For sure. So is there anything specific you're working on the moment in terms of

learning stuff? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not so much like a deliberate, I want to learn this, but sort of a, oh my God, I have to learn this thing because I started this business doing essentially like SEO focused content marketing as a product where other companies pay us to take over their whole SEO and content marketing operation. And it's just been growing like crazy. And so that's been a really rapid learning process. One thing after the next where I've had to figure out like banking and taxes and hiring and remote team management and like systems design and just all of this stuff. So I haven't had as much time for the like fun learn photography type learning things on the side.

So tell me a little bit more about that. So what's, it's growth machine, right? What's going on with growth machine? What have been the developments over the last few months and how are you going about doing what you're doing?

Yeah. So this, I mean, this came out of what I alluded to before, which was I was a, I was in my senior fall at college. I shut down this company, realized that, okay, I don't know anything about marketing right now, but I want to know something about marketing. And so I just started a blog under my own name and I said, hey, I'm just going to start publishing content as practice. And you know, to get some kind of like online portfolio of my writing to hopefully land maybe some content marketing jobs, some freelance gigs. And you know, that was in the fall of my freshman year. I started publishing there. I got an internship with this really great company Zapier, who's amazing at content marketing. I got to work with them during my senior spring. And then I also met this guy, Justin Mayers. And we collaborated on a basically like a lifestyle business thing where we created an online course for teaching marketers programming. So specifically like learning enough HTML CSS JavaScript to automate your workflows, basically like multiply yourself as a marketer. And we were doing those throughout my senior spring. And then I got contacted by this company, Sumo in Austin to come be basically their first marketing hire for their new, is like their company sort of split into their new products Sumo me. So I went there and I was figuring out all of their content marketing, email marketing, webinar marketing and grew their blog from about 5,000 to 170,000 monthly uniques in seven months. So that was like an amazing experience, really good results. And then after that ended, I was traveling for a bit and I started doing some marketing consulting for a few different companies. And that was cool because, you know, one, you make a lot of money as a consultant, which is nice. And two, I got to see a bunch of companies at once. The problem was that for something like ongoing content production, you need to have good writers and editors and good systems in place and editorial management. You need to know how to optimize for SEO and all of these things. And I thought I could just give these sites a checklist and they would be able to do it. And they really just didn't do a good job of it after I stepped out of the system. So I took a step back and said, all right, what's the big problem here? The problem is they don't have the people to implement this themselves. So instead of doing this as a consulting project, why don't I offer it as effectively a product where companies can pay, you know, me and my company to just take over this part of their business. And the goal is that if they want it to be, it's literally like a turn key. They give us the passwords. And then within a couple of weeks, they're getting some of the best like SEO focused content on the web published to their site. They're getting it promoted through their channels. They're getting it promoted through other channels. And they're starting to rank for these keywords that are valuable to their business. So I started that at the end of this past September. And you know, for reference, we're recording this on December 5th. So it's been just over two months. And in that time, we've gone from like no clients to we've got about 10 that we're working with now, we're going to bill about $44,000 in what's effectively monthly recurring revenue in December. We've got like three part time people. I'm hiring two full time people. And we've got about like 12 freelancers helping out as well. So it's just like gone nuts in that time. And my big focus with learning is okay, how do I keep delivering really high value for these clients while also multiplying our capacity by developing really good internal systems for doing all of this and you know, bringing on new people and not, you know, completely losing all of my free time for the things that make me happy as well. And so that's just been this big massive learning project with so many different facets tied into it. It's been a lot of fun. For sure.

One of the main themes that you speak about on NatChat, your podcast, is I think you talk to a lot of people about how they've learned their skills. What are some of the most interesting things you found out from those conversations? Well,

maybe the obvious one is that nobody seems to have learned it in school. So well, there's definitely a selection bias there because I'm talking to people who went non-traditional routes for school. I don't know. I mean, I think the most interesting thing is just that pretty much everybody who has been self-motivated to learn something has figured it out. And this is applied across. I've had people on who now run professional companies where they're selling art. I've had programmers, marketers, entrepreneurs, writers across the board. And pretty much everybody has done the same thing, which is just like, hey, I'm interested in this. I'm going to read some stuff about it. I'm going to start doing it. And I'm going to start charging people for it. And that's a really simple cycle to start getting better at anything. And I think that it's almost, I think it's intuitive and it sounds obvious when people say it. And I think that people just don't do it because they're scared or they're procrastinating or they have this internal resistance to getting started on it. Societal pressure, all of that stuff. But I think the most remarkable thing is just that there are really no secrets. It's like it's all out there. It's mostly a factor of just motivation and getting through the resistance and getting through the sock and making it happen. It is just a matter of accepting that there are any secrets and getting on with it basically, right?

And saying that you backing yourself to figure it out as opposed to sort of being crippled by whatever it is that's holding you back from not doing it. Yeah.

And creating some sort of stake that will make you figure it out pretty much always works. Whatever you can find for stakes that are more emotionally driven instead of just money, I think is more effective. We were talking a little bit, I'm doing a keto diet right now. And I'm tweeting about the keto diet almost every day on Twitter and it's getting a pretty good following on Twitter. And that's really motivating for me to not stop doing this thing for the three months that I've committed to. Right? It's like, if I stop doing it and I stop tweeting about it, I don't know if anybody will actually call me out, right? But that will be embarrassing for me.

