More Money Podcast - 186 Starting a Successful Business with Little to No Money - Nathan Latka, Entrepreneur & Author of How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

For this episode of the show, I interview young entrepreneur Nathan Latka who has released his first book (like…today!). It’s called How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital, and it’s his guidebook on how to successfully start a business or side hustle without that much money at the beginning. You see, Nathan has a pretty interesting story. He basically realized that because of the Internet and social media, the possibilities and opportunities for making money were limitless. He’s started many businesses himself, his first being one where he built and sold Facebook pages (back when you could add apps and widgets to Facebook pages). The reason I wanted Nathan on the show was to talk about a very important, though sometimes overlooked, topic of personal finance — making money. So many personal finance books (or experts) give advice assuming you’re an employee at a company and you’re limited by your salary. Well, that doesn’t have to be the case if you don’t want it to be. Just take my personal finance journey. I worked numerous 9 to 5 jobs since graduating university, but I always had a second job or side hustle to earn more to I keep reach my financial goals sooner. And at that time, none of my friends or family were doing it. Luckily, I was inspired by other people in the personal finance community who were doing the same thing, so I followed suit. Now, so many of those people who thought I was crazy for working more than one job have started side hustles themselves. And that’s what I hope this episode (and Nathan’s book) help you with. Hearing that you don’t have to start out rich to become rich, you don’t have to be a born entrepreneur to start your own business or side hustle, and essentially your past should not define your future. Another thing I really want to press is that money should never be the end goal. Building wealth isn’t solution, it’s the journey. The solution or reason you’re building wealth is so you can live a life that is meaningful to you. For me, I work hard to earn my living so I can afford to travel, have more spare time to fly back to Vancouver to visit family and friends, and sometimes just have the flexibility to take a Thursday afternoon off to read a good book when it’s snowing outside. Why do you want to build wealth? Really define that, then check out this interview or Nathan’s book for some guidance on how to go about making that a reality. Grab a Copy of Nathan’s Book As Nathan mentions in the podcast, his book wasn’t meant to be an evergreen book you can pick up in 20 years and it still be relevant. The business and digital marketing are evolving so quickly these days, his advice may not work even in a few years from now. So, if you want to learn what’s worked for him recently, grab a copy of his book, read it and take action NOW! For full episode show notes visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/186 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Episode 186 of the Mo Money Podcast. I am your host, Jessica Morehouse, and I'm excited to see you back for a fresh new episode of the show. On this episode, I am interviewing Nathan Lotka. He's the principal of Lotka Capital. He's the executive producer and host of the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, also CEO to two companies that he's recently purchased. Not only that, he is the star of the hit online reality show, Latakus Money, which has more than 1 million viewers that tune in for every episode. And he's on CNBC's Million Dollar Road Trip. He's also the founder of the software company, Hayo. And he's on the show to share with me his knowledge and

expertise when it comes to basically how to be a capitalist without any capital. It's his book that's coming out. And so we talk all things how to get rich, not how to get rich quick, because that's a bunch of load of crap. You know that? I know that. We all know that. But basically, he kind of shares a bit of his story. He's a young guy. He's been able to make a good amount of capital and kind of shares a bit of his story he's a young guy he's been uh able to make a good amount of capital and you know kind of uh live that dream lots of us dream of making a lot of money uh but he's going to talk about how exactly he he did it and just some of his um advice and tips on things that he's kind of you know found that worked for him not necessarily that'll work

for you but it may. Basically, I wanted him on the show because he's a young entrepreneur and has a very different perspective. He's a millennial. He experienced the recession and he knows the internet and social media. He knows our language when it comes to the kind of the new digital entrepreneur. And so I thought it'd be interesting to have him on the show and talk about money. And that's exactly what we're going to do in this episode. And before I get to that interview with Nathan, I just have a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is supported by Sonnet Insurance. How much are you paying for home, auto, or tenant insurance?

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you did a nice video of a coat review on YouTube and I tell you, it was looking great. I just needed the detachable fur and it would have been a home run, right? I love that you watched that video. It was such a ridiculous video I did. So thank you. I loved it. Well, thank you so much. You have an incredible story and you have a new book coming out and I love the cover. You look very, like I showed it to my husband. I'm like, is this guy for real? Or is he, is he a humorous guy? You seem like you have a sense of humor. That's what it's about. I'll tell you, I mean, when you're in business, so many people are used to kind of cutthroat and mean and nasty, you know, understanding charm and kind of having a charm offensive can be a real strategy. So we tried to capture that in

the book cover, but I will tell you, your thoughts echo what others have said, which are basically like, this guy looks too fun to be in business, basically. Yeah, that's a good thing because I don't think anyone would want to put, you especially younger people we're kind of over picking up a book with some you know basically old suit on a book like you know you know offense you have a nice new suit and you're like nice and funny so jessica you have no idea this was i've never so this was actually the outfit i wore to the oscars the year prior and this was a tom ford kind of custom thing and i used it i used this you'll see see in the book, I talk about how I only wear a black t-shirt and black jeans every day for systems purposes. This was the first time where I'm like, you know what? I'm

just going to have a stylist handle all of this. That way I can save my energy, save my thought process. And when I got the bill at the end, I'm going, oh my, I'm in the wrong business. I need to be a stylist. Really? Oh God. So not necessarily the best investment. Don't like kind of regret it or. Well, look, I will tell you the, for example, the book, you know, we've pre-sold almost 55,000 copies and we used at the Oscars and there were photos taken. So I think my return on investment on the suit will end up being a positive one, but it was a, it was an interesting investment. And sometimes you have to try things. And I'm sure you get into this in the book and where to kind of spend your money wisely. I think especially if you're at the start and a lot of people listening, even me not

