Why Most Founders Fail at Content (And How To Fix It) With Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan is the Founder and CEO of Foundr, a global media and education company connecting millions with influential entrepreneurs. Under his leadership, Foundr has featured interviews with prominent figures such as Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Tim Ferriss. Nathan bootstrapped Foundr from the ground up, providing insights on content marketing, brand building, and business growth for entrepreneurs worldwide.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:38] Nathan Chan’s career trajectory and how a credit card investment led to the creation of Foundr
[12:28] The early struggles of launching Foundr, including a trademark infringement lawsuit
[16:29] Advice for starting, building, and scaling a digital brand
[21:28] Why some digital brands scale rapidly and others don’t — and Nathan’s formula for growth
[32:58] How to grow a social media following amid changing algorithms
[37:30] Nathan’s unicorn strategy for creating content
[48:27] Best practices for monetizing content
[54:24] The importance of identifying an ideal partner for business growth
[1:03:33] A glimpse into Nathan’s childhood experiences
[1:09:52] Nathan shares his approach to fitness, health, and optimizing performance for long-term success

In this episode…

Creating a business that stands out in the market is a goal for many entrepreneurs, but few understand the challenges of reaching this point. What does it take to transition from a side hustle to a globally recognized brand? How can you create fresh content in an oversaturated digital world?

According to eight-figure digital media founder Nathan Chan, brand growth relies on eye-catching designs, compelling products and content, and loyal brand ambassadors. Connecting with your audience through consistent content creation allows you to build a trustworthy and recognizable brand. Nathan suggests creating high-performing content using the unicorn strategy, which identifies and replicates top-performing content from notable brands and influencers in your niche.

In today’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris hosts Nathan Chan, the Founder and CEO of Foundr, about how he built Foundr into one of the most recognized entrepreneurial media brands. Nathan shares his three-part strategy for brand growth, how he cracked Instagram’s growth formula, and why personal branding is the future of entrepreneurship.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

“People don’t just want to follow brands anymore — they want to follow the person behind the brand.”
“If you want to scale, maniacal focus is your best weapon.”
“Great brands are built on great design, great products, and great ambassadors.”
“The secret to social media growth? Get other people to share your content.”
“Every entrepreneur I’ve met has faced a moment where they thought about giving up. Success is pushing past that.”

Action Steps

Develop a strong brand identity: Invest in great design and ensure your brand makes a lasting impression visually and emotionally.
Focus on a single growth channel first: Master one marketing channel before expanding to others; this level of focus leads to faster success.
Leverage partnerships and collaborations: Work with influencers, creators, and ambassadors in your industry to amplify your brand.
Stay consistent with content creation: Social media platforms reward consistency, so commit to a posting schedule and refine your strategy over time.
Build a monetization plan early: Whether through sponsorships, product sales, or memberships, create a plan to make your content profitable as you grow.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:16

Hey everyone, I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce and beyond to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and way, way, way beyond that. As you up arrow your business and your personal life today, we have a powerhouse in the world of entrepreneurship and digital media joining us. Nathan Chan, the founder and CEO of Foundr Magazine. If you've ever scrolled through Instagram and seen those viral wisdom packed posts from Foundr or if you've ever binge watched interviews with some of the biggest business icons, like Richard Branson, Mark Cuban and Gary V then you already know the impact Nathan and his team have had. What started as a simple digital magazine has grown into a global entrepreneurial education empire with millions of followers, courses from world class founders and a brand that's synonymous with startup success, but behind all of that, a guy who started from scratch, bootstrapped his way up to the top and cracked the code on content brand building and scaling a business in the digital age. Today, we're diving deep into Nathan's journey from side hustle to eight figure media company, his insights on what it really takes to build a brand in 2025 and the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when trying to scale, whether you're a startup founder, a creator, or just someone who wants to learn from one of the best. This is an episode you don't want to miss. Nathan, welcome to the show.

Nathan Chan 1:31

William, thank you so much for having me and this amazing intro. Wow, I feel, yeah, you always feel a bit weird when you get these, like, really, for sure, fancy, impressive intros, but yeah, thank you for the kind words. Man,

William Harris 1:45

yeah, happy to I mean, we, we've been interacting for a long time online, and I've been able to work with you on a couple of other projects before, and so it's fun to finally get you here in the studio recording this, this episode.

Nathan Chan 1:58

Yeah, no, it's awesome to be here. Man, it's great to finally connect a bit further. Yeah,

William Harris 2:03

before we dive into the meat of the episode, I do want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with one that sold for nearly 800,000,001 that ipoed. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com, which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com Okay, now on to the good stuff, Nathan, let's go back to before Foundr. Where were you in life and what was missing that made you start this?

