内森·巴里：财富阶梯，如何从零打造4000万美元创作者事业 | 创业 | 第363期

本期节目部分由OpenPhone、Shopify、Mercury、Indeed和Framer赞助播出。OpenPhone是排名第一的商业电话系统，通过共享号码、人工智能和自动化功能，助您建立更牢固的客户关系并实现快速响应。访问openphone.com/profiting可享前六个月八折优惠。Shopify是全球电商平台，助力业务增长。

Today's episode is sponsored in part by OpenPhone, Shopify, Mercury, Indeed, and Framer. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system. Build stronger customer relationships and respond faster with shared numbers, AI, and automations. Get 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com/profiting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business.

登录shopify.com/profiting注册即可享受1美元/月的试用期。Mercury一站式整合银行与财务管理，让您专注于发展线上业务。详情请访问mercury.com/profiting。通过Indeed平台实现招聘全流程一体化，访问indeed.com/profiting可获得75美元赞助职位信用额度。

Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting. Mercury streamlines your banking and finances in one place so you can focus on growing your online business. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting. Attract, interview, and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profiting.

条款与条件适用。Framer是设计优先的无代码网站构建器，让任何人能在几分钟内发布生产级网站。前往framer.com免费创建网站，并使用代码profiting免费获取首月专业版服务。您始终可以在节目备注或youngandprofiting.com/deals找到所有超值优惠。

Terms and conditions apply. Framework is the designed first, no code website builder that lets anyone ship a production ready site in just minutes. Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code profiting to get your first month of pro on the house. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.

当时所有人都说社交媒体之类的渠道会推动销售，但真正带来销量的其实是邮件营销。我在头24小时就赚了12,000美元。哇哦。

Everyone was telling me, like, social media and all of this is gonna drive the sales, but it was really email that drove the sales. I made $12,000 in the first twenty four hours. Wow.

Nathan Barry是创作者经济领域最受尊敬的意见领袖之一，也是Kit软件公司的创始人，该公司为包括Tim Ferriss和James Clear在内的50,000多名创作者提供支持。您如何看待人工智能的利弊？

Nathan Barry, one of the most respected voices in the creator economy and the brains behind Kit, the software company that's powering over 50,000 creators, including names like Tim Ferriss and James Clear. What you think the good and bad of AI?

我担心的是AI会消除所有职业阶梯的最底层。如果AI取代了这些基础岗位，那么...

One thing that I'm worried about is AI taking out the bottom rung of every career ladder. But I worry that if AI eliminates the bottom rungs of all these jobs, then

您提到创作者飞轮概念，这与传统营销漏斗有何不同？

You talk about the creator flywheel, how that's different from traditional marketing funnels.

每个环节都能无缝衔接至下一阶段。每次循环运转都会更加顺畅。我们可以优化转化率，改进着陆页设计，完善行动号召等所有环节。

Every step moves super smoothly into the next. It gets easier with each rotation. We can optimize our conversion rates, make our landing page better, calls to action, all of that.

对于YouTube博主或社交媒体创作者，该如何运用这个飞轮概念？

Somebody on YouTube or a creator on social media, how can they leverage this flywheel concept?

YouTube是个算法主导的平台。拥有1万订阅者并不保证能获得1万次观看。我们可以抱怨新社交媒体算法，或者选择...

YouTube is a very algorithm driven platform. So if you have 10,000 subscribers, that is not a guarantee that you get 10,000 views. We could complain about the new social media algorithms or you could instead.

Spotify曾向你开出2亿美元的报价，而你拒绝了。为什么？Yap Gang的听众们，如果你正在线上构建任何事业，这期节目不容错过。今天，我们邀请到创作者经济领域最受尊敬的声音之一——Nathan Barry，他是Kit软件背后的智囊，该平台服务着超过5万名创作者，包括Tim Ferriss和James Clear等知名人士。Nathan从一个热爱制作东西的害羞家庭教育孩子，成长为年收入4000万美元公司的创始人。

Spotify offered you $200,000,000 and you turned it down. Why? Yap Gang, this episode is a must listen if you're building anything online. Today, we're sitting down with Nathan Barry, one of the most respected voices in the creator economy and the brains behind Kit, the software that's powering over 50,000 creators, including names like Tim Ferriss and James Clear. Nathan went from being a shy homeschooled kid who loved making things to building a $40,000,000 a year company.

而且他是在没有风险投资的情况下做到的。没有捷径，只有毅力、目标和我们将在本期节目中解析的精妙框架。我们将探讨Nathan从自费出版第一本书到拒绝Spotify2亿美元报价的具体策略。因为他所构建的不只是一家公司，而是一项根植于创作者所有权和长期价值的使命。

And he did it all without venture capital. No shortcuts, just grit, purpose, and brilliant frameworks that we'll unpack in this episode. We're talking about the exact strategies Nathan used to grow from self publishing his first book to turning down a $200,000,000 offer from Spotify. Because what he's building isn't just a company. It's a mission rooted in creator ownership and long term value.

在本期节目中，你将了解他的创作者飞轮理论，以及为何它能碾压传统营销漏斗。我们还将拆解他的财富创造阶梯，探索为何倾囊相授能成为你最强大的增长杠杆。如果你曾想知道如何将观众转化为生意，或将热情转化为利润，这就是你的蓝图。准备好咖啡和笔记本吧，这期节目满载实用干货，可能彻底改变你的创作者之路。若是首次收听，请立即点击关注订阅按钮。

In this episode, you'll learn about his creator flywheel and why it blows traditional marketing funnels out of the water. We'll also break down his ladders of wealth creation and explore why teaching everything you know can become your greatest growth lever. If you've ever wondered how to turn your audience into a business or your passion into profit, this is your blueprint. So grab your coffee, your journal, whatever you need, because this episode is stacked with practical gems that could totally shift your approach with your creator journey. And if this is your first time listening to the show, go ahead and hit that follow or subscribe button.

我们每周都会分享这样的精华内容，相信我，你不会想错过接下来的内容。Nathan，欢迎来到《年轻且盈利》播客。

We drop gems like this every single week, and trust me, you don't want to miss what's coming next. Nathan, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

谢谢邀请。

Thanks for having me on.

我对这次对话充满期待。我热爱探讨创作者创业话题。在研究你的背景时，我发现你曾是个非常害羞的孩子，但始终热爱创造和销售。请谈谈你是何时确立'长大后要成为企业家'这个想法的？

I'm really excited for this conversation. I love to talk about creator entrepreneurship. So when I was researching your background, I found out that you were a really shy kid, and you always loved to build and sell things. So talk to me about what point did you feel like, okay. I wanna be an entrepreneur when I grow up.

我喜欢赚钱。如果想赚钱，你大概需要成为企业家或从事销售工作——后者本身也很有创业精神。大约12、13岁时，我注意到家里经济拮据，由此产生不少矛盾和困扰。于是我想，必须找到赚钱方法，避免重蹈覆辙。

I like to make money. And if you wanna make money, you probably either need to be an entrepreneur or maybe pursue a career in sales, which I guess is pretty entrepreneurial in itself. So maybe when I was 12 or 13, around that time, I noticed that we really didn't have much money as a family. So I I noticed a lot of conflict that came from that and just struggles. And so I thought, okay.

我尝试过多种创业。最早是宠物托管服务，每天收费10美元上门照顾宠物、浇花等。有时一天能赚20美元，对当时简直是巨款。

I gotta figure out how I can make money so that I'll never have those same struggles in my life. And so I had a bunch of different ventures. One of the first ones was a pet sitting business where we'd get paid $10 a day to go to someone's house and let their pets out and water their plants and all that. $10 each time we went over. So sometimes it was $20 a day, which was fantastic money.

后来迷上木工。我家有自制传统，父亲亲手建造了我们成长的房子。我在家庭小作坊制作木雕，挨家挨户或在手工艺集市售卖。

I got into woodworking. My family always made things. My dad built the house we grew up in. We had a little wood shop. And so I'd make these wood carvings and sell them door to door or at craft fairs.

这行利润更丰厚。但真正起色是几年后接触网页设计时。不过那些早期尝试都很有意义。

And that made even better money. And things didn't really take off till I got into web design a few years later. But those were some of the early ventures.

是的。我特别喜欢了解你的背景故事，因为它非常独特，很多内容都超出了我的预期。我了解到你是在家自学的，还知道你提前进入大学却在17岁时退学了。这些经历本身就非常与众不同。

Yeah. I loved learning about your background story because it was really unique, and I didn't really expect a lot of the things that I learned. So I learned that you were homeschooled. And I also learned that you got into college early and then you dropped out at 17 years old. So those in itself is really unique.

跟我们聊聊你在家自学的经历吧。是什么让你意识到自己根本不想接受传统学校教育？

So talk to us about your experience getting homeschooled. And then what made you realize, I don't even wanna do structured school at all?

在家教育对我来说有两个关键转折点。首先，我有三个哥哥姐姐，母亲给我们四人都实施了家庭教育。她通过教导年长的孩子们已经摸索出了完整的教学体系和课程安排。在家教育最大的优点之一——或许该说两大优点——其一是它能完全根据个人需求量身定制。

Well, there were two pivotal moments for me in homeschooling. So first, I have three older siblings. My mom homeschooled all of us, and she'd really figured out the system and the curriculum and all of that with my older siblings. And one of the best things about homeschooling or maybe two great things about it. One is it's really tailored to you as an individual.

你既不需要等全班同学，全班也不会等你。如果某个科目需要更长时间掌握，完全没问题，你有充足时间。若是二十分钟就掌握了，也不必像在常规课堂那样干等其他人。这点实在太棒了。

So you're not waiting for an entire class or a class is not waiting for you. If a subject takes you longer to figure out, that's fine. You have time. Or if you get something in twenty minutes, it's not like the class spends the next hour working on it while there's someone else that we're waiting on. That was one thing that was fantastic.

其二就是它很早就教会你要对自己负责。我父母反复强调：这是你的责任，我们会协助你，但完成与否在于你自己，随之而来的结果——无论是好是坏——都由你承担。

And then the other is that it really teaches you early on that you're in charge. And my parents drilled this in. This is your responsibility. We're here to help you. But whether you get it done or not is on you and the consequences follow, Over the benefits follow as well.

这非常像现实生活，尤其像商业世界。我十一二岁时有个关键经历。我们在博伊西市外的山区长大，有年冬天遇上完美降雪天气。那种情况下谁还想坐在屋里上课？大家都想出去滑雪橇。

That's a lot like real life and especially a lot like business. So one key moment was when I was probably 11 or 12. We grew up in the mountains outside of Boise, and there was a time that in the winter that we just had the most perfect snow coming down. It was the kind of thing where you don't wanna be sitting inside doing school. You wanna be outside flooding.

我当时完全无法集中注意力，一直盯着窗外越积越厚的雪。这时母亲说：'你不必非要学满四五个小时，只要完成学习任务就能出去玩。'

And I'm just, like, sitting here, and I'm just I can't focus at all. I'm just staring outside watching the snow accumulate. And my mom says, you know, you don't have to do school for, like, four or five hours. You only have to do school until it's done. Then you can go play outside.

如果九十分钟能完成就太好了，如果要花四小时——好吧，那是你自己的选择。于是所有往常的抱怨、走神这些小动作瞬间消失，我就像打了鸡血一样。

If that takes you ninety minutes, amazing. If that takes you four hours, like, alright. Well, that's on you. And so all the usual complaining and lack of focus and everything else that I would do was immediately gone. It was like, alright.

火力全开搞定数学，速战速决完成文学课，你从没见过这么专注的十一岁孩子。

Let's power through. Let's get math. Get literature. Like, let's knock all this out. And this is, the most focused 11 year old you've ever seen.

九十分钟后，我已经在外面滑雪橇了——当日学业全部完成。这个道理我花了些时间才真正领悟：本质上根本没有速度限制，节奏完全由你自己掌控。

And ninety minutes later, I'm outside sledding. School's done. And it took me a while to internalize that lesson. But I realized, basically, there's no speed limit at all. You get to set the pace.

因为我当时就想，等等。为什么我要浪费这么多时间每天上四五个小时的学，明明我可以坐下来专心搞定这些。这都怪我。这是一点。几年后，我又意识到我所有的朋友都比我大。

Because I'm like, wait a second. Why have I been wasting all this time having school take four hours or five hours a day when I could just actually sit down and focus and knock this out. And that's on me. So that was one thing. And then a few years later, I realized that all of my friends were older than me.

我的哥哥姐姐们很好，让我和他们一起玩，他们的朋友也是我的朋友，他们非常包容。这很棒，直到我意识到，哦，你们都要上大学了。之前无关紧要的年龄差距，在我还有两年半学业而你们都离开时，会变得非常明显。于是我又去找我妈妈，我说，那高中呢——因为我刚开始上高中或考虑这事——高中是有固定量的作业还是四年制？

My older siblings were great at letting me hang out with them, and their friends were my friends, and they were super inclusive. And that was great until I realized, oh, you all are gonna go to college. And this age gap that didn't matter before is gonna be really obvious when I still have two and a half years of school left and we're all gone. And so I went back to my mom, and I said, so is high school because I'm just now starting to enter high school or think about it. Is high school a set amount of work or four years?

她说，听着，同样的理念。我已经为你哥哥姐姐们规划好了所有课程。如果你三年完成，就可以三年毕业，甚至更早，如果你想的话。我记得当时觉得做数学题特别无聊。

And she's like, look. Same philosophy. I've outlined all the curriculum for your older siblings. If you get that done in three years, you can graduate three years or even sooner if you want. And I remember thinking that I was really bored when I did math.

家庭长途旅行时我也很无聊，比如八小时车程去西雅图。所以我想，为什么不把这两件事结合起来？于是我基本上就是尽可能快地学完各种学校科目和课程。在这些家庭旅行中，我会完成一个月的数学作业。最终结果是我15岁就高中毕业了，快16岁时，然后上大学，只比我那些大得多的朋友们稍晚一点。

And I was also really bored when we go on these family road trips, like an eight hour drive to Seattle. And so, like, why don't I just combine these two? And so I basically just did a speed run through as many school subjects and curriculum as I could. And on, like, these family road trips, I would do, like, a month's worth of math homework. And so the end result is I ended up graduating high school when I was 15, a little bit before between 16, and then going to college and only being slightly behind my much older friends.

这真的让我深刻明白了一个道理：没有速度限制。节奏由你自己掌控。

And it just really drilled in this idea of, like, there is no speed limit. You set the pace.

然后你上了大学。第一次真正的学校经历。对吧？

So then you got to college. First real school experience. Is that right?

是的。我妈妈让我们参加了所有初中和高中的标准化考试。我们会问，好吧，做这个考多少分算好？答案总是百分位数。

Yeah. My mom made us take all the standardized tests for, like, middle school and high school. We'd ask, like, okay. What's a good grade as we did this? And it was always in percentiles.

所以不是分数，而是你相对于其他学生的排名。她会说，只要达到前5%，我们就满意了。我记得当时想，好吧，你必须进前5%。

So it wasn't a score. It was like how you scored relative to all the other students. And she would say, as long as you get in the ninety fifth percentile, we're good. And as I remember thinking, okay. You have to in the ninety fifth percentile.

