- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01KEWGA93792YYSVSS28Q64GNE (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Ben Ornstein: the delegation system for the proactive engagements. So it’s working. Venus like actioned on it and it’s working. I only did it for a couple of clients though. So just got to build out more of it, but I stayed up late doing that. That’s dope. Michael Houck: You should share it with Blake and get his POV too from the content side. Cool. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: I could quickly about, it’s, it’s not anything insane right now. But so basically, I’ll just do it very quick. So for LinkedIn, I paid for LinkedIn sales navigator for a month to see if this could work. And so I created saved leads. So like there are lists, like like an email, email bar list of all these accounts that he’s listed it, you know, you know, he gave us our early on to engage with and then that we’ve built upon. So there’s that list, then there’s also saved keyword searches. So I have three separate ones, one for like work-life balance, one for like fundraising and someone, another one for like founders. And so like there’s the relevant keywords that are within those three. And basically you filter it further on the left and then you, on the left side, of the screen and you’re able to have filter for people who’ve recently posted within that set of people. I realized as I’m talking about this, it’s not going to be that helpful saying this, but basically it works without me having to source myself instead of Venus doing it. Michael Houck: It works without you having to source comments, because they can just see who from our target list has recently posted, basically. Ben Ornstein: Right, and so what she’s then doing from there is she throws in a recent post into Clog, like I would do, and then I have a spreadsheet where she puts in three potential replies from accepted posts that each custom GPT already, like, said was, yeah, this could be a post X client could comment on. Michael Houck: Sorry, I don’t understand the last part there. Ben Ornstein: So what happens is instead of like Venus can’t like go ahead and like put a proactive engagement in herself. So what happens is she’s she’s giving me comments that are she’s giving me three different versions. This is within the GPT that I said this. Ben Ornstein: For any post that a Jeep the custom Jeep Let’s use Emil as an example. For any post that’s something within 24 hours at the absolute max, that’s a relevant post for Emil to comment on, the text of the post gets submitted into Claude. Claude goes through its whole thing looking at the instructions that we gave it saying, hey, yes, this is a post that Emil could comment on, and then it it spits out three potential proactive engagements in his voice for us to like consider. Okay. So just so I’m clear. Michael Houck: So we have this LinkedIn thing set up. It’s surfacing recent posts or people who recently posted. Venus goes in, she finds a recent post. She drops the text of that post into Claude, into our little GPT prompt thing. And then it spits out three options that are tailored to him of what he could say in response topically, tonally, et cetera. And then what happens then? Does she keep wanting copy pastes into LinkedIn? Ben Ornstein: I have her put those in a spreadsheet for me to then review, to do like a final thing before I actually end up doing the proactive replies. Because I might tailor them further a little bit. That’s what I tend to do. Do you think we can get to a place where you are removed from that process? Michael Houck: Either, either by training her or by having another Claude thing that like she puts the final proposal one in there and has it evaluated. Ben Ornstein: Maybe, maybe, but the having the, if this works for all clients, if we have this process, I am saving, I’d be doing this like an hour a day, all for all clients. Ben Ornstein: What hour of the day? I’m saying like, I would spend a total of probably about an hour a day. Oh, okay. Okay, got it, got it, got it. Michael Houck: This would be a massive time saver. The posts that she is picking, are they all within the last like, like, are they like, fresh? Or are they like 24 hours old? Ben Ornstein: So I said, I gave her the constraint of like, we want them at an absolute maximum 24 hours old, but I want them like even sooner if we can. And she sourced ones that were well within 24 hours, like only a couple hours old, so. Michael Houck: Okay, yeah, I think that, like, emphasize to her as much as you can that, like, less than one hour old is the goal. And obviously we can make exceptions if we need to hit targets and get enough comments out. But the importance that you see an outsized benefit the faster you comment, basically, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ben Ornstein: Absolutely. Ben Ornstein: I’m very pleased with the beginning of this. It sounds like a great solution. Michael Houck: I would say the only things are the two things I flag. Let’s make sure the comments are happening on posts as quickly as possible. And then two, uh, let’s try to find a way to get you out of that process at some