Why A-Players Never Need to Look for Jobs (CEO Reveals) | Nathan Chan DSH #1001

Here's a good story.

I was sued for trademark infringement.

It wasn't called founder.

The magazine was originally called Key to Success.

We had the Success logo and then Key 2 in the middle, but we had Neil Patel on the front cover and he covered the Key 2.

You can guess who sued us.

And I get this letter in the mail from Success magazine that they're suing me for trademark infringement.

All right, guys.

Digital social hour.

We got Nathan Chan here from Australia.

I think you might be the first guest I've had from Australia, man.

Really?

There you go.

Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for representing Australia.

Represent.

I've been there, by the way.

Really?

Yeah.

What were you doing there?

I went with my mom just on vacation, but I went to Sydney and Melbourne and got to pet a kangaroo.

Oh, there you go.

And eat one.

Oh, yeah, man.

High source of protein.

It actually tasted pretty good.

It tastes like chicken.

Yeah, and there's a lot of them.

So you kind of have to eat them out there because there's so many of them.

Yeah, yeah, that's a thing.

Do they just like pull up to your house there?

How common are they?

Are they like deer?

No, not as common as deer.

But look, like where I grew up in the suburbs, not like I'm from Melbourne.

Grew up in the suburbs.

And like.

We we there's like a like a lot of nature, a lot of land where we are.

And like I can drive out, you know, close to my parents' place and you can see them like a lot but no not that common they're pretty peaceful though for the most part right yeah yeah it's funny you see all these memes online where people are like fighting and boxing with kangaroos and stuff but yeah no look if you walk towards them they'll jump

funny man

um were you always pretty entrepreneurial in australia because it's not as advanced as the us right no so when i started founder i had absolutely no network my mum was a nurse my dad was a teacher i didn't know anybody really that started a business or started an online business.

I heard about stories from

friends of friends.

But yeah, no, man, like Australia is not like, look, we have companies like Canva, like Adlassie and massive startups, but like it's just not the same as America, right?

Like the mindset, the mentality, we have something called tall poppy syndrome.

Have you heard of that?

No, what is that?

Well, basically, it's where for whatever reason, culturally,

you're often put down or looked down upon if you want to achieve, you want to do great things, you want to build something massive,

something big in yourself.

Oh, tall poppy syndrome.

Yeah, yeah.

That's fascinating.

So growing up, you were kind of ashamed to be an entrepreneur then?

Well, here's the thing, man.

I used to, you know, just sell things at school.

Like, you remember you could burn DVDs?

Yeah, I'd sell PlayStation games.

I used to do all sorts of things like that.

But,

yeah, look, I didn't think I'd become an entrepreneur.

I just kind of fell into it I think it's something you're kind of born with and molded early on in your life yeah look it depends it depends so for me I always was trying to get ahead I was always like you know a bit of a hustler but

nah man like

honestly I I never thought I'd be here.

I started founder purely from I just wanted to do work I enjoy.

Like life is too short to not do work you don't enjoy.

And look, I know you've had these experiences.

Like you've had, you know, you used to be an e-comm, right?

And then you moved to podcasting.

You love it so much, right?

Like, so for me, I started founder purely out of the desire

to find work that I enjoy.

Like, that's how it started.

Like, I started to interview people.

No one in my network.

No one used to get back to me.

And I was just having fun and I created this magazine.

And And like, what I found was like the stories that I was like, because I started founder 10 years ago.

What I found was the stories were so amazing like interviewing these people I had to share it with the world and I started to put out this magazine four months later I got an interview with Richard Branson and then the thing kind of spiraled but dude I was taking founder the digital magazine to job interviews like really

not thinking it was going to be something so I just kind of fell into entrepreneurialism fell into like entrepreneurship wow and it was one of the biggest if not the biggest magazines in Australia right yeah for sure like you know the the brand we've got Forbes fast company entrepreneur you know ink magazine and founder is is like one of the top magazines in the space now we're a global leading brand we're not as big as I'd like us to be we're not as well known as I'd like us to be but we're certainly getting there like you know if you if you ask a founder

More times than not, someone would know the brand.