too long ago, when you're kind of in that transitional period where you're thinking of starting a side hustle or you started that side hustle, you'd love to be able to convert that into a full-time hustle. And you understand that you want to invest in yourself and your company, but it's hard to determine how to spend your money. You don't want to waste money, basically. That's always the concern because there's plenty of people that will take your money. That's right. That's 100% right. I mean, look, the way I look at investments, and especially if you're working a full-time job and you have a side hustle and you're going, okay, I have a thousand bucks free this month. Do I put it towards

clothes for work or do I invest it in my side hustle? I kind of think about it as if you can put money into something that is a system that you're building. So think about like a golden goose. If you're putting money into a golden goose, it's going to keep making you golden eggs over and over. That's a great investment. What a lot of people do though, is they actually just, they buy the golden egg. They buy the output, right? The micro cores bag, the vacation, the whatever, they buy the output. But if you're investing that money in a system that's going to keep cranking out golden eggs, that's an investment that will return in perpetuity. And that's a smart investment. Yeah, definitely. So before we kind of get into this, because I know we have plenty to talk about,

I'd love to kind of start with your story because it's very interesting. So that, you know, you kind of talk about it in the book. So at 19, you founded your own software company with only $110 in your bank account. Can you kind of explain how that all happened? What was this company? How were you able to do with hardly any money in your bank account? Well, I have to tell you, it felt so cliche writing that because you hear about all these gurus online that are like, I was like... From $0 to a million. Yeah, exactly. Homeless on the bed with a broken leg and no money on my sister's couch. And so it felt cheesy

writing that. But I'll admit kind of my bias. I was a white man born in Northern Virginia to parents that were middle class. So I was a pretty lucky dude, right? Thank you for acknowledging that. I appreciate you acknowledging that. This is not a story where, again,, I, again, where I was, it was some, you know, crazy story, but ultimately what happened was I was studying architecture at Virginia Tech and, um, the way they do it there is they mix freshmen with seniors. And I overheard seniors, this was, oh, 2009, I overheard seniors going, they couldn't get jobs.

And Virginia Tech was ranked number one in architecture in the country at the problem above Harvard, Cornell, everyone. So I'm like, I'm not going to put myself through four years five years of this program and have a job at the end so i started selling facebook fan pages on the side when i was about 19 or 20 years old and just what i did is i didn't know how to code these pages so i used an interesting tactic to essentially pre-sell a hundred sorry 70 of them at a hundred uh sorry at a thousand dollars a piece so i had about 70000 in pre-sales in my PayPal account. And that was enough motivation for me to basically say, okay,

let me teach myself how to code something called FBML, which is Facebook markup language. Okay. What does that mean exactly? Or like selling Facebook fan pages? Like what does that look like? I know like 2009, Facebook was so different. That's all I'm going to say. Do you remember Jessica back in the day? I do sort of. Is that when you, yeah. Do you want to describe it a little bit for me? I'm curious how much, how many people in your audience are shaking their heads going, I remember those days, but that was back in the days where you could like have apps on your Facebook page to like collect email addresses or there are little widgets you could build into it. We essentially help people build those applications to get leads from Facebook.

I do remember that. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's cool. And so you were basically selling this before you even had a way to do it? Jessica, I am maybe the laziest person you'll ever meet. So there was zero chance I was going to teach myself how to code unless I knew I could sell the thing I was coding first.

And a lot of people hear me say, they go, oh, well, Nathan, that's not, that's not ethical. You can't pre-sell. Well, I would challenge you and say, well, listen, you know, it's even worse is spending a year of your life and maybe tens of thousands of dollars teaching yourself how to code via courses and books and then trying to sell it and not being able to sell it. That's more of a travesty. So what I did is the communication I used when I was pre-selling, I said, Hey guys, listen, Carrie Wilkerson, the barefoot executive was one of my first kind of customers. I said, Carrie, listen, um, I need six months to deliver the product. You've got to pay basically a thousand bucks now for the, for the, for me to get going on it. And at the end, if you're not happy for any reason, I'll refund you. And so what happened

was it took me about two months to drive those pre-sales. And then once I had those, I didn't spend the other four months actually coding and delivering, but I could have, if I didn't pre-sell enough, I could have just returned everyone's money. No problem. No, that's fair. I feel like, yeah, some people are kind of conflicted with, should I learn this skill or get the skill before I kind of offer this service or product? And it's like, in my experience, I kind of did, uh, no, I guess I, it's tricky. Like my, my own business is a bit different just because I started as a content creator. So I was building my audience before ever money, making real money off of them. And then doing that while you were still full time at a company.

I was. Yeah. So I did it on the side. Cause for me, I mean, I work in personal finance, so I'm all about like, I don't want to get into debt. I don't want to invest more money than I can afford. So it was very strategic in how I spent my money. But when it comes to kind of offering like selling or earning money or whatever, before you have that skill, that's kind of what I did because I call myself a personal finance expert. However, I'm not a CFP. I was actually studying to get a designation called the AFCC while I was calling myself a personal finance expert. So I was kind of trying to do sort of like what you did.

