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Category: Newsletter Strategies
Tags: BusinessGrowthMarketingMonetizationNewsletters
Entities: Industry DiveJustin WelshMorning BrewNathanSam ParrThe Feed MediaThe Neuron
00:00
Did you say you're running a 1 million ARR with a thousand person list? Yeah, if you're going to buy a newsletter, like you want to be really careful about it.
It's definitely easy to build just like a list that doesn't have any quality behind it and then sell it and hope for the best. The leverage in the newsletter is that
00:16
like it comes from you and it's your words and somebody replies, they reply to you. If you're not in this for the right reasons or you're not going to stick with it more than 6 months, then just don't even start.
It's not worth it. First question you should ask is not how I get the subscribers.
It's like how am I going to monetize when I do have them?
00:32
And for most people it should be Nathan. I'm excited to have you on the show.
We you and I just get together randomly and jump on calls or have coffee and talk through newsletter
00:47
stuff. So thought it'd be fun to have you on and just kind of talk newsletter stuff.
Guys, I'm uh I'm pumped to be here. Yeah, this is awesome.
Yeah. Do you want to tell people a little bit about yourself so they have some context of who you are and why you're interesting?
TLDDR on us. So I run an agency.
Um
01:03
we're called the Feed Media and we do paid growth uh for a lot of the biggest newsletter brands. People are spending 50 300 $500,000 a month on newsletters profitably.
And we do that for like we do all Facebook ads. We do it for two groups of people like personal brands, people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse
01:19
Puji, Tyler Denk, and then what I call like media or newsletter native media companies, the neuron, the rundown, the point sky, stuff like that. That's my uh that's my world.
How did you get into the newsletter space? I don't think I know this answer, so I'm curious.
I'll tell you something crazy. Uh so, so
01:35
it's weird, right? Because all my like uh everybody in the space is friends, but technically my competitors or whatever, they they came from like newsletters, right?
One of them worked at the hustle and the other one worked at uh at Morning Brew. Um I didn't do any of that stuff.
Uh so I the way I found about newsletters was I used to
01:51
run a big mobile app portfolio like 1520$20 million mobile app portfolio. We we raised a bunch of money.
We were buying mobile apps from from indie entrepreneurs. And I thought mobile apps were like I don't know like little widgets.
I was like oh this is like cute. It turns out they're they're super badass businesses.
So, for instance,
02:06
there are these two guys. They have a newsletter.
So, I'll uh this will be full circle, but Dave and Joel, these two Singaporean guys, and they had a a $12 million a year uh mobile app portfolio uh with like 50% ebida margins, which is is wild. Um and it
02:22
crazy stuff you'd never think about like logo makers or like screen recorders like random little iOS apps on on your phone. Uh they don't know how to code.
uh uh they had like a Indian development team do the whole thing and that whole team in aggregate was maybe $400,000 on on $12 million revenue. So it's like
02:37
nothing. It's like 3% revenue.
Um anyway uh so they also had a newsletter that did a million dollars a year. They didn't write the newsletter.
Uh they did a supplement brand that did like seven figures. They're just like crazy directors marketers.
And I thought like oh to have a big company you gota you
02:55
got to go to A16Z. You got to go to Sequoia.
You got that like you got to raise. That's what it means to have a company.
And then these guys were just getting after it. And in the same way that like mobile apps were badass businesses, I thought they had that newsletter.
I was like, "Oh, I bet newsletters could be that too." They knew about Sean Pur and the Milk Road
03:10
and Beehive. Um, and that's how I went down the the newsletter rabbit hole.
That's fun. So, you you started working with them.
Was that essentially what happened? My first client was uh The Neuron or these two two folks, the Neuron and then um Oh my gosh.
Uh this guy Julius. uh
03:27
Julius who writes a newsletter called Bold Push. He he like he's a big LinkedIn influencer and all he talks about is like events and event marketing.
So those are my two my two first clients. It was pretty wild and here we are now.
That's cool. Yeah.
Yeah. I I had some small newsletters too.
I had I never talked about this because it wasn't like a a big deal or anything, but I had like
03:43
a like a tiny crypto newsletter that I sold to the the Milk Road and then uh the feed which is my agency. So the feed was like you you scroll the the feed like social media.
That was the idea. But um it it was a newsletter.
So, I used to do uh I always was obsessed with
03:58
founders who had built audiences and how much of a flywheel that was, you know, like Sam Par, you know, Sam Par could start any company he wanted and he has this religious group of people who love him who who would support him and everything he does and I just thought that was incredible. There's so many people that are are like that.
Justin Welsh, Alex Becker, a bunch of different
04:14
folks. Um so, I used to do case studies um on these types of entrepreneurs and a lot of them had newsletters.
So actually technically like originally the feed would have been a newsletter that I think technically would have competed with growth in reverse like back in the day because I was doing like case studies on like very similar uh people
04:31
and I I would look at like like I did the uh I did a case study on like Justin Walsh and so I I read your uh write up on Justin and like I watched like a bunch of podcasts from Justin so I I was reading your content like all the time religiously. I loved it.
That's awesome. I didn't know that.
04:46
I don't think we've talked about that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's super cool.
Yeah, that is cool. Awesome.
Um, and so now you're working with some of those folks and then you've gotten connected to other people that you're working with through those. Um, I know the Neuron is one that you talk about all the time.
You actually almost
05:02
bought it when they were going to sell. So, that's a fun story that I'm sure will never be unpainful for you.
Yeah. H that sucked.
I still think they should have sold it to me. I think I I think I would have been I like the the guy who runs it now.
He it's this
05:18
awesome dude. This guy Rob Balon font.
He has he's a crazy bootstrap company. So they they've gone he started in college and I think they do uh this is like what's public.
I think they do like4 or $50 million a year something something really big like that uh with a bunch of like lead genen and newsletters
05:34
and all kind of like B2B media properties. They're kind of like an industry dive or stuff like that.
So we lost the deal to to them but uh it was cool. It was cool to see like the the deal process and there were a lot of like I don't know things I would have done.
It would have the deal would have closed in January and so it would have
05:50
dramatically changed how I treated this year but the whole idea was uh I mean I knew everything about the neuron because we'd done their growth and my buddy Walter did their ad sales and so like we just knew everything and I and and we worked with their largest competitor uh the the rundown as well and so like it
06:07
would have been cool basically I would have bought it and we would have continued to grow it and there's some tweaks we would have made to the to the growth but it would have been 90% the same and then I was going to do like the industry dive playbook book. So, if people don't know History Dive, it's a super badass uh portfolio of B2B newsletters.
They went from 0 to $110
06:25
million a year in like 10 years, something like that, seven, seven or eight years, and then they sold for $525 million in like 2021, 2022. But they would have super B2B stuff like, you know, waste management dive and, you know, education dive.
They had retail
06:40
dive, marketing dive, all the different stuff. But their whole thing was they would get like it wasn't about how many people were on the list.
it was about who was on the list and so they'd have all these cos and stuff and then they do really highriced like webinars and white papers like all this deep B2B stuff. So you've got your your newsletter sponsorships and it's like how do you
06:57
fully monetize the list even more? So we would have done that and then the other big thing we were going to do so I'm a huge fan of uh the idea I think it's awesome when enemies become friends.
