- Duration: 45 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01K3S0GXMXBHY8RQFGAFFTVX0P (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01K3S0GXMXBHY8RQFGAFFTVX0P)
Transcript
[Grace Lemire]: Hello. Hey, what’s going on? [Michael Houck]: Nothing much. [Michael Houck]: How are you? [Grace Lemire]: Um, I’m okay. [Michael Houck]: A little hectic, hecticness going on, but nothing unusual, I suppose. Um, how are you? Been a while. Has been a while. [Grace Lemire]: Yes. I am also all right. Yeah. Dealing with some crazy health stuff. So I’ve been, Oh, in and out and will continue to be, but today we’re upright and breathing. [Michael Houck]: So we’re here. [Michael Houck]: You’re good. All good. Optimistic. Nothing long-term concerning or anything like that. [Grace Lemire]: Like you’re, you’re good. It’s long-term concerning, but it’s, um, you gotta, you gotta, I don’t know, not focus on it. I have in a month, a procedure to rule out a type cancer, which is crazy. And then three weeks after that, um, a surgery that will hopefully be able to diagnose whatever’s going on. So it’s one of those things where it’s like end is in sight, but it’s like the, that climax of the story where it’s like, I don’t really want to be here. You know? Like, I’m like, this is not a fun climax of a story. Um, but it’s, it’s like a good thing at the same time. Cause it’s kind of like the, the end. Cause I know I’ve told you before health tests have been going on for forever. So chaotic in that way, but like I said, it’s like a, we’re almost there. Almost there. Yeah. Getting that clarity will be better than the uncertainty for sure. [Michael Houck]: Exactly. Exactly. [Grace Lemire]: And hopefully it’ll bring some like actual like physical relief to, to the pain. So I’ve been like in and out a lot recently. Um, so. [Michael Houck]: Well, let us know if there’s anything obviously that we can do or to make it easier on you on our side or anything like that. So, um, wish you the best. Okay, well look, let’s power through this. [Grace Lemire]: I don’t think we’ll need probably the full half. [Michael Houck]: Maybe we will actually, because there’s a lot of stuff for Lee, but I think the way we’ve been doing these so far is just like kind of getting your Read like on the situation, like with the client, like where are the biggest needs to address and then diving into like, okay, what strategy updates like should we make? And I think we’ve talked a little bit about this sort of back and forth over Slack, Yeah, I guess just like started off where you see the the issues, challenges and then opportunities. [Grace Lemire]: Yeah. I. I will just put everything like I feel like very bluntly. I feel like, I don’t feel I mean X has not been successful. I see that I think everybody sees that. I haven’t really apparently isn’t said I’m like, you’re, you’re letting just where you’re paying for what? Like, I don’t know. And I will say, yeah, that hasn’t really felt successful. And I, and I know that, which is why I brought up to you, um, over Slack, the conversation I had with Lee at the cafe, and we ran into each other about like doing more building and public content and that kind of conversation. Um, I see him. I try to be like, what’s going on with the product? Like, cause I’m like, I need context for your posts. Um, but I also don’t want to be sitting at the cafe for like, cause every time we see each other, it’ll be like an hour plus conversation. I just like, can’t afford to do that all the time. Um, but yeah, that doesn’t feel very successful to me. Um, I think I am like running out of things to talk about because I don’t context from him like there’s only so many things I can talk about and also within his realm of what he wants to talk about like and I know with X like we’ve had conversations too about does this type of content even make sense there because I was looking at other finance creators and I kept finding that um ones that have a lot of them that have large platforms but are or like not necessarily large but but like, you know, 20 K plus followers, whatever. A lot of them, their engagement, like there’s a guy that literally has a million followers on X and he gets like, it’s like maybe a thousand impressions from his posts and like no replies. And I was looking at a bunch of other finance creators and I kept finding the same thing, like finance creators in the sense of like similar to him. And I was kind of like, okay, the engagement seems off. It seems like these people, like maybe there was time when this like blew up or like they had, it was working and now it’s really not. So then I was like, okay, what in the finance space is working? And what I kept finding was they were investing creators, like commenting on stocks and things like that. And that is not an area that, uh, Lee really wants to be, nor does it make sense for his product. So to me, I’m like, okay. When I think about Lee as an individual as well, the man knows literally everybody