Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're to startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. All right. Welcome to episode two 49
Speaker 1 00:00:23 Kind of rogue startups. Wow. We're up there, Craig? Yeah. Yeah. We're,
Speaker 2 00:00:27 We're getting close to being big boy podcasters at this point, right.
Speaker 1 00:00:30 You only become a big boy at two 50, otherwise it's just sorta like, you know, uh, a teenager or maybe a twin.
Speaker 2 00:00:37 Uh, I was on a, I was on an, uh, a podcast about podcasting and they were asking me about, um, for our podcast at, at Castillo's called audience. We are on like episode 80 or something like that. And they're like, oh, how does it feel to, you know, finally be kind of like over the hump or something. And I was like, you know, I have this other show. I'm like 250 episodes. And they're like, well, that's crazy. I can't believe it. I was like, yeah, well it's been six years, you know, five and a half years or whatever. So it's, it's crazy, man. I can't believe it sometimes. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1 00:01:07 Just, you know, I pop into startups for the rest of us, uh, here and there. I don't, uh, I don't listen regularly, but, um, I was listening to the one recently with Rob and, uh, Rubin, I think. Hmm. Is that right? Well, anyway, so I was listening, I was listening to start us with the rest of us recently. It was like 549. I was like, holy shit, because I'm not really paying attention to the episode numbers when I'm listening, I'm just going in for the content. And then I like looked at the number and I'm like, damn, okay. We're amateurs.
Speaker 2 00:01:42 Yep. Tough to catch up there. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1 00:01:44 Think it's going to happen until, uh, you know, Rob decides to drop it and I don't see that happening anytime soon. So
Speaker 2 00:01:50 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:01:52 It's just a process. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:01:56 Yep. Yep. So what's going on this week? Yeah. I mean a lot, you know, it's, it's, uh, I, I thought we could talk about two things that we've done recently as it relates to acquisitions, uh, and maybe kind of like why we've done it and how we think about, you know, whether acquisitions are a good idea and kind of how we're thinking about it, fitting into our, our kind of strategy going forward. If that's interesting to anybody else in Dave, if that's cool to talk about, uh,
Speaker 1 00:02:26 I'm, I'm interested. So, you know, you've got an audience of one at least.
Speaker 2 00:02:31 Yeah. Right on. So, um, so, so we made an announcement about an acquisition of a podcast, a couple of, uh, about a month ago, the podcast is called three clips and it's run by Jay <inaudible>. Uh, so folks who are in kind of the podcasting and content creator space pretty heavily probably know of Jay. Uh, he's been, you know, podcasting doing like content and brand stuff, um, for like VC companies. And, uh, it is kind of really on the, on the bandwagon of like, you can create a really great podcast and you don't have to be Gimlet media or NPR and have like this role of like 40 people contributing to a podcast episode. You can do it by yourself with, you know, these tactics and strategies and, and ways to think about creating content. And so Matt and I have been following what Jay's been doing for a long time, know him, pretty decently he's, uh, close to Matt up in the Boston area.
Speaker 2 00:03:29 And, you know, kind of saw a mentioned our audience podcast, but saw three clips as like the, the graduation of, of how, uh, someone could kind of come into our world and start listening to audience, kind of get what Matt and I are saying there in terms of like a lot of the nuts and bolts, blue collar stuff of like how to podcast and then when they get really serious or are people that are already really serious about content would naturally kind of gravitate to Jay and the messaging that he has there. And so in a way, like attracting more of our ideal customer people that are really serious about creating really great content, because those are just like less price sensitive, more sticky customers that appreciate hopefully a lot of like the feature richness of the platform. So yeah, we were talking to Jay about like, you know, Hey, we should do some stuff together and co-marketing and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 00:04:24 And then it kind of came up like, Hey, what if like we acquire the podcast, you stay on this as the host run. It just like you have, but it kind of be under the Castillo's brand. And so that's, that's where we are. It was, it was really easy, you know, Jay's like really great. And it was like pretty cut and dry, but it's cool to be able to, you know, attach our name to such a really like highly respected person and piece of content that that's kind of ongoing and we're hoping, and it's already kind of showing that, like, it brings people into our world that we wouldn't kind of be exposed to otherwise. So that's, that's kind of the story of the first one. Wow. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:05:02 That's a lot to unpack, uh, first congratulations. That's amazing. Second how, I mean, you know, I, I've not been familiar with Jay's work before, so I don't know when you're a quite, you know, I'm used to acquiring businesses on things like income and revenue and, you know, whatever that thing that business is generating. So I presume that Jay must be generating something for you to pay him, to acquire the podcast, or if that's not the case. And I don't want to hear numbers obviously, but how did that work? Like how did you figure that piece out? Cause that, you know, my brain is kind of seizing up around that.
