How Mexico News Daily Built a 100% Reader-Revenue Powerhouse

Welcome to the Paywall Podcast. Today I have a very special guest. That's Travis Bembenek from newmexiconewsdaily.com welcome, Travis. Really great to have you here. You're the publisher and CEO, and you ready to talk some publishing success?

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Pete. Welcome to the Paywall Podcast, where we discuss paywalls and paywall strategies for news and magazine publishers. This episode of the Paywall Podcast is brought to you by Leaky Paywall. Leaky Paywall is the most flexible WordPress subscription platform. Find out more@leakypaywall.com and now for today's episode.

All right, so I have a bunch of stuff to talk to you here about, but the first thing I want to do for our listeners is hear what do you guys, you know, Mexico News Daily, what do you guys publish, what is your content, and who is your listener?

Sure. So Mexico News Daily is the source of news and information in English about Mexico. Right. So my wife and I, having spent a lot of time doing business and, you know, and enjoying Mexico as tourists and now ultimately living here, we're always frustrated at the narrative that the media had about Mexico. Right. We believe it's a wonderful place. And yet the media, if you read an article, you know, in the US or Canada or Europe about Mexico, nine times out of 10, it's going to be negative, Right? And there are negative things that do happen in this country. You know, there is violence in some areas, there is a cartel issue, but there's so much more to the country than that. And so our inspiration in purchasing Mexico News Daily, and we've owned it for three and a half years now, was to provide a balanced and complete perspective on the country that we felt was so missing. So today we have now over a million readers a month coming in to our site. And ironically, despite there being 2 million Americans and Canadians living in Mexico, 80% of our readers are outside of Mexico. So about 60% of our views on a typical day are in the United States, and 10% are in Canada, and then about 10% are in Asia and Europe. So there really is a lot of interest in Mexico around the world for good quality, not sensationalist news.

So if you were to segment your core reader geographically, it sounds like that's not really the target. Since they're all over the place. Is there anything else sort of in their profile that makes them likely to pay for a subscription?

Sure. So, I mean, if you think of a couple different sub segments of people who are interested in Mexico. Right. You've got, as I said, the 2 million people living here, right? So these are people that are, you know, actually live in the country that are from Canada or the U.S. then you've got, in a typical year, over 30 million people travel to Mexico. So they may travel here on business, they may travel on vacation, but over 30 million people are coming to this country every year on trips. And then you have this whole group of people and it's getting bigger every day that are just more and more interested in Mexico to potentially live, right? So it may be people nearing retirement, it may be people a little ways from retirement, but are looking to have a second home. And we're even finding it's a lot of families just looking to provide their family and their kids an alternative environment to grow up in from where they are living today.

And what makes you think, what, what, what do you think is the number one reason for them willing to pay you for content? Because you guys, you guys are a almost, and I could be wrong here, 100% reader revenue.

We eliminated all advertising, not only from our website, but also from our newsletters. So to answer your question, again, I think a lot of people around the world are getting turned off on media. And if you ask, well, why is that a big part of that, I think is because media has brought it upon themselves, right? Media is so political, so opinionated, and it's really brought about sort of an anxiety about reading the news. And so what we do differently is, first of all, we are not politically leaning in either direction in either Mexico or the US Or Canada. So we're a little bit sort of back to old school journalism where we just present the news, right? So we say, this is what happened. Here's what one political party says, here's what the other one says, and then we allow our readers to make that choice for themselves. You know, the other thing is, you know, we have no sponsored content either, right? So even not having ads, we're approached all the time by people saying, hey, will you write about our hotel? Or about, you know, whatever? We don't do any of that. And so I think we've really created an environment where people trust us, right? They trust us that we're not trying to push our opinions on them and they trust our objectivity when it comes to just, you know, telling you what's going on in the country and talking about, you know, what there is to see and do here.

Yeah, that's a great word, trust. I'm glad you said that. I mean, that is, I think the power of publishers who are doing it. Right, right. Like whether it's local news or regional or whatever, if you're not catering to advertisers like big media tends to do, and you're actually catering to your readers, that builds trust and that's, and that's why they give you money, bottom line.

