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That's your problem, you're too good at monetizing things. [laughs] Four to $7,000 a month. This year, so far, at least 10 grand from speaking. Your favorite ways to make money [laughs] in this business.

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My favorite way to make money is to write stuff. You did write a recent issue that you've made over $150,000 from your three newsletters. And I have such a small audience. Like, if I can do it, you can do it, right?

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[laughs] Exactly. [upbeat music] Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast. Today we are speaking with Lex Roman.

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Lex is very much a multi-hyphenate, having done everything from TV production to UX design to growth marketing. But I found them through their excellent newsletter, Journalists Pay Themselves. Uh, so Lex, you do a lot.

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I think by my count you're currently producing two newsletters, uh, which are Journalists Pay Themselves and Revenue Rule Breaker, and you're working as a freelance growth marketer, and you're helping organize this Atlanta Solopreneurs Co-op.

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And I'm probably missing a couple other things. Is that everything you're doing? Yeah. Yeah, no, I do, I do a lot. I do too much. Yeah. It's way too much. Yeah. [laughs] Creators can relate though, don't you think? Yes.

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Because it's like you have ideas and [laughs] then you act on them. Yeah. And when you can monetize them as I can, they take off [laughs] - Mm-hmm... farther than you expect.

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That's your problem, you're too good at monetizing things. [laughs] Um, okay, so I don't wanna, like, rehash, like, your entire career, but I am interested in the transition moment.

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So you graduate college, you spend five years in TV and film production, six years in UX and product design, and now it's been, like, five years in growth marketing.

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And then within those growth marketing years, you've also become a creator and started helping other creators and kind of angling yourself, labeling yourself as a creator.

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Uh, so again, don't have to rehash the whole thing, but I'm really interested in, like, the transitions, why you go from being a TV film producing producer to UX product design, et cetera, up to where we are now. Yeah.

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So, um, I was in TV in 2007, and in 2008- Yeah... the first writers strike happened of this era- Yeah... and I had to look for another job.

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And then coming right back into the industry, I happened to meet someone in tech named Arturo Perez, who I would later go on to work for. And this was right when Netflix was starting to get into streaming. Mm.

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So in 2007 they're still shipping DVDs, and they're starting to get into streaming, and Arturo says to me, "Lex, streaming is gonna kill your industry. You should get into tech." Yeah.

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So he said that to me in like 2007, 2008. I finally take him up on that in 2012. I'm hitting some internal industry union problems in, in TV. Mm-hmm.

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As you might know, like, there's different crafts, different unions- Yeah... for different crafts. Guilds. Yeah.

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And I couldn't switch into the union that I wanted to be in, and so Arturo was like, "Come be a UX designer." [laughs] And so I was like, "Okay." [laughs] Mm-hmm. And I went and did that for technically, like, 10 years.

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Oh. I changed that title a bunch- Yeah... and I started going by growth designer- Okay... which is sort of adjacent to growth marketing. And something that you kind of helped trailblaze as a category. Yes. Yeah.

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I helped label it and popularize it, for sure. Mm-hmm. And spent actually many years in tech convincing people that it wasn't marketing- Yeah... and then went and changed and became a marketer myself. [laughs] Okay.

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Yeah, so I quit tech in 2021. Mm-hmm. I started working for myself in 2019. The most obvious thing to do was to work for tech companies, so I worked for Gusto for six months on a growth design project.

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The pandemic hit in 2020, and I was like, "What should I be doing?" And then I was like, "I really don't wanna do tech anymore." Yeah. I just feel like it's run its course for me.

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After, like, a decade of it, of doing it. After a decade, yeah. Yeah.

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And so I started looking at small businesses, and I switched into small business and sort of stumbled my way through that, found creative entrepreneurs, started working with them, and that sort of led me to the creator space.

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Yeah. Um, okay. Creative entrepreneur, is that different than a creator in your mind? Yes. Uh, to me, a creative entrepreneur is, like, a web designer, a copywriter- Yeah... an audio producer.

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Generally a service provider, though not exclusively. Yes. I agree with that. Um, I do wanna hear how you define the term creator. This is something that people always have, like, a slightly different answer on. Yeah.

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It's a tricky one, actually, and for a while I was like, could, can I call myself a creator? Mm-hmm. I think to me it has to do with whether or not content creation is a main way that you make money. Mm-hmm.

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So there are hybrids, right? There's people that are web designers who are also content creators. Yeah. And I think if, if it's a substantial revenue stream for you, you can call yourself a creator.

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I mean, I, I'm not a gatekeeper though. Like, everyone should be able to call [laughs] themselves a creator if they want to. Yeah. But in my mind, that switch happened when I started making money from content.

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It's when content is the tip of the spear. For me, that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that.

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The way I've been, like, the definition I've been stuck on for a little while is basically just, like, somebody who is creating content for the internet for an audience beyond, you know, anybody they know in real life.

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But I think the way you kind of define it there is telling, and I think is also, like, really more useful, is, like, they're making money from it. It's, like, the main way they're making money.

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Um, when I asked Bry- Ryan Broderick this back in, like, m- February or March, whenever I interviewed him, uh, he, he had a, he had, like, a good answer, but at first he quipped...

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Well, the whole answer was good, but at first he quipped, uh, "A creator is a, a gig worker for content, an Uber driver for posts." Um- Mm...

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and then more seriously he said, "It's people making internet content as the main thing. It's not like they're making something online to be read elsewhere," which is what you said.

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Um, but I'm curious what you think about that Uber driver for posts, kind of like tongue in cheek. It's funny.

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I mean, it w- it's funny to hear that he qualified it that way because to me that speaks to, like, the brand deal- Yeah... you know, arrangement that a lot of creators have.

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Which l- I don't think is his main monetization, is it? No, he, he makes the bulk of his income through subscription revenue.Right. Yeah.

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So in that way, I think that that like, that's why I'm so interested in readers funding your work or your audience- Yeah... funding your work because it's like you feel less that way.

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I think you definitely feel like an Uber driver for posts when you exclusively do brand deals or when that's the bulk of your revenue. Yeah. Well, okay, this is, um, I agree, and I think that's a good point.

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But then I think when there's like, a platform that's like revenue share, like let's say YouTube, right? They take 45% of AdSense revenue- Yeah...

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or Substack, you know, t- their business model is taking 10% subscription revenue.

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To me, like when it's that kind of revenue share thing, like that is like you, you, you know, you own the car maybe, but like you don't own the means of like getting customers and like the cash register, et cetera.

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So I think there's like some comparison there too, right? Y- okay, I think in YouTube that is ex- that is extremely true. Yeah. Because in, it's hard to drive people into YouTube. As a YouTuber- Yeah...

