Nathan Barry - Founder and CEO at ConvertKit | The Secret To Becoming A Billion-Dollar Creator

When we think of a lot of businesses, it's like, I started it, then I just worked consistently on it and then it got better and better and here we are today and it's magic. And Converkit did not start that way. Nathan Barry. Nathan Barry. Nathan Barry. The mastermind behind ConvertKit with a passion for building audiences and companies. Nathan is all about helping creators like Tim Ferris, Rechen Ruben, and thousands more earn a living. How do you become a billion dollar creator? The idea behind a billion dollar creator is taking something that is so, so valuable, which is attention. Attention is one of the biggest currencies that we have out there. And as creators, we have attention and space. Growing up with financial struggles, Nathan set out on a journey that took him from freelance web design to launching ConvertKit, which now supports over 20,000 creators. Let's dive in. When people sell content online, this question that comes up a lot of, what should I sell and what should I give away? Give away just about everything. Just hold back a little bit. Charge a fair price for that. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. I am a huge fan of HubSpot because they support entrepreneurs. A lot of entrepreneurs, founders, executives, listen to this show. And for entrepreneurs that are trying to build, I have a question for you. Does it feel like your teams are getting pulled in a million different directions? When everyone's digging in on different projects with different platforms in different places, it can be tough to stay focused on a common goal. And that throws a wrench into things. That's why HubSpot brings everything your team needs into one easy to use and easy to love customer platform with it. They have everything they need to scale the business at their fingertips. So your marketers can write blog posts in a snap with AI and build better leads with in-depth campaigns. Sales can build connections and close deals faster with tracking tools. And real-time performance insights and service can get a hand from AI-powered chatbots for better support and more five-star reviews. And everyone can deliver killer results and grow revenue faster than ever before. Because when your teams work better, your business grows faster. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free today. Alright Nathan, I'm super excited to have you on. This is going to be a lot of fun. I want to start this off just at a very high level, very open-ended question. How do you become a billion-dollar creator? Oh, yeah, it's a high level, but kind of a challenging question at the same time. The idea behind a billion-dollar creator is taking something that is so, so valuable, which is attention. This idea, you know, attention is one of the biggest currencies that we have out there. Companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to buy attention through ads. And as creators, we have attention in space. That's what we're the best at. And it's creating and capturing attention. So it's taking that attention and then pointing it at something where you have real equity value. There are just through all to be earning a full-time living, paying their mortgage, that sort of thing. And they kind of scale up in there and say, okay, what if instead of making money off of affiliate products or some ad revenue, what if I was making it off of my own products? I'm selling courses, training, all that sort of thing. But really the ones that become billion-dollar creators are the ones who build and use their audience and attention to build a brand with lasting equity value. So one of my favorite examples is Mark Sisson, who had a blog called Mark's Daily Apple. He was one of the first paleo diet, paleo lifestyle blogs. He guided that to the point where he was earning millions of dollars a year, which is fantastic. This is probably 2013 and 2015, around the time. And then what he did is he used that platform to launch a brand called Primal Kitchen, which was all around making a paleo-friendly mayonnaise. And then got in solid dressing and other sauces from there. And he was able to use that audience to launch, you know, so it was really hard to consumer package goods and scale it up. Within a few years, I think three or four years, he sold the craft foods for $200 million. And so, you know, he took what was a good business and then, you know, instead of selling, you know, attention, he sold products. And he scaled that up to, you know, a massive exit. Not officially a billion dollars, but you get the concept. Listen, that's a good amount of money for most creators. I think that the hard part for creators, and I thought about this a lot. And what Mark did is actually very interesting. And I find this slightly novel because a lot of creators are creatives first and then their business people second. And I actually think we're, both of us were actually the opposite because I come from background and SaaS also as do you. So you are business person operator, build a business, understand it, understand a scale growth, all of that. And then you're also a creator at the same time. But I think a lot of creators struggle with figuring out how to create enterprise value or to create something that they own because a lot of creators outside of, we're not talking like the Logan Paul's or the Mr. Beast. They just have such massive reach that, yeah, they sneeze out of product. People are going to know about it. But people that don't have reach like that and they want to start a product and they don't know how to build a business per se. So how come Mark was successful with how many creators launch merch lines or pick a product and it just seems to fizzle out and it just seems to be tired and then they kill it. Oh, who's that makeup artist? I'm going to blank on her name right now. Oh, my girlfriend's going to kill me. Anyways, there's a large makeup artist that just basically dropped her whole makeup line. But the point is the creators struggle building businesses. So how do they do that effectively or is it smarter for a creator to take equity in a company that has an operator that can actually an entrepreneur that can actually build something out for them? Yeah, there's a few things in that. First, I think you have to know what your strengths are. Like you're saying, hey, I am the creative through and through. That is what I'm best at. I can get attention. But I don't want to get involved in software development, supply chain operations, finance, any of that. Then you should probably not get into those things just to chase money. So finding the operator is going to be really, really important. In EOS, which is the entrepreneur's operating system, which is a popular framework that a lot of founders use. They have this idea of the integrator, right? Someone who takes your ideas as the visionary, the spokesperson, all of that. And they're responsible for running the day-to-day operations. So I think at a minimum, creators are going to need a really great integrator, a COO, something like that. I think the creators should not shy away from those things. Like in the same way that you learned how to edit videos for YouTube, you can learn how to read a P&L and any of those other things. It's not just because there's some fancy certification that someone can get. It doesn't mean it's actually that hard. So I would encourage everyone to dive in on those topics. They'll make you much better at running a creator business. But I think, go ahead if you want to jump in. No, no, no, no, I'd go ahead. I had another follow-up and finish your thought. Yeah. In this business realm, I think that you should only pursue products on this level and scale if that's something that you're really, really interested in. I have seen this where people take an audience and say, hey, what should I shoehorn into this? And it's just not a good fit. Whereas you see the other angle of people testing things with their audience. So we mentioned a private kitchen, right? The thing they had a recipe for avocado oil mayonnaise, right? They had salad dressing recipes. They were very popular. There's another CPG company called Wellness that they had this. It was spun off in a blog called Wellness Mama. That was very, very popular. And they had this homemade natural products toothpaste recipe. That was very popular. And so then they basically started saying, oh, let's take this thing. That's already popular and put it out there. A third would be, what is it? A kettle and fire. They make a bone broth broth. That was often a very popular bone broth recipe. And they build the massive business off