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Merry Christmas from all of us at Close Reads! In this episode we're chatting about the final chapters of James Runcie's lovely novel, The Great Passion. Topics of conversation include the way this book is perfect for the Christmas season, how Runcie portrays the performance of the Passion in the book, what the epilogue accomplishes, and much more. Happy listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe
Welcome back to Close Reads as we continue our discussion of James Runcie's The Great Passion. Topics of conversation include the way Runcie introduces the book's tragedies, how Bach teaches both the protagonist and the reader, how to tell the difference between true wisdom and pithy sayings in the story, and much more. Happy listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit closereads.substack.com/subscribe
A few big updates on our Trapital Summit in LA on October 3! Tickets are available here. Use promo code RUNCIE for a discount.You'll hear from Issa Rae, (writer, producer, actress), Denis Ladegaillerie, (Founder and CEO, Believe), Kakul Srivastava (CEO, Splice), Tunji Balogun (Chairman and CEO, Def Jam), Sherrese Clarke Soares (Founder and CEO, HarbourView Equity Partners), Eliah Seton (CEO, SoundCloud), and Troy Carter (Co-Founder and CEO, Venice Music), Larry Jackson, (Co-Founder and CEO, gamma.), Carletta Higginson, (EVP Chief Digital Officer, Warner Music Group), and Tatiana Cirisano, (Senior Analyst and Consultant, MIDiA).Thanks again to the companies who supported our summit to help make it possible. Our platinum partner is Splice, gold partners are Tidal and Warner Music Group, silver partners are SoundCloud and Too Lost, and our bronze partner is Luminate.We still have some tickets available. You can get them here using promo code RUNCIE for a 10% discount!
词汇提示1.fanciful 空想2.integrity 完整性3.obliterate 消灭4.alter 祭坛5.cathedrals 大教堂原文Robert Runcie: 'After the Falklands War' (2)Man without God finds it difficult to achieve this revolution inside himself.But talk of peace and reconciliation is just fanciful and theoretical unless we are prepared to undergo such a revolution.Many of the reports I have heard about the troops engaged in this war refer to moments when soldiers have been brought face to face with what is fundamental in life and have found new sources of strength and compassion even in the midst of conflict.Ironically,it has sometimes been those spectators who remained at home, whether supporters or opponents of the conflict, who continue to be most violent in their attitudes and untouched in their deepest selves.Man without God is less than man.In meeting God, a man is shown his failures and his lack of integrity, but he is also given strength to turn more and more of his life and actions into love and compassion for other men like himself.It is necessary to the continuance of life on this planet that more and more people make this discovery.We have been the choice.Man possesses the power to obliterate himself, sacrificing the whole race on the altar of some God-substitute, or he can choose life in partnership with God the Father of all.I believe that there is evidence that more and more people are waking up to the realization that this crucial decision peers us in the face here and now.Cathedrals and churches are always places into which we bring human experiences - birth, marriage,death, our flickering communion with God, our fragile relationships with each other, so that they may be deepened and directed by the spirit of Christ.Today we bring our mixture of thanksgiving, sorrows and aspirations for a better ordering of this world.Pray God that he may purify, enlarge and redirect these in the ways of his kingdom of love and peace.Amen.翻译罗伯特·朗西:《马岛战争之后》(2)没有上帝的人很难实现自己内心的革命。但是,除非我们准备经历这样一场革命,否则谈论和平与和解只是幻想和理论。我听到的许多关于参加这场战争的部队的报道都提到了士兵们面对生活中最基本的东西,甚至在冲突中也找到了新的力量和同情心的源泉的时刻。具有讽刺意味的是,有时正是那些留在家里的旁观者,无论是冲突的支持者还是反对者,他们的态度仍然是最暴力的,而他们内心最深处的自我却没有受到影响。没有上帝的人不如人。在与上帝的会面中,一个人会看到他的失败和缺乏正直,但他也会得到力量,把越来越多的生活和行为转化为对像自己一样的其他人的爱和同情。为了这个星球上生命的继续,越来越多的人进行这一发现是必要的。我们一直是选择。人拥有毁灭自己的能力,可以把全人类牺牲在某个神的替代者的祭坛上,或者他可以选择与万有之父神为伴的生活。我相信,有证据表明,越来越多的人开始意识到,这个至关重要的决定现在就摆在我们面前。大教堂和教堂总是我们把人类的经历——出生、结婚、死亡、我们与上帝的短暂交流、我们彼此之间脆弱的关系——带进去的地方,这样它们就可以被基督的精神深化和引导。今天,我们带着感恩、悲伤和对世界更美好秩序的渴望来到这里。求神洁净、扩大、引导这些人进入祂爱与和平的国度。阿们。
词汇提示1.goodwill 善意2.rationality 理性3.sect 派别4.nourishing 滋生5.brutality 暴行6.reluctance 不情愿7.distill 提取原文Robert Runcie: 'After the Falklands War' (1)Our hope as Christians is not fundamentally in man's naked goodwill and rationality.We believe that he can overcome the deadly selfishness of class or sect or race by discovering himself as a child of the universal God of love.When a man realizes that he is a beloved child of the Creator of all, then he is ready to see his neighbors in the world as brothers and sisters.That is one reason why those who dare to interpret God's will must never claim him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another.War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God-substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.This is a dangerous world where evil is at work nourishing the mindless brutality,which killed and maimed so many in this city last week.Sometimes,with the greatest reluctance, force is necessary to hold back the chaos which injustice and the irrational element in man threaten to make of the world.But having said that, all is not lost and there is hope.Even in the failure of war there are springs of hope.In that great war play by Shakespeare, Henry V says:'There is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distill it out.'People are mourning on both sides of this conflict.In our prayers, we shall quite rightly remember those who are bereaved in our own country and the relations of the young Argentinean soldiers who were killed.Common sorrow should do something to reunite those who were engaged in this struggle.As hared anguish can be a bridge of reconciliation.Our neighbors are indeed like us.I have had an avalanche of letters and advice about this service.Some correspondents have asked 'why drag God in?' as if the intention was to wheel up God to endorse some particular policy or attitude rather than another.The purpose of prayer and of services like this is very different and there is hope for the world in the difference.In our prayers we come into the presence of the living God.We come with our very human emotions, pride in achievement and courage, grief at loss and waste.We come as we are and not just mouthing opinions and thanksgiving which the fashion of the moment judges acceptable.As we pour into prayer our mourning, our pride, our shame and our convictions, which will inevitably differ from person to person, if we are really present and really reaching out to God and not just demanding his endorsement, then God is able to work upon us.He is able to deepen and enlarge our compassion and to purify our thanksgiving.The parent who comes mourning the loss of a son may find here consolation, but also a spirit which enlarges our compassion to include all those Argentinean parents who have lost sons.翻译罗伯特·朗西:《马岛战争之后》(1)作为基督徒,我们的希望根本不在于人类赤裸裸的善意和理性。我们相信,他可以克服阶级、教派或种族的致命自私,发现自己是普遍的爱的上帝的孩子。当一个人意识到他是万物创造者心爱的孩子时,他就准备好把世界上的邻居视为兄弟姐妹。这就是为什么那些敢于诠释上帝旨意的人绝不能声称上帝是某个国家或团体的资产而不是另一个国家或团体的资产的原因之一。战争源于对上帝的爱和忠诚,而这种爱和忠诚被用于某些上帝的替代品,最危险的一种是民族主义。这是一个危险的世界,邪恶在滋养着盲目的暴行,上周在这个城市造成了如此多的人死亡和致残。有时,尽管极不情愿,武力是必要的,以阻止不公正和人类非理性因素对世界造成的混乱。但话虽如此,并不是一切都完了,还有希望。即使在战争的失败中也有希望之泉。在莎士比亚的战争剧中,亨利五世说:“在邪恶的事物中也有善良的灵魂,如果人们能敏锐地发现它的话。”冲突双方的人民都在哀悼。在我们的祈祷中,我们将非常正确地记住那些在我们自己的国家失去亲人的人以及被杀害的年轻阿根廷士兵的关系。共同的悲痛应该能使参加这场斗争的人们重新团结起来。共同的痛苦可以成为和解的桥梁。我们的邻居确实和我们一样。我收到了大量关于这项服务的信件和建议。一些记者问:“为什么要把上帝扯进来?”,好像是想让上帝支持某种政策或态度,而不是另一种。祈祷和这样的服务的目的是非常不同的,在这种不同中有对世界的希望。在祷告中,我们来到永生神的面前。我们带着人类的情感而来,为成就和勇气而自豪,为失去和浪费而悲伤。我们就是这样来的,而不仅仅是口口相传的观点和感恩,而这被当下的时尚认为是可以接受的。当我们在祷告中倾注我们的哀恸,我们的骄傲,我们的羞耻和我们的信念时,每个人都不可避免地会有所不同,如果我们真的在场,真的与上帝接触,而不仅仅是要求他的认可,那么上帝就能在我们身上工作。他能加深和扩大我们的同情心,净化我们的感恩。前来哀悼失去儿子的父母可能会在这里找到安慰,但也会找到一种精神,使我们的同情扩大到包括所有失去儿子的阿根廷父母。
Discover how AI is reshaping education as host AJ Gutierrez from Saga Education and Bob Runcie, CEO of Chiefs for Change, recap prior episodes of EdHeads. Today we revisit conversations with Erin Mote and Dwayne Matthews. Explore the challenges of equitable AI access, the potential for personalized learning, and innovative approaches to integrating AI in schools. Learn why Runcie believes state-level innovation hubs are crucial and how district leaders can drive meaningful change. From interoperability standards to community engagement, uncover strategies for leveraging AI to improve student outcomes while addressing systemic challenges in education. The core topics in this episode show district leaders how they can leverage AI to improve student outcomes while addressing systemic challenges.
Join Nathan and Dan Runcie, founder of Trapital, on this episode to learn the truth about Taylor Swift's masters and who the real winners are. Plus, the ins and outs of the music industry and how the biggest names in the game are going against everything we know about business. They're exploring how the back catalogs of artists are selling for hundreds of millions of dollars, what really matters when it comes to growing any business, and how artists are innovating their craft as the consumer landscape shifts.Get tickets for our podcast launch tour at https://www.billiondollarcreator.com
Dan Runcie is the Founder of Trapital, a company focused on music, media, and entertainment. Trapital's output includes a podcast, weekly newsletter, and deep-dive essays breaking down trends in the music industry. Dan joins us for his second appearance on the show to discuss how AI will transform the music industry, whether the age of the superstar is over, how artists become billionaires, and MUCH more! Important Links: Dan's Twitter Trapital Dan's first appearance on the show Show Notes: Can the music industry embrace AI? What will happen to music when AI gets better? Will some genres be quicker to adapt than others? How streaming algorithms are improving Are AI playlists the death of DJs? How artists can game the algorithm How artists can use the music industry's Pareto distribution Artists become millionaires selling music, and billionaires selling product Will we see the end of record companies? Will Bowie Bonds die? Are we going to see the end of the superstar? Ads & audiences Spotify vs YouTube vs TikTok Can newcomers displace the incumbents? Will the streamers dominate podcasting? What's next? Dan as Emperor of the World MORE!
Trapital was created by Dan Runcie to tackle the issue of inadequate recognition for accomplished hip-hop executives who have transitioned into successful business leaders. Seeking to rectify the situation, Dan aimed to generate more comprehensive coverage and strategic analysis specifically tailored to the hip-hop industry, similar to the attention given to other sectors. The ultimate objective behind this endeavor was to provide support to existing cultural leaders and inspire the next generation to pursue their passions within the hip-hop community.No Labels Necessary is a Weekly Podcast hosted by Sean "BrandMan" Taylor and Jacorey "Kohrey" Barkley, unveiling the world of marketing from Indie Artists to Major Labels.Topics Covered:00:00 Intro02:27 Mistaking Information for Intimacy and Engagement11:43 The Difference in Festivials and Artists Shows14:07 Making Decisions Based Off Your Data19:18 Artists That Mastered Community Building31:30 Growing Your Career Outside Of Your Music34:10 Why Beyonce and Adidas Deal Didn't Work44:44 The Artist Struggle of Building Community and Selling to Fansd52:01 The Weight Of A Celebrity Name WILL NOT GROW YOUR BUSINESS 01:04:56 The Music Industry InbetweenersGet Free Courses That Helped Multiple Artists Get Millions of Streams!https://www.brandmannetwork.com/grammy?el=dsp
Nigeria is an African country with a population of 200 million, yet it has only 90 oncologists, 3-5 radiation machines in service at any given time, and ten cancer-related clinical trials. Furthermore, there is limited cancer screening and little awareness of risk-reduction behaviors. As a result, more than 70% of Nigerians diagnosed with cancer present with late-stage disease; few have access to treatment. However, a group of young Africans is on a mission to change this paradigm. One of them is today's podcast guest, Mr. Runcie Chidebe, a psychologist, a doctoral student in gerontology, and the founding executive director of Project PINK BLUE, a cancer nonprofit based in Abuja, Nigeria's capital. In this thought-provoking conversation, Mr. Chidebe talks about cultural and ethnic stigma beliefs and their intersection with gender inequity, the impact of a Western lifestyle on Africans' cancer risk, and why global health disparities are everyone's problem. Listeners will leave with innovative and actionable steps to dismantle injustice in their communities and our global society.
(0:00) Intro(1:02) Welcome Dan Runcie(9:15) Primer on the music industry today(16:19) The impact of streaming(20:43) Artist-Label dynamic now vs 20 years ago(30:55) Artists selling their back catalog(35:35) Touring is broken(40:54) TikTok's dominating influence(46:05) Lessons entrepreneurs can take from hip-hop artists(1:01:13) The Trapital Story(1:12:47) The state of Trapital today(1:15:06) Lessons internalized in creating Trapital(1:20:48) Determining who is an interesting podcast guest Show Notes:https://trapital.co/ Mixed and edited: Justin HrabovskyProduced: Rashad AssirExecutive Producer: Josh MachizMusic: Griff Lawson
In this episode, join GU cancer experts Scott Tagawa (Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Presbyterian, New York City, NY),... The post Key Trials from ASCO GU 2023 with Scott Tagawa, Karie Runcie, and Tanya Dorff appeared first on VJOncology.
In this episode, join GU cancer experts Scott Tagawa (Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Presbyterian, New York City, NY),... The post Key Trials from ASCO GU 2023 with Scott Tagawa, Karie Runcie, and Tanya Dorff appeared first on VJOncology.
Trapital Host Dan Runcie joins DJ Louie to discuss the state of the streaming ecosystem. Dan and Louie dig into how streaming has impacted the nature of pop stardom by helping to foster a dissolving monoculture and the rise of the niche superstar, financial incentives, stanning, pop music itself and us, the consumers, and how we relate to the value of music. Listen to TrapitalJoin Pop Pantheon: All Access, Our New Patreon Channel, for Exclusive Content and More!!Shop Merch in Pop Pantheon's Store!Follow DJ Louie XIV on InstagramFollow DJ Louie XIV on TwitterFollow Pop Pantheon on InstagramFollow Pop Pantheon on TwitterFollow Dan Runcie on TwitterFollow Trapital on Twitter
Timestamps:(00:00:00) - Intro To Dan Runcie & Trapital(00:01:51) - Rihanna & Superbowl(00:11:21) - Roc Nation's Impact On Superbowl Half-Time Show(00:16:09) - Value Of Half-Time Show(00:22:05) - Why Artists Are Selling Their Catalog & Bieber's Example(00:35:45) - Music on Tiktok, Instagram & YouTube(00:42:40) - Rapid Fire Questions(00:45:40) - One Trapital Article To Start With(00:46:30) - Def Jam vs. Cash Money(00:51:26) - AI Music: David Guetta & Eminem(01:00:20) - DMX's Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer(01:01:20) - Fav Albums & First Concerts(01:11:02) - Live Twitter Spaces Wed Feb 22nd 2pm ESTWhat Is Not Investment Advice?Every week, Jack Butcher, Bilal Zaidi & Trung Phan discuss what they're finding on the edges of the internet + the latest in business, technology and memes.Watch + Subscribe on YouTube:https://youtu.be/82LIplhsyNITo get a link to our live 100th episode Twitter Spaces, make sure you're in Telegram:https://t.me/notinvestmentadviceLet us know what you think on Twitter:@bzaidi@trungtphan@jackbutcher@niapodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We're thrilled to be joined by Dan Runcie, founder of Trapital, which offers music business insight with a strong focus on the business of hip-hop – the world's pre-eminent genre of pop music. Trapital has recently published its first big report on the business and culture of hip hop – and Dan, a true thought leader in this space, has a lot of interesting things to say: he talks about how the narrow genre boundaries of hip hop are hiding its actual size and success on an international basis, how hip-hop's super-successful leaders like Jay Z are poised to become the large-scale investors of tomorrow – and how their hip-hop roots mean they have a remit to do things differently than the incumbents. It's a fascinating conversation for anyone who cares about the business of music - not just hip hop. Trapital: https://trapital.co/ Trapital podcast: https://trapital.co/pod/ ------
On the podcast this week, James Runcie talks to Sarah Meyrick about his new memoir, Tell Me Good Things: On love, death and marriage. It tells the story of his love for his late wife, Marilyn Imrie, a drama director, singer, and artist, who died of motor neurone disease (MND) in August 2020. “It's about grief, and love. And I hope it's also about gratitude and thank fulness,” Runcie says. James Runcie is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and film-maker. He is the author of twelve novels including the seven books in the Grantchester Mysteries series, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His most recent novel is The Great Passion (Books, 8 April). Tell Me Good Things is published by Bloomsbury at £12.99 (Church Times Bookshop £11.69); 978-1526655448. James Runcie will be in conversation with the tenor James Gilchrist at the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature in February 2023. Tickets available now at https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/ Photo credit: KT Bruce Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader
Grand Jury Update involving Robert Runcie, The Election Process, Drop Box Watch Parties around Florida and the Country, We endorsed the Moment Of Truth Summit with Mike Lindell, JD Vance is now in the lead, Parental Responsibility and education. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/joe-goldner/support
The business of hip hop is often overlooked, even though it's a massive business with outsized cultural influence. Dan Runcie saw this as an opportunity, starting Trapital in 2018. I wanted to talk to Dan about his approach to building an independent media brand. He's already established himself and Trapital as an authority on the hip hop business. Trapital now has over 16,000 subscribers, with the publication supported almost entirely through sponsorships. Dan had earlier done a paid model, but pivoted to free when realizing he could reach far more people without the friction of a paywall – and a value proposition that appeals to sponsors like Moonpay, Convertkit and Alts.. Some takeaways from our conversation: Hip hop punches above its weight. There's a school of thought that niche business publications are best in “unsexy” areas, as Industry Dive showed in its focus on big nuts-and-bolts business sectors. But cultural industries have influence beyond their size. Trapital isn't about news. Dan has made a point of saying what he does is not journalism but business analysis. Part of that is to be clear the product isn't a tool for keeping up to date on the ins and outs of the industry. Instead of the play-by-play, Trapital focuses on the context with Stratchery-like essays on topics like “how The Weeknd mastered his brand” and “Beyonce's streaming strategy, explained.” The pivot from subscriptions. For the past couple years, all roads have led to subscriptions in publishing as the travails of the big digital publishers have cast a pall on the ad model. But as Industry Dive, Axios and others have shown, advertising can be the great focal point of a publishing business model – if the audience is a group that's hard to reach and valuable. In 2018, Trapital scrapped its initial paid model. Often subscriptions are painted as a set-it-and-forget-it option, but making money is hard no matter the model, and subscriptions require constant selling and marketing. Dan saw as a one-person operation this was cutting into his focus. Instead, Trapital focused on an “influence” model that initially treated the newsletter and podcast as lead gen for consulting, while adding in advertising and moving into investing. Going beyond solo. Trapital is working as a one–person business, but Dan wants to expand beyond just himself. The challenge is how to do this without losing the personal touch since Trapital's brand is very tied into Dan's perspective.
James Runcie's latest novel, The Great Passion, imagines a year in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach, culminating with the writing and first performance of his St. Matthew Passion in 1727. Told through the eyes of a fictional, 13-year-old student, it explores the man behind the legendary composer: an ambitious working musician and father of eight, coping with grief and loss, through faith and music. Runcie is also the author of the popular Grantchester Mystery series.
How do you strategize for a musical genre? You embrace the culture that surrounds it. Dan Runcie is a founder at the intersection of music and business. Hip-hop is way more than just the music, it's business, culture, and the artists themselves. Dan is one-step ahead of the moves with Trapital, assessing the deals, companies, and artists that shape the culture and delivering the latest trends to venture capitalists, music execs and media moguls. Adam and Dan get into the weeds of the advantages of targeting niche markets, how to build a business around algorithms, and the thorny issue of subscription models. You'll also hear how Trapital's free weekly newsletter has helped more than 15,000 readers get ahead of the hip-hop curve. And if you love listening to Media Moves, please leave me a 5-star review on Rate My Podcast: https://ratethispodcast.com/mediamoves (https://ratethispodcast.com/mediamoves) Thank you so much! Follow Dan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/druncie (linkedin.com/in/druncie) Keep up to date with the latest Media Moves news. Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdamRy_n (https://twitter.com/AdamRy_n) Sign up to the Perpetual newsletter: https://workweek.com/brand/perpetual (https://workweek.com/brand/perpetual)
This is Tell Me What To Read, the podcast of Booktopia, Australia's Local Bookstore. This week, we sit down with for a special podcast. With the announcement of the 2022 program for the Brisbane Writers Festival, Booktopia is thrilled to partner with the festival for another year. Nick sits down with Sarah Runcie, Director of the festival to discuss the forthcoming festival events, the challenges they've had off the back of the pandemic, and more. Events & Tickets: https://bwf.org.au/ Author/Illustrator Series & Author/Editor Series: https://bwf.org.au/whats-on/online-events *Producer's Note: Due to our team being in social isolation, the sound quality is more variable. Host: Nick Wasiliev Guest/s: Sarah Runcie, Director of Brisbane Writers Festival Producer: Nick Wasiliev Season: 2 Episode: 16 Join us for our bi-weekly show with episodes going out every Wednesday and Friday! Join us on Wednesdays as we speak to authors from Australia and around the world about their latest books, and hit us up on Fridays for the books that we are reading and recommending! Originally Published: 2nd March 2022See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dan Runcie is the founder of Trapital, a publication dedicated to the business of hip hop. In this conversation, we discussed how he had to put his CEO hat on to make the decision to shut the paid subscription down versus listening to the emotional side, how he thinks about the brand evolving in connection with him, and where he sees the business growing from here.
