- Duration: 32 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JH5YBBC182YDMA506Z0WVQR7 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JH5YBBC182YDMA506Z0WVQR7)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: is interested in ghost writing and newsletter growth stuff, but doesn’t really know where he’s at. So he he needed to. It was like somewhere between a sales call and a consulting call, which I feel like tends to be the case with these numbers who want things from us. Yeah, it’s okay. [Max Palmer]: Some of the megaphone demos end up being that way, too. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s not a lot of people know how this They just don’t. Yeah. Anyway, how’s Buenos Aires? It’s good. It’s hot here. [Max Palmer]: But I mean, it’s, you know, it’s beautiful and sunny out way better than 30 degrees in New York. Yeah, not. Is it nice? [Michael Houck]: Does it feel like modern and like clean? Yeah, that stuff? No, it does. [Max Palmer]: I mean, some parts of it remind me a lot of Mexico City. Like Palermo in particular, it reminds me a lot of Condesa and Roma in Mexico City. But yeah, it’s not that dirty. It’s definitely not a fully modernized city yet, but so far so good. How’s Mendoza? Mendoza is pretty dirty. [Michael Houck]: It’s pretty run down. Like the let me give you an example the It’s been so long since they repainted the street lines on the highway that there are no street lines on the highway So it’s a little shitty, but it’s beautiful and some of the wineries are pretty good Yeah, not as good as Chile, but pretty good I’ve been surprised that how expensive it is here? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Michael Houck]: I have also been surprised about that. I thought Argentina would be super cheap, but it’s not. It’s the, they’ve just raised the prices along with the inflation. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. And like, I think, I think things have improved a lot since Malay took over. Yeah, probably. And so, but yeah, I mean, I went to El Preferido yesterday, which is, Right next to Don Julio, it’s one of the nicer restaurants and ended up spending 80 bucks just for a sirloin and a glass of wine. [Michael Houck]: What, really? [Max Palmer]: Dang, that’s okay. Yeah, that’s all I got. I got food this morning and it was like $22 for an omelet. [Michael Houck]: And do you think there do you think this is just like the American international touristy spots where they raise the prices like this? [Max Palmer]: I mean, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure Palermo's Palermo is definitely more expensive than other parts of the city. No doubt about that. But but yeah, I'm still surprised because Rio was so cheap. It's great. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Rio is ridiculous. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I don't know, man. Chile was cheaper than here too, even though it was nicer and more modern and cleaner. So I paid like a hundred bucks for a wine tasting. Yes, one of the two wine tastings I did yesterday. And like, it wasn't even that like special or good or anything like that. [Max Palmer]: So it's really surprised me, but you know, can't do anything about it. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: All right, well, I guess, let's get into it. So, okay, I think number one thing that I need from you is just like that transition doc, just like everything so that I, cause it's blocking me from really knowing how to position like a JD for a new hire. So the sooner you can get me that, the better. If you can get to me before like the end of the day on Monday, Let me include something in the Tuesday newsletter, potentially, if we think there's a role to hire for immediately. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. So, I mean, I could send you something over soon. I can send you something over Slack within 20 minutes of just short outline of what takes up most of my time and what I'm doing. Okay. And over the next two weeks, I'm going to create looms as I do some of these things. And I'll create looms as I'm doing these. And those will mainly be for like, you know, Ben, if he's gonna take over stuff in the short term, or for if you hire someone to take over all this stuff and watch these looms in the future and it'll help them. Yeah, that would be great. [Michael Houck]: I think if you get me something, let's say by tomorrow, it doesn't need to be today. If you give me something by tomorrow, it's like short, like here's what I'm doing. Here's what needs coverage. Here's how to do it. Like one or two sentences. That, that would be all I need to sort of get moving on deciding how to take next steps. Um, but then yeah, as you do stuff over the next couple of weeks, just definitely documented as much as possible. Yeah. Okay. [Max Palmer]: Sounds good. [Michael Houck]: And do you have a place, I guess like in notion to organize all that, do you want me to set something up