Rai Cornell 0:02
Welcome to Season Two of the SOAR podcast, the place for creative entrepreneurs who want to build healthier, happier, more profitable, self employed businesses. I’m your host, Rai Hyde Cornell, business mentor at Chiron consulting and CEO and senior copywriter at Cornell content marketing. Get ready to soar.

All right, today I have with me Nate Palmer. Nate, thank you so much for being here. Tell our listeners, what it is you do and what your business is.

Nate Palmer 0:40
Hey, Rai. So thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to chat. I am a fitness and nutrition expert, self proclaimed. I’ve written a couple different books about it. I work in that field. But basically, I am just a regular guy who’s really interested in how do you really maximize how our glutes are working? Or how do we eat in a way that is performance enhancing rather than performance attracting? So that’s, I’m also a dad, husband, entrepreneur.

Rai Cornell 1:07
Awesome. Love it, all the things because we do wear all the hats when we run our own businesses, right? Yeah. So how did you get into this line of work? Like, have you always been interested in fitness and nutrition and body optimization? Or what was your journey to get into this?

Nate Palmer 1:23
Yeah, I feel like a lot of us. My journey started with a kind of a fear based response or like, feeling insecure. So I didn’t get into training and stuff as a result of being the best athlete or being like a great football player. And like that. I was never really athletic growing up. In fact, when my house got broken into when I was 12 years old, and someone came into my house, and broke a window, I grabbed a knife out of the steak, like the steak knife out of the knife block, and hid it under my bed. And I think that was really the catalyst for me to become like, get more into like physical culture and try to think about getting stronger, because my reaction was like, Well, I don’t ever want anyone to be able to have that power of me, no one ever can ever hurt me again. And the more muscle armor I have, the less people will ever be able to take my autonomy away. So that’s kind of where it started for me. But obviously, you can’t, you can’t really make a career off of like, you know, 11 year old trauma, I guess maybe you can but so I just kind of stayed in it for a long time, I trained really poorly for like throughout high school. And then when I was in college, I was just really drawn to learning more about this sort of thing. I wanted to know more about nutrition. I was so shocked. In like 100% of my classes in order to just stay up late at night reading articles and blog posts and like, you know, in 2007, 2008 and I graduated, I was like, Well, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Also not a lot of jobs for like new grads in 2008. Yeah, they were like, hey, entry level position, we’re gonna pay $12 an hour, must have 15 years of experience. And I was like,

Rai Cornell 2:56
Okay, fuck, how are you supposed to do that?

Nate Palmer 3:00
Yeah, so I was like, you know, I’ll do this, I’ll just become a personal trainer, you know, kind of like, it’s like sales, you know, like having my own business slightly, but within the confines of a gym, until I figured out what I want to be when I grow up, right. So I still haven’t really quite gotten there. But that’s how it started. I was working for a bigger gym. Okay, but what ended up happening was like, with the gym, you just didn’t have any support, really, no one was helping you build your business, it was all on you, no insurance or anything like that. So I had a kind of a medical scare, and I decided I need insurance. So I went back to the corporate world, because I wanted the steady paycheck, I wanted the insurance, I wanted like the security and that lasted for not very long because I thought myself well if I just stay here, this is how my life ends. This is where I like draw the line.

Rai Cornell 3:48
Yeah. So okay, I’m trying to decide where we’re gonna branch off of that because there’s so many things that you said that I want to talk about, in particular, since you just left off with that piece about the steadiness, the health insurance you know, all these things that tend to allure us into the traditional W2 nine to five job. That was your mentality then, what is your mentality now around those pieces?

