Speaker 1: I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
Speaker 1: going to have to start making better content. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
Speaker 1: I think it's at were purpose driven platform. Like we're
Speaker 1: trying to get to substance? How was that? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
Speaker 1: really is? Well? What's up? I'm Laura Currentti and I'm
Speaker 1: Alexa Kristen. Welcome back at Landia. So Alexa, I am
Speaker 1: out in Hollywood, Los Angeles, which is so pertinent for
Speaker 1: our conversation. To open up today's show talking about the
Speaker 1: Emmys and our favorite show, ted Lasso ted Lasso Big
Speaker 1: Wins at the Emmy's. I love this show. It brings
Speaker 1: so much joy and laughter. And as we were getting
Speaker 1: ready for this record, talking a bit about how a
Speaker 1: series on Apple TV plus, I think it's interesting to
Speaker 1: think about how ted Lasso becomes brand and the ability
Speaker 1: to permeate the world of business management. You have some
Speaker 1: thoughts around this uh commerce fandom in a different way.
Speaker 1: So knowing we're going to talk to our friends at
Speaker 1: the Morning Brew about niche community building through media, I
Speaker 1: thought this would be a fun place to start. I
Speaker 1: think it's a great place to start. I love ted
Speaker 1: Lasso as well. Then when I see on Twitter on
Speaker 1: LinkedIn people talking about the business and management like leadership
Speaker 1: lessons of ted Lasso, quoting the show and Laura, when
Speaker 1: you and I were talking about this, I said, there's
Speaker 1: an extension here, like an obvious extension of ted Lasso
Speaker 1: NBA Crash Course or ted Lasso Leadership Course. There's so
Speaker 1: much opportunity to start thinking about that content as a
Speaker 1: jumping off point for additional products. And I think that
Speaker 1: if Hollywood looked at product and product market fit and
Speaker 1: seeing that there is a huge product market fit around
Speaker 1: a business community that's dying for leadership lessons, that actually
Speaker 1: makes you think a little bit differently, And isn't this
Speaker 1: kind of heavy slog of learning? And I think that
Speaker 1: that note that kind of heavy I'll call it my
Speaker 1: This is such an Alexis m right, the heavy schlog
Speaker 1: of learning. But I think the point is is that
Speaker 1: there's so many places in spaces where content can show
Speaker 1: up and have a different um meaning or feed a
Speaker 1: different audience that maybe it originally didn't seek out to do,
Speaker 1: but they're finding that they have major footholds or fandom
Speaker 1: by creating these types of extensions or new products, and
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly what morning Brew has done. Alex
Speaker 1: and Austin on the show they talk about in this
Speaker 1: episode of how they thought about building niche communities, and
Speaker 1: from a marketer perspective, I'm still kind of amazed that
Speaker 1: a lot of marketers get caught in the kind of
Speaker 1: mass media game versus building for niche audiences over and
Speaker 1: over and over in mass and finding these areas and
Speaker 1: building products to create fandom, to create what I call participation,
Speaker 1: So then you start to think about your metrics. Someone
Speaker 1: asked me about, um, you know, how we were measuring
Speaker 1: things at GE last week, and I said, well, we
Speaker 1: went from the typical shares and likes and those types
Speaker 1: of things into participation. And for my perspective, I was
Speaker 1: talking about the podcast. I was talking about the message
Speaker 1: and how fans were popping up fan fiction and how
Speaker 1: they were doing cosplay. That is huge for a brand,
Speaker 1: and I think that morning Brew understands this concept kind
Speaker 1: of fundamentally. I think Alex really started to see this
Speaker 1: when he started really started to see that pull of
Speaker 1: the of the market demand. Even at you know, University
Speaker 1: of Michigan where they started this. The kind of focal
Speaker 1: point of the conversation that we have with them is
Speaker 1: around really starting to think about content and building content
Speaker 1: as products products for niche audiences and serving those audiences
Speaker 1: UM in a way where they can't get um, what
Speaker 1: you're giving somewhere else, and then allowing and this is huge,
Speaker 1: allowing those audiences to create in and around your I P.
Speaker 1: Because we are getting to the place where participation and
Speaker 1: ownership is king. These are the conversations around all the
Speaker 1: n f T s, around crypto and content and so
Speaker 1: as marketers start to think about, how do I allow
Speaker 1: my audience to start to participate and have maybe a
Speaker 1: piece of ownership, even if it's informal, Um, how do
Speaker 1: we ignite imagination or creativity with our audiences? That starts
Speaker 1: to become a very different model of media. UM. Then
Speaker 1: I think we've seen before. Yeah, there's certainly the product
Speaker 1: roadmap that this requires, right, and moving from foreign factors
Speaker 1: to franchises and thinking about, you know, how you build
Speaker 1: for communities, engage with communities, And then there's a conversation
Speaker 1: for the c R oh, right, and the sales teams
Speaker 1: and how they're packaging this. So many times over the
Speaker 1: last few years on this show we've talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: sitting down with publishers talking about their pitch, and nine
Speaker 1: times out of ten those pitch decks have started with
Speaker 1: how many peoples reach right? If it starts with we
Speaker 1: have an audience of X, it's a wildly different entry
Speaker 1: point when you're talking about participation and how you price
Speaker 1: that accordingly. And with that, we'll be right back with
Speaker 1: Alex and Austin, co founders of Morning Brew. Alright, ed Landia,
Speaker 1: we are back with our partners that yield Mo. If
Speaker 1: you remember, we spent our first mini series talking about
Speaker 1: how yield Mo works with brands to make audience attention actionable,
Speaker 1: and in this mini series we take on how contextual
Speaker 1: targeting is being reimagined as brands make every interaction with
Speaker 1: their consumer meaningful. Welcome Lisa Bradner, GM of Data and
Speaker 1: Analytics from yield Mo. Thank you so much, great to
Speaker 1: be back. Always great to talk to you guys. So Lisa,
Speaker 1: talk to us about what is yield Mo, What do
Speaker 1: you do at yield Mo, and how are you working
Speaker 1: with your clients sure, Yelm is a smart exchange. We
Speaker 1: are focused on increasing the value of advertising inventory for
Speaker 1: buyers and sellers. We do that through data and my
Speaker 1: job is to help bring the right data to bear
Speaker 1: so that we can help brands find the best impressions
Speaker 1: for their goals and do so in a privacy safe
Speaker 1: way that is right for consumers. So Lisa and helping
Speaker 1: brands find the right data. How much does context factor
Speaker 1: into that? And how is yield MO framing context as
Speaker 1: you bring data forward to your clients At the highest level,
Speaker 1: context is everything right? It's how do we show up
Speaker 1: as brands in an appropriate way when we're wanted, when
Speaker 1: we're helpful and deliver a service so that we are
Speaker 1: just accepted as being in the right place at the
Speaker 1: right time. Super easy to say, super hard to do. Right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the marketing holy grail. But what we
Speaker 1: look at is the data. Everything that's happening in the
Speaker 1: moment and AD is served, and we look at all
Speaker 1: of that data to understand what's going on, what's surrounding
Speaker 1: that ad, where is that AD showing up, what devices
Speaker 1: it on, is the person viewing that ad paying attention
Speaker 1: to that add and spending time with it. We look
Speaker 1: at everything that has happening in that instant and helps
Speaker 1: clients figure out when they're advertising is landing and when
Speaker 1: maybe it isn't landing as well as it could. So
Speaker 1: why do you think that contextual targeting is gaining increasing
Speaker 1: importance in today's marketplace? So I think when you say
Speaker 1: contextual targeting, that means different things to different people. But
Speaker 1: at the highest level, we are on a half of
Speaker 1: having less data available about the people were serving ads to. Right,
Speaker 1: So Google is sunsetting third party cookies. Apple is already
Speaker 1: blocking on Safari third party cookies. It is harder and
Speaker 1: harder for marketers to connect the data about an individual
Speaker 1: and how they move across the web. So without that
Speaker 1: data that marketers have become really reliant on, it's contextual
Speaker 1: is the alternative of how do I show up in
Speaker 1: the right way without leaning too hard on individuals private data.
