- Duration: 15 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J5RBKHVH2QGXAGXCGE1NM733 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01J5RBKHVH2QGXAGXCGE1NM733)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: What’s up, man? [Stephen Flanders]: How you doing? [Michael Houck]: Good to see you, man. [Stephen Flanders]: Good to see you too. [Stephen Flanders]: What’s going on? [Stephen Flanders]: Nothing Yeah, nothing much. I had tell me about Max and then me and Max talked a bit and he was like, yeah, we’re looking for ghostwriters and I’m still doing some ghostwriting myself. [Michael Houck]: Are you still working with Brett on Watch House stuff too? [Stephen Flanders]: No, I was doing that until March and then Brett kind of, Jason left before me. So I was doing that for a while until Jason left, just solo. And then Brett decided just to kind of do it himself in March. So I think that’s what he’s doing now. I think he’s working on something else now, so. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, yeah, they’re doing an AI email powered app or something. But got it, okay. I haven’t kept up with their newsletter, so I don’t know what they’re. [Stephen Flanders]: Yeah, I think they took it down from like three to one time a week now, and it’s just like, it’s really, it’s not really prioritizing anymore, so. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, makes sense. Um, well, cool man. I mean, good to reconnect. Um, Max is my chief staff. He handles a ton of different stuff for me. So, um, yeah, I guess I can share some context as to what we have going on. You let me know if it sounds interesting and we can kind of go from there. Sure. Sounds good. So, um, Yeah, let’s see. So about a year ago, we started Megaphone, which is this like engagement platform for social, you share a post, and we get big creators in your niche to go engage with it within an hour, basically. We had a lot of people come find us through that. And we’re like, Oh, well, you know, now I have the distribution, but my content’s not so good. So they started asking me to do ghostwriting for them, turned down a lot of people. And then, um, eventually just started an agency, found a few writers and brought folks together. Um, and we’ve been doing that for like three, four months now. Um, and it’s good. We have like, uh, 11 clients, um, spread out across, I think six or seven writers. Now, um, we had eight, but one guy didn’t work out through the little go. Uh, but yeah, like six or seven writers and We have a strong funnel, strong demand, new folks coming in all the time, both for LinkedIn or X, as well as for newsletters. We do a lot of newsletter ghost writing too. I didn’t want to poach you away from Brett, but now that I know that you guys aren’t working together, I figure it’s worth a chat for sure. [Stephen Flanders]: You know, I’ve done, I’ve, you know, I’ve been under a lot, like a bunch of these different ghostwriting companies now, like obviously like Workweek had something like this, Alex Lieberman had something like this. What’s kind of like the differentiator? Is it, you know, you have the megaphone kind of built into it. So if you’re a ghostwriting client, are you automatically in megaphone as well or no? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you get a free subscription to megaphone. Uh, the clients still need to spend, um, in order to get the creators to engage with their posts, but, um, no subscription for megaphone. And it’s funny cause a lot of these other ghostwriting agencies, um, I won’t name names, but a lot of the other ones, they’re actually our customers for megaphone and they pay us per account for, for megaphone anyway, for their distribution. So, um, you know, maybe we’ll build in some us specific kind of features in the future. Um, but yeah, it’s, uh, that’s been a big driver. Also a big driver has been, um, just like understanding sort of like being a founder and like founders needs with ghostwriting, you know, my story similar to, I guess, Alex Lieberman story. Um, but their model is very different. Their model is like, we’re going to throw your posts into our pool of writers. And it’s going to go through like multiple like editor approvals before it gets to you. And you might not get the same writer from week to week. And it’s just like one or two things at a time. For us, it’s like we match the writer with the person, learn their voice over time, more of a long-term, uh, kind of engagement and agreement. And we do weekly batches of content and said like one or two things at a time. So. We found that founders like that model and it’s been good for attention so far. I know the guy who set up Alex’s stuff and he had a lot of positive things to say about what we were doing. [Stephen Flanders]: How much content is it per founder per week? [Michael Houck]: A couple of options. On the newsletter side, folks need to do one newsletter issue or bi-weekly issue depending on what they want. [Michael Houck]: on like the social LinkedIn or X side, it’s either, we call like a full package is like either three long form or, you know, around 10 short form, like two per day, or like, you know, a mix of those, like one or two long form with a lesser amount of short form. Or they can do a light package, which is like two long form or short form equivalents. [Stephen Flanders]: Gotcha. And what kind of field are the founders in? [Michael Houck]: Varies a lot. We have folks in, So many actually. One is like a founder coach. One is in the plant-based meat space. One is in the creator economy space, basically an investment. They create like an investment vehicle for creators. [Michael Houck]: One is, I don’t know, there’s a lot. Everyone’s in a different space. We’re sector agnostic. We try to match the writer with the right client based on their expertise. [Stephen Flanders]: Gotcha. See, I’m thinking about my skills. What are some of the clients that are currently not matched or that you would be thinking of matching up with me? [Michael Houck]: Let me open this up. Okay, so in the funnel right now, folks who I think are high likelihood to close, we have four. One of them is in the events space. One of them is in the remote work space. One of them is in the crypto space. And then there is, what’s his space? There’s another one. [Michael Houck]: Healthcare, health tech. So those are the four that we have sort of like in the funnel that I think are likely to close in the next, you know, let’s say pessimistically three weeks. [Michael Houck]: And then, you know, more folks will have in the funnel by then, too. [Stephen Flanders]: Gotcha. Yeah, I can definitely. It feels like a lot of the crypto guy and maybe the remote work guy. That’s interesting. What’s your what kind of rate are you paying the writers right now? [Michael Houck]: I usually just ask the writer. I’m like, you know, we have a lot of writers who are in our sort of like network. So what I like to do is like, what’s going to make this worth it for you? Um, and then from there I can match you up with the clients who are able to, you know, fit that, that profile. [Stephen Flanders]: Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah. It sounds like pretty, pretty good situation. I worked for an agency that had kind of a similar setup where it was like kind of a writer to founder kind of thing. And then you had an account and that was pretty much the situation. Yeah, man. I’m interested. I’m definitely interested. So right now my rate with clients is 80 an hour because I’ve been doing it for a while now. Sure. That’d be my rate right now. And yeah, that works. [Michael Houck]: What would that be if you like I’m trying to think about it because we normally pay like monthly, right? Like, hey, when we set up the account, I’m like, OK, the client’s paying me this per month. Here’s what we can pay the writer per month. What, like, if you’re going to do, say, three Twitter threads a week or a weekly newsletter for the person that’s, like, I don’t know, somewhere between 750 and 1500 words, I know it’s a big range, but, like, what does that equate to for you? [Stephen Flanders]: It really depends on, you know, how long it’s going to take me, how hard the material is, you know. So I think if it’s going to take me, you know, three threads in a newsletter, that might take me, Let me take 20 so hours a week. [Stephen Flanders]: So that would be, you know, I would do that for like $4,500 a month, $4,000 month. [Michael Houck]: That’s if we were doing both the newsletter and three threads a week. Yeah. [Stephen Flanders]: If it’s just newsletter, I would do I mean, just one, like what kind of newsletter do you usually do? Is it more like a, like kind of a home screen kind of thing, where it’s kind of like just, you know. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, nothing too crazy. You’re not, you know, you don’t need to like be the biggest thought leader in the world. Also the clients will be sending you voice notes through a shared Slack channel that we set up. You’d be like, here’s some questions. They ramble off their subject matter expertise to you. [Stephen Flanders]: Yeah. That’s, that’s the kind of thing I’m like, if it’s like, I have to like come up with all this material off the dome, you know, I have to do all this research. Okay. So that, that, that obviously cuts down the time a lot. So it’d be, it’d be less. So if it’s just like one kind of smallish newsletter and the guy’s sending me the kind of notes and the content, I would do that for $1,500 a month, month, $2,000 something like that. [Michael Houck]: That lines up well with I think what we can afford. Our average rate for what it’s worth is $1,500. We have some folks who are a little more junior who are less than that. And then we have like one guy who’s super senior who charges more than that, but the vast majority of folks are right around that 1500 range. That lines up kind of perfectly with what we can do. [Stephen Flanders]: Yeah, if it’s really like where the founders are, you know, it’s a kind of an interactive process, back and forth process where they send you stuff. I’ve had ghostwriting clients before where it’s more like, hey, come up with all the content myself. [Michael Houck]: And I should have been more clear about that. No, I set the expectation with them during the sales call that I do. And then we do a kickoff call. And then every week on Monday we send them questions in a shared Slack channel. It’s like Slack connect, you know, so it shows up natively in both. Um, And then we say, hey, if you get the voice notes to us by Wednesday, we’ll get the content to you by Friday. That’s basically how it works. [Stephen Flanders]: That’s perfect. Ghost writing is not fun when you have to kind of think of all this stuff yourself. [Stephen Flanders]: What the hell? This content sucks. I’m like, dude, I don’t know anything about your stuff. I’m not an expert in your stuff per se. I got to learn it. You know, so it’s, that’s helpful. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, we’ve had, we had one client who like wasn’t good about it and we ended up firing them because they just weren’t giving our writers sort of what they needed. So if you get a situation like that, like I’ll play bad cop a hundred percent. [Stephen Flanders]: That’s great. Not everyone does that. That’s great to hear. That’s great. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Okay, cool. So yeah, if it is like a more involved thing, obviously we could go up to two K for the account that works too. But I think that range in general works, works well for us. So, Um, great. Are there, you mentioned crypto, are there other sectors that you like to kind of write about or that you would want to focus on? [Stephen Flanders]: I prefer more tech stuff versus more like HR stuff per se. So like, um, like I can, I can figure out healthcare. I’ve done longevity. I’ve done AI. I’m not as good at like, um, like I’ve done like, I’ve done like some founder, like advice stuff in the past. I’m not as good at like, you know, like, hiring practices or, you know, like that kind of stuff, like that, like the, kind of the more of my new logistical HRE founder stuff. [Michael Houck]: I’m not as good at that. It’s funny. Cause we have a, we have a client who already has a writer matched up, but their, their whole thing is literally like hiring for founders like that before. [Stephen Flanders]: And I really did not like, I wasn’t as I was, I didn’t enjoy it as much. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: No, I, my, my job is to make sure that your matchup with clients who you actually want to write for and are excited to write for, and also who, you know, that they’re doing a good job of sort of getting you what you need. So that’s me. My role is basically like the the account manager, so to speak, in these engagements, you’re the primary point of contact. And then we also have Blakey mall, who you probably know from Twitter, he was the first CMO of copy AI, super legit guy. He’s like our sort of editor in chief, if you will. He’s my like, you know, hired him pretty early on, he’s become a partner in the agency since then. So So yeah, so that’s the team, that’s it. It’s a pretty lightweight process. There’s no like tons of approvals to go through or anything like that. [Stephen Flanders]: Cool, cool. Yeah, that’s cool with me. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Okay, well here, I’ll keep you in the loop then as these new folks come through. I’ll add you if you want to our Slack in the meantime, just so easy to keep in touch as they come through the funnel. [Michael Houck]: But yeah, man, I mean, excited. I think we’re building something that I think we can grow pretty quickly. [Stephen Flanders]: Yeah, lots of demands, so I’m excited about it. [Stephen Flanders]: Cool, man. Yeah, just get me on the same email that we just had the call with and then that’d be perfect. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Good to catch up, man. Talk more soon. See you soon. [Stephen Flanders]: Bye. See you.