Made It with Connor Tomkies

[00:00:00] Alex Lieberman: I placed a lot of judgment around the idea of failing with anything I did next. There was this self induced pressure created by a made up story of the expectation that the quote unquote world has of you after you sell your business. It's amazing how things get more enjoyable. When you don't create a story about what people think and you actually do stuff that just gives you energy.

[00:00:23] Narrator: Hey, co founders welcome to made it with Connor Tompkins, a podcast where we meet with bad ass entrepreneurs who've successfully exited their companies, discussing everything from the wins and losses of entrepreneurship to the next steps after the exit. To not miss out on these exciting stories, be sure to subscribe wherever you get podcasts.

Let's dive in.

[00:00:46] Connor Tomkies: Hey guys, I'm here with Alex Lieberman. He's the host of the Founders Journal podcast. He's also the founder of Morning Brew and now the founder of StoryArp. Alex and I are going to be talking about PRONOVO full body MRI scans and why [00:01:00] More people are not doing it. We're also going to be talking about his plunger backyard game that he released during South by Southwest and how the CMOs of yesteryear are going extinct and how there's more things expected from marketing professionals.

So guys, there's a lot in this podcast. I hope you guys enjoy, please do hit the subscribe button on the bottom. It does help us out a ton and I hope you guys enjoy the pod. There we go. How's it going? What's up? It's, uh, it's been good. This is the Argentinian setup with my little fuzzy mic. I love the fuzzy mic.

Little light setup in the hotel room, um, but yeah, how are things going on your end? Everything's good. Just, uh,

[00:01:39] Alex Lieberman: in Hoboken, um, keeping busy. I'm actually about to publish tomorrow a, uh, a new YouTube video, um, about Ezra. Do you know Ezra?

[00:01:50] Connor Tomkies: No. I

[00:01:51] Alex Lieberman: It's, uh, the, have you heard of Prenuvo? No. Okay, so they're both, um, cancer screening companies?

[00:02:00] Yes, is this where you get proactive

[00:02:01] Connor Tomkies: screening?

[00:02:02] Alex Lieberman: Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, so I, I did a YouTube episode interviewing the founder and then I got, I did the full body MRI and like shared the results from it. Are you happy you did it? Yeah, I am, very. Uh, the, the only thing that was tough for me, honestly, is given I have a history of anxiety and panic attacks.

I had never done a full body MRI before.

[00:02:28] Connor Tomkies: And it's, have you ever done one? I've never done one, I've thought about it quite a bit, and I'm on their calling list. So I'm very happy I did it, but

[00:02:36] Alex Lieberman: I almost had a panic attack a few times in the MRI, because it's just very claustrophobic in there. I just didn't realize how claustrophobic it is, because it's like, that close to your face, um, they put a cage around your head.

Uh, there's straps over your chest and your legs and you have to, you can't move.

[00:02:59] Connor Tomkies: So when you were [00:03:00] talking about anxiety, I was thinking you were anxious about the results or what they might be, but you were actually worried about the process.

[00:03:08] Alex Lieberman: Oh yeah, it was while I was in the machine. I was, like, experiencing, like, panic like symptoms.

Like, I was overheating, my chest was pounding, my fingers were getting tingly.

[00:03:20] Connor Tomkies: Oh no. I get anxious whenever I fly, so I get anxious with, like, motion sickness. And I got into my head, like, to kick it, I'm going to become a pilot. Like, I'm going to get my pilot certification. And like, the longer I'm up there, the more my arms get tingly, the more my, like, legs start to tingle, and then I'm like, I need to land this plane.

Like, this is not the right state to be flying in the air. So there's this interview question that I heard, um, in the past, it's like, what things do you believe that, um, the majority of people don't, right? Like what's your contrary belief? Yeah, yeah, it's the classic Peter Thiel question. Right. And I think for me, it's like, why won't [00:04:00] Everybody go get scanned proactively, you know, to see if you have something.

And so I asked my wife and our friends who are also doctors, and I'm like, do you see any downside to this? And from their perspective, they're worried about people saying like False positives? Right, yeah, or over reacting and over surgerizing things as they see them instead of watching them. So I thought that was interesting with PRONOVO.

Yeah,

[00:04:26] Alex Lieberman: I think, I think it's interesting, but I guess, like, my view is, is, at least for me, that's not, like, how they, it actually went down. Like, for example, I can send you my report, but basically there's a scoring system, uh, for Ezra. 0 through 5, or 1 through 5. 5 is something's very wrong, you should go to the hospital immediately.

Stop talking to me, go to the hospital. Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. Um, 1 through 5. One, two, and three are non [00:05:00] urgent. Three is non urgent checkup, meaning it's not urgent, but we see something, and you should check on it in the next few months, or you should just monitor it, and when you do your scan again in the year, you should see if there's any difference.

[00:05:14] Connor Tomkies: And it was similar with, um, we had this dog genetics test, uh, in BARC, and we were testing for, like, genetic health conditions, and there was 160 of them. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. You don't want to trigger people to the point where they're like, my dog has skeletal dysplasia and they're going to the vet. You're just like, Hey, like you might want to check out this gene.