And for me, it did kind of work. Because if I waited several years to get this designation before starting this business as a personal finance expert, well, that's two years kind of gone. So it's like try to do both at the same times. It might be the best strategy. It's a lot of work though. It is tricky though. Right. So let me ask you a question if you don't mind me being personal here for a second. How much, how much were you making in your full-time job? Yeah. About like 60K a year. And at what point did you say it's worth giving that up because my side hustle is doing X amount per month? For me, it was after I did... It was in 2016, I earned about 30K on my side hustle for

that year in my side hustle. So I'm like, okay, if I were to dedicate full-time hours to this, I'll be able to match my salary, I believe. And I was able to do that. So that was what I did. But a lot of people, and I always kind of tell people this too, it's like I'm all about the side hustle and just earning as much money as you can. Because in today's day, and I graduated in 2009, so I was like those seniors with a degree being like, crap, there's no jobs. You've got to kind of protect yourself and do what you need to do to earn money. Cause you know, uh, even if you do find a job, you're probably not going to be paid as much as you expect and things are expensive and all this

kind of stuff. So for me, I was, yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the interesting like thing that I see because I have my own podcast where I interview CEOs and a lot of them will go through the story, which is like, they have a full-time job. Their side hustle starts making them a couple grand, but they don't know when to actually cut the safety net of the full-time job. So it's interesting to hear you cut the safety net when you were making about 50% of your income via your side hustle and it matched about 50% of your full-time salary. Is that when you said, okay, I'm quitting and I'm going all in? Yeah. And also like on top of that, I made sure I had basically a really big emergency fund. So I had about $30,000 in cash in a savings account. So I'm like, if things go really left,

I can afford to pay all of my bills for at least one year. Like if I really don't spend that much money on like anything besides the necessities. So for me, those were my safeguards. I'm like, I know I can earn money because I'm earning money and And I have cash in the bank to, you know, keep me afloat if for some reason I don't earn a dollar in a year and then gives me time to find another job. See, this, this is interesting to me because, you know, I'm sure you've read the books that have come out recently, which are things like, you know, the one thing or like, you know, focus on, you know, essentialism, right? They're like, do one thing. And to me, it just doesn't make sense. Remember, I was in architecture. So I worked with engineers and, you know, engineers, when they're building a bridge, they never want a single point of failure.

So if the wind one day hits 100 miles per hour at this bridge, they've got to have seven points of failure. So if one thing breaks, there's six other things to catch them. So it's always interesting to me when people give advice, which is only do one thing, focus on one thing. In my opinion, it's really bad advice. And it's why my first rule in terms of building wealth is do not focus on one skill. You've got to, you know, you can have your side hustle, you can have a job, you know, you've got to have multiple points of failure. Yeah, no, I really liked that part of your book because that's 100%. I feel like a lot of books out there are all about just like, you know, focus and just do this one thing and dah, dah, dah. And it's like, to be fair, there are some good things to gain from that because there's

some in terms of multitasking, you can do it right. You can do it wrong. But for me, the only way that I feel safe being self-employed is because I have about like nine different streams of income. So if something dries up, I can kind of tap another thing to be like, okay, let's focus on this. So I'm never relying on one way to earn money. And for me, that's not security. And I feel like almost more secure and earning my own, you know, living than I was in my full-time job because I happen in companies that have folded

and that's not a fun place to be. So it's always good to have lots of different things and have lots of different skills. So it's like, I have a lot of different skills that I could tap into if I need to, something dries up and I need to, you know, I need to pay my mortgage. I can tap into that and like, okay, let's focus on this. Yep. No, you're right. I mean, when, when I, you know, I do a little bit of pattern recognition. So, so my podcast, it's called the top entrepreneurs. We just passed 3000 people that I've interviewed. And one of the patterns that you see, I know it's, we, it's a whole system. I actually, I put it in the book in terms of how I do the system and drive sponsor revenue, and it does really well.

But my point in bringing that up is a lot of these CEOs, when you look at who's part of the new rich, and I would say new rich these days is maybe more than $5 million made on your side hustle over the span of maybe five years. Almost all of them. And I say this, success is really going to the multitaskers, 100%. When you look at who makes up the new rich, 80%, 90% is really going to the multitaskers. 100%. When you look at who makes up the new rich, 80%, 90% of it, they're multitaskers. Not focus on one thing where there's a single point of failure. Now, what do you say? Because I know you're like,

let's not focus on this one skill, multitasking. Does that also just mean gaining a lot of different skill sets? Because I feel like there's the old way of thinking where it's like, to be successful, you're good at that one thing. And then people want to hire you or give you money because you're that expert in that one thing. But for me, what I see is if you want to be, especially an entrepreneur in this day, you do need to know a lot of different things. You kind of do need to know basic coding. You do need to know marketing and Facebook ads. You need to know all these different things. And some people, I I think have a hard time wrapping their head around. They're like, no, I just want to sell. I want to be a clothing designer and sell that online. I don't want to waste my time on that. Like, what do you feel like? Should people focus on gaining those kind of at least basic skills

or should they just outsource? Most large, in my opinion, money-making opportunities does not come from specialization, but what it comes from is pattern recognition across many different fields. So the money over the next decade or two decades is going to go to the people that have the most, um, surface level exposure to the most amount of things where they can then kind of pattern intercept across many different things. And, um, and, and so that's what I believe. I also, you know, one of the things, one of the things that I also do is, you know, it's, you know, if someone is listening right now and they want to launch a side hustle and they're like, man, I can't, I can't quit my corporate because I need to build a website

first. Yeah. And you go, well, I do a website. I need to hire a developer. I need to, I need to learn how to code my WordPress site. Well, what's way more powerful in my opinion is to be able to understand how to motivate specialists. Yeah.

And what I mean by that is like, you need to know enough about how to build a WordPress site where you can hire or learn how to, or know if you're hiring somebody good off fiber to code it. But you don't, you don't want to do the weaker thing, which is you actually are really bad at managing people and convince people to work for you where you say, you know what, screw it. I'm going to learn how to code myself. That is so, in my opinion, dangerous because then you're going down a rabbit hole where you're trying to specialize and you're never going to be the best in the world at that thing. Right. Right, right, right. So basically having those kind of surface level things so you know if you do want to hire out, you can tell whether they're doing a good job or you know how to hire them. I believe that. I think that's, yeah, smart.

