The Nathan Barry Show

[00:00:00] Nathan: You are at 500,000.

[00:00:01] Jay: Yeah.

[00:00:01] Nathan: In annual revenue. Right? The goal is 2 million a year. If you could come outta this conversation solving three things.

[00:00:07] Jay: Yeah.

[00:00:07] Nathan: What would those be?

[00:00:08] Number one is how to be able to go from where the revenue isn't as stable. Let's go predictable revenue, more clarity on ideal customer profile.

[00:00:18] Then how to be able to leverage LinkedIn to generate more leads. I

[00:00:22] like it. My guest, Jay Singh, is back on the podcast so we can talk through how to scale his agency. And more importantly, how to do so in a way that doesn't result in a business he hates. If we want to hit this goal, then we need to get really, really clear on who we're serving so that you don't end up with this chaos of jumping around.

[00:00:39] What content could you create that would tell that person we should chat? It could be some like audience discovery features, like how do you know what to build for your audience? If you just say, within the software niche, you could write about a ton of that. Yeah. And it immediately positions you. Yeah, yeah.

[00:00:56] As the

[00:00:56] person. The person. Yeah. I love that. I don't think I've really cracked how to be able to extend contracts longer. I guess if we solve just these two things of predictable lead gen. Yep. And we're there. Let's get to 2 million. I love this. This has been awesome.

[00:01:14] All right, Jay, welcome back to the

[00:01:15] show. Thank you. So what is Casper Studios for? Anyone who hasn't caught up on your journey so far?

[00:01:21] Jay: Yeah, so Casper is a product studio that helps founders to be able to design and build products. We help larger companies to be able to implement AI into their workflows.

[00:01:31] Okay. And then we also use those learnings to be able to design and build our own products, which then I try to share on social media to be able to acquire more customers. Okay. So I'm trying to implement some of your flywheels work right off the bat here.

[00:01:43] Nathan: Yeah, I like it. Okay, so you are at 500,000.

[00:01:46] Annual revenue. Right. And then what we've got written up on the board, the goal is 2 million a year. Right. Uh, you have two other like sub goals within that one around team size and one on profit. Talk about that.

[00:01:57] Jay: Yeah. I think if I can keep the team smaller, the better. I think that's where some of my own personal lifestyle kind of goals line.

[00:02:05] Yeah. I don't really wanna scale like a really big team. I want to keep it small. I want to keep it focused. Yeah. Like. Five people, 10 people. Yeah. Anywhere between like less than 10 makes me feel like I can, um Okay. Manage that correctly. Um, while also being able to kind of work with clients and not spend all my time with just like internal administrative pieces.

[00:02:23] Yeah. Um, and then the margin, the margin piece, like that kind of works back from the life struggle that I have to, you know, over the course of the next couple of years. Either retire my parents, uh, retire. I like that goal myself and my family. Um, I think the 50% margin under 2 million annual revenue, uh, business feels, feels right for that.

[00:02:39] Okay.

[00:02:40] Nathan: That sounds good. If you could come outta this conversation solving. Three things. Yeah. What would those be?

[00:02:46] Jay: I think number one is getting some guidance in terms of how to be able to go from right now where the revenue isn't as stable. Okay. Uh, to be able to kind of create a little bit more recurring revenue for the business.

[00:03:00] Okay. Let's go. Predictable revenue. Or predictable revenue. Yeah, exactly. At the moment it is, it is. You know, it's pretty tough to be able to go from one month of, you know, 50, 60 KA monthly revenue down to, you know, 20, 30 up to 80. Like, you know, being able to set the right systems in place to, to manage that and yeah, have a little bit more projection, uh, over the course of a quarter or half in terms of what that revenue looks like will be important.

[00:03:22] Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So the first thing to solve is predictable revenue. I went a little more broad than recurring revenue. Yeah, because, uh, there's. Lots of revenue that's quite predictable but doesn't technically recur. Sure. And so we can get into, okay. How to take agency revenue and make it more predictable.

[00:03:39] Love it. What would the second thing be? More clarity on my ICPI.

[00:03:44] Jay: Okay. Uh, for anyone who doesn't know the actual SP, what is that? Uh, ideal customer profile. Okay. Uh, in other words, who are you selling your services or products to? I've been lucky enough to kind of grow our business on the back of my LinkedIn audience, and there comes pros and cons of that.

[00:04:00] Uh, I've been really only focused on inbound lead generation and, uh, you know, it makes it easier to be able to find customers, but then sometimes I'm working on quite a wide variety of customers. And so I don't have like a specific focus yet and I think that can end up hurting the business over time.

[00:04:15] Okay. I like it. And what would the third thing be? I think it's how to be able to leverage my LinkedIn to be able to generate more leads, even better, potentially even kind of building out systems that we can focus on outbound to my audience and to get your guidance on that. Okay.

[00:04:32] Nathan: Um, this is gonna be a good topic because.

[00:04:36] Two sides. One, I am trying to focus very heavily on LinkedIn. Yeah. So there's lots of things, right. Uh, that I've learned in others. I'm trying to apply to LinkedIn. Yeah. You spent five years working at LinkedIn. I also worked at LinkedIn. Yeah, exactly. I'm more of a power user now than I ever was. Yeah, exactly.

[00:04:50] It's always fascinating how like, now that you're on the outside, you like, yeah, okay, but here's how many use the product Exactly. Alright, so these are three different things that we could do or that we'll dive into and, and try to solve in the next 45 minutes or so. Amazing. Uh, no pressure. Yeah, exactly.

[00:05:03] Um, one thing that I think about a lot in scaling from 500,000 to 2 million, I feel like the times I've seen people do this, uh, a couple things go wrong, usually they try to brute force it. And so it's like, okay, I just need twice the number of projects. Hmm. Um, and if those projects are scattered across a ton of different customer types.

[00:05:23] Then there's very little automation or systems or processes, and so it just, it turns to chaos. Hmm. And then what happens is people try to tame that chaos by expanding the team. Mm-hmm. Right? And so then they're like, all right, we'll bring in more people. And then you, you expand the team. One team members create chaos, uh, without like a lot of really great systems around it.

[00:05:46] And then two, it's expensive. Mm-hmm. And so something that I see all the time. In both creator businesses and agencies is maybe a 500,000, uh, in revenue business that's doing 40, 50% margins. So like a quarter million a year in profit, something like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's pretty great. Mm-hmm. And then scaling this one to 2 million where the margins then shrink to.

[00:06:11] 10 to 20%. Exactly. So I've often seen where someone doubles revenue and is taking home the exact same profit.

[00:06:19] Jay: Right. Which is like, that just sounds like a lot of work for nothing.

[00:06:22] Nathan: Right. And there's just so much more stress in that. Mm-hmm. Now, there's times where you're trying to cross a chasm here and you're trying, you know, you're trying to leap ahead.

[00:06:29] Right. And so you're gonna make an investment or. Like that's normal in business. Yeah. Um, but there's just a lot to be careful of Yes. In scaling this.

[00:06:37] Jay: Yeah. I think, I think revenue at times could be a vanity metric, uh, on your point. And I think, I think another way to frame this is, is how do you, how do you scale an agency from X amount of profit to y amount of profit?