Speaker 1: But what Yale MO is looking at is you know, contextual.
Speaker 1: One Datto was, hey, here's an article about travel, let's
Speaker 1: serve a travel ad um. We're not going that literal.
Speaker 1: We're looking to understand from the data. Let the let
Speaker 1: the ad experience tell us what ads are working with
Speaker 1: what content and what context and what time and what
Speaker 1: device and what place so that the data that comes
Speaker 1: back can be modeled by machines and tell advertisers where
Speaker 1: and when and how to place their ads. Contextual advertising,
Speaker 1: right and you talk about kind of at its highest level,
Speaker 1: has lots of different kind of meanings and machinations. But
Speaker 1: contextual advertising has become very in vogue in light of
Speaker 1: the cookie conversation. So cookies going away, which we know
Speaker 1: got pushed back right in terms, go push the time back. However,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting time for marketers to be thinking
Speaker 1: differently about contextual advertising. Why and why has it come
Speaker 1: back into such kind of a focus for for marketers.
Speaker 1: It's a great question because I think there was a
Speaker 1: portion of the marketing world that when Google delayed the
Speaker 1: cookie deprecation, when people I don't have to think about
Speaker 1: that right now, right right, but the smart money is
Speaker 1: saying this is real. I'm already actually losing a lot
Speaker 1: of iOS users, and most marketers if they went in
Speaker 1: and really studied their programmatic campaigns, I think they would
Speaker 1: be surprised to see that often their campaigns are going
Speaker 1: to Android users. That's not because the android users are
Speaker 1: necessarily their best customers. It's because the Android users are
Speaker 1: the ones that they can match to their audience. So
Speaker 1: they're already missing a whole lot of iOS customers and
Speaker 1: they may not even be realized realizing that yet. But
Speaker 1: the smart marketers are seeing that, are realizing that their
Speaker 1: audience is going to get harder and harder to find.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, they're upping their loyalty strategy
Speaker 1: to get a lot of first party data, but on
Speaker 1: the other hand, they're starting to test and learn new
Speaker 1: ways of expanding reach, new ways of finding efficiency, new
Speaker 1: ways of communicating and reaching out to their audience without
Speaker 1: relying on first, second, or third party data. Lisa, this
Speaker 1: is a great start to the conversation and we look
Speaker 1: forward to having you back for part two. And we
Speaker 1: are back on the mic with our friends from Morning
Speaker 1: Brew at Landia. Let's give a big welcome co founders,
Speaker 1: Austin Reef and Alex Lieberman. Welcome to Atlantia. Welcome, thanks
Speaker 1: so much, thank you. Yeah, we were just saying as
Speaker 1: we were getting ready to come into the episode, this
Speaker 1: is like total fans of m all things in the
Speaker 1: Twitter feed, so we're excited to have you and bring
Speaker 1: this conversation I r L kind of kind of it's
Speaker 1: it's better than on Twitter, but not as good as
Speaker 1: in person. You both are very vocal founders and business
Speaker 1: leaders who are constantly sharing the journey that you both
Speaker 1: have been on in building your business. One of the
Speaker 1: things that struck Alex and I as marketers is something
Speaker 1: that you posted Alex talking about the most underrated entrepreneurial
Speaker 1: skill is storytelling. UM and as this is a podcast
Speaker 1: that is largely dedicated to the power of it, would
Speaker 1: love to hear you know what that means to you.
Speaker 1: And as you started, as you said, with the product
Speaker 1: in a vision, it was really storytelling that catapulted Morning Brow.
Speaker 1: Can you take us into that. Yeah, you know, my
Speaker 1: thought around this is Austin and I both went to
Speaker 1: an undergrad business program at Michigan, and I would say
Speaker 1: most people in the underground business program we're we're fighting
Speaker 1: for kind of the same three categories really two categories
Speaker 1: of jobs investment, banking, UH and management consulting. And I
Speaker 1: think as a function of that, most people focused on
Speaker 1: attaining the skills that made the most sense for those jobs,
Speaker 1: So things like you know, financial analysis, accounting, operations UM
Speaker 1: and you know, don't get me wrong, those are really
Speaker 1: important things. Those are skills that you know, any business
Speaker 1: professional should have proficiency in. But what was always interesting
Speaker 1: to me is that the skill, whether you want to
Speaker 1: call it sales or communication or storytelling, it wasn't talked
Speaker 1: about a lot. There was one class that everyone took
Speaker 1: that was a joke for most people in business communications.
Speaker 1: And you know, the reason I tweeted about that was
Speaker 1: just in reflecting on kind of what are the biggest
Speaker 1: things that I think most founders are entrepreneurs leverage in
Speaker 1: order to propel their business forward. I think storytelling has
Speaker 1: to be in kind of the top three of not
Speaker 1: the number one. Yet it's not people aren't incentivized to
Speaker 1: really get great at storytelling, uh in college. And when
Speaker 1: I posted about that, I was kind of just referring
Speaker 1: to verbal storytelling, but I think it actually is more
Speaker 1: broad than that. It's verbal storytelling, it's written storytelling, and
Speaker 1: it's visual storytelling. And I think we've seen examples of
Speaker 1: great creators or experts in those different areas build massive
Speaker 1: audiences on the Internet because people are realizing on the
Speaker 1: Internet and not necessarily in school, how important those things are.