in the city of St. Pete. Like I’ll meet somebody, I’ll say, Oh, I have a client who lives here. Cause isn’t Lee. And I’m like, I’m like, I think I said in my contract, I’m not going to say who this is, but Lee will tell me, Oh, this is great. She writes all my stuff. Like he’ll literally tell everybody. So he knows everyone here. Like he is a boots on the ground networking kind of guy. So in my head, I was like, why is, why are we on X? Like, I feel like if he already has a strong network, if he got on LinkedIn connected with the people that or in his network in person, just connected with them online. To me, I’m like, that makes way more sense. Like just like thinking about content wise and like who Lee is as an individual, like he’s much more of a personal connection, networky kind of person. So to me, I was like, to me, that feels more like a LinkedIn thing, but then also I’m like, okay, who, who is his ideal user? It is a paid budgeting platform. There is no free tier. So to me, people who are cheap are not going to sign up for it. It needs to be people who already see the value in paying for a budgeting platform, which to me is probably going to be somebody who’s paid for something else, didn’t like it, but would be willing to pay for something that works. Because they have to already be in the mindset of like, to me, it’s worth it to budget because they’re going to be there. Or broken or barely getting by, you know? Because then why would you pay for, I mean, maybe, maybe if you’re broke, you’d pay for something, but [Michael Houck]: Isn’t his platform, I have a couple notes we’ll come back to later, but just one question on that particularly. Isn’t his platform, like, I’m just, I’m thinking back to like the early sales calls that I had with him in the kickoff call. Didn’t he say that it was like, he’s targeting sort of the lower end of the market, like the people who really need help with a budget, they don’t have a lot of money. [Grace Lemire]: I’ve never heard that. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I could be wrong. [Grace Lemire]: I could be wrong. Also, I know the platform has kind of evolved part of what I also, sorry, I have lots of thoughts and I feel like I’m just like, almost feel like there’s a mismatch with like the newsletter audience because he doesn’t, he doesn’t want to talk about dispute B, which I think, and I understand, stand like the side of he’s like credit repair is a very like dicey kind of industry and there are a lot of scams and so he didn’t want to like touch that because he’s like I don’t want people to think that I like created a scam but the way that I see it is I’m like if you truly are 10 toes down what you’re doing is ethical you can prove like that’s not you’re like okay like if you think credit repair is a scam as a whole like I don’t know I just like to me, and also, like, even Oli, like, it would never… [Michael Houck]: Yeah, but I mean, to be fair, like, the people who just find him online aren’t gonna know him, right? But, like, if he wants to be sort of the light in the darkness and sort of, you know, stand out in that way, it actually will be a good way to stand out, but at the same time, I can understand sort of not wanting to… The first impression people have, like, you’ll have to win them over, basically. [Grace Lemire]: Right. And so I think with that, And that to me that has like impacted things in two ways. One, it’s hard to, when we’re doing like the personal finance kind of education content, which I think people are fatigued on anyways, there’s no, it’s hard to give people a reason as to why they should care or why they should care to learn from Lee specifically. If someone is telling me like, oh, I founded six personal finance companies. I’m like, okay, cool. And like, they exited all of them. I’m like, cool. I want to know, like, I want to learn about startups from you or if someone’s saying, oh, I’m a net worth millionaire at 30, I’m like, okay, cool. I want to know what you’re saying, but Right. [Michael Houck]: Like, like, like I worked at Toys R Us and now I’m a millionaire in 10 years. That’s the story. Right. [Grace Lemire]: I’m like, cool. I want to, now I also am like, I want to, I want to hear about what you think about budgeting, but he, Lee is not really like that. He’s not flashy. He’s not like someone who’s going to be like, I drive a Tesla and whatever. Or I, you know, he just, not or even just like I he doesn’t want to talk about the company he founded or his net worth hit you know what I mean so I’m like I don’t know how to create like credibility with that information like I’m like why would someone care to learn about personal finance from you specifically because I don’t feel like those reasons he wants to share but also when we’re importing the people from DisputeBee into the new newsletter, he was like, I don’t really want to do financial education. So I tried to do more like not reporting style. I don’t know what the word would be, but