[00:06:49] Right. Um, could have been another way to be able to kind of look at this, because I do not want to build a $2 million business, uh, making the same or only marginally more on profit.

[00:06:57] Nathan: Right. Well, it's right down those, those constraints. We'll just do it a little smaller on here. Yep. Because then we know what we're optimizing for.

[00:07:04] Yep. I'm thinking about, okay, we wanna sell predictable revenue, ideal customer. And then I wrote down leverage LinkedIn. But really, you mean I. Scalable lead generation. Exactly. You just have something that's working and so that's why Exactly. You narrowed it down a little, little bit. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:07:18] Exactly. Okay. Let's go to the ideal customer because Yeah. My gut feeling Mm, is that if we want to hit this goal with these constraints mm-hmm. Then we need to get really, really clear a hundred percent on who we're serving so that you don't end up with this chaos of jumping around. Exactly. Like the needs of the creator is different than the needs of the company like Kit.

[00:07:38] Exactly. 40, $50 million a year in recurring revenue. Mm-hmm. Would be entirely different. Totally. Uh, I guess I'm realizing I could represent both of those customers, the creator. Yeah. I could be like the creator, you know, with a half a million dollar a year business. Yeah. And then I put a different hat on.

[00:07:54] Right. And I'm like, okay, well as a 90 person team. Yeah. Yeah. It's very different things. But you would service in entirely different ways. Exactly. Exactly. Let's just start by mapping out some extremes of the projects. Okay. Like, uh, what's the ICP of the. Uh, the largest project you've done.

[00:08:12] Jay: Right. So those end up being, uh, more oriented around, uh, strategy, uh, and Okay.

[00:08:18] Or a redesign of their product. Mm-hmm. Um, or just nitty gritty AI implementation. So. It's either like, Hey, we have a product, can you help redesign it? 'cause they've already, you know, they've been in business for a while from an AI first perspective. Uh, or can you just come in, work with that customer service team that's sitting in the corner there manually, you know, going through their work and be able to automate some of their workflows.

[00:08:40] Right. Um, not the sexiest stuff, but someone that could really help the bottom line.

[00:08:44] Nathan: Okay. So you're saying the large ones. Actually, I wanna switch markers with you please, because we wanna get some, some fun colors in here. Okay. Let's do it. You know, it's, we both like design. Exactly. Uh, all right, so let's go large.

[00:08:55] And so you said, so there's, uh, AI redesign. Yep. Like thinking from first

[00:08:59] Jay: principles, like what, what AI looks like for their product. Yep. It's like, it, it's product strategy, it's discovery that leads to redesign.

[00:09:07] Nathan: And then what was that, what was that other one that you had

[00:09:09] Jay: more like, uh, uh, implementation of ai?

[00:09:12] Yeah. So, you know. Like Nathan introduces me to their finance team and is like, Hey, like here's like, please make this business a little bit more efficient.

[00:09:21] Nathan: Are these those large projects, are those profitable? Do you wanna do more of those?

[00:09:25] Jay: Yeah,

[00:09:25] Nathan: I would love to do more of those. Okay. Yeah. So yes, we like those.

[00:09:29] Yeah, longer. They're longer. A little bit. Longer term. Okay. Yeah. What about the painful projects?

[00:09:34] Jay: Yeah, those are, those are the. Uh, I love my early stage founders, but like Uhhuh? Yeah, like those are the, those are the, the people that are just about to start a company. Uh, we are helping them build their business from the ground up.

[00:09:48] Um, I'm jumping in on strategy product. My designers are helping them design things. We have our engineering team working on building ai. Proof of concepts like we are, we are effectively their team. Okay. Uh, that they are, you know, not paying as well. And so those have been, those have been some of the more demanding customers.

[00:10:05] Uh, and Got it. The price points are so low because, um, even if they raise a little bit of capital, they just don't have that much to spend.

[00:10:12] Nathan: Okay. So this is, IM important 'cause you could describe. 80% of the words you just said, Uhhuh could be turned into like, oh, this is the most exciting. Right? Yeah. Right.

[00:10:21] Fair enough. Yeah. But when you're, then you're like, but then they're the most demanding. Yes. Maybe. Yeah. Uh, the hardest to please. Yes. And you're getting paid the least. Exactly.

[00:10:30] Jay: Yeah. Right. It is fun. I, I like, I do really enjoy it. I feel like I can really provide, um, I feel like I can provide most of, most of the marginal value there.

[00:10:38] Right. Um, uh, which it was respond, but it's

[00:10:41] Nathan: not the customer profile that's gonna get you to, it won't be. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Um, what about, let's, let's just go fun. Yeah. What are the ones if you were running this business? Yeah. Purely for enjoyment, right. Yeah, what customer fits within that?

[00:10:57] Jay: I, I mean, you were alluding to it.

[00:10:58] Uh, ironically, it ends up becoming like some of those early stage customers too. That being said, um, I'm having, I'm having more and more fun here. Here's my middle ground. It's a founder that has scaled up their business and has a decent amount of revenue and fund bend or funding that they can actually.

[00:11:15] Take the same energy that the early stage founders have. Uh, but then you're almost like, um, you're almost like reinvigorating yourself. Yep. Because you can think about things from first principles for ai. Um, the joke of like, you know, someone being in founder mode, uh, uh, the, the, the, the Brian Chesky founder Mode Energy.

[00:11:34] Yep. It's like, it's like you who has been building the business, building it successfully, is now excited about ai Right. And wants to partner on on that. So you get the. You get the energy of the early stage, but then you get the, you get the budgets, um, and the longer term contracts of, um, maybe these larger companies when you

[00:11:52] Nathan: also get reach and reach.

[00:11:53] Right, because in what way? If an established founder Yep. Has an idea, they put money behind it, they bring it to life. Well, they might roll it out to. Thousands or tens of thousands of people. Yeah. Right. So the early stages like, Hey, how okay now? Yeah. I'm coming back to you and you're like, I have a discovery problem, a market marketing problem.

[00:12:10] You're like, okay, but that's not actually what we help you with. Right, right, right. I mean, this is, this is where I Yeah. Love to be. People are will ask like, oh, when are you gonna sell Kit? Yeah. And I'm like, you don't understand. Yeah. I have my absolute dream scenario. Yeah. Because I get to come up with ideas.

[00:12:27] Yeah. In a market, an industry, in a community that I absolutely adore. Yeah. And then when I roll, so I have a full team Yeah. To build anything I want. Yeah. And then when I'm ready to release it, it goes out to. Amazing people. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Yeah. Yeah. Who give you feedback and use it in the wild and all of that.

[00:12:48] And I'm like, yeah, I'm having a great time. This is the best. Yeah. And I get paid plenty of money to do it. Like I can tell you're having fun. I can tell you're having fun. And so I like that. That makes sense. Yes. Establish, um, yeah. Established funders. Yeah. Are there any other angles that you would look at of, you know, some of these big categories?

[00:13:07] We look at the ideal customer,

[00:13:09] Jay: I think, um, it. It, it kind of goes, it kind of goes back to maybe even how you define yourself. Um, it's, uh, some of our customers that are coming in are also like pretty established creators. Mm-hmm. Um, so they. They are early stage in a sense that they're building a product for the first time, but they, their business, their business is probably doing themselves at least, like, you know, half a million to a million a year minimum.

