How Local Businesses Can Master Online Marketing & Turn Their City Into a Goldmine with Ethan Brooks

[00:00:00] This is what I hear all the time. It's like the morning brew of XYZ. I want to build the morning brew for crypto

[00:00:05] I want to build the morning brew for healthcare and that's great. I mean morning brew crushes it

[00:00:09] But what I think maybe gets overlooked a lot is like I'm so curious on how this can be a big win for small businesses because

[00:00:16] Everybody's familiar with email right everybody knows what an email is if I have to go sell a podcast to a local business

[00:00:23] I think that's a very hard sale sorry to people in Arkansas

[00:00:26] I'm listening to this but like Arkansas is the state that you joke about when you're joking about a state that's in the middle of nowhere

[00:00:33] My favorite reason that we have a podcast is because I get to meet cool people just like you Ethan

[00:00:39] When you go local, you're not competing against people as

[00:00:44] This is why you might be if you're all competing on the same stage. It's never too much people want to buy from you

[00:00:49] People want to know what's happening and stuff like this proves it right and it was incredible

[00:00:54] The biggest challenge for the people that are trying to scale to multiple locations is

[00:00:58] We've got some fresh and this is Luis and welcome to the content is profit podcast in here

[00:01:04] You're gonna get the insights accountability and drive to create consistently and increase revenue

[00:01:09] You'll hear from top entrepreneurs creators and anything and everything you need to know about content all this while having a good time

[00:01:15] The Golders podcast is simple entertain

[00:01:17] Educate and turn your content into profit

[00:01:22] Is right guys if you are enjoying this episode go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform

[00:01:28] I know social media at this brosco that is right and if today's guest help you move one step closer

[00:01:34] And I might say again towards your goal

[00:01:37] Please don't forget to share this episode and leave a five style review

[00:01:40] That's right guys like fancy mentioned earlier

[00:01:43] This guest has been on the show with some of the top three most popular episodes because the value was incredible

[00:01:49] I remember having interview number one. We like we need to continue this interview number two

[00:01:53] We need to continue this and we just uncover a ton of value on the online world that newsletter world

[00:02:00] Specifically on that one

[00:02:01] I'm just gonna say the next year's we do with him because we don't know if this one is gonna go to episode two three

[00:02:06] Who knows but the next series that we do with him?

[00:02:07] We need to do them in person whether you know he comes here to Jacksonville to the studio or whether we go to you know where he's at

[00:02:16] In Austin. I don't know if we can say that don't go searching for him live in person, you know who knows

[00:02:21] But maybe we can go there. We have some friends in there

[00:02:24] That's right

[00:02:24] Do an episode live he spent three years writing for the hustle trends newsletter

[00:02:29] Which was a milk multi-million dollar business while at trends he research and wrote the first in debt guy to the newsletter industry

[00:02:37] Which by the way is the episodes that we did based on interviews with operators at the hustle morning brew

[00:02:42] Axios and many more who's one of the first employees at a hampton and Q

[00:02:47] Curated pure group for successful founders of one million plus companies

[00:02:52] Now he's writing his own stuff over the right to Rome and Rambler a local newsletter for founders in Austin

[00:02:59] Let's go. I'm so excited guys. Please welcome the one and only

[00:03:07] Oh

[00:03:09] Welcome back Ethan

[00:03:11] Thanks a lot guys. I um, I think I said this at the beginning of the last episode too

[00:03:17] Which was like man? I have no idea how I'm gonna live up to that intro

[00:03:22] And you got I gotta do like this one's even harder

[00:03:26] This is even harder than the last one was I have no idea what I'm gonna do that thanks for having me back though man

[00:03:32] By the way, I'm gonna

[00:03:34] Go back and read listen to this and like use use what you just said for my about page

[00:03:39] So literally man this is my career better than I can

[00:03:43] It's all you it's all your men. Yeah, you want to know the secret sauce

[00:03:47] We just asked people's like alright, why are you none of them? We just copy and paste it there in the intro

[00:03:51] It's pretty much your own words, you know

[00:03:55] I don't know yeah you guys added something nice to that but

[00:03:58] Thanks for having me back. It's a blast to be here. It's good to see you guys

[00:04:00] Yeah, we just I did the Hispanic accent. I just got a I just got a

[00:04:04] An idea you know

[00:04:06] I've been looking for water things that we can send to our guest as presence

[00:04:12] I think we should send them a little file

[00:04:15] With their intro that we do

[00:04:18] But you know this guy said has an alarm so I was like hey look this is your you're wake up alarm

[00:04:23] You know, it's like yeah welcome what's up? It's like the ultimate high-pub

[00:04:27] And they wake up ready to take on the day

[00:04:30] Yeah, I love that. I'm gonna I'm gonna clip the audio of you guys

[00:04:33] I'm gonna send it to all my friends and have them said it as their ringtone

[00:04:38] Yes, a ringtone that is perfect ultimate high-pub ringtone

[00:04:43] I don't know I saw I saw these ad deal the day

[00:04:45] I was like looking for presence for my father-in-law

[00:04:48] And I came across this ad of this group of African dudes

[00:04:51] That they just sing songs and dance for you if you send them a name

[00:04:56] And it's like maybe that's a service that we can do and they charge like 40 bucks to do this message

[00:05:00] And they're making back man and they're hilarious and they're like

[00:05:03] Lawrence I love you

[00:05:06] Start dancing and it's amazing. It's so good

[00:05:09] But anyways

[00:05:10] We definitely deviating a little bit

[00:05:13] Engine alert we have that with the team but Ethan we're extremely excited men like like I said your episodes

[00:05:17] It was a series of newsletter by the way if you haven't listened to it go ahead on on search

[00:05:22] Ethan Brooks continent's profit is gonna blow your mind

[00:05:26] Every every single comment we've gotten so many dm's on twitter on LinkedIn people wanted to know more

[00:05:31] To the point that people think that we do newsletters and we don't do newsletters

[00:05:36] The guy does newsletters is Ethan. So that's what we brought him back also

[00:05:41] I think he told us about local place for local businesses right? We talked to you

[00:05:45] We talked to you Ethan on you know the purchase of our new studio here locally in Florida where we have a lot of creators and businesses

[00:05:51] I'm starting to transition

[00:05:53] From physical business to online or you know doing that

[00:05:56] That integration and and it's really incredible man. So why don't you catch us up a little bit of what you've been doing

[00:06:02] And uh, and then go from there

[00:06:06] Yeah, sure so I mean you mentioned local

[00:06:09] Um, and this is something I've been really fascinated by recently and and I mean like I said you guys did a great job

[00:06:16] Summing up everything that I've been focused on the last five years but but yeah, so

[00:06:21] Obviously spent some time at the hustle and then went and was part of the early team at hampton which was amazing

[00:06:27] And kind of got the itch to go out and do my own thing at some point and when I started thinking about

[00:06:33] What was what was the thing that I was gonna do? I started looking around and just kind of like

