Morning Brew's Robert Dippell on moving into B2B

Brian: 00:00:09

welcome to the Rebooting Show.

Brian: 00:00:10

I am Brian Morrissey.

Brian: 00:00:12

Got a lot of good feedback on last week's episode with Adam Ryan, from, workweek . Love love to hear from all of you and

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another thing is, before we get into the, the conversation this week, I want to

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tell you a little bit about a new research report we have out from the rebooting.

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I'm very proud of this.

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I teamed up with, former e-marketer, analyst, Deborah Aho Williamson, to put this together.

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we.

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Keep improving on these.

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I think this is about the fifth or sixth we've done.

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This one was done in collaboration with our partners at OMI and it

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examined how publishers are adapting their audience development strategies.

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this was a great time to do this research since the shifts in priorities.

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on audience development comes up constantly in my conversations with publishing executives and

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we surveyed about a hundred publishers to compile this report.

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I'll leave a link to it in the show notes.

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I'm biased, but I think it's worth checking out.

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thanks in particular to Deborah, but also to Amita for its partnership to make this report possible.

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Amita is an audience management platform that allows publishers to better understand and activate their audiences.

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and they're great people.

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Really enjoyed working with them.

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And Deborah, on this project, we have more coming up, so get in touch if you run tech company or some other business that wants

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to reach key decision makers of publishers because we can partner on a research report or any of our other programs.

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Or, you can just email me.

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so anyway, about the show this week, I spoke with Robert Dipple.

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He is the recently named CEO of Morning Brew, Robert, succeeds

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Austin Reef, who is a morning Brew co-founder and has exited the business.

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and over its first 10 years of Morning Brew's business.

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It has only been run by its founders, both.

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first it was, Alex.

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Lieberman and then, Austin.

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so this is, makes it an important transition and it was a great time to catch up with Robert.

Brian: 00:02:13

You know, one of the interesting things is that he comes from the B2B world.

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We actually.

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First knew each other when he was an executive at omi, in fact.

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So we dig into how Morning BREW has built up.

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Its B2B business.

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And, this was an issue I really wanted to go deep on because I have seen countless examples of consumer media

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publications who see the different economics of B2B and go running towards it, and invariably they fail.

Brian: 00:02:43

Okay.

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Morning brew on the other hand, from everything I can see has made it work right?

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And they now have seven B2B brands.

Brian: 00:02:50

They're gonna be adding an eighth, which Robert, disclosed here, although he wouldn't tell me which vertical.

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He's anyone who has, a guess and sends it to me.

Brian: 00:02:59

I, I'll give you a, a complimentary TRB PRO membership when, Morning Brew does finally announce which this vertical is.

Brian: 00:03:06

but we also talk about, we talk about how the dynamics of B2B are different, than B2C and, and why they usually trip up

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Consumer media businesses that, that wanna operate in have a foot in both worlds.

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And I, I think in my view, like Morning Brew has, a big advantage having come from the email world.

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A lot of the dynamics there port over.

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To, the B2B business, whereas the dynamics of a typical B2C publishing business

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that you know is going from like, let's say a page view and a traffic model.

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Do not really translate.

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And I think that's where a lot of the disconnect ends up happening.

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but anyway, as we discuss, morning Brew is more than a newsletter company.

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I find it, you know, it was a little ironic that, you know, morning Brew was brought up so many times at

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this newsletter, growth conference when it's really not a newsletter.

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Company, and hasn't been for several years.

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and we talk about that diversification.

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It's not just B2B, you know, they have greatly expanded into, into multimedia, into video and audio

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and, and, and particularly with its burgeoning creator led business lines.

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those are pretty interesting.

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So I really loved getting into.

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All of this with Robert.

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we have a bunch of great guests coming up and again, I would love to hear

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from you to know, you know, the kinds of, of people you'd like to hear from.

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I'm trying to take.

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What I consider a more ecumenical approach to media.

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so I have plans to have more smaller niche publishers on, you know, B2B of

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course, as well as executives, of course at the big consumer, media publishers.

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And I think they've always been a majority of the focus of the show.

Brian: 00:04:39

They, they still will be, but you know, the, the information space is very big and very deep as I keep saying.

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So I want to branch out And really get at like all the nooks and crannies of it.

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and I might even mix in some new formats too.

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maybe one of those mailbag mailbag episodes.

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I see like a lot of sports podcasts do.

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where I go solo, I don't know.

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We'll see how, how it works.

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But I think it's good to mix it up so your feedback is appreciated.

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Just send me a note.

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It's b marcy@rebooting.com.

Brian: 00:05:04

Now onto my conversation with Robert.

Brian: 00:05:11

Robert, thank you so much for doing this.

Brian: 00:05:14

and congrats on, your new role as CEO of Morning Brew.

Robert: 00:05:17

Thank you, Brian.

Robert: 00:05:18

Happy to be here.

Brian: 00:05:19

Okay.

Brian: 00:05:20

So I was at this newsletter Growth.

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I. Marketing conference.

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I think those are the three words.

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a couple weeks ago, and Alex Lieberman, one of morning Brew's co-founders was there.

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and Morning Brew is like name checked, like nonstop, right?

Brian: 00:05:33

It was like Morning Brew, the Hustle Skim a little less so, right?

Brian: 00:05:37

But it's like newsletter people and like newsletters is like, it's a sector, it's a weird sector.

Brian: 00:05:43

I'm like obsessed with it a little bit.

Brian: 00:05:45

and I was like sitting there and I was like, yeah.

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But at the same time, like Morning Brew isn't like a newsletter company anymore.

Brian: 00:05:53

It kind of is, but it kind of isn't.

Brian: 00:05:54

Right?

Brian: 00:05:55

Because like to me, like newsletters are amazing.

Brian: 00:05:58

I send a a lot of newsletters out, but you know, it depends on what you wanna build.

Brian: 00:06:04

But usually you want to build a, a multifaceted media company and go beyond newsletter.

Brian: 00:06:08

So what is.

Brian: 00:06:10

Morning brew now at 10 versus like, I felt like they were in a little bit of

Brian: 00:06:14

a time machine till like, soon after the University of Michigan dorm room.

Robert: 00:06:19

Yeah, I mean, I can, I can picture you sitting in that, in that crowd and, and hearing that.

Robert: 00:06:23

I mean, it's very much an and not an or like we, we cannot deny that the newsletter side of our business has

Robert: 00:06:29

been absolutely tremendous over the last 10 years and still is a huge part of our revenue and luckily has.

Robert: 00:06:36

Stabilized to be, a, a big part of our business in a big way that we still

Robert: 00:06:40

engage with people and our open rates are still on average, north of 50%.

Robert: 00:06:44

All those metrics that we would look at, to fill like the newsletter business as healthy as there.

Robert: 00:06:48

But Austin and, and Alex, who you referenced, really kind of saw

Robert: 00:06:53

into the future a couple years ago and, and said, this can't be it.

Robert: 00:06:56

It can't just be that.

Robert: 00:06:58

And they started to make some bets to, to really extend that relationship with our, our audience outside of the inbox.

Robert: 00:07:04

And just like how they saw newsletters, I do think they saw that a little bit earlier than other people could act on it.

Robert: 00:07:10

And, as you and I were, were talking about separately, like they very

Robert: 00:07:14

much are entrepreneurs, they're very much founders and builders, so.

Robert: 00:07:17

They got to work a couple years ago, kind of making two large bets with a a million bets underneath it.

Robert: 00:07:23

One being that multimedia audio, video, social, and the creator led side could,

Robert: 00:07:29

could really be something that's a nice natural extension for morning brew.

Robert: 00:07:33

And then on the other side that.

Robert: 00:07:34

We had license to dive into a bunch of B2B verticals and that the people that read the newsletter or, or, or listen

Robert: 00:07:40

to the podcast, you know, they, they like that general information, but they also have jobs and they also really want

Robert: 00:07:46

help with professional guidance on how to be a marketer or how to be an hr, how to be in, in the healthcare industry.