Right.

It's definitely recognizable.

You do well with the magazine covers.

I can even physically visualize the Damon John one and a few other ones.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

Yeah, hats off to you.

So with founder plus, is that the pivot away?

Because I know the magazine space is hurting right now, right?

Well, look, it got to a point where we just use the magazine as lead gen, right?

Like the magazine is awesome, so we just give it away for free, right?

It's like an incredible, incredible magazine that you get, I guess, over 100 editions now, all digitally, like through our platform.

We just give it away for free.

It's awesome.

And then our real focus is now building our membership site.

Because what I found was I started to interview all these awesome founders like yourself, right?

And but we're really niche focused on entrepreneurship, starting, growing a business.

And what happened was a lot of people started to ask in the community, hey, how can I learn more from this person?

Hey,

I love that this person talked about sales, but like I want to get more from it.

And so what I started to do was like, how could I get these people to teach?

How could I get these really awesome founders that have actually done it to get them to teach on a platform?

Because yeah, the course space is massive now.

Everyone's selling a course, it seems, right?

And I thought,

what if I could go out and I could find these awesome founders that we're already speaking to, we're already interviewing, telling their story.

We know that people love them.

Perhaps they just want to focus on building their business instead of actually selling like courses and stuff like that.

And what if we partner with them and get them to teach on our platform?

So kind of like a masterclass for entrepreneurship.

And yeah, I launched that officially a couple of years ago, but really going all in there.

Nice.

Yeah, it's been a journey, man, but it's been awesome.

I love it, man.

Yeah, I think you interviewed me for one of those, right?

We interviewed you for one of our events, one of our summits.

Yeah, yeah.

We go to a lot of live streams.

Yeah, that was an AI event, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you were on the forefront of that, too, which is great.

It seems like you're very on top of things, on top of trends.

Oh, look,

the only way you do this stuff and get ahead of trends is just spend time in the space.

See where people are going, see what's moving.

Like, you know, membership space is massive now.

Like with school.

School is crushing.

Yeah, school and Hormose.

Like it seems now that a lot of people that are selling online education, digital products, they'll want to move to the membership model.

I was working on that a couple of years ago and it's not as easy as people think.

It's not.

Payment processing is hard in that space.

A lot of headaches, but if you could build up an MRR, it helps the company valuation a lot.

Yeah, for sure yeah for sure but for us I started to set like for founder we had single courses right and you know Damon Johns taught a course or Joe Decina the guy that he founded you know he purchased tough mutter and he founded Spartan like which like really cool founders we get them to teach give back and we're just doing single courses but what we found was we were doing a disservice to our community our customers and a lot of people start asking once again hey I've bought like three or four of your programs why can't I get this in a subscription

and that's how it naturally happens

so it's it's it wasn't for us like oh I wanted to create a membership it started with hey how can we get these awesome founders legit founders that are actually doing it that actually like their business is building the thing that they're teaching like they're doing e-comm or they're building an agency or they're building a SaaS business that's their thing they're not going out and teaching and perhaps they want to give back and we give a platform where you can give back and yeah that that started and we started to do single courses and eventually it got to a point where it's just like we have so many programs like why not just package it up and turn it into a membership that's purely focused and that's that's a transition in of itself dude because so many people think okay you know the MRR play all right well I'm gonna get all I need is like a thousand people pay me a hundred bucks oh that's awesome right and I'm making a hundred grand it's a million dollar year MRR ARR I can get a great value great multiple on that But people forget that just because someone buys or enrolls in your membership doesn't mean they're going to stick.

Right.

There's a drop-off.

Man,

you have to really focus on the customer.

The churn, yeah, I just had on a guest right before you.

His name was Tyson.

He's a sports better.

And his drop-off is 10 to 15%, which is really high.

But he said in that sports betting space, it's actually low.

Yeah, wow.

Because sports betting is so volatile.

So if you have a losing week, you could have 25% of people drop off right there.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

How's that a business?

It's a tough business.

That's why you need to focus on community, which is what you've done.

You've built up the social media channels.

You've built these community channels.

