How Nathan Latka Uses His Podcast To Become An Investor In Tech Companies

When acquiring big clients, you need to let everybody hear your voice and let them know that you are worth their time. This is exactly what The Top Podcast executive producer, Nathan Latka, has been applying in his business. He shares how he gains attention from his clients through access and influence in the marketplace. He talks about ways on approaching deal structures and how he strategizes his podcast into influencing tech entrepreneurs and creating his distribution channel.

Nathan is definitely a powerhouse, and even with his numerous businesses, he runs his investments even without full-time employees. He reveals his secrets on how he handles his investments from hiring to having hires execute tasks. There is so much to be learned from Nathan so don't miss this episode.

Some Topics We Discussed Include:

• How to use your podcast strategically to build access and influence to some of the top tech entrepreneurs out there
• The Heyo story – what the software did and how the company was launched
• Where to go to raise millions in funding
• How to think outside of the box and put together lucrative deals using nonlinear strategies
• Why building momentum is king to making good things happen
• Why giving up on some business ideas is okay
• The lessons and business strategies to be learned from Walt Disney
• What Nathan’s new book is going to be about

To learn more about Nathan and his secret on how he handles his investments from hiring to having hires execute tasks, visit http://nathanlatka.com/.

About the Guest: Nathan Latka

Nathan Latka is the host of “The Top Podcast with Nathan Latka” where he interviews SAAS founders and gets them to reveal some of their most valuable financial metrics and posts them on GetLatka.com

Nathan is a highly successful entrepreneur himself but now identifies as more of an investment banker of sorts by using his platform to both acquire and get equity in deals.

He's 28 years old and working on billion-dollar deals and he's a perfect example of using “Access and Influence” to achieve his goals.

He's also one of the harshest podcasters for people who he feels won't be transparent.

Nathan is very transparent in this episode and I think you'll love where it goes. (I won't spoil the surprise)

How Nathan Latka Uses His Podcast To Become An Investor In Tech Companies

I've got a guest that I've wanted to get on this show for a long time. I was on his podcast a long time ago. I have been waiting to return the favor and get to pick his brain on the show. Nathan Latka is joining me.

Brad, how are you?

I want to introduce how we met and how we know each other. I remember when you had Heyo years ago. We can talk a little bit about what that was and how you sold it.

I believe our mutual friend, Los Silva, made an introduction originally. I got to share my story, advice and whatnot on your podcast. We reconnected at Steve Olsher’s New Media Summit. We were both icons of influence.

I've been impressed with watching the stuff you've done from creating Heyo to selling that and going on to create a podcast called The Top.

The full name is The Top Entrepreneurs.

Did you call it The Top Entrepreneurs or The Top for SEO?

I did it for SEO reasons. When you looked at a search volume for podcasting in general a couple of years ago, you saw steadily increasing the search term for the top podcasts going quickly. I'm like, “I'm going to name my show something like that to take advantage of the swing.”

I went the exact opposite way. Los Silva was a guest on the show and he's been one of my longtime friends. When he had a podcast, he said, “Can you share this episode on Facebook?” I was like, “Yeah.”

I just wrote something in the title that said, “Check this out. Lo shared some bacon wrapped business advice if I've ever seen it.” I’m like, “That would be a good podcast name,” so Bacon Wrapped Business was born.

Did you then get into launching your show just because you respected Los and had such a good time on his and you said, “If it's working for him, I should do it too.”

A bunch of my friends has been telling me that I should do it and I never just wanted to come out with a Brad Costanzo Show because it would bore me. When I did that and I saw the name, I was talking to my buddy, Nick Unsworth.

Nick had me on his show and I was telling him I was thinking about doing it. He said, “What would it be called?” I said Bacon Wrapped Business. He’s like, “You got the URL?” I said not yet, but it's available.

He interviewed me and he said, “Go check out Brad's new podcast at BaconWrappedBusiness.com.” I was like, “I guess I've got to start this now.” “Nick, when does the show come out?” He said, “Ten days.” I had ten days to go from concept to launch and it was baptism by fire.

