Transcript 0:00 Hey, Matt here. What you're about to listen to is a live podcast we did with Ted Williams in front of an audience in Charlotte, North Carolina. 0:08 Ted is the co-founder of the Charlotte Agenda, which was acquired by Axios back in twenty twenty. 0:15 And then at Axios, Ted led Axios Local and helped them go from zero to thirty cities and over one million newsletter subscribers. 0:23 Axios was then acquired by Cox for five hundred and twenty-five million dollars in twenty twenty-two, and recently Ted left Axios to build a new startup 0:33 about local news and personal finance, and that startup is called tinymoney.com. Ted is one of the 0:39 legendary founders in the world of local media and local newsletters, and so if you're building a newsletter, if you're building a local media company, this is something you definitely want to listen to. 0:49 Also, because this was recorded live, the audio may not be the best as it could be, but we did our best to edit that and make it sound as good as possible for this podcast. So I hope you enjoy. 1:02 Before we get started, this podcast and this live event was sponsored by Playbookz. Playbookz is a premium LinkedIn ghostwriting service that helps founders and creators build their personal brand on LinkedIn. 1:14 Perrin is the founder of Playbookz. 1:15 He's someone I know personally and who I've hired personally to help with my content, and he is incredible at driving growth for founders and helping them grow their newsletter using LinkedIn. 1:26 They guarantee one hundred thousand in reach in the first six months. Playbookz is offering one thousand dollars off the first month for listeners of this podcast. 1:35 So if you're listening to this, go to playbookz.co to learn more. The link will be in the description of this podcast. That's Playbookz spelled with a Z dot co, so P-L-A-Y-B-O-O-K-Z dot C-O. 1:50 So reach out to Perrin there, get in touch. He's incredible at LinkedIn content. He's gonna help you grow, and tell him we sent you. All right, on with the podcast. [upbeat music] Hey, everybody. 2:02 So just a few housekeeping tips. My name is Arif. Thank you all for coming. You guys are a beautiful crowd. Um, I flew in from Houston last night, and, uh, I got to enjoy this beautiful city, uh, last night and today. 2:15 So, uh, thank you for welcoming me. Um, so we have a beautiful venue today. You guys already got checked in with drinks. Uh, after the podcast, uh, food is gonna be open as well, so feel free to enjoy, uh, dinner. 2:28 Um, and then we're gonna get started, uh, very shortly. So I'll let Matt take it away. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Yes, sir. [audience clapping] What's up, everybody? [audience cheering] Who's in Charlotte here? 2:39 Based in Charlotte. Awesome. Anybody drive here from the state area? Anybody fly in? There we go. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate everybody. It means a ton to us. This is our first ever live event. 2:55 [audience clapping] Yeah. Thank you. Cool. We're gonna get started in just a second, but first I wanna give a shout-out to our sponsor who made this possible, Playbookz in the back there. Say hi, Perrin. Hey. 3:07 [audience clapping] Playbookz is a LinkedIn ghostwriting agency that helps people grow their personal brand on LinkedIn. 3:14 They guarantee over one hundred thousand in reach in the first six months, and Perrin hooked us up with a deal. 3:20 He's gonna give everybody here or anybody listening who wants to get started one thousand dollars off their first month. Perrin is not just a sponsor. Playbookz is not just a sponsor. He's actually a good friend of mine. 3:30 We've personally hired Perrin to help with our content, so he's someone I personally trust and recommend. So I would encourage you, talk to him later, get a free cookie, and, um, get some good LinkedIn content. Cool. 3:43 All right. Time for the main event here. I wanna give an intro for Ted Williams. A lot of you already know this, but Ted is the co-founder of the Charlotte Agenda, which was acquired by Axios for five million dollars. 3:57 Ted led Axios Local, helping them go from zero to thirty cities and over one million newsletter subscribers. And now Ted has a new startup. It is a personal finance and local news startup called tinymoney.com. 4:10 Um, and he just started that recently. It's over five thousand subscribers now. So welcome, Ted. Thank you. [audience clapping] Thank you. Thanks, man. We're gonna get started with the podcast. Oh, look at that lighting. 4:24 There we go. [chuckles] Okay. You made the news recently. 4:29 You were featured in The Wall Street Journal, and the reason why is because you made a five million dollar public offer to buy The Charlotte Observer, which is the local newspaper in Charlotte. Yes. 4:39 So five million dollars, why did you make that public offer? [chuckles] So I worked at the, I worked at the, the Observer, geez, for two years, probably a decade ago, and the brand is awesome. 4:52 The business is awesome, and I think right now you've got a lot of financially motivated owners. So a hedge fund is, is treating it like a distressed asset where they're looking to take cash out. And so you... 5:06 When you have owners like that, they're not looking to transform the actual business. Um, and so I think there's a, uh, a really good opportunity to, to transform the business and create a good 5:17 local media newspaper here. Um, and you know, I think it was interesting because I wrote the, I wrote the headline, and obviously I didn't go through the investment bank route, so this was a... provocative in nature. 5:30 But I think a lot of people are interested in media. They're interested in, like, how does this stuff actually work? So people have read the headline, maybe chuckled or thought it was a joke. They read the story, 5:39 and they were like, "Wait, this kinda makes sense." And they looked at it, they're like, "Well, this is a guy who's done stuff." 5:44 So I think it, um, you know, caused a big reaction inc- including Wall Street Journal coverage. And it was, uh, yeah, it was interesting. Let's talk about that. 5:54 So, um, you basically said they're running it like a distressed asset. They're trying to get the most cash out of the newspaper. I wanna talk about what you would do if you owned it. How would you transformation... 6:04 How, how would you transform it? But first, like, explain what that playbook is that these private equity companies are running with, with this newsla- newspaper or other similar newspapers. 6:13 So I, I think people would be really surprised at how muchHow much money a newspaper makes [laughs]. And so, uh, and they make that money... 6:21 I mean, the overall playbook, like, the two key things are you jack up rates on rich people. And so you go and you look at zip codes, and you jack up rates, and you make it difficult to cancel. 6:30 Um, and then you try to keep the print business, especially the pre-print bi-business, so the inserts into the paper going for as long as you possibly can. Those are both cash cows there. 6:41 Um, and then you lower expenses slowly through real estate sales, get rid of an office, um, take a reporter who was making a hundred and twenty thousand dollars and try to substitute them with someone who's making forty-five thousand dollars. 6:53 Interesting. You also said, you know, in that post, you said, "With any distressed asset, eventually the economics stop working." So with a newspaper like the Charlotte Observer, if they're running that playbook- Yeah... 7:05 how long does that last? Like... You know, that's a question I don't know without looking at the financials. And so to me, I thought that time would be around-ish n-now. 7:15 [audience laughs] And so that is-- that's the most interesting thing to me, is like you have... I mean, these hedge funds, they're not dumb people. So they're looking at the returns of their capital. 7:24 And then eventually after you've, you've taken all the cash you can out of it, what do you do with it? And so I do think there'll be titles for sale 7:33 where you've got a financial motivated seller is now looking to monetize that core asset because they've taken as much cash out as they possibly can. 7:41 And if you had to guess, what do you think the revenue and profit for that business is right now? I, I don't, I don't really wanna speculate with it. I don't know. Fair enough. 7:49 And also in that post, what I think, what I found most interesting, most people found most interesting, was the business plan you laid out that you would implement if you acquired it. Yeah. So what is that plan? 7:59 Can you walk us through that at a high level? I mean, I think, I think, I think media is an execution game. So overall, like, being inside of a newspaper, things get complicated. 8:10 So you c-- like, in a, in a media company, um, that's, that's run in a certain way, you don't kill anything. So you end up just doing a bunch of stuff. 