These type of medications could have like adverse reaction. And like, they also designed a report that goes immediately out to your vet. And so it was good from like a B2B standpoint because what company is this? This is Embark. So this is like nine, 10 years ago. Um, they go up against Wisdom Panel, they're still a roundup, Boston.

And, um, it was nice because you were on the good side of the vet, you weren't like raising alarms that didn't need to be raised. But you were also introducing the vet to [00:06:00] what is this new thing that, like, is on the market, and then potentially turning them into an advocate, which I think PRONOVO would be good, because a lot of doctors don't know what to think about this type of preventive medicine.

[00:06:11] Alex Lieberman: And, and look, I think the whole thesis of the business makes so much sense, it's like, Stage 1 or Stage 2 cancer? On average has a 80 to 90 percent survival rate. Stage three or four is an 80 to 90 percent mortality rate. What a big pivot, like what a big swap. The whole reason full body MRIs were never really considered by like insiders in the industry is because they always cost too much.

If you wanted to do a full body MRI 10 years ago, it would cost you anywhere between 10, 000 and 40, 000. And the whole thing is like they're using, it actually is an application of AI that makes sense to me. That they're using AI to speed up the time that these scans have to be done. Because the way an MRI works is it, it runs over your body, almost imagine like a photocopier.

And it gets an [00:07:00] image of you, but it's very noisy. So it has to keep running back and forth over you to clean up the image. And so they're using AI to basically get a cleaner image faster, and by running the machine faster, it costs less. So right now, their scans cost 1, 300, and their goal is to get it to

[00:07:16] Connor Tomkies: 500 in the next two to three years.

I was reading this book, and it was talking about AI and medicine. And it was talking about, you have, uh, radiologists that are looking for cancer in scans, right? And then how does that compare with, uh, AI reading the scan? And how does it compare with, like, a doctor? Uh, reviewing after AI has reviewed the scan, and it found out that the AI alone, um, did better.

Then, like the doctor reviewing what the AI did, um, just having purely unbiased information was the ideal state, which is very interesting to see. 100%.

[00:07:50] Alex Lieberman: And by the way, in this whole business, that's like what a lot of people, radiologists, are very fearful for their jobs with this whole type of business. A lot of [00:08:00] people, like, um, the founders of these businesses would argue that radiologists are going to still be necessary.

I personally found a radiologist necessary because, like, as I was going through panic in the MRI machine, I was talking to my radiologist and if I just had a robot doing the whole thing, I probably would have had a panic attack and would have had to step out.

[00:08:18] Connor Tomkies: I want to say thank you for a few reasons.

One is you gave me, um, the, and an introduction to, uh, PostExit Founders and that definitely helped. It's awesome. I had just stepped down as CEO and I was like, what should I be doing with my life? Cool group, right? It's fantastic. I think you said it was like the most, what did you say? It's the

[00:08:34] Alex Lieberman: most valuable community that I'm in.

And like, uh, I think the way that I've always kind of assessed value of community. It's like if there's 10 topics being talked about in a group, what percentage of those topics are relevant to me? And in this group, it's always like somewhere between 7 and 9 in a given 10 post cluster.

[00:08:53] Connor Tomkies: I can't keep up anymore.

I have like a hundred that I have to go through. The, um, but yeah, I think you're right. I think it's a little bit [00:09:00] of a timing thing. Like everyone at that one point after you sell your business, you're not quite sure what you should be doing next. Yeah, and we're all just like looking in the dark trying to figure it out at the same time It's actually just like kind of

[00:09:13] Alex Lieberman: amazing how how clearly similar all people's brains are Given, like, I've just seen this pattern over and over and over with, like, dozens of post

[00:09:23] Connor Tomkies: exit founders I've talked to.

How amazing is that, though? Whenever you're like, oh, yeah, I'm special, and then you realize you're, like Yep. Highly, highly non unique. Highly non unique. And that can be a compliment, right? Like, that can be, like, yeah, we can relate to each other. We can understand what we're going through. It's awesome. How has Morning Brew changed over the past two years?

Um, I've seen you guys do a lot of different stuff. You guys have been doing shorts a lot. In the last three

[00:09:50] Alex Lieberman: years is we got to a point where we were clearly going to hit a ceiling with our newsletters. So we have our daily [00:10:00] newsletter, which has, you know, four and a quarter million subscribers. We have our B2B newsletters, which are the industry and job function specific newsletters, and they're great.

But it's like, as your business gets older, it's kind of like your career. Initial core products move from like, let's call it like, um, seed stage to late stage to like IPO or like private equity style cash flowing businesses. Like, that's how I think about our newsletter business. And so we knew we were getting to that point.

And I also think media is just a world where the way you stay relevant is not, you have to reinvent yourself constantly. You know, we knew, we tried out a number of businesses that we thought could, like, re steepen growth at Morning Brew. We tried out commerce, uh, like selling actual merch to our audience.

