Letters of Intent

Sahil (00:14.17)
Welcome to Letters of Intent, where we dive into the decisions that define deal makers, builders, and risk takers. I'm Sahil Chaudry, corporate attorney at Carbon Law Group, and today's guest is a very good friend of mine, Nate Cardin, a former Air Force officer turned startup operator, product builder, and now founder of CEO Amplifier, where he helps B2B founders grow real lead pipelines through sharp strategic content on LinkedIn. Nate, welcome.

Nate Carden (00:42.936)
Thanks for having me, Sahil.

Sahil (00:44.482)
It is such a pleasure to have you. I want to dive right in. Can you walk me through how you go from the Air Force to helping veteran entrepreneurs through Bunker Labs?

Nate Carden (00:56.396)
Yeah. Well, so it started at the Air Force Academy. Actually, I had a, my advisor and one of my, my business management professors was just a very entrepreneurial guy and gave me the bug. And I think since having him in, in marketing class, I've wanted to be an entrepreneur. And so even while I was in the Air Force, I was trying to start my own ventures.

The first one was a language learning website while I was in Afghanistan actually that I tell people was my real world MBA. Made all the classic mistakes of a first time entrepreneur, lost a lot of money, but learned a lot along the way.

Sahil (01:46.483)
What are some of those classic mistakes that you feel entrepreneurs have to make on their journey to building their business?

Nate Carden (01:56.0)
And so I think a lot of the initial mistakes, you they say it takes an entrepreneur four, four times. think the average is four, four tries at, at the plate before you have your first successful venture. A lot of it is, is psychological reasons. You know, it's an entrepreneur will have crazy expectations.

Sahil (02:22.298)
Yeah.

Nate Carden (02:22.882)
that prevents them from doing the slow, boring activities that a successful business requires. And for me, it was just that. It was like I was so impatient to be successful that I, I spent way too much money designing the website. I thought it had to be designed perfect in order to get people to sign up.

And I didn't manage the project very well. You know, I paid, it was basically a friend of a friend of a friend to build the website. And I couldn't manage it well because I was in Afghanistan and they essentially ran off with 40 grand and didn't build anything.

Sahil (03:05.978)
Wow.

I think that does track for entrepreneurs. think, like you're saying, we have a lot of clients who are entrepreneurs. I've had my own entrepreneurial journey and it is, you have successes and you have failures. And I think the biggest, rudest awakening when you're an entrepreneur is when you set off in the beginning and you feel like you're going to be the exception because there's no way you can fail. And even within your successes, there are failures that I think are

Nate Carden (03:32.131)
Totally.

Sahil (03:38.826)
very important. I think that when you are able to speak with an entrepreneur or founder operator and they're able to openly discuss failure, I feel like it's a sign of maturity. I feel like it's a sign that someone has done some self-reflection and is capable of pivoting and adjusting. And so I want to explore a little bit. Were there any other lessons that you felt like you learned at the Air Force that

Nate Carden (03:47.459)
Yeah.

Sahil (04:08.504)
are applicable today to your career as an entrepreneur. And we'll dig into the details later, but just general principles.

Nate Carden (04:11.918)
Hmm.

Nate Carden (04:15.35)
Yeah. Well, so I'll share, you know, this, when I got out of the air force, I, like, for personal reasons ended up back in Alabama teaching at my old high school for three years. And, that was a kind of personal, like it set down on the stage for what I wanted to do in the future. It was a really fulfilling thing. Both of my parents were educators.

So that was, it was kind of like being in the Air Force for 10 years. I had lived away from family for a long time and it was great to go, to go back kind of. And I feel like from a spiritual perspective, God used that a lot in shaping my future. So in 2015, I moved to Nashville and to answer your question, you know, I think one of the things that I learned, like I ended up,

In another venture, this was a, the next venture was a healthy meals for the week company, which turned into, we met this girl who was making juice pulp crackers and they tasted amazing. It was like,

Sahil (05:28.954)
Wow.

Nate Carden (05:32.462)
an incredible story. Like she was hiring women who had come out of like abusive situations and went through this, this like retreat center that she worked at and she would hire them like once they finished the program to make the crackers. And it was this whole like concept of what the world sees as refuse, God can redeem. And because our product

was juice pulp that was left over from juice bars around town that they would just throw away. And so we would take it and repurpose it into crackers that were healthy and tasted amazing. And so I saw it like we were gonna be in every Whole Foods within two years. I thought there's no way that this can fail.

Sahil (06:05.764)
Very poetic.

Nate Carden (06:24.466)
And it ended up failing just due to partnership issues. And it's just like, there are a million ways that, that can, that can blow up a great business idea. And, and like, to your point and going back to a previous thing, you know, a lot of the reasons are like, are personal, psychological, and don't have as much to do with the business idea, as we think they do.

Sahil (06:28.078)
Right.

Sahil (06:53.508)
Right.

Nate Carden (06:54.142)
And, so once that failed, I was going through a business accelerator for veterans called bunker labs. And I told the founder of it in, of the Nashville chapter, like, Hey, you know, I'm leaving this company. It's, it's, it's not going great. And he was like, perfect, man. Can you help me build bunker labs in Nashville? And so I signed on to like co-found like help build out that, that nonprofit.