Nathan Chan 2:38

Yeah, so before I started Foundr, I guess I was in a place where I was looking for work that I was passionate about, and that's been my real Guiding Light in just everything, right? Like, like, like, how it all started. I know a lot of people start businesses and they're like, I've got this dream to build this massive thing and make a ton of money and all this kind of stuff, but for me, I just really wanted to find work that I enjoyed, because I believe life is too short to do work that you hate. And so I was in a position where I, you know, I woke up every day and I didn't enjoy my job. Now, the byproduct of that, byproduct of that was I wasn't getting paid much money either, which I know is a big driving force for people, because you want that freedom, you want that lifestyle and and, and the hilarious thing is, the the longer and the longer and the more you grow your business, a lot of the time you actually have to work harder, for sure, with Your business, and a lot of people say that you don't, and there's rights of passage. Don't get me wrong, right, like, I've got a full leadership team in place now that I could go and, you know, fully eject, I don't want to, but there's rights of passage to this thing. But coming back to it will like, for me, I was working in a day job in IT support nothing to do with what I do now, had no network. Didn't really know anyone that was an entrepreneur, founder 12 years ago. You know, building an online business being an entrepreneur isn't as cool as it is now. You know, being a creator and being an entrepreneur is pretty cool, right? That's what everyone wants to do, right? Like they've done studies in America, and the number one profession that that kids, what like want, want to have, is being a full time YouTuber, being a full time creator, right? That wasn't a thing back then. So I grew up in the suburbs. My mom was a nurse, my dad was a teacher, so I wasn't ever exposed to this idea of starting a business. And so what happened was I did this incredible first ever, you know, once in a lifetime, trip to Europe. It's something that you do in Australia. We call it the. Australia, the Great Australian Dream where you, you know, you, you backpack around Europe. And I went with my best friend at the time, who, unfortunately, a few years later, passed away from cancer. And we went to kindergarten, primary school, high school, university together. So we're like, Yep, let's go on this. Let's go on this amazing European trip. So traveled all around Europe. I was working at my job, and before I even took that job, I said, I'm going to go to Europe for like, a long period of time, like a good few months. If I take this job, you need to let me do that trip. And they're like, Yep, okay, done. So I lined that up. I went on that trip, and I didn't want to go back to work. Like, I had this realization that, like, I can't, I can't do this like, I, like, it's not me, so I've got to go back and I've got to find something that I'm passionate about. It's not that I didn't want to work because, you know, I You got you like, everyone has to work, right? But, like, it was one of these things where I was just like, Okay, I need to make a change. And so I always had this passion. Always has this curiosity for marketing. And I did an elective in my university degree where it was a marketing subject, and I loved it. It was really fun. And so what I did was I went back to university, and I did a post graduate degree in marketing, I did a master's of marketing, and I was studying, and I got a new job at a new company. I'm still in IT support. It was a bigger company with the ambition to finish my degree in a couple of years and transition to a marketing role from it or marketing role, because I was speaking to a careers person who was helping me write my resume, and she said that would be a good idea get a job at a big company, finish your marketing degree, then transfer across. So I did that. I literally finished my degree, but I couldn't transfer across. No one would give me a job. I went for three internal jobs, jobs like job applications and jobs at that company, and they wouldn't even give me a job. And they kept saying, I don't have any experience. That's what I kept hearing, you don't have any experience. And from that, then I was like, Okay, well, I need to get experience so, so I started to, you know, I was brought up with computers and technology. So my dad, he used to teach at a at a college, and he used to teach computing. So he used to always have the latest and greatest computers and games and whatnot. So I kind of was brought up amongs playing around with computers and technology. So I was passionate about technology still, am sure, and I was passionate about marketing. So I was like, what if I merge those passions with this thing called online marketing? So I started to do research and go down these rabbit holes, and then I learn about things like affiliate marketing and how you can create a website. And back then, it was much easier to rank in Google and you could create a website like best smelling cologne.net and make your first dollar, which is what I tried to do where I was, you know, created a cologne reviews website, and, you know, was getting traffic ranking in Google, and then was selling, obviously, had affiliate banners. And so I went down this pathway, and I started learning these kinds of things, trying to, you know, understand affiliate marketing. And, long story short, I found this guy who created, you know, he think, created something called the called the challenge where, you know, it was a, it was a 30 day challenge to make your first dollar online. But, and I was on his email list, and he, he had this software that he launched. It was called mag cast, and what it allowed you to do was to create your own digital magazine. And I thought it was such a fantastic idea, because back then, you know, print magazines were dying, they were going digital, and you could use this software to create this mag, like a magazine on the App Store and Google Play Store and publish it. And I thought it was such a fantastic idea. And, you know, he was running a special promotion, an early bird special, and it was, you know, $2,000 US to purchase the software. And I didn't have much money at the time. I was in my day job, yeah, dude, I was making, at that time, 40 $40,000 for 44,000 $44,000 a year Australian, so it's like 30,000 US a year. And I was living off the back of my credit card. But I was like, You know what? I think this is an awesome idea. I'm gonna go for I need that experience. I love it. And so, so I put, I put that payment down on my credit. Card, and things start to get real. I'm building a magazine. Know nothing about apps, no nothing about publishing. Know nothing about editorial, no nothing, no nothing about the subject matter. And at first the magazine was going to be on horse racing. So horse racing is horse racing is massive. Here in Australia, we even have a, you know, a public holiday for what's called the Melbourne Cup. So I'm based in Melbourne, sure, and, yeah, it's called the race that stops the nation. So every nobody's working, everyone takes the day off. It's a public holiday. And that's how big it is, right? And everyone watches the race. So my best friend, he's a horse racing journal. Another one of my best mates, he's a horse racing journalist. Now, at the time, he he just got a job at a company called racing Comm, and I was like, let's do this magazine together. I'll do the marketing, I'll do the tech, and you can be the subject matter expert, and we were going to do it. We were going to do it because we start this magazine, my best friend, and then he got this job at racing comm and said, they can't. They don't want me to do any side hustles. She was like, Oh, okay. And so I'm passionate about horse racing, but more from a social perspective, not around kind of the sport. And so I went back to the drawing board, and I was like, Well, you know, I've read books like The Four Hour Work Week or, you know, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So, so I was already on that pathway. I was like, what if I create this magazine? I knew podcasts were hot. What if I just interview successful founders like, you know, Pat Flynn, first ever, you know, entrepreneurial podcast I listened to. I was like, what if I just interview successful founders and just share their stories in the magazine, and then I can learn about business and entrepreneurship along the way. And that's how Foundr was born of it.

William Harris 11:57

It's so good. I mean, you were at the forefront of this, like you said, like before. This now, this is, like, the number one job. Everybody wants to be Nathan Chan. They just don't realize that it's Nathan Chan. They want it. But they do, right? They want to be like this. Media Creator, YouTube channel owner, that said, I have to imagine that there were times where it was hard. So you've founded, Foundr, now you're moving through. Was there a time when you were like, I want to give up. This is too hard. So many times, so

Nathan Chan 12:28

many times, so many times I've lost count. William, yeah, and that's not to say that I'm super passionate about what I do and the brand and our mission and this movement and where we're taking things with Foundr, but like, dude, there have been so many times where I've flown so close to the sun, where it's just so hard, and it's just like, you know, it's, in many ways, it's a right of passage. You know, every single successful founder that I've interviewed, they have come so close to, like, you know, we're running out of money. Or, if this doesn't work, we're gonna have to let a ton of people go like, all these different things where it's really tough, high pressure, high stakes, and so, yeah, that's happened quite a few times, even, not even, not just that, like, if you have, not even just cash flow challenges, but even even as an example, if you know, in the early days of starting Foundr, I was sued for trademark infringement. So so I didn't call the magazine. Wasn't originally called Foundr, it was called Key to Success Magazine, and in the first four months of starting Foundr, we were sued by one of the biggest business magazines in the United States, and they Yeah, you can kind of work out, yeah, and, you know, I had to change the name, and it was a massive blessing in disguise. But I remember thinking at that time, like, am I going to go bankrupt? Like, what? Like, I don't want it like, I don't like, is this what building a business is, I don't want to do this like, this is not fun, it's not fun, it's scary, it's nerve wracking. And so, yeah, I, you know, I've had so many times like that where I felt like giving up, but you keep going right, being a solo found it's tough too. It's a very lonely journey. The journey of an entrepreneur is very lonely at many times, your friends and family often don't understand you you want. That's why it's so important to be surrounded by like minded people and people that have you know been on a similar journey to you, or or people that have you know maybe even a few steps before you because you can give back, but your friends and family don't get it if they're not into this stuff. And then, you know, if you're a single, solo founder, it's it's just you, right? And and it's impossible as a solo founder to be great at everything, to wear so many hats. It's so inherently. There are many areas where you need people to substitute you, but it's very hard to identify that. It's very hard to even recognize that in of yourself, and it's very hard to find great people to help compliment you. And then, if you're bootstrapping, you can't afford that. And so there's all these lessons along the way that that are really critical, that that have, I've learned along the way growing. Foundr,

William Harris 15:32

yeah, you mentioned that idea of it feeling like many moments where you felt like, I'm not sure if we can move past this right here. It's like it sucks the wind out of you. Kind of thing, right? Getting sued is certainly one of them. Have you ever seen the videos of those monks in training and you see them like, just getting kicked in the nuts repeatedly? I've heard somebody describe entrepreneurship very much like that, where it's like, somehow you develop this ability to be kicked in the nuts and it not hurt, you can keep moving forward. That's entrepreneurship. Um, you know, you mentioned that there are a lot of lessons that you've learned along the way being where you are now. If you were going to go back and talk to Nathan Chan six months into his entrepreneurial journey, what's, what's one or two things that you would tell him and say, Hey, be aware of this. Stay focused on this, ignore this, whatever that might be. Like, one or two pieces of advice you would give him,

