 So I found a quote, I found a quote that I liked this morning that I thought I'd read This is by Henry Ford. Henry Ford said Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, but this time with more, excuse me, this time more intelligently. I really, I really dig that quote. And I read it specifically before we talked to Nathan because I don't know if anybody's here for the business track last year, right? This was Nathan's first business track last year, but I got to tell you I sat back here and I listened to what this man had to say and I was inspired. I really, I really enjoyed his interview last year, and so I wanted to have him back this year So that he could talk about his failures. Yeah So would you like to start sir Nathan? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so It's great to be back by the way. This is this is a lot of fun So we could talk about how for years I neglected my family for business Or we could talk about how I lost a third of my income and health insurance in one day Why don't we go? Oh, yeah. Oh God. There's no keep going The time that I was sued by a major telecommunications firm in federal court, uh-huh, or we could talk about How I neglected health for years. It's up to you. Oh, let's let's do all four. Okay. We got we got 25 minutes Okay for I Want to start with family? I think that's a great one to talk about. Yeah, let's start with him. Tell me about that Wow, okay, so I think In my opinion your greatest weakness is your greatest strength taken to an extreme so You know, I I'm a helpful person. I love to be helpful I love to see other people grow and I love to go all in helping them do that right so the downside of that is for years I Got I received affirmation and my you know self-worth from being recognized as the hero by clients Right. I don't know if anybody else struggles with that So that's what I've dubbed the hero syndrome and I'm working on some content around that You know, we've heard of the imposter syndrome and this is sort of the kissing cousin to imposter syndrome but you know being the hero is addictive and For years I would work late drop everything Any kind of client would call email Whatever because I wanted to be the hero, you know wanted to be seen that way in the client's eyes and the for some clients It's not as bad But there are other people other clients who will suck the life out of you if you let them Right, they will take advantage of that and will not think twice about it And these are people who can never ultimately be pleased and so for years I struggle with that And so how do you what's the flip? I had how do you? Stay the hero right because it is a good spot to be and it's good for customer service And it's it's good all around but also sell set healthy boundaries. Yeah, well, and that's the key right is First of all something has to happen deep in your soul to realize that your ultimate worth is not It does not come really out of outside of from other people. Anyway, you have to find that Place of self-worth in your own self. We talked about some therapy here therapy a good wise counselor is good for anybody I don't care who you are or where you are in life It's good to have a trained person to just reflect with But you know finding finding self-worth in yourself Rather than in your work or in a marriage relationship or friendships It's got to come from inside and when you do that that lets you set healthy boundaries to protect the things that you feel are the most Important and not things not priorities that are set by other people for you You were seeking some external affirmation And and and using that For something else besides business it was personal it was at least you thought it was personally fulfilling Like that now, I think that's it. Yeah, I think I think that's it and I think Most people I don't want to generalize my own weakness But I think does that resonate with you guys that you you find the need to have other people affirm you and it's it's not that That's necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I think it's healthy to affirm people matter of fact in the I'll lead a coaching group of freelancers and one of the when we have our group call every month One of the first thing we do is celebrate You know tell us something good to happen in the last 30 days because you know when you're in your tribe There are very few other people who can appreciate the fact that you solve that stupid semi-colon out of place problem in the php You know right so and it's good to be affirmed but You know if you wake up in the morning having to be affirmed by someone else to feel like you're worthwhile then it's it's it's difficult But it's different coming from your peers Right then coming from somebody that you're from a client. Yeah, or a customer, right? Correct. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think Yeah, in some ways. Yeah, okay. Yeah Alright, what's the next on your list? Let's see. Oh, so there was the day that I lost a third of my income in health insurance in one. Yeah in one day Okay, so at that time this was 2008 I Was not in the WordPress world yet. It was shortly after this. I found WordPress, but so I've been I started building and selling websites in 1995 I've been at this forever and One of my big in those days my model was you know, I was in the dream weaver space Everything you know custom build, you know everything ground up and you know few a fewer few clients Big retainers that was the model right a handful of clients, you know five six eight $1,000 $1,500 retainers per client, right and it was it was good money Until it's not good money So into how many of you remember what was going on in 2008 right the bottom fell out, right? so one of my biggest clients was Ironically a hair salon in Birmingham, Alabama where I'm from and I You know had been serving these people for a long time. I was doing everything under the sun for them print design graphic design Some web some video photography everything basically they needed I was selling anything I could at that point to you know make ends meet and I walked in one day and the economy tanked and They brought me in the office. Yeah, I thought I was there to just fix a couple of little problems They brought me in the office and said I'm sorry after this month. That's gonna be it and it was the end of the month And so not only were that did they represent a third of the income that was coming into my business But they also were providing health insurance for my family So I walked out of that place that day and you know, they were in a big mall And so you had to park on the other end of the parking lot if you had Working association with a business and that was the longest walk I ever had in my life And that's why I'm thinking okay. I've got to call my wife and explain to her that honey We've just lost a third of our income and health insurance, right? I had two small kids That sucked But I remember on that that walked to my car. I can still I can still see it in my head right now I Realized and I told myself I will never let this happen again I will never let this happen again and the the business takeaway from that is If you have one client that represents that big of a stake in your business you are it's a it's a ticking time bomb Because when that client who consumes a lot of the oxygen in your world drops out You're in trouble So I began that was the day where my business model began to change I was dabbling in wordpress at that time I started exploring more and I pivoted my whole business model away from these large retainers for a few clients into Smaller wordpress care plans for lots of different clients and now if a client drops it's okay We have plenty more they represent a very small percentage of overall income. Is there a certain percentage that you won't let Client go over. I mean is there I know it's kind of feel but you know Obviously a third is too big. Yes, and you know, I don't know that I could put a percentage on it Okay, but you know you you sort of get a gut feeling. Okay, this client is really taking a lot of my time in The in the in the pie chart of my world and I'm starting to rely on them too much and you know That's it can be dangerous and the other thing I'm hearing is it's a third of your income, right? But it wasn't a third of your headspace That is a great point, right? Yeah, because not only you know when you have a client that is consuming that much oxygen And they're paying you you know that much money, you know, and at first it looks great Yeah, the amount of thought time and Worry time about keeping this client, you know because when that client calls you're gonna stop everything, right? Which feeds into the first thing we talked about right, you know if they called on a Saturday, and I'm having fun with my family I'm gonna stop and take that call and go spend an hour working on their problem Which just totally blows the family day sure it's really hard to set up boundaries when you are depending on that But that client for so much and so the flip side of that is okay. It's a 30 rear income It's more than the third of your headspace just for your focus, but also. What's that costing you? Opportunity cost wise on the backside. Yeah, so a lot because As a as if you're a especially few how many of your freelancers in here like you're the okay. Awesome. You're my tribe, so When you're the only person or whether you're on a even in a small team You have to wear all the hats You just have to so you have if you have a client or you you know one of the most dangerous things a freelancer can do is take On a huge project It is and that sounds crazy But if you have a project that's going to consume your life for six months It looks great because this big pile of income comes in but guess what you're probably not going to have the time to Do the marketing and networking whatever so what happens at the end of that six months is cash flow goes to zero Right unless you have a really good healthy recurring revenue stream, so it's incredibly dangerous If you're not wearing all you're letting one client consume all the headspace and you're not balanced in all the things You have to do in your business you you could put yourself out of business. Yeah, that's a great point great point Real quick before we go on to the third story, right Anybody who did raise their hand a freelancer or anybody in the room Can they relate to what Nathan's saying here that you've got a client that pays you less than what they're taking in your headspace? Is that is that familiar? Okay, good. We'll make this progress. Yeah. What's next? Oh, well, so this There was the day I was sued by a national telecommunications firm in federal court. Okay, that was a bad day It started with a sheriff knocking on my door serving me some papers. Oh, this was in the early days of the Internet I think it would have been 1990 It was late 96 or early 97 and I was our first little web venture I was living in a small town in Louisiana and Our first big client right my first client was the parish county the parish Economic Development Office and we had a little web server and you know And some things got posted on that web server that