[00:13:32] Okay. Um, some of them are actually like, like quite, quite larger, you know, creators that have like full operations teams and everything around them. Um, so honestly, like the established founders, it could also be established creators. Right. Um, I don't know if you need to make necessarily, well you can push back on this.

[00:13:48] I don't know if you need to make a distinction between founders and creators if they have. Scale if they have like a scale. Yeah, exactly.

[00:13:55] Nathan: Okay.

[00:13:55] Jay: I mean, I, because those are, because those are businesses as you know.

[00:13:57] Nathan: Yeah. It's, it points to a different, uh, type of customer. Yeah. Right. Because one thing that I want to get into is, we talked about leveraging LinkedIn.

[00:14:05] Yep. Is who specifically we can go after. Exactly. And so there's a big difference between mm-hmm. Trying to, let's not use me as an example. Mm-hmm. 'cause I live in both buckets. Right. Uh, let's take Wade Foster from Zapier. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. He does not actually, I was say he does more content now, like your creator.

[00:14:24] Mm. Now that I think about it, he's viewed as LinkedIn. He's like, Hey, look at what we're doing. Yeah, yeah. With AI agents inside of Zapper, they're crushing it. Uh, yeah. It's awesome. But let's say him not putting out that level of content, right. Right. He is a, an established founder operating a SaaS company at scale.

[00:14:41] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's very different than say, an Ali Abdal. Yes. Right. Or someone who. Uh, is very much a creator Right. Who's built a business around it. Sure. Right. And, and you're gonna target them very differently. Yeah. Message them very differently. They're hanging out in different places. Yeah. I would want us to pick one or the other, right?

[00:14:58] Yep. Yep. You don't have to, we could probably make a Venn diagram and find the overlap. No, but we should. I think we should. Right? Uh, how many projects have you done for creators? You know, let's use established for both. Right. Okay. Established creators and established founders. Yeah.

[00:15:14] Jay: Yeah. I'd say, uh, you know, our projects are like, the last a couple months I've been, year, I've been in business for a year, so I'd say of like the 10 or so clients we've worked with, I'd say it's, you know, like four are established founders and I'd say like three are established creators.

[00:15:29] Okay. So it's pretty even, it's not like you're getting

[00:15:31] Nathan: more traction in one space or the other. Yeah. If we were to go back to predictable revenue Yes. As the lens Yep. Uh, which market is gonna serve you? Like, which market is gonna lead to better revenue?

[00:15:42] Jay: One thing that I've been thinking about is like, who?

[00:15:44] Who? Who needs our services the most and like, where is our skillset, not a commodity One. One example of that is like me moving to New York, like in San Francisco, like if you worked on LinkedIn for five and a half years, and like, they're like, cool. Like what else? So did everybody ask? Yeah, exactly. It's like, and, and you like you're kind of a commodity.

[00:16:03] Okay. Um, and New York, it feels like I actually can. I can, I can like, uh, pull up my experiences and, and provide value, and it's actually, mm-hmm. The speed of the, the customer cycle, the value I can provide to them feels like it's a little bit higher. Um, the reason why I say that is the established founders, um, you know, they're doing, maybe they're series B, series C, they have like a decent amount of revenue.

[00:16:23] Um, I don't know if it leads to predictable revenue. Because we could maybe come in and help for a quarter, like maybe two quarters. And like even if we do a good job, there's likely gonna be some pressure internally to say, Hey, like why don't we just like take all this great work and then just pass it over to the team internally to be able, like you might get them

[00:16:40] Nathan: a step function and then they may just take it, they want to take it internally.

[00:16:43] Jay: We've seen some of that

[00:16:44] Nathan: Yeah. Happen already.

[00:16:45] Jay: Which makes sense.

[00:16:46] Nathan: Which makes a ton of sense from the kit perspective. That's what I would want. That's what you would do

[00:16:49] Jay: too, right? Yeah, exactly. 'cause I've got. 30 engineers already, what exactly? And so take the innovation and then like test it out and see what's working.

[00:16:57] And then once it's working, then hey, like, thank you. Uh, here it is. Like yeah, please create all the right documentation and let my team in, like integrate it internally. Right? That'd be a big success ex. And that would be a big success. Wouldn't lead to that. Right? Um, and so. And so the reason why I'm mentioning that is like, I wonder if the established creators may not have access to Right.

[00:17:15] The type of talent that we're providing. Yeah. That, that's also kind of, I wonder, part of the dimension here. Um, that's interesting because Right. Maybe we work with 'em for longer term because they don't know who else to access and that, uh, who has our skillset.

[00:17:27] Nathan: These are made up numbers, but here for the established founders, we might do a $50,000 project Yep.

[00:17:31] To achieve some step function goal. Yep. And then we'll run with it ourselves. Right. The creator. Mm-hmm. It might be like, Hey, let's bring an idea for to life for you. Mm-hmm. Right. And then for $10,000 a month mm-hmm. Yeah. For, you know, ongoing for a long period of time. 'cause maybe we build a business Yeah.

[00:17:48] That's making a hundred thousand dollars a month

[00:17:50] Jay: Exactly.

[00:17:51] Nathan: And off of their audience and Right. All of that, so, okay. Yeah. That's interesting. That's, that's kind of similar where I've been trying to figure out, okay, so we're honing in on this creator. Uh, as a target, which I like. Is there a way that we could get more specific Yeah.

[00:18:06] With the creator? Mm-hmm. Like who's a creator that would be a really good fit, and then maybe a creator that would not be a good fit. Mm. Either generically or if a name comes to mind, that's great too.

[00:18:16] Jay: I'm gonna try not to use some of the names that are kind of circulating in our, in our prospect. That's right.

[00:18:20] Yeah, that's right. A hard thing where you're like. Um, but they, you know, that person, uh, if you're watching this, you are the, you're who, uh, I'd say, I'm trying to think of like people that I really respect, um, but also aren't necessarily just like, you know, classic name brand kind of stuff. Mm-hmm.

[00:18:36] Nathan: Um, well, I mean, name brand is helpful, like Sure, yeah.

[00:18:40] Let's go. Two different examples I can think of. Let's go Sahil Bloom. Yeah. And Cody Sanchez. Yeah. Right, right, right. They both putting on a prolific amount of content. Yeah. They have vastly different team sizes. Sure. Cody's like 25 people on a team. Sawhill is one. Right. Two, you know. Wow. Um, that's crazy. He is running at that efficiently.

[00:18:58] It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, very, very different approaches. Sure. As you think about those two individuals Yeah. Is there. Uh, like another dimension that would tell you here's why one would be better versus the other. Yeah. I think it's What are you helping them achieve?

[00:19:12] Jay: Uh, I would, I would probably still want to qualify by like, like revenue in some sense.

[00:19:17] Okay. First, right? Mm-hmm. Or, you know, spend, or like some, some indication that. They're fitting our ICP, like it's easy to do that for a Series B founder that's raised $50 million or is doing $20 million of annual revenue. Yeah. Like, it's easy. It's easier to kind of, you know, find those people, I guess. And they're more in my network, um, the creators, you know, is there a similar mental model of, you know, you have, you have X amount of revenue and then y amount of.