Robert: 00:07:52

So they kind of put that in motion and, you know, I joined about two years ago to really help push the gas on.

Robert: 00:08:00

And specifically, you know, build out a lot of the B2B side.

Robert: 00:08:03

But like I started, it's, it's kind of an, and we've added a lot of things in to the newsletter part of our business though,

Brian: 00:08:10

Yeah, it, it's interesting 'cause when you say that they're, I mean they are like, to me, like pure entrepreneurs,

Brian: 00:08:16

like you can drop them anywhere and they'd figure out like a business and, so I'm excited to see what they do do next.

Brian: 00:08:22

they're building their, their next businesses.

Brian: 00:08:24

And along the way I think was interesting to me, just like as observant,

Brian: 00:08:28

morning Brew is, hey, tried a lot of things, some things didn't work.

Brian: 00:08:31

Like you're not doing that.

Brian: 00:08:32

Like MBA, the morning brew, NBA is no longer, you know, courses had a moment and when you gotta like, try

Brian: 00:08:37

all these different things until you hit on it and like B2B was.

Brian: 00:08:42

To me, like a, a really, you know, great move, obviously.

Brian: 00:08:45

I mean, I've spent a lot of time in B2B, so I, I understand the, the dynamics there and, and the upsides of that

Brian: 00:08:52

kind of business versus a consumer business, even if it's a, even if it's a, you know, business media publication.

Brian: 00:08:57

When you get into the hardcore B2B, the economics change.

Brian: 00:09:00

And I think when you're sitting on a mass of emails.

Brian: 00:09:05

Email, particularly engaged email subscribers like Morning Brew, was and is.

Brian: 00:09:10

you can do a lot of things with that.

Brian: 00:09:11

And, you know, the, the quote unquote niching down is 'cause I, your background is very much in B2B is

Brian: 00:09:19

very attractive because the LTV of a person who is like a top marketer.

Brian: 00:09:28

As just a regular, you know, business person is, you know, it's, it's high, but them as like a marketer is

Robert: 00:09:36

Yep.

Robert: 00:09:37

Yeah, it's interesting.

Robert: 00:09:38

Even the consumer side of our business, Devin Emery, who, who's now our president,

Robert: 00:09:42

has done a great job building out like the content strategy on that side.

Robert: 00:09:45

If you step back, it's interesting, like.

Robert: 00:09:47

Even that strategy is about finding niche topics that really appeal to big segments of our audience.

Robert: 00:09:54

And what I mean by that is we've developed this kind of Venn diagram that's hard to visually talk about, on an audio

Robert: 00:10:01

podcast, but, but basically just looking at like the different interests of our audience from work life and like what you.

Robert: 00:10:10

Being an entrepreneur and like raising money and founding a company and, and all the tools you need and, and

Robert: 00:10:15

you know, and new tools that could help you be more efficient, to,

Robert: 00:10:19

to more investing in like what you could do with your personal money.

Robert: 00:10:23

So there's all these different circles within Venn diagram, even on the consumer side, and it's kind

Robert: 00:10:27

of the same move, Brian, to like what you and I have done on the B2B.

Robert: 00:10:30

It's like, how do you build.

Robert: 00:10:32

That speaks to those interests and give them more reason to engage with us.

Robert: 00:10:36

And then how do you find advertisers that are kind of like center of the dartboard for those interests?

Robert: 00:10:42

So we were already playing the game over there and we've been doubling down and launching more consumer franchises.

Robert: 00:10:48

we're launching a new one in the next 45 days called out there, which is actually from one of our consumer creators.

Robert: 00:10:54

Her name is Macy.

Robert: 00:10:54

She's super popular on, on morning social.

Robert: 00:10:57

She's done such a good job that we're actually building and giving her

Robert: 00:11:00

her own show called out there, and we've been testing that for a while.

Robert: 00:11:03

so we're constantly cultivating on the consumer side and on the B2 side,

Brian: 00:11:06

Right.

Brian: 00:11:07

So let's talk B2B and then we'll get into like the crater and the consumer side.

Brian: 00:11:11

so I mean, the way I sort of understand it, it probably works

Brian: 00:11:13

with, with, sort of both ways is like the morning brew mothership, right?

Brian: 00:11:17

Has how many subscribers?

Robert: 00:11:20

4.2 million active total database.

Robert: 00:11:22

Bigger than that.

Brian: 00:11:23

and you can like filter those down into high value professional areas, right?

Robert: 00:11:30

Absolutely.

Robert: 00:11:31

Yeah.

Robert: 00:11:31

We have, we have deep, professional, and industry data on, on that whole, that whole group.

Brian: 00:11:36

Okay, so you've got like a bunch of marketers in there and they get filtered down then into marketing

Brian: 00:11:42

brew, and then you're, you're not only getting sort of two bites of the apple, but like you're getting a bigger

Brian: 00:11:48

second bite probably because that same person who's on a morning brew list.

Brian: 00:11:56

And active has, has a certain value, but then if, if they're on the marketing brew, they probably have higher value.

Robert: 00:12:03

I mean higher depending on who the advertiser is or the action that we're asking them to take, like.

Robert: 00:12:10

We launched a whole new event strategy last year.

Robert: 00:12:12

So like defining higher value would be that I can now sell

Robert: 00:12:16

that person a ticket to a live event that we didn't have before.

Robert: 00:12:20

but, but yeah, there's, there's, I would say additive value to being able

Robert: 00:12:24

to, to engage them on the consumer side and on the professional side.

Brian: 00:12:28

So how many of the, like 4.2 million, like Morning Brew

Brian: 00:12:32

subscribers are also subscribers to one of the B2B publications.

Robert: 00:12:36

Oh, good question.

Robert: 00:12:37

I don't know the exact percentage, like live as of today, to be honest.

Robert: 00:12:41

So I don't want to throw something out and lie to you this, this early in the podcast.

Robert: 00:12:45

if I had to guess, I would say probably around 60%.

Robert: 00:12:48

It's de more, more than half.

Robert: 00:12:50

but keep in mind that we we're adding a lot of subscribers naturally, organically, to those publications.

Robert: 00:12:56

So.

Robert: 00:12:59

in some cases 50,000 new people signing up to a B2B publication on a monthly basis.

Robert: 00:13:04

That doesn't mean they necessarily came from the mothership.

Robert: 00:13:07

It, it could come from just other exposure and organic things or from paid

Robert: 00:13:11

marketing that we're doing to, to drive the right people to subscribe for that.

Robert: 00:13:14

But we have this huge advantage that we do have the mothership and we could get better and better at cross pollinating.

Robert: 00:13:20

Like there actually hasn't been enough of that and we're, we're trying to.

Brian: 00:13:23

Yeah, but I mean, that's your sort of like quote unquote unfair advantage, right?

Brian: 00:13:27

Like, I mean, I think about it like how in your in, in morning Brew's growth, You guys were early to a lot of things.

Brian: 00:13:34

I feel like during that time and timing is a lot of things.

Brian: 00:13:37

That's why when I see people pattern matching and saying, I'm

Brian: 00:13:40

gonna build a morning brew of X still, they're saying that,

Robert: 00:13:43

So hard.

Brian: 00:13:44

I'm like, this isn't 10 years ago.

Brian: 00:13:46

Like it's a different environment and.

Brian: 00:13:49

You know, the, the reality is like, you know, every media company that succeeds hits some kind of distribution scene

Brian: 00:13:56

oftentimes, and that really turbocharges, you know, taking nothing away.

Brian: 00:14:01

The execution is everything, right?

Brian: 00:14:03

But like I. The reality is to, to you couldn't necessarily execute the morning brew strategy in 2025.

Brian: 00:14:12

Like, I mean, it would just be way harder.

Brian: 00:14:14

Right.

Brian: 00:14:14

And I always felt there was like an unfair advantage back then.

Brian: 00:14:18

It was like you guys were early with like something like a recommendation system, right?

Brian: 00:14:22

Where a reward system, and that made your kind of CAC lower because you could like.

Brian: 00:14:31

You, you could, you weren't just like buying one, you were buying like 1.7.

Robert: 00:14:37

And that was

Brian: 00:14:38

the way I think about it.

Robert: 00:14:39

Brilliant strategy, but a great, great example of like, what got you here won't get you there.

Robert: 00:14:43

Like that strategy is not the bet moving forward.

Robert: 00:14:46

But it was amazing.

Robert: 00:14:47

Like I remember reading about that and being like, these, these guys are brilliant.

Robert: 00:14:50

Just like the, I think it drove, you know, 2 million new people for them in a pretty short amount of time.

Robert: 00:14:56

and just nobody else was nimble enough to think of something like that and put it in place.

Robert: 00:15:00

But yeah, I mean, we have to have new tricks now and then

Robert: 00:15:03

beyond anything, we just have to have really damn good content.

Brian: 00:15:06

Right, but I mean, the unfair distribution advantage on a B2B is that you've got this mothership of 4.2

Brian: 00:15:12

million and let's say it's like close to 60%, like you can filter those down.

Brian: 00:15:17

Do you have to do other things to, to build distribution, of course.

Brian: 00:15:22

But if, if you were building from scratch, if you were building.

Brian: 00:15:26

Marketing brew from scratch, you would not have that.

Robert: 00:15:28

Yeah,

Brian: 00:15:29

and, and all businesses just looking for this sort of, the leverage that you have in, in different places.

Brian: 00:15:34

So how many of the B2B publications do you have now?

Robert: 00:15:38

Seven.

Brian: 00:15:39

Seven.

Brian: 00:15:40

Okay.

Brian: 00:15:40

And how do you determine like which areas you end up going into?

Brian: 00:15:45

I would guess you just look at your overall database and see where you have a, a critical mass, and then

Brian: 00:15:51

you, you figure out the, whether the, the market can support.

Brian: 00:15:54

I dunno, how do you

Robert: 00:15:56

Yeah, roughly.

Robert: 00:15:57

I mean, I'll, I'll share some breaking news that we are planning on launching an eighth, which I

Robert: 00:16:02

haven't said publicly and, and we're aiming to do that in June or July.

Robert: 00:16:06

And the kind of thought process there was really thinking about verticals where we morning brew.

Robert: 00:16:12

Has license to go out there and build another B2B vertical where

Robert: 00:16:17

we have a significant part of our existing audience that is interested.

Robert: 00:16:20

So this one, for example, 10% of the core, 4.2 million are already

Robert: 00:16:25

in jobs that are relevant to this vertical that we're gonna go into.

Robert: 00:16:29

And then we also look at where we're winning from an advertiser standpoint,

Robert: 00:16:33

categories and where we think there is additive potential and more spend if.

Robert: 00:16:40

Went more deeper into a specific vertical rather than kind of like

Robert: 00:16:44

adjacently talking about it in other ones, if that makes sense.

Robert: 00:16:48

And just try to find that kind of overlap.

Robert: 00:16:50

and then also thinking about where is there, you know, enough competitive noise or not enough competitive noise.

Robert: 00:16:55

Like Sean GR is super well spoken about this.

Robert: 00:16:57

Like he's not intimidated by noise going into markets.

Robert: 00:17:01

If he thinks that he can, he can do better there.

Robert: 00:17:03

This one is actually pretty open Greenfield.

Robert: 00:17:06

There's like.

Robert: 00:17:06

A lot on LinkedIn and more educational content, but not many people are

Robert: 00:17:11

writing about the industry of this vertical the way we're going.

Robert: 00:17:14

So just trying to like

Brian: 00:17:15

Those are good hints.

Brian: 00:17:16

I'm gonna try to guess which of this is, 'cause you're not gonna tell me

Robert: 00:17:19

You'll probably get it, you've been doing

Brian: 00:17:20

I like, I don't know.

Brian: 00:17:22

You're gonna give, give me a day.

Robert: 00:17:23

I can't say, I can't say the exact one yet, but We'll, we will announce it in in not too long and, and it's gonna

Robert: 00:17:28

be one of those things you're gonna be like, yeah, that makes total sense.

Robert: 00:17:30

Like why the hell didn't you guys already do that?

Robert: 00:17:32

Which is the way it should feel.

Robert: 00:17:34

and hopefully, you know, lots of subscribers and advertisers feel that way.

Brian: 00:17:37

So a lot of consumer, and particularly these days, a lot of consumer publishers want to get into B2B.

Brian: 00:17:44

And sometimes they call things B2B that I'm like, really?

Brian: 00:17:47

Is that B2B?

Brian: 00:17:47

I mean, like, like Jess simply at time, like, I love Jess, but like she talks about their B2B business.

Brian: 00:17:52

I'm like, eh, that's a different kind of B2B.

Brian: 00:17:54

and you know, there's like B2B has different dynamics and there's a lot of struggles that I found in, In consumer

Brian: 00:18:02

publications getting into B2B, otherwise, like why wouldn't the Wall Street Journal have a massive B2B business?

Brian: 00:18:08

Like why, why would that not?

Brian: 00:18:09

I mean, yes, there's FT Specialists and, and Wall Street Journal like dabbles a little bit here and there.

Brian: 00:18:14

They've got a lot of, Dow Jones has a lot of B2B businesses like energy pricing services and those kind of B2B businesses.

Brian: 00:18:21

But as far as B2B media businesses, it's like I've, I've always felt like it, the dynamics.

Brian: 00:18:26

And you know this, as someone you know who's been in a lot of B2B

Brian: 00:18:29

businesses, the, the dynamics are different than, than consumer.

Brian: 00:18:35

And a lot of times the type of sales that you're doing needs to be different.

Brian: 00:18:40

It's hard to do it with the both, but like, talk to me about like some of the, the.

Brian: 00:18:44

The sort of specifics that aren't just like on, like the surface of why Morning Brew's been able to,

Brian: 00:18:51

to, to succeed in, in adding a B2B business to a consumer business.

Robert: 00:18:57

Well first, just like a, an industry comment, which is where you started, it is shockingly confusing

Robert: 00:19:03

for consumer publications to actually understand how to operate.

Robert: 00:19:07

I. B2B businesses very specifically how to monetize B2B businesses.

Robert: 00:19:11

I think there's a lot of assumption that if you have really good consumer sales team, that they can just magically

Robert: 00:19:17

understand how to penetrate B2B verticals and sell into them, and that your team can build ad products and, and

Robert: 00:19:26

have enough data, first party owned data to make those products effective.

Robert: 00:19:32

I was consulting for seven years before I came in here and helped, was

Robert: 00:19:35

operating two to three media companies at a time during that time period.

Robert: 00:19:38

And some of 'em were B2B and some of 'em were B2C.

Robert: 00:19:40

And I was always just like baffled when I got into these larger B2C companies that A, just the assumption that they could do

Robert: 00:19:47

it and then B, how much the fundamentals were like a foreign language to them.

Robert: 00:19:53

If you talked about segmentation of content or writing for certain topics or the power of like targeting, they

Robert: 00:20:01

would look at you as if you were speaking a different language and somehow find a way to default back to scale.

Robert: 00:20:07

Just like more, more, more like, how do I, how do you have more scale?

Robert: 00:20:10

And took me like literally years to get my head around how to speak to them and

Robert: 00:20:15

how to get them to, to really understand like, no, no, like where this is.

Robert: 00:20:21

But where it's going is where B2B has been operating for a very, very long time.

Robert: 00:20:24

And like you need to own your audience.

Robert: 00:20:26

You need to have information on them.

Robert: 00:20:29

You need to have license and credibility and permission to send them targeted,

Robert: 00:20:34

very niche things that make them better at their jobs or better at their lives.

