- Duration: 31 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JJM7VHF6G02P3F29XCT6K5EM (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JJM7VHF6G02P3F29XCT6K5EM)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Hey, yo, what’s going on? [Ben Ornstein]: Not too much finished all the, um, the three much three well simultaneous for a couple of them but three in a row uh ghost right uh ghost writing clients um replies and all that so I finished those watched your two videos I’m actually glad I did watch them on normal speed because I I think I understand it pretty well um and like feel free to refer back to those if you need to sorry they were so long Um, [Michael Houck]: I just, it took me a while to make sure I had everything right. Um, yeah, this is probably a, one of the most hectic days for you yet, because we have the shredding officers still on your plate. We have the partnership stuff, which we’re going to talk about now. And then it’s reporting day for mantle. So until we get all that smoothed out, it’s probably going to be a hectic day. [Ben Ornstein]: So sorry about that. Yeah, it’s all good. Is what it is. [Michael Houck]: If you want to skip the engineering team sync, you should, and just focus on the urgent stuff. Because at that meeting, we’re just going to talk about the launch, which we’re going to do probably tonight or tomorrow, probably tomorrow, honestly. So I don’t think there’s any big stuff for you there. The one thing with regard to that would be, at some point, doesn’t need to be even this week, but at some point soon, we’re going to want to update the Help Center to reflect inner circle and the free tier and all that. So not urgent, but just something to keep in mind. Cool. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, we can sync on that at some point, because you’re right. I saw the last updated was back in July. We can’t have it that way. [Michael Houck]: Plus all the new stuff, obviously. But it’s honestly just low priority. So I would say, yeah, if you want to skip the meeting, that you should and just get just focus on the more important stuff. [Ben Ornstein]: Cool, yeah, I’ll I’ll probably instead. I’ll just set up all the rest of the news because I have a huge like, List of like actual action items to change each newsletter, so I’ll go ahead and do that during during that time. [Michael Houck]: OK, sounds good and then. I have a couple random calls after that too, but I’m free sporadically. Throughout the afternoon. So if you have anything you want to hop back on and chat through with regards to setting those up or then doing the imports and reporting, just let me know. [Ben Ornstein]: Happy to hop back on and chat more. Cool. Yeah. Last yesterday, I went to a coffee shop and just set up all the imports for today. So I have specific spreadsheets with the exact amount of people I need to up to import. It’s foolproof at this point. So the imports themselves today are going to be very easy. That’s going to be the easiest part of the day, because it’s literally just clicking a couple buttons. [Michael Houck]: Great. OK, cool, man. Sounds good. So let’s talk. Let’s talk sponsors. Have you have you looked at that this morning? We’ve done anything there. Any questions or are we sort of fresh? [Ben Ornstein]: So I looked at Max’s email and maybe it would be good to share my screen. [Michael Houck]: And if you want, what we can do is we can actually move this later today and you can like, just so you have more time to spend in it and have any questions, like specific questions, but we can also go through stuff now, whatever you want to do. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, we maybe just like go through, we can go through a couple of these and what they look like, And then. Maybe that’s the right approach. So I saw this one yesterday. I didn’t even know it’s about to send. Maybe I’ll just cancel it for now, but why would we? Why would we cancel it? Well, this was one I set up yesterday, but just so we could go over just to make sure it’s the correct approach. No, I mean, it’s it’s already up looks good let’s do it let’s do a new one okay yeah basically I just added my email in and said checking in again because this was one that was just he continued to follow up on um and I read the whole thread isak told max to reach out to lauren uh whatever yeah and so basically it was just the same same old approach I said like just checking in again and then added myself in And so we don’t have to worry about Max’s email for this one anymore. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, that’s the big thing. Like, that’s really the big thing is that add yourself in, introduce yourself as Max, basically. And then from that point on, like, you don’t even need to worry about Max’s email for that conversation anymore, because you’ll just you’ll just own it. And then what you’ll need to do is because you’ll get that email in your superhuman, and you’ll need set a reminder in your superhuman for like maxity that’s like two to four days or whatever, whatever you whatever system you guys talked about. Just set that up then for yourself. [Ben Ornstein]: Right. And then I’ll remove him from the email. [Michael Houck]: So yeah, with the next one that you send removed. Right, right, right, right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yep. [Ben Ornstein]: Okay, so that one. So how this is functioning is like, pretty much what you said, well, This one’s different. So this guy actually looks like he’s about to convert like he’s asking option one, which I didn’t see what option one was yet. [Michael Houck]: This is this is one of the ones that Max said was really warm and likely to close. [Ben Ornstein]: So hopefully we can get this across the finish line. [Michael Houck]: Maybe even this week. Yeah, so it looks like, [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, there we go. [Michael Houck]: This one. Sweet 6K love it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Awesome. [Ben Ornstein]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: That’s $600 for you for closes. Really? You're telling me I get this one, not Max? [Ben Ornstein]: Max isn't, you know, it's based on the close. [Michael Houck]: It's based on whoever owns the lead when it closes. So this is the easiest $600 she ever made. I mean, that’s kind of insane. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: Feel free to not give me this one. I feel like I don’t deserve this one. I didn’t do any of the work on this one. [Michael Houck]: Well, you’ll have the opportunity to add your commissions at the end of the month in Thera, so you do as you see fit. Got it. Oh, by the way, Max messaged me yesterday. [Ben Ornstein]: He messaged because he wanted to add in his hours, so I just gave him access to the email and then I changed the password again. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, he messaged me about that too, and I told him to check in with you. Got it. [Ben Ornstein]: Okay, so yeah, I believe he finished. OK, so cool. Basically with this one, I’m just going to have to. Just like going through the flow here and I know you’re less familiar with this cause you didn’t actually do this fine. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s all good. [Ben Ornstein]: So basically he wants to do this option one. I’m just going to throw this on another my other screen real quick. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, go for it. [Ben Ornstein]: So he wants to do option one. I’m going to reply here. Do you want to be CC’d in this No, I never want to be CC’d on these. [Michael Houck]: Got it. The only time you CC me on one of these is if there’s a question about the newsletter or interaction or anything. Just if they have questions that you either don’t know the answer to or don’t know how to specifically like finesse it. [Ben Ornstein]: Yep, but either otherwise just keep you out of it. Got it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, and in most cases like slack me about it you add me to the to the thread and we can discuss it because in some cases don’t actually make sense for you to present yourself as the authority rather than [Ben Ornstein]: delegating to me. Right. Plus, your email is probably I don’t even want to know how insane it is. [Michael Houck]: No, that part’s fine. Honestly, Max’s email is the worst. So it’s all good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Ben Ornstein]: So this is a good one. Oh, good. Good. Sorry. No, I was just saying this is pipe drive. That’ll, that’ll be a good one. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it will be. Um, but okay. So then basically he’s, he’s expressed verbally that he’s in, right. So he wants the schedule. So you should go look at the ad availability calendar. I forget what the name of that Google sheet is. Might be at availability calendar sponsor calendar, maybe that this one. [Ben Ornstein]: No. [Michael Houck]: Yes, yes, founding journey ad calendar. That’s it. So basically let me open it up on my side too. I always forget the name of this sheet. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, they all have specific names. [Michael Houck]: OK, so we can. Some of these were, I guess not. We we did have sponsors for something. Maybe we didn’t. I don’t know. I’ll put this. I’m going to close these off. And then we’re not doing dives before then. We do have the bamboo deep dive that we want to schedule in for one of these. One of these further down slots and then hopefully the Midwestern deep dive converts too. But these other ones we can mark these as not booked. It’s because the dates already passed, right? Because the dates already passed, so I just mark it as open, right? That makes it like red or whatever. So. It looks like we have 2-1, 2-11, 2-18, 2-22. Oh, another thing, when somebody books a deep dive, you have to mark the featured placement as NA for that one because we’re not gonna have an ad in the middle of a deep dive for a different company. [Ben Ornstein]: Yep, makes sense. [Michael Houck]: Okay. And deep dives only go on Saturdays as well. Okay, so yeah. So basically what you should do is pick two dates from the featured column and two dates