I actually started my first newsletter back in twenty thirteen. I feel like I've been sending emails forever. You're somebody who I've always recognized to be charismatic, a little bit insane.
How do you have the energy for all this stuff? So I've always had this question, right? Why are you like this? For years, I would wake up before the sun and write every chaotic thought that's ever entered my brain.
You spend your days posting on LinkedIn. You have twenty-five thousand followers there. I have the unique ability to get eyeballs on my content because of how against the grain I post.
You are the only person I know who publicly admits to using Threads. It's gone viral on Threads at least a dozen or so times. Can you rank X, LinkedIn, and Threads from the worst on up? Ooh, great timing.
Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast. My name is Francis Zierer, and today we're speaking with Daniel Burke. Let's get one thing out of the way.
Daniel is a colleague of mine at Beehiiv, but nobody at Beehiiv asked me to have him on, and I don't actually work with him in any direct capacity.
I wanted to have him on because he is a talented creator in his own right, with twenty-five thousand followers on LinkedIn, a revenue-generating local newsletter in South Carolina, and a podcast that he told me made around sixty thousand dollars last year.
The real unique value of having him on, though, is he was Beehiiv's first sales hire.
He's been at the company for a little over three years, and so very few people will have his insight into the problems media companies and creators are trying to solve with their newsletters and how he helps them solve them.
So that's where we're gonna start. It's a good conversation. Daniel is a great talker. Enjoy. So you were the first sales hire at Beehiiv. You joined a little over three years ago, seventh employee.
But before we get into that, you were doing, you were doing newsletters before you joined Beehiiv. This is a big part- Oh, wow... of why you sought out a role at Beehiiv.
Specifically, just looking at your LinkedIn career history, I see three companies where you reference newsletters. Tithely let the music play.
Linkstyle, maybe more that I'm missing, but I wanna know what your formative education in newsletters was, how you view the format. Yeah. So it's Tithely, which doesn't matter. S.
[chuckles] Uh, but I've- Not a religious guy... been doing newsletters- T is tithe. I know, I know. Tithely, actually, it s- it sounds like a dentist office. Like, "Tithely, get your newsletters now."
Paid subscriber to a dentist office. Mm-hmm. I actually started my first newsletter, it was my own newsletter, back in twenty thirteen. Wow.
And I used a Wix website, so this is huge throwback, and emailed directly from Wix. So it's just, like, the most basic...
You know, we talk to people with Wix emails now, you're like, "Oh, man, like, let's, let's improve that tech stack." Mm-hmm. But I-- It was, like, kind of a personal blog. You know, I had about two hundred subscribers.
I had some donors, actually. Like, people paid me so that I could at least recoup the platform cost- Mm...
which, like, of two hundred subscribers, I mean, now I look at that, I'm like, "That was, like, pretty cool that I had engagement and people paying and two hundred and twenty- In twenty thirteen...
total subscribers in twenty thirteen. And, um, I went to school for history, philosophy, and then graduate school for theology.
That is just a glorified way of saying I paid way too much money to write and read for ten years. Me too. Uh- Ten years- Ten years is a long time... right. Y- yeah, well, I don't know. Ten, ten might be a- [chuckles]...
an exaggeration, but, you know, all of college. And
that translates so well to traditional journalism, one, but also what I would call this, like, new media of curating a thought and a voice and a, an ethos in the form of a newsletter.
And so you have, you know, all this journey of my career where I was in marketing and sales, I was in traditional marketing, I was in traditional sales, I was in startups, and I always tried to find a way to make newsletters an adjacent part of my strategy- Mm...
in all of those roles.
And so you didn't even mention the, uh, because it's s- it looks irrelevant when you look at LinkedIn, but, uh, Therafin, I was in medical device manufacturing for four and a half years as a marketing and sales director.
Uh, and in this manufacturing center, they did, like, pop-up startups. They did startups for outdoor camping equipment. They did startups for, like, Paralympic athletes to play bocce ball.
I mean, all sorts of stuff, like, literally the full gamut. And they just threw stuff up on Amazon for COVID. So, like, when COVID- Mm...
hit, we had sneeze guards, and I sold, like, two million dollars' worth of sneeze guards, these literal, you know, acrylic screens. So why do I say all this? There was a newsletter component for all of these things.
As simple as get your customers, email them, educate them on why the product matters- Mm...
and as complex as turn this fan base, this brand, this almost affinity for the educational component of the product into a customer.
So more that long tail, kind of, uh, more privy to, like, life cycle marketing, but- Yeah... using a newsletter component to that marketing strategy. So I've- Life cycle marketing newslettering is your, is your root.
Yeah. Yeah. I've been-- I feel like I've been sending emails as a part of a marketing and sales and content strategy forever. I mean, thirteen, I was, thirteen years ago. That makes me feel ancient. You were thirteen.
Uh, I know. Yeah. [chuckles] Seriously. Good, good night. But anyways, yeah, that's, uh, that's, you know, the long of the short. Mm-hmm. Uh, okay, so joining Beehiiv, as I said, you were the seventh employee.
It was a little over three years ago. You were the first account executive, which is salesperson for- Yep... people who don't know what that term means. What do you do now today, twenty twenty-six?
What is your day to day now? I, I should say actually really quickly too, for the listeners, Daniel and I are colleagues at Beehiiv, but I don't work with Daniel. Creator Spotlight is an island.
I have never worked with Daniel in any [chuckles] capacity. Uh, we're friends, but I don't actually really know what he does. So I'm asking this question generally. What do you do in your day to day now?
[chuckles] Yeah, uh, great question.It has transformed quite dramatically over the years. What I do every day is I-I s- it's enterprise sales. So I am your typical account executive by role and responsibility.
I own large media companies, large businesses, uh, so you think of like Time Magazine and those that look like Time Magazine.
But I also spend my days talking to creators and journalists who maybe are looking to start newsletters as part of their content strategy.
Maybe they've already tapped into social and they have, you know, a, a amassed a following in social, or they might even have like a, a large business with a large newsletter list or, or email list rather.