Speaker 1: I look at the number of newsletter lad businesses that
Speaker 1: have emerged over the last blood's even call it twelve
Speaker 1: to eighteen months. There are a number of choices when
Speaker 1: thinking about the plot of your story on paper, it
Speaker 1: could look similar to a lot of other value props
Speaker 1: that are out there. What would you say was the
Speaker 1: plot twist of Morning Brew that could take it from
Speaker 1: the product you rolled out with two really where you
Speaker 1: hope to see this business grow? I think the plot
Speaker 1: twist was, Well, there's a few. The first one was
Speaker 1: when we identified very early on that the content was
Speaker 1: not just for college students, but it was for everyone.
Speaker 1: At first was Alex who was really doing for his
Speaker 1: friends and they were doing for other colleagues or just
Speaker 1: people in the business school. But when we went to
Speaker 1: our internships or our jobs and we realized that this
Speaker 1: wasn't just for college students, those for professionals as well.
Speaker 1: That was a big moment where the market went from
Speaker 1: college kids, which is a nice market, but not that
Speaker 1: big and not that valuable, to be totally honest to everyone,
Speaker 1: and we had CEOs of big companies reading, and we
Speaker 1: had investment banking analysts, and so that was the first thing,
Speaker 1: who was the first big CEO that you saw subscribe?
Speaker 1: There was the year of Time Warner Cable, who ended
Speaker 1: up investing in Morning Brew. Early on, he was I'd say,
Speaker 1: the first big person who we didn't know signed up,
Speaker 1: and then we found out signed up. We used to
Speaker 1: every night go through the list and see who was
Speaker 1: signed up. I think the second thing was Alex and
Speaker 1: I both knew the tone and voice we wanted to
Speaker 1: hit on in every single newsletter. We know we couldn't
Speaker 1: do that. We know that we knew that we had
Speaker 1: the vision, but we couldn't execute it on every single day,
Speaker 1: every single sentence of every single news letter. We could
Speaker 1: do it for small chunks a sentence, a paragraph, maybe
Speaker 1: even a single newsletter, but not six five days a year.
Speaker 1: And when we found writers who could write in the
Speaker 1: tone we wanted it written in, that was the second
Speaker 1: inflection point, aha moment whatever, which was okay, now we
Speaker 1: can focus on the business really early on me growth, Alex,
Speaker 1: sales even because we had some content people. That was
Speaker 1: the second really big moment where we knew the audience
Speaker 1: and then we do the content and get hit. And
Speaker 1: the third was sales. It was can we get brands
Speaker 1: to advertising Morning Brew, and can we continue to champion
Speaker 1: this idea of creating native advertising? Right, we knew banners
Speaker 1: weren't gonna we were going to build a big business
Speaker 1: off of the backs of banner ads in the newsletters.
Speaker 1: So once those three hit the audience, the content and sales,
Speaker 1: we knew we had a business. Who is your first
Speaker 1: paid partner? It was Emlahart, a college memorabilia business that
Speaker 1: did like branded college rings and other you know, college apparel.
Speaker 1: It was an eight hundred dollar ad. They bought three
Speaker 1: of them total, and the only reason we got it
Speaker 1: was because one of our original investors in The Brew,
Speaker 1: he had a relationship with them and he said he
Speaker 1: was helping us earn some beer money. So that was
Speaker 1: that was the first advertisement partner. The first one we'd
Speaker 1: like earned for ourselves was the University of Jena. And
Speaker 1: the first big partner was discover Card. What was the
Speaker 1: time frame from Memorabilia to discover Card. We'll Discover Card
Speaker 1: we started speaking to when I was in Michigan, because
Speaker 1: I'll never forget they came to us and they said
Speaker 1: we're going to send you an RFP, and I immediately
Speaker 1: said that sounds Great and Google. When RFE was I
Speaker 1: had I had no idea, not a clue, I mean
Speaker 1: just I couldn't even begin to guess what it was.
Speaker 1: But so I just remember pacing in the auditorium at
Speaker 1: Michigan just talking on this call with senior marketers at
Speaker 1: one of the agencies. I can't remember which one. It
Speaker 1: was about Discover. So that was the beginning of seventeen
Speaker 1: and they were tossing around numbers, like I remember, they
Speaker 1: said they were gonna r FPS for a hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand, and five hundred thousand, and
Speaker 1: basically what I had to tell them was for five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, they could own the company five times over.
Speaker 1: And we had liked subscribers. Maybe he's not he's not joking.
Speaker 1: It was like sending like Alex and my mom like that.
Speaker 1: That was the list. The CMO of Discover card her daughter,
Speaker 1: I believe, introduced her to Morning Brew and so she
Speaker 1: reached out to the agency saying, Hey, what they're doing
Speaker 1: is really cool. I would love to partner with them.
Speaker 1: So the agency thought, oh, Morning threw, they're butted up
Speaker 1: all of this stuff, and it was just Alex nine
Speaker 1: and we had no idea what we're doing, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't even there's not you couldn't fake it till you
Speaker 1: make it right. At some point, it's just so ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and so we had to come clean like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is ridiculous, you know we we can't do it there
Speaker 1: with a half million dollars. But the big thing we
Speaker 1: did is we said, but how many subscribers do we
Speaker 1: need to have for you to actually care about us?
Speaker 1: Because at the time we didn't know, we weren't sure
Speaker 1: it was a ten thousand, fifty hundred thousand, a million.
Speaker 1: We had this idea that we could get to a
Speaker 1: place where big brands would care about us, but we
Speaker 1: did know what that point was, and they started throwing
Speaker 1: out numbers like a hundred thousand subscribers, and so that
Speaker 1: for a while is our north star. And I think
Speaker 1: around end of seventeen, that's when we started to work
Speaker 1: with them, was when we actually had thousand subscribers. So
Speaker 1: I was listening to how I built this with Gyraz
Speaker 1: and I think Austin, you were talking about the future
Speaker 1: of media is definitely niche and distributed. What does that
Speaker 1: mean in your business today? And how do you think
Speaker 1: about niche and scale. I think oftentimes people confuse the
Speaker 1: word niche and small. Niche doesn't mean small. What we're
Speaker 1: learning is that the Internet is a very large place.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people in the world, and these
Speaker 1: niches can have tons and tons and tons of followers.
