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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.
[00:00:00] Rob: I had really just fallen into some pretty serious workaholism. I wanted to shift. I wanted more time doing the work that I loved. Mm-hmm. I wanted more time back in my life.
[00:00:09] Nathan: You built something that works and people trust you to deliver, and now you're wondering how do you reach more people without sacrificing the quality or the values?
[00:00:18] They got you here. That's where Rob Y is today. He helps education leaders design better learning experiences for underserved students, but he knows he could help far more people if he shared it online. You don't have an online presence. Is that something that you would like to have?
[00:00:33] Rob: I would love that.
[00:00:34] Nathan: So the things that we need within this, we need a platform that we're choosing to focus on.
[00:00:37] We need a habit, we need ideas. Specificity breeds, universality. I need a feedback tool. The fifth thing that you're gonna need is promotion. And then the sixth thing is you're need. I've been waiting for it. Let's go to the flywheel. As we serve our clients, we're getting great ideas. That's generating the fuel for our content.
[00:00:59] We're getting feedback on it. As we post that content, we're driving to newsletter subscribers. The newsletter subscribers are gonna drive back to.
[00:01:08] Rob: So good. That creates so much freedom.
[00:01:15] Nathan: Rob, welcome to the show.
[00:01:16] Rob: Thanks Nathan.
[00:01:17] Nathan: So I wanna start with the big
[00:01:18] question. All right. What do you want in life?
[00:01:22] I want more students around the world to have a remarkable education that changes their life, outcomes and trajectories for the better. And I want more school system leaders to feel confident and equipped to design for that.
[00:01:42] Okay. There's, I've had a lot of people on this show. That is probably the biggest statement that I've heard. And when we were talking earlier, you know, that in a random question like that came out and I was like, okay, we have got to lead with that because that is powerful. So I wanna back up. Sure. Because someone doesn't come from, you know, just any old background and end up with that.
[00:02:04] Like, this is my goal, this is what I want. What led you to wanting that into this
[00:02:10] life experience? I had an opportunity, um, from some, uh, volunteer work I'd done in my community to go and live in rural El Salvador, uh, to support a women's public health organization. And that was a, um, fundamentally transformational experience in terms of seeing that talent is universally distributed, but opportunity is not.
[00:02:34] And, um, I thought, wow, it would be really neat if more students had access to a great education. And then I finished undergraduate. My dad's health took a turn for the worst my senior year, and I had imagined going back and living in, uh, central America or elsewhere and, and doing, uh, development work with a focus on public health and education.
[00:02:54] Teach For America. Recruiter got in front of me and said like, oh, you can't talk about rural poverty and not know it in your own state and in North Carolina, like, you should go back, you should teach. Um, and I did, uh, which allowed me to be closer to my dad in his last years of life. And it also, uh, gave me an opportunity to teach at a really remarkable school.
[00:03:12] Uh, the term has fallen out of favor, but they were called high, high poverty, high performing schools.
[00:03:16] Okay.
[00:03:17] Rob: And so we served, uh, a population from a county where the college matriculation rate was at or below 10%. Mm-hmm. The nationals about 35%, excuse me, college matriculation and graduation rate. Um, and our students were doing about six times the county average and about double the US average.
[00:03:36] And. So they're at 70%? Yeah, a little over 60 at the time. Okay. A little over 60. Um, like That's amazing. Yeah. It's it's phenomenal. There's, there's a couple of books about it. It's, it's, it's a remarkable campus school. So they're school expected to be at
[00:03:48] Nathan: a
[00:03:48] Rob: third
[00:03:48] Nathan: of the national average,
[00:03:49] Rob: and they're instead performing at almost double.
[00:03:51] Right. Right. And they're, they're, uh, coming from the sort of, uh, legacy sharecropping fields of soybeans and peanut fields, living on trailers and, and, uh, coming and getting these remarkable results. And the public school systems, this was a public charter school, so we had some more autonomy over teacher training, curriculum and time in the school day.
[00:04:12] And our school got phenomenal results. And these same students, siblings and neighbors were going to public schools, not five miles away. Right. And were part of the same statistics of the rest of the county. And I got obsessed with this question of how do you provide a high quality educational experience for students, uh, growing up fairly removed from access and opportunity.
[00:04:37] And taught there for a number of years. And then that question led me to wanna look at more schools around the world and to uh, kind of bet on curriculum. So I wrote curriculum and I was an early digital nomad and I backpacked around Africa and Europe and checked out a bunch of schools and educational programs and was shipping curriculum in, started to run outta money and, uh, had a, a long time fascination with a lake in rural Guatemala called Lago Delan.
[00:05:03] So I moved there 'cause rent was cheap. Um, and I'd always wanted to live there. And I was writing curriculum. And occasionally I'd go back in the US and I'd see the curriculum implemented. And I thought, well, curriculum's not a silver Bowl. There's, there's, you thought you're putting out great curriculum.
[00:05:18] Yeah, right. You not
[00:05:19] Nathan: implemented. And you're like, well, okay. That wasn't what career
[00:05:21] Rob: Exactly. Right. So there's like a, there's, there's a missing piece here. So I got obsessed with this idea of like, all right, well, teacher training. So I took a job, uh, with a management consulting firm that helped school systems design, uh, teacher pipelines and train teachers.
[00:05:36] And I had some expertise, uh, having, having moved from highly ineffective to fairly effective as a teacher in my own trajectory. Uh, and so I got a job. Uh, working on teacher pipelines in, in Baltimore. So I'd go out and I'd check on our teachers in schools and I, I had a team of coaches and I'd meet with principals and say, how are things going?
[00:05:56] And what I heard over and over again was like, central office is terrible. Like they don't understand the needs of schools. And, um, they just keep like shoving initiatives down our throat and you're the central office. They don't make any sense. I worked in central office, so I was a consultant, but what was interesting is, so I had my office in central office and.
[00:06:15] It'd be like seven o'clock, eight o'clock on like a Thursday night. And I'd look across, and most of the office lights and most of the cubicles would still be occupied with lights on, like people's, no laziness here, zero laziness. And I'd go and I'd talk to people, um, and I'd be like, you know, what are you working on?
[00:06:33] And like, everybody had a great idea. Mm-hmm. Was highly passionate, had like a research base for it. And what, what occurred to me is like, all right, so there's this, this liberal argument that, uh, folks aren't from the community. So I'd, I'd ask and I'd be like, so where, where, where are you from? Like down the street.
[00:06:50] So it's like, all right, so, so we've got like lots of local people who are deeply passionate about the city's kids who are really well trained. Mm-hmm. And they're burning the midnight oil.
[00:07:00] Nathan: So to speak. So you should have all the ingredients for success. And it's not, it's, and, and
[00:07:04] Rob: it's not clicking. And in fact, not only is it not success, but like when you go and talk to people, it's like, these people are horrible.
[00:07:08] Like they have no idea what they're doing. You know? It's like, well, they're highly qualified and they're working their tails off. So what's the disconnect? Mm-hmm. And the disconnect was disconnect itself, right? So of total lack of coherence. Mm-hmm. So there's high churn in school systems, uh, and, uh, different officials in the school district try to design a program that makes sense, import a program that makes sense.
[00:07:30] And the collection of uncoordinated programs leads to disjointedness and overwhelm. And so I, I got obsessed with this, this next question, which is like, is anybody focusing on coherence? Like, it's not sexy, but like, does anybody think about. Coherence. And this, this led me into kind of like business strategy, human-centered design.
[00:07:52] Like how do you make a system work? Because this idea of like just importing individual initiatives is not, it's not it. Right? Um, so how do you make the system work? So, well, I wanna jump in for a second. Yeah.
[00:08:05] Nathan: Because, uh, I mean, there's so many things here, but I was thinking about Elon Musk's biography and, uh, there's actually, if someone doesn't wanna read the whole biography, which they should, but there's an episode of the Founder's podcast, which titled How Elon Works, I think it's episode 3 99.
[00:08:20] Okay. And one of the thing, like one of his core principles is that engineering, design and manufacturing all have to be deeply connected to each other. Right. Because what would happen, and this is remarkably similar to what you're describing, is the designers and the engineers would. Uh, either in a vacuum come up with these things that wouldn't work together.
