The Best One Yet - 🎤 BONUS: “An interview… with us” — Nick & Jack interviewed by Colin & Samir.

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

We’re on vacation until Tuesday, September 6th, but we decided to whip up a Bonus Episode for ya. Earlier this summer, we sat down with Creator Economy gurus Colin & Samir to discuss the story of how The Best One Yet became The Best One Yet. So we’re sharing this as a bonus episode to you in case you want more TBOY while we’re off. See you in a week.Celebrate the wins,Nick & JackFYI: You can check out more from Colin & Samir’s podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-colin-and-samir-show/id1379942034Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is a total surprise. Today's pod is the best one yet. Because today's pod, uh, it's a bonus pod. And unlike Gwok, this bonus episode ain't extra. Jack, wrap it up and toss a bow on this beauty. Yeties, we are still on vacation, taking our annual two-week summer break. But Jack and I were talking and we said, hey, we want to whip up one more takeaway for you.

Now, we're not going to cover the news in this episode like usual. Yeah. Because we're still lathering on that SPF on a beach somewhere. So instead, here's what we're thinking. We're going to share our story with you. Earlier this summer, Nick and I did an interview with two fantastic podcasters. Colin and Samir, great guys. They happen to be the gurus of the creator economy.

They interviewed us on the story behind the best one yet. Going all the way back to when we met in college up until today, uh, yeah, we covered it all. And we wanted to give you a chance to learn more about the origin of this show. So Jack and I asked Colin and Samir for permission to borrow that episode, to borrow that interview. They said yes. So if you're curious how our pod came to be, or if you're wondering about mattress, mattress, mattress, or why every episode is the best one yet?

You can jump in T-boy style to today's bonus episode. Maybe you're just craving some slamming salmon while we're gone. Okay, Jack and I are going to hit the beach. In the meantime, Jack, let's hit our one story. Let's toss it over to Colin and Samaria. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm.

It's the best one yet, but the best is an norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more. So just start the show.

Start the show. Today on the show, we're speaking with Nick Martel and Jack Kramer of the hit podcast, The Best One Yet. Some of you may know it as Snacks Daily. Nick and Jack met back in college in Middlebury, Vermont, and they became fast friends and eventually business partners. They launched a business newsletter, called Market Snacks that eventually went on to be acquired by the stock trading app, Robin Hood.

Both Colin and I have been huge fans of their show for years. We've been really inspired not only by how they've built their podcast, but also how they've built a true community with the show. They'll take really complex stories from the business world and make them very accessible and relatable, and that's something that Samir and I hope we do for all of you in the creator economy. Recently, Nick and Jack left Robin Hood, but kept their podcast under a new name, the best one yet. And you'll find out why that's the name later on in this episode. After Nick and Jack went independent, they actually reached out to Colin and I to help them build a video version of their show on YouTube. You'll hear about how they built their wildly successful newsletter and podcast.

All right. We hope you enjoy our episode with Nick and Jack. I do think it's really crazy to hear your guys's voice like this because I do want to say that when the pandemic hit, I listened to Snacks Daily every morning. And it was actually something that kept me grounded and feeling. like I was connected to the broader world while I was isolated in my home. That's really when I started listening. And the fact that it was a daily show was so impressive to me. So Nick and Jack, it's so great to have you guys here actually on the pod. Welcome to the show. Well, Colin Samir, you guys are, first of all, I appreciate those incredibly kind words. Second of all, two guys we admire

as fellow creators. When we relaunched as our own entrepreneurs again, you were literally like our day one emails. Yeah, I remember that. That was awesome. I really appreciate that. And yeah, we're really excited to chat with you guys. I think it'd be helpful to take a step back and, you know, help contextualize who you guys are. We're familiar with their story, but for the broader audience, where did this creator journey begin? Because you guys are old college buddies. Yeah. You could say a creative journey began when we walked into the same dorm room, realized we had the same Seinfeld DVDs and then soon became best friends at Middlebury and realized that we had a lot in common and a lot totally not in common. We had a similar sense of humor, but Jack's from Roe,

Vermont and I'm from New York City. And so there was kind of this cool mix we noticed early on of things that were totally different and things that were really, really nice crossover. Yeah, we both also played sports at Middlebury and Nick actually did a short gig as the college newspaper, sports editor. And he got the chance to write about me once. And he described me as a wide-eyed country boy from Browler, Vermont, who came to the big city of Middlebury. Middlebury is 8,000 people. And I remember one time Nick got good grades one like period. And I saw him writing something. And I noticed it was like a form for the New York Times. And I'm like, Nick, what are you doing? He's like, I'm letting the New York Times now I made Dean's list.

I'm like, the New York Times is not going to publish that you made Dean's list. And then he like, rips on me. He's like, sorry I don't have the Brattleboro Weekly Gazette. So that was the beginning of our creator economy. But really, then Jack and I started rooming together right after college. We were both working at banks and both realized while we're at these banks. You know what? This job has been really interesting.

