How Beacon Hill Makes $550m In Revenue With 12 Paid Newsletters

You want to talk about paid newsletters really quick? A topic that we've discussed a lot.

Yeah, let's do it.

But this one is particularly interesting. Um, the reason why is we've talked about this company a lot, Agora Financial. I've brought it up to you a ton. They spun off a couple of their brands and they tried to do a SPAC. And when they tried to do a SPAC, the company that they were SPACing with just like kind of like went down, like dropped like significantly. So they, there was already a publicly traded company that was going to buy a few Agora brands. The stock went down big time. But that's not that important. What's important is the numbers behind this paid newsletter business. So there's this company called— actually, I don't know what they call this little— it's a subsidiary of Gordon— of Agora. I think they call it Beacon Hill. It owns 6— sorry, 12 different newsletter brands. Collectively, those newsletter brands do— where did I put the number? $550 million in revenue and $200 million in profit.

And by the way, growing— that grew 77% over last year.

Is that crazy? Now I'm going to tell you all some more numbers. They have 10 million free subscribers. So kind of like The Hustle, that's like they've got 10 million of that. This is even wilder. They have 550,000 people paying them $600, between $1 and $600 for subscribers. Then they have a quarter of a million people paying them $600 to $5,000. And finally, they have 100,000 people paying them more than $5,000 for a product, for a paid newsletter.

And what is in this paid newsletter? What's the—

what is— here's where things get way— here's where things get way crazier. They have some paid newsletters that cost $35,000. Now the reason why— what gets crazy— what gets crazy with this is that they have 160 products across 12 brands. So what's that math? So each, each brand has, uh, 12, 12 or 13, uh, products and the products I don't even understand, but basically I understand the business model. The business model is they get you to buy a $50 or $49 thing, then they get you to buy a $2,000 thing. And so they get you to buy that $49 thing and that $49 thing is like a monthly paid newsletter. Like it's not significant. I don't understand how they get it to work and a large percentage of those $49 people buy the $2,000 thing.

Okay. So, but I feel like, okay, so these must be B2B newsletters, right?

No, they're not. Uh, yeah, that's an important part that I left out. Nearly all of this is around, and we'll link to their deck. So they have a whole deck when they, they, they, it's kind of scammy. So they, it's a financial and a wellness company, which is kind of weird. They're talking about health and they're talking about wellness. And if you click Agora up there, Sean, under my name, you'll see the deck. They say that their target demographic is self-directed investors. What's that mean? Well, I'm going to tell you, if you look at the website, it's just a bunch of old, kind of wealthy white people who are probably Republican. And because the reason I think this is, they have ads that say like, Nancy Pelosi is coming for your guns, you better invest in these 8 stocks. Like, they say like crazy shit like that, right?

It's basically the like Motley Fool on, uh, you know Steroids, right?

Yes. Uh, but I think Motley Fool's ethical. These guys aren't. They also sold a book on how to cure diabetes.

But okay, I was gonna ask you why do you think they're unethical, and then you answered my question.

And so it's all financial news, financial newsletter, financial news related stock picks. And it's just, uh, just a crazy story. I brought this up tons of time. We don't spend too much time on it, but it's pretty wild. To actually see these numbers. I actually guessed that this is how big they were. Now we have proof.

Yeah, you've been talking about Agora as like, you know, doing hundreds of millions of dollars and, you know, some people know about them, but I would say most people don't know about this empire. And most people, I mean, this blows away most people's expectations of, you know, paid newsletter, right? Like, oh, you know, like I just had a paid newsletter as an individual, right? I made, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars total and I thought I was crushing it. And these guys are making hundreds of millions of dollars. So when you look at this, my honest reaction is, dude, why couldn't you have done this with The Hustle? Why, what did they do? Or why was the hill too hard to climb where you could scale like this? 'Cause this is huge.

I don't think it was too hard to scale. I think I could have done it. I would say that this business has been around since the '70s.

Right.

So it's kicking ass now. It didn't always kick ass. If you're willing to be patient, you can do it. Second of all, if you're willing to put your ethics aside a little bit, it actually is quite easy to do.

Helps. So how would you do this? You— let's say you want to be these guys or beat these guys. What does— you know, you're Sam, you're probably one of the most well-equipped people in the world to do this. How would you have gone about it?

Well, what you have to do is you've got to create multiple brands under one. It's really hard to have one brand and only a couple of products make all this money. So you'd have to have— for us, we would have done and we were going to do this, but then we got bought. And the reason I got bought was a whole different reasons, which is basically I wanted to get a payday. Like, and I wanted to, I mean, like I was, I was pretty clear about that before. Like I wanted, I like, it was cool. It's awesome. I'm gonna stay here, but like, it was nice to like get a lotto ticket. But if I wanted to be patient and do it for 50 years, which I kind of do, to be honest, I would've created Trends, but for subset subcategories. And you make the first newsletter, the one that people pay for only like $49 or $50 and we send you just a couple things a month. And then the second thing is you go to subcategories and you charge thousands of dollars. For example, if there was a newsletter that dissected media companies, I work in the media industry and you told me it was $4,000 and I also got access to a community, I ain't gonna complain about it.

Right, I mean.

I'm gonna do it. If there's something for digital streaming and that you know that the 5 analysts are smart, Twitch is gonna buy that. It's not that like challenging.

It's not that hard, right.

And so that's what I would do from multiple industries. And the thing that a lot of newsletter writers do, which I've talked about this plenty of times and I don't have to talk about too much, is they do one of two things. One, they charge too little. And two, if they charge too little, they don't have a higher-end back product. You need a front end and a back end. So you need your cheap thing that gets a lot of people and then you need your paid thing that gets only a few people, but it makes a lot of money.

So you guys at Trends is like, I don't know, $300-something a year. You could have been $49 and then $5,000 would have been a better mix of value if you were optimizing for how do we get this thing as profitable as we can, lucrative as we can.

Yeah. And had we not gotten bought, I would have done that. I would have— I was actually— we were about to change it. We were about to make that change.

And by the way, what happens to Trends now? People still pay for it or it's free now?

They pay for it. We might lower the price. Before, we were either going to make that the backend or we were going to make that the frontend, but we were going to copy this model of a $99 thing and then a $2,000 thing.

Yeah, dude, when I see companies like this, it just makes me want to do it so badly because it's like, it just seems so doable. Now I know that in practice, when I— and by the way, we get heat for this sometimes because we're like, dude, it's so easy, it's so simple. We're talking like relatively, like building a successful business is hard, okay? Like it's not just going to instantly happen.

We're not saying things are easy. Sometimes we actually do say that word easy. Really what we mean is simple. So like being able to bench 500 pounds, that is, um, um, simple. Like it's straightforward. What do you do? You just, you, here's how you get strong in the bench press. You lift a lot and then you eat a ton. Now that is quite hard to do for 5 years, but that's, that was, that's the steps you take. So it's like simple. And so what we're saying is that this is simple and it's not easy.

I think weight loss is actually a better example. Cause 500 pounds is a hard thing to bench. Weight loss is literally simple where it's like, Hey, you need to eat these, you know, avoid carbs, avoid sugars. You need to eat a little bit less, less calories than you're burning. And like, you should work out regularly, do kind of whatever. Just try to get an hour a day of, you know, break a sweat. If you actually just did those two things and be like, hey, give it like 4 to 5 months, 6 months, boom, you're in great shape. Everybody knows that formula. It is actually simple. Executing it and doing it, having the discipline and having the rigor to like actually stick to it. Hard, but it is way easier relatively than becoming a CrossFit champion, right? And so when we're talking about business, the scale is that it's like, it's hard to create the next Facebook. That's really freaking hard. Is it hard to create a paid community? Well, I don't think most people who try it will do it, but it's relatively way easier than creating the next Facebook. So for people that are out there, they get all sensitive when we call something easy. It's not, we're not trying to mislead you. Like, yeah, it's going to take work. Most likely it won't work. It'll take some time. But we're on a scale of 1 to SpaceX, this is more like a 1 than it is a SpaceX. And like, that's a scale for people to think about.

