- Duration: 37 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JM05BE1TCXTTAAYV94CQ59ZC (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JM05BE1TCXTTAAYV94CQ59ZC)
Transcript
[Jacob Shipley]: Hey, what’s going on, man? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Can you hear me? I can now. [Michael Houck]: Your video still says you’re connecting to audio and I can’t see your video at all. So I didn’t even think you were here. [Jacob Shipley]: That’s weird. Um, yeah, you’re coming in super blurry from me too. Um, okay. Can you better? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m just going to go video off. [Michael Houck]: I think it’s my, I can’t wait to get out of this Airbnb. The wifi has been terrible. [Jacob Shipley]: All right, cool. [Michael Houck]: So we do, uh, when are you leaving? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Uh, tomorrow morning. [Jacob Shipley]: Okay. Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Sweet, man. [Jacob Shipley]: Be nice to get some time. [Michael Houck]: I’ve been I haven’t been on like a real beach vacation in like, I don’t know, a couple of years. And so I love the beach. So it’ll be nice just at least on the weekend days to relax on the on the beach itself, you know? [Jacob Shipley]: Oh, yeah. We took our girls to Pensacola two years ago, you know, just for like a winter like kind getaway. And I at the time I was working that job at Tyson that I really kind of hated, you know, and so it was just like, like, there’s something about just like being at the beach. That’s just like, so yeah, so refreshing. And just like, yeah, so peaceful. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you know, it’s like, I had this like, weird train of thought about it, where like, I feel like if I’m if I’m near the mountains, I feel like there’s some like wonder and like almost safety, because there’s the ability to go to high ground. And if I’m near the beach, I feel like I put myself in this place where I just don’t care. And I’m just sort of trusting the universe to not have a giant flood that destroys the world, you know? Yeah. No, there’s something to that. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah. I mean, like, yeah, I just remember like, yeah, we took and part of it was like, it’s cool to see your kids see that for the first time, like they’ve never seen the beach or the ocean. And so that was really cool. But then, yeah, it’s just like, yeah, you just like, don’t care about anything, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Sweet, man. Okay, cool. I, you know, I got the kickoff recording, but I would love to just like chat through. Like, obviously, you’ve scaled an audience, you’ve figured out that, you know, before would love to know just kind of like the backstory of like, how did you build the current audience that you have? And then what is like, what’s your, what’s your, what do we want the game plan to be moving forward as far as like, how close do you want that to mirror what you’ve done previously versus like, you know, net new stuff that you’ve never talked about or different strategy. [Michael Houck]: So yeah, I’d be curious to start there. Okay. Yeah. It makes sense. So I, my, my audience came initially just from a couple of very organic viral posts. So I put together this presentation, like this like Google slide deck about like the future of food delivery. I can dig it up and share it with you. This is back when I had just left Uber Eats and I was like working at Airbnb hating my life because working at Airbnb was terrible. And in food delivery, so I just made this presentation. I pushed on LinkedIn, it went viral, and somebody asked me to create a Twitter account and said I should share it there. I’d never even thought of creating a Twitter account before, but I did, and it went, like, for somebody who has literally zero followers, it went pretty viral there, too. It got, like, you know, a couple hundred likes or something like that and was reshared a bunch. And then when I got laid off, Mayor B&B, like the next year I made this post. I think I was the first person. At Airbnb for sure, but also like the Also, like one of the first people in big tech in general to post about their layoff and the post just went insanely viral. This is like COVID, right? It’s like during the code layoffs. I think the post got like six or 7000 totally organically and a ton of followers, a ton of messages, job offers, obviously. And I thought that was really powerful. And so then I was sort of more interested in content. And then there was another round of layoffs soon after that where a bunch of people from Uber who I knew from when I worked there got laid off and I felt really bad for them. And I sort of hadn’t seen what had happened with my post. And so what I did is I created this Google sheet, blank Google sheet, where anyone could go in and edit it and add their name, LinkedIn link, email, job title, user experience, et cetera. And on the other side, another tab, people could post like if they’re a recruiter, like what company they work for, how to get in touch with them to apply for their jobs, et cetera. And lo and behold, this thing also went viral. And it went so viral that Business Insider and a couple other publications called me and we did interviews and they wrote articles about it. And I thought about turning it into a startup in the hiring space and ended up not doing that because the idea just, you know, wasn’t exciting to me, but somebody actually, one of my friends