Shifting from Launch Campaigns to Live Shows.

One of this year’s most popular  presentations at FMS was Nate Tucci’s , “From Getting Attention to Owning Attention: The shift from campaign-driven revenue to live-show revenue.” 

He showed how they moved away from the eternal hotlist launch model at FinMC to a live show model. How it both  increased and stabilized revenue (at scale), and created more predictable revenue.

Today, I speak with Niklas Freier,  President at FinMC, about the operational side of that transition. We got into a lot of interesting areas including how FinMC has consistently been a very forward thinking publishing group.

 They've consistently pushed the boundaries of the FinPub model in a lot of ways and how that is the result of an intentional culture of innovation internally.

 Niklas also talked a lot about how they're using AI in areas like telesales and more. 

FinPub Pro is produced by The Financial Marketing Summit, the #1 networking and marketing conference for financial newsletter publishers, trader educators, and digital financial media.

John Newtson, host and founder of The Financial Marketing Summit can be reached via LinkedIn at John Newtson

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_03 0:00

All right, hey everyone. I'm here with Nicholas Freer, who I think a lot of you know. Um he's uh I think president at Finnish Media Corps and um uh works with if you don't know him, you know you either know him, you know, Morgan Busby, you know, Nate Pucci, who spoke at FMS this year. Um you guys have been around for quite a while. Um and uh one of the better publishing groups for sure out there in terms of size, like one of the fastest growing um, I would say in the last several years, um publishers out there. And so thanks for being here, Nicholas. Thank you, John. Yeah, glad to be here. And today we're gonna do we're gonna go in kind of a little bit of a different direction, I think, because um well first we're we're gonna get we're gonna dive into kind of the as you put it um before this call, kind of building the business for the long term. And so getting into a little bit more the operational kind of side of this. Um but before we do that, um I'd love to get your take on kind of, you know, we're recording this as you know, middle of March 2026. Um kind of the you guys over the last year, two years have have made a very large shift in the the way that some of your businesses are run in terms of going more to that live model that Nate presented at FMS. Um how are you kind of looking at the industry right now in terms of just like the broad macro view? Like what are you seeing and and how would you kind of put where we are right now in context of the last several years?

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yes. Well, you know, I do think, uh, and I think Nate mentioned exactly that uh when you gave us a presentation at uh your wonderful event in uh beginning of the year. Um this the whole idea of make it make sense, I think is something that will continue to matter more and more for customers, right? Where um our customer base is maturing. When we have to um not only age-wise, they they do that also, but new customers are growing in, but they're maturing in the way they consume our content and and and everything that we put out there, right? And we have to take that very seriously, right? Um, so make it make sense to get a customer on board in a in a way that we've probably neglected for a decade or two uh before, a little bit, right? Where the messagings toward the customers did not make a lot of sense. We all have to be very true, like true to ourselves, right? If you look at our inboxes, we say, okay, let's send more email, it's always going to be better. Um But um that has turned out to not be as true anymore, at least for us, right? And and that's why we made this colossal shift towards a more model is based around, well, ideally every message that goes out there should make sense that it should lead into something that customers consume that is feeding into that messaging ideally, right? We've probably always said that we want to do something like that, um, link everything together, kind of like the red thread to all sorts of communication, but we haven't done that, right? And um so our initiative here uh is really feeding into that. And um that from every point, the moment we acquire a lead, um, the moment we start talking to that lead and then put them into the live shows that Nate has talked about, and we now kind of do eight of eight of them every day, almost like linear television, like back in the day, right? And we have people who get on to those shows without even that we even need to talk to them anymore, right? Uh so it's great. It's almost like, you know, just back in the day at 8 p.m., this show is on TV. People show up for it. And that's because that's what we want, because they want to be there, right?

Why Inbox Flooding Fails

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Right, right. That's standing attention. Can I back up a little bit? So, what do you mean when you say um the messaging from the time that the the you acquire the lead um wasn't always making sense? Like when you say it didn't make sense, like what are you referring to?

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Yes. I mean, um we all know, you know, uh um that that one of the most effective things uh uh that you know we've done in the past is the moment we acquire a lead, sure, there's some sort of like welcome funnel uh that should ideally put them on a list and then talk to them, this is this is what this list is about, and this is what you're gonna be hearing from. All that happens still, right? And I think probably most publishers do like pretty good job at that. But at the same time, the monetization machine is running, right? So there's a bunch of offers left running left and right. And so suddenly this lead is on five different hot lists, right? Just because they're interested. And now the messaging gets crazy, right? And um uh the more sophisticated the business is, if you have a very simple business that you only sell two products or something like that, you're a smaller publisher, you can control it, right? And it and I think it's very doable. But as soon as you grow, right, as we are right now, we have 200 products, right? So um, and we have so many campaigns running at the same time, and I think all bigger publishers have that same situation, then you run into issues. It'll be, we could call it cross-pollination, which is a great thing. Um, and it probably leads into you know great sales, but at some point you see dimension returns because especially new to far customers who don't know us, they just don't get it. They don't understand what's going on. And their in bus their inbox gets flooded by all of that. And no matter how good and clean your email segmentation and everything is you do, uh, there'll be problems. And uh that's how you use customers. And that's we what we really wanted to stop, especially with new to far people.

Turning Live Shows Into Habit

SPEAKER_03 5:08

Right, that makes sense. And because even if you're, like you said, the most controlled you are um at scale, you have more so you have I think I feel like there's a couple problems here. One, you have the, like you said, the like we just happen to have these five promos that are working right now, and we're and this was our marketing calendar. We're gonna mail them out to you know the database based on where that where our marketing team sees that's them in the segment, right? They're new to file, they're active 30 or 60 or 90 day clickers, whatever they are, they're gonna get this list or this promotion. But then you also have the other problem that that person has subscribed to other things that are being delivered in similar format, and they're getting emails from everybody about everybody's promo. And since it's all coming in one inbox and it can all kind of start to it's very easy for it to jumble together. And we, you know, it's a constant problem for for decades of people who are like trying to unsubscribe from a product that is from a different publisher than the person they reached out to because they get confused about who like this email. I'm not sure who this product that I bought is from anymore. Um and so like that that issue of confusion is definitely a persistent one. And so then what so you're saying that the live shows, and I think Nate called it like going from trying to get attention to owning attention or having standing attention, like you just described, where you have um it's a TV show that people show up for. Um is that the is that the primary solution then for you guys?

