FMS FinPub Pro

Morgan Busby: Surviving & Thriving in a Changing Financial Publishing industry

• John Newtson

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This episode took me too long to get done.

In this conversation with Morgan Busby, CEO of Financial Media Corp.

Morgan is one of my favorite people in FinPub.

He’s a great entrepreneur and human.

He’s also always willing to talk about the hard stuff in business.

We dig into the challenges he’s had managing the business over the past few years.

From the early 2020 fears of maybe needing the business plan version of an apocalypse bunker – to the biggest boom the industry has ever seen.

To the regulatory nightmare at the start of the biggest drop in market demand the industry had ever seen in 2022-to-early-2023.

“I think we lost money for 18-months straight. It was brutal.”

And how the business came out the other side stronger, more focused, and with a ton of lessons.

The business is thriving again.

And Morgan shares what he’s learned along the way.

Plus, his view on where the industry is headed.

This is one to watch.

We cover a lot of ground super-relevant to all of us in Finpub.

Reminders:

1.  The Financial Marketing Summit 2025 is January 23-24.
Go here to register

2. The Reaching Retail Investors Conference 2024 is November 11-12th, 2025 in Miami, Fl. Go here to register

3. The FMS Pro Community, the #1 online business community for the investment newsletter & trader education industry is found here



FinPub Pro is produced by The Financial Marketing Summit, the #1 networking and marketing conference for financial newsletter publishers, trader educators, and digital financial media.

John Newtson, host and founder of The Financial Marketing Summit can be reached via LinkedIn at John Newtson

John Newtson:

all right, hey, everyone, everyone should recognize morgan. Um, if you've been around fms at all, um, morgan busby's been, I don't know. You've been with us supporting fms from the very first one way back like 10 years ago in vegas. Um, yeah, the planet hollywood, yeah, and you've gone a long way since then. Way back then you had Trading Pub and now you have this whole ecosystem that you're part of and you're partnered with VNR and Financial Media Corp. You have a bunch of different publishers. So it's been a bit of a journey, yeah, yeah, you could say that, and probably the most stressful part of that journey was in the last four years yeah, without a doubt, really last, I'd say two, you know two, I guess two to three.

Morgan Busby:

um, you know, everyone had the covid, you know the covid experience, which was interesting because when it first happened I don't know if you remember this everyone just talks about, like you know, the covid boom in the business. But for that, that first, I guess it was like maybe February, the start of February, right when people started realizing like it was like right when it hit New York and and so it was like, oh, starting to have shutdowns and close, you know, close cities or close government services, where the market was just like tanking every day. And I think the bottom, the bottom was like the Bill Ackman day, you know, when he's like you know all hell's breaking loose or whatever. And then then like the sub tickers, like Ackman buys Hilton hotel by, you know, and like all the stocks that day. But but that was, you know, he he was talking about and, um, and obviously he, he played it probably like investment wise better than anyone, of of buying the right things at the right time.

Morgan Busby:

But uh, we went through a period in our business where it's like sales just totally dried up. Um, I remember, you know the markets would be down, like you know, 3%, 4%. And uh, the only thing we did we just said, hey, let's try to like open up a trade room, you know, like open up live trade room for all of our customers to talk through it and try to, you know, just be, you know, at least be talking to them. And we saw a huge spike in refunds of people that you know would say, hey, I just lost my job, I need, you know. And of course you know, in that situation you just give them, give people their money back, regardless of of the policy.

Morgan Busby:

But we actually made a couple of I remember sitting down with our CFO and like making distinct plans. We had like one plan which would just be initial, you know, cuts. The second plan, which would be like, let's cut anything that's not. You know, at that time we had all these like projects and we're going to go into this area and all you know all this stuff that you try and try to think like very broadly, which some ended up being okay, some weren't, but you know we looked at it. We're like, if it's not going to make us the lights on, like an eight to 10 person core of people, that would just take massive salary cuts and then build the business back up. So it was like that was our thought process at the beginning and then after I guess after a couple of weeks and you know some of the government stimulus and things that the market started rallying and ended up to be the biggest boom and probably the biggest boom in fin pub ever say, like you know, easily yeah, yeah, so it was.

John Newtson:

it was a bizarre time yeah, I mean, um, and I want to go back before that, but just like that. I mean, you had like the that weird dynamic of all with with covid shutting down all live events, all the sporting stuff stopped and then all the people who were sports betting turned out were also like overlapping with the trading market and they were coming online, um, to find something to do. It seemed like and we had this big bump. But I think that there's a structural change there because you can watch like the market activity, um, in retail investors and covid, like they came in and they with historic amounts of trading volume from retail and that's just never gone away. Like it was like a fundamental shift.

Morgan Busby:

Well, and you know the other thing, not just the attention, but there was a period in time where Google ads were extremely cheap. And you know it's like you had all the travel companies anyone branding, you know that just pulled their ad budget. And I remember, you know, you know it's like you had all the travel companies anyone branding, you know that just pulled their ad budget. And I remember, you know, you know Nate, like Nate, who works with us, who had never really run run Google ads, you know, before he had an ad up for one of our, one of our products, and I remember him like distinctly calling me and saying, hey, I think, I think we'll spend thirty thousand dollars today. You know, like on this one, this one ad, is that OK? And it's like, yeah, I get, you know it's backing out, but uh, it was a. It was a weird period. You know, we were like paying our credit card off. It was almost like a prepaid debit card. You know, based on like cause they also cut all the limits. You know, like the credit card Right.