took the idea and got [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: into YC with it, which was pretty cool. [Michael Houck]: Anyway, then when we started building Launch House, I was like, all right, We need to get founders involved. I need to market to them. Content seems like a good way to do that. So I just started writing and I talked with Nathan Ball, who you might know. He’s like a Twitter guy. He was a friend of a friend of ours. And he got involved, sort of helped us learn the basics of threads. And I kind of took those and ran with it. And then I just started doing three threads a week on Twitter. And sort of reposting some content on LinkedIn and just built the audience that way over a long period of time. Eventually met Sahil Bloom and he sort of helped me perfect my strategy and also would engage with my stuff and share with more people, which was sort of the genesis of Megaphone, seeing how he was able to help me [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: do that. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah. And then, so, and then that, like those kind of lead magnet things, is that the automation is what got you booted from Twitter? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No. [Michael Houck]: So the thing that got me booted from Twitter was we were using this tool called Drippi, D-R-I-P-P-I, and it let you send like templates DMs to basically lead lists of people on Twitter. And I just didn’t know there was some limit. And so I just sent a bunch of them and they banned me with no warning or anything. So that was unfortunate. How many followers did you have there? 55,000. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: But at that point, I hadn’t really been posting consistently for like, I’d say over a year. Here at that point. Anyway, most of the following happened during launch house and then in the like, I’d say like nine months after launch house when I was first building up the newsletter list. [Jacob Shipley]: Okay, cool. And then so I mean, moving forward, do you see the main KPI being leads for megaphone for ghost routing primarily? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, look, I mean, My plan for 2025 is basically three things. I have three goals for this year. One is to get back in shape post-divorce, post anxiety over that decision. Two is to make a shit ton of money with the business. And three is to find where I’m going to sort of plant roots and settle into the next phase of my life. So the best way accomplish number two, which is the business focus goal, is to send people to the ghost trading agency and grow that as fast as possible. And then, you know, be bringing in as much revenue as possible per month. And maybe at some point in the future down the road, not this year, consider selling it, right? So that’s, that’s my priority right now. Obviously, we have goals around growing Megaphone, the SaaS product, we have goals around growing the newsletter, and founder membership. But the highest leverage thing and the easiest thing to grow right now are the same, which is the ghostwriting agency. Okay, cool. [Jacob Shipley]: What content has been most effective at driving leads for ghostwriting clients so far? None. I haven’t posted about the ghostwriting agency at all. [Michael Houck]: It’s not even on my LinkedIn, which I need to update. But the sort of conundrum that we need to thread the needle on and figure out here is my audience right now on LinkedIn is startup founders. And that’s the same people who read my newsletter. That is an incredibly valuable audience to have, even if we are not going all in on the newsletter right now and the content agency is priority number one. The reason is as we grow the newsletter and as I sort of have have more success with the broader business, there’s a very clear path to raising a venture fund in the future because of this founder community and founder audience that we’ve built. And having a venture fund will be definitely the highest leveraged thing in the long run for this business. So my challenge here, sort of why I’ve hesitated going in on content again, Because we want to maintain and grow the founder audience, even though we’d probably see more leads come in if we were making content about ghostwriting, social media growth, and stuff like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Jacob Shipley]: But the content for, I mean, the founders are the, I assume that’s the number one job title of your ghostwriting clients, right? [Michael Houck]: Yes, but those founders also have broader interests. Growth is one thing that they’re interested in, right? Like a lot of them want fundraising, a lot of them want hiring, leadership, finding product market fit, how to get off the ground in the first place, right? Growth is one part of that. And specifically within growth, content marketing is another part of that. So we don’t want to niche down to that level because it misses the broader broader audience that is very valuable. [Jacob Shipley]: Okay. And you talked about that in the onboarding thing, some of those other topics that they’re interested in. Where have you been pulling those ideas from when you’ve been creating newsletter content? How have you been sourcing that previously? Usually it’s literally just from whatever’s on my mind that week. [Michael Houck]: So I’m terrible that I write my newsletter the day before every single week. I really shouldn’t do that. But usually it comes from conversations I have. So like, you know, I’m