We've learned a lot. But we wish we were just doing something more creative with our time. We wish we could be applying some of the skills we aren't getting to use right now. now like writing skills, and we're kind of noticing this opportunity in the market, which is business news that actually speaks our language and our friend's language and our generation's language, which was missing. So we began a company called Market Snacks. Really what we began was a daily rundown newsletter that we called Market Snacks, and you can't do this when you're working at a bank. So when Jack and I were crafting these emails every day, we were really doing it anonymously

because you couldn't have a side hustle if you were working at a bank. And we just kept doing it and doing it every day. And it kept growing and growing and growing to the point where finally when we had the opportunity to monetize, that's when we kind of approached our banks and realized better to ask for forgiveness than to have asked for permission, which we probably wouldn't have gotten. And we got the approval. And it became a full-on side hustle that generated some money on the side. And we did that for six or seven years.

as Nick and I worked in finance and Nick worked at a non-profit venture capital firm, which is a great spot. And then we both ended up at business school and turned our one-headed daily email newsletter into a two-headed product in between the two years of business school for kind of our summer gig. So that was the moment we went full hustle, as we call it, from side hustle to full hustle. And that summer was wild. The business took off and we ended up selling the company. a.m. totally changed our lives.

Launching the podcast changed our lives. To give you a sense of what was happening in our lives, before business school, Jack and I would run down to the wall, to the New York Stock Exchange. We would do TV interviews as part of market snacks. Then by 9 a.m., we'd run back uptown on the subway

and go back to our day jobs. And then at night, we were crafting the email newsletter. And so we'd built up this really robust business and we're like ready to pull the trigger on full time. Finally, business school gave us the opportunity. And then what Jack describing that crazy summer. At the very end of that summer, we've launched a podcast, we've launched a newsletter referral system that we built out with an engineer that we could own and had grown the

newsletter even more. At that point, Robin Hood, the stock trading app approaches us. And after we've done a partnership with them, realized this was a really good fit. They end up acquiring us. And Jack and I spent the next three years after that deal as part of Robin Hood, Robin Hood Snacks, which Samir and Colin you mentioned, the daily newsletter and podcast you got to know and love. And then just last month, after three years at Robin Hood, Jack and I were fortunate to work out a deal with Robin Hood in which they keep the newsletter and Jack and I spun off the podcast into our own separate company. And that podcast is the same core product, except new and better, as we call it, with the new name, the best one yet. Yeah, I mean, self, self-proclaimed best one yet.

Well, other people proclaim it. Other people proclaim it. That was awesome. That was a great story. Yeah, amazing. I don't know where you were going to stop, but I love that you kept going all the way into the end. That was perfect. That was really good. You guys are really good to telling your origin story, which is something that Colin and I always struggle with. We would still be talking. And we would only be in like the first quarter right now. But I have a lot of questions just to look back in time. I think something that's really important that I pulled from that story that you guys just told is you said, you had other jobs when you started on your creator journey and you did it for six or seven years. I'm just really interested in that on the newsletter side as you guys started creating. I feel like today, you know, it's so exciting this prospect of becoming a creator,

but it feels like it all has to happen in an accelerated window. Like I think it feels like you want to just explode immediately, but your guys' success was a little bit more gradual. I'm curious if you could speak to those, you know, six or seven years of, you know, building a newsletter. and what that was like to just slowly grow, I guess. For me, I found it personally fulfilling. It was a cool thing.

We were early pioneers in the curated daily email newsletter space. And that started like blow up with the skim and eventually others. But I used my working for market snacks in my day job. I mean, I was writing about the economy and finance. And I did work in finance. So I was able to articulate concepts to clients really well. It was cool. It made me some friends and some dates.

It made some money eventually with the advertising business that Nick mentioned. But for me, I was a little bit of kind of an accidental entrepreneur. I'll be honest. Nick had some incredible kind of instinct on entrepreneurship. But with Nick as my partner, we just found the right moments to take leaps in our commitment and to marry ourselves more and more to this entrepreneurial journey. but we did, even when it was a smaller gig, find benefits more than just through commercial success.

Right. So what does validation look like throughout that six or seven years? Like, are there replies to the email, are people bringing it up at work? Like, you know, what is it that truly keeps you going throughout that process? Well, the fun thing about having, about side hustle entrepreneurship, Jack and I found,

is that you're liberated to experiment from things because you don't have the burden of fellow employees and you don't have the burden of investors and you don't have the burden of profits. Instead, you have the burden of the trust you have with your co-founder and making sure that you're doing something that you're both excited about. And we both were really excited about this and just loved doing it together. So the validation we started noticing, there wasn't pressure to see validation early on, but because we were doing it for so long, we just kind of kept getting validation along the way. And it could be different things. So that validation,

was often in the form of a surprise. Maybe it was getting invited to be on cheddar multiple times. So we would go to the New York Stock Exchange and started doing live TV. Then we realized, you know what, we're having fun and we're doing well at live TV. That led to like us appearing on CBS. And then we started appearing on CBS pretty frequently. And that led to validation that if we're going to get invited on CBS a lot and we can do TV, when someone reaches out to, hey, you guys should try a podcast.

Yeah, let's try it. Those other validators lined up. we may as well experiment with this. Was it a part of our business plan? No, because we didn't have one. Yeah. You know, there's a balance as a creator between focusing on the content and focusing on the growth.