Speaker 2 00:05:45 Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that, uh, the, the, the ability to, uh, to put a price tag on something that, uh, it did make money, we have kind of like since the acquisition turned the ads off on the podcast too, to promote ourselves, but we'll probably start doing advertising on the show later on with kind of related, you know, podcast or content creator kind of related sponsors. But for now we're, we're sponsoring the show, but, but we didn't, uh, like a signup of value to the podcast and Jay's time because we're paying Jay to, to create the content. Now he's on retainer basically with us on an ongoing basis for at least the next year based on, on kind of like the revenue of the podcast, but more so, you know, the value of it as an asset, to, to us as a company, pretty arbitrary. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:06:38 You kind of took, so this wasn't a Joe Rogan deal. You didn't pay him $10 million. We did not pay him
Speaker 2 00:06:43 $10 million. No, it would be so
Speaker 1 00:06:45 Nice if you had $10 million laying around and that Jay's content was worth $10 million and that, you know, this could be the kind of your Spotify moment here, but, you know, we're, we're a bootstrapper so that's not going to happen. That's right. Yeah. But I mean, that's still really cool. So, all right. So there was this revenue stream and you guys talked about what that revenue stream was worse than basically you paid Jay some, you know, I don't know multiple of that and said, all right, you're now creating content for the cast brand. So who were the advertisers that were on there before? Were they other competitive competing podcast services or other stuff? Cause you said you shut the ads off. So I, that, that, that strikes me as a little bit confusing because you know, you had this revenue stream over here. So normally I would think you'd want to keep the revenue stream flowing or maybe tweak it a little bit, but not
Speaker 2 00:07:36 Just cut it off. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think you can look at it one of two ways. One is like, this is a thing that can make money directly for us. And this applies to all podcasts, right? We could charge money for people to advertise on our podcast, or we can use it as a marketing tool for our brands. Our personal brands is what ends up being for you. And I, and we think of, of this podcast, the same way for, for <inaudible> is we could charge money for advertising, uh, and make some money and, you know, maybe make enough to pay Jay for his time every month, or we can not have those other brands kind of interfering with the messaging of the podcast and have us sponsored essentially tropical MBA guys do this a lot where we are the advertisers for the show, the cast us messaging is heavily embedded while keeping things authentic, but the cast does messaging and talking points and announcements and things like that, or are kind of threaded throughout the podcast and every episode.
Speaker 2 00:08:36 And so we chose that because like, and I think this is the math that a lot of people do is you could say, okay, we can make, so you can make $500 an episode per podcast or, or like per month, or, you know, we could go get 10 or 50 or a hundred new customers from us being the sponsors of the podcast. And that's, that's the, uh, hypothesis that we're going through at this point is that, you know, instead of directly monetizing the podcast through selling sponsorships where the sponsor of the show, keep it nice and clean. So from like a brand perspective, so that, you know, cast us is a brand benefits from being attached to, you know, this entity of the three clips podcast. Gotcha. All right.
Speaker 1 00:09:18 So this is basically opening up an we'll call it a paid acquisition channel.