Verzuz, Issa Rae's empire, and dinner with Jay-Z - oh my! Trapital founder and host Dan Runcie joins the show to talk all things music, culture, and the business that keeps it going. From Pusha T's Arby's Spicy Fish diss track to what the future looks like for Gen Z artists – Dan's got the answers!
This is Tell Me What To Read, the podcast of Booktopia, Australia's Local Bookstore. Join us for our bi-weekly show with episodes going out every Wednesday and Friday! Join us on Wednesdays as we speak to authors from Australia and around the world about their latest books, and hit us up on Fridays for the books that we are reading and recommending! This week, we sit down with for a special podcast. With the announcement of the 2022 program for the Brisbane Writers Festival, Booktopia is thrilled to partner with the festival for another year. Nick sits down with Sarah Runcie, Director of the festival to discuss the forthcoming festival events, the challenges they've had off the back of the pandemic, and more. Events & Tickets: https://bwf.org.au/ Author/Illustrator Series & Author/Editor Series: https://bwf.org.au/whats-on/online-events *Producer's Note: Due to our team being in social isolation, the sound quality is more variable. Host: Nick Wasiliev Guest/s: Sarah Runcie, Director of Brisbane Writers Festival Producer: Nick Wasiliev
Nora and Scott chat with Dan Runcie, founder of Trapital, a weekly newsletter about the hip-hop industry, and look at how trends and strategies that start in hip-hop influence the rest of the business world.
Dan Runcie is the founder of Trapital, a media company covering the business of hip hop. Trapital has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC World News, NPR All Things Considered, CNBC, and many more publications, with more than 13,000 subscribers. And 35% of the audience works in the music industry at companies like Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Live Nation, 300, Roc Nation, eOne, ASCAP, UnitedMasters, and more. In this episode, we talk about Dan's pathway into writing the Trapital newsletter, why he shut down a successful paid version of his newsletter to focus on monetizing through consulting, what the subjects of his writing have to say about it, and why Focus has helped him quickly create a name for himself despite being an industry outsider. Learn more about Trapital Follow Dan on Twitter Follow Jay on Twitter Follow Creative Elements on Instagram Full transcript and show notes *** IF YOU LOVE CREATIVE ELEMENTS Leave me a voicemail Subscribe to weekly episode emails Leave a review on Apple Podcasts Leave a rating on Spotify Buy Me A Coffee *** ABOUT JAY CLOUSE Learn more about me Subscribe to my newsletter, Creative Companion Connect with me on Twitter Connect with me on Instagram Join #Tweet100 *** SPONSORS Sign up for ButcherBox Get a free month of Blinkist Premium *** FOR PODCASTERS Enroll in my podcasting workshop Enroll in my course on podcasting, Podcast Like The Pros Learn more about Podpage *** PODGLOMERATE NETWORK This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to Creative Elements, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Rocketship.fm and Freelance to Founder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today's Oncology Spotlight is with Runcie C.W. Chidebe, UICC Young Cancer Leader and the founder of Project Pink Blue a cancer organization engaged in cancer awareness, free cancer screenings, support to people battling with cancer, patient navigation, advocacy, fundraising for cancer patients, cancer research, oncology training, and psychological support. He talks about the journey of Project Pink Blue and initiatives to change the way Africans think about cancer like Upgrade Oncology and Nurse Navigators. Know more about Runcie C.W. Chidebe: Twitter: https://twitter.com/runciecwc LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/runciecwc/ Know more about Project Pink Blue: Website: https://projectpinkblue.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/projectpinkblue LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/projectpi... For inquiries, contact us at info@oncoassist.com Let's connect: Website: www.oncoassist.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncoassist LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/onc... Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/oncoassist/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ONCOassist 2:02 - Introduction to Project Pink Blue 5:07 - Journey of Project Pink Blue 8:38 - Initiatives by Project Pink Blue 12:30 - Upgrade Oncology 16:32- Training provided through Upgrade Oncology 17:35 - Outcomes of Upgrade Oncology 19:03 - Research collaboration through Upgrade Oncology 19:58 - Upgrade Oncology 2021 21:22 - Oncology Professionals in Nigeria 24:35 - Nurse Navigators 27:58 - Future plans of Project Pink Blue
The business of Hip Hop is as important as the music. Every other day rappers / creative entrepreneurs like Jay-Z, Nas, Kanye West, Drake,Travis Scott, Tyler the Creator, etc. are launching a clothing line, beverage, cannabis strain, crypto initiative, or other creative partnerships with industries outside of music. These initiatives are financially lucrative, but also influence popular culture, and our everyday lifestyles as much as a hit single. Dan Runcie is the founder of Trapital, a podcast and newsletter that captures the latest news within the business of Hip Hop. Moments prior to the surprise releasee of Kanye West's Donda album, DJ Semtex caught up with Dan Runcie to discuss the head to head competition between Kanye and Drake, Diddy's shift from music to alcohol, the investment portfolios of Jay-z and Nas, how Rihanna became a billionaire, what's next for Kendrick lamar, NFTs, and loads more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dustin Runcie, from North Shore Church in Hastings, NE shares his journey of song-writing, personal discipline and following God's leading. This episode is filled with useful insight in recognizing how to lead YOUR church in worship.Dustin's favorite resources:The Reset: Returning to the Heart of Worship and a Life of Undivided Devotion by Jeremy Riddle - https://amzn.to/3wsvRwTSong Capture Podcast with Chris Clayton - https://www.chrisclaytonmusic.com/Atomic Habits - James Clear :An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones - Buy Here!Visit https://worshipministryleader.com for all our resources and episodes!
We can learn a lot from studying great business strategies, and some of the best business strategies of the past 20 years have come from Hip Hop. Enter Dan Runcie, the founder of Trapital, a hot new media company and consultancy dedicated to the “business of Hip Hop.” Learn from Dan's extensive experience, having had interviewed the likes of Master P and Steve Stout, and having broken down the marketing strategies of Beyoncé and Cardi B.
How can we improve survivorship in a country where there's no institute or agency for cancer control, no PET scans available, and no health insurance for 95% of the population? The answer to this question isn't simple. But it's a conversation we need to have. In this episode, we speak with Runcie C. W. Chidebe, Founder and Executive Director at Project PINK BLUE. He tells us about the budding state of oncology in Nigeria, as well as his nonprofit's efforts to generate awareness, train doctors, increase access, and improve survivorship. If you're interested in “zooming out” and looking at Oncology care through a different lens, this episode is a must. And if you want to help, Runcie shares several ways to contribute, no matter where in the world you are. Here are the show highlights: - How Project PINK BLUE mobilizes thousands — and even the government — to help fight cancer (3:50) - Why there's a shortage of oncology doctors in Nigeria (5:26) - “People working in oncology in many African countries are the best humans in the world — no apology!” (11:08) - In a way, COVID-19 has actually had a positive impact on healthcare in Nigeria (16:10) - Runcie's call for global collaboration to improve HPV vaccine access (19:51) - Want to help? Talk about it, partner with Project PINK BLUE, volunteer, or donate (25:32) Stay connected with Working in Oncology on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our podcast website.
Trapital is a media company that is home to all things related to the business of hip hop. Dan has a newsletter; he writes essays on his site and runs his own podcast. Among his loyal readers, you'll find music executives, media moguls, VCs, and even pro athletes. This is an especially fun episode, so lets' get to the good stuff...(Read more)
I discussed the IDF briefing that I was at , Israel at War, plus DeSantis and the gas shortage, Runcie situation, bullying, Darlene Swaffer, fight to win --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/joe-goldner/support
Talking about how Runcie wants the taxpayers to pay for his legal fees, Democrats trying to federalize our national elections, attack on Israel, The puppeteer Obama controlling Biden and dividing the nation. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/joe-goldner/support
Runcie resigned and Dale Holiness threatened the taxpayers, the new school superintendent and yours truly --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/joe-goldner/support
The House is ready to vote on final passage of a bill to change the way Floridians vote by mail. Democrats offered 18 amendments to the elections bill. None passed. Also, on today’s Sunrise: — A bill that allows concealed carry of guns at churches that share space with a school is on its way to Gov. Ron DeSantis. — Another bill exempts presidential search committees at state colleges and universities from the Sunshine Law flames out in the Senate. The bill had support from most Senators, but it was one vote short of the two-thirds margin required to pass an exemption to the open records law. — After being indicted by the statewide grand jury, the Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie vows on video he will beat the perjury charge. Several hours after a video dropped, Runcie announced he's resigning — but not because of the indictment. — Otter Cat is back in the Legislature, but now with a fancier name — jaguarundi. — And finally, a Florida Woman says teachers vaccinated for COVID-19 can't work at her school anymore because it messes with a student's menstrual cycles. Spoiler alert: it’s a hoax.
It is time to eliminate the corruption in our schools and in the Broward County Sheriff's office, we continue to eliminate the cocaine and crack cocaine problem in Davie and Dania Beach --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/joe-goldner/support
Two of the pillars of corruption has fallen, Scott Israel, and Robert Runcie, next and last pillar is Gregory Tony. I am the corruption fighter and the next Sheriff of Broward County Joe Goldner --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/joe-goldner/support
After graduating from business school, Dan began blogging for fun about the intersection of business and hip hop. Inspired by a Harvard case study on Beyonce, he started writing his own case studies on the industry.Combining his passion for business and music evolved into his now-successful media company, Trapital. Today, Trapital's readers include music executives, media moguls, and venture capitalists, including fans like Translation CEO Steve Stoute and SoundCloud CEO Mike Weissman. On this call with Dan, we talked about how he turned his passions into a must-read newsletter. Dan shared advice on how he iterated his way to a writing niche, some lessons he learned taking Trapital paid (then back), and how he's leveraged his writing to help him elsewhere in his career. On the second half of the call, we invited attendees to unmute and participate in a Q&A.
On this How Music Charts episode, Dan Runcie breaks down the business of hip-hop with his media company Trapital. Trapital began as a subscription-based newsletter talking about topics such as Beyoncé’s streaming strategy, how the hip-hop’s indie community has taken off and How Tyler, The Creator Built a Cult-Like Following. Trapital’s readers are music executives, media moguls and venture capitalists. We cover why a San Francisco Bay Area tech strategist is in hip-hop, how he fell in love with hip-hop culture, how he leverages his experiences in edtech, fintech, and with a major commercial airline, and his time as a freelance writer for WIRED and Complex. This episode's Speed Round topics: Bobby Shmurda's release, Square acquiring Tidal, Master P & Clubhouse, Scooter Braun's venture into cannabis, and TikTok's Black Creatives program.
Dan Runcie’s Trapital Media gives the business of hip-hop the rigorous coverage and in-depth analysis that it deserves. This week, Dan gives host Dmitri Vietze a picture of the state of hip-hop as a culture, a musical genre, and an influential business ethos— and how it’s evolving faster than ever. Find out why emerging hip-hop artists are so focused on creating their own lane and owning their careers, whether they sign to a label or choose the DIY path. Dan shares Trapital highlights, from an early essay on J. Cole’s superfan strategy to podcast interviews with the people behind the business. Get Dan’s viewpoint on the major music tech trends, like the rise of NFTs and the major label acquisitions that are shaking up the landscape. Dan looks ahead to future developments he’s excited to see in livestreaming and building a more equitable music industry. Listen for the first “Big Question” winner and a chance to Ask Dan Runcie Anything! The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit MusicTectonics.com to learn more, and find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Let us know what you think!
White House: Florida has used only half its COVID vaccines: The Biden administration Monday said Florida had used only half the COVID vaccines given to it by the federal government, challenging Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attempt to blame the slow pace of vaccinations on a lack of federal supplies.Attention has been focused on the transition in Washington, DC , but our state legislature is up to its old tricks while there is little “on-the-ground” oversight in Tallahassee. Instead, public input is being restricted and we need to pay especially close attention to legislation which would undermine our public education system, disenfranchise the voices of educators, and trample workers’ rights. Here are dangerous bills we are watching: · SB 48 would dramatically expand unaccountable vouchers, draining our already underfunded schools, so they can line the pockets of those who seek the profit off of our kids· SB 84 would take away retirement security for teachers, staff, first responders and other front line workers who sacrifice so much for our community· SB 78 would force teachers, staff, first responders and other front line workers to cut through a bunch of bureaucratic red tape and jump through hoops when they decide to join and/or remain a member of their professional organization/unionFor those you following education news locally, the Broward Teachers Union won a critical victory for information from an arbitrator even in a somewhat split decision that found the district had the right to return teachers who had been out with accommodations back to the classroom.“Principals must now provide documents justifying their decisions,” Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco said. “We have been asking Runcie to give us information for months. He stonewalled and prevented BTU from finding out how principals reached their decisions. Now there is a binding decision that Runcie must follow. Runcie will finally be brought to account.”Support builds for Florida teachers to get vaccinated sooner Gov. Ron DeSantis has turned away requests to move educators to a higher priority. A big “thank you” goes out to the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, who passed a resolution asking Governor DeSantis to prioritize frontline workers for the vaccine distribution, including teachers, on Thursday, January 21st. On this Day: January 26, In 1863: Black Troops Recruited for the Union Army. Also, in keeping with the concept of second doses, here is today’s second dose of “this day in history”: on Jan. 26, 2010, The World Health Organization rejected claims that it overstated the severity of the swine flu pandemic under pressure from vaccine companies.
Tune in to the conversation with David Runcie as we discuss scoring 1,000 points at Columbia High School, being a walk on Hampton men’s basketball team, transferring to Bard, his overall journey, his NBA finals picks, and more. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/antonio-burnett-ii/support
In this episode of Infinite Loops we spoke with Dan Runcie, author of the popular newsletter Trapital, which focuses on hip-hop business trends. Our conversation covers: Apple vs. Spotify Music as an investment asset Unique revenue streams for innovative artists The economics of hip-hop Opportunities for artists in Tiktok and other new apps And MUCH more Follow Dan (https://twitter.com/RuncieDan) on Twitter, and check out his newsletter https://trapital.co/.
Dan Runcie is the founder of Trapital, the newsletter that breaks down the business of hip hop. We learn all about his favorite hip hop artists, of course, but he also shares what indie creators can learn from the world of hip hop and so much more.Having switched from a lucrative paid newsletter to a consulting business, Dan explains the thinking that went into his new business model, and what it means for anyone trying to monetize their newsletter.Dan shares his opinion on Substack—the out-of-the-box newsletter service that seems to be everywhere these days. You'll find out why Dan started Trapital on Substack, and why he later switched to ConvertKit.You'll also learn unexpected insights from the world of hip hop, including lessons indie creators can take from Beyoncé's sales funnel, and why Master P's cutting-edge albums in the ‘90s show that consistency might just matter more to creators than quality!Links & Resources Substack ConvertKit - Email Marketing for Online Creators Ghost: Turn your audience into a business Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS — WordPress.org OnlyFans Dan Runcie's Links Sign up for Trapital Twitter: @RuncieDan Instagram: @RuncieDan LinkedIn: Dan Runcie Episode TranscriptDan: [00:00:00] If they're using Gmail or using any other service, they see my face in the icon come up, they see my name there. And it's a familiar thing where it is coming from a person. I want to make sure this reads like an email you would get from someone, not just like a marketing email. So I try to make sure that even though I am sending the email, it's not just the straight copy from the essay, they are getting something that reads like a note that they would get from a friend.Nathan: [00:00:33] In this episode, I talked to Dan Runcie who runs Trapital, which is the newsletter that breaks down the business of hip hop. He's really fun to talk to. We learn all about his favorite hip hop artists, right. Specifically what indie creators can learn from the world of hip hop and so much more. So let's dive in.Nathan: [00:00:50] Dan. Welcome to the show.Dan: [00:00:51] Nathan, thanks for having me.Nathan: [00:00:53] Yeah. Well, I want to dive right in. You have a love for specifically the business of hip hop and I would love to hear from you where, where that started.Why. You know why you care so much about the business side and, what brought you to this point?Dan: [00:01:09] yeah, for me, the love for the business of hip hop really started with loving hip hop. I was pretty early on with gravitating towards this culture and. It was deeper than music. I mean, I remember elementary school. I was really getting into different artists who were the people that are making moves, but it's also the people that were making movies behind the scenes.Right. I was very interested in the persona of someone like a show ignite or someone like a Puff Daddy and the people that were both being very deeply involved with what was happening. But. Pulling the strings and making things happen and all of the criticism and successes that both of those people achieved.And I think as I continued to grow up, seeing what that was like at the time, I never truly saw that as a career path for myself, but I was intrigued with it. So it was almost like a hobby and something I pursued and kept up and would always talk about with friends pretty much all through life, but it wasn't until.Let's see, six, seven years ago. And this was when I was in business school. We were doing case studies on all different type of topics. And one of them that stuck out, we did this case study on Beyonce. He had just released this surprise albno one had done albums, surprise albums like that at that particular timeframe.And it was this huge marketing case study on how these things happened. And it was a case study that was done by Harvard business school. It spread across to other schools. And that stuck out to me almost like a reminder, like, Oh, Hey, you know, this is something that is huge. And. It stuck out for a few reasons.One, the topic, the subject matter, I've been a Beyonce fan since the Destiny's child days, but second, it stuck out to me just how big of a deal that case study was, how it was from a business perspective. And there weren't that many articles or breakdowns that were talking about hip hop artists or.Artists in entertainment that we're doing and making the same type of strategic moves that other industries were making in the type of jobs that I was working in and was playing into working thereafter. So for me, it was really an opportunity to look at that. And that was how I had started doing some freelance writing on the side.Started a blog. It was a personal endeavor just to explore hobbies, my own interest topics that snowballed into publications, reaching out where I started writing for them. But then that snowballed again into writing for more and more reputable spots. And then eventually I saw where media was going. I saw hip-hop's continued rise and said, you know, I have an interest for this.I clearly have some skills that ability to convey these thoughts. Well, let's merge these two together and started diff publication focused on the business of hip hop and that CellTrak capital was born.Nathan: [00:04:05] Yeah, that's awesome. So I'm just imagining, you know, you in elementary school with the love of music, but then you're actually diving in like, You know, when, when something happens or when someone makes a move, you're diving into the story behind that. Are there any early ones that really stand out to you that you know of an artist making some move where you're like, wait, Whoa, what was the deal there?Or that you were fascinated to hear every little detail about.Dan: [00:04:31] fascinating. One to me when I was that age was Master P So I remember this was around the time where I was really starting to buy CDs and I bought a single. Of make Em Say Uhh so not even just the alblike the single, I just had like one side and then maybe like a B side album with it. And I played that single.I don't even know how many times. And That stuck out because master P wasn't just an artist that had this record label behind him, his whole business model. And how he went about just running and being so popular for that stretch in hip hop was so monumental for people across the entire country. He was putting out an album from him and his group every other week.And. They did not go on tour at all. During this stretch, they just monetized their ability to market extremely well, made sure people knew there was a style and a cover of what that No limit album looked like. There was a distinctive sound. And to be honest, even if the music itself wasn't always the best they mastered the art of branding.So when I think about that fast forwarding that 20 years now, when you hear all people in content, talk about how. You know, it's better to be consistent. And sometimes that consistency may be more important than the quality master P is always one of the first people I think of with that. that isn't necessarily a knock to him.It's just seeing how so many of those lessons from hip hop can translate to how media and content and so many things in the current world of the landscape operate Nathan: [00:06:09] Yeah, that's fascinating. And I think we've seen that, you know, all across the creator ecosystem of people who show up consistently, or really do it in a novel way, you know, like that's crazy to think of. I mean, that's almost the level of an author releasing a book every couple of weeks or, you know, every month of, so people they go away for a long time and like, you know, two years later they come back, like, this is my album.And he's like, no, like this is the creative process. Like let's go and we're as much marketers as, as anything else. what about on that side? Like, I think so many creators. Are stuck in this world of like, I am a creator. Like I make great art or over here, they're like, no, I'm a marketer. You know, I, I do business and I feel like in hip hop, they just merge that so well, right.Of saying no, the business and the art, they go hand in hand. Do you have any favorite examples of, artists who have just done that really well?Dan: [00:07:12] Yeah, I think with the best example, I always go back to it's an easy example, but Daisy is still one of the best I've seen that has done this so well, he's not only. Many people consider the greatest rapper of all time, but also the most successful businessperson. He was the first true billionaire to come from hip hop.So much of just how he learned from how the game worked for him. Things didn't always go his way, whether it was how his early partnerships with Rockefeller or the people that he was working with at the time, there are plenty of things that went well, but plenty of things that he learned from, and then.By how he was able to build future businesses like rock nation and the joint partnerships and the ventures he's able to make since then truly show the evolution of someone that has learned the craft evolved, but has also incorporated so much of that into his lyrics. You hear different Jay Z albums.There are snapshots in time for where his mindset was at that particular timeframe. And that's always been the most interesting, I think a lot of this. Rubs off or not necessarily rubs off because I think it probably rubbed off the other way, but a lot of this, you could see with Beyonce as well. I think in a lot of ways, she was a bit.Earlier, in some regard, in terms of how he was focusing on certain things, whether it was the visual content of her work and having that incorporated, having the messaging come in there. But yeah, I really think of the two of them as people who both incorporated how they were changing their business strategy.Over time, how that shifted, how they went about creating their music and the actual content of their music. So it's a bit of this, flywheel type connection where people see what they want. Right? So when you see them having a performance somewhere