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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.
00:08:59:10 - 00:09:01:09
Nathan
What's the dream revenue that we're going for?
00:09:01:09 - 00:09:02:23
Aaron
Dream? $1 million.
00:09:02:23 - 00:09:03:19
Nathan
Pick a timeline.
00:09:03:19 - 00:09:05:03
Nathan
Three years. Five years.
00:09:05:05 - 00:09:06:12
Aaron
Can we say 18 months?
00:09:06:12 - 00:09:07:13
Nathan
18 months?
00:09:07:13 - 00:09:08:22
Nathan
This can go terribly wrong.
00:09:09:07 - 00:09:11:15
Nathan
In this episode, I talked to Aaron Francis, who did
00:09:11:16 - 00:09:14:01
Nathan
350,000 in revenue for the year.
00:09:14:01 - 00:09:15:08
Aaron
Great amount of money.
00:09:15:08 - 00:09:16:11
Aaron
There are two of us,
00:09:16:11 - 00:09:17:04
Aaron
And we,
00:09:17:04 - 00:09:18:11
Aaron
could go get tech jobs,
00:09:18:11 - 00:09:19:21
Aaron
what I want to figure out is,
00:09:19:21 - 00:09:24:15
Aaron
how do we take that and turn that into a long term, sustainable business
00:09:25:08 - 00:09:26:18
Nathan
we have to have multiple price years,
00:09:26:18 - 00:09:27:05
Aaron
Okay?
00:09:27:05 - 00:09:28:22
Nathan
every time I've implemented tiered pricing
00:09:28:22 - 00:09:30:02
Nathan
I've noticed at least a
00:09:30:02 - 00:09:31:21
Nathan
50% increase in revenue.
00:09:31:21 - 00:09:32:14
Aaron
that is
00:09:32:14 - 00:09:33:10
Aaron
obvious,
00:09:33:10 - 00:09:34:14
Aaron
but I'm not doing it.
00:09:34:14 - 00:09:35:15
Nathan
what you want to do
00:09:35:15 - 00:09:37:01
Nathan
is bring everybody back to the
00:09:37:01 - 00:09:37:16
Nathan
this
00:09:37:21 - 00:09:40:10
Nathan
because that's where you have the deepest connection with the audience.
00:09:40:12 - 00:09:42:18
Nathan
the most simple effective thing to do
00:09:42:18 - 00:09:43:14
Nathan
lead magnets
00:09:43:14 - 00:09:48:09
Nathan
in the video. I'm going to show you what to do in the free resource. I'm going to do it for you
00:09:48:09 - 00:09:49:17
Aaron
This feels doable.
00:09:50:12 - 00:09:51:18
Aaron
I think coming in, I felt,
00:09:51:18 - 00:09:53:13
Aaron
in need of a little bit of guidance.
00:09:53:13 - 00:09:54:06
Aaron
leaving now,
00:09:54:06 - 00:09:54:17
Aaron
I feel
00:09:54:17 - 00:09:55:16
Aaron
very much more,
00:09:55:16 - 00:09:57:14
Aaron
organized and with a path forward
00:09:57:14 - 00:09:58:03
Nathan
I love it
00:10:00:14 - 00:10:02:20
Nathan
Aaron. Welcome back. Good to still be here.
00:10:02:20 - 00:10:09:02
Nathan
We were talking on X and DMs and, you listen to the podcast and all of that and you're saying, hey,
00:10:09:02 - 00:10:09:22
Nathan
I'd five to Boise.
00:10:09:23 - 00:10:21:14
Nathan
What? What did you want to I have to voice the, to talk to my specific pitch was, I am the smallest creator that you're going to have on, but I will come to Boise and we can go through it. And so here's what I want to talk about.
00:10:21:14 - 00:10:28:09
Nathan
we've got, High-Performance SQLite, which is a database course to $125,000, great amount of money.
00:10:28:11 - 00:10:58:07
Nathan
Very happy with that. There are two of us because Steve and we, could go get tech jobs, right? Right. And so $125,000 across two people. Yeah, taxes against tech jobs doesn't go that far. so what I want to figure out is, given what we have, which is an audience, expertise, momentum, how do we take that and turn that into a long term, sustainable business that makes more than we could make as W-2?
00:10:58:10 - 00:11:05:22
Nathan
That is that is my goal. That sounds good. And we've got a lot of options, and I'll be curious to hear which ones you think are the best. Okay,
00:11:05:22 - 00:11:08:17
Nathan
now let's let's dive in. Let's draw some stuff.
00:11:08:17 - 00:11:17:18
Nathan
let's get a feel for the business today. I will, I'll start with that. So we did 125,000 in 30 days in the launch. Yep. So
00:11:17:18 - 00:11:19:22
Nathan
okay. So you got SQL Lite.
00:11:20:00 - 00:11:41:04
Nathan
and then we're going to say 30 days. Yeah. But just one thing to talk about here is if we think about the shape of a launch right. You're going to go from zero to there. And then you're going to come down to something and it's going to default to that or that. Let's let's call it this one because I think that's probably more accurate.
00:11:41:06 - 00:12:05:04
Nathan
And so we have to figure out like typically what happens in a launch business is we're figuring out how do we do that. Yeah. And then how do we do that. And usually these spikes keep you this morning. Yes. And I watched that play out many times both myself and in other career purposes. Okay. So 185,000 in the launch SQLite in 30 days.
00:12:05:06 - 00:12:08:19
Nathan
What's the what are some of the other courses that are still driving meaningful revenue.
00:12:08:19 - 00:12:14:17
Aaron
Another property is screencasting.com. Okay. And that has done 115 in
00:12:14:17 - 00:12:16:08
Aaron
nine months
00:12:16:08 - 00:12:18:09
Nathan
okay.
00:12:18:09 - 00:12:41:03
Nathan
And then for the two primary properties that's driving and I have this was pre Steve. So Steve and I partnered up after I launched this okay. So there's a rehab of this coming with some additional material. And this is the first post Steve and Aaron thing. Yeah that we launched okay. That makes sense. So total in the last year.
00:12:41:05 - 00:13:01:00
Nathan
What what do you think revenue is that that we can use as a trend line. Yeah. To understand the audience. an interesting and interesting point about this is we also had a corporate sponsor okay. Paid us I won't disclose because that's the business but pay the same not insignificant amount of money to do that, including top of oh on top 45.
00:13:01:05 - 00:13:22:21
Nathan
Okay. so it's we'll say five figure sponsorship as well. so, so there's no sponsorship as a true sponsorship in. And let's go ahead and include YouTube sponsorship. because then I can, I can hide the numbers a little more easily. So let's say on sponsorship altogether, we've done
00:13:22:21 - 00:13:24:19
Aaron
90,000.
00:13:24:23 - 00:13:37:12
Nathan
So we're going to total all of this is uploading looking to match the word 105. Oh sorry 205. And then to 330 plus some assorted. Yes. Yeah. So
00:13:37:12 - 00:13:46:11
Nathan
this business right now if you could repeat last year you're talking 350 a year is basically what we're at.
00:13:46:13 - 00:13:48:01
Nathan
That sounds about right. Yeah. Okay.
00:13:48:01 - 00:13:56:15
Nathan
on one hand a lot of money a lot of money. On the other hand, the other hand tech jobs two people self-employment taxes.
00:13:56:15 - 00:14:02:07
Aaron
for kids. Yeah. Not, not a lot of money. Well being a lot of money. Yeah.
00:14:02:07 - 00:14:14:07
Nathan
Okay. So as we're thinking about where we're at and so we'll just say today, is.
00:14:14:09 - 00:14:16:11
Nathan
350 K,
00:14:16:11 - 00:14:17:09
Nathan
pick a timeline.
00:14:17:09 - 00:14:19:13
Nathan
We're going what? Sounds good.
00:14:19:13 - 00:14:20:22
Nathan
Three years. Five years.
00:14:20:22 - 00:14:22:17
Nathan
What time horizon operating on,
00:14:22:17 - 00:14:24:14
Aaron
let's say, can we shorten it?
00:14:24:14 - 00:14:25:21
Aaron
Can we say 18 months?
00:14:25:21 - 00:14:26:22
Nathan
18 months?
00:14:26:22 - 00:14:30:15
Nathan
Okay, so this is that silly?
00:14:30:15 - 00:14:37:06
Nathan
We can do anything. I'll do anything. You know, I do this. So by the end of 2025, let's do that. Okay.
00:14:37:20 - 00:14:39:14
Nathan
How much revenue,
00:14:39:14 - 00:14:41:16
Nathan
what's the dream revenue that we're going for
00:14:41:16 - 00:14:48:14
Nathan
in 20. So. So at the end of 2025, what is the trailing 12 months? Yeah.
00:14:48:14 - 00:14:50:06
Nathan
dream $1 million.
00:14:50:06 - 00:15:00:20
Nathan
Okay. All right. Which is not the final resting point, hopefully for the revenue. But by the time we hit 2025, hopefully we've made $1 million.
00:15:01:00 - 00:15:17:05
Nathan
What is okay, so it's 26. I don't know. But the dream would be the dream in the fullness of time is definitely in dollars a year. Okay, so if we can do it by 2026, happy happiest could be
00:15:17:05 - 00:15:26:05
Nathan
There's so much that I wanted to get to of like what that enables or that sort of thing. But you didn't come here for like a counseling session where you came up.