8:20 So you've got ad sales people that are selling, have a media kit that's, you know, twenty-five pages long, um, and y-you... and, and you've got a newsroom that's going from this special project to this special project. 8:32 And so what I would do, um, is focus on paid, paid subs, so deeply reported topics, uh, trying to acquire paid, paid subs there. I'd have a flagship newsletter. I'd have other newsletters around it. 8:45 Uh, I would do events, and I would do like a flagship, um, podcast also. That's off the top of my head. I don't know if you have the post literally with you. 8:54 But those are the items that were, like, the key elements to it. 8:57 And so I think it's the, like, can you, can you take the team and focus on, like, very few products that are either easy to sell ads against or easy, easier to try to get paid, paid subs with. 9:09 You also mentioned you would go to, like, a weekly print edition, and then you mentioned something interesting, um, is potentially, like, a luxury magazine. Yeah. Can you break that down and why you would consider that? 9:19 I mean, I, I... part of that is just circumstantial to, you know, Charlotte here. Like, I think, I think there's room... 9:26 I, I think there's room for a lot of luxury media in general, and Charlotte is, uh, certain parts of it are growing affluent, and so it's easier to make money through packaged stuff on rich people to look at ads. 9:38 And then, um, I think going down to weekly print allows you to have, like, what is the minimum viable product for, for print, and I think it's, like, a weekly rhythm makes sense. 9:48 You see the American City Business Journals do this. I think they're, like, chef's kiss awesome at only doing activities that they, um, that make economic sense. 9:59 So they are some of the most well-executed, uh, media company out there, and boy, do they have a great system. What is that system? If, if you could briefly explain, like, how that works for people that don't know. 10:10 Uh, you know, I think they've got a great website that's, uh, paywalled. They have events that kinda play off the website. 10:16 They've got a data business that's got your book of lists and other things there, uh, and they have a weekly print. And so, like, and they're go- targeting, you know, uh, smart professional business consumer people. 10:26 And so I think that, um, I really... And it's headquartered here too. So, like, it's, it's interesting to see that, um, a level of execution and focus. 10:37 And I alway- I always really respect media companies that are, uh, that are very focused and that, like, say no to a bunch of stuff and understand what they do. And the American City Business Journals d-does that. 10:50 Let's rewind a little bit. So back before that public offer, which happened in September, all the way back to twenty fifteen, right? That's when you started Charlotte Agenda. Correct. Yes. Cool. 10:59 Um, so a long time ago, in, in a LinkedIn post, you said something like, um... Actually, it's an interview. 11:06 So Charlotte Agenda was profitable for five years and never needed more than the original fifty thousand dollars to get started. 11:13 We have a lot of people in the audience who are starting a media company or in that startup phase. If you recall, like, what was the initial, um, investment actually spent on? Like, what did you do- Sure... 11:24 what did you invest in to get it off the ground? So I mean, the, the initial phase is really bad. Like, I don't think there's any [laughs] like, there's any way to go around it. 11:30 Like, I remember that nine months, there was a time in my, in my living room where I, like, curled up into a ball on the floor and was just like, "Oh, like, this really sucks. Did I make a really dumb choice?" 11:43 Um, but what I literally spent it on, so I still remember bringing the fifty-thousand-dollar check, uh, to a Bank of America branch in Uptown Charlotte here, deposited that. 11:52 You know, maybe the upfront cost around design and technology a-and legal, let's call that ten thousand dollars, and then the remaining was spent, um, on freelance staff. And so it was building, uh, building content out. 12:07 And my whole philosophy was, hey, this was in April, so whatever it was, I was gonna have, you know, eight-ish months to try to build audience. 12:16 I had one title sponsor and then tried to have all ad deals kick in, uh, in month nine. 12:22 Happened to work with the calendar year in the way that I kinda set things up in my head.And so, uh, those ori- those original eight months were, you know, terrible 'cause you're, you're producing a ton of content. 12:32 That was back in the BuzzFeed days, and so, you know, you could kind of vomit a ton of content on the Internet, Facebook loved it, and you would get a bunch of site traffic. 12:40 So it was a very different model than what can happen now. Um, but it was, uh, that, that is how the original money was spent, was creating content. 12:51 And we're gonna come back to the content, but originally what gave you the idea to actually start this? Like, what was the inspiration? Yeah. 12:59 So I started a product at the Charlotte Observer, uh, here, called Charlotte Five, and it was modeled after the Yahoo News Digest, if you remember the Yahoo News Digest. Slick app. I thought it was awesome. 13:10 Design was great, and it kinda said, "Hey, here are the..." I think, I think maybe the Yahoo News, News Digest did five also. Maybe it went up to ten. Five things you need to know during a gi- during a given day. 13:21 And, um, it was really fun to program that. And so at the Charlotte Observer and, uh, Clatchy in general, it started to, to gain traffic. And it was kind of the cute millennial thing. 13:32 And really what I thought was that it would be interesting was to r- would be to run the Charlotte Observer, not run a cute millennial side project. And so I was... 13:41 I would go home and complain to my wife and be like, "Man, I'm giving these PowerPoint presentations to these corporate people. Everyone, like, says I'm smart, no one listens to the stuff that I do." 13:50 And so, and then she eventually said, "Well, you're, you're gonna either have to... Like, I don't wanna talk about media every night. 13:56 So, like, do something [laughs] on your own, um, or just, like, shut up about media stuff." 14:02 And, um, you know, we had a three-month-old at the time, and so th- I thought, you know, unlike other startups, I thought there was a high probability of a moderate outcome. 14:11 So I thought I had a, uh, a greater than eighty percent chance of replacing my income. I think at the Charlotte Observer I was making a hundred and ten thousand dollars. 14:20 So I thought after that, after a year, I could replace my income and work with friends on a project that I own that I like. 14:28 And so that was the original thesis, um, around kinda the business, the business side and, and starting everything up. 14:34 And when you were first starting, what did the news or content or editorial product actually look like in the first eight months? 14:41 So it, um, in general, the gap that I saw, I think I was twenty-nine at the time, is the stuff... 14:47 If I had a, a, a beers in the backyard of backyard barbecue with fifty people, the stuff they talked about was not represented in, uh, traditional media, and that was really it. 14:59 It was like none of my friends are talking about things that are in a newspaper, that are in a, that are in a TV newscast. 15:04 And so people are talking about things to do, restaurants to go eat at, bars to go to, um, dating, how, uh, uh, friendship, how to meet people, and career stuff. 15:15 And so I really think it was applying, uh, uh, journalism, content creation, taking those topics seriously. 15:23 Whereas if you look at just the s- the six topics I listed there, like, those aren't traditional beats at a newspaper. Like, no one's covering dating, yet if you're single, it's probably the number one thing of interest. 15:33 And [laughs] so, um, y- you know, it was really just applying, seeing where the gaps are and, uh, doing a ton of content around it. And so what we would literally do, uh, send a Monday through Friday newsletter. 15:48 It was all text with one, one photo. We did, like, a photo of the day in it. Uh, we ran an Instagram handle 15:53 and where we'd post maybe two times a day, and then, uh, we'd publish between five and eight stories on a website every single day. The stories would be a little more evergreen in nature rather than newsy. 16:06 News is expensive to produce, I think. Or, like, deeply reported original journalism is, is expensive to produce. That's a lot of content in the first eight months. Was that... Like, how much of that were you doing? 