Produced By - Crypto Confidential: Behind the Scenes of an Author's First Book | #62: Nat Eliason

Starting point is 00:00:01 Hello and welcome to Produced Buy. Just quickly before we begin, if we enjoy the show, please consider supporting it by joining our Patreon. You can choose from a list of memberships and we'll receive some exciting rewards. Thank you and back to the episode. Hello Net, thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on. So, Nat, can you please introduce yourself?

Starting point is 00:00:26 Yes, so my name is Nathaniel or Nat. Eliasson and I've been an internet entrepreneur, creator, writer for the last 11, 12 years. And now I typically introduce myself as an author since I published my first book last week called Crypto Confidential, all about the last Cryptomania in 21, 22. Yeah. And before we dive deeper into it, can we get to know you better about your background? So can you tell us where do you come from and a bit about yourself? Yeah, I grew up in Washington, D.C. And so I lived there for most of my childhood.

Starting point is 00:01:14 I went to boarding school in Connecticut for most of high school. And then I went to college in Pittsburgh. After that, I came to Austin for a job right out of school. So I was here pretty early in 2015. Now Austin is kind of like one of the big growing cities in the U.S. but it was a lot quieter back then. So I first came in 2015, was here for a year, left, did the digital nomad thing for a couple of years for a year and a half,

Starting point is 00:01:39 lived in New York City for a little bit, and then came back to Austin in 2018. I've been here since then. And what is it actually that you studied? Was it entrepreneurship or writing or something? No, I studied philosophy, actually. Oh, wow, interesting. Is that something I've been interested in?

Starting point is 00:01:56 Yes, it's something I've always been interested in and enjoyed reading. I wasn't much of a student. I wasn't very into college, but I knew I had to finish to satisfy my parents. And that was one of the easiest majors you could do. It had the lowest requirements. And so it gave me the most flexibility to work on other things or just take a bunch of classes based on what I was interested in.

Starting point is 00:02:19 And what was your idea back then about what you wanted to become, like what type of job or what position? Yeah, through college, I was pretty, sure that I wanted to go into entrepreneurship, and that's what I was mostly focused on. I think freshman year I thought maybe management consulting, investment banking, finance, something like that, and then changed my mind pretty quickly to entrepreneurship and was fully focused on the entrepreneur path for most of college. I didn't realize how much I liked writing until quite a bit later. And what is it that interested in entrepreneurship?

Starting point is 00:02:55 I don't know. That's a good question. I think it just felt fun. I enjoyed doing. doing it. And I think more than anything, I knew that I didn't do well having a boss, like having somebody who I needed to report to. And so I needed something where I could control my own fate. And I also believed pretty strongly that you wanted to do work that exposed you to kind of like infinite upside. So, you know, in any salaried job, you have a limited upside because you have a, you have a salary, right? And that's the most money that you're going to make, maybe you make a bonus on top of that. It might only be like five or 10 percent. But then even if you're in a commission rolls, there's still somebody deciding your commission structure. And if you have a

Starting point is 00:03:42 cap or anything like that or, and you know, and you're maybe not controlling the product that you're selling. And, you know, you can get promoted and everything, but there's still a limit on how fast you can move. Whereas in entrepreneurship, if you're sufficiently motivated, there's no cap on how fast you can go. there's infinite motivation to keep working harder and keep reinvesting because you're seeing all of the fruits of your labor. But you're also seeing all the downside, right? And you're taking on a lot more risk. You have to have the right mentality for it.

Starting point is 00:04:13 And I think a lot of people really like the upside part, but they don't like the downside part. And so you've got to understand both sides of it. Always comes with high standards. Yes, yes. And are there any startups or any ventures that you try? Yeah, I actually, in college, I had this idea to do a startup that, you know, I didn't have any experience in this industry. It just seemed like a good idea to do a startup that would make clothes shopping easier.

Starting point is 00:04:50 So the idea was to use a Pandora style recommendation engine. And it's kind of like an old app now. But it was like before Spotify and all of these, it was a website where you could thumbs up and thumbs down songs as you were listening to them. And it would try to learn your music taste over time and make you better and better music recommendations, which was pretty innovative back then. And so I thought, well, what if we did the same thing for clothing where you could like and dislike clothes and it would learn your clothing preference.

Starting point is 00:05:20 So then it could recommend better clothes for you. And I mean, honestly, not a bad idea. A lot of people have tried versions of this. and it's never caught on. I think that people actually enjoy searching. They don't enjoy having their clothing solved for them. But I basically came up with that idea. And I think I was a sophomore.

