Transcript

[Tanyo Gochev]: I’m doing good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: How are you? [Michael Houck]: I’ve never been busier in my life. I feel like I’m spread so thin. So yeah, I’m gonna, um, yeah, I’m like doing like five things even right now. It’s crazy. [Michael Houck]: Uh, what is it? [Tanyo Gochev]: Client management calls, stuff like that. [Michael Houck]: No, it’s, it’s so much various stuff. I don’t even have really bandwidth to go into all of it, but it’s a lot. Yeah. [Tanyo Gochev]: Nicole said she’s going to be a couple minutes late. [Michael Houck]: She’ll be here at 5 after. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK, yeah. [Tanyo Gochev]: Any questions that we should go over first? Not really. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah, I think that. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah, I just want to understand the difference genie and off-label because like from the docs I saw, they seem very similar to me. And yeah, that’s the biggest thing. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: They’re, they’re sort of going after, I think, similar customers, um, or similar readers. I think that, uh, Nicole sees them sort of positioned differently. So I would just, uh, I wouldn’t tell her that they look, um, that’s that similar. Because they are different. Like she does want to go in different directions with them. But I think you and I just need clarity on sort of what that difference is. So I had one quick conversation with her about it, but it was a while ago. So it would be good for you to ask those questions. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah. The way I see it is that off-label is more about like marketing tips for those people. And advanced genie is more about finance. And stuff like that. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: That’s, that’s basically the context that I have as well. So we’ll want her to get more specific of course, but yeah. [Tanyo Gochev]: Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Um, by the way, like in the morning I gave access, uh, means access to his content, but he still hasn’t. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I saw the, I saw also your comment to Ben about needing to give him better notion access. So I’m working on that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. Awesome. [Michael Houck]: I have literally 39 reminders on things I need to get done before the end of the day today. So, and that’s not even counting like meetings and other conversations. [Tanyo Gochev]: Damn, that Notion transfer, is that what created so many things? [Michael Houck]: It’s killing me, man. It’s delaying everything else. I’m spending like so much time on it. It’s, I hate Notion. I really do. It’s so bad. Really? I mean, there’s not a better option. But like, I just, I hate notion personally. [Tanyo Gochev]: Have you tried ClickUp in one of the agencies that worked at, uh, we use ClickUp for like project management and stuff. And it was great. And the writing happened in Google docs and stuff like that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I hate those project management tools even worse. Like ClickUp and like, um, monday.com and Asana. I, I, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah, too complex, like too many, too much stuff going on. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. It’s just like, all we do is deliver content to people. We don’t need to build out some big, like thing with all these rules and stuff. Like we should just deliver the content. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So, uh, it’s just not for me. [Tanyo Gochev]: I’m, I’m a pretty simple, simple guy in terms of how I work. [Tanyo Gochev]: Oh yes. [Tanyo Gochev]: Same, same. Like it’s very tech, like all of those project management tools are very techy. Like they add, a bunch of complexity where it isn’t needed at all. Yeah, I 100% agree. And how did you guys with Nicole, you mentioned it, you know, from a lot of, from a while ago. [Michael Houck]: I think I, I think we met through my newsletter a couple of years ago. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Nice. [Tanyo Gochev]: Good case study, right? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, we’ve, you know, we’ve, we’ve done a lot together. She’s awesome. You’ll, you’ll, you’ll like her. She’s a great person. Um, and you know, I was helping her out with her startup for a bit and that’s actually how I met Grace too, uh, on our team. And then, um, in the last year or so, Nicole’s done some content work with us too, which has been great. [Tanyo Gochev]: Nice, nice. And who is, like I saw you talked to her in Slack, who is Reina and what’s her role? You know Reina, Reina’s my assistant. [Michael Houck]: She does everything for me. Do I know her? I’m not sure I have met her. [Tanyo Gochev]: Oh, okay. [Michael Houck]: I always assume everyone on the team knows Reina. Yeah, Reina’s my personal assistant. She does like a million different things for me. [Tanyo Gochev]: Got it, got it. [Michael Houck]: Awesome. Thank you. It’s very funny. If Nicole doesn’t come in the next Like two minutes. [Tanyo Gochev]: I’m gonna message her and just say we should do this on Monday Okay By the way going forward should I do this every time like create a separate doc do like the kickoff obviously and stuff like that or Is someone else responsible because like I love to take charge, but I don’t want to mess up the workflow and stuff like that No, no, yeah, you should set up the dock in preparation for the call because you have to add in like your, your info and stuff. [Michael Houck]: So for now, it’s still on the writers. Eventually we might centralize it, but for now it’s still on you guys. Okay. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah. By the way, I have been playing around with AI and stuff like that. And then I got one. [Michael Houck]: Oh, hi. [Tanyo Gochev]: Hey, sorry about that, guys. [Nicole Jarbo]: We were doing an AMA, and then the person hosting just abruptly left and crashed the meeting. So we tried to, never mind. Anyways, I’m sorry I’m late, tried to just figure that out and, um, you know, we can, we can be quick. I want to make sure you guys get your time as well. [Michael Houck]: All good. Um, sounds chaotic. Um, so yeah, so Nicole, Tanyo, Tanyo, Nicole, uh, you guys should just, you know, meet each other and then we can, we can dive in. Nice to meet you. [Nicole Jarbo]: Nice to meet you. [Nicole Jarbo]: Thank you for stepping in and helping us out on all this stuff. Yeah, of course. [Tanyo Gochev]: Happy to do it. [Michael Houck]: Um, cool. [Michael Houck]: So Tanyo is great. He’s been with us for a bit now. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think he, I think he’ll be a good fit to jump in for Austin. Like I mentioned, Austin will still sort of be involved. Uh, but, um, you know, just stepping back from sort of the execution of things. So, um, he’ll still be around. Um, and then, yeah, I mean, I think there’s probably two main things we should go over in this call. So the first one obviously is advanced genie. We want to go through that. We want to get sort of the differentiation clarified between that and off-label. And then also I think Tanyo has some questions about off-label too and how that is evolving from rise and roll. So as he steps into that, I want to make sure he has all the info on both. But Nicole, any questions on your end before we jump in? [Nicole Jarbo]: No, it sounds good. I mean, I think these are two good topics that I’ve been thinking about a lot. So I’m right where you guys are. Cool. [Michael Houck]: All right. [Michael Houck]: Tanyo, you can start wherever you’d like, and we can go from there. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah, sure. So first, let me introduce myself. I’m Tanyo. I have written for 200 clients, and some of them were in the crypto space like Magic Eden and CoinGecko. And I also ran a few email newsletters. And I would love for, before we dive into Advantage Genie, just to figure out like the difference between off-label and advanced genie. And the way I see it is that off-label is about marketing and advanced genie is more about financing. Am I thinking about it the right way or is there more context on that? [Nicole Jarbo]: That’s it. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s right. Advanced genie is just a little high level about kind of the organization. So advanced G&E basically is, I would consider like a, maybe like a property that we would want to move out of the organization at some point. And it’s really focused on the financing part, right? So, you know, invoicing, factoring, these sorts of alternative financing opportunities. A way that we see off-label is a potential like referral partner to that work, if it makes sense. But also just focused on the the actual doing in the companies, right? So you’re totally right. I just wanted to put a little bit of, little more color on it. And so the hope is that advanced genie will go off and ride into the sunset once it picks up some traction. But the way that we’re thinking about is really sort of incubating that sort of project. Off-label is like the core, the core piece of it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Tanyo Gochev]: So marketing and execution. Yeah. [Nicole Jarbo]: It’s probably like the sort of like marketing side, but I feel like those things like interweave to some degree, but much more focused on the marketing just because the challenges in that space are unique for folks. [Nicole Jarbo]: Oh yeah, for sure. [Nicole Jarbo]: They’re in high risk, high regulatory spaces. But yeah, the financing stuff has to just be distinct just because it’s a totally different type of company structure. And it’s, it’s something that as soon as there’s a little bit of like traction there, we would want to like push out or I want to push out. [Tanyo Gochev]: I don’t know about my partner, but yeah, that’s how I’m thinking about it. Got it. Got it. Makes sense. Yeah. So, okay. That gives me enough clarity to separate both newsletters and for