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you start to rely on them quite a bit. I think it's starting to become more true on Substack. Mm. But I actually would argue that it's not that true on Substack. Yeah.

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The people that are successful on Substack know how to drive an audience there and could do that on any platform. Yeah. And this is the big thing with Substack.

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People see that these Substackers are popular, and they think Substack's doing it, but that's generally not the case. [laughs] Yeah. No, that's fair.

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I think too, I read, I was, it was, I read one of your posts earlier today, like you were saying that, um, Substack is like a great place to start and then people leave, which I'm not trying to make this like a, a Beehiiv pitch thing, but I do wanna know, uh, so I think this Sunday your platform issue comes out.

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This podcast will already be out by then. This, this will come out a week from today. Um, so I would love... You've been hyping this up a bit.

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[laughs] I would love to hear a little about what you're writing about in this platform issue. That, that- Yeah... listener, you should go read it. It's out now as you listen to this. Yeah, no kidding.

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So the platforms that I'm covering will be Substack, Beehiiv and Ghost. Yeah. Those are the three that, because I'm focused on journalists, those are the three- Mm-hmm... that I hear about the most.

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Though there are some journalists that are on like various instances of WordPress- Yeah... through like news software, um, platforms like Lead and IndieGraph.

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Substack my- so in my circle, Substack has been like the big player for newsletter creators for a long time. Like, at least since 2020, which is when I first started my Substack,

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and that's when Lenny started as well, right? And I wrote one of Lenny's early issues.

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So I remember that time on Substack when you could still hook up your Twitter account, and they had like a functional API- [laughs] Yeah... and they would just get all your followers onto- A lifetime ago. Yeah.

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[laughs] It really feels that way. But Substack's still like, I see people on LinkedIn all the time being like, "Oh, I'm gonna start a newsletter. Obviously, it's gonna be a Substack," right? And I think,

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you know, maybe not to over-credit Beehiiv- Yeah... but I do think Beehiiv has changed the game on that, where it's like, well, maybe it's not Substack actually. Mm. Right? Yeah.

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And I think that, I mean, I'm a huge Beehiiv fan as you probably know. Beehiiv's it. And that's because- Mm... I think Beehiiv

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married all the growth things that worked on Substack w- with the monetization side that we were missing, and Substack frankly is bad at monetization. Yeah. Like, they're subsidizing subscriptions now.

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Have you seen that? I have. The thing where it's like, um, they email you, "Here's a free month if you download the app." Yes. Uh, uh, something's off there, right?

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Like, and, and so my question about Substack is like do they not know how to sell reader subscriptions, or are they choosing to be bad at that? Which doesn't quite make sense 'cause to your point- Yeah...

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it would fill their own pocket. But it's just like at this point we know what works to drive reader subscriptions. They're choosing not to do most of that stuff. It's a little weird.

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Ghost is interesting because Ghost has sort of become like a publishing platform, almost like a WordPress replacement. Yeah. It's more for- And-...

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like publications, whereas like a Substack is more for, for individual columnists. Exactly. Whereas a Beehiiv can be kind of either. Right. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, to me, Beehiiv's the best of everything.

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Um, not, [laughs] not to oversell Be- [laughs] Like I am genuinely a Beehiiv fan. We should move on. We'll, we'll move off the platform shortly. [laughs] Yeah. I'm genuinely a Beehiiv fan because I think- Yeah...

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that like the Beehiiv team just gets what a newsletter business is. So my line- Mm... there is like if you want your business to be coming from your newsletter, if you want to run a newsletter business- Yeah...

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Beehiiv is where you do that. If you want like a better version of social media, and you miss like nice social media, quote unquote- Yeah... that's what Substack's kind of doing. Yes.

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It, it's, it's the social media platform. Um, okay, so not to, not to bore our listeners too much with the, with inside baseball, though this is kind of an inside baseball podcast.

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Um, okay, so in an issue of one of your newsletters, Revenue Rule Breaker, about a month ago, you wrote, "I'm actually not the best at growing audiences, but I am really good," all caps, "at monetizing the hell out of an existing audience."

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Um, and you go on to say that you had 500 emails on your list when you started Growth, Growth, Growth Trackers, um, which you built your Low Energy Leads newsletter out of, which you then grew to 1,500 subscribers over two years, and 400 of those people purchased something from you.

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Um- Yes... so [laughs] that, that was a lot. But what I wanna hear about is these two things, why you say you're not the best at growing audiences but are really good at monetizing an existing audience. Yeah.

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First of all, I'm super impressed that you can keep all my brands straight. I can't. I have like a portfolio [laughs] of brands- [laughs]... that are a little ridiculous.

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So yeah, I, it's funny to hear a growth person I think say, like I've been- Mm... a professional growth practitioner now for, mm, 12 years. Yeah.

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So it's funny to hear a growth person be like, "I'm bad at growing audiences."

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So m- you know, to, to go back a little bit into my career, growth design, my profession in tech, the thing that I popularized, was not actually about like going viral or acquiring random strangers on the internet.

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It was about how many people come to your website who are leaving.Yeah It was like, "Okay, we have all these people coming in, but they're leaving." Well, the growth- We don't-...

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the growth, what you're growing is money, right? It's not necessarily audience, it's, it's, it's revenue. Yes. It's, it's the number going- I mean, it's both. Yeah.

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It's both, but it's like if you have a website where you're getting a bunch of people to come to that website and they're leaving- Mm-hmm... then that audience doesn't matter. It doesn't matter- Yeah...

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how many people you can get to a YouTube video if they never, ever, ever come back, right? Mm-hmm.

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And we see this happen with, like, people have a viral post and they're like, "Weird, no one's subscribed to my newsletter." [laughs] And it's like, well, you weren't connecting the dots there- Yeah...

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between the content you created and what you normally create. And so, yeah, you had a viral post about some lifestyle thing, and that's not what your content's about, so people didn't come over.

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So the skill set that I developed in tech was really about conversion, right? It's like, okay, how do I turn this person who's, like, casually showing up into a loyal fan- Mm-hmm...

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who, you know, knows, likes, and trusts me and wants to buy from me? And so I, I sort of mastered that in, in, for tech companies. And then I brought that over into my small business arena, right?

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And I taught a lot of my clients that because they were like, "Well, all these people are disposable, and I should just, like, spam everyone with Instagram reels, and then somebody'll buy something."

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And it's like, no, that's not how- Yeah... it works. So much of business is relationships,

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and the truth is, even for viral creators, a lot of that virality is coming from their relationships with other creators who are- Mm... boosting their stuff. That's like the ma- I was just writing about that.

