Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show live. Today, we’re going to talk about local newsletters, podcasts, and local brands in general. I have my friend, Brooks Conkle, joining me today. How’s it, how’s it going?
Brooks: Uh, good, man. Good, good to see ya.
Doug: Yeah, and we, you know, there’s always like, oh, how’d you meet so and so?
And a lot of times it’s online, but we met at FinCon a couple years ago. I think, was it in Austin?
Brooks: Um, Kind of met, kind of met, quasi met in Austin, and then, yeah, cause that was like, that was two years ago, right? Is that two years ago?
Doug: Uh, 2021.
Brooks: Okay. Okay. I don’t know. I’m wearing a FinCon shirt actually right now.
It like dates, times, and locations all like mold together for me. We a hundred percent met at FinCon though.
Doug: Okay. Yeah. Same for me. We’re, we’re all getting older second by second and turns out we were drinking at the time, I think. So I, I definitely was drinking. So yeah. It’s not the best way to remember things, but we’ve met in person.
We’ve hung out a few times. We’re going to see each other coming up at FinCon in Atlanta before too long. And a couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with Shana Newman about her portfolio of websites. Do you know Shana from Skip Blast?
Brooks: I, yes I do. And we’re in like another group together. So we’ve like chatted online and cross paths.
Yeah.
Doug: Perfect. She mentioned you about Mobile Rundown, right? So that’s your local brand, which we’re going to talk about today. And I was like, Oh yeah, that’s, that is a great thing to talk about. And I know Brooks. Why don’t I just see if he could join me? So we’re going to dig in today and get into it.
But for the people that don’t know you at all, Who are you? What do you do these days? And I may ask you about your background a little bit more before we get into the, the local branding and what we’re here for today.
Brooks: Yeah, sure, man. So I it’s only, it’s only the last year that I finally settled into this, like, this title for myself, which is a full time side hustler.
It always felt strange to say, but that’s kind of what I’ve been, man, for like the last 10 plus years. I’ve always had like multiple projects going on. And that’s offline and online. So I do agency stuff. I have multiple newsletters. I have multiple websites. You know, I do agency work for others in those lanes.
And then I also have like offline local stuff. Like I’m involved in real estate. And I’ve always had a, I’ve had a broker’s license for like a dozen years. So we’ve been involved in like Airbnb flips, rentals and stuff like that. So, but my time is like, amongst all of them. And it’s, it’s a very, it’s a very kind of weird thing.
It’s not a normal, it’s not a normal side hustle, but it’s like all my side hustles combined together for like my, my business and my brand and what I do.
Doug: Interesting. Yeah. Cause it, I think at one point someone told me, Hey, just say you’re a media company, cause like. You know, you do YouTube, you do a websites, you have a podcast.
So it’s like, it’s media overall. And I was like, Oh yeah, like I could just simplify and say, Hey, I do a media company. And if people care, which most people don’t, then you could dive in, but you’re doing other stuff in addition. So it’s like agency work. You’re doing like like offline, like investing, like brick and mortar stuff.
So can you expand on it? Oh, I see. You got an idea.
Brooks: But yeah, I was just gonna say, I’m with you, I do the same thing. I think it 100 percent depends who’s asking and who I’m talking to. You and me are hanging out online with, honestly, hustly online people. So it’s like, it makes more sense to, like, they would actually get me saying I’m a full time side hustler.
Locally, when I’m meeting someone new, I probably won’t say that. I’m like, yeah, you know, I run an online brand, or I do, I do. Yeah, I use the word media and marketing a lot. I think it all depends on who I’m like, who I’m talking with, you know?
Doug: And we should all, we should all do that every time. Right. So, you know, like the right level of detail and if people like, if you don’t want to talk about it, then you can just say like, Oh, I’m an entrepreneur or like, you know, self employed and that it’s a conversation like killer.
Or if the person, if it’s the right environment, they’re like, Oh, how are you self employed? Blah, blah, blah. Okay. So we could go on and on and about that. But Just curious, so it’s a lot of irons in the fire. How much time do you work per week? Would you say?
Brooks: It’s a good question. Definitely. Like. At least a full time job.
Definitely probably at least a 40 hour a week Repertoire and it’s probably more I actually tracked at one point I haven’t done this in like a year like actually tracked my hours with the stuff I was doing Um for all actually you may have given me that idea, but it’s probably between 40 and 50 hours a week If I were to kind of um, if I were to spell it down, I enjoy Working on one of those weirdos that actually likes to I think if I was working like 80 hours a week, I’d be a little stressed, but I like the like 40 to 50 hours of like doing stuff, like working on projects.
Doug: Right on. Okay. And that makes sense. I think like, cause you’ve been doing this for long enough and I have too. So it’s like, we’ve whittled down to the jobs that we like. So it’s like, you totally can work like 40 or 50 hours and be pretty, pretty content and actually want to do the work where you like wake up and you’re like, I kinda, I got this little project I want to get on.
So, or is it kind of like that for you? You’re like, I can’t wait to get on this stuff.
Brooks: A hundred percent. So I’m building like a side hustle quiz using Claude and AI. And I just started it like two days ago and I was like, I am obsessed. Like. Yeah, kind of like super excited about that. I just bought Thrivecart this morning.
I I’ve been I’ve heard about it dozens of times, but I’ve never used it as like a checkout like tool. So I’m like excited about that. I get this weird like energy and excitement when these, you know, when these new pieces of my projects like come together, I start on them or get them going or whatever.
A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Doug: Got it. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s. Go ahead and get into the topics. I’m going to ask about your history probably a little bit later but when did you have the idea for mobile rundown and can you talk about What it looks like right now. What are the pieces of the business these days?
Brooks: Yeah, sure. Sure It’s so I feel like I hear people talking about local newsletters a lot lately Like it’s a this like newer phenomenon people are like, oh, I want to start a local newsletter Which I think is cool, and I actually think it’s like the future of media personally. But so, but my brain, I, I, like, the mobile rundown has existed for more than 12 years.
Not in its current form by any shape of, you know, at all. It’s, it’s, it’s grown organically over 12 years, 12 years ago, Doug, me and, uh, me and a buddy, another local professional in town. I wasn’t even married at that point. I’ve been married 10 years. So 12 years ago. We missed an event in our city.
And we’re like, dude, how did we miss that? Like, we’re connected, we know what’s going on. How did we miss this event? So we said, screw it man, we’ll start our own list. And originally we called it the Mob 10. We were like, man, we’ll just put out 10 events every week. And that was more than a dozen years ago.
And we we basically just, like, took, I don’t know, a couple hundred of our friends emails, I think, is probably, is, like, how we started out. Yeah, there’s no way we did anything else. We had to start somehow. And we just, like, we’re emailing friends. And we’re like, hey, here’s, here’s what’s going on this week.