Nathan Chan 16:29

okay, all right. First one would be just focus, maniacal focus. I think along my journey, I've done a lot of different things, and that has, you know, that has, you know, lessons in of itself. But focus is so critical. And I think, you know, it's taken me quite some time to understand that true power of focus. And then the other thing would be, and this is an interesting one, just purely from my reflections. Now, at the moment, I'm, you know, really got a big focus on building my personal brand. I'm only a couple of weeks in, and when I say building my personal brand, I've been building my personal brand since I started Foundr, right? But I've been creating content through Foundr, not as Sure. Nathan Chan and I literally only started two weeks ago, right? Nice, I'm doing it. I do. And when I say started like, I'm actively posting on the Nathan Chan, you know, LinkedIn, like all the channels, and I'm I'm actively sharing behind the scenes lessons I'm learning. And also trying to serve through my view of the world, because Foundrs its own beast in of itself now. And you know, I've been doing it for two weeks, will, and I was like, I should have did, done this years and years and years and years ago, so and the reason that I should have done it is because more than ever people are interested in the person behind the brand, and this idea of Foundr led brands is something that's only going to get larger and larger and larger, where creators are becoming founders and founders are becoming creators, right? And it's come to a point now where if you want a competitive advantage in any space that you're in or any market, you need to be doing it. That's, that's, that's, that's kind of the conclusion I've come to, and I've been trained. Didn't even know I was training for 12 years. So, you know, that's something that I would have told myself, like, start documenting, start creating more content. Like, you know, I think it would be, it would be insane if I started doing that literally 11 years ago.

William Harris 19:06

I think it's great advice. I think one of the things that I really appreciate it when founders are out there just talking about, like you said, behind the scenes, what they're doing, what they're learning right then and there, as they're learning, it is. It's so easy to look back and say, Oh, I should have done this, or I shouldn't have done this, but when you're in the heat of the moment, you're getting like, this real processing of, like, what's going through this person's head, because I think that's more relatable to people, because that's what's going through their head, versus like, here was the problem, here's the solution. Obvious. It makes sense in hindsight. When you're going through it and you're like, I don't know what the solution is, but here's what I'm attempting, here's why I'm attempting it, here's what that I ended up turning into. It worked. It didn't work. It didn't work, it didn't work. It didn't work. This one did work. So you can see that there was like this, you know, trial and error that went into things too. And I think that's important, and I think that that ends up creating, overall, just the the dialog that we need to have. In the entrepreneur space, for people to be able to have that and see that, that it's not overnight success, that it was. It was hustle and failure, and hustle and failure, and then it led to where you are now, today,

Nathan Chan 20:11

100% so I think it's how you build relationships. And sure, if you have a strong relationship with your community, it can be really, really powerful with the movement that you're trying to drive. And so a lot of people, we don't know everyone, but in this market, a lot of people do know Foundr, and a lot of people do know Nathan, but do they know of Nathan? But do they really know Nathan? And that's, and that's, that's, that's, that's going to be a focus for me now going forward. But those are two things that I wish I loved. I had it told myself, and there's so many more, man, if you can boil it down to two like that, there's the two that come to mind. I'm trying to, try to, you know, put a box around too, but it, you know, it's, it's tough.

William Harris 20:59

Give me the 1000 things that you've learned? No, yeah. I mean, it's hard to boil it down the two. Let's talk about like Foundr as a brand then, because you've done a great job of building that and growing that. And so taking a step away from personal brand for a second to look at the brand brand. Why do you think that some brands explode on online and others don't. What is it that allows some brands to just excel and others to just stall?

Nathan Chan 21:28

Yeah, so I didn't. I actually, I didn't know much about brand when I started Foundr, but over time, I quickly recognized, just from a byproduct of being in it and doing it now a couple of times, like I actually built an e-commerce company totally separate From Foundr, because I had this imposter syndrome. Like, you know, there's this guy, he's talking about business, but he's only business that he started his business talking about business. I didn't want to be that guy. And, you know, Foundr has a massive, massive platform, helping people start and grow e-commerce, businesses, instead talking about, why don't I just do it and, like, prove the our system, our process, works. But not only that, like you can do it. I'm doing it like it, like so so I built two brands, and two of those brands like, not only Foundr, but the other brands called healthish. Now I ended up selling that, but it was a great brand. And so I I never went out going, Oh, how do I build this incredible brand? I just kind of learned along the way. And then there was things that I picked up and patterns that I recognized from creating both of those brands, and there were strong brands in the marketplace that I've I can kind of talk you through some of the key principles that if I were to start another company, these are the key things that I'd be I'd be doing that I've learned from creating great brand. First and foremost, you need great design, right? Like great design, like you can see the magazine covers behind me, right, right? Like, you need great design. Because the way that your product or your service, or the way that people see it, and the look and feel and the way that they interact, it makes them feel something, and that can be a differentiator in of itself. So so not just the look, but the type and the copy that like, that whole feeling like that tells a story in of itself, right? So that that, that's the first piece, whatever company that I, you know, go and create, I play a big emphasis on design. Designs got to be good, and it's a way to stand out as well. It's a way to differentiate. It's way to get cut through some of the things you ask. So that's first and foremost. And and you look at all of the top startups in Silicon Valley, they all have great brands like that. They all place a big emphasis on design, and it's because these people know, like you go, you go Silicon Valley, you go Sam Fran you raise a ton of money. Any of those VC firms introduce you to a next level branding agency, sure, right? And it's not because they think that it's, it's a great idea, because it's a fancy thing to do, because you want you know they know they do that, because they know it works. Because if you if you want to get cut through, you need a great you need great design, and there's a competitive engine of itself. The second thing is, you need a great product. Now, I know it goes without saying, right? But for. Some people, they just want to sell a widget, and if they're just selling a widget, that's what it looks like, right? So, so you need a great product, your product, or your service, has to be truly world class. Has to be, you know, something that people can go, Okay, this is awesome, right? This is awesome. Where have you been all my life? Okay, this is cool. This is interesting, right? So, so, in the case of Foundr, you know, we, I really placed a high emphasis on the content, right? The contents got to be actionable. We're going to have depth, like, great, incredible, crazy stories, right? Like, so that was, that was Foundr for health. Ish, you know, it was great design, but the product was awesome, right? It was a time marked water bottle. We know that, you know, a lot of people forget when to drink water. It was a very simple concept. It was cool, it was slick. It was a great product, right? So, you gotta have great product. You gotta have great design, yep. And then the third thing is, you need great ambassadors. So if you look at all the greatest brands, like, you know Nike as a great one, they have the best ambassadors, right, and they align themselves with thought leaders and the coolest people out there, or the people that attract the kind of people that they want to buy their product, and also the people that buy that product that they attract the people that they want To be, right? It's aspirational, yep. And so those are my three key things, right? So for Foundr, the way that I got a lot of cut through, inherently, which related back to the product, was I was interviewing world class founders that in many cases, they are hard to reach. They are at the top of their game. And it aligned the brand with those people. So inherently, there's a lot of trust. Inherently, this is cool. Inherently, it's like, okay, wow, that's a you know, credibility, that's credible, and then, and that's how you create a great brand, and that's how you get cut through, and that's the blueprint that I will follow for the rest of my life. You know, obviously you need your core values around your brand. That goes without saying, right? But at the start, I didn't come up with core values. I didn't know what that is. And, you know, I didn't have a very clear idea of of Foundr and what, who, what we stand for. But I knew that great design was important. I knew great product was important. I knew, and I worked out very quickly. If you align yourself with the thought leaders in whatever industry you're in, it just builds an incredible brand, incredible reputation, incredible trust, and gets that cut through, right? So, like, you know, if you're, if you're starting a boxing gym, how can you have one of your ambassadors, like, you know, world champion boxer, right? That everyone knows, yep, because, because that starts to build a brand, then how can you have great design and a great, like, you know, kind of brand, branding, identity, you know, and then you go into the place, like, incredible training next, little trainers and like, amazing look and feel that naturally, like you can already feel that brand right. And those are the things that people feel inherently, but a lot of people don't pay attention to these things.