in or filming a music video, somewhere like the loop that they did a couple of years ago, it all stems from that same type of place that how they generally perceive themselves and how they want to operate in business, which has always been intriguing to me.Nathan: [00:09:19] Yeah, that makes sense. So you have, like, I always think of you as having a foot in two worlds. Right. One of the business of hip hop and then the other in this like indie creator space of, you know, you building an audience, figuring out how to monetize it. everything else before we dive into more of your story, I'd love to hear just some, some of your thoughts or observations on what indie creators, you know, anyone growing their newsletter can learn from the world of hip hop.Dan: [00:09:49] This is one of the things I really enjoy about the work I do, because there's so many things I'm reading or things. I see—whether it's things that happened decades ago or things that are happening right now—that are so relevant to this indie creator space. So right now I'm in this space where I am running a newsletter, running a podcast, and it's my job to help grow these things, but not just to grow them in any particular type of way.How do I attract the right. Audience. So who's the persona, who's the type of person that would be interested in triple a content. How is this going to help them? What problem is it solving? And I think that a lot of artists think of themselves in that same way. They understand that there's a particular niche that they're trying to hit.And there are so many tools that they could use. In some ways they're using a lot of the same tools that. indie creators are using in order to help grow. Right? So many artists have their email lists. They have their community of super phone numbers that they're texting people. They have their social media, so they have their own funnels in terms of how they are attracting customers, attracting fans.And they funnel down to that type of perspective, artists, or indie creators rather need to do the same. One of the more popular visuals I had drawn in a recent. Case study I'd written for Trapital was this funnel for Beyoncé I've just mentioned her a few times in this interview, but it's, what's relevant is funnel of Beyonce of just how her.Big media appearances, whether it is a Superbowl performance an interview her being in a big movie that makes a billion dollars, like the lion King, those are her top of funnel. Right. And then how that helps spread awareness to where she can then sell products that are a bit more on the expensive side, like Ivy park, and then at the furthest end down how she can sell VIP concert tickets and other expensive experiences.I think that most indie creators also have their funnel where they're like, okay, how do I attract people to find out about me in the first place? And then after that, how do I have, or how can I get people to subscribe to my podcast, subscribe to my email list somewhere I have more of a direct connection.And then how can I go about selling them certain. Products or services that can help my bottom line, but then can also help serve them. So, So many of those parallels run true, and I think that's how that's been reinforcing. And I think so much of that is applicable, especially in hip hop because the artists themselves are multihyphenate, they are expanding in a bunch of different areas.And I think in hip hop specifically, there's a bit more of that hustle mentality that you see that makes them a bit likely to expand into different areas.Nathan: [00:12:39] yeah. When I think that funnel makes a lot of sense. And just for an example, From what my funnel is. And I'd love to hear, you know, some of you like, even this podcast, the clips that we're doing on social media, you know, the really short things to get out there that is our top of funnel. It may not be the same level of appearing in lion King, but that is the same.Like I'm just going for awareness at that point. It's not even about trying to get the subscriber. It's people seeing like, you know, the clip pop up and then have a little bit of detail about, art of newsletters or the things that I'm interested in. And then from there, after they see them a few times, then it's like, okay, well, I guess I should listen to the full episode, you know, and diving in getting someone to a listener of the podcast.And then the next step would be the, the newsletter list. And then in a previous life, that would be, you know, books and courses that would follow up next for me, it, you know, in the current life, it's for them to start their own newsletter and, and build and grow that on ConvertKit. so you're absolutely right.You have to think about, okay, what's the thing. Where I'm trying to get them from, you know, having heard of Beyonce or having not heard of, to having heard of Beyonce, having never heard of Nathan Berry to having heard of it, heard of him. And so I'd love to hear for you, you know, what's the, what's that top of the funnel and where does it break down from?I've no idea. Never heard of trap. It'll never heard of Dan Runcie into like all the way through the business to, you know, you earning a living as a creator.Dan: [00:14:07] right. So the top of the funnel, that's the awareness piece. How can I get the people that are not aware of Trapital right now to realize that so. Think about where are the type of places people who would be interested in Trapital are probably spending the most time. So if you are interested in hip hop, whether you are someone that works directly in this music industry, you work tangentially connected to it in some way, or you're a general fan of it.You are probably going to be spending your time consuming. a Fair amount of media, whether that is through Twitter, through Instagram, through LinkedIn. And now there's enough of the core audience in those particular fields that are truly interested in hip hop that are that target core customer for Trapital that are reading tweets on Twitter, seeing people that they follow.So I use social media as my primary top of funnel. if I am posting tweets on a regular basis, I know there's certain things I want to Cover in terms of topics. So I want to at least have something to say or a topic about some timely events that are happening right now in hip hop, or I will also share some evergreen thoughts.I may have about a topic that may just keep coming up in the business of hip hop. So that is my top of the funnel. I probably focus most on Twitter, but I try to follow that 80/20 Rule where I have 80% of the focus in one particular social media app, just to put my primary focus there. So I'm not spread too thin, but also have a little bit of focus into other areas so that if something takes off, I'm not completely left out of it.The further.Nathan: [00:15:51] Well, let's say a top of the funnel for a second, because you mentioned having things, you know, on social media that are really relevant. So I see you like w when there's a breaking story developing, you know, I, for example, one that you've been talking about a decent amount lately, cause it is just happened in, you know, his little way in selling, young monies, masters, you know, and that being such a w what was the number on that?A hundred million dollars, So, yeah, like dive into that for a second of taking something that's just happened, you know, and how you're, you know, writing content, having your perspective on it to go out on Twitter.Dan: [00:16:31] So when something like that time, we happens in the news. There's normally a few things that'll happen. One, a bunch of people will start reaching out to me being like, Hey, what's your thoughts on this? What's your thoughts on this? And it's almost like a thing where okay. If I have. A ton of people reaching out.Then this is something that many more people are probably going to be interested in what my opinion is on this. So I normally try to make sure that I'm not just reporting facts, I'm providing some other deep type of insight where it's thinking about something else that happened historically, or thinking about how this impacts or broader trend.So that relates in two ways. One. young money was a imprint at a time of cash money, which was a record label that Birdman who was a close friend and has had an on-off relationship with little Wayne at the time had started back in the nineties almost 30 years ago. And they had done a pretty landmark deal where they had able, they were able to maintain ownership of their masters.They were able to get a very lucrative distribution deal. So I knew all of those things happening. And I said, there is a narrative here about how this story connects to what just happened, because it's almost a reversal of what we've seen, where. A really good deal happened from the hip hop record label, partnering with the, one of the biggest music companies in the world.And then we just saw the opposite thing happened where Lil Wayne sold one of the valuable assets he had for a very cheap price relative to what we've seen in the marketplace. So there's that. But there's also this broader trend around ownership that we've seen and heard more about, especially in hip hop, more artists are being much more vocal about wanting to maintain their assets that they have, whether that's their sound recordings, which in most cases, their masters or their publishing, so on and so forth and not necessarily making a partnership with a record label.So being able to bring these thoughts together in a clear and concise way and. Posting and sharing insightful tweets helps offer some of that context that isn't necessarily there because this is where also one of the reasons why I started travel, there was so much focus on the, what that was happening, what happened, what is the biggest news that happened, but there was so much less talk about, okay, what does this mean?Is this a good deal? What are the other considerations? How does this fit into the broader landscape? What is the nuance? So being able to have clear and concise thoughts about that, whether that is a tweet, whether that is a Twitter thread or some other type of post that then can get awareness with the people that are already following that can be shared retweeted.And so on and so forth. So because of the way that Twitter's algorithm works, it's also likely to find other people that would be interested in that type of story. And because of that, that then helps grow that overall funnel. That doesn't mean all the people that liked or retweeted are necessarily going to subscribe and become an Email subscriber to Trapital but similar to how you kind of shared with your newsletter. If they see that they then see, okay, who is this person? Dan Runcie sounds like he has some strong opinions on this. They scroll through my feed. Oh, okay. He had something interesting to say about, this deal that happened a couple of weeks ago.He had something interesting to say, about all of these livestream music festivals. Okay. Maybe a week later, you see another tweet of mine coming to your timeline. And it's like, okay, now I've seen a couple of these. Let me go subscribe. And then maybe, you know, a week or so later, you see me say, Hey, I'm going to send out a newsletter.I'm going to cover these topics. Sign up here. If you want to get it, I'm going to send it out later today. There You sign up and then you start to see the email funnel. You could read a few of my past essays and that's normally how it works for a lot of the people that end up subscribing. But I also know that there are people that are off of Twitter I also need to be able to reach as well.So it's trying to use that similar type of mentality in other platforms. And I think that has served me pretty well.Nathan: [00:20:35] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's two things that I heard in there that I want to really highlight. One is the deep industry knowledge, because so many people are saying like, Oh, this happened. And then this other thing happened. And so as a creator, being able to tie that back and say, this happened, and it's interesting because here's the whole backstory, here's the trend, you know, or here's how it's opposite of what happened in the past or here, the continuation of the trend.There's a lot of news, you know, news headlines. We can have all of that. And what you're offering is insights and that's, you know, what other people don't have the deep knowledge or the time or something like that. And so I think we're seeing that with newsletters all across the board, where at first glance glance, we're saying like, okay, newsletter, you know, there are people are highly in the news part of it and saying, Hey, that's covered already.You know, the headlines are written, you just follow the right people on Twitter, you know, read CNN or whatever industry publication. And like, you know, you know, what's going on and what all these newsletter creators are finding like you is that there's a whole group of people who say like, no, no, no, I want, I want the narrative behind it.I want to know. The deep insights and there's quite a market for that. The other thing that you said that you're doing is. In addition to, you know, as we're bridging that from top of the funnel into now subscribed to the newsletter, you're not just saying, you know, every, every week or every month, a tweet of like, Hey, make sure to subscribe.You're saying this story that you'd be interested in my take on this thing that just happened is going to be published, you know, three hours from now later today. Subscribe, if you want to get that now. In most cases, they could go to your site and it'll be published there publicly by having that specific call to action, you know, where you're like, Oh yeah, I want this thing that I know is coming soon, is way stronger than just subscribe to my newsletter or some generic giveaway, because then not only am I subscribing, which is goal number one, but two now I'm waiting for an email from you.I'm like yearly, like Dan said he was going to get it out today. Like, is, is that, is that coming? You know, and that's such a great place to be.Dan: [00:22:45] Yeah, I agree. And I think that it's so easy to just say, Hey. Subscribe, Hey, just subscribe or please subscribe to my newsletter. I really wanted to be able to make sure that I was offering some type of value. And even though that is value that they could get outside of subscribing to the email newsletter, it still provides that connection to be able to provide some type of lead, provide some type of incentive that they are like, Hey.This is just the tip of the spear. That in many ways is how I treat that top of the funnel or how I'm communicating information in social media. This is the tip of the spear. It's enough for me to be able to use this format, but in order to really get the depth of it, that you can. Subscribed to the email list, you're able to get a bit more insights and then it's a bit more of a relationship, right?If they're using Gmail or using any other service, they see my face in the icon come up, they see my name there. And it's a familiar thingwhere it's like, I'm intentionally using the name, Dan Runcie that they're getting from and not coming from travel. Because even though I am a. No solo person, plus a few freelancers running this.It is coming from a person. I want to make sure this reads like an email you would get from someone, not just like a marketing email. So I try to make sure that even though I am sending the email, it's not just the straight. Yeah. Copy from the essay, they are getting something that reads like a note that they would get from a friend.It's a quite detailed note that has a lot of insights and comparisons, but it sounds very familiar and that's intentional with the language and the texts that I use with trappable.Nathan: [00:24:30] Yeah, that makes sense. I have this friend, Levi Allen. Who's a filmmaker in British Columbia. And in his videos, he often said like, he'll just start his videos and be like, Hey friends, you know? And he has just has this like, charming way of, you know, where you're immediately just feel it like, you know, Oh, we are friends, you know, like you're immediately in there instead of having this feeling of like, let me broadcast to all of my subscribers on YouTube or, you know, like dear masses out there, this is my proclamation, you know, it's just instead this like personal feeling.And so I love that about your work of like, yeah. Yeah. I just have this friend named Dan who happens to know all the insights about the music industry and he just drops them in my Dan: [00:25:11] Okay. Right. And I think with that too, one of the things I try to intentionally do is make sure that the tone of Trapital comes across relatable. There is a way where this can be written with much less. I don't necessarily want to say flavor, but there's a way this can be written where it doesn't have as much relatability to how hip hop actually is running, where you're just trying to come at it from this pure business perspective.So I want people to know this is coming from a place where. It understands the business, but it also understands the culture and the analogies and all those things, which make it a much more enjoyable and approachable read. Because I think a lot of us that are indie creators putting out content realize we're just not in the business of trying to educate if we are trying to hold attention.And there is an opportunity for the content we're creating to be able to. Entertain or offer that value it's in our interest to be able to do that. I felt like there was enough about my tone and the comparisons and the way I'm writing it, that that can come across in an effective way. And that's been one of the things I often get complimented on with the newsletter and the essays specifically.So that has also been an intentional part of Trapital's tone.Nathan: [00:26:36] well, I think part of what I imagined it being is like that first HBR case study that you read, you know, when going to business school, being like, Oh, wait, people care about the music business. Like I could, you know, I could write about that. It's almost like as if you were hanging out with the people who wrote that case study afterwards, and they're like, they wrote the official thing and like, this is all of it.And then. It's that plus, you know, they're taken like this didn't make it in to the, the full thing or we had to stay very, you know, I don't know, proper official, that sort of thing. And so now when you're hanging out afterwards, they're like, Oh, but this was super interesting, you know? And so you're getting more of their opinions rather than just the straight facts.Dan: [00:27:22] right. And I think a lot of that came from those conversations I had with people and like how we would naturally talk about things, thinking about how let's say I'm talking with a friend and we're talking about door dashes or air B and BS, IPO. We would, we wouldn't necessarily be talking as if we are wall street journal, wall street, journal journalists that are breaking this down.We would probably be a bit more relatable than that. And that speaks a lot to how we communicate. And I think so much of that translates as well. Whether we're talking about little Wayne, sell a young money's masters or Beyonce, partnering with Adidas or Rianna doing a Fenty deal. So on and so forth.Nathan: [00:28:01] Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Let's go further down the funnel. so we we've covered awareness and we have people in the newsletter list. One thing that you've done is you start with the free newsletter and then you launched a paid newsletter back before pay newsletters were cool, you know, and, and then you've actually later you shut it down and, and change business models.And so I'd love to hear first, what, what, let's just start with, what was attractive about a paid newsletter and, and why you started down that path.Dan: [00:28:31] so I started and focused on the paid newsletter path originally because I was pretty focused that that was the best model for travel because it was what I had seen From other people doing this, that was the most successful. So I was trying to, in many ways, replicate that I saw what Ben Thompson had done with Stratec Curry and had actually talked to Ben Thompson, getting his take on how he had built this.And I said, okay, some of that I think relates some of that. It doesn't relate, but I said, There are enough people that are interested in this culture and rising that even if I'm able to skim off, let's say 10% or however many of those people that end up subscribing to the email list to become paid subscribers, then that would serve me well.And then that would continue to help the business grow. So I think I was almost thinking about it from a wide net perspective where. That paid product. this was something I was charging at the time $10 a month, $100 a year. And it was essentially for freemium content. I had the one deep-dive essay that was going out to everyone weekly.It was a free essay I had written, but then if you wanted, the more timely updates on the most recent things that were happening in the business of hip hop from the past 24–36 hours. That was what I was sending in those, updates later on in the week. And this week product had attracted a fair amount of people in the music industry, outside of the music industry as well.It also attracted people that had just wanted to support B and CBB successful. And it's the type of model that could have worked. I. Didn't necessarily get that 10% of email subscribers. I thought I was going to get, I ended up getting around 6%, so I was a little disappointed from the yield, but then I thought more broadly, there were a few challenges that I had with it.One, I was still in the early days of travel and I really should have spent more time. Building the overall funnel. So really growing my overall top of funnel, as opposed to spending more time shot at events that people that were already in that interest stage to committing to the product that I had, that was at least the product that was at the bottom of my funnel, which was this paid membership to travel and.It was difficult because one, it required a tremendous amount of time to be able to offer what I had already committed to the people that were in the paid membership. And it wasn't necessarily monetizing Trapital itself to the best of its abilities. I realized that beyond just having people who have an interest in hip hop, there was a super-specific group and niche that could be super served well, by what I was offering, there are the people that are working and making the decisions that are truly taking the business of hip hop to the next level. I'm writing about the types of deals Drake has done and whether or not he should have considered other options.I'm talking about the type of partnerships record labels have made with other, livestream companies or other organizations. Over time, if you write enough and you do well, you're going to attract the people that are making those types of decisions to your newsletter. So there's a better way to serve that audience than offering just this general product that was reaching the wide net.And that's a product that can work. It clearly worked for a number of people. I think it could've worked even at a 6% yield with a much bigger net, but. There are better ways to offer products that aren't necessarily annual commitments or subscriptions that can serve them, whether that is a consulting offering, whether that is a specific type of service or advisory or some other type of practice that you can.What I've done specifically with Trapital since pivoting is working more on a consulting and, Unique project basis where I'm helping different companies in different types of ways help bring hip hop to the work they're doing, whether that is helping with podcast, helping a podcast network and thinking through some development for some projects or helping different, Companies outside of hip hop, but in the electronics or the entertainment space, think about how best they can integrate and partner with hip hop artists.You're seeing so many people just seeing the type of deals that are happening. So by me using my newsletter as, or using my newsletter as a funnel to help reach those people, it then can attract the people that are working in these industries. And then It can easily start a conversation where we can explore other different types of business opportunities.So that's been the main way that I've done it. And I think there's plenty of ways to expand on this as well. I think there's an opportunity for courses. I think there's an opportunity for one offer digital products that I can offer to help serve the true executives and the Bogles and the people that are making those decisions at Trapital or that are reading travel.And for me, That is a better way, both to monetize trap metal from a time perspective, which in many ways is my most valuable asset, but also from a value add perspective as well. So it was a lot of learning and building the plane as you're flying it. But I I've definitely been humbled and appreciative of how much I've continued to grow and learn through this part of that comes from.How much, I've just tried to better understand the landscape, but also just came from doing it, realizing what doesn't work and quickly being able to iterate.Nathan: [00:34:17] Yeah, that makes sense. And the most important thing is that once you have someone's attention, There's a bunch of different ways that you can earn money from that I've with pay newsletters early on. I've been pretty vocal about, Hey, I don't think that they're necessarily the best. not that there's anything wrong with them.I just think that for a new creator or someone gaining traction, they may not be the best way to monetize the audience. So for example, David Pearl, who was on the first episode of the show, he's got an email list of 40,000 people. I think he could do a very successful paid newsletter. He's quite prolific.And instead he said, Nope, I'm going to do what he calls the Rite of passage, which is his, you know, very expensive premium course. It's, cohort-based, he's heavily invested in these people. I think the course is 2,500 or $3,000, something like that. And it's generating millions of dollars, per launch of the course, you know, and.And that's not to say that he couldn't also do a paid newsletter. He's just found that this is his monetization method that he wants to do and what works best for him. so yeah, there's a bunch of different options there. And so it's interesting to me that I guess two things in, in what you said, one that you chose consulting as the, the way that you most want to monetize right now.So I'm going to dive into that. Yeah. But before we do, what was the reason that you chose to shut down the paid newsletter? And do consulting rather than keep the paid newsletter and add consulting. why have, why go to one instead of two monetization methods?Dan: [00:35:50] time. Tea time was the biggest thing for me, the way that I had structured the paid newsletter, the product that I was offering was something that required 20 plus hours a week in order to be able to create on a regular