And Nick and I did not have time to focus on the growth. We spent $0 on marketing. We found some strategic partnerships here and there. Like our first advertiser, well, we had a couple advertisers, but our first, like, cool advertiser didn't pay us a dollar. They just gave us a few gift cards. And we said, can we just like make it look like? if you're an advertiser because that's going to give us some cool factor and some credibility

with future advertising partners. And boom, they became a slide in our pitch deck, which we then converted other future advertisers too. So they gave us a few like gift cards and, you know, we rallied that off to people who would share the newsletter. But we actually share that, that advice quite a bit. Like our first advertiser on our YouTube channel was in exchange for product. They just gave us their product. But it was the social proof of this is a space for advertising, as well as even us having to work out the kinks of like, what does it mean to have an advertiser on this channel? And I think that's a really important thing for creators of what you just mentioned that, you know, A, the social proof of like, yes, other advertisers are

are investing in this platform. But B, like, what does it look like to advertise on this show or this newsletter? What was the first like monetized advertising deal you guys had? And do you remember was that a big moment where you were like, oh, this is like, this could be something? Yeah, I actually want to quickly answer Colin to question. Samir, and then we'll go back to it. Colin, given that we didn't focus on growth and we did all the focus on the content, that's actually where the name, the best one yet came from. Nick and I would email each other the next morning and say, T-boy, like, that was the best one yet.

And we'd celebrate together. And we would get emails from people that say, your newsletter gave me the stories I needed to land my job. And we get those emails still today and they're great. We do love that. It was kind of the knowledge that we're only focusing on content and the feedback we're getting on our content is just fantastic. And there were moments where, you know, it was tough going through the slow growth. But we knew that the product was something that was so good that that was the drive tech stay committed to it.

I'm so glad you added that, Jack. Samar to answer a question about our first advertisers, it was probably, it may have been betterment, Jack, as one of the first advertisers or Yahoo Finance at one point. Yeah, it was betterment. I mean, FinTech is a natural, yeah, a natural advertiser for us. Fidelity was back there. Yeah, yeah. Outdoor Voices was the company that gave us the social proofs, you mentioned. Super cool. That's one where we were like, we're getting the better end of this because, you know, we're getting the brand kind of relevance and spin off from you guys. But a funny thing Jack and I noticed in that process was we kind of started treating advertising like a muscle, like something we had to work out, we had to figure out, we had to flex, we didn't. We didn't. didn't want to get it too big that it was like muscle bound, but we didn't want it to be so weak that people wouldn't advertise with us. So we basically would experiment with all these advertisers early on when the stakes were low of, you know, if we put the placements up here, is that annoying people? Is it getting clicks down here? Because we didn't have the answers. And we tried meeting with mentors and, you know, you always try to not reinvent the wheel if

someone's been through it. But every product is unique. So we did spend those first advertising relationships, kind of treating it with like a muscle we had to flex out to figure out what the balance is. And like one other example of that is even years down the line, Jack had a business school professor who was like, you know, Jack and I would book out ads and we were constantly trying to book out ads every week, every week. And he said, make them buy up at least two weeks of ads. And then Jack and I were like, oh, so we set a minimum, therefore, it means we have to do less advertising selling, A, and then B, they're more likely to get better results because they're not just buying a one-off daily ad that may or may not get clicks.

So, like, that came six years down the line. But because Jack and I approached advertising is something that, you know, you don't want to ignore, it's part of the customer experience. Because we kept flexing it and improving it, we got to a place by the time we sold to Robin Hood that we really had an advertising routine and a strong muscle. It was also powerful, Nick, when a potential advertiser would say, I want to advertise in your newsletter. And we'll be like, let me check my calendar.

how's the end of next month? Because we had a bunch of weeks taken out. It was so much, so powerful for our leverage to start selling ads by the week instead of by the day. Exactly. Nick, you brought up selling to Robin Hood. I want to get there. But first, I want to ask you about going from newsletter to podcast. Did writing the newsletter put you in a good spot to transition to podcast?

When you first recorded, did you guys take a step back after and just say, like, wow, that's the best one yet. And like, I feel like your guys' voices are made to be when I listen to them. Was it an immediate sort of hit in your eyes? It was not an immediate hit in terms of that was not the best episode. In fact, Jack and I joke around at the first recording. Yeah, the first recording was not the best. But we had so much fun doing it, we were like, this is something to do.

And I remember, well, we actually, and this is a great example of, like, how you never know what opportunities will lead to new opportunities. Jack and I were fortunate that we got press for being in the Forbes 30 under 30 list. We got some press from that. Great. But it was weeks later that someone reached out, a guy named Chris Corcoran, who is the chief content officer of Cadence 13, a podcast company, and said, I saw that press. And I actually think you guys would translate well, your newsletter and your video appearances, that chemistry, if you can capture it, into podcasting. And Jack and I were honestly skeptical. Well, here's what he said, only if you can do it daily.

We're like doing a podcast daily. He's like, I'm telling you, there's a void in daily financial news podcasts. And we weren't sure we could do it. But nonetheless, we said yes. And yes was to come audition. So we flew to New York. We went to their studio on the Upper West Side. And our plan was just to do that day's newsletter in podcast form.

