- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01KN4ZBWXM8M82KAQ62HBSTJ0X (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: And the hubs are good for you, right, Jacob? They were all set up and everything? Yeah. Jacob Shipley: Yep, looks good. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: OK, yeah. Sweet. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, Hauk, we just had to make them separate, at least at first. I figured just so Jacob had the separate spaces, because technically, Tim and DAs are together right now. And I figured having them all one didn’t really make sense. Michael Houck: Yeah. I mean, it would probably be, it would be a lot because all the, it wouldn’t really make a difference from, from like Blake’s perspective for review, but it would make a difference I think for like the access for the Draper folks. So yeah, it makes sense. Cool. Ben Ornstein: I figured we could always consolidate later if need be. Michael Houck: Yeah. I’m also in talks right now with Draper. University to do their accounts too. Um, I met with them after Jacob, you and Blake chatted about it, met with them, um, yesterday or Monday. Uh, so we’ll see what they say, but I think we have a good shot at that one. And then Andy is going to be coming back. Um, most likely, uh, when he’s done raised the new fund either later this month or sometime next month. So contract Andy Tang, he’s the like, other very senior partner at the fund besides Tim. So he’ll be a good one for him. Jacob Shipley: Sorry, was that we previously wrote for him? Michael Houck: No, no, no, I had been talking to him and I gave him some like strategic advice back in July, August. And then he was like, it’s not the right time for me to do more content right now. But now he wants to do it with us. So yeah, so pretty exciting. This Will be someone just try to join this Will I think this is well, all right, let’s do it Hey, well, what’s up, man? How you doing? Will Hinman: Thank you muted Good hey, sorry guys all good man and security wasn’t too bad No, when I messaged you, I was just leaving my house and I’m already through. So it’s the benefit of living in a little Columbus, Ohio. Michael Houck: Dude, that’s wild. I’ve heard so many horror stories in the past couple of weeks with the TSA DHS stuff. I was worried you’re going to be there for like an hour or two. Will Hinman: Well, our flights delayed a half hour. So you get some of that, but that’s because we’re going in LaGuardia. It’s not, it’s not flying out of Columbus. That’s everything. The issue. Michael Houck: Cool. Cool. Okay, well, we can just dive in. So yeah, super excited to kick this off. I’ll let Jacob and Ben kind of intro themselves. And then Jacob is going to lead the majority of this call from our side going deeper on some of the stuff you filled out in the onboarding form. Thank you for doing that really helps us kind of get things started. I know it’s long and tedious, but appreciate it. Then Ben Will talk a little bit about sort of the operational side of things at the end. We’ll circle back to me to talk about next steps and getting the first batch ready to go. And obviously, if you have any questions or anything you want to share along the way, feel free to cut us off and drop it in there too. But I’ll let the team intro themselves here. Jacob Shipley: Perfect. Jacob Shipley: Cool, man. Yeah, Jacob Jacob Shipley. I’ve been writing with Hauk for Hauk for a few years now. And so, yeah. Super excited to kick things off, man. Yeah, looking forward to it. My just short TLDR, I run social media for Benzinga, which is a financial media company based out of Detroit. I lead the social media team there. And then personally started writing on LinkedIn back in 2022 and kind of grew a following of, I think I’m up to 45-ish thousand followers there talking about all things, social media management, content. So love the space and then super excited to, to kick things off with you, man. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool, yeah. Do you live in Detroit? Jacob Shipley: No, I don’t. I’ve never been to Detroit. I just work. It’s the benefits of remote work. Where are you based? I’m based in Northwest Arkansas, right outside Bentonville. Will Hinman: All right, cool. Cool, cool. Jacob Shipley: We were just talking about that before you hopped on. I was telling Ben our claim to fame is Walmart headquarters. Will Hinman: Yeah, yeah, the city that Sam Walton built. I’m familiar. Michael Houck: That’s right. Michael Houck: Yeah. Will Hinman: I had some extended family that lived in Benton, which is different. Jacob Shipley: Very cool. Michael Houck: It’s the real NWA, right, Jacob? Jacob Shipley: I didn’t know that people didn’t know that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Ben Ornstein: Cool. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Ben, you want to do the intro as well? Ben Ornstein: For sure. Actually, right now I’m in Pittsburgh, so I’m pretty close to you, but I live in Delaware. I’m Ben. I’m Houck’s Chief of Staff. I’ll be your point person on all things operations. I’ll help with scheduling content. We’ll talk a little bit more later about the engagements and that type of things that I’ll handle for you. Yeah, all things operations is really the short for me. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Nice to meet you, man. Jacob Shipley: Nice to meet you, too. Jacob Shipley: Cool. Any other housekeeping items or ready for me to dive in? Michael Houck: No, I think we’re good, man. Unless, Will, you have any questions you want to throw out there before we get started or anything we should keep in mind. Otherwise, Jacob, it’s your show, man. Will Hinman: Yep, that sounds good. Jacob Shipley: Cool. So some of this might be a little repetitive. We have your onboarding stuff. This is just like double clicking on some of those answers. So it gave us kind of a good baseline. And now any areas that we want to double down on, get some more information on, some more context on, get some goals, really try to understand what we’re trying to accomplish. And then the quickest and most effective path to get us there, talk through content pillars, talk through voice. And then really just, we want you to have all the confidence in the world that we understand who you are and what your voice is. And then, you know, Ben Will talk at the very end about what process looks like for getting the first batch of content, how that review typically works. And we kind of go from there. In there, but so you mentioned your primary goal. What does success look like, man? If you’re like in a month, if this happens, we’ve knocked it out of the park. What does that mean? Will Hinman: Yeah, I mean, I would definitely say increasing profile and increasing engagement, particularly, I mentioned this in my onboarding, I think target audience is twofold. One would be, or maybe threefold, One being public officials and, you know, my background before getting into this business, I started a lobbying firm. I was the director of the Speaker of the House’s office in Ohio for a couple of years and worked for our governor before that. So, you know, public officials are definitely targets in a lot of our go-to-market for this business involves public funding, obviously being um a workforce education company that’s uh top of mind to uh Sort of uh people in tech um That might have interest in what we’re doing and what we’re building. I think there’s a good story to tell uh from From their honestly from their like pr perspective where? Ai um, you know displacement and um AI-generated unemployment, if you Will, is a huge risk and a huge threat, or at least it’s deemed such. I think there’s a lot of denialism in Silicon Valley. You hear kind of two sides of the story. On one hand, people are like, yeah, AI is going to be disruptive. And, oh, our margins just went up like crazy because we’re implementing AI and we’re cutting down headcount. On the other hand, you hear people that are like, no, that’s not a threat at all. Is going to create all these jobs. And there’s not a real consistent voice. And I think there’s a void for somebody to come in and say, like, okay, well, here’s how you can actually prepare the workforce for those new jobs, embrace new technology, but also make sure that people aren’t left behind. And I feel like that’s a good place. So that’s another And then third would be maybe three and four would be like people that either work in education and are worried about this problem or people that are just worried about losing their jobs every day, American workers. Michael Houck: And we’ll like if we’re if we’re looking back, you know, after our first six or 12 months of working together on this, you know, where do you want to be and how do you want to measure that? Right. Is that like, oh, I want my follower count to be this or I want this many total impressions, or does it mean something for the business specifically, like a revenue goal or something like that? How should we think about that? Will Hinman: Yeah, because this is, I mean, I just created my ex account like a month ago. And, you know, I have like, I don’t know, 3200 followers on LinkedIn or something like that. Nothing crazy. But because this is my first kind of like real efforts to build a profile, I’m not sure. I know like what kind of realistic expectations look like, Um, but I definitely think very significant increase to my current followers following, um, would be expected. And then also, um, some traction with. People that are influential in tech and politics would also be an expectation. Michael Houck: Cool. Okay. And with the followers in particular, I think we’ll want to spend the first, you know, a few weeks, month or so seeing how engaged the existing audiences for these kinds of topics. And so once we have that, let’s circle up and kind of get more, uh, explicit in terms of like, all right, here’s what we think a follower kind of look like after six months, et cetera, and can set goals around that. Jacob Shipley: Yeah, that sounds good. Jacob Shipley: Okay, awesome. And you already touched on target audience. If you’re cool with it, I’d love to just double click on that. Your background is obviously super interesting that typically one of the first posts we like to do, two of the first posts we like to do, one is like