#20 Nate Noorlander: Building an online business from years in the classroom

In this episode, Nate Noorlander, co-founder of The Nomadic Professor, shares his journey from teaching in Beijing to building an innovative edtech platform. Discover how he navigated the challenges of marketing an online business, the importance of delegating tasks, and the value of having a co-founder. Nate's story is a testament to the power of passion and perseverance in building a business that aligns with your personal values and interests.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The importance of delegation
• 1:26 How the Nomadic Professor started
• 3:35 Wearing every hat: The reality of building an online teaching business
• 7:41 Hiring contractors & outsourcing what you’re not good at
• 10:17 Why zigzag career paths make better entrepreneurs
• 13:55 Leaving Beijing & starting a business during COVID
• 20:06 Co-founder lessons: Trust, complementary strengths, and shared vision
• 25:09 Marketing that works vs. marketing that wastes money
• 29:59 What Nate would do differently (and why ignorance helps entrepreneurs)
• 31:37 Final thoughts: Why doing what you love makes the struggle worth it

Transcript

I would recommend get someone who knows how to do it. We just had to do it ourselves, but when you can, delegating it makes it more efficient, more productive, and you're just happier doing what you like instead of what you have to do.

You need someone, you need that role to be filled by someone who's an expert at filling it or who is willing to become an expert at filling it. Because it's just not a hat I want to wear.

Tiffany (00:26)

Welcome to Main Street Makers, a bi-weekly podcast that features real, local small business owners who have transformed their passions into profitable businesses. Learn from fellow small business owners on how they overcome challenges, find opportunities, and create thriving operations that make our neighborhoods more vibrant, connected places to live.

I'm Tiffany and this podcast is brought to you by Nav, the business credit platform that believes every small business owner deserves the chance to succeed. Now let's get to this week's show.

Tiffany (00:56)

Hi and welcome to Main Street Makers. We are delighted to have Nate Noorlander here with us today because he has a really interesting business and we're so glad that he decided to join us.

Nate Noorlander (01:09)

Yeah, well, thanks for inviting me. I hope it bears up to that introduction.

Tiffany (01:17)

I think it will. I think it's so interesting. You co-founded this business — it's called the Nomadic Professor. Can you tell us about the business?

Nate Noorlander (01:25)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so the company named The Nomadic Professor was started in 2016 as a YouTube channel by my business partner. So he started that as an entrepreneurial professor selling his courses around the country and traveling and filming videos on location throughout the US and throughout the world. He's been Nomadic for a long time.

So he started that YouTube channel in 2016 and we batted around the idea of working together. I was still teaching full-time in the classroom and I taught through about 2020. So while he was running that, we were sort of running our independent careers and talking about working together. But when 2020 came, it just felt like the right time. I...

Quit teaching full-time and we started the joint venture which is Technically nomadic courses, but we just call the business the nomadic professor continuing on from his YouTube channel, which is still there. He's post to and runs that's where I came from that's the name the concept is sort of all location history brought to the student And we've sort of wrapped that

foundational approach into a whole curriculum. So we've got American history courses, world history courses, and other electives and whatnot. We're still building out our catalog, but that was sort of the starting point was let's travel the world and bring the ⁓ setting to the classroom and that we've wrapped curriculum around that.

Tiffany (03:10)

it's so cool. So do you do the traveling? ⁓ Or was that mostly your co founder?

Nate Noorlander (03:17)

We have done a little traveling together, but that's more incidental. We sort of kicked off our joint venture in 2020 with a trip to Asia and Europe together for a couple of weeks. But the title is his. I lived overseas for four or five years, but.

That's not really my contribution to this business. ⁓ He's the nomadic professor. My contributions come elsewhere.

Tiffany (03:48)

What is ⁓ your role look like?