Speaker 2 00:09:22 Yeah. It's content marketing, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1 00:09:25 A, it's another form of content marketing. Yeah. Yep. Very cool. Very cool. And what are they the, uh, the short and medium term plans at this point?
Speaker 2 00:09:34 Yeah, so the short-term plan is just to not mess anything up is to get everything over, change those thing, all this, you know, get the website built and everything for it and, and can not mess it up. And then, you know, Jay is, is like a professional content creator and, you know, Matt, if Matt's listening much better than Matt or I at this kind of stuff. And so we very much try to just say like, Jay, you run with the show, um, here are kind of the talking points that we would love to hear you talk about when you, you know, mentioned Castillo's, you know, private podcasting and analytics and, you know, WordPress and all these, you know, things that we, that we try to to do as a brand, um, is to, to kind of have, you know, themes and talking points for him to mention in each episode, just to kind of get the Castillo's brand embedded into the podcast and the audience familiar with it.
Speaker 2 00:10:26 And I think as we go along to, to kind of like the medium term plans is for the podcast and Jay to, to kind of continue to be an outlet through which we announced new features to like that really premium audience. Right. Cause they're, again, like our best customers are listening to that show. And for us to cross promote three clips with all the other stuff we're already doing, like our podcast and on our blog and in our academy and in our newsletter and stuff like that. So kind of being able to cross promote and cross sell a little bit, uh, across all the different avenues that we have. Cause now we have like, you know, five or six different places that we are publishing content and, and need to, and want to, you know, cross promote all those amongst those outlets. So, so that's kind of the medium term plan. Cool. Very
Speaker 1 00:11:13 Exciting, very exciting. And what challenges do you see ahead at this point that you've got to work to, you know, figure out, overcome whatever?
Speaker 2 00:11:26 Yeah. I mean, I think that the, the obvious one is kind of like making this financially worth it for us. And I think it's a little, uh, fuzzy to, to, to be able to tell like in the short term, um, but, but I think that, you know, our ability to, in a genuine way kind of weave the casitas messaging into the three clips podcast and kind of again, like sharing that our message with that audience is the goal. And so if we're able to do that, then the hypothesis is that that will return to us brand equity and customers. Um, and so I think the challenge is at this point, we're only about a month into it. So it's too early to tell, you know, for sure, but have definitely had calls with customers that we wouldn't have had calls with otherwise who say, Hey, I heard about you through the three clips podcasts with Jay. I know Jay, for a long time, we're looking to do this thing. Can you guys help us? So we're already seeing it from an interest perspective paying off. And I think the, the goal at this point is how can we take, you know, that, that kind of beginning momentum and turn it into like a scalable, repeatable channel, um, to, to, you know, drive business value.
Speaker 1 00:12:40 Very nice. Very cool. I'm super excited for you, my friend.
Speaker 2 00:12:45 Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. It's cool. I mean, I think that, um, we have some other things that we're thinking about, um, from like a original content perspective and, uh, it'll be interesting to see how those go in the next few months, but I mean, I think for, for us, you know, marketing through podcasting is a natural thing for our audience, you know? And, and so it's just a matter of us doing it in a way that makes business sense. Um, because think you can just go create a bunch of content and it never have any chance of paying you back for it. Um, but I think this one is really closely aligned with who we are and what we do and kind of who our ideal customers are. Um, and so I think it has the most chance of, of being successful. So, yeah. Awesome.
Speaker 2 00:13:27 Awesome. Looking forward to see how it turns out. Yeah, me too. So, so the other kind of news we have is, goes back like, um, about two years, about two years ago, I had this idea like, Hey, there's a bunch of players in the podcasting space. What if, you know, we got together a handful of like the smaller players and the term, and like the MNA space is rolled them up, you know, acquired a couple of smaller players so that, you know, we cast dos was a bigger player, uh, growing by way of acquisition and had a handful of these conversations. Like two summers ago, nothing happened with them. And I kind of stayed in touch with most of those folks, uh, in the last couple of years and then got an email like completely out of the blue from one of the founders, like, uh, almost two weeks ago now, Hey, um, I am ready to sell this.