It's been great. It’s been such a cool way for me and I know for you as well. One of the big things I want to talk about to get access and influence in the marketplace and you've done this in a very big way.

In fact, you even mentioned, “I'm not even an entrepreneur or a marketer. I'm an investment banker.” You changed that around.

I definitely want to talk about some of the ways you're approaching deal structure and how you're using your podcast very strategically to build access and influence to some of the truly top and especially tech entrepreneurs out there, creating the Get Latka database and some other stuff.

This will blow your mind. I ran the numbers because we've just passed our 1,000th interview now. We've only released about700 of them. Altogether, the CEOs, they employ 28,000 people. They've raised $6.3 billion and they do $3.7 billion annually altogether.

That gives you a sense and to break that down into some cohorts. Twenty of my interviews are with software CEOs doing more than $100 million per year. I have hundreds that are people that are less than $1 million in annual revenue that is just starting. It runs the gamut.

When you got into the podcast, tell me where you were? First of all, Heyo, explain what the software did.

The Heyo story, I was nineteen in college studying architecture. It was ’09. Nobody was hiring architects in the middle of the financial crash. Nobody's building. That's the first thing to go. I said, “To hell with this,” launched Heyo the software company.

All I did to launch it is I saw another software doing the same thing. I thought the CEO was a total deadbeat and not a good marketer and said, “I'm going to create the exact same thing and I'll market him,” and I crushed him.

A huge time investment is making sure the task is clear and concise. Click To Tweet

A year-and-a-half in, we are growing $30,000 to $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. We then got investment from some of the world. Many would say the world's top Angel investors in David Cohen from Techstars and Dave McClure from 500 Startups and from other folks.

I raised a $2 million round of funding once we grew to about $90,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Grew that to about $5 million in total sales up to the time when I was 25 years old and then sold it to our number one competitor.

Where'd you go when you were in your early twenties? Where'd you go for funding back then? When I was in my early twenties, I knew where to go for happy hour, but I didn't know where to go to raise millions in funding.

I never went out to raise capital. What happened was as I started meeting influential business people who asked me a good question, I would ask a very simple question that I have to give myself some credit. I think for my age at the time, it was a genius thing to do.

I said, “Brad, I respect you. Can I put you on my monthly update list where I send out all my private financial metrics on the business? If you see something you can help me with or challenge me on, just reply back. If not no need to reply, but at least you get free information.”

These people would say yes to that. Once they started getting these updates and now I'm doing $10,000 to $30,000, they're writing back going, “Have you thought about investment?” I'm going, “What do you mean investment? How does that work?” They have to teach me. That’s how it happened.

My friend, Roland Frasier, also said this on our episode together, it's like, “If you want to raise money, ask for advice. If you want to get advice, ask for money.”

It’s true, but you still have to be a little bit of an artist and you have to be a little creative because I meet so many people over lunch and they end with, “Nathan, how can I be of service to you? How can I help you?”

It makes me want to vomit it. It's like they read that tactic in a Vanessa Van Edwards book on how to captivate people. They said, “I'm going to ask that at the end of all my conversations because it's a strategic thing to do.”

It doesn't sound good. You have to ask for advice but not make it seem like you're asking for advice for the sake of a stupid question.

I mentioned that exact same thing when we were on the panel at New Media Summit. At the end of this show, I've got my own twist on that, which I'll ask you. It's a totally different way, especially because I hate that question, “Nathan, how can I support you?”

It's a bad question because it requires me to do work. You will first need to think of a way for you to help me. I can't just say, “Brad, you can't help me because it makes me sound too egotistical.” You're putting the work on me and it's not a good thing. You'll never hear from me again if you ask me that.

We are 100% on the same page. In a way when you were asking them, it's almost like, “Can you be on my board?” but you didn't even ask for that much of a commitment.

Can I send you an update on my financials and everything else that's going on? Who would say no? I'm sure most people would say, “Yeah, absolutely.”

The trick is money follows mindshare. Whether it's an investor putting money in your company or customers buying your product, money follow mindshare. You have to either create value in your product where users are getting addicted, that's getting mindshare.

