[upbeat music] Hey, friend, it's David Nebinski, the community lead at the Chief of Staff Network.
We help chiefs of staff through the three Cs: cohorts, curriculum, and community via Slack with over nine hundred people in it. Learn more about our membership, events, programs, and more at chiefofstaff.network.
You can also subscribe to our newsletter there as well. In this episode, you'll learn from Kyle Hege, the chief of staff at Morning Brew.
This episode was recorded live at our New York City Brain Trust mini conference, uh, in February. You may remember Kyle from a prior podcast episode called "How to Be an Effective Chief of Staff."
Definitely listen to that episode after this one. In this episode, you'll learn about quantifying your role, AI, user manuals, job searching, how to avoid Sunday scaries, and so much more.
Excited for you to level up as a chief of staff. Here we go with Kyle. All right, let's give it up for Kyle. Whoop. Whoo. [clapping] Um, okay. Kyle, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be back. [chuckles] Um,
was there any news that happened this week? Not, not anything too big. No? No? No, nothing too big. No. I think this is the biggest news, being on this podcast. Oh, [chuckles] okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, broke the internet.
Okay. Um, no news at Morning Brew at all? [chuckles] We... So Morning Brew, well, our... The company's technically called Morning Brew Inc. Oh. So clearly you didn't do your research as a, a podcast host, David.
[chuckles] Very disappointed. Uh, Morning Brew Inc., which has... We have, like, fifteen-plus owned and operated brands, Morning Brew, the daily newsletter, being one of them. But we also have CFO Brew, IT Brew.
We have franchises that play in more multimedia spaces. If anyone's seen Dan Toomey's good work, guy dresses in a trench coat and, like, asks what the fuck do consultants do, and it's hilarious.
Uh, so if you haven't seen that franchise, go check it out. Uh, so it's a, it's a, like, you know, company that has a lot of different brands underneath it, and it was founded by Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief.
Um, Alex started as CEO, and then Austin has been CEO for the past four years. But yesterday, Austin stepped down as CEO. He'll be executive chairman now.
My boss, who was the COO at the time, is now the CEO, and so effectively, I got a promotion without really doing anything, which is awesome. Riding people's coattails is, like, so in.
[chuckles] So now I'm chief of staff to the CEO at Morning Brew, and that was the big news that you're alluding to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sick, yeah. [clapping] Yeah, I, I literally did nothing.
Um, but it's a very exciting time for the company just because we have grown up.
It's 10 years old, and we've gone from a single newsletter now to, uh, you know, close to a hundred million dollars in revenue digital media company that's across B2B media, consumer media, podcast, video, newsletter.
So it is a really diverse, strong business, which is exciting, particularly in the media space, which is historically really hard to get to a, a place like Morning Brew is at. Um, what was it like when, uh, Robert was...
As in the process of him becoming the CEO, what was, what was that like for you as the chief of staff? Yeah. Um, it...
Robert is really, really talented and has been CEO of media companies in the past and has been, um, in digital media, media. Like, he's in, like, the unsexy media too.
Like, he had a company that was, like, selling, um, doing media particularly for, like, EMT, police, and firefighters, like, first responders, and then had some, like, training program built off of that.
So he's worked in spaces that are more focused on, like, the quality of the audience and the, the particular people you're hitting than just trying to get to scale, which is typically in media, like, how you make money.
It's just not sexy. So he has a really good understanding of the media landscape and, and that's why they brought him in as COO originally. So to be honest, like, not much changed.
The, there, you know, there were some rumblings of Austin wanting to leave.
We're owned by Axel Springer, that owns Politico, Business Insider, and eMarketer in the U- in the US as well, and Robert had interviews with them, and it was a pretty obvious choice that he was the, the, the next in line to be CEO.
So nothing really changed.
I had to have one call with, like, a German recruiter guy who was kind of frightening, um, to talk, to talk about, like, would Robert be a great CEO, and, and I had obviously wonderful things to say.