Nate Noorlander (03:50)

⁓ Well, what I choose to do, what I like to do, ⁓ what I am interested in doing is developing courses. I like the research and writing of preparing coursework. ⁓ In the classroom, there's like, there's just no time to be really good at everything. So the stuff that I really like is developing really good content, really.

engaging lessons, ⁓ really well prepared material and courses in history and literature and philosophy. And there's just, it's just so hard to have any time to do that in when you're a full-time teacher and you're meeting with parents and you're responding to emails and you have one prep between three other classes and you got administrators who were trying to ⁓ hold meetings and

view your lessons and it's just so much. I feel like I was okay in that setting, but my preference is to just research and write and do stuff that takes time. So my preferred role, the thing I am working to spend all of my time doing is preparing courses. However, we started in 2020 ⁓ and ⁓ there were just two of us at the start. ⁓

There are four of us now with some contractors, but with just two of us, I mean, we're doing everything and still are wearing many hats as I know is the way it goes for entrepreneurs. So my role now, I'm the co-content creator. I write some, ⁓ but my primary contribution is the high school expert to his college content. So.

I will scaffold is like the pedagogical term. I'll offer structure ⁓ support for students trying to understand abstract concepts or incorporate lots of information. So I'll teach them how to take notes, provide guidance, provide video modeling, teach them how to write research papers and all the structure that has to be built into processes like that.

So my partner, Dr. Jackson, is the content expert and I'm sort of the scaffolding expert that kind of brings it down to the level a high school student can really engage with expertly written content that would typically be harder for them to access because if it's just in a 10,000 page textbook, it's a little, not only is it dry, but

It's just hard to retain information and understand someone's complex or academic writing style. So that's my primary sort of course role. And then there are a lot of other roles. I've had to be the marketer and the one who seeks out partnerships and the one who figures out email sequences and ⁓ various web questions. brought

someone on early to do some of the technical stuff because I it's beyond me but so I wear a lot of different hats the one I I am working to be full-time with is just the the content creator

Tiffany (07:14)

Yeah, that's so common. I think every small business owner we've talked to so far has been like, yep, I wear more hats than I want but...

Nate Noorlander (07:22)

Yeah, it's

little painful and tedious. And I know that this is common too, where you look back and you say, if I would have known in 2020 that I would become essentially a part-time marketer for five years before I actually do what I want. I don't know if I would have left. I had a good job in Beijing. the money feels like it goes a really long way when you're overseas. They pay for your housing. They give you

bonuses at the end of the school year to do this or that. So, I mean, we were comfortable and happy and ⁓ this has been a stretch to sort of make ends meet and build a business that is sustainable and not just, ⁓ you know, we're not just looking for a paycheck, we're looking for a lifestyle and ⁓ something sustainable. So it's been a long haul and a lot of these things I'm sort of running out of patience for like figuring out.

customer service and glitches on the website and ⁓ just little tedious things that I don't, you know, we're getting to a point where we don't have to deal with those ourselves, but it's definitely been a challenge.

Tiffany (08:30)

Bekkah and it's good that you've been successful in hiring contractors because a lot of people aren't even there yet. So how has that helped you because you have a marketing director now and you said you have another contractor.

Nate Noorlander (08:44)

Yeah, so our marketing director is full time now.

and we all bring very Interesting perspectives to this

⁓

So having him has helped has hugely relieved a lot of the stuff that I don't excel at and that I feel like takes me away from my strengths. But before we were using Upwork to find contractors who could help us.

set up. mean we've been through a few website revisions.

we have a website that works, ⁓ but it feels a little bit like Frankenstein. It's sort of ⁓ cobbled together with 150 plugins and maybe 20 of them we use and a bunch of them we don't know what they are. there's stuff there that we needed like we needed an expert or it just wasn't going to work. So Upwork has been great. We've hired several contractors. We have one now who's

⁓ semi-permanent, he's on retainer and he just does all of that stuff for us. We've hired a few American-based companies and contractors as well. It's just been a lot of sort of working through our personal networks to see where we can get help based on the context, but our primary support in that area has been Upwork and ⁓

Yeah, we've got a great guy in India now who helps us.

Tiffany (10:11)

that's great because, ⁓ yeah, it's hard for contractors to find work. So Upwork is one of those platforms that can work.