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Yeah, I mean the the format itself uh helps us to really isolate the what we can deliver to to customers, right? And like we get them really excited about that. But messaging has to be isolated as well for that, right? Whether it's you know through a telegram channel, whether it's through Discord, whether it's through SMS or email, right? The messaging for that channel is really consistent with it, right? Um that you know say you have an SMS list that pushes um people or try tries to push people into one of your live shows. It probably gives the typical, hey, it's starting now, join, right? Um, but at the same time, it needs to provide them with content that feeds into whatever that live show provides. Let's say we have a show in the morning that gives people an opening trade for the day. Um that's what they expect, that's what they want. So the messaging around that will also be that. And if you look at a ratio of promotional to um uh to content, right? Um, and I think there's been magic numbers of what that should be, right? Um they change every year. And if you ask two different people, they tell you two different numbers. Um but we really try to stick with like, you know, one starting now versus and one piece of content, right? So it'd be like 50-50. And that starting now is not really promotional in that sense. It's not even buy this, right? It's more, hey, show starts now. Yes, there will be something sold on the show afterwards, but that's not the main purpose of the messaging, right? And people like that. People really like the you know, the rates of people like unsubscribing from these kind of lists are extremely low in comparison, right? And um and very healthy, right? And I I recommend you know just trying to do that like on the side, right? If you if you don't believe it, it's working, sure, right? But try it on the side, try to do an isolated list. You can do email, you can do SMS, whatever you want to do, and just see what happens, you know. And um, we've been like the health of those lists, um, and the way like this this this channel to keep on communicating with a customer, not losing them, has become extremely valuable for us and gave us this you know continuity in a business that especially in trading, because we're you know we're trading French publisher, um, that we didn't have that. You know, we went through those big cyclical launch cycles all the time. We're hurting at times. And everybody knows this, right? Uh, everybody here who uh in that community who has a business like that is you know, we're the launch cycle's bad. You're it's difficult, right? And um uh that has not been the case with our shows, right? Of course, they also run through a cycle, but it's much more flat and it's much more controllable, I feel like. So revenue is more predictable. So now I, you know, as a decision maker in the business, can be more bold in my investment decisions. So I can buy more leads because I know, okay, well, you can be confident that even if the launch cycle is not that great, um, we'll have this kind of this base revenue coming in. And that has been what made me sleep much better for the last six months, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

Uh yeah, no, that that was I think that was one of the most like to me like shocking things when when I was seeing those numbers is that uh you know you're talking about a very stable daily revenue, um, which is not it has never been normal, right? We've always been even before we were in hot list, it's very much dependent on you know whatever the promotion is. And so um that that that piece right there is is I think very exciting to a lot of people. And for people who maybe embarrassingly didn't come to FMS and maybe where they were there and they forgot um the uh uh the promotional model then somebody comes onto the show, so they're getting these very light touches. Um basically come we're starting now, and it's not like hey, here's this big lead up to a pitch. Um they're getting a content show. How is the how is how are the offers then pushed out to get that kind of consistent revenue?

Selling Without Breaking The Promise

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Yes. Um again, making making it make sense is um uh is the key here for me, right? Because there's a couple of options how you can pitch somebody towards the end of that uh that show model. It's always content first, and then it feeds into the pitch part. Um that could be a couple of things. Um we don't always have the capacity, but eight shows a day, seven days a week, right? So you can't always have like a big spectacle uh on every of these shows, right? So we do stream offers, right? We do stream recordings of uh um of successful offers that we have. Kind of like the good old Evergreen, right? Uh that you uh that you kept on sending. But we integrate that into the show. So the show host talked about, you know, something, let's say some sort of chart pattern, uh, something interesting they've discovered in the market. And now they say, and you know what? Um we actually have this wonderful offer uh from Lance Polito. He's actually using exactly something similar to that, and he has a presentation. Um, and I'm gonna stream it like at the end of that, and then you know it'll lead into the stream, right? Which is kind of like the let's say the C tier um of how to promote in that kind of model, right? The weakest, so to say. So always say something new, life is always the best thing. That's A plus, right? Sending an evergreen of something that has been going on out, you know, probably doesn't catch the most attention in comparison to something completely new. So that's kind of like the lowest tier, I would say. That's a majority of the shows, right? Because again, there are so many of them. But it makes sense still, right? People get people get the option. It's like, okay, um, something's coming now. I'm I'm seeing a presentation now that feeds into something that I saw before, but it kind of makes sense why it's been shown. It's not just okay, and now it's over. Here's some watch this ad. Um and that um and that makes people stick around, you know. Let's say if you have 500 people in a room, there'll still be like two or three hundred that watch the offer in the end. They stay around, like they'll they'll be there, right? And then first when we tried this, I was worried. I would say, oh gosh, you know, maybe people maybe 10% stay, I don't know, you know. Um but that you have the attention, they're there, right? And you can still have a moderator in the chat that answers questions that's are in is in relation to the two. Well, how does the content feed into what they're just seeing now on the ad? And then obviously the better version is if let's say we want to promote a uh um a product from Lance Dipolito at the end of the show. Well, ideally Lance comes in and at the end of the show, like the real Lance, right? And now suddenly the show hosts and Lance go back and forth about hey, you have this cool new thing, and now Lance does the pitch, right? Um, that is obviously the best thing you can you can kind of do, right? And everything in between, right? Um where it's like part Lance does a short intro and then it goes into the stream. You can do, you can play around with that, right? But that's obviously a much stronger and it makes even more sense to think. Yeah. Yeah.