[00:19:42] Like reach, but probably revenue as a main metric so they can afford our services more. They probably, if I'm thinking, if I'm thinking critically about who we've kind of already worked with, they've already, um. And where we're helping, they've already built a business. Like they, they, they built a product they now want to kind of venture into, uh, software development and like product development.

[00:20:01] Right. Um, they may have already reached the scale of, um, you know, the other six business models that you, you, you speak about where like, you know, they've already kind of increased, they've already like done their sponsorship revenue and they're kind of like getting marginal returns on that. They've already done their newsletter revenue.

[00:20:15] They may be getting marginal returns on that, and they're. And they're, and they're looking for like the next big swing for themselves. Mm-hmm. Um, and then where we're helping them is building a software, uh, product that can, uh, kind of be a business for them.

[00:20:27] Nathan: Right. The, the way that I would sum that up Yeah.

[00:20:29] Is, I'm gonna say ambition. They have ambition. Yeah. Yeah. Not that a creator who's like, Hey, I just wanna write the next book Yes. And grow my audience. Which is ambition. That, that's great. Ambition. Career has an ambition. Yeah. So this is not the best word for it. Yeah. You know, but it's someone who they're looking to.

[00:20:48] Build probably long-term wealth. Yes. They're looking right, you know, to go from 500,000 to 2 million. Mm-hmm. Uh, and maybe in far beyond that, right, right. So I think about like Ali Abdal in this example. Yeah. Uh,

[00:21:02] Jay: like

[00:21:02] Nathan: he built,

[00:21:02] Jay: he built the mobile app, but I think for like boys journaling or something like that.

[00:21:06] Right. Like getting, getting in front of him when he wanted to be able to build that, he would've been the perfect Icep. Voice pal. Voice Pal.

[00:21:12] Nathan: Yeah. It's a great app. I use it and great. Um. But he's got an audience. He can get out in front of them, but he's saying, Hey, I have a clear vision for how this audience Yes.

[00:21:25] Can turn into five to 10 million a year in revenue. Exactly. And maybe I want to exit. Yeah. That sort of thing. Another example would be, you know, James Clear did, uh, his hanging out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that was in partnership with Andrew Wilkinson. Mm-hmm. Um, he was a big inspiration for me. For what it's

[00:21:41] Jay: worth.

[00:21:42] Yeah. Yeah. B bc BC kid too. Yep. Canadians gotta stick. Is that right? Exactly. Yeah. Um, but it's like the, it's like that, how do I, how do I present myself to those individuals before they make a decision to be able to build out their product? Right. Because I know that we can, I know that we can crush that.

[00:21:58] Like I know that we can provide a lot of value to them.

[00:22:00] Nathan: Yeah. How much is this the focus on creators? Is it creating, are, are we building new products that they'll sell it to their audience? Mm-hmm. Versus streamlining. Processes in their business?

[00:22:12] Jay: That's a great question too. Um, predominantly it's been, we're helping them build a product that they can now kind of use as, you know, to get to five to 10 million and like scale it.

[00:22:22] Um, but, but like, you know, it's one, one very large creator right now, I think, you know, they have over like 20 million. Followers, like we're actually exploring which one do we start with, right? Um, do we do maybe a little bit of internal implementation, maybe prove our worth a little bit, and then like, kind of like earn our, earn their trust to be able to design and build a product.

[00:22:40] Or maybe we talk to them and they're like, no, I'm ready to go. I just wanna build, let's go. So I mean,

[00:22:43] Nathan: if the idea, if we just took what we've established in 20 minutes Yeah. Uh, and said, we're covering a lot of ground, our ideal customer right, are creators who. Creators at scale in revenue already. Mm-hmm.

[00:22:57] Who have ambition to five or 10 x their business from here. Right. By building a new product they wanna sell to their audience. Yep. Does that feel like the right ideal customer? I mean,

[00:23:06] Jay: I, how would you, like, I wanna say yes, but how would you challenge that perspective? Right. Especially when like, it's like these folks are becoming more of a network, but these are the people that are kind of already in my network.

[00:23:18] Uh, because so when you think about like, um, leveraging like, you know, outbound sales motions in your audience is like right. Like one of them, one of them. I'm like learning how to be able to best serve them. And the other one I'm already feel like, you know, or like I am, and I'm like, I, I understand their pain points a little bit better potentially.

[00:23:35] Um, but that's, that's changing pretty rapidly as well.

[00:23:38] Nathan: You know, I, I do feel like you're at a stage now mm-hmm. Where you could find the commonalities between the established creators and the established founders. Yeah. Right. And then you find people like me who live in both, right. Both worlds. Or someone like Wade from Zapier who mm-hmm.

[00:23:54] Established founder, everybody, he's like, eh, you know what? Let's create a thing. Like let me dip a toe in that water. Right. Especially as he's excited, you know, I'm just speculating 'cause I haven't talked to Wade about this, but for Zapier, they've been around for a long time. Mm-hmm. And they're pushing forward a ton of AI innovation and all of this.

[00:24:10] Yeah. But like maybe someone who's a customer of them mm-hmm. Five years ago mm-hmm. Is gonna miss out on that. Right. And they're gonna jump straight to a Lindy or something else. Yeah. Right. When Zapier is just as good for this. Yep, yep. And so I could see the established founder going, Hey, let me try to reach customers in another way.

[00:24:28] Yes. And so lemme put on a creator hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To try to help make this trans Yeah. You know, transition in the market. Right, right, right. Um, so I would wanna figure out what these two groups have in common. Yep. Uh, and then probably explore both. But what we know mm-hmm. Is that we're not really interested in doing AI implementation.

[00:24:48] Mm. For. The middle manager at the larger price, 200 million your company, right? You know, or that sort of thing. Yeah. Likely. Likely. Not right now. Yeah.

[00:25:00] Jay: Yeah. Uh, I feel like there's just a lot to, there's a lot to attract there, right?

[00:25:04] Nathan: This, because we're saying, Hey, we can get predictable revenue. Yep. Establish founders or creators, people revenue, have a bunch of fun.

[00:25:10] Yes. And avoid the pain points at the early stage.

[00:25:12] Jay: Yeah, yeah. And, and avoid the pain points of the enterprise. Um, which Right. Like procurement process, that's a whole other episode itself. And, and I bought a lot of, I bought software on behalf of LinkedIn prior and I know it's a pain in the butt and so I'm worried about that a little bit if I were to kind of Yeah.

[00:25:27] Nathan: Whereas here, if you sell

[00:25:28] Jay: Yes. It's faster. The founder feels like Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That makes sense. And if it comes inbound, like maybe we work on it or maybe not after the show, we just, we, so sorry.

[00:25:37] Nathan: Yeah. I think that, you know, as we scale, it's not going to be like we come out with something ideal and then you say, you know what, we're everything outside the circle, we're gonna just immediately say to do it.

[00:25:46] Yeah, exactly. Because like you have a business to run, you gotta, yeah. But you know, hey, this is where we're going. Then it just, every step takes us closer to that. Exactly. Exactly. Um. So I like that. Okay, so we're going establish creators slash founders. Yep. We will. We'll play with both of those. Um, and just see.