[00:06:39] Testing the waters for where I thought there was some interesting opportunity these days

[00:06:44] And we can get into like some of the ideas um that came up but

[00:06:49] The one of the big things that I noticed is you know

[00:06:54] After writing the guide on newsletters and talking about it a lot for for a couple of years

[00:07:00] A lot of people are obviously there's newsletters are still having a moment people are still interested in them

[00:07:05] There's a lot of people out there who are

[00:07:07] Kind of trying to build this is what I hear all the time. It's like the morning brew of

[00:07:12] XYZ. Hmm. I want to build the morning brew for crypto. I want to build the morning brew for healthcare

[00:07:17] And that's great. I mean morning brew crushes it

[00:07:20] It's it's a great company to look at and try to emulate

[00:07:25] But

[00:07:26] What I think maybe gets overlooked a lot is like just how much went into making the morning brew what it is today

[00:07:32] And it's a very difficult place for somebody to start yeah as a solo operator. Yeah, and

[00:07:38] The thing that really stood out to me

[00:07:41] And a couple of months ago was like

[00:07:44] Local the opportunity in in local newsletters and this is it feels almost weird to say this now because

[00:07:50] Local newsletters are kind of having a moment

[00:07:52] And so I wasn't even really ahead of the curve as much as I thought I was yeah, but um

[00:07:58] It occurred to me that local

[00:08:00] Really seemed like there was some untouched opportunity there. There's some really interesting strategic reasons that I think people

[00:08:06] Should start focusing on it or or I thought people were going to start shifting

[00:08:10] Towards it. Yeah

[00:08:12] And so I just kind of became obsessed with it man

[00:08:14] I've been looking into it a lot recently and as you mentioned

[00:08:16] It started a local newsletter here in Austin as well

[00:08:19] And I've just been talking to all kinds of operators across the board

[00:08:22] And I guess the big takeaway for me and the thing that I was kind of stoked to jam with you guys on is like

[00:08:28] A few months ago. I was looking at this space

[00:08:30] And I thought there might be something to local newsletters there might be right yeah

[00:08:36] For a lot of reasons we can get into

[00:08:38] You know a little bit maybe the biggest reason is like less competition right if you're really good at content

[00:08:43] You have a lot less competition on the local level

[00:08:46] Now a few months into it

[00:08:47] I think where I stand on this is like there is definitely a big opportunity in local

[00:08:53] Especially if you already run a local company like a local services business real estate

[00:09:00] Attorney construction like all these interesting local companies have a really unique opportunity

[00:09:07] um

[00:09:08] That I still think is

[00:09:11] Is like under exploited so it's there

[00:09:15] If you look at the broader newsletter landscape

[00:09:17] There's a whole bunch of people that are trying to compete there if you circle all the way down to you like your town your city

[00:09:23] The playing field is like almost wide open

[00:09:26] And uh just been talking to people all the way across the industry and they have been the ones that have really changed my mind on this

[00:09:31] And kind of like laid out a bunch of interesting stuff about like how these things grow how they monetize

[00:09:36] What the opportunity really looks like

[00:09:38] um, and so that's essentially where I stand on a now I think there's a huge opportunity here

[00:09:43] For people who like content, but there's also a huge opportunity here for people who just run normal

[00:09:49] Uh local businesses and they want to take those up to the next level. Yeah

[00:09:53] So and so happy to chat through anything there. It's just interesting

[00:09:56] That's awesome and so can we let's bend the picture a little bit right because on one side

[00:10:00] Of the spectrum you have

[00:10:02] Full online businesses right that

[00:10:05] That might there might not be tied on to a physical location right they have employees and team all over the place and the audience

[00:10:10] Is all over the place are specifically per topic right you mentioned morning brew right the hustle like this type of

[00:10:15] Of newsletters right that obviously are like

[00:10:19] The i guess the north start for a lot of people right they consume that

[00:10:23] Then you have on the other side of the spectrum you have maybe local businesses like you mentioned lawyers

[00:10:28] Dentest, you know the small business owner right the local donut shop type of deal

[00:10:33] And they are swamp with daily operations right they have a physical location they have staff

[00:10:38] And they also have the responsibility to put their message out there so they can get people through the door

[00:10:43] I'm paid for all of that right

[00:10:45] So

[00:10:46] Personally, I feel I identify a lot because well obviously well now as it's six months ago

[00:10:51] We are also a local brick-and-mortar business owners right apart from the online agency. So this is

[00:10:58] We're learning from you and also you know our paths we use to manage fitness studios, right?

[00:11:02] We we to sell memberships and we have members coming through the doors every single day

[00:11:06] And that's a conversation that happened every day in fact

[00:11:08] We met with a regional manager man a year that he was like well. How do we increase our lead flow

[00:11:14] Right, and this is like kind of over coffee right? This is not a service that we offer

[00:11:18] But how do we increase our lead flow but my owners did not get me any marketing budget to do so

[00:11:24] Right, so they can't run ads. They can put message other

[00:11:28] And I think a lot of local and smaller businesses might find themselves

[00:11:33] In in that position right so obviously

[00:11:36] Yeah, you know where big fans of podcasts and connections and through relationships. You can create opportunities right

[00:11:41] Uh, we admire what you do with email on newsletter

[00:11:44] And I'm so curious on like

[00:11:46] How this can be a big win for small businesses because everybody's familiar with with email right? Everybody knows what an email is

[00:11:53] If I have to go sell a podcast to a local business. I think that's a very hard sale

[00:11:58] Uh, it might not be a fed it might not know the platform they might not consume the content like there's a lot of logistics right that through there

[00:12:05] uh, even if I'm convinced that that's a really good way to to build very meaningful relationships

[00:12:09] I can turn form into profit. So let's dive in right how do I

[00:12:14] How do our business like get started? Like how do they frame this can we define newsletter

[00:12:18] Sure

[00:12:21] Yeah, so before we even get into defining it I think I think the the

[00:12:26] sort of

[00:12:28] Note that I want to give people is like you're in luck. This can be really easy

[00:12:33] Uh, depending on what your goal is

[00:12:35] I think you did a great job laying out the spectrum there in terms of like on one end

[00:12:39] You have a local business that's just trying to increase

[00:12:42] Their relevance in the local community deal flow and and and and and leads and get more people in the door

[00:12:48] Get more people to know about you. Yeah

[00:12:50] And on the other end, you have somebody who wants to turn

[00:12:53] The media they want to run a media business right? So they want the newsletter to be the main product

[00:12:58] And that's where they want to make money and there are different options for

[00:13:03] Uh, how you approach this depending on where you land on the spectrum

[00:13:06] But for now let's start with this like brick and mortar thing

[00:13:09] So the good news is that this can be super simple

[00:13:12] Um, I've talked to a bunch of people across the industry who have already built these in different towns

[00:13:18] all over the US all over Canada all over Europe and

[00:13:21] I'll say the most common thing that I've found

[00:13:24] Is or actually before I even get there

[00:13:27] The thing that you're leveraging is the fact that

[00:13:31] Nobody else in your town is doing this. So there's there are a bunch of people in town and