Speaker 2 00:14:24 I want to sell it right now. Um, I'm, you know, I'm kind of done with it, right? Like that they were just kind of at a spot in the business where it wasn't really enough to like live off of and hire a team. And like the space we're in is really competitive right now and a bunch of stuff happening in money entering and new players, all this kind of stuff. And so mark from potent, uh, emailed him and she's like, Hey, look, I just like, I'm done. I just want to be done with this. Uh, I would like the cell podium to cast us and, and this is what I would like to sell it for. And, and so we did so, so Casos acquired a, uh, a competitor, another podcast hosting platform called podium, podium.co, and an interestingly. And I think it's good overall. And as I'm saying this, like this, these two things, couldn't be different, more different, but, but, um, so-so, we're, we're acquiring potent, which is like a direct competitor and we're acquiring just the customers. So we'll, we'll kind of own the domain and the customers we migrated to cast us. And then the technology itself is getting shut down in about a month. Yeah. And so,
Speaker 1 00:15:39 Because I saw on Twitter yesterday,
Speaker 2 00:15:42 This is the news. Yup, yup. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:15:46 So it was confusing at first because the, you know, in my Twitter feed that popped up through tiny seed and I thought for a second, I'm like podium, are they a tiny, I think in the tiny seed batch, did I miss that somewhere? And of course that wasn't it. They were announcing that you had, you know, cause you are a tiny seed company, so they were announcing that you had acquired them. So I was like, oh, well, we've got something exciting to talk about. So that's pretty cool. How far into this, are you, have you like talked to the customers yet? Are they,
Speaker 2 00:16:17 How do they feel it's gone really well. Yeah. So we announced it yesterday and the, the kind of strategy was, um, mark from Bowden wrote a blog post, um, which we had, you know, some, some kind of editorial, uh, you know, kind of privileged to before he published it and an email which basically just pointed to blog posts. We did the same thing. Our email was a lot more personal and kind of descriptive of, of, Hey, here's, what's happening. Here's what to expect. Here's who we are. Here's kind of what we stand for. Here's about our company. Um, and then the blog post was, was a little more about like, Hey, this is what to expect from Castillo's, you know, features and benefits and things like that. And so it's been about a day and the so far, right. Knock on wood, the, the response has been really solid.
Speaker 2 00:17:06 We've had, we've had a few really good questions from customers about like, Hey, you know, how does this work? Or what about this or what, but, but we tried and put a lot of thought into being really intentional about over-communicating with those customers, because, you know, they're, they're going to be migrated to another platform. And our goal with all of this is to have as little kind of effect on, on them and their publishing and their podcasts, and certainly their listeners as possible. And we're doing a bunch of work to, to make that happen kind of on our end and, and mark on his end. And that was very much part of the deal so that, you know, Hey, we're going to go do all this heavy lifting and kind of legwork behind the scenes so that you basically, you know, one day you'll still be publishing over here. And then the next day you'll publish on Castro's and everything else will be seamless. So, you know, I think that as we can fulfill that promise, then, then everything will be good. And, and that's a, that's a lot of what we're banking on, but just so far so good. That's very
Speaker 1 00:18:08 Impressive. So that, you know, I had a similar experience with, you know, partnerships. It just takes a long time for some things to come to fruition. And I think acquisitions and partnerships, both, it's all a question of timing. If it's not right for both sides, then Jack shit will happen. But you know, the second that it is, right, bam, it all just comes right down and moves at a million miles an hour, based on my experience. Otherwise you feel like you're just pushing a rock up hill forever.