So, so for instance, like uh so Sam Parr from the Hustle and Austin Reef, they
07:13
they hate each other, right? Because they they used to run like competing newsletters and now they're literally best friends.
They spend a ton of time together. Sam uh just moved uh back to New York City and he was going to buy a place.
He he didn't win the bid, but he he was bidding on a place, an apartment
07:28
in Austin Reef building so that they could live together and raise their kids together. Like that's how close they are, which I think is like amazing.
So, my version of that is um Rowan and like the neuron and the rundown. I it's not I don't think they like dislike each other, right?
But they're not like they're not like going skiing together,
07:45
you know what I mean? They're not like besties.
Um and so Rowan has this incredible AI community that is behind his newsletter. Um and Ron did not have that.
And so we had like a affiliate deal worked out. So I would have just like done all the work that we do, which is like driving traffic and like converting that traffic into people who who buy, but for Rowan's community.
Um,
08:02
and I think that would have been whatever maybe $300 to $500,000 in the first year, which is like, you know, basically straight down to IBA, right? Because there no costs, right?
It's just the team we already have like doing what we do for other people. So, yeah, sucked.
I want I want to get that deal. That would have been fun to have like
08:18
that audience to just build the monetization around, which is something that I feel like you love doing. Yeah, it would have been cool.
And I think like uh part of it too is is like an agency owner. This happens a lot in e-commerce.
Like agency owners will become brand owners. I kind of want to do that.
Like I I like running the
08:34
agency. I enjoy it a lot.
But um I want to be like one of them, you know. I want to be like, you know, actual peers, you know, the people that we we work with and and a lot of people come to us and I think we give good advice.
We do awesome work, but it it's different when you also run a publication. I really wanted that.
Um, so
08:49
that's exactly why I stopped doing service work and went and built my own thing. So I was like, well that was fun, but also like you see how well you can grow somebody else's thing and it's like can I just do that for myself like see what happens.
Yeah. So I'm I'm always on the lookout.
I mean that that was definitely opportunistic like I wasn't like seeking
09:06
you know actively. Um but I think like yeah I think in the next like whatever two to five years like I would um I try to buy something.
So, you have not yet bought a newsletter or you just tried to acquire? Uh, yeah, I haven't bought a newsletter.
I think the uh I think for a while. So,
09:23
I think people if you're going to buy a newsletter like you want to be really careful about it. It's very easy to buy like a list.
So, so like the neuron did that. The neuron bought like lists like basically lots of AI founders started newsletters.
We can get into this like I think a lot of people do this wrong. They start newsletters and they didn't
09:40
have the monetization figured out and they get stuck to this or addicted to this like drug. Oh, my subscriber count is going up or my cost per lead is super low and they're not thinking about the actual like outcome.
They're getting distracted by the pretty pink chart, you know, in Beehive or whatever the the ESP is. Um, and I think it's important to
09:56
like just be honest with yourself like you don't have a business until you actually are monetizing. So, a lot of these folks never monetized and then newsletters like the Neuron buy them up for less than a dollar per subscriber.
Um, and you know, frankly, a lot of those lists, you know, are not super
10:12
high quality, um, is something that we we found. And so, I think it's very important to buy a list that is making like IBA like actually makes profit or or if you already have a big newsletter, there's arbitrage, right?
So, so like they actually made out quite well on those lists because they the important thing actually if you're going to buy a
10:27
newsletter, if you haven't started one, it's like the most valuable thing is actually the sales relationship. If you're selling ads, it's very hard to like build a relationship with HubSpot or some of the companies that are buying ads in the Neuron.
That that's actually the real value of of the deal. I wouldn't buy a newsletter that did not have that.
Yeah, that's super interesting. Um it's
10:43
definitely easy to build just like a list that doesn't have any quality behind it and then sell it and hope for the best. But I think you're right, like if people can look past just the number, it's like that's the whole game, right?
People get distracted, I think, by, you know, like there's a uh I think we hit a
10:59
million dollars in AR when I had maybe uh maybe maybe a thousand, maybe 1500 people on the list. I had no following on LinkedIn.
And and there's other examples like I'm not the only one. Like there's Alexi always cites this um there's this woman on Instagram who she
11:16
does over a million dollars a year. She has 9,000 followers on on her Instagram and I think she's got some email late email list and a lot of other stuff.
The reason her thing works is she she'll get like 100 views, 200 views on her Instagram reels, but her niche is like she like works at a hospital system. And
11:33
she is extremely dialed in um on the billing between the hospital and the insurance companies, which I don't know a lot about healthcare, but like it's barely it's this huge battle. And so the hospital does work and then they collect from the insurance company and the insurance companies like oh you didn't
11:48
do this code or oh we're going to pay you know there's all there's all this mess because they want you know they want the money for themselves and so her thing is like yeah I have lived in how to navigate that and like actually get the money that you should have and so that's worth a lot a tremendous amount to the right type of person and so I'm a
12:05
big fan of like that's cons maybe that's B2B 10 list but I'm a big fan of like small but mighty lists there lots of lists that are five 10 you know when we did the Jesse Puji launch I mean that that did a quarter million dollars on 15,000 people like small but minute lists are are a real thing.
12:21
Did you say you're running 1 million ARR with a thousand person list? Yeah.
So we went from zero to million. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It was cool. So So we went from zero to a million AR in about uh 10 and a half months closer to 11
12:36
months uh last year. So we hit it in uh I don't know December of 2024.
Um, and basically I had a bunch of stuff I had to figure out when I entered this market cuz like uh everybody else who does newsletter ads like they either came from the industry or they had like a
12:53
huge following. Um, and so I was like like what do what what do I do?
Like how do I like that's a lot to to go up against? Um, and so I think two or three things worked really well.
One of them was was this newsletter. I didn't know it was going to be a good idea but now I think it's a very good idea.
So I I
13:09
think like any founder if you run a B2B company, so you sell you sell a service, right? That could be an agency, that could be you could be a lawyer, you could be, you know, whatever mortgage guy, any any kind of like service or B2B SAS, um I think you are being financially irresponsible if you do not
13:24
have a newsletter. And so what I did, which I didn't know before, is I thought, all right, um I want to do a newsletter and well, who who do I really need to work with?
like uh at at each of these newsletter companies, there are maybe like two people, you know, I need I need like the CEO or the founder and I
13:40
need the the head of growth or or the VP of marketing. That's it.
And so like if maybe there's like 300 newsletter companies that I want to work 300 times two 600. Okay, can I get 600 people that that's like an Excel list?
Like I can go one by one by one. I can meet those people at conferences.
I can email them.
13:56
I can LinkedIn message them. Like it it takes this giant like nebulous world.
It's like oh my god like how do I do I run ads? write cold email.
Like there's all these people I could reach. I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no.
You just need the 600. Can you just get 200 of the 600?
I I can do that." Um, and so
14:11
that's what I I started doing. And I basically I would go and I think this also is important.
I I made it uh a private newsletter. So So you had to be uh it's kind of cute.
You had to be like like invited, you know, like invite you to the newsletter. And um I would LinkedIn message people uh and I have a
14:26
bunch of screenshots of this and stuff. Like for instance, so I I LinkedIn message Sean Griffy uh who who was the one of the three co-founders of industry dive you know big big deal big guy and I just go hey you know I you know evening Sean like I run a private newsletter for newsletter operators who are doing seven
14:42
eight nine figures you know it's generally for CEOs and their heads of growth a couple people like X and Y and Z read X and Y and Z were mutual connections that we had or a lot of times I'll do um competitors of the person that I'm messaging so it's like oh they see their peers are reading this
14:58
newsletter. Okay, now I've now elevated the status of the newsletter.
