How to build a $100M+ newsletter business
Newsletter Growth, 8-Figure Exits, and Future Media - April 4, 2025 (22 days ago) • 01:11:15
Transcript:
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MFM | I still think the big opportunity in the media space if someone wants to take a big swing someone wants to go build a billion dollar company it's | |
MFM | wait so say what were you saying earlier how you hated me or no you didn't hate me | |
MFM | no I didn't hate you like I hated you just to be clear | |
MFM | I hated you | |
MFM | I I did not hate you like I I feel like also part of like my shtick has always been like I don't hate anyone I try to kill people with kindness I I try like people have to feel like douchebags for hating me because there's no way to hate me like I feel like that was my mo for a while but I remember yeah I remember being on the phone with tim shaw and he was an investor in the hustle also right | |
MFM | yeah I was so mad at him for investing in both of our companies I was so angry | |
MFM | yeah and I remember being on the phone with him and I was like we're talking about you for some reason and I was like yeah like I I would love to talk to sam but I don't know if he wants to talk to me or us and and tim was just like yeah I don't think he likes you guys very much and no but anyway I didn't I didn't hate you but I I was jealous of certain things at the hustle and one of the things I was most jealous of was the welcome email like I remember reading the welcome email and being like this is so freaking good and I'm so angry that we don't have one that is as good as this | |
MFM | I would have traded you the welcome email for your guys' ability to be like financially like just you guys are far more than competent but I was barely competent so I I so like the envy went both ways alright so here's what I wanna do for this show so here's the deal so wait do you guys say what you sold for is that public or not | |
MFM | we yeah we could say 75,000,000 I think is the public number | |
MFM | so collectively the hustle and morning brew we sold for like hundreds of millions of dollars and I we were sort of like the graduating class of like 02/2020 or whatever we were the early people in the newsletter game we didn't like invent it but we kinda helped pioneer a little bit of what is popular today and now officially as of a couple of weeks ago we are both or all three of us are officially out of our companies I've been out for a minute alex has been out for a minute now austin is out and we could finally reveal like a bunch of information and | |
MFM | sorry sam to be clear I'm technically executive chairman so I'm no longer day to day but I am executive chairman of morningbro | |
MFM | you are no longer operating but I think you guys do you still have equity ownership | |
MFM | no we're we're both lit up | |
MFM | alright so that's what I mean and so what I wanted to do was I wanted to go year by year when we each started and I wanted to explain to the listener what we were doing in that year what our revenue and profit was what our subscriber growth was things we learned and also we have to add this things that we would do differently if it if we were starting again today and things that we wish we had done does that sound good | |
MFM | yeah sounds good I'm also excited for it because at the time I didn't know any of your numbers so this is like the first time I actually know your numbers as we were going through it | |
MFM | I think I've like shared with austin like our my whole data room at this. The cool thing about having a data room is like you're supposed to have you know all the information that's easily accessible so you can kinda like go back and look back | |
MFM | yeah but this is this is the first time it's all been in one place we've piecemealed it but I think it'll be fun to just side by side it | |
MFM | so we you guys started in 02/2015 what was the original premise and weren't you guys both in college | |
MFM | yeah so I was a senior at michigan austin was a sophomore I mean both of us were kind of on the finance track the general premise and it's so funny because like we've told this story so many times about how it started I don't know if it's actually the truth it's just what I remember is the story but basically was I was helping students prep for job interviews I would ask kids during these mock interviews how do you keep up with the business world every single student would say I read the wall street journal but my but it's dry I can't get through the whole thing my parents told me I have to read it and so at some. I was like this is crazy these kids are about to spend their whole careers in business yet they don't have something that they enjoy reading so I started putting together the kind of og version of morning brew which was called market corner and it was a pdf that I had attached to an email listserv every day and austin was one of my readers | |
MFM | can I tell you what I think the real story was because it's probably the same story as mine sure you saw the success of the scam and you just said I'm just gonna do this for finance people or in my case tech guys | |
MFM | definitely possible yeah I | |
MFM | I I think that's partly true I do think alex started the the pdf version like I there were two there were two versions there was the market corner and then there was turning into morning brew the evolution of morning brew was totally inspired off of wow if if these two women in new york city could get millions of people I think maybe a million people at the time reading like why can't we do the same there's a bunch of you know at the time we thought dudes in in finance who wanted to read about the business world | |
MFM | and did you have any revenue in year one | |
MFM | no no which by the way I'll say was a huge advantage for us that I don't think you had with the hustle is austin and I were still in school so we basically had a year and a half to two years of like fake timeline where we didn't have to worry about bringing in revenue | |
MFM | so in 02/2015 I think I was 25 it wasn't the hustle it was just an event called hustlecon and that year I think it had made around $400,000 in revenue and like $200,000 in profit like it was like a good event but we and it was basically like a ted talk for entrepreneurs but I was so scrappy and I honestly regret it one of my biggest regrets in life is buying the supplies that I needed for that event at costco and returning the stuff that we didn't use and I didn't realize that you throw things away once like costco throws it away and it was like the most shame that I'd ever felt was like do it being that like cheap and and horrible and that was | |
MFM | was the hustle that profitable like when you did it that first year was it profitable | |
MFM | yeah yeah because it was just me and then I and then I asked my buddy john to help and it was just us two and yeah it made it so like when we started in the year 02/2015 or sorry so the next year in 02/2016 I started the hustle because I was like conferences suck I wanna create a a newsletter because I had saw theskimm I read about thrillist on mixergy.com and a bunch of other and like a bunch of other newsletter businesses and when when I started that business I had $500,000 in my bank and it was all from conferences | |
MFM | it's pretty wild | |
MFM | I think what you said is interesting about the math right I think at the time and we have a funny story we can tell now that we we've held back for a while about john steinberg and our first interaction with him but so many people came to us and they would say like this is so stupid why are you doing this newsletter thing it makes no sense but alex and I would sit there every night and we'd go through a spreadsheet and it was the most basic spreadsheet of you know newsletter subscribers grow five or 10% a month and cpms stay flat and over time you can get to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of revenue a month and I think it was really that simple | |
MFM | I had the exact same spreadsheet I listened to every interview with ben lehr and I'm like tell me what the cpms are and then I met with business insider reporters and I said tell me how many people visit your tech part of your website it'll 80,000,000 okay then yeah like you're giving me some numbers to to triangulate | |
MFM | yeah and like at the time everyone was was spending millions of dollars putting video on facebook and you know I don't think we were actually that smart I just think the people around us were really dumb I do think one of the big advantages you know they they say at a poker table if you look around and you can't find the sucker you're the sucker well I think we picked the industry with a lot of suckers there were a lot of people who started five or ten years before us and they just weren't smart they were doing the same thing that they did for ten years and you know even in 2015 '20 '17 we were like yeah buzzfeed it just doesn't make sense it's not worth a billion dollars and for five years I think people didn't believe us and over time I think we we prove that our model while it seems silly it actually works it it worked and it made us a bunch of money | |
