037: Nat Eliason – Making Money From Your Course Before You Launch

Nat Eliason is the founder of Growth Machine, a successful SEO and content marketing agency. Nat also teaches the popular Roam course, Effortless Output.

Nat earned his B.A. in Philosophy from Carnegie Mellon University, and has worked for companies such as Zapier, and Sumo Group. Nat co-hosts the Made You Think podcast with Neil Soni.

Nat also writes a weekly newsletter called Monday Medley. Each Monday Medley has ten articles, videos, discussions, pieces of research, or other interesting finds from around the Internet, spanning a broad range of topics.

In this episode Nat discusses the evolution of his newsletter. He shares his strategies on developing online courses. He also explains how to find product-market fit before launching a course or product.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• How Nat made $300,000 from his online course
• What separates a mediocre newsletter from a great newsletter
• The differences between running a newsletter and teaching a course
• How Nat balances work, family, and leisure

Links & Resources

• Shane Parrish
• Farnham Street Sunday Brain Food newsletter
• Tim Ferriss
• Five Bullet Friday
• Azeem Azhar
• Exponential View
• airr
• Building a Second Brain
• Tiago Forte
• Wes Bos
• Derek Sivers

Nat Eliason’s Links

• Effortless Output with Roam
• Nat’s Twitter
• Nat’s website
• The Monday Medley
• Made You Think podcast

Episode Transcript

Nat: [00:00:00]
Build up little channels. There’s a lot to be said for having one thing that drives 10 grand a month. But if you’ve got 20 little things that drive $500 a month, that’s cool too. In some ways it’s a little more resilient because if one fails, you’ve only lost 5% of your revenue versus if the $10,000 a month thing fails, you’ve lost all of your revenue.

Nathan: [00:00:26]
In this episode, I talked to Nat Eliason. We talk about a bunch of different things ranging from his newsletter, the course that he’s running, you know, earning a crazy amount of money from the course, his thoughts on paid newsletters versus courses. Really just how he approaches life. It’s kind of a meandering episode as we go through those details.

I love the way that he’s not trying to grow and optimize everything. And then also the way that he’s taking internet money and bringing it into like tangible, real world life experiences, connection with friends, things like that. So it’s a great episode. I hope you enjoy it. And, actually before we dive in, I’d love for two things.

One, if you’re listening to the podcast and you just clicked through from random clips or things like that, and you haven’t subscribed, go ahead and subscribe in iTunes, Spotify, and, you know, wherever you listen to podcasts, really appreciate that. And then the other thing is, I realized I’ve never actually asked for reviews and it turns out reviews help, you know, with rankings and more people to discover the show.

So I would love it if you would go on iTunes in particular. Is iTunes a thing? Apple podcasts, I guess you go on Apple podcasts in particular and subscribe and then write a review or just a rating. That’ll help more people discover the show. So thanks for doing that. And let’s dive into the interview.

Alright, Nat, thanks for joining me.

Nat: [00:01:40]
Yeah. Thanks for having me, excited to be here.

Nathan: [00:01:41]
Why don’t you just kick things off by talking a little bit about the newsletter that you have, and I’m actually curious, you know, how long ago you started.

Nat: [00:01:51]
Yes. So my name is Nat. Hi, in the world of newsletters, I started my newsletter, which is called the Monday Medley or often just the Medley in may of 2015, no 2016.

Nathan: [00:02:08]
Either way it’s been awhile.

Nat: [00:02:10]
Yeah, it must be only 2016, cause I’m coming up on five years next week. I think it’s next Monday is the five-year anniversary.

So, I’ve been sending it out every single Monday for five years straight, which is kind of absurd. I actually, I have no idea how I haven’t messed one up in that time, but here we are.

Nathan: [00:02:34]
At 200, what was that, 260 weeks?

Nat: [00:02:37]
Yeah, it would be what, 260? Yeah, three times five. So it’s a lot of newsletters.

Nathan: [00:02:42]
That is. So what made you start the newsletter? Were there particular people you were following? And you’re like, “Oh, I want to be like them.” Or was it solving a business problem for you?

Nat: [00:02:52]
Yeah. So I was originally following sort of the standard advice of emailing every time an article came out. And that was working fine. And this was for my personal site NatEliason.com. and I was emailing for every article, but it’s like too many emails. Cause I was writing like a couple of posts a week back then, and I didn’t like having to like write a specific email for each article. And it felt like there wasn’t that much like extra value with being on the newsletter besides getting updates on posts, which people can do if they were just like on Feedly and subscribe to the RSS feed or whatever.

So, I saw Shane Parrish start his, brain food kind of newsletter for Farnam Street. And, Tim Ferris had launched his like Five Bullet Friday, around that time too. So the Medley started as very similar to those two where it was like, you know, here’s like something interesting. I read this week. Here’s like a video I enjoyed just kind of like a little, link dump.

And it was kind of that way for two or three years probably. And then it transitioned into kind of a different vibe where I got a lot of inspiration from Azeem Azhar and his Exponential View newsletter, which is like really, really good. And I just loved how, like, he wasn’t really just sharing stuff that he found interesting.

He was kind of like going in depth on each thing. And what I liked about his was I felt like a lot of the link dumpy newsletters were, they didn’t feel very like high effort or very high value. And it was just like, okay, like, here’s kind of like a dump of things, but you can kind of get that from Twitter or elsewhere, plus like everyone was doing it right.

It wasn’t that special anymore. So I was trying to think of how I can make it higher value. Azeem’s was such a great model because he was like going into detail on each thing. So I shifted in that direction first, where it was like, okay, here’s, you know, five, six, seven things from this week that are interesting.

They’re kind of like in categories. And here’s like my thoughts on them, or like a bit of, a bit of summary on them, if you don’t want to like go read them. So it made it a lot more detailed. and then in the last like three months, it kind of shifted again to being somewhere in between like a standalone, like news letter or like, like periodical kind of like what you would expect from a sub stack and that, like link roundups.

So now when I do it, there might only be. Like two, three or four articles, pieces, whatever I’m referencing as like the jumping off points. But then I might write like 500, 3000 words about them and kind of like more of my thoughts on them, more how they tie into like broader themes of the newsletter reference things that I’ve shared in the past, trying to make it more of like a, like a journey through each week, instead of just like a, like a dump of information.

So it’s evolved a lot over the last five years. and I think it’s, I think he’s evolution has been good and made it like better. Yeah.

Nathan: [00:06:10]
And so doing it for five years, interesting to me in that, like that’s a long time to show up consistently every week. has each iteration made it more fun? What are the, like, what are the things that have made it so that it’s been good to show up consistently and you’ve stuck with it for so long.

Nat: [00:06:27]
I think each iteration has come from me meeting to make it fun. So like it changes each time. I get bored of it is probably the best way to put it. Right. So like I got, I got kind of bored of doing just like, Oh, here’s like five things I found this week. So I was like, all right, let’s try to make this a little more interesting.

