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Featuring exclusive interviews with the smartest media experts and operators out there today. Including from the Hustle, Morning Brew, Workweek, The Pour Over, and more.
Ep 35 - Tyler & Colton (v2)
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Tyler Parker: [00:00:00] We, when we first started it, it wasn't very good. I think we were spending probably like eight or nine bucks per per subscriber on Facebook, which was crazy. And then we would recoup some of that with a spark loop, but now we've got it down quite a bit to where really we're kind of in arbitrage mode to where we're spending less Facebook.
Then we are making through SparkLoop. So really, we're, we're making money to grow it. I mean, it's better than growing for free.
Dylan Redekop: Welcome to the Send & Grow podcast. I'm your host Dylan Redekop in my day job here at spark loop. I spend all my time analyzing how the best newsletter operators and media brands in the world grow and monetize their audiences.
I get a behind the scenes look at how they're growing their newsletters and driving revenue every day. And there is so much to learn from their success and from their mistakes. And with this podcast, you get that access to. Every week, I sit down with a different guest from industry experts to successful operators and we go deep on the stuff that you need to know about so you can become really effective at [00:01:00] growing and monetizing your newsletter.
In today's episode, we're doing something a little bit different. I'm excited to introduce not one, but two guests on the show, Colton Sakamoto and Tyler Parker. They're the dynamic duo behind the Office Party Newsletter. Office Party is more than just a newsletter. It's a curated guide for career advancement, tackling everything from job market trends to the impact of AI on employment.
What's unique about Colton and Tyler's approach is their partnership in managing and growing their newsletter. It's a path much less traveled in the newsletter world. Today we'll explore how they started Office Party as a partnership, how they leveraged each other's networks to grow Office Party faster, how they divide and conquer day to day responsibilities, and when they think you should or shouldn't add a partner to your newsletter business.
Colton, Tyler, great to have you both here. Let's kick things off by diving into the story behind Office Party and how you two collaborate.
Tyler Parker: Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks for having us on, first of all. So I graduated college, I played, played [00:02:00] baseball in college and then got a job working. In mortgage sales right after college.
So kind of got some experience on the sales side, but didn't really love it. And then transitioned into just doing personal training in the morning. Colton and I had been friends since, since high school, or maybe before through baseball and kind of had the idea to, to put a newsletter together and then.
Brainstormed a little bit and that's, that's basically how it came to life, what, seven months ago or so.
Dylan Redekop: How about you, Colton? were you up to before before starting about this party?
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah. My name is Colton Sakamoto. Long and short, right out of college. I co founded and put a focus startup.
So we have like a job board training program. Recruiting agency you know, scale that pretty quickly, raise some, some outside capital. The one thing that I really learned in that process is that I just enjoy the employment space. I enjoy sharing information about helping people get jobs. I enjoy helping people get jobs.
So I stepped [00:03:00] down last year around this time. Started writing on LinkedIn, just sharing, you know, pieces of information that I had picked up over those past couple of years and helping thousands of people start new jobs that gained traction pretty quickly on LinkedIn. And then I thought, you know, it might be, it might be beneficial to own the audience more directly through a newsletter, build up distribution through a newsletter and share information that people want, stories that people want, cover layoffs.
Yeah, cover how AI is impacting jobs and things like that. So long and short, that's sort of how we came up with the idea to launch Office Party.
Dylan Redekop: So you guys were checking baseballs around. That's exactly what you do on a baseball field. I know. Yeah. And you just were like, Hey, let's start a newsletter. Or how did it, like, what was the conversation?
How did you decide to? You know, co co run this thing.
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah, I think we both have a passion, you know, for helping people and especially pertaining to helping people find jobs. And we realized, you know, looking at a number of other newsletters, there's plenty [00:04:00] of great publications out there, but none that really.
We feel like do a good job covering stuff pertaining to careers and that information is available on your, on your timeline on X, you know, on LinkedIn, but sort of hard to verify what's true. Information is very spread out. So we take a very curated approach of covering sort of the best and most interesting stories that people want to know.
And we put that together.