Operational Shift To Daily Broadcasting

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Yeah. And it and I love that. And I think for anyone who's listening, who isn't aware, this isn't like a model that isn't scaled. Like you've scaled this, and it I don't I know no one likes to get into specific numbers, but it rhymes with probably somewhere in the neighborhood of$70, 80 million a year in terms of like um sales here. And so like this is a very robust approach to Finpub. That I think um it is one of the most innovative things I think we've seen in the industry in the last 10 years in terms of models. Um and so it's really exciting for me to see you guys doing this. And so but it's it's a big challenge for folks. And so I I'm really curious because prior to this, you were very much like you said, hot list driven, um kind of the traditional marketing calendar that everybody else is kind of familiar with. From an operational perspective, then um what were the challenges to even begin to start to test this model and how is it different operationally like than the more traditional model for you? So where were the biggest challenges, roadblocks, and like what are the things that you've kind of learned from this?

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Yes. Um, well, first of all, you need um you need people to to to run the shows, right? And it can't only be uh your best editors, your best groups that you could fill a day with eight shows at all times that will burn them out, you know, and I'm now probably one or two of them saying it's like, hey, you're we're you know, they work really hard on this, right? So this is really needs to be a bit of a cultural shift also in how editors are perceived in the job of the editor, whether maybe in the past has been you know comfortable uh uh at times or for under certain circumstances. Hey, maybe you go live once a week, or you know, you you you write your email newsletter, and then there's a big promo every now and then, like once a quarter or something. And um and I get that that's like awesome. If that works, right if that monetizes. But if that stops working or it puts the business at too much risk just because you're too dependent on the success of that, and if it fails, now suddenly you're really in trouble. Um, so now it it really adds a lot of like time on uh our guru's calendar, and they've been fantastic about it, to be honest. Um, so that has been like, you know, they proved it out with um uh Nate himself, right? Uh Nate and Graham are copy chief. Uh both of them started the show. It's called the opening playbook. I highly recommend everybody to kind of watch it. Um I think if you just Google it, you'll you'll find it pretty quickly. Um they um they proved it out for uh you know weeks and weeks and just showed like we can get this to work, right? Um and uh we can we can do this also without it being like too scripted. Like that doesn't have to be every day a copywriter has to write like a big script for the show. No, right? Because these people are fantastic at talking about the stock market, that's what they're passionate about, right? That's what they know a lot about, that's what their job is, right? They watch the market and um and that's just what they share with the customers, right? So you have to create this kind of like understanding within, let's say, the guru community, um, that this is the way to sustainably make money moving forward, right? And show the numbers. And I think I think that that's what convinced them in the end. And then the second thing is with the team, um, of course, there need to be some bigger changes. So we started hiring show hosts for this, right? Well, either we hired them from the external or we developed people like internally who had like skill in front of the camera, right? Um, you know, we had someone who was working in the broadcasting department but showed great skill in front of the camera. Now suddenly they run two shows on the weekend, right? Um and obviously you can incentivize people that way um to you know um grow, right, to become better, which I think is something that excites me personally a lot to develop internal talent and make them into something better, right? So you have to identify those people, hire them, and fill the calendar accordingly. From a broadcasting perspective, to be honest, John, um things things got a little simpler, right? Because we do send significantly less email overall. So we don't have to build this in-depth marketing calendar anymore that has like this constant ad messaging. Right. So that got easier, uh frankly, right? Um and um and that is something that excited me, or it was suddenly the broadcasting team is now smaller than it used to be before. And it like reduced complexity, right? And and again, less email, better email health, more fruitpit. Like it's it's kind of like a cycle that that's very positive.

SPEAKER_03 17:55

That is such a crazy thing to say in this industry, right? Because for forever, since since we went online, the kind of rule has been send more mail, make more money.

unknown 18:07

Right?

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Send more, send more, send more. And that's why we have this kind of like arms race of like, you know, I mean, I'm I have it, I have a Gmail that is pretty much destroyed, and it's my primary one because I got put on everyone's master list, and you can't unsubscribe because everyone has put you on so many different lists. And so it's like a Twitter feed now, and I still have people reaching out to me and I and I miss messages and stuff because it's like they're not even on the first page if I don't catch it, you know. Um and so like to say that you send less mail and have and have grown so much and have um stabilized revenue, I mean when I say this is like an innovative, this is like the most revolutionary thing I've heard since I've started FMS in terms of how this business works, right? Like um the hot list model added billions in revenue to the industry. Um and now to be able to sit there and say, hey, we're we're able to make a more consistent revenue without losing money at all. Like we're not going for lower revenue, we're growing revenue, and you're sending less total mail is is just remarkable. Like it's just remarkable.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Yeah. Yeah, we're pretty excited about it. You know, I mean, um, granted, you know, this is uh uh this is still a relative new um thing. You know, we're doing this for um I mean, all in, probably about six, seven months, doing it for 10 months or so, something. Of course, it still needs to be proof itself out, right? We're going through cycles now, the market's been difficult at beginning of the year, obviously, right? But I'm pretty confident that um uh under different circumstances, the beginning of the year would have been pretty tough for us, you know. And um we're we're doing pretty well, right? Um you know, didn't but double our business at the beginning of the year now, but um I think under other circumstances we would have been hurting quite a lot. Um let me just add one more thing. What we still do if we launch new products, like entire new products, we do still want to keep that knowledge of how to proper launch and do the good old spiel of you know launching a product. We still want to keep that in-house, right? Because I mean, as a you know, as someone running a business, you always need to build a contingency plan and make sure that, hey, if this new thing you're trying is not like working out for certain circumstances, you still need those skills inside. You can't have like a new team that suddenly doesn't even know what you know a hot list is anymore, right? That would be really problematic. So we still do that, um, but it has been reduced drastically, right? Where it's the need for copy, for example, has been reduced drastically for it, because now suddenly you need so much less messages. So now you can focus the energy of people writing these messages on making the messages that they do create like much more, much better, right? It's not like, oh, I need to write a hundred emails today, or maybe write 10. But they're now you put a lot of effort in that. We all know you know if you take time and if you really think through what you're doing, it's always going to be a little bit better, just a couple of percent added here and there.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

