How The Morning Brew Co Founders Hire The Best Media Talent & Think About The Future

A lot of partnerships, you start to see them fall apart after a while. How have you guys evolved as partners over the years? Because things typically change.

Yeah, I mean, I would say that it's interesting because Austin and I probably didn't— not probably, definitely didn't meet like most co-founders meet, right? Like, we didn't meet on Hacker News or Reddit like Brian Armstrong and his co-founders. We didn't meet through YC or any accelerator. We met because Austin was a reader of the OG Morning Brew, and he had feedback for the product. It's interesting because it's not like I did so much due diligence into a co-founder. I was just like, this guy's really smart, he thinks really differently, let's bring him on. At the time, it wasn't a business, it was just a hobby, so it was okay to think about a co-founder in that way because it wasn't even co-founder of a business, it was co-founder of a project. And I would say, you know, we've maintained a really good co-founder relationship, I think because we're honest with each other, we are direct with each other. Also, we're— I would say in a good way, unemotional about things. Like, we try to be as objective as possible when talking about things. And of course, there's going to be emotions some of the time, but I think we've been generally pretty good at having conversations that are level-headed, that are steeped in just merit and objectivity, which I think becomes really difficult when there is oftentimes between partners a great deal of ego, at least for a lot of businesses.

Got it. And so I guess for both of you, because you guys are still under 30, right? Both of you, correct?

Yeah.

Still, I mean, it sounds like you guys read a lot and you guys have really kind of— sounds like a lot of philosophy that comes in, right, where you guys have matured quite a bit and removed the ego. Is that something you guys consciously work on? Because a lot of people that are under 30 that have had the success that you've had, they start getting the Lambos, they start getting the mansions and all that, and then before you know it, they lose themselves. Either of you, feel free to take this one.

I don't think it's really a credit to us. Nothing we did was that sexy. We started a newsletter. We didn't raise millions of dollars of venture funding from a16z or a big fund. So for us, it was such a grind. And because we were 2 young founders, I do think we were always, until recently, half a step behind as opposed to half a step ahead because the business was growing so quickly. And I think finally, second half of last year, we really leveled up the the team, the Morning Brew team, and we were finally able to get a half step ahead. But I think we were always, we were still like always in the race, but we were never, you know, in the driver's seat, really, really confident. We were always trying to make sure we were there. So there was really never time to get cocky and we didn't have the, we weren't in Silicon Valley. Like what we were doing just wasn't that cool. It wasn't a software company, it wasn't social media, it was a media company. To us it was cool, to us it was really great. We thought we were doing something awesome. but it wasn't what was being glorified or, you know, we weren't like, you know, social like Mark Zuckerberg where it's very idolized. So it was like just media founders. So it's, you can't, you can't, when you have a newsletter company, you can't get too big of a head. Yeah.

Well, here's the thing though, like this newsletter company, I mean, like when you look at like the HubSpots buying, you know, The Hustle or, you know, you guys with Business Insider, right? It is actually sexy, right? 'Cause like the attention at the end of the day is super valuable. So maybe just to back up a second, Can you guys speak to the business a little bit, what the business model is, how you guys make money? Because I want to give people a sense of how it's all set up.

Yeah. We make money through advertising. We make money across 7 different products at this point. The first, obviously, you alluded to was the daily newsletter, which we launched in March of 2015, has just short of 3 million subscribers right now. And then we've launched other products over time. Our first foray into something else was still in the newsletter space, and that's when we launched our B2B newsletters like Retail Brew, Emerging Tech Brew, Marketing Brew. And the whole ethos around the B2B part of our organization is that B2B media is even less sexy than B2C newsletters, and there's a ton of opportunity to help modern business leaders be better at their jobs. In addition to B2B newsletters, we launched podcasts. So we have Business Casual, where we interview the biggest names in business. We have my podcast, Founder's Journal, where I talk about the mental aspect, the thoughts that builders need to have in general to build successfully. And over time, the business has evolved from newsletter brand into multi-platform media brand. That's what we are now. Still entirely advertising-based. We're testing paid products outside of just advertising, but the advertising business has been really good for us. Newsletters are a high-margin business. It's a high CPM business because we have really quality attention of people who have opted into the product. And I think also part luck, over time, brands have just become more amenable to paying up to get in front of a newsletter audience.

