- Duration: 23 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01KS8NZKKCTDXYSGA5WVD2CNG6 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01KS8NZKKCTDXYSGA5WVD2CNG6)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: This loads like this for me. Oh, I see. Yeah. [Emil Barr]: Down, it creates this. This as part of the animation load, I actually like that it’s cut off. I feel like this looks more modern and like advanced, but like this should animate without having to scroll. It should animate upon loading. So it’s not just like a bar. I sent you the, I texted you the link for Booka Demo. That’s just a calendarly embed. The nice thing is it’s routed. So depending on if they’re a student at school. Or business, it goes to different people at Flash Pass. Um, this is all great. I do think there’s some design standpoint of like, I don’t know if this is too high up because it’s so much white space, but I’d say in general, I’m happy with it. [Michael Houck]: Um, so let’s just keep it as is. [Emil Barr]: I think it’s good to have it high up. [Michael Houck]: Um, if we want to, for like a newer company, if we want to. Pull the white space in on the top border and the bottom border, that’s fine. We can make that a little smaller. [Emil Barr]: Let’s do that, but I like it overall. I’m nitpicking, no change there. [Michael Houck]: Um, okay, I’m making note of that white space thing, or actually, I guess my AI guy will. So, okay, animation as well. [Emil Barr]: Okay, product. This should either link to anchors, so it should go back up to these, or we can just get rid of it entirely. Um, I’m thinking up to you, whatever you want there. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think by that point, people have seen the page. We can, you know, no one’s scrolling down to the bottom and starting from there. So we can just cut it. No. [Emil Barr]: Careers link to our LinkedIn page that has all of our active job postings. About, we can just get rid of this. Press, just link to Greg’s email. Like if they click on it, it’s a mail too. And contact is info at flashbast.school. [Emil Barr]: Alec will get you all these things. So I, sorry to cut you off. [Michael Houck]: I messaged him about that after you texted me. He sent me a message I didn’t fully understand. I’m sure there’s context here I don’t have. He said, those would have been written before I was brought on board. We have, I’m going to fuck out this pronunciation, Guru Khan’s info on that, which we can copy, but we don’t have our own version is my understanding. Is that in the chat? Am I in that channel? [Emil Barr]: I just DM’d him. [Michael Houck]: I didn’t put it in the chat. Because he needs yelled at. [Emil Barr]: I’ll just like, because if you I was in the channel, I would just be like, dude, just like fucking clod, write these claws and send them to like put them on the page. But I’ll talk to him. That’s fine. [Emil Barr]: Okay. I do think maybe let’s replace product with resources and add the Ohio Tech Cred website and add the jobs lost AI website. Those are two logical things. So resources, Ohio Tech Cred. Jobs lost AI. [Michael Houck]: On the jobs lost one, do we want to bring that in? Because we talked about bringing that in as its own page into the main site. What are your thoughts on that right now? [Emil Barr]: The more nuanced conversation I had with Will was that we probably wanted to be less specific to AI because it’s very West Coast. Based, and we probably just want to create like a general job like unemployment aggregation tracker or like job loss tracker. The reason for that is we primarily sell to Midwestern and rural states, and most of the jobs lost to AI concentration is heavy on the coasts because they’re like tech hubs. What would be more beneficial for us from like a marketing and sales standpoint is to. Go into Iowa and say, hey, like three manufacturing, like three shipbuilding yards closed down, you know, like, and you guys lost a thousand jobs. Flashpass can help upskill these thousand people that lost their jobs like in the last 60 days or 90 days. That’s the longer conversation. Immediately, just don’t worry Link it to jobs lost to AI. That’s something that will happen after success stories and just be something to think about after the fact. But I don’t want it to get in the way of what we’re doing right now. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, makes sense. The other. On that was: we talked about the blog to drive traffic to that either tracker or to put it on the FlashPass site. I think the conversation was sort of all in one at the time, like bringing it into the site and putting the blog on. So, how do you feel about blog in either location right now? Ask me again if only have some fucking revenue. [Emil Barr]: Like, basically, like, I want to do it, but I don’t want to do it in the next 30 days. I want to like we have some gravity opportunities that will needs to lock down um because we lost two so the short answer is yes but I see that as like not something we want to do immediately um I’d say that there’s just other priorities right now um yeah well we’ll we can check back in on a week or two no rush this is good yeah check back in in two weeks this is good and the success story page is good because it helps us make sales like when people look us up we look more legit so that’s why there’s pressure to get this done quickly Those are halves that make us, that’s like good content marketing and make us look more established, but like not as immediately tied to revenue. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Sounds good. I think we’re on the same page here then. So we will, next steps here will be: I will send this to, I’ll put it in the channel. I’ll send it to Alec. And we just need to hook up the DNS so that it is actually like flashbacks.com or whatever website you guys are wanting to use for flashbesteducation.com or whatever the new one is. Is. Yep. Okay. Yeah. [Emil Barr]: Let’s just make those changes and get it live by Monday, and I’ll tell Alice. [Michael Houck]: Sounds good. [Emil Barr]: Because to get it live. Okay. Success story page. I want to see a different photo here. Mostly because we don’t offer nursing and like this is like very in-person. And second of all, because like, the theme for this page is I was previously born and living on the streets and I got a job with Flash Pass. And so I feel like the a little bit, the copy isn’t bad, but the visual imagery like across the board is a little bit too corporate in B2B and not enough of like, um, like what we’re doing is we’re literally interviewing like out of all the applicants, there was like three that were like, one like like almost almost in F jobs. That’s who we’re spotlighting in the video. And that’s what’s going to be like a main feature of this. So it’s less of like speaking to a corporate training environment and more towards like, look how amazing we are. Look how much FlashPass helps people. Because again, our end customer is the government. So this is something that we can forward them and show them. [Michael Houck]: We can use the picture from your LinkedIn post. Which one? [Emil Barr]: Oh, yeah, that guy. [Michael Houck]: That’ll be good brand. [Emil Barr]: Yeah, well, I did tell Tatum to be more like Roy Lee, so embrace that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: But yeah, like that’s the vibe. So I think that informs this. [Emil Barr]: Like this, I’d like to replace with the video in general. Um, like a video of like we have on the speaking page, but this is going to be where our video lives of like our documentary where we go to these people’s houses, you know, and like show like flashback success stories. [Michael Houck]: Do we have that today? [Emil Barr]: We will have it June 15th, so just a placeholder, like, we’ll have it within the next three weeks. Um, it can be a good one that we hide. [Michael Houck]: Assuming we can get this page live next week, like, should we keep this in in the meantime, or should we just cut it for now? No, we can just hide the section. [Emil Barr]: I don’t actually mind the idea of being like, oh, yeah, and we do corporate training, but I think it should be towards the bottom. So, like, this is good from help desk to cybersecurity leader. Like, this is all, this is somewhat fine. Two things I’ll say. Say. This is a little bit too B2B in corporate. So, like, a little bit more in the copy of a spin on: I was like poor and now I’m rich. Like, I was looking for work. Now, I make a ton of money through Flash Pass. This is a little bit too internally B2B. But also, like, so for the success stories, and then I don’t mind this, like, oh, also, we do like B2B training because it is part of our story. But I would like push it down here somewhere like maybe above more voices from the flash pass community I don’t be the first thing people see because again like that’s not our primary focus our primary focus is we’re helping all these people that don’t have work or like making no money like finding careers through flash pass yeah makes sense to me okay we’ll move it down for now yeah and like just like that let’s let that inform the copy as well a little bit like again we’re showing states is: oh, I was a paper player, I was a steel mill worker, and my steel mill got shut down. And I wasn’t sure how I was going to provide for my family. But then I learned about Flash Pass at my local community college, and I took it and I was able to find a job making, you know, 90K a year in oils, like, in an oil rig. Like, that’s the narrative that we’re painting to our customer, which is the government. That makes total sense. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, we’ll take another pass of the copy and just tweak it so that it’s more in line with that. Should be an idea. I should be able to do that over the weekend, honestly. I think this is close. [Emil Barr]: Like, this is not far off, but I did want to hop on a call to discuss it. All right. This one, it’s first draft. So I’ll kind of point that to there. Did you see the canva of the marketing material I showed you from the speech at New Mexico? You sent that over, what, like two hours ago? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, okay. [Emil Barr]: I’m just gonna pull it up. It’s literally just this, like, it’s just like four images they used on their TVs. Oh, I only saw the first one, yeah. [Michael Houck]: For some reason, the other three didn’t show up for me, but I guess they’re the same. [Emil Barr]: Yeah, they’re the same, they’re like different graphics. Um, yeah, we tested which ones got more clicks, and the first two did better, actually, um, which is interesting, but I think it’s like they’re just like so. Um, so like directionally, I think the content on the site and the site organization is good, is fine. I like the PDF, I like the signature talks, I like the testimonials, I like the video right away. Like, I like this. So, I actually like the way the site is organized. I think the tone. Is very far off. And by that, I mean both the visual tone. Both the visual tone and the copy. Okay. Like the copy, Greg and I were talking about like what we want to pilot is this like brand of like the richest 23 year old in America. And like it’s not true, but also like if you can get enough news like to publish it, like it becomes true. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: But like that’s the brand. This is just like, this is hitting on the wrong notes. [Emil Barr]: It’s like, oh, he got his university paying 200K. Like, that’s not what we should lead for. Like, the $40 million company is valuable because that was the enterprise value of the companies. My stake was, 20 million, but like 40 million out of a dorm room. Like, just like leading with bigger numbers and more impressive results, I think is going to be important with the copy here. Like, right now, I think we're like, it just seems like very. Like college kid ass, like kiddie, like Mickey Mouse shit, like some of the stuff that we're highlighting. [Michael Houck]: And then I think that comes down to the tone too. [Emil Barr]: Like, this is very bright and colorful and playful. And I want it to be just like more serious and compelling. And like, this is a more relatable version of like Mark Cuban to like come talk to your school. There's a little bit of like, you know, if you. You know, like, if you will, some like self-fulfilling prophecy, where if we say it enough times, it like becomes the truth. So, like, we should always be trying to play towards, like, okay, actually, you know, like playing to this version that has $100 million or like playing to this version that, like, you know, commands like a $40,000 speaking fee, like in the content and the stuff that we put forth. And right now, this feels like a little bit like too. Like we’re we’re erring on the side of underrepresenting and erring on the side of too unserious in the tone versus the other way around. Does that make sense? Like too aspirational? That’s what we’re like, This isn’t aspirational enough. And like this is a little bit just like, yeah, anyways. [Michael Houck]: No, I understand. I think I Greg and I definitely have different styles here a little bit. But we will pull this up. We’ll make this more. Declarative, more assertive, more big number forward, and also just change up the branding a bit to make it feel a little more have more bravitas to it. That’s fine. [Emil Barr]: Greg, this what I told Greg for the record. This was my like POV, like to Greg. I like the way this is organized. I like book a meal for your next event. Like, I like this. This looks very, this speaks to a decision maker very well, which I like as well. I think it’s primarily this blue. Like, don’t mind this yellow. I think it’s just like something with a little bit more gravitas here on the color. And then just the copy is really where I think it just needs more copy emphasizing. Like, instead of five million dollars in revenue, just say 40 million plus from his dorm room, you know, like just like stuff like this. Like, there’s like the 200K seems to be the predominant focus. Like, it’s just like not enough. Like, I like this natural TV. Like, we just need to seem like a slightly bigger deal than we actually are in person, not the other way around, if that makes sense. Yes. No, it makes total sense. [Michael Houck]: Um, okay. I will take a pass of the copy. I will put the new copy on this style for Monday, Tuesday for you. Take a look at that first, if you don’t mind. And then, if we’re aligned on that, then I’ll go back with the designers and I’ll have them take another pass at. At branding. Okay. [Emil Barr]: Are you doing the copy or did Blake do the copy for this? Blake and I collabed on the copy for this. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, he did the pass and then I sort of just leave him in as well because I think he can get there. [Emil Barr]: Like, I just think that this copy is too we’re selling to students, but a student would much like we can’t seem to. A student would much rather hear Elon speak than they would rather hear like some of their age that got a 200K scholarship. So, we need to defer this is the next Elon, right? Like, with like what we’re doing, and not he’s just like you, except he got a 200K scholarship. Like, that’s the tone that this is giving right now. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So, we just want to be like more aspirational in nature across the copy and less relatable. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, no, heard heard loud and clear. We’ll change up the tone fully, and I think you’ll be pleased with the next pass. [Emil Barr]: Okay, um, only other thing I had for you is: since Brian, it doesn’t look like a bite in Brian, would it make sense to get Civichine in front of Coinbase Ventures at least so that there’s like an alternate route there and same thing? Say, Hey, like, they’re not raising Gloat Love to put you like on an investor update. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, we had a contact over there who we did some stuff with at Launch House. Um, I forget her name, but I saw her email. I don’t also know if she’s still there. But either way, I can definitely get in touch with them. So I’ll get something out Monday morning. Okay. [Emil Barr]: everything I had. I think your main focus is speaking. Have you guys had a chance to talk about social stuff? Did you see my messages last night? Yeah, you did. You liked them. I flagged to Tatum. [Michael Houck]: I was down. I know, I’m sure she’s also recovering and stuff, so I haven’t really heard from her today. [Emil Barr]: I’ll say no again at the channel in the threads. [Emil Barr]: Feel free to add me to this sync if it would, if above is not clear. [Michael Houck]: Well, yeah, down for that one ever. [Emil Barr]: I think just like tying in, like, I had this conversation with Greg and separate conversation with Tatum. So, first of all, Tatum needs to capture more content every day, which I’m