Dan Shipper 0:01
Hello and welcome to Talk Therapy, a podcast where two friends talk about their journey to start a media business together. I'm Dan Shipper.
Nathan Baschez 0:09
And I'm Nathan Baschez. And tomorrow we've got some pretty big stuff going on. What's happening tomorrow, Dan?
Dan Shipper 0:15
We do; I am full of anticipation. We are launching a new newsletter into the Everything bundle tomorrow. And the newsletter is Praxis by Tiago Forte, who is a productivity hero of mine.
Nathan Baschez 0:34
Icon.
Dan Shipper 0:35
Icon.
Nathan Baschez 0:35
Legend.
Dan Shipper 0:35
Guru. Myth. And, yeah, Praxis is just a wonderful compendium of all of his best thoughts. And it's going to be available to all bundle subscribers starting tomorrow. And I'm just like, super psyched about that.
Nathan Baschez 0:53
Yeah, it's pretty crazy because he's just spent years, right, like researching and writing and kind of doing his thing. And then, you know, it's up until now only been available directly through him. And then we're able to strike a deal where it made sense. And it felt like actually, like, it's not like some sort of compromise. It's actually best of all worlds for both parties to have this sort of like bundle deal thanks to kind of like, the bundle economics magic that we definitely saw for us kind of play out a couple months ago when we launched the bundle of Superorganizers and Divinations. And so now kind of like seeing how it works with someone else, it just... I'm so excited.
Dan Shipper 1:29
Yeah, me too. And it's also kind of surreal for me because, like, I first took Tiago's course, like a couple of years ago. And I was just like, basically I had all these like productivity ideas in my head and had all these like, you know, thoughts about how to organize stuff and the best organizational systems to use on a computer and all that kind of stuff. And I wanted to build like productivity products and I found this course. And there was this guy, Tiago Forte, who would like figure out, like, all these problems that I had been thinking about in my head, and he like put his finger on them, and then he came up with like, these amazing solutions to the problems. And I was like, Wow, this guy is like, so smart. But like I hadn't met him, and like I kind of knew that I wanted to. And when I started Superorganizers, he was like, the guy — like he was the person that I most wanted to interview aside from, like, you know, like really, really, really super famous people. And it's just been this like, really cool, organic process of like, after I started Superorganizers, I met him. Then I got to interview him and I did this like 3,000-word profile of him. That is like one of my favorite interviews that I've done. And like now we actually work together, and it's just been like a really, really fun journey for me.
Nathan Baschez 2:44
Totally. You know, they say never meet your heroes, but uh, they were lying.
Dan Shipper 2:47
So far Tiago hasn't disappointed. I'm really glad that we got to meet and to work together.
Nathan Baschez 2:54
Yeah.
Dan Shipper 2:54
So yeah, do you want to, I mean, do you want to like lay out you know, how we thought about adding new creators into the bundle? Because it's one of the things that that we're really excited about, and I think it's one of the things that you get most pumped about talking about.
Nathan Baschez 3:08
Yeah, I mean, you know, basically, there's this thing of, like, there's all these great writers that have sort of great individual newsletters with paid components to them. And, you know, personally, my experience is, I run into these paywalls all the time, and I'm just like, Ah I wish like, I could get access to everything... wink, wink. [Dan laughs] And, you know, it's just like one of those facts of life, like, you can't get what you want, always, blah blah blah. But like, there's this great, you know, thing that like can happen, where bundles can actually work and solve that problem for you. And it's the reason why you used to have to buy albums individually for like $10 or $12, or whatever, like, either physically or then on iTunes. And then now you can just get access to everything and, you know, through Spotify and other services like it. And, you know, the misconception is that the music industry makes a lot less money now, but that's not actually true. Artists for sure don't make that much money from Spotify. But the labels, they make a ton. Spotify sends a ton of revenue their way. And you think that maybe that's not the case, because it's like, Oh, if I'm only paying, you know, $10 a month or whatever for Spotify, and I previously had to pay $10 every time I buy an album, like, how can that possibly add up? And the answer is, you probably weren't buying, I mean most people didn't buy one album a month, they weren't spending that much money on it. It's only every once in a while that there was an album that you really, really wanted that you would probably buy one. So you know, maybe one every couple months, or maybe you'd buy two or three at a time and then not buy one for a long time. And so it's really this win-win proposition where people can can get access to everything and then consume it as they see fit when they want to. And so, yeah, it's been cool for us to kind of figure out how do we actually make that work, right? Like what's the sort of like deal we could craft that would make it worth it for Tiago to join this bundle? And basically, the way we thought about it was we should make it such that it's basically even more compelling than the standalone thing, just because it seems like we probably can. And so the way that it works is, you know, when he sends people over to join the bundle, we send the vast majority of the revenue from those people back to him. And because the bundle is more expensive than a standalone newsletter is he actually is making more money than if people subscribe to his individual newsletter. And so it feels like a real win-win, right? Because like he's getting credit for all the people he's sending over. And at the same time, he's also making more money for that than he would have otherwise.