[00:08:43] Right. Or they would work really closely together and be like, we have designed the perfect solution and all of that. Now you over there, the battery factory outside of Reno, we're in Fremont. You're in re like you design it or you sorry, you manufacture it. Right. And they would like, it wouldn't work in practice and like in reality and there was no communication.
[00:09:03] Uh, and so Elon would always tell the, you know, the engineers and the designers like, you must be on the factory floor. Yeah. Like, if something in your design does not work, you need, like the person implementing the manufacturing has to be able to walk over and be like, Hey man, love your idea. Doesn't work.
[00:09:20] Yeah. You know, and it has to be deeply integrated and that's the exact same thing that you're
[00:09:23] Rob: running into. That's so interesting. And it, and I, I talk to people about that all the time. Like, you know, you can have a great car. Let's say it's a Porsche, you can have a great, uh, ev. Mm-hmm. Let, let's say it's a Prius.
[00:09:36] You can't put the Prius inside of the Porsche and expect the Porsche to perform really well. Mm-hmm. And, and that's kind of the ongoing issue in education is we design components, but we don't think about deep integration. Right. And often we ask ourselves like, what's a good engine or what's a good curriculum?
[00:09:55] And. A good curriculum, a good engine, a good anything, helps a user through a set of experiences mm-hmm. That allow them to learn something that is useful to them. And so it really needs to be user specific and outcome oriented. And so many, so often we're just asking, is this good? Mm-hmm. But for whom and under what circumstances and to what end?
[00:10:18] And so education, I think, is often a collection of good disjointed parts Hmm. Uh, that aren't designed for the user in pursuit of a result that's meaningful to them. I'm thinking a lot about the creators who are watching
[00:10:32] Nathan: this, and many of them are, whether on purpose or not curriculum designers. Mm-hmm.
[00:10:39] Right. Because they are teaching content and they're saying, Hey, how do I package up this thing that I'm doing and, and reach thousands or tens of thousands of people. They're probably missing like the hands-on application and really like that design thinking. Is there anything that you would say to that group of like, okay, if you're, if you're making Yeah.
[00:11:00] A million dollars a year as a course creator, like, make sure to do this thing.
[00:11:04] Rob: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've got a, I've got a framework for that. I mean, it, it's kind a few simple questions. So the first thing is, what, what is the outcome that you want at the end of this? What should the competencies be? Mm-hmm. So that whoever you're serving with your curriculum, whatever, like at the end of it, what do they know and are able to do without referencing?
[00:11:24] Mm-hmm. You know, the materials. Right? So you're designing for competency. Then what is their starting point? And the next question is for users, for people who are going on that journey, what are the most common and important benchmarks that they pass through, okay, in order to get there? And what are their most common pitfalls that keep them from starting here and ending there?
[00:11:49] And if you can answer that set of questions, what? What do we want 'em to know and be able to do? Where are they starting? What are the most important through points or benchmarks along the way? And what are the most common pitfalls? And it's pretty clear what you should teach, right? Um, and what to focus on and what to double down on.
[00:12:05] And so if you, if you can focus on kind of getting to the essence as opposed to everything that, you know, the laundry list. Yeah. Right. It, I, because that's, that's the same thing in public speaking, right? It's like people ask themselves like, ah, like, what should I say? It's like the wrong question. It's like, what does, what does your audience need to hear mm-hmm.
[00:12:22] In order to do or know or feel what you need and want them to be able to know and do and feel. Mm-hmm. And like planning from the user, uh, is a, is a huge, I think I. Uh, design mind shift, that's mm-hmm. That's helped me help a lot of, uh, folks with, with educational program design.
[00:12:40] Nathan: And then I think as, as more people go through that programming, then if you're actually having that from a design thinking or a user-centered design perspective, you're doing the interviews and you're saying, are we creating the outcome that we set out to do Right.
[00:12:53] Know what Right. What tweaks to make and, and having that like, iterative process.
[00:12:57] Rob: Right. It's gonna
[00:12:58] Nathan: make a big difference.
[00:12:58] Rob: Yeah, totally. Well, that, and that's the big thing, is like mm-hmm. You gotta be curious and talk to people the whole time. I mean, about what, what they want curious. Talk to people. Yeah.
[00:13:05] Right. Um, it's groundbreaking ideas that almost no one does. Right. Right. But they're really, they really matter. Yeah. Um, and that, and that's it. I mean, so rarely are, I mean, we talk about student voice all the time, but very rarely are we really sitting down with students as design partners in their own education.
[00:13:20] Nathan: Hmm.
[00:13:21] Rob: And that's it.
[00:13:22] Nathan: Okay. So I wanna get into your business lot. Yeah.
[00:13:24] Rob: Um,
[00:13:25] Nathan: and I'm gonna see if I can be a design partner for you in, in your business in a little bit. We'll get up on the board and, and dive into that. But take us through the path from, you know, this experience of, of seeing what curriculum works and all of that, you know, through to the business that you're running today.
[00:13:43] Rob: Yeah. So spent about 10 years in management consulting, um, building out a team that helped school districts, uh, do this, um, be coherent, focus on students. Um, and about a year and a half ago I wanted three big shifts. Okay. One, I wanted more time with my family. Okay. Um, I was at that point flying around the country trying to do business development.
[00:14:09] I had built a team that was, I, and I think this is, I dunno, I hear about this a lot from friends who are independent consultants. Right. You've, you, you have this like. Industry experience or this consulting experience, and you've, you've kind of worked yourself out of the day-to-day work of consulting, and now you're in charge of business development or administration.
[00:14:29] So like this very thing that you loved and built out a team around. Yeah. Do it right. Yeah. You no longer do it. Um, and it seems like you can either move up, uh, if you want to be on like a leadership trajectory, an income trajectory, et cetera, move up and out of the work that you love, or you can go try to do it on your own as an independent consultant.
[00:14:46] And so I wanted, I wanted to, I wanted to shift, I wanted, um, more, more time doing the work that I loved. Mm-hmm. I wanted more time overall, uh, back in my life. Um, so I, I, I wanted to, um, I, I had really just fallen into some pretty serious workaholism, uh, and I, and I wanted to like, get back on like physical health, mental health.
[00:15:08] Mm-hmm. And more than anything else. Um, I had a young kid at the time, now I have two young kids, uh, and I really wanted more time mm-hmm. With them. Um, and then third. Everyone that I had talked to, um, that I'd had deep partnership with, felt excited, energized, renewed about the tools and methodologies that I was sharing, and I wanted to figure out a way to help them reach a wider audience.
[00:15:33] And so on the first two, I give myself a pretty high score. I've, um, I'm working a lot less than I used to. Yep. Um, and thus spending more time with my kids, which is awesome. And I am shoulder to shoulder with a lot of phenomenal leaders doing important work. And on the third front, like figuring out how to get it to more people.
[00:15:51] Um, I have not, I've gotten there yet. Okay. So, so that's, that's, that's one of the places you can help go through. I know. A thing do about that. Yeah. Perfect. You've come to the right place. Yeah.
[00:16:01] Nathan: Yeah. Well, let's, um, let's jump up on the board and just kind of talk through where you're at now and where we're trying to go.
[00:16:07] Yeah, that sounds great. Let's start with the business today. Okay. How much revenue did you do in 2024? And what are you expecting to do in 2025?
[00:16:17] Rob: 2024, a little over 220, 25. A little over
[00:16:20] Nathan: 300. Okay. And I'm curious, it sounds like you grew up in fairly similar financial circumstances that to me, and, uh, were like, that's a lot of money.
[00:16:32] Is that what you were expecting to make coming into this?
[00:16:34] Rob: No, and I started my career as a high, well, as a, as a borderline volunteer in rural El Salvador. And then as a high school teacher with my first big job. So I, I did not What did you, what did you make as a high school teacher? Th low thirties. Okay.
[00:16:46] Nathan: Yeah. So we're, we're right in the 10 x ballpark, so we've made some progress in the career. Highly unexpected. I love that. There's just like, making money is something that, you know, it's a skillset that you hone over time. Yeah. And I always like to reflect back on that. 'cause you know, same thing for me, I look back, I'm like, me five years ago, me 10 years ago would be like, you're kidding.
[00:17:05] Right. And even as we have plans to grow, it's fun to anchor in. Yeah. In that aspect of it. Okay. So I wanna break down where that revenue is coming from, and then we'll get into like what we wanna tweak in the business. Sure.