William Harris 28:34

Yeah, then your ads will work, and everything else that you do, your email will work. It will work because of those three things. What I think was brilliant about the way that you summarized it into those three things. It reminds me a lot of an episode I did with Clayton, Christopher. So he was the founder of Sweet Leaf Tea water, loose sparkling water. Three times that. He's taken CPG brands, food and beverage brands, to nine figures and sold them. So like, I mean, he's figured out this, this thing that's worked. And the way that I would kind of correlate what you just said to some of the things he said in that episode, that I really like here too is, let's say the design reminds me a lot of people's perception of your product. First of all, you have to have good product. So I'll go back to the product first. So you have to have good product. And he would say, liquid to lips. The whole point was, you had to get to the point where in order for people to really want your product, they have to test it. They have to try and say, This actually tastes good. Doesn't matter if it's healthier, doesn't matter if it's any of these other things. If it doesn't taste good, people don't want it, right? So it has to taste good. Has to be a good product. So you get that in okay? Now it has to be a good design, though, too. And to your point, the way that I would say that he had this is people perceive the flavor differently if it's designed. Well, it could be the exact same thing, but they are going to perceive it very differently depending on how it's designed. And so one of the things that he did for deep Eddie vodka that he talked about was they would have pin up girls be the ones that are actually giving you the vodka to taste test at this. Versus, you know, like, granny, or whatever, you know, giving it to you like it leveled the whole experience of trying it to where it's like, it it created this, oh, like, this experience of trying the product. Now I feel like it's better. So it's like, that's the idea of great design. And then I like, where you went with, like, the ambassadors. I'm thinking about this, the idea of the great product and the great design are what's going to get the ambassadors to kind of get behind it. But the majority of people, the majority of people, will only do something if it's cool, right? Like a lot of people will only do it if their friends are also doing it, and they're not not willing to actually try. But to get those people who are willing to try it ahead of time, you have to have those two things in place. Then if you do, then those ambassadors work. And ambassadors, I like to use that word, because it's not just influencers, it's not just celebrities. It can be, it could be sales people of sorts, right? Like it's whoever's out there helping you to build that up. But certainly works a lot better if they're true ambassadors, and it's, you know, like you said, somebody that's relevant within that industry that's going to be able to represent the brand in the right way. I don't know. I like the way that you summarize this into these three core different things, yeah,

Nathan Chan 31:05

so that's, that's kind of my guiding playbook. I launch another brand tomorrow. Those are the things that I'm thinking about. Those are things I'm working towards. First and foremost, I've got to validate the product, you know, get it right and find out the market demand. You know, it's got to have all these other unit economics depending, you know, on whether it's a physical product, digital product, SaaS, whatever. But even if I, even if I launch a SaaS product, right? Like B2B, like, I would have ambassadors. You know, these other companies, well known companies, are using this product. You see where I'm going with it? It's right. It's the same playbook for whether, whatever kind of business you're building, service, local retail, Ecomm, you know, DTC, you know, even education, you know, in the education, digital products, info space, or SaaS, you know, like, like, which all the different models in terms of an online business or offline business. That's how I would do it always, yeah,

William Harris 32:06

another interesting thing that you did when you launched Foundr that I think was for definitely different, I think at the time, you figured out a way to really crack Instagram's code at the time, um, what it obviously, Instagram has changed. The algorithm has changed. Social media has changed as a result of all of that, right? And so now moving forward, what tips would you have for somebody who wants to do a similar thing, knowing that they can't necessarily crack the Instagram code in the same way that you are able to, let's just say, like hyper scale, and crack it, and maybe they can. Maybe you would disagree with me on that, but maybe this is a hey, you need to find whatever that channel is, that's the Instagram of your day, and pour into that. Or, you know, how would you go about really accelerating the social media presence of a newer brand?

Nathan Chan 32:58

So it's been interesting, right? Like I started Foundr, you know, 11 years ago, and in the first couple of years, I used Instagram as a massive growth channel, like in the first year I was using organic SEO on the App Store, and that got me to at least six figures a year in just subscription revenue. And then I found Instagram. Now, at the time, the platform was still in its infancy, and don't get me wrong, there was, there was some land grab there, but it's funny, like the principles, so we're close to 4 million followers now. The principles that I used back then, I'm now using in my personal brand, and also used with health ish, and they all still don't change. Man, like, yeah, there's an algorithm and it's changed, but like, the principles that actually don't change, right? I can, I can talk you through them, so please, and I'm applying it to my personal brand. So like, the first one is, and this, this, this goes for any channel, right? Like, if you're launching a brand, you're launching a company, whether it's B2B, B2C, doesn't really matter. You need to just focus on one channel, and you get one channel, right? You got to get your selling system Right, right? With one channel, one system, and you can, you can focus on one channel, one system, one product, and pass a million dollars a year. Like, not easy, but you can do it. It is definitely possible, right? And that's the power of focus. And who mosey talks about this all the time, right? So I make no claim to that, but the same principles are applying for health issues that I used, for Foundr, that I used and now my personal brand. The first one is getting other people focus on one channel, but then when you're on that, just focus on that one channel, getting other people to share your content or. Or shout you out and mention you in some way, shape or form. So as an example, and this was not, you know, this was not like a like a thing I asked someone to do, or it wasn't a deal, or whatever. You know, I read this guy's book, incredible guy, Dan Walker, fellow Australian, and he's from Sydney. He was in Melbourne. I read his book while I was overseas about a month ago, called 90 day personal brand amazing. And I followed him on Instagram, and I just sent him a message. I read the book, and I was like, This is amazing. I'm doing my 90 day personal brand when I get back. I'm overseas at the moment, and he's like, man, great to catch up. I'm in Melbourne. Let's connect further. I caught up with him yesterday. He's got like, you know, over half a million followers. And he posted, we got a photo together, and he posted, posted a photo of me on his story. And, you know, wave of people, right? Yeah, right. So, and that was not by design, but still, you know, that's all I did with health ish, we had just so many influences, shouting out the brand, sending product for post with Foundr. I had so many other accounts that we were doing, share for shares, I'll shout out your content. You shout out mine. Stories didn't exist. Tag each other. Mention the caption. Mention in the bio, mention the caption, and tag each other like those still play books exist. I have an unfair advantage now, because I'm, you know, making you can use collaborator posts now, right? Like the technology has changed, but still the same thing, you know, like I'm going, I'm growing the my Nathan Chan, Instagram very fast, because, you know, I'm a cloud. I'm collaborating with Foundr where it feels right, you know? Sure. And so that's the first thing. Get as many people as you can to share your content, collaborate. And that applies to any platform. You look at the top YouTubers, like Mr. Beast, he gets all the top YouTubers on the platform on a one effort, on a one one video, and they're all sharing about it, right? 30 of them, 50 of them, and he runs these crazy competitions, right? That's not by mistake. These like he's doing that. Yeah, these friends, a lot of them, but everyone wants to be around him. Everyone's because they're all going to share, right? So, yep, that's the first thing.