Speaker 1: And so at first we call ourselves this niche publication,
Speaker 1: and to some extent we still are people who want
Speaker 1: to consume. Whom to want to opt in, to consume
Speaker 1: business news in a newsletter in a conversational tone every
Speaker 1: single day is fairly niche. It's not huge. But now
Speaker 1: we start thinking about, Okay, we have this audience of
Speaker 1: three million plus, and of course you want to scale
Speaker 1: that and get that bigger. But that's not the only
Speaker 1: way we view growth anymore. We have a goal at
Speaker 1: Morning Brew do two things. One make people better at
Speaker 1: their job, and we do that through our B two
Speaker 1: B publications as we call them. So we have retail Brew,
Speaker 1: we have marketing Brew, we have Emerging Tech Brew. So
Speaker 1: to use one of those as an example, we for
Speaker 1: retail Brew, we try to think about how many different
Speaker 1: ways can we serve a retail professional events, podcasts, you
Speaker 1: know what it, whatever may be within that vertical. And
Speaker 1: so right now we have newsletters, web content, and events,
Speaker 1: and we're contan think about what else is next, could
Speaker 1: be job boards or whatever else. But on the other
Speaker 1: side of things that's not job specific or industry specific,
Speaker 1: we think about up how can we make well rounded
Speaker 1: business minds. And there's four categories were really interested there, business, money, career,
Speaker 1: and lifestyle. And so as you break those down, like so,
Speaker 1: taking for example, money, we're going to think about how
Speaker 1: can we create content in the money vertical. It's mostly
Speaker 1: personal finance and investing. So you could argue investing is niche,
Speaker 1: but the number of people who would like to consume
Speaker 1: investing content in some way, whether it's a Twitter video
Speaker 1: or Instagram post or a podcast, is really really large.
Speaker 1: So we're just starting to break down the content we
Speaker 1: create and target these niches that our audience cares about.
Speaker 1: But my belief is these niches of productivity or investing
Speaker 1: are really really big. Alexa and I used to meet
Speaker 1: with media, you know, sales teams all the time. We
Speaker 1: were coming in from you know, big legacy networks and
Speaker 1: publications to niche startups and the common denominator slide Slide
Speaker 1: number one was how many people you reach? Right, Like
Speaker 1: Austin you said the first question he has, well, how
Speaker 1: many how many subscribers do we have to get to
Speaker 1: to actually validate the cost you're willing to pay. But
Speaker 1: what if at the time those twenty thousand readers we're
Speaker 1: spending on average, you know, an hour plus with Morning
Speaker 1: Brew content in the community, we're deeply engaged were advocates
Speaker 1: for the brands who were a part of the Morning
Speaker 1: Brew community, would that be worth five thousand dollars. It's
Speaker 1: a really interesting question. Yeah, I mean, I would just
Speaker 1: say that it all comes down to incentives. Right when
Speaker 1: you think what you guys are talking about, how it's
Speaker 1: like crazy thinking about audience in mass scale and not
Speaker 1: having focus and monetizing that. But I think when you
Speaker 1: think about incentives drive people, it starts making sense why
Speaker 1: brands m why publishers have valued the wrong things in
Speaker 1: the past. The incentive for the marketer at the brand
Speaker 1: in the past was to make their boss happy. What
Speaker 1: their boss valued was getting in front of exactly one
Speaker 1: ship ton of people. And so if you could get
Speaker 1: in front of that many people and make your boss happy,
Speaker 1: you were happy because your boss was happy with you
Speaker 1: on the publisher side, if you had a business model
Speaker 1: that forced you to get in front of tons of
Speaker 1: eyeballs because your costs were high, you needed to be
Speaker 1: a big scale to create any sort of margin for
Speaker 1: your business. Again, your incentive is to get a lot
Speaker 1: of people reading to make the economics of your business work.
Speaker 1: I think in order to think in this what feels
Speaker 1: like a common sense way, your incentives need to be
Speaker 1: aligned with thinking through common sense. So common sense KPI
Speaker 1: s look like I mean, I would just basically say
Speaker 1: the reason we've been able to think about things in
Speaker 1: this way is it all started with I would say,
Speaker 1: at the core, the value of curation. The value of
Speaker 1: curation is what allowed us with one newsletter to have
Speaker 1: the same number of writers when we had ten thousand,
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand and three million readers. And when you
Speaker 1: have the same cost basis and you continue to grow
Speaker 1: your audience, your margin grows, and so you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about like, obviously we want to scale Morning
Speaker 1: Brus audience, but we're just as interested in getting people
Speaker 1: into our ecosystem through things that aren't just our daily newsletter,
Speaker 1: and also retaining and engaging our daily newsletter readers with
Speaker 1: other things that we create. We don't have the incentive
Speaker 1: to have to get from three million to ten million
Speaker 1: just for the sake of having enough margin as a
Speaker 1: business to have a business that makes sense. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: most businesses, especially legacy I guess now their legacy. I
Speaker 1: don't mean The Times or the Journal, but some of
Speaker 1: these publishers who are popular on the Internet for fifty years,
Speaker 1: they monetize their content with ads or round their content
Speaker 1: banner ads, programmatic pre roll. We're not going to compete
Speaker 1: with BuzzFeed and Vice on SEO in search terms. We're
Speaker 1: just not going to do it. That they've be on
Speaker 1: the Internet for two decades or however long they've been around.
Speaker 1: So we have to compete by building brands that people
Speaker 1: are passionate about, that they care about, and partner with
Speaker 1: brands in really clever ways to generate higher CPM ADS.