And, yeah. Just fast forward to now, 12 years later, things have organically grown out of it. I guess I’ll just go, I’ll give you the dots on like what it is now. Like now it’s got, you know, it has it’s own website, which, it has a blog, which was, was killing it in SEO. Not, currently not really. And email, the email newsletter is now like 11, 000 plus, like big social channels, 30 to 40, 000, you know, social followers on Facebook and Instagram.
My goal is to get our YouTube channel monetized this year and then use all that YouTube content within our brand. What probably throws people off, though, is that we have done physical, in person events from the brand, and also printed publications. After like seven years of being a digital brand, we like moved into some printed publications, and I think that’s kind of like an interesting piece, and I can go into detail on any of that that you find, that you find interesting.
But that’s kind of like where it is today, after 12 years.
Doug: Very cool. And like most good businesses that are worth spending time on. It’s like you identified a problem that you actually had yourself. And then you were like, how can we fix that? And then other people obviously have the problem. So you, um, were you doing the real estate stuff?
Like why did you care about the events that you missed? Were you a local business person? And you were like, Hey, we got to go and network and be part of the business community here?
Brooks: I think So 12, 12 or more years ago, I think I was more just like a young, yeah, just like a young professional that was involved, wanted to see my city grow.
And so I think I was more like, what can, what can I do to help? Like how, how can I, how can I help make sure that other people don’t miss this stuff? Because if I’m, if we’re plugged in and we missed it, then other people are too. It kinda, it kinda was that like almost philanthropic. But at the same time, I think we, we were like, man, we could probably launch this and make.
A million dollars in a year or something, which of course we didn’t. But I think that was probably a thought, a thought too.
Doug: Okay. Awesome. Okay. So you have the, you have the newsletter, which is, that was the origin, right? So it was a news, a newsletter at first to share the 10 events. You got the social, which grew over time.
Do you also have a podcast that you’re actively recording or?
Brooks: Podcast? Yes. So we do technically have a podcast and I didn’t even, I didn’t even list it because I have always treated podcast as kind of like, on, on again, off again, record it when you want, when you have content. So I have a buddy that’s in my city that runs a food tour business.
Super cool guy. He has his own podcast that he’s like all in it. It’s uh, B& B Bites, uh, well B& B Bites Food Tour is the name of the company, but like he has a local podcast. Our last like, 10 episodes or me and him hopping on hopping on live and talking because he’s already a podcast dude. So it’s really easy We literally kind of recorded it live and then made it but we also would hop in other people that we want to have a conversation with and Record those chats and it was super easy because he’s like a co host with me, right?
So it’s like nothing on a nothing on a required schedule But we’ve done plenty of episodes and then we can use that as content
Doug: And I do, I think that’s a valid podcasting schedule where it’s like, if you have something to talk about, like you do it and if you don’t, you don’t force it. Not me though.
I, I force it each week. I, I do it, but go ahead.
Brooks: Yeah, I mean, it’s good if you put yourself, if you say like, Hey, I’m going to do this weekly at this time which is a good, I think a good thing to do, it kind of forces you to also stay accountable and keep that, you know, keep that activity going. And I’ve just I’m just like, I don’t have the bandwidth for that in my brand.
So I’ve never said weekly at this time.
Doug: Got
Brooks: it. Or whatever.
Doug: And I think, yeah, it depends on the format. I was going to say, do you know, um, Brandon, Matt Fientist, speaking of the, the Fi world, have you run across him?
Brooks: I’ve heard, I’ve heard that name, heard the brand.
Doug: So he traditionally, he has like one of the first podcasts in the space.
So he like, it’s huge. And he went to many events over the. You know, last 15 years or whatever, but anyway, he publishes whenever he feels like he retired a few years ago. So at this point, when he puts out an episode, I think he still gets a huge number of downloads, but it’s like once a quarter or whenever he feels like it.
So it’s ridiculous. It’s just like when he, you know, when he has something to share or if he doesn’t, he doesn’t sweat it. He’s like raising his kid and live in life. Right. Right.
Brooks: That’s, that’s pretty cool. Well like, the pod, podcasts are like an interesting medium to me in general. I think they’re pretty easy to start.
I think most people should start one. I think they’re much easier than people think they are if you want to like do a simple, a simplified version of a podcast. But I think the, I think the content bank of the library is pretty cool in, in the podcast format. It’s like, as long as you just pay your hosting fee, like whoever you use is super affordable.
You have You can bank all this content. It’s kind of like, kind of like a YouTube, kind of like a YouTube channel. And I think, it sounds like he’s, he’s reaping the benefits from that type of Thing, listenership, you know, so that’s cool.
Doug: So, and you mentioned YouTube is a piece of the puzzle too.
And if, you know, if you’re doing it similar to like what I’m doing, it’s like, you can record video and you could use that audio later. You could use the same video for different formats. So you’re shooting something once and you’re mindful of like different formats and repurposing you could do. Is that accurate?
Brooks: Yes. Yes. And, I’m also, I’m trying to figure out like, I’m all about like how, how, like how can I reduce friction and like ramp up what I’m doing. So, because I’m running, I’m running my channel The Mobile Rundown has a YouTube channel, and I have like this faceless, faceless music channel that’s like a project that’s just like a piece of content for my newsletter because of that, I’m like okay, I’m usually the bottleneck in anything in regards to like content production or whatever, so I’m like okay, how can we like.
How can we ramp this up? So, I, I just recently made, like, with Eleven Labs, made an AI version of my own voice, and it is freakishly good. Have, have you, have you checked that out at all? Eleven Labs?
Doug: I’ve, I have not, I’ve heard of it. I’ve only used Descript, which can, it did pretty good, but to be honest, I think it was over a year ago when I did my whatever they fine tune the voice and all that stuff, but is 11 labs better?
Brooks: So, yeah, for sure. So I actually use Descript as well as like my, my main video editor and project. Again, if it was me doing it, I’m like, I’m the bottleneck in everything. I’m the bottleneck. I could have like 20 ideas, but like six months later you might get a couple of the of the rough recordings recorded.
That’s just me. That’s just like like my bandwidth and what I have. I’ve, I think I’ve, I think I’ve settled myself into a workflow that I can ramp up content and The crazy thing, we’ve done a few, I’ll have to look, I think like our latest ones is like, it might be my AI voice or whatever. But I record, I record the intro, my face on screen, intro, hook, and then we cut to like B roll and content.
And I have a really awesome video editor that now I’ve worked with for like six months. I hope that he like, if I could afford him full time, I would like say, hey man, get rid of all your stuff. Just like, let’s just keep. Let’s keep working together. So just in the last video, like use my AI voice, kept going B roll.
And it’s like, it’s nuts. Like no one, I don’t even know if my wife would, I don’t even know if my wife would know, man, to be honest, crazy.
Doug: And yeah, with the script, like you can tell but it, you know, the weird part with the script one of my friends listened to the, The episode that I did or a segment or whatever.