[00:13:38] There might be local newspapers or

[00:13:42] You know people on Instagram that are sharing interesting stuff to do nearby

[00:13:46] Or something like that. Yeah, but

[00:13:49] Most

[00:13:50] Like most people are just focused on bigger audiences

[00:13:53] And so they're kind of missing the ball on the opportunity for like

[00:13:57] Yeah, that's a digital media at a local scale

[00:14:01] So so that's what you're tapping into and because most people aren't doing this

[00:14:03] It means that the bar for the content can actually be incredibly low

[00:14:07] And what I've seen most common across all these different places as a most the most common place to start

[00:14:12] Is a simple event roundup of the stuff that's going on in your town

[00:14:20] In any given week now. I give you a couple examples of this um, so Ryan Sneddon

[00:14:24] Uh is a guy

[00:14:26] He runs a newsletter called the the naptown scoop

[00:14:30] Which is a local newsletter for a napalus

[00:14:33] He had a great interview on the newsletter operator podcast a couple of months back with um

[00:14:39] Matt McEary and Ryan Carr and they basically asked him

[00:14:42] He's he's basically turned this newsletter into a six figure company over the last couple of years

[00:14:47] And they asked him like well, where would you start if you were starting one of these?

[00:14:51] What would you focus on for the content and he said

[00:14:54] I would do a roundup of live music in my town every single week

[00:14:58] Because that's the most popular thing

[00:15:01] It's a super light lift you spend maybe an hour or two a week

[00:15:04] Uh, checking websites for restaurants and bars in your area

[00:15:09] Yeah

[00:15:10] And you round it all up and do a newsletter and then you send it out and people people love it

[00:15:14] Now that was his his recommendation. I've since seen the same thing recommended from several other people

[00:15:20] um

[00:15:21] Walter Tennyson

[00:15:24] Who uh was the he's a really interesting dude. He's he actually sold ads at morning brew and he's

[00:15:30] Running his own company now uh in the newsletter space but um on the side he built a local newsletter and

[00:15:37] He's in Europe he built this thing up to 10,000 subscribers doing this exact same type of content it was five

[00:15:45] Local events five of the best local events coming up this week in our city

[00:15:49] And the crazy thing about this

[00:15:51] This is again where that leverage comes in because I said most people are not doing this so the crazy

[00:15:56] um

[00:15:57] implication of that is that because most people aren't doing it

[00:16:01] They grow faster than most other newsletters that i've seen and they grow cheaper than most other newsletters that i've seen

[00:16:07] So right now if you're like competing against say morning brew or the hustle if you're competing for that kind of global tech audience

[00:16:15] English speaking professional audience

[00:16:18] um

[00:16:18] You know you're trying to acquire people for like one to two dollars a piece

[00:16:22] Um, and like really really great growth teams are aiming for the lower end of that scale

[00:16:27] But you're still gonna pay

[00:16:29] Like at least a dollar a piece for readers

[00:16:32] These local newsletters if you pay to advertise them which is not a requirement

[00:16:35] But if you do pay to advertise them they're looking i've seen i've seen

[00:16:40] Cost per acquisition between 18 cents and

[00:16:44] Like 70 cents is kind of like the highest that i've ever seen

[00:16:47] Which to put that in perspective

[00:16:49] That's unheard of these days in the newsletters space like the broader newsletters space those are that's like going back in time

[00:16:56] Yeah, on online advertising you just don't get acquisition set cheap

[00:17:00] Well even i remember just quit parenthesis. I remember when we were in the in the gyms right like for to acquire an email

[00:17:07] It was anywhere from like 12 bucks to 20 dollars right and that was like a lead that we had to call and it was very very expensive

[00:17:13] So you know

[00:17:15] You talk about a solution like this you can start getting traffic on people in the door very very quickly

[00:17:22] Yeah

[00:17:23] Now now there's a discussion to be had about like what types of people are you targeting right so so far

[00:17:27] We've talked about sort of like general

[00:17:30] Local newsletters and this is what i've seen a lot of people doing

[00:17:33] I haven't seen a lot of people going into very deep

[00:17:36] niches yet

[00:17:38] I've talked to a few and i've seen a couple others that's actually where i'm focused myself

[00:17:43] But but just to keep it general for now because if you do run a dentist's office or like a real estate office

[00:17:48] Or something like that you are looking for a pretty broad audience right it's

[00:17:53] You know adults in your town who have money to spend yeah

[00:17:57] Beyond that the the limitations are not that strict. Yeah, so so yeah the good news is

[00:18:04] The content can be very simple around up of local events or live music

[00:18:09] Most people get this down to like one to two hour commitment per week

[00:18:13] And then i mentioned ads to grow them

[00:18:15] But this is it's not actually not where most people start where most people start is

[00:18:19] No budget at all

[00:18:20] What they do is they've been going to

[00:18:22] Local Facebook groups and local reddit pages and sharing the event roundup

[00:18:29] Along with um

[00:18:32] A link to the email so though what they'll do is they'll say like hey

[00:18:35] Hmm in fact

[00:18:36] Walter who i mentioned before he did a great breakdown of this he totally opened up his playbook and shared

[00:18:42] The exact for a bridge that he uses

[00:18:46] Um and it says something to the effect of like

[00:18:49] Want to be like hey every week. I look through all the events that are coming up

[00:18:52] And i pick like five of the best ones and send them to my friends

[00:18:55] Here you can if you want to get that email you can get it here, but

[00:18:59] Here are the five events that i picked this week and they just lists out all the events in their description

[00:19:03] So it's super simple. Yeah people go nuts for it in these local

[00:19:09] Community groups because nobody's really doing it

[00:19:12] It's just it's so hard to figure out what am i gonna do this weekend? What's going on this week

[00:19:16] Uh, and so for now at least because it's not a highly contested field

[00:19:21] It's um a lot of those tactics still seem to be working

[00:19:24] I've seen them used across a lot of the people that i'm talking to

[00:19:28] Um and to the to the point where they're they're actually using the same

[00:19:32] Um the same copy if they if they're doing advertising they're using the exact same ads

[00:19:37] And they're all getting the same results and so this is to me. This is an indication that um

[00:19:42] There's just a lot of untapped potential here

[00:19:45] And the last thing i'll say because i know i've been running for a while on this but i'm like

[00:19:48] This is good. We're like salivating over here. We're like tell us more

[00:19:54] Yeah, if you want we can get into the specifics too like the ad copy and stuff like that

[00:19:57] But the the last thing i'll say is

[00:19:59] And this was one of the things that really sold me on this concept

[00:20:03] I was shocked by how small of a town you can actually do this in

[00:20:08] So when i was originally thinking about

[00:20:12] doing uh like going out of my own

[00:20:16] I had a couple of different ideas. One was a local newsletter

[00:20:20] um

[00:20:21] And then i had another idea for like a direct to consumer business breakdown newsletter