Yeah. And I mean, my wife and I said that, you know, we didn't buy this business to sell more Viagra and more toenail fungus cream. Right. And, and those tended to be the ads that, that popped up on our site, you know, and I'm kind of joking, but you know, it just, it just ruined the reader experience, you know, and, and, and, and I felt like you have to pick a path. You either are going to try to make money because of the quality and trustworthiness of your content or you're going to try to make money through ads.

Right.

And the problem, the trap you fall into then with ads is, you know, you start chasing and to grow your revenue on the ad side, you have to annoy your reader more and more. Right. Pop up ads and draggers and you know, cryptocurrency things. And it just, it's not what we were trying to do, you know, with, with this project.

I love it. Speaking my language. So you had mentioned that you bought the publication. Before I talk about the success you've had with reader revenue, I want to just jump into the crazy youth thing you did, I think during COVID right. You and Tamana were working corporate jobs and you decided to buy a, a news site. How did that happen?

Yeah, well, I mean, so I have no experience in the journalism industry or, you know, but, but I have read, I've been a, you know, a kind of crazy reader of news my whole life. And when I say crazy, I mean a couple hours a day, multiple different news sites. So I, my wife and I have traveled a lot. We've been in the corporate world. And you know, I think to be good in the corporate world, you gotta be up on top of global news. So we always had this passion for news. But yeah, we were living in the Chicago area, corporate jobs and sort of wondering what we wanted to do for the next chapter in life. We didn't want to just be in large companies our whole life working for them. We didn't know what we wanted to do yet. And as we were going through that thinking process, Covid came and we thought we spent time talking, but as I said, we had spent a lot of time in advance and we said maybe this is the time. This is the time to actually take that leap of faith without a clear path of what to do yet. And so we both left the corporate world and moved to Mexico right at the beginning of COVID And so, yeah, we didn't have Mexico News Daily yet when we left our jobs. And as we were living in Mexico and taking the time during the rough, you know, first few months of COVID about what do we want to do? You know, we aligned on the fact that we wanted to do something impactful for Mexico, and we thought helping shape the narrative on the country to be more positive, more optimistic, more realistic would be a great thing for the country to bring more people, more investment. And then we also thought, you know, being passionate readers of media and also really horrified at what was happening with the media, you know, and we really saw it clear in during the pandemic where not only the country was getting divided, but, you know, states, communities, school districts, families. And we said, well, what if we could be part of the solution and what the media is supposed to be, which is, you know, encouraging information gathering and knowledge seeking and getting smarter and not just getting angrier. And that led us to call the current owner of Mexico News Daily. We were already readers of it, but we said, maybe we should call him up and meet him and find out what's going on. And after a few conversations, I just asked him straight out, I said, would you ever consider selling it? And the rest is history.

Wow. You cold called that?

It was a cold call. I was actually on the street outside on my cell phone, and the first call we had, and that's how it all started.

That's awesome. Okay, that's quite a leap of faith. I love it. Mission based.

New country, new business, new industry.

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. My wife and I moved to New Hampshire from Boston with that mentality. She quit her job, I moved the business, and we just said, let's do it because we want it to be where we want it to be. Ye. And it worked out. So when you acquired Mexico News Daily, what kind of state was it in? How different was it back then than it is today?

Well, I mean, it had had a Trump bump and Covid bump, you know, so that was helping, but it was definitely in decline. You know, it was in pretty serious decline. And I think, you know, the owner had become overly reliant on, you know, on advertising. And I also think, and this is not a paid plug for leaky, but the owner had a paywall service that was crippling the business. Absolutely. Crippling the business. And I just think, you know, it was just, you know, he was losing his sort of want, desire and willingness to keep doing this every day. And so I think I called it the right time. So it was not doing well in terms of new subscribers, it was not doing well in terms of traffic trends, and it was becoming over reliant on advertising. That being said, like I said, there had been sort of a life preserver, you know, with, with COVID as many news services, you know, experienced. And then, you know, Trump as well, was good for the, the media industry.