And it sounded, the cadence is a little bit off, but he said he didn’t hear me take a breath and that’s the thing. It’s like a little too perfect. You have to add in like the breathing and some other imperfections, which is like, it makes sense when you think about it. It’s like the AI is going to do it too perfect unless they introduce the imperfections.
Like, you know, everybody makes it a little mistake when they’re talking.
Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. I, I just think that like, it just, it. I’m blown away with how it is now. I’m just like, Oh my gosh, just fast forward six months. And I’m, I have no idea what this feature means for all this stuff, man. It’s nuts. Very interesting though.
Doug: Yeah. Well, let’s, uh, let’s shift gears. So you’ve been working on the brand for like 12 years. It sort of started slow. You guys had big dreams and then it kind of, you know, the reality set in. But let’s talk about the monetization. So there’s some clear paths that I can see, like knowing local businesses, and they’re always trying to get out in front of like other people, whether it’s tourists coming to town or the local folks that maybe would, you know, use the business over and over again.
And when did you start monetizing? Can you talk about if you’re willing to share any revenue numbers or anything like that, even if it’s very broad. And then we’ll get into some of the details too. So yeah, monetization.
Brooks: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don’t, yeah, I don’t mind talking about kind of numbers and revenue and things that we, things that we do with it.
Also to get people like realistic expectations of, of these businesses. A lot of people have heard of Sneddon, Nap Town Scoop. So many people have heard of that newsletter. And they see that local email newsletter as like, Oh my gosh, I can make 200k from, you know, a 20, 000 person email list. And I think you absolutely can, because, because he has.
To do that, you gotta like, love sales and selling all your local businesses and get them in your multiple ad forms in the email newsletter. I do not, and I have zero interest in, in doing that. So like, I, I, I say all that as like my, as my preface. Now, I’ve always been on the hunt for someone that could like, maybe, maybe be that salesperson for us or like, I’ve always been open to that or like a collab partner that could, that could pay like, you know, You know, 30 40 percent of like, of ad revenue generated or whatever.
I have ne we’ve, we’ve had a few people kind of come in and do that. It’s just never like, it’s never really clicked and never really worked. But in our, in like, kind of good year or best year, and this is gonna include, our business is weird because it includes like, the local print publication, or did in the past, and I’ll have to go into a little bit of detail, that like, we were doing it just before, just before the pandemic.
And I’ll just go and give you like a 15 second version of what that, like what that entailed. Okay. Yeah. Cause like, let me do that. Because that kind of loops into, to, to where we are now. So like our brand, pre pandemic, we actually had this idea to launch print publications and this, and we had never done a print publication before.
You’re right. We’ve been a brand for like eight years and we’re like, okay why in the world would we do this print thing? Well, we had advertisers, Surprisingly that we’re all about buying a print ad and a local printed thing, but like wouldn’t buy, you know, like an online digital ad. I don’t know, whatever.
It’s local businesses. It’s how, it’s how they operate. So that’s something that people will learn that certain businesses like certain things. So here’s what we did. We, we didn’t know what we were doing, but we went and met a printer in Montgomery, Alabama, which is like a two hour drive from us. So they print, they print a lot of the local magazines in our city.
And so we went and met with them and we felt good about it. And what we printed was we put together like a quarterly guide. Basically like a, it’s like a 30 page simple kind of magazine. With like, hey, here’s all the events coming up this quarter. And basically we had advertisers in that. Events that wanted to like highlight their event.
You know, paid extra for their events or whatever. The magazines were free. You know, they’re like at like coffee shops and whatever. You know, A dozen or twenty, you know, locations. We printed thousands of them. And then we also made it available online. Super cool. Definitely profitable. It’s very hustly though.
It’s a lot of work. So imagine, you know, imagine putting together this, this project and it’s quarterly and you’re like working on the next one while you’re working on this one and We didn’t know what we were doing. But at, at the time, my, my wife was working with me like part time in that brand. Like, like, she was with me in the hustles and what we’re doing.
So, we did six of those. And then the, when the pandemic came, every, like, every event that like, like there were, there were no events. So there was no magazine to be had. You know what I mean? Like you can’t have a magazine, you can’t have a magazine saying, Hey, here’s, here’s the nothing that’s going on.
So, But, but an interesting piece out of that and if someone, they can have this idea, cause I think it’ll work in local cities. So in that free event magazine, there was a section called do some good mobile. And what it was was like a really affordable, a really affordable highlighted, highlighted spot for a local nonprofit.
And nonprofits, some of them have really big budgets actually. Right. So, but whatever, it was like an affordable spot to highlight a nonprofit that was doing something really cool in the area. Uh, my wife was like, this is crazy, but she’s like, these all sell out really quick and I’ve sold out the net, you know, this section for like the next couple of magazines.
So we started talking and we’re like, go ahead.
Doug: No, no. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. We, we had a light bulb moment. And so over like a coffee date, we had the idea. I said, Hey, what if we, what if we attempt a standalone magazine for do some good mobile and all it does is highlights nonprofits. And so we kind of brainstormed the idea.
That magazine is now the only product that the Mobile Rundown produces. And we just printed the fifth one. So it’s an annual magazine. Non profits pay for their section and or like they can get a company to sponsor them. It’s really cool. Companies can like have their logo on the non profits page and be like, Hey, brought to you by this company.
You know, company gets to look cool. You know, they, they sponsor a non profit or companies can just advertise in it. And they, obviously they look cool being, you know. their, their ad next to like nonprofit organizations. That project has now my, my wife launched her own nonprofit organization to run that magazine.
So it’s like moving from our brand to like her and a board of her friends that are like running that crazy. So it, we actually potentially we’re going to like help people. I was like going to put together some kind of like, I don’t know, content, digital product, whatever, to help people launch this specific magazine.
Cause I think like. I think this could work in like communities all around the country, to be honest. But now I think I would just help people for free. I mean, like hopefully this idea spurs somebody to like, to do that. You were asking me about, you were asking me about money. So I said all that to like, come back to money.
Say like our email newsletter probably generates ballpark 15 to 20 grand a year in today’s world. That’s the newsletter, the website, the blog. It’s weird cause everything molds together and everything is connected by connective tissue. The blog in the highest month made like four to five grand and this is just like straight up media vine, media vine ads.
So like four to five grand now it’s in the hundreds. I think I think last month’s check was a little less than a thousand bucks or something. So, you know, you could tack on extra, That’s a completely fluctuating market, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s profitable and solid. If, if, if I sold ads or we sold ads and I wanted to only focus on this for sure, simple six figure business.
Like, I mean, I like, so anyone out there listening, yeah, they like, like these all day or six figure businesses. If you want to focus on it like full time For me, it’s probably like 20, it’s probably 20 percent of my energy goes to this brand in general. The, the, the Mobile Rundown brand probably gets like 20 percent of my focus.
But other monetization you also mentioned, yes, I’m all about affiliates. So we have affiliate for like booking , imagine local trips and tours. So like an alligator tour. Actually, my buddy that runs the Bienville Bites food tours, I’ve like sold tours for him and he’s on an affiliate program.