William Harris 37:18

And that's beyond just that too, like, just to clarify, that's true in music, that's true in everything, right? That's like, even true in, like, TV crossover episodes, where characters from other shows. It's like, the same thing,

Nathan Chan 37:30

dude, it's biz dev, it's partnerships, you know, like, Drake drops a new album, and you've got DJ colored and you've got Y G posting about it on this story show some showing the love, right? Yep. So, so that's the first thing. You need to find a way to do that. The second thing goes without saying, product, product, content, content, content, content. You need to, you need to, you need to. You need to make sure that your content is good and it won't be good at the start, and that's okay. It actually won't be. And so the the method that I love is, is called the unicorn strategy, where, effectively, you want to look at like, who's the top 20 top, you know, 30 top, 50 influential thought leaders in your space, speaking to your target market. And then you want to go through and study all of their content, and then look at the most popular content, what's got the most likes, what's got the most views, what's got the most comments. And it starts to tell a bit of a story. And that's how you start to build out your content strategy. You do not copy them, but you get inspiration, yeah. And that's how you that's how you start, right? I love that. How, how do you evaluate 1000s of posts to find the one? Is there a tool that you use that you're like, hey, here's a tool to find the best in posts. Look, the tools change like but honestly, if you spend two hours, man, you can, you can work it out pretty quickly. You don't even need a tool. Like, if you went through like, one account over a five minute period, and then you did that over a two hour period, and you just took notes, like, you work it out pretty quickly. Like, it's very obvious. Like, like, smart people pin their most popular posts right? Like, because, because, you know, like, that's the first thing people see. They're going to engage with them more. It's going to be shared more. It's going to be, like, all that good stuff, you know, you know, a big, a big thing as well, is being on Instagram, in this platform in particular, shares, right? How many people are sharing? So you can see, you can see that now, right? Like, so, so, yeah, coming back to it, getting people to share your content, creating great content, drawing button, using the unicorn strategy, drawing inspiration from others. And then the third thing, which is the most important, if you don't do this thing, everything, the first two things. I shared actually don't even matter, and that's consistency, like putting in the reps, right? You you build muscle from consistently doing hypertrophy training. Hypertrophy training is training that muscle at least once a week and then going up in weight. So how can you just make sure you put for me, like, on my Instagram and LinkedIn, I'm posting every single day, right? I'm crossing it off. It's a daily non negotiable for me, right? I'm only 17 days in will, and I'm like, I should have been doing this years ago, right? So just, just non negotiable consistency. And it'll take time, right? It'll take time before you start to find out what works and your content is going to suck. But I think the powerful thing with consistency is these platforms reward it, right? These platforms reward it. And not only do the platforms reward it, those reps that time you get rewarded, because you get better at this, and the better you get, you build, measure, learn, right? You get constant feedback loops. You try something, you analyze it, you try again, you tweak it, right? Like, like the Foundr YouTube channel, like, we're really starting to get some traction now with our podcast interviews, right? And we're just looking at the numbers. What are we testing this week? How do we get 1% better? Like Steven Bartlett says, like, the 1% right? How can we just make every single thing that we do 1% better each week, right? And that's all it is.

William Harris 41:36

And I've heard somebody say, you know, don't even judge your content until you've at least done 100 of them. Right? It's like, literally, just, you just gotta get through that first 100. Like, the first 100 are gonna suck, but you gotta do those first 100 to get to the one that's actually gonna start to make a difference. And so it's like, just to your point, put in the reps. I mean, judge it, tweak it, change it. But for the most part, it's like, don't be too harsh on yourself. You have to go and put in 100 pieces of content before you can really say it's like, okay, great. Now you're at the point where you can just kind of level up a little bit,

Nathan Chan 42:09

yeah, 100% and look, I'm not sitting here saying it's easy, because I'll be honest, sure, William, I was one of the like, why? Like, why? Why didn't I start my personal brand sooner? And so, because I was scared, I was afraid, I wanted it to be perfect. I, you know, I wanted my content to be awesome. I'm, you know, like, I'm Nathan, like, you know, I had all these preconceived bullshit things going on my head. And the best thing I ever did to get me out of it was reading Dan Walker's book, 90 day personal brand. Because there's something really powerful with a challenge. It's not committing forever. It's like, I'm gonna do this for 90 days, like, set the 75 hard challenge, right? I'm gonna do this for 90 days, and then I'm gonna assess whether I keep doing this three months, 90 days, every single day. And then I purchased like, you know, online. Serendipitously, there was this Facebook ad, and they had these note cards where you could, like, create, like, your non negotiables every month, and you cross them off. And so I had my four daily non negotiables, and one was, create content every day, and I'm loving crossing it off, you know. And so that really freed me from the bullshit that goes on in your head around why your time is better spent doing other things, and you don't have time to do this, and it has to be perfect, and you don't know where to start, like, literally, that's an amazing book for anyone reading this that want, that wants to build a personal brand. You gotta read that book. It's just that book. It's just really simple. And I challenge you, like, 90 days, man. Like, that's all it takes. Yeah, there's

William Harris 43:50

two things you said that I really want to call out and draw attention to. One is, like, setting a challenge. Of like, like you said, it's got to be a realistic challenge. 90 days. And again, this is where it's like, don't evaluate content. Like, the first week. If you do, I think people give up too quickly, right in this there's like, they could be two months into it, and they're like, Look, I've been doing it for 60 days. It's like, okay, but you're not at 90. Give it 90 days before you really decide whether this is working or not. So like, set a challenge and stick to it, and then the little dopamine hits of having something that you can cross off. I mean, it's easy for us to think that there's, there's, there's sometimes not necessarily, let's just say, joy in doing the hard work, right? And like, there might not necessarily be joy in working out at first. When you're out of shape, it hurts, you're sore, right? But the joy can sometimes be like those little moments of doing something hard, the little moment of just crossing off to say, I did this, and you do psychological you do get a little dopamine hit from that, similar to kind of what you're doing. I have an app on my phone. I think it's literally just called habit, but it's like little color coded thing that I could just cross up. It's like, did I do this today? Yes, yes, yes. And that's all I have to do, is just boom, boom, boom. It's not overly complicated, but there are the things that I say is like, these are the. Things that I will do every morning and every evening, and even though they might not be the most enjoyable things in the world, I get a little dopamine hit out of just being able to cross that off, and that helps to kind of keep you motivated continue

Nathan Chan 45:11

doing it. Yeah, 100% man. So the reason I wanted to share that is because I don't want to sit here from like, you know, I'm up here, you know, I've got all this chain and all these other things, because, like, I've hardly distracted my team, right? I'm only starting to get their help now, because I said to myself, I wanted to just work this out myself. Now, yes, the team is helping me, yes, but, but we integrated it with, like, the podcast and the magazine, the content, all that kind of stuff, so it's kind of synonymous. But, yeah, look for the first two weeks there, dude, I was just doing it all myself, working it out, yeah, yeah. And you can be done. It just comes down to priorities as well, right? You've got to have, I believe, half an hour to an hour a day, that's how much time I'm spending, like, doing a good, like, I believe, a decent post. And, you know, it's crazy. You know, one thing I learned that has changed now

William Harris 46:01

is the power of AI, oh my gosh, I was gonna bring that up. So I'm glad you did, like,

