He Made $400k/Month Before 30... Then Realized It Meant Nothing

Moneywise

Hampton

Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.7 • 701 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

MoneyWise is a Hampton podcast. Hampton is a private, vetted community for founders doing $3M or more in revenue. Apply at https://www.joinhampton.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=yt051126.

From Minecraft maps to $400k months — but the money isn't the story.

Nathan May grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Ohio. His mom made $32,000 a year. He never left the state until he was 18. At 15, he was selling custom Minecraft maps to famous YouTubers and making his first $100K. He went to Wharton, joined BCG, quit, and built one of the fastest-growing newsletter agencies in the country before turning 30.

But the week he hit his first million dollars, his mom died. And he felt nothing.

In this episode, Nathan gets brutally honest about what money actually gave him — and what it didn't. We go deep on the community he's built in New York with a group of founders sharing an office, a monthly revenue leaderboard, and the kind of real talk that doesn't happen anywhere else. He calls it the Media Mafia. He says it's changed his life more than any dollar amount ever has.

We also get into:

Growing up in poverty and never leaving Ohio until 18
How a Minecraft addiction became his first real business
Leaving a six-figure BCG career to bet on himself
Building a $1M ARR agency in under a year with 1,000 newsletter subscribers
His actual net worth, his $10M target, and why he keeps almost no cash
Why he thinks the wealthiest people he knows are often the least happy

Timestamps

00:00 - Cold open
00:58 - Introducing Nathan May
01:23 - Small talk / how Nathan starts his day
02:32 - The agency, the numbers, how life has changed
03:24 - Growing up poor in Ohio — never left the state until 18
05:35 - He originally wanted to be an actor
06:04 - The Minecraft business: how a video game addiction made him $100K at 15
09:05 - Wharton, Wall Street culture shock, and the path to BCG
10:36 - What BCG actually changed about his life
12:01 - Building the agency: newsletters, Schwarzenegger, and why it felt like video games again
15:32 - His real relationship with money: checking account, savings, leverage strategy
16:52 - The $10M number: how he used ChatGPT to find his "enough"
18:34 - The Media Mafia: seven founders, one office, a monthly revenue leaderboard
20:31 - Being at the cusp — exciting, terrifying, or both?
23:07 - Why IRL community is the highest-leverage thing a founder can build
26:03 - What Hampton means to him
27:31 - His mom's passing, the $1M milestone, and why none of it felt like anything
29:24 - Can you be successful without community?
31:39 - What's next and closing thoughts

MoneyWise is the podcast where high-net-worth founders get radically transparent about how they actually make, spend, invest, and think about money. Hosted by Daniel Berk and presented by Hampton.

Sponsors:
Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We're selling custom Minecraft maps.
0:01.3	It's how I made my first $100,000.
0:03.0	You sold Minecraft, you made $100,000.
0:05.4	And at one point, you made much more than that, right? The first, like, net worth milestone I had ever had, what was a million dollars. I thought, like, that was the whole goal, was to, like, be a millionaire. I grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Ohio. My mom made $31, $32,000 a year. I become a millionaire within a couple weeks, literally weeks of her passing.
0:23.4	She passed away from Staceyvling. In Ohio, my mom made $31, $32,000 a year. I had become a millionaire within a couple weeks, literally weeks of her passing.
0:23.6	She passed away from Staceyville and cancer.
0:25.6	I remember getting a call from my cousin and I was on a ski trip for BCG.
0:29.6	Do you think there's a way to be successful without the community?
0:33.6	All the stuff that people told me was going to make me happy.
0:37.5	Um, totally no, wrong.
0:40.8	Every single thing.
0:41.8	I did not feel like happy from the money at all.
0:44.8	I think like community and doing something that you feel isn't meaningful.
0:48.3	I think that is successful. Today's guest is Nathan May.
1:00.2	He grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Ohio and never even left the state until he was 18.
1:05.5	Now his company did $400,000 in a single month, and he rins out a huge office space with eight other business
1:12.2	entrepreneurs in New York City. This is Nathan May on MoneyWise. Welcome back to another
1:17.6	episode of MoneyWise. I have a guest here, Nathan May. Thanks so much for joining us today,
1:22.2	Nathan. How are you doing? I'm doing fantastic, dude. Happy Friday. I'm feeling great. Fantastic.
1:26.9	Okay. What about your life today is
1:28.4	fantastic. Tell me about what brings you to the episode this morning and why today is fantastic.
1:33.1	Not that many calls and stuff like this where I just get to like the whole day is just I get to be
	...

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