[00:17:18] Rob: And that's not all
[00:17:19] Nathan: take home, by the way. Yeah,
[00:17:20] Rob: yeah.
[00:17:20] Nathan: It's, it's business revenue.
[00:17:21] Sure.
[00:17:21] Rob: Yeah. And
[00:17:22] Nathan: so, yeah, there's, um, there's expenses within that. So where, like, where does that money come from? Is it high-end consulting projects? Is it the long
[00:17:32] Rob: tail, all that? Yeah. Yep. So in the last 22 months, I've had 14 different entities as clients. Okay. Um, I've had three that are above 50 K each.
[00:17:45] Okay. Um, and they, no, I've had four that are above 50 K. Okay. Um, and one of them, uh, above a hundred K. And so the majority of revenue. Is coming from. Yeah. And then there's ten four, four of those 14 clients. Okay. And, and, and there's
[00:18:06] Nathan: 10 at roughly like
[00:18:07] Rob: between like five and 15. Okay. And they are like, they tend to be small nonprofits trying to innovate and do something really cool.
[00:18:17] Yeah. For a, um, population that's pretty far removed from access and opportunity historically and currently. Um, so I feel a lot of passion for them. Mm-hmm. But not only are they paying less, they're also taking a lot more of my time. Okay. I
[00:18:31] Nathan: wanted to get to that of like the, the time aspect is interesting.
[00:18:35] So we were to break down, and I wrote this not quite right, within the four that are 50 K plus is also the one that's a hundred K, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Um, so these are are bracketed together. Yep. But if you were to, I guess from an income perspective, we're at uh, 80 20. Yeah, that's about right from the income side.
[00:18:56] Close enough. Yeah. The math, you know. Yeah. Close enough. Uh, isn't exact. But then from a time side, where are we at?
[00:19:03] Rob: Probably 40, 60.
[00:19:06] Nathan: Okay. Yeah. So it's, it's inverted.
[00:19:09] Rob: Yeah. Might not be exact. 80, 20 Yeah. This way. But like it's,
[00:19:13] Nathan: you know, we're getting, yeah. So basically 80% of your income is coming from 40% of your time.
[00:19:19] That's right. And then 20% of your income is coming from 60% of your time. That's right. Um, conventional wisdom in this would be, I'm not going to do it, but would be to just draw a giant line through all of this, right. And say like, we don't do that anymore. Yeah. Now. We can't do that. We're not going to do that.
[00:19:37] Because there's another phrase written up at the top here of Design for Impact. Tell me about that.
[00:19:42] Rob: I have an MBAI know about the line.
[00:19:44] Nathan: Yeah. You're like, I've done management consulting. Are you for paying me $50,000? Right. Done. Right. Yeah,
[00:19:50] Rob: exactly. I, I, I know about the line and you're a hundred percent right if what I was designing for was profitability.
[00:19:57] Mm-hmm. Um, but what I'm designing for, I hope, is impact. And so I think I've got a toolkit. I think I've got a set of, um, processes that really help folks design phenomenal, uh, life changing educational trajectories for students. I don't have a design, like I don't have something to copy paste. Right. Like, I don't, like this isn't the solution to having, to having Right.
[00:20:21] A phenomenal education. Uh, but I, I think I've got a process for helping folks pretty reliably design and implement, um, something pretty special. Yeah. What I'm really interested, Nathan, and like, you know, the, the, the reason we're here I think is like, I have no idea how to more effectively reallocate this 60% of time to serve not 10, but like a hundred or a thousand, uh, organizations that might not be able to handle like a bespoke high ticket, at least in the education sector.
[00:20:59] I realize these aren't in management consulting, crazy high contracts, but, um, yeah. Like how, yeah. How, yes.
[00:21:07] Nathan: Perfect. You've got, how do we turn that 10 into a thousand plus? That's right. All wealth. I'm gonna switch colors just because it's fun. Uh, now, like we want to decrease. What amount of time would you like to spend serving that group?
[00:21:21] Or is it, is it actually a decrease?
[00:21:24] Rob: Yeah, so I'm working low 50 hours per week on average right now. Okay. I'd love to get that to like. Mid thirties and spend even more time uhhuh, uh, with my kids. Um, so if we could get this to like, right. If this could be, all right, so 40 hours a month. So let's, so if this were 16 hour, sorry, 40 hours a month, this were roughly 16 hours a week, and this were roughly 20 hours a week.
[00:21:46] Mm-hmm. But I could serve 500, a thousand, 1500 education leaders who are like out there in the trenches with a million pressures, uh, on them to just like do everything at once. If I could help them cut through that noise and find the signal and design something phenomenal, like even, even if it couldn't be at quite this level of depth mm-hmm.
[00:22:10] Like, that would be my third thing. Right? Like I'd, I'd spend more time doing work that I care about more time with my kids and figure out how to reach a larger audience in a meaningful way.
[00:22:20] Nathan: Okay. I like that. So we're not trying to decrease time, a substantial amount. No, but. Get from the 50 hours a week to the 30 hour, 30, 30, 35.
[00:22:30] Yeah. But significantly increase impact. Yeah. Uh, on that group, what do you think of this, this model of, you know, continuing to make the bulk of your income from the, the few large projects. Great. And then freeing up lots. Love it. Okay. This is fantastic. We don't want change. Because some people would see this and be like, oh, I don't like how, um, consolidated I am with these handful of clients.
[00:23:00] Yeah, good. That sort of thing. And so then it's, it's like this is just a big a gift basically of
[00:23:06] Rob: like, yeah, wait. And if I'm making like 150 or 200 KA year on 40% of my time, like I'm playing with house money. Like that's like, that's like, wait, I do what I love serve clients. Well, yeah. In 40% of my available work hours and making 200 KA year or in Right.
[00:23:19] Yeah. Like that's, that's so above and beyond like my wildest dreams even. Seven years ago, you know, so,
[00:23:26] Nathan: so usually people come on onto the show and we're like, all right, how do we turn this 300 K into a million? Yeah. Now from us talking to like last night at dinner and, and yeah. Uh, beforehand, like, you would like to do that.
[00:23:39] I like if I
[00:23:39] Rob: have a million dollars, like I've plenty of like good ideas for what to do with it,
[00:23:45] Nathan: but it's not a key thing that we're optimizing for. It sounds key. It, it sounds like a byproduct, right? Of the impact, not a That's right. Okay. That makes sense. Something else that's interesting to me about all of this is, um, you don't have.
[00:23:58] An online presence at least that I could find. Yeah. You have some on LinkedIn, right? Um, how many, do you know how many followers you have on LinkedIn?
[00:24:06] Rob: I have like a little over 3000 connections. Okay. And the reason for that is in May I, um, had somebody told me was like, oh yeah, like you should focus on getting online.
[00:24:16] And I was like, yeah, that makes sense. Um, so I asked my assistant to like, just identify, um, superintendents, um, foundation leaders, et cetera, just like a quick role match and just like add, add 10 every morning, Uhhuh. Uh, so that's what he's been doing. So I'm at like 3000 now, but like, I don't, I don't post, like, it's not, it's, it's not like a real, there's no hero strategy now, all of that?
[00:24:36] No.
[00:24:38] Nathan: Okay. No, there's not. Um, so is that something that you would like to have? I would love that.
[00:24:45] Rob: Okay. If, if it helped me serve a thousand people better and I don't always, that's the goal and Right. And like, I don't know. Right. I mean. We've got this powerful tool called the internet that's been around and like, and I'm not leveraging it, maybe we should use it.
[00:24:59] Right. Right. Yeah. It's just like, it's an,
[00:25:01] Nathan: there's
[00:25:02] Rob: an
[00:25:02] Nathan: obvious platform. Right. Okay. So we, if we were to list out what are we optimizing for? Yeah. Um, or like the, I don't know if it's optimized, the outcomes we're trying to create something like that and we're list out three of them. Yep. Um, building an audience is one of them.
[00:25:19] Yeah. I mean, so it's really scale impact is one. Yeah. Or maybe, I'm trying to decide. Scaling impact might be the overarching thing. Right? Like that's sort of a given in the conversation. Maybe now it's get more specific into how we're doing that.
[00:25:32] Rob: Okay. Perfect.
[00:25:33] Nathan: Um, so you said audience, I think like give them tools, frameworks, products.
