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

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

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right.
Hey everyone.
I'm here today with Andrew Keen, who is one of the only people
in the industry who has not justbuilt his own publishing and
trading business tools.
Business been a major face of apretty big franchise, actually
for one of the Agora companies.
So, andrew, you've done it alland you're of course, greatest

(00:24):
success is being the emcee atFMS.
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Greatest success.
I don't give hits for that one.
Yeah, so that's my greatestsuccess.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, I mean, I'll tell.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I mean, I'm such, you know I volunteer myself to be
the emcee because I'm such aproponent of the FMS and the
summit in.
I'll tell a little backdrop ofhow I got introduced.
So I was, I traded on thetrading floor as a market maker
at the CBOE for 10 years.
I was on CNBC, bloomberg, fox,business like every single day,

(00:56):
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 togo work for, you know, think or
swim or TD, probably at the time, or you know, option monster or
interactive brokers, and I waslike I don't want a corporate
job where I make like 200 grand.
I make 5% a year.
And this is when blogs gotreally popular.
So this is in 2011.
So I went through every financeblog on the whole internet and

(01:19):
I came across John Carter.
John knows the story too and Ibasically went into his trading
room.
I paid $199 a month to get inhis trading room and then I was
like, wow, I mean I think I'mmore entertaining than him.
I have a very big, extensivederivative background.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I think I can do exactly what he does.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
So I started asking around.
I asked Mark Sebastian, whoused to be at the Sebo with me,
and I was like, hey, how doesthis guy, john Carter, do?
And he's like he kills it, I'mlike by selling $199 live
trading room.
So I basically took the simplertrading business model of live
trading room.
We've sold over 10,000educational courses on demand
and DVD and I basically startedmy own company from my Twitter

(02:02):
was big.
At the time Instagram didn'teven exist, so my Twitter
following was my biggest and themedia.
And then I launched.
Basically it used to be calledKeen on the Market, which is a
pun, obviously and then itbranded into Alpha Shark and I
realized over time I don't likerunning a business, I don't like
employees, I don't likemanaging people.
It sucks.
And then I ran into JeanetteSims and Hubert Centers and

(02:26):
Jeanette will be there.
She was my affiliate managerand Hubert's kind of like my
mentor in the industry and Istarted working with them.
So I started doing a bunch ofwebinars and then Jeanette, me
and Jeanette like I think we inthe business world we've gotten
married and divorced like sixtimes and I just talked to her
yesterday and then basicallyshe's like you're really good,
you know your stuff, but likeyou don't know how to do web,

(02:48):
like you have to be at pitch at45 minutes.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
You just tell people, here's my ebook.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
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 thisconference, you should really
come to this conference.
I think you'll get a lot ofbenefit.
So I go to this, thisconference.
This is when, like, I don'teven 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 forSince what?

Speaker 1 (03:12):
13, 14.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Okay, probably 10 years 14, 15, 16 years, or what
year it was.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Well, dan years, or what year it was.
Well, dana was af and she wouldcome back, so you started the
conference in like 2014 orsomething okay.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
So this I think was probably like 2016, like a
couple years, and there's onlylike 40 people there.
It's like crazy.
Now there's like 500 people, itgoes 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 entirelife I've never heard of Agora,
this company called Agora.
Everybody stands up and theysay their name and who they work

(03:52):
for.
And like half the room is like Iwork for Agora.
I'm like I know I'm on thetrading 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 (04:09):
And Diana that was the year Diana wore her costume
too.
That was a bigger one.
That was actually that'sprobably 120 people, that one.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Really yeah.
So I befriend Diana.
I'm like great costume, I needto make friends.
And then basically she's likewhat do you do?
She's like, do you knowanything about cryptos?
And at the time I was decentlyinto cryptos.
And she goes I have a publisherin Baltimore, pete Coyne, and
they're looking for a new guru.
So I fly to Baltimore and meetwith Pete and within probably

(04:35):
four weeks I was signed withAgora Financial and at the time
AF had the highest revenue.
I was at AF for about a year anda half under Paradigm Press and
unfortunately, but fortunatelyfor AF I just didn't get any
bandwidth.
They signed Kurosaki and Sykesright after me and they're
bigger names than me, I get it.
So I just didn't get thebandwidth.

(04:57):
So I went over to MoneyMapPress.
So I was at AF for about a yearand a half and then I went to
Money Map Press for two and ahalf.
Like I was supposed to meetwith Mike Ward for like half an
hour.
I think I was there for likethree hours and I was there for
two and a half years.
We did a half a million dollarproduction in Philadelphia.
They rented out Tower Theater.
Jed wrote my promo.

(05:18):
My franchise did 18 millionthat year.
I think I've done close to 40million total on my brand and my
name.
And then MMP started comingapart and then I've known Aaron
DeHoop for a long time andeverybody's like you should be
at BAN.
Aaron's a great guy.
I met him before I trusted him.

(05:39):
In this industry there's peopleyou trust and don't trust.
So then I went, went over tobanyan.
I was at banyan for a year, solike I think, all encompassing.
I was at agor divisions threedifferent agor divisions for
about five years and probablydid a close to 35 or 40 million
on my franchise total um, and Inever wanted to leave anywhere,

(05:59):
like I was trying to find a home.
I just haven't ever found one.
And then, um, you know, I leftBanyan about a year ago and now
I'm just on my own.
But my whole point is the moneythat I made, the money that
Agora made, would never havebeen possible if I didn't go to
this conference and theconference.
When I try to explain it topeople, I say there's four

(06:19):
people at this conference moreor less, and they all is an
ecosystem and they need eachother.
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 andas a guru, I can't make money

(06:42):
without a copywriter.
A copywriter needs an expert,you know.
So, like we all need each otherand I always, you know, when
I'm emceeing the event, I alwayssay, you know, it's always
uncomfortable to sit with thepeople that you know, like I'll
literally I'll look at people'sname badge and then I'll go to
LinkedIn and I'll be like, oh,this guy was like really high at
Oxford.
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.

(07:02):
I just keep my name oh, I'veknown your name, you know kind
of thing.
So, like the conferencecomprises all these different
people, like, if this conferencewas every month, I would go to
it every month.
I mean because I havepersonally made millions of
dollars from this conference andAgora has made, you know,
thirty five, forty million offof me, you know, know, 35, 40

(07:28):
million off of me, you know, andit's so crazy to think that
this one conference by JeanetteSims invited me and saying, hey,
check this conference out,changed my life so much and I
basically almost like stoppedrunning my business because you
know I was doing very well withit.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Well, thanks for that pitch for the event.
No, it's not a pitch.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
I don't pitch.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
I know.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
No, I appreciate that I really do.
It's like so much money is inthis industry and the
opportunities of what you canmake.
Josh Morris, actually he wentto my high school.
He doesn't know me, he's liketwo years older than me.
I went up to him like, hey, youwent to Deerfield, he's like
you did.
I'm didn't know, maybe it'slike two years older than me.