Create intellectual conversations with potential investors that get them thinking about you more, that’s mindshare. Focus on capturing mindshare first and the money becomes so easy. Money comes to me now. I clap my fingers and boom, money's here. It's easy once you do that.

The biggest problem is probably knowing where to where to deploy it and that’s a good problem to have. I'd rather have more money and not enough ideas. You've got a lot of investments that you're making.

You see yourself as more of an investment banker, especially with this platform and you're making investments, taking equity, doing some creative deals both with your podcast, with food trucks and everything else. Tell me about some of the investments you're making.

We did an amount in 2017 in terms of me helping CEOs raise capital and me helping CEOs sell their companies for great multiples. We did an amount that would shock most people considering I have no banking background.

In fact, I had so many emails coming to me from very large banks, their M&A departments, begging me. They would kiss my foot if I asked them to, to join their M&A firms.

These are typical investment banking firms where they're making 3% of a sale price if they sell a company for $1 billion, they get $30 million. That's their whole business.

What happened was the podcast allowed me to have fifteen to twenty-minute conversations with the unbelievable CEOs.

 

After the interview would end, we'd have five minutes for my next interview where they'd say, “Nathan, we're thinking about selling. We're thinking about raising capital. We want to buy other companies.”

I would then go to work helping them get the deal they wanted and they put all their business through me. I don't even sign an agreement. What I would say is, “I'm going to help you sell your company or raise capital or whatever for an unbelievable price. We’re not even going to sign anything.”

“Here's what I expect. If you like the deal in the end, I expect a big beautiful truckload of money in front of my house in a big shiny, silver car. I will give you more deals if you do that.” That's how I operate.

When you're raising the money, when you're helping them do that, you're doing that via your platform and your contacts and your Rolodex that you've developed through all that?

It’s phone calls and the people I've connected. My podcast, it’s a very sophisticated audience that listens. For example, the John Lee Dumas Entrepreneur on Fire, even Nick Unsworth, those motivational shows. Those people, when they listen to my show, they hate me, which is fine.

I'm very metrics driven. I ask every CEO how much revenue they did last month. What do they pay themselves? What's their equity? What's the valuation? It’s the hard stuff. I have very sophisticated listeners like M&A people, CEOs of huge companies, the smartest people.

Those people listen and then they reach out and say, “Nathan, I heard this person on your show. Can you set up an intro? I want to invest.” I've started building that Rolodex.

It's a big part of the advice that I get, that I try to take myself and then I give a lot of people is that it's access and influence are the two small engines that swing big doors of opportunity. If you can get access, access doesn't necessarily mean ownership.

We’re in an access economy, Airbnb, Uber, etc. Even capital, you don't have to have all the money if you have influence with the people who do. You've done a good job of using your platform to get access to influence and then build influence for yourself.

It gives you more access to more people and more influence. As I say, it's like compound interest and it's the sole reason I started my show. I didn't know where it was going to go. I didn't have any specific reason. I don't have a coaching program on the back of this where I'm selling things.

I do consulting. I do investments and acquisitions as well, but my entire thing was if I can get the right guests on the phone and build relationships with, there's a lot of opportunities that can open.

All of the cool things that are going on in my business life are a direct result of this show and a direct result of treating it strategically. It’s not just trying to fill up the airwaves with more two idiots talking about marketing stuff.

I feel so bad when I listen to these people that launch a show. They've been doing it for a few years. I listen to an episode and I'm bored as hell and I go, “I feel so bad for these people because they are living a delusional world.”

Maybe they have a million downloads, but that door that's opening for them are to people that are broke and in debt. I'm focused on opening doors where if the door gets opened, it's $20 million to $100 million deals for me, not a $10 person signing up for my info product membership site.

Are you personally making many investments of your own cash in some of these deals? Are you able to wield some of your influence and things in order to get equity without even putting a dime?

There are some people that have one and more of my mindshare, so to get that they have given me equity and I help them grow so fast and then raise at a much higher valuation. I have also decided to write very large checks to other venture capital firms as a limited partner.

