The Nathan Barry Show

[00:00:00] Jed Eglington: You don't have to have a following to be a creator.

[00:00:02] Nathan Barry: I think everyone wants to be here. That is the holy grail. It's not some job where you're like, sure I make a million dollars a year, but man, it's hard working in the coal mines. You know, it's like, no, it's actually just good all around. Do you want to make a full time living as a creator, but you aren't sure where to start?

[00:00:16] Nathan Barry: My guest today is Jed Edglington. He helps creators become founders and founders become creators.

[00:00:21] Jed Eglington: If you have a great skillset for telling stories, for capturing attention, you're such a valuable asset to an in house team.

[00:00:28] Nathan Barry: Then there's this ability to. Learn skills and take a salary along the way. Exactly.

[00:00:33] Nathan Barry: What are the steps? We should have the categories that we want to pursue. We want to do the reps, build the body of work. We find a way to offer value to that brand directly, and then we make it very easy for them to say yes. Love it. And then that brings us to the last piece. You need to have We're here to make money.

[00:00:48] Nathan Barry: Some people are like, I do it for the love of the craft. Me too. Part of the love of the craft is getting, is getting paid for it. I think we have a pretty good framework for a new way of how to earn a living as a creator.

[00:00:57] Jed Eglington: This just excites me. It's like never been a better time to be a creator.

[00:01:06] Nathan Barry: Jed, what's the biggest misconception that you see people have about the creator economy?

[00:01:10] Jed Eglington: You don't have to be of influence or have a following to be a creator. You just have to know the skill set. Okay, that's a bold statement. What was your path to get into being a creator? You know, earning a full time living as a creator like you are now, right?

[00:01:23] Jed Eglington: So I started at a direct to consumer brand called high smile Selling toothpaste and teeth whitening kits and I got in there started to understand how to make ads and from there spent three years there and left and pretty much built that out as a service for other brands and Now on to step three, which is create a room.

[00:01:41] Jed Eglington: Okay, that's awesome. What's create a room? So credit rooms an accelerator program for founders and And teams to learn how to make content in house 90 percent of the new customer acquisition comes from paid ads or content for these e commerce brands, but they're outsourcing it. So I guess our whole goal is create a room is to teach them how to do that in house.

[00:02:01] Jed Eglington: So I want to dive into

[00:02:03] Nathan Barry: what that looks like as we think creator career paths, because there's the career paths that we talk about a lot at kit. And then there's actually two others. One that I think doesn't get talked about nearly enough. So let's jump up on the board and map that out and go from there.

[00:02:19] Nathan Barry: Let's do it. So let's talk about how to earn a living as a creator in getting to full time. There's one path that I think about all the time. We'll start there. And that's the founder. And this person is Probably what we see the most at Kit, right? They might be an indie creator, you know, or they might scale all the way up to an established business, but it's, you know, selling your own products.

[00:02:48] Nathan Barry: You have your own audience and email list and all of that. And that's what we see the most often. What's kind of the second path that we, that you see, you know, as a creator, potentially like an influencer. Okay. Yeah. Talk about that some

[00:03:01] Jed Eglington: more. Yeah. So I guess what's changed with influencers and now we have interest based targeting.

[00:03:05] Jed Eglington: So I feel like influencers five years ago, they used to use their following as a distribution method for people. Right. Whereas now that it's interest based, If you can create a bit of content around golfing, it's going to go out and reach a whole bunch of golfers that don't follow you. So I feel like the influence has kind of changed and it's favoring the creators that understand how to capture attention.

[00:03:25] Jed Eglington: And I think from a business model perspective, there's a lot of opportunities, either offering services to other brands, making content for them, brand partnerships. And then you have things like TikTok shop that are coming into play as well. What are you seeing on TikTok shop? From the U. S. I think. What I am saying is that people that can make sales driven content that feels organic, and feels like it's coming from a real human, They're the ones that are winning.

[00:03:51] Jed Eglington: It's trying to make something viral, around a popular product.

[00:03:54] Nathan Barry: Right. Okay. That makes sense. So the founder creator is the one that I see the most. Influencer is something that people hear about a lot, but this third creator type is one that I don't hear creators talking about as a career path. And you're saying that's actually inhouse the in-house creator?

[00:04:11] Nathan Barry: Yeah. So why does the

[00:04:15] Jed Eglington: in house creator matter so much? Not all creators want to be in front of the camera. Not all creators have a desire to have a following. but some just want to be a part of great companies. And if you have a great skill set for telling stories, for editing, for, for capturing attention, you're such a valuable asset to an in house team.

[00:04:35] Jed Eglington: to a company, whether it's e commerce or a SaaS company, driving attention is typically what leads to sales and customers. So this person now, my belief is that they're one of the most important roles in every company.

[00:04:49] Nathan Barry: Yeah. So we saw this, you know, particularly in software over the last, I don't know, 10 years or so where engineers, We're the number one role, right?

[00:04:58] Nathan Barry: That anyone's trying to recruit for. It's still absolutely true, right? Most of the recruiting we do at kit is for engineers. That's our primary product, but I'm seeing more and more of this in house creator who's like, Hey, I have the skills, the angle, all of that to capture attention. Like the, that is a very, very important role, but almost every brand that I encounter outsources this, they go to the influencer or they go like, Hey, let's do, user generated content, right?

[00:05:26] Nathan Barry: So they're going to a marketplace or something and they're trying something like that. Why is it so important for the creator to be in house rather than, you know, just working with the community?

[00:05:35] Jed Eglington: I think there's a certain, there's a certain knowledge you get when you work in house on a product.

[00:05:41] Jed Eglington: People that work in house at Kit understand the product better than anything, so therefore they could probably tell the best stories and they speak to the customers more than anyone else. So therefore, I think the storytelling aspect is a lot easier and obviously speed. You know, you've worked with people externally.

[00:05:58] Jed Eglington: Some are great and some aren't that great. But to have someone in house that can move at speed, I feel like that's a big factor as well.