They're doing your typical traditional marketing, but they don't have a content-first product.
And so I help them strategically look at newsletters as this opportunity to create a new product in their product line that is itself an email.
So one part AE, you know, account executive, one part strategy, and then I do a lot of content creation, some of it for Beehiiv, some of it not for Beehiiv. We'll get into that content- Yeah... creation in a little bit.
More on the types of clients and customers you're working with and the problems that bring you the solutions you are helping them figure out.
So enterprise companies, over the past three years or so, I'm sure it's really run the gamut, right? Like it used to be any customer coming in, you were probably taking a call. Now it's more the enterprise- Yeah...
and still some, as you said, journalists and creators. I wanna talk about patterns among the problems they're bringing you.
Uh, first, like across all those groups, like what are the most common patterns regardless of the size of their audience or potential audience or like the number of people in the company, whether it's an individual journalist or like a Fortune 500 company?
Yeah.
With the Fortune 500s, the commonality is they're using tools that are really good at your traditional life cycle marketing, where you're just doing drip campaigns, you're selling e-commerce, like you're driving people back to a storefront in some, in some capacity.
But the tools they're using are just not good or built for newsletters.
And when I say newsletters, so that everyone listening knows what I mean by this, newsletters in this sense is an email that is itself the bottom of the funnel. It is the, the juice, the product. You open an email.
It can serve as top of funnel, like I mentioned, but the product is the email. The, the goal isn't to get someone to click back to a Shopify.
The goal is actually to get someone to engage with the content that you're producing.
So there's one part is, uh, they just don't have tools that are created to curate that type of customer experience, and the other part is they don't really know what makes this newsletter vertical or channel different and valuable.
And so it's a very strategic educational sales process where you're, you're taking a, a business that is, for all intents and purposes, successful, and you're saying, "Hey, there is a way to generate more revenue from your core base of audience subscribers, customers, but also create this almost like brand-new category without reinventing the wheel."
Like you probably already have a lot of the good content that you could- Mm-hmm... repurpose for this, and you likely have at least some manner of team that could own this.
And so it's helping them package it in a way that makes sense to deliver in an email. What's the hardest part of the sell? Like what, where do you lose people? Yeah.
Uh, a lot of times- I'm sure this varies a lot, but yeah. It, it does. A lot of times with the largest companies, we are serving more as a rip and replace to a tool that they might have years-long contracts with.
And so we're competing with staying, you know, and convincing them that doing something is better- The devil you know... than doing nothing. Mm. Exactly. The devil you know.
And so that's the, the, the single common thread, uh, I would say the most common thread.
The one that not so much with the largest companies, but the smaller companies or creators or journalists, you know, more independent, tiny teams, is that there are actually a lot of tools available.
At Beehiiv, you and I are biased. I love Beehiiv. In fact, I used Beehiiv before I worked here, so like I'm, I'm like a, a super fan of the product prior to having the bias.
But there are other options, and I think when you have, uh, less to lose, sometimes ironically you feel more risk because you have this little baby that's yours, and you're like, "Oh, I've, I've built this over long hours and long nights, and it's my side hustle, and if I move it or if I implement some new tool or strategy and everything breaks, then what?"
Mm. And it's that analysis paralysis that I think people feel when they're smaller. It, it's like, "Ah, I, I'm scared.
I don't, I don't want to feel this fear, and I feel this fear so much that it's gonna prevent me from making a choice." Mm-hmm.
Compared to three years ago versus now, and I don't know, maybe at different points over that period of time, are the challenges that potential clients and customers bringing you the problems that they need solved, have they changed much or has it basically- Yeah...
been the same of we m- we need to, we need a better newsletter software to accomplish some email-related goal or we want to set up an editorial newsletter and what we currently have is not built for that?
Have those problems and solutions changed in the three years that you've been doing this? Yeah. I, I would say they've changed as recent as like this calendar year, '26, and in last calendar year, 2025.
We all know LLMs are changing the way- Mm... search and social operate, and so many companies have relied forever on search and social driving customer acquisition.
When you joined, you joined like right around when ChatGPT came out, I think. If it was like- Yeah... late 2022. I think that's when, right? Exactly. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I d- right around that time.
Uh, you know, it's, everything has changed and-I think the argument for newsletters being more important now than they've ever been is a, a solid argument, and it's because relying on search and social is effectively a dying model.
You talk to website... You know, you talk to, talk to any media company, any large organization, and their website traffic is going down. I mean- Mm-hmm... you have AOA, AOE, AOM, SEO, all this stuff.
You know, like I don't know the acronyms. There's a billion acronyms. How to actually show up in search results for GPTs and for the different LLMs, n-no one's really figured that out. GEO, right? Yeah, GEO.
I'm like, I'm like, "What, what in the world?" There's so many acronyms.
Uh, people have their own suspicions, and they suspect, "If I do this, this'll work," and there's like the Reddit models of, you know, how LLMs pull from community threads on Reddit, and there's like so much that goes into this.
But SEO has been a, a tried and true approach to search and social for decades. Mm.
And so that evolving before our eyes puts more onus on giving, uh, value and, and resource to a content-driven channel that you know has a higher propensity to land directly in front of your audience.
And I, I know there's... I can even think of a few people right now that would disagree with, you know, owned versus rented audience. And- Mm-hmm... you know, your rented audience is social, your owned audience is email.
And the argument against that is, well, is my audience in email-owned if I still have to fight primary inbox versus spam and have like your, you know, your domain reputation?
It's like the, the fact is you have way more control of email and distributing that content to the eyeballs that matter most than you do anywhere else.
I mean, that's just- I mean, s- my argument there is like you can write down on paper a list of emails, and you can have that and like put that in a shoebox under your bed. You can't really...
You can do that with, you know, your social media followers, but it's not the same. You can't then take those followers- Yeah... to another, to another service provider. You can do that with email.
But yes, like- That's exactly right... you know, none, none of it's truly owned. Ashes to ashes- Yes... bits to bits. Um [laughs] okay. We're at, we're at the mercy of the internet powers, unfortunately.