And we did a 50-minute podcast. It was not great. Which is way longer than our 15 minutes that we did today. We were just like kind of rambling. But the team there saw something. They saw chemistry and they said for a first audition, that was great. And they offered us a 90 episode pilot. And coming up with our format was so crucial.

Critical. Week one in 2018, we actually launched May of 2018. So just over four years ago. We had the same general format as we do today, which is an intro. three stories, and then an outro. There's a couple of tweaks and new features we've added along the way, but having that consistent format is like a temp—we literally have a template that we copy and paste every day in our shared Google Doc, and that structure makes the daily production process

doable. Yeah. What we found is that podcasts are a multitask medium. People are doing things when they're listening, but also they're only consuming you their ears. And so we got this great advice. We built out with our producers then, Cadence, which was all these kind of critical tweaks we had to make to that mess of a first episode, which was, like Jack said, the consistency of every day having the same stories. Because if someone's on the treadmill, they want to know when they're finishing their run that you finish story number two,

like usual. We realized that each story had to be a story in and of itself. That's something we knew from our newsletter days. We had to have a climax, a takeaway, a finish, a finale. We realized that we had to hit off strong every day with something that would catch and keep your attention and would be something that you'd want to share. So we always make our intro something that's kind of socially pop culture relevant. We always begin with the same lines. This is Nick. This is Jack. Because consistency is key in audio when you can't see the people. You know, we always want to end on that positive note to kind of leave you excited to return the next day for a daily product. So when we completed that format in the first few months, that's when Jack and I realized. And then

we started seeing the engagement, that there was a engagement level here more than the newsletter. This was something special. And that's when Nick and I realized at the age of 30 that podcasters was our calling. Yeah. We planned to do this for the next 40 years as best friends and business partners. It's a dream career we stumbled into. We just finished our last recording. We had a blast and honestly, it does feel like that was the best episode we've ever done, Jack. We got this feedback from Cadence 13 that this is an audio medium. And since people can't see you, you have to be 110% of yourself. That's what we were told.

And so Nick and I started doing that. But then there's a balance between like kind of performing and being yourself. And we wanted to somehow be both. So actually, being 110% of yourself is the perfect advice because you are being yourself. Yeah. But you're also performing at the same time. And I think I've had a lot of fun just kind of bringing up the energy for every podcast. And Colin, that's something we learned over time and didn't know.

So that's something that I want to be able to do for myself before we record our episodes, both on the podcast and that we have on the channel. Do you have any advice for me of how I can get to 110% of myself? How do you do that every day? Stand up. I'd say stand up. When Nick and I always record standing when we can and we're extremely animated. I'm gesticulating, I'm jumping around.

I mean, I'm really like a boxer before the opening round. Jack and I honestly treat this podcast, just like we did our college sports career. So like we were telling you before, Jack played college football, was a great quarterback in Middlebury, and I was a lacrosse player at Brown, and we would have warm-up routines, and you'd watch game tape, and you'd get excited to be there with your teammates. And honestly, it feels the exact same. before Jack and I have a little warm-up routine. Like, I'll listen to...

The walk-through. I'll walk through for 20, 30 minutes. Listen to like a bunch of different pods that have nothing to do with us. Some pop culture, some business, you know, just totally random. Just to get a sense of how people are speaking, the chemistry and kind of get ready to go. Jack and I'll then turn on the mics and we'll just kind of go back and forth, having fun, chatting about the weekends, some jokes we just read. And we'll have the mics going. And then when the timing feels right, we're kind of just like, all right, here we go.

three, two, and we kick off the pod. So we kind of like let the momentum carry us into the beginning of the podcast. I have a question about Cadence 13, because I think that's kind of a unique way that you guys went into, you know, starting up a podcast. You talked about auditioning. Does that suggest that Cadence had some ownership in the pod? Is that like it was a Cadence 13 podcast that you guys were the hosts of? Can you explain the relationship with Cadence 13? Yeah, we owned the pod, which was great. And it was a simple revenue split. So Nick and I were responsible for the content every day. It was completely up to us. There was no involvement from anyone, except for their great advice on my podcasting best practices. Nick and I just focused on the content every day.

And Cadence was responsible for editing, distribution, and crucially, ad sales. So that's where the revenue split came in. They sold our ads and we kept our part. They kept their part. They kept their part and every day they deliver us the ad reads. Very cool. That's awesome. It was a great relationship. Yeah. And the good thing is we're both mutually aligned because the big of the podcast, of course, Nick and I want a bigger podcast, but so do they because they can sell more ads. So now take us to the point where where the acquisition with Robin Hood happens. Like how quickly is that from starting the pod, having a 50 minute version to developing the format to now getting acquired by Robin Hood Well, Jack and I had to, what we knew from our newsletter days was that with the daily product,

you got to deliver consistency in both quality and in format. So we knew we had to move quickly on creating the format. So we did focus on that quickly in that June of like 2018. And then we launched the pod. We'd already sold out the ad sections, the ad segments, but I was going on my honeymoon. So we literally had a moment two weeks in where Jack was preparing the pod notes. and I was like on our honeymoon Italy and Jack and I would get together and record,

but we knew we had to be consistent. So we had to make it sound like we were in the same place, even though I was six hours away. So we knew early on consistency's key. That whole summer, the next three months, Jack and I focused on just improving the core product, our performance, but within the bounds of that format.