And then I was like writing all of this stuff about each thing, but then it was all of this work to go out and try to like find a bunch of stuff to read and write about each week. And so that was starting to feel kind of like a slog where each Monday it was like, okay, now I need to go like read articles for two hours because I didn’t read enough during the week and then need to write about it.

And so I was like, well, what if, what if I tried to be like, More selective and just picked a few things that were really good. Cause that was the other problem was that the talking about a breadth of things was actually encouraging reading shorter, lower quality stuff. Right. Because let’s say that I’ve got two hours to read material for the Medley, but I feel like I need to send six, seven, eight things.

I’m going to read stuff that’s shorter and probably less good, just so I can like fill my quota. Versus what I like about what I’m doing now is I have good incentive to read, you know, a 30 minute or 60 minute article because I could just riff on that for the entire newsletter and it could be really good.

So that’s made it a lot more enjoyable to me. And I think that, like one thing that I did from the outset that has helped it stay interesting is basically not branding it around anything or not theming it. and just being like. This is whatever random stuff I’m interested in this week. Right. So, you know, one week it’s going to be, it could be about like health and other week.

It could be about like crypto stuff and then a week it’s about marketing. And then it’s about like knowledge management. I just sort of like, I mean, that’s why it’s called the Medley rice. It’s like, whatever stuff it feels like going out this week is going out. it’s probably helped with the longevity a bit too, because I think that if you have like a, a very specific niche newsletter Write or anything, right.

Like you can grow really quickly, but it’s also a little more replaceable. People might like get bored of that topic and move on. when you have, when you brand new rap, just like trying to send consistently interesting stuff each week, I think it’s got a little bit more longevity to it. So, this worked out.

Nathan: [00:08:43]
Yeah, I think the same thing people often in the early days of my blog would ask why it had it around like Nathan Berry instead of, the topic, you know, and part of it is, cause I was talking about, like how to design iPhone applications at the time. That’s my, my entire site or 80% of my site was about that thing.

And so it could have been called, you know, iOS design weekly or, you know, whatever else it turns out I lost interest in that topic. And I moved on to other things and because it was themed around my, you know, my name, all of that, then I could just move with me and I’m sure some people dropped off. You know, some people were like looking at, and I don’t care about designing web applications or Marketing, or cell phone wishing your newsletters, any of this stuff.

And so they drop off, but most people, you know, stuck with me and followed that. And so I think what you’re doing of having it around your name and just like, this is what I’m interested in. If you don’t like it, like there’s an unsubscribe button. If you do like it, you know, telephone.

Nat: [00:09:40]
It definitely helps. I mean, I think it makes it harder in the early days, right. Because. People people almost need like an initial thing to hook on to you from Write. Right. And so for me, a lot of that was probably around like SEO and writing about like search engine optimization and content marketing, and doing all of that.

And then kind of like letting it expand from there, just like what you were talking about, right. It’s like you started with iPhone app development and that was like the initial thing, but it was still under your name. And then as you expand it to other topics, some people come with you. Some people like fall off.

I mean, it’s kind of fun talking about a variety of things because you, you get like very different people from all walks of life or from all areas of interest who, and, following your stuff. it also creates like these funny situations where you have like a strong opinion in one area. and you’re like, you do a lot of stuff in another area.

So people follow you for this thing. And then you like talk about this other thing and then suddenly you get like angry emails about it. so that’s one downside.

Nathan: [00:10:42]
Do you have a specific example or two?

Nat: [00:10:45]
Yeah, I’m very against like fake foods or like, I think that fake foods are just like really terrible for us or bad for the environment, bad for everything. but I, and then I have like a lot of people who’ve come in through the like Roam Research, personal knowledge management, productivity space. So every now and then I’ll have somebody who like comes in through the Roam stuff.

And then I like say something incendiary about Oatley and my newsletter. And they’re like, so those are always kind of funny, but, that, that does happen every time. Right?

Nathan: [00:11:20]
Yeah. I could totally see that, you know, but what did they say if you’re not hated by someone you’re not doing anything meaningful? I don’t know what it is, but.

Nat: [00:11:29]
My heuristic is like, if, if a, if a newsletter edition doesn’t get like 0.1% of people responding, like. Disliking it or being annoyed about something, then you probably haven’t said anything like that. Interesting in it. Right? Like if you’re, it’s something like, yeah. If you’re making everybody happy, you’re like not, I’m totally butchering it, but

Nathan: [00:11:56]
Generally what we’re getting at. So the takeaways we’re bad at sharing quotes. I’m curious, what are some of the like, fun experience that experiences that have come from the newsletter of like either, you know, serendipity or like people you’ve met or opportunities that came up because of it. And we’ll get into courses and revenue side of the second, but

Nat: [00:12:15]
There’s a ton, like I’ve made a decent number of real life friends from my newsletter. Right. and it’s, it’s hard to suss out whether it’s like the newsletter or Twitter. I think that they like go hand in hand very closely, but I believe at least half of my real life friends are now like came in some way from being an active internet person.

Right. And so that’s super cool. have a lot of like, people send me really interesting stuff now each week, whenever I send out the newsletter, which is fun, and also. Kind of like daunting because I’ll, I’ll send it out and then I might get a dozen replies or whatever of people saying like, Oh, this is cool.

You should check this out too. Or like, somebody will point out something that I got wrong and then, you know, like go down that rabbit hole and explore it. So it’s great because I actually learned a lot from the newsletter now, too, from what people sent back to me and that’s really fun. And it kind of like, lets me go down rabbit holes.

There’s other cool stuff. Like, my favorite is when I share an article in the newsletter and I’m like talking about, you know, this is really great. It was interesting, you know, here’s what made me think about, and then like the author is on the newsletter and he replies, Oh, wow, thanks for sharing. And then like, boom, where like instant internet friends.

Right? Like that’s happened a number of times and that’s always a really, really fun experience. I’m trying to think what else, like there’s obviously the business side of it. And I think just like, I. Seeing the newsletter, like help people, especially early stage companies or people who are just like starting to get the word out about stuff.

And I mean, there was like, there’s this podcast app that I really loved called air air. And, I found out about it relatively early and got in touch with the founder. And we just like jammed for a bit and talked about like podcasting and note taking and stuff. And then I shared it in my newsletter and he texted me the next day.

He was like, yo, that was our highest download day ever, like so far. And I was like, that’s super cool. Right? Like, that feels really good because it’s like, I found this thing. I liked it. I shared it. And it like made some small, meaningful impact in their business. Like that part. I really, really enjoy.

Nathan: [00:14:21]
Yeah, it’s amazing to have that attention to be able to direct to things I friends are doing or just that you think is cool. Like so often, you know, like the most value you could give to a cool project is like, Oh, let me click retweet. You know, which doesn’t really do much, but to be able to come across something and be like, Oh, this is amazing.

More people should know about it. And, you know, be able to send tens of thousands of people. That direction is,

Nat: [00:14:44]
super cool. Yeah.

Nathan: [00:14:46]
this is a bit unrelated, but you’re talking about, you know, making friends from the newsletter and all that. Something interesting that I think you posted on Twitter is, or maybe putting the newsletter is really a focus on like, as the world opens up in a post pandemic thing of, like you’re saying, I actually just want to like make friends locally, like I’ve.