Starting point is 00:05:41 It was my junior fall in college. He came up with the idea, found some people to work on it with me, raised some money, actually, from a local incubator in Pittsburgh. And then dropped out of college for a year to work on it. And it didn't go anywhere. we had no idea what we were doing. We had no users. I mean, it was, you know, there was literally almost nothing there.

Starting point is 00:06:04 But we didn't know what we were doing. And a lot of people investing in us didn't know what they were doing either. So it was a perfect match. And after a year, I kind of realized that, okay, this, I should move on from this because this is just not how you do this. But it was a very useful education. And then I basically went back and speed ran the rest of my degree in a semester so that I could still graduate on time.

Starting point is 00:06:26 and went from there. So what are some lessons that you learned from this experience? A bunch come to mind. One would definitely be that you shouldn't try to start a business to solve a problem that you don't have. It's because you just won't understand the problem space. You won't understand the language. You won't understand if it's a real problem or not.

Starting point is 00:06:50 You know, I think like a lot of people, it's easy to look at what some, somebody else does and imagine all of the problems with what they're doing and to think that if you just make a product that solves those problems, then people will want to buy it. But they often won't because what might seem like problems to you are is just part of the process for them. Right. Like, you know, the best running shoe is not a bicycle because people enjoy running. Right. If you if you go to a running group and you say, hey, I've got this incredible tool to solve your running problem. or to solve your like transportation problem, they might look at you and say, like, we don't have a transportation problem, you know, we just enjoy running. A lot of entrepreneur want to be entrepreneurs

Starting point is 00:07:34 fall into that trap because they see, they imagine these perceived problems in other people's lives and then they create these expensive solutions to them, which it turns out nobody wants. So, you know, more than anything, you should really be making something that solves a problem that you have and focus your energy there.

Starting point is 00:07:52 I think the second thing is, you know, just because somebody's excited to give you advice doesn't mean that they know what they're doing. And especially in entrepreneurship and investing and startup world and like that that whole arena, you'll find no shortage of people who want to give you advice, who want to be helpful, who want to give you input on what you're doing, or who might be really excited about what you're doing and tell you what a good job you're doing. And that doesn't mean that they know what they're talking about or that you should listen to them. And often people have money from

Starting point is 00:08:25 something else and they are now investing with that money. It doesn't mean that they know how to invest or that they know how to start a startup. And so you do have to be really careful what kind of advice you listen to and who you listen to advice from because in some ways the most dangerous thing isn't somebody telling you that you're wrong or that you're doing a bad job because you're probably going to have the self-confidence to ignore. that kind of feedback, you're going to be like, they don't really know what they're talking about, whatever.

Starting point is 00:08:59 But if somebody tells you that you know what you're doing, that you're doing a good job, that this is going great, you know, if they're kind of blowing smoke up your ass, that's even more dangerous because you might buy into it, right? You might believe them, even though, again, they have no idea what they're talking about. So you do need to be really careful who you get advice from and how seriously you take it.

Starting point is 00:09:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like a great advice. And then after you continued with, education. Was this experience something that fueled your passion to continue pursuing entrepreneurship, or is that when you switched? It did, but it made me take a step back because I realized that I didn't really know how to do any of the startup stuff. And it was kind of silly for a college student with no experience in any of those things to try to start this big tech company. And sometimes it works out, right? Sometimes you can pull it off. I decided that I needed to go get some more

Starting point is 00:09:57 useful skills before I tried doing something like that again. And so I decided to just focus on learning marketing, because if I could get good at marketing, which is the area of entrepreneurship that I was the most interested in at the time. If I could get good at that, then I would be more valuable to other startups that could maybe get a job at one. And when I wanted to go out and do my own thing again, I would be more prepared because I would have a more valuable skill set for doing it. So did you learn it just by yourself, by educating yourself, or did you actually get the job in marketing? A bit of both. I started off teaching myself how to do it and just reading all the books and I had a blog that I was working on so I could practice doing content marketing.

Starting point is 00:10:44 And then I had one person I was working for. I landed an internship with Zapier actually in Zapier now is a huge multi-billion dollar company back then. They were way smaller, which was pretty cool to get to work with them so long ago. And they were so good at content marketing. It was a great place to learn. And then, yeah, when I graduated, I went and I did a marketing job for about eight months and learned a decent amount there as well. And did you enjoy it working in marketing?