So it wasn't really that complex of a, a, a issue from, from my end. Um, does your responsibilities, does... H-How does your role change? It doesn't change much. R-Robert, like, before this, we s-
we still had, like, finance, events, executive editorial, um, audience, uh, like, pretty much I think nine or 10 business units reporting into Robert as COO.
Now, I think it's, like, 12 or 13 business units reporting into him as CEO, but for the most part, he was, like, acting as interim CEO. Um,
and I think that was intentional to, like, kind of get him some, uh, reps in as that CEO position before Austin, uh, formally stepped down. Okay. Yeah. Um, is there anything else you wanna share about that part? Uh, no.
I mean, very excited for Morning Brew. Really glad that Robert got this opportunity, and again, like, I, I did nothing. [chuckles] I just was, you know, reporting to the right person at the right time. Nice. Um,
is there a secret formula to how to pick the right person at the right time? [chuckles] Um, I think we talked about this in the first podcast.
Like, I think the chief of staff role, particularly when you're reporting to, uh, you know, your principal and executive, I do think you should be pretty discerning about who that is if you can.
Uh, I do think because of the nature of the relationship and the nature of the job, you end up becoming a lot like that person- Mm.... in some way.
And i-in some ways, you have to be to, like, to, like-Help them achieve what they need to achieve, you need to get on the same wavelength as them, and you need to speak their language.
And if you don't like the person you're reporting to, like, you're just gonna have so much cognitive dissonance of working with this person so intimately but not really liking who they are. It's gonna be a bad fit.
And so I would just ask yourself, if you wanna become a chief of staff, or you currently are and you're, like, thinking, "Is this the right move?"
Like, if you ended up more like the person you're reporting to, would you be happy with that? If the answer is yes, you're probably in a good spot.
If the answer's no, I would start thinking about how to find a different person to report into if, if, if you can. Okay. Um, and then we wanted to talk about kind of like, um...
Or you talked a little bit about it on the last podcast about, like, making sure that you're... Or, or thinking about, like, how you're really making an impact- Mm-hmm...
and proving an impact, and ideally it's, like, maybe connected to revenue and stuff like that.
Um, as you've now been, like, a year into the role, um, how have you thought about, like, measuring or showcasing the, like, impact and value that you're creating and how that trickles up to the top line or bottom line?
Yeah. So I think this is...
One of the pieces of advice I give to everyone in their career is really understanding how the work you do ladders up to both the company's, like, vision or long-term goals, but also how does the work you do, like, downstream lead to revenue?
I think if you can draw a really strong line between your work and making money, and if that money is more than what they pay you, like, they're probably just not going to get rid of you.
And it, it, it feels, like, very maybe, like, machine-like, but I, I do think at the end of the day, like, corporations try to make money, and they bring people on only if they feel confident that they're gonna help bring them more money than what they pay them.
So I, I just think from a job security and job advancement perspective, and a negotiating perspective, if you can get clear on how your actions lead to revenue, it's a great idea to do that.
And I, and I think a lot of people, they have, like, a fuzzy job, I would say. Like, maybe you're one person in the marketing org, and you're running top of funnel brand awareness campaigns.
It's really hard to articulate how that ultimately does lead to revenue, but you should do the work to figure that out, at least an estimate, 'cause I think it's going to help, um, help in your career.
So f- first and foremost, I would do that. For me, how I'm thinking about impact, one of my major initiatives from last year was working really closely with our events team. So we have both virtual and in-person events.
This year we're doing 10-plus in-person events. We just had one on Tuesday, and we do, like, up to seven virtual events a month. Last year, we rolled out a new event form, like, uh, format.
So before we were doing these, like, big summits- Mm... all-day conferences. We actually went smaller. We went niche.
We did half-day events that start at 9:00 and pretty much end at noon, and there's all centered around our professional franchises, IT Brew, CFO Brew.
So we're getting finance leaders to come in for a half a day and hear from our programming across, uh, our CFO Brew franchise.
And we reworked, uh, I with the events team and with Robert, reworked all of the sponsorship packages. So we built, like, four different layers that companies could come in and sponsor.
