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We talk with people interested in WordPress publishing. You'll hear interview with publishers who happen to be using WordPress, and also people in the WordPress space.
Hey, and welcome to the PublishPress podcast. I'm Steve Burge from PublishPress , and Dan is with me, my co host.
Dan Knauss:Yeah. I'm Dan Knauss from Multidots.
Steve Burge:And, Dan, who are we talking with today?
Dan Knauss:It's, Brian Morrissey up today from the rebooting.
Steve Burge:So Brian lives in New York in the center of the media and advertising world, and he has a long history as a journalist in those areas. He worked for Digiday and Adweek. And recently, he's become a a substacker, although he doesn't like that term. He's basically runs a newsletter and has events and other revenue streams around the newsletter, and he's a really fascinating read. If you haven't done so yet, head over to the rebooting.com and sign up for his newsletter, and then hear us talking with Brian.
Steve Burge:Hey, Brian. Welcome to the Publish Press podcast.
Brian Morrissey:Hey. Thanks for having me.
Steve Burge:So you run the rebooting. Can you describe the origin of the name? What Where did you get the
Brian Morrissey:name rebooting? I saw our name. Well, I I started this in October 2020. In the pandemic, I was leaving my job of almost ten years, I was president, editor in chief of publication publication, excuse me, called digi day. And we covered the media and marketing industries.
Brian Morrissey:And, yeah, been building that over ten years. And so I think I was like, sort of in like a period where I was thinking about rebooting my own, like, sort of life and career. But I think during the pandemic, a lot of that, I think came to the forefront where I thought, Oh, everything's gonna change coming out of the pandemic. And like, honestly, we, we, we snapped pretty much back to normal on a lot of fronts. But I think I was actually right about media, because, you know, underlying that was sort of my feeling over the, you know, just living in this industry, but also, you know, covering it and analyzing it as a journalist, as an editor, that it's, it needed a rebooting itself, right?
Brian Morrissey:Because there was a lot of signs that, you know, the dynamics had changed to such a point that the models were not working, they were strange. And we saw that a lot in the scale era, with a lot of large digital publishers that never lived up to the promise. Right. And I think, you know, while the particular space, for example, yeah, for like, BuzzFeed and, and, and Vox and vice and the rest of them. And, yeah, the idea was, just like we had these analog media companies like Hearst and Conde, etc, we're gonna have this new crop of digitally native publishers that will, if not replace complement, you know, the legacy publishers that were, you know, dealing with a transition to a completely different business model.
Brian Morrissey:What happened was a lot of the advertising money in particular, went to platforms, we know that, you know, and if you control the distribution, in in digital channels, you control everything, right. And I think what's been interesting is like, the rebooting that's happened has been a little bit different for me. I mean, what's happened is like, what people used to call user generated content has now emerged as this powerful, if not more powerful force in some respects to beyond just legacy media, what I would call institutional media, you know, so I think that is different. But I think, without a doubt, the the whole industry needs to to think about new ways of of what you make, how you make money off, how you distribute it, and how you make money off that.
Steve Burge:When you started, it was almost around the time of the big newsletter explosion. Four years ago during COVID, things like Substack started to get really big, Beehive. And that's how you got started to write with the rebooting. It's primarily a newsletter, first and foremost.
Brian Morrissey:Yeah, I mean, it's, I got I got started on substack. I mean, it's a newsletter. I did two podcasts. And I do events, you know, both online and offline. And, you know, I started on substack.
Brian Morrissey:Mostly because, yeah, I saw what was going on in substack. And I knew the power of email from being you know, that was the most important channel for us. At digi day, you know, I think in b2b, that email has always been critical, right? Like, because your business models typically, at least at digi day was your business models are not like consumer publications, getting people to websites showing them ads. That's part of a business model, but it's like a much smaller part.
Brian Morrissey:You know, oftentimes you're making money, at least a digiday, you know, for a while it was like 8090% of our revenue was in events. And anyone knows, like, you can, if you want to sell stuff, like emails, great. Email gives you data about your by your audience. People, people click on stuff in email and like, buy things that will spend thousands of dollars on like event tickets, like through email, like, it's great. So I knew email was important.
Brian Morrissey:And having a direct relationship with an audience is is really important. And I think like substack itself, and, and there's other platforms like beehive, I'm an angel investor in beehives, my only angel investment, I made it during that time, because I figured there wasn't just going to be one like substack. You know, I knew that that that they were going to be successful to a degree because you can build, you can build like an audience. It's not easy, but it's a lot easier, like through through newsletters.
Steve Burge:Did you find there was a real, yeah, real benefit to being on Substack?
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. I mean, for Substack, I left Substack about a year ago for a bunch of different reasons. But like, yeah, to me, like the biggest benefits of substack are, first and foremost, you don't have to think at all about the product stuff. Like you just don't think about it. Like you send emails and they arrive.
Brian Morrissey:Like, and you know, anyone has dealt with anything, like email breaks, everything breaks, right? And so, you know, I think with substack, what they did was, they took that off of people's plates, and particularly people who have never had to deal with that, you know, in their lives, right? People who are typically starting sub sex, they're either, you know, a side hustle to their main job, or their writers, reporters, you know, content creators of some kind, who aren't like, quote, unquote, business operators and dealing with all that. So that's like, first and foremost was the biggest benefit. And then there's network effects that substack has with its like recommendation system in particular.
Brian Morrissey:You know, one of the other functions, I always break down publishing, it's like, people make it more complex, I think than it is, but but it's basically what you make, how you distribute it and how you make money from it. Like, that's it. And so if you think about with substack, like they make it super easy to make the thing. But then they also give you such a boost with distribution. Because through the recommendation system, it has built in that's built in growth tools, you know, so you don't have to, you're trying to like do so many things.
Brian Morrissey:So you're trying if you're starting, like, your own publication. And so to take that off your plate is is amazing. And then the other one is monetization. You know, I think sub sec is so focused on subscriptions, that they're also really good at it. And at first, I thought like, well, their advantage with subscriptions is, you know, this recommendations flywheel stuff like it's not, they have the credit card on file.
Brian Morrissey:That's what they have, you're gonna sell way more things when it's super easy to buy something. So every time someone wants to, like, take out a subscription or a membership to the rebooting, which I encourage everyone to do, yeah, they gotta take out their credit card. Ghost doesn't have them on file. And, you migrated from
Steve Burge:Substack. You migrated from Substack to Ghost.