So I wanted to ask you a little bit about your background because you talked about it a little bit. And I had a professor in college. I was reading over your bio. I had a professor in college who said that she appreciates a zigzagging background. I don't know if you feel like your background was zigzagging, but I feel like mine was. So I consider it.

Nate Noorlander (10:39)

Mm-hmm.

Tiffany (10:41)

a compliment. So it's like a background that maybe appears a little bit random on a resume but teaches you through experience more than maybe a straightforward one would. Yeah, I don't know if you want to talk about that.

Nate Noorlander (10:57)

Yeah, I probably wouldn't have said zigzagging, you know, five years ago. ⁓ I mean, my original goal was to just go to college and get a PhD and just research and write. I got scared away from that as I was finishing my undergraduate degree. So I didn't do that. I worked for a disaster repair company when I was trying to find a high school teaching job.

I did that ⁓ a few times, so I got a lot of experience doing ⁓ contractor type work, which has been just remarkably beneficial ⁓ because it's how I've sustained this myself through this online business building phase. So I sort of, it felt sort of like a straight line to high school teaching with some odd jobs to help. And then I taught for eight years.

⁓ in the US and China and I'm not a big risk taker. So it took a business partner who's pretty unconventional in his career. ⁓ I wasn't gonna start this by myself. So I sort of zigzagged into it by accident, I guess. ⁓

but it felt more like a straight line until I got off that line. And now it's like, I just got to do what I have to do until something works. So I'm doing contracting. ⁓ I've been doing that for a few years now, just using my hands to build stuff has been a huge asset because I haven't been in the classroom for so long. And so both of these businesses together, the contracting and the online. ⁓

education, the nomadic professor has been how we've ⁓ operated the last five years. And now the balance is starting to switch where I don't have to rely so much on contracting because we've done a lot of groundwork to make the online portion start to take over.

Tiffany (13:10)

Yeah, that's a fantastic feeling when that finally is like, okay, because I think, you know, it's easy. It's easy in the moment to feel like none of it sort of lines up. But then you look back, you're like, okay, because I actually feel like all of your experience sort of led you to the nomadic professor. Like, it just feels like a good ⁓ connection of all of your past experience. But maybe that's just an outside perspective.

Nate Noorlander (13:35)

No, I'm sure there's a way I could pull a of ⁓ fated life story narrative out of it. ⁓ It definitely plays to some of the, what I hope are skills I've developed. ⁓ I mean, I now love having total control over my schedule. I love being the author of the courses I put out. I love not having a boss.

⁓ I think I struggled a lot in all the companies with This is not unique. So is it but I just struggled with administrators principles co-teachers, it just always felt like ⁓ Man I feel like if you just left me alone I could be really good at this and so it's it's sort of really nice to just be left alone and And be doing something that's working

Yeah, I don't know if there's a ⁓ real clear narrative through that, but I'm happy to have ended up here in a place where I feel like I'm sort of utilizing and leveraging certain skills I've developed and sort of unconventional in a way that feels refreshing and affords us so much flexibility and opportunity that was ⁓ not there with a...

know, 10 months out of the year, 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. classroom teaching job.

Tiffany (15:06)

Yeah, that's a long day. Very long day. ⁓ So switching gears a little bit, you were in Beijing when COVID hit, which is a unique situation to be in. What was that like?

Nate Noorlander (15:08)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

so I was coaching the boys basketball team at our international school and we were preparing, you know, we, we traveled to different cities for different tournaments and we were preparing for a big tournament and Ulaanbaatar Mongolia. And I was really excited, ⁓ you know, it's always fun to travel somewhere cool when someone else is paying for it. and we.

we got the first whispers of like, this was December 2019 of like, there's something breaking out in Wuhan. It's possible that our tournament will be pushed back. ⁓ And so obviously this is before any of the scope was clear in at least publicly in China or around the world. And I had family coming to visit and I started to text people like, hey, there's something going on and.

the center of China, ⁓ you may want to hold off on reserving your flight because they already had visas. ⁓ I'll let you know what's going on. So anyway, looking back at it at our ⁓ sort of ignorance at the scale of what was coming is interesting. ⁓ So, you know, ultimately the tournament was canceled. There was no travel.

