- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01KN036164K8SXSYEZK1PE7GF4 (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Staff Sheehan: I know, I was just teasing. Michael Houck: They can do all the functional work. I don’t want them doing the fun stuff. Staff Sheehan: Yeah, right. I was going to say, like, everybody was like, yeah, we’re going to have AI so that can do the dishes while we do poetry. And instead, it’s like we’re doing the dishes and the AI is doing the poetry. Michael Houck: Yeah, it always reminds me of the whole thing of, like, if aliens came to this planet, would they think that we take care of dogs or dogs are, like, under us? You know, it’s like, do they think that are serving us or we’re serving the AIs, I don’t know anymore. But okay, let’s dive in then if there’s no other questions. So outcomes for this call that we want are concrete, sort of both primary and secondary goals, identifying who that exact audience is that we’re going to be writing for, choosing the top, let’s say, three to five content pillars that we want to focus on initially, and then narrowing in on the sort of voice we want to use to reach them. So then we’ll talk about answering any questions at the end and sort of aligning on next steps and sort of getting rolling. Does that make sense? Are we aligned there? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yes, that sounds good. Michael Houck: Okay, cool. Okay, so I think just the first thing is I want to make sure that we’re aligned on this. So if you had to say one thing, primary goal of we’re working together, what is that thing? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Amplifier voice. Michael Houck: Amplifier voice. And that is, would you say, like, do we want that to translate to impressions or followers, like audience building? Or is it about, you know, bringing people into the ecosystem for you guys? Like, what’s, what’s the outcome there that we should be driving towards? Okay, all of the above. Staff Sheehan: I think driving is very helpful to drive. I mean, I’ve just seen this from my prior businesses. It’s definitely helpful to drive followers to our company page. It’s definitely helpful. I mean, I used LinkedIn. LinkedIn has essentially been my like hiring tool, even though I’m now learning to how to like, actually, I usually use like, you know, third party SaaS companies as like, you know, as out of house HR. And now Johanna is helping me learn how to use like LinkedIn the proper way where you like actually pay LinkedIn for it. But I’ve always used LinkedIn as a hiring tool and it’s been a very effective hiring tool. And it’s helped me build out teams, helped me get the word out. I’ve got some really good hires, definitely worth more than the time an effort than I then I dedicated to like, overall, I’m definitely up on LinkedIn compared to recruiters that costs 10, that costs 10 to $100,000 hire. And those are just the cheap hires. So, yeah, I think like, that's kind of that's, and I think like part of it is like, it also is good for venture, you know, VCs follow it as well. I think, you know, they're on Twitter, too. So it's good to have a little bit of a voice there, but like, I don't know, I've always probably resonated better with a more professional audience than kind of the shit posters on Twitter, whatever we're calling it today. DJNs, yeah. You know, the highly regarded folks on Twitter. But yeah, I don't think that's as helpful for like, I don't know, like for the professional folks and especially for like the hires that we look for. But still, I think it's important to have a presence there because again, a lot of VCs do a lot of things there. And it's like, it's helpful with kind of like optics to the market to, you know, with investors and, you know, a lot of, But still, yeah, I think you and Johanna spoke. I think you guys primarily do stuff on LinkedIn. You've been focused on that, right? Or do you guys do both, more or less? Michael Houck: No, we're platform agnostic. We do both. I mean, we'll even do Instagram threads and Substack if you want. We do beehive newsletters for a bunch of startups. We have a TikTok team. We're full service. Staff Sheehan: We can do all of the above, but not TikTok because I've had enough I don't have an Instagram, but I can deal with Zuckerberg. Michael Houck: Uh, you know, um, yeah, we definitely actually probably, we do want to get an Instagram for the company started up. Staff Sheehan: Um, that's definitely something we need to do. We have one. We have one, but we do. She's already way ahead of me on it. Uh, well that's the one because I don't, I don't, I don't Instagram, really. So I have there is an account that exists that is Staff Staff Sheehan on Instagram, but it hasn't been touched. And I couldn't tell you the password to save my life. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll have we'll have videos. We'll have things. But right now, I don't think we do. Michael Houck: Yeah, we will. Let's start. Let's start with one thing. Make it great. And then expand out, expand out from there. But we can we can cross post between X and LinkedIn. Obviously, the formatting is going to need to be different between the two platforms or for it to be sort of native to both. You don't want to post a LinkedIn post on Twitter. People be like, what are you doing? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: But yeah, totally. Michael Houck: But yeah, that makes sense. I think what I'm hearing from you is like tangible results, whether it's sort of hiring, whether it's investor relations, maybe whether it's like partnerships or inbound stuff, like anything that's actually moving the needle for you guys. It's visible is what you're going to be most excited about. Is that fair? Staff Sheehan: Yeah, I mean, like and I do think when I when it comes to like followers, because that was, I think, one of the first things that you started with. I do think that's important. I always think quality over quantity. It's more important to have the right followers than to have just a bunch of randos. But at the same time, it's good optics still to have a good follower base. So I think that's an easy quantifiable thing. I feel like impressions come and go. So I'm definitely not as keen on as I am on kind of like getting the right people following. But I think that's how I've kind of approached, I don't know, that's just like been my learning experiences from, you know, my last company was doing kind of consumer related stuff. And so we had to have a, so we spent an inordinate amount of money on like marketing