#019 "Nat Eliason - Idea Flow and 30 Year Thinking"

The Brandon Zhang Show

On today’s episode, I sit down with Nat Eliason, the founder of Growth Machine, an SEO content marketing agency. Nat is also the instructor of the premier Roam Research Course Effortless Output and the writer behind a personal blog that attracts millions of viewers every year. On the episode, we talk about why Nat loves Austin, the paradox of passive income, the importance of idea-flow and why Nat has invested $4500 in sleep tech.

Links:
1. Nat's Blog
2. Nat's Twitter
3. My Website
4. My Twitter

5 Key Takeaways:

1. Whenever somebody recommends you like a book or article, you ask them, what did you learn from it? And then it kind of forces them to do a little bit of work explaining why it's worth your time to read this thing. And then you'll get a much better idea from their explanation of whether or not it is worth your time or if you kind of like already get the general idea you're not interested in it.
2. The joy of building a relationship with a city is so much greater than, I think the short, quick pleasures from traveling around constantly and living that Nomad life. And I think that there's a lot of kind of like deception in some of the Nomad life that is unfair to people who are looking up to it, right. It's like a lot of the people who are living in Thailand and Vietnam and a lot of these super-low cost of living places and posting about them being on the beach all the time. It's because they can't really afford to live anywhere else.
3. So when I think of what I love about Austin, a big part of what I love about it is a lot of the relationships I have with people who are focused on like, doing good work in a lot of different areas at a very high skill level. But in a way, that's like making something more available to more people. So like as a good example of this, I think like some of the best coffee I've ever had, like in the country or the world, I guess, is like literally two blocks from my house, and is this guy who's just like absolutely obsessed with coffee.
4. Because if you're ambitious enough to make a lot of money, then you're never going to be happy, like being retired and goofing off, you're always gonna want to work on something. So if you don't kind of like design your life, to have a certain amount of space to do all those fun things now, it's unlikely you're going to make space for it later.
5. Read the Recession Proof Graduate by Charlie Hoehn.