- Duration: 36 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J94HVD3J3HV8MS947X0SJ3BD (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01J94HVD3J3HV8MS947X0SJ3BD)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: it’s worth more and it makes a high ticket item. [Matt McGarry]: I think so. And as much as I would like to change it to maybe a regular course or something like that, I feel like it wouldn’t be as successful for all those reasons. Right. So it’s a trade off for sure. But I think I’m going to keep doing at least I’m doing at least one more cohort after this one because it’s been successful. [Michael Houck]: Good, man. We’re glad to hear things are going well. Yeah, I keep seeing notes about how you’re hiring more people and all this stuff and it just seems like you’ve really built a good business here. So that’s awesome. I love to see it. I remember when we talked like two years ago when I was in Cape Town and you were like, I think it was pretty early and just like getting started with things and very cool to see you crush it the way you have. [Matt McGarry]: Thank you. And likewise, same with you, man. We started working together when I was first starting, literally, about two years ago. I may have started maybe six months before, but it was kind of just me. So it’s been fun. It’s been a lot of work, and just always trying to find good people. You know how it is, especially with an agency, right? Because that’s how he grows, with people. You see a lot of those. We don’t have a huge team, but I still do a lot of job posting, because it’s just as important as marketing the business, is getting the people on board. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I, uh, I’ve kind of stumbled into finding some really good people. Um, like we had this guy who interviewed me on a podcast and then like a week later, his startup, like not his startup, but the startup he was working at, um, like fell apart basically. And so I then hired him. Um, and he’s become like my ops guy for anything from the podcast that we’re launching later this week to, uh, a whole bunch of other stuff. And he’s been just a high a really great addition to the team. So just kind of stumble into it sometimes. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, I’ve had that too. A lot of times those are the best, really. The traditional job-seeking stuff, like posting on a job on LinkedIn, that sucks. I haven’t found many good people that way. [Michael Houck]: If I can go my entire history with this new company without having to do that, that’ll be great. Absolutely. But yeah. So yeah, I think I’d reached out a few weeks ago because we’re starting to think about growth again. Basically, in the spring, I think we paused everything sort of unexpectedly. We had to do some more intense engineering on Megaphone over the summer. And we finally launched a totally redesigned dashboard database and honestly like 80% of the code base. On Saturday. And so after a few months of sort of heavy R&D on the stuff that doesn’t grow the business or add new features or anything like that, it’s just like shitty stuff we had to do. We’re ready to start getting back into our normal cadence, which means I can bring the engineering team kind of back to where they’re supposed to be at, I guess. And so that means that we have some budget to start thinking about growth. I’m exploring kind of for the newsletter, obviously what we were doing before paid ads is just how it works. So we’re looking into that. And then we’re also looking at allocating budget towards video content creation for me and also some SEO stuff for megaphone. So I’m trying to like allocate everything across those three different channels because yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much where we’re at. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, walk me through some of the stuff. So walk me through some of the goals for Megaphone. So you’re assuming we’re growing the side of the network that’s publishers who want to get engagement, right? And pay for engagement. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So the vision for Megaphone has expanded a bit. So right now, the product is still pretty similar to, I think, what you would be familiar with. But in the works are some updates we’ll make before the end of the year. So number one is additional partnerships. So we want to position Megaphone not as an engagement service, but rather as a creator partnerships platform. And so we’re getting all these creators to offer sponsored posts or Twitter spaces or podcasts and newsletter ads and other things like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Matt McGarry]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: but with this unique angle of engagement that kind of no one else offers. We’re also launching engagement pods, like private engagement pods for you and your friends to share posts back and forth with statistics and metrics and fun stuff. And a few other things as well. So we’re sort of like, and we’re also expanding to TikTok, Instagram and threads. So a lot of kind of, growing the TAM of the business. And yeah, so that’ll all be launched by the end of the year. I’m trying to think what else I was gonna say. Oh yeah, and then we have a ghostwriting agency now too. So for Twitter, LinkedIn, and newsletters, we’re doing ghostwriting for folks with a team of writers. That’s sort of its own business, but it’s sort of related to Megaphone. It’s kind of all under one umbrella for now. [Michael Houck]: And so my thought for Megaphone is that it makes more sense to grow it through SEO because it might be a harder sell for a SaaS product through paid ads. I’m not sure. But then for the newsletter, we’ve rebranded it from Hauk’s Newsletter to Founding Journey because we’re going to have the podcast, the info product, and the newsletter sort of all under that umbrella. And so for that, I think it makes more sense to run paid ads just because we’ve seen a lot of success with that. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah. Is there a free trial for a megaphone? [Michael Houck]: Not today, but we’re launching a free tier and also a free trial on the paid tier when we launch the engagement pod. Product probably next month. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, I still think Facebook and Google Ads could work for Megaphone. We didn’t entirely crack that when we were working on it with you, but I think it’s possible. It requires more of an education-based funnel. And I would still do it in a similar way that we discussed before, where you basically have an opt-in page, where you’re advertising basically And then kind of like a try it call to action where you enter your email address in the next page. I would have more like a video on a sales page that demonstrate how to use the product and like how to get value out of and why there’s ROI there. Um, and then you have a link to check out or start a free trial or start the free plan on that second step of the funnel. And hopefully, um, some marketing emails for people who don’t. Purchase there too, you know, like a drip sequence, right. Of, of, you know, like five, five to 10 emails sent over, you know, one to two weeks. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And we’d probably also add them to our, um, I think, I don’t know if we had this when we were working together, we have another newsletter now called viral examples. Basically we take three posts that went viral the week before and we analyze what worked about them and create a template. So, um, we’d probably add them to that as well, just to stay top of mind longer term. [Matt McGarry]: Um, Absolutely, yeah. That’s a good idea. I have to show them. I haven’t seen them. I’ll pull that up later. Yes, I mean, that’s one way we do. And we have Google Ad capability now, which can be good for high intent stuff. Like, it’s not really great for newsletters in most cases. But for SaaS, it’s great, because it’s more of like a need-based thing, where people are searching for it. If you can find people who are in market for a SaaS product, Google Ads can be great for that, even though they can be more expensive. So I would think about something like that. And then for founding journey, it’s a little bit more straightforward. We’re focusing on the benefits of the newsletter, sending people to a landing page to sign up. And then where it gets more complicated is what happens after that landing page. So do we have Beehive Boost, which you have? Do we have? Membership pitch, which you have here, like, what does that membership page look like, Optimizing that to get get as many purchases as possible there. Those are the things that we think about, and we can help with, with the newsletter side, and we’ve been focusing on being more helpful on the on the signup flow. So helping you optimize your landing page, your thank you page, a survey, stuff like that is I think it’s just as important as the ads, right? And so imagine for founding Journey, it’s like, it’s really about obviously getting a low cost subscriber, but getting that person to buy the membership. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that’s what we need. Because I think, like last year, for example, when we were spending a lot, you know, the there weren’t as many newsletters behind didn’t have their ad network, sponsorship prices were much higher. And so now we’re in this place where, you know, we’re still pretty filled up, I’d say we have a Actually, I mistakenly sent out this morning’s newsletter without the sponsor in it, which is a miss. We still have like 90 plus percent, I’d say 95 percent booked sponsor slots, but we’ve noticed more pushback on price. And anecdotally, I think we’re hearing, you’re probably hearing too across the board, there’s downward pressure. Now that we have this info product of, you know, I’ve interviewed 60 or 70 venture backed founders, and we’ve written case studies about every single one to learn how to fundraise. It’s like starter story, but for fundraising, right now that we have that, and we’re going to keep adding more to that every week. Really, really important that if we’re spending on ads, it’s people who are going to buy that. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, um, I total in the same The one thing I still don’t love about the membership is just like the price point. This whole thing is way too cheap. And I think you’ve mentioned this, so you changed a lifetime, which I like, Fundraising case studies, weekly deep dives. [Michael Houck]: The case study is the main thing. I want that to be our core pillar product. The problem is often, man, early stage founders, they just don’t have a lot of money to spend on like, it doesn’t feel like they have a lot of money to spend on this stuff. [Matt McGarry]: So maybe I’m doing something wrong with, I think, I think it’s interesting to see the clear ROI there. Um, and I think it’s just the sales mechanism. It’s tough, right? It’s, I think it’s really hard to sell something that’s more than $200 on a landing page. I think you need some type of webinar VSL. And so