Nate Palmer 4:19
Well, I think that some of my goals have changed for sure. But I’ve also realized that money solves a lot of these issues. Yeah. You don’t have insurance, you just need to make more money, like you want a little more security, you make more money and I think that like one of the cool things about it is that with like the internet and like the way the economy and the gig economy has gone, there’s just so much out there and so much money that anybody can make. So like I’ve got friends who are in just like the craziest like most niched down things like between, like calligraphy. One of my friends is an artist, she buys old art from like goodwill, will draw monsters on it and then sell it on Etsy. You know, like, there’s all these like little cool niches that you can get into and just create more income because at the end of the day, we don’t really necessarily have a security problem, we have an income problem, you know, and when you’re trying to take like here’s what your corporate overlords are gonna give you and then try to piece that up and still do stuff with it, then you end up budgeting and scrimping and saving and cutting coupons and stuff like that. When I think the real issue could be solved as just add a little bit more right here. And you don’t have to go back and clip coupons.

Rai Cornell 5:27
Exactly. And I love that you call them corporate overlords but you’re right. And that’s why in particular, I have a workshop called price yourself perfectly. And it’s this walkthrough of the spreadsheet, that’s okay, what do you actually need to make for your absolute bottom line, and then for you to be comfortable, and then for you to have the dream life that you want with a 401 K and a travel expense account and all of these things, and that health insurance, maybe dental insurance, optical insurance, whatever it is you want, the steadiness, the savings account, the cushion, that to me falls in that middle category. And if you adjust your pricing based on that, we’re not talking about going from charging $200 for a blog post to $2,000 for a blog post, it’s actually a pretty subtle changes within your business that can allow you to have that bigger cushion, and that stability and security that you provide yourself.

Nate Palmer 6:27
100% agree with that. Yeah.

Rai Cornell 6:28
And you’ve been able to do that through, seems like you have kind of like multiple revenue streams. I mean, you’re a personal trainer, you also do nutrition. I know you have a book out, multiple books, I see two books on your wall back there. Yes, yeah. So tell me about that. How have you kind of diversified the way that you are bringing in revenue and leads, which then supports the diverse revenue into your business.

Nate Palmer 6:53
So I’ve always heard that the average millionaire has seven revenue streams. And so that’s kind of been the goal is to just create these smaller revenue streams. Obviously, what I do right now is pretty much 100% online. And that’s where I spend the bulk of my efforts. That’s where the bulk of my finances come from. But I also want to be opening up like little recurring revenue streams. So I love the book for that. I love Amazon affiliate links for that, you know, like, I’m not making a ton of money off of it. But all that adds up and kind of creates a snowball effect. So I really liked the idea of like, add ons, right. And so I have not done that at like a very high level yet for my business. I think the one thing that I’m missing really is supplements that go along with this. But I feel like I was starting to think about, like, what’s my business? And what is the problem my business creates when I’m successful, right? Because like, my business is helping people transform their bodies, right? So what are people going to need after they’ve transformed. They’re gonna need new clothes, they’re going to need to keep buying supplements, they’re going to need to maybe do like a different meal prep service, they’re going to need like a couple of those other things. So I’m always trying to think about what are the problems that I’m creating in solving this problem, when like, How can I add those pieces onto like to create a more well rounded business, as well as making like recurring revenue streams. So you know, people need supplements right now like I basically have here the supplements that I use with a little amazon link on those. Anything like that, where I can add a little bit here or there kind of like create, like, Okay, you want to get my book, well, my book is on Amazon, you can get that for 15 bucks. But also, here’s my affiliate link to get there. So just like as many little things as I can possibly add on to get there. I don’t do really any personal training at the moment, that was kind of stopped out in 2018. As I decreased that, I increased the online presence.

Rai Cornell 8:43
And that really gives you that flexibility as well. I mean, when you are your own business owner, if you decide, okay, I don’t want to do one on one or in person training anymore, I’m going to shift my focus, it becomes much more easier than having to leave a company, get an entirely different job, or ask that company to grant your wish to let you transition into a different department. It just allows you so much more fluidity that supports the life that you want

Nate Palmer 9:09
100%. And like last year, well like 2019. I don’t remember what year it is

