FMS FinPub Pro

Andrew's journey from the trading floor to building trader education brands

• John Newtson

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Andrew started trading on the CBOE before starting his trader education company.

He's one of the few traders who have had success both as an independent publisher and as the face of large franchises at The Agora companies.

He's also MC for us at https://financialmarketingsummit.com/

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

Speaker 1:

All right. Hey everyone. I'm here today with Andrew Keen, who is one of the only people in the industry who has not just built his own publishing and trading business tools. Business been a major face of a pretty big franchise, actually for one of the Agora companies. So, andrew, you've done it all and you're of course, greatest success is being the emcee at FMS. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2:

Greatest success. I don't give hits for that one. Yeah, so that's my greatest success.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I'm such, you know I volunteer myself to be the emcee because I'm such a proponent of the FMS and the summit in. I'll tell a little backdrop of how I got introduced. So I was, I traded on the trading floor as a market maker at the CBOE for 10 years. I was on CNBC, bloomberg, fox, business like every single day, and then I was creating a brand. At the time I didn't know it, and when I left the trading floor, a lot of people went to go work for, you know, think or swim or TD, probably at the time, or you know, option monster or interactive brokers, and I was like I don't want a corporate job where I make like 200 grand. I make 5% a year. And this is when blogs got really popular. So this is in 2011. So I went through every finance blog on the whole internet and I came across John Carter. John knows the story too and I basically went into his trading room.

Speaker 2:

I paid $199 a month to get in his trading room and then I was like, wow, I mean I think I'm more entertaining than him. I have a very big, extensive derivative background.

Speaker 1:

I think I can do exactly what he does.

Speaker 2:

So I started asking around. I asked Mark Sebastian, who used to be at the Sebo with me, and I was like, hey, how does this guy, john Carter, do? And he's like he kills it, I'm like by selling $199 live trading room. So I basically took the simpler trading business model of live trading room. We've sold over 10,000 educational courses on demand and DVD and I basically started my own company from my Twitter was big.

Speaker 2:

At the time Instagram didn't even exist, so my Twitter following was my biggest and the media. And then I launched. Basically it used to be called Keen on the Market, which is a pun, obviously and then it branded into Alpha Shark and I realized over time I don't like running a business, I don't like employees, I don't like managing people. It sucks. And then I ran into Jeanette Sims and Hubert Centers and Jeanette will be there. She was my affiliate manager and Hubert's kind of like my mentor in the industry and I started working with them. So I started doing a bunch of webinars and then Jeanette, me and Jeanette like I think we in the business world we've gotten married and divorced like six times and I just talked to her yesterday and then basically she's like you're really good, you know your stuff, but like you don't know how to do web, like you have to be at pitch at 45 minutes.

Speaker 1:

You just tell people, here's my ebook.

Speaker 2:

Here's my website, so, jeanette, then said hey, there's this conference, this, we're getting into the conference. He's like there's this conference, you should really come to this conference. I think you'll get a lot of benefit. So I go to this, this conference. This is when, like, I don't even know what this year, this year, it is. That's when I met Diana Gordon, so this is probably about how long have you been? Running the conference for Since what?

Speaker 1:

13, 14.

Speaker 2:

Okay, probably 10 years 14, 15, 16 years, or what year it was.

Speaker 1:

Well, dan years, or what year it was. Well, dana was af and she would come back, so you started the conference in like 2014 or something okay.

Speaker 2:

So this I think was probably like 2016, like a couple years, and there's only like 40 people there. It's like crazy. Now there's like 500 people, it goes and there's like 40 people there and they're like you know, up say your name and who you work for. And I've in my whole entire life I've never heard of Agora, this company called Agora. Everybody stands up and they say their name and who they work for.

Speaker 2:

And like half the room is like I work for Agora. I'm like I know I'm on the trading floor. I know Citadel, I know Goldman, I know Morgan, I know, Barrow, I know Barpleys, I know Morgan, I know Merrill, I know Barpleys, I know Bear. Like I never heard of Agora. Who are these people?

Speaker 1:

And Diana that was the year Diana wore her costume too. That was a bigger one. That was actually that's probably 120 people, that one.

Speaker 2:

Really yeah. So I befriend Diana. I'm like great costume, I need to make friends. And then basically she's like what do you do? She's like, do you know anything about cryptos? And at the time I was decently into cryptos. And she goes I have a publisher in Baltimore, pete Coyne, and they're looking for a new guru. So I fly to Baltimore and meet with Pete and within probably four weeks I was signed with Agora Financial and at the time AF had the highest revenue.

Speaker 2:

I was at AF for about a year and a half under Paradigm Press and unfortunately, but fortunately for AF I just didn't get any bandwidth. They signed Kurosaki and Sykes right after me and they're bigger names than me, I get it. So I just didn't get the bandwidth. So I went over to MoneyMap Press. So I was at AF for about a year and a half and then I went to Money Map Press for two and a half. Like I was supposed to meet with Mike Ward for like half an hour. I think I was there for like three hours and I was there for two and a half years. We did a half a million dollar production in Philadelphia. They rented out Tower Theater. Jed wrote my promo. My franchise did 18 million that year. I think I've done close to 40 million total on my brand and my name.

Speaker 2:

And then MMP started coming apart and then I've known Aaron DeHoop for a long time and everybody's like you should be at BAN. Aaron's a great guy. I met him before I trusted him. In this industry there's people you trust and don't trust. So then I went, went over to banyan. I was at banyan for a year, so like I think, all encompassing. I was at agor divisions three different agor divisions for about five years and probably did a close to 35 or 40 million on my franchise total um, and I never wanted to leave anywhere, like I was trying to find a home. I just haven't ever found one. And then, um, you know, I left Banyan about a year ago and now I'm just on my own.

Speaker 2:

But my whole point is the money that I made, the money that Agora made, would never have been possible if I didn't go to this conference and the conference. When I try to explain it to people, I say there's four people at this conference more or less, and they all is an ecosystem and they need each other. It's a guru, it's a marketer, it's you know. It's somebody who sells leads, it's a publisher and copywriters that's like 90% of the room and as a guru, I can't make money without a copywriter. A copywriter needs an expert, you know. So, like we all need each other and I always, you know, when I'm emceeing the event, I always say, you know, it's always uncomfortable to sit with the people that you know, like I'll literally I'll look at people's name badge and then I'll go to LinkedIn and I'll be like, oh, this guy was like really high at Oxford.