Nathan Chan 46:07

like, dude, when I was doing it, you know, like, so much more work, very manual, right? Yeah, now it's so much more easier, and I haven't even started playing around with the agents yet soon, like, I'm gonna have, like, my own team, my own social media team around me, dude. Like, it's gonna be insane. So, yeah, like, even just like, I've been training chat GPT of like, all the interviews I've done with guests, and then all the interviews I'm doing where people interview me, and then I'm betting, baking in stories that I won't remember of them all, and then I'm just working with the training at bang, bang, bang. And so it's, it's pretty crazy, man, like, you know, with the emergency AI, like, you know. So if you have half an hour to an hour a day and you want to focus on your personal brand, and you know it's important, and you can allocate that time Now, not all founders can right? Depends where you're at in your business, in your journey, right? It's not, it's not for everyone. I'm fortunately, in a place where I do have time to do it at the stage of my journey, and I could have done it many, many years ago as well. William, I just didn't. I just didn't. I didn't understand. And I thought, Oh, well, I still have a personal brand, but I now know that I need to build a stronger relationship with our community, and for people to yeah, get to know how this, how this beast of a company is being built, and yeah, that I'm only just scratching the surface, but coming back to it roundabout way, Those are the three key things, getting other people to share your content, creating great content, using unicorn strategy, drawing inspiration from others, and then also being consistent, beautiful. I want

William Harris 47:54

to talk about monetizing content then as well, because you haven't done just a great job of, let's say, scaling a media empire. You also have found ways to monetize the content, which I think a lot of people reach that point where developing great content to your point, it takes time and resources, and it will scale, and you'll get to a point where you're saying, this is costing a lot of money. I need to monetize this in some way, shape or form, too. What do you think about, like, when to start monetizing content and and what are some of the best ways to monetize that content?

Nathan Chan 48:28

Yeah, so it depends, right? Like it's it depends on what platform. So as an example, let's just say you're creating a newsletter, right? Newsletters are cool businesses, right? Newsletters are very, very cool businesses. I'd love like, we have a newsletter for found, but not, not like your standard kind of, you know, your hustle or your morning brew type, like, like, that's the main product. Like, it's a product in of itself. That's, that's a content based product. You know, with newsletters, they're a great product because, you know, obviously you grow your subscriber base, and then, from the back of that, you sell sponsorships and and then off the back of that, you know, you a smart person, from my experience, you do all the sponsorships, and then you see which sponsorships take off, and then you create a similar product, if you can. That's the way to go about it. That's what that's what influences and creators are doing, right, right? They're doing all these sponsored content, and then they're saying, you know, oh, my followers really resonated with these shoes that I promoted. I'm going to create my own shoes, right? Like makes a lot of like so, so it depends on the platform and the medium, but first and foremost, you can, you can sponsor your content, but with sponsoring your content, will you need volume? You. Right? You need volume, and you need you need trust from your community that are going to take the recommendation. And I think Remember how I talked about this idea and concept. Now that creators are becoming founders, and founders are becoming creators, I think what creators have worked out over the years is they sponsor their content, but they actually the from a commercial perspective, they do far better from also creating their own products, like Mr. Based right like Yeah, and so it depends on the platform, it depends on the channel. It depends how you're cultivating your community. I'll talk through how we've worked out and how we monetize and and for us, it's a little different, because we're building a media company. So inherently, the product, like, it's a bit broad, like, there's a lot of things we can play with, but for us, we, you know, play in the sponsorship space and sponsoring our content, then we get into, you know, what premium content looks like. So we've got a membership with courses, so a lot of people that we interview, they give back on our platform, teaching courses and doing workshops. And then we've got a community, and then we go even further, where our most, a lot of our most successful students, or other people in our community become mentors and coaches. So then we've got a coaching and mentorship, high ticket products, right? But then you go even further, and then you've got, you know, we, you know, we recommend all this software to, you know, and to start your business and help so, so there's obviously, you know, commercial relationships with companies like Shopify as an example, right? So, and then you go even further, and then say, Okay, well, you know, what? What software could we create for our community, another product, and this is like, Okay, well, how can we, you know, what are some other problems that our community is facing? Do they need capital? Do they need help setting up their business entities? Do they need help with their digital marketing? And then we've got some services so, so that my vision is to build an ecosystem that we can help you on your entrepreneurial journey in so many different ways. Right now, it's only around we only really help you with leveling up as a founder, through knowledge and learning, right through coaching, mentorship, and then also for our content and training. So, but that through So, from a how do you monetize content? That's how I'm thinking about it. I'm looking at, what are the problems that our community is facing, and how can we serve them from a product or a service or an affiliate commercial perspective. But then there's the other side of the coin is, you know, you just have sponsored content to monetize it. You need volume, right? You just need that. You need you need a decent amount of people that you have a healthy relationship with. And so, yeah, it depends on the channel. Man, it really does. And it depends on the brand. Is the founder becoming a creator? Or is it a creator becoming a founder? Because for me now, over time, you know, I will do speaking engagements, another form of monetization. Now, why would it be a form of monetization? Because the filming of that content, like, obviously be paid for the gig, but then the filming of that content feeds the machine, right, sure, and then, you know, then, yeah, but it's really, like, the main way for creators is for sponsorships, and that's a that's, that's, you know, it's, it's, it's an interesting space, right? Because,

William Harris 53:38

yeah, I love it, and what I appreciate that, like you said, the tie in from creators creating their own products, and product companies becoming creators and stuff like that. I think that there is this, this tie in between the two of them, where there's bridging the gap. Like you said, you've talked about Mr. Beast. There's also ones that have done this and failed. You know, Kristen Bell created one with what Dax Shepard. It's like, diaper brand didn't work. And so sometimes, to your point, it's like, but what is your community? What is your what are your followers? What are they looking for? What are the problems that they have, and how can you solve those? And I think when you have that as the mindset of what it is that you're going to launch, then it makes a lot more sense. It's gonna be a lot more beneficial to your followers. It'll be more beneficial to you then as well, in that context, yeah,

Nathan Chan 54:24

I just pick up from that room. Like you heard about Kirsten Bell failing with her product, with her husband, as much as like these. So so these creators, or people with a with a large following, or, you know, be big relationship with a lot of people have influence a lot of the time. You can look at it from the outside, and it's the product, but oftentimes it might not even be the product itself, dude, it's the people and, and, and so this is something that I've found really, really interesting. Interesting as I've built Foundr. Businesses are built by people, and you can, doesn't matter, like you can have an incredible product, incredible brand, but you can get to a certain scale, if you don't have great people around you, you can destroy the whole thing, right? Because you can't, you can't do it all yourself, right? As a solo founder. And so I'll give you this example. So you look at the Nelk boys, controversial guys, right, crazy content. But if you look deeper behind the scenes, right, you look at the the Shahidi brothers, who who Kyle partnered with, and they've been in this space for, you know, 1520, plus years, would happy dad and all the other things they're doing would wouldn't elk boys be as big as they are now, if they didn't find the right partner? You look at skims. You look at this lady behind me. Em agreed. She's done skim she's been behind. Skims with the Kardashians. She's been behind good American with Chloe, right? Like she's launching brands all the time with creators behind the scenes. So it's as much as the product as it is also the people around you, and finding good people that's that's something really interesting that it took me a long time to work that out. William, a long time.

William Harris 56:27

Yeah, we've, we've all been in that situation, either as an employee or as an employer, where you've found people that weren't the right people for the position. They could be wildly good at whatever it is that they're doing, but if there's not the right fit for this. It can, it can seriously break whatever that vision is that you're trying to accomplish. And so to your point, having somebody who understands what it is that you're trying to accomplish, having a track record of doing it, and knows how to come in and do that, that's, like you said, even behind the scenes, paramount to the success of this, that is the product to a point, right? 100%

Nathan Chan 57:03

100% businesses are built by people, and when you get to a certain scale, yeah, like the scale that, you know we talk about, yeah, you solo founder, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely,

William Harris 57:16

um, because Kim's not back there, you know, calling the shots on the product, right? It's like she's coming in there to have some vision that she's casting, but she's got somebody behind her that's really making the the product come to life, yeah?