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I'm working on tomorrow's newsletter right now. That was... I just wrote sentences to that exact point. [laughs] Yeah.

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[laughs] It's like a secret that no one talks about, but it's like relationships are driving a lot of, a lot of growth. Yeah. Right? And, and the whole premise of word of mouth is networks of relationships.

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So once you understand that, you can start investing in fans. And then thinking about, "Okay, what do these people want, and how do I give that to them in a package way that they're gonna buy something?"

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And that's been, my whole business has been about cracking that puzzle and helping other people crack that puzzle. Mm. So with GrowthTrackers, when I launched GrowthTrackers, GrowthTrackers was a membership program.

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It was very high touch. I make a distinction between subscriptions and membership, and the distinction there is membership tends to be more community. Yeah. Right? You're meeting me, we're interfacing.

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Subscription tends to be more sort of like over the wall. Faceless. So like a media subscription. Yeah. Yeah. You subscribe to NPR, you don't necessarily meet the reporters. Yeah.

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So when I launched GrowthTrackers, the first people I went to were my past clients.

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And I was like, "Hey, you guys have said that you wanna keep working with me on growth projects, that you wanna keep experimenting with your marketing together. How about we do this?"

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And then 10 of them were like, "Yes." And so I booked my founding class that way, right? Yeah. And then I just kept going back to my audience and saying, like, "Do you know someone? Do you wanna be a part of this?"

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And that worked. Like essentially- Mm... that's how I sold that. And then, you know, throughout Growth- Which is what, which is what small businesses are all about is, like- Yeah... that high touch.

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That, like, the, you know, the person behind the counter you shake hands with who knows your name, and, like, knows your order, et cetera. Like, that's what it is all about. Yes, it is.

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Actually, a journalist, Seamus Hughes, who writes Court Watch, said this- Mm... um, earlier this week. He said, "One of my favorite things to do is to write a personal thank you note to every new paying subscriber."

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Yeah. "And I find that that keeps them around longer because they know me, and they can come to me if they have questions, and it builds trust." And it's like it's so overlooked. Mm-hmm.

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But when you do that, people wanna come back, and they wanna pay you, and they wanna promote you. And it, it, that's where the growth engine comes from. Yeah, which is, like, to me, I think people...

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I mean, this is, I guess, what we've already been talking about, but people always think that, like, you know, you want a big audience.

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But, like, really it's not how many people follow you, it's who follies, follows you, that kind of thing.

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Um, would you agree that, like, for most people, whether that's creators or indie journalists, whatever, you're kind of more after a boutique approach versus a scale approach? I think you are now, actually. Mm-hmm.

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And the, the writers behind 404... Are any of the 404- Yeah... writers coming to your event? Uh, yes. Uh, yeah, Samantha. Sam. Yeah. Right, yeah. It's Sam, yeah. So they've talked about this, right? Yeah.

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They're like, they've talked actually extensively about how, um, when they were at Motherboard it was all about- Mm... SEO. It was all about views. It was all about ads- Yeah...

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and things like that, and now it's like, it's about paying subscribers, right? Content's not free anymore. Yeah. I took that from you. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

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So I love that because it means that they're investing in their readers, they're investing in their community. Like, to me, that's, like, a fully aligned revenue model- Yeah...

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where we're producing content for our audience directly. They wanna pay us. It's, it's just, like, there's no, like, weird third party involved and, and- Yeah... driving, you know, how things are going down.

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So yeah, I think when, when you focus on that, when you focus on the monetization there, when you focus on your loyal fans- Mm-hmm... you show up better in your business. And you're not just, like, out meeting strangers.

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Yeah. You're focused on the people that matter, and guess what?

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They help you meet strangers, and then you have- Well, this is, so one thing I, like, uh, been thinking about recently is, like, you know, the internet as, as the global village, right? Like, this is...

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And that's not just the internet, but, like, this concept of the global village. I feel like it's much more productive to think of things in, in terms of, like, villages that you can access globally. I don't know.

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I haven't got the, [laughs] the nomenclature down perfectly, but it's like that is more and more what is more useful for the internet, like, having, like, pockets, right?

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Like, we, it, the monoculture isn't good for anyone or anything or anybody's business. Um, I don't know. I'm all about global villages these days. Interesting. Okay. Mm. Global villages. Yeah.

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I'm gonna have to come around to that model. [laughs] I think, like, I definitely think niche communities are having a moment- Yeah... right now. Which is what, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that,

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like, it's just the, the internet has changed so much. Like, the algorithms are not what they used to be. Mm. Google is sort of, like, flooded by SEO teams, right? Mm-hmm.

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And being, and cannibalizing that as well, putting, you know, like, the, the AI generated summaries, et cetera. Oh, my God. The A- Yeah... yeah, just, just total nonsense.Um, yeah.

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And then social media platforms, like I, you know, some people can crack those- Mm... and I've definitely, like in, in the journalism space, I've definitely come across journalists that are excellent at social media.

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Yeah. And if that is you, awesome, but that's not a lot of us, right? Mm. There's a lot of us that are good writers or good creators or whatever, but we're like not so great at Instagram Reels. Yeah.

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We can't crack TikTok, or YouTube isn't our bag. And so it's like that doesn't mean that you don't have a distribution model. Mm. It just means that that's not it. Not the one, yeah. Yeah.

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And I think leaning into your relationships, whether it's your fans, your readers, your viewers, or partners, co-promoters, is plenty. Like, I'm proving that you can make a living out of that. Yeah.

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Um, okay, so speaking of making a living, you did write in a recent issue of Journalists Pay Themselves that you've made over $150,000 from your three newsletters in the last few years, and that that revenue spans from sponsorships and paid subscriptions to digital products, memberships, coaching sessions, and speaking gigs.

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Yes. Um, can you say which of those were like the, are the biggest portion of that 150, and like which are the smallest? Yeah. The biggest portion is my membership. So Growth Trackers was $500 a month. Yeah.

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It was a, it was an expensive membership. Which wait, let's, let's say quickly for the listeners, this is something you did for two years that was like- Yes...

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a, yeah, a membership community with a newsletter for, again, creative entrepreneurs looking to grow their business and get- Exactly. Yeah, and it included a bunch of live sessions. Yeah.

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I had created a lot of content that was paywalled, you know, inside that community for them. That community actually s- is still going, just for free, like we have an alumni community.

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Um, but that was the majority of my revenue. Yeah. So I made 4 to $7,000 a month on Growth Trackers. So it was like my anchor- Wow... revenue stream, I call it. Mm-hmm.

