All right, welcome back to Monetize Media. I'm Kyle Scott. On this episode I talk to Michael Kaufman, founder, owner and operator of Catskill Crew, a local newsletter in the Catskills region of New York. We get into how he grew his newsletter, how he creates his content, but most importantly we talk about the monetization and business aspects of it. How he is forming direct relationships with local advertisers, his events business, how he himself wants to launch a business on the backs of building a trusted brand in the region. There is just super fascinating stuff in this show, both for people who are creating local newsletters or newsletters in general as a media business, but also for business owners, particularly small and medium sized local business owners, and how you can use a content based newsletter once a week to become the most trusted brand in your area. Super fascinating conversation. I learned a lot. So here's my conversation with Michael Kaufman.

All right, wanna welcome on Michael Kaufman, Catskill Crew. Michael, welcome to the show. Pumped to be here. Thanks. Thanks for joining. So people heard a little bit there in the intro, but why don't you quick do like a 30 to 90 second overview of what you do? Yeah, you know, I've been building startup companies for about 14 years now. Started in the beverage industry, found my way to digital health, spent a long time fundraising, got a little, got a little burnt out and decided to start a new venture. Something that was playful, fun, community oriented. I launched a local newsletter called Catskill Crew about a year ago and just hit 11,000 subscribers. You know, I really see it as a local brand more than a newsletter and an opportunity to build a holding company. In addition to that, I run the Newsletter Club which is a members only community of local newsletter creators. There's over 60 of us who are starting to cover the entire world. And you know, my vision for that is to really kind of be on the forefront of what local media and journalism looks like. And then finally, just most Recently, I've launched 1-800-Fly Fish, which is an outdoor media company and kind of the same model of like how do I leverage a newsletter to build a community to then be a Trojan horse for a products company? Smart. Smart. Yeah. And full disclosure, I'm a member of the community and it's awesome in the couple weeks I've been a member. How long have you been doing it? How long has it been going on? I started it while I was on a road trip out west in August and I was firing off invites end of August while going on the back roads of of New Mexico and it quickly grew closed. 20 members. And I was like, wow, this is. This is really incredible. There's a lot of positive energy here. Like, everyone's helping everyone. Now it's 64 members. And, you know, there's a nice, healthy wait list. So I'm slowly bringing people in. I think with where the magic is, as you're probably coming to see now, is there's people who are just getting started. Some folks have been in the game for 8, 10 years, other ones who have exited, and now we're kind of reexamining what this space looks like. Everyone's learning from everyone. We're compounding knowledge, and it's just exciting. It really is fun. Agreed. All right, so why don't you talk a little bit about specifically what Catskill crew? You know what, before you do that, dig in a little bit more. What made you want to get in to this space? The local newsletter game. You touched on your background, but maybe just sort of tie together the thread of where you were, how you got to here, and why you wanted to kind of be in. I mean, media in general is tough. Local media is harder. Yeah, it's a. It's. It's kind of one of those things where I wasn't sure what I was trying to do next. You know, I think I was even talking to my therapist at one point. He's like, you know, are you really an entrepreneur? After, you know, I just got totally burnt out trying to capital raise for this previous business. I was like, I don't know. You know, it's a. It's a. It's a funny question. When you come into these forks in the road in life and you're like, what do I want to do next? And I wanted to build something. I knew that it's what I know how to do. It's what I've spent my whole life doing. But I didn't want to get caught in the capital raise trap again. I wanted to have full autonomy. I wanted to be able to tap into all the skills that I have, which is community building, which is branding, marketing, product development. And so, you know, I kind of just started examining what my opportunities were. And I saw just in the Catskills here, a few hours north of New York City, it's really hard to find out what's going on. I mean, exceptionally difficult. I always talk about how the algorithms have failed us. Businesses used to post for free, get massive organic traffic. Then they had to pay for massive traffic. Now they can't even pay for what once they Once got for free. There's no conduit between local business and community anymore. And so I personally was just struggling to find what is there to do this weekend. It's such a vast region. There's so much exciting stuff, but it's always like, I see the post three days after it happened. So I started aggregating events that were taking place in the area and I called the Catskill Crew. My mom subscribed and I was like, yeah, thanks, mom. But after about a week, I had 500 subscribers. It's like, oh, organic. Yes, all those were organic. I didn't do paid for quite a long time, which is a lesson that I try to share with everyone. Put money into the Zuck machine as soon as possible. It. You can't buy your way to success or sponsorships, in my opinion, but it's worth it. And so, yeah, pretty quickly got about 500, then a thousand. You know, I put a lot of effort into the organic and the creative side of things to make sure I was riding the coattails of the established businesses and I just made them look really good, you know, with the Catskill Crew branding, with their branding and, you know, I started recognizing there's a massive opportunity to do more. Started looking at other content buckets. What else can I integrate? I'm a, I'm a history nerd. So I started focusing on the rich history of the Catskills. Oh, my God. That really resonated. Running beehive polls. Do you guys actually like this? What else do you want to see? And so it's, it's, it's never solidified. You're always being playful with it. And I think that playful attitude with the Catskill Crew brand, with the newsletter, it keeps people sticking around. It's an authentic voice. It's not stale or stagnant. It's ever changing. And yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible to see what it's grown into. And 2025 is. It's going to start off like, you know, it's going to be pretty crazy start. Yeah. I love that idea of, of kind of being able to play with the format and the content. I've always found in, you know, I've been in content 15 years, is that when you try to create a hard template, they can be good, but they can then force you to either do things that aren't really that interesting or, you know, like have something interesting and have nowhere to put it. So having that flexibility is key. What does the media look like? You said it's hard to find stuff like, what is the media situation in Catskills? Like, is there a local newspaper? I'm not super familiar with the area, but, like, what is. What is your competition? Yeah, it's probably similar across most geographies, right? Like, you have Instagram, you have Facebook groups, Instagram. It's a bunch of. Look, it's, it's. The algorithm is add and it's kind of perpetuating those behaviors where you're just scrolling. There's deep. There's no deep engagement. So, you know, the timeline screwed up. You're reaching a very small percentage of your overall following. There's local newspapers, but unfortunately they're run like dinosaurs and by dinosaurs, I support them. I buy every single paper. But I've seen over the last seven years just quality, you know, really, really kind of tank. And it's more ads, the writing and the stories. It's just written for a very different demographic. And so I wish them the best, but unfortunately, I feel like they're going to continue to capitulate, which actually opens up opportunities for local newsletters to fill that gap, become the backbone. There's magazines and print media out there, but, you know, I'm an owner and a business up here and the stack arrives and, you know, by the time they bring the next stack the following month, one or two may have moved. Most people aren't reading deep diving into them either. The content is. It might be great, but it's just so long form and no one needs to read that much. They're to some degree, they're just writing more to put more ads in. And, you know, so I think there, there's nothing that offers such a direct conduit between community and local business and really ties in the history. And I think first and foremost, this is really about deepening the connection with the region. That is my mission. It's about community. It's about bringing people together. And so it's not just about getting the news. It's. I'm throwing events all the time. That's not about the money. Pays pretty well. You know, I've probably done $15,000 in events in the past, you know, 60 days, priming them for 20, 25. I got one this weekend, one on Monday. But it's about community. It's about the culture here, and the news is part of it. Yeah. Now it's interesting. Sam Parr, obviously from the Hustle, put out a tweet the other day, kind of, I want to say, dumping on like, kind of current newsletters that they're maybe a little late to the game. And he said, you know, he liked to look at other companies and history to get his ideas to kind of take from other categories and verticals and apply them to a new business. But I actually think you could do that within newsletters. If you look at the tech business, kind of news, straight general news, even politics, maybe even newsletter space has played out. But taking that playbook, which is what both you and I and many others have done, and applying that to local is. There's so much opportunity there. And I'm sure it sounds like you've experienced this. What I've seen firsthand is people are like, this is awesome. This is cool. Someone every week. This is highly engaging. It's better than a magazine. It's better than a newspaper. I can kind of quickly.