Robert: 00:20:38

If you are not doing any of those things, then there is a time limit to the success of your business.

Brian: 00:20:44

Hmm

Robert: 00:20:45

When I showed up here at Morning Brew, the, one of the reasons

Robert: 00:20:47

it was working is they had some people here who understood those things.

Robert: 00:20:51

they had Jacob Donnelley, who I know, you know, they had Josh Sternberg, our executive editor.

Robert: 00:20:56

They had some

Brian: 00:20:57

on my team.

Robert: 00:20:58

yeah.

Robert: 00:20:58

Oh yeah.

Robert: 00:20:59

Amazing.

Robert: 00:20:59

So, you know, Josh, so I, I, we had people here who like, knew that

Robert: 00:21:03

stuff and then we had to, we had to reinvent and improve the product side.

Robert: 00:21:09

and, and a of the sales side and.

Robert: 00:21:12

My first year really trying to break in and break through with the sales team about how to sell B2B and, and

Robert: 00:21:20

then we built a whole team that is our professional sales team, and they've become really successful.

Brian: 00:21:25

So explain that.

Brian: 00:21:26

'cause I think this is one that doesn't get a lot of focus, but probably should.

Brian: 00:21:31

Right?

Brian: 00:21:31

Because I think, you know, someone would just be like, okay, well you got a sales team already.

Brian: 00:21:36

It's like, just they, they, they, they got something else.

Brian: 00:21:39

Something new to sell.

Robert: 00:21:40

Yeah, that's exactly what I was

Brian: 00:21:42

LFG.

Robert: 00:21:44

see it, people see it as like a, like an account sorting exercise.

Robert: 00:21:48

There's like, there's consumer accounts and there's B2B account and like, yes.

Robert: 00:21:52

But the sales motion to the B2B accounts is so wildly different.

Robert: 00:21:58

And, and, and, and the, the inverse is also important to say like the sales

Robert: 00:22:01

motion to large consumer accounts and the way that operates is very different.

Robert: 00:22:05

And the, these are all, like, none of this is a mystery.

Robert: 00:22:07

I mean, selling to large consumer accounts, the sales cycle is going to be longer.

Robert: 00:22:12

It's going to be heavier RFP based.

Robert: 00:22:14

You're going to lose a significant amount of those RFPs.

Robert: 00:22:17

You're going to only capture a percentage of the ones that you, you win, meaning like.

Robert: 00:22:22

You might win half of your RFPs and you might only capture 30% of the value of those RFPs for the ones you win.

Robert: 00:22:27

So you like manage that business very different.

Robert: 00:22:29

Also, the products you sell on the consumer side a lot of times are large brand campaigns.

Robert: 00:22:35

They are sometimes rooted in scale and like we have enough scale to be dangerous, but we're not dot dash Meredith, we're

Robert: 00:22:42

not New York Times and we don't do programmatic on the B2B side, like.

Robert: 00:22:47

Though that that kind of lazy answer doesn't take into account that you have to be selling high volume.

Robert: 00:22:55

It's not like high RFP, it's, you need to be going out there and pitching high volume of clients and the pool of clients.

Robert: 00:23:02

It's much bigger.

Robert: 00:23:02

Like all the clients that we can access for our hr, vertical marketing, vertical

Robert: 00:23:07

healthcare, it's a large pool and we have to be getting a lot of shots on goal.

Robert: 00:23:11

The average transaction size is gonna be a little bit less, but we're gonna get more of.

Robert: 00:23:15

The product set is gonna be different.

Robert: 00:23:17

It's gonna be much more, some lead generation performance marketing.

Robert: 00:23:21

There's gonna be brand, but it's gonna be a lot more like thought leadership.

Robert: 00:23:23

Like how the hell do I explain my company?

Robert: 00:23:26

All this stuff to you is table stakes, but like explaining that different and

Robert: 00:23:32

building sales teams that can speak both languages is very, very difficult.

Robert: 00:23:37

We've successfully done it here, and it's not like a, it's not perfect.

Robert: 00:23:41

We're gonna continue to get better, but we've hired really smart people and we've really focused

Robert: 00:23:45

on training and it's working, but we have, we have differentiation.

Robert: 00:23:48

We have a professional B2B sales team that that is what they do and their motion

Robert: 00:23:53

and the way they prospect and the way they sell and the products they lean on.

Robert: 00:23:57

Is noticeably different than our consumer team.

Robert: 00:23:59

Everybody can sell everything.

Robert: 00:24:01

and there's a lot of power in that too, as far as building diversified campaigns.

Robert: 00:24:05

But you gotta, you gotta have some level of focus and, and, and train them on

Brian: 00:24:09

Yeah, I mean, I would guess you'll have someone like, I'm just gonna

Brian: 00:24:12

choose, like, I have no idea if they're client, but like Salesforce, right?

Brian: 00:24:15

That is gonna work with you on the sort of mothership side.

Brian: 00:24:20

but they're, they're a great fit for a lot of different like verticals.

Brian: 00:24:23

But the reality is within a lot of B2B, you're going after, you know, their own, like endemic, right?

Brian: 00:24:30

I mean, there's a lot of.

Brian: 00:24:33

Technology companies in particular that, you know, some professional services too, but are specific to, to that vertical.

Brian: 00:24:41

And I think like the way you broke it out is interesting.

Brian: 00:24:44

'cause the way I look at it is think of myself.

Brian: 00:24:46

It's like thought leadership, which is the B2B version of branding really.

Brian: 00:24:51

and that is smaller, at least in my experience.

Brian: 00:24:53

Maybe it's just in, in the area I'm in, but that's, that's the smaller part of the budgets.

Brian: 00:24:58

there's lead gen. Which is like you do things, you put something in front of people for them to give information,

Brian: 00:25:04

that then goes to the, Client and in B2B they've got, particularly the SaaS companies, they got a playbook, they

Brian: 00:25:12

got their M qls, they got their SQLs, they're, they got a different language.

Brian: 00:25:15

I feel like that, that they speak that consumer publishers

Brian: 00:25:18

generally do not speak, but you know, it's a little bit different.

Brian: 00:25:21

And then you got what I call like in person, like kind of sales enablement.

Brian: 00:25:25

I don't know what else to call it.

Brian: 00:25:26

Right.

Brian: 00:25:27

But like when you get into B2B, at least.

Brian: 00:25:29

In the areas I'm most familiar with, the reason that there are so many freaking events that that

Brian: 00:25:34

happen is because that's where the money is, because these companies overall are incredibly sales driven.

Brian: 00:25:44

Like the marketing is different in a lot of B2B companies, at least from what I can tell.

Brian: 00:25:50

I don't know what your experience is.

Brian: 00:25:52

I'm speaking a lot of my own.

Robert: 00:25:54

No, I mean all of that is true.

Robert: 00:25:56

I think our approach, which is not, is not bs, is to do like the healthiest version of all of those things.

Robert: 00:26:03

So we do lead gen, but we're not dependent on it and we don't give away the farm.

Robert: 00:26:08

but we provide value to some clients without abusing our audience.

Robert: 00:26:10

we do events,

Brian: 00:26:11

Do you do a de, will you do a dedicated email?

Robert: 00:26:14

We do dedicated emails with huge amounts of guardrails on them only to our B2B verticals.

Robert: 00:26:20

and because of our list sizes, we can be very disciplined with like monitoring saturation, but you know.

Robert: 00:26:27

We're probably the most conservative in the industry as far as how many we send.

Robert: 00:26:30

Uh, and then, yeah, and then we do events.

Robert: 00:26:32

And our events have become a huge part of our, our, our business model.

Robert: 00:26:36

It's also just really cool to be able to touch morning brew, like have morning brew, be live.

Robert: 00:26:40

We found people are really excited by that.

Robert: 00:26:42

But you know, it's not a, it's not a, because we have to thing, it's actually an additive gravy thing for.

Brian: 00:26:49

Yeah, I mean, you have a different kind of B2B business.

