Status Games, Fame, and the Truth about FIRE

Today Greg is joined by Nicolas Cole, the co-founder of Ship 30 for 30, a daily writing challenge. In this episode, Greg and Nicolas talk about how much money it really takes to be free and why it's better to be anonymously rich than it is to be internet famous with no customers. 


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LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
Production Team:
https://www.bigoceanpodcasting.com
Nicolas Cole:
https://www.ship30for30.com/
https://twitter.com/Nicolascole77

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 - Intro
4:37 - Someone somewhere is working harder than you
12:48 - A mental model for competition
20:32 - How much money does it take to be "rich"?
30:51 - Status games

Creators & Guests

Host

GREG ISENBERG

I build internet communities and products for them. CEO: @latecheckoutplz, we're behind companies like @youneedarobot @boringmarketer @dispatchdesign etc.

What is The Startup Ideas Pod?

This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).

📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com/

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Free 5 day course on using the ACP method to turn strangers into customers via internet audiences and communities over here https://www.communityempire.co/

Greg: Dude, what are you, what are you drinking?

Nicolas: This is my, my morning protein shake.

Greg: Both you and Dickie Bush have like morning schedules, actually not even just morning, like morning, afternoon,

Nicolas: Yeah. Dick, Dickie, I think is a bit more dialed than, than I am. I've tried, I've tried to let go a little bit over the past couple of years, but even still, I am my, I am in my ways. I still have a pretty strict routine.

Greg: What's a, what's a typical day in the life of Cole?

Nicolas: say I'm going to get up at six or six 30, but actually get up at like seven or seven 30,

Greg: There we go, that's the honesty I like to hear,

Nicolas: Yeah, uh, I try, but I'm, I'm not a morning person. try and like, maybe stretch a little bit in the morning if I can, just get the body moving. Uh, lately I've been, I used to eat a big breakfast. I realized that was kind of like weighing me down might be age as I get older.

So now I just do a protein shake with like peanut butter, coconut water. You know, I chug one of these mountain valleys first thing in the morning, hydration, very important. and then it just depends on the day, like some, some days, especially cause ship 30 and everything is just growing. So some mornings are all.

Team meetings, you know, getting people aligned for the day. And then I do deep work in the afternoon, other days, more like middle of the week. If people know what they're working on, then my mornings are, you know, I, I leave them pretty empty so I can just like go straight into writing or work or something and then check in with the team around like one or 2 PM.

And then lately I, this is like the first year I've been back in a good, uh, gym routine. Usually around like three, I'll go hit the gym two days a week. I do gym and physical therapy back to back, just kind of work on mobility and stuff. And then after that, like days, usually done, come back, maybe close out some slacks, answer a couple of emails, do what I got to do.

And then spend the rest of the night with, uh, with Alyssa, my fiance.

Greg: which is pretty dope that you're basically stopping a work at three or four every single day,

Nicolas: Yeah, it took a lot. I mean, you know, though, like it took a long time to get there. Like I, you don't have that luxury in your twenties. You don't have that luxury when you're like. First starting my first business. I didn't have that. Even when we first started ship 30, like that was hard. I mean, we were putting in work, you know, like I was up working seven, 8 AM.

I might stop around four or five for dinner. Then I'd go work another three hours, you know, seven to 10, finish some stuff. Like there was definitely a year, year and a half there where Dickie and I were pushing it really hard.

Greg: and it feels like Dickie is Also pushing it really hard. Like I remember last time we hung out, I was like, come to dinner. It's going to be with a bunch of great people and, and. You're like, I don't know, Dickie's going to be working. Uh, and then you send me a text like, ah, we're working, you know, we are working late night or Dickie's working late night.

So do you find you, you both work the same or is one of you working harder than the other? Because I think the last thing you want. In a partnership is any sort of resentment where one person is working harder than the other.

Nicolas: I think we both work about the same. There, there are periods where just because we have different, Uh, not even like responsibilities in the business, but there's just things that I'm better at than him and things that he's way better at than me. And so there's certain things that we're building where sometimes the dinner example, like that was right when we were launching our ghostwriting program.

And at that time I had a little bit more bandwidth because I had already like the month or two before. Was my grind month, you know, and so that month or two before like I didn't do anything But just work go to the gym sleep and I and I basically built the whole ghostwriting curriculum in 30 days You know, which is the equivalent of like writing a whole book and recording videos in 30 days It was a lot and so I had already done that work and during that time Dickey didn't have Like as much to work on because I was the bottleneck, you know, I needed to create this curriculum But then a month later, you know when you were like, hey come out to dinner like then that he was in that period You know, so he was like, okay.

Well now the curriculum is done Now I got to go build all the infrastructure and everything for this So I think we work the same sometimes it overlaps. , but like We both enjoy working, you know, I enjoy being dialed in like that.