It's the same playbook those guys were.

Running with the Hustle or with Morning Brew, but applying it to a local region, and people are almost, like, stunned that something like this exists. They're like, where has this been my whole life? Have you had. It sounds like you've probably had that same experience with people up there. Like, yeah, why would I not want this? It's the greatest thing in the world when I throw these events and people come up to me and it's not just like, man, I've discovered so many amazing places, or I didn't know the history of, you know, bluestone quarries in the Catskills or bark tanning leather. But what really kind of gets me going is, like, I've made so many friends through Catskill Crew, and I'm just like, oh, like, that warms my heart. And that's what this is all about and everything else. Like, of course I need to make money off of this. But at the end of the day, your defensive moat is, are you adding value, not just news, but value to people's life? Are you being the connective tissue to bring people together to connect with their neighbors, their friends, their frenemies, whatever? And I do agree that, like, I think a lot of people have been using newsletters in a pretty generalized way. And I think there's so many ways we could take this format. And through creativity, you can build something so much bigger. I always say, like, my newsletters are Trojan horses for a much bigger business plan, a much bigger operation I have. And you don't need to know exactly what's over the horizon, but you need to be posturing it, structuring it, uniting that community, engaging that community in a way that builds the Trust and authenticity. So when you go to execute that plan on a. On a bigger stage, you know, it's primed and ready. I mean, you can't do surveys and polls and get the insights you want through print media or traditional media. That is such a superpower. A poll and a survey is insane. I don't build anything without running a survey. Do you run the results of the survey or poll? Because we've actually used that for content in some cases. About, like, a popular issue in town. Yeah. So 1-800-Fly-Fish now, it's. It's being very playful and fun, and I'm sharing the results every week. And the same with Catskill Crew. You know, I'm like, hey, do you guys want to, you know. A Monopoly board completely branded for the Catskills with reservoirs, rivers, towns, fire towers? Yeah. All right, well, 97% of you voted for this, so I'm going to go bury myself in Alibaba. Working with Chinese manufacturers for the next 60 days to make this a reality for you. And I think that type of autonomy, I say it's a newsletter for the people, by the people. And I mean, it's. If someone doesn't, if the community votes no for something which hasn't happened yet, I'm fine with just bringing out back, killing it, and never talking about it again. I love the Monopoly idea. I would steal that if we weren't like, two miles next to Atlantic City, where Monopoly is actually based on. It's a great idea, and it's going to be fun. It's designed to be evergreen. It's a journey. It's a process. I didn't know what I was getting into, but I just got a video of the. The latest production run. They ship out on the 18th, so they should be here early January.

Okay.