我们某项考了前2%，另一项前1%，诸如此类。我就想，太好了，达标了。直到后来我才明白那到底意味着什么。意思是你的成绩超过了95%或98%的考生。

And we get ninety eighth in one thing and ninety ninth in another, all that. I'm like, sweet. We're good. It wasn't until I've later I realized what that actually means. And that means that, you know, that you've scored higher than ninety five percent or ninety eight percent of all the kids who took that.

只是我妈妈用这种方式设定标准。如果我当时完全理解，可能会说，妈，这标准高得离谱，让人很不自在。基本上总有人觉得，哦，你接受的是劣质教育——这种说法很常见。所以她通过说‘你要学得非常好，达到...’来抵消这种观念。

It's just that's the way that my mom anchored it. Had I fully understood it, would have been like, mom, that's an insanely high bar, which is a far uncomfortable. Basically, everyone always had this idea of, like, oh, you're getting an inferior education was a common thing. And so she counteracted that by saying, you're going to learn so well that you're at

游戏巅峰。各位

top of game. Everybody

其他人。是的。那就是我们进入标准化学校的经历。但大学确实是第一次走出家庭教室接触外界。我15岁就入学了。

else. Yeah. So that was our check-in to standardized school. But, yeah, college was the first time in an outside classroom and and all of that. I also showed up when I was 15.

所以

So

那一定很不容易。

That must have been tough.

有趣的是，我有个同样在家上学的朋友，她比我大几岁，16岁就开始读大学。她给了我一个建议：永远不要直接回答年龄问题，因为人们会立刻区别对待你，但也不要撒谎。于是我采纳了她的方法——当数学课上有人问'你多大了？'时，我会说'你猜'。

Funny thing is a friend of mine who had also been homeschooled, and she was a couple years older, she had started college when she was 16. And she gave me some advice on to never answer the question of how old you are because everyone will immediately treat you differently, but to not lie about it. And so her method, which I adopted, is when someone come up because you'd be sitting in math class, they'd be like, how old are you? You know? And instead of saying, oh, I'm 15, I would say, guess.

他们会打量我然后说'好吧，看起来像15岁，但这是大学新生课，应该是18岁？17岁？'我就回答'猜得不错'。因为这确实是个合理的猜测。

And they'd look at me and be like, okay. Well, he looks 15, but he's in a college freshman class, which would make him 18. So 17? And I would just say, oh, good guess. Because, like, it was a good guess.

虽然猜错了，但很接近。他们就会默认'这孩子17岁在读大学'，而我从不纠正。就这样

It was wrong, but it was a good guess. And they would and be like, yeah. This kid's 17, and he's in class. I just never corrected it. And so

这招真妙。

I love that.

这样至少能让人们接纳我。在大学里我学到很多，比如适应课程和独立生活。后来我和哥哥姐姐住在校外，这段经历很棒。之后我不断学习，尝试更多赚钱方法。

But that meant that people would at least somewhat accept and include me. And then I I learned a lot in college, like, all of the, you know, navigating classes and living on my own. I ended up living in a house just off campus with my older siblings, and that was a good experience. And then I just kept learning and trying to figure out more ways to make money.

于是你辍学做网页设计对吧？开始在互联网上赚钱。跟我们聊聊你的网络掘金历程，最初什么方法奏效，后来又是如何进入邮件营销领域——也就是ConvertKit的前身。

Yeah. Which led you to dropping out of school and starting web design. Right? You started doing stuff on the Internet to make money. So talk to us about your evolution of trying to make money on the Internet, what really stuck first, and then how you really got into email marketing precursor to ConvertKit.

我出生于1990年。14岁那年，我的第一任高中女友带我接触了网页设计。那段恋情虽无果而终，却成就了我的整个职业生涯。是她告诉我：‘嘿，你可以建个网站并上传到GeoCities。’

So I was born in 1990. So I was 14, and my very first high school girlfriend introduced me to web design. And nothing came of that relationship except for my entire career. She was the one who showed me, like, hey. You can build a website and put it on GeoCities.

她说可以写HTML代码之类的东西。我立刻着了迷。记得我为爱达荷州象棋协会做了个网站——我弟弟们当时在学棋。设计logo赚了75美元，网站设计赚了300美元。

You can write HTML and all of this stuff. So I became obsessed. And I remember I built a website for the Idaho Chess Association. My younger brothers played chess. And I got paid $75 to design a logo and $300 to design that website.

那大概是我15岁左右的第一笔自由职业收入。上大学期间，我不断承接设计项目，精进建站技术。17岁读大二时，我接到了首个1万美元的网页设计项目。我打电话给母亲说：‘听着，我来大学本就是为了学习赚钱。’

And that was, like, my first freelance income maybe when I was 15 or so. And then as I was going to college, I kept taking on more design projects and learning how to build websites more and doing all that. And then when I was 17, I'd spent two years in college at this point, and I landed my first $10,000 web design project. And I called up my mom, and I said, look. I'm here to learn how to make money.

我很确定现在就能赚钱了。她回答：‘如果想辍学就去吧。’于是我退学继续做了几年自由网页设计。到2009年2月时，我自由职业已近两年。

I'm pretty sure I'm making money now. And so she was like, yeah. If you wanna drop out, go for it. And so I ended up dropping out and doing freelance web design for a couple more years. Now in 02/2009, I said I've been freelancing for almost two full years at that point.

2008年应该是我收入最高的月份，接了大量客户，一切顺遂。后来和当时的女友（现为妻子）及朋友们去了南非旅行，在当地孤儿院工作，度过了难忘的时光。

I guess the 2008, I had my best month ever. I landed a bunch of clients. That was going really well. And then I went away on a trip to South Africa with my girlfriend at the time, now wife, and a bunch of friends. We worked at this orphanage in South Africa and did these amazing trips.

我休了五周假，原本很安心因为业务运转良好。但回来后所有预约客户都说‘现在不投资了’——金融危机全面爆发了。我的自由职业从巅峰瞬间跌入谷底。简而言之，我最后加入了唯一还在花钱的客户Unity Media Group。

And I took five weeks off, which I felt really good about because my freelance business was going so well. And when I came back, all the clients that I had lined up to work with, they all were like, we're not spending money. Because it was then the financial crisis had fully hit. And so I went from feeling awesome about the freelance business to be like, this isn't going well at all. And so the quick version of all of it is I ended up taking a job at the one client that was still spending money, which is a company called Unity Media Group.

最终我领导了他们的设计团队。入职时只有两人，后来获得风投扩张团队。我在那里三年学到很多，掌握了带团队的基本功。

And I ended up leading the design team for them. They were, like, two people when I joined. And they raised a bunch of venture capital, like, scaled up the team. And I spent three years there. I learned really a ton, the basics of leading a team, all that.

那其实是我最后一份正式工作。生平仅有三份工作：高中时在温蒂汉堡打工，短暂任职博伊西州立大学书店，然后就是Unity公司的软件设计团队。

And that was actually the last real job that I've had. The only three jobs I've had in my life are working at Wendy's in high school. I worked for the Boise State University bookstore very briefly. And then I worked for this company, Unity, on their software design team.

哇，你真是个天生的创业者。

Wow. You're a true entrepreneur.

是啊。后来我经营Kiv公司至今十二年，用专业术语说大概算是‘职场不适格者’了。

Yeah. And then I, you know, I've been running Kiv for the last twelve years. So unemployable is probably the the technical term of that.

是啊。或者超级有野心，想要创建自己的产品和服务之类的。我们有很多共同点。我其实在大学时就开始做自由职业的网页设计，在电台工作的同时兼职做这个。你也开始写博客了。

Yeah. Or super ambitious and wanting to create your own offers and things like that. We have a lot in common. I actually started doing freelance web design in college and did that as a freelancer while I was working at a radio station. You also got into blogging.

对吧？跟我们聊聊，你是从什么时候开始写博客的，然后又是怎么发现电子邮件营销的。

Right? So talk to us about, like, at what point you started blogging and then how you discovered email marketing.

是的。在网页设计圈子里，人们总说我是自学的。我心想这倒也没错。但实际上，我所有的网页设计老师都是那些写博客的人，他们分享CSS技巧、Photoshop技术等等。

Yeah. So in the web design world, people would always say like, oh, you're self taught. And I was like, that's kind of true. But, really, all of my teachers for for learning web design were all of these bloggers who were writing about, here's how to do this thing in CSS. Here's these Photoshop techniques and all that.

我觉得'自学'这个说法有点奇怪。不，我有老师，只是不认识他们而已，懂吗？

I felt like self taught was always kind of a weird thing. Like, no. I had teachers. I didn't know them. You know?

但互联网上这个神奇的社群就是我的老师。我只是有动力自己去学习这些材料。大概从2007年起，我就关注了很多博客，先是网页设计，后来转向商业领域。接着发生了两件事。

But this amazing community on the Internet were my teachers. I was just self motivated to go through and learn the material myself and all that. So probably from 2007 onwards, I was following a lot of blogs. First web design and then kind of into business and on from there. And then a couple things happened.

首先，2010年iPad问世时，我所在的公司说希望发布当天就在App Store上架应用，并让我负责设计。我完全没经验，于是和公司几个开发人员经历了场'烈火试炼'，边学边做iPad应用。

First, the company I worked for in 2010, the iPad came out. And they said, hey. We wanna have an app in the App Store the day the iPad is released, and we want you to design it. And I had no idea what I was doing. And so myself and then a couple of developers in the company had sort of this trial by fire of learning how to design and build iPad apps.

我们成功了。应用如期上线，首日就看到成果。这让我开始专攻iPhone和iPad设计，之后两三年都专注这个领域。

And we pulled it off. We had the app released. Got to see it on day one and do all this. And that sent me down this path of learning how to design for the iPhone and iPad specifically. And then probably for the next two or three years, that was all I did.

虽然也做其他工作，但这才是我真正想做的。为实体设备设计太有趣了，与网页设计基础完全不同。后来我开始自己开发应用，自己编程，找开发朋友帮忙设计。有几个应用月收入达到几千美元。

I did other things too, but that's all I wanted to do. Because it was just so much fun designing for a physical device, and the form factors were so different from the basics of web design. And so that continued until I started building my own apps. And I would code them myself and get help from my developer friends, and I'd do the design. And I got to the point where a few of my apps were making a couple thousand dollars a month.

于是决定辞职重回自由职业。有了产品收入打底后，我开始接更多自由项目。同时一直关注博客圈和早期网络创作者的动态，这个过程充满乐趣。

And with that, I decided to quit my job, go back to freelance, and, you know, I sort of had this baseline of product income, and then I started doing more freelancing. All the time, pay attention to this world of blogging and very early creators who were making money online. And we dive into all of that because it's a fun process.

确实。我想快速了解一下你的经历。你最初用的是Mailchimp吧？知道你有应用开发背景很有帮助，因为我总觉得打造一个能与Mailchimp这样的巨头竞争的平台简直难以想象。不知道当时Constant Contact是否存在，但电子邮件服务领域巨头林立。所以了解到你将应用设计经验与解决电子邮件问题的需求结合，这很有启发。

Yeah. I'd love to just really quick in terms of your experience. I think you used Mailchimp to start And then this is so helpful to know that you were building apps because for me, I was like, man, I couldn't imagine launching like a platform that seems like such a difficult thing to do to like build a whole entire platform that's gonna compete with these giants like Mailchimp. And I don't know if Constant Contact was out back then, but there's a lot of email service providers out there that are giants. So it's helpful to know that you had all this experience with app design and you merged what you knew in that space with the problem that you were trying to solve with email.

那么你当时想解决什么问题？为什么决定创建这个平台？

So what problem were you trying to solve? Why did you decide to create this platform?

离开Unity开始自由设计工作后，克里斯·吉勒博、蒂姆·费里斯这些谈论如何在互联网上赚钱的人给了我很大启发。克里斯会就某个特定主题制作指南然后出售。于是我想，不如写本关于iPhone应用设计的书。我当时有两个想法。

After I left Unity and started working on freelance design, I was really inspired by people like Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferriss, and others like that who were talking about here's how you make money on the Internet. And Chris Guillebeau would make a guide on a very particular subject and then sell that. And so I was like, okay. Let me write a book about how to design iPhone apps. I had two thoughts with it.

第一，如果我是写iPhone应用设计书的人，就会有更多客户想雇我设计应用，信誉度会提升。第二，既然这些人能赚钱，我大概也可以。于是我坐下来写了本叫《应用设计手册》的书。

One, if I'm the guy who wrote the book on iPhone app design, then I'll get way more clients wanting to hire me to design the app. The credibility will increase. And the second one was, well, if these guys are making money, I probably can do. So I sat down, wrote a book. It was called the app design handbook.

顺便说，我那时很难养成持续写作的习惯。于是我想做个iPhone应用来追踪这个习惯。做了个叫Commit的应用（现在已不存在，但有类似应用），你只需设定每日习惯目标，它会提醒并记录连续完成天数。

And as an aside, I struggled to build a habit to write consistently. And so I was like, I'm gonna make an iPhone app to help me track this. And I made this app called Commit, which isn't around anymore, but there's other apps like it. You just say, hey. I'm gonna do this habit every day, and it just reminds you and then keeps track of the streak.

我设定每天写一千字。出版这本书时已连续坚持80天。第二天应用弹出提示：今天要写一千字吗？我说：不用，书已经写完了。

And so I said, I'm gonna write a thousand words a day. And I was at eighty days in a row when I published the book. And the next day, the iPhone app popped up and said, are you gonna write a thousand words today? And I was like, no. I finished writing the book.

后来我写了篇书籍发布总结发在博客上。当然第二天应用又弹出提示：今天要写一千字吗？我说不用，结果我又写了另一本书。

And so I ended up writing a summary of how the launch went and all that, published it on my blog. And then, of course, the app popped up the next day as it's gonna do. And said, are you gonna write a thousand words today? And I was like, no. And so I ended up writing another book.

具体数字就不说了，但很疯狂。我从此长期保持规律写作。最初出书目标是：如果能获得新客户，并且这本书终身能赚1万美元就太棒了。当时通过Mailchimp给798人的邮件列表发布了这本书。

So we're getting all the numbers, but it was wild. I just launched down this path of consistent writing for a long time. But my goal from the book was I thought, okay. If I can get new clients and if I can make $10,000 over the lifetime of the book, that would be amazing. And so I launched it to an email list of 798 people on Mailchimp.

人人都说社交媒体会带动销量，但实际是邮件营销驱动的。前24小时就赚了1.2万美元。

Everyone was telling me, like, social media and all of this is gonna drive the sales. But it was really email that drove the sales. So I made $12,000 in the first twenty four hours.

哇。

Wow.

我完全震惊了，之后再也没有接过设计外包。感觉像做梦——我有了产品收入。但更重要的是发现邮件才是销售主力。

And I was blown away. And I never took on another freelance design client. I thought, it's a dream. You know, I'm making product income. But then the other thing was that email was driving all of these sales.

那本书之后，发生了两件事。其一，我对电子邮件着了迷，试图学习所有关于最佳实践的知识。其二，我持续写作，不想在我开发的小小iPhone应用中中断这个习惯。于是，我又连续九十天每天写一千字。最终，我出版了另一本书，名为《设计网络应用》。

After that book, two things happened. One, I became obsessed with email, and I was trying to learn everything I could about best practices. And then the second thing is I just kept writing because I didn't wanna break the chain in this little iPhone app I made. And so I ended up writing a thousand words a day for another ninety days straight. And at the end of that, I published another book called Designing Web Applications.