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And then on top of that, speaking gigs actually is something I'm taking more seriously this year, but I think I've made, this year so far, at least 10 grand from speaking. Yeah.

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I get paid, most of my speaking stuff right now is like trainings and workshops, so there's a program called Pollen, um, which was actually adjacent to Growth Trackers, also for creative entrepreneurs and, um, folks that were leaving corporate starting their own- Is this inbo- inbound or outbound mostly?

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It's been mostly inbound, which is wild. That's ideal. Yeah. And actually, with Journalists Pay Themselves, I've been really impressed by the newsletter to speaking gig pipeline. [laughs] Yeah.

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So I've, I've had people reading the newsletter and say, "Hey, I'd really like for you to come talk to our..." You know, I'm speaking with the TV critics next week, the TV Critics Association, shout out to them.

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We love our TV critics, as a former [laughs] TV production person. Um, and that came from the newsletter, and I spoke with Tiny News Collective in October- Mm-hmm... similarly. Yeah. Nice. That's always good.

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I feel like, I, I was hoping that'd be the answer, 'cause I feel like, I don't know, sometimes I'll get outreach for like, to be a guest on this podcast or whatever, and, you know, sometimes I consider it, and I always look, but I'm always like, I'm always a little suspect of that.

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So I'm, I'm happy for you [laughs] that, that you're finding success that way. I mean, I think it's good. Yeah. It's good to vet that stuff, right? And I'm prioritizing paid speaking gigs going into next year. Mm.

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Like, in the past, I've definitely done a lot of free stuff as well. Yeah. But- Well, okay, wait.

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What are, what are the top three, of those, of all those things, I, I'd imagine this might be a little different from which was the biggest portion of revenue.

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What are like the top three or like, I don't know, your favorite, your favorite ways to, to make [laughs] money in this business? My, I mean, my favorite way to make money is to write stuff and have- Yeah...

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people, like, contribute to... So in October, I, I did an appeal to my reader.

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'Cause like, so since I started Journalists Pay Themselves, I've been like, "Obviously, you guys can do this," and a lot of journalists have been like, "I don't think I can."

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And, you know, Katherine Reynolds Lewis, not to call her out if she's listening- Mm...

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to this, I love her, I super, I really admire her, but she was like, on her podcast actually, was like, "I don't believe that journalists can make one to two grand in revenue a month from their readers."

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And I've had several journalists say that to me. Yeah. They're like, "I don't think that this is possible." And I was like, "Okay, let, let me do this again, and, like, let's see," right?

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So I made an appeal to my newsletter, Low Energy Leads- Mm-hmm... which is now only paid, in October, beginning of October, and I said, "Hey, you can buy the paid version of this newsletter for $100," and

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54 people did it, so I made five- As like a one-off product, right? Correct. 'Cause it's just the archive now.

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I made, I made five grand, and then several of those people bought into a subscription version of that, so $99 a year. Mm-hmm. And now I'm selling the subscription version. So the lifetime deal- Yeah... has expired.

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That was just for October, and now people are buying the subscription, and my goal is to sell 100 by the end of the year, which will be $10,000 in revenue. Yeah.

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Which is, you know, roughly 1,000 a month, even though I started in October, so technically it'll be, you know, 3,500 a month. And so for me, if I can get 500 paying readers at $99 a year, that's 50 grand. Yeah.

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So- That's my ideal situation. Yeah. It's b- it's starting to become, like, doable, and I have such a small audience. Yeah. Like, if I can do it, you can do it, right?

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Well, so I think this is, like, one of the big conflicts in the creator economy, is, like, there are these really creative-minded people who maybe aren't as good, uh, at, you know, the business side, process, marketing, all that.

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Uh, they can't, they've got a good product, quality product, but they can't make it sustainable.

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And then there are the business-minded people who are great at process, market- marketing, monetization, et cetera, um, and you know, they're producing a product that people like and will read and subscribe to or they can generate ad revenue off of, but it's, like, maybe not as high quality as, like, those more creative people.

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And I think this is, like, you know, two poles of a spectrum. These are two extremes.

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Um, most people probably fall more in the middle, but I think, like, it- it's interesting that you come to this from more of a growth marketing side, right?

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And, like, you have this, you know how, you know how to do the monetization side, but you're also not, like-Building this, like, evil empire, flooding the zone [laughs] type of thing, right? Um,

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but yeah, I think this is, this is a theme in Journalists Pay Themselves too, is that, like, you know, journalists have this distaste for marketing, which I agree.

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Like, I graduated college, thought I was gonna be a journalist going in, came out thinking I was gonna be a marketer. Didn't wanna go into marketing 'cause I was like, "This sucks." Um, and look, look where we are today.

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I'm a bit of a, um [laughs] But okay. Just- Turns out that line's actually kinda thin. [laughs] Yes, exactly.

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Um, but so this is what I'm curious about, is like how you communicate to journalists, 'cause you work with a lot of journalists now.

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Like, how do you, like, make this palatable and, like, help people understand how to, like, do marketing in a way that, like, is palatable? Yeah. I mean, lucky for me, they've realized it already, right? Mm-hmm.

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So a lot of journalists are starting their own newsrooms- Yeah... or starting their own publications, and they're like, "Wow, people, more people should be paying me."

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Especially people who are seeing, like, a big free audience growth. They're like, "Okay, well, 10,000 people are here, but 50 of them are paying me.

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It really should be like 1,000 people paying me or 2,000 people paying me, so how do I make that happen?" Lucky for journalists, it's a pretty easy course correction.

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Like if I had to pick which camp to be in, the growth marketers or the journalists, the journalists have just a better shot of making money. Yeah.

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Marketers and business people who know how to monetize, if their content's not good, it's really hard. Yeah. It's really hard to, to, you know, put lipstick on a pig or whatever you wanna say. [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

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But for journalists, it's like the content is good. What I notice that they're missing is selling why people would subscribe or why people would contribute. Mm-hmm.

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So they're often just missing this piece of, like, they're not even really telling people they can contribute, or they're not telling them why they would, or they're not saying that frequently enough.

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And the frequency plus the messaging, it's like you can solve that gap pretty fast. Yeah. Um, okay, you also do these virtual events about twice a month. Tell me about these. Yeah. How do you structure them?

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What are the topics? Yeah. How many people show up? So with some of the folks that I initially sort of seeded this publication with, I was like, "Let's just start meeting and, like- Let's hang out...

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trying some of this stuff out." Yeah. 'Cause I'm trying to get out of consulting, but I wanna help people, and the newsletter can only do so much, right? Mm-hmm.

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It really helps for you to say to me, "Okay, well I tried that thing you said, Lex, but here's why it didn't work for me." Yeah. So that's where consulting comes in, but I don't wanna do consulting. Yeah.