Right. And it's always been a game of percentage points. So it matters. So that's that's so what's what's a what's a core kind of editorial? Let's let's like look at this in segments then. What's a kind of a core editorial team now look like for you? You have a showrunner that you added into the mix, um, you have the guru who has to commit to being um showing up like kind of almost every day or or at least a few times a week on a show, whatever, whatever the model's gonna be for people. Um what also so what is it what does the editorial piece look like? And then, you know, how is your franchise kind of structured, I guess, um around an editor?

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Yes. Um, I mean, uh we you know, we operate. In like different imprints, right? So we have uh two bigger marketing teams that operate all of our imprints, but they're kind of like mirrored copies of each other, right? Um they all are consisted of the same kind of team structure. There's a broadcasting component, there's a paid editorial component, there's a free editorial component, and then there's a marketing messaging um uh component, right? They're all fed by a centralized copy team. Um, they're all fed by centralized systems operations, Martech, and all that kind of stuff that cater to their needs depending on what they need, what they need to do. Um the free, the free editorial team is the one that needs to, together with the gurus and the guru's analysts, because uh depending on how big a franchise gets, you know, we you know you need uh need analysts to even make it possible so that fulfillment can be uh can can be done. Uh creates this kind of messaging again that that makes that should make sense ideally, right? Fully fed into what is the guru guru doing on a daily basis, like what is their basic principle of their products and ideas, combined with what are their shows promised to deliver to the customer. Right. So that is what the free editorial team is creating. Um and a bunch of um bunch of the content is now also going out through those SMS channels for those shows, right? It's like short to the point content pieces that are part of the promise what the show is supposed to deliver, right? Yes, we you know the free editorial team also writes still email newsletters on a constant basis because you know that is a that is a source, so that's a that's a channel that we don't want to lose. And they're doing a fantastic job with it. Like we use a lot of AI supporting this, of course, like everybody does now. We're getting better and better at it. The quality and the quantity of uh content output is has increased quite a lot. Um, but um it again, it needs to be messaging that all makes sense together, right? For every channel, every marketing channel that we have, and now the show, every single show is one, the messaging should be very consistent with what the show is promising on a constant basis. That is what the free editorial team is kind of structuring right now. So um each of um each of those we call them pods, uh our marketing units that I just described, each of them have one um free editorial um manager. Um, you call that. So there isn't a team of 20 writing that, right? So now they'll probably, if they see this, they'll probably say, yeah, oh you know, we have a lot to do. And I agree, they're they work really hard. Um but um uh it's uh it's it's not a big team anymore. And I think we can manage the manage the messaging like that, right? Especially if we help the gurus help a little, the analysts help a little. So getting the best content out to customers is uh what we try to try to do at all times.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Right, right. And then for the for the show concepts, then are you using basically kind of the same the same kind of framework you would maybe use for a free e-letter and say like we're gonna make this into a show concept, but structure or from a from an editorial standpoint, conceptually you're you're still looking at like these are kind of the framework um that we would use for an e-letter, but now we're just delivering that conversation in this format. Is that about the same?

SPEAKER_02 25:15

Yes. If you if you look at like conceptualization of um uh an e-letter, and you know, I still remember from back in the day how that would take a lot of time, right? You would put like a lot of ideas and effort into building a product or building an e-letter, um, maybe even have like conferences about it with a bunch of people um all trying to align. You know, I um what I like about a good concept for an e-letter or now one of those shows is if the promise is explained really quickly, if a customer gets it just um, yeah, of course I need to, I need to um uh I need to get on that show because every day at the closing bell, right, there will be a chart pattern laid out for me in this show that explains to me uh you know what I can do after hours or what I can do for the for the next opening or analyze a certain commodity on a constant basis. Very simple, very clear promises that are not too general, but I think people are um not sick because it still has a place, but people are bored of too generalized content where it's like, yeah, well, we'll talk about the market and see, you know, maybe uh we'll just uh I mean, I don't know. You can turn on the TV or anything, anything for that. Like it's it's gonna be the same. Something very much niche to the point. And and that's how those are conceptualized, right? And that promise needs to be delivered. I'm not sure if we always do a good job at that. Sometimes maybe we move away a little bit from it, but at least that's what we try. And it's also if we review what we're doing there, we have to challenge ourselves. Do we still hold up that promise? Or does that show need to be course corrected because it has moved too much into a different direction and doesn't add up anymore?

Streaming Everywhere Without Extra Work

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Yeah, but I love that because it's not we're not talking about just general market news. This is you can get that. And honestly, like the I'm sure the revenue per user on a general market news kind of TV show, right? Like that's there's a reason they have the advertising model for their other and hopefully brand advertising because it doesn't deliver the same way as a really targeted niche conversation to a specific audience can. Um so you're doing eight shows a day. What do you guys just you what do you guys use for um your streaming platform?