Right. How did, how did you know to dump like go the dump advertising change and lean into paid subscriptions?

Well, you know, again, my wife and I have a combined 50 years of, of global business experience. So we've, we've seen a lot of what, what works and what doesn't work. And we just took it from a customer perspective. You know, day one, we eliminated at least half the ads. You know, these literally the owner had gotten into this trap where, you know, you click on an article and the first thing that appeared was an ad, right? Or these ads that would drag along with you. And so immediately we, you know, day one eliminated those. So it just had an immediate. And those were the most profitable ads as you can imagine. But we just, we went with our, our experience and our gut and just said, you know, from, from our, our own experience, it's a horrible reading experience, especially on a small cell phone when those ads are popping up. It's, it's horrible. And so, you know, we literally day one eliminated about half the ads. And I said to the team, our goal is to get to a position where we can eliminate all ads. And I think they thought, you know, we were crazy when we said that or it would never happen. And it took us about two years and then we, we eliminated everything. We just said that's it. So, you know, really, you know, I, if you ask me, well, do you think your readers appreciate that as much as you want them to? Probably not, you know, but I mean, if you look at some of the best newspapers in the world, they have ads, right? And sometimes they're pretty annoying. I mean, a New York Times article will have 10 ads. And so I don't know if they appreciate it as much as we want them to, but what we do know is when you read Mexico News Daily, if you're free or paid, it's a nice experience, right? So the other model so many people go with is, well, why don't you just put ads on your free people. And again, I have a hard time in my head believing you can lure someone to pay by having an annoying experience and telling them if you pay us, we won't annoy you. I just, you know, I think that's maybe a benefit I have of not being from the industry. I'm not cynical enough yet because, you know, but I just, I think, you know, telling someone pay me to not annoy you isn't a good value proposition. You know, I want it to be pay us because we give you a lot of value.

I gotta bring you along to talk to other publishers because that is the battle today where, you know, and I mean, you see this, we see this all the time. You hit the site, like you said, there's a pop up of some kind, right? You have to get rid of it. Then there's another pop up and then the ads are sliding in and all of a sudden you're, your webs like you're treating the visitor as the enemy instead of as a friend. And when it comes to converting paid subscriptions, you really gotta, like you said, you gotta really make the experience a good experience. That's cool.

Well, it's not easy, right? I mean, it takes craziness or I don't know what the word is, but you know, patience, right? And just believe in your product. And we just work so hard to improve the product and differentiate our content to the point where we felt comfortable that people would recognize that.

Not everyone has your confidence though. I mean, just speaking to thousands of.

Publishers, but maybe the publishers will say, oh, give him five more years in the industry and he's going to be putting more pop up ads. Who knows? But it's working for us. Um, and, and, and we're a hundred percent committed to what we're doing, so.

Cool. Well, let's, let's, let's talk about that in a minute. But next, next segue is let's talk about the success you've had with paid subscriptions. So now we've known each other for at least a couple years. I don't know how long it's, it's, it's been. What I do know, and I'm not gonna reveal any numbers or anything, but I do know.

I think your parents know them, so I hope you won't.

No, no, But I do know that your, that three things for you in the last couple years. One is website traffic, which sounds a little crazy when you put up, you know, a paywall and it's like you're actually walling People off. But through the newsletter groove, your traffic has grown, your email list has grown and your paid subscriptions have grown. And as far as I can say, I'll just use the word, you've had a lot of success doing it. So can you give our listeners an idea of what, how you got there, how did you, you know, what do you, what do you do, what's the funnel look like? And how are you converting visitors all the way into paid subscribers?