Speaker 1: But the CPM the higher CPM ADS makes sense because
Speaker 1: it's not this banner that's chasing around the Internet, but
Speaker 1: it's actually an integration into our podcast, into our social
Speaker 1: To Austin's point, this whole thing is like, if we
Speaker 1: can create great niche content, what you're effectively doing is
Speaker 1: targeting a specific psychographic, a specific problem that's being solved
Speaker 1: or passion that's being filled for our audience. And so
Speaker 1: by doing that, you have the ability to not just
Speaker 1: create content in one place, but create content around like
Speaker 1: an actual franchise in a brand. And what that allows
Speaker 1: you to do is that when you go to market
Speaker 1: and partner with a brand, you know, they're not just
Speaker 1: getting native ads in Morning Brew. They're not just getting
Speaker 1: placement in a social post. They're not just getting a
Speaker 1: host reading a podcast. They're getting all of the things
Speaker 1: to exist everywhere and aligned fully with the franchise that
Speaker 1: is focused on a specific niche you know. So for
Speaker 1: Heineken Um, we're working with them on their zero point
Speaker 1: zero or zero zero product, which is their non alcoholic beer,
Speaker 1: and they get to align with Business Casual, which is
Speaker 1: the more key podcast product at Morning Brew, but we
Speaker 1: don't even refer to it as a podcast anymore. It
Speaker 1: is a franchise that has podcast, that has newsletter that
Speaker 1: has social content that also gets extended into our daily newsletter,
Speaker 1: and Heineken zero zero get those touch points in all
Speaker 1: four places that I just mentioned, so that one stands
Speaker 1: out to me. The other one that stands out to
Speaker 1: me was the work that we did with Fidelity with
Speaker 1: Fresh Invest, where we created a custom, uh interview style
Speaker 1: podcast with them. It was a limited series where basically
Speaker 1: I was the host. I would introduce Fresh Invest, I
Speaker 1: would talk through the biggest things happening in the markets
Speaker 1: in the last few days, and then I would interview
Speaker 1: a Fidelity employee who was an expert in one of
Speaker 1: the topics of the financial markets news that I was
Speaker 1: covering in that episode. And we did that as a
Speaker 1: limited series. It ended up getting you know, two x
Speaker 1: the downloads that we were expecting on the show. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're talking about another season for that
Speaker 1: coming up. But that was a really good experience of
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at the ratings for the podcast,
Speaker 1: if you look at people's experience, people felt like it
Speaker 1: was a genuine content franchise where they learned about the
Speaker 1: financial markets from experts, and it just so happened to
Speaker 1: be created in partnership with Fidelity. That's awesome. I love,
Speaker 1: love love that you guys are talking about ecosystems and
Speaker 1: franchises actually like ecosystems because when you start to think
Speaker 1: about who's created I P and content ecosystems. You start
Speaker 1: thinking about Disney, Marvel, blah blah blah blah ba. There
Speaker 1: haven't been a lot of publishers who have created these
Speaker 1: types of They've tried, Laura and I have like sat
Speaker 1: with some of them. They've tried, but unsuccessfully. I think
Speaker 1: in the past um who have really created these sustainable
Speaker 1: ecosystems all based on specific audiences. As you guys started
Speaker 1: thinking about this, was this an intentional build There's a
Speaker 1: little rhetorical question, but like it was this an intentional
Speaker 1: build into ecosystems and franchises? Was it? Were you looking
Speaker 1: at the entertainment world and starting to see what was
Speaker 1: happening in the last you know, seven eight years in
Speaker 1: terms of like really building out that i P. What
Speaker 1: led you to the infrastructure here and the kind of
Speaker 1: framework that you're going after. I think there are a
Speaker 1: few great examples of the people are companies that are
Speaker 1: doing this that really inspired us. And so to your point, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the scale players aren't doing this. They don't
Speaker 1: need to. And in fact, it's probably to be honest,
Speaker 1: those scale players that's probably disrupting themselves. They probably can't
Speaker 1: do it. Just it's not in their DNA to build this.
Speaker 1: But you look at if you're familiar with the Churning
Speaker 1: group in their portfolio, whether it's Food fifty two or
Speaker 1: Meat Eater or bar Stool or Crunchy Role, any of
Speaker 1: these franchise, they've taken these niche audiences. Now they're doing
Speaker 1: it with Golden Auctions, which is an auctioneer house there
Speaker 1: that that's actually more commerce, and now they're going to
Speaker 1: build out content. I assume they've done a really interesting
Speaker 1: job there. Same with if you look at the Ringer,
Speaker 1: they've done a really interesting job with some of this
Speaker 1: and e sports teams you look at hundred Thieves or
Speaker 1: these other sports teams, they've done a better job than
Speaker 1: most media companies of building franchises and building passion audiences
Speaker 1: and selling them commerce and selling them tickets to gain
Speaker 1: to you in person, the sports competitions and events. Those
Speaker 1: are some of the people we looked at. His inspiration
Speaker 1: for what we're doing. Was it premeditated? Though? Like that
Speaker 1: I want to get because what I love when you
Speaker 1: were talking about in the how I built this, and
Speaker 1: I think it was really honest And I have to
Speaker 1: commend you guys on your um on your kind of
Speaker 1: level of transparency UM, building in public and and doing
Speaker 1: it what feels really earnestly UM, which is super refreshing
Speaker 1: and absolutely a part of your brand, which you've already
Speaker 1: kind of talked about. I started listening in the Founders
Speaker 1: Journal and one of the things that you said was
Speaker 1: we really kind of didn't know we used our naiveness
Speaker 1: about the media business to actually succeed here when you're
Speaker 1: talking about franchising this stuff out in these ecosystems is
Speaker 1: actually a pretty big deal in terms of a business
Speaker 1: infrastructure and thinking through this. So was that premeditated? What
Speaker 1: I would say is to the point of us building
Speaker 1: in a in a naive fashion, I would say for
Speaker 1: the majority of the life of the business, that is
Speaker 1: how things went down. And um. You know, Paul Graham
Speaker 1: has a great essay about independent thinking and one of
Speaker 1: the you know, when when he tries to to guide
Speaker 1: people through how can you be a more independent thinker,
Speaker 1: one of the things he always refers to is having
Speaker 1: a beginner's mindset. What is one of the best ways
Speaker 1: to have the beginner's mindset is literally to have a
Speaker 1: beginner's mind is like not even know this. The way
Speaker 1: that things have been done. That is how we started
Speaker 1: building our business because we had no exposure to media.
Speaker 1: And when you asked about how have we gone into ecosystems,
Speaker 1: I think it was more just like us thinking linearly
Speaker 1: about serving our audience and also what brands were asking for.
Speaker 1: So it's like we started with newsletters and then we said, well, one,
Speaker 1: we wanted to diversify away from just creating newsletter content,
Speaker 1: and our audience doesn't just read newsletters when they read
Speaker 1: about business. That's what guided us to podcasting because we said,
Speaker 1: what Morning Brows built is a really intimate relationship with
Speaker 1: a really obsessive audience. There's nothing more intimate than hearing
Speaker 1: a personality or a brand speaking to in your ears.