MFM | alright a few episodes ago I talked about something and I got thousands of messages asking me to go deeper and to explain and that's what I'm about to do so I told you guys how I use chatgpt as a life coach or a thought partner and what I did was I uploaded all types of amazing information so I uploaded my personal finances my net worth my goals different books that I like issues going on in my personal life and businesses I uploaded so much information and so the output is that I have this gpt that I can ask questions that I'm having issues with in my life like how should I respond to this email what's the right decision knowing that you know my goals for the future things like that and so I worked with hubspot to put together a step by step process showing the audience showing you the software that I used to make this the information that I had chatchippity ask me all this stuff so it's super easy for you to use and like I said I use this like 10 or 20 times a day it's literally changed my life and so if you want that it's free there's a link below just click it enter your email and we will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about twenty minutes and I'll show you how I use it again 10 to 20 times a day alright so check it out the link is below in the description back to the episode alright so fast forward to 02/2016 where are you guys at how many subscribers do you have what was your revenue in 02/2016 what's the business | |
MFM | yeah so 2016 was the year when at this? I'm working full time on wall street doing the brew in basically you know let's call it 7pm to 11pm every night falling asleep on my laptop on my lap where were you working I was at morgan stanley | |
MFM | was that miserable | |
MFM | yeah yes it was my my entire life was like built up to that. Because remember like my dad was a trader on wall street for twenty years my mom was like this is all I knew but it was horrible and going back to what austin was saying about just like there not being a lot of smart people in media I actually think the best thing we did is like I call it like iq arbitrage where I was on a trading desk everyone was a phd in math I was the dumbest person on my desk like not even a shadow of a doubt and just by moving to media I became not the dumbest person september of twenty sixteen I quit my job also it was hilarious right before that I almost got fired from morgan stanley because they were worried I was insider trading through morning brews newsletter so so they basically hr found out about morning brew which I was supposed to have permission to work on the guy who was supposed to give me permission and told me he would got fired in a massive layoff at morgan stanley so I didn't get permission and they basically had me meet with morgan stanley lawyers two litigators that were defending morgan stanley saying you can never tell anyone about this meeting but we are concerned that you are trying to make investment decisions and get private information using your newsletter so so that was kinda like the last straw for me made me really not enjoy the job quit my job we raised a small round in 2016 twenty '16 is also the year when we talked to john steinberg as he was starting cheddar | |
MFM | and john steinberg is like a media executive did you guys see the facebook message yeah that he sent me | |
MFM | yeah | |
MFM | so this guy named john steinberg at the time I think I'm 26 and I'm just like a guy in a shitty apartment trying to do this newsletter and john steinberg is the president or ceo of buzzfeed and he's about to start a new company called cheddar | |
MFM | he was at buzzfeed then he went to daily mail north america that he was the ceo of he stepped down from daily mail and then he sent austin and I an email austin what was the subject line like what did the email say again | |
MFM | yeah so it was from his g we had no idea who john steinberg was we didn't know the media industry and we get an email from it's like john steinberg some numbers@gmail.com and he emails us intro line subject line intro to founders body of the email like what you're doing. That was the whole email so we looked at the guy on linkedin and we're like holy shit this guy's a big deal you know we give him a call and I mean alex can tell the story better but he turns it he flips it on us he makes us think that he's excited in us he's gonna he's gonna invest in us all this stuff and then he brings alex to his office and I'll I'll let alex take it away what happens go ahead | |
MFM | yeah so I I go to john's office which at the time was a tiny like closet of a wework space and it was him peter gorinstein who was his cofounder and the chief content officer and I get there and I think the conversation is gonna be about how john is gonna invest in morning brew or how morning brew maybe will have a segment on cheddar that would create you know audience and distribution for us instead he starts interviewing me | |
MFM | yeah because he wanted you to work there | |
MFM | yes so he started interviewing me he's like okay so fitbit earnings come out you need to get an expert on the story to talk about what this means who are you talking to how are you finding them let's go and I was like well I'm gonna figure out a way to get to the | |
MFM | oh you totally do it yeah yeah | |
MFM | and and I was and then at some. In the conversation I was like you know to be honest I'm you know I'm not interested in a job at cheddar like I thought we're gonna be talking about a partnership with morning brew or you guys investing in us and I will never forget this line honestly I have some respect he said this because he wasn't wrong he goes to be totally honest the cost of the legal fees to do this deal would be more than I what I would pay for you guys and I was like damn he's right right now he's right right now | |
MFM | have an ex very similar story first of all related to john I just found an old message on facebook that I got sears is opening two lines have we met we should meet | |
MFM | dude he he's he's amazing he he he's there like four or five times and that guy's motor just runs like he is just unbelievable | |
MFM | so this is we're in the year 2016 I get an email or maybe I cult email ben lear who started this thing called thrillist which became group nine like a billion dollar company and then he's one of the co founders of lear hipaa which is like one of the most preeminent vcs in new york we start talking and I think he's gonna buy the hustle right out the gate and I'm like hell yeah like $5,000,000 I'm I'm I'm that's how much I have right now already like he the offer is gonna happen and he breaks in the president of the company and it turns into an interview the exact same thing and I was like oh I thought you were gonna buy us he's like brother this is a newsletter this will never make more than like $2,000,000 a year and I was like well I don't know man like if you do the math he was like no like you should come and join us like you know we're we're a real company like if you wanna like make this work you have to join our company and I forever that has been a chip on my shoulder | |
MFM | and just think about like how valuable it was that we were all kind of like both had conviction and were like irrationally confident in what we were doing because like you could see so many other scenarios where someone's like you know googly eyed by someone who's super successful and goes and joins their thing and then it basically cuts all of the possible upside that you know we ended up experiencing with our businesses | |
MFM | so this is alright so we're in the year 02/2016 the hustle launched on 04/2016 and so that year we did 400 k in revenue I think we had at the end of the year we had like a hundred thousand subscribers I had this strategy where I was writing these crazy blog posts and getting like 500,000 to a million people a month coming to our website and that's how we grew and I think of the 400 k I think a hundred thousand was advertising revenue and I think it was four of us at the time where where were you guys | |
MFM | so that's that's amazing because in 2016 we did our first ad deal it was a watch brand called emelhart I believe it was about a $3,000 deal for for three we used to call them exposures we were so naive we called them ad exposures it was three of us we had a writer who ironically we poached someone from bi I think I'm not kidding I think he made it like seven days like he barely made it at the company he quit because we wanted him to work more than a a nine to five but you know we did 25,000 that year you did 400,000 we were three of us that I was still in college | |
MFM | but mine ours were events though it wasn't advertising which is way less like more but you | |
MFM | guys did what fill a hundred thousand | |
MFM | of ads that's pretty good yeah we started advertising I believe in june and I looked at my first deal it was $4,600 I cold emailed a guy named chris martinez at wealthfront | |
MFM | so funny that's the funny thing is it it kinda reminds me of like if you go to my linkedin and look at my dms from last ten years I have basically dm'd every human being that has worked in growth marketing or media over the last ten years and I remember that name chris martinez because I probably emailed him 12 times over that year to try to get him to do a deal with us | |