I completely agree. And I think like, now let's talk about what makes this hard. The first is that you have to sell your soul a little bit. Now, many people will not be comfortable with this stuff. Sean is pretty comfortable with it. I think I'm comfortable with it, but I think I'm a little bit less comfortable with it. You have to be a face sometimes. You have to be, you have to say, I'm an expert at X. Pay me money to— for you— me to tell you my thoughts, right? Second, um, well, no, this is off that. So guys like James Altucher, who we've had this podcast, he was ridiculed for doing this with Bitcoin. Everyone made fun of him. He made $60 million doing it, but he still got mocked constantly. And shockingly, most people would actually prefer not to make the money and not get made fun of than they would to make the money and get made fun of.

Uh, well, the way I think about it is most people truly will not— they are afraid that they're going to get them not going to get the money and get mocked. And so they're like, fuck it, I won't do it. If you really had a guarantee, I think people would happily trade reputation points for bank points.

But— Well, yeah, and perhaps, but that's a moot point because the fact is, is that most people don't even wanna— 'Cause the first point that you said of like they may not get the money at all, that is also true and that's what they're, they're not gonna do that. So you have to do that. Second, it's a treadmill. You can't stop. This is a lifetime job. So if you are a content creator, I hired people to do it for me. You 100% can do that. But you're gonna, you can't, you have to, you actually have to do the work for a little while anyway. So you're gonna have to work.

And by the way, quick question on hiring, 'cause people ask me this and I have no idea. I'm like, why don't you ask Sam? He's the one who did it. Why are you asking me? They'll be like, dude, The Hustle has had amazing talent. Like they talk about Trung, they talk about Steph Smith, they talk about some of the people you guys have.

Well, you, me, I mean, right? I mean, I consider you be part of our crew. You, me, Trong, Steph, this guy Colby. We've got, yeah, we've got a bunch of people.

So the question is, where the heck did you find these people? So can you give me the 10 seconds on each? Where'd you find Trong? Where'd you find Steph? Where'd you find Colby? Where'd you find, you know, all these people?

Colby was, worked at a PR firm where he was doing some copywriting work. And Trong, Amon Choi.

Did he just apply to you? Or you like recognized like, oh, this guy's good?

Mutual connection. Friend of a friend said, you should talk to this person. Trong came from Eamon Troy, a mutual friend and investor of The Hustle. Steph, I found on Twitter because I read her blog. Who else?

That's it. I just kind of want to know, and then when you found these people, are you— what's your— did you cycle through 30 people who kind of sort of sucked before you found the gems?

When we actually sold to HubSpot, they were like, wow, you guys have a lot of churn. I'm like, yeah, but here's what we do. Like, this is actually quite normal in the editorial industry, but you hire a bunch of people and you Got a— you either fire or there's a mutual like, all right, we tried it, it wasn't a fit. Um, and that happens a lot. Um, yeah. And you also set the tone.

I would say that was also a key, right? Because you were writing it originally, and so you—

yeah, and you saw the trends community, the right people, and you saw the trends community. Like, I was the one actually doing all the work every day.

You were posting in that thing.

Yeah. And that sets the culture and attracts like-minded people. Um, I also think that, um Once you find the winners, then you go all in on them. So Trung is what I call— he's a made man. Steph, a made woman. Whenever Steph wants to do something, cool, sounds good. What do you need? When other people come with an idea—

negotiate, baby. Time to double it. Time to double that number. Whatever number Sam gave you, time to double it.

These guys are all doing great. Whenever— if an outside person or if a non-made person comes with an idea, it's You know, why don't you just show me a little MVP and let's just see what people think. If Trung says something, it's all right. Yes, sir.

Right.

Yeah. Like you're a proven hitmaker. So, and then the, um, the last thing is when we interview them, I always ask about the bottom fourth of the resume, which is like the college classes and all the things that they take. Cause I want them to like entertain me during the interview. So in the same way that you are really good at storytelling, you have to have other people that are good at storytelling.

Right, right.