The Finance Publisher for Founders

Mathieu Silverstein runs Wealth Factory.

It is not your traditional FinPub – but has done something unique in the industry.

He straddles a fascinating line between B2C & B2B.

Wealth Factory publishes finance education for founders and business owners.

His marketing model is 100% the B2C marketing approach we are used to in FinPub.

But his target audience is B2B.

They have money.

They spend money.

And it’s essentially a business expense for them.

That’s a powerful position to be able to market into and Mat is crushing it.

He’s generating over 400k a month in MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and over 9 million in annual sales.

No question: Mat has built a phenomenal business.

He was kind enough to come on and share his insights and experiences building such a great business. 

He shares some real gems, like why FOMO (the fear of missing out) is not nearly as strong of a sales generator as FOFU.

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

John Newtson (00:02):
All right, hey everyone, I'm here with Matthew
Silverstein from WealthFactory.
Thanks for being here, Matt.
Thanks for having me, john.
So I've wanted to talk to youfor a while about WealthFactory.
You've been coming to FMS for acouple of years, right, and you
have a different type ofbusiness than most folks in

(00:23):
FinPub, and so your productmodel, your audience, is a
little bit different.
So would you kind of lay thatout for folks and kind of
explain what WealthFactory is?

Mathieu Silverstein (00:33):
Yeah, so WealthFactory, we do personal
finance for entrepreneurs.
We help small business owners,entrepreneurs, keep more of the
money that they make, and that'sthrough tax strategy, asset
protection, estate planning,insurance coverage and cashflow
optimization, and a little bittouching on investments as well.
What we tend to do speaks topeople who are active earners in

(00:59):
their earning years the workingwealthy, so to speak and their
lives change.
The situations get morecomplicated, they get less
complicated, they get married,they get divorced, they build
businesses, they sell businesses, and we want to be here through
that entire process as criticalquestions come up that if only
they had known some strategysooner, they may have been able

(01:20):
to save a boatload on taxes.
Or been able to structure,corporate structure differently,
to make life easier and, alongthe way, teach them how to find
opportunities to build theirwealth, both through their
business and through otheropportunities that are aligned
with their strengths.
So that's the core of it, andit's one thing that I think

(01:43):
makes the demographic of ourbusiness a little bit different
from traditional FinPub in termsof, if traditional FinPub skews
older, high net worth lookingfor what to do in terms of
getting an edge in the marketand in investing.
We're looking at people thatare actively growing, starting

(02:07):
or maybe even, at the other end,winding down, but like in their
business, and so that's theirgreatest leverage point that
they have that we can help themwith.
And I think everything comesout of that because for a lot of
entrepreneurs and smallbusiness owners, what they make
in their business there's afunction of like that's what,
how much of that can flow downto them personally so they can

(02:28):
build the life that they want tolive.

John Newtson (02:31):
Right, right.
And that's to me that's veryinteresting because, like, how
would you?
So you have the word.
I like love that phrase.
It's a great copy phrase.
The working wealthy, likethat's fantastic.
And the idea of selling toentrepreneurs and business
owners what types, if youwouldn't mind, like, is it
digital entrepreneurs?
Is it like the doctors anddentists?
Is it kind of all of thosefolks?

(02:51):
Is it the kind of therestaurant owner, like where do
you see?
Kind of that customer?

Mathieu Silverstein (02:59):
Great question.
So when we first started, ourcustomers were a function of our
network and circles that wewere in.
I was fortunate to start thebusiness.
One of my co-founders was a NewYork Times bestselling author,
garrick Anderson, and he's adynamic individual who connects
great with people and hiscircles were.

(03:21):
He was speaking on stages andbeing invited on webinars for in
the chiropractic community, fordentists, for a lot of people
in medical professions andthings like that.
So in the beginning ourcustomers were often condensed
into a couple of differentindustries with specific needs.

(03:42):
Fast forward 10 plus years andwe're diversified across
everything you can imagine.
And that's because we had afriendly little competition.
Garrett and I in the beginningof like, okay, can we scale, can
we build an engine to scalepaid traffic to beat the pants
off of anything that we're ableto do on a one-on-one or even a

(04:03):
one-to-many standpoint, and sothat went from $0 a day in ad
spend to $5 to $4,500 a day onaverage in ad spend.
We peaked at one point at$13,000 and came back down
because it was pushing the gas alittle too hard for a small
business like ours.
From a logistics standpointit's funny to reach a too many
customers moment, but it happens, yeah, so that means e-com,

(04:36):
restaurateurs, real estateprofessionals, people that are
high earner W-2s who have a sidehustle or are starting a side
hustle, and that's aninteresting trend that I've seen
reflected directly in ourbusiness over the past few years
is that the number of newbusiness starts every year keeps
going up, and so the number ofpeople that identify whether
because of how they'reinteracting with social media or
what they're seeing thatidentify as an entrepreneur or

(04:58):
wanting to be one, but have askill set to start with, it's
opened up the doors beyond justa traditional small business
owner for us to a much largerTAM, which seems to continue to
grow.

John Newtson (05:13):
That's awesome.
I think so.
For me, coming at it from theFinPub perspective, a couple of
things stick out really strongly.
One is that the kind of theworking entrepreneur to me has
always been the best tier ofcustomers at FinPub and that
includes the doctors and thedentists and the chiropractors,
the people who have their ownshop and professional setup.

(05:35):
Those have always been the toptier.
I think the best description ofit is a little bit more.
It was Richard Stanton Jones.
He was a copywriter back in the80s and 90s.
He called it the you know thebest customer.
He called him the millionairepig farmer, which he meant like
kind of the blue collar businesssuccess, um, and I think that
we found over the years that thedoctors and dentists and stuff

(05:56):
are a huge segment and so in ain a business environment where
people are thinking aboutacquisition of on the higher
price points, like thetraditional front end backend
model was always you're going touse the front end product to go
out and identify a payingcustomer, subsidize the cost of
the media, and the point of thatwas that you would find a

(06:19):
segment of customers that somepercentage of would buy your
backend products and the goalwould be like you're really
using that as a filter to findthose high-end buyers.
What I always love about whatI've seen from you is that
you're just getting thathigh-end customer.
I mean, I know you have afront-end product and stuff, but
like your customer isfundamentally that high-end

(06:39):
customer.
Right, it's like you'refunctioning.
It seems almost it's like a B2Ckind of operation, but it's
really a B2B, right.
You straddle that line sobeautifully and that to me is
like a really fascinatingbusiness from a lot of
perspectives.
Is that kind of how you see ittoo?

Mathieu Silverstein (07:01):
That's exactly how I see it.
I think about it from B2Ccustomer acquisition strategies.
B2c typically have a lowerlifetime value but the customer
acquisition cost can be lowerthan going B2B, where you might
have traditionally differenttactics cold email, linkedin,

(07:21):
longer sales cycles,opportunities for enterprise
deals.
So in our business I look atwhere are the design constraints
.
A couple of years into thebusiness, garrett asked me.
My co-founder asked me, knowingwhat you know now, matt, what
would you do differently withWealthFactory?
And I said I would never againstart a business that didn't
either have the opportunity forenterprise level deals,

(07:42):
enterprise sales or recurringrevenue.
It's got to have one of thosefor me to be able to sleep well
at night and know the businessI'm growing is going to be like
a foundational business.
So we decided to go MRR I couldtell that story later on but
essentially the front end B2Cmodel books, low-end tripwire,

(08:06):
accessible price point products,and it does bring in a wide
array of entrepreneurs andpeople that are interesting in
building their wealth, but itimmediately goes into our core
services that are for that idealbusiness owner.
So to your point, if I were togo out and market our backend

(08:27):
program, our high ticket program, um, it's going to be pretty
tough for me to go out therewith ads, webinars, everything
If it's just like traffic toconsultation funnel.
Um, because there's a big hairycommitment there of something
Our services are very valuableto our clients.
But there's still kind of bigpicture and amorphous.

(08:49):
We're talking about oh, we'regoing to help you with tax and
estate planning and insurancecoverage and cashflow
optimization.
It's like, ah, how do I make adecision on that?
It's way easier for people toget past a fear of there's this.
You can bleep me out if youwant, but I was listening to a
podcast with April Dunford fromObviously Awesome, one of the
best business marketing booksI've read in a long time.

(09:12):
She was interviewing someoneand he said that in B2B sales,
people think that it's the fearof missing out that they need to
ratchet up to get people offthe line and convert them into a
backend program, and reallywhat we see in environments like
this, it's the fear of fuckingup fofu.
And I think when we try to sell, we try to do it all the time.
We keep going back and we tryto sell.