Sahil (07:24.742)
Well, and I understand you built it, you scaled it to over 30 cities.

Nate Carden (07:24.865)
And over

Nate Carden (07:30.988)
Yeah, well, we started out just in Nashville. We would have 10 to 15 people in a cohort. And so we did that for two years. Blake Hogan, the co-founder of Nashville, kind of went out and raised the money, sold the vision within the city, and kind of gathered our partners. And I was more focused on coming up with the curriculum.

facilitating the accelerator for the veterans. And this was what was interesting. And this is getting to your question initially of like, what did I see most? It's that founders are just blind to their, we're often our biggest bottleneck and stumbling block. And you know, it's,

Sahil (08:24.006)
Right.

Nate Carden (08:27.82)
the ones that are successful, like without fail, it's the ones that are humble and teachable. It's like, and I saw, would see myself in some of the other veteran entrepreneurs who came through our programs. It's like, if anyone tried to offer them feedback and they're like, no, no, no, it has to be this way. You knew it wasn't gonna be successful. But like we had some entrepreneurs in there who were already a million dollars in revenue.

Sahil (08:35.354)
Right.

Sahil (08:47.192)
Right. Right.

Nate Carden (08:57.174)
who would they would be the ones asking me and I hadn't had a successful venture at that point. Like Nate, what do you think about this, this business model or is this my like my target, my target audience? Is this my ICP, whatever.

Sahil (09:00.281)
Yeah.

Sahil (09:12.25)
Yeah, that is very interesting. And probably something that you only learn from experience because as you take a step on this journey as an entrepreneur, there probably is more clarity on who you were. I heard this quote that the...

the benefit of being an entrepreneur, and I'm paraphrasing here, is the person you become. You can feel the transformation. So I do want to ask, going from one city to 30 cities that takes strategy, building that type of curriculum, being able to see what people need, especially connecting that experience to veterans and what are the specific needs of, let's say, a veteran entrepreneur.

What were some major lessons that you learned from that experience and what does it take to scale? I think a lot of entrepreneurs want to know, a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck at some level of a plateau and being able to crack through ceilings, I mean, you've seen multiple ceilings crack through. What was the key to unlocking that type of growth?

Nate Carden (10:19.022)
Mm-hmm.

Nate Carden (10:25.55)
There's a number of things. I think the people that we had involved in it, the founder, Todd Connor, is one of the most charismatic, inspiring people I know. And Blake Hogan, kind of the co-founder of the Nashville chapter, who later became the CEO of Olive Bunker. Both just very easy people to follow.

they can sell a vision and it's like, need those people on your team. The other thing is just like, think a lot of successful founders, not only are they humble, but they'll admit like, I, a wave picked me up and carried me. You know, they just caught, they just caught a wave and it's like, you realize like it is humbling when you're successful because you're like,

Sahil (10:58.606)
Hmm.

Sahil (11:13.7)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sahil (11:22.725)
Yeah.

Nate Carden (11:24.546)
there were other business concepts that I thought would do way better than this one.

Sahil (11:28.494)
Right. Yeah.

Nate Carden (11:31.104)
So, you know, it was a very like, learned a lot in those years. just like, there are a number of factors were there in such that the wind was just blowing in our direction, like filling our sails. It's like, you know, helping veterans grow their own business is an easy vision to sell. And...

Sahil (11:49.135)
Yeah.

Sahil (11:54.618)
Yeah, yeah.

Nate Carden (11:57.985)
And it was in like, you know, our biggest sponsors were banks. Yeah. So we had JP Morgan and USAA and several others that, like quickly signed on to the vision and like, we're our biggest corporate sponsors. so, and, you know, I think we, we were able to, tell a different story than most, veteran nonprofits. There's, there's thousands, tens of thousands of them out there.

Sahil (12:02.789)
Right.

Nate Carden (12:27.246)
And as a veteran, it's like most of them are uninspiring because it's like some corporate, like VA kind of feel where it's just like, okay, no, I want to be around inspiring people who are doing amazing things. And that was our goal is like, we realized that, you know, as veterans, you often don't know what's available to you.

Sahil (12:39.726)
Right, right.

Sahil (12:45.647)
Yeah.

Nate Carden (12:56.012)
You one of the things we would say is you'll be what you see. you know, the, it's like, if you're a cop in the army, most of them just end up being a cop in the civilian world once they get out of the military. And so our, biggest mission, I think, was just to tell stories of veterans for like Fred Smith, for instance, who was a Marine who started FedEx. and there's a ton of them out there that it's like.

Sahil (12:59.822)
Mm-hmm.

Sahil (13:04.954)
Yeah.

Sahil (13:09.871)
Right.

Sahil (13:21.049)
Right.

Nate Carden (13:25.55)
veterans actually are for the successful companies that endure veterans, like only 1 % of the population, but 10 % of entrepreneurs are veterans. So it's within our kind of DNA of, know, the way I see entrepreneurship is it's just creative problem solving. And you learn that in the military. It's just like, so.

