[on-hold music] Look, I think there's cheesy ways to grow, and there's successful ways to grow, but you're, you're- Tell me the cheesy ways. I think threads are cheesy at times.
I think a lot of people do, like, l-a low engagement threads. It's the same way of, like, newsletters. What, you mean, like, ripping off, like, Wikipedia- Wikipedia pages... and stuff like this? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Ninety-eight percent of people don't get this. Yeah. Sorry, uh, that was a little bit of an aside. What were we talking about?
[on-hold music] Before we get to this week's episode, quick message from our, uh, sponsor, Bombora, and that's about why complacency isn't a strategy, and this is something that I truly believe.
You know, we all have a complicated relationship with deadlines. We resent the seemingly arbitrary nature of them, and we know that we could always do a better job with just a little bit more time.
But most of us end up accepting that deadlines are just the push we need in order to make sure that we keep progressing.
And the same is true of the regularly shifting deadline for the phase-out of the third-party cookie. You know, many publishers and others were constantly complaining that the deadline was too rushed last year.
And then, wouldn't you know that Google pushed it out into, until, uh, twenty twenty-three, and what happened? A lot of people just fell back on complacency once the deadline was no longer looming.
But at the end of the day, change is coming. The deadline will eventually happen. The third-party cookie's going away.
And that's why I had a conversation with Steve Lilly, Bombora's SVP of Global Data Strate- or d- Global Data Partnerships, about why publishers need to use this breathing room in order to, in Steve's words, "kiss a lot of frogs" to sort out what a workable post-cookie strategy for monetizing audiences is for them, and it's gonna be different across all different publishers.
Here's how Steve put it. We're essentially a massive data ecosystem, and our business model is really nothing new. We're, we're a data co-op.
So there's a lot of problems that we solve for data as it relates to sales and marketing, predictive analytics.
But as it relates to our publishing partners specifically, there's two primary problems that, that our model solves, which is unknown audience.
Just about every publisher we speak with has a massive percentage of unknown audience and no real cost-effective way to, to address that.
The other, in terms of B2B marketing or B2B audience targeting, is understanding what businesses are visiting your site and what those businesses are in market for.
Stay tuned after my conversation with Adam Ryan in order to hear more of my conversation with Steve about why complacency is not a strategy. Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey.
I'm very happy for this week's guest. It's Adam Ryan, the CEO of Workweek. Very interesting new brand if you don't know about it. I'm sure most of you do.
But it's taking B2B spin in a different direction by sort of intersecting it with the entire creator economy deal that we keep hearing about.
And Adam and I, I think we've, we've talked back when you were just forming Workweek, but we agree on a lot of, like, things, right? But we come at things from a different point of view.
Adam more on the operator side, me on more of the writer side.
But I think the things we do agree on, and tell me if I'm wrong here, Adam, is that B2B does not have to be dull, and we could talk about that, about why that's the, the case, 'cause I don't think you can do that anymore.
Yep.
And that the strongest brands in the future are gonna find that sweet spot between the individual and the institutional, and they're gonna be able to manage the tensions that are inherent to that, because it's gonna shift for every brand.
And the other thing is that going narrow and deep is key.
I think your experience, I'm sure you've probably seen this, but when you can go narrow and deep on a topic and make it for a specific group of people, that gives you a lot of leverage and a lot of different ways to make money.
And I guess the final one is that advertising's actually a great model. Adam- I, I agree... thank you for joining us. I, I agree on all those things. All right, so we'll just wrap it up. It's over. Thank you, everyone.
Yeah, thank you. [laughs] Appreciate it. It was good, it was good, good talking to you.
[laughs] No, like, let's go back, 'cause I remember you, you were kind enough to share, uh, your plan for Workweek before it launched with me, and I gave you some, like, of my, like, unvarnished feedback on it, 'cause I like the idea, 'cause I think it's, it's super good.
But, like, you were, you were the president of The Hustle, but you were also at Spiceworks, and you were at Under Armour.
Explain exactly within your background the opportunity that you saw that you were going to build Workweek with your co-founders in order to, uh, uh, to realize that opportunity.
Yeah, there's really, like, three, uh, the three companies I was at previously, there was, like, one key takeaway from each one. At Spiceworks, uh, well Spiceworks you could say there was, like, one A and one B.
Uh, it, it was a B2B IT community, and they focused solely on the person managing helpdesk tickets, doing desktop monitoring, all of that, all of that role in the office.
Uh, and they had two hundred and fifty thousand monthly active users. We did about seventy-five million in revenue, uh, a year, uh, when I was there.
We grew from thirty to seventy-five during the couple years I was there. It was an amazing company, mostly because of, and this gets played a lot, but I think about Spiceworks and I think about authenticity.
Because everybody was referring at that time to IT professionals as, like, suits and ties, and, like, all these ads from HP and Dell of, like, your IT pro buying your Dell, they were in, like, a tie.
And the reality is they wear, like, Star Wars tees and have, like, long hair and tattoos.
And Spiceworks created a mascot that was, like, an orange dinosaur, and everything, like, embraced this, like, nerd culture, and people loved it.
And it went really deep, and there was a million ways to monetize, and our revenue per user was, like, through the roof. And it showed me what, like, what you said going deeper can do with...
The one B was that they raised a hundred and thirty million from Goldman, and it was during that era of BuzzFeed where everyone over-raised, and I called Spiceworks.
They ended up selling to Ziff, but, uh, it was a great company, bad cap table. Like, they had to... They actually made a ton of money.
They didn't need to raise that much money, and then because they did, they made terrible decisions long term.
And that, that inspired Workweek a lot in, in many different ways.Under Armour was this like idea to go content to commerce, MyFitnessPal, Map My Fitness, and all these consumer apps had over a hundred million users.
The idea was could we sell more shirts and shoes through that profitably with advertising? There was a lot of takeaways there. The two things that...
The thing that drew me there was when I was pitched the data play, it was like, "Look, we know who shops at Whole Foods. We know how many people are lifting weights versus doing HIIT exercises.
Like, we know how much water they have. Like, we know all this data about these personas."
And the idea of using that to have better marketing, to create better products, to do customer research, like I was obsessed with. It was like what drew me there.
The reality and the failure of that, which has- is really important for Workweek, was it was a total disaster because of culture. The idea, the vision, the products- Yeah... all were there.
But putting four companies under one roof in Austin, uh, which was Endomondo, MyFitnessPal, Map My Fitness, and Under Armour, very different cultures.
You had Sp- uh, MyFitnessPal was Mike Lee, San Francisco, very kind of a liberal culture. Uh, Map My Fitness, Robin, Robin Thurston is a, a madman. Genius, but mad.
And Under Armour, like it was right when the Trump stuff was happening, and it just like did not work. And like the peop- And not only do you have the technical issues of like, well, do we use Jira or Slack? Yeah.
Like, like switching that over is not as easy as you think it is, and then you have like all the cultural differences.
