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Timestamps
Episode Transcript
John Newtson:
All right. Hey everyone, I’m excited today because I got Brian York here, who I think a lot of you know. Brian is the CMO of the Agora companies. Brian, thanks for being here. Yeah, no problem, thank you. Yeah, I’m really glad to have you on here and this kind of started this last conversation.
John Newtson:
We kind of started because you left a comment on that video the State of FinPub. Yeah, I thought it was a really really important point that you made comment on that video the state of FinPub. Yeah, I thought it was a really really important point that you made and basically just to read it to everybody, you basically said that the bull market and I’m quoting here in COVID forced FinPub into the mainstream. Most businesses chase the volume with mainstream ideas. That was a mistake. We need to refocus on big fringe ideas and go deeply into those ideas. Customers pay us to be trusted advisors with ideas they won’t get from their brokers. Yeah, and I love that, because to me, that is kind of the essence of what FinPub has been forever. Would you elaborate on that a little bit, though, when you say like people were chasing volume and we were forced into the mainstream?
Brian York:
Yeah, it’s a big. I mean I know and thank you, for I think this is a hugely important point, so thank you for having me on to talk about it. But I think, if we look at the bull market, it hurt a lot of things in our business and I know that in previous episodes you’ve had people mention this. It became too easy. It became too easy to chase ideas. We forgot all of the ways that we serve a customer best throughout any market. So I think what it did was force us to go really into, honestly, pot stocks and crypto. What’s the easiest way to make money at the time? Pot stocks and crypto. Unfortunately, right now, with crypto, it seems like there’s another upswing in easy money and making crypto promos, but that’s another subject for another day.
Brian York:
But our customers don’t always pay us to be right. They pay us for well-researched ideas and when we’re simply chasing the bull market, we’re competing with the mainstream, and I think that’s something that we need to remember is we are never mainstream. We are in the fringe. We are chasing ideas that seem, quite honestly, unbelievable, but they happen. They happen a lot, and that’s what our customers are looking for If they just wanted those mainstream ideas that came out of chasing the bull market. They would pick up anything off the newsstand they wanted to, or anything online, uh, but not us yeah, I think that’s it’s such an interesting um set of distinctions.
John Newtson:
I feel like we need to make around that too right, because, like I’ve been talking quite a bit about the, the mainstream of financial information, because everybody is trying to well, everyone is consuming information around investing online. It’s becoming a much more common thing. Yeah, that is very distinctly different. That has to do with kind of an increase in demand, yeah, right, but what you’re talking about is very specifically about what they will pay for.
Brian York:
About the ideas.
John Newtson:
Right, the ideas themselves? Yeah, because they can. Like you said, there’s a lot of free information and in the, the free information is exploding. Um, it has that’s been a continued trend, for I think, since the internet started. Is that the?
Brian York:
amount of information.
John Newtson:
The quality of it has continued to improve over time, and so what people are willing to pay for is very different than just generally from investing information, and so that idea of fringe, fringe ideas and niche ideas is where all of our acquisition is going to come from.
Brian York:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and interesting ideas and you know, really everything in this business comes back to the idea that it drives the offer. It drives you know how we deliver things. It drives what we deliver. So it all comes back to the idea in the end or in the beginning no-transcript.
John Newtson:
Their audience don’t actually invest, which is fascinating in and of itself in terms of behavior that they’re paying for investment research but it’s primarily to because they’re interested and they want to be interesting about these things.
Brian York:
It’s actually a scary statistic. I’ve been looking at that a lot recently.
John Newtson:
It’s very scary. Yeah, so why do you think it’s scary?
Brian York:
It’s scary to me to think that 75% of your audience that paid for something isn’t using it. Is that high? I think it can be in some cases. Yeah, yeah, I think it can be, and I think the usage of the product ties into a lot of different things. Part of it is certainly going to be the track record, Part of it’s customer service, part of it is just usability. But in the end, if our customers are not using our product, then we’re failing them.
John Newtson:
Um, yeah, Because then they’re not. I mean, the lifetime value on that, too, isn’t going to be great. And then, um, why are they there? Yeah, and that’s one of the problems with some of the more um, aggressive front end products that have been out there is that they’ve, they were really successful in bringing new people in, but they weren’t really good back-end buyers because they weren’t actually consuming the information or the product in order to do something, isn’t that?
Brian York:
yeah, all of our efforts should really be on that middle of funnel stuff. The top of funnel stuff is shrinking and I think honestly it’s going to shrink some more. It’s not going away by any means, but it is shrinking and to a certain extent we should make it shrink to those people who are able. We were able to monetize to an extreme in the middle of funnel. But again, all that ties back to using our products and hitting the right audience. To my point that I made in that comment hitting the right audience with the right ideas that they’re willing to pay for.