Tyler Parker: And I guess I left it out. But I I ran a job board as well before it wasn't super successful or anything, but I was writing on LinkedIn as well. So Colton and I both had kind of decent followings on LinkedIn. And it kind of sounds weird to say it like that to own and monetize your audience, but that's really what it.
What it is, if people found value in the stuff that we were saying, so we figured we could continue it in a newsletter.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I've heard, you know, people who kind of shudder at the term about owning the audience. It's like really what you're owning, you own the distribution, right? Because with algorithms, you don't own that control.
You have no control, really, over that. You can post as much as you're, you know, your heart's content. [00:05:00] But when it comes to actually owning the distribution, that's where, you know, email and a newsletter becomes kind of your the main thing, the thing that you need to, to leverage. So talk to me about you guys start the newsletter, talk to me about a day in the life or a day in the week, cause you guys publish twice a week, the office party.
What is, what is a, you know. A week in the life of the office party look like who's responsible for what?
Tyler Parker: Yeah. So it's when we first got into it, I think we kind of had the understanding. I was going to maybe try to do kind of the sales side and Colton was going to do the content side, but we, we talked about it at first and then what it's.
What it's came to now is I kind of do all the research for the newsletter. So throughout the week I'm reading stories I'm subscribed to a million different newsletters kind of in the space trying to find stories that I think our audience would, would like, and Colton and I have like shared files that we'll send each other stuff through.
So I'm kind of always browsing and reading, and then we just have a notion page to where I'll basically just [00:06:00] sum up the stories and then get images that That fit with the stories too and throw them in there and then Colton kind of wraps it up, basically finishes it, puts a bow tie on it, and then writes the actual newsletter and gets it scheduled to send out.
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah, it's a pretty streamlined process to where, you know, it doesn't take us a ton of time because we've kind of split responsibilities, at least on the writing piece of it. Yeah, so Tyler does a great job of finding like interesting stories. And our basic criteria there is obviously it's, you know, career related.
So layoffs, how AI is impacting jobs companies that are hiring, but really even more than that, it's just stories that we find interesting that we think other people will, will find interesting as well. There's one story that we did where a company, I'm not sure if it was for a publicity publicity stunt, but they hired a robot CEO. And so we wrote about. So just like ridiculous
stuff like that, that people, you know, we'll find some enjoyment from and hopefully some relevant takeaways and then to add on the [00:07:00] ad sales side, I mean, we both kind of split that, that burden of the ad sales process is very manual and tedious. And so we both sort of split that responsibility between the two.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. So what I was going to ask next is how you. How you agreed on, you know, roles and, you know, ad sales would be definitely be a part of it as well as growth too, right? Like deciding on how you want to grow the newsletter, whether it be organic or paid. So how did you come up with the roles and responsibilities?
Tyler, you mentioned at the beginning. You were going to do one thing that turned out you, you ended up doing more of the research stuff. So it was just more of a sort of a natural progression of things, or was it something that you guys kind of outlaid in advance?
Tyler Parker: Yeah. Well, absolutely. That's our original plan for how we were, we were going to monetize and we didn't really expect to, to have any sales until we were at at least probably 10, 000 subscribers, which we're probably just going to pass.
Nice today, actually. But thank you. But we, from, from the audiences that we had on LinkedIn, we got a bit of inbound interest basically right away from people in companies that wanted to [00:08:00] advertise in the newsletter. So we talked to each other. We said, yeah, I mean, if there's already interest, we can, we can let them advertise, figure out a fair price.
And then. Now let's start looking at other companies that are either advertising in different newsletters, or anytime I see like an ad pop up on screenshot it and then go try to find people that work in marketing at that company and email them. And so that's kind of how it came to be. And then it was kind of just organic.
We just both shared that responsibility.
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah. I mean, we're so early in, in our, in our. Process and our creation of office party that were very scrappy. And it's very much, you know, a lot of times we're both doing the same things. I think if you were to kind of categorize our responsibilities, I would say we both do ad sales.