I will recommend people who are interested in funding for those firms. I invest, but I'm not the one making the investment decision. It's my money, but someone else has control over it because I wrote a check.

The other aspect there is I am doing some deals myself, but these are more for entertainment purposes. I walked with my checkbook down Rainey Street in Austin and bought a random business on the spot that I didn't know. It was a food truck called Ming's Funny Pad Thai.

I wrote her a $6,000 check. She pays me back $0.75 per meal until I'm paid back and then $0.05 per meal in perpetuity. It’s great returns. More importantly, maybe it's up to 1.3 million people watched my Facebook Live when I did that on my Facebook page at Nathan Latka.

That gave me the opportunity to teach over a million people about business and investing. It cost me a $6,000 check, which also helped an entrepreneur and also helped her grow. Those are more for entertainment and teaching purposes.

It’s a costly investment that is paying you back.

I already got paid back. I've already made an 11% return on that in a few months.

Momentum is king. Click To Tweet

Are you acquiring any businesses like the majority ownership and trying to take full control over those? Because I know you got The Top Inbox and another one.

Those deals, I did. I bought the whole company, not made an investment. The reason I like TheTopInbox.com is that it is a tool that helps salespeople send emails later in Gmail or auto follow up, which increases conversion and close ratios.

It even allows you to see when your emails are opened. I used the tool back at Heyo. When I realized the opportunity to buy it, I wrote the check very quickly. I bought it and I have to tell you, it's growing so fast now. It’s almost doubling quarter over quarter in terms of both users and revenue base.

Do you have a team handling that? What's your role there?

I'm not a big team guy. I don't like making people feel good and all that. I just like getting stuff done. I like to know that if something goes well, my name is on it and I get credit. Also, if it goes bad, you get all the crap. I'm good at dealing with crap.

Are you in there dealing with the crap every day? How much time are you spending running the business?

For The Top Inbox, I maybe spend an hour a month on that. Most that time is our emails with the developer that I have developing on it.

How many people typically does it take to run something like that?

That one, I could release the developer if I wanted to stop making product updates and it would still grow about 6% or 7% month over month in terms of revenue. I don't have any full-time employees.

What I do is I have all my systems built out in tasks and I then hire people for those tasks. What I do is once the task gets going and I get it in a flow.

If I don't like that person X is charging me $10 to do that task, I will go make it competitive and find someone to do it at $5 to cut my costs in half because I have a lot of volumes.

Get the task laid out, hire a person for the task to execute it. Once you get a volume play, then negotiate a lower price point with that person or go replace them with somebody else.

Are you doing much micromanagement of them, like project management? Do you have anybody to oversee that, report back to you KPIs and you only come in when necessary?

My biggest time investment is making sure the task is clear and concise at the beginning. That's my biggest time investment. After it, it just runs.

I bought a business.

Is it the eCommerce one?

That one and that's changed, but in a good way. That one's on hold. I'm not quite close.

What'd you do? Did you walk away?

Things aren't done yet. It is still being massaged and manipulated. However, all good. The other one that I bought, it was a smaller website. It has a big audience. It's got some great opportunities, but then one of the issues that I noticed is I bought it. It's almost like getting a new Christmas Toy.

It’s like you decided to unwrap and then you realize assembly is required and you go, “Crap.” Now I'm in the process of bringing the people to handle those tasks. I've had to zoom back out and say, “Stop working on this $10-an-hour stuff.”

Sometimes you need to, sometimes you got to roll up the sleeves and figure it out, “What did I buy?” so that I can hire the right people. That's not my strength, which is managing teams, project managing. I love systems, I'm just not the best at creating them or following them.

I'm trying to learn that aspect as an entrepreneur. What's been cool about the acquisition I've done, the acquisition I'm working on is it's forcing me to think more.

 

Instead of like a business owner, I'm trying to think more like an owner of businesses and dive more into P&Ls and balance sheets and income statements. It’s understanding how the business runs from an investor level as opposed to worrying about conversion optimization, EPC and all this other stuff.