So I want. I want to really dig in on the business side before we get there. So I just want to go over kind of the growth in the content. So you got a little bit of organic traction. Early on, you said about 500 people. At what point did you kind of begin investing in Facebook ads? Is that the primary form of growth? And then after that, you know, you kind of mentioned you're a marketing and business guy, and what I didn't hear was like, journalist or content, which, by the way, I found some of the best media businesses have started by people who weren't traditionally journalists. So I think that's actually a positive. But talk about for you, is there a challenge in creating the content? You've focused mostly on events. Do you do as much news or is it more events? So talk about the growth and then how you position the content and. And then we'll kind of get into the business side. Yeah, growth. You kind of have two buckets, right? You have organic or you have paid. It's not rocket science organic. You know, it's Reddit groups, it's Facebook groups, it's Instagram. It's making businesses look good, riding the coattails of them. So they're sharing with their audience and you're. It's basically a vampire attack, but not in a negative way. Let me dig. I want to double click on a couple of those. The Reddit piece, is it local subreddits? Because I've looked into this. I'm like, man, sometimes it's tough because you can't always with local newsletter, tap into the scale of the Internet with something that's local. So talk about the Reddit and then talk about riding the business coattails. Because sometimes you want to leverage a business, but also you eventually want them to pay you for sponsorship. So how do you sort of do that? Like on off dance of hey, I'll promote you and we'll have a relationship. But certain, you know, at some point I might want you to pay for that. Yeah. So Reddit, you know, you go in, you find subreddits in your area and you deliver value. Right. So I post the A list of some of the events for the week. Hey, if you guys want the entire list, sign up here. It's totally free, unsubscribe anytime. And if you want me to get any spots on here that aren't covered, let me know. Some mods might boot you out. Okay. There's nothing you could do about that. A little bit of a headache and a pain in the ass. Spin up your own subreddit. Catskill Events or Catskill Crew, simple as that. And start bringing people over. Now you own that domain. The same tactic can be used in Facebook groups. So that's really kind of the way to play the Reddit game. You kind of got two approaches. Tap into existing markets. If you get pushed out, spin up your own. You will be able to find people and you can even advertise that quite effectively on Reddit. It's a fairly simple advertising platform for writing the final. Get a lot of subs from Reddit. Yeah, and I. From the ads. From the ads. I don't do too many ads. I've done them with 1-800-Fly-Fish because it's very easy to target a subreddit. But I found my acquisition cost was so low on Facebook and I'm already spending so much time there that I'm just going to keep my efforts there until that CAC gets a little bit higher. And then I'll shift back over into Reddit and explore kind of this untapped vein. How low are you going on Facebook? How low can we go? How low can you go? I would say my lowest was about 38 cents and now I'm hovering around 42 cents. But every market is different, every type of copy and media is different. And you have to be playful, you have to kind of, you know, move. You have to do a little bit of kung fu. Right. You got to bend with the algorithm and the black box of, of the meta ad platform and there's some ads you'll put out there and you'll be like, this thing's gonna crush and it gets no exposure. You're like, that doesn't make sense. And you just kind of have to be very a B testing and you know, have a backlog and tinker. It might be going from static to video. It might be totally different copy or subtle things. No one really knows how that that thing works, but when you find something that is running, pump some dollars onto it. So the Catskills. So I imagine there's a lot of people that have second homes there. Yeah. So this is a challenge I've run into is, you know, you could zip, zip code target on Facebook, but sometimes you might want to reach people who aren't there all the time. So I've, you know, kind of targeted people who are members of groups or have liked pages related to the town. What sort of targeting do you use? Because it's kind of maybe different than someone's like true local town where it's like all year round residents. Yeah. So I'm hitting all the counties so who are up here. So the weekenders who are coming up, they'll see it over the weekend, whether you know, scrolling Instagram or Facebook. But at the same time I'm targeting kind of the general vacation, the vacationers location. So that's Long island, that's New York City, that's Jersey, that's western Connecticut. And you know, it's working right now. And at some point when it starts kind of petering out, I'll spin up a new campaign, duplicate, you know, make sure that the audience isn't being targeted that I already have and you know, start playing around again. But in terms of audience itself, you know, I say 22 plus. I don't really add too many demographic requirements there. I let Zuckerberg figure out who the right target is and let him do his thing. You pretty much just roll 22 plus in these areas and, you know, Facebook will figure out who spends their time in the Catskills. Interesting. In addition to adding kind of my exclude list, which is downloading my Beehive subscribers, kind of scrubbing the list of the inactives, focusing on the actives, uploading that with just the emails and saying, don't target these people, you could also do a lookalike and say, target people like this. So there's a bunch of tactics you could use. Facebook is one of the most complicated systems to really do right, you could do it, you could do it. But to really do it right, you got to be effective with it. The interface, too. The interface gets me for a company that's like, consumer, you know, they've probably thought about every pixel on the consumer facing end to optimize for usability and engagement. And it's like the back end makes you want to throw your laptop through the window. I've done it. I've done it. I've drawn it a few times. What do you view as kind of your, like, your tam, like, what's your address? How many people, theoretically, if you got every single person subscribed to your newsletter, could you get? Yeah, it's funny. And I, I, I won't BS it, I don't know. And I, I'm not too worried about that overall, because I'm, I really, I've struggled in the past around, like, you know, before I started deploying capital into ads, it was really about like, well, what do I need here? Is it 10,000 true fans, you know, or a thousand true fans? Sorry, 10,000 would be amazing. It is a quality over quantity. I am very much focused on subscriber ltv. It's, it's not so much about what is my open rate, Everything like that. Like, are people willing to spend money on my products, coming to my events? That's the most important thing. But this is a massive region. Three hours east to west, you know, two and a half hours north to south. That's just the locals and weekenders. Then you have New York City folks. So there's an opportunity to niche down into the Catskill Crew brand and create Catskill Crew experiences. Bringing people up here, unlocking a whole new opportunity to build a relationship between them and my brand, but also to monetize. I'm not a big fan of traditional monetization. Overall, ads and sponsors, I'm looking at it from a much larger creative standpoint. Yeah. All right. Yeah, so let's get into that. So you use Facebook a lot for growth. Cost is, you know, under $0.50 per subscriber, which is, which is excellent by any metric. And I think you're probably going to explain why your LTV compared to CAC is excellent. Content sounds like mostly events, a little bit of news, a little bit of history. Have that, right? Yeah, yeah. And I'm always playing around like I feature charities and everything like that. And you asked earlier, like, what's my experience in journalism? I was a college intern working at the Boston Globe doing classifieds. I wouldn't call that a journalistic experience, but I've been telling stories in marketing for 14 years. How do you get someone to care about a brand? How do you get them to understand something super complicated? And actually, like, I was an intern for Jay Walker, who was the founder of Priceline, prolific inventor, 300 plus patents. And he, the first day at the office, he introduced me to his chief story officer and I was like, what? It's a great title. I was just like, I was perplexed. I was like, what do you mean? And we had this long discussion around it doesn't matter how good your team is, how good your product is, how novel anything is. If you can't tell the story and get someone to care, then it doesn't really make a difference. And so I think part of that is how I tell these stories and how I write. It's just, it's authentically me. And every time I write, I'm writing as if I'm talking to you. And I keep it casual, I keep it light. And so, you know, I think that's, that's very important to everyone out there. Like, be authentically yourself, because that's what people crave. I think that's so important. I think a lot of people, especially these last couple of years, have really sort of tuned out. Maybe the classic journalism style. You can still deliver really good information in a professional way. But everything was. Journalism styles were rooted in AP style, which is inverse pyramid. And there's a literal reason behind that, which was in newspapers, they would have to cut off the least important part. So you'd have to write in a way that they could just chop any of the bottom paragraphs and nobody would notice. And it's not the most engaging format. And to your point about chief story Officer, humans are narrative driven people. Everyone likes a story. And even consuming complex information usually Requires putting it in a narrative so that people can kind of grasp it. So I love. I love what they were doing there. I love that title, by the way. Yeah. And you mentioned, like, which are the content buckets? Like, yes, it is events first and foremost for me. However, I do try to, like, again, kind of highlight the past and bring it to the future of this area. And it's so rich in history. And so that's everything from fly fishing to the wildlife to, you know, the resources from hemlock and tanning and everything in this area. And so, like, I'll play with these secondary buckets and these tertiary buckets. And I think that's also what keeps it interesting of, like, hey, I don't know what's going to be in here next time. However, there is opportunities to niche down, spin Out Land and Lodge, which is another publication I'm looking at launching focused on real estate. There's opportunities to go to experiences. And so a lot of people say, should I go wider? Should I go wider? Nah, go deeper, in my opinion. But, you know, everyone has their own kind of strategy and approach. Not. No one is better than the other. All right, so let's talk about the monetization, then maybe talk about today. Start with ads. You know, ads is the obvious spot. So talk about ads. Talk about different parts of the pie that you monetize with and then where you'd like to go. And focus specifically for now on Catskill Crew, like, how you build that brand and where you are today, where it could be in five or 10 years. And then we'll kind of dig into each of these. I might kind of pop in along the way and ask you to, like, go deeper on something. Yeah, please do. I might start going on tangents. You know, I spend a lot of time answering questions from folks of like, hey, I just put a ton of money into my newsletter. I got 5,000 subscribers, but I can't get a single advertiser. Well, it takes time. You know, you can't just pump money into a local brand and expect there to be trust. You got to kind of be out there. And the fastest way to build trust, in my opinion, is to give stuff away for free. Show value, show goodwill. And so from day one, I was giving out ad spots to my friends and their businesses. And it was really kind of twofold. It was to. It was threefold. One, optically, it made my newsletter look bigger than it was. Two, it was. I was able to build relationships from a business standpoint with my friends, businesses showing them metrics showing them value. And then three, it was, they were promoting it. Their competition would see and their competition would reach out to me and be like, hey, I would love to advertise. I'm like, I'm working with the Pines right now. I can't really. When their campaign's over, like, I would love to talk to you. I love your business. Like, here's some information. And then I would just wait it out two weeks and be like, all right, that campaign's done. Let's get to work. So I think right out the gate, give away free inventory. You know, you're. It's not necessarily. You're not monetizing in any way, so you might as well put it in there. Find partners you want to work with, start showing them metrics, start finding, finding. I would say challenge yourself to find advertisers that are value add for your subscribers as well. So that's like first and foremost, there's a bunch of different ways and placements. You have banner ads for me. I do a lot of featured events, so I have this long list of happenings. But to guarantee your event is in there, because there's about 200, 300 each week you pay, and that could be 250 to $500. If it's a small business. I like them, I know them. Or they've come through a recommendation, like, I'll cut you a deal, no problem. I'm not here to maximize my profit from each business. If I know their margins are tight, I'll give it to them on the house. Like, I will give favors all day long. And it's not even about like, oh, they're going to come back to me and pay me on this next round. It's about building those relationships. You're in a small community and they will spread good word for you and are actively like a organic lead gen on your behalf. So by the way, dump into that for a sec. Super smart. You know, it sounds like you don't have a rate card, right? And I think so many people in advertising will always ask, like, well, what's your rate card? Or, you know, what's the cpm? And I think I've seen you say this and I think I agree with this, especially with the local newsletter, you don't want to be bothered with CPMs. That's for big ad buys where people need to get a certain number of eyeballs. In