Brian: 00:26:52

I feel like B2B media business in that, and maybe this is just my,

Brian: 00:26:56

like, maybe I'm missing it, but like most are way heavier on events.

Brian: 00:27:00

I mean, you came from Biznow, like, you know, like this events industry and I mean, you guys do some events, but you

Brian: 00:27:07

know, like I came from Digiday, like it was like 85% events for a while.

Brian: 00:27:10

Like I

Robert: 00:27:11

Yeah, and, and, and that model.

Robert: 00:27:12

I, I think the dig model has become pretty unhealthy.

Robert: 00:27:15

I, I think that the, it's not set up to have good value for either side of.

Brian: 00:27:21

Explain that.

Brian: 00:27:21

Why?

Brian: 00:27:22

Why do you,

Robert: 00:27:23

I just think the ratio of decision makers that are there versus, you know,

Brian: 00:27:28

Well, your incentives come on.

Brian: 00:27:29

Your incentives are, I don't know.

Robert: 00:27:32

preventable.

Brian: 00:27:32

I, yeah, but it's hard to prevent, honestly.

Brian: 00:27:35

And like I, I feel like a lot of times, you know, there's almost like a B2B triumphalism against like B2C.

Brian: 00:27:41

It's like, well, you junk your sites up with all these autoplay videos

Brian: 00:27:45

and all these other things, and you do all this stuff for traffic.

Brian: 00:27:47

And I'm like, yeah, but you've just pounded me by 15 dedicated emails, which I call spam.

Brian: 00:27:53

Also, by the way, the 50 to 50 ratio of buyers and sellers at the event is really 70 30 vendors.

Robert: 00:27:59

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Robert: 00:28:01

But all this is a

Brian: 00:28:02

Nobody is pure.

Robert: 00:28:03

Immediate.

Robert: 00:28:03

Well, I mean we're, we're really trying to be, and, and again, I mean all those

Robert: 00:28:08

decisions get made when other parts of the business are unhealthy, is my, is my take.

Robert: 00:28:13

Like when you are dependent on a certain type of, of revenue that's maybe traffic based or something like

Robert: 00:28:18

that, and it starts going down, you start making other decisions and, and those things add up over time, can

Robert: 00:28:27

of.

Robert: 00:28:28

Not having to make those decisions.

Robert: 00:28:30

And I'm incredibly disciplined to not expose us to things like that.

Brian: 00:28:34

Yeah.

Brian: 00:28:35

Okay.

Brian: 00:28:35

So last thing on the B2B business, how much of it is the, of the overall business?

Robert: 00:28:39

I don't think I

Brian: 00:28:40

Come on.

Brian: 00:28:40

Percentage.

Brian: 00:28:41

No, axle Springer doesn't care.

Brian: 00:28:42

It's fine.

Robert: 00:28:42

No, they do care for sure.

Robert: 00:28:45

It's, it's healthy and growing.

Robert: 00:28:47

I think it is growing faster than most people probably expect, and will continue.

Brian: 00:28:55

Okay, but you're not a B two.

Brian: 00:28:56

You're not a B2B company yet.

Brian: 00:28:57

You're not a newsletter company.

Brian: 00:28:59

You're not a B2B media company.

Robert: 00:29:01

yet.

Robert: 00:29:01

It's a, it's a pretty solid mix.

Robert: 00:29:03

yeah.

Robert: 00:29:03

The newsletter is stabilized in, in a great place and then we've been able

Robert: 00:29:07

to build a ton of consumer stuff, stuff around it, which we can talk about.

Robert: 00:29:10

B2B is, is not the majority yet.

Robert: 00:29:13

It could be someday.

Robert: 00:29:14

I think that, that, that is absolutely, possible and would be exciting because I think the rest would be stable as well.

Robert: 00:29:21

The growth opportunity could be there.

Brian: 00:29:23

So let's talk about the other area of growth.

Brian: 00:29:24

At least the way I see it is like, is on the, the quote unquote, like creator and multimedia side.

Brian: 00:29:30

I mean, I think what's interesting is like the, what morning brew was built in a very interesting way.

Brian: 00:29:38

That was of the time, and I wonder if you would, if, if that it would've been built like that now.

Brian: 00:29:44

I should do one with like Austin or something.

Brian: 00:29:45

Maybe they would tell me.

Brian: 00:29:47

because now is like, you know, it's like personal brands and everything like this

Brian: 00:29:50

and, and there is like a lot of leverage in the market around the individual.

Brian: 00:29:55

There's a lot of downsides to that when it comes to, I. Enterprise value.

Brian: 00:29:59

I think about this all the time.

Brian: 00:30:00

but Morning Brew, you know, I mean, Alex started, you know, writing it, but it wasn't like Alex Lieberman's Morning Brew.

Brian: 00:30:07

I mean, Alex and Austin became sort of identified with it, but like it wasn't dependent on them.

Brian: 00:30:15

And then you can build real franchise value there.

Brian: 00:30:18

And, and that's why Axle Springer, bought Morning Brew, really.

Brian: 00:30:22

But at the same time, obviously there's been the shift, you know, from institutions to individuals and,

Brian: 00:30:27

explain how you guys think about that, particularly when it comes to expanding beyond the inbox and beyond site when

Brian: 00:30:36

it gets into these, video podcast scene when you're talking about these areas.

Brian: 00:30:42

There the, I feel like the pendulum swings a little bit more towards the individual having a lot of leverage and

Brian: 00:30:50

you can protect against that by having it be a sort of, I think a Adam White calls it like faces and franchises.

Brian: 00:30:57

It's like you've got, you've got a face, but you got a franchise because like, you know.

Brian: 00:31:02

I hope everyone stays until they retire.

Brian: 00:31:04

I hope they get the Gold watch at Morning Brew.

Brian: 00:31:06

But like the reality is, you know, you, you know, faces tend to come and go and so you want to keep franchise value.

Brian: 00:31:12

So talk to me about how you guys think about that.

Robert: 00:31:15

definitely, and those are the right words.

Robert: 00:31:16

I mean, so.

Robert: 00:31:17

On the consumer side, we, we've built a series of franchise, a portfolio of franchises, and they try to serve

Robert: 00:31:24

that Venn diagram I was talking about earlier of like, where are

Robert: 00:31:27

the interests of our users, of our, our subscribers and our viewers.

Robert: 00:31:31

Where can we double down?

Robert: 00:31:32

And, you know, we have our, our podcast, morning Brew Daily has

Robert: 00:31:36

been a massive success and that's an extension of the Morning Brew brand.

Robert: 00:31:39

Neil and Toby are, you know, beloved and they're the faces of that thing.

Robert: 00:31:44

And it's a franchise that we've delivered.

Robert: 00:31:46

We've also created these other franchises and you know, the faces that are on them are hugely important.

Robert: 00:31:54

We want to kind of support those people in their career.

Robert: 00:31:57

But it is definitely a value exchange.

Robert: 00:31:59

Like I think that really strong creators right now, it can be tough out on the street to do that on your own.

Robert: 00:32:06

And there's certainly value to being a part of a mothership like us.

Robert: 00:32:10

and our goal is to develop homegrown talent, and, and really give them their own show.

Robert: 00:32:14

So, like two great examples is Dan Toomey, who's brilliant, and like every day that he's not on SNL is a, is a blessing.

Brian: 00:32:21

fan.

Brian: 00:32:22

Dan, if you're listening, big fan.

Robert: 00:32:23

He's great.

Robert: 00:32:24

and you know, he started out doing a lot of stuff for Morning Brew the brand, and then was doing such a good job.

Robert: 00:32:29

They were trying to find the right fit for him and, and, you know, good work came to life and now he

Robert: 00:32:34

owns good work and it's, you know, it's his thing, it's our franchise.

Robert: 00:32:37

But he is, he's very much the face of it, the one I mentioned with Macy.

Robert: 00:32:42

Macy is a star.