When doing Workweek, that was a big inspiration of like if we're gonna bring people together that have already started their own journey, they already have their own culture and values created, we have to make sure there's alignment or this is just not gonna work, even if the product is great.
Uh, and then The Hustle, uh, we, uh, realized that you, in media, like you don't need a lot of money.
You can be really scrappy, and it's just about creating great content and like high signal audiences and high engagement, and you can do a shit ton with that if you just focus on, uh, creating things that people like, and that's the only reason why we had success.
Okay. Oh, so no, uh... But the other ones, you gave something good and then something bad, but you gave nothing bad f- 'cause I do think it's- There, there-- I do, I do think- It is very interesting because...
So I wanna leave, but like it is interesting 'cause I think a lot of times people are...
lay that down, but when you're building something new, when you've been through a lot of other things, you take cues both good and bad, right? Yeah. Like, so there's...
It's just like, I mean, I don't have any kids, but I assume parenting, like there's, you take the good stuff from your parents, [chuckles] and then you take the stuff you didn't like, you're like, "I'm not gonna do that."
I think The Hustle, the takeaway was like if you look at the alumni of that staff, Kendall Baker, who I think writes the best sports newsletter in the country, was the first writer there.
There's a lot of Trung, obviously. Sean Puri now has exploded. There was so much talent in that place.
There also was a lot of turnover, and I- some of the probably biggest lessons there, which is not as much media oriented, was just like how to manage people and create a culture that like people actually loved it.
How do you keep talented people here for a long time? Okay. So with Workweek, what did you see going on out there? Obviously, the creator economy sort of blew up, it seemed like.
At least everyone started talking about it, right? But usually the creator economy is, at least I always thought about it as YouTubers and TikTokers and stuff like this. I never considered myself a creator.
I mean, I was just- Yeah... like a reporter and an editor, and creator sounds like, uh- Yeah... I would need to be far more entertaining. You don't, you don't make any money.
[chuckles] That's what that sounds like, uh, when you're a creator. At least like when you're a reporter, you're getting paid. Yeah. The... So I never really... I mean, I did like my first, uh, uh,
whole, uh, spiel how Substack is fucked in February of '21.
I never really was like a huge creator economy is going to explode type of person, and I think you're seeing a lot of the pullback now because the business models were built literally for all the creators to graduate off of.
They didn't think about that at all. You just like... Uh, they didn't neces- they lowered the barrier is what the success of the creator economy was.
It made it easier to press send, which Substack, Maven, all of those companies deserve a lot of credit because they lowered the barrier so much. Does that mean they're gonna continue hitting that? Is it consistent?
Does it pay? Does it create billion-dollar outcomes?
Like, I have a lot of question marks around those things still, but one of the, like, real inspirations, and it sounds ridiculous, but I'm a pretty big, uh, football fan, and when Tony Romo moved from being a quarterback on the Cowboys to being an analyst, uh, I was like, "Holy shit, he's a way better analyst than he ever was a quarterback."
And it was his insight of being a quarterback that made him so good at being an analyst, and now I think he's going to potentially win more awards than he ever did as a quarterback as- Yeah... being a TV personality.
And, uh, I think that what Substack did in the creator economy is it started to have that happen in the B2B world.
People like you who are operating started to write, and it was like, holy shit, this is good, 'cause like he actually won.
The problem with B2B, I think, with m- historically is the reason why it's kind of boring is because you have a lot of people that, like, have never done those jobs. So they're just like listening and regurgitating.
They're not like coming from a point of action that's like allows it to have personality 'cause, like, they don't have personality. Uh, and that to me, like- Well, I don't know if they... I have to jump in there.
I don't know if it's they, they don't have personality or something like this, but yeah. No, not every- But yeah. If you don't, like, I- Being unbiased naturally doesn't allow you to, like, have more- Yeah...
uh, spiciness, I should say. You know, it's also the structure of the profession, right? Like, I mean- Yeah...
you're trained as a generalist for most things, and then you're thrown into the, the whole profession is geared to being thrown in. You gotta cover a fire, you gotta cover courts, you gotta...
And it's a real skill set, right? But, like, the problem is you can't go narrow and deep if, like, you're... I know, like we'll get into, like, the idea of deep generalism.
I think that's, like, I think you gotta choose a lane. But, like, deep generalism just tells me that, like, maybe you read some books. But, like, the profession is geared towards generalists, not specialists, right?
And so a lot of times when you're, you're covering stuff, I remember having to coverTech for a little while, like real tech. Not like ad tech Yeah... like real tech. Yeah.
I'll never forget a- being assigned a story to write about hot swappable hard disk drives. Holy shit.
I was talking to this guy from Intel, I was like, "Please don't make shit up just to screw with me, man, because, like [chuckles] you could." Yeah. And that's when I was like, "I gotta specialize." Yeah.
I- But- And I think that's just, like, what... It's, I'm not blaming or, like, faulting journalists. And a lot of, like... And this is, like, I'll call it, like, industry dive.
What they have done, what Sean's done so well, is he's focused on regulatory industries that have a lot of regulation that constantly is changing, and that's need-to-read stuff, right?
Like, when you are in, uh, certain industries that where government and regulation's evolving and changing and impacts your job, journalists are the best people to learn from in that way of, like, what is actually happening, and that's how you become, like, a need to read.
My, my thing though with Substack was, like, when you read... For me, I was reading Jacob Donnelly and, like, reading all these personality, I'm like, what makes them good is because they come from the arena.
Like, they were there. They use their real life examples, and their bias is actually what makes it good. And that's not in, like, the way journalism was taught at...
I went to University of Missouri, like, you don't do that, right?
And so there was this new type of, of content creation where I think taking experience, perspective, and bias in the same way that Romo does with covering zone to zone and man to man and what he would have done, he takes an opinion, but that's, like, what you wanna hear.
And that's kinda what Workweek... That's what I saw early with Workweek.
And then the other trend was I, I did a call with Packy McCormick, uh, in, like, Jan- December twenty twenty, maybe January twenty twenty-one, and he said, "A- Adam, I wanna do, like, a million dollars this year is, like, my goal."
And I just, like, looked at everything and looked at his growth, and I was like, "If you were a media company, like, where we had people around you, your goal would probably be closer to ten million."
And, like, Packy's pretty proficient at monetizing, better than most, and I was... And it just, like, kinda clicked of, like, wow, this content, like, of these folks that it's amazing they're growing organically.
All the KPIs that you dream to have at a media company, these, a lot of these operators are experiencing this in their own mediums, but they have no idea the opportunity that they have in front of them. Yeah. Yeah.
And that's, like, the sort of sweet spot. But, uh, t- let's talk a little bit about that, 'cause I think there's the, the sort of Goldilocks challenge. It's like you wanna... Yes, you want...
Like, there are these opportunities, and I totally agree, but the, the, the question is, like, how do you architect the system correctly, right? And, like, because obviously people like bundles.
They like being able to just, like, ha- they like brands and stuff like this, and personal brands, personalities are, are part of that. But, like, I think it can get confusing. There's just too much stuff out there.