this, it's sponsorship. How much is worth it for the business to pay you? Because the CPMs will never really work when you have 10 or 20,000 people, which is kind of the range for most of these. Even a good CPM is not maybe going to pay enough for the amount of value you can generate. When you can reach like 60% of a local population with a single email and half of those people will open it, there is a premium to pay for that. Even if it's only 2, $300, that might still be 3x what a good CPM would be. Absolutely. I mean, if I had one bumper sticker to put on my car, it'd be throw your CPMs out the window. I mean, truly, I think it's like, I don't have a rate card. I'm first to admit that every business I go to, I send them a partnership kit, which just explains kind of like high level why, what is my competitive advantage? Look, put yourself in their shoes. They've wasted a ton of money advertising, marketing, with probably very little to show for it. So you got to kind of like get on their level, address that pain point, and say, look, no one else is like Catskill crew. We are the most direct way to reach the customers. You want 10,000, 11,000 locals, weekenders and vacationers. Not a black box like print media or an algorithm like Facebook. This is direct to inbox. We have the data to back the efficacy and most importantly, you have the trust and the authenticity of working with my brand. And I mean that in, like, a really honest way. I've spent a long time saying no to brands and nurturing this community. I'm not going to take money from any business. So working with me is really about validation as a core partner. I actually, like, approve this message. So in terms of the CPMs, yeah, I don't use them. I send the partnership kit and then I set up a call. If they don't follow up with that, like, they're just like, well, what are the rates? I'm like, can't do that. I need to understand who you are, what your goals are. Like, are you a big business or a small business? Because I don't want to like, throw out, hey, it's $700 a week. And they're like, whoa, we can only do 200. I'll probably come right back and be like, you know, there's always this sweet spot you find. I'll go as low as I can go. But at some point, you have to, like, honor what you've created and people will try to pull fast ones on you. So it's kind of like, how do I support local. But at the Same time, you know, make sure that I'm valuing what I've built and what I've invested in and what I know this can deliver for the business. So an example is I've done collaborative events. And, you know, I did the first one, and, you know, it was, hey, do you guys want happy hour together? Like the catskill crew community? 95% in favor. Okay, went to a business. Let's do tickets, $20, get a free drink, 20% off rooms. They sold out. I think they moved 12 rooms on a Tuesday night and did $7,000 over the bar. It was their biggest night ever. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I probably won't be able to do that again. Did another event, another event, another event. Every single one has been a record breaker. I never guarantee this, but I know these. The chances of a record breaker are tremendous, let alone just the marketing exposure of being on Catskill Crew. The feet, the foot traffic through the door. And so are people paying you, or is the. Is the venue paying you? Or both? There's a bunch of different ways to cut it up. I would say the majority of them are the venue pays me. I try to really simplify it, and I don't increase those rates too much. On average, it's 1500 dollars to 2000. But I have some in the pipeline that are $7000 events. And the reason why I don't charge too much. So it's like. And I really promote it for three weeks leading up to it. I design posters. I really make it feel special because it's an opportunity, yes, to ride the coattails of these other businesses that I'm working with, but to bring the community together. And at the end of the day, that is the most important thing that could possibly happen. It makes me more than just a newsletter. It makes me, you know, a best friend. And so, yeah, I would say there's a bunch of ways to cut it up. You can charge tickets. There's free events that people attend, and the venue pays me. It's a marketing effort, but know your value. And early on, you might not. You might be like, ah, I'm gonna throw one of these events. Run it through your. Run it through your audience. Let them vote on what they want. Do they want bingo night? Do they want happy hour? Do they want a full foraging experience out in the woods? Let them guide you and then support that effort, because you are basically just executing what they want. And it kind of removes a lot of pressure off the operator to do that. To be like, you know, What? Yes. Of course, we're all nervous every time we hit send, but, like, I'm doing what you guys want, and, like, we're gonna have some fun with this and be light with it. What. What was your audience size when you had that first event, which is a success? Cause I wanna maybe give people who have a localized audience what sense, you know, what level they need to be at where they can think about an event. And quick aside, 14 years ago with my sports website, I thought I had a big website audience. A big website audience is a lot different than even a small newsletter audience. You need very large on the website. Cause the engagement's not as high through an event. At a bowling alley in Center City, Philadelphia, three people showed up. Two of them were me and my girlfriend. And it was like four months in. And I was like, all right, we're not ready for events yet. Now, years later, we had hundreds of people show up. But that will. That will bruise. That will bruise as well. That will leave some bruises. It has to. That hurts. I know. And, you know, it's like, I was probably sub. A thousand. It was March last year. Maybe a thousand subscribers. Maybe. Maybe 1500. Yeah, I think it was, like, early March. And I went to a place called Urban Cowboy up here, which is like a trendy Brooklynite mountain bar, restaurant and hotel. And I was just like, talk to the gym. I was like, hey, what do you think about doing a happy hour here? And he's like, yeah, all right. I was like, you guys definitely don't want to pay me. No. No. Okay. So we decided to do whatever. 40 tickets or something like that that we priced at 20, 25 dollars. We negotiated what that got you. And, you know, again, like, once that was set up, I kind of started asking people, what do you want to do? Okay, you want to do a happy hour? Where do you want to do it in this massive area? You want to do Ulster County? Okay, here it is. 40 tickets. You know, X amount of dollars. And I think I moved one ticket on day one. And I was like, shit, I'm all alone drinking martinis. Not the worst thing in the world. And what I realized was, like, I don't think I announced there was 40 tickets. So, okay, number one, scarcity value. Like, all right. So now I started dropping. All right, there's 30 tickets left. Then on social media, 25 tickets. 20 tickets. And then I started making it very friendly. Come hang out with your friends, neighbors, and, you know, like, let's have the best time ever in the mountains. And I Would say it sold out. And then I sold probably an additional six tickets the night of because there was no. Everyone could still roll in. But yeah, you could do it at any size, but make it. I mean that is like 4% of your audience showed up to an event which is, you know, getting a 4% click through rate is tough. That is insane. And the GM came over to me in the middle of the night, the middle of the party and he was sweating and he's like, we were understaffed for this because then they started inviting friends in and then it was like, screw it, everyone just comes in. Like, you don't get free drinks or anything like that. But like the bar opened up and the bar was as deep it's ever been. And I think the magic for me was like when people said like, this is the best party ever. And it wasn't over engineered, it was just, it wasn't about like having this live music and designing everything. Right. It was about community. And that's the most important thing. That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay, so your events are a big part of the business now. 100%. You do them same type of events? Happy hour type events? No, all different. So we've done foraging walks and brewery tastings. We've done, you know, July 4th parties with oyster bars and martini making class. This weekend we have a holiday party which is, you know, a special drinks menu, a live band. We're going to do a, a cooking experience and fly fishing experience at a campground over the summer. Just keep it interesting, keep it fun. What is the, what is your range of demo? Right, so when, you know, I imagine the first event you had people show up and you're like, what does my audience look like? You know, man, woman, old, young, you know, do you have sort of a sweet spot or do different events kind of have different mixes? It is everyone. That's what lights me up too. Like, you know, we just did a booze cruise on the Hudson river on the oldest passenger vessel out there. And the oldest people were probably about 75ish. The youngest were probably about 22. You know, there were locals who've been living up there their whole life. And there was, you know, folks from New York City who are, you know, very wealthy who just moved up here and, you know, wanted to start meeting some people. And I think that's where things, you know, really are interesting and exciting for me is the idea that my voice, my writing style, how I operate this business really resonates with this massive audience. And I Don't. That's so important to me, is to not kind of exclude anyone. That is awesome. Okay, so you got ads, you got kind of these direct sponsorships. You got the events. You've kind of mentioned using it to create a brand. You said you have business up there, so maybe touch on that. And then how you plan on using Catskill to create a brand. I know we've kind of talked about, you know, even these service businesses in town could be really interesting. Whether that's partnership. Do that, and then we'll get into the real estate piece. Because I think that's a separate branch off of the same idea. Yeah. Cool. So I think, like, first and foremost, you know, you've built a brand. If someone's willing to buy a hat with your logo on it, you know, if you're running a newsletter and someone's buying your hat with a logo on it, you've built a brand. Congrats. Good work. And that's a good rule of thumb. I like that, Chief story Officer. Buy a hat with your brand. Buy a hat with your logo, you build a brand. Two good takeaways, you know, and so I started, like, really kind of like, hey, does anyone want shirts? Yeah. Because I'm going to make one myself. But if, like, other people want one, cool. I'll make 50 of these. You're polling along the way for all these ideas? Yeah. So smart. Every single point. Does anyone want hats? Okay, I'm gonna get them custom made. You guys like these? Should we. What colors should we do? I had everyone vote on every single piece of this journey because they feel invested in the outcome and excited about it. And I've done some things in the past which have, in my opinion, failed. I did a piece of art, and I've done some, like, scratch off posters called the Triple Trout. Catskill Triple Trout, which was really well designed. It didn't sell that well. I did an elder buck print, and I was kind of like, does anyone want art? And it was a pretty solid response rate, but it didn't move that well. I still made a profit, but there's some things that just move better than others. And, like, don't beat yourself up. And it's also not about selling out instantly. Play the long game. But, yeah, I was gonna say, like, it's. It's to build the brand, I think is the most important thing. And again, I've. I've thought of Catskill Crew as really the validator and distribution vehicle for a holding company. So how do I. I'm a Partner in a fly fishing shop up here. And you know, I think like when you, when you have this platform with 10,000, 11,000 subscribers, there's no more effective way. I understand the value and I see the value it's generated for local businesses. Like, man, there's only so much upside, so much subscriber ltv, so much money I can make off ads and sponsors. Like, the next best piece of that is to own the advertising space and the business that's advertising in there. Now what businesses do you move forward with is the biggest question. Well, that's where you let your audience guide you again so you could start asking key questions. Man, I'm having a hard time finding firewood. I live in the Catskills. It's cold as hell. We have wood stoves going all winter. Long cords and cords of wood are coming in. We're chopping it. Finding a reliable individual to bring you wood through the winter, hard to do. And so you could literally just ask questions like, man, I'm having a hard time. Anyone else having a hard time with this thing? And you could be playful with it. Oh, shit. A lot of people are having a hard time with this. Okay, well let me put a, let me spin up a little lead gen website that's well designed. Put an ad in there. I don't even have to say I own it. I actually have not done this yet, but this is how I would run the playbook and just, okay, Catskill Firewood company. How many people are actually clicking into it? How many are signing up? Shit. All right, there was 250 clicks and 150 signups. All right, well, do you want to go acquire a firewood business? Do you want to invest in one or do you want to start one? You have a lot of opportunities there and obviously that's firewood. There's house cleaning, there's all different services businesses, there's software businesses. But when you own that validation engine, the distribution engine, it's just one of the biggest monetization avenues you can do. Yeah, I love that and I love. There's probably two arguments that putting your brand name on it. One is if you know it's good, eventually you want to tie those things together because your brand carries value. But you can put up that firewall early on that if this doesn't work or you don't go down that route or it just doesn't go well, like you don't sour the main brand. And you could very easily test. So smart. It's such, I think like a cheat Code if you have an audience. We used to sell a lot of apparel at my sports site and within five minutes you knew if you had a good product and we would poll people, but eventually you just have to make it and put it for sale. And I would tell you like, if we didn't get a couple of sales within five minutes.

