- Duration: 39 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JM08PBYEXDSW87TWP8ZWHB42 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JM08PBYEXDSW87TWP8ZWHB42)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Yo, what’s going on? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Thanks much. Ben Ornstein: How you doing? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, pretty good. Feeling I’ve been like stressing about this script all week. But I think the direction is finally wrong. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, it’s looking good. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think we got something good. So okay, let’s Let’s dive in. So I have your agenda open. Ben Ornstein: Do you want to just run through that piece by piece? Let’s do it. I’ll actually delete the quick ones. I sent this at 5.05 AM. I got like two hours sleep last night. I don’t know why. It is what it is. I don’t know. But one of them is bamboo HR thoughts. Mitch finally responded and said there was chaos. So that one’s easy. Another quick one, Poop Podcast Research. Just wanted to let you know that I know that. So I’ll delete that as well. I’ll get that one a week ahead of time to you. Another one’s Rena. We already chatted quickly about that. Sounded really scary. I kind of hope everything’s okay. That’s awful. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I’m wishing her the best. She’s got a young kid. I hope it’s nothing serious. Worst case scenario, we’ll have to adapt. I don’t know what that looks like, but hopefully she’s fine. Yeah, absolutely. I added Mantle quickly to the list. Ben Ornstein: I chatted with Matt. I think a ton is going on, so I just ended up saying to him, how about I just do the imports this week? Is to catch up, I did two days worth yesterday, I did two days worth today, and I’ll do one day tomorrow, so we’re caught up. [Michael Houck]: Okay, we don’t want to be doing that. You have other stuff that we’ve shifted, so I just shot Matt a message in the channel just to play hardball, like, there’s no reason you should be doing that anymore, you handed it off, you showed him the process, if he can’t handle it on his side, that’s his fault. We’re making a referral fee from this stuff now, we’re not splitting it 50-50 anymore. So it’s not, that’s not how you should be spending your time. Ben Ornstein: So I’ll force the issue with them. Yeah. It was quick. I spent, you know, not very long, but understood. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. It’s just the principle, right? Like if, if it’s not, if we’re white labeling something and someone else is running it, you know, we don’t want to be doing the work, right? Yeah. Ben Ornstein: So for sure. Sorry. [Michael Houck]: Do you mind not deleting things list just so in case we need to refer back to later what we talked about that it’s it’s there. Ben Ornstein: Oh, sorry. Okay. Rena bamboo HR and Okay, I think those are the three. But yeah, sorry. Okay, um, so first thing I guess, is the Blake content ops takeover. And you said something about holistically, like a lot’s gonna change, I would assume with this explosive growth. So I’ll put the ball in your court. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, look, I mean, so we just need to specialize a bit more right now, Blake has sort of been doing some ops work, because we haven’t had, you know, we pay him for for the editing. And process right he knows this because he set up an agency before in this space so that’s we’ve been paying him for until now we basically he’s had bandwidth outside of the editing just because the clients numbers haven’t been where they are now and so he’s been able to sort of keep the wheels moving as well I’ve just been doing sort of sales and account management and he’s been sort of managing the writing team problem is at As he has to spend more time editing, he has less time to sort of do everything else. So we need to hand that off. It’s not like urgent, like we don’t need to do this like today, but we should develop a plan to hand it off to you so that you can sort of like, again, just keep the wheels moving within the business. And so the blocker here is on me. I need to write playbooks about how X, Y, Z parts of the business work so that you can and refer back to them, change them as needed as things change, but just like have those SOPs to run through, because it’s just gonna be more, it’s just gonna be better that way. We’re gonna have to do that long-term anyway, as we bring more people onto the team, but I’m just gonna do it now for the ones we’ll hand off. So that also is like the third bullet on your list, like the process of getting a new newsletter client set up. It’s just one of those playbooks that I need to write. I will get those done, at least the vast majority of them done this weekend. I want to get the YouTube video done first, but that’s my next priority is basically finalizing the transfer of our notion to the new version, and then using that to transfer some of these responsibilities from Blake to you. So yeah, that’s the TLDR. There’s a few different things that’s going to play into that. They’ll all be sort of playbooked out. I don’t think there’ll be super time But yeah, that’ll just be, instead of setting up people’s mantle automations and stuff, you’ll be setting up like the newsletters for our newsletter clients and things like