were defamatory towards a large Telecommunicate well allegedly defamatory we'll say right Toward this large telecommunications firm, which you would all you know recognize immediately if I told you and you know We thought we dealt with the issue. It was a mistake You know we dealt with the same day and then you know about 10 weeks later on a Monday morning 8 o'clock Sheriff's deputy knocks on my door and hands me a paper. That's a lawsuit and I'm you know at that point I'm like 24 years old. I'm making nothing You know just newly married. I Was petrified absolutely petrified in the other The you know, it's a it's a long story, but it turns out okay We had a lawyer that got aggravated that we were being picked on Our attorney's take was they're trying to establish some case law. No internet case law existed at that time And so they were trying to get some case law established on an easy case and he took the case pro bono We went in and the judge threw it out. It was you know But the takeaway from that is be real careful who your partners are because somebody Did some things and I became responsible for them and it turned into about 18 months of pretty much hell Sure worry and anxiety, you know not being able to have a lot of peace internally about what was gonna happen next sure, okay? For number four Yeah, so that's the the health conversation Yeah, let's talk about that cuz yeah recently going through a transformation. Yeah, so when I was here last year I weighed 270 pounds. I'm five foot six And since December the 10th day after I came back from word camp us I've lost about 80 pounds So it's it's hard when you work behind a desk all day, right it is hard to focus on health and This is this is it's just a new priority for me and What it's turned into is realizing Lots of things that I've let slide, you know the business takeaway from that is You know, there are so many little micro habits that you can establish in your world Not only on the health side but on the business side to increase your productivity to increase your health to just do small things You know, how many of we know we should be drinking more water, right? We hear that all the time drink more water. You know what how I drink more water. I have water with an arms reach all day I mean, how stupid is that but if it's there? I'm gonna drink it, right? It's little things like that little small things you can do in your life and in your business that if you'll just do this Little thing those micro habits build up to big-time avalanche change great So One thing I'm gonna pick out of what one of the said is you mentioned the D word dream weaver there Is there anybody else in the room that that that I recognize from the dream we were support group You've been building websites for as long as I've been building websites, right? I started my company 1995 You started you started selling websites in 1995, right? And it's a little bit off topic, but how did you make that transition from building everything by hand to This to to wordpress to oh, wow, okay. This is such a fun story Yeah, I did a talk in Jacksonville two years of that. Yeah, it was last year and it was in the Gutenberg crisis, right? We all survive that right the sun came up after wordpress. It was like why 2k over again I hate wordpress. That's perfect for the video. Can we can we get that snippet on Twitter? I had a big slide It said I hate wordpress in this talk and that's those words came out of my mouth in 2008 I hate wordpress. It's gonna ruin my business. Okay, which is ironically what people said about Gutenberg last year as well, right? Yeah, so and It was it was in that in that phase of my life that I described earlier where every I was all in on dream weaver all in on you know several good clients big retainers and Here comes this wordpress thing and it lets people edit their website. They are you know, they are taking away My ability to sell this thing that I do right and so it required a major pivot And it took some time for me And it was actually that that story that I told earlier that was the pivotal change for me of realizing this You know this model that I had is not sustainable. Anyway, people want to be able to edit their websites Well, some do how many of you have wordpress clients that never log into their website anyway. Yeah, me too But you know That started the process what really sold me on wordpress was We were building a site for a client who needed a dealer locator You know, they had a product it was gonna be in dealers and you know I reached out to my developer and it was gonna be about, you know $1,800 to build that by hand and then I found a wordpress plugin for $39 that did it already And I thought there might be something to this Because that's that's a lot of margin You can just buy this and install it and it works right so and then I slowly discovered the wordpress community Yeah, which is the best part about wordpress and realizing not only are there people who have probably already Thought about problems that I already have and likely already have a solution, but there's this immense community of People who are just amazing You know, I've had the privilege to you know to beat over 50 word camps so far across the United States in Canada And it's everywhere every wordpress community. I've ever been in is amazing just people who are willing to give willing to share I mean here you are you're standing up here sharing. Yeah It's an amazing thing that we amazing thing. We have the privilege of being part of cool All right, we've got questions from Nathan. We covered a lot in a short time, but