And I, and so does he,

Greg: And by the way, I want to like set the stage here with like who you and Dickie are and what you've built ship 30 for 30, seven figures a year, uh, business. Um, both of you have grown to like together, I don't know, five, 600, 000 followers on platforms, at least in the last few years. And someone asked me recently, who's one of the most underrated Twitter Roddy is actually how he described it. Yeah. And I said, , even though you're getting pretty rated, cause like a lot of people know you. I still feel like you're underrated, uh, in the sense of like you're dialed in when it comes to building content, writing for the internet community, you know, building SAS products with type share.

Like you, you're, you're building an empire through writing and it's.

Nicolas: Well, I appreciate that. whether it's true or not, I mean, I don't know. I think other people will have to be the judge, but I certainly feel that way. I have always enjoyed being the, the unsuspecting threat in the room, you know, like one of, one of my like dark twisted fantasies is always thinking like. If I go to a industry event, and there's a panel, and everyone's really excited to hear all these other big name people talk, and then I'm on the panel, and by the end of that, you will know that I am not just Some guy, you know, that's definitely the ego part of me, but it, but it also, I constantly have something to prove to myself. um, Growing up. My dad used to have this t shirt. My dad was really busy and, you know, cared a lot about his career. And so I have sporadic memories, you know, spending time with him. but he used to wear this t shirt when he would wake up and work out every single morning.

It was like a Nike t shirt. It might, it might even have been an and one t shirt way back in the day. And on the back is this like kind of big, long monologue. And it's like, Somewhere, someone is practicing harder than you. They're spending more time in the gym than you. They're sweating more than you.

They're pushing themselves harder than you. And when you meet them, you will lose. And I, and he wore, I mean, my dad is like successful, but like kind of cheap. And so he never bought a new workout t shirt. He wore the same workout t shirt like every single morning, all my entire life, all growing up. And so every morning I would wake up and I would like see him downstairs.

And I would read the back of that t shirt and that it was such a small thing, but it had such a huge impact on me. And I've thought about that seriously, like my whole life is I'm just like, I am, I am that somewhere. Someone is working harder than you. And when you meet them. You will lose and I've just like fully internalized that

Greg: I was actually thinking about something similar this morning. So, I woke up, it's kind of like a cloudy, rainy day here. And, I was talking to my fiancé and I was like, usually I go for a walk in the morning. And I was like, you know what, I don't want to go for a walk, it's like, Probably gonna rain really hard and I just like I'm not feeling it and she's like no you should go you should go So I was like, okay So I go for my walk and I was thinking about why did I actually make the mental?

like cross the mental hurdle of like I'm not gonna go do this thing that I know is good for me and I was thinking about it and I was like I remember growing up my grandfather Who lived well into his nineties and was in great shape, would go for daily walks

Nicolas: hmm

Greg: grew up where all my aunts and uncles live within like one mile radius basically of each other and my grandfather would basically walk to all of us and he would kind of just like ring the doorbell would ring.

It's like, who's that? Like, is it, you know, who is there? And it's, oh, it's my grandfather just like walk there. and it just got me thinking about like growing up nature versus nurture and how these like seemingly. minor,

Nicolas: insignificant

Greg: insignificant things that our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins do in their lives, some of them stick with you

Nicolas: Yeah, I mean not to you know, we don't have to like go down the political rabbit hole, right? But recently the whole affirmative action thing getting turned over and I think that's that's like one of the nuanced points that is very difficult for people to hold in their head is Where you grew up and this and the sort of things like even even the fact that I Had a dad so already an advantage, you know had a dad that even though You know We didn't have a lot of talks growing up and like it's not like he sat me down and like explained work ethic to me And stuff but even just the fact that in my home I could observe a male figure showing up and doing the repetitive thing every single morning.

Huge, huge nurture advantage, you know? And I don't think you really realize it until you get later in life. And same with you. It's like just, just observing how people close to you, the choices they made, the, the ways that they carried themselves, the choice of doing the hard thing versus the easy thing.

Like, I don't think we really realize how much we soak. Those things up and then you see other people who don't have those things, you know, and then it's like society turns to them and it's like, well, why don't, why, why aren't you different? Why don't you have that? It's like, well, you didn't have any of the nurturing.

You didn't have the model. you know, so yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot lately too.

Greg: It's a bit of like a ripple effect, right? Like, it's not about the fact that your dad wore that t shirt so much, or the fact that like What that t shirt meant was he showed up to work every day. He compared himself to the greats, not like people worse than him. And he did it publicly, basically, like he did it within your family to let your family know. Working out is really important. Health is really important and being better than other people is really important. So that, so when I hear stories about like you almost were like a professional hockey player, you were one of the best world of Warcraft people. You start a Twitter account and go to zero to 200, 000 in two years, you start a company and you're making like seven figures of cashflow and teaching a whole generation of people to.