We’ve got local hotels. We, we haven’t made, we haven’t made a bunch of money there, but I know that that’s like, that’s a, that’s a piece, like that’s a future piece that we can, that we can grow. Got it. Alright, let me, let, uh. Real world events too, I guess I should go ahead and throw that out there if you want me to.
We just threw, we just threw, we started throwing silent discos. We can pause and you can ask me something or I can tell you about that. You let me know.
Doug: Go ahead, tell us about the silent disco.
Brooks: Okay. So, And before we get to the Silent Disco, there’s another event that we launched called the King Cake Off.
Launched out of our brand, we brought on two other partners to run this event. It was based, so Mardi Gras actually originated in our city, most people don’t know that. They obviously think New Orleans, which is two hours west of us. Mobile, like we have this fun battle of who actually originated Mardi Gras.
Like literally in the history books, it’s pretty interesting. So we, so we launched this thing called the King Cake Off. Super fun event. It’s now a 1500 person ticketed event. It’s, it’s gone into its fifth year. We actually just like we sold that, sold, merged the event into a local nonprofit that was looking for their like fourth big fundraiser to do.
They’re like, yeah, we’re looking for this fourth big fundraiser. So we kind of brought them on as a partner for a couple of years and then we’ve like completely shifted it back over to them. Leads me to Silent Disco. I had always just wanted to go to one, man. I’m staring down because I have all these, I have a pile of headsets at my feet because that like we were, we were charging, charging them up for an event.
If people don’t know what it is, I’ll give you the, the, the 10 second version is. You literally wear, you have a headset that can change, it can change channels. So this is blue, red, green. You can have three DJs, or three music channels playing different types of music. So like you choose what you want to listen to at the party.
And there’s something weird about these headsets at a party. Is that like, you’re, you’re in your own world. People don’t, people don’t care. So like they lose inhibition inside a headset. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how to describe it. But it’s also It’s also quiet at the event. It’s not like quiet, but you can just take off the headsets and just have a chat.
So we can just have a drink and talk. You’re not like screaming over a band or a DJ. Right. So that’s what a silent disco is.
Doug: Got it. Okay. Very cool. I have seen them going on funny enough. Never participated, but I was at, I think it was at GABF, the great American beer festival. So like inhibitions were low for most people anyway, because they were just drinking beer all day.
But yeah, yeah. I’ve, I’ve seen that. And, and actually Brooks, I’m pretty sure when we met, it was like the opening party at, in Austin. And it was like, yeah. Insanely loud. Like, I’m, I, I I cannot handle the loud. Yes. And we’re like yelling at each other. Yes. I’m like, bro, we gotta go outside because this is too much.
And I think you bought me a beer. And I was like, let’s go outside. Right.
Brooks: I, that is so funny. I just now have the mental, I I, I just got the, the visual picture of us meeting. My wife was with me. It was inside, it was at the, at a table literally screaming at each other. I was like, you were like. I don’t know man.
I don’t know what you’re saying. I was like, I don’t know what you’re saying. But like, I think I recognize you. And so I was trying to just introduce myself or something. And we were kind of chatting and screaming at a table. Yeah, a silent disco would relieve all of those. Love it. All those issues.
Doug: I don’t even like a loud restaurant these days.
Like, I’m very much an old man. Yeah, I went to too many concerts before, so I’m like, okay, I think I had earplugs when we met and I was like, all right, you did,
Brooks: you, you did, you did have earplugs. Yeah, exactly. So, so the silent disco, I had always wanted to go to one. I’d never seen one in my city. And, uh, so my 40th birthday was coming up and our 12th year old birthday.
Of the mobile rundown was coming up. I was like, dude, let’s just let’s produce an event. Like we have a and here’s the here’s the golden nugget for people. I was like, we have a we have a marketing platform called the mobile rundown that we can advertise our event. So if you’re a person like if a person wants to like build a newsletter, but they also like want to produce events like having your own local website, Brand is the perfect avenue to advertise like what you’re doing, you know what I mean?
And so we we just put it together. We collaborated with a local a bar owner. That’s a friend of mine There’s like this private space in the back. So I was like we kind of partnered with them and I was like, hey, man Never done this before let’s do it. We rented headphones the first time Which which freaked me I had a great experience with this company that I rented them from But it freaked me out because the headphones didn’t show up until the day before the event.
They were supposed to be here like two or three days before. So I’m like rearranging my schedule, like waiting on the UPS guy to drop off this giant thing with, where we had like sold all these headsets for this event that I’ve never done before. So after that first one, like it was, it was nuts and everyone had a great time.
I was like, dude, I’m gonna like, let me look into buying a set of these. And so, so I had my first experience with Alibaba, which I was It was fun. It was a, it was a blast. I got to like chat with manufacturers in China and I ordered my own set of 125. So now, man, I’m, I’m set to like produce recurring silent disco events.
I could rent equipment to other people that want to do events. I could produce events for other people. And that, and that, and it’s actually like, if I’m kind of looking for an operator for that too, because that alone again, I’m pointing at the floor, it’s a pile of headsets. That business alone can, is, on rough napkin math, simple six figure business.
Again, for like, producing a few of your own events per month, and then doing some equipment rentals to people. Like if you, twenty to thirty hours a week, spend some time, Easy, easy six figures in revenue. And so I’m like, man, if I could find the right local person that like just graduated college or whatever I’m kind of, I’m kind of shopping for that, that operator right now.
Doug: That’s so cool, man. Yeah, so many jumping off points, but I do want to pause just for a second, plug some of my stuff. So as you mentioned, um, If you have your own platform, you can promote your own stuff. So I have another podcast and YouTube channel called Ranking Revolution. It focuses on SEO. It’s more on the pro level.
So people should check that out. Also want to give a plug to Linkify. Are you familiar with a Linkify? Have you heard of this business?
Brooks: I’ve heard of it. Yes. I’m excited to hear more right now.
Doug: So they do digital PR. They focus primarily on what used to be Haro and now it’s called Connectively. If I. And pronouncing it right, but basically they do like High level like kick ass like link building for you in the form of digital PR They did a very small campaign for me about a year ago and they got a nasdaq.
com Link yahoo finance and something else which I feel like I have no business to be in any of those publications But I did ask them to kick off another one for me. So they’re gonna be they’re doing it right now Hopefully, you know a couple weeks. I’ll be able to share the first couple links and it is for an inside project So I will be able to share it You can save 10 percent over at Linkify using the discount code, Doug.
And the last thing, actually two more things to promote ePrintables course that is coming out next week with my friend Cody Berman. Do you know Cody from, uh,
Brooks: I, I first heard him from you actually, your podcast, your show. And I was like, this guy seems cool. So I’ve kind of followed him a little bit from that.
Doug: Really smart dude, and he I met him a few years ago at FinCon or some other event. I think he might be 27 now. But basically, yeah, he like crushed it very tons of energy. Like, someone in their twenties has and yeah, he’s built. I think, I don’t know if it’s a million dollar business or cashflow or what it’s, it’s very big.
He has his hands in a lot of different areas. He has some Airbnbs, he has the digital course business and yeah, he’s a cool dude. But anyway, he’s launching his course next week. It’s coming out. They do launches I think a couple of times a year. So September 23rd to the 30th, I’ll be talking more about that in the next week.
And of course, Brooks you have a YouTube channel out there, you have your blog where, where should people go? We’re, we’re going to come back, but I want to give you a chance right now in the plug section.
Brooks: Yeah, if they just, if they just Google me and they can Google my name and connect wherever they want, whether it’s like Twitter, LinkedIn, my website, if they go to full time side hustler.
com that’ll, that, that connects to my, uh, that connects to my email list where I’m like sharing my projects every week and like, here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I did. Here’s what I learned.
Doug: Got it. Very cool. Well, one question I want to get to, um, that Brian asked in the chat, he He went to, uh, the mobile rundown seems kind of like basic looking and he thought maybe branding and the design would be more important.
What do you think about that? Is the design so important?
Brooks: No, I totally agree. Brandon, are you a designer? Or Brian. Yeah, I’m game. I’m game for a refresh. You know, every time I log on to my homepage, I’m like, Oh God, like I gotta put design on my list. But here’s, here’s the Here, here’s my thing or just like part of my, I have to remember that like people, people don’t let people don’t usually land on my home.
They do land on my homepage, but like we’re cranking out content. Like 90 percent of my visits weren’t like, weren’t to my homepage. They were to like a, a blog post or an article or whatever. But even those, the way they’re, the way they’re designed with like my header and the stuff. Oh my God. Yeah. It’s super, super basic.
Yeah. I can totally do like a modernized design refresh, but. I don’t know. Like, do I want to invest in that right now? Not like, not, I mean, maybe, maybe, but I’d have to spend, I’d have to spend the time, energy, and effort and like, find a person, help me, let’s go through this process. You know, whatever. So.
Yeah.
Doug: And it’s, it’s one of those things where it’s like, yes, you know, it’s something that could be improved on. But, from where I sit and I think, you know, point that people should, should look at is like, so you’re doing you, you’re, you were spending time like running the silent disco and you were like, you know what, this is actually a good business model.
So the point being like, you’re selling shit, you’re making money, you’re pulling in revenue versus And the designers out there will have a stronger opinion, but entrepreneurs versus designers, usually the entrepreneurs are like, let’s sell some stuff. Like, we don’t need to spend time on it. Like we’ll figure that out later.
And then sometimes the later is like 12 years later and you’re like about five years ago, I should have done a design refresh. And it’s like, Hey, you’re selling stuff.
Brooks: Yeah. I, um, Maybe, maybe years ago I would have been like a little bit like offended at that question. Like what? My design’s not good.
But now I’m just like, nah man. Yeah, I totally get it. You can always improve and always get better. But w what’s kind of interesting is that my focal point now is actually, it’s less on the website, more on the newsletter. So I’m actually now running I’m actually trying to grow that. The platform that I’m using is like they, they’re kind of my ad sales team currently.
So, like, advertising sponsors directly within there. I’ve also been able to, like, finally start to figure out some Facebook ad stuff. So, like, I’m, I’m getting subscribers. Like, I’ve grown a thousand subs, and it cost me, like, 23 cents apiece. And I’m like, I actually hadn’t run the math on that. Yeah, I hadn’t run the math, man.
But I just ran the math before our call. And I was like, wait a minute. Based on, like, The sponsors that my platform finds me I was like, dude, those are profitable with my click through. Like literally, I’m like, I need to actually crank that up. If I can keep that, uh, if I can keep that, that, that purchase rate, if I, if I crank up my if I crank up the budget, like I’m really spending low, low amounts per day.
If I crank it up, they’ll probably. The cost will probably creep up, but so I’m more focused on my, on the newsletter side and we point to like articles that already exist on, you know, on the blog and whatnot.
Doug: I want to go back to the website and you mentioned the blog revenue and it was maybe like four or 5k at one point.
And now it’s about a thousand and it sounds like maybe Google, you know, Algorithm updates impacted you. Is that accurate? Can you talk about that?
Brooks: Yeah, my dude my my thoughts on I used to be Well, I say used to, maybe a couple years ago so probably four, no, three, three to four years ago, I was like, oh, there’s this SEO thing.
This is cool. Like why, why don’t I focus more on this? So like I cranked up that knob pretty hard. And that’s where, I think our best month in ad revenue is like, it actually may have been like, did I make seven grand or nine grand? It was, it was the month of Mardi Gras So like we, we were ranking for the parade schedule that year.
And so everyone literally in town, the, the, you know, whatever the, the, the 20, 000 visitors we had every day were like finding our site on Google, like for the parade schedule. And so I was like, this is cool. So I ramped that up since about a year ago or more, whatever, dude, all these Google updates, we’ve had all kinds of effects.
I don’t, I don’t measure the updates. I don’t track the updates. I’m not like, Oh, this update just rolled out. It just finished. Where, where, where are we sitting? I ignore, I don’t wanna say I ignore Google now, but like I used to see Google as our main traffic source. Now I see Google as kind of what it needs to be, which is just another traffic source.
That’s, that’s like, I think for me, that’s like a maturing of, of my business. And like my thought process is like, cool. It’s just dude, it’s just Google. Like, okay, it’s, it’s a traffic source. Now it may send you a ton of traffic, but as people have seen recently, it may also get rid of every niche website, kick them all down and bump up, you know, Reddit and you know, only big brands.
And so, so I’m like, okay, Google, I see you. And so I just treat it like any other traffic source, man. It’s the same as like. Me ads or social media or growing via LinkedIn or Twitter or YouTube all all the same to me it’s all the same to me. It just depends like how like where I want to focus
Doug: And it’s crazy that it was only three or four years ago when you were like, Hey, I got to spend some more time on SEO.
Like you knew it existed, but you were just like, ah, not too you weren’t spending much effort on it.
Brooks: I was not, man. I would, so, you know, I know a lot of people in SEO have been like in, in the game or the industry for like a long time. I, like, I definitely, I definitely knew about it. In fact, in fact, kind of funny story.
This is, you seven years ago or something. My friend in town worked for like the local, like a local agency. And he was like, Hey man the local tourism board wants to rank for the stuff you’re ranking for. He’s like, you’re, you’re ranking for like things to do in Mobile, Alabama. And like, they want to like, yeah, they’re like, they’ve hired us to help them to rank for that.
That’s the local tourism. And we’re actually, we’re actually pretty close to them. We’re pretty cool with them. But they have like a multi million dollar budget. Their whole job is to get people like to the city. They get like the hotel tax dollars. I’m just like this little solo operator guy with a website.