Speaker 1: And then as we've gone into other things, whether it
Speaker 1: be social content, going more into video content, going into events,
Speaker 1: that has been furthering that narrative of what are all
Speaker 1: the ways that we can serve the modern business leader
Speaker 1: in the two big needs that Austin talked about, um,
Speaker 1: how can we do all of those things? And at
Speaker 1: the same time, we've heard from brands how what they
Speaker 1: hope to do is get in front of our audience
Speaker 1: in a way where they are hitting multiple touchpoints of
Speaker 1: that ecosystem where truly feels like in an ecosystem and
Speaker 1: not just a single product placement here, in a single
Speaker 1: product placement there. I would say, Now, you know, especially
Speaker 1: with Austin at the HELM, we are way more meditated
Speaker 1: in how we are building out these ecosystems. But I
Speaker 1: say for the vast majority of the business, it was
Speaker 1: really linearly thinking about what does our audience want and
Speaker 1: also what are brands asking for? Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: a difference between franchises versus form factors when you think
Speaker 1: about what leads right, especially from a consumer standpoint, to
Speaker 1: stop leading with the form factor first, but is the
Speaker 1: perspective and community that we are building as creators that
Speaker 1: we should be putting the premium against. It's funny you
Speaker 1: bring this up. We've been talking about this a lot
Speaker 1: of the Brew. We spoke the last year about this
Speaker 1: transition from newsletter company the media company, and all that
Speaker 1: means is we transition from a medium which is newsletter
Speaker 1: to multi platform and we now lead with whatever platform
Speaker 1: best serves the audience in that niche, with the talent, personalities,
Speaker 1: whatever we have, and so as we go into personal planants,
Speaker 1: if it makes sense to be newsletter heavy, well be
Speaker 1: news letter heavy. If makes sense to be video heavy,
Speaker 1: will be video heavy. And so initially we people did
Speaker 1: call us a newsletter, and most people still think of
Speaker 1: us as a newsletter of business. I did to think
Speaker 1: a while. I think my goal is where a lot
Speaker 1: of people actually discover us, not through Morning Crew, right,
Speaker 1: they listen to Business Casual and they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't either one what is Morning Brew? Or I didn't
Speaker 1: Morning Brew has this podcast? That'd be awesome. And if
Speaker 1: we can do that in all these verticals. And this
Speaker 1: is not a one or three even three or five
Speaker 1: year vision, this is this takes years. You look at
Speaker 1: the companies have successfully done this. Food fifty two is
Speaker 1: a great example. It's taken a long time. A really
Speaker 1: meat Eaters another one. If you're not famili to media,
Speaker 1: they're a really interesting brand and no one really talks
Speaker 1: about it's at least not in the New York City
Speaker 1: media circuit because they cover hunting and fishing. But that
Speaker 1: company has scale tremendously and now they have all their
Speaker 1: oy have a ton of brands, they bought a commerce brands.
Speaker 1: They're selling hunting gear and you can only sell product
Speaker 1: product to your audience, they actually care a value. You
Speaker 1: can't sell things to your audience and they don't care
Speaker 1: a value, And so that that's the goal. Are there
Speaker 1: other bets as you think about this modern business leader
Speaker 1: you're serving that push media beyond form fact there, but
Speaker 1: push media as we know it into new territories that
Speaker 1: perhaps some of the legacy competitors in your category aren't
Speaker 1: thinking about. But you know that the customer is interested in.
Speaker 1: So we have a ways to go till we're really there.
Speaker 1: Right So right now we're testing out this this cohort
Speaker 1: based course called MBA, which our first test into non
Speaker 1: ad based revenue, and it's really exciting. But I see
Speaker 1: a world in which we're not just the media brammit.
Speaker 1: We're a consumer brand where people don't. Yes, we create content,
Speaker 1: but just like every commerce brand out there trying to
Speaker 1: create content, I think we can beat all of them
Speaker 1: to create commerce. And so that core based course is
Speaker 1: one thing we're doing. But I see a world in
Speaker 1: which we have content and investing in content and business
Speaker 1: news and content and productivity and maybe in the productivity vertical.
Speaker 1: We have a morning Row journal that helps you journal
Speaker 1: every day, and that's a I don't know, you buy
Speaker 1: that every three months or so, and that's a product
Speaker 1: that franchise sells. And maybe we have financial products in
Speaker 1: the investing vertical, and maybe in the news vertical we
Speaker 1: have a community that talks about certain types of news.
Speaker 1: And in retail, which is the B two B side
Speaker 1: of things, we have a once a year annual event. So,
Speaker 1: just like the other companies I mentioned, have evolved over
Speaker 1: time and started to build out different types of content,
Speaker 1: blur the lines between what's a content company what's just
Speaker 1: a consumer brand. That is where we're in up play.
Speaker 1: But we have a lot of work to be done
Speaker 1: in terms of just we just started to build on
Speaker 1: social and build video and the five we have one
Speaker 1: we have two two podcasts Always Only and then one
Speaker 1: podcast Alex mentioned we did as a one off, and
Speaker 1: so we just scratched the surface in terms of what
Speaker 1: we're capable of doing. And so we have a lot
Speaker 1: of runway in terms of what we can get done
Speaker 1: and we're really excited about being able to do all
Speaker 1: of that. This takes really specific talent. How are you
Speaker 1: guys thinking about creative talent and hiring creative talent? Is
Speaker 1: there a different kind of requirement or person you're looking for.
Speaker 1: We have been incredibly talented team we have. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not specific, Alex. It's more creative than I am,
Speaker 1: so she can talk more about the people we have
Speaker 1: on the team. But we just hire really talented creative people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would just say that people always ask
Speaker 1: us how is our writing so good? And there really
Speaker 1: is no secret we hire incredible writers. We like to
Speaker 1: say we go unicorn hunting every time we hire eiter,
Speaker 1: because you need to find someone who is obsessed with
Speaker 1: the news, someone who is really well informed, someone who
Speaker 1: has great writing chops who writes with flow, who just
Speaker 1: like writes extremely well, and someone who's funny but isn't
Speaker 1: trying to write laugh out loud jokes, is able to
Speaker 1: intertwine humor with um and punch nous with the stuff
Speaker 1: that they're writing. I think talent will work the same way,
Speaker 1: just in in a different type of context, with social
Speaker 1: or with multimedia. I mean, we're already seeing this right
Speaker 1: with Morning Bruce TikTok, which has gone from zero to
Speaker 1: twenty almost seven thou followers in a few months. Daniel
Speaker 1: Toomey who's been our talent on there um he was
Speaker 1: an inbound person who applied to the business. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna have to change the lens through which we assess
Speaker 1: social audio or video talent, but we're gonna look for
Speaker 1: the same mix, which is who who are the p
Speaker 1: bold that are able to marry entertainment and information in
Speaker 1: a way that creates the morning grout voice that has become,
Speaker 1: you know, a special part of our I P. I
Speaker 1: want to go to like a quick speed round of questions.
Speaker 1: What is a topic that you think in the business
Speaker 1: world that gets you so excited that you want to
Speaker 1: go deep on and no one's really covered it the
Speaker 1: right way or the way you want to cover it.
Speaker 1: I would say DEFY and recently reading up on DEFY,
Speaker 1: what is defy decentralized finance? And I'm sure people have
Speaker 1: covered the right way. It's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I feel like such an outsider even trying to consume
Speaker 1: some of the content where I'll read a tweetstorm on
Speaker 1: DEFY and I'll see a term or a phrase or
Speaker 1: something that is a matter of fact in that conversation
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I'll look that up and I'll
Speaker 1: have no idea what that means. And then I'll read
Speaker 1: that and you have to keep on pulling back layers
Speaker 1: the onion and then they just a really complex topic. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: maybe a listener on the podcast can sponsor it, and
Speaker 1: then we'll do it. Alex, what about you topic? You know?