[00:25:37] I'm not sure. Like the group that you're serving right now. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, this 15 clients, 10 are in the long tail. Do you feel like if you produced a course. That would serve them? Like give them what they need? Or do they really need someone like they need more than that? They need like hands-on, you know, like a lot more help there.
[00:26:02] Rob: There's a spectrum within that
[00:26:03] Nathan: title. Okay.
[00:26:04] Rob: There's a spectrum within that tail.
[00:26:06] Nathan: Yeah. So my gut feeling is like for this group of the, the long tail of, of consulting clients, you don't wanna abandon them, right? Actually, I wanna serve more of them. You wanna serve more of them, serving them in the way that you're 60% of your time on 10 clients for that amount of money, right?
[00:26:25] You can't pay someone else to serve them. There's not, there's no profit there to do that. You're like, you know what, I'll scale a team. I'm losing money in this group and so I'll just make it up on volume. Like that will never work. And so I think what we need is we need to productize. Um, and so we need to create those outcomes at some level of scale, right?
[00:26:47] Within this framework of like, of things we could solve for solving for you, having an audience, solving for you, productizing this, um, part of the business. Is there a third thing that we wanna solve for
[00:27:02] Rob: the MBA in me wants to say monetize, but, um, I think like if I, right, if I had more, like from a flywheel perspective, if I had more money, I could reinvest into the business and reach more people more effectively.
[00:27:15] Um mm-hmm. And so I think like there is something around monetization, not, not mm-hmm. Not because like, I'm not thrilled with, with where, right. With my current circumstances. Yeah. But the money to reinvest, uh, I think that's like, it's gotta be part of the, it's gotta be part of it. Right?
[00:27:33] Nathan: I heard this quote this weekend and now I've quoted it four times since hearing it.
[00:27:37] And that it's from Seth Godin. I just quoted on a previous podcast, I was someone listening to every podcast is like, yeah, Nathan, I heard this on the last spot, but it's Seth, a Seth Dakotan quote, and he says, profit is just permission to do it again tomorrow. Yes. Yeah. I believe that.
[00:27:51] Rob: I, I believe that. I believe that.
[00:27:53] Nathan: Um, so we're not optimizing for profit. Um, we're ensuring it. Yeah. We're giving this foundation. So the, the things that, the options that I wanted write here are, uh, a flywheel of some kind of like, how do we close this loop and, and accelerate what we're doing? Money can be a, a great loop closer. The other one is time.
[00:28:16] Right? Like really, you know, a theme through all of this is like, how do we do the best with the time that we have? Right? And then the third option would be like the monetization profit Yeah. Aspect of it. And that all could fit in within, within the flywheel. I'm gonna write down four things. We're gonna go time, I'm, and then flywheel.
[00:28:36] Okay. They go, all of these go hand in hand. Sure. As we dive into solving these four things, I just want to orient for you, like this session is entirely for you. So are we headed in the right direction? Like is this resonating If we could solve these problems and focus on decreasing time?
[00:28:50] Rob: Yeah, a hundred percent.
[00:28:51] A hundred percent. Because look, I'm good with spending 40% of my time serving 3, 4, 5 clients really deeply with bespoke work and leveraging those learnings to then share and improve myself. And I think this, this really is it. Like, so that leaves us with 60, well, I wanna work a little bit less. Yeah. So this leaves us with this balance of my time, right?
[00:29:14] Half my time to move from trying to serve 10 organizations, 10 system leaders, well to a thousand, well. Mm-hmm. And yeah, I mean, I think that that is, that is exactly what I would love to do.
[00:29:27] Nathan: Okay. That sounds good. Well, let's first start by. Productizing, we're gonna start on step two. Okay. And, uh, I'll explain why.
[00:29:35] Sure. It'll be obvious a little later. Sure. Um, so the pro productizing is taking, really just taking something and packaging it up in a way that can be repeatable. So if you and I sit down for a consulting session on like, help me design great curriculum, help me design these outcomes in a school, and you spend eight hours walking me through exactly how to do that.
[00:29:54] Yeah. That was wildly helpful to me. Yeah. And no one else, well, besides the thousands that I will then go impact. Right, right. Um, and, but then if tomorrow Kara or producer is like, now do it for me, you're like, great, let's do the exact same thing over again. There's no, nothing's productized in this. Correct.
[00:30:13] And so that's what's happening, right. There's nothing productized for these 10 people. So what I wanna do is design a program Yeah. Where you could have as big of an impact on, you know, every, uh, everybody that you have now with significantly less time spent. So the things that come to mind are all of these, you said five to 15 k are all of these custom negotiated packages?
[00:30:39] Yeah. Okay. So that's the first thing we wanna change. Yeah. Right. Is we want one standard offer. Yeah. Um, so, uh,
[00:30:48] Rob: can I, can I ask a question? Yeah. Okay. You can cut this if it No, you can ask whatever you want. It's your session. Okay. So here I, in this, I have a mix of school districts, education, nonprofits mm-hmm.
[00:31:01] And foundations. Mm-hmm. And I love serving all three. I think all three have a very similar issue, which is how do we design effectively for students and cut through the noise and the pressures. Right. However, I do think like on these custom, there's some slightly different through lines in those three, uh, segments.
[00:31:19] Nathan: Okay.
[00:31:20] Rob: So I don't know if that means I have to pick one offer to match to one niche, probably. Right.
[00:31:25] Nathan: Uh, maybe. So let's say, could you get down to three through lines? Yeah. Okay. So then we, we, great. We've gone from 10 bespoke things to three. Sure. So it's already a significant reduction. Yeah. Uh, so that would be helpful.
[00:31:39] What I would wonder is if, actually maybe one question, would these people benefit from learning from each other or their problems different enough that they, that they wouldn't learn anything from each other?
[00:31:53] Rob: So the segments, yes. But then within segments there's levels of readiness. Okay. So in some, in some cases, yeah.
[00:32:00] And in other cases, it's the blind leading the blind. Mm-hmm. So I think there's, there's a range there. Okay. So what I'm wondering is if within this one offer of, and that's not the blind, leading the blind, like on everything. Like there's are highly competent people who are doing a great job, le le leading through complex change, but like in terms of like readiness to mm-hmm.
[00:32:21] Leverage some of the methods that I have, I think in some, in some cases. Learn from each other. And in some cases, like need, need to build up a foundation first.
[00:32:30] Nathan: Yeah. What I see here is like, what if you had one offer? So it's like, this is a, uh, for $10,000 a year. Yeah. I did just make you raise your bottom price slightly.
[00:32:40] Yeah. Uh, well it double, but yeah. Um, you know, for $10,000 a year we'll solve this problem and maybe the solution is different within each of our three tracks.
[00:32:50] Rob: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:50] Nathan: But like the packaging of the offer Yeah. Is similar. Yeah. Would that work? Yeah. Okay. And so then you're, you're trying to standardize as much as possible.
[00:32:59] Right. Um, the analogy that I've seen, you know, is like, uh, I dunno where I wanna do this. Maybe I'll put it down here. Right? Like, you're doing this totally custom bespoke thing and this totally custom bespoke thing and that, and like, there's no. Replication to it. It's different every time. You can't clone that.
[00:33:20] And so what you're trying to do is like exactly the same. Exactly the same. Exactly the same. Right. Like we can, we can make a factory that makes this over and over again. Mm-hmm. And probably creates like better outcomes.
[00:33:34] Rob: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:35] Nathan: Because we've standardized a lot of that. And then, you know, if you need to help someone with the edge cases, you can because you freed up more time to be able to do that.
[00:33:45] Right. Um, and so that's what I wanna see is like a single price point. Um, and then you just say, okay, what is different to create the best outcome? Cool. We're now 70% the same in the last 30%. Yeah. Is different. That sounds good. Okay. So if we wanna offer then we, we need a format. Do you have a sense of a productized format that would serve like this group of people?
[00:34:14] Um, and would let you scale to 20 or 40, it sounds like group coaching, right? I think so,
[00:34:20] Rob: yeah. Um, or there's like some prerecorded content mm-hmm. Some prompts that everybody works through individually and then you come together to learn from each other and have like office hour spot checks. Right.
[00:34:32] Nathan: I think there's gonna be onboarding as well.