John Newtson:

We're like, hey, we're getting rid of risks, so so we would be paying. We'd pay our credit card off like every two days, and it was. It was a wild time. Yeah, yeah, that was. I mean, it was a. You're right, there was that period of like everyone's kind of holding the rails and like this is going to be bad, um, and then it turned out it was this amazing boom um. But before that, because I want to talk through, like kind of how I feel, like your journey in finpub, because you've had both the advertising side and the subscription publishing side and the trader education side, all in one, you had this really cool journey that really reflects a lot of these trends all the way through the entire last 10 years of the business, or more actually. So let's walk back to, like you had TradingPub, right, you want to tell everyone what was that business and then what's the? What's this progression? Yeah, so.

Morgan Busby:

So in 2011, I actually tried to do two things. One, I was um, I had a, I had my brokerage license. I had a series 7, a series 24. We had like a branch office of a broker dealer and the idea was to create another like an online trading platform. And we actually had a white label to thinker swims platform that we could open up direct accounts, called it was on think, called think pipes, which was like their institutional platform, which was pretty cool. So we got like really good pricing and had some growth. It was profitable and doing well. Then, when thinkerim sold to TD Ameritrade, they said, hey, we're going to get rid of this white label and just use it for RIAs. So that pretty much put that whole idea out of business just overnight.

Morgan Busby:

But at the same time, I had started this blog on the side with the idea of like, hey, it'd be cool, I'd had the opportunity, my dad had an educational firm, it'd be cool, you know, I'd had the opportunity, my dad had an educational firm. And so I'd met you know, met people going to like Traders, expos or money shows and thought like it'd be cool to have like an online version of just free education and eventually, you know, maybe figure out how to you know how to monetize it. And so we would have, we'd have webinars where I would host the webinars and just have two or three speakers come on, give a really good, like free, educational session, then at the end, have maybe make an offer at the end or a opt-in. And uh, when it started, I think our first six months, we did like 1600 bucks, you know, in revenue. But just thought like, hey, if I can build an audience eventually, you know, figure out a way to monetize it. And I look back now on those web, like like the stats of those webinars you'd have, you know, 50 or 60% of the people who registered would show up. We would have webinars, some of them with like two or 3000 people in the room, you know. And now, like the effort it takes to get that number of people in the room is like crazy, you know, like what it's like. If I had known then what I know now, you know, would have been been crazy. But but yeah, so it grew. We made money through.

Morgan Busby:

Our first big sponsorship was actually with Nadex Exchange, which was a binary option exchange that had gotten registered. There were a lot of offshore binary option exchanges, but the US regulated one was Nadex and they liked our webinar. So we would do these educational webinars on their products and try to try to bring awareness. And one thing I always did was just I'd take pretty much anything I made on that and just reinvest it in lead gen and try, and, you know, just thought like I'll just have a bigger audience or bigger audience and and so that was what sort of like started the trading pub model and then we eventually merged with Fin uh, finmc, which was a monitor that was like a monetization component of sending out paid offers and uh yeah, and then that was I think that was 2014 that we we did that deal, which was right around the time that FMS got started.

John Newtson:

Yeah, I think we started in 13 and like that next year you did that deal, um. Like that next year you did that deal, um, yeah. And so then like that's where I always thought of, like the you know that that business kind of growing, you know, as fms grew, not like directly related to it, but like just in parallel, like, yeah, every year you'd show up and there'd be more things happening and more things happening um, Um and uh and so, like you went with like for a while there.

John Newtson:

I remember like financial media core for MC was. You know you were like the, the that business was very innovative in terms of like being the first ones really to bring the uh, uh, the one click opt-ins to the industry, um, and things like that. There was all these like kind of technical stuff that you guys brought in that became kind of like standard across the industry over the over the next several years. But like a lot of that innovation happened, you know, at FinMC and then you ended up buying your partners out and adding a whole publishing empire there too, right.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, yeah, and you know it's interesting when, back when we were doing a lot of innovation with FinMC, you know I had had two partners, James and um, and then also Bob, who a lot of people didn't know Bob, but he was really the, uh, the tech side of the of the partnership and I think one of the most valuable things in the in the world, like there's a lot of people have, like you know, tech knowledge or or you know, called it knowledge, whatever it's, like your, your way of showing that you don't know anything about tech when you call it it but, uh, but having that like more of a software mind or technical, you know, a technical mind, the people that have that plus understand the marketing business, I think have just an enormous advantage over everyone else where, like you know, like not strong technically, so any idea I have, you know I have to then take and, you know, go through someone who is technical, you know, or or or like I don't see all the, all the things that probably, like, the best example you see in our space is, uh, with matt, you know matt paul, absolutely, yeah, and what he's been able to do, and and even like george and charles, both you like fit into that category.

Morgan Busby:

So it's a huge advantage, like if you're technically minded, I would say, if you can spend a lot of your time trying to learn the marketing side and a lot of times that doesn't fit, you know, like people who are technical or and vice versa, but if you can really work to learn, that can become extremely you know, extremely valuable.

John Newtson:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's one of those things where it's almost like on the, on the, you know, on the traffic side, like your competition now would be, like people like, who can do all this technical stuff. It's very difficult to compete with people like, I mean, market beat, matt paulson is in the phenomenal job, um, and, like you said, george and inflatable like they're, they're some of the biggest traffic drivers in the industry, right, and that tech piece is a big piece of it. And so then from there you make the decision you have essentially what is a vertical ad network in FinPub, trading, education and retail investors. And then you make the decision like, hey, we're going to actually try and launch um publishing businesses and sell subscriptions, and so, like that was another, like you know, fundamental shift in kind of what you, what you were doing.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, yeah, and it kind of came, came about organically. You know, a lot of times when, when you're in the traffic business, a lot of people there, you know some people will buy traffic. You know just like, hey, I'll buy it straight numbers, here's the, you know, here's the cash. If it hits this I'll scale. If I hit, you know like and usually it's more of the kind of like, deeper pocketed advertisers that have the ability to go in the hole a little bit on, you know like they don't have to make back their money day one. Then you've got other people who say, hey, I'll do affiliate stuff, which affiliates great like, because if it's converting really well, there's no real cap on it. You know, it's a, it's a great value for the business if they price their you know their payout or CPA correctly. And so we'd always get approached by you know people hey, we do this affiliate deal, we do this.