We both focus on growth pretty heavily. I do the writing. He does the research and the content creation. That's very much a teamwork approach. And I think the other interesting piece of that, that I think. [00:09:00] Listeners will find valuable is every week we meet to go over growth for about 30 minutes to an hour where we have like a pretty solid system in place where we're tracking our Facebook ads, we're tracking our spark loop earnings were very methodical about how we, how we advertise, how we spend, we don't have any massive budgets or anything like that, but we've created a really strong system to know exactly how much, how many subscribers we can expect how much we can earn off of SparkLoop
and you know, how much we can, we can grow.
Dylan Redekop: So how have you been growing predominantly the newsletter?
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah. So initially that kind of zero to 1000 phase was very manual. We were reaching out to people on LinkedIn. We were posting on LinkedIn. We did a couple of like, sort of what I'd categorize as publicity stunts to where I changed my title to chief party officer.
And like if you change your title on LinkedIn, it notifies everyone. And then I plugged the newsletter under and said, you know, if you're looking for career information, subscribe to this newsletter. And so that type of stuff [00:10:00] really brought in a lot of subscribers right off the gate. And then it was a ma a matter of manually reaching out to people.
Our connections on LinkedIn think, you know. I think at 20, 000, I think Tyler has something like 12,000, and we're just reaching out to as many people as possible. It was super tedious, but it converted pretty well, and it gave us sort of that initial you know, piece of growth. Tyler does a really good job, and I'll let him talk about this posting in Facebook groups, which I think listeners will find really interesting, good way for free growth.
And then you can monetize, you know, with SparkLoop from that. And then the key piece as of lately has been, you know, Facebook or meta ads. We've found a pretty solid way to, you know, get the CPA down quite a bit and then make some money off of spark loop on the back end of that. Cool. Yeah. Let's
Dylan Redekop: hear Tyler your, your info on that.
Tyler Parker: Yeah, yeah, that first little bit, like Colton said, was kind of just all manual and telling people about it on LinkedIn, but then I joined a bunch of Facebook groups. Our audience is predominantly people that work in [00:11:00] HR and recruiting and stuff. So I joined a bunch of Facebook groups like that, and then I would just find, I would just find posts.
And anytime I'm scrolling, if people had a question or a comment or something, I would kind of just answer it genuinely. Or sometimes they'd have a question about like a specific law or something, and I wouldn't know the answer, but. I just Google the answer real quick and find it and give them an answer and then plug the newsletter, say, Hey, by the way, here's a great newsletter that covers these sorts of topics as well.
And from that, we'd already had SparkLoop set up. So every time I post something, we get maybe five to 10 people that would subscribe from a comment like that. Sometimes they'd go viral in the, in the bigger groups and we'd get more, but from that with, with spark loop, we'd make, you know, between like two and 3 per subscriber.
So we were already making. Making money for free like that. So it was pretty organic. We really didn't need a lot of money to start it up. I think Colton and I deposited maybe like a thousand bucks to start off. And then it was all kind [00:12:00] of organic like that at first. And then now like Colton said, we've kind of nailed down our Facebook ads.
So. When we first started, it wasn't very good. I think we were spending probably like eight or nine bucks per per subscriber on Facebook, which was crazy. And then we would recoup some of that with a spark loop, but now we've got it down quite a bit to where really we're kind of in arbitrage mode to where we're spending less per subscriber on Facebook than we are making through spark loop.
So really we're. We're making money to grow it. I mean, it's better than growing for free. So we've kind of just slowly kind of turned up the spending and fine tune the Facebook ads that way. And and basically. Skyrocketed the growth like that.
Dylan Redekop: Right. And I mean, I think we'd be remiss not to mention that Colton is a spark loop employee as well.
So he's kind of got the inside track on how to, how to leverage you know, SparkLoop the best in terms of the paid recommendations that we're just talking about with upscribe [00:13:00] as well as you know, partner programs for growth too. So we don't need to necessarily get into too much detail with that, but I thought maybe that would be a good thing to mention here.
Tyler Parker: He wasn't when we first started.
