- Duration: 33 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JDNEDMVE35FESBRQNN2X2PDF (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JDNEDMVE35FESBRQNN2X2PDF)
Transcript
[Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Hey, Michael. Good morning. Yeah. Good morning. You just, we talked right before you went to bed. [Michael Houck]: Now we’re here. You wake up. How’s it going, man? What’s going on? Nothing much. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Just trying to stay awake. I appreciate you doing this. [Michael Houck]: It’s such a tough, a tough time. We’ll try to make a future one of the times that work better for everybody. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: I think it’s okay. Yeah. I think it’s more like, Once in a month thing, right? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean the kickoffs we only do when we get a new client. You and Waleed can talk about if you guys want to do regular calls or not. I kind of leave that up to you guys to figure out. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: We don’t require it though. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: I had the permission to share the screen, right? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I just I added it before you hopped on, so you’re good. And then let’s just wait for you need to share it yet. Let’s wait for him so we can do some intros. But yeah, I’m excited. I think he’s going to be a good client. He’s someone who I’ve known sort of tangentially for a long time, a couple years at least. So it’s good to be working together on something. Oh, looks like he’s on his phone. So it might be audio only. Let’s see. Let’s see. I’ll let him in now. Hey, what’s up? I’m leaving the gym right now. What’s up, man? [iPhone]: How you doing? Good. How are you? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Good. [Michael Houck]: Is this a good time? Yeah, I’m leaving the gym right now. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. [Michael Houck]: We can we can do this another time if it’s you know, when you’re back at your computer or something, if that’s better. Is it better if I’m on my computer for this? Um, I, I don’t know, maybe just when you’re, are you gonna be like, you know, traveling, like walking or driving somewhere or something like that? [iPhone]: I’ll be sitting in my car. Okay. [Michael Houck]: I guess if you’re just, yeah, I mean, we’re just going to ask you questions and sort of try to get more context on stuff. So as long as you sort of are in a space where you can, you know, put some thought into the questions, then we should be okay. [iPhone]: Oh yeah. Perfect. I can do that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Sorry. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool. No worries. Um, do you want me to give you a minute till you, till you get to the car. [iPhone]: Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: Just let us know when I can see it. [iPhone]: Okay, sweet. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I’m in my car. [Michael Houck]: Sweet. Cool, let’s jump in then. Cool, so we’ll try to make this quick, so you don’t take the full, we scheduled an hour, but we’ll try to make it so we can get through it before then. You gave some good answers to the stuff that we sent over already, so thank you for that. That kind of answers some of the questions we would normally be asking on this call, so we’re appreciative of that. I guess the first thing I’ll do, I’ll turn it over to Tanmay, and you guys can, sort of do intros back and forth. And then we can dive into the meat of the call. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Sweet. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Let’s do it. So, hey, Violet. Hi, I’m Tanmay. I’m 24. I’ve been ghostwriting for two and a half years now. And in that time, I grew my Twitter from zero to 54k. One of the ways I’ve met Michael and built my network with 30 plus founders, built a legendary asset for my business. So yeah, this is what I do full time. And very excited to work with you. I have never worked with such a young founder before you and I are at the same age. So yeah, very excited to see how this goes. [iPhone]: Nice me too. That’s awesome. You built such a big following and such a small amount of time. Congrats on everything and for me. I guess I’ll I’ll reintroduce myself in case you haven’t listened to the memo. I don’t know what to like repeat, but 44 I started my journey when I was like 10 I was making YouTube videos and I was always making like internet friends growing up from all over the US I’m from like a suburb in Dallas and we would go to this convention called VidCon every year that was super fun I used to just go to like meet my favorite creators back in the OG days and eventually I would just go to like hang out with my friends and around like college time I kind of put all that stuff in a back burner even though like I I really enjoyed making content and growing my pages at a meme page like 80K. My YouTube, I grew to like 500K views and like 8K subscribers, but it was always just like, it was really dumb and silly vlogs, but it taught me how to edit content with video editing softwares like Final Cut, iMovie, and with Photoshop, I learned how to edit thumbnails. So it basically made me a digital marketer without me even realizing it. And then I started doing it for startups and tweeting about it, and I met a bunch of founders through the same And my niche has been like consumer apps mainly so