Speaker 1: Normally I say the creator economy, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: switch it up this time, and what I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: is studying totally different businesses in other countries. That's a
Speaker 1: relevant thing for me just because, like recently, companies that
Speaker 1: I've been looking at are China based or India based,
Speaker 1: and you find entirely different models that haven't been tested
Speaker 1: or haven't reached um mass market in the US, and
Speaker 1: I think that's such an amazing arbitrage in general, like
Speaker 1: they're different, arbitrage is for business opportunities. One is creating
Speaker 1: a business for a younger generation. That's been done for
Speaker 1: an older generation, but it hasn't been done for a
Speaker 1: younger generation. That's quite literally morning brew. I think another
Speaker 1: example of that arbitrage is studying businesses in other countries
Speaker 1: and then bringing them stateside. I think you're even starting
Speaker 1: to see that, like with the recent news around podcasts
Speaker 1: um and like Apple, Spotify, MPR introducing obviously paid podcasts
Speaker 1: like that that has existed in China for many years. Okay,
Speaker 1: dream brand partner? Who is it? Lulu Lemon? Oh, tell
Speaker 1: me you wear men's Lulu Lemon. Yeah I'm wearing I'm
Speaker 1: wearing a lu Lemon right now. Yeah, I'm big, big
Speaker 1: Lulu guy. And now they own Mirror. You can really
Speaker 1: get a cool campaign with Mirror and Lulu Lemon. Morning Brew,
Speaker 1: Alex Lieberman, Model executive chairman, bring it all together? Well, Alex,
Speaker 1: who's your dream partner? So I'm gonna say this, because
Speaker 1: Austin did a realistic one, I'm gonna do an unrealistic one.
Speaker 1: But it ever happened. I just go into retirement right then.
Speaker 1: And there is uh Tesla, not only because they don't
Speaker 1: spend on marketing, but I just envision a world in which,
Speaker 1: when it's fully autonomous, you have a whole campaign around
Speaker 1: what work looks like in an autonomous vehicle, and I
Speaker 1: think it would be sick. What is your legacy headline
Speaker 1: if you look back, when all is said and done,
Speaker 1: what would you like to sum up in a headline
Speaker 1: about Morning Brew? That's a question you should have asked
Speaker 1: us to prepare for That's that's a that's a big one. Ah,
Speaker 1: this is cliche or it's a bad answer, But I
Speaker 1: want I mean we and we said this from day one.
Speaker 1: This was this analogy. We use the way that our
Speaker 1: parents generation, the way boomers look at the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: especially the most passionate boomers, where they read it every day,
Speaker 1: but also they get the Wall Street Journal Wines magazine
Speaker 1: and they go to the wine tastings and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff, that type interaction and that type of uh
Speaker 1: daily you know, thinking about that brand. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: that to be the way people think about Morning Brew.
Speaker 1: But compelling that with the fact that we now the
Speaker 1: Internet and we have digital and does not a once
Speaker 1: You don't consue a paper once day, but you consume
Speaker 1: digital products all day long. And so that's the analogy
Speaker 1: I want people to make. Is Morning Brew did for
Speaker 1: for millennials or gen Z or whatever the Ultra Journal
Speaker 1: did for boomers? What about you, Alex, Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say it's uh just a different angle on the same
Speaker 1: type of take. Right, we're talking basically at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, our goal is ubiquity for our generation.
Speaker 1: UM I want rap songs to be written about us.
Speaker 1: I want people to reference the Brew on big TV
Speaker 1: shows that come out on Netflix, because when things like
Speaker 1: happened happen like that, you reach a level of cultural
Speaker 1: ubiquity that only happens when you've truly served an obsessive
Speaker 1: audience for a long period of time. Before we go,
Speaker 1: we play a game with all of our guests. Bye
Speaker 1: bye bye. What would you get rid of? What would
Speaker 1: you buy or acquire? And what would you do yourself?
Speaker 1: I would buy on behalf of Morning grew a financial
Speaker 1: service company. I don't know what, but I do think
Speaker 1: eventually Morning Bruising get into financial products. So that's again,
Speaker 1: that's the ten year vision. I think I would create
Speaker 1: a tequila brand. Oh, now we're talking. Now we're talking
Speaker 1: a partnership. Yeah, that's collaboration all the way. Spicy Margarita's
Speaker 1: or the official drink of Atlantia Tequila shots for the
Speaker 1: official drink of Austin Reefs. So, and what are what
Speaker 1: are you getting rid of? I would get rid of
Speaker 1: the sentiment that AD based businesses are bad. I think
Speaker 1: it is ludicrous and I think bad at they add
Speaker 1: based businesses are bad. So I think all bad businesses
Speaker 1: are bad, But I don't think all AD based business
Speaker 1: are bad just because a few people ran or poorly
Speaker 1: ran AD based businesses. So you just landed yourself a
Speaker 1: keynote at the next I A B conference. What about you, Alex?
Speaker 1: This is a tough one. Um okay, So let's just
Speaker 1: start uh bye? What what would I bye? Well? I
Speaker 1: was going to say a find financial services company, because
Speaker 1: I think there's just a lot of technology we wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to figure out and we want from a partner.
Speaker 1: But Austin said that, so I'm gonna go with I
Speaker 1: would buy a failed uh direct a consumer apparel brand,
Speaker 1: something like a Combatant Gentleman, a brand that did not
Speaker 1: work out well but is for the modern business leader
Speaker 1: and is what we think of quality products. But the
Speaker 1: economics and the business they just didn't run it prudently.
Speaker 1: I would buy that business. Who would I say by two?
Speaker 1: Or what would I say? By two? Um? I I
Speaker 1: would say by that I'm now I'm just cheating because
Speaker 1: I said this on Twitter. I would say bye to
Speaker 1: the word orthogonal. I think it's such a usually start
Speaker 1: up word. It's a good word, but I just there
Speaker 1: has to be a better way to say what orthogonal means.
Speaker 1: And the only person who I give permission to use
Speaker 1: it as Ben Thompson because he uses it a lot,
Speaker 1: but he's also leagues UH smarter than all of us,
Speaker 1: so he can use it. And then by b y
Speaker 1: um a journal brand like I just think, especially the
Speaker 1: Founders journals, the audience UH continues to grow. Literally can
Speaker 1: have a journal called Founders Journal or journal brand by
Speaker 1: Founders Journal that gets featured in all social content, with
Speaker 1: all recordings of episodes. And I think given we're we
Speaker 1: could actually literally create niche journal brands for decision journaling,
Speaker 1: for different job functions, for UH, for mental wellness, for
Speaker 1: professionals focused on like specific prompts for your mental health.