16:16 How did you decide, like, what freelancers to hire and what to- So that's where-... allocate to them? That's, that's where that freelance bucket came from. Yeah. 16:22 So it was, you know, a cost per, per piece, and then I had, like, a couple core freelancers. Did you still- And, uh, it was a very different era. 16:30 So if you can remember back to the BuzzFeed era, where Facebook loved publishers. So you would throw anything up there, and it would just take off. 16:37 And so it was, um, it was leaning into that as a distribution channel, uh, rather than something else. And did you have... Like, was, was any of that under your focus? 16:49 Like, did you care more about the newsletter and you were more the editor there, and you let the freelancers do the blog? Like, was there any division of labor that you found helpful in the early days? Uh, no. 16:59 I cared about everything. Like, I think everyth- uh, hold on, that's not, that's not true. I... The newsletter needed to be awesome. 17:06 The newsletter had to be fantastic, and the web stories I would specifically try to edit as little as I possibly could. And so it was trying to... It's okay to make mistakes. You're gonna have grammar errors. 17:20 And so, like, that is, that was, that was part of... And a- again, we were covering very light topics. 17:26 And so resources were s- were spent making sure the newsletter was awesome, publishing a bunch of pieces onto a website, having those be like, you know, not edited or, like, edited in kind of a shitty way. 17:38 And then Instagram, I had a really, uh, talented partner, uh, Katie, who was very good at Instagram. 17:45 I, I felt Instagram I was wishy-washy on, which makes me seem stupid now, but she couldn't not do it, and it g- just grew into an enormous asset where it was, I think in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, zero advertisers asked about being on Instagram. 18:00 I think it was twenty eighteen, every advertiser asked about being on Instagram. So it, like, switched overnight, and so that was a good bet to make. But, you know, his- looking back on it, it was a good bet to make. 18:10 You know, obviously, if it would've cratered or Instagram wouldn't have been, been popular, we would've wasted three years of a smart person's time. We have a lot of newsletter writers here, newsletter writers. 18:20 Back then, how did you think about the newsletter as part of your strategy? And, um, how did that change over your time at The Charlotte Agenda?Always thought of it as its own product. 18:31 That seems, you know, very obvious now, but the idea that you're gonna do a roundup of links to drive people to a website, uh, just doesn't make sense. I still don't think that makes a ton of, a ton of sense. 18:43 So the idea is i-it's its own product. You can read it start to finish, be as short as you possibly could, and be as personal as you possibly could. Like, make... Give it the, a certain texture or content to it, um, 18:56 and would always do like a... It works with my brain, like a color by numbers. 19:01 Like, here's the intro, we did a job of the day, thing to do every day, uh, original summarize, a roundup, uh, summarize, a photo of the day, and then a newsletter close with like a l- something personal. 19:14 And so I think that takes creative people instead of, like, opening up a blank canvas to be like, "Okay, here's the, here's the color by numbers I can do every single day." 19:22 But that was-- We put a lot of rigor towards that, um, and then, you know, the big thing from the business model is just to bring advertising to-- into the newsletter rather than have it be a marketing channel to lead to a website to serve advertising there. 19:35 That's obvious now. It wasn't quite as obvious in twenty fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. And you mentioned, like, a founding partner or sponsor. Yeah. H-how did that come about? And was that really important? 19:46 Did that matter at all or- Yeah, I mean, it, it mattered a lot 'cause I was gonna run out of money. So I, uh- And how, and how did you get that founding sponsor? 19:53 So I-- The model I looked at was when Vox launched, I think I'm getting this right. When Vox launched, they had GE as a presenting title sponsor. 20:01 And I remember thinking, "Damn, that's really smart," 'cause, like, if you have limited resources, you can't, like, traffic a bunch of ads. No one knows you yet. And so I sat, um... 20:13 I actually didn't know a ton of advertisers from my Charlotte Observer days. I worked like half newsroom, half pricing, a bunch of strategy stuff. But I, um, I quit my job at the Charlotte Observer. 20:24 Two days later, I lined up a meeting with a, a Blair Primus, who's a CMO of a orthopedic practice, who I thought had the highest likelihood of saying yes. 20:33 I sat in an uptown bar on the third floor, and I ran through a five-page PowerPoint deck that was kinda shitty. And I was like, "You know, here's what, here's what I'm gonna do. Here's the plans I'm gonna make. 20:46 And to be the presenting sponsor, you'll be the sole advertiser for whatever the period was, eight-month period. It's gonna cost," I think it was thirty-five thousand dollars. 20:54 And, uh, I remember he looked at me and said, like, "We believe in people. This idea is good. Yes." And I remember thinking, like, I didn't know him that well. I was like, "Well, you need to go check with somebody?" 21:05 [laughing] "Like, can you just say yes?" 21:06 And so obviously I, you know, I drove home that, that night, and you know, I remember calling my wife on the way home and being like, you know, a little bit teary-eyed, being like, "You know, this-- that thirty-five thousand dollars helped offset some of the other money, so we're gonna be capable of producing content that was, that was, that was better." 21:22 But it was, it was merely making an authentic pitch to, oh, a w- a warm lead and getting lucky with a yes. 21:31 What do you think a partner like that cares about when they're, when they're buying or making a decision about that type of partnership? 21:38 I think they, they care about being associated with a, a leader and a person who's gonna execute well, represent the brand well, and then they get the halo effect of being part of something new and cool. 21:50 You could argue that thirty-five thousand dollar buy was the best media buy in the city of Charlotte in the past decade. 21:56 So like, I think that was the bet he was making, and he was, um, a smart enough CMO to say, "Hey, thirty-five thousand dollars in the grand scheme of things for healthcare marketing is not that, that much. 22:08 If this thing works, we're gonna get all sorts of coverage here." And then people remember the people who were the early advertisers and stuff. 22:15 Um, and it-- like, not only the people operating it, but the people reading it. So like, they're like, "Man, this advertiser signed on?" And so, um, I, I think there's, there's, there's a lot of benefits there. 22:27 When you were in the startup phase, how did you get the first, you know, ten thousand, twenty thousand newsletter subscribers? I was very intentional on... 'Cause I was okay if I failed, 22:41 and I, I, I would go get another marketing job somewhere. And so [chuckles] the idea was to try to shorten that window as, as much as I could and to let the market decide. 22:50 And so I said, "If we don't have a newsletter that people are, are reading and sharing, then we suck, and we need to go get new jobs." 22:58 And so it was really that simple, and it would grow by, like, fifteen-ish, twenty people every single day, if I'm getting my math right. So it was a slow, terrible grind. 23:07 Obviously, if you put scoops in the newsletter, if you have scoops, the newsletter's gonna grow faster. If you have some cool original take or content, the newsletter's gonna go faster. 23:16 And so, you know, I think the better, the more quality the newsletter, the more original the content, the faster it's gonna grow. Um, and we did not-- we did no paid acquisition. 23:27 I think I tried one, one contest, and then it just kinda felt, kinda felt shitty and sleazy, um, of like, "Hey, enter your email, and you can win Panthers tickets," or something like that. 23:37 And so really, it was a, a, a slow, awful grind. Yeah. So traffic from Instagram, traffic from Facebook, word of mouth, but no really, like, growth hack or- No... tactic that worked super well in the early days. Correct. 23:50 I think we were pretty bad at it, and I-- intentionally bad too of like, this... We wanted to make sure the market was-- wanted it. 'Cause if the market didn't want it, then w-we should do something else with our lives. 24:01 Absolutely. Okay. Fast-forward a couple years. One question real quickly is, before you were acquired, what were like-- what's the subscriber number that you were at for The Agenda? 24:11 I think we were at fifty-five thousand newsletter subs. But it was interesting, you know, it was interesting. 24:15 I felt like we were in a city of Charlotte's size, let's say it's eight hundred thousand people back then, when we reached ten thousand subs, it felt like we were dictating culture. Like, it felt like we were hot. 24:26 And so I always think, like, the, the idea that you need to be-- have a ton of subs in order to have an impact and i- in or- and in order to make moneyAnd i- in, in specific niches, at least in this like geographic niche, is just, is not accurate. 