[00:06:06] Nathan Barry: Okay, so that's why it's so important to brands. But let's say I'm a creator and I'm early on in my career, right? Maybe I've got a few thousand followers on Instagram, something has worked and taken off and then the next four things haven't really.

[00:06:20] Nathan Barry: And then as we're going from there, I'm trying to figure out what path that I want. Like ultimately the people that I follow, you know, maybe I'm looking at a Dan Go or a Justin Welsh or, Amy Porterfield, right? Someone who has built this amazing. you know, founder, creator business. And I'm like, I want to be like that.

[00:06:39] Nathan Barry: And so I dive in and I, I make my own product and it sells a few hundred dollars worth or a few thousand dollars worth. And then I'm looking like, I can't make a living off of that.

[00:06:49] Jed Eglington: Yeah.

[00:06:50] Nathan Barry: You're saying, Hey, maybe you should put this on hold and focus on getting to an in house role. Is

[00:06:56] Jed Eglington: that right? That's correct.

[00:06:57] Jed Eglington: I think that all, acquire different skill sets. Like in house, if you can learn how to capture attention through whatever form of media they're playing in, mostly video, you will make for a great in house role. You'll be a really good candidate for an in house role. And there you will learn about the skill sets that might need you to become an influencer, that it takes to become an influencer.

[00:07:20] Jed Eglington: And, at least from my experience, that's, I guess that was, that was Yeah, that was my road to climbing this ladder, was started in house, learned the tools to become a freelancer or an influencer, and then now founder.

[00:07:35] Nathan Barry: So what's interesting in that is. I think everyone wants to be here, right? That kit style of creator that is the holy grail because it scales in a ridiculous way, right?

[00:07:46] Nathan Barry: You could get to someone, you know, the names would be the Sadaf. Those are people who are earning literally millions of dollars a year off their creator businesses and have like, It's not some job where you're like, sure, I make a million dollars a year, but man, it's hard working in the coal mines. You know, it's like, no, it's actually just, it's just good all around.

[00:08:05] Nathan Barry: But often when we go try to go straight for the goal. It ends up being a harder path and you know, like this might be, we're trying to learn so many skills and jump all the way up there and you know, grind it out along the way. But if you go in house, then there's this ability to learn skills and take a salary along the way.

[00:08:24] Jed Eglington: Yeah. And learn about the business that you're in. Right. and that's why I think like picking a startup or a business that you love, trying to get in there and really understand what the drives are. Because that's going to help you figure out what type of influencer you're going to become and potentially how you're going to run a company as a founder.

[00:08:44] Nathan Barry: Okay. So I want to break this down into two things, right? We've established the type of creator that we're talking to, where they're at in their career. And I want to break down the skills that they need to build and then the steps to get that in house role. So first, let's start with skills. What are some of those skills that you think are so important?

[00:09:01] Nathan Barry: I think basic video editing. Okay. Even if it's the, most people are like, no, I'm the talent. I'll hire someone else for video editing, but you're saying no, no, no. Everyone should learn this.

[00:09:10] Jed Eglington: Yeah, I think so.

[00:09:11] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:09:11] Jed Eglington: Why is that? Because if I'm a founder and I'm hiring a creator, I need to know that you can try and do it end to end because with an in house role, we can't hire a script writer, an editor, someone to be in front of the talent.

[00:09:24] Jed Eglington: You need to be all of those. Yeah. Right. So I think You don't need to have the best understanding, but you need to have a basic understanding of video editing. Editing. Well, let me stay on that one for just a second.

[00:09:34] Nathan Barry: What's the, if you had to send someone in this crash course, let's say like, I'm in this position and I'm like, okay, I wanna get good at video editing or good enough for this, where would you send me?

[00:09:45] Jed Eglington: What would I do first? Honestly, YouTube. Okay. I would go to YouTube. Obviously Creator room's, trying to build out that for itself. But there's so much free information on YouTube for you to learn about these skill sets. So I'll go there.

[00:09:58] Nathan Barry: Okay, that sounds good. Something else that I So, what I did a lot as I learned design is I would try to do my own projects, but what really helped me was copying other designs.

[00:10:09] Nathan Barry: And not because I'm trying to put this into production and have that be the ultimate thing, but I would go to a website, like maybe it's for a clothing brand like Banana Republic, and I would pull that up on one screen. And then I would go on my other screen and I would go recreate that in Photoshop at the time.

[00:10:25] Nathan Barry: Now I use Figma. Right. And be like, Oh, like it's hard to notice all the details, the spacing, all those things. So for video editing, what I would do is I might go find a video on YouTube where I like the editing style. And I might clone it with all of my own, like I might record my own shot of talking to the camera and then I'm like, okay, so what cut did they do there?

[00:10:45] Nathan Barry: Why did they do a cut there? And I might just copy it and make that exact video. But instead of Peter McKinnon or Ali Abdaal or whoever else, it's just me. Yeah. And you'll, by copying, you'll learn so much. And then don't go in public, right? This was a skill building exercise.

[00:11:03] Jed Eglington: I love it. And I do it a bunch as well.

[00:11:07] Jed Eglington: copying other people to understand how they actually did it. And then once I have that core fundamental skill, I can then use it to Yeah. I like that. Okay. So video editing is really important. What else I would say? Storytelling or script writing. Okay. I think every great video starts with a good concept or a

[00:11:26] Nathan Barry: script.

[00:11:27] Nathan Barry: There's an episode that we did, a few episodes ago with clay a bear on, it's called the perfect intro. And so he gets into some, like, how do you tell stories or transformations? So everyone should watch that episode, but also, you can follow a similar like copying format where you'll find that there's often a lot of the same hooks that are used, story formats.

[00:11:50] Nathan Barry: Like if we talk about books for a second, there's actually only like four book titles that exist in the world. And there are things like, the, this of that, right? The psychology of money, right? Or, You know common category unique modifier, right? Like Habits common category atomic is the you know atomic habit.