Speaker 2 00:18:38 Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I, I think something that's, that's really worth like adding to that is like, you only get the opportunity to do this because you're a good person and you're honest and you're open and you communicate and you, you know, want the best for, you know, the industry and the people in it. There are people in the MNA space, I think that are, you know, blood thirsty, hungry jackasses. Right. And, and like you said, less than scrupulous, but sure. Okay. And those people are never the ones that, you know, mark would call to say, Hey, look, I want a smooth transition. I want to take care of my customers. I need a good place for them. I know you we've talked a lot, you know, and I have a good feeling about, you know, handing my customers over to you. So I mean, that, that is, you know, something that I always kind of knew that like I do, and I hope that I am and that our brand as an everything, but, but it really kind of hit home that like, even now in the digital age and, you know, living abroad and working remotely and stuff like that, like it all kind of comes back to like people skills, you know, and like developing really good relationships with people that, that you may one day work with.
Speaker 2 00:19:49 But even if you don't like this, you know, it's still good to just kind of be friendly with them. So yeah, that was, it was good to kind of drive that home. Like,
Speaker 1 00:19:58 You know, everything you needed to know, you learned in kindergarten, number one, don't do this, you know, nobody, nobody wants you to throwing sand in their face. Uh, that's good. Wow. Exciting. Very exciting week for you. Very busy. I can see why you're a bit overwhelmed
Speaker 2 00:20:16 Right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There there's just a lot going on and there's, there's other stuff going on that I can't talk about right now. That's just like, just as stressful, but I mean, it's all, it's all good. I mean, the cool thing is like, I've kind of felt for a long time. Like there's just a lot going on in our space, you know, and you probably feel like this with like e-commerce. And I saw a blog post day about SMS marketing and like, I feel like kind of the spaces we're in, there's just a lot going on. And if we can just participate in the fact that there's a lot going on and these markets that like that that's really good for us. You know, I think if I was in a market where it wasn't really dynamic, I would be more worried because then you, you might not know like what direction to taken and what to do, you know, but in these places where there's just a lot going on, like, I think it's, it's almost easier to say like, cool, we're we're going with the flow of the market. I don't know that, that, that might be weird thing to say, well,
Speaker 1 00:21:16 In some ways it's more challenging because like with e-commerce, there is so much shit going on. Sometimes you can get distracted. So I remember a couple of years ago that everybody was talking about certain trends in e-commerce about VR commerce and some other stuff along with all of the other things that were going on. Plus, you know, there's the thing that isn't necessarily talked about at the same time or all the things that are going and working in that everybody's doing, but are kind of commonplace. Email marketing kind of fits into that a little bit. I mean, people are talking about it, but it's never like a hot news topic. It's always about like, here's a, how to, let's talk about black Friday campaigns. Let's talk about this, but nobody's ever like, Hey, we've got a new email marketing service and it's just like everybody else's and we send emails, you know, like nobody talks about that, but you know, people are like, Hey, there's a new VR thing.
Speaker 1 00:22:15 And so everybody can like pile on to that and be like, Ooh, cool, VR, let me see what that looks like. You know, I'll do the shopping experience where I can take furniture and move it around my virtual living room. And yes, there's tons and tons of energy in there, but sometimes it's just as important to like stay focused and not get distracted with all these shiny objects that are going on. I would rather have a market where there are lots of shiny objects and I have to decide which of these shiny objects is the most important instead of a market where there are zero shiny objects or one shiny object. And there's just not much else to talk about. Like I enjoy the fact that there's that vibrance in, in the e-commerce market and I would have it no other way.
Speaker 2 00:22:56 Yup. Yup, absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. I think that the, the challenge of, you know, picking the direction that, that your product and the company go in is, is tough sometimes, you know, but, but yeah, I would rather have that than say, okay, we're all going to talk about this one thing for the next five years. I mean, I can remember back in corporate world that that's how it was. And it's like, golly, to talk about the one same thing that your competitors are talking about all the time was just exhausting and like, there's, it's tough to win with that. Yeah. I'm, I'm thankful that we have enough different stuff to talk about in our industries that, that it's not everybody talking about the same thing all the time. So that was more of an update than I wanted to give, but I thought it was, you know, one niche that we're really excited about both of these acquisitions and kind of wanted to share some of the background of both of them with folks. Um, but I've talked a lot. So Dave, what is going on with recapture and in your world?