I spent all this time, you know, like we could all get on the plane again. We could go to conferences and, and like expand our internet circles. And you’re like, look, there’s plenty of people here in Austin here in the area around, like what drove some of that thinking of like investing in local community and just making friends around you.

Nat: [00:15:23]
Yeah. I mean, I think that it was a combination of things, you know, one pre COVID. We were probably traveling like minimum once a month, like often, twice a month. So, you know, going somewhere every other week or every three weeks, something like that. And that was just a very normal for two years or more, I guess it was just like, Oh yeah, this is just like what we do, right?

Like, you’ve got the ability to travel. Like you shouldn’t travel and you should like go these other places and like, see things like Instagram and whatever. And then, you know, COVID hit and, you know, I don’t know what it was like in Boise, but in Austin, especially in our community, we sort of like gave up on a lot of the.

Like social guidelines very quickly where it was like, we had a very healthy, very young community. We were just hanging out with each other. We weren’t like seeing at risk people. And we were just like, you know what, we’re just going to roll these dice and not like spend a unpredictable amount of time, completely isolated from each other.

Right. Cause it’s like, there’s a lot of risks with that too. Right. Like it’s incredibly unhealthy way to live. So we just like started doing dinners with friends, doing cookouts, going for walks, doing like random activities, like almost every single day of the week. And so like we would be going to someone’s house for dinner.

They’d be coming over for dinner. We’d be doing cookouts on the weekend. And so Write, it was just like. Nonstop social, like group stuff that was at people’s houses and in their yards and not like at a noisy bar, and didn’t involve like having to get on a plane or like going anywhere. And pretty much all of us were like, Holy shit, this is so much, it was just like, this is, this is like the best way to live.

This is awesome. we all got really good at cooking. Like a few of us bought like ranch houses outside Austin with acreage, or we could go like, hang out. I mean, it was just like completely new lifestyle. It was so much better. And so as you know, stuff is opening back up, we’re all kind of like, we don’t want to travel.

Why would we go? And like, why would we do get on the plane and go somewhere? when we can just like, enjoy life here, like, why would we go to bars when we can like, have, you know, dinner or like drinks and party and stuff at friend’s houses? Or like, why would we go to. Any restaurant, except like the very few that can legitimately make better food than we can get at home.

But it’s just like completely changed our relationship with like socializing and time. And I think there’s like this, this tough question of, you know, like who do you want to build a deeper relationship with? And I think, you know, and every time you choose to spend time with someone or with some place you’re choosing not to spend time with someone else or with someplace.

And so every weekend that you get on a plane and go to somewhere else in your you’re like deepening a relationship with something or someone that’s like not actually where you live. Right. And so there’s this element of like, you know, I, I do have friends in other cities and States and I do feel close to them, but at the end of the day, like I need to prioritize the people who are actually going to like be in this environment and who, you know, are probably going to be in Austin for the foreseeable future.

Cause it’s like, I think that it. It really highlighted how much stronger, like in-person friendships and stuff can be and why it’s better to just focus on those than to try to like travel all over the country. Like having relationships with a bunch of cities and people in a bunch of places. And it’s like, it’s kind of like a awkward or tough thing to say or talk about.

But I think that people would just be a lot happier if they like didn’t travel, spend more time in their home.

Nathan: [00:19:09]
Yeah. And it’s just all about being, being deliberate in that way and choosing the things that, you know, you’re going to focus on. Cause you can’t, you can’t focus on everything.

Nat: [00:19:18]
Yeah, exactly.

Nathan: [00:19:19]
Okay. I want to start courses and then I want to talk like. W w w we’ll go to, back to ranch houses since, you know, courses help enable ranch houses.

So the, it seems to me from the outside of the main way you monetize your newsletter is through, courses like you have the, of course, on Roam called effortless output. that is, is that the primary revenue driver or are there other things as well?

Nat: [00:19:45]
Yeah, that’s the primary revenue driver now. So, you know, there, there is other, there there’s a bunch of other stuff, like there’s, a bunch of like relatively high paying affiliate deals on the site. There’s a, I sell my book Notes as like a little like info-product, I’ve got an iPhone app. Like there there’ve been other things, but at this point, yeah, the course revenue just like divorce, all the rest of that.

So that’s that kind of like in the last year, just like blew up as the main monetization channel for the site and it actually got another one coming out now focused on like SEO for solopreneurs.

Nathan: [00:20:25]
Bringing it full circle to what started the Content. And initially

I want to ask him about the Day affiliates are there, like I don’t hear about affiliates, you know, and, that as a channel, as often for monetization of newsletters, are there some of those that, you know, you can talk about and share, share numbers on.

Nat: [00:20:44]
Yeah. I mean, there’s an honestly, I guess it doesn’t really come mostly from the newsletter, mostly comes from the site and from SEO. So if we’re talking about newsletter monetization, then yeah. That’s predominantly courses. but there there’s a couple of programs in particular that, I mean, actually it’s really like one that’s predominant, which is web flow.

Right? So when Field probably is like 80% of the affiliate revenue, and I just like discovered web flow in 2017 and like really fell in love with it and started like promoting it hard. And they’ve just got like an awesome affiliate program. And my like my philosophy on affiliates is like, I’m never going to.

Sign up for an affiliate program or promote something that I don’t already like love and use, but it’s something that I love and use has an affiliate program than like, yeah, I’m going to sign up for it.

Nathan: [00:21:38]
How much revenue is web, affiliate program driving for you? Like on a monthly basis?

Nat: [00:21:43]
It’s like a bit over a thousand dollars a month. So it’s like not insane, but it’s also like, that’s nothing to shake a stick at, right?

Nathan: [00:21:51]
Yeah, exactly. It’s funny. The time, like the things where, like, I have a couple of like, well, optimized blog posts on this or something like that. And it’s like, and that is driving, you know, it’s like half a house payment.

Nat: [00:22:03]
Yeah. That’s the thing, right? It’s like a, it’s fun to frame that stuff in terms of other things like, my buddy and I used to talk about random little. Affiliate passive income stuff is AAA money. All right. It’s like you you’ve paid for all of your Chipotle A’s for the month off of your like random you to me, affiliate revenue or whatever.

Right. It’s like, and if you, if you work on stuff long enough, you know, and you, you build up little channels, right? Like it can get to a sizeable amount of money. I mean, there’s a lot to be said for having one thing that drives say 10 grand a month. But if you’ve got 20 little things that you’ve tried 500 a month, like that’s cool too.

And in some ways it’s a little more resilient because if, if one fails, you’ve only lost 5% of your revenue versus if the $10,000 a month thing fails, you’ve lost all of your revenue.

Nathan: [00:22:50]
What was the reason behind diving into the Roam course, creating a launching that. And then I’m also curious how you price it. If you went with a cohort model or if it’s just always open, like how do you approach that?