That's not ultimately where I want to be. I want to be investing in more businesses using my influence, using my knowledge and strategies to help them grow without having to get into the weeds.

What do you hope the outcome is? Do you want to sell or milk them for cashflow forever? What do you want to do with them?

The two that I'm working on are fix and sell. I don't want to necessarily be in them for the long-term, but they both got the potential for an exit. Maybe a small exit, maybe a big one. It's hard to say at the moment.

That's my strategy as well and it's one of the reasons I don't like hiring people. It can be a liability when you're trying to sell the company, but if you have a booklet of tasks that have to be executed, that's easy to pass off.

One of my mentors, I don't want to say he was a misanthrope or hated people, but he hated employees and he was always very much like, “Everybody says hire A-players.”

He goes, “No, have A-plus systems that you can plug in C-players and you can replace them with needed if your systems are good enough.” That's true to a degree.

Here's what I'll say about that. It's 100% true that if you want to de-risk your ability to hit doubles, and by double I mean a $4 million exit every couple of years, you should do exactly what you said. It’s A-plus systems that you can plug anybody into.

If you want to create the next Facebook where there has to be some innovative breakthrough, you have to design, create something brand new, you have to go the other route, which is A-players. Your chances of success are significantly lower.

It also depends if you're trying to be innovative, you need innovative minds behind that. If you're trying to buy a cash cow, it's just, “Let's get this in, plug the pieces together and sell somebody a business in a box.” It’s a different story.

Those are some of the things that I'm working on. That's one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you because there are few people out there who do think very much like a deal maker. How can I take a little bit outside of the box and put together lucrative deals using nonlinear strategies?

You're definitely doing a lot of that. I was impressed. When you started The Top podcast, did you have this in mind?

No, I will never be the coach that looked back and said, “Look how smart I am. I planned this from the beginning.” What I do believe is, and I've always believed and you can go watch videos of me from several years ago, momentum is king.

I know if the ball gets going. I will make good things happen. I didn't know this stuff would be happening, but I knew if I got going and committed to it no matter what, the good stuff would happen.

It's exactly what I did too. It's got the ball moving and figure it out as you go because it's way too hard to plan it. I've never been able to come up with like a five-year plan.

What’s your five-year plan? I literally don't know. I'd be thrilled if my life and business is totally different in a year as long as it’s better.

It's one of the issues I have with these books that come out, The One Minute Manager. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, The ONE Thing, I’m big fans of both of them. It’s a well-done book, but it is the stupidest thing you could possibly do to focus on one thing.

No successful person has ever focused on one thing. Look at Bezos. He's got his hands in so many pots now. Starting first and the second he had the ability to do it, he launched other balls in the air. That's one of the things I tell people all the time is you shouldn't worry about starting a bunch of stuff.

You should worry about finishing. No when to end them. Ask yourself at the beginning, “If this goes 100% according to plan, what's the most money I can make?” If that money doesn't start coming in and the time period you give yourself, shut it down and launch a different ball in the air.

My contention with people who say never ever give up, that’s terrible advice. You have to know because those are people who don't understand opportunity cost.

It's people that have a big ego that doesn't want the public to see them as a failure, that's why they say never give up.

Never give up on trying to improve your life and go after what you want, but business ideas, etc. One of the businesses that we talked about when I was on your show, the coffee business, that was with my wife.

You have to be a little bit of an artist or be creative if you want to raise capital. Click To Tweet

Because of opportunity costs and of some unforeseen things, it's still there, but I had to put it on the back shelf because of that exact reason. The economics weren't working out. Opportunity costs were too high. I realized that this is going to be a single, it's never going to be a double, triple home run.

You should shut this stuff down fast with no apology and as quick as you possibly can.

I was in a mastermind when this happened. When I made that decision, everybody raised their drinks and toasted. It was a drinking mastermind. It’s cool when you know that sometimes quitting is the exact right thing to do.

You have to swing the bat to hit a home run, swing.

Who do you turn to for advice? Who are some of your most trusted advisors, mentors? Maybe we don't know them. If we don't know their names, in general, who are they?