(09:33):
Ideal customer.
Here's our backend program.
Here's our program wealtharchitecture that you're going
to love and get a lot of valueof, with the risk, reversal and
everything.
But it's a big decision to make.
If you haven't made anydecisions with us before, you
eliminate a lot of fear offucking up.
If you just spend a couple ofdollars on one of our books, if
you enjoy it we have, afterpeople buy they can

(09:57):
self-schedule with us on thethank you page after some
upsells and downsells and thingslike that.
And so what we find is we canrun ad spend on meta YouTube.
Someone that's never heard ofus before clicks on an ad, buys
a book, self-schedules on thethank you page and two days
later spends $8,750 and then$475 a month.

(10:20):
Now it doesn't happen everysingle day, but that path does
happen and I tried it the otherway a lot of times.
It doesn't work the same waywith the same efficiency, I'm
sure.
I'm sure At the front end youat least still get 40% to 50%
return on ad spend on a zerocost of goods sold type of
product on day zero.

(10:41):
It still helps us have theconfidence to be able to keep
investing in that engine.

John Newtson (10:49):
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense and I think
that I'm not one to say, oh,everyone should get rid of their
front end.
I know that's a big thingthat's happening market-wise
right now and I know there'speople who are using various
high-priced funnels on the frontend.
But I think that, yeah, there'sa lot of, there's a reason that
it developed.
That's more than just um thethe fact that it was hard to

(11:11):
sell on the front end.
You know higher price points,right, like it's a much broader
pool of customers.
You have more people thatyou're not going to catch, maybe
in the other one um, and, likeyou said, like there is,
especially with going to a pricepoint like that, there's some
comfort that has to come withthe relationship sometimes and

(11:31):
you might be getting apercentage in a hard phone floor
kind of model, but like there'smore people you would get if
you kind of have both I think.

Mathieu Silverstein (11:39):
It's a really good point.
I think that does come down totrust building and also whether
you are the world's bestcopywriter.
I mean, I'm there's.
No, I'm not going to comparemyself to Porter.
He's on an entirely differentlevel, so he can pull that off
Right.
I can't, but we still have tobuild trust in our marketplace
and make this something thatsomeone who's never even thought

(12:02):
about our business before mightgo.
I like these guys.
They resonate with mephilosophically.
I don't feel like I'm going tobe signing up for a ton of work,
for something that's going tomake my head spin, and we have
to show.
We have to be able to show thatover a through different
mediums, on our business atleast.

John Newtson (12:19):
Yeah, especially with.
So, like I mean in my head andyou correct me if I'm wrong it
seems like kind of the productmix.
Is this combination of kind ofwhat you would get from a really
good CPA and somebody whoreally is almost like a business
operations or cash flow mentor,like someone, kind of this
mixture of like there's taxstrategies, there's things that

(12:40):
you need to do with the moneythat you're making kind of
systems, there's things that youneed to do with the money that
you're making kind of systems,and so you have like the I love
that fofu idea, because that issuch an easy like whenever you
have a situation like that, likethe fear of fucking up is, um,
almost bigger than the fear ofmissing out for entrepreneurs,
um, in a lot of ways, and so youhave that, that uh, kind of

(13:03):
product mix.
That's that's really interestingand then but it's not as, like
you said, it's not as clear cutas like here invest in these
three stocks, cause this iswhat's going to happen, kind of
approach that a lot of people,obviously on the FinPub side,
the newsletter side, stocknewsletter side, are there.
It's almost like there is athere's a certain kinship with

(13:25):
the trader education sidebecause there is this education
piece of how to be better at themechanics of running the
business.
Yeah, very much so Now let me dothis first, before I go to this
one.
Um, do you make your own copy?
You kind of alluded to that,right, are you?

Mathieu Silverstein (13:47):
the primary copywriter I am I am not, um my
one of my partners.
I started the business with TomBernthal.
He's our.
I have a couple of in-housecopywriters.
We've been Tom and Steven andI've been working together gosh
since 2011 in the samebusinesses and we just working
together for that long.
So Tom has been the voice ofthe business and then Garrett

(14:13):
was the spokesperson of thebusiness, who was able to
connect with people and landthat messaging.
We had a really great workingrelationship with our internal
team.
So, because we've been doingthis so long and my team of
copywriters, we're entrepreneurs, they're entrepreneurs.
They just have a really greatknack for speaking to our

(14:33):
customer and knowing what theyneed.
So I won't take credit for theactual copywriting piece.
I couldn't hold a candle totheir skillset.

John Newtson (14:42):
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
It was great to have a team.
How did you?
Let me ask you the thing first,Because of the customer you
have have you done affiliatework with other people in the
newsletter space and the tradeeducation space?
Have you done any kind of likeswaps or things that you tested
out, trying to see if eachother's traffic in lists have

(15:02):
good crossover?

Mathieu Silverstei (15:03):
Embarrassing moment to say no, I haven't
done any affiliate work with umfolks in the trader education
space.
I um one thing I'm doing.
I love Michael McDougal, who Imet through you and FMS and so
we've been.
We've been working together todo some paid traffic stuff with
with some trader audiences tosee if there is a, some paid

(15:25):
traffic stuff with some traderaudiences to see if there is a
there there.
And in our initial testing whatwe were finding, at least
through his systems, is that theconversion rate was off the
charts compared to what we wereable to get on Meta.
Haven't dialed in the ROAS sideof that yet, but I think there
is definitely something thereand it's going to come from some
more massaging of the messagingwhich I haven't nailed yet and

(15:49):
we're going to get.

John Newtson (15:50):
We'll be able to get through testing oh, that's
interesting though.
So there is definitely some,but there's definitely enough
like smoke to make you thinkthere's some fire there yeah,
yeah, absolutely absolutelythat's great.
I love working with like mike'sgreat because he can.
He gets all hands on like withyou guys and helping to figure
out like how do we make thisthing work, rather than you know
.

Mathieu Silverstein (16:10):
Yeah, Interesting on the on the flip
side, thinking about it from aokay, our audience like our
existing audience and do they?
Would they value some of theinsights that people in FinPub
could bring to the table?
Wow, we had Matt Warder on andhe did a webinar.
Like lucky to snag him rightwhen he was getting off an

(16:31):
airplane, but he was able tojust drop some values, some
knowledge to our audience.
None of them had ever heard ustalk about coal before
commodities, but we have someresearch on some of it.
But people, it provided aperspective that they had never
seen before, which was aninteresting model for them to
think about how to navigate theworld as an entrepreneur.

(16:52):
I think even just thinkingabout not what is my next trade
I'm going to make, but I thinkthe interview you did with him a
couple of years ago, where heshowed that quadrant and his
predictions of quarter byquarter or year by year, what we
think is going to happen andwhat's going to sell, it's
actually really helpful forentrepreneurs to know where the

(17:12):
puck might be going, to be ableto prepare and plan for that.
Now granted as entrepreneurs, weoftentimes we're way too busy
putting out fires in ourexisting business and focusing
on what, what needs to happenthis month, um.
But to have that sense of wherethings could head really helps
with planning purposes, and Ithink people really valued that

(17:35):
Um, and so I think that there'sa lot of wisdom that could be
unlocked by that kind ofdirection and collaboration too.

John Newtson (17:43):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's.
That's that's why, like,there's an interesting and
matt's brilliant because he doeshave such a great macro
presentation of things and Ifeel like there's this classical
aspect of finpub on this, onthe macro side, which was like
I'm going to interpret the worldfor you, I'm going to show you
how this works, and when youhave somebody who's really good
at that, it is is kind of like arevelatory moment.

(18:05):
And so, yeah, I think thatwould be really interesting to
me to see how that develops foryou guys.
If you start to add productlike that or do affiliate
relationships or things on theback that might be valuable,
what's your product mix looklike then?
So I know you have their veryhigh price, but it seems like
you have a few different producttypes.

(18:26):
So what are those basic typeslike, kind of from the
deliverable perspective?

Mathieu Silverstein (18:30):
Sure.
So if I were to just split theminto front end and back end,
let's say on the front end,books, courses and a mastermind
type membership where we meet onZoom once a month with
entrepreneurs and veryunstructured, you can come in
and out $197 a month, havearound a thousand members in
that program.
Right now we call that WealthBuilders Club and that would be

(18:57):
our largest membership typeprogram of active subscribers.
On our backend, wealthArchitecture is our program
where you could think about thatas what we've always been Like,
our big vision of what we'recreating is something very
interconnected.
For entrepreneurs thatresembles almost like a virtual
family office, without the pricetag.