00:15:26:05 - 00:15:46:03
Nathan
I said, yeah, exactly. We'll sit back down. I love the specificity of the goal. Shifting gears a little bit, is there anyone maybe we can brainstorm a few people who comes to mind when you think of they've pulled off something like the business you're trying to create.
00:15:46:03 - 00:15:51:08
Aaron
Kinsey Dodds, West boss. Okay, maybe, Matt Pocock.
00:15:51:08 - 00:15:59:18
Aaron
Kinsey Dodds is a educator, developer, educator, which is what I like to call myself, a developer educator. he has primarily
00:15:59:18 - 00:16:15:09
Aaron
staked out a place in the react ecosystem, which is a JavaScript framework. And he has he's got a big team now, actually, but he does, educational materials. And he, you know, has written recently, not recently, in the past year or so about his million dollar course launch.
00:16:15:09 - 00:16:17:10
Aaron
And I'm like, that seems good.
00:16:17:10 - 00:16:19:02
Nathan
like I said, we'd be halfway there.
00:16:19:02 - 00:16:30:22
Nathan
Yeah. Halfway there. West boss, on the other hand, is also a developer educator, but he is following and much more, I think similar pattern to it will have, which is several discrete properties that it's like,
00:16:30:22 - 00:16:43:16
Nathan
okay, learn ES6, learn CSS, whatever, and they're all on different domains, but they all funnel back to the West Pass brand. So I think West Bos is probably the closest corollary to what we're going for.
00:16:43:17 - 00:17:02:17
Nathan
Okay, that makes sense. The reason I ask this question is often we throw out crazy things, you know, like, okay, hundred and $85,000 launched 2 million a year in revenue. It's really hard to bridge that gap mentally. And you can do things where you're like, okay, well, if we just had 14 courses that would get there or you had.
00:17:02:17 - 00:17:20:13
Nathan
Yeah, yeah. And you're like, you can quickly say how that's a terrible idea. But what it helps with is saying, am I trying to do something that's never been done before? Yes. Are we trying to climb the mountain that, you know, to date has been proven? I've killed everyone else. This. Right. Yeah. I don't want to do that.
00:17:20:15 - 00:17:23:07
Nathan
Or are we saying, like, no, people
00:17:23:07 - 00:17:45:19
Nathan
who are wildly talented, very determined and all of that have done it, and actually, they might be friends of mine, actually like and that brings it down into this achievable way. Yep. And then you can also do this thing where when you start to look at all the problems that you're going to have between here and there, you can list those out and then you can be like, well, how did Kent solve that?
00:17:45:19 - 00:17:51:09
Nathan
Right. How did how did where solve the problems are solvable? Yeah. Because they've been solved before.
00:17:51:09 - 00:18:07:20
Aaron
Yeah. our mutual friend Ben Orenstein, tuple guy, tweeted not too long ago when I was actually working at tuple. He tweeted, I think it's something like I think it's very reasonable possible. And more people should consider that you can make $1 million a year if you're a good teacher and a good developer.
00:18:07:21 - 00:18:18:00
Aaron
And that has stuck in my brain of like, yeah, I think that I think that is possible. Being a good teacher is a huge part of it. And these two guys are but I think it's very, very possible.
00:18:18:00 - 00:18:23:05
Nathan
That's interesting what you're talking about there of you think of the other words you can substitute in there.
00:18:23:11 - 00:18:45:02
Nathan
Great teacher, great developer. You know, someone's like, oh, I'm going to become the best machine learning AI engineer. And some Faang company is going to pay me $1 million a year. That might actually be a harder path than to be a good developer. And a and again, yeah, it's that combination of skills that I think more people
00:18:45:02 - 00:18:48:09
Aaron
could have a lot of great developers out there.
00:18:48:12 - 00:18:56:20
Aaron
Honestly, I don't think there are that many great teachers. but the overlap of good developer and good teacher, that's a that's totally available to everybody. So
00:18:56:20 - 00:18:58:07
Aaron
that is my goal.
00:18:58:07 - 00:19:02:02
Nathan
Yeah. And there's other people, you know, even as you list out a few people, I think of
00:19:02:02 - 00:19:09:18
Nathan
more I think of like Adam Wathan. Yep. you know, there's and they've taken a different path in that they made a wildly successful framework.
00:19:09:19 - 00:19:12:12
Nathan
Right? yeah. Early on, Adam would be on
00:19:12:12 - 00:19:24:14
Nathan
this list, but now he has a different type of company so that I can't see myself in him. But yeah, he's absolutely an inspiration. Yeah. And so we could look at what we'll put him on the list because of
00:19:24:14 - 00:19:28:13
Nathan
we can learn from the early days overlap at this point because I'm early.
00:19:28:13 - 00:19:31:14
Nathan
Yeah. This is this is what he was doing early on.
00:19:31:14 - 00:19:32:18
Nathan
What do you think
00:19:32:18 - 00:19:36:05
Nathan
are some of the biggest obstacles that you're going to hit?
00:19:36:05 - 00:19:48:21
Nathan
Like what? What problems? As we get more specific, do we need to solve? I think the biggest it's like the biggest fundamental structural problem is,
00:19:48:21 - 00:19:53:20
Nathan
having enough stuff that people can throw money at.
00:19:54:00 - 00:20:16:11
Nathan
Like there's no way that SQLite gets $2 million. There's maybe a way that screencasting does a million. But like, I just don't feel like the surface area upon which people can give me money is is large enough at this point, and inherent in that is the drawback of being a course company. I don't want to make a course every three months.
00:20:16:11 - 00:20:19:03
Nathan
Okay. And so that's where I'm trying to figure out, like
00:20:19:03 - 00:20:21:11
Nathan
what is the right product mix
00:20:21:11 - 00:20:25:18
Nathan
or bundle or guest and structure instructors
00:20:25:18 - 00:20:30:19
Nathan
that like, I can get to a point where this number is reasonable and this number is possible.
00:20:30:19 - 00:20:35:10
Nathan
And I have I have ideas on how to expand both of those. Okay.
00:20:35:10 - 00:20:40:06
Nathan
tell me a little bit about, Ken's million dollar launch and.
00:20:40:06 - 00:21:04:09
Nathan
Yeah, what what was that in? Right. Because that's almost. Yeah. The numbers you did. Yeah. So was that different audience. Different different audience, different lead time, different technology. so one thing about single night is it's relatively niche. So it happens to be the most used database in the world, but most people in our space don't really use it's very much for like embedded stuff.
00:21:04:11 - 00:21:30:04
Nathan
so it's a relatively niche audience, databases themselves, relatively, relatively niche audience. And when you look at what Kinsey Dodds is doing, it's react. And for the people that don't know, react has eaten the world. And so like, yeah, everyone needs to know react. And I feel like a lot of his stuff begins at a beginner level. he does have intermediate content, but a lot of the stuff that I do begins more at the intermediate level.
00:21:30:06 - 00:21:42:10
Nathan
Right? so if you think of that pyramid, you're further up just meaning that there are fewer, fewer people, fewer people. There's just fewer intermediates than there are beginners. West bass, I don't know the numbers that he has done,
00:21:42:10 - 00:21:52:22
Nathan
but he does have a lot of he has a lot of products. And so I think the difference between these two guys is Kent has consolidated everything into what he calls epic web.
00:21:53:00 - 00:22:16:09
Nathan
And that includes like React and Tailwind, CSS and some other stuff. Wes boss is like 30 days of JavaScript, ES6, CSS, whatever, react, whatever, and they're all discrete. That's more what I am going towards, because I don't have one piece of content that is large enough to encompass 10 million people, you know, okay, so you're
00:22:16:09 - 00:22:21:04
Nathan
going for more more products.
00:22:21:06 - 00:22:49:15
Nathan
is there really quick? I realize we didn't get the the elevator pitch on screencast Incom. What is that product? screencasting.com is my techniques, methods, technologies for recording high quality screencasts quickly. So high quality low effort. How do you do that such that you can put stuff out into the world and move on, and is the focus of this someone doing internal training, or is it someone who wants to be the next developer creator?
00:22:49:16 - 00:23:09:02
Nathan
it could be for internal training. the the way that I talk in the course is more like you are an individual trying to make a audience or grow an audience, or create a course yourself or whatever. That's that's what I talk about. Okay. That makes sense. What's the price point on screen? Yes, that was quite a bit more of that leads to 99.
00:23:09:03 - 00:23:20:16
Nathan
Okay. So skylights currently 149 screen castings 299 I think it's overpriced. and I have some evidence for that, but, yeah, it's quite a bit.
00:23:20:16 - 00:23:22:19
Nathan
okay, so one problem is enough products.
00:23:22:19 - 00:23:47:22
Nathan
Yep. what's another problem in our path from 350 to 2 million? I feel, and I think we've taken a step towards solving this already. I feel like the administrative. Yeah, of having all of these things. It's great. Okay. And so, like, emails about purchasing power parity discounts, emails about, typos in the transcripts, emails with just random questions.