John Newtson:
Right, I’m going to dig into that a little bit more in a second, but first I’m gonna kind of make sure that I’m complete in kind of drawing out so many things that you brought out up here, um, the I mean part of chasing volume during that time when it was boom. I mean, like I’ve heard some people say that, well, that’s kind of what we had to do in this period of time was, you know, you, you kind of let your winners run, um, but then, like, the fallout is when it hurts, but it wasn’t necessarily wrong to go after those ideas like Bitcoin and things like that when they were such a big boom, because that’s where people’s interest was their attention was yeah yeah, yeah, I don’t know.
Brian York:
It’s hard to say, even in hindsight, whether it was wrong. I think where it becomes wrong is when you’re chasing an idea that perhaps resonates with your audience at the time but doesn’t lead into further monetization. Then I think it’s the wrong idea and our business. We can’t make snap decisions. We have to look at very long term tests, tests that could take one, two, three years. I mean, we look at three years as a fully baked lifetime value Could be more than that, but that’s our measure of three years. In some cases we need to look at that and in some cases it might take a year and a half to two years to realize. You know shit, we, we might have gotten the wrong idea here.
John Newtson:
You half to two years to realize you know shit, we might have gotten the wrong idea here.
Brian York:
You can’t go backwards though, right, right, right, and you also can’t wait two years to make decisions about the business when it comes to acquisition, right.
John Newtson:
There’s some very unique things about FinPub, and one of them is this idea that we go after niche ideas, yeah, and other marketing kind of cultures at this point, other info, marketing cultures and stuff like that are actually focusing more on niche audience first. So they might say, like an example I’m not saying that this is something that you should do or not do, but like, okay, we’re going to go after the female investor or we’re going to go after or after a specific subset of investor that is only interested in this thing, or you know but niche audience has never really been a FinPub focus. It’s always been on niche ideas, right, and do you think that that is going to continue? Do you think there’s opportunity to explore niche audience as well? Do you think that really, because investing is the idea, is what it is, regardless of who you happen to be that it’s just going to stick with niche idea entirely? Or have you thought about that or had any discussions around those kind of things, around niche audiences versus?
Brian York:
Yeah, that’s it’s. It’s interesting for sure. I mean, we’re always thinking of audience, we’re always thinking of our avatar when it comes to those ideas, particularly how we market those ideas to the extent of idea pops up as we flesh it out. What would John think, what would so-and-so think, Our fictional avatar there? But are we looking at the audience to develop the ideas? Yeah, I guess we are, because we always want to think about what keeps them up at night, what are their fears, what are their dreams, what are their goals, what are their desires. That’s part of that thought process, of what are they thinking about that we’re not talking about.
John Newtson:
Yeah.
Brian York:
Yeah.
John Newtson:
I think it was Richard Stanton Jones who had the great avatar in mind of the perfect fit and customer is the millionaire pig farmer. It’s like blue collar entrepreneurial folks who, yeah, and.
Brian York:
Well, it’s funny, but I’m sure you talked to some of the folks back in the day that were with Palm Beach Letter and they were running Bill Bonner’s letter at the time and their their winning ad. The image for it was just him as a farmer in front of a bunch of cattle and that was basically the headline was something like millionaire farmer, blah, blah, blah.
John Newtson:
Yeah, it works yeah, it works, it does. And you know, it’s interesting because I thought about this when I um came across this video of um mark andreessen talking about their when they started a16 and how, even as a vc fund, what they did in the beginning was they targeted a niche audience, they targeted other founders. They didn’t raise from other funds. They specifically went to founders and said, hey, um, here’s, here’s why we think you’re a better investor than other people. And by doing that they they established like a bunch of things that were very specific to their business.
John Newtson:
But, um, it was such an interesting, I think, idea to me because here we have the largest vc fund in the world by far and he started with a very niche audience and that same marketing concept seemed to work, yeah, but then what makes it even more interesting to me is that the growth of that company comes because they invested so much in niche ideas, yeah, and so there’s this tension between these two things that I think is important to explore to a certain degree.
Brian York:
Yeah, I agree completely.
John Newtson:
And when you think about the state of FinPub, then how do you see things right now? We’ve had what was this massive pullback? There was industry headwind and company headwinds for the last five years, basically since, I’d say, right after the crypto boom. We had the crypto parabolic move. The first one got pretty much all you guys off of Google and Facebook for a couple of years. We’ve had cases throughout the industry.
Brian York:
You know what day it was, John, it was April 1st 2018.
John Newtson:
Google kicked us off April Fool’s Day. What a day. Um, how are you guys seeing, you know the industry at this point? How do you see any kind of the market and the state of things?
Brian York:
Yeah, Um, I don’t think it’s going to go back to what it was, nor should it Um and again, that kind of ties into what I said before, where, if we look at that bull run of, you know, 10, 11, 12 years where anything we put out there sold, I’m not sure we brought in the right customer. To your earlier question, and I think we should shrink that a little bit. I think everyone should intentionally shrink that a little bit, just for long-term sustainability is bringing in the right customer, serving that customer well, and I think there are two big points here. Bringing in the right customer, I think, involves something that we did not have to face in that bull run and that is kind of the four-letter actually five-letter word of direct response, which is brand. I don’t think we’re never going to sell by brand and I’m going to say that again just so everyone’s very clear. We are not brand marketers, we are not selling via brand. But the brand supports what we are selling. It supports the long sales letter.
Brian York:
And what do I mean by that? It’s really do we know who we are? Do we know what we’re selling? And from the outside, looking in, does the customer see that same exact thing that we are. Because if there’s a difference there, if there’s a conflict there, then it makes it very, very hard to sell in today’s environment. Because what’s the first thing someone does when they see a sales letter? They go off and search for more information about you. You know they’ve got to find things that are aligned and cohesive with the message that was in that sales letter. And then the other side of it in terms of I forgot the other side of it.
Brian York:
Now, what was I talking about there, John? Bringing in the right, oh, and scaling it. Scaling it so again, just making sure that that customer comes in on an idea, on an offer, on a product where we are giving them 100% of what we promised, 125% of what we promised, and just customer service out the wazoo. It’s maintaining those relationships. Keeping those customers becomes ever more important. And again, I think that’s something a mistake that was made in FinPub during that bull run was it was just so damn easy to get customers. We didn’t think enough about retention, we didn’t think enough about renewals, we didn’t think about that long-term relationship. We just kept churning going up. And when I say we, I mean the global we, not just Agora.
John Newtson:
We just kept going after people hand over fist, but I think now it’s ever more important to give them 125 to make sure that they stick around and that you create a lifelong customer with as many people as you possibly can yeah, and I always think of like, especially when I think of like the kind of the classic, kind of agora letters and and for me some of the classics, of course, were, I mean the daily reckoning with bill bonner and everything he put out and some of that Like there is absolutely like a relationship that’s built with the person Right.
John Newtson:
So you have like the fact that they had an ad for him. That’s a farmer, both connects to the customer and talks a lot about who he is and his ideas and kind of he’s great because he has such who he is and his ideas and kind of he has he’s he’s great Cause he has such an amazing voice and his ideas are very distinct. I think in in in pretty much financial media. But that issue of like uniqueness comes down to like in having great ideas. I mean it comes down to like having really great editorial and editors who are thinking and so like. Finding those people seems to be like a harder thing.
Brian York:
A lot of people have mainstream ideas.
John Newtson:
There’s a lot of people that have good ideas but they’re not like. They’re just not that interesting. People are to make them interesting or they resist being made interesting. So how do you like? How do you like? How do you think about that piece? It’s like the editor and the relationship that the editor has to build um with the customer through the copy and through the editorial and through the kind of business I mean that that’s the business we’re in is relationship.
Brian York:
You know, revenue is a byproduct of that. We’ve got to maintain, we’ve got to build and maintain that relationship. Uh, you know, we always talk about it, like in the dating analogy. Like you know, you’re you’re basically asking somebody out on a date and what are the steps you’re going to go through? So that’s really it.
Brian York:
I mean, I would think the only flaw to that dating analogy is that that you can and should sell somewhat aggressively upfront, but you should sell them on the thing that they came in, on the idea that they came in on. And if they don’t buy right away, that’s fine, that’s fine. Let’s build that relationship, let’s talk to them, let’s think about them. If we look at lifetime value, so if we look at any given business and we look at someone that’s acquired as a lead versus someone that’s acquired as a direct to paid acquisition over a span of a year, the the lead acquired acquisition we call it a two-step acquisition is always going to be worth more. The lifetime value of those people built on the relationship is always worth more than the direct to paid acquisition.
John Newtson:
Wow, really.
Brian York:
Yeah, yes.
John Newtson:
That’s amazing, so it costs more right.
Brian York:
Investing in those good people and those good editors, that costs more Sending out those emails, that costs more thought um he was a, you know.
John Newtson:
Maybe there was a little section about them, but he had very little to do with the promo even in terms of what, the how it was presented on some of those maybe it was. And then the consequence then of that is that you, you, you haven’t really built it up front, you haven’t built that relationship up front. You haven’t, yeah, really like sold them on this person and how he sees the world.
Brian York:
Yeah, they got far too sold on the greed than the person behind the ideas. You know, yeah.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and so I always thought that like, and you can’t make every package a guru package, but the guru package to me was always like if a customer buys on that, that guy, I mean he’s in because he’s in for this person Exactly, and so almost all front end should have, like I don’t know, a guru package element.
Brian York:
Yeah, well, it’s funny, the Oxford Club and I don’t know if they still run this, I need to check but they used to have something called the club package or the tour package, and it was literally, if you can imagine because they’re in this old brownstone mansion down the street, that way and if you can imagine just being taken on a tour through there and these are the people that you’re going to meet.