And two months in, we were doing a promotion in the newsletter with Robin Hood, when we realized there was more of a fit here. Yeah, Robin Hood sponsored the newslet. for a week. And then Jack and I said, you know what? Okay, there's actually a thesis we had in business school, which was tech needs media to engage their audience better, but media needs tech to kind of subsidize their business. So we'd always had this feeling that that would be a good fit. We were watching all the newspapers and the media and the journalism outlets just crumble

as they lost advertising to YouTube and Google and Facebook. And so we knew we needed a sugar daddy at some point, so to speak. And apparently Robin Hood believed in that thesis too, because suddenly they started asking us questions that had just nothing to do with like a one week ad sponsorship. And Nick and I looked at each other like, what the hell is going on here?

Literally we're like, put the phone on mute, we're like, before you know what, they dropped the A bomb. And Nick and I were full disclosure just after the phone call. We kept it together until the phone call end. Yeah. But Robin Hood was the $5 billion, you know,

massively just soaring company. First company that never did commission-free stock trading, which was an unbelievable value proposition. And we flew out to meet the co-founders. Yeah. And Vlad Béjou, the co-founders, just really good guys who we sat down. It was such a fun connection because they had been like friends in college and had lived in New York and started a business in the East Village just like us.

So it was fun just culturally talking to them. They knew finance. but then they also had a vision that we could be a brand as part of Robin Hood, continue doing exactly what we were doing. And our purpose wasn't to drive people into the app and be like content marketing. Our purpose was to be a separate, you know, a standalone brand that could really just engage people, drive high NPS and have a halo effect for Robin Hood by us focusing on the news. So we actually, as part of the deals, we worked it out over the next few months.

and deals, by the way, just take longer than I think a lot of people realize. Brutal, brutal deal process. Just anyone, it's just going to take months. People always see the Instagram photos of like the champagne popping. It's after like five months and a lot of legal fees. And, you know, it was crucial for us that we sought the advice of advisors because we just would have been less prepared and struck a not as good deal if we didn't let some people in on the circle of trust and get their feedback on, are these terms good, so on and so

forth. I totally agree. We went through an acquisition as well in 2014. And the hardest part for me personally, because I was dealing more on the business side and with the negotiation, was keeping day-to-day operations going while you're dealing with an acquisition, a looming acquisition, where, you know, some days are better than others in the negotiation process or the deal-making process. There's a ton of fear involved in that. There's a ton of excitement. It's just a mix of emotions that while you guys were producing a daily show, I imagine, was a challenging thing to manage. It was. In this latest deal, because we did another deal, Nick and I continued to put on the show

every day. He's also on the West Coast, and I'm on the East Coast, and we're really kind of owning this remote work setup with me in Vermont, Nick in San Francisco. But one benefit of that was we would have, like, deal emails that we had to get back to, and we had to get back quickly. otherwise the deal would have dragged out even longer. And we have the shared Google Doc. It was originally called Follow Up Fridays,

because Friday was the day that Nick and I found time to, like, get back to people because we put on a show every day. Eventually, follow-up Fridays was used every day. But Nick would draft an email, an important email as part of this negotiation. In the evening, because I was, like, asleep in Vermont. And then in the morning, I would review his email. and then we'd get together at like 11 Eastern 8 Pacific and we joked that certain important emails

we both had to turn the key at the same time for. But we had a full 24 hours to like make sure it was a great email. And honestly, sending good, comprehensive, informative emails was crucial for any deal to close. And having, you know, having the time to like let the email sit there and made sure that it was the right one to send when we finally did. That's good advice. We now call it our deal docs, Doc, and it is the same thing.

It's kind of like throwing a ball back and forth. I'll throw it to Jack, and I trust and know he's going to do an amazing job with it when he gets it, and vice versa. Sometimes Jack will draft something in the mornings, and then I'll get it, and then I'll send it off. It's funny. The pod is the product of both of us. I draft the initial notes for a story, and then Nick edits and reviews, and vice versa. And so are all of the emails any business partner gets from us. It's the product of both of us.

Jack and I have a rule for official. Because you guys, I know have seen this with content, which is so much at like media companies, you see friction around content because one person is created and then one person edits, and then it leads to tension because it goes through edits and edits and edits. And that may not be with the writer intended. And it could cause bad blood or just a little resentment from the person who's being edited, especially if they're being over it. Yeah, even a time delay.

And so Jack and I have a one and done rule where like one of us write something, if Jack thinks the joke that we just crafted on coffee creamers doesn't land, he'll cut it out. I'm not going to push back on it because I trust his judgment. But if I did push back on it, it would just waste our time. We don't have time on a daily pod. And it would create friction. And like, that's not what this is about. At the end of day, it's about our friendship.