Starting point is 00:11:13 Yes and no. I enjoyed parts of the work, but I didn't enjoy working with the person I was working with and I didn't enjoy working on the company I was working on. The whole thing just felt pretty like low quality and very aggressive, salesy type marketing. Like it wasn't a good product. It wasn't something that people actually needed. But it was the kind of product where you could convince people that they might make more

Starting point is 00:11:40 money in their business if they bought your product. And that was what a lot of the marketing revolved around. And, you know, that was sort of like the whole shtick of the person who started it was like, oh, I have this secret knowledge and these secret tools that will turn you into like an overnight success with your business or whatever. And so the whole thing just felt very scammy. And so I didn't enjoy that part of it.

Starting point is 00:12:03 But I definitely learned some useful skills through doing it that helped me with other work after that. Yeah. And you mentioned that you learned from some books. Do you remember any influential or impactful books? You know, in terms of content marketing, there weren't too many books because it was such a niche discipline and there just weren't many good books on the subject. The Zapier blog and the buffer blog were two of the most helpful resources because they were both putting out really, really great content around content marketing. And that was just really, really helpful to see and to read

Starting point is 00:12:40 because they were breaking it down in such a useful way. A lot of it honestly was just reading those resources and then seeing what some other people in the space, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income, was putting out some good stuff, Brennan Dunn, right? There was this whole era of like email marketing and content marketing influencers that I was able to learn a lot from in that time period. And then really, though you learn the most from just like starting your own project and trying to apply the knowledge to that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:09 Yeah. Yeah, I actually just was about to say that both Zapier blog or Buffer, I still read it these days. Those are still great resources. Yeah, yeah. And continuing from there, did you then continue marketing or is that when you switched for something different? Well, yeah, when I left that job, I did, I worked on my blog and I was mostly working on my blog for a while because it was making me some income so I could sustain myself off of that for a bit. But then I actually started a marketing agency because, you know, I was doing search engine optimization through my content. That was a fairly valuable skill set because SEO,

Starting point is 00:13:49 was very popular at the time, and especially working with startups and e-commerce businesses. It was an interesting way to attract customers. So I had gotten decent, I'd gotten pretty good at doing it, and I had done it really well for my own site. And so I reached out to companies who might be able to benefit from it and started doing SEO for them. And in the beginning, it was just me doing it as a freelancer and, you know, working on the projects directly.

Starting point is 00:14:18 And then as I started getting more and more projects, I realized like, oh, there could actually be a business here. And so I started hiring a team and building it out and turning it into an actual agency and then worked on that for the next three years. And you mentioned block. Is that the block that you're still around? Or was it a previous one? Same domain. So same natalaisen.com. Now I have the newsletter on Substack, which is a little.

Starting point is 00:14:44 So I've moved it there. And that's where I do most of my writing. but I still have the website and I still work on that a decent amount. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then after the agency, did you still continue? Or can you tell us when did you actually discover the passion for writing? Yeah, I was writing through all of this because I was doing content marketing. I mean, even back when I was in college trying to figure this out, I was writing.

Starting point is 00:15:13 And, you know, but from a marketing lens, so I was writing for my blog. and then doing the marketing agency, that was all writing based because it was content marketing again with SEO. And then when I left the agency, I tried a couple of things. And then I dived into working in crypto for a little bit. And when I was working in crypto, still I was also writing again because I was doing the crypto work and I was programming and day trading and everything. But I was also writing articles about what was going on in crypto. So there was still this strong writing element. So when the crypto stuff ended, that was when I said,

Starting point is 00:15:49 okay, this is actually what I want to focus on is like just doing the writing. But I had also been writing in some capacity for the last decade at this point. And out of curiosity, you left the agency, but since you said that you started the agency, was it still around or did the company? And it's still around today. Yeah. I had a COO who was working with me and she was one. wonderful. And when I decided I wanted to step out, she and I figured out how to transition it to now she's fully running the business.

Starting point is 00:16:25 And she's still doing content marketing and SEO work for people today. Wow, that's cool. So what is it that interested in crypto? Or how did you get into crypto? I guess there's the question that you get asked a lot, but it would be curious. No, no, I mean, the thing that interested me was just the ability to make a lot of money quickly. I think that's what pulls a lot of people into it. This was kind of the whole vibe back in 2020 and back in 2021 was like this thing is taking off. Crypto's going nuts. All these people are making all this money in it. And you need to get in or else you're going to miss this like once in a lifetime opportunity to make life changing money.

Starting point is 00:17:05 And so that that's really what was the most interesting about it. And then once I was in, it was a question of, okay, well, within crypto, what's the most interesting? what's the most fun thing? And what should I focus on to try to make that money as quickly as possible? So that was, I mean, at the end of the day, that was really what was exciting about it. Do you remember how much was Bitcoin back then? I think when it first got back on my radar, I'll fact check myself as I'm saying this. When it first got back on my radar in like December of 2020, I want to say it was like 18 or 19,000.