Didn't work. We tried out education, like creating cohort based courses. But not a big enough opportunity like that also became part of [00:11:00] the threshold is where can we allocate resources? Such that a new line of business, we think it has the potential to get to at least eight figures. Maybe not in the first year, but in the first few years.

And then the other one, the final piece, was multimedia. So, podcasts, uh, social content, and, uh, long form video. And I would say it's taken basically 18 months, uh, of executing on the strategy of our current chief content officer. Morning Brew Multimedia is like an absolute rocket ship. Like, our Our Instagram, uh, Morning Brew's Instagram handle is one of the fastest growing handles, like, from a relative,

[00:11:39] Connor Tomkies: uh, basis.

In a way, we see, like, the progress, and it's like, oh, Alex is testing out this format, or Morning Brew is launching this thing. And it's been fun. And we're talking to other founders being like, Oh yeah, Alex is trying this thing. This seems to be working pretty well. This seems to get some traction. I just shared with Morning Brew, there's

[00:11:58] Alex Lieberman: stuff that hasn't [00:12:00] worked.

And even in my own entrepreneurial journey, there's stuff that hasn't worked. And I think at first, um, I think it was very much like an exited founder thing where I placed a lot of judgment around the idea of failing with anything I did next. Uh, because I, there was this self induced pressure created by a made up story of the expectation that the quote unquote world has of you after you sell your business.

Again, it's all just a story. It's amazing how things get more enjoyable when you don't create a story about what people think and you actually do stuff that just gives you energy. But it was like, uh, after stepping out of the CEO role for The Brew, I created a backyard game called The Plunge, where basically it was backyard axe throwing.

So it was an axe throwing game in your backyard, instead of throwing axes, because those are quite dangerous to throw in your backyard, it was plungers. It was [00:13:00] plungers and plexiglass boards. And I created it from scratch, literally worked with a manufacturer in China, created the game. And it was great, but for a number of reasons ended up shutting it down.

And, you know, as I reflected on it, there was one part of me that was like, this really like feels like it sucks because just like to not have anything work out after having a big win with a company made me feel like a failure. But then there's the other side that was like, this was an amazing journey.

Like, you know, I spent, I think I lost 35, 000 on developing this business, but I learned how to do a Kickstarter launch. I created a physical product, which I have always wanted to do. I understand how supply chains work now. I literally have like three of these boards sitting in my office. And like, what I'm going to remember when I'm 80 years old is like the story of building a plunger game and not like.

This business not working out.

[00:13:55] Connor Tomkies: How amazing is that? And please tell me you have like 35, 000 in plungers in your garage [00:14:00] somewhere.

[00:14:00] Alex Lieberman: There is not 35, 000 worth of inventory, but we had so many plungers because one of the things you learn in building a plunger game is physics is a really real thing. And so I learned so much about physics in terms of how heavy the board had to be, but the heavier you make the board, the board had to be heavy because if you throw a plunger really hard.

If it's not heavy enough, the board will move. But the heavier you make the board, the more expensive shipping is, the more that the unit economics of your game goes down. Oh, and by the way, every plunger has a different level of, um, stiffness. The stiffness of the rubber. If it's too stiff, it won't

[00:14:40] Connor Tomkies: compress enough to create a suction.

There has to be a point when people come by to see your house and you're just there like testing different plunger. It was just a ton of fun and like, I, I remember

[00:14:52] Alex Lieberman: you're, you're normally in Austin, right? Yeah,

[00:14:54] Connor Tomkies: normally.

[00:14:55] Alex Lieberman: Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I tested the game during, [00:15:00] uh, South by, uh, where I came down to South by and whatever the big park is in Austin, there's like a huge park.

I can't remember what it's called. Yes, exactly. And about 15 to 20 people who I just like, I posted about, I'm going to be in Austin at that park at this time to play the plunger game. And if you guys want to join, come by. And like, Sean Frank came by, like different entrepreneurs came by. And we were just like throwing plungers in the middle of the park.

And it's just like, it was such a cool experience.

[00:15:32] Connor Tomkies: That's a good memory. I think that, um, I think we both like startup ideas. So I had kind of like a, a moment when I was doing something I didn't think I would normally be doing. I had this idea for this bath bomb, which is not something that you would normally connect with a guy that did like an outsourcing company or like a, a dog genetics.

How did you come up with the idea? So there's this farm in Alabama called 1818 Farms and they produce like these really good bath products. And one of the things that makes them great [00:16:00] is that use. Like goat's milk, right? With like different types of, of cream. And, and so this idea around this bath bomb that makes your skin feel really smooth, and then like, this is where it gets questionable for the podcast.

But if you'd use it with someone else, it tends to lead to more positive. Outcomes might be the best way to put it. So, it's a natural aphrodisiac? It's a natural aphrodisiac. You're in the bathtub and you're like, Oh, this is nice, and this is nice to do together. And, um, anything that you can do if you're married to increase your odds by 0.