And so there's a lot of, like, benefits to that. Uh, talk to me about, like, how you decided to sort of architect the business. Yeah.
Because I think there's inevitably a tension between the institutional brand and, like, Workweek with the individual brand, with Nick Sharma or Trung or any of the other, or Nicole, or any of the other creators that you have.
Yeah. That came from just, like, uh, to what we've talked about.
I historically, I managed the editorial team at The Hustle, but they would, uh, they would all laugh and be like, "You didn't know what the fuck you was doing."
Uh, uh, I'm not, uh, I was not a creator, a writer, a journalist. I don't self-identify that way. I never have. I've been working to get better at it, uh, mostly just by bringing people like you on my podcast.
But what I started to do is just do... Packy started this wave of me just reaching out to people and being like, "Hey, this is who I am. Would you be down talking?"
Uh, and I talked to about 100 folks who were writing a newsletter, doing a podcast in spring of '21, and my... And what I was asking them was, "Why do you do this?" And like, "What makes you excited to do this?"
And then, "What would make you stop doing it?" And, like, those are important distinctions, and I think the last one is actually what most media companies don't ever ask anyone.
And the takeaway is where I do this 'cause I...
Like, the really good ones that, like, already had traction, like, "I wanna be a voice in my ind-- like, I wanna be the person in the industry, and I wanna have success, and, uh, I want people to listen to me," attention, validation.
They're-- It's just, like, naturally what the good ones wanted to do. Uh, the second aspect was they, uh, they also saw the potential to make a lot of money. They were like, "Look, I can do this."
But the money was never, uh, as much as important as the creative freedom. Like, they were like, "Ah, I've been..."
Like, I talked to many people, and they're like, "Oh, I've been offered a job here and here, but, like, they want me to, like, cover this beat," or, "They...
I have an editor that's gonna, like, write, like, edit out what I do," or, "I want my brand to, like, be able to say this, and, like, is that cool with you?" Right? And to me, that's almost...
And, uh, I read a great piece by Shereen today, who-- your former colleague of, like, uh, how to build trust in media, and she talked about basically drawing clear lines of sponsored content and editorial content.
But I kind of wanted to take a different approach and say, what if we just allowed... What if we trusted the creator to make the right choices because it's their individual brand at stake?
Uh, and if Packy ends up having a terrible fund and everything flopped, it's bec- it's on him. It's his reputation, right? Yeah. And in the same way, that's what Workweek is trying to do.
It's like, "Hey, Nicole, Daniel, Trung, like, what you put out there, like, I'm not going to filter this. I'm gonna trust that you're doing the right decisions." And then the question is, like, incentive alignment.
Are they, like, incentivized to want to grow their brand to make sure that they're doing the right thing?
And I think Barstool's a good example of this, that they just let their people go, but they're, they, uh, the difference is, I think with B2B, it actually is a more secure path.
I'm not gonna probably get sued or be called a bunch of names because, like, when you're covering fintech, there's, like, just you putting memes out there is already in the 1% of, like, being more relatable than most people.
Yeah. Although you'll end up getting sued.Or threatened with a lawsuit. Anyone. I always say it's like the, uh, the test of whether you're like, in like the media business is when like you-you...
is when you get the lawsuit threat and like- I, uh- When you lose business because of what you wrote, 'cause otherwise you're in the content marketing business.
If you just are doing stuff and no one's threatened you, then you're probably content mark. That's my- We- Suit. Becca, uh, who's my co-founder at Workweek, was the GM at The Hustle.
Uh, she calls me, uh, Adam Riley, attorney at law, 'cause we got sued so many times at The Hustle that I would just like... We couldn't afford to pay a lawyer, so I just would like act like I was and- Oh, yeah...
basically deal with it. Most of them go away. A lot of people are like- Oh, yeah. I, like, I don't know why anyone goes to a lawyer to send like the nasty gram, the nasty...
It's like, "If not, we will be forced to like pursue." And it's like, "Okay, sure." Stern-sternly worded like email, but sometimes they go through, and that's why it's a challenge. So the model is...
'Cause you have a mix of people, right? And like, some people have that direct experience, but some people are journalists, I would say.
Like, and I think the unicorn that, that you talk about, and I don't think unicorns are that, that common, uh, is, uh, maybe like poolside inflatable unicorns in Miami, but otherwise, uh, not so much, is you want someone with the deep sector expertise, but you want someone who can like, who can produce clear, concise, engaging copy, and oh yeah, by the way, do it every week or twice a week, and do it like again and again.
And like, as like someone who's done that, I took like ten years off as an editor, mostly sending emails, it's like, it's a really hard skill. Like, I mean, it's hard.
It's like, you gotta like, you build it up over time. Yeah. But like, how do you look at like that mix?
Because like, there's a lot of people with incredible sector expertise who just literally, they can't communicate it. I mean, they can write emails and memos and stuff, but they can't like hold a list. Yeah.
I think, uh, this is the former teacher in me. A long time ago- [laughs]... I was a high school teacher, but like I think you can learn that skill. Uh, and it's a- Oh, yeah, it just takes time.
It takes time, and it's also a mentality as much as anything. Like, the biggest thing holding me back from writing my piece today is just like, is this good enough? Like, ah, like the pressure of like, ah...
And I think that's something that like really a lot of people don't address, uh, immediately.
Like we never once at The Hustle, maybe this is just like bad management, but like we never once were like, "Tell me about like the imposter syndrome that you have writing to one point five million people every day."
We just like expected them to hit publish. And some people naturally trying have the confidence just to like work through that. That's rare. Uh, and I... So what we focus on, The Wolf is a perfect example of this.
The Wolf was, uh, he's a pseudonymous creator at Workweek that covers the franchise industry. He calls himself The Wolf of Franchises. He was in sales, uh, before this selling franchises.
We reached out to him and signed him when, which is crazy to think about, he had forty-five, like, newsletter subscribers and had sent one issue. Not exactly a journalist, not exactly a history of writing.
Uh, he came on September first.
We didn't announce him till January, um, which is something that we've learned, like we don't announce people, which is really when the eyeballs come, which is when the pressure comes and all that stuff.
We normally give people a few months to like really start to build up, and he really took like four months to like get his feet under him. And one day he called me, he's like, "It's my fucking job to be on Twitter.
Like, is this really what I do now?" Oh, my God. "Like, I've been like selling franchises for... Like, this is my job?" And I was like, "Yeah, this is your..."
And like, there is that moment, uh, we have built like a creator development program that we're building out to help people like- Yeah...
understand what the process is and a few other things, but if we can help those folks, and just as much I know Romo got help by the folks. Yeah.
They taught him where to stand and how to do this, that's what we're trying to help them and support them to do to make that transition.
Yeah, 'cause like, I mean, I don't want to get into like, like what kind of media brand you're building, but like the test of a media brand to me is being able to grow people, for lack of- Mm-hmm...
a better word, use the intransitive. It's, because otherwise you're just like a, a, an ad network at the end of the day. Like, which is interesting.