Rai Cornell 9:16
We’re in 2022

Nate Palmer 9:18
That’s hard. Math is hard. I’m a trainer, I count to eight, come on. Anything above that it’s cardio anyways. But in 2020, I promoted myself to author like, I just sat down and spent like six weeks hammering out this book on a daily basis. And you can’t do that without the flexibility. So my goal I always, I get tied up in there sometimes it’s probably a different thought anyways, but I always hear about people like making so and so much a month. You know, like at first it’s like, Oh, you got to hit 10k a month and it’s like, well, this guy’s doing 50k A month oh, these guys have 100k months. This guy’s making a million dollars a year. I kind of started to push myself into those like comparing myself to other people. Yeah. You know, specifically in people in other businesses, one of the other income streams I had was coaching other personal trainers to bring their businesses online. So I’m not doing that anymore. I’ve kind of cut that out. But it’s easy to fall into the comparison trap. So what I realized, though, is that my goal kind of to your point earlier was time freedom, and location freedom. So right now I’ve achieved half of that I’ve gotten the location freedom, I can pick up my laptop, take it out of my office, go to Puerto Rico in the summer, just going to spend a month there, and I can work from there. It’s amazing. The time freedom, though, we haven’t quite achieved that yet. But like, but having the clarity on what that looks like, and what it takes to achieve that, and what that number is, in order to be like, I can set my own schedule, I can do whatever I want to, I can take full weeks off. Knowing that makes it much easier than having this nebulous, like, hey, it’s a million dollars, because like, you know, money only solves money problems. And once I get rid of all your money problems, then you’re left with everything else.

Rai Cornell 10:55
And to that point, I mean, it’s funny, because at the beginning, we said, all these issues with stability, and insurance and things, they’re solved by money. So it’s kind of like those basics are in means like, we need to make sure that if something happens, if there’s a car accident, we can pay the health insurance bill, we need to make sure we can pay the mortgage, we can pay for the trip to Puerto Rico, you can do all the things that you really want to do, and provide for yourself and your family. And we need money to do that. And then there are these higher level needs, like healthy relationships time with our family that money supports us in because then we’re able to, you know, increase our hourly rate, reduce the amount of hours that we’re working, and get those things. So it’s all connected. But the mistake that people often make is thinking, money equals happiness. No, money is just the conduit, it’s the facilitator, and you have to do the hard work of figuring out what is actually going to make you happy.

Nate Palmer 11:55
I think the trap that I fell into was not necessarily money equals happiness, but money equals worth, like my self worth is somehow related to the financial success I was having. Because, you know, like in online coaching, that kind of the industry I was in, everyone would talk about the success in terms of like, what was their monthly revenue, you know, and like, this was really good. And this was medium. And this was bad, you know, like, and that was kind of the spectrum. And I think I kind of adopted that. And it took a second to be like, Whoa, that’s not indicative of my self worth. Like when I went from this and I went to this, like this next level like nothing else in my life changed, I still drove a Honda Fit. So like taking it back a second and be like, what is actually important? And where do we need to get to? So going back to like, what you’re talking about, like, what’s that base? What’s living comfortably? And then what is like, what is this living like in your version of whatever lavish is,

Rai Cornell 12:49
Right. And it’s all about also knowing what your measures of success are. Because I have known some people who are millionaires, they make $2-$3 million a year, and yet they feel broke, because their money is constantly going to things that they don’t actually care about. They’re like, I just made all this money. But where did it go? They don’t have good money sense. They don’t have a good relationship with money. And they’re constantly fixated on money as their measure of success. Whereas if your measure of success is you’re healthy, you’re stress free, you can sleep really well at night, you get all this time with your friends and your family and your loved ones. And those are your measures of success, then again, money just becomes the conduit to getting there.

Nate Palmer 13:32
Totally 100% agree with that.

Rai Cornell 13:33
And one of the other things that you said that I think ties in with your worth. And you said this at the beginning, you said that you’re an expert, self proclaimed. Now, I want to know why you felt like you needed to kind of like, clarify that or justify that. And the reason is because I have so many freelancers that I work with, writers in particular, for some reason, there seems to be like a plague within the freelance writing community, where they have a really hard time saying that they are experts. And yet, if you look at the definition of expert, it is someone who has an above average level of knowledge. Well, that could mean anything, it could mean that you have been doing it for two years or two decades. So tell me about that. Why you said self proclaimed expert, and what that really means for you.

