- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01KT7ERQ1ETWWVYF8EZ4RGJYCX (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Michael Houck: Yo. Hey. What’s up, man? Ben Ornstein: Starting to dig into the Jolt stuff, which is very exciting. Ben Ornstein: So that is exciting. Michael Houck: I’m pumped. Ben Ornstein: I’m excited. So yeah, digging in now. Michael Houck: How’s it going on? I know it’s not related to Jolt stuff, but how’s it going with getting Casper stuff ready to like if we create a landing page for it and start selling? Ben Ornstein: So I still have to catch up with Rafael about like how we’re going to make this available for external clients. And I know he was thinking through a bunch of things. And so I’ve been trying to balance between like bothering him and not bothering him. So I know he’s thinking about things and like how, how to do it. So I just got to continue catching up with him. So I’m trying to move all these things forward at the same time. Michael Houck: He messaged me yesterday and we talked a little bit about it because he was like, oh, there’s some security risks with Open Claw. And I I I don’t care. But then I was like, he explained it to me why this particular one could be initiated. Like, oh, actually, that does sound dangerous and bad. So I think he’s maybe still researching that. But yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Because as soon as we get that in the funnel, like in the welcome sequence that we have for people. We’ll be able to increase our ad budget for viral examples as a result. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yep. Ben Ornstein: I sent you the updated account management one. I just restarted it because I didn’t like what I had at all. I do agree. I think it was fully half baked. I’m very pleased by the rewrite. So I think this is a lot closer. You’ll, of course, find holes to poke, I’m sure. Michael Houck: Yeah. That’s good, though. I’m excited about that. The account manager one is tough. It’s a hard one. So I assume it’s going to be more in depth. I have it on my agenda to go through that today. I have like a bunch of like random stuff. I have to do like copy for a meal. I have to do copy for the FJ Plus page. I have to do copy for the lore page. I have to do copy for the AI call thank you page for signups. I have to record the AI voice more. I have to do the Tuesday newsletter to go out tomorrow. I have to do this with the account manager thing. Wanted to update the welcome sequence to be about FJ Plus, but I think I’m that to next week because we’re probably not going to launch it till next week. So I’ll do that then. And then I have to record the superpower video too. I’m like two days behind on that, too. Ben Ornstein: So, yes, we luckily, so we have Ratmirs going live this weekend. Michael Houck: Yes, correct. But I have to get them like three videos in the next couple of days, too. So we can get ahead of it. But the call with George was helpful for the scripting side. So, to hold off till then. The other thing that we should talk about is skill pack. So, one of the things in FJ Plus that we want to launch alongside the deals, ideally, is like a founder skill pack, right? We haven’t talked about that in terms of what that should look like, but I’m going to send you a message later with, like, hey, here’s a thought. And then it’s just a matter of us building the skills. And if you want to do that, if have Rafael do that. That’s fine. Whatever is going to be faster and better. But I don’t think it’s be like that crazy long to set up. It’s just, you know, it’s just a skill pack. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. Michael Houck: Make a note to do that for FJ Plus. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, it’s just like a lot of like copywriting for me right now, which is kind of annoying. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, it seems like there’s a lot. I guess when we start all these at the same time, it’s hectic. Michael Houck: Yeah, I mean, it is. And also, it’s just like I’m trying to get everything done so that when I’m out, you know, I’m not be blocking you guys from stuff. Ben Ornstein: I know that’s feeling well. You do. Michael Houck: And I want to get Blake more up to speed on the sales side. Because I want him to be able to step up and do some of those calls like alongside Tatum or alongside Emma while I’m out. Because think about it. We have, I mean, I guess that one will be written, but realistically, we have three, three or four Tuesday issues where we could announce this stuff and we could just change the format on those Tuesdays to have it be a deep dive. Between now and when I’m when I’m out. So that doesn’t leave us a lot of time. It feels further away than it actually is. So I want to make sure we’re sort of ready to go. You know, if we launch, if we launch Lore on the 16th and then turn around and launch Jolt on the 23rd, like that’s two and three weeks away, respectively. Plus, we have to launch FJ Plus, right? Maybe we launch FJ Plus the 30th. But we also want to launch it to