Dan Shipper 5:33
Yeah, and yeah, to add onto that, like what we wanted to do is like craft a way to create a bundle which is a really good, like a really good thing for consumers, for readers, and then do it in a way that wouldn't affect individual creators' independent businesses. We want individual creators to continue to have their, what we call super fans. So, and this is from a bundle economics explainer, which we'll link to in the show notes, that kind of lays us out and is kind of the foundation of how we think about this, but we want like independent creators like Tiago to retain their super fans and have a direct relationship with that audience. But we also want creators like Tiago to be able to monetize their casual fans, so people that like probably wouldn't subscribe to him directly, but still want access to his content, they just wouldn't pay his like $10-a-month price. And what we think we've done is crafted a way to create a bundle where Tiago gets to keep his super fans and then sends his casual fans to us. And for any every one of his casual fans that we monetize, we will send most of the revenue back to him. And what we're really trying to do is like, create a way for him to preserve and grow his independent business, but then also monetize the people who wouldn't signed up with him directly and and and basically created a deal that's like maximally good for creators. We don't really want to make a ton of money on the revenue that creators bring to us; we want to give as much of that as we can back to them. And so that's what we're testing tomorrow — we'll see if it works.
Nathan Baschez 7:07
Totally. So it'll be interesting to see. I think this is the part of the show where we planned on making some bets.
Dan Shipper 7:15
[Laughs]
Nathan Baschez 7:15
What do you think?
Dan Shipper 7:16
Over or under time?
Nathan Baschez 7:17
So how are we going to structure this? Is it gonna be number of new subscribers, like just in general? Is it gonna be like a percent increase in the total subscriber count, like how do we wanna?
Dan Shipper 7:26
I think like, I think I'm really talking-
Nathan Baschez 7:28
[Simultaneously] We haven't really talked about public disclosure. [Dan laughs] What we want to say publicly here.
Dan Shipper 7:33
I think number of new subscribers is probably the easiest way to go here.
Nathan Baschez 7:37
Okay, so just net new subscribers, and then what period of time? So from the moment that we launch until what, like first 48 hours? First week?
Dan Shipper 7:45
I was gonna say just like, maybe like first 24 hours, just to make it simple.
Nathan Baschez 7:49
Okay, so first 24 hours after launch.
Dan Shipper 7:52
Yeah.
Nathan Baschez 7:52
How many subscribers are we gonna get? Do we want to just like pick a number and then say it and then walk through our reasoning?
Dan Shipper 7:59
Yeah, let's do that.
Nathan Baschez 8:01
There's actually, I have, sorry, I have a question that I forgot the answer to. How many people on Tiago's free list? Also, can we say that?
Dan Shipper 8:09
I don't think that we can say it. So uh...
Nathan Baschez 8:12
This is gonna make it difficult for me to make my prediction. I'm just gonna do the best I can. Okay.
Dan Shipper 8:16
Do it.
Nathan Baschez 8:17
All right, all right, all right. One second. Let me do some quick math. You say your prediction first.
Dan Shipper 8:22
Okay, so my prediction is like, not math-based. It's just like, kind of a gut feeling based on what we did last time, when we merge ours into a bundle. I think that we'll get maybe about 100 new net, new signups, like paying subscribers.
Nathan Baschez 8:42
Oh man. I was gonna say 80, so...
Dan Shipper 8:45
Okay, there you go.
Nathan Baschez 8:45
Yeah, we're very close on that. And mine was math-based, so... [Both laugh]
Dan Shipper 8:51
Yeah, I guess I'm just like an intuitive genius or something. I don't know.
Nathan Baschez 8:55
Yeah.
Dan Shipper 8:56
But I am a little bit more optimistic than you, so I'm picking over you. So I guess we'll see what happens if I win.
Nathan Baschez 9:05
I think the winner gets to gloat, obviously.
Dan Shipper 9:12
[Laughs] Don't worry, that'll be taken care of.
Nathan Baschez 9:15
What's a good prize for this? I feel so bad because I'm like betting against him. I didn't know you were gonna say 100 — you could have just said like, you know, 70 or 60 or 50 for all I knew. I don't want to win anymore. So like, let's just say, let's hope you're the winner.
Dan Shipper 9:30
Okay, perfect. Let's hope I'm the winner. And we'll report in on our next episode.
Nathan Baschez 9:35
Perfect. Perfect. It is interesting to just think about like the, like why bet on this kind of stuff? And it's funny to like, also make a public bet. This is an idea you had that intuitively was like, of course we should do that. But I'm curious. We didn't talk about why.
Dan Shipper 9:52
I just, I keep going back to this thing. Like I love the idea that this podcast is like, this time capsule where like, we're talking about all these things that are happening as they happen, and we don't have any insight into the future. And like, for all we know, tomorrow, like, early morning, we get an email from Tiago being like, I don't want to do this anymore, or like, something changed in the world and we can't launch it or like, whatever. And you know, what we know is that the future is uncertain. And there's like tons and tons of twists and turns in the road. And I love this like, the ability to say what you think about the future, and record it in the moment and then have a record of it. So you can like look back and see how things changed and how things turned out the way you expected or didn't, both because it's like, it can help you make better decisions, but also just because it's like really interesting, and I kind of wish I had this for like all of my life so I could like look back on all these different moments that I had, you know? It's like kind of, it feels like a shame that I've lost a lot of them.