Nate Palmer 14:25
So I’m really glad you asked this because I’ve actually thought about this a lot. And I’ve struggled through it because like no question. I’m an expert in fitness and nutrition. Yeah, I’ve spent well over my 10,000 hours studying, researching, writing. I’ve got over 400 articles on my blog post. I’ve got 160 podcast episodes. I’ve got two published books. I’ve got 600 videos on YouTube, like I have all those things. But like, whenever I show up, and I’m like, I am the expert on fitness nutrition. I just feel a little bit douchey doing that. Because at the end of the day, like that’s not my identity. Like I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m an adventurous guy. I’m a guy you want to like sit down and have a beer with you. Yeah, I don’t really want to like put on, especially in like the fitness industry, I think is just so full of people like flexing on the gram, that I don’t want to bring that energy with me and like how people like. So here’s what happens when I go to parties, right? So I go to a party, and people are like, Oh, hey, what’s going on? What do you do? And I’m like, Oh, I do like fitness and nutrition coaching. And they’re like, Oh, don’t judge me for eating this food. And I’m like. They’re like, tell me what you think about this, so my aunt’s doing keto right now. And I’m like, I have to leave now. I’m going home. So I like being an expert, I do feel a good amount of self confidence and self worth from having pushed through this for such a long time. I’ve been in it for 13 years now, which is way longer than, my friends have all jumped around jobs, you know, and they’re experts at what they do. But they’ve not been in the same vein for so long. But I also don’t want to, like propagate the idea of that, like all fitness people look this way, act this way, have a man bun, just generally. You don’t want to like, I’d rather show up and you’d be like, hey, that’s Nate, that’s my buddy. And then people find out later, like, oh, he wrote some books, he did this other things. Like, that’s kind of how I like to show up. And I don’t know if that’s the right idea for like, podcasts like this. So

Rai Cornell 16:16
Well, does it? I wonder, okay, so I’m very much a words person. I’m a copywriter by trade. And so I’m wondering if it feels differently to you to say, I’m an expert versus I’m the expert.

Nate Palmer 16:32
Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s definitely legitimacy to both. I would say I’m an expert in fitness and nutrition. I’m the expert on performance eating for high performance and business owners.

Rai Cornell 16:44
Perfect. And so what advice would you give someone who is struggling to own that expert status within the service, the very legitimate service that they provide their clients?

Nate Palmer 17:00
Well, as you can tell, I am of many minds about this, I don’t know if you know I have great advice. I feel like the things that have helped me really solidify, like maybe not how I present on podcasts, or speeches or whatever else, but like, internally, like making me feel very, like getting rid of kind of the imposter syndrome and make me feel very confident in the message I have to deliver. And the way I go about delivering it was just saying it all the time. So finding places where I could talk about this. So like, at first, you know, it’s in my blog, because no one cares about me. And as I started a blog in 2011, and I just wrote, I wrote and I wrote, and I wrote, and my writing is dogshit. I go back and I look at it, I’m like, This is so cringe, I can’t even believe I wrote this. But I just kept going, and it gradually got a little better, got some traction stuff, then podcast, you know, the podcast was amazing, because that forced me like real time to talk through some of these thoughts that I had. And so you come up with like, little stories and anecdotes and picthy quotes and things like that, that was kind of come out. And so now at the end of dozens and dozens of podcasts, I feel like I’m very confident to answer any questions really, that relate to health and fitness at all. Even if I’m not necessarily like 100% sure of the answer, I can at least take the conversation in a way that will provide some value as well as not make me look like a total fool. Yeah, that’s my advice, take it or leave it.

Rai Cornell 18:27
I think that’s great advice. And I think that’s really the antidote to impostor syndrome is doing something and telling people about it and talking about it as much as possible. And you’ve done a brilliant job of getting yourself tons of exposure. I mean, you’ve talked about videos and blog posts and podcasts, and you have two books. And I mean, that’s a lot of eyes on you. And there has to be a certain point, where of course, in the beginning, you’re kind of like, Oh, my God, don’t look at me, like, please, nobody looked at my blog, like, still getting my feet wet here still trying to figure out what the fuck I’m doing.

Nate Palmer 19:04
I thought it was amazing at first when I wrote it, I was like, Oh, I’m so smart. Look at this so good.

Rai Cornell 19:10
Or you’ve got the other pendulum swing. And then at some point, you just kind of feel like, oh, yeah, I am answering all of these questions. And I do know what I’m talking about. And it sort of clicks into where you feel like you actually are the expert that you were originally just self proclaimed. But now you actually are that thing. Was that true for you? Did you feel that kind of shift at some point in your career?

Nate Palmer 19:35
I do think so. So throughout my career. What happened was I started working at a gym, I went to a corporate world, talk to some of my mentors, they’re like, You need to open up your own business doing training. So I started a personal training business. Like where I was self employed, but I’m just like working out of someone else’s facility, started getting my own clients, love that, sold that business, moved to Seattle with my wife and then in Seattle, so I’ve already been doing this for probably for about three and a half, four years was when I started, like, Okay, I got this. Because all of my time, I was just obsessed with this stuff. I was just like, so if I wasn’t at the gym, I was reading about it. And if I wasn’t reading about it, I was writing about it. So like, by the year four or five, I easily eclipsed 10,000 hours of like, total practice and immersion of just like, because I was so obsessed with this. I remember thinking at that time, I was riding the bus, and we only had one car in Seattle. And I remember like reading through an article that was written by one of my absolute like, heroes, someone I’ve been reading since 2007. Like, followed all of his stuff. And he wrote an article and I was like, I wrote that article, like four weeks ago. Like we talked about the same thing, I kind of brought up the same points we talked about, like I put in a study that he referenced, and I was like, did I do it? Did I arrive? I remember that moment.

Rai Cornell 20:56
So that brings up another point. It’s kind of like this. Feel like it’s just this pendulum swing between, I know what I’m doing. I am an expert. And then Oh, my God, I’m an imposter. I’m a fraud. Everyone else is already saying the things that I want to be saying. What is that like for you when you realize that you’re putting out content, and then you see someone else saying the exact same thing? Does that ever make you feel like you need to withdraw? Or does that actually give you more fire to go – No, actually, I’m saying what the pros are saying, I think I belong here.

Nate Palmer 21:35
That’s a great question. And I feel like for me, like in this instance, was going to Jason Ferrucci. I think he wrote an article about sprinting or Hill doing Hill sprints. And I was like, I just talked about Hill sprints. I do hill sprints all the time. So that was a really affirming moment for me, because it was published on this article, there’s a website called T nation. Testosterone nation, they’re like the top body building websites, and then like, a year later, I was published twice on that website. And I was like, I hit it, I arrived. But the one thing that I think kept me going and pushing through a lot of times when it’s like, I don’t know, should I publish this? Am I actually an expert? And again, just like, this is just uncle Nate’s advice, just take this with a grain of salt. But I always think myself, and nobody gives a shit about this. Nobody’s gonna read this. No one cares. Publish it anyways. Yeah, put it out anyways. And like, because sometimes I think that we get so hung up on like, what is rating? What does my mom’s think? What’s my friend think when he reads this, they’re not gonna read it. No one’s gonna read it, except for the people who a, really love you, or b, are genuinely interested.

So like, if you put out something that’s stupid, it’s not gonna get any eyeballs, because it’s stupid. And that’s like, and that’s honestly, like, it feels good to me to be like, oh, like, no one’s gonna really be like, well, this guy’s horrible, he’s the worst, you know, like, they’re gonna just zone out and on to the next thing, people aren’t even really thinking about you. And that has helped me a ton. Because I would consider myself to be fairly prolific in this space. I’m not batting 1000 you know, I’m batting about 300. And so like, 70% of my stuff is like, I look back and I’m like, why did you put this out in the world? Yeah. But it’s always helped me to be like, no one’s gonna read this. No one cares. And I heard someone say once I forget who it was, but they said for every person that you have in your mind when you write, you can decrease the quality of your writing by 10%. So if you are thinking about what is my mom gonna think about this? Should I really swear in this article, what’s my friend Jeff? I had a friend named Jeff, he was much cooler than I was. He lived rent free in my head for about six years. Always ran through things like what’s Jeff gonna think about this. Yeah, Jeff probably didn’t read any of my stuff, like it wasn’t an issue but I always just felt like and judged a little bit like I don’t know, am I cool enough to write this stuff. Write it, put it out anyways, it doesn’t matter.