like financial regrets rather than like, here’s how to budget or how to do whatever. It was like, here’s what people tend to regret and like how you can avoid those things. Or like, here’s like, like just like I tried to pull away a little bit from, or like his financial regrets or things that he’s heard from, you know, like bringing his own angle to it. But I think the problem is a lot of like the people who’ve reached out to dispute being on his email list are people who have very poor credit. So these are people who probably have credit card debt up to their eyeballs or like medical debt up to their eyeballs. [Grace Lemire]: That’s what he said. [Michael Houck]: That’s that’s what he said. I’m connecting the dots now. Yeah, that’s what he said. [Grace Lemire]: And so I’m like, OK, They probably are not the people who are like, we need to tell them like, Hey, you don’t actually need to store a hundred thousand dollars cash in your savings account. Like you’re going to be okay. These are people who like, they don’t even know. Not that all of them don’t because debt is not something it’s not. Sometimes you kind of have to take on debt. Life happens. You have to take on debt. I get that. But like, these are people who are probably barely scraping by in a lot of ways. So I’m like, I, you know what I mean? So I’m like, but then how do, how are we convincing these people that Lee is who they need to be learning from And that it’s valuable to learn from Lee specifically because it’s from him. Like how, how are we creating that like credibility to where people are like, yeah, I, I feel some sort of relationship to you. So I care to learn from you specifically. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And also with these people, like if they’re in these situations where they barely scraping by, they are like, who they choose to trust is actually a high risk decision for them. Exactly. Right? So establishing that credibility is more important than it would be with a sort of broader, more general, typical audience that we would sort of see in the space. So yeah, I think it’s, I mean, Blake, what’s your POV on this? Because what I’m hearing is that it probably is really important for us to sort of get Lita, you know, pull back the curtain a little bit. And let himself establish that credibility. [Blake Emal]: Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked about this before, and I still don’t know that I have an answer for all this. My gut is like, do we just need to have a regrouping chat and get aligned on what he can reasonably give us, and maybe that’ll help inform what we can do strategy-wise? Because right now, from what I’ve seen, we get, not even withstanding all of the things that Grace has just brought up but like we don’t get edits or feedback or like anything post content either so there’s really no pre or post maybe that’s a signal that we might want to regroup a little bit but at the same time I don’t I don’t want to rock the boat too much with him if he’s he feels like he’s good but I mean for how long is he gonna feel good if we have not been feeling good about it for months correct I one thing I will say or a couple things So one of the things is so well, I tried DMing him after our. [Grace Lemire]: Thread like, um. On slack. Him on slack because, uh, sometimes there’s been a couple of times, not many times that he’s like DM me on slack. Um, just like personally being like, I’ll get those answers to you. Or like, he asked me a question about like marketing in general. Like he there’s someone in the city that we both kind of know. And, um, he would answer quickly through there, but then not in the main Slack, which I was just like, and it’s not like there’s any sort of conversation that’s happening there that couldn’t happen in the main one. So I was kind of confused, you know, um, like I was like, what, we don’t need to hide this from the rest of the people. Um, so I sent him a DM, um, last week and I said like, Hey, do you have an estimate on when you might be able to give voice notes? I’m really needing like more context. Because I felt like he might feel like if it’s like I’m DMing you now, like it’s a little serious and like we have a good relationship. So like, Please, it seems fine. [Michael Houck]: It’s fine. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, of course I thought that might like light a fire under his butt. [Grace Lemire]: He didn’t respond and then I sent him a message yesterday and I tagged him just like I know you’re already getting a notification because it’s a DM, but I’m going to tag you. You get double notifications like hello and I was just like, just like hey like you know, we really want to test this, da, da, still haven’t gotten a response from him. And I think what irks me a little bit is I’m like, I will see him in person and he’ll be having hour long conversations with like random people in these coffee shops. Like, so I’m like, I know that you could take 30 minutes and you could respond to these or at least give me something. Well, no, he can’t. [Michael Houck]: He can’t do that because he’s having hour long conversations in coffee shops. Exactly. [Grace Lemire]: But I’m like, I know if you prioritize this, like if like so I’m kind of I’m like getting irritated um because I’m just like I don’t really know what else what to do here I think like like I don’t know how else to contact him other than like ambushing him in a coffee shop but I’m like it’s not in my scope to perform an in-person ambush um I also don’t want to I mean I’m happy to do it to like have a conversation with him in person or do the interviews with him in person but I’m like this is getting extra at this point he did tell me at one point this was about maybe a month and a half ago two months ago um do you guys know who robert croak is he founded silly bands I don’t know if you know that company um like little gummy bracelets became like a multi-million dollar company they were huge when I was a kid um he lives in st pete he happens to live in the same building as um as lee and um he ran into and had a conversation with him and Robert told him he was like, I guess Lee mentioned that he was like doing some like newsletter and personal brand building on social media. And Robert said, yeah, anything like that takes like, you got to let it just go for like at least eight months and just like, you know, let it build and like let things kind of work. So I know Lee has that expectation of like, he’s not like a, this has to happen overnight, but at some point the eight month mark will happen. And he’ll be like, okay, you know? So I have been like, okay, maybe because he’s finishing the budgeting feature, I don’t need to push him too much. [Michael Houck]: My Read on him is that he just doesn’t have a lot of urgency for much of anything. Like, you know, he told us four months ago that we had to be ready to execute on the rebrand and he still hasn’t launched that for the product itself, right? So, you know, at some point, like the analogy with like a bigger company would be at some point, the accountant’s going to Read the mail, right? At some point, he’s going to go into Stripe and be like, or his credit card bill and be like, Oh, I’m paying these guys a couple thousand dollars a month for, for, you know, these services. And I want to make sure we’re getting ROI. And that’s sort of my sort of whole thing right now is like, let’s get ahead of that. And it sounds like yours is too, but like you also, it sounds like are sort of in this position where if you don’t get more from him, it’s hard for you to do that. Which is fair. So, I mean, you know, maybe what we do is we just sort of proactively mentioned that we want to do LinkedIn, see if he gives us credentials to set up the account and then see if he gives us like a personal email list of people that we can go find and connect to from him and therefore get that going. And like, we can have the ops team do that. Like that wouldn’t be on you to, to, to do that. Um, cause I agree. I mean, it sounds like, it sounds like that’ll be easier than X. But the content side is tough. I see the challenges that you’re sort of dealing with and that you’re raising here. And I don’t know, Blake, what’s your POV? Because it’s, I mean, it’s valid what Grace is raising. [Blake Emal]: Yeah, I mean, it puts you in an impossible situation when you have to come up with things out of thin air. And then eventually what happens is client doesn’t give input or output or one of the two, but either you kind of need both. Then eventually, writer runs out of original ideas. If we don’t get more inputs via voice note or whatever, writer has to come up with things from thin air, which leads to broader content because how could it not? We don’t know inside their brain what their stories are. And then the client is like, Hey, why is this sounding like generic LinkedIn stuff? And then we’re like, well, because you haven’t done your job. So it’s like that, you know, the virtuous cycle there. I mean, if we, if we convince him to get on LinkedIn, I that feeds really well into what we’ve talked about recently of doing more short form stuff, but still like, so, so far it’s been, we can do longer stuff and shorter stuff, but like the LinkedIn can be the focal point where the longer piece gets written and we can just repurpose based off of that and break it into chunks and repurpose that to X and still serve both platforms without too much more effort. So I think we could make him happy that way if we can convince him to see the value of of the other platform, because like I’ve expressed this to you Houck, but like my concern is he’s been posting for so long on X and nothing’s happened that I’m like, is he just, is his account just totally doomed? Is there something behind the scenes that we have zero control over that will not get unlocked no matter how good we are? [Michael Houck]: Grace, I just dropped, this is the account