Why He Killed Paid Subscribers on Day One

Oh, before, sorry, I just want to double check with you. Your last name is pronounced as Biddlecombe. I know what your name. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Okay. Hello everyone. Welcome back to TwoSet AI. Today I have Adam Biddlecombe. He build Mindstream, the AI newsletter with more than 200,000 people read every day and from five subscribers to a HubSpot acquisition in 17 months. Adam, welcome.

Yes, perfect.

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's quite surreal to hear it kind of read back to you. I listen to so many podcasts and hear like really cool intros and then you get your own. like, well, that's pretty cool.

I know. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just give the audience the LinkedIn headline version of you. Do you have a version LinkedIn doesn't know that you can share with us?

yeah, I think, you know, I'm a, I'm a guy who's just kind of out here learning as we go. It's very interesting when you kind of look back and you pick out, the headlines and you pick out the best bits of yourself. but, you know, I'm someone who's, I think the thing I'm most proud of is my ability to kind of keep going and not give up on something. And that's, that's about it. You know, the headlines will make themselves.

Yeah, awesome. I feel honored to have you because you've walked the path. I want to learn from you. And I mean, here's the thing, Adam, you build, as we all know now, you build one of the fastest growing AI newsletters out there. I mean, I'm building something different, but a little bit similar in a sense, you know, this YouTube channel, founder interviews. It's different format, but also kind of like a media company as well. I also started as a side project and I just recently decided to go all in. So I thank you. I'd love for this conversation to be a real mentorship session and help me see what I'm missing. Should we do that?

Wow, congratulations.

100%. I guess the most important thing when you're setting out to do anything, and I think this relates not just to media, but whatever you're trying to do is have like a really clear end goal in mind. And you've made the decision to go full time, huge congratulations. You know, I'd love to know if you have the answer to that question, what are you trying to do? What is the goal?

that's a really good question. I'll tell you a little bit about what I do now first. I think it's pretty obvious. I interview AI founders and builders about how they built their product. So what actually works in production and some real decisions made behind the scenes. And I do that because I, I bought a SaaS product two years ago and I failed.

course.

So I feel like I need to learn. This is public education for me and I'm returning that to the community as well. And you know, there are, I think with AI democratizing access to building software.

Yep.

It's just going to be everywhere. Everybody now has been equalized of building. And then the next question is, well, I failed once and I want to know how to make it work.

Yeah. So, just to double tap in on that, you know, you say you, you, you previously tried to build a SaaS, it failed and now you want to kind of, learn in public. building the podcast probably gives you more access to more interesting people than if you were just having coffee chats, because you're building the audience. but there's kind of two goals there, you know, are you building, are you truly just looking to get insights so you can go and have another go at SaaS and hope for better success? Or are you trying to build the media business to be the thing?

Honestly, I don't know yet. I have some ideas, but I haven't stress tested myself. So that's the thing I need your help to figure out. what did success look like for you when or your what were your goals?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we can take it back. And by the way, you know, this is like the hardest question to answer, but I think it's, I think it's really important to work back from. And it may be that, you know, you have, like a lot of people do in their profession, they'll have a goal and a stretch goal. So, you know, it can be multiple things. When, when we started Mindstream, me and, me and Matt, my co-founder, the first goal was to see if we can make enough money to leave our jobs. Me and Matt have I've been friends since we were like three, four years old. He's been my closest friend throughout my whole life. And when we were 15, 16, we spent a lot of time together talking about how we were really smart and we were going to be really successful. And we didn't really feel like we fit in with people around us. You know, a lot of people were getting into like drinking and drugs and just being teenagers. And we were thinking about businesses we were going to start. then fast forward 10 years, we still hadn't done it. No, I'd gone off and done my thing. Matt had gone off and his thing. and, you know, little kind of highlight. I six years trying to be a rock star, best education I could ask for. I played more than a thousand shows, travel around the world. but eventually kind of became clear that, I probably wasn't going to make it. And, I was going to massively reduce my life expectancy with, late nights and traveling and all of that sort of stuff. I pivoted into, as far opposite rockstar life as possible and tried to be normal. And when it got jobs. And I remember fantasizing about like, oh my God, I could wake up and I could go to the gym and then I could go to a job and then the job would finish and I'd come home. Um, but over, know, a couple of years that got quite boring. Um, and I remember sitting down. No, I didn't sit down. picked up the phone and I went on a walk and I called Matt and just like, just chastised him with real misdirected, um, frustration that we, as you know, two people weren't where we wanted to be.

Um, I won't tell Matt's story. That's his to tell, but you know, at the same time he was in a similar boat as me. He wasn't really happy of where it was in life. Um, you know, I said to him, used to have all these dreams. We used to like, believe we were going to be successful. We used to believe we're going to have loads of money. And like when, you know, we're 25 or when is that going to start? So I told Matt to come over. Um, I lived in a small two up, two down house and I'd built an office at the end of the garden. was two minutes by two meters and said, come sit in the office. I locked the door and said, we'll open the door when we started a business and basically had a blank sheet of paper. And at the time I, my favorite podcast was my first million hosted by Sam part and Sham Puri. And I'd sort of followed Sam par selling the hustle to HubSpot. And then I'd follow Sham Puri building the milk road and selling that after I don't even think it was nine months. I can't remember exactly, but I'd basically listened to these two very, very successful people build and sell newsletters. So I knew a lot about the model and Matt was working as a copywriter. So we talked about the idea of a newsletter and then we looked at what was kind of available to talk about. AI was the obvious thing. It was something I was really struggling to kind of adopt at work. This was June 23, so. seven months or so after chat GPT was released, it was all the hype, know, pressure from people to kind of understand it. so all those pieces of the puzzle fit together. I've come around this a long way, but you know, you asked me what my goal was. And I think with all this context and all my history, the goal was, can I make enough money to change my situation? And for me, that was not have to have a boss. I tried the like crazy musician thing, couldn't do it sustainably. I tried the normal thing. didn't like it. So I had to find something else. and when you make that your singular focus, you work towards that. So, you know, we started building the product and I focused on bringing revenue in as soon as possible. then after a couple of months, I thought, let's go and get some funding. And we managed to get some funding. then just three months after we'd started it, we were able to say that late, leave our jobs and get into building full time.

Was it a time that you actually made enough money to make that decision?

Yeah, the two things. I basically went after it two ways. said, we can make, I were making money or we can get funding and we ended up doing both. so they all fell at the same time, which was quite nice. but yeah, you know, either of those strategies, you know, I thought could have got us that runway. And, I think particularly in, in SAS world, a lot of people will kind of, go for the funding route and it might be years until they actually kind of make enough money, but we were. We kind of did both with bootstrapped and we raised. yeah, they both worked out.

Did you think at the time it was the right decision to raise some funds? Because you could have continued to bootstrap, right?

Yeah, so, was it the right decision? Yes, it was the right decision. We took investment off a colleague of mine's cousin. So was like somebody I knew. And he ran a marketing agency in the local area. So he invested a bunch of cash, but also gave us services and support and stability. So we had his bookkeeper doing our books. had his, CISAD person like doing all our slack and emails and everything. And then we had SEO support, we had brand support, we had kind of business mentorship by someone who'd been there and done it. So that was probably more valuable than the cash and really set us up for success. And then, you know, you look back, you look back on things in your life and there's pivotal moments. Taking that investment was a pivotal moment, but in Oxford, So I think December, 2023, we acquired another newsletter. Um, it's called auto GPT. This was a huge moment for us. We'd grown to about 15,000 subscribers and this acquisition took us to over a hundred thousand. Um, and, uh, Paul Ingram, who is our investor was such an influential part in getting that acquisition over the line. So that acquisition was more important than the raise, but it wouldn't have happened without the raise. And then.