talking to her about. Like, you focus on speaking, but like, um, right now, this thing of like filming once every two weeks is not getting us enough volume of content, I think, to make a difference. So, like, we’ve got to ramp up a volume. But the other thing is, like, we had an option to do like an ice bath with like someone from the New York Post that like Greg declined because he’s like, oh, like it’s not like high value. Like the videos don’t get like a lot of content. And same thing, like we’re reaching out for this American ledger campaign. Oh, we should reach out to some influencers. He’s like, yeah, like press doesn’t like really care like which influencers are going to be associated with this unless it’s like a mega influencer. And I’m like, that’s fine. But RPR should also serve like a social media purpose. If we’re serious about like hitting like a hundred thousand followers. Like it has to also the stuff that we do has to like there are times where it might not be an immediate press opportunity, but like it’s a very clear content opportunity. And so I think just getting them aligned around like how do we like make sure that at least once a week we’re doing something that’s a cool piece of content that has the potential to be a viral video and like getting rhythm of creating and architecting those moments like very consistently that’s going to be like very important. Actually hitting like hundreds of thousands of followers. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean the biggest thing we can do to get followers is to co-opt the audiences of high trust influencers who already have those followers, right? And doing interesting things with us, whether that’s like the easy example of this is like those YouTube shows, like the old hot one show or the um the like the game where they pop the balloon or the game where they debate the person, you know, like all these like stupid shows that I mean, I don’t actually watch, but I see the little clips pop up all the time. There are opportunities there that, yeah, I agree. We should be looking for things Even if it’s just in an ice New York Post, like that’s content we can use that footage for whatever indefinitely, right? [Michael Houck]: Okay, I mean, do you do you want me to sort of because I think Greg sort of, he sort of operates in his own sphere. Do you want me to sort of bring the team more together on that instead of like a, you know, path that be part of our weekly check-in, basically? [Emil Barr]: I think just having part of our weekly check-in is good. What social media moments are like, what events are happening like each week? I think that’s a good cadence to add in lead those. But I was mostly telling you so you’re in the loop on like where that was coming from [Emil Barr]: And this is where the braining matters, right? Where if we’re speaking at Harvard and MIT and we’ll have this perception of the richest 23-year-old in America, now you’re kind of like a caricature, but one invite you on, right? It’s like poor people debate like a rich person. How do we become that face and voice? And where like, I do think that there’s definitely a brand to be built there, but like we almost have to become like a more of a caricature, like a more extreme version of ourselves to be able to fill that cultural role across, like, you know, where podcasts and like shows and stuff are going to want you on. Do you know? Um, do you know Nathan Lotka? [Michael Houck]: Have you heard of him or do you know him? [Emil Barr]: Sounds familiar. Why do I, what is this deal? [Michael Houck]: He’s this guy. He was he’s a friend of my old co-founder and then he lived at our house in la for like three months back in 2022 or 2021 maybe uh he’s like he’s totally a shark like he’s totally uh um you know I don’t know he’s in fully self-interested uh which is you know how I guess he needs to operate um but he’s incredibly good at content and like himself, and like, he’s like, oh, if a big press piece, all I care about really is the headline showing up on Google. Cause he got this thing that was like, trying to remember the specific example. I don’t know, he’s just very good at like these like headline brands that then people are interested in talking to him. I could reach out to him and see if he’s down to. [Emil Barr]: even just connect and chat and like how what he’s done specifically to make that a success and a repeatable process for him if that’s of interest I think maybe creating um running a list of people like that that tatum and gray can audit is probably thing okay um but yeah he’s doing a good job just those types of we have very real content opportunities we’re either missing or not manufacturing And I don’t think that doing four interesting content things in a month is like a very high bar. But I do think we can be doing like interesting content things in addition, just like going to Wendy’s and talking about the cheeseburgers if we like want to really have exponential social media preps. [Michael Houck]: The one thing I’ll say is that the copy-paste sort of repeatable format, though, is important. Like, not to say that we should not do bigger things, shots on goal, et cetera. But having something that we can just keep doing is actually really strong for the brand right now. So I would say, don’t pause that. Don’t like replace that with this, but like, let’s layer this on and do these sort of collab stunts, partnerships, things like that. Let’s do those two. Cool. All right. [Emil Barr]: That sounds good. Let me know if anything. But this was helpful and glad get you out of here early. Have a good Memorial Day weekend, man. [Michael Houck]: You too, man. Talk to you soon. See you.