[00:12:16] Nathan Barry: Yeah, and when you start to see like as you break it down There's not that many unique book titles. They just all follow these patterns and I bet if you went and studied 25 Instagram reels that got at least a million views and you were like what patterns do these follow you would find You'd probably distill it down to five.

[00:12:34] Nathan Barry: Yeah, I don't study it well enough. Is there anything comes to mind of like a pattern? You know that works well in storytelling.

[00:12:42] Jed Eglington: Yeah, I think though I mean, there's normally a conflict that makes a right story right a problem and then there's a resolution so I think To everything you need to, to get people's ears listening, there needs to be a problem.

[00:12:55] Jed Eglington: I guess the story is about how are you finding the solution. Every great story starts with, I think, those two aspects.

[00:13:00] Nathan Barry: So you can start to break down, start to look at stories that you love. Why did that work? You know, is this a, are we telling the story of a journey? Right? Or is this a, like, overcoming an obstacle, any of those things.

[00:13:11] Nathan Barry: And then also the book Story Brand, by Donald Miller is really good on this. Cause he'll, he does like sort of a modern take on Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey.

[00:13:20] Jed Eglington: Yeah.

[00:13:21] Nathan Barry: And so, like, are you the hero or are you the guide? Well pro tip, most of the brands you'd be working for, they're the guide, not the hero.

[00:13:29] Nathan Barry: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so video editing,

[00:13:31] Jed Eglington: storytelling, what else matters here? I think you have to be both behind and in front of the camera. Okay. So I think having that flexibility to be comfortable being in front of the camera will allow for a better story and make your job a whole lot easier. to, to, to become a full service creator so that this founder like finds you really attractive.

[00:13:51] Nathan Barry: You're not pitching to a brand like, Hey, you need to hire five people to do this. I'm like, I can do this end to end. Yeah. something else on, on being better on camera. There's two people who I think are remarkable at this, who I've watched build the skills firsthand. one is Cody Sanchez and the other is Nick Huber.

[00:14:10] Nathan Barry: And they both built a business is doing tens of millions a year in revenue. purely off of content. And hanging out with them in person, it's fascinating to watch them like hone their craft, where they'll do things like, I'm hanging out with Nick, we're actually driving a golf cart, like at this resort that we're at.

[00:14:28] Nathan Barry: And he's like, you know, he like pulls the card over the side cause I'm like, I gotta, I gotta get better at like delivering crisp lines on cue. And he's like, Oh, the only way to do it is practice. He pulls the golf card over and he goes, you know, I'm here with the founder, you know, Nathan Barry, the founder of KITT.

[00:14:42] Nathan Barry: He's built a business to 40 million a year in revenue. Nathan, what are your three biggest tips on hiring? Go. And I'm like, and he's like, no worries, pause for a second, figure out your three tips. And he's like, does it again? And you're like, Oh, that was actually not as difficult as I thought. And you're like, you can do multiple texts.

[00:15:00] Nathan Barry: So it's just that repetition and trying it I think makes a huge difference.

[00:15:04] Jed Eglington: Another interesting thing on my end is we don't use big cameras. We use iPhones, 90 percent of our, our content shot on iPhone. So I think, So like one,

[00:15:15] Nathan Barry: I don't know if this is a skill or a step, but I'm going to put this here. You know, most people are like, Oh, I got to have gear.

[00:15:23] Nathan Barry: And we're just like, nope, cross that out.

[00:15:25] Jed Eglington: Yeah. Everything we shot on big cameras doesn't seem to work. Oh, interesting. It doesn't feel organic. I think this is what makes this role so attractive. Right. Is the barrier to entry. So low. We've all got a camera in our pockets. Right. And if you feel like you're a good storyteller and you, this is for you.

[00:15:42] Jed Eglington: It doesn't take much to get involved and to get started.

[00:15:46] Nathan Barry: I'm thinking of two people in particular where you're even talking about some of these skills of storytelling where they go very low fidelity. And that's, Karen Chang. She goes by Karen X online, online, and then Casey Neistat. Both of them. Will like get some random pieces of paper and some markers and the mix of them on camera and then like You know, yeah writing something out with the top down desk shot like

[00:16:15] Jed Eglington: yeah,

[00:16:16] Nathan Barry: and they do great storytelling and you're like, we're at like 85 cents worth of you know, we're an iPhone and 85 cents worth of equipment here

[00:16:23] Jed Eglington: Yeah The best thing I heard from Casey Neistat is like he kept dropping his cameras and he said I view them as tools You They're not an expensive camera to me.

[00:16:31] Jed Eglington: They're a tool, which I thought was really cool from Casey Neistat. Like, I know John Ushai sat down with him and was trying to break down how he tells stories and Casey Neistat just couldn't figure out. He's like, I just do it.

[00:16:45] Nathan Barry: But there's even like, Casey had this video, the point of the video was when I run the New York City Marathon next week, I'm not going to wave at anybody.

[00:16:55] Nathan Barry: But what he did, and this is something that you see in a lot of short form video especially, is he had these series, he'd pre written a bunch of stuff, and then he had covered it all up. And the like visual hook of like, well what's behind the next Yeah. And it's him like doing this very silly math of like, well, a wave takes this many calories and if I retain this and I get my speed up by two seconds per mile and then I'll hit my three hour goal.

[00:17:19] Nathan Barry: Yeah. It was a retention hack. Yeah. Okay. So we've got the three main skills that are going to be really important for going in house. What are the steps, right? We have to go, we're going to learn these skills, but what does it actually take to go from like an interest in basic abilities as a creator to actually getting that in house role?

[00:17:38] Jed Eglington: I don't know if this is a hard step and you might be able to help me with this, but I feel like finding the company that you really want to be a part of is kind of like the most important step. Right. Because if you're in something you don't really want to be a part of, doing those, getting those skills dialed in is just going to become a lot more

[00:17:56] Nathan Barry: difficult.

[00:17:57] Nathan Barry: All right. So we have the company to pursue and it's not that this is an all or nothing thing. Like, I want to be the in house creator at kit. And everything that I'm doing is for that one thing. And if I don't achieve it, my career is a failure. It's more of like having this guiding principle behind it.