Would you mind if I add you? And then I I manually add them.
They give me their email and then I I don't put them give them some landing page where it's like, oh, here you you go do it, right? White glove.
I do it for them and I add them. Yeah,
15:14
that's been a great tactic. Well, and then when you send out the newsletter, you actually at the top say, "Welcome to blah blah blah." And like there's four or five really big names that have joined in the last week and it just like solidifies the reason I'm reading this newsletter.
like, "Oh, yeah. So is Tyler Dank and, you know,
15:29
Nathan Barry or whoever reading this newsletter." And I think that's such a smart move, too. Yeah.
I uh I feel I think I stole that from something. I can't remember.
Uh but I I like that part as well. And a lot of people email uh about that.
And and like for somebody like listening to this, like I don't have like uh my newsletter
15:46
is like super ugly. Like there's no there's no design.
It's like it's literally just like an email from me. Like but but I think that's by I think that's an I think that's a good thing like like if you like sell like a high ticket or like healthy product or
16:02
service like people want to hear from you and I I think the mistake so if you were going to go do this I think everybody who has an existing company should go do this because no nobody does it by the way so actually so this is important to know okay why is this better than like cold emailing people well number one Sean Griffy is not going to get on a sales call with me like
16:18
that's not Sean doesn't know me it's like who is Nathan I don't I don't care about this right so the barrier to entry for a newsletter is significantly for people who do get on sales calls with me. Typically, if you're a B2B business owner, you have like all right, you get on call with somebody, let's say they don't close, you know, you're not going
16:34
to have a chance to get on another call with that person for maybe another quarter. So, so maybe there's like four times per year you could potentially close somebody, right, for for your product or your service.
Um, so newsletter, right? And then so you have this huge list now and and then if I want to reach out to people, I have to individually reach out to all them.
Well, so a newsletter kind of solves all
16:50
that, right? Like the the friction is extremely low.
Anybody would join. And now I'm building trust and I every time I hit publish, I have a chance to potentially get on a sales call with somebody.
And I write one thing and it reaches every single person that I would
17:06
potentially want to work with. That's like I think why it's so valuable.
Well, and the content is like case studies of what you've done or like these badass stories from people you're working with. And so you're like you're showcasing your clients, which is amazing.
I'm sure they love that. you're also showcasing the value you you
17:23
provide and like what you can do and then you're just kind of putting it all together in a newsletter and delivering it nicely to them. Yeah.
I wouldn't um I wouldn't delegate it like like I got on a call with uh do you know Eric Su at all? Yeah.
He he runs like a big SEO agency called Single Grain and he he's um he's really
17:38
good friends with uh Yeah, they they've been around. Yeah, they're they've been around for a long time.
They're they're cool. Like they're like buddy buddy.
They they live near each other in LA. They're they're like an cool like agency owner uh pair.
Eric's doing this for his company and I think the mistake that Eric is making um is
17:54
like he's delegating it to like his content team. I think that's the worst thing that you can you can do and that's no disrespect to anybody's content team.
Like the leverage in the newsletter is that like it comes from you like the founder and it's your words and somebody replies they reply to you not like a
18:10
member of your content team. Um I think so I think that's the other important thing like that is not a part of the business that I would ever delegate and I don't recommend anybody.
So with the because you have more than 600 subscribers now. So you've opened it up a little bit in terms of that initial list.
Yeah. So then so the stuff that I'm have
18:27
to figure out now is like um so we opened up a little bit. So like for instance like uh Brad Wolverton who who used to lead content at the hustle like did like a write up on us and so we like opened up you know for that and so a couple hundred people came from that or
18:42
uh we do other small things like that like we you and I you and I did that summit with with Beehive and we open I opened the newsletter up to people who attended that summit. uh it is becoming more um so this was a double-edged sword uh in in my business which is like so we
18:58
did a very good job of like I I hope I don't know building rapport and like let me just give a bunch of information like like like uh stuff that I think other people would charge for. We just gave it away for free.
Uh and I think that's very important to do and we did that and all the content we write is for people
19:14
who are already doing six, seven, eight, nine figures. I do not write um beginner level level content and that's good for the agency.
Issue is uh well we've not really built any like distribution audience with like somebody who is just starting their newsletter trying to get their first 100 subscribers or trying to get to their first $100,000 with their
19:30
newsletter. We've done a very bad job of that.
And I had this buddy, this buddy Rowan who runs the rundown. Tell me that.
We went we uh all went out with this guy Walter together to SF like last October. And Rowan was like, "Dude, what are you doing?
Like you need to be like writing content on on LinkedIn. Like this is the whole thing.
You got to do
19:46
this this this." I was like, "I'm I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it." Um and so that's what I've been trying to do more of.
Um you know, the what not like acquiring the neuron meant is like now I have to like figure out new ways to grow the the business. Certainly the agency will continue to grow, but like
20:02
uh I want to start to stack other things on. And so like uh part of doing that I think like requires that we I hope like really cool stuff that like if you're just starting your newsletter will be really useful.
Doesn't that dilute the like the coolness and like exclusivity of like being on your private newsletter?
20:18
Yeah. So, um, it's still like decently hard to get on it.
Like, uh, like we did a we got a feature with, uh, creator spotlight, like behind open up for that. I'm going to probably later today like close it up again.
I think what I got to figure out is so right now everybody
20:34
gets the same content. Um, I actually think that's not going to be the case in like a month or two.
I think like advanced people will get my private newsletters and then everybody else will get like more kind of like regular business as usual content. But I I do have to solve for that.
And this is kind of like me like uh like I'll figure this
20:49
out. I don't know.
Like I'm looking at what other people do and like um and stuff and try to figure that out. Uh but yeah, I still think it's such like a a valuable way for anyone getting started who wants to like build a service business or even just like a small niche business to like start that way.
I think
21:06
it's such a smart move. I think it's the easiest thing to do like and and I you know if you are like a creator or you want to start a newsletter and get to let's say just you know 10k a month even I think ads can help but I I think there's this whole like I think it's wrong
21:22
it's very hard to build a big business just selling ads because you you really to like be interesting to so so there's two ways to do it right like you could you could go over simpify a little bit right now like you could go and you could have ads sold for you for like the BI of ad network and I think Kit does
21:38
some of that stuff too, right? There's basically networks now where like you can have HubSpot or Nike, whoever as a sponsor and you don't have to worry about you don't have to hop on sales call.
It's just like done for you. The problem with that is that if you sell your own ad inventory, you might get, you know, a 20 to $40 CPM depending on
21:54
your on your niche on average. And there's plenty of newsletters that break that rule.
But um well that's good because that means like so $30 CPM is basically every single time somebody opens you make 1/ 1,000th of that or 3 cents, right? So you know you can see a path where like oh I get 10,000 people,
22:10
you know, 5,000 open, you know, whatever a newsletter where I think the math is like if you have a 20 or 30,000 person newsletter and you have a healthy open rate, you know, you can get to like 5 to 10k a month. But like the if you do the networks, your CPM is not $30.
