The Startup Ideas Podcast - I met this guy who is the million dollar content flywheel king

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Today Greg is joined by Case Kenny, the host of New Mindset, Who Dis? and author of "That's Bold of You". In this episode, Greg asks Case how he was able to build a one-man content creator flywheel that involves a newsletter, SMS community, podcast, books and merch.►►Subscribe to Greg's weekly newsletter for insights on community,creators and commerce.You'll also find out when new and exclusiveepisodes come out from Where it Happens. And it's totally free.https://latecheckout.substack.comFIND ME ON SOCIAL:Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@gregisenbergLINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:Production Team:https://www.bigoceanpodcasting.comCase Kenny:https://twitter.com/thecasekennyhttps://newmindsetwhodis.com/SHOW NOTES:0:00 - Intro1:32 - Turn a podcast into a content flywheel10:55 - Mission + Rituals = Community25:56 - Turn content into products

All right. Case from this show. Hello. Thanks for having me, man. So explain to people who you are because I came across your Instagram. People were just sharing your posts again and again and again. And I was like, I need to reach out to this guy and try to understand who he is and how he's doing this. And I just want to crawl in your brain a bit. So, yeah. I mean, I would say Instagram is like a really small part of what I do. It's a way that a lot of people find me and kind of get into my proverbial funnel, but it's really a small part of what I do.

I'd say the joke that I say is that I share my feelings for a living. That's the like brand. And it comes to life in many different ways. Like, for one, I'm a podcaster. I'm a podcast since 2014. I host a podcast on Sirius XM called New Mindset Who Dis. It's all all things mindfulness. I've created products that are in Target and Walmart, bringing mindfulness to life in fun ways.

I have created candle lines. I've created journaling lines. I do a lot in music with artists, in dance music, with music and mindfulness. So really, I'm just very passionate about the topic of mindfulness. And I've privileged to be able to do it for a living and talk and share my feelings for a living. Instagram, just being a way to bring my idea of mindfulness to life in small, consumable ways. You know, grateful that people like to really share that, the content. But for me, it all started with the podcast, frankly. That's like the, you know, the center of my universe. It's It's where I create all my original content. It's where I then decide to create products and books from it.

So it's interesting that you said that you started with the podcast because a lot of people ask me, should I start a podcast? And I'm always kind of like, if you don't have an audience, like don't, honestly. Yeah. Because there's no discovery built in within podcasting. Like how are you able to break through in the podcasting world without having an audience? Yeah. Yeah.

I hate to say I'm the exception, but your advice is true. It's very difficult, right? Most of the, you know, podcasts nowadays that are started are started by people with big followings or her moving their following from an email list or something, something like that. And that's obviously the way to do it. I started podcasting in 2014 on a different podcast. And then I started New Mindset Who Does in 2018. At the time, I think I had like, I don't know, 10,000 followers on Instagram or something. So, you know, now I'm at like half a million. So there, there's the growth there. I don't know. I mean, I did a lot of different things over the years. I've grown large email lists. Like I was building an email newsletter at the same time like Morning Brew was. I was close with those guys. So like I learned a lot about like how to build a brand. But you know, for me, I think podcasting in a serious way in 2018 did give me a little bit of an advantage. It was a little bit before kind of the heyday that we're in now. But really the way that my social came about was I created the podcast. It did really well. I remember the first month it did 56,000 downloads with no social media following. And that doesn't sound like a lot. But for a no name podcast, or just start with that in a month, it puts you in a category of being successful. And from there, you know, I podcast for about a year. And I was like, oh, this is really interesting.

Like it's doing well. Then it was 100,000 a month, 200,000 a thousand a month. I was like, I should monetize this. But I didn't want to do ads. So I was like, what can I create for my audience that I can sell to in a really authentic way? landed on creating a journal. Actually, I don't know if you know Austin from Morning Brew. It was actually he put something in my head and suggested that and I ended up doing it. But when I started to create the journals and I sold them and they started to do really well,