of it. So you're following this trend that there's already interested excitement. And there's an example that I really like is Mark Rober, where with his YouTube channel, he has 40 million subscribers or something crazy like that. He didn't start out saying, hey, I'm going to make a subscription science box. He started out being sponsored by a monthly subscription box. And he's looking at how well does that work in my audience. You know, he formed a good partnership with them. And at some point, he's looking going, wait, I can make something significantly better than this. And I don't know the details, but they probably had decent terms for him. But he's like, wait, I can not only make a better business, but I can integrate it better with the videos. I can tell it better. And then, you know, he's ended up making crutch laps, which I don't remember the numbers. But I want to say it's pushing 100 million a year in revenue or something like that. Like the subscription numbers are absolutely wild. But it's because he's really looking for the early signs of product market fit. Instead of going out and saying, I have an audience, let's just emerge at it. Let's, you know, just trying to fill in some of these things. And they aren't really a sustainable business. I'm wondering if you've thought through this because I'm sure I'm sure you have. Like with ConvertKit, I know you're rebranding it as Kit now, but a lot of the audience knows it as ConvertKit. Did you have a strategy for preemptively finding product market fit or reverse engineering a product for an audience that you knew was going to be a hit? Or whether multiple iterations and failures and stresses, and I'm sure there were a lot of stresses along the way. But how seamless was that product when you chose to launch Kit from the ground up? And how did, like, talk me through your specific example of what you just suggested creators do? Because at the end of the day, what you just recommend to creators do is just a smart entrepreneur idea. So my background is in software design. I've built a lot of iPhone apps, I've written books on iPhone, Web App Dell, and that got me into the creator world. And so I didn't, you'll have an established audience and think, okay, what's this interesting? Let me do software and figure that out. Because that's a whole challenging thing, as you know, from a lot of times spent in the software world. And so, like, I was really a student of that in that business and that industry. So what I set out to do is really, as I came into the creator industry, is I wanted to build a better email tool. I was using, at the time, you know, this is 20... Well, I guess. Yeah. So, 12 years ago, I'm looking at the email tools. The main ones out there were Aweber MailChimp and ImpusionSoft. And basically, if you were a direct response marketer, you used Aweber. If you had just gotten lumped into this industry, you just started. It was probably MailChimp. And if you were like sophisticated, you used ImpusionSoft. And so I was using MailChimp. And I remember thinking, like, this is not made for people like me. Like, I learned all these best practices and then you had to hack it in. And I was running custom code and I was doing all this stuff. Preferably basic things. And so, I think a lot of businesses are born out of a pain point. And that's where ConvertKit was of, okay, this can be done better. I can build in the best practices by default for a specific audience. And so that was, you know, we started out email marketing for bloggers and then expanded into Indie Creators. But it was not an overnight success by any means. And we can get into that if you'd like. Yeah, no, I think that, I mean, those are some of my favorite stories. It just shows the whole journey and all the ups and downs. And we'll get there. I guess let's go back to your childhood because your father owned, I guess, a Christian bookstore. Is that correct? And that was, he was entrepreneurial. And that was sort of your first entrepreneurial bug. Walk me through or at least exposure. Walk me through some of the really early childhood experiences. It could be that. It could be other experiences that sort of shaped you into an entrepreneur. Yeah, I think there's a couple. The first was just being very aware of money or the lack of money. You know, my dad running a ministry type business. It was supported on donations and all of that. And so I was just very aware of the lack of money in my family. Like, watch it be a point of stress between my parents. They eventually divorced with money being a big, a big factor in that. Another one would be, you know, my upbringing. I was homeschooled. And Derek Sivers talks about this in his book, anything you want. He has this experience going to the Brooklyn School of Music, where someone sits and down and is basically like, there is no speed limit. You can go at your own pace. And they teach you a semester's worth of music theory in like a day. And they test out the class and moves on. And that was my experience as a kid where the first time I remember who's being like 11 or 12. And I grew up in the mountains outside of Boise and I remember just like the most amazing snow coming down. And thinking like, I have all the school to do and I just want to be outside sledding. And my mom said to me, you know, this is a fixed amount of work, not a fixed amount of time. Just because school normally takes till two or three p.m. every day doesn't mean it has to go. Like, whenever this is done, you can go sledding. And you've never seen a more focused 12 year old like in your life. You know, I got all my math, literature, everything done. Like two hours later, I was out sledding, you know, by an amp probably. And that stuck with me in a huge way. And that's really how life works. And I ended up playing it forward in a much bigger way where I was always trying to keep up with my older siblings. And so a lot of my friends were my older siblings friends, so they were, you know, two, three, four years older than me. And that didn't seem to matter. They were super inclusive. They let me tag along to everything until I realized, oh wait, they're all like 16 years old. And I am 13. They're going to be going up to college really soon. And this age gap that didn't feel like a big deal is about to be a giant castle where they'll be gone. And it all be here. And so I was thinking, yeah, I'm just talking about my mom about it. And I asked like, is a high school a set number of years or is it a fixed amount of work? And she was like, it's a fixed amount of work. You have older siblings. The curriculum is already laid out. Like you can graduate whenever all of this is done to accept all grade levels. And so it was exactly like that sledding example where I remember thinking, we would do these drives from Boise to Seattle to this family. You know, it's like an eight and a half hour drive. And I remember to take care of like, I'm really bored when I'm doing math. I'm also really bored when I'm on these drives. Like, why not just combine these two? I have my older brother sitting next to me who's already done, you know, I'll go for a two or whatever. And so in that eight hour drive, I would do like a month or more worth of math lessons. Just power through 30 or 40 lessons, learn all of that. And yeah, you know, get help whatever I needed to. And I just had that mindset. So I ended up graduating high school when I was 15, going out to college. I dropped out of college when I was 17, halfway through a degree to start in bus stop. By the way, I'll let you know that when you're trying to research like your pass and your timeline, it was very confusing because I saw that you dropped out at 17. And I couldn't figure out why like I was using like AI to like do research and stuff like that. A prep for the show. And I'm like, something's not working, right? Like something's totally up. No, this is your home school. And this is what allowed you to adopt that mindset, which allowed you to apply to get into and then drop out at 17. Yeah. So it's this idea that, you know, I didn't read this from Derek Sivers. Probably until I was, you know, 20 or more. I was looking at the book and I think you want to come out. But reading that I was like, he is describing my life when he says there is no speed limit. And he's just talking about how life is designed to go at the pace of the slowest person. Whether it's a 25 person class or, you know, structure and work, projects, all of that. You know, you want to make, you want to make people come for roles. It should be left behind all all this things happen in groups. And he's just like, look, it doesn't have to be that way. You can, you can buckle down and