Yeah, look, community is key.

And I think we niche down as well.

We just focus on e-comm.

So that allows us to really speak to a certain kind of person.

I know a lot of people doing

memberships that can often be quite broad.

For us, we're like, focusing really on the niche of e-comm.

You want to start an e-commerce business, you want to grow an e-commerce business.

you can learn from us like for $99 a month.

It's $500 a year.

It's like super cost-affordable.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's a no-brainer.

We would have spent millions of dollars producing

courses, programs, building out the platform.

And I feel like e-commerce,

it's definitely hit its peak in the U.S., but I feel like with other countries, dropshipping is still really hot and upcoming.

Yeah, look, it depends, right?

For us, believe it or not,

our biggest customer base is in the U.S.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

yeah.

Biggest customer, yeah, yeah.

Because I thought dropshipping kind of hit its peak a few years ago.

Oh, look,

for us, when it comes to e-commerce, we don't really teach dropshipping.

We teach people to build a sustainable brand.

Oh, right.

It's like founder, right?

Like people teach people to build a brand.

We're more about owning the customer, own the relationship, building something that's a scalable asset.

Dropshipping is a very hit and miss.

Get rich quick, use Facebook ads.

It can work, don't get me wrong.

It's a great, maybe a great starting place for people to understand products, understand product market fit, understand media buying.

But yeah, no, our whole methodology and framework is building a brand, solving a problem, not just finding some product that you can just, it's trending.

You can try it day trade.

Like, that's not a business.

There's a lot of that on social media.

People teaching the get quick online stuff.

Yeah, 100%.

So, yeah, no, look, for us at Founder, we teach people how to actually build a long-term, sustainable business.

It just comes back to the kind of founders we interview, right?

Dude, I've interviewed,

you probably were the same as me.

You probably interviewed over 100 billionaires, right?

Not billionaires.

You've definitely got me beat on billionaires.

Okay.

I've interviewed maybe 10.

Yeah, okay.

Because I interviewed tons of super, like, well-known founders.

If you don't know their company, you would know them.

They're all built sustainable businesses.

And that's kind of like our kind of ethos at like the word founder.

Like if someone's into if someone's drop shipping are they a founder maybe maybe not have they founded a company maybe

you know they're more of an internet marketer right like you're already

it definitely should be treated as like a stepping stone i started off with drop shipping a lot of my friends did but they're not doing that anymore yeah that's right that's right so it's a great place to learn but for us we just kind of our ethos is around you know We interview founders, we have founders give back on our platform, and we teach people how to found a company and build a business.

What's your process for interviewing a billionaire?

How long are you prepping prepping and how does the interview go

so i have a re like a team that helps with the pre-production um

i

i go through

like for us now man

when it comes to the process we really

we're really about the storytelling like like and and the more that we can get the guest

to share the difficult stuff, right?

Like not enough people talk about how hard it is to build a business being vulnerable yes yes that's the stuff we're looking for right so in terms of prep I'd say I'd spend maybe an hour or two and look I fortunately I have a team that helps and yeah I'm looking for the stories I'm looking for the interesting uniquely interesting stories or the you know the stuff where it you don't hear people talk about like you know you've got an incredible network.

You would hear crazy stories from founders, right?

That, you know, have been so close, losing millions, tens of millions of dollars, like all times that you've almost thought about giving up because every single founder's gone through that, man.

Like every single founder has got to a point where they're flying so close to the sun that they might lose it all, right?

But they don't.

And, you know,

the question is, if you don't experience those moments, maybe you're not pushing hard enough.

You're living too comfortably, right?

Exactly, man.

Like, and that's what life's all about.

Right.

It's like making a move.

Even myself now, when I go through

a couple month periods where I'm like, things are too easy right now.

Let me go public speak at an event or something, like put myself in an uncomfortable situation.

Yeah, dude, you have to.

You've got to always be challenging yourself.

Well, look, when you're getting to reaching, like...

interviewing someone's a billionaire or multi-millionaire

they've built something of true worth and significance And to get there, you just have to have times of adversity, right?

You have to have battle scars.

And that's what I want to hear.