Speaker 1 00:23:51 Well, uh, I have several exciting things, sort of in-flight here. One of which I'm going to announce next week on our podcast. It will be an exclusive here, so get ready for it. It's big. It's huge. And that's all I'm going to say about that for now, but yes, it's very big. Yes. I didn't want to, co-opt your news here today? So we'll save that one for next week when everything is signed, sealed and delivered. Okay. But, uh, yeah, for recapture right now, I am in the throws of hiring writers and I say writers, plural, when I'm really just trying to go for one. And so I threw up a job posting on pro blogger.com and I got 40 some odd applications. And of those 40 applications, there were about 13 that were worth a damn based on, you know, I put up, I used your template.
Speaker 1 00:24:53 So I put up some things that force them to actually write some answers. And there were obvious things that just made me discard them. Like if they didn't answer all the questions that was an automatic discard. And if they answered the questions, but you know, they use like one word answers or two word answers. I'm like, that was an automatic discard. Cause I'm like, you're you're, this is your opportunity to communicate with me, go for it. So I threw out a huge number of those, but then there were 13 that were pretty decent. So then I emailed all of those. Interestingly, I only heard back from sick.
Speaker 2 00:25:25 Oh, you emailed 13. Only heard back from six. Yeah. Yeah. That was interesting. Yeah. So
Speaker 1 00:25:31 I don't know what happened there, but yeah. So, you know, that helped call the list even further of the remaining six. I, you know, ask them some more questions. And then I said, let's do a test article together. And I gave him a set price, a couple of them, you know, that was it. They were done at that point because they charge more than that. And I'm like, great, that's fine. That it's out of my budget. It's not a fit with you. That's perfectly. Okay. So I still got them.
Speaker 2 00:26:01 Sure. Like at what point, like percentage wise, did you say that's beyond my budget? Like, cause, cause we did a similar thing as a one was like 50 bucks difference and I was like, okay, 50 bucks is, you know, whatever for a good writer. That's, that's nothing like, did you say no after like a 30% overage or a hundred percent or what? Um,
Speaker 1 00:26:19 I went up to 33% over my price. Okay. Okay. And I said, because of my original, which so I'll just throw out the numbers. My budget was 300 per cause I'm, I'm doing multiples of these and I'm trying to find, you know, somebody who can churn out a decent amount of content at 2000 words a month. So a 2000 words, an article, excuse me. And so I said 300 bucks, 2000 words, and a couple of them came back and said, Hmm, how about 400? And I'm like, all right, we can try it. So, but my hypothesis is, if you're going to charge me 33% more than you'd better be at least 33% better than, than everybody else. And if their articles are on par with somebody who's charging me 300 a month, they're automatically out. So it's like, it's kind of a self-selecting thing. I got two of them at that point.
Speaker 1 00:27:12 And if their stuff isn't like head and shoulders above others, you know, then they're off they're, I'm not gonna, uh, I'm not going to hire him. So I've got four of them that are out there doing articles. And it's kind of interesting, you know, I'm getting a whole gamut of responses in terms of so, well, let me, let me set this up a little bit better. So I started out and I said, all right, I want you to write an article and I want you to use this keyword. And it was pretty obvious keyword for my space. And I said, I want this to be a unique take on this because it was a keyword. That is, it was, you know, because it's so common in my space. It's also probably a bit challenging to write for. Um, so I gave it to them to say, show me a different angle about this.