MFM | I don't know who chris is anymore I haven't talked to him but if you're listening thank you the things I would do differently from 16 is we raised a little bit of funding I would not have done that I thought and and in fact I tried to raise way more money but no one invested which ended up being a blessing because I made a lot of money because I owned the majority of the company but that's what I would do differently so if you're listening to this I if I were starting today I would not raise funding at all would you agree | |
MFM | I think raising funding is all about your business needs right I certainly wouldn't have raised more money than we did but we did need the $750,000 I actually specifically remember this is now fast forwarding 2017 it was december like twenty seventh twenty seventeen and I didn't realize that payroll goes out early if it's if it's new year's eve because they don't do payroll on holidays and I had a check-in my hand that was going to make payroll and I had to sprint to jp morgan because they were going to close at 05:00 it was like 04:55 and you know when people say you were close to missing payroll I was literally two minutes away from missing payroll so we didn't need every penny from a cash flow perspective because obviously media companies the accounts receivable and I mean you might you might need thirty sixty ninety or one hundred and twenty days just to get paid so we didn't need the money but yeah for a media venture I don't think you should raise you should raise as little as humanly possible | |
MFM | I will I will say there is one thing I would have done differently and like one big lesson from that. And the raise the first is we had 28 individual investors so we had 28 people who wrote checks from $2,500 to a hundred thousand dollars | |
MFM | same | |
MFM | but if I was to do it again I would have way fewer I would also try to suss out if these people are going to be difficult because we'll fast forward at some. But there were some very difficult investors when we sold the business the second is time is a crazy thing in startups and you always think you can get more done in a shorter. Of time and I remember we had a slide in our investor deck that showed our one year plan to investors and that slide looking back on it now took us nine years we tried everything in that slide and took us nine years to try everything and most of those things did not work but yeah it took nine years to do accomplish our one year plan | |
MFM | alright so we're now we are in 02/2017 do you remember we ended the year I tell the story differently I tell the story that we went from 100,000 to 500,000 in subscribers I think I missed a year because I went back in 02/2017 we ended the year with 250,000 subscribers we had 2,200,000.0 in revenue 400 k was events 1.8 was advertising and my big learning that year was hiring a sales team I did a lot I think I did the first year of ad sales and I was horrible at it I didn't realize how uptight you had to be you had to be like button up I didn't know I didn't understand this where were you guys at the end of 2017 | |
MFM | yeah so '17 was the year that we were both full time | |
MFM | or I | |
MFM | was only full time half the year we ended at a hundred thousand subs we did $300,000 of revenue we finally started taking a salary we're taking 60 k each but that was the first real year we hired our first we hired tyler denk who now is the ceo of beehive I'm sure everyone listening knows beehive and he was transformational for us | |
MFM | what was his job everything | |
MFM | dude do you remember his do you remember his first title austin do you remember | |
MFM | no growth engineer growth engineer yeah | |
MFM | yeah | |
MFM | yeah I mean he did everything and and between him and then we had michael schwartz who also now works at beehive who was our first writer and then we had he brought on neil freiman who still works at morning brew today he is I mean like look alex was the the visionary of the morning brew voice but I do think neil was really the the executor and took it to the next level neil is I think I spoke about him last time I was in the podcast neil was huge for morning brew he he really did what alex and I couldn't do which was take this idea in our head and put it on paper every single day three hundred sixty five days a year for now ten + years | |
MFM | I also think neil is a great example of what we did well at the broom what you did well at the hustle which is I think about our first three writing hires neil michael schwartz and then this woman nikki and all of them were nontraditional hires like I think | |
MFM | both the | |
MFM | the morning brew and hospital were really good at finding undiscovered talent and seeing a ceiling in them that other people didn't realize and it was the same thing for you like I remember we'll talk about it later but like I watched your writers like a hawk I could read a hustle story and knew knew who wrote it without seeing a name attached to the story and and I knew their backgrounds and none of these people were what media companies would traditionally hire as talent | |
MFM | dude I tried to recruit media people and they laughed at me like I emailed this one famous journalist and she said that's cute thank you like like I tried to and so the only people I could a afford and b convinced to do this stuff were like for example lindsey quinn was a blogger at like a procurement startup or something or I I don't even like she was not a writer but she could write and wanted to write and you seldom on the dream of like wouldn't it be fun if you could do this hobby all the time and make money from it and that's the only people we could convince to join us | |
MFM | she was she was my writing hero the number of times in my career I've tried to poach her is very non zero | |
MFM | yeah she was fantastic | |
MFM | and this really fast forwards to 2018 but alex isn't kidding we knew every single writer you had we knew and alex in particular knew every single story who wrote them and and we would come to work every day end of twenty seventeen '20 '18 we would for the first two to three hours print out morning brew print out axios print out the hustle print out the skim and with a paper and pen and alex led the charge we'd go through every single story he'd circle what he'd like he'd x out what he didn't like and look alex is the most likable person on the planet you now know the sound I'm sure a lot of listeners know how likable alex is the only person on the planet I know who doesn't like alex is our first writer because alex would sit there and just you know cross out half the words he put in the newsletter and be like look lindsey quinn wrote this same story better than you did like be better and I mean we were we were maniacal we we were you know we lost our minds to the game we we we were crazy about this newsletter thing | |
MFM | and for the record I didn't do that and that's a regret like now that I'm older and understand how company building works like I would I would like if if you told me you were doing that I'd be like you guys are insane just have fun do what feels good but that does not like once you get past I don't know 5,000,000 in revenue or something like that you you can and that means you probably have some type of product market fit you could absolutely iterate your way to being like wonderful you know starting like you're at a b or a c + you can get yourself to an a + through iteration | |
MFM | and and honestly I think a lot of me being my maniacal with the content came from like what austin had taught me along the way around standard setting and basically the the standard of your business is what you allow and so like if you allow suboptimal content to be written that is the new standard you set like basically you're implicit by saying not saying anything to something you're implicitly saying that that is okay and to me that was my biggest fear is if I said okay to things that were not exceptional content that was the new standard of how | |
MFM | it is you guys | |
MFM | the during this era in 02/2018 I was '22 '20 '3 | |
MFM | right | |
MFM | yeah and yeah I mean I'm what a year and a half older than you | |
MFM | yes you were 24 yeah | |
MFM | dude you guys were like I I'm I'm like what you guys are in when you were 22 today I am now a 22 year old austin and 22 year old alex like I totally buy into everything you're saying back then I completely would have laughed at you and your way is 100% the right way like being it's crazy how mature you guys were at such a young | |
MFM | age yeah when when we sat down at first to set our core values two and at the time I thought core values were fluffy now in hindsight I actually regret that we didn't you know write those in stone and keep those we we we messed around with them a bunch but two core values were really important it was one have an ownership mentality act like you're an owner and if you own something you're gonna every day critique it you're gonna give it feedback you're gonna care a ton you're gonna drive every single day to that and the second is underdog mentality we came into work every day a group of misfits a group of people who had no idea what they were doing in the media industry and we just act like an underdog it's march madness right now and you just see the the way these underdogs show up to games they're loose right they don't have this weight on their shoulders and every day we came into work and we were like screw it we are gonna kick the shit out of all these legacy media companies who raise these live at sea a hundred million dollars of funding alex and I would would sit down it's like what could you possibly do with a hundred million dollars of funding and what they did is they burned it on fire flushed it down the toilet and added no value to their companies | |