Your CPM is like $5. And so that's like
22:25
interesting like you can generate revenue but if you want to do something where the newsletter is now a business right it replaces your full-time income you need to go direct sold which means you need to like get to a certain size and so I think it is far easier to do ads and something else. So, you had you had CJ uh on uh I I was messaging CJ
22:43
about this and at the at the very end of the podcast he was like uh he mentioned the media mullet and I was like, "Ah, yes. Uh amazing.
I'm I'm I'm getting it out there." Cuz I've always thought that like it can be uh media in the front uh like a product in the back of some way. And so
22:58
this mullet, the medium. Yeah.
Yeah. It's the mullet.
Who wrote about that? Was it Mario?
I have no idea. It sound very melody.
That's cuz it is. It's supposed to be like that.
Party in the front, business in the back. Yeah.
Yeah. Um I So I think everybody should have a
23:15
media mullet and and a media mullet is basically I think it's I think it's good to say things that people can visualize. It's kind of silly, but you should have ad supported newsletter in the front back here, you know, right right here.
And then what you want is you want party in the back. You want party of high LTV
23:31
products that sit in the back. So if you look at every big newsletter business, the ones that who really succeed are doing this.
The hustle had ad supported newsletter in the front. They had trends $300 per person community in the back that had something like 15 to 20,000 paying users.
It was something like a five to7 million AR business. It's I
23:48
think Sam has said that like maybe three or four people were staffed on that business, right? So, so sure maybe that was comparable to the size of the hustle ad sales, but when you actually look at the profit trends versus the newsletter business to be I think they had like five or six sales people and like five
24:05
growth people and so writers they're paying 100, you know, $150,000 a year. My guess is the newsletter business was probably like a 20% margin and that's cuz they were in growth mode.
So I don't want to like you know plenty newsletter business have 30 40% margins. I think the SAS or the the community business I
24:20
think that was like a 90% margin business if I if I had to guess and so it's very important to have that block works Jason Yanowitz right that's newsletters and podcasts in the front but then they've got events they've got an agency business basically like a consulting business for crypto they've
24:36
got um uh like an enterprise like data platform that sits behind there right so all these kind of businesses the Van Trump report right they this is a guy who makes $20 million a year with like two employees they do subscription content on agriculture like so so like you you want something high TV in the
24:51
back and so like even if you're a creator who has you know 5,000 followers think about like what skills do you have that you could teach somebody uh because 5,000 people on your list you know if you're niche down enough like can you get like one person two people to pay
25:06
you just $250 a month to start for your time like can you sell your time in some way and I think that is probably the most valuable thing you can do because you don't necessarily need to go to the agency route after at actually selling your time to five 10 people. Now you intimately understand your newsletter subscriber and when you want to launch a
25:23
digital product like a course, an accelerator, whatever, whatever you want to do afterward, you're getting paid to do your own customer research. And so I think that's one of the best places to to start.
Yeah. And you're also like glossing over the fact that yes, Samar and the hustle, they had like that huge sponsorship
25:38
business and then trends on the back end was even if it was just like the same income like bringing in the same amount of revenue. The people that were in trends are now like dying for him to restart that because it was such a good product and they loved being part of it.
And like I see it all the time like
25:54
randomly log into my Facebook account. I'm like people are trying to get trends back going and like talking to people and being like how do we get this started again?
And it's just like he built such a raving fan base around the back end of that and you don't get that just by selling sponsorships. So I think there's that too.
26:09
I was talking to uh Justin Gordon the uh uh that guy we did a run together in New York like two months ago. Uh he he smoked me.
I don't know if you he's like crazy fast runner by the way. He's so fast.
I see him on Strava all the time and I'm like I am never running with you because
26:25
I will die. He's he's crazy.
I I've run with a couple people. Uh I I tried to do that like oh if I if I'm going to meet somebody like oh let let's like also go on a run that's like kind of fun.
Uh he was the only one where like and and not it wasn't even close like by by a long
26:40
shot like I had to be like hey man uh could we like walk uh for a little bit like is that is that chill? Is that all right?
Uh he's really fast. Um, but he he's got a big community of founders like, "Dude, you should like we're talking about maybe you should just like restart trends." And it's it's wild.
By
26:56
the way, like I don't know people I I was never in trend, so I never got to see the inside, but I've seen like the outcomes of that. Like um Cody Sanchez, who now like you know does over $10 million a year with her business.
Like she started in trends basically. Like there's all these like juggernaut people
27:13
who when you look back they they were in trends. That that's that's pretty cool.
Yeah, that is pretty cool. Um, I think there's something about building that community on the back end.
It's just like it goes with you no matter if you sell your business or what. Like people are still wanting that back.
So, yes, you want to be uh you want to be
27:30
known well, not not well known. I think that's important.
Well, cool. So, I know you have this whole thing about like the four types of people who should start newsletters.
Do you want to share that? You mentioned that in your little list that you sent over.
So, I'd love to hear what you think about that. Yeah.
Yeah. Your how do I choose frameworks were were interesting.
I'm I'm curious to learn about those.
27:45
I want to know what you guys think, too. Like I so we so we just did this uh accelerator with uh Beehive and and the way the way we did it so we had uh we we had 250 300 people join and basically a hundred of those were team members of like the biggest uh newsletter companies
28:02
I invited for my newsletter. We had like the Hustle, we had New York Times, we had Morning Brew, we had the Gist, we had Superhum, we had like all the all the all the big folks.
And then we had 200 spots that were um either people who went to the summit or who uh just like raffled um and and um that was cool
28:17
because it was the first time I spent a in a long time that I've spent like a significant amount of time around people who are like trying to get their first 10,000 or or get to their first $100,000. And yeah, I think uh a couple of my learnings from that I I think there are like yeah, three or four types
28:33
of people for whom a newsletter tends to work the best. There's so many cases where somebody can succeed, but I'm just saying like on average like the most likely to succeed are are four.
So one I think is um you create any creator should have a newsletter. Like if you're trying to build an audience on X or
28:48
LinkedIn or YouTube or whatever, trying to figure out ways to pull down that audience to your newsletter is one of the most important things that you can you can do. The number one channel for Alexi for like the revenue that he makes, it's not like reals or YouTube or
29:04
any of that. It's it's it's his it's his email list um 100%.
And like he's he's a big steward of like building that out. Um the second group, I think I don't know this group as well, but are are journalists.
So, so and we've all kind of seen this, right? Like there's a like there's a lot of distrust in like
29:19
traditional media houses. So, a lot of journalists.
Um, we just started working with this guy Oliver Darcy who used to be like a big time journalist at CNN uh in in broke away and runs an incredible newsletter called Status and like it's just crazy to see like how people love
29:35
his content like how sticky that is with people. And so, so I think if you're like a well-known like writer like do your own thing is like a move right now.
I think the third is uh business owners. Every founder in B2B should have a newsletter.
And I think the fourth is like if if you're like newsletter
29:50
curious. I think there's a a much more predictable path of how you avoid the like, oh, I got to 5 or 10,000 subscribers over 3 years or or or got there with ads and spent a bunch of my money but I never got that money back.