Brian York:
This is the investment director, this is the the chairman. Uh, you know, this is the lovely club room that you can sit down in and have a cocktail with your other members. And it was all about the belief system of the Oxford Club and that the scale wasn’t high. But man, those people that bought on that they stuck, they stuck around and they spent a lot of money. So I think you go from that like a belief system package and then maybe next step up is that guru package and then you get into like that, that system or just that pure greed package is the one that people don’t really care. Who is telling me this? They’re just sold on that idea yeah, yeah and it’s, it’s.
John Newtson:
I don’t know if you guys have found this. I I’ve seen it, but I’m not, I’m not. It’s been a while since I’ve been hiring copywriters or writing directly, so I thought that a lot of what I saw when I would talk to writers or see the promos going out was there’s a younger generation that just they kind of didn’t know how to write those packages anymore yeah because they just it was like, oh well, I just put, put 10 000 behind everything, yeah, and that’s kind of the promo that I’m gonna write, yeah, and so it was hard to to find people who could then make that transition now to like, hey, you can’t quite do that anymore.
John Newtson:
The FTC says, don’t do that. Which, by the way, do you think that the how much Backup is where it’s hard to. No one wants to talk about this stuff too publicly, but I was going to say, like, how much do you think that the FTC kind of coming in and saying, hey, like we’re, we’re changing kind of the rules, that that that you know where the line is, we’re going to get really aggressive about this and so you have to be much more conservative with your copy. How much do you think like that impacted kind of this last period where, where sales were down? Do you think that was a large consequence of that? Do you think that was?
John Newtson:
do you think that just fueled something else, the market kind of shifting. Do you think like yeah, that’s that’s.
Brian York:
That’s an interesting question. I think it it added to it, but I don’t think it was the primary reason and mainly on the back end, I think it’s a good thing. I think what the FTC did and I think that’s been said here in this space is that they these were rules that needed to be set down to clean up the space a little bit, clean up the space a lot. Frankly, we as a company, the stakeholders in the company, sat down and they said we’re even going to go above and beyond what the FTC asks. They set in place their own series of rules that look for honesty, authenticity and transparency in everything we do. Google has a similar belief system when it comes to evaluating their own page.
Brian York:
So I think it’s important, and if a fraction of sales was lost because of that, then it probably should have been lost. I’m sure everyone’s going to call me after this or email me and say what the hell are you talking about, brian? But again, I think it gets back to these were probably not the right people, and if we were able to segment those people off that came in only because we were super aggressive and super hyperbolic, we’ll probably find that there’s not a lot of lifetime value, but on the flip side the refund rate is probably enormous on those type of people.
John Newtson:
Yeah yeah, not every front-end dollar is equal. Yeah yeah, and you know, with that kind of idea of shrinking a little bit, you know, I had a good conversation with Mike Pizzo the other day.
Brian York:
Okay, yeah.
John Newtson:
But you know and he was saying that him and him and joe had uh, joe schriefer had had many times had this conversation that maybe the right size of a publishing brand is maybe 40, 50 million, rather than like pushing them to one, two, 300 in their case at one point.
Brian York:
Do you think that that sounds about right, like there’s a there’s kind of a natural size to to a brand, especially since it’s fringe ideas, or yeah, I think a brand with fringe well maybe not even use the word brand I think a business with fringe ideas needs to stay small and nimble and I think it gets very difficult when you’re over that 50 million size. So I I definitely agree with joe and mike when it comes to that.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah, so that seems to be, um, you know, I haven’t found a lot of people who’ve pushed up towards a hundred million, yeah, who were happy with the business they had yeah, at that point. Yeah, it seems like most people were like yeah, this I wish, I wish I’d known exactly yeah, no, I, I completely agree well and know.
John Newtson:
With that, when I look back on Agora’s history because I mean Agora, you guys, you guys basically have been, you’ve defined the industry in so many ways right Over the last 20, 25, 30 years and one of the things that I always admired about the way that the Agora grew is it had kind of an ecosystem approach to businesses where you had talented people. Someone had a really good idea. They wanted to try and launch a pub. They’d get the chance to, and if it worked, it worked, and if it didn’t, the guy got his chance and maybe there was some money was recouped, maybe some money was lost.
John Newtson:
You don’t lose the talent. They go back into another group, but because of that you were able to grow like this ecosystem of you know it’s high dozens of companies, yeah, like um, and so if, if it’s a smaller overall publishing or business unit, um, it would seem that like the plan going forward might be to kind of grow out new small pubs again or franchises. Is that part of the plan? Because I know there’s a lot of conversation, just as in the industry, about Agora’s plans to maybe not be as big as they were as you guys were before and in general, and so what does that look like for you guys?