MFM | yeah I I I also I also just think it's like at the time austin and I like we just had such a fire and I think for austin similar to you sam like austin kind of creates like an opponent in his head and that is enough to basically just create this like insatiable drive to win I think for me I actually have less of that but the thing that compensated at the time was like the two things it was like my my dad dying and feeling like I needed to provide for my family and I told you this last time when we saw each other in person sam like me being bullied from fifth grade to twelfth grade and feeling like I just wanted to prove that I was like worthy that was more than enough where I think even when the the brew is small austin and I had this like deep in our bones feeling that we were going to succeed like the business would ultimately sell and it was just a matter of time | |
MFM | that's what I've always admired about you guys was you have this really cool combination of optimism and pessimism where austin is like afraid all the time yet like is logical enough to be like I'm gonna do this this this and then like the likely outcomes are a b and c I did not feel that way I I I was a scarcity mindset and so in 02/2018 you guys did 3,100,000.0 in revenue you had 10 employees and how many subscribers did you have | |
MFM | so 2018 we went from a hundred thousand to a million subscribers | |
MFM | so in 2018 I think we ended the year at 500,000 subscribers we had 5,100,000.0 in revenue about a million was from events and I paid my we had a hundred and $60 in profit and that was the first year that we spent on advertising I went and looked back so we got to like 200,000 organically and then we spent money on ads and I spent a million that year did you guys spend money on ads that year to get to a million subscribers | |
MFM | we spent every penny we possibly could I would track daily cash flow to make sure that we had enough money and we put I mean 2018 was the year for us that was the year that I mean there were days in 2018 we were growing 20,000 you know this we would do these macbook giveaways we would grow 25,000 20 five thousand subscribers in a day so yes we spent every dollar we could possibly find and my only regret is we couldn't figure out a way to find more money to put more money into facebook ads | |
MFM | if I remember by the end of that year we were spending like 500 k a month on ads right | |
MFM | yeah at least at least | |
MFM | that's crazy I I was being I had such a poor mindset where I didn't look at it you guys because you had this finance background and also I think you are just more like this naturally anyway you had this mentality of like well I I will spend $1 to make like if $1 turns into $1.1 I will spend every $1 I have for me it was like 80,000 a month that's astronomical it doesn't matter what the return is like you know what I mean like like that that was a failure that that's an immature mindset | |
MFM | I also feel like part of it was like austin and I were younger than you we also like you know at the time we were only making 60 k or I think we had upped our salary that year to a hundred 20 k and I don't like I think part of maybe your mentality for the hustle was like this is kinda just like a cash flowing lifestyle business for me that I'm gonna just like I can continue to pull money out of the business as like the the vast majority owner of it I feel like austin and I at the time weren't thinking about monetizing it for ourselves in the same way | |
MFM | yeah and sam I knew you thought that right because you know I had a deal in rippling that whole thing just happened and we certainly didn't have someone in your slack but we would talk to all your former employees we would get every bit of information we possibly could and I knew that you had a profit threshold you're like I wanna profit this every month and I said well that means sam's taking his foot off the gas and so if sam's taking his foot off the gas I'm gonna do the opposite and we're gonna- which | |
MFM | is funny we did I didn't make a lot of profit I didn't actually make a lot of profit like we grew revenue like 50% most every year but like I did not so I yeah and I think that you were talking about values I wish I would have so you know I think I think you guys matured earlier than I did I was still really immature and I didn't codify my values and I didn't codify the culture I started the company when I was 24 20 five and I I I think I evolved to where I am today when I was like 31 you guys were kinda like 31 year old sam when you were 21 but had I done it over again and if you're listening I would codify your values early on and stick to it also what a lot of people do is they buy ads because so back then this was only you know a handful of years ago back then it felt like buying ads was more like there weren't that many experts now to buy ads it's like commonplace like you you it's way more common and so people buy ads way earlier for their products now and I actually think that's a huge mistake | |
MFM | totally yeah I totally agree I mean that's the part of the story that we didn't talk about is like we didn't do paid acquisition until 2017 really so 2015 and 2016 to get to a hundred thousand subscribers it was entirely organic growth so by the time we actually were paying for subscribers like we knew we had a great product we knew how long subscribers were staying we also knew how to like work within scarcity of not having money but finding ways to grow regardless and I think that muscle if you skip over it is a really bad thing | |
MFM | okay and another thing that I learned that well I learned so I'll say it in 02/2019 so we're in 02/2019 you guys did 3,100,000.0 in revenue with 3,000,000 in profit | |
MFM | 13.1 | |
MFM | sorry 13,100,000.0 in revenue 3,000,000 in profit a salary each of 2 50 a team of 25 we did about 8,000,000 in revenue which with $6.40 being from events we did profit of 200,000 but we did cash flow of 1,600,000.0 and we had and I'll explain why so at that. I sort of sort of switched the business to caring about cash flow and I had subs of about 1,200,000 and that year we launched this podcast on under the hustle name launched my first million this year in 02/2019 the thing I learned was that you know how like a lot of social media companies are like who cares about revenue who cares about profit just grow your users this was the year that I learned that to be true that if you know that you make a certain amount of revenue per advertising via advertising or subscription per user that's the only thing that matters it's just getting more users and I wish I would have understood that a little bit earlier | |
MFM | yeah I think what we learned this year was we started to see the plateau of not just newsletter growth but of the economics and newsletters morning brew got to a. Where we started to ask ourselves how much could you make on a single newsletter | |
MFM | I think it was $18 for us per subscriber right 50¢ a month for advertising maybe | |
MFM | that that sounds right I don't know exactly yeah | |
MFM | or 75¢ | |
MFM | something like that I I I think that that makes sense but what we learned was at some. And the answer ends up being far far down the road but we we started to ask ourselves you know do we just wanna be a single newsletter or or are we gonna get to a place of diminishing returns from pumping more and more money and we were spending this year we probably spent 6 to $7,000,000 on paid acquisition so we spent what you did in revenue almost just pumping growth back in and we started to ask ourselves does this make sense and that's where we learned about industry dives and we started to really take the approach of wait our audience works in retail they work in marketing they work in as cfos or in finance what if we took that path the cpms are higher you don't need to grow as fast it's not a race to the bottom it's more of an engagement play and so that's when we went into our industry verticals | |
MFM | yeah and and what I would say is also that year I actually think of all the years in the business 2019 was the most important year because that was the year when austin and I I can't remember what month it was but basically I would say austin and I really never got in big arguments or fights in the history of the business but in that year was the year that I could tell austin was or a single day austin was most upset with me because basically what I remember is austin and I were still working in the business like we were in the frickin' mud and all we could think about was like making sure the newsletter went out tomorrow making sure we were getting an ad deal for friday like we could not see a month or a quarter ahead of us | |
MFM | that's a really stressful time | |