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Um so I mean, we try to do like an omni-platform approach. So we try to give customers as many um uh um many opportunities to to watch our show. But I think at the core we use WeSpop um um to get stuff out there, but we'll stream on um uh stream on YouTube. Um usually every of our imprint has a YouTube channel also where we host the videos, you know, gets some organic traffic. We have tapped into a whole new uh YouTube um uh path. Uh it's called Unfiltered Finance. Uh, we're quite happy with it. Like we got an amazing showrunner for it, Emily. She used to be a TV anchor, and um uh she she's doing a fantastic job at uh kind of like building that up for us. Um and you know, everybody should check it out. It's uh it's pretty cool stuff that she's doing. Um but we didn't have a YouTube strategy before. So it's not exactly like um we'll want to grow organic traffic through putting it there. But if somebody wants to watch it through YouTube, because they that's that preference, right? Um, you know, we'll you know, we create it at some point and then we stream it into all sorts of different uh places. Um that's what we do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:31

Yeah. I think that's another area where you guys have been kind of on the on the leading edge of things, is that you use way more um platforms um than most other publishers. I mean, you have Discords, you have tele, like you said, you have telegrams. Um how does that piece fit generally for you guys? Because you do like it's con it's both content, it's the editorial piece is is hosted in different places, and there's marketing that way. So um, what does that look like for you to use all these different platforms?

SPEAKER_02 28:59

Yeah. I mean, um you need you need everything to be backed by a very solid Martech foundation, right? So it can't be that all of these have to be um maintained uh um and somebody needs to even get like an access to all of that. Ideally, everything's created in one single point of truth, and then just it gets multiplied into all these platforms, right? Um, that's the best path forward that you could take with that kind of stuff. Just give the customer the chance to watch it on their like on the platform of their preference, right? But without adding like complexity for the team with it. So there needs to be work done beforehand, right? And uh, you know, Dave Ditman and his team um doing a great job with that. They're trying to, you know, always make it as simple as possible.

SPEAKER_03 29:49

I have a strict rule that we don't compliment David Ditman.

unknown 29:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Yeah, that's uh you know, um I've known David since that in a 2005.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Uh great friend, yeah. Love him.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah, yeah. And uh yeah, he uh you know, uh he and his team uh trying to make it as simple as possible, not only for employees uh that had then have to operate it, because that's what I want to get rid of at all times, right? Kind of like nonsensical tasks for employees, right? And and you know, and I think maybe we can talk more about that at some point, but if you use AI, if you use you know any kind of vibe coding or anything like that, right, should never be at the expense of like, oh, we have to get rid of a lot of people, right? I think that's a very poor choice uh on a on different levels, right? It's like like like to keep the same people, make them better, make them earn more, make them grow, but with like much, a much bigger output. So let's get rid of all nonsensical tasks, which would be to just post the same video on six different platforms that now this person is waiting there and upload and all that kind of stuff. Automate that, make it as simple as possible, um, and uh free their time up to do more meaningful tasks.

AI Automation For Sales And Ops

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Right, right. Which is again, like I think about when Morgan came to one of a when well hosted one of the um FMS Pro Accelerator meetings in Jacksonville last year. Is it last year? Um, and he showed a lot of the AI tools you guys have been building for the for the um copy team, and it was pretty impressive how many different things. And you're right, like how many, like just even I was like even simple things, you're like, oh, that makes so much sense to like we have a format generator for trade alerts, so that's all consistent, and it's like nobody has to do the same, like nobody has to set this up. Um so with the AI piece, then like where are like how are you using this then to get rid of all these nonsensical tasks? Like, what do you think are the biggest kind of um time savers or um output maximizers that you guys have developed?

SPEAKER_02 31:47

Yeah. Well, I think one of the biggest that can show for real numbers and it's just um uh it's been unstoppable for us or uh called Groupot. I don't even know how that name came up, but uh you know, but it's um Groobot. Uh um I'll have to check with the guys again what the uh why it was called that. Um but um it's uh essentially an appointment setter, right? Um we use it for telesales. Um and um you know it has been a game changer, right? So the job of the setter um that has been like an absolute requirement for um high-ticket sales um always, right? One-on-one. I mean, I'm not a telesales guy myself, but everything I've always seen, yeah, you need great setters that like warm up these leads and put them in place for the for the agents. So Groupat does that um um to put it very simply, and it fills up a pipeline um uh for all these agents. So they they log on in the morning, and now that day is scheduled with like these meetings, and they just need to you know pick the ripe uh uh fruit um and uh make the sale. And it's great for the customer too, because they get a lot of context and information beforehand. The the um you know, the groupot campaigns that are running, they can be written and they can be they can be put in place by the best person possible that you have on your team, right? So now imagine the smartest guy, best experience in sales and all of that kind of stuff, is kind of like the the conductor of Groupot, right? Sitting there like doing a little orchestra. Um and it will be so much more impactful. Like no, like uh you know, no setter in the world could do the same job as like your chief of sales, right? Right. It's like the smartest guy, the best guy, best experience. So um the likelihood of those um of those um uh um of those appointments actually happening and somebody actually showing up for it, it's much higher, right? Because now you you know have an AI talking to these customers with the voice of that head of sales, right? And so that has been massive for us.

SPEAKER_03 33:47

What's that what's that look like from the customer's perspective then? Like how is this conversation happening? Is there a is it a chat on the on the website? Is it kind of a series of emails that goes back into a chat? Like how how does that look from from the customer experience?