24:42 And so, um, you know, I think with that fifty-five thousand, like we felt, we felt big. Whereas, you know, you see a lot of nu- People can float out any type of number. 24:50 But sometimes you feel thin, and if you go to a city and you ask people if they've heard of it, they're like, "What, what are you talking about?" 24:56 So, um, I often think that, uh, or, or, you know, maybe that's a way of me, me, me saying I did a shitty job with growth, but it was, uh, fifty-five thousand subs. That's a lot. 25:07 Um, but also, it wasn't just subs, it's revenue too. 25:09 So in 2019, um, it was reported that The Charlotte Agenda did two point two million in revenue, you were profitable, you had the website, the newsletter, and you had a membership with, um, says here seventeen hundred paying subscribers, or paying members. 25:24 Yeah. Can you break down, like before the acquisition, what were the revenue streams in the business, and what were those, uh, what was the breakdown by percent roughly? Yeah. 25:31 It was probably, um, 60% were annual ad partnerships. So we, we would sell, uh, sell on a seats basis. I'm a big believer in this too. Like, "There's, uh, twenty-five seats. 25:44 Do you wanna be the exclusive, uh, bank of the, of the Charlotte Agenda for this next year?" I, I, I, I would, I would refer to it as like the minor league baseball stadium. 25:54 Like, we wanted the brands on the outfield fence. Like, that's the brands that, that we, we wanted. And so I figured there was about 100 of those brands in Charlotte that actually had money to do digital brand ads. 26:05 Wanted to stay out of the lead gen space. I've seen enough sales meetings where someone is promising someone that owns a rug shop they're gonna sell more rugs the next month. 26:13 I wanted to work with brand advertisers to do awesome brand advertising, to work with the next generation of this city. And so that was probably 60%. One-off campaigns, they were between $10,000 and $20,000... 26:24 $10,000 and $40,000. This is like a Bud Light wants to do a big campaign around football, happened to find [laughs] us and, uh, wanted to do something there. That was probably 15%, so that's 75%. 26:36 Job board was probably, you know, 10%. We had a, a calendar that was probably 5%. Membership was probably 5%, if I'm... Maybe that equals 100. Yeah. And so for those 25... What'd you call it? 26:51 What was the term that you used for that type of sponsor? Uh, they were annual partners. Annual partners. Is what we went- So was that 25 total, or was that 25 per category? 25 total. Okay. 26:59 I mean, the, the whole idea of running a sort of, a profitable media company is to work... is to try to work with as few people as possible as deep as you possibly can. Otherwise, like, it's a really shitty business. 27:08 A poorly managed media company, everyone's really busy, no one makes any money. And how did you think about pricing that? Like, did, did you have a formula? Did you have a number that you wanted to hit? 27:20 Um- Or any advice you would give on pricing something like that for the people here that might wanna do something similar? I think that at the beginning you're desperate, so I priced it... 27:29 The pricing was just horrifying. I think I did one sponsored con- one piece of sponsored content a month, couple text snippets in the newsletter, uh, something on Instagram for like $1,000 a month or something like that. 27:41 And then the real hard part, the real strategy that we implemented, was try to, try to grow pricing as audience grew, and try to get the right brands that would grow with us. 27:52 Um, and so that was trying to get like big corporate brands who had budgets and, and, and provide them more s- solutions over time, and just price things higher. But that was it. But like I, I... 28:03 That doesn't answer your question exactly. I don't remember the exact pricing. It was a bundled solution to, "Hey, here's a $75,000 program. Here's the, here's the components of that program. 28:13 Um, we reach the next generation of Charlotte. We're gonna tell that story too." You know, we had a creative kinda content studio. 28:20 I say content studio, it was one person who was, who was really good, and we were gonna integrate that in like a smart way. And we were good people. I s- I think people overestimate... 28:29 Like, people wanna work with good people on long-term stuff. In media, you've got a lot of corporate-owned items. Then you have Facebook and Google. They're just not fun to work with. 28:39 Like, no one wants to, to spend more money with the hedge funds and, like, with someone who may or may not be the same sales rep the next year. You know, nobody wants to, to just spend money... Not nobody. 28:49 Lots of people wanna spend money in the Facebook-Google abyss. But like, in general, people are rooting, advertisers are rooting for you, I've found. Yeah. And they're rooting against Facebook, [laughs] right? 28:58 You get no support. You get nobody. You- [laughs] Okay. This was a audience question. Do you feel like there's a tipping point in number of subscribers where it makes sense to start offering advertising? 29:07 I imagine your answer is no because of what you've done, but what are your thoughts on that question? Because it's a very common question out there. Uh, my answer is no. My answer is make money from day one. 29:16 Putting ads in a newsletter leads to more ads in a newsletter. So the best... I, I, I mean, outbound sales sucks. It's never successful. In, in, in all [laughs] of my time, it's never been successful. 29:27 Like, if someone isn't, isn't, like, experiencing the media product, there's a low probability of closing them. And so I think that, um, you gotta take inbound sales seriously. I would, like, attack people. When I... 29:41 When someone would fill out that form, I'd email them three minutes later. I'd go find them on LinkedIn. I would try to call them. I would, like, come on aggressively, which, uh, sounds creepy now. 29:51 [laughs] But, um, like I, I, um... That's, that's the way I would think about it. And then, like, the number one [laughs] thing that led to more ad interest were people seeing competitors' ads in the newsletter. 30:03 So like if you run a local law firm and you see another law firm in there, you're like, "Hey, how did, you know, Suzy's Law Firm get in there? Like, I wanna see my logo in there." 30:12 So, um, that's why running ads is the best form of, of, of generating new leads. 30:18 I heard this, I don't know if it's accurate, but I heard you did not share click metrics, so the number of clicks you're sending to sponsors on their ads. Is that true? If so, why do you do it? When did you do that? 30:30 I think we may have shared it. So first of all, I think reportingIs, is really important. And so [laughs] um, coming the... After working at a newspaper where reporting can be different and you've got, you know... 30:44 You're, you're basically processing a ton of ads. The ad operations can be, you know, medium, I'll say. [laughs] The, um... So, like, doing what you say you're gonna do, reporting those things out, makes sense. 30:55 Uh, we would... So we would put together good-looking three-page PDFs that had, you know, s- the fun content that they did, the overall reach, some e-engagement, some audience feedback. 31:06 I do think we would include clicks, or maybe we wouldn't. I don't, I don't know. But we would never talk about clicks. And it was, um... 31:14 Just 'cause, like, if you're gon- Like, it doesn't make any sense to sell clicks or lead gen stuff. Facebook and Google will always beat you. And so if you're set, like... 31:22 And s- or at least that was my th- my, my thought, and still is. 31:26 So, like, if you're look- If you're a small business or even a large business that's looking to grow, um, leads or, or down funnel stuff, you know, a general interest or whatev- or a geographic focus site just doesn't makes, makes sense. 31:41 And so never wanted to play in that, in that, in that game, um, because I, I don't, I didn't believe an advertiser should buy it. 31:47 And, uh, and being the salesperson too, it's like you don't wanna sell something that you don't believe in. Like, you wanna sell something that, um, works. 31:55 And you mentioned some examples of this, but how do you gauge the success of a sponsorship campaign, um, both, both internally, like the metrics that you're looking at or the feedback that you're looking at, um, and the stuff that the sponsor looks at as well? 32:10 Yeah. I mean, I would just say, you know, reach, views, engagement, and then do they feel more c- more culturally relevant? Like... And that's, and that's squishy. I think that's part of the art. 32:21 You mentioned, like, putting in some feedback from readers in those reports. 