Speaker 2:

I don't know anybody, oxford, I'll just like hi, I'm Andrew Keen, I'm an options guru. You guys ever need him. I just keep my name oh, I've known your name, you know kind of thing. So, like the conference comprises all these different people, like, if this conference was every month, I would go to it every month. I mean because I have personally made millions of dollars from this conference and Agora has made, you know, thirty five, forty million off of me, you know, know, 35, 40 million off of me, you know, and it's so crazy to think that this one conference by Jeanette Sims invited me and saying, hey, check this conference out, changed my life so much and I basically almost like stopped running my business because you know I was doing very well with it.

Speaker 1:

Well, thanks for that pitch for the event. No, it's not a pitch.

Speaker 2:

I don't pitch.

Speaker 1:

I know.

Speaker 2:

No, I appreciate that I really do.

Speaker 2:

It's like so much money is in this industry and the opportunities of what you can make. Josh Morris, actually he went to my high school. He doesn't know me, he's like two years older than me. I went up to him like, hey, you went to Deerfield, he's like you did. I'm didn't know, maybe it's like two years older than me. I went up to him like, hey, you went to deer field, he's like you did. I'm like I know your little sister. I do two emails for him. I made five grand. It's five thousand dollars. It's great, you know, like that's just one tiny, little little partnership, you know yeah, no, I love that because I mean that was.

Speaker 1:

I remember, when, you know, when I first had the idea for for fms, it was essentially like I was working a lot in the trader education space, especially doing affiliate launches and stuff, and I'd come from working for clayton makepiece, who was, uh, much more on the newsletter side as a copywriter, um, and so I knew like the agora world and the weiss's and all the publishers over there, um, but like no, those two worlds didn't know each other at all and so that was the. That was the first idea was what if we put these two people together? Right, and like that was kind of magic because the amount of information transfer, the amount of recruiting, relationships, partnerships and everything that came. And then you're right, like it is like the.

Speaker 1:

The thought was the ecosystem, like there's, it's like the industry is like a house of cards and you know you have this group publishers, you have the media buyers that they need, you have all the talent that they need and none of them, like you said, nobody can work without the other group, um, but there wasn't a central place for everybody to kind of learn and meet and connect, um, and just like talk about the industry. So that was kind of where it kind of started and yeah, it's been really cool to see the development of that. But then also like how the industry has evolved in the last 10 years. How would you say, because you have such a unique experience in the industry A lot of people come from just Agora where they have their own business, like you, having crossed back and forth how would you kind of characterize this arc that we've been in and where the industry is now from your perspective?

Speaker 2:

It's interesting because I am very privy to like the Agora world and the Agora, you know, gossip and what's going on in it, um, but I do, you know, I do run my own company. Um, so when, when I launched my first my company um 13 years ago, we used to sell a lot of education like I would.

Speaker 1:

I've done a thousand live webinars right, so we used to do education we put it.

Speaker 2:

We worked with kunaki um and they can make the dvd on demand. There's like a robot in las vegas, where you send kunaki, you send them the files and they just print out the dvd and ship it. You don't even talk, you don't even talk to a human being.

Speaker 1:

I don't think they have a human being.

Speaker 2:

So when we launched you know I am technically a publisher um, we, we know we sold like 10 000 educational courses, like we would always sell education. Okay. So this is going to be different than the world because they have traditional front and back end and you know like they, you know, in a world of like, more like john carter we used to sell a lot of education.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I, I think we have 19 courses on demand and dvd, so education was really, really popular. And then I think there was an industry shift. And then people, people became indicator crackheads. Oh my God, it pops up on my chart and tells me to buy Apple and where my stop loss is. Then we pivoted and we have 13 proprietary based indicators, I think, or some trade station and engine, and people love that Right. And then people- don't want that anymore.

Speaker 2:

So then we started sending like trade alerts. And there's actually I don't even know if you know about this, but there's a big ploy with text providing services. So we, since we do, uh, advice, I'm a publisher exemption, so, um, I guess, recommendations. Um, the carriers are starting to block anybody sending text alerts. So we've had to change our number three times through SendHub because the carrier will just block us and they just don't care. They don't want AT&T, verizon, t-mobile, they don't want any text whatsoever sent. And I go, we try to explain to them that like, hey, a subscriber is paying for a text alert through us. We aren't soliciting them, we're in compliance with every guideline in the united states. They're asking for this. We're not saying this will be your ai stock, for buy for two dollars and go to a hundred, like this is a, a recommendation they're asking for and paid for.

Speaker 2:

That's a whole nother thing. So that got really popular and now we start selling like proprietary based scanners in the derivative space. With my background, we license the technology from the CBO. They create the scanner for me on my 15 backend filters and now you know, we've selling a lot of the scanners. So that's kind of our. The trajectory of where we've been in business is education first, indicators, text alerts, and now it's kind of like these scanners. And you know, if you throw anything with the word ai, it's like five years ago like everybody was becoming a crypto miner, like there's like publicly traded companies like uh, we don't sell uh drugs anymore, we actually do uh bitcoin mining, like stocking up like 400.

Speaker 1:

Now you have to just associate everything with ai and it's just everything blows up so, yeah, that's how the more regulatory issues with that like they're gonna have, like using the term ai for things that are not ai, and the ftc is definitely looking at that too.

Speaker 2:

So, yay, ftc yeah, and then you know in the, in the world of you know agora for me, um how that has shifted and changed a lot. You know it's just Agora used to I feel like be able to take anybody Like Jed is like one of my heroes in life.

Speaker 1:

He's not a good copywriter. He's been a copywriter at Money Map for a long time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so Jed is like one of my heroes in life, and so I had a promo. He's been an operator at Money Map for a long time. Yeah, so Jed is like one of my heroes in life. And so I had a promo. Jed and Mike Ward ripped it up. He goes go sit with Jed for a couple hours. I'm there for 10 hours talking about the DNC. And Jed said to me one time he's like oh so you're a guru. I'm like I'm not a fucking guru. I'm like I'm not a fucking guru. I'm like I'm an expert, like I know derivatives backwards, forwards, left and right. There's not a question you can ask me about derivatives that I don't have an answer, because that's why I'm going to write for you. I'm like what he's like? I could find some dude on Upwork right now and pay him $30 an hour and I could do $10 million.

