- Duration: 25 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JZ8VW5RJPMXT5DT20PZZ3FBZ (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JZ8VW5RJPMXT5DT20PZZ3FBZ)
Transcript
[Emil Barr]: I think for me, what I’m trying to do, and I’ve been sort of very candid about this, is like we need to find a way to become much bigger than that. And almost like, you know, I think fame is a crude word, but like you have to have a large enough platform to go raise a couple billion dollars from like people like SoftBank and stuff. And I think it’s hard to do that if you’re just like, whatever, you have 20,000 followers, even like you’re like an objective success and it’s positive ROI. But I think my goals are a little bit different. And so the model I’m sort of toying around with is almost like, instead of like a client and having all these like vendors, like a PR agent and a podcast agent, and you know, like, you know, like a ghost writing and like a social agency. I’m almost like thinking of building a quasi in house team where this isn’t like the only thing that they do, but like you hire like a really good PR guy for 7k a month and like a really good social media, like writer for 5k a month. And like someone that really understands like TikTok for 5k a month. And you offer them like multi-year contracts. So they don’t have to worry about churn, like they can try crazy ideas and stuff. They don’t have to worry about like delivering quick wins to make the client happy, kind of like two or three year contracts. But really the upside is on the end, if we’re able to hit our funding goals and raise a billion dollars, every person involved would get a bonus of a million dollars each. And then my thesis is that if you can find a young, like hungry kid, you know, like that worked on like Gary V’s personal brand, like it’s like 25, you know, like that’s a life-changing amount of money. To earn it three years. Absolutely. And it would sort of be tiered out so that if they’re not, you know, they can’t earn it, you know, whatever, we only raised half a billion, you know, they would still get 500k, like there’d be marginal hits. But it would be tied to funding we’re able to achieve to it wouldn’t even be tied to like virality or KPIs, because you can go viral for the wrong things. Of course, that would do is the idea is that’s going to put a few people in a room together, who are really like, how can we build a personal brand for me? And let’s like, different than everyone else building a personal brand, like, how do we really cut through the noise? And like, yeah, there’s the monthly retainer part of it, you know, which is lesser part of it. But just like a startup, everyone’s taking kind of like a little bit of pay cutter, like, you know, going on it for this, like, hope that if they pay off in the end, they get this huge payday, like, you know, the company exits, but same thing with the startup personal brand. And so shifting this model, like it just didn’t make a ton of sense. Like I didn’t see where you guys would necessarily fit in or if like, you know, cause you guys are an agency, you operate off of a retainer model, stuff like that. So, but I wanted to give you context and wanted to kind of give you the, you know, hop on a call and be transparent with you on what I’m thinking and kind of like how I got there. I don’t think it’s a lack of performance necessarily. I think the team is good. I think it’s just like, I don’t think what I’m currently doing is going to get us to millions of followers and it’s not going to get us to like billions of dollars of capital. And it’s not, it’s not economic. Like every client you could do that, you know, you guys would be turning like, you know, rest in the gold. But then it’s like, what I’m personally doing is I’m trying to build a team around that mission and sort of willing to pay it out on the back end with a lot larger incentives. But, you know, kind of like, Hey, if we succeed, everyone makes a couple of million dollars here. But I think that’s the way you kind of have to build the team. If you want those like crazy results like that, Alex Hermosin, Gary Vee, and those guys are getting online. If that makes sense. Yeah, I hear you. [Michael Houck]: And I think that with your goals and how, you know, your goals for the company and also obviously for yourself, it makes sense. It’s intuitive. I’m a startup guy. I’ve raised venture. I’ve raised a fund. We invest in a bunch of companies out of that fund. I do angel investments. I understand the sort of upside game. I’m not opposed to something like that here. I’d have to talk to Jacob and sort of see how things would work between us for this. But I like you, and I like what you’re doing, and I believe in you, and you’re sort of proven out already that you can be successful with the things you build. So I think I don’t want to look at this through the lens of like an investment, right, you know, we’re going to be probably taking less upfront in order to potentially have a bigger win on the back end. So model wise, I’m not opposed to it, I probably want to take a little bit of a closer look at as you’re out with the company and things like that. But high level, my intuition is that there could be something we can make work there. [Emil Barr]: Yeah, so like an I’d be welcome to do it. I love Jacob. Like, you know, it’s like, I’d be welcome to do it with you guys, you know, like, as well as like, if, as like that copywriting voice for context, I put together, um, a really great PR guy, um, who’s cutting his retainer, but that’s like just doing it, you know, separately from