Nathan Barry Archive

Why don’t people share financial numbers? In this twenty-minute audio essay I delve into some of the reasons why people are afraid to be financially transparent, and why I’ve chosen to ignore those reasons in favor of exposing my revenue numbers (and why you should too). Show NotesSacha Grief – one of the people who’s inspired me most to start publishing books and be transparent about the process. Jarrod Drysdale – a great designer and one of the inspirations behind my design books. The App Design Handbook launch – here’s the blog post I published where I revealed all my launch numbers – and got accused of bragging as a result :-D Want to try something fun? Leave a comment below with a financial number you’re comfortable sharing. It could be anything from your latte budget to how much your most recent product launch made!

One of the most effective ways to show potential customers how your product could be useful to them is to feature it in a promo video. Well-made promo videos can be inspiring, insightful, and fun. The problem is, video can take a bit of time to learn how to do right. Luckily I have a good friend who runs his own video production studio. His name is Caleb Wojcik; you might know him from Fizzle, which he recently moved on from to run his studio full time. If there’s one person I’d recommend to take video production advice from it’s definitely Caleb. I recently asked him to hang out with me and talk video for an hour; we dug into gear, production techniques, and some sweet hacks to make your editing workflow quicker. This episode will be especially insightful if you’re thinking about making a promo video for your product. Enjoy!Show NotesCaleb Wojcik’s DIY Video Guide – if you’re getting into making promo videos for your business, I can’t recommend this guide enough. Caleb Wojcik’s gear guide – we talked a bit about gear, but it’s way too easy to waste time figuring out what gear to buy instead of actually making videos. Luckily Caleb’s done all the work for you in this free guide. Pat Flynn’s website – we mentioned our friend Pat a few times; here’s his site if you haven’t had a chance to see his work yet. Wistia’s “down and dirty” lighting kit – for less than $100 you can make your own professional lighting kit, my friends at Wistia show you how.Caleb and me hanging out – the live hangout this podcast recording is taken from.

If you dream of selling your own products and creating a lifestyle of flexibility and independence, it’s going to be pretty tough to do that without an audience. Not only that, but that audience must be comprised of people who love what you do and have the financial means to pay you for solutions to their problems. There are many ways to build an audience, but very few of those methods lead to a profitable audience.In this short audio essay, I share with you three habits which helped me build an audience of amazing people – people who not only love what I do, but also get a ton of value from my products. They’ve been the key to my success, and if you build your audience the right way, it can be a game changer for you too. Enjoy this quick listen! Building a profitable audience takes time, and it can be a difficult process without guidance. Luckily I wrote an entire book about how to build a profitable audience from scratch – and how to create a valuable product you can sell to them. Real people have used the information in Authority to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling educational products to their enthusiastic audiences. Get your copy of Authority to find out how you can too.Or you can check out what a few people have said about Authority on Amazon. 

This is part two of the live event Sacha Greif and I put together in August of last year. As a reminder, you can watch a video of the event here, and you can listen to part one here if you missed it. Enjoy part two of The Self-Publishing Hangout!Sacha, Justin, and Paul are all super helpful, knowledgeable, and experienced in their respective fields. You should definitely follow them and subscribe to their email lists. Here’s where you can find them online:Sacha Greif Justin Jackson Paul Jarvis

In August last year Sacha Greif and I put together a live event called The Self-Publishing Hangout. We brought on Paul Jarvis and Justin Jackson to round out our panel. You can watch a video of the event here, or checkout my podcast episode below.   Since recording that episode each of the guests have gone on to do amazing things. You should definitely follow them and subscribe to their email lists. Here’s where you can find them online:Sacha Greif Justin Jackson Paul JarvisSee you in part 2!

Today I’ve got my absolute favorite product creation and launch story to share with you! Sean McCabe started as a web design consultant, then built up a following for his true passion: hand lettering.He then started teaching and grew a massive email list and then launched a training product. He shares the story and all the launch details (including exact revenue numbers) in this episode. Here’s where you can find Sean on the web:His main site, Seanwes.comThe seanwes podcastHis new book, The Overlap TechniqueHis tshirt and print storeAnd finally, the wildly successful Learn Lettering courseHere you can see the very first tshirt Sean sold in his store.      Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes.

Few things have paid off better in my business than a focus on email marketing. In building my list up to 18,000+ subscribers I’ve learned that email is the most profitable marketing channel around. Easily beating out Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.To learn more about email marketing I brought on three of my good friends: Brennan Dunn, James Clear, and Corbett Barr. All three have built highly profitable email lists in the last few years.Enjoy the episode!You can find each of their businesses (and subscribe to their lists) here:Corbett Barr — Fizzle.coBrennan Dunn — Planscope.io, BrennanDunn.comJames Clear — JamesClear.comPlease go to iTunes and subscribe and write a review. It would really help me out!See you in the next episode! 

In January 2013 I wrote a series of goals for the year. One of them was “launch a podcast.”How does a goal like that take 18 months to be realized? Well, first I created all kinds of reasons that a podcast was much harder than it actually needed to be. Finally after recording episodes and working sporadically on it for over a year, I’m ready to launch!This first episode is a short book I wrote called The Productivity Manifesto. If you read my last post you know that productivity is something I’ve excelled at in the past, but am struggling with right now. So it seemed like a good topic to revisit for episode one.After listening please do me a huge favor and write a review on iTunes. Good reviews are critical to getting an audience for a brand new show.See you in the next episode!