an origin story of just like who you are, kind of, you know, something along the lines of deciding to put more effort into content. This is who I am. This is why you should listen. And then the flip side of that on the business side, how you got into your current business or business business is and kind of a backstory there. But if you, I’d love to just take a couple of minutes and like, what is like, how’d you get into the stuff you’ve done? Like obviously working at the, um, in government and then the, you know, lobbying and now work flash past, like what’s that looked like, How did you kind of navigate that journey? Will Hinman: Yeah. Um, so back when I was in, I mean, before I was in college, I had a landscaping business. That I started when I was 12. By the time I was in high school, we had 30 employees and we’re doing well with that. So I’ve always kind of had like a knack for entrepreneurship and an interest in it. But when I got to college, I was crazy enough to decide to get into politics for whatever reason. And I’ve always kind of enjoyed like government and found that to be an interesting space. So I got really involved at the state house when I was in college, started off as a page in the House of Representatives, which is like the lowest on the totem pole there. Worked my way up through various roles, worked for a congressman in D.C. One summer, worked for a lobbying shop in D.C., did some state, bunch of different state and federal roles, volunteered on a ton of campaigns at every level. And then ultimately, when I graduated college, I decided to stay in Columbus versus pursue D.C. Work my way up to have a role in the governor’s administration, and then ultimately became the director of the Speaker of the House’s office. During that time was exposed to a lot of different workforce programs, and how they’re funded and things like that. And also my bosses, like the speakers, main focus area was was education. And so notice a few emerging trends in that space. One being the shift away from traditional K through 12 four year tracks that are debt saddling and not very workforce aligned in terms of outcomes for students toward more short term credentialing that was workforce aligned and could actually be applicable to direct employment for students. What would be, you know, this labor market disruption through AI and automation that is now only continuing to snowball. And then three, kind of putting those two ideas together that governments didn’t really have good solutions to not only, to not only address, you know, workforce aligned, educate workplace aligned education, if you Will, but then to also convert into people landing jobs and being able to provide for themselves and their families. So that’s sort of been the journey along the way. I met Neil and he, you know, I started my lobbying shop. We had all kinds of clients from, you know, and still do actually, we kind of pivoted more towards flash pass, but still represent, you know, draft Kings. And Huntington Bank. And we worked for with Deloitte for years. So had some like a lot of success in that space, had some really big clients, did a lot of procurement work in the government space. And one of the things that we noticed was, you know, we were helping clients get like these huge contracts. And, you know, we were making a good monthly retainers and things like that. But we were kind of my partner and I in that business kind of thought to ourselves, like, Why don’t we just build something that we can sell to governments and leverage our relationships and build a lot of enterprise value along the way? So that was around the time I met Emil. He was, you know, I think you guys all know Emil and what he does, but obviously with his like short form video content background and my political background, we thought that there was a lot of synergy to build this online education platform together. And we’ve gotten some good traction so far. We just closed our funding round, which is exciting. And we’re doing some press around that that’ll hopefully get picked up. So yeah, it’s about brings you up to speed. Jacob Shipley: Okay, awesome. Will Hinman: Yeah. Yeah. I grew up in the Cleveland area. Um, now I live in the Columbus area. Cool. Jacob Shipley: Um, on that, what was it like growing up and this is getting kind of a little off track of the traditional onboarding stuff, but I’m super interested. What was it like growing up in Ohio and how do you think that kind of shaped, um, you know, where you ended up? Will Hinman: Yeah. Ohio is an interesting microcosm for the rest of the country. Um, You have just about every walk of life represented. And that’s why it tends to be like a good test market for brands and things like that. I mean, socioeconomically, ethnically, et cetera, there’s really a good cross section here represented. And so, you know, growing up in the Cleveland area, Cleveland’s interesting because there are a lot of like ethnic pockets that still persist like there are Jewish neighborhoods and there are Italian neighborhoods and there are Polish neighborhoods and, you know, Hungarian neighborhoods, et cetera. I didn’t live in like downtown Cleveland. I lived out in the suburbs, but I think that’s something that makes it unique. One thing about Ohio that I tell people is like, you know, the three C’s are the big cities, right? Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati. Cleveland is very like, it almost has like It has more like a Pittsburgh feel like more of an Eastern kind of rust belt Atmosphere and attitude if you Will I think people tend to be like sort of gritty and edgy a little with a little more like Not East Coast attitude, but a little bit more of that flavor Cincinnati on the other extreme is you know, you’re basically in Kentucky at that point It has a little bit more of a southern kind of preppy feel to it you know, I would say a little less like, yeah, it’s more of like a, almost like a southern feel to it. And then Columbus in the middle, where you have, Columbus is a very new city, unlike the other two, it’s the only growing metro in the state. And, you know, there’s a lot of state is here, we have a lot of colleges and universities So it’s younger population. We have a little bit of tech a little bit of Fashion like L brands Victoria’s Secret Abercrombie DSW. There’s a lot of fashion industry here. There’s some banking Huntington Chase have a big presence here. There’s You know a lot of insurance nationwide route insurance So it’s an interesting place to be and then it’s a state capital. Kind of equate it to to, or I hope, maybe certain senses, that it’s like what Austin was like 15 years ago. You know, there’s a lot of similarities with it being a state capital, large university, young population, and maybe some, hopefully with us included, some emerging tech. And Anderle just announced a big project here. Intel announced a huge project here. I’m bullish on Columbus for sure. Cool. I love that. That’s awesome. Um, drifting back towards like the, uh, double clicking on some of the onboarding stuff as far as like, yeah, I think one thing is like, that’s super interesting. Jacob Shipley: Like, it sounds like you could talk about just Ohio and the Ohio ecosystem for a long time. Will Hinman: And, and, and, What are other things that like, you know, uh, metaphorically you could bang your fist on a table and rant about like, well, what, what are things the that like you could talk about for hours and not get tired of Um You know, I mean politics is certainly something that’s top of mind as well I tend to try to be pretty careful about all of that because uh, the winds change quickly and you want to be on the right side of it. Um, I, and actually I can send you a couple of those too. I didn’t think to, um, I didn’t think to send you any of this in my own boarding, but I do a lot of news clips. Uh, so I like go on our local news and talk politics, um, as a pundit pretty regularly, probably at least once a month doing that for the past, like two years. Um, On some different channels. So that’s something that you guys can can look at and happen to I would also say Yeah, I mean the need for You know the training programs that we’re providing and to give young people purpose the number one Anxiety among people is what their next step looks like and what they’re gonna do next in their life and providing people with solutions to that I think is really important especially right now if you look at like you know mental health and things like that among youth I think a lot of it in part is attributable to purposelessness meaninglessness and so providing people with purpose and direction in their lives I think is immensely important I’m Catholic and my faith is important to me. Family is certainly important to me. So I have like, I would say I have like a lot of traditional values and that’s probably in part where I’m from as well. Trying to think what else. Jacob Shipley: That’s great. Jacob Shipley: What on your family, what is your family like you grew up in a big family? Will Hinman: Yeah, so my mom is one of seven kids. My grandfather was one of 13. I only have two brothers and sisters, but I have 16 first cousins. My mom had 61st cousins on one side of the family. So yeah, Catholics, man. So. That’s. You know, we have family everywhere. Cousins, probably 20 states, maybe not quite. But my family currently lives out in Denver, all of them. So they moved from Cleveland area out there and I get out there quite a bit to see them. All right. Sister, my older sister and her husband have two kids. So that’s kind of been fun lately. And Um, yeah, I think that’s just an important element. Jacob Shipley: Yeah, totally. That’s awesome, man. Um, as far as like you said, like you try to be kind of careful as some of those things, you don’t want to like take a hard and fast stance that might not bode well down the road. Say as a whole, you try to be pretty, um, what’s the right word? Try to be pretty measured in kind of like how you speak? Will Hinman: Yeah, I would say so. Although, um, I’m not opposed to being a little controversial at times. I know it, um, generally it’s favorable for engagement. And so I want to make content that’s engaging and entertaining. Um, but I don’t want to, yeah, I would, I would definitely say I’m a little bit more measured than