his agency. And I put together, um, someone that like did personal branding and made like short form video, like blew Gary V up on social, like actually ran Gary V’s tech talk, like in the early days. Um, so I sort of envisioned as like, and whatever, like those three folks and maybe their person is someone from Megafon, like Jacob, you know, it’s like they’re going to do a weekly call. You know, it’s also like, I think as a creative person, it’s fun to have people like run ideas back and forth with each other. Like, you know, but like, yeah, my, my thesis here is like, I’d rather put three, like very smart people on just like working on this, but make sure, like, I would want to make sure there’s an upside for Jacob at the end of it, that like motivates him or all the other clients. Of course, my vision would be like, how do we create this like pod of like very smart people where it’s like, if they get this, they enough money, maybe not to be set for life for like what you and I consider, you know, set for life. Right. One in their 20s or, you know, someone that’s, you know, making $8,000 a month or whatever, you know, like making a hundred grand a year, the dollar check, like hitting your bank account, you know, basically in two and a half years, if we could crush this, and maybe we have to give you guys more, you know, to kind of like make up for the time investment stuff. And like, I’m still working out the specifics. We haven’t drafted anything. This is like a high level approach I came up with a week and a half ago. Um, but like, you know, that’s my like I think that can be really motivating to people because it’s like all they have to do is Blow me up and they have financial independence, you know, and they don’t have to worry about their kids college and like Yeah, right. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, and I mean look I think it’s it’s an exciting project for us because it’s obviously an incredible case study if we can make it a success for you, so It’s a thing where I would probably be comfortable Investing some of my time to sort of personally so beyond some of those calls especially early on with Jacob and with the other folks, we could figure out something that makes sense for that. But yeah, I think I definitely want to be involved from our end and would be happy to do it. So yeah, I think it can work. And Jacob and I have an incredible relationship. So I’m sure we can figure out something to make the sort of the back end win for him a really big piece this and have him motivated in the right way as well. [Emil Barr]: And we can enlarge the pie a little bit if you’re also participating and like understanding that it might be more upfront investment and you’re not going to be as deep in it, but you know, we can enlarge the pie a little bit and stuff like that. Like ultimately, if we raise a billion dollars, we’re talking about a fraction of a percent paid out the folks that do this and that’s my litmus test. So it’s like, look, if we hit it, you know, I, I’m less concerned about, you know, fractions of percents. I just want everyone kind of excited about this. Yeah. And I do think that, you It’s doable, right? Like, the nice thing is, because I’m not in this to make leads or money, it’s just about grabbing attention, you know, and really we just need the attention of like, raising a billion dollars isn’t that hard. There’s like, probably a hundred people in the world that write those size checks, but like, SoftBank won’t write a minimum size check, right? So there’s funds out there that like, won’t write less than a billion dollars. So it’s like, you have to get the attention of millions of people to get the attention of like, ironically, a hundred people. But if you’re like, no, when you’re some random fucking kid from Ohio, you know, like they don’t give a fuck, right? Like, you know, but like, if you’re someone that’s has a personal brand, it’s like worth knowing, like, it’s ironic. So like, I keep talking about Gary and I don’t want necessarily Gary’s brand, I think we can actually be a little bit more controversial and talk about bringing back the dinosaurs. And like, I think we can like lean less into like the Gary stuff. But like, everyone knows Gary V. And I we met with his agency, they’re only doing about 50 dollars in top line, they’re doing like 10 in profit, like Candid is a third of the size of VaynerMedia. And we’re looking actually at doing a roll up because we think we can be larger than VaynerMedia like the next two and a half years, you know, like, because it’s Gary, like how many agency owners out there have like those types of agencies, like he can DM Trump, and like Trump will hop on a call with him, you know, like he could DM Masa from SoftBank and like, they’ll be like, Oh, this guy’s legit, you know, he’s built that for himself. And like, same thing, Alex Ramosi And again, like just emphasizing, I don’t want the brand of them, but like when we look at them as case studies, he had a gym, he had like five gyms that he grew and great. Like I could go out and buy five gyms tomorrow. So it’s like, you’re not seeing the most successful founders or like business people translate to the largest brands. I think there’s an X factor of people taking content seriously and having like teams in place and really treating it as a priority. And that’s what I want to lock that X factor because I don’t think business success and personal branding or like awareness, there’s definitely like not, there’s a correlation, you have to have some element of success, but there’s not this like really neat one for one