and stuff like that. And I always felt like the impressions were the low, of the lower ROI, you know, metrics, whereas like, you know, but yeah, Johanna, does everything I'm saying make sense, or am I just completely crazy? Michael Houck: Nope, it makes sense. Michael Houck: Yeah, and that aligns to, I think, best practices in general. Like, obviously, it's a fine line, right? We need, if we want followers, we need content that's going to generate impressions, but we want those impressions to come from sort of the right niche, the right people, and we want to be able to build sort of a deep They just don't like like some posts and then you know, we never see them again So it's a fine line, but I think the distinction is important for us because it tells us like, okay Do we want to lean into like making Staff like, you know a big like lead magnet thread boy? We're just putting viral stuff out there all the time or is it more about hey, let's go deep. Let's showcase our expertise Let's make our sort of brain resume be out there in public where people can sort of trust us Sounds like maybe leaning towards the the latter here which makes sense. Okay, anything goal-wise that did not come up there that I should just take a note of like a secondary goal or anything like that? Staff Sheehan: Yeah, I definitely missed things. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: No, I mean, my only concern, so I do think we need to talk a little bit about Staff and project Omega, I do have worries that Staff is, if we make him too amazing, that they're only going to want Staff and he has he has science, he has work that he has to do at the labs. So I do want to balance here between building Staff's persona online with project Omega and project Omega and and so that he has a balanced life too, because I don't want him necessarily to have to do everything in the company, including speaking everywhere. But I do want him to get the, you know, like, to get the primo speaking engagements and then have Project Omega just be recognized too. So whatever that balance is, and how we do that, I think it's important. Michael Houck: Oh, that's good to know. There's a couple of different ways we can approach that. You know, there's on one extreme, there's like, Andrew has decade, you guys familiar with Andrew Gazdeki? Okay, so he is the founder of this company acquire.com. They're like an acquisitions marketplace for for startups. He built like 100 plus 1000 person audience for his personal account on Twitter. And then because he had that audience, he was unable to build up the brand account very quickly. And the thinking behind that was initially people are going to follow people on a mission before they follow a brand account. That's, you know, obviously putting him to your point, John, like front and center on everything. And that might be too much for I think the sort of everything you guys want to want to do and what you need to achieve. So, you know, it was a bootstrap company where he sort of like had to be the face of it, basically, maybe it's a little bit different here. Another strategy would be where we have, you know, Steph, your account, focus on, you know, one particular angle on the business, or maybe like the thinking behind it, the vision, and then the company account be more about like, it can be, you know, a different personality, right? There's a lot of different types of content we can put in there and we'll talk about that. We'll get to that. But the idea would be kind of separate in terms of voice, but maybe like equally important, let's say. Staff Sheehan: That makes sense. I mean, I think like whatever you guys did with Alex, it seems like it's been working. Out and a lot of like the a lot of their like a lot of their posts and things are very well done and things like that. So I feel like whatever I like not to not to be totally a monkey see monkey do but like I feel like whatever you did with Mantis is probably good good for us. I mean like I'm not a I'm not a world famous DJ so I don't start out with a high follower count but you know I so we'll have to get we'll have to get the nerds on board because that's at least one place where I can where I can try to bring something to the table. Michael Houck: Well, it's either that or we get you behind the decks. One of the two, you know. Staff Sheehan: One of the two. Michael Houck: Okay, Johanna, does that make sense? And we'll get more into like specific approaches. Okay, cool. And then I think we've sort of talked about this, but just like cover my bases here. Just realistically, like if we go out three, six, 12 months down the line, what needs to happen in order for you guys to consider this partnership to be a success and us to be sort of earning our keep, et cetera, et cetera. Staff Sheehan: You go first, Johanna, and then I can go. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: Yeah, I mean, raising our visibility, I don't have a percentage. I'm not sure how to quantify that. So that would be, how do we put together those metrics in order to show effect? It's the amplification of our message to what Staff said earlier. We'll have a pretty robust, I think, in the next three to six months campaign, and through video, through thought leadership, I think is going to be really important because at the end of the day, and maybe this is the third thing, it's not necessarily all of our job to change the way that people think about nuclear recycling and nuclear in and of itself. But I think that we're going to play a key role in this, and I think that our showing, not telling, that's going to be very important. So I think just the amplification, the education, kind of changing people's perspective of nuclear and nuclear recycling, and just growing Project May. I mean, we're starting from like 850 today on our LinkedIn. I know it'll grow, and I've grown, I've grown onto 100,000 followers. It's hard, but I know we can do that. And then that gives you the ability to really reach out to a lot of people. Staff Sheehan: That makes sense. Michael Houck: Is that anything you wanted to add there? Staff Sheehan: I think that I do think that that's probably going to be like our, um, like our top metric is like, you know, bringing on board followers, to be honest, just, you know, that's like the, And I do a lot of promotion of our partners anyway. I always try to loop in one of the venture funds that backs us into posts and things like that. So I feel like that's going to happen. I try to do that organically as much as possible. So I think that we'll be good on that side. But yeah, I think