MFM | yeah and I remember one day we're in wework I got a a message from austin on slack saying hey one of our investors who is this guy Scott who created the snuggie and he has a bunch of other products he told austin because austin had asked him about like what are thing what are resources you have to like operationalize your business and run your business and he goes I use this book traction and you're going to read it and you're going to adopt in your business austin read it and he gets back to me he messaged me in slack and is like dude you need to read this book yesterday and this is what we're going to do and I remember a day goes by and I did earn a few days went by and I didn't read the book and austin messages me and says did you read the book and I said no and he says it's something along the lines of I don't understand why you're not doing the thing that is the most important thing in our business right now and I can tell for the first time | |
MFM | that like he was actually pissed | |
MFM | at me so I went that day and I read the entire book I did not work I went to the the highest floor of our wework and just read the book and I think a few things happened one is traction was a game changer for our business I also think that really became the inflection. Where austin really took over as ceo of the business in kind of not in title but in action and like I think it was a transformational year for the company | |
MFM | I read that book around the same era and it had the exact same impact on me and in fact on tuesday it's wednesday yesterday I hired an eos implementer and I met with him yesterday to implement it into hampton and so for those listening eos it's called entrepreneur's operating system it's a framework to run your company it's based off a book called traction that's so funny that we all came across this at the same time | |
MFM | yeah I'd love for you to do a full episode of my first million I think everyone where you kinda do a postmortem and talk about how you implemented it reveal as much as you could because we didn't hire an implementer I thought it was a waste of of time and money | |
MFM | it's totally worth it and that's my | |
MFM | biggest regret is not hiring an implementer because I didn't wanna be the bad guy I didn't wanna be the bully you you basically spend you could say I don't know probably thousands of dollars | |
MFM | 60 thousand dollars is usually the guy I talk to it's $60 a year wow | |
MFM | which by the way which by | |
MFM | the way is why it's an unbelievable business it's basically like a dinch digital franchising business it's it's such a cool business | |
MFM | yeah it's but it's worth it it's basically it's $60 a year it's basically an executive coach / organizer but it's so funny that it happens if you're running a company once you get to like the five to ten million mark that's where it's like alright what we are doing is mostly working at least good let's do more of it and how do I do more of it without killing myself and creating redundancies and building a company and transition from going from a business to a company and that is where that book helped me | |
MFM | a % yeah I kind of thought about it at the time as like first chapter of morning brew was newsletter as a hobby second chapter of morning brew was newsletter as a business and third chapter was like newsletter business meaning multiple newsletters and there was no way we were gonna be able to do more than one newsletter unless we figured our shit out because we were too in the weeds | |
MFM | how many subscribers did you guys have at the end of nineteen | |
MFM | I'd say probably about two right we probably went from one to two maybe from one to 1.8 but again that year was defined as us maturing as a business so sam at the hustle where were you in terms of maturation of you you had you were doing more than we did you had events and you had an ad business and you launched my first million like how was the business actually being run | |
MFM | oh and I have to say we launched trends that year and so trends was basically a $300 a year subscription where like I had this woman named julie and steph smith write a weekly email and then we had a facebook group where you could talk about like interesting companies that's why we we started measuring cash flow because I learned the importance of building $300 upfront versus monthly so at that. In the company I just had so many like demons that I was still just getting out of and like when I learned about running a company at that era was that the issues that you have as a person transcend into like the company and I went I didn't have like you guys had each other each other as like right hand man and I didn't have that like at the company where I could like confess to someone all the things I'm nervous about and so I ran the company using eos and I had brad adam ryan so brad did content adam did sales I think I had Scott nixon who did growth and I and I think we had one person who did events so I couldn't remember and then I had steph smith who did trends so I had five people who reported to me and I was kind of beginning to get a little checked out because I was so exhausted at this stage you know exhaustion kicks in around year four or five and I was starting to get dead from running the company and I just did not care anymore like sean came to me wanting to launch mfm and I was like that's stupid like I hated everything and I was like this is stupid but if you really wanna do it you you know we'll be the publisher so we own it but show me an episode and he sent me the episode and I was like fine we'll do it and like but there was no and I published it the next week there was no planning there was nothing and I really was immature for not doing planning not having longer term thinking and for exhausting myself out | |
MFM | yeah one thing I'll say is I think in that year that you kind of felt like mentally toast and like a little lost like that that was the year that I felt the same way I think for different reasons the other thing that's I think just an interesting observation is like you you mentioned like austin I had each other as right hand people as we're going through business and I think that's true to some degree but I also think austin and my relationship has evolved a lot over the years because I think we started the business so young that the way like when I co found a company now and the kind of the level of direct communication and feedback to each other that I have with like even for storyarb with my ceo it looks very different than the way that austin and I would give feedback to each other in the brew and it's not because like it's not for any other reason other than we didn't have the maturity to speak with like radical candor and speak openly I think we were like afraid about critiquing each other giving feedback and so I actually think at least for me a lot of my growth honestly came through like things like therapy or like dealing with it on my own I it's funny I think austin and I as cofounders today will look so different than us as cofounders you know in 2016 through 2019 | |
MFM | I will say for me I think my big maturation like I matured a lot during the sale process we dealt with so much and so many different stakeholders and look alex and I are really lucky like we grew up with with nice families and we started this business and basically from day one everything took off like we had no hardship and the hardest part of running the business professionally the hardest part of running the business was when we had the sale process and we had some investors who were pissed at us for selling too early the same investors who six months early were begging us to sell we had employees who felt as if they didn't own enough of the company and and what you learn is when it's when you sell a company there's a huge lump sum of money that's in a paper and when everyone sees that lump sum everyone starts thinking like oh how can I get mine how can I get my money sure I only own? 25% of this company but actually I kind of view myself as a cofounder I kind of view myself as more than worth. | |
MFM | 5% of this company and I think I took that very personally it was very hard for me it was very hard for me and at the time I was I was a bull in a a bull in a china shop right and I remember taking these calls and my my now wife was in the other room and I'm on the calls with these people and my wife goes austin you're an asshole and I'm like what do you mean she goes you're a total asshole and I'm like but I'm right and she goes you're totally right but you can be right and not be an asshole and I was like oh I I didn't know that was possible | |
MFM | like I | |
MFM | didn't know you could feel like that was that was a thing so I was the total asshole up until then and I think I've matured a little bit since then | |
MFM | well you're still a bull in a china shop but in a great way you know what I was telling you earlier was I would never wanna have an argument with you I don't wanna fight with you because you will win a lot of times because you're so smart and you're you're you're just like intense and so let's go to the year 02/2020 the year 02/2020 is the years we both sold so 02/2020 you did 20,000,000 in revenue 6,000,000 in profit we did 12,000,000 in revenue and I forgot how much profit we did but we had about 3,000,000 in cash and we had 1,500,000.0 subs I think you had three and the beginning of that quarter or 02/01 we were probably in the same spot I thought we were going out of business covid hit we thought I thought it was over did you think that | |