Sahil (13:39.202)
Interesting.

Sahil (13:49.112)
Right.

Yes.

Nate Carden (13:54.006)
I think that just that like the challenge of entrepreneurship is something that attracts veterans. But it's also like we need to learn that like you can't just bang the door down. You know, you've got to like instead of trying to go through the wall, you got to find your way around the wall. And I think once the veterans learn that, then they're then they're.

Sahil (14:11.514)
Yeah.

Nate Carden (14:22.37)
going to be a lot more successful.

Sahil (14:24.836)
So you talked about the importance of being able to sell a vision. Nate, you and I were on a summer program in Greece. And one of the qualities that I remember about you, when we spent that almost a month in Crete, we were studying politics and economics, but you were clearly a very charismatic person. And I would say that you are a storyteller at heart.

Can you talk a little bit about that quality and how it played a role in the work you were doing at Bunker Labs?

Nate Carden (15:03.756)
What's interesting is that, you know.

Nate Carden (15:09.302)
It's funny, when I was getting out of the Air Force, I had a conversation with my dad. My dad's the principal of the private Christian school I went to K through 12 in Alabama. And when I got out of the Air Force, I was in the top of my class at the Air Force Academy, got a scholarship to go to study at Sciences Po in Paris, France, and then did three years in hospital administration.

I had a good resume and so in my mind, my options were either I'm going to start a business or I'm going to go work at Facebook or Apple or some big, big company. And my dad was like, Nate, I don't know why you want to go back to France and start this language learning website. He's like, you're, you're a teacher. And it, it, when I, didn't say it out of respect to him, but I was just like,

Sahil (16:02.126)
Wow.

Nate Carden (16:08.462)
That's the last thing I'll ever do is move back to Alabama and, and teach at the school where my dad's the principal and where, you I went K through 12. It's like, thought, you know, my dad thinks so small, like I want to change the world and, um, and God had other plans. It was like every door closed that should have been opened to me.

Sahil (16:24.791)
Mm-hmm.

Nate Carden (16:36.558)
And I learned at the end of this year, there was a message that was a life-changing moment for me. heard this, he was a teacher for 20 years. I heard this speaker at a weekend conference on purpose and finding your purpose in life. he said, fulfillment in life comes from following design, not from following desire.

is like, you know, if God created you and gave you certain gifts and abilities, you're gonna be most fulfilled when you're doing what he created you to do. And so that for me, it was like the only door at that point or the most, clearest open door was teaching. My dad asked me again that next summer and I was like, okay, I'll try it. And...

Sahil (17:11.046)
Love that

Nate Carden (17:29.516)
Within three weeks of teaching, was the most fulfilling thing I'd ever done in my life. So I don't know how my dad saw that in me. I didn't go, I didn't study education in college or grad school. It's like in my mind, I was always going entrepreneurship, business. But it became part of my identity after three years of teaching. I still see myself as a teacher.

And to teach, like, before you can teach, it requires deep understanding. so, like, you know, I saw myself as a student, really. So this was the great thing about teaching a Bible class at a private Christian school, which is like, it's not a required class for college. And my dad gave me the kind of freedom to develop my own curriculum.

And I had gone through there what they went through and I was like, I want this to be interesting for them. Like we're going to have discussions. We're going to watch documentaries. Like I'm going to learn. I'm going to, I'm going to teach them the things that I want to learn. We're to learn this together. And in the end, I learned way more than the kids did probably, but they had a blast. And that was the class. I think that they would all talk about in the halls and around the lunch table.

Sahil (18:44.132)
Yes. Right.

Yeah.

Sahil (18:59.114)
I love that. And I think that takes us into your next chapter, which was Jesus Academy. And I would love to explore how, I mean, you're calling it an academy, which I think, you know, I remember Nate, seeing you read the Iliad. I feel like you were always influenced by academies, philosophers, know, places of learning. And so I would assume that that played a role even in the name.

of Jesus Academy and it certainly plays into your essence as a teacher. So I would love to talk a little bit about how did you go from Bunker Labs to Jesus Academy and what did that experience mean for you?

Nate Carden (19:43.651)
So Jesus Academy, was originally called Ut Unum, which was taken from Pope John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Scent, which is that they may be one. And the concept of this came from while I was teaching, and this is where I said earlier that those three years of teaching really shaped my future. So while I was teaching,

My childhood, one of my childhood best friends and I were roommates and like he grew up like me, just non-denominational, like pastor's kid. He became Catholic while we were roommates. And it was just, it was kind of a shocker for me. Like I, you know, wasn't being in the military, I had friends from every, every religion, but also every stripe of Christianity.

Sahil (20:42.715)
Right.

Nate Carden (20:42.754)
Like, you know, we have Serbian Orthodox friends, we have Maronite Christian friends, we have, you all kinds of different Christian denominations represented. And I think what the impact of this guy who was just like me changing, it inferred that I was missing something. So that was a journey for me.

Sahil (20:45.54)
Yes.