Go make a million dollars as a writer. someone asked me, Oh, like, how did Cole and Dickie get there? They must be lucky. I'm like, dude, no, someone, someone

Nicolas: No.

Greg: like my answer. No, like, just, just no.

Nicolas: That's why I love the somewhere someone is working harder than you. Like I tell myself that every single day and any, anytime I don't want to do something, that little phrase like pops back into my head and I, and that's all it takes. Like, do you ever watch the Michael Jordan, um, documentary, the last dance, right.

And like how he would like make up little narratives for himself. Like, I didn't really realize how many years that I've done that. Where the moment that I'm tired or the moment I don't want to do something or whatever like that little phrase comes in somewhere Someone is working harder than you and it doesn't even have to be a specific part I just imagine this like doesn't have a name.

It's not a real person I just imagine someone like me waking up one day and going wow They did the thing that I always wanted to do and I just get filled with you know, every emotion from frustration to Drive to anticipated joy, like what will that feel like when I get, you know, and it's just like this endless source of motivation for me.

Greg: How much do you think about competition of ship 30 for 30? And, and your whole empire with other writing programs, ghost writing programs, do you think about it a lot?

Nicolas: So a cool business concept that I, that I've learned and been introduced to over the past couple of years. And I learned this from Christopher and Eddie, who I started category pirates with, which was a separate paid newsletter. It was all about category design.

And one of the cool. category design, not even principles, but just, like mathematical takeaways is that when you're the leader in a category, the best thing that you can do is grow the category. The more that the category grows, the more that you benefit. You know, so the more that the smartphone category grows, the more apple benefits, the more the electric car category grows, the more Tesla benefits.

So I look at other writing programs and other writers and other people talking about the same things as a net positive, because they are growing the pie and the bigger the pie gets, the more that we grow as well, you know? And so that's why it's a bit of a contradiction because on the one hand, I am a highly competitive person, but it's really not competition with someone specific.

It's just within myself. And then on the other hand, I'm very aware of these category dynamics where businesses, a little bit of a winner take all in the sense that the category King captures the majority of the category and the upside, but the reality is it's also not winner take all because as the category grows, lots of other people can be successful and.

Be part of that upside as well. So it's like, I don't even think about it as having competition. Like they're, they're all partners. You're all helping grow this category that we're at the forefront of. So thank you, you know,

Greg: That's a, that's a very American way of looking at it in a good way. I Americans come at it and I love this about America, which is, you know, if I'm eating. I want everyone to eat type thing, like let's feast together. And like, it's, it's all about growing the pie and not from a scarcity mindset. It's really from an abundance It's the best way to describe it, I think, um, people from like Europe and Canada often.

Are more in a protective mindset. It's like, Hey, I built this thing and I'm just trying to like build walls around it. So I could protect as much as possible. I think the reality is. If you're building a venture backed business, it really is winner take most, you have

Nicolas: or you have to act like it is.

Greg: you have to act like it is, and, and to be honest, like Google captures 90% of search, uh, Facebook captures 90% of social, right, it is a winner take most, but I think in our world, in the non venture backed world where, you know, we're building cash flowing businesses, seven, eight figures, like, Businesses, which by the way, might have an enterprise value in a few years of nine figures or high, even high nine figures.

But when you're building cash flowing businesses, Like there's really no reason why you should come at it with a. scarcity mindset, in my opinion.

Nicolas: Yeah. I agree. I think sort of saying it differently to it. It just depends on what type of business, you know, because so if you're a venture backed, you're most likely not building And education business, like you wouldn't really raise money to build a ship 30.

Greg: No.

Nicolas: do you need the money for?

Right.

Greg: about that for one second? Venture backed company called me yesterday. I'm an investor. they're doing 25 million in ARR, okay? They're doing really well. They launch a quasi service based business. attached to their SaaS product.

Nicolas: Ooh.

Greg: Okay. They do it just to grease their flywheel to get people to use their SaaS product more. I'm looking at the numbers and I'm like, this could be like, they could be cash flowing 50 million a year just from this service business. I speak to the founder. I'm like, so what are you going to do here? He's like, Oh, you know, I'm actually thinking of shutting down, shutting down the service part

Nicolas: it doesn't scale

Greg: Why? Oh, it doesn't scale. I was like, well, Do you see the opportunity I see? Like Look at these metrics. He goes, I know it kind of hurts me, but what am I gonna do make 50 million dollars? Literally, that's what he said.

Nicolas: because the expectations and the incentives are upside down. You know, when you go raise all that money, like I've, I've written a bunch about this and it was a painful lesson in my first business, which is every time you raise money, your chances of success don't go up. They go down. You just kicked the goalpost way further, right?