Dan Knauss:Yeah. Right. Yeah. And was that because you've you've mentioned that three subscribers don't convert? Like, I I agree completely with you on on that.
Dan Knauss:And I found you through Substack's, recommendation engine. Sure. And I almost never, you know, it does work. But I I almost never actually subscribe on a paid model to things or I don't stick I haven't stuck with any. It's just sort of my, you know, what's going on out in these different universes.
Brian Morrissey:I mean, I think of like the recommendations as being kind of top of the funnel. Yeah, I mean, they dump a bunch of people in. And, like, it drives a lot of substack. Substackers. I always hated that term.
Brian Morrissey:I think that was one of the main reasons I wanted to point to switch to go. Right. Nobody was gonna call me a ghost or ghosty. But I think one of the Yeah, I think one of the things with with recommendations is Yeah, and substack doesn't show it right. They show a lot of stats on their like dashboard, but they don't show they don't show how many of your paying subscribers came from recommendations.
Brian Morrissey:I don't think that's an accident. If what I mean, they have the data, and they want to show you how many of your overall subscribers came through recommendations. And so but to me, like, my model was less focused on subscriptions. Like, it really wasn't. I didn't have subscriptions the entire time I was at Substack.
Brian Morrissey:I mostly switched because I think, ultimately, as a publisher, no matter if you're an individual, or like a collection of individuals or whatever, you have to decide, are you going to build a business on a platform, which has advantages and disadvantages? Or are you going to build a platform around your business? You know, and I, you know, building a platform around a business to me is like, what I would say is like the WordPress path, right? You typically, you do get a CMS like WordPress, you know, that's the default, right at this point. And then you stitch together an ESP and different tools.
Brian Morrissey:And like that involves, you know, it's not like, you know, you're you're undertaking like a mission to Mars or something like that, but it involves, you know, investing in product and tech and the rest. And then, you know, the substack and beehive are all in one platforms. And there are there are real drawbacks that and that because they have to have a product that is, that is for so many different people, it has less flexibility, you know, because it's a it's not, it's not just a SAS product that these that these companies are making. They're making a network product. I mean, Andreessen Horowitz did not like plow all that money into substack.
Brian Morrissey:For it to be like, you know, like an ESP with a few other features, like they're inevitably going to become they and they clearly want to get on the path of being more like YouTube. And so that means if you're going to operate on YouTube, there's all kinds of benefits to that with distribution with monetization tools, etc. But you also are at the mercy of the platform itself, they can choose to demonetize you, they can choose to delist you, you don't really have have control over your your data, they they might expose that to you. And in sub Saks case, it might be portable. But, you know, I don't really believe that you are truly in control.
Brian Morrissey:If your platform provider is emailing your your your audience without your permission. Like one sub sex started doing that. I'm like, Who are we talking about? What are we talking about here? This is not my audience.
Brian Morrissey:This is your audience and my audience. Like, I can take it, but you're gonna keep it anyway. You're gonna keep all that data.
Dan Knauss:Interesting. SubStack was originally, I think their first version or a kind of proof of concept, they built it in WordPress. And, you know, Ghost, of course, comes comes out of out of a WordPress developer who, John O'Nolan, who who, has built that up over the last decade. Is the open source model then what you're saying be the platform? That's kind of the ultimate, superpower there.
Dan Knauss:That Yeah,
Brian Morrissey:I think it's very attractive. I think it's really attractive, particularly if you're drawn to like the autonomy of, you know, the independent path. I don't think it has to mean that you're just like, solo. But I think what's it? What's really interesting about this corner of alternative media is that you have the people who are making it take control, and build their own businesses.
Brian Morrissey:Sometimes they're just like, you know, small newsletter businesses. And sometimes they're they're, I don't wanna say more ambitious, but you know, sometimes they want to do something that involves like a larger collective, if you will, and look more like institutional media. I think the difference is typically, in institutional media, the people who are making the media, our employees, they're not, they're not owners, and they're not directing the asset. And we saw the last generation of these companies with super smart, in quotes, like, executives running them, the day and they didn't seem to know what they were doing, or weren't able to operate them. So maybe we should try the people who are making the media, give them a shot.
Brian Morrissey:And to me like ghosts, like all these things are like trade offs. I don't know if it's the right decision, wrong decision. But ghosts to me was like an in between solution where it's kind of, you know, you you can you have more flexibility, like I do a lot of like lead gen with a you can just build more things on it. Like you can't build anything on on, on substack. It's like, the product is the product.
Brian Morrissey:It's like Facebook, like, you're not going to build things on it. So I think that kind of flexibility, particularly with where you want to go with the product is is it's attractive to some people, And sure to other people, it's like, nah, I don't need it. I just want to sell some subs. Right.
Dan Knauss:When you're an institutional, publisher, though, I've found that, you know, some traditional news publishing, companies shy away from embracing being the platform and doing that community engagement. Because like you mentioned, it's typically journalist employees, editors who maybe haven't made that shift to the community management component. And if it's a very newsy and open type of, publishing operation, opening up membership, community engaging functions, like they're terrified even of just comments because they are then responsible legally. They perceive all these liabilities for being the platform then. Is that something that you've engaged with at all?
Dan Knauss:And, and,
Brian Morrissey:I guess, I mean, I'm not sure if it's like liabilities or anything. I think it's a lot of it's just a pain in the ass. It's like a number.
Dan Knauss:Right.
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. I think it can be viewed as like yet another job that you end up having, right? Like, I mean,
Dan Knauss:is getting over that is that I think to get over,
Brian Morrissey:I think overall, you know, people I guess, I'll say this, I've been, I've been a journalist probably for like, twenty five years at this point. And, I mean, when I started in the profession, I mean, there was a few sort of like, it was like cliches that were true. Like one was there was this weird, sort of pride in in being ignorant of the business model. And the business. That was the business side.
Brian Morrissey:And it was as if like, you were in some kind of like, you know, priesthood of sorts that like, is proud of its ignorance of the like, outside world. Like,
Dan Knauss:right.
Brian Morrissey:I think that disadvantaged not just publishers, but the journalists themselves. I mean, I think that's faded a lot over time. And that's been a good, good development. And I think the other thing was, there was a very narrow view that a lot of journalists took of their job. Yeah, I can remember having colleagues who would not write headlines, because that was the copy editor shop.
