A Little Throwback

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal. I'm your host, Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. Normally on the show, I'm your startup Sherpa, where I find the best content on the internet. I read it and summarize it so you don't have to, and then I provide you takeaways so you can action on it within your business. But I don't know, I'm just feeling in a different mood today, and I decided I'm going to throw it back. So for you OG Founders Journal listeners, this is going to sound a lot like the episodes I used to do, where I basically just. Deliver a true journal entry. I wrote down some bullet points on my Apple Note of some takeaways and some experiences over the last week, and I'm just going to deliver a true journal from an entrepreneur and see how it lands with you all. So let's hop into it. Okay, we're going to start at the top with the joy of solving for product market fit. Something that I have realized as I have started spinning up new businesses beyond just Morning Brew is not just how much I love the early parts, the early innings of a business. Like, that's something I knew. You know, part of the reason that I stepped into the chairman role for Morning Brew and I'm starting other businesses is Because something that I realized as I was reflecting on my journey after selling the business is the first four years of building Morning Brew, I found far greater fulfillment than the second four years. And I think a large part of that is because the early days of building a startup feel like the most creative to me. There's something so special about building a business with a really talented ragtag team that feels like a family that you get to know at a really deep level. You see people growing at incredibly fast rates. I would say it feels. Feels like the highest impact part of the business when you will something into existence. So I knew that I a big part of my goal in moving out of the day-to-day of Morning Brew and starting new companies was to spend as much of my time as I could in the zero to one of business. So I knew that, but I didn't necessarily realize the nuances of what specifically in the zero to one I love so much. And I've realized in the last few weeks one thing that like. Truly fires me up so much. So let me just talk about StoryArc. For those of you that have not heard me talk about StoryArc, it is the first business that I launched post-Morning Brew. StoryArc started as a personal brand accelerator for the modern executive. So let's just say you're a founder of a B2B SaaS company and you're realizing that it's important to build an audience online, whether it's on Twitter or LinkedIn, but you either don't have the skillset to do that because creating content is very different than running a business, or you just don't have the time to do that. Because creating content on Twitter is never going to take priority to fundraising, hiring, operating the business, etc. The whole idea was with StoryArm, we would act as kind of like your personal content engine. We have some of the greatest writers on the internet on our team. We have some of the best content strategists in the world on our team. And so we would form this team around you of content strategist and writer to help you build your audience online. And so as we've been building this business, one of the reflections that I've had is that There's basically unlimited demand for Storyarb. Every other founder or entrepreneur that I speak to wants to build a personal brand online, and so the amount of top of funnel and lead flow that we get for this business is kind of crazy. That said, like any business, there are real challenges with this type of business. First of all, the first agency business I've ever built. Every business is hard. Agency businesses are. Hard as well. Any kind of customer-facing business can tend to be difficult because you're always on the clock. Some customers will take advantage of you. It's just, it's a nature of the beast. But I would say the challenges that have been most interesting for me to see are one, that a lot of clients expect faster results than is possible. Something that I always set an expectation on with our business with StoryArb is that You know, I've been creating content on Twitter and LinkedIn for the last anywhere between 7 and 10 years. It took probably 3 to 4 years on each of those platforms to gain any sort of momentum where I was actually seeing results, like meaning opportunities come from having an audience. And I think even though a lot of founders nod their head when I say this is a long game, I have found a lot of people are very impatient and 3 months in they are scratching their head wondering why they haven't seen results yet. So all of this to say, one of the biggest challenges with StoryArbor, or just, I would say, personal brand businesses in general, is retention. I think it is generally very hard to keep clients for a long time. When I say a long time, I'd say anything more than 12 months if you are solely offering executive social. And so right now we are in the process of testing out some other offerings for StoryArbor that will allow executives and specifically marketing teams to use StoryYard as their content engine, creating executive social content, their company social content, newsletter content, email marketing content, et cetera. So truly like the content marketing engine for your business. And I say all of this to say that I have realized that kind of this puzzle of going from your initial product, which odds are will not be the thing to achieve product-market fit, and then talking to your customers and understanding what's working for them and what's not working for them such that you can evolve your offering in a way that you can get to product-market fit I actually love— like, I think that is the thing I love most about building a business. And we are still on that journey. But to me, there's just something so intellectually satisfying around pivoting the business. And it's so funny as I think about this, you know, pivot has such an icky connotation, even though I feel like entrepreneurs try to normalize it. I generally think when people hear of a business doing a pivot, they assume like the business isn't doing well. But I don't believe that to be the case at all. Story Harbor is doing very well right now. It's very profitable. But also, if you want to build for the long term, you need to have high retention with your customers unless you just want to be like a marketing engine for decades. And so, yeah, I have found the journey of finding product-market fit and evolving your product from what you initially thought the world would want to what they actually want by constantly talking to customers. It's one of my favorite things. Okay, next up, is a reflection on something that I