MFM | yeah I mean I it's very interesting like I can remember with these big moments like exactly where I was pacing in a room talking to us and like I literally remember pacing back and forth in my now in law's main room talking to us and we were talking about one of our biggest sponsors who is a financial services company that I can't remember the exact number but let's just say it was like they had an $75,000 sponsorship coming the next day and the day before as covid was starting they canceled it so right $75,000 gone in one conversation and then basically the floodgates opened and I can't remember the exact amount but let's just call it like in a. Of a few weeks 30% of all revenue that we had booked vanished and I remember austin and I going back and forth being like how the hell are we going to make enough money to just not fire people I remember the first lever we pulled is we basically turned paid acquisition paid marketing down to zero but him and I literally like we brainstormed everything from starting a patreon and asking people to donate all the way to our education business like we ended up launching an education business at the brew which we've since shuttered but the reason that started was to bring in short term cash and that first education thing was a partnership with Scott galloway when he was starting section four his section four | |
MFM | we did the same thing we did an edge like a course and it made $300,000 in one month and it | |
MFM | like | |
MFM | helped save us and that was the year that I learned what the word force majeure meant and it it was crazy I I I thought we were going on a business and I remember you guys had just signed like a $80,000 a month like office lease and I was like yeah I hope this breaks them down I hope this is their downfall and I remember during this era I remember I got a one of our advertisers who we shared because when we got going something we didn't say earlier advertising in newsletters wasn't really much of a thing we had to convince like early adopters to give it a shot and so we had a lot of this we had shared advertisers and I would beg them like show me their click through rate versus our click through rate and what I learned was like it was basically like the same for a lot like it wasn't like significantly different but the fur the first half of that year I thought we were gonna go out of business the second half everything fucking boomed yeah it was crazy that was it was like the business was booming like our trends thing was selling like crazy people were spending like crazy it was a boom and we ended up getting like I remember we got what was that called what the government gave you money like p something yeah p e p p yeah we like got some of that money because our events business got shut down entirely and I was like I don't I don't know how I'm gonna make payroll and then it turned out I'm like damn I kinda feel bad because we killed it we killed it that year like it felt great | |
MFM | I remember the emotional journey of the acquisition was crazy for austin and I because our I don't know how long your sale process was but our customers | |
MFM | days it was it was loi loi to loi to closing was ninety days but then there was like thirty or sixty days of flirting | |
MFM | yeah so ours looked completely different our process like end to end was eleven months so the first conversation with the person at on the axel springer side of things was november of twenty nineteen and I remember we first got deal terms I can't remember when it was but let's just call it like january or february march | |
MFM | from axel springer from who | |
MFM | yeah from axel yeah and I remember what happened was in march world shuts down so there's a. Of three weeks where austin and I are like forget a deal we don't even know if we're gonna have a business and then after those three weeks starting in april everything ripped and we went from austin and I being like like we not that we don't even think we're gonna have a deal we don't even know we're gonna have a company after this too we're way underpriced we're doing so well are we even being paid appropriately for how much the business is ripping now and that roller coaster in those three or four months was insane | |
MFM | it so we both sold that year the sales process that was the most intense part of my life it was horrible like it was so miserable I was so bummed for like almost every day for three months this woman who works with me her name's edie she still works at hubspot I believe I hired her earlier that year or maybe a few months before covid hit and she was probably 63 or 65 she basically had birthed her daughter a little bit later in life in her forties and was like now that my daughter is 20 I'm gonna go back to work to prove to her that young women can kick ass and I was like hell yeah you're the best I'm gonna I would love to hire you and so she was like our hr person and our accountant person and she was great but then I learned during the deal process like I would we would be on a meeting with like me hubspot which had like six people kpmg accountants six people and then six lawyers so it's like that would have been like it would like like like a like a $20,000 meeting and I hear edie and I kinda see her bring her iphone up and take a picture and I was like eddy what the hell are you doing and she was like I don't know how to take a screenshot on my computer and they're talking about dropbox and I don't know how to use dropbox so I'm trying to like take pictures I'm like eddy I gotta teach you how to use dropbox man so and she's like brilliant she like nailed it and she was so good at her job but she didn't know some of the technical stuff like using dropbox so I had to teach her during this process and I'm like I can't tell them that like we this is how scrappy we are | |
MFM | wait did you use a banker | |
MFM | dude I hired a banker so the first time I tried to sell I hired a banker and we ended up getting an offer from vice and it was an all stock offer thank god I didn't take that and I you say | |
MFM | you've been working at mcdonald's | |
MFM | oh my god it like I went to tour the office and like no one was there and I was like where is everyone and they were all in sexual harassment training because like incidents there were like so common I'm like you guys suck and so I hired a banker for that and I hated it and then I always thought that hubspot or a company like that should buy us and they reached out to me and I was like I don't need a banker like I'm gonna negotiate this when I started the company my goal was to make $20,000,000 by the age of 30 I was like as long as I make that I don't care and the deal allowed that to happen and so I didn't hire a banker and I actually talked to kip the cmo of hubspot and he told me that he tried buying you guys and he was like I wanted to buy both of y'all and own the business newsletter space and he's like but they were too far along and you guys hadn't talked to anyone so I knew we were gonna be able to buy you but not them | |
MFM | yeah so I don't know if kip is totally being truthful there I think kip wanted to buy us I got the impression at the time that they were gonna make a hundred and $20,000,000 bet on on email newsletters they were really interested but because we did a better job of monetizing each subscriber you know we were more expensive and the hustle didn't care or hubspot didn't care about that extra revenue like you know okay it's or profit right what's $10,000,000 of profit to the the hubspot they cared about our users right it's the classic and vertical integration and I think that you you know you said you always thought you were gonna sell to hubspot I always thought we were gonna sell to fidelity or e trade or robinhood I thought it made so much sense as an acquisition play and as a retention play and you know we we pitched alex and I were talking about this last night sam I don't think I've ever told you this story I definitely haven't told it on the podcast but we pitched sofi and the ceo of sofi at the time was formerly the ceo or coo of twitter I think anthony noto and he really liked us or at least liked the business and we went we pitched a group of executives at sofi and it's over zoom this is during covid and I'm like alex this is our pitch like this is our moment we're gonna sell for hundreds of millions we're gonna get all this stock in sofi it was going crazy and we pitched him for fifteen minutes and the woman I'm not kidding deadpans looks at alex and goes I don't get it and I'm like which part and she's like why would we buy you guys I don't get the whole thing and I was like well you know content to commerce we have an audience and the the other guy like the head of business development flips the the background of his screen and he shows sofi stadium right he shows that their big stadium and he goes 300,000,000 eyeballs a year I'm like what he goes that's how many people see this stadium you think we want 3,000,000 emails what are we gonna do with 3,000,000 emails and that was the entire call | |