Speaker 2:

Like literally and I believe it Right, so like they can play off anybody. So, so well, so you know, like, and I think in the industry, in the ship, like oh, I was an analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Speaker 1:

You know how many analysts at Morgan Stanley. Well, there's a couple of things there, though, like. One is that that was during a particular period of time Right, when anything was selling like, especially through bitcoin on it right right now it's gotten harder, um, and if he could do 10 million with a guy who had 30, then the more credibility he's got, he can do 30, 40, 50, right. Like I think that's a piece that like there's been an arc of credibility increasing of people in the space, um, and so it's not like I don't want people to like think, oh well, if it doesn't matter how good the guru is, I can get this guy in pakistan and you know he's never done anything.

Speaker 2:

He can write some stuff for me like I mean I think I think that the copywriter is way more valuable than the guru. I mean I used to tell jed like I work for you, like you don't work for me, I work for you. Like you are going to determine our success more than I'm going to determine I can only do so much.

Speaker 1:

I would say it's it's two wings of the bird. Right, because for bringing somebody in, because they don't know what the product, they don't experience a product till they buy it right, bringing somebody in is the copywriter, keeping them is the guru. That's kind of the you know they gotta like it. The in can you sell. It's easier to sell better secondary products to people who actually like you because you are great at what you do, versus you know there's there's plenty of cases of like hey, this promo sold a ton of stuff to this person but, like man, this guy sucked in the renewal sucked and then the um, the backend sales were, were sluggish and you know, yeah, I mean like like.

Speaker 2:

I agree with that because you know, if the customer is happy, I know they will have some products that have an 80% refund rate and stuff like that. So if you have an expert that can produce a decent track record then you will keep the customers longer. The refund rate I was told when I was at MoneyMap that I had the lowest refund rate at all of Agora. It was like something crazy. It was like 7% blended's like four and twelve, with the front and back end. Yeah, our back end we got because we were running a fulfillment every day right, because I ran a lab trading room. So like the fulfillment every day made those people not know, because they got a product every day instead of getting a you know pick once a week. I think it was like seven to seven and a half percent blended. It's like four and twelve or something like that. So yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I mean, I think in the industry shift and like I've been told through the grapevine that, like agora, is trying to get away from the trading space. Um, and you know, just by looking at their franchise and the gurus that they've had, it's not as much trading as much anymore. It's like going back to the old school investing. I had the only trading room at Banyan and then Money Map Press Brett launched five or six rooms and Money Map doesn't exist anymore. So those rooms are now gone. I think the only room that exists for a trading room now in agora is oxford with, you know, war room, um, and they used to have, you know, 10 across the board, um, so I think the industry shift is away from trading per se. I mean, I was on cbc and I don't believe this, I cannot believe this. They said 40 of all options trade are zero DTE Days until expiration. So there's now, so there's. So options always have an expiration.

Speaker 2:

So when I was a market maker on the trading floor, if you wanted to trade Apple for an announcement, you'd have to trade the monthly options. So there's 12 expirations and the market was like this wide, was it $1 or $1.10, right. And as technology evolves and there's this shift in everything, the markets, you know it's like, if you can think of a currency exchange like a currency exchange, maine's goal is to buy the bid, sell the offer a million times, just make the spread right, just like in Vegas. They don't want to be on too much of one side of the bet, so it was like 106, 107. So like there's no, there's no theoretical edge for a market maker. And then expirations became weekly expirations because so now if you want to trade apple, for you know for some announcement they're going to have, or earnings, you don't have to trade the one that's a month out now and the exchanges keep pushing out more products, more products. That means that there's going to be more volume, which they make more money. So now the hottest thing out there is there is zero dte options days until expiration.

Speaker 2:

So the spx has one. There's one called the xSP and that is basically the S&P, like a tenth of it. So it's the SPY, but these convert to cash. So when you trade normal derivatives, you know if you're long a call and expires in the money, you get long stock. Okay, if you short a call, expires in the money, you get short stock. Now it just settles to cash.

Speaker 2:

They said on CMDC, 40% of all the volume flow is going to these DTEs. There's a lot of people in the industry that says this could be your next black swan effect. I don't know how regularly you watch the market, but yesterday the S&P was up like 10 points, or, like you know, the four days before Christmas everybody's in the Hamptons Like it, just just sitting there chilling, all of a sudden, in literally an hour and a half, the S&P sold off 80 points, no reason. It just sold off and like that could be the next black swan of these zero DTEtes that convert to cash, because the volume on these things are so big, and so what's your interpretation of that from the publishing perspective, then?

Speaker 1:

are you saying that that means that there's way more active trading going on than I?

Speaker 2:

think there's a huge. I mean, if I was a publisher I guess I technically am a publisher um, if I was a big publisher like a, like a gora, I would be launching a zero DTE product ASAP.

Speaker 1:

So here's how I think of this as and I could be wrong, but I want to put this frame out there for people to think about in terms of like, is active trading declining or not in this whole? Because you're right, there's a lot of Gagora groups and other publishers who are moving away from it. I think that what we had during this last kind of bull market was one of the kind of subtrends was this increased sophistication in trading in the retail investor. There was a boom in it. There was a couple of things driving it. There was one, a substantial enough group moved into retail trading. We saw this huge bull market in just the retail trader investor and a larger segment of that increased the market for active trading.

Speaker 1:

And like options trading is kind of the pivot point where everybody kind of when somebody like that's, that's a marker, like as soon as somebody trades an option, they've moved into a new class of customer from our perspective. In my mind, they are way more active because they're not just looking at long-term stock investments. Even if they're doing swing trading on stocks, it's not Once you do an option. That's a significant event in their sophistication. You used to not be able to sell options to newsletter guys at all. They had to hide it, and then you have massive refund rates because everyone was scared of them. Then you had a period where you could sell options products as a mechanism and you would have like just the same kind of thing you would have in any other trading strategy or asset class and increasing sophistication in the mechanism.