Dylan Redekop: Oh, that's true. That is true. Yeah. Yeah. You, you guys started OfficeParty several months before Colton started with SparkLoop. So so now we've talked a little bit about, you know, your roles and responsibilities. We've talked about a little bit about your growth with OfficeParty and what you're doing there.
What do you, what do you think are the biggest benefits of having a newsletter business partner? Like, I guess, you know, extract. Tyler checked Colton out of the mix and vice versa. Colton extract Tyler to the mix. Like, and imagine doing it all yourself and then like, you know, that might help formulate your answer.
Are two heads really better than one? And are they, or is it is it kind of more of an exponential thing there?
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah, I think it's a matter of streamlining and creating, you know, good processes that really cut down on the time it takes to publish a newsletter. It can be tedious to write a newsletter.
But if you have someone that you're, you're doing it with and you're collaborating [00:14:00] with, it makes the writing process, you know, more fun and enjoyable but also, you know, quite quick, quite quicker. Another thing that's helpful too, is just putting our heads together around strategy, you know, for growth.
I think two people are often better than one, you know, when it comes to ideation and strategy.
Tyler Parker: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think, I think it's definitely the two heads specifically are better than one because the work aspect of it, it's, it's not. It's not a crazy amount of work or anything besides, you know, manually emailing and trying to sell ads and stuff, but being able to bounce ideas off of each other and try out different things and if, if I have an idea that sucks, that I think would be good and I would have probably implemented it if I was by myself, it's to have Colton to say.
No, let's not do that. And basically perfect our process is a lot better. And sometimes we both have ideas that suck and it doesn't work and then we just fix it in our weekly meeting the next week. But, but having, having a partner to bounce things off of has, [00:15:00] has definitely been an advantage.
Dylan Redekop: You might not know this, but before I joined the SparkLoop team, I used to run a weekly newsletter of my own.
In a couple years I had grown my newsletter to over 5, 000 subscribers, but back then monetizing was really hard, especially as a bootstrapped newsletter founder working nights and weekends. I look back now and think, man, if only Sparkloop's paid newsletter recommendations tool had existed back then.
From those 5, 000 subscribers, I'd have earned more than 10, 000 in extra revenue with zero extra work. It would have been a game changer for my indie newsletter business back then, and it's a game changer for thousands of the world's best newsletters today. This year, SparkLoop is on a mission to pay out over 50 million to smart newsletter operators just for helping your audience discover other amazing newsletters that they'd love to read, too.
Head over to sparkloop. app, sign up for free in minutes, and unlock life changing newsletter revenue today. Now, back to the show.
And so what are the[00:16:00]
I imagine, you know, giving up a little bit of that sort of independence to some degree, like, you know, if you have an idea and you want to run with it, but your co founder says no, that can be, that can be frustrating, but how do you guys, how do you guys navigate those challenges?
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah, I don't think it's, it's really been a challenge at all.
You know, Tyler is someone who works hard and has high integrity. And I think both of those things are important. And so when you look for in, you know, who's going to lead a business with you so, you know, not too many challenges, I think you know, not always on the same page, which is just sort of natural in something like this.
But I think generally we split the workload, you know, pretty well. And we've. Really streamline our processes to where, you know, we're, we're pretty efficient and, you know, running pretty well.
Tyler Parker: Yeah. Yeah. We really haven't had any, any major challenges. I think one thing that, that Colton and I both really appreciate in, in terms of the newsletter coming from.
Backgrounds in baseball is the kind of instant feedback we can get. So if we try like a new, a new [00:17:00] time to send the newsletter and it doesn't work, we know within a few hours that, okay, we, we can't send it at two o'clock anymore. We got to send it at a different time. And so we've played around with stuff like that.
Stuff like AB testing subject lines with an emoji at the beginning or the end, just kind of random things like that. And being able to get instant feedback and know, okay, let's talk about this the next time. And kind of Really fine tune that and, and come up with, with the best process and the, the best way to be able to, to do it through both of us is, is something that I think we both appreciate a lot.
Dylan Redekop: Awesome. And do you guys like, do you have like a specific way of tracking those things or like a document or how do you go about, you know, let's say you're running these tests. And then you have, you have the results come in that instant, that relatively instant feedback. How do you document that?