Right.

It was like not a good shirt. And like the quicker you got one, you get that instant validation. And then if it's not a winner, you know, you buy 25 of them and you don't print anymore. And that's it. Interesting. So, okay, so when you think about businesses, it's like, okay, how can I use the brand? Maybe spin up a little bit of lead gen and then think about partner, acquire or launch. Are there any of those before you get to the real estate piece? Are there any of those that you've kind of identified early on and then, you know, maybe as a side question to that, I imagine, you know, you're largely a one man show on Catskill Crew if you're not correct me. But at what point? And this has been a challenge for me, you know, we're kind of running, you know, almost a dozen of these local sites now. And there's a. We want to build some of these businesses on the backs, but like, you could spread yourself thin. And being in the firewood business, for example, is a much different day than the media business. And how do you kind of scale yourself and then at what point do you sort of hire. You need to hire people to run these businesses. Yeah. So it's just me running Catskill Crew and my puppy who's sleeping down here snoring. Easy life. I have two VAs who helped me with event identification and aggregation, but I think you nailed it. You only have so much time in the day. So how do you find your way to executing, let's say, hypothetical? We identify that the firewood business is actually killer. We have a thousand people who signed up as lead gen. They're willing to pay, they're biting tooth and nail to be the first customer and get cords delivered. So, you know, then you have the question, well, look, Kyle, it's going to take a ton of money for us to start this thing to get the gear, to get the knowledge. I don't know how to do it, you know, so like that rules it out right there. And do I want to do that all day long? Probably not. Do you want to do a house cleaning business, A roofing company? Probably not. And so it kind of leaves the Option of do you acquire a business? Well, if the prices are right. You know, we have an aging population who wants out of their business. And you could probably negotiate fantastic deals right now. And the other side is, you know, do you just want to invest in, you know, a business where you trust the operators? There's both pros and cons there. If you trust the operators, great. You're only going to own a percentage of it if you acquire the business. Well, now you need to find operators who are reliable. And where I live, that's a really hard task. And in many places, people don't like to work. So, you know, we kind of have to be very diligent through that process. And, you know, I believe in kind of moving fast, breaking things, you know, that whole philosophy and not chasing perfection. But when it comes to that services side business, I am happy to wait all day until that opportunity arises where I'm like, that's the one, because I will lean all in on it. So I practice patience on that front. Yeah, find the signal, you know, kind of wade your way through the noise. All right, so you mentioned real estate. What does that mean for you? Kind of talk about the idea as you think about real estate? Because I think a lot of local newsletter people have kind of identified this as obviously a high ticket item service business, inherently localized. What does it mean for you? Yeah, I talk about this in the newsletter club quite often. It's actually my struggle to execute this new publication concept. So I went out there identifying a potential opportunity which could be highlighting real estate with my own kind of authentic voice and under the branding, the Catskill Crew. And I kind of posed the question, hey, does anyone want a weekly newsletter on real estate? And I was shocked that it was like 89, 90 in favor. And the ones who were against it, most of them were just like, you're doing so much already. And I was like, oh, that's, that's sweet. Thanks, mom. Yeah, it was like, there's more caffeine, it's all good. And so I designed the whole brand land and lodge I've talked to, which opens up the opportunity for like hospitality plus real estate. So kind of thinking bigger picture. I, you know, negotiated a couple deals with some realtors where they wanted to get involved. I kept it at 3, spread out across the region. However, I've still yet to pull the trigger, and that's pretty unlike me. And I think I'm trying to trust my gut and my instincts here, where the conversations with realtors look, they're very much just Like I need to close a sale. I need a sale. I need a sale. They are hunting. You know, it's not the authenticity I'm looking for, the relationship building, it's look, they have a job to do. I respect that process. But the other part is the idea that this is a newsletter for everyone. When you start getting into real estate, look, you have folks who are on Zillow porn scrolling but then you have the other individuals who are like, look, everything's seven figures now and there's a massive drop off of quality and everything like that in this area as folks have moved up here during COVID and spiked prices. So how do I do that in a way that's not divisive and diluting to my, to my subscriber base? I might honestly be overthinking this like crazy. But I'm thinking about what I want and everything is through the lens of what I would enjoy and I haven't found that sweet spot now. Yeah, it's a massive opportunity nonetheless. But I tried to do everything differently as well. So kind of what's my unique twist on the real estate market up here? Still haven't figured that out yet. And it'll come to me or it won't. I think we're very. You and I may be very similar in that regard. I always like to like just be a little bit different, especially with content. Like how do you do it? Like it's different than what's, what's out there. We've. So I've explored this real estate thing and it's. And we're in like kind of similar spaces at least with, you know, our walking the boards at the shore, the Jersey Shore, because it is a vacation. There's a lot of vacation. Home prices have gone up since COVID significantly and the audience is, is, you know, in general, very generally speaking. And it sounds like, you know, you're in a similar boat, one of two buckets. You have maybe the vacationer or the second homeowner. So you know, different bucket. And then maybe you have, you know, at Jersey Shore there's a lot of locals who, you know, aren't maybe in that income bracket, but because the real estate's gone up, I mean their homes might be worth significant, substantial life changing amounts of money.