[00:26:06] What deals come in and all of that.

[00:26:08] Jay: It's funny 'cause there, there's a interesting flywheel is a little bit of a tangent, um, to try to install some of your flywheel thinking. Mm-hmm. Um, when we work with these founders established or even early stage, uh, they once we're, once we're kind of like done designing and building their product, they also come to us for growth ideas.

[00:26:25] Okay. Um, that's my ba like, you know, partnerships BD sales and the background of LinkedIn and like I'm growing my own business on LinkedIn. And so they're kind of, they're, they're kind of looking for access to creators, um, to work with, to be able to actually distribute tribute their product. Interesting.

[00:26:41] And so there's a, there, it's a little bit of a tangent from ICP conversation, but there's this flywheel of, uh, we work with established founders. Yeah. They want to be able to distribute their product. Uh. How, uh, they go work with the creators that are also in our network. Uh, creators get like equity. They get, you know, like good rev share or whatever, you know?

[00:26:59] Um, and then they start distributing the product that then helps, I dunno. How do we position ourself in that kind of flywheel? Well,

[00:27:05] Nathan: let's, let's sketch that out. We'll just use the bottom part here. What did you say? Um, so it's like build for founders. Let's say, let's say you

[00:27:12] Jay: build for founders. Yeah. Okay.

[00:27:14] How do founders grow their product today in 2025? They likely need to go think of other creator strategy. They're either doing it themselves, like you said, with the Zapier team, or they need to go partner with creators. But there's a, the distribution today is gonna be through audience building. Yep. Or become one themselves.

[00:27:33] Right. Like, you know.

[00:27:34] Nathan: Yep. Okay. So you're building for founders, they're turning to, to grow with creators.

[00:27:38] Jay: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:39] Nathan: And then what would come

[00:27:41] Jay: next? I mean, ideally, like, you know, business, like revenue goes up, like, like creators. Creators and founders win because they're distributing something to their audience that they mm-hmm.

[00:27:50] You know, like there's some success like with, with both. I don't know if that,

[00:27:55] Nathan: this might be just the, we could turn this into a real flywheel later just Sure, sure, sure. Hang out with the idea, but yeah. Right. I think it's like scale revenue and relationships. Yes, exactly. 'cause here, here's what's interesting to me about this.

[00:28:07] Is the more projects that you're building. Mm-hmm. And then you stay involved. You're not like, mm-hmm. Hey, we made this thing, and then we're handing it off. Exactly. Then they're like, all right, how do we grow? Mm-hmm. And you're growing with creators, so you're gonna be building this relationship with the creators.

[00:28:20] Yep. You're gonna be pulling in creators. You already know. Yep, yep. And you're really uh mm-hmm. Helpful in that process. Right. And then it's just like, Hey, we're all winning together. Yes. And then that adds to your reputation, all of that. And so then another creator comes along and you're like, oh yeah, actually.

[00:28:37] Not only do we pair up founders and creators, right. When we do this, we help creators become founders. Yes. And so this is a very loose flywheel, but Yep. It's, it's a revenue and relationships flywheel. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Love it. Love it. Alright, so now let's dive into predictable revenue and then I want get into how we're scaling lead generation as well.

[00:28:56] But how do you. Like what's unpredictable about the revenue? What are the challenges that you've got got into here?

[00:29:02] Jay: Yeah. I, they, these connect. Okay. Because the it, the lead gen is not as predictable either. Yeah. Uh, and so if lead gen is in a good spot, I can close a percentage of them and then we end up, you know, being able to work on those contracts and then.

[00:29:18] So it's, it's like this isn't that predictable. And then, uh, the, the contract lengths themselves end up becoming relatively short contracts. I don't think I've really cracked how to be able to extend contracts longer. Um, we, we did sign two one year long contracts with, uh, early stage founders. Uh, last year and, and that was gonna give us, you know, almost like 250 K of annual recurring revenue, but they both ran outta business, um, given early stage stuff, right?

[00:29:47] And so since then, I haven't been able to kind of revert back to, to the engagement model where, uh, it makes sense for the business and it makes sense for us to have a longer term engagement outside of honestly, like three, four months Okay. Even if

[00:29:59] Nathan: we're successful. Okay. So yeah, we need to figure out how to get the, the contract longer.

[00:30:04] I guess if we solve just these two things. Yeah. Of predictable lead gen Yep. And longer contracts we're there. Yeah. That, does that take care of it? I think so, yeah.

[00:30:14] Jay: And that, that's also giving us the, the confidence in the systems that we have in place. Um mm-hmm. Instead of right now we're, honestly, it's a little bit random.

[00:30:21] It's like, who comes in on my LinkedIn feed and how do I convert them to a customer, you know?

[00:30:25] Nathan: Right. I guess in addition to short contracts, uh, you could have repeat business. Yes. Right. And we want more of that

[00:30:32] Jay: for like expanding like to other services maybe. Kind of touches on this a little bit. It's like, you know, you help them with design and product strategy and maybe you can help them with, you know, distribution or, I don't know.

[00:30:43] Nathan: Right. Right now you really have two products that people buy. Mm-hmm. They're either paying you to help them build out or redesign. A software product? Yep. Or to refine internal streamline. External Internal. External. Internal. Okay. And so it's not like as far as repeat business, you can sell one and then the other.

[00:31:04] Yeah, totally back and forth. That's good. So long as we're going to the right people. The right people. So part of this actually, short contracts and repeat business, are those both solved by reaching the right people ideally, or what else? What else? Like, that'd be the cop out, like easy, like, oh yeah, we just get the right people and then we will get both of these things because they'll do longer contracts, bigger projects.

[00:31:29] Right. But what, what guarantees mm-hmm. That we get repeat business and longer contracts.

[00:31:35] Jay: Hmm.

[00:31:35] Nathan: What, from these right people?

[00:31:37] Jay: I think it goes back to the skills gaps that we're filling for them. Um, okay. The, the, those early cust, the insights from those early customers is that there was no way that they'd be able to find a team like ours, um mm-hmm.

[00:31:50] And, and, and, and pay us the amount that they were paying us, you know? Um, and so it was like this middle ground of, uh, they really need us, uh, because they may not be able to afford, you know, hiring like a million dollar, you know, AI engineer from open ai. Right. Um, but, uh, it's in our sweet spot where we are.

[00:32:08] We're not, we're doing it profitably. Mm-hmm. Um, and so it's. It kind of is a similar sentiment as maybe why more this audience versus this one? Because, uh, they may need, they may need us more as a hypothesis. Right. Um, versus again, like you said, like, great, thank you for your work. I'm just, I have, you know, 40 engineers that will just go build this internally.

[00:32:27] Mm-hmm.

[00:32:27] Nathan: Yeah. That, that's really interesting. So we actually really providing them more value than, you know, than like their kids. Yeah. The SC app, I think is, is really interesting. Yeah. And so finding people, if you want that repeat business. Mm-hmm. Then finding people that you can really help them. Yes. You can really partner with them long term.

[00:32:45] Exactly. And they don't already have a CTO or VP of engineering or someone like that. Right.

[00:32:49] Jay: Right. Or if they do, like we could help them too. Um, mm-hmm. But they don't like, they probably don't have like a full on like team.

