One friend that I grew up with is now a best selling author and a multi-millionaire from speaking tours... and he's about 35 years old.

Big things started with his book deal, and to an outsider or even some of our friend it may have seemed like that came out of nowhere. But, he knew he wanted a book deal so he worked backwards from there. He researched for months on how people were getting their first book deal with large publishers. OK, they needed a good agent. How were they getting good book agents? OK, there's lot of different ways. But how can I get a good book agent to talk to me?

Oh ok, I need a good idea and some proof that people find it interesting. What sort of things are popular right now? Let me start a social media property around this idea. Wow, it's getting very popular -- this is the proof I need for a book deal. Let me send it around to some of the best book agents and see what they think. Oh wait, they need it in draft format. How do I write a draft? OK, that's how you write a draft.

From "wanting a book deal" to having a book deal was about a 4 year process while he worked a 9-5 executive job. Oh, I skipped over his childhood and college eduction... he also went to a top business school, and then to an Ivy league business school for his masters, and had good grades from a young age.

But the book deal didn't happen to him because he had good grades, he made good grades by putting in the work and made a book deal happen because from a young age he was the type of person who knew what he wanted and figured out what he had to do to make it happen, and then most importantly: he did those things.

If you look at Nathan's biography, it's the same thing... a bunch of small steps to eventually get his own show.