Mmm.

HubSpot acquiring us, I firmly believe that that wouldn't have happened without those two events. It's sort of like one deal grew into a bigger deal grew into the big deal. but all of them had to happen. So, I don't regret it. Obviously, you know, when you sell your company and you're dividing up all the equity and everything, go, if I could hold onto that or whatever, but you know, everyone paid a pivotal part in us, in us getting there. So, you know, we'd never change that.

sounds like you know you kind of have to have climbed a deal ladder by the ladders or you're climbing did you plan it landing any of these?

Yes. No, no, had, I truly didn't believe that, And I probably wouldn't, I don't know if I actually say that. I was going to say, I wouldn't recommend building a media company with a view to acquisition, but it's becoming more and more common. So, you know, maybe you could, but I think, I think with any company you're trying to build, there's certain things you can do to ensure it's sellable. And it's just like making sure everything's clean and tidy on the inside and, know, making sure you build a very strong brand. but I don't know if building to sell is, going to give you the right motivation to keep going. So, when we were building mindstream, I wanted to build it into a business that would give me, give me and my co-founders cashflow to live the, the sort of life that we wanted to live. So that's what we optimize for. And I think that probably. in the end, put us into a better position to sell the company than if from day one, we'd said, let's build a company and try to sell it. Cause I think if you're, if you're kind of viewing it as a long-term asset that you might want to hold for 10 years, you build it with better foundations and something you're trying to build and

Hmm. Yeah, it sounds like, you know, flipping houses here is very common in Silicon Valley, probably in bigger cities in London too, right? People buy the house and they flip it with cheap materials and they try to sell it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, yes. And they'd probably make more money. Oh, I don't know. Again, flipping houses. Um, I think they probably feel better if they built things, um, to a kind of very, very high standard, you know, but, there you go. Um, so yeah, you asked me, you asked me if it was intentional. Um, it wasn't intentional, but you know, go back to what we're talking about at the start. Um, you have goals that you set out for. So, you know, the first goal was, um, can we, Can we, can we make enough money to leave our jobs? And that was, that was such a huge win. The it's almost like everything after that is a bonus. And then you tack on your next goal and you tack on your next goal. the, kind of top line goal that we always held towards was trying to build the biggest and best AI newsletter in the world. And that was in size. And that was also in a editorial standard. and you know, I think that was such a nice, kind of nice goal that you can always optimize for and you can give yourself these like mini goals inside of it. And I think we're the best. We're not the biggest. We're still growing. But you know, do you know the expression, shoot for the stars, land on the moon?

Yeah, yeah, right. You have to shoot high and but you know you're going to land a little bit lower than that.

100%. 100%. So, so yeah, you know, with coming back to yourself, when you're looking at building your own media company,

I think you just advise me not to build a media company and at least not with an exit of selling it in mind.

Well, you know, there are, there are more and more and more media companies that getting acquired. There's this model of content to commerce and you look at, you know, big, big tech companies who are trying to build brand and build trust as a moat as, as, technology and AI is removing some other moats. more and more and more of them are buying and acquiring media companies. So it is on an upward trend. so I wouldn't necessarily advise against it, but the thing is, If you fundamentally love having these conversations and you feel like they're allowing you to learn at like a faster rate than you would be from like just listening to podcasts or studying or whatever. that can be the goal. The goal can be. I want to have two to three awesome conversations a week that with people that inspire and interest me. And that's such a kind of easy goal to optimize for because you're just having fun, you know,

It's an easy go. Yeah.

I was listening to Naval earlier and I'm not going to quote it word for word, but he says, you can, something along the lines of, you can make your work play, you're always going to outwork someone who sees it as work. So if this is play to you and you're able to do it full time, then you're already winning. And you know, the other thing is if you build, if you're building particularly a personal brand as a media brand, it's, it can also be seen as an opportunity magnet. So I'm from a small town in the UK and I built out my personal brand alongside my media company. And so much of our business came through my personal brand. So much of my opportunities came through my personal brand. The person who eventually introduced us to HubSpot came through my personal brand. And still to this day, I get to kind of open my laptop in the morning and see opportunities that I can handpick. And those opportunities are tailored towards me because people will consume my content and think, I know Adam would like that. So, if, if the goal is have great conversations and, and, interesting conversations, know, the, the second and third, you know, results from that is going to be, you get this inbound of opportunities and you never know somebody might reach out to you, who wants to partner on the, on this great SAS idea. And then you get the, the, the goal that you had. two years ago, it can lead you to that indirectly.

Yep, I mean, you said so many things that's so inspiring already. I think I consider it a supply for me. I worked unlike you. I think you made your decision very quickly that you don't enjoy the nine to five jobs. And it took me maybe almost 10 years to figure that out. Because I'm traditionally trained with Asian tiger mom type of parents that you have to go to the best university and then you have to go to the Fortune 500 companies, you have to climb the career ladder of becoming a manager and things like that. I'm glad you don't have to go through that pain. And then after that, I realized, I just enjoyed this. enjoy talking with people firsthand. And it's not the same as just listening to podcasts. I enjoy all the podcasts you mentioned and also Stephen Bartlett and DOAC. And I feel like I'm learning a lot of things from them. But this is actually play for me. I really enjoy it. And this is my easy goal. I have my next, a little bit harder goal is, well, you know, I also want to make a living. I don't want to be a burden. I'm okay. I just don't want to be a burden for my family, right? Okay. I can cover some of the expense at home, then I'm happy with that. So that's the second goal I'm thinking of. It did cross my mind that should I think, like I'm seeing all these things, start a story.

Mm-hmm.

you must know the story, right? 800k. And I'm looking at their channels like, oh, maybe I can be like that. Maybe I can get introduced to Hopspot one day. But I can only tell you that across my mind. But I don't think that should be a go.

Yeah, a hundred percent. you know, starter story is a, is a great story. think, I think it's an absolutely brilliant brand and kudos to HubSpot for getting that one across the line. and the really cool thing about starter story, they've been building that for eight years. Whereas in our case, it was, I think it was 17 months from start to acquisition with HubSpot. and. When my stream was acquired, it was, it was an amazing moment for me and Matt and everyone involved. And there was a lot of kind of like outpouring of love, but what we saw from, the starter story was absolutely huge. I don't know if you happen to be on, socials, like the prevailing 48 hours after the acquisition, was absolutely a takeover. And, you know, if you look at, if you look at Pat, He has built that over eight years and that has been built with video, which is a little bit different to what we did. We built the newsletter and we built out on LinkedIn, but with a lot of texts, infographic carousel type content. So the outpouring of love for Pat and his acquisition, is absolutely, absolutely huge. But I doubt that Pat, when he, decided to start store, start story eight years ago, he was going, here we go. Eight years time. I'm getting that big position. So it's really important to know that these things can happen. but if you, if you aim for them, you know, I said earlier, I'm kind of contradicting myself. So I said, shoot for the stars, land on the moon. I think if you, if you had the goal of, I'm going to have the most interesting conversations with the best founders in the world, that's a, that's an infinite indefinite goal. It's.

Okay. Right.