Rai Cornell 23:54
And on the flip side of that, have you ever experienced having a hater someone who just tears you apart in the comments and has that ever happened for you?

Nate Palmer 24:05
Yeah, a couple times I actually got a, I’m trying to put out like on my Instagram feed make it really like super cute and have like every third one be a transformation picture. So day was like, why are you posting so many transformation pictures? I’m about to unfollow and I was like, what, I went to my wife and I was like, I’m really mad at this person. She’s like, you need to be calm you need to have a cool head about this. Treat this so I answered very respectfully, but in my head I was like then get out. No one asked you to follow me. One time I did get completely roasted by this professor. So I wrote an article on Huffington Post called What should you do first, cardio or weight training? And I tried to take this complicated topic about like the oxidative pathways, and like and how you burn fat versus how you burn oxygen versus how you burn carbs and distilled it down to like I talked about like how doing cardio first was like digging with a shovel. And then doing cardio last was like digging with a backhoe. And I kind of made some comparisons in there. Maybe my math wasn’t what we’d call 100%. Right? Like I said, I’m a trainer? But this dude, I think he was a professor at like Brown University or something like that. And he told me that I was everything wrong with the fitness industry. And that I’m the reason that people can’t get results.

Rai Cornell 25:21
Wow, that’s heavy.

Nate Palmer 25:22
I didn’t write again for six months. That one stopped. That one hurt me.

Rai Cornell 25:28
And ultimately, did that hurt your business? Did that hurt your career? His comment?

Nate Palmer 25:35
No, not even a little bit? No

Rai Cornell 25:37
It just hurt you. It hurt your writing. Okay.

Nate Palmer 25:41
And then he lived in my head for a few years. Yeah.

Rai Cornell 25:44
Yeah. So for the people who do get those haters, which I feel like it’s kind of a mixed bag. You know, we live in this digital everything, share everything, video everything. You know, my assistant who runs my social media, she’s absolutely fantastic. And she’s like, Oh, we should start doing Tik Tok videos. And she goes, there are people who I actually watched them just go through their morning routine of making their coffee. And I watch it every day. And I’m like, Who the fuck is recording making their morning coffee. I mean, this is so like benign. It’s so mundane. But that’s our world. We live in this social media, record everything, share everything sort of world. And so people, everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to comment on what you’re doing, what you’re saying and your philosophy and the way you look. And yet at the same time, I feel like we’ve entered this era where the majority of people, they’re very, like vocal about being supportive and positive. And the quote unquote trolls seem to be kind of dying out, the louder the positivity gets. Has that been your experience?

Nate Palmer 26:54
I’ve never really dealt with like a ton of trolls. You know, I’ve had once you’re there. I like it. Especially when it’s not someone who’s like, You’re the worst. And what you said is completely wrong. If you say that I’m wrong like then I’m sad. But if you say that I’m stupid. I’m like, Okay, let me go to your profile and find all the stupid things you’ve ever said in your entire life. And I go down this rabbit hole of just like malevolence, you know? Yeah, I think that’s funny, because then I can come back and write just like crazy responses to people, which makes me laugh, you know, I think that like, if I’m having a good time, then that’s kind of the point anyways, but so everyone in my life has generally been pretty supportive, like, especially like, verbally, you know, whether or not they are financially supporting me, actually reading my content or checking it out.