Brian Morrissey:Right? It was like, really, like you like that is the number one, you've worked on the story for days. And the number one deciding factor about whether anyone's gonna see all that work, you're just gonna like, Yeah, you're not even gonna give it a shot. Like, really? I mean, I don't think I'm a control freak.
Brian Morrissey:But that always struck me as weird. Like, I don't know. I know, if I don't know the story, I need to be able to sell the story. And so I think, you know, overall, if you're gonna, if you're gonna compete, and you have to compete these days, if you're going to compete in what I call the information space, which is not just legacy media and institutional media, it's all this alternative media, it's creators, it's YouTubers, it's podcasters, it's this podcast is my podcast, it's everything. You got to compete, and you got to market.
Brian Morrissey:You know, and I feel like there's been a generational shift that has happened that were a lot of reporters now are realizing they got to be marketing, they got to be. And look, this isn't like a total change. I think the last year, to a degree was was very, it's sometimes it was too obsessed with that, like, you know, by by chasing data and optimization of content to specific interests, particularly those of algorithms, where brands kind of lost their identity. But I think that that is a big difference. But it's just happened over time.
Dan Knauss:Right. So for those who kind of embrace the platform and ideally an open open platform and the running, they're running the platform, the media comp, the media company, Outlook, and, you know, you've got journalists representing it and engaging, engaging their subscribers, their members in a lot of ways. What kind of revenue opportunities does that open up? You've talked about doing a lot of private events and b2b partnerships, sponsors and things like that. Does that work, across the board or better or worse for certain certain types of media, traditional publishers, the the establishment ones?
Brian Morrissey:Look, I mean, I think I think without a doubt, there's been a shift in in all of publishing, I think in like, in niche and in b2b, it's a little bit more natural, right? Like, so I've always been pretty much on the sort of b2b side, right? And b2b is the audiences, the audiences are always smaller, they're always more focused, right? They're also more high value. And, and it's always been about having a deep understanding of the audience.
Brian Morrissey:And, and that you need to do that through data. And, but it's also been always been about connecting an audience, you know, community is overused, but it's kind of at the heart of these models. And I think overall, publishing is moving in that direction. I mean, if I have a criticism, like too many publishing models, still probably you got a lot of people hiding behind spreadsheets and dashboards and whatnot. And like, you have to be out there, like talking to your, your audience, just like, just like the advertising team is talking to the clients.
Brian Morrissey:Like, you just have to be, you know, walking the shop floor at the end of the day. Events were a major part of, our model and like over a decade of going to like so many of them. Like, it just it just forced you whether you like it or not, you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna have like focus groups like every every few weeks in which you run fine. They're not going to be like, the overwhelming number of your, your audience, but you're gonna like, be out there and like talking to them.
Dan Knauss:Yeah, exactly. Let's let's talk about the AI a bit. That was, Steve and I were paying a lot of attention to your some of the more radical sounding comments that that you've made.
Brian Morrissey:I gotta compete in the information space. I gotta market Dan.
Dan Knauss:But I think you're right. Yeah.
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. Hey, it's all coming crashing down.
Dan Knauss:So right,
Brian Morrissey:get a membership, and I'll tell you how to survive.
Dan Knauss:Well, this is this is really good this this morning, that, talking about open AI and deep research, AI apps will move from information chat to retrieval, and the publishing functional need to change to focus more on, for lack of a better term, community, giving people a reason to come to their destinations beyond the simple retrieval of information that I
Brian Morrissey:was going to say, when you're reading when you're reading that, I didn't know you weren't reading it. And I was like, man, that sounds exactly
Steve Burge:what it
Dan Knauss:was like. No, that's you. Yeah. It's we're just exceeding seeding the, the space to robots just, you know, replacing why should I go to a website if I can just query, an app or or speak to an a digital assistant or, you know, you're just you're just getting the digest version. Yeah.
Dan Knauss:I have lots of thoughts about that. But, you you also mentioned in your, when you're doing working for WordPress VIP and and surveying publishers that a lot of them really are kind of on the fence. We're not ready for AI or we're not sure. Is this an opportunity or a weak point? You're gonna get blindsided by, where do you where do you see these this leading for for publishers?
Brian Morrissey:Yeah, look, I think that there's, it's a massive change that's taking place right now within the media ecosystem. And I don't think think there's any denial about it. There is it's clearly, AI is an accelerant. It's part of it. But, yeah, so too, is is the the loss of trust, and just the centrality that institutional media has played in the overall media ecosystem.
Brian Morrissey:And as I said, I think now it's a information space. And, you know, like it or not, legacy media and institutional media are going to be competing with with individual voices, they're going to be competing with independent and alternative media. And that is not going to be rolled back anytime soon. This intense fragmentation is one of those is one of those things that falls into Jeff Bezos, like, you know, focus on things that are not going to change. I don't see that changing.
Brian Morrissey:So the question is how how you adapt, you know, these models, right, and I think AI can be an important part of adapting these models. However, there's a defense component. And like, you know, that is the fact that, obviously, open AI and the others have scraped the internet, and they've taken that content. And now there's a lot of negotiations about how to be fairly compensated. I think, to me, the bottom line is, there's going to be a change, there already is the beginning.
Brian Morrissey:And it's only going to accelerate, I believe, a change in user behavior and expectations, like so, you know, when Amazon introduced next day delivery, I guess it's like same day now or drone delivery, and I guess we're at, but like, they introduced that that changed consumer expectations. I don't care what your product was, you go to some luxury retailer, and they were like, Yeah, it's gonna take like seven to nine business days, you're like, what? What doesn't make sense. So the idea that all this is going to change, you've got deep research you've got, you've got the operator, right? Also from from open AI, and that these agents are going to be going out and doing things that that is not going to impact at peep how people consume information is that's, that's, that's a crazy bet.
Brian Morrissey:To me, like, of course, it's going to now whether it goes, you know, entirely where, you know, there's no websites that exists, because websites are just some clunky UI put on a database from, you know, that was done, like, what are we like 30 ago now? Maybe websites, websites will exist in some form, right? Well, they have the central role? I don't know, I would take that bet. I would take a bet depending on the odds.
Brian Morrissey:I would take a bet that, like, the central role of websites will be, you know, far will be severely diminished in in five years' time. I would take that.
Dan Knauss:Does that, how does that look though with with AI if you're if you're if you're a publisher? You can try to do your gated paywalled community where people know maybe there's some significant unique value in following what you're offering, But that's sort of siloed off then from people who are just querying, an AI search result. Yeah. Do you need to get into those as well, but not give away the the farm, so to speak?