So that's what we do is we have a one and done rule. We kind of apply to everything, which is like if the other person feel strongly on it, we just go with the other person because it just saves time and it saves a relationship. Yeah, I think that's really good advice. Just in general, in a creative career, not getting. too attached to your ideas, especially when you're coming up with minor ideas in a much grander process, right? Like, we're coming up with so many ideas that are just within the bounds of a singular

video. You think about the amount of edits we make for one of our videos. It's thousands. Yeah. We don't have time to get hung up on every single one of those little changes now. So when this does happen and you guys, you know, obviously figure out how to keep a daily product going while this negotiation's happening. And then we do get the champagne bottle pop Instagram. You know, how did it feel going from being an independent, you know, media company

to now being just wrapped up into Robin Hood? Well, it's two emotions, I think, as a founder. One of them is the excitement and the opportunity. Because for the first time, you're getting resources and things that you would have taken you so much longer to get. One of the big things, Jack and I focus on out of this deal, which we and Robin Hood C is like it was mutually beneficial for both. And most deals are not was that what we got out of it was incredible growth and reach of audience. We reached an audience size that we never thought we would reach and we wouldn't have received on our own.

So that was a huge benefit for us. As a founder, the other thing we found is, you know, you're giving up your baby. You're giving up control. Why don't you tell what your therapist said about the car? Oh, when you sell your car. Yeah, that's my therapist put it. You know, you've given up your car to someone. You sold the car.

You can't go into the garage now and say, hey, you got to drive it like this. Or take it easy on the right hand turns. Like, it's not your car anymore. It's in the garage. And it's their garage. And it's their decisions on what to do with the car. So be proud that you took care of this wonderful car. But it's not your car anymore.

And give your advice on how to take care of it. But it's no longer yours to take care of. And you need to emotionally separate. Right. And so I shared that therapy tidbit with Jack, and we realized, you know, at the end of the day, that was the newsletter. Jack and I were writing the newsletter every single day. Now it's a team of like six, seven people who are working on the newsletter. And we had no role in it at the end of our time of Robin Hood and definitely no role in it right now because we let that car go. Fortunately, we were able to continue to own and run the podcast after Robin Hood. And that's a car. We love driving. Yeah. Incredibly important was that we declared editorial.

independence when we launched Robin Hood snacks. So we had, you know, all the stories were chosen by us and written how we wanted to do, which was incredible. That gave us such great peace of mind, because the pod is like our life force. I was really curious about that. I was like very intrigued to press play on your guys' pod when there was negativity surrounding Robin Hood, you know, and like what that was going to sound like. Yes. We noticed in the download numbers that you weren't the only one. I can imagine. I mean, it was a fascinating thing to explore to be like, okay, here's these creators who are, you know, at Robin Hood, who have said to us they have editorial independence, and now here's a moment, like, are they going to cover it or not? Oh, well, we should, yeah,

you know, it was a prescient decision. I'm so thankful we made it because it made our lives a little bit easier. Our lives weren't easy on those days you're referring to, Samir, but we did say that we're not going to cover news about Robin Hood. So while we were at Robin Hood Snacks, we didn't ever. Now, when there were moments, there were a couple moments we acknowledged what was happening because it would have just been conspicuously absurd not to. Yeah. But anyway, perhaps you listen to that episode, but we basically just said we don't cover

Robin Hood news. We do cover news that are industry trends that Robin Hood might have been involved in. And we did to the best of our ability. But for the most part, being a part of Robin Hood. We just weren't the best place for people to get Robin Hood News. So we made that decision early on. And the cool thing about that is because we communicated that early on and because we built up, and this is what's so important, Jack and I found about just having trust and closeness with your community, with your audience, is that they were forgiven.

And that, you know, this was non-on audience that just left us when they were frustrated with the parent company. You know, on the contrary, they continue to listen and almost separate the two in their minds. Part of that's because we had a sub-brand. We were Robin Hood snacks or snacks daily, not Robin Hood. But part of that was because we built up, and this is something that's so special about podcasting, a very personal relationship with the audience. Where at the end of the day, they're listening to you. They're listening to our chemistry.

And that's what this is about. It is not about the corporate element to the medium. The medium is really, really human and personal. I think the thing you guys did extremely well and have done very well, but in your format development was this what you mentioned which is so smart around like the consistency the ritual nature of it the ability to reach a mass audience and at the same time the inclusion of your community um at the end right like you like the fact that there's there was a name with snackers and you know now you guys have played into that with the with the with the new name um but it wasn't

even community just at the end it was like entirely throughout right i remember samir and i one time dissected one of your episodes. Just to think like, okay, second zero to five, that's about community. Right. Seconds like 20 to 30. Okay, that's value prop. Right. You know, like, and it was amazing how often you always came back to a community element.

I did submit Colin for a shout out one time on his birthday. Unfortunately, did not get it. But that's how often we were listening that I was like so excited to see if it was going to happen. And it was, yeah. Yeah, but it is, it is like an incredibly exciting thing. Even at the age of 32 years old to hear your name is just exciting. It's something that you listen to. Even the name of the show, you guys have just created so much of your own vernacular and your own vocabulary.

And that's key to communities, right? But if you're listening and you say, T-boy, and I don't know what it means, then clearly I'm on the outside. Right. But I want to keep listening until I'm on the inside. I think you guys have done that better than like any podcast show I've ever seen. Thanks so much, guys. It actually is part of a strategy Jack and I have, which is that great brands have their own language,

just like, you know, a country does. And the language we speak with our audience, you know, not everyone is fluent in it at first, but if you're curious, you can learn the language and be a part of this group. It's not exclusive at all. Everyone is welcome. It just takes, you know, a little bit of listening, and you kind of can pick it up on your own.