Nat: [00:23:02]
Yes. So it link came about very. I guess serendipitously or randomly, depending on how you want to frame it. I mean, I, from having the newsletter and talking about personal health management stuff and being on Twitter, talking about PKM, I was just like very in that world. And probably like, if there’s a, if there’s a head of that world, it’s definitely Tiago and his chorus building a second brain.

And I went through that back in 2017 and you know, I’d been like very vocally supporting his course and everything that he was working on. but I never liked Evernote. And I always had like a lot of struggles with Evernote as the tool for kind of like doing all of that. So when, Adam Kiesling tweeted about Roam in like November of 2019, I was like, Oh, this is kind of cool.

Like, let’s go check this out and play with it. And, you know, like immediately fell in love with it. And I already had like my newsletter, right. I already had the Medley. And so I, I shared it in the Medley and I shared it on Twitter and then other people were like, Oh wow, this is pretty cool. And I think just because I’d been sharing stuff, I was interested in and share in like building an audience of other people, interested in personal knowledge management, people took to it very quickly.

But it was, and still is kind of confusing and opaque tool. So I had a lot of people asking, like, how do I actually use this thing? Like you say, it’s cool, but it’s not clear at all why this is so cool. So. I was like, all right, well, you know, I’ll write an article about it wrote the article, the article, like hit front page of hacker news and like went mini viral on Twitter and got like, you know, some tens of thousands of views in the first 24 hours.

And I was like, Oh wow, okay. There’s like a lot of interest in this. And then I had four or five friends text me saying like, Hey, you know, if you did a course on Roam, like I would take it. Cause like, you seem very excited about it, but I still have like, no idea what to do here. So, that was really the push where I was like, all right.

If, if my, like, if my friends who are like, Smarter than me are like asking me for a course on this. Like, that’s probably a good sign. I should do one. but I’m also like, I I’m, I’m somewhere in between like intelligent, lean startup person and like exceptionally lazy, because I was like, I don’t want to do any work on this if no one’s going to pay for it.

So, I just like put out a tweet and said, you know, Hey, some people ask for a Roam course, I’m going to do one. Here’s like the initial table of contents. just PayPal me $50 if you want early access. And I got like 50 ish PayPals in the first, like 24 hours, which was like, ridiculous, because it was literally like a yeah, from a tweet and like a picture of the table of contents.

Right. So, that was like strong validation was like, Oh shit. Okay. I should actually do this. And also now I have to do this because people have Tape don’t want to just like, do a bunch of refunds. And so, yeah, I spent the next month, like recording everything, getting it out. and then, you know, you asked about pricing or something kind of funny happened then too, which was as I was like finishing up the course.

So I, I said PayPal me 50 to get early access. the next day I put up an actual landing page and started charging 75. And then by the end of the weekend, I upped it to a hundred and I said, okay, it’s going to be a hundred while I finished recording all of the content and everything. But then when I release it, the price is going to go up.

So that was recording everything and putting it out. and then as I was getting close to finishing it, the, the Roam teams, people who worked on Roam took the course and they liked it so much that they basically subsidized it as they’re onboarding. So they, and this was really funny cause they didn’t even tell me they were going to do this.

I just woke up one day and they had put out this tweet that said like, Hey. we liked that score so much that if you take it, we’ll give you a hundred dollars in Roam credits. When we turn on payments, which was like incredible, because that basically made the course free, right. I was charging a hundred dollars for it.

They were going to give you a hundred dollars in credit, but it basically pays for itself. and so after they did that, I said, okay, well, I’m not going to increase the price as long as they’re offering that, because it makes it such a no-brainer to buy. So I just left it at a hundred dollars. And I mean, it was, it was crazy.

I mean, by, by the time I got, by the time September rolled around, it was wanting to do the second version of it. It had done like two or $300,000 in sales. On a, a hundred dollars a student, which is like a lot of money for, an online course. and especially one that like, you know, in all honesty, I expected to make 10 grand off of, you know, some friends and other nerdy people on Twitter.

I definitely did not expect it to have like that kind of reaction. so that was just like, kind of wild and continues to be a sort of wild, thing to have created.

Nathan: [00:28:01]
When you did the second version, what did you change about it? and how did it change the pricing?

Nat: [00:28:06]
So the first version, you know, the, the great thing about building in public and doing like the whole lean startup MVP, whatever is that it lets you like validate as you go. And not like build stuff that people don’t want and don’t need the downside is that when you don’t have a plan stuff, kind of just like gets hacked together.

It’s sort of like, you know, building like an MVP with like actual code or whatever and you have this like cowboy code spaghetti code, like mess of stuff that needs to go back and you need to go back and clean up later. So version one was very like disorganized and very, like just tutorial, right?

It was like, here’s how to do this and here’s how to do this. And here’s how to do this. There wasn’t that much of a like user story through it or like a flow that would, like help somebody like understand the why of the tool. It was just like the, what the, how to do this, this, this. so for V2, it was like, all right, we’re going to do some quick, basic tutorial stuff. And then we’re gonna go through an actual, like a journey of using this app. So we’re going to like pick a topic that we want to learn more about, and then we’re going to do a bunch of research on it.

And we’re going to organize our research in our database. They’re going to take that Research or we’re going to like distill it into like our lessons and our takeaways from doing all the research. Then we’re going to create an actual, like project to manage shipping the deliverable that we want from doing this research.

And then we’re going to actually create something new from all that research, whether that’s like an article or a script, or, like, you know, some sort of other creative work or whatever. And that seems to resonate with people a lot more. Cause then it was like, Oh, I see why I would use this now versus just like, here’s how to use it.

So for that one, Increase the price to two 50 and then also had a cohort-based version for 500 where you got the whole self paced. And then we met once a week for five weeks to go over implementing each of the five sections of the course. and. The cohort went fine. I just didn’t enjoy doing it very much.

And it didn’t feel necessary for the type of course. So it was like, I think that if you’re learning, if you’re learning how to do something or how to use something, you don’t need a cohort based model. I think we need a cohort based model four is like when you’re adopting a new identity or doing something that requires feedback and like a continuous integration.

So like David’s Write of Passage course is like the ultimate cohort-based model because you can’t do like a self-paced course on writing. Cause you need like social pressure to actually ship stuff. You need feedback on the writing, you need coaching. Like there’s a lot that you need to do that well. whereas like how to use Roam, you can absolutely do self-paced So I haven’t done another like five week cohort, but what I have been experimenting with, which I kind of like, is this a one afternoon intensive?

So I did one of these last month. I’ll probably do another one, like next month or something where I called it and building Roam in a day where it was a four hour, like intensive where each hour we did one of the units with like a 10, 15 minute break. And that actually went super well and people really liked it.

And it gave me an excuse to update some of the course content. So I might try doing that every quarter or something.

Nathan: [00:31:26]
You know, it’s interesting as you talk about that, I’m reminded of, James Claire for a long time, when he was building his newsletter, he, he was purely focused on growing the newsletter. You know, he, atomic habits wasn’t out yet. so he was publishing twice a week, you know, and then promoting republishing that content.