00:23:48:00 - 00:24:07:22
Nathan
And my personality is such that, I tend to not I tend to not be able to do those things very quickly. I tend to put them off and then they grow and it's like, well, guess I'll never get to that email because it's been a day now, I guess. This is bad. so that's a really difficult part for me.
00:24:07:22 - 00:24:27:07
Nathan
And I think some of that is like I maybe am becoming more of a creative. I'm like, I need more of this space. And then doing all of these things has become even more difficult. So we've recently we've recently hired, somebody for 20 hours a week to man all of the inboxes to help us do content calendar.
00:24:27:12 - 00:24:29:05
Nathan
I actually came from listening to your
00:24:29:05 - 00:24:34:02
Nathan
Podcast about your personal brand manager. Yeah. And I was like,
00:24:34:02 - 00:24:49:00
Nathan
I mean, I can't afford that, but like, having somebody who can do that for the business, plus me as we're moving into this is the Aaron Francis brand. That has been a huge a huge help. But I imagine it's going to continue to grow pretty pretty drastic.
00:24:49:02 - 00:25:08:20
Nathan
Yeah. But what I like about that is that you've already created that bucket of like, yeah, sectioned off that bucket of work and do the hard thing for you will be to just stay disciplined about it. Yes. And to say that is not my problem big time. And she started yesterday, so I'm not quite there yet. But yes.
00:25:08:22 - 00:25:12:00
Nathan
But there's like one struggle that I had was
00:25:12:00 - 00:25:25:01
Nathan
leading from the front or, you know, I don't know, leaders eat last or like these kind of ideas. And so I always think, like, I never want to ask someone to do a job that I'm not willing to do myself. And so I would be jumping right in there.
00:25:25:03 - 00:25:37:08
Nathan
I just found that as holding the business back in substantial ways. And so there's, two phrases that I think are really interesting. One sounds horrible, so maybe it's just an internal phrase,
00:25:37:08 - 00:25:53:10
Nathan
but it's where you just say it's not my problem. Sounds great. And you're like that. That is your problem. The other one that I heard, Andrew Wilkinson from tiny say recently is he said, I am Teflon for tasks like to try to try to give me something to do.
00:25:53:10 - 00:26:16:06
Nathan
Oh, look at that. It just slipped. Right. yeah. You know, and I would love that. And so, like, getting into that mindset is you're realizing, like any of those examples, a refund on this, the transcript bug either like you can't spend any time. No. And it just eats away. Not only does it eat away my time at like just little bites all throughout the day, it eats away my energy, right?
00:26:16:06 - 00:26:35:08
Nathan
And that's the hard part when I'm like, all right, you've got to sit down and record five videos today. And then you see the email inbox is like, there are 13 people waiting for who knows what. Heck, oh gosh, I'm just not going to do anything. It's like, no, can't do that. So I feel like that it's and this is very much a personality thing.
00:26:35:10 - 00:26:54:23
Nathan
and I think we may be hiring around it. but it is going to be interesting to see as we go how much of that I can, like, give. It takes a level of discipline that's really hard. One, one thing for me as the team has gotten bigger, you know, on the kid side is really like you engaging at the right level.
00:26:55:00 - 00:27:22:01
Nathan
And a phrase that I've started to use, is I think I'm involved with the right altitude. Interesting. And so that's where, you know, we might be talking about overall strategy. And then I find myself getting into the like the tactics or the email copy or something like that, and people want my opinion on it. or they don't want my opinion and I'm and they listen to both of those situations happen.
00:27:22:03 - 00:27:39:00
Nathan
But just that like giving the team that language and all of that, I'm like, oh, I'm involved at the wrong altitude here. Like we can step back and and reset. Zoomed in too far. Yeah, I like that. and so that's the other thing that you can ask, this is maybe more if someone who has a bigger team.
00:27:39:02 - 00:27:59:05
Nathan
But to say if someone's bringing a problem to use to say either. What role would you like me to play? like, because you don't want to be the person. Like, they're dealing with real problems and you're like, not my problem. And they're like, but can I just get five minutes of your time to, you know, and to like, oh, I play the coach role or the manager role in that?
00:27:59:07 - 00:28:15:23
Nathan
or also to ask, what altitude would you like to have this conversation about? and, and that can really help with some of those team dynamics. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. That's very helpful. Okay. So problems and have products I feel like we have this is going to be hard. It's going to be hard. But we have a plan for it.
00:28:16:00 - 00:28:24:18
Nathan
Yeah. What other problems do we run into. I think inherent in this enough products is enough time for
00:28:24:18 - 00:28:49:21
Nathan
me personally, to create the stuff, okay? Because, not only are we doing courses, but we're also doing YouTube and I'm writing blog posts, and Twitter is our top of funnel in some regard. And so like there's a big amount of creation pressure that is put on me like I am the face of the business, Steve and I are the business, but I am the face of it.
00:28:49:21 - 00:29:06:19
Nathan
And so like, I have to be out there and it's just takes a lot of time. Okay. Yep, I like that. That makes me think of two other problems. Great. one is brand. Okay. You brought up. Have you been the face of the business? Big problem. Yep. and then the second one. I can't actually write and talk at the same time.
00:29:07:01 - 00:29:23:08
Nathan
I would have sort of just write whatever I want. Yeah, just says the second one. the second one is audience size. Yeah. Because at some point all of this comes down to a math equation. Yes. Right. And so
00:29:23:08 - 00:29:27:18
Nathan
you have to have a plan to grow a significantly larger audience. Yeah.
00:29:27:18 - 00:29:32:11
Nathan
Which comes back to time to create and enough products.
00:29:32:11 - 00:30:00:07
Nathan
And I get all yeah, these are all very related. Yeah. They are. Okay. So as we look at these well actually let's quickly talk about audience size. what size audience do we have right now, that we're getting into, size audience we have now on Twitter. We're at 39,000, YouTube, maybe 42 or 3 across email lists.
00:30:00:09 - 00:30:07:06
Nathan
probably I want to say close to 7 or 8000 across email lists.
00:30:07:08 - 00:30:26:00
Nathan
You're so good about calling it X, I just cannot okay, so here's the thing. Here's the thing. If I invite all of you in our little secret, I was not good at calling an X. And then I went to rebrand my company name. and then I saw right. But that's the respect thing. Okay, I see what you've done there.
00:30:26:01 - 00:30:32:13
Nathan
Yeah. this is a safe space, right? Everybody guess we can let people in on little secrets.
00:30:32:13 - 00:30:35:21
Nathan
Shall please call it Kit. Okay.
00:30:35:21 - 00:30:43:02
Nathan
So if we're talking about an increase of, you know, five times somewhere in there,
00:30:43:02 - 00:30:47:10
Nathan
could you reasonably increase these audience sizes by five x.
00:30:47:12 - 00:30:49:21
Nathan
In two and a half years.
00:30:49:21 - 00:31:14:06
Nathan
Yes. Maybe. Doubt it. So email. Yes. Because I've put very little effort historically into growing an email list. And now with the decline in my opinion of X I'm thinking I gotta get off this thing. And so putting a lot more energy there. YouTube I think, yeah I could get to 200,000 in, you know, a year and a half or two years or whatever.
00:31:14:08 - 00:31:37:13
Nathan
no, I don't I don't think I could get to five times better for 200 as well. I don't think I could do that. Okay. Are there people out there, these people or others who have hit five x these numbers. So the numbers that you need to get here. Yes. Okay. Yeah I think camps at north of 200 West is that maybe, I don't know, 150 atoms probably at 150 on, on Twitter.
00:31:37:15 - 00:31:49:11
Nathan
yeah. So yeah, it is not impossible. And I don't know why, but I don't think I can do it. Well, it might be that the algorithm is totally different. That's right. Right. I look at it, I have 103,000 on x and I'm like,
00:31:49:11 - 00:32:02:13
Nathan
do I want to push that to 200,000? I don't know that the techniques that I learned and used, will scale in the same way you feel that someone posted a tweet the other day and they were like, can we just have the algorithm from two years ago?
00:32:02:13 - 00:32:12:23
Nathan
Back? Yes. It was like all my friends, plus their friends. That was it doesn't have to be complicated. My friends and their friends. Yeah, exactly. So that's something else. Like
00:32:12:23 - 00:32:20:14
Nathan
I think we can five x these audience numbers, the one that I would focus on the most or the two is YouTube and email.
00:32:20:14 - 00:32:23:02
Nathan
Good. Okay. that's where I feel most optimistic.
00:32:23:02 - 00:32:24:13
Nathan
So that's good because I
00:32:24:13 - 00:32:30:22
Nathan
think about the hub and spoke model for content creation or really for audience growth.
00:32:30:22 - 00:32:45:14
Nathan
And so what a lot of people do is they maybe list it out like, like this, where it's just like, I've got all these channels. Someone said I should grow on LinkedIn as well, so I'm doing that. I'm already making videos, so I guess I need an Instagram and since I'm on Instagram, I might as well have a TikTok.
00:32:45:14 - 00:33:03:08
Nathan
Exactly. And before we know it, we're on every single platform. Imitate it all. Yep. Speak for yourself. Yeah, I love it. I'm trying to take time for a second. It's like I am too old for this. And you thought YouTube comments were bad? Wait till you get TikTok comments. No way. So in the hub and spoke model, right?