You don't need to take it to a duolingo. But you should launch it to do a lingua. You should launch a tea boy d'a lingo. Yeah, there are phrases that we say that of underlying meanings, like guac is always extra. What we're saying there, you know, is that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Or sometimes we'll joke around and say, mattress, mattress, mattress quickly. And we're referring to the fact that if you say mattress, the phenomenon that everyone's experienced, where if you say something, you're going to start seeing ads for that thing.

That's my favorite, I think. Or a level five zucking, you know, when Facebook copies a product. Well, I have to say Facebook copy. beat something. We can just say it's a zucking. By the way, the best thing was this week, you guys called it something an OG zucking. And I don't remember what it was now, but I just like, he said the winkle vibe. Yeah, it was like the OG sucking. And I just laughed out loud at the gym while I was listening. Um, so really get to your point in community too. Um, the fun thing is then the audience learns that language. And a lot of times when we reference like

zuckings, it's because the audience is tweeting at us and saying, hey, I just saw a level three zucking over here. Well, it's also how we speak to each other, you know? And, We want people to just feel like a part of the conversation. And having these little inside jokes. I mean, inside jokes are great. We all love inside jokes. I think as we produce more audio, I think you guys should expect a level five zucking from us.

Just so you know. You can start listening. You can turn on our show. This is Colin, Mrs. Samir, you know, you're going to hear it. Unless you guys call yourself, T-boy, the greatest one yet. It's going to be lower than level five. It'll be level four, level three.

It's a funny line because one of the books that Jack and I love is steal like an artist. It's a great book. Yeah, it's a fantastic book. Nick gifted that to me. So, you know, there's a funny line there. There's copying. And then they're stealing like an artist from inspiration. So we're big fans of stealing like an artist. So can you talk through just, I'm sure there's people who are listening right now who are curious about the process of making a daily show and that process when it comes to being within a company too, like at Robin Hood, the growth that you guys saw, a lot of that is like you mentioned from the consistency. Making a daily show sounds unbelievably overwhelming. How do that work and how does that work?

Is it the same process right now? Have you guys refined the process? It's the same process with some caveats. Robin Hood is and was a heavily regulated financial entity. So we had to go through compliance. Everything we put out went through the same compliance review as anything Robin Hood puts out. And that's just how the finance industry gets regulated. So we don't have that check anymore. We also are just, it's just Nick and me. So it all starts with a meeting that we call the headline hammer. And in the headline hammer, it's at about 1130 Eastern 830 Pacific. We have a list in this shared Google Doc, which we work so much in Google Docs and Apple FaceTime. Those are our two must-haves. But we have about 20 potential stories that we could cover.

And they're basically just news headlines. And Nick and I both consume a ton of news. And it's always our goal when listening to news. to take note of the smartest insights that we hear and find a way to get it into the pod in the next couple weeks. Anyway, in the headline hammer, Nick and I just decide, what are the three stories we should choose today? The right mix. Yeah.

And our show is not finance news. It is much broader and more accessible than that. It's really, we call it pop biz. It's business, but served in a pop style. So we have a combination of finance. economics, markets news, and business news. And we find a combination of three that feels diverse, informative, fun, not too heavy, but sometimes there's heavy stories because they're too important not to know.

And Nick and I will pitch each other, our favorite stories. So I'll pitch Nick my story. He will either love the idea or politely decline. Or we'll build out something together. Yeah. We end up with a mix of three stories after about, I don't know, 45 minutes. And then Nick and I go off. We assign each other's stories.

I'll jump on the Tesla story. Nick will jump on the Beyond Meat story. And I primarily do the research for one. Nick does for the other. Then we swap. I edit, I review. I fact check.

He does the same. About 4 o'clock Eastern, one Pacific, we are ready to record the pot. Nick, how many hours a day is it like? Probably before we push record. It's probably an hour of researching stories.

Another hour of our headlines. Hammer Chat, which is the core of the day, then two to three hours writing, crafting, the notes and the outline that we work off of and riff off of. And the research. And then two hours of recording. And the fact checking. And then we send it to our editor. What Jack and I try to channel is we almost think of ourselves as chefs going to a farmer's

market. And every day with the news, and this is the thing about a daily news pod, you don't know what's going to be at the market. You know, the salmon may be fresh or the asparagus may be fresh. But we don't know. What we do know is that we love these. huge, like we have our big launch day where we're going independent on April 25th. We have no idea what stories are going to be in that pod until the day before that pot. It's whatever is

fresh. I almost can't handle the real-time analogies. They're so good. Yeah, they're so good. So basically, what we realize is whatever is fresh, Jack and I can find the story. And by that we mean, we can find the recipe from our experience that tells and serves that dish up to you in the best way possible. And then we want all three stories to be the right fit. One should be, you know, the appetizer, one, the entree, one the dessert, you know, the right mix. So it's whatever's fresh. Jack and I know that we can kind of serve up the fun meal for it. And are you guys editing it, or are you sending it off to an editor? How is that working? It takes us about an hour and a half or up to two hours to record the pod, but we only have 15 minutes of footage that makes the cut.