So if you raise a million dollars and then you get acquired for five million, that's not a, that's it. That's a failure. You know, if you raise 10 million and you don't make it to at least a hundred million, that's a failure. You know, whereas if you don't raise money or if you do like a very small friends and family, or maybe strategic, and you're like, I just need half a million to get off the ground, but I'm never going to raise money again.

And you build a cashflow business bootstrap, or with a small round, you get to a couple million, you get 5 million, 10 million, 15 million, like life changing outcome, life changing outcome. And that I sort of, I keep asking myself in hindsight, it was like, was I just never introduced to that perspective?

Or was I just naive and didn't want to hear it? Cause when I was a lot younger, it was like, you're either building Uber or you're working a full time job. Like I looked at it in such a binary. Sort of term it's like billionaire or bust and you start to realize as you build things You do not you do not need to do that And the funny part is most founders if you were cash flowing two million dollars a year You would your desire to go build a billion dollar business would not go up.

It would go down You would be like, why would I expend all that effort? I don't real I don't actually need all that two million dollars a year basically lets me live And do whatever I want. And so I think that's, what's weird is like when you're, especially in your twenties, but you're like in your twenties, you have like 10 grand to your name, you know, and you think I have to go make a hundred million dollars to be happy.

And it's like, you don't even know the feeling of making half a million dollars a year. And if you did, you would realize that like, you don't need as much as you think you need. You can basically do everything you want to do on two or 3 million a year, which is now that I've like built a couple of businesses, you start to realize like that is not as hard to build as, Oh, I got to go build the next Google.

Greg: We were texting about this the other day. We're just talking about how much how much money Do you really need should we talk about it publicly here?

Nicolas: Yeah. I mean, there's a nuance in there, which is how much money. Do you really need versus how much do you want versus how much do you think you need? Versus how much do you think you want? Cause I think all those are four different answers,

Greg: So for you, let's let's talk about it

Nicolas: so mentally, I remember I had a couple mentors that have each told me like 20 million is the goal. You know, if, if you get to 20 million, basically you can cover all your yearly expenses. And, and, and that is like actually the definition of like, you don't really have to work again. The reality is, I mean, you can get to the, you don't have to work again off of.

Two million if you wanted to, it's just, it's the, it's the level of lifestyle, you know, like if you're living in the middle of nowhere in Idaho, you don't need as much to cover your living expenses versus if you're like, I want to never have to work again, but I want to live in Miami or I want to live in LA or I want to live in New York, you

Greg: Okay, I want to I want to talk about this concept of never having to work again A lot of us follow these subreddits like fire, financial independence, retire early, fat fire, lean fire, chubby fire. It's getting really, really popular and I've taken some time off in between things and it gets boring. if you're listening to this podcast, realistically, you would be one of those people that would be bored doing nothing. Nothing. You can't, and if you're going to do something, there's going to be some economic value associated with it. If you decide to do a passion project where you open up a coffee shop, maybe your coffee shop's not going to make a lot of money, but.

It might make something, you know, you're buying coffee for 50 cents, you sell it for 2. So, I think that a lot of people are actually chasing this net worth dollar amount so that they can quote unquote, retire. like, I feel retired right now, straight up. What does retirement mean?

Retirement means that you can do whatever you want to do when you, you know, wake up every day. Isn't it?

Nicolas: So the nuance for me is, one of the things that I've really learned, especially in the domain of writing, is that there's two very different ways of approaching writing. And one is, I like to think of it as art and business. And the business side of thinking about writing is starting with the end in mind and working in reverse.

So it's like, you know, why have we chosen to spend so much time on chip 30? Well, we see a need, we see problems, we see how to solve it, we solve it with writing. We work in reverse, you know, why did we launch our premium ghostwriting academy? We see a problem We see a need we know how to solve it. We know if we solve it.

That's valuable. We work in reverse and so a lot of what I talk about and a lot of where i've gotten to in my career as a writer is like If I want to make money as a writer or if i'm talking to someone else if you want to make money as a writer It's significantly easier to start with the end in mind, start with a problem, and then use writing as a vehicle to solve it.

When I think about, quote unquote, financial freedom or retirement, or like, what's that net worth number, I think a lot more about the other side, which is the art of writing. And there's a lot of things that I want to write. Like, I, I believe that I have the capacity to write the next Game of Thrones. I believe I have the capacity to Write some of the best selling memoirs of all time.

I have some really cool like Category shifting ideas in terms of art and writing and new structures But if i'm really honest with myself Could those make money? Yeah, like if you really are able to create the next game of thrones or star wars or something like that Massive home run right but it is significantly more unknown and more risky Then starting with the end in mind and going, I see a problem, I'm going to just build the solution and I'm going to go solve that.