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Well, there's a certain set of rules in place of like what leads are eligible, right, for for that. It could be, you know, and you could change those rules and you can play around with it kind of like that's segmentation, right? That's that's always first. Um let's say we first we look at people that have um you know bought a certain product from uh Roger Scott last week, um, and they've also owned another product from Roger, and now they may be eligible for a bigger bundle product, right? That uh could be interesting for them. And so um now it starts to contact them, um, and it's usually omni-channel. Try to do SMS, it's uh it's it's email, um, you know, it's a sequence that could start on both, and it goes back and forth with them, right? Um it's like, hey, you know, you've bought this and uh this is why it has been great, this is why it makes sense to to look at that. And have you have you heard that Roger has like these other products, right? And it starts talking to them and then obviously starts asking questions like, okay, well, could you would you consider like for like um you know a consulting um with us and talk to one of our um people to kind of talk about your product portfolio? Because we think there might be something for you. And um uh and then you know it just goes on back and forth, really to the moment of um let's schedule this. Are you free to stay? Are you not? And so on. There's always an escalation path. If that you know, if the the AI can't answer something, it'll always go back to a human, right? Um, so uh we'll obviously have to review it and make sure that there's you know great communication happening with the customer. Customer's not being told anything that we don't want them to be, because that's always the most important thing for me, just do right by the customer, right? Yeah, and um and that's how uh the appointment comes to be. And uh so we are able to schedule so many of them. And uh and it's running on all cylinders, right? And uh um yeah, uh that has been a blessing for uh for the sales team. And again, you don't need to get rid of people that were sellers. That's it's quite important for me because it sounds like yeah, you found a way to save some money on paying the seller salary. No, not at all. Now develop them into you know, maybe junior agents or develop them into somebody that helps writing campaign. You know, that's um uh that's how I view it, right? So now they do they upscale, like they they they do a higher qualified task, they perform a higher qualified task. And that's what I want them to do, you know, because they'll grow, right? And I'm happy to pay more money for that, actually, than they did before because now they have more impact.

unknown 36:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that that kind of frame for how to how to um use AI with the team is is to get more more out of the people you have, not get rid of the people you have. Um and so that's great. So, what other so besides the Groupot, um, what what else has been really kind of a game changer for you guys?

SPEAKER_02 36:41

Yeah. Um I guess like probably not gonna talk too much about you know editorial and copy, because I think everybody's kind of doing that right now to a different degree. We have all that, we do all that, we use it, and we it gets better. Um But um uh I think one of the things that we're uh working on right now, and it's it's very fresh still, but it's gonna go out. It's uh um, you know, it's a new broadcasting platform, right? So where we uh try to automize or try to take out the scheduling element almost entirely, right? Which is is and I said earlier that we do less of it, but still it's a lot, right? So and it fills people's day. And it's setting up emails on your um uh on your ESP or on your um uh um on your SMS platform can be a tedious job and it's there's a high potential for error, right? You always need to do all these items for it. Somebody needs to deliver the text and the subject line needs to be put in, needs to be proof-checked, it needs to be tested and all that kind of stuff. So what it'll do now, um, you know, we have the best people again, are kind of like marketing admins that create the calendar, right? Like inventory managers, we call them. Um, and they make the best decision that should make us the most money, right? Like pick the messaging and send it out at the right time that it makes us the most money. So they create the calendar, and from that point on, AI takes over, takes the messaging, pushes it to our email sender, um, you know, sets it up, does test sense internally, pushes it back as a feedback loop to those um inventory admins that they can kind of see, okay, 18 emails went out. Those are the snapshots of the um of the test sense. Good, good, good, good, good. Um, number seven has an error. You can basically talk to it as like, hey, change the subject line, it doesn't want that dub way. Do another test, right? Without actually logging into the platform, right? And um there's those multiple security levels of it, right? Because it tests itself, it proof checks. Is the information matching that was put in, does it mat, does it match the output? And if it misses something, there'll always be human interaction at the end that does the final execution of it, right? But it takes away of the classical broadcaster role almost entirely, right? Um and that has that's I think gonna be massive for us because now we can we can be so much more granular, right? So now we can increase again the amount of of broad messages broadcasted, but that doesn't mean that a customer gets more email, but it's more granular. So now you can you know do a you know a segmentation that's uh a hundred levels deep, right, if you want to. And um I think that's fantastic, it's just like much humanly possible, other than having a team of 20 people sit there, right? Performing a very simple task of setting up emails and sending them out, right? Which now these people can be developed into become system administration uh system administrators for that AI tool, make it better, control it, like you know, make it more granular. Again, you don't have to get rid of them, absolutely not, because that has never been the goal. Develop them into something where they can be grow, where they can grow themselves and have more impact for the company and for themselves.

Culture Built On Throughput

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Nice.

