College Student Unions - What's Your Business Model?

Matthew Kepnes runs the popular travel blog, Nomadic Matt, and also writes a successful newsletter. In fact, Matt’s newsletter is one of the biggest I’ve had on the show. His book, How to Travel the World on $50, is a New York Times Best Seller.

After a 2005 trip to Thailand, Matt decided to leave his job, finish his MBA, and travel the world. Since then, he’s been to nearly 100 countries, and hasn’t looked back. Besides being a New York Times best-selling author, Matt’s writings have been featured in countless publications. He’s a regular speaker at travel trade shows, and is the founder of FLYTE, a non-profit organization that sends students overseas to bring their classroom experience to life.

I talk with Matt about his unique approach to running his business. While others are building online courses, Matt has shifted to doing more in-person meetups and events. We talk about his newsletter, and we also talk about growing your Instagram follower count, scaling a business as a solopreneur, and much more.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• When & why you need to start outsourcing day-to-day tasks
• Matt’s email opt-in strategies and tips to get more subscribers
• The most important metric about your email list
• How to quickly get more followers on Instagram

Links & Resources

• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Matador
• Lonely Planet
• Blue Ocean Strategy book
• Pat Flynn
• Women In Travel Summit
• Traverse
• Cheryl Strayed
• ConvertKit
• TravelCon
• FinCon
• Podcast Movement
• World Domination Summit
• Hootsuite
• Tim Ferriss
• Seth Godin
• OptinMonster
• Seth Godin: This is Marketing
• Rick Steves
• Nathan Barry Show on Spotify
• Nathan Barry Show on Apple Podcasts

Matthew Kepnes’ Links

• Matt’s website
• Follow Matt on Twitter
• Matt’s Instagram
• The Nomadic Network
• Nomadic Matt Plus

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Matthew:
When I started these courses back in 2013, there wasn’t a lot of folks. Now you have so many people with courses, so many Instagrammers and TikTokers selling their stuff. It’s sort of like, is this worth the time to really invest in it when my heart really isn’t in it? How can I maintain 400K in revenue a year? Is that the best use of our resources? The answer is, not really.

[00:00:33] Nathan:
In this episode, I talk to my long time friend, Matt Kepnes, from Nomadic Matt.

Matt’s got a travel blog that’s wildly popular, and he gets into that—shares all the numbers. He’s probably one of the biggest newsletters that I’ve had on the show, so far.

What I love about him, in particular, is how thoughtful he is about his business model.

Most people are just adding more courses and figuring out how to grow revenue; honestly, what’s now fairly traditional ways, and it’s quite effective. Matt takes another approach. He gets into in-person events and meetups. We get to talk about why in a busy, crowded online world, he’s actually going offline.

I think that Blue Ocean Strategy he references, the popular book by the same title, I think it’s interesting, and it’s something worth considering when some of the online strategies don’t work. We also get into a bunch of other things like growing his newsletter. Like I said, it’s quite large.

Then, also growing an Instagram following. Instagram is not something that I’m going to actively pursue, but it’s interesting hearing his approach of what you do if you’re at 5,000 followers on Instagram, and want to grow to 50,000 or more.

So, anyway, enjoy the episode.

If you could do me a favor and go subscribe on Spotify or iTunes, or wherever you listen if you aren’t subscribed already, and then write a review.

I check out all the reviews. Really appreciate it. It helps in the rankings, and I’m just looking to grow the show.

So, anyway, thanks for tuning in today. Let’s go talk to Matt.

Matt, welcome to the show.

[00:02:06] Matthew:
Thanks for having me, Nathan. I’ve been trying to get on this podcast for ages.

[00:02:10] Nathan:
Well, don’t say that, that’ll make people think they can get on just by asking. Really, you came to my house and stayed in my cottage on the farm, and then you’re like, “Yo, have me on the podcast!” And that’s when I was like, “Absolutely.” But if anyone just asked, that would not be a thing.

[00:02:26] Matthew:
No, I just mean I finally—I’m excited that I’m worthy enough in my blogging career to be on.

[00:02:33] Nathan:
Oh, yes.

[00:02:35] Matthew:
I’ve made it.

[00:02:36] Nathan:
Yeah. It’s only taken you, what, a decade and a half?

[00:02:39] Matthew:
13 and a half years. Slow and steady wins the race.

[00:02:43] Nathan:
That’s right.

I actually want to start talking about that side of it, because I’ve been in the blogging world for 11 years now. But even I feel like things changed so much in the first couple of years, even before I entered into the world. So, I’m curious, going back to the early days, what were the prompts for you to come into the blogging world and say, “Hey, I’m going to start publishing online”?

[00:03:10] Matthew:
Yeah. You know, it was a very haphazard, there was no grand plan. Like I had Zanger when people had Zeno’s, which is, you know, a personal blog, way back, you know, 2003, whatever. And so what, I went on my trip around the world in 2006, I just kept updating this Zynga. You know, it was called, Matt goes the world and it was just like, here I am friends here I am.

And then, you know, everyone was really excited in the beginning. And then after a while I got sick in my update because the know their back of their office job. So I kinda just forgot about it until I came home and January, 2008 and I need money. And so I started a temp job, and I had a lot of free time and I really just hate...