32:25 Is there any other, like, cool thing that you did, um, for a sponsor that you felt like was a personal touch that went above and beyond that really helped the relationship? We would, uh, we'd do a sponsor meetup. 32:37 So, like, my idea was, hey, these 25 people are in the, are in the club, and they're gonna get in- intelligence and do more meetups and stuff like that. 32:45 The busier, the more high up a corporate marketing employee, like sometimes it's even hard to get them to email you back. So, like, if you, you [laughs]... Which isn't a bad thing. 32:54 You wanna be like a spec on someone's, on a big company's media, uh, uh, budget out there. But it was, um... We, we would try to focus on, like, having 33:04 one experience for the brand that would stand out every single year 'cause we thought when people would go to renew, um, every year, like does one thing stick out? Was it an amazing piece of content? 33:14 Was it an amazing connection that we made for them? Was it something else I can't think of right now? 33:19 Like, how, how can we do one thing that is memorable, being a really good providers of, of ads and sponsorship, doing what we, we s- we, we say we're gonna do? Um, and that, and that worked. I believe, um, 33:36 on the Charlotte web- Charlotte Agenda website, you used to say, "We wanna work with brands that get it." Is that accurate? Yes. What does that mean? And, like, why did you include that? 33:45 I wanted, uh, brands to self-select and know that they were, like, modern marketers. And I th- I, I, I think that was important. 33:55 And I think, I, I mean, any type of sales page, I think it's important to have like a point of view there. Be for some people and be not for other people. 34:02 And so I, I remember specifically writing like, "Hey, if you want lead gen stuff, go to Facebook and Google." And so h- being in local media, um, people are selling solutions that are everything. And so, uh... 34:14 And this was 10 years ago. Who knows what people are selling now. But, like, in general, you were gonna roll in, you'd be like, "Hey, do you wanna buy this ad, this TV slot? 34:20 Oh, by the way, we can do all sorts of stuff across the internet." And so w- we didn't do that. We were like, "Here's who we reach. Here's the type of stuff that we do. It's really good, good, good work. 34:30 If you get it and you understand it, work with us. Uh, if not, there's great other players out there." I was told you did a study at the UNC Journalism School. 34:37 I don't know a lot about this, but I was told [laughs] to ask you about this. So can you tell us what was it about? What were your main takeaways? And if I'm totally off base, let me know [laughs] too. 34:47 No, I always wanted to, uh... I, you know, I've... Even when you're not... I guess when you own something, you're still selling even though if you're not selling. 34:55 So, like, I never really could get a sense from ad buyers and so I always wanted to be out of the game and ask ad buyers, "What are you buying? Why are you buying? How would you buy more of it?" 35:06 And so did that with UNC's Chapel Hill. 35:08 Uh, UNC has a center of innovation and sustainability in local media, and so we surveyed close to 100 ad buyers, I think it was like a 25-question survey, and asked them what they're buying, what they plan to buy more of. 35:20 Um, and then I interviewed 15 of them and we reported everything out. Cool. Any, like... Was there a 80/20 on, like, the things that were really interesting from that? The whole thing was interesting. 35:31 I was fascinated by the growing people. I've... 35:35 Again, I forget the percentage right now, but it's something like 27% of peoples plan to spend more money on local aver- like, from local media than they did the previous year. 35:44 And so I think a lot of people are overlooking local ads because buyers wanna, wanna do them. And then influencers, I, I just saw, uh, these are things that stand out to me now. 35:54 Influencers, there's like, I think it was 47% of people were gonna spend more on influencer marketing, and so there's, there's, there's a o- obviously, there's a big opportunity to both service that and to be an influencer. 36:05 Got it. Let's talk about the Charlotte Agenda ac- acquisition or sale to Axios. So it was reported that you or the, the, the Charlotte Agenda was sold for nearly five million. So how, how did that come about? 36:16 I was told that you sent an email to the co-founder of Axios, Jim, and he got back to you in like two minutes. Is that- I would, I would go around the Charlotte Agenda office and say... 36:27 I, I didn't have the smart brevity down. I would say, "We need to write more Axios style." And so I think, you know, um, writers' tendency is to, is to overwrite instead of just like, "Can we say this quick and choppy?" 36:41 And so I must have said Axios style like 20 times every single day. 36:45 Can you explain real quick what smart brevity is for people who haven't heard of that before?Oh, man, now I f- now I, now I feel like I need to be prepared It's best to go and read it after this episode since- Uh, smart brevity is just like, can you, can you be shorter? 36:56 Uh, why does it, why does it matter? How do you get the information as short a- uh, and as quickly as you possibly can to somebody? Awesome. Okay. Um- Um, and so I had always value... 37:06 I thought there was a super smart group. They did Politico also. And at the time, the, um, Charlotte Agenda was doing a little over two million dollars in revenue. Um, 37:17 and it was a really good business, and I didn't know how to take it from two to ten, and, like, I didn't know... I had just lost a, um, a really smart person, uh, uh, left, and so I was like, "Man, 37:30 uh, if you're not growing fast enough, like, A plus people are gonna leave." And, like, that was hitting me mixed with, like, this yearning for wanting another challenge. 37:38 Our team was super smart, and so I always thought if there was a national media company that was going to get into local media, and I thought there were maybe five that I thought were great and smart. 37:47 Like, of course, like, we understood the unit economics of a single city. 37:51 Uh, we're smart enough to know how hard it is to go to a second city, therefore, to hedge it with a national media company that could recruit talent, back it with a bunch of funding, and then go to national advertisers and be like, "Do you wanna be in these two cities instead of one city?" 38:06 The, the, like the risk just goes off of the table. And so, uh, saw in a, I think it was a Wall Street Journal story, Axios was getting into local media. 38:14 I think they had like three pilot markets they were thinking about. I emailed Jim. Jim emailed me back. He was going through the TSA line. 38:21 I think we had like a twelve-minute conversation, and he was like, "How much, how much, how much revenue do you do? How much profit do you do? How much money do you want?" I answered all the questions. 38:30 He's like, "Yeah, I think this makes sense." You gave him the offer number on that, on that first phone call? You remember what you wanted? I, I, I gave him the offer number on the first phone call because I didn't... 38:40 You know, the fun thing about, uh, I guess, you know, owning something is like, I didn't really give a shit. I wanted it to be... I wanted our people to be in a great spot. 38:48 I wanted to have a big impact, and I knew exactly these things, and I've been around enough of media deals where everyone's coy about different stuff. 38:54 And so I was, you know, it, again, it's hard to tell 'cause it didn't get shopped out to the market or whatever. Obviously, in any negotiation, you lose money by saying the number, the number first. 39:04 Like, that's not, that's not a good negotiation tactic. But I didn't really give a shit. Like, I was like, "Either this is gonna happen or not. I don't wanna have a bunch of phone calls with people." 39:13 And so, um, he said yes. Our teams met. We wanted to make sure it was like a good, uh, mesh of cultures. 39:21 And, you know, credit to Jim, Roy, and Mike, they did an outstanding job enabling people doing what they said they were, they were going to do. 39:27 At that time, I think they planned eight, maybe five, I think they had three cities planned, and so we grew faster than, uh, originally thought. And they were great shepherds of the local brand too. 39:37 You know, anytime you're selling something, it's like, you know, kind of your baby, and you wanna make sure that the actual city you're in makes sense. Yeah. 39:44 So Jim, the co-founder of Axios, said this was a, like a no-brainer acquisition or something along those lines. Yeah. 39:50 You, you did a great job explaining this, but is there anything else that you think helped make it a no-brainer? Anything that you said or that you did to set up that, um, business for, for the acquisition? 40:01 I, I think it was a really good business. 