- Duration: 21 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JN48TCSYTT4D3C7N19N6Q1JX (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JN48TCSYTT4D3C7N19N6Q1JX)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: I’m in Austin, Texas for a conference. It’s called like the newsletter operators summit or something. I don’t know exactly what it’s called. [Neeraj Chouhan]: Yeah. How are you? Where are you based? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Nice. Bangalore. [Michael Houck]: Oh, nice. We had a huge part of our team when I worked at Uber was based there. [Neeraj Chouhan]: I mean, Uber was practically built in India first, right? [Michael Houck]: Must be pretty late for you. So I appreciate you hopping on at this time. Oh yeah, no, no, no. [Neeraj Chouhan]: My time right now is like, my time have been from last couple of years with US. So I’m like having cappuccino right now. [Michael Houck]: You’re like, I’m a pro. I got this. Go man. Yeah, I mean, look, I took a look at what you sent over to Blake. And we chatted to, I think, excited to, you know, to sort of bring you into the team and test out with somebody and kind of see how it goes and then go from there. So yeah, I guess like we can use this time, just basically for me to answer any questions that you have sort of about how we operate and things like that. And then also So anything that sort of comes to mind for me, I’ll fire at you as well. [Neeraj Chouhan]: Sounds good, sounds good. If you can give me a sort of brief overview, like I’ve been through everything, like I know you guys are doing like account takeover, partial takeover, newsletter, bi-weekly or weekly. And like, if you can give me a brief overview, do you see me fitting? And is there anything that I do not know? For example, do you do engagement as well from client’s account, et cetera, et cetera? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so we started mostly doing social media. Like last year, but we’ve seen a really big uptick of newsletter clients. And those clients tend to be more attentive and just sort of more bought into the process. And it’s also, I think, easier on the writers because you’re not having to think of 10 different ideas every week. You just need to think of one main idea each week and then research it and write about it. So our focus for this year is mostly newsletters. We’ll still do the social media for people, for sure. But in terms of how we’re selling, mainly about the newsletter side of things. And when we do do social media, we are doing engagement. So we have a content ops guy who sort of goes into the accounts, and he’ll engage with thought leaders in the niche and reply to the comments and optimize their profile and things like that. But on the newsletter side, yeah, we just we set up their account, we set up some sort of like automations, like welcome sequence and things like that. And then we’re just delivering content each week. We do one kickoff call with clients when they join. So that’d be like you, me, and the client. And then we’ll get more information from them on that about like voice, content pillars, whose content they like, that we can sort of take inspiration from the tone of and things like that. And then everything else happens through Slack, unless the client and you sort of agree, oh, you know, actually let’s do content interviews instead. Some clients will want to, But the majority of our clients, because they’re startup founders and they’re super busy, they don’t want calls. They just want the voice notes back and forth in Slack. That’s what they want. So that tends to be what we do. And then, yeah, I mean, that’s really it. The writer’s sort of role is research the content, write the content with input from the client, make sure that we’re receptive to feedback and all of that. That and incorporating their unique voice in POV, and then getting it to the ops guy. And the ops guy goes and schedules it in Beehive. The other thing that we have is we have a designer on staff. And so if you’re writing a piece and you’re like, oh, this could really use a chart or an infographic or some visual like that, we have a form that you can fill out just like, hey, I need this type of thing for this post this client gets notified to the, to the designer, and then they’ll send it to you by the date that you sort of ask for it on. So pretty straightforward. And yet we’re all async to slack and notion. That’s, that’s how we operate. [Neeraj Chouhan]: And is the client ops have like four writers under them? And like, how is it that structure? Yeah, so we’re growing really fast. [Michael Houck]: Up until like November ish, we only had like, I think 10 or 11 clients. And now it’s, you know, two, three months later, we have 25. So our growth channels are kind of hitting on all cylinders right now. And so team structure is pretty flat. Like it’s, it’s me sort of leading sales, growth and account management with the client. I’ll play the bad cop, right? If the client and you are sort of not seeing eye to eye, tell me loop me in, I’ll sort of be like, Alright, client, like you need to do this thing, whatever, Um on the content side blake runs the show and so each week when you’re writing content Just send it to him before you send it to the client so he can sort of get his eye Things like that um And then we have one content ops guy right now and he runs the whole the whole show there He’s sort of my chief of staff. Um We’re probably going to hire a dedicated content ops person pretty soon If you actually if you know anybody I’d be happy to chat with them. Um Um, but, um, yeah, that, that’s sort of going to be our, our first non writer, uh, hire for the, for, for the team. Yeah. [Neeraj Chouhan]: I think, I think like, and, uh, what have you seen the sort of efficiency to the client have been so far? [Michael Houck]: Uh, sorry, what do you mean? [Neeraj Chouhan]: Uh, I mean like, what’s the ceiling of, how many clients a writer can have? [Michael Houck]: Oh, I mean, that depends on the writer, right? We don’t require people to only write for us. If you have other clients that you have, that’s fine. Obviously, we prefer as many are through us as possible. But you have the freedom to sort of do what you want there. So some writers, they take on five, six clients. I think one is up to, one is willing to do seven. We haven’t filled the bandwidth yet. And there are other people. With like two or three because they have a lot of other stuff going on. [Neeraj Chouhan]: So it’s really a case-by-case thing. Got it. Got it. Understood. And how does the comm structure change? Is it like based on the client or like a deliverable? [Michael Houck]: The comm structure? What do you mean? Yeah, like compensation. [Neeraj Chouhan]: Oh, yeah. It’s based on the writer. [Michael Houck]: So I think you and Blake, I forget what he told me, but I think you guys talked a little bit about rates. Is that right? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so we’ll work with whatever kind of makes it worth it for you to do. [Neeraj Chouhan]: We want you to be excited about the work and all that stuff. And if I were to join tomorrow, what would be the ratio of newsletter versus the social? [Michael Houck]: I would imagine that if you joined now and we started sending clients who are coming in through the phone, now, it would probably be like, I don’t know, 70, 80% newsletter somewhere around there. And we want to we want to keep it at that level or even higher. And they’re, they tend to be the better clients. Just in terms of making it easier on the on the writer. [Neeraj Chouhan]: So that’s our that’s our focus. And, and what are what are the sort of the demographics or like the people, like I know Blake sent me one who was sort of a 15 years PM product manager, now she’s like founding. What kind of other people are there? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so most of our clients find us through my newsletter and my personal brand. And what I do is I write like an advice column for startup founders. And so a lot of startup founders come to us either for their personal brand, or to start a newsletter for their company to build trust with potential customers, right? Those are really the two main use cases, founder personal brands and like startup related newsletters. So it’s actually a really good type of client because we tend to be able to get involved pretty early in their startup, like before they hire a team really or anything like that. And then what we see is that as they grow and they hire more people, in a lot of cases, they’d rather just outsource more content work to us. And so we’re able to sort of expand the account with them as they grow. So it’s a, yeah, we’ve seen that happen a couple times. [Neeraj Chouhan]: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s all the questions I have. I have bandwidth to get started. And then accordingly, like, I see the initial work, I see how much more we can and take it forward from there. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s sort of get one under your belt. Let’s see how it goes. And then you can let me know sort of what your bandwidth would be like going forward. Yeah, we’re expecting this thing to grow quite a bit this year. We have a loose, unofficial partnership with Beehive and with Y Combinator for webinars for their founders about why they should do newsletters. Both of those have been really, really good for us so far and have no signs of slowing down. So our goal is to get to over 50 clients at some point this summer. And then by end of year, who knows? Maybe we double again. Maybe we go 75, somewhere around there. Either way, we think it’s going to be a pretty big business by the end of the year. And so yeah, we’d love for this to work out beyond just the one client and have this be a long-term thing. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes. [Michael Houck]: Any other questions you have for me? Um, I guess just in terms of like, um, like process, right? So you work, it seems like mostly like us hours. Is that, is that fair to say? Yeah. [Neeraj Chouhan]: Okay, cool. And then you’re cool. [Michael Houck]: Just being in for the most part, like async type work. [Neeraj Chouhan]: I’ve been working remotely all my life. I’ve never worked in an office environment. I love that. [Michael Houck]: That’s amazing. Cool, man. Okay, well, look, I think let’s give it a shot with somebody. We have some people in the funnel right now, and I’ll send one of them your way. I guess one last question for you would be like, subject matter expertise, like niches that you’re most excited about most comfortable with, like, what would those be? Just so I know what to kind of keep an eye out for? [Neeraj Chouhan]: Yeah, I mean, like anything. Like Twitter, sort of tech Twitter, anyone in tech Twitter, like I feel like I can handle it pretty well in terms of form writing for them. In sort of like particular niches, like one example would be like product manager, right? I think that would be done. If someone is like, Sean Curry kind of guy or like Sam Park kind of that as well. Or like in more creative spaces, also sort of like someone who call in and submit vibes, if you know about them. Yeah, so I think that this issue. Do you, um, what about AI? [Michael Houck]: Are you familiar with like, the AI ecosystem and sort of how things are moving there right now? [Neeraj Chouhan]: Yeah, like not so technical of like where I can play it. Like, okay, what was the why was this benchmark this way? Yeah, maybe not that engineer wise, not that technical, but 100% like, very much caught up with what is happening and will be able to do that. [Michael Houck]: Let me what I’m going to do then right after we get off this call, I’m going to send you a couple accounts. I had a sales call with somebody on I think it was Tuesday. And they they’re an AI founder. And they’re interested in working with us, but they wanted to make sure that whoever we matched them with on the writing side would be able to get like the right depth of content within the AI space. And, you know, I think it’d be interesting. So let me send you a couple of the, like, they sent me a couple of people’s accounts. So like, I like this person’s content. This is the altitude and the depth, like good example to look at. So if I send you those, could you let me know if like, that level of depth is something that you think you could get to for this client. And if not, no big deal. We have others we can send you I just want to get a sense of if this one would be a be a fit. [Neeraj Chouhan]: So if, for example, the client will send some brief, right? This is what I want to talk about. And if, if the whatever the voice note or whatever content they send, if that has substance, then I can like take it forward and put it into like depth. But if it’s like, if the unique insider and it’s just very less brief, then it might be difficult. But I’ll take a look and see if it would be possible or not. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Yeah, that makes sense. I think our responsibility is to identify interesting topics and then have the right questions to ask the client to get expertise. And so then it’s on them to provide that unique POV that only they can. So how do we get that? We just want to make sure we’re asking the right questions. And so, so yeah, let me send you these accounts. You let me know what you think. Maybe this one’s a fit, maybe the next one that comes through will be a fit, whatever the case may be. But it could be an interesting one to start with. Cool. All right, man. Well, I’ll send it over now. And then I will also send you an invite to our Slack so we can hop in there. And, you know, whether it’s this client, or again, the next one that comes in, we’ll get things rolling soon. [Neeraj Chouhan]: I mean, super, super excited. [Michael Houck]: And welcome to the team. [Neeraj Chouhan]: Thank you.