004: 4 Creators Who Are Playing Chess, Not Checkers

One of my friends has a TV show and he said the thing that I wish creators knew is that they are better than the people who produce TV shows at creating content. That YouTube creators and people writing great content, like, that we are actually better at it than the people getting paid huge sums of money to produce and who have been doing it for long periods of time. He's like, that's what I wish every creator knew. Attention is power and creators harness it better than anyone else, but they're not using that attention to create the biggest impact possible and are vastly undermonetized. Hi, I'm Rachel I'm Rachel Rogers. My co-host Nathan Barry and I believe you can be a billion-dollar creator. Sound impossible? Over the last 10 years, we followed each other on our own quest to build billion-dollar companies. We've studied creators and seen how entrepreneurs build traditional audiences and use them as a launching pad for a massive business. And it got us thinking, if it can happen for them, it can happen for us. And if it can happen for us, then why not you? Billion Dollar Creator is a show teaching creators how to capture attention and turn it into real wealth. We will deep dive into brands, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who have done it before and show you how you can apply it to your business as an everyday creator. Join us weekly as we learn from both the wild successes and the missed opportunities, the grand gestures and the integral mistakes, and through that, help you become an expert at building your audience on your journey as a billion-dollar creator.

Rachel, you look way fancier than I do. I entirely missed the memo about dressing up for this podcast. What's the story? What do you, what do you got going on that's more interesting than life at home at the moment?

Yes. I don't usually get dressed like this. I usually look more like you, t-shirt, like that's how I work. But I was on Tamron Hall today, the TV show. The topic was Against All Odds. So I was just sharing my story of going from being low income to building an 8-figure business and sharing some tips. And it was great. And Fun fact, completely unrelated, my best friend was also on the show today. We got booked separately for the same show. Yes, it was so fun. So his dressing room was across from mine. We took hilarious photos. He was the segment right before me, also Against All Odds, right? Talking about him, you know, renovating this like 300-year-old house that he bought that he has a whole TV show about that's going to launch soon. So Yeah, it was a very interesting day. And Tamron Hall is amazing. I also was really fascinated because, you know, TV personalities, you meet them, but you meet their team first. So, you know, you go on set and you're meeting different people in her team and like, there's so much handling, like they just take really good care of you as a guest. But I was really fascinated by like how all of her team members, it just— you can see the culture the moment you interact with the first team member. Like everybody was just super fun, personable, very warm and engaging, like It was beautiful and it got me excited about my own team and the culture that we have. So, I don't know, it just, it was a good reminder that like your team is going to be seen first before you. And when you have a really strong culture, it's that through line is consistent, right? Whether they're talking to you or one of your team members, no matter which team member it is, it all feels the same way. And that's the goal. So, that was interesting, but she is such a boss and it was great, but it also was like, You have 5 minutes to say 1,000 things, so you gotta talk fast, spit it out, and then you're off, you know? And it's like 3 hours of prep time for like 5 minutes, you know? So it just went live. I'll put it up on my Instagram, but it was a pretty cool experience.

I love it. Have you done media training, and is that something that you would do before an appearance like that to condense a story that much? Or how do you think about that?

I wish I have now that this segment is over. I've never done media training. I have a publicist, and I asked her, should I do media training? And she said, you don't need it, you know. So I think when you are somebody who's used to speaking publicly, used to speaking to large groups, you're just accustomed to it. And I have done a lot of media, but most of it was during COVID When I launched my book, I just did a ton of like news. I've done GMA, I've done a lot of things. And so I've had a lot of experience doing that. But it's different because when you're in your house, you can control the environment. You have your notes up on the screen, like you're in your zone because you're in your home or in your office. When you go into a whole nother environment, all these people talking to you, and like, there's a lot going on, and there's a studio audience, and you're talking to her, and then there's the notes and the prep beforehand, and there's things on the screen while you're talking. Like, it's so much— it's a much more dynamic environment. And both Robert and I, it was funny because her producers prep you, and they're like, OK, you're going to hit this note, then this, then this, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, right? So you're all prepped. And then the first question she has is completely different, absolutely not the things that we talked about ahead of time. And you're like caught off guard. And you're like, you got to just think quick and think on your feet, which actually I was trained to do that as a lawyer. So I think it transfers over. I do think if you're not comfortable in front of a camera, media training for sure. And that's a live show too, so there's no retake. So you got to be on point.

But we'll just fix that in post.

There's no fixing it. But it was, it was really fun. And they promoted my book. They gave a copy of my book to everybody in the audience. It's great. Every time I do one of these media appearances, like the book sales shoot up to like 2 or 3x what we usually sell in a week. So, it's a great way to do it. And then, there's— just so people understand like the business model behind it, there is an advertisement for my most popular program and like the program that is the entryway into our world in the back of the book. So, people read the book, they see there's a way to work with us, they go to the link, they wind up becoming customers. Or sometimes people just watch something on TV and then become customers without even reading the book. But that's sort of the pathway. So, it's a marketing strategy. And I think it's actually— I'm very interested in strategies outside of just funnels and ads, you know. And I think that these kinds of things, at least for my audience, I feel like it works better than, you know, just ads and all of those kinds of things, funnels everywhere. I mean, there's a time and a place for all of it, but I think there's some other great ways, like sponsoring events, you know, which is something we're both doing. There's so many different ways to market that we need to think beyond just the funnel and the ad.