[00:34:34] Say more about that, or how do you define, I, I imagine you have like a custom methodology in all of this, right? Well, you were telling me earlier that you'll do these workshops with someone where you'll sit down and train them. Right. What I'm wondering is if you could train a cohort instead, could you train four organizations simultaneously?
[00:34:54] Yeah. And maybe they would act like, I think they would learn more so long as they're within the same track. Yep. Um, they would learn more from, you know, the questions that they ask. Like I often, I was at this, uh, event the other week where all of these great founders, I'm used to being at something where like people asking me questions.
[00:35:13] And there was just the, this great group of founders, and actually there was three guys sitting at the breakfast table. Uh, one was 60 years old, the other was 70 years old, and the other was 80 years old. And I did not say a word. Like I was so thrilled to listen to everybody else at like, ask them great que Oh, that was amazing.
[00:35:31] Que I wouldn't, wouldn't even thought to ask that, right? Like, I just wanted to hear everyone else's questions and then like this incredible wisdom from these three leaders. Um, and so I feel like I learned so much more from other people's questions. Yeah. And so being in like an onboarding cohort I think would be really interesting 'cause I would learn, right?
[00:35:50] There's like what I got stuck on, right? And then, oh, you got stuck on something. I didn't even realize I was stuck on that until you asked that question. Like, you know, that sort of thing. Right? Um, and so I think that could help a lot. So could you do like a quarterly, a quarterly onboarding? Yeah. Um, where you spend two days with.
[00:36:09] You know, whether it's four new organizations or eight new
[00:36:11] Rob: organizations, would that work? Probably. Again, it depends a little bit on the segment. Foundations and nonprofits have time. School superintendents are pulled in a million different directions. Like holding two days is pretty tough, but possible.
[00:36:24] Okay. Possible. How do you,
[00:36:26] Nathan: uh, well, that
[00:36:27] Rob: might be the three tracks and the,
[00:36:28] Nathan: how do you onboard them right now? Right. If it's bespoke for the school superintendents, like how do you get time on their calendar?
[00:36:34] Rob: Yeah. It's like two hours, like every two weeks or something, you know? Okay. It's like, it's a, it's a slow drip.
[00:36:39] Can you actually serve them? Yeah. They might need a different offer,
[00:36:43] Nathan: but like even if they're are, are you effective in creating impact in their organizations when they aren't able to allocate time to like learn the methodology and all of that? No. Okay. If we're designing for impact. What I'm wondering is some of these, like pushing a boulder down the hill and then like this one category or like pushing the boulder up the hill?
[00:37:08] Yes. Okay. If you had to like, let go of serving that group, what would it, what would it mean for you?
[00:37:14] Rob: There's a lot of kids in public schools that are run by superintendents who have insane set of operating conditions. You know, like 12 bosses who don't agree with each other. Right. I, I a school board. Yes.
[00:37:28] Right. It sounds like a very challenging job. I, it's, it's, it's incomprehensible. Mm-hmm. Quite what they're up against. Um, so I think like for me it's a, like, I want to serve them well. Mm-hmm. Um, and I don't think I've figured out how to do it well yet, and I'm not confident they're productizing, uh, is gonna work.
[00:37:52] Is gonna work. Yeah. But I'm, it's a tough problem. It's a tough problem.
[00:37:57] Nathan: Yeah. Because there's, there's so much leverage in this. Right. Because if you can. Positively impact these few individuals. They will then impact thousands. Right? That's right. But they're so hard to reach. One thing that, that I'm wondering, tell me if this resonates at all, is if you could set the boundaries on what it means to work with you.
[00:38:16] Yeah. And so someone says, like, you know, I'd love for you to come in and show us what to do. Yeah. And, and all of that. Uh, and I got about 45 minutes next, not next Friday, but the one after that. Sound good. Right. And if you were to say, man, I, I totally see how important it is for you to create this change.
[00:38:35] Yeah. And I, I see your passion for it, and I see how hard your job is. Yeah. Here's the thing. I have good news and bad news. The good news is like, this methodology works. We can create change. Like we can help solve so many of these problems. The bad news is it's gonna take a commitment from you. Right. And it's not gonna be 45 minutes.
[00:38:54] Every is in two brightest it's going to look like, right. Whatever this is. Yeah. And when you are ready to dedicate the time,
[00:39:03] Rob: yeah.
[00:39:04] Nathan: I would absolutely love to work with you.
[00:39:06] Rob: Right. So I think, yeah, I think that's right. I, and I think that basically means that segment dies in the short term. Okay. But my, my long, long-term hope and like, and maybe this is a pipe dream, Nathan is like, we build an audience to such a, to, to, like, we get the, we get a platform big enough that a superintendent can be like, oh, we have the opportunity.
[00:39:25] My firm's called A DGN. Right? Like, we, we, like, we have an opportunity to work with A DGN if we can allocate the time, and then the school board and everybody else is like, yeah, well, of course, like if we have that opportunity, we'll we'll create the time. That's, so that's like, that's a, that's a distant dream.
[00:39:41] But like, I do think I need the, the brand cachet in order to like be able to say that to them. Right. Because that, does that make sense? Yep.
[00:39:50] Nathan: Because audience. Is gonna get you reputation, right. That you have in these circles. Right. Your whole business is driven on referrals, all of that. Right. But you don't have a reputation at scale.
[00:40:01] Right. And so the superintendent heard from someone else, they're like, oh, we have to work with them. And the school board's like never heard of them. Yeah. Who care, you know? Yeah. And, and so if the school board is like, wait, really? Yeah. I saw their con, you know, I just listen to a podcast. Right. You know, whatever then.
[00:40:16] Yep. That makes sense. So one thing that I've found is often in sales when you're willing to do everything mm-hmm. To make it work. Yeah. You like gradually erode your own credibility. Mm-hmm. I would not be surprised if within the same group, even before you have reputation from the audience, if within the same group you said, this is what it looks like to work with us.
[00:40:39] And they're like, ah, you know, I can't and all that, but we could do this. And you're like, this is what it looks like to work with us. And they're like, oh, and you're, you keep coming back to it. I would guess that a lot of people would say. I can't do it this month because whatever's happening in the school year, you know, any of these things.
[00:40:56] But I will make time to make that happen. And so my guess is that, uh, conversions would ultimately go up. Um, because you said our program matters. It happens under our rules. There's a reason for it. You care about impact as much as I do. These are the circumstances which we create the most impact. I think I've been,
[00:41:16] Rob: uh, allowing like a false dichotomy between empathy and standards to like take root.
[00:41:23] I think what, what you just said is a really good push. It's like, I mean, it's boundaries in any relationship used talking about that with teachers all the time, right? It's like your empathy is like your empathy, like you, like you lowering the bar for these kids is like keeping them where they're at. Uh, right.
[00:41:40] Whereas when you say like, no, like, this is what a good paragraph looks like. Mm-hmm. And like, Nope. Like, you're gonna keep rewriting, like, I'm gonna keep giving you feedback until it, until it's good. Right. Then, then like, people rise to the challenge. And I, and I think like in my own consulting, I've allowed myself to be like, oh, but like their circumstances are so difficult that like, let me bend and do some stuff that's not gonna work.
[00:42:01] Nathan: There's a, uh, a Greg Popovich quote, which I'm gonna totally butcher. The gist of it is basically like, I hold these standards because I care about you deeply, and I know you're capable. Right. Of hitting it.
[00:42:14] Rob: Right.
[00:42:14] Nathan: Right. And so it's that like exactly what you're saying. You see it all the time with students where you're like, oh, if I lower the standard and I cater to them, you know, I, I don't teach, but I, I have three kids.
[00:42:24] You know, it's a, oh, you're total teachers. Right. And so, you know, you just see like, there's times where it kills you to enforce the consequence or the boundary or whatever, and you're like. Yeah, we'll let it slide this time. And, you know, like, wow, that is such a huge disservice to them. Yeah, that's a nugget, man.
[00:42:42] Rob: Yeah, I mean that's a, that's a word. Like, like if I, yeah, if I leave with nothing else that's, that's like, that's like a critical reframe and I've already left another stuff, but like, that's a critical reframe. Hmm. Okay. So yeah, what I'm gonna put put in here
[00:42:55] Nathan: is I'm gonna write down, um, boundaries. Okay, so we've got a lot to cover.