And we always talked about like, Oh, how are you going to monetize it? And he’s like, ah, I just want to focus on growing total readers. But he did obviously need to make money. And so once a quarter, we would do a live habits workshop. And I think the first couple of times he did it, you know, like maybe the first one made 25 grand or something, you know, but then it got to the point where once a quarter he was doing these workshops and they were making like 250 grand each time just as that grew.

And then for the entire rest of the 90 days, he could just focus on growing the audience. And so it was like once a quarter, he would take this little break, go make a bunch of money and then go focus on growth. And it’s interesting. Cause I could see, yeah, you doing a similar thing. Like it just reminds me of with the intensives of like, Oh, if I do this every couple of months, you get kind of this fun interaction with all the students.

It’s another reason to like PR to promote, it’s kind of a mini launch of like, or a reminder of like all of them that’s Roam Content. So I like it.

Nat: [00:32:47]
Yeah. And what I did the last time was I charged a hundred dollars and then you just got like all the recordings and the tutorial. And what I then did is I saved all those recordings into a new course. And so now, effortless output has like a hundred dollar option and a $200 option. So the $200 option is the one that was two 50.

And that’s like the full self-paced course, but you can also just pay a hundred dollars for the recordings from Roam in a Day, plus the tutorial material. So it’s like a condensed, like less in-depth version of the course. And that’s actually been working out really, really well. And what I’m thinking I’ll do for the next Roam in a day is basically say that, like, if you’ve taken either course, if you’ve bought outercourse, then you get to watch and join for free.

So anybody who’s taken either one can watch it join for free, but if you pay like. 25 or 50 or whatever. I haven’t decided you can actually join live and like ask questions and engage. Because like, with, I think it was something like 4,500 students that have gone through it. Now, like if I try to, if I invite all of them to a zoom that could turn into a master really quickly.

So having like two tiers where there’s like an engagement tier and a like watch tier, I feel like is kind of a, a good way to do it.

Nathan: [00:34:05]
Yeah. And it encourages people or like gives people something where they’re like, Oh, I’ve paid for the course maybe before Roman a Day existed. And so I can, you know, come check it out for free and people will appreciate that. what are you changing next time around as, you know, as you work on this, SEO course.

Nat: [00:34:23]
Yeah. So one thing that I’ve changed my mind on recently is kind of like pricing psychology with courses. So I think that. I think that you, you can make a lot of money and you can do very well pricing it very high. and I think, especially for cohort-based courses, you have solutions, you should charge a lot, but for self-paced stuff, I’m actually, I’ve gotten more of the mind that it’s better to try to create like a disproportionately incredible course for the price so that there’s no reason.

For anyone to recommend any other course. So, there are a lot of SEO courses out there and a lot of them are like kind of expensive, and a lot of the inexpensive ones aren’t like that. Great. Right. so my, my goal is I’m probably, I’m probably gonna do like a two tier structure, just like I have with the Roam course where there’s going to be like a hundred dollars version at $200 version.

And for the $200 version, like, I just want it to be like the absolute disgustingly best SEO course out there, where there would just be like no reason for anyone to recommend, like anything else, especially considering the price point. Because I think that once you like, get into that position of like, No, this is just the, of course you take, then that’s where, like you really start to get sort of like the incredible long-term like tail benefits from it.

Cause I think that like you, what you might lose in short-term revenue, you gain in long-term Mindshare. And it was this interesting thing where like, when the Roam course was only a hundred dollars, there were like so many people taking it. And so many people talking about it on Twitter that it felt like it was everywhere, right?

At least in that like very small niche community. But when I increased the price of two 50, like fewer people were taking it, it wasn’t getting talked about as much. It felt like. It was LA it had less of the mind share. Right. And so I think there’s, there is actually a lot of power in like at least starting very inexpensive building, a huge fan base of people who like, love what you’ve built and then either never increasing it and maintaining that mind share, or like increasing it later once you’ve kind of like established a baseline of a lot of people who really like what you’re doing.

So that that’s sort of what I’ve leaned more towards now.

Nathan: [00:36:44]
That’s fascinating because just as like I got into selling digital products and courses back in 2012, and you know, the common price points were $29, $49, you know, like I had a version of mine that I charged two 49 for, and a lot of that was relatively expensive at the time. Whereas, you know, since then, yeah.

Like a $2,000 course is not at all uncommon, you know, and then you, you get some that are cohort based, you know, there might be 3,500 or more in there they’re positioning against like a semester of college, you know, or, or something like that. which I think is great. And, and it’s enabled a lot of things and you can have, you know, a hundred students and make a crazy amount of money, which is fantastic.

But I have wondered if it’s going to go the other way as people try to find the sweet spot. So I like what you’re saying about the a hundred dollar, you know, a hundred to two 50 price point and really, I guess all that, what are you optimizing for? And at this point you’re not optimizing for the absolute most dollars per email subscriber or something like that.

You’re optimizing for Mindshare and that’s a great call app.

Nat: [00:37:54]
Yeah. And I think that there’s also this element too, of like knowing, knowing what you’re good at and knowing what you do and do not want to do. And for me, for one, I hate cohort based courses. I can’t stand them. like I have nothing against people doing them. It’s an incredible model. And a lot of people love it and they should do it.

I’m like, I just personally, like I’m crazy add, I can’t like say engaged with something for like weeks and weeks at a time. Usually like, I want to download all the information in two days and then run with it. I can’t wait. Write, like I was, I was like the most annoying student when I was in second frame of Tiago.

Cause I was like, dude, can you just give me the lectures? Like, can I just watch them now please? Like, I don’t want to wait until next week. Like, I’m surprised he put up with me because it’s a pain in the ass about it. but for me it’s like, okay, I know I’m going to do self paced. Right? Like I’m not going to do cohort.

And then if I’m going to do self pace, like what in self pace do I not want to have to deal with? And the number one thing is like support, right? I want to, I don’t want to have to be like always responding to emails. And I think that if you’re like pricing at 500 or a thousand or something for self-paced course, people reasonably assume that you’re going to give them some amount of your time.

Whereas if you’re in the like hundred to two 50 range, I don’t think people have that same level of expectation. And honestly, somebody I like look up to a lot in this regard is West boss. because he’s got these. Phenomenal programming courses like 25 hours of JavaScript training for a hundred dollars.

Like the, the Delta between the value he’s providing and the value he’s capturing is like insane, but he makes millions of dollars off of his courses. Like the numbers on his site are like honest about how many people have gone through them. Like he’s printing money on those. And everybody recommends him because his courses are incredible and very reasonably priced.

Like it’s a, it’s a very, I think underrated model, if you’re doing self-paced to just like, create this disgustingly huge difference between what people are paying and what they’re getting and let that just like, do all of your marketing for you. Like when I, when I put up the presale for the SEO for solar preneurs on Twitter, a couple of days ago, I got a number of people who were applying, being like, Holy shit, only $97, like that’s instant.

Yes. Right. And I was like, cool. Okay. That’s like the thing that I’m going for here.