5 percent is probably a massive market. I love that. And so we're like, what do we call this thing? We call this like, sex bomb, sex ba bomb, or bath ba bomb, or something like that. Yeah. And my, my friends and I get really excited. We ordered all these supplies from like Alibaba in bulk. And so we have like this bulk, like goat milk powder and we're in the kitchen with like scales and we're weighing like these bag, these time sized bags to put into these like bath bombs.

Um, so I just imagine you [00:17:00] and your family or your friends, like figuring out stiffness of plungers and then having people walk in at the wrong time.

[00:17:06] Alex Lieberman: Oh, it was the best. And I remember for a period of time, the way that I thought that the game was going to blow up is through trick shot content. So I was for a while trying to partner with like Dude Perfect and other trickshot, um, Uh, YouTubers and TikTokers and I even made trickshot videos myself.

Basically the reason I, uh, I stopped the game is because I'd put 35 or 37 thousand dollars in and We're getting to the point where I had to like make my first run I got to do my first run of games and that would have been called another two hundred thousand dollars And I was looking at like, what would my margin be on that 200, 000?

And it was like, not pretty. And the issue is like, this is why I think the game business is so hard. It's like, you really have to have a breakout success because most of these things are not repeat buys, right? Like, that's why I find something like Spikeball so impressive, right? Because a single SKU has sold millions of sets.

Like you have to get to that [00:18:00] level for it to be successful. And then you have to build a portfolio of these like products that you just keep getting wins with. So, yeah, so WhatDoYouMeme was created by the founders of FuckJerry, the meme account on Instagram. And let's just say that WhatDoYouMeme was so successful, that basically, like, that is their core business, that's where they put all their attention now.

And FuckJerry, which was the biggest thing when they started, it's kind of just become like this, this like, Thing that exists to market their game, but like,

[00:18:29] Connor Tomkies: what do you meme, is massive. It's like, um, yeah, we are this like media company that, but we sell, we sell games. What is a business that we could attach

[00:18:38] Alex Lieberman: to Morning Brew that would like, significantly increase the value of the business?

I would basically say it's like Motley Fool. The issue is that that business is incredible. They print money, like hundreds of millions of dollars top line, super high margins, um, but it's also like, you know, nothing against them, but I just, I wouldn't necessarily [00:19:00] be feel comfortable building the business in the same way as, as how their business was built.

[00:19:05] Connor Tomkies: What I like about your content is tone and conciseness. The action items being like really clear and the throughput being very clear. You guys also have like this tonality that makes it easier to read or digest.

[00:19:17] Alex Lieberman: I totally agree with that. I think a question I have, and I don't, I always go back and forth on this is, would I build a business that gives people stock picks?

Like, do I want to be in the business that offers people individual stock analysis and advice? There's one part of me that says, That doesn't feel really good because I think at the end of the day, the best thing for people to do is put most of their money in index funds and never look at it. But then there's the other part of me that's like, whether or not I want people to just invest in index funds, they are going to invest in individual stocks like that is human behavior.

So I might as well give them the information that helps them not lose money.

[00:19:59] Connor Tomkies: I think we're getting [00:20:00] closer now than we ever were before. And then we also have more asset classes, paint, paintings, memorabilia. So, like, the whole painting thing, that's something that was surprising to me. Have you ever invested in any art?

We have art in our place, but, like, I

[00:20:15] Alex Lieberman: never bought it thinking about it as, like, a store of value. No, I bought it as, like, uh, something that I think looks nice in our home. But I know people are super into it. Who was I? I was listening to, um, Invest Like the Best, uh, an old episode that, uh, Patrick O'Shaughnessy did with Mike Ovitz.

Um, who founded CAA and he, he was just talking about in the episode. I think he has like one of the largest private art collections in the world and how he's like currently, he was saying in the episode, he's currently mentoring like five or six like millennial professionals on how to start building up their collections.

[00:20:54] Connor Tomkies: That's amazing to me, but also isn't there like a tax thing to this? Like You buy the art and then you donate [00:21:00] it to like the museum and you get evaluated at one point. Not, not for the purity of the, of the, of creative expression. Of the collection, yeah. And people also do this with wine, right? And I think that's kind of fun is there's this guy off the coast of like, um, here's a black pearl, um, off of Spain.

And like, he would get all these like wine, um, and he would Um, you have to store it for a certain period of time. So he would put in like a crate and then he would drop it down to the bottom of the ocean floor to like go store for a while. And then he would pull it up and people would want it because as an asset class and this kind of cool, right, you have like coral, like attached to it and stuff like that.

That's so wild. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was, um, you are a public founder in many ways. One is your company was a media company, but the other side of it is a lot of us, Whenever we sell our business, we're kind of poking our head up and we're like, what should we be doing? And, um, there's like podcasting and inside this post exit group, there's a lot of us trying to figure out like, what route should we go?[00:22:00]

How has being, uh, a public kind of, uh, figure and putting yourself out there, how has it led to some positive serendipity in your life? I post about my post exit

[00:22:12] Alex Lieberman: founder journey and like, you know, trying to refine motivation, purpose, identity, all of these things. Um, I would say I always find that there's a ton of support and it's led to really valuable conversations with other founders who are going through the same thing.

