- Duration: 63 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JJA1JT1KW5ABH1XSXB9CRR5J (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JJA1JT1KW5ABH1XSXB9CRR5J)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yo, what’s up? [Michael Houck]: How’s it going? It’s good. I just got word from Airbnb that I’m getting a refund for this place. I’m going somewhere else. Ben Ornstein: Nice. That’s huge. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Glad they, the host wouldn’t make it right. So I’m glad that Airbnb did instead. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. That’s good. [Max]: So you’re moving out? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I’m, uh, I’m searching on, you know, for various hotels right now, trying to find somewhere to go for the next week. I have a place for the second two weeks here, but I have like a week now because I’m finally getting out of here. Okay, well, look, this is mainly for you guys, so I’ll just chime in if I need to, but Ben, I think you’re meeting sort of, so take it where you want it. Ben Ornstein: Cool. There are like a few things Um, questions for access related. I’ll just send that in the chat. So like while we’re talking maybe. Yeah, I think you can. You can do. [Max]: I’m assuming it’s going to have to give you access for most of this stuff. But there’s might be some stuff. Oh yeah, OK, I I knew there was going to be a few logins that I hadn’t included in this doc yet and Um. Okay, I have the Apollo log log in. It’s actually third dreams is email. So I’ll get that. Salesforce. Yeah, Ben, do you know dreams? [Michael Houck]: I just realized Do you know her? Ben Ornstein: I remember you introduced me to her in my first week working with you. And then I have never chatted with her since. [Michael Houck]: Okay, she helps max out with a lot of the sponsorship stuff. She’s like the Rena equivalent for sponsorship I figured. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Okay. [Max]: I just added you to writer’s room. [Michael Houck]: And I can also do Salesforce because what we’ll probably do is remove Max’s login to Salesforce and add you instead. So I’ll make a note to do that later. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Thanks. [Michael Houck]: Max, do you have the other ones? Or do you need me to? [Max]: So I just I just got Apollo in there. Can I get access to viral examples? I don’t think I can give him access to notion pages, right? [Michael Houck]: I think you need to do that. I’m not sure, but I can do it. [Max]: What is the page in notion? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Like where is it located? It’s in. [Michael Houck]: Viral examples, newsletter ideas, is that it? Or no, no, the hook. Where is it? Oh, it’s in. Viral hooks that was called viral hooks. OK, cool. Great, and then is there a way to mark which ones which ones have been done that’s column featured in newsletter column? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Michael Houck]: OK, cool. Can you spend some time today and into tomorrow adding more to this? [Max]: Yeah, I mean, I’ve already got next week’s viral examples done. I’m going to try to get at least one more done. They’re getting harder to find. This is one of the things I was going to chat with you about Ben, but they are getting it is getting harder to find good. Viral tweets that are template able. So I’m yeah, I’m going to keep looking over the next two days, but Yeah, you’ll need to keep an eye out. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, get as many issues done as you can, even if it’s not like writing the full issue out, if it’s just adding them to the library, that’ll speed us up. Yeah, okay. Founder library, is that the Notion doc with the resources for members? Yes. [Max]: What is that called? What’s the name of it? Founder’s library? Yeah. All these notion pages. [Michael Houck]: OK, I think I found it. [Max]: Yeah, it’s under membership and then founders library up. [Michael Houck]: OK, then I’m I’ve just given you access to both of those. Notion pages so you should be good there. Ben Ornstein: Oh, that was one of my questions. Well, like what is the founder library? That’s what it was. Do you have the URLs in the in the doc? Or do you need me to show the URLs to he linked to the pages? Yeah, I got linked to still have access. It was that’s how I knew I didn’t have access because I tried clicking it. Okay. All right, so I kind of, I think I have questions for each little subsection here. Okay, so I DM’ed you Max about the different newsletters that I could follow to find other like ad opportunities. BigDesk Energy was a good one. I already followed that one. I should probably just follow them all in the same email though. So, cause I think I have followed BigDesk Energy on a separate one, but [Max]: Yeah. Is also tracking these. So, um, you know, she’s adding sponsors to, and I showed this in the, this loom videos, but she, she’s adding sponsors to the, their table. Um, so she’s tracking these newsletters as well. I just subscribed to these myself because it, it just makes it quicker. Like there were, there were often times where I would subscribe to TLDR founders. I’d get their, um, newsletter in my inbox on whatever, Wednesday morning and immediately I would see who their sponsor is, find a contact and reach out to them. And it would only take me five minutes. Yep. That makes sense. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. Ben Ornstein: I’ll, I’ll probably end up just doing that and I’ll find other newsletters, stuff like that. That works. So when you were looking, when I was looking at like the, the followups or the things you have in superhuman. I’m not sure if I’m going to get access to superhuman per set like your your superhuman. [Michael Houck]: Well, you will. OK, the way it works, Ben is that will will get superhuman for you and then will give you access to Max’s email so that you can add that as one of your accounts. Ben Ornstein: Got it, OK, that’ll be helpful. When you were showing the different saved follow up templates. It didn’t seem and I remember it was just, you know, one little screenshot for a second, but it didn’t seem like there was a [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Like a Ben Ornstein: Like a thread of which one goes in order kind of thing, and I and I’m sure that’s not every kind of approach. Would it be best to just kind of look at the threads that you’ve had and just kind play it by ear kind of thing yeah and I can write that out for you but but yeah they’re all built in [Max]: my threads and then superhuman has some shortcuts and so I’ll use those and so my shortcuts are kind of in there as well but I can write out just a copy I use for follow-ups yeah it might be good Ben Ornstein: to have a dock of just like in this scenario this one will be and I’ll learn it pretty quickly quickly, but I feel like just getting it getting something like that would be helpful. OK, doesn’t have to be like the exact string of follow ups that you use for each one, but because again, I’ll pick it up relatively quickly, I think, but just when I’m getting started, that would be helpful. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Oh, so in terms of like the packages that Like, how do I know which ones to offer? What are the packages? [Max]: Yeah, so for the most part, like, I make it up. Okay. I will look at the company. I’ll Google, have they raised money? If they’ve raised money and I know they have money, then I’ll propose larger packages. If I know it’s a small SaaS tool that, you know, is bootstrapped, I won’t propose large packages. Packages, if I saw that they sponsored TLDR, then I’ll know that they can afford larger deals. And so I’ll propose a larger package. So a lot of it, you just have to have context. You know, you have to kind of understand who these companies are. And then, yeah, I mean, we’re discounting basically every every deal at this point. Um, so, you know, you’ll you’ll be able to see in my in my emails, like the type of packages I’ve given. Um, but yeah, we’re heavily discounting deals to get them across the line. Um, so and, you know, how can sometimes I still, um, consult with Hawk before, you know, we we offer them a big deal. But for others, I, you know, how has given me free reign to run this myself because I know, you know, I just been doing it for a while. So I know what’s best. I know, you know, what’s going to work. Um, so yeah, just understanding all that context is, is important. [Michael Houck]: And a good way to think about it is that, um, like we have our base prices and those are priced at, I think a little bit of a premium probably to what we can command these days with how the newsletter market has changed in the last two years. And so, and also just our performance, just based on what people can expect. So what we do is we basically keep it priced at a premium, but then we make people feel good by basically offering everyone a discount. And so they feel like they’re getting a discount. And the degree of that discount, like you’ll sort of see the trends as you look through past packages and things like that, but it’s just based on the things Max talked about, and we sort of have a floor. And so if you need to go to like a really low discount or a really big package, just talk to about it with me first and figure it out. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I figured there will be a lot of like back and forth between us for a little bit. Yeah. Is there like a standard package or a few different ones that that you offer and then and then discount? [Max]: I mean, typically like if somebody wants to purchase two future placements, I’ll do like two future placements for $4000 or. If they can do something larger, I'll do three future placements and two, two of the weeks for, what do I usually say for that? I think around eight or $9,000 for that. [Michael Houck]: You’ll see in the sponsor revenue tracker, Ben, you’ll see what the package was and how much we charged for it. You can kind of pattern match against that. The most common things that we want to push are a three pack of featured placements, or just if they don’t wanna do that, then either one or two. We can give a little bit of a bigger discount on three. And then obviously the deep dives as well, because those are very good margin for us. So, yeah. But those… Deep dives are pretty rare, I would say. [Max]: It’s mostly the featured placements and the tool of the weeks that get booked. Yeah. And feel free to throw in a link of the week to sweeten the deal, or if it’s a larger deal, throw in a tool of the week. The tool of the week one, it does need to be a tool, typically a software tool. But for the link of the week can be anything. And Ben Ornstein: I probably know the answer to this or can easily find it tool of the week. Is that in the main newsletter or is that something else? Well, it’s in the main. [Michael Houck]: It’s on the Tuesday issues. Basically every issue has the featured placement at the top and then the Tuesday issues also have like that curated link section. And so we do up to one sponsored link as the link of the week in that. And then the tool is like, you know, we have like the opportunity, the framework, the trend, the quote and the tool. That tool section is sponsored for free subscribers to the newsletter and people who pay for the newsletter get a different tool that’s like not sponsored. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. [Max]: Matt that link of the week is also on the Tuesday newsletter. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll explain that more when we talk about the Tuesday newsletter. [Michael Houck]: Um, yeah, maybe max drop some screenshots in the the handoff doc just so Ben can like see exactly what they look like, Ben Ornstein: OK. And again, I read all the newsletters. [Max]: but like they all get jumbled up when I’m not creating them. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, it’s good to have a reference. Ben Ornstein: OK, so when someone does respond to one of the emails, Um, and I know there’s not going to be a simple, these are the steps, but like, what are, what are the steps to close someone? What, what do they, I don’t know. [Max]: I’m not the best salesman. Um, so yeah, let me, let me actually just share my screen right now. Ben Ornstein: I imagine it’s going to be different based on like deal size type of client. Etc. But so like it may be too much of a loaded question, but it’s it’s there’s not really a system, right? [Michael Houck]: It’s more so just you’re trying to get them to a close and understand what their objections are and then give them reasons that those objections aren’t valid. Right, it’s going to vary from, but I’m sure Max can talk about what the most common objections he hears are or things like that. [Max]: That would be helpful, yeah. OK, you can see my superhuman. Yep. OK, so. For example, actually this one right here. And I’m making a list for you guys of like hot leads and not so hot leads. So this is Pipedrive. This is a CRM. We’ve worked with Atio and HubSpot before. So that’s like, this was a cold email on November 5th. I told them we’ve worked with CRM tools before. He responded to that the next day Said, you know, fortunately didn’t work out as expected. You have any case studies. I Sent him this big email again, you can go in here and read all this I don’t want to but once he’s interested which was Unfortunately, we are still work on next quarter plan Kept following up Sorry, we finally have budgets for q1 Do you have available space soon? So like, this is what it takes. Like he told me no a few times, didn’t have the budget that quarter. I kept, like I’ve followed up like over 20 times now it looks like, And, you know, said finally we have budgets for Q1. And then he said, can you please send some options and costs we can activate? And then I sent him these options. So here’s a few discount options we’d love to offer. Three options, 6,000, 9,000, 11,000. Thousand gave him more context on the deep dive if he wants to include that. And now I’m waiting to hear back. Cool. So this is like one of the hot, hot leads that, you know, I’m going to pass off to you guys. And this, this one like probably should close. Um, I got his automatic reply that he was on an offsite event. So that’s another one. [Michael Houck]: And then like this one, One important note there is like, you know, I don’t want to gloss over how critical the follow-up is. Like Max, you just said you followed up probably like 25 times with this guy over the course of a couple of months. And now we’re classifying it as a hot lead that we think is likely to close. But when he first responded, obviously it wasn’t in that state. [Max]: So sort of the nurturing and the following up is really important. Yeah. So sales is simple but not easy. So, you know, all I’m doing is sending emails. Like that’s not a hard thing, but you do it a lot. You have to do it a lot. And you have to constantly be top of mind for these people because they’re getting hit up by everyone. And we’re just another newsletter that wants part of their marketing budget. And there’s a bunch of other companies that want part of their marketing budget. So staying top of mind, for them is really important also like updating them that’s why you know hopefully the newsletter is going to continue to grow because if some of these don’t close three months from now you can go back and say hey we added 15 000 subscribers like and and our pricing is the same do you want to give us a shot now um but yeah and with superhuman like it makes it so easy to follow up and you can also see if they’ve read the email and that’s like if the person’s reading the email email, that’s a good sign. You should keep following up. And now, this is another one. Yeah, he responded to a cold email and I followed up a lot of times. There is a stretch right here. It looks like I followed up 15 times. That’s crazy. He’s like, okay, good with async. We’re discussing which option to select. I subscribe to the news there because I just want to see the options. Let’s see, what did I give him in terms of Yeah, like this is… It’s just, literally just relentless. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, like look at this. [Max]: Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, our product launch is delayed and needs a bit more time. We’re hoping to launch it next week. Once that’s done, I’ll reach out. Because he was like pretty responsive at first. I got a response from here, here. And then I was like, okay. And then there was like literally 15 of my responses. And then he gets back, check back with me in a month. We’re closing our current round of funding. So of course, what do I do? He set a reminder for exactly a month. October 16th, November 18th. You mentioned a check back in now. How is the funding round going? And then Of course, no fucking response. So what do I do? Another 10 times I fall up here. I see that he’s reading all the all my fucking emails. And and then finally, I’m interested. What’s the next step? That’s absolutely ridiculous. And so, yeah. And so we can do a call. You know, I link to my account. Obviously, like, I don’t want to call. I mean, I take a call if that’s going to help close the deal. But like, Async is best. And so, you know, I link to my calendar. If he wants to book a call, he can. But like happy to do async and and yeah. And so then I sent him. What did I say? So, yeah, I was like for three future placements and two tool of the weeks, we can do eight thousand. Does that work? And I gave him, you know, examples, screenshots of what the future placement looks like, because he asked. And then this was, you know, three days. Yeah. Sorry for the day. I share this into, I’ll get you back by the end of the week. And then he ended up responding right away. We won’t have a budget due 8K, 2K. And so, you know, then I gave him a different. So, so that’s just like an example of like, this one should close. It’s not going to be that big of a deal, but it should close. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: But it’s, you know, it’s an ad placement, so that’s good. [Michael Houck]: And Ben, when you’re, when you’re sending the link to book calls, you can just send those to me. For now, just use my Calendly and I’ll chat with them. And then you can jump on the calls and kind of see how we do it a few times. And then again, I mean, Max can tell you better than I can. Most of these people just want to go async over email. [Max]: They don’t want to hop on calls, but especially for the bigger packages, some of them need their hand held a little bit. Yeah. Like even Bamboo. Ben Ornstein: I would never hop on a call with Bamboo. Oh, really? You guys not once hopped on a call with them? [Max]: Nope. That’s surprising to me. Yeah. Uh, Midwestern, like we’ve hopped on, I’ve been on three calls with him in total now. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Interesting. [Max]: Yeah. And he’s been on two of them with me. So yeah, you know, some, some people are different. Some people like the higher touch. Some people don’t need that. Um, makes sense. Most people, when I send them like this really well done, uh, you know, our, our partnerships page, like they’re probably coming across as trustworthy. They can, you can send them a link to the newsletter as well, whatever that is. And they can see that, you know, we’re real, this is a great looking newsletter with good branding and all this info. So, yeah, so that’s like, that’s this process. And also, it goes without saying, but for every one of those that I just showed you, there’s dozens of other ones that never amounted to anything at all. Sure. And that’s the game, right? It’s the, it’s the power law. The power law is undefeated. It applies to literally everything. 80% of the revenue will come from 20% of the outreach, but you have to do that 80% of the other 80% of the outreach to, to get that 20%. So yeah. Yeah. Um, so you’re going to do a ton of outreach and it’s going to amount to absolutely nothing, but some of them will. And that’s just how it works. Ben Ornstein: I have, I guess I have some experience doing this. Like, and I have a super human. I love superhuman. Um, where like for my own podcast, I was reaching out to like, God, I can’t even tell you. Um, so many people, it was usually through LinkedIn sales navigator back in the day, but, um, so many fucking, it’s a game. So this is really, it’s a game and like, it’s just being relentless. That’s what it seemed. That’s what I’m getting from this. [Michael Houck]: It’s a game. It’s being relentless. And it’s also having an understanding of where the, uh, the lead is at, right? Like what’s their mindset at any given time and being able to like, understand that implicitly without having to tell you. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Um, here, Ben, I’m going to add you to superhuman now so you can get set up today. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Awesome. [Max]: Yeah, and like Monday morning, you’re going to get reminders in my inbox. And, you know, you’re going to need to follow up on them. Some of them are very new leads. Some of them are not. But, you know, for the next few months and specifically the next few weeks, my inbox will be, you know, will have action in it every single morning when when Superhuman and sends all my reminders at 8 a.m. So yeah, I mean, much of my day is spent in email. Ben Ornstein: And so are you tracking, you’re tracking the progress of all of these as well somewhere else in the Airtable? [Max]: I mean, a lot of them are in Airtable. Many of them are, but I’m not like manually changing like the status in Airtable of every single one of these. Yeah, that would be too much. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. With all the followup and manual stuff in superhuman, it would just be, it would just be too much. Ben Ornstein: It doesn’t make sense. Got it. Okay. Were you going to say something else? [Max]: Yeah. The CRM is, it’s not as much needed when you’re a one person team. If there or other sales reps going after these leads, that’s when you need an organized CRM. So there’s no crossover, but yeah, for a one person team doing all this, you kind of, I have everything in my head and superhuman and you know, that’s, that’s. So what I, oh, so go for it. [Michael Houck]: I was gonna say, we just use it so that Dreams can kind of keep things in there and add stuff to there for Max. That’s really good. Ben Ornstein: Got it. Makes sense. When you’re when you’re sending these emails, you have reminders to say, follow up with this person, because I remember you actually you go for it. [Max]: Like, look, these are emails I sent today. And Like Hey, Jen, so agents like a hot air, startup right now, and they’ve been sponsoring newsletters. I reached out to her first time on the 15th, followed up on the 20th, followed up this morning. She read my first two emails, hasn’t read this one yet. And then I said, you know, set a reminder, and this is going to pop up in my inbox Monday morning. And Monday morning, I’m going to send her another email if I haven’t heard back. So basically every two to four days, two to four business days, I will, you know, ping these people again. And then like some of these, like this one is Navon. This is like the second or third person at Navon I’ve reached out to. Yeah, I even mentioned I reached out to Tennessee, which is another person at this company. And like she’s opened them now. She’s like not opening them. So, you know, I might only follow up one or two more times if she continues to not open my email. Ben Ornstein: You just kind of like, you can feel the momentum or lack of it. Yeah. Plus you get it, you get the reminders or the notifications to see if they’re actually opening them or not. [Max]: Yeah. A lot of it is context. Like, look at this one. Like, what is that? Eight responses or whatever. And then I actually gave up. This was on December 12th. And then two days ago, wanted to reach out based on preview. I know now is a better time for us. And so boom, we got a potential deal here. This is like a hot AI company as well. I sent them over our partnerships page. We do, I told them, you know, we have availability over the next six weeks. What is your budget? I usually ask, what is your budget first? I rarely get a response. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I can imagine that. Which makes sense. [Max]: People don’t want to give a- They want leverage. Yeah. But yeah, this is another one I’m including in my list of like good deals that should, or that look promising. But yeah, I mean, these are all just kind of examples of the data with data work. Yeah. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: In short, like this, it’s really all about context for all these things. I’ll learn it over time. I’ll, you know, It’s gonna be very manual and all that. [Max]: Yeah, you have to understand email etiquette. You have to be conscious of people who are on vacation and like people who, yeah, you just have to have kind of business context for all this stuff. Ben Ornstein: Yep. Okay. For the partnerships air table, how often is Dreams the context. So she was on a weekly basis. [Max]: She just told me her computer broke, which I’ve learned this kind of happens a lot to her. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, there’s like a third time her computer is broken. [Max]: What the hell? I know, I know. Well, she told me I felt really bad. She told me her home flooded like completely flooded. And yeah, and so she told me she hasn’t had access to a computer since the new year. So for three weeks now. Ben Ornstein: Oh my God. [Max]: So, but before that she was, you know, updating it or she should be updated on a weekly basis. And she’s just tracking these newsletters. So yeah. [Michael Houck]: Have you, have you given her context that things are transitioning to Ben? [Max]: If not, I can chat with her today. I have not yet. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. I’ll chat with her today. Okay. Ben Ornstein: So that answers Dreams, that’s really unfortunate. Yeah, I get messages from Rena every once in a while. Like sorry logged off early today We had no electricity. [Michael Houck]: I’m like damn they lose power all the time and it’s terrible Philippine sounds nuts. [Max]: Yeah, it’s pretty crazy Okay, and is she the only one that adds things to like this week’s targets and does that like update how does that Yeah, I mean, this isn’t as organized probably as it should be, but like you can just play around this. Like that’s what I was doing in our loom. I was playing around with this. Ben Ornstein: You’re just playing around, yeah. [Max]: Yeah, like you can change this however you want. Oh yeah, so like I ended up sending this. We had the issue with Salesforce. So now what I’m going to do is change all these contact status to email sent. And then you could change all of this and play around with stuff and hide fields and whatnot. And so I was kind of showing that in the Loom videos. But yeah, this is kind of yours to work with. [Michael Houck]: Then we’ll probably do a revamp of this when we find someone part-time to help out this stuff and let them kind of help shape what the future of this looks like, Ben Ornstein: Yeah. All right, yeah, I saw the things that this week target, so I was like, OK, like he’s up, maybe he’s updating this like every week or something. [Max]: No, it’s not typically every week. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No. OK. Ben Ornstein: When it comes to collecting and refining the copy after you’ve closed a sale, is it just you that does that? Is Hauk involved in that? [Max]: Yeah, Hauk’s involved. Oh, yeah. OK, so, yeah, that’s in Slack, actually. Yeah, I’m only claiming. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I mean, you confirm it. [Max]: I would assume there’s not a crazy amount of work there. Ben Ornstein: Maybe it’s like a word or two or, you know, they’re marketing. No, you’d be really surprised. [Michael Houck]: A lot of these people don’t work with newsletters that much. And so they don’t, and like they think more words is better because it lets them describe to the product better. So they’re trying to maximize the amount of words when really all that does to make people skip it because it’s a long ad. So there’s this tension between we want it to be short, but we also want them to not blame us if it doesn’t perform well. What Max does is he’ll work with them to get some copy. Once it sort of meets some level of approval, he proposes it to me in Slack, in the newsletter channel. And then I’ll be like, yeah, this looks good most of the time. Or sometimes I’ll be like, let’s tweak X, Y, Z it. One thing that a lot of people try to do too that I personally just don’t like is that they try to write it in like as if I’m personally endorsing. Yeah. Yeah. And the phrasing just wouldn’t be something I would say. And so we’ll push back on that. Ben Ornstein: Got it. Okay. Okay. That’s all I had on the ad sponsorship side. I know this is going to be a bit of a learning curve and it’s just going to take time, but I’m cool with that because it sounds like it’s kind of fun. It’s a little bit of a game. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, the thing I’ll say there is that obviously this is a high priority because this is revenue generating. No, of course, of course. But at the same time, we’re in sort of a lucky position where Max has closed this really huge deal right before this transition is happening. And we also have Midwestern, which might also be a pretty good sized deal closing. So we’re in a good spot with flexibility, but obviously still very important to generate as much revenue as we can. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, of course, of course. I say it’s a game. I just like the mental side of it. It’s kind of fun. For sure. [Max]: And also there’s, you know, like the two deals I was just showing you, there should be a few more deals that close within the next few weeks as well. As long as you guys stay on top of it. A lot of nurturing, right? It’s after that, that you will need to do net new outreach. [Michael Houck]: So we need to do outreach in the next like week or two in order to have revenue coming in in like late February into March. [Max]: Yeah, exactly. March. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: I mean, these deals actually take time. [Max]: Like the sales cycles is not that fast typically. Yeah. That doesn’t surprise me. Ben Ornstein: I mean, if, you know, it’s minimum a few grand, it, you know, it’s not something that most companies will just be like, okay, see you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thanks. Ben Ornstein: Okay, so yeah, looking at the customer success. Yeah, I just imagine that’s, you know, going back and forth every once in a while. It’s like, oh, yeah, we’ll do it this date. Does this date work for you? We have availability here on this date. [Max]: Yeah, and it’s just, it’s on here, which is linked in there. Cool. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, saved. [Max]: So just keeping this updated. And like also like the Athena deal like, you know, they did two per month. So actually we need to schedule them for, uh, for February. Yeah. So do we even mark down anywhere? Ben Ornstein: Like for example, that one, like you probably atop your head, like, Oh yeah, we need one more for them. But do you have that linked anywhere? [Max]: Like for the ones that are, it’s, it’s just, with with Athena, but Ben Ornstein: But yeah, they bought how many? 77 placements, yeah, same. OK. Collect copy for week before. Ideally makes sense. Your follow ups on the podcast front. So I kind of know how that works. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yep. Ben Ornstein: I saw that you were like, you offered them zip by optimizers, maybe you offer you offer them like the free one that was they appreciated that was cool. [Max]: Yeah, so that’s like another thing where it’s just kind of context having context of the situation. If a partner pays $8,000 for an ad package and it delivers them five customers, we typically will give them a free future placement, or if it's a smaller deal, give them a free tool of the week or link of the week. [Ben Ornstein]: Try to make up for it and just be conscious of that. Yeah. [Max]: I guess, again, probably difficult, but what's a good outcome? They'll tell you. Yeah. I typically ask when of packages done like how did this go on your end or even after just their first placement in the package like you know how did this go on your end do you want to make any changes to the copy but you know they'll tell you if it's worked out well like I remember our first placement with Athena like crushed for them like it did so well and they told us and so we're like fuck yeah like this is gonna be a great you know. [Michael Houck]: In terms of how it got ahead of time though Ben, it'll vary based on the type of product that they're selling. Like for example, Athena or Micro One or one of these like hiring services, they really only need one person to convert in order for it to be a success for them because it's, you know, they're selling a multi-month subscription to a high margin, high ticket size product, right? Or service really. But people who are selling like, you know, $29 a month SaaS products, they know what range of conversions they need or at least leads make it successful. And so we should try to ask that and, um, and, uh, or, or just they’ll tell us in most cases. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Ben Ornstein: Okay. Um, so after this, like, I guess packed a pack of, of hot leads, I’ll be, I guess I’ll be reaching out from my own email after that. Uh, yeah. [Michael Houck]: So what we’ll do is we’ll just in Salesforce, we’ll switch it from max to and then also when you’re reaching out individually, just do it from your founding journey email. If you want to, to separate it from your other stuff, I don’t know how many emails you’re triaging on a daily basis, but we can set up like, you know, some other email for you at founding journey and you can use that if you feel better about doing it that way. Ben Ornstein: That would be nice to be able to separate it. Like I know Max had like at join, founding journey or something, something new. [Max]: So, yeah, I’ve actually found that separating it. Well, for like the mass cold outreach, you want to use a domain that’s not our domain, obviously. Sure. But yeah. [Michael Houck]: So the way it works is that when we’re doing the mass cold outreach in Salesforce, we buy a bunch of cheap domains that are similar to our main domain. That way, our domain health isn’t ever impacted for the main domain, right? So that’ll all go out from like Ben at, or even Hauk at, or Rina at, or whatever, at like 10 different domains. And those will all get funneled and forwarded to your main inbox. The question is, do we want that main inbox of yours to be, you know, ben at foundingjourney.com, or do we want it to be like, you know, Ben at foundingjourney.com? And I think what Matt’s gonna say is that he’s found it to be better in the same inbox, but I’ll defer to him on that. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, yeah, that actually makes sense. Yeah. What were you saying, Max? [Max]: You found that it’s easier just to have it in your own. Yeah. I just like, like everything in one inbox and you don’t have to like rotate between two. Ben Ornstein: Got it. Yeah. Let’s, yeah, let’s do that then. Let’s just keep it in. My benefiting journey that it was really active when, you know, podcast was going on or I should say more active, but, um, yeah, let’s, we’ll just keep it at that. That works. Um, cool. What’s the repeat rate like after? Just out of curiosity, like after someone books, how and and you know. I don’t know the exact rate. [Max]: We don’t know the exact rate, but lately it hasn’t been that good. Yeah, we need to grow the newsletter performances down performance across the whole industry is down. [Michael Houck]: Honestly, I’ve seen some other people mention the same things in like group chats. But our performance is definitely down, so that’s why we wanna grow it with the new stuff that we will. Exactly. Makes sense. Ben Ornstein: Okay, I think I’m clear, at least high level obviously, on the ad side. Obviously I’ll have many questions and it’ll take me time, but I appreciate it, that’s helpful. I guess we move on Tuesday on the I didn’t have too many questions on the Tuesday send. Pretty pretty simple, like just I downloaded Tweet Hunter. Or was that for viral examples? That was for viral examples, but yeah. I guess it’s tech. It could technically be for both. And you’re writing viral examples as well. [Max]: Not just yeah, so I’m viral example has two newsletters. One is the curation every Thursday. Another is the one that Blake email writes on Mondays. So I’m doing the curation one. And yes, I’m writing it. There’s not like a ton of writing involved. And you can see, I mean, yeah, you can see it. But but yeah, it’s you have to find good tweets and LinkedIn posts that are viral, but also Like, yeah, I mean, I’ve found some good ones. It is getting harder to find. But so, yeah, that’s that’s viral examples. Do that every week. And and then the Tuesday send, I will say like about the Tuesday send. It’s basically 80 percent of this stuff is coming through my Twitter account. Know, like 80% of the content that I’m curating, you know, how does the writing for it? I’m curating these five resources. Well, it’s more than five because I’m curating also a bunch of links each week on top of that. So, you know, 10 to 15 things each week that I’m curating. And it’s just it’s basically all through Twitter. Like my Twitter account is very in touch with like the tech community. Like Twitter knows I’m interested in startups and tech and founders and entrepreneurs. And all that stuff. And so the For You page just gives me that content and then I bookmark it. And then each week I look through my bookmarks, add, you know, what I think is really good to the newsletter. And some of the things I bookmark aren’t that great. And like, like I would, how can I were slacking yesterday and I was sending him a few options that I, you know, had that I also didn’t love and he didn’t love them either. You know, some of them just aren’t always that great. Um, and only the best ones that I curate and make it into the newsletter. Uh, so yeah. [Michael Houck]: Ben, do you feel like your Twitter feed is similarly like attuned