I like it. Yeah, it's interesting thinking about all the different books you see, like these little calls to action. You know, if you're reading Atomic Habits or something, you'll have additional little links off to a resource or something like that. And I know behind the scenes, and I see this in a bunch of books now, that's the author saying, hey, when you bought that from Amazon, I didn't get an email address. I have no idea. You know, yes, 500,000 copies sold. I can't email you, right? But if you download this resource or use this calculator or, you know, this checklist or something else, then I have an opportunity to contact you and you can be a part of our, our community. So I'm always interested in like the behind the scenes of how those things actually work. Do you have a sense of how many people have joined your ecosystem directly from the book that wouldn't otherwise?

Oh, I think many. I don't know exactly the number, but it's definitely in terms of our mailing list, definitely tens of thousands on our mailing list in terms of people who have joined. In our community, you know, I would say hundreds, but I don't know the exact number. We should survey them. I mean, we, we send a survey to our audience every quarter, but I don't know if we've asked the question, where did you first hear about us? That would be interesting. And one of the other pieces to this too, because you want to be strategic, right? Not every single media thing is worth doing. And so we literally have an equation like that. We sort of do the math on to say this appearance, right, requires me to fly to New York, be away from home for a day. There's like hair and makeup prep, all this stuff that has to happen. And so let's say it's a one day away from my life or my business. How many, you know, new club members could we get? How many new people in our audience will we, you know, be in front of because we did this exercise? Right. And so for like a whole day away, we want to see like a significant number of new people coming into our community as a result. So if it was like some really, really small thing, unless it was like a niche that was like, everybody in there was one of our people, it doesn't make sense to do it. But getting on a show like this, national TV, definitely feel very aligned with the host, you know, it makes, it just makes perfect sense. And then you have a video that you can put on your website and people can see it and have another example of connection with you. So I think it's important to think about it strategically. Like if you're going to do media, don't just do everything, do the things that make the most sense, get you in front of your people. And create that opportunity for you to create that connection and that relationship.

So is that almost like a calculator, right? Could your chief of staff or someone on your team be like, okay, Rachel, here's the opportunity. I didn't bring these other 5 to you because they didn't meet the bar, but here's what I think we'll get out of it.

Yes, that's exactly how it works. It's like there's a formula to say if it's going to take X amount of hours, you know, how many club members would we need to see from that to feel that it was worth it to do that thing? And sometimes it's just a feeling like Tamron Hall, you know, as soon as I heard it from my publicist, I'm like, I'm like, hell yes, you know, just because for no other reason than I want to meet Tamron, you know. So some things are like that, but other things you do have to evaluate because it's like a longer trip or it's several days away, you know. Speaking gigs are like this, lots of things like this. And so I just think it's important for people to do the math on their time and their investment and make sure they're— because we do all these marketing activities that we don't measure the return on them, right? So making sure you're actually measuring and doing less better, right? Like I don't have to do all the activities, but what specific marketing channels makes a lot of sense where I can get the biggest return?

I like that. Okay, so I have to ask, how many club members is that threshold that gets Rachel on a plane for a day?

Well, I feel like that's proprietary, so I'm not going to share that. That's our special secret algorithm. But yes, you want to get like, let's say Hundreds, right? You want to have more than 10, you know, for example. And it's really like doing the math and saying, okay, what's the return? What is the return in dollars to the business on spending the CEO's time in this way? And to train yourself to like make sure you're spending your time on the things that matter the most.

Yeah, I like that. Okay. So the thing that I mainly want to talk about in this episode today is based off of a comment that you made. Episode 1? I don't know when, but you just said like, Chess, not checkers, as like a throwaway comment. And I just latched onto that thinking about who are the creators that are playing chess when everybody else is out here playing checkers?

Yes.

And I think we should make it a recurring segment on the show. But when you're talking about that, I immediately thought of a couple different creators, but the first one is Tim Ferriss. And so I was listening to Ryan Holiday on Jocko Willink's podcast and he was talking about something that I had had kind of a front row seat to. But had forgotten about. Yes, because it happened in the early days of— not early days of Audible, like they've been around for a long time. I think maybe just before they got acquired by Amazon, or right around that time.

Right.

And there was this weird thing where authors were noticing that they were selling more audiobooks, or as many audiobooks as print books.

Yes, I've noticed that. Publishers—

is that true for your book?

Yes. Definitely.

Yeah. And so it's especially true now, but there was like this tipping point and publishers didn't care about audiobook rights.

Right. And they don't count them. They don't even think about them.

Yeah. And so it's becoming really popular. And the other thing that was happening is Audible, as like sort of this outsider in the space at the time, had this really interesting royalty scheme where the more copies you sold, the higher percentage you made of every copy. And I think it started at something like 30%, which is great. That's better than what you'd make through a publisher. But then it went up. I want to say it went up to like 85%. Wow. That you make, that you take home.

That's amazing.

I remember talking to Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA.

I love that book.

And he had, he had had something happen where he had sold, sold the rights to the publisher, done the normal book deal, and then the publisher had sold off the audio rights to somebody else, as they're entitled to do. And then they didn't really want to exercise it. And so they were selling it to a third party and it was just like, and Josh goes, can I, can I buy those?

Yeah. Like how much?

I want to say it was $10,000 that he paid for the audio. Yeah. And this was like 2013, 2015, somewhere in there.

Right. It wasn't valued the way that it is now.

Yeah. So Josh went on to make— I know there were months that Josh made over $50,000 just on Audible.