Starting point is 00:17:42 Let's see. Yeah, like 19,000. Yeah. And just for the comparison, was the price now? 60,000? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:52 So it's about 3x from there. So yeah, I mean, it got interesting to me again in like December, January when it was, you know, 19, 20, 30,000. And then at the peak of that cycle, it went up to what, like 69,000, something crazy like that. And as you said, did you see it only? to make money as something temporary, or did you actually maybe like the technology and saw the future? I definitely liked the technology and I definitely saw the future, like the opportunity for it. And I definitely saw the opportunity for like blockchains to be useful and to be valuable as a new tech to build a lot of our like digital commerce, commerce infrastructure on top of.

Starting point is 00:18:36 But at the time, the thing that was most interesting was just the get rich, quick element of it. because you know you can be interested in the tech and you can think the tech is really cool but being really into the tech doesn't necessarily make you a lot of money really quickly the speculation number go upside if it does so I think you can be interested in both was it bitcoin only or other cryptocurrencies as well no no it's actually much more interested in the like ethereum world just because there's more to do there right like bitcoin bitcoin is kind of like perfect as it is it's a wonderful technology for what it does being a store of value and a large value transfer system. But it's not great as a like

Starting point is 00:19:19 programmatic infrastructure for building a new like internet of money system, right? Like Ethereum and some of the other like smart contract chains are just better infrastructure for that. So that was the side that I was really interested in was like, okay, what could actually be built on these that might be useful and valuable in the future and what might be interesting to work on in that regard as well. If you want to boost your online presents, check out our digital marketing agency called Trailblazed. You can also enroll in a Skillshare course called the 10 tips on how to succeed in your creative career, which was inspired by the podcast. Lastly, make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter called Creative Spotlight to stay up to date

Starting point is 00:20:05 with the show and more. Links are in the show notes. Thanks. So, Nat, can we now jump into the book for people who are watching this book? So now we can dive a bit deeper into it. So can you tell us why did you actually decide to write about it? Yeah, I mean, I ended up having this kind of interesting experience through the last Cryptomania and coming out of it with the market settling down,

Starting point is 00:20:32 it felt like there was a cool opportunity to try to capture what it was like working in it during that period, assuming crypto is going to become a big thing in the future, people might be interested in what it was like at the beginning. And I felt like I had an interesting experience and an opportunity to capture that and share it with people. I was actually trying to find out if you wrote any books before. But you said you haven't wrote any, but when I was checking on a good rate, it seems like there is a book listed before. So have you actually written any or not? I've written a few e-books. So like just Amazon self-published type things.

Starting point is 00:21:09 I think I've published like four of those back in my like blogging, more like blogging era. There was like a time in 2016, 17, like 2015, 16, 17 when self-publishing e-books from blog posts and things was like really hot and was like the way a lot of people were, were monetizing their blogs back then. They're like paid newsletters weren't a thing. You know, that's a relatively new monetization channel to exist. And so I tried doing the blog to ebook thing a little bit, but didn't take any of them, I think, crazy seriously and ended up just like taking them all down a year or two after. So writing such a book, it's quite a big deal.

Starting point is 00:22:01 So what were your first steps, how to approach it? Yeah, I mean, you know, with a nonfiction book like this, you've got to like find the agent and you've got to make a proposal. I usually have to make the proposal first so the agent can look at it. And then they go out and they shop it around and then it gets hopefully picked up by publisher. And so that all might take six odd months before you get to the actual writing of the thing. And so, you know, there's that element. And then in terms of the actual writing, you've got to outline it. And then, you know, once you feel like the outline's good enough, you try to do a first draft and you'll often have to like,

Starting point is 00:22:35 adjust the outline as you go. And you kind of just like keep going back and forth between looking at the structure, working on the actual pieces of it, adjusting the structure, trying to finish, you know, full drafts as you go and getting feedback from your editor as you do. And how much basically freedom have you got because you work with the editor? So do you like share it regularly to get a feedback? You get a good amount of freedom. They, they don't, at least where I was, at least the publisher I worked with portfolio. They don't strain you too much. So you've got a lot of leniency to do the book how you want. And then, and you can share it with them for feedback basically as often as you want to. So some people

Starting point is 00:23:15 won't really share it with their editor much at all until right before it's due. But I gave it to them three or four times for full reads, starting as early as like four months after I got the deal. So I definitely used my editor quite a bit more. than a lot of other people do. And I remember you were talking about it in your newsletter, about the pros and cons of working with like a big agency or a big publisher. So would you mind summarizing it a bit? Because I found it very interesting.

