- Duration: 39 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JXDMPTBKD0YF5S9S5QPVPTB0 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JXDMPTBKD0YF5S9S5QPVPTB0)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: How are you? Oh Jesus Christ. Hold on. Sorry Sorry, I’m at my parents house right now. It’s fucking chaos over here We had another client turn this morning, which was a great way to wake up Durable One fucking month man It’s you know When it rains, it pours, I guess, but just, it’s tough. And it’s, yeah, I mean, everyone we lose cuts into our profit, which A, cuts into any exit that we can do, and B, makes margins tighter in general across the whole business. So we’re at a bad spot, it’s just frustrating, and we need to sort of change the narrative, and Valley has not sent us a single closed customer yet I’ve done 30 calls with these people so there’s just some there’s some frustration there yeah that is terrible that’s super frustrating because it looked like that one was gonna be a pretty easy client I thought so I thought so too but he said they’re hiring some head of marketing and seemed to imply they weren’t happy with it but I’m like it’s just a couple weeks like obviously it takes time to and voice for a new client. I thought he was, I don’t know, I didn’t think he had the quick trigger finger. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, that’s really unfortunate. Yeah, well, hopefully we can start shifting the narrative and switching things up. I’m doing everything I can on my end. I can promise you that. Yeah, I know you are. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it’s just top of funnel. We just need the right people. So we just see so much better hit rate with these one-on-one things. So I think part of it is we need to start making more noise. I need to start talking about it more on social, and I need to do more one-on-one outreach to folks in my network and offer them referral bonuses. But the problem is, it’s time. So much of my time has been caught up on fighting fires, or operational bullshit, or hand-holding with David. So it’s like, I don’t do a lot of this work on some days until it’s like 7 p.m. [Ben Ornstein]: which is rough yeah yeah I fight fire so I can’t even imagine the stuff you’re dealing with I’m giving you some of that crap too sometimes so I apologize for that we have to solve problems you know it is yeah it’s just I just I feel the the pincers right now a little bit you know what I mean yeah no no I can totally understand I don’t know what you’re saying there. I wonder if there’s any shift in responsibilities that I could do. There’s not. [Michael Houck]: I mean, there’s really not. I just had a call with Blake Stewart right before this. And he asked me the same thing. He was like, what can I take on off your plate? And I looked through my whole to-do list. I’m like, I am just backlogged on shit that only I can do. And the problem is that I keep getting pulled into other shit. It’s, I can’t get my head above water. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, damn. Would helping on top of funnel, like doing outreach specifically for studio would, I don’t know. We already have that process set up. [Michael Houck]: Kind of, yeah. So it’s like, you know, I can’t add anything that I’m gonna need to explain or have to help with or it’s just going to slow me down even more. So I just need to get through this stuff. My backlog is really the, really the takeaway. Yep. [Ben Ornstein]: No, totally understand. Um, okay. Well, if there’s, if there’s anything I can do, I’ve said this, I think I said this every call, if there’s anything that you do outside of what I’m already doing, just let me know. And you’ve got a lot on your plate. [Michael Houck]: I, um, obviously I didn’t have a ton of time to look through the agenda, but I did take a quick look. [Ben Ornstein]: Like a couple minutes ago, so I have some context on where things are at on your end Not sending that earlier and the reason I didn’t send it earlier was because I knew there were gonna be updates During the day that had an impact on on sending it. [Michael Houck]: And so that’s why I didn’t right Yeah, I would say like, you know when you put these together like you don’t need to put all the detail in there Just be like hey add ideas. We have new ones, you know, like got it. I’m sorry know what we’re, yeah. So let’s start from the bottom. I don’t know why I always do that, but it’s become a habit. So you’re out on Friday and you are flying on Thursday, I know. What needs to happen before you leave that I am currently blocking you on? [Ben Ornstein]: As of right now, I don’t think there’s any blockers. Viral Examples has already Andrew is pretty much autonomous now. I mean, he’s reaching out with questions every once in a while, but even less so like at the end of last week. And so far this week, like MailChimp, for example, that was like the first thing he asked me because he hadn’t done it before. But no, he’s become quite independent. I’ve actually been pretty pleased the last, you know, end of last week, early this week so far has been great. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, he seems very competent. I want to try to get, because he and I were brainstorming this last week, I want to try to get some of this stuff actually off his plate. So for example, like the reactive engagements and also the sort of scouting for posts to engage with proactively, not actually writing the proactive engagements, but just scouting for the posts. I feel like the time we better spent by a VA doing those things both from a cost perspective and just from a time perspective to free him up to be able to service more clients as we add more, right? Definitely. So I’m going to try to, there’s a VA who emailed me and so we sent, we created and sent her an assessment for her to do. Um, and if she fails at it, we’ll just ask someone else on the team to do it. Uh, but, um, I think that could be, I think that could be a good thing. So, um, we’re going to try to roll that out later this month and see how it goes. Um, and just have him do the like, like more operational ad hoc tasks that come in and also the proactive engagement writing. Um, because that’ll free him up to take on more of the account management side as well. Cause I want to get to a point where like, I’m not the bottleneck here and I’m not, my time isn’t sucked into all Right. Um, I want to be able to have him do the kickoff calls. I want to be able to have him answer questions in Slack, uh, from clients. So I’m just doing the sales calls. That’s it. Um, and then the whole business sort of runs autonomously underneath that. That’s, that’s what I want. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And the key is, I mean, you know, obviously we need, we need to grow clients because now that we have him on the books, like that’s a meaningful expense. Every month, right? We need to grow rather than lose clients over the next couple of weeks. Because I don’t want to be in a spot where we’re putting in all this effort and we’re not actually making that much from it as we start to think about selling it. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, 100%. The margins are going to be important too. [Michael Houck]: we can get to a place where the VAs actually do as much of that as possible, except for like, you know, the kickoff calls. So maybe the writers can even just run the kickoff calls because if we can count his salary against Rivalry instead of against Megaphone, it’s much better. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, I didn’t even think about that. That would change a lot, actually. [Michael Houck]: Wow. I’ve never counted you as part of megaphone right because you do stuff across the whole business You can get into a point where that’s the case. I Feel a lot better about that and it puts us in a much better position. So I’m sort of subtly sort of moving things in that direction And there’s no rush to do that. So it’s just like gradually as he gets up to speed feels more comfortable delegating Yeah, I think we can do that yeah, that’s super interesting In terms of me being out on Friday, I will of course make sure anything that needs to get done will get done. [Ben Ornstein]: I’m going to either do a late night tonight or tomorrow, I haven’t decided yet. But I will probably end up doing that. Although a lot of the stuff is just waiting for people to get back. There’s YouTube research, that stuff I want to get even farther ahead on. But anyway. But honestly, in terms of my direct work that needs to get done, that’s fully under my power, we’re in a pretty decent spot, which is good. But still a lot to get done because I have to follow up with people. We’ll talk about the campaigns when we get there. [Michael Houck]: But OK, good to know that there’s nothing that’s blocking you that you’re going to have to be stressing out Thursday morning to finish or something like that. I wanted to know. [Ben Ornstein]: I don’t I don’t think there’s anything of that nature. [Michael Houck]: Okay, for augment then. So I didn’t look at the sheet. How are the numbers looking? [Ben Ornstein]: Are we are we in a good place? Yeah, even after stripping out that one, like molt like mega viral post that we’re looking pretty good, actually. [Michael Houck]: So I see it now we’re actually good on impressions. We’ll hit that impression number no about engagements and followers. Wait, why is, oh, followers. Oh, oh, right. Followers has, I don’t know what happened. [Ben Ornstein]: I don’t know if it was from that one viral post, but he has been gaining a lot of followers. [Michael Houck]: Some of them must be from that post, but also just in general, like, you know, maybe what we do is we, we look at this number without that one date. Right. So like, um, what was the date of the, of the posts? 331 or no, no, the week of 526, right? Yes. Nice. Saw a ton of follower growth that week. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So that’s probably where the majority of it’s coming from [Michael Houck]: Right. So we should strip that out too and just see sort of what it looks like, But I think overall they’ll be happy with this. But again, like I am concerned that we haven’t seen more breakouts and he’s going to be like, well, you know, if I can just write a viral post on a whim, what do I need these guys for. Yeah. We both know that that’s not like reality because just because he happened to write one that went viral doesn’t mean that he can repeat that, right? But we need to fight against that mindset. So, um, the calls, I know it looks like Sammy’s out tomorrow. So do you know if we’re still doing the call? Um, didn’t see that. [Ben Ornstein]: I will check in with her and I’ll get back to you on that. Um, I was messaging her earlier cause I was trying to get, um, a man, uh, and your access to the compliance software. So I’ll just follow up and ask about that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, just check in with her and then I’ll probably join tomorrow. Cause I just want to get a read on like, especially if Noel’s going to be there and Jameson, just like how they’re, what they say, like their tone of voice, their intonation. I want to get a sense of that, body language. Cause then we have our, stupid dog. We have a new one coming up in three weeks. So I want to be conscious of that. Yep, understood. [Ben Ornstein]: Noel hasn’t come to any of those actually, those calls. He came to the one, he came to the one. [Michael Houck]: No, it was the call before the call that we did the one time. Remember that? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yes, you’re right, yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, Jameson and Noel work really closely together, so I feel like I can probably pick up some stuff from him. And also I feel like Jameson likes us quite a bit. I feel like Sammy, This hates everybody, but I feel like Jameson likes this quite a bit. [Ben Ornstein]: I think Jameson seems to be pretty pumped. I have the same read. [Michael Houck]: We have to make sure that they’re cool because they’re going to want us to know at the end of this month, like, okay, well, what are our goals for next quarter? And then do we think we can hit those? And is that worth you guys doing it versus Noel doing it himself or another? And it’s like, so I just don’t know. So I just have to get a bit of a read from Got it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yep. Okay. Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: So just let me know what Sammy says, and we’ll go from there. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, I’m gonna make a note right now. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: Okay, newsletter, list growth stuff. So do you know sort of how to get everything set up from here? Or do you need me to chime in on anything? [Ben Ornstein]: I’m pretty sure I will be okay. The segments, because of when we set all this stuff up for Mantle, I’m feeling pretty confident that I can handle setting up the one, the automations with just one kind of [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, look in founding journey to see what we do there, because there’s the automation. And we also, I don’t think we do one for viral examples, but if you have questions, Like ask because you know, this is it’s important We get this stuff right like when these people are imported they go into a segment then we hit manual Whatever go into that automation and then they go through that automation very like and they don’t get the regular welcome email they get this like that it needs to work that way and Then there’s the auto unsubscribe after some amount of time right and that’s custom for this cohort versus overall folks who joined the newsletter. So, and we tagged them correctly, like all that stuff needs to happen. So if you have questions, let me know, but I obviously, you know, I just have a lot on my plate. So we’ll prepare if this can just be set up, but if there are questions, it’s totally cool to send, just let me know. Yeah, no, totally. [Ben Ornstein]: I’m going to try to be as autonomous as possible. I’m going to send like a draft of the automation without like a screenshot of it to you so you can at least like see how I’m thinking about it, um, but before it goes live. And so, so I have the, the one, I got the one from Gil, the video, it’s a really good, like evergreen type video on like tennis data. So it’s good. Um, and then individual IPO is already on greatest hits. Advanced genie already has one. I emailed max about, um, yep. Yep. So I haven’t heard anything from him with them. Like that’s fine. [Michael Houck]: Just as they come in, you know, just, just, just do them. All I’m saying is that process-wise, like maybe even run a test email like yourself through it and just make sure that it’s working right or something like that. Because it’d be nice if we just set this up and then it just works. [Ben Ornstein]: And so for the process here, like now that I have the lead gen for a couple of these, should I now change the password of everything and completely lock Matt out and that kind of stuff? [Michael Houck]: Are they using our login today or how are they accessing these accounts? [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, they’re using, we have a shared login sheet where, so on that shared login sheet, that’s where I changed the recovery emails. So now it’s all in our power, but we have still used the same shared login. [Michael Houck]: Sorry, so these are the like fake Gmail addresses that he created, right? Correct. Okay. [Ben Ornstein]: So that’s why I was, I thought yeah that part of it is a little complicated in terms of How we go about that We can we can just switch the account in beehive. [Michael Houck]: We could create our own gmail and use that instead, you know And like a brand I’d like a different gmail a new one. Yeah, like, you know jim smith124 at gmail.com or whatever, uh Um, so yeah, I mean, look, I notified Matt. I was like, yeah, we’re going to move them onto some other, some other stuff. And you know, he wasn’t happy, but he was accepting of it. So he didn’t give me a problem with it. Um, and is, is, is he importing anybody? Like, have we seen him and he had doing imports this week for these, not for mine, at least not mine. [Ben Ornstein]: I’ve checked my email, my, And he had, well, he, and well, mine’s different because I had decreased the amount, um, mid month. [Michael Houck]: So. Okay. Can you, can you get confirmation that since like middle of last week, end of last week, they have not been adding more emails, uh, to each of these. [Ben Ornstein]: And then from there we will decide what to do about access. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: And just in the interest of time, we gotta move on, so I’m gonna keep going. Sounds good on Draper videos. Yeah, just keep me in the loop if anything needs to happen there. Ideally, you’re not the one doing this. I guess you are the one doing it because you have the better sort of content chops than we know, like necessarily Andrew does today. Maybe he can grow into doing this, but I think for now it probably doesn’t actually make sense for you to do it. So let’s keep this process the same. So no action there. And I’ve already sent him three. [Ben Ornstein]: If it’s once a week, we already have three covered, three weeks. So yeah, totally fine. [Michael Houck]: OK, YouTube research. I saw your message about the Peter Thiel stuff. I will get to that. I think I need to do the Telegram one first. So don’t expect a response there till the weekend at the earliest. Apple, OK, that’s fine. We’ll get to that later. Campaigns. Okay. So look, I see, I see the numbers, um, the numbers seem low for trellis and aviation. Obviously these are like pretty niche, right? So I get that. Um, how can we, cause I think peer view is good, right? 48 confirmed recipient or participants. That’s great. Let’s just focus on those three to start for, for the top two trellis and aviation. Like, and also for peer view, like it’s been a while, I think it’s been like a week since they, or maybe even more than a week, maybe like almost two weeks. How can we compress that timeline as much as possible? Because now we basically have to go back and sell them on the idea again, right? [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. I think for peer review, I think we’re good to go. That’s 48. I think that’s a pretty solid list. [Michael Houck]: That’s not the problem though. That’s the one part that’s like, I’m not talking about here. The two parts are, one, the other two have low amounts of people confirmed. And secondly, All three of them, it’s been a while, so now the sales process sort of needs to happen again. So those are my two concerns. [Ben Ornstein]: Peer review looks fine, 48 people, that’s great. Yeah. The biggest problem, especially for Trellis Health and Aviation, is people just are not getting back. It’s like, that’s the biggest problem. 100 people, 72 people, I would have expected. We’re asking them to get paid. I’m surprised people are not responding. Yeah. Use the same verbiage that I’ve used for all of them. I’m getting responses. Peerview, a lot of them are our creators. [Michael Houck]: So that’s what, because it’s the niche. It’s the response rate for sure. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. Right. And so maybe it’s, I got to be spinning it differently in the way I’m set. I’m asking them to get paid. I don’t know. [Michael Houck]: Are you DMing these people on, on X? And LinkedIn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. LinkedIn direct DMs. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if email would be a better channel. I feel like, I don’t know, their DMs might be flooded, but we don’t have their email, so we’d need to extract their email somehow. [Ben Ornstein]: The way I do it is I go through the list that Vetus creates. If they don’t have a direct DM, I try to very quickly see if I can find a website form to go into or an email that I can reach out to, if they’re relevant enough to reach out to. And so if there is an email, then I, of course, note that. But in terms of the process, that doesn’t matter. [Michael Houck]: Okay. Here’s what we should do then, because I think we need to get back to Trellis Aviation and Peerview. Obviously, Peerview, I can just reach out to, like, tonight or something. Or you can even reach out to tonight and share. But for the other two, let’s give it another week. And so on next Tuesday, we will send them the list. Because I think right But now it’s such a small list. It’s like, yeah, they could do that. But do you feel like we’re going to grow that list if we give another week? [Michael Houck]: Or do you feel like this is capped? [Ben Ornstein]: My idea, what I was going to discuss today is reach out to all those people again. I’ll DM them again a second time. The ones that haven’t responded. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Keep spamming them. Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: That’s what I’ll do for those two. I think if one more week goes by with a follow-up, I think they have to Okay, so let’s do that then. [Michael Houck]: If either one of them emails us, you just respond and be like, hey, we’re still following up with some folks. We’ll follow up with you next Tuesday. And then on next Tuesday, we’ll make a call. For PureView, can you put together the Google Sheet in the same format that we’ve used and send that to them tonight? It’s already created. The one that’s linked is that one. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, I thought that was just a website. [Michael Houck]: I didn’t click into the link. Okay, let me click into this real quick. I’ll fix that. [Ben Ornstein]: But yes, I have that already created. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool So, let me just take a look at that then send it over and then you can send over them as far as anti metal goes Okay, I think you should have Rena reach out to these folks because like at least the ones who you haven’t heard back from because she has like telegram chats or what’s up chats with all these people from the early megaphone days, so I would loop her in today and have her do this. As far as Alex and Luke, I thought that for Alex, he only wanted to comment anyway. Either way, let’s try to get Alex and Luke to do comments, and if that changes, basically, after the campaign runs on Thursday, so like by Friday, let’s say, or actually, no, because you’re out on Friday. So on Monday, you give me a readout of like, hey, here’s who didn’t end up engaging, because we need to refund them if folks like who we, you know, who didn’t. So we could do that. And then for the Mizzou humble guy, yeah, just send me a link to pay that guy and I’ll take care of it. [Ben Ornstein]: Okay. I will loop in Rena to the rest of them. We’ll get them understood. [Michael Houck]: And then for men’s newsletter