Speaker 1:

Like my mechanism for option trading is better. I have this system, I have that, I have weeklies, I have whatever. And now we've moved to the point where, like, just having options isn't like exciting by itself, right, it's about something else. And then so there's this, this one trend where I think that people are way more comfortable trading actively, um, but at the same time, I think that we have an increasing list bias in the industry. I think that the stock investor customer that is better on the Agora side has fewer and fewer of those people relative to other models of acquisition. And so I think that, like, is that me or you? Sorry, I have it on, do not disturb, but the customer base is getting more sophisticated and so, like, you have groups that are going after the trader directly in different marketing models more effectively than just finding them on the backend of other stocks.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So let me ask you a question because I mean you might know it better than me. If you took all the Gora's companies, okay, other stocks, okay. So let me ask you a question because I mean you might know it better than me. If you took all the Gora's companies, okay, and you, let's get rid of all the crypto products.

Speaker 1:

Let me finish. One thing first. One thing for the. There's a difficulty too of how you built your list on one strategy when so like, and then you try and switch it to another one with other products is really hard when so like, and then you try and switch it to another one with other products is really hard, right, because you have kind of a bias in the customers. They bought this type of product whether it was stock investing, more passive, longer term kind of interesting stuff versus like really active trading.

Speaker 1:

Um, it's hard to convert. You're not going to convert all those people to another strategy, right, because they came onto the list under a certain kind of frame and those customers identified themselves said, hey, I'm this type of trader, I'm this type of investor, um, but there was a boom in people who were interested in trading as an income stream, because there's a ton of people out there who were selling like newbies on the idea of trade, and this isn't even in the industry. This is more like biz op, internet marketing on the idea of trading in the last cycle as an income stream, and so they brought a lot of people in. I think they all got washed out because none of them were really very good traders. They didn't have money to do any real investing.

Speaker 1:

Bitcoin brought a lot of people into the market on the Bitcoin side, but they weren't really buyers of other types of trading and investing products necessarily, and so you have these big floods of customers that come in that aren't really from the market. They're not really customers of the industry, they're customers of a trend, and when the trend goes, they don't stay in the industry as much or a huge percentage. So a lot of people who came into the crypto booms didn't stay as buyers necessarily on a longer term, because they weren't really long-term investors. They were like holy shit, they're catching the Bitcoin trend that everyone was talking about everywhere.

Speaker 2:

From your opinion, then is trading options customer base increasing or decreasing?

Speaker 1:

I think it's stabilized. I think there's going to be growth with it. But what you don't have is this explosion of options, of trading that we had in the last several years. It's going to be. A certain percentage of the customer segment is going to trade options going to go away. I don't think it's going to shrink dramatically.

Speaker 1:

I think what it is is that we're benefiting from a growing trend, as people were in mass kind of getting more and more interested in options, and that everyone's promoting it. It has a kind of an effect where everyone's seeing options and so people who were on the fence move into it, and so you have this increase in the number of people who are willing to trade options. That was really kind of big, and then the energy from that fades out. It's no longer new to people, it's no longer that interesting as just an asset or a trading strategy. Right, it's there. It's part of the thing.

Speaker 1:

I've tried it, I like it, I don't like it. And so you have a stabilized segment of the market versus like, hey, when it was on the upswing and people were really starting to get interested in options, for a while you had this really big boom, and so, as it was growing. It's just like any other trend. People are buying this trend right, and you had this explosion in it, and so people are buying this trend and it's easier to sell into it. Just like when Bitcoin was first booming, it was easier to sell into that than it is after it drops 40%, 50%, right.

Speaker 2:

And I think the next trend in options will be zero DTEs. So right now they only have them in the S&P and the SPY. I was at a different conference and I talked to the head of business development at the Miami Exchange and I guess the Miami Exchange is backed by do you know who they're backed by? Someone with? And I guess the Miami Exchange is backed by? Do you know who? They're backed by? Someone with a lot of money. They're backed by someone with a lot of money and they're trying to create new, innovative products and I'm like if you could create.

Speaker 2:

So the good thing about the zero DTEs like I said earlier, they convert to cash. So you can put on a put spread, you can put on a call spread, you can put on a put spread, you can put on a call spread, you can buy calls, you can sell calls. It converts to cash. So, like your margin isn't going to worry about that, like on Friday. You know, like I put spreads on for tomorrow. And Micron and NVIDIA, I have to watch those tomorrow because they convert to stock. These convert to cash and I think eventually, if Miami doesn't do it, they should do.

Speaker 2:

It is zero days until expiration options in Tesla, in Apple, in Amazon, in Google and those convert to cash. That would be such a home run, in my opinion, in the option realm and I think that would be the next hot thing because now you can buy and trade with something that converts to cash. Like I trade for the first hour and a half I'm done, I don't. I mean I look at myself when I'm at the gym but like I'm kind of much done. If I can put out a trade or position at the end of the day converts to cash, that's your wave. I mean, they said on cnbc, 40 of all options are zero dts, like and the sebo, because I'm very well connected with people that are very high at the SIBO. They're trying anything to push these things because they have the only zero DTEs for the SPX that converts to cash. They basically told me they would give me a significant marketing budget if I was to start pushing a product for zero DTs. Hmm, wow.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting. That's cool, though, cause it's like thinking about how, like the you know again, like, securities are a product and they're sold Right, and understanding when, when there's going to be a lot of push and money coming in for a new product that that market's excited about, then us having our product of newsletters, subscriptions, education, whatever it is around that product. That's kind of part of the game.

Speaker 2:

It's like the timing game, and so you can time the market stories like AI in general, or you can time the asset class story, I guess you'd say or you can time the asset class story, I guess you'd say, well, I mean, it's like, as we know, in any I feel like in every Agora division and every publisher that tries to, you know, pretend they're Agora is basically some trend comes up, right, and if you have good copy, you have a good guru that knows their stuff. You're going to do really well, right, and we've got to be at a point. A good guru that knows their stuff you're going to do really well, right, and we've got to be at a point pretty soon. We're done with AI, right. It was cryptos for a while and then, unfortunately, altature was promoting, you know, bitcoin, when it was 8,800, that dropped to 3,500, and he's getting hate mail and stuff like that, which I don't. I don't condone that. I think that's crazy and terrible for him. Like, look at him now. Now it's $45,000.

