- Duration: 30 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JQVVTSKXESMTNEKKFMPKRZX7 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JQVVTSKXESMTNEKKFMPKRZX7)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hey, what’s up, man? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: How you doing? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good, good. [Michael Houck]: How are you? [Basil Chatha]: Sorry about being late. [Basil Chatha]: No, you’re all good. [Basil Chatha]: My laptop’s also dead now, so I’m on my phone. [Michael Houck]: Oh, OK. Yeah, no problem. [Michael Houck]: Is now still a good time? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: Well, good to see you, man. It’s been a while since we were connected originally. [Basil Chatha]: Yes. Yeah. So I was actually in launch house. I know. Yeah. So I was in launch house, I think. And I think basically like your last cohort, it was like 2021. And then, yeah, I’m still connected to the people there. So that was really cool. Thanks for thanks for doing launch house, I guess. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, no, it’s crazy how a lot of the cohorts like they and still keep in touch and everyone’s still doing their thing. So it’s been great. Yeah, but look, man, I mean, catch me up. Like, where are you at with everything? And also how do you think we can plug in and sort of help with the content side? [Basil Chatha]: Yeah, so I don’t know if you know much about my business, but basically, so we have this like AI consulting business. So like, basically what we do is like, we’ll go to these like older, like these big older companies that want to stay on top of AI but like you know they don’t have the engineers who know how to do it and then we’ll basically be like hey you guys want to build this stuff you don’t know how to or you don’t have the talent to and um you know so we’ll do it for you and so like a couple like an example project that we like one of our first projects was like uh with this like fashion software company we’re still working with them but like one of the first projects was like they wanted us to make this uh uh have you heard of nike id you can sort of like customize your own nike issue on their website. The problem with that is it still looks like a 3D render. It still looks like it doesn’t look photorealistic. And so they wanted a photorealistic version of that. So we built them that. That was kind of the first project. Then we built like you know other things like right now we’re building them this thing where they basically want designers at these like big retailers to be able to like upload a sketch and then turn that sketch of let’s say like a woman’s jacket into like a Realistic version of that jacket and then be able to customize different parts of it with like different colors different patterns that kind of thing So that they like so that they can like iterate on their ideas faster Before they send it off to manufacturing and then right now we’re working with we’ve started expanding beyond that So right now we’re working with a couple call centers. We’re building them like some voice agents So it’s just kind of like hey, we’re like in this like we’re just building AI stuff for people. That’s essentially what we’re doing and yeah, and so right now like I’ve been trying so like previously all of our leads have been through either a referral partner or through one was just kind of random because like our first one was kind of random because we started with a product and then basically it didn’t get a ton of like traction we’ve got like six you know like two hundred dollars of revenue or something in a month but then like we messaged some of the users and then they were like hey I work at the software company we need help with this stuff can you help us. So we totally pivoted away from that to like consulting. So that was just kind of random and now we’re trying to build this like, More like machine where you know like I know hey if we get a certain number of impressions on you know like a newsletter or on LinkedIn or whatever. If we can keep that up then like hopefully you know we’re going to get some kind of like a leads leads through that. And so like we’ve been like over the last couple We’ve been doing some like cold outbound on LinkedIn doing, I’ve started posting, like I’ve been trying to post like once a day. I didn’t post the last couple of days, but I’m trying to post like once per day on LinkedIn. And then also, so posting on LinkedIn and then we’re doing a bunch of like cold email outbound that we’re trying now. So that’s kind of like my main priority. And so that’s kind of why I was hoping maybe like a newsletter would help. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, totally. [Michael Houck]: And also, I mean, it sounds like smart business, there’s probably a lot of these legacy businesses that, you know, could use some relief on their margins these days. And this is probably an easy way for them to do it. They pay you guys set something up, and then they’re sort of good with a lot of things being automated for them. [Basil Chatha]: So yeah, it’s either that or it’s just like, you know, like these bigger companies, their investors are all like, Hey, so what’s your AI strategy, right? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So You’re like, I’m the AI strategy. [Basil Chatha]: Yes. It’s like that meme where like, you know, like you’re holding up the rock and it’s like the rock is the company. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, cool. Okay. So yeah, definitely think we can help, um, you know, in a few ways, maybe, uh, definitely a newsletter that’s easy for us to do. That’s can sort of be the place where you build trust with these leads. You get them into the funnel, you’re sending them, and then, um, I know that as a Founder of Superhardness. Sorry, can you hear me again? Can you say that part again? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I was just saying that I know as a founder, it’s super hard to consistently find time to create social content. And so that’s something we do for a lot of our kind of newsletter and social combo. Okay, cool, cool. [Basil Chatha]: So could you tell me like, is that your business? Like, what’s your business? [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So, I mean, what I’m doing these days and what I’ve been doing for the past two years, I have a holding company. Yeah. We have our own media assets. Uh, we have a SAS product. It’s like a creator network platform to amplify your content on social media. And then, uh, we have, uh, the ghost ring agency as well. And we’re launching a few more agencies, uh, later this year, but that’s the, that’s the model. So yeah. So we help people specifically founders in most cases with newsletters, either for their founder brand or for their startup. And then similar on social, you know, we’ll take over either the personal account of the founder or the company account or both. Nice. And then like, how does it work? [Basil Chatha]: Like, how do you price it? Like, is it priced based on just like a, like a flat month and like, you’re going to post like a certain number of posts or like, how does that work? [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So it’s pretty simple. We did 3k a month and we do a combination of content and ops for that. So for example, we’ll deliver weekly batches of content. Send to you in a Slack Connect channel. We’ll send you ideas first. And if you want to send us a rambly voice note, we give you a unique POV that helps make the content more unique to you. But we’ll get you weekly batches. And we’ll be sort of ahead of the curve, so you’re not always scrambling week to week. And yeah, then we deliver it in Slack. You give us a thumbs up. We handle scheduling. We handle engaging with the replies. We even handle optimizing your profile and also commenting on, like, post from thought leaders in your niche. So you get some free impressions that way, get some followers that way as well. And so that’s for social. For the newsletter, it’s $3,500 for a weekly newsletter or $2,000 for a bi-weekly newsletter. And for that, we can help create a brand for the newsletter. We have a designer on staff. We do set up all through Beehive and everything like that. We help you get the DNS set up too. And then we do weekly reporting for both both combined. Oh, and the newsletter would also have like some automation set up. So if someone clicks on this, you know, we send them an offer, you know, XYZ, we unsubscribe them if they’re not engaging, things like that. [Basil Chatha]: Actually, it seems like for me, rather than the newsletter, probably the social posting would be more helpful right now. So how many like how many posts is it like per month? Yes, you It’ll depend on strategy. [Michael Houck]: So if you’re like, hey, I wanna do, and there’s reasons we would pick this or another strategy, but if we wanted to do long form posts, it would be probably realistically, if we only did long form, it would be like three to four long form a week. If we do a mix of long form and short form, it would probably be like long form a week and then a few short form interspersed in between. Some people also just say, hey, I just wanna get a bunch of short form out there you’re posting multiple times a day and we can do that too. So we walk you through that with our writer once we get everything set up and we sort of decide on strategy together, but it’s a full batch of content. [Basil Chatha]: Okay, cool, cool, nice. And then is there like a minimum like contract length or something? [Michael Houck]: No, so we do require a 30 days notice for cancellation, but it’s only month to month. So basically by starting sort of effectively doing a two month start, but after that it’s month to month. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, cool. [Basil Chatha]: And then, okay, so you said it’s like, the way that it works is we have like a Slack channel and then I just kind of like throw, like, how does that work? Like, I just kind of like throw voice messages to you or? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so every Monday, our writer will drop some ideas in there that we think could be interesting to post about. And if you want to reply to those specific questions that came up during their research about those ideas, those are the most useful kind of voice notes you can send. The more rambly and all over the place, the better, because we sort of get the authentic emotion and intonation and things like that. If you also have ideas that you just want to throw at us, either links of inspo posts or just voice notes on random topics, we love that. Internal docs you guys write. Anything you want to send us is useful. And then if we get those from you by, say, the middle of the week, then it’ll be included in that batch of content. [Basil Chatha]: And we deliver every week on Friday either way. Okay, cool. All right, so we talked about pricing, how’s it worth? And is that just for one platform or is that for, oh, we’ll cross post to X as well or whatever? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so we can cross post. [Michael Houck]: you want the content to be exactly the same. If you’re like, Hey, I think this long form post on LinkedIn could be better used as a thread on X, then we would need to sort of upcharge for the additional right there. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Like what would that look like, It depends how extensive it is. Uh, it’s not going to be substantial, probably, you know, realistically max an extra 500 a month. [Basil Chatha]: Oh, okay. Cool. Um, All right, that makes sense. Yeah, do you have a document or something that you could send over? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I have a Notion doc I can send over. [Michael Houck]: I’ll shoot it over to you, I guess, in a couple of minutes. Everything we talked about and some more stuff. We do also have a strategy component of this as well. So if you’re like, hey, I want to do the content posting and creation. We also want basically a sparring partner, like a chief content officer, so to speak. We have an option for that as well that’s 5k. So no pressure on that, but it’s an additional thing we offer. [Basil Chatha]: OK, cool. Awesome. Yeah. That’s all I had. If you can send over that doc, that’d be awesome. And then I’ll email you back. [Michael Houck]: Sweet. Sounds good, man. I’m excited. Yeah. Awesome. [UNMATCHED_VIDEO]: Thanks for getting on the call. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Chat soon. See you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Thank you.