We actually brought the price down from where it was in previous years. We added more value. We made them much more holistic. So instead of just sponsoring an event, you were getting a custom article.
You were getting some digital impressions. You were maybe getting some leads based on where you came in at.
So they were much more, like, full funnel activations for our clients, which, who are advertisers, and they did tremendously well.
And we've now booked, or we've now set the schedule for this year, uh, in October of last year. So we had our 10 events picked already in 2024 for 2025.
That was as fast as we've ever done that before, and we just put, I wanna say, like, over $200,000 on one event, which I think is our most money we've put on one of these half-day events thus far.
That's all the work that myself, Robert, and the entire events team, and mainly the events team, did, and it's now incremental revenue that we weren't getting last year.
So I g- I have something to point to that's like, "Hey," like, "I was deployed on this little mission to go in with the events team and, and help figure this out and look at all the progress."
And, and so that's, you know, one example of how I would tie myself to impact. What's another example? Um, yeah.
[laughs] The one I'm most excited about right now is we have this amazing, like, insights and analytics team. Mm. And Morning Brew, one of our, like, secret sauces is we have so much first-party data.
If you go to, like, sign up for a newsletter, we've all been there. You wanna read the newsletter, you put in your email, and you're, like- Yeah... finally gonna be able to read it.
You click subscribe, and then it's like, "Wait, what company do you work for?" [laughs] "How big is the company?" And you're like, "Motherfuckers."
[laughs] Like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna give you all this information.
But we make you do that to read our professional newsletters, but it's really, really helpful for us because then we understand, like, what type of company you work at, how big is it.
We can actually create content that's better for you. Mm. And when advertisers ask us, like, "Hey, we wanna activate in CFO Brew, how many of them are director level or higher?"
We actually have accurate information to tell them- Mm... so they can tailor their campaigns in a much more effective way, too. So we have all of this amazing data.
We also have this group of, like, diehard Morning Brew Inc. fans that live in our break room, and we can survey them and get really, like, live updates on how people are feeling about AI or how people- Yeah...
are feeling about burnout or how, you know, the, the software they're using as finance professionals. And I think there's a really great way where we can take that information and use it, one, to inform our-...
uh, sales team- Yeah...
on, like, what the market is like, and they can go to a client and say, "Hey, we actually did a survey, and it turns out 68% of our audience uses HubSpot, so HubSpot, you should be focusing your campaigns on, like, more niche use cases because our audience is already familiar with your general product."
Um, we can also go to our content teams and say, "Hey, our audience is telling us they really care about AI, so CFO Brew, we should be writing more stories with a primary tag about AI. Our audience is super into that."
And we can go to our content creators- Mm...
take it per my last email, for example, my- the show I co-host at Morning Brew, we're doing a whole episode on these really interesting insights we got from the break room that then lead just to really, really great content.
We kinda already know is gonna resonate with our audience 'cause we asked them what their thoughts were, and they gave us good feedback and good signal that this was something they were interested in.
So there's a way to, like, collect data once, but use it in like three or four different ways across the organization that either drive franchise growth, they drive incremental revenue because we're better able to help our clients, or they drive more effective content, which, you know, keeps subscribers sticky and allows us to add new subscribers.
So it is like the classic build once, sell four or five times model. Really excited about that, and we're off to the races with that, uh, so far this year. Cool. Um, per my last email, uh- Yeah... the pot.
[laughs] Uh, I like the name that gets some laughs. Yeah. Was that- That's good... was that triggering? Um- [laughs] Um, uh, does that drive bottom line, or how do you think about, like, spending time on that? Uh, yeah.
Yeah. Well, it, it hasn't drove bottom line yet, so if there's any people that wanna sponsor a very great work life podcast from Morning Brew, talk to me after. Um, so what David's alluding to- See, that's good.
There we go. Yeah. [laughs] Uh, so I, I, I'm chief of staff as you all know, and, and that's why I'm here mainly, but I also co-host this show at Morning Brew called Per My Last Email.