basis. And sure. The. Unit economics of it can work out. If you have a large number of people, it's a zero marginal cost product, but it was still a large time for me to be able to do that where you just, I would have needed to have a very large number of people, not just to justify the cost, but also more to justify the opportunity cost of what else I could do.With that time. So it was a tough bullet to bite, right? There was some traction and there was some recurring revenue that would have been there. And, having paid subscribers consistently is a nice thing to have. Even the people that I know that are successful with paid products. It is nice to be able to have that.There is a reason that I, so many companies have been trying to figure out how best to create subscription models. But that said, one of the things that I think does make it a bit easier as a. Nimble and indie creators that you can pivot and see when these things make the most sense. So for me, offering the consulting was a way to be able to do a few things.One. If I look at that 20 hours of the week that I can now buy back, I can do better for myself. If I am very selective with the type of projects I'm taking on with the type of companies I'm taking that I'm working directly with and thinking about it, not just in a way where you are. Renting out your time for money, which I do think can be the reality for a lot of consulting projects, but what does that deeper layer?How can the insights or connections or work that I'm doing further help? Either my context, so trapped little, that it can be used in other, stories in other, Work that I'm doing or could somehow help what, what, what I'm doing in the future in some other type of way. So I always try to think about that when I'm partnering with a company or when I'm working directly with, with the client, whether it is on an advisory basis or it is on a specific project basis.So those are the things that. Have interested me and I think I will continue to do it. The thing that I'm most interested in in the future is what does that course, what does that digital product look like? Cause I think there's a huge opportunity there with trappable and I think over time there's a reality where I may pivot to doing more of that.Then I will have the than I will have the consulting. I think the thing that may make it a bit. Tricky though, is that because of the type of work I'm doing, there are a pretty selective group of clients that would truly benefit from being able to, partner with trappable or partner with me specifically to work on a consulting project.There's so many of the insights from the weekly memos that I'm sending out. That's like, Hey. Loved your thought on this. Can we talk sometime it would be great to get your thoughts and that's how these relationships start, but there are only so many CEOs of these companies that can work in this particular type of way.So if you're building a product and you have a very specific type of customer base, Consulting in a lot of ways does become quite attractive or having some other type of service where you know, that there are a very few number of stakeholders that are in this sweet spot, but these are deep corporations that have deep pockets in many ways, the best way to be able to partner and work with them.Would be to have some type of consulting agreement, whether that is purely for cash, whether involves equity or some other type of revenue share for whatever the deal may be. But that said, just given how many people in this space are thinking about their own personal growth, their own personal brands and how they can continue to grow.I think there's a great opportunity for that digital product and the course in a company where travel is heading. And that excites me too.Nathan: [00:39:54] Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. I want to get into some specific numbers. and so feel free to answer or not answer any part of it. I'm going to ask three together so you can choose whether to answer all three of them or, you know, dive in on, on just one. I the first is I'd love to hear numbers of, you know, how big you were able to grow the capital audience too.So, you know, on just the free subscriber side, you mentioned the 6% free to paid conversion rate. And so just getting into the, what the MRR was when you shut it down. And then the third one is I'd love to just hear how your structure consulting deals are. These $10,000 consulting projects. Are these a hundred thousand dollars consulting projects?You know, how you go from there?Dan: [00:40:34] Yeah, so the newsletter itself right now, over 7,000 people subscribed to the email list. And when I had shut down the page, The newsletter itself, there were. To be honest, I forget the exact number, but I want to say maybe it was around like 220 230 people, or so that were paying either a $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year.So it was somewhere between like 22 to $25,000 in monthly recurring revenue. So, I mean, that was me doing the math of that to be like, okay, this is what I'm, you know, at least at this current stage, putting 20 hours a week into to be able to. You know, continue to, ultimately get that type of revenue. Of course it can grow, but it can't grow until I have more time to be able to help grow that overall base.So that was a big, piece of the, decision there inNathan: [00:41:30] Yeah. So about, so 2200 to 2,500 a month in recurring revenue from the, from the newsletter. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a solid baseline for, you know, like as an indie creator, having that coming in consistently. You know is really nice. That's all of rent in some cities, you know, two thirds of renting in other cities, you know?Dan: [00:41:53] It doesn't cut it in San Francisco, which is where I lived down. So, I mean, luckily I was able to, you know, I I'd saved up some money before I had started trap it'll or not. Before I started charitable before I started working on it full time, because I said, you know, there's probably going to be some, trial and error and I need to have a bit of comfort there.So it wasn't all the money that I was living on. Thankfully. But I realized that, you know, there's a timeline for everything I needed to make some changes and make some pivots there. So in terms of the type of projects that I have right now, it that I take on for consulting, it truly depends. I mean, I think for the most part, that main.Way that I've got about it. So the main standard is let's do a three and a half month engagement where I am giving an overall assessment on what the best path of strategy should be. So this is me working much more on the strategy side, more than the implementation side of things. So if you think about how a trap metal article or how a trap capital newsletter is typically written, there is.My take my insights on what's happening with a particular company. So if someone reads that, they're like, Hey, we would love something like this, and even more in depth for what you think we should do. Moving forward that 3.5 months of work would include the. analysis, it would include the interviews, the research to understand what makes most sense for this company and then being able to provide overall recommendations, next steps, moving forward and so on.So it really depends on the company because in some cases, Is straight cash and other cases it's, you know, revenue share or derivative rights, or if there is something, if there's a partnership related to the future content that we're creating in other aspects, I've become an advisor for companies and getting equity in exchange for that.So it's definitely varied based on the deal. So I think for them, People that are listening to this. It's probably best, helpful to think. Okay. Where are the places that you want to be able to serve? And for me, there was interest in being able to do. All of those things, whether it was working for the big fortune 500 companies or working for the startups and just knowing that the type of deal or the type of structure you have in place for a startup may not necessarily make sense for a big firms working for a big firm that three and a half months strategic.Advice works much for, you know, for some five figure amount of money makes much more sense than a startup where equity makes more sense for several reasons. One, they probably don't have the cash to pay that. And secondly, Where they are from a company isn't necessarily someone coming in with some big strategy deck or some analysis to be able to suggest things.They want someone that they can reach out to you. And hopefully if you become more of a trusted and supportive advisor, that's always a running joke. Not every, you know, not every advisor is necessarily worthwhile. As they are, but if you become one of the worthwhile ones then great, great for you awfully that can work out well, if there's an exit for the company in the future.So the flexibility has worked out well, and I think that's what I'll continue to do. Moving forward.Nathan: [00:45:09] yeah, that makes sense. And then you're just able to tailor it to each, each business in each conversation. Let's talk about the rise of newsletters, you know, we've seen, obviously you've been doing it for, for quite a while. you've run your newsletter on ConvertKit. There's all kinds of things.Email's been around for a long time, but over the last three years, but even the last, like 12 to 18 months, we've just seen newsletters take off like crazy. I was joking with Barrett, our COO at ConvertKit that like, it seems like half the people that follow us on Twitter, you don't have a sub stack in their, in their Twitter bio and that sort of thing.And it's just a level, whereas 12 months ago, 18 months ago, if you were like, Oh, you know, I'm a newsletter creator. People would be like, Where's your startup, you know, whereas, you know, but now if you say that they're like, yeah, me too, you know, and everybody is. And so I'd love to just hear your take both on, on platforms.And then maybe before that, get into the, you know, just the, the most recent wave of an excitement around newsletters.Dan: [00:46:09] right. I think I came in just before this wave truly kicked off because I had started, I at least I had the idea for travel and knowing that I wanted this to be delivered through email towards the end of 2017, because I started a trap battle, in spring of 2018. And then I started working on it full-time a year later, but yeah, so that, as you mentioned, yeah, 18 months, 12 months ago was when things really took off.So I think I kind of came in just before that, but I think that for me, the. The platforms tell a big story, because I do think that where people have chose to start their newsletters have said a lot about the brand and the identity of what the newsletter wave is, what it means and where things are necessarily going.I think what's worked out well. I think Substack has been one of the main companies. Involved with the wave. I had trap it'll on the sub stack for the first year that it, that that had existed. And funny enough, I found out about sub stack by typing into Google. Is there a platform out there where I can have my blog posts combined with my email list?Because. At the time I was looking for something that was very easy at the time, I knew that this was a pilot that I wanted to test out with Trapital. I wanted to see what this was like, and I wanted the tech to be as low and as easy as possible and ended up talking to the founders that work at sub stack, both great guys, Hamish and Chris, and was able to at least help me get ramped up and really think through how the delivery deliverability and audience for something like trappable.Could work. What I think later on happen though, is just given the ease of Substack and how it was built. It worked in a way that, because it was very easy and out-of-the-box to use it attracted a lot of the people that were like, Oh, well I have the content I have. You know, tens of thousands of Twitter followers.Let me find a way to monetize this content, because if I can follow the best case scenarios of a Ben Thompson or a, or some of the other people that are doing quite well, then I can. Monetize 10% of that audience by that I could hopefully come on and subscribe to my newsletter. So I think it performed and got caught on quite well with tech audiences that were seeing what was happening and just because of how popular tech, Twitter and VC Twitter is, it was able to help the spread of a lot of those things quite well.What I think differs though. And this is, these are conversations I've had with people conversations I've had with, Hammerson Chris at sub stack and also other creators is that what sub stack offers is great in that it's a very quick out of the box tool that lets you as the creator focus primarily on the content you're doing.What I think is a little different though, is that one, they are very much focused on having people start paid newsletters, and I think it can work out great. As I mentioned, it wasn't the path I want it to go, but I think it can work out well from that perspective. So it's very easy to turn on. And in many ways, it's almost like how Amazon could work.If you're a seller from a marketplace, it is very easy to sell your products. Right. However, if you want something, that's a bit more bespoke, something that is a bit more customized for your audience, and you want to be able to be a bit more flexible almost in the way that Shopify or some of these other platforms are for sellers that want to have something you may want to move your newsletter off of that.And just have something where you can customize the website. You can offer products or services that aren't directly tied to. Having a paid newsletter or freemium content. And more importantly, you can segment and see those audiences, see that audience in different areas. I knew that that valuable information and having that customization was going to be important for me.So it was worth the switching costs. I'll call it in order to switch. And as you know, I'm now on convert kit, I've been on convert kit now for say a year and a half. And yeah, I mean, I think like anything, it took a bit of. Getting used to this would have been a mess, but it would have been a much tougher switch for me.If I had made the switch to cook, or if I had made the switch to ConvertKit earlier, if I'd started, I converted because I didn't feel like I had it tested out. I was very new to this. I didn't even know how to create a website already. The things that I would have needed to know how to do before this.But I do think that. You're seeing a lot of people that will also kind of do what I did, where they'll start on Substack get an initial following base there, and then they may move off of it. Or you see people that have stayed on sub stack and, you know, continue to do quite well for themselves. And I know there's a bunch of other platforms like ghost is coming up and getting more popular MailChimp of course has been around for, decades plus now and doing.I'm still, you know, one of the top players in the space. So I think that the wave is probably going to continue for some time. I think, just to bring it all back. This is something we've seen outside of writing and this type of content as well with some of these paid podcast platforms that have come up or.Products like OnlyFans which is essentially like a paywall for Instagram. These types of things are coming up that are allowing creators to monetize their work in more individual ways in, I think that's probably the overall way that interests me. So the optionality of this is great, but it's important for creators to think, okay, where am I in the process?How do I think about this from that MVP perspective to be able to grow the product. And if I'm thinking about that, What makes the most sense And for me, my journey did work out pretty well with it so far.Nathan: [00:52:06] Yeah. I'd like to imagine that in your ConvertKit account, you have a segment for like, just music executives, you know, and it's like just this group of people and you're like, those, those are the people here's the whole audience, you know, and you can break it down in so many different ways that you, right.You can't do on, you know, a Ghost or a Substack or something that's more built for broader publishing. But then at the same time from the difficulty or the setup side, right. You have to have WordPress, you know, and, and do your publishing, you know, and then the email through ConvertKit. So. There's a lot of trade-offs, but I think it makes sense that, this trend that we're seeing, if people starting on sub stack and then getting that level of traction and either seeing the payment cost or wanting an API or wanting flexibility or segmentation and reporting, and then say, okay, it's time to graduate from sub stack to, kind of the next level.Dan: [00:52:59] right. Yeah. And I mean, I think that let's say that if you are, if your goal is to, you have a large following and you want to monetize that following on the side from everything else that you're doing. Something like sub stack could work out quite well. Obviously other platforms can do a lot of those same things too, but the quick plug and play aspects of it can work out quite well.But I knew for me, I wanted to do something a little different. I truly wanted to build a company that in many ways, stood for things beyond just monetizing the audience I had. I didn't have an audience before I started trapping, so I didn't come into it from that perspective. It's something that I'm still okay.Building now. So being able to have that as a home base was a reminder of where I wanted to take things, but also a, a I guess, a stake in the road in terms of where I wanted to make sure that the company was heading and being willing to make certain trade offs when the time was right.Nathan: [00:53:54] Yep. That makes sense. Well, thanks for joining me today. It's been really fun to dive into your newsletter in the world of hip hop. where should people go to subscribe?Dan: [00:54:03] so people want to learn more about this. Go to Trapital.co that's the website. So that's T R A P I T a l.co. Sign up and subscribe. I send a newsletter out every Monday, I call it the Weekly Memo and this is the weekly breakdown of the business of hip hop. So you want to get all of the latest insights, whether it is what's happening with the latest artists, partnering with the company, a masters deal that's happening, or just a wave of partnerships or deals that are happening that are even tangentially outside of hip hop, but are still related to the people that are operating in this space. It's most likely going to get covered there so you can check it out.Nathan: [00:54:46] Sounds good. And also, I would just say everyone should follow you on Twitter. Just @RuncieDan on Twitter. yeah, you're one of my favorite Twitter followers. SoDan: [00:54:53] Thank you. I appreciate that.
Dan Oshinsky was the Director of Newsletters at both Buzzfeed and The New Yorker. Today he runs his own email consultancy called Inbox Collective. Dan has seen newsletters from the early days, and has been instrumental in developing the newsletter strategy for some of the largest publications around. In this fantastic interview, Dan shares takeaways for large newsletters and indie creators alike. He shares how his newsletter led to the Buzzfeed job, and how, once there, he discovered the building blocks that make newsletters resonate with their audience (spoiler: cats ARE involved).Dan also warns us of the danger of obsessing over open rates (or any “silver bullet” metric), and how Job #1 for your newsletter is to earn its place in people's inboxes.After talking about the importance of carefully defining your newsletter's audience, Dan answers these burning questions: Can I really build a business around an email newsletter? Is email going away? Tune in for the answers, and so much more!Links & Resources Buzzfeed Newsletters The New Yorker Newsletters The Wall Street Journal Newsletters Dan Oshinsky's Links Dan's Website: danoshinsky.com LinkedIn: Dan Oshinsky Twitter: @danoshinsky Inbox Collective - Together, let's make better newsletters. Sign up for Not a Newsletter Episode TranscriptDan: [00:00:00] It sounds kind of corny, but you kind of have to have a mission. When you start with the newsletter you have to have, this is the thing that I'm doing for this audience.This is why I think I can be useful and how I can be helpful. And if I do a good job, I build that loyalty. I build the audience in the long run. there's going to be a return on that investment. Nathan: [00:00:24] In this episode, I talked to Dan Oshinsky, who was the director of newsletters at Buzzfeed, and then the same job at The New Yorker. And now he runs his own email consultancy called Inbox Collective, and Dan has seen newsletters from the early days. He's seen multiple waves of newsletters become popular.And then of course he's run, some of the largest publications around. So it's a fantastic interview. He has a lot of takeaways that are good for, you know, large newsletters and indie creators alike. So I'm excited to dive in. All right, Dan, thanks for joining me today.Dan: [00:01:00] Thanks for having me.Nathan: [00:01:01] So let's, let's dive right in. You've got an interesting background in that we have all of these newsletter creators who. Come into it from, you know, any number of things, but, but they're often indie creators where they're brand new to the space, you know, or they're growing up through one path and you've taken a different path of building newsletters at Buzzfeed than The New Yorker.And now you've got a bit more of the indie path as you're doing the consulting and everything else, but I'd love to just take us back to when you first started to get into running newsletters at Buzzfeed and what, what started that path?Dan: [00:01:36] So it actually started a little before Buzzfeed. The first newsletter that I really launched was a newsletter called Tools for Reporters. It launched in 2012 and it was.I've been doing it a little while. It was Tools for Reporters is exactly what you think it was. It was a newsletter where we share tools that reporters could use.It's actually still going. I went to the university of Missouri journalism school and some Mizzou J school grads have picked up that mantle and run with it. And it's all it just hit earlier this year. Something like 200 additions of this thing has been going for a long, long time. despite my efforts over the years to, to accidentally kill it with, you know, having a job and having other things to do, it turns out when you get hired at Buzzfeed and you have a thousand things to do the like side newsletter, you're working on becomes a little less of a priority, but it's my entire newsletter story really starts with this thing Tools for Reporters.I was playing with lots of different types of tools. And it had stuff that I wanted to share figured a newsletter would be a good place to share it. set up a fairly basic, you know, at the time this was MailChimp. I went to MailChimp, set up a newsletter, pretty straightforward to get something off the ground.And in a couple of, you know, first couple of weeks, I got to a place where there were a few hundred subscribers. And for me, the game changer with email was I had, I don't know how many Twitter followers or Facebook, you know, Followers or friends I had at the time, but I had more of those than I did newsletter subscribers.But if I put something out into the world on Facebook, or I sent out a tweet, nothing would happen, literally nothing would happen. I'd say here's this exciting new thing I'm working on and nothing would happen. And then I would email a few hundred people and say Hey, here's this thing I've been working on.And I would get Requests from people that, you know we want you to come in and sit down with us and have coffee, job interviews, the Buzzfeed job partially came at a result of at, or out of me working on Tools for Reporters. They. You know, when I started talking with them, I shared with them my newsletter and they're like, this is really good.We like this. We can do more stuff like this. It was amazing to me how much more impact email had. the conversations I had out of email was really the exciting part because it wasn't just me broadcasting, whatever news right out into the world but Putting stuff out there and then people writing back and saying I actually have some more stuff I want to talk to you about this, or I want to go deeper on that subject.Or how do you feel about this? I really got to build relationships with my readers and that always struck me as something that was really, really powerful, that set email apart. when I got to Buzzfeed, our, our thinking was twofold. One is we were going to have a chance to build an audience and really have ownership of that audience.of the relationship with them it wasn't something where. Social media giant could just say one day, you know, We know you have X number of people who follow you on this channel, but, we've made some changes to the algorithm and you no longer have access to that audience. You know, we really have the ability to build relationships through email, which was exciting, but the other thing was the potential for conversations, the potential to ask people questions, to get their feedback and to really get to know our readers.That was really, really exciting and something we knew there was huge potential for Nathan: [00:04:57] Yeah, that's big. And then, I mean, that's the exact same experience that I had earlier with. Now of like, I actually expected social channels to outperform email, but people were like, you should have an email list. And I was like, okay, sure. You know, if you say so, I'll listen to smart people and then you actually do it.And you're like, Whoa, this is different, you know, 800 people on an email list is, you know, I would take that over like 5,000 people on a Twitter following. You're definitely on Facebook. And so that blew me away from the beginning. SoDan: [00:05:27] There's also the other thing too, for you, and I'm sure it was, he was definitely for me. And I imagine for you too, like, because it wasn't something that you were hearing from a lot of other sources you weren't, you know, like in the news world, when I got started at Buzzfeed, I started going around trying to find, I was like, Oh, I'll, I'll talk to the people who have my job at.The New York times, the Washington post, all these other places. Like I'll talk to them like these are smart people. I'm sure they've already figured out email. Like I'll learn from them, I'll steal all of their good ideas and then I'll bring it back to Buzzfeed. And then I found out those people didn't exist.Like those jobs didn't exist in other places. And. Email. My theory is always out. I'm curious what you think. Like my theory has always been just because everyone uses email all the time. People think they know a lot about it. They just assume like, Oh, I, I send emails all the time. Like we don't need to have teams thinking about email.Like, what does email for in a newsroom 10 years ago is what does email for? Here's an, arguous a reverse Chron RSS feed of our