[00:43:03] So in the interest of time, offer a format. Um, I think the, the onboarding cohorts are going to be good. Basically what we're just trying to standardize everything. 'cause the more we standardize group things together, not only do I think we can increase impact 'cause people will learn from each other, but we can substantially decrease time.
[00:43:20] Love it. And then when someone's like, Hey, when can you start working with us? You say, yep, our next cohort starts in three and a half weeks. We'd love to have you in it. Um, I would just need the commitment from you, you know, by the end of this week so I can save your spot. Love it. Right? Um, so that's going to be really good.
[00:43:35] As we're productizing. Let me draw this arrow. What else are we missing to productize?
[00:43:43] Rob: So this is all paid content. Mm-hmm. Like I would, I don't know. And like, maybe this is for another day or another year, but like I would love to have free content. Yeah. So we'll get to that. That'd be the audience. Okay, great.
[00:43:55] We'll get to that. Great.
[00:43:56] Nathan: I think the third thing, I don't know what to call it. I'm gonna write down learning. Um, that might be the wrong thing. Lemme talk through it to make sure it's right. What I want you to get out of this, obviously you're gonna get money out of this and you're going to help people, right?
[00:44:10] We're getting money and impact, but as we transition into audience, we need learning ideas, pain points. Yeah. We need fuel for our content. Maybe that's what it's, I'm just gonna write down fuel. Perfect. Love it. Um, so now like, what I want you to have is like, as you run this, you make this whole process. You have this track running in the background that is continually harvesting.
[00:44:36] What's your biggest frustration as a school superintendent? What, what problems do you run into all of this, right? And you're just harnessing the language that someone used all this, every one of these onboarding calls is recorded, every question, all of that. And you're, you know, using your custom, the transcripts and your custom AI is to mine for all of this, right?
[00:44:54] And put it into place because that's what's gonna give us, love it. The fuel for authentic content. Love it. Okay. Love it. All right. So as we talk about audience, what I wanna do is define a few of the ingredients for that.
[00:45:06] Rob: Yeah.
[00:45:06] Nathan: And then let's also get into our time commitment. Okay. So as you were breaking down these elements, we're talking a 40 hour work week.
[00:45:13] I don't know. Say we're spending 15 to 20 here on the consulting aspect of it. Yeah. Highly high end bespoke. Yep. And then if we could be 10 hours a week on our productized offering. Yep. You think that's possible? I mean, it doesn't exist yet, so I, so anything's possible. Yeah. That's a story that we design with it.
[00:45:30] Right. And then 10 hours a week for the audience. So why don't you write audience up here and we'll start to break it down.
[00:45:35] Rob: Great. That sounds good.
[00:45:36] Nathan: Okay. So the things that we need within this, we need a platform that we're choosing to focus on. We need a habit, right? So how are we showing up consistently?
[00:45:45] The time block, all of that. Love it. Uh, we need ideas. Fuel. Yeah. Fuel. 'cause that's what's gonna make the time spent, uh, much more effective. Yep. I think we need a feedback loop. Let's just talk through these and see where that ends up. Um, so let's, yeah. Let's just say audience, uh, in 10 hours. Love it. Right off the edge of the board.
[00:46:12] All right. So an audience in 10 hours a week, that's our constraint. Okay. All right. So let's first talk platform, the people that you try, you're trying to reach, what platform? Instagram, LinkedIn, all of that. Do you think they're most on
[00:46:22] Rob: professionally?
[00:46:23] Nathan: Yeah. LinkedIn. Okay. So that's easy. We got LinkedIn, the habit.
[00:46:29] How do we make content creation for LinkedIn? A consistent habit that you're excited to do and showing up consistently for?
[00:46:38] Rob: I think it's all interconnected. So I mean, I get stuck on ideas. I get stuck on platform. Um, so I think like, um, pro like constraints are helpful. Um, like constraints unlock creativity sometimes.
[00:46:50] Mm-hmm. So constraints and I think like time held sacred. Um mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think that's a matter of like calendar blocking. It's a matter of, right. I mean, it's a virtuous cycle in the sense that like right now. This creeps into, right? Like, like I have all of these clients who I like, have such a heart for and, and like, I'm not, I'm, I'm not doing a good job of setting boundaries.
[00:47:17] Mm-hmm. Right? And so like, that eats into the time. So I think like calendaring is big. Constraints are big. I think accountability, you know? Mm-hmm. I think like, I, I, yeah. I thrive with like gamifying, I don't know, like a, a way to win, you know?
[00:47:31] Nathan: I mean, you could do the old, uh, Tim Ferriss thing where you're like, uh, if I don't show up and write three days a week in this period of time, then uh, you know, you as my best friend take this thousand dollars and donate it to this organization that I despise.
[00:47:48] Yeah. Donate it in my name to this, or like, put some stakes to it. Yeah. That's good. I've never personally done that. Yeah. Like, it scares me a little too much. Uh, a simpler version, you know, I'm writing a book right now and a simpler version is I will post, you know, like I took three days off of my normal.
[00:48:06] And said, my number one priority is to make progress on this book. And I, you know, posted on Instagram and I was like, this number is currently 22,000 words. It needs to be 30,000 words by the end of this week. Hold me accountable. Yeah. And
[00:48:19] Rob: like that helped. I, I mean, that would work for me. Like okay. Doing anything publicly.
[00:48:25] I'm like, all right, lemme step it up.
[00:48:26] Nathan: Okay. So I think you need, uh, some public accountability and then you probably need a peer, like someone that you trust Yeah. Who is like going to call and be like, yep. Hey Rob. Yeah. How's it going? Yeah. You know, did you do the thing? Um, yeah. So I think those two things will create the habit.
[00:48:42] Obviously if we were designing a true habit in like a atomic habit style Sure. We'd want, um, the q and and other things. Yeah. Like, uh, those are two great places to start from. Yep. Okay. Number three, we need ideas. Yep. So the hardest thing, this is where I think the habit breaks down to the point that you just made to.
[00:49:00] When you don't have ideas, you sit down and you're like, okay, my calendar says right now I should be writing, I should be creating content, but I don't have that. What am I gonna do it on? And so you need that fuel consistently coming in. And so that's where if we can build into our flywheel right from the offer that every time we're having these calls, we have a system that's like logging all of the ideas, the pain points, and all of that.
[00:49:31] Right? And then I'm just coming to that and saying, in this 90 minute block of content creation time that I have, yeah. I'm just picking from this list. Yeah. Of what I'm gonna actually write. Yeah. I have no system for that right now. I guess just to talk through it really quickly, it's. Record the calls. Yep.
[00:49:49] Make a custom GPT that takes the recording of that. Yeah. Right. So we're, we're recording in grain or Fathom or whatever else. Yep. And so then Zapier or or Notion has a, a recording tool.
[00:50:01] Rob: Yeah.
[00:50:02] Nathan: Right. You're just putting it in a set spot and you're having your CLA project read out of that. Mm-hmm. And its job is to then summarize and say, uh, these are the pain points that were identified in this.
[00:50:14] And you'll, you'll tweak that prompt over time and Sure. And you'll read through it and you're like, oh no, it missed one. Why did it miss one? Yeah. Going from there. So you might set that up, combination of Zapier or some of the tools, but like, uh, and then you would constantly have pain points logged, and then you're gonna have that, that place stored in there.
[00:50:28] So the things that you think of, right. You're on a call that's not recorded, maybe with a Right. More enterprise client or I mean, I would, I would record all the calls. I do, I do already. Yeah. But I've got, so you go through 20 minutes of them in fireflies. Yeah. And mine, all of that. The other thing that I do a lot is I use the whisper flow app.
[00:50:47] I don't have it. And so, uh, it's a text to, or a speech to text. It's really, really good. If you use a Mac like I do, um, you can press the function key on your keyboard and just get perfect speech, text it, transcribes it immediately. Uh, you like the delay is 1.2 seconds or something like, and so great. It constantly tells me like using speech text, you type at a hundred, it's the equivalent of typing at 150 words a minute.
[00:51:12] It's like, uh, I don't type that fast, you know? Um, it's great. So anyway, use that. But then there's an iPhone app. So in the car I use it all the time where I will turn it on as I'm driving and then speak to a prompt or, you know, that sort of thing. Uh, to mine. Mine ideas. And so really just have the place that you log all your ideas for content and you summarize all your pain points, um, and frustrations that you hear from your audience.