Um, both valuable because they share kind of their approach with me, but also valuable because they feel alone. They haven't talked about it with anyone and it finally makes them realize there's someone who's. Open enough to talking about this that they can reach out and have a conversation with me. So I think that's the positive.

The negative is there's a part of me that always wonders, like, should I just go off of social media? Should I just stop creating content? Like how much of this is contributing to kind of like bad habits and old habits? of like seeking [00:23:00] validation, um, you know, like doing things in a way that isn't for like my actual fulfillment, but because I think it'll create social currency that'll make me feel belonging and important.

Um, yeah, so I don't know, it's so hard because I do see so much, I, I really do

[00:23:16] Connor Tomkies: love creating content. I struggle with the idea that there's an expectation, uh, around making content. Like, if you stop, people might call you out on it, or be like, why is the newsletter not out? Why is this video not being produced?

I've been thinking a lot about

[00:23:31] Alex Lieberman: the different business models tied to creating content. Like, I actually think, like, there isn't a right or wrong, but to me, like, the, the reason I've been thinking about this a lot is, you know, Matt Mullenweg, uh, who, um, created, uh, WordPress, uh, and the, the holding company that sits over WordPress, which I believe is Automatic, and he still has, like, a WordPress blog.

And if you go to it, it's, his website is ma. tt, Matt, and you, you, [00:24:00] by the way, which is, like, a sick domain, um, and so you go to ma. tt. And it's like, he truly treats it as a blog. And when I went to his website, I just felt like I was transported into a place in the internet that none of us experience anymore.

Like I scroll through this thing and it just feels like a kind of unadulterated curation. And so part of me is like, is it even possible for creators who make money from their content to even behave in this way? And the answer I think is no, because like, If Matt Moldweg was to put what I just looked at on ma.

tt on Twitter or LinkedIn, it wouldn't do anything.

[00:24:44] Connor Tomkies: But that doesn't mean it's bad content. There's a personal side of it and a business side of it. And there's a lot of expectations on, I think, CEOs in general. Like we're not in the CEO seat anymore, but there's an expectation that like you have to run the company, take care of stakeholders, be [00:25:00] financially responsible, set the culture of the company.

Adding on top a public facing layer to that is like a full time responsibility and a full time job. Um, and so I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect. I know that a lot of people are expecting their CEO to be that public space face for them. And that's, that's tricky.

[00:25:19] Alex Lieberman: Yeah, I hosted this dinner last night.

It was like a, We call it like the challenger dinner series. And basically I do it. I co host it with the CMO of General Electric, uh, Linda Boff. And basically it's like half of the people in the room are fortune 50 CMOs. So we had like CMO of Calvin Klein, Fidelity, Diageo, JP Morgan, et cetera. And then the other half is like, basically my curation of who I think are the one, the top 1 percent marketers.

In the world right now that are like rising stars. So it was like, you know, Nick Sharma was there, the head of marketing for Mischief, the viral marketing brand, [00:26:00] uh, Robin Arzon, the Peloton instructor, like all these really cool and interesting people. And we talked about a bunch of things, but one of the things that we talked about and thinking a lot about is like, we, we live at a time where it's like, there's this, I just think the whole dynamic about, around the creator economy is so interesting.

Because, on one side, people are obsessed with it to the point where it feels like a tired thing to say now. On the other side, I actually think, like, there's a lot of hate from tech entrepreneurs who create on Twitter, who don't, like, respect full time creators. Like, I think there's actually a lack of respect.

Like, they, like, I think entrepreneurs, um, and, like, especially Silicon Valley people, consider creators to be, like, a low status, full time job, and I think the creator economy is gonna continue to grow. I think there's almost been this over indexing, where I actually think, like, companies can still build great brands, even if, like, the CEO isn't attached to it.

Those brands just have to feel like they're human. [00:27:00] And so it's like, so it's like, why do I love, like, Wendy's, uh, or Taco Bell, or KFC, or like HubSpot's Twitter accounts? Even though they're from these brands, it's because there's an individual who is hired To run these accounts, and that individual has an amazing voice that I feel resonance with.

How important is that? I mean,

[00:27:20] Connor Tomkies: did you see that thing, National Park? National Park's, I think, like a year or two ago. Like, it almost felt like an intern took control of the channel, for like the entire country. And then they were posting these hilarious posts, and they were going viral, and they were like, Oh, this, this, like someone must have gotten control of the handle.

But it humanizes this, like, institution that's been around since Roosevelt. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, and to be honest with you, from

[00:27:45] Alex Lieberman: a company's perspective, I actually think it's, like, lower risk. Because you don't, like, you put all these resources into someone creating content, and then they leave.

Right? This is something we think about at Morning Brew all the time, and now I think we've been [00:28:00] thoughtful in knowing what the trade offs are, and still thinking that personality driven content is really important. But I think having a brand that no matter who leaves the company, you

[00:28:10] Connor Tomkies: still own, is incredibly important.