to, um, like the tech Twitter startup Twitter world? Cause if not, we can just create a Twitter account for this, uh, and have you just follow, I think Max already put together a list of, people that we could do this for for the tech news newsletter for mantle that we’re thinking starting up so we can just use that same list and have this account. Ben Ornstein: All of those people’s minds pretty good. I’m sure it could be better and I could just follow a few people that are on like for example the the viral examples. Page or maybe it was the different one was the [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, no, the the viral examples. Ben Ornstein: I could follow some of those guys that I don’t follow, like the notion page with all those different guys from the past. But that’s. [Max]: Yeah, that’s kind of related, but so I know it’s separate, so I guess the question then is the Tuesday send what? Ben Ornstein: I guess what are the what am for there compared to viral examples? I mean, they’re very different. [Max]: So like complete. Yeah, let me let me go for a sec. So they’re completely different, like viral examples. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone in the text, but this startup tech entrepreneurship space at all. It just needs to be a viral tweet that is also template able for others for the Tuesday send like what I would do if I I would do is I would go back through the last dozen Tuesday sends of ours and look at each one and see the type of content that I’m curating and get a sense of the quality of it, the taste of it. Because basically you just have to have a good taste for startup content. That’s all it is. Like you have to have good taste for this stuff. And so go through the past several ones that we’ve done and look at the type of content that we’re curating, and that’s the type of content you need to find. And if you have a Twitter feed like mine, then that’s the type of stuff that will pop up on your feed, save for the political weeks that are crazy. But that’s the stuff that pops in my feed, because that’s the stuff I’m interested in. Yeah. And I am, too. Ben Ornstein: And I got a lot of that stuff, too. I saw one of your examples, like Chad Byer. Like, I follow him. So, like, there are examples I’m sure I’ll be able to find. I don’t think I’ll struggle too much with that. [Michael Houck]: I just sent you the list that Max had curated for the Tech News newsletter. I think since this is going to have multiple purposes for us, like one for curating the Founding Journey newsletter and two for this Tech News newsletter that Austin’s going to write for us, I think it probably makes sense for this to be its own account. I’m sure you’ll get some interesting stuff on yours too. So it might just be good to do both. Ben Ornstein: To check both. Yeah. Yeah. My, my feed is usually tennis cause it’s mixed with another like Twitter account that I have and then tech tech startups, VC, all that. So, um, that’s, I should be able to find stuff. Okay. And when you’re creating the Tuesday send and viral examples, are we finalizing these? A day before. [Michael Houck]: No, so the way it works is that. Max will usually be like, I don’t know, at least a week or two ahead with the founding journey Tuesday send. I think there are more than that set up now and before he’s he’s leaving, so we’ve got a full month ahead. [Max]: Great, so we got it. [Michael Houck]: We got a few weeks viral examples. I think yeah, Max usually send it over on Wednesday for me to review and schedule right? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Yeah. [Max]: So start looking for content now for the Tuesday Send and then, you know, a month from now is when you’ll need it. Yeah. And then I just, you know, I pay for Twitter so I can use the bookmark feature, which is great. And then I just whenever I see one of these tweets that might be a good fit for the Tuesday Send, I bookmark it into this folder called Tuesday Newsletter. But sometimes I have to go searching for a framework or for a tool. The tool I rarely find on Twitter, actually. It’s the other stuff I find on Twitter. The tool I usually find on Product Hunt or Y Combinator. Yeah, I made notes of those. Ben Ornstein: That was helpful. Thank you. [Max]: OK. Ben Ornstein: The trend and quote those are pretty self-explanatory. I can find those. Yeah. [Max]: There’s a few newsletters I follow for the trend too. Oh, could you list those? Ben Ornstein: That would be helpful, yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Ben Ornstein: OK, OK, that’s Tuesday. Send pretty much. I guess I’m like getting the Tuesday send and viral examples mixed in my head because I’m not. 100% familiar with this and there’s like 55 things going on, but that’s all good. OK, on the viral exam, so wait, sorry, I wanted to write that down. So what Tuesday sent obviously sent on Tuesdays. When do you finalize that one? I write it on Mondays. [Michael Houck]: Max usually analyzes it a couple weeks ahead of time. Ben Ornstein: Couple had a couple weeks ago for the two days sent. [Max]: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: And then for the viral examples, what’s the usual cadence on that? [Max]: I usually just do it on Wednesdays, tell him when it’s ready, and then he approves it and schedules it. Those, you know, those are a bit less, I mean, it doesn’t take you much time at all to… 5-10 minutes tops. Yeah. So, yeah. That’s mainly will be your work. Tuesday sent, you know, Hauk writes it. So that one, but the viral examples is easy. Ben Ornstein: And when are viral examples sent? [Max]: Every Thursday morning. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thursday. Ben Ornstein: Okay. So it’s literally, I see. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: I could imagine, especially if you’re saving these ahead of time, that one’s pretty easy to do. [Max]: Yeah. It’s getting harder. Ben Ornstein: It may just be the thing where, like, we’ll have to start going back to people in that database and just find it. I already have done that. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. OK, so that’s file examples. OK, I think we can, oh, yeah, my questions on that were like, how often are you adding something to the database? Again, my guess is, There’s no system here. [Max]: It’s like when you find something you kind of to the viral examples database. Yeah, yeah, just there’s no system really. [Michael Houck]: I don’t know if you were doing this Max, but one thing I’d recommend then is I’m going to send this to you. Tweet Hunter has this extension. Yeah, it’s in there. Ben Ornstein: I already I already added it. That is going to be extremely helpful. It’s already on my Chrome. Yeah, Yeah, that one’s going to be great. And then the other question was like, how often are you adding something that’s in the database? [Max]: Yeah, not just when I do the newsletter each week, like there was one point where I added a bunch before we actually started this newsletter. But yeah, now it’s just like every time I, you know, add one to the database, I’m adding it to the newsletter. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Okay, cool. I guess we can move on. Onto the megaphone demos. Really, the only thing I’ll need from this, I think, is two things. How you’re framing the product. And I feel like I can get that framing. And I know the product pretty well, obviously. But do you have a recording of one of these calls or a couple of these calls that I could just watch? I feel like that’s all I’ll need to kind of master this. [Max]: Yeah, help this. [Michael Houck]: I have a ton. But one important thing is that since we’re launching of these new features in the next few weeks, the way we position and talk about the product is going to dramatically change over the next few weeks. So I think for now, like I’ll probably take a lot of those demos that get scheduled on my calendar anyway. And then once we get into, you know, sometime in February or something, we’ll probably transition those back to back to you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sounds good. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. If I get to watch a recording or two of how you’re framing these, I really think that’s all I’m going to need. And I’ve done this kind of thing before for a previous startup. So it’s just like, as long as I understand the product and can frame it well, that’s really all it’s going to take, I think. I wrote a question here. Anything I should know that’s worked really well in getting people to sign up on the spot? Like anything specific that is not obvious? [Max]: For megaphone, no, I don’t. I don’t have anything. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Again, this will change dramatically soon, so hard to hard to know. [Max]: Yeah, got it. OK. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I guess. And then for the resources, the last thing I said was like, And there wasn’t a loom here. You don’t need a loom. [Max]: There’s no way to really take a loom. This is another thing where it’s just like you’re going to have to have a good taste in startup founder content and be able to find that in, you know, basically the same thing, except instead of finding tweets and stuff, you’re finding full on articles or essays to include in the founder library. This only takes me an hour a month, so it’s not a ton of work. Just every other Friday, it usually takes me 30 minutes to find five articles, you know, good articles. To include. And where you’re finding those, where usually? Ben Ornstein: Sometimes on Twitter. [Max]: I got a hop. [Michael Houck]: I have to prep for this next call. [Max]: So you guys keep going. I’m just going to jump off. All right. Sometimes on Twitter, sometimes in other newsletters, like TODR founders usually curate some good content that I steal from there and other newsletter writers write founder content. I’m asking like too many questions on purpose, by the way. Yeah, that’s what this is for. Ben Ornstein: And I kind of figured a lot of this is just like you play it by ear. You just kind of fucking run with it. But any systems I can put in place given God fucking 50 other things that I’ve got going on. That’ll be that’ll be good. Yeah man, I think that’s I think that’s all I had in terms of questions that worked out that it was a full hour actually. I’ve got a bunch of notes here. I took notes while I was watching your looms so. I think I’m set there. [Max]: Okay, so what do I need to add to this doc for you? I think there was something at the beginning that I said I would add. Ben Ornstein: I’m forgetting it now. Oh, in terms of for the new outreach, in terms of like, maybe like a list of how you follow up again, you might just be able to just look at some of the threads and just learn. [Max]: Yeah, I can literally copy and paste some of these threads and put it into a doc. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: OK, that works. And then lastly, I want to hear what what’s what’s this new gig? [Max]: Yeah, I’m working with I’m going to work with Austin and Alex from Morning Brew on a new company. So, yeah, we’re launching basically like a B2B talent agency where we help B2B creators like Pomp and some other big ones like Tim Ferriss, like monetize their audiences. So I’m going to kind of be the head of sales and the first employee. And yeah, so it’s exciting. That’s so exciting. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Max]: So I’m working directly with those two guys and hopefully we can build a big company. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That’s dope, man. Ben Ornstein: I’ll definitely have to check in and see how things are going. [Max]: Sounds exciting. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s stay in touch for sure. One hundred percent. Come up to New York, man. Ben Ornstein: You got to move up here. Dude, I come all I’m from New York, so like I have this certain way of thinking about New York City and it’s which I love visiting. But yeah, living there. [Max]: I don’t know. Ben Ornstein: I’ll have to come out. Come out there and hang with you and Randy sometime. [Max]: Do you see him like in person? I saw him last night. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I had a little event last night, so yeah, I went to it. I’ll definitely have to come visit both of you. That’d be fun to like catch up for sure. But yeah, no, thank you so much, man. This was very, very helpful. Yeah, a lot of things to take over here, but yeah, well, we’ll figure it all out. [Max]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if we need it, Hop on a call for 15 minutes tomorrow. Let’s do it. Ben Ornstein: Just let me know. Cool. Yeah. Once I get added to all the, well, I guess I’m starting to get added to these things, but I’ll, yeah, I’ll figure I’ll, if there’s any other questions, I’ll, you know, I’ll ping you. Definitely.