as she's featuring these authors in the book club, going back to the Audible conversation earlier, she buys not the rights of the whole book. She's like let me just buy the film and TV rights. Then if it happens to, the book takes off and gets optioned, I'll help you do that, of course, but we'll go from there.
Rachel: But there's an important piece to this because she's leveraging the book club to actually launch the books. So her book club makes it more likely that that book is going to take off and be a best seller or just have a huge impact, which then makes the movie rights more valuable.
Nathan: Yeah. So what's interesting is that the movie rights have, or the options right, are worth one amount to everyone else, but to someone in her position, she knows once she gets the rights, the value changes dramatically because maybe it just became five times as likely, ten times as likely to get optioned for a movie. It's a huge, huge difference.
So anyway from his book club, I don't know the total number of books they've launched, but she says on her site 61 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 15 Emmys or Golden Globes, and they have 57 million community members. I'm not sure how much.
Rachel: 57 million. That's better than like most TV shows don't have. there might be no TV shows that 57 million people watching. Right? Amazing.
Nathan: It's wild. Like getting these rights, selling the rights to Netflix, using her own production company. There's just all of these different things. She went on. I was looking at the numbers. Let me find it. Yeah, Reese Witherspoon sold her production company Hello Sunshine for $900 million to Blackstone Group. So. Book club, $900 million exit.
Rachel: Exactly. I think the book club probably was part of it. I'm curious to know for sure. I'm assuming it was because it's such an integral part of the business model. But.
Nathan: Yeah, I don't know any of the economics. Once I saw that, I was like okay, I have to dive in. Because even their show The Home Edit, which is on Netflix. They've got a podcast tied to it called Best Friend Energy. Just their Instagram for that has 6.7 million followers. So I'm like oh, okay, this is big.
Rachel: Yes. We used to talk about the Oprah effect. I think that this is a similar thing, like following the Oprah model, but even taking it beyond that because then you have the movie rights as the next step, which makes so much sense. I do think Oprah has made a couple of movies out, but it's not her business model. It's not what she's repeatedly doing. So I feel like Reese looked at the Oprah model and said let me take this to the next level and add this fact that I can produce these movies
Nathan: And own equity.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: That's the biggest thing is like get paid in equity. Own the equity that you're driving the value up on considerably. Reese is like yep, no problem.
Rachel: Wow. So it's like strategically choosing books for the book club that they'd want to make a movie out of. It's so good.
Nathan: The author is just like this is amazing. They own the rights to the book. They're getting a huge amount of promotion.
Rachel: Like who else would they want to sell the movie rights to when they've been involved in making this book a best seller, which is what every author wants. As many readers as possible. So the same company that's given them readers now can give them movie viewers.
Nathan: Oh, I love it. Okay, so that's our chess not checkers segment. Everyone listening, send us more examples. Like this is the stuff that we nerd out on. So in our Instagram DMs. So if you're like ah, here's someone playing chess.
Rachel: I got one for you. Yes.
Nathan: We want to hear it.
Rachel: I love it.
Nathan: All right. Have you followed what's going on with Scribe? Apparently, we're just talking about book publishing today.
Rachel: Yes, exactly. So we talked about authors, now we're talking about book publishing. But yes, they're the company that helps experts create their own book. They don't have to sit down and write it. They interview them, take the transcripts, and help them turn it into a book.
Nathan: Then they have a publishing arm and then do all that. So it's like they're trying to make the best of both worlds. You get all the support and all of that from traditional publishing, but like they understand that the author does a lot of promotion. The author should make, I don't know what the commissions are. I assume 50%/60% to the author?
Rachel: I don't know. But the interest that the author has is they're going for high level professionals. People who have a high level of expertise and have always wanted to write a book. It's almost like you're a consultant, or you're selling services of some kind. The book is a way for you to get in the door with people, get you in front of more people that will become clients. So the author actually doesn't need to make money from the book. They're making their money from the services they're going to sell to more people because of the book.
Nathan: Yep. Yeah. So I've been around this company for a while. The original founders, I've known them. They ended up bringing on a CEO as they kind of stepped back and filled other roles, which I think honestly, for a lot of founders, is a good thing. Like we shouldn't be too attached to the CEO role.