Right.

So they actually do have a. A lot of locals will complain about the value of real estate going up and people getting priced out, but at the same time they have a large asset as a result. But I've kind of struggled with this too. We've Toyed with this idea, doing the same thing. Spinoff real estate brand. So much pull through. We've promoted it a few times in our newsletter and the amount of people who've opted in, we got 2,000 opt inside. We've only done. I haven't sent one out in eight months. One piece of content that worked was looking at the MLS results. And you know, these MLS results are very messy. And the Redfin's and realtor.com of the world do a really nice job of real estate stats and data and commentary on a national level, but it really breaks down on the local level. It's just really not good. It doesn't understand the local market. So we sort of took some of that data, data, wrapped a nice content package, put our spin on it localized. It talked to developers, talked to Realtors, and the content output was excellent. So that might be a spot for you to start, which is just like content about local real estate. Because one of the things I've noticed is, you know, to your point, Realtors just want to sell, sell, sell. And oftentimes the only local real estate content is coming from either a Realtor or a mortgage broker or someone in the transaction chain that has a very vested interest in selling you a property. So it's always time is right to buy, buy this house. Like there's no, you know, there's no context ever. And so honest. And these could be big asset classes, especially in an area like you're at or where I'm at at the Jersey Shore and in most towns. I mean, these are big asset classes. And if you look at like finance or crypto, there are how many public publications covering the stock market?

Crypto.

