Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Thank you. This is The Top, episode number zero. The Top is a podcast where you're gonna hear from entrepreneurs who are either number one or number two in their industries. They're all at the top of their game.
I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and in this 15-minute daily podcast, that's one five-minute daily podcast, you'll hear from students who turned into venture-backed $10 million entrepreneurs like Nick Knooper in episode number four. You'll also hear from bloggers and coaches who turn their email lists into $37,000 a month software-as-a-service businesses like Peter Shallard in episode number three.
You'll hear from best-selling authors and keynote speakers like Bob Berg in episode number six who command $20,000 per keynote, and he's sold over 2.1 million copies of his best-selling books.
You'll also hear from people who are stuck in the corporate grind, like Kevin Lovell in episode number seven, who quit his job, launched his own company, and now gets celebrity endorsements and attends fancy cocktail parties to accept awards, all while employing countless veterans.
I'll also surprise you with guests you thought I would never be able to get a hold of, like the guy that took a company you know from $300,000 a year in sales to $300 million using a weird trick called REM time. That's in episode number eight. And you're probably wondering, well, what company is that? Well, I'll tell you which company this guest is with soon.
But first, I want to chat with you about three things. And I'm sitting here tucked in the Appalachian Mountains in Blacksburg, Virginia, wearing my Hayo shirt and blue shorts, just enjoying life and a nice mocha from Starbucks. And you know, it's just you and I today. No guests. I just want to get to know you.
So the first podcast, the first thing I want to talk about is what this podcast will be about. The second thing we'll talk about is why I created it. And the third thing we'll discuss is who the heck I am.
Now, you might be driving to work or jogging while you're listening to this, in which case, I freaking applaud you if you're also drinking coffee, but dear Lord, please keep two hands on the wheel. Now, here's what you'll get with the top. First things first, it's seven days a week, and each episode is about 18 minutes long.
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Chapter 2: How can students become successful entrepreneurs in under 24 months?
If you wish your 20-year-old self knew one thing, what would it be and why? Now, the reason I ask this question is because time is your most valuable resource, right? You're running on the jogging trail right now for 10, 20 minutes. Well, if you had to do something else, right, you wouldn't have the time to do that. So my goal is to save you time with these questions.
Now, some of you might be wondering, Nathan, why are you doing this? You might be wondering how much this show is costing me to produce. Well, what I'm spending money on, and you'll learn this, along with the process I'm using to engineer the show to be at the top of its category, you can read the blog post I put together describing the process at nathanlatka.com forward slash the top zero.
Again, the top and then the number zero. So, that's, again, how each show will break down. Seven days a week, fresh in your ears, 15 to 18 minutes each episode from an entrepreneur who is at the freakin' top.
And I gotta tell you, I'm sitting here in studio right now, and there's this little fly that's like flying all over me, so I'm going to try not to kill it while I'm telling you guys about the show. But listen, here's why I created this show. It was inspired by a few people, three people specifically. The first, my good friend John Dumas. Now, I think John is crushing it with Entrepreneur on Fire.
He's doing an amazing job. You know, he follows a 15-minute script on every episode, and some people like that consistency. But here's the deal. When I listen to John's podcast, sometimes I feel like he has to stick to his script so he doesn't go deep and get the real numbers and the real data. On the top, I'll go deep and get revenue numbers.
The second reason I created the show is, you know, look, I listen to these shows by NPR and Harvard Business Review, and just like quite frankly, they lack personality. The top is gonna have a ton of personality. It'll be more like the James Altucher show, or the Ask Pat Flynn show, or the great work Chalene Johnson has done on her show.
So I'll have personality, as you'll see in episode three with Peter Shallard, where we talk about lathering up our bodies in suntan lotion in Cancun, and then talk about how we went from $0 blogger to $37,000 a month software CEO. Okay, the third reason or the third person that inspired The Top as a new podcast was Tim Ferriss. Look, I love Tim's show, but here's the problem.
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Chapter 3: What strategies do bloggers use to generate significant revenue?
The dude covers so much information in one hour, I just get overwhelmed. I mean, there's like 700 links I have to follow up on after I listen to a Tim Ferriss episode. I just think it's too much in one hour, and a lot of people probably take no action. Now, those are the three things that inspired me.
John Dumas' Entrepreneur on Fire, NPR and Harvard Business Review, I'll be the opposite, we'll have personality, and Tim Ferriss, I won't overwhelm you. Now, this show is not for these kinds of people. I don't want you to listen if you're one of these, you know, do what you love and forget about making money, hippie-ish kind of go-hike-the-Appalachian-mountain-trail people.
This show is going to be about how you can live a balanced life but also generate revenue, what the funnel looks like, what the metrics look like, and it's going to be very analytical. Also, you shouldn't listen to this show if you think the people in the top 1% don't deserve it. Because frankly, if you listen carefully to every episode, I'm going to teach you to become a top 1%-er.