SPEAKER_03 39:59

Why do you guys think you why do you think you guys have such a how do I put it, like a I don't want to say experimental, but you have a very like like you said, you're very tech forward, you're very test forward. You're really trying like on each of these areas from platforms to the broadcasting to the basic format, like you guys have to have a culture of kind of pushing the model itself forward. Um I mean, is that consciously cultivated? Like, or is it just kind of like the how like how do you guys kind of maintain that culture and how does that culture culture feel inside this business? Because you are consistently, you know, it's Morgan, it's Nate, um it's you, it, you know, I I know I know you I know you guys also well, right? Like you know, Dittman for Forever, and um but I really do feel like it's very different than other publishing groups that I that I know, right? Like other publishing groups almost feel like you know, they like this feeling of being, you know, we're still kind of this old school kind of publishing model. Um and then they they do launches and things and it works, or they're or they're very copy forward, and so everything's about the copy. Um but I I do, I think you guys have a very kind of unique culture in the industry um that is pushing the entire model forward, which is fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Yeah. And you know, I don't think that's uh a product of chance at all. Um that's very uh that's a very conscious cultural development that we've kind of established over the last couple of years. And I think at the core of all of this is the the original partnership that we entered uh with Morgan uh back in the day, right? So, you know, I'm you know, me me coming from Germany, as probably everybody I can't hide the accent, even though I try, you know, sound sound more American with Germany. Um But um uh um some of the core values that we have in Germany um are very complementary to the values that um make US publishers so great, right? And both sides have weaknesses. And I think we're at the beginning of this partnership, both sides were really cognizant of those weaknesses in particular, and just say, well, you know, the American drive to s to sell and the the creative output and the the willingness to grind and grow and all of that is is amazing, right? And it's it's 10 times better than it is in Germany. Well, maybe not 10 times, but uh like um a good bit more. Whereas like the German side is much more, you know, um on the analytic side, much more on the engineering side of the business, putting teams together and all that kind of stuff. But sometimes what the one side's lacking, the other side just has. And this, you know, that was that was the beginning of this partnership where we thought, wow, this is great. Like you, you're great at this, and we're great at this. So like just pair it together, right? And I think the product of the last couple of years, and that we can be what you just described, that we can be very aggressive and testing new things and trying new things out is um, you know, Morgan and um also Nate or Graham Lindman or Copy Chief, they're creative geniuses. They're you know, they're visionaries, they have they have fantastic ideas to drive them forward, right? So taking all that and then not making like great ideas evaporate because they're there for a month and then they're gone because you couldn't follow up on them and they couldn't materialize them into like a more mature business. That's now what we could could have built with it, like with help of somebody like Dipman, right? And just making sure that you know we have the right underbelly for it. And um it's it's not a coincidence that that culture is possible, right? Because you can burn your business pretty quickly if you just like randomly test and do all sorts of things randomly, but you don't have any kind of structured throughput of it, right? Um that is you know the bottle and neck of all American publishers are not ideas. It's throughput, I would say. You know? Um it's just yeah, sometimes there's The lack of the ability to deploy and iterate ideas fast enough and make them stick, right? Um, and uh and that is what we've managed to do. And so now we can do all these things, right? And we can have somebody like Morgan, who's a great visionary and is a you know, great business thinker, come up with really cool ideas. We try new stuff, and we can actually do it in a meaningful way. We can actually implement it in a meaningful way, and that feels great, right? And everybody feels more empowered through that. So net builds the culture, right? And that hasn't been a coincidence because that is how the partnership was founded. Clear separation of labor, right? Like I, for example, I would never I mean, I'm a financial publisher now also for 13 years or something. I'd never even like question Nate on his decision to create a new product in a word and way, like uh on his strategic uh composition of our guru portfolio or anything of that. He knows 10 times more than that, and I do, right? Um separation of labor within empowering the people in their position and then really like believing in them, right? Hire somebody on customer service that you truly believe in. We have a new uh chief of customer service we hired recently. Um she's fantastic, right? So whatever she wants to do with making a customer happy, I'm not gonna challenge her in that just because you know I'm I'm technically her boss, right? I create a culture where people are empowered and really happy um to actually express themselves in their job and not put in by some constraints by a person that is a know-it-all, right? And just claims to, just because I'm here for 20 years, I know everything. Nah, I don't. You know, you know, I can still own it if it goes wrong. That's fine, right? But um uh it, you know, it's all about empowering them, uh composition of team. So it's about you know, real separation of labor and believing in each other, and having a leadership team that has that separated out, and everybody believes, no, no, that like she is the best at customer service, so we're gonna follow her on her decisions on that, and not somebody dictating all of that. Because that can go really well and you can have great growth, but then you can also crash really hard. And we've seen that over and over again in the past. And that's what I want to avoid.

SPEAKER_03 46:19

So yeah, no, I think I mean that's that that is one of those, you know, there's repeating trends in the industry. And I think that um successful publishers reaching a point either getting stuck because, like you said, there's the there's one person like who got them there, and that that person kind of runs almost like an ideological tyrant. Like it's their way of doing it, and that's it.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Um that's a great way. That's a great way of putting one steal that, John. Like that's like I like that. I like that.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Um but that's usually the thing that like you get to a certain point, and it's like that that approach got you here, but it's not gonna get you to the next level. And so you see that that happen. But then you also see that like the somebody who grows, and then they may not have a complete collapse, but they fall back quite a bit from where that growth took them. Um and often, actually, ironically, going back to the start of this conversation, um it often happens or coincides with a market downturn combined with a couple of hot list launch kind of failures, right? And all of a sudden the volatility of the business is you know really strong to the downside for them, and their cash position starts to fail, and they start to get in a really rough position, and it's very hard to recover because they have to stop their acquisition or dramatically lower their acquisition, so they have fewer leads in the door. And it can become a really painful cycle for a lot of folks.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

Yeah. I mean, that there can be a lot of like hidden uh um fragility, right? Like where uh you know you you've masked certain things by aggressive growth. You didn't have um the underconstruction for it, and now you realize, oh gosh, it's like and I'd much rather get ahead of the curve and like try to construct that before, right? And another thing in our industry, I think, that that is that is dangerous, like a trap to fall in. I think you know, I call it vanity metrics, right? Um when you have a conversation about somebody of you know, whatever they do, like uh click-through rates, uh revenue, right? Um like our CFO always says, uh says like he wants to live on Net Island. I I like that a lot, right? And as as a it's fine to talk to external um folks about more broad, bigger picture um uh metrics, but there's a danger if you start believing them yourself, right? If you talk about I make so and so much, right? I make a thousand dollars, right? But that's the the top line, top line of top line, right? You should not believe yourself that you actually made a thousand dollars. That gets dangerous and it becomes copper like corporate culture that you believe your own vanity metrics, you'll start to make really poor decisions. So be really honest about your like to yourself at least and your in your team, like inner uh you're in a team. Of course, you don't have to share every metric with everybody out there. That's that's I understand that too. But if you start believing them yourself, you're in trouble, I think. And I think you have to double check yourself. What metrics do I actually believe in?

Data Platform Truth And New Devs

SPEAKER_03 49:28

So yeah, I love that. And it reminds me of the kind of the back and forth that um back, I'd say pre pre-COVID with um Porter Stansbury and some of the other Agora publishers at the time and Mark Wise, where you know, there was other groups with higher top line numbers, and they're like, We're bigger. And he's like, Well, we have a higher net, what matters? And it's like, yeah, that's that's absolutely right. What what what what actually matters? Um that that's yeah, so I guess then um how we don't talk about this much at all, or I don't normally, because it's not my not my wheelhouse, but you know, speaking of people like Ditman, like the tech team you have is is is super important, right? Like um and increasingly so I feel like. Uh how do you think of the the tech side of this and the tech? Because I, you know, I know Matt Paulson over at Market Beat is phenomenal, and he's himself a phenomenal, like he's a he's a programmer, he has a really strong dev team. Um they've built, and he he's said many times that you know if if Market Beat has an advantage, it's it's their it's their analytics, it's their data. It's like they're so good at it that they know what they can spend and how to spend it and what they're gonna make, and and they they've built a phenomenal business. Um but I think again, it's one of those areas of publishing that um is you know it's underappreciated and it's underinvested in for a lot of publishers. Um so how how how do you kind of view that side of the business and where it fits?