And so when I think about net worth number and this idea of like never having to work again, what that means to me is shifting from, I see the problem and I'm just going to use writing as the vehicle to solve it, to I'm going to take much bigger swings, longer term bets. But I'm not making decisions from a place of this is going to make me money now.

It's more on the, I would classify as the art side, as opposed to the business side.

Greg: I like that way of framing it.

Nicolas: cause I think you're kind of lying to yourself if you're like where a lot of writers go wrong, I think is they. Much earlier in their careers, you don't have the money part figured out, you know, you haven't really gotten your footing and you're like, I'm going to go pursue the art, which is great.

But then at the same time, they want the immediate external result and that's where things get hairy because you're picking one thing, but your expectations are aligned with the other. And so that's why, like my kind of whole thesis, especially in the world of writing is I actually think it's better to focus on the business side first.

Learn how to monetize writing, learn how to use it as a vehicle to solve people's problems, answer people's questions, learn business models, learn audience building, learn all the things you need, build your foundation, you know, and then whatever that net worth number is for one person, it might be a hundred K for another person.

It might be a million for another person might be 10 million, whatever, like get your footing. But then once you've gotten your footing and you're like, I now have the skills to be able to take care of myself forever. Like, I, I have a insane amount of career defensibility because I know I can always wake up tomorrow and monetize my skills in a different way.

You know, but the ultimate goal, at least for me is kind of shifting that pendulum from, I'm writing with the primary goal of making money to I'm writing with the primary goal of creating new things that might make money.

Greg: I want to tell you about the moment that I felt really free to do whatever I wanted. Because I think you'll appreciate this. In June 2020, like pretty much, I mean peak COVID. COVID had just started. I bought a house in the woods one hour north of Montreal, Canada. In this, it's actually in a small little town, but it's, it's, it's basically in the woods.

And I walk into this open house and it's this beautiful house. It's five bedrooms. It's overlooking, you know, 80 acres of land and forests and rivers. I walk outside and I like, just smell that fresh air. It's like combination of like maple trees and pine and, and just like, it's on a lake. So it's like that lake air. You're hearing like, I was like, I don't remember the last time I hear, I've heard birds chirping, you know, like birds

Nicolas: Yeah.

Greg: I was like, what, what is this? I saw like a little blue jay, literal blue jay, just like land. On this tree. And I was like, I need to buy this house. And I went

Nicolas: like, wow, the graphics out here are amazing.

Greg: the craft, this is crazy.

Activision. You've really outdone yourself.

Nicolas: That's

Greg: I was like waiting for the lag to happen and it just wasn't. So you know, I went to this open house for fun. Literally

Nicolas: how it always goes.

Greg: Yeah. And I go to the real estate agent and I was like, how much is the house? And he goes, it's 330, 000.

Nicolas: What?

Greg: Canadian.

Nicolas: Oh my God.

Greg: So I go, okay, I'll like,

Nicolas: Put a bow on it. I'll take it.

Greg: I'll take, I'll take it. I get a call the next day. He said, sorry, there's, there's another offer on the table. I'm like, okay, whatever. I was like, put in three. So it's, to me, that felt like a fair offer.

Nicolas: Uh huh.

Greg: Get a call back five minutes later, the house is yours. Next day, I go to the bank. I get a sweet 2. 12% interest rate loan,

Nicolas: Boy, remember the days.

Greg: the good old days. And for basically 1, 000 a month, Canadian,

which is 750 a month, I'm living in this crazy house. And at that moment I said to myself, I don't need any more money ever.

I could live in this house forever. I could smell the beautiful smells. I could get free education and free health care in this country.

Nicolas: Could you imagine? Yeah. Wow.

Greg: I could walk to my favorite coffee shop. There's great, you know, great restaurants. Uh, you know, it takes me 50 minutes to get to the, to an international airport. There's skiing, there's snow, there's all these things. And it made me realize that all these years that I had spent in San Francisco and New York, where I was spending Tens of thousands of dollars a month on random stuff that You know, I moved to those places to get freedom and really I got enslaved by those places.

Nicolas: Hmm.

Greg: the number one way to get more wealthy, I think, is to just lower what you want. And once I started, once I had that mindset shift. Then all of a sudden I was being, I was a better business person

Nicolas: In what

Greg: I, so I think I was just in the past. Okay, when I look back at like all my ventures that I've done, the ventures where I actually like try to make a lot of money.

I actually don't make a lot of money and the ventures that I'm just following my curiosity. And building towards my curiosity, those tend to do better.

Nicolas: Yep.

Greg: for example, in 2021, in the hip to crypto mania, we had an offer. I don't think I've publicly said this, but we had an offer for, we had a hundred, someone willing to give us 100 million to go build a studio incubator around web three startups

Nicolas: Oh my God. even just hearing that, I, I just feel like there's a giant asterisk next to that a hundred million dollar, number.