There's a lot of ad networks out there, but like [chuckles] if the only thing you can provide is a CMS and like some monetization, one, you're gonna lose people, and two, you're not gonna have a, as high a value, and then I guess three, it's not as rewarding.
So I mean, is...
Do you look at like Workweek as like a talent incubator that like you're making the bet with people that, "Look, you can keep doing this on your own or you can go, there's a lot of different models out there right now, but if you come work with us, one, you're gonna, you're gonna grow faster."
Like the lists, because you guys, you're good at like, at the growth m-mechanics, and that's important, but you're gonna grow a-as, as far as the quality, and you're gonna get better. So every single...
You, why don't you ask me what one of the takeaways from The Hustle.
Becca and I, uh, were, became amazing friends, and through that time at The Hustle, we stopped, a lot of people left, uh, that we thought were like wildly talented.
And when people start to leave a company, and this is like less media operator and more broad, but like when people start to leave, there's just this like huge shift in like culture of like, "Oh, well, I'm the next person."
It just like becomes a snowball effect, and especially with talented people. And Sub Stack is a good example. Like, once one person leaves, everyone's like, "Well, is the grass greener? Maybe I should look for it."
And when we were getting this started, and this is like 100% factual, we were at a coffee shop, uh, in like February or March of '21. We had no idea what we were gonna do.
We were actually like spitballing like a, creating like a sales community or something. And we were like, "Hey, before we do this, we know last time the issue was not being aligned with values.
Let's like write down of what the type of people we wanna work with, like exactly the type of people that we could spend day in and day out with and fucking grind with and work for ten years."
And something that I wrote down, uh, on our original thing was, you can't really make an impact in media unless you're at least ten years old.And that's my belief. Like Morning Brew is what?
Like, ah, now seven years old. They're coming up on next year they'll do a hundred million. Like that's an impactful business in the industry. Normally, I think you need ten.
And the longer time horizons you have, I think the less shortcuts and bullshits and like stuff you do, which I learned from Spiceworks.
So wait, when you say impact, you mean like, like impact as a business or like impact in- I view it just a little different. 'Cause like I view... When we use impact- Yeah. [laughs]...
those of us on the [laughs] journalist side, we don't think about business. We think about the, something different.
Well, I think it's like naive to think that way, 'cause if you can't afford the journalists, you have the situation that most companies are in today. And so like my piece of this is like if you can build a business...
Like Morning Brew has upped their staff of journalists since they started [laughs] making more money, right?
They've-- You're able to invest in the things that maybe aren't loss leaders, but they're definitely not your margin makers when you're making more money across the board. Oh, yeah.
And so like to me, if you wanna make an impact, like once you cross 100 million plus in revenue, like Industry Dive, huge impact in the space because of like the size that they got to, now they're able to like move the needle forward and take bets to move the industry forward.
And that's like what's... To me, I got to a point where I was just like embarrassed to be in this industry.
Uh, I like debated tot- I jumped into higher education for a few months 'cause I was just like, I'm just embarrassed by this. Like the outcomes are bad, the job is hard, you grind all the time.
There's like no big winners. Everyone talks about like tech companies being better. And there was this like, huh, this is just a broken industry.
And then part of what like Workweek is trying to do is like, we're not big enough to take all the bets that we wanna make, but if you can have a big enough impact financially, you can start to invest and shift things and move the needle to move the industry forward in a better place.
And to me, that's what someone needs to come in and not say, "I was so sick of tiring..."
One of the themes of the spring conversations I had is, I swear to God, three out of four creators, I'd be like, "What's your goal?" And they'd be like, "Well, I'd love to sell to HubSpot."
And I'm like, "This is just so lame." [laughs] "Like, have some aspiration here. Like, have like big-- dream bigger. Push things forward." And, uh, it just was missing. Uh, and I think that's what I mean by impact. Yeah.
So let's talk about like how g- you, you ended up like then like building the business, right? Because you raised money, right? We did. And like so the history of raising money is like you talked about like...
And I know there's like, again, this is a Goldilocks thing. It's like you need to have, you need to have m- capital to like get going at this. The capital is everything.
So that's why I take your point on the impact, but I sort of don't totally agree because like revenue to me is oxygen. It allows you to do stuff. It's not the end goal, right?
It's like and so- Uh, we're in agreement with that... that's from a journalist standpoint. But like- We're-- No, I, by the way, I'm in agreement with that.
I'm just saying, and like using Morning Brew as an example and Industry Dive, the more auction they have- Yeah... if you have good leaders, the more investments you can make- Right... to move the industry.
And like there's different ways, like so bootstrapping, for instance, like people love to like glamorize bootstrapping and stuff. But like the reality is like you move so slowly. It's like you talk about ten years.
If you're gonna bootstrap, like it might be twenty. Like, I mean, it takes a long time because if you're... You don't have a lot of oxygen. It's like Miami- Yeah... in July.
Like there's just not a lot of oxygen in, in the air, and so that's rough.
Uh, you can short-circuit it like with having an events business in the back end that like can churn a bunch of revenue pretty relatively quickly.
But talk to me about figuring out like for the impact you wanted to have that like you wanted to go, 'cause I think you guys have been pretty aggressive. Like I don't even know how many people you are now.
I feel like every week on Twitter at least, you're, you're bringing on someone else new, someone, a new- Appreciate that... another new creator.
So one thing that we knew was, uh, overall, and I wrote this publicly, it's not new, but like Disney is a big inspiration, what they did in the entertainment industry.
Like if you study what he did, the guts that he had in nineteen fifty-five with his brother, like a bunch of fun stories. I'm a pretty big Disney, the business of Disney fanboy.
And that was like really like a North Star for Workweek, just looking at the overall cat-- If entertainment is a category, then like business can be a category. And that's kind of like our inspiration.
That takes some capital if you're gonna swing bigger and with longer time horizons, and we wanted to be aggressive.
Uh, we thought some of the moves that we were making, uh, there wasn't comparables out there that every, I mean, every company I've advised and talked to, no one exactly had similar setup and arrangements.
Uh, and so we wanted to move fast because if you're a startup, that's your only advantage when you don't have a lot of oxygen. So we were... We've been pretty aggressive.
We have about forty-five people now, uh, at the company. About nineteen of those are creators.
And, uh, with how we're spending and growing, the idea, and this is lesson learned, of like I, I-- Spiceworks had a fire sale, right?
Like sold eighty million, eighty million bucks as if we did seventy-five in revenue 'cause they were just gonna go out of business. We're, we'll be profitable by end of year. We covered our expenses.
Uh, we covered our employee expenses one month already, and our paid growth is growing super fast.
Uh, I think the magic is can you find, can you find the levers that actually move a media business forward and not like the shortcut ways? And one of the most obvious ones is organic growth.
And like that's why I was attracted to creators is because like if I grow two hundred newsletter subscribers a week organically, and I value those unpaid growth at ten bucks,
I save a hundred grand of cost throughout the year. That's the bootstrap attitude. That's what you have to do when you're bootstrapped.