[00:20:26] Kind of similar to what we used to do at trends

[00:20:30] and

[00:20:31] The reason i was very hesitant on the local side was because i just i didn't think there was enough people in austin

[00:20:38] To get a big enough list to make it a viable business

[00:20:41] and then um

[00:20:44] As i started listening first to Ryan Snedons interview and then talking to other people across the industry what i found is that

[00:20:51] You can i'm shocked by how small of a town you can do this in so um a lot of people that i've heard have said or her spoken to have said like

[00:20:58] minimum size

[00:21:01] Like the absolute small say it goes 20,000 people if you have a town at least 20,000 people you can you can have a pretty significant

[00:21:08] Marketing vehicle here

[00:21:09] um

[00:21:10] I think Ryan these days is saying he wouldn't go much smaller than like 80,000

[00:21:14] But that's because he's actually

[00:21:16] monetizing it as a media company not just using it to bring people in the door to a dentist office

[00:21:22] But that's a small town now the town that he's in right now

[00:21:25] I think i'm gonna get the numbers it's been a little while to look at them specifically but like anapolis

[00:21:31] proper has i think

[00:21:34] 40,000 people or so and then

[00:21:38] The wider metro area there is somewhere between like 100 and 200,000

[00:21:42] So it's still pretty small i mean i'm in austin we've got a little over a million here the town that i grew up in

[00:21:46] Has like 30,000 people so

[00:21:48] It's not he's not in a huge spot

[00:21:51] But i think in the interview he said the list was like 14,000 which means they would have gotten

[00:21:57] Between 10 and 25 percent penetration into the market. Yeah, which is insane

[00:22:02] You know, it's just insane you wouldn't expect to get that in any other industry for any other thing

[00:22:07] Yeah, well

[00:22:08] I remember we ran that campaign with a business called de goulness right was a local shop

[00:22:14] And it was not a newsletter play but it was

[00:22:17] They they wanted same problem right they couldn't

[00:22:20] Pay for a new lead that they had no idea what the lead cost was first first of all

[00:22:24] That's one of the problems right that we asked him like how much are you paying for a new email or a new phone number that no idea

[00:22:29] So we're like okay

[00:22:31] So we took this out of a playbook or a different book uh and it we

[00:22:35] Granted we grabbed six businesses around we created like this uh give away

[00:22:41] That it was gonna be on friday we ask each of the businesses be like hey guys

[00:22:45] Send three emails here's the copy of the emails. We're gonna

[00:22:48] We're all pitching together for this price is $6,000 worth of stuff

[00:22:53] People are gonna love it right so each business is sent all the emails

[00:22:56] we drove about two thousand

[00:22:59] Optance

[00:23:01] With those emails wow local play local businesses in one little shopping area right two thousand emails and the

[00:23:08] cool part was

[00:23:10] We announced a winner and immediately after we sent an email saying hey, we still have a present for you

[00:23:15] Thank you for opting in and we sent them to the actual business offer

[00:23:20] Which was they wanted people through the door so they offered

[00:23:24] A free three minute something a session right where they

[00:23:28] Book to get in there and then there was like an op cell of like a hundred and fifty dollars type of thing

[00:23:32] So they actually booked that day

[00:23:35] 150 appointments the manager called us and they were like

[00:23:39] What's going on like our phone is just like off the hook

[00:23:43] And then I think they sold a fifteen hundred dollars worth of services before people walked into the door. So

[00:23:49] That shows that's why that is

[00:23:52] People are hungry for this stuff right like when when a lot of the conversations that we have with local businesses

[00:23:56] Like oh, we're mainly once a month a newsletter of the things that are happening in the business way too much with corporate businesses

[00:24:04] Uh

[00:24:05] corporate is not allowing us to send emails right like because it's too much

[00:24:09] I'm like it's never too much people want to buy from you people want to know what's happening and

[00:24:15] Stuff like this proves it right and he was incredible, right?

[00:24:18] And then right after that covid happened and then you know brick-a-mortar world kind of went kaboom but

[00:24:24] Uh with this local play with the newsletters you start doing that and then you add a strategy like that or a tactic like that

[00:24:31] Man, yeah, I think there could be a lot of traction

[00:24:34] Well, that's a fascinating example and I think it really speaks to this concept of of

[00:24:43] Big fish in a small pond kind of it's like there are some people who are

[00:24:48] Well actually, let me just pause for a second. So we spoke for a second to the people who already run brick-a-mortar

[00:24:54] They already compete in the local arena and we kind of like highlighted hey, there's an opportunity here for you

[00:25:00] And I think it's great the other side of that equation though is these people who want to run media companies and what's been

[00:25:07] What really kind of drew me to there were a few things that drew me to local

[00:25:13] And ultimately made me decide to do it one of them this was not the biggest deciding factor

[00:25:18] But it was it was a significant one is this concept of like

[00:25:23] Being a big fish in a relatively small pond or a bigger fish in a relatively small pond

[00:25:28] Okay, the competition landscape

[00:25:32] For global media right now is

[00:25:35] Is incredible. It's like there are so many incredible operators that are building incredible

[00:25:42] Podcasts and newsletters and all this kind of stuff

[00:25:44] Um, yeah, it's like it's fun to compete there

[00:25:47] But it's really difficult to be unique or different now all of a sudden you pull that down to the local level

[00:25:54] The story completely changes right and so there's so many people out there that I think might be listening to this

[00:25:59] Who are in that second category like they're already professional

[00:26:03] marketers or they already do content on a big scale

[00:26:07] And when they if you shift your attention to local all of a sudden

[00:26:12] You have this unfair advantage which is that you know all these

[00:26:16] Strategies and tactics that work

[00:26:19] At at the bigger level, but no nobody's doing them locally

[00:26:23] And so when you implement them, I mean what you just talked about that's like a 30 cent cost per acquisition

[00:26:28] Which is is just insane

[00:26:30] um

[00:26:33] So you yeah, you just have this this big unfair advantage

[00:26:36] I will I will point out the other reason to so um

[00:26:40] That was one thing that really intrigued me about local

[00:26:44] It wasn't the thing that actually got me over the hump though and and and made this I think worth

[00:26:51] Actually doing yeah, the thing that made it worth it um

[00:26:55] And I think this might go for other people too is like if you feel like your

[00:27:00] You want a stronger connection to the place that you live

[00:27:03] So for me I kind of grew up

[00:27:04] I mean Austin now when I grew up moving all over the place

[00:27:07] I'm really good at moving all over the place like I like traveling

[00:27:10] For most of my life. I've never lived

[00:27:12] Anywhere longer than like six months to one to two years at the top end

[00:27:18] Yeah, and so I've been in Austin now

[00:27:20] It's Austin was kind of like the exception

[00:27:22] But I've been in Austin for six years on and off

[00:27:25] But like this has been home base

[00:27:27] Um and still felt like I didn't know the city at all

[00:27:31] And

[00:27:32] So for me the local newsletter became oh like as soon as I was like okay. I think this could be a viable business

[00:27:39] It also became the only business that I was looking at that would force me to like get to know

[00:27:45] Or get to know the city put down roots and like build a community

[00:27:49] And I mean you mentioned covert a minute ago. I think of people

[00:27:52] I'm certainly

[00:27:53] Craving that more now. I think a lot of people are just craving like a bit more of a connection to where they are

[00:27:58] locally, so if that's you too, I think this can be a really interesting

[00:28:03] Um

[00:28:04] Way to go about it. Yeah, I mean

[00:28:06] With your guys as local podcast studio too. I think that's my my head is another super interesting

[00:28:11] All right

[00:28:13] I'm up chime in here people might have no that I'm on the podcast. Yeah, we know but I'm actually here

[00:28:18] I'm just I'm telling you

[00:28:21] I haven't been

[00:28:22] This excited about an idea in a while really counting my arms. Yeah, I am

[00:28:27] I am I forgot to mention at the beginning of the episode

[00:28:30] If you want some sort of gift-car prize just still having decided

[00:28:35] You need to guess how many arms my brother says in today's episode and then we'll pick a winner

[00:28:41] And we'll send you whatever president is coffee on us. Yeah, we just started doing this since last episode

[00:28:46] So I have the counter live up in here

[00:28:49] so far

[00:28:50] Single digits, so we're doing good but to get back on topic Ethan

[00:28:56] Did I haven't been this excited about an idea in a while? You know, we've I mentioned before the episode right before we start hitting recording

[00:29:03] That we've had this idea

[00:29:05] You know and I believe in abundance. I'm gonna put it out there for whoever wants to take it and operate it whatever they are

[00:29:11] But we've had this idea that we've been very excited about but we haven't executed yet it literally comes up

[00:29:18] Every other month, you know, we talk about it

[00:29:22] We've had the idea of now for probably year and a half or so

[00:29:26] But we haven't really executed and it's something around creating a podcast for the city

[00:29:32] So, you know kind of like the local podcast in a sense right?

[00:29:36] We want to call it the jack spot right and then

[00:29:40] As we started dreaming a little bit

[00:29:42] We talked about the city podcast network where we go into cities and then we have these models now as you're talking about this newsletter

[00:29:51] All I can think about is this is a perfect business model, right?

[00:29:54] And now I'm even gonna share with you right now what I wrote down here is like

[00:29:59] A business model for the studio. So let's go to a city right bias studio that might not be that cheap

[00:30:04] But you know, for example, we already own the studio and obviously you have you know people renting

[00:30:11] You have you know businesses that they want to do their podcasts etc

[00:30:15] But besides that you start your local newsletter and you attach it to the studio

[00:30:19] So let's say or local newsletter is gonna be like the example you provided about

[00:30:24] Events in town right something a little bit generic, you know entertainment base. There's a lot of events in town

[00:30:30] We do the newsletter, but we also have you know a podcast version of the newsletter

[00:30:37] Obviously sponsored by studio podcast suite so people know where we are recording this

[00:30:42] I feel like you can sell that in a way to the radio

[00:30:45] We know radio has times where they don't really show

[00:30:49] They don't have that much programming and they're looking to put stuff in their head

[00:30:52] Can we put this 50-minute podcast episode on the radio right?

[00:30:57] So you can show it to people obviously in there you're trying to find leads and get people

[00:31:01] You know to sign up to your local newsletter in the local newsletter once you start growing it

[00:31:07] And I'm sure this is part of what we're gonna get into here in a little bit right? You're gonna have sponsorships

[00:31:11] So for example, there are organizations that we know let's say your local newsletter would be about events

[00:31:18] Right on entertainment who is the biggest entertainer in town

[00:31:23] Well here in Jacksonville is a Jacksonville Jaguars right like

[00:31:26] They want to build their fan base. Can we get some sort of sponsorship with the jacks that they sponsored this newsletter

[00:31:33] Right or the biggest entertainers that they won their name in their newsletter it could be

[00:31:38] Some of the biggest coffee shops here in town for example, right? That they won their name in front of people

[00:31:43] I feel

[00:31:44] This is such a complete package and then you can go and replicate

[00:31:48] That as the city network right on all their places not only that but you're saying the local newsletter make it about

[00:31:55] Event roundups what about and I think this is along the lines of what you're doing

[00:31:59] But business events roundups and then rather than going to the jacks you ask yourself okay

[00:32:04] What is the biggest entity in town

[00:32:07] That does business and you know that once a lot of traffic that wants a lot of attention

[00:32:12] Well, maybe is the chamber of commerce or maybe is you know the leadership organization that we are part of

[00:32:17] We have a contact thing that we can talk to and we have actually thought about

[00:32:21] Doing a podcast with them. What about we include them in the project until hey look can you sponsor this?

[00:32:27] We're gonna reach this type of audience all

[00:32:30] Local I think is so so powerful what you're talking about

[00:32:33] I'm telling you I'm so pumped up so excited about this after this show

[00:32:37] We're definitely gonna be discussing next steps

[00:32:40] The calls I'm not gonna lie Ethan my mind even cross

[00:32:43] We need to find a way to partner with this guy because he's a monster. You're an absolute baller

[00:32:49] So just so you know, we're probably gonna come up with something try to bring your own board into the city network

[00:32:55] Right or however it is we're gonna be calling it

[00:32:59] I you said something that I actually wrote down because I love this mindset

[00:33:04] But you said I believe in abundance and so I'm gonna put this out there and and and

[00:33:08] It reminds me of something that I think is important to call out with the local

[00:33:13] Situation to

[00:33:16] Another another reason that I like these local newsletters

[00:33:20] Is because I think a single city can support several of them yeah because there's a lot of different psychographics inside of a single city

[00:33:29] um and I also this is something that helps me as I build mine

[00:33:35] Is realizing that it's like we in the newsletter community. I think are just

[00:33:41] Sort of realizing there's an opportunity here, but it's it's actually not new and if you start to look around

[00:33:47] Um what you'll find is that there I mean there's there's tons of local media that already exists

[00:33:52] It's kind of like our industry is just catching on to it

[00:33:56] And you know, there are some people who say we're just

[00:33:59] reformatting like reinventing a local newspaper. I don't think that's quite true, but

[00:34:03] Yeah

[00:34:05] But

[00:34:07] But that help it helps me to realize that this isn't brand new

[00:34:11] Because it makes me feel less rushed like there are there are other people who've been building in this space for a long time

[00:34:17] They've built long-standing successful companies around it. They're some of them are struggling because they've been slow to adapt the business model

[00:34:25] Yeah, and people coming in from like our world already know the business model that works on this yeah

[00:34:32] But the the the concept itself is actually pretty well proven which is which is encouraging

[00:34:38] Um you also highlighted something this is this is this this is the hardest thing to crack for local media

[00:34:44] So there when you look at

[00:34:48] The far end of the spectrum of people who are just trying to run media companies right

