Billion Dollar Creator

Marissa Lovell: [00:00:00] You know, you see like the people who have it figured out.

Nathan Barry: I just made a million dollars doing this.

Marissa Lovell: And it's like, okay, how do you make like a hundred?

Nathan Barry: In this episode, we walk through what it actually looks like to build a newsletter to nearly a hundred thousand dollars a year revenue.

Marissa Lovell: It's like whenever I focus my energy into one part of it, and then it's like.

Crap, I don't have any sponsors though. 2023 revenue is 87, 000.

In three years, 500, 000.

Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Here we're operating in solopreneur numbers. This is team numbers. What makes someone decide the price that you're charging for sponsorships, the number of subscribers they're reaching? And the biggest way we got here, great content and paid ads.

One of the big mistakes I see creators make is they try to tackle too many things at once. And if I were to give you one problem to obsess over, it would be

Marissa Lovell: After this. I feel like I have an action list of where my time should be spent.

Nathan Barry: I'm really excited for that.

[00:01:00] Entrepreneurs get to some level of success and they're like, I'm going to start a local newsletter. And then it almost never works out. It's usually much harder than people expect. Yes. And, uh, you've done it and you've pulled it off and you've scaled it. So I want to dive into that today. What's something that's fundamentally different from, you know, when you started to like how things actually turned out, you thought like, Oh, this would be hard, but it was actually this other thing.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Um, I thought it'd be hard to come up with story ideas.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: It's not. It's the easiest thing. I have a million story ideas. I was enough stories for like 10 years and it's much harder to make money to like, keep going.

Nathan Barry: That makes sense. Well, let's start just by sharing some context of where the newsletter is at.

And yeah, talk through subscribers then we'll get into revenue after that. Yeah,

Marissa Lovell: do you want me to give the spiel about like what it is? Yeah, let's do that. Okay, so it's called From Boise. It is a weekly newsletter and podcast about life in Boise. On Tuesdays, I send a long story. It's usually about like a person, a [00:02:00] place, piece of history, or some sort of happening, something happening in town.

And then on Thursdays, I send a huge list of things to do, like a huge list.

Nathan Barry: It's a very big list. I

Marissa Lovell: have learned that there's, there's too much. Um, there's like, there's a limit. Wouldn't

Nathan Barry: the email find the clips in Gmail? Yes, yes,

Marissa Lovell: no, exactly. Um, it's the limit.

Nathan Barry: So let's talk through some of the numbers, right?

So how many subscribers does it have and the social following and all that?

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Um, we have 22, 000 newsletter subscribers. Um, we have, so the podcast is new. I started the newsletter in, I sent the first one in March, March 30th, 2021.

Nathan Barry: So just over three years. Yeah,

Marissa Lovell: just over three years. And then I started the podcast version, May of 2023.

So the podcast is like a year. And some months old, um, and the podcast has about 1300 monthly listeners. Um, and then the Instagram account has about 24, 500 subscribers or followers. And, um, I don't [00:03:00] really have any strategy there either. I post on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the newsletter goes out. And usually like whatever coffee shop I worked at or something I went to over the weekend.

I just make a reel about it.

Nathan Barry: But maybe let's start by setting some context of, I guess, how it started, right? So I think it started with your idea. Let's bring me into the story. I think it was December 2020. I've been thinking about this for a while, inspired by Andrew Wilkinson, who runs Capital Daily, I believe, in Victoria, Canada.

It actually kind of came together from there. And I was like, well, I can't run it. So I need to hire someone to run it. And I posted a job ad. We had never met before, but we had a few mutual friends. Jess

Marissa Lovell: Flynn sent it to me.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. And so it was one of those things that I thought I was hiring someone, you know, like the, the editor in chief to run it.

Right. And that was, and it's just this experiment. There were zero subscribers, but then really what happened, I mean, as it's [00:04:00] transformed over time, I was. decently involved in the early days of figuring out the format, the growth. Um, a random funny thing is the, like the first newsletter ads to promote it.

Like I was, I played a lot of indoor soccer and, uh, one day I came into soccer and two different people were like, Oh, I saw you, I saw you on Instagram. And I was like, what was that about? Um, but it's because I had made this Ad walking through Freak Alley, which is one, like one of the iconic places in Boise.

And the goal was to have an ad where if someone knew Boise, they would immediately stop scrolling and realize, Oh, I know where that is without having to say it. You know, you don't want to be over the top of like, I am in Boise, Idaho in freak, you know, it's like, no, if you're in the know, you know where that is.

And it was just me walking through it, you know, through this very visual place with all the murals and everything saying like, Hey, you know, I started this newsletter. Here's what it's about. You should subscribe. [00:05:00] And that's how we got our first, first bunch of subscribers. Yeah. But then it really turned into, um, like, I mean, I'm honestly an absentee partner in this business where you run it so much.

Let's talk about the money side of things. I think people are curious about, okay, if you get to that level of subscribers, that, that reach.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: How much money did From Boise make? revenue last year?

Marissa Lovell: Last year is, um, 87, 000. 87, 000. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: That's awesome.

Marissa Lovell: And I did that while I had another job, too. Yeah. Which was pretty crazy.

I was very tired, but it's, it's possible. Um, and 77, 000 of that was sponsorships.

Nathan Barry: Okay.

Marissa Lovell: The rest was reader donations and I did some like merch that I wouldn't do again.

Nathan Barry: We'll talk about that. And then what's revenue year to date? We're recording this late. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Um, we're at about, these are like rough, you know, um, rounded out, like we're at about 33, 500, 29, 000 of that as sponsors.[00:06:00]

It's like pretty much all sponsorship. And then I have not done any merch this year. The rest is reader donations and that, and reader donations is. People donating on a monthly basis from like anywhere from like five to ten dollars a month and then There's a couple like people someone gave me a three hundred and sixty five dollar tip the other day So, yeah, there'll be like those random like twenty five dollar to like a hundred dollar Sometimes 365.

Um, but I will say that like, well, I wouldn't say I have not been good about it, but I could probably ask for reader donations more often, like every time I have asked people do it, but it feels weird to ask. Like

Nathan Barry: to what extent, you know, if you put it in a newsletter, does that mean there's an additional a hundred dollars in donations or it comes in at like 500 or 800?

Marissa Lovell: Um, at the three year anniversary mark. So like I say, it's March 30th. Um, is I just said, you know, like this. [00:07:00] It's free. I want to keep it free. And like, we're a really small team. It's pretty much just me most of the time. And, um, you know, your support really makes a difference. And I think I got like 1, 500 that day.

Nathan Barry: Oh, wow.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. By like a lot of different people.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Um,

Marissa Lovell: they were like pretty, also pretty small donations, but like a lot of people did it.

Nathan Barry: Which is the whole thing. I mean, that's true for so many creators. Where they're like, no one's buying my product. It's like, well, have you told them about it? Have you directly asked them to buy it?

And I'm like, no.

Marissa Lovell: I know. And it's like. The free newsletter isn't like raking in money, of course, but if you don't ask, I mean, a lot of times people value it and they will say like, I know you're doing it for free. Here's, you know, 20 bucks or whatever.