Brian York:
Are you thinking about like yeah, I mean I can’t comment on specific plans going forward, but I would say everybody always wants to grow. We just want to grow the right way. And I think to your point. If we look back decades ago, gosh, I started with Oxford in 2000. So it’s 24 years now and Oxford was a place where Money. Map Press came out of Oxford, stansberry Research came out of Oxford. Stansberry is now MarketWise. Of course, wall Street Daily, which ended up becoming part of Agora Financial I’m sure I’m missing a few Sovereign Society, which ultimately became Banyan. So it was a breathing ground. It was an incubator for so many different new ideas. And if you look at them now, the Oxford Group has the core Oxford and then they’ve got Manward Press and they’ve got Monument Traders Alliance. And Monument Traders Alliance is, I’d say, a very different idea and execution of the idea. It’s that live trading room. It’s not your traditional Oxford concept of investing, but it still works.
John Newtson:
There’s a lot of crossover in between the files it’s so interesting to think that all that came out of oxford, because oxford, yeah, um I remember I don’t know, maybe it was the 2005, the agora marketing conference that um, uh, put out some cds. I remember the conference was like a 25 000 conference, um way back I think it was a five somewhere in that period of time, um, and I remember there was an uh you know like porter was there and he was like there is no marketing model, we’re all doing different things.
John Newtson:
Um, the oxford group was a small group of I think there was maybe four or five marketers total, but they were crushing it in pay-per-click um but like to see all those different groups coming out of that group and then at the in the real boom here you can say that a lot of the groups that came out of them for at least a period of time were larger than them yeah what do you think is so unique about like oxford, that like it’s the one that’s stable?
John Newtson:
it seemed like it was stable of the businesses. Right yeah, what do you think is unique about it? Is there a specific culture? Is it something about that belief system? Like, what do you think that is?
Brian York:
Yeah, I think part of it was culture. I think part of it was the stability for sure. I think part of it is that they’re typically the most valuable customers. That might vary now, but historically it was the highest LTV of any of our customers. You had a fairly wide range. You had people as young as 50-something upwards from there. So you had varying investment styles too. But I think also you had information junkies there. You had people that were really sold on reading and understanding the ideas. And that’s where, in the early days, when you had Porter Porter, who’s just a master of ideas coming up with ideas and conveying those ideas to people, I think that that’s that was one thing for sure that would make him successful from the start. Money Map Press again a global investing idea. So there we go again. We’re going back to the idea. It’s the big idea. Whatever big idea there was at that time, that’s what grabbed people. That’s why they were successful. And you know, really it was a style, a management style back then, which very much welcomed that to your point.
John Newtson:
Nice, nice. And then when we talk about the ideas, then there’s a difference between a franchise idea, like a business unit idea, and a promo idea. What do you think is when it comes to having that kind of global idea for the business unit? What are the edges of that? How does that have to look to be kind of worthwhile? Just give me a stumper there, john. Small idea questions at you the edges of the franchise idea.
Brian York:
I’d have to think about that, john. I’d say, first and foremost, have a franchise idea. I mean, I remember one time years ago I was asking two businesses overseas, two businesses in the same location and two different publishers and I said all I need really is your elevator pitch.
Brian York:
you know, because that we were working on their advertising at the time and I said all your ads are basically going to work off of the core pillars of your business and those core pillars are built around your idea, your elevator pitch, your franchise idea, and one gave it to me within 10 minutes that it was fantastic, and the other one it took two months for me to coax out of him and it was horrible. So you know that’s, that’s just bad if you don’t know what you’re selling. So what are the edges to that? I don’t know the answer to that.
John Newtson:
I don’t know the answer to that? Maybe it’s things. What would be some good examples of like hey, that’s a really great franchise, that you understood what they were doing.
Brian York:
Yeah, well, if we look at international living, which is pseudo-financial, but the first of Agora’s, it’s retiring overseas for less as an American you know which at the time was a very fringe idea. I think you know one of the boundaries I guess based on that would be it needs to be a fringe idea. Now that that idea is not so fringe and they’re having to explore kind of subsets of that idea, so yeah, it’s got to be something that’s fringe yeah, and that’s a very I mean, that’s that that’s been running for since the 70s, right?
John Newtson:
I mean? Uh, 1978 or 79 was when that launched, I believe yeah wow, that’s an amazingly stable and long life for an info marketing, info publishing business, that’s yeah that’s so like the fringe ideas, um, and I think that’s something that, like you know, in the trading side of the world people sometimes lose is they’re so focused on.
John Newtson:
I have this trading system, yeah, and so there isn’t really an idea other than, like, maybe there’s momentum trading, maybe there’s you, you know, but those ideas are. Some of them can be fringe, but a lot of times they’re they’re relatively well known, and then you don’t have a lot of new things to say about it, and that makes it difficult to have to run this kind of a marketing model in particular, I think.
Brian York:
Well then, I think it goes back to the editor. The onus is on the editor to build a fantastic, freaking relationship and maintain that relationship, because if someone can get those ideas anywhere, if someone can get that information anywhere, they want to go to the person that they like to get it and that they trust. It’s really. It’s trust. There is what you need to build, yeah.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah, and that’s where you know I remember. I forget who it was, but it might have been something Brian Hunt wrote, or I forget who, but something about like on the trust side, like you got to own your mistakes. So when you’re wrong, I was wrong when you’re one, when we won.