from the tool column and propose those to him. And he might say, oh, we want to front load these sooner, or we have to start these after a certain date or something like that, or we want them spaced out more. If any of those three things happen, that’s totally fine. And just, you know, make whatever adjustments he wants, unless there’s like some reason. And the reason to push back would be if we have a similar sponsor, who’s like the issue before or something like that. Say that you don’t want to say we have a similar sponsor, you just say like, like, oh, that date isn’t available, or whatever. [Ben Ornstein]: Got it. Makes sense. It’s really just all of this is about context, just considering really everything. I think that’s like the the all in just consider everything and make sure you’re not missing things is is the short answer there. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And that’s why like with these conversations, it’s better to go slow. And like, you know, don’t just solve the problem and respond, like, take a minute to think about the context before you before you follow up, because if we have to change things up on them, you know, it can create havoc with us moving other things around on the calendar, or it can just like, cause him to lose trust in us or something, depending on what we have to do. So we want to make this as simple and easy as possible for them. And sometimes that means taking an extra minute to think through the context before like, responding, basically. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Right. [Ben Ornstein]: So like, for example, if an Athena, Hoop, or Vanta competitor, well, maybe Athena or Vanta competitor wanted to book a featured placement for February 1st, we would probably say that’s unavailable because it’s pretty close. One week or two weeks? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, ideally two. Ideally we have a two week buffer. The only time we really run into that is with the hiring start like the offshore hiring startups. And that might not be the case in 2025, but in 2024, they were blowing budget on everything. So we had like four of them at one point who we had to schedule out and it was very chaotic. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: Now, one thing I want to take a look at here is Athena. So we have one, two, and then three other recent spots for them. We have two more Athena spots that we’re going to need to schedule for I think March into like maybe the beginning of April. So just keep that in mind. [Ben Ornstein]: They booked a seven pack and we’ve we’ve put five here so far. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK, make a note of that. OK. [Michael Houck]: And you can you can feel free to check in with Max to make sure there’s no one else who’s booked who’s not on this calendar. I don’t think that’s the case. He does a good job of keeping up the date, he just doesn’t schedule out like specific dates too far in advance on here. Basically, when he adds a name to here, it means that that name has been that date has been communicated to the partner. So people book long term packages, sometimes he doesn’t pick the dates right away. But if you want what you can do is you can just have like a like a pending Athena. So if we want to do like 315, we could do like that. And that way, it’s sort of I think that’s probably a better system. [Ben Ornstein]: That is because then I don’t have to really make as much of a note. Yes, just remember to check in with them before like enough time to get the copy from them and things like that. [Michael Houck]: Got it. OK. So. OK. So yeah, so. For this guy, Pipedrive, what dates would you pick? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Two featured and two tool of the weeks? I’m making a couple notes. [Ben Ornstein]: So two featured, full featured placements, and then two tool of the week. Pipedrive, it’s like a sales tool, as far as I’m aware. I can do some more research on that, but I believe that’s what it is. [Michael Houck]: Pipedrive’s like a CRM, isn’t it? I don’t know. I know nothing about these companies. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, they’re a sales CRM. Yeah, that’s what I thought. [Michael Houck]: Okay, sales CRM. [Ben Ornstein]: what my approach would be just do a little research, quick research on each of the other ones that are around it, around the available slots. Smart, yeah. This one is not a competitor. Athena, didn’t we say Athena’s also hiring? [Michael Houck]: Athena is hiring, yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: So I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t make the first one February 1st. Well, it’s a little close. Maybe maybe that’s why. [Michael Houck]: Or no, if if we’re close like, We should, because no one else is going to take that spot. So either we’re going to lose out on the opportunity to make a couple K off of this spot or or not. So we should be opportunistic. Basically the way I would frame this to them is watch you finish, finish, finish the other recommendations you make and then then I’ll talk about how I frame it. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, it looks like, Previously, we waited really only like a couple weeks to do two. So we could do the same approach of like a February 1st, February 11th. My other idea was just to do it once a month, once on the first, second on the first. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think, and then what about the two of the weeks? You do for them? [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, two of the weeks. I wouldn’t want them in the same weeks as the open slots, right? I would definitely not want that as the feature place placements. I mean. [Michael Houck]: Well, it’s not necessarily that black and white. Sometimes seeing a featured ad on a Saturday and then seeing the tool the week to get sort of more organic explanation, the tool can actually help drive conversions. Like a quick reminder, oh, I just saw this somewhere. So I would say some clients might not want that, some sponsors may not want that, but it’s not necessarily that black and white. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Understood. [Ben Ornstein]: I mean, in that case, then maybe I would just do. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Like [Michael Houck]: You don’t want him in the same issue, though, yeah, I will say that, yeah, yeah, and that’s what I was referring to. Yeah, same issue, definitely not. OK, cool, so yeah, I think that is one option. I think that’s actually a good option. That way we take up like upcoming dates that we would otherwise lose out on. The other option would be we do 21. Featured. We do. 218 featured. And then we do. One of the tools in between, maybe 211. And then the other tool, like either end of Feb or beginning of beginning of March. Excuse me. The more important thing, though, is. Oh, wait, sorry, and this was this is pending Midwestern. That deep dive they want to do that date. But there they haven’t paid yet. To make a note there. But we did promise it to them on want to add that in. So the thing that I’d say is like, hey, we can do these dates in February. Let us know if February 1st would work for you, if this Saturday would work for you, or if that’s too quick of a turnaround. The one thing you to keep in mind is like, the reason to not front load them all, like you had proposed is because if we front load them all, it looks like we’re a little desperate to try to fill those slots, which we aren’t because we have other people in the funnel as well, right. And that might actually make them less likely to convert and pay it might like sketch them out or something. So I would probably position it as like some of these spread throughout February, or maybe even into the first week of March. And then we see if they wanna take the 2-1 slot. We propose it and we say, like, yeah, hey, so we can have the first one run on 2-1 and then we’ll have the rest run over the next few weeks. [Ben Ornstein]: Here’s some proposed dates, let us know. Yep, got it. And the framing is important too, like, because you’re right, it could seem desperate even though we’re not. Okay, again. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so maybe the four selected I have right now are probably good. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think those four work really well, actually. So if you want to propose those and then and then see what they say, that’s fine. And then if you want to send me the copy before you send the email, I’ll just I’ll review it. [Ben Ornstein]: Perfect, OK. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: But that’s great, that’s that’s 6K coming in. [Michael Houck]: Hopefully they pay before the end of the month. And actually having the date of 21 for the first one is good, forces them to pay this week, which we always want to close revenue in the current month before rolling it over to the next month. [Ben Ornstein]: That’s like always our priority. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That makes sense. [Michael Houck]: The two big ones that you should keep an eye out for this week are Bamboo and Midwestern. So Bamboo obviously is already signed, so they’re committed, but they haven’t paid yet. For that one, I wouldn’t even loop you in. For that one, I would stay on Max’s email because they have such a long relationship with him. It’d be weird if he like is no longer there right now. I would just keep replying. I think he’s like checking in with them like once a day even, or maybe once every two days at the most. So just keep pushing that one forward. We want them to really pay this week before the 31st, before February 1st. [Ben Ornstein]: Yes. Let’s look at that one quickly. [Michael Houck]: Oh, wait, it looks like he just replied, 1109. Yep. Morning, Max. Spoke with a brilliant team. Everybody’s been approved. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Let’s go. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so now I would reply to this right now, and I would say, oh, make sure to include me on there too, because I’m on this thread, and so is Kim. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, sorry. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So I would just say, like, great. We’ll keep an eye out for it. And looking forward to getting the first great we’ll keep an eye out for it. Once it comes through. We’re actually going to do that. Great. We’ll keep an eye out for it. We should start talking about dates to run the first the first few placements. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Well, perfect. [Ben Ornstein]: I’m going to make sure I know I noticed that Max doesn’t usually do the high, the high Mitch, like I do, like I always, I just, I just do that. He kind of just says like, he goes straight into it. He doesn’t say like, yeah, yeah. [Michael Houck]: So I’m going to copy that actually. I’m not going to stay with his style. [Ben Ornstein]: He’s all business. Yeah. Starting my days to run the first. [Michael Houck]: I would, I would add yourself to this But just not comment on it. Just not comment on it. That way you see when Mitch replies, you know? Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, great. [Ben Ornstein]: We’ll keep an eye out forward. Start talking about dates to run the first few featured placements. [Michael Houck]: Okay, maybe add one more thing. We should start talking about dates to run the first few featured placements. Let me know if you have specific dates in mind. Otherwise, we can propose some. Cool. Perfect. Okay, let’s. Great. We’ll keep an eye out for it. She’s talking about days around the first year future. [Ben Ornstein]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: And then what you should do in your superhuman is set a reminder on Wednesday for this. [Ben Ornstein]: And I already have a couple, which is good. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, just do it when it comes in. It’s all good. Any others you wanna go through now? [Ben Ornstein]: Yes, sorry. There was actually one that just came to me that I think was an intro from you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Ben Ornstein]: And I didn’t even read this till right now. I’ve been doing so busy this morning. OK, just trying to understand. I could be a potential club. I mean, look inbounds great. [Michael Houck]: This this to me reads like I. So I think he’s selling the company. I don’t think he’s like trying to get users for the company. I think he emailed me once before, I forget. So we should propose, we should send over our partnership option because he might want to list an ad that he’s selling the company. That’s how I read it. But we’ll see how he responds. So you should respond to this just like you would a normal one and we’ll just see how he responds. [Ben Ornstein]: And that would just be like, hi Michael, yeah, no. Hi. [Michael Houck]: I just want to do like one of these while you’re here and do it reply to his reply right now you’re applying to my message. His replies below his replies below. Oh man. OK, I gotta I gotta take a piss before the engineering meeting. Let me do that then we can. You can stay on. [Ben Ornstein]: Okay, okay. You Okay. [Michael Houck]: So, okay. We don’t share the Passion Fruit page. That’s not our partnership page anymore. If people come inbound through Passion Fruit, that’s one thing. And Max’s email, we’ll get the notifications if they do. But yeah, this is what we share. Obviously, the branding is outdated. But you can call that out in the email. Just like, hey, here’s our partner page. Journey. We’re currently rebranding the page. Let us know what you want to do. [Ben Ornstein]: And you do not want to be cc’d going forward? I mean, since he emailed me, he feels like he has a relationship with me. [Michael Houck]: So you want to keep me in there just as a cc. Obviously, I don’t want to be cc’d on the email, but it’s fine. Might just help with the with the conversion. [Ben Ornstein]: Cool, OK, thanks for this. I’m gonna go ahead and I’ll send this one and then maybe we can hop on later to discuss some of the other ones. But yeah, I want to get. Let’s hop on later. [Michael Houck]: I’m flexible, especially in the late afternoon. I also I would not include that last line that you have there. You never want to be the person to propose a call if they want to do a call, then okay. But otherwise, your time is going to get sucked up with calls that could be emails. Got it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Understood. [Ben Ornstein]: I was just looking at one of Max’s old older. Actually, it was only reply like five days ago. But yeah, it’s probably a little bit of a feel thing. [Michael Houck]: I need to look at the specific example to see why you did that. But I think this guy is pretty low probability anyway. So especially because of what his use case seems to be. So you don’t want to take up your time with a lead like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Understood. Okay. Thank you. [Ben Ornstein]: I appreciate it. We’ll chat later. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Let’s chat more later to do more, but let me know if anything comes up as you do more of these and also reporting. [Ben Ornstein]: Yes. Sounds good.