[00:51:38] Love it. Okay, so next is the feedback loop.
[00:51:42] Rob: What you're gonna find. Yeah, go ahead. Quick question. So do the ideas have to feed into the coaching? Does everything that I post have to, in some way seller or underscore problems or solutions within my group coaching offer? Or is it fine to serve a longer tail with a bri with a broader
[00:51:59] Nathan: Yeah, it's fine.
[00:52:00] Fine
[00:52:00] Rob: to go broader
[00:52:01] Nathan: because Great. Because you're still within, because education, creating great outcomes. Outcomes for kids, great. All, all of that music, it's just that this group. You're gonna have a front row seat to their problems. Great. And I would bet a lot of money that their problems that are wildly painful to them are pretty universally applicable.
[00:52:23] That's correct. To the rest of your audience. That's right. Uh, and so there's this idea, uh, that Tim McGraw taught me. He's a really great writer and, uh, book launch expert and all this stuff, and he always says that specificity breeds universality. So like, the more specific you can be to a certain person's pain point and the, you know, all of this, the more universally applicable it'll be.
[00:52:44] That's great. Okay. So the feedback loop, okay. The hard thing here is you're gonna publish content that's not gonna resonate because it's not very good. Right. And how do you know whether it's good? A lot of people use, uh, views as their metric click, and that like, that's some element of feedback loop I posted on LinkedIn, did it work, did it not?
[00:53:07] And you track that and you, you. But I think you also need a few peers. You need people who are on the journey together who maybe are providing some accountability. They're providing some feedback. Hey, is this this a good post? Uh, am I still writing like I did when I was in corporate? You know, or management consulting, like, or am I writing for hooks and retention and, and all of that.
[00:53:31] So do you have any ideas of like, who you could form a group with or does anyone come to mind who is good at this kind of thing that you could get feedback from?
[00:53:43] Rob: Not really. It's kind of an empty space out there. I mean, or at least, at least. I mean, I'm not on there regularly, so like, sorry if I'm offending somebody who's like, got the most amazing content in the world in this space, but like, I don't, I don't hear a clear voice that's like speaking to the pain points and desires and like actual workable solutions for, um, for any of these three mini segments within education leaders.
[00:54:04] So I would go outside of your core audience. Okay.
[00:54:07] Nathan: And I would say. So the, the principles are the same. Right? Right. So like in the same way that if I'm teaching software engineering Yeah. And I don't know you're teaching math or Right. All of that. A lot of the principles of like how we engage in a classroom, all of that create the learning environment are the same.
[00:54:26] Rob: Right.
[00:54:27] Nathan: In the same way that if we're both trying to get attention on the internet and I'm doing it in one category, like the principles of hooking content, maintain, like those are the same. So I would join a group like Jay Klaus's, the lab, um, or I, I would try to find other creators to be around. I would come to Craft and Commerce Okay.
[00:54:48] Kits event and, you know, meet people, but like form that small group of people that you can turn to
[00:54:54] Rob: Okay.
[00:54:54] Nathan: Who are on a similar journey. Okay. Um, and get that feedback loop. You can even see if there's someone that you can hire maybe a, a copywriter. Cool. Or, Hey, can I pay you $500 a month on retainer? Yeah.
[00:55:05] Or a thousand dollars a month. For you to just like, give me feedback on every post before I put it out.
[00:55:11] Rob: Yeah.
[00:55:11] Nathan: And that would be well worth your time. You might only do it for three to six months, um, be well worth it, but I bet your learning curve, uh, would be really good.
[00:55:20] Rob: Okay.
[00:55:20] Nathan: I love that. And then track all your numbers, right.
[00:55:23] Um, because then you'll see like, oh, this worked, this didn't. I really like having a spreadsheet that, oh, here's a little secret about the internet. You can repost content. Hmm. So I thought if you wanted to build a big audience on social, you had to like every week come up with the best content.
[00:55:43] Rob: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:44] Nathan: Turns out you can create lots of content and find the best ones and then repost them every six months or so.
[00:55:52] Rob: Mm.
[00:55:53] Nathan: And if you're trying to post weekly, it doesn't take you that long before you could actually be like, oh, I'm set. I don't need to write any more content because my reposts, uh, keep performing well.
[00:56:05] Because you really shot, like imagine a crowd of people going by, right? You know, if the difference between like standing behind a pulpit and lecturing the same group of people versus like a crowd of people going by in an airport, the algorithm is really a lot more like the airport situation. And so if you repo, if you say things over and over again, you're reaching new people rather than like, oh, I, I said that, you know, once, two years ago.
[00:56:29] I can't ever say it again. So what that means is that you end up creating a spreadsheet that's like all your best ideas and then, you know, so as you, you post these and like those two did really well and it's like great in six months, you know, I'm gonna be waiting like on the calendar, right. And I'm going to have a date later on that that's gonna get reposted.
[00:56:53] Rob: Right. So they can get to what's half a year, 180 days. You can get to 180 great pieces of the content then you would
[00:57:00] Nathan: Yeah. I mean you don't actually need to post every single day. Right. Um, I would go for. Quality over quantity to an extent. They, the huge caveat on all of that is that quantity often leads to quality, especially when you're early on, right?
[00:57:17] So I would probably look for a cadence of publishing three times a week, okay. On LinkedIn. Um, and see like what can you do within that quality bar, especially. 'cause remember we have our constraint of 10 hours, right? Uh, and then there's a whole, uh, I guess the, the fifth thing that you're gonna need is promotion.
[00:57:36] So why don't we write that one down in your fancy orange marker. So the promotion piece is really important because a lot of people put out the content and they don't put in that work. So there's three like, main elements of, uh, promotion that you're going to do. One is that we're looking for is comments.
[00:57:56] So these are people that you can connect with in your community. You're trying to grow together. They're commenting on your things, you're commenting on their things, right? Comments is what primarily drives the algorithm. It adds credibility, all of that, right? We wanted that reputation. Yeah. Um, so really try to find a handful of people that you could grow with, uh, who will, um, do that.
[00:58:18] The second one is going to be partners. And so what you wanna do,
[00:58:25] Rob: is it important that the commenters are in the same space that I am? No,
[00:58:29] Nathan: no. It just should be like they, they should genuinely find your content interesting.
[00:58:33] Rob: Okay.
[00:58:33] Nathan: Um, but yeah, they don't need to be in that space. Um, so the partners is basically like who already has your audience that you could go out and write to.
[00:58:45] And so if you were publishing three times a week and I would probably do two to your own audience and then one that you're trying to partner with someone else, there's a really great creator. His name is Brian Harris. Uh, his website, growth tools.com. And he has his whole group coaching program and all that where he is teaching like experts how to grow their audiences in the, the only method they teach, right?
[00:59:08] He's done all kinds of stuff. He was telling me he used to have like 95 playbooks for growth. Now they have four. Like the only thing they teach is partnerships. Go out and identify potential partners, pitch the partnership, make it happen. So that is coming on someone's podcast, doing a webinar together, writing a guest post for their blog, doing a swap for newsletters, right?
[00:59:29] All of those things that you're happening having happened over and over again. And then the sixth thing that I'm realizing you're gonna need is you're gonna need emails.
[00:59:38] Rob: I've been waiting for it. I was gonna be so disappointed if he didn't, I was gonna ask you. And then I was like, oh, is Karen gonna get mad at us?
[00:59:44] Nathan: Yeah, exactly. All right. Because we need a way to capture this attention. So what you're gonna do to get, uh, people on your newsletter is gonna be lead magnets. Cool. So what you want to do is take the most, we've identified pain points, right? That's in our fuel. We're gonna try to take the, the most painful problems that people have, create a late lead magnet around that.
[01:00:05] And then in our content we're gonna drive people back to that. Um, great. And then when you, another way to get comments is when you have that newsletter and if it's, if, uh, weekly is too often to send a newsletter, you can send it monthly, you can start with a more casual cadence and build up to it. What's gonna happen is as you build the newsletter, you can actually drive them back to the comments on your posts and say like, uh, hey, we're doing this big discussion here and uh, you know, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
[01:00:37] Right? What's your biggest pain point here? What's the solution here? Tell me a, a story about the time when, and that will drive comments, interaction. 'cause you just took a hundred people or a thousand people emailed them and said, go to this LinkedIn post. Right? And so you end up in this flywheel. So I guess to wrap up, 'cause I've like thrown a lot at you all at once, so Good.