we need to just drive... I think it's realistically driving more followers is the big one. That would be how we could see it as a success. Michael Houck: And we'll treat that as our way to see how are we doing raising visibility. How many people are actually going through and following the accounts. And we'll track that. Ben and his team will track that on an ongoing basis and we'll report on that as we go. And we can set goals around that too. Okay, let's move forward to sort of target audience. So, excuse me, like who are we writing for? And is this different between the company account and staffier account? Staff Sheehan: I think that I can, I'll just, I can start out on that one, but I think we're writing for a fairly general audience, but also a professional audience. It's like where I currently have probably a lot of government folks, a lot of political appointees on both sides of the aisle, a few senators and congressmen that follow. Uh, you know, so, um, sorry about that. I just got a call ahead of decline. Um, so, um, I think that like the, the, the audience is definitely a more professional audience. Um, and I think the folks that we're trying to go after are probably along those same veins, I think like in the next five years, you know, and this is also, I'm just also just thinking about my account. Maybe I'll just say like Johanna. If you want to jump in on the company account, but I think there's going to be a lot of overlap. I think in the next five years, what it really is, is like we want folks in the national security space. We want folks in the kind of defense sector. We want folks in the, you know, venture. I think for me, venture capital space is a little bit more important than for the company. That's probably one place where it divulges a little bit because the venture capitalists are, you know, it's in a lot of cases, it's the relationship between the And for the company, it's got to be like super customer focused. So like, you know, the, you know, customers in national security, customers in the government, customers in like larger businesses. So like think about Constellation, Dominion, like the big energy companies. So it's got to be like national security and energy focused and focused on customers for the company account is my thought. For my account, I probably probably have to do a little bit more of like VC speak. Michael Houck: Yeah, we're over VC speak, don't worry. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: I'm looking at this from coming from doing a government, you know, LinkedIn campaign where the person can be a little edgier and have more perspective while the company has to be a little in not overselling. There is a vision, absolutely, but it's like within our mission, where I think Staff can have this big, bold mission, make some, be a little more controversial. But, you know, so I feel like we can play them off each other. And have just two kind of similar but complementary voices, where you have a cautious and more of the vision. But the company's less of an have the vision and the mission. So it's just that, how do we work together and make sure that we have that? Michael Houck: Are there, well actually, I'm going to save that question for later. I'm imagining that there are other company versus founder pair accounts that we might have in mind of like, who does it well, right? So we'll get to that. But I think that makes sense. Staff Sheehan: And I think, Ben, that's something we've seen um kind of time and time again too is that the founders you're not gonna like my answer to that question oh okay you know who I think does it really you know I think that who I think actually and it's it's as evidenced by their um as evidenced by their uh by their traction uh anderil and palmer lucky do it really well you know I told you weren't gonna like the answer to my question palmer's palmer's the definitely out there. Michael Houck: And he... I don't want to be that crazy. But we can be a little crazy. Is that what you're saying? We can be a little crazy. Staff Sheehan: We can be a little crazy. But like, I'm not at Palmer's level to be that crazy. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: I thought he's calmed down, by the way. I think he's kind of calmed down quite a bit after his last Axios interview. I was actually like, he's kind of grown up a little bit. Michael Houck: I mean, compared to like, you know the oculus days for sure for sure okay so that that's actually a good frame um because we're very familiar with with all uh all their stuff um I imagine we shouldn't be fighting with vcs though like he does with jason all the time right yeah no it's okay I I'm in a fight with a vc so I uh you know it's just I I only fight with china backed feces oh okay that's that's totally fair. Staff Sheehan: If they're Chinese-backed VCs, I am gonna put, give me the boxing gloves, I'm ready to go. Michael Houck: Okay, let's go. I love it. I can see John is, are you stressing out a little bit about that one? Johanna Spangenberg Jones: Yes and no, but I mean, I did write that down because at a certain point, I do think that that could become an opportunity. Although uncomfortable, I am very comfortable in that area. I mean, it just, it depends on it. Some time has to go by Staff, but I do think for sure. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, for sure. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: And that could be an edge because nobody else really has that experience. I mean, I have it from the department or you have it from skin in the game and living in. Michael Houck: This is going to be fun then when we get there, obviously let's establish some things first. Uh, but, um, okay, cool. That, that makes sense. Um, anything we wanted to Cause right now what I have for Staff for your account is sort of, you know, professional government type of audience, you know, national security defense sector with like a venture capital sprinkle on top. And then for the company account, I'm more focused on customers, security, government, energy companies, et cetera. Anything else you want to add to that? Johanna Spangenberg Jones: Also recruiting. I mean, that's going to be a big thing where both of us will have to deal with it, but like, yeah. Staff Sheehan: That's our job. That's we got to build the team. Michael Houck: I would say that, yeah, that that plays into this well, then, because the more sort of personality that we can show in like a controlled, you know, authentic way, the more people are going to want to work for you guys, or like interesting, you know, people