[00:18:13] Nathan Barry: There's a YouTuber named Matt D'Avella, and he has this, like, he, a great podcast. I think he's built his channel to four or five million, subscribers. And sort of this running joke, this gag. And what he does is that for his podcasts and videos, he wants to have The Rock as a guest. And so he has these recurring things.

[00:18:33] Nathan Barry: It's not that. It's a failure if he doesn't have the rock, but like in his studio where he records, there's this photo of the rock and he'll, he'll refer to it every so often and it like makes it more endearing. It's fun. And who knows, maybe it'll eventually happen. But the same way the company to pursue, it's not like that's the only company that matters and you can list out five.

[00:18:54] Nathan Barry: But then as you study things, as we're studying video editing and storytelling on camera, maybe. It's giving us ideas of the types of stories to tell. It's like, Oh, I want to work for this amazing clothing brand. Like one that I saw, actually, this is maybe not a good example cause I can't remember the brand itself.

[00:19:11] Nathan Barry: but I love aviation and this clothing brand did this fantastic video of these pilots who fly in the back country in Alaska. And like, it was only marginally about the clothes, but you know, I was like hooked for the entire 18 minute video. And I loved every bit of it. And so you'd see like, Oh, if I want to make something for this clothing brand or the software company or whatever else, let me try telling stories in that way.

[00:19:37] Nathan Barry: Let me learn the editing styles that they already use or better yet, let me learn the editing styles that I think they should use.

[00:19:45] Jed Eglington: Yeah.

[00:19:45] Nathan Barry: So I love that. So one company to pursue or probably I would probably list out like four or five.

[00:19:50] Jed Eglington: Yeah. And see what we, and I think making those four or five companies, aligned with maybe step two or step one.

[00:19:58] Nathan Barry: What

[00:19:58] Jed Eglington: is the category that you're passionate about?

[00:20:01] Nathan Barry: Yep.

[00:20:01] Jed Eglington: And shoot for that direction because remember we're trying to get learnings out of being in house somewhere and we want that to help build our creative career up to step two and one. So I think trying to find companies that will align with your future vision of yourself.

[00:20:16] Jed Eglington: Yeah. So an example of that is

[00:20:18] Nathan Barry: let's say that I deeply care about like health and beauty content. Yeah. Right. And some of that I really want to make all of us about it. And then I'm like, but the in house role I'm going to get is that a software company. And you're like, exactly. You know, you'll learn skills for sure that will translate, but you might have a 50 percent translation when if you were targeting something in line with where you want to be as a founder, that 80%, 90 percent overlap.

[00:20:44] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Okay. So, cool. We have the companies that we're pursuing, but I think if we started out pursuing those companies immediately, we're not putting our best foot forward. Right. I'm showing up as someone who's got, who's probably not a very good creator. Yeah. So what I think the next step is, is really to just get the reps.

[00:21:01] Jed Eglington: Yeah. Like, as you said before, getting confident in front of camera, learning your editing style. Learning how to story tell. Get the reps.

[00:21:13] Jed Eglington: I think the question that will come with that is what do I create, right? You know, and that might lead to our third point. Well, so

[00:21:20] Nathan Barry: yeah, let's talk about, getting the reps because on one hand you're generating ideas yourself. You're like, okay, brand I want to work for. Let me make a video. I may not show it to them, but let me, let me try.

[00:21:31] Nathan Barry: Okay. Bye. You're relying entirely on your own knowledge at that point and like your own ideas. And so I think having an outside source of inspiration could help. So, I'm curious what you think about this because you're in the space more than I am. What I would do is I would start to go on some of these influencer marketplaces and do UGC content.

[00:21:53] Nathan Barry: Not because I think it's a great way to make money or, you know, maybe I think my time is worth more than the 200 per video that they might pay, but really I'm just trying to get the reps doing this, like hone the craft. Yeah. the two things that I get out of it, one, I get some money, but two, I get brands saying, Hey, this is what I want.

[00:22:14] Nathan Barry: And then me putting my vision on top of it and, and for a

[00:22:18] Jed Eglington: lot of the time, those brands might give you a script and that's where you can potentially break down how they're telling stories. How they're building out scripts. yeah.

[00:22:26] Nathan Barry: And your list of storytelling, you might be like, look, there's only five, you know, great ways to tell, like to do short form video and you might come across, you're like, Oh, this is a good script.

[00:22:34] Nathan Barry: And actually, Oh, maybe there's a six that you can, you could break it down.

[00:22:39] Jed Eglington: Yeah.

[00:22:40] Nathan Barry: okay. So the skills, I think there's almost another skill here that I'm thinking about. I don't know, a skill or a habit. It's like, I don't know, I want to say it's like learn with purpose. I think what a lot of people do is they just, they just do random things.

[00:22:59] Nathan Barry: And over a

[00:23:00] Jed Eglington: long period of time.

[00:23:01] Nathan Barry: Yeah. What do you think? No, you have

[00:23:02] Jed Eglington: a great thought because I think there's a misconception with content. It's like, if I can make it look pretty, it's great. Right. It's like, no, we need to get attention and that's what we need to focus on. And it's really common for ugly ads or content to get the attention.

[00:23:17] Jed Eglington: You as a creator need to understand how do you get attention over how do you look pretty? And I think there's a big rut that people fall into. I'm like trying to look too perfect. So Yeah. Like you said, learn with purpose. What's the purpose? How do we get attention? Right. I like that. So for a lot of short form content, I'll jump onto pages I like and just go on their reels and see which ones popped off and in my head, I'm coming up with my own conclusions on why did they, why did this work over this?

[00:23:45] Jed Eglington: And then I'll go and try it for myself.

[00:23:48] Nathan Barry: But then even like documenting that so many people would do that, but then they wouldn't track it in a spreadsheet that they could refer back to. I would track the performance in the video that I was copying. You know, learning from and then when I make a video, I would track that as a comparison.