Amazing. What a great investment. My God, I love it so much.

Bet on yourself, right?

Yes.

I think this is a great book. You don't value the rights. I'm going to get that back and publish it. And I think that's the— like, Josh made an amazing move, probably the best investment he'll ever make. You know, it's a 100x, 1,000x return. I don't know what that is. Like, it's going to be crazy. But that's the normal creator thing. What Tim did is really, really interesting to me because Tim saw this moment and he started buying the audio rights to other people's books.

Wow.

I think the first one he bought was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius or one of those Stoic books.

Yes.

Where for somehow the audio rights were available. He bought that. And then Ryan Holiday had something similar where his audio rights were not valued super highly. And so Tim actually owns the audio rights to Obstacle Is the Way. Tim bought that from the publisher. I think I need to find out from him, but I think he bought the audio rights to like 6 or 7 of his favorite books and then just had them self-published, put those out there. But that was just one of my favorites of such a brilliant thing, an opportunity jumping on it.

Yes, I feel like there's so much opportunity specifically in publishing because it is such an archaic business model. And when you publish a book and you work with a publisher, you're like, Do you care about selling these books? Do you? What is the strategy here? What are you actually doing to sell? This is your business. And their model is essentially like a VC, just making bets. Some are going to take off and make them money for years and years to come for the next however many decades. And then most of them are not going to see much of a return unless the author is going to put the effort in to sell them, which is what I did. I just went, I went all in on marketing my book and we sold a lot of copies. But I think, you know, most people's like, authors don't realize that they need to market it. So they only sell a couple. And then, you know, if it doesn't take off and if it's not a hit, publisher kind of doesn't care. And there's not going to put that much effort into making it a hit. More like it has to just naturally organically become one, you know, unless the author is going to go hard. So those are your options. But that is so brilliant to say like, oh, I can see That audio is becoming a thing and I'm going to just make this bet. And probably he bought all of those rights for pretty cheap.

And yeah, I don't think it was a lot of money out of pocket.

Amazing. So fascinating. And I'm so curious, like, I wonder if Audible has approached him to buy those rights back or like, what's the next step in that, you know, or does he just own them forever?

Well, I think he owns them forever.

Well, yes, but I'm surprised if nobody's made him an offer for them.

Yeah, and I think, you know, Audible and the publishers and Amazon and everybody else, I think they're focused on the next books coming out. Yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna push for— okay, well, one, they got really smart. Like, that was a moment in time opportunity where you could buy that at those, you know, it was a mismatched price. The market now understands, oh, audio rights are worth a lot.

Yes.

And Audible is This is now flipped, right, where Audible will come in and be bidding for a book deal and say, we'll buy the audio rights. I don't know, someone else can have the print rights, we don't even care. Yes, the print rights have turned into the throwaway as it has gone the other direction.

It's fascinating to see.

Yeah, these things normalize and like the market corrects. I just love the example of someone seeing like something being poorly priced based on the opportunity.

Yeah.

And instead of saying, okay, cool, I will use that for my rights, you know, like Josh did. You know, Tim's taking it way further and saying like, okay, buy as much as I can.

Yeah, what are my favorite books that I feel comfortable promoting a lot in my content? And then buy those. And so he has the audience, he does the promotion, so he can drive a lot of sales. But of course there's natural sales as well. So that's brilliant. I actually have a deal with Audible for 3 books that are going to come out later this year. And I don't remember exactly, I don't remember the details of the contract, but one piece that I do remember is that I get the print rights after a certain time period. I can print the books myself. So I love that because my plan is to print them and make them available for sale in the printed version, you know, and I know how to sell books. So I feel like it'll, it'll do well and it'll generate some additional income for us. And also You know, a book is a calling card, right? A book is a way to bring people in. So it's another great opportunity and it's on 3 different topics. So it's almost like 3 different— like if you had different landing pages to hit audiences in different ways who are focused on different aspects of entrepreneurship. So I'm excited to see what I can do with that and I'm getting paid to create them. So yeah, there's definitely interesting things happening in the audio space. Audible is also the 3-book deal that I have with them is so they can create Audible Originals. And they're starting to do that with creators to say like, I want you to come in, they'll take a speaking gig, or you can create an original audiobook that's like a short and they'll produce that. They're also producing their own podcast. So they're going beyond books now in the audio space.

You just made me think of 2 other examples of chess, not checkers. One is what Audible is doing because they can pay way more because they have an entirely different business model than the other publishers.

And they did pay way more. I will say that.

Let's just be clear, I got paid quite well.

You know, we love, we love that Amazon money. Yeah.

So in that, right, if I'm a traditional publisher and I'm bidding on a book, then I'm thinking, okay, if I sell X number of copies, then we'll make this amount of money. I invest this much into it. Here's when I'll earn back the advance I paid the author, etc. Right. There's one equation there.

Yes.

What Audible is able to do is to say we actually have an entirely different backend monetization. We're going for subscriptions for credits. And we know that once you've been hooked on the credits for 3 years and you go to cancel, if anyone's a, like a software nerd or a cancellation flow nerd, look at Audible's cancellation flow. It is absolutely masterful. Like, in all of these subtle psychological ways, it's like, oh yeah, totally, yeah, you can cancel. Did you want to use the 4 credits you have left that you haven't used yet? Okay, cool. Yeah, why don't you stay as a member and use those credits? Oh, and keep getting more and more.

Yes.