You have to be very careful with advice because even a billionaire giving you advice is coming from a very different perspective. That billionaire probably doesn't remember the actual steps they took when they made their first dollar to teach you.

Even if they did, it might not be relevant now. What I do is I go hunting for systems and patterns. I don't like to get that in the medium of people talking to me over coffee.

What I like to do is go read biographies and read a biography about Warren Buffet on commerce one day and the next day on Walt Disney about creativity. I’ll pull the pattern from both commerce and creativity and build that pattern into your business.

You’ll get to the source material. I try to do that as well and you get a lot of insights over that. A lot of the context can be lost in these conversations of people giving you advice on, “This is what I would do,” and they don't even know the full picture.

A lot of people ask somebody else for advice to make the other person feel good. That's why they do it. You want to impress them and make them feel like you respect them. You say, “What advice do you have?” Maybe you care about their advice, maybe you don't.

The worst thing you can do is take the exact advice they give you and execute it just to impress them until you did it, when you know it's not right for your business.

You mentioned Walt Disney and the very first episode of my show I ever did was a strategy that Walt used, and I use it as if I am giving advice. It's a strategy that he used, grabbed his career in taking a dream and turn it into reality.

He realized there are always three voices in your head that show up to plan it. It's like the dreamer, the person who's just imagining what's possible. There's the planner, the doer. You're storyboarding it out. There's the critic and the critic is not there to spoil the partying and all the fun.

He's there to make sure that you're covering all the bases, that you didn't leave something out. He had three different offices in their headquarters. One room we're going to imagine what's possible. The next one we're going to storyboard it and we’re going to figure out what's wrong.

When somebody asks me for advice, I don't give them this whole diatribe, but I'll ask them, “Do you want me to help you imagine what it could be? Do you want me to find holes in it and the things you're missing?”

By telling them that, they never hear that, I'm like, “What hat do you want me to put on? Plan how to do it.” I think it's well-received because they're like, “I never thought about that aspect of work.” It's helped me, especially if I'm working with a business partner, employees or team members.

I was like, “I've got my dreamer hat on. Don't even criticize this. I wanted to see if this is a worthwhile dream to pursue.” For my readers, if you want to read about that, it's the very first episode of the show.

I'll add too, the best book ever written in my opinion on Disney and nobody knows about it. It's called Storming the Magic Kingdom. It’s a very old book. It was published decades ago.

The reason it's valuable, this is the story of back in 1982 when investors, the Toll brothers, the brothers in Texas added up all the value of the real estate owned by the Walt Disney Company and believed that the stock price was undervaluing just the real estate.

They did a raid on the business, tried to buy up shares of the company and go after board seats. They ended up getting greenmail, which that’s a whole different thing. In the book, it's a beautiful clash of commerce from the private equity people and creativity from Disney.

You learn how we thought in this book. It's a very good book and you should follow it up with Walt Disney’s biography after you read this book.

I used to work for Disney in Orlando for a couple of years. I got out of college and I was preventing a midlife crisis. I went to work at Epcot for $5.95 an hour. It was cool that I got to be on stage getting demos of virtual reality back then with silicon graphics, supercomputers.

This was 1996 so I got to be on stage and talk to people and then I got a job. I was a finance major, so I was like, “I'm going to get out of the parks. I'm going to do to get a job in the accounting and finance department.”

It was terrible because it was no creativity or fun. I got out of that business, but it was cool because you'd get an inside track on all the history of Disney and how crazy cool. I'm definitely going to pick up that book.

Speaking of other books, what are some of the books that made the biggest impact for you either overall or the ones you're super excited about? I know you read Principles by Dalio.

I got a very nice note. I signed a big book deal with Random House and he sent me a signed copy but I'd already bought the copy on the release date. Principles are good so far, but I'll give you some books that you'll never hear of, that are under the radar.

There’s one called Unconventional Success by David Swensen. The reason I studied David Swensen, he runs Yale's endowment and it is the number one performing endowment. He grew it from $1 billion to $20 billion. He's killing it.