far. And I’ve done all sorts of different types of like project-based activations, like content houses, influencer trips, working with like large creators. I feel like I’ve just like tried everything out because I get bored quickly. And this year I kind of entered like a CPG space. Like I work with Doritos and they have a sub brand called Dinamita and Cheetos doing like influencer stuff, content creation. And I’m trying to figure out like which direction to take my agencies in the past few years has been like mainly paid ads and content where we like work with creators we strategize their briefs and like just handle everything for the client and I’m starting to realize like I don’t want to keep I think I want to like maybe like 50% of my business to be consulting but I want to grow like a paid community or paid newsletter I’m not sure which just yet but I do know like having an audience will get me there as long as I have the trust in the area. So I’m trying to shift a lot of my focus on the content, or at least I try to. But then with all my other stuff, I can’t stay on top of it. [Michael Houck]: So that’s why we’re here. [iPhone]: Yeah, that’s literally how we got started on this new journey. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. [Michael Houck]: Sorry to interrupt you. No, no. I was going to say, I’m going to turn it over to Tanmay for most of the call. And take the lead here from our side. I’ll be here to jump in and answer any questions out of context and things like that. And then we’ll circle back up at the end and I’ll go over next steps and kind of where we go from here. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: So Tanmay, if you want to jump in, we can get right to it. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Yeah. Let me share my screen. Just a second. OK. Sweet. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Can you see it now? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, I can see it. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: So the outcome of this meeting is pretty straightforward. We are going to just find out some of the content pillars, topics, subtopics, and what’s your positioning in the market, set up some clear posting schedules, and just walk you through how this process is going to be like, when we are going to submit your questionnaire, and we are going to submit your content and everything else. Does this make sense? [iPhone]: Yes, this makes sense. For some questions, for some of these, I have like a general idea and I’d love like your guys’ expertise. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, we’ll hear your thoughts both during this call and also kind of on an ongoing basis too as we start to see feedback and results from content. We’ll be, we’re your partners here for that for sure. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Okay, sweet. So yeah, of working together? What’s the one reason that you want to create more content? What’s the primary goal that we’re looking at? Leads, revenue, credibility, awareness of your brand? What’s that? [iPhone]: Yeah, I think first is credibility. I just want people to see me as a thought leader in this space when it comes to working with content creators. And after that, very closely tied as revenue but I say that second because I think it’ll come in the future as long as like the credibility is there. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Okay and so you actually answered two questions over there. Let’s just jump to I think you’re pretty familiar with digital marketing so I don’t want to bore you with the other questions so let’s just jump to what’s the target audience of your business? [iPhone]: I would say founders and looking to grow through creators. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Okay, does it include those apps that you have just recently shared and all those content? Yes. Okay, okay. And is it the same audience you want to target in your content? Like is there something new also there? This is one thing I would love advice. [iPhone]: I think immediately like that’s what most people follow me for so it makes sense. I think the general trend online is like if you want to go broad you should to start niche. For that reason, I think right now, it’s a good focus. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think, you know, I when I heard you say just like founders who are looking to grow with creators, like the more that we can niche that down to like what type of founders, what kind of apps are they building, the more specific we can get what type of creators with audience size careers are working with anything more specific, they’re not necessarily we need to have it right now. But just as we Yeah, we’re starting as niches will let us get the notoriety to go more broad, you know, later in 2025. Okay, cool. [iPhone]: Yeah, I’m aligned. I’m aligned on that. I’m hoping, like, I kind of want, I’ve been doing, like, Series A and, like, Pre-Seed Seed for a while. I’ve been leaning more towards, like, bigger companies this year. I’m hoping with Doritos and, like, the other big names, like, Perplexity, Partyful, I can kind of keep going after, like, Series A and beyond. Yeah. So that is like the current goal. And like, maybe like the paid community could be like a lower tier offering that I have like newer founders enter. [Michael Houck]: If that makes sense. Yeah. That’s a good, that’s a good, a good logo to have at this point. [iPhone]: That’s awesome. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Thank you. Thank you. Um, cool. Yeah. [iPhone]: And if you do need me to get more specific, I can, but I think on my side, I’m also, a bit, like these next two months, I’m trying to figure out the direction of where I want to take my agency. [Michael Houck]: So also over time, I think all we can sort of ask then is just keep communication high with us in Slack so that we’re delivering the content that is like aligned with your thinking and the direction you want to take things and we’re not like on a delay or lag for that. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Okay, that sounds good. Okay, so now we are going to like get a little more tactical. So What are the content pillars? What are the three to five topics that matters to you most? A good litmus test would be topics at the intersection of your business and expertise that you can just rant about for hours a year. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. [iPhone]: I can kind of talk about things that we cover as a service slash also perform as well on my page. And that will be breaking down other apps’ content strategies, like this app has this many downloads, and their videos have this many views. And I get very analytical on what makes it get a lot of views. This is founder-led content, and their hooks are really strong. I just analyze the patterns within that and then tweet about that. That’s a very strong one. My hook is consumer apps on the rise alert, and I put two siren emojis, which I can re-bump. That’s one thing. General social media. Trends is helpful, like, oh, tick tock is prioritizing carousels, or like, they announced this new feature that does well. If there’s anything like general, like if doing it as a really cool, like, campaign with a creator, I’ll talk about that because people find it interesting. And then another thing is like video hooks, like if you’re stuck on video formats, like, use these hooks or like just like steal this company’s formats. And like, I’ll add for video examples. Okay. Okay. And thank you so much for that. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: So some of the content that you shared got really good engagement and it was very decent I saw. Did it also bring some warm leads for us? For your business? [iPhone]: Yeah, it brought warm leads for sure. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [iPhone]: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. It gives me a lot of DMs. I would say it doesn’t get me higher ticket clients, but the ones who just want to work with a creator and they’ll enter a Discord channel, it works with them. Typically, in my experience, all of my big clients that I’ve got have all been word of mouth, but it usually links to my social media in some way. I met someone through Twitter, and then they refer me to someone who except for Plexi, for example. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Should that be should that be the goal? [Michael Houck]: Should we be telling people as the CTA to DM you to, like, you know, connect with creators or should we be sending them to, you know, a landing page somewhere? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: For now, DM is good. [iPhone]: Like reply. I like doing reply because it usually boosts the engagement. I’d like reply or DM. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Okay, do you have like any case studies and testimonials that we can turn into content that will bring us just like more warm and more leads? I can, I just have to get client approval. [iPhone]: That is something I’m going to work on probably this weekend and then I can have that to you guys over Monday. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Yeah, because it works as the best social proof to generate leads for like any online business. So yeah, that would be great. Can you also tell me like how your funnel is working like right now since you just told me like just DM you like all the inbound leads should just DM you but usually what I have learned in other high ticket like service online based business usually they just send them down the funnel in the newsletter and then there are some email sequences in places which is just hammering down the CTA and social proofs and like, and at the end of it, there’s a link to book a call. So do we have something like that? Not right now. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I do all that manually. [iPhone]: We got to get that off your plate, man. [Michael Houck]: We got to get you more time. Is that something you guys do? I mean, we can advise. I’m happy to just, you know, help out as a friend and sort of, you know, tell you what I do and what we have set up. But, um, Yeah, we can we can jam on that sometime for sure. [iPhone]: Yeah, that’ll be awesome. Because I’m trying to get out of this consulting rat race. [Michael Houck]: Like, it’s tough, man. I was doing that for the majority of what we had coming in revenue early on. And yeah, it’s, it’s rough on your time. [iPhone]: Yeah, I think that’s like, I think I enjoy doing it. But the hard part is like, the marketing TikTok landscape is changing, like every two, three months. So I have to keep changing my offering. And that’s what I don’t want to keep doing. Like, if I could just stick to paid ads and content, I would do it. But that’s also like, it’s scalable linearly, which people want that virality from organic. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: So yeah, which are the formats that are working most for your brand right now, like long form, short form memes? [iPhone]: What’s working right now? So right now, I would say long form posts has been good. And then Like a close second would be threads where I’ll link like oh, here’s Party fools top three videos and then it’s like read more below and then I’ll put one video example and like three tweets after it and say this is why this video is good and Then here and there memes, but I’m not funny enough to keep those going out consistently, but I did a funny one I did like a fake like YC rejection letter. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, it was like a rose. I And that popped off actually. That did good. [Michael Houck]: That was a good post. I got to give you props for that one. [iPhone]: That was good. Thank you. It got so much engagement and people were confused that I got community noted. [Michael Houck]: That’s how you know you made it with the post. I guess to kind of double click on that real quick. I can’t believe I just said that. How do you want us to think about the mix? Go too deep on this when we chatted, but how do you want us to think about the mix between like long form posts, threads, screenshot essays, and then just like the little kind of shorter posts that maybe can fill [iPhone]: in the days in between the longer stuff. Um, I think, okay. So I have like one format that works already, which is just like the, this is like this consumer app is going viral alert. Um, I do that over and over again. And like, that does very well. So I think we should try prioritizing that. Like, if it’s like possible, maybe like twice a week and the rest, I’m happy to like, just do experiments. Like, I know Twitter, just like a quantity game. Yeah. So as long as like, we’re just getting stuff out there, I’m open to like, whatever it is, I don’t care too much as long as we’re just like trying new things. [Michael Houck]: Well, I think you and Tanmay should jam like async or something over Slack of just, um, What sources you’re finding the best data for for those types of consumer app threads to sort of give him access to where you’re getting that stuff and sort of what you look for. [iPhone]: Yeah, would it be helpful to me if I like a lot of times I can like I see what’s going on and I like save it. On Tick Tock, I just don’t have time to like turn it into content, but I can definitely send you links as like a thought starter and like maybe a voice note with. Some like initial. Ideas and then maybe do like a rough draft and I can help polish if needed. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Yeah, that would be helpful and even I’ve noticed in your threads like what you have done really well is you have that like hook right in and then to add like weight to your argument you have just added like some of the TikTok videos so maybe what you can do for me is anytime you see some some of these videos maybe you rant over it on like voice not really quickly and then I can like turn that and [iPhone]: clear it up and turn it into like a thread or something okay sweet that’d be awesome also this is one thing um it just came to mind paid ads is a really good content pillar I’d like to lean into onto paid ads um and I do think companies still need that help I think an issue with Twitter is like a lot of people are like, oh, like organic is the way to go. So I should try to like, push back a little bit because I still think I can get clients through that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think that to me sounds like the type of like viewpoint perspective, that could actually be really useful to hit kind of time and time again, because it’s contrarian, but it probably actually drives meaningful leads for the business. Because you’re speaking to people about like, hey, actually, this is reality. [iPhone]: This is the truth. Yeah, 100%. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Like that. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Yeah. So actually it’s also like more like enemy-based marketing. So yeah, it’ll just set you in like in a really good positioning. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Sweet. [iPhone]: Down for that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: So about posting schedule, I think Michael wanted to take over, like do you need to schedule for you? Like, yeah. Yeah. Or will your team tackle this? [Michael Houck]: We, we’ve started to take this on sort of as a default for most clients that we work with. So unless you want to manage sort of the scheduling and posting and like replying to comments and things like that, as I mentioned, I think over email, that’s something that we now just sort of take over by default. So just can you like confirm that you want us to do that? [iPhone]: Yeah, that sounds good. Do you guys use any software? Because I use typefully because it has like the auto retweet after six hours. Okay. [Michael Houck]: Thank God you use typefully because some people use Like one of the other shittier ones and I’m like, no. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So, um, if you can give, uh, Tanmay access to your typefully, um, we can get in there and also probably Ben from the content ops team will want to get in there too. Um, and then are you comfortable giving Ben your actual X login so that he can reply to comments and comment on like thought leaders in the niche and things like that? [iPhone]: Yeah, that works for me. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: Just you can DM him from the channel with that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay, cool. [iPhone]: And then I know this says three posts a week. [Michael Houck]: This is outdated. We talked about sort of more frequent posting. So we’ll do a couple long form per week, sort of in the format that you were talking about to start. We’ll experiment with more too. And then we’ll fill in the other days with shorter form posts as well. Something covered on most, if not all, days. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Sweet. [iPhone]: Also, is there a note taker gonna make a to-do list for this call? Or should I quickly take notes? Oh, no, yeah. [Michael Houck]: I’m gonna add the full recording, and there’s a link with takeaways and action items at the top of this doc, and then this doc will be shared with you as part of your Notion hub in Slack. [iPhone]: Okay, sweet. [Michael Houck]: Um, cool. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: So, okay. Yeah. No, go for it. So, yeah. Uh, the final question actually saved this for the end. It’s realistically what needs to happen to still work and you and I, we, we just didn’t work for like, let’s say six, four, 12 months. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Like what needs to happen? [iPhone]: Uh, I would say probably followers growing because I think sales and like leads and all that. Um, I honestly, I think the biggest bottleneck right now is me figuring out my offering. So for you guys, I think as long as like my, my followers are growing, I think it’d be a win. [Michael Houck]: Do you have a, do you have a set goal in mind for like six or 12 months from now that we should keep in mind? [iPhone]: Um, all I know is I just want 10k because I’m like four away. After that case worth it. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Yeah, that is worth it. Yeah. I think yeah, I have everything on my end, Michael. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Cool. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Can you scroll down to the bottom of the document? [Michael Houck]: Click on Yeah, our process section. Yeah. So yeah. So well, it’s obviously what’s gonna happen from here. Temes sort of already started to do context gathering based on what you shared. We’re going to expand that into sort of other things in the niche. We’re going to look at what you share format wise with us too, like we talked about. Then tomorrow I’m going to record a loom profile audit for you. I think your profile is already pretty solid, so it probably won’t be super extensive, but I’ll just make any little recommendations that could be helpful to convert people into followers and or leads for the business. And then as long as you send your credentials, over to Ben, he’ll reach out also and start to set up the sort of content ops process with you, where we’ll get in there, we’ll start replying and things like that. I’m sorry, Tanmay will be writing the first batch, and then we will get that scheduled to you, we’ll get that scheduled within two weeks from now, assuming that everything’s in a good place, like the content edits are good and [iPhone]: things like that. Sweet, sounds good. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I’m excited. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, me too, man. It’s crazy to actually be working together on this. [iPhone]: I love it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, same here. Yeah, seriously. So we’re gonna share the notion that this doc lives in with you. It’ll be pinned in Slack. Everything’s gonna exist in here. If you’d rather us write drafts in Typefully, we can do that too. But generally we find that people like the UI for this the stuff in Notion better, so you let us know what you want there. [iPhone]: I think, I like Typefully. [Michael Houck]: Okay, that’s fine, because we can still leave comments in Typefully, so it should be, it’s another reason to love Typefully over the other options. So we’ll do drafts in there, but sort of this doc and any other docs will live in the Notion. And yeah, then that’s it, we’ll start doing weekly batches. If you feel like you are going to be blocked from approving stuff based on how busy you are or anything like that, just sort of give us some guidance on what’s okay, what types of content are okay for us to just go post versus needing to sort of wait for you to manually approve. [iPhone]: Okay, awesome. That sounds good. And we’ll, we’ll probably we’ll go over this soon. But my writing style is very casual. It’s like you’re talking to your bestie. You can throw in a typo in there if you want. That’s the current thing. Because I’m also like leaning in like, oh, like if you want to like target Gen Z, come to me. [Michael Houck]: So that helps with that as well. Yeah, 100%. That’s as authentic as it gets right there. Okay, cool. So next steps, we’ll just do all those various things we just talked about. You already added in the accounts that we should be looking into 10 already looking into those. If there’s any other reading samples or docs that aren’t just on your X account already, just send those over. [iPhone]: But yeah, we’ll get started and, and go from there. Sweet. Awesome. Sounds good. [Michael Houck]: I’m excited. Thanks guys. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Nice to meet you Tanmay. Cool man. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Talk soon. Yeah. Nice to meet you. [Michael Houck]: See you soon. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: See you soon. Bye. Bye. [Tanmay Singh Chauhan]: Let me move.