the sort of insiders first. So we’ll see. There’s like so many factors and things to try to get done between now and then. And hockey stick, I haven’t even, I don’t think we’re get that live before I go. I got to touch base with Max on timing there, but I haven’t heard from him in like a week. So I’ve got to touch base. Ben Ornstein: Yep. No, that makes sense. Yeah, there’s a lot. Michael Houck: It doesn’t look like Alan is showing up, maybe. So is there anything we need to talk through? Ben Ornstein: Not specifically. On the Ben campaign side, creators are actually really, they like what Ben is doing. They’re pumped about like creating the their sponsored posts. So that’s so yeah, I’ve got them all lined up. I’m continuing to update them. Them. How I have it lined up: if everyone engages and creates their post, it’s right at 5k. So it’s like it’ll spend a full budget. Michael Houck: If we’re keeping, sorry, is that what commission rate did we set for this? Ben Ornstein: So it’s for the engagements, we’re taking the 40% from there, and I do a 40% upcharge on the sponsored posts. Michael Houck: Right, correct, correct? So, how many sponsored posts is he getting? Ben Ornstein: We’ve got one, two, three, four, six, six sponsored posts. Um, and then a whole bunch of engagements, comments, reposts, quote posts. Um, and then I negotiated one with Chase across a bunch of his accounts, which was awesome. That was a that was a great deal. Michael Houck: That is a good deal. So, yeah, that’s good because I think he cares more about his own posts than the sponsor post, which honestly, in my opinion, is the opposite of what he should care about. Ben Ornstein: that’s that’s what I think too. That’s and and so when I’m when I’m doing these things and I’m and I’m I try to balance between the two, especially because I could tell that’s what he was optimizing for. Yeah. I’m like, all the creator is going to be more pumped about the sponsored and they’ll do them, but yeah. Michael Houck: Yeah, I don’t know, man. He’s, I feel like he’s like kind of gone a little crazy here over the past like six months. I don’t know. Ben Ornstein: That’s what it kind of seems like, He just I don’t know, when I was when I was working for him, it seemed like he was like he was locked in, and maybe that’s because they’ve pivoted and they changed. Michael Houck: Um, and I know you know, I remember you told me there’s there have issues, but um, yeah, yeah, I think um, I don’t know how transparent I was with you, but I’m pretty sure that they’re going to shut down the company this month. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, you so you did tell me it was, you did tell me that, but it just doesn’t seem like that at all. Michael Houck: Yeah, I know. They’re trying to push hard, and I think, I don’t know. They have this June 15th deadline, and we’ll see if they stick to it. But my hypothesis is that their final renewal for content, which I think comes through today or tomorrow, is going to be the last thing that they do with us. And maybe Ben will keep it going personally afterwards. I don’t think he’ll. Keep LinkedIn going. I don’t think he likes Blake very much, but he might keep TikTok going because he likes Tatum. Ben Ornstein: That’s good. Yeah, it’s been interesting for the LinkedIn side. Michael Houck: Yeah, to say the least. Ben Ornstein: That’s unfortunate, though, because I really do like the cake product. It’s a fundamentally like, to me, a good product. Michael Houck: It’s just, it’s just a graveyard, like this personal CRM space. You just, you can’t crack it because it’s just, there’s too much education. There’s too much, even if you take away the data side, it’s just people don’t think to use their network this way. Like, you know, my opinion: CAPE is going to zero. Good word is going to zero. Their competitors are going to zero. Like, I just don’t think it works. And that’s fine. I mean, you know. Many people said that about many successful startups, you know, but my own take. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: But other than the Ben campaign, obviously, again, I’m just, I’m trying to push all the agent stuff forward as much as I can, do the research. I’m sent a message to Tatum. I’m just asking her about her process. Michael Houck: yeah, yeah, might be good for you guys to jump on and chat. I don’t know if you guys have already, but we did one call before I left. Ben Ornstein: And so I got, I did get context on what we like, We went through all the agents and I was like, okay, trend spotter, here’s like what we Hawk wrote down. Is there anything you want to like talk further about? Like, and then we just, and then there were follow-ups there. And it was, it was very helpful. And I wrote notes down. And we might do another call soon. But to try doing some of the research first to see what I can come up with because I have at least a baseline for what Tatum does. Michael Houck: Yeah, I mean, look, there’s two big things that I think are at least somewhat going to fall on you with regards to Jolt. So, one is what I just tagged you on in