[00:24:03] Nathan Barry: like how did it perform? But I would write down my hypothesis of why I think the original worked and why I think my version is going to work. So then I can have, you know, over the course of 20 videos, I'm going to look back at my hypotheses and be like, Did that work? Maybe not. Like maybe I still believe in the hypothesis, but this video didn't take off.

[00:24:22] Jed Eglington: And

[00:24:22] Nathan Barry: so I might make another one following the same hypothesis. And if I use it three or four times, I'm like, I might be wrong about that. Yeah. Like I thought I figured out why something was working. I guess I didn't. Yeah. And that spreadsheet would be really, really important. Absolutely. and then it would also let me see what hook or style I used.

[00:24:40] Nathan Barry: So other people know short form video better than I do, but I would, if in storytelling. If we break it down, there's only five, you know, formats that actually work. I might in my spreadsheet have a dropdown for which format I used. And then later on, six months or a year later, I might take a step back and I might graph the performance of the videos by format and see, did that teach me anything?

[00:25:03] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Then I might throw it all in the chat and say, Hey, what did I miss? Yeah. Like, what do you notice in these trends? that I didn't. I love that. And so it's just that learn with purpose of really breaking things down. Okay. So going into the We're doing the reps, we're building up these skills, what's step number three?

[00:25:21] Nathan Barry: Building a body of work. Okay. And what's the difference between the body of work and doing

[00:25:24] Jed Eglington: the reps? A body of work is something that the brand can look at that they can maybe see it working for themselves. So I think aligning your body of work to show your skill set, but potentially also to align with the potential brand that you might be reaching out to.

[00:25:42] Jed Eglington: For example, if you're doing, if you're reaching out to a cosmetics brand, maybe grab a few different cosmetic products you like and know about and build a bit of content around it. you know, you might've got that opportunity through our UGC marketplace, looking at other people's scripts, or you might just be doing that for yourself.

[00:25:59] Nathan Barry: So this is, The doing the reps is very focused on learning the skills the body of work is Using the skills to position, you know, it's your resume to basically say hey I'm I'm in a good position to be this in house role because that makes sense. Okay, and then the last step is Really somehow we have to take this body of work and we have to get it in front of the right companies

[00:26:21] Jed Eglington: Right.

[00:26:21] Jed Eglington: Yeah.

[00:26:23] Nathan Barry: so what does

[00:26:24] Jed Eglington: that, what does that look like? I think it's a real challenge at the moment. Yeah. I think I see a lot of creators making Canva templates and then shipping this out through DMs or on email and trying to get it in front of the right people. but I think what would be most effective is if you made a video that was potentially an improvement on what the company has done or an idea that the company could do.

[00:26:49] Jed Eglington: Yeah. And they might take more towards that, but I'm not sure what your thoughts are.

[00:26:54] Nathan Barry: Well, I think something that would work well is, yeah, say, Hey, I love where you're headed with this, this video, this concept. Something that we do a lot at kit is our creator stories, right? And so we have these great visuals and storytelling and all of that.

[00:27:10] Nathan Barry: I think someone could come in and there's two different pitches that they could do. One is they could say, Hey, I love the way you're telling stories, but I think you're doing it too polished. And you should do it like this. Like, here's me telling how like Amy Porterfield's rise to fame, right? and how she built this business, like super scrappy and the hook is perfect.

[00:27:29] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And that would really, you know, maybe that's me on camera being the personality, right? And so I'm pitching that, or maybe I want to really, focus on the, the video editing and the hook. And so maybe I take an existing video, like I go into their, like, kid's YouTube channel and say, okay, here's a 17 minute video, You know, I don't have the accounts.

[00:27:51] Nathan Barry: I don't know the like watch time and the attention curve on that. But you're like, Hey, this is the hook that you had. Here's the first 60 seconds that you did. Here's the 60 seconds I would run with and it's all of your footage. And so then, you know, they believe in that content cause they spent tens of thousands of dollars to produce it.

[00:28:08] Jed Eglington: But you're

[00:28:09] Nathan Barry: just like, Hey, here's how I can take what you're doing and do it. So offering value, you want to give the company value in some way. I think there's one other point in that. And that's making it easy to say yes. And that's something that you mentioned we were talking before of, if I offer this value, like maybe I recut one of your videos, right?

[00:28:31] Nathan Barry: Or I make my own take on this brand's video. And then I just say, Hey, run it. It's yours. I'll sign whatever release you want. Yeah. All of that. But if it works, hire me. Hire

[00:28:41] Jed Eglington: me.

[00:28:42] Nathan Barry: Love it. Taking a step back. I think we've got the skills. We've established that gear is not one that matters. Yep. We want to learn with purpose.

[00:28:55] Nathan Barry: And then we should have the, the companies or the, at least the categories that we want to pursue because that will be a great frame for all of our, learning. We want to do the reps. There's the only way to learn these skills. Is actually doing the reps. You can't just, you know, do you to me courses or something like that actually show up and we build the body of work targeted at the company.

[00:29:18] Nathan Barry: We find a way to offer value to that brand directly. And then we make it very easy for them to say yes. Love it. All right. I think we have a pretty good framework for a new way of how to earn a living as a creator and a direct career path to being in house. Love it. But there's two things I'm thinking about.

[00:29:32] Nathan Barry: One is that I think a lot of people, they might not be thinking this yet, but if I'm in this shoes and I ask you in this process, I go, Oh, you know what? I actually want to be a founder. Like I actually, I want to work for myself that I'm thrilled with this as a process to get there and to learn the skills and get paid along the way.

[00:29:53] Nathan Barry: But I want the, like, I ultimately want the freedom and the earning potential of being here. The second thing And it makes me a little nervous to say this, I'm like, wait, as we map this out, how many kit team members am I going to lose as we have the full steps, you know, for them to go from this in house role to a founder?

[00:30:13] Nathan Barry: Because you learn all of these skills. Yeah. What's the framework that you use to think about creators becoming founders?

[00:30:21] Jed Eglington: Okay, cool. Yeah, I've got one. So if we start with.