Greg: from a very, very well known group of people top tier. And I spoke to my co founder about it and I was like, should we do it? Should we not do it? I was like, I know what I want to do, but I'm curious what you think. And, you know, we started talking about it and I was like, no, no, no, we can't. We're not doing this.

We don't, we don't need to do this. We, we have our path and we're going down our path. And if I didn't, if I wouldn't have bought this house. I don't know if I would have made that decision.

Nicolas: Hmm. Something I have noticed, I've been having a handful of these conversations with Some entrepreneurial friends lately and something I wish people would share more isn't the things that they choose to do. It's the things they choose to say no to, because I think it's really hard to wrap your, it was certainly hard for me to wrap my head around it.

Like much earlier on, I was just having a conversation with another buddy. Who's telling me he turned down a, like one year strategic, you know, they wanted to hire him to be like CEO of this company just for a year to kind of like bring it attention, help turn it around a little bit. and they offered him like 2 million to do it.

And he like thought about it. We were having lunch and he was like, yeah, you know, I thought about it for a bit. I talked to my wife about it and then I was like. Like, I don't really need this in my life right now, you know, cause you know, when someone offers you 2 million dollars, like they're not just giving you that, that there's a lot of strings that come with that.

And all of a sudden you have a boss and all of a sudden you have expectations, right? And, and, and the life that you've built for yourself sort of goes out the window. And I am really fascinated right now in these conversations and just talking to different successful people and hearing what they say no to and why.

Like what was the real, why did you turn down a hundred million? Why didn't you take this seemingly cushy job? Cause a lot of people look at that and they're like, what, how could you turn that down? Like, that's my biggest dream. But it sort of circles back to what we're saying about venture backed versus bootstrap, you know, versus the, like what version of entrepreneurship do you want to live and play?

What type of life do you want to build? And I've, I've come to very much the same conclusion. Like I've had some, wild offers in the past two years. And I've said no to almost all of them because I'm like, I really liked the life I have right now,

Something I recognize is it's really not about the money. It's actually more about the status. It's more about the, like you feeling chosen.

Greg: Totally.

Nicolas: You know, like you feel special that it was offered to you.

Greg: it's the status to yourself, but it's also, you know, a lot of people I speak to. Like, I feel like in our world, in, in the cash flowing, bootstrap world, it's pretty low status.

Nicolas: Oh dude. When I, when people ask what I do and I'm like, yeah, I run a writing program. Like you can see it in their eyes. It's as if I just said, I teach kindergarten. Like I've even had people be like, and, and how, and how's that going? Are you, are you having a good time? Like there's like condescending about it, you know?

And I'm like, okay, like I like rich and anonymous is okay with me. You know, like I, I like that, but there's very little status in the world that we're in. Whereas you, if you're a founder of a VC backed company, You could be paying yourself a salary of 80k a year, be losing millions a year, and Be on a trajectory to like work 80 hours a week for five years and your chances of success are 5% or less But when you talk to people, people are, they shower you with admiration.

Greg: It's especially low status being a creator in our world.

Nicolas: Yeah

Greg: Like just calling it what it is. I see it sometimes cause you know, I recently been posting on Instagram. I don't.

Nicolas: Instagram Instagram is a world unlike many others

Greg: So, you know, recently I've, I've, I've been trying to grow my Instagram. If you're listening to this, just toss me a pity follow at Greg Eisenberg. Also on YouTube, please, please. Like I'm trying to grow

Nicolas: subscribe button.

Greg: Yeah. Like give me some amount of status folks. So I'm posting, I'm posting on Instagram and I'm like struggling to get.

Any sort of traction. And I've noticed that people, especially when I'm posting about myself, there's a bunch of shares because I have a business account. You can see who's sharing it. And I know it's people sharing these like photos of myself or these stories that are just like gossiping and making fun of me.

Nicolas: Hey, however we get the metrics up,

Greg: Totally. So there's one way to look at that and be like, that sucks. Right. And it's probably the truth is it is probably a lot of people who I do respect for my like Silicon Valley days and stuff like that. But the other hand, it's like, I'm not trying to play that status game. Like Neval says it right.

Neval says, like playing status games is dumb. Basically.

Nicolas: Yeah. I've, that had a big impact on me when I read that book, which is one of my favorite business books actually. Um, the Almanac. Um, and uh, there's a wrapper I really like Russ, who had a song recently that where he is like, if you have to pick one, go for the money.

Don't go for the fame.

And a cool concept Dickie and I've been talking about a lot is like, This idea of how much revenue can you produce per unit of attention? like if you look at some creators that have Hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers and then you do the the math of like what's their revenue?