Speaker 1 00:27:57 Cause I know the angle that everybody would take on this. If I just assigned it to you and said, I'm going to pay you for this. I want something that stands out. I don't want it to be the same. And that was my challenge to all of them. And then some of them came back and said, well, well, what is it you want me to write about? Like, you know, if I give you an outline, are you going to approve it? I'm like, no, I want you to give me your take on this. This is a hundred percent you show me what you can do. I'm basically giving them free reign to show off how you know, and I've, and I've told them what, like tone and style I want, you know, I want something that's, you know, kind of like what Lianna patch does, you know, conversational, humorous, irreverent off the wall, memorable, fun, you know, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 00:28:48 So, but I can't afford Leanne. So not, not for this, which is unfortunate. I wish I could. But anyway, so, you know, I, I, I gave them this assignment and some of them came back and were like, you know, if I give you an outline, can you approve this? I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. You tell me what you're going to do. So I want to see what they're going to come back with. I think my gut feeling is there's two of them that are probably going to do pretty well on this one. And one of them is that the lower price. So I'm pretty excited about that. If, if she pulls it off, it was interesting that all of my finalists were women except one.
Speaker 2 00:29:29 And
Speaker 1 00:29:29 When I was going through the initial screening process, I did something to make sure that I wasn't being biased in any way by who was submitting it. So I hid their email address and I hid their name and I just looked at the same thing. Yep. I, and I was basically scrutinizing, uh, only the articles and only what they wrote as the answers. And then from that I would pick the top ones. And so the ones that I ended up picking, most of them were women. And, uh, one of them was a man. And uh, from the last name, it looked like he might be, uh, African and descent. So I can't tell for sure. I mean, I really don't know, but unfortunately he wasn't one of the ones that responded. So I, you know, I didn't get a chance to find out what his writing style would be like. So yeah. I, you know, I'm excited to see how that all plays out. It looks like I've got some pretty strong contenders in there and yeah. If I get somebody who's pretty amazing, then they're going to be doing some significant content marketing for me starting like immediately.
Speaker 2 00:30:33 That's awesome. Cause, cause I have a lot
Speaker 1 00:30:35 Of work for them. Yeah. And I'm getting a keyword report done right now. So after the keyword report and hired a content writer, then it's going to be off to the races in, in our, uh, our content marketing.
Speaker 2 00:30:48 I love it. I love it. You know, talking about the, the outline. I have done it both ways with this. And I find now that the outline is actually helpful with a new writer. We hired a new writer and she is, uh, in, uh, writing some for us. And I am asking her for an outline, like we give a really detailed brief, you know, this, the keyword, this is what people are thinking when they search for it. These are the, the LSI, like the secondary keywords. These are, you know, inspiration know articles like articles you should, you know, pull information from or it might be references. And then say, you know, please create the outline and it can be pretty detailed and then send it to us. We'll take a look and review it and then give you the thumbs up or tweak things or whatever.
Speaker 2 00:31:32 And I didn't want to do this in the past because I thought it kind of stifled creativity a little bit. And I don't know why, why I think that, but now I kind of like it because it helps us with a new writer, make sure they're going down the right path. If it's just slightly off, you know, like if they totally are missing the ball, then like them writing the, the outline is just like, we ought to just not do this at all. You know? But like if they're close, it gives us the opportunity. And maybe this is a thing after you pick this person to say, okay, as we start working together, here's the keyword report. Please write the outline and give me some thoughts about what you're going to put in here and then we'll make sure that's okay. Before you go to a whole bunch of work enough to go revise the whole article after you've presented it to us. But yeah, I'm finding that the outline is helpful in that kind of situation. I never did it before. Um, so just, uh, just a data point, I guess.
Speaker 1 00:32:30 Yeah, no, that's, that's a solid thing. No, that the outline specifically for this we'll call it that the writing test, I specifically don't want that for the writing test. I want to see what they do on their own for our regular articles. I've had this before, where the outline got submitted to me and I would read through the outline and you know, it was general enough that I could see where the article was going with it. But then the final article often had some issues where we had to dissect those or deal with them after the fact, the outline was fine, but the final article still had some, some problems with it. So I'm not sure that the outline solves everything in that regard, but you know, it certainly didn't, I didn't go and look at an outline and say, this whole thing is fucked.