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. And I think we're seeing that, you know, play out right now with big publishers and that, you know, they're striking deals for the most part, because what's the alternative? Right? I think most of them are, you know, doing the math, what are they going to sue? Like, look at look at the New York Times earnings reports with how much they're spending on these lawsuits.
Brian Morrissey:For most publishers, it's not an option, though, like, Hey, you go, good luck. Good luck, New York Times, we're behind you. Yeah, they can they can sue through associations. But the reality is, these deals aren't forever. And this is a way to understand again, you're gonna have to find your place within this, assuming this change, like really continues, right.
Brian Morrissey:And I think it's a safe bet that it will, you're gonna have to find the place for your content, the idea that, there used to be this idea that platforms couldn't exist without like, you know, quote, unquote, publishers. Well, the platform is called that bluff. And, you know, that's they don't believe that's the case. And also, by the way, these gigantic platforms, tech companies that are the same ones, mostly the same ones that have these AI models, like they don't want necessarily an incredibly strong institutional media ecosystem. They love creators, they love why you could disadvantage them.
Brian Morrissey:Why would why try to negotiate with a couple powerful politically connected, like companies? Why not like, just provide the terms to millions of individuals who have no leverage? Right?
Dan Knauss:Yeah, exactly. So about Steve, go ahead.
Steve Burge:Yeah. How do you think about community when it comes to your business as a sub stacker? The old fashioned way, I guess, was to think of it in terms of comments or maybe number of subscribers. You seem to think about it slightly differently in terms of getting people together for for small events, in terms of perhaps connecting people, even in person, one on one. Yeah.
Steve Burge:You talk about community
Brian Morrissey:being differentiated. I think that's the test of a I think that's the test of a brand right now. Right? Whether it's individual institution or whatever, like for publishing. It's like, can you get people to take action?
Brian Morrissey:Is is your brand strong enough? You know, again, individual is to it doesn't really matter. But like, is it strong enough for people to, you know, want to, like, get together and under your auspices? Because, yeah, I got a, I got a note from a marketer to something I wrote recently, where he was talking about, you know, the roles publishers can play and, and he's like, man, it's all IRL activations, because that is something the energy that exists there that is a tangible proof point that, you know, brand is like real, versus, you know, we went through a period with so many highly engineered, quote, unquote, fake brands. And by that, I mean, like, they, they existed in some, like, liminal space of like, platforms and search engines where they were, they were minimally plausible brands, they, they were plausible enough in a search results context, but like, if they were, you know, when they get wiped away by like a Google algorithm change, nobody misses them, right?
Brian Morrissey:When like, a lot of these Facebook brands went away. They had massive audiences. And literally, like, there was no thought that I could tell that was like, put into the fact that got wiped off the face of the earth. Right. And, you know, I think this is the sort of antidote to that is, is if you can have, get people involved and get people to, yeah, particularly congregation, I think events are going to continue to be a really important part of a lot of publishing models, and will only be more so because of the challenges to the typical ways of, of making money, particularly putting ads next to content is, is going to continue to be a tough business.
Steve Burge:How does your business break down now? You've got the newsletter? You've got adverts that go out, you do webinars, you do events. It's got a variety of different revenue sources. If you don't mind me asking, share as little
Brian Morrissey:Yeah.
Steve Burge:Or as much as you want. Which of those drive the bus? Which of those, are seeing growth for you?
Brian Morrissey:I like break it down between, like, thought leadership, which is kind of the B2B version of, like, branding. And that's like, I, you know, I was up to I was like, Yes, I love to do all thought leadership, because like, then your, your, your success metrics are that, you know, people saw whatever the piece of content was, or listened to it or consumed it in some way, right? So like, that can be advertisements in a, in a newsletter or podcast sponsorship. And there's different elements of this in different products, right? Because I think it's important.
Brian Morrissey:The reality is performance marketing has eaten like the entire media world. It's eaten consumer, but it's also, you know, and b2b has always been very performance driven. And that's where you get like lead generation. And so I I like work with someone like WordPress VIP. And like we do a co branded, research report, right?
Brian Morrissey:Where, you know, they're really good. And most of my clients are like, they're not like, it's not like a research report that like, finds that like, people all need to use WordPress VIP, right? They really want to understand what publisher product teams are facing and the challenges and the opportunities they see, etc. But something like that serves like a thought leadership function, but also a lead generation, because, you know, we share the leads that are generated by the report. And then there's in person activations, like with WordPress VIP, we then did a co branded media product forum where we get out of the rebooting invited, I don't know, 5,075, I forget which one it was top product people from publishing companies to an event we did in New York last July.
Brian Morrissey:And I think we're doing it again in in April. And, you know, look, that is how business gets done. That's how relationships get made. So in some ways, what the publishing becomes is, it's kind of like a front business to some degree, like, you make money directly off the publishing, but you make more more of your economic models downstream of the actual content publishing. So like, take like podcasts, for example, like I find making money directly from podcasts extraordinarily difficult.
Brian Morrissey:I've been doing podcasts for a long time. And I just find it really difficult to make money off of niche podcasts because you're not Joe Rogan. I'm not at least not Lex Fridman, thank God. And I'm definitely not one of the all in guys. So it's like really difficult.
Brian Morrissey:It's a super power law of, of, podcast. The other question is like, well, why do you do it? Like, why not just do just do webinars all the time? You know, it's great. But the reason is, like, I'm sure you guys have this is I track like, who I hear from, and like, what they write me, right.
Brian Morrissey:And I always hear about podcasts always. And like, I was at an event. I was saying to Dan earlier, in Puerto Vallarta, over the weekend. And I met like, a few people. This one guy is actually from Ottawa, Michael from the Ottawa business journal.
Brian Morrissey:Shout out, Michael. He was like, I listened to you when I when I'm when I'm when I'm vacuuming, which I found funny. Like that's the association. But I think that is sort of where a lot of like, publishing goes to where you're trying to establish some kind of human connection. And I think podcasts do that tremendously.
Brian Morrissey:And I just know, like, if I invite someone to one of these dinners, and they're a podcast listener, they're like, five times more likely to come easily. So, right,
Steve Burge:podcasting is top of the funnel. And then at the bottom, you have little 50 or even 15 or 10 person events. Yeah.