Morgan Busby:

And we were able back then to negotiate some pretty good deals. Like we would have, uh, like long-term cookies. Uh, we would. We, we had a few that we did. We, we actually had lifetime cookies on uh, which eventually they expire, you know. Uh, you know I don't have any, any checks coming in for those lifetime cookie deals, but uh, but again, you know, when you have the power to send, like you can get better. You know, just get, get better deals with it.

Morgan Busby:

And so we started to do some of those where then we said, hey, if we have this strong affiliate deal, we'll actually go out and buy traffic you know, build a far list and use that as a way to offset our ad costs. And that just sort of organically flowed into the idea of doing, you know, a publishing partnership. And so we we did some where we tried launching our own product. We had some partnerships that that came about where we said, you know, like would would kind of say, hey, there's three options A, we can be be an affiliate, uh, you know. Or like a super affiliate, if you give us really strong terms. Or C, we'll actually partner and kind of we'll just be the traffic side and you guys run the business. And so that's sort of what.

Morgan Busby:

What launched us into this publishing mindset and the whole, the whole idea behind it, was we were sold out every month of advertising and it's like, hey, if someone's, you know, pick a price but say someone's paying you five bucks a lead or six bucks a lead and they do it month after month. It means it's worth more than you know five or six bucks a lead. So it's like it's worth more than you know five or six bucks a lead. So it's like obviously there's the opportunity, opportunity there to uh, you know, to increase, you know, increase the revenue of the client.

John Newtson:

Yeah, yeah. And so then you had you know um, wealth press, um, dti, um and other businesses, and then you know, then you you had again like your journey mirroring so much in the industry. Right, then you have. When the ftc came in, you guys had that fun experience as well with with one of the publishing businesses. Yep, um, which was not fun, uh, and and yeah, I guess how did that change everything for you guys?

Morgan Busby:

So, so obviously, um, and and we were set up in a way. I think, when you look back and kind of like, when I talked about the COVID plan of like or like, hey, maybe we should shut down this initiative, maybe we should shut down you know this initiative and I actually I I gave a talk recently at a um, at another marketing event, kind of, on the topic of like, the difference in making money and building wealth. You know, like with your business and the the thing to think about. You know, like you go through your bio slide and it's like hey, here's my bio, so I started this business and then we did this and this and this happened. And then I did a secondary bio and I was like, here's the bio that you know usually don't promote. And it's like all the bad ideas I had, things we tried to launch that we didn't fail, or things that we launched and you know, maybe did mediocre, but then you know it was set up as a bad deal or it was. You know this and that and it's it's a realization. I think, as you grow in business, to to just sort of like focus more on on the things that work instead of trying to go so wide, you know with with all the ideas, which is tough for me Cause like I'll get excited about. You know, tell me any dumb idea and I'll start like I'm like very optimistic and you know always look at at the bright side or like, oh, that could work this way and this way and this way. And then you know it's like if I sleep on it for a week I'm like yeah, it's really not not the best idea, but I'd say we got too too far expanded with like all the a lot of the partnerships and deals you know that we did.

Morgan Busby:

And, um, when it was interesting, when the FTC at wealth press happened, it was also a time where it was like post peak of the industry. I think when I feel like, when you know, agora had an FTC thing, when that happened, it was sort of like still the way up. You know, raging Bulls was still the way up. When WealthPress got its letter, it was sort of like there were cracks in the you know, in FinPub the market was starting to be a little soft and you were seeing companies that had peaked and it's sort of like, wow, we've added all this. Like you know, post COVID expenses and bloated payrolls and all these deals and everything.

Morgan Busby:

And so for us it was, um, it was really tough, because the first thing that happens when an FTC notice comes is you say, hey, like we want to. Obviously we want to be compliant. So what do we need to to do? You don't really know exactly what it is like very vague, like, hey, just send us everything you've ever done. And so the first advice of you know kind of the attorneys like let's take anything down. You know that hasn't been like fully reviewed by an attorney, you know by like you know with like a fine-tooth comb or whatever. So it's like you take all your promos down and immediately revenue goes to zero. You know like, and it's like you don't take everything down and let your whole team go. You just take everything down and think, okay, hey, we'll go through this, get this back up, or whatever.

Morgan Busby:

So it was a really really trying process to a. It was like difficult market times. B. You know we were also going through a. You know the merger with merger with VNR. So those discussions started, I think, in March of 2021. So we had been, I guess, probably like six to eight months into that. We were about to close about the time that WealthPress got the letters, that was interesting to go through and see, hey, are we still going to close this deal, are we not? Or what are we going to do? And, um, you know, so it's like all of that at once, which was a pretty stressful, you know, stressful time. Thankfully we were able to kind of, you know, to push through it on both fronts.

Morgan Busby:

We had a rough, rough year, I think we lost money, maybe like 18 months in a row, you know, from from that point, which is just a, a brutal stretch to come into the business and just thinking, like you know, I'm working more than I've ever worked and I'm basically like writing a check to you know, writing a check to be here. But we had had a really solid team like that stayed, kind of like our whole core leadership group stayed, which was which is an interesting thing we um, we did have a lot of people leave, some people left voluntarily, some people left as part of layoffs, you know which. So it can be very sympathetic to like other groups that are going through that Like it's a brutal. Obviously it's like the worst for the employee you know that that's going through it but it's also brutal. As a business owner, you know you develop relationships, you get to know people, their friends, their families, and so it's really like a trying time to kind of, you know, to go through that and yeah, so we went about like 18 months of that.