(08:09):
I went up to him like, hey, youwent to deer field, he's like
you did.
I'm like I know your littlesister.
I do two emails for him.
I made five grand.
It's five thousand dollars.
It's great, you know, likethat's just one tiny, little
little partnership, you knowyeah, no, I love that because I
mean that was.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
I remember, when, you know, when I first had the idea
for for fms, it was essentiallylike I was working a lot in the
trader education space,especially doing affiliate
launches and stuff, and I'd comefrom working for clayton
makepiece, who was, uh, muchmore on the newsletter side as a
copywriter, um, and so I knewlike the agora world and the
weiss's and all the publishersover there, um, but like no,

(08:41):
those two worlds didn't knoweach other at all and so that
was the.
That was the first idea waswhat if we put these two people
together?
Right, and like that was kindof magic because the amount of
information transfer, the amountof recruiting, relationships,
partnerships and everything thatcame.
And then you're right, like itis like the.
The thought was the ecosystem,like there's, it's like the

(09:03):
industry is like a house ofcards and you know you have this
group publishers, you have themedia buyers that they need, you
have all the talent that theyneed and none of them, like you
said, nobody can work withoutthe other group, um, but there
wasn't a central place foreverybody to kind of learn and
meet and connect, um, and justlike talk about the industry.
So that was kind of where itkind of started and yeah, it's

(09:26):
been really cool to see thedevelopment of that.
But then also like how theindustry has evolved in the last
10 years.
How would you say, because youhave such a unique experience in
the industry A lot of peoplecome from just Agora where they
have their own business, likeyou, having crossed back and
forth how would you kind ofcharacterize this arc that we've

(09:50):
been in and where the industryis now from your perspective?

Speaker 2 (09:55):
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 myfirst my company um 13 years
ago, we used to sell a lot ofeducation like I would.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
I've done a thousand live webinars right, so we used
to do education we put it.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
We worked with kunaki um and they can make the dvd on
demand.
There's like a robot in lasvegas, where you send kunaki,
you send them the files and theyjust print out the dvd and ship
it.
You don't even talk, you don'teven talk to a human being.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
I don't think they have a human being.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
So when we launched you know I am technically a
publisher um, we, we know wesold like 10 000 educational
courses, like we would alwayssell education.
Okay.
So this is going to bedifferent than the world because
they have traditional front andback end and you know like they
, you know, in a world of like,more like john carter we used to

(10:54):
sell a lot of education.
Okay, I, I think we have 19courses on demand and dvd, so
education was really, reallypopular.
And then I think there was anindustry shift.
And then people, people becameindicator crackheads.
Oh my God, it pops up on mychart and tells me to buy Apple
and where my stop loss is.
Then we pivoted and we have 13proprietary based indicators, I

(11:14):
think, or some trade station andengine, and people love that
Right.
And then people- don't wantthat anymore.
So then we started sending liketrade alerts.
And there's actually I don'teven know if you know about this
, but there's a big ploy withtext providing services.
So we, since we do, uh, advice,I'm a publisher exemption, so,

(11:37):
um, I guess, recommendations.
Um, the carriers are startingto block anybody sending text
alerts.
So we've had to change ournumber three times through
SendHub because the carrier willjust 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.

(11:57):
And I go, we try to explain tothem that like, hey, a
subscriber is paying for a textalert 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 beyour ai stock, for buy for two
dollars and go to a hundred,like this is a, a recommendation

(12:19):
they're asking for and paid for.
That's a whole nother thing.
So that got really popular andnow we start selling like
proprietary based scanners inthe derivative space.
With my background, we licensethe technology from the CBO.
They create the scanner for meon my 15 backend filters and now
you know, we've selling a lotof the scanners.

(12:41):
So that's kind of our.
The trajectory of where we'vebeen in business is education
first, indicators, text alerts,and now it's kind of like these
scanners.
And you know, if you throwanything with the word ai, it's
like five years ago likeeverybody was becoming a crypto
miner, like there's likepublicly traded companies like
uh, we don't sell uh drugsanymore, we actually do uh

(13:02):
bitcoin mining, like stocking uplike 400.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
Now you have to just associate everything with ai and
it's just everything blows upso, yeah, that's how the more
regulatory issues with that likethey're gonna have, like using
the term ai for things that arenot ai, and the ftc is
definitely looking at that too.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
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 usedto I feel like be able to take
anybody Like Jed is like one ofmy heroes in life.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
He's not a good copywriter.
He's been a copywriter at MoneyMap for a long time.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, so Jed is like one of my heroes in life, and so
I had a promo.
He's been an operator at MoneyMap for a long time.
Yeah, so Jed is like one of myheroes in life.
And so I had a promo.
Jed and Mike Ward ripped it up.
He goes go sit with Jed for acouple hours.
I'm there for 10 hours talkingabout the DNC.
And Jed said to me one timehe'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.

(14:03):
I'm like I'm an expert, like Iknow derivatives backwards,
forwards, left and right.
There's not a question you canask me about derivatives that I
don't have an answer, becausethat's why I'm going to write
for you.
I'm like what he's like?
I could find some dude onUpwork right now and pay him $30
an hour and I could do $10million.
Like literally and I believe itRight, so like they can play off

(14:23):
anybody.
So, so well, so you know, like,and I think in the industry, in
the ship, like oh, I was ananalyst at Morgan Stanley.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
You know how many analysts at Morgan Stanley.
Well, there's a couple ofthings there, though, like.
One is that that was during aparticular period of time Right,
when anything was selling like,especially through bitcoin on
it right right now it's gottenharder, 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 piecethat like there's been an arc of

(14:57):
credibility increasing ofpeople in the space, um, and so
it's not like I don't wantpeople to like think, oh well,
if it doesn't matter how goodthe guru is, I can get this guy
in pakistan and you know he'snever done anything.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
He can write some stuff for me like I mean I think
I think that the copywriter isway more valuable than the guru.
I mean I used to tell jed likeI work for you, like you don't
work for me, I work for you.
Like you are going to determineour success more than I'm going
to determine I can only do somuch.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
I would say it's it's two wings of the bird.
Right, because for bringingsomebody in, because they don't
know what the product, theydon't experience a product till
they buy it right, bringingsomebody in is the copywriter,
keeping them is the guru.
That's kind of the you knowthey gotta like it.
The in can you sell.
It's easier to sell bettersecondary products to people who
actually like you because youare great at what you do, versus

(15:47):
you know there's there's plentyof cases of like hey, this
promo sold a ton of stuff tothis person but, like man, this
guy sucked in the renewal suckedand then the um, the backend
sales were, were sluggish andyou know, yeah, I mean like like
.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
I agree with that because you know, if the
customer is happy, I know theywill have some products that
have an 80% refund rate andstuff like that.
So if you have an expert thatcan produce a decent track
record then you will keep thecustomers longer.
The refund rate I was told whenI was at MoneyMap that I had
the lowest refund rate at all ofAgora.