40:02 I think he bought, he, I think he bought a really good business and, like, you know, he's a smart guy, and, like, if he thought he could get X revenue, uh, multiple on revenue, of course you're [laughs] gonna, you're gonna buy something for not, not X ri- you know, uh, two and a half times revenue and then sell it for much higher. 40:17 So you could argue that that made, uh, Axios and Axios investors a ton of money in a short period of, of, of, of, of time. So, you know, it's like any private equity roll-up too. 40:27 You know, if you just, like, you get a smaller multiple, and you get... as you get larger, you get a bigger multiple. And so, um, uh, that made sense, and I thought our cultures really a- really aligned. 40:37 Like, we were, uh, we were a pretty no bullshit, really, really good team, and so I think he, he noticed that quick. Okay, let's talk about your time at Axios. So you got acquired, you joined the team there, 40:50 um, the Agenda team joined there. How did you take the things that worked at The Agenda and roll them out to all these new markets? 40:58 I mean, I think the, the, the key thing was being newsletter first and hiring really good talent in each market. So, like, that, that was 41:07 essentially the p- [laughs] essentially the playbook, and then you could go back to adver- you could go to national advertisers, so you had the same sales force. 41:14 Salespeople cost a lot of money, um, and so you had the same sales force, and you could go to a, a Goldman Sachs, a Wells Fargo, a Google and be like, "Hey, we're in these cities. 41:24 Do you wanna be any, in, in any of them?" "Yes, I wanna be in these five." "Okay, we're gonna serve your ads there just like we do in Axios AM and things like that." So there was, um... 41:33 You could basically, you know, keep costs low in terms of, uh, a-ad sales, ad operations, run newsletter first, and really pick off the smart professionals in major metros across the US. So we, we didn't target any... 41:48 There's no, there's no small cities. These are all big cities with thriving media around them, and we were able to grow audi-audiences there. 41:55 Yeah, and that leads me to a question, which is, like, how did you decide, you talked about this a little bit, but how did you decide which cities to launch in? 42:01 Were there commonalities, factors, or, like, a formula when considering where to go? Yeah, I mean, there was a long formula. I think there was a consultant with, like, a b-a big formula. 42:10 I think at the end of the day it came down to, is the city a big size, and is there advertising, is there expressed advertising interest there? Okay. And just prioritizing cities like that. It's only 30, so we had to... 42:21 I think our list went down to, like, 100 cities, and then we would debate different cities and stuff like that. Was there, like, a minimum size? 42:27 Obviously, you don't wanna go LA and New York 'cause that's too big, and there's almost too much media there. Those, th-those were the two that were ruled out. Uh, I think those were the only two, and then the... 42:37 I, I think everything else has been a top 50 city. Got it. And, you know, you had a growth method or a lack of a growth [laughs] method at The Agenda that worked really well. 42:49 Um, what type of growth channels or tactics worked at Axios Local for these 30 cities?So they already had a bunch of subscribers to other newsletters, and so their growth team was a very sophisticated engine that was different than, you know, a local media company in, you know, uh, here. 43:07 And so they had a, um, a paid acquisition, would get people in their newsletter ecosystem, uh, grow subs there, organic growth, a ton of onsite stuff and things like that. So all of the typical newsletter growth items. 43:22 Yeah. Facebook ads. Yeah, that we weren't necessarily doing [chuckles] in Charlotte. You, I mean, you could also argue that, like, I, I think, you know, it would be interesting to, to talk to Jim. 43:31 I bet if our newsletter subscriber base was higher, that we coulda yielded a higher sales price tag. But I guess since I said the sales price tag, nobody gives a shit, he... all he had to do was say yes. Makes sense. 43:42 And how do you think about structuring the team across cities? Like, how many reporters per city? What, what's the support staff around them? Was there a structure for that that worked well? 43:52 Uh, so it was, it was, it was two in each city. I mean, I think Axios is still trying to figure out the right support staff of different stuff. 43:58 And then, um, but two r- two reporters in each city, editors rolling up to each, each city. How connected do the cities need to be? What are the standards? 44:05 Obviously, you can't make a mistake in, in, in Axios the can- the way you can as a single individual media company. 44:12 You know, I think there's just more at stake the larger the company gets in terms of, uh, quality threshold, um, things like that. And so, you know, the editing was more, was, is more rig- r- rigorous there. 44:24 And then I think the sales thing is something that, like, they're still trying to tinker with. Like, there's been a lot of... 44:29 Now that you've been in market for a while, there's a lot more local sales interests, so you have more local buyers. Well, like, salespeople cost, cost a lot of money. 44:37 How few salespeople can you have in order to get, uh, in order to be in market and do those types of deals? When is a deal too small? Um, items like that. 44:46 Do you know how many salespeople across, like, the local business there might have been? Uh, I bet there's probably... and including, like, the management layer, I bet there's probably 12 now. Okay. 44:57 So you have two reporters per city, two primary reporters- Yes... and then control sales. And what... So you launched a lot of cities. I'm sure some went really great, some didn't go so well. 45:06 You also did a little stint in Raleigh at The Agenda that you decided to shut down. So my question is: what did you learn from the cities that didn't go well? 45:15 What did you learn from The Raleigh Agenda that didn't go well? Mistakes to avoid that we can learn from if, if we're launching a media company or, or a local company. Yeah. 45:22 I mean, I, I think the, I think The Raleigh Agenda was immaturity from my point on, like, uh, you think you did one thing smart, and so you can go do other things smart, and I d- I didn't build, uh, 45:33 I didn't replace my job. It's like I can't take photos of a pizza and write a cheeseburger ranking and then try to put together cross-market ad deals in Raleigh and Charlotte. 45:42 So, like, some of it was just I was, I, I did some, um, you know, just dumb management stuff and then part of the Raleigh was just, like, money was falling off of trees in Charlotte, and doing those cross-market ad deals, I was getting chewed up in agencies, and, like, last thing you need to be is, like, sitting in front of a twenty-five-year-old at an ad agency trying to explain how they should do a one-off buy in these things when, like, they're gonna shift everything programmatic and blah, blah, blah. 46:05 So I couldn't do the same deals as I could there. And then, you know, I thought about moving there. I thought about, like... 46:12 You know, the interesting thing, after selling it, I never wanted to sell The Charlotte Agenda, so it was built to not sell. And so it was built to be a profitable media company and to be great. And so the, the idea... 46:24 So I also thought about, like, man, if I move to Raleigh, then you can sell the story of being in a bunch of cities, and maybe you get a higher multiple there or you do whatever, and I was like, "I don't wanna. 46:33 I'm not gonna. I got young kids. I'm not gonna move to Raleigh, and I don't, I don't wanna sell these things. I wanna run these, these things." Um, and so that was the, the, the Raleigh example. 46:42 In the Axios example, there's just a lot of cities, and so you're gonna have some that, um... It's like what... Like, I would def- I would, I would a- I would ask just, like, what defines success or failure? 46:51 Like, is it, is it revenue? Is it subs? And so for us, it's like you're gonna have a, a, a portfolio of cities. You need them to have the canvas in order to go to the Goldman Sachs. 47:01 I keep using Goldman Sachs [chuckles] as a example of a national buyer. To go to a national buyer and say, "Hey, what... Like, these are on the menu. What are you interested in?" 47:10 And so I think without that heft, national buyers don't think that you're, um, you're really committed to this, and then they just can buy less. And so, like, I do think, um, there's a certain benefit of, of doing that. 47:23 Okay. Couple more questions, then we're gonna do Q&A in a second. Axios was acquired by Cox for five hundred and twenty-five million dollars in 2022. Um, like, w- what do you think led to that? 47:35 From a a- acquirer's perspective, what were the reasons Cox bought it? What did the Axios team do to set that up for success? Man, I think it's- It's, it's a big question, but... [laughs] Yeah. 47:47 I mean, I haven't talked to... Well, uh, that's not true. I have. [laughs] Like, the, the, uh... I mean, you would have to ask Cox about that. I mean, I think they got a rare crown jewel in media. 