Nate Carden (21:08.384)
At the same time, my dad had a religious experience in a Greek Orthodox church in Chicago. So anyway, it just got me learning a lot about church history and trying to understand what is Christianity? Because the reality is there's 41,000 Christian denominations in the world.

In this process of learning, there's a Catholic philosopher I really like whose name is Peter Creve and he talked about the ecumenical movement, which was that we have evangelism wrong, that evangelism is looking like Christ and that if Baptists and Catholics actually loved each other instead of like, well, Baptists are going to hell and vice versa.

then the unbelieving world would see it and say, I'm attracted to that. I'm like, tell me more, rather than, you know, standing on the boxes in the streets and telling people they're going to hell. And so the initial vision for Ud Unum was based on like relationships like you and I have. It was like, I mean, my best friends from my master's degree in Paris were a Muslim from Morocco.

a Mormon from Utah and a Greek Orthodox guy from Greece. It sounds like the start of a joke, but you know, we were, when we were getting to know each other, we were 23, 24 and just curious and like, tell me, really? You believe this? well you believe that it's like, what was interesting in there, like learning more about Mormonism, like,

The story of Mormonism is fascinating. How it, like in the early 1900s, was one of the farthest out there cults in the US. And within 60, 70, 80 years, they're mainstream in American society. We have Mitt Romney running for president.

Sahil (23:15.834)
Secret lives of Mormon wives. Yeah.

Nate Carden (23:21.07)
But one of the things that they did, like they were excellent marketers. Like without talking about theology, they would have Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers, in a two minute clip, you know, showing him singing and showing playing with his kids. And at the end, he's like, you know, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a singer, I'm a Mormon. People see that and they're like, Brandon Flowers is Mormon? That's not that weird.

Sahil (23:48.824)
Right.

Nate Carden (23:51.862)
And so this was my initial idea for Ut Unum was like, I want to like video what a Catholic service is like, what an Eastern Orthodox service is like, what a black revival in Utah, looks like. And I filmed all those and ran out of money. And so when I moved to Nashville, this was the start of Jesus Academy. was like thinking from an entrepreneurial perspective, like how...

Sahil (24:11.344)
Mm-hmm.

Nate Carden (24:20.768)
If it's not sustainable, it's not going to make any impact. And realizing that nonprofits are just hard to run, like from my time at Bunker Labs as well as just trying to start trying to raise money. So my goal was to align things like how can I create tools that matures Christians that is also desirable to them and that they'll be willing to pay for. And so.

Sahil (24:24.004)
Right.

Nate Carden (24:49.102)
I started creating while I was at Bunker Labs because our mission was like, know, part of our ethos, I guess, was if we're veterans and we can't create our own successful companies, we shouldn't be teaching other people how to do it. So part of our is like, should have a side project and you should be creating a successful company. So I was just learning the whole time I was in Nashville from 2015 to 2020.

Like I learned kind of the self-publishing world. learned like working with designers to create a gratitude journal, to create a liturgical planner. You know, I was making like prayer candles and all kinds of different things, just kind of testing and playing around with different concepts and business models. And it kind of culminated for me in so.

Also that it was like the start of COVID. I was working for an e-commerce company, was had a product for them and it was a planner company as well. And it was like, you know, like this is my dream. Like I feel like I'm giving away all my best ideas. Like I want to still build my own planner and journal company. And, and so I left.

Sahil (26:04.474)
Yeah.

Nate Carden (26:13.678)
I sold my house in Nashville. I also went to Brazil. was a different kind of personal journey of mine of like learning to.

I think this is important to the story, so I'll share it. I think what COVID did for me is that it helped me ask questions that I had never asked myself. Like, why am I killing myself, working so hard, so that I realized I was living an American narrative rather than a Christian narrative, which is...

Essentially you have to suffer that's life until you're 55 and financially independent then you can enjoy life and I was just like I don't think that's the only option and You know if I trust God enough to provide for me Then I can pursue the life that I want now instead of waiting until I'm you know too old to actually enjoy it and so I had dreamed of learning how to surf and

And I loved living abroad and learning other languages. And so I did, I sold my house and moved to Brazil and took five or six months off, just recharging. And that time, like gave me the motivation and the inspiration to create my own peace planner and joy journal. And also gave me the name Jesus Academy. Kind of came in that period as well.

And so I spent a year and a half building that. And this was kind of the final straw that broke me psychologically. So that then now I'm in a successful venture, finally.

Sahil (28:06.414)
So I'm excited to get into your current venture, but I think you said something very interesting, which is about the role that faith played in your ability to take risk. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, you are going to have to take a healthy amount of risk. And I think everybody has their own level of risk appetite and what motivates a person to take risk. What you just described,

was quite a big risk and actually your personal journey shows a persistent willingness to take a bet on yourself and to

take risk. So I do want to explore, does faith play a role in your ability to take risk? And specifically, the moment you decided to sell your house, move to Brazil, it's a new country, it's a different language, it's a different system, a different society. And then also, you would be dealing with how the social pressures would perceive you.

you know, being an American. For example, you talked about the American context. What is the American context and how we're expected to, you know, kind of forego living today for some reward in the future, which you may or may not be able to enjoy. And so, but that comes at a cost. mean, authenticity does come at a cost, which is you're dealing with social pressures, how people are perceiving you. Now,

I would love to explore how faith played a role. And you've had successes, you've had failures, and if at any point your faith was tested and how that played a role as well.