[00:34:53] We talked about this in the last episode

[00:34:54] There's basically three ways to make money from media companies

[00:34:58] You have free products that are monetized by ads and then you have low price and high price paid in products, right? Yep

[00:35:04] um

[00:35:06] So so people in that world who are trying to monetize through that lens the there are kind of two types of them in the local space

[00:35:14] There's the single operator

[00:35:16] who's just trying to build one

[00:35:19] Sort of like local publication and then there are people who are trying to do the scaling model

[00:35:25] um

[00:35:26] And what i've talked to a couple people on both sides it's personally i'm doing the single operator thing

[00:35:33] um

[00:35:34] And so like the name actually i ended up changing the name of the newsletter to the austin business review

[00:35:38] So it's never going to go beyond austin. I kind of like forced myself to like stay in one pond

[00:35:42] I like it, but i've talked to people like

[00:35:45] Farhan Muhammad who runs overstory media what he's partnered up with

[00:35:52] Andrew Wilkinson on overstory media

[00:35:54] uh

[00:35:55] We he's been super helpful and given a ton of insight and stuff like that

[00:35:59] And we were talking and i think one of the biggest challenges for the people that are trying to scale to multiple locations is is finding the creatives in each town

[00:36:08] Who have that unique combination of like

[00:36:12] The ability to create content and a connection to the city that allows them to make content that other people in the city

[00:36:19] Want to read so like some companies have struggled with this if you look at maybe

[00:36:23] do

[00:36:24] 6am city um, they have a lot of different locations

[00:36:29] But the content is

[00:36:32] It's okay. It's okay. It's not it's not amazing and that's just the that's a natural um result of

[00:36:40] scaling because as you get bigger it's harder to be as

[00:36:46] curated or as as spoke

[00:36:49] So if if a company really figures out the scaling model like the way the way that you said it

[00:36:54] I think it's gonna be it's gonna be the the the big thing that they're gonna have to crack is how do we find the creatives in each town

[00:37:01] Yeah, because like you said the advertising business is is there we can talk a little bit more about monetizing too

[00:37:06] If you want i've gotten a bunch of great insights from other people in the industry about about monetizing

[00:37:12] um

[00:37:13] But you know it's it's the business model exists there's already local media

[00:37:16] There are people who will pay you for ads all that kind of stuff exists the real tricky part is how do we find the people in every city

[00:37:24] So that we can really keep it local it can't it's almost like it can't end up being yeah

[00:37:29] Yeah, I love it big umbrella. It's it's always got to be local every single time and that's super tough

[00:37:35] Yeah, I love that

[00:37:36] I actually wrote down here too as another tier of the master plan that we're gonna be executing probably here in 2024

[00:37:43] Is the talent per type of newsletter right or per talent of per topic

[00:37:49] So if you do like an event roundup right who is a personality you can bring because let's be honest

[00:37:54] We cannot be as much as we like and enjoy being in front of the microphone

[00:37:59] We're not gonna be the talent for all of the newsletters right

[00:38:01] We are not maybe we don't have this subject matter expertise

[00:38:06] When it comes to sporting events here in town for example, right maybe soccer

[00:38:10] But you know soccer here in Jacksonville's not the best yet, right?

[00:38:14] Shout out to usl team that's coming out

[00:38:17] But that being said say can we do some sort of

[00:38:21] Casting event where we're gonna be you know hey you're gonna be the personality for the local newsletter and the local podcast on

[00:38:28] events right or music events in town and

[00:38:32] You are

[00:38:34] Responsible for covering all these things are obviously there's a lot of things that we got out yeah logistics

[00:38:39] That we got to work here on there, but that being said

[00:38:42] This reminds me of actually I'm gonna skip this story. I think it's not relevant at this point

[00:38:47] But I would love to hear about

[00:38:49] All right, I'm not gonna skip it. It's actually more of a lesson right it reminds me

[00:38:53] It's a connection that my mind made

[00:38:56] About something I heard a long time ago, right? And it actually goes back to Sam Park right who he started the hustle

[00:39:03] I think you have a good relationship with him and

[00:39:07] I remember him sharing a story

[00:39:10] On when he was trying to grow the hustle and he did this kind of aggregator

[00:39:16] Newsletter slash article where he said this are the best entrepreneurs of

[00:39:22] 2020 something or let's say 20 I don't know 1718 whatever year was when he started it and he made that list

[00:39:29] Of what he thought were the best entrepreneurs, but also the people that he wanted to connect to and also the people that he wanted to bring

[00:39:35] To hustle con and

[00:39:37] majority of those people had

[00:39:39] audiences big audiences

[00:39:41] And most of those people share that right share the pose about being some of the best entrepreneurs

[00:39:49] Right, quote unquote of that year

[00:39:52] And I thought that was genius because obviously he's leveraging

[00:39:55] those people's audiences to get a

[00:39:58] Bigger reach but at the same time

[00:40:00] He's leveraging that article now to start building those relationships

[00:40:05] And I see the local newsletter doing something very similar as well when starting right which is you know

[00:40:11] We're gonna show you the top five places this week to go do something

[00:40:16] Just by sharing that it gives you an opportunity to go and reach out to those events or those locations and tell them

[00:40:23] Hey, I'm featuring you in my newsletter

[00:40:26] Would you mind sharing this with your audience as well, right?

[00:40:28] And it's another way for you to grow

[00:40:31] Build relationships and expand on the reach. I think it's absolute genius

[00:40:36] Now where I wanted to go next that does kind of like the little parenthesis in there

[00:40:40] But what I wanted to go next is definitely, you know

[00:40:42] This is content is profit so we definitely want to learn some of those

[00:40:47] Behind the scenes secrets that you've learned on building, you know, and monetizing this local newsletters

[00:40:54] Yeah

[00:40:55] Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let me think about this for a second

[00:41:00] Well, while you talk a little bit about growth

[00:41:02] Yeah, go for it. Well, you put your thoughts together here

[00:41:06] one of the

[00:41:08] Last night I was a meant this new friend

[00:41:11] And uh he's a big

[00:41:13] Just say you know that sounds very sketchy. I know

[00:41:17] Anyways this new friend

[00:41:19] We have trading cards in common right? So he's a big soccer fan and we've been just talking about different things right and

[00:41:26] It's been incredible because since the second I met him

[00:41:29] I've had the idea of launching a soccer podcast right and

[00:41:34] I said it it there's no launch date is gonna happen

[00:41:37] But you know, we're obviously you know running the business and the service and the offer and the thing

[00:41:42] I just haven't put a date on it, but I said that and it's like for him

[00:41:46] For me it's like oh, you know for us. It's not a big deal

[00:41:49] But for him it was a big deal

[00:41:51] So then this person started introducing me to a lot of the local businesses in town

[00:41:55] Here's the guy with that with a soccer podcast. Here's the guy with the soccer podcast and

[00:42:01] Yes, we met and a business opportunity came up that could be huge for the for the podcast or the publication or the thing