Nathan Barry: Right.

Marissa Lovell: And if you have a hundred people do that, like it, you know,

Nathan Barry: it becomes meaningful.

So you came to craft and commerce, um, Kits annual conference, uh, last year, I felt like all the help that I wasn't able to, or didn't give you, like you [00:08:00] had some really good breakthroughs from there. Talk about. I don't know, the before and after and like what you, what you learned being a part of that creator community.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. It was pretty life changing, honestly. Um, and I'm not just saying that because you're right here. Like it was really, I felt like it was up until then from Boise was just like this thing I was doing. Like I was like, yeah, I like this little newsletter and it was just like my side hustle type thing.

And it was when I really realized that it, I was like, Oh, like, this is a real business. Like I could like actually do this as a career and not just like, it's not just like this little thing, you know,

Nathan Barry: I was just popping into the like little workshops here and there, that sort of thing. And Matt Mullen has this amazing content creator and really like behind the scenes genius on so many things, email marketing, I'm like, Oh, I'll pop into, his workshop and see what's going on.

And he's like, you had volunteered. He's like full email strategy with you.

Marissa Lovell: I was like, I mean, these, like, I looked up all [00:09:00] these people and I'm like, I can't afford to have your coaching thing. So like, if you're going to coach me for 15 minutes for free, like, yeah, I will be the Guinea pig. You know? Um, I also volunteered for, um, Justin Moore's sponsorship thing.

I was like, pick me apart. Tell me what to do.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So talking about the money side, you mentioned Justin Moore and He really encouraged you to do sponsorships entirely different than how you were doing it before.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah, and I've kind of Landed in the middle. I found that like what has been working is in the middle So originally we had like, you know, these are the packages like this is how much things copy, you know Yeah, um, and he was like don't do that You're putting the sponsors in a box when you do that.

Like you're like if you want to work with me, it's 500 But what if they had 10, 000, you know, which I'd found to be true But also sometimes people just want you to tell them a price so that they can go tell their boss and, or they're like, we have 200. Can we, can we do [00:10:00] something? Yeah. Like it's, um, I think that that's something with the local newsletter that's like unique to that.

Basically what I've done is I kind of like have my pricing. Do you want me to just kind of like go into it? Okay. So I have sponsorships. Which are ads in the newsletter and on the podcast, the newsletter, it's at the top or in the middle and, or in the middle, um, podcast, I just record them and my guy puts them where they should go.

Um, and then lately I have also added on four existing sponsors that are the right fit. Like a, a reel add-on, like an Instagram reel. Add-on. I pretty much just focus on Instagram. Yep. For, for social media, the top spot ranges between like 500 to a thousand dollars. The middle spot's, like honestly, I've go, gone as low as like 50 for a nonprofit.

Um, but usually it's like between like 250 to 500. And then, um, the podcast sponsorships are usually like 200 to [00:11:00] 250. I will. So that's kind of just like a one off thing. Um, I will package those together to do like a bulk deal. Usually it's like the fourth one would be like 250 off. Um, and then kind of like bundling both of them.

Like, you know, you get for newsletter things and for podcast episodes and, and a real, and that's like a thing. going back to that beginning is I was freelance writing and I had written a lot about Boise. I'd written a lot about like the music scene in Boise, which was really struggling, you know, at the end of 2020.

Nathan Barry: Right.

Marissa Lovell: Um, and I kind of been posting these like long things on Facebook, like my own Facebook page that was just like this cool bands coming, like here's a little thing about them go to these shows. And when I went at post for a week, people would be like, Hey, you're going to do your. You need to do your post.

And I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah. And so I have been kind of thinking about like starting a blog that was really focused about Boise music. Like there was no place, there's just no like one source where [00:12:00] you could just find all of the shows happening. Um, so I was kind of like thinking about that, but blogs are hard.

Like it's really hard to like, get someone to come to your website and SEO and all that. And so I was like,

Nathan Barry: well, actually let's talk about that for a second. Cause it's something that. It took me a long time to realize early in my creator career because I started blogging and you got, you know, traffic from search engines, traffic from, you know, directory, you know, Reddit, other, um, forums, things like that, but it was really missing the way to push content to subscribers.

Yeah. So I had this post. This is probably November 2011, I think that, uh, I wrote, it was titled how I made 19, 000 on the app store while learning to code. And I love the like little two part, you know,

Marissa Lovell: classic blog title.

Nathan Barry: Oh yeah. A hundred percent. And it ended up going to the very top of this news site called Hacker News, which is in the tech community.

And in like two days it got 40, 50, [00:13:00] 000 views. And I thought like I was getting hundreds of visits a month and I got this all in one, in one go. And I thought like, Oh, I've made it as a blogger. But then the next month there was, there was nothing. If you had hid that month, November, 2011 in the Google analytics graph, you would have never guessed that anything had happened.

And that was really when I, well, a few months later, like discovered newsletters because that's the difference of like people stick around and they want to follow and you get to build on some of that compounds instead of like this went viral. And then we're back to like, 10 percent more than nothing, you know.

Marissa Lovell: And I think it's easier for the reader too. Like you're just, you just show up in there. You're just magically there every week in their inbox. Whereas like on a blog, you know, you kind of have to, you have to like go find them or seek it out or.

Nathan Barry: That's an interesting thing. If you're going from the blog into the newsletter, had you, you know, I've never paid much attention to newsletters before.

I never

Marissa Lovell: even thought about it. But then, um, my old boss, Jess [00:14:00] Flynn, sent me your, your, um, Twitter posts or X posts, whatever. And, um, she was like, this is the perfect thing for you. And I was like, Oh my God, a newsletter is so cool. It's totally what, like, that's, that's what I want to do. And I basically wrote you a cover letter that was like, hello, you need to hire me.

This is what I'm supposed to be doing. Um,

Nathan Barry: let's assume that we have a bunch of people listening who, you know, are living in, you know, I don't know, Boulder, San Antonio, like all of these. Um, and there could be that market. A lot of other local newsletters are taking a very different approach. Either they're doing something like Capital Daily was and they're, they're really doing news reporting in, in the form of a newsletter.

Or they're going the other route and they're just saying, Here's what's up.

Marissa Lovell: You know?

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Talk about, like, choosing the format for From Boise and why you think that matters so much. Mm

Marissa Lovell: hmm. Um, I mean, first of all, it's just, it [00:15:00] comes natural to me, so I'm able to do it consistently. You know, I'm a long form writer.

Like, I want to write long stories. I'm not really interested in, like, talking about the news all the time.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Because that was

Nathan Barry: a very deliberate decision you made. I don't, we, like, we don't ever really talk about the news. And that keeps us out of politics, it keeps us out of so many things. Also,

Marissa Lovell: like, you can find it other places.

Yeah. You don't need it from me, too. You know, I, I kind of like to think of From Boise as like, it's just the fun stuff. Like, when you need a break from all the other stuff, you just read From Boise. And that, and people tell me that, too. And then I like to just find, like, I do some serious sleuthing to find, like, some random stuff.