Got it. And so I guess, where do you guys see newsletters going? Because obviously, with the Substacks and a16z pumping a lot of money into Substack, everyone's making a newsletter now. Do you think we're reaching a bubble at this point, or do you think it's still very viable to start one?

Yeah, I think it's— newsletter is just the medium, right? So it's— you can totally start a newsletter, just like you can start a YouTube channel or a podcast, and everything's saturated until someone comes in and does something differently. So I don't know if you know Packy McCormick, but if before Packy started his newsletter, if you said, hey, Pak is, hey, I'm gonna write about business, business stories and break down business. People have been like, there are 100 people, maybe 1,000 people who do that. And I don't care if you do it in a YouTube video or a Twitch stream or newsletter. It's been done before. But he did it in an interesting way. He does it in a very funny, interesting way. And he's really smart and a great writer. And so there's space. Same thing with Pomp. Pomp does business interviews. If you would have said when Pomp launched his podcast, another person interviewing people in business. Everyone like, he has a different point of view on the world. And so I think there's absolutely opportunity. You just need to have a unique point of view in the world or be an expert in the space you're talking about or just do it in an interesting way. But I do think if you're trying to recreate, let's say a Morning Brew or a Hustle or the Skimm, then it's more challenging to create a successful business. And because of that, that is why you see so many people going to subscription. I don't think subscription is a better model than ad-based. I just think subscription is the way you monetize a niche audience, and niche audiences are the way of the future. There's so many content creators out there. You have to be niche to stand out.

Got it. Makes sense. And so this is actually a question from my team. They're just wondering, you know, for Morning Brew, I mean, how are you guys tracking revenue for the newsletter? That's something that kind of perplexes them.

When you say tracking revenue, what do you mean?

Yeah. So I guess they're asking like kind of, you know, maybe what tracking tools you guys are using and how are you guys breaking out revenue per product and like per ad format, all that type of stuff.

Yeah. I mean, nothing we do is fancy, right? And so we actually still use Booster, which is our CRM, but we actually use Google Sheets as well. So, you know, we'll have a mid-8-figure business and a lot of it's just run off of Google Sheets. But yeah, I mean, just standard startup tools, like that's what's helped us succeed, I think, is just like general SaaS products.

Yeah. Don't try to overcomplicate things, right? So I kind of asked this yesterday to Alex in Clubhouse, but it was fairly short. I do want to kind of double-click on you guys building this amazing team, right? Because actually in Miami, I met up with one of your first employees, Josh Kaplan, right? Super smart guy. He's just talking about everyone else that you had in the beginning and how the team continues to level up. I think there's a lot that goes into that, right, Alex? The way you test people to see how they write from a tweet, I think it might be interesting to explain that story here because obviously podcast, but also from a broader perspective, how are you guys finding all these great people? Where are you scouring?

Yeah.

What I would say is, We've been really fortunate to level up the business over the years, and I think we've had to find smart ways to do it because to Austin's point, up until the last year, newsletters weren't sexy, basically bootstrapping a business wasn't sexy. And so it made it more difficult for us to hire great talent because we didn't have all the advantages that a lot of venture-backed businesses had. In the early days, as I had mentioned to you yesterday, for writers, that's always been so difficult for us. Writers are absolute unicorns because one of the ways that Morning Brew stands out is through our voice that we communicate to our audience with, where it feels like you're chatting with someone over drinks after work in this passionate and quippy way that's not condescending, but really informed. It's such a specific blend.