If you can do that and throw fuel on the fire and have monetization aspects behind that- Yeah... you can start to be really aggressive and fast, which is the model that we made.Okay. Yeah.
'Cause that's, like, something I'm always, like, with the sort of paid growth. Like, like, Morning Brew did a ton of it. I just think a lot of people do pattern matching. I'm sure The Hustle did a ton of it, right, too.
We did. And like, I don't know, like, manufacturing that, like, in some ways...
I mean, again, this is also coming from, like, the sort of journalist side, 'cause, like, we, we were almost like, "Oh, only losers pay for it," kinda thing. [laughs] I have a podcast coming out tomorrow.
Literally, I think that's the topic is, like, the, the- Only losers [laughs]... the hate of paid growth is, like, the topic of the podcast.
Well, I have nothing against paid growth, but don't, like, pretend it never happened. I mean, come on. I totally agree. I- that's why I've been very public about it. Like, I would not...
And you can spend data a lot of ways. I get your ads all the time. Like, I've seen them. I would not be, I would not be- I don't click on them because, like, I don't wanna cost you the money.
I don't wanna screw up your- Thank you. I appreciate that. But I would not be surprised. Like, here's... I'll use, uh, Daniel Murray as an example, one of our creators. We- he start- started seven weeks ago.
He has grown about 9,000 organic subscribers in seven weeks. Just one of the fastest growing creators, uh, we've had. This is making me feel good about the reboot.
[laughs] Uh, but he's at 20,000 because we've used paid ads to grow, right? And but my challenge, if you have, like, operators on here listening, is I actually use organic growth as an example of product market fit.
Like, I would challenge the line- Hey, yeah... of thinking of, like, hey, it's not that losers pay, it's that people- losers pay when you don't grow, and that's your only thing that you're doing. Yeah.
No, I, I was sort of, like, taking the most extreme side. Like, I- Yeah... I- in most areas, I try to end up somewhere on the middle, but on this one, like, I'm probably...
Like, I feel like we're both in the middle, but you're just on the, like, the si- the side, like, operator. On the right center. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And, like, I'm just, like, left of center a little bit.
But no, because, like, I think, like, that's... And I think one of the dangers I would think of it is, is you start to, like, optimize the wrong way, right?
So, like, you can think you're, like, doing a great job when, like, the... You might not... You're, you might miss signals, particularly early on. You gotta look for signals, right?
And, like, when you get more scale, a lot of the signals show up in dashboards and spreadsheets and stuff like this, but when you're first starting out, and I always tell this to people, like, you, your signals end up being, like, hearing from people, seeing, like, what resonates and stuff like this.
And when you start to mix in too much of the inorganic stuff, in my view, early on, the risk is you're gonna miss signals. Yep. And I... What's, what is...
I know some media companies do this, but we have a dashboard that shows the creators the organic growth. To me, when they ask me, like, "Hey, Adam, what's the number one thing I should focus on?" That's what I tell them.
And, and then when this is, like, how our model works is it's like, "Well, how do I grow organically?" And I'm like, "Look, you gotta be active on Twitter. You gotta be active on LinkedIn.
You gotta encourage people to share in their newsletter, write great content." Like, the... It's all around content and personal brand. Like, write a hell of a newsletter where people share it. Right.
And then also distribute those ideas on social to introduce it to new people, and, like, that's how you grow. And then you start to take a step back and you're like, well, some people are terrible copywriters on social.
Some people are scared of it, like, it, they have, like, a fear of it or have been harassed before. Other people just don't have time.
And then that's, like, where the Workweek model comes in of like, well, how can we supplement that, right?
And how can we help, uh, take some of these things off your plate and build these ecosystems around you in the same way where Jimmy Fallon has an entire team around him to support him, but he is the face and brand, can we do that with B2B, uh, operators and creators?
Yeah. So right now the revenue model is it's all ads. Uh, we have, uh... No, we have, uh, a few different lines of revenue.
We have, we have advertising, uh, we have, uh, education, uh, guides, courses, programs, uh, et cetera. We have events. Uh, we threw a pretty big event in New York in May, which is some sponsor.
Some of it's super sponsorship heavy. I am... I don't know when this podcast is gonna come out. Uh, I haven't invited you, but I'm gonna throw a little- Okay...
uh, executive summit in New York, uh, for media operators, uh, about 20 or 30 of us. So we do events. Uh, we have job stuff, uh, and a few other kind of minor, more minor categories today.
But over time, uh, we will have a pretty, uh, balanced book where about 35% of revenue is advertising. Okay. But, like, our... Look, we've l- we talked about Substack, right?
And Substack has optimized its entire model around, around subscriptions, something that I was bitching- Yeah... to you about before we began this podcast [laughs] because- Yeah...
there's a bunch of different downstream stuff that, that makes the product, uh, a little challenging. And I've shared this with them. Uh, are you less bullish on...
'Cause look, I always joke that the media business is like a children's soccer game. Everyone just, like, chases the ball, a clump of kids around one ball, one part of the field.
Clump of kids is all around subscriptions these days. I'm sort of, again, in between. Like, I think there's too many people going into subscriptions with low engagement products. But, like, how do you view that?
Do you view that as an important part of the model, uh, long term? Uh, I, I'm not a big believer in, uh, paywalling, um, like B2B content in general.
I think the more accessible you make it, one, I think the more idea sharing that can happen, the more successful you can...
I mean, this sounds like foo foo, but you can, like, higher chance of grow GDP if more people fucking knew how to grow businesses, so why would we paywall that and keep it to people that can afford it?
And so that's something we believe. And also, though, from a monetization front, uh, to your point, there's... I don't believe in subscription fatigue if the content is great.
But there's actually, if your content is great and people keep reading it, it's free, your monetization opportunities are way more than just a subscription fee to me.
And so that's kind of how I see this is what else can we do to support this audience? What other problems can we help them solve? Yeah.
And that might be, that might be a course or a guide, that might be an event, that might be, like, literally just, like, a happy hour. It doesn't matter.
But I think, uh, if you have affinity, or you call it high engagement-The opportunities are endless, and the-- having it free, you have a bigger top of funnel.
And like I know that's not a journalistic term, but like the real- the reality is like that's- I love funnels. If you- What are you talking about? I just...
Well, uh, I once told a journalist that, uh, I see newsletters like as a financial instrument, as a top of funnel, and they're like, "No, this is like quality journalism." I'm like, "It is, and it's also this."
And- I think it's middle of the funnel, though. Okay. I- Top of the funnel is, top of the funnel is like social media and stuff. Sure. The threads and whatnot. Like- Yeah. Those really work, right? They-- I-- They do.
Uh, you- Ugh, I can't stand threads. You know that, Adam. I know. But they, they do help, uh- Everyone out there, if I'm doing a thread and like growth is- You're desperate... totally ground to a halt.