Like, what's an

Nathan Barry: example of something that, you know, You included, that was very, very random, or someone wouldn't have picked up from the newspaper or, you know, the radio station.

Marissa Lovell: Like, cornhole tournaments, dog parades, like dog meetups, like very specific breed dog meetups, things like that, like that are just

Nathan Barry: Let's talk a little bit about the team side of things, because Well, [00:16:00] this is a small business.

It's a big undertaking and now reaching, you know, 20, 000 plus readers on a, on a weekly basis, like how has the team evolved over time? Like working with contractors, you know, as you brought people in, what roles? Yeah. So

Marissa Lovell: at the beginning I just did like literally everything. Um, cause I

Nathan Barry: didn't give you enough budget to do more than that.

I was like, I don't know, can we start this with a few thousand dollars a month?

Marissa Lovell: Well, I was also just like, I don't know. I didn't really understand what needed to be done, you know, um, it was kind of just like getting the rhythm of writing that much on a regular basis. Um, and then the first person I hired was a social media person, um, which was good.

And then that has, then I was like, you know, I'm, it's like taking a lot, like, I'm, I was like waking up at like, to finish newsletters and then send them.

Nathan Barry: That were supposed to go out that day. Which I know is

Marissa Lovell: like, other newsletter operators can relate, but it's not fun. And [00:17:00] it gets old really quickly. Then I started working with some other writers, so, which I still do.

So I have, um, like three pretty regular writers, um, and this year actually I've used them more than ever. So I'm pretty much writing like one story a month, and then they each write one, and And so like, there's my stories, it's really nice. Um, and then on the podcast, like, I just read those stories. So I say who wrote it, but like, I read it.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. And the team is so interesting because it's so much content that has to be produced. You know, minimum, you're looking at a long form article every Tuesday, you know, a, a long series of short things every Thursday and then the social media content. And that's just to keep up, you know, now it's like, okay, well, what are you creating to grow?

We've done different guides over time and all of that.

Marissa Lovell: It's like whenever I focus my energy into one part of it, like, I'm like, okay, I'm two months ahead in stories. And then it's like, crap, I don't have [00:18:00] any sponsors though. Right. Or like, you know, what are we doing for the social media part of it though?

Or like, now I don't have anything running for, to like get more subscribers. And, um, there's never been a time where all, it's like all systems are going and I'm like, yes. Yeah. This is good. Like it always seems like I'm like, Oh my God. Okay. Now I need to like focus over here.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Jumping between the different things.

That makes sense. So what have you noticed that's different in like how you were selling before what you were doing was didn't work very well for the large brands, like, um, you know, the local ski resort, right. Or. Uh, the insurance company or like these, these giant brands, how has it worked since you've made tweaks and sort of found that middle ground?

Marissa Lovell: I think that like, it's just allowed me to work with more businesses, which honestly has kind of been an experiment. Like there's some that I've worked with that I'm like, this is not like in hindsight, I should have just said like, this is not the best fit. I think it's just like being flexible with [00:19:00] that.

Like, price point and really hearing like what people's goals are is has been like more impactful.

Nathan Barry: So really before you were leading with this is what we can offer and now you lead with what are your goals and what are you trying to accomplish? And then, you're not hiding what you can offer. But you're finding the right time to bring that into the conversation.

But going to a local newsletter, like the ability to actually drive real humans to get on their bicycles or in their cars and to show up to an actual event, I think is just the coolest thing. Because I spend all my time in the digital world. And we tend to think about things in terms of, Uh, subscriber counts, and then we might look at what are the email addresses behind it, but it's just like, it's so disconnected.

And so to, to run things and say like, Oh yeah, I got 50 people to show up physically to the space. Yeah. I think it's just, it's crazy.

Marissa Lovell: I [00:20:00] will say something about that. That I would suggest to people. That's something that I did that I didn't realize was a good thing in hindsight. Was make the newsletter from me.

It comes from Marissa App from Boise.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. You're not hiding behind a brand.

Marissa Lovell: No.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Like, but I. It was, that was the thing. Like I was like, I don't. You know, this, I was like, I don't want anyone to who I am. I don't know why I just like

Nathan Barry: three years later, how do you feel about that?

Marissa Lovell: I still don't really want, like, I just, I think that what it is is like, it's not about me.

I don't want to, I'm, I don't see myself as an influencer, even though it totally has become this thing, but I decided to just do it because I was like, whatever people can, like, it's just a first name. Like, I don't have to, I don't have to like do anything with that. But what's funny about that is people. I mean, people think they know me.

And in a way, they do. Like, because it is just like, I'm very myself.

Nathan Barry: I think there's something in the, the type of fame, which is an interesting conversation for creators. Mm hmm. [00:21:00] Because on one hand, we're, we're trying to become much better known.

Marissa Lovell: Mm hmm.

Nathan Barry: You know, we're trying to build an audience and that requires people knowing you.

And then, there's also this fear of like, oh, what if this tips over at a certain point? Mm hmm. And you can't reel it back. You know, the, the child actor who becomes super famous and their life is entirely different or that sort of thing. One thing that I've noticed is the difference between like, writers and YouTubers, where I've watched a lot of writers be able to attend a conference and people, they've sold tens of millions of copies of their books and people don't actually know what they look like.

And then I've seen YouTubers like at Craft and Commerce, you know, Casey Neistat be mobbed before he even. Like, he, it's the Boise Airport. And like, he's trying to get to his car and people are like, Casey, you know

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And so, there's something really interesting in, in the, the mediums that you have chosen allow you to reach and influence really a lot of people.

And [00:22:00] someone has to really know you to like, stop you at the local restaurant and be like, I love the newsletter. Because your face is not on the newsletter. And, you know,

Marissa Lovell: I've like put, I have put like picture in there before, but it's not like people, I mean, you wouldn't. Are

Nathan Barry: there even photos on the about page?

No. Okay. I don't even have

Marissa Lovell: an about page.

Nathan Barry: There used to be an about page at one point.

Marissa Lovell: Um, I should have one up, but no. I mean. There's not. I mean, and like, I, you know, there's times where I've like made an appearance on the Instagram page or something, but I've never done the video where it's like, you know, me going into this place.

Like it's never,

Nathan Barry: it's not the traditional influencer stuff. No. And I think there's two sides of that that are interesting to me. One is the Like, your relationship with the audience. You know, of how much you want to be front and center. Stopped in the street with your kids. That sort of thing. But then the other is how it I feel like it kind of shapes the relationship with [00:23:00] the audience in an interesting way.

It makes it more easy for, like, me as a community member to feel a part of it, instead of like, Oh, this is the Marissa show.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: It's like, oh, no, this is what we collectively do as citizens of Boise. And Marissa just happens to be the person who, like, Is the conduit for it. Yeah,

Marissa Lovell: yeah, for sure. Which is, I didn't really realize that that's what I was going for.

I was more so being like, I don't want to be, I don't want anyone else. Just like being like, bashful. It started out of fear and ended in a great place. Yeah, basically, basically, yeah.

Nathan Barry: Was there anything else? Going back to Craft and Commerce.

Marissa Lovell: Mm hmm.

Nathan Barry: It felt like it was such an important time for you as you learned.

I think what I'm noticing is not just tactics, but also it felt like you came out of it with this. Like, I don't know, it's not quite renewed purpose, understanding, confidence, maybe? Like, just being around creators who were not the biggest names. But it was like, you know, [00:24:00] I don't know. Is it like seeing the entire middle class of the creator economy?

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. It like really validated it. That it was like something real, you know, because, um, you know, you see like the people who have, who have it figured out. Right. Um,

Nathan Barry: I just made a million dollars doing this or whatever. And it's like,

Marissa Lovell: okay.

Nathan Barry: Or someone who said like,

I

tried for so long to make this a full time living and I couldn't like, we get the two extremes, you know, or like, I feel like the news wants to run stories of being like.

You know, failed influencers can no longer pay rent, you know, and it's just like,

Marissa Lovell: like you get like, you get fed the like two opposite ends of the spectrum all the time. I think like the willingness to share is also really cool with, with creators. Like people are like, Oh yeah, this is how I did it.

Nathan Barry: Um, yeah, everyone's, everyone's an open book.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. It's really cool.

Nathan Barry: Let's talk, go back to the money side a little bit. Because there's, there's a lot of things that you've tried that either felt like the next new thing and [00:25:00] maybe this will be the, the breakthrough and then they've worked moderately well, or you've scaled it back, talk through like the membership or the swag or some of the other things.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. So I did, uh, I tried. Membership paid community. I don't even know what you'd call it, but it's called BFFs and it was a group. I had a lot of people asking me like, how do you meet people? How do I meet people? And I was like, well, I should just get people together. There's all these people that want to meet people.

Um, and it was really great at first. Like I had like a hundred people sign up. Um, I offered it at 9 a month or 99 a year. And we did meetups like we, So, um, yeah, that was the, so that was the first one and it felt like that was like it

Nathan Barry: peaks there. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: And then it's kind of like, so at the beginning of the year I was just like, you know what?

We're not going to do meetups anymore. I don't really know what this group's going to become. And I had about 16 people cancel and everyone else was [00:26:00] like, it's, I just want to support you. Yeah. So I still have people paying every month that are like technically BFF.

Nathan Barry: Did you think about like other, other ways, other things to offer in that membership?

Cause I think a lot of people go to like, Oh, there's going to be a members only section of the newsletter or. Tuesdays are free, Thursdays are paid.

Marissa Lovell: And

Nathan Barry: we've talked a lot about not wanting to limit access to the content. Because that's such a key thing.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah, I've thought about that. And I did have actually have a secret section in the newsletter.

BFF only section. But I couldn't, like, it got to the point where I was like, what do I put in here? Like, it's, why would I only tell them something and not everyone else? Like, it just didn't seem, I don't know. It just didn't really, it felt like, again, like, one more thing for me to try to like, Figure out and do.

And, um, that wasn't really worth it in like, I hate to make it like a monetary thing, but it was like,

Nathan Barry: yeah, we're running a business.

Marissa Lovell: And so it was like the time I'm spending on this is [00:27:00] not like computing.

Nathan Barry: I think that the other side that we would assume would work really well as the merch sales.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Right.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. So I did merge I've done, uh, Two different rounds of merch and it just is so much more complicated than you think it's gonna be like I was like I'm gonna make a shirt and sell it and it's like you got to figure out like a place to sell it Where are you gonna print it order it get someone to design it?

I think I sold 80 shirts and was like, okay cool It's it was just like a lot of time And then, you know, offering shipping, because I have readers that don't live here.

Nathan Barry: Okay, let's talk about that, because that was actually surprising to me. Oh

Marissa Lovell: yeah, we have a lot of readers

Nathan Barry: that don't live here. A substantial number.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: What are like the top three or four reasons that someone reads regularly and they don't live here?

Marissa Lovell: Um, they used to live here. And they just like want to keep, they can't believe how much it's growing. And, or they like know the history stories and they, yeah, but they, they used to live here. Okay. They have family that lives here, family or [00:28:00] friends and they want to come visit or they want to move here.

Like, I had someone sign up yesterday. She was like, I'm just researching Boise and I really want to move there. So, I'm like, reading everything you've ever written right now and I want to move there.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, that's what, it surprised me. I think it was a substantial portion, something like 35 40 percent of readers don't actually currently reside in the greater Boise area.

Marissa Lovell: But yeah, it's a lot of people. Like a lot of people.

Nathan Barry: So then really as we talk revenue going forward, and actually I wanna jump up on the whiteboard. Mm-Hmm. in just a second and dive into like, let's talk about, you know, the future of Mm-Hmm. from Boise over the next five years or three years. Mm-Hmm.

Whatever time period we wanna pick. But it sounds like sponsorships are the thing that are working the best. And as you, you look at it. you know, that's going to continue to be 80, 90 percent of the revenue.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. It still takes a lot of time. So I would like to figure out how that could just like be a little, I don't know, easy, I want to say like easier, but like,

Nathan Barry: yeah, a better system [00:29:00] for it.

Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: A better system for it. And, um, so that maybe I could spend time doing like these bigger brand deals. And I would also like to sell something directly to my audience. That's valuable to them. And I have an idea for it, like I think that I know, but I, I do think that maybe I should like talk to some of my audience to like run the idea by them once it's a little more fleshed out.

But I think that I could come up with a product that people want to buy too, a digital product that I don't have to ship.

Nathan Barry: Well, let's jump up and grab some markers and plan this out of what the next, I don't know, pick a time frame. Three years? Looks like. Yeah. Okay.

Marissa Lovell: That sounds good.

Nathan Barry: Okay. So something that you said earlier is what would make this fun.

It is fun. Yeah. Like we're having fun in this competition. It's fun. You're obviously having fun building the business. Yeah. But what would make it way more fun is making substantially more money. Yeah. And not just for your take home, like that's really important. Yeah. But also to be able to invest in [00:30:00] the team and all of those things.

So tell me again, what was the number of revenue in 2023? Okay.

Marissa Lovell: 2023 revenue is 87, 000.

Nathan Barry: What sounds interesting? You know, if we're looking three years from now, it's gonna say 2026, what would be like, I can't believe I'm running this business and it's grown to this level?

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Well, I was going to say, I want to hit six figures, but I was so close.

Yeah.

Nathan Barry: That's very close. I

Marissa Lovell: would love to be making like 500, 000 would be, I would be like,

Nathan Barry: I mean, that's a legit business. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Totally.

Marissa Lovell: That's like, I could, I'd have a team.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. I wouldn't

Marissa Lovell: do it all.

Nathan Barry: I like that. Okay. So in three years, uh, 500, 000.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: We'll say 2027.

Marissa Lovell: 2027. Cause we're like halfway dude.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: 2024. And I feel like I'm a little behind.

Nathan Barry: You're also building systems so that you can take a parental leave and all of this. Yeah. I've been

Marissa Lovell: doing, I've actually been doing a lot of systems [00:31:00] work

Nathan Barry: this year. That's awesome. It's, it's good. So as we go through some numbers here. We've got 22, 000 subscribers now.

And so we're making, let's go easy numbers, let's say 4 per subscriber per year. That's like directionally correct. So if we're looking to hit 500,

Marissa Lovell: 000,

Nathan Barry: this is sort of the equation that we're playing with, right? We need to either, well, you know, 6X the number of subscribers. Or, we need to 6X our revenue per subscriber.

Uh, in reality, it's going to be a combination of both. So when you think about this, this is like subscriber growth versus, uh, I'm going to use the, the industry term of ARPU, which is average revenue per user. So, uh, we'll just say. Uh, list growth, [00:32:00] uh, so those ideas will go here and then,

uh, our increasing average revenue per user ideas will go there. Let's brainstorm list growth right now. We've actually stayed at about 22, 000 subscribers for a while because it's really been about systems and that focus. I haven't really

Marissa Lovell: been, uh, I haven't really done much to grow the list, honestly. Um, until recently.

Recently I started writing a new ad. I kind of like, wasn't really running ads or I would run one. And, um, but it's, it's like a classic thing of like, just keep it simple.

Nathan Barry: Right.

Marissa Lovell: Um, so the ad I have running now is super simple. Yep. Um, and it's great. It's like working a lot. Um, I'm also on the creator network that definitely brings in subscribers.

Um, you know, the people I'm partnered with on there are like other local, like people [00:33:00] locally who have newsletters, not necessarily local newsletters. Um, so that I'm just about to, I just kind of finished up our referral program. So that should help because honestly, we have a lot of word of mouth, but like making it easy for people to do word of mouth.

You know, there's a lot of businesses who like I want to work with or want to work with us that maybe don't have the budget to advertise, but would maybe give something to do like a giveaway. And I would, I want to experiment a little bit with like giveaways in the, like, you know, subscriber, get people to subscribe giveaways in the newsletter.

Nathan Barry: So something. A broad idea that fits within these is how do we get good at translating going from social media followers to newsletter subscribers? Because social media has a discovery algorithm.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Email does not.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And that's like both email's greatest gift and fatal flaw simultaneously.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. I think I should be using some sort of like, [00:34:00] um, right message or whatever it is to like, you know, comment, subscribe, and we'll send you today's newsletter, something like that.

I think I should be doing that.

Nathan Barry: Okay. Yeah. So that's, um, uh, We'll just say comment to subscribe.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: So getting that dialed in one thing. So most of these subscribers, at least we should look at the cohort data on this. Most of the initial growth from subscribers came from paid ads where we actually invested quite a bit in paid ads.

And then we had this pivot with like 2021, 2022, where I was like, okay, now let's run it profitably. Um, and then we really scaled back the ads.

Marissa Lovell: I also wanted to see like, what happens if I do nothing, like what is the growth look like then?

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Um, it's the

natural momentum. Yeah. Of this.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: What did you find?

Marissa Lovell: Um, it definitely like, you know,

Nathan Barry: ebbs and flows. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Um, [00:35:00] but I always kind of like stayed on top, but it was really small. Like it would be like, you know, net like four subscribers a month. Right. Right. Right. Um, but it was interesting to see like, what happens if I do nothing.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Like what's the baseline.

Um, but definitely the paid ads has been like

Nathan Barry: the biggest. Yeah. So then why don't you write down on, if we're increasing average revenue per user or the total revenue, what are some of the things that you can think about that would do that?

Marissa Lovell: Can, can you like explain this a little bit more? Like, is this like charging your sponsors more when you have more subscribers?

I'm like, what does that, what does that mean?

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So this is really. In a subscription business, we'd be thinking about who's paying 10 a month versus who's paying 20 a month. How do we get more of the 10 people to become 20? It's more of that kind of thing. Here we're using it as an approximation for this math of basically, we've got, [00:36:00] this is the equation of Um, we can find ways to make more money off of each person.

Let's say, uh, what do you put on, on the list is charging sponsors more or sponsors who pay more. Why don't you write that one down? You know, the same size list might result in even more, um, but it's going to result in more revenue. Right.

Marissa Lovell: I think direct selling something directly to the audience,

Nathan Barry: like, Oh, it's a, a, it's Yep.

Marissa Lovell: So would you write like product?

Nathan Barry: Uh, yeah. I would just say, um, yeah, selling products. Also from what you were talking about earlier, there's something to the asking for donations that. Yeah. you know, like an actual process for that. Not just, Hey, we do it once a year. Um, you could just say like increased donations.

Marissa Lovell: Cause that has worked for other newsletters. Yeah. Like really well local newsletters.

Nathan Barry: One thing. Yeah. Let's continue. If there are any other ideas on [00:37:00] increasing average revenue per subscriber, I

Marissa Lovell: don't know if this would go there, but I've thought about like affiliate things. I mean, my Thursday newsletter has like, Over a hundred links in it, probably.

Like, and I don't make money from any of them.

Nathan Barry: Is that, yeah. So on one hand, it's a great opportunity to make more money. On the other hand, does that change the feeling of it?

Marissa Lovell: I know. I think about that all the time. I think about it all the time. It's also, I've been kind of like hesitant to have non local sponsors.

Nathan Barry: Right.

Marissa Lovell: Even though like, Justin, Kinda like pushed back on that with me and was, he was like, just be like, are your national businesses

Nathan Barry: wanna reach customers everywhere? Yeah. Well,

Marissa Lovell: and he was like, are you, do you only exclusively use Boise products? ? And I was like, no, . Like, he's like, you know, people in Boise like use things that aren't from Boise, not to,

Nathan Barry: so that hopefully

Marissa Lovell: the brand name , [00:38:00]

Nathan Barry: you know, we said sponsors should pay more, but there, there's a, a.

another one in there that you're getting at, which is basically like, is it national sponsors? Is that the Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: And I think kind of like brand deals versus just like an ad.

Nathan Barry: Like

Marissa Lovell: there's a difference between those

Nathan Barry: two

Marissa Lovell: things.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Why did you say national brand deals? Now, something that I'm thinking about here, and we'll continue to write down things in both categories.

I'm thinking about the 90 10 split that you have right now. There is going to be a tendency that we have of like, how do we get to these? How do we get sponsorships to 40 percent direct product sales to 40 percent we'll use actual numbers, say 200, 000 in sponsorships, 200,

Marissa Lovell: 000

Nathan Barry: direct product sales, 50 in donations and 50 and other.

My gut feeling, I don't know what you think. My gut feeling is that actually the 90 10 might be the right split. Maybe it goes to 80 20. But that [00:39:00] we're actually not going to have a like a whole suite of things that get us there. It's probably going to be pretty dominated by sponsorships.

Marissa Lovell: I think so, for sure.

Especially because, I mean, Boise is like small, it's still a small city. And there's only so many places to advertise. And like the way that I'm doing it is different. It's a different offer to businesses.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, it's fully attributable. For sure. What is that word? Attributable.