maybe some of the people in the political arena out Um something that I honestly took from my former boss Um who was before he was the speaker of the house. He was a supreme court justice in ohio Before that he was a state senator county prosecutor just had like A very long history career in politics and a lot of that I think he would attribute to his ability to stay measured and not be hot-headed about things It’s definitely a better recipe for longevity in this space than spouting off about, you know, the issue of the day. Jacob Shipley: What else would you, how else would you describe your voice? So like measure, not afraid to, I’d say like what, take a intelligent stance, but what else, how else would you define like how you, how you communicate? Will Hinman: Um, I don’t know if I always could do this publicly or professionally, although I might like to more like privately. I’m like kind of silly and goofy, but, um, I don’t think that really comes across much professionally. Um, so I guess do with that what you Will. Um, I, uh, I won funniest in high school era, like class clown or, or whatever the Relative was and I tell that to my friends now and they’re like You’re objectively not funny so Again I don’t know if that really comes across professionally, but I would say I Like to have educated and informed opinions I would say I I Like to be authoritative where I can on things I would say generally Depending on the day I try to be optimistic certainly in Again there’s probably a little bit of schism between like behind closed doors and what I want to project to a degree and Maybe you guys Will help me like find that authentic authenticity in my voice. Um but You know certainly as it relates to like workforce issues and things like that I want to remain pretty optimistic in terms of what I put out there privately. Um, you know, I can definitely have a dark sense of humor sarcastic sense of humor, etc It didn’t get added to our reservation So then we manually added it to our reservation while we were in line. Michael Houck: Uh oh, sounds like there’s a canary in the mic. Did you hear that? Will Hinman: Well, you probably hear it better than I can with headphones on. Jacob Shipley: What is, so like, you kind of talked a little bit about like the lobbying stuff and flash pass, but like, what does the journey look like from ideation of like, you know, whether it was working with the meal or just, you know, you kind of started thinking about it when you were working in government, but what is the ideation? How have you seen this? Like from, okay, maybe this is a good idea to, well, we just raised money. This was clearly a good idea. Like, what is, did you ever doubt that this was something that would really work out? Will Hinman: So Yes. So when I, I probably started, um, I always kind of had in the back of my mind that eventually I wanted to, uh, start, I wanted to start like a lot. So like probably back to when I, when I was first, um, in DC, I was studying for the LSAT and I was like, wanted to go to law school. I was still an undergrad at the time. Um, and I met with like as many, Lobbyists as I could I’m a big networker. So that’s like always been a strong suit of mine. It’s I Since I was like a baby I was never afraid to like talk to adults and it’s always like comfortable speaking with like whomever and Shameless and who I approach for advice and things like that so I was just meeting with as many like people as I could and just gravitated towards some people that I felt were like powerful lobbyists on the hill and every single one I talked to was like Yeah, don’t go to law school. Don’t do that. You don’t need to do that. Just work in government for a little while, and then find a path for yourself in lobbying if that’s what you decide you want to do. And so as I was continuing my career in government, it was always kind of like, and I think it’s the case with a lot of folks that work in government, frankly, which is always like, you always have a little better opportunity in front of you, and you can continue to climb the slope rung of government before you make the leap to the private sector. And it is a leap. So for probably six months before I left, I was planning and plotting every single detail of this lobbying firm and how it would work out. I was going to get clients and what my brand looked like and all these things. Frankly, overthinking it, if we’re being honest. I was losing a lot of sleep the last month because my boss was term limited. Losing like a lot of sleep and just kind of like, I couldn’t, I couldn’t solicit clients while I was in government, of course. So, um, really had to jump in the cold water in that respect. Um, and then I went out and did it and it was like, it worked out really well. Like I started getting clients, um, pretty quickly soon eclipsed my former salary by a lot. It was, um, I don’t know if I should say this publicly necessarily, but like 10 X to my government salary in probably a year, which was a very modest government salary, of course. So I started to have a lot of success with it. And then I partnered up with another lobbyist and we merged our firms into, so it was Forest Will