(19:19):
So you have a financialquarterback who helps assemble
any missing pieces of yourfinancial team that you might
not have.
I saw anyway, sorry, moving onfrom that piece, you could call
that a coaching program, youcould call that a consulting

(19:39):
program, but essentially youhave that quarterback who's
going to help parachute in otherexperts, cpas, attorneys,
anything like that that youmight need in your plan, and
that's our program.
That's the higher ticket $87.50, $4.75 a month, one-time price

(20:07):
point 25,000.
That was our higher tier butworked really well with an
in-person event model that weknocked it out of the park on
every time, but COVID hit.
We had been doing this and wewere able to transition really
beautifully into this model.

John Newtson (20:17):
Okay, cool, I was actually going to ask you about
did you have an in-person model,and so you've replaced that
in-person model with thisentirely?

Mathieu Silverstein (20:23):
then, yes, entirely, we haven't done
in-person model with thisentirely, then, yes, entirely.
We haven't done in person in along time.
I miss it, and there's a lot ofa lot of fun, a lot of work and
I I actually, from a structuralstandpoint, love the focus that
our organization is able tohave and, like the sales team,
can sell one product and not.
You know, when you have anin-person model, it's beautiful,
but you end up with this weirdinefficiency of, okay, sell the

(20:47):
event first, which people eitherwant to go to or don't, and
either can make the date orcan't make the date, and then
you have your ideal customerwith a waiting period built in
from now until the event.
So the velocity is stilted in aright in a way, at least when

(21:08):
you're ramp, at least whenyou're ramping up.
Once you have a pipeline, it'sit's, yeah, but still it is.

John Newtson (21:13):
It is an issue I know, like the, that's a, it's a
great way to frame it.
Um, where, like, especially if,like, you're able to sell the
product without that event pieceas well, the price points, then
why have that interstitial,interstitial, interstitial event
product between those things?

(21:33):
Right, like I love events forfor different reasons, not just
because of the business side,but, like I, I'm an event guy,
but I also recognize thatthere's a limiting factor on the
event product, right, just likeyou said.

Mathieu Silverstein (21:48):
Sure, but, but here's a here's a
differentiation of why yoursmakes all the sense in the world
and the one I was talking about, the, the workshop.
The one-off workshops weregreat but aren't in the current
model.
Um, I would like to bring themback when we have capacity to do
so, but your event is acommunity event and that's the

(22:12):
kind of event that wouldentirely be a no-brainer make
sense for us, like once a year,all of our clients, members,
people in the community come.
I mean, this is such a greatbusiness model.
You can have event sponsorshipsthat can outweigh anything.
Great renewal opportunity.
These events, the workshops,were very more top of funnel-ish

(22:35):
and so that was like why are wecreating a choke point on
people coming in and gettingvalue from us?
Right?

John Newtson (22:42):
Right, right, yeah , not a great front end, kind of
off.
Yeah, no, that's definitelytrue.
I have a colleague that I spoketo who does like 30 events a
year and was telling me thatthey do a um, they do a massive
event that is free once a yearand it costs them like a million
five by the time they're donewith it.
But it's like that's theirmarketing is they just pull

(23:04):
everybody into that and thenfrom there they split them into
the other events and get peoplein and do stuff and it's like
it's a really cool model, bigupfront expense, but it's a pure
event model, right, like it'snot this mix, and so, anyway,
like how do you see so now thatyou've built, you have you've

(23:25):
built your very uniquestructured business, right, and
now you see all the stuff fromthe kind of the newsletter model
, and I would say like a lot ofthat is like there's the agora
model, which has been kind ofduplicated out into lots of
different businesses in thecommunity.
We've seen kind of the tradereducation model, which is
different, and there are somesub models.

(23:47):
But where do you see, like fromyour perspective, what has been
the most interesting kind ofpieces that are useful to you
and your view of your businessversus things that may be like
hey, I see a lot of people dothis, but this doesn't seem to
make sense from us.
Like, where do you see thosekind of I see a lot of people do
this, but this doesn't seem tomake sense from us.
Where do you see those kind ofI guess, that outline of

(24:08):
similarities and beneficialthings and areas where maybe
this isn't quite the same model?

Mathieu Silverstein (24:15):
Sure.
So, speaking as a only sort ofoutsider, my own perspective may
be skewed or not even accurateall the way here.
So the question being how do Isee what is working?
Can we go over that again?
How do I see so?

John Newtson (24:34):
basically like so you think about the award model,
right?
You have like traditionally,that you have a set of front end
newsletters for a group, asingle guru you are going to go
up into price, into multiplebackends, and then you would
have another guru who would havethe same kind of product ladder
, and so it's front-end Freenewsletter, front-end newsletter

(24:55):
, multiple backend products, andthat guy forms a mini franchise
and if he's big enough he's hisown franchise.
But if he's not big enough thenyou add other people to him who
have a similar model, right?
So you end up with a multi-gurukind of publishing brand.
And then you have the.
There's different ways that theproduct ladder is built.

(25:16):
A lot of times it's built on arisk profile.
So the front-end products arebasically these are the basic
blue-chip stocks around thisidea that the simple things you
should do.
And then the backend servicesare the higher risk.
Maybe they're small caps, maybeit's a trading strategy, right.
And then so you're selling likethis risk profile almost on the
backend.
And then on the trader educationside, the product ascension

(25:40):
kind of goes with proximity tothe guru, right.
Right it's here's a low priceproduct that like here's which
here's kind of a how I do it.
Let me train you to do it.
It's a higher price product.
Here's a um, a service, wheremaybe I'll have a trading
service and you can follow me,and then the highest product is
some form of a coaching programwhere it's proximity to the guru

(26:02):
is kind of the thing right,like we get on a live webinar or
things like that.
So I think of it as kind oflike those are the two basic
vectors of product development,with a lot of variation in
between and, like I said before,I think yours fits to me, not
exactly, but more in line withthat proximity side.
But it doesn't seem to be likeand maybe this is because you,

(26:22):
you bought out your partner andthat you're.
How do you think of thatproduct development?
I guess, is what I'm saying onyour side versus what you see on
some of these other models.

Mathieu Silverstein (26:35):
Gotcha.
So, in terms of productdevelopment, we think about what
is the max value that we areable to provide to an
entrepreneur through ourcollective knowledge strategies,
the problems that entrepreneursface, and my team chunks as
many of those out as possibleinto how do we productize

(26:56):
knowledge.
So there's this snake eatingthe tail kind of scenario, where
I think that, in order for usto grow, it's taking value from
the biggest stuff that we can doand try to condense them into
discrete pieces that we canproductize.
So can we productizeinformation and knowledge and
strategy and then, once we'veproductize it, can we automate

(27:20):
components of it, whetherthrough code or other kinds of
automation, or a great userexperience in the form of
calculators, generative toolsthat we're working on.
So I'll give a brief aside onthat.
I just built an AI tool.
So, in estate planning, onething that people like to do is
a statement of purpose.

(27:41):
Think of that I'm butchering it, but think of it as the if
you're watching this video, I'mdead now and here.
Great-grandchildren is what I'dlike you to know and what's
important to me and I'veconveyed in my estate plan and
the rules and everything likethat.
So you could start with a blanksheet or a worksheet and fill
that out, or just built a toolwhere you can answer a handful
of questions and it getsprocessed and fed through a

(28:04):
number of training examples ofwhat a good statement of purpose
could look like and it spitsout a full document for you.
So we look at where are thereplaces that for a busy business
owner we can either create valuethat they can't create
themselves or we can condensethe amount of time.
So that's the example of a toolthat we might put in to one of
our products to productizesomething that maybe they would
spend hours writing on their endor even an hour talking with

(28:28):
their estate planning attorneyand get billed in part in that
conversation.
If we can take that down to azero cost, that's value that we
can move on to our customer.
So my team, in terms ofproductization, when we launched
the business, we had, let's say, two products, our backend
program, $25,000 one-time pricepoint and a workshop that you

(28:49):
could come in person to.
Then we create our firstnewsletter for the front end and
we go, okay, well, what elsedoesn't get captured in that
newsletter or isn't the rightkind of medium?
And we should have video and weshould dive deeper into a
particular topic and so in theearly days that was just launch
course and then another course,and another course and another
course.
The courses started to becomemore interactive with tools.