Brian York:
Customers will absolutely forgive you for being wrong about something. What they will not forgive you for is sloppy research or poorly researched ideas. Yeah, that that they. They will go on to someone else.
John Newtson:
Yeah, I think that’s the thing. There’s lots of someone else’s these days, yeah.
Brian York:
Yeah.
John Newtson:
What else is on your mind these days about the industry where it’s going, where it’s not going, that it should? In your spot, you see marketing from so many different business units too. How do you okay, we’re shrinking, but what’s the, what’s the path forward? Do you think for pubs at this point, or what else is on like a major thing, that we should be thinking about? That? Maybe we’re not.
Brian York:
Yeah, I think for me it’s really keeping my eyes on on connecting the dots. It’s the omni-channel relationship, uh, because our readers are are to the point. You know, it’s not my parents anymore. My parents are 81. They’re beyond or slightly beyond our demographic. It’s someone who isn’t much older than me now that I’m selling to. It’s someone who’s very savvy. It’s someone who isn’t just going to a website for information. They’re going everywhere. They expect to find me everywhere. So with that becomes or comes that point that I mentioned earlier and that’s alignment. It’s how do I look versus what do I perceive myself to be, but also making sure that I’m there and I’m serving my customer, serving both in acquiring and fulfilling everywhere I possibly can, where I know that they’re going to be, and then connecting those dots. So connecting those dots in the data gives us such valuable information about who our customer is and what they’re doing and when they’re primed for another service and when they’re primed to renew. So that dot connecting is something that is difficult and is something that we’re working on.
John Newtson:
Yeah, we’re working on. Yeah, so then omni channel kind of implies a little bit that it’s you know we think of it as fin pub, it’s publishing, but really like you’re a media company at this point, and that means you have to be on whatever channels we think that the customer happens to be on to a certain extent right, and so do you think that that is kind of one of the things that’s going to grow then?
John Newtson:
is you know kind of that growing octopus of media channels that you’re pushing some form of content out in some way in order to lead them back to kind of the central entity? But then that means there’s a lot more production that needs to happen.
Brian York:
I think the first part is true. I think that’s a necessity in terms of the production. That’s what we can’t let happen. So we need to become very intelligent with something that we’ve done very well, that everyone in FinPub has done very well, and that is slicing and dicing our content to repurpose and reuse it in many different ways. And that’s the project, that’s the exercise right now.
John Newtson:
Yeah, so AI couldn’t come at a better time. Then yeah, exactly yeah, so that’s, ai couldn’t come at a better time, then yeah exactly.
Brian York:
Yeah, now, ai is fantastic for that. But yeah, I mean, I think I think some of those fringe networks are a little bit under, under utilized right now. You know, I look at TikTok, which I was raving about three to four years ago to people to you know, get your ads on TikTok. Get your ads on TikTok, because people my age were on TikTok and they were there because their kids are on there. You know, if your kids are on a network, get on there because there’s value there. You know that there are other old dudes there with money that are going to invest because they’re watching their kids. So how could we stand out? You know, we stand out like a sore thumb on TikTok with an ad at the the time. Now there are financial ads all over the place, but at the time to see a financial ad, why wouldn’t a 50 year old person click on that?
John Newtson:
of course they would right yeah, yeah, yeah, do you see also like, do you think I mean I don’t know if you guys, I think you guys still do at least on the back end, direct mail? Um, you know, I’ve seen and talked to some people who were like you know, I mean, the biggest problem with mail these days is the list universes aren’t there, but there’s also no competition and so there is at least on the backend, pretty good opportunity just sending mail physically.
Brian York:
Yeah, you would think so. I honestly don’t know enough about direct mail. I started right as direct mail was fading. I know that we still do it. I think maybe it’s reserved for our house file, uh, or for ad inserts that would go with an issue, uh, but I’m not entirely certain. But I agree, you know there’s no one else out there, so why wouldn’t you do it? I think market wise still does an extensive amount yeah, you know, it seems to be it’s.
John Newtson:
It’s an interesting thing because, um, yeah, you know, it seems to be, it’s it’s it’s an interesting thing because, um, that used to be the big problem is, you know, I, I, I was raised in a household of a multi-buyer of all the bottom other stuff and so, like the magalogs would come all the time and it was just like there was so much of it that’s how you got into this.
Brian York:
Huh, it’s just your child just growing up reading that stuff.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah and then I was so proud the first time I wrote one of those types of packages, because I was like mom, you understand this yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly um that’s funny yeah.