And so when you're talking about having to find writers who can write with great technical writing chops in 150 words, in a quick-witted way, who have a good sense of pop culture to be able to make references, you're looking for a unicorn every time. And so it's not surprising that our first writer, who is now our managing editor, had no professional writing background, but he had this just wonky set of experiences in life, from being in his a cappella group and writing the lyrics for it, to his parents being professors, so growing up in an academic household, to writing his school's newspaper. It was the perfect mix for him to be the really funny yet informed newsletter writer. I would also say it takes a certain type of person to love writing curated stories every single day. And so that was how we thought about writers in the early days. And I think we've done a good job as the business has grown, leaning into the growth of our brand and our legitimacy, and selling it well to prospective hires. And I think that's what allowed us in the last half year or year to build out a full senior leadership team. For the first time ever, Austin and I are the most junior people around the senior leaders of the business and to have that as your team of Avengers. We feel confident we have, in general, the best team in digital media, especially our senior leadership team, but the entire company as a whole. I would say the final part is when you build a brand where you have an audience that really cares about you and is really obsessed with the product, it makes recruiting a lot easier because we don't have to worry as much about job sites. You market your jobs through your newsletter. You have a ton of people who are super passionate Morning Brew readers that ultimately apply for jobs because they're like, I love that brand, I would love to work there.

Got it. I love that. And so can you tell us, just the audience real quick, what that 150— I think it's a 150-character test, right? What does that look like?

Yeah, so 150 words. And yeah, I mean, very simply, writers have had to apply to The Brew by basically writing a 150-word story max about a business story that happened in the last few days that they think is worth the modern business leader's time, and they have to write it in a way that they hit the points that they think the modern business leader should care about or will care about, and with a voice that feels conversational in nature, but still direct to the audience. And we've had thousands of people apply for writing jobs at MorningBrew, and I don't know the exact acceptance rate, but what I can say is 95% of people who go through writing assignments, you know within a sentence if they're going to have this balance, this weird balance of skills that makes sense in the context of The Brew.

Got it. Makes sense. Yeah. When I look at your guys' stuff and also The Hustle as well, I'm just like, dude, everyone they hire is freaking amazing. I don't know how they do it, but definitely go check out the writers from all these media companies. They do a great job. Both of you are prolific on Twitter. Is that the medium of your choice? Because here's my thing, There's the podcast, there's a YouTube channel, there's all this stuff, but I'm spread thin. I guess, Austin, I'll throw this question at you. How do you think about where you create content today?

Alex is definitely a more prolific content creator than I am. I got very involved with Twitter starting 2019. I went really deep end of 2020, and this year, I've taken a little bit of a step back because At some point, it gets pretty bad for your mental health, and I was certainly there. And so, I mean, I used to write tweetstorms and just refresh the tweetstorm all day, like on a weekend, all day long, and I had to stop. So I don't really do tweetstorms anymore. Maybe I'll get back to it every once in a while, but I love Twitter. That's where our audience is, whether it's the Morning Brew audience, our personal audience, that's where they are. And so for Morning Brew as a company, we'll start creating content everywhere. We're starting to expand outside of the inbox. Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, but for our audience, I do think we are going to really over-index LinkedIn and Twitter versus Instagram. I think YouTube is another place where we definitely have a lot of room to play, but to me, that's going to be a tougher battle. But Twitter to me is just so obvious. That's where, you know, the FinTwit is, and that, that group of people is growing. So So yeah, I love Twitter. I think it's where the perfect audience is. It's a good platform. I've become a fan.

Yeah. You know, I actually was talking to a guy yesterday from one of these big newsletters, and he's like, hey, I'll do pay-for-performance tweetstorms with you. So if we don't get like a certain engagement number, then you don't pay. I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's do it. So he's figuring that out right now. I think that's going to be the future, right? I think hiring kind of micro content creators like that that are repurposing stuff, or people that are just Doing it for like your YouTube Shorts as an example too, right? So that's the future. Alex, how long are you spending on tweet storms per week?