Relative to the units of attention that they're producing their ratio is really unimpressive You're like, oh, you're doing, you know, half a billion views a month, but you're only doing 70 grand a month, right? Like, not a great, not a great ratio. I would rather my, my attention be lower, but my profitability per unit of attention be significantly higher.

Greg: I had this conversation with a friend of mine, he has like 300, 000 followers on Instagram, maybe 500, 000 on TikTok, and He called me up and he was like, I'm barely making any money. I'm barely, barely me. I'm scraping by. He's like, what is your suggestion to get me out of this hole? So my suggestion to him was to niche down in a particular, highly monetized sub niche of his, you know, what he talks about.

Oh, but you know, I don't want to, I'm going to alienate all the other people and I'm going to, who cares? Like, that's just like a mental game of him, like he's attached to his 250, 000 followers on Instagram or

Nicolas: Yeah, why?

Greg: why?

Nicolas: My worst case scenario would be being recognized on the street. and still having to work a full time job, or like, Making not very much and still just living in my studio apartment in Chicago. Like, how horrible would that be? You know, it's like you're losing your personal life.

Now you got people that are like, Hey, it's you from Instagram Like, and, and you're getting recognized in public. And now you have this weird dynamic that you have to live with. But you're not even getting the financial upside? Like that's, to me, that's, That's horrible. Like, I would never want that. And I get, I mean, maybe other people want different things, and that's fine, but, Yeah, I,

Greg: Especially if you're not proud of the worst, the worst case of that is you get recognized, you're scraping by, and the thing that you got recognized for you're not proud of. You know, I was at a wedding recently and I, I ran into. You watch The Office? David Wallace? You know who I'm talking about?

Nicolas: Oh my God. Amazing.

Greg: I see David Wallace from the corner of my eye, and I, I, I asked someone, I said, is that David Wallace from The Office? Looks exactly like him. Yeah, it is. So I go over them. Hey, you know, my name's Greg Eisenberg. I'm a huge office fan. Like I watch it like every night, you know, before I go to

Nicolas: Every night before bed. Yep.

Greg: he's like, you like the office?

I was like, yeah, he was like genuinely like, so, so stoked.

Nicolas: Uh huh.

Greg: He goes into his pocket. He hands me a business card. I look at the business card, it says David Wallace, CFO, Dunder Mifflin.

Nicolas: Oh my God.

Greg: I was like, you're literally my hero right now. Like, you did a thing at this point 15 years ago, but you're, you're proud of the thing that you did. And all the respect to you.

Nicolas: I totally agree. And that's a great way of putting it is it depends on how you feel about it. You know, it's like an, it's like an artist who maybe doesn't make that much, but they love their work and they love what they do. And, but even still, I still sort of circle back to if you're generating all that attention and you're not monetizing it.

Something else is going on because it's not that you can't like the opportunity is there. It's just either you have a skilled efficiency like you haven't really learned or taken the time to understand how to monetize business models, you know, whatever, or you have some sort of relation like weird unprocessed through relationship with money.

Where you're like, no, I feel weird. I don't want to monetize my craft. If I monetize like that's selling out That's you know, and whenever I talk to people like that, it's very clear that like that's not true It's not like if if something makes money that doesn't mean that it's lower quality That's not a factual statement.

But so many people have these faulty beliefs Around money thinking I can't charge for that. I don't want to charge for that if I do charge for that That means xyz You know, that means I'm taking advantage of people. That means I'm selling out, whatever. And none of those things are true. And so, yeah, I just look at it like, why go through all this effort to generate all this attention?

Greg: Yeah. There's a guy on Twitter, JK Molina. He

Nicolas: Yeah. Likes, likes saying cash.

Greg: and cash. He's

Nicolas: I'd take, I'd take the cash over the likes any day.

Greg: Mm hmm. Well, it sounds like you'll take the likes and the cash.

Nicolas: Yeah. You know, but I, again, I want the ratio.

Greg: There's an argument to be made that You need top of the funnel content that goes viral to get attention to then build a niche or audience. What do you think of that when people say that?

Nicolas: No, I mean ship 30 is a great example of how not true that is, you know Super niche a lot of the things that we write around writing don't go crazy viral at all, you know And I also think that a lot of creators have it backwards like it's not you build Attention and then you build a business because if you build a ton of attention posting memes And then you try and go launch a business like it's, it, people aren't brain dead.

It's not like just because they followed you, they're just going to miraculously buy the thing that you sell, you know? And so it's not audience and then, Oh, now I have something to sell. It's like, who's the person that you want to help build the thing that, you know, helps them and then go sell the mixtapes out of your car, you know, then go get attention for it.