[00:30:31] Jed Eglington: All right. I like a good day. Walk me through it. Yeah. So the framework we've got product, audience, and traffic. Most brands will sit here. They have a good product. They have the audience they're selling to, but they're trying to figure out traffic and that's where they're becoming creators. Okay. So you're saying that overlap,

[00:30:47] Nathan Barry: the intersection between these right here is where the brand says.

[00:30:51] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:30:52] Jed Eglington: Okay. And with traffic and audience, This intersection is where most creators sit.

[00:30:58] Nathan Barry: Okay.

[00:30:59] Jed Eglington: I think what a lot of the skills that you honed in, in the in house job will allow you to understand how to drive traffic. It's just whereabouts are you on your creative career? Do you have an audience or are you just getting into building an audience?

[00:31:13] Jed Eglington: You need to have these two circles filled to then go into product. Okay. So you're saying

[00:31:19] Nathan Barry: as I go into this journey, right, I'm a creator who wants to become a founder. Yeah. As I'm in house traffic is what I've got figured out. That's what I have dialed in, right? We've practiced as a whole bunch. And not just in traffic, like a big part of that is capturing and holding attention, right?

[00:31:36] Nathan Barry: Whether I'm trying to get it organically or whether I've got a 50, 000 a month meta ad budget behind me, either way, I've got to capture and hold attention. And then in that position, you've got to go to audience. Next if you want to become a founder,

[00:31:50] Jed Eglington: is that right? Yeah, that's correct A really good example is D rock from Gary V's team.

[00:31:55] Jed Eglington: This is yeah, this is ages ago, right? So D rock was lucky enough to actually build an audience while he was working internal So he comes out of that in house process with a little bit of an audience Mm hmm What I would have loved to D rock to do is like double down on what it's like to be a video videography in house and then once he's built that that community that audience You Does he go into products selling tripods or something along those lines?

[00:32:20] Jed Eglington: That's a good example of someone leaving an in house role and coming out with an audience. Right. For a lot of us, I think we're going to come out just with the skill set of understanding how to drive traffic.

[00:32:29] Nathan Barry: That's really interesting of building an audience in an in house role. It's what I always think about when I'm building an audience is first, what, what do you want So, what area of focus do I want to have?

[00:32:40] Nathan Barry: Like, you know, I might have captured attention with a ton of different things, but the audience has to be narrowed. Right? We need to be delivering value around a certain category so people know to keep coming back to me for this one thing. And then the second thing is, what point of view or what access do I have That might be really interesting.

[00:32:57] Nathan Barry: So the way that I would pitch this, let's say that I am an in house content creator at a software company like kit, I'm making all these videos that go on social, that go, you know, are driving kits brand and some companies, you know, if you started to build your own audience. Yeah. Yeah. Might be like, Oh man, like Jed's over here doing his own thing.

[00:33:17] Nathan Barry: And like, I feel like he's distracted or all that. So our pitch instead is to say, Hey, I'm going to keep doing everything I'm doing here, but now what I'm going to do gets audiences creators. So I have this idea of how we're going to hook more creators and I'm going to like start making content about what it's like to be an in house content creator.

[00:33:34] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Right. If I'm D rock, I'm going to make that content, like you said, of, you know, what it's like to be a, you know, a video creator at. Gary V's companies and so it still fuels the main brand Perfect example. This is Charlie. Who's our creative director. She's got 200, 000 followers or subscribers on YouTube all of this what she does is she starts a podcast.

[00:33:58] Nathan Barry: She's like look I'm trying to learn how to be a great creative director So, let me just interview all the best designers at all the best companies and that's my own thing But everyone can see how it ties in very well the kit. Yeah, and so it's not It doesn't create any conflict. Do you have a problem with that as a founder?

[00:34:15] Nathan Barry: No, not at all. Right. Because I know that it elevates our brand.

[00:34:19] Jed Eglington: Yeah. I also know. Because I think that's, sorry, I think that's something that founders are going to have to get used to. Right. It's like, these people can act on their own. They can become the founder. So, but we still want them a part of our journeys.

[00:34:33] Jed Eglington: So

[00:34:33] Nathan Barry: I think two things in that. One, you have to realize what this person's goal is. Some people's goal is to stay in house. Forever for a very long time. There's a lot of amazing perks of being an in house creator, right? Health insurance. We love health insurance Yeah, you know, yeah a team all of those things So if they want to stay in house, like do all the things to like really fuel that career.

[00:34:56] Nathan Barry: If you know that they want to be their own founder, like help them in that journey, right? They will be like, it's, it's a long career. We're building companies that are going to last for, you know, a decade or more. And so having that ecosystem of people, maybe this person, you know, in our example, like someone like D rock, maybe he builds this audience and it, while he has it, it contributes.

[00:35:20] Nathan Barry: to the traffic and everything for Gary Vee. And then over time, he's like, Hey, I'm going to go out on my own. And they're like, cool, we're going to miss you a ton, but let's still do some partnerships on that. Yeah.

[00:35:30] Jed Eglington: Right. And then maybe the recruitment side, right? It's like, you've just told how great it is to work at Gary Vee.

[00:35:37] Jed Eglington: Now just stop.

[00:35:38] Nathan Barry: We're going to give you all the job roles. Yeah, exactly. Hey, we'll, we'll pay you a, you know, a recruiting fee, right? Because you spent a huge amount on that. And what doesn't go well is when you say like, Hey, no side hustles, you know, any of this stuff and you like crack down on it. Cause then someone's just like, well now I just got to do it, but hide it from you, you know, or that's right.

[00:35:58] Nathan Barry: Or then you're not playing the long game. There's someone, that I worked with years ago at Kit who's now running his own business and we're collaborating on some really exciting projects. You know, it just took a while for that to come back around. Yeah. So don't burn those bridges. Yeah, never. Like, there's so many things that you can do.

[00:36:15] Nathan Barry: As you build that audience, something I see a lot of people who are good at traffic do, is they build a crowd rather than an audience. And I think that the current social media algorithms, fuel this, right? Because it encourages you to chase whatever's working in that moment. And that might take you into these very different categories.