模式相似，但应用于不同的媒介。这本书面向更大的电子邮件列表，约3000人。首日收入26,000美元，首月50,000美元。而我一年前辞职的最后一份工作，年薪才63,000美元。看，我现在一个月的收入几乎相当于过去一年。

Similar model, but applied to a different medium. And that launched to a bigger email list of, like, 3,000 people. And it made $26,000 in the first day, $50,000 in the first month. And my last job that I quit a year earlier, I made $63,000 a year. You know, I'm now making almost in a month what I made in a year.

是的，我知道创作者的世界很神奇。

Yeah. I know that The creator world is amazing.

所以基本上，你成为了一名创作者。一旦开始写这些书，你就正式踏上了创作之路，并且作为创作者从未回头。是这样吗？

So basically, you became a creator. Once you started writing these books, that's when you officially became a creator and you never looked back in terms of being a creator. Is that right?

没错，完全正确。第二年，我作为创作者赚了25万美元。我觉得这简直是梦想成真。但在这个过程中，我对电子邮件痴迷不已。

Yeah. That's absolutely right. I mean, that next year, I made $250,000 as a creator. And I'm like, this is a dream come true. But in that, you know, I'm obsessed with email.

电子邮件是创作者高收入的秘诀。我看到那些在Instagram或其他平台上有数万粉丝的影响者，他们的收入远不及我。于是，我意识到，关键在于电子邮件列表。

Email is the secret to high earnings as a creator. I'd see these influencers who had, you know, tens of thousands of followers on Instagram or something else, And they weren't making nearly the money that I was making. And so I've realized like, oh, it's in the email list.

没错，朋友们。想象一下，你公司里某个关键人物突然辞职，你只有几周时间填补这个职位，时间紧迫。

Yeah, fam. Picture this. Somebody who is crucial to your business unexpectedly quits. You've got just a couple weeks to fill that position. You've got no time to waste.

那么，如何快速招聘呢？很简单，用Indeed就够了。招聘就用Indeed，别无所求。不必再为在其他招聘网站上难以被看到而烦恼，Indeed的赞助职位功能让你脱颖而出，招聘更快。

So what do you do to hire fast? Well, that's easy. You've got to use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get seen on other job sites because Indeed's sponsored jobs feature helps you stand out and hire faster.

具体来说，你的职位信息会跳到相关候选人页面的顶部，更快触达合适人选。效果不言而喻。Indeed数据显示，直接发布在Indeed上的赞助职位比非赞助职位多收到45%的申请。无需月费订阅，没有长期合同。

So here's how it works. Your post jumps to the top of the page for relevant candidates, so you reach the right people quicker. And the results speak for themselves. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed receive 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. No more monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts.

Indeed按效果收费。我最喜欢Indeed的一点是它消除了所有猜测。在使用Indeed优化招聘流程之前，我需要在多个招聘网站发布信息，在社交媒体上发帖，还得筛选大量简历以确保候选人合格。

You only pay for results with Indeed. And what I love about Indeed is how it removes all the guesswork. Before I started using Indeed to optimize my hiring process, I would post on multiple job sites. I would post on social media. I would have to sort through all of these resumes to make sure the candidate was qualified.

但现在有了Indeed的赞助职位功能，我能获取所有符合条件的候选人，无需担心他们的技术能力。我只需关注文化契合度。而且效果立竿见影——就在我和你说话的这一分钟里，Indeed全球已促成23次雇佣。这就是它的高效之处。

But now with Indeed sponsored job feature, I get all qualified candidates and I don't need to worry about if they've got the technical capabilities. I just need to worry about culture fit. And get this, it works fast. In the minute I've been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed worldwide. That's how fast it works.

无需再等待。立即通过Indeed加速您的招聘流程，本节目听众还可获得75美元赞助职位信用额度，提升职位曝光度。请访问indeed.com/profiting，并告知我们您是通过本播客了解Indeed的。indeed.com/profiting。条款与条件适用。

There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed, and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/profiting. Just go to indeed.com/profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/profiting. Terms and conditions apply.

招聘，Indeed就是您所需的一切。各位，最近我听到一个让我深思的数据：近半数美国成年人表示，如果失去主要收入来源，他们将在六个月内陷入财务困境。如果您觉得这可能是您或家人的处境，请记住您并不孤单。但好消息是，今天就可以采取行动。

Hiring, Indeed, is all you need. Yap gang, I recently heard a stat that really made me pause. Nearly half of American adults say they'd face financial hardship within six months if they lost their primary income earner. If you're thinking, well, that could be me or that could be my family, you're not alone. But the good news is that you can do something about it today.

因此我很高兴向您推荐Policygenius。作为全美领先的在线保险市场，他们让人寿保险购买变得异常简单。您可以在几分钟内比较顶级保险公司的报价，找到符合需求和预算的保单。我喜欢他们消除流程压力的方式——持牌顾问会全程指导您。

That's why I'm excited to share Policygenius with you. Policygenius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace, and they make getting life insurance ridiculously easy. You can compare quotes from top insurers in minutes and find a policy that fits your needs and your budget. I love the way they take the stress out of the process. Their licensed agents guide you every step of the way.

他们解答疑问、处理文书工作，并为您争取权益。我强烈推荐通过Policygenius购买人寿保险。更重要的是——请注意这个重磅福利：

They answer your questions. They handle your paperwork. And they also advocate for you. I highly recommend using Policygenius to find your life insurance. And get this, this is huge.

通过Policygenius，您能找到年费仅276美元、保额达100万美元的人寿保险。只需每年276美元，就能为家人获得百万美元保障。这是守护所爱之人、安心展望未来的便捷方式。立即访问policygenius.com/profiting，免费比较顶级公司报价，查看可节省金额。

With Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1,000,000 in coverage. Dollars 1,000,000 in coverage for your family for just $276 a year. This is an easy way to protect the people that you love and feel good about your future. Secure your family's future with Policygenius. Head to policygenius.com/profiting to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save.

网址是policygenius.com/profiting。年轻的创富者们，经营自己的企业是我经历过最有成就感也最具挑战的事。总有新问题要解决，每个决定都举足轻重。真正帮助我的是找到一个真正懂行的平台——

That's policygenius.com/profiting. Hello, young and profiters. Running my own business has been one of the most rewarding and overwhelming things I've ever done. There's always something to figure out and even small decisions can feel huge. Now, what really helped me was finding a platform that just gets it.

Shopify不仅为小企业服务，它本身就曾是小企业，所以真正理解需求。全球数百万企业使用Shopify，它支撑着全美10%的电商交易。从Gymshark、美泰等大牌到初创业的品牌（比如您的），通过Shopify可以在一个平台处理业务核心环节：库存、支付、数据分析。

Shopify isn't just built for small businesses. Shopify was once a small business, so they really get it. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide and 10% of all US e commerce. From big names like Gymshark and Mattel to brands just starting out like maybe yours. With Shopify, you can do everything that matters for your business, inventory, payments, analytics, in one place.

其内置工具还能简化邮件和社交媒体营销。如需全球销售，Shopify助您触达150国客户；若偏好线下，获奖的POS系统能无缝整合线上线下销售。Shopify拥有99.99%的运行时间和全球最高转化率的结账系统。若想把握每个销售机会，请务必获取这个优惠——

It even makes marketing easier with built in tools to run your email and social media campaigns. If you guys want to sell globally, Shopify helps you reach customers in 150 countries. If you prefer in person, Shopify's award winning POS system connects your online and offline sales seamlessly. Shopify's got 99.99% uptime and the best converting checkout on the planet. If you wanna get started with Shopify so you never miss a sale, you've gotta get this deal.

用Shopify为小企业做好大事。立即注册享受1美元/月试用期，开始销售之旅。请访问全小写的shopify.com/profiting。重复一遍：shopify.com/profiting，即可开启1美元月试用。

Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com/profiting. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/profiting. Again, that's shopify.com/profiting for your one dollar per month trial period.

如果你刚起步，当初出版书籍时是从哪里开始建立邮件列表的？

If you were just starting out, where did you build the email list to start with when you had your books?

是的。我主要通过其他博客来建立列表。我在许多设计类和iPhone应用开发社区的博客上发表了大量客座文章。要知道那时候推特如日中天，而Instagram才刚诞生两年。

Yeah. So I built it from a lot of other blogs. I wrote lots of guest posts on other blogs, different design and iPhone app development communities. You gotta realize at the time, Twitter was going strong. But Instagram was only two years old at this time.

可能三年吧。当时的Instagram远没有现在这么强大。

Maybe three years old. And so Instagram was not the powerhouse that it is now.

我记得那时候。

I remember.

现在的话，我会全力押注Instagram或LinkedIn，或者双管齐下。但当时邮件订阅主要来自博客和其他社区。SEO刚开始兴起，我当时就想：好吧——

Today, I would go all in on either Instagram or LinkedIn or both. But yeah. So the emails were coming from the blog and other communities. SEO was starting to be a thing. And then I just said, alright.

我要钻研所有关于邮件的知识。我实践了能找到的所有最佳方案，比如提供免费样章，然后用自动化流程引导读者购买全书。因为我在做列表细分，当时还不得不为所有人破解Mailchimp的功能。后来我想通了——

Let me learn everything I can about email. And I would implement every best practice I could of, like, let me give away a sample chapter. And then there's a automated sequence that gets you to buy the book afterwards. Because I were segmenting the list, and I just had to hack around Mailchimp for all of us. Then I said, you know what?

我要为像我这样的内容创作者专门打造邮件服务。这就是ConvertKit的由来，我决心把它做大。于是接下来的十二年我都投入其中。去年我们刚从ConvertKit更名为Kit。

I'm going to start a email company just for content creators like me. It was called ConvertKit, and I'm gonna gonna build this up. So that became the next twelve years of my life. And then last year, we rebranded from ConvertKit to Kit.

我们Yap Media正在向Kit迁移，转型很顺利。其实是从Mailchimp转到ConvertKit...幸好Mailchimp不是我们的赞助商。这经历太不可思议了。所以你早在'创作者经济'这个概念出现前就成了创作者。当时的创作者经济更像是创作者创业。

We're actually transitioning to Kit at Yap Media, so that's well underway, which I'm really actually, from Mailchimp to ConvertKit. Luckily, Mailchimp is not my sponsor. That's absolutely incredible. So you became a creator before the term creator economy was really created. Creator economy was about creator entrepreneurship.

这是新现象。感觉近一两年突然爆发，现在人人都想成为创作者企业家，几乎所有创业者都在向这个方向转型。

That's a new thing. I feel like in the last year or two, it's really started to bubble up where, like, everybody wants to be a creator entrepreneur, and, like, almost all entrepreneurs are becoming creator entrepreneurs.

仔细想想，企业家最擅长发现杠杆并最大化利用。通常你会发现某种分销渠道，或是产品制造方法之类的杠杆。你我早就明白：构建受众群体是超级杠杆，可能是最强的商业杠杆。

Well, if you think about it, entrepreneurs are great at identifying points of leverage and then maximizing that. And so usually, there's something where you figure out, oh, here's a distribution method, or here's a way that we can manufacture our product or something like that. Something that gives you leverage. And so something that you and I have known for a long time is that building an audience is insane leverage. Probably the best leverage you can ever get.

因为你不仅能获得通常需要花费数万甚至数十万美元才能获得的传播渠道，还能同时赢得信任。人们会说，我信任哈拉，我信任内森。他们对这件事怎么看？这会产生巨大的影响。

Because not only do you get distribution that you normally have to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for, but you get trust at the same time. And you get people saying, oh, I trust Hala. I trust Nathan. What's their take on this thing? And that makes a huge difference.

实际上，我想第三点收获是人际关系。你会结识所有那些同样通过他们的受众、信任等获得影响力的人。这种复合效应是惊人的。企业家们过去常说，你做的那个创作者影响者的事情很有趣，但我经营的是真正的生意。现在他们过来道歉说，其实我错了。

And that actually, I guess the third thing you get is relationships. You end up meeting all of these people who also have leverage through their audience, trust, and everything else. And so the compounding effects are insane. And so entrepreneurs used to say, oh, that creator influencer thing that you're doing, that's interesting, but I'm running a real business. And now they come over and then say, actually, I'm sorry.

你不会拥有世界上最好的传播渠道。我厌倦了通过Meta和谷歌广告付费获取关注，现在我想免费获得关注。教教我你的方法。因为他们意识到，我可以基于受众建立庞大的业务。这将主导未来如何获取关注和建立业务的方式。

You won't have the best distribution that exists in the world. I got tired of paying for attention with Meta and Google Ads, And now I wanna get the attention for free. Teach me your ways. Because they're realizing I can build a massive business on the back of an audience. And that's what's gonna dominate how attention and how businesses are built over the next

是的。你谈到了创作者飞轮。我很想听你详细解释一下你对创作者飞轮的哲学，以及它与传统营销漏斗有何不同。

Yeah. You talk about the creator flywheel. I'd love for you to break down your philosophy around the creator flywheel and how that's different from traditional marketing funnels.

是啊。哦，天哪。内容太多了。我可以永远谈论飞轮。

Yeah. Oh, man. There's so much. I could talk about flywheels forever.

我能听出来。

I can hear it.

也许首先，关于飞轮，我认为这是很多人使用但实际并不真正理解的词汇之一。我提到2008年2月去南非的一次旅行，这是我第一次亲眼见到现实中的飞轮。当时我们在马塞卢（莱索托首都）的一家孤儿院安装水井。电力供应不稳定，经常有轮流停电。

Maybe first, in flywheels, I think it's one of those words that a lot of people use that people don't actually know what it means. So I mentioned a trip to South Africa in 02/2008, and this is where I first came across a real life flywheel. And so we were installing this well at this Orbanage in Massaro, which is the capital city of Lisutu. And electricity was inconsistent. They would have these rolling blackouts.

所以我们想，不能装电动水泵，否则停电时这200个孩子就没水用了。于是决定需要手动泵。如果你露营过，你会想象一个长长的金属把手，把水从几百英尺下抽上来需要很大力气。

And so we're like, oh, we can't put a pump on this. It's gonna require electricity because otherwise, the 200 kids at this orphanage are not going to have water whenever the power's out. And so then you're like, alright. We need a hand pump. And if you've ever been camping or something like that, you know, you imagine, like, a long metal handle, and it's a lot of work to pump water up hundreds of feet.

这行不通。有什么东西能利用输入的能量并放大它，不需要电力就能抽水？那就是飞轮。它是一个安装在泵上的大金属轮。不同于手动泵的线性上下能量，飞轮产生旋转力，你输入的所有动量不会重置。

So that's not gonna work. What exists out there that can take energy that you put in and compound that, not require electricity and all this water? And that's a flywheel. So it's this big metal wheel that sits on top of the pump. And instead of this linear up and down energy of a hand pump, you get this rotational force where all the momentum that you put in doesn't reset.

它会持续传递。我们装上飞轮后，一开始泵水非常吃力，比普通手动泵费劲得多。

It carries forward. And so we put this flywheel on there. And at first, we started pumping it. It was really hard. Way harder than a hand pump would be.

事实上，飞轮效应在各个领域都是如此。启动飞轮需要耗费大量时间和精力，但一旦它积累起动量，就会持续运转。不同于同等努力获得同等回报的模式，在飞轮系统中，初期巨大投入只能产生微小效果。但随着时间推移，所需努力逐渐减少，而成效却与日俱增，直到最终形成良性循环。

And that's actually true of a flywheel all across the board. It's much slower and much harder to get a flywheel going. But once it builds momentum, that carries forward. And so instead of the same effort getting the same impact, on a flywheel, a huge amount of effort gets very little impact. But then gradually, the effort decreases and the impact increases until this finally on the well.