Like, maybe not, but everyone’s always been like, hey, good for you, you’re doing a great job, hey, I’m gonna check out your book, I’m gonna send you this person. So I’ve never really felt like, I could be one of those people who’s like, this one’s for the haters out there. Everyone who said I could never do it. By the way, like, Who are all these people who are like, especially teachers, I feel like teachers get shut out all the time. They’re like, my third grade teacher said I’d never amount to shit. I’m like, did she? Or she just said you couldn’t go to the bathroom? Like what teachers are out there being like, you’ll never amount to anything. I’ve never met a teacher who says things like that.

Rai Cornell 28:11
Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty atypical for teacher behavior. And you are so prolific, you do have so much content out there. And so I’m hoping that that serves as an inspiration for people who are hesitant to put something out because they’re afraid that somebody might comment on it negatively. Because I feel like when you come from a genuine place, and you write content that you genuinely believe in, or you film videos, you record podcasts or whatever it might be that you are actually 100% behind. The likelihood of you getting a quote unquote hater is significantly reduced. And so then the question just becomes, well, what do you actually want to create? And so, from your perspective, you have done pretty much all of it, you’ve done video, you’ve done audio, you’ve done print. What would you recommend for people who are just wanting to start and start putting the word out there, start showing their expertise and just expressing themselves and what their actual passion is?

Nate Palmer 29:17
Yeah, so I think this varies from person to person. And so I’ve tried out a lot of different modalities. I love writing. Writing’s my favorite. I’ve always had some sort of blog even going back to like, like using 2011 Fitness blogs were gross, my 2004 high school blogs. Like I’ll never be president right. So but you got to figure out what you like, you know, I like writing and I feel like I’m pretty good at expressing myself communicating through the written word. But I found when I first started doing videos, they were rough. It’s a new skill. My first podcast, I got to interview John Lee Dumas on my podcast, my second episode because I just had like a hookup? You know who that is

Rai Cornell 30:02
I’ve heard of his name but I don’t know of him No,

Nate Palmer 30:04
I mean talk about prolific he runs entrepreneurs on fire. It’s a massive podcast platform, all these things. And I was the worst. It was a horrible interview. I think I got in an argument with him about an aura ring, like, Oh my God, no way. It was so awful. You can go back and listen to it. It’s out there. But like, just like learning, that the skill of talking on camera and feeling natural was a big steep learning curve. But starting to learn how to do a podcast. I was like, I’d go back and I’d watch Larry King interviews because that dude is the best. He was amazing at it. So I like watch how he does it. Because I was like, I suck at this. How can you make it look so fluid? Yeah, but like, so two things.

Number one is find the thing that you are like interested in or drawn towards. If you’re drawn towards Tik Tok videos, and you just want to be like, Hey, here’s what’s up, I’m making some coffee right now everybody’s look at my house. Like awesome. Like, that’s a definitely like a type of media. And that’s one of the fastest growing social media platforms of all time, like we’re on this crazy trajectory. But also, I would say as an encouragement, if you’re not amazing at Tik Tok off the bat, if your video edits look a little janky. If your podcast sounds a little rough, if your sound quality isn’t super great. You’ve got blog posts with grammatical errors in them, don’t stop, just do a better next time. Just do a little better next time. Because if you start a process like this, and you just do a little tiny bit better in every single blog, you do a little bit better. And you learn a little bit more about SEO, and you learn about how to hit like put up titles and then Okay, now we’re gonna work in some Canvas graphics and stuff like that. You’re gonna look back and be like, Wow, look how far I’ve come. I think that’s almost more important than being super polished right off the get go

Absolutely, that progress is so incredibly motivating. And so I love that you said you can still go listen to your second podcast where you get in a fight with this guy you totally admire. You didn’t take it down. So tell me about that. Most of us, I think if we look back at our work, and we’re like, oh my god, this is such shit. Like, I did such a shit job. We cringe and then we go, unpublish. But you haven’t done that. Why?

I feel like we’re also always our harshest critics. Right? So I’m doing my like, tonight is my third stand up opportunity I’ve ever done. So again, like if you just take all that into consideration, I’m not good at it. And so my second one, I recorded it, and I went back and I watched it. And the whole time I was like, Oh no.