So, you know, we record the intro, then we take a breath, we prepare for the first story, then we record the first story, and then we repeat that for the second and third, and then the outro. So we have kind of five chunks of story for the podcast. And Nick is taking notes. He's timestamping when we start and when we finish each story. And then we send those notes to our editor along with My File and Nick's file, and he beautifully syncs the two together.

His name is Adam. He's based in L.A. It's great that he's on the West Coast, by the way. Yeah, that's nice. And then after hour or two, he delivers the final product based on the notes that Nixon ends over. So you guys sound like you've got this process pretty dialed. When you're at Robin Hood, your connection to your community is dialed. Like you have those two things checked off.

What was missing in that situation where you decided that you ultimately wanted to go independent again? It's not just a missing story. It's also a sense of satisfaction. that Robin Hood snacks was a fantastic, you know, newsarm. We had an enormous newsletter. The baby that Nick and I, you know, gave up to Robin Hood was thriving. And that was, that was great to see. So after three plus years, we just felt like we'd succeeded and felt really, really good about that. We had a team at Robin Hood that was ready to continue the snacks product that we gave birth to. And so that was what satisfied us.

And then the one thing was missing was, you know, we were entrepreneurs who sold our company and we want to get back to entrepreneurship. Oh, the thrill of deciding every day what to do. Oh, my God. It can cause a little anxiety for sure. I mean, the limitless possibility and never knowing what you'll do as much as you decide to do that day. And that's both empowering and a little scary sometimes.

But, you know, one thing we wanted to do was invest in our audience. Yeah. And that means while we were at Robin O, we invested in our audience through our pod every day. And we gave like everything to that podcast every day. But we wanted to do more than that, like live weekly chats. So since we relaunched, Nick and I have jumped on to Instagram live for a half hour every Friday. And we've had so much fun inviting our fans into the hangout, you know, see their face on screen and answer their live questions. It's that kind of thing that is harder to do at a heavily regulated financial company like that.

The first day Jack and I launched the best one yet podcast, we launched video pod. We hadn't done that in the prior three years. And that's opened up new opportunities with platforms and partners in an exciting way. And so we can just be so nimble and do so many new things. Jack and I kind of see everything in media and everything we're doing as, is it a growth opportunity or an engagement opportunity? And there were kind of elements of both we wanted to hit. So our plan for this first year is a lot of engagement focus that we hadn't done before

and new ways to focus on growth in different ways. I love that. Engagement in particular has been fun. I think it's really important for a lot of creators and even people on the outside who are exploring the creator economy to recognize that people like yourselves, people like us,

like we are entrepreneurs and we have entrepreneurial desires. Media just so happens to be our product, right? It's like we're producing this creative as our product, but just like any other entrepreneur, we're interested in scaling and building and having some of those similar experiences, and we're validated by pretty similar things. But I do think the unique thing is,

I think it's really challenging as Colin and I have started to grow and produce more content. We're not making a daily show, but we're working on content every day. I find it incredibly challenging to work on the business side and the creative side at the same time. I'm curious, you know, as you guys have, you know, stepped out of Robin Hood.

First of all, it sounds like you have an amazing relationship and the fact that they, you know, came on as an exclusive sponsor of the pod. But I'm just curious about that, you know, that step and now being, you know, independent again. How has that been so far? I know it's been a really short amount of time. Well, we do have a great relationship with Robin Hood. And it's just been really nice to continue that relationship. In terms of the biz dev opportunities, this is where Jack and I have.

have a lot of fun. And after you've sold your company, you're not going to do as much of that at the company where you are. So what Jack and I found is actually, it's been overwhelming. It's kind of like a lot of inbound because it's been so pent up. So what we do is Jack and I really segment out our days in a very organized way. Because with the daily product, like you're saying, Samir, if one thing gets off track and that recording gets sent to our editor two hours late and then he can't edit, and then it's too late for me to get back in the studio and we can't change something, that's a disaster. So Jack and I keep a very strict schedule.

And basically, we work in that mutual Google Doc to do deal and biz dev stuff in the mornings. We kind of block off 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific to just focus on social media and biz dev opportunities. We take all of our calls, ideally before 11 a.m. Pacific, to make sure it's not interfering with the pod research. And then the whole second half of the day is all devoted to the pod research. and then doing the actual content,

actually doing the recording. Because also Jack and I know, once you're in the zone, once you're recording, once you're on the mics, you don't not want that interrupted with a call with a business partner to chat about a contract.

Like we got to stay in the zone here so we can remember that like we were just having fun chatting about Jack's sweater and we don't want that line of fun to like be forgotten in the rest of the pod. So we really segment out our biz-depth stuff. This is Nick again. This is Jack again.

Hope you enjoyed the bonus episode, Besties. Big thanks to Con and Samir for taking the time with us and letting us suck their episode for this show. We really did suck it. This is like a stage, what would you say? Stage four, Zucking, Jack? Yeah, if you're interested in an awesome pod on the creator economy, check out the Con and Samir podcast. We got a link in this show description. We didn't just suck the episode if we want to give them credit too.

Besties and Yetis, you've looked fantastic while we've been gone. Jack and I are back on the mics Tuesday, September 6th. Can't wait to see you then. In the meantime, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. We'll see you in a week.