(29:11):
We started to publish booksbecause my co-founder was a
great author and I teamed upwith Andrew James has a firm
called Cerebro and he's got thisis someone I've worked with for
a long time but he reallyhelped us figure out how to
market books and use bookfunnels and that became a big

(29:33):
driver for the front end for ourbusiness.
And that catapulted um Garrett,because the millions of dollars
we spent in ad spend where.
I mean that's great for him interms of his face, in terms of
his recognition.
Now he goes everywhere andpeople are like, oh you, and not
that he wasn't successfulbefore that Um, but that really

(29:54):
worked in that, in that modelNow he was our only guru and an
owner of the business.
So it's not, it was not a, not arisk factor.
I know for a lot of guru modelsit can be um.
I think there is a model therefor wealth factory that makes
sense to have more multiple um,multiple gurus.
So I would take that from theAgora model and install that

(30:16):
into into wealth factory, if wehad the chops to figure out like
the best way to do that, butthat's still kind of new to us.
So anyway, long story short,you could say that we built my
team has built 20 plus productson the front end and we don't
advertise all of those on paidtraffic at the top of the funnel
, probably only advertise two,maybe three of them, usually at

(30:40):
one at any one time.
I remember sitting down withRyan Dice at our office in
Austin before Wealth Factory andhe said to me in our previous
business, previous business, youguys don't have an offer, you
have a product, or, sorry, youdon.
Previous business, you guysdon't have an offer, you have a
product, or sorry, you don'thave a.
You don't have a business, youhave a, an offer.
We were like oh no, and thatwas.
We had a great business, but itwas like one product.
So it was like never going todo that again, learning from

(31:02):
that piece of piece of advice.
So we created multiple products, but he said, at any given
point, you're really going toonly have one.
That's knocking it out of thepark on paid traffic.
And so it does look like that.
However, people come in and ifthey're not ready to join Wealth
Builders Club or WealthArchitecture, my team will
promote our own products to ourlist at least a couple of times

(31:24):
a month.
A different product.
So that's where the contentcalendar comes in.
So we could have a tax cutpackage where we give all of our
tax strategies and you get athree-year tax review with a CPA
if you submit your tax returnsfor them to look at and find
some missed opportunities.
Or an access capital and creditprogram where we teach

(31:46):
entrepreneurs.
There are certain levels thateverybody's in.
Some people already know X, yand Z.
Other people haven't taken thetime to go through it.
So we have entrepreneurs thatcome to us and they're
successful, but their creditscore is all beaten up and they
have inefficient loan structuresand their cashflow sucks
because they're paying downloans in the wrong order.

(32:07):
So we have programs just tosimplify that and make that easy
, and every time rates go up ordown, it's obviously a great
time to promote that program.
So different hooks of thingsthat happen throughout the year
tend to match up well withdifferent products that we have.
That match seasonality forentrepreneurs, or just different

(32:30):
things that happen in theeconomy.
All of those then lead tofront-end product, then lead to
do you want to join us in WealthBuilders Club?
For our mastermind, that's our$197 a month.
Typically we'll have a bribe tojoin in there.
Get the full thing for freewhen you join Wealth Builders
Club Self-schedule on the nextpage.
For hey, if you really want tofast-track the results, results
wealth architecture programschedule on Calendly here and

(32:52):
talk with our team.
So that's how we think aboutproductizing into discrete
components that make it easy forpeople to go.
Yeah, this one thing is reallybugging me right now.
I'm going to click and I'mgoing to check this out and I'll
drop $97 and spend some time onit.
It's low risk, low timecommitment and yeah, you know

(33:14):
what I think.
I do want to bite off some ofthe other more holistic pieces
too.

John Newtson (33:17):
Right, oh, that's.
That's really cool though, causeI think like the idea of using
like the same kind of economicevents that that you would use
to sell an investing product andusing them in the marketing
from basically the other side,right For the entrepreneur is a
really cool like.
I never thought that that wouldbe something that you would do,

(33:38):
which makes sense when you sayit, and so that's that's really
interesting piece in themarketing side that you would do
that.
Where you're, you're, you'reframing things for those guys,
and I think that you know one ofthe one of the things that I
have a few firm beliefs aboutthe changing state of FinPub,
and one of them is that, um,building very unique brands

(33:59):
around specific customersegments whether they are
traditional customer segments ornew like ancillary customer
segments is one of the ways towin going forward, and I feel
like you guys have done thatreally well already, and so the
copy piece is interesting to mebecause you have a stable set of

(34:21):
things that are more like yousaid.
They're more about my experienceas an entrepreneur, my ability
to run my business moreefficiently, do better things,
or my ability to run my businessmore efficiently, do better
things, and then you also havethis event-driven kind of
market-driven set of copyapproaches that give you that
kind of like urgency andnewsiness of what we would think

(34:43):
of as being a more normal, likenewsletter type stock
newsletter type promotionalmodel, and so that gives you,
like this really interesting mixof acquisition opportunities
then, because, like you said,you 20 front end offers so far
like Somewhere, somewhere aroundthere, I think.

Mathieu Silverstein (34:58):
we just counted it up yesterday and it
was around that.

John Newtson (35:00):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
So like do you know what kindof mix of stable versus like
newsy products you've done there?
That's just random.

Mathieu Silverstein (35:10):
Yeah, you know a minority uh, very much a
minority of them would be um, solet's, let's think about some
of the more um, let me justthink out loud for a moment of
some of the more one-offprograms that we did.
We created a program back whendefy was hot and spending a lot
of time in it, and it was wascrazy and I was like I can't
believe that this works so well.

(35:31):
So we created a program,cashflow Crypto, and it was.
You know, we looked at variousthings that weren't in the buy
and hold but not trading.
So how could you, where couldyou find yields and things like
that?
And so that had a shorterlifespan but was obviously
crypto offers are doing verywell right now, but that

(35:58):
specific one that fit ourcashflow ethos was I guess you
could call that a moment in time, at least until something
changes there.
The other one-offs we've done afinancial trends summit that we
turned into a financial trendsproduct and that's like what are
the big things that arehappening and coming up over the
next, over the next few months?
Now, if I was smarter about it,I'd do over the next 10 years.
It's just like Diamandis style,singularity style.

(36:19):
I just don't know on the frontend like how many people I can
get thinking on 10 year timehorizons even if that's a
healthy way to think aboutthings.
that's tough, so a minority ofthem I'd call it sub five or six
out of those 20 that were morespecific.
Now our copy to sell anevergreen type of product we

(36:41):
might try to.
We'll try to make that asrelevant to now as possible
because new and relevant isalways going to beat evergreen
With, with the exception, goahead.

John Newtson (36:53):
No, no, but that's what I think is so cool about
this, is that.
So there is like the, the nonnewsy kind of trendy stuff.
When you have that working,that's kind of like your stable
workhorse, right, like you canalways get something there
because you know it's about anongoing kind of personal issue I
have with the business orwhatever, and so you know you

(37:14):
always have that, no matter whatthe news cycle is doing.
But then you can capitalize onthe upside of attention with
kind of news, trend-based stuff,right.
Which is the beauty of havingthose kinds of things is that
you can get hey, there's a lotof attention on this, like it's
crypto, we can bring in a lotmore customers than normal right
now, but it has it has a shortperiod of time.

(37:36):
Um, we also know that, like,only having things that are like
market driven or news drivenmeans that some, some publishing
groups, and even the best ones,might go a year or two without
a really effective front endacquisition product, and that
sucks, Like it sucks.
And so having things that arestable, um, that are evergreen

(37:57):
as well, to kind of fill inthose gaps, is is like a.
It's a really nice mix, I think.
Um, as a business owner, tohave um in your marketing.

Mathieu Silverstein (38:06):
It, it is, it's.
I wanted to build it this waybecause I want to say lessons
learned from, or scars from, theearly days where we had no
recurring revenue, event model,high ticket, and we launched the
business, did a few hundred Kon the launch but, like my team,
we pulled like two all-nightersin a row.

(38:28):
I was like come on, guys, it'sgoing to be 5am.
The coffee shop at down, likeat the taco.
Come on, guys, it's going to be5 am.
The coffee shop at the tacoshop in Austin, it's going to
open.
I'm going to make it there.
I'm going to bring back a vatof coffee and a bunch of
breakfast tacos stay awake.
And so we did that.
We launched, went well, andthen the next month hits and we
got to do it all over, not thelaunch part, but how do we go?

(38:50):
Start at zero every month issomething that I went.
That doesn't need to happen inthis world anymore now, or at
least it doesn't, if you canthink about it in a different
way.
And a mentor of mine had alwaysbeen beating into my head
subscription revenue,subscription revenue,
subscription revenue.
And so I was thinking how do wedo that in a stable way?

(39:12):
So when we had thatconversation that I referenced
earlier of, like my businesseither has to be able to win
enterprise level deals orrecurring revenue.
We went recurring revenue so wetook that $25,000, lobbed it
down to $12,500 upfront and$2,000 a month.
That was the first recurringrevenue piece that we made.