I started to put a lot of ad spend into it. And in effect, started to really create this, you know, the business did seven figures in the first eight months. It did really, really well. But then I used that momentum to pour it back into the podcast. So the podcast quickly became part of the e-commerce marketing cycle. And that kind of helped explode the podcast as well. All my fulfillment emails, all the follow-up emails, all the loyalty emails within my funnel, pointed people back to the podcast. So it became this really nice cycle of organic content, created journal from it,

market the journal with paid ads, push people back to the podcast, pushing the social, and then it became this thing. And ever since, it's become a really organic way for me to create content on the podcast, see what people react to, create a book from it, create a product from it, and then just go from there. So really nice,

like, unforced cycle. So what you're describing is a flywheel, basically, it's a creator flywheel. And that's like the holy grail of what every, they're calling them now,

creatorpreneurs, which are like creators plus entrepreneurs, wants to be at. Just like walk me through the whole flywheel in like one level, deeper. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, I mean, the lowest level, of course, was the podcast. I've been doing it twice a week for five years. I just hit episode 500. It's my thing. It's ingrained in my routine twice a week and then pretty much 24-7 because I'm always thinking of content. And I don't do guests on the podcast,

so it's all just like Case Kenny's thoughts of the day. I also came from a really like self-compassionate place. Like I worked in advertising for 11 years before I started doing this and Chicago with a bunch of the, you know, tier one agencies and then an advertising technology sales. I led a sales team in Chicago. When I was about to turn 30, I was basically like, you know, called a quarter life crisis, whatever you want to call it, break up. And I was traveling a lot for the job. I was based in Chicago. I was going to like Toledo in Columbus and St. Louis and Kansas City, no disrespect to those cities, of course. But it was just like little plane to here, to rent the car to here. And I was just like, man, what would happen if 20 years from now,

I looked back and was like, I never questioned anything. I never questioned who I was dating, what I was doing, the goals I had, so on and so forth. So I created the podcast from a pretty genuine place of wanting to challenge myself. I'm a pretty type A person and the fact that I didn't have great answers to some pretty simple questions of who am I? What do I want? So on and so forth. I was like, let me start a podcast. In 2018, a little less cliche than the straight white guy starts a podcast in 2023. So it was a little more vulnerable. And I saw it as a, you you know, platform to just push myself. And then from there, yeah, it just became this thing where I realized what I was doing. I was practicing mindfulness, you know, the art of introspection,

the art of radical honesty. And it just became a really simple thing where I would just ask myself questions and answer them for myself and for other people. And then, you know, the podcast started to grow. Then I started to do a lot of dating content through the lens of mindfulness, not like how to text someone or anything like that, but through the lens of mindfulness. And that's what really blew up the podcast from a content perspective. And then, yeah, it became really easy because I don't do guests. Typically, I mean, I have, but it's typically me just, you know, here's something I saw the other day. Here's a TikTok that said, don't catch feelings. And I was like, that's stupid. We should catch feelings. And I would just react to stuff through my lens.

And I don't call myself an expert or a guru. It's really not my thing. I'm not a licensed therapist, of course. So just try to keep it real and simple. And it's just, you know, it's easy, it's easy to do 500 episodes when it helps you and it helps me. It's my therapy. So I've been doing it for five years. And then year four, Sirius XM came along and bought up the distribution rights and the advertising rights. So then it became this big thing. But to answer your question, that's kind of where it came from.

So that's the podcast. Yep. And so that's part one of the flywheel. Yeah. From your podcast, are you driving people somewhere? Yeah. I always drive to new mindset hoodest.com, which links all my journals, all my books, different products that I'm involved in. Obviously, when I first started, it was just one journal,

the new mindset journal, which I created in January 2020. I launched on Indiegogo in 2020, January 2020, raised 37, $39,000. Did not do well. I actually lost money on that between agency expenses. I hired an agency to help me, 3PL expenses, manufacturing expenses, just didn't really know what I was doing. It is what it is. So I lost, you know, a couple grand on it. Then COVID hit. And I had fulfilled the initial cohort of people who bought it on Indiegogo. And I had like, like, 2,000 journals left over. I was like, oh, man, these are burning a hole in my pocket with my 3PL in Cicero, Illinois. I've got to get rid of these. So I started posting on Instagram just, you know, and at that time I had, I don't know, maybe 50,000 followers or

something. And luck, randomness, timing, positioning, something happened where they just started to sell. And I remember at that point, having Shopify notifications turned on on my phone, was getting a little ping. I was like, oh, this is, this is crazy. People are actually buying this. And then I started to run ads. And ads were really still cruising, and especially during, during COVID, the early part of COVID, really cruising. So I started to put money into it. And in the first 18 months, it did about five and a half million. And that's not a number flex. I learned a lot. I messed up a lot. I really screwed up inventory. Um, you know, my, my, my P&L was all over the place, but it kind of took off. And when you say ads, you're talking Facebook

