HOST EVENTS

“We actually are the new family office is what I'm trying to explain. When you are a family office and you're investing and you walk in and say, I'm writing a $5,000,000 check, the thing is is you're not getting a 70/30 split with the sponsor like a like a guy writing a 50 or $100,000 check is getting. You're getting a 90/10 split, like a 20% gap. So I'll go in and get that 20% carried interest and effectively split it. So, like, our team gets 10%, and then all of our investors get 10%.”

“And, like, even with me, like, I struggled for a while because I was like, I'm building my personal brand. It's under me. And I was like and I wrote from a newsletter. It was just my name. And I was like, no. I need an entity that feels like it could grow from beyond just me when eventually I will have two you know, not enough time to to build this out. And so I think that does derisk you in a way. So you build your personal brand, and then you say, I'm building this as a brand, as a business, as a community, what have you.”

“Please, please, please, for the love of god, get yourself a whiteboard and put it in your workout room. Okay? And that's my setup. And so I get up in the morning. I'm usually thinking about whatever I'm thinking about, and then I start caffeinating. Right? So it's like coffee, exercise, and whiteboard, and what are you doing in between sets. I always try to work in shapes. So it's either some kind of Venn diagram or some kind of, you know, quadrant or some kind of triangle.”

“But I think for this creator model, the way that I think about it is, like, if at you're as a creator, you are almost like, a label of sorts. Right? You're attracting people that are interested in the things you have to say and your experiences, etcetera. And when you start to build this, like, audience or community, what people don't realize is that your audience is probably likely to get along really well.”

“Well, like, something cool like Jay Klaus is doing. So he's got his, you know, high ticket creator science community. And they're just pegging it to the conference, to the the kids' Craft and Commerce conference. So it's like, can you peg it to something that people are already traveling for? Like, I think there's ways you could get, you know, creative with it, basically.”

“We, to this day, turned down we do not extend an invitation to enroll to 75% of people who apply. We don't let them in. Like, we are not in the we separate you from your from your money business. We are in the can you actually do this, and we have the highest acquisition to member ratio in the entire space. Hands down. Unparalleled results for people.”

“But I think the big the big opportunity here and I've been trying to do a lot of research around this in terms of how many creators out there actually, you know, have x amount of followers, have this money and they're not doing newsletter. And, like, there's a lot. There's a lot of people that are they're leaving it on the table, and and and what would that look like if if they kind of expand into their own audience?”

“You have to figure out how to eliminate key-face risk so the brand lives beyond you.”

“Big companies are looking for systems and assets that don't depend on one person's social media profile.”

“IRL events are the next big creator play for high-engagement media brands.”

“Every book, falls. You launch, and your launch dictates as high as it's gonna get, and then they fall. And it either falls like a brick because it's a it's a terrible book. That's code for average. The average book sells 400 copies over its entire lifetime. Okay? Or it falls like a feather, Okay? Because it's great content.”

“Email has never been more important than it is right now. AI is gonna come in probably in the next twenty four months or whatever, and there's gonna be so much noise and so much nonsense. But if you can get in now and build your newsletter now and people will start reading it now, then they know when that newsletter comes in that that's the one I read. Right now is the time to be building your newsletter, and that's actually what I think has been the most impactful thing I've ever done.”

“What creators avoid—but shouldn't—are the scaling pains required to make a business acquisition-ready.”

“Buy Then Build has sold about a quarter of a million copies, which puts it like, it's one of the best selling, business books in human history. Did you have any meaningful audience before the book launch? Zero, Matt. I had zero. In fact, like, one of the early reviews was, like, my I like it's a good book. My my only criticism is, like, who is this guy?”

“I sent out an email just to my list that was like, hey. All you guys are always asking me what I'm investing in. And here's my a team, and I've got more money invested with them than anyone else. And I invested $50,000 in this project, and I'm just inviting you along with me. I sent it. And I raised we we had we had room for $1,350,000, and I raised 4 and a half million dollars in four hours. That was the power of my email list.”

“Exceptional content is really a mix of a few things. Number one, strategy. Number two, tactics. Number three, a unique framework. And number four, a story or a case study. And that's it. If you can weave those four things together, you end up at, you know, Stanford Business School teaching classes. You end up with, you know, the single best course or curriculum out there.”

“My mom quit her job, in choosing tech sales, big tech career, and, bought a house in Italy, started documenting that. She found that a lot of, you know, people, her core audience were these, like, middle aged women that had the money to spend, like, a very valuable demographic, and they, like, love to travel, and wanted, like, experiences to go to. So she's like, let me start hosting some retreats. And some of them were, like, real estate focused in terms of people that wanted to to move abroad, and others were just, like, for fun. But that's been kind of, like, her surprise business model of sorts is she's got a she's got a paid Substack community. She's making money through her retreats”

“So, salary transparent, she started as a TikTok account, and you might have seen them if you're on social media where they go up and, like, interview people on the street and ask them how much money do you make. And they obviously think that The US go viral. It's, you know, been this, like, cult sensation. And I think most creators might just stop there. They say, I've got a million followers. I'm getting brand deals. I'm good. What else is even possible here? And, you know, from the early days, I felt like she and eventually had you know, has a little bit of a team behind her. It's built more intentionally as, like, how do we actually expand this as a business”

“I knew that the ETA, Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, club at Harvard Business School was putting together a conference. So I reached out to the MBA students, and I was like, hey. I just wrote a book on this subject, and look at Amazon. Look at all the reviews I'm getting. Would you mind if I sent free copies to all of your attendees? And they're like, no. That'd be amazing. I'm like, great. And I was like, all I ask is one thing. Just take a picture of the book there at Harvard.”

“And I think just this week, Plaid bought this week in fintech, which, again, is not a traditional, like, creator in terms of how it's more of a traditional newsletter brand. But, again, it proves that same model, as we've been seeing, like, works. And I think with with creators, we're we're seeing a lot of, like, investment in terms of, you know, people want, like, a face to the brand”

“I mean, I wouldn't say there's a typical number. I think you would be well, you wouldn't be surprised given the nature of what you what you do, but most people would be surprised at the amount of people that are running 7 figure businesses, and it's them a couple of, you know, maybe some contractors, maybe one employee, and, you know, some VAs and things. Like, I think that is really that lean creator business that is very, very successful.”

“The gap between being a creator and a founder is what actually determines if your business is scalable.”