It's almost intangible. So you can always optimize towards it versus if you say, I'm going to get to X amount of subscribers and sell the company for X amount of dollars. You know, you can't, you also can't guarantee that, but it gives you something to fail or win against. If you know what I mean. so, you know, I think it's good to know that the various kinds of exit plans and outcomes at the end, it's quite obvious. You build this channel. If you build it authentically. then you're going to have this huge, huge audience and you can monetize that in so many ways, right? You can, you can quite simply work on brand partnerships with, with products or tools that you absolutely love. and there are people who do that well, and there are people who do that badly. So you can just do that well. you can, you can release products, whether that is, you know, I've interviewed a thousand founders and I have now the blueprint. You can put something together that's really useful people and you can monetize through that. you can, you can view it that you are building the marketing department of your next company. So you just have this distribution engine. And when you say like, Hey, I've now built this product, you have such kind of loyal fan bases, like the wrong word audience. have this loyal audience and this loyal kind of trust. And people are more likely to kind of test and iterate and give feedback and potentially become customers. so, know, build, build the audience first. And it won't be hard to work out how to, how to, how, how to make that lucrative.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, let's get back on the ground. I mean, I can share with you what I have today. I've done some sponsorship deals, but it's not a predictable stream yet. When you first started with getting sponsorships, I would love to know how you decide to go about making it more stable and predictable. I get a lot of inbox emails, but mostly I don't consider them fit. because my format is interviews, not product demos, right? So, so I, cannot convince myself to just pluck someone's product and then just, you know, demo it on camera. and I, I, I can tell you a funny, thing is my, one of my podcast friends, he told me that he would accept sponsorship with Astley's fifth brace. I'm like, you know, I just cannot wrap my, my mind around how do I tell the story? and I recently started like doing membership channel, like, you know, some YouTube channel for membership. But I haven't really thought it through. So how do I like, what do I, what is the valuable things I should put in a membership and create this community, right? But also, I also realized that I'm gaining really nice traction in the founder network. So really great founders like yourself keep saying yes to come on my podcast. So I feel tremendously honored to have you guys and being able to have this conversation that's intellectually inspiring and also sharing that with the community. And I'm starting to realize that this network of founders that I'm connecting and getting access to is something I could build and it's quite valuable. For instance, like, what can I do with you as a founder network? Like, what can I, how can I help you? Like, with all the, all the, all the great proven founders I'm talking with, like, do I create more value in this community? So these are the threads I'm pulling right now.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah. So I think, when you talk about sponsorship, it's quite obvious. you have this format and you could like run ads against it and you are right. You know, when you're doing interviews, makes it slightly harder. You're doing product demos and you were doing technical product demos and then Zapier says, can you demo Zapier? It's quite, quite simple. you look at, you know, Joe Rogan, Chris Williams and Darius CEO, and you look at who their sponsors are and who their brand partnerships are.

Right, exactly.

They're not necessarily related to the conversations they're having. They're related to the, personality that, those podcasters get across. Right. So, you know, Chris Williamson will talk about like function health that he uses. He'll talk about AG one that he uses. He talks about all these products that he uses and, you know, lot of his conversations may be health and fitness related, but it's more about, I think it's more about for him who is listening to the podcast. and you know, why are they listening to me? so you could think, okay, who am I? What do I do? What do I like? What products do I actually use every day? And then sort of think long-term about how you're going to tell that story over the course of all these interviews. it's quite an interesting exercise. I did a while back of, don't have a podcast. I've never had a podcast, but I wrote down, my top five. guests and my top five sponsors that were like truly authentic to me. And it's kind of crazy how, how different they were from the sort of

Wait, before they reach out to you, you wrote them down so it's like your dream logos?

It was, if I was to launch a podcast tomorrow, who would my top five guests be and who, and who would my top five sponsors be? and in theory, once you have those things, it can tell you what your podcast should be about. and you know, for me, it was a lot of health and fitness related stuff, which, which kind of put a little bit of a spanner in my works, you know? so, you know, you can, you can build that story over a long period of time, but I think what you're trying to talk about with the community is.

Okay.

Sponsorships and brand partnerships is a way to directly monetize the product you're putting out right now. You can take it a layer back and say, okay, the product I'm putting out now, this series, these founder interviews, that is the billboard, that is the magnet, that is building the brand of me, and I'm gonna productize something else. So that could be a founder community. That could be, as you mentioned earlier, a new kind of SaaS product that you want to launch. It could be just like one-on-one consulting that you're going to offer. So there's so many things that you can leverage away from the content where the content becomes the funnel for them. you know, you look at, you look at like Alex Holmosi and his content. you know, I S like, I see a video of his pops up pop on unlinked in. I don't think I've ever seen him promoting a product directly. However, I have his book on my bookshelf, right? And, you know, he's talked about how his content is a play for acquisition.com. So he's trying to create a magnet for people to, come to him and say, Hey, I've got company you want to buy. and I'm sure there's many other things that I don't know about. so, so is the content, the product or is the content. a way to get out whatever the future product is to the masses. And I think the latter, if you go for the latter, you're to be better set up for success rather than productizing the content because that is always going to be limited. And, and by the way, I would put two buckets in that productizing the content is either just selling ads against it or it's a paywalling the content, which sounds like you, you suggest you you've been doing that with YouTube.

Did you do that? I just, so you never pay what your content.

No. I firmly didn't like that was w when we acquired auto GPT, they had a subscription newsletter and my first business was to shut it down. because I, cause I think it's very, very hard. Okay. So if you have to say we have 200,000 readers now, and we say, okay, payers 5 99 a month and you get some more content. Right.

Why?

We're doing a daily newsletter. So you're already getting seven days a week. We're going to give you another one. Right. So then that paid for piece of content has to be substantially better than the free piece of content. Right. Which is okay. But if you flip it, our free content is substantially worse than our paid for content. Then you're no longer making the best product. Right. So you limit the public content and you limit the quality of the top of funnel. It's a little bit different if you're doing like a course or a community, cause it's separate from the content. But if it's just like a paid for version of the same product, I you look at, you look at the hustle, right? They did, they did trends. And I think that was, I can't remember if it was $300 a month or $300 a year, but it was a kind of a premium product. And you had the hustle daily newsletter, which is business and tech trends in the last 24 hours in the news cycle, trends with like a deeply researched product. that would kind of inform you on trends kind of before they were surfaced. And the idea is you can go in like monetize that by building business on the top of that. So that was a separate product. It's a little bit different than, than, than, what a lot of newsletters do where they have like a premium newsletter. and, and, Sam Pa has spoke about trends before, and I'm going to paraphrase this. He says his, like, one of his big regrets is not charging 10 times the amount of money for. that product. so I know $3,000 a month, three years. So, you have your, you have your content. If you monetize that, makes your free content worse. And your free content is where people find you. That free content is going to be the best possible thing it could ever be. Cause that's going to build the trust and build the conversion. by the way, just, just, just, just to finally wrap that up. If you make your free content, 10 out of 10 and your pay content is 10 out of 10, then there's no reason to upgrade as well. it kind of cancels it out when you work through it in that way.

Thanks.

I really like how you interpret this whole thing of membership and pay what content. You kind of have to just treat it like a different product. It has to be different. Otherwise, you're just having competing products within yourself.

Yeah, it has to be more. It has to be more. And you spoke about community. Communities are kind of a natural evolution for a content creator. And you talk about building audience versus building community. I think building community is like 10 to 100 times harder than building audience. So I'd say kind of be very, very strategic about trying to build a community if you're going to go and do that. I say, I mean, a lot of people fail to build oasis, but a lot of people fail to build community. They're very active. They take a lot of input. you need to make sure you have the right people in, you know, take a lot of moderation. and if you think about your own habits, with this kind of information over world, overload, well, we live in, like, you know, you might have, a bunch of apps you open, like you might have social media, you might have a few. books on the go at any one time, like two to three books, you might have two to three podcasts that you've listened to for like five years and maybe every one or two years a new podcast comes in, but generally you'll find that you've probably stuck with the same thing for a long period of time. would that, would that be fair for you? Those assumptions.