of one of our creators on Megaphone who’s in the sort of finance space. It’s not personal finance specifically, but it’s also not investing specifically. And sometimes his posts don’t get good engagement, but often they do. If you just scroll through, you’ll see multiple stuff with thousands of likes and things like that. He obviously has a huge follower base, but could be helpful to Read through and get some inspo for what topics and ways of talking about it are generating interest right now. I would say, yeah, I mean, look, I don’t necessarily think you should go and sit down with him for an hour in the coffee shop every week or something like that. But if you see him there, maybe just say, hey, just want to check in and see, we need this. Just reinforce what you’ve been saying over Slack, but in person, force the issue a little bit lightly. [Grace Lemire]: I’ve tried to. The last time I saw him, I think, was three weeks ago. And it’s been raining like crazy, like cats and dogs here. So I’m not going to the coffee shop. It’s rainy season here, but um When I have seen him I have been like like the last time I talked to him I we talked about for about an hour about um just different things and about Having it be more building in public and when you step into that and all these content things and I was like, yeah I was like cool. So when I get home in 15 minutes, I’m gonna send you some questions and then I was like Centered around this conversation. I said if you can have them by end of day tomorrow, he was like, yeah for sure We’ll have the budgeting feature launched tomorrow and then I’ll send them. So I was like, okay, great. I’ll send those questions when I get home. Like I was very like, I mean, I was trying to not make it seem like I’m trying to push him hard, hard, but like, you know, since I’m seeing, I’m like face to face with him. But I also think too, like with, I think with money related products, there’s already a, um, like a budgeting product like this. It’s not like buying a book where like you buy it and then it’s like, you know, it’s not really, it’s very simple. With a budgeting tool like this, you’re like, you’re literally connecting all your bank accounts and like everything, like there’s a- It’s onboarding tax. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. [Grace Lemire]: And so I think the way that I see it too with these types of things is like thinking about, again, who we’re importing from Dispute B and like all of that, it feels like there’s mismatch because also because of to me it would be easier to convince someone who has already budgeted or used something before and just want something better or like someone who is like yeah I guess more a little bit more established and already like familiar with the idea of a budgeting tool and like budgeting software maybe they’ve like even just like looked at one in the app store or they’ve downloaded one, but then they were like, I don’t know. Like, I don’t like the interface or like whatever it may be, because that’s a lot of, he was showing me the product in person. Like a month ago, we sat there for like two hours or a month and a half ago and was like showing me different things. It just, it’s similar to what’s out there. It just solves for a lot of the like dumb things, like dumb UI things that other platforms have. Like when you hit the back button and it refreshes your whole budget feed, why is it doing that? That’s annoying. Now you’re back at the top and you are looking at a transaction from two months ago like it solves for like these little things and has a smoother interface um so to me it’s like trying to convince somebody who like is already struggling to pay their bills to pay 12 bucks a month for a platform you know like so and so to me I’m like in my head I’m like okay where are people who are making money LinkedIn like you know they’re already there they’re there for work because they’re making money or trying to They have a job. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Grace Lemire]: They have a job. You’re employed and you’re maybe a little bit more stable versus maybe someone who doesn’t. So to me, it’s just like, I don’t know. I think, I feel like we’re all on the same page in terms of like direction and whatnot. And I appreciate you saying that Blake about like, like, cause at one point I was just like, am I dumb? Like I was like, I don’t have any more ideas. Like I was getting desperate and everything I was looking, I was, like I was literally having like AI I was like come up with like 10 you know every single one I had used or I thought was stupid and I was like oh my gosh I’m like I don’t know what else to say and how else to speed it without like additional context um yeah I think the real trick here is just getting him to respond like that’s awkward like I need you to get if you responded we could get a lot more when you’re talking about the sort of the differences that the product has, like, you know, it’s a competitive space. [Michael Houck]: It’s a commoditized space. Also, all the products do the same thing. Right. And so the little things can make a difference. Are they going to make enough of a difference for someone to switch? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. It seems like maybe less than a 10 X improvement. Right. But it does seem like an improvement. So maybe what we do is as we’re sort of going after these folks, especially through LinkedIn, we build out some new onboarding email sequence for the newsletter. And therefore we like use it to highlight the product first and foremost, multiple emails spread out over a couple of weeks, right? So that again, we’re maximizing ROI for Lee. He’s getting the maximum users that he can from this. [Grace Lemire]: I also think too, like he talked to me at one point. So this guy, Robert Croak, he’s like, I think in his sixties, maybe early seventies, point like um but he’s also a content creator now and he makes like money content and so he was talking to lee about like lee asked him he was like you know is influencer marketing something that I should maybe explore with this and whatever and robert was just like I don’t remember what advice he gave him but then lee started asking me about it and I was like I’m in a this is a weird, I’m like, I don’t want to say yes, because I don’t want you to stop doing the ghost reading. And I was like, I also like, I’m going to give you honest advice. And I told him, I was like, no, like, I don’t think you should do influencer marketing. You’re going to spend an arm and a leg. I was like, if anything, affiliate program. And I was like, obviously because I met Lee through you guys, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t work with Lee like one-on-one. So I told him, I was like, maybe that’s something that Hulk might have thoughts on or something we could add to your package, because I know how to set that up. So obviously, if that’s something we wanted to expand to, you know, but I said to him, I was like, I think that would make more sense. But then again, thinking about LinkedIn, if you have affiliates that are LinkedIn creators, engaging with your posts, reshare, like, I just think the ecosystem there makes more sense. [Michael Houck]: I mean, even just with his audience, you know, these people who they need, they need money, need opportunity, right? They need to get out of debt or get their credit score up or whatever. That audience will take well to an affiliate like offer because it’s, it’s, you know, all that, like, what do they care? They promote it and a few people sign up and it helps them meaningfully. Right? So, um, I do think it’s a good idea. I can shoot him a note and maybe start a conversation with him between me and him kind of that way. And then as we get into it, I can sort of, Hey, you know, I’ve noticed this thing, like maybe we should figure out how to set up better engagement. More from you, like in a nice way. But I agree with you, Grace. It seems like the number one problem and really, really the only problem because everything else is solvable. The only real actual problem is like, this guy just seems to have no urgency and engagement with anything that we’re doing. [Grace Lemire]: Yeah. And I feel like it’s, it’s, you were saying earlier, like, um, something about like my like role in this and like it’s I don’t remember exactly how you worded it but it’s not that I like I want to do work that I feel like is providing value to a client and I feel like and to like the agency right like this is not generating at this moment in time you know really like amazing insights that are like wow look at like what we did for this client you know it’s not bringing that for me it’s not bringing that for you and it’s really bringing much of an ROI for Lee and that that’s not like satisfying to me either as like as the writer um so like I’m trying to think actively too about how to solve that problem but I feel like it’s gone to a point where I’m like okay well now I feel like my hands are tied like I’m I’ve I’ve been trying to do as much as I can um but like I also want to like provide value to the to the client and like problem solve for that. And I do feel like, yeah, like you said, the thing that I’m like, I don’t know how else to solve this is getting him to respond. So honestly, I think, I mean, maybe if you, like you said, if you reach out to him, I feel like when you come in, it’s like, oh, this is serious, you know? Like whenever I get a Slack, I’m like, oh no, it’s serious. I get tagged in Slack. So I feel like we still have the same, Like, oh, OK, I should respond. But I also think like, I know I I hope he’ll respond well to like, Hey, like instead of just continuing on like doing this like we think this would be like way like would work better like you know. Yeah, I obviously I’ll frame it as like not like this is not doing well. [Michael Houck]: I’ll frame it as hey here we can improve it right. I