Speaker 1: And the best thing about a journal business is not
Speaker 1: only the margin um, but also you can make it
Speaker 1: into almost a recurring revenue product where people use up
Speaker 1: all their pages and then they need to get the
Speaker 1: next journal. So, Alex Austin, if people want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with you to journal, make tequila or do
Speaker 1: business with the Brew, how can they get in touch
Speaker 1: with you? You can sign up for Morning Brew newsletters
Speaker 1: at morning brew dot com and you can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Austin underscore reef r E. First you'll
Speaker 1: go and sign up for all the Bruise products where
Speaker 1: Austin just said morning brew dot com. Then you'll listen
Speaker 1: one of those products is Founders Journal. Would love for
Speaker 1: you to listen. And then on Twitter on business Barista. Awesome,
Speaker 1: you guys, Thank you so much, Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and please come back and visit. We will. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having us guys. Thank you again
Speaker 1: to Alex and Austin for coming by. Great conversation. Going
Speaker 1: back to what we were talking about at the kind
Speaker 1: of beginning of the show, it really codified my thinking
Speaker 1: and some of the things that we used to do
Speaker 1: together where we would have conversations with c r o
Speaker 1: s at big media companies, but we would be asking
Speaker 1: and pushing on what I P do you have? This
Speaker 1: was what what's your I P? What's your most valuable
Speaker 1: I P? Talent, etcetera, technology, etcetera. And what happened because
Speaker 1: we were asking those questions, we stopped having conversations just
Speaker 1: with the sales teams. We started having conversations with the founders,
Speaker 1: CEOs and the chief product officers and maybe more importantly,
Speaker 1: the chief product officers, so really the people who were
Speaker 1: driving the technology, thinking about audiences and developing products in
Speaker 1: media for audiences. And that completely changes the conversation that
Speaker 1: you have on the brand partner side if you're actually
Speaker 1: starting to develop with developed products, think about audiences with
Speaker 1: a chief product officer at a media company. And I
Speaker 1: think that there are actually still few chief product officers
Speaker 1: titled kind of quote unquote properly, but I believe we're
Speaker 1: going to see a lot more, a lot more chief
Speaker 1: product officers entering entering into the world of media. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting if you go back in the episode the
Speaker 1: transition from newsletter to podcast, because there was an intimate
Speaker 1: relationship that existed with an obsessive audience. That pairing of
Speaker 1: the commercial side coupled with the content side when you're
Speaker 1: picking up the signals, insights, inputs from audience pits on
Speaker 1: um what what you're noting around bringing product officers forward
Speaker 1: with revenue officers and having those conversations with marketers. How
Speaker 1: can advertisers be a part of it and build not
Speaker 1: just media product, but add product around it and and
Speaker 1: in that intimate relationship with obsessive audience. Note it does
Speaker 1: not look like impressions. It does not look like clicks.
Speaker 1: It looks like conversations. It looks like how many sweatshirts
Speaker 1: I sold last quarter to people who are engaged with
Speaker 1: my community? And so could you imagine lex and we've
Speaker 1: sat down in many of these conversations with publishers, c
Speaker 1: ros and sales teams. If that pitch deck started with
Speaker 1: X media company we sold ex sweatshirts with our logo
Speaker 1: on it last quarter, versus we reached X audience, could
Speaker 1: you imagine the conversation that that would have started for us?
Speaker 1: And just what's happening there? Tell us about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think it just signals something different, which is the
Speaker 1: participation factor. And in that participation factor, new ad products
Speaker 1: and monetization models should emerge. Two things. They're one, I
Speaker 1: think that we too easily equate scale with volume like that,
Speaker 1: so on the nose direct impressions, giant audiences, you can scale,
Speaker 1: and in fact, brands are doing it all the time,
Speaker 1: scaling with niche audiences and Austin. Austin talked about that.
Speaker 1: He was like, and I kind of pushed him, so
Speaker 1: he hit home the point that niche and scale are
Speaker 1: not mutually exclusive in fact they work together. And so
Speaker 1: when you start to think about that, are we even
Speaker 1: defining scale the right way? Do we have the right
Speaker 1: tools to really think about and design for scale visa
Speaker 1: V niche? And then too that participation factor, how do
Speaker 1: we allow and invite the audience to own part of
Speaker 1: the experience because that is where the fire happens. That
Speaker 1: point is really interesting when you think about how much time, attention, engagement,
Speaker 1: money is left on the table when you go vertical
Speaker 1: versus building horizontally, and so you can scale that niche
Speaker 1: by moving into and diversifying your product portfolio, as we
Speaker 1: heard the Brew intends to do. I think it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting inflection point for media company. He's in thinking
Speaker 1: about ted Lasso included how I moved from form and
Speaker 1: function to franchise and thinking about the newsletter or a
Speaker 1: streaming show which now has the ability to move into
Speaker 1: and engage with community in new ways that widely opens
Speaker 1: up the aperture for business totally. And with that, Atlantia,
Speaker 1: we'll be back in two weeks. Laura hit it with
Speaker 1: a list of all of our friends and family at
Speaker 1: my Heart who have been so good to us and
Speaker 1: helped us get back on air. Big thank you to
Speaker 1: Bob Connal, Carter, Andy, Eric Gayle Val, Michael jen We
Speaker 1: appreciate you. Thank you so much for this opportunity. We'll
Speaker 1: see you in two weeks. So, Ryan, what Ted Lasso
Speaker 1: character are you? I really wish I was Roy Kent,
Speaker 1: but I am, in fact a Nate through and through,
Speaker 1: and I hope that is uh his oar goes where
Speaker 1: I think it's going, where he'll have a bit of
Speaker 1: redemption from being a little bit of a jerk this
Speaker 1: season totally. But he's not a jerk, and you're not
Speaker 1: a jerk. He's like a secret killer. He's a secret killer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't see you don't see him coming, and then
Speaker 1: he'll just drop some some knowledge bombs. Ryan, if you
Speaker 1: have to cast Alexa and I, who oh my gosh, Well,
Speaker 1: well Laura has to be. It's it's a tough toss
Speaker 1: up because I know you probably both want to be
Speaker 1: the key Ley. But I feel like I feel like
Speaker 1: Laura's kind of the KEI ly in in this vibe
Speaker 1: as an occasional mix of Roy, a little bit of Roy.
Speaker 1: I think there's a little Roy Kent, a little Roy Kent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Laura will be are Roy. That's a good call,
Speaker 1: all right, Ryan, who am I? Who am I? I
Speaker 1: have to go with with the boss lady, with the
Speaker 1: team owner. I feel like just honest and like doing
Speaker 1: weird investigative. I think that you're you're definitely the leader
Speaker 1: that surprises, that's very much in touch with the team
Speaker 1: and uh and knows the way to go. Nate, you
Speaker 1: just got promoted. Nate, you just got promoted assistant coach.
Speaker 1: You definitely our assistant coach.