Starting point is 00:23:50 I think for the people who have never experienced this, it might be very interesting information. Yeah, there are a lot of people or there are some people online who will try to push self-publishing as the best way, to publish a book because, oh, there's all these problems with traditional publishing. And like, those people are usually just misrepresenting the situation. And often because they're selling a course on self-publishing or they make money by getting you to self-publish a book.

Starting point is 00:24:19 And the truth is that you should almost never self-publish a book unless you cannot get a book deal. I mean, that's really the main reason is if you just can't get a book deal, then, okay, yeah, self-publishing is going to be your best. or if you can't get a good book deal, because, you know, especially in fiction, if you can only get like a $10,000 advance for your book, the publisher's not going to put much effort into that. And so you may as well just self-publish it.

Starting point is 00:24:46 Most likely, if you've no audience and no connections, then it doesn't matter whether you try to trad pub or self-pub, like probably nobody's going to read your book. If you do have an audience and you do have connections, then you may as well tradpub because they have so much better distribution than you do. They can get you into like the big TV networks and the big magazines and the big publications. They can get you into all the bookstores and they can like get your book out there in ways that you could never do on your own self-publishing. And, you know, the only reason is self-publish in that situation is I guess if you just want the creative control, but you get most of the creative control with a big publisher too.

Starting point is 00:25:22 Like you get to, you know, drive designing your cover and your layout and how the book looks. It's like a lot of the downsides of working with a publisher that self-publishing people talk about are like just not true. So there's really not much reason to self-publish except. And I think the truth is most people self-pub because they're just like scared of taking it seriously. Right. It's like a way to protect themselves. And it's a way to avoid the risk of rejection. And the truth is like a lot of people just shouldn't write a book.

Starting point is 00:25:50 Like they're just not good enough or they just don't have good enough ideas. And it's like the reason that your book is getting rejected, like that's probably. good feedback. Like maybe you shouldn't be writing it in the first place, or maybe you're just not good enough yet. And it's not that they're wrong. It's that you live in a fantasy land about your own work. And you've got to kind of like wake up and be a little bit more honest with yourself.

Starting point is 00:26:16 So I do think that for the vast majority of people who are deciding between traditional publishing and self-publishing, like you should try to get the book deal. Yeah, and following on this, what you just said, I don't mean it with any disrespect, but what made you to be sure that you actually have something to share, that you actually cannot write a book? I mean, I knew I had a good story, and I knew that nobody else had written something like this about crypto. All the crypto books were either very idea-driven non-fiction explainer books,

Starting point is 00:26:52 or they were outside looking in journalists. style books, you know, people trying to tell a story from the outside. Nobody had written an inside story of being in the industry and like doing things and what it was actually like to be inside of it. So I knew there was a market opportunity in that sense. I knew I was a decently good writer. I knew I had an audience and connections and, you know, could go out and actually sell the thing once it was published. So I figured I was in a pretty good position. to do it, but obviously, you know, still with the thought of the back of my mind that I needed to get a deal to actually go after it, right? Like, it wasn't going to be worth doing if I didn't

Starting point is 00:27:38 have an actual book deal behind it. So I needed to cross that hurdle too, but once we've gotten that deal, once they seemed excited about it, that's when I really felt like, okay, there's something here. And if you don't mind sharing that, have you faced any rejections before the publisher except to your offer. Yeah, I talked to five agents before I found the agent that I ended up working with and they passed on it for different reasons or they just ghosted because that happens a lot too. And then when we started shopping the book, we put it out to 30 publishers, I think. And there were a few that we were most excited about.

Starting point is 00:28:22 But some of them rejected us, or like some of them just said, no, we're not interested. There were a decent number who were just waiting to see if anybody else was interested in it. But one of the ones that we liked ended up making what's called a preempt offer. So they offer a little extra money to get you to not take the book to auction. So it's sort of like getting in early decision or early action to college. And it was from a publisher that I wanted to work with. And so I just said yes to that. And so I don't know if those other publishers would have said no or would have said yes and might have bid on it or not just because of the deal that we ended up taking.

Starting point is 00:29:02 And I would be curious, what was in the end the length of time that you spent right in the book, you know, from the initial job that you submitted to finished book? Yeah, from when I first started outlining it. So I first started writing and outlining on like June 2nd of 2022. And then I submitted the final on October 15th of 23. And then there were a few like little edits and things like that. And I turned in the last bits of edits and whatnot on January 2nd of this year, 24. So that's what a year. and seven months total.