00:33:03:08 - 00:33:16:04
Nathan
If we're making a wheel, you know we've got a few different spokes coming off and we're bringing people right. Each of these, you know, x YouTube,
00:33:16:04 - 00:33:21:22
Nathan
you know, IG those are all going to be spokes. And so
00:33:21:22 - 00:33:31:03
Nathan
what you want to do then is bring everybody back to the email list. Right? Email is at the center because that's where you have the deepest connection with the audience.
00:33:31:05 - 00:33:58:20
Nathan
The only one I own. It's the only one you own. Right. Like, if I really piss you off one day, you can be like, screw it. I'm experimenting. I'm going somewhere. That's right. Yeah. Please don't. Yep. Now all but how this turns out. Yeah, exactly. It turns out good. I'm happy you call me an influencer. It's over. And so in this, you know, you can take this approach because email is really amazing at connection and really, really terrible at discovery.
00:33:58:22 - 00:34:27:11
Nathan
Right. Like agreed. Zero out of ten on on discovery. Agreed. and so then you can choose what platforms to focus on. Now, what I think is interesting about YouTube in general is that YouTube is really good at discovery, because it has both the like. You should watch this algorithm and the search algorithm. Yeah. And and then it's also not half bad at the connection and that long term side of it.
00:34:27:16 - 00:34:53:16
Nathan
That's really interesting. And so the fact that you already have 40,000 on YouTube and that's growing gives me a lot of confidence in being able to hit that number. Good, good. And this has come in one the past year. Yeah that that's fantastic. So that gives me a lot of optimism that you're optimistic. So the thing that I want you to get good at is and this is maybe where you can write some things down and we'll go up.
00:34:53:16 - 00:35:20:03
Nathan
Here is the YouTube to email conversion. Yeah. Have is there anything there that you've tried. to the extent we've tried anything it has primarily been YouTube to SQL. Like course. Okay. There's been very little which in a way is second order on to an email list. But there's been very little YouTube. Go sign up for my newsletter.
00:35:20:08 - 00:35:40:10
Nathan
In fact, when I say very little, what I mean is zero. There's been look at that at all because, well, there's these things where, if people have this, some people have heard recently to help with things that Kit have come in and said, like, I'm very like, this is not going well of some area of the business they're coming in to fix.
00:35:40:12 - 00:35:52:23
Nathan
And they're like, I'm really excited by this. And I'm like, why? Because it's so bad. And like, let's just say there's a lot of opportunities. What a nice thing to say. Thank you for a lot of opportunity here. Yes I agree. So
00:35:52:23 - 00:35:59:04
Nathan
so we haven't really done any YouTube to email. No. so why don't you write down up here.
00:35:59:10 - 00:36:05:14
Nathan
Let's go. let's just say, like YouTube to, to email conversions.
00:36:05:14 - 00:36:24:05
Nathan
So are we doing a, are we doing like a funnel type thing? let's just let's just go. Categories. let's put a category wherever you want up there, and then we'll brainstorm ideas underneath that. Okay? So we'll say, YouTube to email
00:36:24:05 - 00:36:45:17
Nathan
So what are our ideas here. So we've done nothing so far. Nothing. What what do you think would work. We got 40,000 people over here. there's probably some number that are on the email list, right. Because they got an email list from buying the course, that sort of thing. So we have we have a few things we've got, we could do, you know, we could do YouTube video.
00:36:45:19 - 00:37:05:20
Nathan
This, this is what we're doing now SQLite course, which in fact puts you on the email list. So you have a hop, skip and a jump here. But this is paid. This is paid. However, there are certain videos that are free to watch provided you put your email in sort of a free trial. Okay. So that's, pretty disjointed.
00:37:05:22 - 00:37:11:22
Nathan
I think the question that you're asking is, how do we do this? and,
00:37:11:22 - 00:37:20:18
Nathan
so one thing that I have done is so it's number two, this is number three, I have done this,
00:37:20:18 - 00:37:24:23
Nathan
which again is a hop, skip and a jump. So from YouTube, I will,
00:37:24:23 - 00:37:32:19
Nathan
I will typically take a YouTube video, turn it back into a written article, put that on the blog, and then the blog has a way there for a second.
00:37:32:21 - 00:37:36:05
Nathan
And then that has a way to sign up for the email list.
00:37:36:05 - 00:37:53:11
Nathan
Very tenuous, because this is like in the description of the YouTube. And so by the time you reach here is like this one, you're you've got to finish watching the video. Then you read the description, read the description, gonna come, come over and then scroll to the bottom.
00:37:53:13 - 00:38:00:21
Nathan
So here we're like a 1% conversion rate. And then this is a 1% conversion rate. Lots of room for improvement.
00:38:00:21 - 00:38:04:19
Nathan
There we go. You can just click. So I mean
00:38:04:19 - 00:38:14:21
Nathan
the most simple effective thing to do here in this case is lead magnets okay. Right. It's a weird I don't know why we call it that, but here we are.
00:38:14:23 - 00:38:31:03
Nathan
And so what we're doing is just providing something in the video and saying, hey, if you want this, go and download it here. The way that I like to do it the most is in the video. I'm going to show you what to do in the free resource. I'm going to do it for you
00:38:31:03 - 00:38:32:11
Nathan
as much as I can.
00:38:32:13 - 00:38:35:13
Nathan
So is there a cheat sheet, a
00:38:35:13 - 00:38:46:06
Nathan
you know, a code snippet, something like that, that you're teaching on a regular basis, ideally that you could link to from a series of videos, right? Exactly. So you can create it once and get leverage from that.
00:38:46:06 - 00:38:54:07
Nathan
That does not exist at the moment. Okay. I'm not opposed to it. I think my question is the shape of that thing.
00:38:54:09 - 00:39:17:08
Nathan
because let's say I'm doing a video on SQLite, I'm doing a video on Laravel, which is a framework. I'm doing a video on JavaScript. The those lead magnets need to be different, I would assume maybe, there's probably something we come up with. It's generic enough, but okay, so but generally going generic is not what you're trying to do with the lead magnet.
00:39:17:08 - 00:39:40:01
Nathan
So so in your estimation, let's say I produce I produce a video on SQLite because the, the content of the YouTube video is SQLite. And then I say go to your inference.com/sequel, I sign up and I'll email you whatever we come up, whatever I come up with. So let me give you a different example and we'll see how this comes out.
00:39:40:03 - 00:39:58:10
Nathan
If I'm I wrote a book two years ago called authority and, one of the most popular things in a higher package that I sold in, that was a 90 day launch plan. so I told you everything to do in the book. Here's all the theory. Walk through it. We built up in the concepts and all about.
00:39:58:12 - 00:40:21:17
Nathan
And then there was this one thing that was wildly popular, which is like, you want to launch on this day, here's a plan that works backwards from there. What's your spreadsheet or something? Yeah, what to do every week from there. And that was so popular. And that's the thing of like, I'm teaching you how to do it in the YouTube video, and I'm just giving you the resource to make it really easy to apply it.
00:40:21:19 - 00:40:39:23
Nathan
And that's the sort of thing where you say, you know, in my case, I'd be like, go to nathan.com/launch plan and I'll give it to you for free. Yeah. They put in their email address and I send it to them. and that's the kind of thing that you can talk about a lot, you know, it's screencasting you could go, here are the,
00:40:39:23 - 00:40:42:00
Nathan
camera reviews, camera reviews.
00:40:42:00 - 00:41:04:00
Nathan
You could do I would do the five biggest mistakes that I see people make. It's great. You know, it's a lot easier and and especially because the camera reviews change over time. The mistakes really don't. We all we all make the same thing. So help me understand here. So YouTube to the course good produces money right. And so I feel good about that.
00:41:04:02 - 00:41:25:22
Nathan
Yeah. This is you know we've got a course that YouTube up here. And then down here outcomes like course. And this is where the money is. So are you saying that this is in the long term more profitable all than this. Skipping over driving them to the course and driving them to email? No, I want to do both.
00:41:26:01 - 00:41:50:11
Nathan
Okay. Because the thing about email is it lets me change the message to each person based on where they're at in their relationship with my content. Okay. And it, it it lets me segment and lets me do so many things. So I put out a YouTube video. It goes out to everybody. Right. And so I'm not going to put out a YouTube video once a month thing, like here's why you should buy not even sequel, but like whatever else.
00:41:50:12 - 00:42:12:05
Nathan
But if I get you on the email list, then I can say, oh, you came in because you bought sequel. Right now you're on the email list. Let me send you an email about how to create, screencasting videos. See if you engage with that. If yes, let me send you an email sequence that really promotes the Screencasting course.
00:42:12:07 - 00:42:30:00
Nathan
So that's one side of it is that email. You can personalize things so much more. But the other side is the conversion rate. This jump from YouTube to SQL eight probably has a very very low conversion rate. Got to be vanishingly small. Yeah. Less than 1%. So if you're
00:42:30:00 - 00:42:37:23
Nathan
in your mind it is more profitable to do this.
00:42:38:01 - 00:42:45:20
Nathan
To go from YouTube to email somehow to course somehow. Because then I can go to second course to third course, to fourth course. Like correct.
00:42:45:20 - 00:42:57:11
Nathan
And and it's not just that it's more profitable, it's that, you're going to get that higher conversion rate. I'm going to do both because you talk about the when it's the direct day, you talk about the SQL course.
00:42:57:13 - 00:43:14:18
Nathan
But what I don't want is someone to say, the only reason I would join your email list is if I bought your product. because think about someone who comes in. let's go upstream from this. Okay. Right upstream from YouTube is a search.
00:43:14:18 - 00:43:21:21
Nathan
right. So I have my search query and that takes me into YouTube. And then you're like, buy my course.
00:43:21:21 - 00:43:42:20
Nathan
And I'm like, oh no, you we just met. Yeah. But if you're like, hey, download this additional resource. I'm like, hell yes, absolutely. And then the other thing that you can do it if we go back to this hub and spoke model right. And I'll put in the spokes that we're ignoring for right now. But now it lets me hit this from multiple angles.
00:43:42:22 - 00:44:03:16
Nathan
Part of the reason that I think your course launch that we talked about in the first episode went so well when you went live on, you know, on X is that you send an email and they got that email and they're like, oh yeah, look at that later. Or they saw the subject line. but then they were scrolling on X and they saw you go live and they're listening to that and they're like, oh, I actually got that email.
00:44:03:16 - 00:44:16:05
Nathan
And then, right, you're hitting it from multiple channels. It's sort of like retargeting. And so in this case, if we get them on the email list, we can have that steady drumbeat of content and we can engage with them.
00:44:16:05 - 00:44:18:19
Nathan
The written content, the YouTube video,
00:44:18:19 - 00:44:21:22
Nathan
what's the thing that YouTube optimizes for most. What do they care about each time.
00:44:22:00 - 00:44:43:11
Nathan
Yeah. You who who's great at watching your content. People that click a link in an email telling them, hey, I made a video on this thing. It's a good point. Go here to watch it. Yeah, right. They click through with so much, trust and intent that then YouTube. Now YouTube knows that was direct traffic. Right. And but they'll think about it and it's not going to penalize you.
00:44:43:11 - 00:45:00:12
Nathan
Yeah. May not help as much but it's not going to penalize you. Plus I get to email people. I got email people. You got to email me. You do have to email people. You know Nathan emails important I got email people okay I like the learning that to this. Yeah I like that. So the lead magnet I think is really important to this.
00:45:00:15 - 00:45:13:16
Nathan
You right answer look like a flywheel. Look at that. I just invented that. Yeah. You're welcome. So in this I really want. Well, let's let's brainstorm some lead magnet ideas. Okay.
00:45:13:16 - 00:45:42:19
Nathan
just generally speaking, cheat sheets, I feel like, are always good. and databases are, prime for cheat sheets. So. So is, screencasting. Yep. Cheat sheets. You said, top mistakes or whatever. Yeah. So I feel like that's another good one. something that I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea is some sort of, free access to,
00:45:42:19 - 00:45:44:20
Nathan
partially free access to one of the courses.
00:45:44:20 - 00:46:12:06
Nathan
Yeah, it's like with a book doing a sample chapter. Yes, exactly. Yeah. so I feel like that would that would be easy to do for me. I think my hesitation is somebody that is cold off the street. Are they going to want free access to a course from a guy they don't know about, partially free access? So the thing that I like about that is it has really, high perceived value.
00:46:12:08 - 00:46:38:17
Nathan
Okay. Right. Because you. Hey, I took the time to create this whole course and all that, and we have a lesson on exactly the thing that you're dealing with, and I'll give that to you. That's interesting. The other thing that it lets you do is you can have a bunch of jumping off points. Right. Like you could give away little bits of the course and someone who's a true like who's consumed all your content might be like I could piece together 27% of this course if I like opted in everything.
00:46:38:17 - 00:46:57:18
Nathan
Go for it. And it's like I sure matter. That sounds great. Or you can buy it for $149 and charge it to your credit card, but it's actually no fun. So and the thing about that is, you could get really relevant conversion rates without making a ton of content, because you could go to you can have ten of these.
00:46:57:18 - 00:47:25:00
Nathan
Yes. And that is interesting to me because of what you just said, where each one could be related with a to like the video that I just put on YouTube. Yeah. And so you could go and find the most relevant thing. Go create a landing page and kit that's dedicated to that. Customize the copy. So it's like search intent to the video to the exact like at each point, the intent and the conversion is really high.
00:47:25:02 - 00:47:44:16
Nathan
And again, just there's 70 lessons in the course. There's going to be more who cares and cannot care about something like a lot. It doesn't satisfy a lot of what people are paying for with courses is organization. Yes, structure. So if you can piece everything together, congrats. That's what I did. I had to do that. So I'm super.
00:47:44:16 - 00:48:06:09
Nathan
There's certain about that. A quick line of especially is we're teaching skills that make money generally to people who have money. partner Mackenzie was my patio 11 has this line. This is no like payroll department in a company wants to write a payroll check where the memo line says researching free stuff on the internet because it's like there's there's nothing free about that.
00:48:06:09 - 00:48:27:00
Nathan
I just paid you, $150,000. $200,000 worth of time to just read docs when you could have just paid 149 yes. Yeah, totally. Exactly. This. This moves me. I like this, okay. I like this for a few reasons. not least of which I don't have to go and invent new things which these will, I think, be good in the fullness of time.
00:48:27:00 - 00:48:42:06
Nathan
But right now you can you could do that today. Yeah. And I like that. Yeah. That's good. Okay. So that I do I do like this I feel compelled by this. So let's put a pin in this because I think we found something good there that we want to go to. And this is going to really take us.
00:48:42:08 - 00:48:53:12
Nathan
You know to the audience. Sighs we've got some other problems that we need to solve. there's a couple other tweaks that I want you to make here. Okay. one I want to
00:48:53:12 - 00:49:00:21
Nathan
I want to double your average order value. Great. I would love that. And so the thing that we have to do is we have to have multiple price years, okay.
00:49:01:02 - 00:49:21:10
Nathan
Right. So a single price of 149. And this is going to 200. I honestly would not I like the cheaper price of 149. I would probably keep that. And then I would add a second price of 250 300. So the struggle I've had with that, and I, you know, read authority. I don't remember your Michael talk, I remember Ryan, what's his name?
00:49:21:10 - 00:49:51:12
Nathan
Delk. Yeah, right. Has Microconf talk. The struggle I had with that was coming up with what is the additional tier, given my moral reservations about putting expert interviews behind a paywall? Because I asked Kincaid's to donate his time, and then I sell it. I'm like, I read that what we came up with, it was not very compelling is, it's team pricing, and the only reason the pricing exists is to anchor the 149 is being incredibly low because I'm comparing it to like, you know, 699, right.
00:49:51:14 - 00:50:09:10
Nathan
Page. Yeah. And team pricing is great. Yeah. Right. Because developers tend to, you know, flock together. We we did this kind of on a lark just for the, the pricing psychology of like 49 is low because it's next to whatever. We sold one team package of 25 seats for like three grand. Yeah. We never spoke to them at all.
00:50:09:12 - 00:50:28:05
Nathan
They came to the site, hit add to cart and gave us three grand. I'm like, yeah, we should do more of that. So that's the only tiering we have at this point. So I think going back to switching styles in your content. Okay, if there's anything where you can go in the course, I will teach you how to do this.
00:50:28:07 - 00:50:57:16
Nathan
And then the next tier is I will do it for you. so if there's anything in here where it's like, hey, this makes it much more compelling. you were it's going to be a shortcut. So, an example would be in my first book was the App Design Handbook. And, you know, I had just the ebook for $39, and then I switched media types, and I said, you get the ebook plus training videos for $99.
00:50:57:18 - 00:51:19:21
Nathan
And then because I don't have the the moral hesitations that you do around it, I had expert interviews in the 249 package, but the the other thing that I did is I said, hey, what what tools do I use? And let me get all of those in there. Right. So I had the cheat sheets, I had the hey here's the Photoshop templates that I use back and we all used Photoshop.
00:51:20:03 - 00:51:38:10
Nathan
Good days. But you know I was just saying hey as a professional who does this. The industry all the time. What are all the tricks of the trade. And those things that I can put in there. So I like that where I thought you were going is how can I lump in some of my time? Because I don't want to.
00:51:38:12 - 00:51:56:10
Nathan
Yeah, I don't want to get on that. Yeah, I did that with Screencasting. There's the 299. And then for $1,000, you get a one hour hands on and $1,000 is awesome. But then you get to schedule these hands on. I didn't have very many, but I had, you know, five and every one of them, it's like, am I bringing enough to, like, justify it?
00:51:56:11 - 00:52:15:12
Nathan
Yeah, you have both. This isn't worth my time anymore. And I don't know that this is worth your money. And so I felt hesitant about that. But adding on non time bound things I think is doable. I would need to. I can't do it off the top. Figure out what that what those things are. Yeah. So
00:52:15:12 - 00:52:21:15
Nathan
every time I've implemented tiered pricing I've noticed at least a 30%, if not a 50% increase in revenue.