SPEAKER_02 51:05

Yes. Um yeah, well, you know, um uh I'm I'm definitely with Matt there and applaud him for for his success. You know, it's it's also not a coincidence that he is where he is right now. Right. Um and um uh for us it all started with data, right? When we when we built this up, um when we build up this relationship, the first thing we kind of tackled is really give everything to a pretty hardcore data team that we have back in Germany, which is one of our, I think, biggest core strength of VNR. Um and um that that data team is is big and it's it's uh um uh it's not cheap and it's not uh it's very skilled individuals uh that can do um fantastic things for your business, right? So creating a platform of truth for your business where everything is in, it's it's all consolidated, it's all cleaned up, like everything is very neat. It's not a kind of like a patchwork of how so many businesses are set up with a guru organically over years. Oh, yeah, you have a data set here in Salesforce, and then there's another one here, and then you have some ESPs, and nothing really talks to each other, and you kind of like pick your data from all these different sources. No, consolidate it everything in one platform and then start decision making based on that. And everything else builds on that, right? That is what you want, right? And that's what that's that's what you um that's what we did. Um and recently, again, with AI, I think we started to add new resources to our company that um are a different breed of tech employees that probably haven't existed like that before. Um, because you would say, oh, you have your dev team, right? And there's not typically people that are not as savvy with the business decisions behind everything, that don't like intuitively get. They always need somebody to to translate or give them like requirements for we want this tool. You can't have the the um you can't have the marketing manager talk to them because they won't speak the same language, right? So you need somebody in the middle. Um, but we start to hire um and work with these uh these people that are really young, savvy, hungry guys that just fully embraced um uh the whole palette of uh AI coding out there, um, and um are able to get requirements from a business because they're actually interested in like how the business works and how the business develops and can then transform transform them into tools much quicker because they answer all these questions themselves and they the why behind a tool, why would that tool be needed, right? They can answer that for themselves, and so they can produce something like much quicker. Also moved into something where now somebody like a guru or an analyst is basically building their own tools. We use something like Raplet, for example, right? Um I think a lot of people are using it. Now a guru can start to build their own tool and kind of like fake code it themselves and build it like how they wanted to use it, and then that gets passed on to exactly these kind of guys who understand a lot about the business and can then harden that and build into the real tool. And then Dave's team makes sure that the right data is connected to it, that reporting is uh correct and all of that, right? So it's um it's almost like moving these worlds closer together, taking out this kind of like invisible wall between marketing and deaf by making the new devs a person that is actually much closer to um to the business than it ever been before, right? Entrepreneurs, basically, developing entrepreneurs, maybe you can call them. And that have that's what we're looking for, and that's what we're hiring, right? Um how are you recruiting them? So um, you know, again, uh uh is this uh this is one of the things that Morgan does so well, right? I think the first person that we found in that, you know, I think Morgan just like put out a couple of projects on uh platforms that we said, hey, I want to develop this tool. Like I need somebody to help me vibe code that, right? So now suddenly this uh uh gentleman from uh from Norway uh reaches out and say, Hey, you know, I'm I'm I I can do it, right? And I think the way he did it, like that person did it, he just developed the tool, right, and sent it to Morgan to say, Hey, I did it here, before without taking money or anything, right? It's just like I'm done here. And so um I think I can recommend that to everybody. Like put out, like you want a tool for something, put it on one of these platforms, and just and I guess you have to kiss a bunch of frogs, you know, just because you know, and it just has to be good to identify who actually does a great job at it, right? Or is just looking to make just a quick bug. Um that's how we find them. And then it becomes kind of like they have a network of people. Now they start to trust us as a business. So now we work with, you know, we have our uh Norwegian uh our Norwegian crew, like uh three of them. And they're you know, we invite them here, they come here to Florida, and we um you know work closely with them together at a workshop just like uh last week with one of them here. And um that that's that's the progress we we we get out of like a like a cool idea, you know, that now translate into something very fundamental for the business.

unknown 56:24

Yeah.

Closing And Bonn Roundtable Invite

SPEAKER_03 56:24

That's awesome. I love that. That's fantastic. Cool. Well, I appreciate it. This is this has been a fantastic conversation, Nicholas. This this is awesome. Um I love I love seeing what you guys are doing, and I love like kind of this perspective of kind of what's underneath the hood and how how how it's all kind of come together. So I appreciate you coming on here and doing this. This has been fantastic. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

No, I'll love it. Thank you. Um thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 56:49

Yeah. And uh hopefully we'll do more of these. And actually, for anyone who's an FMS pro member, VNR, you mentioned you know, in Germany, um, is actually hosting one of our in-person roundtables um there in October in Bonn, Germany. So we're gonna be heading out to Germany, uh, which will be a lot of fun. I don't know if you're gonna make it or not. Um if you can if you can leave the the beaches of Florida or if you're planning to do that.

SPEAKER_02 57:13

I will I will be there for sure. You know, and um, you know, I lived in Bonn for many years, so whoever whoever's around, you know, I'll show you the best places in the town. Uh, and uh, you know, we can have great conversation. I think it's you know, please, please take John upon this. You know, I I remember the the London events uh you guys had, it was it were fantastic, you know. I think I highly encourage everybody to join, really.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

Yeah, thanks. And so um, yeah, I'm looking forward to this one. So can't wait to do that. Um, thanks again, Nicholas, um, and have a great one. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 57:41

Thank you, John.