Speaker 1:

Now he's a genius again, right?

Speaker 2:

So I mean there's got to be. There's always trends in the industry that somebody finds to sell well, like the 5G was hot for a while, right, so like what is the next? I mean AI field is like so played out. We talked about this before.

Speaker 1:

We've already seen that with the media buyers. I did the media buyers, I did a, posted a video lot was it last month, um, and they were saying that like the, the real boom on acquisition, like it was about five months and then it petered out and it'd come back in waves, but like it was way shorter of a period of time that it really really ran front end. You're saying, yeah, um, when they're acquiring stuff, then then you would have thought, and in fact 5g lasted way longer in terms of its work. So I don't think it's over.

Speaker 2:

I mean, do you know the new hot thing that's been converting? Well, if AI is not doing so well, it's not doing terrible.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's part of the conversation we'll have in FMS now. So what I do is I try and bring in, just like I do that thing on YouTube here where I'll get a bunch of media buyers to come on and just talk about what they see working. We'll do that more in depth there and I'm trying to do that every quarter here in the channel just to kind of like keep a finger on it. But the other thing is it's still like sentiment, like you can just track Sentiment and subscription sales pretty much go together at this point.

Speaker 2:

I mean, would you say, obviously, like, like, agora is the big whale, but there's a lot of actually market wise is is.

Speaker 1:

I mean, in a lot of ways you could say that market wise is planting agora for not not, because you know they're so intertwined, right, right, yeah, um, but yeah, like, uh, those two companies are definitely like the dominate the space.

Speaker 2:

So let's, let's just remove that for a second, because they obviously have bigger budgets, bigger marketing, bigger advertising, more employees. You know, like, on the smaller scale, on like other publishers, there's a lot of publishers, a lot of publishers that would be at your, you know, your conference. That's not Agora. What do you see? You know you talk to a lot of people. You know have a lot of premium information. What do you see working, not working? Where do you see the shifts and transitions? On a smaller publisher, Someone's doing two to 20 million.

Speaker 1:

Well, here's the thing is like a lot of the smaller publishers there there there's a certain size you can get to that. Your biggest problems are less the market and more your marketing. Right, and I would say you're sub 5 million. Your marketing is a problem. It's not your. You're not even like yes, you can catch a big trend, but you're not going to catch very much of it, right, even if, like your Bitcoin, at the best, when it's hot, you're going to get a piece of it, but it's not going to work as well for you because you can't scale the customer base, you can't acquire the customers to really get the most out of it. And that's part of the cycle when we talk about all the layoffs that happened this year in the industry. If you want to understand when the market is booming, the game, in a sense, the business is adding as much product as you can to capture as much of the upside. And that's what a scaled business can do. It like expand with the market as it goes up and then has to contract when it drops down because all that product is no longer sellable, and so like that kind of layoffs when things drop, is just the normal cycle that we have, because you have to really like have the infrastructure to be able to capture more of the total upside when things are booming, and so a smaller group has no capacity to really capture that much of the upside, and so you'll have. But it can be stable at the, at the place that it's at, and that bridge to like, hey, how do you actually like scale up the staff and the production capabilities to capture more upside is like so it's an operational in a marketing problem, right. So a lot of smaller groups, they can't afford to have copy teams that work. You know like it's expensive, they need the promo to work. They can't. They can't work more like with the model that's more like a venture version of investing. Right, it's like I'm going to have 10 promos and one of them is going to make all my money, or you know they can't afford to do that, and so they have a marketing kind of operational hurdle to get over and you, you know you either use some kind of a partnership or you use a trend to kind of capitalize or you raise money to try and capitalize through that problem, but if you don't, then you're kind of stuck there. So smaller guys like sub 5 million. It.

Speaker 1:

It's a different, it's a completely different issue than a larger publishing group. The guys in the 10 to 20 to 30 million dollar range is more like um similar. They have enough scale that they can capture upside when things are going um and uh, they follow kind of the same things where ai is still working. You know, we've had you know, um. I got to get the guys back on to talk about the things, things where ai is still working. You know we've had you know, um. I got to get the guys back on to talk about the things that what else is working. But it's very narrow trends that you can capture it once you're big enough. You need a big trend to capture enough volume of customers to make it worth your time and worth your while yeah, but take, take that small publisher is obviously.

Speaker 2:

I'm in the under five million group. I would love to some degree and this is why, personally, for me, agora was such a good fit.

Speaker 1:

Right, they take my name, they take my brand they give me the copywriter, they give me the money, they give me the marketing and then I get this much of it, which was great for me.

Speaker 2:

But like I'm a small, small publisher, I'm under the 5 million right. I would love to scale up under the five million right. I would love to scale up and it's not. It's not a money issue for me. You know, if I spent twenty thousand dollars a month and you know leads, or fifty thousand dollars a month, as long as I'm getting roi break even in, I would even take nine months. I can't even get nine months. Then I can scale it as much as I want. I don't.

Speaker 1:

I would never want to get too big, so I don't think it's a money thing it's, it's well for so there's like and I can speak this, I mean, this is what I can split down. You're also a single operator, right?

Speaker 2:

I mean, yeah, some back and forth, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But you don't have another partner. No, no, no, a hundred percent. So if you're most of the sub 500, $5 million businesses are partnered businesses and this is this is like a math issue right, because now, if you have two people who are taking their income from the same sub, you know small publishing business. That dramatically reduces how much money you have to invest. Right, because you have to make your nut. You have a family, you have we have a digital product.

Speaker 1:

There's zero cost of goods sold you know, it's just like if I can get 90, for revenue and spend 90.

Speaker 2:

I'm doing that till the cows come in because I know eventually I'm going to get them on the back end. We have the best industry in the world. I'm an EO Entrepreneurship Organization. I've been an EO for 10 years. Ypo is the big boy game EO and then Accelerant. In EO.