Advanced Genie specifically, like, Do you have any specific goal in terms of maybe getting more leads or building a brand? Any tangible thing we’re trying to achieve with that newsletter? [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, that’s a good one. And also, I’ll be open to, Hauk, I think that we talked about doing this every two weeks, but I wonder if that’s probably too consistent of a cadence to get the like type of traction that we that we might want. But there’s no tangible. Yeah, go ahead. [Michael Houck]: No, I was going to say, like, I feel like we could probably start it biweekly and see. But then as we’re as the list is growing, I think maybe we can think about bringing it more frequent. But it’s not abnormal to start that way, basically. [Nicole Jarbo]: It’s great. In terms of tangible goals, I mean, I think in the next few months, we want for Advanced Genie to basically give us a set of qualified leads, right, for financing. So the structure and what it looks like is, I don’t know if you’re familiar with like NerdWallet or Fundera or any of these kinds of… NerdWallet. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah, I know NerdWallet, yeah. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, this would be like more similar to maybe like a Fundera where there’s a lot of like business facing content. Lot of it is like more sort of programmatic SEO and things like that. But they’re basically referring or working with like broker partners to get people tailored loan terms for them. Right. So that’s that’s kind of what advanced genie is. Right. So kind of like sitting on top. And then we would want to recruit what we’re doing on the back end is recruiting financing partners that are right fits for people. We have two different two different financing partners, like one that does merchant cash advance and one that does something called factoring, which is similar in some ways. So we’ve got those two partners. Winning would be like delivering them, you know, a set of qualified leads. I think the number, I think I’ll have to talk to Tanyo about like what feels right, but a win would be in the next couple of months, seeing this actually like play out, right? There’s actually like a financing deal that happens. It’s probably gonna be a handful because they’re harder, you know, deals to make happen. But that’s really what this is for, driving those qualified leads to our funding and financing partners. [Tanyo Gochev]: Got it. Got it. Makes sense. And I love the setup, like I noted out on these types of financial plays. So I love it. I’m curious, like, any other secondary goals or that’s it just bring leads to those financial partners, financing partners? I think that’s the primary goal. [Nicole Jarbo]: And then I think like, you know, this idea where we could create a brand is really important just because in this space that we’re in, and I’ll just call it like B2B financing, it is not a brand forward space. For sure. [Nicole Jarbo]: Right now. [Nicole Jarbo]: And so, you know, the biggest players, have these kind of 1990s square, like old square space looking sites. And, you know, they’re very focused on a niche. So the big ones out there, like some of these companies are focused on trucking, financing, other things like that. And so, you know, I think I think the goal is, as these high risk organizations get more traction and become more mainstream, so it could be whatever crypto, it could be like sexual wellness, psychedelics, as those start to get more attention, our hunch is that the people running those types of businesses are very different than this sort of old guard of folks who are running the trucking fleeting business. But their financing needs are generally much higher and they’re locked out of the space more. And we can do the same things that our funding partners can do the same things these other places do. So like, you know, if they have a P&L or they’re making some revenue, we can get them funding in two days, right? We can do those same things. Our funding partners are just more willing to work with those types of companies. So for Advanced Genie to build a brand that people can kind of trust, that’s distinct from the other types of folks doing this, that would be a pretty cool secondary goal because it would give us some level of potential longevity. Got it. [Tanyo Gochev]: Got it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Tanyo Gochev]: While I was listening, I was thinking that I don’t know if you’re familiar who Cody Sanchez is, but I can see like this being like similar offer, but just for the like more taboo industries. So, yeah. OK. And the target audience. Startups is basically the founders, the marketers, operators in all of those industries, cannabis, CDB, hemp, crypto, psychedelics, sexual wellness and stuff like that. And reproductive and telehealth platforms, gambling and alternative financing, stuff like that. Yeah. [Nicole Jarbo]: And I think that this is probably the part, even though I talked about it, where these two opportunities just like overlap a lot. Right. So I think I’m kind of talking about both of them a little bit. But yeah, the advanced genie stuff, of course, is more financing related, like explicitly the off label stuff. They’re still experiencing similar challenges. Right. [Nicole Jarbo]: And they also have the same like, you know, the same target audience, I think, exists for them. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, for sure. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And [Tanyo Gochev]: I’m curious, like, Is the thing about Advanced Genie is because these like the operators and the founders of these companies, like they don’t have an alternative and they’re basically like, hey, I need to find a financial partner and then Advanced Genie, that’s where the value proposition, that’s the main value proposition. We are the only ones who do this. For people like you. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah, I don’t think we’re the only ones because we’re like the layer on top. We’re not going to actually give them the money directly. These financing partners will. So we’re kind of a, I’d say like a content driven kind of like referral or like affiliate sort of company. Right. Like I don’t think it’s as sexy to call it that, but like we want to be educated. Educational for people, um, but also at the right time, you direct them to like the solution that they want, which is if you’re reading this advanced genie stuff, it’s cause you probably want money, right? Like that’s like the problem, right? And so people are coming in and so we have leads from kind of like other stuff we do on the financing side, mostly for cannabis and people are looking for money usually to like expand their product lines. They are not eligible for funding through something like on deck is like a big, a big one in our space. So if you look up like on deck small business capital, these are the options that people have so they can get money from credit funds and other folks and investors. It’s just it’s not as readily available. Right. So if you’re reading Advanced Genie, you’re probably going to have some interest in financing because again, you want to expand product lines. You don’t want to go to VCs. You don’t want to go to conventional banks because the rates for those organizations are just, there’s a lot of sort of like predatory small business stuff happening there because folks can, right? So I think the way that we want to think about Advanced Genie is more of like a partner to people. And yeah, so like most folks, I guess, or who we want to target are folks who want that more traditional, quick capital, capital infusion, because they’re ready to grow their business in some way. [Tanyo Gochev]: OK, and these financing partners, like do the founders have to give out equity or is it just like they get the money in exchange? [Nicole Jarbo]: So these are financing partners that are generally things like credit funds, they can function sort of like banks. So they technically could take equity, but that’s not really what, you know, we’re looking to do. It’s mostly for people who want like short term loans. So it could be short term loans, long term loans, basically like cash advance. Right. So maybe you have a big purchase order coming in, but they’re not going to pay you for three months. Right. A hundred thousand dollars. We would just or like they, not me, they would just like front you or give you that $100,000, but maybe they take, you know, $10,000 off for the effort of originating the loan and other stuff. And so that would be a really big deal in this space, this space right now. So just so you guys know, credit kind of funding in some of these industries, it depends on the industry, but anywhere from, we’ll just say like APR, like it’s like a credit card, for like interest, it’s anywhere from 25% to 50, 60%. Like literally, so like, you know, and then people will pay that because it’s just very difficult, right? They’ll do sort of different, there’s different activities in the space people will do. Well, they’ll go to like one loan provider and then they call it like stacking and they’ll like continue to stack loans with rates into this like loan capital stack and you know sometimes these businesses are forced to default because they’re stuck in this like thing and all and the brokers are getting money every time they like they’re like hey well I know like a loan guy you should go talk to Hauk and and Hauk will give you a great rate and then you know go talk to Austin so and use Austin’s money to pay back Hauk and then you’ll have someone else come in and say, actually, you don’t, don’t pay any of those, you know, people like just put a stop, stop paying how and only pay Austin and you won’t know because it’s like, Whoa, he and I didn’t have this. Yeah, sorry. [Michael Houck]: We don’t, we don’t like the stop paying how phrasing. [Nicole Jarbo]: That’s the kind of stuff that’s happening in this space. And so I think there’s an opportunity on the brand side to sort of educate people. It’s not like a fear mongering thing. Of course, like we want to make money too. So it’s, it’s not like a charity, but there are a lot of inefficiencies that really hurt businesses because at the end of the day, we want businesses that are making money that do have, um, a promising trajectory to grow, to be able to grow. And so that’s why the brand part I think is important because right now, um, it’s, it’s just crazy how things get done. It’s a lot of cold calling, boiler rooms, like abroad or like in New Jersey or something. And people are just calling and trying to get you to say yes to a loan. And then they call you again to be like, hey, we’re a different company, like loan us. So there’s a lot of, I think there’s a big opportunity for these kinds of operators to learn more about like alternative financing. [Tanyo Gochev]: Got it. Yeah. Just listening to you, like one One angle that seems interesting that could be like we are founder friendly financing and we won’t judge you like for the industries you’re operating and it’s not predatory. You won’t get insane rates and stuff like that. That might be an interesting angle as a brand play. Yeah. [Nicole Jarbo]: And I would say too, because I think the word I was looking for was like aggregator. Right. So like we really do want to collect these funding partners, right? Like we, we don’t necessarily want to position ourselves as giving the money away, but people guide, find the right ones. Cause for some people, the 30% rate actually is really good for them. Right. Cause it’s better than what they’re hearing in the market. Right. So there’s like that, that I think we want to also be like good at positioning ourselves around just cause we’re not giving the money, but there is someone out there for you who will give you the rates you want. And we’re going to help you find that person. Good. [Tanyo Gochev]: Like who will find the best partner for you. Exactly. I’m not sure what’s up with the Zoom. [Michael Houck]: I do pay for Zoom. So it’s weird that it’s giving me the 10 minute timer. So if we hit that, we can just hop over to a Google Meet or something for that. [Tanyo Gochev]: OK. OK. And what are like a few different topics you would love to cover in the newsletter I saw from the forum, like stable coin payments, growth without VCs, banks, creative cash flow management, like future of factoring in MCA and breaking stigma into space in a working capital. Are there anything else or do these topics cover it all? [Tanyo Gochev]: I think that’s mostly it. [Nicole Jarbo]: And then the way that I think about it is maybe early on, I think content that feels more educational and not like talk down to people or anything, but helping them understand their options is going to be going to be valuable for the audience. [Tanyo Gochev]: Got it. And what, like, if you like, you answered that question already, but just to be clear, what’s unique about your perspective on these topics specifically? [Nicole Jarbo]: Hmm. That’s really interesting. I think what’s sort of unique is, and I’m speaking for my partner, Tanyo, on this too, because a lot of this is his background. I think what’s unique is the way that he might talk about this is we sort of see ourselves a little bit as problem solvers, more like creative problem solvers in this, right? So if you have a financing need, well, you can go to the bank, you can ask your friend, you can get a credit. There’s a whole variety of things. And I think our perspective is you should find the one that is right fit for you, because that’s what’s going to help you optimize your own outcomes. And we’re not going to judge what that is. Right. And that’s very different than the space, which is generally trying to push you towards certain types of options. Right. That’s why it’s important for us to get the MCA people in our funding network, get the factoring people in our funding network, get the credit people in our funding network and so we aren’t pro you need to do like purchase order financing we’re just like how how can we like help you sort of like empower yourself without taking too much of your time right like we don’t need to teach everybody everything about this but we do want to be able to advocate that there’s a right fit for your company and it’s on you to figure that out but we’re here to like support you. Like we’re not going to, we’re going to be transparent, I guess, if that makes sense. [Tanyo Gochev]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. One thing we could do in the content itself and as an angle, just as an idea, is that we can mention like how you filter your financing partners. So we can do like the anti-positioning, like, hey, other people will just refer you to the best partner for them, but we actually do a lot of checking ourselves to see what’s the best partner for you. And that could be like an interesting positioning play, just as an idea. I’m curious, like, do you have, when it comes down to email newsletters, do you have some that you like in terms of style and formatting that you like advanced you need to be like in a sense? [Nicole Jarbo]: I have to think about that because like probably not in this industry, but I’m sure there’s like more general ones. Let me think about it a little bit because I know the last few ones we’ve done with Megaphone have been more like news oriented. And so this is going to be a different one. Yeah, I’ll get back to you on it. That one. [Tanyo Gochev]: Got it. [Michael Houck]: In Slack whenever, no rush. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yep. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Tanyo Gochev]: And like from the onboarding doc, I saw how you like the tone of voice and style to be, but just one last time to check, how would you describe the content voice? You mentioned educational, authoritative, but also like not judgmental. Would you add anything else to that? [Nicole Jarbo]: No, I mean, I think this is probably connected to like authoritative in some way, but I think that we want to have some level of like being casual and like confident, I guess. Casual is probably not the right word, but I would probably position as like confident or could be like more street smart or more, you know, it was mentioning that we we sort of think of ourselves or want to position ourselves as helping people sort of creatively solve these challenges. So I think it’s probably like important that we come off as like people who can actually creatively think about solving these problems. And so I’m not sure what tone that would match up to, but that’s like the only other thing I would add. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Like yeah. [Nicole Jarbo]: Capable, yeah. Like competent, like, yeah, we don’t want to look incompetent. Like, you know, it’s it’s like the bar is very low, which I don’t think people get because it hasn’t had to be high. [Michael Houck]: Right. Yeah. [Tanyo Gochev]: I mean, that’s yeah, that’s opportunity. So that’s good. Yeah. And last question. Are there any specific people who already embody that voice? Well, it doesn’t have to be from the same space in industry but someone in general you think has that voice already? [Nicole Jarbo]: I got to think about it but I don’t think it needs to be as like I think the way that I’m talking about this feels like a little bit more cartoony than it needs to be but I think the what’s it called the first round report I think that’s like a very good like straightforward. It’s not like cartoonish in any way It’s straightforward. It’s like easy to read. I think they have like good content. That’s like very tactical I Think another place these are like VC things And I don’t actually wouldn’t necessarily recommend we go in this direction, but I was reading some of their stuff today’s NFX, the venture, it’s like a venture fund slash network kind of thing. They do a really good job of breaking down more complex ideas, but it just sounds very straightforward. There’s no frills. So I think both those places do a good job of showing that they’re competent and just being really straightforward. And it’s educational, right? [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, these are all my questions I had. I think I have good clarity about what advantage it is, what is off-label, and what we are looking for in both of these. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: If that’s the case, then for the first off-label issue, which will be, I think, the week of the 27th, right, Nicole? That’s what we said with Austin. [Nicole Jarbo]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, then, Tanyo, just get rolling for that and deliver that for Nicole to review next week at some point and go from there. And then Nicole, when you give the thumbs up, I will go into Beehive and update all the branding and all the references and things like that just to make it cleaner for folks. I might have some questions about like, do we want to offer them something different if they rate an issue well or, But yeah, by and large, I think we’re good. And then for Advanced Genie, Tanyo, we also can just sort of get rolling and then we’ll take that live when it’s ready to go too. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, perfect. [Nicole Jarbo]: Well, I also just dropped in, I think Bankless, not everything that they do, but some of their work’s sort of like a good tone for like off-label. And they’re like a crypto- Yeah, I know them. [Tanyo Gochev]: I know them, yeah. [Nicole Jarbo]: But yeah. So that kind of vibe where they’re explaining things, bringing up different cases, have a little bit of a forward-looking perspective. So yeah, I think that they’re a good example. Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: It’s going to kick us in a sec, but Nicole, anything else you wanted to go over or are we good? You guys got it. [Nicole Jarbo]: I’ll follow up on Slack with some of those items. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: Sounds good. We’ll talk to you there. Some content to you for this next week. [Nicole Jarbo]: Great. It was great to meet you, Tanyo. [Tanyo Gochev]: Thank you. Nice to meet you. [Nicole Jarbo]: Okay. [Tanyo Gochev]: Yeah, for sure. [Michael Houck]: Good luck with the case.