[01:00:57] Let's go to the flywheel. This is, uh, just in the interest of time, I'm going to give you like the most basic version of the flywheel. Yeah. But you know, as we talk through this, we're trying to create a virtuous cycle, right? The more that we do something, so with more time, I figure out a better one. But what it is is, you know, as we serve our clients, we're getting great ideas for like what their true pain points are.
[01:01:27] Yeah. Uh, yeah, go for it. Write anything down you
[01:01:30] Rob: want. Okay.
[01:01:31] Nathan: Um, and so then from there, like that's generating the fuel for our content tent. We're writing all of those posts, the highest quality that we can. And maybe there's a mini, a mini feedback loop in that of like, you know, we're getting feedback on it, uh, from.
[01:01:54] You know, on our ideas. Yeah. But then what we're doing is as we post that content, we're driving to newsletter subscribers and then the newsletter subscribers are gonna drive back to, uh, different appliance to Yeah. There's two loop closers that you go with. There's actually a bunch.
[01:02:11] Rob: Okay.
[01:02:12] Nathan: Um, becoming clients would be one of them.
[01:02:14] Rob: Yep.
[01:02:14] Nathan: Um, and that would work well. We could also drive back to our content, which helps boost the reputation.
[01:02:21] Rob: Yeah. No, this is like a mini loop within it, or no.
[01:02:23] Nathan: Yeah. So maybe let's just go do those subscribers back to, uh, new clients. Right. That's the simplest.
[01:02:29] Rob: Okay.
[01:02:31] Nathan: And what you'll find is that's the main goal.
[01:02:32] This is a, a flywheel to drive, um, drive new clients. What I was trying to close it in is a flywheel to drive, uh, more audience growth because from. Listening to you, I believe you care more about more, more audience growth than you care about more clients. That's true in this moment. That's true. But more new clients will get you more people to serve, which would get you better ideas, which, you know, so like they go hand in hand.
[01:03:00] Yeah. Um, okay. So there's a lot of iterations of this. I would test this flywheel and try to measure it, and then I would play with, oh, is my loop code a little different? Like over the next six months, like, um, swap out some of the things on the flywheel. So now let's take a step back. Yep. What we're optimizing for audience, we've got a clear idea of how we're gonna do that productizing, right?
[01:03:24] We've got the 60% of our time that's going, it's not making that much money. So how do we scale the number of clients? We'll decrease the number of ti the amount of time I think productizing the offering is going to do it, especially because we have, uh, we're standardizing, we're going into a lot of other.
[01:03:41] Uh, you know, we're maximizing our time in that we also have a, a tie in for the fuel goes into the audience. Um, from a time perspective, I'd really encourage you to focus on this calendar element. Yeah. And say, Hey, how do I time block for not just the writing, but for each thing and be like, how does this all fit together in a given week?
[01:04:04] And so you're saying, okay, once a quarter I'm doing onboarding, so I'm going to have these two days blocked out once a month. I, or, you know, every other week I'm doing these office hours. You know, and you can make a puzzle where it all fits together and then try to leave at least like 10 to 20% margin for, um, other things.
[01:04:23] Um, but then you can get to the point where I think you hit all of your time goals and hit your impact goal. And a lot of that is driven by number four, which is the flywheel of, you know, we've got each of the a, these aspects of it all getting together in feeding on each other because. You know, the fuel from the audience, the, the audience is gonna drive more, um, inversions into the coaching program.
[01:04:50] Uh, and honestly, the big anchor clients are gonna continue to provide great revenue all the way through.
[01:04:57] Rob: Right.
[01:04:58] Nathan: Okay. I just threw a lot at you. Thankfully. We wrote it all down and recorded the whole thing.
[01:05:02] Rob: Yeah.
[01:05:03] Nathan: Um, any takeaways, any things that like, especially stood out to you a lot?
[01:05:10] Rob: Um, I mean, I think just like retaining some clients mm-hmm.
[01:05:14] That are high ticket, highly bespoke and provide a ton of fuel for great ideas like that. Like, and that, like that creates so much freedom because that I can reallocate the balance of time, um, to growing the audience. And I think the reframe around, like, it's not actually about not serving these folks, it's about serving more folks better is really helpful.
[01:05:37] Um. Then I like the audience building. Like I'm, you know, I came in here with like zero, I mean, totally clueless. And this is, I mean, it makes a ton of sense. Um, makes a ton of sense. And that feels approachable. Yeah. Within 10 hours a week. Mm-hmm. A question I have, yeah. Like what would happen if I put this on pause for six months?
[01:05:59] Okay. And then 20 hours a week here and 20 hours a week here and like just focused on growing audience and subs, knowing that I had like three or four here while I built out. It could be a great use of time. Okay. Um, or is like, or is this a critical building block?
[01:06:16] Nathan: No, I don't think it is. The thing that's critical is the fuel.
[01:06:19] So if you have Right. I get it. But if you have enough of a back catalog and you have enough from there, that's great. Yeah. I mapped out the productized aspect of it. We really talked about, 'cause that felt to me like a non-negotiable Okay. In the impact that you're trying to have in the world. Well, that's retro true.
[01:06:35] Now it might be a non, like, we might just need to think about our time horizon. Right. Right. In three years, or over the next three years, it might be a non-negotiable in three to six months, that might be something that you're willing to put on pause,
[01:06:49] Rob: you know? Yeah. Like
[01:06:50] Nathan: that's a trade off you might be willing to make to have a much bigger impact long term.
[01:06:53] Rob: Yeah.
[01:06:54] Nathan: Right. And so the idea if in any given week you're like, I'm gonna spin up a new audience in a new, uh, offer room and have three different tracks and on, you know, and I'm gonna pull it off all simultaneously, you're like, no, there's no chance that works. Right. Um. So putting things in sequence rather than doing all in parallel might make a lot of sense.
[01:07:13] Okay, this month I'm going to get really good at, uh, the habit of creating content. Mm-hmm. Next month I'm going to get really good at the feedback loop. Hmm. And I'm gonna stack that on my habit of creating content.
[01:07:27] Rob: Yeah.
[01:07:27] Nathan: The following month I'm gonna get really good at promotion. Okay. So now I've spent three months on audience and I've sort of stacked these skills and I've just said that's the one thing at a time success in month one is just showing up.
[01:07:41] Did I do my, uh, you know, three times a week of writing for 90 minutes each time, right? Yes or no? And you're like, but it didn't do well on LinkedIn. Doesn't matter. First did you build that habit? And then the next month you layer on the next one and up from there. And then you might say, okay, I have this dialed in at least to a level that I'm happy with.
[01:08:01] And now I feel like instead of it taking 20 hours a week to do all of this and 80% of my mind share. Now it's down to 10 hours a week and 40% of my mind share. 'cause now I'm just like, worried a rhythm, and now I'm ready to layer on the next thing. I love that. That feels way, like
[01:08:20] Rob: accessible, doable.
[01:08:22] Nathan: You know, maybe as a final thought, I'm just curious how you felt coming in, uh, to this and how you feel now
[01:08:27] Rob: came in feeling, uh, both overwhelmed and hopeful and I think I'm leaving feeling, um, much more, um, equipped and hopeful.
[01:08:40] Nathan: I love it. Yeah. So I always ask guests this question. Uh, normally they have an audience already. Yeah. But if people want to follow your journey, see what you're doing, like where should they fall along? And I just chuckle because you don't yet have this, right? Yeah. But where, uh, where is it going to live?
[01:08:57] Rob: Yeah. Well, my last name's hard to spell, so write it here. Rob and I'm on LinkedIn and you can find me at rob@adgneducation.org for, you know, reaching out for anything. Um, and, and always helpful, uh, always excited to, uh, partner with anybody who's trying to make a difference for kids.
[01:09:17] Nathan: Sounds good. You're, yeah, you're doing very important, very impactful things and I'm thrilled to play a small part in it.
[01:09:23] So thanks so much for coming on.
[01:09:24] Rob: Thank you so much, Nathan. I really, really appreciate it. It was really cool.
[01:09:28] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Berry Show. Then hit subscribe and 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 just who else do you think we should have on the show?
[01:09:42] Thank you so much for listening.