Now, to be fair, I totally learned how to code. I'm not like an expert coder or whatever, but I always kind of build my own website. But to be fair, the reason I didn't just learn that skill just for the heck of it, I used to work in marketing and digital marketing. So I kind of learned that during my day job. So it was kind of natural for me to be like, okay, let's just learn how to build my own WordPress site. Yeah. Well, and there's different degrees of like learning how to code. I mean, I know people that have used the fact that they haven't launched their own website for like, as an excuse to not like going all in on their titles for like three or four years, right? Because they haven't learned how to code, right? I mean, it's just, it's just an excuse, right? So, so I mean, you probably did it differently. You probably use like a drag and

drop editor. You did a little bit of coding, some CSS here and there, some HTML, but you're not doing like backend Ruby development. No, no, no. Oh yeah. No, no. I like, no, the surface level, I use like that visual composer plugin to kind of move things around. And when there's something specialized, I do outsource to a developer to do these kinds of tweaks. But then again, like there's,

there's so many new options too. It's like, I'm a big fan of WordPress because I've used that for years now, but now there's like, you know, Wix and Squarespace or whatever that literally anyone can learn how to make their own website in like a couple of minutes.

Yeah, you nailed it. Yeah. So anyways, that's why I think that first rule is really important is again, you don't want to focus on one thing. I certainly didn't. No, definitely. And so your kind of second thing that you talk a lot about in the book, which I thought was interesting is how, you know, the kind of advice was be unique. That's the only way that you'll stand out. And when we think of kind of successes out there, it's like, oh yeah, they developed this thing that didn't exist. But you're saying that may not necessarily be the route to go. It's about like kind of copying the competitors, but make improving what they've developed already. Is that

kind of what you mean? That's right. And by the way, I am not like a Harvard PhD. Yeah, don't steal. Well, of course. But like what I was going to say is I'm not like a Harvard PhD. I just run like in-depth theoretical studies on this. The book built around there's essentially these four rules and then there's 36 stories with screenshots of how i actually use them between 19 and how i am today which is 28 and so this whole idea of copying here's what i mean when i launched my first company heyo in my dorm room at 19 the reason i launched it and launched it is because I saw somebody else doing drag and drop Facebook fan pages. So basically, Weebly or Wix or Squarespace for Facebook. And so usually, it's very difficult for a guy like me, a business guy, to put together a spec or a wireframe to hand

to developers to build. It's much easier to just link your development team to a site and say, build that exact same version. And once they build that, you then add your own twists. And that's exactly what I did. So Heyo, that company grew in my dorm room from nothing to about $40,000 a month in sales, basically copying competitors and then adding my own twist. And ultimately, you see in the book, there's a screenshot on page 164 where I'm turning down a $6.5 million acquisition offer of a company that wanted to buy the whole thing. Right. And we were only three or four months, three or four years old. So I just see what a lot of people do is they go like, my idea is so unique. I want, you know,

I can't tell you what it is unless you sign an NDA, right? Like, like, let me, let me do something unique. But ultimately every major invention is just copying a competitor and then out executing Netflix, for example. They started it. Do you remember those little, the red things that came in the mail with CDs in them? They're copying basically AOL strategy. When AOL, they put the CD-ROMs in a ton of magazines and stuff and shipped them out to get people on AOL and AIM and using their internet connection. Then Netflix added their own twist, which was let's bring it online. Same thing with iPhone. Internet browsing was not new. And making phone calls was not new. So Steve took something that was familiar to everybody, those two components, and combined them. Two patterns and combine them. That's where you generate wealth. But you have to give yourself

permission to copy. Otherwise, you'll never get there. You'll focus on some brand new unique thing that has no market. 100%. And I think that's, again, a big excuse lots of people use is like they think that they need to create something that's never been created before. But as you mentioned, it's like almost everything's been created. All the kind of new inventions or new apps or whatever are really just like, oh, it's kind of a better version or something that exists but with a different twist. So it's really about focusing on not getting bogged down in this idea that you have to reinvent the wheel, basically, because you'll waste so much time. And I agree. When I was trying to figure out what is going to be my business, I didn't just figure out,

what is no one else doing? And I could do that. like no i'm gonna see what other people are doing that are successful and do my own take on it because you do really have to be careful in terms of you still have to be unique and like true to yourself and offer something that is a bit different you don't want to look like a copycat so to speak well most people are scared of looking like a copycat that's what they tell themselves in their head yeah like ultimately what's the difference between google drive and dropbox? They're both storage. Like they just, maybe they have different colors. Like that's actually the point I'm trying to make, which is like you telling yourself and you being fearful that the world is going to judge you as a copycat is actually usually what's holding you back from going on that thing where you see something that you like, you say, I want

to copy that and add this one twist. Like, like that's the key. So it is a balancing act, but I mean, look, I give people on page 27, a bunch of ideas of how to go find things that they could go replicate. For example, a way to go to Fiverr and see what's already selling, like consulting that people are doing. And then basically how to replicate that same product yourself. Um, but there's a ton of, I mean, there are literally dozens of ways to do this that I outlined in chapter two. Okay, perfect. And I want to talk about your third kind of rule, which is, it's not a good idea to focus on one goal, but you kind of mentioned this as we've been talking about creating a system to get a lot of different outcomes. You want to kind of talk a little bit more about what you mean by that? Yeah, 100%.