当飞轮运转到某个阶段时，我只需用一根手指就能维持旋转。最初需要全身发力才能启动，现在仅需轻微触碰就能获得比初期更大的成效。这个物理定律不仅适用于现实中的飞轮，也同样适用于商业运营、受众培养等各个领域。让我举个简单的例子。

At some point, I'm spinning it with one finger. I first had to lean in really hard to start. I'm now spinning with one finger and getting even more results than I was when I started. And so this works in real life physics, and it also works in business and audience building and everything else. Let me give you a really simple example.

假设你每周都要撰写新闻简报（或以任何形式的定期内容为例），很多人都会为选题发愁。比如简报定于周二上午10点发送，很可能周一晚上9点你还在抓耳挠腮：天啊，明天到底该发什么内容？

If you write a weekly newsletter or any kind of content that you produce on a weekly basis but using a newsletter as an example, a lot of people struggle with what to say. And so say, newsletter goes out Tuesday at 10AM, probably Monday night at 9PM, you're like, oh, shoot. What am I going to send tomorrow?

嗯。

Mhmm.

传统零散的工作流程是这样的：你会临时头脑风暴，绞尽脑汁想出点子，最后靠意志力勉强完成任务。但其实你可以围绕这个问题设计一个飞轮系统。具体来说，你可以这样做：

And so the old scattered process is where you'd be like, you're, like, brainstorm ideas. You're coming up with it. And you through force of will, you get something out. But you can actually design a flywheel around that problem. And so instead, you could say, alright.

当新用户订阅简报时，我会先发送几封欢迎邮件，包含我的精华内容。到第三封邮件时，我会发送一封非常个性化的邮件：'嗨，Nathan，我是Hala。非常感谢你订阅我的内容。有个小问题想请教——'

When someone signs up for my newsletter, I'm going to send them a couple welcome emails with my best content. And then maybe email three, I'm gonna send this really personal email and just say, hey, Nathan. It's Hala. Thanks so much for subscribing and checking out the content. Just one quick question.

'你在经营线上业务或创业过程中遇到的最大挑战是什么？'（如果是早期的我可能会问：'你在学习设计iPhone应用时最大的困难是什么？'）直接回复这封邮件告诉我吧。这封纯文本邮件看起来就像用Gmail随手写的，只有两三句话。但人们会回复。

What's your biggest struggle related to building your online business or your journey as an entrepreneur? Or if we go back to me back in the day, hey. What's your biggest struggle with learning how to design iPhone apps? Hit reply and let me know. And this is plain text.

我把所有回复归类到Gmail的特定标签下。现在当我在苦恼'这周写什么'时，只需查看这些回复，就能看到读者亲口诉说的具体痛点和困扰。这样我就不用凭空设想话题，而是针对真实存在的问题撰写解答，稍加润色就能成为一篇实用价值极高的新闻简报。

Looks like it was written in Gmail, and I just fired it off. It's maybe two sentences. People reply to that. I organize all of those replies into a label in Gmail. And now when I'm going, oh, what am I going to write about?

用飞轮理论来解释：订阅用户越多→收到的回复越多→可供解决的痛点越丰富→产出的简报质量越高→吸引更多订阅用户→获得更多回复，如此循环往复。这个系统把原本像手动水泵般费力的工作，变成了轻松自运转的流程。

I go into those replies, and I say, oh, now I have people telling me their exact pain points and frustrations. So instead of brainstorming a hypothetical, I'm actually looking at exact pain points that people have. I write an answer to that one person and then make it a little more generic. And I know that I have this highly useful newsletter that's gonna go out. So then if we put it in flywheel form, the more subscribers I get, the more responses come through, the more frustrations I have to pull from to solve with my newsletter.

最终整个系统会运转得极其顺畅，让你毫不费力就能持续产出优质内容。

My newsletter goes out, which then helps me get more subscribers, which gets me more responses, which gives me more frustrations, and now around we go. And so it takes something that was like the hand pump version. It was difficult and painful and turns it into something that's quite effortless. Yeah. And get to the point that it becomes really, really easy to do.

关于飞轮效应的最后一点是，飞轮有三条定律。第一条是每个步骤都能流畅地过渡到下一步。不同于线性流程中做完一件事就停下，飞轮效应中所有环节会循环运转，直到最后一步无缝衔接回第一步。我们发送的新闻简报越多，获得的订阅者就越多——这就是我们的闭环。

So last thing on the Flywheels there is there's three laws to a flywheel. The first is that every step flows smoothly into the next step. So instead of, like, a linear process where you do something and then stop, the flywheel, everything flows all the way around until the last step goes smoothly into the first step. The more newsletters we send, the more subscribers we get. That's our loop closer.

第二条是每轮循环都会让各步骤更轻松。随着重复次数增加，事情会变得稍微容易些。这可能是因为你实现了某些环节的自动化，或者操作越来越熟练。最后一条是每轮循环的产出都超过前一轮。

Second is that every step is easier with each rotation. So it gets just a little bit easier the more we do it. And that might be you're automating certain things. You're getting more consistent with it. And then the last one is that each rotation produces more than the previous rotation.

这就是每个环节循环的意义——我们能获得更多创意和订阅者。这效果太惊人了。我在业务各处都应用飞轮效应，现在每月只需几小时就能运营整个个人品牌，而以前这可是我的全职工作。

And so that's where each sentence goes around. We're getting more ideas and more subscribers. And it's just wild. I implement Flywheels everywhere in my business. And it means that I can run my entire personal brand in a few hours a month instead of before where that was my full time career.

我太喜欢这个概念了。我觉得需要重新审视所有业务漏斗，用飞轮思维来思考。举个实例：三年来我一直为各种品牌做赞助网络研讨会。最初没有邮件列表时起步非常艰难。

I love this concept. I feel like I need to think about all my funnels and think about it in a flywheel. I can think of one example on my business. I've done these sponsored webinars for like all these different brands for like three years now. And so in the beginning, was really hard when we first started because I didn't really have an email list.

但研讨会通过Zoom举办，注册用户会留下邮箱。现在我们拥有3万名热爱参加研讨会的用户名单。每次举办活动都能新增2000个邮箱，让满员研讨会变得越来越容易实现——这就是飞轮效应的体现。

But these webinars have a Zoom. And when people register, they give me their email. So now we've got a list of 30,000 people that love to come to my webinars. And every time we do them, we get another 2,000 emails that get added to the list and it gets easier and easier to just get a sold out webinar or whatever it is because it just is a flywheel effect. So that's one example that I have in my business.

那YouTube或社交媒体创作者呢？他们该如何运用飞轮概念？

What about somebody on YouTube or, like, a creator on social media? How can they leverage this flywheel concept?

以YouTube为例。我们总追求订阅数，但YouTube是算法主导的平台。就算有1万订阅者，也不能保证获得1万播放量——可能只有1000基础播放。

Yeah. Well, let's take YouTube as an example. We always pursue YouTube subscribers. That's the metric. But YouTube is a very algorithm driven platform.

如果视频质量尚可，或许能获得3000播放。只有优质内容才能触达所有订阅者并进一步传播。因此很多YouTuber会同步建设新闻简报和邮件列表。

So if you have 10,000 subscribers, that is not a guarantee that you get 10,000 views. More like a guarantee that you get maybe a thousand views. And then if the video is decent, then maybe you get 3,000 views. And only if it's great does it reach all of your subscribers and go on from there. So what a lot of YouTubers do is they build newsletters and email lists combined with their YouTube channel.

具体操作是：发布视频时说'我正在系统讲解某个主题'，比如在视频里教产品发布策略。结尾时可以引导：

And so the way it works is you put out a video and say, hey. I'm teaching this topic end to end. Right? Maybe I'm teaching product launch strategies in my YouTube video. Well, at the end of it, I might say, hey.

'如果你喜欢这个内容，想深入学习，我准备了免费5天邮件课程，深度解析产品发布策略'。这样就把活跃观众转化到邮件列表。通过每周简报保持联系后，下次发布视频时，就不必依赖算法推荐——可以直接邮件通知已注册的千名用户观看新视频。

If you enjoyed this and you wanna deep dive on it, I have a free five day email course that gives you a lot more in-depth on product launch strategies. And so now I'm converting my engaged viewers through to the email list. And then I'm gonna send a regular newsletter, say, week, staying in touch with those people. Well, now when I put out my next YouTube video, instead of hoping that YouTube promotes it to all of my subscribers, I actually have this email list, and I have the ability to push content to them. And so I'm gonna publish my next video, but now I'm gonna email the thousand people that signed up and say, hey, go check out this video.

他们会去那里观看。YouTube会认为，哦，这是个好视频。他们会看到观看时长和留存率，因为你的铁杆粉丝都来了。他们会稍微打个折扣，因为他们知道是你把这些人引来的，而不是YouTube推荐的。但随后这个视频会获得更多曝光，吸引更多人。

They're gonna go there and watch it. YouTube's gonna be like, oh, this is a good video. And they're gonna see the watch time and the retention because your biggest fans showed up. They're gonna discount it a little bit because they know that you sent those people rather than YouTube sending it. But then that video is going to get more reach, attracting more people.

如果你在结尾加入行动号召，引导人们回到你的免费电子邮件课程、清单、指南或其他内容，那么你就能让更多人加入邮件列表。想象一下，这个飞轮每转一圈都无比顺滑地进入下一环节，而且越转越轻松。我们可以优化转化率，改进着陆页和行动号召等等。

And if you have a call to action at the end, back to your free email course, your checklist, your guide, or whatever else, then you're getting more people on your email list. And so if you imagine, you know, this flywheel goes around, every step moves super smoothly into the next. It gets easier with each rotation. Right? We can optimize our conversion rates, make our landing page better, our calls to action, all of that.

每转一圈产出都会更多。因为第一圈时我可能只有一千人指向YouTube，而第25圈时可能有五千人。这样我就有五倍的注意力可以引导回电子报，从而为YouTube带来更多观看量。

And then it produces more with every rotation. Because the first rotation, I had a thousand people to point to YouTube. Rotation 25, I might have 5,000 people. And so I have five times as much attention to direct back to drive newsletter. And so it's getting me views on YouTube.

如果我的频道发生任何变故，或者我决定在LinkedIn等其他平台采用相同策略——猜怎么着？我有五千个对我的内容感兴趣的受众可以随时引导。这种飞轮效应随处可见，但很多人虽然在做，却没意识到它的运作原理有多简单。

And if anything were to ever happen to my channel or I would decide, oh, I wanna do the same strategy but on LinkedIn or on some other platform. Well, guess what? I have 5,000 people that are engaged with my stuff that I can point to anywhere. You see flywheels like that play out all the time. And I think a lot of people do them, but they don't clearly understand how simple of a flywheel it is.

他们没从这个角度看待问题。

They don't view it in that way.

没错。如果从这个角度看，你就能关注哪些环节出了问题，或者如何让它更好更快。你还没提到的是，观众评论和观看视频产生的互动会通过平台算法加速视频传播。我认为电子邮件就像老式社交媒体——早期算法基于好友图谱，内容展示取决于你有多少粉丝。

Yeah. And if you view it in that way, you can pay attention to what's breaking down or how can I make this better and faster? And the other thing that you didn't really mention is the acceleration through the engagement that you get with people commenting and watching the video is actually gonna boost the video being shared through interspaced algorithms. The way that I think about email is that it's sort of like old school social media. So algorithms used to be friend graph based, where it was based on how many people you had following you.

当时发帖基本是按时间顺序出现在信息流顶部。现在算法完全不同了，你无法掌控。就像你说的，就算有十万订阅者，也不会有十万人看到你的内容。

And if you put out a post, it was basically top of the feed based on recency. So it was all based on just a chronological timeline, how many followers you had. And then now algorithms are totally different. You don't have control. To your point, even if you have a 100,000 subscribers, a 100,000 people are not going to see your stuff.

现在完全基于兴趣相关度和用户搜索行为。只有获得互动且用户主动寻找类似内容时才会被推荐。而电子邮件就像没有算法的老式社交平台，完全由你掌控。

It's all based on interest relevancy and what those users are searching for and finding. And you only get sent to them if you have engagement and if that user is actually looking for that content and actively searching for it and engaging on content similar to yours. Whereas email is just old algorithms. So it's like a social media platform that you basically control, and there's no algorithm to work through.

完全正确。我们可以抱怨新社交媒体算法不公平——辛苦积累的十万YouTube订阅者只有10%能看到新视频。但不如接受现实，这其实有好的一面：过去优质内容可能只触达双倍人群，现在在LinkedIn、YouTube、Instagram上，优质内容可能触达10-50倍的受众。

You're exactly right. And we could complain about the new social media algorithms and be like, oh, it's not fair that I worked so hard for these 10,000 YouTube subscribers, and only 10% of them are gonna see my new video. Or you could instead accept that that's the way that it is. And in a way, this is good. Because before, if you had amazing content, it might get to double the number of people that you normally reach.

所以我们要双管齐下：既然社交平台都转向兴趣推荐机制，那我们就好好玩转这个游戏，让内容极具传播性。毕竟凡事都有两面性。

Now on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, if you have amazing content, it might reach 10 to 50 times as many people as you normally reach. And so you wanna play both games where you say, okay. All the social platforms have moved to reach and discovery and interest based, And so let's play that game really well. Let's make our content really, really shareable. And everything is a double edged sword.

因此，那些未能走红或传播的内容意味着我们无法触达同等规模的受众。这没关系，因为我们还有邮件列表这个渠道。这样我们就能拥有一个稳固的基础，每次只需往上添砖加瓦，逐步构建起我们强大的邮件列表基础。然后我们乘着社交媒体病毒式传播的浪潮起伏。因为算法过度依赖分发机制这一事实，反而成了我们的巨大优势。

And so wins there mean that we're not gonna reach the same number of people with our content that doesn't go viral or spread. And that's okay because that's why we have the email list. And so we get to have this steady foundation that we just keep adding another layer of bricks to every time as we build up, you know, this amazing foundation of our email list. And then we ride the spikes and the viral waves and everything else of social media. Because then it's a huge asset for us, the fact that the algorithms are so over indexed on distribution.

我们来聊聊财富创造阶梯理论。你提出了这个关于财富创造阶梯的框架。希望你能分解不同阶段，然后我想和你玩个相关游戏。

Let's talk about ladders of wealth creation. So you've got this framework about ladders of wealth creation. I'd love for you to break down the different stages, and then I wanna play a game with you related to this.

关于财富阶梯，这是我几年前基于现实观察写的一篇文章。当时我非常困惑：为什么有些人赚的钱远多于其他人？为什么劳动收入和实际财富之间存在巨大差距？

So with the ladders of wealth, this is an essay that I wrote a few years ago based on just observations in the world. I was really confused. Like, wait. Why do some people make way more money than other people? Why is there a big difference between income that you earn and actual wealth?

回想我做网页设计的时期，当有人说'我有个新应用创意，要做遛狗界的Uber'时，为什么我会立刻感到尴尬并想'天啊千万别，那简直难如登天'？

And then even going back to my web design days, why is it that when someone says, oh, I have this idea for a new app, it's going to be Uber for dog walkers? Why do I immediately cringe and be like, oh god. No. You should never do that. That's insanely hard.