Yeah, yeah, it's fair completely. Yeah.

Okay. And now how many, how many communities are you in that you're paying for and you're actively engaging in? Two.

Two. Yeah, I mean two. Yeah, I mean J. Alex LinkedIn community, just because I want to improve my LinkedIn writing and he's pretty much the world's best LinkedIn coach. I just interviewed him the other day as well. And that's when I decided that LinkedIn is important for me, so I'm going to pay for it. And the other one is a community led by my friend who's working on like adopting, adoption to AI, AI adoptions across enterprise. I have to say the reason I applied, I paid for these communities is I think they truly add value. I think the community founders, they, I think the way they interpret how to use AI is at a whole new level. Like, you know, it's just, it's not a data collection level. I can tell you more about it. Definitely if you're interested, but, but, but that's the reason I pay for them. All right. What about you? Are you paying for any?

Yeah.

I'm not paying for any communities. No, no. I think, I think, I think you'll find a lot of people in our space, maybe paying for one or two. but it kind of has the same shelf space problem that like a podcasters in the, know, no one's going to be in 20, right? You're, you're competing for a very, very short amount of attention. I have been in paid communities and I have churned out of them if they're not very, very, very good. Um, so you also, I think you have quite like a high churn problem with communities. Um, and if that, that churn is, it will be quite compounding because people will see the churn and like a newsletter, you know, if we, if we turn out like 5,000 subscribers tomorrow, the readers who don't turn out, don't see that. Whereas if you're like, Oh, where's that person? He was really active in the community and now he's gone. You know, you, you, you see that chat. So I do think communities are hard, but if they can be done right, they're, they're, they're excellent. Um, you know, anything you do, uh, what is it? I've got it written down here. Everything worth doing is hard and the harder it is, the more worth doing it is. Um, I think communities come into that, to that bracket. think, um, with an audience, you can build like X amount of trust and with a community, you can build a hundred X amount of trust, you know? So I do think that they're really valuable. Um, they're just, they're just quite hard. I'm not trying to be down here. Um,

I go- No, no, no, no. What about you? Have you thought about building community out of your newsletter? Like, you know, take it to the next level?

Yeah. So it was, it was another thing that, you know, you talked to early about the premium newsletter. community was something that was suggested to us a lot. Podcasts was something that was suggested to us a lot. people would always come to me. was growing my LinkedIn following and they'd say, build on X. Why aren't you building on X? Why aren't you building on YouTube? and for, for, for me, when I was looking at like operation operationally with mindstream, you know, there was, There was content, there was editorial, there was, there was ad sales, there was operations and there was, LinkedIn content. I say fit in the editorial and every time that I tried to scope out doing something else, it never made sense in the mix. know, you, you, you think about, like the 80 20 rule as well. if I was to, if I had a hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn, which I did around this time, if I started from zero on pet, I might have some leverage and that I could repurpose some of the content. The amount of time it would take me to make an X post versus a LinkedIn post was the same. And the distribution I'd get from LinkedIn was 100 X what I get from X. So I would always think, okay, so I have so many hours in the day, I can focus my time on growing on X or I can focus my time on growing my LinkedIn faster. And it always made more sense to me to do that. Now I do think that there's a, there's a point you reach where it's good to go wide. But for, for us, I was so focused on, just growing narrow, making the best newsletter we could make, giving the best possible results from relationship with the partners that we worked with and growing on LinkedIn as fast as possible. And, and I don't, I don't regret that. I do look back now and think, I, if I'd have started a YouTube channel from day one, that might've been a better bet than newsletter. But, but if I had started a YouTube channel, I would have said, let's, let's build the YouTube channel, you know, rather than kind of launching all of these other things. So that's, that's, that's where I was with community. it is a natural evolution is something we've thought about, and we're trying to bring my stream into the community. It's been a big part of what we've been doing in HubSpot. We've been doing, IRL events. We've been trying to get closer to our readers, reaching out to them more. We just did a campaign recently where we hit a thousand sends.

So we went out and reached out personally to the first thousand subscribers and just kind of a big thank you campaign. So we are trying to bring Mindstream much more into the community and make it more of a community brand. But like paywalling a community and kind of, you know, doing the traditional community thing I haven't seriously thought through.

Mm-hmm.

When, based on your experience, when do you think you should think about casting a wider net? Because if I think about it, could have just, or you could have just copy paste your LinkedIn posts and just paste it on Twitter. Can you? Okay.

I don't believe so. I mean, we did try that and it didn't work. I think to do anything well, you have to kind of build it for that platform. I do think that there are ways you can do this with AI today, whereas maybe you couldn't have two, three years ago. We've been testing out, testing for long time content repurposing and what a lot of people will do is they'll do content resharing. they'll create something on LinkedIn and post it on X. Repurposing remixing is going, okay, I'm going to create a hero piece of content. So for example, it could be this interview. So I've just, I've just done an interview with Adam and now I'm going to put it in a newsletter send. So you wouldn't just copy and paste transcript and put it in. You'd, you'd, you'd have a bit of an intro. You'd maybe pick out like three or five of my learnings and the most interesting points. And you'd, you'd editorially draft that beautifully. And then you go over to YouTube, you might clip something and distribute it on YouTube, but you'd edit it a bit sharper than you would in long form. And then you're to put it on LinkedIn. Maybe you create a carousel for LinkedIn because people really like that format. So that is, that is, that is repurposing rather than just kind of distributing. Yeah. And even that,

Copy, paste, yeah.

It's something that takes quite a lot of time. Now you could, I do believe that you can systemize it. I certainly think you can systemize it today. but even the, the, the process of systemizing and then, you know, I think w why was I able to grow my LinkedIn account as fast as I could? It's cause I obsessed over it every waking minute of every day and all of my networking calls with other people trying to grow their LinkedIn accounts. And we would go on these calls and having all these conversations and obsessing about how to grow on LinkedIn. If I'd have split my time, right. I'm going to obsess about X for the, for, you know, a bit of the day and then obsess about LinkedIn and then obsess about whatever. I probably wouldn't have done any of them as well as I have done this one, you know? So it's very tempting to go horizontal, but I think you're going to get more returns are going vertical. And, and, you know, back, back to you in this channel, if you obsess over making the best YouTube content, in the world for the next two years, everything will work out. And these ancillary things, all the different ways you can monetize it will become obvious to you. Whereas there may be not, you know, now there's, there's like everything possible. Whereas if you just go deep and this channel gets absolutely huge and people absolutely love what you're doing, you, you, you won't need to worry about how you're going to make money from it. It will, will kind of land in your feet, you know?

Yes.

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah, because they, because your experience was just like that, but they came to you and you didn't, you you didn't seek after those, right?

Yeah, a hundred percent. We just focused. mean, my, um, my editorial team, they're amazing. Um, Matt village, my co-founder and Maria Maria Grebe, joined, uh, uh, she joined in January 24. So about six months after, um, I just like my one. I guess, action for them is make the best newsletter. And every day I would tell them to, to read the hustle. Like before you started your day, go on a call for half an hour to an hour. And I would occasionally join these and analyze the hustle. Cause I thought it was the best editorial product at what we're trying to do. And they, and they did that. And then, you know, when HubSpot came knocking and they said, we really, really love your editorial. think you're the best. editorial newsletter in the AI space in a space by the way, that was, didn't, don't believe it had a lot of great writers, you know? So we, create, we took a very, very human approach to a, to a newsletter about AI, which by the way, think allowed, people who were kind of on the fence about AI. made them feel very, very, very comfortable in our space. Cause we were speaking to them as humans. We even signed off every newsletter as written by humans, know, in a world when people were going,

Yep. Yep.