I Guess you covered it all up Got it. Oh back there. Hey, what one sec Go ahead how did I lose the 80 pounds? It's it's a plan I'm on That's it's built based around eating every two to three hours a small meal and then one meal at night Which I'm happy to talk to you more offline If you want to do that But yeah, but like everything else you talked about it sounds like even your health needed to be a process That's it. And so I Watched a friend of mine. Who is my health coach drop? 200 pounds Easy Well, I say easy At least 200 pounds and kept it off for a few years and I finally talked to her I watched some other people. She was helping do the same thing. I'm like look is this is this a plan? It's easy enough where I could stick to it and follow it because I'm I'm very much a process person I have a checklist for it. You know when I go to a word camp. I got a checklist and Trello to plant, you know to yeah To you know, make sure I don't forget stuff If it's got a checklist and a plan that I can follow I'm gonna do it I'm gonna execute on it and that's what this was it was an easy plan You know to follow that you know, it's a process and really I mean that's No matter what you do if you can figure out how to turn that into a process that you can follow and just be Accountable that process you're gonna you're gonna be better So different question one of the other things I was thinking about is you're telling all these stories, right? One of the things one of the things that And it's wonderful that you've shared everybody your experiences because they can take away from your experiences Hopefully learn from what you've gone through. But is there a way when you're in the moment, right? Especially with your family, right? And that resonates with me because I've been through that before as well Yep, it's hard to recognize that you're neglecting something, right? You're neglecting your family when you're in that moment. You can't see it Right, it's almost if you got blinders on right can't see it Is there anything that you've discovered over the years that you can? Kind of step outside of that moment and say, okay I need to shift something or do something differently. Is there a process that you've discovered for that? Oh, man. Okay. Yeah, so I'll enter that two ways First it inside yourself. You have to be willing to be wrong That's a great takeaway Pride is the enemy. Oh, right. I mean you can learn that from lots of sources You know from the Bible to Greek mythology, you know hubris gets you nowhere, right? Sure If you're not willing to be vulnerable and teachable by people First of all, you're a jerk Second of all, I mean your success will be limited You have to be open to be instructed by people The second thing is you have to have people in your life who have the privilege of calling you out on stuff You have to have Relationships, you know mine starts with my marriage and then a couple of close friends who have the the open door to say You're really missing it right here because we can fool ourselves into anything We can talk ourselves into anything you can make excuses for anything We can fool ourselves very easily so you have to have somebody on the outside looking in to say You're really missing it right here, and you and you need to you need to change this But then you have to be humble enough to say, you know what you're right. Yeah, good good life lesson Yes one more Thank you Nathan one of the things I'm taking away because I'm more business audience I'm really trying to get something started up off the ground And I'm curious to hear from your point of view because you've worked with so many other freelancers agencies. What have you? Have you recognized some top three or maybe five traits that you can tell from an offset is going to make a business very successful? For example, I heard you talk a little bit about Adaptability and we all know that you need that in business so I'm curious to hear what other traits you think your characteristics are key to To a successful venture so what yeah, what's what traits do you think? Can predict success? Wow, okay That's some of your questions. That's that's a good question personal traits or That's up to you Okay, so What I just said, I think is a good way to answer that question just and to start out. I think Anyone who's successful is vulnerable needs to be vulnerable needs to realize they don't have the whole picture Because you know you can go so far on your own But without a good team of people around you you're limited nobody has the whole picture I mean just in the human condition, you know, I think everybody has a gift Everybody has a superpower and figure out what that is and then monetizing it is the core But then bringing people around you to you know instead of trying to improve the areas where you're weak Bring people around you who already have strengths where you're weak Whatever those areas may be, you know a really good developer is never going to be a really good designer and vice versa You know a person who is You know great being a developer is probably not going to be a good sales person that those those skills rarely reside in the same person So but it comes down to that core aspect of Vulnerability and humility of realizing I don't have all the answers myself So either you know you bring around a formal team as employees or contractors or just have strategic partnerships with other groups or other freelancers who Have a piece of the pie that you don't have right and just building that network and growing that I think that's a great place to start Great any other questions