(16:22):
It was like something crazy.
It was like 7% blended's likefour and twelve, with the front
and back end.
Yeah, our back end we gotbecause we were running a
fulfillment every day right,because I ran a lab trading room
.
So like the fulfillment everyday made those people not know,
because they got a product everyday instead of getting a you
know pick once a week.

(16:43):
I think it was like seven toseven and a half percent blended
.
It's like four and twelve orsomething like that.
So yeah.
So I mean, I think in theindustry shift and like I've
been told through the grapevinethat, like agora, is trying to
get away from the trading space.
Um, and you know, just bylooking at their franchise and
the gurus that they've had, it'snot as much trading as much
anymore.

(17:03):
It's like going back to the oldschool investing.
I had the only trading room atBanyan and then Money Map Press
Brett launched five or six roomsand Money Map doesn't exist
anymore.
So those rooms are now gone.
I think the only room thatexists for a trading room now in
agora is oxford with, you know,war room, um, and they used to

(17:28):
have, you know, 10 across theboard, um, so I think the
industry shift is away fromtrading per se.
I mean, I was on cbc and Idon't believe this, I cannot
believe this.
They said 40 of all optionstrade are zero DTE Days until
expiration.
So there's now, so there's.
So options always have anexpiration.

(17:50):
So when I was a market maker onthe trading floor, if you wanted
to trade Apple for anannouncement, you'd have to
trade the monthly options.
So there's 12 expirations andthe market was like this wide,
was it $1 or $1.10, right.
And as technology evolves andthere's this shift in everything
, the markets, you know it'slike, if you can think of a
currency exchange like acurrency exchange, maine's goal

(18:11):
is to buy the bid, sell theoffer a million times, just make
the spread right, just like inVegas.
They don't want to be on toomuch of one side of the bet, so
it was like 106, 107.
So like there's no, there's notheoretical edge for a market
maker.
And then expirations becameweekly expirations because so

(18:36):
now if you want to trade apple,for you know for some
announcement they're going tohave, or earnings, you don't
have to trade the one that's amonth out now and the exchanges
keep pushing out more products,more products.
That means that there's goingto be more volume, which they
make more money.
So now the hottest thing outthere is there is zero dte

(18:56):
options days until expiration.
So the spx has one.
There's one called the xSP andthat is basically the S&P, like
a tenth of it.
So it's the SPY, but theseconvert to cash.
So when you trade normalderivatives, you know if you're

(19:16):
long a call and expires in themoney, you get long stock.
Okay, if you short a call,expires in the money, you get
short stock.
Now it just settles to cash.
They said on CMDC, 40% of allthe volume flow is going to
these DTEs.
There's a lot of people in theindustry that says this could be

(19:37):
your next black swan effect.
I don't know how regularly youwatch the market, but yesterday
the S&P was up like 10 points,or, like you know, the four days
before Christmas everybody's inthe Hamptons Like it, just just
sitting there chilling, all ofa sudden, in literally an hour
and a half, the S&P sold off 80points, no reason.
It just sold off and like thatcould be the next black swan of

(20:01):
these zero DTEtes that convertto cash, because the volume on
these things are so big, and sowhat's your interpretation of
that from the publishingperspective, then?

Speaker 1 (20:09):
are you saying that that means that there's way more
active trading going on than I?

Speaker 2 (20:14):
think there's a huge.
I mean, if I was a publisher Iguess I technically am a
publisher um, if I was a bigpublisher like a, like a gora, I
would be launching a zero DTEproduct ASAP.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
So here's how I think of this as and I could be wrong
, but I want to put this frameout there for people to think
about in terms of like, isactive trading declining or not
in this whole?
Because you're right, there's alot of Gagora groups and other
publishers who are moving awayfrom it.
I think that what we had duringthis last kind of bull market
was one of the kind of subtrendswas this increased

(20:49):
sophistication in trading in theretail investor.
There was a boom in it.
There was a couple of thingsdriving it.
There was one, a substantialenough group moved into retail
trading.
We saw this huge bull market injust the retail trader investor
and a larger segment of thatincreased the market for active
trading.
And like options trading is kindof the pivot point where

(21:10):
everybody kind of when somebodylike that's, that's a marker,
like as soon as somebody tradesan option, they've moved into a
new class of customer from ourperspective.
In my mind, they are way moreactive because they're not just
looking at long-term stockinvestments.
Even if they're doing swingtrading on stocks, it's not Once
you do an option.
That's a significant event intheir sophistication.

(21:32):
You used to not be able to selloptions to newsletter guys at
all.
They had to hide it, and thenyou have massive refund rates
because everyone was scared ofthem.
Then you had a period where youcould sell options products as
a mechanism and you would havelike just the same kind of thing
you would have in any othertrading strategy or asset class
and increasing sophistication inthe mechanism.