Right. I mean, these are billion, multibillion dollar, trillion dollar asset classes that have lots of information and content. And yet localized real estate really doesn't have much. Maybe you find some commercial real estate and like the big investments in major cities, but like, you don't find actual good information. So from a content perspective could be an idea for you to consider. But then it's like the monetization piece. It's like, are you then do you become a broker? Do you work with a broker? Do you sell leads? You know, you're in maybe a little bit of a rental market. Like we have a big rental market. That's an opportunity. No rentals here. Oh, really interesting. Everything is Airbnb now. It's. Yeah, so. So there's kind of this sour taste that people have around real estate. I think there's a lot of ways to do it. I think, you know, from a content standpoint, there's a lot of educational stuff you could put out there. I think if I ever got into being a broker, it changes my relationship with my subscribers. How do I maximize? How do I move people down this funnel? And I think that would actually be detrimental to the overall mission of what I'm trying to create. I don't want to be having an event and being like, hey, if you ever want to sell your house, like, hit me up. I actually had an acquisition offer very early on from a major real estate company in this area, and their goal was to own this subscriber base in case, well, when the time comes for someone to sell or to buy, this is the place to do it. And I said, no, very quickly, would I ever sell the business? Maybe. I'm honestly not even considering that. But I do think, like, what we're talking about from a real estate standpoint, it's applicable to all the different niche, broader or rather deeper plays. We can all go with newsletters, and you have to look at it and say, well, which one's going to be fun and engaging? Which one's going to actually generate more value for the subscriber? Which one can I actually monetize? You know, you have to be consistent long term. Now there is another option of what the future of local media looks like. And most of these newsletters are individually owned and operated. Well, what it looks. What does it look like to actually have true contributors, like a local news newspaper does? So you find the great voices in the area that you like, that you think are authentic, and you bring them on. And now, you know, through Beehive, you can have, you know, contributors and everything like that. So you could actually streamline the content creation process. You can have one focused on politics, one on real estate, everything like that. And now people have the choice of, hey, do I want to just follow Catskill Crew or do I want to do Catskill Crew Politics? You know, you have these choices and you're compounding the ability to create content, bringing on different authentic local voices and, you know, building deeper relationships. Do you think, you know, getting into something you mentioned a little bit with real estate, then you inherently want to sell people stuff. Politics is another one. Do you feel like if you get into politics, especially local politics, it can be polarizing? Like, I think it's a huge opportunity. How do you. How do you balance that part of it? I'm not touching it. No, I mean, truly, I have no interest at this point in time. The way I look at the newsletter is Good vibes only. Yes. I try to make this thing very fun. I don't touch things like, you know, we just had a ton of forest fires up here that didn't make national news. I had one a couple miles down the road. For me, I didn't want to get into it. Right. Like, that's not really where I want to put my effort. People are getting their news elsewhere now. Could there be a version of Catskill Crew that's focused on news where I really try to focus on the good stuff that's happening? Yes. I want this to be an oasis for good vibes. I want this to be a place where people come for community, for fun. Yes. To learn things. But that's very important to me. You know, maybe eventually I start Catskill Crew Bad Vibes, but that's not a priority right now. You could just call it Catskill Crew Politics and same name. Do you think you mentioned earlier, like, you know, realtor wanted to maybe buy you guys? I have this belief that I think a lot of people were starting local newsletters and this will kind of dovetail into what you're doing in the community. But I think a lot of people will have successes building business, getting ad dollars, hosting events, and it will become a sustainable business or side income for them or turn it into a larger media company. And then another group of people are going to build a list of 10 to 20,000 people. Kind of hit that point where, like, it's a. Either go over the tipping point, you go over the top of the mountain, or you fall back down. Just you're creating content for not a lot of return, and then they wind up selling it to a local business. Talk about if. If you're a local business, the potential in that maybe in either starting one of these or acquiring one of these. Or am I off base? Like, do you think now that that's not a world in which like, of these get acquired by the local realtor or the local insurance company or whatever it is, the local ice cream shop, for that matter. I think they are extremely acquirable assets at this point in time. And I think that's been validated through every single conversation I've had with local business. You know, the desperate nature where they have no way to reach the customers, their customers, existing ones, let alone new customers. So. So there's clearly an opportunity and a value generated there. The idea that a realtor came to me, a bigger realtor, and offered acquisition very early on was another validator of oh, shit. Okay. Like, this is valuable. It is about community. And it's one of the best ways, you know, you can't just start a newsletter and expect success. And I'm going to use that in kind of air quotes and very umbrella term. But you need to engage. You get out what you put in a hundred percent. And look, if you're this kind of boring voice that's aggregating some events and there's no branding there, people aren't going to stick around. You need to kind of find your voice. You need to find your niche, you need to find your secret sauce. And, you know, that could take so many different forms. But if you're able to do that, you do create this defensive mode. You do create this further value of if you do want to continue to grow this launch businesses, you can. If you want people to share, you know, and refer you, refer you to other folks, you can. But if you don't have that, it's hard to sell. Then you're just a list. And I think, like, the value probably gets cut 75% there, you know, if it's not an engaged audience. Yeah, that's. That's a big part of it. There's a lot of people with local lists. And you'll say, what's the open rate? And they'll say 12, 15% and 3% click rate. And you're like, that's not an audience, that's a list. There's a difference. There's a different, different words. All right, Talk about what you're doing in the community. You have the newsletter club. So when I, you know, kind of plug that and talk about that. You've done some office hours on X. How do you sort of see yourself? Because this is one of the nice things about this business is there's not a lot of overlap. As long as you don't find the guy who's starting the oven, the other Catskill crew. Right. You can kind of share these learnings with people and, you know, kind of like both you and I are doing, picking up ideas along the way. And everyone, like, you know, almost by definition has their own territory and isn't going into somebody else's. Yeah. So, you know, basically, to be pretty concise here, I called a friend of mine, Jason, and I was like, dude, I did 10k. This was back in like July or something or June. I did 10k this month with my local, local newsletter. He's like, you gotta start selling a course. And I'm like, no chance. But I did see the opportunity of like, wow, this is significant opportunities to. It was enough proof that okay, I'm really building something special here that I could go on to do something much larger. Everyone should be doing this. And so I decided to start this little club, you know, end of August and people started coming together and I saw the idea of yeah, this is not competition, competition. We are compounding this knowledge. So, you know, every. The price increases in the club every 10 spots, small increments. If you can't afford it, I always say just hit me up. Anyways, I'm happy to be a resources because I do want everyone to win. I mean that truthfully. And I think it's really fun engaging with everyone and hearing their challenges and sharing whatever I know as well to get them a little further along. So, you know, the club is 64 of us so far and you know, long wait list and we're sharing tips and tricks. There's mastermind classes where we're deep diving specific topics. From sponsors to meta ads to nurturing new leads. We have a weekly call. We have, you know, resources and digest. Continue to grow this thing and the beauty is everyone's coming at it from different background, different experience, different different geographies. However, even if someone does come along, it is inevitable that as this continues to grow and proliferate, other people will start local newsletters in your area. As Landon from Wichita Life says, like, you know, free market. I think it challenges you to be better, to find your voice. And I don't think there's anything wrong with two newsletters being in an area per se. I also believe that there's opportunities to coexist really like in a symbiotic way where you're addressing this market. I'm addressing this market. I have this voice. You have that voice. You're focused on nightlife, I'm focused on parents, you know, whatever the way it is that you guys could kind of work together. But again these are brands and so naturally different brands are going to have different voices, different personalities, different end goals. So yeah, that's the newsletter club. It's incredible. We got a lot of stuff coming in 20, 20, 25 and yeah, super pumped. If you want to know more, you just the newsletter club and how can. People follow you on X? That's I guess that's your main platform, right? Yeah, I haven't updated my LinkedIn in about seven years. Mikey Pesto. I make good pesto. So, so I I for then to plug you further, I first come across you and you put out some of your Revenue numbers. And I frankly, I didn't believe you. Right. I was like, those are, that's crazy. And then you DM me, you're like, no, here's how we're doing it. And then like we were talking and you sent me the link to the newsletter club, which has been awesome. A lot of, a lot of good ideas. And I try to like, try to pop in only a couple times a day because otherwise like, you know, then like you don't leave and it like turns into like a new Slack chat. So I try to pop in. I know I'll give myself like 20 minutes to look around and then otherwise I get, get sidetracked. But there's a lot of good stuff in there. So you've done a really nice job at kind of building that group. Yeah, it's, it's been great. And you know, I think like, what the future of the club looks like is again, I'm not chasing perfection. We're going to grow, we're going to hit growing pains. We're going to adjust. This is run by everyone. I'm just kind of like supporting and facilitating it all. And in terms of the revenue numbers, you know, I think a lot of people saw those numbers and were like, bullshit. And I would probably say the same thing. However, there is a caveat here which is like, look, that there's a lot of stuff in the pipeline that I've been building towards and it's not always consistent. Consistent. I say no to advertisers all day long. I'll say no to like, you know, I'd rather say no to a bad advertiser and give, you know, a small business or a non profit a plug because I'm playing the long game. And there's been months where I'm like, I made a thousand bucks this month and January, I have a lot in the pipeline. There's Monopoly boards coming, there's a bunch of events, there's a bunch of sponsors who, you know, their budget was allocated for 2024, so they've lined up, you know, sponsorship spots for 2025. There's more products, there's more merch coming down the pipeline. I'm really leaning into that. And that's been validated through customer subscriber surveys that they want more drops. So, you know, everything is a limited edition drop. I think that's special. It's fun for me. It's what I would like to participate in. But you know, I, I'm the first to admit, like, I don't put much effort into trad monetization. I know it is there and I could pursue it down the line. But like, you know, I connect with tourism boards. I'm waiting for probably about $30,000 in ads, you know, sponsorship money to be secured by tomorrow. So, you know, I kind of ebb and flow with that. And you got to kind of find where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are. And for me, it's really about monetizing the community in fun ways. And then do you guys know anyone who'd like to sponsor? Don't waste your time with sponsors who aren't serious. You know, if they don't follow up on two emails, forget them. Just move forward. You don't have to chase them. There's enough small businesses and high LTV businesses in the area. Be confident in what you're building and magic will happen. Yeah, I think it's a good point to end on, especially building the brand. You know, if you get the brand strong enough and you have enough reach and engagement, there's always the opportunity. So you don't need to chase it all the time. Awesome. Mike. Mike or Michael, I don't care. I haven't figured it out yet. Michael, thanks for. Thanks for joining and yeah, we'll talk soon. Awesome conversation.