[both laughing] I, look, I think there's cheesy ways to grow, and there's successful ways to grow. But you're, you're- Tell me the cheesy ways. I think threads are cheesy at times.
I think a lot of people do like l-a low-engagement threads. It's the same way of like newsletters. Like- What, you mean like ripping off like Wikipedia and stuff like this? Wikipedia pages. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Ninety-eight percent of people don't get this. Uh. [chuckles] Yeah. Sorry, I-- that was a little bit of an aside. What were we talking about? Uh, we were talking about paid subscriptions. Okay, yeah.
And you're just not a big believer.
I do think, though, when we introduce subscriptions, uh, one, we have this ghostwriting service, uh, that's now a subscription, which is a B2B product, which we really like, uh, to help people like you that hate being on Twitter- [laughs]...
but realize that, uh, it's- I saw that like you, you said that you've used this for your tweets? For like five months, and no one knew, yeah.
So l- explain this to me, because like I'm like, I'm out there, I'm like, I have been living in Miami, so I'm a little like, like all like fufu- Yeah, you're living a good life... and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah.
Like, and, uh, although I'm moving back to New York, so I'm gonna get like eighty percent more cynical. But the, the thing, it's like, shouldn't that be more personal?
Like, I just feel like you can't optimize everything. I... Well, there's definitely... It doesn't-- You're not giving up your Twitter account. Like I still very much like tweet very personal things.
The difference is that like people need to realize that if you're-- Like it's a way... It's such a shame that your newsletter is not distributed in more places 'cause it's so good. Like that is an issue.
And I also believe- Yeah... that like to become, to, to actually have the consistency and cadence and to do a platform, like it's just helpful if someone does it for you.
Like Ellen DeGeneres does not do any of her stuff online, and like people think- [gasps]... she's hilarious, right? And like a shocker.
Uh, and like George Washington didn't write his farewell speech that's like the most famous h- presidential speech. Uh, it's just like- I think Trump writ- Trump is writing a lot of these tweets.
Yeah, I think- I gotta say... okay, he has defined history once again. But I, uh, I-- it's not an uncommon thing to do, and it's-- We only work with people that are already creating some sort of content, right?
It's not like we're like making things up out of thin air. But Charlie basically would take my newsletters, turn it into a thread. I give him another idea that I wanna work on.
We'd meet like once a week, and then boom, he'd do it. And I was like, "Hey, I know the Friends, uh, contract thing was like pretty unique situation at the time. Creators probably like that." Yeah.
Turned it into a thread, gave me like seven hundred newsletter subscribers. Um- Really? Yeah. Shit, man, I might come around to it. I know. It, it is- [laughs] Uh, also ego.
Like I've woken up on Saturday mornings before where he like schedules a tweet at like eight in the morning, and I wake up- Yeah... and I'm like- But I think the que- What, what...
the question I have then with that and just the, the overall with the model is like are you getting the right people, right? Hmm.
So like I see like the numbers as like this has grown seven thou-- I'm like, there are not...
Like, first of all, I see like things of like Marketing Brew, "We have two hundred thousand, uh, uh, marketing decision maker."
I'm like, first of all, there's not two hundred thousand marketing decision makers I think out there. But like- Yeah... secondly, like you don't-- I've done it. Like
you, you don't do that like organically and reach like the top people. Right. So like a lot of B2B models, the reason that you don't need big numbers is because you need- Agreed... the right people. Yep.
So if you're not-- You can have bullshit n-numbers. Not you personally, but like- Yeah... one can have bullshit numbers. There's lots of different ways.
Like even like Sub Stack with the recommendations thing, like I'm monitoring it, but like there's too many Gmail addresses in there for my- Yeah... taste. I like seeing business addresses. Agreed. Yeah.
So, uh, audience quality, one, uh, there's, there's certain audiences, like I'll use climate tech in my newsletter for media. Mm-hmm. They're tam on those.
If you're crushing it like twenty, thirty thousand right now, like based on what's out there, like that would be pretty big. If I like expanded to like ad agency world, like maybe like thirty, forty, fifty thousand.
Like that's probably like the biggest it could get. Uh, marketing- You can get bigger. You can get bigger than that. Maybe I can get bigger, but, uh, I won't be able to like- We had like a hundred and thirty thousand
subscribers to Digitize, you know? All right. Well, there you go. When I look at like Marketing Millennials, I think it's in the millions. It's just like a broader, more marketing approach thing.
When I look at Sharma's D2C specifically, mostly like people focused on D2C growth, f-another like fifty to a hundred thousand.
The way that we think about that, and like that's, right now, if you look at the growth of our newsletter, the, it's matching Tam. Like it's, the climate's only at like seven thousand or something.
It's not, they're not like exploding 'cause like trying to find the right people. I also think the way that you test this is with events and taking action. Mm-hmm.
So like climate tonight, he's hosting his first happy hour, uh, and had a hu- a pretty good attendance rate for, or registration rate for what I expected. Um- Yeah...
Nicole, same thing, like sold out an event in May, and you're like, these are the signals that you wanna like look for. Yeah. That's the signal. Um, yeah.
Like getting people to like take any kind of action is like- Yeah... an important signal- Yeah... particularly early on.
And if you can get people to not-- to turn out and to wanna connect with each other, then that doesn't mean you have a community, but it makes it more likely that you have a community and not- Yeah... an audience.
[chuckles] Well, I wrote a huge piece, you'd appreciate this. I wrote a huge piece about community, uh, in my newsletter, and, uh- Yeah, I read it...
s-someone wrote back and was like, "Hey, you defined this completely wrong." [chuckles]And I, and, uh, he was like someone that runs a, like a Web3, uh, media company. Oh, wow. And I was like, "Oh, uh, tell me about it."
He's like, "Well, community is very simple. It's just if your audience self-organizes, you have a community." And I actually always loved that. Um- Yeah...
I've appreciated that definition since then, 'cause that is the best signals. Like, if you have people that are like, "Hey, let's meet up here.
Let's do this thing," that means, like, you're actually, like, creating some sort of connection through your content. Yeah. No, I think that's the... that's absolutely the key, and that's why events to me are like...
I look at it as like a triangle, where it's newsletters, podcasts, and then events live. Yeah. We'll do, uh, we'll do 33 events this year. Oh my God, you guys do a lot of stuff at scale. It's, uh...
But, and what's fun about this is that's like another thing. I always ask myself is like, "If I was doing this on my own, what could I do?" And like Nicole, we rented out The Roxy in New York.
It was like 20 grand to rent it out. It's a big venue, hard to sell. We got a bunch of sponsorships.
Like, then she showed up and hosted it, and it was an amazing night, and her audience loves her, and like all that stuff, and, and that's kind of the stuff that makes you tick, uh, for what we're doing here. Okay.
So you're gonna... I, I wanna be mindful of time- Yeah... 'cause we don't wanna go too long. So what are you gonna end the year at in revenue? Uh, I'm not sure if I'm ready to, to say that one. You're the CEO.