MFM | what a douche that they your wife should've talked to them that's insane to me | |
MFM | but but I think allison I feel like you made a good. | |
MFM | About like just the lesson in incentives there | |
MFM | yeah I mean at the end of the day we were telling the the marketing team of a company we can market your product better than you can you know what cmo what head of marketing is gonna buy a company unless they have a ton of humility if they believe that our pitch is we can do your job better than you can and and I think that she was pretty fearful and so that's why that's why that deal didn't go through so you know and we couldn't even get | |
MFM | in touch with the fidelity's of | |
MFM | the world the e trade's of the world they they didn't like they that wasn't even a conversation so that's when we went to to more media buyers like axel springer who already had made the offer and and a few others and look we we we shopped I don't know about you I'm curious how many conversations you had we shopped it to everyone and we got no computer | |
MFM | it to all traditional media companies no one was interested hearse her hers wasn't interested like new york times wasn't in no no media people were interested and frankly I hate the media industry so I was kind of happy | |
MFM | yeah and that's part of the reason we sold is we were we were I mean a couple hours before we signed we were unsure I was talking to all these people getting all this advice but we came back to we own the vast majority of the company and we didn't get a single offer in writing from another company and that was just terrifying to us we said what if accessware goes away and we're never gonna be able to sell this company of course in hindsight that's not true but at the time you're so scared it was a you know we made a a decision I I think it was the right decision in hindsight but we did it partly because we were scared | |
MFM | can I alright I wanna rattle off the so my story ends there in 2020 we sold you guys sold half the company and then later sold the rest I'm gonna rattle off the future numbers but then I wanna talk about like future stuff like what people listening can learn so '21 you did 46,000,000 in revenue and 10,000,000 in profit twenty two '70 million in revenue 10,000,000 in profit twenty three was the same numbers and so I imagine the business now is in the $70.80 90,000,000 range something like that but you guys aren't owners anymore what do you think people doing now newsletters are really popular so I remember when substack started I thought it was the dumbest idea ever I chose not to invest in beehive I thought that was a silly idea I was wrong about both of those things what do you think that the people starting now are getting wrong and where's the opportunity in your opinion in this space | |
MFM | I think the number one thing that people get wrong is they view this arbitrage that we had in 2017 and they think it exists today they think the same economics exist today because they read a blog post that tyler denk wrote in 2018 the value of a subscriber is significantly less than it was when we started because there are so many newsletters out there and people forget that the most important thing it goes back to what did we do in 2018 we printed the newsletter out every day and we were not maniacal over the content every person out there I see now on beehive ninety nine% like oh here's an untapped market let me write like c + or b - content and let me use all these growth hacks and I'm gonna get to a million subscribers and I'm gonna sell all these ads and I think they get to half a million or a million subscribers that they can and their ads don't sell for $50,000 they sell for $3,000 and the economics don't work because there's not enough engagement because the content's not good enough and so just people aren't focusing on the content it's all about the content that'd be like selling a saas product and the code not being variable the product not working that well like you have to focus on the content first everything else follows | |
MFM | yeah I would just add on and austin and I have obviously talked about this at length but the more niche the better like the internet is just this long tail of millions of niches and the more niche you go especially if you pick the right niches not only can you get higher cpms and I would argue that like in this advertising pullback that has happened for like the brew or just media companies in general b to b has been less impacted but the other part about it is you know the trouble we had at morning brew which I think you had less of at the hustle is we didn't know we could not figure out how to monetize our audience directly we tried everything we tried selling merch to them we tried the education product we couldn't figure out a good solution for your audience like I think causal trends was a really smart product for your audience the more niche you go I think the more clear it becomes how you can directly monetize your audience | |
MFM | I think a big thing to learn for people starting now is my strategy was partially right partially wrong the strategy that I had I hated advertising I remember do you guys remember how like the sales guys always wear jeans and a plaid shirt and these bright brown shoes I remember I bought a pair of those brown shoes and I wore them to one meeting in new york and I took them off at the end of the meeting and I threw them away and I like went home in my socks I was like I'm never wearing these fucking brown shoes that tech salespeople wear ever again I will never wear these brown shoes I just like distinctly remember that because I hated it and so I was like I wanna create products to sell to my audience and what a lot of people get wrong about that is they go outside so like you know I think adam and becca at workweek wanted to sell like software products or something like that and that strategy that they and many other people if who are I don't even know if they did do it but whoever wants to try and do that it will almost always fail because in order to make a business like this work where you sell stuff to your audience you almost always have to be it has to be within your core competency of content and if the founder is not like what mark zuckerberg was to facebook of being like a tech wizard you need to be that about content otherwise it's not always but almost always otherwise the the business sucks and so I think that for the people listening if you are going to build something go super hard on content make money via advertising which is the right thing to do and then if you do make money in other ways you will almost always wanna make money in ways that fit within like the ikigai of like your company's core competency and what the world wants is some type of content y media thing | |
MFM | yeah we we see it all the time where people start a media company they try to sell a product and it's really hard because you're pivoting from a content company to a product company or software company it's really really tough | |
MFM | it's like buzzfeed like doing haven't they tried like making ovens or something like that | |
MFM | yeah with tasty they have like their entire cookware brand yeah I think at the end of the day it's like basically you you just are adding so much complexity to your business especially the more you get out of your core cause it's like peep like a media company and content like content is the product a media company is a business then what you're basically saying is you wanna create an entirely different business and now what you need to figure out is the entirely different business is the product exceptional do you have someone who understands it deeply who can run it then the media side can you keep that going in the right way and then also is there an intersection where your audience not only trusts you but trusts the thing that you're now selling them that's a different product like there are so many more moving pieces | |
MFM | what else for different opportunity you guys had on here that you being based in new york helped I agree with that it helped you guys a lot I think being like if you are an ai company being in san francisco is beneficial if you are a media or content company being in new york is beneficial | |
MFM | I think that was huge for us I think if you wanna build a a big brand in media you have to be where the ad agencies are and I mean alex was just grinding going to ad agencies meeting with people talking to people if he lived in austin those people weren't there he was never gonna be able to meet with them in person | |
MFM | yeah it's like you're you're way you're you're not in it to win it if you are not in new york | |