Like how do you avoid those situations? Because that's actually what happens to
30:06
like 70 or 80% of those people. And I think it's version of that.
the bucket of those people who are thoughtful trying to monetize as quickly as possible. So like if I was going to start, you know, a new newsletter, I would like a budget uh because I'm I'm I'm trying to pay with my dollars instead of my time.
You you'll pay for
30:23
your subscribers one way or the other. You'll pay with them with your time or you'll pay with them with with your dollars.
I would set a three to six month timeline. We're like, "All right, I'm going to whatever spend $15,000.
that's my budget for this newsletter initiative and I'm going to try to as quickly as possible get a couple sponsors and sell some kind of like
30:39
product or service. Like that's the people who do that I think are the ones who do quite well and that's like hey I'm coming to this with like not a big audience if if you have an existing audience even if it's 5 or 10,000 people and you are B2B or able to monetize that
30:56
at a B2B level. So for instance like there are you know people who sell for instance like fitness coaching or or like uh you know other types of transformation around jobs, investments, life transformations like losing weight or looking better, dating better where you can sell things that are $1,000 or
31:12
more that can completely work with a small audience or even no audience uh sometimes. But but if you're not in those categories, right, like then you you either need to like you need to have a big audience if you're trying to grow organically.
Um, you know, like I I I think the I looked at a bunch of
31:28
creators like Justin Welsh and Dicky Bush and all these folks and like I think the average is like people convert 10 to 20%, you know, their audience down to the newsletter. And you know, I love this um you put together this graphic that was like all the people you studied like what was the average time it took them to get to like 50,000 subscribers
31:43
and it was something like was it like a year and a half, two years, something like that? Yeah, I mean it's a it's gotten so much faster over the last couple years.
I was just looking at this the other day. Um, if you started back in like 2014, it took like 8 years on average.
And now it's like 24 months is like the average
31:58
to 50K. Uh, which is just wild because now you have things like recommendations.
People are getting more savvy with paid ads for newsletters. Um, there's just all kinds of like boosts you can use and refine and all those things.
So, if you really want to grow that number, it's totally
32:14
possible these days. Uh, and it's just gotten so much faster.
But my caveat with that is like if you're just starting and you don't know if your content resonates or like who your audience is or or that kind of thing, like I am a huge proponent of waiting until you have like at least a thousand subscribers, if not a few more uh until
32:31
you start running paid ads because otherwise, who are you sending it to? Who's what what content are they getting?
Are they going to enjoy it? Because if you if you burn that trust like early on, it's kind of hard to get them back later.
So, um yeah, but it's it's a whole whole can of worms, I think. and how you're going to monetize
32:47
too will play a big part. Like if you don't know how you're going to monetize this audience, then there's no point in sinking a bunch of time and money into it.
The Yeah, it's it's the first question you should ask. It it's like it's the I think first question you should ask is not how I get the subscribers.
It's like how am I going to monetize when I do have them? And for most people, it
33:03
should be choose ads and then one other thing from like products or services, digital products or or services. Services can be coaching and consulting, right?
not just like uh I'm an agency or I I do your taxes and I'm an accountant or something like that because that
33:19
needs to be the like okay cool if I'm going to monetize with consulting like I need to I I want to be able to get one client by the time I have 1500 subscribers so that now now you have like a like a goal that like actually a goal that translates into uh revenue getting to 1500 subscribers not
33:34
automatically translate into revenue right getting the first consulting client or getting the first ad sponsor is what translates into revenue okay so you have four types of people who should start a newsletter who do you think should not start a newsletter. Um, so if you are impatient, you need to be in one of those four buckets and you
33:51
need to like you need to create a sandbox that's like how do I find out in 3 to 6 months if this will work the answer could be no that this particular idea doesn't work. My sale to milk was like it was an okay amount of money but was a giant amount of money and and like
34:06
me doing the case studies for the the feed and you know we got some subscription revenue but it was like a couple thousand dollars a month. it was it was not meaningful.
And so like oh I was like oh why don't I just turn that in an agency and I'm writing all these people with personal brands and newsletters. Why don't I just go work with those people actually instead and charge $4,000 or $5,000 a month instead
34:22
of you know charging a regular person you know $10 a month. You you need to set that that sandbox even if the answer is no because if the answer is no that's okay.
It just means you now have you could go choose another idea and you haven't not you've not wasted too much of the most valuable thing which is your
34:37
time. The worst mistake you can do is spend two years on an idea that you sp should have spent six months on.
So I think that's that's the thing. If you're impatient, if you are very patient and you know the game that you want to play, for instance, um you know, if you are there's an awesome guy who was on our
34:54
first cohort who is doing crazy well with a relatively small newsletter called the secret CFO and he he writes he's like a CFO at a really big company and he's totally anonymous. He makes a killing on his newsletter.
there's only like 40 or 50,000 people. He's in he's
35:09
like CFO. I my life is CFO.
I am committed to this niche. I am never changing anything.
Then you get to be more patient, right? Cuz like you you know your game.
Um but most people don't know the game they want to play, right? Like you're just tasting from the the tasting menu of the universe, right?
And
35:25
that's okay. You don't want to like you know if if you uh what's a good example?
Like if if you if you go down to like the East Village in New York City and there's so many amazing restaurants, like you don't want to just go back to the same old ramen shop, like there's amazing sushi place nearby in something else. Like you you want to get an answer
35:40
and then you want to move on. Maybe the better example is like a bar crawl, right?
You want to actually move and taste a bunch of the different cocktails or validate that this is my favorite bar of all time. This is what I'm going to stay at.
Like you you want to be careful with your I don't know. Did I answer your question?
I'm not sure if I did. No, it makes sense.
And I would have said the same thing. like if you don't if you're not in this for the right
35:56
reasons or you're not going to stick with it more than 6 months then just don't even start. It's not worth it.
And but the thing I'll say is like the I don't necessarily mean it as the right reasons. I think it is um and people can have their opinions but like I think it is totally okay to be an opportunist.
Um
36:14
you know like I I have a a buddy of mine Josh who's in he's Washington Square Bark a couple blocks south of Europe like right now. He is 23 years old.
He makes $200,000 a month. um 23 selling street interview ads to DDC companies like AVI and Jones Road Beauty and like
36:30
all these different companies. He's been doing this business for a year.
The Wall Street Journal actually today he just did a uh a Twitter post actually literally right Josh. This is so cool.
I this I got a notification for this literally right before I hopped on this call. Uh this is him.
I don't know if
36:47
you can see it. There's Josh.
He's in Washington Park right now. Oh, and uh the Wall Street Journal is about to to go interview him for for his business.
Josh is like Josh didn't like exit the womb passionate about, you know, like street interview ads. Like he he was an
37:03
opportunist. He found a really good niche and he burned the boats and he he quit he had a job at uh an internship at Blade.
He quit that. He dropped out of college this last semester and he went all in, slept on couches and he built this business over the the last year.
That's okay. Like you can be an opportunist.
Um, but if you're going to
37:19
be an opportunist, like you need to ration your time and be smart about quitting stuff uh that isn't going to work. Um, I think that's that's more about what what I'm Yeah.
Well, and I wouldn't even necessarily call that an opportunist. I would almost say like he's an extra experimentter.
Like he's trying a bunch
37:36
of things. He's going to test like see what works, see what sticks with him.
And I'm sure over time he's going to find something that he wants to stick with for more than 5 months or 6 months or whatever. And so I think that's actually a smart move especially when you're young.