stories. We'll just send it out to people or many times a day and they'll click on whatever. And. That's the end of the story. And so I started getting into it at Buzzfeed was like, all right, let's talk to the smart people who are already doing this.And it's like, Oh, well, there aren't really that many orgs that even do this. And nobody really had my job. it's exciting to see how much it's changed, but it does, whether it's going to be a Buzzfeed, the work you've done through convert kit, you discover that it just takes a certain amount of momentum of seeing like, Really smart people over and over and over again, telling you like this works, this works really well for people like, huh?I wonder if that email thing works.Nathan: [00:07:11] Right. Yeah. So what was your title at, at Buzzfeed?Dan: [00:07:15] When I started, I was newsletter editor, which was a title that, we made up because everyone at Buzzfeed who wasn't me was associate editor pretty much aside from a writer, chief, like everyone was associated. And I was like, well, I'm an associate editor, I'm the newsletter editor. I'm sure that's my title.And then at some point the team grew and then I hired a newsletter editor and they're like, well, you can't be this anymore because that title is taken. And Busby, wasn't the kind of place where you become like the vice president of newsletters. So it's like director of newsletters was the next title up.Then I, when I got hired at The New Yorker, the title just carried over. It's like, we don't really know what the title is. Director seems nice. Like, sure. That's fine. I don't, I don't at no point throughout the process was the title a. Important thing for him to work at places like those. I remember telling my boss that new Yorker is like, you can call me whatever you want.I don't care. You're telling me I get to work at The New Yorker, but these smart people and help make a difference. Call me whatever does not matter to me.Nathan: [00:08:13] Yeah, that makes sense. So you're bringing up a point about, you know, that, that title or really that job not existing. And I think that's, that's fascinating cause even, you know, people just weren't using email. I mean, they were, but I think about when I was getting started in all of this in 2011, 2012, kind of around the same time, that you were diving in on it.People were using email, but like 5,000 subscribers was a, was a big email list. Like I remember following, you know, bloggers I followed would be like, Chris Guillebeau or a, Liam about to, from Zen habits. And I remember thinking back to that and like, I think they were like 8,000 email subscribers, 10,000, like, and those are the people that I thought of as being really big in the indie space.And now of course, like there's plenty of people with millions of subscribers and. and so much from there, but, but it's fascinating how even seven, eight years ago, you know, like you said, these job titles didn't exist. It wasn't a, Oh, here are all these best practices. Let me go copy them and learn from them and everything else.So what were some of the things that you learned in, you know, maybe that first time at Buzzfeed running newsletters of like, okay, this is what works, this is what doesn't.Dan: [00:09:29] Well, I'll tell you this. My first day when I showed up and our chief technology officer showed me to my desk and sat me down and in a very like, He meant it in a very colloquial way. It's like, do you know what you're supposed to be doing? And he mentioned it just like, you know, you're supposed to be doing, I need to go back to my job.I have other things to do, but I took it into like, do you know what you're supposed to be doing? I kind of hope when I showed up, they would have like the magic playbook, you know, Jonah Peretti would have like labeled out, like you do this and you do this and you do this. Then you have a job. everyone loves you.And it's like, that's like, no, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing because I was scary. But that first year we learned. So much about email. So the big things that first year were just figuring out what an email was supposed to look or sound like from Buzzfeed. Where are we allowed to have personality, your voice?Where did curation fit in at the time in 2012? You know, even a publication like the New York times, their daily newsletter was not a personal lot. Like today. Even Leonhard personalized, curated, they're asking questions. We're starting a conversation 2012. It was just, here's a list of the stories that are most recent on our website.As of 6:00 AM. When this email goes out with no thought as to what the right subject line or which stories need to lead, there was no curation aspect. So all of that for us was like, what does curation look like for a newsletter like ours supposed to be, which was trying to do a combination of. News and humor and culture and lifestyle, like what even goes into a Buzzfeedy kind of email.So a lot of that first year was figuring out what is the voice sound like? How far can we push different sorts of ideas or products? I mean, I remember my first day I pitched three newsletters. The newsletter is for a daily newsletter, a long form newsletter, because we were doing a lot of kind of magazine style, long form reporting, and then a newsletter that I called this week in cats, and everyone laughed about it.But this weekend cats ended up being a really successful newsletter because among the lessons we learned at Buzzfeed were well, there were really four building blocks for us that made a great newsletter. 1 Newsletters were either about identity, who you are and what you care about. And. being a cat person it turns out is a pretty significant identity. Our cat people love cats. And then the dog people later on got mad at us because they thought we were biased towards the cat people. So we had this week in cats and then we had dog dang, which was also a great newsletter. identity was a big thing. 2 Service was a really big thing.The stuff people wanted more of, I want healthy recipes to cook for my family. I want ideas because I'm a parent, I'm trying to figure out. How would I entertain my kids? I'm trying to figure out how to do more of the stuff I want to do Buzzfeed Can you help me do that? 3 There was stuff that was more utility based, and these are newsletters around, your job around your community, around the news.I need to know what's happening today. So I can be informed that a lot of local news organizations do this now, you know, I need to know what the weather's going to be. I need to know what's happening in my community or. if you're, you know, someone like me, I still do a lot of my work in the journalism space.Art. I need to subscribe to newsletters around journalism and news. So I'm informed as to what else is happening out there. those utility newsletters do really well. 4 And then personalization. That was a really big thing for us. How can we add and utilize our unique personalities, the voices you could only get from Buzzfeed and bring them into a newsletter that people were really going to connect with and get excited to hear from.those four building blocks that really shaped a lot of the products, but that came through through testing through really a lot of different launches. Some that worked. Some that didn't some that people thought were jokes like this week in cats, or, you know, I think we have the w the Internet's first Royal baby newsletter when George was born at that kid is now like 37 years old or whatever.It was a million years ago that happened. but you know, we launched these different products, some of which people are like Buzzfeed, but then it turned out like, Oh, people really want this, like, We're in the business of giving people stuff they want, that they care about. They're passionate about. Yeah.Let's launch the Royal baby newsletter, nothing wrong with that. No reason why we can't have a news newsletter that caters to a serious news clientele, a politics newsletter, and yeah. A newsletter where where we'll tell you when you know, the Royal baby is born. These can all exist under one roof.Nathan: [00:13:53] Yeah. So let's take a newsletter like this. We can Katz, what does, you know, this is crazy idea that you throw out there and everyone's like, Oh, ha ha. We've got, you know, it's sort of like two truths and a lie where you've got two pitches that we're suppose to take seriously. And then this third one that like, we're supposed to ignore and laugh at.Like, you know, and you're like, no, no, no, they're all.Dan: [00:14:11] They're all serious. We're going to do all of them one day.Nathan: [00:14:14] But if we have to only do one, it's the cat newsletter. So you choose, So in that, right. How do you measure success? What does, or what does success look like? is it just that you're getting X number of subscribers? Is that like the, the growth rate, the open, what are you looking for? Particularly on the cat newsletter?Dan: [00:14:34] I got really lucky my first year at Buzzfeed in that I reported directly to Dao Nguyen who's Now the publisher of Buzzfeed. One of the smartest people in media Dao knows everything about everything. And Dao was somebody who really impressed upon me there wasn't just a single bullet metric. It wasn't just like the open rate is the end-all and be-all If the open rates are good, we have a good newsletter. Or if we have a lot of subscribers, this is a good newsletter. We thought about growth. We thought about engagement opens, click to open rate. We thought a lot about, you know, Metrics like clicks per thousand if if the newsletter is going to grow.How many, you know, how much traffic does this newsletter drive for every thousand readers? so we could project, if this newsletter goes from 1000 readers to 10,000 to 100,000 how much traffic do we think this might drive? We thought about metrics like time on site. You know, we really utilize Google analytics.If someone's clicking through on one of those long form stories to a Buzzfeed article, for instance, well, Those articles are going to take you 10, 15, 20 minutes to read. How long do they actually spend with these? Are they just clicking or do they spend time? there? And we would put together a couple different types of metrics to measure success over time.That's changed for me now, I think a lot more about loyalty and habit. So how often do people, especially for something like a daily newsletter, how often do people turn to this newsletter day in and day out to read and turn to us for. Know, for, for their news habits. we look a lot more now it's stuff like onboarding and automation.How are we utilizing that to drive engagement that we want, but it's a variety of different metrics across, you know, engagement, habit, loyalty, growth. certainly for a lot of organizations or individuals too, you're looking at revenue numbers is this newsletter driving the end result that I want in terms of revenue for my business, all of these together, give you kind of a full picture of success.What I find is the people who just pick oneif the only thing you care about is open rate. You're going to do anything to get the open rate up. I mean, if the best example I can tell you is sign up for any super PAC's emails and see the emails they send you. I got one the other day, it was a call to action to support, a a political cause the subject line was, and the, the, the, the sent-from name and the subject line was a flight confirmation.It was like, Flight confirmation number 6247 And it was like your flight's been booked. I was like, what is this? And then I clicked and it turned out it was an ad telling me how I need to donate to some political cause it's like, yeah. When the only thing you care about is opens and just getting people to like getting your message in front, you will do some weird stuff to get people to open your emails.You've You've got to have a bunch of different metrics in play.Nathan: [00:17:25] Yeah, that makes sense. And, well, I mean, first the thing is with any political donation, your email address then suddenly gets like passed on to like 50 organizations. And you're like, it's so frustrating, butDan: [00:17:38] It's it's the worst part about all there's many worst parts about politics in 2020, but one of them is you like a candidate. You give them $10. Cause you think it's, you know, I really believe in this person. And then you find out that until the end of time, you will be getting emails from other candidates asking you for money because that $10 donation means that you are suddenly Scrooge McDuck with an unlimited amount of money to give to all political candidates who come asking.Nathan: [00:18:05] Yes, but in that you see so many of these subject lines, especially cause I think, well, you touched on loyalty, right? And that being a metric that, if you had open rate, balanced by loyalty as a counterbalancing metric, then you're not going to push subject lines in a way that, are click baity or spammy or anything like that because you know, that's going to hurt her loyalty.But in this case where the email address was just purchased or passed on, you know, like your political party was just like, Hey, by the way, they had made a donation. So now his email address is fair game for any of you. then there's no thought to loyalty because you don't have any loyalty to the super pack or whoever else.And so then of course, they're just pushing that. So that's,Dan: [00:18:50] And at the, at the end of the day, at the end of the night, too, where people re anyone who's working on an email needs to think about. If there's one thing I've learned over the years with email it's that email is not just a broadcast tool. It is a relationship tool. if you think about email as a relationship tool, as a conversation and of the inbox as this really personal space, this is their space.I tell a lot of my clients, I think of it as like a living room, like the client. So our reader is letting you in and saying, I'm going to let in my family and my friends and some of my colleagues and maybe you, and you've got to prove your worth to earn your place in this space. Like, all right. So what are you going to do?You're going to start a conversation. You're going to ask questions. You're going to seek to learn about them. You're going to try to make sure your newsletters feel personal and are relevant to them. You're going to do a lot because at the end of the day, when you think about email as a relationship tool, Well relationships, are a long-term kind of play.Nobody thinks about how do I develop a relationship for today and tomorrow. And that's the end of it. You think about how do I, you know, I'm making a new friend, I want to make a friend and I want to keep this friend for a long, long time. I want them to be someone in my life for a long time. You make a set of decisions that's best to based on what's best for the Both of you and email is the same way. The more you think about the relationship, the more you think about the conversations you want to have. the more you think long term, you know, it's not just about getting an email address today and how can I sell something as quickly as possible? How can I get this person to know me, understand me how can I learn from them?How can I listen to them, establish trust, and then in the long run, once I've done that, we can do some pretty cool stuff together. When you think about the habit of loyalty in the relationship, it totally changes the way. You think about email and the types of things you would send to them, the things you want to do with them, what you even build in terms of your email product, all that stuff is great stuff that happens when you shift the mindset from broadcast broadcast, push, push, push to no, this is a conversation. Let's start talking.Nathan: [00:20:54] What's an example that comes to mind from your career. you know, or maybe even from a client that you're working with now where that relationship really paid off, or, you know, you're talking about, okay, I'm going to do this in a way that builds long-term loyalty. And that moment where you thought like, Whoa, this is a really loyal audience that we've built.Dan: [00:21:13] So I'll give you the personal example with me. I, when I started this Google doc and. January of 2019, Not a Newsletter. The goal was just when I got started at Buzzfeed, I had always wanted there to be a place that I could go to learn from other smart people. And in the seven years between me starting and when I started me starting at Buzzfeed, and then we started Not a Newsletter.That place never really came up and nobody builds the, the go-to source for, you know, for email conversation, especially for people in news or nonprofits or individuals. There's lots of great. You guys have one of these, but like there's lots of great places you can go. For email conversation of high level and a lot of stuff around marketing, but I found that, especially in the new space, it was just lacking.Like, who am I supposed to go to learn from? So I thought that I might try to step in and, and offer some advice, and be a person that I could share perspectives and learnings from over the years. And then I had this Google doc and just launch it as a Google doc, so I could get out into the world as quickly as possible.And then I had an email alert tied to that. So you could come back for the next one. So people through that, through my onboarding series, through the emails I sent would reach back out. They they'd ask questions. Sure. Feedback. And what started to happen? I mean, this is one I'm still at The New Yorker.What started happening was. People started to ask me like this, we're learning so much about email. We're really excited. We have this budget to work on our email strategy. These next couple of years, we really, really try to figure out who we should be working with, who can like help us figure this stuff out.Who's the person we talk to. And then I would write back like an idiot, like, Oh man, I really wish that person existed. It would be so great. If there was that person who could help you all figure out how to do this stuff, you know, like I have a job I'm working at The New Yorker. I got my hands full. I wish I knew who to refer you to.And then I got so many of these at some point, my wife just told me, it's like, people keep asking you who the person is, your, the person. Oh yeah. It's like, I see. Okay. Now I had to figure out, you know, people who work at it, the people who work at The New Yorker. A great thing about a place like The New Yorker is they always say, there's that old adage.Like you want to work with people who are smarter than you you'll you never want to be the smartest person in the room. There was never any doubt at The New Yorker that I was not the smartest. Like I was always the stupidest person in the room. I was constantly constantly thinking like, I cannot believe how much part of these people are the me, why they let me into this?Why did they let me into the building in the first place? but that means that people from The New Yorker also go on to like big ambitious jobs. They don't usually go to. You know, David Remnick can be like, I'm leaving because I started a Google doc and people now want me to show them how to send better emails.Like that's not a thing that they've ever had to deal with before. but from you really, that was it. That was like, Oh, having, and we'd done this. We'd ask questions of our readers, The New Yorker and gotten great feedback at Buzzfeed. We do these crowdsource posts and get great feedback and have really good conversations.But with Not a Newsletter, the email attached to that, that was the one who was like just by starting a conversation just by being willing to apply to every email that came in. You know, I had a list when I left The New Yorker at the list was about 1500 subscribers. And I knew when I left that I was going to be able to drive enough business from just 1500 subscribers because I was having these conversations because they were telling me.It made it real. In retrospect, it made it fairly easy to figure out what I needed to do to make my business successful because readers were writing and telling me, this is the thing I need help with. This is where I want to spend my money. And then when I would hear five, 10, 12 different organizations tell me we all have the same problem.It's like, well, Good news. I'm setting up a business to solve your problems, and I'm going to make this one of the problems that I can just solve right away. It was great. I made it super easy now, you know, when I work with teams trying to figure out like, who is our audience? How should we market this?Like, well, have you talked to them? Have you surveyed them? Have you listened to them? Because they probably have a good, pretty good idea already of what it is that you do really well. And sure. Especially these big organizations, big brands. We're going to go out and we're going to spend a ton of money on some fancy marketing agency.That's going to come up with a perfect slogan to explain what our product is like. Have you thought first about just serving your audience and hearing from them what it is that you do well, because you might be able to come to that perfect tagline, that explanation without having to spend, you know, five, six, seven figures on a marketing budget that doesn't actually explain what it is you do well in the first place.Nathan: [00:26:06] Yeah. Oh, that makes so much sense. And I mean, I love that you brought up earning a living from a small list because I think people that do think, okay, I have to have 10,000 subscribers active 50,000, and we have tons of examples from ConvertKit. If someone earning a living from. 500 subscribers or 2000 subscribers are all kinds of things in that range.Usually they end up doing consulting, you know, we're selling a higher priced product, you know, because the smaller number of people that you're selling to then the higher price point, if say we're solving for a $80,000 a year salary as our, as our base. you brought up a few things I have on my list here.In my questions, I didn't even write it into a full questions or a full question. It just is Google docs. Question Mark. and it's really not even Google docs. It's a single Google doc. cause as you talked about Not a Newsletter is in fact not a newsletter. It is a Google doc, that you can go in and as you want to read the different issues in it, you just use the outline.On the side to go through. And one of my favorite things about it is the, so it's a, it's a read only a Google doc, right? You're the only one who has right. Access to it. But as you're in there reading that you see like other people popping in and leaving to read it because, you know, I don't know what it is like anonymous wombat shows up to read.And so you can see like, wow, there's eight other people. Reading this at this exact moment, then a couple people drop off and five more people jump on. but so I understand that you've launched it as a Google doc to move quickly and you wanted to get it out there and, you know, speed is an asset, but why is it still a Google doc today?Dan: [00:27:48] So it started as a Google doc, partially because. It was simple to launch. And also I had done other projects. I had this talk that I'd given a few months earlier where I had produced this as a Google slides. And it was actually, it was a list of ways to grow your, your email audience. And I've gotten shared around and people would email me say like, Hey, do you know, we're just getting started or so-and-so newsrooms.How do I grow my email list? And then I would go, and I find that Google slides and share it with them. And there were always like four anonymous wombats who are lurking. It's like, that's weird. This talk that I gave to a hundred people that I never really publicized. Like, why are there always people hanging out in this Google slides, it just stuck with me.And so I launched it that way and now it may just be permanently stuck as a Google doc because it got known as the thing. That's a Google doc. There's a novelty to it. I always tell my news clients. Who will remark on the same thing going there were 17 people reading the Google doc at the same time on a random Tuesday, but.You realize that if you go to your Google analytics, there are literally thousands of people reading your website right now. Why are you impressed by 17 anonymous wombats? But I think there's something about knowing that other, the, the, being able to look and know that other people are looking at this same thing at the same time, there's something to it about knowing there's a collective action there.You're not alone, especially. This year when everyone's isolated, the idea of, especially right after I sent it, when people like there's like 175 people reading this thing right now, I'm like, yeah, the email list is a few thousand people at this point. Like people actually read this thing. I don't can't fully explain why, but people keep listening to me for some reason.And so, yeah, it might just be stuck as a Google doc. I will say. And I'm disappointed to say this, but I'm happy to break the small bit of news here on this podcast. I do think next year there will be an actual website that people can go to, to find some of the resources and links because. It's to me. I started it to be as useful to as many people as possible.And as much as I would love to have it permanently, be like a series of Google docs and slides and this weird little world you have to like keep clicking and navigating to find. I also want to be more useful to a wider audience and it would be nice if. You know, I, an ironic thing about Google docs is they're not actually SEO friendly, despite it all being a Google product, Google doesn't make Google docs, SEO friendly.You can't find it. So if you search for Not a Newsletter, You ended up getting redirected to posts or things, other things that people have written about it to get to it. It's I would like the stuff that I'm doing that I think is getting really useful to a larger audience to reach a larger audience. So I do think there's a world in which at least some of the, Not a Newsletter kind of universe exists on a real website that you can, you know, search for and find, it might happen.I think it's probably stuck as a Google doc for the long-term though, just because. I don't know if I switched it over. I think I would get angry emails from people saying that I like sold out to a WordPress or something. I'm not quite,Nathan: [00:30:56] Well, I like to think of Not a Newsletter as being like, sort of the speakeasy of newsletter content, where you have to know where to find it, you know, it's like, it's it's and then you get there and you're like, what did I even, what is this? but it goes to show that the important thing in a newsletter or any publishing business is the content.And really what you did is you cut through all of the noise of, should it be a newsletter? Should it be a blog? Oh, no, sorry, this isn't a blog. This is a magazine. Or like any of these debates of decisions that people get into. And you said like, look, it's content like valuable content delivered on a consistent cadence and a Google doc works right for that. so I love the simplicity of it.Dan: [00:31:41] I always, always, always urge newsletter. Creator is. If you're thinking about launching a newsletter, the two things you have to think about first are and not just a newsletter, any product, a blog, a website, an event series, anything, any piece of content or storytelling that's going out into the world who is the audience for it.And is it as clearly defined as it can be? Do we know really who we're trying to reach? You don't have to come up with. My, my reader is Susie in Des Moines. She's 36 years old and she likes shopping at Hy-Vee, but like, you should know who your audience is in this case. My audience is people who work in email care about email, send email, and make their money off of email.Alright that's about as specific as I can get. And then what am I going to do to serve them? What is the job of this newsletter? And with mine it's I want people to be able to dive really deep into a topic that affects their lives. Help give them the opportunities for analysis, for insight, to identify trends and because it's packaged in that way.It resonates with folks, but if you know any newsletter and you, your newsletter going to have 50 subscribers, 500, 500,000, know your audience and know what you're trying to do to serve them so often. And I'm sure you get these conversations too, on like a daily basis. People reach out. I have this amazing idea for an email.It's going to be great. Well, what is it like? Well, It's a newsletter where I share the most common one that I get. It's like, it's a newsletter where I share all the things that I'm reading every single week, people are going to love it. Like, all right, well, okay. Newsletter, reassurance stuff that you're reading this week.Who's the audience like the audience is anyone who's like smart and curious and interested. I'm like, yeah, I have really bad news. That audience isn't there. You have no audience, like you're building it on an audience of everyone, which means you're not building for anyone. Like who are you really building for?Who are your people that you're trying to reach now? Long-term you might reach more people than your existing audience. You might be able to build an awesome product that starts with a pretty narrow audience, and grows into something really big. Cool. That's great. a Great outcome. But start narrow.Start with something really specific. It can always grow from there. People start thinking I'm going to build the next Skimm I'm going to build the next morning brew. I'm going to be the next James clear. I'm going to be the next Malcolm Gladwell. everyone is going to read this. no, you have to start small and specific.Have an audience in mind, know how you're going to serve them. Then you can figure it out from there and grow it from there.Nathan: [00:34:19] Yeah, for sure. So. You know, we talked about newsletter starting back in 2011, 2012. Things have changed a lot, even just in the last 18 months or so to the last two years. What's your take on like this hockey stick of growth that we've seen in newsletters?Dan: [00:34:38] it was in some ways kind of inevitable because even just in the time I've been doing this. This is at least the second cycle of email is cool. There was one back in 2013, 2014, when products like the Skimm and Horts were doing really well. And TinyLetter was really on the rise and doing well, everyone had a TinyLetter and it's like, email is cool.And then there was the inevitable backlash, email sucks. Everyone hates email. I hate getting emails, yada yada, and then, you know, all of us working in email just kept doing our thing. And then when. This came back already for whatever reason. And cyclical comes back around. This is at least the second cycle of email as cool.And it will be followed inevitably with a backlash towards like emails to add. I hate email. it's just, it's going to how it's going to go forever. someone's going to invent the brand new thing. That's the, the email killer. Then people forget You kind of have to have an email address to exist on the internet.And most people like using email, it's simple. It's there on your phone. You don't have to be taught how to use it. And if you build good newsletters, like great, you're reaching people in a space they use every day. Plus thanks to the rise of mobile phones. It's easier than ever just to read something on your phone in those couple minutes, while you're getting coffee or you're on the subway or whatever it is anyway.What I think has really happened the last few years. that's exciting is people have shifted from thinking about email is cool because email drives traffic. Email is the place, especially in the news and non-profit world and brand world was like, email is what drives all this attention, attention, attention.And now it's like, Oh, Email's The thing that actually drives all my results. My revenue comes from email. If I do a good job building the right products and the right relationships. Email's going to sell a subscription to my publication. It's going to drive a sale of my product. It's going to lead to a donation to my organization.It's going to be thing that drives a new member. now we're seeing also people creators, and this is so exciting thinking, like if I build my audience, if I want to sell courses, I want to sell a membership, a subscription product, get people to come out to an event. Awesome. Like my email list is the thing that's going to do that.I think email is just. No matter how much people say that email is like, it's going to die. It's not going to last, yada, yada like email is here to stay because it works really well. And it does. At a place like The New Yorker, Conde Nast, our parent company used to talk a lot about this idea of cross-functional teams.We'd be like, all right, we have people from marketing and sales and editorial and all these different parts of the work we're going to work together. Email is the cross-functional tool. It's the thing that does a little bit of everything. It builds relationships. It drives loyalty. It drives traffic. It drives sales.It keeps, keeps people coming back and reduces churn. Emailed us a little bit of everything. So I know people want email to go away. I think it's just kind of here. You can accept it and get with it and try to build awesome things for email, or you can keep fighting it and keep fighting it. and At some point, people are going to give in and just say like Alright I guess this thing that works really well and everyone's everyone's having success with, I guess I'll give it a try.Nathan: [00:37:51] Yeah. Oh, that makes sense. so as you're looking at platforms and the recommendations on where people should. like how they should set up their list. Obviously there's the converts and sub stacks and ghosts and WordPress and medium and everything else out there. Like what are you recommending to clients?And what are the factors that, that go into that as you're trying to figure out what's the best bit for each person's newsletter?Dan: [00:38:14] So, wow. One is what that is a giant question. It is, it is one very individualized. I'm always very cautious about making big public proclamations. Like I never want to be in a position where. I, you know, I'm on a podcast or I write something in my Google doc and I'm like, this is the thing that everyone should use, because I remember seeing this back in the day where there'd be like studies done around email marketing and some organization would come out with some big report.And they'd say, like we did all these tasks, did all these tests and we found out that purple buttons convert best. And then you would open any email for the next six months. And they would all have purple buttons because one test happened and everyone just kind of thought on critically. It was like, well, I read on so-and-so marketing blog, that purple buttons.So like purple buttons for all. and so I'm always very cautious about being like, Oh, this is the thing you should use because. Everyone's case is unique. And so a lot of what I do is kind of individualize conversations with folks. I'm trying to figure out better ways to do this. I released a up like a basic version of this ESP guide a couple of months ago, and there's going to be additions to that.I'm going to do one in 20, 21 to around monetization from newsletters. And I'm trying to figure out ways to introduce kind of. Different sorts of recommendations for different sorts of users and try to personalize it as best I can. But even with that, I'm still expecting, I'll probably even do a fair amount of like one to ones and encouraging people to reach out, to ask questions.Cause like, I think email can be so powerful and so useful. And I'm so incredibly nervous about saying like, everyone should do this and then forever. Or everyone's like, well, I read this one thing. And even though it doesn't necessarily apply to my case, I'm just going to take it at face value and use it.And then people like Dan told us to do this and it didn't work out. what I will say is what's very exciting. Is just one of these options, but there's more options now to use email and use email effectively than ever before, which is amazing. From a creator perspectives is proliferation of tools, tools that can exist and be integrated with other sorts of sales platforms.So, you know, I'm an individual and I'm trying to sell courses or books or consulting. Or a paid subscription to my newsletter. I'm a news organization or nonprofit trying to drive reader, revenue, an e-commerce business, trying to drive sales, the number of tools that exist out there today, and options is really, really exciting and options.I mean, as far as I'm concerned and I always, as much as the work that I do with various ESPs and tech partners, like at the end of the day, All the writing that I do and work that I do is in service of my readers, who are writers, creators, newsrooms non-profits brands who are just trying to get the most out of email.And what I always tell them, it's like the fact of the matter is there are more things to do with the stuff you want to do now. And there were a year ago and there were five years ago. It means you have choice. Choice is a really good thing for you. You get to pick like what. Back it up. And actually to your question, what I usually tell them, it's like start with the stuff that you absolutely need.What's the stuff that you absolutely absolutely absolutely need to be successful, make that list of the three or four or five things that you care most about. Okay. So at the top of your list is automation's great. It doesn't mean that the number one thing is automations. Don't pick a tool that you aren't crazy about, the automation kind of feature, and then start to narrow it down and ask to have this sort of automation.And we need this level of personalization, or we need a tool that has certain integrations, you know, we're working off of WordPress. So we need something that has a native integration with WordPress. we're working off of ghost and we want to figure out something there. We use Zapier for a lot of things and we need it to work, whatever it is, think about, you know, what features you need integrations you're going to need certainly cost is obviously a factor, the data that you want out of it.And. With whatever tools you're using, think about whether or not the product is being built by people who get your use case. You know, something that I, I really respect about what you guys have done at ConvertKit is you all have always really been this creator first kind of ESP. And there are lots of great email options out there and different ESPs are being built for really specific use cases.Awesome. Like. Try to find ESPs or partners who get what it is that you're trying to do. It's not just a matter of, you know, I listened to a podcast and I heard this one, ESP advertise. So like, I'm going with them to think more critically, like, do they get what you're trying to do? And, you know, I. Even at a place like Buzzfeed in the back of the day at Buzzfeed, we use campaign monitor, send our newsletters and they were really good partner for us.back in the day, what I found was a lot of other newsrooms just automatically without asking us just picked them as the partner there. No, we had a really specific reason for picking it up. There were things we liked about their team, their setup, their customer service, their automations. That were really specific to what mean needed.You guys are picking them because you saw a press release that had my name on it. That I said that I really liked using their tool. Like, that's fine. I do like their tool, but I really wish you guys had asked. You know, Dan, like, what do you think of this? We're trying to do X, Y, and Z. Cause like they might be the right tool for you.They might not. and you really, because of the choice out there, like I just always encourage teams, like think critically, really make the list of stuff that you need, need, need. And then the stuff that would be really nice to have maybe, you know, Maybe it's really, really important to you that your email tool will have like a countdown timer built into the drag and drop builder.I don't know. Maybe that's not. It's like at the top of your list, which case sure. Like that narrows down your options quite a bit. Maybe the most important thing is automations. Maybe the most important thing is integrations. Whatever it is, like start with the list of stuff that you really need. And then that should help you narrow down.Like, you know what automations is top of the list. This tool doesn't really do that. This tool doesn't do that. Integration is really important. Well, that narrows it down a little bit more. You're going to be able to find something that does a lot of what you want to do. The other thing too. And I mean this with all due respect to the convert kit, which I think is a wonderful platform, no email tool does 100% of the things you want to do.And, until you build your own email platform that does all the things you want. Like no email tool does a hundred percent of the stuff you want. If you get someone that does. 75% of the stuff you want, you get down on your knees and you think the product team that built that tool that does 75% of the things you want, you signed a contract and you move forward.Nothing does everything. There's always gonna be stuff you wish it did. And that's just kind of, part of it.Nathan: [00:45:40] Yeah, that makes sense. Well, and I think the biggest takeaway is from what you're saying is that. The tool is ultimately not the thing that matters. What matters is great content in front of the right readers. And if you focus on those things, then, you know, like you said, get the tool that's largely a good fit, not going to get in your way and otherwise focus on the content of the vendors because ultimately your newsletter could be a Google doc if you want it, you know,Dan: [00:46:05] It doesn't really matter what the product looks like. It's about the content. And are you serving a really specific audience? You do that. You can deliver this thing via carrier pigeon and it'll do well, needs to be, have the content, know what you're trying to do, do for your audience and do it well every single time.And you're going to do good things in the long run. Whether it's a podcast, it's a blog shoot. You can prove to a print magazine, you can do a newsletter. You can do an events series, whatever it's audience content well over and over and over again. And you're going to have good results in the long run.Nathan: [00:46:43] Cool. I want to touch just for a second on monetization.Dan: [00:46:47] I reccomend it.Nathan: [00:46:49] Yeah, money. it's it's helpful. Yes. I'm pro monetization. Just want to get that out there.Dan: [00:46:56] You could slap it right on the, on the, the subject line of this, of this podcast, of this episode. Oshinsky, colon recommend making money. I'm not necessarily going to tell you how to do it, but I recommend trying its very leastNathan: [00:47:11] Yeah, exactly. So in that you've probably seen all kinds of different ways that people are making money. You know, paid newsletters of charging directly for the content, is seeing a big rise. People are doing, you know, courses, books, any of those things I'd love kind of your general overall take. And then what specific area that I want, you know, like your take instead of just some random newsletter creators take is kind of at this price point because you're seeing the wall street journal, and all of these other publications doing right.They've done paid subscriptions for a long time. And often you have an individual newsletter creator charging more than like a major publication is doing, right. So let's say that, you know, I'm signing up for, for this sub stack for $20 a month and I'm getting content that I'm really enjoying. And then I come across, you know, the New York times wall street journal, and I'm like $15 a month.That seems really expensive, you know? And you're like, well, wait, what, you know, it's, I'd love your take on, you know, these price points that individuals are charging versus newsrooms and. And, kind of thoughts on the whole paid newsletter thing in general.Dan: [00:48:18] So one is. I think it's amazing that this new format existed. I mean, Ben Thompson, Mr. Tucker was really the first one of these to do it. And it's the pioneer here, self stack and the work that you've done to push this forward. He's amazing. And now we're seeing a lot of folks interested in, can I build a business around a newsletter?the answer is yes. I think there's a couple of things to keep in mind. One is not everyone needs to have a paid newsletter. Like I am one of these folks, Not a Newsletter, I suppose, could be a paid newsletter product that people would pay for access for I've enough readers that if I went paid, it would probably do pretty well.I don't really have a lot of interest in doing that because I one. I Want to try to get my stuff out to as many people as possible impact for me is way more important than, you know, the total revenue I drive. Also, I make more than enough money with Inbox Collective. I don't need the, so I'm happy with what it does and how it helps and, and, and.You know, everything that is fucked up, doesn't have not just a lot of works. Dan, Runcie at Trapital is another great example, had a paid-newsletter product realized Oh, my impact is actually in, in telling these stories and doing consulting cool. Like there's lots of different ways to make money off a newsletter that aren't a paid newsletter.Consulting selling courses, getting people out to an event series, building a membership program. these are all ways you can drive revenue and that's really, really exciting. So anyone thinking about launching a newsletter, thinking about making money from it? You don't have to immediately go to paid newsletter.Like there are other options. It is one of several. I also think what's really crucial and we'll see, I think a ton of in 2021 are different types of paid newsletter products. So the wall street journal is a fantastic organization. Subscriber love their work. I think they do awesome stuff. We're going to see a lot more in newsrooms in 2021, say, you know what?There's actually a group of us who live in this city. We want to cover the city really, really well. We're going to launch a newsletter. We're going to launch and have a subscription product. That's going to cost X number of dollars per year. People are going to pay for access to local news or coverage, in Charlotte, the Charlotte ledger.The team that I'm starting to do some work with, and they're doing amazing work it's business news for Charlotte, a very small team of reporters working on that. There's going to be a lot of interesting opportunities there. It doesn't just have to be, I'm a single person. I tried to build an audience and tell you about what I'm thinking there.There's other opportunities out there there's only so many, you know, Andrew Sullivan's of the world, and. For a lot of folks actually thinking about a local news angle or thinking about working together with a handful of different writers to put together a real publication, this kind of bundle model publication model is really, really interesting.I am really bullish on the future of kind of driving record. I knew from newsletters, once you build an audience, there's lots of opportunities to sell stuff. I just hope that people. There is a little bit of fear on my end that people are going to start these and think like I saw that. No jet lag, launched a newsletter and it's doing amazing.And he's just one guy reporting on this so I can do it too. And they think In three months I'm gonna be making $100,000 a year off my newsletter. I'm like, well, you don't have an audience yet. You haven't defined an audience yet. They don't know ya It's going to be, if you're building a, you know, newsletter product you want to be your full-time business.It's probably going to be a two-year process minimum to build and grow and drive the revenue you want. this is not a game you get into with like, short-term returns in mind. I often find myself saying direction is more important than speed, where you are going is more important than how fast you get there.If your goal is to figure out how to make a quick buck getting into the newsletter game is probably not for you. You had a question in there somewhere that INathan: [00:52:22] No, I, I, I think you've covered it. I, I, that's a, that's a great place to kind of start to wrap up. This is a long-term game and going all the way back to relationships and building that with your audience, building that loyalty with your audiences, it's going to take time. And when you see things, I think a lot of people online see these gold rushes that happen over time.Right? You see someone making money, whether it's, you know, maybe courses and then it's Bitcoin, and then it's amp like fulfillment by Amazon drop shipping or whatever else. And. So I think you're going to have a lot of people right now and go, Whoa, newsletters are the way to make money right now, whether you're doing a paid newsletter or anything else.And it's like stop chasing gold rushes. Like maybe some of the other things, there was a gold rush. The gold rush of newsletters is going to take a long time for you to achieve. And I think most of the people who come in with the intention, or if they're there for the primary reason to make money, rather than for a love of writing or the craft or whatever else.They're going to get burned out and give up while before the money shows up.Dan: [00:53:30] it's the, it's exactly what I mentioned earlier with, my old boss Dow and that silver bullet. Like if the silver bullet metric is. All I care about is revenue. And I just need to make as much money as quickly as possible. Like this is not something that's going to work out for you. If your only metric is traffic, like, all I care about is driving clicks.Like this is not going to work out. You have to have a couple things in mind. You really have to have. Honestly, like, it sounds kind of corny, but kind of have to have a mission. When you start with the newsletter you have to have, this is the thing that I'm doing for this audience. This is why I think I can be useful and how I can be helpful.And if I do a good job, I build that loyalty. I build the audience in the long run. I think there's going to be a return on that investment and that time that I put in, but it's not a short-term play like the, I drop shipping and Bitcoin. These are all great examples. Like email is like spend is like, I have a thousand dollars in the bank, where can I put it to make quick money?You're like, well, I guess you could like bet it all on Bitcoin. And maybe you'll get lucky. I don't know a thing about Bitcoin, but I all other, other, other than that, Every time somebody tries to tell me about Bitcoin. I get confused. And like, I still don't understand that at all. But if your goal is like, how do I make a quick buck?Like, I guess, like spend it on Bitcoin, but you could also just, you know, drive to Reno and put a thousand dollars down on black or whatever. And see if you double your money. Email is like, I don't know, taking a thousand dollars and going out and buying some shares of Coca-Cola like, could it make, could it be successful for you in the long run?Yeah, that's probably a pretty good bet. Give it 10, 15, 20 years.Right. It's a longterm play. You gotta be in it to win it.Nathan: [00:55:10] Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well, Dan, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for coming on the podcast. I'd love to, for you to just to end by sharing where people should follow your work and, and, you know, follow Not a Newsletter and Inbox Collective, and allDan: [00:55:23] Oh, yeah, thanks. So people can find me, Not a Newsletter is available at notanewsletter.com. and if you want to sign up for it, signup.notanewsletter.com. There is an email alert tied to the newsletter. It's not a newsletter. It's an alert. I know it's a technicality. Please don't be the 9000th person who's emailed me about it.I know, I know. I know when I launched it, I gave it the name. I didn't realize that one day I was going to have to explain over to him. There is an email alert technically, and it's not a newsletter, the whole setup. So I signed up at notanewsletter.com. I do writing every single week, not on newsletter topics, just about stuff that I'm learning danoshinsky.com.And Inbox Collective, which is my consulting work, where I work with nonprofits and news organizations and brands to help them figure out how to get the most out of email that's inboxcollective.com. Naturally, that'll actually take you to a set of Google slides. again, once you, once you kind of form a brand as the person who does all their stuff on Google docs, this is what happens.You got to stay true to the brand. Yes, exactly. All right.Nathan: [00:56:26] Thanks so much.Dan: [00:56:27] Thanks so much for having me.
Time Stamps:(5:50) Dan’s background / What is Trapital?(12:32) Sports and Hip-Hop: “We want to be them, they want to be us”(13:12) How artists have engaged fans without live events(17:55) Example of how music can scale into sports and entertainment(24:37) Creative models to replace revenue (26:05) Key partnerships for at-home entertainment(29:52) "Name-Image-Likeness" Parallels(31:40) Disruptions in the music industry(34:17) Framework for analyzing business models(37:52) The role that music videos have had in revenue generation for the music industry (44:08) Modern-day lessons from music business leaders (47:19) Generating Passion vs. Influence(50:46) If Dan were the Athletics Director for a day...Resources Mentioned in This Episode:Harvard Business School case study on BeyonceBen Thompson Business Model Michael and Janet Jackson Scream Music Video Where to Reach the Guest:Trapital NewsletterEmail - info [at] trapital.coLinkedIn - Dan RuncieTwitter - @RuncieDan
Ian, a former golf professional, encourages people to join the Wales VI golf phone group. Ian talks about his sight loss, how it won't stop him achieving new goals and his love of the sport he's played throughout his life. Photo is of the head of a golf club and golf ball on grass.
A conversation with Dan Runcie.