mean look the worst case scenario here. It seems like is that. We just sort of keep hitting on the same topics and then eventually he turns out, right? I don’t know when that would happen. It could be two months, it could be 12 months for all I know, right? But that’s a worst case scenario. The best case scenario is that when I message him, we have a conversation, he gets excited about a new strategy and it’s sort of more fulfilling all around, adding more value all around. So I think that’s the next step here. I can let you know sort of how that goes. I know it’s Labor Day on Monday, I probably won’t do it till next week, but I don’t know, like Blake, is there anything that we’re missing here that we haven’t talked about that you’re seeing? [Blake Emal]: No, not really. I’d know more if I had any feedback from him to like say, oh, he didn’t like it. Usually this is like a voice conversation, right? It’s like the voice still not hitting. That’s not the problem. It’s kind of everything else. So no, I don’t. I mean, I have the same concerns I think making a shift to LinkedIn makes sense. There’s just a possibility that the audience also isn’t there. I guess that’s another thing to think about, but it’s just clearly not hitting on X. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, but I feel like there’s, you know, people are interested in financial topics that aren’t just investing, right? Like there’s more to talk about in this space. And I think he hasn’t given us a lot of that talk about, right? We’ve been sort of constrained as a result, but personally, I’m not ready to sort of give up on the idea that there is an audience for this. Um, I think it’s just, we need to make sure that a we’re on the right platform for it and prioritizing that platform and be, um, that he’s sort of giving us enough so that the content is, you know, it’s personal. It sounds like him. It’s unique. It stands out. It’s not just the next guy saying, Hey, you should do this, budgeting tip, right? [Grace Lemire]: Um, I think like, so two things, one, I don’t use X. I’ve never written for a client on X. The idea of X scares me. Like I’m like, I don’t want to be there. So if there are things like, and I said this over Slack too, but like there, I, I will look on X for like examples of things and content, you know, ideas and like things like that. Um, But if they’re like formatting things or it’s like, like I always look at whenever you make edits flake and you move it over to client review, I always like look at it to see like what you edited and try to like take that all into account. But obviously it’s like a trying to remember like, okay, what, what was it before? Um, so I’ll look at like the suggestions and things, but I’m like so open to feedback on that because I don’t like X is not my strong suit at all. Like I much prefer the LinkedIn space and newsletters. But I think the other thing is seeing like how the personal aspect of like how he uses the tool like I always think that that like you know the guy from beehive the one with the big desk energy I think yeah yeah when he would talk about like how he uses beehive followed him for a long time, it’s like, okay, like you’re literally showing how you’re successful with this. Like, I think that that element of would be helpful here. Like, are you, do you even use your own tool? And like, he does, he has his own data, like pulled into it. He like showed me, um, and he’s talked about, we’ve had conversations about like, he buys coffee out like almost every single day. Cause he likes to work in coffee shops and like is more productive there. He says, and things like that. Like, Okay, let’s talk. Yeah, he said, allegedly, um, but you know, so I’m like, let’s talk about it. Like, bring up, like, let me show me inside your own product, how you are looking at this, how much did you spend on coffee? Why is that? Okay. What like, but he’s also not the most controversial. He’s not, he doesn’t have an ounce of controversialness inside of him. Like he will be like, but that’s just my opinion. It’s like, you know, and I’m like, Oh my God. [Blake Emal]: Yeah. On X it’s there’s a couple things like hedging is awful. And it’s, it sounds like that’s going to be a problem. If everything has to be nuanced, like nuance just doesn’t live there. The second thing, I guess it does come to mind as well. Every client that I’ve worked with personally, that totally crushed it. Like the outlier people, the biggest factor is that they’re building awesome companies. Like they’re building stuff that is crazy that nobody else is willing to do, or they have a story that is so unlike anybody else that it’s just like endless content. So if, if we’re missing that piece, then we have to lean more into just insights and knowledge and stuff like that. Cause like, you can’t, you can’t inform the story really. And then the flip side, if he’s building a company that maybe this just isn’t it, it’s like a company and it could succeed, but it’s