Nathan Barry Archive

Packy McCormick writes the popular newsletter Not Boring, which is all about strategy and investing, from big companies to small. Packy was the VP of experience at a company called Breather, but when he left that role to start another startup he ended up creating a blockbuster newsletter instead! Not Boring has grown to over 30,000 subscribers. Packy’s newsletter is generating fantastic revenue, a...

Today’s interview is with Nathan Baschez. There aren’t too many people more familiar with the creator economy than Nathan. He started his own company with Hardbound and was the first employee and VP of Product at Substack in the early days. Now Nathan runs a company called Every, which is a bundle of premium newsletters. In this episode we dive into how Nathan creates tons of high-quality content...

Khe Hy’s been called the “Oprah for Millennials” by CNN, and his writing is all about transforming your relationship with time, work, money, and, ultimately, yourself. Today we talk about how he runs RadReads, his newsletter for over 25,000 people. It’s an incredible newsletter where Khe gets super tactical about Notion, but also goes deep on living a better life, organization, productivity, etc....

Louis Nicholls is the co-founder of SparkLoop, an email newsletter referral program where you can have each of your subscribers refer their friends to unlock cool rewards. SparkLoop is amazing. They’re growing really quickly in the audience-building space and ConvertKit actually gives away free SparkLoop accounts to all of our creative pro customers. In today’s show, Louis talks about how to incre...

Dan Frommer runs a popular newsletter called The New Consumer, which discusses topics on technology and consumer brands. Beginning his career at Forbes, Dan has a long history in the technology field.  His extensive experience includes Editor in Chief at Recode, Vox Media’s tech and business news publication, and technology editor at Quartz. He also spent years building up Business Insider as its...

Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity. He runs Forte Labs, an education company that helps knowledge workers use technology to become more productive.  He earns over $1,000,000 per year by using his 40,000-subscriber newsletter to sell his online masterclass, Build a Second Brain. In this interview, Tiago shares newsletter essentials, including:  How to get your first...

Lenny Rachitsky sold his company to Airbnb years ago and he spent a bunch of time there as a product manager, working on growth. Now Lenny’s full-time job is his simply-titled “Lenny’s Newsletter”, where he shares everything he’s learned about building products and teams. With over 3,200 paying subscribers, Lenny’s Newsletter brings him a larger income than he had at his tech job! In this fun inte...

Byrne Hobart is a chartered financial analyst who loves writing about the intersection between finance and technology. He writes The Diff, one of Silicon Valley’s most popular newsletters. In this episode, we dive into how Byrne launched his newsletter, how much he’s earning, and how he publishes five times a week! You’ll learn why Byrne isn’t worried about pirates getting their hands on paid news...

Dan Runcie is the founder of Trapital, the newsletter that breaks down the business of hip hop. We learn all about his favorite hip hop artists, of course, but he also shares what indie creators can learn from the world of hip hop and so much more. Having switched from a lucrative paid newsletter to a consulting business, Dan explains the thinking that went into his new business model, and what it...

Dan Oshinsky was the Director of Newsletters at both Buzzfeed and The New Yorker. Today he runs his own email consultancy called Inbox Collective. Dan has seen newsletters from the early days, and has been instrumental in developing the newsletter strategy for some of the largest publications around.  In this fantastic interview, Dan shares takeaways for large newsletters and indie creators alike....

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the founder of Ness Labs, which applies neuroscience research to productivity and creativity. In addition to writing articles and running a growing community, Anne-Laure also writes a newsletter subscribed to by over 25,000 “mindful makers”.  In this conversation, we talk about building up a newsletter audience from zero. Anne-Laure tells us why newsletters grow differently...

David Perell is known as “The Writing Guy” on Twitter, but did you know his email newsletter has over 40,000 subscribers? Not only that, but he sends THREE newsletters a week… every week!  In this in-depth conversation, David shares exactly how he uses Twitter to grow his audience, how he maintains consistency with such a high rate of output, and how he’s built an amazingly profitable business by...