Speaker 2:

All these people own different businesses. You have restaurants. In my form there's a restaurant, somebody owns legal something, but anyways, like the complaints they have with their business is like hey, we have 90 day paydays. I'm like that sucks. I take people's credit card right now, you pay me right now. Like they're. Like they have 120 employees. Like that's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Like the fact that we get paid and we're selling a product, I mean most of these products. If you have a development cost of the software, I get it, but most of these products. When I sell an educational course, there is this much to cost of that product, right? So we have a digital product. We have a recurring business model where you have a subscription that's recurring every month. I mean I'm going to go on Netflix for four months. I'm not canceling my subscription, and that happens too. When people want to cancel. We'll cancel, no problem. But it's the best business in the world. That should make it easier to scale because you're getting money. Today you're on a subscription and there's no cost of goods sold for most of these products.

Speaker 1:

All your product and there's no cost of goods sold for most of these products For a guru to send out a recommendation.

Speaker 1:

All your product is always in acquisition, right. It's in your cost of media and promo risk, right. That's pretty much all of it right there. And so that issue is the thing that stops everybody, and some of it's because they don't have enough product, like when WealthPress was able to boom. The way they were able to boom was because they had Roger was able to put together so many, because he had systems. He was able to put together so many different products that they could have a robust backend really fast as they were acquiring and keep selling and monetizing Somebody who has fewer products or they have a more time-intensive thing.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of different issues here. For people, some of it is like their appetite for media spend risk. It's like trading, like some people are comfortable spending a hundred grand a month and other people freak out after they put $10,000 down and it doesn't work out right away, right, but in trading you'd be more comfortable with a certain size risk and then, once you get to a certain dollar amount, you're freaking out, and so it's like risk tolerance there. And then it's promotional skill is a huge problem. And so the product delivery. You're right, the product delivery is great, but it's the promotional problem, promotional risk.

Speaker 1:

How can you sell your stuff, not just like, can you get a converting offer, but can you get it out in time if it's trend-based, which a lot of times people can't do? Can you stomach the fact that you, if you're paying for two or three or four failed promos to get to that fifth one that really works well? Do you have like the stomach to keep hiring? Or do you hire Because this is what I see too is like I hired two copywriters. It didn't work. Copy doesn't work and it's like what are you talking about? Like an individual promo piece of copy might not work, but copy clearly works. That's that's you know. And so, like you have these issues on a smaller scale, that like they're bigger hurdles because the the amount of money you might have to risk is uncomfortable for people.

Speaker 2:

So I mean I understand I agree with all those points.

Speaker 1:

Do you see it different? I mean, I mean in terms of promotion like well, I mean you're a good pitch.

Speaker 2:

Most small publishers are not going to spend much on promotion. Like I was fortunate at money map, they spent $4822 000 on a promotion that was just a rent tower theater and get an and one promotion. They rent a tower theater in philadelphia and they had 300 paid actors there, you know, and they spent 480 000. Because you want to know why? I'll tell you exactly why? Because jed saw the tim sykes promo and he goes I don't want 30 people in an auditorium.

Speaker 2:

he's like I want to rent the whole thing. And jed's like, like he tells Mike he goes, hey, I need a billion bucks for this thing. Mike's like, okay, cool, let's do it. He's like I want Andrew to be the guy Tom Gentile got mad at it because I'm the new kid in town and I get the half a million dollar production. But like production costs shouldn't be much, I mean. But like what do you see in the trend Media buy-in though the media costs.

Speaker 2:

Okay so what do you see in the trend of publishers on a non-Agora scale? The shift is there shifts of customer acquisition. That's working now, like do you hear anybody killing it on TikTok? Do you hear anybody doing really well on Instagram? You know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that's interesting, like there are it's kind of like the Substack thing. So I was talking I don't want to say their name right now, but I was talking to somebody who was this was last week the I think the number one for a period of time the number one Substack newsletter, entirely sold via social content. What's Substack made? You don't know what Substack is a newsletter platform, um, and you can publish there and it basically lets you.

Speaker 1:

You know it has a discovery engine, so it will recommend people and they you can you can sell subscriptions through their platform and they'll handle the money um transaction piece so that they'll take a small percentage. And so, uh, and as it grew, as it grew, as it grew um, a lot of people who, who were not publishing business people they, they were just analysts or whatever they wrote a newsletter and they put a paid version and they're making great money and they are making great money. So I was talking to the largest one of that. It's been a big kind of sub trend, um in the industry here.

Speaker 1:

Uh, for a while, bill Bonner was writing on sub stack, which is funny um himself, but he stopped that, I think. Um, but uh, the they were, they were giving you customers as the as the traffic grew and their seo on the whole platform, like they were giving you customers um, and this person was growing social and they told me, frankly, like they, this was, they started in 2021 and 2021 they're pretty much capped out um on their growth and this was a hard year and so it declined a lot and they're not getting any more of that kind of acquisition and so they have a problem of like, do we try and learn paid acquisition or do we just try and sell our business um?

Speaker 2:

and you're saying they get what social media?

Speaker 1:

outlets they get for the jack. They're using twitter, um linkedin, uh, not so much youtube, I don't think um tiktok, like all the short form kind of stuff. And they grew, they, you know they have a couple hundred, 250 to 300 000 paid or not paid, free subs, and I don't know how many of their paid subs were, but they were kind of the top one of those, and so they grew that way, right, um, and so what I've seen is we haven't seen anybody. I mean, tim Sykes did this, right, like Tim Sykes started on Twitter. He was the original financial influencer, he was like the guy, um, he built it and then he transitioned that audience into a paid model too. And so that's what I think is I think there's a lot of people like that. We haven't seen anybody who has, or I haven't seen anybody who has scaled the business on social. It's a question of how do you start to get traffic, because you can get to a certain point. Real Vision started with their Twitter audiences. Their first, like I forget how many thousand subs came from Twitter, and then they hit the same wall. Everyone seems to hit the same wall, which is this is a niche business, right, it's not mass consumer. There is an audience of a certain size on social for this kind of stuff, depending on what sector segment. Whatever you're in, if you can do it well, you can get to a certain size, but I think you're still sub five million. Maybe you can get over five, but I haven't talked to anyone who's really broken that five million dollar mark in revenue. I think from Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know the revenue of this last group, but then they hit a wall where it's like you have to convert into a paid direct response marketing business to be able to continue to grow and you can leverage it. But I think that's the thing and and that's what's that could change. Right, it could change Like.

