- Duration: 13 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J91XYT2Z2N00Q7YW4AD4N8VX (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01J91XYT2Z2N00Q7YW4AD4N8VX)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: The benefit and downside of having a big window is that it makes it very hard to see things sometimes. [Sarah Parr]: I totally got you. Are you in Brooklyn right now? [Michael Houck]: I am. I live in Williamsburg. [Sarah Parr]: I’m actually in Brooklyn right now as well, and I’m usually not, but I’m at my friend’s place in Bushwick. Oh, nice. Yeah. That’s so funny. [Michael Houck]: Do you live in New York or are you just visiting the city? [Sarah Parr]: No, I actually live in Cleveland, Ohio. I was born and raised in New Jersey and I had to come back to New York cause I got into like a little play festival thing and I’m acting in that. So yeah. So trying to just see everyone I can and just so happens that I looked at your LinkedIn and said, Brooklyn, like that’s so funny that I’m right here. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, no, I live in Williamsburg. I’ve been here for about four years and SF and LA before that for a while. [Sarah Parr]: Wow, nice sweet. Name is it or hook? I just want to make sure I’m addressing you correctly. [Michael Houck]: You actually nailed it the first time, which is very rare. It’s it’s how they use like a W perfect awesome. The most the most mispronounced five letter last name. I feel like in the English language. [Michael Houck]: But yeah, how are you? What’s going on? [Sarah Parr]: I’m great like I you know, I feel like I just filled you in so much of what’s happening in my life right now. But yeah, things are great. I love the art behind your wall. [Michael Houck]: Oh, thanks. We got the lion and the tiger. I don’t know which one’s me and which one’s my wife. [Sarah Parr]: But how are you doing? How’s everything going? [Michael Houck]: I’m good. Yeah, things are good. I’m just getting ready for q4. Very, very strong q3. So trying to think how to like, deploy into some new growth stuff. And, yeah, all good problems to have right now. So things are good. Nice sunny day. But yeah, I was glad that Grace connected us. And, you know, we’re looking to grow the agency, I think we were in a position where my audience is sort of very aligned to needing content creation, ghostwriting, and all that. Kind of seeing the success that I’ve had with that. And so there’s a lot of like inherent interest in it. But we’re also starting some more sort of like targeted outreach type things. So I’m expecting pretty strong growth in Q4. And so just a good time for us to kind of touch base. And yeah, I think because we’ll probably be looking to grow the team before the end of the quarter. [Sarah Parr]: That’s awesome. Yeah. So what kind of clients do you have at your agency? Do you feel like like what kind of niches are we talking? I’m down to like work with whoever and however I can support. [Michael Houck]: But yeah, I mean, so my audience is like broadly startup founders, and a good portion of those are venture backed founders. Some are bootstrapped as well. But that’s sort of where I built my my niche. And so what that means, of course, is profile of client, you know, they’re super busy, their founders, you know, they’re running their teams, they don’t have time to like create content, like that’s the profile of the person that comes to us. Got it. But what that also means is that their companies are all over the place in different niches and, and, and things like that. So that’s why, you know, we have clients who are building AI companies, we have clients who are building, like, offshore hiring companies, We have clients who are building fintech apps. Everything is super different in terms of the subject matter. And so I try to match the writers on the team up to the people who I think are the best fit for their knowledge and the background and all that. But it’s super varied. And so what we do in terms of work is either LinkedIn and or X, as well as newsletters. Because a lot of these startups, they want to stay top of mind for their potential users and their active users. So they want newsletters as well. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Sarah Parr]: That’s great. Yeah, I love LinkedIn. I’ve been posting a little bit on there and it’s just fun to like build your network and community and things like that. But that’s great. I love that it sounds like you have a very defined idea of like exactly what you need. [Michael Houck]: And yeah, it’s great. Yeah, we’ve built up a process that like works very well for this type of client. Super lightweight for them, and also that means pretty lightweight for the writers on the team, too. Everything happens through Slack. We send them questions for the week. They send back voice notes, so no need to hop on too many meetings. Some clients will want a monthly content interview or something, but it’s pretty lightweight, and as long as we those content, or as long as we get those voice notes back from clients by Wednesday, then we tell them that we can get them the drafts by Friday. That’s that’s pretty much it. So, yeah, I mean, it sounds like you would want to focus mostly on LinkedIn clients. Is that is that fair to say? [Sarah Parr]: Um, I think that would probably be my favorite. But I’m also down for newsletter writing, too. I’ve done some of that. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool. That’s great. [Sarah Parr]: Well, repurposing, like repurposing kind of with all of those three platforms in mind or different? Okay, perfect. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, you know, not every client wants all of the above, right? Some people are just like, I want to use LinkedIn as our top of funnel for our product. That’s it. But for the ones who do want multiple, you know, the X and LinkedIn is pretty interchangeable. You just maybe change the format of the hook at the beginning. And then for for newsletters, newsletters tend to be a little bit different. We can take kind of inspiration from the LinkedIn stuff and vice versa, but, um, it’s more about sort of going a little deeper in most cases, every newsletter is a little different, but, um, yeah, that’s, that’s pretty much it. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s straightforward. Um, I’m sort of like the, the bad cop between you and the client. So if anything’s ever, um, if they ever have any concerns about anything, or they’re trying to ask you to do too many revisions or something like that, like, you tag me in, I’m the bulldog, I go in there, I set them straight. And then we also have I don’t know if you know Blakey mall. He’s like, he’s a he’s big on Twitter. He’s grown on LinkedIn, too, but he’s bigger on Twitter. He was the first CMO of copy AI, one of those early AI tools. [Sarah Parr]: Really? [Michael Houck]: Yeah. And so he’s my he’s my partner in the agency, he sort of like manages the content team. So on a week to week basis, anything that you’re writing, you would send to him sort of to take a look at and edit before we send it to the client. So that’s sort of how he and I delineate responsibilities at that side of things. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. [Sarah Parr]: That sounds great. Yeah, I’d love to help. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Well, I mean, I trust Grace’s opinion quite a lot. So I’m glad that she introduced us, I guess. And yeah, I mean, we’ll be sort of ramping up some of these outreach options I mentioned probably in the next like 10 days, I would say. So what our plans are is basically to see who comes in and then kind of match that up with folks from there. So what I can do is sort of add you to our Slack as we start to ramp that up. And then when we have a client that seems like a good match, I will let you know. And if you have specific niches or anything else that I should be aware of, like preferences for what type of content or who to write for, things like that, please let me know. [Sarah Parr]: Yeah, I definitely will. I personally, I’m a big foodie, so I don’t know if you deal with any of those people, but that’s something I love. [Michael Houck]: Me too. Yeah. You’re in New York, that’s the best place for it. [Sarah Parr]: It truly is. Cleveland’s got some good stuff as well. I’ve been very fortunate. The places that I’ve lived have had very amazing food scenes. [Michael Houck]: I love it. I need to check out more places. I basically hopped from West Coast to East Coast and back and forth for the majority of my adult life. I’m debating actually leaving New York and going somewhere, maybe Dallas, maybe Nashville. So I don’t know, we’ll see. [Sarah Parr]: Yeah, I mean, Nashville definitely has some food places as well, you know? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, the Nashville fried chickens calling my name. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool. Well, I guess any other questions for for me? I know we’re not like getting started on anything right now. But I just want to make sure I answer anything. [Sarah Parr]: Yeah. No, I don’t think I have any questions right now. But it was so great to me. And I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do together. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, me too. I’ll add you to our Slack relatively soon. And then as we start to ramp things up, I’m sure we’ll have one, two, you know, oh, that is a good question. Like, what is your bandwidth? Like how many clients could you take on per like month? [Sarah Parr]: Oh, yeah. I mean, I usually have about 10 hours open per week. So I guess depending on if it’s just strictly a LinkedIn client or strictly an ex client, um, I would say maybe I could start with one or two and then depending on how much time it’s taking, um, we can see if there’s. Places to like add more. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: Okay. That sounds good. Um, and then as far as like, um, rates go, it’ll depend on the specific client and sort of what package they pick and also how much work then is, is going to you. I try to make it basically fair to all sides in terms of what we can offer. We’re not trying to take anything crazy off the top. So I can present sort of the offers to you as we sign the clients and you let me know if they’d be a fit. [Sarah Parr]: Yeah, that sounds perfect. Thank you. [Michael Houck]: Cool. All right, Sarah. Thanks so much. [Sarah Parr]: Thank you. Have a great rest of your week. [Michael Houck]: You too. Talk soon. See you. Bye.