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. 10 person dinners and things around particular topics. Yeah. I mean, that's Yeah. That's exactly it.
Brian Morrissey:I mean, I would say, yeah, the complete bot. I mean, yeah, I mean, like, you know, memberships are part of it, too. And, you know, I want to build memberships more quickly. They just take longer. I find my stuff's not I don't know.
Brian Morrissey:I haven't figured it out.
Dan Knauss:What is LinkedIn working out? Well, for you, it seems as a as a platform kind of complimentary to that, that sort of strategy. It seems to be struggle.
Brian Morrissey:Shiva I struggle with LinkedIn. I think in the notes you guys had like, I'm a terrible for I like, you should have like, hit me on this when I said before how like, you know, like, contributors are all are all used are all like, you know, they all have to be marketers is because I'm terrible. So that was a mess. I'll I'll question myself why we're not better at it. What's that?
Steve Burge:You're hardly on social media at all. I see a few tweets, a few blue sky, a few LinkedIn posts.
Brian Morrissey:I don't see much. I don't I don't know. I'm not on blue sky. I haven't I haven't I haven't gone. I haven't.
Brian Morrissey:I'm like an old school Twitter user. You know, like, I, I joined Twitter in its early days when it was the What did you have for lunch? I grew up in that Twitter. The current iteration, I don't really find I've been trying to cut down on the amount I consume there. But I just didn't really it's not a place necessarily.
Brian Morrissey:I don't and I'm sure maybe it's just the way I I see it. Like, it's not really a place for the type of content that I produce and want to like, I don't want to fight about, h1 b visas or grooming gangs or something like that. I don't know. Like, I don't, I mean, I'm, I'm sure these are important issues. They're just not necessarily to me.
Brian Morrissey:And and, you know, I think x has become increasingly about that. I was never really into Facebook. LinkedIn is a weird place. I don't know. Like, I can't get my like, arms around LinkedIn.
Brian Morrissey:I want to like it. But then, like, I think some of the like, I don't know, some of the like truly like hashtag thought leadership posts get lead me. It's just, it's become so nakedly self promotional. I should probably get over, get over it.
Steve Burge:And very heavily AI driven as well.
Brian Morrissey:Yeah, it's not so much AI slop is like going through this. So, I don't know. I mean, I haven't like totally figured it out. I mean, I like I like newsletters for that, like human connection. Yeah, people write you back.
Brian Morrissey:Some mostly good, but sometimes bad. But, it's totally different than, you know, over the years, you know, writing, I've written for all kinds of different, and created all kinds of different content. And I can remember when I was like, ad week, the like comment section, I would avoid that thing like the plate. And people are like mean and like, like internet comments, I used to treat it like, used to run like marathons a lot. And like, you have to use porta potties if you run a lot of races.
Brian Morrissey:And, like, yeah, the role of porta potty is, like, never looked down. Like, nothing good. Nothing good comes from looking down. I kind of felt the same way when I have about comment, the comment section.
Steve Burge:So you really do have a distinctive view of community as far as it goes with building a publisher business. Not big on social media, not big on comment sections, but very heavily skewed towards sort of high value connections getting together, getting people together in person. It's a is that a possible framework of
Brian Morrissey:I I think that's true. Like, I haven't really I I haven't really thought it through that much for me when just, like, doing it, like, now is, you know, to me, a lot of particularly when you move into a sort of publishing format that's more, like, tied to an individual, like, it has to be, for lack of a better word, like authentic. Right? And so if, like, I would always see people like who I know personally, and then like, you know, they they have to, like, they're doing the, like, promotional tweet, because I'd like, you know, of course, I'm then texting them making fun of them for it, you know, if what, because I know that it's phony. And I, you know, I just feel like the best of these publishing models, and you get so much leverage if you can narrow the gap between that, like, phony baloney stuff.
Brian Morrissey:And, like, who, you know, so you just have to find find things that, like, fit to, you know, yourself versus going down, at least in my view. And maybe that's just what I'm comfortable with. Like, rather than going down some checklist where it's like and I've had this as people were like, yes. Did you you have to you have to do a thread for every post. You have to do like this.
Brian Morrissey:You have to do a first person video on LinkedIn. I'm like, do I? Like,
Dan Knauss:really? No. Yeah. I have some musician friends who call that soul the most soul sucking thing in their business, and they they avoid it, hate it.
Brian Morrissey:Maybe you're actually really good. Because I wanna be like a professional. I I feel like I've I mean, it is my job. And I don't like, look, I don't like QuickBooks, but I'm gonna like, not I don't like paying taxes. But like, there's all kinds of things I do that like I, you know, for business, but I do think from like a brand perspective, it is important, particularly these days, to do things that are kind of true to yourself.
Dan Knauss:It's it seems to be necessary for reaching people who don't know about you, but, it seems to be universally hated by really talented makers, influencers who have a good community going usually around a newsletter. And it's just, how do I get that visibility out there? You've got I've got my own platform, but yeah, how do I get into the into the larger?
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. And I don't know, like, I like go back and forth about it. Because, so I had like a big advantage, like starting out, earned one, but it was an advantage where, you know, when I started the newsletter, when I said, Oh, I'm leaving to like, do something new. Yeah, I had like, oh, three four thousand people who are signed up to the newsletter before I sent it. And that's like a tremendous advantage.
Brian Morrissey:And I think a lot of actually talking at a newsletter event. I think it's later this month, or it might be early March, but about this, and it's supposed to be about how like, I don't really necessarily believe in most newsletter businesses. Exactly. Like, I think newsletters are a really great format. Right?
Brian Morrissey:Like, it's just it's a good delivery mechanism, because you get data off it. It's a direct connection. It's still intermediated by technology platforms. But, you know, it's great. It's portable, open protocol, etc, etc, etc.
Brian Morrissey:But I think a lot of these like this newsletter boom, right has been driven by people who are, you know, it's just a new generation of growth hackers is just a new, it's something new to growth hack. The content is like, an almost like an afterthought. And maybe this is just like, you know, seen a lot of these, like, there's almost like a get rich quick, passive income, like vibe in parts of like newsletter land. You know, that's like, okay, you're gonna your CAC is like this, and then you're gonna orbit into like this, and then you're gonna, like, reinvest to lower your CAC and all and I'm like, okay, congratulations, you're a direct marketer, like, I feel like I okay, But this is different than like being to me. And again, this is where I come from as a quote, unquote, content guy.