folks. Yeah. Just, just start getting pricing. Cool. Okay. Okay. And then ads. So let’s talk about this. So what where do you want to start here? [Ben Ornstein]: So I have, two versions of each of the first four created. There’s like the link. These are some of the ones that you sent me, like the one that I’ve come across. So there’s like a LinkedIn post version. There’s the who wants to be a millionaire. I actually love that one. So I’ve already created two different versions of each one for the Pitch Deck one for the investor database. I didn’t link them here. I didn’t add them. I can explain that. [Michael Houck]: So I have eight from Can we start like a Google Drive folder that just houses all of these? I think I had that, actually, at one point. Yeah, I can do that, for sure. If I told you to not do that, then ignore me, because I think that was actually a good idea. Sure. [Ben Ornstein]: Well, I will put them back in there. I agree. That’s probably a good play. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So as long as they’re named who wants to be a millionaire or whatever, it’ll be easy to navigate. [Ben Ornstein]: I can add the ones that, You also said that you would review as well if you want. [Michael Houck]: Just add everything, our whole library, everything we’ve done. Because there are a couple of the older ones that you did that are for the investor database. And I haven’t set up the funnel for the investor database yet. So we only have Pitch Deck Database once live. So add them all in there. Anyone that was like not, that we didn’t edit or reject or whatever. And then next week, I want to start jamming on new lead magnets because I think we want new ones. I think we talked about this a little bit last week. So let’s actually put that plan in motion next week. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sounds good. [Ben Ornstein]: And then in terms of the ones that I haven’t come up with or that I haven’t created ones for, this will probably be the next batch that I do next week. Yeah. If I can get ahead and start this week, of course, I will. I think some of these are really interesting. [Michael Houck]: It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get to it this week, because we do have more that you’ve already created that I haven’t taken live. So we will have fresh creative going out later this week. So not a huge deal. But let me actually click into these really quick, because I don’t think I have. Oh, yeah, the billboard one is good. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, I like the Tim Ferriss one. [Michael Houck]: Let’s see, 1440, what is this one? This is, oh yeah, that’s funny, that’s good. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, I thought the, was that the meme one? Yeah. Yeah, so I like the meme creative, I thought that was interesting, because it’s like, you can get a laugh and education. [Michael Houck]: This is like a Coachella signup, whatever they call it. Okay, and then slack one The smb deal hunter like it’s a pretty crowded one. [Ben Ornstein]: I actually think it’s a bad ad i’ve seen better slack ones So I’ll find like a better one to model off of yeah, this one does look a little it’s it’s text heavy. [Michael Houck]: Um But yeah, some slack one is a good idea. So yeah, I mean look let’s just um Let’s do these for next week’s batch with the goal of getting these live next week, basically And we have seen CPA come down a little bit this week not a ton not as much as we needed to but a little bit But either way so far. We’re in good shape in terms of You know, we’ve added I think Somewhere over 2,000 subscribers or something. And so if that leads to one ghostwriting client out of that batch Assuming that they stay for two months minimum Then you know will be um Or sorry three months minimum, uh, then we’ll be profitable from the channel. So So yeah, it seems like it’s working, um and with volume, you know, we’ll see more folks, uh, uh convert so We got a creative to to use now as well We got like a nice backlog of ads, uh, or potential creative. [Ben Ornstein]: I mean, so just nice. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, keep keep sourcing them, too And if you want to have Rina do some sourcing, too, or Venus or whomever, just have them do it. We should have a motion to constantly be finding. I think someone is already adding them to the Airtable, like new one. [Ben Ornstein]: I have Venus doing that. Yeah, so she’s carrying that for me, and then I can go right into the Airtable. It’s honestly pretty easy. And with this AI tool for static posts, I can now make these very quick, which is that AI tool is it has been a savior actually. [Michael Houck]: So I just raised like 10 million bucks. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, I didn’t even see that. Good for them. I mean, I saw a competitor of those when I was looking for a good tool to add for the Tuesday send yesterday. [Michael Houck]: It was shit. It was terrible. It’s great. It’s pretty good. But yeah, okay, cool, man. I got to run to chat with Andrew. But I think we’re in a you know, we’re a good place with a lot of this stuff. And you seem like you’re on top of basically everything, so it feels good. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, I feel like I can be autonomous, which has been good. So I’ve been trying my best not to bug you. [Michael Houck]: Especially with some of that stuff we talked about earlier, like bug me if it comes up, like the automation stuff, because I know that stuff gets a little hairy. [Ben Ornstein]: I’m going to start on that today, and I probably will reach out, but sounds good. All right, man. [Michael Houck]: I’ll talk to you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right, see you.