Nathan Baschez 10:55
Yeah, you should gamble more often. [Dan laughs] No, totally. I have the same thing. I think like maybe a little more slightly skewed towards the sort of like, rationalist thing of like, you know, the mind is a very malleable thing. And then once new information is learned, it becomes very impossible to remember what it was like to not have learned that. And all sorts of stuff just like, subtly shifts under your feet without you realizing what's happening. And I think it's really, really important to like, mark down what you think is going to happen and why, and then adjust when you actually see the result and learn the data. It's just a way to stay closer attuned to reality and to learn more from your work, and like it's something that we were in the habit of doing at Substack and then we got actually kind of good at it. And I think it was because you just, you know, you get in the habit of marking down kind of like what you think.
Dan Shipper 11:45
Interesting. Was there a specific format for doing that that that worked for you guys, or was it like literally just like, just write some stuff down and that's all it was?
Nathan Baschez 11:53
Yeah, just write some stuff down. It just depended on the thing, right? Like if some new publisher was launching in the platform, we would like you know, casually, I mean it is like a casual thing, right? Like kind of like what we're doing now, it's not like we had some sort of like CRM for our bets or whatever.
Dan Shipper 12:05
Yeah.
Nathan Baschez 12:06
It was just fun. And it is fun. Like we would bet on AV tests, it's like a good casual thing to build into the culture and like the the bets should basically just take the form of like, for fun and like honor, like, I don't really know if it makes sense to put cash on it or like to treat it as like a management technique or whatever.
Dan Shipper 12:21
Yeah.
Nathan Baschez 12:21
I mean, there are people that are doing that, like Philip Tetlock who wrote the books "Superforecasters," which would be a great spin-off of Superorganizers.
Dan Shipper 12:29
It would be.
Nathan Baschez 12:29
For real though. You know, it's basically, I think they built software to like help organizations make these kind of bets as like a management culture thing.
Dan Shipper 12:38
Oh, interesting, I didn't realize that. Because I thought their whole shtick was that like, most people are bad at predicting, but there's like this very small group of people that are like, really good at it. But I didn't think that they knew why they were good at it. Did they figure it out?
Nathan Baschez 12:51
No, the whole book is about why they're good at it. Yeah. So it's like they have a whole bunch of stuff and it's basically like, sort of the opposite of the approach you took, which is to like, just like have a gut thing. It's like, break down the problem and like, sort of like ask yourself what's your prior, and sort of like try and make it more of an equation where you've like broken out all the elements and you feel independently strong about your assumptions on each of the elements. And then you know, if you can figure out like, where in the broken out- so like, for instance, there's different ways for me to be wrong. I could be wrong about the size of his email list, I could be wrong about the open rates that I kind of guesstimated he was probably having in my head, I could be wrong about the conversion rate, like there's different layers and like, I may not know all of that, but it's better if you break it out and make each one of those explicit, you tend to come to a better prediction.
Dan Shipper 13:38
So you're saying that I'm not just like an intuitive genius savant?
Nathan Baschez 13:43
No, you could be. [Both laugh]
Dan Shipper 13:47
Okay, 'cause I'm really reevaluating my whole worldview here.
Nathan Baschez 13:51
You know, why can't we have both? You can be an intuitive genius savant that like thinks things through?
Dan Shipper 13:58
Yeah, no, that's actually a good point. It's so funny how often like, basically, when you have a problem, all you need to do is like break it down into its component parts and like solve the component parts, like that's usually the way to do things. And like how simple that is, but how hard it is to do that consistently in practice.
Nathan Baschez 14:16
Yeah. Yeah, no, totally, I mean, it's so easy to forget because you just like, stare at a problem, and unless you've really trained yourself, you just sort of think like, Oh man, what am I gonna do? How could I know? And maybe it presents as anxiety or maybe it just presents as like, I bet it's gonna be this, or whatever as the solution. But either way, whether you feel good or bad about your ability to solve a problem, you'll probably do a better job if you like break it down.
Dan Shipper 14:40
Totally. Yeah, I think the first thing is getting through the emotion of like, not wanting to break it down, of either overwhelm or I know what it is. And then you get to the point of like, breaking it down, and then you have to like, I think then the thing is being able to know what are the constituent parts. Because you can cut a problem in infinitely many ways. So like, what are the parts of the problem is really interesting, and then how do the parts interact? And like if you can do those two things, then you can kind of figure out some stuff.
Nathan Baschez 15:05
Yeah. Well, we're figuring it out.
Dan Shipper 15:07
We're figuring it out. And that's time.
Nathan Baschez 15:09
See ya.
Dan Shipper 15:09
See ya.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai