- Duration: 40 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JPQXN6DM3K4G93X26TN4YC37 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JPQXN6DM3K4G93X26TN4YC37)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Yo, I think you’re muted. Hey, how are you? Good. [Nicole Jarbo]: I’m in Nashville right now. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I was going to ask you in a hotel. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: It’s one of these like, uh, Hyper optimized Airbnbs like just it’s like an apartment building, but it’s like for Airbnb. Yeah, like like Sonder whatever. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, it’s not technically a Sonder, but it’s like that vibe like that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I was just in Nashville at the end of January. [Nicole Jarbo]: I liked it. I like never really spent a ton of time there. It was raining the whole time though, which sucked. OK, the weird thing is it’s like cold and rainy. [Michael Houck]: It’s been here. I got here the other day. It’s been here like it’s been like that the whole week too. I didn’t think it was that rainy, but it’s been raining a lot. [Nicole Jarbo]: Never been here before. So, yeah, it’s it’s cool. I mean, if you like country music, it’s like cool. And there’s apparently I didn’t go. If you want to do something like a fancy dinner for like downtown. Yeah, I am. I want to do like a a fancier dinner, not super fancy. And there’s nothing Nashville about it. So I just will say that the They have this hotel like Marriott or whatever bought that is like a train station. I think it’s called like the Union Station Hotel or something like that. You’ll find it. Their restaurant’s pretty freaking good. I honestly, I went there twice. I had to meet with this like board member. And so they took me there. And then on my last day, I just went there because I liked it so much. But yeah, if you want to do something like a little bougie, I liked that place. Everyone there is like super nice and cool. [Michael Houck]: But, you know, yeah, I always like to test out sort of the full spectrum of like food, like get like the super authentic, like the Nashville barbecue, Nashville hot chicken. But then also see like, all right, if I because I’m testing out if I want to live here, right, that’s why I’m here. OK, it’s like I want to see if I want to do fine dining and I live here. [Nicole Jarbo]: What is that like, You know, yeah. Howdy bees for chicken. [Michael Houck]: I’ve heard people tell. [Nicole Jarbo]: People will tell you, my thing is just like, I trust food recommendations from pretty much only fat people. And like someone who like works at the place. Like everybody else, I’m like, I’m sure they have a great like, you know, chopped cob salad. But like, I don’t want that. I want like the most like food loving like person to tell me what they eat. Or somebody who works there and gets free meals, what they get. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, that’s my favorite thing too. Always asking, I don’t know what’s good here. Literally, what do you get at the end of the family meal? [Nicole Jarbo]: And if it’s different than what’s most popular, then I fuck with that. Unless they have dietary restrictions. But I’ll be like, what do people like, And it’s like, what do you like, And they’re like, well, not that. I’m like, okay. So I don’t want that. But yeah, where else are you looking that you might go? [Michael Houck]: I was just in Dallas for a couple weeks. That was stop number one. After this, I’m going home to see my parents for a bit. But then after that, I’m going to Charleston, going to check that out. And then oddly, I’m going to like Northwest Arkansas. [Nicole Jarbo]: Like, yeah. [Michael Houck]: Is it have you been? [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s like great. Like as a black lesbian, I don’t like love. I lived in Louisiana, but, you know, the South is interesting. But because Walmart, the Walton family has put so much into it, it’s like a very different. [Michael Houck]: Type of place than the rest of Arkansas, that’s that’s what I picked up, like I’m looking for somewhere with like good community and like just like marriage minded people, family minded people, you know. So we’ll see. My friend’s trying to convince me to go to to Provo as well because he’s LDS. [Nicole Jarbo]: I mean, how desperate are you to have kids here? I mean, I will say, like, actually, like Salt Provo, I’m not sure, but like Salt Lake City is actually like, you know, I feel like is pretty cool and has pockets of a variety of like thought there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’ve been to- You like Dallas? [Michael Houck]: I like Dallas a lot, actually. Yeah, I like Dallas too. My dad is from Dallas originally, but like he has no family there anymore, so I haven’t been there since I was a kid. But it was great. The food was good, the people were incredibly welcoming, had a lot of things to do. Do clean, modern, it’s a good vibe. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, there’s a good like kind of thoughtful culture there. And there’s a lot of like entrepreneurial like energy there too. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, at least more than you’re gonna get in Northwest Arkansas. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, I mean, these, I think of red states, like probably Texas is the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, I like a Dallas, like Houston’s on the list, but not as high as Dallas. Also got a lot of friends moved to San Antonio. We really like it as well. So there’s like a variety of backgrounds. I mean, you can probably still check it out, but I have a lot of, yeah, I have a few friends who, you know, business school types or whatever, who left like Boston or whatever and are in San Antonio and really like it. Um, I do, I do like Salt Lake City, but you know, I’m on like a, I’m on a different life journey than you. So I feel like if I’m comfortable there, then there’s like something for kind of everybody is how I think about it. No, Salt Lake was cool. [Michael Houck]: Um, I went there, I was at, um, I did Sundance a couple of years ago and we did and park city. And, um, I mean, obviously it’s a very sort of different vibe than it normally would be. But it was really cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. How are you? [Nicole Jarbo]: What’s going on? [Michael Houck]: I mean, I’m fine. [Nicole Jarbo]: Like I was just meeting with my coach and We’re like talking about like firing someone, and I hate I hate firing people. And he’s like, yeah, that’s kind of like a you thing. And I’m like, well, I think some people like like it. But like we just talked about how I can’t imagine liking it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Right. [Michael Houck]: Because he’s like, you made the decision. [Nicole Jarbo]: So now it’s about X Right? And so like, how do you execute this and like feel like you’re aligned with your own kind of like values or leadership or whatever. So like, let’s like pinpoint the actual issue. Like this person’s going to be gone. How do you do that? [Michael Houck]: This is like the advice they would give to the Grim Reaper. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah. It’s about execution, you know. But I appreciated it and I get it. I think that like one of the things And I don’t know if you see this, like with your teams, I’ve always known this about you, like you’re just so high output. And you’re like, you’re high output, you’re responsive. To me, those things are like normal. And I like forget that that’s like not normal to everybody, right? It’s like, I’m infringing on your time. And I’m like, I’m sorry, I thought we had like a contract, like you do work and then I pay you money. Like, I think that’s like our agreement, right? So I’m like cultural remnants of the old Oregon 4.0. And I’m just like, I keep just being like, if I if I could just do your job for you, this would be great. And I’m already finding myself doing some of that. So, you know, it’s fine. I got some good tools because I do think I can be clear about a couple of things. And so I’m going to try for a while and kind of track how folks are doing. But anyways, everything is good, except for what I want to talk to you about. Okay, go for it. Not that it’s not good, but like, as you’ve probably seen, Tom has all these ideas, but like, he’s not like fully into them. And so with the rise and roll stuff, a lot of my like work on this has been and kind of supporting his whims, but then they change constantly. And he’ll admit that, right? And so I finally would just sat with him and I was like, if you want me to work on this, there needs to be like a real direction. There needs to be like a real, like, we should be trying to better monetize. We should be like bringing some kind of fucking value proposition to the space. And so, One of the things that I think I messaged you about was that I wanted him to like consider is what is like his niche? What can like I help with or get resources for folks to like help with? And it’s really around this kind of like marketing for like what I kind of call like these sort of frontier businesses. It’s kind of like what he calls them. So like his background and like what he wants to do essentially is You mean he wants to drive, he has like an ecosystem of like relationships and it’s really in like credit, crypto and like cannabis. And to me, I’m like, why would we just do this like cannabis like thing when we could just talk to these, like this ecosystem of like stigmatized businesses, right? And like, and do something that’s like more practical for them, right? So like, I’ve been doing thinking and research around, like, I don’t know how much you know about this, but cannabis obviously is, it’s hard to market in cannabis because it’s like highly regulated. And I’m like, you know, who knows a lot about that? Like you, Tom, who’s like a fricking like lawyer, like, why aren’t we just doing content? Why aren’t we just writing a newsletter? That’s like, if you have, if you’re building in like a highly regulated, like space, then like, like, here are things like every week or every whatever, like, why don’t we give you some kind of information about how to barrier bust this? And then we can do things like, I don’t know, build like an agency off of that or his people into his law firm that does cannabis law. I’m like, there’s no reason for us to do this if there’s no real like output. And he’s great about you’re right, I acknowledge this is like my fault. And I was like, well, my big thing is like, Hauk’s team is highly valuable. And if we are not using them to get real outcomes, then like, we’re just wasting a lot of like money and time. And so that’s kind of where I’m at. And so I wanted to throw that out to you. I think maybe it either looks like launching a new newsletter. I’m more in favor of trying to just convert this one and keep things going and do a rebrand and all that stuff. But that’s basically where we are. And I think if there’s interesting stuff in there, I see more of an opportunity to do things like, I don’t know, get you guys some fucking clients since you’re working on it or whatever. 