00:52:22:02 - 00:52:48:11
Nathan
in my own personal stuff, it's been A2X increase, especially when you're in a market that is not price sensitive. They're spending other people's money, they're spending other people's money. And so give them the ability to do that. Yeah. to pivot very slightly. Yeah. I think bundling and that's that can okay. This I think yeah. Bundling could be a way to achieve similar ends.
00:52:48:13 - 00:52:50:05
Nathan
Okay. So let's
00:52:50:05 - 00:52:57:04
Nathan
we so we have another sheet or have you ever done a three sheet. Can I do it. We've never done a three sheet, but we might as well flip. Or should we leave these out?
00:52:57:04 - 00:53:00:04
Nathan
Let's flip this one. Okay, so. So let me give you,
00:53:00:05 - 00:53:11:11
Nathan
Wow. First three sheer. Yeah. I don't know if that's good or bad. okay, so we've got, we've got, screen excuse my doctor's handwriting. Screencasting over here.
00:53:11:11 - 00:53:24:10
Nathan
Standalone course. Right. Flagship course teaches the philosophy of how to do it. How to record, how to edit, how to prepare yourself, how to teach people. But it doesn't teach us how to use Adobe Premiere or DaVinci resolve or Screenflow.
00:53:24:12 - 00:53:47:19
Nathan
So I think and now, with the help of Steve, who's a proper video guy, right, we're going to have a course on premiere and a course on resolve and a course on Screenflow, such that you buy. What is that, 299 such that you buy this for 299 and then some combination of the other platforms for 99 each.
00:53:47:19 - 00:54:04:14
Nathan
And then maybe we say you get a discount or whatever, but like this increases our average order value because you can say, I want to learn philosophically, how do I teach people? How do I get comfortable on video? Also nuts and bolts. How do I use Adobe Premiere? Yeah. And then in your checkout flow you can have it where you're on the sales page.
00:54:04:14 - 00:54:33:01
Nathan
You're saying, hey, buy this whole bundle. and they say, no, I want just this, you know, like, okay, cool. And they buy it. And then they say, hey, do you want to upgrade to one of these? And they're like, yeah, what the hell? Yeah. You know, or and then you can tailor that pitch because you're like, all right, you're going to learn everything you need and all of this, and then you're going to find out that you actually want to know keyboard shortcuts and payroll locations and how to execute philosophically, how to execute tightly in these.
00:54:33:03 - 00:54:57:10
Nathan
And they could, you know, you could go on, you could do Camtasia, you could do descript, you could do like. And so I feel like this is this is a model that I think we can execute on SQL Lite as well. Because you've got here's here's SQL eight, the database, here's its rails implementation, here's its Laravel, here's its Django.
00:54:57:12 - 00:55:20:20
Nathan
And so this becomes one, I think 199 and this becomes 99. And so like you learn everything you need to know about the pure vanilla SQL. Right. And then your real sky. Great. Learn how to use that in rails. All of its quirks foibles, flaws, rails caching, rails active record, all of that stuff. And that takes the cart price.
00:55:20:21 - 00:55:24:04
Nathan
Yep, I think that's good.
00:55:24:04 - 00:55:26:23
Nathan
I'm hesitating and I'm trying to figure out why.
00:55:27:02 - 00:55:28:07
Nathan
It's because of this
00:55:28:07 - 00:55:50:21
Nathan
is the time to create, because I've seen enough course businesses to know that you could have the three, maybe four courses total and hit this 2 million, like, so why do I why am I making for you? Okay. All right. Here, here's my rebuttal okay I see, I see and I rebut. Steve could do this one.
00:55:50:23 - 00:56:08:04
Nathan
Steve could do all of these guys an actual expert. I can't teach rails. I don't know the first thing about rails. So a guest. Yeah, I could teach this one, so I'll put a F next to that one. Django. I don't know the first thing. So the thing is I'm on the hook for. I would actually probably do screenflow.
00:56:08:06 - 00:56:20:23
Nathan
are these two. Yeah, that is a rebuttal with embedded in it a problem. Now managing guest instructors, which there's a lot like you can build a great business off of that.
00:56:20:23 - 00:56:23:00
Nathan
are ways that this can go terribly wrong.
00:56:23:01 - 00:56:45:11
Nathan
Sure. Where you can say, oh, let me forever give you a revenue split on this course. And all of that, and you might really regret that, right? Or you could say, hey, I will pay you $10,000 to help produce this with me. We'll do all the backend and all of that. And, you know, as you build your audience, I'll help amplify it in A, B and C, I like that.
00:56:45:11 - 00:57:05:12
Nathan
So we eat some of the risk for some certainty. Yeah. And hopefully that person gets a chunk of change that they're thrilled about. And they don't have to market a course. And we can also throw some of our, distribution or reach behind their personal brand, even though it falls under our course platform. Yeah. So there's a lot of ways you can solve that.
00:57:05:12 - 00:57:27:22
Nathan
But I think you're right to, to worry about like that. You know, there are some, you know, potholes in that journey these are not worried about because it's Steve. He's my business partner. So that seems great. And if you have course creation down to a science, like there's a lot of things where okay, say on one of these more particular ones, say three years from now, we're like, actually we don't want these individual ones.
00:57:28:00 - 00:57:38:14
Nathan
But you spent like a month right on each, you know, you learned a bunch. You're now better at of course, creation. You made plenty of money. Like it will work.
00:57:38:14 - 00:57:46:21
Nathan
I would just really encourage you to think as you scale the business, to think beyond scaling products, kind of scale revenue,
00:57:46:21 - 00:57:50:00
Nathan
okay, because you're in a high leverage business.
00:57:50:01 - 00:57:56:23
Nathan
and so if we look at the the equation here, well let's look at the equation. So equation is what number of products,
00:57:56:23 - 00:58:09:10
Nathan
I don't know that it's even number of products. I started off strong on it but it was number of products times. So we got to, Editor's note you know, what's the equation? Well, let me think about it.
00:58:09:10 - 00:58:10:11
Nathan
I think it's.
00:58:10:11 - 00:58:21:15
Nathan
I mean, even if we just go, well, this is go. Audience actually started a new line, and then we've got a conversion. The.
00:58:21:15 - 00:58:35:13
Nathan
and a I mean, maybe the price comes first, right? I didn't write it as an equation. I, you know, it looks good. Yeah, yeah. That's perfect. Much better. So in this, like,
00:58:35:13 - 00:58:48:10
Nathan
if we can figure out how to grow this audience to, 50,000 on the email, which we know we can do, we know we can do because it's been done.
00:58:48:11 - 00:59:09:01
Nathan
It's been done before. And then if we can go from it, you know, I'm making things up and we're not going to do live math, but a 2% to a 4% conversion rate. Okay. And then that's doubled. That's doubled. That's great. I wasn't going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. and then if you know price, this should actually be I'm going to say rpu.
00:59:09:02 - 00:59:16:07
Nathan
Okay. so average revenue per user. but then if you could take that from 149.
00:59:16:07 - 00:59:19:00
Nathan
To, you know, say 250.
00:59:19:00 - 00:59:33:17
Nathan
Right then these are the, the factors that we can play with. And you didn't actually touch product quantity. who wrote that. So that's, that's where my brain went was immediately I wrote products because I'm thinking how do I go here.
00:59:33:23 - 00:59:45:01
Nathan
And I go straight to make more products, but no more sell more things. Yeah, I think that, that, that quite a bit as well. So let's stay here for a second. So average order value.
00:59:45:01 - 00:59:55:21
Nathan
There's two aspects of it there. You know there's the average purchase that we're making. And then from there if we're moving on then we've got the lifetime value right.
00:59:55:23 - 01:00:23:06
Nathan
And so I feel like you jump to increasing lifetime value before you increased average purchase price. I see now they go hand in hand. But like you can get really good at cross-selling actually on that. No. Have you done much cross-selling between these. Zero okay. So that's the thing where you're like you're getting into a strategy that involves, okay, we're gonna get great at cross-selling.
01:00:23:08 - 01:00:45:12
Nathan
And it's like, well, that's not yet a strength. So maybe let's not it's not you know, we that's right. Yeah. I think this in my mind is the desire for, like completion and like empire building. Right? I want to have. Yeah. And I don't know if that's good or bad, but this to me feels like. Wow, look at that.
01:00:45:12 - 01:01:04:22
Nathan
Look at all those arrows and stuff that feels good. I think the easiest or maybe the, the first thing to do is work on that. Yeah, it could be work on that when they go hand in hand. Right. Because we are creating more content that we teach on YouTube. We're documenting in public what we do. It builds the audience.
01:01:04:22 - 01:01:11:11
Nathan
It talks about the course. Right? Right. You don't truly put things like, I will only do this and then I will only do that.
01:01:11:11 - 01:01:13:18
Nathan
well, actually, maybe let's think about
01:01:13:18 - 01:01:16:09
Nathan
the order of operations relative to this funnel.
01:01:16:11 - 01:01:32:06
Nathan
Okay. So if we're going here, the action step is to get to a second price here okay. And so we want to get to I believe 249 okay. but you should pay with it. Okay.
01:01:32:08 - 01:01:41:19
Nathan
So we want to get that second tier. The second thing is we come over to audience here, is we want to get really good at converting from email to YouTube, and
01:01:41:19 - 01:01:47:15
Nathan
from email to YouTube, from YouTube to email. The inverse of that, I was like, you're not introducing a new that, are you?