Yeah. You you need to commit to being a uh like a founder.
I think maybe that's
37:51
maybe that's the better like rule like like uh what's the I think Naval said this but it's like startups fail founders don't. It's like if you committed to the identity of I'm somebody who starts stuff.
It's okay to try crypto newsletters and then try one that's in penny stocks then do one that's for creators like jump around you
38:06
know but like uh commit to like five years of like I'm going to start things until something works. Otherwise, like you know Yeah.
Yeah. We haven't talked at all about like really about paid subscriptions or paid newsletters.
Is that is that a path um any of your clients go down or that you
38:22
go down or have considered going down or what's your overall kind of feeling on on that monetization revenue stream? Yeah.
Um I think paid newsletters are really hard. Um really really hard.
So, as part of how much I can say about this, we've talked to a lot of the big
38:39
newsletters that are paid and um I think a lot of them a lot of them have made organic work. So, there are two scenarios in which I've seen a paid newsletter work really well.
You um you have a giant hyperfan audience. So, this would be like if Rowan wanted to Rowan
38:56
who runs the rundown, he's 600,000 700,000 followers. He interviews Mark Zuckerberg once a year.
Like gets invited to all this AI in SF all the time. He could start a paid newsletter because of his scale and because he's so wellknown.
The the journalist version of that is like Oliver Darcy at at uh at CNN who I run
39:14
Status or like um which is a newsletter publication or like um oh gosh, what's the one uh the the anchor which covers like the business of Hollywood reporters who the journalists who write for that? They've been writing for that.
like they're known in those industries.
39:30
That's why executives and people are willing to pay for that content. The other scenario is you you got to break the news.
You you got to be someone or or your analysis is so darn thoughtful. This is the only place people can get
39:46
it. Um and so like a great example of that, you know, might be like a I would say like a like a right with AI by by Nicholas Cole.
like it's really thoughtful like how do you actually use AI to like you know make more money in your business or you know prompts that will like help you out but I think it's
40:02
hard to do it and when I say breaking news actually so this is maybe I should tweak what I said people who like break stories um so like uh Oliver actually maybe is an example of both like he broke I think a lot of the stuff like I think RFK had some like affair you know
40:19
with some some person and that was a huge breaking headline Oliver was the one to break that and then like the New York Times and everybody else picked that up from Oliver. He gets the scoops.
So if you're first, right, you you have to be first or you have to be best and ideally you have a large audience. That
40:34
is when subscription works. the cases where I've seen it work at a smaller scale, like a hundred to $200,000 a year, would be like there's this guy, I can't remember his name.
He's uh we cover him in the in the accelerator, but uh he he gets into like Lego investing and teaches you all about like how to
40:51
invest in Legos and he makes like $150,000 a year in in in that space. So, it's like the things I said plus like, okay, how do you map all these things to a framework?
There's generally four things people are doing. They were doing some type of life transformation, so like lose a bunch of weight or something like that.
They're doing some type of
41:07
investing thing. So that's like Market Beat has like a big paid subscription.
They do $40 million a year. Probably five of that is um through their subscription.
They're like investing in stocks, all that There is um uh oh my gosh, what are some of the other ones? There's jobs, so like become
41:22
better at my job. Status is subscribed to a lot of people in the media industry because having that breaking news is actually really impactful for strategy and like what other people would go and write about.
So people pay for that. And then the last one, oh niche hobbies, which is like a Lego thing.
What about entertainment? Is there a place for entertainment in a paid newsletter?
Have
41:39
you seen that work anywhere? I bet it's hard.
That's my That's my sub. I think it's hard.
I think it's like uh entertainment like media like business I think would work. But just like unless you were breaking crazy stories and doing like investigative stuff, you know, like you know, uh Taylor Swift, you know, I don't I don't
41:56
know is is going to break up with whoever that big chunky football guy that she dates. Travis Kelly.
Exactly. Exactly.
That was going to be my second guess after big chunky football guy. Uh Uh um I think that would work, but like uh I don't think like People magazine could do like a paid
42:12
subscription in a good way. I mean maybe they get 100,000 people because they've got whatever 100 million who like visit People magazine, but it's not going to be like a needle.
And so when you say it's not it's not going to work, you just mean it's not going to get to a scale where it's like large enough to maybe run paid ads on a
42:27
regular basis or that kind of thing. Yeah.
Yeah. It's really it's really hard.
Most of the people who scale uh paid subscriptions scale it organically. Um not I think paid is very tough.
Some people are making paid work. Uh but it's you got to play the long game.
It's like
42:43
you you require a subscriber for about as much as you make on that subscriber in the first year. And so where you start to actually make money is like year two, year three.
That's a long game, right? That's that's a long game to play.
What do you What do you guys think? I mean, have you seen like killer subscription newsletters work?
I mean I
43:00
think the big audience thing like Lenny Richetsky has done this very well. Strateeer has done this very well.
There's examples. But does Ben Townson of Strateker even run paid ads or does No, not paid.
So that's that's the organic thing. Yeah.
Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. Especially with like a lot of the paid subscriptions and paid newsletters are on Substack and you
43:16
don't get many good analytics. So it's really hard to say like is this working?
Is this not working? Did they actually come from a paid ad?
Did they not? Yeah.
We're trying it by the way. So, so, so like, um, you know, we have, uh, I think we've done a good job of like we, we've
43:33
done it multiple times now where like there were multiple ad monetized newsletters that we have scaled to above $100,000 a month in spend profitably. Then we went to like affiliate and we worked with this big affiliate company called Red Ventures.
They own a newsletter called the points guy. They've never worked with an outside agency and they were very skeptical.
We
43:48
have skilled them, you know, they they spend now in the top five of newsletters per month. Um, and so, you know, we'll see where I want to go next is like, oh, can we go solve subscription and also like niche B2B, like where you want to get executives and like really qualified people on the list.
Um, so that's kind
44:05
of what we're do. We're working with like five or six pretty heavyhitter subscription newsletters right now, but we've just gotten started like in the last like two or three weeks.
So, I'm kind of like I'm giving a bunch of problems, but I try to solve it and see what we can do. If someone were starting a B2B newsletter today, what do you
44:20
think like the biggest opportunity that is like not well known is tools? I'll say two important things.
So, industry dive um again $100 million plus revenue company. A lot of the industries they entered, they were not first or the second or the third like newsletter to enter those industries.
44:36
What they cared more about was like, is this industry highly regulated? So, they care about news because shit's like changing all the time.
Or do people spend a lot of money? Because then, oh, advertisers spend a lot in order to get like a paying customer from our our newsletters or do people meet at like trade shows and conferences?
Because then we can go, oh, we could go find our
44:53
advertisers. We can go find our executive readers.
Like all those are really critical ingredients in B2B and B2B is I think most newsletters are an execution game. You do not need to be first.
Like the rundown is just and this is no disrespect to Rowan because he's incredible operator and they write
45:09
amazing content and and Rowan is winning AI. I mean, no, nobody, in my opinion, is close to Rowan uh in the AI space.
But the rundown is like Morning Brew, but for AI. And so, so it's it's like it's an it's an execution game.
Uh it's not like you don't have to be the only one doing something. Yeah.
The stuff
45:26
that would be important in B2B. Oh, shoot.
There was something I wanted to say. I forgot it.