Rachel: Yes, I agree. You have to think about how am I best adding value to this business? Is it running the day to day, or even running the next five years? Like what makes sense. How do you add value to the business? Put yourself in that position instead of being in the top role just because you can.
Nathan: Yep. So they do that. They run with a new CEO for a few years. Then, as I understand it, I don't have inside knowledge on this part of it, but they ended up, like the original founders fully sold their shares, exited the business last year. Then what a month and a half ago, something like that, I just started hearing like Scribe is going under. They're bankrupt. They're not paying contracts. There's like this.
Rachel: Less than a year after the sale they're going out of business.
Nathan: Yeah, like a year, year and a half. Somewhere in that timeline. Wow. So anyway, that like that was shocking. Then I hear from two other friends of mine, Sieva and Xavier, who run a business called Enduring Ventures. They go and buy companies that they think.
Rachel: Are in distress.
Nathan: Well, I think their goal was to buy really great companies that they can grow for a long time, but they will happily buy distressed great companies as well.
Rachel: It’s a lot cheaper when it's distressed.
Nathan: So anyway, they announced the deal a month ago or something like that. I think they've been in lawyers and due diligence and all of that. But they just announced today two things, that the deal was closed. So Enduring Ventures now own Scribe, which I'm excited about because I have a huge amount of respect for those guys. But what surprised me is they also announced the Eric Jorgensen, who wrote the Almanac of Naval Ravikant, which is one of those books, if you haven't read it, you’ve got to read it. I've given away so many copies of it.
Rachel: You can kind of listen to it. They did a podcast where they kind of read the whole thing, basically.
Nathan: Oh nice. Yeah because I think part of it was this idea like Naval with Eric was like sure, I'll do it. But it's fine if it makes money and all of that, but I don't want it to be seen as not writing a book is selling out in any way, but he just wanted it to be widely accessible.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: So they made it available to read for free online.
Rachel: It’s a very interesting story because Eric was just a fan of him. He decided to ask him if he could interview him, or take all of the content that he'd already put out there and turn it into a book. It was something like that.
Nathan: Like condense it down into something that's approachable. Because like I've given it to two of my brothers who loved the book, and they're not going to sit down and binge listen to 50 hours of Naval on all his podcasts. They're not in this world. But they read the book and loved it. It was like the appropriate depth.
Anyway, so they just announced that Eric is going to be the CEO of Scribe, which I think is fascinating because Eric knows like all these authors. He has a front row seat to like the self-publishing world. Then also, like he just has an amazing reputation in the space. Because, I mean, like the foreword for the almanac book is written by Tim Ferriss.
There's just, I think everyone saw like how well, how good of a steward of Naval’s ideas Eric was and said like oh, great. You did a great job there. We trust you. Yeah. So now all right, Eric is making more of these books. Now he's going to be the CEO of the book creation publishing company.
Rachel: What else has Eric done? Is that his main thing that he's done is create that book for with Naval?
Nathan: That is a good question. I know he was in the startup space and has done a couple of companies. Okay, one of which I think he's sold. Then I want to say he comes from like the product management space in like startups and that world, and then he's really done the content creator thing. I know he's built a great audience. He has a course on like understanding leverage in business. So he's taking that further.
So I think is his path, someone else who knows more can correct me, but I think his path was like startups and software in that tech world. Then going into content creator and then now the CEO of a business that serves content creators.
Rachel: I just think the pathway is interesting because sometimes it's like you just take steps that something has you curious, something has you like sparked your interest, and you just become obsessed with something. Sometimes you just need to follow that. You have no idea where it's going, but you do it. It can lead to all kinds of things, even that are not necessarily on that pathway, but you just make a connection while you're on the path that leads to something else.
But that's very interesting. It makes sense for them if they feel like the business was in really bad shape to hire someone that is trusted in the space. That is known to people who are going to be their clients, who they hope to have as their clientele, as somebody that they trust to kind of turn the ship around. It's a very, very strategic hire.
Nathan: Yes. What I thought was interesting, as you're saying, like you go on path, you don't know where that's going to go. Eric was the person who was close enough to Scribe to see what was happening. He texted Sieva and Xavier because I think he's an investor in their fund, potentially. And was like hey, someone needs to swoop in and save this. You two are the best to do. So, I love the that they swooped in and saved it and then said like now we need to a CEO, and we think you're the best.