I wasn’t doing anything in regards to SEO at that point. And honestly man, I didn’t even the light bulb didn’t even go off at that point. To be, to be like, oh. It’s kind of funny how looking backwards you can see all these like, These connected dots, but, but yeah, about four, three, it was right during the, it was during the pandemic.
So maybe like three years ago I started like writing content, like actually writing content, like creating content for our, for our brand. Whereas before we, we weren’t.
Doug: The advice I’ve been giving people, maybe in like the subtext of some of these live streams, your business should run without Google and, you know, there’s other platforms where you may have a dependency, but it’s too volatile.
And I mean, you know, you were talking about like the, the big month, you made like eight or 9, 000 and some, I’ve been doing SEO Probably for 10 years or so I could say, and yeah, in the earlier days it was much easier and there were some, you know, healthy five figure months over and over again. And, you know, it becomes like not unhealthy psychologically, but it’s just like, for me personally, but I had some friends where it was like, I could do no wrong.
And they like overexpanded overextended themselves and they kind of ended up in a spot where they, they were not profitable. They weren’t running a cash flow. And from our, you know, financial independence knowledge and background, like I was running a pretty lean business, like even when the cash was you know, coming out of the pockets and all that stuff.
So yeah, when I think some people hit some, some rough times, especially in the last like 18 months or so, so it’s pretty rough there.
Brooks: A hundred percent, man. Like it’s, it’s very real. And for me, so like, it’s very, it’s very difficult to give It was very difficult to give Google a blind eye or like diversify from Google when They were giving you everything you needed which was like basically your money, right?
They were like sending you all this traffic and you’re making money What like why would you not double down on that? You know what I mean? Like why would you not and like diversifying obviously is smart I mean i’m i’m in that category man, like so my you know, like some of my sites definitely disrupted I guess I was just maybe it’s lucky enough or smart enough or whatever just not to have You Maybe it’s because I’m a full time side hustler that like that diversification just allowed me not to kind of like to go out of business, right?
With with those websites or have to like completely regroup. I regrouped in a sense of just saying, okay, Google, I see you now. Now I’m going to create different forms of content, man. I should actually, I guess say this now. It just dawned on me. We’re like, we’re we’re testing out news break. So we just got monetized on a news break.
We create on MSN. And we just started receiving some cash there. So we’re starting to see some return from like from our investing in content there. But what that thinking is for me is like, Oh, wait a minute. There’s all these platforms that are building their own audiences and will like share revenue with creators.
Like you don’t have to just get from Google to your website and figure out how to make money. Like. You can syndicate on these other platforms in their, like, siloed communities, make money, and then you can still point people back to your own platform. So, like, those are the kind of things that I feel like, if Google had not changed what they were doing, I don’t think I would even be looking at these other platforms.
These other platforms like for me, like for me personally, I’m starting to look at medium as well. I think I’m going to like start producing content on medium, very similar built in audience that’s like there to read certain content.
Doug: Right.
Brooks: And it seems like it’s, it seems like it’s like stretching yourself thin and doing all this weird stuff.
But in, in reality, it’s really not, it’s like, It’s you taking your brand and like building it, building the overarching brand, like, but on the places where you, where you need to yeah, so medium
Doug: Well, the other funny part is as the business models go up and down and there’s some cyclical nature to it now that I’ve, been around for a decade.
So medium, whatever, five years ago, people were like, you got to publish on medium or you got to do it on LinkedIn. And then like the popularity goes down and it’s like, Oh, you got to do YouTube. Now people are like, newsletters, medium, like back to the written word. So it is slightly amusing to just see like the, the ebb and flow and people.
I mean, the other part is like people are selling shit, right? So there’s people selling courses and they’re like, they have a vested interest or they’re selling software and they have a vested interest to get people to do the thing and talk about how great it is. And even if it’s like, it’s worthwhile, if you’re trying to get from.
95 percent to like 97%, but like it shouldn’t be your starting point, which actually let’s get to that. So let’s zoom back out and say someone is involved in their community. Maybe they have a small business themselves and they’re thinking, Hey, I want to get started. You outlined a blog, email, a different social media.
YouTube channel, where would you advise someone to get started first? Cause they shouldn’t start all of those things, right? So where should they get going first?
Brooks: Definitely, definitely don’t start all of them. If you try to start all of them, you’ll, you’ll analysis paralysis, and you’ll just, you’ll, you’ll blow up and you’ll never start.
You’ll just, you’ll, you’ll quit before you get started. Before I forget the, the real thing you just said about ebb and flow of like all these, these platforms, like coming back around. I just want to put out that point that I feel like the longer you’re in Transcribed The game or in the online business you start to you start to kind of see all that and like it’s almost like it Is an ebb and flow or and that’s fine And and it’s also like it then becomes okay to like start on a platform and pull back from a platform Don’t do this platform go all in on a platform when it’s working and then It’s like in the short term.
You don’t see that stuff, but I think over the horizon That’s that starts to make sense. It’s like yeah, of course, of course i’m going all in on this because You Maybe that platform needs more content. Maybe they’ve grown their user base and maybe they’re incentivizing people to produce content. It’s like every, every, every, every site is a marketplace.
And so anyways, I just want people to like, think about that. Like it does change. Nothing is static. And, and that’s kind of what you learn over the time, over like 10 years or 12 years, you learn that it’s dynamic and everything is changing. Okay. Yeah. No, uh, sorry, I just wanted to make sure I shared that because I was like, man Definitely don’t start on all the platforms.
You’ll, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll explode. Pick, pick and choose what you like, man. People in your community will like whatever. Like, so we have an Instagram account with like, I don’t know, 11 or 12 thousand. I suck at Instagram. If somebody wants to come and like run my Instagram, come and, come and help us.
That’d be awesome. Like, we could do so many cool things. But, even I’m spread thin. I don’t have the perfect recipe for success, even like with that, with that platform. So I don’t want to tell someone what to choose. I think it’s like, I think it’s like pick, pick your platform and go for it. But Instagram’s cool locally.
I know like local influencer type people like build on Instagram. I’ve just seen that. I’ve seen like local, local moms and like mom blog type stuff like work on Instagram. I think the newsletter thing’s, I think the newsletter thing’s pretty killer and a good place to start. Just like literally with a core newsletter.
Because that can be I was hesitant to say like the platform I was using because I didn’t want to be like, whatever. But like, dude, I’m obsessed with Beehive. I’m just gonna go ahead and say it. I gotta tell you, man. I’m obsessed with Beehive. Yeah, I’m an affiliate. I do affiliate of like all kinds of stuff.
Yes, I’m an affiliate. But like, I, it’s my favorite tool of 2024, for sure. If anyone if anyone moves to beehive like send me a message if you’re interested like I will help I will help people I’ll like Literally consult you or something or help you like move through it or like learn the platform As long as you use my link, obviously, but like, I’m just like, I like them that much.