Look, there was no moment where I was more excited than when I was in my dorm room in 2010. This is on page 33. There's a screenshot. It says it's from PayPal and email. Thank you for your order. And it was basically a $700 sale I made to somebody and that was my first custom fan page sold. And what I was doing in that is I was essentially selling these one-off things and coding them myself. And I realized very quickly, instead of getting alert and seduced into the $1,700 payment, building a system where people could drag and drop their own things together themselves without me having to do the work myself was actually going to scale way faster. And I could charge $30 to $300 a month for that.

And that's what I did. So the point here is a lot of people, when they think about what they want to do, they set a singular goal, right? They identify the goose, the golden goose egg they want, whether that's a vacation or Michael Kors, whatever, right? What's way more powerful is to say, how can I build a system that generates a Tom Ford suit, right? Or what's a big woman's fashion brand? I'm trying to think like, what's a big women's fashion brand? That's a good question. I'm bad with fashion. I'm trying to think like,

what's a big women's fashion brand? Okay, there's like a Dior dress. I don't know if it's Dior dresses company. I have no idea. But my point is like people are seduced and there are trillions of dollars that go into advertisements that try and convince you

to go after the golden goose egg. But the people that build wealth, again, build the system, the golden goose, and they keep making sure the golden goose gets fed properly, watered properly, because then the golden eggs will always come. So what does a system like that look like exactly? Great example. Look, my podcast is a great example of this. And I'll tell you why. It is now a system that pumps out one episode every day. We make about $7,000 per episode, right? Because of our

sponsor fees. Last year we did over $2.1 million in sponsor fees from that. And it basically just goes automatically because there's a system built for recording the episode, post-production, publishing, marketing after it goes live. And so the golden goose every day is another $7,000 check. I can then choose to spend that on really whatever I want to spend it on. So that's an example of how I use that system kind of in my own life. And my all-in cost to operate that system is about $29 per episode. Interesting. Okay. Okay. So it sounds like you're really into the whole, a little bit of like the Tim Ferriss thing, like not working hard, working smart and creating systems. So you like, it's all about that passive income and not so much trading so much of your

time for that money, but creating systems. So you don't have to spend so much time, but still kind of get that revenue. It is. But Jessica, I imagine your audience is probably a little like me. They're a little bit crazy, right? So you're never actually going to be able to have a four hour work week because you're always going to have other ideas, right? So I think that's a bit of a false sale, but I mean, I work like a dog. I sleep 10 hours every night though, which is great. But every moment of my day is basically I'm building a layer cake. I'm adding systems on top of my other systems to keep driving more golden eggs and making the goose healthier. One question that kind of pops in my mind, because we've talked a lot about doing a

couple of things to grow a business, to be successful, to make money. But is the driving force behind all of this just to gain wealth? Or what is kind of like, for you at least, the big driving force behind all of this hard work? Because it can't just be money, because money is just a tool. Yeah, totally. Look, I mean the podcast for me, I launched because I realized it was gonna be a quick way to get meetings with anyone I wanted. Right. And we've now done 3000 of them. We're booked all the way through the end of 2021. Right. So like I went all in on that, but, but I will tell you, like I'm young, like I'm, I'm not mature enough yet to have like the whole philanthropic, like charity, like what's my bigger life purpose.

I do not have any of that figured out, but I'm really competitive. Right. And I love systems and I love board games in real life. And the way I view business or essential is essentially like settles up the tan or monopoly or risk. But in real life, you're understanding the rule book, you're then playing the game and you're breaking or adding rules like where you think you can push the limits, right. To drive value. And, um, and that's what I'm doing right now. So, so, you know, part of me doing all this is I'm learning these lessons, like I put in the book and now I'm trying to help other entrepreneurs essentially break these rules and do the same thing. And the reason that's important is just, I don't know, do you, do you follow politics at all? Like internationally?

I do. Okay. So like we won't get political, but generally speaking in a dictator, if you look at a country that's run by a dictator, once they're elected, once they climb the ladder to be elected, they make that ladder as complex as possible to ensure no one else can take that same path to the top. Right. And so in China, that might look like, you know, censorship, right. In other regimes, it might look like killing journalists, right? Or changing policies or changing term limits. And what's happened is these people that have created incredible wealth, let's talk about the taxi medallion holders, maybe in New York city. Once they locked up that system and they controlled, they monopolized that industry. They added all kinds of regulation on that ladder to make sure

no one like an Uber could come up really fast. Now Uber's hitting the hell out of them. But my point is people that are wealthy have essentially convinced us, you, me, your audience, that they've got to follow these four rules. And I've just realized actually, no, they're just complicating the ladder so that we can't all get wealthy with them, right? They want to protect their wealth. And so you've got to break these four rules I put in this book to gain that wealth. And I tell that story through how I've done it over the last 10 years. Okay. That's an interesting way to... Yeah, I've never really thought about it that way. I mean, to be fair, I think also coming from lower middle class upbringing, I always had the idea that to get to that level of wealth, you have to start with wealth. And I think that's a narrative that

was perpetuated for a number of years. And it's only, I feel like since the internet boom, that that story's been changing and lots of people, you know, like yourself have been able to create something out of nothing, which is very inspiring. But do you feel like in order to kind of, cause there's lots of different levels of success. We all have different goals. Like some people, I would love to have $10 million or some people were like, actually, I'd be so happy if I just made $100,000 a year. I'd be so thrilled. Do you feel that no matter what though, to kind of follow lots of the, you know, advice you have in your book that you need to have this, like, it sounds like you specifically are passionate about entrepreneurship