Starting in January, the city was a ghost town. It was just locked down. ⁓ It was very hard to get flights out. I was there with my wife and two kids. My kids were going to my school. I was teaching at the upper school and they were in the elementary school. ⁓ you know, they had to book, I think the first three flights were ghost flights. didn't really exist, but the websites hadn't caught up to.

The cancellations that were taking place so you reserve a flight you find out 24 hours later that flight doesn't exist you got to wait for the money to be ⁓ Put back on your credit card or whatever and that happened three times before we got a flight that was like exorbitantly expensive, but they just wanted to leave they didn't want to be stuck in ⁓ a Ghost town for the foreseeable future ⁓

They wanted to get out while flights were still running. So my wife and kids left. maybe January or February of 2020. And we still didn't know if school was going to start up again. So I didn't really have the freedom to just pick up and go and didn't know if I was going to be called back, you know, on short notice. So I just stayed and I walked on my treadmill.

took walks around the city. It's like very, very quiet, empty and eerie. I mean, maybe eerie is the wrong word. It sort of feels eerie looking back to a city of 20 million people to just be so dead. And it's already kind of a gray city. on days, you notice when the weather's good because it's so frequently.

polluted. It's just gray. It's just dirty and oppressive. But then it's blue and it's like this is the best city in the world. So you already notice ⁓ when when the air is good. So when it's empty and gray and quiet and you're you're super restricted on what you can and can't do. It was an odd couple of months. I stayed there.

I think I was teaching online during that period. Eventually when I came home, I was teaching at like two in the morning because we had to finish the semester, but the time zones were so different. ⁓ I watched Game of Thrones. ⁓ I mean, it was just a weird, slow period. ⁓ So I stayed until ⁓ March, I think, late March.

And it just, was clear that everyone was stuck where they were. the school closure happened in the middle of a vacation. Maybe it was Chinese New Year. I can't remember. Maybe it was Christmas holiday, but people were stuck in different countries, like on vacation in Indonesia or at home in Australia. And it's like that no one could get back. so the whole school just went online.

And when it became clear that this was indefinite, I ⁓ left and just finished the semester out online teaching early in the morning US time, my students in China. And we finished the semester probably June or something. And then I just never went back, stayed here and founded the company. that's what I've been doing ever since.

Tiffany (20:21)

Wow, I feel like we're still in the sort of the wake of COVID. So in like 20 years, that's going to be such a crazy story now. But in 20 years, it's gonna be even crazier. It's gonna be like your party story. Yeah.

Nate Noorlander (20:35)

Yeah, it already feels a bit like a party trick. Like, hey, I was in China, that land of millions

of square miles, as if I was like at the epicenter, which I clearly wasn't. it sort of is really interesting to look back and just recognize the whispers. hey, there's something going on. There's an outbreak of something. You might have to postpone your trip for a month.

Tiffany (20:46)

Right.

Nate Noorlander (21:03)

And just to recognize how ⁓ little we knew about the scale of what was coming and to think it was something that would blow over and we might still be able to go to Mongolia and have our tournament. ⁓ It is really interesting to see from this perspective. This was like a world changing ⁓ event that ⁓ clearly, as all events do, unfolded a day at a time.

Tiffany (21:17)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly. Do you think you would have gone in and co-founded the business if it hadn't been for COVID?

Nate Noorlander (21:38)

Yeah, I mean it was a total coincidence. Dr. Jackson ⁓ and I, his name's Billy, We had been talking on and off since 2016 and our now marketing director, his name is Jacob Harlan, Billy and I were talking in maybe November, December and I was already feeling

a bit, I don't know what the right word is, oppressed, resentful about some of the Chinese bureaucracy. The internet was, I mean, we were an international school, so we're supposed to have unfettered access. had a school-wide VPN, but it started, I don't remember a lot of specifics about what the particular irritants were.