35-year-old guys that are doing stuff in these frontier spaces that you probably know of, but they don’t know how to market. And it’s very much a B2B marketing play, right? Because that’s where a lot of the challenges and the collection stuff, credit stuff, it’s stigmatized just by virtue of debt collection. But that’s also like Tom’s background, which is like helping companies, you know, when you get all these, I mean, I’ve gotten a ton of them for boost, but all these like random like places that are like, we’re collecting on like a debt. There’s this whole legal machine behind that, that costs like a ton of money. And collections are actually super difficult in these like stigmatized industries, because there are like less regulations. So of all that to say, how can we build a media property that better feeds into these things and monetize on the backend by literally being the only place who’s willing to talk about these issues, right? So super niche, but high monetization on the backend. [Michael Houck]: No, I actually think it’s really compelling. So when we first started talking about rise and roll, the idea was that the monetization would happen on the backend, products or whatever else. And I think obviously doing that for cannabis market, there’s opportunity there, but it sounds like that’s not necessarily the direction you guys want to go with it. [Nicole Jarbo]: It’s too fragmented, right? Like, I think that’s, so for me, we could do like a B2B cannabis, like whatever marketing thing, but there’s this bigger opportunity to kind of do this in my opinion with like the, the three Cs, or that’s like what I tell Tom, right? Like, you know, cause he has a crypto company that mostly does B2B stuff. So they’ll set up like, they’ll set up like pools and DAOs for people. And then he has a law firm that like sort of specializes in these things. And I’m like, well, why don’t, why don’t we just drive people to that and then get paid an affiliate fee and do SpawnCon and do all this, like whatever, make the platform the go-to I have B2B marketing and I can’t find information on it because it’s a stigmatized space. People don’t really get it. We could just do that for people and then make referral capital. And then if there is an agency opportunity, we can partner and kind of get some money from that. [Michael Houck]: There is 100% agency opportunity there because even though you’re sort of attracting different types of businesses, they all have the same problem. Right. And that problem is one basically of knowledge of like what to do or how to do it right. And so I think there’s a really easy like just consulting type agency there. You get referrals to other partners you send them to. I think that’s pretty straightforward and clear. I also think that the TAM is actually pretty big for this because probably bigger than it is for the cannabis fund because there’s a more competition and be maybe more fragmented. In the cannabis market, I’m not sure. [Nicole Jarbo]: There’s more like, there’s more stable capital flowing in, you know what I mean? Crypto, I don’t count for anything, but like, you know, there’s still something there where you’ve basically, what he’s seeing, cause he has a venture studio too, that does like more FinTech stuff. He’s just seeing these like really smart guys, like maybe they’ve had an exit. They’re doing these B2B plays because easiest to raise for, they have relationships. And then once they exhaust their relationships, it’s like the YC lead quality thing. People can’t find leads, they don’t know what to do. They come to Tom, Tom doesn’t know what the fuck to do either. Because he’s just recycling his relationships around each other. And they’re like, you need a lawyer, go to my friend. I’m like, well, why don’t we make them more scalable? So I think that there’s a very specific market of folks who are like, they know marketing is gonna be a challenge, they’re not sure how to invest in it, that we could probably just create content for that goes through things like, new cannabis regulation thing for like putting shit on LinkedIn, new like whatever. And so I do think there’s, in terms of sourcing the content, it’s actually gonna be obviously different for the team, I think that’s a much more compelling thing to do. [Michael Houck]: It’s more actionable. [Nicole Jarbo]: Disorganized. I mean, the space is so disorganized. And I think that the hope was that you could introduce a new brand, but everything looks like 1990. People are just like, just make a clickbaity YouTube to get distributors to use your thing. And it’s like, we probably just wanna be in like a space where we can better attract folks who recognize they have some like regulatory complexity in marketing and value marketing. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, look, I think that this is a good niche to be in because the people who you will want to target because you can monetize them are people who are like actually probably pretty desperate for these types of services and knowledge. So, um, not in like a negative way, just in like a, it’s hard to know. [Nicole Jarbo]: There’s, there’s no ecosystem out there. Right. [Michael Houck]: So I think it’s a place where a sort of center of gravity could probably be built. Uh, if we do it right. Um, we’d need to, you know, test out what the right altitude for the content is. Like, are we writing things that are sort of broad initially? And then we have like sort of sections for each of the three C’s for example, or do we write like one issue about this, one issue about this. And even if one of the two issues isn’t valuable to the whole audience, maybe they know that the next one will be, I don’t know. We’d have to test out sort of formats there. But I think I lean more towards your thinking around like how we would do this. I would say, let’s just convert the existing ones. And whether that means we wipe the old content off the site and do a rebrand. I mean, we probably would do a rebrand, but in terms of whether we wipe the old content off the site or not, TBD, but no need to sort of give up the audience in my perspective. [Nicole Jarbo]: And I love what you guys are doing with the like growth stuff. I feel like this is a space, again, more like niche for people. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Nicole Jarbo]: Just more like loyalty can be like built. Right. It’s also a gap in the space. It’s just bigger, too. [Michael Houck]: Right. Because like it’s a niche problem, but it’s it’s a it’s a niche problem that’s felt deeply by multiple industries. So over time, I think this could be something that there is a large audience for, because there’s not a lot of people that I know of, at least, who are talking about this. So look, I think it’s a smarter direction. If that’s the way you guys want to monetize, I think it makes sense for us to. [Nicole Jarbo]: Well, Tom’s not allowed to make any more choices about this, so. You’re like, I’m putting the hammer down on this one. He’s a great, he’s a great guy, really, really smart. And I was like, you know, if I were you, and I had this sort of track record, I would be looking to like, leverage my expertise more. Right, right. And like, expand my like, sphere of influence. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, in my mind, he’s always sort of been like, this, like, not mysterious, because he’s very friendly guy, like we go over in calls, but he’s just sort of like, It’s been, I feel like he has a lot more sort of behind the curtain that he hasn’t brought into what we’re trying to do, you know? [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, like he does this thing where, so his, he has this law firm that he basically started like for his friend who was like, whose startup shut down. And he’s a very generous, like nice guy. And I’m like, if you’re going to be that generous and like, you have to have like a higher bar for like excellence. Because you can’t even work on this stuff anymore because you’re running the law firm, which was supposed to be a five-hour-a-week thing, right? And so I met with both of them and I was like, what are your guys’ goals for this? But they’re actually like a great potential client too, right? Because they’re like, we actually have deep expertise in cannabis. We don’t have any marketing infrastructure to like engage those folks. And I’m like, okay, well, you know, I can, like, direct you on how to build that. I can, like, get people to build it for you. But, like, if you have a vision for this, you should execute. And then Tom will be like, we could do whatever. And I’m like, yeah, but you don’t think that. You just want to, like, work with the people you know and pull them away from, like, Latham or Skadden or whatever and come to you guys because you have a deep expertise. His expertise is in, like, like creditor’s rights, which sounds so annoying and evil, but like creditor’s rights, debt finance. So it’s super specialized work that like a Latham charges two grand an hour for. Whoa. And he does it like at a very, cause he just like nerds out on it. And I’m like, why aren’t you guys writing like legal content about like how to properly like collect from like clients in like the cannabis space or whatever. So he has that. And then the other thing that he does, this is a little silly. I’m going to slack it to you because this in the most playful, cute way. But I think he has he he got this like branding done for this thing, and I’m like, dude, that looks like a cartoon Hulk. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh, no. [Nicole Jarbo]: I mean, I’m bringing this to you in a loving I gotta like find it. But, oh, I mean, yeah, dude, let me like, how do I drop it in here? I gotta download it first, hold on. But he basically like, he created this brand like a couple of years ago and for something called Advanced Genie, because he does all this like non-dilutive finding work for people that he funds, basically. Oh my God. It’s cute, right? I mean, I was like, dude, this looks like Hulk a little bit. [Michael Houck]: I can kind of see it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: The face. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I wouldn’t do the earring, but the face, I can see it. [Nicole Jarbo]: So he built this brand called Advanced Genie, and I was like, why? And he was like, well, it’s just been my background. Because everyone comes to me and they just like want these like merchant cash advances and whatever. And I’m like, that’s like actual, like real fucking business, Tom. It’s not like, if people want money from you and you’re willing to give them money just by looking at their P&L or whatever and taking a fee off of it, this could be a place that could like assist in capturing that, right? Like doesn’t need to be, like if we’re making, if we can just make We can just break even working with you guys. That’s great, because then we can start building capital to reinvest and make this bigger. But this idea that we’re just going to experiment forever, I’m not down with that. And I want to work on this, because I think there’s a lot of opportunity. But I’m not down with putzing around as much. It feels like a waste of time a little bit. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think there is a clear direction here, too. We should absolutely be doing those things to send folks to let it be monetized with what you guys have available sort of already. And then strategically sort of reinvesting and building new things on top of that. So I’m with you a hundred percent. That wasn’t that scary. That’s not that bad. That’s okay. Oh, no, no. [Nicole Jarbo]: Oh, like in general for my life? No, it’s not scary. [Michael Houck]: I’m good except for the thing I want to talk to you about. [Nicole Jarbo]: It’s like my life is like fine. I mean, there’s other stuff that like affects our industry. Like everyone’s like things are like burning down. And my orientation is like I do think everything is like political, but like that’s what like our world is like sad. Then like there’s no like I’m doing what I can, you know, in my day job to to fight and bring awareness and whatever. Yeah. My path is like, if we build more stuff, then these kinds of changes don’t impact people as much. Like we have more control if we’re actually like innovating and, you know, doing what we can. So I feel good about like that side of things. It’s this that just feels like we have a great resource in Megaphone and you, and we’re not using it to like drive real value for the space. Totally. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Look, I mean, That makes sense to me. And thankfully, there are a lot of people who are sort of taking action and things like that. So that’s good. But yeah, look, I’m with it. Do you want us to sort of do a rebrand and sort of engage our design team to do that? Or what are you thinking? [Nicole Jarbo]: I think what I can do is I don’t have like a name. I don’t have anything like that. Maybe we don’t need that. But what I could do is put together page brief and drop it to you. And then just be like, where should we go from here? We definitely obviously need a rebrand. I think that, you know, we, there’s a lot of things we can do to like position this better. So let me write the brief and then you and I can just kind of offline talk about like next steps and stuff. And yeah, Tom’s not gonna fucking care. He didn’t give me a big apology and be like, I feel like this is my I’m like, well, I have agency in this too. I’m going to stop deferring to you. I’m going to do what I would do, which is try to use the capital we have to build an actual business here. Okay. Do you want me to engage Austin on this and sort of cue him in or do you want to wait until after we sort of go through Let me, I’m gonna do like a quick like voiceover. I already wrote some notes down in terms of like what I think would be valuable. I’ll share that and then you can share it with Austin or whoever else. And what is, if your folks do a rebrand, what do you kind of like scope out on timing for it? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so it’s pretty quick since there aren’t a ton of like newsletter assets that we need to create. It’s basically new name, new logo, new thumbnail template, and then new like design for the actual issues itself. You know, if we, if I get something from you and we align on sort of like high level stuff in the next day or two, then we could have something to you next week. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sweet. All right. [Nicole Jarbo]: Let me, let me do that this afternoon. Cause it’s pretty easy. But yeah, I’m pumped about this. This just makes more sense. And I’m like, I do like to engage Tom, but I had a moment where I’m like, This isn’t your, brand building is not like your strength. You know what I mean? And like, this part is not your strength. It’s kind of executing on the delivery of these types of services. You know? [Michael Houck]: Also, I think like, I mean, I know, you know, we’ve known each other for a while now. I think you just have a good beat on sort of like strategy and like what should be done and like seeing the opportunity that’s in front of you. So, and acting on it. So I would say just trust yourself on that. Trust your gut and you know. Thank you. Obviously you want Tom to be excited about it too, but he should be, especially if we’re going to drive business for him. [Nicole Jarbo]: But we’ll all be excited when we make more money is like how I see it. Like, I don’t there’s we should just be making money off of this. And it’s not a like a cute project to me. It’s just like, this is to make money and provide value to the space. [Michael Houck]: Well, let’s do it. I think the reposition makes a lot of sense. And I honestly think that the TAM is way bigger for this. [Nicole Jarbo]: Oh, for sure. But then there’s like, we can monetize way faster, right? Which means we can do cooler stuff with you guys. I don’t know what else. You kind of offer up the value chain. But it’s like, well, what can we get if we put another two grand into this a month with you guys or whatever? And that’s, I think, how we should be thinking versus like waiting for some shit to happen. I’m with it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: All right. [Nicole Jarbo]: Thank you. I’ll call out. We have a Nashville guy on the team, so I’ll ask him if he has any recs for you. I’ll drop him in Slack. But enjoy your time there. And I’ll follow up probably later this afternoon. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Good chatting.