not. Inherently cool. It does make it way harder to have that explosive growth and exits way harder. Than it’s ever been. So even breaking through to like that next layer is harder than it used to be. But again, like there’s things we can operate even within those confines. It’s just we probably shouldn’t expect it to be like a crazy explosion. [Michael Houck]: I think that makes sense because I mean, we’ve seen this even with our clients through the agency. Like if people are interested in the product and the business that you’re building, that’s going to align. You’re going to be talking talking about the things that are in that same niche. And if people are interested in it, in a product, they’re going to be interested in the same kind of things and topics and content and all that. So like, if you’re building a newsletter platform, like Tyler is, people want to use that newsletter platform. Therefore, people are interested in content about newsletter platforms and the people building them, right? If you’re building, you know, right now, proactive healthcare is super hot, right? So if you’re building a proactive healthcare company, your content is going to be more likely, or like remote work, offshore hiring, things like that, that’s super hot. So it’s really easy to go viral in that space right now because there’s an inherent interest. Personal budgeting and personal finance, you know, I think what we need to do is like within that world, we need to think about what’s the biggest TAM? What are the content pieces, the content topics, the pillars that have the biggest TAM right now in terms of the amount of people who would be interested in it, right? Like where does that live? And then how can we create content to attack that within the sort of limited scope that Lee gives us? So, I mean, I don’t know, as you’re thinking about sort of future batches and ideas, Grace, I mean, obviously I’m going to reach out to Lee and we’ll kind of keep this conversation going with what he says there. But I would just say, like, my advice would be, think about it through that lens. Like, obviously we want to make him happy and be within sort of what he wants us to do. But we should be pushing that envelope towards the bigger TAM ideas. Like, I don’t know what those are in the personal finance and budgeting space, but, you know, I think with the research you do and just also your to the space than I am, I feel like we can find what those big, like, interesting topics are to people right now. Yeah. [Grace Lemire]: I’ve been trying to pull in, like, trends or, like, things that are, like, trending, like, on social media or things like that. But, like, simply put, he is just more of, like, a vanilla kind of guy. Like, you know, he just, he’s not controversial. He’s not opinionated. He has very standard thoughts and opinions on a lot a lot of things and it is a budgeting tool that is like marginally better than other stuff. So it’s like, it’s not like something, and I think over time you’ll get better and better, but it’s not like a standout product that you’re like, you know, which makes it difficult. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, look, if he, if he was trying to change the world, he’d be in Silicon Valley, right? Like he’s not, he’s trying to build a nice business and nice software product and help people. And that’s good. That’s great. We need that. But it does, it does make our job marketing. A bit harder. Okay, well, look, I’ll, I’ll try to chat with him. I’ll let you know how it goes. And we can, we can go from there. But was this helpful for you? Because it was definitely helpful for for me to understand. So what’s going on a little better? Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve just had a lot of these thoughts for a while. [Grace Lemire]: And I’m trying and I was just kind of like, I don’t really know, like I conveyed I know I sent you a message, you know, message at one point and just kind of like, shared my thoughts. But I was kind of just like, Am I the problem here? Like, I don’t know. But I think, I don’t know, I think it was a necessary conversation. So, yeah, I think in terms of ideas, I don’t necessarily, I’m not like, oh, wow, I have tons of ideas now. I think I’m still in the same spot of like, okay, what’s a girl to say? But problem for me next Wednesday when I write this next batch. So, but we’ll figure it out, we’ll get there. [Michael Houck]: And I guess, I mean, you definitely look at Andrew’s account, that one that I just sent. And then I guess, Blake, as you guys go through the sort of editing process, if any ideas come on your mind, obviously just share them with Grace and we’ll go from there. But yeah, I’ll try to make sure that we get some clarity here in the next couple of weeks, let’s say. [Grace Lemire]: Cool. All right. [Michael Houck]: That was good. Cool, guys. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good chat. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Bye.