Hinman, then became Bowers Will Hinman, Andy Bowers, who’s my partner. And he is an older lobbyist. He’s in his fifties and had been doing this for a long time. And he sort of had this like serial entrepreneur mindset where he was, he has a law firm and he has a real estate company and he has a, um, a debt collection firm and, you know, uh, all these loosely, very loosely related, like investments, um, and businesses that he was involved in. And that became very inspirational to me. And he was encouraging me. He was like, look, like, you know, you should think of yourself as more than just a lobbyist. You have all these crazy, like government connections and weren’t working in government people that work in every single industry and every single law of life, which is like one of my favorite things about working for government. I knew, I knew. So if you name a big company that does business in Ohio, I know they’re lobbyists. I know I have an in there somehow. And so we just talked about like ways that we could leverage that. And then, um, I started getting interested in like ways that we could better, um, Create, uh, enterprise value, um, because consulting businesses, which is. What a lot of these investments that Andy was making were obviously don’t create a lot of like the valuation multiples are like one and a half at best right because it’s like all you like I can’t go around and turn and sell my lobbying firm that easily because like I’m very um not that I’m too important but I’m like essential to that business because it’s my relationships that we’ve sold um with software uh it’s not that way But still I can leverage my relationships, um to create a lot of value in that um, and obviously it’s infinitely scalable and all that good stuff, so um Yeah around that time. I met emile and um, it was just like Very fortuitous timing. Um I originally Was like pitching him that I could represent him And then he was like would you just like be interested? Being my co-founder in this business. And I was like, yes, definitely. Um, you know, and you guys know, he’s very like high performing individual and kind of has like, um, for somebody at the time who was, I think he was 20 when I met him, um, was just like miles ahead of any other 20 year old that I knew. So, um, I was like, yeah, I definitely want to work with you. And, um, And then, yeah, I mean, along the way, I think as we started hitting our revenue targets and then I kind of came up with an alternative revenue strategy, which was scalable across states where we could just create relationships with trade schools and then get legislative appropriations for those schools through our relationships and create some sticky revenue that way. Versus some of the more Ohio specific programs that we were making a lot of revenue from previously, then it became like, oh, we can expand this to other states. We can expand this into every state in the country. All we need is like a good lobbyist, you know, that we can just contract with. I’m not like unique by any stretch. Like there’s, there’s 12 me in every state at least, you know, that we can find and repeat this So that’s where we’ve taken it to date. Jacob Shipley: Very cool. Will Hinman: This is so odd. I feel like I’m talking way too much about that. I hate talking about myself this much. Jacob Shipley: This is great. Jacob Shipley: Yeah, it’s awesome. Um, how, so like you said, traditional values and I’m kind of bouncing around a little bit, but traditional faith and family is super important. How comfortable are you talking about not obviously we’re not gonna you know get super personal but like the personal side of like that kind of you know faith and family having nieces and nephews and you know going to Church that kind of thing like how much do you talk about those kind of things publicly? Will Hinman: I’m comfortable with it. Yeah Yeah, I think I think so, you know, I’m not like big into um I’m not big into like talking about interpersonal relationships so much just because I think that’s those are meant to be private and interpersonal and definition, um, but definitely, yeah, like The importance of family and the importance of faith and things like that are things that I’m comfortable i’ve never been like overly evangelical, lowercase evangelical, if you Will, like never been like, you know, super outspoken about those issues, but I do like to engage with that content on social media quite a bit, so. Jacob Shipley: How has that, like growing up in Ohio, having that, you know, like not a huge immediate family, but like extended family, and then faith in you in part. How has that shaped, do you think, your career trajectory of having this kind of traditional values? Will Hinman: I think that, you know, certainly, like, hard work is instilled in that environment. I think, like, growing up in a large extended family, you kind of have to, and being I was the youngest kid. So you kind of have to like um Create your own like destiny if you Will I think it’s a little bit maybe different than being an only child where you’re the focus of your parents attention like you have to really like go out on your own and um create things