And frankly, I don't want you to hate yourself when you get there. Okay, lastly, this show is not for somebody if conflict makes you feel uncomfortable. I mean, you guys know I have an agenda on every episode. Get the guests to share revenue numbers and funnel metrics so you can benefit. When they resist my questions, sometimes it gets uncomfortable. So just embrace the conflict.
Chapter 4: How do corporate employees transition to entrepreneurship?
So that's who the show is not for. Here is who the show is for. If you like Pat Flynn and John Dumas and how they do their monthly income reports, this show is like an audio version of a monthly income report. So you'll really like it. This show is for people who might skip a conference because they are doers and not talkers.
And you skip the conference because you know if you skip the conference that everyone else is going to and stay home, that you'll get more done and get richer faster while everyone else is doing nothing at a conference.
And lastly, this show is for those kinds of people listening who like to hustle on holidays because you love the feeling of getting ahead while everyone else is out celebrating getting absolutely nothing done. So that's who the show is for. So here's what we've covered so far. I walked you through the format of the show. I walked you through why I'm doing this show.
And now I want to talk to you a little bit about me. Again, I'm sitting here in Blacksburg, Virginia. I was a tech student, and again, I'm comfortable in my blue pants right now battling this little fly that's bugging me, and we'll see if it makes it to the end of the show without me killing it. Now, anyways, when I was young, I loved Legos and K'nex.
I loved to construct these buildings with Legos and then deconstruct them. I also learned, you know, in addition to deconstructing things, I really loved architecture. And that's what ultimately brought me to Virginia Tech to study architecture. And it was, it has, you know, Tech has the number one architecture program in the country.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do entrepreneurs face in sharing their revenue?
So I love deconstructing things. Next, I worked for Target, you know, when I was young and growing up and I learned quickly after that summer, I was working 40 hour weeks that I could never work for anybody else because I just think most people aren't that intelligent. Here's an example. You know, I was standing as a cashier at Target and my legs would literally get tired.
I mean, in pain at the end of an eight hour day. And I pitched to my boss. I said, why can't I have a stool? And he said, well, because that's not what corporate recommends. And I said, well, what if I paint the damn thing red and put a big target sign on the top of it and it'll match corporate? And he said, no, no, no, we can't do that. That's not in the rule book. But guess what?
It felt really rational to me. So you need to know that about me. I'm not an emotional guy. I'm extremely rational. I like facts and figures and analytics. Next, as I was growing and I came to Virginia Tech, I was top of the class, doing extra, extra well, had everything going for me, but I was really bored. And I followed, I like to ignore things when I get bored.
So I immediately started to invest in myself. And I think it was, let's see, sophomore or junior year, I skipped finals and paid to go to a conference in Jupiter, Florida that Bob Berg put on. Now, I have Bogberg interviewed in episode number six, and he walks through how he sold 2.1 million books and how he commands $20,000 per keynote that he gives.
But I went to that conference, and I learned more there than I did anywhere else. So it's really important to me that you understand I love investing in myself, whether it's books or conferences that I've qualified that I know have quality people at them. So, I worked at corporate at Target and quit.
I was a student, and as I was growing up at Virginia Tech, and really studying and learning from those around me, I overheard fifth years who were upset that they weren't getting jobs. Now this was in 2010, after the financial crash. Nobody was building or hiring architects. And guys, look, I got really, really insecure. I mean, it's just you and me here, so I can be honest.
You know what that feels like, right? We've all had moments of insecurity, and I was really insecure. I wanted to make sure I had a job when I graduated. So with that insecurity, I went back to my dorm room. I was wearing my ex-girlfriend's Christmas boxers she got me. They were red. They were Christmas-themed.
I was sitting in my dorm room chair under my bunk bed, and I started just calling random executives that had Facebook pages, and I started selling them Facebook contests. Well, long story short is that was the start of Hayo. Hayo helps small businesses launch Facebook campaigns, and I built that into a SaaS business where in the first three months, we grew it to 30K per month in revenue.
And now it's doing way more than that. It's hugely successful. We've had $2.5 million in funding, and we've created over 25 really high-quality jobs and have over 10,000 paying customers. So I got bit by the entrepreneurial bug. That's a little bit about me. So here's what you should know. In this episode so far, I told you the format of the show. I told you what inspired me.
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Chapter 6: What is the format of The Top podcast and what can listeners expect?
My goal is to suck information from these guests so that it all benefits you. So go ahead, pick another episode now and I'll see you there. In the next episode, number three, you'll see how a blogger used his list to go from zero to $37,000 a month as a software CEO with my guest, Peter Schaller.
This podcast is produced by Oration Recording and is sponsored by Eddy Communications and Roanoke, Virginia's Grandin CoLab, the premier workspace for entrepreneurs and growing companies.