(21:53):
Like my mechanism for optiontrading is better.
I have this system, I have that, I have weeklies, I have
whatever.
And now we've moved to thepoint where, like, just having
options isn't like exciting byitself, right, it's about
something else.
And then so there's this, thisone trend where I think that
people are way more comfortabletrading actively, um, but at the

(22:14):
same time, I think that we havean increasing list bias in the
industry.
I think that the stock investorcustomer that is better on the
Agora side has fewer and fewerof those people relative to
other models of acquisition.
And so I think that, like, isthat me or you?
Sorry, I have it on, do notdisturb, but the customer base

(22:45):
is getting more sophisticatedand so, like, you have groups
that are going after the traderdirectly in different marketing
models more effectively thanjust finding them on the backend
of other stocks.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Okay.
So let me ask you a questionbecause I mean you might know it
better than me.
If you took all the Gora'scompanies, okay, other stocks,
okay.
So let me ask you a questionbecause I mean you might know it
better than me.
If you took all the Gora'scompanies, okay, and you, let's
get rid of all the cryptoproducts.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Let me finish.
One thing first.
One thing for the.
There's a difficulty too of howyou built your list on one
strategy when so like, and thenyou try and switch it to another
one with other products isreally hard when so like, and
then you try and switch it toanother one with other products
is really hard, right, becauseyou have kind of a bias in the
customers.
They bought this type ofproduct whether it was stock
investing, more passive, longerterm kind of interesting stuff

(23:30):
versus like really activetrading.
Um, it's hard to convert.
You're not going to convert allthose people to another
strategy, right, because theycame onto the list under a
certain kind of frame and thosecustomers identified themselves
said, hey, I'm this type oftrader, I'm this type of
investor, um, but there was aboom in people who were
interested in trading as anincome stream, because there's a

(23:51):
ton of people out there whowere selling like newbies on the
idea of trade, and this isn'teven in the industry.
This is more like biz op,internet marketing on the idea
of trading in the last cycle asan income stream, and so they
brought a lot of people in.
I think they all got washed outbecause none of them were
really very good traders.
They didn't have money to doany real investing.

(24:14):
Bitcoin brought a lot of peopleinto the market on the Bitcoin
side, but they weren't reallybuyers of other types of trading
and investing productsnecessarily, and so you have
these big floods of customersthat come in that aren't really
from the market.
They're not really customers ofthe industry, they're customers
of a trend, and when the trendgoes, they don't stay in the
industry as much or a hugepercentage.
So a lot of people who cameinto the crypto booms didn't

(24:35):
stay as buyers necessarily on alonger term, because they
weren't really long-terminvestors.
They were like holy shit,they're catching the Bitcoin
trend that everyone was talkingabout everywhere.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
From your opinion, then is trading options customer
base increasing or decreasing?

Speaker 1 (24:58):
I think it's stabilized.
I think there's going to begrowth with it.
But what you don't have is thisexplosion of options, of
trading that we had in the lastseveral years.
It's going to be.
A certain percentage of thecustomer segment is going to
trade options going to go away.
I don't think it's going toshrink dramatically.

(25:20):
I think what it is is that we'rebenefiting from a growing trend
, as people were in mass kind ofgetting more and more
interested in options, and thateveryone's promoting it.
It has a kind of an effectwhere everyone's seeing options
and so people who were on thefence move into it, and so you
have this increase in the numberof people who are willing to
trade options.
That was really kind of big,and then the energy from that

(25:48):
fades out.
It's no longer new to people,it's no longer that interesting
as just an asset or a tradingstrategy.
Right, it's there.
It's part of the thing.
I've tried it, I like it, Idon't like it.
And so you have a stabilizedsegment of the market versus
like, hey, when it was on theupswing and people were really
starting to get interested inoptions, for a while you had
this really big boom, and so, asit was growing.

(26:09):
It's just like any other trend.
People are buying this trendright, and you had this
explosion in it, and so peopleare buying this trend and it's
easier to sell into it.
Just like when Bitcoin wasfirst booming, it was easier to
sell into that than it is afterit drops 40%, 50%, right.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
And I think the next trend in options will be zero
DTEs.
So right now they only havethem in the S&P and the SPY.
I was at a different conferenceand I talked to the head of
business development at theMiami Exchange and I guess the
Miami Exchange is backed by doyou know who they're backed by?
Someone with?
And I guess the Miami Exchangeis backed by?
Do you know who?
They're backed by?
Someone with a lot of money.

(26:45):
They're backed by someone witha lot of money and they're
trying to create new, innovativeproducts and I'm like if you
could create.
So the good thing about the zeroDTEs 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, youcan put on a call spread, you
can buy calls, you can sellcalls.
It converts to cash.
So, like your margin isn'tgoing to worry about that, like

(27:07):
on Friday.
You know, like I put spreads onfor tomorrow.
And Micron and NVIDIA, I haveto watch those tomorrow because
they convert to stock.
These convert to cash and Ithink eventually, if Miami
doesn't do it, they should do.
It is zero days until expirationoptions in Tesla, in Apple, in

(27:27):
Amazon, in Google and thoseconvert to cash.
That would be such a home run,in my opinion, in the option
realm and I think that would bethe next hot thing because now
you can buy and trade withsomething that converts to cash.
Like I trade for the first hourand a half I'm done, I don't.
I mean I look at myself whenI'm at the gym but like I'm kind

(27:47):
of much done.
If I can put out a trade orposition at the end of the day
converts to cash, that's yourwave.
I mean, they said on cnbc, 40of all options are zero dts,
like and the sebo, because I'mvery well connected with people
that are very high at the SIBO.
They're trying anything to pushthese things because they have

(28:08):
the only zero DTEs for the SPXthat converts to cash.
They basically told me theywould give me a significant
marketing budget if I was tostart pushing a product for zero
DTs.
Hmm, wow.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
That's interesting.
That's cool, though, cause it'slike thinking about how, like
the you know again, like,securities are a product and
they're sold Right, andunderstanding when, when there's
going to be a lot of push andmoney coming in for a new
product that that market'sexcited about, then us having
our product of newsletters,subscriptions, education,

(28:46):
whatever it is around thatproduct.
That's kind of part of the game.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
It's like the timing game, and so you can time the
market stories like AI ingeneral, or you can time the
asset class story, I guess you'dsay 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 inevery Agora division and every

(29:11):
publisher that tries to, youknow, pretend they're Agora is
basically some trend comes up,right, and if you have good copy
, you have a good guru thatknows their stuff.
You're going to do really well,right, and we've got to be at a
point.
A good guru that knows theirstuff you're going to do really
well, right, and we've got to beat a point pretty soon.
We're done with AI, right.
It was cryptos for a while andthen, unfortunately, altature

(29:33):
was promoting, you know, bitcoin, when it was 8,800, that
dropped to 3,500, and he'sgetting hate mail and stuff like
that, which I don't.
I don't condone that.
I think that's crazy andterrible for him.
Like, look at him now.
Now it's $45,000.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Now he's a genius again, right?

