- Duration: 31 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JQS7RRW36ZM5S860W80V1EWB (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JQS7RRW36ZM5S860W80V1EWB)
Transcript
[roya pakzad]: Hey, roya, how you doing? [roya pakzad]: Good, how are you? [roya pakzad]: I’m good. [Michael Houck]: I think last time we talked I was in South America. [roya pakzad]: Now I’m back in North America. [Michael Houck]: North America, where are you? I’m in Nashville, but I’m flying back to see my parents in Philly tonight. [roya pakzad]: Nice. Have you decided where you’re going to be based? [Michael Houck]: Because that’s also one of my dilemmas. No, so far I’ve visited Austin, Dallas, Nashville, and then a couple other smaller along the route. I still have to go to Charleston later in April and a couple other smaller ones in May. So no decision probably till early June on my side. Got it. [roya pakzad]: Which city has been your favorite? You have a favorite? [roya pakzad]: It’s hard. [Michael Houck]: There’s a lot of things I like about both Nashville and Dallas. In Nashville, there’s more social stuff going on, but maybe too much. Um, Dallas, I found a really good community down there. Um, and just the pace of life was really nice down there. So I’d say if I had to pick a front runner right now, it’s Dallas, but it’s, it’s, it’s close. It’s close. Interesting. Yeah. I, I really want to go to Nashville by the way. [roya pakzad]: Cause my sister went for the first time. She loved it. And a lot of influencers are there and they’re loving it and it looks so pretty. And I was like, okay. I’m gonna go, I wanna go check it out. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s nice. I would definitely recommend it. It’s, I mean, granted, like when I say like Dallas and Nashville, like neck and neck, like both of them are so superior to like SF and New York, in my opinion, just for where I’m at right now. It’s bright, it’s warm. You know, everything is like new except for like the core downtown, which is like, you know, like a downtown in any city, but everything around it, so beautiful. And the people are just so welcoming and friendly too. It’s great. Yeah. Okay. [roya pakzad]: I’m gonna, I have some decisions to make. Anywho, so I finally decided I’m coming out of my hermit acquisition home. Cause I’ve been like thinking, okay, I really want to do this. I want to build my personal brand. And I know the key is to be consistent and you have to have a system behind that’s going to roll out content every day. I already know this. And so I finally pulled the plug. I mean, sorry, like pulled the trigger and I signed up for your $49 a month subscription on Megafone. I'm starting with that. And then I'm probably going to upgrade to the $89. And so I wanted to learn a little bit more about Megafone. And then I know you have your ghost writing. I just clicked on the Megafone studio and then it’s asking me to fill out the type form. I haven’t filled it out yet. So before I do any of that, I wanted to ask you, so let’s first start with the Megafone $49. Let's say I don't want to ask. OK, I hate asking my friends for things, which is something it's just in like what if I don't want to ask the friends in my network and also like they're not. They're not that active on LinkedIn or X, which is where I want to start building a following. Let's say with the $49 per month, I just want to go after people in like can I access influencers and people within the megaphone that are willing to share my post? Yeah, so. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, there’s a lot to tackle there. So simple way to say it is that yes, if you are on one of the paid tiers, you are able to access the creator network. We have a few hundred creators in various niches, our algorithm matches you with the right ones. And you do need to pay the creators in order to amplify your posts. [roya pakzad]: I noticed that. So in addition to the $49, so the $49 just gives me access to the creator network, correct? [Michael Houck]: Okay. It’s like our cut basically. Exactly, yeah. One thing I’ll say is that we are in the middle of sort of a V3 of the product. So the V1 is like me and Airtable. The V2 is what you see. V3 is a model where we’re sort of combining that. So there’s not two different things you need to worry about paying for. It’s just like one monthly subscription. And you’ll be able to pick sort of how much you want to invest in the network at your subscription level. We’re also automating a lot of the process of like sharing the posts. And tracking the engagements and things like that. It’s hard to describe until I show you the designs, but basically a lot of the sort of like mental decisions that you need to make around like, oh, do I want to repost or comments on this? Do I want this or that? We’re using AI to automate the whole thing. So the product you’re using right now will be very different probably in like one to two months from now. Got it, okay. [roya pakzad]: Okay, yeah. [Michael Houck]: you just share the posts with the network. I recommend obviously doing it right after you make the posts and that happening in the morning so that it’s like maximum creators online, things like that. You share the post, our algorithm matches it based on your budget, your niche, and what creators are online. And then they have an hour to go engage with it. And if they don’t, then we send it to basically another one who’s also a fit. [roya pakzad]: Okay, so let me see. So let’s say I, post something on megaphone, then your system will go match my posts based on the topic to the creators and your thing. And I noticed it’s one hour after I posted, I noticed that. And so does it only match it with one creator or does it match with multiple creator? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so it’ll depend. So let’s say you set like a $30 budget for a post, right? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: On the budget. [Michael Houck]: That means that sometimes you might get one creator with like 300,000 followers. And other times you might get like three creators with, you know, 100k or less. [roya pakzad]: Okay, so these creators have set their, they’ve set their rates. Correct. [Michael Houck]: When they sign up, they tell us I need to be paid this amount to be incentivized, basically. Oh, I love that. [roya pakzad]: And once I build my personal brand, I want to be one of the creators in your thing. Oh, my God, I love this. I’m going to send any influence anyone who’s trying to build their personal route, I’ll send them to you. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Please. [roya pakzad]: This is so cool. I love it. Yeah, we advertise this more LinkedIn. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I know where I think I’m going to wait till V3 because V3 at this point we’ve collected so much feedback from users that we know like exactly what the product needs to look like in order to really scale where we want it to go. So we’re just going to do that over the next couple weeks and then and then ship it and then we’ll start kind of pitching it more on social and stuff. [roya pakzad]: I’ll also share this on my LinkedIn once once the V3 comes out. That’s really good. Okay. So they said that, and then is there a chance where nobody picks up my content? Yes. [Michael Houck]: So creators do have to, they receive a message on like Telegram or WhatsApp and they do need to decide, like, I want to engage with this post. I want to fulfill this request. Our average fulfillment is like 88, 89% usually. So, you know, you will get some folks who don’t, who we send it to who don’t engage, but the majority of your budget will be spent assuming that you’re not sharing it at like, you know, like 9 p.m. Or 3 a.m. Or something crazy like that. [roya pakzad]: Okay. Okay. That’s that. That’s a megaphone. Now let’s talk about the studio. Okay. So here’s the thing. Um, the topic, does your studio also help with content strategy? Like not just ghosting, like I give them a topic. Okay. Here’s what I need help with. I know exactly what I want to talk about. I do need help with the area in general when I’ve always like struggled with his content strategy and story Does your, like more of the storytelling, you know, cause I want to share my personal journey as it, as it relates to the topic that I’m talking about. And I just want like, can someone, and I know chat GPT exists, chat GPT sometimes sounds so robotic. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, no, there’s no human behind chat GPT. [roya pakzad]: And that’s what I struggle with. [Michael Houck]: Oh, the biggest thing that we hear from folks who come to us from either other agencies or trying to use like AI tools themselves is that, I know this is why we don’t use it with our writers is that, you know, there’s a lot that you can get from AI about like information and inspiration and stuff like that. But in terms of really capturing the voice that somebody wants. Your voice, exactly. It’s just not there. And so we don’t use any AI tools with our writers at all. Um, it’s all, it’s all human. Um, and, um, and they’re all, they’re all people who’ve worked with either me or Blake Imahl, who’s my co-founder on the agency for a long time in various ways. So yeah, high quality team, all human writers. And you’re talking about strategy work. Yes, so the writer will be the person who’s sort of in the weeds doing the execution of the content. And they’ll also be sort of like the primary person who’s reaching out to you with like ideas each week, like get your feedback on these ideas. [roya pakzad]: I love that. I have all the ideas and I just want them and I’m open to hearing their ideas. I just need them to fluff my content. Also follow the algorithm of viral contents. You know, like you have a hook and then you have this and then you have