[00:42:08] And he and turns out that because of that single point of connection with the lever of the content side

[00:42:14] That might be a little unknown for them right and it could be like something very casual for us

[00:42:20] He now turns out that he is very good friends with the president of the chamber of commerce of our city

[00:42:26] And he's like man just ask I will make that introduction today, right? So to the point that

[00:42:34] Before we dive into the monetization just the fact that you have a media property in the city locally

[00:42:40] You're presenting an opportunity for everybody in the city

[00:42:44] To be part of something really cool

[00:42:46] So even before you get to the money the opportunity is gonna show up because then you can talk to those people that you want

[00:42:52] To really connect in the city and opportunities will show up

[00:42:55] So you know, and this was completely random on the soccer

[00:42:58] And there's definitely going to be a newsletter on the soccer side that we're gonna do and we're not

[00:43:02] Implement all this so we have the local play the soccer specific one

[00:43:06] And the content is profit

[00:43:07] So I'm very excited because I think this shines the light of

[00:43:12] The massive opportunity that we can do locally whether that's a topic specific topic or the local play for the city

[00:43:19] Which I think is so genius

[00:43:22] Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up because I think you just spoke to one of the most

[00:43:27] Important aspects of this at least this is one of the things that I'm thinking through

[00:43:31] the most

[00:43:34] We've already touched on it a little bit

[00:43:36] But the playbook for monetizing a media company is pretty well established at this point

[00:43:41] You like I said earlier your free products you have paid products

[00:43:45] Especially if you're going after relatively broad high-value audience like the advertising dollars are already out there

[00:43:52] That's pretty well known

[00:43:54] It's a little less well-defined on the local side. I've heard a couple of things coming from people

[00:43:59] But what you would and I'll get into the specifics in a second, but what you touched on is this

[00:44:05] There are probably ways

[00:44:07] To monetize this that the broader industry has just not realized yet. Yeah

[00:44:14] Part of that is if you own a local services business like you're obviously going to benefit from having a product like this or

[00:44:21] You know, if you just happen to talk to

[00:44:24] 10,000 people in your city every single week like there's just inevitably

[00:44:28] There's going to be opportunities that come from that so that's one of the really interesting things about it is I'm not sure the

[00:44:34] The

[00:44:35] The full spectrum of benefits of a local newsletter is really as well defined as it is for other types of media properties. Yeah, but to your point

[00:44:46] Just having it. It's almost like

[00:44:49] It there's just no way

[00:44:52] Nothing happens right you can't you can't talk to that many people

[00:44:58] in your town

[00:44:59] Every single week and just have nothing I love how it was there's no way

[00:45:04] No

[00:45:06] Yeah, it's just this there's I think they're I think the traditional ways of monetizing media are all on the table here

[00:45:13] I think they're probably a little bit different for local because the audience sizes are different and the advertisers are different like one of the things

[00:45:20] I've heard which is kind of interesting

[00:45:23] I've heard several people who run local newsletters say

[00:45:26] The advertisers are much less

[00:45:30] Technologically sophisticated than other types of advertisers we've dealt with

[00:45:34] So if you and that's not a dig it just means that they're not they're not looking for the same things

[00:45:38] And you can't sell them in the same way because they don't have the same types of expectations

[00:45:42] so if you go to

[00:45:44] Let's say like the hustle right if you're if you're if your cell and ads the hustle doesn't sell ads anymore

[00:45:50] Back when it did you would go to a tech company and you'd say

[00:45:54] Hey, I've got this many readers

[00:45:57] This percent of them opens email every week

[00:46:00] And this is our click rate and most tech companies understand the implications of that

[00:46:04] They're gonna go. Okay, well we're probably gonna get in front of this many people like we expect

[00:46:08] This kind of ROI like they're running specific numbers in their heads. Yeah on a

[00:46:13] People who are running six and seven figure

[00:46:15] Companies out of these newsletters right now and what they've said is it's different

[00:46:19] They're not looking for the same kind of metrics wait what a lot of times what people are more interested in is

[00:46:26] What is the visibility that I'm getting with this and they're not even measuring things like return on investment or cost per acquisition

[00:46:32] Stuff like that

[00:46:33] So it's a challenge because there's a lot of education that goes into selling this opportunity

[00:46:40] Yeah, cuz it is kind of new

[00:46:42] But also if I think it what it means is that everybody who's doing this right now should at least be aware

[00:46:47] That's the case because you're gonna have to approach it differently than you would in other types of media

[00:46:53] Cuz just even just the media kids gonna look different. Yeah, I mean, I remember when we when we call the owner of that business

[00:46:58] And we told them the same story that we told you right they were like

[00:47:02] You know they want to know like how much they made or whatever right and in her mind

[00:47:08] She's like well, we just sold $1,500 right

[00:47:12] And I'm like, yeah, but you have 150 people

[00:47:16] Coming to your studio the next two weeks that each of them you can sell my $150 membership per month

[00:47:23] Right and then on top of that you also have 2000 emails

[00:47:26] That the data that we collected is about

[00:47:30] 20 bucks an email that you were paying for

[00:47:32] So multiply all that I was like 20,000 dollars worth of value just on the emails right but she couldn't understand it

[00:47:37] Right so to your point like there's some education that needs to happen

[00:47:41] To to to connect both so I encourage if you're a business owner know your numbers

[00:47:46] Like what's the these examples that that we're saying but at the same time

[00:47:50] This is a great play for you to kind of start measuring the traffic to your own shop right forget about

[00:47:55] You know the advertising side of things but you know initially if that adds a ton of friction

[00:47:59] But to your point yes, there is some education that needs to happen and it's not nobody's fault right like they they're

[00:48:05] The business owners that might be busy with so many things right or small business owners

[00:48:10] Right and it's it's also just kind of a new paradigm a lot of local media like it was newspapers and you couldn't really measure things like

[00:48:18] um

[00:48:19] You know impressions on a newspaper

[00:48:22] And then there's a whole other setup problems which is like a lot of those industries

[00:48:26] Kind of got a little bit warped in their reporting because

[00:48:29] They were incentivized to report different types of numbers

[00:48:31] So there's a million reasons why it's not the same but the it's important that it's been interesting to me to hear that it is

[00:48:38] Different because I was even just planning my approach to different sponsors and stuff and

[00:48:44] Was told over and over again for people in the industry like hey, I don't think they're gonna care about this metric so much maybe think about

[00:48:50] A little bit more of the prestige and and positioning it this way rather than on like a strict numbers basis

[00:48:56] So that's one big thing a couple of the other big things that I've heard is like

[00:49:00] service providers are a great group to go after so

[00:49:04] um

[00:49:05] You know construction companies

[00:49:07] Realtors like you said dentists but lawyers things like that

[00:49:12] um

[00:49:13] Because the value of a single deal is much higher

[00:49:17] So it you can get a realtor one client that's thousands of dollars in revenue for them whereas

[00:49:24] You know, it would be really tough for me to drive thousands of dollars in revenue to my local