S-speaking of those internet powers, I wanna talk a bit about you as a creator. Can you rank, in your experience, X, LinkedIn, and Threads from the worst on up?
Ooh, great timing because I have wrestled with this recently. Mm. I took three weeks off of X, which is a trillion times longer than I've ever taken off of X since I started on X. Uh, three week...
Like I, I'm like addicted to X. It's probably a problem. Yeah. It is definitely a problem. I'll say that for everyone listening. [laughs] I took three weeks off in January as sort of like a, all right, new year, new me.
Let me, like, just gonna- I deleted it from my phone for January as part of like a little dry January thing. Right. Still looked at it on my, on my desktop, but- Sure. Sure, for like 20 hours a day on your desktop.
[laughs] No, no, not that bad. Anyways, so back to you. Uh, so it depends on what we're ranking it for. Hmm. Like LinkedIn,
X, and Threads are worlds of different for the audiences you are more likely to be in front of, whether there are decision-makers that are like lurkers. I think a lot of decision-makers lurk on LinkedIn and on X.
I personally... So I've gone viral on Threads at least a dozen or so times. But you don't have particularly- I don't even have-... that many followers there. I know.
I only have like 900 followers there, but I've gotten a post like four or five million impressions, like, like regularly, and it's almost always about health and running- Mm... and fitness- Mm-hmm...
when I pop off there, and all the people that reply and engage are like stoked out of their minds. "Oh, you know, running is sick, and I, you know, I, I'm doing a marathon too."
Like, "Good for you," losing weight, all this stuff. Like I, I haven't even seen, um, maybe they're there, but I have not experienced any, like economic buyer of a Fortune 50 company lurking on Threads.
Personally, you are the only person I know who, who publicly admits to using Threads. I have never- Right?... used it. I only, like I- There are so many people. Yeah.
I'll be scrolling on Instagram, and you know, they'll have like the little inset Threads posts, and I'm like, "Oh." It's always... It's al- it's almost always soccer-related, so I'm like, oh, here's- Yeah...
something I wanna know about like one of the players I like, and I click that, read it, I'm like, "Oh, well this was pointless to click this," and I immediately close the app.
I, I think, like s- apparently Threads has more daily active users than X. Like that's what I've seen, i-i- But I think it includes me doing that. Right. I have no idea. Exactly.
I have no idea how to like verify that, but I think X is still where, in my opinion, the most, like tech bubble, tech niche founders are gonna be- Mm.
Like I just, I just tweeted a few days ago about- Which are the people you're in conversation with and wanna reach... That's what I'm... Well, not for enterprise necessarily, but for like networking to get- Yeah...
in the door of enterprise 'cause all these people know other people.
So a lot of times, like I, I, I tweeted about something like recovery after runs or something, and like the founder of a cold plunge company DM'd me, said, "Hey, I founded this." It's like a hyper successful.
I was like- Yeah... "What?" And I had to like verify, is this guy who he says he is? He only had like a coup- couple thousand followers, but that's what I see with X.
Like very important, powerful people are just on X, and you can just DM them [laughs] - Mm... uh, very easily. LinkedIn, LinkedIn there's a lot more strategy. So, uh, y-you asked, how would I rank them? Yeah.
For my day job, I would, I would say LinkedIn, X, Threads. Mm. For my own personal- That's, that's best. Best to worst. Best to worst. That's where it's best. [laughs] Best to worst.
I would say for my own personal enjoyment, X, LinkedIn, Threads. Hmm. But I, I'm, I'm starting to like Threads actually.
[laughs] Like the, the vibes are better more, more often than not, at least in my experience, and I know everyone sees their own little algorithm- Mm-hmm...
and we're all in kind of a bubble, but-Like X is pretty negative. Uh Well, wait. So I, I wanna, I wanna talk about LinkedIn specifically- Sure... but one last thing on X. So I mean, I, I noticed I don't really...
Like, I'm, I don't think I'm gonna put it back on my phone after a year, after a week- I might join you... excuse me, after a month not having it on my phone. Yeah. I just don't need it. Like, my life is better.
I'm not spending time there. Um, but I, you know, I've only recently taken to calling it X. I'm only recently saying that because- I know...
I mean, to me, to me, I think the whole rebrand thing, whatever, it's ridiculous. We don't need to get into all that. But I don't think it was- Sure...
func- I don't think it was functionally in practice a different thing than Twitter for a long time. I think that now- Right... the culture has sort of resettled and the culture of the app is now X and not Twitter.
And- I think so too... you know, we could, we don't need to spend too long talking about the ways that manifests. I think it's, a- again, more negative, this sort of like, uh, engagement baiting example.
There's the X article, $1 million for the most engaged X article context that just happened, and I mean, this is how these things work.
It was this person who's like a, some sort of like corner of crypto Twitter, and they got engagement pod- Right... boost this. Right.
It's not about the substance of the article, it's about your ability to, to boost engagement. But anyways- Yeah... talking too much about this.
I think that I am starting to call it X because the culture of it has sort of settled into X from the- Yes... Twitter transition period. Only- I think you're right... only now at the beginning of 2026.
Uh, I think you're right, and, you know, as, as recently as at the time of recording this last week, or even this week, I think, SpaceX and- We're recording on February 5th, to be clear. February 5th.
So this week, SpaceX and xAI and X, formerly Twitter, Elon announced, like this merger, upcoming merger ahead of the IPO, which puts the IPO valuation at like $1.25 trillion for a, a raise of 500 billion.
Largest IPO in history by a long shot. And you're like, X?
It was funny, there was all these memes popping off about how like the X employees are like, y- you know, rolling dough because like they made all this money from the stock options of SpaceX at the IPO.
[laughs] 'Cause like, I don't know if that... It's a meme. It's hilarious, but like also- Yeah... maybe if you're merging with SpaceX, you might get some, some stock options in, in the value of, of SpaceX. So
I don't know, man. I, I couldn't tell you what is going on in Elon's mind. He operates on a plane that I've not ever gotten close to touching, and you gotta hand it to him. I'm like,
I'm not gonna praise him by any means- No... but like the dude's brain is unbelievable. I mean- Is-... he's doing stuff that's just like, okay, I mean-... certainly cracks how to, uh- Yeah... attract money. Good grief.