Rai Cornell 32:31
Oh,

Nate Palmer 32:33
Why would you? Oh, don’t do. Oh, honey, please. And this wasn’t like, this was two weeks ago. It was not good. Not good. So but I think that like, I hate it. My mom loves it. You know, like there are people out there who see it. And like it, you know that not everyone has access to what’s going on inside of our brain. A lot of us have the curse of knowledge, where we see all these things. And we follow like for me, I follow 50 different personal trainers and authors and writers and people who are amazing. But for most people, if you’re following me on social media, I’m like one of two fitness people you follow. Like, you don’t see all this other stuff. You have no basis for comparisons, you know, so like, someone is going to run into your stuff and be like that article you wrote is awesome. And you’re like, Oh, that one that one that sucks. And they’re like, didn’t suck. It was great. It was exactly where I was at the time. And I think you just got to let those things percolate a little bit because yeah, it’s a little bit cringe. And yeah, like, I’m not really proud of of some of that early stuff. But if I took down every single thing that I wasn’t proud of, wouldn’t have any content left, you know, yeah. So I just leave it up and I move on, you know, and like you know, all this stuff where it’s actually battled, you know, literally take that down, like, shout out to my MySpace page.

Rai Cornell 33:49
Does that still exist? It’s on a server somewhere

Nate Palmer 33:51
Probably like, you can’t read the stuff on the internet. There’s a website called Wayback Machine which I’ve gone and looked at some of my old stuff with.

Rai Cornell 33:58
I love wayback machine

Nate Palmer 33:59
How do I delete Wayback Machine? Yep.

Rai Cornell 34:04
So ultimately, it sounds like the moral of the story is, just do it. Find the thing that you’re passionate about? Immerse yourself in it, create what you’re called to create, and don’t look back, just keep making progress.

Nate Palmer 34:18
And I think that is not just the lesson for business owners and people who are working on a side hustle. That’s a lesson for life, like Yeah, I’m never gonna be an NFL athlete. I don’t have the talent for it. Right? I’m never gonna end up on that field. But for everything besides professional sports, like on the highest level, like musical stuff, you don’t need talent to be a success. Whether you’re building a business, whether you’re working on physique, whether you’re trying to drop some weight, whether you’re trying to be like a better partner in your relationships. All that stuff takes consistent effort over time, we will overestimate what they can do in a month and underestimate what they can do in three years, you know, so if you look at it that little bit of a longer timespan, you can be so so successful, you know, you might not feel like it in the moment. But if you look back on where you came from because you didn’t quit, you’re gonna be as shocked and amazed at how far you’ve come.

Rai Cornell 35:09
And on that fantastic note, where can people check you out Nate?

Nate Palmer 35:15
Where do you want me to start, all the places, hit up my space is Dog, my space is cool.org You can check out my book, it’s on Amazon, if you want to grab it if you want though, I’d love to give that away for free to anyone who’s listened to the show, you can go to n8trainingsystems.com/book to get there. By the way, Nate training systems, n8 training systems I spend like 77% of my time being like, no, it’s eight. Now like seven eight. Again, that’s a symptom of a decade old blog that I wish I would have gone back there’s been like, abs in 24 hours.com or something like that.

Rai Cornell 35:54
Oh, yeah. If we knew then what we know now. Excellent. Well, we will drop off your show notes.

Nate Palmer 36:01
I’m also on Instagram at million dollar body method. Probably on YouTube also

Rai Cornell 36:05
And your podcast

Nate Palmer 36:07
Called The million dollar body method podcast. Burn Fat and get motivated with Nate.

Rai Cornell 36:11
Love it. Love it. And we will put all of those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here Nate.

Nate Palmer 36:17
Thanks for having me this is a lot of fun. Awesome.

Rai Cornell 36:31
Hey, Rai here again. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and rate us in your favorite podcasting platform. Want to be a guest on the show or know someone who has an amazing story of entrepreneurship apply on our website at chironconsulting.us/podcast.