ads. Yeah, I'm talking, I'm talking Facebook, TikTok, did a little search, but, but principally Facebook. Meta. Meta. Meta. Right. And like what did the ad copy say like that? It was wild. It was so silly. Like every marketer would tell you it wouldn't work. My initial ads were static carousel images of text messages that someone might send after standing up for themselves or affirmations to remind them of themselves. And then the final carousel would be a picture of the journal. But it was very incongruent. It was text messages for a printed journal. journal is very confusing, but it was still, it was cruising it like a five times row ads on it. And it worked really well. Obviously, you know, since a lot has happened in advertising and iOS and all that jazz, a lot has changed and has really, you know, forced me and my, my fellow e-com compatriots to get

really good with creative. But frankly, I really don't spend that much on ads anymore. You know, luckily so since since then, two, three years ago, things have taken off or organically for me where my books on Amazon. I'm on Amazon now about two years in. I started selling on Amazon and let that ecosystem really boost everything. But in the beginning of the ads were really simple. Didn't really know what I was doing, but they worked. I'm on your website right now and new mindset, who dis, join a community of 300,000 journalers. And there's a bunch of, you know, you can shop the bestsellers and stuff like that. Yep. So let's just say,

Someone comes in from an ad, a Facebook ad. They buy the journal. They make that a part of their habit. How do they hear about the podcast? Like, what's that flow look like? Yeah, twofold. For one, there's a page in the journal that actually promotes the podcast and drives people there. So you're actually going to be reminded of it in the book.

The second, of course, is the fulfillment process and the drip flow through, I use clavio through the actual fulfillment process itself the first email you'll get when you confirm your journal is hey while you wait why don't you get ready with some mindset and it points to the points to the podcast i've also in the past i've also been somewhat clever i suppose by i i drip some affiliate emails affiliate links into the email specifically with some of the um the online therapy groups that pay pretty large CPAs there so also while you wait why don't you start with therapy so that's also worked pretty well. But yeah, email has been a big way to promote it. So that's smart on a lot of a lot of level. So first, I don't think enough people do this where they have a low ticket item

that they sell via paid ads mostly and then put them in a drip campaign that ultimately leads them to audience building, community building and affiliate deals that are related. Like, value ad affiliate deals to help basically, you know, get your return on ad spend up. Yeah. Like people, the baseline is like, oh, I'm just going to like create an ad. I'm going to sell it. I'm going to sell my product and hopefully get an email and market to them in the future. But there's so much more you can do.

Yeah. I mean, that's my exact. I mean, every additional listener on the podcast because I have programmatic ads in the podcast is money in my pocket. So any link in an email should benefit the economics of the business that I've built in a healthy way. I also have like Amazon affiliates in there because I sell a lot of my products on Amazon. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways to make money from one click that goes beyond the purchase, the actual item that comes from that they bought.

And then the other important piece I think is just like the product itself, you're like double dipping and then triple dipping on like all levels. basically. Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, it's really beneficial because I mean, for one, you know, I designed the journals with a certain aesthetic. It's meant to be shared. Like I, like a lot of the quotes that I post on Instagram come from the journal and vice versa, where people are just incentivized to get their phone out, take it and share it. And that drives people to social and that drives people further back to the podcast. So, you know, it works really well. And then I wrote a book this past year that was not a journal that was not like a quote product. It was a book book. And that has really helped as well. Just like really just creating a line of products from from entry to, you know, to wherever people want to go that benefits their style, whether it's journaling or reading or I've because I have audio books as well. So it's, you know, it sounds a lot more strategic than I think it was.

It just to me, it just was like, duh, it's just what I do. But, you know, having the support of like serious for the podcast also like, I used to sell my own ads on it and stuff and that was really complicated, but like bringing someone else on board who can do it at scale. It's a dangerous game because there are a lot of ads in my podcast and it is rather short, which I don't particularly like, but when you're a capitalist trying to make money off a podcast, but you know, all the things move together. And I try to be really specific about the advertisers that I work with and, you know, it's not just throwing money at something. Quick interruption from me. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