Starting point is 00:29:49 It's not a crazy month. I mean, I'm not sure what is it like, but is it kind of regular average, or is it short or fast? I think that's on the faster side. A lot of people, it ends up being closer to two, two and a half years.

Starting point is 00:30:03 And so I feel like I was a little bit on the quicker end of things, but we also knew that we wanted to get it done and out before the crypto market came back. And I'm also just a faster writer than most people, so I didn't need as much time. think, as some other people do. And were you able to work on it full time?

Starting point is 00:30:21 Yeah. Yes, I was basically working on it full time. I had other little things I was doing. I was still working on my blog. You know, I was working on like growing on Instagram and a TikTok and doing things like that. But this was the main focus. And, you know, and I say main focus, not necessarily full time.

Starting point is 00:30:36 Because you can't really work on a book for eight hours a day. You just don't have the energy for that kind of creative work. So it's really more like three hours a day. But it's the main focus. focus of each day. And I, in your new starter, I really enjoyed or was interested in when you discussed the design of the homepage. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:56 Yeah. Can you, can you share it for the people who haven't read it? How did you end up with this design? Yes. So, you know, I feel like a lot of nonfiction book covers are pretty boring. They're just large block letters. And there's very little like design or personality. to it. And the thing that we needed to do with the cover was make it clear that this, not an

Starting point is 00:31:24 explainer book. This wasn't like a nonfiction Bitcoin 101, what is Ethereum type book? Because that's what a lot of people would assume. They would assume that when they saw, oh, crypto book, that isn't about a specific person, that it must be, you know, like a normal explainer idea book. And it's not that. You know, it's a narrative. It's a story. And so the packaging needed to show that it was something different. And so we really wanted to make something that stood out and that wasn't like a normal nonfiction cover. So, you know, we tried a few different ideas.

Starting point is 00:32:02 The early drafts that the designers came back with just weren't good at all. And so my editor and I actually used Mid Journey and Dolly to come up with ideas for the cover to like come up with new designs and new like visuals that we could use to to convey the type of energy that we were thinking and he's actually the one who came up with the like watercolor monkeys dancing around the casino and we really loved that idea and so we gave that to the designers and we said hey you know let why don't we try doing something with this doing something more visual like this and they they ended up really liking it too and then the thing that we needed to do was like the original version of it was almost too bright and fun and happy.

Starting point is 00:32:47 And we wanted it to be kind of like dark and stressful. The thing that I often told the designers was like it needs to feel like you're very strung out on caffeine, nicotine, maybe you're drunk as well, whatever. Like that's the energy that we're going for. And the other cover that was a big inspiration for it was fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Yeah, yeah, I remember. That one has like, and it's got a similar handwriting scroll type vibe to it. And we want to try to bring some of that energy, again, to try to make it clear that, like, this isn't the book that you might think it is when you just like hear the title or when you hear,

Starting point is 00:33:25 oh, it's a crypto book. So that was a pretty fun part of the process. Yeah. After the release, how was the reaction of the market? Did you expect, you know, that people like it, the feedback, the reviews? Yeah, I expected people would like it. like it. I expected people would enjoy it and read it quickly, which, which they have been. You know, and there have been a lot of people posting really nice things on Twitter and

Starting point is 00:33:47 Instagram, whatnot about reading it and liking it. So that's been really great to see. And, you know, once a book is out in the wild, it's not just you pushing it anymore. It's not just your network. It's everybody else who reads it and whether they're enjoying it or not and whether they're talking about it or not. And so you kind of have to, you know, wait and, see what happens. You've got to hope that word of mouth carries it because at the end of the day, you can only do so much with your audience and no book succeeds just by the author promoting it. It only succeeds if people talk about it and recommend it and read it and enjoy it. And so you've got kind of like hope that you did your job making something that's worth recommending.

Starting point is 00:34:29 And looking back at it, is there something that maybe you would do differently when it comes to write at the book such as maybe you missed something or would do differently or completely so they have to hold it ended up. No, looking back, no, because if I were rewriting it today, I would write it differently, but that's just because I'm a better writer now. But the only reason I'm a better writer is because I wrote this book. So, you know, I wouldn't go back and change anything because I wouldn't have had the skill set to do these things back then.