01:01:47:16 - 01:01:54:20
Nathan
Okay, I'm with you. Yep. Driving you to 57 minutes in and new out of left. You having YouTube to email. Okay. Yeah.
01:01:54:20 - 01:02:07:09
Nathan
I think this is worth the price of the trip to Boise. Okay. I think this is. That is obvious. but I'm not doing it. and I didn't think about it.
01:02:07:09 - 01:02:24:04
Nathan
Yeah. So this is, because we're going coming back to our equation, our funnel or whatever is this is the audience side of it, because then you keep doing what you're doing and you on YouTube and then just say, okay, now I'm going to get really good at it, especially because we have a way to do it with the sample content.
01:02:28:15 - 01:02:39:05
Nathan
And a way to do it. And this is what I keep coming back to. That doesn't require more time to create or making new products. Yeah. I agree
01:02:39:05 - 01:02:53:09
Nathan
I agree. And that's why this strategy is so compelling to me because it leverages work I've already done. And if my limiting reagent is time to create, which I believe it is, this does not affect that, right?
01:02:53:11 - 01:03:03:06
Nathan
Okay. Now downstream like I would really focus on these two okay. And then downstream I would focus on cross-selling. Right.
01:03:03:09 - 01:03:07:10
Nathan
Which is interesting. And I'm curious from your perspective,
01:03:07:10 - 01:03:34:13
Nathan
these are not related screencasting and databases. They're just not related. you can argue that some portion of developers wants to screen tests is I mean, it's got to be like just that part, right? Yeah. Whereas Screencasting and, you know, Adobe Premiere is like, right, that so that's where I come back to like, this makes sense to me in like a cross-sell bundle, upsell or whatever.
01:03:34:15 - 01:03:54:04
Nathan
In fact, SQL Lite plus our next course, which is Postgres, which is a different database, even those makes sense to me. Like maybe use Postgres to work in SQLite on a side project. That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know how I get here, I'm not saying it's not doable. I'm saying do you think that makes sense?
01:03:54:06 - 01:04:19:13
Nathan
I think you can cross-sell a lot more things than you might originally think. Okay. the example that I'll use is my first two books were about design, iOS design and web app design. And print. You know, that's that's this Postgres SQL light of like, it's a different flavor, but like 601. Yeah, yeah. and then I wrote authority, which is about, you know, how to build an audience and all of that.
01:04:19:15 - 01:04:26:08
Nathan
I sold a decent amount. I don't know the numbers, let's say was 20%. It made good money.
01:04:26:08 - 01:04:49:15
Nathan
so there's a decent amount of people follow you because of the brand. They, they want to pay attention to you. But what I'm wondering bigger picture. You really want to make more products. And as much as I'm trying to talk you out of some aspect of that, like I think you imagine this brand getting to six eight plus products, right?
01:04:49:17 - 01:05:12:16
Nathan
So I imagine three, 4 or 5 flagships with three or 4 or 5 each compendium. So that's kind of how I think about it. So I think that you could totally get there. I would just try to like, get really good at some of these other things before you increase the footprint. So before I do any of this, try to cross-sell these two that already exist.
01:05:12:16 - 01:05:31:09
Nathan
Yeah. And I think that your cross-selling when you do this, it's on hard mode. Yeah. And I think that'll be really good for the learnings. Yeah. Because you can see okay what actually worked and do it as a test. Because what you're actually doing is saying, hey, I need to drive LTV long term and I need to get good at cross-selling.
01:05:31:11 - 01:05:50:20
Nathan
And so I'm going to use the things that I have cross-sell what I can and, and build that skill. how do you see this happening in like, tactics. So people somebody signed up because they want to take Sybil like course.
01:05:50:20 - 01:06:01:19
Nathan
The simple move to get them to even think about Screencasting. Yeah. What I like to do is to send some automated emails that include talking about Screencasting.
01:06:01:21 - 01:06:23:21
Nathan
And so it might be a single one. How often does this really well where there's something and I haven't heard in a long time. Yeah. So he has a lot of content around building online business. Yeah. And then one of those emails is all about podcasting. Hey, if you want to start a podcast and if you click and engage with that, then he has you tagged as interested in podcasting.
01:06:23:21 - 01:06:42:02
Nathan
And then he will pause the main sequence and send you emails about how to start a podcast and going from there, and that goes into his course. So you really looking to gather some intent and interest. You can also just run a poll, right, and embed the poll in the email and say, hey, what kinds of content would you like to see from me?
01:06:42:04 - 01:06:58:15
Nathan
you know, more about Screencasting more about this. What's the biggest problem that, you know, like, what's the next skill that you're trying to learn? so play with things like that. So the pat thing makes me think of a potential angle. They'll be curious your opinion on. I am on camera teaching all of these videos. Yeah.
01:06:58:17 - 01:07:17:06
Nathan
Here I'm teaching you how to be on camera and tennis videos. And so I wonder if, like, tying those together or somehow like, hey, you bought the sequel. Like course you enjoyed it. Actually. I also have a course teaching you how to make courses just like that. Like the one that you just watched and paid for, you know, click here or whatever.
01:07:17:09 - 01:07:34:21
Nathan
Whatever. Yeah. Like you could put a lesson at the end of the skill, like course or in it somewhere as well. Right? You can cross-selling because if you're going to get it back up, I could put a lesson in the skill. Like course that is functionally across all to the screencast. Yeah. Course.
01:07:34:21 - 01:07:36:10
Nathan
And you could tie it in really well.
01:07:36:10 - 01:07:52:04
Nathan
Right. You don't truly understand these concepts until you can teach them. And so let me show you how to teach this so that, you know, you apply it at work here. All that because you're not gonna be like, oh, I had this great Erin Frances video and let me explain it. And I actually can't explain it well enough.
01:07:52:05 - 01:08:05:23
Nathan
Literally never crossed my mind to use this course. I thought I had to go through email. I could potentially use this course to talk about other and, you know, vice versa. Yeah.
01:08:05:23 - 01:08:08:22
Nathan
The other thing that I want to see you do is
01:08:08:22 - 01:08:29:03
Nathan
as we're jumping around a bunch, but as we think about the brand and I'd love to see you spend time on the big picture brand and how these things come together, and then say something like, like make a video that is, this is the Erin Frances Content business master plan.
01:08:29:05 - 01:08:51:15
Nathan
Here's the courses that I want to make. Here's how I want to link people between them. Here's the order that I want to do it in, and think of it like it's the combination of your live stream product launch on X and Elon Musk's like, this is my master plan for Tesla. We're like, first we're going to have this product and then we're going to level it up into a, you know, consumer level sedan.
01:08:51:15 - 01:09:16:12
Nathan
And and on from there. We're just tell people what you're doing. And then that gives you another opportunity to cross-sell because they're like, I didn't even know you've had this. And that is reality. People are like, oh, you have a Screencasting course. Like, yeah, it's got the best domain ever. You know, just yeah, that's very real. And so what you're saying there, if I'm, if I'm hearing you correctly, is, zooming.
01:09:16:16 - 01:09:41:14
Nathan
So zooming out a little bit to the level that is above this, which is the Aaron Francis Empire, and use some behind the scenes content to grow the audience, but also grow all of these, in their cohesion. Yeah. I think that you're not quite clear on what the brand is long term. Yeah. You're like 90% there, but
01:09:41:14 - 01:09:45:21
Nathan
requiring yourself to teach it and to explain it is going to force you to get clear.
01:09:45:23 - 01:10:04:06
Nathan
And then they'll get the audience to be really clear. What does a clear brand sound like to you? So if you had to do describe, me as if I had a clear brand, what would a crisp brand statement be? Because I don't even know if I fully understand. Yeah, what that could sound like. Or pick somebody else.
01:10:04:06 - 01:10:14:19
Nathan
Pick, you know, pick Ali Abdullah or Amy Hoyer, pick somebody else you feel like has a crispy brand. I think it's hard to do, but. So if we.
01:10:14:19 - 01:10:20:14
Nathan
we come into it from the perspective of we're trying to explain what we're doing, where we're going,
01:10:20:14 - 01:10:37:03
Nathan
one is the it's about me as the creator. And that would be like, I'm passionate about these things, and I teach everything I know and and so and so as that brand I'm expecting, like, okay, I'm going to get training content on whatever Aaron is, is passionate about.
01:10:37:05 - 01:10:41:09
Nathan
in, in this example, I could say something like,
01:10:41:09 - 01:10:42:21
Nathan
You know, you're coming in,
01:10:42:21 - 01:10:57:09
Nathan
And you're going to learn the content necessary to become a great developer. And I'm going to teach that to you in multiple levels. First, I love teaching the tactics and the specifics, but then I actually think that the meta skills are just as important.
01:10:57:11 - 01:11:25:08
Nathan
And so in these other courses, I'm going to teach you how to teach because you show up day to day in your job as a developer, you actually have to teach and advocate for your ideas and explain and be clear. And that's why I have screencasting.com. And then in addition to that, I have this other thing. So it's not like we're getting down to one sentence of like this is the tagline, but you're explaining the through line of why you chose to create these two courses.
