- Duration: 24 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JNEQB3HZ186SQX5651FWDZRB (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JNEQB3HZ186SQX5651FWDZRB)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: I feel pretty good down here in Austin right now. What about you? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Where were you? [Connor Flynn]: Where’d you say you were? [Michael Houck]: I’m in Austin right now. [Connor Flynn]: Oh, cool. I’m in Seattle. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Nice. Yeah. Seattle’s cool. [Michael Houck]: Very beautiful. I’ve been up there a couple of times. Yeah. It’s great for nature scene too. [Connor Flynn]: Like if you’re a big outdoors person, it’s got everything. I haven’t been to Texas, anywhere in Texas, but I’ve heard Austin. A really cool place. [Michael Houck]: I’d love to do it someday Yeah, it’s been all right. I’m going up to dallas tomorrow. I’m excited for that because uh family there but um Austin’s cool really really good food city like underrated food city for sure. Mm-hmm. [Connor Flynn]: I’ll just take note of that. [Michael Houck]: It’s good to know Um, but look man glad we’re able to to chat and kind of thanks for your patience as we sort of got some things set up on our side, but Yeah, definitely Yeah, I mean look want to learn more more about you, share some context about us, and I guess just sort of answer any questions that you have too, and then we can talk about what next steps would be like, [Connor Flynn]: Awesome. Yeah, happy to give an introduction to myself, because I feel like that would provide some good context. So obviously, I’m Connor, started my career in public relations. So when I was there, I was working on about 10 different B2B client accounts for professional services. So things like law firms, banks, healthcare organizations. And what I mainly did there was build their content strategy and help them get national media coverage. So writing everything from press releases, newsletters, social media copy, you name it. So I got a good variety there. And then after I left that firm, I started working with my own B2B and B2C clients. Um, so when I was working with them was mainly building their marketing funnels, implementing, you know, marketing strategies, um, doing a little bit of social media ghost writing as well, specifically on LinkedIn. So, uh, an attributable revenue for email specifically helped them generate over 600 K in revenue from, from email marketing. And then for the past, probably since like last fall, uh, have ghost written LinkedIn for two big LinkedIn ghost writing agencies. So B2B, working with B2B clients, and just helping them generate leads, right, their content for, for LinkedIn specifically. So that’s kind of a little bit about me. Any questions kind of, or hopefully that kind of covered just broad background speaking? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, no, I mean, it sounds like you’ve, you sort of seen this space from a couple different angles, which I think is important. And obviously, the direct experience with other agencies is helpful, too. Yeah, I mean, I guess like one question comes to mind sort of as a next type of question would be, like, if we were to move forward with something here, like, what is your bandwidth in terms of like, maximum number of clients you could realistically take on without, you know, quality suffering or anything like that? [Connor Flynn]: Yeah, definitely. I guess it’s kind of dependent on like, what is your guys process? Because I’m sure it depends on like the number of posts, like if you’re doing like LinkedIn content posts for clients and stuff. So I’d say max bandwidth for me, at this point would probably be around like, 10 hours a week. So whatever that would accommodate to just in terms of like, probably a good amount of LinkedIn content, if that was now next steps where newsletters definitely fits within that range. So specifically like time-wise, probably like around 10 hours a week. So I don’t know what you would quantify that out of your guys realm, but No, that’s helpful. [Michael Houck]: And then, um, you mentioned newsletters, you mentioned, uh, LinkedIn. Do you also do X? We might’ve talked about that over email a while ago, like drawing a blank though. [Connor Flynn]: Yeah, I, so I’ve, I have experience with X, not specifically go straight in for any because I’ve only ghost-written for clients on LinkedIn, but I’ve been writing myself on X, building like a small following over there. So that’s the main extent to my experience on X at least. Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, most of the clients that we are looking to bring in these days are newsletter clients. The reason is just that we found them to be, I guess, just like stickier, more retentive, easier to work with. With social media, people, you know, they, they want to, they care a lot about how their personal brand comes off on social and like a public newsletters is more about conversion and sort of building trust with, you know, people who are already in the funnel to some degree. And also it’s easier to sort of batch content, like from a writer’s perspective, you know, you need to come up with one big idea per week, basically, instead of like five to 10. So we’re trying to niche down into newsletters as much as possible. Obviously, some clients will want to do both in a package or some clients will just come to us and want to do social, that’s fine. Like we’ll take them on. But we’re really excited about about newsletters. I think most of the people that we will have coming in over the next couple months will be newsletter related. So I want to make sure that of interest as well. [Connor Flynn]: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Because I started I was doing email and newsletters before I got into to like LinkedIn go straight and stuff So that’s kind of I would say I want to say my bread and butter but kind of like it’s it’s what I enjoy probably the most out of anything I had to be honest It’s at least your bread or your butter. Maybe not both. [Michael Houck]: Yeah Cool man, okay Would help if I give some context sort of on how we work and like our process and and all that Yeah, definitely. [Connor Flynn]: Feel free to share anything. [Michael Houck]: So we’re pretty lightweight, you know, I mean, we work with startup founders, that’s our RICP. And they’re all super busy and don’t want a bunch of meetings put on their calendar. So we do everything through Slack, for the most part, Slack and Notion. Every client has their own Notion board, we have like a bunch of playbooks and resources for the writing team about, you know, how to handle this type of situation or how to do this and and what our process is for this. So it’s all kind of written out and helpful there. But the basic process is that every Monday we send over a couple topic ideas and some specific questions about those topics that came up during your research on it that you want sort of that extra subject matter expertise on from the client. And then they know to send voice notes back through Slack in the next 24 to 48 hours after they get that. And if we get that from them by Wednesday, then we include it in that week’s batch of content. If we don’t, then we just move forward and sort of tell them, hey, you didn’t get it in this week, so that’s on you. And I’m happy to play band cop if anything ever comes up with that. Yeah, it makes sense. And then internally, you’ll write the content, deliver it to Blake, Blake Imahl. He’s like my partner on the agency. Content side, I lead the sort of growth and sales and client side of things. And so he acts as the editor. Once he sort of takes a pass, makes some tweaks, then we send it out to the client. And the client gets one, you know, revision, we’re not going to let them put in like rounds, rounds, rounds. So that’s how it works. Pretty simple. We handle all ops as well. So scheduling, reporting, that’s all handled by our you don’t need to worry about that. All we need is the content, basically, and that’s it. [Connor Flynn]: Gotcha. That makes sense. [Michael Houck]: Do you guys follow the same newsletter structure for every client, or is it different? No. Some clients want evergreen essay style. Some clients want customer stories. Some clients want current events or trending topics, reactions, and Morning Brew style, things like that. It varies, but we try to keep the length the same either way, so it’s roughly the same amount of work for you guys. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, that makes sense. [Michael Houck]: Cool. We might have talked about this over email too, but it was a while ago, so forgive me if so. Are there specific niches that you’re either most excited about or most comfortable with or what have you? [Connor Flynn]: I would say I… Context wise I have experience with like B2C e-commerce so I currently have one client who’s a long-time client who’s like a clothing brand so it’s probably it doesn’t sound like what you guys do but love the B2B like marketing space right right about that trying to think of other things I mean I’m pretty flexible I would say it’s kind of nice to have like that diverse background and like a lot of different things, but I’d say B2B marketing is probably what I’m most comfortable with just because recently that’s what I’ve been doing the most effective. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Okay, that sounds good to me. If anything, is there anything else from my side? No, I don’t think so. I guess what question do you have? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What can I answer? [Connor Flynn]: It sounds like most of you guys are just looking to outsource some of the newsletters specifically work just for time’s sake, I’d imagine. I guess one other question, how many other writers do you guys have? Yeah, so we have six writers who are actively working on clients for us. [Michael Houck]: We have a few others sort of in our our team, our pool, if you will, who we’re looking for the right fits for. And we’re sort of experiencing some pretty crazy growth right now. So back when we first started chatting, I think we had like, I don’t know, maybe around 10, a little bit more, a little bit less clients at the time. But since January 1, we’re up to 25. And we have some growth channels that basically are locked in and should continue to help at that rate through the spring and through the summer. So for example, we have a good relationship with Y Combinator and so we’re doing some webinars with some of their founders and talking about the value of building an audience and building a newsletter and how it fits into your funnel and all that. And a few others too that have been doing well. So we’re expecting pretty big growth this year. We think we can easily double to triple the size of the business from here. So just looking to sort of bring folks into the team who could be a good fit and then kind of match them up with the right clients opportunistically as they come in. [Connor Flynn]: Yeah, makes sense. All right, and then two other questions that I can think of Are most of the clients for newsletters that you guys work with, do you send a weekly, like one newsletter each week or is it? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so weekly is sort of our default that we pitch to clients when we’re chatting with them. Some clients don’t want to commit to that and we’ll just do every two weeks instead. We do offer that. And then if they really push back, but for some reason they’re like a high profile client and we want to work with them, at that point we’ll offer like just doing a monthly. But we try to, we don’t like publicize that anywhere. [Connor Flynn]: We try to push for weekly or at least bi-weekly. Yeah, that makes sense. And then last question I can think of is do you guys do like like write a welcome sequence for like, if you’re at the onboard a new client in terms of like email marketing, do you guys do that or just the newsletters? Like, what’s that like, Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So we have three automations that we set up for each new newsletter. So one is a welcome sequence, usually two to three emails go into that, depending on what the client has, like an offer that they want to send to people or, um, or tell a story or something. Um, we have a template for like the initial welcome email. That’s just sort of, it’s pretty quick, works pretty well and communicates everything that needs to be communicated in that first email. And then we have a re-engagement slash auto-churn automation that we set up that has one email, and that’s also pretty templatized. And then we have, we add like a satisfaction survey in each issue, because we use Beehive, so it’s pretty easy to do that. And when someone rates an issue as like really good, we’ll have an automation trigger that sends them, again, some kind of offer from the client to get them to convert to their product. So if you have more ideas with the email side of things, let me know, because that’s actually an area of the business that we’re looking to grow into. We’ve had some clients express interest in either doing project-based work or ongoing work around broader email marketing. We’re already doing newsletters. I feel like we might as well expand into that. Open to open ideas there. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Connor Flynn]: Yeah. I’d be happy to share some ideas as they come up. I like that. I’ve never actually thought of the, when someone writes an issue, it’s great to send them into a new motivation, because that’s a good idea. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s nice, because they’re already feeling good about the content. So strike while the iron’s hot. Yeah, might as well. Cool. Well, look. I think this could be cool. I think this could work out. So as long as you’re feeling the same way, what I can do is I’ll intro you to Blake, and he might have some follow-up questions or want you to sort of provide some samples or something. He’s a couple of different methods that he likes to use. So I’ll connect you guys, and then after you and he sync up on whatever that looks like, he and I will chat, and we can move forward from there. [Connor Flynn]: Cool. That sounds great to me. [Michael Houck]: Cool, man. Anything we didn’t cover that we should? [Connor Flynn]: No, I think that’s all good. I think I got all my questions out. Cool. OK, man. Looking for the connection. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I’m glad we finally met. I feel like we’ve been talking over email for minutes. [Connor Flynn]: Yeah. Yeah. Glad we were able to finally meet and appreciate your time. [Michael Houck]: No, of course, man. Same to you. And we’ll go from here. [Connor Flynn]: I’m excited. Sounds good. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it. [Michael Houck]: See you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Bye.