So, Beehive now, they just recently bought an AI AI website company. So, what’s cool about it is that it, it can be your website and newsletter. It’s not like just a newsletter platform. It, like, it’s an all in one. I’m actually starting to get traffic from SEO from my newsletters which is pretty nuts.
Because what happens is, when you create a piece of content on the platform It also gets published as a, as a, as a live article and you can have your own domain. So, you know, whatever Denver, Denver bros. com or something. I don’t know where I’d Colorado. So say Denver bros. com is a local site. You write an email newsletter, you send that out to your people.
It also publishes as an article and you can like optimize it for SEO. And it’s so simple, easy to use. They have, dude, they have a built in referral program where people can, like, refer your newsletter by, like, just sending a link to your friends. They sell sponsorships for me, or, like, I don’t have to do any ad copy.
I just click a button, put it on my calendar, and when I write the newsletter, I just click add, and it just, it goes straight in there. There’s so many cool things that they’re doing. I was, like, trying to hold in this, like, let me mention Beehive and say how much I love them, but I’m like, you know what, like, I, I need to, like, I need to, because I genuinely, I genuinely like them, you know, and think they’re like an awesome company.
Doug: They’ve yeah. I was going to say, I’ve heard of them for a while and I definitely saw some friends on Beehive and. I see they have a free, that’s the thing. It’s great to have the free level so that people can try it out. And they’re, they’re up to 2, 500 subscribers for that, which is a pretty healthy news list.
So if someone is like, Hey, I want to like, give it a shot. That is a vowel. I’ve never used them before, but I’ve heard good things over the years. So that’s very cool. All right. So the, to, to summarize here, and it basically, it was like, where should people start? And it’s like pick one or maybe two newsletters are really good.
Instagram is pretty healthy for local social media. Facebook,
Brooks: I’d say Facebook is your third. If I were going to give you three, I’d be like Instagram, Facebook or a newsletter. And honestly, you could probably do all three of those, right? You could probably, if you, if you chose newsletter, you could probably launch your newsletter and then obviously have your socials, right?
Have a, have an Instagram and like make those work together. That’s not like too stressful or whatever.
Doug: And for the newsletter, I know you mentioned you are running some ads. So that’s where some of the subscribers are coming from. Where are other subscribers coming from? This question is from Paul.
Brooks: Oh, okay.
Yeah. Good question. Um, let me see if I can log in and look. It’s kind of interesting. Cause on my on my, what do you call it? Your dashboard on your dashboard. They kind of tell you, but like, we get a bunch of website visits. So we have forms embedded in our, in our, in our website. So, straight from our, straight from our organic reach website visits on those social channels we have like, we don’t, we don’t do a ton of posts where we’re like, we do but they don’t work, you know, where you’re like, hey, sign up for our newsletter.
We, we do some of that, but of course in our in our profile links, like on Instagram profile link and in Facebook our profile link we set up a what’s called a pretty link. So it actually is like the mobile rundown. com forward slash yes, please. Or forward slash newsletter. Like, I think ours is yes, please.
And I’m like, what? So, I want people to be like. What is that? You know, when they click, it goes straight to our, it goes straight to our sub subscribe form. So like, that’s now where I’m sending people. I’m not sending people to our website in those profiles. I’m sending people to our newsletter. So like I’m directing traffic for people to sign up for that, for that newsletter.
YouTube is starting to send some, so every social channel is starting to. Send some referrals, like people are referring our newsletter, which is kind of cool. So, and it’s a built in, a built in tool. That’s the bulk. That’s, that’s the bulk, that’s the bulk of our subscribers, how we’re doing. Very
Doug: good.
And I think, you know, just thinking about, um, local businesses and the ability to actually like, let them know. That you’re doing this and then they typically are the hub of their little, you know, community or friend group or whatever, or they’re somewhat of a hub and they could say, Hey, you could sign up for this newsletter and you end up with, you know, a lot of the local businesses.
In there, you know, they get coffee in the morning. Entrepreneurs like to meet all the time cause we’re often solo or we have people working for us. So it’s like, you want to go out and talk to other peers that are making the same or that are doing the same things as you and have the same stresses. So they end up saying like, Oh yeah, be sure to, you know, make sure you’re on this newsletter.
Like they give a shout out. So if you have an event, be sure to let them know. And you know, this brings it back to, You know, you said you don’t want to spend too much time on the advertising and it can be, I mean, it could be a pain in the butt, right? Like you, you don’t want people to sign up like once a month.
And then you have to deal with like 10 people that are like, should we renew and you’re negotiating? And there’s all this discussion. You want him to sign up for like a quarter or six months or like a year or something like that. Which is why you’re going with sort of the built in ad Mechanism inside beehive.
Right. Do you have any other observations or thoughts on that and dealing with advertisers or anything like that?
Brooks: Yeah. So we, we sell, we still live in advertising as well. I think this would just be interesting to let people know. So that’s like part of our, part of our revenue stream. So we highlight events every week.
That’s actually how our brand started. Right now events is just like a piece of content that we produce. But like events was our content before. So when my wife was helping me, it was like, we like sold it. Events are, events are weird because you’re like, If your content is events, like you, you need that content, but then you’re also trying to get people to pay for that content.
It’s a weird, like, it’s a weird dynamic and you try to, you’re like trying to figure out how to do it. So what I’m doing right now is basically like, cool, we give people a week promotion for free if it’s a, if it’s a cool event. And then if they want more promo, like now that we’re, we have a big community, it’s 40, 49 bucks a week and we make it super simple.
Just send them a link and I’m like, yep, if you want to do it, we’ll just, you know, we’ll, we’ll highlight it. And then also affiliate deals for. We just started this recently. So, ticket master and booking type stuff, those I will go ahead and turn on and like promote them months out because if people book, you know, they buy something.
I like, I, I profit from it. And it’s a win win because it’s like, it’s good content for us. All right. So like whatever, that’s all the event side. You can, if, if, Whoever wants to launch this, like you, you’ll, you’ll do fine. You can make a full time income from this if you’re willing to like sell, like if you’re willing to just talk to businesses or walk in and introduce yourself or email a bunch of cold emails, like, like you can, you can absolutely do it.
I, I only sell inbound requests. So like people ping me, maybe they were, maybe they respond to the email and they’re like, Oh, I’ve been getting your email for a year. Like how can I look at advertising? And I’ll like, I actually suck at responding to those two. I know that sounds super dumb. And people are going to laugh at me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, I’m like, all right, Brooke. I’m like, Brooks, get it together. Like send, send, you know, send them, send them your package or whatever. Now I will say this, I don’t follow when I respond to those people, if they don’t get back with me, I don’t have a follow up system. Like, I’m not going to ping them again.
If I had a person helping me, of course we would do that. Of course we would like follow up. Of course we would like do. You know, cold outreach or whatever. So my, like my focus and what I’m good at, I think, I mean, I feel like is the operation side and like growth. Like, I feel like I’m good at like figuring out this growth side and I want to keep focusing on that and.