Sure, and I don't claim to have all the answers yet. I mean, one thing I love about what we're doing is every day I feel like we have kind of limitless things we can do to get better. And so we just keep getting better every day at what we're doing. And really we did have a falling knife business when we got it. So I mean, our number of paid subscribers was literally falling off a cliff when we bought it. And so that was stressful as you can imagine. And really the first, my wife and I have owned it for almost three and a half years now. To simplify it, I'd say the first year we focused on the back office there was just, it was just messy. You know, the sort of behind the scenes on the site was really messy. Then we focused on the user experience again, eliminating ads, cleaning up the site, adding categories. That made sense. And now, you know, over the last year or so and it's accelerating and this year we're really going to lean in more to sort of the marketing. We've spent not a penny on marketing, you know, on anything yet. But we feel like, you know, we are, are just increasingly working to understand our customers and what they want and what they need and what they can't get from social media. Right. Or substack. Right. I mean, it's, it's, we talk about that all day, every day because people say all the time, well, what is your competition? And you could say, I mean, everything, right? I mean, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, you name it. And you could then say, well, substack. And in our case, you could say any think tank that puts out content on Mexico or government entity. I mean, we have infinite amount of competition. But you can also say, so how do we find that space where, you know, we have something unique and differentiated and you know, again, a lot of corporate experience and a lot of customer and marketing experience has just, you know, gets us, we're fanatical about it. How just each and every single day we're talking about how do we differentiate, what do we give our customers and we try to be really in tune with what's going on in the world. So we're cognizant of the fact that if we cover the US Mexico trade argument, you know, Trump has been putting tariffs on Mexico. If we just cover that every single day, it'll get clicks, but people are going to get tired of it. Right. And so we have to be thinking, how do we balance that with lighter content or content that makes people laugh or smile or inspires them? And so we are, and it sounds like a cliche, but we are just razor focused on what do our customers want to read and how do they want to read it. And I find a lot of times talking to some other publishers, it's really more about what they want to write and what they want to put out there. And I think, again, not being from the industry, I think has given us a little bit of a benefit of just being way more sort of customer focused to do that.

Getting the content right. Yeah. Okay, so from the content. So you sharpened up the content. Let's talk about the funnel. So walk me through the experience. A visitor from social media or Google search gets to be a paid subscriber at the end of the line.

Yeah. So I mean, you know, about, you know, using round. I mean, we get a good chunk of our traffic directly to our site. We get a good chunk of our traffic through sites like Google. Still, we haven't seen a drop off there. And we really, the previous owner had not put really any emphasis on social media. We've put, I would say, a light touch on social media because we just have yet to see. And again, we've only done a light touch, but we just have not seen conversion from social media to our site.

Right.

Or even traffic. Right. It's awareness and that's why we're doing it. But as far as someone seeing something on social media and then going to our site, you know, it's a pretty loose, you know, pretty loose connection there. And so we on the site, you know, we have a paywall after a couple articles every 30 days. And then people can sign up for a free newsletter that we have and we have a morning newsletter that's more topic. So one day it may be about articles about business in Mexico or one day it may be about Mexico City tourism articles. And then we have an evening newsletter that has the day's news. And so, you know, through those newsletters, we're obviously, once we've gotten them, you know, getting this free newsletter, we try to, you know, encourage them and Inspire them to want to pay us to see all our content.

Would you say the newsletter is an important tool in the toolbox?

Oh, of course, absolutely. And I mean, we, I think we're in just our initial phases of getting the most out of that newsletter. We just had a conversation this morning and we're, you know, the future again with that hyper customer focus is, you know, let's just take Pete as an example. Let's say all he cares about maybe is Puerto Vallarta.

Right.

He doesn't really care about Mexican politics. He doesn't really care about, you know, business. He's retired and he just cares about Puerto Vallarta. Cause he maybe wants to retire there. And so we want to offer that customization in the newsletter of saying, okay, we'll just give you the articles we write on Puerto Vallarta. Right. So that degree of customization in the newsletter is where we're headed next. And everybody's feeling fatigue on everything. I think social media has managed to make us fatigued, not just on our phones or to read, but just in life, just because there's never a down moment. And so we just have to be very cognizant of that reality of humanity and make sure we're giving people exactly what they want and no more.

Yeah, it's funny, I don't know if I don't know if this is a trend or not, but I turned off notifications to all my social channels some time ago because I was miserable. And I became a happier person, like much happier.

And I don't have notifications. But you know, something interesting happened at the start of this year. We have a 26 year old lady in our office and I sent her something on Instagram at the start of the year. And I came in the office and I said, did you see it? And she said, at the start of the year, I deleted Instagram. You know, this is a 26 year old girl who you'd say she's in the target market for social media. And so I do believe there is an increasing trend, not by everybody, but by an increasingly large segment of the population saying there are some benefits of social media, but the negatives are just too much. And obviously we want to be there to still be able to inform, inspire and entertain people. When that happens, when people say, I just can't, I don't want the baggage that comes with social media.

Yeah, yeah, I think you're right, actually. I think you're completely right. Just from having two kids myself, they are really aware of how bad it can be. So they're super cautious. They use it, you know, very privately amongst friends and they don't, you know, they really try not to get sucked into all the nonsense that's out there. It's not, it's not 100% for sure. And doom scrolling is still, still a thing. And I think for my teenager, I think it's shopping scrolling. It's like fashion, fashion scrolling. But, but he's aware of his problem.

That's good.

That's step one. Anyway. All right, so, okay, so we talked a little bit about newsletters. You have niche, like city based newsletters that folks can opt into. You're sending newsletters, I know every day, maybe twice a day, there's a lot of newsletters going out, which is in my opinion, the number one direct marketing tool for publishers. Very, very important. Now one thing that we skipped over a little bit is how folks get on the newsletter. They hit the site you mentioned, they get one or two articles and then do they have, do they, can they optionally opt in or is it required opt in in order to.

Well, I mean, you, you can read an article and then if you want to read the second one, it asks you to sign up for the newsletter and that allows you to read the second one. And then if you want to read the third one, you've got to pay. That's every 30 days. So we've tightened that up over, over the time we've owned it, we've tightened up that paywall, you know, because, you know, it's just if you give people too much, they're going to, you know, so we tightened it up and I think even, even where we're at today is still somewhat generous. I mean, I go to some, you know, large newspapers at Chicago Tribune, I mean, it's like they won't even let you read one article. You know, that wall is right there. So. Right, that's where we've settled in.

Right now we have a lot of publishers that are very nervous about putting a registration wall up and restricting access. So they're like playing around with just a few articles and leaving most of their content open. But I think your registration wall sits on the entire content base. And when you say tighten it up, that means like giving away less free articles, requiring an email before getting to the content. What happened when you tightened it up? Like, did you notice a difference?

No. I mean, no one. We saw more. We didn't. We saw. We've only seen an increasing amount of new subscribers. Right. As we've tightened it Up. So we went through that as well, you know, should we, shouldn't we? Are we going to lose people? Are we going to get less traffic? I mean, we agonized over all of that. But again, I mean, you go back to the previous things I said, if you're going to get tough on your paywall, you better not be annoying them with ads. You know, you better have awesome content. You better not have people reading your content and wondering, is this paid sponsored content or is this real? You know, if all that starts entering in, you know, it's not, I believe it's not going to work. So you got to get those pieces in place and then you can get tougher on the paywall. The other thing is, obviously social media has trained everyone that everything's free, right? And so, you know, it's something, you gotta kind of retrain people. No? If you want quality, if you don't want ads, if you want to trust, if you want to make sure that's not AI, you know, there's a price to that and some people get that and a lot of people don't, but that's where we're at on this.

Well said. I love it. Okay, last content piece on the success side. So you started something called MND Kids, which is your, which is a really fascinating content experiment. I think it's new. And you're taking your existing content and you're leveraging it by helping people learn Spanish. Right. Or kids learn Spanish. Can you tell us more about that?