Rachel: How about you?
Nathan: He’s like I was just saying you should fix this. They're like yeah, and you should fix it with us. You don't know when like a random idea will turn into like an entirely new career.
Rachel: Okay, this takes me on a tangent that we probably don't have time to go on, but I am curious. Do you feel like you could ever be the CEO of someone else's company?
Nathan: I don't know. I am very, very attached to my company.
Rachel: Same.
Nathan: When I see people who are not attached to their company, they're just like oh, I started something up. I scaled it, and I have this like emotional distance from it, or I bought a company and it's a good business. I'm attached to how good of a business it is. But if I get a great offer, I’ll sell it.
I think I might be attached to ConvertKit maybe almost to an unhealthy level. Like this is my thing. I've poured ten and a half years into this company. I love the people, the mission, and everything else. To answer your question, no, I don't think I can be a CEO of someone else's thing.
Rachel: Yes, I think it has to do with being mission driven. Like it's a mission driven company. You're very attached to the mission and how you are executing on the mission and seeing the results of that mission. That's very satisfying. Even beyond the money, it's so satisfying to see like actually the goal of this company happening and see examples all the time and talk to the people who appreciate this product because of what is able to do for them.
So I think all of that makes you very attached, which I can relate to because same. I'm very attached to the mission and can't imagine not being, but I definitely am willing to give up the role though. If I feel like that's what's best for the mission to keep moving it forward, I would absolutely give up this job and do another job or do no job and just be an owner.
Nathan: Chairman of the board or something.
Rachel: Exactly. I think the commitment to the mission is more important than what I do on a day to day basis. I imagined that you share the same thing. But yes, I don't know. I mean, maybe later in our career or at some point we could see ourselves doing this, but I feel the same. Like I don't think I could lead something else. I guess it’d have to be something that you can get as excited about as you are about ConvertKit.
Nathan: Yep.
Rachel: And, of course.
Nathan: It’s just a thing that I get as excited about as I am for ConvertKit that I end up acquiring or starting inside of ConvertKit.
Rachel: Exactly, exactly. You just buy it.
Nathan: I love that idea. That should be part of our community.
Rachel: Yes, totally. You know what? On a future episode, we should definitely get into acquisitions because that is definitely a strategy to become a billion dollar creator. You've done some of that. So we should dig into that. I've attempted it and then it didn't work out in the end. So I haven't done it yet, but I'm sure I will.
Nathan: I like it. Let's wrap up with one other thing. You were just in Sardinia.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: You like, well one, you just have this like glow about you that despite traveling all over the world, your like oh, life has been good. So I'm curious. You just gave me a little teaser. So I'm curious what that sparked around thoughts on longevity or something I know listeners know you care about a lot.
Rachel: Oh, yes. That's my latest obsession. So very inspiring place, and Netflix just did a whole show on longevity that I could not wait to watch about blue zones. That's a book that came out a long time ago. But now they've turned it into a Netflix show, and they're trying to take. They sort of have a framework for what are the things that are common between all the blue zones, and how can you create a blue zone? How can you take a city and turn it into a blue zone? So I'm fascinated by that.
But one of the blue ones is Sardinia, which is this tiny island off the coast of Italy. It’s a part of Italy. They were saying like some of the attributes. It’s very hilly and mountainous. So people are constantly walking up and down hills. I went on a run, and it was very hilly, and it was actually very refreshing. It was great.
They said one of the things that's unique about Sardinia that helps people to, because people there become, what they mean by longevity is they become centenarians at four X the rate that we have centenarians in the US. So you're more likely to live to 100 if you live in Sardinia or if you're from Sardinia. They even have an example of a guy who lived in the US until he was 65, was told he had six months or less to live, moved back to Sardinia where he grew up. He lived to like 100. It was wild. What is it about this place?
One of the things was their wine. It's just a beautiful culture. Italian culture is great, but it's just very friendly, warm, welcoming. Lots of conversations. You take forever to have meals. It’s just spacious. It's not all about work, work, work like Americans are.
But one of the things was everywhere we went like we were offered this like special homemade wine or like alcoholic drink. I don't even know what it was. I forget the name of it. But everywhere we went, I was like I'll take it. Because people were like I don't know if I want to try it. It might not taste good. I'm like I'm throwing it back because I apparently it helps you live longer.