And the less you've been using Audible, the more you have, like, oh, I have 27 credits, you know, like, I don't want to give that up now.

Yes.

And then further, like, you know what, I do want to cancel anyway. Then they go, okay, yeah, no problem. But just, you know, you'd lose access to the 47 books that you already have in your library, right? And you didn't listen to this one. Are you sure you do want to listen to that one right now? Like, after you've got your Audible? And so they end up hooking you. Yeah, on this really, really well. And so when you're talking about doing an Audible original, Audible is not like doing the same math the publisher's doing. They are running entirely different economics where they're like, okay, if you can only get Rachel's new book through Audible and you have to become a paying subscriber, yes, then this is potentially worth a fortune to us. Like, the lifetime value could be, you know, $12 to $15 a month for 10 years.

Exactly.

Like, hell yes, we'll pay up to get this advance.

Well, so, so what's interesting about that too is like a book, if you think about it as a loss leader, right, you get paid to create it. But honestly, when you market it yourself, I spent so much more on marketing the book than I did, than I earned from the— and I had a six-figure deal and it still was not enough to cover the marketing for it, right? But so you think of your book as a loss leader. That's what Audible is doing with me. I'm a loss leader for them. They're going to pay me to create these Audible Originals. They feel that I have enough of a following that I'm going to bring a whole bunch of new customers to them, and then those customers are going to stay long term and they're going to pay a subscription long term. So they might come in just to listen to my new Audible Originals, but they stay because they're doing Audible Originals with other people and other content, and they start to build up a book library in there. It's so fascinating to see that, like, what they paid me, which was very good money, is such a drop in the bucket for the amount of customers I'm going to bring them and that are going to stay long term. And they're going to make, you know, whatever they make annually for, let's say, the next 10 or 20 years. So it just makes a ton of sense to spend that money and create those Audible Originals. Brilliant. Love it.

Yeah, I love it. So the way I think about it and apply it to a creator business is if you ever see someone able to spend more than you can, right? That would be Facebook ads, you know, even in, say, Google Ads, right? You can see the ranking basically who ranks the highest. You know, they're paying the most per click, broadly speaking. And so you're like, how is that possible, right? I make $10 per customer per month, you know, and my math says I can pay $1 per click, right? How is someone else over here paying $5 a click, $20 a click? Like, that's insane. And go study like their lifetime value and their backend flow and everything else. Because chances are they're making money in an entirely different way than you are.

Exactly.

Playing a different game.

Exactly. Getting very creative. And that's so true. Like, whoever can spend the most on the marketing can win, you know, even the media that we talked about, right? Like, not every entrepreneur, especially if you're early on, you might not be able to afford to because they do— a lot of these shows will cover your cost of travel, but sometimes they don't. It depends on their budget and really depends. So my, my travel costs didn't get covered. So the flight, the hotel, the whatever, wardrobe, you know, any of those things that come into play for the expense, it's like, can you start spending money on marketing in a different way or in a more strategic way? And like, what can you afford to spend versus what you can't, you know? And that determines so much about how quickly you're able to grow. Another example is sponsorships, right? I've never done that before. I'm doing it for the first time this year. But buying a sponsorship at an event where it's like, you know, thousands of your specific ideal customer, it's more targeted than Facebook ads in my opinion, you know, where it's like, okay, I get to get in front of 2,000 people and affect them in a certain way and make sure that they know about me. And you can just spend that money just for brand awareness, even if they don't immediately become a customer, just getting them talking about it and knowing you exist can be part of the value. So I just think it's important that we get creative and go beyond just the most obvious ways to market or to grow your business, or to develop your business model and just look at it from a different angle, you know, see what's possible.

Yeah, I love it. There's one that I want to go to quickly for Chestnut Checkers, and that's Sahil Bloom. But all I'm going to say is he's coming on the show for our live episode in New York, which we're recording in like 3 days. And so that'll be the next episode that airs and people can tune in there.

Yes.

The person I actually want to talk about is someone anyone who knows me will be like, really? Again? But that is Taylor Swift. Playing chess, not checkers, with her launch of her new— or her show in theaters.

Yes.

I expected, right, she did a fully produced version of 1989, right? It's fairly normal, right? After a show finishes, then you can go watch it, right? You can watch Hamilton on Disney Plus, right? That's normal.

Exactly.

What I was surprised by is that she launched the Eras Tour in theaters while the tour is still happening.

That is also very interesting.

Yeah, it's coming live, what, October, November? I should know this.

I don't know it, but it's brilliant because it's using the momentum of the show that is still happening right now. And also, I think the timing is strategic because she's— I think she's just finished the US tour and now she's going overseas. So it's like after people have purchased tickets and she sold out stadiums, now in the US you can go to a movie theater to see the show.

Right.

So I think the timing is, is really smart.

Yeah. One other thing that stood out to me is how she's cutting out the middleman. In like theater distributions, there's typically 3 roles, 3 companies, right? The producer, the distributor, and then the theater itself. And so, you know, you look at small production companies are working with a big distributor like Disney. So like in a classic example, I guess Pixar is owned by Disney. But Pixar is the producer, Disney's the distributor, and then you get AMC or whoever else is the theater, and they all take a cut. But what's interesting with this is that Taylor went straight to the theaters. So for this show, one, she's the producer, she spent a bunch of money. The estimates were $15 to $20 million to make this whole thing, but she's filming a show that already happened, right? It's not like she said, okay, I need 60,000 extras to come in, and it's like, no, no, these are just fans, you know, we're already doing the show. So she is the producer, that makes sense. But she says, forget it, I don't need— I have enough leverage and enough pull, I don't need someone else to distribute this. Yes, I'm gonna go negotiate all of my own deals with the theaters.