Speaker 1 00:33:18 Like we just can't do it this way. It doesn't work. I haven't had that experience yet. Maybe I will with a new writer. I don't know. The last one I had, the outlines were fine, but the articles sometimes got problematic. But I think that was more the fact that he was farming them out to somebody else after he wrote the outline. Right. And that, that was not acceptable. And so I just want to clarify that this time around to say, okay, all writing will be you and you can do, like, I will probably do the outlines for a while. And then if you know, I'm seeing that I'm always getting the outline and I have no comments on the outline then I I'll just say, look, you create the outline, write the article, send me the rough draft, you know, and then we'll go over that. I try not to block the process too much, you know, cause I don't want to be a bottleneck on that either.
Speaker 2 00:34:11 Totally, totally. And like Dennis, the guy that's been writing for us for a long time does not send us, uh, our outlines anymore, unless it's something totally weird. And then he typically does say like, Hey, is this on point? So yeah. Well it sounds like really good progress, man. It's uh, it'll be really exciting to see what those writing tests come back with and like how they look and how you're going to go from there. Yeah. They're all due
Speaker 1 00:34:37 By the end of this week. So we will see, I just got my first one in today and based on when I sent out the various responses, it was interesting of the six people that responded, you know, they all responded within 48 hours of the original thing. So there's like a 48 hour separation or based on when scheduling happen. I've got one that needs me to pay an invoice before she'll write it. So I'm guessing that she's been burned in the past by people not paying her for a writing I'm going to pay absolutely. Every single one of them for their test article. I'm certainly not going to be one of those asshole clients, but um, yeah. It's just interesting to see how people interact with you on, on stuff like that. Like some of them were like, yep, sure. All right, go for it. Here it is. You know, they sent me the article. No, you know, just trust was implied. And then this one woman was like, okay, here's my invoice. Let me know when you pay that and I'll get started.
Speaker 2 00:35:31 Yeah. That's a tough one. I have been faced with that before and I never paid the whole thing upfront. I'll do half the beginning and half at the end max, but yeah, generally I think for blog articles, it's just like, that's a stretch I think. Yeah. And in this particular
Speaker 1 00:35:46 Case, like the only reason I'm annoyed by it is the fact that, um, it involves a, I have to do a transfer via transfer wise. So there's a fee and it's like, you know, 15 bucks per payment
Speaker 2 00:36:02 And I'm like, Hmm.
Speaker 1 00:36:03 Yeah, that's doubling my costs on that one. And that's kind of annoying there. So let's just do one. Like if you want payment, I'll pay you up front. If that's where your level of trust is at and I'll extend the trust to you. And if you don't do this well, you're fired anyway. And it costs me $400 to figure that out. So, you know, but you damn well better be good at this point. If, uh, if you're making me go through all these hoops, you'd better be head and shoulders above everybody else
Speaker 2 00:36:29 And we'll see. Yeah. See, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:36:31 It sets the bar higher for them. So you want, you want more than I expect more and you better
Speaker 2 00:36:36 Deliver. There you go. There you go. Nice man. We'll uh, very much looking forward to hearing how that's going, looking forward to next episode and we can talk about the secret thing.
Speaker 1 00:36:46 Well, the next episode will be a secret, but not thus secret because the secret sucked. So, okay.
Speaker 2 00:36:54 No, I'm looking forward to diving in. I of course know the secret. Uh, I can be paid for divulging the secret and the advance of anybody like to, uh, but no, Dave look forward to chatting through the, the news and kind of the story behind it and everything next week, indeed. And
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Speaker 0 00:37:31 Thanks for listening to another episode of rogue startups. If you haven't already head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show for show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey, that over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