Starting point is 00:35:02 So, no, no, I don't think I would really go back and change much of anything. There might be little lines here and there that I would tweak, but nothing makes. And that was actually a nice feeling when I was doing the audiobook because I recorded the audio book two months ago, a month and a half ago. And at that point, I hadn't looked at the book in almost six months. And so I was a little unsure of what that was going to feel like to be looking at it again after not looking at it for half a year. But it felt good.

Starting point is 00:35:28 I was like, oh, this is pretty good. This is solid. Like, I like this. That was a nice feeling to have. Yeah. And I'm really curious. But have you got actually an idea to make it into the film? Yeah, I'd love to make it into a film that's not really in my control

Starting point is 00:35:47 because we need some Hollywood producer or studio to find it and get excited about it and to want to buy the rights. So we're kind of just like waiting to see if we get any interest there. We've had one person reach out who's interested. And yeah, I mean, I'd love to see it happen. I hope it does. Oh, it would be super cool. Yeah, yeah, it'd be really neat.

Starting point is 00:36:10 Have you got the main actor, or at least the idea who would be the best? No, no. I think it'd be hard to say. Like, I don't know, I don't know any late 20s actor who looks like me, who's done similar movies. And I don't know who would be a good fit for it. But it would be fun to get to think about that if it happens. I guess we will see in a few years.

Starting point is 00:36:35 Yeah, yeah. If Max Verstappen ever starts acting, he'd be one pick. And are you already maybe writing a new one or have you got an idea for a new one? Yeah, I'm working on a sci-fi novel. And so I'm a decent way through that. I'm in the second draft of it. Yeah, yeah. And hoping to sell that by the end of the year.

Starting point is 00:36:56 And with fiction, it's totally different. With fiction, there's no proposal. There's no period where you. you work on it with your editor, you write the whole book and then you try to sell it. And then they pick it up and they publish it or they don't. But you've got to have the whole book done before you try to sell it like that, which is a pretty like scary thing because you might spend two or three years working on something and then nobody wants to buy it, right, which is not a situation you want to be in.

Starting point is 00:37:28 But, you know, I feel like coming off of Crypto Confidential, I could write a very good fiction book. And I feel really good doing it and I'm really enjoying it. And so I'm going to try to get this second draft done in the next couple of months and then get that out to people for feedback and for see what needs to be improved and then implement that feedback. And yeah, hopefully have it ready to sell by the end of the year. So that's the main focus. And then I have another nonfiction book that I want to do that I'm in the proposal stage for right now. So finishing up that proposal, hopefully in the next couple of weeks to maybe try to. sell it in early August and see if I can get a deal for that one as well.

Starting point is 00:38:08 Oh, is it then the career that you want to continue in to be a professional writer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really enjoy writing. And if you want to make money writing, you either become a journalist or you do a paid newsletter, which is like basically just for professional topics, which I don't really want to write about. I don't really want to be a journalist. You can be a ghost writer and I don't want to be a ghost writer. And so books, like books are the thing.

Starting point is 00:38:33 If you want to make money off of writing your own ideas and putting them in the world, like books are the only way that you do that. And it's a very hard career to succeed in, like one of the hardest. But if you pull it off, it can also be extremely lucrative and extremely fun and very rewarding kind of work. So I'm just fully focused on that now. And with this sci-fi novel that you are working on, have you started once you finished this one? or have you been already working on it during the process?

Starting point is 00:39:03 I started it when I turned in the final draft of Crypto Confidential. So I started it last October. I had a first draft that I started in October. I got about 20,000 words into it and realized it was wrong. So I threw it out and started a new first draft in November. And then I finished that first draft in like January. In February, I picked it back up and got it to a second draft by like May. and then I set it aside to work on marketing Crypto Confidential and getting Crypto Confidential out.

Starting point is 00:39:36 And now the Crypto Confidential is out. Now I can go back to it. And so I started working on it again yesterday, actually. Yeah. And are you still interested in the crypto or is it closed chapter for you? It's a pretty closed chapter. I still hold my crypto. You know, I've still got a decent stash from everything that happened in the book.

Starting point is 00:39:54 And I'm still very interested in what's happening on the tech side and like what's being built. and, you know, I think that it's going to be a pretty big part of our financial and tech lives in the future, but I'm not tracking price charts every day. I'm not trading. I'm not trying to speculate on what's going to come out. I'm just holding the big coins and being patient. Yeah, yeah. And I would be curious, you as a creative person, what do you do when you run out of creativity?

