- Duration: 16 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J4VTEF5RJXMQA5WQ598X2826 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01J4VTEF5RJXMQA5WQ598X2826)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Yeah, I’m sorry. [Michael Houck]: All good, man. Yeah. So yeah, good. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you would. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, no. So I guess talk to me about I guess how you found us and also sort of what you’re what you’re looking for. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: So I’ll tell you about mine and why I reached out to you to schedule this meeting. First, I’ve been following you. I’ve been following you on LinkedIn. Maybe I’m not that active right now, but I have been consuming your content for quite some time now. I’ve been consuming content for some other big creators also, like Sahil Bloom, Justin Welch, and many other creators like Tom Helling, or maybe Chris Donnelly, all these people. So I found a certain pattern out there. I know you already know about that, Jack Ward and all these people. And that’s why I’ve reached out to Megaphone See, nobody is immune to the rules, right? No matter how big creator you are, you need support from other peers from yours, right? And I have noticed that whenever Justin Welch post or whenever Sahil Bhoom post or whenever Michael Houck post, initial comments are made by one or two creators of this similar niche. And that’s how it works. That’s our community. You can call that as a or you can call that as a community. But that’s how it grows. So I’m kind of very curious. I know how does that grow. I have built my community to almost 70,000. And it’s all organic. I haven’t joined any pod till now or any sort of that. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: So in last one year, I would say I have grown only 1,000 followers. But all these 1,000 followers are most probably founders, CXOs, which are my target audience. I wasn’t active in the last one year on LinkedIn, but my business never stopped. My leads came on all through organic and it was completely 100% inbound. And still my business is based on 100% inbound. But now I feel that now I want to step up. I want to expand my lead base. And that would be possible only when I collaborate with some big creators because If I know I can again grow organically, but then I have to spend around 5-7 hours on LinkedIn doing engagement on others and other people will also engage. I know all this thing. You have to put out time. If you want other people to invest time and that I don’t have right now and that is the whole reason when I saw Megaphone I thought that let’s reach out to Mike and let’s talk directly because I am into personal branding agency my majority of clients are based out of US, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe India. So it’s across all the globe. And I would want to see how we can collaborate in this so that my clients can also get benefit from this activity. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, makes sense. That’s that’s totally clear. Makes total sense. So we do work with a lot of a lot of agencies in this way, too. So I think there’s opportunity there. Basically, depending on how many accounts you want to bring in, we’d be able to You know, basically, when you join Megafone, you can share your deposits across different accounts. So let’s say you have your account, let’s say you have your agency client accounts, right? Each account is responsible for its own like access subscription, but you can share the deposits that you make across all of them. So what a lot of our agency clients do is they will like not say anything necessarily to their clients, but they just use megaphone to amplify the content that they put out from them. Because you know, it helps with retention, it helps with like satisfaction, surprise and delight for the clients, things like that. So we do that for a bunch of the big branding and ghostwriting agencies, content agencies and things like that. So Yeah, I mean, the average budget on a post can be anywhere from about 20 to $30. And that'll get you a couple comments from a creator or a really big creator to to come and engage. So, you know, if you want to do like a big announcement or something like that, people tend to spend a bit more on those. But for an average post, 20 to $30 is pretty normal. [Michael Houck]: And, you know, how often you post is sort of up to you. If you want to do that every day, if you can do that once a week, that’s totally up to you. You get unlimited unlimited posts as part of the standard package. There’s no, we don’t limit you to this. You only share like that. So yeah, there’s a dashboard, we can see metrics and, and we’re building some AI stuff that’s going to be coming out soon to around content generation and also other ways to partner with, with non. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: It’s like a, it’s like a Tapio on that kind of tool, which help you in generating content. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, we don’t have the API integration for scheduling, because, you know, with a paid engagement tool, you don’t want to necessarily integrate with the APIs. But, but we handle we handle everything else, basically. Okay. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: So, Mike, help me understand how is it different from the other community groups already created out there like a WhatsApp group or the LinkedIn engagement group? There are a lot of how is this community different from those communities or those pods you can call whatever. [Michael Houck]: So in a traditional like pod, you know, you only have access to the people who are in that pod and they’re not specifically targeted to you. They don’t particularly get your content, your content is just in a feed and they click on it, I engage with it, right? With Megaphone, basically, and also you can kind of see who’s in there too, right? So there’s like that like level, well, is my account safe in this, you know, all that kind of stuff. With Megaphone, we always keep total anonymity on the platform between people. What we do is when you send a post to us, our algorithm goes through every creator we have in our network and it matches it with the best fit creators who are currently online right now and who are within your budget. [Michael Houck]: Then we send it directly to them in a DM on WhatsApp or Telegram and they receive it and they know that they have one hour to engage or they don’t get paid for it and you don’t get charged. So there’s that urgency that it drives, there’s the safety that it drives, and also it’s directly to them. It’s not just in some feed in that group. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Got it. Got it. OK. Now, one more thing. Let’s say we start posting on that. We start putting out our content link in that. Can we also engage on other creators’ posts who want to put their content? So can we also collaborate? Is it both sides? Like, I’m a creator. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so today, it’s not both sides. So today, it’s just you would share your posts, we’d match it with the creators, and they’d come and engage. But actually, next month, we’ll be launching a feature called groups that will let you create a private group where you can share back and forth both directions with anyone in your network who agrees by mutual opted. So you can sort of build your own private network within our larger network. And then you can share all of your posts to them for free. And then also if you want to spend to get the big creators involved, you can also do that. Okay. Okay. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Understood. Makes sense. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Makes sense. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: So can, do we also have the option, like if I want Sahil Bloom or maybe you or maybe Justin Welch, if these kind of folks engage in the initial first five, 10 minutes, everybody knows automatically your post will go up. It’s crystal clear. When a big creator posts, other creators in the similar niche will also go, OK, this person is engaging with that. Even though post is very normal only, if it’s not too thought-provoking or not too much also, then also people start engaging. It’s how Chris Donnelly, I don’t know, is Chris Donnelly also part of your engagement group? [Michael Houck]: We don’t share the names of anyone who’s engaged. We’ll always keep everybody anonymous. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Because I have not seen his comment on your post, so I am not sure about that. That’s the reason. But I have seen multiple times, Sahil Gloom, Jack Ward, and all these people’s comments on your post. So it’s quite clear that they may be part of your group. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Yeah, I mean, we can’t share the names of anybody who’s… Yeah, no problem. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: I just wanted to understand. So how much do we have to spend? Or can I post my client’s link directly from my IDs? Or how does this work? Or do I have to give a consent to my client that, okay, I will be posting because I don’t want them to know that I will be posting this link in this. [Michael Houck]: No, no, no. You don’t have to, you don’t need to like connect their account through, you don’t need to log in as them and connect it or anything like that. All you need to do is sign up for megaphone with that URL, their account URL. And then when you go to share a post, select that account from your list of accounts. And what we do on the back end is we locate, does the URL for this post match the URL for the account? That’s all we do. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Okay. Okay, cool. So because what, why I don’t want, because I don’t want someone from that creators list to reach out to them and offer services because I have seen very big creator. I know you already know, you must be knowing about the name, Matt Craig. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Oh, yeah, sure, of course. Yeah, right. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: So he reached out to one of my client already, whom I’m already providing services, although he’s a big creator, but he’s still pitching out in a not in a salesy way, but in a relationship building way to promote organic, but I know how this organic thing works. So nobody’s even organic over here. See, everybody needs fruits. You can grow organic, but then you have to invest a lot of amount of time of yours. And that I right now I don’t have, because managing eight to clients in a month and that’s where my personal brand is getting it. I’m not able to contribute to my own personal brand. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that is the whole reason I feel like whenever you’re building a business, it’s hard to also build your personal brand at the same time. I find that myself. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Right, right, right. So how do you manage? How do you manage? You have some content team in your site? [Michael Houck]: So I write all my own content. But when we do like ghostwriting for other people or with Megaphone, for example, like I’ve hired people to help manage those businesses. Normally, these calls actually get done by my chief of staff, not by me, but not all the time. But my focus as much as possible is on sort of managing the team and writing my own content and the other stuff I just delegate to other people. Oh, great. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: So is there any chance in the future if we can also collaborate? Because we guys provide good services and you also know, and I would say we aren’t that expensive, what the agencies in US and US rope charge. You already know about that. So compared to that, if you see the quality of work, we don’t compromise with the quality, but the pricing wise, we always provide you a better option compared to the other ones. Yeah, and always look at that. [Michael Houck]: Send me a send me an email with like a proposal of some kind. And I’ll take a look and I’ll see if it can fit into some of the stuff we’re doing. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: So what do you want in that proposal? I can just send a proposal in the just, I should be just whatever you think makes sense as a way for us to collaborate. [Michael Houck]: You know, I’m not sure exactly the details of the full scope of everything you guys do you have that context. So you just sent me over that I can take a look at and I’ll see if it fits in. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: I’Ll send you a formal proposal. And along with the pricing mentioned in that, usually we don’t mention, but I’ll give you a ballpark figure. Consider that as a ballpark. If that’s not, it will be the final price. But we can always discuss about that. Because see I want to grow and I want someone who can help me grow so that I am open to spend dollars but then I should get a good ROI compared to that when I am investing something in microphone so that yeah and you already told that but can we have some do we have some NDAs or something like that, because when I’ll be sharing link of my clients, and you guys also provide the similar kind of service, and someone in this group also might be providing the other person branding-related services. So I don’t want them to reach out to my clients and do that kind of thing. I don’t want that. And I also don’t want my client to know that I have published their link in this group. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, we’re happy to sign some sort of non solicitation thing if you want. That’s fine. I mean, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that. I’m not that kind of guy. We have our own business. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Not you, but I’m talking about the, there are some people and you never know. [Michael Houck]: Oh, yeah. I mean, I can’t control what other people are going to do. What I will say is that anyone who joins our creator network, I’m super clear with them that, Hey, if we find out you’re soliciting people this way, we’re going to kick you out of the network and you won’t be able to earn money from it anymore. So there’s an incentive. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Yeah, that makes sense. Perfect. I guess you’ve already answered my question. That was the only thing I had in mind. But yeah, thanks, Mike. You took your time. I appreciate that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. No, of course, man. Good to meet and excited to get you started on Megaphone. Shoot me an email if you have any questions, obviously, for the proposal, too. But also, if you have any questions about getting started or how it works or anything like that, we can go from there. [Prabal Lakhotiya]: Perfect. Perfect. Have a great day. Have a great weekend. [Michael Houck]: Thank you. Talk soon.