It's like work life, so introverts versus extroverts at work, or how to talk about your salary with your coworkers, or, like, w- if Amazon does a big return to office mandate, we talk about, like, is that really...
Do they really want people going back to the office, or is this, like, sneaky layoffs? It's- Mm... it's that type of content. And we launched the show in April, uh, and we're still doing it. It comes out once a week.
And that eventually will help bottom line, like, we're obviously talking to sponsors around it now that we're at the level we need to be at where sponsors are interested.
But I think the, like, maybe more interesting topic we could explore is, like, how to know how to spend your time as a chief of staff, 'cause typically when I tell people I'm also co-hosting a podcast, they're like, "Oh, so you're probably, like, a pretty shitty chief of staff 'cause you d- you, you have to, like, go spend all your time doing podcasting stuff, and you can't actually focus on your main job."
And, you know, that's a, that's a good question. [laughs] And so [laughs] I, I ought to have a rebuttal. And I do think it's, like, if, you know, you want something done, give it to a busy person.
I think there's an element in all of our careers where it's not about doing as many things as possible.
It's really deeply understanding which levers you can pull that drive the biggest impact and really focusing your time on those levers.
Uh, and so I think that's a skill that you're a chief of staff or not is really, really important to develop. And per m- how is Per My Last Email connected to that?
Yeah, I mean, I really only do it, like, we record on Wednesdays. We record in batches, so we'll do two back-to-back episodes. And then, you know, we're blessed at Morning Brew. We're like, we h- I- we have a producer.
We have people that are cutting it up to make social clips. Like, we have all that. So it's not a major chunk of time. However, like, I do get really into it when I'm- Mm...
doing it, so that is maybe another hack is, like, being really focused and really intentional when you are spending time on something.
But there is, like, this, like, undercurrent benefit that whether you have a podcast or not, I think you can learn from, which is doing stuff, particularly as a chief of staff in other areas of the business, I think is just really helpful.
Mm. As a chief of staff, you should be really strong as a generalist. You should understand how the company works from finance to creators to marketing to sales to sales enablement, everything in between.
And, like, being able to actually go live the life of a creator at Morning Brew, like microdosing being a creator at Morning Brew, is actually really helpful for me when I'm thinking about, okay, like, we're not monetizing multimedia in the way that we need to be at the company, and why is that?
Well, I actually now have this lived experience of, like, what it's like to be a creator and maybe where the disconnect is between creator and sales and post-sales and the production cycle and where all the documents live.
And so it is actually, like, helping me better understand the business by having lived experience in that role.
And whether it's, again, a podcast or if you're, like, on this mission to go prove, improve the events, um, revenue situation, like, you're deployed into the events team, it's really helpful to, like, really understand that business, get to know that business 'cause then as you're operating at, uh, at this higher level, you're able to more effectively connect the dots.
Cool. Um, who's got questions before I move on to another topic? Olga, come on up. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So my question is actually around, um, whether you have any advice on how to understand the business.
So do you ask to shadow people? Do you ask to join meetings and just be a fly on the wall? What-- how do you make that decision? Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I definitely would go to the different business leaders.
So when I first started as chief of staff, my previous job was, like, kind of this, like, startup within a startup that was operating very differently than the rest of how Morning Brew operated 'cause we were building courses, they were writing newsletters.
And so when I became chief of staff, I was like, "I'm really excited for this role, but quite frankly, like, I don'tI don't know what y'all have been up to for three years. Like, I was doing something totally different.
So I did do this, like, you know, listening tour where I sat down with the heads of all the different business units, and, like, the finance person, like, I don't know anything about finance.
So, like, really coming in with this open mind of, like, "Walk me through your, like, day. What are your main objectives? Like, what made your week difficult this week? What can I, like, help you unblock?"
And I just did that across the entire organization. And then also, I think we often can think that, like, the department leaders know everything.
They know everything at a certain level, but it's really helpful to go talk to, like, more junior folks, individual contributors, people that are, like, actually in the weeds on a lot of this stuff too, 'cause they often have way better insights on, like, what's actually happening than someone who's a little further removed.