Broward County Schools Superintendent, Robert Runcie *Follow him on Twitter: @RobertwRuncie
Today I am speaking with Ariel Garten. Ariel is probably one of the most interesting people you will meet. She is a psychotherapist, Neuroscientist, mom, former fashion designer, and the female founder and visionary of an amazing and highly successful tech start-up Muse. Muse tracks your brain during meditation to give you real-time feedback on your meditation, guiding you into the “zone” and solving the problem most of us have when starting a meditation practice. Muse lets you know when you are doing it right. When Ariel is not reading brains (literally) or investing in, inspiring and advising other start-ups and women in biz, you can find her on stages across the world, from TED to MIT to SXSW. She inspires people to understand that they can accomplish anything they want by learning what goes on in their own mind. Ariel is also the co-host of the Untangle Podcast. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. This series is a platform for women, female-identified, & non-binary individuals to share their professional stories and personal narrative as it relates to their story. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age, status, or industry. TRANSCRIPTION *Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors [00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with women. Female identified and non binary individuals regarding their professional stories and personal narrative as it relates to their perspective. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts, regardless of age, status or industry. We intend to transparently investigate the evolving global dialog regarding underrepresented figures in all industries across the USA and abroad by hosting these stories and conversations. We aim to contribute to the changing platform and representation of these individuals for the future. If you're enjoying this podcast series, be sure to check out our subsequent series called Roundtable with Patricia Kathleen, where we talk with a panel of guests regarding key topics that arise in these individual interviews. You can subscribe to all of our podcast series on iTunes, Stitcher or Pod Bean, as well as our Web site. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. And you can also contact me directly via this Web site or through my media Web site. Wild dot agency. That's w i. L. D e dot agency. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:30] My time will be off to the races. [00:01:38] I said your name right? Ariel, Garten. [00:01:40] You did. You're actually like the only person ever. So great job. [00:01:45] I wonder if my little mermaid like, The Little Mermaid with Ariel. Is that how people like to say it? [00:01:52] People say air-i-el. I say you say r-e-el, which is the right way, but nobody ever does it. [00:01:57] So, yay, I'm glad. OK. [00:02:00] Make sure. Yes. Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Ariel Garten. Ariel is the founder of Muse, which is a tech startup, a device that gives you Real-Time feedback during and post meditation. You can locate it online at w w w dot. Choose News dot com. Welcome, Ariel. [00:02:23] Thank you, Patricia. [00:02:23] It is a joy to be here. I am excited to climb through what you're doing. I'm really excited to have you on today for everyone listening. I will read a brief bio on Ariel. [00:02:32] Before I do that, though, a quick roadmap of today's podcast will follow the trajectory that all of those in these series do. Namely, we will first unpack oriels academic and brief professional life so that we have a basis of a platform understanding where she came to developing news. Then we will look at unpacking news and the device. What it does, the data that it captures will also get into the nuts and bolts of her enterprise, which is the who, what, when, where, why and how. For all of you entrepreneurs out there, you guys like to hear about founders ship funding. We'll get into all of those logistics and then we'll turn our efforts towards looking at the ethos and kind of the philosophy behind the company. Then we will look towards goals that Orio might have towards the next one to three years. How she's kind of reconceptualizing goals, though, that dialog has changed for a lot of you. Given the recent pandemic, and it's interesting to hear for all of us about that change, and then we will wrap everything up with advice that RTL might have for those of you who want to get involved in what she's doing and perhaps emulate some of her career success. So a quick bio on Orio before I start peppering her with questions. Ariel Garten is probably one of the most interesting people you will meet. She is a psychotherapist, neuroscientist's mom, former fashion designer, and the female founder and visionary of an amazing and highly successful tech startup Muse. News tracks your brain during meditation to give you real time feedback on your meditation, guiding you into the zone and solving problem most of us have when starting a meditation practice. Mused, Let's you know when you are doing it right? When Orio is not reading brains literally or investing in inspiring and advising other tech startups and women and bears, you can find her on stages across the world, from Ted to M.I.T. to south by Southwest. She inspires people to understand that they can accomplish anything they want by learning what goes on in their own mind. Oriol is also the co-host of the Untangled podcast. So Orio, I want to climb through all of that. You have such a prolific history and and what isn't in your bio that I do know from our research is that you have even more history on the back end before Muse was in two realities. I'm hoping right now you can unpack some of your professional and academic background to develop like your own personal platform. [00:04:57] Sure. So my whole life, I've been kind of split between arts and sciences when I was a teenager in high school. I excelled at the arts. I excelled at sciences. I had a job in a research lab doing embryonic stem stem cell research on knockout mice in the 90s. And I also had a tiny clothing line that I sold on consignment to stores in downtown Toronto where I lived. So I was always kind of parlaying between the world of art and the world of science. And back in the 90s, people would say, well, you can't be an artist and a scientist. You have to choose. You can't do both. And when I went to school, when I went to university, I chose to go for neuroscience because I felt like if you went to arts, you couldn't go back into the sciences yet to continue on with the sciences and then keep doing the arts on the side. So in university, I studied neuroscience at the University of Toronto. I also had an art gallery that I ran. And then as soon as I graduated, I opened a clothing store in basically the front of my house. I was just like, OK, I need to do this clothing thing because I've done the science thing for four years. Yeah. I then continued to work in research labs part time while I ran a clothing line that what I was selling across North America and a store retail store in downtown Toronto. All of this being entirely unable to sew. So it's like I'll just start a clothing line, even though I've no idea how to sew. But I love fashion and I can figure it out. And my family business was very, very small scale real estate. So I was also helping out the family business at the same time. So I was had these multiple career trajectories going simultaneously. I was fascinated by all of them and always kind of felt like I could do what ever I put my mind to. [00:06:44] So in my mid 20s, I started collaborating with Dr. Steve Mann. He's one of the inventors, the wearable computer. And he had an early brain computer interface system. I began working in his laboratory, working on basically concerts that you made with your mind. These artistic endeavors with real scientific information from the brain and really started to marry. My art and science approached the world. And from there, I became inspired to take this technology that was letting you literally interact with the world directly with your brain. [00:07:18] It was a brain computer interface and try to take it to market and create my own business. And that's how myself and my two co-founders, Chris Emeny and Trevor Coleman, created news. [00:07:29] Fantastic. [00:07:30] So you have two co-founders that kind of dropped us into the next question that I have, which is the top three tiers of logistics, which is co-founders funding and year you launched. [00:07:43] So I started working in Steve's lab in 2000 to 2002, 2003. And in those early days, we were creating concerts using this early brain computer interface system. And I began collaborating at that point with Chris. Amy. Chris was Steve's master's student. And he was just the most brilliant engineer you could ever meet. And also had an incredible understanding about humanity and art and the soul. And so as I started to think that this technology could come out of the lab, I got together with him as the CTO, the company. And Trevor Coleman, who is my boyfriend at the Times, best friend. And the three of us founded Muz. But before founding Muse, we spent many years playing around and Trevor's basement and in Steve's laboratory, figuring out what this technology could do. And so probably 2007, we really agreed that, yes, reforming a startup. In 2009, we incorporated and had our first big project, which was at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. We the first funding that we had came in twenty twelve I reck. I was the CEO of the company and recognized that we would need to raise funds. We got paid for Olympics projects. We were able to bootstrap for many years. And when we started to raise funding, I went out first to New York that Boston, San Francisco to raise funds and ultimately probably. Or first. Yeah. First round is four million dollars from FEC in New York. And our very first investor was actually Chad Menteng, who was at that point. Google's jolly good fellow. He was the guy who started Google's meditation program. Also search inside yourself. Since then, yes, it was amazing. So since then, we've raised I personally raised eighteen point two million dollars as the CEO of the company from, I guess, 2012 until 2015. In 2015, I stepped down from maternity leave and brought in another CEO. And to date, the company's raised probably around 30 million dollars. [00:09:54] Wow, that is amazing. What round are you guys on? Moving into Runcie. Brilliant. That's amazing. [00:10:01] I mean, and it's it's an incredible. I think there are a lot of people that get to a certain position and phase out, particularly with that kind of longevity in a career. You know, you can kind of very few founders anymore kind of staying on and hanging around past that point. I'm wondering, in the beginning when you said you were going to I don't know if it was trade shows or in 2009 or 2012 when you started kind of getting out there. What was the gradual change of the product or was there a story like how did it you know, companies grow with funding traditionally on a lot of different levels. But I'm interested in before we describe the product of it as it is now, the device. [00:10:44] What was the original product or device like? [00:10:48] So this is pretty funny. Originally, we started with a technology and a technology that was in search of a solution. So we had this device that let you put an electrode on the back of your head. And by focusing or relaxing, you could change some element, sound, light, etc.. So initially we thought we were going to go after a thought controlled computing. As you shifted your brain state, it would allow you to control the lighting in a room or control, you know, a cursor on a computer screen. And we did a lot of demos and experiences showing people that you could literally shift your brain state and make music or brighten a light. The project that we did at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics let people in Vancouver control the lights on the and tower Canadian prime buildings and Niagara Falls with their brain from across the country. So we had tens of thousands of people literally interacting with the lighting on these massive icons with their mind. So when we came off the Olympics, we were on a high. And we're like, we can do anything we want. Yeah, we just succeeded at the Olympics. And so we went on to try to thought control everything. We made like a thought controlled toaster and which was really stupid. But it was a fun trick and a thought controlled beer tab, which is awesome to have at Christmas parties, but not really useful in real life. You'd focus on it. It would pour. You would relax or clarity. It would stop pouring. We made all sorts of great thought control, things like, you know, trying to grasp. But what is it that we're really going to do with this? And that's when we sort of had that light bulb moment that it wasn't about letting people control the world outside then. It was about the fact that this technology could actually show you what was going on in your own mind and give you real time feedback on your brain. Because as we were teaching people to focus and relax so that they could, you know, make a light bulb go brighter. What we're really doing was taking these internal states that were intangible and making them tangible and visible, showing you when you're focused, showing you when you're relaxed and doing so, essentially giving you BuYeo or neurofeedback to teach your brain and body to do that more. And that's when we kind of had the recognition that this was going to be most useful for the world as a meditation tool, because meditation is this amazing activity that is so powerful for you. But most people don't really know how to do it, and they're not good at it, per say, because you don't know what's going on in your mind. And there's nobody showing you what's going on in your mind and telling you when you're in the right zone and when you're not. And we have technology that could really do that. [00:13:22] Well, there is a year when I feel like there was a year, it may have been a couple of years or a day, but where Silicon Valley began leading this or Silicon Valley like areas started leading this charge where they had meditation rooms developed in Google, you know, places like that where it felt like it took meditation out of this Eastern philosophy yogi realm and placed it like squarely into like productivity. Corporate America like this is now like a break room moment. And I'm wondering when your device when it switched over into, like, focusing on the meditation and inward movements and recognition moment and how well that paralleled with you think the industry kind of accepting this new form of meditation being just as important for productivity and things like that in the workplace as a break. [00:14:14] We were so lucky. We completely followed that curve. So, as I mentioned, our first investor in 2012 was Chad Menteng, the guy who literally made Google's meditation program before 2012 when somebody would ask us what we were building. We felt like we had to say it was a cognitive trainer and are really like our early das. Our early pitches all had pictures of brains with like big muscles on them. Going like this is going to make your mind strong. It'll help you focus. And then people would do the demo. And on rare occasions I would be asked, like, is this meditation? And we'd be like, Do you like meditation? Yes, I meditate. I would be like, it is meditation. Just don't tell anyone. I was like, you know, we whispered background conversation. And then over time, I think for us, what I really kind of count is the tipping point was meditation being on the cover of Time magazine. It was around 2013. There was a photo of a woman on the cover of Time magazine, and Tom got in trouble because it was a very, you know, white woman doing this. But she was sitting there with his eyes closed and the lotus position meditating. And that, to me, really marked the moment when the world took notice. And all of a sudden you had big CEOs meditating and athletes meditating and celebrities talking about it. And then the you know, first the kind of vanguard corporate meditators like Google and then the slow trickle of every company having a meditation program that they'd offer to their staff. And we just, by chance, were entirely in tune with that wave and were able to capitalize on it from 2012 moving forward. [00:15:53] Yeah, that auspicious. Right. [00:15:56] I mean, I think it would have done well without. But like I said, when you mentioned into cognitive training and things like that, I think that's esoteric and confusing as well. You know, and it's funny when you have to fight against terms like that just to kind of make sure that you're alleviating communication gaps or bigotries. It's fun to kind of look at those things. So now let's get into the device. Let's talk about its structure. I mean, for everyone who's looking to get a picture of it, obviously, if you jump on w choose News.com, you're going gonna get some of that. But if you can kind of describe for everyone listening right now briefly where it sits, what it looks like and how it outlook as an experience as a user. I come to your house. I sit down. We put this thing on me. What's going on? [00:16:40] So news is basically like a Fitbit for your brain. So it's a slim little headband that sits on your head and it tracks your brain activity during meditation and gives you Real-Time feedback to know when you're focused and when your mind is wandering. So you slip on the news. It would connect to an app on your phone. You'd plug in your headphones. And then as you meditated, you'd be able to hear the sound of your mind through guiding sounds. And the metaphor we use is your mind is like the weather. So when you're thinking or distracted, you hear it as stormy and as you come to quite focused attention, it quiets the storm. So you're getting Real-Time feedback, letting you know when your mind is wandering and killing you back into the meditation zone and then reinforcing you for staying there, reinforcing you to that state of calm. [00:17:27] Then after the fact, you get data, charts, graphs, scores, things that show you what your brain was doing moment to moment and really help you track the progress of your practice. [00:17:37] Yeah, it is exactly like a Fitbit, and it's exciting. [00:17:40] I mean, it it almost just lends to I don't know if it's the human mind or the American human mind or the entrepreneurial mind, but I already when you pitch it that way or when you describe it, I start thinking, oh, I get into training it more. I have areas I want to tap into immediately. It's like this, you know, nice little green pill that I could, like, do something and take and like focus and train or even like a muscle and focus on that. Do you find that people immediately, the people who congregate towards the idea are those that want to tap into certain resources in their brains most quickly? Or is it just the curiosity? [00:18:17] A people come from both directions. So, you know, people who are performance oriented obviously love the performance aspect of it that you can measure and through measure improving. [00:18:26] There are people who are very experienced meditators and they come at this more from the perspective of being a consciousness explore, of understanding the process of the mind, of being able to hone the observation of the mind through a new year on their internal state. So there's lots of different experiences that people get out of it. The app is completely customizable, so you can either use the Real-Time feedback during your experience or you can turn off all the feedback and just after the fact, see what your brain was doing through your own silent meditation. We also started with the brain and now have sensors for the heart, the breath and the body so you can hear the sound of your heart like the beating of a drum and be able to track its increases and decreases and really learn your heart's rhythms. You can find stillness in your body and track your movement. There's breath patterns and now there's also hundreds and hundreds of guided meditations that you can use along with the device to actually track your brain, heart, breath and body during your guided meditations as well. [00:19:29] And are those developed by ever in in collaboration with your company Muse? [00:19:34] Yeah. So we have dozens of top teachers from all around the world who build meditations for performance, stress, anxiety. We have a cancer collection that males currently testing for finding morning joy for sleep and on and on. [00:19:50] Nice. What is so I want to you have a topic that you've addressed in the past and I kind of want you to enumerate on for our audience. What is the the mindset of an entrepreneur like it? [00:20:03] How does that relate to the collection of the data that you've looked at? That's a fascinating question. [00:20:10] So the mindset of an entrepreneur is different than the mindset of an average individual. And the mindset of an entrepreneur has to be one that A is willing to handle a whole lot of risk and B, is able to have emotional flexibility because being an entrepreneur, you have so many demands on you. And a lot of those are emotional demands. You know, you're you're at the high of success. You're at the low of your business crashing or at the moment before funding. So you need to be able to navigate all those smoothly. And you are typically not afraid in the same ways that other people are afraid that this goes back to the risk piece. So one of the things that I noticed in myself with the mindset of an entrepreneur was that I really believed I would be able to accomplish what ever I wanted. And, you know, occasionally I'd have thoughts that came and come into my mind, like we all do it, like, oh, that's gonna be too hard. You're not good enough. You know, somebody will judge you for it. But I was very easily able to overcome those thoughts. Was variable easily. Is able to say you're just a thought. That doesn't matter. I'm not going to let that hold me back. And I was able to move out into the world without really being held back by a fear that something wouldn't work without being held back by the thoughts in my own mind. I think that's a that's a fundamental feature of entrepreneurs, because the people who aren't entrepreneurs are the people who have a great idea and then just get overwhelmed by the thought of doing it, get bogged down in the feelings that it will work, get held back and not knowing what to do next. [00:21:47] Yeah. And it doesn't work. We'll just move with it. [00:21:49] So how would an entrepreneur. Most quickly utilize Muse? What would be, you think, one of the first steps of using it? Is it just articulating areas that they could tap into through meditation? [00:22:01] Or what do you think, given, you know, the dialog you just created about the entrepreneurial personality and mindset? How would it be most beneficial or collaborated with using Muse right off the bat? [00:22:14] Sure. So we have literally hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs that use Muse and top CEOs and CEOs will buy them for, you know, their top executives and muse together. So it's it's something that entrepreneurs have really tapped into. So one of the reasons is the idea that the thoughts in your head don't need to govern how you live. So most of us just have the thoughts in our head and we assume that they're supposed to be there, like this isn't gonna work out or I'm not good enough for, you know, this is gonna be too big for me. We just assume that that's the truth, because that's a thought in your head. As an entrepreneur, you learn how to move your mind away from those thoughts and overcome them by taking actions. And that's a big part of what Muse teaches you to do, Muse, cuz you when your thoughts are wandering and then gives you a cue to say, hey, you don't need to follow that thought, you can come back and focus on the thing in front of you. [00:23:04] You can move your mind away from that and focus instead on something you care about or the task in front of you. So it helps you shift into that mindstate of possibility and lets you move out of your negative thoughts and into a neutral space. And it also significantly increases your productivity because every time your thoughts wander away, that's a little procrastination. That's a micro distraction. With music, get very good at saying like no distraction, back to focus, distraction, back to focus. And then on the emotional piece. What meditation teaches you to do is to ride your emotions without getting bogged down by them. So you might, you know, have just lost a big deal and you might, you know, feel a lot of emotion in your body. And what you learned to do with meditation is to observe that emotion, you know, see the sensations and feel the sensations that it brings in your body without ramping the thought cycle in your head. It's not like, oh, my God, I just lost that deal. Oh, my God, I feel terrible. Whoa, that's really bad. And cycle cycle down with meditation. You. You observe the sensations without getting sucked into the feelings in a way that's going to drag you down with a negative feedback loop between thought, feeling, thought, feeling, thoughts, feeling. So as an entrepreneur, it becomes an incredibly valuable tool to ride through the lows and to let yourself relish the highs. [00:24:25] And I'm interested about the feedback that it provides through the app and collect collecting that data. What would the average user do with that feedback? Does it help growth? I mean, if you have the cues on obviously there should be some in the moment change and, you know, change of of mental status. But I'm wondering, accumulating that feedback. Do you see how quickly you are able to return to focus and meditation? What what would someone apply the feedback to and what all is collected? [00:24:57] Sure. [00:24:58] So when you do a mind meditation, what you're looking at is the times when your mind has wandered in the times and you return and. We celebrate the ability to notice that your mind has wandered and to return back to a place of focused attention and calm. [00:25:15] We also reinforce and celebrate staying in that calm spot. So it's OK that your mind wanders all of our minds. Do what you want to do. Say like, nope, I'm going to come back to focus. And what you end up seeing over time is a graph that starts looking really jagged. You've got lots of distractions and your mind's bouncing all over the place. And as you progress in your practice, that curve gets smoother and smoother and lower and lower as you're spending more and more time and focus calm. So when you look back to your graphs, you can identify the things that trigger you, the kinds of thoughts that distract you or the sounds that might have been in your environments. You can become very aware of your internal state and you can also really acutely see your progress over time. And you can then also see, you know, OK, this was a great meditation today. What was I doing differently? What what does this mean? How do I reinforced this in the future? Yeah. With the heart meditation you're actually seeing when your heart rate increases and decreases moment by moment and you're learning the things that will get your heart to speed up, things that cause you stress and anxiety and things that get your heart to slow down. And by seeing the patterns of your heart, you learn the kind of relaxation and breathing patterns that get you into optimal HRB and an optimal, beautiful, smooth, sinusoidal rhythm and allow you to relax your body more effectively. [00:26:33] Right. And when you say that I picture things that I'm more than likely, everyone listening has had glimpses into either the Buddhist monk that was hooked up to electrodes that kept, you know, his heart rate at a certain way, or the deep sea diver who she was, you know, controlling heart rate so that she could dove deeper and things like that. Is that kind of the area that you're headed towards in this kind of lowering of the heart rate or raising it back up? Is it this mind body connection and control? [00:26:59] Yes. So you learn you learn that mind body connection and that mind body connection is called interception. It's the ability to sensitively understand your internal state. And there's studies that demonstrate that people who have improved interception actually have less stress because you're much more able to sensitively understand where your body is at. Check in on your body. [00:27:21] And then if you notice stress, tension, increased heart rate, say, hey, I have an exercise that I've learned like a breathing exercise or guided meditation that I know will bring me back to that state of calm. So we start to become master self regulators, noticing where we're at. Having a set of tools to use at that moment, applying them and then shifting into the state that we choose to be in. [00:27:42] Yeah. I love that. It's perfect master self regulators. You know, that's the call. I think the key right to everything. I'm sure nobody hears that and doesn't think that sounds fantastic. I'm wondering, you you talk a little bit in in some of your the numerous different speaking engagements you've had about how to be empowered in your own mind. And I you know that it's that's a beautiful statement, but it's more a theory than practical, you know, engagement for me. And I'm wondering, since this is kind of tying into that idea of being master over over one's own mind, body relationship, if you can kind of enumerate further on what you feel the empowerment to be empowered in one's own mind looks like in reality, like some of the benefits beyond being able to connect with stress and therefore lower it. You know that the mind body connection. But even further than that, some of the the practicality of what that looks like. [00:28:41] Sure. So being empowered in your own mind to me means not being at the behest of the crazy thoughts that you consume most of us. Much of the time, you know, most of us just go through our lives with our brain generating a bunch of content in there that often makes us feel unhappy, like we're not good enough. Like things aren't good enough. [00:29:03] And generally, you know, frustrated, not feeling great. Our brain is constantly telling us that makes us feel things that make us feel a little bit shitty. And frankly, there is no reason for that to be the, you know, existence of your life. There's no reason it needs to be that way. What you learn in meditation is to change your relationship with your thoughts. So rather than being sucked in by them and just listening to all the stuff it tells you and assuming that that's what you need to hear, you actually learn that you can rise above your thoughts. You can create metacognition, you can observe them, and you can make choices about where your brain goes. You can make choices about the contents of your own mind. And when you start to do that, you can now start to orient yourself towards the positive. You can now shut down those negative narratives that weren't serving you. You can now begin to recognize that the narratives that you had about yourself probably aren't true. And you can choose new narratives. It becomes an incredibly. Liberating way to live. And as you start to make better choices about the contents of your own mind, your body follows suit. You start to sort of shut down the negative narratives that keep you small and frustrated. You start opening yourself up to freedom and joy and possibility and the emotional experiences that come with it. And meditation, taking you out of your head and putting you in the present moment really brings an aliveness to your life, to the things that are right in front of you and the things that that are here and real rather than the problems that we worry about that probably will never happen. And so it's it's an incredibly empowered place to be. [00:30:47] Yeah. [00:30:48] And when you said, you know, and change the relationship with your own thoughts, a