How do you go over it? Do you have it a weekly meeting doc or how does that? How do you manage that?
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah, I think the best example of that would be [00:18:00] our ad tracking. And we had created this spreadsheet. It's just a notion, so it's nothing fancy. You know, we're very scrappy, but every week we go through the ads that we're running, the creatives that we're running you know, the audience size, the CPM, CPA.
We track these metrics, you know, week over week. And it allows us to monitor, you know, what's working, what's not we're pretty careful not to, you know, tweak things because it didn't, we, it didn't work one week. You know, we're pretty methodical about, you know, how we do things and that's allowed us to take our CPA down from what Tyler, you know, mentioned earlier, it was ridiculously high when we didn't know what we're doing, allowed us to test different creatives, test different audiences.
And things like that to get it down to where it's now, you know, anywhere in the 0. 50 to 1. 50 range, you know, depending on the week and the creative. So I think in terms of, you know, systems and collaborations that's probably, you know, the best example.
Dylan Redekop: That makes sense. What are, what are the most important things? Like if you, if you had to start over again you know, you're, you're about six, seven months into running this newsletter, co running a newsletter, [00:19:00] what are the most important things you'd want to nail down first? If you were to do this again with, with a partner like in terms of maybe responsibilities financials strategy, earnings, that sort of thing.
Tyler Parker: I think, I think the biggest thing is really that. The first probably want the first probably one to 2000 subscribers and basically figuring out how can we leverage each other's circles or audiences. You don't have to have like a big audience on LinkedIn like, like we do, but figuring out how can we get those those 1st few and then really, I mean, probably the.
Biggest factor in terms of our success has been being able to leverage SparkLoop so that we're growing for free. I mean, because we didn't have to deposit any more money. I mean, we started it and then because of the earnings that we were able to get through SparkLoop, we, we could kind of just scale it and grow it without having to stress about [00:20:00] money.
And then as far as, like sharing profits or anything. We've basically agreed at the beginning to just reinvest everything into growth. I mean, a hundred percent, we're just, we're putting back in to either Facebook ads or paying for subscribers on spark loop. So so, so that's been probably the biggest thing so far.
Dylan Redekop: So is the newsletter now is it making a profit, I guess, if you're able to. Get subscribers getting basically get paid to get new subscribers. I would assume that things are looking good that way.
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah. And we've been able to sell a pretty good number of that slots at a decent price to a couple of the issues there are.
One, towards the end of the year, we saw ad interest slow down quite a bit. A lot of budgets were being used up and two, we only write twice a week. And so that sort of limits our earning opportunities you know, from an ad placement standpoint. And I think to answer your earlier question about like, you know, if we [00:21:00] were to start over, I think what I would do is find, you know, some additional ways to monetize outside of ads.
Outside of SparkLoop, both have been great for us, but I think, you know, if you can kind of own products and services off your newsletter that you can promote I think you know, that makes income a lot more steady ad sales are, are good, but they're very tedious as your newsletter subscriber count grows and you have an engaged audience, you can obviously, you know, charge quite a bit more for advertisement.
So, you know, we're looking to do that too. But it is, you know, a bit of a pain to. Manually reach out to a bunch of different contacts and a bunch of different companies. You know, try and sell ads.
Dylan Redekop: I've been there and I've done it. I don't I don't question that for a second. So what would be the type of the type of product that a newsletter like yours would be looking at?
Cause if you're, I assume it's something that's either. Kind of a productized service or I mean, there's a few options, like a community, a paid community, a productized service, a paid newsletter, that sort of thing. Do you guys have any ideas?
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah, we thought a lot about [00:22:00] doing stuff like that. I think services for us, you know, we're, we're both pretty busy right now, so I don't think that's like necessarily, I don't think it necessarily makes sense for us. We've had a lot of people who, you know, our main focus was getting people in HR and recruiting, but a lot of people have said they want help, like getting jobs. And so we've thought about, you know, doing a community or creating a product or service that makes it easier to, you know, redo your resume or write a cover letter quickly and things like that.