So, like, just go and talk.
And, like, that is kind of one of the cool things about being a chief of staff is if you're a curious person, it kinda gives you license just to go learn from, like, really, really smart people, which is awesome.
And, like, you kinda have this disguise as, like, "I'm doing this for, like, to get good at this role," but really, like, I'm just like, "I love learning about media and business, so, like, I have all these smart people at Morning Brew.
I'm just gonna go ask them a, a lot of questions." So that's how I would go about it.
And then the other thing, too, is, like, there's so many great resources out there on, like, I read maybe five or six newsletters that are about the media industry writ large.
So I would focus most of your time understanding your business from people running your business, but also take time to understand the industry that your business is in and how other businesses similar to yours run.
And then the real hack is like, "Oh, I learned that Semaphore Media, uh, is doing this. That's really interesting. We're not.
How can I, like, take that and translate it into Morning Brew terms and see if we could do something similar?" Um, so yeah. Uh, it's a great question, and, like, 1000% just go talk to people on your team.
Also, it helps, like, as a chief of staff, you have to get really good at influencing without authority.
You have to be able to join teams that are typically really tight-knit and working towards a, a shared goal and are all in the same business unit, and you have to come in and, like, help them and suggest things that they should do differently, but not have it be rejected by the host.
And you have to show, like, respect that you don't know what they're doing and you don't know the business unit as well as them. You might have some ideas that transfer.
So I think some of these conversations, if you come in with a beginner's mindset, an open mindset, and just hear them out at first, then when you do have to work with them and have to, like, maybe have some difficult conversations, you at least have that relationship, um, already.
Okay. So, uh, chief of staff has a lot of different roles, but one of the main- Yeah... I think I've heard from a lot of people and I've experienced is being a effective communicator. Mm.
Um, I'm sure being chief of staff at a media company also has a [chuckles]- Yeah... a double, double meaning in that where you're also effectively communicating your stories to your listeners and your readers. Yeah.
Um, do you have any tips or tricks that you swear by when it comes to being an effective communicator, particularly around, like, telling a story that is very complex to a group of stakeholders that might not understand it?
Yeah. It's a really good question, and kind of like... It's a great question, kind of at the heart of, like, all, all roles. Uh, a f- a few, like, nuggets to throw at you and, and if they're helpful, that's great.
So, uh, Claire Hughes Johnson, she is an amazing leader. She was the former COO at Stripe, and she has a book called, uh, Scaling People that I really, really love.
And she also, in that book, and, and there's a, a webs- a web article about it too, she has this thing called an unauthorized guide of working with Claire.
And basically, she created this Google Doc that was, like, how she likes to be communicated with, like, when you should Slack her, when you should email her. Is she blunt? Is she a little more passive?
Uh, does she like synchronous communications or asynchronous communications? And I love the idea of, like, a personal user guide that you could create for yourself.
And then I, I do manager trainings at Morning Brew, and I often tell managers they should create one and share it with their team, and then they should have all their teammates create one because then it just helps you get on the same page.
Like, as an example, I would... There was this one day I, like, Slacked Robert, my boss, like, this really long Slack that, like, you had to scroll on Slack.
If you're ever scrolling on Slack, I'm like, "Dude, I fucked up, man. Shit." [laughs] Uh, and he was like, "What is this? Like, this is an email. Like, well, this is way too long." And so I was like, "Okay," like,
Slack, I... You know, if we could've, I could have not embarrassed myself if we just had a conversation of, like, how do you use Slack and how do you use email and, like, where do certain communications go?
So figure that out first. Um, in terms of, like,
doing a presentation to various different stakeholders, I think this is where, like, understanding how your organization works and what their incentives are and what their goals are.
If you've done, like, really effective strategic planning, you should know, like, the Rocks or the OKRs for all the senior leaders, what they're driving towards. It's, it's understanding your audience, right?
The same way as if we're writing a newsletter for finance professionals, we have to use their language. We have to understand what matters to them.
We have to deliver the message in a way that's gonna be most receptive to them.
So if you're giving a presentation to stakeholders, like, before you even think about what you want to say to them, first think about what do they need to know? Like, what are they driving towards?
What's the language they like? And then you just... It's like a transformation. You take the information you have, and you transform it in a way that's gonna land with your audience. I would say, like,
if you're saying something, even if it's right but it's not landing, like, that's your fault. That's on you. Mm.
And really making sure that you've kind of delivered it in a way that's gonna be receptive to the audience is key. I, I hope that's helpful. So for a job seeker- Yeah...
you have an interview that's maybe 30 minutes long to prove that you're... capable [laughing] and intelligent enough to do all of the things that you're describing, what would be your advice? Oh, that's tough.
So different from being internal and already proving- Yep... yourself on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. So, all right. I like... This is a great question too.
I love career pivots, and we've done an episode about career pivots, um, in a, in, in a few different ways.
And whether you're pivoting or you're, you're trying to stay, like, my, my general advice for interviews is you can typically, like, shift your industry or you can shift your role, but it's really hard to do both at the same time.
So what I mean by that, if you worked in media, like me as a chief of staff, I could probably go work for another media company and be like any particular role because I understand the industry.
And so what I would really be focusing my time on is convincing them that I know how to do this other role, or I could be, I could go be a chief of staff at like a med tech company, and they know I could be the chief of staff and I'd, I'd spend my time focusing on like, "Here's what I do and don't know about med tech, but here's how I can get up to speed."
Um, like proving yourself in a 30-minute interview, that's really tough.
Um, I do think that something that has worked for me, and it's a little bullshit 'cause I do think you have to like do way more than you should in interviews now.
Particularly like projects that last like weeks and you don't get paid is like crazy to me.
But when I got my first job at Morning Brew, I think like I knew that if I was just as good as everyone else in the interview, I wasn't gonna get the job. I was living in Milwaukee.
I like had never worked for a cool company. Um, I had like a nonprofit government background. I knew like I had to be just like obviously the best candidate.
So I would almost like figure out where you are on that spectrum, and if you know you need to be the best candidate, like you probably are gonna have to go like above and beyond.
So after my interview at Morning Brew, I, I was trying to get hired for this community manager role. I built an entire notion that was like, "Here's the first thing someone would see if they joined the community."
It had like our community principles, it had our merch, it had like all of the flow of, uh, communications. It was like literally the hub, and I just let it rip and sent it over to Morning Brew.
And then when I got hired, I went back to Slack and I was like, typed in my name and I was like, "What were they, what were they saying about me?" [laughing] 'Cause they never...
Companies never remember to not like delete that part. [laughing] So there's a little hack for you.
And so I found it and Austin, who was, I think, he was COO at the time, but he's one of the co-founders, he was like, "Did this kid just send this?" [laughing] And they were like, "Yeah."
And then I, I was talking to a, a coworker of mine who was on the team I just joined, so she... And they were like, "Yeah," like Austin was just like, "Hire this guy immediately." Like, "What the hell?" They...
But particularly 'cause we were building something from scratch, they needed someone with that mindset. So like, yeah, if you really want the job, I'd...
I, I think going ab- you know, above and beyond and, and shooting your shot, like it, it can't hurt.
Um, and it's maybe unfortunate, but I think we just have to be realistic that like an interview, they're never gonna understand fully who you are. They're looking for heuristics.
They only have a limited amount of time, and they're looking for signals, and if you can provide your own signal, you increase your chances. Does anyone have any questions about AI or something else? It's always AI.
How are you using AI in your role? So it was really interesting. This is
tangential to this question, but Anthropic just came out with this really cool paper about how they analyze like, I can't remember how many, but it was like a million plus conversations on Claude, and then like broke it down by like, what are people asking AI to do for them?
What, what, uh, t- what role would this fall into? And they had this really great like data visualization. It came out like two or three days ago. So I, I just... Go check that out. I was reading it this morning.
It was really fascinating. Um, so AI is interesting. I think if you say AI, half the people are like, "This is the greatest thing ever. It's gonna change the world. We're all gonna be like unemployed in two days."