Speaker 2 (29:43):
So I mean there's got to be.
There's always trends in theindustry that somebody finds to
sell well, like the 5G was hotfor a while, right, so like what
is the next?
I mean AI field is like soplayed out.
We talked about this before.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
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 sayingthat like the, the real boom on
acquisition, like it was aboutfive 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 reallyreally ran front end.
You're saying, yeah, um, whenthey're acquiring stuff, then

(30:19):
then you would have thought, andin fact 5g lasted way longer in
terms of its work.
So I don't think it's over.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
I mean, do you know the new hot thing that's been
converting?
Well, if AI is not doing sowell, it's not doing terrible.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Well, that's part of the conversation we'll have in
FMS now.
So what I do is I try and bringin, just like I do that thing
on YouTube here where I'll get abunch of media buyers to come
on and just talk about what theysee working.
We'll do that more in depththere and I'm trying to do that
every quarter here in thechannel just to kind of like
keep a finger on it.

(30:52):
But the other thing is it'sstill like sentiment, like you
can just track Sentiment andsubscription sales pretty much
go together at this point.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
I mean, would you say , obviously, like, like, agora
is the big whale, but there's alot of actually market wise is
is.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
I mean, in a lot of ways you could say that market
wise is planting agora for notnot, because you know they're so
intertwined, right, right, yeah, um, but yeah, like, uh, those
two companies are definitelylike the dominate the space.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
So let's, let's just remove that for a second,
because they obviously havebigger budgets, bigger marketing
, bigger advertising, moreemployees.
You know, like, on the smallerscale, on like other publishers,
there's a lot of publishers, alot of publishers that would be
at your, you know, yourconference.
That's not Agora.
What do you see?
You know you talk to a lot ofpeople.
You know have a lot of premiuminformation.
What do you see working, notworking?

(31:45):
Where do you see the shifts andtransitions?
On a smaller publisher,Someone's doing two to 20
million.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Well, here's the thing is like a lot of the
smaller publishers there therethere's a certain size you can
get to that.
Your biggest problems are lessthe market and more your
marketing.
Right, and I would say you'resub 5 million.
Your marketing is a problem.
It's not your.
You're not even like yes, youcan catch a big trend, but
you're not going to catch verymuch of it, right, even if, like

(32:11):
your Bitcoin, at the best, whenit's hot, you're going to get a
piece of it, but it's not goingto work as well for you because
you can't scale the customerbase, you can't acquire the
customers to really get the mostout of it.
And that's part of the cyclewhen we talk about all the
layoffs that happened this yearin the industry.
If you want to understand whenthe market is booming, the game,

(32:31):
in a sense, the business isadding as much product as you
can to capture as much of theupside.
And that's what a scaledbusiness can do.
It like expand with the marketas it goes up and then has to
contract when it drops downbecause all that product is no
longer sellable, and so likethat kind of layoffs when things
drop, is just the normal cyclethat we have, because you have

(32:55):
to really like have theinfrastructure to be able to
capture more of the total upsidewhen things are booming, and so
a smaller group has no capacityto really capture that much of
the upside, and so you'll have.
But it can be stable at the, atthe place that it's at, and
that bridge to like, hey, how doyou actually like scale up the
staff and the productioncapabilities to capture more

(33:19):
upside is like so it's anoperational 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 withthe model that's more like a
venture version of investing.
Right, it's like I'm going tohave 10 promos and one of them

(33:39):
is going to make all my money,or you know they can't afford to
do that, and so they have amarketing kind of operational
hurdle to get over and you, youknow you either use some kind of
a partnership or you use atrend to kind of capitalize or
you raise money to try andcapitalize through that problem,
but if you don't, then you'rekind of stuck there.
So smaller guys like sub 5million.

(34:00):
It.
It's a different, it's acompletely different issue than
a larger publishing group.
The guys in the 10 to 20 to 30million dollar range is more
like um similar.
They have enough scale thatthey can capture upside when
things are going um and uh, theyfollow kind of the same things
where ai is still working.
You know, we've had you know,um.

(34:21):
I got to get the guys back onto 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 onto talk about the things that
what else is working.
But it's very narrow trendsthat you can capture it once
you're big enough.
You need a big trend to captureenough volume of customers to
make it worth your time andworth your while yeah, but take,
take that small publisher isobviously.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
I'm in the under five million group.
I would love to some degree andthis is why, personally, for me
, agora was such a good fit.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Right, they take my name, they take my brand they
give me the copywriter, theygive me the money, they give me
the marketing and then I getthis much of it, which was great
for me.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
But like I'm a small, small publisher, I'm under the
5 million right.
I would love to scale up underthe five million right.
I would love to scale up andit's not.
It's not a money issue for me.
You know, if I spent twentythousand dollars a month and you
know leads, or fifty thousanddollars a month, as long as I'm
getting roi break even in, Iwould even take nine months.
I can't even get nine months.
Then I can scale it as much asI want.

(35:16):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
I would never want to get too big, so I don't think
it's a money thing it's, it'swell for so there's like and I
can speak this, I mean, this iswhat I can split down.
You're also a single operator,right?

Speaker 2 (35:29):
I mean, yeah, some back and forth, yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
But you don't have another partner.
No, no, no, a hundred percent.
So if you're most of the sub500, $5 million businesses are
partnered businesses and this isthis is like a math issue right
, because now, if you have twopeople who are taking their
income from the same sub, youknow small publishing business.
That dramatically reduces howmuch money you have to invest.
Right, because you have to makeyour nut.

(35:52):
You have a family, you have wehave a digital product.
There's zero cost of goods soldyou know, it's just like if I
can get 90, for revenue andspend 90.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
I'm doing that till the cows come in because I know
eventually I'm going to get themon the back end.
We have the best industry inthe world.
I'm an EO EntrepreneurshipOrganization.
I've been an EO for 10 years.
Ypo is the big boy game EO andthen Accelerant.
In EO.
All these people own differentbusinesses.
You have restaurants.

(36:20):
In my form there's a restaurant, somebody owns legal something,
but anyways, like thecomplaints they have with their
business is like hey, we have 90day paydays.
I'm like that sucks.
I take people's credit cardright now, you pay me right now.
Like they're.
Like they have 120 employees.
Like that's crazy.
Like the fact that we get paidand we're selling a product, I

(36:44):
mean most of these products.
If you have a development costof the software, I get it, but
most of these products.
When I sell an educationalcourse, there is this much to
cost of that product, right?
So we have a digital product.
We have a recurring businessmodel where you have a
subscription that's recurringevery month.
I mean I'm going to go onNetflix for four months.
I'm not canceling mysubscription, and that happens

(37:05):
too.
When people want to cancel.
We'll cancel, no problem.
But it's the best business inthe world.
That should make it easier toscale because you're getting
money.
Today you're on a subscriptionand there's no cost of goods
sold for most of these products.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
All your product and there's no cost of goods sold
for most of these products For aguru to send out a
recommendation.
All your product is always inacquisition, right.
It's in your cost of media andpromo risk, right.
That's pretty much all of itright there.
And so that issue is the thingthat stops everybody, and some

(37:41):
of it's because they don't haveenough product, like when
WealthPress was able to boom.
The way they were able to boomwas because they had Roger was
able to put together so many,because he had systems.
He was able to put together somany different products that
they could have a robust backendreally fast as they were
acquiring and keep selling andmonetizing Somebody who has

(38:01):
fewer products or they have amore time-intensive thing.
There's a lot of differentissues here.
For people, some of it is liketheir appetite for media spend
risk.
It's like trading, like somepeople are comfortable spending
a hundred grand a month andother people freak out after
they put $10,000 down and itdoesn't work out right away,
right, but in trading you'd bemore comfortable with a certain
size risk and then, once you getto a certain dollar amount,

(38:26):
you're freaking out, and so it'slike risk tolerance there.
And then it's promotional skillis a huge problem.
And so the product delivery.
You're right, the productdelivery is great, but it's the
promotional problem, promotionalrisk.
How can you sell your stuff, notjust like, can you get a
converting offer, but can youget it out in time if it's

(38:46):
trend-based, which a lot oftimes people can't do?
Can you stomach the fact thatyou, if you're paying for two or
three or four failed promos toget to that fifth one that
really works well?
Do you have like the stomach tokeep hiring?
Or do you hire Because this iswhat I see too is like I hired

(39:08):
two copywriters.
It didn't work.
Copy doesn't work and it's likewhat are you talking about?
Like an individual promo pieceof copy might not work, but copy
clearly works.
That's that's you know.
And so, like you have theseissues on a smaller scale, that
like they're bigger hurdlesbecause the the amount of money
you might have to risk isuncomfortable for people.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
So I mean I understand I agree with all
those points.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Do you see it different?
I mean, I mean in terms ofpromotion like well, I mean
you're a good pitch.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Most small publishers are not going to spend much on
promotion.
Like I was fortunate at moneymap, they spent $4822 000 on a
promotion that was just a renttower theater and get an and one
promotion.
They rent a tower theater inphiladelphia and they had 300
paid actors there, you know, andthey spent 480 000.
Because you want to know why?
I'll tell you exactly why?
Because jed saw the tim sykespromo and he goes I don't want

(39:59):
30 people in an auditorium.
he's like I want to rent thewhole thing.
And jed's like, like he tellsMike he goes, hey, I need a
billion bucks for this thing.
Mike's like, okay, cool, let'sdo it.
He's like I want Andrew to bethe guy Tom Gentile got mad at
it because I'm the new kid intown and I get the half a
million dollar production.
But like production costsshouldn't be much, I mean.

(40:20):
But like what do you see in thetrend Media buy-in though the
media costs.
Okay so what do you see in thetrend of publishers on a
non-Agora scale?
The shift is there shifts ofcustomer acquisition.
That's working now, like do youhear anybody killing it on
TikTok?
Do you hear anybody doingreally well on Instagram?

(40:42):
You know.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, so that's interesting, like there are it's
kind of like the Substack thing.
So I was talking I don't wantto say their name right now, but
I was talking to somebody whowas this was last week the I
think the number one for aperiod of time the number one
Substack newsletter, entirelysold via social content.
What's Substack made?

(41:03):
You don't know what Substack isa newsletter platform, um, and
you can publish there and itbasically lets you.
You know it has a discoveryengine, so it will recommend
people and they you can you cansell subscriptions through their
platform and they'll handle themoney um transaction piece so
that they'll take a smallpercentage.
And so, uh, and as it grew, asit grew, as it grew um, a lot of

(41:25):
people who, who were notpublishing business people they,
they were just analysts orwhatever they wrote a newsletter
and they put a paid version andthey're making great money and
they are making great money.
So I was talking to the largestone of that.
It's been a big kind of subtrend, um in the industry here.
Uh, for a while, bill Bonner waswriting on sub stack, which is

(41:45):
funny um himself, but he stoppedthat, I think.
Um, but uh, the they were, theywere giving you customers as
the as the traffic grew andtheir seo on the whole platform,
like they were giving youcustomers um, and this person
was growing social and they toldme, frankly, like they, this
was, they started in 2021 and2021 they're pretty much capped

(42:06):
out um on their growth and thiswas a hard year and so it
declined a lot and they're notgetting any more of that kind of
acquisition and so they have aproblem of like, do we try and
learn paid acquisition or do wejust try and sell our business
um?

Speaker 2 (42:23):
and you're saying they get what social media?

Speaker 1 (42:24):
outlets they get for the jack.
They're using twitter, umlinkedin, uh, not so much
youtube, I don't think um tiktok, like all the short form kind
of stuff.
And they grew, they, you knowthey 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

(42:47):
one of those, and so they grewthat way, right, um, and so what
I've seen is we haven't seenanybody.
I mean, tim Sykes did this,right, like Tim Sykes started on
Twitter.
He was the original financialinfluencer, he was like the guy,
um, he built it and then hetransitioned that audience into
a paid model too.
And so that's what I think is Ithink there's a lot of people

(43:09):
like that.
We haven't seen anybody who has, or I haven't seen anybody who
has scaled the business onsocial.
It's a question of how do youstart to get traffic, because
you can get to a certain point.
Real Vision started with theirTwitter audiences.
Their first, like I forget howmany thousand subs came from
Twitter, and then they hit thesame wall.

(43:29):
Everyone seems to hit the samewall, which is this is a niche
business, right, it's not massconsumer.
There is an audience of acertain size on social for this
kind of stuff, depending on whatsector segment.
Whatever you're in, if you cando it well, you can get to a
certain size, but I think you'restill sub five million.

(43:50):
Maybe you can get over five,but I haven't talked to anyone
who's really broken that fivemillion dollar mark in revenue.
I think from Maybe I'm wrong, Idon't know the revenue of this
last group, but then they hit awall where it's like you have to
convert into a paid directresponse marketing business to
be able to continue to grow andyou can leverage it.
But I think that's the thingand and that's what's that could

(44:14):
change.
Right, it could change Like.
This is like, I think, ademographic question, right,
when you know the, the, you knowI always say this millennials
are what?
Just in their, the leading edgeis early 40s.
I don't know, I'm not amillennial.
They're early 40s yeah, I'm 40.