Yeah, uh, too long, um, for sure. Uh, and I think, uh, Austin's experienced this, I've experienced this. My guess is pretty much every, uh, Twitter creator has probably experienced this, is like you truly appreciate how much addiction has been built into these platforms when you start using them a lot. Because yeah, like, I'll do a tweet storm and it's literally my thumb will get sore from refreshing. Like, that should never happen to a human being. Um, so I, um, I actually was big on LinkedIn first. LinkedIn was like the platform where I started creating audience, and I still create content on LinkedIn, but I would say To be totally honest with you, the product feels a little lost to me. Twitter, I think I got involved after Austin got involved, because he was loving Twitter. I was like, I got to check this out. I think what I've loved about Twitter is there's— we talk about talent density in the Brew. I think there's such curiosity and intellectual density on Twitter. Where we're going to be able to play here for Morning Brew because Morning Brew generally has a curious business professional audience, but then also just as an entrepreneur, you have so many other really smart people to meet. And the coolest stuff happens in the DMs on Twitter where you're talking to cool people that you connect with. Sometimes I also need to remind myself that it is such a microcosm of society, in Twitter in a few ways. One is I think technologies that you feel late on, on Twitter, you're actually incredibly early. You're just seeing dozens of the first users talk about it. I'd say also Twitter is sometimes a place where you feel unsuccessful, no matter how successful you are, because you're interfacing with 4x founders who have started 3 unicorns and ran a marathon sub-3 hours. It's like, how do these human beings exist? So I just try to also ground myself in that Twitter is a very helpful thing, but what I think makes it helpful also can make it, at least for me, it can make me self-conscious at times. I need to remind myself that Twitter is not a representative sample of every person in the world or the country.

Right.

Yeah, I think Twitter is one of the most important platforms out there if you know how to wield it correctly. Actually, Austin, if you didn't put that tweet out there about your rolling fund, Like, like, my decision process through that was like, oh, Austin seems like a smart guy, cool guy, okay, let's do it, right? Like, that was like a little, like, like a 5-second decision.

Uh, so, so I think there's a lot of power in that, right?

Um, so anyway, let's talk about your rolling fund, Austin. Why did you decide to do it? You know, how are you thinking about your investments and all that?

Yeah, uh, so to take a step back, I wrote a few angel checks beginning of 2020. And, you know, it was the heart— April, May, June, it's the heart of COVID and pretty bored. And I was spending a lot of time on Twitter and not so much in terms of content creation, but just, I mean, deep consumption. I was deep in Twitter. It was bad because like, what else were you doing? I was living at home with my parents and I would just be on Twitter for like 4 or 5 hours. And this guy, Sahil, you know, is like the poster boy for rolling funds. And I was DMing with him. He's like, you should launch one. I was like, you know, like whatever. And it just became interesting to me. And this was also before the deal too. So if it was after the deal, maybe I wouldn't have launched one. But before the deal, I wanted to write bigger checks, but I didn't have the capital to write that size of the check that I wanted to. And so I just launched it. And I mean it, on Twitter, I make it look easy. It's actually been way harder to fundraise, to invest. It's just a lot to balance. And fundraising is always challenging, right? Because these people on Twitter, a lot of them don't invest in funds because they have access to angel investing themselves. You know, being an LP in a fund is mostly for people who don't have the access, right? What I'm providing why I can charge 20% carry is because a lot of people don't have access. Now, a lot of people definitely do still have access in my fund. It just, it takes a little bit more of a hurdle why should they invest in my fund. So I started it. It's gone well. I'm 3 quarters in. I like it. Don't get me wrong. But it's been a lot of work. And yeah. What I like most about it is the fact that I can build in public with it. Right? It's just like we did with Morning Brew. It's like my side project. I do it nights and weekends. I'll spend probably all day Sunday working on it. And that's the cool thing is I can tweet about it, I can talk about it, I can write about it, I can send LP updates. And yeah, so it's been a lot of fun.

Got it. How big is the fund?

Yeah. I'm now up to $650,000 a quarter.