Nathan: [00:40:18]
When it comes to monetizing newsletters, there’s a bunch of different paths, you know, like, courses, eBooks, all of that has been really common. People have done sponsorships. I feel like a bunch of them are having, different forms of Renaissance, but paid newsletters are really popular right now with some stack and, and ghost and ConvertKit and everything else.

I’m curious, you sort of like dip in both worlds a little bit where you’re most, it seems like from the outside, most of your revenue is coming from courses, but then you’re also putting content in not your own pain newsletter. Right. But you’re putting it in the, every bundle. what’s it, what’s the reasoning behind that?

Nat: [00:40:57]
I mean, I, every bundle, I think is just like a cool right Like I love what Dan and Nathan are doing Uh I think that it’s so I I had wanted to do some sort of paid writing thing And I try to membership for my site That was a mistake Uh didn’t go well for me considered it, for the same reason that I don’t like a lot of core stuff.

Like I’m, I’m very good at like focusing intensely for a period, shipping something and moving on to the next thing. I’m not good at maintenance. Like I can’t sustain stuff very well. and when people are like joining a membership that sort of expecting a certain level of maintenance or like engagement or stuff, and like, I.

Yeah, those are the things that I hate most are like doing the same thing week after week. Right. Whether that’s even if it’s like hosting a different workshop, like if I have a recurring event on my calendar, that’s, work-related, it’s just like the bane of my week. and so I just, I couldn’t enjoy doing the membership, even though there were cool people in there and it was making good money.

Right. It’s like, I, it was, it was doing like a bit over five K a month when I launched it. And after a month, when it started the second month I like canceled it and refunded everyone. Cause I was just like, I’m sorry guys. Like, I just, I’m not enjoying doing this. Like glad I tried it, but it wasn’t the right thing for me.

So like that didn’t work. I considered doing a paid newsletter, but then I was worried about the same problem, which is basically like, okay, if people sign up for this for 10 a month, then I have to ship something like every week so that they feel like they are getting their money’s worth. and I’ve, I know myself well enough at this point to know that the minute I introduce that, like incentive structure, I’m going to hate doing it.

So, what I liked about every was since this is a collective you’re, if I don’t send something for a few weeks, there’s still a lot of other, really good stuff in the bundle people are getting access to. So I don’t have to feel like I need to ship on a set schedule in order to like give people their money’s worth, because I’m just like a part of a, a broader collective.

And so I like that a lot. And I liked it there. Like, it’s, it’s a very wide variety of topics and they’re very like, hands-off with sort of like, just for the most part, letting me write about whatever I want to write about. And I’m also like, I’m definitely the odd one in the bundle and that my newsletter has like no cohesive topic that makes any sense.

But that’s also like, if anybody knows my writing, they know that that’s just like who I am. and so it kinda like fit, like it’s good that they were willing to let me do that too. Right. So. It’s just like, I think it’s a cool experiment and I think that they’re going to like grow and it’s going to be cool to like, be in that community and it’s fun.

And it’s like, it’s a good, it’s a good link exercise for writing too. Cause I don’t really have anybody edit the stuff that goes on my blog or that goes in my newsletter, but like, they’re very good about like editing and feedback and stuff. So it’s making me a better writer too. which I appreciate.

Nathan: [00:43:57]
Yeah, I love the structure that they’ve put around it. when Nathan was on the show, we talked a lot about the. Like writing process and editorial and, and how to have that group of people where you can riff on ideas with, cause we all do it, you know, but we do it with a random friend who’s over for a barbecue and we’re like, Hey, we’re like testing out, you know, material for another blog post.

And, and so to have people who are like Hey there’s something here but this draft that you wrote isn’t it you know and actually like and say, Hey, if you put a couple more hours into this, it could actually be something that’s, that’s really good instead of like passable.

Nat: [00:44:36]
Definitely. Yeah. And they’ve got like weekly chats for like workshopping article ideas and people, you know, give each other feedback on stuff they’re working on. and it’s interesting too, because it’s like, it’s, it’s actually a very like politically diverse community. but everyone’s very like respectful.

And so we can like, it’s, it’s cool because I think that a lot of publications are, you know, like we’re seeing this with New York times and whatever, like they, they become very politically homogenous. Whereas like so far there’s like a pretty big diversity of like etiologies, whatever, and the people writing for every, and we’re all like, we can, we can disagree very respectfully, like within the discord and like have really interesting conversations about stuff.

And so I’m like, I’m hoping that that can like keep up, and it makes the newsletter more interesting too, because I feel like we can write about stuff that, you know, Different people have very different opinions on

Nathan: [00:45:31]
Yeah, how’s the money side of it, of at work. Is it driving, any kind of meaningful revenue for you?

Nat: [00:45:37]
Yeah, it’s serving some, I mean, the way it works right now, and actually, Evan Armstrong who writes for napkin math, just put out an article on this, on every blog title is something like, am I, am I getting screwed by every, it was like, it was a clever title where he basically, he broke down the math of how like writers for the bundle get paid and whether or not it makes sense.

And so it’s like basically you get 50% of all revenue from, people who like sign up and reference you as the reason they signed up. So the bundle costs $20 a month. And everybody who signs up either through my publication or who say that, like I sent them, I’m getting $10 of that revenue. So I think I’m making a bit over two grand a month from it right now.

And I think that like, if I, I am, but I’m also like, not that great about writing as consistently as everyone else. so if I like do a better job of that, and honestly, I think that if I decide on a topic to focus that newsletter on a little more deliberately, that’s going to help with it too. Cause it is hard to know if it’s worth subscribing to something when you’ve no idea what you’re getting.

So I’m playing around with a couple of topics to try to like narrow in on over there and then leave my like other Medley of ideas for the newsletter and personal site.

Nathan: [00:46:51]
What’s interesting to me about that is it’s like half a, your own paid membership or, you know, paid newsletter and half affiliate at that point. Right. Cause going through your have um you know like there’s several posts that you click into and it’s like here’s the start of it And then go read the rest of it on every um and so that’s like you know it’s just like go read the rest of it on my paid newsletter But even if you know a few years from now I imagine if you like were ready even less consistently for every you’d still have what’s effectively affiliate links driving traffic over and Hey, that recurring subscription.

That’s interesting.

So let’s talk about some of the things you’re doing offline.

One of my favorite things is taking, I think Ryan holiday and I were talking about this at one point of taking like internet money and turning it into tangible, real life things. what are, what are some of your favorite, you know, real world uses of, of internet money?

Nat: [00:47:47]
There’s like, and this goes back to the COVID realizations about like better living. I mean, just spending time outside and away from screens. It’s like, I, I, and I think this is a fairly common sentiment at this point. It’s like time behind screens is to pay for more time away from screens at this point.

So. Like with, you know, during COVID, my wife and I bought like a really nice, like five bedroom house, about 45 minutes outside Austin. on six acres, like in this sort of dense wooded area with this like huge like wraparound porch and just like a perfect house for like getaway parties and cookouts and stuff like that, and built a big fire pit.

And we’ve got like three different grilling apparatuses out there and just like the ideal spot for everyone to like go and enjoy being out in nature. And I think that’s been like one of the biggest, like good investments in like quality of life that we’ve made. I think that like too much gets lost in the, in the financial optimization discussion.