MFM | yeah one other thing I would say is like I think actually sam you and I feel differently about newsletters now like I know kind of your perspective is like newsletters are so much harder you you wouldn't necessarily do it today my my general view is like I feel like we're like past early of every media channel on planet earth like I don't think anything is early anymore like podcasts have been saturated youtube has been saturated newsletters have been saturated like everything is harder in my mind so I think like the game overall has become harder that said I still think there are gonna always be opportunities especially in a niche that you know a lot about to succeed so like I would say I am still bullish on newsletters as a way of owning your audience I just think the the level you have to play the game is higher than where we had to play the game one other just random thought is I used to always hate the news business like I thought the news business was such a bad business to be in because you need so many people to crank out content the economics are horrible I would actually argue with kind of where we are in society now and you know like general distrust of news broadly of traditional news rally I think there's a ton of opportunity to actually disrupt news as an upstart and I think we've seen that with like barry weiss and the free press and I think we'll see more of that over the next few years | |
MFM | so here's one of know one of my takes on is for like where interesting opportunities are I I would bet my life I bet my life you guys agree with me quarterly or monthly hardcover magazines or some type of physical newsletter | |
MFM | yeah I love that | |
MFM | I almost made so we did moneywise a podcast about it's like a personal finance podcast for high net worth people I almost made that I was gonna make it a 500 2 thousand dollar a year shows up quarterly in a manila envelope with stapled printer paper but really well written articles to keep it like like to feel like a mom and pop type of like underground zine that's what I thought about doing and I still think someone could pull that off | |
MFM | have you seen arena magazine | |
MFM | is that the thing you love | |
MFM | yeah so I think it's really cool it's this guy max mayer I believe he worked at eight vc with joe lonsdale and he started this magazine it's quarterly now I don't I can't tell you if it's gonna be a big business but they tell the coolest stories and it's beautiful like this thing is done you know like a magazine from twenty or thirty years ago where you're selling super high gloss paper and the graphics are amazing and then you're probably charging a $7,000 cpm to some beauty brands that it's amazing and stripe is making these really cool ads and ramp it's it's awesome everyone should should check out arena may | |
MFM | what I would do is so you said beautiful I would make it the opposite of beautiful I would pick an industry that has a lot of employees whether it's like the financial advisory industry or the advertising world industry something where there's like a hundred or a few hundred thousand people but you are only one or two degrees separated from each person and the whole name of the game would be name as many names as possible and as many companies as possible in it and so you would want to like buy it for all of your staff and you would have like rankings like the top this person this quarter and it would because it was almost like the difference do you remember when oscar started advertising in the subway versus on like a computer if for some reason when you see casper out in the open versus on facebook you think oh wow this is like way more legit and exciting I would do that right now for an industry and I would name as many names as possible so they would just be paying money in annual fee per year just to have their name on paper | |
MFM | yeah what's that the the par 30 under 30 | |
MFM | something like that but for like financial advisers or something but I hate financial advisers so it would be like like you all suck but here's the least sucky ones any other interesting opportunities that you wanna bring up | |
MFM | I think that's I mean the media space I I I think that's it for like the newsletter stuff I I still think the big opportunity in the media space if someone's take a big swing someone wants to go build a billion dollar company it's to do what we're talking about into or what the hustle did right use content to build something like a trend but do it to the extreme so I think the best example right now look at what overtime is doing oh dan dan porter who's been on the show is amazing right and for the first three years of this business I didn't get it at all I said overtime I | |
MFM | thought it was so stupid | |
MFM | so dumb I was like this guy's an idiot he left all these awesome jobs he could do anything and he built another company off a ton of funding and all he did was just put sports on social and next thing you know he's doing basketball tournaments I'm like that's like kinda cute and then he's running a league that's trying to compete with college basketball and I'm like holy shit this guy is on a different level he's trying to compete with the ncaa in the nba that's a big swing like you know if if in a couple years I build another big company I would think like that right whether it's you know basketball like that or or peddell I think is really interesting or there's people now thinking about doing it in tennis there are so many interesting niches where you can go take a massive swing and try to compete with you know the biggest organizations in the world yeah I've I've | |
MFM | a few I wanna add on top of that the first is a media company focused on alternatives | |
MFM | what's an alternative alternative to what | |
MFM | like alternative investments so like real estate private equity venture etcetera like my whole thing is alternative investments are becoming a bigger part of people's portfolios but they're more opaque they're harder to understand but they're also really interesting ways to monetize people who are investing in alternatives I think basically a company that becomes like the go to source for figuring out the complexity of investing in alternative assets is going to make a killing I think that's the first the second is basically for a long time austin and I talked about how an amazing way to monetize our audience and we could figure it out would be like our version of motley fool and the reason we never did it is like motley fool's built an incredible business | |
MFM | but I feel good | |
MFM | yeah but but but our thing was like the marketing just does not feel good to us and so I think if someone can figure out how to support retail investors in a way that makes them smarter about not losing their money in the markets and media is just like you know the funnel to it even like when we were at that newsletter conference two weeks ago right and james altucher was talking about what he makes on his premium thing | |
MFM | he said he made a hundred he did said it on stage he said a hundred and $20,000,000 a year in revenue | |
MFM | yeah and so so I think that is still a massive opportunity as well | |
MFM | this is awesome guys thanks for doing this how do you feel | |
MFM | feel good | |
MFM | that was like therapy for me that was the most therapy I've done in my life I think | |
MFM | but for the record you know I I never hated you guys I hated the story that I made up of you and for the listener over the past like three or four years austin and I have become very very close where our families are hanging out on saturday alex you and our we did a family hang two weeks ago I have nothing but love for you guys I consider you guys family and you're some of my closest friends and so it's it's been fun to to get soft instead of like you know wanting to compete because now that I know more about you guys over the past like ten years I don't wanna ever compete against you ever again you guys are very formidable and not people I wanna go against it was horrible | |
MFM | not nothing but love from our side | |
MFM | yeah quite the one eighty from 2018 | |
MFM | it was all a story which by the way I think if you're listening to this and you have a company having that story was so helpful yeah like going having an enemy was so helpful even if it's made up | |
MFM | it's funny you say that I will use this time to plug my new newsletter that's launching and one of my first newsletters that I I I've written is about enemies and I think having an enemy whether it's real or fake right for us it was the skin and the hustle I think it's really really important you know beehive has convertkit and I think it just motivates everyone just a little bit more | |
MFM | and I know nathan and he's the sweetest guy ever I've gotten to know tyler a little bit and he seems like a wonderful guy and I'm like I'm not gonna start stop you guys from fighting because I think a fight's good and also I know that you're both wonderful people and you would love each other in a different world or when this is all done but you I've like you have to have that so I'm on board what's | |
MFM | just six six years from now one of them is gonna have a podcast my first email and they're gonna both be on it and it's gonna be all hugs | |
MFM | what's your thing austin where do they get it | |
MFM | you can just find it in my twitter dms or sorry my twitter bio | |
MFM | well I appreciate y'all and thanks for doing this if you Google your name austin by the way it's that stupid photo of you guys on the white wall that you've been using for like fifteen years and it's your last episode of my first million so it's funny how we have all come to work together alright we appreciate y'all that's it that's the pod thanks |