But it started to feel like we were teaching at a Chinese school in terms of, I mean, I'm teaching history, so there's a lot I have to be able to say without censorship. And I sent a document to, know, Billy and my brothers, like, check out this document we got about what we have to say about the USSR if we cover it, or the chapters we can't cover about China if we, if we, because we're teaching the IB curriculum, International Baccalaureate, which is...

there are a lot of different courses and subjects to teach when you're teaching history

there are a lot of courses to choose from. And if you choose a course that covers Tiananmen Square or the Cold War, like you have to prepare the students for an exam that you don't create. And so it felt a little handicapping. I didn't end up in a context where like a student couldn't pass an exam because we couldn't cover material or something. I just, in principle, I guess, I was feeling more and more...

resentful about having to be complicit or concede to these constraints. we had already decided as of late 2019, I'm not going to sign another contract. I'm going to finish out this school year and we're going to just see what happens, see if we can start a business together.

So it was a coincidence that COVID hit that year because I had already decided to come home

And the air, the air was the other thing. the air is measured from clean to dirty. And a clean American city, might be like 2.5 or...

22 or like on a bad day. Hey the air is at 70 don't go outside today. We had days there were like 850 it's just like you're breathing in a coal mine so that was another I mean just there were there were several factors like that that convinced us now's the The time to find another job In another city so it just was a coincidence that kovat hit and We came home

Tiffany (24:21)

my gosh.

Okay, that's really interesting. So you talked a lot about your co-founder. What are, just in general, what are some of the struggles that you found of, or challenges, doesn't have to be a struggle, of having a co-founder and how does it make it easier?

Nate Noorlander (25:01)

⁓ well, the easier part is easier to speak to. ⁓ I mean, I wouldn't have done this. I'm not the engine of the company. I'm, I think I have developed, ⁓ into something useful, sort of managing day to day, ⁓ helping with all my contributions to the courses. ⁓ you know, every business needs someone with a sort of day to day person who is.

not just dreaming about the future. Not that Billy only dreams about the future, but he's a big vision guy. ⁓ So in terms of like what has made it easier, it would only be possible with a co-founder. I just didn't have the drive or the incentive or the temperament to try something new. It felt like international teaching was probably my future and I would eventually...

You know, find a school and get a raise and just live somewhere cool for 20 years until I retired. So that's been great. The ability to consult with somebody you trust ⁓ just about everything from should we publish this with this wording? You know, history has been fraught, especially the last five years. It's been very politicized. So we've

just had to establish a brand identity and being on the same page with your co-founder about what your values are, what you care about, what you don't, what you'll compromise for, what you won't. I mean, that's just been a huge relief. don't struggle to get on the same page about who we are as a company. ⁓

Tiffany (26:49)

How would you recommend if somebody was considering having a co-founder? What would you recommend looking for in that person?

Nate Noorlander (26:58)

I can explain how it worked for us and then if there's something in there that's useful. So ⁓ the secret trick here is that he's my brother-in-law. I married his little sister. So we've known each other since 2008. Now, I mean, working with family adds another layer of potential problems to this.

It's just worked out well for us. mean, we didn't, we didn't start in 2016, like when we first started talking about it. I don't know. The relationship was tested some already, discovered our, our sort of pedagogical style was, aligned enough, but different enough that we could have a constructive relationship where it's, we're not just yes men to each other, but we're also.

⁓ We're not so different that we struggle to get anything published because we just hate what the other person says. So that's been extremely useful to have a productive relationship where We can discuss our differences, but we align on a lot of the fundamentals. So that's been hugely valuable.

I mean, you can't really just find someone you trust. But the fact that he trusts me to do the finances and I trust him not to publish, you know, make stupid claims about this or that historical event. I mean, we trust each other in our separate spheres. And so I don't have to like track or monitor all of his daily comings and goings and the work he does, because we sort of know that within our

realm where professionals and so it relieves a lot of the daily tedium of overseeing the business ⁓ and like managing and supervising. So that level of trust and confidence has I think has streamlined what we've been able to produce because we just we don't have to waste time with

office politics or something where it's like you get caught up in the relationship and resolving the relationship before and it slows down your production or your efficiency or your organization and whatnot. So that's been great. I think we have a good working relationship and a similar enough professional outlook that we haven't had conflict there.