Robert: 00:32:43

We've, you know, developed her here.

Robert: 00:32:45

She's been hugely to the company and.

Brian: 00:32:53

What is out there?

Brian: 00:32:54

What is like, so.

Robert: 00:32:55

I'm so glad you asked.

Robert: 00:32:56

yeah, it's, it's a really cool concept.

Robert: 00:32:58

So, like her whole thing is, she, she's never in the office.

Robert: 00:33:00

She's always out there showing how interesting businesses that you wish you

Robert: 00:33:04

understood how they operated, how they operate, and then the economics of them.

Robert: 00:33:08

So a couple cool examples.

Robert: 00:33:09

One, there is a hotdog vendor.

Robert: 00:33:12

He's like the number one hotdog vendor in New York City, and he's

Robert: 00:33:14

out in front of the Met in like the prime position every day.

Robert: 00:33:17

And the way he gets that prime position is he sleeps in a van in front of the Met every night.

Robert: 00:33:22

So we rented Macy a van and she slept in front of his van and then she did the

Robert: 00:33:26

whole day with him and was the top hotdog vendor in the city with him every day.

Robert: 00:33:31

And as you're going through the day and you see the lunch rush and

Robert: 00:33:33

you see people coming in all the like economics of operating that

Brian: 00:33:36

How long has he been, how long has he been sleeping in the van to do this?

Brian: 00:33:39

People in media complain about this business.

Brian: 00:33:41

I mean.

Robert: 00:33:42

he seems pretty pumped about his job too.

Robert: 00:33:44

And he was.

Robert: 00:33:44

He was super nice.

Robert: 00:33:45

Another one is, you might have remembered 'cause you're in the

Brian: 00:33:48

It also is another, it shows that distribution is, is everything.

Brian: 00:33:52

You know, you gotta get, you gotta get distribution.

Robert: 00:33:55

The other thing is, you might remember when food deliveries, there

Robert: 00:33:57

was all these like, changing policies in New York City about how to tip them.

Robert: 00:34:01

So like Uber Eats and Caviar were like taking out the tip.

Robert: 00:34:04

They were putting it before the, you know, before the transaction, after the transaction.

Robert: 00:34:07

And Macy wanted to do a video about like what this all means for the delivery drivers.

Robert: 00:34:11

So in order to do that, she strapped a GoPro to a bike and she delivered.

Robert: 00:34:15

Ramen and sandwiches around the city for a couple days and filmed it and while

Robert: 00:34:19

she was writing, she was narrating how the economics were hitting and the way.

Brian: 00:34:24

Hmm.

Robert: 00:34:28

To get back to your original question though, like I feel great

Robert: 00:34:31

about cultivating this, this talent and building these franchises.

Robert: 00:34:35

Do I think that they're all gonna be here forever?

Robert: 00:34:37

No, but most of these people that I've been mentioning have been here for 3, 4, 5 years.

Robert: 00:34:41

and, and I think that we've created a good environment for them where they get support to develop this stuff.

Robert: 00:34:47

There's a bunch of value to us, and the credibility of of the brand really helps them.

Brian: 00:34:51

And are you, you're scaling these things on, on YouTube?

Brian: 00:34:54

Mostly because I think the other

Robert: 00:34:56

Social and YouTube.

Brian: 00:34:57

social and YouTube is, and this is something I've really, I have admired

Brian: 00:35:02

about Morning Brew over the years is, you know, sometimes you can get comfortable.

Brian: 00:35:06

A lot of people are one trick ponies, right?

Brian: 00:35:08

Like, and it doesn't matter what you do.

Brian: 00:35:10

And, and I don't mean as like knock, it's just like, well it is kind of a knock, but it's it's just a reality of, of, of life.

Brian: 00:35:16

And you know, the real.

Brian: 00:35:18

The magic is when you can, you can switch lanes and you can build on what your strengths are.

Brian: 00:35:24

It's very easy to say, okay.

Brian: 00:35:27

Obviously, you know, morning Brew developed a really good email muscle, right?

Brian: 00:35:34

Gross cell I think was what like Alex and Austin talked about.

Brian: 00:35:37

Man, it just like kept it simple.

Brian: 00:35:40

Completely worked, and it's very easy.

Brian: 00:35:41

You can do that.

Brian: 00:35:42

You can just stay with that, but you gotta master other things.

Brian: 00:35:46

And I remember saying, I'm like growing a podcast compared to growing a newsletter.

Brian: 00:35:50

Totally different.

Brian: 00:35:51

And by the way, like probably five times harder at least.

Robert: 00:35:54

But we've done it.

Robert: 00:35:55

I mean, morning, morning Brew Daily is one of the biggest success

Brian: 00:35:58

Yeah.

Brian: 00:35:58

It's, but it's like, it required different muscles.

Brian: 00:36:00

Like you, you couldn't run the playbook, that, you know, that Tyler was, was doing with, with growing the newsletter.

Brian: 00:36:07

It's totally different.

Robert: 00:36:08

Yeah.

Robert: 00:36:09

Yeah.

Robert: 00:36:10

And I, I do think we're, we're pretty comfortable taking, taking bets here and, and the business is at a point now where

Robert: 00:36:16

we do have some, some veterans in seat who kind of know, know the guardrails to make

Robert: 00:36:21

sure those bets are appropriately risky, but kind of within our capabilities.

Brian: 00:36:26

Yeah, so I mean you have to get these, a lot of these creator business

Brian: 00:36:30

to a a bigger, to me it's almost like it's a bigger swing than B2B.

Brian: 00:36:34

And maybe it's 'cause I sort of understand the dynamics of B2B.

Brian: 00:36:37

'cause I'm like, you know, just like here, everything is hard in media and just probably in life

Brian: 00:36:42

that, but to me, like, you know, when you start with 4 million plus.

Brian: 00:36:48

Email subscribers to a business focused list.

Brian: 00:36:51

Like, you know, you can, you can sort it out, you gotta execute well, like on the content side and do all the rest of that.

Brian: 00:36:57

But like, you know, it's not, like moving into a totally different, particularly the dynamics are very

Brian: 00:37:05

different when you talk about these kind of creator, focused businesses on, you know, YouTube and social,

Robert: 00:37:12

Yeah, and it's the polar opposite of B2B.

Robert: 00:37:13

I mean, we're not leveraging the newsletter to build those audiences,

Robert: 00:37:17

like we're leveraging the content and the platforms in order to get there.

Brian: 00:37:21

Right, so you have less com.

Brian: 00:37:22

I guess my point is like you almost have less, fewer competitive advantages than you, you do like on the B2B side.

Robert: 00:37:29

I mean, our advantage is the, the morning rou tone, the talent we have and just kind of nailing the

Robert: 00:37:35

interest of our audience and just knowing exactly what they want, and the kind of the loyalty we have with them.

Robert: 00:37:40

And again, making the bet that they were gonna want to interact with us

Robert: 00:37:43

in other ways, like on YouTube and, and on social and with audio like.

Robert: 00:37:47

We, I think we did, and I don't get credit for this at all.

Robert: 00:37:50

I think we did nail that transition timing as well.

Robert: 00:37:53

Like you were saying, the timing was really good with the newsletter.

Robert: 00:37:55

I think the timing of launching a Morning Brew daily or deciding to

Robert: 00:37:58

go and you know, have Dan Tumi do, do videos was also really good.

Robert: 00:38:03

so now we just have to push the gas on it.

Robert: 00:38:05

And we have some really exciting ones, like one that I'm not sure you've checked out is omics.

Robert: 00:38:09

we have this guy Phil, this creator and I, I think he's one of our, one of our best, and his videos are tremendous,

Robert: 00:38:15

but he is kind of at the, the curvy part of the hockey stick, and I think

Robert: 00:38:19

about to really explode just purely because of the quality of this content.

Robert: 00:38:25

we, he had a video go out a week ago about, the epic ski pass and like all of the mountains being bought up

Robert: 00:38:31

over the last couple years and what that means for the ski industry.