So we're definitely thinking about a lot of those things going into, into the new year.
Dylan Redekop: If you had to, if you had to start over, what kind of what kind of characteristics aspects, personality traits would you look for in a newsletter partner? Like if somebody is listening to this, they're running a newsletter, they want to grow it.
They see the, they see the success you guys have had kind of co running a newsletter. What kind of, what kind of traits and, and that sort of thing would you look for in a newsletter partner?
Tyler Parker: I would just say somebody it's nice having somebody that I was already friends with [00:23:00] before because feelings don't get hurt if, if we don't agree.
Which really hasn't been a problem so far, but somebody, I guess that. Is it is easy to work with doesn't mind constructive criticism and, and really kind of just has the same interests like Colton ran an employment based startup. I ran a job board. And basically what it was was we were just talking about stuff that we were interested in already.
We, we liked seeing people get jobs and helping people like that. So. We were, it was, it's kind of organic. We were already just talking about the stuff that we found interesting and the stuff that we liked and then found a way to to put it into a newsletter.
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah. For me, I think you know, making sure that the person you do something with, you know, has integrity and that they're going to work hard and that they have sort of the projects, you know, best interests in mind you know, are important things for me.
And for, I think anyone who's looking for a co founder to do [00:24:00] something like this, you know, with, with someone else. I think it can create challenges if it's not the right person, but I think if it is the right person, you can really streamline your processes and really grow something, you know, quickly together.
You know, it really doesn't take us too long to publish our newsletter and the feedback we get from our readers is really positive. Generally speaking, and so I feel like we've done a good job at you know, sharing the workload and. And making a good product.
Dylan Redekop: So what kind of newsletter operator do you think would I'll ask you two questions in one.
What kind of newsletter operator do you think would benefit the most from a partnership? And who wouldn't be who, who isn't a newsletter partnership for?
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah. I mean, I think really anyone could benefit from having a partner. I know you know, the morning brew guys were a duo when they first started and look what that's, that worked out all right too.
And so it worked out all right. And so I think like,
I think it would be a challenge to start from zero [00:25:00] to try and get to, you know, 1, 000, 20, 000 subscribers, try and write and publish frequently, try and stay up to date on everything relevant that you're writing about you know, try and sell ads and monetize and all that stuff.
I think if you're doing that solo, like it's. A bit overwhelming and we want to take a very long term approach to this to where we're, we're growing steady steadily and hopefully exponentially at some point. But we're, you know, in it for the long haul and we want to make this thing work over time.
We don't want to just. You know, jump on a trend and try and make something work in one year and then, and then bail on it. So I think that splitting between us both, like allows us to take more of a long term approach to it to where it's not eating away at too much of our day to day. We can, you know, publish frequently and consistently.
We can focus on growth, we can focus on ad sales and we can maintain that long term approach.
Tyler Parker: Right. I would say, I would say to answer the question of who's, who is it not for, I would say. Somebody that, [00:26:00] that just maybe feels a little bit overwhelmed with the workload of it, I would say it's probably not best to, to get a partner to just try to share the work because really you could, Colton and I both could probably do all the work.
On our own, but what's nice is, is being able to bounce things off of each other. And obviously it is nice to, to share the workload, but for, for somebody that is. Maybe just a little bit burnt out. It would probably be better to just hire somebody to to take over some of the workload, but for Colton and I.
Like you mentioned, the long term approach to it has been nice because neither of us, I mean, it's not like we need to make a million bucks right away or we need to grow it to a huge number of subscribers right away. We were taking a longer approach that it's something we both enjoy doing, which, which helps a lot for sure.
Dylan Redekop: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think one thing that comes to mind for me is, when, when operating my own newsletter, just the, the feeling of momentum is [00:27:00] very, is very valuable and very important. I find, so I could see it being helpful or could have been helpful having a partner when perhaps I felt like things were just slowing down or I needed a boost or a kick in the pants or something like that, or, you know, having a partner to, to kind of, you know, run ideas by, or, or, you know, bounce on feeling off of, or to.