Wait, what was it again? I was just asking if there's like a good uh like Oh.
Oh, yeah. I've got it.
I've got it. I've got it.
Okay. So, okay.
where I think people are not spending a ton of
45:41
time are are tools. So like uh like uh so one of my buddies worked at Figma and when they went public like three or four uh whatever weeks ago, I can't remember when it was.
Um he was sending us all these text messages. All the all the
45:56
sales guys at Figma were like trading texts and it's like so that IPO was huge. There are sales people who made $1 million, $10 million.
Like some of the top sales people made like $15 million in that IPO just just like employees, right? Because they got stock, you know, five years ago in in Figma.
It's like a
46:13
I can't even remember $10 billion plus company or something like that. Why isn't there a newsletter?
Maybe there is a newsletter that's like we teach you everything Figma, you know, like that's the best for like Figma. Like pick whatever your giant tool is, you know, like that.
Um, you know, replet Replet or whatever, you know, it could be any
46:29
of those things. I think being the barnacle like on a giant tool like that would be really valuable.
Yeah. Cuz then you could eventually maybe even sell to that company and then there you go.
They already have the content and the distribution and everything. Exactly.
Exactly. You could do hiring, you know, for instance.
So there's like
46:45
a there's a newsletter. I don't know if I'm supposed to say although they do talk about they talk about publicly.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So, there's a newsletter called Fit Insider, and it's these two guys who sold a fitness like gym company.
And so, they're really well known amongst like operators uh in that
47:01
space. So, they have a bunch of like high-profile people who read their newsletter.
You know, they if you go look on their LinkedIn, like they're doing hiring services because they have a bunch of cool fitness wellness um you know, operators on their on their newsletter. And so, like that now they've turned that into like a B2B
47:17
service. Well, like what is Figma gonna have?
It's probably gonna have a bunch of like cracked designers and like full stack engineers. Oh, okay cool.
If you take the best people in that you could do a high like there's a bunch of different optionalities you could just by focusing on a on a tool because that tool is basically implies right you've
47:32
got a bunch of designers. So yeah I think there's cool stuff.
There's a lot of people who do courses for tools um like how to learn with Obsidian or notion or you know stuff like that even Canva to some degree but yeah you don't you're right you don't really see a ton of I guess tools specific newsletters for that that kind of market and that
47:48
could always branch into kind of courses or memberships or communities. Yeah, it's important to know your options, right?
So the so what does tools technically sit inside? It sits inside the second thing I mentioned which was jobs.
Help me do better at my job. That's like a category of newsletters you want to be in.
And so like, okay,
48:04
well, what's a real example of that? Miss Excel makes millions of dollars every year selling information on how you become like cracked at like VBA and like pivot tables and, you know, VLOOKUP and index match in Excel and like people pay for that.
Oh, well, what if you were
48:19
really good at Excel, but like you wanted to pair tool with a niche? Well, there's a company called Wall Street Prep that is uh sold a bunch of courses on how you become like an investment banker, get really good at modeling in a private equity context.
and they were doing that to consumers. Well, then they said, "Oh, well, actually, let me take
48:35
scale plus niche and actually go from B toC to B2B." So, now if you go work at Goldman Sachs, the people who train you are not Goldman Sachs people. Wall Street Prep comes in and Goldman pays them to train you.
So, this this is why it's important to understand the the menu cuz okay, jobs, okay, jobs, tools,
48:53
do I go B2B? Do I go B to C?
Do I go high ticket? highly like you want to have this like mapped out in your head so that you know all the places on the board that you can go with your newsletter.
Wow. Brilliant.
I love it. Smart.
This is awesome. Um I know we're at the top of the hour so we can jump off here
49:08
shortly if you have to run but awesome. I just extra time.
I mean are you guys busy? You got stuff going on?
I don't I don't I don't want to I don't I don't want to trick you and like keep you captive. No, no, no.
It's good. Um so Okay.
So wait, dig into this Figma idea a little bit more. So you're saying like if you
49:25
were building out like I don't know send out one awesome tip for Figma a week or something like how what do you even envision that looking like? Yeah.
So I think what I would do is probably um tutorials guides on like how to do something really really well in Figma. So, so as an example, um there's
49:42
a guy there's a So, okay, let's say how do you get the audience? Probably the best place to get audience for thing because it's a visual thing is to do reals on Instagram because that's discovery, right?
Reals sends you to new audiences with video. So, not posts but reals or do that on Tik Tok.
where you can show like doing an amazing like I
49:59
don't know uh let's let's say you're doing it around like mobile app design and there's some like really cool like you know swivel or some really amazing like payw wall design that works really really well and it's like that's like really pretty or onboarding sequence. Okay, cool.
People are that's like going really viral because it's like beautiful
50:15
and designers interested in that content. I was like hey um if you want like this Figma template I just made it for you so you don't have to think about the hex codes.
You don't have to think about the animation. You don't have to think about like all the stuff you think about.
I have the template. Sign up to my newsletter.
It's in the description
50:30
or or or if you're on Instagram because you can use mediat comment the word word, you know, animation or Figma and I'll send it to you. Emailgate the template.
Now the person's on your Figma newsletter and you've sent them the template and now maybe your content is like sending templates. Maybe it's that
50:46
plus like tips on like becoming a better, you know, designer. Maybe that can extend beyond just like tactical, you know, Figma stuff.
I'm not a designer so I don't know a ton about this but for instance like if you are I'll give an example for um you know for Excel like like I I used to be a consultant at this company called uh BCG
51:02
which is like one of these like fancy fancy strategy consulting places and like a big thing on our training for Excel is like yes it's important to be good at Excel but when you're building a model it's actually really important to like map out on a whiteboard what are the inputs for your model and like the data you need to get to get and how does that tie to like how you bubble up or
51:18
predict revenue or the size of a market before you get into the model. So, I don't know like like that's an example of like it's an actual qualitative thing like a skill thing contributes to like your ability to be good technically.
I'm sure there's some version of that in the design world. So, you could start to like map that out.
What are all the
51:34
things the designer needs in their tool belt to be good beyond just the choose these colors, do this animation, think about this widget. It's like theory before actual practical skill to some degree.
Yeah. Yeah.
And and people want both, right? like like uh on LinkedIn, you
51:49
know, I'll do posts where I'm like an example of what we are talking about right now. Like this is like kind of meta, but like there's like doing things right and then there's choosing the right things to do.
So doing things right like I've perfected my welcome email and all this stuff and all this stuff. Oh, but oh wait, I'm I'm in the
52:05
wrong niche. I'm in a niche that's actually really hard to monetize.
That that choosing the right thing to do actually first would be really really important. So you want that kind of like what's the framework?
And then you also want really like tactical stuff. So, like when I write, you know, we we wrote a big case study on like the the $200,000 launch with Jesse.
And so, I I
52:20
literally just showed people like here are the emails that we wrote, did the revenue. You want to have both of those things.
Tell people how to think and then tell people what to do. Show people what to do.
Um I think those are all very important. No, I like this idea.
This is brilliant because I was not expecting you to go down this path. When it when I was said
52:36
like what's the B2B play you would do and you said tools, I was like that's interesting. Tell me more.
But makes sense. I mean, it's kind of like uh what Miss Excel did just in a different It's important to niche down, right?