[00:32:56] Nathan: That makes sense. Alright, so let's think about how we can do leverage LinkedIn for scalable lead gen for these people.

[00:33:03] So why don't you write up here just for scalable lead gen. And so we're looking for, I guess this is a great time to, to put in these attributes, right? So we're looking for, yes. Uh, established creators, um, you know, looking

[00:33:19] Jay: product, incubation, ambition, or, you know, yeah. I remember the podcast with, uh, you and the, the creator who wrote, uh, the MBA or personal MBA.

[00:33:29] Yeah, Josh Kaufman. Yeah. And I remember him saying like, I just wanna, I don't really wanna do, like, I just wanna keep like, generating royalties off my book. I'm like, great. Like that's that. Like that's amazing. I want to copies of his book. Yeah. And it keeps increasing. That's working.

[00:33:41] Nathan: Yeah. Working well for him, but not, he's not Yeah, exactly.

[00:33:44] In our icp. Exactly. Okay. So we're gonna leverage LinkedIn for scalable lead gen. To reach established creators who want to build products. It's

[00:33:52] Jay: like, yeah, it's like wanna build businesses. Um, but I mean, yeah. Like the product led businesses.

[00:33:58] Nathan: Yeah. And the reason I didn't say businesses is because they've already built businesses.

[00:34:03] Exactly. And I think a lot of them, if I think of like an ol ab doll or a James Clear mm-hmm. They know what the product can become if it really takes off. Exactly. But they're probably not committing. To that being the next phase of their career yet. Sure, yeah. It's a bet. Because if they, yeah, exactly. It's an experiment.

[00:34:20] Yeah. Because if they were committing to that, then they would've hired, like hired, raised Exactly, exactly. Those. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Um, and so in this case, you're like, no, we're building a product. Right. And if this works right. If this gets to 10 KMRR. Yeah. Forget it. We're shutting it down. Yeah. If it gets to 30 KMRR.

[00:34:37] Yeah. We're thinking hard about it. Exactly. If it blows up to a hundred K. Yeah. We're raising, we're gone.

[00:34:42] Jay: Yeah,

[00:34:42] Nathan: exactly. You know, we're going all in on this. Yep, yep, yep. And so, alright, so with that profile of who we're looking for, I'm really curious, what content could you create mm-hmm. That would mm-hmm.

[00:34:54] Tell that person Right. Yeah, we should

[00:34:56] Jay: chat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Um, uh, why did you want to build a product yourself?

[00:35:03] Nathan: Uh, I mean, I, I love building products. Uhhuh, we didn't, just seeing them come to life Yeah. Inspiration from other people Okay. Is a big thing. Right. So, to answer my question with your question, uh, I would say one piece of content, I would want to see a bunch of profiles Yeah.

[00:35:19] Of creators who have done it before. Who have done this, whether you helped them or not. Yeah, exactly. Right. So a LinkedIn carousel that would crush it. Case studies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is five creators, yeah. Who have launched products off of their audience. I love it. Yeah. Don't you write that down.

[00:35:34] Jay: I love

[00:35:34] Nathan: it.

[00:35:34] Yeah.

[00:35:35] Jay: Uh, there's actually, there's actually so many of these. Um, oh yeah. So I've been learning, you know, it's, it's outside of the main ones, like Ali Abdal and James Clear. There's a ton of folks that have been doing this. Um, some of them fail pretty miserably too. Um, but

[00:35:48] Nathan: okay, so getting into that, you know, you're mentioning some of these fail.

[00:35:52] Yeah. That's a whole thing. Yeah, exactly. That's five that have failed. That's its own content. And the full reasons why. That's its own content. Love it. I mean, this is stuff in my essay, uh, the Billion Dollar Creator. Yep. That I'm talking about this, I'm broader. Right. 'cause we're talking about, uh, skincare lines and tequila and apps.

[00:36:09] Right? Right. Love that. But there's, you know, if you just say within the software niche, you could write about a ton of that. Yes. And it immediately pushes positions. You Yeah, yeah. As the person. The person. Yeah. I love that. Uh, and then you do a deeper dive case study on here's the one that we made. Yes, exactly.

[00:36:26] Yeah. Or here's how we think about it. Right, right, right. Love that. And then, uh, we did an episode a little while ago on, uh, a minimum viable brand. Mm-hmm. And how when you do outbound mm-hmm. Content mm-hmm. Or, uh, sorry, outbound sales, often it falls flat because someone goes to look up who you are, there's nothing there and there's nothing there.

[00:36:45] Mm-hmm. And so this is the kind of thing where you want the right minimum viable brand mm-hmm. To position you as the expert, right. For all of this. Right. So if I'm looking around, okay, who should I use to do this? Yep. We've got this flywheel. Mm-hmm. Someone in the network is like, oh, you should talk to Jay and Casper studios.

[00:37:02] Mm-hmm. And I'm like, all right, look it up. And then the kind of content that I'm seeing mm-hmm. Is like dialed in. Oh. Jay thinks about how creators should build products all day, every day. Yeah. And he does it. And here's a case Studies of failures and why and like, right. Yeah. You know, and you could start to break down, uh, you know, here's why James Clear's app worked.

[00:37:21] Mm-hmm. And someone else's didn't. Yeah. Right. Or actually, I mean, you'd be fascinated if you're like, Hey. In this niche. Mm-hmm. It seems like there's a 70% hit rate on these products, at least from what I could find. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in this niche, it seems like there's a 10% hit

[00:37:34] Jay: rate.

[00:37:34] Nathan: Yeah. Right, right. Like why is that?

[00:37:35] Jay: Those are good, like breakdowns in stories and interviews or you know. Yeah. If they're down for that, you know, to talk about. And the

[00:37:40] Nathan: other thing is, I think some of these questions you don't even have to answer. Okay. You can throw out those questions Okay. To, to the community and be like, like you'd ask that question that I just did and be like, why is that?

[00:37:50] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then in the comments you can speculate and other people can speculate. Yeah. And then, uh, rumor has it that comments help amplify things on LinkedIn. Uh, uh, thoughtful, not as much

[00:38:00] Jay: thoughtful comments. Yeah. Not AI generated comments. Right. That ruins your brand. Like, I mean, like, I don't, you know, I don't have internal data on this, but just look at your own feed and Yeah.

[00:38:09] When you see those same people that are just AI generating content Yeah. It just immediately like diminishes their, their own brand.

[00:38:16] Nathan: Right. In my

[00:38:16] Jay: mind, you know, I, I, I

[00:38:17] Nathan: think, I think so. Absolutely. Um, but if you have that level of engagement, then Yeah, exactly. It in that thoughtful discussion. I love that.

[00:38:25] It's gonna be, I love that. I love that meaningful.

[00:38:26] Jay: Do you think it's a big enough market, uh, like the tam, like the tam for established founders, uh, versus, you know, established creators? Established creators?

[00:38:35] Nathan: Yeah. My gut reaction is yes, absolutely. Yeah. But let's question that. Okay, so what's an average?

[00:38:43] Project size mm-hmm. For an established creator

[00:38:46] Jay: anywhere between like, like, let's say like 50 to 80 K right now. Okay? Mm-hmm.