Speaker 1:

This is like, I think, a demographic question, right, when you know the, the, you know I always say this millennials are what? Just in their, the leading edge is early 40s. I don't know, I'm not a millennial. They're early 40s yeah, I'm 40. And like they're not in their prime, investing years, but they invest in trade way more than any previous group did at that age. Right, so as they age, they should come into this market more because really like saving for retirement and into retirement is where the customer base for newsletters and everything really kind of is, and so I think that's. But they're also much more comfortable in acquiring content, in making decisions and stuff through social channels. So maybe that will shift the market over time, but we don't know.

Speaker 1:

Like I think about, like Andrew from investor place was telling me this, they tried so many tests, like when they had when Facebook was big and Facebook groups were big, you know, they got a million or more followers on their page and they did all this stuff and they were like it just ended up never being worth their time. And so there's and I don't mean to talk too much here myself because, but like there's a split of like direct response marketing. Businesses are built on advertising in other content channels or marketing channels. Right, it's the paid piece that makes you able to scale, it makes the business work. It's the copy media buying, the funnel, all that stuff that used to be direct mail.

Speaker 1:

Right, it would be like you had to have a good list buyer, you had to have all that kind of stuff and then it switched to the internet, but it's still fundamentally always this direct response piece is there's large channels that I can buy ads in. Now there are people who can make the business work with content first, but how far can that get you? I don't know. We haven't seen a With the possible. I guess maybe Hedgeye, but they're doing acquisition, paid acquisition too, as far as I understand it, but that's a pretty good size business and so I haven't seen anybody that has gotten to like I would question, like the $10 million limit.

Speaker 2:

I agree with it's actually as I was thinking about it too. You know like I got my initial customer base from Twitter. There's a lot of people that are uh, are on. You know that are basically influencers that like a ricky gutierrez you ever heard his name?

Speaker 2:

he's like glenn glendale I was like ricky gutierrez, cameron foose, who used to be with sykes um and like warrior trading, like ross, but like they used social to grow and they went from zero to you know, decent side publishing, but none of those. I agree with you that I never thought about that before. Nobody has used just social to get above 5 million, because I don't think any of those guys are as much as they want to say they are but they made a nice business just doing YouTube, tiktok and Instagram. I don't know if those three guys.

Speaker 1:

So you used to be able to do the exact same thing with just pure affiliate marketing when I came into the business and the trading side when I first started like writing and doing campaigns in the space, like you could have a killer promo and you could build your business. And while we managed to get to, I think we had a year where we did 10 with that because I just had a killer promo that over the course of two years did like 11 or whatever. Then it shrunk right back down, right Without any paid media. You know we've got 10 million and then it just shrunk down to two or three, you know, without being able to do the paid acquisition well and having like the full like kind of like system of multiple promos products. You know, and doing that like I, we just haven't seen it yet you know, why don't we get?

Speaker 2:

we have probably like what 10 minutes left or something. Yeah, why don't we? Why don't we kind of hype up the conference a little?

Speaker 1:

bit here.

Speaker 2:

I know, I know, I know you never like to like promote stuff and advertise and talk about the conference and I. It's okay because I can do it for you, because I don't make money.

Speaker 1:

I don't know. I think about it this way For me, and this is my view of the world in general is there's a lot of problems in business and half of them are solved by another person, right, like a connection. Like right now there's a lot of people that are looking for gigs because they got laid off, and it's like you know, people are sending me their introductions to them, trying to help them find work, and I'm doing my best when I can, but we're not really hiring right now. And I'm talking to folks and they haven't heard of FMS because they've been inside a company, realize, hey, I don't have a network of people. And then I know other people who are like literally everybody that I work with is from somebody that I met at FMS or through somebody I met at FMS.

Speaker 1:

And so when you need affiliate promotions, when you need to get hired, when you need a joint venture deal, when you need like, hey, how do I solve this particular problem, whether it's technical in the business or marketing related, like it's, usually the information or connection to somebody else is going to give you that answer. And so we just put everybody who really knows the business in the space, in the room, don't promote it to like the entrepreneur. Don't promote it to like digital marketers who don't work in the space and just get folks here from the industry to get together and share and like. So, like that network, like your network is, I don't want to say your net worth, but it's your, it's your opportunity set you know.

Speaker 2:

So to go back to that, like obviously, like I've emceed a couple of times, and you know, from my point of view, like there's so many people there it's and you know we didn't prep this too there's so many people there it's, and you know we didn't prep this too there's so many people there and it's hard to meet someone you know. So, like, can we do something? Like my favorite thing is is a speed dating thing we're doing it, we're doing boom, boom, boom like I.

Speaker 2:

I think there is like like in eos I do a lot of experience from eos we always do needs and wants, like I need a copywriter, I want this and like, and then people can network. Like maybe we have like some board in the back you say your name and what you're looking for, or something like that, like the idea of bringing everybody together in this industry and I never thought about that before that you don't let these people in it. You know, like digital marketer in san diego, like ryan does a great job, but they started with like 200 people.

Speaker 2:

And then, two years later, some guy has a dentist practice in iowa. He wants to do facebook ad campaigns. I'm like I have nothing to come with this guy. And the chiropractor in des moines is like what's going on here?

Speaker 1:

why am I here now?

Speaker 2:

so you know how it's great a to bring the network together, that your network is unbelievable and who you can get there, who you get to speak there and who you bring there, like there's always, you know, ceos of the agoradivisions. But how can we, now that we get people there, how can we integrate them together better?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so like the first thing is, I tell this to everybody, like I'm literally, when I'm not on stage, I'm just trying to make connections, so like, if I don't talk to you, I'll talk to you, so bother you yeah bother me, because I'm like that's like the thing that I do at the event.

Speaker 1:

It's like you need this, you need this, and you'll see me just finally, like towards the second half of the day on the first day, I'm like I won't even say anything. I'm just like you come over here, talk to this. Person had the idea for speed networking the first time, so we did that and we're going to do that again. It's awesome. So everybody gets to meet everybody at least for a couple of minutes. Nobody brings cards anymore, but if you have cards or you do the LinkedIn QR code to connect to people, like just get ready to like connect to everybody. I love the idea of needs and wants. Let me think about that, how we can do that. So a little bit too big now to do what I used to do. That's why I used to do that thing in the beginning, where it's like everybody stand up and tell me who you are. Yeah, because then, like, everybody knows really fast who to talk to, who not to I think one year, which was a cool idea too.