as, as just its own thing? What if someone's just passionate about one kind of topic or industry? Do you feel like you have to have this kind of specific entrepreneurship drive to succeed the way you kind of talk about in your book? I'm not sure I understand the question. As compared to what? Sure. Well, just like, for instance, I'm not really interested in creating a business just to build wealth. I'm very passionate about the topic of personal finance. And the reason I'm in this business is because I want to help people with money. That's it. If I couldn't do this, I'd just be working in a normal job. So do you feel like if someone's passionate about

one thing, they could still be successful following some of your rules? Or do you feel like you need to reach this level of success that you have, a millionaire and all that kind of stuff? You have to love the process of building businesses, hiring people, and then maybe selling them and starting anew. Does that make sense? Well, I think the things that I put in the book are patterns that are applicable to whether someone just wants a side hustle at five grand a month or wants to go sell their business for a billion dollars. I mean, it, these patterns are lifelong. Um, I mean, they work, they work over and over again. Uh, they've been, been done for decades. So you and I are different in that. Look,

my thing is I understand money does create freedom. And so I want more, I always am going to want more and more freedom. And then once I have my own freedom, I want more I always am going to want more and more freedom and then once I have my own freedom I want more money to help get other people get freedom right okay like so like that's how I think about it now this book is not for it is not a book that actually breaks down specific industries right like how to be a consultant these are all these are rules that would apply to someone listening right now that might maybe wants to launch their own Shopify shop right maybe they want to do consulting work and they want to make, they want to get their retainers up from a grand a month up to three grand per month. There's email scripts that I used to do that early on in my career. There's, there's scripts in here about, you know, how I email ahead to a five-star hotel resorts

with only 5,000 Instagram, and I only have 5,000 Instagram followers and how I got them to give me free hotel stays. So it's kind of like, how do you live like a king or queen without owning a thing? I mean, so these strategies are all in there specifically to help people create freedom. Okay. Yeah. No, that's, yeah. I was just more just like thinking like a lot of the people that are writing kind of about, you know, how to, you know, be a millionaire like me. A lot of them are very similar and just like their outlook on like like they love building businesses and making money. But I'm like, I wonder what about like kind of folks that are like, I just want to do better than where I am now. Is that a possibility? Do I have to, you know, you know,

just hustle like crazy in order to kind of reach that specific goal? Look, so I am not Gary Vee. If you look at a picture of him, if you look at a picture of him 10 years ago compared to today, it looks like the same pictures when people compare presidents from day one in office when they leave. I mean, he can preach hustle all day long, but he is making himself totally sick and it doesn't look healthy to me. So no, like I will never preach the whole hustle, like kill yourself. Don't say anything. I will never preach the storyline, which is look, I'm rich. Be like me. Yeah. You can do it too. Yeah. Totally. Although I do put my tax returns on page six. So people know I'm not just fibbing out this whole thing. They can actually see the tax return and the results. But what I do want people to say is,

okay, Nathan used these systems to get these outputs. I can copy these systems to get the outputs I want. That's really what I'm trying to get in the book. Yeah. Okay. That's, and I'll tell you why, by the way, you probably see this all the time in your industry. No one can do exactly what I've done. Yeah. I can't put it in a suit. I mean, timing my personality product, Jessica, I have a great comb over. I mean, this thing sells like you wouldn't believe, but no one can be exactly me. So I would never sell. You use my system to get exactly, you know, to do exactly what I've done. But you can still take and get an unfair advantage from the systems and the things that I've done.

So that's a really great question. Because what I found too is you'll read a bunch of books or read a bunch of articles, try to gather as much information from other successful people as possible as kind of a template. You're like, okay, I'm going to try this out. At what point, how do you recognize when to do it your own way? You know, and I'm sure this is how you've probably developed some of your own, um, kind of, uh, rules on how to get successful, but like, how do you know when to take someone else's advice and when to just like, you know, be true to what you think in your gut, maybe this, this is the path, even though I feel like no one else is going this path, if that makes sense. Well, the people that are having the most success today are the ones that

test the fastest. Malcolm Gladwell put in a great book about 10,000 hours doing something to become an expert. I would argue that today to build wealth, it's whoever can get to 10,000 tests the fastest, which is why companies like Amazon that literally are running a billion tests a month on their UI or Facebook. They've got a billion different A-B tests running every day, right? That's why they're so... They know what works if they test it. So the trick for your audience is, how do you increase your testing velocity, right? How do you make sure the nights and weekends that you're working on your side hustle and you're not doing your full-time thing, how do you make sure you're testing as many things as possible and then quickly keeping the winners and killing the losers? And that velocity, training your brain muscle to understand that velocity is critical.

Yeah. So this kind of leads me to this question. How do you know when to, if you're pursuing this one particular business idea, how do you know when to keep on going with trial and error or when to quit and call it a loss and just move on? Well, look, does it make you feel good? Right. So there's a lot of people where like, they're happy, you know, not being rich, not being poor, but they're making a hundred grand a year and that's fine. That makes them happy. Great. Keep doing it. There's other people that want wealth. There's other people that don't want to make really money at all. They want to do other things that make them happy. So like, that's the first, that's the first barometer, but you have, I can't define for

every industry and every person what success looks like. You may have to define that. Right. And then the trick is though, that you do the exercise of actually defining that at the start and giving yourself and saying, I will quit if this thing doesn't happen by this date. I think that's smart. And then actually doing it and then actually stopping if that doesn't happen. Absolutely. I think, yeah. And do you want to talk a little bit more about before you kind of like, you know, start working towards whatever your goal is, what are some things that people should kind of write down or think about or plan out before kind of taking action? I really like that advice on just like defining what success means to you. So you always have that to refer back to. Yeah. So the question is, the question is what should they plan beforehand? Yeah. Yeah. the question is what should they plan before yeah yeah well again it's hard for me to answer that question the way i decide what kinds of things to go after is i look at kind of what's