point, because I mean, I guess it’s not an issue today, so it’s not a high priority thing, but like, let’s, let’s envision a world where this acquisition goes through. Right. I want to be able to say, take Venus, and she can run with it. Ben Ornstein: Today, we could have it where Venus selects one of them and just comments. They’re not perfect. There’s still tailoring that I have to do afterwards, because I rarely take the GPT output. Ben Ornstein: But they’re in line, and it’s just tweaking a little bit. So it’s, I understand what you’re saying though. And like, I feel like I want to build out the process for all clients first, get this and then work on that part after. I’m not concerned about these. Michael Houck: I think everything here sounds great. I agree with everything you’re saying. All I’m saying is like, I’m thinking further down the line and I’m like, what does the future end state of this look like, That’s all. So I think it sounds great. Michael Houck: And yeah, I guess let’s, let’s start rolling it out to everybody. Just get Blake’s eyes on it. Understands Claude better than I do. But other than that, yeah, sounds good. Nice work you turned around so quickly too. Yeah, it’s working. Ben Ornstein: So I just got to build up all the saved searches for each client in LinkedIn. And then on the X side, it does involve, I haven’t done the X side yet because it involves the saved search. So the same list of accounts. It’s basically like, I haven’t tested it yet on X. So I need to do that because Venus was working from like a coffee shop or something. She didn’t have internet. So she had to go. Michael Houck: Let’s celebrate the win here, right? The win here is that it’s working and that we have something that we think we can scale to every client. Like that’s awesome. So I’m really excited about that. Ben Ornstein: And that’s gonna save me a lot of time. Ben Ornstein: I don’t have time during the day to build this out, which is why I’m doing it at night and I’m slowly building more and more. So I just, I need to get to a point where all that’s done. And so I’m also like, I’m trying to think about as well, splitting responsibilities between Rena and Venus where I can, because I want Venus to be spending a ton of her time here. And then in the event that Rena is gone, which I think we should safely assume that she will be. Michael Houck: We have to be planning as if she’s gonna be gone for over a month. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, that’s gonna be, so that’s one of the things I said that I still need to get to is figuring out what to do in that event. I mean, we have to go to Angelica, right? Michael Houck: Like there’s no other option really. Yeah, and is she involved, like does she work with Yeah, she does partnership stuff with Blake, but like, it’s, you know, she was asking for more hours, more projects and stuff. So she’s got tons of bandwidth. Okay, that’s good. Okay. So keep in mind, she’s, she’s not quite at the same level. Definitely a Verena, but probably even also a Venus. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. So, okay. Yeah, I’m gonna have to figure out to build processes for her. I gotta find time somewhere. That’s the biggest thing right now. Michael Houck: Well, it’s, you know, better than the opposite problem where you’re like making sure, worrying that we don’t have enough stuff going on, you know? There’s a lot going on for sure. Ben Ornstein: But so all in all, basically I’m pleased with the beginning of this. My hypothesis has proved to work. It’s just doing it now, building it all out. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Michael Houck: I guess what I will ask of you then is over the next, let’s say through the end of this month, as we’re rolling this out to everybody, just be hyper aware of any, like literally count how many times we need to, like clients get upset or they delete things or anything like that. I wanna see, is that more frequent, less frequent? Do they notice that it’s AI? Like, do they care? Like, where does that sit? Ben Ornstein: Okay, yep, sounds good. Okay, on the things to, Discuss what the first thing I have is what we talked about a few days ago like discuss how we can market Oh, actually, let me do the updates first because these are just like literally just giving you updates So on the typefully side we’ve officially switched from the FJX account login to the admin and megaphone studio email That’s gonna be actually really important as I mentioned before because if there are issues with Venus using our the X account we’re not like logged out of Typefully. So that was surprisingly more difficult than it should have been. Michael Houck: It’s not- Yeah, Typefully does not make that stuff really easy for whatever reason. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, so I had to go back and forth then over like a week, but it’s done now. So that’s good. Good. I hopped on the Weekly like big human call with Jacqueline and Steve today. Everyone’s officially all aligned. I’ve given Andrew everything that he needs to know. He’s like, like, all right, cool, we’re set. He cleared out that edits required thing. So we’re in a good place there. Michael Houck: Cool. OK. I have a note I’m going to send to Andrew as well, but it sounds like it’s probably the same stuff you already covered with them, but I’ll just shoot in my POV. Michael Houck: But yeah, I’m glad that they’re sort of back in the fold. I sent them that loom this morning that I think they’ll like, Michael Houck: Some really basic stuff they can just change to make it better. Michael Houck: But, yeah. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Michael Houck: Sorry, quick ask from you before I forget. I got a message in the channel from the Workmate guys today. They want to chat. It doesn’t sound like they’re canceling. It sounds like they want to see ROI. So, I mean, we’ve had them for a year. If they cancel, it is what it is, you know, but I’d like to avoid that. Um, so can you just pull together some stuff for me, similar type of stuff to what we’ve pulled together for other clients when they’ve done these types of calls, just like anything you think I might need when I talk to them in that setting. Yeah. Uh, when’s their call? Ben Ornstein: When’s the call? Oh, you, you haven’t booked it yet. Not scheduled yet, but this week for sure. Michael Houck: Okay. Michael Houck: Um, Okay. Ben Ornstein: Okay, um, man, the shade form guy is he’s he keeps texting me now he’s goes, he was concerned that the make the megaphone boost didn’t go well. Or, yeah, like the mega because he deposited like 2k. We reshared in the network, we did it again. Sky’s been texting, emailing calling. Michael Houck: I would say more anal than, yeah, he’s not upset about anything. Ben Ornstein: He’s just like, is it expanding? Is it, how’s the response? Is it anything else that we can do to get this amplified? You spend more money. You didn’t spend enough. I told you to spend more. Anyway. He’s freaking out. Michael Houck: I got it. He’s freaking out. Ben Ornstein: Well, so, and on that, I think it went very smoothly. All the sponsored posts were, posted it was like 4,500 bucks. Ben Ornstein: And then they, yeah, $2,000 were budgeted for. Yeah. So I think relatively well, just make sure that that Raphael adds everything to the database. Michael Houck: So we have a we have a tract. Yep. Yep. We'll do. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, so the system I talked about, and then yeah, just I have to think about. I'm going to split that LinkedIn connection responsibilities so far, like the Venus pulls together every single day, people for for each client to kind of like potential connections. And then I review that every day. That's what we've done. So I'm just we've done that for your LinkedIn. Knowles, Brindis is and now I'm adding in the rest of them too. And we are seeing the dividend. Michael Houck: like we are seeing follower count or connection count go up as a result? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I mean, when I'm doing reporting each week, like, you know, we are, we are seeing connections. Michael Houck: Because I know we see Noel and Brindis getting pretty good results consistently there. So that's, that's good. Okay. Yeah, so that's a daily process that we do. Ben Ornstein: I have not, Andrew was supposed to be handling it for like Brindis. It didn't seem like he was keeping up with that. So we have a ton of potential connections. So, yeah. Sounds good. Michael Houck: I guess, yeah, the more you can, I mean, look, really what you're doing right now and probably what you'll be doing for the next sounds like a couple of weeks is like just getting, getting a handle on everything and setting up the processes that'll let us go into the future, where like, we're not going to have to be as in the weeds of the business. Like if we don't sell it, right. And we have megaphone as we spin up the founding journey stuff. And as we spin these other way labeled offers, you know, um, I don't want your time or my time, but definitely not your time to get sucked into the weeds on managing day to day ops for megaphone. Like you can be, and I can be points of contact for clients on various stuff, but there's other things I want us to be spending our time on. So, um, it sounds like the next couple of weeks, there's going to be about like you, you're diving in and sort of setting all that up. Now. Yeah, it's gonna be for a while. Ben Ornstein: So get just getting a handle on things and just building the process because it's going to take time while I'm still doing the proactive engagements and all the many things that come up. But yeah, that's that's the goal for sure. Ben Ornstein: So am I am I safe to send the Jeffrey Weekly report over now that you have chatted? So we didn't chat. Michael Houck: But you can send it over. Yes. Okay. Got it. I talked to Steve today instead. Oh, Steve instead of Jeffrey, okay. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. I keep calling him Jeff. Michael Houck: I don't like Jeffrey. Yeah, I don't like Jeffrey either. I'm not a fan. Ben Ornstein: But yeah, I've tried to respond to Steve's emails. I don't really know the process since we haven't like done anything. I just try to respond as soon as I can to his emails. Yeah, I mean, I think just drive it forward. Michael Houck: context on Gatsby, this like weird platform they want to use for some reason. Is there any context you don't have on that? Andrew has a contact over at the Gatsby team who can help us. I would just say that like, you know, and this is more on Steve than on us, but they paid, I want to say either end of September or early October. And we haven't gotten a newsletter out yet. So it's like, no, I've had calls with them. I've had calls with Andrew and them. It just never got done. You know the process, you know how to work with Celine on getting these newsletters up. Just force it through and make sure that we get something live so that Steve doesn't get annoyed. Because right now they love us. They're referring clients. They're like, oh yeah, next year we'll do this. Like they're bought in, right? So like 2027 talking about, not like later this year, like next year. So I want to make sure we keep that. And Jeff's performance obviously has not been good. Steve sort of blames it on Jeff, I think, more than on us. But any other lags that we're doing will maybe change that perception. I don't want that to happen. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, I've already had a call with the Gatsby dude. So I had a call with him. The newsletters are set up. They're ready. It's just like they keep having little edits every single time. They also want to do this founder testimony email. It's finally done. They sent me the contact list today. So it's just like, all right, when do you want me to send this out? You can give context on that. Um, I have that I'm gonna have to input the list And then do it but you know, he didn't give me that contact. So that was my email. I sent right for this But so yes, basically I'm moving those things forward. Um As well, I'm just I'm hoping I'm not missing anything. There's so many things I'm trying to catch up on No, it's okay, man. Michael Houck: Don't don't put yourself in burnout mode. You know, we've got we've got time Not in a big rush on a lot of this stuff. Um, obviously has to get done But just, yeah, take your time with it for sure. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: So I wanted to say thoughts on the feed, guys. I know we haven't done much because you've been crazy busy. Ben Ornstein: Do they seem like they're decent so far? Yeah, so they've been running ads. Michael Houck: I found this out like a couple of days ago. I didn't even know. They've been running ads for founding journeys pitch deck database. And the CPA is okay. It's like $2.50 per subscriber, which, you know, for example, we have ads from the Matt McGarry era and then some of the ones that you did that can get like a little bit under $2 per, but the feed’s whole premise is these are gonna be higher quality leads who are gonna pay for things more. And we have seen an uptick in people buying the case studies, not a huge uptick, but an uptick. So I think there’s some truth to that. We’ll know more once we have the megaphone funnel set up and everything, but I’m happy with them. So for the only thing I’m not happy with is that that fucking guy Ed keeps tagging me on everything, but Ben Ornstein: I, I get so mad every single time I see a message from him. He’s like, bro, how already said he would get back to you. Michael Houck: I said it three times. It was like, what do you want me to do? See, Nathan finally just took him off. Oh, did he? Ben Ornstein: I didn’t see that. Yeah. We got a new guy now. Michael Houck: Well, that’s funny. Ben Ornstein: Okay. Michael Houck: And like, I get it. Like he’s doing his I’m not a mean guy. I was like, super nice. I’m like, look, I just, I got a lot going on right now. I have everything bookmarked. I will get back to you. No need to ping me again. You know? Ben Ornstein: And then he still did. Yeah. And that was why I brought that up. Because I could tell you were a little pissed off. Michael Houck: I was just like, what do I need to say to this guy? Yeah, I did. Ben Ornstein: I did see that. And so that’s why I asked about it. Because I was like, yeah. Anyway. Michael Houck: Other than that, I still have full confidence them. And you know, we won’t really know until like early March how it’s going. But we’re starting back up February said 1, do these frickin lead magnets for him now. Yep. Cool. Ben Ornstein: Um, so from what you’ve seen being being acquired is is within the realm of possibility. Michael Houck: It is legitimately within the realm of possibility. I don’t know if it’s real yet. Right. But I had a call with intermediary company who’s sourcing us as an acquisition target for this guy who wants to spend some money. And they were like, yeah, we have this guy. He’s trying to buy a couple of businesses in the social media space. You guys are unique. You stood out. He wants to know about you. Michael Houck: And so I put these financials together and I put some platform metrics together for that side. And I sent it over and really what they look at an acquisition process is what’s called TTM trailing 12 months. Yep. Um, you probably know this actually, but yeah, so I put together a TTM and like our TTM is good. Like our TTM, if you, if you just look at megaphone and megaphone studio