(39:34):
I knew going into it, we knewwhat kind of cash crunch that
was going to cash flow crunchthat would create for us, but we
went through it anyway and I'msitting there, living in LA at
the time and going.
I am now making less money thanI made in my first sales job
out of college and I know whatI'm doing.
but gosh, this is hard.

(39:55):
What if I made the wrongdecision?
Right, but it started to likeyeah.
I know a lot of brilliantmarketers and business owners
that are like way, way, way moresuccessful than me and they say
I would never sell a recurringrevenue product because I can
sell 10 X the amount if it's aone-off.
Um, because it's so hard tosell a subscription and I agree
with that.

(40:15):
I just didn't want to.
I don't think I'm such a goodmarketer that I'm going to be
able to make it work 12 out of12 months, year over year,
starting from zero every time,because you know what else is a
recurring thing Expenses, rent,overhead payroll.
I want to be able to hit allthose things.

(40:36):
We never missed them, but youdon't want to be sweating it out
.
So we made that decision andeventually the recurring revenue
continued to stack and stackand stack until we I think it
was last year we hit like$423,000 in recurring revenue,
monthly recurring revenue fromsubscription revenue, and that

(40:56):
accounted for somewhere aroundhalf of our monthly revenue.
But it just means that we gointo every month and we know
what we can invest back intogrowth.
We know what we can invest intothings and while we have not by
any means grown as big or evenas quickly as many of the folks
in in uh, in FinPub um, ourcontractions have been it's it's

(41:22):
just been a little more stable,right, even if we, even if
things slow down materially andwe drop off 30%, like it doesn't
break the entire thing becausewe have that flexibility.

John Newtson (41:33):
And that's so like one just as a philosophical
point.
I don't think anybody in FinPubat this point, other than maybe
one or two people, believes thatpeople should be growing as
fast and as big as we're in theboom right.
Like there's this wholequestion of right-sizing, what a
franchise actually is, and $150to $200 million doesn't seem to
be anyone's answer anymore fora bunch of reasons.

(41:56):
And two, like the I mean thesize that you're at is like from
a publishing perspective,everybody that I know that has
kind of gotten to that size andyou know there's some range
there is really happy with theirbusiness.
It's always there's a hundred,there's always a thousand
problems, right, but likeeveryone's always happy there.
And then whenever I meetsomeone or somebody that I know

(42:18):
starts to push up above 60 to 70million, up in that range,
they're a lot less happy aspeople, like they're just a lot
less happy because there's somany more problems.
And I feel like that's in thelawsuits employee lawsuits,
employee lawsuits, staffingissues, all kinds of stuff like
that starts to happen, let aloneregulatory issues.
But like and so like.

Mathieu Silverstein (42:37):
I think that, like you know, that idea
of bigger is better is is notpeople's lived experience in
most cases yeah, I, I thinkthink the there's a bit of a
risk containment to by bykeeping them chunked into
smaller businesses too.
Right, I know I I don't want toget like I'm not looking to

(43:00):
like, advocate for or get into adebate of like is holdco the
way to go or is mega behemoththe way to go?
There are obviously benefits toeither of them and I know we
have people in our group thatare crushing it in single
business models and I don'tpersonally have experience
running a hold code so I can'tspeak to that.

(43:21):
But yeah, in an environmentwhere there's significantly more
risk in, I think about that asinsurance, estate planning, to
have everything in one entity.
I'm not saying that the bigguys are doing that, but at
least in my world, if risk canbe contained into buckets,

(43:44):
that's fantastic.
So can I even do that in amicrocosm in our own $9 million
a year business?
I think so, because I actuallyI think that our business could
be a $20 million a year businesswithout adding much more
complexity to it.
I think that there's a get luckybetter offer our way to it.

(44:07):
You know that's a strategy.
Yeah, strategize my way towinning offer.
That just completely takes off.
That's what we're always in inpursuit of, but I don't see in
our existing model that we would, other than like ad spend and a
few other things, need to likedouble head count, for example,
um, and so that's a riskcontainment piece to to me as

(44:28):
well.
So to your point of the 60 to 70and the unhappiness, um, yeah,
there are so many more movingparts under one, under one
umbrella, and I'm not like Ihave no political opinion on
like break up a small business,uh, you know, a bigger business.
I was talking, but I wastalking with my um attorney who

(44:48):
was talking with a long-term.
He had a very successful healthbusiness but he also built a
very successful um fulfillmentprocess, warehouse fulfillment
process for his health businessand our, our mutual attorney
said to him turn that into itsown business, break it off into

(45:10):
its own entity.
He did that and that became afulfillment uh service for all
kinds of e-comm businesses andthat thing ended up doing
hundreds of millions of dollarsin revenue, but it's its own
business.
So it was able to even take offon its own because it was able
to specialize in in what it does.

John Newtson (45:29):
Oh, very cool.
That's very interesting.
Yeah, I love that.
So, like you mentioned, likementors and stuff, how, how have
you like let's take, let's lookat your journey as an
entrepreneur, like how did youget started, and then I can just
maybe specifically talk aboutlike your relationship with
mentors if you have one, two,multiple ones and how that's

(45:49):
kind of impacted your growth andyour development in your
business.

Mathieu Silverstein (45:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I'll go back for a moment tocollege.
I was at UCLA and I reallywanted to work in the
advertising department at theschool paper and I applied and I
didn't get the job.
I failed miserably.
I had no sales skills and I waslike jittery and high energy
and like they're like how do yousell this pen?

(46:13):
And I was like never, had neverdone that before.
Um, I'm Jewish and had to gosell Christmas wreaths around
the neighborhood, but like thatwas the most, like growing up
during those fundraisers, butlike that was the most, that was
the most that I had that I haddone.
But I applied a couple moretimes and the guy was like I'm
going to stick my neck out foryou because I could tell that
you try hard, I think we can getsomewhere with that.

(46:34):
So cut my got in, cut my teethin sales and ended it.
So that was like my first boutof mentorship where the guy
there who ran the advertisingdepartment just spent the time
with me because I put the timein and said how do we make this
even better?
And I went.
I like that path.
My first job out of college.

(46:54):
I was working at a startup adagency.
Michael Eisner called it thenext Google at a hundred million
in funding and blah, blah, blahand I'm doing phone sales.
But I loved it.
I'm like I'm in the middle oflike some startup tech thing and
a family member of mine fromacross the country, who I didn't
have much of a relationship,was in town for a business
conference and I was at the time.
I was like I'm going tointerview everyone who owns a

(47:16):
business and ask how'd you getinto it, what do you like about
it, what advice do you have?
Because I want to own abusiness someday, but I don't
know what that means, other thanI took a history of business
class at UCLA and loved it, thatkind of thing.
So it was all theoretical.
And he was like well, I want youto read Rich Dad, poor Dad and
the E-Myth.
And at the end of dinner he'slike how would you like to come

(47:37):
work for me in Florida?
I said, no thanks, I don't needto.
You know?
No thanks, um, I've got thesestock options and blah, blah,
blah.
And he was like well, how longdo you think you need to know
whether that would work out?
I said give me a month.
Month later I was like, okay,let's do this, I can't.

(48:02):
And that was an incredibleexperience.
That's where I learnedmarketing.
That's where I learned I lovetechnology and became like our
tech person databases, marketingautomation.
I became like the 300thcustomer in the early days of
HubSpot.

John Newtson (48:18):
I was like inbound marketing, and so just like it
was a fun playground.

Mathieu Silverstein (48:21):
I ended up with this title, got like chief
R&D officer, but it's becausesomeone yes, there was nepotism
there, that was my in, but itwas a long leash and hey, go
explore research, come back andlet's build products, and so we
would do that.
I'd go out and find somethingin a different industry.
I was really into innovation soI got to like Cambridge and do
a bookstore and go buy all theirbooks on R&D and innovation and

(48:42):
try to go okay, love this idea.
Takeaway what's an innovation?
What's something that's workingreally well in another industry
?
Can I bring that to an entirelyunrelated industry and create a
product or service or delivervalue to clients out of it?
And that's kind of been.
You know, I wasn't eventhinking about that going into
this meeting.
That has kind of been my thingfor my entire career.

(49:03):
What's working in anotherindustry?
Can we try it and apply it?
And is there an unlock there?
That's what I love about FinPub.
That's what I love about SaaS.
When we moved to recurringrevenue, I went what are the
best playbooks for SaaS?
Growth retention, mrr,reactivation campaigns, trials,
all of those things that thereare proven playbooks for growth,

(49:25):
playbooks in SaaS.
Which ones of those can I tryand apply in this business that
are not necessarily beingapplied in the personal finance
space, and that's how we'vebuilt this.
I've looked at what works inFinPub Can I try that here?
What works in SaaS Can I trythat?
Can I try that here?