focus on it. I remember thinking, I did ballroom dance in college. And so we're on the, I was on the competitive ballroom dance team for a couple of years and just really enjoyed that. And then, but I didn't do it that often. And then after college, I didn't do it often. But you know, maybe I'd do it once a month or something. And I remember talking to someone like, oh, how long you've been doing ballroom dance? I was like, oh, six years at this point. And then I had this other friend in LA or who had moved to LA and he got really into it. And he was doing it like four or five nights a week. And I was doing it like one night a month. And he, it probably took him six months to get to the point where he was just as good as I was. And in seven months, he was probably 50% better than I was. And in eight months, he was twice as good. And it just really reminded me that like, your amount of time and my amount of time are not that so equal. We could both have done this. I hit have done it for six years, you two or six months and you could be just as good. And it's like how focused and deliberate are you with them? But that idea of there is no speed limit like you set the pace has probably shaped every aspect of my life. I feel I think that's probably one of the smartest ideas I've ever heard on this podcast because I don't think many people, I don't think many people have that perception of time. I think that I think that well-meaning thought leaders, influencers tell you to balance and to enjoy the journey, which is it's important so that you don't give up too soon. But you I love that you don't have to be limited just because it took someone else six years to get there. You could you could get there in a quarter or an eighth of the time with the right focus and the right mindset and the right application and the right allocation of your bandwidth towards this particular thing. Very very similar example. Oh yeah, a friend of mine, his name is Trent and he spent he has built and sold multiple businesses. Nothing like crazy exits, but he's done some good stuff in the e-commerce space and all of that. I believe he's he's in his early fifties and he decided last year that he wanted to become an airline pilot. Which if you're like 53 years old is the most ridiculous thing because first there's a mandatory retirement at age 65. So when people say like, oh, you have tons of time to pursue your dreams and all that. He's like, okay, I have 12 years that this career is even possible. Now he can go fly private charter and other stuff down that, but you know, there's that mandatory retirement. The other thing is to even fly, you have to have to fly for an airline. You have to have 1,500 hours of flight time, like actually behind the controls of an airplane. That is in the air flying. And so it takes everyone three to four years to get that, you know, takes them years to get their basic ratings and then to become an instructor and to work their way up and all of this. And he decided like, I don't have that much time. And so he basically set up to see how quickly can I do this. And so well, most people get, you know, maybe all of their readings from the first private pilot's license all way up to being a flight instructor in a year if they were focused. He did it in 90 days because conventional wisdom is you should fly three times a week. And he's like, forget that. I'm going to fly twice a day, twice a day, six days a week. And you know, he's in the simulator training all of a sudden. Like he just logged out as much as possible. And now he's 18 months into his journey. And I think this week he'll hit us 15 hundred hours. And so he's done it in less than half the time. He has a job offer from Sky West, which is a regional airline. And he, of course, he created the YouTube channel about this whole thing which having an audience helped him in every way. But I just love these examples of people who say like, the standard pace is for other people. Like I'm going to figure out what's up my own pace. Hey guys, Scott here. I just wanted to take a quick moment to say a heartfelt thanks to every single one of you. Six years of this show and it's really all because of you. Your listens, your support, your shares, it will keep this thing going. When I started, I had no idea how big this would get, how many lives we touch. The stories we share, the lessons that we learned together. It's truly humbling. And I believe that we're building something really special here. A community where no one has to reinvent the wheel. All in this together, learning and growing. And here's my ask. If you love this show, it's made a difference for you. Please share it with somebody who needs it. Hella friend, host on social, whatever works. It's the best way to keep this thing going strong. Bring on even better guests and share more life changing wisdom. And you can find us on all the spots. So you can go to successstorypodcast.com if you like listening to podcasts. If you like video, you can go to YouTube. It's youtube.com slash c slash Scott DeClaire or the newsletter newsletter dot Scott DeClaire.com. Just spread the word. I'm eternally grateful for each and every one of you. Let's keep learning. Let's keep growing. And let's keep making this world a little bit better together. All right. Let's get back to the show. Have you ever noticed, obviously, this is a, this is a sort of a thesis on life that you've adopted. And it makes perfect sense. Have you ever noticed if somebody is listening to this? And they're like, oh, yeah, let's just like, you know, excuse my friends, balls to the wall on whatever it is I'm trying to do. You speed run through life, through entrepreneurship, through the precursors that you have to go through to get to the desired end result. Are there negatives? Are there cautions? Are there warnings? Are there red flags that you, you just note for somebody if you try this? Has I ever fought back? I think I probably tried to grow up too fast. Like, there's probably more fun entertainment that I could have done. I don't know. I had a good time through high school and college and, and all of that. I think I would probably tell myself, you have more time. Like, I think that I had probably too much anxiety and urgency through this process. So probably try to bring in more of a life as a game type attitude. Because I think there's a lot of fun things in that where you're like, all right, let's look at college. You know, why don't I just test out of half of these classes? Like, go to Barnes & Noble. Buy the test guide for US History One. I studied a lot of history in high school, you know? Like, let me read, study this book, test out of the class. That's kind of fun. And so do that from a, how do I play and beat the game perspective? Rather than from a, it's kind of weird to think back on, you know, at like 17 or 16, I was like, I'm running out of time. Which I like. And so much time. So I would just think about your motivations to do it. Like, do it in a challenging, fun, playful way, not a stress driven anxiety sort of way. Exacting activities, different motivation. Very good. So obviously you're a content creator yourself. Now, I learned that you wrote at one point when you were, I guess, I want to understand if you were getting into blogging and writing, you wrote a thousand words a day for 600 days straight, which is absolutely wild. And anybody listening to this is like, well, now that they actually know how you look at life, maybe it makes a little bit more sense. But for most people, that's like a WTF moment. Like, how do you commit to that for so long? So when you, when you write a thousand words a day for 600 days, what's the motivation for that? What's the reason? Like, you're a creator, you're a writer, you're a blogger. What was the purpose that that served in your life when you were, when you just started that? Yeah. So in early 2012, I was working as a freelance software designer. I'd made a bunch of iPhone apps both for myself and for clients. And I had had a lot of ideas for content that I wanted to create. The people that I looked up to and admired were a lot of content creators, both in the web design space, business, software design, and all of that. And I thought, okay, I want to write a book. I want to be like that. I want to, you know, write and either self-ubuse or tuition publish a book. And I had this problem where all of my output was tied to my motivation. So I would get an idea. I would be like, oh, this is going to be great. And I'd work like all weekend on it. And the next week I'd, you know, work three different days to get time on it. And the next week I'd like work on it for three hours. And then we get to that