that. Ben Ornstein: Gotcha. Makes sense. And so all of these new people are starting, I’m looking at like the daily, the list that I have, and I’m probably even still behind. I have, after adding in Usman and Um, David workmate, David, uh, yeah, David from workmate that’s for every single day. That’s 8 AM through 11. I’ll be, you know, replying and monitoring the LinkedIn’s and that’s, that’s not including, I think drove. Um, that’s not including, and again, all this to say, I’m not complaining. I just, I truly believe the replying that should be someone’s because to do that well and to keep clients happy, and that’s what’s going to drive a lot of the growth outside of just, you know, actually creating the content. It takes so much time to do it well, and I feel like I’m drowning as I see another new one come in, and then I’m not going to to be able to do anything else well outside of that. So in terms of content ops, I think there can be two roles within that. One could be an even more junior person than myself. It’s weird to say, like, I’m not that junior anymore, but someone like, it could be like even in a smart intern or like, and that, assume that means US-based. But someone who can respond, understand tone, understand the context of the business that’s replying, all of that. And then I can handle interactions with the writers, making sure the content’s posted. I can do all the scheduling and all that. And then I think if someone else handled the actual replying, that would, my bandwidth and just like mental space would increase exponentially, I think. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So I think until we get all the playbooks written out, it’s hard for me to know for sure. Like, let me take a step back. There are a lot of roles that we could hire for the ghostwriting agency right now, right? A sort of social media manager, strategist is one of them. Manager ops wise is another one, right? And the seniority of that person, there’s like multiple levels we could consider bringing in based on what the role would be. And then there’s like this sort of generalist ops role, that’s probably its own role, as well, as you’re sort of alluding to sort of a separate thing. Those are true, right? The question is, we don’t want to what the situation is, we don’t want to hire because we know role will exist, we want to hire because we need to hire. Right. And so it sounds like you’re saying I’m drowning, right? Like, it’s really hectic in the morning. And that makes sense. What will be helpful to know is, okay, well, if somebody is devoting their entire morning to this, like let’s say they’re doing four hours a day on this, right? So it’s a part-time role. It’s a 20-hour-a-week role, right? If that’s the case, 8 to 12 every day, then how many clients can they, what’s the maximum they can handle without sacrificing quality, right? Once we know that, then we can say, okay, we’re at that level. We’re beyond that level already, or we’re like not quite there yet. So you obviously are in a weird spot here because you have a lot of other responsibilities outside of just this role that will eventually exist. And so what I would say to you is next week, if you stay, I’m going to devote my entire morning to this and I’m gonna save everything else for the afternoon. And that’s everyone else is gonna have to wait for the other stuff till the afternoon. If you set it up that way, you will then have a full week of data about how overwhelming the current client base is and whether we can add more or whether we can’t. And once we have that data, then we’ll clearly be able to say, okay, we’re at capacity here and there’s more people coming in, so we need to hire somebody, right? Because otherwise in the meantime, we could just decide if we wanted to, to structure your day where mornings you do this, afternoons you do everything else. Maybe that means everything else suffers and it’s not worth it to make that trade-off and we end up hiring anyway. But my point is that we should have that perspective, have that viewpoint before we make a hiring decision. That’s all I’m saying. Ben Ornstein: Yep. No, that makes sense. And I guess that’ll be a good test because what I’m doing is, with all the other stuff going on, of course, I’m trying to watch the video to see if there’s any extra edits. Right. Click back to LinkedIn. Click back to Twitter. Respond, making sure, all of that, it just, it can’t, it works for a very short amount of time. So, all right, that’s a good test. Let’s see how that looks next week. And we’ll see. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, otherwise the switching costs are gonna kill you, right? If you’re trying to go back and forth a minute of the video and then a minute of podcast research and then two minutes of LinkedIn, like it’s gonna drive you nuts. So yeah, I would say next week, see how it goes. And our goal for our one-on-one on next Friday or whenever we do it, I guess it’s, well, I guess it won’t be because our one-on-one’s gonna be on Tuesday. Our goal for our next one-on-one, the following Tuesday, should be, all right, you have a perspective of how many clients someone should be able to do if this is a 20-hour-a-week, part-time role for the mornings. And if we have that number, then we can sort of back into the other decision of do we hire now, how senior does that person have to be, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ben