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Well let, let's move, let's, uh, let's move on from- Yeah... this tepid platform to another tepid platform, LinkedIn. All right. So, [laughs] so you post a lot on LinkedIn. This is one of the reasons...
I should, I should say, Daniel has been haranguing me to come on the podcast for a little while, and I...
I mean, he's-- I thought it'd be really interested, interesting to talk to him about the, the Beehive Sales angle, but also he's very good at gathering attention online, especially on LinkedIn.
You have 25,000 followers there, about 25.5. Um, and your biggest, most popular posts, you routin- routinely do some numbers there and you've featured your biggest posts on your page.
Your most popular ones tend to be these broad appeals, sales, marketing, general business bits that, for the most part, anybody could have posted. They're not really specific to you- Yeah... or what you do.
Your most popular post is one of these generics. It's photos and a few words about that severance marketing stunt last year where they set up a glass box in Grand Central Station in New York- Yeah...
put the actors in there. You got 8,458 likes as of today. Does this actually do anything for you? Does this help you towards some goal of like increasing your audience, or is it just empty calories? You know, uh,
it does. It, it absolutely does do something for me, and it does several things for me.
So I have a much better chance of getting real responses from people on LinkedIn when I InMail them or cold DM, comment on their post if I have a lot of posts getting a lot of traction around the same time as that reach-out attempt.
So as, as far as it pertains to Beehive and what I do in sales, if I, i- if people have seen me, and they have, I mean, if I'm, if I'm getting five million impressions that month and they're in the same bubble as me- They've seen your posts...
they've seen my face, they've seen my name, they've seen the little bee next to my name. They've probably seen me engage on some of their posts or some of their colleagues' posts.
So when I finally go DM them, it doesn't feel like this random, robotic, generic outreach. They're like, "Oh, this guy's like a, a real dude- Yeah... posting about,
you know, business relevant stuff," and also idiotic, random stuff. Maybe he's doing LinkedIn stand-up comedy, but hey- Yeah... he's, he's good at it.
So like I, I get a pretty good, pretty healthy response rate when I just engage with people, and I think a lot of that I can, I can, you know, attribute to, you know-... uh, posts that pop off. Mm.
I think the very direct to revenue practical way that it helps me outside of Beehive is brands pay for that, like, all the time. So, like, they're like, "Oh, snap, you got, you know, 8,000 likes on this post.
Like, can you... Here's, here's $1,000, can you do a post for us?" Okay. You know, easy money. Like, 1,000 bucks, sure, I'll do that, and it, you know, takes me 10 or 15 minutes to craft.
I try to make it as personal as possible. Done.
And then I have Two Dads and Tech, which is a podcast where my co-host and I, you know, package some of our sponsorship options as including access to our LinkedIn audience, and so we, we get creative- Mm...
with what that looks like and, you know, the deliverables.
But any way that you can show, "I have the ability to get in front of an audience effectively," and that audience is in your general industry or ecosystem, I mean, people wanna pay for that.
I saw, right before we hopped on, a LinkedIn post from Will Allred, co-founder of the company Lavender. Oh. And it reads, "Thought leadership on LinkedIn versus conspiracy theory joke on LinkedIn."
And it's just a screenshot of the impression counts from each. The thought leadership count is 1,402 impressions. The conspiracy theory joke is 100,984 impressions. [laughs] Your thoughts- Yeah... sir.
Uh, I mean, that's my playbook. Uh, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think I have the unique ability to get eyeballs on my content because of how against the grain I post- Mm... on LinkedIn specifically.
X, I'm just, like, another person. [laughs] Like, I'm, I'm an idiot, but, like, so is everyone else. Yeah.
On LinkedIn, I think the post specifically you referred to, which was actually not chaos, it was just a well-written, like, breakdown of a marketing strategy that Severance did in Grand Central Station.
The reason that popped off is because I very intentionally posted that breakdown the second it started existing on X. Mm.
And this is what I think a lot of people don't understand about juggling- You're doing X to LinkedIn arbitrage. Exactly. People don't understand how late LinkedIn is to the game.
If you can arbitrage Reddit virality and X virality to Threads or Facebook or LinkedIn, you will go viral, and that is part of what the chaotic onlineness of me and how often I'm looking at social throughout the week, a, a lot of my virality comes from me breaking the news on something that everyone on X already knows about- Yeah...
to everyone else on LinkedIn who's just not as Internet native, so. And maybe not as shameless. Not as shameless. So I think there's that part of the strategy.
But also, you know, your conspiracy theory, like, you know, comparison, I just think people on LinkedIn are refreshed by, like, personality. Mm. There's so much put together, like, suit and tie type of content.
That's boring. No one wants to read that anymore. Then on the other side, there's just an incest of AI content right now where people... Like, you can tell. You're like, "Dude, you didn't even try."
[laughs] Like, there's an emoji every third word. There's em dashes everywhere. Like, y- all the signs are right there that this was absolutely generated by AI.
So for someone to go in there and say whatever he feels like saying with no rules is, I think it's refreshing. And- Yeah... I, you know, I'm grateful that I have a, a job that permits that.
I, I understand a lot of people out there work roles that is, like, you probably can't do that to the extent I do. Well, but I, I, I mean, no, sorry to interrupt, but I think most...
This is the way the wind is blowing for most tech startups as- Yeah... I mean, which is not- Yes... the entire economy.
But if you work at a tech startup, it is valuable to any employer, especially if you are in really any role, but especially if you are in some kind of, like, growth side of the business, sales or marketing role. It is...
Y- you will probably get hired over somebody who is identical to you but has no social media, and especially in this business. Oh, absolutely. It's job security. I mean, if I needed a job right now,
I, I could get it literally hundreds of times- By the end of this call... more easily, yes. Yeah. I, I don't need a resume. I just, like, look at what I can do, now let me do it for you. Mm.