Morgan Busby:

I talked a little bit about some of the things we did at the FMS talk like to turn the business around. That, I think, was healthy. It was like a healthy cleansing process to go through and thankfully come out, you know, come out the other side of it. But I think one of the interesting things that was through that whole, that whole part with like FinPub as a whole being in a bear market and tough time, like it wasn't like we were the only one struggling. Everyone else was having these. You know, it was like a tough environment. So. So not to say like you, you want other people to suffer, but at least like I felt like hey, this is not, it's not just like we're just not a horrible, horribly run company, like we're just struggling in a difficult macro environment.

John Newtson:

Yeah, and timing, you know, I feel like there's a lot of publishers that had, just before that market turn, like new pubs started and they were doing well, um, or they as well as they could, and then as things deteriorated, they were like I'm saying this is the worst time in the history of finpub to have started a pub. Yeah, and you know they go down and, like you know, I think of some of the deals, like you know, with rogue and like their editor died, passed away unfortunately, terrible thing happened there in the same time that all this is happening. You're like man, like trying to run up a hill that like keeps crashing down on you, is so hard for an existing business and then for the startups. You're just like this was just some of the worst timing.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, yeah, I think it's different challenges, you know, like I know during that time I'd look at things and think like, oh, how great would it have been to just started our business, you know, and only have this or whatever. But it's like you're always kind of looking at you know the grass is always green or whatever. But yeah, I'm also, I think, looking back. You know it's like cliches, it sounds like very grateful. You know for it, you know to go through it, you know for it. Uh, you know to go through it. It changed my perspective on a lot of things. I think changed my my perspective on, you know, on taking different risks, on how to structure, you know, partnerships, how to like even just discussions to have, you know, going into, going into a deal with someone of um, so, so obviously, and I think you know know, in the next 10, 15, 20 years, like, will probably be things that'll be extremely, you know, extremely valuable you know what are some of those.

John Newtson:

What are some of those changes in perspective then, specifically in terms of, like pre-deal, um, what discussions to have?

Morgan Busby:

yeah, so. So I mean one thing, that's that's it's like when things in our business, even though we have like a couple of blips, like we were pretty much on a straight lineup, you know like, like I said, like from 1600 and revenue it was like we grew every year. Every year is bigger than the last, uh, every year. Also, I I I never really like took a ton of money home. Uh, like, I always tried to like reinvest, like we did these acquisitions or we did the you know bought, you know like bought more traffic or brought on a higher team, or like tried, you know, and just kept trying to like build and get to the next level, get to the next level, and then when the you know like the bottom goes out, you kind of look back, you're like gosh, I wasted so much money on so many things that like would be great to have right now to to really kind of like come in and solidify things, or you know so. So I think, um, a of of thinking through like new verticals or new ventures, you know ahead of time and where we funded a lot of them out of cash flow, like a lot of them would be like okay, hey, to let's say that that we were going to commit a million dollars to some new idea or whatever. But okay, well, over the next two years, that's this much thousand per month, as opposed to saying, hey, here's a million bucks, this is it. If it's gone, we're, you know and. And so you put yourself in this position where you can always especially as like an optimistic person always talk yourself into holding onto it, instead of saying, hey, just you know it didn't work, hadn't hit the metrics. Just you know it didn't work, hadn't hit the metrics, whatever, you know. Another thing that is is big. When you start losing money comes into capital contributions.

Morgan Busby:

You know with with any partnership and and just I think, being upfront about like, hey, what are we? You know, how do I view it? How do you view it? What is kind of and everybody has their own limits, right, like it's. Like you know there's and that was a discussion we actually had, you know, with with VNR was like hey, what is, what is my limit and what is your? You know their limits, obviously much higher than than what I'm personally able to do, and so, like having that. It's just a very like frank discussion early on. But those are difficult things to have when it's like, you know, when it feels like your plane's going down right, everyone's uh, everyone's super stressful. But we had, we had, you know, had a lot of good partnerships that uh, you know everybody for, for the most part of a very difficult situation, you know kind of put their best foot forward in every, you know, in every regard.

Morgan Busby:

That I'm really, you know, really thankful for I think a lot of that's like just with, you know, building good relationships over the years, and I think fms is a big part of that. You know, bringing bringing everyone together. And if I look back at like trading pub in the early days, that was probably it wasn't always that way where, like, everyone was like super open of sharing. Like earlier today, or I guess it was friday, matt shared like hey, here's the top 10 affiliate offers that we have right now, you know, like which, which again, is not an out of the ordinary thing, but years ago you would probably have like I'm not sharing that, like those are my you know, like those are my people. So I think having like a very like open, collaborative thought process has been good for you know, it's been good for our business and also for the industry as a whole yeah, no, definitely, definitely.

John Newtson:

And how do you see then, like the you know we haven't, this happened.