That's what we want to share.

But if you don't do enough research, how are you going to know?

How are you going to pull that out?

Because generally, people aren't that vulnerable, right?

Like it depends on the person, but you do interviews all the time, man.

Usually people are surface level, right?

You're sure that you're not going to be able to do it.

Especially a billionaire.

They've been PR trained.

They're taught to kind of suppress emotions for the most part in that level of business.

Yeah, man, you really have to push.

Yeah.

You have to ask.

You have to warm them up.

It's not that easy.

Yeah.

Damon was a good interview.

He got vulnerable when I interviewed him.

Yeah.

Shout out to Damon John.

Yeah, he's awesome.

Yeah, he was a good interview.

I've had some challenging ones for sure, but those always make me a better host.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes when they're so closed off, it's like, okay.

Maybe I could have done better.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Look, it's an interesting one.

Sometimes you find, like, because I do EPS interviews, do you have done for a long time, right?

Sometimes you find, is it the guest that carries the show or is it you that carries the show?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And it's your job as the host to really try and push and get the most out of that person.

And then also know your audience too, as what's going to be interesting for them.

Right.

Yeah.

You do well with the fact that, because a lot of people can't relate to billionaires, but you do well with humanizing them, you know, providing stories that people can relate to about them.

Because sometimes they're so detached from the ordinary person.

Yeah, 100%.

But at the end of the day, man, like billionaires, they're still a human being.

They're still like, they still have the same challenges that everybody has.

They've just, you know, for the most part, surrounded themselves with incredible people.

Right.

Like businesses are built by people.

Like billionaires, like, it doesn't matter how smart you are, you have to have an incredible group of people around you and you have to be willing to have difficult conversations to move on those people as well and like move people around like you have to be good with people but you have to have great people around you but you know when you look at a billionaire

there's so many people behind them that has allowed them to get there right and it's your job as the founder to find and identify and lead those people, right?

It is so key.

It's not a sexy thing people talk about when it comes to building a business, but it's like absolutely everything, man.

Yeah.

Right?

Like I just met John.

He's like, he seems like a really smart, super savvy dude that works with you, right?

Like, how'd you meet John?

We just met last week.

My friend told me he just moved here and was looking for a job.

There you go.

I feel like he's crazy, right?

But there was something that you identified.

I saw his struggle.

He grew up in a rough environment and I actually liked that because that builds character.

Yeah.

Sometimes when you're spoon fed too much, it's hard to really come out of that shell.

100%.

So, he's hungry.

He's hungry.

I could sense it off him.

Exactly, right?

Like, he's doing stuff I'm not even telling him to do.

How good is that?

It's amazing.

I woke up.

Yeah, I woke up to two Google Docs full of all this useful information this morning.

See, that's what I'm saying.

So, like, you look at a billionaire, right?

It's easy to look at that person and go, Oh, how wow,

they're so incredible.

And it is incredible what they've been able to build, right?

But they're no different to you or I, right?

They're no smarter than you or I.

They just

they've had a shit ton of luck, right?

They've worked so hard.

There's been so many times where they've flown close to the sun, right?

And

they've got this ability to find great people to work with them.

100%.

Like, that's so key, man.

I've seen Cuban talk about the luck stuff.

Yeah.

Because even he says himself, he had a lot of luck to become a billionaire, the timing of his companies

and everything.

And I know you've interviewed him too.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but man, businesses are built by people.

It seems so simple, but so easy to forget.

Everyone's looking for like the next tactic or hack or you know, TikTok shop or like whatever it is, right?

But

the biggest hack I believe in business is just finding exceptional people and just like

finding a way to keep them motivated to keep working with you and you know finding out what they want and you know how can you align that with your business goals and just building a great company and culture where it's just like like you said like how cool is it that john's thinking right like that gives you so much leverage right how can you give how can you find great people you can just let them go and they go off and they build a part of your company for you that's what you want man absolutely it's not easy to find not easy most people want to follow instructions do the bare minimum work check out early Yeah, exactly.

And it's easy to do that, you know?

Exactly.