You can do whatever you want. I know. I'm not sure if I want to yet. Uh- Why? We'll- It sounds like it's going great. It is. Uh, it is. I think there's, uh, there's definitely...
I mean, you can start to do the math of like where we're growing.
If 45 people will spend 30% of revenue on paid growth, uh, probably by the end of the year, uh, which is pretty aggressive, and still reach profitability, we should cross seven figures a month by end of year. Okay. Cool.
And like what... So what verticals? Like, you're more into marketing than I would've thought you, you were gonna be. Yeah, no, I mean, not like marketing, like you guys have a lot of marketing newsletters. We do.
Yeah, that was pretty purposeful, uh, both from a fuck up that we had early and then, uh- Okay [chuckles]... a, a realization. We went to market with cannabis franchising, fintech, and climate tech. Yeah. Terrible idea.
Uh, well, it wasn't a terrible idea. All those people are amazing, but there's just no connection. Jacob Donnelly wrote this the week we launched. He was like, "There's no way that they ever make any money."
He wasn't wrong that like it's a lot harder to... Those conversations are drastically different when you're pitching franchise healthcare, fintech- Yeah... et cetera. And so he was definitely right there.
We did get more focus, and we started doing what we call like a pod strategy, where now we have three fintech writers and doing more and more to just makes it easier. Yeah.
With marketing, uh, one, uh, bringing on Nick, uh, was a... We kinda called him like a light... what we identified as like a lighthouse.
Like it just, he just like shined a whole light on the whole community and brought, we...
The amount of inbounds, I mean, 30, 40 different Substacks reached out to us like within weeks, uh, saying like, "Hey, we'd love to work with you." Yeah.
So we kind of had a pick of who we wanted to work with, which was great. It allowed quality to be higher.
And then the second thing is like marketers just create an absolute flywheel for a business early on, 'cause the inbounds that we get then to spend more money, they love talking about shit on social, uh, where they share higher amounts.
They just live and breathe on the internet, the good one. Yeah. Uh, so it just allowed the business to...
Focusing on marketing allows our business to essentially have more efficiencies than if we like go super deep on climate or franchising. Okay. So you're like this pod strategy. So, so I got a crazy idea.
Why don't you build brands specifically to those areas? Because that defeats the whole purpose. I think like- [laughs] The... So like you'll see, like the Wolf of Franchises now has his own website.
We're spinning up a few others. Over time, the goal of this is not to have these people just like live under the Workweek umbrella. I already say very much is like we want Nicole to be known for...
She says in her profile, like, "I'm the founder of What the Fintech?" The Wolf is the founder of the Wolf of Franchises.
Over time, we see these as, in many ways, like these creators are running, in some ways, their own business.
They just have a huge support team to help them, and we're allowing them to build their own brand, and it'll be a h- And a house of brand strategy is something I very much believe in versus doing- Yeah...
a, the one brand like, uh, Morning Brew. Yeah. But like why won't they just graduate then and like leave you behind? I mean, 'cause that's like- Yeah... 'cause that's what I wonder, are you an ad network? Are you not?
Like, 'cause like, uh, when you're, when people are talking about like... This is like when, I think when you shared the idea, I was like, "Well, who owns the list?" Yeah. "Who owns the IP?"
'Cause I w- uh, you know, to me, that's the test, right? If you don't... If you own the list, then okay, you've got the enterprise value. I, I think there's a lot of like... So what I did was like look at what has...
This is what like the honest conversation that needs to happen, is like what do media companies do really well for specifically creators? What do the writers, whatever you wanna call them, what do they do well for them?
Uh, and then what do platforms do really well? Like, why are platforms attracting talent? The reality is they both also have a lot of cons. Yeah.
Graduation rate of platforms is one of, of they kind of graduate off of each other because the lack of growth, to your point earlier.
Platforms, they don't individualize basically any support help to get Subst- You're still waiting for Substack to get back to you. No, they got back to me. Um, from, uh, yeah.
[laughs] Uh, and media companies, lots of people around you, but you're kind of told what to do. You have direction. What Workweek, and we've been like people like love to hate. It, it is what it is.
They've been like, "Oh, well, are they a media company? Are they a platform?" And it's like, like I said, we're trying to like do something totally differently. I don't define us.
I like to say media company, so one day we can just be really a successful media company and define, redefine the narrative. But, uh, we took a lot of the strengths of both of these and allowed...
And I think it's creating a solution where creators are like, "Holy shit, I..." Uh, if you look at what...
I have a Slack from a, a creator from like two weeks, and he's like, "I just don't understand why I have this opportunity." He's like, "So good. I feel like incredibly lucky." Nicole posts publicly about that a lot.
And the reason why is like we listened to what they actually wanted.And I think, like, it's funny to hear operators always talk about, like, "We focus on the content, focus on the content."
But actually what that means is, like, focus on the people, and no one wants to say that. And what we did was we focused on the people and said, "Well, why do you love Substack?" when we took those things out.
"Well, why do you hate it?" And we... "Okay, let's not do that." "Well, why do you love working in a media company?" "Because of this." "Okay, great." Yeah, yeah.
And we-- every structure and every creator is different because what we're saying to them, Alex Johnson lives in middle of nowhere, has three kids,
supports his family, his needs are very different than, uh, Nick Sharma, who's running a full-blown agency and has, like, eight staff members working for him.
Like, his needs are different, so our deal structures are different. But- Okay. And that's- So you do different deals with... It's not like a- Every person- Okay... has a different deal.
Like, every sing-- there's not a single one that you're like rinse and repeat, and I think that's a huge advantage for us. 'Cause that's the stuff that, like, regular media companies sort of don't do. Do. Yeah.
Like, I think the most extreme example is, like, is The New York Times. They sort of do with the op-ed page. Yeah. But, like, ultimately, they need to... They don't need to. They can do whatever they want.
They're very pro-- They're very, uh... They're doing a good job. They're nicely profitable. But, like, I just feel like that model is just, is not gonna work with putting the individual at the forefront.
Like, it's just not gonna work. It's just a different model. Yeah, it is. And, like, we're not, uh... I said this to someone earlier, but I was like, "In many ways, I don't see us competing with really anyone."
Like, if you wanna just, like, go write a Substack, I'm not trying to have a thousand, ten thousand writers on my platform. I'm also not trying to, like, save the world with journalism.
Uh, like, we're not in any of those spaces.
And for me, what I, like, hope to have happen is, A, I wanna be known for saying, "Hey, eighty percent of our creators make two hundred and fifty, three hundred thousand dollars plus a year.
They get to choose everything that they do. They have total creative freedom. They love their life. They have a complete survival kind of baseline."
And then, uh, I'd love for over time, like, a couple of them to start to, to be some of the highest-paid kind of creators in the country, and that's kinda the idea. Okay.
I could do this all day, but I'm gonna leave it there. Me too. Adam, thank you so much. I know. This was fun. Yeah. I, as always, gotta have you back for my podcast 'cause, uh- Yeah... everyone tuned in. Any time.