I guess somebody I don't want to let down as well would be, would be an important thing because sometimes we're really easy to, we're easy to let ourselves down, but we don't want to let somebody else down. So I could see that being something just almost intrinsically that that could be helpful having a partner in crime.
Colton Sakamoto: Yeah, no doubt. And there's old saying that I'm going to butcher, which is like, if you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, you know, go with the team or go with someone else. And I think that's very much applicable here.
Tyler Parker: Yeah, that's actually a really good point, too, about not, not wanting to let somebody else down. I mean, there, there are definitely days to where I'm tired and I don't really feel like reading 10 articles or whatever to to get the research up. But having a partner, it's [00:28:00] it, there's definitely an aspect of accountability.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I think that's really important. Okay. So let's, we'll be wrapping it up here, but I want to know what you guys think when, when should, when should someone consider finding a partner?
Should they, is it like, I have an idea for a newsletter. I should find a partner. Is it, you know, I've written 10 additions. I've started earning revenue. Is there, is there a specific time when someone should consider finding a, Okay. Yeah,
Colton Sakamoto: it's a good question. I think there's really like two approaches to it.
The first being like, okay, I want to start this newsletter. I want to partner with someone who is complimentary to my skill set, who's going to hold me accountable, who I can trust that, you know, we're going to do this together. I think the other approach, which you alluded to, which is like, I've already started my newsletter.
I found that I'm really good at X, Y, and Z. But I'm not good at A, B, and C. Let me go find someone who's good at A, B, and C who likes doing that. Where it's, you know, not a [00:29:00] one plus one equals two, but a one plus one equals three or X, you know, scenario to where you know, the sky's the limit with the partnership.
Tyler Parker: Yeah. I think, I think probably the, I would say the inception phase is probably the time to do it. It, it, it might get a little bit weird if you're already into it a little bit. And then you ask somebody to come on board. I don't think it's impossible. But knowing, knowing what I know from how we've done it, probably if, if you have an idea that you think, you know, somebody could could be complimentary to you, mention it to them.
And if they're on board, then, then I think the best time would probably be right at, right at the start.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I think, you know, that you're both on the same path right at the. Alignment's important. Accountability is important, all that stuff. So I think that's probably, that's probably some pretty sound advice.
Well guys, thank you for coming on. Really love talking about, you know, all things newsletter for lack of better term, newsletter partnerships, business partners with newsletters. You're the first you, the first tag team duo that [00:30:00] we've had on the podcast. If I, you know, if all if I'm remembering correctly, so yeah thanks for coming on let us know, let the audience know where they can find each.
Why don't Colton, you share, share your share where we can find you online and where we can find the office party and then Tyler, you can. You can wrap it up.
Colton Sakamoto: Yep. I'm on Twitter. I haven't posted much on that recently. I think I'm C. J. Sakamoto 15. I'm more active on LinkedIn. It's just my name, Colton Sakamoto, and then office party is joinofficeparty.
com.
Tyler Parker: Yep. And same. I'm I'm, I'm active on LinkedIn, just Tyler Parker. And then then just the newsletter, if you're interested in employment news and memes and stuff like that, then I think you'd probably like the newsletter.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah, it's I'm not looking for a job currently, but I still, I still enjoy the memes for sure.
That's, that's the, one of the main things I look forward to when it hits my inbox. So you guys are doing a pretty good job of those tip my hat. Thank you. Thank you. Hey guys. Well, thanks for coming on. All the best in 2024 with the office party and we'll talk soon.
Tyler Parker: [00:31:00] Cool. Thank you, Dylan. Awesome.
Appreciate it. Thanks for having us, Dylan.
Dylan Redekop: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Send and Grow podcast. If you liked what you heard, here are three quick ways that you can show your support. Number one, leave us a five star rating or review in the podcast app of your choice. Number two, email or DM me with some feedback with your questions or with suggestions for future episodes.
And finally, number three, share your favourite quote from the episode on social media and tag both me and our guest. All of the links for that are available in the show notes. And whatever option you choose, I am really grateful for your support. Thanks and see you next week.