And I mean, I, I probably wouldn't try to get another job. At this point, I would just make more money doing all this for myself than, uh, than another job could pay me.
But, like, the job security that comes from having an audience, you, you can't replace that. Mm. If you have your own audience, we talked about this with newsletters, it applies everywhere.
If you have people listening to you, and you can use that to your advantage or to a company's or product's advantage, that is absolute job security. So speaking of audience, you mentioned this podcast, Two Dads and Tech.
You're about 57 episodes in as we record. Your first episode went up in December of 2024. You're a busy guy. You have kids. You have the job that we've been talking about.
Uh, you, you spend your days posting on LinkedIn. Just did your third half-marathon. You're a busy guy. Why did you feel the need to add podcast hosting to your life?
As somebody who does two podcasts, I know that it is a lot of work, and I wouldn't really wish it upon most people. Yeah. Why did I do it is such a fun question that I don't have a great answer to. I, I have the
obsessive compulsive need to know what doing something is like. Mm. Yeah. I had never done a podcast.
I had spoken on podcasts like what we're doing now, but I had never owned and operated my own successful or semi-successful podcast. And so, yeah, I did a few, actually. That's, that's a lie.
I did, I did something called Bible Brew. Mm. It was very theology based, and I did four episodes, and that was fun. But, like, that's... well, it doesn't really count. Uh,
I, I just wanted to know, like, all right, like, I know I can speak 'cause I'm talking to people on a mic in front of a camera-All day, every day. Like, that's all I do for my day job.
You're a real, you're a real sell me this pen type of guy, honestly. [laughs] Absolutely. And I've spoken in front of crowds all over the world. You know- Mm... I'm, you know, I'm former minister. We maybe- Yeah...
don't have time to get into that during this call, but I mean, I've spoken in multiple languages to crowds of people. Chinese, Spanish. You speak six languages, right? I learned. I don't speak. Okay. I learned.
I've also forgotten many of those languages. [laughs] Uh, drop me in any Spanish-speaking country, I'll do all right, but the other ones, let's just pretend I never learned those. Yeah, the Mandarin faded. Yeah.
Man, that one faded fast. That one is-- that one was hard, but I learned it. I was in China for a while, and I was speaking it.
It was great, but, you know, I, uh, I just wanted to know what it was like, and I thought if I can launch this podcast and bootstrap it for, you know, couple months where it's, like, more work than I want to do, but then learn the process well enough to delegate everything- Mm...
so that all I have to do is spend 30 to 60 minutes per week working on this, uh, effectively the length of the episode, then it's a very low risk, high reward way for me to, one, produce more content that is helpful for the podcast, obviously, but also helpful just for everything else we've talked about to this point.
Repurposing podcast content, in my opinion, well, long form video content specifically, I think is the most valuable piece of content you can produce because you can make every other piece of content we've talked about so far- Mm...
out of a long form piece of video content. So we have, like, 100 hours of video content now, or probably it's closer to 75 hours of video content.
A- we could never produce a single second more and have years of newsletter and social and podcast and short form and TikTok and Instagram, like years without ever doing a single thing.
So I was like, "Let me just start building a library of content where some of it's rubbish and some of it's like a hot take that's just gonna continue to feed my social, you know, posting over the years."
Have you made much money from it in the, the year you've been doing it? And equally, how much have you had to spend on it? Yeah. We, we spent... We made last year... It's funny.
I, I could've sworn my head math was about $100,000 just shy. I, I came up with $92,000. I did my taxes for, for this company. I have an accountant now, and I just keep sending him stuff, and I'm like, "I'm sorry."
I, like, apologize at this point- [laughs]... 'cause I've sent him so much stuff. I was like, you know, praise for this guy that just has to figure out what all this stuff means.
We made about 60, $65,000 last calendar year.
Um, the first month in December of '24, we also made some additional, so it's closer to about 70, uh, total so far in 58 episodes, and we spent about 26, 25 and a half thousand dollars on production. Oh.
So we did profit handsomely, I would say, and, uh, you know, there was a couple months that Troy, who's my co-host, and I, we paid ourselves.
Um, the hope early, the first half of 2025, was that we would just pay our mortgages with the profit. Mm. Um, you know, he lives in Madison, Wisconsin. I live in Charleston, South Carolina.
It's like, hey, if we can spend 45 minutes a week and not have to worry about a mortgage, that's pretty s- that's pretty sick, you know? So we did. We did that for a number of months, and then just to be honest, it...
the bandwidth did start to weigh on us. Uh- Yeah... just even showing up to record because there's an hour time zone difference. He owns a company. I work all the time, and I have a family.
Literally just aligning our calendars every week for one hour together started being just annoying to, to try to figure out.
So we kept recording, uh, we did, but, like, anything beyond that, like talking to sponsors, doing any amount of outreach, like doing anything to grow it, to monetize it, we're just like, "We just don't have the energy for this."
So the last- And people advertising it primarily through, like, B2B ads, right? Like this- Yeah, exactly... you guys are both kind of B2B audiences. Yeah. I think Zapier is one of your- Yep... sponsors.
Zapier did a, a, a full month with us December of '25, and that, that was actually a turning point for us because after about two months of us just, like, recording without making money and growing, we were like, "Whatever," you know.
It's just-- I actually hired a, an agency to sell, and, like, 24 hours later, they came back with a $10,000 Zapier package. I was like, "Okay. Uh, sweet. Thank you, sales team."
[laughs] So, like, there's, there's a huge opportunity, but it's still, to your point earlier, you know, like, when? And, and ultimately the why is the one that's harder to answer as we grow. Mm.
It's like we don't- Yeah... even have 1,000 subscribers on YouTube yet, which on the one hand you're like, "It's a miracle we made any amount of money last year with less than 1,000 subscribers."
Again, the LinkedIn audience is a huge proponent there, but, like, where are we going with this thing? It's a conversation I had as recently as this morning of this recording- [laughs]...
with my co-host of like, "What are we doing here? Uh, let's, let's figure out, like, a-" Are we trying to hit 100 episodes or- Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's so fun.