He follows a very simple portfolio model, which you can adapt as a smart business person for your own personal finances. I won't give away what that is, but Unconventional Success was also written a long time ago, but a very good book.

There's another one that you might like, I read it. I'm trying to think the name. It’s the story of Wayne Huizenga. I don't know if you know much about Wayne.

Wayne, amongst other things, he was the Founder of Waste Management. He was the Founder of Blockbuster. He was the founder of multiple companies, but he is a dealmaker extraordinaire, amazing with roll-ups, etc. I think he owns some sports teams.

A friend of mine used to work with him pretty closely and he's like, “The deals that this guy would structure and put together.” He came from a blue-collar background. The way he approached this thing, it was amazing. Huizenga was a great book of business adventures.

The Making of a Blockbuster, I’m a big fan of it. GetLatka.com, that's the big database you're building. Explain a little bit about what that is and how you plan on capitalizing on that.

The database I'm building, the reason I'm building it is I got to the point where I did so many interviews, I couldn't keep track of everyone's revenue, customer count, margins, equity and valuation in my head. I put the database together.

Now it turns out thousands of people are now finding it and it's growing, almost doubling every few weeks in terms of people actively using it because when you go there, you can click on any company.

Your audience has heard of these companies. You go there, you'll see a logo of a company, you’ll click it and the revenue they're doing will shock you. What you can do is you can click the revenue data point or any data point.

It will take you to the point in the audio file where I was on the phone with the CEO where the CEO gave that data point. You can get the context around the data points, which is critical too.

Is this a free database or pay?

It's free. The way I make money on it is I watch who signs up. When I see @GoldmanSachs, @KleinerPerkins and @Facebook sign up, I go reach out to those people and that's how I do more M&A deals, which are $10 million to $100 million deals.

It reminds me years ago when I first got into the world of internet marketing and I was in the relationship/dating advice niche. I didn't know what else I was doing. I was like, “Let's try something here.”

I was a nobody, I had a little product. This was before Facebook was big, it was like 2008 or 2009. I created this little syndicate, like a Google group where people had to sign up, but it was all business owners and marketers in this area.

I managed the JV calendar and I managed the form, but in order to sign up, they had to come and enter their name, information, phone number, the email address where they found out. They came to me and then I called them up and made sure I had a little introductory interview to tell them who I was.

It allowed me to build rapport and let them know that, “I may not be the biggest kid on the playground, but I'm having a party in my house tonight.” It allowed me to now tap back into them anytime I wanted them to mail my offer or do something like that.

There was instant reciprocity built-in, but I paid attention. Everybody who wanted in, that's an opportunity for me to contact you, access influence. It's the exact same story. What’s the most exciting thing you're working on? The book sounds amazing. What's the book going to be about?

I'm working on a very large deal, which has the potential to break that beautiful B number in terms of dollars. Being my age, when you look at my age relative to the things I'm doing, I don't think there's ever been anybody my age doing these deals.

Always build an opportunity for getting contacted by investors. Click To Tweet

I turned 28. These are exciting. That’s good. In terms of the book, I failed English in high school and college. Random House is no baby. These are the biggest publishers on the block, multibillion-dollar company. They gave me a contract, which frankly I've asked around and I know a lot of the best authors in the world.

I was 27 when I got the deal. I think it was the largest advanced plus realty contract ever for someone my age. The reason that got it was because they kept putting their authors on my podcast.

They’re buying me as a sales channel, which I took as a very big compliment. A lot of people can't do that. It's a compliment. Now I got to figure out how to write a book.

Have you started writing it yet or no?

I have. It’s going to be a good book. What we're going to do, it's going to be called something like The New Rich. I'm going to give a bunch of tactics, maybe 100 tactics because there's this group, I don't know if you know them.

It's like your audience, they go to their neighborhood block party and there's this person, guy or girl, who they go, “That guy/girl is so stupid, but I know they're so rich because the house they live in. How do stupid people get so rich?”