Tiffany (29:25)

Karly, sounds like you complement each other as well. We talked to a husband and wife team who said that they work really well because they are able to stay in their lanes, which sounds really similar, and they don't really know enough about the other side to even really comment.

Nate Noorlander (29:42)

Yeah,

I mean we know enough about the other each other's work that we can edit each other we can we can sort of have an internal peer review process and that's valuable. Just being competent, careful people is enough to have as the person who kind of edits your work. I'm not an expert in all of his subject areas.

He hasn't had as much time in a high school classroom as I have. But we sort of have enough experience in each other's worlds that we're able to contribute a lot to what the other person does. But also just be like, dude, this is your job. I trust you to take care of it.

Tiffany (30:27)

Yeah, trust seems like the key and it makes sense in any relationship. So I wanted to ask real quick, you run an online business. So what are the challenges and strategies that you found for finding new customers?

Nate Noorlander (30:45)

Oh, it's such a pain. I hate it. We've tried a lot of marketing strategies. I mean, early on 2021, we had one quarter of our first course ready to I mean, it was that was published our American history series is a four part course. It's four semesters long. If someone does the whole thing, we only had the first part ready. And we just didn't. I mean, we didn't know how to do online ads. We didn't

We didn't have the manpower to build the catalog and figure out how to be business people. So, I mean, we just looked around and it seemed like everybody, all of our competitors were going to conventions. So we started going to conventions and we paid a lot to do that because you have to travel. It's very in-person and requires all these big extravagant setups and you got to catch people's eye and

You think you're reaching your audience just by showing up in the city with your banner and your table. But once you're there, there's internal competition because now you're next to four other history booths and they all have their own niche they're targeting and they all seem like they've been doing this for a few years and you haven't. How do you separate yourself? So that was a pain. We went to conventions for... ⁓

Four years, I mean, we've just stopped essentially going this year because we decided to experiment and see if digital ads would have the same return or better and we could spend less or just transfer that money and be more productive because we don't have to travel to all these cities. And the return on digital spending has been so much greater than the return on in-person spending.

I don't know it feels like an experiment that's paid off. So we still once a year will go to Alaska because they have a big charter school, homeschool audience that gets money from the state program. when you've got the state funds, you're just so much more free to spend. ⁓ So we go up there once a year and we have a decent audience there. We've developed a course just for that audience.

the history of Alaska that's a requirement for high schoolers. So anyway conventions were one route and we've sort of discovered this year that we probably won't put a lot of time into those going forward so we've pivoted to ⁓ well we've paid for email campaigns we've paid for blog reviews ⁓ we've paid we paid this company to like promote us

sort of covertly on all these social media spaces and that there's just a lot of experiments that haven't really paid off. So the thing that's paying off right now is just very conventional social media ads and Instagram, Facebook stuff ⁓ and there are a lot of states now who have ESA programs meaning

Like money is coming from the state to follow the student wherever they spend it instead of just going to the homes or to the the public school so a student might get 2 000 or 5 000 dollars to spend in a year And it's like this backpack funding it and we so marketing to those groups has been a new ⁓ effort to We've been got approval lots of different states And ⁓ so that's another

channel, but we really just reach them through the same route. It's just digital media ads where we target certain regions and demographics based on our track record with that ad and that demographic. So we've tried a lot of things and wasted a lot of time and money and we really just came back to, let's just spend some money on digital ads and it's worked.

Tiffany (34:39)

That's awesome. For somebody who's brand new to digital ads, like say they have a new business or they've just never tried them before, how would you recommend getting started? Because that's just, it feels like another world, you know?

Nate Noorlander (34:51)

It's

a full-time job. I would recommend get someone who knows how to do it. Because I don't know how to do it and I don't want to learn how to do it because it's too time consuming. And I don't find any joy in it. So it just feels like I'm doing chores and jumping through hoops. So that's the only thing that's worked is now we have someone who can pay attention to it and who ⁓ gets fulfillment out of watching the progress happen.