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So my solution to that was community events. And then what's cool about that is that I'm not a genius, and other people have great ideas. [laughs] And so we started formalizing those sort of over the summer.

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We do two events a month right now. Your Next Milestone is one of the formats. Hmm. So folks come and they share their next goal. I wanna hit 1,000 subscribers. I wanna hit 10,000 subscribers. I wanna start speaking.

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I wanna add a different subscription tier, whatever that goal is. Hmm. And then they tell us how they're gonna do it. And other people share their experience with that, right?

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Like, one of the things that comes up a lot is sponsorships and ads, right? Yeah. And somebody always has an interesting take on that.

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Obviously, newsletter growth always comes up, so people, people share cool ways that they're doing that. Yeah.

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We met actually on Monday, and I wrote down, I think, 15 different growth strategies that people shared in that meeting- Hmm... on Monday, which was awesome. What's, what's been the most, uh, like, heated?

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What, like, where, where have you, where has everyone really gotten into the topic and, like, the, you know, it goes over by an hour, whatever.

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What's been the most, you know, heated conversation or- I mean, I, I think, like, one of the most controversial growth things has been Substack's cross recommendations, which Beehiiv- Mm-hmm... has as well. Yeah.

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Like, the idea that when you sign up for a publication, you get, like, auto-subscribed. Here are the three to 17 others. Yeah. But, correct, yeah.

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And I think Substack does that in kind of a shady way where it's like, now it's, like, collapsed- Yeah... where you just, like, auto-subscribe to a bunch of publications you can't even see.

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In Beehiiv's case, you have to, I think, check them, so it's a little different, but that's a really controversial feature. And what's hard about it is it's ma- it's a huge growth feature for me.

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Like, it's, it is really successful. Yeah. And, you know, Casey Newton famously wrote this post about how he thought it was bad and we should stop using it. And so that's, that's one that comes up quite a bit.

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I think ads also, like taking ads and running ads- Yeah... is also quite controversial. People don't wanna give Facebook their money. I totally get that. This is another place where Beehiiv shines.

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Um, and they're like, w- you know, there's a lot of panic about working with brands. Yeah. Like, okay, if I work with this sponsor, how do I push back when they say something about the content or whatever? Yeah.

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Those are the things that are, that are tricky. How do you- But there's solutions to all that stuff, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You can, and you can read about it in, in Journalists Pay Themselves. [laughs] You can.

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[laughs] Um, ha- uh, have you learned anything from these virtual events, these meetups? Anything that's really surprised you from the people?

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I mean, I, like, I would say that it's incredibly encouraging how good journalists are at business. Like, I just, I really want to share that hope with them because- Yeah...

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every time I talk with them about business, they say to me what you said to me earlier, which was like, "We hate business." But then it's like they're, like, secretly good at it, and I think it's fun. Yeah.

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It's super fun to work with writers and people who care about what they're doing.

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Like, they see business in such an interesting way, and, and they actually, like, they're just in a spot where they sort of have to be good at it.

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And they're, they're leveling up so fast, and it's really, really fun to watch and hear about. Like, there's, you know, Alyssa Walker, who joins, uh, our events quite a bit, she's a journalist in LA who covers- Mm-hmm...

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the LA Olympics, the 2028 Olympics. I forgot about that. Um, yeah. Alyssa's newsletter is called Torched. It's, it's amazing. She said there's no better growth lever than a good article, and that is so true. Yeah. Yeah.

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Um, uh, so this reminds me. Something I used to always ask people in these interviews was, like... and I stopped. I don't, I think it's been, I don't know, a couple months.

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Uh, is, like, do you feel that you have a responsibility to your audience? Do you think about that?What is that? For you, I think it's quite obvious.

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It's to help journalists make money on the internet while doing, like, what they love to do.

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Um, but I think more broadly is where I'm really interested in it, where, like, I believe, and I would imagine you believe too, that, like, people putting content out there, contributing to the corpus of the internet, like, there is a responsibility just in like a, you know, a way we have a responsibility to be productive members of society, right?

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Um, but I think it's like... And this goes back a bit to the marketing ver- the, the journalist versus, like, the more marketer side, is it's not necessarily incentived, uh, incentivized. I don't know.

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Do you have thoughts on, like, how you can, like, incentivize this on a broader level? Like, how to encourage people to, like, have better ethics?

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Like, 'cause I think this is one of the big differences between a journalist, somebody from a journalist background, and somebody who's not, who's a creator, is like, there's no, you know, you haven't come through an organization where there is this, this really strict code that you're taught to adhere to.

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Um, I don't know. Yeah. It's, it's, it's kind of an unanswerable, broad question maybe. Yeah. But do you have thoughts? Yes. I have so many thoughts, because I came from, like, a growth practice, right? Yeah.

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Like, I, I came up in the time of Andrew Chen and Brian Balfour and then, um, Chamath at Facebook, [laughs] like, all these growth guys.

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Um, you know, and some of what we were doing at that time was not that ethical, uh, to grow tech companies.

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I think part of what it is working with journalists is actually helping them let go of some of those ethics [laughs] actually. Yeah. Because, you know, I think sometimes

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people go too far with that, especially indies, indie creators and indies- Sometimes you need to bring a gun to a gunfight. Mm.

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Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I see people do on the flip side of this conversation is, like... You know, there's a lot of conversations about ethical tech companies right now. Mm-hmm. Right?

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Like, who's ethical to work with, who's not. And it's like, do I think we should have those conversations as a society? Absolutely.

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Do I think you, as an individual creator who has no audience or a very small audience, is gonna make a societal impact by not choosing this platform because you don't like the founder? Yeah.

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No, I think that's just gonna damage your business. Well, it's that, it's that meme, that, that, that panel from that comic about, like, we should improve society, and yet you participated in it, right?

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I think about that, like, literally every day. Uh, it's just that. Yeah.

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I, and I just think, like, if you, if, if every decision is like, "Oh, I need to make the absolute most ethical decision possible," it, that becomes, like, a hindrance in your business. Yeah.

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So I think the thing to do is to be in conversation with other people and sort of check that stuff with them, right? If you're in creator communities, which I highly, highly recommend you be in- Absolutely...

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or journalist communities or writer communities, just check that stuff. "Hey, I'm thinking about turning on this cross-recommendations. Pros and cons, everybody? Like, what's, what's..." Yeah.

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You know, 'cause sometimes there is, like, a legitimate business downside even to the bad actor stuff, and then you're like, "Oh, okay, turns out that was bad anyway. Great." Yeah. "I won't do it." Easy decision to make.