Nate Carden (29:54.626)
Yeah, well, so this like, I think this is one of the core themes of Jesus Academy is that what keeps us trapped in lives or jobs or relationships that we despise is fear, like insecurity.

And what makes us like burn ourselves out is a desire for security and validation, like primarily security, think it's like, you know, I can't, you know, people would say like, I can't pick up and move to Brazil or I can't quit my job. And, and it's this fear of the unknown that prevents them from doing that. And.

I think for me was easier probably than I'm single, but it's not easy. I tell people, it's like, just because I'm single and yes, I don't have a family that I have to make decisions for, but it wasn't easy to sell my house. I loved the house that I had, but I realized it was like, these are golden handcuffs. This is a golden hand. It's like,

Sahil (31:12.91)
Right.

Nate Carden (31:22.326)
What do I really want like diving into those things and.

So, and like talking about the veteran piece as well, I do think that we are more inclined to take stupid risk. I, like a lot of my risk was like, wasn't based on faith. was based on like blind optimism. What I've learned now, like what real like faith,

I think a better way to define it is trust, is trust in a person, that God is a person. And this was part of what I implemented into the gratitude journal in the Peace Planner, which is that the more we remember the times that God has delivered us in the past, has provided for us, the more trust we have that He'll provide for us in the future.

And so like this whole concept, and this is what I would, what I built into this planner was that, there is, there are small daily habits that we can do to build our, our faith, that faith is a muscle that gets stronger. And so like the first is prayer, like prayer, you know, is, I've heard somebody say it's, it's, it's planned wasting time with God and.

Because it's like to an outside observer, it's like you're not doing anything. You're talking to an invisible person in the sky. Like prayer is probably the biggest test of faith that we have. It's like, do you pray? Do you take time out of your day to talk to that invisible person?

Sahil (33:13.947)
Right.

Nate Carden (33:24.398)
So this idea that, if you can shut your computer and stop working enough to like exercise, to have a hobby, to like sleep more than like six hours, you know, which like we live in the hustle culture, like, no, I'm grinding, you know, I'm basically taking pills as my food. is like, no, like,

Sahil (33:46.96)
Right.

Sahil (33:50.764)
Right, right, right. Drinking ice bath water.

Nate Carden (33:54.358)
Right. But if exactly, but it's like, if you do these little things, it builds the tank to where eventually you have enough trust to quit the job that you hate. and move to the place that you like, you think, cause we're guessing, we're guessing it like in a way, making hopefully informed guesses about where we want to be and what we want to do and who we want to do life with.

But like, yes, to ultimately your question, like faith, I believe plays a primary role in helping us take risk, take calculated risk in like living our, like it's cliche, like the best life that we can. So.

Sahil (34:44.738)
I remember the quote, I think Matthew McConaughey said it at the Oscars, when you've got God, you've got a friend and that friend is you. There is a chance we all need, I think, time for reflection. And I know you talk a lot about journaling. Is that something that you...

Nate Carden (34:53.228)
Yeah, that's great.

Sahil (35:11.194)
you advocate entrepreneurs and operators do as part of the regular practice?

Nate Carden (35:18.498)
Yeah, there's an article, I'll send you, it written by a Harvard professor who was also a West Point grad. I forget what he did in the Army, but talked about the importance for officers, the best officers made time for solitude and reflection. And I think if you look at the most effective people in history,

They've been, know, the Marcus Aurelius is like the, Bill Gates, the Warren Buffets, they, they put time, they, they block off time on their calendars to sit and think, to reflect. And, know, one of my things, like this is what was a, was a course changer for me. It was through journaling that ultimately led me to, um, to taking the leap. Um,

Sahil (35:50.021)
Yeah.

Nate Carden (36:18.516)
And I started with Julia, I think it's Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. So I just bought her companion journal for like 10 bucks on Amazon and journaled through that and you make a commitment to journal every day for 90 days. And the value in it is like...

Sahil (36:25.252)
Yeah, that's right.

Nate Carden (36:42.186)
She says in there, she's like, you can only complain about something for so long before you do something about it. And I think the reason why most people never do anything about the thing is they forget. You know, they forget that they complained about it yesterday. And, but it's like when you journal it, you see it. So it's a reflection in the mirror of like, are you going to do something about this that you keep complaining about? And so I think journaling is just, it's.

putting it all out on paper is so beneficial.

Sahil (37:17.318)
I want to explore this idea as it relates to your current venture. You talked about there's what you want to do and there's what you're designed for. And maybe those two things overlap, but it seems to me that what you're doing now, CEO Amplifier, you are certainly designed for it.