Brilliant.

And so she gets to cut out the middleman, double dip, however you want to phrase it. Actually, I said double dip, that is a terrible phrase. That implies that like she's getting more than she's owed. Then I think that, yeah, she's just like You didn't do anything. There's no reason that I would pay a distributor when, like, I can just do your job. And I love it when creators say, like, nope, I'm gonna take my fair share of the thing that I made and cut out whoever it is taking all of these, you know, little cuts along the way.

Well, it's exactly like taking your, you know, your costs and turning them into profit centers instead of, you know, hiring your own producer hiring somebody on your team that's negotiating your distribution, and your name allows them to do that. So it just, it makes a ton of sense. And Beyoncé did something similar with Homecoming because that was the Coachella show that she did where she turned that into a Netflix deal. She sold the rights to that to Netflix, but she is the producer as well because she owns Parkwood Entertainment that produces everything that she does. So she's never paying a producer because she owns production. Otherwise, that would be, right, a line item. It would be an expense you'd have to pay. And so she created her own production company so that she earns money on producing her own stuff and also has a lot more control too. So it's just another example of cutting out the middleman. And really fascinating. And it makes so much sense. And now in the day that we live in, like, there's so much that we figured out we can do all of these things ourselves. It's funny, one of my friends— I might have said this on the show already, but one of my friends has a TV show and he said the thing that I wish creators knew is that they are better than the people who produce TV shows at creating content. You know, like that YouTube creators and people writing great content like that, we are actually better at it than the people getting paid huge sums of money to produce and who have been doing it for a long period of time. He's like, that's what I wish every creator knew. So it's like if you can take that skill set and apply it You know, now you can cut out everybody. You don't have to pay anybody else to produce the things that you want to produce. All kinds of entrepreneurs now are producing their own TV shows on YouTube. We've created our own, you know, sometimes radio shows, right? Or podcast networks, which is like a radio channel. So, so much is possible. It's very interesting to study these and then apply it to like, okay, when I'm a starting out creator, what does that look like? We're all cutting out the middleman in one way or another already. So we can look for more ways to do that.

One thing that stood out to me is how you're talking about people creating their own shows. There's the idea, and you just had this, right, going on Tamron Hall, there's producers and the full TV and the, you know, amazing set and all of this stuff. You think about like, oh, I could never do that. But what I was just thinking is like the amazing set that always looks the same, that's probably the cheapest part, right? Right. That's an office space. That's 5 grand a month or something and, you know, you're paying an interior designer to make it amazing and match your brand and all that. That's a one-time cost. And so the thing that makes it feel the most professional, yes, is actually quite achievable. But for whatever reason, we think like, oh, I could have a home studio, but I could never have, right?

Well, like everybody's buying those. Well, not everybody, but a lot of, you know, well-paid content creators are buying those LED walls. And that's exactly what she has in her studio. It's an LED wall where you can put all kinds of things things on the screen behind you. And so lots of other people are, are buying that wall. Somebody told me the price, you know, maybe it's $30,000 to buy that wall or something. It's, it's not even that expensive as a one-time expense that you're going to produce your show in front of. And then you get to just change the wall. You can create all kinds of things and put it on the wall, so you don't even have to redesign anything, you know. It's just creating digital art that you're putting on the wall. So It's interesting. Yes, I feel like we're like, okay, what are these TV shows doing? How can we do that?

You know, I love it. Okay, last example that I have of chess, not checkers, is Reese Witherspoon with Hello Sunshine. So I just came across this because actually a friend of both of ours, Eamon, sent it to me because I was asking what are other examples, and this one blew me away. I'll comment on it from you know, someone who recently learned about the scope of this. So I'm sure some listener will be like, I'm a mega fan, and like fill in.

Yeah, exactly. This one is hard to top. Like, I don't think I've seen an example that is more genius and impressive than this.

Yes, Reese Witherspoon, right? Famous from all kinds of great movies, TV shows, The Morning Show on Apple Plus. And so what she did is she created a book club. Okay, lots of people have book clubs.

A lonely book club seems so simple, you know, and it doesn't seem like a club really a billion-dollar move?

Reese is like, watch me.

Exactly.

So what she does from here is she, as she's featuring these authors in the book club, going back to the Audible conversation earlier, she buys not the rights to the whole book. She's like, let me just buy the film and TV rights.

Yes.

And then if it happens to, you know, the book takes off, it gets optioned And I'll help you do that, of course, but we'll go from there.

But there's an important piece to this because she's leveraging the book club to actually launch the books, right? So her book club makes it more likely that that book is going to take off and be a bestseller or just have a huge impact, which then makes the movie rights more valuable.

Yeah. And so what's interesting is that the movie rights have, or the options, right, are worth one amount. To everyone else, but someone in her position, she knows, like, the value— once she gets the rights, the value changes dramatically.

Yes.

Because maybe it just became 5 times as likely, 10 times as likely to get optioned for a movie.

Yes.

Like, it's a huge, huge difference. So anyway, from this book club, I don't know the total number of books they've launched, but she says on her site, 61 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 15 Emmys or Golden Globes. And they have 57 million community members.

57 million. That's better than like most TV shows don't have, right? There might be no TV shows that have 57 million people watching, right? Amazing.