this, like help me with that as well. Okay. [Michael Houck]: We have a whole like library of hooks and things like that. And yeah, so we’re covered in that department. If you do want to add like more strategy work as well, that’s not just like an upfront, like, Hey, let’s get your voice and let’s get your content pillars and let’s run with it. That would be either you and me directly or it would be you and Blakey Mall, who again, he has an even bigger audience than I do. So he knows. [roya pakzad]: I’ve never heard of him. Is he like someone that I should know? [Michael Houck]: He’s a Twitter guy. He’s got like 95k on Twitter, like 30 something LinkedIn. [roya pakzad]: What’s his Twitter handle? [Michael Houck]: If you don’t mind, I want to follow him. [roya pakzad]: It’s Hey, Blake. Hey, Blake. Oh, it sounds very familiar. Am I already following him? Okay. No, I’m not following him. Okay, cool. Awesome. So you guys co-founded Megaphone. So I founded Megaphone and then- You got a Megaphone, you brought him for the agency. [Michael Houck]: Well, no, I founded the agency too. And then I brought him basically. I was editing everything with our writers initially. And when that got to be too much work between both growing it and being the lead editor, I sort of brought him in and gave him some equity so he’s incentivized to be in the weeds with the writers on the editing. So everything that we put out meets the quality bar that he and I set together. And then my main focus is on sales, account management, growth, and just like relationships with our clients. I love that. [roya pakzad]: So what is the cost to use the agency? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so 3K is our standard rate, and that’s going to get you a full batch of like long form content per week, as well as some short forms kind of spurs in there. And we test out different formats, of course, you know, screenshot essays, video clips, threads, long form posts, memes, whatever you want. Like we can test out and see what performs. And that also includes content ops. So that means that we’ll have somebody from our ops team who’s going into your account, scheduling everything obviously, but also engaging with people in their replies to like drive conversation. And also commenting on posts from like thought leaders who we identify early on as being in your niche and who have the audience you want. So that they see these like, you know, kind of funny or kind of insightful replies that drive impressions to your profile. And we’ll also optimize your profile so that, you know, high conversion from a viewer to follower. I love that. So also, because I want to change my LinkedIn profile. [roya pakzad]: I changed it right after the acquisition announcement, but I want to change it again. I don’t like it right now. Do you guys also give tips on like what to put in your banner on LinkedIn, what to put in your banner on X and all that to optimize? For a click? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So on like the day after we do our kickoff call, I go in, I record like a five to 10 minute loom walking through both of your accounts. And I basically say, here, here are the tweaks I think we should make. You give me the thumbs up and then we have our team go to work and make any changes there. One thing I should note is that if you want like distinct content on both accounts, we would need to price that differently. Yeah. For example, if you’re like, I want threads on X and I want, you obviously can’t have threads on LinkedIn, right? So if it’s like extensive differences between the platform, we would need to price that differently. So I’m just flagging that up front. [roya pakzad]: No, no, totally. So is it only 3K a month? Is that the only tier you have? [Michael Houck]: We can go more if you want like a higher volume of content or if you sort of more involvement on the strategy side. So we’d go up to 5K if you want like, you know, us to be jamming regularly on strategy updates and also like a higher volume of content where we’re doing, you know, like, you know, more than say, two long form a week, and also a few short form. So if you want like three, four long form a week and a batch of short form, then we need to we need to increase the price to the five. And you don’t deal with video. We don’t do a video today. But we’ve actually started. We have one client who is very bullish on this. I actually love the idea. So recently, we created a digital twin for somebody with like, with K-Gen. Yeah. And so we’ve done video content with that for them. And we also have a video team who I work with for my YouTube, who we can make available as well if we want to do that. [roya pakzad]: Got it. K-Gen. Is that like an AI twin? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: It’s like the, it’s like really, they raise a ton of money. It’s like you record a couple of videos of yourself and then basically all we would need to do is write scripts and the kind of video version of you would, you know, let me actually show you an example. For example, it’s easier to… This is not one of our clients, but this is a friend of mine who has done it really well. [Michael Houck]: We always keep our clients anonymous, which is why I’m not sharing. [Michael Houck]: Oh, wow. These are AI? [roya pakzad]: Yeah, these are AI. That’s so cool. Wow, that doesn’t look AI. I know. Crazy. Okay. I think I’m going to this one. I do want to show my own face, but I get this. This is, I think this is for someone. I think I want to take a different approach with the AI stuff with video, but listen, I still, I need to focus on my writing, like LinkedIn and X before we even get to video. [Michael Houck]: Okay. [roya pakzad]: Let’s jump into it with the written content at a time. Exactly. Also, here’s the thing. I’m going to start with megaphone. I’ve given myself three months to get some like following on X and LinkedIn. And then I’m going to sign up for your agency. I’m not there yet to put three K aside. Cause I first want to generate a little bit of revenue with my, some contract work that I’m doing and also my personal brand. Sure. And then I definitely wanted, I 100%. I want to do this. [Michael Houck]: So one thing is that, um, it’s obviously not like a huge amount or anything, but you get a free megaphone account for the platform. OK. If you’re an agent. Exactly. Wonderful. Wonderful. OK, no, that does help. OK, cool. [roya pakzad]: Do you remember? Was it Jamie James? Who was it? Who was the guy in Launch House in New York? Yeah, Jamie. He also has a ghostwriting agency. He does. You guys, like, are you collaborating? Are you going to join forces or he’s doing his own thing? He’s doing his own thing. [Michael Houck]: I have a lot of respect for Jamie. You know, he did not kind of have our backs when everything went down, and so I kind of wouldn’t feel comfortable. [roya pakzad]: Oh, yes, yes. Oh, I totally forgot. I totally forgot. I was… Okay, okay, okay. Really quickly, not to make this about a gossip session, but I was shocked when he did that. I totally forgot about that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so I… [roya pakzad]: It did not seem… I thought he… Okay. I was so taken aback by that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, look, it’s, you know, it’s all water under the bridge. [Michael Houck]: years in the past, but you know, right, you totally don’t don’t want to collaborate with him. [roya pakzad]: And hire someone you can trust that that’s the vibe. Again, I’m surprised he did that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, but okay, I mean, look, let me know as things develop on your end. [roya pakzad]: 100% I’m doing this. And yeah, can’t wait to also Okay, one last question, then we’ll go on. What kind of topics are Okay, so really quickly, I’m gonna tell you what I’m, so I’m talking about nervous system regulation as it relates to executive function. In order for you to max it, look, so I feel like there’s so many founders who are operating at 10% of their potential, 15% of their potential. Regardless of how much revenue you have or how much money you just raised from Andreessen Horowitz or who, Founder burnout is real. And so my whole platform and I experienced this. So it’s, this is coming from a personal pain point. I want to give founders and executives tools on how to maximize their potential and operate at, let’s say 60%, not just 10% of their potential. And hopefully one day 100% of their potential. And there is a science behind this. It’s all about the regular, the nervous system. I’ve been nerding on this for the literally past six, seven months. I have so much content. I have so much, I’m getting my certification and heartburn coherence, which is a way to regulate your nervous system. So I’m really, and when we were looking at women’s hormones results, every woman’s nervous system was out of whack. So it’s both for your health and longevity, but also how do you show up as a founder and entrepreneur and solopreneur? Physical, mental, emotional health, and also for personal development for as an executive and founder. And so these are going to be my content. And that’s why, like, I need help with strategy on the content pillar. Some of my content is just going to be focusing on the health and like, you know, how to optimize your health and longevity. Some content are going to be mostly about like, how do you show up as your full potential as a founder, as an entrepreneur, as an executive to, you know, just live a life in alignment with your soul, not just just like, an overdrive in your ego, but like, like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I love it. [Michael Houck]: I think that, like, first of all, I didn’t know that it was that common. [roya pakzad]: I was joking around when I said like, you know, if that but if every single one of the people that