于是我尝试建立一个解释框架，这就是财富阶梯。我将它分为四个层级，核心在于随着你在阶梯间攀升或跨越，你的赚钱能力和财富积累能力会提升，但难度也随之增加，整个过程都需要持续学习技能。

And so I tried to make one framework that breaks this down, and that's the ladders of wealth. And so I have four different ladders. And the idea is that as you move up between these ladders and move across between ladders, then your ability to earn and your ability to build wealth increases. But at the same time, the difficulty increases. And you have to learn skills all the way along.

赚钱的关键在于它是项技能。你必须循序渐进地学习相关技能。如果试图直接从第一层跳到第四层顶端——比如打造社交网络或创建遛狗服务平台这种市场——这几乎是世上最难的事。若毫无技能基础就尝试，注定失败。有人问该如何逐步搭建这些阶梯？

The key thing in making money is that it's a skill. And so you have to learn the skills as you move along. And if you try to do something wild and crazy, like jump all the way from the bottom of ladder one to the top of ladder four, which building a social network or building a Uber for dog walkers, a marketplace, is like the hardest thing you could ever do. And if you try to do that without any skills, it's not gonna work. And someone said, how do we layer these things on gradually?

第一层是'时间换金钱'。通常我们都从这里起步，比如我在温蒂汉堡每小时赚6美元的日子。那时我学会了基本技能：如何准时到岗，如何兑现承诺。

So that first ladder is just time for money. And this is where usually we all start. This was me $6 an hour at Wendy's. And I had to learn some skills there. How to show up, how to do what I say I was gonna do.

这种外部问责机制很关键——迟到三次就会被解雇。虽然我很快跳到了下一层，但很多医生仍停留在这个阶梯上，只不过他们的时薪极高。但这个层级的收入终究存在上限。

You know, have the outside accountability. If I don't show up on time, I'm gonna get fired. You do that three times in a row, and they're gonna be like, get out of here. But on that ladder of time for money, you can go pretty high. I jumped off that ladder onto the next one pretty quickly, but a doctor many doctors are still on that ladder.

若跃升至第二层，就是创建个人服务业务。这时你从雇员转变为经营者。最初可能仍按小时为客户服务，但需要学习新技能——因为再没人强制你准时出现了。

Just their salary is really, really high. But earnings are ultimately capped. If you jump to the next ladder, it's your own services business. This is you trading, working with someone else for being the owner. And at the base of that, maybe you're doing hourly work for a client.

现在我们必须掌握新技能，因为再没人监督你是否准时到岗，是否完成工作了。

We gotta learn some new skills now because no one's making you show up on time. No one's making you do the work.

现在这个第二阶梯是你独自一人吗？你是像自由职业者那样单独提供服务吗？

Is this you solo right now in this second rung? You solo providing services like freelancers?

没错。好的。然后如果我们往上走，就得学会按项目收费。这是一整套技能。如果能稍微拉开距离，比如从‘我以每小时50美元为你建这个网站’变成‘我以一千美元为你建这个网站’，你的收入就能大幅提升。

Exactly. Okay. And then if we move up, we gotta learn how to charge by the project. That's a whole set of skills. You can earn way more money if you get a little bit of separation between, hey.

突然之间，如果这个项目用时少于二十小时，我们的时薪就提高了。这里面可以学到很多。再往上走到阶梯顶端时，我们讨论的就是管理团队和提供服务了。这时我们引入了更多杠杆效应。

I'll build you this website for $50 an hour to I'll build you this website for a thousand dollars. All of a sudden, oh, if this takes less than twenty hours, our hourly rate just went up. You can learn a lot in there. And then as you move to the top of that ladder, we're talking about, like, managing a team and doing service work. We've introduced a little more leverage.

在整个阶梯攀升过程中，我们获得的杠杆效应会越来越强。现在我可以付钱让别人做那些工作。而到目前为止我们已经学会了很多技能。如果跳到下一个阶梯——产品化服务，其实就是将任何事物产品化，这时你开始以固定价格销售固定范围的服务。

All the way throughout these ladders, we're getting more and more leverage as we go. So now I could pay someone else to do that work. And there's a lot of skills that we've learned up until this point. Now if you jump to the next ladder, which is productized services, really productizing anything, then you're starting to sell, like, a fixed scope for a fixed price. So that might be like, hey.

比如‘我提供一千美元的网站设计审核服务’。但关键在于，在这个过程中你必须学会如何在不对话的情况下销售。当我销售网站设计服务时，我们需要通过Zoom交流或见面喝咖啡，这是一对一销售。但如果是产品化服务，我就能通过网站销售，需要客户在不与我交谈的情况下购买。

I do web design audits for a thousand dollars. But the key thing here is you have to learn somewhere in this journey how to sell without a conversation. When I'm selling web design services, you and I are gonna talk over Zoom or we're gonna go out to coffee, and I'm selling one to one. But if I'm doing a product type service, I'd be able to sell it on a website. And I need you to buy without talking to me.

无论是100美元的咨询电话还是1万美元的定制项目，我都需要做到文案能独立促成交易。我需要网站、域名和支付系统。继续往上走，你还可以获得经常性收入。

Whether it's a $100 consultation call or a $10,000 custom project, I need to get to the point that the copywriting is there. I need need a website. I need a domain. I need payment processing. And then as you keep going up, you can get into recurring revenue.

比如‘我每月为你剪辑四个视频’，这就是每月一千美元的持续性服务。突然之间，如果有10到15个这样的客户，加上完善的流程，我就能稳定赚取可观收入。

So maybe it's like, hey. I'm gonna edit four videos a month for you. And that is a recurring retainer that you pay for at a thousand dollars a month. All of a sudden, I get 10 or 15 of those clients, and I've got a good process, all that. Like, I'm making good money, and it's recurring.

这个过程中你会学到各种技能。这是第三阶梯。最后的第四阶梯是销售产品，从非常简单的版本到极其复杂的都有。比如最简单的就是销售电子书。

You're learning all kinds of stuff. So that's ladder three. And then ladder four, the final ladder, is selling products. There's versions of this that's really easy and then all the way up to things that are really, really hard. And so, like, an easy thing is selling an ebook.

相对于开发软件，制作电子书相当容易，但我们仍需销售它。我们仍然需要前一阶梯的技能：建站、支付处理和文案撰写，这些技能依然适用。另一种方式是进入现有市场销售产品。

Right? It's fairly easy to make an ebook relative to, like, making software, but we still have to sell it. We still need those skills from the previous ladder of how to make a website, how to process payments, how to do copywriting. Those skills still come in handy. Other things are you could sell into an existing marketplace.

比如你可以把客房挂在Airbnb上出租。你不需要自己创造需求，因为Airbnb已经为你解决了这个问题。你把产品放入现有市场，这很棒——毕竟既要制作产品又要创造需求是非常困难的。

So let's say that a product you could do is you could have a guest house that you rent out on Airbnb. You don't have to really create demand for that because Airbnb is doing that for you. You're putting it into a marketplace. And so that's great. Because now when you have to make the product and create the demand and all of that, that's hard.

对我来说，当初销售iPhone应用时，我必须先打造产品。软件开发固然困难，但你要知道，应用商店已经存在。人们会主动搜索解决需求的工具——我是在既有市场中销售。但随着业务升级，实体产品、电商这些领域才是真正的挑战。

Or for me, when I was selling iPhone apps, I had to make the product. Software was hard, but it's you know, the App Store already exists. People are going on there searching for things to solve their problems. So I'm selling into an existing marketplace. But then as you work your way up, physical products, ecommerce, those are really hard.

软件即服务（SaaS）难度极高，而最顶端的则是平台型市场和社交网络。只要涉及网络效应，获取用户信任就需要巨大投入，其中还伴随着令人发指的复杂性。

Software as a service is really hard. And then at the very pinnacle is marketplaces and social networks. Because anytime there's network effects involved, it takes so much to get traction, and there's just an insane amount of complexities.

构建网络效应确实是商业领域的巅峰啊。

Creating a network is, like, the top Yeah.

这是商业中最难实现的事。以Craigslist为例，它无法提供即时价值——只有当买家主动寻找商品且商品真实存在，或卖家发布商品时真有买家前来，平台才产生价值。这种需要同时撬动市场供需两端的难题，解决起来真的非常非常困难。

It's the hardest thing to do in business. Because if you think about Craigslist or something like that, it doesn't provide immediate value. It's only good if I come there looking for things and those things are actually there to buy, or if you're selling something and there's actually people coming to buy it. And so it's just really, really hard problems to solve when you have to get two sides of a marketplace at once.

没错！若想将业务提升到新高度，网站升级势在必行。如果你还在使用那些千篇一律的复制粘贴模板——就是让所有网站看起来雷同又乏味的通用模板——是时候打破这种模板陷阱了。如果传统建站工具让你觉得笨拙受限，Framer正是你期待已久的解决方案。对，就是Framer。

Yeah, Bam. If you wanna take your business to the next level, you've gotta upgrade your website. And if you're still stuck with those copy paste website templates, you know, the ones that have all those generic templates that make every site look exactly the same and boring, it's time to break up that template trap. If traditional site builders feel clunky or limiting, Framer is the solution you've been waiting for. Yes, Framer.

若你尚未听闻，Framer是一款以设计为先的无代码网站构建器，能让任何人在几分钟内发布专业级网站。它正风靡一时——你可以免费开始，浏览数百个惊艳的像素级完美模板，或从完全空白的画布创作（我钟爱这种创作自由）。根据需求选择空白起点或独特模板（绝非其他网站的泛泛之作），支持多人实时协作（作家/设计师/营销人员可同步编辑），杜绝版本混乱。想让网站脱颖而出？无需代码即可添加滚动动画、视差效果、循环文字等炫酷元素。

If you've never heard of it, Framer is the design first, no code website builder that lets anybody ship a production ready site in just minutes. Framer is all the rage right now because you can start for free and browse hundreds of stunning pixel perfect templates or design from a totally blank canvas, which I love for creative freedom. Depending on what you want to do, you can start blank or use their amazing templates that are not just generic that you'll find on other websites. Framer's got multiplayer collaboration, meaning your entire team, writers, designers, marketers can work on the same page in real time, so there's no messy version control issues. If you want your site to stand out, you can add scroll animations, parallax effects, looping text, so much more in seconds with zero code.

无需雇佣昂贵开发者，内置AI能智能排版并即时翻译整站内容。幕后更提供响应式断点、集成托管、灵活CMS和隐私友好型数据分析。想打造手工编码级网站又不想高价聘请开发？

You don't need to hire expensive developers. It even comes with built in AI to create smart layouts and instantly translate your entire site into any language that you want. How cool is that? Behind the scenes, you'll get responsive breakpoints, built in hosting, a flexible CMS, and privacy friendly analytics. Ready to build a site that looks hand coded without hiring an expensive developer?

立即在framer.com免费建站，使用代码PROFITING可享首月专业版免费。记住：framer.com加促销码PROFITING。说真的，我职业生涯最酷的部分就是能环球旅行——

Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code PROFITING to get your first month of pro on the house. That's framer.com with promo code PROFITING. Framer.com promo code PROFITING for your free month of pro. Yeah, fam. I have to say one of the coolest parts of my career is that it takes me all over the world.

我曾为采访、演讲、播客会议周游列国，住过许多令人惊叹的Airbnb。这些房源充满设计巧思，总让我宾至如归，这种体验甚至激励我成为房东。如果你曾因怕麻烦而犹豫（毕竟我们创业者都有副业要忙）——

I've had the chance to travel for interviews, speaking gigs, podcasting conferences, and I've stayed in some seriously stunning Airbnbs. And these Airbnbs always make me feel at home. They're so thoughtfully designed, and I just love the experience of Airbnb. And that actually inspired me to start hosting myself. And if you've ever thought about becoming a host, but you felt like it was too much to take on, like you can't take on another side hustle, I know a lot of us are entrepreneurs, side hustlers.

或许你觉得无力承担更多，但若手头有闲置空间又渴望尝试，好消息是：现在你不再需要独自应对一切了，已有全新解决方案。

Maybe you think like, I can't just take one more thing on, but I do have this space. I want to do it. Here's the good news. You don't have to do it all on your own anymore. There's new solutions for that.

这就是Airbnb的联合房东网络发挥作用的地方。对于那些总是奔波在外、或房产所在地与自己居住地不同、可能没时间处理每一件小事的房东，你可以与当地的联合房东合作，由他们负责客人沟通、现场支持等事务。这样，即使你不在场，住宿也能顺利进行。无论你拥有度假屋还是闲置房间，将其转化为收入比你想象的要容易。如果你想在Airbnb上起步，但像我一样忙碌，可以在airbnb.com/host上找个联合房东。

That's where Airbnb's co host network comes in. For hosts who are always on the go or live in a different state than their property and might not have time to manage every little thing, you can team up with a local cohost who can handle guest communication, on the ground support, and more. This way, the stay runs smoothly, even when you're not around. Whether you've got a vacation home or just an extra room, turning it into income is easier than you might think. If you wanna start on Airbnb, but you're busy like me, find yourself a cohost at airbnb.com/host.

那么简而言之，这个阶梯的四个阶段是什么？

So succinctly, what are the four stages of that ladder?

第一阶段是用时间换金钱。第二阶段是建立自己的服务业务，真正为自己工作。第三阶段是以某种方式将服务产品化，能够在没有他人在场、无需直接对话的情况下销售。最后阶段是完全转向产品化。这其中确实有很多门道。

Time for money. Second one is building your own services business, really working for yourself. Third is productizing that in some way, really being able to sell without someone else there, without a direct conversation. And then the last one is products all the way up. And there's really a lot to it.

但有了这个框架，你就能理解：首先，如果转换阶梯，你的收入会暂时下降。当我从经营服务业务转向产品化服务时，收入大幅下降。甚至在同一个阶梯上攀爬时，我从销售数字产品年收入25万美元的状态，决定要攀登这个阶梯，转向软件即服务(SaaS)业务。

But with that framework, you can understand how, first, if you switch ladders, you should expect your income to decrease temporarily. When I switched ladders from running my services business to productized services, my income went down quite a bit. Even moving between rungs on the ladder, when I went from selling digital products, I was making $250,000 a year. And I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna climb this ladder, and I'm gonna do software as a service.

我的收入跌到极低水平，花了六年时间才重新达到年收入25万美元。所以你要明白，转换阶梯或攀爬阶梯意味着收入会暂时下滑。其次，你可以跳跃前进。比如直接从打工跳到销售数字产品。

My income dipped down super low. It took me six years to make $250,000 a year again. So you should expect that moving ladders or moving rungs means a dip in income. The next thing is that you can skip ahead. So you could say, I'm gonna go from working a job to jumping all the way ahead and selling digital products.

你可以这样做，但仍需学习过程中的所有步骤。每个阶段所需的技能。你可以逐步学习，也可以选择大跨越。但可能需要数年才能达成最终目标，因为你仍需学习如何注册有限责任公司(LLC)等基础知识——这些本该在第二阶梯底部掌握的技能，现在却要在跳到第四阶梯底部时补课。

You can do that, but you still have to learn all the steps along the way. All the skills at each step. So you can learn them gradually, or you can say, I'm gonna make this huge leap. And it might take you years to achieve this thing at the end because you still have to learn how to file for an LLC. You know, all of the stuff that you would have learned in the bottom of ladder two, but now you gotta learn it as you've jumped all the way to the bottom of ladder four.