I, I love the conversations we've had with each other, with our guests. It's been so valuable to be able to learn how to produce a podcast. I mean, it's a skill that I can sell now.
I mean, if I-- if someone needs a podcast, I could easily make money doing their podcast, and I could... You know, it's people are asking me to guest on, uh, on their podcast.
Like, there's a whole bunch of valuable skills that come from people seeing you behind a mic all over the place. Yeah. "Oh, he, he's a guest. He-- Let me ask him to guest on my podca- Oh, that's a good point.
I see he has a, a real mic. He's not just a random guy with, like, a, you know, a, a, a wonky setup."
Like, a lot of opportunities come from just showing your face enough, and I think last thing I'll say on this, back to something you asked earlier, like how the posting affects some of my life. Mm. Yeah.
The more people see my face like this on a podcast, which Two Dots and a Tech, it's, like, everywhere.
We did-- We have for now about eight months done three short form videos every single day, seven days a week, 30 to 31 days a month on Instagram and on TikTok.And no, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, not TikTok.
Uh, in addition, we do the long-form weekly episode, and then we do medium form blocks, so like five minute, eight minute. Production team does all that. It's, it's amazing. Yeah.
But my face is everywhere, and so people know what I look like, they know what I sound like, and when they hop on a call with me, and this is not me blowing smoke or patting myself on the back.
Every week I call or I have a call with someone beehive adjacent, and they say, "I saw this post you did on," fill in the blank, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, whatever, "and I was so excited to chat with you because of X, Y, and Z way- Yeah...
it made me feel or resonated with me." And I'm like, people-- Not always.
A lot of people don't know me before they talk to me, but a lot of people like feel like they know exactly the type of person I am, what I talk about, what I'm like before they ever meet me in, in general.
You're a character. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a valuable asset that comes with doing podcasting. [upbeat music] If you're trying to grow on LinkedIn, you already know the hardest part isn't posting once.
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[upbeat music] Palmetto Parents, speaking of newslettering, this is you playing the local newsletter game with your wife- Yeah... actually. Yeah. Local newsletter.
Um, as we are recording this week, we, uh, published our latest local newsletter interview story with Marissa Lavelle of-- from Boise. I love those stories. Everyone in the audience seems to love them.
I think it hits whether you're a journalist or an entrepreneur. No matter what, there's something to see in it. When did you start Palmetto Parents? Yeah.
Uh, we started Palmetto Parents in March of '24, so we're coming up on our two-year anniversary, trying to do a big like IRL event, uh, at a local coffee shop that has a huge like backyard, and just bring a bunch of people, pay for- With the parents...
all the coffee, you know, just- Kids. Yeah, exactly. The, the stories is, is fun with Palmetto Parents. We, we moved to Charleston from Chicago when we were pregnant with our first. Uh, it was in 2021.
Um, he was born in January 2022, and we, you know, feet on the ground, we're like, "What, what do new parents do?" W-We've never been parents. Uh, we've never lived in Charleston.
We've been to Charleston, but we had never lived there. What do they do? Like, what, what is there to do around here? Let's like plan because we're about to be parents.
And it just was-- There was like not really a central place to get information like that. Mm-hmm.
There are little community groups and like, you know, Facebook groups and like all the different places that you could find pockets of information, but not a central place that was trusted and established that you could go and kind of be with your community and, you know, resonate with that audience.
So I obviously had experience with newsletters and, you know, fast-forward a bit to us being parents of our first, about a year and a half in or two years in at that point, I'm like, I'm like, "Babe, we could create that place."
'Cause it, it had been a conversation many times at that point. You know, fast-forward two years, we're like, "There's still not a place. This is annoying."
Like, we wanna not only know what we should be doing and, and be creative with our lives, but also like, where are all the other people? They're everywhere- Mm-hmm... but like, where? So we created Palmetto Parents.
It was just a very standard newsletter that was bucketed into four categories in March of 2024.
Uh, every week we would send to Summerville, South Carolina, was our flagship newsletter, uh, something to do, timely, like an event, you know, something to do that week, uh, something generally to do, like a place to go, like a park, uh, you know, you know, family-friendly thing that you should go out and do, a restaurant to try that's family-friendly, and then the fourth section is we call it a Palmetto piece, and it's like inspiration for, for parents.
You know, you're going through it, we're going through it, here's a nugget to help you get through it. Parental solidarity. That... Yes, exactly.
The reason we set up those four sections is because, one, that's what we were always looking for, and we assumed many others were too, and we did some preliminary research that affirmed that.
Like everyone on Facebook, yeah, would love that.
Two, all, all four of the-- with the exception of a Palmetto piece, the three sections I mentioned at first could easily be paid-for advertising slots by a restaurant- Mm...
by an event, by a place that has something to do. So very early on I'm like, "Let me make sure the skeleton exists to very easily monetize this if and when we have an audience."
Fast-forward to the end of 2024, we launched Charleston, which was our second newsletter, um, and that-- I, I wrote that. Uh, so we actually launched it and unlaunched it, and then we hired a writer to relaunch it.
[chuckles] It's now a very successful weekly newsletter as well that follows the same format.
Uh, and we also have a third newsletter called Pawmetto Parents, because we identified this massive audience that had dogs and called themselves dog parents, but did not have children, but they wanted to know the same four things- [chuckles]...
to do with their dog. Uh, and it's, uh, it's hilarious. There's, you know, there's a full subscriber base there. So our audience is, uh, about eighteen thousand people now across newsletters and social.
Uh, we have, you know, reels on, you know, two specific Instagram accounts, one for Charleston, one for Summerville, so like super relevant reels and posts.
Uh, and then we have a Facebook-Um, page, I guess, that has a, a few thousand subscriber, uh, followers there, um, and three newsletters. Um, with a fairly good website component too.
We're always trying to figure out how to make it really look and feel like a, a real media company, and, and now we are.
I mean, I sent a quote for an advertiser, who will remain unnamed, for like forty-eight thousand five hundred dollars last week. And so we are at the cusp of breaking the ceiling. Wow.