and work on it for 30 minutes. And I just realized that I had all of these projects that I'd started at different times that had died out. And I realized that I was never going to achieve what I wanted to if motivation and output were tied together one to one. That was never going to work. And so I had to figure out, how do I disconnect these things? So that I have productive output regardless of, you know, my current energy and motivation. And around that time, I was following Chris Killabo, who is one of these creators that has really inspired me for so many things. And he talked about, he had this line where he said, you know, it's really easy to publish a book every year. And a self published book. Write 100 blog posts, 50 guest posts, you know, maybe some long form magazine pieces. It's really easy to do that in a single year. And I'm like, I can't even write a blog consistently. There's nothing easy about what you're describing. But he kept going, he said, if you just write a thousand words a day. In a thousand words, I was like, well, that's a lot, you know, four digits of anything feels like a lot. But then he kept, he broke it down and he's like, look, that's like two and a half pages of content. It's not actually that much. If you're on a roll, that's 45 minutes. If you're grinding it out, and it's hard, that's two hours. Maybe. And so I was thinking about this. I was like, okay, that's, that's going to be my goal. I have to disconnect the output from my current motivation. And so I will write a thousand words a day, no matter what. That is my primary goal. And I really focused on that. Actually, the first thing I did since I was a software developer is I went and made an app to track a streak of writing a thousand words a day. And then I launched it into actually doing it. But I ended up, you know, getting like 10 days in a row and then I broke my streak. And then I got five days and broke it. And then the third time I was like, all right, I'm going to do this no matter what. So I'll accept, you know, schedule the time in on my calendar. I set multiple reminders so that it would pop up and be like, hey, did you write a thousand words today? And I just, you know, so the groundstone like got that done every single day. And there were days I would count editing. So I towards the end of this book that is working on. And you'd be like, well, I don't actually need to write net new words. But I need to edit down and rewrite. And so, you know, that would would count towards my thousand words. And by the time I published my book, it was called The App to Zen Handbook. I published it in September 2012. And I was done and I'd gotten to 80 days in a row of writing a thousand words. And the next day commit the app that I had made popped up and said, are you going to write a thousand words a day? And I was like, no, I did it like check the book in bed of big success beyond my dreams. And I thought, I don't want to break that chain. And so then I was like, you know, let me write a blog post about how the book launch did and the lessons that I learned. Wrote that, published it. And then sure enough, the next day, the app popped up and said, are you going to write a thousand words today? And I was like, well, no. I know what the hell. Let's write another book. And so 90 days later, I'd written and published another book on designing web applications. And then I just kept that streak going. It actually wasn't until, you know, 600 days in that I ended up getting shingles, getting super sick, dealing with a whole bunch of life stuff that I finally broke that streak. You know, it seems like this was, there was a very tangible output. Obviously the books that you, that you ended up publishing, this is also like a mental training ground and a mental exercise. It probably served you super well in, you know, when building, convert kit. It reminds me a lot of Seth Godin too. I mean, I'm a huge fan of his work. And I'm sure obviously if you wrote a thousand words a day for the calendar days, you obviously know that I think he's been writing, not a thousand words. But he's been writing every day for, I don't even know how many years. Yeah, he published it not every day. Yeah, which is super interesting. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Seth. We actually had a keynote, our very first conference. Yeah, he is. Well, I think that was for writers. I think look up to him because publishing every day I'm sure, because that's probably, that's not even just writing. You have to add it. And the thoughts that he puts out everything, every single day are so prolific. I actually ended up sitting down with his book agent who had gone to Seth. It was either a house or an apartment when he was on tour. And the book agent for one of his books, at least, assumed that he'd walk into this apartment. It would be like a couple of people like ghost writing for him. And it's no, it's just him. Like it's just, it's just Seth, just writing. And nothing else, no one else, no assistance, no ghost. It's just him. He sits down and cranks out an idea per day. But anyway, so not about Seth. This is about you. If you're going to look at some of the, so after you, after you put these published these two books, obviously hundreds of blog posts, at what point does the idea of convert kit and now kit come into play? Yes, it was actually really soon. There's so many things I look back on. I'm like amused by my thought process at the time. So I had a few things going on. And so September 12th, I published my first book to an audience of 800 people on a Mailchimp email list. Like December 15th, 2012, I published my second book. And that is to a list of more than double the size. I should probably three or four thousand people. That book goes on to sell $50,000 worth in the first month. And then January 1st, I start working on a convert kit. So in a 90 day period, I saw most two books and started a software company. Just laughing because you never stopped. You never stopped. Yeah. So let's divide itself or we'll be around. I don't know. But I, so at that time, I was teaching a lot about software design. And I had this idea, I could see myself moving fully from being a practitioner into teaching. And I had this idea that you know what? If I stop designing myself, then I'm going to be one of these people who only teaches. They lose touch and credibility in the industry. And so I should have another project that is software designed so that I can keep learning, keep my skills sharp and have more to teach about. And so when I started convert it, I did it with something I called the Web App Challenge, where I said, I'm going to build a software company from zero to $5,000 in a month of your current revenue within six months, with only $5,000 of my own money contributed to this. Everything else has to be cast or refunded. And I'm going to live vlog the entire thing. And so that gave me a lot more to write about. I actually published another book in the middle of this, which is kind of wild. But that's the thing. When you have this muscle going of like the sheer amount of content, I was learning so fast I was just teaching absolutely everything that I knew. By the way, just a total is total aside, writing that much, did it help with your clarity? Because I find this helps my clarity of thought when I write in everything that I do, and when I don't write, I actually feel like a little bit more sluggish, a little bit more foggy. I don't know if you felt that too, but I'm curious. The first thing that people often bring up, people who aren't writers, when they talk about the amount that I wrote during that time period, they go, don't you run out of things to say? And so long as you are consuming content and doing research and all that as well, I find that the more that I write, the more I learn the more that I have to say. And so, yeah, I was just so prolific actively doing things at the time as well. That I could just even write about what I was doing. You know, and that was the thing with building a software company. There was every single week, there were things to write about. How do you name the company? How do you hire developers? How do you write copy for the homepage? And that's really where I like, cemented these core values, or these mantras that I have, which are, there's now four of them. But the first is teach everything you know. Second is create every day. Third is work in public. And then the fourth is depot, the generosity. And like all this is around, like constantly creating, constantly learning and sharing. And if you do those things consistently, you cannot lose. I don't want to move off of convert just yet, but because you brought it up, and