piece of me, I felt like a piece of that was a description or about as rather a piece of a description of happiness, you know, of the human condition to be had to change the relationship with your own thoughts is to change ones that are in disparate nature or causing discomfort. And so to change that back into something, it sounds like a control over one's unhappiness, which is exciting to the human condition. [00:31:19] You know, across the globe, I think I don't think that's just approaches one particular genre of person, though. I'm sure that there are many that utilize it better than others. But changing the relationship with your own thoughts is is a power that I think a lot of people come to when they start meditation and don't realize that will be one of the benefits. [00:31:37] You know, it's yeah, it's an extraordinary power. It makes such a difference in your life. You know, most of us are living in self created jails in our own mind, getting caught up in thoughts that truly create our own suffering. And it just doesn't need to be that way. [00:31:55] Yeah. Who are the clients that that muse has so far reached? You talked about CEOs and people that are really looking at it, as you know. I mean, one of your a jolly good fellow. You know, he's he's brought it up with the Google meditation and stuff like that. But, um, who else do you have industries or populations that have really tapped into being clients? And who do you see it going towards next? [00:32:18] Sure. So there are literally hundreds of thousands of people that use Muse regularly. And it's from, you know, moms and just awesome everyday people to corporate. So as I mentioned, you know, what CEOs do with their exact we have corporate programs in healthcare. So we have over 200 studies that have been done with Muse, both as a meditation tool and as a clinic. Great. E.g.. So we have a whole hospital systems that have been engaged in testing news. Mayo Clinic has written papers on breast cancer patients awaiting surgery using news. We have thousands of doctors and clinicians that recommend it to their patients. Oh, in an athlete's pro golfers, skaters, footballers, Olympic soccer teams, Olympic swimmers like really quite across the board. So we've we've been we've been very, very lucky that both from just average people who want to learn how to meditate to really top experts. All have been able to find value in the tool. [00:33:27] Definitely. And I I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be able to find value in it. Even children, you know, young not children, but adolescents and people who are just learning to have that dialog. I think that there's such an opportunity there with young minds that people don't necessarily look at. And to that end. I'm wondering how young the youngest age group that, you know, that studies with Muse have been done on? [00:33:52] So Muse used to be able to be used for anybody, but now we are GDPR compliant, which is Europe's privacy standard. So we say Muse is not for anybody under 16. Certainly, I've seen no photos of people using Muse of their very young children, though, according to label. It's not not not not till over 16. There have been studies done using Muse in schools. The Denver school board did one. Kansas State University did a study of grade eight students using news, and they saw a 72 percent decrease in kids being sent to the principal's office after using use in their classroom. [00:34:28] Yeah, and that's kind of what I was suspecting. You know, I think a lot about some of these different ailments that afflict children who tend to be disturbing in the classroom environment or group settings. And it's more just about the therapies applied to social therapies apply to these children are very much so the feedback that it sounds like news would provide. It's about being in touch with the thoughts and reading relationship with the thoughts, which we just clarified. And so that kind of feedback sounds like it will be instrumental. What is there when someone gets on? How much can they explore on your Web site? Like, what are the price points and how does one go about purchasing it? Where at what phase is all of that in? [00:35:07] So Muse's in market and has been for since 2014. We now have. So we have two devices, Muse two, which gives you real time feedback on your heart, breath, body and brain during meditation. And then we have a new device that we just launched, which is Muse s one of the things that we noticed as people were using Muse before going to bed to help them sleep. And so we now built this beautiful purpose-built device that does all the same things as Muse two. And it also gives you guided meditations and Real-Time feedback in a way that's designed to help you fall asleep faster. So it's a very soft, comfortable band that you were in bed to help you fall asleep. And then we're building more and more sleep features that are going to be released over the next year. So Muse 2, is somewhere around two hundred and fifty bucks. And Muse S is somewhere around 350. [00:35:59] Nice. So not going to break the bank. You know, I mean, not inexpensive. But for the feedback it's providing and given, can you use one device, I'm assuming for different family members or definitely individuals or does everyone. OK. So you can change application. [00:36:15] Yes. So we typically see, you know, device. Mom brings the device home, dad starts using it. Kids start meditating. Now you have the whole family using the one device together. [00:36:24] Absolutely. That's so exciting. I'm wondering to that. And given that you just came out with muse s. What goals does Muse have on the horizon between the next one to three years? And has there been any conversation of application between the global dialog about the pandemic and Muse, or has that kind of been something that it's just obviously addressing within the functionality of the device? Or has the company come out and kind of looked towards efforts as to have a dialog with that? [00:36:51] Oh, we're definitely dialoging with it. So since the start of the pandemic, we've obviously seen a massive increase in Muse usage, both people purchasing new devices, buying them as gifts, and people who had Muse's really starting to use them very, very regularly. And so we're really looking to how we can build more support and content to help support pandemic specifically. We have a collection of actually free content available to anyone called our S.O.S. Com collection with guided meditations for dealing with uncertainty, working at home, cetera. [00:37:28] And then we also have monthly challenges that we run with both users and nonusers where you can be guided through a week of support on a particular topic focused around coalbed. So it might be finding peace working from home. Kofman the mind and uncertain times, etc.. [00:37:48] That's fascinating. [00:37:49] That's a great idea to a monthly challenge, you know, focused around things that are particularly found within it. That's an interesting take on it. I think that a lot of people have tried to get there but haven't quite gotten there with a lot of their business endeavors. Monthly challenges are interesting. And are there any other goals for with the company has that is aside from the covered conversation? Are you guys going to come out with new models? What areas are you reaching further into? I feel like and this might be incredibly naive, but like diet and certain things that are affecting, you know, that the greater health and relationships certainly would be kind of this trickle down effect that would happen when being in conversation with one's own thoughts and their thought relationship. But has there been any movement towards, like diet and exercise or using it, showing people the utility of using it and other major areas of their life? [00:38:39] So on our podcast that I co-host with Patricia Karpas called Untangle, we approach questions like diet, relationships, etc. every single week with guests in those areas. So, you know, we try. Give you more information around how the brain and the mind work and how to kind of optimize them in relationship to all these topics. And then in our guided content, we also have content specific for different areas, performance, work from home. We've a mindful eating collection. We have lots of relationship collections. So we also try and the guidance to give you new insights, new tools to help with specific areas of your life. And then the thing that we're really diving into now is sleep, because people don't realize how fundamental sleep is and was. [00:39:28] Sleep has really gotten disrupted. Also, as an entrepreneur, sleep gets disrupted as well because you sit there as you're falling asleep and you can't help but think about all of the problems of the day and the problems of tomorrow and that poor sleep and poor sleep hygiene and poor ability to fall asleep actually depresses your immune system and decreases your emotional self-regulation and cognitive function the next day. [00:39:51] So for us, we're really looking at how we kind of help people optimize this 24 hour cycle, how you can fall asleep more effectively, stay asleep longer, have more restful sleep, and then be more cognitively and emotionally capable the next day. Do your meditation, you know, enhance them further, sleep well at night and feed forward. Absolutely. [00:40:13] And it's key. I think Muz asks coming out sounds perfect. I mean, the populations that need sleep most are the ones that always receive it less. It's new parenting entrepreneurs, people making very heavy handed decisions. There was in 2005 a report came out that said the average American president and all of our history got about four hours a night. [00:40:33] And it was like, no, I need them to get so much more than that. They've got very hands on the button. [00:40:39] You know, it's a it was just daunting. These. The more important the position, the less sleep. And it was and it was a reverse dialog. It was in conversation to some of the most prolific people that they had discovered in the arts were these people that got massive amounts of sleep. Some of these founders that were coming out saying, I get like nine hours a night and I can't believe anybody wouldn't. And these were the people that were changing the world at the time. And it was this kind of dialog, a back and forth. The article was. But I think it's it's so crucial. Young parents, people like that, Warriors' in all places, you know, don't leave. You have to be the founder of a billion dollar company to be a wildly important individual. And those people in those high stress, high stakes environment are usually not getting sleep. And so I think that feedback is crucial. And I'm glad you brought up your podcast, because I'm wondering, I haven't had the opportunity to dove in and explore more. And so for everyone listening, join me in that endeavor. It's called Untangle. And I really want to climb into a little bit about that experience, how long it's been running. And also, do you bring users of Muse on to have like an actual conversation with a user? [00:41:48] So the podcast actually started with Patricia Karpas. It was a podcast that she had started building. And when she joined our company as the head of content, I joined as the co-host. And we love doing it because we get to speak to experts, neuroscientists, meditators, top athletes, top artists and unpack the practices in their life that allow them to be effective. And my particular passion is talking to neuroscientists and through with them, unpacking how the brain works and then how we can use that knowledge and understanding the brain to be able to optimize our behavior and our functioning. It turns out that a fair number of the people I interview are users. You know, my my colleagues and peers and in neuroscience and in arts or athletics, they tend to actually also use music. And often I don't even know that. [00:42:39] I interviewed B.J. Fogger, a top behaviorist, and when he got on the music, oh, my God, you make me use I'm like, oh, my God, you know that I made music crazy. And Dr. Stan Kotkin, he's a top relationship therapist. He was like, I love you. I'm like, oh, my God, you know what news is like? Yes, I use it every day. So it it ends up being kind of serendipitous and typically slightly embarrassing moment for me. I'm sitting here like, what am I supposed to wonder? But it's lovely. [00:43:06] Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's exciting. I'm glad to know that. And I'm glad to know that you guys kind of interview people who you don't know have used it as well just to garner the information around it without this kind of marketing standpoint. And I look forward to getting on and I look forward to purchasing it because I'm sold. I'm all in. And I practice my station and I have for 10 years based on my spiritual following. So I I'm wholeheartedly looking to jump into this. I think it's important for people to understand that regardless of what you practice and how you do, you can always change your relationship with meditation. You know, there have been people who've meditated for 50 years that are constantly changing their relationship with it. And this device sounds like it could do that and should do that as well. I'm wondering if you can if you can answer our final question on this series is always one of my favorites and it's one that people usually think that they won't be able to answer. [00:44:01] Perhaps, given that your life has been dedicated to research and and proffering up solutions, you'll be able to more easily than one often thinks. But if someone approached you tomorrow and it's important, we didn't get into it today. But you also have a lot of dialog about women in business. And I do want to ciAriele back around one day and pepper you with that, because that's the platform that we run a lot of our series off. Patricia Kathleen, podcasts. But if you were approached tomorrow by a woman or a female identified a non binary individual, essentially anyone other than a white CIS gendered man. And the person said, listen, I started my career off in this wonderful science and I've I've done a peripheral amount of work there. And I'm thinking about launching this new device, this tech device feedback company. So something remarkably similar, perhaps not identical to what you've done. But she was headed. They were headed that way. And they said, can you give me your top three pieces of advice? What would those top three pieces be? [00:45:02] Knowing what you know now, sure, that's easy. [00:45:06] So number one is you don't need to know everything. So I think as a founder or an entrepreneur, it can feel daunting when you start a business because you feel like, OK, well, I need to understand finance. I need in the case of my business, manufacturing, engineering, technology, neuroscience are logistics. There were so many pieces to this puzzle and I really only understood one piece. Got educated and learned myself several of those pieces like fundraising and being the CEO of a company, having ever worked in one myself. And then I was able to attract and hire individuals who knew how to do everything else. [00:45:44] Experts in their own domain who understood manufacturing in China and logistics and customer care and whatever the role was. So tip number one is you really don't need to know everything. And frankly, there's very few things you do need to know because you can bring on the people that matter to do the job. Yeah. Number two is do not let your own thoughts of not being good enough or not accomplishing enough. Hold you back. We are all amazing capable creatures, but we are held back by the stories in our own mind. You know, the stories that say, oh, you know, we shouldn't take the risk because or people will think this of us or what if it just doesn't work out? And so it's normal for those thoughts to be there. But the person who becomes a successful entrepreneur is the person who is overall to able to overcome those thoughts, who is not held back by them, the person who takes the step and moves forward despite the thoughts and fears in their mind and body. And number three is lead with inspiration. So you may not know most of the things that you need to know to do this. Totally fine. But if you have an inspiring vision and you're able to articulate it and that inspiring vision is going to make the world better in some way, people will want to come along and join you and follow you and work with you and work for you and bring this vision to life together. So the most successful entrepreneurs are those that are able to see a vision that the world needs, that people agree is going to be good for the world and inspire people to come along with them. [00:47:23] Nice. I love that. So I have. Don't. No one. [00:47:29] You don't need to know everything. Number two, do not like negative thoughts. Hold you back. And number three, let lead with inspiration and let your vision inspire your audience. And I have to say that, as you said, those things as as silly or interesting as it sounds, I feel like if your device muse could speak, it would say that's exactly what it does. I think so. Yeah. I think that you've you've got the idea in tune and chip with what your craft and your knowledge have all developed in this embodiment of the device. And we are out of time today. But I really want to say I appreciate you taking the time. [00:48:09] I know everyone is at once available and incredibly busy, you know, during this time of stay at home. And so I want to say thank you so much for all of your knowledge and time today. [00:48:21] Thank you for the opportunity to share it. Much appreciated. [00:48:24] Absolutely. And for those of you listening, we've been speaking with Ariel Garten. She's the founder of Muse. You can located at W w w dot Tewes Muse dot com. [00:48:36] And until we speak again next time, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte.
Today on the Music Business Podcast, we invite Dan Runcie, the founder of Trapital. Trapital is a media company that covers hip-hop business and strategy and assesses the deals, companies, and artists that shape the culture. Trapital's audience includes thousands of music executives, media moguls, and venture capitalists.On this week’s episode, we discuss macro trends in the music industry, including alternative label models, the shift of media influence in breaking artists, the impact of hip-hop culture on pop culture and the Black Lives Matter movement, and more. Learn more about Trapital at trapital.co.This week’s episode is sponsored by Hannibal Burress, who drops in to promote his new special, Miami Nights, available now here.As always, leave a review or follow us @musicbusinesspodcast on Instagram and let us know what you think of this week’s episode. Support us via our Patreon at http://musicbusinesspodcast.com/community. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Just as there are no two recipes that contain the exact same ingredients or measurements, there are no two success stories exactly the same. Recipe For Success features entrepreneurs, visionary leaders and innovators of all ages who will share their ingredients that make them successful – personally and professionally. Let's get cooking! As superintendent of the nation’s sixth largest school district – with over 270,000 students in 337 schools and approximately 30,000 employees – Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert W. Runcie is committed to Educating Today’s Students to Succeed in Tomorrow’s World. Runcie knows first-hand how a high-quality education can transform a person’s life. Born in Jamaica, he moved to the United States as a young boy and became the first member of his family to attend college, graduating from Harvard University and earning an MBA from Northwestern University. He later founded a management and technology consulting company and held several strategic leadership positions with Chicago Public Schools, including serving as its Chief Information Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Area Instructional Officer and Chief of Staff to the Board of Education. Runcie joined Broward County Public Schools in 2011. With the support of a dynamic School Board, Runcie developed a strategic plan for the District focusing on three key areas: high-quality instruction, continuous improvement and more effective communications. As part of these strategic goals, Runcie spearheaded technology innovations in the classroom. Among the initiatives is the Digital 5: Pathways to Personalized Learning project, which provides a blended, personalized learning environment for students and teachers from 100 elementary schools with laptops, digital resources, online instructional materials, and other learning tools to maximize student learning. In addition, under his leadership, BCPS became the only Florida school district selected for a unique partnership with the national non-profit organization Code.org, to increase students’ opportunities to learn computer science in schools. Learn more about Broward County Public Schools at https://www.browardschools.com/. For more information about Junior Achievement of South Florida, visit https://www.jasouthflorida.org. Follow us on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasouthflorida LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/junior-achievement-of-south-florida/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasouthflorida Twitter: https://twitter.com/JASouthFlorida
In this episode, Lawrence Peryer shines the "spot lyte" on Dan Runcie, founder of Trapital Media. They talk about the genesis of Trapital and talk through a few hip hop case studies including Travis Scott, Jay-Z, Kanye, and others. Trapital is written exclusively by Dan Runcie. For years, Dan was a go-to source among friends about any and everything related to hip-hop. That led Dan to start his own personal blog to see what others thought. Those stories landed him freelance gigs at publications such as WIRED, Pigeons & Planes, Medium, and several other publications. I started Trapital in 2018 and started working on it full-time in 2019. I have lived in San Francisco, California for the past five years.Learn more about Lyte: http://www.lyte.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, Lawrence Peryer shines the "spot lyte" on Dan Runcie, founder of Trapital Media. They talk about the genesis of Trapital and talk through a few hip hop case studies including Travis Scott, Jay-Z, Kanye, and others. Trapital is written exclusively by Dan Runcie. For years, Dan was a go-to source among friends about any and everything related to hip-hop. That led Dan to start his own personal blog to see what others thought. Those stories landed him freelance gigs at publications such as WIRED, Pigeons & Planes, Medium, and several other publications. I started Trapital in 2018 and started working on it full-time in 2019. I have lived in San Francisco, California for the past five years.Learn more about Lyte: http://www.lyte.com
Robert Runcie, superintendent of Broward County Public Schools visits with us during this time of the astonishing and rapid breakdown (albeit temporarily) of society and the economy in the United States--in large part due to public schools being ordered to shut down across America. Parents are unable to work, families and children are unable to get food and computers that are needed for teachers to even attempt to migrate to online teaching are not available or dispersed equally to all families. And to make matters worse, teachers are not trained to be teaching online and many communities in the United States don't even have broadband or secure wifi access. Incredible, right? This global crisis caused by the virus that is killing people, has also killed public education in America as we have come to know it. Robert Runcie is at the forefront of change in education technology. Originally from the private sector technology industry, by way of Union-heavy Chicago, he knows first hand how almost impossible it is to innovate in and transform public educational processes and systems. But the biggest threat we are all facing is the too-slow transformation of our mindsets around not only on our awareness of the vitalness of quality public education for all, but also how we as social beings must evolve using technology in order to survive. --- The Honest Field Guide is a production of multichannel brand strategy and visual identity agency Birk Creative at http://www.birkcreative.com. Episode song "Ruby" can be downloaded on Apple here https://music.apple.com/us/album/ruby/212635734?i=212635749 and is written by Grant Birkenbeuel and JinJa Davis, from the band Utah Carol http://www.utahcarol.com. Recorded at Stomping Ground Studios. Podcast editing by Birk Creative. Mastering by Chris Enns. --- Do you love our show? Can you donate to support our podcast? We will shout you our when you do it on an upcoming podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/support. --- Text The Honest Field Guide at (312) 445-0903 Send us a voice message and we will record it on an upcoming episode: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/message . --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/support
Broward County Schools Superintendent, Robert Runcie *Follow him on Twitter: @RobertwRuncie
Ian Runcie speaks on trusting in God's Faithfulness throughout all the seasons of your life.
Dan Runcie (@RuncieDan) of Trapital joins Erik to discuss business and strategy in hip-hop. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg.
Dan Runcie (@RuncieDan) of Trapital joins Erik to discuss business and strategy in hip-hop. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg.
The Barbell economy is this concept that the most opportunity happens at the bottom (left) and the tip top (right). This week we sit with the Dan Runcie of Trapital Media to discuss how that has affected his business decisions in the new music journalist space and how it plays out in a variety of music-related industries.
Trapital founder Dan Runcie joins this episode to discuss the wide variety of shared opportunities—and problems—between hip-hop and venture capital. What are the similarities in how independent musicians and tech founders navigate their respective funding landscapes, and what alternative funding models are emerging to serve their needs? How do record labels and VC firms make investment decisions, and how could they potentially improve (e.g. pattern-matching biases)? How are third-party music distributors like UnitedMasters similar to tech accelerators like Y Combinator? At large, will the convergence of music and venture capital actually increase the value of recorded music itself—or only exacerbate current issues of wealth disparity and diversity in the music industry? After diving into these questions, we each share our carefully-selected picks for the latest overrated music news.
One year later, Dr. Carole puts Parkland on the couch: the terror, the tragedies and the traumas. Though Nikolas Cruz may not have pledged his loyalty to ISIS, he and other school shooters of recent years were undoubtedly influenced and spurred on by terrorists and the attention their attacks get. Where are they now? Nikolas Cruz is in jail awaiting trial, but what about the other key players: Sheriff Scott Israel, Superintendent Robert Runcie, town members and students? Students like Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg have stood on the shoulders of victims to become famous. Hear why this should make you angry. We delve into the life of one Parkland family whose daughter was killed in the shooting, and see how the tragedy continues to haunt them daily. How do we prevent another Parkland? You may be surprised to find out that the solution isn’t as simple as adding more security because studies show that students feel less safe when they are faced with such measures as cameras, guards, and school shooter drills. Sky Pilot Radio http://skypilotradio.com/
Broward County School District Superintendent Robert Runcie remembers clearly the events of February 14, 2018. That’s the day a gunman killed seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In this conversation with the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, Runcie talks about the power of hope and how some of the radical academic changes he brought to the District, the sixth largest in America, may have helped the school’s students become powerful leaders in the gun control movement. Show Notes Discover more about the Aspen Institute. Follow Aspen Ideas to Go on Facebook and Twitter. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. The views and opinions of the speakers in the podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the Aspen Institute.
Robert Runcie instituted radical changes when he became superintendent of Broward County schools. Those changes helped give rise to the Parkland generation after his students experienced one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.
Runcie tells Brian Mudd that the plan to install metal detectors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was reversed so the school board could discuss some potential issues that have cropped up involving the operation of the equipment.
Runcie told Newsradio 1290 WJNO back in March that accused Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz was not involved in the Promise Program.
Safety concerns for students after several incidents at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, in the wake of the Valentine's Day shooting. Runcie talks about it.
Ryan is a full-time painter and creative based out of Austin, TX. He can be found painting murals on many public and private attractions around town or constantly at work at his house. We sit down in this studio and go over the creative process, how to bring out what is inside all of us and how he has turned what he loves to do into his job. Find Ryan on IG @ryan_runcie
Warning: This episode contains spoilers for Episode Two of the Second Season of Grantchester. Grantchester is a real town in the English countryside, but the crime-solving adventures of Sidney and Geordie exist only in the mind of author James Runcie whose book series, "The Grantchester Mysteries," serves as the inspiration for the Masterpiece program. In this episode, Runcie talks about meeting James Norton, tells us how Amanda Kendall came to be, and reveals secrets on the making of the show.
A lecture by Robert Runcie, Director of Flood and Coastal Risk Management, the Environment Agency, in the presence of HRH The Duke of Gloucester KG GVCO. In the presence of HRH The Duke of Gloucester, RUSI will launch a series of public lectures exploring flood risk and the built environment. The inaugural lecture was given by Robert Runcie, Director of Flood and Coastal Risk Management at the Environment Agency. The lecture discussed the medium and long-term strategy for managing flood risk and enhancing flood resilience in the United Kingdom and will address the implementation of the recommendations made by The Pitt Review. This formal presentation was followed by a panel discussion in which members of the Inter Institutional Flood Risk Management Group posed questions to Mr Runcie, following which the discussion will be opened up to the wider audience.
The first castaway of 1989 in this week's Desert Island Discs is one of Britain's most senior church leaders - the Most Reverend Robert Runcie, the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his Liverpool childhood and his war years when, as a tank commander, he won the military cross.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: The Sanctus Book: The Odyssey by Homer Luxury: Rocking chair
The first castaway of 1989 in this week's Desert Island Discs is one of Britain's most senior church leaders - the Most Reverend Robert Runcie, the 102nd Archbishop of Canterbury. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his Liverpool childhood and his war years when, as a tank commander, he won the military cross. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: The Sanctus Book: The Odyssey by Homer Luxury: Rocking chair