You know, as someone on a payroll job, why would I spend more time on something I don't have to so i get the mindset yeah exactly but entrepreneur mindset is kind of the opposite yeah 100 that's the difference there yeah but incentivizing employees that's that's where i'm trying to figure out you know

because i'm not a fan of salaries dude i feel like people do the bare minimum just to collect the salary and i get that that's what i would do if i was in that position so i need to think of better ways to incentivize people yeah well look it depends right it depends what your goals are right

show me show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome.

So, how can you align

your goals with the show, with this podcast, with this business, to

where you want to go, where perhaps your team members want to go, how can you align that?

And how can you give them KPIs that recognizes and incentivizes and rewards what you're going after?

But from my experience, like,

Look, it depends on the quality of the person, but

good people know their worth too.

They know their worth.

And if they're commercially savvy enough, when you get to a certain like level of talent that you're looking for,

if they're commercially savvy enough to be in the position they're in, then they know their worth.

And

it's hard to get people to work off just perhaps

like a commission only.

It depends though.

It's a great test.

It shows how hungry somebody is.

But oftentimes, you know, people that are super savvy, commercial, that can build businesses and they typically build other people's businesses,

they know they're worth in the marketplace.

Absolutely.

Where have you been sourcing your top talent?

Ooh, look, we've used recruiters in the past, but I find one of the best ways is through the network, like my network or my team's network, friends.

You know, all the most game-changing hires that I've made, majority of them have been through my network.

A warm referral.

Yeah, 100%.

Like, you just,

it's really tough for job boards and finding people that way.

I found that.

Yeah, it's a needle in a haystack, right?

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Because oftentimes why people are looking at a job board, A-players, they don't,

like A-players don't have to look for a job.

People keep finding them.

It's like dating apps.

It's like the hottest girls aren't on the apps.

They don't need to be on the dating apps.

Correct.

100%.

Yeah.

That's right.

It's the same thing.

You want to find A-players.

Oftentimes, A-players don't have to look for a a job, man.

The next job finds them.

That makes sense.

Because if you're that good, people are going to be approaching you.

Correct.

And that's what I was saying before.

Like, if you're that good, you're commercially savvy, you know your worth, right?

So you take a certain kind of deal to not have base, but you can structure, you know, maximum upside on both sides, right?

And minimizing downside.

There's always, always different ways of structuring things.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Warm referrals.

So I have a WhatsApp shot of all the previous podcast guests.

Oh, yeah, John's just going to admit.

It sounds awesome.

Yeah, but like you were saying a lot of people post uh like their friends looking for a job in there and they're like a great person and they get hired within a few hours yeah it's crazy so there you go i definitely agree a warm warm intro because the trust is there you trust this person they've worked with them in the past they produced these results yeah i'll hire you yeah 100 and the thing is right

sometimes with recruiters what's cool

there's pros and cons people don't necessarily always like recruiters um but the but the pro is there's a lot of work in finding that high quality person

and yeah it would be powerful for me as me as the founder you know tap someone on the shoulder through LinkedIn but you've got to sift you've got to look through it all and then you know the recruiter they're they're head hunting like they're looking for somebody that's done it before that's the key as well like you know I've always heard that Jeff Bezos

when he goes to enter a new market he go he

poaches the top executives from that market.

Wow.

Like the top executives at the competitor, he poaches them in that market and then gets them, plugs them into his

entry business, right?

And

there's a lesson in that, right?

Like how much easier it is for someone to succeed in your business if they've already done it before?

Right?

Like how cool would it be if you got the Joe Rogan's producer?

Jamie.

Like you got one or many of his producers to to come work for you.

How much faster are you going to grow?

Way faster.

Exactly.

And that's the key, right?

How can you find people that have done it before?

How can you find somebody that has seen the movie?

Seen the movie before.

Big as hack, man.

Yeah, it reminds me of Dan Martell buying your time back.

Yeah.

You know?

Because you're hiring these people that have spent X amount of years for a new venture.

So you're saving all those years.

Yeah, man.

He's a super smart guy.

He's blowing up right now.

Oh, yeah.

And that's where content comes into play, which you were early on content.