I was going to bring those, I thought there was three things, but I didn't realize you added a fourth. So those four mantras, maybe just two, three sentences on each one for a creator that's listening to this, or an entrepreneur that wants to be a creator, how do they adopt those four mantras as they go out and they create content, they document their journey, they vlog, they meme, they tweet, they write, they do whatever. Yeah, so the first one of teach everything you know, really was a hard earned lesson for me, because I got started in web design and all of that. And I just didn't understand the difference between the expertise that I had and the expertise of those who were public and out there and famous. And it wasn't until I realized that, it's not that people teach because they're experts. It's actually the inverse. We perceive them as experts because they teach. And so I was thinking like, oh, I can't write blog posts on this. I can't, you know, but I'm not an expert and so I can't teach any of this. But then it was that I realized it actually was the first time I was trying to install Ruby on Rails on my computer, the programming framework. And I read an article written by an expert and it didn't make any sense. It felt like it made sense to them and they'd like skip past some key stuff. And then I found an article written by an absolute beater who had read the first article, suffered through it, learned all of the missing points that a beginner, you know, actually encountered. And they wrote theirs and I was like, ah, there's someone who's two steps ahead of me and they wrote something that was far more useful to me. And so then I always had that mindset of, okay, I'm just going to, I'm not going to teach from like an ivory tower up the top. And like, here's how things work. And I say, hey, here's what I just learned. It's helpful like as a breadcrumb for you as you follow in my footsteps. And that changed the game. Like that immediately gave me thousands of things to write about because it's like, oh, well, from the point of a non-expert, I knew a lot. The second one of create every day really came back to that lesson of writing every day and actually finished the book of like, you can't have these false starts, you can't tie effort to motivation. And it's just like, show up. I don't know which famous author this is a quote from. But it's something like, you know, I'll never write when I'm inspired, but it can be that I get inspired every morning at 9 a.m. sharp. And it's just like, I am a professional. I do this. You mentioned Seth Gordon. And he has this essay called, a manifesto for small teams doing important work. And it's one thing, it's like 100 words long, 200 words long, it's very short. And it's just so good. But it's basically like the gist is, you are a professional act like it. And yeah, that was huge for me. The third one of work in public is really just separating this idea of, you know, what I'm doing and what I'm teaching. And just saying like, look, I can just talk about what I'm doing. I don't even have to be teaching. I can just say, here's a problem that I'm running into. But I don't have to have the answer, where here's a milestone that we hit. Here's what we're celebrating. Here's what we're challenged with. And that in itself is interesting gauging content. I remember a time working in Converkit where I was struggling with the copy for the sales page. And I just talked about it in one of my blog posts. I was struggling with how to write this. And then Amy Hoi, this amazing copywriter and business leader in the BitChap software world, who I met and we talked. I think we'd met once at a conference. But she just messaged me and said, hey, I'll help you. And we got on the Skype call. And we rewrote all of the copy. And then instead of saying, like, here's the final version. I did that. But then I published a whole blog post and everything I learned to like the transcripts of some of our conversations. And that was one of the most popular things I'd written because they wanted to see like how a great copywriter works behind the scenes. And then so that's working public. The final one is default to generosity. When people sell content online, they have this, this question that comes up a lot of, what should I sell and what should I give away? And a lot of times people say like, okay, I'm going to give away 20% for free. And I'm going to sell 80% of it, right? Because I give away too much that people won't buy when I'm selling and all of that. The problem when you go that route is that you just never provide that much value for free. So you never grow that big of an audience. So you never end up having that much reach. And so there's not much revenue from it. And I like to invert it, not 80, 20 of giving. It started with the 80, 20 of give 80% away for free, old 20% back. I think now I'm probably more like 95, 5 of defaults generosity, give away just about everything. And then just hold back a little bit, charge a fair price for that, and then there's plenty of money to be made in those areas. So those are the four mantras and they've guided so much that I've done as a creator. 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So you need to go listen to iDigress, one of the most useful podcasts for entrepreneurs and founders, part of the HubSpot podcast network, wherever you get your podcasts. So when you look at, when you look at ConvertKit, just walk me through the rationale for you even starting that company. Like, I'm assuming you were serving yourself, that's what you mentioned before, which is one of the best ways to build a business. You're serving a pain point that, you know, you're so in the weeds, and you're in this, you have all these experiences that you're frustrating, you go build a product for it. So you were serving creators. At this point, talk to me about the creator economy, back then, who you were serving, some of the problems that creators had, when ConvertKit was first created, some of the problems that maybe have been fixed, or haven't been fixed in the interim. I just want to get your sort of, your thesis on creator economy, more specifically, I guess, email marketers, bloggers, writers. Yeah, and so, the creator economy at the time wasn't called that. I think the term was coined, maybe considered 2018, 2019. It was mostly dominated by authors and bloggers, right? And so you had a lot of people publishing, you were trying to get people to subscribe to your RSS feed, occasionally the RSS feed, like the providers like Google Reader, which shut down, and everyone would be like, oh shoot, I just lost access to a big portion of my audience. So you had this contingent that really got invested in email early on, and they did really, really well. So those problems that were solving was like, how do I give away something for free, and trade for you during my email list, like a sample chapter of a book, or a free PDF? And that was hard and painful in these tools. And so I just made it so that's a core feature. The next thing was, a lot of people were just sending, you know, broadcast or campaign emails. So it goes out the entire list at the same time. And I really became fascinated with this idea of email sequences. But basically if you join on day one, you're going to get emails time to you. And if I join 10 days later, I'm going to get the same emails, but time to exactly meet. And this idea that like wait a second, I could make this sequence once. And it could work perfectly. And if someone joins a year from now, they're not going to miss out on all the great content that I already shared. But there was no interface that made writing these sequences like easy and effective. And so one of my first innovations was actually just making an interface where you had the main email editor, and then you had all the other emails down the side. So you could tap between them super easily instead of like going all the way in and then all the way back out. And so actually, convergence was launched really on those two, those two ideas of making that easy. And then as we expanded, you know, there's a lot into deliverability and tagging and segmentation reporting and all those things. Basically viewed through the lens of like writers and contact creators. Because every other tool was like, hey, we're for all of small business, you know. And so, having that narrow lens allowed us to build something that was really effective but didn't, you know, have all the clonkiness of trying to serve everyone. Now, at 24, you had sort of a crossroads for a convert kit, and you had to figure out whether or not you wanted to continue or you wanted to shelve this. So was, was walk me through what