47:57 People buy media brands for a lot of different reasons. Axios has a pr- pristine brand, super smart team, clear areas of, of growth in terms of multiple business lines, um, and an excellent management team. 48:10 Do you know what the multiple... And I don't know if you can talk about this, but do you know what the multiple of that acquisition was, uh, as reported? I mean, you can probably do that. 48:15 I mean, I don't, I don't know what the revenue, um... I don't feel comfy. Yeah. I don't wanna get Jim to, to, to text me and yell at me. I know he's a, he's probably a podcast listener here. Oh, I hope so. 48:25 [laughs] But I, um, uh... Yeah. I think it was pretty good for that, for that time period. Really good for right now. [laughs] Um, how, how did that change your life, both, like, financially and personally? 48:36 Like, you sold The Agenda. You probably got... had some equity and had a little bit of bump in the, the, uh, Cox deal. 48:45 So, like, not just financial stuff, just wanting to get into numbers, but, like, how did that make you feel? What was, what was going through your head when that happened? It made me feel okay. Not... 48:54 It wasn't as cool as you think it was. It's like, eh, you kind of feel cool for a day. You know, I remember when I sold The Charlotte Agenda, like, I still had three... I think I had three kids. 49:04 Yeah.And, you know, like someone wasn't eating broccoli and like, you know, slaying through broccoli on the floor, and I was like... 49:12 had to go pick it up, and like, didn't have a w- I was like- You didn't have a broccoli picker upper that night? Yeah. It was, it was just a very, um... 49:17 You know, it was one of those weird moments where like, yeah, you get a bunch of texts and emails and you're like, "Okay, it's not as cool." It's more fun to build stuff. So, uh, if anything, it's like a... 49:27 It's like you're racing to the finish line and you get to the finish line and you're just like, "This is, this isn't as cool as it seems." 49:32 It's more fun to be, to be building something that you're proud of, that's really fun, with people you love. So, um, so like that, that's the... That's, that's probably when I'm like lit up the m- I get the most energy. 49:46 Uh, but o- o- obviously it's fun. I mean, it's fun to make headlines, it's fun to make money. Let's talk about what you're building now, and this will be the last topic. So tinymoney.com. 49:55 Um, but before we get into what that is and like why you're building it, we'll do two, two or three questions about that. 50:00 You mentioned in an interview, after you left Axios and before you launched Tiny Money, you had about, like, 20 different business plans or business ideas out there. 50:09 What were some of the ones that you thought were great, but you decided not to pursue? I s- I still wanna start a parenting publication from a dad's angle. 50:20 I think there's a lot of na- I think there's a lot of parenting publications that are, that are more, uh, from the m- mom-centric. I think it's a wide open space nationally. In fact, uh, I bought a bunch of domains. 50:32 It's like I'm, I'm one of those crazy people that buys a bunch of URLs. So like, and [laughs] this is, this is actually pretty interesting. 50:38 Part of the Axios deal, th- their lawyers, they had fancy venture c- you know, 'cause they're venture... They had am- And maybe, maybe they're just fancy. They had a bunch of smart lawyers. 50:45 They get all of, like, our U- ur- like, URLs. Like, "Hey, put all the URLs in Exhibit F." And so I go in there and there's like 45 URLs, and a lot of them, or probably 15 of them were, like, dad-related URLs. 50:58 So it's like they could've been interpreted [laughs] in a lot, number of different ways. [laughs] So it was like, it was like, it was like daddyletter, uh- [laughs] Okay... dot com. [laughs] Daddyinchief.com. 51:08 So, you know, I never... I didn't wanna say anything to mess up the deal, and I, I kinda wanted to keep some of the domains, but I did not do that. 51:14 [laughs] So, um, my, uh, my idea that I still wanna do, that I'd love to do, and maybe with my children or s- or somebody else, was just like Charlotte: a local dad publication that's focused on things to do with your kids. 51:28 Um, doesn't give you, like, the, "Should you breastfeed or not?" "Here's how to do sleep training or not." 51:34 Like, just gives you things to do with your kids so you're spending more time with them, rather than just, um, watching TV, and... 51:40 'Cause I think every parent of a young child who's woken up on a Saturday and doesn't have, doesn't have anything to do is like, that's a really bad feeling. You're just, like, sitting there staring into the abyss. 51:51 And so, um, that was, that was one of the ideas. That's a good idea. It is a good idea. We sh- Yeah. Um, two more questions. So, um, what is Tiny Money? Why'd you start it? 52:02 And how are you doing things differently with Tiny Money than you did with The Agenda, with Axios? Um, what are your goals for, for this? Tiny Money started from, you know, a decade of experience in local media. 52:15 The number one thing that people care about is money. How do I, how, how do I push my career forward so I can make more money? How do I spend my money better? 52:24 And anytime we would do topics like that or through the lens of, of, of money, people would read it. And so, um, the idea was just personal finance meets local news. 52:34 You have a ton of national sites, uh, Credit, Credit Karma, Bankrate, Nerd, NerdWallet, a bunch of others that are focused on, like, national personal finance. 52:44 Then you kinda have American city business journals or Cranes in certain cities. But you have no one focusing on making and spending money. I still think it's a local problem. 52:52 Like, most people still make and spend money, you know, within five miles of their house. And I just like it. Personally, I just like it. I think it's really interesting. It's, it's kinda complicated. 53:02 It's a taboo subject. It's a subject that's, that's changing, where young people... You know, I'm 40. It feels like young people, they all share their salary with each other. At 40 I'm like, "Ooh." 53:13 And then at like a parent's generation they're like, "What the hell? I wanna earn you at the same company for, you know, 50 years." And so I felt like it was, uh, a topic that had, had a lot of change in it, too. Um, and 53:25 so, so that was the, that was the idea, and the idea was, went, "Hey, I'm gonna do a weekly newsletter helping people make and spend their money better around Charlotte." And, you know, for me, it was really about... 53:35 I was kind of a suit at Axios for a long time, and I, I am, I'm, I'm okay at that. I feel like in media you're either, like, business lane or, uh, newsroom lane, unless you, like, own it or you're the publisher. 53:48 Like, if you're Jim, you can do both. But, like, no one else really does both. 53:53 And so, uh, I feel like I'm a better, you know, newsroom content person, but if you're good at the, the business stuff, then you work on the business stuff. So I got, um, I was kind of a suit for a while. 54:03 I just miss creating things that people looked at. Um, and so that was also a big motivator on my end, was to just create, again, stuff that is valuable to people. Yeah. The content's great. Okay. 54:14 Any final words of advice for the media founders or entrepreneurs in the audience? Any, any takeaways that you have? I mean, my whole belief is, like, because the cost is essentially zero, like, starting something, um... 54:27 Like, if you're interested in something, like, there's no barriers to entry, so start something. Like, the w- worst is it's unpopular and it sucks, and then you just stop doing it. 54:35 Um, like, the, the, the, the medium is you have an asset that you can, you know, um, sell more chairs to or something like that. Or, um... And then on the, on the high end, you can build a business from it. 54:48 So, you know, I don't have, uh... I'm not a big strategy guy. I'm a big, like, you know, just start doing it. And then in terms of hiring pe- I've talked to a lot of young, young people. 54:57 There's just no reason to not be creating. It's like, I don't... I mean, who looks at a resume for a young journalist-creator? 55:04 Like, you're either doing stuff or you're not.And like, I don't-- I mean, did you get good grades at a, at a college? Like, who gives a shit? Like, what have you produced? 55:13 And so I think, uh, journalism and content creation are gonna be more entrepreneurial moving, mov-moving forward. And so, uh, I'm, I'm also, like, really bullish on this space. 55:22 Like, I see a ton of small businesses in media. I think it's gonna be a tough time for, for large media. 