[laughs] All right. Thanks a lot for listening to that conversation.
Up next, I have a ten-minute bonus conversation with Steve Lilly of Bombora about why publishers should be out there kissing a whole bunch of frogs in advance of the demise of the third-party cookie.
Trust me, it makes sense in context.
[upbeat music] We're actively coaching all of our partners that you should be engaging with everybody out there that is proposing to have a solution out there f-for, you know, the cookieless or just a more proactive, um, data manager side.
Or just saying, "Look, now is the time to be getting and building the skillsets that will allow you to be nimble in, in a cookieless context." I think the other thing too is that
this is a cliché term that I've thrown about, and Brian, you've heard me say this before, but you know, the, an, an audience as an asset is certainly bound to appreciate as cookieless comes to be, 'cause where else are you going to find authenticated users at scale?
And so if silver is becoming gold or this asset is guaranteed to appreciate, it seems like there's no better time to be making investments, trying new things, even things that seem like the high-risk end of the portfolio, if you will, because there's been no greater time to reap a return in the value of any improvements on capturing, uh, users, authenticated audience, but also just figuring out strategies that can allow you to have greater resolution on unknown audience that don't rely on third-party cookies.
And those things aren't just sitting out on the shelf.
And so I think just, it's just hard to imagine that you're going to hope your way into a differentiated position in a cookieless context if you're just waiting on the major players' ad tech to kind of tell you what true north is before you start making decisions.
There's a human aspect to data transformation that I think we took for granted when we started the co-op, which was, "Hey, we're gonna give you this tremendous amount of high-quality aggregate data that allows you to have cost-effective, higher resolution on your audience," and we figured out tomorrow they were gonna be printing money with that.
In many cases, nine months later, still getting people's heads around how do we take a holistic approach and talk about data?
The catch 22 of data, and I'll be quiet here in a second, but is that it requires greater accountability. You're using data to say, "This is directionally what we should be doing from a planning standpoint," right?
Then you're driving the activation, and then you have to hold yourself to a higher level of accountability, and that's a scary thing to do.
And so data, when done well, drives better business outcomes or data-centric strategies when done well drive a better business outcome from the publisher, and that they find the most valuable subsets of, of their audience more effectively, and they drive a better business outcome for the advertiser, but it also comes with greater accountability.
And I think, you know, what people forget, it's not just signing up a platform and getting access to the data.
It's, it's the human component and process that goes along with it that allows you to be more effective in an arena now that is, to some degree, less forgiving. Greater rewards, but also greater accountability.
And maybe that's part of what slows the transition- Yeah... even in the face of something emergent like Cookiebot. Well, I think it's also just the... It-- I love that you brought in the human dimension 'cause some...
oftentimes that's missing when we talk about data. When data is just basically just a proxy for humans, but we forget about the humans to some degree.
But on being able to make that data useful and to truly have, like, data transformation with an organization, it requires, like, an organizational challenge, right?
Like, I mean, you have to be able to have, like, a cultureThat, that uses d- that has true data.
I'm gonna like lapse into some sort of cliches, but like, has true like data centricity and doesn't just use it as a crutch. Like, we've always s- we've all seen like data come in at the end, right?
[chuckles] And just like be used to justify hunches, guesses, biases, and whatnot. Yeah, I think it's exactly that. I mean, I kinda said it in the beginning, right?
It's one thing to espouse being really investing in a data strategy versus really being data-centric and putting the people and processes in place to use data to tell a truly differentiated story, to really highlight where unique value exists and drive a premium for it as, as is justified.
Yeah. And publishers- So that, like, yeah, yeah, I remember we've talked before about this data storytelling. Like, explain what that- Yeah... actually is. 'Cause they're usually- Well-... held in opposition, right?
[chuckles] Yeah. We, what we learned, so we launched a managed service, uh, function because we realized that we were struggling o- on our time to value.
So we were delivering these fantastic data resources that had all kinds of potential malleable applications for the most niche B2B pubs to large, uh, massive international B2B media companies and all the way up to household names in, in business news.
And but there was always this challenge of that, that person that could look at it holistically and be a conduit, be a transmission between the ad, the ad operations, the execution, the basic insights on how did a program function, and then tying it back to what, where is the unique first party value that the publisher brings to the table, and then making those insights marketable from either an upsell, looking at post-campaign reporting, right?
Or arming sales to do that thing that everybody in media is always talking about is how do you help the salespeople be m- more consultative, and yet they don't have their hands on the levers where you actually see the data, you actually do the analysis.
They often get positioned unfairly as sort of a two-legged stool that just has the information that media planning has provided them.
And that's a failure of people and process to really figure out what is our data-centric product offering here, and how are we going to run reports and insights that are done a la carte or customized for, for each advertiser in a way that sales can take it to market, deliver those insight, ad tech, pardon me, the ad ops team can execute, and then you've got a post-contract insight that really says, "Hey, we delivered on what we said we were going to deliver.
We met those targets, and here's how we delivered greater value." Yeah. "Here's how we delivered greater performance." Yeah. "And here's why you're gonna write a check for-" Yeah. "... twenty-five percent more."
And that's actually hard to do, and it's not necessarily the systems and the data. It's how people work with one another to translate value sort of through, through that value chain. And what we found is that
for folks that hadn't turned that corner or are still trying to figure out what does data transformation mean, is that they didn't have that data czar, if you will, or that, that literally a transmission between the wheels and the engine and the gas tank to really deliver value.
And so, um, what we're always coaching people is recognize that it's ultimately gotta tell a story with data to create differentiation, to identify value, and then prove where you've delivered greater value.
And that comes down to sort of this, you're really pulling together a lot of different skill sets that I think are traditionally siloed into a unique kind of role that can, can pull those assets together and make it a repeatable sort of mass customization process that still delivers, uh, that customized value.
And that was always the weak point for us, was finding the person that could play that role, or where necessary, with all the pieces in place, we had to sell a managed service contract to play that role on their behalf while they figured out who would fill that gap.
I think that's the, the one thing that, what's interesting is when you find that role, you find that data strategy moves much more quickly than it had previously.
You really need to see that person that has that vision from sales to activation and measurement on the backside to create continuity that really delivers on the value of what we all know is possible with data, but isn't necessarily just there for the taking if you don't have the human resources and process in parallel, if that makes sense.
Sorry that was long-winded. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. What I liked about what you said is, like, two things. One is, like, you talked about storytelling, right?
And you talked about differentiation, and both those things are core to brand, right? Yeah. And that's what brand is about.
And I think sometimes, particularly on the publisher side, when talking about data, they think it's the opposite of brand, right? It's the enemy of brand in some ways.
And I think some of that is just scars from the way the ad tech industry sort of developed, uh, over the first couple of, uh, iterations, but I think that's changing. I mean, I, I was in Cannes the other week.
I like to mention that every now and again 'cause I'm fancy as a newsletter impresario. [outtro music] Thank you for listening this week. We will be back next week with a new episode.
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