They have a coworker they work with who said, “I'm quitting.” You're like, “There's no way that coworker is going to make it.” Before you know it, they're making $20,000 a month and you're thinking, “How are they doing so well?”

They're part of the new rich. The new rich are using the new economy to create money, cash and freedom like never before. I've decoded that and that's what the book's going to be about.

We’re part of that. I can't tell you how many times my friends and asked me like, “What do you even do? How do you make money? I don't get it.” It’s so far out of reality and I love opening people's minds to that.

What’s a nut you're trying to crack in your business? It doesn't sound like you made trouble raising money, but maybe it's finding the right people or even a new skillset, getting introductions. Are there any nuts you're trying to crack that myself or my audience could learn from?

My number one thing that I'm trying to do for The Top Inbox, find additional people writing about productivity tools or business tools and build a relationship with them.

Get them to try the product for free, use the product, fall in love with it, then share it with their users, email lists, etc. That's my number one goal.

It's more exposure to your The Top Inbox. Did you see how I asked you in a much more specific way? How can I support you, Nathan?

It was good and thankfully this is a little unfair because you have an advantage. I already had thought of something, but it is a better question.

I try to do that at the end of every episode because there is no easy way. Sometimes you want to leave it open. It’s visual, what's a nut you're trying to crack?

I follow that up so that you don't have to do all the thinking where I said, “Is it money you're trying to raise? Is it a person you're trying to hire? Is it somebody you're trying to partner with? Sometimes that's a hook. You're like, “Yeah, I didn't even think about it.”

I take a lot of contention with how can I support you? If anybody's out there who are reading, I have a couple of people I may be able to introduce you to here who do write a lot about that. They talk about productivity tools or whatnot. Hook Nathan up.

What is the best way that they can get in contact with you? Obviously, they can listen to your show, The Top at NathanLatka.com.

If you're a SaaS or software CEO reading, I'm happy to have you on my show. If you're thinking about launching your own company or you're just an entrepreneur, I’m happy to have you on my show.

You can also shoot me a tweet or a text at (703) 431-2709, but don't embarrass yourself when you tweet me. Make sure it's damn good.

Nathan, thanks for stopping by the show. This has been a lot of fun and I'm excited that we've gotten to connect several times. It's going to be cool to watch your journey and happy to share with you any of the cool things that I come across. It may help you out, but thanks for being a part of the show.

Thank you, Brad.

To our audience, if you want to get ahold of me, if you've got any questions, if you want a second opinion about something you're working on trying to do, maybe it's not working out so well. Shoot me an email at AskBrad@BaconWrappedBusiness.com and let me know.

If you've got any great book advice. I asked Nathan if you've got a great piece of advice on a book I should read, email me. Share this on social media. Tag Nathan, tag me and let us know that you liked it.

Until next time, stay tuned because I got some cool episodes coming up and you don't want to miss them. Nathan, we'll talk soon.

Important Links:

• Nathan Latka
• The Top
• Los Silva – past episode
• Roland Frasier – past episode
• Nathan Latka – Facebook
• TheTopInbox.com
• The One Minute Manager
• The ONE Thing
• first episode – past episode
• Storming the Magic Kingdom
• Principles
• Unconventional Success
• The Making of a Blockbuster
• GetLatka.com

About the Guest: Nathan Latka

Nathan Latka is the host of “The Top Podcast with Nathan Latka” where he interviews SAAS founders and gets them to reveal some of their most valuable financial metrics and posts them on GetLatka.com

Nathan is a highly successful entrepreneur himself but now identifies as more of an investment banker of sorts by using his platform to both acquire and get equity in deals.

He's 28 years old and working on billion-dollar deals and he's a perfect example of using “Access and Influence” to achieve his goals.

He's also one of the harshest podcasters for people who he feels won't be transparent.

Nathan is very transparent in this episode and I think you'll love where it goes. (I won't spoil the surprise)

 

• Here’s How »

• Bacon Wrapped Business on Facebook
• Brad Costanzo on Facebook
• Brad Costanzo on LinkedIn
• Brad Costanzo on YouTube
• Brad Costanzo on Twitter