In this episode I sit down with Tim Soulo, the CMO at Ahrefs. He shares behind-the-scenes on how they've built a company to over $1M in revenue per team member.

 Trying to avoid center stage? You can get all the benefits of building an audience without putting yourself in the spotlight. In fact, you don’t even have to be the center of attention to connect with your peers and build relationships with your clients. Allowing your brand to take center stage can bring your business the returns you’re looking for and the email list you want. Ruben Gamez is here...

 If you’ve ever felt like your blog posts are a shot in the dark, this episode of the Nathan Barry Show is for you. Working to build an audience never has immediate results, but don’t be discouraged by your lack of response! My guest today will tell you how to produce valuable content over time in order to generate the right kind of response you need to see your business succeed.  As a professiona...

Today we’re sharing what sorts of things you should give away to build your brand and how to create them. Content is a great way to up your value and really fine tune your audience.  There are a few important things to consider when picking an audience, and it’s important that you choose wisely. Strive to maintain a personal brand, instead of a subject-based brand; that way, even if you deviate, y...

Wracking your brain trying to develop the best marketing campaign? When you think about it, marketing is really just big companies competing for attention. But I’m here to tell you about one of the biggest cheats these companies are missing out on. While they’re too busy fighting each other over a few seconds of everyone’s time, you can be working toward building an audience. That’s right, an audi...

Nothing I do is completely original. In fact, so many ideas that people credit to me are originally from someone else. In this episode I want to give credit to the people who’ve provided some truly impactful ideas to the world. This is not a complete list by any means; I’m sure I’ve missed someone, so I plan to add to this list over time.  I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to leave a comment if y...

In the previous part of this episode we met three talented people – Brandon, Samuel, & Jason. We chatted a bit about their successes with self-publishing and learned how they used my book Authority as a roadmap for creating and publishing their work.  In this episode, we dig deeper into how each of these fine gentlemen came up with the topics for their books, dealt with technical challenges, a...

Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to make an independent living selling your expertise? In my book Authority I lay down an end-to-end plan for how to research, write, and publish a book to an excited and profitable audience so you can do just that.  As it turns out, the methods I outline in Authority work extremely well for many people. Luckily I was able to get a few people who’ve ha...

Why don’t people share financial numbers? In this twenty-minute audio essay I delve into some of the reasons why people are afraid to be financially transparent, and why I’ve chosen to ignore those reasons in favor of exposing my revenue numbers (and why you should too).  Show Notes Sacha Grief – one of the people who’s inspired me most to start publishing books and be transparent about the proces...

One of the most effective ways to show potential customers how your product could be useful to them is to feature it in a promo video.  Well-made promo videos can be inspiring, insightful, and fun. The problem is, video can take a bit of time to learn how to do right.  Luckily I have a good friend who runs his own video production studio.  His name is Caleb Wojcik; you might know him from Fizzle,...

If you dream of selling your own products and creating a lifestyle of flexibility and independence, it’s going to be pretty tough to do that without an audience. Not only that, but that audience must be comprised of people who love what you do and have the financial means to pay you for solutions to their problems. There are many ways to build an audience, but very few of those methods lead to a p...

This is part two of the live event Sacha Greif and I put together in August of last year. As a reminder, you can watch a video of the event here , and you can listen to part one here if you missed it. Enjoy part two of The Self-Publishing Hangout! Sacha, Justin, and Paul are all super helpful, knowledgeable, and experienced in their respective fields. You should definitely follow them and subscrib...

In August last year Sacha Greif and I put together a live event called The Self-Publishing Hangout. We brought on Paul Jarvis and Justin Jackson to round out our panel. You can watch a video of the event here , or checkout my podcast episode below.      Since recording that episode each of the guests have gone on to do amazing things. You should definitely follow them and subscribe to their email...