working and i try and go up like for example a bunch of magazine businesses right now are going out of business right you know fortune time magazine fortune magazine money magazine like just sold there's a bunch of magazines going out of business i just launched a magazine, fortune magazine, money magazine, like just sold. There's a bunch of magazines going out of business. I just launched a magazine. And the reason I did that is because it's a, it's a, it's a counter storyline to the storyline that everyone's going out of business and press will pick up a counter storyline every time. So the value of that press is actually what is making my magazine successful. Now, 10,000 people read the magazine every month and they pay seven bucks a month for it. So it's a nice little side revenue stream. Um, so I look at, you know, when I'm planning on what to go into next, I look at, are there things that I believe in that are counter to the average, which is important,

by the way, because the average American is worth about negative $4,000. So you know, you're onto something. If all your average friends are telling you that's a crappy idea, right? If you listen to them, you'd be worth about negative $4,000, right? So you have to do counter things. And then the second thing is like, is it in a space that makes me happy? And three, is it a system that I'll enjoy building? Like, is that a board game I'll enjoy inventing? And if all those things are true, then I go.

Yeah, no. And I mean, that's kind of your last rule is don't appeal to the masses, which I think is a really important thing to think because I feel like that idea of appealing to the masses to get everyone involved so you can make the most profit, it's not accurate anymore. That system just does not work. It's all about... Now, do you mean by that focus on a niche or just be very conscious of who your audience is so you're always being very focused? Yeah. So the rule four here is don't go mine the gold in California, but it's like sell the pickaxes to the gold miners. You know, you like got the wealthiest off the gold miner people that launched jean companies and they sold the jeans to the miners, or they launched a shovel and pickaxe company and sold the tools to the miners. So the question your audience should

ask themselves today are what are the prevalent trends in their industry? And whatever's the hottest thing, that's also where there's the most competition. So don't do that thing. Do the thing that that trend needs to survive. What I mean by that is, let's see, meal delivery companies like Blue Apron or Uber Eats. They all need to figure out last mile delivery. So there's a company called OnFleet that's handling that. They're growing very fast. They don't do meal delivery, but they support a hot trend. And so your audience wants to try and identify that pattern. You want to pick something that you can sell that is supporting a hot trend, not the hot trend itself, because that's where

the most competition is. Oh, I like that. That's, yeah, that's really smart and a different way to look at it too. I like that. Yeah. So that's my, that's my thought process there. Yeah. That's yeah, that's really smart and a different way to look at it too. I like that. Yeah. So that's my, that's my thought process there. Yeah. That's great. Well, thanks so much for sharing all of your, I know I've like given you a lot of questions and I really appreciate you sharing your wisdom. I have fun. Do you have fun? I have fun. Oh, I always have fun, especially when people know what they're talking about. Yeah, no, it's great. I, you know, and, and by the way, you know, you make me look, you know, so nice and so good because and so good because we're an author with Random House and I'm a first time author and I failed English. And so you only asked me a good

question. You failed English? What? Oh my gosh. I will tell you very, very quickly. I don't know what page it's on, but I think it's on page 200-ish or somewhere in there. There's a screenshot of a acquisition offer I had for Hale when I was 23 and it was for six and a half million bucks. And I, that day that I turned that down was the same day I read that Mark Zuckerberg turned down a billion from Yahoo. And I was thinking, well, if he can turn on a billion, I can turn down 6.5 million, which by the way, at 23, 24 would have changed my life. It was the stupidest decision I ever made to turn down that offer. So ridiculous. I mean, your audience is going to read this part of the book and they're going to go, Nathan is an idiot. It's page 243, actually. And you see, it says the purchase price will be up to 6.5 million. It will be paid in the

following manner, blah, blah. I turn it down. And then I sell for a little bit less many, many years later. So my point is like the book is meant to, I literally take screenshots from my email, from my PayPal and Stripe accounts, from my tax returns, from my email psychological triggers to get very wealthy people on my show. It's pretty vulnerable. It's open. I don't want to pitch like, hey, come be a millionaire like me. I'm not pitching everyone can do this. What I'm saying is if you read this, the four rules and the 36 stories, you will definitely pick up nuggets that give you an unfair advantage in building your own side hustle. And that's a win in my book. So if we read your book, you're going to learn something

different than lots of the other books on the market because you have a very personal and different experience than other people. That's right. Yeah. So now that you know all this, what do you think about the title? Do we do a good job titling it or would you title it something different? How to be a capitalist without any capital. I like it, but I hate the word capitalist because there's a lot of negative connotations with that. I'll tell you, but I think people will pick it up because of your lovely, lovely mug and that suit. I will tell you, I have a little bit of an ego, but it is a good looking picture. Jessica, we were so on the offensive of using the word

capitalist because of all the negative connotations. I know. Is that terrible? Yeah. It's like, yeah, people like, ooh, cringe. Yeah. But I think it's an interesting idea. Interesting book. I think it's a really great read. I like it especially too because you're younger. And so you can really relate to a lot of millennials. And you just have a very different perspective. And I think that's important because honestly, a lot of the people that are like those big time entrepreneurs with these kind of books doing those speaking gigs are a bit older and they may not quite understand the experience that we all had during the 2009 recession. You is. I mean, one thing about this book that my editors hated, this is not a timeless book. This is not something you can buy in 10 years and get value from. The tactics I put in here, you've got to read it and hopefully be one of the first people to read it and use the tactics today because by nature, because of how much, I mean, they may need so much work, people will come in and copy them and then they won't be valuable anymore. So this is not a timely book. It's an urgent book. People have to do it and execute immediately. And editors hated that, but I think it's important.