Sure. So, you know, I talked about our mission before, but it's, it's mostly focused on adults, right. And so we started getting more and more feedback from friends and family and even some people in the educational space saying, why don't you guys do something for kids? And they said not only is it interesting to have short form nonfiction content for kids, which schools told us they needed more of, but also you guys can do it in Spanish and English. Also you can reinforce the importance of news. Also you can reinforce the fact that it's not politically biased. Also you can reinforce with teachers, you know, how to look for AI. And then you can also reinforce Mexico to kids as well. Right. Unfortunately, as I said, a lot of adults in the United States, Canada and beyond have been trained by the media that Mexico is a dangerous bad place if you leave your all inclusive hotel in Cancun. And so we felt like it would be a nice extension of our mission to be able to offer kids real quality news and information about the country so they don't grow up with those same misperceptions as well. And so we've got this going in schools in both Mexico and the United States. If anyone listening to this is aware of a school district that would be interested in something like this. But as Pete said, basically what we do is we take one of our articles a day from our main site. This is set up as a separate site, and we rewrite. First of all, we select an article that kids will be interested in. And then if you go down a little bit more, Pete, what we allow is you can choose to read the article in Spanish or in English. And you can also then choose Level 1, 2, or 3 back up to.

This article we're looking at.

Sure. So the child can select whatever article they're interested in, whether it's a culture one or about pyramids or about food or about sports. And they can select whether they want to read the article in Spanish or English. And then they can also select whether their reading level is, you know, elementary, middle, or high school. And the article appears in the right language, written at the right level, with some discussion questions and things like that. So we're just getting started with it. It is being used in schools in Mexico and the US and we think it's going to be a great, great tool because really, you know, it's more important than ever for the US And Mexico or the US Mexico and Canada to be friends. And it doesn't feel like our politicians are enabling and fostering that right now sometimes, but it is important. And so it would be sad to leave the next generation with a legacy of distrust about your neighbors. And so we're trying to change that with what we have and hopefully leave a legacy of curiosity and not being naive about our neighbors.

That's a great mission. I love it. And just for if you're listening to this, the takeaway here is look at your publication, look at what you're producing content wise, and see if you can repurpose your existing content in another way. Because I think what Travis has done here for Mexico News Daily is really a stroke of genius to take the content that already exists and use it in an educational way to learn Spanish. It's really pretty fantastic.

It felt like a very logical but also very important extension that we could do of our content for kids.

I love it. I love it. All right, now tell me about your podcast. You're running a podcast, You're a publisher. What's going on here?

In the interest of filling every second of every day since we bought Mexico News Daily, we've been approached constantly about a podcast. So people always look me up and say, hey, I can do a podcast for you guys. And I was really, you know, I would always say, I don't know if the world needs another podcast. Right. I mean, there's. There's zillions of them. And the other thing we were worried about was really protecting our brand. Right. We didn't want to just have. I mean, if somebody said, I'm a. I'm an expert on Mexican politics, you know, that's not what we're trying to do. Or if someone was like, you know, I've been an Expat here for 10 years, and I can tell you the bottom line of this country, you know, that's a little bit dangerous as well. So we said no over and over and over again when we got those pitches. But ultimately, just recently, we settled in on what I think is the right sort of topic. And what the podcast is called is confidently Wrong. So part of the name came from the fact that my wife always calls me a confidently wrong person about directions, you know, or about, you know, where I think the restaurant is or something.

That's a guy thing.

It is, for sure. We're actually going to get merchandise made up that says, you know, my husband is confidently wrong, and then I'm in.

Sign me up.

We're going to do that. But it's really consistent with our brand in the sense that so many people are confidently wrong about Mexico. Right. You know, can I drink the water? Is it safe? Can I drive there? Is Mexico City, you know, a hellhole or a wonderful place? And so we base it on our written content, and we educate ourselves on our content. And then what we do is we have a podcast each week for about 30 minutes where we pick one topic and review some of the confidently wrong things we've seen and heard from others or on social media, and we talk about them in the podcast, you know, just to use, like, water as an example, right. If you tell someone you're going to Mexico, to this day, people say, don't drink the water, you know, or don't touch the ice or don't eat lettuce. And there's just so much confidently wrong information out there that we started a podcast called Confidently Wrong by Mexico News Daily.