I remember seeing your content when I was just becoming an entrepreneur in college like eight, nine years ago.

Yeah, there you go.

What gave you that conviction so early on to get into content?

Well, look, I bootstrapped founder, never raised any money.

And I found that it was really powerful how you could take one piece of content and turn it into like 30 pieces of content.

And I'm a big fan of leverage.

So that's what I used to do, man.

Like I started, I started with the magazine, right?

Digital magazine, started interviewing successful founders, sharing their stories.

And then what I realized is like, well, I could have way more distribution if I took this interview and turned it into a podcast, turned it into clips, turned it into an article, turned it into a newsletter, turned it into a tweet, turned it into an Instagram quote, like,

you know, 101 things.

You just get more distribution.

You get, you, you sweat sweat the asset more right because every single interview that you're doing that's an asset where the content goes out you and it's like you're planting a seed like i'm sure and we see this like you would have some guests that do really really well that are super viral but it's probably only a small percentage right but you're planting all these different assets out there and some will hit some will miss but eventually you'll find some that work and that amplifies your distribution and amplifies your reach right yeah so that's how I kind of worked it out.

It was like, okay, well, how can I just leverage that interview?

And I knew as well that there was so much power in having a magazine, dude.

So much power.

So much influence.

Everyone wants to be on the cover of a magazine.

Exactly.

But then also, for whatever reason, when you have these super successful people on the front covers of your magazine, it builds.

trust by association.

And that's what's built the brand.

Trust by association.

These guys are effectively ambassadors for our brand.

So then people know the brand.

It's a great name, too.

Great name.

Founder without the E.

Like we own the word founder, and that's synonymous amongst entrepreneurship with the E or without the E.

Do you listen to founder?

Do you read founder?

Do you watch founder?

Are you a member of founder?

Like, yeah.

Such a simple name that it's like perfect, right?

Yeah, but dude.

Here's a good story.

You want a story.

So when I first started founder, I was was sued for trademark infringement really first three months of starting someone trademarked it so

it wasn't called founder so the magazine was originally called key to success

and I had Neil Patel on the front cover on I think it was the third edition and we had the success logo and then key to in the middle but we had Neil Patel on the front cover and he covered the key to

so you can you can guess who sued us.

And dude, I was working in my day job,

had like no money whatsoever.

This was like a little side hobby.

Didn't know I was going to go like be found and be where it is, right?

And I get this letter in the mail,

FedEx package from Success Magazine that they're suing me for trademark infringement.

And like, dude, I didn't have the money, right?

Like, and I was scared.

Like, your first business, imagine your first business the first three months, you get served a FedEx package by this big company in the United States that you need to appear in Dallas, Texas.

Jeez.

And, yeah, man,

I just changed the name, sorted all that out by changing the name and called a founder.

Wow.

And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

So that lawsuit helped you.

Yeah, dude.

That was a blessing in disguise.

Wow.

Because, man, like, I would would have had this name, Key to Success.

It's pretty shitty, night.

Not as good as founder.

No, no.

I love one word names.

Like, you think of all the top brands, like all the well-known brands, very, very rarely, they're multiple words.

Usually always one word.

That's true.

Right?

Yeah.

Away suitcases.

Google.

Facebook.

Instagram, Snapchat.

Snapchat's maybe, but Snap you know, Snap like yeah, Most brands are one word.

Ideally, no more than five letters.

Yeah.

I wonder if there's some psychological thing to that.

Not sure.

I don't know, man.

I think it's just cool.

Yeah.

Just float.

You know,

why would you want to say a long word?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, it just seems that way.

Like,

Chanel, you know what I mean?

Like, I don't know why, but what do all these names mean?

Like, that's the thing as well.

Right.

Just random names, and they've become that brand because it's been built.

What did you think of Facebook and Twitter changing their names?

Oh, look,

I'm no branding expert, man, but like

for some reason, look, the Facebook one,

it's still branded like Facebook.

It's not meta.

Like, when you log in, you don't go to meta.com, right?

Like, it's so, it's just the parent, you know?

So I think Facebook was less of a bigger deal.