Is this written by AI? yeah.

Really? You're saying that you haven't used AI in any of the writing?

We don't, use, and Maria use AI for research, for content ideas, but it's written by them.

Okay, wow, that's amazing. Like I don't know how many of the content creators out there today can claim that.

Yeah, I certainly can. I use AI to write all my LinkedIn content, you know, and you know, we distribute so much content, but that was the thing that I truly believe from day one, that if we apply like proper journalism and copywriting and editorial talent to this niche, we will be successful. And it's something that our readers still connect with today, that kind of editorial voice.

I have so many questions. I have so many follow up questions for you. I feel like I'm lost. Can you tell me like, how did you, what was your role? Like I heard a little bit about like you asked them to read the puzzle. What was your role within your small team and how did you decide this role like for each person? Cause there's a little team like, but you're, you're, you absolutely are operationalizing it very nicely.

You better not lost.

Yeah. So I was the CEO. I always think it's very funny when you start a company and it's like two people and you call yourself the But I was the CEO. Matt was, Matt was the, it was in charge of the newsletter product in charge of the editorial. And I oversaw everything else. Big part of my job was at sales. So I was, we never hired a sales rep.

I agree. Yeah.

doing all of the ad sales and all the relationship management. I'd spent three years working as a salesperson. So I knew how to manage those relationships. I was also fully in charge of the LinkedIn content engine, which drove like most of our leads, most of our subscribers. I wouldn't say most actually, probably 20 % of our subscribers came from LinkedIn. And you know, all the connections, all of our hiring was done on LinkedIn. unofficially, like it was all just like in DMS and meeting people. So I, I, I managed that. Those were kind of my, my three, my three products. So I'd work with Matt on the newsletter, kind of like a high level strategy, strategy point. I never got involved in the writing. I only ever actually wrote three issues in like the first two weeks when Matt was at Glastonbury after that, I never, never touched it again. so yeah, it was the, it was the, the just kind of. overseeing everything. said to Matt from day one, if you can write this thing, I'll make it into a product and I'll sell it. As in sell the ads, you

What are you saying?

What what what was what were you selling?

ads, sponsorships. Yeah.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that? How did you go about selling it? And is this a strategy I should think about things? I do have sponsorship. It's different. It's more like founders that they want me sometimes to talk about their infrastructure. So something like that. It's less about It's less about product demo in its outright, obvious form. But in a conversation, I can talk about it a little bit. So I've done that. Nobody noticed it. So it's very subtle.

Say double check the FTC guidelines if you're doing that. Yeah, so with sponsorships you have to disclaim them.

It's it's it's disclaimed. It's just not yes. It's definitely yeah. Yeah, it's not so obvious like it's into it's intrusive. It's not like that

Okay, it's not in your face. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's important. So I think, a couple of things, like when you're doing, when you're doing advertisement, you've got to think about how it affects the re the reader. and, and with that, you know, your reader or viewer, your viewers, what's your content because they like you and they believe in you. So they're not going to begrudge you trying to make money out of what you're doing. Sorry. No, they're not, they're not going to be good.

Right.

I hope not.

especially if you're doing it in the right way. So, you know, you hear a lot, a lot about kind of influences selling things that they don't believe in or like cryptocurrencies that go in the floor or whatever. And this, this is where it kind of gets the bad rep, but, generally, you know, you look at like Joe Rogan, biggest podcast in the world. has like three or four ad reads in every podcast and everyone's okay with that. They understand that he needs to make a business out of it. So first and foremost, like I'd say try and get over that kind of mental barrier that you might have of like, I need to, I need to be careful with my viewership. You have to be careful, but they understand that this is a business. Like no one expects you to do that for free. So then you go into like, okay, who do, who do I want to sponsor it? You have to think about, who's going to give you money, but also what would actually provide value to your viewers. So you can go through a process of like analyzing who views your content and trying to create a archetype of like one person. So you can kind of like speak to your audience. When I listened to like modern wisdom is probably one of my most listened to podcasts from Chris Williams and over last three, four years and like That backpack that sat on the floor there I bought from, from his, him, and I love the backpack and it's really good. I have work that I learned about on a podcast, brilliant. I've had AG one for four or five years. I heard about it on a podcast. Everything I've bought from a podcaster has actually been good. which shows that there's alignment between what the podcaster is promoting and who I am as the listener. so, you know, for you in your area, it's probably, probably going to be like tech products.

Thank

I think it could also be lifestyle people. If you know, if you, if you can get into the, to the mindset of like who your viewer is and you know, maybe, don't know, let's just say it's, it's a 25 to 30 year old, engineer working in a tech company. It's like, okay, so maybe it's like, some, something that sits in your desk that improves your productivity. You know, maybe it's one of these things that you like use to time certain workflows. Maybe it's a really cool keyboard. You know, those sorts of things. So, if you can like align those things, your viewers are actually going to get value from your sponsors and then they're going to trust you more. And then even more important thing, your sponsors are going to get return on their investment. So they're going to sponsor with you again, you know, Joe Rogan's been promoting AG1 for like 10 years. You know, there's, there's obviously a good fit on either side there. and then once you've identified them, you know, you obviously got to go in. reach out to them and sell to them. Obviously, it will flip and there'll be a day where it all comes inbound. You mentioned at the moment you're getting a lot of inbound. So a good starting point is just no, no, yes, no, yes. And then when you get those yeses, you work on something that, you know, works, works for you and works for your audience. But no one's going to begrudge it. it is a, it is a, you know, an easy way to make money while you're building the thing, which isn't necessarily the thing. You know, even, even with mainstream, you know, we monetize free sponsorship, which allowed us to grow and allowed us to reinvest by, I always believed that that wasn't the, that wouldn't be the final thing. I thought that we would probably partner with SAS companies and kind of advertise them through mainstream. Like I thought it would be like equity buy-ins with, companies and we become like a marketing department for them. That's, that's where I thought my stream would go. I also always considered launching him. Kind of like an AI university, like the rundown have done, believe superhuman have done it as well. That's, that was quite an obvious thing to me. But sponsorship was always like, build the team, build the momentum, build the product. And then as I said to you earlier, once you got the audience, the monetization opportunities are obvious, you know, the certain ways that you can go. Um, but you know, you might get to a point in, in, you know, you might get to a point where you have like,

Mm-hmm.

team of like 20 people helping you build this thing and then you can really like, go, all right, well now, you know, now the podcast looks after itself. What's what's next type thing. So sponsorship can, can get you there and it can, it can be, you know, it can be all you can be all you ever need. You know, I don't think Joe Rogan promotes anything else. I think he has launched a couple of products. I don't really know. you know, it's mostly for sponsorships, I believe.

Yep.

On your side, you did a cold outreach on sponsorships.

we, we tried it in work. All of us, actually 99 % of our sponsorships came inbound. a lot of it through LinkedIn, cause we were just like building out there. So, you know, I highly recommend keeping building on LinkedIn. Another like huge part for us is we, we used to, with sponsors would come to us. I'd, I'd always want to call with them and I'd ask them where they heard about us. And we realized that there was a lot of inbound because there was an article, of like,

Thank you.

top 10 AI newsletters or 20 AI newsletters. And we placed second on this article. So the next thing we did, we had a blog called AutoGPT. We wrote an article of top 20 AI newsletters, put ourselves in number one spot, bought a load of backlinks against it and got it to number one on Google. So we had the first spot, the second spot and the third spot of top AI newsletters where we were in in the top one or two positions. And I'd say probably 30 to 40 % of our inbound came from that. You know, you've got these influence of marketing people, marketing managers in these tech companies. Someone says to them, go and buy some ads in AI newsletters. They're going to go to Google, top AI newsletters. Um, so yeah, that was, that was huge for us. It was absolutely huge for us. Um, and just something that we looked into and then doubled down on.