Wow. And by the way, did you get all the things from like all the people coming in from your LPs, right, coming in from Twitter?

Yeah, 100% of LPs, or maybe not 100%, but the vast majority have been from Twitter. I don't— AngelList doesn't promote it at all. It's all just me. And for me, I'd love to get a little bit bigger, but I don't really want to get it much bigger because then it becomes a job and I don't want— the last thing I want is for it to be more work.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, it's just Twitter. It's just a flywheel of Twitter. And now my LPs have become my deal flow at times. Yeah, so it's really cool. I like it a lot.

Wow, I kind of want to do one for the hell of it now. Guys, tweet at me if you want me to do one. Um, so I guess, I mean, you guys decided to, to, um, to sell. I guess, you know, how are you guys looking at things long term? Like, what's the long-term, long-term vision, the long-term thesis? Like, uh, what do you guys want to be doing? So this is really a question for both of you.

Yeah, I mean, uh, what, what I'll just say is The goal of the business, the mission of the business hasn't changed, the ambition just has. So the goal has just always been, how do we empower the modern business leader with engaging and accessible content? And I think now more than ever before, we have the team and the foundation of audience to truly accomplish that. And so I think what you're going to see over time is that MorningBrew is a media company already, but I think the The reach, the size of the audience, and the intensity of the audience is only going to grow, and it's going to exist in a what I call multi-platform, multi-context way. So it's going to be Morning Brew exists everywhere where the modern business leader consumes content, and the content we serve them solves the biggest problems or biggest needs in the modern business leader's day or career. And that doesn't just mean serving them business news, There are other things that a modern business professional or business leader needs to be successful in their life or their career. I don't know, Austin, if you want to add anything onto that, go for it.

No, I think that's the perfect example or the perfect explanation is we're just trying to slowly do more, have more of an impact on our readers' lives in different ways. And when we started, one thing we talked about a lot is we wanted to have the same impact that the Wall Street Journal had on our parents' lives, on our generation. And I actually think the ambition now is we can do more. Like digital, it's not a newspaper that is sent to you every day. Being, having this direct relationship with your customer allows us to do so many things. Like if you think about all the areas of content we can create, and therefore what are all the things we can do beyond just content. Like, our goal is not to just be a media company, it's to be a consumer brand. And what does that mean? What are we selling? What are we, what are we providing people? It's, you know, in 10 years now, it's not just content. Content is just one thing. It's gonna be the biggest thing, but it's not gonna be the only thing.

Got it. I love that. And so working towards wrapping up here, I just want to know kind of this question for both of you too. What business trends are you two particularly excited about moving forward? Austin, I kind of have a sense, for obvious reasons. But let's start with you, Alex. Yeah.

I mean, to me, one of the things I find most fascinating is the creator economy. And it's been— I feel bad saying it because it is talked about ad nauseam. And sometimes I feel like people don't even understand what they're saying when they say creator economy. But I am just fascinated by the fact that tools have been built on top of the internet to allow individuals to create something. It doesn't just have to be content that leads to them having enough of a livelihood to work for themselves, and then gives them the optionality to grow beyond themselves, grow as an individual, or grow a team. I think the more that I dive into the creator economy, the more that I see that it is such early days, in unlocking individuals working for and creating for themselves. And I think also when people think creator economy, they think just Substack creator, they think YouTuber with 2 million subscribers. But to me, there's so much beyond that. It is the person who is creating courses on Teachable. It is the niche consultant who's doing boutique consulting work. It is the the entrepreneur who's doing executive coaching now. It is the software engineer from Airbnb who's creating niche SaaS products like add-ons to Notion. To me, the creator economy is in day one, and I think you look at all those use cases and you're like, wow, there's a lot of ways and a lot of high-leverage tools on the internet now that people can make a livelihood for themselves only working for themselves.

Love that. All right, Austin, you, you're up.