When Twitter changed to X, I personally thought it wasn't the smartest move because there's just so much,

just so much brand recognition built in Twitter.

Like, X is cool, though, but it's just going to take a lot of work to build it back up.

But everyone knows the platform anyways, but I don't know why they needed to.

Did they need to?

They kind of just followed Facebook suit, I feel like.

The timing was weird.

Yeah, I don't know.

I've heard that Elon Musk always owned that domain.

Oh, X.com?

Yeah, apparently he's owned it for a long time.

And he just wanted to find a use.

Yeah, I think so.

I think that's what that was.

But look, that guy's so smart.

Like, he's making so many moves so far ahead of the curve.

Who knows?

Is he a dream interview for you?

Yeah.

He's on my list, too.

Yeah, for sure.

I made a manifestation list when I started the podcast.

I'm sure you did something similar.

That's so cool, dude.

You got to do that, man.

I've been crossing off names every every month.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you got to do that.

There's something special about that.

I did that too, and I made a top 50 list, and I've gone through most of them.

Yeah, the only look, the well-known founders I haven't interviewed is Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.

And they're all within reach.

Yeah.

Because you're able to leverage all your prior guests now.

100%.

You're one degree away from them, probably.

100%.

Yeah, we will get there eventually.

Yeah, that's how I see the podcast, too.

You're just building up such a massive community.

Now I'm like one or two degrees away from anyone I want, which is insane.

Yeah, look.

There's something very, very special doing it in person.

I'm based in Australia.

I have to do a lot of them remotely when you can do them in person I think it's so much stronger for building network building relationships 100% building rapport being able to connect with that person on a deeper level I think yeah

that's there you there's yeah there's a lot of magic yeah you get a glimpse into their life because you could see their office you could see what they're doing on a daily basis you meet their team it's just way better I've only done one virtual one or maybe two and because they were banned from the US.

Yep, okay, wow.

So I couldn't do it here.

Well, who's that?

It was this guy named Santos Bonacci.

Yep.

And then there was another guy.

He just recently passed away.

Oh, but his name was Tom Palladino.

Yeah, well, there you go.

Yeah.

But I'm like, even with Andrew Tate, because I'm interviewing him, I'm going to fly to Romania.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah.

That would be a fun adventure.

Because it's way better.

Yeah, it'll be awesome.

But I, him over Zoom, it just wouldn't hit the same.

There you go.

I've seen anybody that interviews him, his interviews

really pop up.

Yeah, guaranteed a million views, pretty much.

much yeah wow yeah certain people are just like that they got a really captivating audience yeah and i've been studying all the top content creators and a lot of what i'm noticing is the delivery of the message the editing plays a big role of course but if they're just confident with the delivery borderline arrogant that's like a formula to go viral because i've had on a thousand guests now and i see which ones go viral Yeah, well, yeah, it's the conviction in what they're communicating.

Right.

Yeah, because Grant Cardone, there's a ton of billionaires, but his conviction is just so powerful.

He goes viral every time.

It's also the, look, how controversial.

Like, I've seen

some of your clips and, you know, like the guy that's drinking his own urine and stuff.

Like, dude, that's hardcore, man.

And then he's put on his face and stuff.

Like,

man, you'd like people got to share that.

You know what I mean?

Like, for good, matter, otherwise, right?

Like, I'm not here to throw shade, but that was out there, right?

Like,

you know, you don't see that in your regular feed.

No.

You know what I mean?

I think I might have been the first to break that one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you know what I mean, right?

You're laughing now, right?

Like, this is crazy.

Yeah, I didn't know you were going to bring up that one.

That's a funny one, though.

It was crazy.

Like, I saw that clip.

I saw that clip.

So, like, so yeah, I don't know.

I don't know how,

like, how much conviction that guy have, bro.

But, like,

that's just wild.

Yeah.

Yeah.

there's that, there's that line in social media where how degenerate do you want to be for views, right?

Yeah.

So I don't want to base my whole brand off that because that's a never-ending loop.

And then you go crazy if you're just relying on like doing the craziest things you could think of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But look, it's all about the hook.