for yourself though and understand that like you’re not necessarily the center of the world, but through your own, you know, sort of self-determination, you can develop positive growth and things like that. So, you know, that’s probably one way. I think just growing up in the Midwest gives me a lot of, like, bona fides with people around the country and just, like, from Ohio, frankly, just kind of makes you a little bit related. Like probably more relatable than somebody from like a bigger city or a bigger place that might intimidate some. Like when I go down to speak with legislators in like Mississippi or like, you know, throughout the maybe Arkansas or what have you, like, I think it’s a little less, it’s a little more disarming like I’m from a small town like you, versus to say like I’m from, you know, New York or LA. Jacob Shipley: I want to make sure we leave enough time to go through the operation side, what content cadence kind of looks like, A couple like quick questions or kind of operation stuff, but next steps, I Will want to get, like if you have other accounts that you were like, this person talks like how I want to talk or this person talks about the things I want to talk about, those are super helpful. Um, and so, yeah, I think that’d be like super helpful. Just kind of like starting to think through what that first batch of content looks like, But then if you want to talk through, uh, the upside, for sure. Will Hinman: Um, I’ll look, too. I honestly, offhand, I’m like, I know that a lot of people are talking about this issue. I’ll shoot you some ideas offline, though. I don’t want to get into Ben’s time, either. Michael Houck: Well, it doesn’t necessarily need to be people in the same niche. Sure, sure. It can just be people who have the voice or use content formats that you like and would want to represent you. We use that as inspo, not just for topics, which we can get from you, right? It’s also more just like, how do we, you want to be heard? And like you fill out the form and that’s helpful. And we talked here, that’s helpful. But sometimes it’s also good to just see examples like, Oh, you know, I like, you know, if you’re in the startup niche, maybe like Alex Formosy’s voice or something like that, you know, maybe not niche, but you still like Formosy’s voice. You want to apply that to yours. So just stuff like that’s helpful. Will Hinman: Yeah. Yeah. I mean this, not that this is necessarily what you’re asking for, but one, Interesting point that I think you guys would maybe be familiar with is like, um, kind of basic like this. I listened to the all in podcast and, uh, um, Like, uh, sacks is always kind of like, and Chamath, they’re always like dispelling that AI is going to replace any and displace any workers. Whereas Jason’s always like, no, like it is. And like, we need like education solutions and things like that. I don’t really align politically with Jason as much, but I want to create that sense of optimism that can appeal to people on the right, like Sax and Chamath, with some of Jason’s optimism, if that makes sense. So again, not necessarily exactly what you’re looking for, but maybe that’s a helpful thought as well. Michael Houck: Yeah. I mean, when it comes to Jason, even a broken clock’s right twice a day, right? Will Hinman: Exactly. Did you know he invested in Uber? Michael Houck: Oh, no, I hadn’t heard. Is he one of the first? Maybe? I don’t know. Ben Ornstein: Too good. Yeah, so on the operations front, yeah, as Jacob and Howard both said, any kind of accounts would be great. If there’s any other kind of information, it could be anything like docs, writing samples, anything Would be great news clips that like maybe things that we can’t see public anything that we can’t see Publicly that were fine publicly that would be helpful Literally send all of it in any of it super helpful to us And you can just dump all that into slack I’ll I’ll also DM you for things like your your LinkedIn Social your your credentials because we’ll lock you into our scheduling software but also we’ll do things called engagements proactive and reactive. So what this means is when we post the content for you, we’ll also be replying in your voice if you’d like us to on those posts, so you don’t have to worry about that. I would check in with you to make sure the voice is as close to yours as physically possible before kind of doing so independently. And then on proactive engagements, this is This is a pretty big value add that we found for other clients where, you know, we are stealing attention away from other relevant people in your niche and kind of proactively engaging with their content in your voice from your account. And so if that’s something you’re interested in, we can do that as well. And the same thing on the reactive side, I would check in with you to make sure the voice is perfect before doing that independently. Will Hinman: Cool. How do you guys typically run, aside from the reactive space, how do you typically run content by your clients? Michael Houck: Yeah, so we run it first through an internal process. So Jacob Will draft it, and then Blake, Blake Imahl, who’s our editor-in-chief and my