correlation, where the more money your business makes, the more of a platform you have, it’s almost definitely inversed. [Michael Houck]: And I think I think you have an interesting chance at this too, or shot at this too, because at least in the, you know, the months we’ve been working together so far, you have been very comfortable sort of leaning into more experimental stuff, more controversial stuff, stuff that is going to have the potential to generate impressions if we package it up and all that. So I think that if we’re approaching this from the perspective of, okay, let’s get a team in here, let’s do omni-channel, and let’s lean into some of that stuff. [Emil Barr]: I would rather we try all sorts of stuff for six months and have no results, because you guys have a two-year or three-year guaranteed contract where you don’t have to worry about proving month-over-month ROI. Find that one thing that works and takes off like wildfire versus like this kind of like stuff that like, we’re doing it to keep the client happy. But like, I’ve been in an agency, but like, I think that’s why it’s very hard to align incentives then because you are optimizing for lack of churn, not for like, finding that silver crazy bullet, you know, it’s like, it’s like you’re trying to show consistent growth versus like gambling and like trying 50 things in hopes that like one is the thing that takes off. [Michael Houck]: Right, like the weekly Slack message metric report becomes less important than hey, have we had some big spike, or are we moving in the right direction, are we trying the right things, and all that. I think that makes sense. Yeah, look man, I’d love to do this, and I know Jacob would too, I know Halo’s working with you as well, so I guess if we were to do that, what would it look like, And if you don’t have it kind of planned out right now, that’s fine, we can touch base over email or next week or something. I think you guys would be great for you guys to put some thoughts together. [Emil Barr]: I think the general thesis is it would be a long term engagement so that you guys don’t have to worry about covering costs, you know, or anything like that. Like I want to optimize. And then it would be basically this idea with this like large chunk of the pie at the end, you know, or like a meaningful enough amount of, and we’re still working on the specifics with everyone at like money where it’s like, if we crush it, we crush it. And then it wouldn’t be like, obviously like I’m not building a truly in-house team, but the idea would be that there’s probably going to be more upfront time and like just time investment here than like a typical client that you could go out and get for that price, which is the case for everyone that I talk to. It’s like a startup, you’re taking a little bit of a pay cut, putting in a little bit more time, because if we succeed, there’s this huge financial outcome for everyone involved. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, totally makes sense to me. That’s how I’ve lived in a lot of ways throughout a lot of my life, so I’m with you a thousand percent. Okay, I’ll put some thoughts together for what it would look like if it’s just Jacob versus Um, and, um, and yeah, in terms of like calls and the extra upfront work and things like that, that’s totally fine. We can, we can, we’re happy to do that basis. Right? [Emil Barr]: Like, like I was talking to the PR guy and he’s like, do you want to do a daily comment? No, like I don’t have, I’m just like, I just think that there’s something magical that happens when you put multiple creative people in a room instead of also in agencies, you’re working in a silo and you have like lots of clients. What if we just put someone that’s a genius at Tik TOK, someone really good at PR you guys together, like, and let you guys just talk and like, I’m happy go to those meetings and give opinions, you know, or you don’t need me to like, whatever, talk without me, like, stuff was great, because we had our own group chat. And half the time we should talk to him, like you should be doing this. But like something magic happens there, you know, versus when you’re just alone behind a computer screen, I think it’s harder to like find that x factor, if it’s just like, if that makes sense. [Michael Houck]: It makes total sense. I think it could be something special and something fun for for us as well. So let me chat with Jacob. I’ll do that today, assuming he’s not done. I mean, I think it’s four o’clock, I should be able to catch him. So I’ll chat with him today. I’ll follow up by Sunday or Monday at the latest. Cool. [Emil Barr]: Sounds great, man. As I said, we can sort of iron out the details. We have a little bit of time. I’m actually really excited to be open to this as an agency. I mean, you’re a startup guy, but most agencies coming from that world. [Michael Houck]: Oh, yeah. Well, I think, you know, it’s, I’m more of a I’m more of a Silicon Valley guy than a traditional agency guy. So it’s, yeah, we’re happy to do it. I think it’d be fun. [Emil Barr]: I think you get the you get the idea then. But yeah, like the PR agency I talked to looked at me like I have three heads. [Michael Houck]: Most most agencies wouldn’t be fair. [Michael Houck]: So like, why would I do that? Right? Like, I really appreciate it. [Emil Barr]: I want to be mindful of your time. But yeah, just let me know. And you’ve got my slack. You’ve got whatever we can talk back and forth as well as you need. Cool. Sounds good, brother. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Talk soon. Have a good fourth. Bye. You too.