(44:34):
And like they're not in theirprime, investing years, but they
invest in trade way more thanany previous group did at that
age.
Right, so as they age, theyshould come into this market
more because really like savingfor retirement and into
retirement is where the customerbase for newsletters and

(44:56):
everything really kind of is,and so I think that's.
But they're also much morecomfortable in acquiring content
, in making decisions and stuffthrough social channels.
So maybe that will shift themarket over time, but we don't
know.
Like I think about, like Andrewfrom investor place was telling
me this, they tried so manytests, like when they had when
Facebook was big and Facebookgroups were big, you know, they

(45:16):
got a million or more followerson their page and they did all
this stuff and they were like itjust ended up never being worth
their time.
And so there's and I don't meanto talk too much here myself
because, but like there's asplit of like direct response
marketing.
Businesses are built onadvertising in other content

(45:39):
channels or marketing channels.
Right, it's the paid piece thatmakes you able to scale, it
makes the business work.
It's the copy media buying, thefunnel, all that stuff that
used to be direct mail.
Right, it would be like you hadto have a good list buyer, you
had to have all that kind ofstuff and then it switched to
the internet, but it's stillfundamentally always this direct

(46:00):
response piece is there's largechannels that I can buy ads in.
Now there are people who canmake the business work with
content first, but how far canthat get you?
I don't know.
We haven't seen a With thepossible.

(46:24):
I guess maybe Hedgeye, butthey're doing acquisition, paid
acquisition too, as far as Iunderstand it, but that's a
pretty good size business and soI haven't seen anybody that has
gotten to like I would question, like the $10 million limit.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
I agree with it's actually as I was thinking about
it too.
You know like I got my initialcustomer base from Twitter.
There's a lot of people thatare uh, are on.
You know that are basicallyinfluencers that like a ricky
gutierrez you ever heard hisname?
he's like glenn glendale I waslike ricky gutierrez, cameron
foose, who used to be with sykesum and like warrior trading,

(47:02):
like ross, but like they usedsocial to grow and they went
from zero to you know, decentside publishing, but none of
those.
I agree with you that I neverthought about that before.
Nobody has used just social toget above 5 million, because I
don't think any of those guysare as much as they want to say
they are but they made a nicebusiness just doing YouTube,

(47:23):
tiktok and Instagram.
I don't know if those threeguys.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
So you used to be able to do the exact same thing
with just pure affiliatemarketing when I came into the
business and the trading sidewhen I first started like
writing and doing campaigns inthe space, like you could have a
killer promo and you couldbuild your business.
And while we managed to get to,I think we had a year where we
did 10 with that because I justhad a killer promo that over the
course of two years did like 11or whatever.

(47:45):
Then it shrunk right back down,right Without any paid media.
You know we've got 10 millionand then it just shrunk down to
two or three, you know, withoutbeing able to do the paid
acquisition well and having likethe full like kind of like
system of multiple promosproducts.
You know, and doing that like I, we just haven't seen it yet

(48:10):
you know, why don't we get?

Speaker 2 (48:12):
we have probably like what 10 minutes left or
something.
Yeah, why don't we?
Why don't we kind of hype upthe conference a little?

Speaker 1 (48:16):
bit here.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
I know, I know, I know you never like to like
promote stuff and advertise andtalk about the conference and I.
It's okay because I can do itfor you, because I don't make
money.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
I don't know.
I think about it this way Forme, and this is my view of the
world in general is there's alot of problems in business and
half of them are solved byanother person, right, like a
connection.
Like right now there's a lot ofpeople that are looking for
gigs because they got laid off,and it's like you know, people

(48:49):
are sending me theirintroductions to them, trying to
help them find work, and I'mdoing my best when I can, but
we're not really hiring rightnow.
And I'm talking to folks andthey haven't heard of FMS
because they've been inside acompany, realize, hey, I don't
have a network of people.
And then I know other peoplewho are like literally everybody

(49:12):
that I work with is fromsomebody that I met at FMS or
through somebody I met at FMS.
And so when you need affiliatepromotions, when you need to get
hired, when you need a jointventure deal, when you need like
, hey, how do I solve thisparticular problem, whether it's
technical in the business ormarketing related, like it's,
usually the information orconnection to somebody else is
going to give you that answer.

(49:33):
And so we just put everybodywho really knows the business in
the space, in the room, don'tpromote it to like the
entrepreneur.
Don't promote it to likedigital marketers who don't work
in the space and just get folkshere from the industry to get
together and share and like.
So, like that network, likeyour network is, I don't want to
say your net worth, but it'syour, it's your opportunity set

(49:56):
you know.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
So to go back to that , like obviously, like I've
emceed a couple of times, andyou know, from my point of view,
like there's so many peoplethere it's and you know we
didn't prep this too there's somany people there it's, and you
know we didn't prep this toothere's so many people there and
it's hard to meet someone youknow.
So, like, can we do something?
Like my favorite thing is is aspeed dating thing we're doing
it, we're doing boom, boom, boomlike I.

(50:17):
I think there is like like ineos I do a lot of experience
from eos we always do needs andwants, like I need a copywriter,
I want this and like, and thenpeople can network.
Like maybe we have like someboard in the back you say your
name and what you're looking for, or something like that, like
the idea of bringing everybodytogether in this industry and I
never thought about that beforethat you don't let these people

(50:38):
in it.
You know, like digital marketerin san diego, like ryan does a
great job, but they started withlike 200 people.
And then, two years later, someguy has a dentist practice in
iowa.
He wants to do facebook adcampaigns.
I'm like I have nothing to comewith this guy.
And the chiropractor in desmoines is like what's going on
here?

Speaker 1 (50:55):
why am I here now?

Speaker 2 (50:56):
so you know how it's great a to bring the network
together, that your network isunbelievable and who you can get
there, who you get to speakthere and who you bring there,
like there's always, you know,ceos of the agoradivisions.
But how can we, now that we getpeople there, how can we
integrate them together better?

Speaker 1 (51:14):
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, solike, if I don't talk to you,
I'll talk to you, so bother youyeah bother me, because I'm like
that's like the thing that I doat the event.
It's like you need this, youneed this, and you'll see me
just finally, like towards thesecond half of the day on the
first day, I'm like I won't evensay anything.