Nathan: These people live to 100. I'll drink whatever they're drinking.
Rachel: Whatever they're drinking, I'm drinking it. We had amazing boat day out. It was just like in terms of if you want to learn how to live, it's a great place to learn how to live better and enjoy your life more. One of the other things that we did, we went to a spa there that was absolutely magical. It was totally the whole sort of circuit of like you get in the dry sauna and get really hot. Then you go from that to like cold plunge. There's like four different steps in it. They have that at every single spa.
Nathan: You're like oh, you listen to Huberman as well. They're like we've been doing this for hundreds of years.
Rachel: Exactly. This is not.
Nathan: What's a Huberman?
Rachel: Yes, exactly. This is not a new thing that startup guys have come up with. Okay, this is something like that has existed for a long time. But the other cool thing related to longevity that's out now is Peter Atea has just launched this course called early. That's all about like he works with a very small group of clients, from what I understand, to take them through this process. It’s all about prevention.
Instead of waiting for a disease to happen and then treating the disease, how about we just treat the person the whole way and prevent the disease from even happening? You're more likely to live longer if you're able to do that. He has a podcast, and it can be very technical and nerdy. But it definitely teaches you these different things that if you just shift how you do certain things, even how you work out. Like we obsess over cardio, but actually it's muscle building that's going to help you to live longer.
But he just launched a course called Early, and I was on his list waiting for it because you can't hire him. Listen, if anybody has a hookup or like can introduce me to Peter, I'm happy to take that introduction because I'd love to hire him. But so the next best thing is he came up with this course that I think he's done once before. He's done one cohort before. I sent it to my girlfriend because she was interested in doing it too.
We bought it immediately, like within minutes of getting the email, because I had a feeling it was going to sell out. Another friend of mine went to buy it six hours later, sold out. Closed. I was like wow, there's just such demand. I think what he's going to start doing is training other doctors to do this kind of preventative medical work so that instead of waiting to get sick, we start to do these tests and see what's likely to happen in the future and then start taking action to prevent it.
Also too like a lot of people in the longevity space are just kind of, I don't know, they're just weird. It's like wear these weird glasses or don't wear shoes. I feel like it's more accessible and credible from Peter. So I'll let you know how the class goes, but I'm excited to dive into it. It's just online training. I don't even know if there's community in it or anything else, but you just take the class step by step. It's like a 12 week program or something like that.
Nathan: Yeah, I'm curious to find out more and what you learn.
Rachel: Yeah. I think the reason why I think it's sold out so fast is because he just creates a ton of content, podcasts and all these. It's like you almost don't have to market or sell, right? If you just create amazing content all the time, when you go to sell, it just sells out instantly because people already trust you. They already have that connection, and they're ready to go. So more content, less marketing is my advice.
Nathan: I like that. That is a good place to leave the show for today. We're going to be hanging out in a couple of days in New York. Live recording happening there. Nashville is coming up, New Orleans. Plenty of shows on from that. People should go to a billiondollarcreator.com to find the live show they want to go to.
Rachel: Yes.
Nathan: It's so cool. Rachel, we're actually on tour, selling out venues. It's a great time.
Rachel: I mean, I'm impressed with us. Also, can we talk about the t-shirt for a minute though because I'm obsessed with the t-shirt.
Nathan: Yes.
Rachel: You're going to get your limited edition first edition billion dollar creator t-shirt. So that, in and of itself, is a reason to come.
Nathan: I love it. Then you'll wear it around and people know like oh, you were there in person at the first tour of the podcast.
Rachel: Exactly.
Nathan: Once was becomes a top ten business show. Then people will be like oh, you're an insider. I love it.
Rachel: Yes, yes. Those t-shirts will sell for lots of money in the future. I'm sure of it.
Nathan: It’ll be framed. It will be framed on someone’s wall like a Lebron jersey or something.
Rachel: Listen, dream big is what they say.
Nathan: All right, so go to billiondollarcreator.com. We appreciate anyone coming to the show in person. So all the dates will be on there. Also just tell people about the show, write reviews, subscribe, all of that, and we'll keep more episodes coming.
Rachel: We sure will. See you next time.
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.