heard Sam Altman talk about on the Lex Fridman podcast. So Sam Altman, you know, former president of Y Combinator, he's the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, which is behind Sora and ChatGPT. You know, you've probably heard of Sam Altman unless you're living under a rock. But what I found very interesting in the conversation between Sam Altman and Lex Fridman is Lex asks Sam about What is his reflection on basically the entire, like, ousting and board coup that happened a few months back? And if you don't remember what happened, basically Sam Altman was fired from the CEO role of OpenAI by the board. It was completely unexpected. He ended up coming back into the role, but it was clearly like he was clearly blindsided. He had no idea this was happening. And something he shared is that He has historically been someone who is default trusting when he builds businesses. He is default— he believes people have good intentions. He does not believe people are going to screw him over. And what he said is that's unfortunate is after this experience, he is going to have his guard up more than ever before and not necessarily be default trusting in the way he's going about business. And he's not happy about that. And as I thought about this, it felt very resonant because something I've always thought about is I'm a very trusting person, you know, literally from being the guy that will leave his laptop in a Starbucks to go to the bathroom and assume no one will take it, which I acknowledge is very dumb, but I am probably naively trusting. But also in business, I just assume when I build good relationships with people and if I treat people with integrity, they will treat me with integrity as well. And similar to what Sam said, Sam was like, I would rather be default trusting. And the cost of being default trusting is being screwed over once or twice in my career. That's how I've always thought about it also, which is like I would rather trust people and open up to them and build deep connection with them, which leaves me vulnerable to being screwed over, than the alternative of kind of always being paranoid and cynical and not fully opening up. But it's interesting because Sam basically said that his philosophy on this has changed ever since. The, the board ousted him from the CEO role. So I don't know, maybe if I am unfortunately screwed in some sort of business dealing in the future, my perspective will change. But I generally believe that being a default trusting person, it just feels a lot better to go through life that way. And so I'd be curious if you are on the kind of guard upside or guard downside as it relates to trusting or not trusting people from the get-go when you're working with them in business. Okay. Next up, is a reflection on a conversation I had with a big content creator. So this guy I was talking to, he is the co-host of a podcast that does, I want to say, probably 1 million downloads a month. And what we were just talking about is I, I love being a content creator. I love the fact that for a living I can learn, share those learnings with the world, have an impact at scale on people's lives. There's so many opportunities I've gotten from building audience on the internet. But one of the downsides is with any job where what you do involves audience and building audience, it is extremely difficult to know how much you are being driven by extrinsic versus intrinsic motivators. And so what I mean by that is, as I'm recording this podcast right now, on one hand, I would say to you, and I genuinely believe this, that part of the reason that I am doing this is because I believe that it is very fulfilling to share some of my insights and the things I'm thinking through as an entrepreneur. And I think it can help you, the listener on the receiving end of this, to feel heard, to feel like someone understands your journey, and also maybe to pick up at least one thing in an episode that helps you better navigate being an entrepreneur. And I genuinely believe that motivates me. But on the other hand, I know some part of my motivation is extrinsically driven. The idea that it feels good to have an audience of people who listen to you and follow you and ascribe value to you. Like, I think just by nature of this job, building social currency and social status, it feels good. And so I think there isn't anything inherently wrong by being driven by extrinsics. I think what happens is, is when you're way more driven by extrinsics than intrinsics, all of a sudden you're doing things for other people that actually don't drive long-term fulfillment for yourself. And I think unfortunately, unlike, I don't know, let's just say like running a no-name hedge fund that no one knows who you are, but like you enjoy the act of breaking down businesses and taking positions in businesses, like maybe actually in some ways you are doing that for extrinsics also because you want to make a lot of money. But it's a different type of extrinsic. It's for money that leads to power versus recognition from people that leads to power. But anyway, I just think something I think about a lot in any sort of public-facing professional role is the difficulty of knowing at any given time how much you're driven by kind of ego versus the desire to serve others, to grow, to learn. And so it's something I'm constantly thinking about, and I believe I'll never know the exact answer. But what I want to kind of know is, do I feel at least like there's a good enough balance such that I'm not spending my time on something that isn't going to fill me up long term? And then one other thought on just like content and content creation that I've been thinking about a lot is, look, I am all for making money through advertising in media businesses, whether you're a content creator, a media company, a newsletter, etc. Like, I think it's really important, first of all, to have free content in the world just from like a societal perspective. I think there's a real danger of every business putting their content behind a paywall and all of a sudden content no longer is a public good of sorts and there ends up being kind of like this huge inequality of access to important information. So I think advertising is important for societal reasons, but I also think it is a valuable way to monetize your audience and offer your audience free content as well. That said, I do believe that one of the big perils of advertising that I think about a lot is how, you know, one of the reasons that content creators start creating is to be creative, to have a creative outlet, and to express themselves through some form of storytelling, whether it's the written word, whether it's YouTube, whether it's audio and podcast, it is to express yourself creatively. And one of my fears with advertising-based businesses and like platforms, whether