01:11:25:08 - 01:11:31:01
Nathan
Right? And you're seemingly very disparate. Yeah, yeah. And so you're getting into,
01:11:31:01 - 01:11:55:03
Nathan
you know, that idea of like, this is where I'm trying to go with the brand long term. And so this is a place to focus on being clear over being clever. Right. And so it's just like tell me, you know, I think like a takeaway that I'd love for you to have is the, the, a couple hundred word explanation of where are you going with this brand, what do you want to make and why?
01:11:55:05 - 01:12:16:17
Nathan
And then I think you'll see those lines. You'll start to see, okay, where's the audience overlap? one of the most powerful exercises I did early in my creative career is. So I had started out just trying to get, like, worked on things that were interesting, where it helped me learn to code healthy, learn design, marketing, whatever.
01:12:16:17 - 01:12:39:15
Nathan
And so I ended up with, an iPhone app for kids with special needs, like all of these different a book about this, you know, a whole bunch of things. And I drew a Venn diagram of the audience overlap. And then I got rid of everything that didn't have some level of audience overlap. Okay. And that helped me find clarity of what the through line was.
01:12:39:17 - 01:12:53:22
Nathan
Now, I think you really love these different aspects of do of the business. and so I'm not saying oh, because there's, you know, only 10% overlap. You got to kill one and double down on the other. But what you can do is
01:12:53:22 - 01:13:06:19
Nathan
really find what that throughline is and spend time with it, and then figure out how you explain that to your audience, because they'll they'll see the passion and the authenticity from you and what you're creating, and they'll follow you through that.
01:13:06:19 - 01:13:11:02
Nathan
You just have to give them the the tools for it. I
01:13:11:02 - 01:13:12:16
Nathan
totally understand that.
01:13:12:16 - 01:13:40:06
Nathan
I think I'm at the point where you were creating, an app for special needs kids where you're like, I can do this, I'm interested in this. I'm going to do it. And I feel like I'm currently in an expansion phase of like, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, and I need to at some point, probably soon move into a contraction or consolidation phase where I'm like, this is the ethos, this is the brand statement, and here are the things that align with it and the
01:13:40:06 - 01:14:00:06
Nathan
reasons why they align. Right. Here's the thing that's out here that no longer aligns. Yeah. And then especially because you have a business partner. Yeah, right. You guys need to have a shared lens through which you're making decisions, because otherwise you're going to get to some point where, you know, you're saying, I really think we need to launch, you know, the next, right, the seventh right.
01:14:00:06 - 01:14:21:12
Nathan
Specific, course or you know, video editing platform course. And he's saying like, no, actually, I think the data says that we should launch, you know, Postgres, right? Or this other one. And you need to have that shared vision of where you're going and otherwise at some point, it's going to lead to conflict. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This this is a place I feel murky.
01:14:21:12 - 01:14:41:00
Nathan
And so that that is something that needs to be that needs to be clarified, especially as we're moving towards putting all of this under my personal brand, which is shared with Steve. But this this needs to be identified. Yeah. And the thing that I love about the way you've built your brand so far is you get to do this.
01:14:41:00 - 01:15:04:20
Nathan
You could explore this question in public. Yeah. And it just it just adds to the brain. Does do I like does yeah. So I think as we take a step back, we've covered a lot of ground here. So today we're at 350,000 a year in revenue. I think it's totally possible to hit 1 million. and next year and then the year after that to hit 2 million.
01:15:04:22 - 01:15:28:03
Nathan
We've proven with people like Kenzie Dodds, West boss, this is a path that's been done before, right? And so we can learn from them now in all of these different problems, the ones that I'm thinking about the most are how do we get really good at the audience size, and then how do we get really good at increasing that order value.
01:15:28:05 - 01:16:01:00
Nathan
And then the other thing that I love about it is the clear brand that we're talking about is really going to bring you back to that lifetime value. because if you can get that cross selling long term down to a great place, then let's say down the road we bring in paid acquisition. and you're like, yes, that's something where you're like, wait, I thought I could only pay a dollar per subscriber, but now because I can cross that, I can pay $4 per subscriber, like all of a sudden I could pay way more to spur at that point.
01:16:01:00 - 01:16:03:09
Nathan
Yeah, exactly. There's all kinds of things.
01:16:03:11 - 01:16:06:23
Nathan
This feels doable. This feels doable.
01:16:06:23 - 01:16:10:17
Nathan
I like it, this this feels doable.
01:16:10:17 - 01:16:13:14
Nathan
I want to do this. And I think in time that will come
01:16:13:14 - 01:16:31:10
Nathan
post-Christmas coming soon. But like these guys, will come at some point. But I think this is the most, this being going from YouTube to email to email, I feel like is the most important and and easiest thing to do, which is great.
01:16:31:10 - 01:16:46:00
Nathan
I love it when those two come together and then this will be a good adventure. Cross-selling to figure out. All right. You want to you say you want to do this. Let's figure out how to do it now. Right. Don't don't spend three months building stuff. Do it now and see if it works. I like that. Sounds good.
01:16:46:00 - 01:16:51:21
Nathan
All right, let's take a seat and, Yeah, chat through the the final details.
01:16:51:21 - 01:16:56:19
Nathan
Okay, so you made the trip up to Boise. I did that, I did, I got three sheets out of you.
01:16:56:19 - 01:17:25:04
Nathan
Got three. Really worth it. So what? First, let's just talk about, like, what you're coming in with and then what some of those takeaways are. Yeah. So I think I was coming in with a lot of raw materials. like I think things are going well, I yeah, I do believe that, and what I needed was a little bit of, organization direction, tactics, next steps, that sort of thing.
01:17:25:06 - 01:18:00:05
Nathan
Because I feel and I imagine this is common, I feel in the creator space, it's like I can do everything. I can make anything. The question is where do I spend my finite time and leaving? I feel like I have a few things that will move the needle. primarily this whole YouTube email thing. and then figuring out the cross-selling, I feel like those will move the needle and I have a path forward to, like, start to get a flywheel going, because right now everything is done through sheer force of will.
01:18:00:06 - 01:18:21:22
Nathan
Yeah. If I can get to a point where it's a flywheel, I can breathe a little bit. Yeah, I like it. So you're going into action items. You're talking about YouTube to email. That was when you said that of like, can I use the the course material? And I realize how it tied in with time to create as a problem the, you know, the sheer number of products.
01:18:22:00 - 01:18:45:07
Nathan
It just it made so much sense to me. I love that. what are some of the other, like, things that you're going to implement right away? the brand discovery thing. pretty important as we continue to increase our footprint. Yeah. We need to have a guiding, guiding principle, not only for ourselves, but for the audience that they can see.
01:18:45:12 - 01:19:00:07
Nathan
This is the ethos that, that is infused into everything that we do. So we'll have to. That'll be a fun one for Steve and I to work on. And I think the outcome there is going to be a statement like, right, this is our this is our brand statement. We don't ever have to share it, but we probably will.
01:19:00:07 - 01:19:19:19
Nathan
But like for us to know this is our brand, there's another creator, Tim Groh, who's been a guest on the podcast before, and he put out this video. He ran Story Grid, which is teaching people how to become great writers. And, I don't remember the the title of the video or something, but the gist is like, this is my evil plan to take over the world with Story Grid and just like, walk through it, this is what I'm doing.
01:19:19:19 - 01:19:35:11
Nathan
I'm going to do this and then this, and here's how it's all going to work. And all of that. And on one hand, you're like, you can't show how all this is made. But he's like, people trust me more now. Now they know here's exactly where I'm going. Like the The Empire thing. It's a good shtick. So I can I can ride that stick.
01:19:35:12 - 01:19:50:03
Nathan
Yeah. This how I'm going to build my empire. And it's like, yeah. So yeah, I think that'll be a fun exercise for us to do, I like it. The other thing that I want you to do is to really think about what could be an additional price tier on the products, and I would just ask your audience.
01:19:50:05 - 01:20:10:22
Nathan
So I would just send an email to everyone who bought spotlight and say, hey, what's something that's not video, right? That I could include, not consultant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here are the constraints. and what's in that I could include that would add a lot of value to this course. Yeah. You know and throw out a few ideas and just say hit reply and let me know.
01:20:11:00 - 01:20:17:03
Nathan
Yeah, I like that. There's a reason it's an email. If a reason to send you know, it all comes back to that. Exactly
01:20:17:03 - 01:20:27:21
Nathan
we covered a lot of good ground. This is great. So if people want to follow you in this journey. Because one thing that, everyone has learned from this is that you will share this whole process live.
01:20:28:02 - 01:20:34:15
Nathan
So follow me. Yeah. Where should people go to follow you? Yeah. I think, most real time updates are going to be
01:20:34:15 - 01:20:43:23
Nathan
on, x.com/aaron differences. You can also go to Aaron francis.com. And you know while you're there while you sign up for our newsletter like get on my email list
01:20:43:23 - 01:20:44:19
Nathan
I love it
01:20:44:19 - 01:20:46:23
Nathan
I love it. That was good.
01:20:47:01 - 01:20:51:00
Nathan
Perfect. Well Aaron thanks for making the trip out. This is a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.
01:20:51:00 - 01:21:04:06
Speaker 1
If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel. Just search Billion Dollar Creator and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also who else we should have on the show.