For the, for the website I’ve seen, I’ve seen Mediavine as like a sales partner. Cause they sell, they sell those advertisers. And now I’m seeing Beehive also as like a sales partner. Because they’re, they’re lining me up with these sponsors that I’m not having to do the work. They’re doing all the fulfillment.
All I have to do is build the, build the platform to like, To showcase, to showcase these ads. But I will I will sell local at yeah, like people can do it. You can absolutely do it. I just I I am not good at it. Like I don’t like going, you know I also don’t have the time nor do I like doing that aspect of it,
Doug: right?
Yeah. Totally makes sense. And I think it would wear, it would wear me out. Depends on like who you’re doing business with and all that. I could definitely see like some people are like, all right, I want to be like flagship sponsor for this year. And then it’s like, you sell like two or three things. You’re good to go.
You have like a good, true partner and they don’t want to waste time. You don’t want to waste time and all that, but those are hard to come by for sure. Okay. Well, go ahead. What do you got?
Brooks: And I was going to say, I would absolutely sell those. And those In the 80 20 principle, if I do outreach, that’s the type of outreach I’m doing, is like that type of long term.
Hey, you know, I’d love to connect with you for like a year deal or something. So, yeah.
Doug: Yeah, and that’s tough. I mean, that means the company has, you know, pretty Hefty marketing budget and they’re like, okay, like we don’t necessarily know the ROI that we’re going to get, but we support what you’re doing and blah, blah, blah, which, I mean, going back to a previous point of, you know, the, the nonprofits and like helping the nonprofits, like you actually have your foot in the door a little bit with the big sponsors that are you know, talking to the nonprofits and just sponsoring those.
So anyway, we can go on and on. Let’s um, let’s start wrapping up. I have two questions. The last one will be about where people could find you and what you got coming up and the full time side hustle and all that. Sounds like it’s new. But before that last question, so you got mobile rundown, what’s coming up in the next year?
So you have the silent disco ability now, any other big plans for the next year to 18 months?
Brooks: No, there’s nothing like nothing out of the like out of the ordinary. So previously, just before the, the or maybe it was a couple of years ago, I was wanting to do like quarterly big events. So like we had that, uh, that we had that king cake off and I was like, this is amazing.
I was like, I want four of these events in a year and I want to run four big events per like one per quarter. Right. So I was coming up with these ideas. Absolutely not interested in that anymore. Like whatever things things change events are hard. They have a ton of moving pieces and I want to I want to keep doing just more of the same of like what we’re doing I like I think I have a new I think I have a new way to grow Our youtube channel, which I think is working.
I want to continue growing the newsletter. I just I didn’t I just now realize that oh i’m i’m And then on an annual basis, I think I can be profitable with like literally just producing the content, running automatic ads and getting those automatic sponsors. So like no additional work. And I think I can like.
So I need to turn that up. Um, the third thing is kind of like, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of special to me because I have a real estate license. So, but I’ll just go ahead and say it in case anyone has one and they’re thinking of this real estate brokers try to produce stuff like what I’m doing all the time.
And, and they do, and they need to because it’s like their local funnel for like, let me tell you about this neighborhood and the city and these restaurants because it gets them business as a real estate person. Yeah. I have zero time to, to be like a, a, a, a standard, typical real estate agent. But I’m, I’m really close, I think, with the right software and stuff and the company that my license is at, to be able to kind of automate this.
Because real, it, it’s, it’s literally affiliate marketing for a real estate agent. Like, real estate agents can make a referral fee, so I can make a percentage of a commission that’s made when someone buys or sells a house. The problem is it’s very like, it’s very hands on and there’s so, there’s a ton of friction in it.
But I think I’m really close to having a solution that will work with like, one of the software programs that we’re using at our real estate firm. And if that’s the case, I will crank up the volume on real estate content within
Doug: Got it. That’s great. In fact, one of my, one of my friends in town, she has a podcast with a couple of friends and she’s like a, I think a commercial real estate agent.
And yeah, they just talk like local businesses and local things and whatever they want. And it’s cool. It’s entertaining. They, I don’t even think she mentions that she does real estate on there. Like, I mean, it’s just so like, there’s no pitch, but I’m like, they, they have a little platform there. It’s, it’s pretty amazing.
One idea I want to contribute to you. Maybe it’s something to explore. So on the YouTube side, collaborations are one of the best things that you could do. That’s why we’re talking, right? Like I was like, Hey, like we’ll, we bring our audiences together or whatever, but. Surely there’s some local vloggers or some local YouTubers that you might be able to partner with and collaborate on a small thing.
I don’t know what, but that would be a great way. Cause I mean, like if people were watching like local vlogs, they would potentially be like, Oh yeah, there’s another brand around here that’s producing content and I’m interested in the community, but it may be something to explore may go nowhere, but.
Collaborations are fun. And it, at worst, it’s like three years from now, it’s like, Oh, can we work together on this other thing? Like, even if it goes nowhere in the short term.
Brooks: Great, great idea. Yeah. I’m all about, I’m all about collabs. In fact, my wife makes, she makes fun of me cause I’m always like. That’s like my initial idea is like, I’ll meet someone.
I’m like, Oh, we should like collide, like maybe we could do, I’m always trying to find a way to work together. And not everyone operates, not everyone that I meet doesn’t operate like that. Like, and I’m not, I’m not reaching out to like some giant, bigger, it’s like, it’s always an equitable thing. I’m always trying to find an equitable solution, but like, I don’t know, I feel like only a small percentage of those actually work out, but I think if people were more open to them, they.
Everyone would do so much better. So yeah, thanks for the reminder of that.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing how well it works. And I mean, I think back to some of the early collaborations I did in like 2016 or something, it’s like friends that I like still have. And I still like, Hey, do you want to come on the channel?
Like we’ll do a catch up. And you know, we were, we had like 1500 subscribers at the time or 2000 or something like that. And now I think one of them. You know, it has like 80, 000. Another has like 250 or something like that. So it’s just like everybody kept going, but we’re still in touch. So, all right, Brooks, this has been amazing.
Where can people find you?
Brooks: Yeah, just Google my name, go to Google. Give me some Google juice. Brooks Conkel. It’s weird to spell, but C O N K L E is my last name. Brooks, B R O O K S. So just Google, Google my name, go wherever you, that makes you happy. But I’m, I’m mostly active on probably like.
Twitter or X or whatever in the in the online space. But if you, but if you do go to full time side hustler. com forwards, that’ll take you straight to my email newsletter. And that’s like where I’m tracking like every week I’m like, Hey, here’s what I did on these Facebook pages with these Facebook ads or like what I’m doing with this faceless YouTube channel or the AI voice and all that kind of stuff.
So I like, I track that stuff every week. Right on.
Doug: All right. Well, this has been awesome.
Brooks: Sounds good.