John Newtson:

Um, you're probably one of the best people to kind of you know, you've seen so much and experienced so many of the different dynamics that have that have affected the industry as a whole. Where do you see things going right now? Where do you see like the industry in terms of like, where are the opportunities in the business? Because I think it's, I, because I think it's, I mean, I think it's changed quite a bit over the last several years and, like the market's grown a lot in terms of the customer size. I think that that that that easy growth has gone in the sense of like, okay, we have kind of the size of the market in terms of, like, online retail investing, folks looking for information. That that will, you know, there'll be some growth in there in terms of, I think, more adoption in the millennials as they get older, um, but I think that the market you know we have, we've had this huge boom market um of an increase in total number of investors for the last, you know, 20 years.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, yeah, it's. I think there's gonna continue to be, like you know, I don't have like a bold proclamation to be like email is dead, you know, or macro is dead, everyone's traders, or everyone's you know this or that, or crypto. I think, for the most part, though, there's going to be the opportunity for like several different like niche areas to be successful and to grow where it's like oh, there's probably a small publishing company right now that's maybe doing half a million to a million bucks a month. That could be a 15 to 20 or 20 to $30 million publisher just focusing on one aspect of trading or just focusing on a gold macro letter, because I think the market is a lot bigger in that sense. And also you've seen, with a lot of what happened with Agora, which I think reached what like over a billion, you know at the peak. You know the peak of it all, and you've talked a lot about this, about kind of the talent dispersion of you know of that, and so it's still looking at it like they have several divisions still doing very well.

Morgan Busby:

You know, like some, I think, like everyone else, it's like if your promos are good and I talked to someone in the past week from who was, who was previously at one of the market wise companies, and you know we're talking about some of the challenges that they were facing and uh, but at the same time, you know he's like, you know, at the end of the day there's still one promo away, you know, like from it's like they have the money to do it, they have the team to do it.

Morgan Busby:

If you have that one promo, it's like such a hits based business that if you can, you know, keep, keep a core there.

Morgan Busby:

And that was really our fear, or the thing that we guarded against when we went through like layoffs and went through difficult decisions was, you know, we're like there comes a certain point where you cut beyond, coming back Like we have to keep a certain amount of this and and um and so once we sort of went through all that and we started to see just a little bit of success, we really tried to hammer the lead gen and just said like, hey, we're just going to close our eyes and buy traffic, because if we don't do that, then we do have the hit launch. We don't have people there to watch it, and so I think that's the interesting thing about these businesses, where it's like you could look at a business and say, oh, they used to be at this and now they're only at this, but really they used to be at this and now they're only at this, but really they're one hit away from getting the train going again. So it's a good and bad thing with the volatility.

John Newtson:

Yeah, I think that piece of the volatility side of promo and acquisition is definitely something that a lot of people coming into the space aren't familiar with. Um, that there is. Like you know, there have been promos and it's happened. It doesn't happen as regularly as we would all like, but it happens enough where there's a promo that you see somebody bring in 200,000 customers in a year, right On, and you're like Holy crap, that's an amazing. And it's happened so often that you know it's out there, right. Um, it's's just you can never predict when they're going to hit um and so like, yeah, things can come back.

John Newtson:

I think, structurally, businesses are different and there's different goals. Like there was a, you know there was a period of time when, you know, uh, the idea of being a billion, three or whatever it was in subscription sales was like this is just the new normal for them. Um, but then there was always a voice I think it was mark ford always like you know, it's the right size business. And so the question there has become you know, what is the right size of a publishing business? And is having so many two to three hundred million dollar publishing franchises the right model or not?

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, yeah, and it's a tough it's. It's a tough question. I think it's easy to answer philosophically and I think, like I've got a number in mind that I think works, that that is good, but the I think the hard part is then you get to that number and you have a working offer and you have a team that's motivated, know, like, like the, the people that are going to get you to a number like that aren't aren't the type of people that, once you get to a number like that, that are going to say, okay, hey, I'm happy with you know, happy with where we are. And I, you know, another person I talked to that was, uh, kind of helped lead, lead a gore during that that boom time, and I want to say his name just in case he doesn't want it public. But he's said before, like I would never sell over this many, like I would never have a promo go over this many customers you know, like this many tens of thousands of, like I would just cut it off.

Morgan Busby:

I remember asking him and so, well, how do you tell you know, tell your editor that, how you tell your copy team or your media team? He's like, honestly, I'd pay him double and just shut it down. You know he's like it's not worth the headache and and um and all that and it's not. It's not in the sense that, like anything changes between 10 000 customers, 20 000, like it's like the product's still the same, the copy's still the same, your compliance is still the same. It just opens up. You know a lot. You know like customer service issues and having to hire and build up your team. You know, if we had been at 50 people you know as a, as a team at the time and and had to like we probably could have turned it around much faster, you know than with where we are, cause it's like so many more steps and planning and things that you have to do once you reach a certain you know certain numbers of subscribers.

John Newtson:

Yeah, yeah, and I do think that to your point before about opportunities for small groups to hit maybe $15, $20, $30 million and really focus in on a subset of the market, I do think that that's one of the things that probably people should be looking at now is that there are, like I said, much bigger customer segments.

John Newtson:

I mean there's whole different like competitive categories now in FinPub, from like kind of the investment newsletter to trader education to kind of the community models of Discord groups and things like that to you know and everything in between, that are large enough segments that people can build a position in that category.

John Newtson:

That is, I think, in a way, it makes them kind of like there'll be volatility because as that category goes up and down, especially if it's sector specific, you'll have more, but like there can be some more stability in kind of the core business because you can build, you know, like when let me phrase it this way when the industry was growing as a whole, it's much easier to keep a high churn model right where it's like we're just going to put stuff out out the door. The product might not be as good as the promo um, but there's always more customers. And then as people start to build out positions and take more and more spaces, then, like the goal would be to get to lower churn models where, like no, like this is the guy for this Right and I love him and I'm going to stick with him, and so that that that can build some, that renewal revenue becomes more important.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, and I think that's that's a key of of looking at. It's like the formulas, less, almost like less customers hire LTV, you know, and again, that's not like groundbreaking, I think, like anyone would be like, well, duh, like but it. But I think in this model there's still people that are, if they're really excited about it, like they're happy to buy a new product or buy your additional, you know additional product, and that was one thing with when we sort of worked on turning the business around. Probably one of the easiest levers we pulled was just raising the prices. You know, like of getting away from 997 to 19, going to 1997, or going from 1997 to 29, you know 97, and uh, and obviously there's a, there's a certain point there that makes sense.

