Alex Lieberman and Eric Siu discuss Morning Brew's strategy of building a media layer around creators, then monetizing it through ads, products, courses, and merch. Siu explains how the company handles production and ad deals for creators, and they touch on Lieberman's book club and his recent read, When Breath Becomes Air.
The media is the marketing layer. The marketing layer can be monetized with ads, just like Facebook as an audience or marketing layer can be monetized, but it could also be monetized with our own products. Naturally makes sense that where there is audience, money follows, and also where there are there are needs that creators or, or people don't want to do, someone is going to come in to solve it. And so all that to say, one of our bets is that Morning Brew is filling a gap in business media, and we're doing it creator-first, and we're focusing on providing support to creators on the things that are really freaking annoying to them— infrastructure, monetization. We just recently brought on a creator who's focusing on personal finance. that is going to be her jam and her deep interest. All we want her to think about is how she can have a content empire around personal finance. We don't want her to think about post-production, pre-production. We don't want her to think about cross-promotions. We don't want her to think about direct ad deals. We are going to do all of those things. So that's one of our big views as well.
I love that. Yeah. I remember talking to Jacob, the— I think he's the GM that's running all this.
Yeah. Jacob Donnelly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was like, oh, we can totally do this from marketing school. He's like, no, you guys are too far along and you have like staff. And I was like, oh, damn it. But I think it's a good idea for everyone that like, 'cause it's a lot of shit to worry about, right? Like to your point, most people don't want to worry about all this stuff. They just want to create. And so I think it makes a lot of sense to do a deal with a Morning Brew on this. And sounds like, I mean, this is like an entire empire. It's no longer, it's a media, it's not just a media company. I mean, you, I don't even know what to call that. Would that just be like a— That's not a collective. Is that like a—
It's like, it's, I mean, it's just like a consumer brand. Like, I, I mean, the, yeah, to your point, the way we think about it is the media is the marketing layer. The marketing layer can be monetized with ads, just like Facebook as an audience or marketing layer can be monetized, but it could also be monetized with our own product. So if you think about it, it's like we are building up this marketing layer. The way we are building up the marketing layer is with creators focused on specific interests from personal finance to crypto to productivity. And then sitting below that marketing layer is how do we create products or educational courses that can be marketed through that layer? And so just to give you the example of myself with Founder's Journal, the way we think about it is Founder's Journal is a franchise that's focused on career and growth. We can monetize it through advertisements that our sales team sells, but we could also monetize it through merch for people who are super into Founder's Journal. We could monetize it through NFTs if we have a really passionate part of our audience. We could monetize it through a course. Like, right, we are launching an audience-building course that I am the teacher of, and it is marketed in Founder's Journal. We are likely thinking about launching a line of journals. This could be the first place to launch that product. So you can imagine I'm just one node We have dozens of nodes focused on specific interests that business people have.
Super smart. Yeah. I mean, to me, I think like, you know, you hear like the Naval code, capital, media, labor. I think the media part's the hardest, right? And arguably the most valuable because everything kind of just builds on top of that. So I love that.
I totally agree.
Cool, man. By the way, for everyone to know too, Alex put together this awesome book club that I joined, and it's just another good way to And also connect with really amazing people. So you should be doing that with people around you as well.
And again, experiences turn into content, which is why a book club episode became an episode on my podcast.
Oh wow. See, there you go. Literally this, this conversation, right? Serendipity. Like, it's just like little things. I'm just like, okay, I need to be doing a Founder's Journal style for leveling up because I have my own lessons.
100%.
Cool. Um, all right. So we gotta be doing this more. Um, so we'll probably do one in like, I don't know, 6 months or whatever. But, um, Final 2 questions. What would be your favorite book in the last 12 months?
When Breath Becomes Air. So it's by Paul Kalanithi, who was a medical resident. I can't remember where. He passed away from cancer, and it's his memoir of his experience being diagnosed with cancer and the emotional and spiritual journey of living with that truth and having cancer, coming into remission for a period of time, and then getting re-diagnosed. And again, became a Founder's Journal episode because it moved me so much. But it's, uh, it's not a business book, which are oftentimes the best books, right? Like our book club right now, we're reading the Will Smith autobiography. I've learned more about myself as a professional from that than many business books, but it just, it creates amazing perspective and, and it really makes me appreciate every opportunity that I'm given.