(49:45):
What's happening in FinTech toproductize boring, clunky
financial services?
This is an aside.
I think that I'm bullishlong-term on this idea of
embedded finance.
So can we take embedded financeproducts like bookkeeping and
accounting and what are someother ones that I'm able to

(50:08):
bring in and put into ourmembership site, put into our
product that customers caninterface with best of breed
user experiences, get betterlending and financing through an
embedded lending program?
That's not our business.
It doesn't make a materialamount, but it allows me to
transition us from knowledge toproductized knowledge, to

(50:32):
automated software that improvesthe user experience, can lower
costs for them, and I just tookus on a bit of a tangent, but
that's where I'm going.

John Newtson (50:41):
That's a great tangent.
The embedded financeconversation is one that I
wanted to have for a while.
Maybe that would require alittle bit more of a focus on it
, because I think it is a hugearea, obviously unrelated to
FinPub and things, butspecifically in relation to it,
I think there is a lot of thingsthat are coming in, that are

(51:02):
out there, that again likechange, user experience change,
product mix, change, all kindsof things and it's a really cool
area.
I haven't really done aconversation on it because you
know there's not a lot of peoplewho seem to be very interested
in it in the community right now, and so I haven't, but like

(51:23):
it's really exciting to me tohear you talking about it,
because I do.

Mathieu Silverstein (51:26):
I think it's huge, I think it's a
massive area of opportunity, somany, so many areas in it to map
out some, like you know.
A quick, quick aside.
So Michael Milken was famousOne of, I mean, other than being
a junk bond king for thiscritical thinking time.
Right, he'd be like four orfive in the morning, just sit
there and think about complexproblems and before doing any

(51:51):
meetings or any other kind ofdaily work, and just sit there
and think about it.
And so I sit there and thinkevery now and then about what
are all the different ways thatthere could be embedded finance,
like what?
Okay, well, what is there inthe finance world already?
Like, just in terms oftraditional stuff, there's

(52:13):
insurance and estate planning.
And so I write down each ofthose and go, I put the word
embedded next to that and go,what would that be?
And if it doesn't exist, firstI'll just go lazy, I'll go
Google embedded insurance.
You know, a few years ago therewas nothing.
No Google search results forthat.

(52:33):
Last year, googled, it cameacross and met a woman who's
founded this embedded insurancecompany and it's like it's
incredible, embedded insurancecompany.
And it's like it's incredible.
I love what she's up to and soI'll.
So I'll continue to do thatover time and evaluate all of
these different areas, becausethat's only going to continue to
grow.
It doesn't mean that it's ano-brainer, because they can
face really high customeracquisition costs.

(52:53):
It can be complex to integrate.
Man, if you've spent any timewith I'm going to oversimplify
for a moment but if you spentany time with some of the with
quad, gpt, any of these things,it's able to.
We're really quickly getting tothis point where, if you can
think it, you can build aprototype of it.
And if you can build aprototype, you can actually turn

(53:16):
it into some piece of code.
And maybe you don't become afull stack engineer just because
you're a marketer and a productperson and can come up with
good ideas.
You could get a lot fartherthan you could have just a few
months ago and doing these crazythings, thinking things up and
Matt Paulson was mentioningrecently how hard it was that
someone on Twitter commented Ilove the heat map of all the

(53:40):
stocks that you have onMarketBeat.
And he's like thanks, that was abeast to build.
And last week I just cameacross an open source version
that uses generative AI andemploys the TradingView API and
just builds it like that.
You don't even have to codethat stuff yourself anymore.
So what does that mean if?

(54:01):
And that was created by a kidwho's currently in college, and
so it's like what does that meanwhen these things get easier?
It means to be competitive.
Doesn't just mean we need to beable to capture more attention
by being awesome on social mediawith short form video or
anything.
It's like what are the tablestakes for building products

(54:23):
that people want to use?
Um, go up, and I'm not sayingthat we're there where you can't
build a fin pub or a wealthfactory without it, because
we're not a software company, sowe're not there yet.
But I think that even justthinking about that embedded
finance, the oversimplifiedversion was if you can drop an
iframe into your membership site, that's step one.

(54:46):
But if you could just evenenvision doing that, wow,
there's a widget there for yourclients in your verticalized
business where you work with abunch of, let's say, dentists
because I know a lot of peoplein public will have that and hey
, for dentists, here is a.
You don't have to get on thephone, we already have some
information about you.
Click a couple of buttons, nocredit checks, and we're going

(55:08):
to be able to show you somereally compelling funding offers
for your business.
That's like a step two beyondthe iframe embed, but you can do
that with very little technicalknowledge now.
So where are the opportunitiesin things like that that can
create personalization withoutthe kinds of risk that we have

(55:29):
as publishers when we get thepersonalization, because I don't
want to step on that right.
But if you can embed anotherservice that is doing, you can
do content recommendations, butultimately a licensed
professional.
You know it has to be adifferent company in order to
button that up, but I think thatembedded finance is going to

(55:52):
really help bridge that.

John Newtson (55:54):
Yeah, and even things like insurance.
Like the money in insurance isvery big right, even like old
school direct response, likekind of direct mail telesales.
Infomercial people have, likethose guys would sell leads to
insurance companies, right,because they would pay out so
well, especially on things liketerm life and things like that,

(56:16):
and so there's a ton of moneythere and things like that, and
so there's a ton of money there.
And so the idea of wealthbuilding in FinPub is very
narrow, which is great from amarketing standpoint, right,
there's a lot of reasons forthat.
But that customer again is inhis whole wealth kind of journey
, has a lot of other things thathe's thinking about and talking

(56:36):
about and spending money with.
That a well construction,constructed franchise could
capitalize on.
And the embedded finance area isone that really just kind of
takes it to another level.
And then I think that, likekind of to your point of the
ease of these tools out there,like the ability to do anything

(56:57):
in finance is so much easierthan it ever was.
I mean you look at like Cartaand things like that, just to
raise SVB, um, um, specialpurpose SPVs, um to do things
like that, and like do directinvestment models direct to
investor models, like there'sthis explosion happening of
alternate models because the thetech stuff is no longer a
barrier for people.

(57:19):
Right, it's not a barrier.

Mathieu Silverstein (57:21):
Yeah, big time.
And I think that FinPubs aresitting on a gold mine here.
They probably already know it.
So sorry if this is.
If we think about, I remember acouple of years ago some
college friends of mine fromlike 20, whatever yeah, 20 years
ago created a little stockpicking club just to meet on
Zoom during the pandemic andtalk about our ideas, what we

(57:44):
see emerging, what might be agood whatever, and I remember
looking I spent some time at thetime it wouldn't be a trade now
but looking at Square Cash andthere was a really interesting
dynamic that they had at thetime where their customer
acquisition cost for theirlittle banking app was like I'm

(58:04):
going to butcher the numbershere because this is off memory
was like 50 bucks.
But you compare that to thecustomer acquisition cost for a
traditional bank that wasoffering a similar service and
that was hundreds of dollars.
It's the arbitrage there.
If you think about a financialpublisher, they have way lower
customer acquisition costs thanthe guys who are directly trying

(58:25):
to sell insurance, trying tosell banking products, trying to
sell wealth management, who arelike let's go out golfing and
I'm also going to take you todinner and obviously that works.
Don't stop the things that areworking.
But if you can acquire acustomer for 50 and build a
relationship or acquire them for100 or even 200, you still have
an edge.
And the FinPubs have scale andthat's one thing that I only

(58:46):
have a 400,000 person databaseand had maybe like 100,000
people buy stuff from us overthe 10 years.
But FinPubs that were in ourgroup here that have the scale
to be able to launch an embeddedfinance product that, because
of the scale, the distributionthat they have, they could win

(59:07):
right out the gate from rollingsomething like that and I think
that that's incredible.
They have that arbitrageopportunity right there.
And insurance here's a quicklittle story on that.
One of our books that we marketused to be called what Would

(59:27):
the Rockefellers Do until theRockefeller Family Foundation
said stop using our name.
So now it's called what WouldBillionaires Do, and it's an
awesome book, one of thestrategies in there, where it
looks at how John D Rockefellercreated this like
multi-generational wealthstructure using trusts and using
vehicles that you can emulatewith overfunded whole life

(59:48):
insurance right when you get thetax benefits upon transferring
the wealth you could borrowagainst the cash value to invest
in entrepreneurial pursuits andpay that back at whatever rate
you know, whatever pace you want.
People that read that book loveit to such an extent that it
has gone on to generate so muchlife insurance business for a

(01:00:18):
life insurance shop that webecause people would read the
book and go who do I go to andwe're like you can go to?
It depends you have tostructure it the right way, but
any reputable insurance provider.
But you don't want to work withagents who are going to try to
sell you whatever let's say,variable, universal, because
people get crushed by that oranything like that.
Obviously it's not like someonemight be watching this and go.