happened. Maybe this is probably like the one of the more stressful points when you were building this out. You know, for entrepreneurs listening, give some guidance, some wisdom as to sort of what sought process or framework you had to go through to decide which direction you wanted to go. Yeah, so, when we think of a lot of businesses, it's like, I started it, and then I just worked consistently on it, and then it got better and better, and then it compounded it, and then here we are today, and it's magic, you know. And convert kit did not start that way. At the six month mark, it wasn't at 5,000 a month for your career revenue. I wasn't at 500 a month, actually 500 probably would have been better, because it would have said like, okay, this doesn't work. But I spent time in this like painful middle ground of almost success. And it's just all this ambiguity. So we were at 2000 a month in your career revenue. And then from there, I struggled to get more customers, and ended up, gradually declining, because churn is a painful thing instead of saying it's out. Everyone talks about the benefits of recovery revenue. They don't talk about the pain of churn. So that went on for a while. And so then about maybe 18 months into the business, I had my books and courses that were doing well, and I was at a conference, and one of the other speakers there, Heaton Shaw, we were walking back from, from dinner, and he just said like, hey man, I think you should shut down in Birkit. And I remember thinking like, a first just being surprised, and then second thinking like, that's not a very nice thing to say. Like I've spent a year and a half of my life building this thing. There are thousands of people following the story of me building it. Like, what's going on? He goes, yeah, you've proven that you're going to be successful at, you know, any number of ventures, you've given Kon Birkit, your best effort, your 18 months in, like, it didn't work, shut it down, it's time to call it. And he kind of just let me sit with that for a minute. And then as I was processing, he's like, or, you can give it the time, money, and attention it deserves, and build it into a real business. And he'd correctly assessed that I was sitting, like half an hour. I was spending, you know, probably 10 hours a week, maybe 20 hours a week, building Kon Birkit and the rest of the time, but he offered into the things it was working, like building my audience and selling digital products. And so, I like the joke that I did, what everyone does when they hear really good advice, and that's nothing for like six months. So, I sat on that, and then I revenue kept declining and it was probably 1,200 a month. And so, it was barely covering like basic server and email expenses at this point. And even though you were building your brand, and everything like that, that was not leading customers. That was not converting customers. At the rate that you were churning, excuse me. Yeah, it's a big deal. So, it's a big deal to move your business to any software. And you really don't want to move your business to software that is not growing and bribing. And, you know, and then especially if it's super early on, then you're like, this doesn't even have half the basic features that I need, right? Because you know, whatever we complain about a feature not being there in software, it's like, well, someone had to build it at some point. And like the competitors have a 10-year head start of building all of the, you know, the commonplace features. So, yeah, it was, it continued to shrink. And I ended up making like a really simple two-question framework for how you decide when to shut something down and when to double down. Because we all hear these stories of like, it was really, really hard and then I persevered through it. And now, you know, Red Bull has gone public or you don't know, right? Red Bull is still privately out. But you get the idea. Yeah. And so, I didn't want to be the person who gave up too soon. And I also didn't want to be the person who wasted years of his life. It was something that was never going to work. Or at least fighting ridiculous headwinds the whole way. And just actually, that's a really good point that you only hear the stories that actually worked out. So there is, there is a, there is a little bit of a bias as, yeah, 100%. Yeah. And I think it's a really tough place to be, especially when you don't have clear signal. Right? If no one buys it, then the answer is pretty clear. And I just shut it down and move on. But if you're like, now it's like, it could work. It's the two questions were first, do I still want this as much today as the day that I started? Because if not, you can move on. Maybe it's that thing where like, oh, I'm going to run a pluck and you're so motivated and you're excited and then like two weeks later, you're like, I don't really want that anymore. And if that's the case, like, shut it down, move on, and do it totally guilt-free. You probably learned some great things in the process. But if you still want it, and for me, I was like, yes, I absolutely want to be the CEO of software company. I want to build this in the next challenge. And it's like, all right, we'll move to question number two. And the second question is just, have you given this every possible chance to succeed? Because if you have, if you really really want it and you've given it your best effort and your years in and it's not working, there's probably some serious headwards. You know, the idea doesn't work, you're too early, you're too late, you know, you're not the right person for the solve this problem. Any number of things. But you can shut it down and move on knowing that you truly gave it your best. But for me, the answer is no. I felt like I hadn't. And that has a tough place to be. On one hand, where you say, I really, really want this. And then over here, like, but I haven't given it my best. And I imagine this person, like, who I would end up as, years from them, from then, at a party, being like, oh, yeah. So it was like, hey, what happened to the convertit? And like, oh, you know, you know, if I really focused on that, I could have made that thing work. Or if I just tried this, or I just tried that. And I realized that that was going to lead to regret. But basically, always wondering, could I have pulled that off if I had just done these things? You know, if I'd given it every once, and I realized that was something I was not willing to live with. And so that really left me in a place of like, all right. I can only shut this down, when I feel like I have truly given this my absolute best effort. And that made it very clear that I had to double down. Can I ask, why, why the difference in mindset from somebody who wanted to compress time as much as possible to get to the next stage of life and to put their all into school and to blog writing and to book writing and to all these other things, it seemed to be these adjacent things. Why, why did you switch your mindset and not have that enthusiasm into your main thing convert kit from day one? Yeah, so I think I definitely did for the first six months. And then it became hard to continue to work on it as it didn't have traction. You know, if I think back on all the things that I had, they had really positive short-term feedback loops, where they, you know, that's the thing about contact creation. You can, if you're getting traction, you get these feedback loops of comments and likes and engagement on your ideas. Now, the hard thing is when you're just starting out, you don't have that. And so, you know, you really have to suffer through that time period of no positive feedback because you're writing to, you know, three friends or family. So I think I was split basically about six months, probably a year in to work on convert kit. I was doing two things at once. One was really working and one was really not working. And so, the building, the audience, and selling books and courses continued to work well. And I got to the point I was making $250,000 a year on that venture. And then, you know, over on the software side, it was just a grind. It wasn't until later on that I had watched a conference talk for a woman named Gail Goodman. She was the CEO of Constant Contact. And the talk is called the long, slow, SaaS ramp of depth. And it is about their grind building Constant Contact, an email company, from like 1998, maybe, or 2000, somewhere right in there, like for the next, I think she's probably 15 years in, at the time, that she gives the talk. And she basically talks about how like, it is so slow going. And I didn't understand that. I didn't understand the compounding nature of software. And so I was