I see. Yeah, I know that that was a part of the go-to-market strategy for some of the SaaS companies here in South Korea as well. Get onto directories. Like, get on to Right? Yeah.

Yeah, a hundred percent. And, know, it's, now moving into like AEO, right? Like how, how do you, how do you ensure if someone goes, I mean, I, I, I love this use case of AI. say, cause I really like, I really like reading. really like audio books. and I really like audio books when I run, I'm training at the moment for the London marathon. And my main problem with doing long runs is I get bored. So I need to find books.

Exactly.

and like very specific, I like books about people who are doing endurance things, but not like a run. will be like, I'm going to cycle around the world for four years and tell like really good stories around it. So I have a very, very, very specific, specific niche of books that I like. So I'll put it, I'll put it into a quarter touch between say here, here are the five books. like go and find me more like this. And that's a great use case. So I'm sure people are doing that for YouTube channels, for newsletters, for all of those sorts of things as well.

Yeah, yeah. Tell me about, do you have time? Can you tell me a little bit about LinkedIn? Yeah, there's so many things I could, before I ask you about LinkedIn, I do have one more counter, maybe a little bit counter argument about.

Of course. Yeah.

about when we were talking about repurposing content. So because you mentioned the idea of AEO, and this is what I'm working on as well. So one of the things that, one of the product I'm thinking of building is this AI visibility thing to help imply the search, the AI search engines, being able to find you. For instance, being able to find you through finding our podcast, for instance, based on the same stuff that we talked about. And then there is a level of AO optimization we can do with our videos as well. And I'm happy to do that for us. in the meantime, repurposing content across different platforms, if you really think about, could amplify your probability of being able to surface on charged BT searches. So maybe today the read is a little bit different than before. At the time you wanted to focus and be vertical and niching down. And today maybe the white net is a good idea.

It's it's a hundred percent. It's, it's not the, the, the going wide is a bad idea. I just think you have to be absolutely brutal with your time because I know that like when I am, when I am productive, when I am most productive, I am quite singly focused. and now, you know, it's very interesting. talked, we talked earlier about employment and everything. I'm now a year and a half into my job at HubSpot and, it's very, very different.

Meet.

You know, there are, there are lots of things, there's lots of different people involved in everything you do, and you need to get like buy in from certain people and like, it's, you know, a lot of, a lot of projects. and I think the thing that has been most important in me being effective at HubSpot is being able to go very deep, very quickly on a certain thing and then, and then, be able to share it in an effective way and then, and then go and do that, go and do that again. Because at HubSpot, it's, it's amazing work inside HubSpot media is amazing. And there is a million things I could do. It's so different to any job I've had before. Like, you know, it sells jobs, go and sell this thing, like then sell it again, sell it again. Now it's like, you know, my job is to build the brand of Mindstream, which is what I've been doing before. but we have so many amazing people and so many amazing opportunities I could go after to the point where you could actually end up doing nothing. Right. So, you know, you have to be extremely brutal with your time. And, know, we were also talking on our prep call a couple of days ago, I've got, I've got a baby coming in a few days. So I know that that time is going to get, is going to get even more tight. so into the thing of like vertical versus wide net, if you can go wide net and you can do it effectively and you can go. very, very deep and niche on building out the ability to go wide net, then, then great. Like it's, it's, it's always going to be better to have more distribution than worse. but ask yourselves, am I doing 10 things badly or am I doing one thing? Well, does the quality, does the quality worsen as I go wider? And I think that it probably does even Even though it is 10 times easier to do it than it was a year ago, you're still spending your time building the systems and the processes to go wide on that one piece of content rather than that time could be spent on just making that one piece of content better. So, that, that is two things you can do. You can, you can focus on making that one piece of content better, or you can focus on, distributing it.

better. You have one hour, pick which one to do. And it may be that this is the best one. It may be that this is the best one. It's relevant for, you know, the answer is going to be different for everybody's problem. But I just, I just do it all the time. I always ask myself, is this, is this the most important thing I could be working on? And often it's not because often the most important thing is the most difficult thing.

You know, it's so easy to just check a to-do list off and it's not an important thing on the list.

It is, it is, it is. I am the worst. My biggest like time sap ever is dashboards. Like every day I open up, I open up my computer, I check LinkedIn, I check my emails, I check the Beehive dashboard. I check my like internal KPI HubSpot stuff. And now like. You know, Oh, you know, we've gone up a little bit from yesterday. I've got a few, few more subscribers than yesterday. Our open rates gone up. And that was like really important in day one when I was like deep in the details analyzing, but now it's a complete waste of time. You know, I don't need to check these things every day. And by the way, I don't only do it once a day. I do it seven times a day. It's like my ultimate form of procrastination. I bet people do it with their phone as well. It's like open Instagram, close it open YouTube, close it open, open. People do with the banking app. remember when I had no money, I was like, okay, how is my thousand dollars in crypto doing? How's my thousand dollars in Vanguard doing? How's my thought? I'm just watching this thing do this. And when it, when it does this, by the way, I get really upset. And when it does this, I feel great, but I haven't done anything. Right. So, yeah. What is it like? Shannon Puri has this thing that I've been, I've been trying a little bit and I'm not great at it yet, but it's.

Yeah.

it's one important thing. So every morning he writes down what is the one important thing that if I did today and I did nothing else, it would be a success. And he does that. And then after he's not so worried. I've tried that. It's pretty good. It's not a habit yet. but I think that would be a good habit.

Other than that, are you being so brutal about your own time?

not as effectively as I, as I want to be. you know, you can always, it's, something to optimize. I'm, quite selective with meetings. That's something I've changed in the last few months. when I came into HubSpot, you know, I'd never worked in a big company before. A lot of people would put like coffee catch-ups on my calendars. I was always open. You can always find me now. I'm very selective because I'd find myself in four or five hour meeting blocks. Yeah. Every day.

every day.

And it was great at first. was like meeting loads of people and learning about things. I, and I sort of, you know, I'd asked myself the question at the end of the day, how many of those meetings were productive and how many of them were, I was going to say social calls, but social calls can still be productive. So, you know, how many of those were productive and, you know, the ones that weren't, I'd try and cut them down and try and move them to Async and also just trying to be respectful of other people's time as well. and, You know, like loom is great. Claude skills for building decks is great. Like I can just, I can just speak into my phone for, for like two minutes, put it into Claude and have like a deck hubspot branded two minutes later and send it through to someone rather than jumping on a call with them. so yeah, there's kind of those like micro things throughout the day that you can do. also, whenever I'm kind of working on a problem, like rather than just like normal work when I have a big problem to solve, I just go and walk and I, and I put my AirPods in and go on chat GPT voice mode, just talk through the problem and then have it pull up a summary at the end and take that back. So productive. It's actually annoying because I've started doing it on runs today. I was going on a run and I was thinking about this call and I was thinking about something to talk to you about. I opened up whisper flow and started talking to it. And then I, and then I was like, my pace is just ruined.

Yeah.

I need to run faster for the rest of this call. yeah, it's great, but it can, it gets so easy that it can break into other things, you know.