John Newtson:
So the I don’t know like the, the um. One of the things that sparked the thought to me, um, besides hearing people talking about it was I had a a friend of mine works for a marketing data company that they work with like a lot of e-com brands, and he was saying that a lot of the Warby Parkers of the world and other things. They start on Facebook marketing and they get up to about 50 million in sales with their digital and then at a certain point they realize that their cost to acquire starts to be so high that it’s cheaper to go to physical retail and so they go offline and that’s how they get their much more expansive growth. And it was such an interesting dynamic for me. You build your brand online, you reach a point where the cost to acquire gets too high and then it becomes cheaper to go offline. You know, online you reach a point where the cost to acquire gets too high and then it becomes cheaper to go offline.
John Newtson:
And then I remember in the mail like and this is not inflation adjusted, but it was, you know, 130 to $150 to acquire a customer. And it’s like well, what do we pay now? 130 to $300 to acquire a customer. You know, it’s like it’s not that different, and so it just stands out to me as one of those like some niche niche business maybe, um, for some people back end for sure yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, and I think also uh in the mail is is uh, new member welcome experience.
Brian York:
You know, I I remember, uh, it was very recently I was on on x and uh, porter had retweeted. I don’t know if you say on X and Porter had retweeted, I don’t know if you say re-Xed or retweeted someone from someone, a new subscriber that got something in the mail and it was a really well done welcome package and you know, talk about creating brand evangelists and raving fans. I mean that dude just put it on Twitter, on X. This is what I got. It’s at Porter and Company, right there. And gosh, I remember there was a group it was money map when they did national institute for cannabis investors and they had a facebook group going and all these people were doing unboxing of their welcome package and everyone was like when do I get it?
John Newtson:
I?
Brian York:
I, you know, I just joined, I haven’t gotten mine yet, so you can’t buy that sort of excitement. Yeah, yeah, that’s that that’s.
John Newtson:
That’s. That’s awesome. Yeah, you know, when I think, like you know, nikki, the national institute of cannabis investors, that was a very niche idea. It was kind of mainstream storyline, but still it was a. It was an investing niche. I think back to like what are the big front end ideas that we’ve had and they have been? They just like there was. I mean crypto, cannabis, 5g, right on the tech side, the bricks I always go back to like the early, like 2000s, it was all very.
Brian York:
China.
John Newtson:
So some of these stories, like they’re hitting the mainstream, but you’re trying to navigate, like here’s what the no one’s talking about inside that, yeah, right. So that seems to me to be like there’s this dynamic, too, of you have to find the fringe idea because there are people who are talking about Bitcoin in 2012, or right, very fringe at that time, but you weren’t getting the attention in sales because of it, but it gave you the credibility for later too, um and then, and so I think that there’s also that tension. I don’t and just curious, if you think that this is accurate that you might have to channel the attention from a mainstream idea or something that happens to be mainstreaming in terms of the media. Yeah, focus it on like, well, this is the story that’s not being told. Yeah, everyone’s missing yeah, yeah.
Brian York:
You need that level of interest at the top, and that interest is helping you drive it into something else. So it’s here is the hidden aspect of this that you didn’t realize, and what’s what no one is talking about in the news right now.
John Newtson:
Yeah, but we know right, yeah, so it’s like the, the prediction it’s. It’s like you’re not really predicting. I mean, you are, but that’s not how it feels the customer.
John Newtson:
It’s like you’re illuminating hidden corners and hidden ideas and things that are not, and that for me, that means that you’re not just your editor, but your whole copy team. You have to be really interested in the market, and that, I think, is another thing that it was easy to get away with not being interested in the market when everything was selling so easy, right, yeah, I see your point.
Brian York:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And also the copywriters could drive the idea more than the editor, where really it should be the editor driving the idea, with the copywriter latching onto that and then expanding on that idea, or at least a 50-50 relationship. But it should never be a position where the editor or the I’m sorry, the copywriter is just pushing out this idea that they know is going to sell. It’s allowed to get out there in the wild and then the editor can’t necessarily support it with how they’re writing and how they’re talking and what they’re investing in.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah, that’s. It’s so funny you say that, cause I hear. I remember in my head now I’m thinking of all these conversations I had with people who were like this copywriter was trying to get me to do this, yeah, or I had to do this because the publisher then told me to do it anyway.
Brian York:
Yeah.
John Newtson:
Because they thought it was a good sales idea, but they hated it.
Brian York:
Yeah.
John Newtson:
And it seemed to me that some of those editors that became kind of the kind of grievance that drove them to leave those publishers. Yeah, that like feeling that, like I’m on the hook for this idiot’s idea.
Brian York:
Yeah that.
John Newtson:
I’m on the hook for this idiot’s idea, and I’m the one that’s going to be recommending.
Brian York:
Well, and when you don’t have? That communication I mean really the perfect triangle of communication is your editor, your copywriter and your marketer, that they all need to be talking and know and live and breathe what each other is doing. That’s what helps get good ideas out the door. That’s what helps to create good customers.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah. And that what helps get good ideas out the door. That’s what helps helps to create good customers. Yeah, yeah, and that that seems to also be part of the reason that the um, the freelance copywriter kind of went. That didn’t go away. But, um, everyone favors teams copywriters were on teams, that that you’re able to keep those kind of close relationships, that close communication.