Ornstein: That works. Oh, OK, so history silicon valid potential final edits. There was one thing that I wanted them to fix. They were scrolling through a 16’s website and there was just an arrow like you could see the mouse, the actual arrow in the so so I was like, yeah, we can’t have that so. Told them that was the last edit I had. The video one more time, um, to make sure that we’re good, then that’d be great. Okay. [Michael Houck]: I will, uh, can you send me the most updated link and then I will watch it after I get done calls this afternoon. Um, and I’ll send any final feedback to them and then they can make the final edits. And it looks like we’ll be able to schedule for Saturday morning though, which is great. Ben Ornstein: I think so. There’s something that you’re seeing that makes it where like, no way. You know what? Okay. We actually shouldn’t post Saturday. [Michael Houck]: I just, we have the mural group deep dive. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Oh, good point. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So we can’t, we can’t make the issue about that. So it’s fine. We’ll actually have more flexibility this way. We’ll be a week ahead. First video will come out And, and we’ll we’ll just, you know, that’ll give us more time for the fundraising. Yeah, exactly. So it’s, it’s, you know, we never like to delay, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s okay. Yeah, do we have a deep depth coming up? Ben Ornstein: bamboos was in the distant future. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: See? [Michael Houck]: Oh, and then Midwestern And they said they want to reevaluate in March. Ben Ornstein: So I’m going to move that back to an NA slot. Yeah. OK. So that’s on the history of Silicon Valley and this message you sent me. I guess we can do the March 3rd through 5th at the end. Quickly, I want to talk about Blake. He’s been great. Yeah. I think he’s been awesome. He’s asked a ton of questions. He’s hit the ground running. He’s already very independent. I’ve been very pleased on my end. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, he has reached out to me with questions too. And if he’s also reaching out to you with questions, that’s good. I told him probably one of his big priorities for this week is just ask any question that comes to mind. And yeah, I would agree. He seems like he’s sort of moving already in the background, which is great. That’s what we want. I saw a message. I got an inbound from a sponsor yesterday and I forwarded it to him or added him to the thread or whatever. And he just responded and it was good, good quality response. So yeah, optimistic, optimistic. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And I, so I’ve answered as many questions as I can. Ben Ornstein: There have been a couple that I’ve said, I truly don’t know, this will be better to ask Calc, but I’ve only done that like once or twice. So, which is good. I actually know the process better than I think. Yeah, I’m not surprised. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool. Look, I mean, he could be it’s funny, we could be going from a couple weeks of just the two of us basically to having him and maybe a social media replier as you so eloquently put in the near future. Well, we’ll see if we need that. I don’t know if we will yet. But yeah, pretty cool. He’s definitely hit the ground running. And he’s already sending out emails and hopefully getting some deals And so any. Anything that you think you could be doing better? I guess I haven’t had enough exposure with him. Ben Ornstein: Maybe ask more questions, because like I’m like damn, does he really have a handle on like I’ve got less questions than I thought I would. And again, this is the same thing I said about when I took the ad stuff over. Maybe it’s just that Max did a really good job of explaining like his role in those docs. In the transition docs. And maybe that explains a ton of it. The one thing that he mentioned when we did like our little kickoff call was, so he doesn’t just want to be the partnerships guy, or at least that’s what he said. He wants to get more involved, which I think opens up some cool opportunities for us. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I basically told him like, let’s get partnerships under control, right? And we’ll check in after a couple months and see, okay, you’re hitting goals with partnerships, you’ve automated some of these systems, we’ll see where it goes from there. It would be great if he can take on more operational stuff too, because we will need it if the agency keeps growing. But yeah, his mandate for now is just partnerships and basically to keep his eye out for other areas of the business he thinks he could help out with after we sort of go through the initial couple of months. I told him to check in in May about it. Ben Ornstein: Great, that’s awesome. And then quickly on the sponsorship stuff, I know I saw, I was looking at the sponsored rev spreadsheet and I remember you saying about our goal of 5K. If VimCal comes through, we hit that. Like they have already agreed, which is great. [Michael Houck]: I was thinking about that actually when you told me about the VimCal thing, that we’d already be over the goal. So yeah, look, I mean, my expectation was that we, you know, have potential for almost nothing. Cause I had no expectation really. And the fact that you basically not missed a step and kept us on track is, is great. So I’ve been really, really impressed with that. Um, cause it’s totally something that’s foreign to what you’ve done before with us. So, um, yeah, really impressed. Nice work. Um, obviously we want them to convert and all that, but we’re not even, way through the month, so there’s a chance to do some damage here. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, still a bunch of follow ups that are like I’m looped into that I’m responding to. So yeah, maybe even more. They said Vimcal sent they sent it to their their leadership team. So I would assume it’s going to get pushed through, but obviously doesn’t matter until it hits the stripe account. [Michael Houck]: Literally does not matter till then. But yeah, no, it’d be great if they come through. And then I mean, hopefully pipe drive. Ben Ornstein: I’ve followed up so many times. I’m going to continue to. I’m just going to, who knows, could be a bamboo situation. [Michael Houck]: Maybe something happened to the dude. Yeah. Look, I mean, there’s no reason not to just be relentless and assume that the answer is yes. And assume that they’re just, I don’t know, dragging their feet or something. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Matt is also starting to do some sponsor outreach for our He says he’s gotten some good responses. So yeah, could be good there. Awesome. That would be great. Ben Ornstein: And okay, so the last thing I have on this list is what will need to be done while I’m out March 3rd through 5th. Yes. The most important thing I’m thinking about, but this is what I was thinking about like 3 a.m. The most important thing was the replies. I’m the only one that does that. I, I’m the only one that has access to the accounts. The simple answer to me is we simply just don’t do replies for those three days. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Would you agree? [Michael Houck]: I think that is the simple answer. I think it’s fair. Um, if they want like a two or three day discount on that month, that’s fine. It’s not the end of the world. Um, but you know, I, I, I think that’s totally fair. Those days are let’s see what where I’m going to be that there’s a couple of days to uh the third through the fifth yeah honestly I’m not I was gonna say I would just do it and I just handle the crazy mornings um but I’m going to be traveling on the fourth and so it probably just makes more sense to just pause it for the three days and I think it’s as easy as that I’ll make sure every Ben Ornstein: post is scheduled and they’ll still get posts up and all that but yeah I think that’s probably easy answer. [Michael Houck]: Yeah we probably won’t even need to refund anyone if the posts are still getting scheduled and we’ll just be like hey we have no coverage for uh replies for the first half of this week just letting you know everything will return to normal after that. Cool. So I guess on the um on the the 28th then can you just make a note to um like send me uh the message you’re gonna I’ll just give a thumbs up and then you can just send it to UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: all of them. Ben Ornstein: We’ll do. OK. And then the other obvious ones are the new things that I’m taking over, the viral examples and Tuesday. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, but those you can just do the week before, just get ahead of them. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: So that shouldn’t be disruptive. Ben Ornstein: And anything else that I’m not thinking of [Michael Houck]: Well, the one other thing will be the YouTube stuff, the long form stuff, because we will um we’ll be in a cadence of doing one per week sort of going forward right so um we’ll just need to make sure that we either do a little extra the week before in terms of I get an extra video done early and um they get edits to early rather than like finishing one they sort of polish rather than polishing off one they sort of start to at the same time again at least the initial additional round of feedback from you, right? Or I can just take that on too and just give them feedback directly. Although you do such a good job with the time codes and like the specific links and stuff so. We can sort of play that by ear a little bit, but that’s the only other thing that really comes to mind as. Ben Ornstein: As a time sensitive over those days, you know it actually helps. I didn’t think about this till right now. We have the two podcasts. Less edits than the long form videos. So if we get one of the podcasts done ahead of time, which they simply don’t require that much editing. It takes one hour of me watching the first video, noting things down. It’s very quick. Well, comparatively, I should say. And so I think if we get uh, long form at on schedule as we do, plus like the hoop podcast, we could potentially save ourselves the week that week that I’m gone. Cause the interview is the 26th. It would be quick. It would be a tight turnaround on hoop. [Michael Houck]: But I, I, I see what you’re saying. The issue is that like once we’re doing the long form, I ideally don’t want to get into a world where, um, we’re like swapping in a podcast episode for a long form. I want to be doing one long form per week and the podcast like additive on a different day. Um, and maybe that doesn’t come to fruition and maybe we do just do the podcast and you know, we’ve run out of time or whatever, and that’s fine. Uh, it would also let us get a couple more weeks ahead, which could be good. But, um, I, I see it as like a very different, but work stream in my head. Ben Ornstein: Yep. Understood. [Michael Houck]: We’ll need to pay Clipwing extra for the podcast editing for the episodes, which is fine. But yeah, I don’t see that sort of slotting in and being the same thing. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Got it. Ben Ornstein: I think that’s everything on the agenda, at least for now. [Michael Houck]: Anything else on your mind that’s not on the agenda? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, I mean. Ben Ornstein: Oh, one thing. Well, it’s my birthday today, so I’m probably going to leave it like what? Oh my God. Dude, happy birthday. What the heck? [Michael Houck]: I had no idea. Yeah, that’s all good. Ben Ornstein: I was just going to say that because like I’ll probably head out at like 530 and probably be off for the night. Yeah, get out of here. [Michael Houck]: Get out of here whenever you want. Get out of here. You know 2 o’clock right now. Whatever it’s fine. Ben Ornstein: Oh no, too much stuff. Too much stuff to do. I can’t. [Michael Houck]: I can’t do that yet. OK, what are you? Ben Ornstein: What are you doing? So tonight, just going out to dinner with the fiance, the her sister who we live with and their her husband. So tonight is just dinner this weekend. On Saturday we’re going to go to. Have you been to Topgolf? [Michael Houck]: Oh yeah, I have been at Topgolf. It’s fun. Yeah, yeah. Ben Ornstein: So we’ll do what we’re going to do. On Saturday, which will be fun. [Michael Houck]: That’s dope, man. There’s one in Manhattan that I went to a couple of times. Ben Ornstein: I was in New York. Oh, I didn’t even know they had one in New York. [Michael Houck]: That’s awesome. I think so. Unless I’m confusing or something else. Let me look. Topgolf NYC. Yeah, yeah, I was there. Oh, that’s sick. Ben Ornstein: Very cool. It’s fun. I’ve been I went to one in Maryland a couple of years ago. I play a little golf. I enjoy it. I’m not great. I’m a 10 times better tennis player than I am golf, but But so that’s what we’re doing. And then the part of I guess you could say like my birthday gift is it’s my birthday gift. It’s my engagement gift is that the parents are taking the trip to Saint Lucia, so they paid for pretty much all of it. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: That’ll be nice, man. [Michael Houck]: Dope, well, I’m Sorry, I didn’t know. I feel like I should have known. I got to pay more attention to people’s birthdays, I guess. Ben Ornstein: But thank you. I appreciate it. I don’t think of birthdays as like being anything crazy. It’s just another day to me. But in terms of my own birthday, I like celebrating other people’s birthdays. [Michael Houck]: You know what I mean? Yeah, I always feel like I’m just like, all right, well, now I’m I’m a little bit older. But other people’s birthdays are fun. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. Um, but yeah, so that’s, so if I don’t respond, if you, if you’re sending stuff, you’ll, you’ll know why usually I do 24 seven, but no, please do not, do not log into tonight. [Michael Houck]: Don’t check Slack on your phone while you’re at dinner, just ignore everything and get back to me tomorrow. Ben Ornstein: It’s totally fine. Sounds good. Um, for the rest of the day, let me see. Oh, so the B roll haven’t started that yet. Um, okay. Um, that’s going I even looked at the first line and I was like, you start with a problem. I’m like, should I get what? But I can’t get like a still of a maze. But that was the first thing that came to mind. It was like a person walking into a maze or something. Like that was my first thought. [Michael Houck]: Well, look, you don’t need to design the whole video right now, right? Like don’t make this a bigger thing than it is. Just like get clips that you think will be helpful for for this video and then drop the links in like a bunch of links with like context about them to clip point and just say, Hey, here’s some options, no need to use everyone, but check them out and see if they’re, see if they’re helpful. You know, their job is to go in there and design the video. That’s what we pay them for. So, um, they’ll have ideas on the B roll side too, but you know, since we had to add some of the first time for them, just makes sense to give them some of this time. Ben Ornstein: Yep. So yeah, just give them ideas rather than like structuring the entire video. That makes sense. And then the other thing I want to get, I have to, I’m going to have to log emails, list of creators into the spreadsheet. That’s that’ll won’t be that difficult. And then the strike bookkeeping, I still have that on my list. I’ll probably get to that tomorrow. Yeah. If you don’t get to it tomorrow, it’s not the end of the world. [Michael Houck]: Um, it’s just, uh, it’s just for my sanity more than anything else. So it’s not, it’s not a, to stop blocking anything on the client side, it’s fine. Ben Ornstein: Cool. All right. That’s yeah, that’s pretty much it, I think. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. [Michael Houck]: Well, sounds good. Let me know what you get to by the end of the day before you log off and then don’t log back in till tomorrow. All right, I’ll see you.