are going to want to work for you guys, too. So that fits. Okay, today. What does the audience What do those people sort of come to you for that? This can be for both accounts? How do they see you and Project Omega within their world? Not sort of the broader world, but within their world specifically. Like how do you fit in? Johanna Spangenberg Jones: I'll go first because I think Staff has more. Project Omega came out of stealth last month. And so we are very nascent and I think we have an opportunity. I think we came out strong with some strong coverage from key areas. We've been doing Hill push, company push and government push, like we're going to have some contracts that we're going to be announcing. But we are, we are very malleable, we have a brand, but we can develop what that is, and the voice that comes with it. Staff, on the other hand, has more of a, you know, like you have an established voice and reputation, which is interesting. Staff Sheehan: Interesting is a good way to describe it. Um, I think I, I think like from, from my perspective, I think like I have a, um, probably, I guess like a reputation of being a little more educational, um, and like trying to like explain things and like get people to understand what this energy stuff is and like what, I think that was largely from like when I was running my last business. Carbon dioxide and climate change are abstract things and you have to like explain them a little bit more clearly in terms of like, you know, it's like an education challenge. You know, I also, I've also, I don't know, I think like other than that, I just kind of like post about the company. Like I'm not really, I'm not really doing too much, too much else. I don't know, Johanna, what, you're a third party that, you know, it's always it was hard for me to be, to, you know, look in from outside, but like, what do you think my, how do you think my voice comes across on, I guess, LinkedIn, because I don't really post much to anything else. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: Yeah, I think you're measured, but you have a founder perspective, you have a scientist perspective, and I think that, I don't think you do as much on the VC side, but I think you could, and I really like the China approach down the line, national security. You haven't really done a lot on the national security side. So I think you're very measured, but I do think you have these different personas that are all kind of coming together in this one company that has an interesting, it has interesting potential. Michael Houck: So what I'm hearing is basically right now on the company side, the audience is coming to us really just for like this initial blast that we've put out there coming out of stealth recently. They're interested in learning really who we are, what we're all about. And we sort of have this opportunity right now to sort of develop that and put that out there. On Staff, your side, it's more, you know, you are more established, you do have a perspective. In the past, you've sort of been focused on educational type of content, sort of explaining it, understand things, and talking about like what you're passionate on, aka what you're building. Is that sort of a fair characterization today? Staff Sheehan: Yeah, I think that's probably a fair characterization. And I do think that like, I guess my, maybe I'll just add that I guess like one of the things that I even have people reach out to me to like weigh in on things, you know, as a technical expert. So I guess like the, you know, I know I speak the technology language and I can translate technology and the normal people speak. You know, this is another piece of it. It's like, I guess it's like a technology expert. Michael Houck: Sounds good. I'm going to move forward to talk about content pillars. Now we've got a couple of questions on those and Johanna, you can, we should go through what, what, what you brought and what, what ideas you had too. I just want to quickly introduce Blake. So Blake just hopped on. He's my partner in the agency. He's our editor in chief. And he and I will be working both directly on this account with you guys. We're really excited about it. So if you just want to give a quick background yourself and introduce yourself, I think that'd be great. Blake Emal: Yeah, it's great to meet you all. I've been partnered with Hauk on this for a couple years, three years now. Building this out, historically, I am a marketer 11 years in, I guess, and mostly on the organic marketing side of things, but have found kind of a little niche for content strategy and personal branding. So I have spent a lot of time building my own accounts and other accounts through various different channels. So I'm happy to help with whatever. If you ever want to shoot a message, ask a question, I'm here to help. Michael Houck: Blake is, of course, he's a nice guy. So he's underselling himself. He's built a massive personal brand on X and also has a good one on LinkedIn through his newsletter. So he's a killer. We're excited to have him as part of the team, obviously, and working with you guys too. So I'm going to Jump back in. I want to make sure we get through everything. Be conscious of you guys' time. Okay, so for content pillars, first thing on our mind is usually like, let's just brain dump, let's brainstorm what are the sort of topics that are at the intersection of business expertise and sort of what we can rant about just for hours and hours and hours. And that can be, you know, situated at Staff through your personal account and also then through the company account. So Johanna, maybe we start with what, which ones you had on your mind already? Johanna Spangenberg Jones: So I think, Staff, I kind of focus on the two things, the national security mission. So these long duration batteries, or lack of a better word, but power sources, that's a key area that we're going to be focused on. So national providing these power sources that never die. There's a supply chain aspect to that, where a lot of the batteries that the military currently uses are challenging. They come from China. So, you know, having something that we can use in missions that matter, unmanned systems, you know, or water sensors that never die in space. There are a lot of options to do some new exploration. I should probably take it up to another level. So there's national security. There's probably the fuel cycle. And then there's, let's see, national security, the fuel cycle, and then maybe the economics. Maybe those three areas might be useful. Um the energy side is the recycling Talking