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[laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay.

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So something I read, speaking of, going back to paid subscription businesses, something I read in your newsletter is that $9 per month is the ideal base price for a subscription offering, and that it's fairly obvious to you that that is [laughs] the ideal price point.

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According to me, yes. Yeah. How did you get there? According to me, it's $9. Okay, so I analyzed, uh, 14 different worker-owned outlets. Mm, mm-hmm. 404 Media, Hellgate, Rascal- Defector... Rain, Defector, exactly.

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Mm-hmm. And I looked at their pricing. The majority of the starting tier was between $5 and $10. Yeah. I agree with Matt Brown, who writes Extra Points, a Beehive Sports publication- Mm-hmm...

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um, that they're, it's not worth doing anything closer to the $5 tier. Like, getting someone to pay you at all is hard, so I think there's this sentiment of like, "Oh, people don't wanna pay.

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They wanna pay $1, $3," right? Patreon and Substack popularized the $5 tier, but I'm with Matt- Yeah... that if someone's paying 5, they can pay 7. And actually, if they can pay 7, they can pay 9.

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Yeah, but keep it single digit. And if you're gonna put in the labor... Keep it single digit. Yeah. But if you're gonna put in the labor, you might as well get the 9, right? Like- Mm-hmm...

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these are people that have disposable income. Mm-hmm. No one's, like, giving you their lunch money, right? So the n- the $5 subscriber and the $9 subscriber are the same person. Yeah.

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The $9 subscriber and the $99 subscriber are different people. Yeah. Right? Or people who are on a different path with your publication. That's like your niche business product.

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Yes, or your, like, absolute biggest fan or your founding fan, right? Mm-hmm. Or your corporate fan. Yeah. So they're different people. You're catering to them in different ways.

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But, you know, you're not gonna lose a lot of people going from 5 to 9, so I price mine at 9 [laughs] as well. Yeah. And I'm, I'm a big fan of that.

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And, uh, it's interesting, I actually would really love to hear from 404, 'cause they're at 10. Mm. Why they went to 10 instead of 9, and it would be really interesting to know if that actually is the, the limit there.

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Yeah. Is it 9 to 10? Like, uh, it's hard to know. Um, so that's a good transition to subscript- subscription fatigue, uh, which I should say personally, like, I'm currently not paying for 404. I read a lot of their work.

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I've been thinking about paying. But I am currently paying for Hellgate, uh, and I'm paying for some others, and then, you know, there's plenty of publications I read and I don't pay for.

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Um, and in my mind it's like I only ever wanna be spending, I don't know, not $100 per month on these subscriptions, but, like, not... A manageable amount, because I'm reading so much.

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Like, I'm not gonna read every article from the thing I'm subscribing to, so it needs to make sense, right?

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So, like, that's my personal subscription fatigue, um, experience, and, you know, I'll, like, unsubscribe to one to subscribe to another. Three months later, I'll do that again with another. Uh, yeah.

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What do you think about- Interesting... subscription fatigue? Yeah. Well, 'cause subscription fatigue goes beyond just media subscriptions, right? And beyond newsletter subscriptions.

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It's like- Well, like Hulu, Netflix, yeah... Hulu, Spotify. Exactly. I heard the auto manufacturers are about to make our cars- Oh my God, yeah, what-... into subscriptions. [laughs] Every piece of software.

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Well, it's Salesforce that we have to blame for all this, right? Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And if you run your own business, then you're paying, yeah, QuickBooks and- Yeah. [laughs]... Notion and whatever else, Google.

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Mm-hmm. So I, I understand that, like-Subscription fatigue is a thing.

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But I think as a creator you have to ignore that because, one, people who want your work to exist understand that you need to get paid, and two, it's way more work for you to chase down one-time contributions than for you to get someone into a recurring subscription.

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Mm. Mm-hmm. And so you can play with things like discounts, you can play with things like annual, right? Which I think for some people comes across as, like, less of a annoying thing.

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It's like, "Okay, I'm just gonna pay $100 a year," that feels less bad than taking on this monthly expense. I rarely do that- It's like a lot... personally. You what? I rarely do that. I'm almost- Oh...

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always a monthly guy. Yeah. But I think some people are different, right? And this is- Yeah... the thing. Your, your, your audience is not a monolith, and so you have to play with these things and sort of- Mm-hmm... see.

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I also think, I like, uh, Matt Kiser's point from, um, What the Fuck Just Happened Today, about some people just are never gonna be monthly people. Give them a one-time option. Yeah. That's fine.

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But I, I wouldn't shy away from monthly contributions because you personally hate subscriptions. Like- Yeah... this is something I hear all the time from people.

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They're like, "Well, I hate getting newsletters so I don't wanna have a newsletter." And it's like, if you don't wanna have a newsletter, fine. But like don't- But you're not your audience... you're not your audience.

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Like- Yeah... you know, I hate getting direct mail, but guess what? It's really effective, and that's why we get so much of it [laughs]. Yeah.

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Um, you said on an issue of Revenue Rule Breaker, your pop-up newsletter, uh, that you kind of have framed your subscription offering as a subscription to Lex and not to any one project, which I think is really a very creator way of looking at it, right?

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Where it's like... Like, 'cause that's, that's another thing. Sometimes when I've asked people, "Well, what is a creator?" And they've said, "Well, it's like a personality driven content entrepreneur."

244
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Um, tell me more about that. Like, did you- Yeah... used to frame it more on a per project base and now it's about supporting Lex? Yeah. It's funny because when I started my business in 2019 it was called Lex Roman Inc.

245
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Like- Mm... my corporation name was Lex Roman Inc. because I sort of knew that I was the brand at that point.

246
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And I was, even though I started as a consultancy, I was doing a ton of writing and speaking and teaching and had a personal brand around growth design that was beyond my client work.

247
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And somewhere along the way in the small business realm, I started these, like, mini brands, right?

248
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So a bunch of the things you've heard in this show, growth trackers, low energy leads, Revenue Rule Breaker, journalists, I started these, like, brands, these, like- [laughs] Yeah... spinoff brands.

249
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And then I would, like, latch on to one, and then I would decide I didn't wanna do that project anymore. Mm-hmm.

250
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Low Energy Leads was my main newsletter for, like, a year and a couple months, and then I was like, "I actually don't wanna write this newsletter anymore, so I need to start lifting up above these brands and recognize that some of these people will come with me," right?

251
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Yeah. Like, s- for some people this is where we, we leave each other, but for others, they're gonna come along. You know, before all this, I had another newsletter, my Substack, LA Pays Attention.