I think a little bit about what you said in the beginning about trying to find the right marketing person for this specific job. Whenever I was running a company, I was, like, for a CFO guy, like, I want the person that's done, like, 30 transactions and, like, Right. And for the lawyer, like I want them to have deal experience, but for the marketer, I could see like a senior position for like the, the 22, 29 year old person that doesn't have a lot of experience or the person that's incredibly agile and, and lives on Reddit.

Basically based on the

[00:28:48] Alex Lieberman: rate of change of the job, uh, that dictates the, the level of experience that you

[00:28:55] Connor Tomkies: require. Yeah. And I think marketing just. Exponential, [00:29:00] right? And getting even worse, possibly. Like, it's just like, speeding up. Yeah,

[00:29:04] Alex Lieberman: I think, uh, if you're thinking about bringing in someone to run your TikTok who, uh, has been in marketing for 15 years.

I think

[00:29:14] Connor Tomkies: it's, it's a tough decision. I feel like I need to go to the University of Texas and just set up a table. And just be like, looking for a Chief Marketing Officer. Show me your TikTok handle.

[00:29:25] Alex Lieberman: So, so it's, so it's funny, um, at this dinner last night, another guy that was there that, um, he's an Austin guy, actually, um, uh, who, uh, you'd probably enjoy talking to.

His name is Patty Galloway. And he is like the YouTube godfather. So he's worked with Mr. Beast, uh, Red Bull, Jesser. He, like, he just, he is like, what, what my co founder Austin and I are for newsletters, he is for, uh, YouTube. And one of the things he was saying is, like, oftentimes the worst YouTube editors, [00:30:00] Are like great, like people who are great, like movie editors or like traditionally trained video editors and the best YouTube editors.

He's like, is a 16 year old living in the Philippines? Yes. Is like, who's editing from 10 p. m. to 2 a. m. and then playing Dungeons and Dragons?

[00:30:18] Connor Tomkies: That's exactly it. That's what we need to be looking for is we need to be walking around the Philippines trying to find, um, the right, the right person. Um, yeah, because they just consume the content and they know what they want, right?

And, you know, I usually, whenever I'm looking for a marketing person, I find someone that's like, Oh, they have a good eye for design in this area. Or they're very good at Google search optimization or SEO. It's so hard to find someone that has coverage over different areas and can understand what they're looking for.

The issue is,

[00:30:44] Alex Lieberman: is if like, you don't know what tactics are actually going to work. If you go for the point and shoot person, you're potentially hiring for a tactic that ends up not being one that's really meaningful for your business. If you hire kind of the generalist, who's like fine at everything, you may end up hiring someone who [00:31:00] ends up having to hire people below them.

All of a sudden you're like stacking people way too early in the business. And so it's a game of trade offs.

[00:31:07] Connor Tomkies: That's something that's really hard is that I, I love the people that I build businesses with, because in some cases those people carry on to the next business, right? And those relationships stay.

Stay with you. I feel like this is like

[00:31:20] Alex Lieberman: how private equity has always worked where it's like private like private equity firms have like their, you know, like their mercenary CEOs who they always go to and the reason they go to them is because like they've worked with this CEO four times who's done four different turnaround jobs and not only has this CEO done four different turnaround jobs, but they have an entire C suite that is literally built into a Rolodex.

Every time they get called in for their job, you know, the C suite you're going to have every single time.

[00:31:53] Connor Tomkies: It's probably literally a Rolodex. Like they probably literally have a thing on their desk. They call on their team and they're [00:32:00] like, we ride again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You literally just bring back the band every single, every, every four years.

Have you had exposure to the private equity industry since your, uh, your, your exit or any of your, your investments? You know, Morning

[00:32:13] Alex Lieberman: Brew was purchased by. Axel Springer, um, and Axel Springer is owned, um, at least part of the business is owned by KKR. So, I've had exposure through that, um, but to be honest with you, like my, just what I've realized is like my energy always gets sucked when I get later and later stage or to like bigger and bigger companies.

And that's not to say like private equity is bad or wrong, but it's like, I just, the more I can stay, keep like my head focused in like the early stages of like building. Like getting businesses from zero to one and like working [00:33:00] with like co-founders and, and uh, you know, early team members that feel like a family.

I've just realized that like, that gives me so much more energy. Like, and like that we found savings and synergies here, guys. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they're like genius. Yeah. Like financial engineering is their form of cre creativity. Yeah. For sure. Which for me, my form of creativity is, feels way more like, or like for me.

in early stage building businesses like from scratch and like finagling them to actually try to get to a place where like they actually work and you've actually hit product market fit because likely the first product you come out with isn't going to be the product. Like that feels more like art to me.

Yeah. So I think like science to some people feels very creative. Art feels very creative to me and whenever I'm doing something that feels scientific it does not feel like creative expression which means I don't get energy from it. And so the more that I can spend time on things, generally, I think earlier stage behaviors feel more like art.

The more I [00:34:00] feel artistic, the more that I feel energized.