you're getting any value. You need to come to YouTube and subscribe to the Where It Happens podcast YouTube channel. I promise you the experience is richer, more interesting. So if you're getting any value, just stop what you're doing, open up the YouTube app, go to the website and press subscribe at where it happens on YouTube. And if you're watching this on YouTube and you haven't subscribed, what are you doing? go press subscribe thank you enjoy the rest of the show the book why write a book you know it just seems hard well it's it's not hard when you have a podcast because i could just go to my podcast i just go to my top listens and i'm like huh is there a pattern here yes let me write a book from

my top podcasts and i've already written all the podcasts like the podcasts are written with very detailed outlines. I just take the outline, turn it into a book. I don't think there'll ever be a point where I write a book from zero from scratch. It's always built from analytics, things I've talked about, things that people react well to. So you talk about a cycle there. Furthermore, I mean, I'm an author. Like, that is who I am. I don't, I love being an entrepreneur. I love creating products, but, you know, my heart and my soul is, is the art of the content. It's speaking, it's writing, it's creating ideas. From a media standpoint, it's also easier in my experience. In my experience, to get traction from a book. I was on the Today Show two weeks ago, which is a pretty unique

opportunity. And it was a five-minute segment on me and the book. Media likes to cover books, especially when there's like a nice, meaty promise to it. And for me, writing a book is also about distribution. Like, I distribute the book exclusively on Amazon, which pushes to my other Amazon products, which are my journals. And it just, it just brings in new people who want a book, but aren't journalers or journalists who want to read and it just creates a nice again cycle i i see it and you've got the fly go going i also see it i'm kind of like well there's so much more you probably can do here and i'm curious if you feel the same way like do you look at it and you're like well like i'm just going to you know maybe write a book every year

continue doing the pod um or am i like no no no i want to build like you know you're wearing a mad happy a hat. Like, no, I want to build like a mad happy level brand here and build something extraordinary in terms of the side. So I mean,

my real aspiration is to build something bigger than Case Kenny. Like right now I'm attached to my name. And that's a, that's a privilege, of course, to be able to do that. I mean, very few people are able to make a living from their name by writing.

Especially if you have such a cool name like Case Kenny. Like Case, you know, my name is. Greg Eisenberg. It's just not, it doesn't have the same like flow to it. Yeah, you know, maybe I was, I was born for this. Who knows? But, you know, my real aspiration has built something bigger than me. I'll tell you two things that I'm working on to that effect. The first thing is actually somewhat inspired by Mad Happy. It's called 216 Social Club. If you go to 216 social club.com,

it's basically my thing that's like, there's a lot of great apparel brands, communities that are built around the idea of, you know, evangelizing conversations around mental health. And I think that's great. I like to build really practical, simple things, brands, services, etc. 216 is a number that's always been close to me. Long story there. But I take time every day at 2.16 p.m. to do nothing, to practice stillness, forgiveness, gratitude, anything I can get my hands on or literally just stare at a wall.

It's proved to myself that I'm capable of being mindful. So I launched that the other month. I'm still trying to figure it out. Really don't know what I'm doing. But I think that's got some real legs to it about bringing mindfulness into culture through merchandise and then through larger things. But the idea of uniting people around a time of day, I think is pretty interesting and pretty unique.

I have a small, large SMS list that every day at 216, I send out a text. So every day at 216, people are thinking about either myself or what I represent in some way. That's not a big revenue business for me at all. In fact, it's very, very tiny. But I think the idea has some legs to it that I could build a community around people who want to practice mindfulness in practical ways, not just talk about mindfulness and how great it is to be mindful, but to actually do it in cool ways. So that's something that needs some work. I kind of just launched it and let it sit. But hopefully you'll be seeing more of that soon.

Let's jam on this for a second. So first of all, I love this. Besides from like the design, the name is so good because it brings it. back to the ritual of 216, people often ask me, what makes a good community person? And I always say, if you can throw a good party, you know, you are a good community person. And when you think about building a, you know, creating a party, what do you think of? Do you think of like, what is the purpose of the party? What is the food?

What is the music? You know, who am I inviting? How are they showing up? with time, what time of they leaving? Like, how do I think about surprising and delight throughout the night so that they're never bored? Like, maybe there's like, I don't know, maybe like a special DJ comes at this hour or live music, you know, just like keep, keep surprising.

And the most important piece of that whole pie is really the mission and the rituals, you know, the purpose and the ritual. Yeah, ritual. You hear you have a very strong purpose and rituals. So I think you're like underselling yourself a little bit when you're like, I don't know really what I'm doing because it's like, you have a great purpose slash mission and rituals. The question for you really is if this scales to 10 million people,

like what do you want that text group to look like? Because when I'm on the website, it says one of the main value propositions is our focus is community, your purchase gets you added to our daily mindfulness text group. Like what's your vision for the community? Yeah, I don't know. I think that that's where I'm still circling that because, you know, I think a lot of people want to build community for community's sake.