(51:35):
I'm just like you come overhere, talk to this.
Person had the idea for speednetworking the first time, so we
did that and we're going to dothat again.
It's awesome.
So everybody gets to meeteverybody at least for a couple
of minutes.
Nobody brings cards anymore,but if you have cards or you do
the LinkedIn QR code to connectto people, like just get ready

(51:56):
to like connect to everybody.
I love the idea of needs andwants.
Let me think about that, how wecan do that.
So a little bit too big now todo what I used to do.
That's why I used to do thatthing in the beginning, where
it's like everybody stand up andtell me who you are.
Yeah, because then, like,everybody knows really fast who
to talk to, who not to I thinkone year, which was a cool idea
too.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
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'redoing certain tables, this table
is the copywriters.
If you're a copywriter, go tothis table right now and then
who needs a copywriter?

Speaker 1 (52:31):
go introduce yourself kind of thing, because there's
there's.
So the problem is like there'sso 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 abouthow to do that.
Maybe.
Maybe I can find some space todo that again.
The table was a good one.
A couple things that we didthat I thought were cool that

(52:53):
you know.
One was that where we did havelike, 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.
It works better in a small group, but we did it a big group and

(53:14):
it actually turned out prettycool was I call it deal doodling
, where it's like throw threepeople together and just like
tell each other what you do realfast and then brainstorm a way
that you guys can do a jointventure don Don't have to
actually do it, but just likebrainstorm it and, um, people
start coming up with shit.
Like that they could work witheach other on that.
Oh, I never thought about that,because now it's just a

(53:35):
brainstorming exercise.
So that was pretty cool.
But I think that the tables, um, that was a good one.
And then, of course, there'sjust the actually know what you
want.
When you come in the door andjust tell people like, hey, what
are you looking for?
And then ask them, like this islike part of like how do you

(53:55):
work an event.
You know, tell them what youwant.
Hey, I'm looking for this, I dothis.
And people you tell it toenough people, everyone's are
starting to do something.
That's one thing I love.
To enough people, everyone'sgoing to start introducing you.
That's one thing I love aboutthis community is everyone
starts to connect each other.
Like you should talk to thisperson.
You should talk to this person.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
And I will take some of his responsibility.
If anybody wants to beconnected, 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, Iknow that.
So come find me and ask I meanI, I know I'm a guru, I know
that.
So, like I, always every time Igo there because I was with the
Gora for six years, I wouldalways try to.
I mean I got Lance a deal withMorgan.
Like I'm like you know, I waslike Lance, I'm like you're not

(54:36):
going to.
I'm like come to thisconference.
I'm like you're probably notgoing to get an Agor deal, but I
could probably with Morgan.
Now he's been with Morgan forfour years.
Same thing.
I didn't make any money offLance, I just wanted him.
I love Lance.
I wanted him to do well in theindustry.

(54:56):
Everybody says their industryis really small.
Our industry is really really,really small.
We all want there's enoughmoney to go around where you can
have everybody succeed.
I was so happy when John Cartersold his company to Private
Equity.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
I'm like, yes, yes, we're one for the good guys.
And then when the FTC goesafter another company, I'm like
no, we don't want this.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
This is so bad for the industry, you know.
So why don't you brieflymention, you know?
Do you want to talk about theaccelerator thing?

Speaker 1 (55:20):
We are going to be bringing the accelerator back.
I don't want to go into toomuch detail right now.
That's right now.
That's like basically themastermind group for the
industry.
It's a little bit more thanthat and I've come up with some
new things that we're going todo.
We've got a lot of really coolstuff that is going to come out.
I'm going to try and announceeverything fms and have it all
for everyone to understandwhat's going on, because the
industry is.
I think there's a lot of thingshappening in the industry.

(55:40):
It's shifting, not just like um, it's not just the market, but
there's like a lot of thingsthat are changing.
I think the trader educationside is getting a little bit
more segregated from thenewsletter side in terms of
what's working and not workingthere, the sales models, the
marketing models.
I think there's everybody who'sinterested in the connections

(56:00):
between this business and otherparts of capital markets and
finance business and other partsof capital markets and finance
um.
There's opportunity there.
So it's kind of like the, thesmall kind of operator has a, I
think, almost more opportunityright now than they have in the
past.
Um, and there's a lot of coolthings that you can do to
generate revenue pretty quick,especially in times of like

(56:24):
trouble.
Here did we have uh, was it?

Speaker 2 (56:27):
one year off or not.
It didn't go last year, rightor?

Speaker 1 (56:30):
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 itevery year for 10 years, so no
well, I'm looking forward to theevent.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
I'm looking forward to meeting people.
If you see me there, I will be.
I'm seeing the event, whichmeans, unfortunately, I cannot
get drunk the night beforebecause I have to wake up early.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
That's the only the only thing I didn't like about
doing it like I have to get up.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
I'm not a morning person, so um if you guys have
any, yeah, if anybody needs anyintroductions.
Um, you can come find me.
Um, I'm really looking forwardto it.
You know like I have a lot ofthings going on personally in my
industry as well, that you knowI want to make more deals, you
know I want to make more money,and this out of everything I do

(57:16):
in this world.
This is my number one source ofpotentially finding something.
You know I'm a guru, I've beenwith Agora for six years.
I'm looking for a publisher.
You know, like I would love togo, come on board, I'm gonna go
bother.
Uh, heather weiss right nowprobably.
Um, so I mean it's a great.
You know, like I said, there's,in my opinion, there's four
different segments and everybodyneeds everybody, the ecosystem,

(57:37):
to come together.
So, um, I'm excited to go, I'mexcited to meet new people,
basically to make the zachcharacter.
But I said still, thinks aghost.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
This is zach westfall .
Zach doesn't like to travel.
He is coming.
He's coming out of his hole inaustin, is very well stocked,
very wealthy little hole inaustin and coming to speak,
which is great.
Um, because I do think that'sone thing.
Like the trader, like justspeaking about zach, his, the
trader education model that hehas is not the agor newsletter
model.
Right, they don't have the samemarketing model.

(58:08):
They're fundamentally differentand he has a fantastic business
, him and Tim, and they're doinga lot of cool stuff.
And I think that's somethingthat people need to start to get
clear on is that there'sdifferent ways to monetize and
make this business work.
You don't have to just try andcopy Agor because a lot of times
you can't, you really can'tlike, you really can't.
If you can't afford thecopywriters, then you can't use
their model like fundamentallytrust me?

Speaker 2 (58:29):
I have.
Do you have the black book, thegore black book?

Speaker 1 (58:32):
oh, I have this thick it's like 800 pages.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
I read like 20 pages like I'm never gonna do any of
this awesome man.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Well, thanks, um for doing this and thanks for
emceeing.
I'm looking forward to gettingtogether and hanging out uh yeah
, me too appreciate it, thanks.