One big thing I'm thinking about— yeah, I do think the creator economy is really interesting. I am more bearish than most on creator economy businesses. Not all, but, you know, as you know, I've invested in a few, but because I think a lot of them are great for creators but not great for themselves, because creator— the creator economy is a direct response to Facebook and Google taking All controlling, commoditizing supply. But some of these businesses have done the exact opposite, which is given the creator all the power, and therefore switching costs I think are really low on a lot of these businesses. But beyond that, a big thing I'm thinking about is what happens in whether it's 3, 6, 9 months and we go back to work. Like, what does that actually mean? And what are the businesses that are going to help us do that? And so whether it's— there are a lot of companies who are taking the concept of what WeWork did but trying to transform that, right? Because I do believe work is going to be very fluid. It's going to be flexible, right? So who is providing the infrastructure such that you can have a hybrid work? Like, how are we going to send out all of our chairs and our computers and like all our hardware? So I actually invest in a business that helps with that. Another business I invest in is The best way I can describe it is WeWork meets Starbucks, right? So it's, it's like a coffee shop plus, right? And they're— the interesting thing is they're leveraging the retail space of all these retail companies that are going out of business. They're getting really, really cheap retail deals, really cheap in second-tier cities. So not New York, D.C., L.A., Chicago, but other than that, these big cities, and they get this really cheap retail space. and it's all, you know, Starbucks-looking wooden tables, uh, and you have a subscription. And so what does that look like, I think, is a big trend, and how do you facilitate that? And I think what COVID's done is it has accelerated bringing these tech businesses into, you know, really the forefront. And what that does is it starts a flywheel, right? Morning Brew grows. Morning Brew is not going to use Skype. MorningBrew is going to use Slack and all of these newer tools, Notion. And so we're going to support Notion, right? Let's say Notion, because that's something I use at work. And then Notion is not going to go back and use those legacy companies. They're also going to use newer companies. And so I think we have this flywheel of newer companies using newer tools. And so people are talking a lot about valuations, and I'm less concerned because I think a lot of these softwares are now— these SaaS products are going to be just like default. It's not, do I use Skype, or do I use— it's like, no, I use Slack or whatever else, because like obviously I use those tools. Um, so those are a few things I'm thinking about.

Got it. I love that. All right, so 2 more questions from, from my side. Um, I think you guys were fairly public with your numbers before, maybe not so much anymore, right?

Yeah, we're, we're less public now. Um, we are, we are growing faster than we did last year, is about as much as I can say.

Got it. Before, when you were public with the revenue numbers, what were they before you had to kind of not talk about it as much?

We did 13 in 2019 and we exceeded 20 in 2020.

Got it. Perfect. Um, cool. So, you know, you guys have kind of answered this already, but I know I'm going to get questions from people being like, oh, why would they sell? They're doing so much in revenue, right? But you kind of talked about how you have more resources to fulfill the, the, the mission and the vision, right? Is that the main reason or is there anything else behind that? Like taking some chips off the table?

I think it was a general de-risking of the entire business.

We—

this is not a— the business has so much potential and we've hired 40 people since the deal. And while there was a question whether or not we could afford that, and in hindsight we could have, we would never have had the confidence to go out and hire the best exec team in digital media. And so we were able to do that.

Perfect. Perfect answer. All right. So favorite business book, let's start with you, Alex.

So this is just like very fresh because I'm reading it right now, but, uh, Seven Powers by, uh, Hamilton Helmer. Uh, it's, uh, basically just like the 7 strategies that create power for any business, like, um, create defensible moats for a long period of time. And it hits on like the obvious ones, like network effects and switching costs, I think it just does a great job of laying out the 7 things that generally businesses who are profitable for long periods of time, even in the face of competition, they usually have one of these 7 traits, and Hamilton lays it out in a really good way with specific examples.

Wow.

I don't know if you mentioned this yesterday during the Clubhouse, because I feel like it's déjà vu, like you might be the second person—

No, I didn't. I didn't mention it. Actually, Uh, Packy McCormick, who Austin had mentioned, was the original person to recommend the book to me.