Morgan Busby:

But if the value, you know, if the value to the consumer is good enough and and you see refund rates go down, which means customers are, you know, are happier, uh, generally speaking, and uh, so it's, it's like one of those levers that I think you're, you're always a little bit afraid to pull, you know, just because it's like, oh, that's a, it's a big jump. Um, the pool, you know, just because it's like, oh, that's a, it's a big jump. But if, if the you know product's good enough, it'll, it'll end up working out and that changes the mark, you know, changes the margins and changes the difference of maybe an offer that wouldn't work, that then does work and and it's like it filters down to every aspect of the business.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, yeah, and so now you guys have I mean, how many different groups do you kind of have run in separate franchises, so everything's now under with, you know, with kind of like one one group. You know we used to have a lot of these external partnerships and those have have either been spun off you know like spun off or or or consolidated, you know wholly internally off, or were consolidated wholly internally. But we've got eight different editors. We've got two new ones that are starting, one that's an editor who's been in the industry for a while and one that actually was a student or a subscriber of one of our current editors, which those are always really powerful stories where you have someone that came in, bought the product, used the product, had real, real success, you know, with that, with a strong, audited track record, and then has the ability to be able to talk, to talk about it just comes off as a very authentic, you know, experience, and so so we'll have hopefully you have 10, you know, by the by the end of the year. So we'll have hopefully have 10, you know, by the by the end of the year. And, and I'd say we've kind of diversified in that sense of just having like multiple offers like the way we do promotions now. It's very like market catalyst driven, and that's one thing. I think that's a bit of a misnomer is you know some people are like, oh, it's either a macro idea or it's a trading idea. Misnomer is, you know some people are like, oh, it's either a macro idea or it's a trading idea, and what we found the most powerful thing on the trading side is actually having some type of macro idea tied to it. You know, to have a catalyst, if we just do a trading promo that's around, you know, like a traditional systems promo, compare that to a webinar that has you know something that's big macro. You know in the environment going into that, we'll see such better engagement on that like macro based based catalyst and uh, but, but the ability of doing that like we do a lot of like webinar decks instead of full. You know VSL promos.

Morgan Busby:

That was another change we made Like when we went through all the all. The transition is you know it was like so cost intensive to. You know have a copywriter write you know this huge script and then you know it goes through compliance. Then you set a film date, you go film it, you wait three more weeks and it's like the markets are so dynamic, by the time you have your you know your crypto promo ready, crypto's back in the gutter and nobody cares, or vice versa, or it doesn't work and it's like you spend all this time so. So we really went to much more of a like. Let's go very like, you know, kind of catalyst driven trading idea, run the webinar on it, get the deck turned around, and so.

Morgan Busby:

So we've taken the process where it used to be. It's just like, and maybe it's like something that copywriters decided, you know, years ago. We're, hey, one promo every two months. That's our limit of having our copy team really being able to turn out a significant amount of promotions month after month or within a couple weeks, and then updating and tweaking. So it's one of those things I think, like it works for our business. It might not work, for, you know, for business and I think that's one of the things that you learn over time is like there's no one way to do this business. Like there's successful macro franchises at Agora that just have the traditional VSL. There's, you know, trading education firms. There's the Discord guy you know that none of us know about. That's probably the best year ever, and so it's just really finding, like, what works with your model and your strength and being able to play to that.

John Newtson:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's. I think that's very true. I think that you know there's like the number of offers out the door is one of those core metrics. I think that, like nothing else, if you don't know anything else number of offers at the door, like is one of those things that, like, makes a huge difference on the business. And then, um, yeah, like the kind of just different approaches anymore, like one of the it's, it's one of like the to me it's like the double-edged sword of FMS, right, like is that, hey, we highlight what's successful, it's working as a kind of an educational piece.

John Newtson:

And then, like everyone's like, oh well, I should do that, right. It's like no, no, no, no, no, no wait, you should understand that that doesn't necessarily mean you should do that. Um, and that's a harder thing to you know, to talk to people about. Like, you can't sustain the if you're a one shop, one man shop, doing, you know, um, a front-end sub stack newsletter and you want to do the lifetime back ends of, you know, market wise. And agora, it's not so easy because, like, the whole point of doing that is to move cash forward to invest in acquisition. And if you're not doing paid acquisition, um, you know, you don't have the same product mix, the same teams, the same any anything.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, same with the value. Like if you're one person, you have one product or two products, it's hard to justify a large bundled price.

Morgan Busby:

So, I was like, oh, if I subscribed to everything, it costs me two grand a year.

Morgan Busby:

So why would I pay? You know, five, 10, 15, 20, where it's like if you have a ton of products, then it's a lot easier to right for the consumer to understand like, okay, I'm, I'm gonna buy all these, it's gonna cost me this, so I'll just, you know, do a bundle and so it's, yeah, there's, you know it's, the advantages, disadvantage. It's like you know, if you're you're small, you can move quickly, you can try new ideas, you can test things. You can also probably test things cheaply. You know, like it's, it's difficult and there's there's ideas we have now that like we look at and we're like god, it could work, but like it might not be worth the effort to really, you know, to, to test it or do it, and so it's like you miss out on some of those things as well yeah, so how do you think then you know you mentioned earlier we can get to it that this whole last few years has changed, like your, your perspective on risk and taking risks.

John Newtson:

And is that what you mean? Right, there, is that it's.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, a lot on like your, your timeshare and and things that, like things that I would, you know, not get involved in risk in the, in the sense it's like, hey, we'll do it because it will make money.