about The waste that we we look at all this waste that's out there right now hundreds a hundred thousand tons of just um Spent or used nuclear fuel that we are going to take and reuse develop these isotopes that we can put into these Long duration power systems and potentially sell and there's that economic side side too, that we are building this new nuclear fuel ecosystem. So that's the economic side. So I kind of see those three buckets, but there are probably a few other buckets too. Michael Houck: So just to sort of have these, one is like a national security angle of making sure that this sort of supply chain around all of these power sources is fully US-based and owned. The second is sort of the general idea of the fuel cycle, just getting people comfortable with the idea of, hey, there is a lot of nuclear waste out there, but actually, it can be reused, like, there's no reason for it to just sit there and be this, it's an asset, not a liability, basically. And then the third side is, hey, there's this whole economy that's going to come up as a result of treating it like an asset. Staff Sheehan: Okay, cool. Staff Sheehan: I would even kind of like state take a step back even farther, I would say that it's like, it's about operational energy. For national security, it's about operational energy and contested logistics. And so it's about energy for the warfighter, energy for the Department of War, energy for the intelligence community, energy to support America's operations abroad. That is the power source. That's the nuclear battery side of the business. It's broader than just power source. It's operational energy. You run out of energy before you run out of bullets. So, and then the second, I think, like, I kind of lump the other two together in, like, we are fueling the nuclear industry, because, you know, when you build a nuclear power plant, and this was one of our advisors me this. It's essentially a third of the cost of your plant is your CAPEX, a third is OPEX, and a third is fuel. And so a third of the cost of building your nuclear power plant and operating, owning and operating a nuclear power plant is the cost of the fuel. So like the uranium that fuels it. And we can take that cost and drastically reduce it and do that We do that in a way that entirely shores up all of our manufacturing in the US, because right now we buy a lot of that from Russia, and that's not very good. Even though China is the country that I have run into in a dark alley once or twice. I will say that they're both America's adversaries, Russia and China. So we don't want to be reliant on our adversaries for critical materials. And I think that that's really the message. By recycling, we can have both energy independence and lower cost of electricity for data centers, and for manufacturing, and for all the other things we need for electricity for. Michael Houck: I love it. That's a very coherent message. I think it's important to say it with a lot of people, especially in this space. Our job will sort of be to package that up in interesting content formats and with examples and stories, things like that. So that's a good place to start there. Anything else on content pillars we want to make sure we get down now? Staff Sheehan: I'm just going to go off video for a second because I'm gonna eat a protein bar as my first meal of the day. Michael Houck: And then we sort of We sort of got into this already with that last answer and even a little bit before but just want to make sure we hit on everything so like Is there anything else that we want to say is like our unique position on this stuff within the space like these these topics? How do we stand out against other people who are even thinking about recycling nuclear energy? What's our POV? Staff Sheehan: I Mean we as new tech we've developed better technology. That's our point of view. And we are developing better technology. That's one piece of it. And another piece is I think it comes down to traction. Actually, I think one of the big competitive advantages we have, we just got signed last week, and we're doing a press release on either Wednesday or Thursday, whenever Johanna tells me. But we're going to be the only company that's actually working with used nuclear fuel through this contract. Nobody else is doing that. We're the only ones that are actually able to touch the stuff because it's so highly controlled by You know by the government I Mean with we're gonna be the only startup company I should say that Orano is the Orano currently touches use nuclear fuel But they are the multinational its own by the French government that recycle there They're like the Western company that recycles nuclear fuel in France right now I think our other differentiator is Staff. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: He is a successful entrepreneur. This is his fourth successful. It will be successful. We already are. But his experience over the past few years, he is a unicorn in the sense that he can speak science and then he can go in the next minute and speak to venture capitalists and understand the financial aspects of it. And by the way, he's also built a pilot plant and can tell you what worked and didn't work. And most people haven't had that experience. So we're going to show again, I go back to the, we're going to show and not tell you a lot of these startups are all about the marketing. This is why this is important. We're going to show people, but we also want to kind of soften the wait, the beachhead, you know, like we want to get out there and explain kind of what we're going to do. And then they're not going to be surprised when we're going to own it. Michael Houck: I really liked the show, not tell con concept knowing, I think more now, the other folks in the space to like if they're all about the sort of the sheen and they're all about like hey we're going to do this really cool thing and this is why it's going to be great but we're over here actually doing it that's such a strong position for us to be in um that gives us a ton of ammo for content so I think that's great absolutely and I'm blushing um but also but also uh I I mean we do have hopefully we will have additional assets you know we have a laboratory that we have a lot of good folks that I think that the UBT guys are gonna be working to make more with. Staff Sheehan: We're gonna have two additional facilities going live, hopefully in the next few months. One that's like a non-RAD manufacturing facility, and the other that's gonna be our RAD facility in Idaho. We call that internally, and this is not the name we need to use on any sort of social media. But right, it's using radioactive materials, and it's like a pretty small facility, so we call it RadioShack. Even our our head of operations even bought me I have actually in my backpack even bought me like one of the old-school RadioShack like off eBay like an old-school RadioShack t-shirt Yeah, that was the that was the present that will gave me when I visited Idaho Johanna Like one of you run a retro RadioShack we can we can play with that if you guys want to You know, there's fun media types we can do there if you want to. I'm down, 100%. Michael Houck: Okay, well, actually that gets into the next question really well, which is about our content voice, right? So we sort of identified what we want to talk about, we sort of identified our perspective there, identified who we're going to be talking to and what our goals are, but how do we want to get in front of them? What do we want them to see from us? How do we want to talk to them? Like how and john, maybe this is a first and foremost question for you for the brand voice How do we want to describe brand voice and then we can get into how Staff's account differentiates from that? Johanna Spangenberg Jones: I'm not quite sure how to separate that from what I said before. I mean again, I feel like Staff can be a lot more Visionary and controversial. Well, I don't want to say we're because that's not correct. I mean, like that's a very government way to say it, but I want to play Project Omega kind of safe where we have a message, we're going to push it out. We have a, you know, like we have a mission we're going to show, not tell. We need to attract the talent. We need to attract the customers. And we do this in tandem. So I'm not, I don't know what, how to say it beyond what I've already said. If you're looking for more. Michael Houck: No, I think it's, I just like to make sure nothing else is gonna sort of come up, but you're right. We did sort of touch on that earlier and we already have that sort of in our notes here. So I think we're pretty good there. Unless there's anything else that comes up when you guys hear like content voice in particular, that's different from what we talked about before. So Steph, anything on your side there? Staff Sheehan: Not really. I think also like, I think I've had kind of like a voice in my posts that I've put up on LinkedIn LinkedIn, and even like a lot of them, you know, Johanna drafted a lot of them too, that I think is like, I think, you know, keeps it professional. And I'm perfectly happy to say more controversial things. You know, as long as we're all, as long as Johanna reigns me in and I don't say anything too stupid, I'm good. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: The only other thing that I would like to, I mean, we have a few other people and I'm sure we're going to hire other people, but we have the former head of the Nuclear Regulatory And I'm not sure quite yet how to use him. We have two special operators that work with us, and then we have a reservist who's a builder. Like, I feel like we have these other personas that we can weave in in the future, too, when it's ready. But I really, like, I think it's Project Omega and Staff first, and then kind of growing that, the circle of, you know, like, the voices that you hear from us as we So that's the only other thing that I'd like to just kind of put a note that in the future, I'd like to get to that point where we have these other people that that help and amplify in different ways that are useful. Michael Houck: Yeah, I think that's really smart. I'm sorry, Steph, go ahead. Staff Sheehan: I mean, I also like to shout people out like in my last business, like when an employee did a really good job on something, I'd like shout them out on social media too. You know, so like, I feel like that So I can help with that to some extent, because I do think that shouting people out and giving credit where credit is due is really important. Michael Houck: Yeah, I totally agree. I think in general, this concept of like employee advocacy or like, you know, broader, even ecosystem advocacy of this person is like not a direct employee, but just like an advisor or something like that to having folks in the ecosystem who are intimately familiar with the business and are constantly talking about it online and even interacting with each other and playing off of each other is super powerful. I'm sure you guys saw the cloud company Wiz just got acquired for like 32 billion or something. I think it was Meta or Google. Staff Sheehan: Google, just know them well. I know. I'm on a group chat with the co-founders and they put together their mega family office. They might be investors in us soon. Michael Houck: Oh, there you go. Well, yeah, you know them super well then. But they did such an amazing job with this. And so another example is like Beehive, right? Just companies that get their employees involved, get them active, get them talking about it. It just makes it seem like wherever you go on social media, they're part of that conversation. So I think, Johanna, I agree. Let's nail it with the company account and with Staff's account and sort of build that center of gravity, just like the other companies have done. And then if we do get to that point, at that point, let's go bring other people into that Everyone has their own personalities. You see those people in your feed all the time. They're always engaging with each other's stuff as well and it amplifies it. You have employee engagement pods and things like that. There's a ton of stuff that we can do there as we grow things. Staff Sheehan: I think it makes a lot of sense. Staff Sheehan: One of our investors, Slow Ventures, is very active on Twitter. They've also offered to like push things whenever we needed things pushed and like stuff like that. So yeah, we can utilize them as well. I don't know if we have too many other investors. I feel like Mantis and Slow are probably the most socially active investors. Michael Houck: That gives us a lot to keep in, like arrows to keep in the quiver for later. So that's cool. Staff Sheehan: I don't know if you saw, but they just had this huge, essentially they promoted at one of their companies. And I don't know if they worked with, they might've worked, I don't know if they worked with you guys or a similar company like that, but they did this huge like back and forth on LinkedIn, the name of their company that they invested in. I knew they were investing in it before, cause they actually chatted with me about it. The name of the company is