it's Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, etc., is there ends up being a game, right? There ends up being a playbook that people who have success in media— there's a playbook that works for them that led to them getting a lot of audience and a lot of impressions, which allowed them to monetize their audience. And then people look to them and they're like, what is this playbook? And let me copy this playbook. And so I think one of my big fears is how, as a content creator, can you not get sucked into basically doing a lot of regurgitation or kind of formulaic content that you know will perform and get eyeballs or ears on your content? But it's lost its soul. It's lost kind of like the creativity and the creative expression that if you weren't at all driven by advertising or monetization that way, you would have never created that content in the first place. So that's something I I've been thinking about is like, how can you have the best of both worlds, like full creative expression, but also turning content and audience into a business? And I think where I kind of sit with this right now is ideally the most creatively expressed version of content is something that has many revenue streams, so you're not dependent on one single, and also ideally is a niche in which you're really passionate. And I think one great example of this is there's this YouTuber, Thomas Frank, who I've become friends with, and I think he's awesome. He built a huge YouTube channel around productivity and it was a super general audience. I think he was getting really burnt out and he decided to start forgoing advertising revenue. He created a new YouTube channel exclusively around Notion, the application, because he's obsessed with it. And he basically— his Notion YouTube channel is way smaller, but he monetizes this audience through paid digital products. And I think he feels more energized and more creative and like creatively actualized than ever before because he's creating what he would actually want to create even if he didn't have an audience and he doesn't feel like he has to chase impressions. And then the final thought I want to share with you all, and this is going to require some participation on your side, is I've been thinking a lot about this podcast. Obviously, as you know, if you've been listening to Founders Journal for a long time, I love creating content. I love building businesses. I love breaking down my lessons in a way that hopefully helps you in your journey build whatever you are building. But I feel like the show is a little lost right now. I feel like the content is good, but I feel like it's not exceptional. I feel like the show is not growing as fast as I want it to grow. And of course, I want to make the show exceptional, not only because it feels good to win and it feels good to grow, but also I want this show to be an absolute need-to-have for you and not a nice-to-have. And I think it's incredibly difficult, but I think I can get there. So I just want to share a few ideas of where we could take this show. I want you to think about them, and then I want you to shoot me an email after the show and tell me if you could just wave your magic wand and I was your personal employee creating podcasts around the only podcast you would ever listen to, what that would be. I want you to tell me. So here are a few ideas. First idea is a business book club. So think like Reese Witherspoon's book club, but specifically for people who are builders and business minds. Every week I'd read a book. I'd summarize it, share my biggest learnings, and I would share the list of books that I'm going to read in advance so people can join in on the book club whenever they want. Obviously, you don't have to read a book a week, but you could read a book a month and join on the book that's most interesting to you. And then I could see a world where I invite authors on. I have other entrepreneurs and founders join me for some episodes where they read the book with me. I could imagine a world in which, like, I create a community for my listeners to talk about these books outside of the podcast. So that's idea one. Idea 2 is interviewing really successful founders who have a ton of momentum right now, and they're called like just past product market fit and they're hyperscaling their business. And the show would really be an interview show focused on the 0 to 1, which again is the part of startups that I'm most interested in and get most energized by. So this would be a focus on how do you get a business from, let's call it, the -1 to 1, interviewing people who did it so well in the last year or 2. The 3rd idea is interviewing post-exit founders and interviewing these founders who sold their business businesses about how they found purpose, motivation, and kind of like their next thing after selling their company. I just always find those stories to be really interesting personally, but I don't know how interesting it would be to everyone in my audience. And then the final idea is interviewing founders that I think have a chance to change the world. So what made me think about this idea is I recently interviewed for my YouTube channel this guy, Emi Gall, who started Ezra. It is a cancer screening company. So they built AI software products that get paired with full-body MRIs. And so you can do a full-body MRI in 60 minutes or less for $1,300 or less. And their goal is to effectively help cure cancer by detecting cancer early in stage 1 or stage 2 versus 3 or 4. And I would love to talk to other founders like Emmy in all different industries because I left that conversation so inspired. And I also felt like I left the conversation Where for the 60 minutes I was talking to him, I was living like 10 years in the future before everyone else was. And I thought that was really interesting and people would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall. So on that note, those are some of my ideas. First of all, I hope you enjoyed kind of this OG style of going back to a true founder's journal journal entry. Now I want to hear from you. Obviously, I want to create something I enjoy in this podcast, but most important to me is creating something that becomes a complete need to have for builders like yourself. So shoot me an email. And let me know if you like any of the ideas that I rattled off or if you have any other ideas of where you want me to take the show. Oh, by the way, another idea I didn't mention is just like going back to journal-style episodes like the one that I just delivered in the last 21 minutes. So with that, shoot me an email at alex@morningbrew.com. Tell me where you want me to take the future of Founders Journal. Any insight you can share will be super helpful because I'm creating this show for you. And thank you as always for listening to the podcast. I will catch you next episode.