I actually want it to be beneficial because I've had the privilege of building a community, but I want it to be very practical and I want it to benefit the community. Obviously, I want it to be a marketing distribution for myself, but I truly want it to be a source of ideas for people to practice mindfulness in relatable ways at scale. My second ambition that's closely related to that, because again, I'm very into the idea of mindfulness and culture. You see culture grab onto mental health in recent years at accelerated rate. I think mindfulness soon has an upcoming cultural moment that is going to be defined by its practicality. Not its woo-woo-ness, not its fairy tale rainbow-ness, but it's, hey, here's how we're actually

going to do it. We're not just going to talk about it. Like, is this a broadcast text message that you're sending, or is it like an actual text group? No, it's with community, the text platform. Got it. Got it. Cool. And just can you explain community just for folks who don't know what that is? Yeah, community is the one that you knew about but didn't know about back a couple years ago when all those celebrities started sharing their numbers on social media.

It was through community, which is basically a SMS platform. That's a little bit more approachable than using like an attentive or a clavio for texting, which can get out of hand pricing wise. It's a little bit, they group it based on how many subscribers you have rather than text sent. But it feels a little bit more personal. Like it's it literally looks like a text. It is a text. They can message me.

I can respond back if I'm so inclined. But it's got all the analytics and segmentation. and you can send people text on their birthday and by city and I think different demographic information if you want. But for me, it was wanting to choose something that was as close to an actual, you know, homey text group as possible without, you know, turning it into a daily marketing text. There was this guy who I met on Twitter. He actually gave me a like 15 or 20 minute meditation Zoom thing. you know, during peak COVID. And his Twitter account is like, he tweets like every day,

you probably should be drinking water right now. And it's this like reminder, hey, you need, you should be drinking water. And it's a similar thing to what you're doing with 216, which is there's these things that we know we should be doing, but we end up forgetting or life gets in the way. And, you know, it's so fast paced. life today. So I think there's probably a set of brands, community-based brands that you can create around not just meditation, but imagine like a water company, which employs a similar model. So I think there's something here around the daily ritual, 216, do this every day,

that relates to the product. Again, that's another flywheel. Like, you're building another flywheel. 100%. Yeah. Have you started any? Have you started it? It's funny. It's like you're the non-flywheel flywheel guy. I'm like, damn it again. I did it again. Oh, who's again? Do you, have you started any paid ads or any marketing or just sort of testing the business out now? I'm testing the water's for the vulnerable answer of I don't know what I'm doing in apparel. Like I know how to manufacture a journal. I know exactly who to go to. I know my cogs. I know exactly how to make it real sweet and nice. I don't know the first thing about building an apparel brand, what I should be paying.

I'm drop shipping it right now, and I'm fine with that because I didn't want to drop a hundred grand on something that might not do well, that, you know, I just don't know what I'm doing. So it's kind of a wait and see reaction. I've got a phase two drop coming with new designs, which I want to, I want two or three drops under my belt before I decide that I really want to go scale at it with talking to manufacturers and everything. So that's the real answer. So no paid ads or anything like that behind it now.

What do you need to make this big? You know, let's just jam on this a little bit. Like, do you, is it you're missing like a apparel partner in this business? Is it you're missing a creator to be a part of this business? Like, what are the pieces that you're missing to help scale this? Yeah, I think it's twofold. I think it's an apparel partner for one to make, so we can really figure out the price point. Like, I was really inspired by Siegelman Stables.

I'm sure you're familiar with their story of like creating a luxury product. out of something that isn't necessary a luxury product and that's what they stand for. For me, creating a luxury product and mindfulness space feels a little disingenuous to like price a hat at $70 or something like that. Feels a little bit wrong for trying to make mindfulness more approachable at scale. But I really need to know what I stand for price wise. Right now, I've got to sell hoodies for, you know, 70 bucks because my drop shipping price is 40.

Like, we're not making a lot of money here, of course. So the first point is working with someone like that that can help educate and scale. The second, I think, is, yeah, it's along the creator lines. I don't think a cold paid ad strategy is going to get this where it needs to go. I think it needs to be organic. I think it needs to be community driven. I hate to say it. I think it might need to be like celebrity driven in a sense.