Brian York:
Yeah, uh, just for that reason yeah, no, I agree, I, I agree. I mean, in the best case scenario, the copywriter really becomes entrenched with the editor and is talking to them nonstop during that copy creation. Yeah, yeah.
John Newtson:
Yeah, no, it’s, I don’t know. I think that, like to your point before, like some of the things that happened, like the pullback, was good for the business in a lot of ways, just because it’s made us stop and think about the business, like what are we doing that matters, what are we doing that maybe isn’t sustainable and now things are going? I mean, and why are?
Brian York:
we doing this Right. Yeah.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and I’m hearing pretty much from most people that they’re on the upswing pretty, pretty handily so you’re seeing that too like yeah, yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I don’t know what, uh, what analogy to use.
Brian York:
I guess we’ve stopped bailing out the boat, you know, now we’re making sure we don’t have any more leaks in there, but uh, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, we’re getting there yeah yeah, I think everyone is. Yeah, I think I think people are seeing some lights um, internationally. I think it’s it’s the same. We had a little bit of a delayed effect in some markets internationally. That might still be hanging on, but uh, I’d say the same thing things are changing.
John Newtson:
Yeah, yeah yeah, and so then now that we’re going into kind of a, an election year here, um, do you think that’s normally positive, negative? Um, I don’t know.
Brian York:
It’ll be a fun one, John. It’ll be fun. Um, there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s put it that way.
John Newtson:
Yeah.
Brian York:
There’s a lot to talk about. Let’s put it that way yeah, there’s a lot to talk about. How much of that gets, you know, quote unquote, censored out there as we put it out? I’m not sure. And again, that applies to everyone, because even just talking about certain issues that could be considered political are occasionally getting censored. Now.
John Newtson:
So it’s yeah that’s actually that’s a really good point, because that is a very I mean, it feels like a very new phenomenon, the last almost since covid yeah, um, there was some of it in the sense of like the crypto stuff, but that was because the icos were, yeah, the scams were were kind of out of control there, yeah, but other than that it seems like in covid it was like this, like sea change that happened with the media.
John Newtson:
but other than that, it seems like at covid it was like this, like sea change that happened with the media companies, where, now that it is like you have to be careful about what ideas, yep, or even how you enter the idea, because even if it’s not something that they would be upset with if they actually paid attention to it, you can’t enter it in an interesting or shocking way, because it can’t be shocking, it can’t be shocking.
Brian York:
So you can enter an into an idea. You can use a lot of the same language of that idea. You cannot shock people into reading it. But if you were to get somebody into an idea using an advertorial, get them to click off into something else where they’re on your turf. That’s a different story. But you know, obviously we know that degrades the whole responsiveness of the entire experience. Um, but I’m I’m interested, interested to see how that’s going to change or become even more aggressive as we move into this election cycle, cause I think, uh, I think, there will be another clamp down.
John Newtson:
Uh, just see how extreme. Yeah, yeah, no. I think that’s probably a good prediction yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
Brian York:
I think that’s yeah, I’ll be a good prediction. Now is the time to talk about social issues before media shuts you down.
John Newtson:
Yeah, no, that’s definitely. Uh, that’s definitely coming yeah, yeah cool. Well, is there any other big things that you think we should hit before? Um, because I really this has been a great conversation, brian, yeah it’s been a lot of fun.
Brian York:
I’ve got to get to FMS. I mean, I don’t know how many years you’ve been doing that. Like I said, it was right on my son’s birthday and I’ve traveled so much over the years and I haven’t traveled much since pre-COVID, but before COVID I was on the road 10 days out of the month, something like that. I’ve got three kids. I always make it a point to stay home for their birthdays.
John Newtson:
I did the same thing pre-COVID. I was on the road similarly, COVID was such a nice reset. Then I was like wait, I got to be very conscientious about my travel. I brought my kids down.
Brian York:
Yeah, I read about that Next time you’re in Baltimore or wherever. I’ll brought my kids down, um they, yeah, yeah, I read about that in the event, and it’s great, yeah, well, next time you’re in baltimore, uh, or wherever, I’ll make it a point to see you, yeah no, I’ll let you know that’s great, no, but I think you know parting thoughts.
Brian York:
I think it’s just. It’s all about um, it’s all about creating that customer experience. I think the next 10 years are really going to be middle of funnel things. Uh, it’s maximizing lifetime value, and we can only do that through creating strong relationships that stand the test of time.
John Newtson:
Yeah, and that’s a fantastic way to leave it, because that is the kind of the essence of the business.
Brian York:
Yeah, yeah.
John Newtson:
Awesome.
Brian York:
All right.
John Newtson:
Thank you, john, fantastic, so all right To have you on again as more things develop.
Brian York:
Okay, sounds good. Thanks, john.
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