[00:36:37] Nathan Barry: And so something that I always want to see is you to build this core audience of, it could be a hundred people, 500 people who like are truly following you for the value that you deliver. Not necessarily the entertainment that you deliver. Right. That's a value on top, but I, you know, that's where you're getting them to an email list.

[00:36:54] Nathan Barry: you know, using D rocket as an, as an example, he might have, an email course that he puts together that says, Hey, if you want to get An in house role as a video creator at a brand like, you know, one of Gary V's companies. then here's what I would do. Yeah. Drop in your email address, right? And it's just five emails.

[00:37:14] Nathan Barry: You don't have to maintain that all the time, but then you're pulling people into this core audience. What are those

[00:37:18] Jed Eglington: steps? If I've got a crowd, I'm great at getting attention. How do I change my content or my messaging to slowly build an audience? Like, cause I feel like I might be in this seat right now, I've done 30 days of content.

[00:37:30] Jed Eglington: We've grown really rapidly. How much of that is my audience and how much of that is my crowd? Right, okay. So we're going, our, our goal

[00:37:41] Nathan Barry: is to go from crowd to audience. So people think that they have an audience when actually they have a crowd. So an audience is the right people paying attention. It's not the view counts.

[00:37:53] Nathan Barry: It's not all of these things that a crowd is, right? It's not, how do I get all of this attention? It's how do I get attention from the right people? So the crowd might be people who enjoy, you know, watching your reels or scrolling past it and they laugh at your jokes or whatever else. The audience is the group that is following you for who you are and the value you deliver.

[00:38:11] Nathan Barry: Right. When we say the right people paying attention, it has to be like the right people paying attention for what? Right.

[00:38:17] Jed Eglington: So what are you, what are you trying to do? I'm trying to help founders become creators. So I think a lot of founders that need to understand how to create, they're following us to try and build internal creative teams and become creators themselves.

[00:38:30] Jed Eglington: So it's for me building this audience in my head. It's about offering value to the founders

[00:38:37] Nathan Barry: That's really interesting. So the first thing is right as we have a crowd we've got all these different views that are coming in I'm gonna draw our crowd. We need to then figure out how do we get the right people in this crowd?

[00:38:51] Nathan Barry: Hmm to pay attention, right? So something that we talk about all the time in advertising now as algorithms have changed is that you do your targeting through your creative, right? And so you can start to do that exact same thing. It works in paid ads. It works in organic. Yes. Right. And so then you're now you're saying like, You're these videos are targeted at the founders and like yeah, you get views from other people Yeah, that's great.

[00:39:14] Nathan Barry: And like other people in the crowd are not bad, right? They might not be the founder, but they might be married to the founder. They might have a sibling That's the fact, you know, there's yeah, like they'll help it spread But what I would be doing is I would say, okay, what is the video that I could create?

[00:39:30] Nathan Barry: That speaks just to the founder who wants to be the creator. And so it might be some of these case study videos, like you would not believe how this founder created this much attention and got this, you know, outcome for their business because they understood this one thing brought the creators understand, you know, whatever.

[00:39:45] Nathan Barry: Yeah. and then as we go from there. I don't know where this works in the drawing, but what I want to get to

[00:39:52] Jed Eglington: is because I feel like I'm doing that and I feel like I'm getting those views. I'm just trying to figure out which ones of those are my audience and which ones of those are my crowd.

[00:40:02] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:40:03] Jed Eglington: And so the thing that helps with that is

[00:40:05] Nathan Barry: going to email.

[00:40:07] Nathan Barry: because you have to break free. Like the algorithm is amazing because it like helps discovery in so many ways, but you gotta go to email. And so what I would do is I would make that email course that is the five things. Founders have to understand, you know, to, to scale a business as a creator, the, the five secrets creators understand.

[00:40:28] Nathan Barry: I don't know what the copy is.

[00:40:28] Jed Eglington: Okay. So I'm not asking him to sign up to a newsletter. I'm asking them to download an asset. So I value act. Okay, cool.

[00:40:37] Nathan Barry: Because then you didn't, you didn't sign yourself up to now. I have to send a weekly newsletter, you know, every Tuesday to the end of time

[00:40:44] Jed Eglington: to have a weekly newsletter or something.

[00:40:46] Jed Eglington: Right. No. Cause we did this early on in. Some of the short form content. I had a performance calculator and we had a bunch of these people sign up for emails, but my my concern was Am I supposed to nurture them through email? Am I supposed to? So it's better if you do.

[00:40:59] Nathan Barry: Right. Right?

[00:41:00] Jed Eglington: Like

[00:41:01] Nathan Barry: in the, in the spectrum of quality, like optimally executed, you know, there's a range of things like getting attention or getting traffic without converting it to an audience.

[00:41:14] Nathan Barry: At least you have traffic. Like you can do a lot with traffic. It's not the best thing. Right. But then as we go to the audience, capturing it in any form is, is an improvement. Right. Right. The next step from there would be, Hey, I'm going to send you a monthly thing of what we learned, right? This is what I find interesting, this month.

[00:41:34] Nathan Barry: Here's an update on like what we're doing with creative room, you know, it could be monthly or it could be quarterly. Like that's an improvement. And then of course, if you went to weekly and you were delivering high value content every single week of the newsletter, like that's the gold standard.

[00:41:47] Jed Eglington: I'd love to ask this question.

[00:41:49] Jed Eglington: Is there a rule of thumb for hats? You know, what's too many emails sent because my emails get flooded with newsletters I don't read right and it turns me off the idea of being subscribed to them And it's probably turned me off the idea of creating one for myself So yeah, is there like an optimal amount that you should be creating?

[00:42:07] Jed Eglington: Yeah, so there's there's if we think of the

[00:42:12] Nathan Barry: Two things quantity and quality. So what we want to do is is we want to send emails at the highest quantity that we can maintain a particular bar for quality. So for some brands that might be, well actually let's go to content creators. Yes. For some content creators that might be once a year.