Nathan Chan 57:29

And I guarantee you the amount of testing they would have done, sure, right? Like insane, yeah, um, you've had

William Harris 57:41

the opportunity to learn from some of the absolute best minds that exist on our planet right now. Richard Branson, right Mark Cuban, Gary V so many others, which interview do you think has changed your perspective the most? Like, if you think back to them, they're just like, wow, that. I didn't expect that, but this just blew my mind,

Nathan Chan 58:05

dude. This is like, the biggest common question I get from people when they interview me, and I always have the worst answer to be honest, William, because, like, picking

William Harris 58:14

your favorite child. Somebody asked me what my favorite podcast episode was the other day. I'm like, How do I pick? I can't pick. Well,

Nathan Chan 58:21

then I think you've answered my question, like, Yeah, unfortunately, fortunately and unfortunately, because I am still the CEO within Foundr, I just can't take in all the gold like it might look from an outside perspective that I get to take in all this stuff, but as soon as the interviews finished, or I'm doing them back to back, I'm out the door and I'm on to my next thing sure and, and that's, that's a problem. Like, honestly, that's a problem. I don't, you know, catch up with guests as much as I should. I don't build relation like, like, all these different things, right? Like, so and then it becomes a huge blur, to be honest with you, right? So, like, it like, I, I will tell you one interview that I was just like, wow. But there's so many at that time. I'm just like, wow. But I got so many things going on, so overwhelm, like, all this kind of stuff going on, because there's so many things going on, nature, running for business and trying to grow it, and that will change over time, right? The more that I start to develop my personal brand, the more and more I want to be able to just kind of go all in there and all in on the podcast and all in on other ventures and all sorts of things. But there was one interview that I did with a guy called scooter brawn. So Scooter Braun, he is a little bit of a controversial character around he bought the rights to Taylor Swift's album, or one of them. Okay, then she didn't own the rights. It ended up being. Eight for her, because she just re released them and tweaked them a little bit. But this guy's been behind Justin Bieber, like, he found Justin Bieber for a YouTube video. He found Ariana Grande, you know, Kid Leroy, like he's behind, like in a manager of a lot of these very, very big, famous artists. And he's a super successful founder in of all a business, and I was just so blown away by how incredibly raw and authentic and vulnerable he was around the pressures of building a business around the lessons that he's learned on his journey. And he shared one really cool thing with me. I just thought it was interesting, and always sit with me, he said, You know, I've recently, recently become really good friends with a guy who's the richest person in the world. Everyone would know him. His name is Jeff Bezos, and I asked him a question, and that question was, you have everything you could ever want on planet Earth and in this world, you have more than enough money to learn to last forever. You've got so much success, you know. You know, not, if he's not, he's not active in Amazon, he's he's not CEO anymore. And like, what do you want out of life? Well, what's important to you? And Jeff Bezos said to him, I just want to evolve. And that always stuck with me, because this is somebody, you know, we always tell ourselves these stories, William, like, when I get this, I'm going to feel this. When this happens, I'm going to feel this. And it's such a trap, because it's never enough with with that mindset. And a lot of the time, US founders and people that are striving to be more and want to evolve, that's the story we tell ourselves, and it's just not true, right? And I think it's just such a great way to look at life like you just want to evolve, and conceding that it is never enough, but you just want to evolve, right? Yeah, and being comfortable with that. So I that always stuck with me.

William Harris 1:02:25

I like that. It reminds me of a quote from Jim Carrey, the actor, and I'm probably going to but it was something along the lines of, I hope everyone gets a chance to see their dreams come true, so they can realize that that's not what they needed to be happy, right? Like that doesn't provide happiness. Like you can get there, you could be the best actor in the world. You could be the richest man in the world. You could be the whatever that won't actually get you the result that you thought it would have. But to your point, it is the evolving. It is the journey. It is the things that you have become as a result of getting to that point. It is like that transformation. That is the thing that is better for you. That was the reward. Yeah, 100% I want to talk a little bit about who is Nathan, Jan, because we're talking about the human side, and I love getting into the human side of people as well. You hinted at this a little bit, that your childhood wasn't, it wasn't a childhood of entrepreneurship, where you had, you know, your parents were like entrepreneurs or whatever, but tell me a little bit about your childhood and how you think that has helped shape you into who you are today, the person who's able to be the head of Foundr magazine. My parents

Nathan Chan 1:03:35

have been amazing, super, just super loving. You know, family is really important to me. I still see my family every Sunday. That's it. Like my parents are getting a bit old now, though, like they're in their 80s. And like, I feel bad that, like they're cooking for me and my brother every Sunday. So I'm starting to to cook and entertain and take turns. But, yeah, look, my parents. Like, you know, I we weren't, like, poor and thing, like middle class family and I, I didn't, I didn't ever succeed in anything really, like, like, before Foundr, like my mom used to say, like, Nathan, I wish you just had more ambition, right? Sure, I never forget that, right? So I say that just to paint a little bit of a picture that I was the kind of kid growing up that I wasn't really that interested in school and I didn't really care to try because I didn't enjoy it, but once I found something that I enjoyed, and that's where remember that started this interview, right? Life is too short to not do work that you don't enjoy, and now I enjoy this work and good at it, right? And that's where we've kind of built. Of what we've built, of course, great people around me. It's not just all me. I've got an incredible team. But, like, I think growing up because I didn't have an interest in academia, you know, and that's why I think it's so cool what we're building with Foundr, like, it's an alternative form of education. Like, you can pay 30 grand for an MBA, right? Like 30 grand for an MBA, MBA anymore, Yeah, I bet you'd learn more, like through found a plus, right? You would literally learn more. You would learn more on our, on our membership platform, right? And it's only like $500 a year, like nothing, right? We're not even charging, you know, most people charge $1,000 or $2,000 an online program. We have like 4050, plus online per 100 plus online programs. So it's kind of crazy, but we're going for mass market, right? So different, different, different play, but I guess, because I never really achieved much, I guess I had a chip on my shoulder. Dude, like, for sure, and I think you'll find they've done studies most I don't know the exact like, I'm butchering this, but most entrepreneurs, they have chips on their shoulders. They feel like they got something to prove. And so because I never achieved much, because academia and the traditional education system didn't really help me for what I want to do. Like, if you know, my girlfriend's a doctor, like, you know, she, she had to go for that path. And, like, it's worked amazing, right? Like, so for certain careers you have to go through, and it makes sense. But I guess from a, you know, if you're a knowledge worker, you know, working behind a computer, that type thing, doing commerce, business, which is where I ended up going. And I didn't do a trade, you know, I didn't want to be an architect, or all these other areas that. That's how it kind of failed me with traditional education. So I had a bit of chip on my shoulder. But growing up, you know, my family was amazing. But you know, we, we, we, we made do with what we had, right? Like, I grew up in the suburbs. I didn't go to a private school. I went for like, you know, you know, you can get scholarships if you, you know, do certain tests to get into private school so you can get discounted tuition. Man, I did all those tests and I could, I, I didn't. I didn't get the I didn't, like, you know, pass these tests and these private schools would let me in on a scholarship, or particle scholarship. So that was kind of me in many ways. And does that answer your question,