And so that's wonderful. You need someone, you need that role to be filled by someone who's an expert at filling it or who is willing to become an expert at filling it. Because it's just not a hat I want to wear.

Tiffany (35:32)

Yeah, that's great advice. Delegate the things that you hate pretty much.

Nate Noorlander (35:36)

Yeah, I mean for a long time we

just had to do it ourselves, but when you can, delegating it makes it more efficient, more productive, and you're just happier doing what you like instead of what you have to do.

Tiffany (35:51)

Yes, yeah, definitely. Okay, cool. So real last question, sort of a final words of wisdom. If you could do it all over again, is there anything you would do differently?

Nate Noorlander (36:03)

I think the takeaway when I look back is that, and I've heard this from other people too, so this is not original, ⁓ but it's true in my case, ignorance about the slog is the only thing that paved the way for undertaking it. In 2020, if I would have recognized, this will be five years of like,

very little budget, very little free time, doing things you don't like to do. ⁓

Things you're not good at I don't know I I may have undertaken it. I don't know I just I think it's doubtful that I would have been had I not had unrealistic hopes for year one I don't think that I would have tried because it's just so much work and we're still not there I mean we're we've turned a corner in this last quarter or two, but You know, we have many corners to turn and there's so there's a lot of

work still to come, but now I'm in the thick of it and I'm enjoying sort of my day-to-day workflow that we've developed over the last few years. But I don't know what I would have done differently, but I'm glad I was ignorant of what it was gonna take.

Tiffany (37:18)

That's really funny. ⁓ rose colored glasses are helpful sometimes.

Nate Noorlander (37:25)

Yeah, we were super

confident that it would take us a year to be like, replace our salaries. Which is just laughable because not only did we not have a catalog, we had no customers or like business model. So it's still, it's still not a slog anymore, but it's still a lot of hard work. And, it's a relief to be reaching a point where my eyes are fully open, but things are also paying off.

Tiffany (37:38)

Right.

Yeah, definitely. But you would still say it was worth it.

Nate Noorlander (37:57)

Yeah, but only because I'm doing what I like to do. I mean, it wouldn't be worth it if I were trying to run like a hand sanitizer business where it was just I was just selling a product, you know, something that gets pitched on Shark Tank. I feel like I'm selling more than a product. we have really sound pedagogy and we're good at what we do and I enjoy building the content. So it's fulfilling.

Tiffany (38:01)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nate Noorlander (38:23)

And it's also exciting to have something fulfilling turn into, your career and what pays the bills.

Tiffany (38:32)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's kind of why we wanted this podcast is like to help people get past the slog because it's everybody, every single small business owner goes through it, whether they know it's coming or not. So.

Nate Noorlander (38:44)

Well,

I hope either they don't listen to this until they're done, because otherwise they'll be super discouraged that it's going to take really long, or they listen to it and don't believe it. Because if they believe it, they might not start. Yeah, I don't know, again, if I would have ⁓ had I been eyes open five years ago.

Tiffany (38:46)

Hahaha

Yeah.

Right, right.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. Yeah, it is a very common sentiment. So ⁓ yeah, we feel you. Well, thank you so much. This was really, really interesting. And we really appreciate all of the insights and your story was so fascinating and your co-founder story. So ⁓ yeah, we wish you all the best and we're glad that you're out of the slog, kind of.

Nate Noorlander (39:12)

Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah,

it's been great to chat. If we do this again in a year or two, we'll see if I've given up or not.

Tiffany (39:38)

No, no.

I think in a year or two, you're going to be way out of the slog. That's what I predict. Nice. Very good. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Nate Noorlander (39:44)

Yeah, I mean we hope so the trajectory is really good. So we've got our fingers crossed

Alright, thanks. We'll see ya.

Tiffany (39:55)

Thank you to our guests for sharing their story and thank you for listening today. Keep in mind that every small business is unique and there is no such thing as one size fits all advice, so take only what you find helpful. We look forward to next time.