And so I would love to learn a little bit about how you developed this concept and how you have been able to help so many entrepreneurs, so many operators grow their businesses. But, you know, what was that spark of inspiration? What was that aha moment of, a second, wow, I've got this secret sauce here before it really started to expand.

Nate Carden (38:07.83)
Yeah, well, so it came through the failure of Jesus Academy. I sold my house and part of that, know, probably half of the profit from that went into designing out the planner, the Peace Planner and the Joy Journal, publishing a thousand planners and a thousand journals. And I produced 35 videos.

kind of explaining the concept, like a lot of the stuff we were talking about just now, the need for journaling, all that. And by the time it was ready to launch, I was out of money. so the less, big lesson there, you know, a lot of things coalesced in that, like in that breaking point.

Realizing this was kind of the breakthrough for me. It like this is my pattern I realized journaling in I was like complaining that's like God. I'm not gonna make it Yeah, I'm out of money. I've got you know, I was $60,000 in debt I Was like, I don't know how I'm gonna pay that back like I've got half of these books. I haven't been able to sell and I felt like

the nudge from God to go look at your annual goals in the Peace Planner for this year. And I looked at it and it was like, sell 12,000 books for half a million dollars in revenue, get 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, buy a house. I had no money. So I had no marketing budget. I had sold.

500 planners and 500. Like how was I hadn't even published another 6,000 or 5,000 of each. Like this, and it hit me in a moment. I was like, this is it. This is my pattern. set insane goals for myself that I can't hit. And then I keep moving the deadline back and that kills my confidence. And I get discouraged and I quit. And then I move on to the next idea. And like, once I've repatted my bank account, I like do the cycle all over again.

Nate Carden (40:27.214)
So this for me, it was like, all right, God, this Jesus Academy is my dream. Like it's my mission in life. And I want to do this for the rest of my life. How do I make it sustainable? And I was like, I need a job. Within a week of that prayer, essentially, an old professor from the Air Force Academy offered me a B2B sales role.

And I prayed that God would help me sell the books and he gave me a sales job. And so I learned like in this sales role, I hated cold outreach. Nobody responds. And eventually it was like, you know what? I've never responded to a cold out, like a cold message, LinkedIn message or email or anything. And I was like, this is a $20 million company with zero online content.

Sahil (41:02.958)
Yeah, that's right.

Nate Carden (41:26.382)
I started to realize there's a lot of companies that have great products, um, that just don't know how to sell in the modern day world. And, um, so I started, I pitched them on, let me start to make content. Cause I learned how to make content for my previous ventures and realize like, this is how we've all been trained to buy today is what like scrolling in a feed. And so I started to flesh that out and.

This was kind of the start of the thought leadership movement. And so in 2023, the end of like June of 2023, two years ago, I started my own marketing agency, helping founders and CEOs and really executives of B2B SaaS companies grow their businesses through growing their personal audience on LinkedIn.

And this was like learning that people engage more with people rather than company pages. and I saw that whenever I posted my personal page versus the company page, would get way more reach and way more engagement. And so, I started out with my brother. my brother was kind of my, my target audience, like had a successful energy consulting company and a software.

they'd been running for 18 years without a marketing, without a sales team. And, I was like, dude, like, trust me, your clients are on LinkedIn. There's a billion people on LinkedIn, 234 million just in the U S like a lot of CEOs think, well, my, you my clients are blue collar or they're, or they're old and they don't use, they use LinkedIn. And, I got Kevin.

posting twice a week on LinkedIn and within six months he had three offers on his company.

Sahil (43:29.208)
Wow.

Nate Carden (43:32.334)
Another like, oh, so I'll say this, the like after he was acquired, it was still kind of, and this is the personal like pieces that are required, I think for business success is it was still a year in and I had that like amazing case study of like of a first client. But I still was like drawn to Jesus Academy.

And I felt like this is my mission. Like I'm kind of wasting my time with CEO amplifier or like it's a distraction from my true calling. And it hit me last year, like October of like, um, I was like, you know what? If Jesus Academy was where God wanted me right now, he would, he would provide, um, he would make it sustainable. He would provide income from that, but he's not.

Sahil (44:26.629)
Right.

Nate Carden (44:29.098)
And CEO amplifier is what's like providing my living. And so I was like, you know what? All right. If, it's training for the thing, it is the thing. And so October of last year, I was like, all right, I'm all in on CEO amplifier. This is what I'm doing right now. And within three months, my business quadrupled.

Sahil (44:40.098)
Yeah.

Sahil (44:53.188)
Wow.

Nate Carden (44:54.478)
And, and so now, uh, you know, I have seven or eight clients, um, that like, I'm getting to help them grow their business and getting to meet like other inspiring people. And, um, it's super fulfilling and it, and it is kind of a sweet spot. Cause I was, I dealt with all of their fears of posting online and all of the psychological, like wanting it to be perfect.

all of the things that prevent executives from showing up publicly.

Sahil (45:33.84)
So on that note, what would you say to founders or CEOs who are debating where to invest their money or resources in terms of sales versus marketing and what's the difference?