[00:49:30] Um, I don't know pizza shop

[00:49:32] Um, and then the maybe like one or two other big things that have come up a few times

[00:49:38] uh

[00:49:40] I've heard a couple of times and this is really interesting if

[00:49:44] We talked a little bit about the challenges of scaling something like this to multiple cities

[00:49:48] Uh, it's certainly out there. There are people that are doing it um, but it's got its own unique set of challenges

[00:49:54] But kind of the interesting thing for people who do want to do this as a full-time business is that

[00:49:59] From what I've seen

[00:50:01] They can be a significant business even in just one relatively limited location

[00:50:07] so

[00:50:08] Ryan obviously from nap town scoop great example he's doing six figures with one city

[00:50:14] Um, and if you're a solo operator

[00:50:16] It's over two hundred thousand dollars a year right now in the newsletter

[00:50:19] So that's a pretty good income for one person running a business

[00:50:23] You know with with not that much overhead, you know

[00:50:26] There's no there's no office. There's no printing. There's no nothing that's needed

[00:50:30] If you're paying for ads maybe you've got an expense there, but it's a relatively lean business to run

[00:50:36] Um, and then there's like slightly bigger options or examples

[00:50:40] So Jacob Donnelly who runs a media operator which is a really great newsletter for anybody who

[00:50:46] Is in the media space

[00:50:47] He told me about this one company called Arkansas business publishing group. Have you guys heard of this before?

[00:50:53] We have not

[00:50:55] Nobody's heard of this before that's that's the joke like nobody

[00:50:58] Arkansas sorry to people in Arkansas

[00:51:01] I listening to this but like Arkansas is the state that you joke about when you're joking about a state

[00:51:06] That's in the middle of nowhere

[00:51:10] And yet and yet this guy runs an incredible business in the state of Arkansas

[00:51:16] He's basically runs publishing companies strictly focused on Arkansas business doing eight figures in revenue

[00:51:22] in

[00:51:23] The state that like is probably the 51st state people think of when they think of business

[00:51:29] And by the way, I love Arkansas for the nature. I've never ever looked into the business up there

[00:51:33] What is the name of that of that business Arkansas? What

[00:51:37] The Arkansas business publishing group

[00:51:39] Yeah, if you look at it

[00:51:40] It's it's it's not one city

[00:51:41] But he basically owns like the business media landscape in Arkansas

[00:51:46] But the fact that you can do eight figures in one state

[00:51:50] That's not even like I mean come on

[00:51:52] Silicon Valley that wouldn't surprise me new york that wouldn't surprise me

[00:51:56] But the fact that he's doing it in Arkansas is is is awesome

[00:51:59] And so I think there's a

[00:52:03] There is an argument to be made for scaling

[00:52:04] But you can also make the argument for staying in one location and just continuing to double down and

[00:52:10] Drive those roots deeper and create more monetization the last thing I'll say about this is um

[00:52:17] The people that I've talked to who are building successful companies on this have all ran weirdly enough

[00:52:24] Recommended that you look to make advertising about 25% of the business

[00:52:29] And that the rest should be other forms of revenue and that was surprising. It's also been surprising how consistent it is

[00:52:39] But at least two

[00:52:42] Maybe at least two people have said that to me

[00:52:46] Both in Canada now that I think about it, but anyways

[00:52:50] 25% ads and the reason for that is that the ad business is kind of tough

[00:52:54] um

[00:52:56] They've said that like if you can sell in multi-month

[00:52:59] chunks it becomes a little bit easier a little bit more stable but

[00:53:04] The ad business is tough and so what they try to fill it in with is

[00:53:07] Memberships and things like events

[00:53:11] Yeah

[00:53:12] And the surprising thing is that people seem to be very willing to pay a membership for local media

[00:53:19] That's cool wow

[00:53:21] You know my own my our minds

[00:53:24] Again today isn't man. I don't know what we waited so long to bring you back

[00:53:28] We're gonna bring you to Jacksonville. We're gonna bring you to Jacksonville and we're gonna talk shop just saying

[00:53:34] Yeah, man, we'll do it. We'll do it in person next time. You might see you guys. Thanks for thanks for having me

[00:53:39] Absolutely you might fall in love with Jacksonville and you're like, yeah, you know why they're like

[00:53:43] Ha

[00:53:45] That would be like the that would be the the end of uh end of my business right

[00:53:49] I'm better from Jacksonville

[00:53:52] You can live recursly through us here in Jacksonville you know what

[00:53:56] Yeah, sure the updates. That's awesome and now Ethan how come people find you? How come people follow your journey your new sliders

[00:54:02] Where can we send them

[00:54:05] Yeah, so if you just go to ethinbrooks.com

[00:54:07] That'll take them right to my main site which is called the right to roam awesome

[00:54:11] um

[00:54:12] That's where I share the things that I learned as um

[00:54:15] Building here in Austin and also talking to other people across the industry and maybe the last thing

[00:54:20] I'll just say I would I try to shout people who have been super helpful

[00:54:24] I also want to just mention Jeff Sharp over at lookout media. He's been super super helpful

[00:54:30] um

[00:54:31] And

[00:54:33] The last little note for people is

[00:54:37] This community seems to be very open to talking and I think a big part of that is because

[00:54:43] When you go local, you're not competing against people as

[00:54:47] viciously as you might be if you're all competing on the same stage. So

[00:54:52] You know, just get out there and talk to people. It's a really cool really cool community people have been super helpful so far

[00:54:56] Awesome

[00:54:57] The best is the best reason why to have a podcast talk to cool people but I say that all the time I'm like

[00:55:03] One of the best reasons or my favorite reason that we have a podcast is because I get to me cool people just like you Ethan

[00:55:11] And I think today proves it you know, we literally we learn we mastermind

[00:55:16] You know, we share future plans of potential partnership. Who knows you know just turned out there

[00:55:22] You know and it was absolutely amazing

[00:55:24] We had a we had a really good time so even thank you so much

[00:55:27] Dude, this was really cool. Thanks for having me on guys

[00:55:30] Absolutely. Is there anything else that you want to leave with or add up?

[00:55:34] Nope. Yeah, I think you left it all in the table man

[00:55:36] This is incredible fun. See what about you just thank you. It was absolutely amazing

[00:55:41] I really appreciate it. I'm sure people are gonna love this episode

[00:55:44] We're gonna do our best to promote it get the word out there and you know, we'll run out everywhere about this episode

[00:55:49] Except in Jacksonville so we can now kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding because again. I believe in abundance. I believe in abundance

[00:55:55] So yeah, absolutely amazing. Thank you. Yeah with that say guys

[00:55:59] Thank you so much for joining to the contest prophet podcast go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform

[00:56:05] I don't know some media at this bros

[00:56:07] Co that is rana if eaten here help you move one step closer towards your goal

[00:56:11] Please don't forget to share this episode and leave a five-star review and remember if you guess my brother's arms count

[00:56:18] Will we'll get you something?

[00:56:21] Bye guys