pettylawsuit.com. You can, for the low cost, they're $29. You can sue your friends. And it’s like an AI, essentially an AI lawyer that will like file lawsuits for you. But literally, it’s for small claims lawsuits and people have had… I know their financials and they’re doing quite well. And their win rate is like 85%. This is part of, I think, the whole push to replace lawyers and other professional services with AI. But they did this whole advertising campaign where Jack, who’s one of the partners of Slow Ventures who’s here in New York with me and actually we’re meeting up later this week. He’s got like 100,000 followers on Twitter and he like sued his bosses. He sued the GPs with petty lawsuit. And then the GPs were like posting up pictures of the like demand letter they got from their employee on petty lawsuit. And realistically, it was just, it was great PR for petty lawsuit. And I think they crushed it with that campaign. But that was just, I don’t know if that’s something you guys were aware of or saw, but that’s a good example of how a venture firm used PR. And obviously, the founder played along with it. And I’m sure the founder architected it to some extent. But it was a really good example of how a venture fund that has a lot of outreach could help to get a lot of followers and a lot of customers for a portfolio company. Michael Houck: Yeah, that’s a lot of fun. Any little stunts like that. Um, I mean, I think petty lawsuit sort of like lends itself to that kind of stuff just with the type of Company and the name and it’s just like too absurd. It’s like a You know, it’s like it’s like the absurdity of the future we’re going into it’s like a really great example of that. Staff Sheehan: So, um, Hey Alex and I were going back and back and forth on nuclear storage wars. So, you know We’ve got our own like We need to have our own petty title we can do that and then and then actually the people from actual storage war and like a and e have reached out Um, like the actual celebrities that did storage wars. They they they were like, oh, we’d love to do something with you guys. Michael Houck: So um You could do like like fractional ownership of like one nuclear tank Sometimes like you sell access. I don’t know. There’s a whole bunch of funny stuff. You could probably do there. Staff Sheehan: Um But yeah, it would be entirely But it actually is kind of funny because when you open up the casks, you have no clue what’s in them. And so it is actually kind of like a nuclear storage for it. Michael Houck: Okay, that’s cool. If they’ve already reached out, we should totally do something with them. That sounds really fun. But, okay, cool. I think we have a good sense of things. Johanna, was there anything else you wanted to go over on this call or any questions about what we’ve talked about so far that we shouldn’t have? Definitely cover now. Johanna Spangenberg Jones: So I haven’t, I know you can’t share a lot of your other past partners. I just know Alex and I’ve looked up his things. So I guess two things. One, just looking at Alex’s post, he doesn’t do a lot of images or videos. Is that something that you factor in because we do have some videos and you know, like, what Staff was saying, we’re going to have Images as much as we can and um things to see just because we’re trying to make this not scary That’s part of our brand too. It’s just we’re trying to make nuclear It’s very natural. A lot of the things that um that Are brought or that are used um in nuclear are very natural radiation is natural, you know Not the bad kind of radiation, but you know, like the bananas give off radiation. Um, you have uh, the smoke detectors in your house, which is nuclear recycled fuel from France. So there is this, as much as we can show, make things not scary, that’s great. And so images and videos are my one question. And then also, I think if you could give Staff a little bit of a short overview of how you do your magic. I gave a little bit, but I’m sure I missed some things. Michael Houck: For sure. Images and videos are a great idea, I think, especially in this case. We always evaluate on an account-by-account basis. Also, a lot of it’s just due to the preferences of one client versus another client. Some people like it, some people don’t. For your guys’ case and what our mission is here and our frame, I totally think it’s a good idea. We have to make this thing real, we have to make this thing accessible, we have to make this thing not scary. I totally agree. The more assets you guys have like that, the better. If there’s like… If there’s like libraries of video files or images or brand guidelines that you guys have that we should keep in mind You know, we do have a designer on Staff. We do have editors on Staff We can loop them in sort of as needed for the stuff that we’re going to create I know initially, you know, it’s not going to be entirely on us, but You know, we do have those resources available to sort of loop in as needed and then Yeah Staff and then sort of our processes, you know, we have a slack channel set up. I’m not sure if you’re in there yet, but if you’re not, we’ll make sure to get you in there. Staff Sheehan: Um, yeah, I don’t, you don’t typically use Slack, but we, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll download it for you guys. Michael Houck: Oh, that, that warms my heart, man. No, you don’t, you don’t have to, uh, we can also send stuff over, um, you know, to, uh, to you guys via email if you like, Uh, some folks prefer that or even WhatsApp or something like that. Totally fine. Staff Sheehan: I’m going to be that guy. Say signal. Michael Houck: Oh, we can do signal. We haven’t done signal before, but I have it. We can do it. Staff Sheehan: If it’s a new thing, then I can just download Slack. I’m OK with that. Michael Houck: But I mean, if it’s not something you’re going to check and you’re going to be active in, we’re fine to sort of meet you where you are. But yeah, so whatever the frame or whatever the channel of choice we use is, We will be hopping on bi-weekly strategy calls, and you’re welcome to join those. Johanna, I know you’re going to lead those, I think, from your guys’ side, and then Blake and I will either both be on them, or sometimes we’ll alternate, depending on schedules. But we will be there to assist with strategy on those, and then we’ll also be starting to produce content for you guys as well. That will happen. We have a Notion board that we’ll have set up, and we’ll share Drafts of those in the slack channel or the signal chat You guys are obviously initially we’ll want you to be super