Nate Carden (45:51.214)
Yeah. Well, so I think the niche that I've found myself in is, it's usually founder owned. It's been acquired by a PE or they've taken VC money. Um, they have budget now and usually what happens is these founders, you know, they were in the, they did the sales to get to a certain point either to their, to the first 5 million and the first 10 million.

And now that they have budget, it's almost like, well, I don't want to do sales anymore. And so like, I'm going to hire salespeople to go do the thing that I want to do. And I'm to go back to product because that's the fun. That's the fun part, right? You get to be creative and build something. and the, think the, the misconception, like what happens when, when you go out and hire a sales team is essentially what you're doing is.

Sahil (46:32.922)
Right.

Nate Carden (46:49.944)
you're hiring a bunch of solo marketers. The successful salespeople today, they quickly realized that cold outreach doesn't work. so they then will develop a customer avatar. They'll probably do customer interviews. They'll work on messaging and the offer and all of these things that's typically in the marketing world. And so like,

I think the, why I think that's the wrong approach or at least it should be 50-50 marketing versus sales is that 70 % of consumer purchases, consumer purchase decisions today are made before they ever talk to a sales person or anybody at the company. Like there's a lot of things that have gone into shaping

where we are today where the consumer wants to feel in control of the buying process. And so I think marketing, know, usually another thing that happens with these PE or VC firms is that they'll buy companies and maybe they'll merge companies together and that they'll start like cross-selling. And that's a boost in revenue for sure. But what I tell them is like, look,

You know, that's going to work for the next like maybe two, three years, but you're going to reach a point to where you've sold to all the people that you know. What marketing does is it helps you meet people that you don't know. Like, how do you, how do you, how do you sell to strangers or how do you open a conversation with strangers? That's what marketing is. And like, you need to build the well before you're thirsty and the best. And so.

Sahil (48:24.505)
Yeah.

Sahil (48:42.628)
Yeah.

Nate Carden (48:46.134)
I'm all about like picking what the highest lever is. And, you know, this is the thing. It's like, we've come full circle where marketing originally was like, how do you distinguish yourself at the market? You know, how do you distinguish your product at the market? And it's, it's like, you, you were there at the market talking to the people who would come up to buy your bar of soap, for instance. and they trusted you.

Sahil (49:11.791)
Right.

Nate Carden (49:16.002)
But what happened is like with industrialization, with like the expansion of railways and distribution, you weren't face to face with your customer anymore. And so for a while there, there was a period where brands were like established trusts with a consumer. But what happened is that consumers, we've been burned.

buying something that we don't need or buying something that like didn't do what they said it would do. And now we've come back full circle where we want to know who's behind the curtain of this company. And so this is why personal branding is the biggest lever for any company is like, you need a face. You have to have a human face in order to sell really. Like Richard Branson has 20 million followers on LinkedIn.

Sahil (49:52.879)
Right.

Nate Carden (50:10.186)
And Virgin Airlines has 500,000.

So like this is what it's like. There are several people that they can follow on LinkedIn. Gal Aga, think is how you pronounce his last name, Adam Robinson. Like this is the new model is like you can, you can operate much leaner with marketing because marketing, you know, sales is kind of like you, you water a little bit, you get a steady, but like predictable return.

with marketing, you know, for the first six months, you might not see a return, but within six months, a year, two years, it's exponential. and so what you also don't, then you don't have like these big sales teams who have families and you feel guilty, letting them go and they're earning commission on every sale that they bring in where maybe your marketing did a lot of the legwork. with marketing, it's like,

You invest in just something as simple as that. It's like the service that I offer people is like, it's half the cost of one salesperson. So for this, you multiply you, your presence, who the CEO is always going to be the best salesperson in the company.

Sahil (51:35.938)
Interesting. So what's the most misunderstood opportunity on LinkedIn right now for a PE VC backed executive?

Nate Carden (51:46.338)
I think, you know, some of the things that I hear, I mentioned like, my clients aren't on there. I think the other thing is like, I don't want to be an influencer. I don't want to bother my clients. Like I don't want to appear desperate. And what I tell them is like, look, your clients want to hear from you. Like you have, they don't realize like how much.

built up experience and industry knowledge that they have. they're sitting on a gold mine. And it's different, it's different, it's thought leadership has become a catchphrase now. And usually what will happen is like, we should do that too. And they'll just have their marketing department take over the CEO's page.

And usually it's like they just try to sell immediately and it kills, it kills the like any momentum that they would have gotten. So the, it's like, look, just be a human being, just add value. Just like, and it could be kind of your takes on the industry. Just share something. Like if you, if you share one post a week, you know,

Publish one, like you don't have to start with a video podcast. You don't have to do something super complicated. Like a lot of those people that I just mentioned.

are just text-based posts on LinkedIn. So that's the best place to get started is you choose one platform, LinkedIn. You don't wanna be on Facebook, especially if you're B2B. Instagram is mostly B2C, direct to consumer, and it's super crowded. It's hard to stand out on Instagram.

Nate Carden (53:37.804)
LinkedIn, it's still a huge opportunity because a lot of people see it as, it's cringy, which means that nobody's posting. So if you post authentic, valuable content, you're going to garner a huge audience quickly.