[00:34:03] Connor Tomkies: I get a kick out of the zero to one, like creating something, building the landing page, getting excited about that, the first customers. Super interesting. Right. So like, I just need to find someone to help out with that middle, that would be the awkward teenage years would be awesome.

That would be great.

[00:34:18] Alex Lieberman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so out of curiosity, like when you think about. Just starting anything moving forward. Like, how do you think about whether you want to be a CEO from day one, or put a CEO in place from day one, like how do you think about that? Any business you build moving forward, if you even want to build businesses moving forward, what involvement do you want to have?

[00:34:40] Connor Tomkies: So since we last talked, I started Operator Equity, which is, um, the idea is that I buy businesses and then the entrepreneurs are then the LPs and then they can invest with me on the upcoming businesses, right? And so that's kind of like the parent company. Super interesting. And we have And when you buy those

[00:34:59] Alex Lieberman: [00:35:00] businesses, do the entrepreneurs stay running the businesses or no?

[00:35:03] Connor Tomkies: They do. Right. So far they do. Right? So there's six logos underneath the brand. And what I like about it is that, talking about the zero to one, gap between one and two and then two to three, is that most of the time they have a leadership team in place. Right? And so that's kind of like the two to three.

It's like, I'm helping. With a thousand different stairsteps that it takes to improve the fourteen different departments to get them to scale and get them to grow. Um, but on the other hand, I have, um, Sexbobbomb, Bathbobbomb, um, in my kitchen, right? And you have your plunger game, and I can, like, have an idea from, like, Conception, I can build a landing page, I can do this podcast, I can do Um, but I compare it with some of the things I'm folding up into, uh, operator equity.

Like I bought a marketing company three or four weeks ago and that marketing company is going to help empower the rest of the portfolio and, um, help out with, uh, building different communities around the [00:36:00] different topics that we're interested in. And so it's, it's kind of fun from that perspective and that I can do a little bit of both.

What did you find you were

[00:36:08] Alex Lieberman: drawn towards or gave you energy in the process of like buying this company? The hunt for finding the company was a figuring out like the terms that would make

[00:36:17] Connor Tomkies: it work. You know, that like little piece of joy that you get right before like a piece like snaps into place. Like, yeah, yeah.

I feel a little bit like that whenever you find a piece and you're like, Oh, this is how this works. Right. And then this is how it ties into the other stuff that I have going on. Right. And so I had invested in this company that does. Um, like music lessons across the nation. They were on chapter two, two, three, four, right.

And I'm like, I need to scale and grow this company. But then we also have, there's like this low latency audio piece and you have to introduce people to the new product. How are you going to do that? You're going to get amazing musicians like, uh, skunk Baxter and, um, and like the, the basis from public enemy.

And you're going to work with these amazing people. And, uh, you're going to [00:37:00] launch this brand in this community. How do you do that? You need a marketing company. And so for me, I was like excited about that. And then I was excited about the team. And the team, like the individual people, were so awesome that it made me excited to do stuff with them.

Um, Alex, you started StoryARB. Do you want to talk a little bit about

[00:37:18] Alex Lieberman: that?

[00:37:19] Connor Tomkies: Yeah.

[00:37:19] Alex Lieberman: So, I started, uh, StoryARB nine months ago. And the idea, the original thesis for the business was simple, which is that there's a ton of attention. There was a ton of attention at the time going into just like, offshore arbitrage businesses in general.

Um, it felt like there was this renaissance of it. Like, you know, like, you, you, you, I feel like it was like, I feel like it was like less sexy when like you were working on it with Support Ninja or when like Task Us originally started. And then like in the last few years, it's become super sexy. And I, and I think, and [00:38:00] I think the reason it's become very sexy is one, like the VC, like money machines stopped, tons of tech companies got marked downs, tons of layoffs, like cash flowing businesses all of a sudden became like a viable path to entrepreneurship without like the risk profile.

of venture businesses. At the time, short form video agencies were like the new thing in offshore arbitrage. Like, so you saw like Clipped, you saw Viral Cuts, you saw, um, there were like three or four others where you, there's a team in the Philippines, really good short form video editors, you can have your, uh, videos edited.

And it was also big because like we were seeing the fast rise of TikTok and YouTube shorts had just come out, etc. And my whole thing about it was like, I think that's cool. But I actually think also those are tough businesses because my impression was like churn is gonna be super high Because like you can't actually there's it's very hard to attribute like sales or like business you get from short form video [00:39:00] So my view is like people would kind of cut you off after some period of time of realizing like it you can't measure ROI And then I was like, at the same time, I think the written word is more important than ever before.

Actually, uh, Twitter and LinkedIn are some of the best places to actually drive business, and no one's helping entrepreneurs to do this. So that was the thesis. StoryArb stands for Story Arbitrage, and the idea was like, there's all these founders who have amazing lessons and insights and stories, but they don't have the time to create on Twitter or LinkedIn, or they don't have the skill to.