what I would say is like, if you don't want to do webinars, just keep the price under $200 is that is inaccessible for an offer price where I can buy something without having to do a ton of research on it. But if you want to sell this for $1,000 to $2,000 where I think it should be, and I really do think it should be to $2,000 for life, I think you need a webinar or a VSL or a sales call. And usually out of of those three, the easiest option is the webinar. In my opinion, what's a VSL? [Michael Houck]: I don't know what that is. [Matt McGarry]: Sorry. It's like a direct response marketing term, video sales letter, which basically a video that sells the product. So usually a webinar is like about one hour. It could be two hours. A video sales letter would be usually between 10 20 minutes. So it's not like a demonstrate a demo video, which is like two minute demo video with some animations. Like this is really going to take you from like A to Z from like no understanding of why this is going to help you to a full understanding and guide you through a purchase. That's what a video sales letter does. And it's usually 10 to 20 minutes. Um, and so, um, and then the other options like selling on the phone, if it's at $2,000 or above that can be done, but that’s, that’s, there’s infrastructure and hiring involved with that. So that’s the one I wouldn’t recommend out of those three. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, look, I’m not opposed to those sort of heavier, um, heavier, I guess, approaches. Webinars are fine. I’m good on camera. I have a good setup. I’m sure we could create something. I guess it’s like, we launched the case studies, I think, maybe two weeks ago now. Response was good, but it wasn’t what I was hoping it would be for the price point that we’re offering it at. Because I agree, I think it’s too cheap. [Michael Houck]: But like, if people aren’t buying it to the level that I want them to at $200, why are they going to buy it at the level that we hope even with a stronger sale for over 1000? You know? [Matt McGarry]: Yeah. I think I just don't think the offer is right. And I think it's a little bit more to focus on features and not benefits. So like what? And what if I'm just gonna like, pretend like I know everything about your So I don't have all the context that you do, but like, I'm assuming it's people who have a startup or a startup idea and want to raise capital and get off the ground, get their first users and customers, but are not there yet. It's aspiring entrepreneurs, even entrepreneurs, right? It's like you put most people in that category. There's definitely people who are not in that category, but if we were like, do like 80, 20 for it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I'd say It's more like say, 30, but yeah, pretty close. [Matt McGarry]: And that's the market for courses. Like, that's the thing I've, when I first did my course, I was like, I want people, if you only, I want you to have a newsletter and have 500 plus subscribers before you enroll. But people who like already have a business don't buy courses in these types of programs. It's a, it's always the aspiring audience. That's why a lot of people like call this category of business opportunity because all the most successful courses and programs business opportunity things as people who want to start a business and want to be successful but are not there yet. They have time on their hands but they don't have a lot of money. If you already have a second figure business like me and you don't buy a lot of courses probably by some and not a lot because we just don't have time to complete them. And so like I would position this more like a business opportunity program. And you know it doesn't make sense to spend one the two thousand dollars if I can help you go and raise $50,000 to $500,000 for your startup? Yes, it does. That's a huge ROI. And so that's why I think that price point's relevant. Or if I can help you get your first $10,000 in sales for your startup through this, it makes sense to spend $1,000 to $2,000 to invest in this one time and get access for life. And so what I would… Not that I want you to add more to this, but one thing this may not have that we need in the offer is a turnkey And again, I’m just kind of giving you some unsolicited advice, but like a turnkey system where it’s like, so the fundraising case studies is good, but I have to go and read those case studies to like get stuff out of them. What I would want as another feature is like basically like a template where it’s like, give me a pitch deck template. Maybe it’s already in there. I don’t know about it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, we have one. Yeah. [Matt McGarry]: I would make, I would make the templated process more this was basically in these types of programs, people want a turnkey system where they can basically just plug in their stuff, copy and paste it and get results. So it’s like, if I need to pitch deck for fundraising, I want to pitch deck temple that I can copy and paste. If I need a cold email, I want cold email templates. If I need to contact investors, I want an investor database. And I think you already have like stuff. And so what I would, I would pitch it as like the turnkey system to raise your first X amount of dollars and we won’t make income claims, right? And we won’t do anything like that. Um, and we can’t make financial fundraising claims either, but like, you basically want to demonstrate that you, like, you could do this and people have done this by following this advice. Um, but you’re not going to say like, this is going to get you this thing. Of course, you know, we never say that. [Michael Houck]: Uh, or yeah, I can already, I see it. I feel it. I’m with you. That’s a lot more compelling. Telling. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, and this like startups.com I think did something like this where like they would they would like charge it was more like a coaching program, they would charge like 10s of 1000s of dollars to help you raise money. Or maybe it was another one. Maybe it wasn’t startups.com. Maybe it was someone else. [Michael Houck]: But um, I think people, one thing we need to be conscious of with this niche is that with the like, we don’t want to put we don’t want to blow our credibility with And maybe this is a benefit of actually removing my name from the branding, but we don’t want to blow our credibility with the like legit farther along already venture back to multiple round or something founder community. Right. Because those people, they’re like, you know, if we’re like, I don’t want it to come off like I’m charging people for them to fundraise, you know, because that that’s like, [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Matt McGarry]: And we want to focus on like it needs to be a benefit first. But we’re also like, hey, these are the deliverables that you’re getting that are going to help you do this. It’s more of a system than a list of case studies or deep dives or features. It’s more of a system that’s guided from A to Z. And the problem is, that’s a balance that I have, too. But the challenge is, those people, they’re not buying the product. They’re always going to be the minority of your customers, even though they have the money. It’s just because they don’t have the time. [Matt McGarry]: So if it’s a less than $2,000 product, it should always be aimed towards beginners. Now, if you wanted to have a different product for those people, that would be more like a tens of thousands of dollars coaching program and services. And that would be for those people. So there's definitely a way to work. I'm being a little bit more hyperbolic in how I explain this, but there's a way to explain this in the right way, in the wrong way. And I definitely care about compliance and all that stuff. Setting realistic expectations. But like that's in like the if I were like the CMO, like that's what I would repurpose this as like the I wouldn't change the name necessarily, but I would repurpose it as like essentially like the fundraising system. We add those things or we just format the offer in a different way, and we charge one to $2,000. And I was gonna say maybe even add some your time in but I don’t think to do that. But if you wanted to charge even more, you would add some of your time in. A one day advising call with Hauk. Yeah, so you’re doing that for the 750. You might still have a different tier where it’s like 1000 versus get the call for 1500. [Michael Houck]: Dominic Yeah, or even like quarterly calls for a year or something for more than that. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, it needs to be a lot more if it’s the one on one quarterly calls, but You could have group calls too, but then it becomes challenging because you’re doing lifetime access here, right? So anyways, I don’t don’t get to it. Details anyways, it’s just something to think about. One thing we do is like we had a kosher burger. Now we charge $5000 time and then $500 per year. And so it’s like, [Matt McGarry]: a lot less of a commitment. Like I used to do like $3,000 per year. And it's been a lot easier to sell the 5k one time at $500 per year than $3,000 per year. It's interesting. Yeah, I've picked that up from some other folks who do similar stuff. Anyway, so like, that's my concern with just the selling the membership is like, it's just we can sell it as is. I just don't know if we're going to be able to sell seven figures and memberships as it is right now. It's just like a lot of people that need to buy this. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, look, I mean, I'm with you. Like when we worked together before, the majority of what we're doing, if not like 99% of what we're doing, except for the couple of welcome emails that you guys wrote for us, which were great. Everything was just, you know, we're doing that basically. That's what we were doing. Are you saying that now you guys basically Take on these other things too and you're working. [Matt McGarry]: You know, that's the challenge because we don't have like all this done for you Although I'd love to so we don't have the team and bandwidth for that So like we do like basically our services the signup flow obviously all the ad management and creative and Then we've done some add-ons where it's like we'll do email marketing like we'll write a 10-part welcome sequence for you for a set cost per email It's not very expensive. I don't know. We may charge like $100 per email for you or something. Maybe 150 Usually we charge more now, but like, let’s just say 100, 250 email, training email sequence. If you want to like, we don’t work with clients on like restructuring the offer for them, changing any of the course deliverables or learning center stuff. We haven’t written webinars for clients. Like we haven’t set up a webinar for client. Like that’s, yeah, that’s the stuff where like you would need to, if you wanted to do it, you would need to be able to do it with me. Um, and I would just guide you, but it’s not a requirement. Like we could just do the $200 per year one. I just, yeah, I mean, I don't see it being a seven figure membership at $2 per year. It’s just really tough. [Michael Houck]: Like I said before, I think I could, um, you know, I think I could figure out the majority of it. I think as long as, you know, I can come to you with questions or screenshots and be like, Hey, what do you think of this versus this? Um, I think that would, that would be enough where I could just take on the rest of it. So it wouldn’t need to be like full service and like, hey, create this webinar for me. It’s more so like, as I create a webinar, I’m able to ask you questions. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah. Yeah. We can definitely do that. And I don’t think it’s that complicated. Like a webinars, the contents love, I don’t think it’s that complicated and it’s not, it’s not never something you couldn’t do. How much have you done like membership revenue this year so far, if you know a ballpark number? [Michael Houck]: It’s the top of my head. I think it’s like 100k. [Matt McGarry]: I think it’s like 100k. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, I think, you know, just imagine if we’re, what’s the math here of like how many members of that is? 500? [Michael Houck]: in the math realm? [Matt McGarry]: I hate math. I don’t think in math, so I’m off a little bit. Yeah, it’s like if we sell like 100 people at 1,000 or 100 people at 1,500, still a lot easier to get there and above that with less customers. [Matt McGarry]: And I would recommend charging more than 1,000, like in the 1,500 range. Yes, it started to get so, you know, weeds of all this stuff. But like, yeah, it’s just I think with advertising being tough, I think you have to have a strong info product. And I just like as it is right now, I don’t see it as as a strong info product. I think it needs needs those improvements. Megaphone I think is seems like it’s growing super fast. And it’s almost turned in your main thing. As I wasn’t expecting that when you first started that. So that’s awesome. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, Megaphone has been a lot of fun. And I think I I actually think that our growth in 2025 is actually going to be even faster than 2024 because we’re launching this engagement pod thing that I think is really going to make organic growth really easy rather [Matt McGarry]: than having to do a lot. I remember that. I like that. [Michael Houck]: It’s been in the works for a while. Then this database thing took over my life over the summer. [Matt McGarry]: I got to run to a call at 2 p.m. My time. I guess it’s your time too. I can walk you through how we work together. I think you wanted to add there, I interrupted you. [Michael Houck]: No, no, you’re good. Yeah, I guess I’d want to know if we did megaphone, if we got this info product for founding journey kind of set and then did that, what everything would look like, [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, so the challenging thing is our base fee starts at $4,000 month now. And just because we have limited team, limited clients we can work with, That has to be where our feet start set. And the challenging thing is we're advertising for two completely different products. That can be essentially double the work. So we're not going to charge $8,000 per month for that. But we have to charge a little bit more if we’re doing ads for both of those. So I’d have to get you a quote for that. But we can just assume. [Matt McGarry]: First of all, if we just start with one, our fee would be 4K per month or 8% of ad spend, whichever is higher. And then if you’re doing a megaphone ads, I can just help you with the founding journey stuff at no additional cost. That’s just my advising stuff. But then when we want to add ads for founding journey, if we were to do that a couple months later or one or two months later, then we’d have a small additional fee. And so it’d probably have to be a fee of like $1,500 per month. To add another advertising thing onto that. So $5,500 per month, right? To do two totally separate products. [Michael Houck]: I mean, I think that’s fair. If we’re seeing that we can sell the product at $1,000 or more, that pays for itself. So I’m not too worried about it. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, I think that’s where you really start to unlock great return on ad spend is when you’re able to do that. So let me send you I like to start kind of boilerplate email that just has all that stuff on email. You’ve probably already seen it, but I think it has an updated contract too, which I got to share with you. It hasn’t really changed in any significant way than our previous contract. But yeah, unfortunately I’ve got to run to another meeting right now, but just keep me posted on that. And if there’s other things I can help with, let me know in email or Slack and we can talk about that there or set up another call and talk about it if you want to. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Yeah. I mean, this is super helpful. I appreciate the time. I’ll let you run. I’ll keep an eye on the email and we’ll talk in And then I’ll get back to you on kind of what next steps make sense Yeah, thank you, man. [Matt McGarry]: I’ll be in touch soon. Appreciate you don’t yeah, and hopefully I’ll see in New York if you have time for that event Oh, yeah, I’ll be the way worse. [Michael Houck]: I’ll be there. [Matt McGarry]: Yeah, we got some gold be like Tim from 1440 is gonna be there It’s gonna be a good crowd mostly more advanced people I’m excited. Thank you. All right. I’ll talk to you soon