All right, so that was Michael Kaufman and pretty fascinating conversation. I want to pull out a few items that to me really stood out and are, if you made it to this point in the podcast, important for just about anybody listening. First and foremost, the engagement on Catskill Crew is absolutely insane. The numbers he gave when he had a thousand subscribers and something like 40 people show up to an event that is 4% of the subscribers came to a physical event. There are digital marketing efforts out there that get 10 to 12% open rates. Those are just people opening an email and maybe 2 or 3% clicks and maybe one out of a thousand people might actually take an action online. For him to get 4% of his existing base and maybe some people brought friends. So it's a little less than 4%, but the point definitely still stands to a physical event in an area that's kind of large, it's not a small town, the Catskills. He described how many, forget how many miles wide. It was super impressive. This is the importance of building an audience that is hyper targeted, whether that's a business niche or location like the Catskills. Because when you have something for them to do an action, you want them to take a place you want them to go, a product you want them to buy or an advertiser you want them to support, you want to be able to have high pull through. And that is just outrageous. The other thing he's doing along the way, he's doing this very smartly. He didn't arrive at that event number by accident. He polled people along the way. What do you want to do? When should we do it? Where do you want to go? And this is so easy to do, you know, anywhere online, but particularly with newsletters. Because you constantly can poll people using the poll function on Beehive. And then you could build profiles and you could segment the people who respond to your polls. And then you can not only see the data, but contact them specifically and ask them follow up questions if you really want to get strategic about it. So, point being is, he didn't luck into these engagement numbers. He is polled. He filtered out the noise, he got the signal. And with an audience even of a thousand, usually poll results are kind of statistically relevant enough to give you a pretty good idea, especially for this, where it's just sort of back of the napkin estimation, where should we have it? What day is best really smart use of that? And he's continuing to do that with products and services. He wants a launch. He's asking people, do you like this hat? What color should we use? And now the risk for him when he goes to print those or stamp a T shirt, um, it's just, it's almost zero. Cause he's already had the audience to find the product along the way. And sometimes you need to be careful about listening to an audience too much. Cause there is a lot of noise there and you're always gonna have people who complain. So I would never look too far into any one individual comment or response. If you start getting quote, unquote haters, that usually means you're reaching enough people. And you may see one person out of a thousand say something truly terrible or why an idea or product is truly bad, you can often ignore that. And polling is a great way to kind of filter that out and aggregate those results. And if you have 20 people who are kind of saying the same thing, then maybe you have some signal there. But the engagement, the polling, super cool. The business side of it, obviously there's a number of directions he could take this. And maybe he's a little bit paralyzed as to where he wants to go, but at the same time, there's no rush. There's a quote, I think it's from Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger about with investing. And I would say in this case, when you're building a brand and launching a new product. You don't need to swing at every pitch that comes down the plate. You don't need to try every idea. You don't need to invest in every stock that comes your way. You just need to swing at the one that you really like. And if it's a home run, it can make up for three or four missed opportunities in the past. So what Michael is doing is he's thinking of these ideas. He's polling his audience. He's finding ones that he thinks would work, whether it's a local business or a product or hat or the Monopoly game that he wants to launch. And then he's finding ones that have the most upside. And he's saying, okay, I'm going to swing at that one, and I know it's going to be a home run, and it doesn't matter if I passed on another one. So really smart and obviously a number of different ways he can go. And I'm sure we'll follow up and talk a lot more on the show about what you can do building, you know, whether it's a service business, a product business, and probably most importantly, and where I'll leave this is how a business can launch one of these local newsletters to grow their own brand. Michael described it perfectly. At the end of the day, he's just building a local brand. And it's maybe starting off as a newsletter because it's kind of cheap and easy and can reach a lot of people. But if you're smart, you could turn that into an established holding company backed by your brand. And this can apply, you know, listen to his background. He's not a writer, he's not a journalist. If you are a financial advisor, if you're a lawyer, a realtor, if you own a flower shop, if you own a pizza place, it really doesn't matter. You could do this. The digital chops to start one of these and to write the content. The bar is pretty low. Doesn't mean it's zero.

You have to be good, you have.

To be engaging, you have to be willing to stick with it. Because it takes months, maybe six to 12 months to build up an audience like this. But once you have it, you are now a brand. And I always say you want to be the most trusted brand in town. So the lessons here apply. If you have a business in an area or even in a topic, and this specifically talks to local media, just create this weekly events newsletter and do it over and over again and be friendly and Engage your community and then after a little while, this newsletter is sponsored by your pizza place, by your insurance company. And it's a soft sell. It's in every newsletter at the top, in partnership with you, subtly let people know that you operate that business, you develop trust with them and don't treat it like direct response. Don't expect that every newsletter people will click to have you advise on their finances or buy insurance from you. That's not the way these things work. Or even buy a pizza. It's just brand advertising. And then when people are in the market for insurance or just they're hungry for a pizza, they're going to think of you and nowhere to go. And they'll have seen your brand so much that they don't even need to open the email. They'll just know where to call. They'll know which pizza place to go to. Things like services like legal, accounting, insurance, most people don't want to think about those. That's where I think there's a huge opportunity here. And if they just trust somebody, insurance looks the same to most people. So they're just going to go to the agent they trust or the lawyer that they trust. It's really difficult to know what's better and who's better than somebody else. And it's all about trust. And you could build that up with these local newsletters. So really fascinating conversation with Michael. If you enjoyed this show, make sure you like or make sure you subscribe to Monetize Media, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, pretty much anywhere you can get your podcast.

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