It's. Yeah, yeah, I do that too. I noticed that you're trying to be productive, you know, on the road and you're always talking to this. People used to think that you're on a call with some real human. Now you are just talking to the AI, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 100 minutes. So it's like, habit stacking has been huge for me. So when I was trying to lose weight, I found that I was spending so much time watching Netflix eating food. So I said, okay, if you want to watch Netflix, you got to be on the treadmill when you're watching Netflix. So then I watched three hours of Netflix, but I'd be on a treadmill. So it's just, you know, taking a negative habit and like stacking a positive one on top of it.

Was there a moment that you wanted to give up? A lot of the founders, I think, they fail because sometimes they just lose interest, they lose momentum, they can keep going. They don't make enough money that they thought they're going to make.

I am.

Yeah, I've got a good story here. So it was February, 2024. we had, we were three months after the acquisition of auto GPT and we had our first offsite. So it was myself, Matt village and Matt, it's, um, who was the founder of auto GPT. came over and we were building this, this huge spreadsheet with like all of our revenue, all of our subscribers, all of our sources of new subscribers, just like the master brain of the business we were trying to build. I'm sure you have. another spreadsheet like this. And the big thing we were trying to solve for was churn. So we were looking at, you know, a subscriber comes in month one, how likely here is to unsubscribe month two, month three, month four modeling it all out. And then how much we were paying to acquire new subscribers, how many we were getting from organic. We this huge spreadsheet. we spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours building it. And the number at the end was just telling us that basically the business was eating itself. It was just. destined to die. And it was like, it was really dark, you know, we just persuaded Mattis to come and join us on this journey. We just bought his company. We just merged these things together. He'd taken a big leap coming to work with us. And we just, we just couldn't make it work. We went out, got some food, had a few too many drinks. Next day, with a bit of a hangover, pulled the spreadsheet up again and we realized the formulas were wrong. And we fixed the formulas and everything that was red went green. And it's so, you know, it's, it's, was, it was just like the biggest sense of euphoria I've ever felt. It was absolutely wild. How, how good we felt. Um, and you know, that's, I don't know, there's some lesson in there about like bad data or, know, um, not, not relying on the spreadsheet too much. Um, but you know, that was, it was two months after that, that we started talking to HubSpot about the acquisition two months after that moment of.

Everything's everything. It's all screwed. It's all done. It's over

It's a wild story.

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's going to have those moments. Um, another thing I might have it written down here. I really like is, um, when you're bad, you're not as bad as you think you are. And when you're good, you're not as good as you think you are. I think that applies to everything like business, you know, when you think everything's screwed, it's not as bad as you think it is when you think everything's great. It's not as bad as you think it is. Um, and another thing that Sean Sean purely does, he has his company slack. Um, and everything, anytime, anything's like really good or really bad. They write it in this Slack. Um, I can't remember exactly what the parameters are, but they have the Slack channel and they review it at the end of every month. And the things that were like disaster are always like, Oh, we forgot about that. was not that big a deal. And the things that's like, this is this game changer turn out not to be as big as you think they are. So, you know, it's, um, it's always about like meeting in the middle somewhere. And it's, so easy to look back on that, but when you're in the moment, it's so hard. still, you know, I have this all at home. look at things, I go off this, this is it's the end. And then a few days go by and something comes in. You know, it's all good now. We're great. We're set. We're good forever.

Yeah, know, when you're in such a dark, having such a dark day and having a bad mood, maybe the way to deal with it is just to go get a drink and step away.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's the lesson. Um, I, I do also, my favorite thing I've got written on my wall here is, um, uh, action cures fear and anxiety. And I, and I do really believe that like whenever I'm really anxious about something or fearful, the best way out is through just like do the work.

Just do it and don't.

just do the work. you know, if there's something that you're worried about, like, say for example, it's having a difficult conversation with your partner, with your business partner, in any part of life with your boss. If you're worried about having the conversation, have the conversation, then you'll stop worrying about it. Whereas if you put it off for a week, that whole week is filled with worry.

I love it.

You know people do that.

they spend the week worrying.

I do think so. think people put things off. I think sometimes as well because sometimes it's a hard conversation to have. Then I always think that I'm not ready for it and then just put it off. Like an ostrich, you know. But.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes you just gotta have the guts and just move forward.

You just got to do it. I heard this thing once and I don't know if it's true, but it's true for me is that any, any state of mind that you're in, you're practicing it and you're getting better at it. So if you sit in anxiety, you're actually practicing anxiety and you're getting better at it. And the more time you spend in anxiety, the more you're to be anxious. And this is, this is not like commonly spoke about, but people often talk about practicing gratitude. If you sit down and every morning you write down what you're grateful for, and then you go outside for a walk and you look for things to be grateful for over time, you won't have to practice gratitude because it will be natural to you. I don't think we really think about it the other way around. You know, if you practice anxiety, it makes you a more anxious person. If you, if you wake up every morning and go, this day is going to be terrible. I'm really stressed. I've got this thing that I'm worried about. You're going to get really good at being stressed and worried. So, you know, I have these things written on, written on my whiteboard and One of them is action cures fear and anxiety. And I try and catch myself when I'm, when I'm anxious, cause I'm, I'm so like, hate that feeling and I, and I want to do whatever I can to get away from it. And throughout my life, even when I'm have like massive imposter syndrome, which I think is a type of anxiety, it just put, put

You do?

Well, when I do, I just put one foot forward and push myself into the situation. And as uncomfortable as it is in the moment, you get out the other side and you either get the result you wanted to, or you've learned something and you're going to be more, you're going to, you know, you're going to exercise that muscle of uncomfortability, you know, of pushing through something. so there's nothing good that comes from sitting in anxiety. So whatever you're anxious about, just, just do it because that that anxiety, you know, it's, it's practice, it's being practiced every moment that it sits there is going to make you more anxious in the future.

Is this something that you learned from your parents? how did you acquire that skill or mentality?

From my parents?

Just, you know, a lot of books, a lot of podcasts, a lot of conversations have given me the kind of fundamentals, but also practice. know,

And then you feel related by moving forward and then it helps you to keep going.

Yes, yes. It was only three years ago. I was in a, like a very bad place in my life. Just like, like I said, you know, at the start of this, the conversation that I had with, with Matt, I said, we're not happy with where we are. Yeah. It wasn't, I had it. had a job. had a house. had my partner where I'm with now. We had our dog, like a lot of the same, the things were the same, but I was very unhappy about where I was. I didn't like my work. I was overweight. didn't like myself. You know, and to go from there to where I am now, where I fundamentally am happy. I'm healthy and I enjoy my work. It takes a very, very long time. And I'm, I, know, I imagine a stock ticker for everything in life. You're either going up or you're going down. There's no staying the same. There's, there's no staying the same. You know, show me a stock in the world that's flat. The only one is zero. Right. So you can get there in death. But in everything in life, you're either going up or down in health and happiness in quality of the relationship with your parents, in the work you're doing and how effective you are, you're either going up or down. And I think momentum is more important than where you are. you know, four years ago when I was unhappy and unhealthy, if I was getting better day by day, that's, that's huge. Whereas today where I am, I've got to keep going up because I'm not going up and going down. And that feeling of going down is, is, is more important than where you actually are. You're, you're the, the, the best tennis player in the world one year and the next year, you're the second best you're losing. Whereas if you're the hundredth and you become the 99th, you're winning. So that momentum is so, it's so important. And that's why, you know, you asked me how I learned this. I'm still learning and I'm, and I'm, and I'm not the the finished article in any way. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of the things I'm saying, you know, you've probably been through as well and you're probably working on all the time. You know, we're all, we're all working towards something and the fact you're, the fact you're like here building something shows me that you're winning, you know, and that, know,

This is a really deep path. I have to say, you know, because it's hard. I mean, you went through these ups and downs, but you know, it's always harder to go uphill than downhill. And when you're first going up, that must be the hardest moment. And now when you're up here, do you have a fear because, you know, once you go down, it feels like it could be a slippery slope more easily.