partner in the agency, either he or myself, usually him, but sometimes both of us, especially early on. We’ll review it once it passes our quality bar, and for context, Blake’s built a 100,000-person audience for himself as well, so his quality bar is pretty high. But once it passes by that, then we’ll get it over to you in Slack, and you’ll see Notion notifications pop up when that’s the case. Eventually, obviously, we want to get this to be as autonomous as possible, so it’s not a time-consuming thing you need to do every week, but early on, any engagement from you there is super helpful, just to narrow down what the voice is, and if we’re talking about things in the middle of the day, etc., etc., if we’re capturing your POV appropriately. And then after that, we’ll take it and we’ll schedule it from there. So if we don’t hear from you by a certain time, our default Will be to just post it, but we want to make sure that we give you enough time to go through and review. So figure, get a content batch from us on, you know, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of a given week. That’s not something that would go into production without your sort of explicit approval for at least a week. So you have a bunch of time to go through a review. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Jacob Shipley: And then there’s also typically like early on, I’ll obviously, we’ll be wanting to, it’ll take up more time. The first, let’s say a couple of times we do this just because I want to get really comfortable with your voice and who you are. And then the goal is to make it as minimal as possible to where you can glance at it and give a thumbs up and we’re good to go. Talk about family values. I have four kids and so I’m busy and so I’m always my default is to try to work ahead so that a so that we’re never scrambling so that you’re never feeling like oh man, I got to review this before next week and it’s going back and forth. But also just give you a little bit of breathing room so that you feel like a lot of times with people that are super busy. They can do 30 minutes every other week versus doing it’s harder to find smaller slots every week. So I’m open to that. I can be, you know, a little bit more in the weeds week to week, or we can, you know, kind of batch it out a little bit further, but we’ll kind of, you know, cross that bridge when we come to it after we get these first few batches done and get the voice sounding right. Will Hinman: Cool. Makes sense. I tend to not be quite as, uh, as on demand as my co-founders. So I probably won’t be calling you on Sunday as much as Emil might. Michael Houck: No, I love the random calls from Emil. Michael Houck: It’s actually, it’s great. Michael Houck: He’s the same way I am. You’ll see sometimes I’ll be sending Slack messages over at like 2 a.m., but obviously not expecting anyone to reply to those at that time. Will Hinman: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s cool, but my management style typically, you know, I’m like, I’m working on Sunday night, but I’m going to schedule a message to go out at 9am tomorrow. Michael Houck: I think you’ve got it figured out if that’s the case. But okay, so yeah, so next step. So we’ll just get started on things on our end, Ben Will follow up over DM to grab your credentials and stuff like that. And then you’ll probably see the first content batch come through sometime next week. And again, sort of your engagement on that for those early few batches is definitely appreciated. Jacob Will also send over some first questions in the next, you know, day or two, maybe the latest Monday, of just things that have come up during our research that we think would be interesting sort of first topics to hit on. So if you want to pick up your phone and record a rambly one to two minute long voice note in Slack and reply to those, that’ll be hugely helpful. And then we’re sort of off to the races from there. Will Hinman: Perfect. Yeah, that sounds great. I’ll have like in this, I’m sure this is helpful too. Like I’ll share some stuff with you guys as it comes up that I think might be worth engaging with. Um, I like, for example, we, I think we’ll get some press around our fundraise, um, this week. So hopefully you guys can run with some of that, um, my TV hits, you know, et cetera. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Michael Houck: Honestly, with the TV stuff in particular, um, I would love to get in like a cadence there. Ben can help me. Up what that process looks like on our side. But yeah, I think overall, anytime Will you have either things come up for the business, things come up for you personally, or also just like interesting thoughts that maybe people aren’t talking about. Just drop a voice note, drop a link into Slack, and we’ll get right on it. Will Hinman: Great. Sounds good. Michael Houck: Well, all right, guys. I’m excited for this. And thanks for the time at the at the airport. We’ll appreciate you No, likewise. Will Hinman: Thank you guys. Appreciate your time and excited as well. Michael Houck: All right, talk to you guys soon. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: See you. Thank you.