Morgan Busby:

If it's not a good thing or whatever, not in that regard, but just more of like spreading ourselves too thin. And again, that's something I think that you've seen Matt do a good job of staying focused and he'll post every now and then someone's like, oh, hey, you should be a publishing company, why don't you? You know, why don't you do that? He's like, ah, it's not what we do, you know. And obviously he's thought about it, like I'm sure he's gone down the rabbit hole of like what it would take and do this and that, and maybe one day he does it or one day he doesn't. But like he's had that singular focus of I'm going to grow, you know, grow market beat and do a really good job with that. And so I think that's been um, kind of kind of the main thing of of just saying like, hey, I want to, like I've only got a certain amount of time and focus and capital and this is what I want to, you know, put, put my efforts into yeah, and but you do have like.

John Newtson:

So you had a almost like a very loosely expanding ecosystem and now you've consolidated it back into a tighter kind of functional space. But because you have enough of an ecosystem there, um, in terms of number of products and editors and franchises, or you know, the customer comes in, it seems like you have, like on an ltv basis or a churn basis, like somebody comes in the door. There you can, can. You can monetize them better than if you still just had, like you know, one or two guys, right.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's a big. So so for example and I'll just share, share some numbers when, when we run external advertising, we do a lot of lead gen to like a webinar, so so that's sort of our, our whole. We've got a few like front ends but but they're mostly tripwire. You know like $5 cheat sheet type thing, uh, but for the most part most of our advertising goes through a Legion. It's Legion to a webinar and and we might make back, you know 30%. You know we call it funnel ROI, which is just like day zero, zero revenue. So which, obviously you do the math of that. It's like we're losing 70%, you know from from days, if another dollar doesn't come in, we've lost you know 70% of whatever, whatever we spent on ads. But I think because we have enough products established that we'll see people who and because we do lead gen that's another thing you know a lot of publishers will just do, you know, like VSL to buy. You know like they're just trying to get the buyers, they just care about buyers coming into their file, and so we'll see people who come in the free side that don't buy, that then they buy something later. We'll see people who buy, then go on to buy, you know, to buy other products. So so we're able to to scale lead gen based on that at that 30% rate.

Morgan Busby:

I have some offers that might be 80% or 100%. Those are obviously the ones we try to spend as much as possible. But we've really gone out with just much more of a hey. We know these traffic sources work long term. If we can hit a minimum baseline, we'll almost take as much, as you know, as as much as we can get, and the more offers we have, the easier it is. Because you know, with like an email list, you know maybe we could spend 50 grand off one offer, but if we have 10 offers, you know we can spend two to three times that. So, uh, so it's it's been a um benefit of having like all those offers going. So even if we have a suboptimal offer, we'll still run traffic to it just because we have faith or trust that knowing it's the right type of lead will work out to the ecosystem.

Morgan Busby:

And I think the other thing that's a big change and this is something that someone at MarketWise had shared with me is they didn't put a lot of and this a couple of years ago didn't put a lot of faith into dupes. You know so. So like you work with some affiliate and I know a lot of this from the media side back when we'd work with people, some people would be like, oh, you know, I don't want any dupes, or use the suppression file and other people, many different lists. You know it's like they're not just your customer, they're uh, you know they're also on, you know, xyz trading list and they bought products from this person. It's like buyers.

Morgan Busby:

You know buyers tend to buy and so, having that understanding, it's like look, if we buy them, you know, if we buy them on this list and we buy them on this other offer later that month, like, like, it's not that big a deal, it shows that they're interested in our stuff. I think if we tried to my guess would be if we tried to like utilize a suppression file it would really hurt our business. It cut our lead budget down significantly. But I think it cut our revenue down because people you know are so less engaged now, like when I mentioned the trading pub numbers early on, you know we'd have 50 or 60% of the people show up in a webinar. Now you might have 10%, you know right. So it's like there's just so much stuff that people are inundated with that it's hard to get that attention.

John Newtson:

Yeah, and I think it's so interesting. You actually shared this with me. This was, I don't know, five years ago. We were talking about lists and you had a list where you were. You were saying that, um, the same email address on the same list, or on multiple lists getting the same promo, but of all the lists that they're on, they would only buy from one of them. Maybe, right so they're getting the emails, they might even open them over here, but for whatever reason, this one list is the one where they're getting the emails. They might even open them over here, but, for whatever reason, this one list is the one where they buy from. They don't buy from over here, they buy from this list.

John Newtson:

Yeah, so it's the same dude, um, on different things and that, and my thought was that whatever list that is could change over time. Right, so it. Maybe it switches to somebody else's list, right, buying there for this year. He's buying over there. Yeah so, um, you, you have the email address, but you don't necessarily have the attention all the time yeah, yeah, it's like the mind share.

Morgan Busby:

You know, like, do you have the mind share? And then that goes back to your content quality. You know it also goes back to the text. You know email deliverability. Understand that understanding. You know email deliverability, understand that, understanding what you know and this has been a discussion in the like FMS pro channel like how much is too much? You know, like like, hey, if we send an email, we make money. Well, if you send two emails, you make twice as much money If you send three. At what point? You know, like, at what point is that tipping point? Where it's it's not ideal for the customer.

Morgan Busby:

One of the areas, too, we've been focusing on is like thinking like what are different communication channels or networks that can be, you know, positive to have that you know, like to get out of the email clutter or, um, you know whatever, to to be able to to talk to consumers. And then like the level of content. So it's like we might advertise more in email than we would on SMS, where SMS has more content based. Or might you know, like just different channels that we use where it's like, hey, this might very active with content they put out, you know, throughout the day and they'll have a higher show up rate when they do a webinar than someone that just does the once a week, you know, or three times a week e-letter. So it's an interesting like. I mean, it's totally true.

