Jun 12, 2023 · 16m · founders-journal
10 VALUABLE Lessons from a Successful Show
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Morning Brew co-founder Alex Lieberman breaks down ten essential media and business lessons learned from the explosive launch of Morning Brew Daily. He provides entrepreneurs and creators with actionable insights on content-market fit, audience migration, host chemistry, and the operational rigor required to build a multi-platform powerhouse.
Statements from this episode (15)
Morning Brew Daily hits 2M downloads, pacing for tens of millions
“It's at over two million downloads, and it's on pace to do tens of millions of downloads over the next 12 months.”
Two B+ friends make better podcast co-hosts than A-player strangers
“I would take two B-plus players that have a deep friendship over two A-players that are complete strangers and Every day of the week.”
Change only one variable when migrating an audience to new platforms
“Lesson number two, only change one variable when you're moving your audience. Four and a half million people, no morning brew for our daily newsletter. By keeping the variable of news constant and only changing the platform, From newsletter to YouTube and podc…”
Cross-promoting across similar platforms converts better than cross-medium migration
“What we've learned over the years is that transferring audiences across like platforms is way more successful than different platforms, and what that means is promoting a new newsletter in your existing newsletter is way easier than promoting a podcast in your…”
Relying on built-in distribution prevents building exceptional standalone products
“Having a huge audience is a blessing and a curse. It can supercharge new things you launch, but if you treat it as a crutch, you will never create great products that are truly exceptional on their own merit.”
Podcasters must customize 30% of their content when adapting to YouTube
“The rule I use is the seventy-thirty rule. When you're creating a podcast, I would assume 70% of the content can be used in your video form, but 30% has to be changed so that you're publishing something that is built to perform on the specific platform, in thi…”
Daily content builds habits faster but creates an operational grind
“Daily, timely content is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it's easier to build a habit and timely content creates more urgency. People need to know the news so that they can talk about it with their friends or their colleagues. And also when it's d…”
Morning Brew Daily's brutal 4:12 AM morning production schedule revealed
“Here is just a quick summary of what has to happen to put the show out every day. And this was sent to me directly from Toby, one of our co-hosts. For 12 a.m., alarm goes off. For 30 a.m., in Uber. For 45, in office. Five 15 to five 30, the rest of the product…”
Audiences gravitate to personality-driven media over faceless corporate brands
“Because we live in an era where the ability to create content and build an audience has truly been democratized because the cost of creating content is basically zero now, people are gravitating towards consuming content from brands that they resonate with. An…”
Half of Morning Brew Daily's comments relate to hosts, not news
“And the fascinating thing about going through the comments of the show is half of the comments actually have nothing to do with the content or the news stories. Half of these comments are literally just related to the hosts of the show.”
Media shows act as hubs creating value through diversified spokes
“I think of morning brew shows as hubs that have spokes coming out of them. And those spokes are ways that the core content can create other value for consumers and for morning brew at the center of this hub is the anchor show, which in this case is morning bre…”
Morning Brew Daily operates as a low-risk talent incubator
“Another spoke is morning brew daily being a talent incubator where we can bring in guests or guest hosts and In order to test talent, low risk to us, and potentially leverage some of our best test guests or hosts to launch new shows under Morning Brew's umbrel…”
Audience growth linearly stretches like a balloon before popping exponentially
“Growth is mostly linear, maybe one day exponential. There is an old Founders Journal episode that I'll try to find and link to in the show notes, but I talk about this concept called the balloon effect. Now, imagine you have a water balloon under a faucet, and…”
Content-market fit is the top priority for a media CEO
“Finding content market fit is priority number one when you start creating content. Everyone talks about finding product market fit as being the first job of a CEO in the startup world. And I think finding content market fit is the first job of a media company,…”