It's awesome. I love it. It's almost like a FAQ for the country in a funny way. Right? And then. So if you're interested in Mexico, it's like. And you're. Yeah, like you said, if someone's considering Moving there, you're probably on the search for as much information as you can get about what's the quality of life actually, you know, there.

So it's not meant to be, you know, a promotional, you know, piece for Mexico. It's meant, again, just like our website, to inform and educate people. And so check it out. We have a web. We have a YouTube channel called Mexico News Daily TV. And then we also have. It's also on Spotify, so check that out. We do have a website where we put, you know, sorry, the YouTube channel. We do cover some of our news articles as well. So check that out.

We'll put those in the show notes for sure. All right, so we're kind of getting to the end here. Just want to wrap up with a couple of questions that I've written down. So here's one. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you bought Mexico News Daily? Is there something that you've learned along the way that you. I'm asking. I could.

Absolutely. Is there.

Is there one thing that you were absolutely sure about when you started that today? You're like, yeah, you know what? I was confidently wrong for sure.

First of all, there's many, but one I would share is. And I guess I should have known this from the name, but when it's Daily, that means every single day. And so we do publish new content 365 days a year. We probably don't have to, but we're just committed to it. And so that does mean every single day we've got stuff going on. And when you're part of a big company and there's lots of overlap of responsibilities, that's one thing. But when it's a smaller business, it's intense. And I don't mind the intensity. I actually like it. But it's been very intense. I guess the other thing I would say I grossly underestimated was just how precarious and dangerous and important the back office is. Right? So everything from your server to your paywall to everything in between, you're hosting. I don't have experience in that area. And so it's hard as a small company to get all that right. We have tens of thousands of people every day hitting our site, and it's constantly changing. And we had a cyber attack recently. And that part, you never can totally relax because there's always something that could happen. And again, we're a site that people are looking at 24 7. So it's not easy for us to just say, oh, For a day. The site isn't live. You know, that's.

That's our bread and butter and dovetail with that. What would you say your best failure was in. In this journey? And what did you learn from that failure? Do you have anything that particularly stands out where you went a direction, crashed into the wall and then, oh, wait, no, that was wrong. This is what I learned. Anything.

Yeah, I would say our best failure. Wow, I wasn't ready for that question. I mean, we've made a lot, right? So, you know, again, I think we underestimated the importance of some of those people in that back office area. And, you know, at the beginning, we trusted some people that were, you know, legacy from the previous owner and that turned out to be a failure. And we had to make decisions. You know, basically we got rid of those people and had to bring in new people. So I think just the people side of things, you know, we had, again, being a smaller business, you really count on some key people. And I think, you know, again, because we're not from this industry, we probably over relied on some of those key people and held onto them too long instead of just making the change. And so we've made a lot of changes in the team to make sure they're aligned with what we're trying to do and what the mission is and get along with everybody else on the team.

That's awesome. Yeah. You gotta make the change when you need to make the change. It's hard, but you do have to do it. Well, I was gonna ask you what's next for Mexico News Daily, but we talked a lot about what's next.

We got a lot going on.

Yeah. Yeah. So just gonna wrap up. Where can people, where can they get the news and where can they get the kids and the podcast? Can you repeat that?

I mean, hopefully if you go in Google and write, Mexico News will come up first, but MexicoNewsDaily.com is our site, MND. So Mexico News Daily, MNDKids.com is our kids site, and our YouTube site is Mexico News Daily TV. So we'd love to have you check us out. And what I tell people always is if you're tired and fatigued and depressed with the news in your home country, it's not necessarily like that everywhere. And there's a lot of wonderful things and inspiring things happening in a country like Mexico. And so you may say, the last thing I want to do is read news about another country, but you may actually find it, and many of our readers do find it inspiring. To read about good things going on in this country. So check us out.

That's great, Travis. Thank you so much. This was super fun.

Thank you for having me.

Let's do it again.

Great.

Stay warm in the south.

Thank you, Pete. Take care. Thanks for listening to the Paywall podcast. If you'd like to get in touch to discuss subscription Strategy, go to LeakyPaywall.com See you next time.