Marissa Lovell: Mm hmm.

Nathan Barry: Attributable?

Attributable. Attributable. That's a way to pronounce it. It's fully attributable. You know, you can see how many people clicked this. Yeah. Uh, which is both a blessing and a curse, right? Because on one hand, someone's like, well, did I get the exact clicks to track through to the sales? Right. And it's like, yeah.

You spend money as a brand all the time on things where you're like, ah, it just goes into good vibes. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Totally. But that is really hard. But this

Nathan Barry: one in particular, you want to measure a direct revenue.

Marissa Lovell: But there's also just like, you know, with like events, it's like you can be, you can take out a [00:40:00] billboard, radio, newspaper.

Nathan Barry: Oh, as I'm looking at the, the list on increasing revenue per subscriber, I'm like,

Marissa Lovell: yeah, that's

Nathan Barry: There's some of these things that you should do of like figure out, okay, this is our system for donations. Here are the four times a year, you know, that we ask for, here's how we always do it. You know, it's in this dedicated, it's email three of the welcome sequence that you get, you know, or I'm trying to think if we could do this in, uh, in kit, but you know, if you could do a like anniversary email of when you joined as a subscriber.

Right. So there's probably some systems things that we could do to improve that.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: But we should put the five hours into doing that, automate it and not touch it again. Because we're, we're going to get, maybe we double the donations per subscriber, but that, you know, it takes us from 4 to 425,

Marissa Lovell: you know,

Nathan Barry: like it's not going to be a lot.

Uh

Marissa Lovell: huh. [00:41:00]

Nathan Barry: Selling products. I think could be. It could be big, but I don't think it'll, I don't think it'll get beyond a hundred K. Mm

Marissa Lovell: hmm.

Nathan Barry: I mean, that'd be amazing.

Marissa Lovell: That would be amazing.

Nathan Barry: Even getting to a hundred K.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Because I think that the product idea I have can feed the other content things, which frees up my time.

Right. Yeah. Which it's like, and it would be, it's amazing to make a hundred K off of that.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. But I do think that 9010. Let's say we get to an 80 20 split. Um, and so that sponsors

Marissa Lovell: Sponsors the 80

Nathan Barry: products

Marissa Lovell: as the 20.

Nathan Barry: I'm not really sure why I'm writing regular case here and all caps here, but we're rolling with it.

This is

Marissa Lovell: what we're doing. It's cool.

Nathan Barry: So long as we keep the trend going. Okay, so I don't, neither of us think we're going to have, like, [00:42:00] an even split everywhere. So sponsors are going to be the big focus. One thing that I'm wondering is, what makes someone decide that the price that you're charging for sponsorships is the right amount to pay?

Like, how big of a factor is like the suite of touchpoints they're getting versus the number of subscribers they're reaching? Mm

Marissa Lovell: hmm. I think it's Both of those, but it also depends on the business. Um, there are some that are very, like, I only want, I, I'm not interested in the podcast. Like I just want to be, they want to like see it and have it, um, be very like clickable.

Um, you know, something like that. The, those are also usually ones that want to add on like Instagram real,

Nathan Barry: right? They're

Marissa Lovell: like, it's like a visual mentality.

Nathan Barry: Um, I'm just thinking on this. There's some, I don't know which column it goes in, but it's growing other channels. So maybe let's put it, let's put it here of, [00:43:00] you know, growing podcasts and social.

So if we grow both the podcast and social, then we're getting more touch points with every subscriber and that's more that we can sell to each sponsor. So I'm thinking about that balance of how much we focus on growing the total subscriber base. versus, you know, getting each subscriber on every touch point.

And then also, you know, how you think about how easy it is to sell sponsors,

Marissa Lovell: right?

Nathan Barry: That's another thing. So there's a lot of things that we can focus on here, but let's, let's focus on the balance, right? 22, 000 subscribers. Uh, Instagram, you said it was about. It's 24,

Marissa Lovell: 500, but like, I want more newsletter subscribers than anything else.

Nathan Barry: So that's where. We should put some time into like the giveaways and the comments. Subscribe.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Cause we actually don't know, there's not a good way to know what percentage of social followers actually read the newsletter. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: And I think that like I don't ever really do [00:44:00] social content that is like Hey, this is actually is, you know, I think that there's, I would say, Oh, there's a large portion of this social following.

That's like, it's just an Instagram page, even though it says it everywhere.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So make that, make that a lot more clear.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And then what I'm thinking about is the overlap between, and I'm going to make this up cause we don't know the numbers, but let's say that the, the newsletter. is, you know, 22, 000, the, the podcast or sorry, the, the social is about the same size.

We don't know what this overlap is. And then here we've got, you know, the, say the podcast overlapping a little bit there.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Right. And so there's something to be said for making sure that like on the newsletter, let's go social, right. That we're getting these people there and these people here for sure.

We can get good at that.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: And so, so that's giveaway, [00:45:00] that's, that's here because I think primarily two things I would implement. One is a casual mention. Did you know we have an Instagram as well?

Marissa Lovell: Mm-Hmm. .

Nathan Barry: And promote. Maybe there's a, the best thing from Instagram.

Marissa Lovell: Mm-Hmm. . But

Nathan Barry: you should work that in more subtly.

Marissa Lovell: Mm-Hmm. .

Nathan Barry: Um, maybe you feature your reel. Yeah. Each week

Marissa Lovell: I've done that. Like, Hey, if you like this coffee shop's amazing. I just went there and I'll just. link to the real,

but I

don't know if that actually makes people follow.

Nathan Barry: Right.

Marissa Lovell: Because honest and

Nathan Barry: try

Marissa Lovell: and see,

Nathan Barry: cause you can test this unscientifically where you can, you can see, Hey, we had 24, 000 on Instagram.

And then I put in a direct, Hey, we have an Instagram. You should go subscribe. Did you get 50 new followers or did you get 200? And so, cause that's worth it. Totally. You should get that extra touch point, right? The number of times that. You know, if the inbox is both the inbox and Instagram are busy.

Marissa Lovell: Mm hmm [00:46:00]

Nathan Barry: And so you might catch me in one hook me with it like an Instagram about the story and then I go find it in My inbox.

Yeah Or vice versa so having both

Marissa Lovell: uh huh

Nathan Barry: and then really getting good at the social to newsletter

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: I think I don't

Marissa Lovell: really, I mean, like, I think that that's a huge one because I like right now I'm like, you know, read it in the newsletter. Like here's, I make a reel about the story and it's like, read it in the newsletter.

But it's not easy for people to do that. Like the easiest way to do that is to just. Comment, like, read. Right. And I'll send you the newsletter.

Nathan Barry: Yep. Yeah. Using MiniChat or these other tools for it. Okay. We've got some good, good action items there.

Marissa Lovell: Mm-Hmm. .

Nathan Barry: Let's talk a little bit about sponsors and then let's go into products.