我认为第三点非常重要的是：受众群体能帮助你实现这种跨越。这正是你我学到的经验。我们职业生涯的决定性因素在于，最终有数百、数千甚至数万人关注我们的历程，看着我们在不同阶梯间跳跃、攀爬或尝试新事物。他们为我们加油，提供支持，牵线搭桥。所以当你说要...

And I think the third thing that's really important is an audience will help you make this jump. And that's what you and I have learned. You know, the defining factor of our careers is that we end up with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people who follow our journeys and watch us make these leaps across ladders or climbing rungs or trying new things. And they cheer us on, and they support us, they make introductions. So when you're saying, you know what?

创办一个播客网络——这是件极其困难的事时...

I'm gonna start a podcast network, which is an incredibly hard thing to do.

我刚想问这是第四阶段吗？是第四还是第三？

Is that latter four I was gonna ask you? Is that four or three?

两种情况都有道理。因为你正在将这些服务产品化和标准化。你在销售广告，协助预订需求等等。但你开始获得这些网络效应。

You can make an argument for either case. Because you are productizing and standardizing some of these services. You're selling advertisements, you know, helping to book demand and all that. But you're starting to get these network effects.

是啊。也许介于两者之间。3.5分吧。

Yeah. Maybe in between. 3.5.

没错。要知道，当你真正拥有这样的社群和受众时，他们为你加油打气，助力你走向成功。因此当你在不同阶梯间跳跃或向上攀登时，基于拥有受众这一事实，你的成功几率会翻倍还不止。想象一下试图建立一个播客网络的情形。

Yes. You know, as you really have this this community and this audience, they're cheering for you, and they're helping to make you successful. And so as you make these jumps between ladders or you climb up, your chance of success is more than double, based on the fact that you have an audience. Imagine trying to build a podcast network.

但你从没做过播客。没接过赞助。也没经营过代理机构。

But You never had a podcast. You never had sponsorships. You never ran an agency.

从来没有 对。假设你只是个幕后人员。明白吗？可能你做过所有这些事，但始终藏在幕后，没有任何公众知名度。

Never Yeah. Let's say you were just a behind the scenes person. Right? So maybe you did all of those things, but you were just behind the scenes and you had no public reputation.

那样难度会大得多。

That would be way harder.

所以在积累财富的过程中，有些方法能给你巨大优势。这通常归结于哪些因素具有杠杆效应。

So there are things that you can do in this journey of building wealth that give you insane advantages. And it usually comes back to what has leverage.

好的。我们深入探讨下，我特别喜欢创作者阶梯这个概念。现在我要描述一类创作者，咱们玩个游戏。你告诉我他们处于哪一级阶梯，以及需要学习什么技能或采取什么行动才能升级。

Okay. So let's dig into this a bit because I love this idea of creator ladder. So I'm gonna read a type of creator to you. We're gonna play a game. I want you to tell me what rung they're on and what skills they need to learn or things they need to do to move up to the next level.

从第一个开始：一位在Etsy上制作并邮寄手工珠宝的创作者。

We'll go to the first one. An Etsy creator who's making and shipping handmade jewelry.

他们虽然在销售产品，但手工制作的性质让这更像服务型产品。如果想引入更多杠杆效应，我们可以从两方面入手：首先需要获取更多关注，虽然现在是在Etsy现有生态中销售，但如果有自己的受众群就能带动更多销量。

So they're selling products, but it's it feels a lot like maybe a product as a service because it's handmade. And so if you think about if we want to introduce more leverage into this, we have two aspects of it that we can do it. First, we need to get more attention. We're selling to an existing ecosystem on Etsy. But if we had our own audience, that would drive more sales.

另一方面是改进生产方式。如果坚持纯手工，产能永远受限——除非雇佣更多人。所以手工模式本质上属于服务型产品，因为产出直接绑定个人劳动。虽然通过网络销售无需直接沟通，不需要打电话说'嗨，Hala'这样的环节。

And then the other thing is we need to be able to manufacture the product better. So if it stays handmade, we're always going to be capped unless, alright, we hire more people. So the handmade version is really I would call it a product as service because you are directly tied to the output. But, you know, it's being sold online without you having a conversation. You're not having to call up and be like, hey, Hala.

我很希望你能购买。你知道吗？嗯。你不是在做一对一的销售。而是大规模销售。

I'd love for you to buy. You know? Mhmm. You're not doing one to one sales. Like, you've got this mass sales.

所以这是一种服务型产品。如果我们想转向可规模化的产品，就必须实现自动化或批量生产，要么雇佣20多个手工匠人进行规模化制作，要么转向工厂化生产。

So it is a product as a service. And if we wanted to move to a product that has scale, then we would have to automate or be able to manufacture in bulk, either through hiring 20 more people who are doing the handcrafted work at scale or by switching to something that could be manufactured in a factory.

按你说的，不只是借助Etsy的品牌效应。对吧？还有他们的受众，建立自己的受众群体。比如一个拥有25万粉丝的TikTok网红，仅靠品牌合作赚钱。

And to your point, not just leveraging Etsy's brand. Right? And their audience, creating your own audience. Okay. A TikTok influencer with 250,000 followers who only earns money from brand deals.

是的。那时你就是在卖服务了。可能会有品牌主动找你，说想接触你的受众。但本质上你还是在说：好。

Yeah. You're selling a service at that point. And so you might have some of those people coming to you, those brands saying, hey. I'd love to get in front of your audience. But, ultimately, you're saying, okay.

一套专题推广收费8000到1万美元，这是我们的服务内容。他们会问能否同时发送邮件给订阅列表。每项服务都是定制化的。你可以优化流程，比如让客户填写表单自动付款，无需电话沟通。

A series of featured posts, that's $10,000 or $8,000, and here's what we could offer. And they're gonna say, oh, do you can you include an email to your email list at the same time? Everything is bespoke and custom. You could prioritize that more where you could say, hey. If you wanna get in front of my audience, fill out this form, pay automatically, and we don't get on a call.

但这本质上仍是我们的服务型产品。

But that's still very much our product that service.

要如何实现规模化？

What would they do to scale that?

销售自有产品是颠覆性策略。有些人极擅长品牌赞助，赚得盆满钵满——你就是这样。但多数创作者在同等关注度下，销售自有产品收益更高。

Selling their own products is a game changer. There's a group of people that are incredibly good at selling sponsorships. They make a huge amount of money in sponsorships. You're one of them. But most creators earn significantly more money for the same level of attention if they're selling their own products.

课程对你来说算产品吗？

And is courses a product to you?

当然算。你看那些创作者通过数字产品（课程或其他）赚取数十万甚至数百万美元，这绝对是提升商业层级的关键。

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. And, you know, you watch these creators make hundreds of thousands dollars or millions of dollars off of their digital products, whether it's courses or something else. That is absolutely moving the ladder four.

然后他们会赚得更多。回想新冠疫情时期甚至2022年，品牌预算大幅缩水。那些销售自有产品的创作者，收入比依赖品牌投放的人稳定得多——毕竟品牌是否愿意花钱取决于当时利率是否合适。

And then they're gonna earn so much more. Let's say that go back to COVID or even 2022. Both those times, brand dollars really dried up. So the creators who were selling their own products, their income stayed way more consistent than those that were relying on whether brands felt like the current interest rates meant that it was a good time to be spending money.

拥有受众的另一大优势是能快速转型，因为总有人愿意购买你的产品。这是个很好的过渡——我们提到课程，我知道你还有个常说的理念：倾囊相授，教学时毫无保留。请谈谈教学如何建立信任？

And that's another great thing about an audience is that you can pivot really quickly because you always have people that wanna buy from you. So I feel like this is a really good transition. We mentioned courses, and I know you have another philosophy that you always talk about, which is teaching everything that you know and not holding back in terms of what you're teaching. So talk to us about how teaching really builds trust.

『倾囊相授』源于我的困惑：该教什么？凭什么让人听我的？我曾以为学习者分三类：初学者、进阶者、实践者，而专家是另一个群体。我总觉得自己必须成为专家才能教学，否则会遭人嘲笑。

Teaching everything you know really came from this idea of what should I teach and why should anyone listen to me. Because I always thought that there were beginners and then intermediate people and practitioners who we learn things and we implement it. And then there's this other group over here, and they are the experts. And I can't teach something until I'm an expert. Otherwise, people will laugh at me.

他们会嘲讽我：『内森，你算老几也敢来教学？你的学位呢？资历呢？』

They'll make fun of me. And they'll be like, Nathan, who do you think you are to be out here teaching? Where's your degree? Where's all of that? Right?

仿佛大学辍学的事被发现后，我就毫无公信力了。看到别人通过博客教学赚钱时，我总羡慕地想『要是我像他们那样专业就好了』，直到我意识到——

Like, they're gonna find out you dropped out of college. You have no credibility. And so I would see people making money in building a blog and all of that teaching, and I'd be like, oh, man. I wish I was an expert like them. But then I realized something.

人们不是因为成为专家才教学，而是因教学被视作专家。追溯历史就能发现端倪：那些我们熟知的历史人物，仔细推敲时会突然愣住——

People don't teach because they're experts. We perceive them as experts because they teach. And you can actually look through our history at key historical figures that we know now and start to break it down. Be like, wait. Hold on.

比如马可·波罗，我们都知道他探索过丝绸之路。

Why do we know that? Like, if I say Marco Polo, we know who Marco Polo was. Right? He explored the Silk Road. He did all of this.

『第一个发现通往中国之路』？根本不是！早有人走过。他只是跟着叔叔们旅行——

He was the first to discover the path to China. He wasn't at all. Plenty of people had done it before him. And so you're like, wait a second. He went along on a trip with his uncles.

我说不出他叔叔们的名字。马可·波罗青史留名只因他记录了见闻。他并非以专家姿态宣称『作为丝绸之路权威，我将传授知识』，仅仅是做了记载。

I couldn't tell you his uncles' names. We know Marco Polo's name because he wrote about it. He didn't say, now that I am the person who discovered this and I am the foremost expert on the Silk Road to China, I will write about it from my place of expertise. No. He was just the one to document it.

保罗·列维尔和『英军来了』的灯笼故事同理。当时有许多信使，但一首诗让他名垂千古。所以别抱着『先成专家再教学』的念头，而应该——

Same thing with Paul Revere in the famous lanterns, where the British are coming, all of that. There were a bunch of writers that went out. But Paul Revere's name is mentioned in the famous poem, and so that's why we know who he is. And so you don't take this approach of saying, oh, I have to be an expert, and then I'll teach. Now you say, okay.

我会把我所知道的一切都教给别人。如果我上周学到了什么，我就会教。我会记录下来，因为后面还有人在跟着学，这对他们会有帮助。当我学习编程时，我在学习如何在我的电脑上安装Ruby on Rails，这是最基础的事情。但我就是搞不定。

I'm gonna teach everything that I know. If I learned something last week, I'm gonna teach it. I'm gonna document that because there's someone else who's following along behind me, and that'll be useful to them. When I was learning how to program, I was learning to install Ruby on Rails on my computer, and this is, like, the most basic thing. And I could not figure it out.

我读了那些专家写的文章，那些创造编程语言、构建框架的人写的教程。我一步步跟着他们的教程做，但还是搞不定。后来我看到了一个初学者写的教程，他说，嘿，这是我作为初学者的做法。那些专家觉得太明显而跳过的步骤，这个初学者会说，嘿，

And I read these articles from the experts, people who made the programming languages, who built the frameworks, all this stuff. I followed their tutorials step by step, and I could not figure it out. And then I came across this tutorial from someone who was a beginner and said, hey. Here's how I did it as a beginner. And something that was so obvious to the experts that they'd skipped over, the beginner was like, hey.

这部分真的很重要。我就是卡在这里了。我当时就想，太感谢你了。因为从专家的角度来看，他们会觉得怎么会有人不知道做步骤c呢？这太明显了。

This part really matters. I got stuck on this. I was like, thank you so much. Because from their place of expertise, they're like, how would anyone not know to do step c? Like, it's obvious.

我甚至都没提。这太明显了。但作为一个初学者，这正是我需要的。我需要有人用初学者的语言来解释。自从我遇到这种情况后，我明白了为什么我们知道马可·波罗、保罗·里维尔这些名字，我意识到，哦，我只需要把我所知道的一切都教给别人。

I didn't even mention it. It was so obvious. But as a beginner, that was what I needed. I needed someone to speak to the beginner level. And ever since I encountered that, understanding why we know Marco Polo and Paul Revere and all of these names, I've realized, oh, I just have to teach everything that I know.

这不是关于这个内容是否足够重要？我是否足够重要或出名？我是否有资格证明我可以教这个？不是这样的。而是，这是我学到的东西。

It's not, is this important enough? Am I important or famous enough? Do I have credentials to say that I'm valid to teach this? It's like, no. Here's something that I learned.

这是我学到它的时间和生活经验，我希望这对你或其他人有用。这让我建立了整个观众群。这让我建立了整个职业生涯。我也克服了冒名顶替综合症。因为我觉得，我不是专家。

Here's when I learned it and life experience that I learned it from, and I hope it's useful to you or someone else. And that built my entire audience. It built my entire career. And I got over all the impostor syndrome. Because I'm like, I'm not an expert.

我只是个普通人。我会说，嘿，这是我上周学到的东西。希望对你有帮助。结果成千上万的人会说，是的，这对我很有帮助。

I'm just a guy. And I'm going to say, like, here's what I learned last week. I hope it's helpful to you. And turns out tens of thousands of people are like, yes. That was helpful to me.

非常感谢。

Thank you very much.

我觉得这对任何创作者和有冒名顶替综合症、担心在网上发布内容的人来说都是很好的一课。我经常说的与此相关的是，每个人与他们的观众都有自己独特的关系。我想起自己刚开始做播客时，我的角色是一个记者。我会采访专家，然后报道我学到的东西。我不一定是专家，但我会报道出来。

I feel like that is such a good learning lesson for anybody who's a creator and has imposter syndrome of being worried about putting content online. Something that I also say related to this is that everybody has their own relationship with their audience. I think about myself when I first started as a podcaster and my relationship was a reporter. I would interview experts and then I would report out what I learned. I wasn't necessarily expert, but I would report it out.

有些人可以是啦啦队长或激励者。有些人更像是导师或老师之类的。你不一定总是要成为专家。但我很喜欢你这样的表达方式。你应该把你所知道的一切都教给别人。

Some people can be a cheerleader or like a hype man. Some people are more of a mentor or a teacher or something like this. You don't always have to be the expert. But I love the way that you phrased it like that. You should just teach everything you know.

即使是初级水平的内容，有些人可能也需要。

And even if it's the beginner level, some people might need that.

是的。而且我认为现在信息无处不在。过去信息是有附加价值的，比如我们渴望获取新信息。而现在信息已经过剩了。

Yeah. And I think that now information is everywhere. It used to be that information had a premium to it. Like, oh, we're we're hungry for new information. Now there's just a surplus of it.

现在我认为我们在寻找的是故事。我们想学习东西，但想通过跟随某人踏上旅程的方式。有个大概19、20岁的年轻人，一个大学生，正在进行环球飞行，飞往每个大洲。他把整个过程都发在Instagram上，我很喜欢关注。

Now what I think we're looking for is we're looking for stories. And so we wanna learn things, but we wanna do it following someone going on a journey. There's a I think he's probably 19 or 20 years old. So, like, a kid who's in college who is going on this journey to fly a plane all the way around the world to every continent. And he's putting that whole thing on Instagram, and I love following it.