252
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Actually, one of the first growth trackers was a reader of that newsletter. That was a political newsletter about LA. So you never know who is gonna come through some of these different iterations.

253
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And if you're like me and you can't pick a lane, like- Yeah... you can sort of rebrand as yourself. Even if you're not... Like, I'm not, like, a lifestyle influencer, right? Yeah. I'm more of a B2B creator.

254
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I, I focus on monetization and marketing. But it's still- Like-... whi- whichever...

255
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I'm sure even from the, from the LA newsletter up until now, it's still, like, all about, like, your particular philosophies and, like, your, like, political outlook look... you know, bleeding through.

256
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Like, c- obviously a clear connection there if you're, like, doing kind of LA journalism to now you're, like, doing content for journalists. Like, it's all, like, it's all ideologically gonna be of a thread. Yeah.

257
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Well, and, and, and now that I'm doing Journalists Pay Themselves, a lot of the folks who were on LA Pays Attention were journalists- Mm...

258
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and they're coming back up, and they're like, "I used to read that, and now I'm- Yeah... over here." And so y- I used to sort of be like, "Okay, bye forever, I'm gonna go do something else," but now I'm like- Yeah...

259
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"No, I think some of these people might wanna come." And the ones who don't, they can just get off the train and that's totally fine. Yeah. Um, what is your relationship like to social media?

260
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'Cause you don't have huge followings. I think LinkedIn might be your biggest. Uh, ig- we, we've covered a bunch already how, you know, you're not a big audience type of person.

261
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Yeah, what's your relationship with social media? Yeah. I have a minuscule social media following. Like, people act like my level of social media following, like, doesn't even exist, right? Yeah.

262
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Like, creators will be like, "Well, these small creators at 10,000- You've got 635-... followers"... on Twitter or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's like nothing. Yeah. Absolutely nothing.

263
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Um, yeah, I mean, social media is interesting because I have really good conversion off of LinkedIn. Like- Mm... in terms of people coming on- But you are a B2B person.

264
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I'm a B2B person, and so I've had, you know, clients for years have come through LinkedIn. I've stayed in touch with people on LinkedIn. That's how people hop from all my different projects.

265
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I've gotten people into my paid subscription, into Growth Trackers from LinkedIn. I get a lot of DMs there and speaking opportunities there. It's always been a big business driver for me.

266
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Twitter, actually, when I started Journalists Pay Themselves, I had deleted my Twitter years ago. So I started over this year exclusively because I wanted to reach journalists, and that's where I knew that they were.

267
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So I started Journalists Pay Themselves, I had like 50 followers on Twitter. [laughs] Right? Like, but because I think this message was not being said very often- Mm... it stood out.

268
00:42:06.128 --> 00:42:16.428
So I started, like, replying to journalists on Twitter, and that's how Nick got in touch with me at Hellgate. Like, that was when I had very few followers, like almost nonexistent account, right? Yeah.

269
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Um, like almost suppression by Twitter [laughs] level of account. Like, this person might be a bot level. Yeah.

270
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Um, but it was, I think, enough of a resonant message that people were like, "Okay, let me see who this person is," which is the thing. If you're gonna be a small audience person, your message has to be really good. Mm.

271
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You can't just be, like, sort of parroting this, like, generic thing. It needs... You need to have a take of sorts- Well, you have to show, like, that you're authentically a person.

272
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Like, I feel like I see a lot of people who are good at growing an audience, but it's like-Such, like, clear...

273
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And maybe it's just 'cause I have worked in this and, like, written- ghostwritten these for other people, but it's such clear, like, growth hacking stuff.

274
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Like, th- you're not trying to engage with anybody, you're just trying to get engagement in a one-way transaction. Yes. Well, and if you can't back that up- Yeah...

275
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like, through your products, through your services, then that's gonna dead end for you and you're gonna stay on a content treadmill forever, right? Mm-hmm.

276
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Which goes back to the listening to the audience thing, [laughs] right? Yeah. I think people still think about content as a funnel. I think we overweight social media in our marketing efforts- Mm...

277
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and we underweight this, like, word of mouth engine, which is honestly way more fun to crack, way more efficient for you as a creator, and way more rewarding for your audience. Mm-hmm.

278
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So yeah, I try to lean away from social. I do use it, um, but I don't, like- Just to doomscroll... I don't, I don't doomscroll and I just like, I s- I've stopped sweating. Like, I cannot nail short form video.

279
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Like- Yeah... I cannot, right? Like, YouTube is not my bag, as much as I would li- I would like it to be. Mm. It's just, like, not. Newsletters are something I'm good at, so I'm just trying to lean into what I'm good at.

280
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Community building is something I'm good at, so I'm just leveraging the things that I- Yeah... that work for me, you know? Uh, in the same way I asked what is a creator, what is a newsletter? [laughs] Okay.

281
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I think of a newsletter as a piece of content that stands alone that isn't trying to sell you something necessarily. Yes. Mm-hmm. I, I- So- Oh, go ahead. It can sell you something,

282
00:44:16.976 --> 00:44:25.146
but it's not always trying to sell you something. So, like, an email list is, like, a business would have an email list- Mm... and that can be just for selling you stuff. Like, the hotel- Yeah...

283
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that you recently went to, they have an email list. It's probably not a newsletter. They're just selling you hotel stuff. Yeah. This is good.

284
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So the way I- I hadn't thought about this in a little while and I wrote it down, uh, knowing I'd ask you this question. What I wrote was, it's a non-transactional themed email sent to a mailing list. Love it. Yeah. Yeah.

285
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It's a really thin distinction though, right? And I- people struggle with it. And the funny thing, I was telling my, um, email friend, Tarzan Kay, who I also recommend, folks. Do you know- Mm... Tarzan, for instance?

286
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Okay. I don't think I do. Oh my God. Tarzan is an email marketer- Mm... who made a transition into the newsletter space. I was telling Tarzan, I think I actually pivoted too hard into the newsletter space. Huh.

287
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And I had to reestablish an email list recently. Because I have so many projects- Yeah... I do need to sell people more frequently, and so I needed an email list where I could be more salesy. Yeah.

288
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Well, so I think, um, like, w- you know, Substack comes onto the scene and creates this, like, wave of, like, individual creator columnists.

289
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And like, that's a type of newsletter, but then there's the more publication type of newsletters, right? Like, all the independent organizations we've been talking about, 404, Hellgate, et cetera.

290
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Um, and then, then there's things that are kind of in between. But I wonder, like... 'Cause the individual creator columnist, I think this is why, this is what Substack is great for.

291
00:45:45.196 --> 00:45:52.796
It's like, you don't know really what you wanna do. You, you, you're not thinking about any of this except, "Hey, I wanna write, kind of somehow. I don't really know what I wanna write about."