William Harris 1:07:37

absolutely? And I think that's to your point, that the chip on the shoulder, I think I've heard somebody else, and I don't remember who it was. I wish I wanted that. I think was like a Navy SEAL talking about how they did some kind of a study too. Or maybe it was the FBI or somebody, you know, I'm really getting loose with this here, but it was somebody on that, that spectrum, that said that you almost had to have some micro trauma that pressured you into becoming great, right? And it's like too much trauma and it didn't work, not enough trauma and it didn't work. But it was like there's some element of trauma that would have to happen, almost in childhood, that would propel you to say, I'm going to do this thing, even though this thing is painful, ridiculed. I will feel isolated like but that is, you can use that to push through that pain. Yeah, but I have to ask. So you said you're starting to cook for your mom and your dad a little bit. What's your go to? Milo that you like to cook? Oh,

Nathan Chan 1:08:34

I said, good one. So dude, I'm starting into barbecuing. And yeah, and I like to, I like to go to, like, a really good, like, Greek traditional Butch, take a spit down, and then, you know, put chicken on their lamb, and it's obviously marinated girios. And then, yeah, cook up a nice spit. That's my go to. And then I get my brother to bring a salad, and, you know, my mom to bring maybe some pita bread or something, then, yeah, like some stuff like that that I

William Harris 1:09:06

love it, get out that sauce. Yeah, that's good, yeah. Okay. You earlier, you and I were talking about passions and just some of the things we're passionate about. And one of the ones you mentioned that I like, as well is health and fitness. And the the name of the podcast, up arrow podcast, is this idea. It's a mathematical notation for making numbers that are way bigger than exponents. It's this idea of just like really taking it up a notch, right, and being intentional about trying to do something on purpose. And so you're intentional about your health and wellness. What are some of the things that you are doing from a health and wellness perspective, that you're like this, I'm this is how I'm intentionally trying to improve

Nathan Chan 1:09:53

where I'm at. Yeah. So, okay, a few things, a couple you. Now, a year and a half ago, I did, like, a challenge, like, where I did a bulk, and then I did a cut. I used to have a six pack, well, I want to have ABS again. And, yeah, I got, I got really lean. And so I've started. I started, yeah, I started going pretty hard and health and fitness, I've, like, I'd say, in the past few years, just because a few years before that, I burnt out. I had extreme amounts of burnout, and I didn't even want to go to work, and it was crazy. And so that's, like, now a non negotiable for me. And yeah, I want to look good. I want to feel good. So that doesn't mean having a six pack or ABS or anything. But I want to, I want to be in really good shape, so I like to now go through these rounds of bulking and cutting or build and then a shred, or whatever you want to call it. But just how bodybuilders do it? But I'm not a bodybuilder. Obviously, not a big guy, but so yeah, long story short, within that, you know, have a trainer that I work with four times a week. And then within that, you know, I've got to get my 10,000 steps on average, every single day they force me to go outside. I've got a passion for sauna and spas and, you know, cold immersion therapy. So I'd like to do that with friends like, and that's a massive movement now as well. Like, totally more than ever, these bath houses are opening up in Australia and all over the around the world. So I really enjoy that I've interviewed like, I've interviewed the founder of Whoop, incredible product. Yeah, I love to, I love to track and measure and just optimize my performance from a health I'm not surprised. Yeah, I've got an eight sleep interview, the founder of Eight Sleep, incredible product as well. So, you know, I'm interested in optimizing my sleep. So, yeah, that's kind of me on the health and fitness side. I really like playing pickleball now, because I find, like, not only is it super fun, but it's just amazing cardio, and it's something me and my brother. Do we do that every weekend? But yeah, so, so health and fitness is really important to me purely because, yeah, I want to live, live to be, you know, live to an old age. And also, at the same time I feel good, like I want to feel good and I want to be able to perform at a high level. And I think that if you look after yourself, then that's a really strong hack, you know, like, I know my macros. I get everything measured, but I'm not going to do a bulk again, dude. So I did my Yeah, I put on, like, 10 kilos, 12 kilos, but I ate a lot of crap, and I let myself go, and now I'm cutting and, yeah, now I'm only going to do, like, just a lean bulk and, like, just eat clean and eat more food and increase my calories and then just maintain. And I know saying this, I sound quite vain, and I'm conscious, like, I'm aware of that, and it's just, for me, yeah, I'm interested in health and fitness, and I just want to be in good shape. And for me, it's, yeah, I know that being in good shape allows me to perform at my highest level.

William Harris 1:13:13

Yeah, I you were talking about rights of passage. And I almost feel like that's one of the rights of passage of an entrepreneur as well. One of the rights is getting to the point where you are out of shape and burnt out. That's part of it. And I feel like every entrepreneur I talk to, for the most part, almost without fail, reaches that same point at some point in time, and they say, I want to be healthy. And then, as every entrepreneur is, we're not just healthy in some small, moderate way. We decide that we're going to use all of the best gadgets, all of the data, to tell us everything we need to do. We are going to do, you know, Body, body building, you know, diets, and we're going to just go after it with with with intensity. And I think that's a good thing. And to your point, not vanity, as much as just you do. You operate better, right? Like you're going to perform better than in work. You're going to perform better in relationships. It's like, because of, you know, the workouts that I'm doing, I'll be able to get on, ideally, you know, get on my knees and play with my grandkids and things like that. It's like the goal is to optimize it, not necessarily, like you said, vanity. It's just there's, there's more opportunity to do what you want to do in every area of life if you maintain good health. Yeah,

Nathan Chan 1:14:21

100% 100% so I think that's something that people don't talk about enough. And you know, all the top founders that I've interviewed, I've interviewed now over 100 billionaires. You know, one of the most common things I will do is they meditate, right? They all meditate. They will go to the gym. They all work out. And they might not be in incredible shape, but they use it as a form of mental fitness as well. Yep, I think that's huge.

William Harris 1:14:48

I know that we're getting to the end of the time, so I want to make sure that I give an opportunity here. If people want to follow you or work with you in some way, what is the best way for them to get in touch? Stay in touch? Yeah.

Nathan Chan 1:15:00

So look, you can just follow me on Instagram. Just Nathan Chan. You can follow Foundr at Foundr. It's Foundr without the E. And look, we'd love to support you on your entrepreneurial journey. We have the best programs out there if you want to start or grow an e-commerce business from the world's best people that have actually done it all the things you want to know, like CRO Facebook, ads, growing your social getting your product right, sourcing, manufacturing, influencer marketing, you name it, we'd love to be able to serve you. We offer a $1 trial for 14 days. We can test out our platform. You can cancel any time it's a membership. So you can go to foundr.com/membership. So Foundr.com/membership on a $1 trial. We'd love to support you however we can. And yeah, otherwise, that's it. Like, let's you know we're at Foundr, and we just want to serve and help people and just share what's working out there in the marketplace.

William Harris 1:15:57

Yeah, and you are, you are sharing some of the absolute best insights out there. I've been following you for, like I said, probably close to a decade, and have learned a lot from you and the content you've put out. So I appreciate that. Nathan, it's been so fun getting to know you, learning from you, hearing your stories, and just appreciate you coming on the show.

Nathan Chan 1:16:16

Awesome. Thank you so much for your time and having me an absolute honor.

William Harris 1:16:20

Yeah, and thank you everyone for listening. I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 1:16:22

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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