Some real tastemakers getting it, wearing it, creating the cool factor. I always ironically say, like, I don't like the word cool. But I also do because I want my influence to be cool. I want it to be imbued in cultural moments. And I think some folks that are at a high tier of celebrity could help that. So I think somewhere in the mix there is really what's going to push it. So that's the question is like, do you partner with like a CAA or someone like that or like an individual creator? Or do you just like reach out to like cold DM or get warm intros to different select?

and just do it yourself. Yeah. I mean, I'm a, I'm a lone wolf. I always tend to do that. I think calling myself out on my own BS right now, I just got a lot going on. And I need to figure out a priority. But I've always done well of, you know,

sending certain people product and things like that. I think that's the next step. Or bringing someone on, you know, I've had many chats with, you know, some investment groups and folks like that that I keep close. And they always like, yeah, let's loop in. Let's, let's race. capital and I've always been like, I don't want to do that.

Why would you do that? I've never been inclined to ever raise, to be honest, at this point, yet. I mean, even writing books. Like, I've had so many meetings with publishers, the big five in every time. Just the idea of giving away my IP for a quick payday makes me really sad. So I've always been a little bit of a glutton for punishment in doing things myself with my own capital and just kind of going the way. But, you know, I think for this, I need, I need a energy that comes from a second drop where I'm like, I really like these designs. Like, the first

designs were cool. Like, I think what's really cool is what it stands for. But I need some designs that really speak to it. And I've got a great designer who's working on some now. So I think after that's dropped, I'll, I'll have some, some better direction. I don't know, man, because I'm, I'm looking at the website and I'm looking at the designs and like, you know, I run a design agency. multiple design agencies. Do you like them? And I'm looking at this and I'm like, this is sick. Cool, man.

It's something that I'm like really excited for. You know, it's so funny. Like even when I first got into journaling, I was like, man, a little bit of imposter syndrome. Like, the people really need another journal. And I feel like I still have a little bit of that where I don't have the like, let's do this. Like let's dedicate some serious time and resources to it just yet.

I just need to find that on switch. I know it's a cool idea because I talk about the number 216 all the time on the podcast. So I'm like I love the topic of it and people seem to really resonate with it. Just got to got to hit go, you know, before before someone swoops in and, you know, takes the idea with another time. Well, I think, okay, a few things. So one is around the journal and competition, my thesis is that every community, every, every well-oiled community can actually have a journal. So if we go back to how we defined a community before, which is like purpose slash mission and rituals, the rituals piece is the journal in a lot of ways. And of course, some communities

lend itself way better to having a journal. Obviously, you know, yours is like beautiful. I've got one for you that along the same line. So I'm working with a large men's fitness brand. they do really good work. They're pretty large, not gym shark, smaller than gym shark, but I'm developing a journal for the gym for them that instead of scrolling on your phone, like we all do between sets, which is ridiculous. Like we can't take an hour off our phone. It's we're going analog in the gym. And we're not necessarily writing answers in this journal that I'm creating for them, but it's a workout tracker. You're tracking your workout and then it's got journal prompts. So in between sets, when you're huffing and puffing and you're resting,

you're thinking through these things. So it's bringing mindfulness into. to the gym and their community is just rabid for that kind of stuff. I think it's going to crush it when we release it. But I totally agree. I make a good living also from consulting for brands that want to create this type of product for their community. I think fitness is a great community for that kind of thing. What other verticals or spaces do you think a journal could do well in?

I don't know. I've had the fitness one circle for a long time. obviously just lent itself so perfectly people are wanting to improve themselves um i mean i think the one that i haven't seen anyone do great just yet because they always turned it into a freaking productivity journal and it drives me crazy is business professionals i can't think of a more stressed out group of people than salespeople for instance i used to run a sales team a technology ad technology company i don't talk about being stressed out and hating yourself there you go so i think a a journal for a either very specific group of people, salespeople, executives, whatever, I think would

crush it. I'm sure it exists in different forms. I've just never seen it the way that I like journaling, which is a mix of prompted and unprompted. There's a lot of journals out there that just they stress me out more than they help me. They're like, do this, do that. Come back at this time. Measure yourself on this. And I'm like, I'd feel even worse about myself now. So somewhere in between and that's marketed in a cool way. I think we'd kill it there. It's an interesting lesson because we all, you know, product builders, we're always kind of like, well, I don't want to go and build something in this space because there's too much competition, but it's kind of like, well, if you have this devout community, as long as you like purpose