I mean, you you uh you know, I I saw I was talking about this on a different podcast thing, but like I I was
52:52
scrolling um Instagram like 3 months ago now, and I saw this um this like ad for like a a paid ads agency that worked dog e-commerce brands. I clicked through because I like to look at people's funnels, but in my head I was like,
53:08
"Dude, this is ter who like this has got to be the tiniest business." like what a terrible idea. And then I go to LinkedIn, you can click the little insights thing on LinkedIn.
It will tell you how many employees people have and like whether they're going up and whether they're going down. And it was like 25 employees like up and to the right.
And I was like crazy. But that
53:25
that's so if you think you are not niched down enough, you're probably wrong. And it makes sense, right?
Cuz like okay, if you're a designer, like I'm sure there's a bunch of different design tools. Like you want the person who would give you Figma.
If you're the e-commerce company and you have like a dog food brand, like do you want like somebody who just does all general like
53:41
DTOC or Facebook ads or do you want the guy who like his whole life all he thinks about he wakes up every single day and all he thinks about is like how do I get people to buy like wet dog food for like $30 a month? You know what I mean?
Like you want that guy, you know? That's why people pay Josh $200,000 a
53:58
month. Like Josh doesn't do podcast ads and you know static graphs, all this thing.
He wakes up, he stands out in the 80°ree heat, and when it's the the the uh the winter, he flies to Miami or LA and does it or he goes underground to the subways and he does the ads. Like
54:15
that's the guy for uh uh street interview ads. Like you you want to be that.
That's that's what you want to be. Yeah.
Wow. Wow.
That's epic. I like it.
I like it. Yeah.
Um you're making me want to start a Figma newsletter. If anybody's good at Figma, reach out.
54:30
You can write it. I'll help you grow it.
Let's go. It's good.
You know, you should you should take like uh percentages and have you guys thought about like how do you guys think about growing your businesses? Um and the podcast.
How do you guys think about that?
54:45
Great question. I don't know.
Uh the podcast TBD right now. It's just fun.
It's fun to have conversations and like it turns into other things and like getting to know people like you and CJ and you know, Caitlyn Burggoyne more. So, it's just a a good time to uh create
55:01
more content. I think people really enjoy the podcast just because they get to see you and hear how you think and um it's almost like your newsletter.
Totally. Yeah.
It's like your newsletter where you like writing these case studies, but you're just like talking to people and it's just like more of a trust builder. I don't know.
I don't see
55:16
it getting huge, but I think it's just like a fun like consistent ongoing play to have. So, that's the right way to think about it, right?
Like I uh like so we I I launched a podcast would be hive called um personal IPO and like the smartest thing for me to do
55:32
actually probably in the short term would have been to like do like a newsletter podcast say it actually doesn't like you're saying like small like it's a bad thing but but actually like you're small because like if somebody you are so hyper specific to the right person like if somebody anyone who has a newsletter should like listen to this podcast right you actually want
55:47
to be there my thought process with like personal IPO was like I want like I may want to do newsletters and other stuff like are there other things I could build onto the business in the long term that I don't even know I don't even know they're unknown unknowns I don't even know to think about them well I should have one thing that I do that is broader
56:04
and is TAM and so personal IPO it's still specific because it's like we talk to founders like S parry bush Justin Walsh these people who it's basically the feed like the original newsletter but like a podcast who have built like incredible businesses and have a personal brand but it's much broader
56:19
than just the newsletter stuff uh because I I don't know what I'll do in like 10 years. But but I think it's good to like have some type of asset that I've built that is like that and that to be working on that now.
Um that that's why I think No, I think it's a good one. I listened
56:34
to the Sampar episode. It was good.
I enjoyed it. Yeah, he's fun.
He's uh he's kind of like uh he has so many good stories like I don't know. It was kind of just like winding up like a doll and you just like let him go.
Totally. He just kind of like I don't even need to be here, you know?
56:50
Like I'm I just say some words like everyone they just it's the most entertaining doll. Yeah, it's crazy.
I mean it it was what like he's so he's so good. Like like we've talked to other guests and all the guests have been awesome but like when I was with him then it was kind of like oh
57:05
man like I you could just you could talk for five hours like you just there's you're so I think Sean Pur calls it generative like somebody who can just take one thing and build on it like 10 different ways. He's like uh he's the most generative person I've ever spent time with.
It's it's it's insane. That's awesome.
I mean, that's why his podcast is what
57:22
it is in part, right? Like, he's just I very rarely will like laugh out loud to a podcast, but when him and Sean start laughing and they're going off on tangents and it's just it's Yeah, you can't help but help chuckle.
And then that just keeps me hooked as a listener. So,
57:37
he's so real, you know, which I think is hard to like I I always remember I think this has happened multiple episodes, but he's like, you know, he'll be talking about a guest. He's like, "Let him what is it?
What did the kids say? Like, let let him bake.
let him bake. And she was like, "No, no, no.
Dog, dog. Come on.
Let let him cook. Let him cook." And
57:53
just all these fun like, you know, like I don't know, Samisms. Uh it it's cool.
Like it makes me feel better cuz um really their whole podcast is this way is like they they have these super successful people on, right? And it turns out and we're we're kind of doing this with personal IPO.
It it turns out
58:08
like oh man like they make mistakes or like they up in this thing or this thing isn't going well. And it's it's not that you wish for those things, but it's kind of like oh I I feel like I up all the time.
So to hear, oh, this person I think is, you know, up here like they're just like me. Like that's such a important thing.
I'm a big
58:25
fan of this phrase like it doesn't matter what doesn't matter what ideas are true. It matters what ideas serve you.
And the idea that like whether it's true or not that like somebody who's like really really made it deals with the same struggles and it's just been the game is actually staying in the game for as long as possible is like the thing you should do. That is an extremely helpful thought to have.
And I
58:41
get that thought. I get that feeling from that.
Yeah. Yeah.
And they leave in all like the things that other people would cut out like the mistakes and like the weird things that they say and I love that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's good. Cool.
Well, this has been fun. Um I'm going to go not talk with my bronchitis
58:56
and and hang out. No, this is a blast.
I really appreciate Don't forget to pee on it. So, before we start Oh, no.
It's a jellyfish thing. Yeah.
Yeah. Before we start recording, I was saying that I went back to the doctor
59:12
yesterday and they were like, "We can't really do anything." And I was like, "No, there's got to be something that you can do to make this go away." And Nathan was like, "Just pee on it like a jellyfish." I was like, "Oh my god." Of all the things. Of all the things.
It's always worked for me.
59:29
Yeah. Well, on that note, where uh where can people find you and um learn more about what you're doing?
Yeah. Um, find me on on LinkedIn, Nathan May.
I I write uh what I what I hope is is really tactical stuff on building a business with a newsletter and um
59:45
personal IPO. Um we talk about we take big people like Sam Parr, Dicky Bush, Justin Welsh, Jesse Puji, we're going to do uh you know, Alex and Austin, all these different people and we we talk about finances, funnels, and feelings.
So like help you build your business and we uh we get into the into the fields,
00:02
which is is fun. So Heidi, go go go check it out.
Yeah. Awesome.
Yeah, it's a great show. I'm excited to listen more.
Thanks for coming on, Nathan. This was fun.
Yeah, thanks. This was great.
Appreciate you guys having me.