- Duration: 31 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JD86EY0M3D5ZAWWHERTDBAV4 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JD86EY0M3D5ZAWWHERTDBAV4)
Transcript
[Max Palmer]: His last company was like, I think it’s his current company still. It was called Howard. Let me just send it to you. [Michael Houck]: Howardddc.com. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I don’t remember that. I just sent it to you. [Max Palmer]: Oh, I do remember this. This was forever ago. [Michael Houck]: It was a year ago. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Wow. [Michael Houck]: Okay. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: And, um, I think he’s just got this new thing, helping companies adopt AI. I think this guy’s actually like a low key, good entrepreneur and has had some success. I mean, the, the AI thing is a really smart idea. [Michael Houck]: So yeah, that, and also the other AI thing, the robo agency or whatever, both of those are just smart businesses to have right now. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Um, I was doing some quick math. Let’s see if I take out the non sponsorship things here. Um, yeah, look, I mean, if everybody who you’re in talks with converts this month who we’ve spoken about, this is gonna be the best month, not only a sponsorship revenue, but just a revenue for the company ever. Good. Like Bamboo, Athena, FERC, the robo agency, HubSpot, the AI company that just paid, Bounty. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, Bounty, Freck I’m really confident in because she’s responsive. So that will come through. Bounty, you know, I, it sounded like it will come through. That’s going to be smaller. [Michael Houck]: Um, right, right. But I mean, and it might not come through this month, but it could. Um, yeah, but I’m just, I’m just, let me just sum everything up here. Um, yeah, if everything comes through like best case scenario, we could literally have like over 65 K a sponsor revenue hit this That would be awesome. That would be so, that’s like, that’s like more than we made last month in total revenue. [Max Palmer]: Wow. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So great timing before the end of the year. Um, and for the holidays too, to get that in. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Um, probably, probably some of them will convert next month instead of this month, but still, yeah. Um, uh, yeah, I don’t know. Nice work is all I can say. It’s very impressive. I’m stoked. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Dang. [Michael Houck]: So are we booked up? If all these convert, will we be booked up basically through January? [Max Palmer]: I don’t think so. Not quite. We need this HubSpot one with Wouter to close. That one annoys me. I followed up with that guy who we were in contact with multiple times. He opened all my emails, no response. And then you connect me with Christine. No response, not opening my emails. And then Wilder comes in, I’m like, fucking damn it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, what can we do? It’s better than not taking it, you know? Yeah, no, I know. [Max Palmer]: these big companies don’t even know what’s happening inside their company. [Michael Houck]: And for Christine, she works on like a very specific part of HubSpot. She’s like HubSpot startup community HubSpot for startups or something like that. So, I mean, there’s a chance that they could want to do something separate from the main product, you know, I don’t know. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. There’s a chance we’re communicating with three different teams at HubSpot. [Michael Houck]: The newsletter that sponsor a certain date and we’re like, Oh, actually that’s already taken by HubSpot. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. Um, well shit. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, look, this is going to be just an insane, insane month. Well, yeah, let’s, we got to get bamboo. [Max Palmer]: Bamboo is so annoying. Bamboo is the big one. Cause you never know what could happen. [Michael Houck]: That’s like the, the albatross once they pay, I’m a feel so much better. [Max Palmer]: And then Athena and Frecker. Going to happen. Bamboo’s starting to worry me a bit, but we’ll see. [Michael Houck]: Well, I’m excited. The good part is that this is going to put us in a position, and I guess there’s no real reason to necessarily keep it between us, but you can if you want to. This is definitely going to put us in a position where, unlike last year, I’m going to be able to do modest holiday bonuses. Oh, awesome. On top of the, on top of the fat commission check you’re going to get, you also get a little. That’s awesome. Thank you. Yeah, of course, Matt, you’ve been, you deserve it. Um, so we’ll finalize that next month, but yeah, that’s a, that’s definitely going to come. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: Um, okay. So also with crypto right now, like I’m just like, yeah, life is good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I know. [Max Palmer]: I know. I put too much money in, well, I put most of my money into ETH and that hasn’t been pumping, but I do have a lot in Bitcoin as well, so. Well, it will, you know, it’s like, [Michael Houck]: It’s got to eventually. I mean, the way this has happened in the past cycles, you know, it’s like Bitcoin goes and then people take what they earned from Bitcoin and they fuck around in various altcoins and ecosystems and try to and stuff there, so. We’ll go from Bitcoin to ETH to Solana, although Solana’s already gone like crazy. And then the meme coins from there. But okay, anything else you need from me on the sponsor side? Anything that I’m blocking right now? I know we need the IO for Wouter, but are we still waiting on something from him for that? [Max Palmer]: He said he was going to respond with his company legal name and he’s traveling today or whatever. [Michael Houck]: So, um, we, I mean, it’s not, we don’t necessarily have a week, but we should try to get all this stuff done before next Thursday, obviously for Thanksgiving. [Max Palmer]: Cause people will be a little hard to reach. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, yeah. Um, okay. Cool. What else is top of mind for you? [Max Palmer]: Okay, so I think I think two things. So I sent some messages on Upwork to designers. And then I pinged Blake, and he hasn’t responded yet. Just because I want to get a better idea of what he’s looking for. Yeah. So waiting on response from him and then I can better respond to these people who have responded to me. So that’s that. [Michael Houck]: What’s the timeline on that? [Max Palmer]: How fast do I need to move? You don’t need to move fast necessarily. [Michael Houck]: We just want to introduce it as a new thing for clients as soon as we can. So it’s not like that needs to happen next week, but if we find someone good, we should move on it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Okay. So that’s that. And then I had the call with Matt yesterday. [Michael Houck]: Oh yeah. [Max Palmer]: How’d that go? I mean, you know, fine. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: It was long. [Max Palmer]: How long did you guys chat for? Like an hour and 45, but we were, we were, we were talking about my son. Newsletter for like 45 minutes of it. [Michael Houck]: So sometimes I am. [Max Palmer]: So yeah, I mean, we’re just we’re just throwing subscribers into the newsletter without emailing them now. And yeah, and that’s what he wants to do for all of these newsletters. Because he’s saying like, it’s there’s no point in emailing. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, and he’s, he’s sort of right. Um, like the, the returns that we get for emailing them are probably not worth the operational complexity, but there’s no good solution that I can think of, um, that solves the client concern, which is legitimate about deliverability. If these people, you know, unsubscribe at mass rates and spam reports and stuff like that. So, For now, we have to do it. I think when you guys talked, he was under the impression he was getting a little far down the road with this method that somebody else told him would work, but I kind of had to set him straight. It was like, that does not work. It does not solve the problem last night. So yeah, he might have been a little further down the road there. We were not going to be directly importing people into Beehive for other people unless they explicitly give us the go-ahead to do so. We’ll give them the option to do the cold campaigns and we’ll just have to manage the email infrastructure unless we can come up with a better option. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. Okay. And then I guess I’m not sure like where I’m fitting in. I created like copy for prompts daily for him and we like went back and forth a bit to edit it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. But I would say that in the short term, two things, one, is sort of what you’re doing, which is just plugging the gaps, writing the copy, and things like that. The second thing is, as we start to scale this up beyond just people who I know, it’ll probably make sense for both you and I to be doing sales calls for newsletter operators and also for startups who have an email list but aren’t using it as a newsletter. That second cohort is more valuable to us because they will also want to pay for ghost writing, which is separate. Like we, the revenues are split, right? It’s like the thing with Matt, our own ghost writing agency. So for us, it’s more valuable to get those ghost writing clients. And he knows that and he’s on the same page. So yeah, I’d say in the short term, plugging the gaps, copy, and then like very soon we’ll start to target startups, not just these people in my network. Once we do that, um, it’ll make sense for both of us to do sales calls. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Okay. Um, but it’s going well, man. [Michael Houck]: I’m, uh, getting bullish on it. [Max Palmer]: We’re seeing fine results from just throwing people in the list. Yeah. It’s crazy. [Michael Houck]: Uh, let me, let me pull up our segment here that I have. Um, Open rates obviously are not, excuse me, gonna be as high as they would be this way, because we’re not validating anything about them. We’re just looking at what they’re interested in and being like, oh, we think they’re a fit because they’re interested in this. That’s what the email campaigns help with. Is this an engaged email? Open rate is 39.4%. Click rate, though, is 2.9%. 11.8% which for us is pretty good. An unsubscribe rate is only 11.1% and that’s after doing this for three weeks. So I would have expected the open rate to be a bit higher by now. What percentage of that click through rate is people clicking the unsubscribe button? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That’s a good question. [Michael Houck]: Let’s see. Of unsubscribed out of that. Like if you count multiple emails that are being sent, I’m not gonna be able to do the exact math, but if you count the emails being sent, it’s like a quarter of them, not that many. [Max Palmer]: And you’re not getting like people responding, like how the hell did you find my email or? [Michael Houck]: I have gotten zero emails like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Wow. [Michael Houck]: And if you look at the, um, the analytics of the recent posts, like just to sanity check the spam reports, cause it doesn’t let you look at spam reports by segment, which I think is weird. Um, but if you just look at like recent posts to see if there’s been an uptick, let’s see what we get. Yeah, we don’t on the last three emails we sent, we actually have zero spam reports. You can see that in Beehive? Yeah, you can see it in the analytics post report down at the bottom. So probably a limit of like right now we’re adding the effectively we’re adding 10% new subscribers per month and we’re obviously breaking it out by day. My guess is that for this method where we just import people, 10%, maybe 10 to 15% is probably the limit. If we’re validating them through cold email campaigns first, my guess is that we can probably stretch it more to like 20%, 15, 20%. So our offer is basically, you know, free, like, well not free, but you know, like easy autopilot, 20% growth for your newsletter promotion. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: OK. [Michael Houck]: So I’m continuing to talk to clients. I’m setting up our CRM. And then I’m basically turning them over to Matt to get the leads and set up the campaigns. And then he’s sending it back to Rina to do the importing. And I just need to design that process for her when we do it the first time with a client. But yeah. So for now, just help him out with copy on the new campaigns. And you can go through linear and check if any of the things in there you want to take on too. [Max Palmer]: You can just assign yourself the tasks. OK. [Michael Houck]: Because he had us in. Yeah. Fuck Trello, man. It’s so bad. It’s like 2010. I just can’t. [Michael Houck]: So we already use linear for the engineering team. So easier to just keep it all in one place. [Max Palmer]: Okay. I’m assuming you’ve invited me in the past. [Michael Houck]: I think you have, I just invited you last night. [Max Palmer]: So it’s a, it’s your how it got news email. Um, are you sure I didn’t get it? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Do you get one? No. Okay. [Michael Houck]: Let me, um, no, unless I accidentally deleted it. Let me resend one second. Okay. Um, members. Okay. It says you’re an existing that your account is suspended. What did you do, man? It says my account is suspended. [Max Palmer]: I went to invite you and I said, you’re already a member, but your account is suspended. [Michael Houck]: I’ve literally never used it. Well, it’s not, it doesn’t let me do it. [Max Palmer]: Their members page is actually not that good. It doesn’t let me, uh, okay, let me continue with Google and see if it like lets me in. Workspace name, how linear.app slash how it’s saying create. No, no. I don’t want to create a workspace. [Michael Houck]: No, you don’t want to create a workspace. [Max Palmer]: Log in. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, it’s only letting me create a new workspace when I try to log in. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: It’s just weird. [Max Palmer]: All right, let me send it to your founding journey email. I’ve never used that email. Should I send it there or should I send it to your personal? Send it to my founding journey. I don’t want to use my personal. Why? Why would I be? I’ve literally never used it. I think I logged in once. Okay, now got sent to your founding journey email. Okay. I’m going to log into that email for the first time. So many Google accounts. I know, I know. [Michael Houck]: Thank God for superhuman. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so right now all the tests in here either assigned to me or Matt Arena has one, but if you want to take any of them. That you know you. I want to leave just just do it. Mostly small stuff for now. [Max Palmer]: You don’t happen to know my password for my founding journey email. [Michael Houck]: I don’t. You should have received did an email to your hack.news email that had a temporary password. That was probably from like early September. Yeah. You have a new Google workspace. [Max Palmer]: Okay. Yep. Okay. I haven’t done any of this. So, okay. I mean, I, I don’t need to do this now, but, um, you’re right. I tried to use either incorrect or no. Of course. Yeah. Okay, I’m going to go forgot password. Contact your domain admin for help. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Fuck. [Michael Houck]: I guess that’s me. Let me look into Google workspace here. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: admin.google.com. [Michael Houck]: This is for founding OK, users. I’m going to reset your password. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And [Michael Houck]: I have your password here. Let me send it to you in Slack. I think it’ll make you reset it after you use that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Let’s see, 875991, 5991. Okay. [Max Palmer]: Uh, what do you use to create passwords? [Michael Houck]: Uh, I used to use a really cool app called remember, but they got acquired and then they shut it down for some reason. So now I’ve started using one password. It’s, I’d say it’s good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Not great. [Max Palmer]: Um, Damn, it is not letting me do any type of normal worded password. What? Your email? Yeah. No, like Google for this email. I don’t know. Well, I’ll figure this out. I mean, we don’t need to do this. Yeah. What else do we, what else do we have? [Michael Houck]: Anything else going on? I Know we have the the actual founding journey Membership offers stuff the newsletter stuff sidetracked me first half of this week So I’m gonna get back to that this weekend and then on Tuesday we can talk about next steps [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: there. Okay? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I don’t think there’s much Okay. Um, yeah, we should be good. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Sweet. I will, I guess, let me know if you have any issues with the login. Um, and then if you’re talking with Matt and he’s like asking you to do something for the newsletter stuff, just create a task in the issues tab in linear, um, and just like tag it and name it and assign it to yourself just so we have a record of it in here. Okay. Sounds good. Cool. All right, man. Nice work on everything. It’s, um, I’m just, yeah, I’m in awe of the sponsorships this month. [Max Palmer]: It’s a, it’s a nice surprise. I’m so proud of it too. [Michael Houck]: Cool, man. All right. Well talk soon. Later.