The Exchanges

Q I think you would never think of a newsletter costing 2000 dollars a year. Um, but it's all, I think what's really smart, what Motley Fool does that's really smart is it's all about the value, right? It's like, oh, if I get one good stock pick, it's worth it to me to pay 2000 dollars a year. And I think that's how a lot of people think about it.

A Yeah, absolutely. Especially depending on the subscribers that they have. Many of the people that sign up for the low price ones, they're probably working with, you know, five or six figure portfolios, maybe seven figure portfolios on their own, but they have plenty of members that are worth five, 10, 20, 50, a hundred million dollars. And, and for, at that level of clientele, for them to spend, you know, 10 grand a year on, on a service is like, you know, chump shames to them. So they've done a really good job at Segmenting their, their, their audience, their backend audience, um, and then upselling them over time. The other thing that they've done that's really fascinating is they have taken their, um, initial business, business model, initial brand name, and they have actually spun off from there, um, a number of different brands. So they have a hedge fund that they run, um, called one, six, two, three, three capital. And that I believe employs a fairly traditional two and 20, uh, model. Which is very obviously lucrative, and that is, they service a very small number of clients, but they have a very high net worth client base that goes in there. They have mutual funds that they've spun off. They have ETFs they've spun off. They've had sister brands that they've spun off that focus on personal finance and real estate. So they have just done an excellent job of taking this cor…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, absolutely. Especially depending on the subscribers that they have.”

Q but I just imagine that He went to the cultural tutor and was like, Hey, I'll give you X amount of dollars per month and just like continue doing what you're doing and just go do this full time and make it better. And then almost as like a patron of the arts, it sounds like, um, wait, you know, where you, yeah. Is that, is that, is that fair?

A Yeah. And I know in, in, in that specific use case, I think the cultural tutor was working at McDonald's. So he essentially said, I'll, I'll, I'll give you the same salary or maybe more of a salary that you're working at McDonald's, but quit that job and spend all of your time, uh, doing this. But I think there's an opportunity to apply that same thinking cobbled together for lack of a better term, um, a podcast network, but do it across different, uh, platforms. And if you build up a decent enough size and have a decent enough Uh, trajectory for the, um, for the accounts that you, you go after. I think for the small accounts, it gives them an opportunity to actually monetize their platforms without having to think about the back office way before they could reach any scale on their own to turn it into a, a full-time living. And in exchange, they're giving up some of the, of the future upside if they really hit it big. But I know a lot of small creators would, would happily make that, uh, would happily make that trade. And then the other side, if you're the one aggregating, Uh, you have to think like a venture capitalist, right? You just need a handful of those. If you have like, you know, 20 or 30 of these, um, on your payroll or in your network, you just need a handful of them to really make it big for the entire, the entire payoff to be big.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. And I know in, in, in that specific use case”

Q So what's the story? He, cause you know, what's the story with him? I know he, he grew up in, or he was living in Key West. I think he was like poor, you know, playing on the streets. Well, you know, how did he go from, you know, playing the streets of Key West to being a multi-billionaire, owning a bunch of companies?

A Yeah. So he actually tried to get into, he wanted to be a musician. He knew that about himself and he tried to get in to, um, the music industry, uh, through the front door. So he went to Nashville and he tried to get a recording, uh, deal and he would come in and the record labels would be like, we don't know how to classify you, right? Like you're not, you're not country music. You're not rock music. So he tried, he, he got a couple of records out, I think the traditional way and they, Utterly failed. Um, and he actually picked up and went to kind of green pasture Key West at the time, uh, which when he went there was like a shell of what it is today. Like rent was super cheap and he was actually, uh, going from bar to bar saying to them, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll play here for, for tips and booze. And that was his fee, uh, if you will. And he basically was super scrappy and lived off of Uh, of tips and slept where he could, uh, in the beginning, but he went, uh, he, he slowly started to develop, uh, a name, uh, for himself. And he actually, uh, you know, he was playing so often that his style started to become, uh, more formalized. And since he was leaving, living in, uh, Key West, he started to make that a part of his persona and a part of his, uh, of his music. And, um, he just, Worked his tail off going from venue to venue, uh, around key West. And then he started to expand an…

AI assessment note: “he slowly started to develop, uh, a name, uh, for himself.”

Q to B media podcast, uh, that podcast actually went a little bit viral. If you haven't listened to it, um, go and check it out on the channel. But, you know, do you have any, do you have any thoughts on, you know, categories that make sense? Um, and how you, how do you think about B to B versus, you know, your classic B to C funny meme account?

A Yeah, you're asking obviously excellent questions because it has to be in categories that you could monetize them in some way. So having a bunch of, you know, prank channels, uh, get together isn't gonna be, isn't gonna be great. Uh, but you could certainly focus on, um, like one category that I love consuming content on is like the building category. So I love watching YouTube videos that are people constructing houses or doing home repairs or doing a product reviews of, uh, Of tools and services. That could be a very, a very lucrative field to enter because there's a bunch of ways you could monetize that on the back end. I'm also in the finance world. So that's the one that I know best. And obviously there's lots of ways to, to monetize people that are interested in stocks or investing or, or real estate through, through brokerages. Uh, that you could, uh, you, you could partner with, or there's tools out there that you could sell to people that have interest in that. So those would be the two that come to mind, but I'm sure there's lots of categories that you could apply it to.

AI assessment note: “one category that I love consuming content on is like the building category”

Q want to check your stocks daily. Um, you know, and I think that's, that's another way to think about some of these partnerships is how do you, How do you create, how do you, how do you go to them and say like, I'm going to help increase your retention rate? Um, your attention is going to go up because the thing that I provide is a daily use case.

A Absolutely. I, I don't even think that they necessarily had to create a special, uh, a special, a special deal. Like I think AOL actually had a program in place because they were again, looking for content. They didn't want to be content creators. They wanted to partner with content creators. So again, it was easier for them. Uh, it was easier for them in the first place, just given the nature of what they were trying to do. But I totally think that that general strategy, the general idea is find something small that could be big and find a way to partner with them or find a way to help them get. They want that can be a great way to build a business.

AI assessment note: “I think AOL actually had a program in place because they were again, looking for content.”