Brian: 00:38:34

It's apparently cheaper.

Brian: 00:38:35

It's cheaper to go on a ski vacation to like guad in like Switzerland than it is to like Colorado now.

Robert: 00:38:43

Yeah.

Robert: 00:38:43

And he explains, he explains why, and like the weather considerations and

Brian: 00:38:47

my explanation is private equity, but maybe it's more complicated, but,

Robert: 00:38:51

no comment.

Brian: 00:38:53

nothing against private equity to any of the PE people listening.

Brian: 00:38:57

yeah.

Brian: 00:38:57

So talk to me about like, making those into like businesses though, right?

Brian: 00:39:00

I mean, you gotta, you gotta build, you know, the audience and whatnot, but it's

Brian: 00:39:04

different than, And again, this is another one, you have to learn other muscles.

Brian: 00:39:07

That's why like, I wrote a thing, it's like, you know, newsletters

Brian: 00:39:10

aren't necessarily a business, it's a, it's a distribution channel.

Brian: 00:39:13

'cause you

Robert: 00:39:13

So we had to.

Brian: 00:39:14

build different muscles and you, you monetize differently.

Brian: 00:39:16

So how, talk to me about that.

Robert: 00:39:18

Yeah, we had to rethink aspects of the revenue world.

Robert: 00:39:21

So, you know, we never had a, a defined lifestyle focus.

Robert: 00:39:26

so we, you know, our, our sales team has broken up into a couple verticals,

Robert: 00:39:29

and one of the verticals that we really pushed last year is this lifestyle team.

Robert: 00:39:33

To, to all of the consumer products that we just got done talking about.

Robert: 00:39:37

So, you know, bringing in advertisers in travel and.

Robert: 00:39:43

Package new products and things like that.

Robert: 00:39:45

And that was not a muscle that we really had.

Robert: 00:39:47

So we brought in, a director for that team that came from busell.

Robert: 00:39:51

we brought in sellers that were at companies like Wall Street Journal and, and other more consumer facing

Robert: 00:39:57

publications that were used to selling multimedia and that had, kind of knowledge of how to sell those types of clients.

Robert: 00:40:03

And then we just.

Robert: 00:40:05

Started chopping wood and, and like learning what we learning.

Robert: 00:40:07

And we didn't have the right products at first.

Robert: 00:40:09

Like when we brought in that director, you know, she, she's incredibly good at what she does and I think the first

Robert: 00:40:14

couple months she had to come to me all the time and be like, we don't have what they're gonna wanna buy.

Robert: 00:40:17

Like, we have to think about our data differently, or we need this type of targeting.

Robert: 00:40:21

And it was, a little bit of learning to swim in the middle of the ocean just to like get those things going quickly.

Robert: 00:40:27

But.

Robert: 00:40:28

We're, we're a small company, we're like 220 people.

Robert: 00:40:31

We, we can move pretty fast.

Robert: 00:40:33

So last year was really about that bobbing and weaving to get the lifestyle team, and other groups that

Robert: 00:40:39

were gonna sell into this consumer stuff in an even better place.

Robert: 00:40:42

Because as you know, in media, there's this like.

Robert: 00:40:45

Ever changing chase of supply and demand.

Robert: 00:40:48

Like sometimes your content is crushing, but you're not monetizing it, and

Robert: 00:40:51

sometimes your sales team is doing amazing and you, you don't have the right content.

Robert: 00:40:54

We scaled engagement on the multimedia side last year by like, or the previous year into last year by like 125%.

Robert: 00:41:02

Like the way people engaged with Morning Brew just jumped to Infeed video, YouTube

Robert: 00:41:09

audio, and the, what we raced to do last year was to catch up with that.

Robert: 00:41:15

To build ad products and hire people that knew how to, to leverage that new engagement and, and monetize it.

Robert: 00:41:21

And then this year is just about executing and, and, and hitting it.

Brian: 00:41:24

Yeah.

Brian: 00:41:25

talk to me about direct revenue.

Brian: 00:41:26

'cause that doesn't seem like a ma a major part.

Brian: 00:41:28

Maybe I'm missing it.

Brian: 00:41:29

I mean, maybe you sell some events tickets, but like it's, it

Robert: 00:41:32

What do you mean by, wait?

Robert: 00:41:33

How do you define direct?

Robert: 00:41:34

Everything we do is direct.

Brian: 00:41:35

Oh, no, no, no.

Brian: 00:41:36

I meant like direct from the audience, like consumer

Robert: 00:41:39

like paid?

Robert: 00:41:39

Oh, yeah.

Brian: 00:41:40

Like paying for subscriptions, memberships to, you know, there's, you know, not through an advertiser, whether

Brian: 00:41:46

that, I know you don't do programmatic, but like, you know, I, I don't know.

Brian: 00:41:51

I, I didn't check, I didn't check the stock market today, but it's probably down.

Brian: 00:41:54

That's my guess.

Brian: 00:41:55

you know, the, the chances of recession are going up and, you

Brian: 00:41:58

know, we all know what happens at a recession, you know, the, the.

Brian: 00:42:01

People rush to adage to, to do.

Brian: 00:42:03

The worst thing you could do is cut your budgets of the recession and all the CFOs, they cut the budgets.

Brian: 00:42:08

and you know, the reality of any kind of a advertising business is, it can be

Brian: 00:42:13

lumpy, it can be, you know, there's a lot of stuff outside of your control.

Brian: 00:42:17

It's like Q4 is great, like Q1.

Brian: 00:42:19

Hmm.

Brian: 00:42:19

Um, and.

Brian: 00:42:21

In the weight of the overall media business, a lot of people are moving, you know, are trying to, particularly

Brian: 00:42:28

if they're in, in verticals and niches to move to, direct to consumer revenue.

Robert: 00:42:33

Yeah.

Robert: 00:42:34

Couple different questions in there.

Robert: 00:42:36

First one on.

Robert: 00:42:37

Our audience paying us for things or, or what you're defining as direct?

Robert: 00:42:40

We don't do a lot.

Robert: 00:42:40

I mean, we, we sell tickets to our events, at a, a reasonable rate.

Robert: 00:42:44

And we have a couple products, like we, we have, our money with Kad franchise has a, a wealth planner that comes

Robert: 00:42:51

out once a year that is like the most robust spreadsheet you've ever seen.

Robert: 00:42:55

just helps you like plan out your finances and, and people pay about $60 each for that.

Robert: 00:42:59

we debuted a crossword puzzle in Q4 book, crossword puzzle book 'cause people liked our crossword so much and we that for,

Robert: 00:43:06

we have a couple things like that, but it's not a huge part of the business.

Robert: 00:43:09

it could be more.

Robert: 00:43:10

To go to your other question on the recession, I mean, I've been through, been through a couple ups and downs and I

Robert: 00:43:17

think that the best defense is optionality and if I've done anything in the last

Robert: 00:43:22

two years here, is to build a lot of different paths to hitting revenue goals.

Robert: 00:43:27

And Morning Brew is very fortunate that we're not dependent on any one big industry.

Robert: 00:43:32

We, we serve finance, we serve lifestyle.

Robert: 00:43:35

We have seven different B2B verticals.

Robert: 00:43:37

Within those seven B2B verticals, there's 10 each of sub-verticals, that are all spending.

Robert: 00:43:43

So it would have to be a pretty wholesale halt for us to feel major pain.

Robert: 00:43:49

and I'm obviously doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes to make sure that, that we are protected.

Brian: 00:43:54

But to go back to the subscriptions, like why not go down?

Brian: 00:43:56

I mean, it's a, it's a normal part of a, of, of.

Brian: 00:44:00

Almost most like B2B media models.

Brian: 00:44:03

There's, you know, look there, there's no, I think we, you mentioned Sean before, Sean Griffey, the, the,

Brian: 00:44:08

the, the founder of, I guess he was a co-founder of, of Industry dive.