And we, we haven't-- we, we've gotten some really strong advertisers. Three-month agreements, six-month agreements, um, like realtors, coffee shops, dog groomers.
I mean, like strong business cases, but like twenty twenty-six, we are legitimately one signed quote away from being absolutely legitimate six-figure media company. And so I think it's gonna happen this year. Yeah.
That's why we're investing a lot of money, uh, next month in this IRL, not to really make money, but to ba- you know, really kinda put our foot in the ground and say, "Hey, we exist. We're here. This is who we are.
This is what we look like. We'd love to really make it a, a true community." And so we're starting to kind of figure out what that looks like. Yeah. There's a paid subscriber component as well. Uh, Wikipedia model.
"Hey, if you love this news, pay us [chuckles] 'cause we need it." [chuckles] Um- Yeah... so like, you know, not many subscribers in that front yet.
We haven't driven that much traffic to it, but, you know, there are people, I mean, paying five bucks a month, forty bucks a year just because they're like, "We love what you do, and we wanna keep receiving it."
So pretty cool.
So I heard on the latest episode of Two Dads and Tech, or one of the latest episodes late last year in twenty twenty-five, the second year of doing Palmetto Parents, and you just mentioned some of this, that you hired your first writer, ad salesperson, and ad buyer besides those two additional launches.
Have you put more money into this than it's given back, or has it been giving back enough to, to do that? Yeah. Um, we-- So we're paying our, our, the writer and the salesperson profitably. Mm-hmm.
But I did somewhat intentionally put myself in the red in Q4 last year to just grow like crazy and also for taxes. Uh, I just wanted to, you know, do a loss. Um, but I'm still figuring that out.
I, I think we may have made a little bit more than we spent last year- Mm... although I tried not to. This year is really about sustainability.
I think if we can get close to breaking even with paying the writer, my wife, and the salesperson, and maybe a new writer.
We wanna launch a fourth city, uh, ideally by the end of Q1, although more realistically it'll probably be middle of Q2 at this current rate. Um, we, we wanna be able to be generous to them, to the employees- Mm...
but also generous to the community, and so, uh, you know, whatever that looks like.
It looks different in different ways, but like this IRL event, um, we have an, a survey where people subscribe, and we ask them a number of questions, like, "Are you a parent?"
You know, ninety-eight point five percent yes. Right, okay, great. Uh, good. Th-this is for you. You know, a lot of questions like that, but then when an open-ended question, "What's something you need?"
And it's, uh, I have some suggestions. Do you need support? Do you need friends? Do you need date ideas? Do you need diapers? Like, so we have
4,000 people respond to this survey so far, and literally so many needs, which is really pushing us to like a community-driven model. We don't know exactly how to do this yet. I have a lot of ideas.
I've launched communities before, but none IRL, like, uh, like people who would probably meet me in real life. That kind of community is still something I've, you know, not quite experienced.
But there's people really looking for support, and it looks very different f- you know, per family, you know, single parents and kids with, you know, learning disabilities and, like everything, the full gamut, where having an IRL component to this almost feels like the altruistic thing to do at this point.
Uh, and so we're, we're really trying to like wrestle with like is, is this a, like a media giant where we make- Yeah...
a bunch of money someday, or is this like the right thing to do [chuckles] where we break even every year?
And if we can support ourselves and even potentially do like nonprofit five one C three eventually, maybe that's the, the goal. I, I don't know. To me, that sounds like it's the goal. I mean, I'm currently- Yeah...
as we speak, I-- it's Thursday. Tomorrow I have to send a newsletter, and I'm working on one after this Marissa Lavelle from Boise Local Newsletter one.
I'm, I'm working on one just kind of reviewing all the local newsletter people I've spoken to and what's compelling, why, why people seem to like these stories, um, how they relate to more traditional local newspapers.
And the people I've spoken to generally, it's like they're doing a community service, right? Mm-hmm.
I, I've been thinking about people in the creator, in the content economy broadly, which I also wanna talk about the idea of a content economy in a second, but people who are more outcome-focused versus output-focused.
It's not perfect- Yeah...
but by output-focused, I mean people who care about the thing they're making, and the point is to make that thing really good versus people who generally are trying to reverse engineer a financial result, right? Yeah.
Like, I want to make $10,000. Where is the be- what is the best way to do that quickest that I can exploit, right? And exploit would be the word there.
Um, there's also, I mean, an-- to kind of, you know, poke a hole in my, in my, uh, spectrum there, an outcome of something like a local newsletter like you're doing is community building, is reproducing a community and building this community culture.
And so, uh, what you were saying of like is this a nonprofit at the end, like, I think it is, right? The, the people I've spoken to- Yeah... who are doing local newsletters
are easy to root for because they're generally rooted in that community in some way, and they, uh, you know, it, it's like a, it's like a local landlord versus like a corporate landlord.
You can see them at the grocery store, and you can like threaten them if they're not, you know- Yeah... gonna fix your plumbing. Um- Yeah...
versus like, you know, the, a lot of the old school newspapers that have been bought up by these companies that just hold these, and they're sort of dying and underserved, right?
And that's part of the appeal of these newer local media organizations is they're for, for us, by us in a community, right? Yeah.
And so to me, it's like what you're doing, I think, um-Charleston's like eight hundred thousand, I looked it up- Yeah... population. That's not that big.
And you could do a brisk advertising business, but whatever you're doing, um, this is another of the factors of any of these local media businesses is there's always this, like, culture that is baked into them b- that is about who you are and the type- Yes...
of people that, the type of, the type of cultural output that you do as, as a parent, as a religious person, right? Like, is gonna... Like, it's not gonna appeal to all eight hundred thousand of those people.
So there's, there's, like, there's a cap on it that is realistically an even smaller cap. Um, I'm rambling a bit here, but to me it's like that's what's so compelling about what you're doing with Palmetto Parents- Yes...
and what all these people I talk to are doing is, like, this is functionally a community service. There's typically not reporting. It's more of this, like, classified and culture, um, section of a traditional newspaper.
