Who is Nathan Barry?
Nathan Barry is the Founder and CEO of ConvertKit, an email marketing tool for creators. Before ConvertKit’s growth took off, he worked on building iPhone apps, writing books, and coding websites. Nathan got his start as a web and software designer, but soon became obsessed with the world of audience building and book publishing. During that time he wrote 3 books (The App Design Handbook, Designing Web Applications, and Authority) and 2 courses (Photoshop for Web Design and Building Profitable Audiences).
In October 2014, Nathan made the decision to walk away from the book and training business and focus full-time on ConvertKit (at the time we had just $1,000/month in revenue and now we have $770,000/month). Since then we’ve grown 300x and have an amazing team, product, and customers. And I feel honored to be apart of the ConvertKit team!
Over the past year, I have learned so much from Nathan. And in this episode we really dive into some big topics like: the importance of asking why and questioning the “normal” ways of doing things, the true gift of a side hustle, the inside look of how Nathan wrote 3 books in 2 years, how working in public, creating every day, and teaching everything you know are a key parts of entrepreneurship, knowing when to shut down or double down, and how to tap into vulnerability and use it as a way to overcome fear and connect with others.
“Challenge yourself to ask “Why?” before you do something just because it’s what has always been done.” – @nathanbarry
Listen above – Direct Download – Subscribe on iTunes
- Look at goals/achievements like a set amount of work, instead of a set amount of time.
- Challenge yourself to ask “Why?” before you do something just because it’s what has always been done.
- Age is only a factor in your success if you let it be.
- What daily habits can you build that will allow you to accomplish your goals?
- First create the habits and then your accomplishments from those habits will be a natural byproduct.
- One of the best ways to build an audience is to work in public and tell your community what you’re working on and why.
- People trust you when you’re teaching them how to do something they care about.
- In regards to experts — they don’t teach because they’re experts, they’re experts because they teach.
- There are times when you should shut down your business or side hustle because it’s just not working.
- When deciding whether or not to shut down or double down, ask yourself these two questions:
- Do you still want this as much today as the day you started?
- Have you given this every possible chance to succeed?
- Does your effort and actions match your vision and ambition?
- Use a side hustle to experiment and learn about things that you’re interested in. You don’t have to pressure it into something you don’t want it to be.
- You can’t truly connect or trust someone unless they’re able to get vulnerable with you.
- I wanted to be measured based on the quality and quantity of my work, not how much time I spent sitting in a chair at an office.
- It’s hard to do the same level of meaningful work on the road compared to you in your office in a controlled environment.
W: ConvertKit.com + NathanBarry.com
T: @NathanBarry
YT: @NathanBarry