looking, you know, my energy followed where I was getting the feedback, which was in the contact creation. So, obviously, when you had that conversation and you had that thought about, should I shut this down? You applied that, sort of that two-prong test to figure out whether or not you should or shouldn't. Okay, you decide to go back into it. That's a pivotal moment, obviously. What was the strategy, the framework, the mental model that you had to apply so that six months later, the same thing didn't happen? Yeah, so, there's a few different things. First, I realized that my artificial constraints were fruitless. I was taking something hard and making it extra possible. You know, and so saying, like, okay, I have to fund this only with customer money. So I stopped it. I took most of our savings and put $50,000 into the business. The second thing I realized is I couldn't build this with contractors. I needed someone on the engineering product side who was focused on this 100%. My friend of mine, Danny, talks about hiring contractors versus full-time team members. And he says, if you pay for half of someone's time, you get a quarter of their attention. And his point that he's making is, if you're dealing with a whole bunch of freelancers, they're just like, yep, let me get that hashed on for you. Let me take care of that. And they're doing good work, but they're not thinking about it, you know, every weekend. And so what I ended doing is hiring my friend David who was a great engineer and designer, and he went all in, and he was like, all right, this is everything that I'm thinking about. There's little things, like, I would send him a design, and he'd go to implement it, and he would, like, I thought it was great design. His implementation was better than my design, like, the little animations that polished the details. The rated development sped up a lot, based on that, you know, it was starting to get really real momentum. The next thing is, I focused on a specific niche, so before, I'd even given this advice in contact creation, of like, you've got to serve a niche. You know, you can't build, you can't make a course or write a book for everyone, you've got to choose something really narrow, and build it there. But then, I just think that's the easiest advice to give, and the hardest advice to take, and because I was like, well, well, well, well, we don't, I mean, the software could work for everybody, so like, it's more, you know, if you're running a marketing agency, versus your blogger, all of that, you know, you have the same needs that works for all of them. And that can be true, but in the messaging, you have to narrow it down. And so I narrowed it to email marketing for authors, and then I played around with the wording, and I realized that, the people are trying to reach, really more identified as professional bloggers. And so then, that's where we ended up. And then the last thing is, I focused on direct sales. I had all of the success, you know, selling ebooks and courses, mass market, to thousands of people on an email list. And so it's like, I'll sell software the exact same way. And turns out, you can tell what, $40 ebook is an impulse buy, at a $50 a month software platform that you have to migrate to, is not an impulse buy. And so I had to sell it differently. And so there's a lot that we did downstream from that, but those are the thinking that really started to gain traction in momentum. I want to, I wanted to save a couple of last minutes to talk about creator economy, but before I, so I pulled out a couple different, I guess, insights, thoughts, from different people that comment on the creator economy. I just want to get your feedback on them, because obviously you live it and you breathe it. But before that, I just want to give you sort of the floor. So talk to me for people that are listening who don't know kit or know it, but don't know the direction that you're going in. Who are you serving? What are you building out for creators? Like, give the elevator pitch, so people can sort of get to understand how to use kit for their business, their brand, whatever they're trying to build out. Yeah. Kit has evolved a lot over the last 11 years that I've been building it. And so really, what we're building now is the operating system for creators who mean business, meaning those who are, they could be beginners or they could be the biggest creators out there, but they're approaching it with a level of intention and business mind to like, hey, we're going to build something really substantial here. So a couple things that play into that, first is everything is email-focused. You know, and so we're bringing a lot of creators who might have a big audience on social on Instagram, YouTube, et cetera. But they're using email as the core of how they connect with their audience. And then, the next thing is really playing in the reporting side of it. So we pull in data from every platform that we can. So if you were to sell, you know, courses on Teachable or a membership on my network or whatever else, that aggregates into kits so you can see it in one place. So like, who's buying what and why? And then the last thing is, just as here, we launched an app store where now the idea is that, you know, any developer can build on top of kit and extend it. And that's still super early. But, you know, for people in the software space, right? You look to Shopify and WordPress, and you can see, oh, there's a, there's incredible power in an app store. Why is no one in the creator of the email space doing this? And so we have our first six or seven apps out now. And it's just amazing to see, like, what developers are adding onto it. And I mean, if you're a creator listening to this, I mean, other competitors have popped up now and maybe just like, speak to the, the similarities and differences. You can name names of competitors or not. I won't do it. But, there's a lot of people playing in the, in the email space and the newsletter space as well. So, how do you stand out? Who do you serve differently from someone if I'm a creator? I get some other names that would immediately pop up. Yeah, so I think, you know, first, the biggest players in the space are like the campaign monitors, active campaign and MailChimp, where they still, you know, or many, many multiples of our size and revenue. And so, against those, it's like, hey, we're really focused on creators. We do all the things that they do, but in the best practice for creators. Now, on the other side, there's probably three main companies that have spun up in the last few years that are focused on creators specifically, just like we are. And those would be FlowDesk, BeHive, and SubStack. And so, I think, FlowDesk is one, I mean, they bootchapped that company. So, it's, it's incredible, incredible what they've built. And they really focused on, like, beautiful email design. And so, that's something that we actually probably a little late of the game of building it out. And so, they built a great business and, you know, we saw like, okay, that is a really popular thing. So, like, let's match their beauty and email design, but let's do it in a way that's accessible, way easier to use. Things like, you have to use their templates, but in ours, there's an open marketplace, where any wood designers can make and sell and share or give away templates. So, they have, I think, dozens of templates, we have hundreds, you know, and the design quality and accessibility is way better. And then there's other things, like, we just launched a free plan in front of 10,000 subscribers. So, we're like, here, just use the product for free, kind of, kind of bring everyone in. And then on the other side, if you look at, like, a beehive or a sub-stack, you know, those are the venture-backed companies where you see Silicon Valley, like, just pouring in insane amounts of money into the creator space. Because it's like, congratulations, creators, like, you're the hot new thing. And so, you know, Andrews and Horowitz are, Google Ventures or whoever is, like, how do we drop $50 million into seeing if this will work? And those, those are email-focused platforms. So, they really focus on monetizing through paid newsletters. Which, that's a whole thing that we can get into. I think paid newsletters are great. Kit Power is a lot of them. But it's not the highest leverage way to earn a living as a creator. You know, we, we have this data from running newsletters for people like, James Clear, Andrew Huberman, Tim McGraw, I mean, so many giant creators that we get to see, like, here's what actually works. And it's really creators selling their own products that turns into that business, that way