BH”
Nathan:
Hey Moshe, hope you’re doing well mate.
Moshe: Hey Nathan, you as well… So let’s get started. Tell us a little bit about your back story.
Nathan: So, back story is I started this media and publishing company called Foundr Magazine. And I started it because I was sick and tired of doing work that didn’t really motivate me or inspire me. And just stumbled into starting this magazine. And as time went on, I really really fell in love with the process. So I started on the side, just as a side hustle. Wasn’t even called Foundr. And it was called something else. Sued for trademark infringement by one of the biggest business magazines in the states. And then things just took off from there.
Changed the name … we got sued, changed the name to Foundr. And then after about 14 months I quit my job and I’ve just been building it from there. Basically we started off as just a magazine. Then I started really growing other channels, not just the magazine, but the blog and the podcast. And we started producing content in many different modalities. So whether it’s audio, whether it’s video, whether it’s written, magazine, books, you name it. Now we’re really getting into courses. So that’s how I ended up building Founder. Just being consistent, producing consistent content over a long period of time.
And then really making sure that we mastered certain channels. Then, as time went on we built up this audience and we started to get these incredible interview with all these amazing Founders. And then yeah, just went from there. So I saw that I could make a living from it pretty much from day one. The first day we launched made $5.50. After that month made about $70 ’cause it was a magazine on subscription. The recurring revenue grew. Took about four months before we started to make a profit. Not much but it was enough. And just built that up over the next 14 months so I could eventually leave. What was it that brought Founder finally making some money? Literally just consistency. Just showing up every day and producing great content for the magazine. I don’t think Founder ever went viral to be honest. It was literally just a series of compounding. I remember I used to think to myself, “Wow, I can’t wait until Founders blows up or makes it or whatever.” And it’s funny just saying this now. Yeah, we’ve built up a decent size audience but I think we really just scratched the surface with really what’s possible for the brand. I don’t think we’ve gone viral yet. There’s
a lot of people that don’t know about the brand. So our formula for differentiating Foundr, we strive to be better than the rest. But it’s a big market. There’s guru’s, lot of guru’s. There’s a lot of big publishing and media companies. A lot of big educational companies so the way to differentiate ourself is just followed what feels right to better service our audience. Founders started off as a magazine and now we’re much more than a magazine. We’re an entrepreneurial brand that produces content at scale. So the way we differentiate ourself is try to make our content better than most peoples paid stuff. And we really pay a lot of focus and attention to design and we only produce the highest quality content. And we have all these incredible rock stars of our industry features on our podcast or our magazine. We just take it from there. So that’s how we’ve been able to do it.
Moshe:
What advice would I give to a younger version of myself before I started in the early days?
Nathan:
Probably more around just focusing on one thing at a time. In the early days just did far too much. Now we’re pretty focused.
Speaker 1:
Best ever advice I’ve received in life. It’s not about how much money you make it’s about what you keep.
Who are my role models and how have they affected me and my journey? Someone like one of my mentors Mitch Harper, massive role model. Darrel Way, another one of my mentors, one of my old bosses. So yeah, these guys have massively affected my life because they not only have built tremendously large businesses that have huge value and significance but they’re just really world class people. And world class leaders. And they’re the kind of people I aspire to be.
Speaker 1:
An entrepreneur I’d aspire to be like. Probably my moms been my most influential in my family to my success. She’s just really really savvy. Really really resourceful. Very very smart. Yeah, really knows what to do if something doesn’t work and always comes up with great ideas. She’s really good.
Moshe: What’s your winning forumula in business and in life?
Nathan: Winning formula for a business and in life that I believe in. I think just consistency and then just yeah, learning from really smart people.
Moshe:
What failures and setbacks or challenges that have been most instrumental to your growth?
Probably being sued was a good one. Probably growing Founder, hiring a ton of people. They’re not working out, what to do next? And struggling to scale it. We’ve kind of gone through that challenge now which is really exciting.
Moshe:
What’s next?
Nathan: We’re gonna really grow and scale our educational based offering and produce a lot more content on the free side as well. I’m really excited to really double down video content. We just wanna produce ridiculous amounts of free video content. But then at the same time, produce a lot more audio content. But at the same time produce a lot more courses. I think there’s real opportunity for us to really produce something that is truly world class and disruptive in the entrepreneurial educational market.
Moshe:
How do you pay it forward?
Nathan: Doing what I do at Foundr. Just really wanna share insights that we get from some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation for free basically. That’s how we pay it forward. 99.9% of our content is free.
Nathan:
So yeah. I hope this is helpful mate. I’ll speak to you soon.
Moshe:
Thanks Nathan, speak soon.