Speaker 2:

Um, there is like I'm not sure if you guys did it, but I feel like there's tape, like you did like an hour or 30 minutes and like, okay, we're doing certain tables, this table is the copywriters. If you're a copywriter, go to this table right now and then who needs a copywriter?

Speaker 1:

go introduce yourself kind of thing, because there's there's.

Speaker 1:

So the problem is like there's so many people it's like hard to find what you need at that time, you know yeah, no, that's good, um, let me, let me think about how to do that. Maybe. Maybe I can find some space to do that again. The table was a good one. A couple things that we did that I thought were cool that you know. One was that where we did have like, okay, I know, everybody needs a handful of things. They're gonna need a copywriter, they're gonna need a media buyer, um, they're gonna need, uh, you know, an affiliate, um, and so who's open to what? Like, yeah, have sections, um, another thing that we did that worked really kind of funny.

Speaker 1:

It works better in a small group, but we did it a big group and it actually turned out pretty cool was I call it deal doodling, where it's like throw three people together and just like tell each other what you do real fast and then brainstorm a way that you guys can do a joint venture don Don't have to actually do it, but just like brainstorm it and, um, people start coming up with shit. Like that they could work with each other on that. Oh, I never thought about that, because now it's just a brainstorming exercise. So that was pretty cool. But I think that the tables, um, that was a good one.

Speaker 1:

And then, of course, there's just the actually know what you want. When you come in the door and just tell people like, hey, what are you looking for? And then ask them, like this is like part of like how do you work an event. You know, tell them what you want. Hey, I'm looking for this, I do this. And people you tell it to enough people, everyone's are starting to do something. That's one thing I love. To enough people, everyone's going to start introducing you. That's one thing I love about this community is everyone starts to connect each other. Like you should talk to this person. You should talk to this person.

Speaker 2:

And I will take some of his responsibility. If anybody wants to be connected, I know a considerable amount of people in the room, so you can always come find me and ask. I mean I know I'm a guru, I know that. So come find me and ask I mean I, I know I'm a guru, I know that. So, like I, always every time I go there because I was with the Gora for six years, I would always try to. I mean I got Lance a deal with Morgan. Like I'm like you know, I was like Lance, I'm like you're not going to. I'm like come to this conference. I'm like you're probably not going to get an Agor deal, but I could probably with Morgan. Now he's been with Morgan for four years. Same thing.

Speaker 2:

I didn't make any money off Lance, I just wanted him. I love Lance. I wanted him to do well in the industry. Everybody says their industry is really small. Our industry is really really, really small. We all want there's enough money to go around where you can have everybody succeed. I was so happy when John Carter sold his company to Private Equity.

Speaker 1:

I'm like, yes, yes, we're one for the good guys. And then when the FTC goes after another company, I'm like no, we don't want this.

Speaker 2:

This is so bad for the industry, you know. So why don't you briefly mention, you know? Do you want to talk about the accelerator thing?

Speaker 1:

We are going to be bringing the accelerator back. I don't want to go into too much detail right now. That's right now. That's like basically the mastermind group for the industry. It's a little bit more than that and I've come up with some new things that we're going to do. We've got a lot of really cool stuff that is going to come out. I'm going to try and announce everything fms and have it all for everyone to understand what's going on, because the industry is.

Speaker 1:

I think there's a lot of things happening in the industry. It's shifting, not just like um, it's not just the market, but there's like a lot of things that are changing. I think the trader education side is getting a little bit more segregated from the newsletter side in terms of what's working and not working there, the sales models, the marketing models. I think there's everybody who's interested in the connections between this business and other parts of capital markets and finance business and other parts of capital markets and finance um. There's opportunity there. So it's kind of like the, the small kind of operator has a, I think, almost more opportunity right now than they have in the past. Um, and there's a lot of cool things that you can do to generate revenue pretty quick, especially in times of like trouble. Here did we have uh, was it?

Speaker 2:

one year off or not. It didn't go last year, right or?

Speaker 1:

did it go last year one year off one year, which was hard for me, um, but uh, yeah, we had one year off, um, and other than that, we've done it every year for 10 years, so no well, I'm looking forward to the event.

Speaker 2:

I'm looking forward to meeting people. If you see me there, I will be. I'm seeing the event, which means, unfortunately, I cannot get drunk the night before because I have to wake up early.

Speaker 1:

That's the only the only thing I didn't like about doing it like I have to get up.

Speaker 2:

I'm not a morning person, so um if you guys have any, yeah, if anybody needs any introductions. Um, you can come find me. Um, I'm really looking forward to it. You know like I have a lot of things going on personally in my industry as well, that you know I want to make more deals, you know I want to make more money, and this out of everything I do in this world. This is my number one source of potentially finding something.

Speaker 2:

You know I'm a guru, I've been with Agora for six years. I'm looking for a publisher. You know, like I would love to go, come on board, I'm gonna go bother. Uh, heather weiss right now probably. Um, so I mean it's a great. You know, like I said, there's, in my opinion, there's four different segments and everybody needs everybody, the ecosystem, to come together. So, um, I'm excited to go, I'm excited to meet new people, basically to make the zach character. But I said still, thinks a ghost.

Speaker 1:

This is zach westfall. Zach doesn't like to travel. He is coming. He's coming out of his hole in austin, is very well stocked, very wealthy little hole in austin and coming to speak, which is great. Um, because I do think that's one thing. Like the trader, like just speaking about zach, his, the trader education model that he has is not the agor newsletter model. Right, they don't have the same marketing model. They're fundamentally different and he has a fantastic business, him and Tim, and they're doing a lot of cool stuff. And I think that's something that people need to start to get clear on is that there's different ways to monetize and make this business work. You don't have to just try and copy Agor because a lot of times you can't, you really can't like, you really can't. If you can't afford the copywriters, then you can't use their model like fundamentally trust me?

Speaker 2:

I have. Do you have the black book, the gore black book?

Speaker 1:

oh, I have this thick it's like 800 pages.

Speaker 2:

I read like 20 pages like I'm never gonna do any of this awesome man.

Speaker 1:

Well, thanks, um for doing this and thanks for emceeing. I'm looking forward to getting together and hanging out uh yeah, me too appreciate it, thanks.