(01:00:40):
I don't like overfunded wholelife, that's okay.
My, my, my illustration is itended up generating so much
business for the people thatwant because of the people that
wanted to implement thatstructure and the people we
referred to, that the two agentsthat we referred people to
ended up becoming two of the top10 producers at mass mutual in
the country and the up becomingtwo of the top 10 producers at

(01:01:01):
mass mutual in the country andthe CEO had their cell phone.
It was like that is not even ourbusiness and it should have
been my business, I guess, butmaybe I would have not thought
about it the right way.
That had been my business I'dbe like would I be trying to
just like market life insuranceand then be in the same boat as
everybody else who's marketingit?
Or my customer acquisition costwas $20.
And everything that happened onreferral on the back end if

(01:01:25):
that was part of my businesswould have been I could have
factored that into the financialmodel.
But you could call that icingon the cake If I'm still getting
.
At the time I was getting 100%return on ad spend day zero or
90% return on ad spend day zero,90% return on ad spend day zero
and still had our own programsto sell.
That's where backend can bereally interesting.

John Newtson (01:01:45):
Yeah, that's what I don't know.
I feel like there was a periodof time when people were a
little bit more interested inkind of some of this stuff and
the FinPub kind of you know, notquite collapsed, but that real
massive pullback has reallysucked the air out of the room
on on anything other than, like,hey, we need to get back to

(01:02:07):
whole, which is which makestotal sense, and that's not a
criticism whatsoever, that'sjust the reality of it, sure, um
, and like, people are, you know, less, less experimental right
now than maybe they were,obviously, when everything was
flying high.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:02:24):
And it makes sense.
We have to be prioritizingprofitability.
We have to be a little morerisk averse in certain ways
right now than when interestrates were zero and consumers
were feeling really great andgoing I'm going to do this thing
.
They were doing that every dayand now the demand certainly has
dropped off.
You know, it's not the.

(01:02:44):
It's not where we were a coupleof years, you know, a couple of
years ago.
From that perspective, so I'msure we all have our hands full
with what's the thing that'sgoing to work now in this
environment, right Cause wecan't we can't wish our way into
a different situation withmacro.
We can't control that.

John Newtson (01:03:01):
Right, right, but I do think that the issue of
tools and the ease of techdevelopment around tools
everybody that I know who has atool, trading tool, whatever
that has become a bigger andbigger part of their business.
I think there is a lot moredemand and just acceptance of
the need for or interest ininvesting in trading tools right

(01:03:23):
as a product or service, and soI think ignoring that piece is
a mistake for most people,because there is again like it's
so easy to build screeners andscanners anymore.
It's not the same you knowexpensive development that it
used to be.
Now they may not all be up tosnuff the way same.
You know expensive developmentthat it used to be.
Now they may not all be up tosnuff the way that that you know
a fully developed one is, butthere's so much interest there

(01:03:45):
that a lot of the groups that Iknow that have them are like
this is our fastest growing partof our business.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:03:50):
Yeah, I think that's going to continue.
Yeah, I think it's a.
It's interesting, you know.
It gets me thinking, though.
Like it gets me thinking,though, how do you think about
R&D in the FinPub space?
How should a FinPub, what arethe best practices for how a

(01:04:11):
FinPub thinks about where toallocate towards experimental
stuff, and I don't mean A-Btesting, necessarily copy or
funnels, but let's say, let'ssay product.
Sometimes we see private equityby businesses and they go for
profitability and get rid of theR and D side.
That was like the founder wasdumping a bunch back into
building better experiences orbuilding new innovative stuff,

(01:04:34):
and then the business collapsesright.
So like, obviously it doesn'talways work just to turn it off.
Where's the space for it?
And how do you think in FinPubabout allocating in different
economic cycles towards I don'twant to call it tinkering, I
don't even want to call itexperimenting, but trying to
figure out the next thing,separate from the messaging and

(01:04:57):
campaign side.

John Newtson (01:04:59):
Right.
So there's a dynamic here inFinPub and maybe some people are
going to get upset with me whenI say this, but I had a really
good conversation one time withAndrew Taylor over coffee about
kind of all of the problems thathit the industry up through the
FTC issues pre you know, upthrough you know, the FTC issues

(01:05:20):
, the, a core financial gettingbanned on Facebook and Google,
all the different stuff, thestuff even with, like the, the
case against what's his face?
Who was taking money out of thetable to feature stocks, like
all of these issues.
If you group them all togetherthe Visa, MasterCard audits,

(01:05:42):
just all the stuff from acrossall the companies, what you
essentially have is a managementfailure.
There were things that were notbeing looked at, that were not
being managed.
It's a management failure andthat's a symptom of the culture
that is kind of your strength isyour weakness.
We have this very marketingforward culture that is very

(01:06:04):
much about customer acquisition,copy promotion, and that's a
huge strength in the industryand the standard pattern for
somebody running a publishingunit is that they were a great
marketer who really drove a lotof things and made things happen
, and then you put them incharge of things, give them no
management training whatsoevernone, pretty much.

(01:06:24):
And now they're running a large, in some cases, a business that
grows into the hundreds ofmillions.
And now things start to happen.
And they're still doing whatthey're great at, but things
start to happen, and so thateven the idea of like, well, how
do you allocate towards R&D?

(01:06:45):
Is a management question, andwhat I would bet is that, by and
large, the thought isn'tcrossing most people's minds.
Right, Because we're not a verysophisticated industry from a
management perspective, andthat's good and bad.
But it's also an area ofopportunity, I think, for some

(01:07:06):
people, once you get to acertain size, to really think
about well, how do we managethis business better?
How do we really think aboutthat?
Take your view of well, how dowe look at our cash flow?
How do we look at all thethings that impact this?
And how do we think at our cashflow?
How do we look at all thethings that impact this and how
do we think about R&D?
Because the only people who arethinking about R&D that I come
across generally, with a fewminor exceptions, I would say

(01:07:28):
Tradesmith has their tool-basedsoftware business.
You'll think about Matt Paulsonat MarketBeat.
He's very focused ondevelopment, but, by and large,
the only people who are thinkingabout it are the marketers and
copywriters, specifically in therealm of what can I sell and
offer?
Right, it's offer development,and so otherwise it's very much

(01:07:52):
an area that, from myperspective, is undiscussed
right.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:08:00):
Yeah, so that's interesting Cause.
So a couple of thoughts at the.
I remember a principle that myvery basic, foundational one
that when I was in my twenties,a mentor taught me.
He's like solve problems, youwill get paid.
You will.

(01:08:20):
If you solve problems, you'redelivering value and that's how
you're going to make, that's howyou're going to build your
wealth.
So, find out what they want, goout and get it, give it to them
.
That's like a simple mantrathat a guy, keith Cunningham,
who was like rich dad of RobertKiyosaki, right what he said

(01:08:41):
find out what they want, go outand get it and give it to them.
So we do think about that asmarketers.
Right, we think about the solvea problem.
Are there other ways to solveproblems?
That or are there otherproblems that we can solve that
can be done through uniqueexperiences?
I'm looking at this.
I saw this tweet this morningfrom a guy, greg Eisenberg,
great marketer.

(01:09:02):
I really like a lot of hiscontent.
He said when I first moved toSilicon Valley, engineers were
gods.
A 10x engineer could make orbreak a startup.
And now things have changed.
I studied computer science atschool, so it pains me to say
this, but marketers are the newengineers and attention is the
new currency.
So I think, based on thesetools that are coming out not

(01:09:23):
that this will happen overnight,but I think there are going to
be some incredible innovationscoming out of the marketers in
FinPub because, okay, marketersare the new engineers.
Here's more from GregAttributes of a marketer the
ability to spread ideas, masterthe art of copywriting, speak
visually, create engagingnarratives, understand product
psychology, build brand andcommunity engineer distribution

(01:09:47):
that's what the FinPubs have andbuild dynamic funnels.
So now, if you can take acomponent of your funnel or of
your product and literally go toClaude and say, turn this piece
of my content into aninteractive widget, it will do
that instantaneously.