Okay. Because I think you have a lot of energy towards

Marissa Lovell: Mm-Hmm. ,

Nathan Barry: uh, some digital, both of those things. Yeah, because

Marissa Lovell: I just want, like, I was just like, the income, the revenue needs to be like much more consistent. Right. It's very like. all over the place.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So Tim [00:47:00] Ferriss has this question of what would it look like if it were easy?

And so maybe let's just dive into that. If we think about sponsorships, uh, what would it look like if that was easy? If

Marissa Lovell: that was easy. Um, they're inbound, like right now I'm doing a lot of cold outbound outreach, right? Not even necessarily cold, but it would be inbound. Um, and there would be very, there's very clear spaces that are just booked out.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: But it's like, there's two spaces in the newsletter, there's two spaces in the podcast and they're booked out and maybe like formatting thing for them, you know, like it's four sentences and it would be easy. That would be easy from a copywriting perspective.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So they provide copy. I'm going to just add that in the same.

There's one that I think is missing from this. What if you didn't do it and not what if you didn't collectively do sponsorships? [00:48:00] Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: But what if you,

Marissa Lovell: yeah,

Nathan Barry: didn't do sponsorship with that,

Marissa Lovell: that would make it a lot

Nathan Barry: easier. Right. And so here we're operating in solopreneur numbers, right? This is you can earn a full time living off of that, all of that.

This is team numbers, right? Right. And so hiring someone who. Sponsorships is their thing.

Marissa Lovell: Yes.

Nathan Barry: Now this is hard to do. You've tried to do aspects of it before, like what's worked and what hasn't worked in bringing in people to help with sponsorships.

Marissa Lovell: It would be amazing to have a person who actually does sales.

I am not a salesperson.

Nathan Barry: I think as we're looking at the level of scale that we're trying to reach, you have to get to this point. And if I were to give you one problem to obsess over after this, it would be to learn from who has effectively built a sales team, how it could be a single person, right? [00:49:00] But and how have they owned that?

Because I think that that's going to be like, ultimately. Give you the revenue and still keep you the, the headspace to be able to focus on the other aspects of it.

Marissa Lovell: Mm hmm. Okay. So question about that, because I would imagine somebody else watching this. It feels the same way. If you don't feel like you have enough money to hire a sales team, how do, like, how do you get, how do you sell enough sponsorships to hire a sales team to sell enough sponsorships?

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So if someone's really early, let's say that we're at 5, 000 subscribers and you're like, I'm going to bring in a sales team. You don't have enough inventory to sell, uh, for it to be worth someone's time. Because that's where it's like someone could sell out the entire newsletter and that's just they can only sell it at a couple hundred bucks per issue.

There's not enough money for any of this to work. What a really interesting point with the number of subscribers here where there is enough to [00:50:00] sell, especially as we get into this additional inventory, right? Growing podcasts and social. So we've got enough to sell to keep someone busy. And so the way that you do it is you have a sales team that operates on base plus commission.

Now you can do it. In some cases you can do commission only. But sometimes to get the commitment from someone, you can say, Hey, I'm going to offer you this base salary, especially if it's like, Hey, help, help me get the sales material over the top, like over the finish line. And so you do some very heavy commission sales, which is going to cut into your margin a lot.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. But it's going to

Nathan Barry: flip it out and make it easy for

Marissa Lovell: me.

Nathan Barry: And so that's where you're going to look at the base plus commission. And so maybe it's something like, Hey, I will pay you, um, 1, 000 a month plus 40 percent of whatever you sell. You know, I don't, I don't know what the numbers are. We should ask around in the industry and find out.

but that's [00:51:00] the way that, uh, that I would structure it. And then you're going to have to spend your time making sure they're set up for success and then really thinking about, okay, how do we grow the inventory of things that they can sell? Right. How do we grow, make it so instead of selling 500, let's say 500 sponsorships, we're selling 2, 000 sponsorships for a newsletter.

Okay. So. If we're driving this number, first let's think about audience size. Is it realistic to 5X this number, to get to a hundred and ten thousand subscribers on the newsletter? Do we even addressable market?

Marissa Lovell: I think so. Especially by 2027.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, we have the, the population growth that I know. Will either of us be able to afford to live here in Boise or a different question?

This is actually just friends.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah, no kidding. But I do think that that, I mean, that would be [00:52:00] crazy. Like really what's the population of Boise 300, 000 or something.

Nathan Barry: Right. But the treasure is 700. Yeah, which

Marissa Lovell: I, like, like we talked about, I have readers outside of Boise, but also like. Like, outside of Idaho, but also just in Nampa, Payette, Sun Valley, like, I do think that's possible.

Nathan Barry: So, getting to, I have, I guess I 6X'd it, but that's relative to, um, to those numbers. Um, so we think we can get there, especially if we keep the same ratio of, say, 60 percent local, 40%. Um, then in that case, you know, we're talking basically, if there's a million people in The valley and the surrounding area.

Marissa Lovell: Mm-Hmm. .

Nathan Barry: Um, I think we get to those numbers.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah, I think so too.

Nathan Barry: I think that paid ads are gonna be paid ads, really work.

Marissa Lovell: I also think that there's something, this is um, something that I started thinking about after listening to, [00:53:00] um, Bonnie's podcast. Mm-Hmm. and Amy Porterfield's podcast quiz. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: So Bonnie Christine quizzes and Amy Porterfield.

Marissa Lovell: They do

Nathan Barry: quizzes. Quizzes, yeah.

Marissa Lovell: And like. I think that that would work local, like if you make it local.

Nathan Barry: So if you're going to like awareness, conversion, um, you know, giveaways, giveaways can be awareness, but they're, you know, all three of these tend to be conversion points, whereas these are more awareness points.

Um, that's, that's good. So I think, I think it's time for. from Boise as a business to really focus on subscriber growth. Like we sort of plateaued for a while. And I think the goal should be how do we double the readers are from Boise in the next 12

Marissa Lovell: months?

Nathan Barry: How do we get a 44, 000 free subscribers? And the way, the biggest way we got here, great content and paid [00:54:00] ads.

Great content is now the table stakes. And so paid ads is where we're going. And so it's really, What are the ads that we're running right now?

Marissa Lovell: It's, I just have one ad that's, it's on Facebook and

Nathan Barry: Instagram.

Marissa Lovell: It's, um, like a video of the balloons over Boise, the hot air balloons in September. People will know what it, like it's recognizable.

And it just says the newsletter that sends a huge list of things to do every Thursday. And it has like the sign up. That's all it says.

Nathan Barry: Do you know what it, what it costs per subscriber right now?

Marissa Lovell: I don't, I just started running at the beginning of the month.

Nathan Barry: Okay. So that's the thing of building the system for producing new ads, uh, all of that.

It's going to be, you know, like, uh, when I was more involved, we were spending time like we had the agency running the ads and they got good results, but the, um, The creative is never very good.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. [00:55:00]

Nathan Barry: Like it didn't feel authentic. It didn't feel

Marissa Lovell: local. Yeah. Um,

Nathan Barry: so if we're thinking about the, the ad side, like that's the system that we're really going to need to improve.