[00:38:50] Nathan: Now, let's say that this project works and it's happening on an ongoing basis, gets

[00:38:54] Jay: closer to like, you know, above like a hundred, 120. Yeah.

[00:38:57] Nathan: Yeah. So let's say you're, you're building 10 KA month, building the MMVP for 50 k.

[00:39:01] Yeah. 50 k. Yeah. And then you're going to maintenance scale and establish it and maintenance and all that for 10 KA month. Exactly. Yeah. Right? That's right. And so maybe the first year were a hundred k. Yeah. Um, you know, 150 k, something like that. Yep. If it works. Right. Alright, so then in that case, um, how many do we need to get to 10 million or to, sorry, to 2 million, right?

[00:39:24] We need not a lot fif 10 to 15. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on Yeah. What we're doing. Because you're probably still taking on a few other projects. A few other ones here and there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's not, that's not too bad. So are there 10 to 15 creators at scale? Let's say the entire, later the business model becomes, we're actually just maintaining these.

[00:39:42] Yes. And like, I think 10 KA month to maintain and improve an app that's doing 30 to a hundred KA month is Makes sense. Pretty reasonable. Yep. Yep. You don't wanna be so expensive. No. That they're like, I just gotta build, bring this in house. Exactly. Um, but you know, you can have that balance. So if we're talking.

[00:40:03] You know, we need 2 million recurring mm-hmm. Is 166,000 a month. Mm-hmm. And so, okay, well that's 16 on maintenance. Yeah. Yeah. Or 10 on maintenance plus one new build every month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, I think that the, the market is big enough. Yeah. Especially if you're not exclusively focused on, just on established creators.

[00:40:25] Right, right, right. If you're taking the, the established founders that are adjacent to that, then it's.

[00:40:30] Jay: And it's a thought experiment, but which one of these markets grows over time? My, my bet is actually this one that the creators do. I mean, I think, I think, you know, like established founders, I mean, it's a whole conversations around like, you know, VC backed companies and like, maybe you don't need as much capital these days.

[00:40:45] And I, I don't know, I think they

[00:40:46] Nathan: both grow Yeah. Very significantly over time. Yeah. Because the number of people out there that have lots of ideas and incredible amounts of money Yes. Like. Yeah, that's,

[00:40:57] Jay: yeah,

[00:40:57] Nathan: that's pretty huge. But then, but creators, I think grows much faster.

[00:41:01] Jay: And, and, and the reality is, like the line between these two are kind of blurring.

[00:41:04] Nathan: It's, it's very, you know

[00:41:05] Jay: what I mean?

[00:41:05] Nathan: Yeah. They're blurry today and they're, it's gonna be, it's gonna get a

[00:41:09] Jay: thing in the future, really. Right, right. It's going to get so much. Do you believe that like, it's like to be an established founder, you need to be an established creator. To be an established creator, you need to be established founder.

[00:41:18] Nathan: I think there's tons of established founders that will do amazing things and never become creators. Right. I think the next wave of, of established founders, a substantial portion of them are gonna use creator techniques to get there.

[00:41:31] Jay: Yes, exactly

[00:41:32] Nathan: right. Right. Um, so I think that's growing very significantly.

[00:41:35] The other thing that I wanted to get to in LinkedIn though mm-hmm. Is what this content allows you to do of the case studies and the failures and why, and the breakdowns and all that. Mm-hmm. Is I really think it lets you do targeted outbound. Yes. Because then that instead of that. Uh, DM or something being like, Hey, have you ever thought about this?

[00:41:54] Mm-hmm. Because actually they've probably thought about it. Yeah, exactly. Um, you could, you could break it down by niche. Mm. Let's say that we do fitness, food. Mm-hmm. Uh, business and productivity. Yeah. As three niches that we want to go after. Right. We'll take all the case studies that you've done. Mm-hmm.

[00:42:12] Distill them down to those, like bucket them into those niches. Mm-hmm. And then. Individual posts and carousels. Now you can DM these founders. In the food niche. Yeah. And say, Hey, I don't dunno if you've ever considered this, but Right. A growing trend that we're seeing, right. Is food content creators. Yeah.

[00:42:29] Building their own apps. Right. Right. Here's an example of five if you ever want to chat. Yeah. That would be helpful. Let me know, right. That I'm for sure. I'm a hundred percent clicking that one. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then if I flip through it Yeah. Like I might not take the call right away. Sure, sure, sure.

[00:42:42] Yeah. But you've worked in sales and bd follow the follow up process. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so that like. Engagement from outbound is going to be through the roof. Yeah. Compared to the usual outbound, which is like, would you like to buy our new ERP software for Yeah. You're like, oh my gosh. It's like

[00:42:58] Jay: this long.

[00:42:58] You're like,

[00:42:59] Nathan: right, because you like this is gonna be visual. Yes. It's gonna be, yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's visual and storytelling.

[00:43:04] Jay: Yeah. It is interesting 'cause this is where like my product hat goes back on, like you could just start creating products for them in the outreach. Uh oh. Because the effort is so low, at least mockups, right?

[00:43:17] You, you can, you can, Hey, uh, here's, here's like the case studies for your niche and I've already like, kind of built you a rept agent, uh, or a product that can, that can kind of give you a sense of what this will be. Um, oh, that's interesting. I'm wondering. Like take it and go if you need that or, or you know, now you can work with us to actually make it a business.

[00:43:36] Nathan: Yeah. Um, first reaction was, I love it. Second reaction was I wonder if it devalues the entire offering, potentially. Right. Because a worry that I have with development getting so easy Exactly. Is that then people say like, oh, it's, I can just throw something out quickly. Exactly. I don't need you. And they miss out on mm-hmm.

[00:43:54] The. Product and market research. Yeah. The user experience. Mm-hmm. The scalability, all these things that are so important. Yes, exactly. And then what I think would be sad for this entire industry, right, is if someone, if the established creator says, oh, I can create mm-hmm. AI driven software in 10 minutes.

[00:44:11] Yeah. So I tried that. It failed right off the entire category. Exactly. Right. It's like, no, you just, you just do it Right. It poorly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You just wanna find that balance mm-hmm. Of how to. Make sure that nothing you do devalues the offering. Right, right. It positions it well. Yeah.

[00:44:30] Premium. Um, so it, yeah. It's this premium thing is, yeah. Actually it's the other thing that creators care about very deeply Mm. Is their brand reputation. Yes. Yeah. And really delivering value to their Yes. Audience. Yeah. I would focus on that a hundred percent. Yep. And then I would say, Hey, and actually, because of how mm-hmm.

[00:44:47] The product development world is mm-hmm. We can move faster and test things. Right. Uh, to deliver more value, and we can do that with less cost. Yeah. But that's like the, you don't want the person who is trying to, who's excited about it because it's cheap, fast, and easy. Exactly. You want the person who's excited for the outcome.

[00:45:06] Yes. And they're willing to pay and then they get tipped over to doing it. Yeah. Because companies like yours have made it cheaper, faster, easier.

[00:45:14] Jay: Right, right. Maybe the, maybe the, the other PI love that. Maybe the other piece around, um, trying to provide a lot of value. 'cause the framework I was trying to take was like, how do you provide value with the outreach?

[00:45:24] Nathan (2): Mm-hmm.