Got it. I'm on Amazon right now, and apparently I bought it in May, uh, last year. So anyway, Austin, what's your favorite? Did you read it? No, I didn't. It's— I like— people say it twice and I'll just buy it, right? And I'll just— it goes into like the to-be-read pile. So, but I'll add it to the, the next one up. Go for it, Austin.

Uh, yeah, I would say there's a book called Traction. And I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's a general framework for running a business. And while the further and further we get from the early days, I think the further we will get from that process. It really helped us when, when I read that book. We needed some structure in our lives. We needed a North Star, something that we could all say, it's what the book says, like we got to just do it. And it builds a systematic process. For how to run a business. And it was super helpful for us going from, let's say, 10 employees to now we're at 100. Like, I truly believe we would have been much, much slower to set goals, to set yearly plans, to set budgets if not for that book.

Yeah. So have you guys hired an EOS implementer before?

We have not. I did think about it, but we haven't.

It's really different. Like, it totally changes things, but you guys are at 100 now, so Framework now might be like scaling up. I don't know, right? So anyway, costs a lot of money though, but it's great. By the way, on this podcast, for listeners, we've had Gino Wickman on the podcast before, so check that one out. And favorite business tool, let's go with you, Alex.

Oh, favorite business tool. I'm gonna go with Most people wouldn't consider it a business tool, but it helps me with my business, which is screen time on my phone. I just set all of my social media apps at 2 hours a day now, and so I get the annoying notifications when, when I hit 2 hours on any of them.

How often do you override that, Alex?

I definitely override it, and I only hit it with Twitter these days.

That's awesome. All right, Austin, you're up.

So I'll, I'll give 2. The first, so I've been, I've gone through every to-do list and every productivity tool you can imagine. And so my most recent to-do list and productivity tool is this, this crazy concept called paper and pencil. And it's been a really good one for me recently. It's, you don't waste so much time learning new productivity tools. And so yeah, I've literally been using a pen and pad of paper. And there is something satisfying about actually like crossing something off your to-do list. And this seems so stupid, but it's been pretty great for me. So that's the first one. The second one, similar idea to Alex's Screen Time, is an app called Freedom. It's actually a Chrome extension and it prevents you from using a website. And so I actually, there's a default one, which is social media. And what I'll do is I'll look at my calendar at the beginning of the day and be like, okay, I have like dedicated deep work time from 9 AM till noon. And so at 8:55, I'll check Twitter, I'll blast off a tweet, and I'll set freedom from 9 to 12. And I just won't check Twitter because otherwise, like to me, I won't spend hours on Twitter at a time like some people do. But what I'll do is I'll do 3 minutes of work, refresh, and then be 2 minutes on Twitter and back and forth. And it's, it's, that's terrible for getting anything done. So Freedom is awesome.

I think it's like $40.

Like, I think it's a lifetime purchase. And it's, it's, it's incredible. I would highly recommend it. You can use it for any website. So if for whatever reason you want to use it for your email, you can use it for your email.

Interesting. You both picked productivity tools to kind of control your time, which I think says a lot, right? So that's awesome.

Well, I think, I think it says that we're addicted to social media. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna use the cop-out that we're in the media business. And so It's part of our job to be on social, but yes, that is definitely why.

Amazing. Well, guys, this has been great. What's the best way for people to find you online? Austin, let's start with you.

Twitter, Austin Reef.

There you go. Alex?

I'm gonna go with Founder's Journal. It's my podcast about the mindset you need to be able to build a business successfully, 3 days a week, and it's been a lot of fun.

It's good stuff. Check out that podcast, guys. Thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks so much for having us.

Don't forget to check out the next video over there. Okay, over there. And before we go, open a new tab, levelingup.com, to learn more about the book. We may or may not have other goodies tied to this book. All right, levelingup.com in a new tab. You can check out the next video first in a new tab, and we'll see you later.