292
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So you can just go in and, like, super easy to just start writing and like, you know, be on those lists of recommendations and get some subscribers.

293
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But, like, is that a lasting thing in the same way that, like, was Medium a lasting thing, right? I don't know.

294
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And that's where, like, a Beehiiv, a Ghost, et cetera, these other things that are more about, like, building a business and aren't social networks, like, that probably has more longevity.

295
00:46:15.456 --> 00:46:23.846
And I like a bunch of these, you know, personal essay columnists. I'm, I'm, I'm writing about one this week, uh, [laughs] for the newsletter, Alex Dibranco. Yeah.

296
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But with him too, he writes this newsletter Both Are True, like,

297
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one thing I noticed going, like, went through all his archive, et cetera, and like, kind of watching this person who was, like, a stand-up comedian, uh, wannabe, who, he didn't really wanna do the open mic stuff.

298
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He's like, "I'm gonna try to do, uh, stand-up on Substack," right? And he starts doing that. But then you see him, like, kind of professionalizing and trying to make a business out of it.

299
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He, like, plays this character called Brad C Unversion, like Brad Conversion, where it's like, him sublimating his desire to not do marketing, right?

300
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And like, just putting it in this character that then allows him to think about it and talk about it. Um, anyways, I think, like...

301
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'Cause it's a lot of work to, like, write personal, good personal essays, at least on the internet. And like, it takes hours, and especially if you're committing to the weekly thing.

302
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And I think there's, like, I don't know, maybe, like, over the next five years, five years, there's more and more, like, kind of just bloggy ones that people will write, like, once every couple months. You know- Yeah...

303
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you write an essay. Um, but then there's also more, like, really dialed in businesses around content. Um, and I think that's, like, that's, like, a difference too b- that I see between Beehiiv and Substack.

304
00:47:30.456 --> 00:47:42.436
Like, a, a Substack, you know, that has become, like, Kleenex for tissue, right? But like, what a Substack is is, like, a single columnist who, maybe it's not even a personal essay style, but like, they're not...

305
00:47:42.536 --> 00:47:50.696
Again, going back to what you said at the beginning, it's not really about m- making money, monetizing, it's about, like, building an audience that maybe you do with other things. I don't know. Yeah.

306
00:47:50.816 --> 00:48:00.066
Um, I'm on my soapbox a bit here, but- No. I mean, you've hit on w- my main beef with Substack, right? And I'm trying to be more even-keeled about it, because I have some Substackers in my DM- Yeah...

307
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who I love dearly- Yeah... who are, like- I subscribe to a bunch of Substacks. I, I like them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, obviously. I, I do too. Yeah.

308
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But I think I've been really raging against [laughs] Substack because I've started to, like, dig back in to what's going on there, and I'm like, I actually think they're really screwing over these writers, right? Yeah.

309
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They're sort of s- making this sales pitch that you can have growth on autopilot. That's the line that they reuse over and over again in their documentation, "We're doing growth on autopilot for you."

310
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And, um, what they're doing is audience on autopilot. Ah, yes. Right? They're not doing monetization really at all, not even in the manual way. Mm-hmm. So they don't even do m- ma- manual monetization.

311
00:48:38.416 --> 00:48:49.756
They certainly do not do automated monetization. And so, like, what you're saying with Alex is a perfect example. Substackers that I'm coming across, like, uh, Eric Newcomer, who has- Yeah...

312
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I think 100,000 subscribers on Substack recently- $2 million in revenue, right? $2 million in revenue.Big asterisk, paid subscribers flat for two years. Mm. Right?

313
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That revenue growth is coming from events and other sponsorships- Yeah... and other revenue streams. Substack is not making that happen, right?

314
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So that- And well, and crucially, they're not making more money on that, which is their business model. Yes, which makes absolutely no sense, right? [laughs] So it's like they're not- Yeah...

315
00:49:15.296 --> 00:49:21.636
enabling sponsorships really at all, which, you know, is a product choice, which is- Yeah... you can sort of make a, an argument for. Absolutely.

316
00:49:21.636 --> 00:49:28.546
But the fact that they're not helping people sell subscriptions, their only lever there is this thing called Boost, which is different than Beehiiv Boost, right?

317
00:49:28.606 --> 00:49:37.286
And it's like a series of discounts that they're offering you. Yeah. It's just really lame. Like, I, I don't know if like no one at Substack knows how to monetize subscriptions.

318
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Maybe they need to hire more creators in-house. Mm-hmm. But they're just not even enabling that. So my react to Substackers, for sure, is to think about moving away from [laughs] Substack- Yeah...

319
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once you have like a good audience base. You know, to me the, the minimum there is like 1,000. Mm-hmm. Um, once you have some folks on your list, like I would think about getting out of there.

320
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If you feel like you can't leave, I would, I would back it up with a list tool that will actually let you automate and segment your audience so you can sell to them. Yeah. That's a good point.

321
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Maybe just one more question. So you've been doing this for not even a year. Uh, based on your track record, are, are you still gonna be doing it in two years?

322
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Or [laughs] what, what would you- That is such a great question... be doing in two years? [laughs] That remains to be seen. Yeah.

323
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Um, I think it depends a bit on sort of like the opportunities that come my way in this space- Mm-hmm... and whether or not I can make a living doing like trainings and speaking and the subscription. Yeah.

324
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Like, you know, I pivot out of necessity, right? Either because it gets to be too operationally challenging for me, or- Yeah... there's not enough interest in the space.

325
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But I guess like on some level I would like to solve some of this quickly for journalists. Mm.

326
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Like I, I would like for more journalists to feel confident that they can launch their own newsletter, launch their own publication- Yeah... and make- Oh, like ideally this is a corpus that you can complete. Exactly.

327
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Mm-hmm. Exactly. So I don't know how long I'll be doing it, but I'm not like trying to prolong it necessarily. Yeah. If we can solve it faster, I think we should. [laughs] Yeah.

328
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[laughs] 'Cause I can always find another thing to do, [laughs] so yeah. You could always go back to TV production. [laughs] Exa- yeah, no kidding. Absolutely not. I would never. But yeah, exactly.

329
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[laughs] That kind of thing. Cool. Well, I guess we'll stop it there. Um, do you want... Where, where should people go to find you, Journalists Pay Themselves? Yeah.

330
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Journalists Pay Themselves, and then I have all of these random things that we've talked about at lexroman.com. Lexroman.com. Well, Lex, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. Yeah, of course.

331
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And everyone else, I'll see you next week. This has been Creator Spotlight. Bye-bye.

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