55:30 I think it's gonna be awesome for one, two, three smart people to do unbelievable work and make a really good living doing it. I agree. Cool. All right, let's do questions. 55:40 Before we do, quick shout-out to our sponsor, Playbooks. Say hi to Perrin back there. Talk to him about LinkedIn ghostwriting. He's honestly incredible, so, um, I know that 'cause we actually hired him. 55:50 [laughs] All right, um, we got a mic back there. Arif, you wanna bring that up? And if you have a question, maybe just shoot your hand up. Before we do that, let's give a big round of applause for Matt and Ted. Yeah. 56:00 Thank you, Ted. [clapping] Thank you. All right, so I'll be walking around with the microphone, and if you got a question, just raise your hand. How's it going? 56:07 Um, so you mentioned the kinda Facebook heyday of media when they would promote anything back in '15, and, you know, I had a site then, and it absolutely, that was the highest point of our traffic. 56:17 And then you could see the slope off as they started charging for all that. 56:20 So I'm curious, if you were to restart something like The Charlotte Agenda today or what you're doing with Tiny Money, how do you approach that differently i-in this environment where throwing just every bit of content against the wall doesn't really work? 56:32 I, I always recommend one other social channel and whatever you're most comfortable with. 56:38 And so a lot of entrepreneurs I f- uh, media entrepreneurs I feel like need to be on, on everything, and I think that's the wrong, um, the wrong thing to, to do. 56:47 So if you're really good at Twitter or X now, focus on that. If you're good at Instagram, focus on that. If you're good at TikTok, focus on that. Don't be... If you're good at LinkedIn, do, like, do that. 56:57 Don't do all four medium. And so for me, I'm forty. Feels like TikTok is, it's awesome. I lose, like, an hour of my life when I open the app. But, like, it just feels like it doesn't, it's not, it's not me. 57:10 Instagram feels a little too, just isn't what I wanted to do right n- right now. Uh, X feels like the Wild West. I love LinkedIn. Couldn't get enough of LinkedIn. 57:19 And so for this type of content and mixed with just the, the-- my, like, I like writing, I like images, um, LinkedIn was the channel that I chose. 57:28 And so I always believe that the best growth is have a really good, uh, newsletter product or, you know, single product and one other social channel that you're, like, best in class at. Ignore the others. 57:40 Did it change the strategy of how much and what type of content you produce, though, as, in the current environment? Yes. I think producing a lot of web text, so articles for the web without a paywall 57:56 is, uh, just kinda crazy. Like, [laughs] 'cause you're just not gonna, you're not gonna monitor... 58:03 Like, the CPM, like if, if, if BuzzFeed can't make it work, like some geo, you know, s- uh, geographic-focused site or niche or anybody is not, it's not gonna work. 58:13 So, you know, unless you're gating, uh, unless you're gating information, so unless you're, um, you know, putting a paywall up for articles, like, you know, writing articles for the internet, um, is, uh, a tough business, or I don't know how to make that business work. 58:30 Hey, thank you for sharing so much wisdom tonight. You mentioned a couple times that really smart people help you build these media companies, these great media companies you built. 58:39 Other than being really smart, what type of things you look in someone that you recruit to work with you, and maybe how do you go about it? I look for taste and judgment, character. 58:51 I mean, I d- I don't know that I'm the best person for this. Like, I, if you look at the amount of hires I made, it's not that many. I'm kinda soft. You know, I think I've gotten m-more intense the older I get. 59:03 But, um, I, I always agreed with the advice of like hire s- hire s- uh, hire slowly, and especially if you suck at firing people. 59:12 And so, you know, the good news in media is that it's, there's a, there's a freelance culture. And so I would, um, try to do heavy freelance with people. 59:20 So, you know, I'm looking at Michael Graf, who worked with for years. And so we, um, we started off at a freelance relationship where he may have felt like I was underpaying. 59:30 I felt like I was paying him a gazillion dollars to go do stuff. But it allowed us to interact. I can see the way that he thinks and works, and I can see the way the audience responds to stuff. He's making money. 59:39 You know, we get, we get a story. And so I think that, that that's the, um, that's the way that I would, that, or at least that's the way that I think about it. 59:49 Can you talk about your relationship with, uh, illustrative images for articles over time, if that's changed with photojournalism, with graphical kinda things? Totally changed. 59:58 So, uh, so I, I believed in, like, the iPhone photography mixed with stories, and, um, I still believe that that's, that, that's really good right now. 1:00:09 But now, like, the illustration side of stuff is so, uh, powerful, and I, and I really believe in it, and I saw that through Axios too. 1:00:20 Like, they had a whole team, and so it really opened my eyes to, uh, how much information you can get across in a chart, how hard those are to produce at a really high level, how valuable they are. 1:00:33 And then, um, just from a photo, uh, perspective, like, you know, people like looking at photos. [laughs] You know, it's less time than to read stuff. So I think my, my, uh, the value I placed on that, that has gone up. 1:00:47 And then I think short f- people that can do short-form vertical video, I mean, they're worth so much money 'cause that is where the world... And it's not going, it's where the world is right now. 1:00:56 And outside of major metros, the pe- those people are hard to find. 1:01:00 And then even if you hire someone who's great on, on TikTok or Instagram for their own stuff, once they get in, like, a corporate setting or once they feel like they're doing it for a publication, they'll kinda tighten up, and so it changes the actual product. 1:01:13 But people with those skills are like, are, are highly valuable. I also think a great creative can do any of those things. Like, someone with good ideas and good taste and judgment, they can move mediums. 1:01:25 Um, and so I am a big believer that, uh, talentGood talent is worth a lot more, 1:01:32 um, and medium tal-- on, on the, on the creator journalist side, um, they can yield a lot more money in the marketplace, and their value is high. Medium talent that, like, that, that value is going close to zero. 1:01:46 And so, like, it's never been a better time to be an awesome journalist, a-an awesome content person, and it's never been a worse time to be a solid B or B or like B+ creator. 1:01:56 Um, and that's got pros and cons, but that's, that's the way the world is right now. So on the heels of that, have you leveraged any AI tools for Tiny Money? And if not, what are your plans to do so? 1:02:10 I have not leveraged any AI tools. I have no plans [laughs] to leverage any AI tools. I, I don't know what-- I mean, I sound like an old right now. 1:02:21 I don't really know what to think about it, but like in general, I just don't wanna do any AI shit. And like, I just don't wanna build a company that does a bunch of AI stuff. A-and I think that, um, 1:02:34 authenticity and originality are gonna be even, even at a greater premium. And if you're gonna get replaced by AI, I kinda suck anyways. And so, um, I don't really wanna lean into any AI items. Maybe I'll change... 1:02:48 I'm, I'm, I'm a pragmatic person. Maybe I'll change my mind about that, but, uh, I currently u-use no AI [laughs] tools and have zero plans to use AI tools. Do you have any, um... We'll get another question. 1:02:59 But do you have any thoughts about how, how a company like Axios could be affected by AI? 1:03:02 Because so many of these newsletters and articles follow a template, and so I'm sure somebody could train whatever, ChatGPT, on this template, plug in a news story, and it's gonna spit out an Axios smart brevity style article. 1:03:15 And so, like, how does a company like that get affected in the next couple years? I mean, that's up to Axios. 1:03:20 But like, in general, if you're not, uh, if you're not original and you're not good and you can be replaced by AI, you su- you suck. So it's just like, you know, a-anyone can shorten things. 1:03:30 So like, if Axios' magic is to shorten things, like, um, like that's like, that, that's not their magic. Their magic is like having original talent, put taste and judgment, uh, report stuff out. 1:03:41 And so, you know, people that are gonna be replaced by AI, like, um, they're obviously not doing valuable enough activities. Okay. Cool. Any other questions? Going once, going twice. Cool. Let's get some drinks. 1:03:58 Thank you, everybody. [audience applauding]