you guys because you guys had the data with feminine, like, you know, everyone, their cortisol and their nervous system was like, so the the number one supplement we would give to women was to balance their adrenals and regulate their adrenals, which is where the cortisols are pumped. Everyone, including myself, my cortisols have been ridiculous. And the story is really beautiful. It’s coming from a personal pain point. And I’ve noticed I am not reaching my 100% because my nervous system is not regulated. And this goes back to years. It honestly even goes back to childhood. So we talk a lot about like emotional, mental, physical health, and talk a lot about startup founders and how they can maximize the potential. So it’s like, you know, it’s a combination of everything. I didn’t want to just be health and wellness focused. I really truly do want to bring the founder community in because they need this the most. I think founders need nervous system regulation the most. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I think A, it’s smart to sort of have your personal story back this up. That’s going to give you the credibility to tell this narrative and get this important information out there, just frankly. But also, I think you’re targeting the right people. 90% of the founders I know who haven’t already exited a company, and even some that have already exited a company and are figuring out what to do next or onto their next company or whatever, they’re all stressed beyond belief. And their bodies are probably all out of whack. I mean, yourself, how stressed were you guys, especially when you were going down? [roya pakzad]: love to know when you guys raised your 10 million from Andreessen I would love to know how much you guys more stressed you were I’m assuming you were even more I mean just because you’re now like you have 10 million you’re like oh now we gotta we gotta do something with this 10 million I mean from from one aspect you’re like oh this is such a great feeling we feel amazing but then from another side it’s like oh what are we gonna do with this 10 million no I I think one one problem we did not have was of how to spend money. [Michael Houck]: So I actually didn’t feel too worried about that, but obviously as everything was going down, it was going down. That was very stressful, right? My life for sure. But yeah, no, I think the 10 million was more validating for us because we had been written off a lot of people early on as like this co-living thing. And then we got this sort of stamp of approval. So it actually felt like more exciting. Yeah. Yeah, but cool. Okay, look, I mean, one thing that we do do for a few folks who aren’t ready to sort of jump into the full ghost writing for two things. So one is like strategy ongoing. So that would just be you and me sort of getting on calls, jamming on strategy, jamming on approach. For free? [Michael Houck]: No, no, no, no. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: What? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I wish. [roya pakzad]: I know. [Michael Houck]: No, I gotta charge something for it. Okay, no, no, tell me. [roya pakzad]: Actually, so this is what I wanted to say. Not 3K, do you have something like that? Okay, okay, good. No, I’m totally willing to pay like an hourly jam session, like a strategy session. Yes, yes. Okay, thank you. [Michael Houck]: 3K for me right now is a huge job. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: It makes total sense. [Michael Houck]: There’s two things that we can do. One is the strategy side, and then the other is like the functional operational side, like without the content, just us being the ones who are managing the account, making sure the profile is optimized, scheduling, so you can do anything. Any of the ops work there. So we can break those two up separately or we can do something with them together. You know, if we do a weekly jam session or a bi-weekly jam session. Yes. It’s like a half hour or even if you want to do an hour, it would be more affordable than the, the 3k. So what I can do is I can put together a couple options of like what putting those things together would look like, send it over. We can go from there. [roya pakzad]: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Michael. I really, I’m to do this. And yeah, I can’t think of a better person to do this, like, you know, with. [roya pakzad]: No, let’s get the word out. [Michael Houck]: Let’s build up your personal brand. And when it when the time makes sense to layer in a writer, we can do that. But if not, then that’s totally fine, too. We can just keep rolling as as it would be. [roya pakzad]: Yeah, no, I’m definitely gonna eventually get to the three K for sure. But yeah, just getting started somewhere. [Michael Houck]: And then yeah, for sure. 100%. Okay, well, with an email, but Good to see you, as always, and we’ll talk more soon. [Michael Houck]: Thank you so much.