(01:10:08):
You give it to your web personand now you have it.
I mean I'm oversimplifying, butthat can happen.
So just to prove how not muchI'm oversimplifying, I saw
someone last night share onTwitter a cool couple slides
from BlackRock of what they sawin a couple of market dynamics

(01:10:28):
in Europe.
I didn't particularly careabout the content, but I went to
Claude, take these two slides Ijust dropped the screenshots in
there Create an interactivedashboard from the charts and
stuff that are in these slidesand then create an analysis for
me as to what's happening, andinstantaneously.

(01:10:51):
It created an interactivedashboard that presented it way
better than the slides did, withcharts and graphs and menu
items and all kinds of stuffthat were interactive.
You can hover over it and youcan see.
And then down below was ananalysis that wasn't captured in
the initial slides, becauseit's able to derive that by
looking at the charts, just likesomeone who knows what they're

(01:11:12):
doing might be able to.
Now you don't want to take thatas factual, that it didn't make
an error, but generally, ifyou're a marketer and you can
take a screenshot of a chart andyou can drop it in and create
an interactive dashboard of thatdata immediately.
That takes one minute.

(01:11:34):
And if you don't have time inyour life to play for one minute
a day, even just to get theideas turning, because no,
someone's probably not going tolike buy because you put an
interactive chart on your salesletter, but can we build that
muscle?
For as marketers, we build thatmuscle, for how do we show what

(01:11:58):
we're trying to sell?
How do we prove it?
How do we show?
So this is just another way ofshowing it right.
So we have the muscle, for howdo we show and convey these
ideas and demonstrate.
We now have even more ways todemonstrate at our fingertips.
I don't know which methods ofdemonstration are going to be
the highest converting, but youcould start to create uniqueness

(01:12:23):
in your businessdifferentiation if you replace a
piece of content or somethingstatic in your product with
something interactive.
Your conversion doesn't getmade or broken by putting that
in your product, but allows youto experiment with that and at
least provide possibly adifferent or a better user
experience.
You get the feedback from yourcustomers and if they like it

(01:12:45):
and go wow, then maybe you canlook at how could I turn that
into a marketing tool or howcould I get that wow.
On the other end and that's howI try to think about that Lower
risk to put a betterproductized experience into our
products that people havealready bought.
Get the feedback, productizeexperience into our products
that people have already bought.
Get the feedback and if peoplelike it, is there a hook there

(01:13:07):
that would resonate with peoplethat haven't bought yet?
And can I use that forengagement or to get them to opt
?

John Newtson (01:13:10):
in or anything like that.
No, that's awesome.
I think you're right.
I think that's a path ofdevelopment here for marketers.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:13:17):
You know I think about your.
You know we've talked aboutbefore.
I love when we're at theconference and you have your,
your.
Your kids are learningentrepreneurship by helping with
, by helping with everythingthere, and I'm sure they're
doing more with you too and Ilove that.
And as my six-year-old'sgetting into dad, how do I, how
do I make money?
I want to make money so I canbuy more Legos.
Um, we look at how do we makeit fun and I think about on

(01:13:42):
marketing to adults.
The answer is not just likemake it entertaining and go
viral on TikTok.
That doesn't necessarily aswe've discussed in our groups
here, that doesn't necessarilytranslate cleanly to buyer
intent.
But if you can make theexperience delightful, then
they're more likely to retainthe information.
So I think about that with mykid when I'm teaching him about

(01:14:03):
money and entrepreneurship.
So there's this like AI tool,suno right, where you could
literally just think an idea fora song or you could write the
lyrics or any combination of,and within five seconds you have
a song.
So I went okay, summer project,because we were having a lot of
fun with this.
He said my band name is Muffinsin a Hot Tub.
I was like what's that?

(01:14:23):
He said I just made it up.
Great, you know what I was like.
That would be a great.
I wrote the whole song in myhead within a few seconds, just
because I like doing that.
I've always liked doing thatstuff.
But it was going to be style ofRamones Muffins anyway.
Style of like Ramones, ummuffins anyway.
So so I've got like a punk punksong, go to Suno, drop it in.

(01:14:43):
You've got a banger here and Iwent okay, here's what we're
going to do this summer.
If you have other songs youwant to create for your friends
things that you're doing we'regoing to publish them on Spotify
through CD.
Baby, 10 bucks to do like.
So now, his song.

John Newtson (01:14:58):
He's got an album cover his's on Spotify.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:15:00):
Yeah, you could go find it in your in your
local.
Spotify.
But I was like here's how we'llmake that fun.
It's hard to make money as anartist.
It doesn't mean you're going tomake money on this.
In fact it may be a goodexperience to learn that you can
have fun and create somethingthat's delightful, but it's
really hard to make money.
But like, let's just see, let'spublish it and let's make some
swag print on demand shirts andmaybe a couple of your friends

(01:15:21):
want them and maybe you makefive bucks and if you do, that's
the first $5 ever made in anentrepreneurial pursuit.
And maybe that's not enough tobe a business.
Maybe you learned it's reallyhard to sell.
Maybe you learn it's reallyhard to make something work, but
you got that, you started tobuild that muscle and you can go
back on that.

(01:15:45):
So, as we're experimenting asbusy business owners and as busy
marketers and we're going tolive and die by, can we figure
out the next promo, the nextproduct that resonates?
There is some low dragexperimental stuff that we can
do with some of these tools thatare really compressing the time
from idea to prototype, and I'mexcited about that and that's
why I think, with distribution,that FinPub has the ability to
acquire a customer.
So the customer acquisitioncosts, arbitrage for banking

(01:16:07):
products and other products thathave higher stick or higher
lifetime value or aresignificantly more competitive.
Who can think about how toconnect with people?
And you can think a miniproduct solution into existence
or at least a prototype of it, aworking prototype.

(01:16:27):
I am extraordinarily bullish onseeing, like, what innovation
comes out of this, because it'sgoing to we're going to see it
in like now yeah, no, I agreewith you.

John Newtson (01:16:38):
I think that's the thing and, like, the more
people who are thinking about itand playing with it, uh, the
more stuff that'll come up, forsure.
Um, I love that.
The music I've seen that in,like, uh, that's like, that's a
cool way to do it.
I love the idea, like with mykids, I do the after the event,
like I force them to do pnls andlike everything else and like

(01:16:59):
then, of course, it starts thethe most, most annoying part,
which is, um, they try andrenegotiate their fee for like,
oh, yeah, yeah, but that's goodCause.
I'm like okay, let's talk aboutthis negotiation tactic here.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:17:15):
Yeah, come on, kids, never split the
difference.

John Newtson (01:17:17):
Let's make this right yeah.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:17:18):
Yeah, my kid is becoming a fierce
negotiator, but they're engaged,they're thinking about it.
It's amazing and it's likethey're not viewing it as work
as much as enjoying solving theproblem.
Right, yeah, and my kid's onlysub seven years old, but like so
I created this GPT called DreamFactory, and it was.

(01:17:39):
He can speak anything into theapp.
And I created this GPT calleddream factory, and it was.
He can speak anything into theapp and it'll create a bedtime
story for him.
And but the twist on this onewas that every story teaches a
lesson in entrepreneurship orinvesting.
So you may go.
Is that obnoxious?
But like it's still the storyhe wants to hear.

(01:18:00):
It's just that the octopus, orwhatever it has to solve a
problem by collaborating withthe clownfish in order to blah,
blah, solve the problem, inorder for them to have an
undersea lemonade stand orsomething.
And it's like it gets thosereps in.
And as adults, how do we getour reps in that mimic play but
have business use case?
And that's how I like to thinkabout how to fit in R&D when we

(01:18:21):
still have to turn a profitevery day and keep the lights on
.

John Newtson (01:18:25):
Yeah, that's very cool.
That's a great point.
That's a great point, awesome.
Well, I appreciate you doingthis man.
This is a great conversation.
I really appreciate you comingto FMS and being a part of the
FMS Pro community too.
You're a cool addition into theecosystem here and, yeah, I
can't wait to hear more aboutwhat you know, what you guys are
doing next and what else.

(01:18:45):
And if anyone wants to connectwith Matt uh, you know I'm happy
to make connections.
You can find them on LinkedIn.
You can find them atWealthFactory.
You can find them in FMS pro.

Mathieu Silverstein (01:18:53):
Um so yeah, thanks, man.
Thanks, john.
Love the FMS community, fmscommunity, excited to continue
being a part of it and gratefulfor what you're doing and you're
touching so many lives andhelping people like me connect
with other people and thethoughts.
I mean.
You have such a wealth ofknowledge about it and it's
opening a lot of doors to how Ithink about the world and how I
can deliver value to mycustomers now and next year and

(01:19:15):
the year after and the yearafter.
So thank you for everythingthat you do.

John Newtson (01:19:19):
Appreciate that, thanks man, yeah, all right,
take care Bye.