[00:42:35] Nathan Barry: But imagine that you follow this creator who everything they do is so fucking great that like if an email came from them you would stop everything and read it. I think that Tim Urban from Wait But Why did this really well, right, where he would put out these essays that you're like, well now I have an existential crisis.

[00:42:54] Nathan Barry: Right. Because of the way he made me think about my life divided up into weeks. Or like he did this whole breakdown of Elon Musk and how he's building his companies and had this insider access. Right? The quality is so insanely high, but the quantity was very, very rare. Once a month, once a quarter.

[00:43:09] Jed Eglington: And that's fine.

[00:43:10] Jed Eglington: That's totally fine. See, I love the idea of that. It feels like a gift. When you get given that email, it's like a gift. Now he's the top of the

[00:43:16] Nathan Barry: spectrum for quality. Right. Right. I love it. Now, what you. Then as you think about quantity, like quantity is, is good. And so, cause that's more opportunities to get our brand in front of people, to do commerce, to promote our product, any of that.

[00:43:33] Nathan Barry: But so what I might say, okay, I can deliver a super high quality content. once a quarter, you know, or once a month, that's very manageable. But the problem where people get into the problem that you described is when they try to deliver really, really, they focus on quantity. And so they're like, you know what?

[00:43:52] Nathan Barry: I want to get my product in front of people every single day. So let me send a daily email. But it turns out I can't maintain quality as I do that. And then now the readers are like, eh, I opened the last five and they weren't really worth it.

[00:44:05] Jed Eglington: And so the, so the quantity is decided on the volume of value that comes through you.

[00:44:10] Jed Eglington: How often can

[00:44:12] Nathan Barry: you send an email while always maintaining your bar for quality?

[00:44:15] Jed Eglington: Yeah. But what describes quality? Value?

[00:44:18] Nathan Barry: Yeah, I think so.

[00:44:19] Jed Eglington: Yeah. And you know, right? Like, did you

[00:44:21] Nathan Barry: finish something and you're like, oh man, I'm so proud. I cannot wait to get this in front of people. Or you like. Good thing we got the newsletter out this week, you know, and so I see brands.

[00:44:32] Nathan Barry: There's one called ug Monk Jeff Sheldon He sends a monthly newsletter for his e commerce brand and that's because that's the frequency He would sell a lot more if he could maintain like do a weekly newsletter like it would drive more sales but monthly is where he can maintain that high bar for quality fits in with everything else.

[00:44:53] Nathan Barry: He's doing to run his business and You know still at the quantum Okay So in this journey of creators becoming founders, right you you do the in house creator you build up the traffic Then we figure out how to get good at that how to find our best our specific value that we want to deliver and who we want to deliver that to.

[00:45:11] Nathan Barry: So then we're going from a crowd to an audience. We're finding the right people that out of the algorithm to then bring them into, you know, the email course we're sending emails, you know, based on the quality that we want to hit and how frequently we can do that. And then that brings us to the last piece, which is the product, right?

[00:45:29] Nathan Barry: We're here to make money.

[00:45:30] Jed Eglington: I'm

[00:45:32] Nathan Barry: unashamed about pursuing making money. Some people are like, I do it for the love of the craft. Me too. Part of the love of the craft is getting paid for it. And there's, once you have the traffic in the audience, there's so many different products that you can do. I just, I think you don't have to figure it out from the beginning, but somewhere in that journey you just, you know, be taking notes, learning with purpose towards that product because then you can start to focus the angles of like, okay, how do I craft this audience?

[00:46:03] Nathan Barry: Because if I'm building product A versus product B. Well, the right people paying attention is a little different, right? Yeah, and so you want to think about that early on. Love it. I think that is a Great overview. Let's let's sit down and kind of chat through it and recap it

[00:46:17] Jed Eglington: I think one thing I got out of this probably being more of a Gen C creator We see a lot of crowd building.

[00:46:23] Jed Eglington: We see a lot of big followings big view counts and You know, I probably didn't focus too much on the audience side of it. And I think for creators to really understand maybe what it takes to build that audience is going to be a really valuable step to becoming a founder.

[00:46:39] Nathan Barry: I love that because when you know where you're trying to go, then everything else that you're doing follows in line behind

[00:46:46] Jed Eglington: that,

[00:46:47] Nathan Barry: right?

[00:46:47] Nathan Barry: If I'm saying. Yeah. going from very broadly, like I want to be a creator and I want to be able to pay my rent doing it. Like that's so broad. But then if we come in and say, Hey, actually the best path to do it is as an in house creator with the best path for me, then all of a sudden the skills I need to learn and the steps become so much more narrowed.

[00:47:03] Nathan Barry: And then as you get into that journey in the future, then exactly what you're saying of like, okay, now I know that I want to build. You know, this founder creator business. And so now I can think about how do I leverage these skills to build the right audience and then build it into the product that I want.

[00:47:19] Jed Eglington: Yeah. I think what's exciting to me is we could have kept drawing about all these different directions. Creators can go. And like the premise of the conversation is what a great time to be a creator. It's like never been a better time. it's such a useful role for building your own personal brand or in a different company.

[00:47:37] Jed Eglington: And. I think this just excites me about the future of creating and what it looks like for people just getting into the business or maybe founders that are picking up cameras for the first time.

[00:47:48] Nathan Barry: I love it. Jed, if people want to follow you and see what you're doing with creative room and everything else that you're making online, because the best way to learn is by like studying someone who's great at it.

[00:47:56] Nathan Barry: And I've loved following your content. Cool. Where should people go?

[00:47:59] Jed Eglington: Go to credit Jed at Instagram. We just did a 30 day series. It's actually really great. We talk through a lot of, topics on paid ads. So yeah, there, and I'll be. Building my audience at CreatorGen. That sounds good. I love it. Thanks for coming on.

[00:48:11] Jed Eglington: Cool. Thanks for having me.

[00:48:13] Nathan Barry: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe, and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else you think we should have on the show.

[00:48:27] Nathan Barry: Thank you so much for listening.