Greg: Yeah. Sometimes I see like these, you know, memes and stuff like that online. And that's cool if like you love sharing that stuff and you get enjoyment out of it. But if you're trying to monetize it, and it's like, if you like this meme, you'll also like my newsletter on, you know, and it's like, that's literally the definition of bait and switch, by the way, you know, it's literally bait, meme, switch, newsletter,

Nicolas: Yeah.

Greg: like, okay, if you're actually like creating value add content to the conversation, and then it's like, if you like this, check out my newsletter.

That's one thing.

Nicolas: people make it way harder than it needs to be. You know, ship 30 hit seven figures as a business with. Like four steps. It was right on Twitter drive people to a free educational email course Send them a weekly newsletter sharing.

Here's more of what we know every couple newsletters Join, the next cohort of ship 30 we're not talking about building a SAS platform here We're not talking about Launching a cybersecurity firm, you know, like this is, it's not that difficult and people make it to make it out to be so much more complicated than it needs to be.

It's like solve someone's problem, give a lot of it away for free, remind them of what you have to sell, do it a lot.

Greg: Cole, thank you so much for, for like chat. I could literally chat with you for, for hours. Um, so you're going to have to, you can come on whenever you'd like you, you and Dickie have a open invite, uh, for people who want to follow you and the ship 30 and PGA journey, where can they find you?

Nicolas: Eh, Twitter, you know, all things Twitter.

Greg: Cool. And I gotta ask you about, should I write a book or not?

Nicolas: All you know, it's so funny you just said that literally yesterday, I was thinking of texting you. Because someone else that I met at, uh, when Dickie and I went to that cab, uh, Cabo, that Cabo mastermind, um, I was just chatting with him and he's thinking about writing a book. I was giving him some feedback, stuff like that.

And then I thought of you, cause we had talked about the community book, like six months or eight months ago or something. And I was like, I should circle back and ask Greg if he's ever going to do that. Cause I think that would be a, I mean, totally man, just keep dominating the category, you know, keep planting your flag and

Greg: But why, why, okay, I have a tweet drafted, actually, about this, it's not even a tweet, it's a, it's a gem of an idea, and it says, I have no desire to write a book. And it says, write thousands of words a day, and you get No easy way to get instantaneous feedback. Like what I like about Twitter and my sub stack is like, I post something and I get instant feedback. And what scares me about writing a book is I'm going to go spend five months of my life.

Like Sahil Bloom, I know is writing a book right now. And he's spending so much of his energy, like writing a book. And it's like all he's thinking about and it's taking him like a year. Like, is that going to be me? Am I going to spend thousands of hours on this thing? Hmm.

Nicolas: it just depends on what sort of book you want to write. I think, you know, he, cause I'm assuming he, he got a, uh, like a publishing deal. Totally different. It's like venture backed versus bootstrap.

Greg: Mm

Nicolas: Totally different set of expectations, right? He, his book needs to sell a million copies or it's a failure, right?

Like VCs, you're either a billion dollar company or you're not. And, and I think I would encourage you not to do that. I would encourage you to self publish bootstrap and instead write a book that is basically. Think of, think of a book as you're just doing, it's, it's, well, it's two things. You're doing all of the work where you now have content to pull from for the next five years.

on this one topic. And this idea of you wanting feedback, you already got all, all the feedback, like you already know what you would say about community.

Greg: I know, I know what I'd write about.

Nicolas: Yeah. So you don't,

Greg: I probably, to be honest, yeah, you gave me really good advice once, uh, when I probably said the same thing, like, oh, it's so much work. I, you were like, dude, it's literally 10 blog posts.

Yeah,

Nicolas: And you already,

Greg: posts. And I, I

Nicolas: you already know.

Greg: I know exactly what I would, those 10 blog posts would be,

Nicolas: So this is the difference, right? Is like you already, and this is also the difference in like types of nonfiction. I, I'm about to publish my, uh, ghost writing book took me three months to write. I didn't have to think about, I already knew everything I was going to say. So Hill or anyone that goes and gets a publishing deal or whatever, like most of the time, cause the expectations are different.

There's a lot more research and they're figuring out what they want to say. Cause they're trying to write something that, you know, they have a totally different goal. You don't have that. You already know everything you were going to say, so you don't need. Like feedback on what like you already know what you would say and so now it's just a matter of taking the time to compress it and you have this asset and a book does a really Good job of planning planning your flag in the ground and being like I own this category

Greg: even if it's self published. I mean, I would,

Nicolas: Art and business of online writing self published.

It's made me way more money than if I would have gotten a publishing deal for it And everyone in the online writing world references it.

Greg: I think if I were to write a book, I wouldn't even like my goal. I really actually like Alex Hermosi's approach, which is charge as little as possible for the book and get it

Nicolas: Yeah, you can do that too. It's not about the money It's about I wrote the book on this topic

Greg: Yeah. All right. I got a jet.

Nicolas: Awesome.

Greg: See you, bro.