So it's wild, like getting these rights, selling the rights to Netflix, using your own production company, right? There's just all of these different things. And she went on, I was looking at the numbers, let me find it. Uh, yeah, Reese Witherspoon sold her production company Hello Sunshine for $900 million to, uh, Blackstone Group. So I wonder, book club, $900 million exit.

Exactly. I, I think the book club probably was part of it. I'm curious to know for sure. I'm assuming it was because it's such an integral part of the business model, but yeah.

Yeah, I don't know any of the economics. Once I saw that, I'm like, okay, I have to dive in.

Yeah.

Because even like their show, The Home Edit.

Yes.

Which is on Netflix and they've got a podcast tied to it called Best Friend Energy.

They're just—

their Instagram for that has 6.7 million followers. So I'm like, oh, okay, this is, this is big.

Yes. It's like, it's, you know, we used to talk about the Oprah effect and I think that this is a similar thing, like following the Oprah model, but even taking it beyond that because you have the movie rights. Creates, you know, as the next step, which makes so much sense. And I do think Oprah's made a couple of movies out, but it's not like— it's not her business model. It's not what she's repeatedly doing. So I feel like Reese looked at the Oprah model and said, let me take this to the next level, you know, and, you know, add this fact that I can produce these movies and own equity.

Yeah, that's the biggest thing is like get paid in equity. You know, own the equity that you're driving the value up on considerably. And Reese is like, yep, no problem.

Wow. So it's like strategically choosing books for the book club that they'd want to make a movie out of.

Mm-hmm.

It's so good.

And the author is just like, this is amazing, right? Of course. They own the rights to the book. They're getting a huge amount of promotion.

Like, who else would they want to sell the movie rights to when, you know, they've been involved in making this book? you know, a bestseller, which is what every author wants, right? As many readers as possible. So the same company that's given them readers now can give them movie viewers.

Oh, I love it. Okay, so that's our, uh, Chestnut Checker segment. Yes. Everyone, everyone listening, send us more examples. Like, this is the stuff that we nerd out on. So like Twitter, Instagram DMs, if you're like, ah, here's someone playing chess, I got one for you.

Yes, we want to hear it.

I love it. All right. Have you followed what's going on with Scribe? Apparently we're just talking about book publishing today.

Yes, exactly. So we talked about authors. Now we're talking about book publishing. But yes, they're the company that helps experts create their own book, right? By like, you don't have to sit down and write it. They interview them, take the transcripts and help them turn it into a book.

And then they have a publishing arm and they do all that. So it's like the— they're trying to make the best of both worlds, right? You get all the support and all of that from traditional publishing, but like they understand that the author does a lot of promotion and the author should make— I don't know what the commissions are. I assume 50%, 60%?

I don't know, but the interest that the author has is, you know, they're going for high-level professionals, right? People who have a high level of expertise and have always wanted to write a book. And it's almost like you're a consultant or you're selling services of some kind, and the book is a way for you to get in the door with people, get you in front of more people that will become clients. So the author actually doesn't need to make money from the book. They're making their money from the services they're going to sell to more people because of the book.

Yeah. Yeah. So I've been around this company for a while. The original founders, I've known them. They ended up bringing on a CEO as they kind of stepped back and filled other roles, which I think honestly for a lot of founders is a good thing, right? Like we shouldn't be too attached to the CEO role.

Yes, I agree. You have to think about how am I best adding value to this business and is it running the day to day, you know, or even running the next 5 years, right? Like what makes sense? You know, how do you add value to the business and put yourself in that position instead of being in the top role just because you can?

Yeah. So they do that. They run with the new CEO for a few years. And then as I understand it, I don't have inside knowledge on this part of it, but they ended up like the original founders fully sold their shares, exited the business last year. And then what, a month and a half ago, something like that. I just started hearing like Scribe is going under, you know, they're bankrupt.

Wow.

They're not paying, you know, contracts. There's like this—

less than a year after the sale, they're going out of business.

Yeah. Like a year, year and a half, somewhere in that timeline. Wow. So anyway, that, like, that was shocking. And then I hear from two other friends of mine, Siava and Xavier, who run a business called Enduring Ventures. And they go and buy companies that, you know, they think are in distress. Well, I think their goal is to buy really great companies that they can grow for a long time, right? But they will happily buy distressed great companies.

It's a lot cheaper when it's distressed.

So anyway, they announced the deal a month ago or something like that. I think they've been lawyers and due diligence and all of that, but they just announced today two things: that the deal is closed. So Enduring Ventures now owns Scribe, which I'm excited about because I have a huge amount of respect for those guys. But what surprised me is they also announced that Erik Jorgensen, who wrote The Almanac of Naval Ravikant, which is one of those books— if you haven't read it, you got to read it. I've given away so many copies of it.

And you can kind of listen to it. They did a podcast where they kind of read the whole thing, basically. Oh, nice.

Yeah, because I think part of it was this idea, like Naval with Eric was like, sure, I'll do it, but we gotta— it's fine if it makes money and all of that, but I don't want it to be seen as— not that writing a book is selling out in any way, but he just wanted it to be widely accessible.

Yes.

And so they made it available to read for free online.

It's a very interesting story because Eric was just a fan. Right, of him. And he decided to ask him if he could interview him or take all of the content that he'd already put out there and turn it into a book.