Brian Morrissey:Like, that's very different than than saying, Okay, I've got something unique or valuable to say to a specific group of people. And then I'm going to do these various distribution tactics in order to reach those people and more people like them. I almost feel like the distribution tactics are often put first, which I kinda get because the idea is if you don't have distribution, who gives a shit? But I don't know. Maybe maybe the purest in me feels like it's cheating.
Brian Morrissey:I don't know. Everyone wants to be the morning brew of x still, which is kinda crazy.
Steve Burge:Yeah. You you're being quite honest about presenting, taking an authentic route rather than a particularly strategic route to try and maximize your growth.
Brian Morrissey:It could be, it could be a cover up for the fact that I haven't been very strategic. So, that's a possibility.
Dan Knauss:Sure.
Steve Burge:I mean, you've you've been doing this four years now. Right? You've got, you've got a handle on how things are going. Is there room for you to keep doing this? Would would you jump at a big media opportunity if one came along now, like a big traditional media player?
Steve Burge:Or is there quite a lot of runway for you as a independent?
Brian Morrissey:Oh, I mean, yeah. I don't see why not. I mean, look, there's lots of challenges that are kind of outside of my control, you know, with, you know, a lot of my clients, you know, where, you know, most of my revenue, probably like 90% comes from work with clients versus directly from the audience. Right. And that was just a strategic decision.
Brian Morrissey:Because I know the dynamics of the industry. I had a fair number of relationships I just looked at like, and I think this is important for anyone. It's like, or any, any company, any company, any person, whatever, you just understand where is your leverage? Like, what is your unfair advantage? Right?
Brian Morrissey:Now, if you're super young, your unfair advantage is you can work like harder than like older people with more experience and more connections that sudoo that. Like, if you're super young, you don't have a choice. You have to you have to lean into the fact that you have way more energy. But I think, you know, I looked at I was like, well, look, I know subscriptions, I built subscription programs, they take a long time in my experience. You know, you always hear about those sort of overnight success cases, but you know, they're, they're not common.
Brian Morrissey:And so I thought, you know, my advantage lay in the mechanics that I knew worked well with how b2b marketing worked. And that I knew that if you aggregate a valuable audience in specific areas, and are able to find out information about them, You know, if you have, for instance, like, I have like audience segments for like audience development, for product, for email marketing for subscription, like, I can then like, have my partners and be like, Okay, well, here, here, here is the groups of people I'm going to be like, connecting you to, right? And these are the people you're going to be reaching. It's, you know, it, it requires being able to, like, do more than, like, publish content, but like, having, like, an understanding about how to, but how audience segmentation works and how you then, like, work to activate those segments. And I looked at that as an advantage that I had, because, you know, I was the president of the company, like my last company.
Brian Morrissey:So like, I knew mechanics of this, whereas I don't know if an editor would necessarily have had those advantages. I mean, I was an editor too, but like, it was just one part of my job. So I was just trying to, to play to my strengths. But no, I would never I mean, you never say never, I guess. But like, no, I I have zero interest in in having a having a job at a big company.
Brian Morrissey:I mean, there's, to me, they're going to one direction. I mean, I would I grew, like, 85% last year. I don't know many of these big publishers that did
Steve Burge:I I remember smaller base. I remember hearing you say on one of your podcasts that, media businesses are just gonna have to accept being smaller these days.
Brian Morrissey:But Yeah. I think that's the future. I mean, look, I when I went to that Puerto Vallarta event, it was it was for, like, city and regional magazine Association, and it was, area business publishers, you know, so like the Ottawa Business Journal, right, the Des Moines business record. And, yeah, they're doing fine. They're small.
Brian Morrissey:It was like such a throwback. I mean, they're not doing great or anything, but some of the like the their challenges are, you know, if they're all executional, right? Yeah. The AI stuff is not it. Yeah, it's so far away for them that they don't really even think about these.
Brian Morrissey:So some of them still have like 80%, like print revenue, man. And this is a big industry. And there's lots of small and successful media businesses, I feel like the mass media era was a blip. Really, what we're returning to is the way media was before mass media happened. And to me, that's okay.
Brian Morrissey:Right? Like, you can have tons of very successful publishing models. They just might not be like, you know, hundred million dollar plus businesses. I like, it's okay, it's fine. Like, having like, tons of like, 2 to $10,000,000 businesses doesn't sound like terrible to me.
Brian Morrissey:Like, I think that's fine. And I think for for individuals, there's a lot of individuals, I think people keep thinking that like, substack, whatever is going to spawn, like, you know, a million, like, you know, high paid, you know, creators who get to like, just toil away at their craft and get rewarded handsomely for it. Well, I don't know. The world doesn't work that way. You know, there's gonna be people who make it and there's gonna be people who don't.
Dan Knauss:Is it more I'm curious what your your thoughts are kind of about federated platforms and the the Fediverse, and if is it more likely and more beneficial for publishers if we move towards a more a scene where people are doing what you're doing and and, you've got a lot of people who are owning their own platform and brand. They've got their own small community and it's small on its own, but if you, it's also very it's very hard for users to focus their attention. But once you've got like one community and one you're paying attention to, I'm watching your events, I'm going to those, Then, you know, there's some adjacent people in the, in the same industry or maybe something totally different. I follow, you know, a couple of different, pillars of, of content maybe, and, certain subject areas that I'm, that I'm interested in. Is that kind of the consumption model you think is it's maybe smaller, but in some ways, I don't know, more beautiful, profitable in a, in a more federated kind of ecosystem of media.
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. I mean, I hope so. Right? Like, cause I think like right now, there's, there's some very binary choices that are sort of being foisted where it's like, you're either a sub stacker or a YouTuber, or you're working for some dying conglomerate, you know, that it and there obviously needs to be a middle ground. I think when you're when you see some of the new models that are emerging, you know, a lot of it is basically trying to federate independent, you know, voices.
Brian Morrissey:I don't think anyone is certain. Not many people are well, I mean, there was the messenger. But you know, outside of that, or not many people trying to recreate, you know, it's like, yeah, well, we're gonna do like BuzzFeed, but for nobody's saying that. And so I hope that there are more flexible models that emerge that allow allow people to have the autonomy that maybe that they really wanted by going down this path, but have the upside of having having people to work with and doing joint things together. In some cases, it'll be just like a regular LLC, you know, and just where people are partners like a law firm, or something.