or what? [Max Palmer]: Um, if you want, You probably just put in a doc and I can figure it out. [Michael Houck]: Just a random, yeah, I'll just create a doc. I gotta reorganize our whole notion. I've been putting it off for months. I finally have to do it. Okay, cool. How are things going this week? [Max Palmer]: Good, so I mean, I closed that one, that deep dive. Yes, congrats. That was good. I just sent out another invoice today with the Substrata people who I was slacking you about. They said, sure, let's just do the two placements for 4,000. Hopefully, that gets across the line because that one's been another one that's been going back and forth for a year now. Then we need Bamboo and Midwestern too, right? Yeah. Now, Midwestern. You saw their email. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I saw it. You messaged me, you said to check it out, but it looked like you had already replied and kind of... [Max Palmer]: Well, no, I messaged you yesterday to check it out and then an hour ago or so I replied and was like, yeah, like... [Michael Houck]: Oh, wait, maybe I didn't see this. Oh, yeah, yeah. He has to hop on a call. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like next Wednesday though. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I don't know, man. They, you know, maybe they just move slow. [Max Palmer]: Not sure. Yeah. And they're, they're clearly hesitant, I think. So I'm kind of losing a little faith in that one. [Michael Houck]: But we should probably both hop on that call. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I agree. I agree. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Okay. Um, that's fine. That time that they proposed, let me make sure that works for me. 10 central time on Wednesday. Yeah, that's that. It's 1pm our time. Yeah, no, no, it's two. It's Oh, wait. No, you're right. You're right. It's one. Yeah. Yeah, that works. That works for me. Okay, we'll see what they say. Yeah, let's try to get that one across because I feel like they're so close. Like the Freck people or Furker, I don't know. I don't think they're going to close. She hasn't responded since. She's not responding, yeah. I don't know. OK. I'm trying to think. [Max Palmer]: There might be others that will pop up in my email. [Michael Houck]: We definitely need Bamboo. Yeah. And hopefully Midwestern that puts us in a good place. Okay. All right. One thing that I'm going to do, I hope you don't mind this is after you leave, we're going to retain your email since you have so many of those long term reminders. Oh, yeah. [Max Palmer]: No, that's part of the plan. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sure. [Michael Houck]: Okay, okay, good. Good, good, good. Okay, because some people get weird about that stuff and I just wanted to make sure you got it. [Max Palmer]: I mean, no, it's not, I don't think that's weird at all. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it's- I mean, look, we were going to do it no matter what, but I'm just, I just want to be transparent about it because you have too many reminders set up for, and also people who might contact us again through your email. [Max Palmer]: Oh yeah, no, definitely. Like somebody needs to take my email over right away. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good. Good. Okay. [Michael Houck]: Um, so I'm going to, yeah, I guess once I get that list from you, I'm going to decide basically what the profile of someone we need is, or if it's something Ben can take on in the short term or even Ben and me, I guess my guess is that we'll need somebody because just for context, the, um, the newsletter growth thing, it's just, it's an instant sale every time I talk to about it has like instant product market fit. We'll see about retention, but I think every single one of our pilot clients is renewing. So it seems pretty good. So Ben's time is going to get taken up with the ops around that. So we probably will need someone separate for this. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: And you're not going to want to send 60 emails a day or, you know, 40 to 60 emails a day to follow up with people and yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I get the calls if I need to. [Max Palmer]: But yeah, yeah, you can take the calls. There really aren't that many calls. Like I often close deals without ever hopping on a call. [Michael Houck]: That's just because you're really good at emailing these people. Okay, well, D. Okay, I guess two kind of questions for you about that one. Do you know anyone who could be a good fit for this, who might be looking for something new? [Max Palmer]: I was thinking, I was trying to think of someone, but I don't have that off the top of my head. [Michael Houck]: Okay. My hypothesis is their role will be sort of more specific to sales and partnerships rather than sort of the broader, also including content and other things, the growth and stuff that you do. Yeah, we'll probably separate that out. That's my that's my initial thought. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, so I do remember Wowder telling me like if you ever leave and this was months ago like if you ever leave how let me know because I could Take over his sales like full-time But that's from an agency standpoint. So you'd have to pay him 30% on every deal Yeah, but I think he would do it like full-time time for you. [Michael Houck]: That could be, that could be a short term solution. Like give me, give me flexibility to find the right person, you know? [Max Palmer]: And I think he'd be pretty good. I mean, I think he's, you know, pretty good at it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I messaged Matt McGarry and I was like, who are the best people at newsletter ad sales that you know? And he was like, Katie Wouter and this other guy who's like really old and has his own agency. Yeah. Um, So, yeah, maybe I'll talk, actually, yeah, maybe I'm gonna talk to Wilder. Let me see what you send over first. I'll make a final kind of call. That could be a good short-term solution to give me more flexibility to take time to hire the right person. Okay, cool. And then I guess the other question related to that would just be, if you were hiring somebody to take on that part of the role, what are the most important things should look for in that person? [Max Palmer]: From a sales standpoint, they just need to have some grit and be willing to do a bunch of cold outreach. You can do more than I've done, like, you know, I've, I've only spending 20 hours a week on this for the most part, but I like most of that is spent in email, like, it's just, my email is everything. And there might be more outreach to like, I reach out to like, almost everyone that's sponsoring another big newsletter. And then I find other companies that are following the matter of people LinkedIn or random software tools I come across on Twitter. I'll reach out to their founder, all these little things. There's probably always more you can do. Just being able to send cold emails, follow up promptly, be a normal, respectful person over email and understand email etiquette. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Just be real relentless in the follow up and in the pursuit. Okay. That makes sense. [Michael Houck]: That's sort of what I would have guessed. So it's good to know. Yeah, we'll need to we need to find somebody for that. Because it's, it's a big revenue driver. And just needs to needs to keep going. Yeah. Okay. Cool, man. What else is on your mind? There's going on. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Let's see. [Max Palmer]: So I'm working on creating more Tuesday sends, and then the viral examples too, and I'll create looms of how I'm doing those. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, do kind of like as many of those as you can, because I'd rather keep continuity there for as long as possible before transitioning that to, you know, I don't think Ben has sort of the same content instincts that you do, at least with written content, he's good with the video stuff. But yeah, I want to make sure we have as many of those as possible done. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, that's kind of another thought is like the Tuesday sends, like, you know, I do the content creation for every Tuesday, and you could do it because you have good content sense. But without your Twitter, it's kind of actually hard. [Michael Houck]: It's hard. Yeah, it's hard. [Max Palmer]: It's another reason you need your Twitter back is to just stay up to date with everything that's happening in the startup world. And that's how I curate basically like almost everything for the Tuesday send. It comes through Twitter. Okay. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I'm going to be, I'm going to be sort of pushing more aggressively, um, through Andreessen, uh, through the people I know there, uh, to get it back. Cause they were a big backer of Twitter during the, the taking it private again. So I'm gonna push for that later this quarter, but- Yeah, and email those two people I found. [Max Palmer]: Yes. And I think we just need to go try every avenue. This is too long, and this is too long it's been out for. Yeah, yeah, my feed right now is just solely fire stuff. [Michael Houck]: Oh, I didn't hear about that for a while. Hear about that. Yeah, mine was the limited feed that I have was just about H1Bs for a while. And then, then randomly the fire stuff now too. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, H1B stuff was popping off for a bit. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Okay, anything else we should go through that I'm forgetting? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, so okay, so we're, you're for sure kind of stopping the podcast. [Michael Houck]: Yes, we have the Sahil Chopra episode going live next week. And that's the last one that we've recorded. So my top to do list for content stuff is filming our first long form video this weekend, so that we can stay on a weekly. Yeah, weekly cycle. Okay. [Max Palmer]: And then I've been working, you mentioned to me and Ben to find 50 long form videos. So I'm, I'm at 43. So I gotta find a few more. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, if we if we need to push that past Monday next week, that's fine. There's no immediate rush. But if you get it done, that's fine, too. [Max Palmer]: I'll be doing it myself over the weekend. Okay. Um, yeah, so those were the only two podcast sponsors we had was by optimizers and Merrick health. Yep. So we just need to do that. Put that by in the newsletter next week, next Thursday. And then those will be done. I mean, I don't think either of them have gone very well and neither of them are very responsive with me either. So I don't think they're like, it doesn't seem like they're very into this, which is a good thing. It's kind of a good thing. [Michael Houck]: It's not a great thing. [Max Palmer]: I mean, yeah, it's not a great thing, but the Merrick Health guy told him we can like give you a free link of the week, weak spot to try to make up for it. But I mean, they're just clearly not a great fit for our audience. [Michael Houck]: Like, we kind of knew that. Yeah, we kind of knew that. And also like, podcast ads are about awareness, right? [Max Palmer]: It's not about the direct response. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, with such a new podcast, we're just not going to have very many. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I really thought the newsletter audience would translate better the podcast lesson learned that people prefer the mediums they for at the end of the day. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. And podcasts are just hard, I think. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, but you think big audience, you know, translates over. I don't know. We just did it backwards. We should have just done long form YouTube first and then launch it. Yes. Later. Yeah. Lesson learned. Okay. Are we still sending out new batches of outreach to people too? [Max Palmer]: I have I mean, I've been cold emailing people, but I haven't been doing batches lately. Okay. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, let, let's do as much as we can before you, before you head out, like, let's really slam it. It's January. People have budgets, like let's, uh, let's go hard with it. [Max Palmer]: And then I can just take over any combos that get started afterwards. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. Okay. [Max Palmer]: I also, through going and finding these long form videos, there really isn't a channel besides Y Combinator that's doing great startup content. I know. I know. Which is why I think it's such a good opportunity for us. [Michael Houck]: We might be the first like personal brand channel who's doing it. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: It seems like such a like, how is this not covered on YouTube out of all places? Like, is Y Combinator just capturing all of it? Because I mean, they do have good content and it's broad and they have a lot of subjects and they're obviously have very smart people creating these videos. [Michael Houck]: The thing with their content though, is that it's very educational. It's like, it's not that engaging. Gary's done a better job. Their old content is really bad. Like it's really not engaging, but he's improved it, but it's still comes off like, I don't know, like a lecture, luxury to me. Yeah. But you want luxury because those guys are fucking brilliant. They see everything, right? Yeah. But I think it's an opportunity for us to be more personable, more engaging. And, and really build a following quickly. [Max Palmer]: So we'll see how it goes. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: But yeah, dude. I'm just excited about the newsletter thing. I can't believe a tool report wants to increase from, what is it? 8k to 32k a month. That's so crazy. $32,000 a month. [Max Palmer]: 32,000 leads 16,000 a month. Wow. [Michael Houck]: Like, I really think that so basically, next week, Matt is going to start sending out massive cold email batches. And just with my Calendly and blowing it up. I think that between the go rating and the growth for the newsletter, sort of like the done for you, all encompassing offer. We take the whole newsletter off your hands, blah, blah, blah. I think that we can get to a million in ARR in easily the first half of the year, maybe sooner. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Jeez. [Michael Houck]: And that’s not even the exciting part. Like the exciting part is the media company that we can build, Agora 2.0. Right? Like, yeah, if we can blow up a newsletter from scratch, and if basically if people are paying us for leads, but we can blow up in our own newsletters to like a million subscribers or more from scratch, and then sell sponsorships through them or for them. You know, the business is massive very, very quickly. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I know. It makes me want to start an NFL newsletter on top of this, on top of my soccer newsletter. I just know how much time it’ll take for me to create the content because I create all our content for our soccer newsletter like my brother does a little bit, but I do most of it. Yeah, I can tell. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And it takes time. [Michael Houck]: One of the things we’re going to be doing later this year is basically creating like little AI agents for each niche. And so feeding in all of the Beehive, Substack, ConvertKit, blog posts into an AI, along with like linking it up to Twitter to get like the most relevant tweets every day. So it has like broad historical knowledge, opinions, and also what’s going on right now. And we’re just gonna have that turn out cost of the writing goes down from, you know, 1500 to 2K a month to, you know, they probably spend a couple hours editing each piece to make it more unique or something, but it goes down to like a couple hundred bucks. So the margin is like, it’s like a software margin. So it’s just, yeah, it’s gonna be nuts. It’s gonna be nuts. [Max Palmer]: And you’re excited again about working with Matt? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I am, because I think we have a structure that makes it make sense. We’re finalizing all the sort of corporate structure stuff over the next week or two, but I think it works. And you know, he’s proven that he can deliver. It took him a while and he oversold, but we’re getting the leads, they’re performing really well. And he’s shipping the product on the backend and I see the updates about it. No reason to distrust or feel bad, just need to, you know, it’s like when you start working with someone new, you just sort of need to know how they operate and then sort of account for that. And I didn’t know how he operated at first. Now I do, and I can account for that. But yeah, man, it’s one of those things where like, What I see is a world where right now there’s all these big creators, right? And what I want is for us to be able to make anyone one of those big creators. That’s really what I want, because I see how much it influences the opportunities you get. It’s very powerful. What we can do with this thing is basically say, all right, we don’t know anything about astrophysics, but maybe there’s a great astrophysicist Let’s hire this astrophysics guy who’s toiling away in his PhD program with research that’s never going to get published, making $30,000 a year. And let’s tell him we’re going to make him this big newsletter brand, of which he will own, say, 30% or 40%. We take the majority stake, so it’s owned by the company. And all he has to do is basically curate the newsletter, make sure that the content is good and unique, and forward thinking and yeah, actually gonna be interesting to people in the niche. And then just we blow it up for him. And we put a million subscribers into it. He gets access to all the astrophysics things he could have ever wanted to he makes a ton of money from it. And we pay him some salary off of it to on top of the equity. It’s such a compelling offer. And it us the power to create the best media brand in every single niche imaginable. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I know. [Max Palmer]: That’s what I want to do with a soccer and NFL. [Michael Houck]: Well, look, man, you have any second thoughts stick around. [Max Palmer]: I mean, either way, I think we can. [Michael Houck]: We could partner potentially. Yeah, we could we could we but the thing is, with like, extra external folks, the plan is that we’ll feed them the leads at some rate, right, like 50 cents per lead or something like that. But unless unless we’re talking an equity deal, you know, then we’ll basically cap how much we can grow those newsletters by because we always want the potential to sort of focus on our own newsletters. You know, so but yeah, it’s a It’s very exciting. I think, I don’t know, I think a year from now, it’s going to be a very interesting place where we end up. I’m excited for you too, the good guys to work with. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, we’ll see. I don’t know how it’s going to be, but I’m excited. A new challenge. So yeah, hopefully it works out. [Michael Houck]: Well, hey, if they have if they have people’s newsletters, they want us to grow. [Max Palmer]: Let me know. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I definitely will. Cool. What do I have right now? I think I have another call right now. Oh, yeah, I would go straight call. Okay. Well, sweet. I guess just keep me in the loop with with the list of where everything’s at and what needs to be done. And then I’ll figure out what I’m going to do hiring wise. [Max Palmer]: Cool. Sounds good. Talk soon.