因为这是有人在挑战困难、踏上旅程。如果你想学习任何东西，无论是计算机编程、缝纫、建立受众群体还是其他，就去踏上旅程，告诉大家你是谁、你想学什么，并记录下沿途学到的所有东西。你会发现很多门为你敞开，人们会说'我很乐意帮你'或'非常感谢分享'。

Because here's someone doing something hard and going on a journey. If you are trying to learn anything, whether it's computer programming or sewing or building an audience or all of that, go on a journey and say, here's who I am. Here's what I'm trying to learn, and I'm gonna document everything I learned along the way. And you will just see so many doors open to you where people are like, oh, I'd love to help you with that. Or thank you so much for sharing that.

我要踏上同样的旅程。或者我比你晚六个月开始之类的。这样你也不会陷入'我该分享和教授什么'的困境。你只需要分享这周学到的东西。这感觉相关且可操作，而且来自非常人性化的角度。

I'm gonna go on the same journey. Or I'm six months behind you or whatever else. And then you're also not stuck in this problem of what do I share and teach. You're just like, well, let me share what I learned this week. And it feels relevant and actionable, and it comes from a very human place.

而如今，太多内容都是这样：如果我们想要事实，就去问ChatGPT。ChatGPT擅长提供事实。我想了解事实，但想通过人类经验来学习，想通过跟随一个真实的人来学习。

Whereas today, so much content like, if we want the facts, go to ChatGPT. ChatGPT is great at facts. I wanna learn the facts, but I wanna learn it from the human experience, and I wanna learn it from following an actual person.

我想回到你的创业历程，因为你在Kit上建立的成就令人印象深刻。我越了解你和你的背景，越觉得你的公司了不起。现在我正在把我的东西转移到Kit上，看到了你们那些很棒的工作室。你们正在建造所有这些令人惊叹的工作室。首先，我知道你对财务状况很透明，所以我很高兴问你这个问题：去年你们赚了多少钱？

I wanna go back to your entrepreneurship journey because what you've built with Kit is so impressive. The more that I get to know you and get to know your background and just how impressive your company is now that I'm transferring my stuff over to Kit, I saw your awesome studios. You're building all these amazing studios. First of all, I know you're really transparent with your financials, so I'm happy to ask you this question. How much money did you make last year?

我们去年收入约4000万美元。太棒了。今年预计能达到5000万美元左右。

We made about $40,000,000 last year. Incredible. And we're on track to make about 50,000,000 this year.

其中利润有多少？

And how much was profit of that?

利润率大约7%。好的。所以有几百万利润。我们投资非常激进。你懂的？

Profit was about 7%. Okay. So handful of millions. We invest very heavily. You know?

所以我们正在研究可以把钱花在哪些方面，以提升创作者业务。大多数时候，这意味着雇佣大量软件工程师并打造更好的产品。但同时也包括像Kit Studios这样的项目，我们建立了世界级的制作工作室。我现在所在的博伊西就有，芝加哥也有，纽约市的工作室也在筹备中。

So we're trying to see what can we spend money on that makes creator businesses better. And most of the time, that's a whole lot of software engineers and building a better product. But then also, it's things like Kit Studios where we build out world class production studios. We have Boise where I am now. We've got Chicago, and we're working on New York City.

你们还拥有一些重量级创作者。比如之前提到的蒂姆·费里斯。现在Kit平台上还有哪些知名创作者？

And you have some huge creators. You have Tim Ferriss, who we mentioned earlier. Who are some of the big creators on Kit now?

哦，那可太多了。从杜阿·利帕、马修·麦康纳、汤姆·布雷迪这样的名人，到安德鲁·休伯曼、詹姆斯·克利尔、蒂姆·费里斯这样的顶级内容创作者应有尽有。还有哈桑·明哈杰这样的喜剧演员。基本上每个领域都有顶尖人物。

Oh, man. There's so many. You've got everything from celebrities like Dua Lipa and Matthew McConaughey, Tom Brady, through to the biggest content creators like Andrew Huberman, James Clear, Tim Ferriss. You got comedians like Hasan Minhaj. Any industry, we have pretty much the biggest names.

Kit现在有63,000名付费用户。哇。而且我们现在支撑着数量惊人的新闻通讯，想想这最初只是我用来增长受众的更好方式，真是挺疯狂的。

There's 63,000 paying customers that Kit has. Wow. And we power an insane number of newsletters now, which is pretty wild considering it started as a better way for me to grow an audience.

是啊。你自己开发的这个应用确实非常不可思议。但这恰恰证明了你无法跳过成长阶梯——你具备了成为如今这样的企业家、拥有现在这家公司的所有基础。

Yeah. Your own app that you created. It is really, really wild. But it just goes to show that whole, like, you can't skip the ladders. You had all the foundation to become the entrepreneur that you are and to have the company you have.

我也是这样。必须一步步来，直到达到播客行业所能企及的巅峰。对了，你为什么要把财务状况做得如此透明？

Same thing with me. It was like I had to take it step by step until I had the pinnacle of what a podcaster could have in terms of the industry. You know? Why do you make your financials so transparent?

我成长的环境里金钱非常匮乏，而且我不明白钱是怎么赚来的。那是个秘密，是个谜。当我第一次要去谈薪水时，我甚至不知道该怎么谈。我父亲不是那个世界的人，所以我没问他。

I grew up in an environment where money was very scarce, and I did not understand how money is made. It was a secret. It was a mystery. And when I went to negotiate my first salary, I didn't even know how to do that. My dad didn't come from that world, so I didn't ask him.

我打电话给我女友的父亲说：'嘿，我周一要谈薪水了，但不知道怎么谈。'他说：'过来吧，我教你。'于是他给了我各种建议，还给了我一本别人写的薪资谈判小册子。

I called up my girlfriend's dad and was like, hey. I'm gonna have to negotiate a salary on Monday, and I don't know how to do it. He was like, oh, come on over. I'll tell you. So he gave me all these tips and then gave me a little book that someone had written on salary negotiation.

效果出奇地好。关于这个还有个有趣的故事。那本谈判书里说，谈薪资时不要先开口。当对方给出数字时，要表现得深思熟虑，别立刻答应或拒绝。

And that worked out super well. I actually have a funny story on this. So in the salary negotiation book, they were saying, like, don't speak first on salary. And when someone says a salary, be really thoughtful in their response. Like, don't just jump on it right away and be like, yes.

我当时想，如果能在2009年2月找到这份年薪4.5万到5万美元的工作就太棒了。

That'd be great. Or like, no. That won't work. Like, be very thoughtful and considerate. And so I had thought, if I can get 45 to $50,000 a year in this job in 02/2009, that would be amazing.

我们正与这家公司的首席运营官共进午餐，边吃边聊。当时我犯了一个关键错误——或者说最终成了妙招——我点了一个很难嚼的百吉饼三明治。于是我拿起三明治。

We're sitting down to lunch with the COO of this company. We're talking through. And I had made a crucial mistake, or it ended up being a great move. I had ordered this bagel sandwich, which is very hard to chew. And so I picked up my sandwich.

就在我咬下去的瞬间，他说：'我们想以年薪5万美元聘用你。'而我这一口咬得太大了。我从小被教育要有礼貌，不能满嘴食物说话。所以我在心里盘算：5万美元年薪，比预期要高啊。

And right as I'm taking a bite, he says, we'd like to offer you the job at $50,000 a year. And I took this bite. Too big of a bite. And so I'm chewing, and I was raised with good manners and so you don't talk with your mouth full. And so in my head, I'm going, $50,000 a year, that's more than I was expecting.

简直太棒了，完全可以立刻答应。但我还在不停咀嚼。这时他开始有点不安，以为这个报价冒犯了我，是不是数字开得太低了？

Like, that would be fantastic. Instant yes. But I'm still chewing and chewing. And so then he starts to get a little uncomfortable. Like, did he just offend me with the you know, like, was that too low of a number?

他试探着说：'5万...或者年薪6万也行？'等我终于咽下食物回答：'6万美元年薪非常理想，谢谢。'就在我咀嚼的这段时间里，我实践了那本书教的薪资谈判技巧。

He's like, 50. Or, you know, we could use $60,000 a year. And I, like, finish chewing and say, $60,000 a year would be great. Thank you. And so in that time that I took the bite, I, like, implemented the feedback from the book, salary negotiation as a skill, basically.

我的薪资水平就这样提升了一档。但说到底，这完全得益于我咀嚼时的沉默——那个恰到好处的时机让我多赚了1万美元。

I moved up a little bit in the ladder. But, really, it came down to the fact that I had words timed by and that Really good luck. Time ended up making me an extra $10,000.

这故事太精彩了。看啊各位，沉默的力量多么强大。只要你保持沉默，对方就会主动用更多信息填补空白，这绝对是绝妙的谈判策略。

I love that story. Yes. Silence is so powerful, people. If you just are silent, people will want to fill in that space with just more information. So that's such a good negotiation tactic.

好的，你解释了公开财务状况的原因。另外你的公司是自筹资金的吧？从没接受过外部投资？

Alright. So you told us why you share your financials. You also bootstrapped your company. Correct? Never took any money.

我刚知道这事太震惊了——Spotify曾出价2亿美元收购，你居然拒绝了？为什么？那可是笔巨款啊。我对Yap Media的心理价位是1亿美元。

You I found out I had no idea about this. I can't believe I didn't know that Spotify offered you $200,000,000 and you turned it down. Why? It's a lot of money. A $100,000,000 is my number for Yap Media.

要是我的公司能被估值1亿美元然后退出，那就太完美了。所以你到底为什么拒绝？

Like, I would love to be valued at a $100,000,000 company and exit. That's really big. So why did you turn it down?

你知道，我总说不会卖掉公司，因为我热爱这份事业，热爱服务的社群等等。当报价来自私募基金或不那么诱人时，这话容易说。但Spotify这样的品牌说'我们想收购你'时...

You know, I always said I'm not gonna sell this company because I love what I'm doing. I love the community that I'm serving, all of that. And then that's easy to say when it's offers from private equity or they're not that compelling. But Spotify has a big brand saying, hey. We're interested in buying you.

我们很乐意谈谈。我们考虑的数字大约是2亿美元。这确实很有吸引力。所以我不得不坐下来认真思考，写下我的想法，然后问自己：我真的想这样做吗？

We'd love to talk. Here's 200,000,000 is kind of the number we're thinking about. That was really compelling. And so I had to actually, like, go sit down and journal on it and say, alright. Do I wanna do this?

你知道吗？我真的仔细想过，好吧。如果我拥有2亿美元会做什么？对吧？因为我从未引入过外部资金。

You know? And really, I thought about, okay. What would I do with $200,000,000? Right? Because I haven't raised any outside capital.

我仍然持有公司85%的股份。

I still own 85% of the business.

我正想问你，你持有多少股份？

I was gonna ask you, how much do you own?

是的，很多。因此我意识到，我会回头做完全相同的事。我想建立一个服务创作者的平台，我喜欢创造东西。即使在早期，我做了东西也没人看。

Yeah. It's a lot. And so in that, I really realized that I was gonna go back and do the exact same thing. I wanted to build a platform serving creators, and I like to make things. Even in the early days, I'd make something and no one would see it.

如今，我做出东西后，第二天就有大约6万人使用它。这非常特别。我热爱这种影响力，也热爱与我共事的团队。有些人说，哦，我想成为独立创业者。

Today, I make something and, like, 60,000 people use it the next day. And that's super special. I love the impact. And I love the team that I work with. And, you know, there's people who are like, oh, I wanna be a solopreneur.

我为他们感到高兴，但那不是我想要的。我喜欢与团队合作。所以我意识到，我会转身去做现在想做或正在做的事。于是我决定，不。

And I'm thrilled for them. That's not what I want. I love working with a team. And so I realized I would just turn around and do the exact same thing that I wanna do now or that I'm doing right now. And so I realized, no.

我不想出售。另外，他们说复利的第一法则就是不要过早中断它。我们之前提到过Mailchimp。尽管我创业是因为对他们的产品感到沮丧，但我非常钦佩他们的业务。他们经营那家公司超过二十年。

I don't wanna sell. The other thing is, you know, they say the first rule of compounding is to not interrupt it prematurely. And we mentioned Mailchimp early on. And even though I started my business because I was frustrated with their product, I really, really admire their business. They built that business for more than twenty years.

他们花了八年时间才实现第一个百万美元的收入，最终以10亿美元的收入退出，并以120亿美元的价格出售。所以我意识到，我正在享受这段旅程。我遇见人们，分享旅程，基本上在做我一生的工作。我可以年复一年地继续做下去，继续享受复利。

It took them eight years to get their first million in revenue. And they exited doing a billion in revenue, and they sold for $12,000,000,000. And so I'm realizing, like, I'm enjoying the journey. I'm meeting people, sharing the journey, basically doing my life's work. And I get to keep doing it year after year, and I get to keep compounding.

而且你赚了很多钱？

And you're making great money?

是的。所以我对我们正在做的事情充满热情。假如我，比方说，不知道怎么回事，坐时光机穿越到十年后，有人告诉我‘嘿，你还在经营Kit公司’，我会觉得，嗯，这很合理。

Yeah. And so I'm very passionate about what we're doing. And if I, like, I don't know, did a time machine and somehow woke up ten years from now and someone was like, yeah. You're still running kit. I'd be like, okay.

没错。这完全说得通。如果十年后我还在经营同一家公司，我一点都不会感到惊讶。

Yeah. That makes sense. I would not be surprised at all if, ten years from now, I'm still running the exact same company.

那跟我聊聊你持有85%股权的事吧。纯粹出于好奇，你在股权分配上是如何考虑的？是分给团队？还是用于融资？你有给团队成员分配过股权吗？

So talk to me about you have 85% of your equity. So just curious about how selfishly, how you've approached giving away equity. Is it to your team? Or is it for investments? Have you ever given away equity to your team?

我分配的所有股权都给了团队。期间有几位成员通过我们协助的次级轮转将股权出售给外部投资者。但实际上，我完全根据市场角色来分配——Afterthem Equity的投资分四年兑现，之后我们会按惯例发放补充激励。要知道，我的团队里有人跟随我八年以上。让团队成员深度参与、共享收益，我认为这对保持目标高度一致至关重要。所以我将薪酬体系划分为四个象限来规划。

All the equity that I've given away has been to the team. A few team members over time have sold equity to outside investors in these secondary rounds that we've helped facilitate. But, really, I just based on the role in the market, Afterthem Equity invests over four years, and then we do refresher grants as you know, I've got people that have been on my team for eight years or more. And it just really helps for team members to be deeply invested, for them to share in the upside, and I think just for us to be totally aligned. So actually think about compensation in four quadrants.

想象一个2x2的矩阵：横轴是「固定薪酬」与「绩效薪酬」，纵轴是「短期」与「长期」。短期固定对应基本工资，长期固定是401k匹配计划，短期绩效是利润分成。

So if you imagine a grid, you know, a little two by two grid, and across the top, we've got guaranteed versus performance based. And then alongside, we have short term versus long term. So short term guaranteed is salary. Long term guaranteed is a four zero one k match. And short term performance based is profit sharing.