For sure, the public accountability, yeah? Exactly.

Yeah, it's super

effective. Absolutely. So talk to me a little bit more about how you think about self experimentation. So I know you've done a bunch of experiments in loads of different fields. How do you think about these? How do you choose them? And how do you go about managing them? So obviously, I guess the obvious example to go to is the one you're doing right now with the ketone stuff. Yeah.

I don't have a perfect answer for that. I mean, most of them tend to come out of me just being curious about doing something and then going after it. I think where it kind of all started was when I was a junior or senior in high school, I decided that I wanted to start getting in shape. And I started reading stuff about weightlifting and all of that, put on a bunch of muscle really quickly. And that kind of made me go like, whoa, what else can I do with my body and life? And I've just been really interested in it ever since. So I don't have a clear structure for any of it. It's more I just find interesting to test what the human body can do and particularly what I can do. So I think my favorites are probably, you know, like I tried intermittent fasting at one point around that same time senior year of high school. And it's basically where you only eat within an eight hour window. And I was trying it like seven years ago now. So it was before it was cool and popular and people were like, Oh my God, what are you doing? Breakfast. And I said, I was like, well, I feel better and I save time by not eating one meal. And I'm still getting stronger and I'm thinner. So like screw you, I'm going to keep doing this. And I haven't stopped, right? I've been doing it for seven years now. So that was like one. And then I had heard, I don't remember how I had heard about it, but this was three years ago now. I'd heard about like longer term fasting where, you know, people could go for five, seven days, whatever, like just drinking water. And that was literally just like I read about it one day and I said, Oh, okay, that sounds interesting. And then I just tried it starting the next day. So I was, you know, I basically said, okay, well, I can't eat starting tomorrow for five days. And I was taking detailed notes on all of it. And I made these other criteria for myself. Like I had to go about my normal life. I had to behave like a normal person and just like doing research about it as I'm doing it. Right. So I mean, I was in like day three of the fast or something and I was reading online and it said, like, Oh, make sure that you, you know, stay seated and resting in bed for most of the day so that you don't overexert your body. And at that point, I'd been like walking around and going up and downstairs and doing everything normally. And I was like, that's weird. It doesn't make any sense. So it's just sort of whenever I find something I'm curious about. So with keto, it was a mix of things. You know, I obviously it's pretty in vogue now. My experience with fasting made me more interested in it because it's a similar process. When you're fasting, you're in ketosis, doing the keto diet is obviously to get in ketosis. And the best part about fasting to me is the mental benefits that you get. So with intermittent fasting, I usually won't eat lunch until probably 2 p.m. And that whole morning, it basically, it just feels like I'm high sort of like I'm super focused, energized. I feel amazing. It's like drinking a bunch of caffeine, but without all the jitters and tunnel vision, it's awesome. And part of this one of the selling points with keto was like, Hey, you can have that all the time, right? And because I always kind of hated lunch, right? Eat lunch. And then I just be a little bit more lethargic the rest of the day. So that may be interested in it. And then the other thing was I was reading this book, unconventional medicine by Chris Kesser. And he's one of the guys who started the whole functional medicine movement. We probably don't have time to go into it, but functional medicine is cool. Everyone should look it up. And he mentioned in the book that he had seen ketosis have a really beneficial effect on people who suffered from eczema, which for anyone who doesn't know it, it's a very bad, but is a pretty gnarly skin condition where your skin just breaks out in these open sores. And at the light end, it can just be a couple of them at the harsher end. It can be like all over your body. And it's, it's considered an autoimmune condition. We're still not entirely sure what causes it, but my girlfriend has had it pretty bad for since middle school. So she's had it for, you know, a bit over 10 years now. She's gone to tons of doctors for it, tried a bunch of different stuff. The only thing that has a really noticeable effect is like oral steroids, but obviously you don't want to be taking those for your whole life. So she had just sort of given up and was like, all right, I guess I have to live with this. And you know, I saw it in Chris's book and I was like, hey, you know, maybe we should just try keto diet for a bit. And we started it a week ago. And this like sounds really bullshitty and pseudo-sciencey, but I shit you not like her eczema is gone. Like it's literally cleared up more than any drug she's ever taken, any skin on me she's ever put on. It's absolutely wild. And we like didn't even take before pictures because we didn't expect this kind of thing to happen. So she's like, obviously feels amazing about it. And then I've been getting great effects from it too. So I've lost like five pounds in a week. My strength is like stayed pretty consistent, which is pretty good. And I just feel awesome. Like I feel really, really good. I feel really high energy all day. I don't get that afternoon crash anymore. And I've had a lot of fun talking about it online because I think it's something like you said before, a lot of people are interested in, but a lot of people don't actually like pursue or try or they're just not sure about it. So I'm doing this like big mega article on it. And I think I'll just like keep updating it each week with all of my like blood tests and weight and ketone levels and what I'm eating and all of that. It's just fun. It's like fun to play around with. And I find too that I'm so ADHD with doing stuff that I need a project like this so that I can focus on my business stuff. Because if I don't have like a personal project, then I'll end up like starting to other business-y things on the side and I completely overwork myself and have to shut the other two down. So the dietary experimentation or whatever else is a good hedge against my natural

tendency to like run around like a ferret and try everything at once.