Brian Morrissey:I don't know if that answers your question. But I mean, I hope that on the on the, on the Fediverse stuff, I find it like fascinating. And I hope that, like, real structures emerge. I mean, I got, like, I went down the Dow rabbit hole during the crypto days. I mean, I blame living in Miami for it.
Brian Morrissey:But so I'm like out on on getting, like, two, like, pie in the sky with that stuff. I got I went for the Dallas, so, like, I'm out for a little bit. I'm gonna wait till something bubbles up.
Dan Knauss:I've, I've been very slow to kind of get into Mastodon and blue sky and things like that. What I just find there's so much fragmentation in, in so many channels it's, I just want to find the people I want to look at the ones I don't know. I, who they know
Brian Morrissey:Yeah.
Dan Knauss:That I don't know I wanna look at and have it all come in through the same app.
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. I think that has I mean, I guess just common sense wise, I'm like, that has to happen. Right? Like, so I have, like, I consume, I had consumed too much of the x stuff. And I, I felt my brain was like, getting like softer.
Brian Morrissey:And I was not feeling good. It was like, it was like going to like, the movie theater and getting like the large popcorn bucket. You're like, oh, yeah, it's only an extra dollar. And then you're like, Oh, my God, I, I want to die right now. I've eaten so much popcorn.
Brian Morrissey:I felt felt that way. A lot of times after using x, combination of that and having smoked like two packs of menthol cigarettes. But, you know, there's a ton of like value that is that is there. It's just like, getting through it is just who needs that, like, and I feel like there's more. It's a little bit trendy now, but we'll see if it has legs.
Brian Morrissey:You know, there's a lot of focus right now on our fractured attention spans, and how it's really almost like it's a public health problem. Really. I mean, if you look at just like, how many people are getting hit by cars, right? Like, I'm sorry, like, I don't need like, in-depth studies. I walk around New York City.
Brian Morrissey:And so many people are just walking around looking at their phones. Like we're like opioid addicts. Like, just as the opioid addicts, we like feel like pity for them. If this was someone like, you know, got into a time machine from twenty years ago, the number one thing that would like, amaze them is how many people are walking around looking at their phones, it's so bizarre, that we've normalized completely bizarre. And so I think there's going to be more intentional content consumption overall.
Brian Morrissey:Right. And I also think because of AI, there's gonna be so much synthetic content out there, I think 98% of content will be synthetic soon, that people will purposely seek out more human handcrafted content much like, you know, farm to table, right? Farm to table is not like the way we feed, you know, the majority, at least in The US with like, you know, we've got like a mechanized agriculture system, we got all kinds of health problems as a result of it. But like, hey, we, we produce a lot. And I think it's going to be very similar to our, our information ecosystem.
Brian Morrissey:But I think if you're if you have the means, and the time, you're gonna you're gonna seek out high quality, high quality food, curated experiences, etcetera. Like I was listening to Travis Kalanick, the Uber guy, talk about cloud kitchens. Do you know his cloud kitchens thing?
Dan Knauss:Cloud kitchens?
Brian Morrissey:No, we're gonna do away with the restaurants, right? We're gonna have robotic, like robotic food preparation that is then like, brought to you, you know, with the delivery apps and everything and but you're not gonna have to sacrifice. And I'm just like, dude, what? You go to a restaurant for a bunch of different reasons, man. And also delivery food.
Brian Morrissey:I don't care AI, whatever. It always tastes like garbage. AI is not gonna make anything other than pizza, like, taste good delivered. That sounds like it seems
Dan Knauss:to be running younger people seem to be running in the other direction, which which I'm pleased to see. I I have four adult daughters of, you know, from, like, 20 mid twenties to 18, 19. And yeah, they're gen they're opening bookstores and interested in kind of slow, slower, older forms of, of consuming media and, how many food?
Brian Morrissey:It's because it's like
Dan Knauss:25 to 18. Okay.
Brian Morrissey:They're like, broadly Gen Z. It's like any generation reacts against the previous generation, their older brothers and sisters and like, the, the like dopamine addicts of the millennials with all the like, BuzzFeed and like Facebook and all that stuff. That's not gonna be cool. There's 0% chance that'll be cool. I think it's gonna be no there rock to have like a smart show.
Dan Knauss:They're bailing out of it and reading Jonathan Haidt and stuff like that. And Nicholas Carr.
Brian Morrissey:Good. They're radicalizing.
Dan Knauss:Exactly. Well, and it's it's interesting too, though. The one who actually wants to influence science and medical technology is, is thinking in that way of like, institutional change in academia can't do it. I gotta figure out like small scale commute, local policy level stuff. And it's like, wow, that's really, it's just interesting to listen to how they think and talk about not just what they consume, but where they're trying to exercise influence.
Brian Morrissey:Well, right. And it's also on a more like micro level, it sounds like what you're saying. Because I think also just societally where we're coming from is after 2016. And all these grand protests and grand, you've got to like be at the front. And like, the reason that like that has totally not existed this time around with Trump's return is people saw that didn't make one bit of difference.
Brian Morrissey:Like, why would people keep I mean, there was the definition of insanity is keep trying to do the same thing. Like, so I would think that people would, particularly younger people would be like, we're gonna we're gonna take a different approach. Right. And I think it's like, not that different in like the information ecosystem. And particularly publishers, I think it's like, really, are we going to try to, you know, build a new version of like, BuzzFeed?
Brian Morrissey:Really? Why? Like, why do that? Like, there's plenty of opportunities to build smaller and more focused publications, that are good businesses. You know, I don't know, nobody deserves to or is entitled to some massive media business.
Brian Morrissey:Like, it's fine. Life will go on.
Steve Burge:So, Brian, you've laid out, a really quite interesting case for a business that is quite small, has a lot of in person interaction, is not built by constantly being, ship posting on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Brian Morrissey:You've described
Steve Burge:you've described a pretty good business. Is that
Brian Morrissey:a suggestion?
Steve Burge:Well, you've managed without it so far. That kind of leads well into the final question I have for you, which is, have you come across any other good publishers lately? Are there are there publishers who, when their newsletter drops in your inbox, you stop and read it? Or publishers who whose podcast you always grab. Other people whose work you admire, who's who's catching your attention at the moment?