Right. Where. You know, you’d probably hear somebody say like, Oh, well, you know, it’s actually a really bad like investment to buy a vacation house because you could invest that money in like index funds. And then you could just like rent an Airbnb whenever you want to go do that. And it’s like, yeah. But like, then you’ve got to like find the Airbnb every time and it’s like, not exactly how you want it and you don’t have all like the grill stuff you want and you don’t like, there’s just so many downsides to that model that kind of like get lost by just over optimizing for return on capital.

So, we’re, we’re like very pro you know, investing in like ways to enjoy life with friends, outdoors, and been like a lot of little things like that. I mean, also during COVID we like. Did a big renovation on our backyard in terms of like building out a big deck and everything. I got a sauna for back there, which I’m using like almost every day now.

And it’s awesome. I moved my whole desk outside of it, which is like another awesome quality of life improvement. And it’s raining today, which is why I’m like recording this in my kitchen. but like that, I mean, that’s such, it’s been great. and I think that like, it’s really easy to forget how much better it feels being out in nature and having that clean air and that like healthy environment and everything.

Until you like get back out there and remind yourself, because it’s like, it’s something about being in the city and like being in work mode, you forget how much better you feel when you’re out there. And then you go back out there and you’re there for even 20 minutes until like, Whoa like this is, this is how I should feel all the time.

Like, this is better. So how do I get more of this? And how do I remember to go get more of this? Cause it’s, it’s again, it’s really easy to forget when you’re in that like downtown work mode.

Nathan: [00:50:42]
Yeah, I’m, I’m optimizing for many of the same things of like, you know, this evening after work, I’m going to go plant a two acre field with pasture grass, because I’ve got the, the seed spreader, you know, hooked up that I borrowed from a friend hooked up to my tractor and, you know, we’ve got like, I don’t know, 50 pounds of seed and, you know, that’s what we’re gonna do this evening.

And it’s exactly that of like taking a phone call or something. And like, I can go, go for a walk and like, not even leave my own property, you know, as I’m like wandering around talking on the phone or, or anything else. And so it’s really fun. And then like, you’re talking about as well, having the space to invite friends over, you know, and, and like have the spare bedrooms of like, Hey, come visit.

There’s there’s plenty of room for everybody.

Nat: [00:51:29]
I mean, it like socialization and like spending time with people is completely different when it’s, Hey, come have dinner and hang out for like six hours or the night. And, you know, like really spend a chunk of time together versus what we normally do, which is like, Hey, let’s go meet for an hour and a half dinner and then like run off to our next commitment.

I think that you can actually get a lot closer, a lot deeper with people and like a single, you know, six hour long hang, then you can get in, you know, months of occasional dinners and whatnot. it’s like, it’s a, it’s a very different way of spending time with people. And I think just like so much more enjoyable.

Nathan: [00:52:11]
Yep. It’s good. we have now I guess, between the two properties that we bought and side-by-side, I think we have like eight. Spare bedrooms from like various houses you know, we can rent out on Airbnb. And so one of my goals is to just have, have more people come visit and stay. And we have a lot of work to do on this property as far as like, you know, there’s crazy amounts of bare dirt, everywhere, lots of trees to plants and all that.

But that’s, that’s part of the fun.

Nat: [00:52:38]
That’s awesome. Yeah. And it’s like, it’s fun doing the work too. It’s very satisfying. It’s a different kind of satisfying from like working online.

Nathan: [00:52:46]
Still at the same creative mindset, it just is applied differently when you’re, you know, outlining a Roam course versus building a fire pit.

Nat: [00:52:54]
Yep.

Nathan: [00:52:56]
Let’s see, on the other side, I’m curious about things. Well, so from following you online, you have this interesting balance between like lots of things that are optimized, Write being the rum, Roam Research guy, you know, you’re, you’ve got all the systems dialed in, you know, I remember you talking about.

You, I, I think you and your wife talking about perfect pitch, you know, and you’re like, Oh yeah, I have an article somewhere. You know, like, let me go dig it up. You know, I’ve researched this and like how to develop, how kids can develop perfect pitcher, you know, any of these things, right? You have extensive research and, and things that are heavily optimized.

And then you also have like this whole other side of your life where it’s purposeful under optimization, you know, where, you’re either saying like you’re getting out of your agency and stepping back from that, you know, you don’t strike me as the person. Who’s trying to make the most amount of money in every area of life, or so I’m curious, how do you think about that?

What are the things where you’re like, this is what I’m going to have dialed in, and this is the area where maybe you’re even actively preventing yourself from, optimizing some of those things. Yes.

Nat: [00:54:02]
Yeah. I think a lot of it comes back to, for lack of a better term, just like being kind of stubborn and like selectively lazy in the sense that I think that, I think that when I was a kid, you know, my parents would always say like, well, you’re going to have to do stuff that you don’t want to do. And I think there was part of me that was like, I’m going to show you.

Right. Like I bet I can figure out a way to like, not do most of that stuff. and I think like realizing that the point of accumulating capital was to like, Design your life in the way that you want it. And not just to like accrue more capital, it was like a very helpful realization in maybe in college or something.

I guess I had a lot of friends or peers who were going into these like wall street careers, where they were working 60, 70, 80 hour weeks and making great money, but just like being miserable. And, you know, I started down that track and then realized like, yeah, I don’t think this is for me. I’d rather like, you know, control my time more and get to do what I want.

And I think that’s just always been like a very helpful driving force for me, where it’s like, I’m not going to optimize for like dollars in the bank. I’m going to optimize for, you know, free time on the schedule and like the ability to do whatever I want to do, work on what I want to work on. Right. It’s like I’m spending probably six hours a day right now, just like programming and learning more coding and development and learning about crypto and stuff.

Because like, that’s what I’m really curious about right now. And I think that I like. I can do really, really good work and I can make really, really good stuff when I’m very interested in it and very like compelled to do it. But the minute someone like tells me to do something or the minute I feel like I have to do something, my like quality of output and everything just like goes through the floor.

And I’m like, like, I’m the worst possible person that you could hire. and I think that like accepting that about myself and trying to like work with that, being my personality instead of like fighting it and trying to. You know, operate in the normal ways was like very, very helpful for like, you know, both work success, but also like psychological health Riley.

I think that for basically all of high school and early parts of college, I thought that there was like something wrong with me. And I was like messed up because I didn’t care about grades and I couldn’t focus on schoolwork and, you know, like I thought this was dumb and didn’t like it, and you know, it was just like always this source of tension in my life.

And once I kind of said like, like, fuck it. I’m just going to figure something else out. It, like, everything just went a lot better. So, you know, like even even dumb stuff now, right? Like it’s like, yes, I should. You know, obviously I have the time to like do my laundry and clean my house, but like, I don’t want to.

And, and so we like hired a nanny who comes and helps us out, like once a week and, you know, like, Takes care of all, all of that stuff. And it’s just like being very okay with, not with optimizing, for like living in a way that’s like in line with how my brain works versus trying to like maximize, you know, finances or like, you know, do what you’re supposed to do or whatever.