That's cool. And so by us having a team of writers and content strategists to support them, we can arbitrage these stories that have never been told in the world. And so we've been, we've been around now for nine months. You know, the business does over a million dollars a year. We have a team of, um, five internally.

And there's been so much learning. Um, and what, what are the things that I've realized with this business is there's a few things, one is [00:40:00] picking the right market really is so important. And, and actually in some ways picking the right market allows you to be a worse entrepreneur.

[00:40:10] Connor Tomkies: Yes,

[00:40:11] Alex Lieberman: for sure. The wave is going to carry you to the shore.

What I just realized with StoryArb is like, There is just like unlimited demand for really good personal brand, uh, support and also just like content and copy support. Right now, like there's a ton of things I think driving that. Email newsletters are still sexier than ever before. Content marketing is more important than ever before because marketing gets more expensive, uh, through paid.

Personal branding because Like, we just live in a time now where every CEO feels like they need to build a personal brand, and then you're seeing the acceleration of it recently with like, Zuckerberg going on this. You know, Oh, you know, road show of like being a normal human being on camera. It's like, look at me.

I play dominoes. I'm a normal guy. [00:41:00] The beauty of this business is like, there's unlimited demand. The difficulty of this business. And this is where I've realized one of the things I love is the puzzle of going from initial product to. to the actual product that's going to get you product market fit. And we're in that stage right now.

Like we have a product that generated us a lot of revenue, but I do not believe we have product market fit. And I think the big reason is because I think personal brand is a nice to have, not a need to have for most CEOs. I think most CEOs will pay for personal brand help for like five or six months and then they will stop.

And if that is like the average life of your customer, That means just to stay flat, you need to replace your entire customer base every single year. And that all of a sudden becomes a very exhausting marketing exercise. And so I actually, so right now we're working on evolving the product to support more than just [00:42:00] executive social, because I actually think there are content needs that companies have that are way higher retention than a founder social, for example, a company newsletter.

Uh, another example is company social. Another example is like landing page and website copy. Another example is like customer case studies. And so, I think it's been very valuable to see where the initial thesis was wrong. But still have all this demand and figure out how can we harness all this demand and really good writers and really good content strategists and point the product in the right direction.

I think I've also just realized that like, first of all, early stage startups are horrible customers in general. If you can build a business that where early stage startups are not the customer, I encourage you to do so. Uh, and, and look, I love early stage founders, but it's also, it's like, It is the most resource strapped you'll ever be as a company.

And so if you're a vendor of that, it can be a very difficult thing. If you're helping these founders find product market fit, [00:43:00] like bless you. Yeah. Good job. Totally. Totally. And then I think the other thing is that for most, when, when your buyer of a product is a CEO or a founder, I generally think there's like four points of value you can provide to a founder or CEO to be a sticky product for them.

You either deliver some product that is a core part of their job, uh, so if one of the founders is a CTO and you're GitHub, like, they're always going to use you, or like, if it's not core to their job, then it has to be something that saves them money, it saves them headaches, or that it saves them time.

And that's actually why I think, like, the offshore executive assistant businesses, DAO are pretty good businesses because I think it saves them time, it saves them headaches, and also, especially, like, they can be good in down markets because instead of paying an EA 150k in New York City, you [00:44:00] know,

[00:44:00] Connor Tomkies: it's way cheaper.

I think you might have changed my life in August when you said that outsourcing was sexy, or you were like, how do you get into sexy business like this? And I'm like, You, you do newsletters, like. Yes, that's cool. Which is hilarious because if anyone said what I said to you about newsletters when I was building Warning Brew, I'd be like, this is not sexy at all.

It's like the least sexy thing. I'm like, well, we have offices around the world, but I actually liked it. I thought it was cool because you work for people in different cultures and you build these like international teams. And so I felt like the weirdo in the corner of the global map. Things happen very

[00:44:34] Alex Lieberman: serendipitously where I actually think a lot of the knowledge you got in building a team.

An offshore talent business as the world gets increasingly distributed and globalized. I think just like the way company companies operate moving forward is likely going to be some combination of A little bit of in house talent combined with automations,

[00:44:53] Connor Tomkies: AI, and offshore. This is probably going to be like the pre novo where it's like, why [00:45:00] wouldn't you do this?

Like why wouldn't you do this ahead of time? Is that when you could just hire in your city or your town, now you can hire in your country with remote. Now you can hire in other countries and find the best talent. And so yes, there's arbitrage kind of piece to it, but there's also kind of like this talent piece of it.

Alex, thank you so much. Uh, where's the best place for people to go to find you, Alex?

[00:45:22] Alex Lieberman: Yeah, so, uh, you can find me on any of the social platforms, uh, on Instagram, I'm Alex Lieb, on Twitter or X, I'm Business Barista. Um, TikTok, I'm business barista too. And then I have a podcast, Founders Journal. And then as you mentioned, my two businesses are Morning Brew and StoryArb.

Fantastic. Alex, thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:45:44] Narrator: That wraps up today's episode. For more inspiring stories and valuable lessons from successful entrepreneurs, be sure to listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep pushing boundaries and writing your next chapter.