Or you talk to someone and they're like, "It's all BS, and like we're wasting so much money and probably like burning the planet." I, I'm, I'm probably in the middle.
[laughing] And, but I would say like I wouldn't think of it as AI, I would just think of it as like technology. Mm. And I think as a chief of staff, your company should have a technology strategy.
And if AI didn't exist, you should still have a technology strategy, which is like, how are we gonna leverage new technologies to be more efficient, to augment our capabilities, to automate some roles?
Like, whether it's AI or not, you need to have an answer to that question or like you're living in the Stone Ages.
So, uh, outside of that, I would think of it as in two ways, like personal use of AI to drive productivity, and then like company-wide, uh, AI initiatives or AI use cases. For me, I'm obsessed with this new AI tool.
It's called Granola. Mm. Everyone write that down. If you've never used it, it's fucking magical. Yes. [laughing] Right? It's like fun. Granola? Yeah. They need to do that. I think it's only on Mac now.
Someone said they're waiting for the full, uh, yeah. Yes. An integration in Notion. It's amazing. Anyway, it's like, it's like a, you know, it, it's kind of like a consumer app.
It's one of the first ones that I've felt like really excited to use. Mm.
And what is interesting about Granola is there is AI note-taking apps, but they do the thing where like, and I'm sorry if anyone works for these companies, I'm gonna be a little hyperbolic, but they join your meeting and it's like, "Kyle's AI note taker joined.
Alex's AI note taker. Jennifer..." It spams the chat, and there's like all these fake bots on the screens, and it's like, this is insane. Granola just sits in the background. Mm.
It's really like discreet, and it just does one use case right now, which is you take your notes and it's transcribing in the background.
Then when you're done with your notes, it enriches your notes with the transcription using different AI algorithms.
So you get this really comprehensive breakdown of what happened in the meeting, but it's using what you wrote down. It's giving more weight to that 'cause it knows that, oh, that must be important. Yeah.
Kyle wrote it down. My note-taking has gotten like 100 times better, and it, it's, it's a really cool tool.
So I think if you're-I would use that tool, and then I'm talking to Claude, which is like my model of choice, or like ChatGPT or whatever you want, like every day.
And what I've found it to be really good at is like writer's block just doesn't exist anymore. Mm.
And particularly if I have to do like a big like I have to go research like B2B affiliate revenue strategies, like just talking to Claude for like thirty minutes, I have like seventy-five percent of that done.
I have a really strong like scaffolding, and then I can supplement it with my own thoughts and like internal knowledge about Morning Brew and other searches, but it speeds up the process for sure.
F-from like a company perspective, um,
I think as a chief of staff, I'm really excited about this, this year, is having every business leader write like what technology they're using now, what technology like they, uh, they think they might be using.
But most importantly, what problem are you facing? What's getting in your way? What problem are you trying to solve? Like, it's very important not to put the technology before the problem, and it's like anything.
You have to identify the problem you're trying to solve, and then technology might help you solve it, or it might be a different solution. So that's really important.
And then there's one layer that I think is really underrated, which is like the horizontal layer across your company.
So like there's technologies that'll help like the vertical different business units, like finance and events and whatever. But there's also like now this like really cool layer. Glean is a company doing this.
Like I think search is a big issue at companies where you have information that lives in Notion and Gmail and Slack and written down in the discrete corners of your desktop and like all over, and like just finding stuff is really hard.
And so I think like search that's like connected to all of those different tools and helps you like find information a lot faster is one great use case that is horizontal that everyone can use at your company.
Um, so yeah, I mean, think what you want about AI, but technology is definitely here, and you should have a great technology strategy.
But I would start with the problem you're trying to solve as opposed to like, "Let's just add AI to like my socks," because that sounds cool, and it's like, what the f- what does that even mean, you know?
[laughs] So yeah. I'm looking at my socks. [laughs] Um, but uh- Could use some AI. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh. Now we're talking. Um, any final, final question from anyone? Come back, yeah, Anthony. Let's go.