you're doing millions or tens of millions a year in revenue. So, yeah, we're the, the indie platform built specifically for creators. And I think, playing on that, like, it's extensible when it grows with you. It's kind of the main idea. I'm curious about, about some of your thoughts on the future of the creator economy. So, I was just looking at some, both, both some contrarian opinions, just some thoughts. So, one thought, the guy who put this out there is Alex Cantrowitz, he's a journalist, he has a podcast, but the point is, the thought, and the quote is, after years of hype, the creator economy is slimming into reality and influencer programs are shuttering, investment is drying up, and worsening economic conditions are threatening to crush creators, and trying to find them, while today's economic downturn is causing broad pain, the creator economy is suffering in particular because it's middle class hasn't yet emerged. What do you feel, what are your thoughts on this quote? Yeah, there was a whole trend, maybe 2021, where people were saying, like, the creator economy doesn't have a middle class. And it was really interesting. This came about a bunch in the news, and then this is, you know, a continuation of that, like, middle class watching that, thinking like, they could not be more wrong. But I understand where they're coming from, because basically, what they were seeing is, in the influencer space, all these people are trying, not getting traction, maybe they got a whole bunch of views on TikTok, like 100,000 followers and a bunch of views on TikTok, but that never turned into revenue. And then you have the other end of the spectrum, where you have, the big name celebrities or those creators who then became, big name celebrities, who are getting huge amounts of money, like, he was just announced, yesterday, today, that, wondering did a hundred million dollar deal, for the Kelsey Brothers podcast. You know, and you're like, okay, so we have the two extremes. We have people making, insane amounts of money, where I like, that's, that's, that's, like, closely amount of money they made, as, you know, NFL, like, star NFL players, and they're doing it for a, a weekly podcast now, and then no money at all, on the other end. But what we were seeing, is, the thriving middle class, right? We were seeing, the creator who, is teaching something of value. They're teaching design. They're, they're a teacher in Kansas who's like, hey, this is what it looks like to run and manage a good classroom. Here are my lesson plans for, you know, high school English. And their customers are other teachers who are trying to do their, their job better. Right? I see example after example, of people making, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, off of, all kinds of industries, whether it's cooking or bird watching or, you know, development, any of these things, and there's a very thriving middle class. But the difference is, they're not chasing views. And they're usually not, driving it based on advertising or sponsorship revenue. So what they're doing instead, is they're teaching something of a lot of value. And most often, they're teaching a skill that makes money to people who have money. And in that, they're building a deep relationship with a smaller audience. And then they're, they're selling a product themselves. And there's such a clear path to making tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars off of that. And so I think, there's a lot of money that has come into the critter economy, chasing these extremes. And so far, that has mostly skipped over the middle class. And so it's, it's sort of the tools like kit that are just like, hey, we've always been here. We have a first-hand seat, you know, to what actually works. And we're at this point. You're enabling the middle class with kit, really? Yeah. And we're like, we're watching more of the billions of transactions, billions of dollars of transactions go by across the platform. And people earning a huge amount of money. And it's, it's just, it's not as flashy or, basically, still the press hasn't, I picked up on it. And also, I think it's because, people kind of want, they seem like influencers take off in a way, and people kind of want influencers to fail, because it feels cheesy and fake. And so, that's a headline that people want to write. It's a very different headline to be like, no, there's people who are like, there's creators who are delivering some substantial value in their account. And, you know, going from there. It's not, it's not as sexy as headline. And it also seems like, it seems like, there is, in the same vein of thought, people, people look at traditional and like, a scene news organizations. And they, like, this is actually, the second quote that I was going to bring up was from, where was this here? Oh, it was about, it was Jack, it was from Jack Conti, the CEO of Patreon, talking about creators are about to have the leverage control and political and cultural influence to a degree that's unprecedented. But, there is an insinuation in that thought that the goal of the, of the creator is to, is to replace traditional media and replace traditional news. And with that thought comes, okay, if I'm going to replace traditional news, and how do I structure a business in the same way as a news organization with sponsors and advertisers. And I think these are the, the goals of a creator that doesn't understand, for example, how to sell a product or how to build a business. I think you just want to create the most amount of impressions or eyeballs. And then the sponsors are going to come. And this is the way media is always kind of worked. I mean, news doesn't traditionally sell an information product or a course or some sort of, you know, instruction to solve a problem. But, I think that the way you approach the creator economy or the way that you enable and empower creators is a much healthier way. And it's a much quicker path to revenue. That's the way that I see it. Yeah, I think that's right. And you do have examples of news organizations that sell products. Like Bloomberg News, for example, has the Bloomberg Terminal, which is a very, you know, every trader on Wall Street uses that product. And you see a lot of businesses around it. And you see, like, the New York Times, they've had a lot of success with their subscription product. And there's a lot of other publications that have not had success with their subscription products. But, you see the wide range of it. But yeah, I think that, creators have this opportunity. Their influence is just going to keep growing. You think about the content, the content that you're consuming, the, even people from the creator world who break out into the traditional space, and take like a Matt Rife in the comedy space, where he very much grew up in this digitally native world. And yes, he's doing Netflix specials now. And not like, he's broken through into the, the prime angle. But, but he still has this direct connection with his audience. If at any point, he didn't get, you know, the third Netflix special or something, he'd be like, cool, no big deal. Because I have, you know, millions of people on my email list and on my social volumes that I can just pursue in other, in other ways. If people want to, if people want to connect with you, where should they go? Where do you want to send people who listen to this, who want to get more involved in Kit, or just sort of consume more of your content? Yeah, I think the, the first thing is, I'm going to podcast, called the billion-dollar creator. Very soon, it'll just be called the Nathan Berry Show. We're going to keep things simple. So just search that on YouTube. And then, yeah, NathanBerry.com to subscribe to my newsletter. And then kit.com to see everything that we're doing to power the creator economy. I love it. All right. Last, a bit of wisdom for entrepreneurs for people listening for creators. I guess entrepreneurs are one and the same at this point. But, if you were going to go back and tell, you're young. So I was going to say you're 20 year old self. Maybe tell you're 15 year old self. One piece of wisdom or insight or lesson learned. What would that be? Oh, man. I, there's so many things that I did that I would absolutely do again. I think going back to the idea of there is no speed limit. That's the thing that I would just hammer home of like, do that, keep directing that in the way that you want. And I would just add the caveat of paying attention to your motivations as you do it. Like, do it from a place of abundance and fun and joy rather than, you know, occasionally straying into the, the trap of doing it from a scarcity of mindset.