doing a paid consulting call with a founder, or I’m just catching up with a founder friend, and they tell me about some problem they’re having, and it sparks an idea, right? So it’s, it’s, I know that’s not very helpful. No, that’s fine. [Jacob Shipley]: Well, how, how, like, like how much overlap, not like, obviously not copying, pasting newsletter to LinkedIn, but using like the content ideas from the newsletter for like social posts. Oh yeah. I mean, you’ve got, you’ve got two years of, of good stuff in the newsletter. [Michael Houck]: So by all means, like we should, the audience of the newsletter is the audience that we want on social media too. The complicating factor is that we also want to work in posts for that audience specifically about why they should be paying us to create content for them, be their content partner, basically. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. And then as far as like, like the personal stuff, like how I kind of what I when I was talking with Preston, I was like, how much do you want to share about like, you know, stuff like drug addiction? And he was like, everything. I want to share it all. And if a zero is I don’t want people to know my name, where would you fall on that? [Michael Houck]: I’m a lot closer to the zero than Preston. OK, cool. I’m I try to avoid the personal stuff. There’s a lot of stories that we could tell. Like, for example, I I founded Launch House. I brought in two people to be co-founders after the first house, basically two months into the company. And then they moved to LA to set up the next house. And I went back to New York to spend some time with my wife, my soon-to-be wife, and hire more people and vet our cohort. And then they conspired against me out there and stole the CEO seat and company from me. And then I was in a tough spot for the next two and a half years with them while they made terrible decisions and drove the company into the ground eventually. So there’s a lot we could talk about with that stuff. I need to be very sensitive with how I kind of bring that stuff up publicly. But in general, I would say, you know, personal life stuff like going through divorce, you know, all that. I’m not super interested in broadcasting that to the world. Even things like, you know, in public. Like I posted our MRR on LinkedIn over the weekend. I don’t really love doing stuff like that either. I think it’s a, that was a really big milestone for me personally. Cause it was like the same revenue, same MRR, same MRR that we’ve reached with launch house, but I did it faster on my own. So it felt really good. But you know, in general, I don’t love that sort of like, Hey, give away all your secrets on social media. It’s like an engagement hack, I feel like, to do that. Whereas for me, holding on to the secrets of how the business works are more valuable than a few extra followers. [Jacob Shipley]: Totally. Okay, sweet. And as far as voice, I know you’re cool being controversial, but I just would love to hear how you think about the line between being controversial versus being a dick. You know what I mean? [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, look, my written communication style is I would say some people would call me a dick. When I was at Uber, a few people referred to me as Darth Hauk. Well, like, you know, we don’t meet people in person. We’re just talking through text. I’m all business. We had a thing at Launch House where I was like, I would say, like, oh no, that’s not an option. And it just became like a meme within the company where people were like, not an option. So it’s like, you know, I’m obviously kind of a different person when you’re speaking to me, but through written conversation, I’m totally fine being aggressive, being terse, and leaning into controversial stuff too. Where I draw the line is like, I don’t want it to come off like I’m just trying to engagement bait around controversial topics. It’s more important for me to come off like I’m doing things authentically, regardless of what that is, rather than just trying to get some followers or something like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, okay. That makes sense. [Jacob Shipley]: I mean, like, okay, so Alex Lieberman growing StoryArb, what is he doing that like you think is, or I mean, or anybody that’s growing a ghostwriting agency, but like, that you think is smart versus doing that you’re like, just [Michael Houck]: pisses you off? Well, I don’t think Alex Lieberman is that smart, if I’m being totally honest. He posts some good content and I’m not throwing plungers at people in public. But look, I mean, his longer form posts where he goes deep onto the vision like opportunity and sort of what they’re seeing. I like the sort of Greg Eisenberg, Alex Lieberman long form posts where talk about a topic and sort of have a unique insight that’s like new, but obviously true. That stuff is very appealing to me. I think it does very well for the audience I’m going after. Yeah. [Jacob Shipley]: And I mean, yeah, certainly not going to post anything about like Alex Lieberman publicly, but just like curious from your perspective of like how he talks about story or how he’s like promoting the business, like stuff like that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s largely good. Um, I, I have him muted, so I don’t see a ton of his content, but what I, what I have seen the majority is of the long form stuff is it’s solid. [Jacob Shipley]: Um, I wish I had more specific feedback on it, but I just don’t. That’s good. Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: All right, what am I not asking that I should be asking? Well, I guess in terms of the balance between short form and long form, it’s tough, man. I think I would bias more towards the longer form stuff, but I do want consistent posts as well. So it’s like, I think we just experiment. If we have a good idea for a long form post, great, we do a long form post. If we don’t that week, great, we do a batch of short form and that’s totally fine. [Jacob Shipley]: I don’t think we should hold ourselves to specific cadence there. [Michael Houck]: How many posts a week are you wanting? I mean, just the full Monty. So we’ll do a full contract for this one. [Jacob Shipley]: So whatever you do for other folks is fine. Okay, cool. Like imagery, I haven’t actually, I don’t think any of I’m waiting for Noel to give me approval. So I can submit a design request, but I haven’t really done any of that. What are your thoughts on like, just text versus like submitting some design requests for, you know, like, more in depth imagery? Like, what’s your preference there? Yeah, I love the screenshot essay format. [Michael Houck]: I think that’s a really, really good format, we should use it. It’s very shareable. It creates a lot of view time on the posts, which drives impressions, obviously. If we write a post, or if you write a post, and I’m like, yeah, that looks great, we should experiment with making those screenshot essays. So having Celine create a template for me specifically, like a branded template, that we then throw the text into, maybe Ben will do the opposite around actually executing and sending it back and getting it scheduled and everything. But yeah, I love that format. I’m not opposed to the text-along form, like the Greg Eisenberg, Alex Lieberman style too, but I’m gonna mix the screenshot essays. [Jacob Shipley]: Okay, cool. And then as far as like your previous posts, like pulling from there for inspiration and changing up And like, I was just looking at like your most viral posts of all time, like the read these books to become a better founder, like that kind of like, you know, refreshing some of that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I’m not opposed to that at all. I mean, again, I haven’t been consistently posting in like, probably close to two years at this point, a year and a half, at least. So a lot of people won’t even remember those posts, or if they do, it’s been a while since they’ve seen it. I know that in the past, in a couple different ways, sometimes written out, sometimes as like tweet screenshots, carousels. We should think about what formats make the most sense, but definitely not at all opposed to repurposing. [Jacob Shipley]: What about video content? Like, I know you’ve been doing some podcast stuff, anything around there, like clips or anything like that, you think? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so Ben and I have actually been working with a We’re publishing our first YouTube video on Saturday. Let’s get done. So we’re going to try to have like either a new video every one to two weeks going forward. I don’t know if I can post those full videos on LinkedIn. Maybe I can, cause they’re only like 10 minutes long, but yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe we do that and include those as part of the schedule too, or at least like grab a clip from them and link to the full, full YouTube video. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah, totally. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, no, it’s really not gonna hurt to test it. Let me see, I was looking at, yeah, it’s like the YouTube shorts that you’ve been posting. Have you tested, like, have you tested throwing those on LinkedIn and seeing what they do? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I tested a few. They did okay. I think in general, I’m not as excited about the shorts as the long form videos right now. It’s just easier to build trust and authority, which is just what we want to do, um, through the, through the long haul. [Jacob Shipley]: Totally. Okay. Sweet. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Awesome, man. [Jacob Shipley]: I feel good about it. Um, trying to think if there’s any, yeah, no, I think that’s, I feel like, yeah, I’ve got enough context from just working together previously. I feel like, yeah, I feel good to go. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: Okay. Um, would it help if I do the sort of normal post kickoff stuff where I like identify a few accounts whose content I like stuff like that? [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah, totally. That would be helpful. Um, and then I feel like we’ve just got such a backlog of like newsletter stuff, previous posts that have done well, um, that I feel like, yeah, we, it’s going to be a lot of like testing to have like, yeah. What format works best? Like what combination of assets, but yeah, I feel like I don’t foresee content being the problem just based on how much you’ve created in the past. Cool. Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. [Michael Houck]: I’m going to add you to the newsletter. I don’t know if you’re already on the list or not, but I’ll give you a premium subscription so that when you log into Beehive, you can see the paywalled stuff because a lot of the A lot of the Saturday essays are paywalled. [Jacob Shipley]: Wait, what do you charge for your premium subscription? [Michael Houck]: It is $195 for lifetime. [Jacob Shipley]: Oh, okay. Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh, you know what? [Michael Houck]: It’s not letting me… I have some weird stripe issues with my Beehive account. Let me… I’ll get this fixed. I’ll add you to the paid version. Great. [Jacob Shipley]: And then I’m on your newsletter. How do you, is that line brick that you use with the mountain? Is that an image or is that like custom code? [Michael Houck]: How did you do that? Oh yeah, it’s, it’s an image. I had Celine do it when she set up the brand. Oh, that’s awesome. Very cool. Um, yeah, she’s great, man. If you want to use her, you know, feel free. [Jacob Shipley]: Okay, cool. No, that’s awesome, man. Um, yeah, I think that’d be super helpful. I mean, like you mentioned, great guy, Greg Eisenberg a few times. I love him too. To his like right-hand guy is this dude named Jordan. His handle is Jordan Mix. No, I know Greg. [Michael Houck]: I know Greg pretty well, but I don’t know Jordan. Oh, do you? Okay, okay. [Jacob Shipley]: I’ve never actually talked to Greg, but this Jordan guy is super, his content’s kind of underrated. Doesn’t get like near the reach. He’s not as consistent, but his stuff’s really good too. [Michael Houck]: What Jordan, Jordan, what, how do you spell the last name? [Jacob Shipley]: M-I-X. That’s not his name, but that’s what his like, handle is everywhere. It might even be on LinkedIn actually. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh, I see him. [Michael Houck]: Partner at late checkout. Here he is. Jordan Mix. That is his last name apparently. [Jacob Shipley]: I don’t think it is. I mean, I think he just goes by that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Interesting. [Michael Houck]: He’s in Nashville. Maybe I’ll say hi while I’m in town. [Jacob Shipley]: Oh yeah, totally. [Michael Houck]: Greg’s in Miami most of the time, Montreal sometime, and it goes back and forth. [Jacob Shipley]: Okay, cool. This Jordan guy, he started a company, I think he helped with like a medical device company in Fayetteville, Arkansas. And so he connected me with his co-founder, who I’ve gotten coffee with before here. [Michael Houck]: But yeah, it’s just, yeah, crazy small world. That is a crazy small world. Dang, okay. Yeah, maybe I’ll reach out to him and see if he’s around. Anything else I can give you? What do we normally collect from people at this stage? [Jacob Shipley]: We just ask them for the accounts, right? There’s not necessarily anything else. Yeah, let me pull it up. Yeah, five accounts you think will do well. Yeah, five accounts that you think do content well, five accounts that have the audience you want, and then any documents and writing samples. But I feel like all of that’s probably in the founding journey newsletter, right? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you’re gonna get all that in the news. That’s the best source, that and like past posts. It’s actually a shame that you can’t see my old Twitter posts because the whole account is suspended. [Jacob Shipley]: There’s a whole bunch of good stuff. Yeah, that’s true. And so there’s no roadmap to get that back? So not explicitly. [Michael Houck]: What I’m going to try to do, I just haven’t prioritized this. I’m going to try to go through Andreessen because they are one of the main backers in Elon Musk’s new Twitter bid. So I’m going to try to get one of the partners over there that I know to apply some internal pressure and and get me reinstated because there’s just an honest mistake. [Jacob Shipley]: We’re not doing anything crazy. Yeah, no, totally. That’s wild. Yeah, that’s insane. And you can’t even like, yeah, view anything like it’s just completely like dark. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And it’s like, it’s like indefinite, which is crazy. Like literally just hit some threshold and they’re like, all right, well, you’re a spammer. So your account is banned forever. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah. That’s pretty wild. [Michael Houck]: And the worst part was that it’s banned not only on the account, but on like me. And so any Twitter account that I log into on my computer or my phone, because they have the device IDs, gets insta-banned as well. Really? Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Wow. [Jacob Shipley]: So have you tried to create a new account then? [Michael Houck]: I had a Hauk’s newsletter account. The handle was hauk.news, like the word dot. Yeah. And I logged in and a friend added me to this like DM group that we were all in. And I was literally insta-banned at that point. [Jacob Shipley]: Wow. Dang. Okay. And then so like, if you log into it, so any account you log into on. I believe so. [Michael Houck]: I mean, I haven’t tested it beyond that because like, why would I, you know? Yeah, totally. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah. Yeah. I’m not about to send you a Benzinga’s username and password. No, I need a new life. Laptop, I think. Yeah, that’s pretty crazy. Okay, well, cool, man. Yeah, gonna throw those accounts in the chat. That’d be helpful. And then yeah, man, I’ll, I’ll get to work. Cool. [Michael Houck]: And then for when we’re sharing stuff back and forth, can you use the content channel, the team channel? Yeah, I’m trying to keep all of our like YouTube and podcast and newsletter and and social media stuff in there too. [Jacob Shipley]: Yeah, totally, man. [Michael Houck]: All right, dude. I’m excited. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, dude. Same here.