Sahil (53:57.924)
So if I'm a founder, I'm looking at, I know you have a number of successes, but if we take the success of what you did with your brother in terms of identifying and acquisition, what was different or what was unique about the way that you were planning those posts that attracted such a high quality lead?

Nate Carden (54:23.342)
I think this is maybe like the difference is I think most people think, well, I'll just hire a social media market or a manager. And I could just go to chat GPT and that'll create posts for me, which is fine. And they can do that. I think the value that I offer is very personalized.

It requires, it's a skill to be able to draw out the stories and the lessons learned. And I think that is maybe a competitive advantage that I have is the interviews. So the structure of what I do is like, it takes only two hours of the CEO's time per month. So it's a one hour interview every other week. And in the conversation that I have with them, like they open up.

And sometimes it takes a couple weeks, a couple interviews, maybe a month or two of posting before they're comfortable sharing some of the more personal stories. But the general feat, once they start posting and they start getting comments from people in their network that they haven't heard from in 10 years,

it's the light bulb starts to click and they're like, I want to do more. So I think to answer your question, I think that's the differentiator is being able to make it feel like them. Like to me, that's my, goal that I'm trying to get to is hearing them say, like, that's it. Like that's what I wanted to say, but I didn't know how to say it.

Because when they post on LinkedIn, it feels permanent. And if a CEO sits down to write a post, it takes them four hours.

Nate Carden (56:29.888)
So like in being able to have a month's worth of content, like just from those two hour interviews, like the clients I have see it, see a ton of value in it.

Sahil (56:41.974)
So would you say, know, our firm advises entrepreneurs, operators, and we consider ourselves counsel for risk takers and deal makers. So to what degree

do you think that narrative story is required for anyone considering themselves a deal maker today? It sounds like, know, if you want to make deals in business, you've got to be telling a story. If you're saying, for example, the platform is LinkedIn, and that's the modern equivalent of being the salesperson at the market, how does someone even figure out what their narrative is?

You've gone through, I think, lot of self-reflection and experiences to force you to know who you are. But where does someone even start to discover that question? know, that who am I in an authentic way where it can resonate with other people?

Nate Carden (57:34.904)
Mm-hmm.

Nate Carden (57:44.65)
Right. So the way I think about it is kind of like a, you know, a Venn diagram where, you know, you have the two circles and what you want to do is find that the overlap between your customer base and your interests. And so, you know, one of the, one of the initial processes is, is really you start with your customer.

Like if you want to attract people, it's like you have to talk about things that they're interested in. on the other hand, if you're, if you're talking about things that interest them, but don't interest you, you're, you're going to quickly like stop doing it, stop producing. So you have to find what you're interested in, where your interests overlap with your core, your target audience. So I think it's, it's doing that. Like, I would go talk to your like.

to real humans in real life, like sit down and have a coffee with them. Like, tell me about like, what are your pains? What are your frustrations in your day-to-day life? Like if you have, if they have customers already, that's great. Like take one of them out to lunch, you know, like really hear about what their, what their journey's like, what would be valuable for them to hear? Share that you're like, Hey, I'm looking to start sharing more.

And so I think that's the one piece of it. I think the other piece too is looking at, I would write out, what are the top five things that you know the most about? Because I think a lot of people think, well, what am I interested in talking about? And then it's just like you create an illusion that you could talk about anything when in reality, there are things that you've

just because you're interested in, like listing out what you know the most about will tell you what you're most interested in. More than you like guessing I'm interested in XYZ. Because you know about it because you've spent the time learning about it. And you've spent the time learning about it because you're interested in it. So like you list those out and like that becomes kind of like the starting.

Sahil (59:47.962)
Right.

Sahil (59:52.442)
Right, right.

Nate Carden (01:00:09.57)
piece of building content pillars is what was kind of the technical term we use for it. like choose two to three themes or three to four themes of content pillars that there's endless like post ideas within those themes and just rotate through them. like, you know, for LinkedIn especially, it's like I would pick like each post is one topic, like answer one question.

If it gets too complex, you're going to lose people. it's like each post should be about one thing. It's like one question, one answer.

Sahil (01:00:49.988)
Nate, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a very inspiring podcast. I know our listeners are gonna really enjoy your journey and then also the practical advice. If our listeners wanna follow up with you, whether it's to get started on LinkedIn or to find the best surf spots in Brazil, where can they find you?

Nate Carden (01:01:13.368)
So I think that just shoot me an email. My email is nate at CEO amplifier.com. I think that's the other piece of working with me is like, it's me in several like expert copywriters. You're not talking to a huge agency where you're gonna get lost. think that that's how I want to run a business is I'm not looking to scale to 10 billion.

I want to work with inspiring people and still enjoy the lifestyle that I want. so, yeah, if that fits, like people in your audience, like I'd love to talk to you.

Sahil (01:01:54.65)
Well, perfect. Thank you so much, Nate, for joining us. And to everyone out there, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Letters of Intent. We will catch you next time.