It was something like that, something that's approachable, right? Because, you know, like, I've given it to two of my brothers who love the book, and they, you know, they're not gonna sit down and binge listen to 50 hours of Naval on all these podcasts. Yeah, right. They're not in this world, but they read the book and loved it, and it was like the appropriate depth. Anyway, so they just announced that Eric is going to be the CEO of Scribe, which I think is fascinating because Eric knows like all these authors. He has a front row seat to like the self-publishing world. And then also like he just has an amazing reputation in the space because I mean like the foreword for, um, the Almanac book is written by Tim Ferriss, right? There's just— I think everyone saw like how well how good of a steward of Naval's ideas Eric was and said like, oh great, you did a great job there, we trust you.

Yes.

And so Naval— or, uh, Eric is making, you know, more of these books, and now he's going to be the CEO of the, uh, the book creation publishing company.

What else has Eric done? Is that his main thing that he's done, is create that book for— with Naval?

That is a good question. I know he was in the startup space and has done a couple of companies.

Okay.

One of which I think he's sold. And then like, I want to say he comes from like the product management space in, in like startups and that world. And then he's really done the content creator thing. I know he's built a great audience. He has a course on like understanding leverage in business. And so he's taken that further. So I think his path— someone else who knows Morgan, correct me— but I think his path was like startups and software in that tech world.

Yeah.

And then going into content creator and then now the CEO of a business that serves content creators.

I just think the pathway is interesting because sometimes it's like you just take steps that something has you curious, something has you like sparked your interest and you just become obsessed with something. Sometimes you just need to follow that. You have no idea where it's going, but you do it and it can lead to all kinds of things. Even that are not necessarily on that pathway, but you just make a connection while you're on the path that leads to something else. But that's very interesting. And it makes sense for them if they feel like, you know, the business was in really bad shape to hire someone that is trusted in the space and that is known to people who are there, who are going to be their clients, who they hope to have as their clientele, as somebody that they trust to kind of turn the ship around. It's a very, very strategic hire.

Yes. What I thought was interesting, as you're saying, of like, you go down a path, you don't know where that's going to go. Eric was the person who was close enough to Scribe to see what was happening, and he texted Sienna and Xavier because I think he's an investor in their fund potentially, and was like, hey, someone needs to swoop in and save this. Like, you two are the best to do it.

Wow.

So I love that they swooped in and saved it and then said like, and now we need a CEO and we think you're the best. How about you? I was just saying you should fix this. And they're like, yeah, and you should fix it with us.

Yeah.

So you don't know when, like, a random idea will turn into, like, an entirely new career.

Okay. This takes me on a tangent that we probably don't have time to go on, but I am curious. Do you feel like you could ever be the CEO of someone else's company?

I don't know. I am very, very attached to my company.

Same.

And when I see people who are not attached to their company, They're just like, oh, I started something up, I scaled it, and I have this like emotional distance from it. Or I bought a company and it's a good business. I'm attached to how good of a business that it is, right? But if I get a great offer, I'll sell it. I think I might be attached to ConvertKit, maybe almost to an unhealthy level.

Yeah.

You know, like, this is my thing. I've poured 10 and a half years into this company. I love the people, the mission, and everything else. To answer your question, no, I don't think I could be a CEO of of someone else's thing.

Yes. I think it has to do with being mission-driven, right? Like it's a mission-driven company. You're very attached to the mission and how you are executing on the mission and seeing the results of that mission. That's very satisfying. Even beyond the money, it's so satisfying to see like actually the goal of this company happening, you know, and see examples all the time and talk to the people who appreciate this product because of what it's able to do for them. So I think all of that makes you very attached, which I can relate to because same. You know, I'm very attached to the mission and can't imagine not being, but I definitely am willing to give up the role though. If I feel like that's what's best for the mission to keep moving it forward, I would absolutely give up this job and do another job or do no job and just be an owner.

Chairman of the board or something.

Exactly. I think the commitment to the mission is more important than what I do on a day-to-day basis. You know, I imagine that you share the same thing, but yes, I don't know. I mean, maybe later in our career or at some point we could see ourselves doing this, but I feel the same. Like, I don't think I could lead something else. I guess you just have to— it'd have to be something that you can get as excited about as you are about ConvertKit, you know? Yep.

And of course, the worst thing that I get as excited about as I am for ConvertKit, then I end up acquiring or starting inside of ConvertKit.

Exactly. Exactly.

You just buy it. I'm like, I love that idea and that should be part of our community.

Yes, totally. And you know what, on a future episode, we should definitely get into acquisitions. Because that is definitely a strategy to become a billion-dollar creator. And you've done some of that. So we should dig into that. I've attempted it and then it didn't work out in the end. So I haven't done it yet, but I'm sure I will.

I like it. Uh, let's wrap up with one other thing. You were just in Sardinia. Yes. And you like, well, one, you just have this like glow about you that despite traveling all over the world, you're like, I'm Life has been good. So I'm curious, you just gave me a little teaser. And so I'm curious what that sparked around thoughts on longevity. Yes, something that I know listeners know you care about a lot.