Back to back. Who's more fun to co-host Morning Brew Daily with- [laughs]... Toby or Neil? Um, oh, they're both great.
So we have a, a show at Morning Brew called Morning Brew Daily that's, uh, it comes out very early, like s- seven, seven thirty maybe, uh, every day.
It's like, I think it's number one or number two business podcast on Spotify. And the two co-hosts are Neil, who has been at Morning Brew for like nine years, nine of the ten years, something crazy, maybe even ten.
He is like the lifeblood of the company in so many ways and was the first newsletter writer. And then Toby, who runs a lot of our social and is like a brilliant social minds.
They co-host it, and then if one of them is out, I, I will fill in, which means I just have to get up at four thirty AM and Uber to the office and record at like six AM. Uh, they're, they're both fun in their own way.
I'd say Neil is more like, maybe like into the numbers and like that Morning Brew tone. And Toby is like, Neil is like Morning Brew newsletter, and Toby is like Morning Brew social, and they're both fantastic.
Uh, so I don't have like a favorite, but depending on if you like Morning Brew Social or Morning Brew Newsletter more, you might pick one or the other. It's a great question.
Um, last podcast, we said we would end, um, around like tactics. That's, I think that's how you per my last email always- Yeah... like wrap show on tactics.
What's like a final tactic or two that you wanna leave people with here? Hmm, final tactic or two. [inhales] Um, hmm. [lips smack] What's a good one we haven't covered?
So I'll, I'll, I'll share one that I do that I really like. And again, if you're all chief of staffs, like it's gonna depend on what your principal likes. Uh, but I have this thing where, like,
I try to avoid the Sunday scaries as much as possible. And so I will carve out like an hour or two hours on Sunday to actually like do a little bit of work.
And what I'll do is I have this running document that I look at that's like my objectives for the week, and they're bucketed by certain categories. Mm.
And then, you know, I look at that on Monday, and I, on Friday, I'm literally like checking everything off. I can see like, okay, did I hit about like eighty percent of these.
On Sunday, I then like recreate that document. So I'm putting all the stuff that I wanna accomplish that week into, into the buckets.
And then I think like, if I only could accomplish like three to five of these things- Mm... what are the most important things that I need to get done? I put that in an email, and I send it to Robert every Sunday.
And I just say, "This is my weekly focus areas for this week. Here's what I'm thinking about multimedia monetization, maybe a couple bullets linked to a relevant document.
Here's what I'm thinking about X, here's what I'm thinking about Y. Here's what I'm thinking about Z." And then he sometimes will respond on Sunday.
Um, I don't know, if there's like a good football game on, he doesn't respond.
[laughs] And, uh, then on Monday, we meet at ten AM, and we just basically, like I get confirmation that what I think is the most important, he thinks is the most important as well.
And that really does like set the tone for the week. It gives me this like very concrete target and confirmation that we're aligned on general strategy and what's important to run at that week.
And that cadence, then we'll meet on Friday and basically review, like did we get done what we said we were gonna get done? I really like that cadence.
So like maybe the meta tactic from that is like looking at your calendar and your like comms cycle with your boss and just thinking about ways you can make that work for your life and to come in Monday with like not a sense of dread or that you're behind, but you're actually ahead and you're feeling really good.
Um, I do think just like general calendar management is, is pretty underrated, um, because then what I can do is like I can look at the five most important things, and there's like the political saying where it's like, "Don't show me your campaign promises, show me the budget."
It's very similar to like, "Don't show me what you're gonna work on, show me your calendar." Mm.
And like, you can only do things with time, and so like if you haven't mapped out the time you need to spend to accomplish the things you said you're gonna accomplish, they're not gonna get done.
And so actually chunking your time to be like, "Okay, for two hours, I'm gonna work on most important thing number one. And then this two-hour block, I'm gonna work on most important thing number two."
Like my calendar has a ton of holds and a ton of blocks just to make sure I have the, the time necessary to complete what I need to complete. Let's give it up for Kyle.
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