involved and sort of give us feedback Make sure we’re nailing the voice There’s gonna be some back and forth as there is with any sort of new account that we take on But over time our goal is to get that to where it’s able to be Basically fully delegated to us and we can sort of own that not have it be some additional You know thing you guys need to be reviewing or taking up your time and things like that. So we’ll work towards that And we’ll share also like questions and topics and like trending things that we notice in the niche. We’ll share them in Slack or Signal or whatever. And what we ask from you is that we want your commentary on those. We want the content to sound uniquely like something that could only come from Project Omega or could only come staffed from you personally. So the best way to get us there is like, hey, if you see something in there, minute if you’re walking between meetings or something like that pick up your phone record a one minute sort of rambly voice note that’s all we need that gives us this sort of authentic emotion and intonation that will give us your unique perspective and then we can use that to to craft the content from from there we handle all scheduling if you want us to we handle engaging with other people in the niche if you want us to that can be customer lists like target customer lists that can be target vcs that can be Just anyone else who’s in the niche who we want to have beefs with or who we just want to sort of build relationships with You tell us you give us a list and we’ll sort of get to work and then You know, our goal will just be to sort of grow the account. I’ll also go through and do a profile audit on both accounts Via loom and I’ll send that over in the next, you know, 24 hours or so with any like optimization and tweaks I recommend we should make. Oh, Seth, I think you’re muted. Staff Sheehan: Sorry about that. I said, sounds good. I just downloaded Slack. So now I’m a Slack user. So yeah, I will make sure that I have notifications on And good, all right, I’m on Slack. That’s at projectomega.co. Michael Houck: Love it. Okay, Johanna, anything else we should cover now while we’re on the call here? Johanna Spangenberg Jones: No, I just, I put together a document just on some of the topics. I mean, we’ve been talking about, you know, like non-proliferation is a big area where it’s important for us, a lot of people like recycling because they think that there are going to be more nuclear bombs so there’s going to be plutonium and all of these different uh I guess uh opportunities for new nuclear whatever waste um bombs dirty bombs things like that so that’s a big topic area critical isotopes you know how we have a critical mineral list um having a critical isotope list would be amazing and having leadership so I have a just a number of different topic areas that I’ve put together, safety, the national security mission, the contested logistics, things like that, just that might be helpful. Michael Houck: No, that’s going to be hugely helpful. I think, can you drop that in the Slack channel, and then as we sort of get started on the first batch from our end, we’ll take a look at those, we’ll incorporate those, we’ll probably just use those as sort of the inspo for some of the initial That’s what we put together. Last question from my end is, Steph, for your account, do you prefer sort of that we foresee is sort of posting more frequently, but shorter posts, or less frequently, but sort of more longer form, font leader type content? Any preference there? Staff Sheehan: I mean, like, I prefer whatever is gonna be better for the algorithm, to be fair. But, you know, I usually, I don’t know, you can look the posts that I’ve made, I try to keep them kind of short. And I like to tag people on them. So like, I like to give shout outs. But I like to keep them like two paragraphs. You know, that’s kind of like my typically my style. One thing that just when Johanna brought it up, it made me think Alex always responds to people that comment on his on his on his thing. And I assume that’s something should start doing and do more of Michael Houck: You can do that. Or alternatively, we can have Ben do that and his team. Staff Sheehan: Oh, that that’s I would like Ben to do that. Michael Houck: Okay, sounds good. Yeah, we’re happy to take that on. It’s most impactful when it happens in the first like half hour or hour after the post is made. And after we start getting comments. All right. We’ll monitor usually for like a couple hours after a post goes live, and then we could just take that off your plate, so you don’t need to worry about it. Staff Sheehan: Yeah, you guys, I don’t know anything about how the algorithm there works. I just post things at three o’clock in the morning or whenever the hell they, you know, whenever, so I’m sure I’m doing a lot of like social media faux pas. But yeah, so I’m just gonna follow your guys’ lead. I’m agnostic, like I usually don’t try to do like super long posts, but if you think that there’s a good opportunity, definitely have to do it. I always like to keep it like tied in with like, again, like with people or like, I always like to link something from, you know, from the company, like, you know, we have so much, I haven’t even made a post. I still have to put a post up about our scientific American thing. I haven’t even done that yet. Michael Houck: You want to drop a one minute voice note in Slack about that after this, we can just do that for you. Staff Sheehan: Yeah, if you guys could do the scientific American one, Johanna. Yeah, do you have? Yeah, you invite me to slack. That’s what I’m going to do. And I’m probably just because I’m always, you know, I’m always kind of like, you know, back to back and stuff. But so like, I might sometimes I’ll voice note and sometimes I’ll just like text my thoughts if that’s okay. Michael Houck: That’s fine. Whatever is easiest for you. As long as we get something that’ll be that’ll be helpful. Okay, let’s do it. I’m really excited about this. I think we got everything we need on our side. Blake and Ben, I have another call right after this, but let’s hop on in a little bit and chat through next steps here. And Johanna and Steph, thank you guys both for the time. We will see you in Slack and get rolling. Staff Sheehan: I’m excited to work with you guys. Thank you. Michael Houck: We’ll find the recurring time for these on a regular basis. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: That’d be great. Michael Houck: All right, guys. Talk soon. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: See you.