长期绩效部分则体现在股权上。我认为最理想的团队薪酬方案应全面覆盖这四点。你不能说‘我几乎不付你工资，但给你大量这家高风险公司的股权，如果成功你就发财了’，也不能像Mailchimp那样走向另一个极端，声称‘我们永不卖公司，所以只支付现金’。

And then the long term performance based is equity. And I think that the best compensation packages for your team really hit on all four of those things. And so you're not saying, oh, I'm barely gonna pay you anything, but here's a bunch of equity in in this moonshot. If we hit it big, you'll be rich. Or I'm not going the other way like Mailchimp did and saying, oh, we're never going to sell, so we're only paying cash.

多年后当他们以120亿美元出售时，员工几乎没得到什么。但你可以选择中间路线：我们盈利良好，支付优厚薪资，为你的401k养老金计划供款，同时你也持有股权。

And then years later, when they do sell for $12,000,000,000, the employees barely make anything. But you can actually just walk this middle line and say, look. We're profitable. We're paying good salaries. We're contributing your four zero one k, But you also have equity.

这样我们就能实现真正平衡的薪酬方案。这就是我的思考方式。

And we can have this really balanced package. That's the way that I think about it.

你是否将任何员工视为业务合伙人？

Do you consider any of your employees to be your business partners or no?

不，我从未有过那个级别的联合创始人。现在我拥有一个出色的高管团队，是通过长期培养和精心招募建立的。

No. I've never had a co founder at that level. Now I have an executive team. It's amazing. And we've built them up over time and really recruited.

所以我们有这样一个核心团队真正运营着公司。即使我退后一步，他们也能继续运营。但我从未有过联合创始人。

And so we have this core group that really runs the business. And even if I were to take a step back, they would run the business. But never had a co founder.

你创业历程中另一个有趣的点是，你用5000美元启动了公司，并且公开了这次创业。为什么选择如此公开透明地发布这个创业项目？

Something else that was interesting with your entrepreneurship journey. You launched your company with $5,000, and you were public about the launch of this company. Why did you make that launch public facing and transparent like that?

我认识到了受众群体的力量。这个群体能为我做几件事：首先，如果有数千人关注我的进展，我知道他们会帮助我。这种情况经常发生，比如我会说'嘿，我在文案写作上遇到困难了'。

I learned the power of an audience. And then audience was gonna do a couple things for me. First, if I had thousands of people following my journey, I knew they'd help me. And that happened a lot where I'd say, hey. I'm really struggling with copywriting.

如何为软件公司撰写销售页面而不显得千篇一律又无聊？结果我观众中有一位出色的文案写手艾米·霍伊说：'我们上Skype聊聊吧，我来帮你。'从提到Skype就能看出这是很久以前的事了。

How do you write a sales page for a software company and not make it generic and boring? Well, someone in my audience, who's an amazing copywriter, her name's Amy Hoy, said, oh, let's jump on Skype. I'll help you with that. You can tell it was a long time ago. It's in the reference to Skype.

是的，她确实帮了我。我还为此写了篇文章，这样就能号召其他人提供建议。其次，这给了我责任感。我以前有个坏习惯，投入某件事几周后就会失去干劲。这很棘手。

Yeah. And so she did, and I wrote a post about that where I'd be able to call other people up for advice. The next thing is it gave me accountability. I had a bad habit of jumping in on something and working on it for a couple weeks and then losing energy and momentum. That's tough.

但我知道如果有成百上千的人问我：'内森，这周你的业务进展如何？'我就会真正取得进展并保持连贯性。最后一点是，这帮我获得了客户。虽然我写关于创建软件公司的博文时并非专门针对内容创作者，但我知道存在交集。这三个原因让我完全值得公开这段旅程并沿途讲述故事。

But I knew that if there were hundreds or thousands of people being like, so, Nathan, what progress did you make on your business this week? That I would actually make progress and stay consistent. And then the last thing is I knew it helped me get customers. I wasn't exactly targeting content creators with all of my blog posts about building a software company, but I knew there was overlap. And so those three things made it absolutely worth it to go on this journey in public and tell the story that I along the way.

还有个有趣的副作用：我保留了2013年3月获得首批客户或预售时的所有精彩博文，记录了我当时的想法。多年后回看这些，实在是特别珍贵的财富。

And a fun little side effect is that I have all these great blog posts about what I was thinking in March 2013 when we got our first customers or presold this or that. And, you know, it's just such a special thing to have years later.

你一定为最初那些小小的进步感到非常自豪吧。

You must be really proud of the little baby steps that you took in the beginning.

是的，百分之百。

Yes. A 100%.

好的。最后一个问题，之后我们就要结束这次访谈了。AI正在席卷创作者经济领域，请谈谈你认为AI的利弊？你的观点是什么？

Okay. Last question for you, and then we're gonna close out this interview. AI is taking over the creator economy worlds. Tell us what you think the good and the bad of AI. What's your perspective?

是的。我认为科技一直在革新我们所做的一切。工业革命终结了大量农业工作，但最终社会因此变得更好。印刷术、互联网，所有这些都需要巨大的技术变革，才让你我能从事现在的工作。

Yeah. So I think that technology has always innovated everything that we're doing. The industrial revolution, that ended a whole bunch of farm jobs. But ultimately, I think society was better off because of it. The printing press, the Internet, all of these things require a huge technological shifts that are required for you and I to be doing what we're doing now.

而我认为人工智能可能比所有这些加起来还要重大。因此很难预知未来。好的一面是，我们已实现许多事物的民主化。若你需要顶级图书编辑来评析作品或论文，AI每月仅需20美元就能随时效劳。

And I think AI is probably bigger than all of those combined. And so it's hard to know what's gonna happen. I think that on the good side, we've democratized so many things. If you want a really great book editor, someone who's going to critique all of your work or your essays, AI is just sitting right there for $20 a month. And you go, hey.

你可以问：'我的论点存在哪些逻辑漏洞？'它会立即回应：'这里存在逻辑跳跃，你用一个个人轶事过度推断了结论。'过去这类服务需要支付数千美元。

What are all the logical flaws in my argument here? And it'll be like, oh, let me tell you. And it'll be like, you made a leap here. This is a personal anecdote that you extrapolated all this stuff. You used to have to pay thousands of dollars for someone to do that.

现在各类繁琐工作都可省去，就像Figma和Photoshop加速设计流程那样。但AI带来的飞跃更大，且将影响所有行业。另一面是，制造垃圾信息和噪音变得前所未有的容易。

There's all kinds of busy work that you don't have to do anymore. Similar to how Figma and Photoshop made design so much faster. Well, now you're getting a much bigger leap in AI. It just happens to hit every single industry. The other side of it is it's easier to generate nonsense than ever before and just noise.

在这个能批量生成创作者的时代，如何脱颖而出？我认为必须讲述更个人化的故事，与观众建立连接。在写作或录制播客前要思考：这是我的独特视角，还是任何人都能复述的泛泛之谈？

And so what do you do to stand out as a creator in a world where we can just generate whole creators? So I think you have to tell more personal stories. I think you have to connect with your audience. You have to think before you write something or before you podcast it. Like, is this unique to me, or could anyone share this anecdote?

我担忧的是AI会截断所有职业阶梯的底层。律所合伙人不会被AI取代，但初级律师会。初级网页设计师也面临同样处境——Cursor和Replit等工具已能胜任。最终行业顶端专家借助AI实现十倍产能，不再需要基层员工。

One thing that I'm worried about is AI taking out the bottom rung of every career ladder. Because if you think about maybe a partner at a law firm isn't gonna be replaced by AI, but the junior associates are. The beginner web designer, and, well, you know, Cursor and Replit and all these, pretty good at doing that. And so you have these experts at the top of their careers. You wielding AI to do, like, 10 times what they could possible before and no longer needing the junior associates and whatever else.

这些专家具备鉴别AI产出优劣的判断力。但若AI消除了所有初级岗位，新人将失去学习机会。有位大学教授朋友允许学生在课堂使用AI写论文，他认为这是未来趋势。

And they have the all the expertise and discernment to know, oh, this is great output. This is not. But I worry that if AI eliminates the bottom rungs of all of these jobs, then no one's learning how to do that. I was talking to a friend of a friend who's a college professor, and he was saying he allows everyone to use AI in the classroom, writing papers, all of that. He has no problem with that because that's the future.

问题在于没人再阅读原著了。本该通过阅读经典培养鉴赏力的过程，现在变成了'ChatGPT，这本书的摘要是什么？好的，搞定'。

That's what's expected. The problem that he has is that no one's doing the reading anymore. And so instead of reading this literature or these great works or all these other things that you could really learn from and build taste, now everyone's just saying, hey, Chachi Bhutti, what's the summary of this book? Okay. Cool.

我担心十五年后，当一代人丧失审美判断和基础技能时，我们将面临什么。若能既享受AI红利，又真正掌握那个世界所需的鉴赏力与智慧，前景将很光明。但若持续抽掉职业阶梯的根基，下一代将面临严峻问题。

Now I can do this thing. And so I'm worried about what happens if in fifteen years, no one has a sense of taste and style and all of that, and really these fundamental skills. And so if we can get all the benefits from AI and really learn the taste and the wisdom and the skills necessary for that world, I think we're gonna be in a great shape. If we continue to eliminate the bottom rungs and the next generation doesn't learn all these core things, then I think we've got a serious problem.

哇，这真是发人深省。我从未这样思考过。很高兴你提出这点。对于三十到四十岁的听众来说，我们因具备基础技能而处于更有利位置。

Wow. That was really eye opening. Like, I never thought about it that way. So I'm really glad that you brought it up. For everybody tuning in who's more in their, like, thirties and forties, I feel like we're in a better situation because we have a lot of the foundational skills.

对于所有年轻人，我认为教训依然是学习那些技能。还是要尽可能多学，不要跳过或只获取每件事的概要。

And everybody who's younger, I think the lesson is still learn those skills. Still try to learn everything you can and not just skip over and get the cliff notes of everything.

真正去读书。

Actually read the books.

没错。真正去读书。内森，我总以两个问题结束节目，问所有嘉宾。第一个是：我们年轻的创业者今天能做哪一件具体的事，明天就能变得更成功？

Yeah. Actually read the books. Nathan, I always close my show with two questions I ask all my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

记录你的历程。无论是通过每日的Instagram帖子还是每周的简报，把你刚学到的东西记录下来。即使只为自己而做，六个月或一年后，你会惊讶于自己掌握的技能和进步。单凭这点就值得去做。但很可能，你会因此吸引数百甚至数千人关注，他们想帮助你实现梦想。

Document your journey. If you do that, the thing that you just learned, whether you do it on a daily Instagram post or a weekly newsletter, any of those things, just document that journey. Even if it's just for you, you'll be blown away at the skills that you build and how much better you get in six months or a year. And that's worth doing it just for that reason. But chances are, you'll end up building a following of hundreds or thousands of people who wanna help you achieve your dreams.

那你认为生活中成功的秘诀是什么？

And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is?

我处处寻找杠杆。我会读一本叫《纳瓦尔·拉维坎特年鉴》的书，听起来有点吓人。

I look for leverage wherever I can. I would read a book called the Almanac of Naval Ravikant. It sounds like an intimidating book.

什么年鉴？谁的年鉴？

Almanac of what? Revolve what?

《纳瓦尔·拉维坎特年鉴》。纳瓦尔是著名投资人，亿万富翁，非常成功的商业哲学家。我朋友埃里克把他的智慧集结成书，包括他那篇叫《如何不靠运气致富》的推特长文。

The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. Naval is a famous investor. I think he's a billionaire. A very, very successful guy who's like sort of a business philosopher. And my friend Eric wrote this book of all of his wisdom, including he has a Twitter thread called how to get rich without getting lucky.

书里全是精华，但核心是解析杠杆作用，帮你理解四种杠杆类型及如何在生活和商业中运用。掌握这些，你做任何事都会更轻松。

And, you know, just all of these great things. But, really, the core thing is that this book breaks down leverage and helps you understand the four types of leverage, how to implement in your life and business. And if you do that, you'll just have an easier time in everything that you do.

太棒了。我要买这本书，而且会真正读完它。

I love that. I'm gonna get that book, and I'm actually gonna read it.

去做吧。

Do it.

内森，非常感谢你抽出时间。大家在哪里可以了解更多关于你、Kit以及你所做的一切？

Nathan, thank you so much for your time. Where can everybody learn more about you, Kit, and everything that you do?

我有一个播客叫《内森·巴里秀》，曾邀请过马克·曼森等杰出嘉宾，当然还有我自己。谢谢你来参加。

I have a podcast called the Nathan Barry Show. It's had amazing guests like Mark Manson and yours truly. Thanks for coming on.

是啊，很有趣。

Yeah. It's fun.

如果你喜欢播客，欢迎收听。如果想建立新闻通讯，让电子邮件为你的创作者业务赋能，可以访问kit.com。

So check that out if you love podcasts. And then go to kit.com if you wanna build the newsletter and, have email powering your creator business.

太棒了。内森，我会把所有链接放在节目备注里。这次采访非常精彩，我迫不及待要发布了。非常感谢你的时间。

Amazing. Nathan, I'll stick all those links in the show notes. This was an awesome interview. I'm so excited to put it out. Thank you so much for your time.

好的，谢谢你。

Yeah. Thank you.

Yap Gang的听众们，听到内森从害羞的孩子到翻汉堡，再到拒绝2亿美元的收购要约，最终将Kit打造成年收入4000万美元的企业，这实在太励志了。这就是押注自己的力量，这就是创作者经济的威力。因为在当今世界，当你建立受众时，你就在建立杠杆。而有了杠杆，你就能创造自由。

Yap Gang, hearing Nathan go from shy kid to flipping burgers to turning down a $200,000,000 offer and then building Kit into a $40,000,000 a year business was just so inspirational. That's the power of betting on yourself. That's the power of the creator economy. Because in today's world, when you build an audience, you build leverage. And with leverage, you build freedom.

内森不仅建立了企业，他还通过每一份内容逐步积累了势能、信任和长期影响力。所以，如果你是创作者、创始人或有抱负的企业家，希望你此刻和我一样热血沸腾——因为内森给予我们的不仅是建议，更是一份按照自己意愿建立事业和人生的路线图。而创作者经济能撬动一切。

Nathan didn't just build a business. He built momentum, trust, and long term impact, one piece of content at a time. So if you're a creator, founder or aspiring entrepreneur, hope you feel as fired up as I do right now because what Nathan just gave us isn't just advice. It's a roadmap for building a business and a life on your own terms. And the creator economy leverages everything.

内森提醒我们：建立受众不在于点赞或粉丝数，而在于信任和分发渠道——这两项你能拥有的最强资产。当你培育受众、与他人合作并 reinvest 你的势能时，你就激活了创作者飞轮。这个循环不仅能壮大你的事业，更能使其持续发展。你将不再艰难攀爬，而是开始有目标地旋转。我们还深入探讨了内森的财富创造阶梯理论，这是每位创业者都需要理解的框架。

Nathan reminded us that building an audience isn't about likes or followers. It's about trust and distribution, two of the most powerful assets you can own. When you nurture that audience, collaborate with others, and reinvest your momentum, you activate the creator flywheel, a loop that doesn't just grow your business, it sustains it. You stop pushing uphill and start spinning with purpose. We also got deep into Nathan's ladders of wealth creation, a framework every entrepreneur needs to understand.