Brian: 00:44:12

you know, they did great without, they did great.

Brian: 00:44:13

They did great in B2B media without, without subscriptions, without events.

Brian: 00:44:17

It's like, wow.

Robert: 00:44:18

yeah, yeah.

Robert: 00:44:19

He did a tremendous

Brian: 00:44:19

there's a lot of different ways to succeed and it's not like everything needs to be subscriptions and, but I.

Robert: 00:44:25

I would agree.

Robert: 00:44:26

It's timing.

Robert: 00:44:27

It's like everything else, like I, I haven't.

Brian: 00:44:29

Sequence.

Robert: 00:44:30

It's a sequence and I, we have so much loyalty with our audience.

Robert: 00:44:33

It's, it's kind of like the ultimate lever to pull, to be like, most of you should now pay us money for something.

Robert: 00:44:38

The value exchange of doing that I will wanna make sure is, is clear.

Robert: 00:44:44

Like, what are we providing them, besides just access to something they already had access to.

Robert: 00:44:49

which I think is a lot of times the model that, that has been implemented.

Robert: 00:44:52

so I think when the timing is right to do that, we'll, we'll do it.

Robert: 00:44:55

It's, it's not today.

Brian: 00:44:57

Yeah.

Brian: 00:44:57

Tell me about some of the ancillary business, because I, I didn't, I I didn't actually know about like a couple of them.

Brian: 00:45:03

you have like a, a data, like an insights business.

Brian: 00:45:07

What is, what is that?

Robert: 00:45:09

We have one of our biggest secret weapons, which I hope.

Robert: 00:45:12

Someday you'll have me back on and I'll talk about how incredibly

Robert: 00:45:15

profitable it is and how it's grown is our data and insights team.

Robert: 00:45:18

I, I think it's one of the things I, I would've just loved to have at like five other companies before this, and

Robert: 00:45:24

I couldn't believe when I got under the hood that they have, but we have this really capable and not huge but

Robert: 00:45:30

capable data insights team that can basically go out to our audience and get first party feedback on anything and.

Robert: 00:45:40

We can get 20, 30,000 people to fill out a survey in, in a couple days, which is wild.

Robert: 00:45:46

coming from, you know,

Brian: 00:45:47

You just, you just email them and they'll, they'll fill it out?

Brian: 00:45:50

Or do you have some sort of incentive

Robert: 00:45:51

We, we, we email them.

Robert: 00:45:53

We also, without getting into too much detail, 'cause we haven't launched it, launched it yet.

Robert: 00:45:57

We have basically a, a room if you will, where they all are opt-in

Robert: 00:46:02

participants and are excited to give feedback to Morning Brew.

Robert: 00:46:05

And we can basically step into that focus group and ask them questions whenever we feel like it.

Robert: 00:46:09

And we also have the ability to, to kind of do lots of custom research to, to the whole audience.

Robert: 00:46:14

So most of the time though, Brian, it's leveraged in presale in order to win and convince clients that, you know,

Robert: 00:46:23

we, we hold their audience and, and that they are, you know, very active with

Brian: 00:46:26

Okay, so you haven't so much, I mean, that's like a typ, you haven't like productized it as,

Robert: 00:46:31

have, we have products.

Robert: 00:46:33

I just think there's way more opportunity there.

Robert: 00:46:34

we do, we do paid research and companies like Apple have paid us to do paid

Robert: 00:46:38

research, but we are using it for a lot of blocking and tackling as well.

Robert: 00:46:43

I think that there's more opportunity to do more paid research, and because of

Robert: 00:46:47

the audience we have, it could be a huge advantage that hasn't yet been tapped.

Brian: 00:46:51

Okay.

Brian: 00:46:52

Got it.

Brian: 00:46:53

so final thing is, is, is I'm always interested in media

Brian: 00:46:58

brands that start out with a particularly like age cohort, right?

Brian: 00:47:04

Like, and they become synonymous a little bit with it.

Brian: 00:47:07

Sometimes I. People probably lean too far into it.

Brian: 00:47:11

I, I'm not saying probably they do in my view, because you kind of get stuck.

Brian: 00:47:15

It's like, am I gonna, are we gonna age up with our audience?

Brian: 00:47:18

Are we gonna like cycle through them?

Brian: 00:47:20

I mean, I think in some ways the skim might have gotten like caught in that it's like they were talking

Brian: 00:47:26

about like, you know, young women and then they've got kids and like they've got different interests.

Brian: 00:47:32

Like, and then it's like, okay, what are we about?

Brian: 00:47:33

Like.

Brian: 00:47:34

Young moms now are, and I think there's a, a challenge to that is, is, is Morning Boost, is it a millennial brand?

Brian: 00:47:43

Is it a Gen Z brand?

Brian: 00:47:44

Is it just a business

Robert: 00:47:46

well, funny enough.

Robert: 00:47:47

Today is our 10 year anniversary, like literally today.

Robert: 00:47:50

so I think that's an important, that's an important data point to keep in mind.

Robert: 00:47:53

Like I do think that people have grown up.

Robert: 00:47:56

With Morning Brew, a lot of people, like, I, I actually looked back yesterday 'cause I was doing, a toast with,

Robert: 00:48:02

with the team and I subscribed to it seven years ago and I looked back at

Robert: 00:48:06

that first issue and like who was the advertiser and, and stuff like that.

Robert: 00:48:10

and I was just like, man, like a lot of us have grown up.

Robert: 00:48:13

A lot in the last seven, 10 years with this.

Robert: 00:48:16

And the company has changed from just being that newsletter in a lot of way to, to continue to provide more content.

Robert: 00:48:21

So like we went heavy into personal investing last year and we launched brew markets.

Robert: 00:48:26

we launched after earnings, things that.

Robert: 00:48:29

Go with you when you're a little bit older.

Robert: 00:48:31

So point being, I, I think that we have scaled the kind of content of the company.

Robert: 00:48:34

I also just think the morning T tone is something that like my parents read and love and their friends love, that

Robert: 00:48:40

college kids love, like it is kind of a sweet spot that I think can transcend our audience as we market it is younger,

Robert: 00:48:48

affluent, up and coming professionals, but that's probably defined as like 18 to 45.

Robert: 00:48:54

and it's a, it's a broad range.

Brian: 00:48:56

Yeah.

Robert: 00:48:57

We haven't been like niched into one.

Robert: 00:48:59

I don't think you can tell me

Brian: 00:49:00

No.

Brian: 00:49:00

So I, I, I, this is sort of a leading question to, to end on Rah, because like yesterday I didn't prepare you for this.

Brian: 00:49:07

I got, I just happened to get a text message from my mother.

Brian: 00:49:11

I. That said, do you know anything about the website, morning Brew for News?

Robert: 00:49:17

Mom.

Robert: 00:49:19

That's awesome.

Brian: 00:49:20

I, I said, I said, oh yeah, I'm doing a podcast, tomorrow with the CEO as it have, you know.

Brian: 00:49:25

And I said, you know, it's a bit for young people, mom.

Robert: 00:49:30

but it's not.

Brian: 00:49:30

she said, let them know.

Brian: 00:49:32

She uses them, so she's very progressive.

Brian: 00:49:35

Let them know that your 80 plus year old mother is signed is signed on, so I'm letting you know

Robert: 00:49:41

I love it.

Robert: 00:49:42

Yeah, I do.

Robert: 00:49:43

I do think our tone is from college student to mom friendly.

Brian: 00:49:47

it's a Pelican Preserve retirement

Robert: 00:49:49

but tell your mom thank you, and I'll definitely send her some merch if she wants.

Brian: 00:49:52

Yeah, definitely stickers and everything for a laptop.

Brian: 00:49:56

Okay, thanks Robert.

Brian: 00:49:57

This is great.

Brian: 00:49:58

Really appreciate you doing it.

Robert: 00:49:59

thank you.