build the product for that community, like it doesn't make a difference that there's thousands of competitors. I used to be really bad at that thought process. I used to always talk myself out because I'm like, it already exists. Why would I build it? And I remember very specifically, I think I've ever told Austin this, but Mr. Austin for Morning Brew, I was in a conference room at my old job talking to him. I honestly asked him. I was like, give me some life advice. He was like, oh, why don't you create a journal? And my immediate reaction was, why would I create a journal? Tim Ferriss has a journal. Everyone has a journal. And I remember leaving that and being so frustrated with myself for like having that. that be my knee-jerk reaction that I just then went and spent the next five months and

created it and sold it. So, you know, I think, yes, agreed to your point. If you have a community, you could definitely build a product for them. I think journals are great. But, you know, if you build a custom for a community that you know well and that trust you, I think it'll work long run. And then you have to ask yourself like, Tim Ferriss literally thought about, wow, should I create a journal right now? And it's like 2015. Yeah. Like in 2015 or whatever, was like it was competitive then and tim fares is you know he's not a dumb guy like the guy knows what he's you know knows what he's talking about and understands competition really well and doesn't launch a lot of products either so yeah i think a lot of founders especially this whole

like solopreneur movement i think a lot of people are going to see different spaces see products in that spaces and then just like turn away when they really shouldn't be turning away they should just be like, don't find your niche, find your super niche, create something purpose built, and don't worry that there might be a hundred more general purpose competitors out there. Yeah. So when I first launched the new mindset journal, which was like my base journal, like now looking back, I'm more proud of what I've built since since since, because I've learned a lot. But when I first launched that journal, my marketing for it was, here's a journal to help you be happier. And it didn't do well, right? It didn't do well. It didn't do.

well because the promise was so vague. It's like, I don't have time to be happier. I've got bigger problems. I got bigger fish to fry. The moment that I pivoted the branding from here's a journal to help you be happy or whatever to here's a journal to help you get over a breakup because all the prompts were actually more geared towards like forgiveness, obviously emotionally triggering entry point. That was when things really started to blow up. Healing. You know, not in like, we're not like, you know, obviously taking advantage of people's emotions. here, but finding the most palpable concrete triggering entry point to get people in, that is what has always done wonders for these types of products. And I think in the past, I thought a little too

high level, happiness, confidence, these kinds of things, as opposed to like the sticky points that really get people in. And then you can go broad with some of the things. But yeah, when it's so competitive and everyone has a journal for happiness, we got to go a layer deeper. And I think that's what's really helped. My last book is basically, it's called That's Bold of You. Basically, it's a a book about, you know, becoming your best self. I mean, it could not be a more basic of a self-help topic in the world. But the whole concept was if you've ever been called crazy, loud, too loud, too quiet, too difficult, these things that particularly a lot of my audience, which are women have been called, that was the entry point. And that was the, oh, yes, definitely, you know,

poke me to get into helping reinvent yourself. That is what has done wonder. So obviously, this is just marketing stuff, but it's the little things that matter as far as like, what is the problem you're solving or what is the trigger point that you're addressing. And I learned that over time, of course, to get as specific as you can and then serve that group of people and then opening them up wider. And it's worked really well. Yeah. And really just, I like your example around showing examples.

Like here's examples of, you know, how to get over a breakup, how to get over this. asking people these rhetorical questions. Like, have you ever been called too difficult? And you know via your audience that like, that's the number one podcast in the last 90 days. So you're like, of course I know. So it's using, that's why I always say like building a community based product is building a startup on easy mode basically in a lot of ways because you get to, you get to learn from your audience and your community what they want, their likes and dislikes. and then you just feed it back to them. Yeah.