together as one business, even if you break out the revenue lines and everything like that, it did like 1.3 million. Michael Houck: And of that, 550K was profit. Now, a lot of that profit got eaten up by Rivalry, Down and Journey, like that type of stuff, right? But Megafone itself is pretty healthy. And so the one sort of knock on it is that we are not growing, we’re not doing any marketing, if you don’t know what ROI is, right? We haven’t invested in that. And so our growth rate is negative for users on the platform. For the ghost writing agency, you know, we have months that are really big with like, you know, when Mantis paid for the year, right? And overall that looks healthy and the overall trend looks healthy. But if they’re just interested in megaphone, I don’t know if they’re going to bite because it doesn’t look, you know, it’s not trending in the right direction. Now we can change that as we roll out these ad funnels and things But we don’t have that data today. So what I’m proposing to them is basically, this is a good business together. If you want to acquire it, I know how to build out a marketing funnel for you. We just haven’t done that. We haven’t invested in it because we haven’t had to. I will do that. And I will stay on in some sort of part-time capacity for 6 12 months throughout this year. My goal will be to build out this marketing funnel for you. And we’ll have some sort of like revenue targets and things like that. Right. And so there’ll be an initial payment from a sale. And then depending on how much we grow it, depending on what the escalators are, we’ll get the rest. Um, so it’s not ideal, but it’s our own fault for not building out a really good marketing funnel. The reason we haven’t done that is because we haven’t solved some of the churn stuff. And so We’ll see how it goes, but I think it’s probably a better idea to sell if we can than not, as long as we don’t get some like crazy, terrible offer. Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Ben Ornstein: And so you set the financials, they said it looked pretty strong. What’s the next step from there? Michael Houck: So they’re in India, the intermediaries in India, the investors in France or something. So they’re asleep right now. But when they wake up after a little brief exchange this morning, they will talk internally. And then probably, my guess is later this week, get back to me and be like, hey, the investor likes what he saw. He’d like to meet you now. And so then I’ll have a call with that guy. He’ll have some follow-up questions, probably about growth and things like that and structure. And if we find something that makes sense there, then they’d probably put together a formal offer and float No. Cool. Ben Ornstein: Crazy how quick it could happen, but you know, we’ll see. Yeah. Michael Houck: So I think like, I don’t know what they would value it as, but like 45% margin, like five 50 K on 45% margin with 1.3 million top line revenue. Michael Houck: I could realist for like a tech enabled agency, which is how I’m going to sell it. Not like a platform. Cause it’s not at the At this point, it’s a tech-enabled agency. If we sell it that way, probably get somewhere between, I don’t know, two to four times revenue. So like low-end, absolute low-end would be like, I mean, I’d probably take lower than this, but absolute low-end of like what you should do is like two million, two to 2.5. High-end would be like, you know, six. I’d probably take 1.5 or higher, basically. That’d be great. Yeah, so we’ll see what they come back with and the structure and if it’s appealing or not. But in the meantime, two things. One, got to hit the hay on growth. So I’m going to go pretty hard the next couple of weeks on trying to grow faster, for a studio at least. And then two is getting other bids in play. So I’m going to start talking to other platforms and see if we can we can kind of covertly list. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, that platform Limelight, they actually just raised funding, I believe. The ones that we identified as potential competitors, that could be an interesting one. Oh, wait, Limelight? I think that’s what it’s called. Ben Ornstein: And I saw a LinkedIn post when I was doing… Sorry, yeah, I thought… Michael Houck: I’m talking with Blake Stewart right now about a company called Light Field, that wants to sponsor the founder retreat. So I got confused. Michael Houck: Can you hear me? Ben Ornstein: I can. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Houck: So there’s another company called Lightfield. I was confusing them with. Got it. Ben Ornstein: So Limelight is very similar to us. And when I was doing proactive engagements, I’m pretty sure I saw they were, yeah, they just closed funding. So it could be interesting. Cool. Michael Houck: Okay, I gotta go to our Weekly call with Nuon, but also a terrible name. They really need to get a better name than Nuon. Michael Houck: I’ll talk to you later. If you can put together a list of some of those potential competitors you think could be interesting, in my way, but that’s very, very low priority compared to the other stuff you got going on. Ben Ornstein: All right. Sounds good.