I think it’s just like, been very, very helpful. So I try to just like focus my time on the very few things that I’m legitimately good at and can actually focus on versus like trying to do everything right.

Nathan: [00:57:37]
Yeah, that makes sense. A question that comes to mind for me is, is balancing. Like not wanting to have commitments or be told what to do or that sort of thing, which I can very much relate to with like, pre-selling a course, you know, some people have this problem where they, I think Derek Sivers talks about like, not telling people you’re going to do something before you do it, because you’ve gotten part of the dopamine hit saying like, I’m going to do the same because like, wow, that’s amazing.

That’s so cool that you’re going to do that, you know?

And, but then you haven’t, you know, you haven’t done it yet. and so, especially when you’re, pre-selling something right, you now have this obligation. Is that not a problem that you run into? Are you able to like, just power through and, and meet the obligation or does it trigger some of those feelings?

Nat: [00:58:22]
No, that’s a, that’s a really good question. and I think that the reason it works is that it’s an obligation I want. Right. It’s like, I, cause it’s funny, like at the same time that I’m really bad at doing things I’m told to do. I’m also really bad at like, Shipping stuff. If there isn’t some reason to ship it, if that makes sense.

So like, I respond very well to peer pressure or like having other people who are committed to the same things as me. So I find like, you know, workout buddies, like that works very well or committing with somebody to, you know, doing something for a month, whether that’s, you know, not drinking or like whatever, like that all works very well.

And I think that’s because those are commitments that like I want and things that I want to do, but I might not have enough like willpower or focus to do on my own. So, you know, with the course stuff, like I’ve been talking about doing an SEO course since January, and it was on my like list of things to do this year.

And I like had even I’d put out a tweet of, like two months ago saying like, Hey, I’m gonna do this sign up for the email list to like, know when it comes out. But like, none of those were enough to actually like get me to sit down and do it, whereas like. Something about collecting money is a very, very effective, like stick, I guess, for actually like making the initial progress.

I think that like part of it is it’s something that I want to do, but it’s very easy to procrastinate on because it’s like, Oh, I can always do it later. I can do it later. I can do it later. But once I’ve like put a line in the sand, had some people commit to it, then I can like make a lot of progress really quickly.

But you’re you’re right. That’s kind of like a funny, like, comparison or like example, or I don’t know what the exact term would be, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like this weird dichotomy I can’t do. I can’t think of things that other people tell me to do, but I can do things that I tell other people to tell me to do.

Nathan: [01:00:26]
I think we’re all or everyone who has creative output and is working in that way is, is looking for like, how can I like through crafting my environment, my friends, you know, understanding my own motivations and all that. How can I like harness this mind and body into doing the things that I want?

Like did I say I want to do, but are actually hard, you know? And so it sounds like you’ve found a lot of those of like, for you, that is a tool that works, you know, you build up this momentum of like, okay, I want to do this now. I need a reason to do it now instead of, you know, later this year or next year or never.

Nat: [01:01:06]
months. Yeah, exactly.

Nathan: [01:01:08]
Yeah. That’s good. as, as we wrap up, I’m, I’m curious a bit more your relationship to goals, and maybe I’ll go with a different question. our friend clay Aber has a question that he likes of, if we were to meet a year from now with a bottle of champagne, What would we be celebrating? And so I’m curious to hear your answer to that question.

And then I’m also curious for you to know more about how you set goals. And if you do.

Nat: [01:01:35]
Yeah. I mean, it would, it would be slightly late, but we’d probably be celebrating, my wife and I having our first kid, you know, I think that was like the most important thing to focus on for this year. and it’s, you know, I think once, once you decide to focus on like family and like community and building that, like all of the work stuff really just feels like it’s in support of all of that.

So, you know, that, that was like number one thing, I think on the list for this year. And, you know, we’re, very lucky that we’re expecting in October. So, really looking forward to that. And, I think that would be like the number one thing, you know, there’d probably be other stuff too, but, you know, like our daughter’s not even here yet, but I can sort of already tell that it’s just like, all of the other work goals are gonna kind of like fade in comparison. and it’s one of those funny things too, where it’s like, if you’ve spent your whole life focused on or your whole life up until this point, right.

Which hasn’t been super long, but as long as it’s been focused on work goals, then you, on the one hand, you’re sort of like, Oh, I’m gonna like lose motivation. And Dr. once I have kids and like, that’s bad because work is good, but it’s like, no, that’s good. That’s a healthy thing. Like, you’re your end all be all like incrementing numbers in like a database somewhere.

There should probably be stuff in the real world that’s more important. So I’m excited about that. And I think that that’s going to be like a really just like awesome change of like life and energy and like, and unfortunately I think it’s like something that. A lot of like young, ambitious guys don’t like, or could probably focus on earlier and be happier with Write.

And like, I don’t want to tell anyone how to live their life or whatever. I just, like, I think that I I’ve, I’ve never, you know, you don’t really hear people in their sixties, seventies, eighties saying like, I wish I had kids later and spent more time focused on Right. Like maybe there probably are some people who feel that way, but it’s much more common to hear the opposite.

Right. So, I’m, I’m, I’m pretty excited about that. And I think that’s probably be celebrating.

Nathan: [01:03:49]
Yeah, that’s good. And we, to bring it back to what you’re talking about of, you know, some COVID changes, and benefits that came from, from that for us. we had our latest kid, let’s see, January 1st, 2020. And so I would have spent, you know, I would have done a couple of team retreats. I would have, you’d like every conference request, you know, it’d be like, Oh, I, you know, how much business will this do if I go speak at this or that.

And I just had none of for the for an entire year Uh I was like the whole first year of his life I was there you know every day And that was

Nat: [01:04:29]
Awesome.

Nathan: [01:04:31]
And so yeah, you end up with this, a different focus on priorities.

Nat: [01:04:36]
And also it’s like, Oh, to, to your point earlier about just like having random articles and stuff about things, it’s like, Oh, this is what all that research is for. Right? It’s like, this is why, this is why I care about health stuff so much. Right. This is why I care about education stuff so much true. It’s like, The, like I’m I’m so I’m so jealous that she gets to grow up in this world where we have so much more information and like, know how to do so many more things and like understand certain things so much more than we did, you know, almost 30 years ago when I was born.

Like, that’s pretty cool. And I’m like excited for her for that.

Nathan: [01:05:10]
Yeah, that’s good. Well, let’s leave it there. Where should people go to sign up for the Monday Medley and, and check out all the things you’re doing.

Nat: [01:05:18]
The best spot to go, just be NatEliason.com. that’s where pretty much all of the content. You’ve got the newsletter sign up on the homepage there. And then I’m most active on Twitter. If anybody wants to hit me up just twitter.com/NatEliason, since it’s really the main social media I use.

So, say hi there and let me know if you enjoyed the episode.

Nathan: [01:05:40]
Sounds good. Thanks for joining me.

Nat: [01:05:41]
Yeah. Thanks Nathan. Talk soon.