And that's why, back to the beginning, that's why I'll always do the podcast. Even if I shut it down and don't make money or it dies, because podcasting is difficult. You've always got to be leveling up your game. Otherwise, your audience slowly declines. But I'll always do it because it's a great way for one, to give me ideas and two, to react to whoever is listening

and judge their reactions so that it can go out and build different things. So I'm not building in a silo. I'm not building for a headline. I'm not building something that sounds good. I'm actually building something that people want. If people want to build their own empire, their own media empire, like you've built, what advice do you have for them to get started? Well, I mean, I think the cliche one is build something that you would use and that you

will use because, again, I'm very incentivized to continue to create and build and do content because every single time I do, it helps me. I wouldn't be doing this for five years if it didn't help me. would run out of gas 100%. I mean, if you look at podcasting, it's like the average podcast ends after like 10 episodes because it's very difficult to do. Same with brands. How many people make a living from their brand? Very few. What's the average revenue of a small SMB? I don't know, 40 grand or something. It's very small. You got to find something that you'll stick through when things aren't going well. I remember when iOS 14, 145 would ever hit and all of a sudden my ads stopped working. I was like,

well, I guess we had a good run. I guess that was it. But no, I didn't say that because I was like, I love this material. I'll take an income hit for a little bit here while I figure things out, but I kept going because I had that reason. So I'd say for one, have a why. I know it's cliche, but you need to have a why. You need to build something that helps you. I really do think that's important. And then I don't know, I'd say from there, you know, distribution is everything. And I'm not just talking about rented distribution on Instagram and TikTok because that can be taken away in a flash of a moment. So I would focus on the tried and true, the email and I think SMS is, of course, having its moment as well. Open rates, response rates on SMS are bonkers.

So I try to try to build something there. And then I think also like I also do a fair amount, a fair amount of retail. I think retail is having its comeback moment for all the econ boys and all the focus there. I think having a retail wholesale strategy really helps mitigate a little bit of the risk of, you know, what happens when your ads or your online community isn't as responsive as it used to be. So somewhere in between there of why plus distribution plus a balance of retail and e-commerce strategies will probably be well served. I like it, man. I got to head out in a minute, but do you have any questions for me? I'd love to continue jamming on 216 with you. I actually haven't thought about that in like two weeks because I've been so head down on some other

stuff, but what proof points would you look for when you're first building something like that that said, okay, let's pour some gas on this? Like, what do you look for? Metrics wise or vibes wise or somewhere between? So one of the first things I would do if I was running 216 or 216 was a client of late checkout would be, I have this thesis that every e-commerce store should have free and paid products. For example, like if you go to, you know Jack Butcher? Yep. So I'm pulling up his website right now. So if you go to his merch page, he's got like hoodies for sale for like 50 bucks and coffee and coffee mugs and hats and stuff like that. But he's also got for zero dollars, you can get a visualized value wallpaper for your phone.

Or if you go to his courses, you can buy. his courses. There's a course for a dollar. There's a course for $99. There's also something called Daily Manifest. I don't know if you've played with it, but it's it's kind of like a habit tracking app slash journal that's a digital asset. That's zero dollars. You might look at it and be like, why is he doing that? I think that he's, this is brilliant because what he's doing, and he's using Shopify to power all this is once you add it to cart and you check out, he's getting that email address. And then all of a sudden you've been onboarded into the visualized value world. Like if you're going to use one of his like, you know, graphs as your mobile wallpaper,

like you're looking at it every day. Like that's high value and you might, you know, over time be way more likely to buy some of his products or services. So one thing I would do if I were you is I'm not sure. I'm not convinced. that buying the product puts you into the text community. Like to me, the text community is something that you give away for free, that you ultimately nurture them. And you have a set of free products that you start selling on your e-commerce store, and as you're doing, you continue to double down on your paid products.

But your set of free products is all about building the community and nurturing the community. your set of paid products is actually to it's actually more word of mouth than anything you know in the beginning of this call we talked about mad happy your hat that you're wearing you get to go out in the world order a tea you know let's say you're going or go out for dinner and people are going to see that you're wearing that hat so they might be more likely to buy that product or if a celebrity wears it or an influencer or whatever. So I think I see physical products as identity reinforcing and word of mouth. And I see digital products as a way to nurture through community. And that would be my biggest piece of feedback for you to chew on is thinking about free, different than paid.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I actually really like that. I love a good nurture. I really do. I love a good proving it. Like, don't just like buy a product. Just I'll prove it to you. I'll prove it to you. I'll prove why it's valuable. And my SMS list has always been one that's been for free. And then I would just send out some of my best thoughts. And it always felt very nice and very inclusive. And then the people who got it, got it and bought my product as a result. And it felt like a very unforced, you know, marketing journey.

So I'll definitely give that some thought. I appreciate that. My pleasure, man. It's been fun jamming. I'll see you in Miami. Yeah, man. Yeah. Let's link up when you're back in town.

That'd be great. Sounds good. All right. Later, man.