And so it's probably a few, well, if we break it out into awareness and conversion, right. If we imagine a lot of this is going to be social content. And so these are our reels, we're going to be testing a bunch of different reels here. And then We're going to have different, uh, offers down here, right, that we might be sending content to.

This is the gift guide. This is the, one's going to be the straight subscription, right? Our offer is like, we send good stuff,

Marissa Lovell: you

Nathan Barry: know, one might be a roundup of our 10 best stories. And then, so you need a process for probably having three to four of these and then 10 to 20.

Marissa Lovell: So like three to four kind of

Nathan Barry: lead magnets,

Marissa Lovell: lead [00:56:00] magnets that are all to like the end of that funnel is to subscribe and 10 to 20 like reels that promote them.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. So we're going awareness conversion. And

Marissa Lovell: would you add in like. I'm thinking about with this, like, I've been listening to a lot of Amy Porterfield's podcast and she talks about her own stuff constantly, like constantly, every episode she's talking about her own stuff. I never talk about my own stuff ever, like, um, besides the fact that I'm like reading the newsletter, but that's it.

So would you add that into it too? Like, am I talking about these lead magnets also on the podcast? I think

Nathan Barry: so.

Marissa Lovell: Okay.

Nathan Barry: I would, I would talk about it everywhere. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: Okay.

Nathan Barry: And then I would have a series of call to actions that you rotate through in the newsletter of, you know, if we're talking about a referral program or even simpler than that, just word of mouth.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Hey, could you do me a huge favor this week? Send this newsletter to two people who [00:57:00] you think would enjoy it, you know,

Marissa Lovell: um,

Nathan Barry: yeah. And that, like those little things can make a big difference. But if we're talking about, you know, this, like, how do we double it in the next year? Um, you know, five X in three and a half years, then it's really like, we have to get so good at paid ads.

Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: I think it's paid ads and this, like taking this,

Nathan Barry: because you can, uh, if you're running reels that say comment to subscribe.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Barry: then that can be, that can work really, really well.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. And even like, cause like I have some reels that are like a couple months old and they're still getting engagement.

Like they're at, you know, the reach is like 50, 000 accounts now.

Nathan Barry: And I would try on these reels, like if you have one that works, like the hook worked it

Marissa Lovell: and all

Nathan Barry: of that, try making a different version of it that has a different call to action.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah.

Nathan Barry: Right. So maybe there was one, go back to the top five that you did in the past.

That did really well. Try to [00:58:00] reverse engineer what worked and then put in, you know, before it was like, you might've said to go to from Boise. com for whatever. And here you're like, comment this and I will send you. Yeah.

Marissa Lovell: I haven't, I like can already see this. One of the most, seriously, one of the most popular reels is it was a story that I did about how downtown Boise was almost a mall and they almost built a mall like where all of eighth street is.

Can you imagine? Like, um, yeah. And, um, People are also pissed about the fact that that didn't happen, which is hilarious now. Um, but I was just like, read the story. Right. And the real is just literally a bunch of old pictures of downtown Boise from like the, like between like the fifties and the seventies.

And it just says like downtown Boise, like 1950 to 70, that's all it is. And then the captions, like, that's so easy. Like you just, you can do the green belt. And then it's like, you know, for more Boise history stories. Like this is what I talk about. Right. I talk about Boise history constantly.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. I think, I [00:59:00] think that would work really well.

Marissa Lovell: Okay.

Nathan Barry: Okay. We have a lot of things on here. One of the things, one of the big mistakes I see creators make is they try to tackle too many things at once. So I'm realizing actually that we haven't gotten into selling products yet. We're going to do for the selling products. We're going to do inside the creator flywheels course.

We're going to talk about the flywheels and all that inside products. So that'll be just for the members of the course. We'll get into that in a second, but for this, what are the two or three things that you want to really work on? Like coming out of this conversation,

Marissa Lovell: um, definitely having like a, um, like a strategy and a process for the ads, paid ads that I would say like includes lead magnets.

Yeah. Um, and the get implementing this, um, also just cause it's hot right now and it [01:00:00] works, it works, it

Nathan Barry: works really well.

Marissa Lovell: And making sponsorships easy.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely that because like

Marissa Lovell: this doesn't like, it's like growing your audience is great, but if you're not really making money off of it, then it's impossible to keep doing this.

Yeah. That's part

Nathan Barry: of the flywheel. Right. So we're, we're basically saying if we were to map this out at a very high level, we're taking the revenue that we're making from sponsorships and we're reinvesting that into ads. And that. Uh, it gets, makes the audience bigger,

Marissa Lovell: which

Nathan Barry: then gives us more to sell, which gives us more revenue from sponsorships.

It's hard. I don't want to like downplay any of this. This is a big undertaking, but it's not harder than getting to these numbers, you know, and getting the content backlog and all of that,

Marissa Lovell: that

Nathan Barry: you have so well.

Marissa Lovell: Um,

Nathan Barry: probably one other thing that I would say, I said, choose three, I'm going to add a fourth.

It's probably downstream from that a little bit is just make sure that we do this, um, [01:01:00] like this overlap between the podcast and social and, and just think about, okay, what's my system for doing that? How do I make sure?

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. You know, something I've never really done with the podcast is like, Uh, some sort of reason for a listener to give me their email address, like, you know, like

Nathan Barry: these could be,

Marissa Lovell: yeah, it's even, it's even like, you know, I have the content written like I'm going to tell you about these, like five, like one we just did is five iconic Boise foods.

Like put your email in and I'll send you like the list and the address and the photo of whatever I was just talking about. It's like so easy. Yeah. I already have it.

Nathan Barry: Yes. One other thing that I really encourage you to, but be careful not to do is to create too many lead magnets because that's where you can get caught up into like, Oh, and then I can create this.

And then I create that. And if you think about the effort versus impact, there can be a lot of effort into making these. Yeah. Um, when really [01:02:00] you have, With a bit of effort, you can have enough.

Marissa Lovell: Like I

Nathan Barry: would, I would not have more than five. Um, and then really think about, okay, what awareness content can I do to drive more?

Okay. So the big things are, we're going to research and learn a lot of what it takes to build a sales team and learn about the compensation models, focus on paid ads, uh, really build out the comment and subscribe, like how that conversion works. Cause that's going to be part of the paid ads, figure out.

What's worked in the past with reels and how can we recreate that in a format that's designed for an ad for a subscription and then keep coming back to a few calls to action, you know, both here and here that will like increase that conversion. Does that sound good?

Marissa Lovell: Yeah, it sounds great. I mean, it sounds, it's good to have a plan.

Nathan Barry: Yeah, exactly. Okay, we've covered a lot. Let's, let's sit down and process this. There's a lot to work on in there. The, the next things that we [01:03:00] want to do is, uh, for everyone inside the creator flywheels course, we'll do a breakdown on a flywheel around digital products. And then otherwise there's so much great stuff to dive into here.

So Marissa, thanks so much for coming on.

Marissa Lovell: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Nathan Barry: If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search billion dollar creator. Go ahead and subscribe, make sure to like the video, and uh, drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also who else we should have on the show.