Starting point is 00:40:22 I mean, on a month-long scale, it just doesn't happen. It's the kind of thing where like it's a flywheel, the more you use it, the more you get. But on a daily schedule, it always runs out at some point, usually after two or three hours. And then I just don't force it. I just go do something else, you know, work, you know, get through my emails, respond to messages, do like spreadsheet work or other things that aren't creative that I need to do. And I don't try to let get every single drop out of the day because that works for a week or two. you know, you can burn and you can do five, six hours of writing a day for a couple of weeks,

Starting point is 00:41:00 but the work starts to get worse and you start to get drained by it. And it doesn't lead to good results. So you've got to respect, you know, it's like a marathon, right? Like you could totally go out and do a 25-mile training run, but that's going to do damage to, you know, your muscles and your hips and everything. it's going to actually make it harder for you to finish the marathon and the time you want to finish it. Like, it's better to do the 16-mile run and then a few shorter runs and, you know, build that base really slowly and really respectfully and not burn out on it because it is like a very, very long game if you want to stay in it.

Starting point is 00:41:43 Yeah. I was actually about to ask if you've got any advice for people who want to start writing as well or become authors. I know we discussed it a bit in a beginning, but is there maybe something you'd add? Yeah, I mean, the boring advice is like to just start writing, right? And if you don't enjoy doing it, if it doesn't, and you won't enjoy it in the beginning, you're going to have to force yourself to do it a little bit. You're going to have to make a schedule and you're going to have to say, I'm going to publish

Starting point is 00:42:06 one or two things a week and I'm going to get them out every week at this time. But if it doesn't become natural, if it doesn't become something that you just keep getting pulled to do, then like don't do it. Most people shouldn't be writers. Most people shouldn't write a book. Like you don't need to feel like you have to have a blog or have to do any of these things because you don't. So if it's not something that's naturally pulling you, then like, that's fine. And if it is something that's naturally pulling you, then you'll figure it out,

Starting point is 00:42:32 right? You'll write. And if you want to get better, you'll find books to help you get better. You'll find interviews you can listen to to to help you get better. You'll keep improving at it. And I think that if you're somebody who's like sitting around looking for advice on how to start writing or anything in that regard, then you're probably not really somebody who like should be writing in the first place. You probably feel like you should be. And so you're looking for advice to make it easier. But if you're looking for that, then it's probably just not the thing for you anyway. And you should figure out what the thing for you is. Yeah, yeah. That's great. And what are some inspirations for you, such as any authors or writers or people you follow? Yeah. Brandon Sanderson

Starting point is 00:43:18 is super inspiring just because he's a machine. I mean, his pace of writing. writing and like the the amount of stuff he puts out is incredible and he's a really smart business person too and it's just constant like that that's extremely impressive to me uh Stephen king too in that regard more so Brandon Sanderson is interesting because he's he's like a business now you know he has his own publishing house that he started or kind of like James Patterson built his own publishing company and you know they have taken a really interesting approach but I also really like Stephen King's approach where he just writes a book a year. He does it in like six or nine months and then he just chills. He's not like

Starting point is 00:43:58 started another business. He's not like doing a podcast. He's not adding all this other noise to his life. He just writes and then enjoys his life. And that to me is almost like the most admirable version of it is like you don't have to go insane and try to like do everything. Like you can just publish a book a year for 50 odd years now and he's got 50 plus books out. and he's made hundreds of millions of dollars off of his books and his movies and everything. And he's still just like he has no employees. He just hangs out in his house in Maine and writes horror novels. Like, it's kind of cool.

Starting point is 00:44:34 It's really cool. Yeah, I can imagine living like that. So then, Nat, to respect your time, before we finish, are there any final notes about the book or about yourself or something that you would like to share? No, no, not really. I mean, if anyone wants to read the book, it's Cryptoconfidential. you can find it on, you know, Amazon and Audible and Kindle. I know in some countries, the Audible isn't up yet. And I guess in a lot of countries, it's not all up yet just because we still need to do

Starting point is 00:45:01 translations and other international rights. But if you're U.S., UK, India, Pakistan, South Africa, like any countries in like that, I think Australia, then you should be able to get it now. Yeah, aside from that, I'm on Twitter at Natalysen or blog.netta Nalysen.com for the essays and articles. I will make sure to add any links to the show notes. to promote it, to support it. And I want to say a huge thank you, Nat.

Starting point is 00:45:24 I really enjoyed it. I'm excited to read the book, and I appreciate your time. And thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a five-star review

Starting point is 00:45:36 on your favorite podcast app, get in touch to provide your feedback, or share any ideas for future guests. Thank you, and see you soon.

Produced By - Crypto Confidential: Behind the Scenes of an Author's First Book | #62: Nat Eliason

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