.

I have such a fear and I, I, and I catch myself all the time. Like I do things that I don't like, like, um, you know, I might be, I might like snap at my partner. I'm like, why do they have to do that? I'm better than that. Um, so I'm just, I just hold myself to a higher account, you know, and I, and I understand more about this, you know, human psychology. And I understand that like, um, if you do something negative, Once it's a mistake. If you do it twice, it's the formation of a new habit. So I'm very careful not to, not to do those new habits. I keep the good habits like journal, like journaling is huge for me. It got me out of a bad place. And I, I look back through my journal, from my journal over the last four years, I journal more when things are bad. Right. But I need to journal also when they're good. This is what I tell myself all the time. I chastise myself about it. You got to keep, keep doing things that get you moving in the right direction. Because as I say, it's a stock ticker. It's going up or down. Look, this is hilarious. I'll show you this. girlfriend, my fiance, I should say, sent me, um, two pictures that came up on her memory. This one is from 2022. how overweight I am. This is my girlfriend. And this one from last summer.

Yeah.

Wait, is this you? You look totally different person.

Right. I'm totally different person. And I was like, I was like, wow, fuck that makes me that fuck. Like, you know, fuck if I'm not careful, I'm going to go back to that, that other person. Like it really scared me. So I printed it off and I'm going to put it on my wall. Cause it's just like a daily reminder, you know, do the right things. Do the right things. It, it, it might drive you crazy. I might end up ripping these down and throwing them in the bin, but I'm always kind of trying to think about. things to do to kind of keep me moving in the right direction because that's what makes me happy, like getting better, know, doing more.

I know how you feel. do feel like, you know, trying to keep it up, like it was a higher standard and keep you up there is also working against the current, you know. You have to move forward to stay still in water if you're against the current. It feels like that, right?

But why is the current against you? I don't think it is. I think it's with you.

Because that's the question I want to ask you. Because it takes effort, does it? What you're trying to maintain and trying to become a better self. I do this too, so I can totally feel you. But sometimes I wonder, know, this is a lot of work. Like you're trying to be, let's say the goal is I'm trying to be a better version of myself every day. Like don't want to lag behind. So you have to be very disciplined. You have to be brutal with your time management and you have to be selective of your goals and where you're going. Right? You have to control yourself and not snapping to your fiance. That's a lot of control you have. You know what I mean? That's the current, I think. It's the harder part.

I think it's fun. I think fundamentally it's fun. Like I'm having a lot more fun now than I was when I didn't care about any of this stuff. You know, I think...

I think taking on responsibility is a good way to not worry about yourself. I think if you're sat... on a sofa, overweight, unhappy, and nobody needs anything from you. It's quite easy to look at yourself and be like, wow, you suck. You need to sort this out. But if you can take on responsibility, you can't afford to slip. And then you get all this positive reinforcement. So, you know. The reason I'm upset if I snap with my fiance is because I see how unhappy it makes her and I look at myself through her eyes and go, God, that guy's an asshole. Whereas if I'm nice to her, I get that in the opposite and that's so rewarding. Right? So every time that you do one of these things, you're practicing that thing. And if it's positive, you're practicing the positivity. it's negative, you're practicing the negativities. Why I think you were spot on when you said it's really hard to get started earlier. Um, but I think, you know, it's, it's kind of like a snowball rolling down a hill. You know, if you, if you put good out into the world, good comes back to you, which motivates you to do more good, which will bring more good back to you. And I think this applies, just applies to every part of life. Um, you know, I think if you, if you focus on being a better employee, you'll learn the skills that allow you to be a husband, wife, and be better. Like, I think it kind of all. compounds. kind of contradicts my like going deep thing earlier, but I think, you know, that's more on like project and task selection. think, the kind of self-improvement arc, you know, a lot of people would be like, I'm going to go into monk mode and I'm going to, I'm going to like make a load of money and I'm going to come really fit and healthy and I'm going to cut everyone out. And I don't think that works. I think it might work in like a short period of time, or at least it doesn't work for me. I think, I think like the more that I spend on how I communicate with my partner, makes me a better communicator.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

and vice versa.

Yeah, can I ask when is your birthday?

7th of January, why do you ask?

I just feel like, know, the way you think is, I feel I resonate a lot with. So I'm wondering if maybe we're closer in birthday. So I'm like, you know, we're the same horoscope or something. I am March 14th, so I just. Yeah.

When is your birthday? Congratulations. Well, you'll probably be the same horoscope as my coming daughter. So that's, that's something.

nice! When is your birthday? Supposed to be? 27th of March. she's maybe a little bit more aggressive than me. For the end of March babies. I don't know but yeah hope everything runs smoothly. I I feel like I can talk with you for another hour very easily but I want to be conscious of your time and it's really late already and I'm assuming you haven't had dinner yet?

her birthday, hopefully 27th of March.

I haven't. This has been great. I don't know if we've gone a bit too deep or whatever.

I love this. think this is the better part. Do you see why I'm doing this? This is the part I'm waiting for. when are you vulnerable? Because people come to my show, sometimes they have this PR moment and they have to show their PR face. And it's my job to kind of, you know, peel it off, which sometimes is quite hard, you know, especially you get used to talking with investors. But I'll cut this part.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

But for being so authentic and so genuine about all your opinions and helping me out as well, I think I have a clear goal now. Like I just want to make a good show out of this and share all these valuable insights for people who are still struggling.

Yeah, I think that's the best thing you could do. I really do. you know, talking about all the different opportunities and stuff. There are good opportunities, but there's a million good opportunities. And, know, I have this, I have this problem. I've always had this problem where I want to do so many things, you know, and, you can only do so many of them. Well, so it's so, it's so important to pick.

Can I ask you a closing question?

Of course.

If you could recommend a book to a 20 year old yourself, like you just graduated yourself today and yourself maybe 20 years from now, what would that be? No pressure, no pressure on.

The magic of thinking big, I think it's Robert Schwartz.

What is it called again?

The magic of thinking big.

the magic of thinking big.

It's quite, um, Oh, I don't know if it is. It's such a good book. I don't know who the author is. Um, let me just check David Schwartz. Um, it was written 1959. Um, it's got that like beautiful, um, like twang of like self-help books from the past. think, um, how to win friends and influence people is another one I like, but the magic of thinking big, um, was one I read at quite a pivotal time. Um, it really kind of, I believe was a part of setting me on a path. Um, and I'm rereading it now. I reread it quite regularly and it's, um, it's, it's, it's one of those, um, you know, don't recommend reading too many self-help books. I think that, um, there's like great podcasts that you can listen to that make it kind of easier to consume. But this one is one of the ones where you actually struggled to put it down rather than struggle to pick it up. Cause I think with some self-help books.

you

and it's just fundamentals, like everything you read in it, you're like, yes, I know. Yes, I know. I'm going to do that. It's nothing groundbreaking. It's not selling you anything. It's just, teaching you how to, put positivity out into the world and then it will come back to you.

I love it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Adam, really nice chatting with you and I hope you have a very smooth experience being a dad for the first month. I think the first month is the hardest. It's really hard. You feel constantly jet-lagged.

Thank you.

It's gonna be great, I can't wait, we're so excited.