Slack, which is our sort of front end offer. So, similar to how we want to make Casper self-serve tier on the megaphone side, for Jolt, we want to make sort like excuse me, like content inspo and scripting tool with some of these agents. So, whatever agents are necessary to build this are the first ones that we should do. I Tatum about this like two days ago. Okay, so let’s prioritize those. And then the other thing is the newsletter. So we’re be launching like a viral examples for TikTok newsletter. And you and Tatum should just sync on what is her process to source good TikToks. Because, like, for each client, what she’s doing manually. Is just scrolling endlessly through TikTok and finding like videos that are templates that she wants to use for the client. Like, template niche mixed with unique insight from my client’s perspective, equal good video, right? So, what we need to do is create a sourcing process for that, like take her process and use it, but just apply it to like the similar type of newsletter thing that we do when you source tweets for. Viral examples, and then we’ll need to spin up like a simple beehive where it’s literally viral examples, but with like an extra thing on the logo, like for TikTok or something like that, you know? Yeah. So we’ll get more into that next week. But the front end offer, there’s some work there on the agent side. So I would just say prioritize that first. Ben Ornstein: That’s the first part. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Because I was scoping out all of them and, like, if it could be, yeah, there’s a lot I could talk about there. So, yeah, I’m thinking about it, but that makes sense. Okay. Michael Houck: And then, yeah, I mean, it’s funny because, like, the agents are not urgent for her. Like, we don’t have enough clients today for her to need the agents, right? But to use them for this front end offer so that people can just pay when they sign up for the newsletter, get the lead magnet for free, and then we upsell this and make some money back so we can increase ad costs. It’s all about like volume in the funnel for me right now. Like we have the back end offers, we can figure out how to augment them with AI, right? We sort of have ideas on that already. But what we need is ads, landing page, lead magnet, front end offer to recoup some costs. Like those are the things we need for each of these right now. Ben Ornstein: Okay, that’s super clear. That makes a lot more sense. Um, because I’m like envisioning these things in my head, and it’s like, I know we’ve got the back end offer with the different people and their services. That that makes okay, I’m glad you mentioned that. Michael Houck: My like priority right now is get these website pages up, right? Get these, get the landing page up, because that’s like the most step in so many steps and add a blocker to launching. Like, we can’t launch with an ocean page. I know we did for Megaphone Studio, but that’s just because we already had Megaphone and I have of credibility in that niche. This is something brand new. Yes. So Studio Salt is slow. They can do like one thing a week, basically, maybe two. So it’s just, and then the engineers have like a meal stuff that we’ve looped them in to do too. So it’s just like bandwidth is low right now. But more, I guess, on Mahul than on Rafael. Rafael has some bandwidth. But all that to say, I’m focused on sort of like top layer, like putting a pretty bow on it. I need you to be focused on like those pieces of the engine that we’re need to sell, basically. Ben Ornstein: Yep, that’s super clear. Okay, that’s cool. That makes sense. Michael Houck: Okay. Look, I don’t know what happened to Alan. Can you shoot him a note and just see if there’s another time that works better for him? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I’ll reply in the email thread there or like to both of us over email. Michael Houck: Yeah, that’s fine. Okay, I’ll review the account manager thing tonight. So keep an eye out for that and we can get that set up. Ben Ornstein: Sounds good. And then on. Michael Houck: Sorry, do you think we’re at a point where, let’s say we get the account manager set up, let’s say we build a graphic designer agent? Right? Or at least have some process with Claude Design or whatever. Do you think we’re at a point where if we decided to hold on selling till next year, that we could let go of some of the writers and just have the whole thing run through Blake, Jacob, maybe Andrew, or Austin for the one client or so that he has? Ben Ornstein: Design, I’ve been able to like pull together some things. Where, like, I’m throwing some things in ChatGPT and throwing some things into like Claude Design. Claude Design’s pretty good. The quality of like the V1. I mean, Jacob did say that, like, we, the quality is pretty much there, and then he’s just tweaking. I don’t have a great answer. I don’t know. I don’t know. Michael Houck: Right, because I guess, like, what I want to be able to do is we have these tools that we’re building. Okay, how do we better use them for the business? Right? How does it improve the business? It improves the business in one of two ways. Either it means that we can do more content for the same price for clients, or it means we can. Can pay less for the existing content and improve margins, right? So, my preference is to consolidate with, maybe Blake is doing more content himself. Maybe it’s like Jacob and Blake in like a tag team situation. And then that’s sort of just like how the business runs. And, you maybe we just didn’t give them a monthly retainer instead of paying Jacob per client. Right. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: I would say it’s not impossible, and I totally see why you’d want to do that. Maybe we’d like have Andrew still on board to do newsletters just because he’s so, I feel like he’s very good at the newsletter. Michael Houck: Yeah, don’t worry about newsletters. We’re going to break newsletters out into its own thing in like a couple months anyway. And whether that’s in-house or whether that’s white labeling someone else, I don’t know. I’m not saying we should get rid of anyone necessarily today. I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t want us to be spending $3,000 to $5,000 a month on AI and that not improving our margins. I don’t want that to be like, oh, well, now we just have $5,000 less in profit per month. Ben Ornstein: No, I get it. I would say it is on the social side, if we’re just considering social. I would say it’s possible because it with Dom. Like, I don’t know if it’s because Dom wasn’t a good client or like doesn’t understand social, and he’s just an easy, he an easier and a worse client in general on social because, like, he just wasn’t really reviewing, but I was able to do it. Michael Houck: Um, right, and like you know, you obviously have some content sensibilities because we’ve been working on this business for a while, but you know, Jacob is a content writer, right. Blake is a copywriter, too. So it’s like, if we give them those tools, could they do what you did for Dom for everyone? Ben Ornstein: I think it’s possible. And we, I have the proof. We did it. It was working and Dom was paying us, and your account were a lot better. So yes. Michael Houck: Okay. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. Michael Houck: I understand. Ben Ornstein: Like you’re blowing all this money on this right now, and you need to see the ROI on it because it’s a lot of spend. Michael Houck: Well, I mean, it’s just an investment, right? My hypothesis going into this was this will let us scale faster, improve our margins, et cetera, et cetera, right? And I think that that’s proving out to be true, or at least it will prove out to be, like, he’s giving us the capability to make that true. But we haven’t actually forced it to be true yet. And so it’s like, what does that look like, Does that look like lower rate per client? Probably not. I don’t think the writers would accept that. More likely, what it looks like is consolidating and giving a monthly retainer to someone and whoever takes that sort of job type deal, you know? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I think that’s that makes sense. And when we’ve got the workflows for like I still have like the breaking news off for Trent because I just it wasn’t even helpful and it burning spend so I haven’t even seen like I think you guys turned that off when I was out um I turned it off just because there was nobody there to manage it right like there was nobody there to like vet the stuff um like I wasn’t gonna I didn’t have time to go in and do that it It wasn’t that helpful for now because I wasn’t using that stuff, but it was working. It was like bringing breaking new stuff and the format. I turned on the formats today, that one. Michael Houck: Yeah, like we should have that stuff on if we think it’s useful, right? If we think it’s going to surface actually trending conversations that the client might want to comment on, we should have that pop up in the client channels, you know? So, like, I’m not opposed to that just because it’s expensive. I think that’s fine if it makes clients happy, makes them retain more. You know, it’s fine. Yeah, I’m just trying to brainstorm like what is the model for the business if we do keep it, you know. Ben Ornstein: So the clients, of course, outside of Ben, they don’t know that we’re even using these guys. Would that be? And so I guess what you would potentially tell clients in that scenario is: hey, we have these agents that are going to be popping into the channels. Will decrease your cost. Would that be how you would do it? Michael Houck: Wait, why would we decrease their cost? Ben Ornstein: Well, I guess not. I guess it would just throw the agents in the channels and it would be like in something else that they could use potentially, right? Michael Houck: Yeah, I mean, we position it as a value add. We position it as you’re getting the same service, but now we also have these agents who are constantly tracking your niche and service, you know? Ben Ornstein: I guess I was thinking about that the wrong way. Michael Houck: Yeah. So maybe, maybe we don’t introduce like Casper and Eddie into their channels. Maybe we just introduce Trent because Trent surfaces the trend, right? That’s the idea. Yep. Ben Ornstein: He’s he finds the breaking news. And then I guess we could do an alternate workflow where he doesn’t pass it straight to Casper. It would just be like for the channel. Like that would, that would be a new workflow. Yeah. Michael Houck: And then and then the client can respond and be like, Yeah, I like this, or no, don’t worry about this one or whatever. And he can then message Casper in like the Casper channel internally, and they can create a post, you know? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would, that workflow would make sense. Um, and then, and then it would be like Jacob posting that instead, saying like the fight, like the final version. Michael Houck: Right, exactly. Ben Ornstein: Look like you know, Jacob is the one doing the actual writing still. That could work, yeah. Michael Houck: Let’s try that with like one or two clients who you feel would be most amenable to it, and you can just introduce them, you don’t even need me to just be like, Hey, this is Trent, he’s an agent, like you can even just make it personal, make it like I built this agent because you did, right? Just Hey, I built this agent, his name is Trent. He’s constantly searching your niche for trending conversations every day. He’s going to surface them here. If you want to comment on one, just add your unique perspective as a reply to him, and we’ll handle it from there. Ben Ornstein: Okay. Should I prioritize building out that one little workflow quickly for Trent? Michael Houck: If it’s going to be quick, yeah, if it’s going to take you more than like, you know, a couple hours or something, then. Don’t worry about it right now. Ben Ornstein: I don’t think it would because it’s just building one more workflow. I can envision it in my head. So, okay, let me do that. I’ll do that first before anything else. Cause that should be quick. Is that because things on the acquisition side are like iffy? Michael Houck: I mean, it’s just, we’re going to need to do this either way. Way, right? Like, we’re going to need to do this whether we keep megaphone or whether we start a new content agency right afterwards. Um, so we might as well test it while we have active clients to test it on, But obviously, also, I’m just like, sort of, they got back to me with some questions. The questions are fine. Um, but I don’t know. I feel like you’re still thinking about the future. Yeah, I’m just I’m in the, I’m in the shit with it. And it’s like everything else going on, too. So, oh, I don’t think I told you, but I can say it because she’s not here, but I’m going to propose to Carly when we’re in, when we’re in France. Ben Ornstein: got a lot of That’s amazing. Oh, that’s so exciting. Yeah. How long have you guys been together? Michael Houck: Since November. Nice. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: That’s awesome. Michael Houck: Yeah. I like to think about it like last year was the year of planning and this year is the year of execution. Ben Ornstein: The execution. Oh, that’s awesome. I’m pumped for you. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Michael Houck: So, um, yeah, we’ll see how that all goes, but um, on the uh acquisition side, but yeah. So, okay, that sounds good. Um, and also just want to say, like, you’ve been doing a good job. You’re doing a fine job. There have been a couple of times where you’ve like messaged me and you’ve been like, I haven’t been doing, you know, you like, don’t do that for my benefit. You know, like, I have a lot of trust in you. We’re 100% solid. I’m not worried about that. Don’t beat yourself up too much. It’s fine. All right. Ben Ornstein: It’s more of me just like, I want to be making progress on this stuff and like so badly. And like, I’m just, I’ve been so slow with the agents. I know I’ve been slow. I don’t know what I’m comparing against. Michael Houck: There’s no like, dude, I have the same feeling. I’m like, I’m like, to get all these things launched. I want to do all this. The exact same feeling right now. So, look, we’re going as fast as we can. We got a small team. We’re doing our best. We’re making good progress. Not everything’s going to be, you know, by next week. So it’s all good. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. I just wanted to make it clear that I’m not sitting on my ass. Like, I am, I’m probably working. Like, I’ve been working like nine, 10. I think it worked 11 hours yesterday. I’m grinding. I’m trying. No, no, no. Michael Houck: that is not a worry that I have. So yeah, all good. I know you’re grinded just like I am. So we’re solid. Ben Ornstein: Okay. Just wanted to make that clear because, yeah, yeah. Cool. Michael Houck: Okay. Okay. I think we got we got action plan from here. So I got a couple more meetings after this and then back to work. Michael Houck: Sounds good. Ben Ornstein: I’ll send Al an email right now. Michael Houck: Sounds good, man. Talk to you soon. See ya. See ya.