[00:45:25] Jay: Um, part of that is content. The, like the case studies. Yep. Um, uh, maybe it could be some like audience discovery features. So like, it feels like, like how do you know, how do you know what to build for your. Audience. Um, ironically, I'm trying to think about that myself as we think about how I can.

[00:45:43] Maybe build a product myself. Yeah. To be able to diversify my revenue streams set of the agency. Um, it's actually kind of hard to know what to, what to build for your audience and Right. Maybe we can automate some of the discovery process, but again mm-hmm. That you have to be mindful of that on your previous point around devaluing the, the broader service.

[00:46:00] And that's like, you know, scraping, scraping tools, like pulling in a bunch of information, you know?

[00:46:05] Nathan: Yeah. I think that, I don't think automating discovery. Or making a clear path, uh, devalues it. Right. Because you're the one saying, Hey, you gotta do this, right? Yes, exactly. Don't just rush in. Mm-hmm. You've got a brand on the line.

[00:46:20] Yep. And so if, if you say, Hey, we have a proven five step process mm-hmm. For yes. Breaking down, for establishing what's the right fit for your audience, product, audience fit is so, so important. Mm-hmm. And all of these people think, oh, I've got a hundred thousand people following me so I can just make something and put it in front of them.

[00:46:40] Well, those are some of the failures. And you're like, they think that, and here's five examples of that. Yeah. And you kinda look dumb. That doesn't work. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, what was the, I feel like M-K-B-H-D and uh, he had a bunch of, like a iPhone wallpapers or something like that. Okay. And he just. Like the highest quality brand, Uhhuh perception of him.

[00:46:59] Everything he does Uhhuh and everybody just tore him apart because Oh really? It was a cheap, cheap, cheap product. Cheap product. It was just like not his brand. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah, yeah. You know, you are reviewing like the highest quality cameras and cars. Yeah. What is this wall launching? You're like, yeah, this felt like a quick cash grab.

[00:47:14] Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, you can say, Hey, we can take you through this. Yes. And this also distinguishes you from, you know. Uh, someone's brother or nephew or whoever. Yeah. Stuff. I spent 10 minutes with cursor. Yeah. I can build this. And it's like, yeah, of course. Yeah. You can. You can. I can.

[00:47:31] Jay: Yeah. That's awesome.

[00:47:33] Yeah. There's way more to it though. Yes. Yeah. The hard part is like, um, getting people to get to that point, uh, because AI tools are becoming easier to be able to build product. It's just a fact. Yeah. And we're, we're using that to our advantage at the same time. Um, at the same time it's, I, I hope that it's kind of creating, like the, the tab is increasing and people don't want to build product because it's so easy to do it.

[00:47:53] And then a percentage of them will realize that, you know, cursor and lovable is not gonna be able to maybe necessarily take them fully to the next level. Right. Um, but honestly it's hard to know that Yeah. Even how fast, like the space is changing, you know? Right. But the discovery, the audience research mm-hmm.

[00:48:07] Like that. Yeah. Like, that'll be maybe later to be automated away. Yeah.

[00:48:12] Nathan: Okay. Coming back to all of this and looking at it, one thing I was thinking about in predictable revenue Yeah. That we touched on, but I think is really important, that repeat business and the, you know, it's kind of in all of this, uh, the short contracts repeat business, the skill gap.

[00:48:26] What we're really doing is we want to be a long-term partner. Yes. Um, yep. And that's where the recurring contract makes a lot of sense. And so it's like, Hey, here's the whole roadmap. Yeah. We're gonna launch and test this. Yep. And for 50 grand Yep. We can do that. Yep. But then here's the whole roadmap of how exactly every single month Yeah.

[00:48:46] We've got new improvements coming out. Totally. And the reason this is important is because as a creator mm-hmm. You care about your reputation. Yes. You care about delivering value to your audience. Right. And so you're not gonna be in this position of like, you threw a one off out there. Yeah. And then

[00:49:02] Jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:49:02] Nathan: Hopefully the best.

[00:49:03] Jay: Yeah. It's a hundred k. It's not a hundred km rra. Like it's a failure. Yeah. It takes time, right?

[00:49:07] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm just looking back at this. I think that we've, we've gotten, we've gotten somewhere we, we've gotten somewhere. So cool. You know, we're, we're scaling this goal of 2 million.

[00:49:17] Yeah. Let's go back to the constraints for a second. Yes. 50% profit, right? 10 people. 10 people. Yeah. Our hypothesis is that we need to really focus in on right established creators and founders. Mm-hmm. And this like mm-hmm. Give and take between that, that line, that's becoming more and more blurred. Mm-hmm.

[00:49:36] We need to really find ways to partner with people who are thinking long term mm-hmm. And want to build, turn a product into a real business. Yes. And they have an audience to do that off of. Yep. And then we want to really focus on attracting those people. Mm-hmm. By putting out content that I'm pretty sure no one is putting out this content right now.

[00:49:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's not a category. Yeah, exactly. I think I probably write a more than anyone about that. About creators building businesses with real enterprise value. Yes. Right. Exactly. And I'm not even in this sub niche. Yeah, yeah. And I write about it once a quarter. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:50:11] Exactly. So like you could absolutely own that. Yep. Yep. And then not only will your content attract new leads mm-hmm. But then it gives you the perfect path for outbound.

[00:50:19] Jay: Yeah.

[00:50:19] Nathan: Yeah. I think we're done.

[00:50:22] Jay: Let's get to 2 million. I love this. This has been awesome.

[00:50:25] Nathan: Alright, well I'd love to hear just a little bit about how you're feeling coming in right to this versus how you're feeling now after we've scribbled on the board for an

[00:50:33] Jay: hour.

[00:50:33] This

[00:50:33] Nathan: has

[00:50:34] Jay: been great. Um, I. You know, one, one thing I've been meditating on myself, just as an individual is how your own personal strengths and weaknesses enter into your business. And I definitely have, you know, uh, that's happened for me. I like experimenting with different things. I like mm-hmm. Seeing like how, you know, uh, different types of customers we can help and, and sometimes that is beneficial, you know, it got us to here, uh, but it, it probably, it won't get us to there.

[00:51:00] And, and so this has been helpful to kind of, uh, hit one of my Achilles heel, which is. Potentially not being as focused. Yeah. And this is getting us, this is getting us to a place where I've been thinking about it, but because of the lack of intentionality behind it, I've been not focusing on it enough.

[00:51:16] And so, yeah, I'm excited. I'm like, I'm excited to, uh, to get going after this and, and really start to work on these pieces of content. Um. Yeah. And yeah, just like really help hopefully scale the business. Sounds good. Yeah. Well, thanks

[00:51:28] Nathan: so much for coming on. Thank you. Where should people go if they are, let's say hypothetically?

[00:51:32] Yes. An established creator. Yeah. Who wants to build a product, right. That provides real value. Yeah. To get in front of their audience.

[00:51:39] Jay: Yeah. I can find me on LinkedIn, uh, Jay saying, uh, and then our website is also Casper Studios xyz. Perfect. Sounds good.

[00:51:45] Nathan: Thanks for coming. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry Show.

[00:51:51] Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else do you think we should have on the show? Thank you so much for listening.