Morgan Busby:

I don't have the exact numbers, I can just from like knowing the difference of show up rates on and I'm sure we could figure it out, but it wouldn't really prove anything other than just, hey, put out better content, you know, engage with your customers more. So it's an interesting, you know, it's an interesting facet like to think through. Those are like all the little things down the road that then make a difference of, yeah, of one guy having a launch that's, you know, two times bigger than the other person because he engages his customers. You know, for the past two or three months, right.

John Newtson:

Yeah, I think that that's that. That's counterintuitive. Um to a lot of people that more communication can be better than less. Yeah, I think, yeah, so what else? So, what else? I mean? What am I not thinking about here that, like you think, is important in the industry right now?

Morgan Busby:

um you, know, you know I, I think honestly, a big thing is just the shots on goal. You know like a uh and the whole like good verse, great. You know like arguments of, of things and that's that's worked for us, where it's like let's just try to get us get stuff out. Get stuff, you know like get some feedback rather than like trying to make it. You know completely from and this is more from like a copy. You know like a copy standpoint.

Morgan Busby:

I think, like you know, uh, 80% promo that goes out today could be more valuable than a hundred percent promo that goes out two months from now, just because of all the changes in the market. And you can always go back. It's like if, if an 80% promo works, you can always go back and tweak it and re-lead it and spend time on it. So I think that the quicker you can get something out to get customer feedback, the better chance of success you're going to have, which is a hard thing to do with some people because it's like, no, this isn't the way I want it, but it's like that might not move the you know, move the needle anymore and I think as people's attention spans change, it may even becomes even more important. You know to the that it's like you know they won't pay attention that long, or?

John Newtson:

but it's, it's so weird, Like to me, like how the amount I think this is part of the amount of content that I consume that something that I was interested in last week if I didn't do anything else with it, and it pops up again. Sometimes it's like, oh, that was so long ago.

Morgan Busby:

Yeah, Like years ago, it'd have been like that last week is fresh in my mind, but now it feels like, oh, that's so long ago, yeah yeah, there's so much you know with books and podcasts and and that's another thing it's like, oh, we should start a podcast, you know, or we should start, it's like want to do everything, but it's like let's just focus on things we can be, you know, be impactful and and concentrate our efforts there yeah, yeah, no, definitely, mission creep is definitely easy to happen in content, um, so that's awesome.

John Newtson:

We're gonna appreciate it. I'm glad to get you on here. Um, you know there's we dive into all kinds of little things, but maybe another time, like your view, and going to the intricacies of partnering with people would be awesome, because I know you've done so much and so much experience there, but that would be a whole other conversation.

Morgan Busby:

So yeah, I think just a real quick on that, like the best thing, the best thing to do is just think through, you know like, just think through any scenario, that like business scenario that could come up, like everything from how fast you want to scale, how big you want to get, how much you want to put into it if the idea doesn't work, and and put that also like down on paper, like is and and it's not a not like a lack of trust, but I think there's everyone has their own perception.

Morgan Busby:

You know, like, even when you have a conversation you've done like I think everybody in business has dealt with this where it's like, ah, that's not what we talked about. It's like, no, it's what I had in my head, that you know you had a different thing and so I think it can just make it a lot. You know a lot smoother process of um, and that's like if you're an employee, you're talking about a bonus or you're talking about a goal or anything like that, Like I would just say, hey, just as a follow-up, this is what we're. You know, like, three or four bullets, this is what we're agreeing on, Right, lot of you know a lot of conflict and the potential conflict in the future of um of working through that.

John Newtson:

Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense, so awesome. Well, thanks, morgan. Um, we will. Uh, if anyone, we are in FMS season in terms of, like you know, we're only a few months away at this point and you know we're going to need sponsored and been a major part of FMS since the very beginning, which I really appreciate. It probably wouldn't have happened continually in those first few years without your support, um, and so anyone who wants to come to fms, like you know, meet morgan. Everybody else will all be there, get the industry together, do a lot of deals, see what's working in detail and, yeah, it should be fun, yeah, yeah yeah, and I'll say I think I say this at the conference like it's our best ROI of any dollar spent.

Morgan Busby:

And the ROI is not just like we learned this tip at the conference, but like still, I'll have people that maybe I met at FMS several years ago. Eventually, you know, it's like there's not a fit then, but then two years, three years, four years later, something opens up, get a text, get a call, hey, let's talk about this and see you, you have a deal come together. So I think just like investing in, like investing in those relationships, just opens up the opportunity and even the you know like with with VNR that came through FMS, like I met, met, uh, the VNR group with you know, like Richard and Nicholas who are here, they came to FMS several times. Mark Breda was the vnr group with you know, like richard and nicholas, who are here, they came to fms several times. Mark brada was there.

Morgan Busby:

So it's like that would have, you know, maybe never happened, maybe would have happened, who knows, but like the fact that we met at fms was like the initial launching point of that. So really would encourage everyone and it's good to be in person, like we were just talking about, like the online verse, in person stuff, like anytime I have to travel now like I dread it. But then every time I get back I'm like I'm glad, I, you know glad I did that or went to that. So yeah, it's not. It's awesome that it's now, I guess, 11th year or 12, I don't think it'd be the 11th, yeah, the 11th year.

Morgan Busby:

Uh is an awesome you know awesome accomplishment to be around through that and hopefully, hopefully, the start of another boom you know boom cycle as much as we learn in the bear cycle. It's time to uh, time to get an easier path, yeah for real, for real Awesome.

John Newtson:

Thanks Morgan, thanks John, All right, see ya.