The hook, for sure.

Yeah, the hook is the first three seconds.

If it's not interesting, I'm gone.

Yeah, and TikTok trained that into people now.

Yep.

YouTube views are down.

I'm talking to so many youtubers they're down like 60 really on average really because shorts are just destroying attention spans man have you noticed a dip in your your podcast listeners yeah we noticed a dip but only because

some apple changes and stuff like that did you see that did you yeah yeah i'm down on audio but even like just the youtube long form is down too

uh yours aren't down

Oh, we've been on a journey with YouTube, man.

Journey.

Gone up and down, up and down.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's saturated now, too.

Yeah, it's a hard platform to conquer.

We're starting to work it out now, but it gets going again.

Honestly, the hardest because you could go viral on Instagram and TikTok with no followers.

Yeah, 100%.

But YouTube, I don't see it that often.

Yeah, it's tough.

It's tough.

There's a lot of interview shows now as well.

Yeah, tons of shows.

I mean, when I look at the charts, because I study all the top shows, it's just like new shows constantly are in the charts.

Yeah.

Like the Hawk Tour girl is in the top five right now.

She just started last week.

Yeah, I saw that.

That's crazy.

Crazy, right?

Did that make its way to Australia, that video?

Yeah.

Yeah, it did.

Wow, she was everywhere.

She was a worldwide phenomenon.

Dude, Australian subculture is very similar to the US.

Like, we're always dialed in on what you guys are saying.

I figured that.

Yeah, I hear that a lot about like countries that kind of follow our lead.

So Canada, United Kingdom, Australia.

They see what's going on here and then a couple months later, it'll trend over there.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

You think you'd ever get a second spot out here in the U.S.

for business?

We had an office in New York.

Oh, you did?

Yeah, we had an office and a studio, and then I shut it down over COVID.

Oh, yeah, it was way too expensive.

Yeah, well, we weren't using it because lockdowns were crazy.

Oh, they were bad.

Yeah.

And then, look, we'll get it back up and going eventually.

Nice.

That'd be cool to have like a...

I actually am looking for a studio in New York.

Yeah.

I got a film with a couple people out there.

Yeah.

Oh, that's awesome.

So, yeah, you're going to base out of there?

well i film once a month in a new city now because not everyone comes to vegas yeah so i've been filming a lot in la texas miami those are like hot cities but it's been hard to find a spot in new york to film out

surprisingly i filmed with ryan serhant but i had to go to his office um but i can't really find a good studio out there yeah okay interesting um look for us uh we went to a place called

What was it called?

I forget now off the top of my head, but

it was a decent space, and you just build it out yourself.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, you have to build it out yourself.

It was like a warehouse space.

Oh, yeah.

Just send me the link after this.

Industry City.

Industry City.

It was in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we're in Brooklyn.

I'll check it out.

Industry City.

It was really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then you can just customize the space.

Yeah, there's a lot of good guys in New York I want to hit.

Yep.

Yeah, Gary B's out there.

I think Barstool Sports, they got some guys out there and a lot of Yankees and Knicks players.

Yeah, that's the good thing about the U.S., man.

You could go to any city, any major city, and get like 10 interviews in.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, you'll never run out of people here.

I mean, like I was telling you off camera, I filmed 1,200 interviews in two years.

That's insane.

In the U.S.

Yeah.

I'm catching up to you, man.

No, I know, I know.

I know, dude.

How many have you done?

Dude, I think I've just tipped over a thousand.

Yeah, you got to be up there.

I think, I think, yeah.

Because you've been doing 10 years.

Yeah.

That's a lot, man.

Well, it's been an honor.

It's finally great to meet you in person, man.

We've been talking for a while.

Where can people find out about Founder Plus and what else you have coming on?

Yeah, you just go to founder.com.

Founder.com.

Want to learn how to start or grow an e-commerce business.

We'd love to support you on the journey.

We put out a lot of content around business entrepreneurship.

Perfect.

We'll link it below.

Thanks for coming on, Nathan.

Thanks for watching, guys.

As always, check out the links below.

See you next time.