Oh, yes, that's my latest obsession. So very inspiring place. And Netflix just did a whole show on longevity that I could not wait to watch about Blue Zones. And that's a book that came out a long time ago. But now they've turned it into a Netflix show. And And they're trying to take— they sort of have a framework for how— what are the things that are common between all the blue zones and how can you create a blue zone? How can you take a city and turn it into a blue zone? So, I'm fascinated by that. But one of the blue zones is Sardinia, which is this tiny island off the coast of Italy. It's part of Italy. And, you know, they were saying like some of the attributes, it's very hilly and mountainous. So, people are constantly walking up and down hills. I went on a run. And it was very hilly and it was actually very refreshing. It was great. They said one of the things that's unique about Sardinia that helps people to— because people there become— what they mean by longevity is they become centenarians at 4x the rate that we have centenarians in the US. So you're more likely to live to 100 if you live in Sardinia or if you're from Sardinia. They even have an example of a guy who lived in the US till he was 65, was told he had 6 months or less to live. Moved back to Sardinia where he grew up, and he lived to like 100. It was wild. What is it about this place? And one of the things was their wine. It's just a beautiful culture. Italian culture is great, but it's just very friendly, warm, welcoming, lots of conversations. You take forever to have meals, you know, it's just spacious. It's not all about work, work, work like Americans are. But one of the things was everywhere we went, like, we were offered this like special homemade wine or like alcoholic drink. I don't even know what it was. I forget the name of it. But everywhere we went, I was like, I'll take it. Because people were like, I don't know if I want to try it, it might not taste good. I'm like, I'm throwing it back because apparently these people live to 100.

I'll drink whatever they're drinking.

Whatever they're drinking, I'm drinking it. We had an amazing boat day out. It was just like, in terms of if you want to learn how to live, it's a great place to learn how to live better and enjoy your life more. One of the other things that we did, we went to a spa there that was absolutely magical, and it was literally the whole sort of circuit of like you get in the dry sauna and get really hot, and then you, you know, you go from that to like cold plunge, and there's like 4 different steps in it. And it— they had that at every single spa.

And you're like, oh, you listen to Huberman as well? And they're like, we've been doing this for hundreds of years.

Exactly. This is not—

what's a Huberman?

Yes, exactly. This is not a new thing that, you know, startup guys have come up with, okay? This is something that has existed for a long time. But the other cool thing related to longevity that's out now is Peter Attia has just launched this course called Early that's all about, like, he works with a very small group of clients from what I understand to take them through this process. It's all about prevention, right? Instead of waiting for a disease to happen and then treating the disease, how about we just treat the person the whole way and prevent the disease from even happening? And you're more likely to live longer if you're able to do that. He has a podcast and it's, it can be very technical and nerdy, but it definitely teaches you these different things that if you just shift how you do certain things, even how you work out, like we obsess over cardio, but actually it's muscle building that's going to help you to live longer. But he just launched a course called Early, and I was on his list waiting for it because it's, you can't hire him. I listen, if anybody has a hookup or like can introduce me to Peter, I'm happy to take that introduction because I'd love to hire him. But so the next best thing is he came out with this course that I think he's done once before. He's done one cohort before. I sent it to my girlfriend because she was interested in doing it too. We bought it immediately, like within minutes of getting the email, because I had a feeling it was going to sell out. Another friend of mine went to buy it, 6 hours later, sold out, closed. I was like, wow, there's just such demand. And I think what he's going to start doing is training other doctors to do this kind of preventative medical work so that in instead of waiting, you know, to get sick, we start to do these tests and see what we are— what's likely to happen in the future and then start taking action to prevent it. So, and also too, like, a lot of people in the longevity space are just kind of, I don't know, they're just weird. And it's like, wear these weird glasses or don't wear shoes, you know. I feel like it's more accessible and credible from Peter. So, I'll let you know how the class class goes, but I'm excited to dive into it. And it's just online training. I don't even know if there's community in it or anything else, but you just take the class step by step. It's like a 12-week program or something like that.

Yeah, I'm, I'm curious to find out more on what you learn.

Yeah, and I think the reason why I think it sold out so fast is because he just creates a ton of content, podcasts and all these things. It's like you almost don't have to market or sell, right? If you just create amazing content all the time, when you go to sell, it just sells out instantly because people already trust you. They already have that connection and they're ready to go. So more content, less marketing is my advice.

I like that. That is a good place to leave the show for today. We're going to be hanging out in a couple of days. Yeah, live recording happening there. Nashville is coming up, New Orleans, plenty of shows on from there. People should go to billiondollarcreator.com to find the live show they want to go to.

Yes, it's so cool.

Rachel, we're actually on tour selling out venues. It's a great time.

I mean, I'm impressed with us. And also, can we talk about the t-shirt for a minute though? Because I'm obsessed with the t-shirt. Yes, you're gonna get your limited edition, first edition, okay, Billion Dollar Creator t-shirt. So that in and of itself is a reason to come.

Yes, I love it. And then you'll wear it around and people, when they're like, oh, you were there, in person at the first tour of the podcast.

Exactly.

Uh, once this becomes, you know, a top 10 business show, then people will be like, oh, you're an insider.

Yes, yes, those t-shirts will sell for lots of money in the future, I'm sure.

But they'll be framed, signed by Rachel and I, framed on someone's wall like, uh, like a LeBron jersey or something.

Listen, dream big is what they say. That's right.

All right, so go to billiondollars.com billiondollarcreator.com. We appreciate any, you know, coming to the show in person. So all the dates will be on there. And then also, you know, just tell people about the show, write reviews, subscribe, all of that. And we'll keep more episodes coming.

We sure will. See you next time. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Billion Dollar Creator. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe, share it with your friends, and leave us us a review. We read every single one. If there is a company you want us to profile on Billion Dollar Creator, send us a message on social media and we will consider it. Thank you, and we will see you next time.