It's very raw that way. Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well, before I let you go, Nathan, where can people find more information about you and grab a copy of your book? Yeah, the best place to do it is you can just look up my name on Amazon. It's called How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital. I also have my own podcast called The Top Um, you can just Google it and it'll be the top result. It's a nice little orange logo, or they can also, uh, if they want to connect me directly, I'm on Twitter and Facebook and I will have a CNBC show actually launching in the spring. So you'll be able to chat with me via CNBC's website as well. Amazing. Congrats on all your success. That's amazing. Well, we'll, we'll have fun just kind of, maybe I'll need to hire you to come in and be my,

my CFO, huh? Maybe we have a lot of fun I think. We do. Yeah, for sure. We would. Well, thanks again for joining me. It was so great chatting with you. Jessica, thanks so much. And that was episode 186 of the Momany Podcast. Make sure to check Nathan out online and grab a copy of his book, How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital. Again, he also has his own show, his own podcast called the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast. You can check out on iTunes or wherever you listen to a podcast. And of course, check out the show notes for this episode where I write a bunch of, you know, just kind of, if you were like, what was that episode about? What were the most important things about that episode? Guess what? I put that all in the show notes. Go to jessicamorehouse.com

slash 186 for all of that good stuff. I'm still also doing a bunch of other exciting things. Usually, well, no, usually I always list them in the show notes. So that's why you always want to check out my website for all that info. But I'm going to share with you them now. But before I get to that, just a few words I want to share about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is supported by Sonnet Insurance. It can be pretty time consuming collecting insurance quotes to compare prices. What's great about Sonnet is that you can do it entirely online and get a quote in just minutes. Even better, if you decide to buy Sonnet insurance, you can do that online too. It's so easy to use and understand, it really makes

insurance simple. You can even see your quote update in real time if you add additional coverage or change your deductible, so you can confidently know what's in your policy and how the cost compares to competitors. Need to see it to believe it? Try it out yourself by visiting sonnet.ca. Once again, that's sonnet.ca. Okay, so I'm still running a couple contests and I thought it would be kind of easy peasy if I just put them on one page instead of you going to a bunch of different pages. So I'm giving away a ton of books, including Nathan's book, actually. Surprise! So if you've been listening to this season of the show since it launched at the beginning of February, you know I've interviewed a ton of authors already and I'm

giving away their books. So includes, let me see if I remember them. Melissa Leong's book, Happy Go Money. Shannon Lee Simmons' book, Living Debt Free. And last week I had Tanya Hester on the show. She has a book called Work Optional. And now I'm giving away a copy of Nathan's book, How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital. So if you want to enter to win a copy of one of these fabulous books, make sure to go to the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 2086. Or, well, there's a couple things you can do. Or go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contests. And I'll just list

them all in one page for you. Or of course, please sign up to my email newsletter because I always list all the cool, exciting things I'm doing in my newsletter. jessicamorehouse.com slash subscribe. Do it. Why not? You know, another thing you could also do, because why not, is I have a free resource library of a bunch of free cool things, free downloads, worksheets, spreadsheets, some past webinars and online trainings, all that kind of good stuff. But speaking of online trainings and webinars, I thought it was high time I did another one. And this one I'm super excited about because it is about investing. So obviously, you hopefully know. If you don't know, that's cool. I have an online investing course called Investing Foundations for Canadians. You can currently sign up and enroll right now on my

website. Again, I'll put some info in the show notes, but just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash investing foundations. But I am going to be doing a webinar all about some of the key things that people ask me about investing. So I actually started sourcing some questions on Instagram and Twitter and my Facebook group. And I wanted to know what are some of your, you know, really important questions that you just cannot find the answers to, or maybe you just, you know, are important questions that you just cannot find the answers to, or maybe you just, you know, are a bit too embarrassed to ask somebody about it. So you feel comfortable asking your friend Jessica. So I'm going to be doing a webinar, you can go to jessicamorehouse.com slash webinar to sign up. And it will all be going down on Wednesday, March 20, at 7pm Easternm. Eastern time. Sign up even if you're not sure if

you can 100% make it for the live webinar because I do always send out a replay link. So make sure to sign up because it'll be a good one. I'm also going to be doing a live Q&A. So if you have questions that maybe I didn't answer during that particular webinar, you can ask me live. I'll try my best anyway to ask them. And it'll be a hoot, a really good time. Another thing I want you to maybe join me for, with, I don't know. I'm going to be hosting a Twitter party on Twitter in cahoots with Fisco. And it, because March, I don't know if you know this, March is Fraud Prevention Month. And so we are going to be doing a fun Twitter party all about educating people and promoting how to protect yourself against mortgage fraud. You may not even know that that is a thing. It's a thing. It is a real thing. It is a big, important, scary thing. And I want you to know,

but I also want you to have a chance to win some fun prizes. I always give away prizes at the end of my webinars. So again, I'll include some info in the show notes, but just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash Twitter party, and you'll be able to find out more information and sign up so you don't forget and you'll receive reminders and all that kind of stuff. But it's gonna be a ton of fun. Okay, that is it for me. No, that's a lie. Oh my god. I forgot. Tomorrow, I've got a bam bonus episode. I've got a bonus episode for you tomorrow. And you're not gonna want to miss it. I'm just gonna keep it mystery like that. So I'm gonna see you back here tomorrow for my special bonus episode. Have a good rest of your day. See you tomorrow. This podcast is distributed by

the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.