But what you're doing is, like, creating a pillar, a reference point for a certain culture within a community. I, I couldn't have said it better myself.
I think people ask me frequently, "Hey, I'm thinking about starting a local newsletter. Like, you know, what, what does that look like? How do I do that?" And I think the question that always comes to mind is why?
You know- Yeah... like, if you look at, if you just Google local news and then blank your city, there's plenty of people creating local news, like, successfully. So, like, why would you do it?
And I think the reason we did it is because what we're doing is so character, personality, community-driven it didn't exist, and it serves a need that people are actually seeking and, and, and looking for being met.
So yeah, I think you're, you're absolutely right. I mean, this, this gives me a lot to chew on personally. It's a very interesting thought. Uh, okay, one last thing.
As long as I've kind of known you, again, for the listener- Yeah... we technically work together, but in no practical terms do we actually work together.
Um, but you're somebody who I've always recognized to be charismatic, a little bit insane. Why are you doing all these LinkedIn posts? How do you have the energy for all this stuff?
So I've always had this question, right? Why are you like this? And a few months ago you tweeted something. In November 2025, 2025, you wrote this fairly long tweet that I think really explained why you're like this.
I'm going to summarize some of it. Okay. So you explained that you were arrested at seven. Yeah. In sixth grade you were kicked out of school. Yeah. You didn't really finish middle school, then you went to high school.
You went through three private schools before being kicked out in eleventh or twelfth grade. Didn't finish high school, dropped out.
Um, backdoored your way somehow into USC, studied pre-law, dropped out, backdoored your way into Clemson, where you did graduate. We were talking a little bit about your education earlier.
And then during college, you also started your own company building websites, running marketing programs for small businesses and startups, so that seems to be sort of the origin story of how you then get into this sort of business world and why we- Yeah...
both work together and are talking today. Um, you also say, "On the side, I wrote a blog and newsletter," we talked a little bit about that earlier, "and journaled every single morning.
There are boxes of notebooks filled to the brim- Yes... and thousands of pages of typed documents, including unpublished books and years of research that I did for fun."
So reading this, I'm also thinking about what you said about starting the podcast and how, you know, "Well, I've never done this thing. I would like to try this thing."
And you have this, uh, you're one of these people who is just a source of energy it seems like and, like, you know, driven by some, I don't know, insanity. Uh- Little bit. Yeah. So this is...
My question was why are you like this? You know, anybody can go look up this tweet. Go to, go to danielcburke.twitter, twitter.com/danielcburke, whatever it is. Uh, and go to November 2025. You can read this tweet.
You can listen to this podcast, whatever. Crazy guy. Um, but [laughs] I wanna end on these boxes and boxes of notebooks and thousands- Yeah... and thousands of pages. What were you writing about?
Was this, like, your theology era and that's the, the great bulk of it? What were you writing about? Oh, man. So many things. Uh, it's almost like a, like a don't touch this box type of memoir.
[laughs] Like, it's like every chaotic thought that's ever entered my brain. Um, I spent, for years I would wake up before the sun and write in a, with a pen,
and then I started typing because my thoughts were going way too fast- Too fast... for my hand, and so I started typing. I also type very fast because I did that, uh, for years. I could type a lot of words.
I think, I don't know, like, a hundred and sixty-five words a minute. It's very fast. Um, and so... I think that's fast. I can't- It's fast. That's very fast... remember myself at one time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
A hundred and sixty-five. Last time I tested I was, like, a hundred and twenty, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, super fast 'cause I was literally typing stream of consciousness, which is how you get, you know, so many pages of random blabber.
What it helped me do and what I was writing about most commonly is either prayer, I would write prayer, um, just direct prayer. "This is my prayer." But also, like, what I will call prayer adjacent.
I'm not necessarily praying, but I'm writing these thoughts that are in my head, very meditative.
Writing these thoughts that are in my head, feelings I have, you know, what I'm doing to wrestle with a challenge I have, whether back in the day it was at school, relationships, work, family, home dynamic.
Like, trying my best to get everything out of my head and onto paper. And what, what that for me was just incredibly meditative and- Mm... uh, almost, like, prescriptive. You know? I, I would...
It, uh, I don't recommend doing it instead of getting help if, like, you're listening to this and you need help. Like, definitely get help from someone. But for me it was, it was a calming, almost stress reducer.
Like, you know, life is stressful. Mm-hmm. You have relationship problems, you have family problems, you have work problems, you got, you got issues. Everyone has issues.
I just did a podcast on this, how I think every single adult should see a therapist. I believe that strongly. I think every adult should see a therapist either long term or at least for some sessions to- Mm-hmm...
understand, like, why they are the way they are. So I think that's what it was for me. It was like therapy, prayer adjacent, like meditation. Uh, so I, I would just write anything.
Um, and I would run out of notebook paper very fast, so I did, you know, legal notebooks where it's, like, the yellow pages that you flip upwards. Mm. Classic.
I would do, uh, what are those, like, really nice notebooks called that everyone loves back in the day? Moleskines? Moleskines, yeah. Yeah. Uh, literally probably 20 or 30 full Moleskines. Um, but, like, notepads.
I worked in, uh, legal offices for a while during school. I was, like, a record file assistant, and I would just, like, take a book because there was trillions of them.
That's, like, where legal notepads come from is law offices. [laughs] So I would just write through all them. I just, like... It was, it was, it was nutty. But, um, yeah. Sure.
Definitely just wrote a bit of anything and everything. A window into the mind of Daniel Burke. Yeah. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Of course. Thanks for having me, man. This has been a great time.
It's been a long time coming. I'm glad we finally did it. Me too. Cool. All right. Listener, I'll see you next week. Thank you. [upbeat music] Hi there. My name's Tom. I'm the producer of the Creator Spotlight podcast.
If you're looking for another episode to watch, I would recommend our recent episode with Marissa Lovell. She's a local newsletter creator who has just cracked one hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue.
It's our most popular episode in a while. Go watch that one next. It's a good one.