Brian Morrissey:Yeah. Lately, I've been on a real kick with, like, Ezra Klein's work. I'm really kind of envious of the sort of arc he's gone on, you know, because he like, he was a founder of box. Right? I mean, before that he was like, kind of like, a boy wonder at like Washington Post and talk about like, all the missed opportunities like, yeah, they say with, with, like sports stars, they had him in the house, like they if they the post for all this, if they had him in the house, like they had him, they let him go.
Brian Morrissey:And they let him go because he saw an entrepreneurial opportunity. You know, Jim Bankoff at box was smart enough to see his talent. And he built a brand with with Mattie glaciers. And I think there was one or two other I think Melissa Bell was one of the co founders, too. I might be missing one person.
Brian Morrissey:But they built the, you know, box.com, and you know, for their policy wonkery. And then, you know, at a time, there was a lot of people, prominent journalists like Ben Smith, etc, who had gone down this path, and then like, they sort of retreated to the confines of like, institutional legacy media, particularly in the times. And, I just been I really admire like, how thoughtful his content is, like both, particularly in the podcast, and and his writing, like he puts a lot of effort into it. And he's incredibly well prepared. It's not hot takes.
Brian Morrissey:It's incredibly well researched. And it's thoughtful, I think, for the most part. And also, I would say it, it has a level of curiosity that shouldn't be completely common throughout all media, but in my view is often been missing. Like, he's like, he seems generally curious about like, how things work and how how people, particularly how policy works. So I've really been enjoying as our clients.
Steve Burge:Yeah. I seem to remember one of your newsletters landing in my inbox, and it said, you had a list of, like, three things of three things you look for in a publisher these days. And I think curiosity was your number
Brian Morrissey:one. Yeah. Because I think that's been missing for a lot of I mean, some of it is might be just like my own sort of biases. Like I got into I got into journalism because I was curious about how things worked. I mean, my my family was mostly engineers, but I didn't get the math.
Brian Morrissey:Gee, this is part of that. So, but I still got the engineering of gene of like how things work. And so I think a lot of people enter journalism for different impulses. So I've always been biased about the parts of journalism that are about connecting the dots. Versus Yeah, I never was really good at breaking stories.
Brian Morrissey:And that's always been the, and there's, there's incredible value to it, but you either got it or you don't got it, you know, And it's also it's just one form of journalism. And I feel like these days, there's probably more value. It's arguable, but like, there's a lot of value in in connecting the dots, because there's so much information out there, right, there's gonna be always gonna be value for finding new information, for sure. Right. But there is a lot of value in connecting the dots and for people to be in a trusted source of, you know, what all this means and, and, cutting through a lot of, you know, the noise and hyperventilation that is, that is that is normal.
Brian Morrissey:I think that should be fine with what's coming with AI. Like, I think that sounds like if there's if there's some kind of port available in the storm, that seems fine to me, particularly if it's tied into some kind of human connection that you can do. Because I just tried at this point of my career, it just to be, you know, you just have to try to be like sort of yourself and to build some kind of personal connection with people. Because otherwise, you'll be completely commoditized. And it's not a good place to be these days.
Dan Knauss:You're reminding me of the old Picasso quote. You know, the one about why computers are useless. Says they're a famous quote attributed to Picasso anyway on the Internet. I think it's it's it's true. Their computers are useless because they can only give you the answers.
Dan Knauss:So, yeah, I think if you're if you're not curious and full of questions, especially nowadays, something's something's wrong.
Brian Morrissey:Well, I think that's a big, like, I think that's a big appeal of a lot of podcasts. Right? Like, I don't think the most if you go down the list of the most popular pockets, yes, the daily is there and stuff. But most of them are, I would say at least outwardly under produced in that like they are more than the beauty of the format is that it's conversational. Like the all the like serial stuff and the highly produced like that that kind of didn't pan out as much as as, as people wanted.
Brian Morrissey:It really became talk radio to some degree. And a lot of that is driven, I think, by the podcast where they're curious about things. There's obviously a lot of like pontificating and less like, I don't know, it's just a totally different format than, you know, going over to watch like cable TV with all of those outdated conventions of it is is is Yeah, it's jarring. It's it's it's firmly in the uncanny valley.
Steve Burge:So if someone wants to to hear from you directly, someone wants to hear Brian's unfiltered opinions on on what's going on with publishing. Where do they find you?
Brian Morrissey:If you go to the rebooting.com, you can sign up for a newsletter. You can take out a membership, that'd be amazing. You might wanna sample it first. That's okay. I also have two podcasts.
Brian Morrissey:I do one called the rebooting show where I talk with usually with like an executive at a publishing company or building a building a publisher about their business. And then I have another one called people worse algorithms that I do that's more of a conversational show. I've got two co hosts. One is Troy Young, the former president of Hearst magazines, and the others Alex Schleifer used to be the head of design at Airbnb. He brings he now runs a video game company.
Brian Morrissey:So he brings more of the Silicon Valley perspective. And, you know, Troy knows the media business inside and out. And I chirp in every now and again.
Steve Burge:Well, the the newsletter is great, and I can recommend a podcast as well. I this weekend, I heard a an episode with the people from The Defector, which we've talked about quite a lot of pub published press. A really interesting sports publication. And you interviewed them talking about how they make their business model work with an enormous dose of community. Yeah.
Brian Morrissey:I mean, that's a great example of, you know, they were at a big digital publishing company that was going through lots of changes and cutbacks. And they, they used to be part of Gawker, which was, you know, sort of an iconic, you know, digital media company that, you know, burned, burned fast, burned bright, and then burned out, after Peter Thiel suited out of existence. And yeah, they had a really big tie with their audience, this group of writers, right. So I thought, you know, the thing I like about defector is they, yeah, they decided to go off on their own. You know, they have like, almost like a quasi worker collective, which always gives me pause.
Brian Morrissey:Like I'm like a bunch of journalists getting Oh, what could go wrong? I mean, what could go right? But they've made it work. You know, I think they're on like year four now. And, yeah, I'm like rooting for them, obviously.
Brian Morrissey:I think the more the more defectors we can have out there, the better, you know, the idea that like, the, you know, the media industry is going to be, you know, reliant on like Hyundai NAST and Hearst and the others, you know, getting their acts together. I mean, I think that they have, you know, that opportunity, and they can, but I think it's I think it's good to have, like, this kind of diversity right now.
Steve Burge:Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Brian. Congratulations on making it through the first four, four years of the rebooting and
Brian Morrissey:Cool. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Deb.
Dan Knauss:Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Brian.