Isaac Saul started Tangle in 2019 without a platform job, a big name, or the institutional head start many Substack-era independents enjoyed. He describes himself bluntly: “When I started Tangle, I was a nobody.” In this episode, we talk about how he hustled his way from zero readers to a 450,000-person list and 70,000 paying subscribers, and how he’s trying to make the shift from a creator-led project to a durable media company. We get into his decision to add new voices, the limits of solo output, the temptation to do more, and why he thinks the next phase of media is about building systems, not personalities.

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Thanks a lot, Beehiiv.

Welcome to the Rebooting Show.

I am Brian Morrissey.

There is a fork in the road that every creator media business eventually reaches.

If they find traction, right?

The early days, you know, are often powered by personal leverage.

It can be one person with a clear point of view, a tight relationship with an

audience, and a product that hits a nerve.

that model works until it stops working, or at least becomes a drag.

You can see the split in the market.

You know, some stay small by design.

they continue to optimize the engine around the individual.

and others follow what I think of as the Barry Weiss path.

Yeah.

They use, a personal brand as leverage.

and the ambition is to build a. More of an institutional publication, but one that is

rooted in, the heat of a personal brand.

this is a very difficult transition.

it is not a clean one in, in most cases.

you're basically trying to maintain this direct personal connection to the

audience while the same time building the infrastructure required, to make, the

brand bigger than quote unquote just you.

and there's of course always risk that, the brand will end up becoming diluted.

And I think that keeps, a lot of creators, from going down this path.

This is.

A big part of my conversation with Isaac Saul, who I've spoken to on this podcast before.

I mean, Isaac began Tangle, which is a nonpartisan, news site back

in 2019 as a personal project.

It was Isaac's voice, it was his structure.

You know, it was born out of his commitment to viewpoint diversity.

But one of the things that I, I, I've, I found is that Isaac, realized early

on, that while this enabled him to get traction, he needed to make sure that the

Tangle brand was about more than just him.

So we discussed that tension, and how he's navigated, using this

non-partisan approach to news.

To build a $4 million plus recurring revenue business with a dozen person team, 70,000 paying

subscribers, and 450,000 overall email newsletter subscribers, and a half million, monthly podcast

download and did all that, without any funding.

Completely bootstrap.

really admire that.

really enjoyed this conversation, with Isaac.

I think he's, very thoughtful about how he approaches, building a media business.

And, I hope you do too.

So, if you like this conversation, I hope you do leave us a rating and a review on Apple

or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

And of course, send me your feedback.

my email is brian@therebooting.com.

Now here's my conversation with Isaac.

Isaac, it is great to have you back, on the show.

I think we talked a couple years ago, so I wanna use, I like to revisit

these, you know, 'cause you were.

You know, you were at a different point.

I was, you know, at the time you were a news, it was a newsletter, non-partisan

newsletter, you know, and you're still fighting the good fight, by the way, on X.

You're like the last reasonable man left on X, and I appreciate it.

I don't even weigh in.

I stay quiet.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, it's a bit of a cesspool over there.

I mean, I started realizing that I'm mostly arguing with bots and people copying and pasting

You are like, but on the one hand, on the other hand, and like, I'm like, ah, I

don't know if this is a place for you, Isaac.

Yeah.

but let's, let's, for those who didn't catch our first, time in this, like, Explain

a Tangle for, for the audience because I think it's like, it's a really interesting property.

There's some others who, who have gotten into the space since then I wanna talk about.

But you know, we're at a time obviously where, where partisan news is, is what

sells for all the different reasons.

And you took a different path.

Yeah, so I, I, I, there are a lot of newcomers, new kids on the block, I'd like to say.

but yeah, I started t in 2019, so six years ago during the Democratic primaries in the lead up to

the 2020 election when, when Biden was elected.

and the, you know, the fundamental premise is really simple like.

We embrace viewpoint diversity.

That's basically the whole ball game for us.

So we tackle one big political debate that's happening in the news every day.

and then we give you that summary of the story in the most neutral terms possible.

We share a collection of perspectives from the left.

We share a collection of perspectives from the right.

Then somebody from the team, typically me, but now not always me, shares their own

personal take, like a mini op-ed, that kind of wraps up the newsletter and the podcast.

and it's full of other, you know, little quick hits on the daily news

and good news stories and re answering reader questions and things like that.

But that was the fundamental.

Newsletter offering, which is still our core product.

and as you kind of alluded to, I mean, since the last time we spoke,

things have definitely evolved.

I mean, a, the newsletter grew a ton.

We have, you know, 450,000 people on our mailing list now.

and b. As a larger audience came in, there was demand for new kinds of products.

So, you know, we stood up a podcast and then, you know, once we had the daily

podcast, we started a talk show podcast, and then we stood up a YouTube channel.

and now, just recently, last week actually, we launched a texting service, which has

been really interesting in SMS service.

I saw you experimenting with

Yeah, no, I'm gonna, like, when this comes out, I'll have, I'm

doing, I'm doing a texting service.

Yeah.

And, and I've been real, you know, we're only a couple weeks into

What?

How are you using it?

you know, I'm really, really dedicated to not using it as like, click this link

and read this piece, or promote whatever.

I mean, the, the, the reason that.

off.

Yeah, exactly.

Like I've, I've subscribed to a few tech services, only a handful, and I like

them either 'cause they're like punchbowl news, breaking news stuff, or they are.

News outlets or independent influencers, whatever, who are just like almost

using it like we used to use Twitter.

They're, they, they use it as like a place to kind of experiment with some

ideas and thoughts and get feedback.

And so I've been trying to do that.

I mean, we've been sending, you know, I, I, I feel the urge to tweet something and

instead of tweeting, I'll draft up a subtext and send it to the audience and like.

We've sent something two days ago.

there we probably have about 15 or 18,000 people, something in that range now on the,

on the texting service, which is crazy.

I mean, it took me two years to get that many people on my newsletter.

So to collect those, that amount of phone numbers in a week is mind boggling.

You got all these phone numbers.

I, I don't know why, but I'm like, I want phone numbers.

Yeah.

I, I'm, it's like, I have no idea what the future of email or media holds, but I

know people have cell phones in 10 years.

this is like the newsletter.

The newsletter people's like prepper sort of

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a good way to put it.

It's totally true.

and you know, we got, I got 4,000 responses to a text that we sent last week.

Like, it's insane to me.

People are eng engaged and they're really interesting.

We're reading, there's something about that's so, it's like the inbox, it's so personal.

so I, I'm really

Yeah, I, I, I think so too.

I just did like an experiment with it, in Cannes, I just noticed that I, I,

I'm not sure whether it was the novelty.

I hope it's not the novelty and, and we'll find out.

I think it was easier around an event, but I, I do think that there's, there's something

that's, it is more personal place and that's why it's like, oh no, people are gonna flood

to this, but, but let's get in because it's really interesting to me because you really

began this, it was kind of like a personal brand project in that like you were the brand.

Right.

And I think there's a lot of people who have, you know, reached some kind of like.

Creator market fit or something.

And, and then they're faced with this, you know, a good dilemma, right?

in that are they gonna continue to make it, you know, the about them or how do they

expand, you know, beyond, you know, it, it being just them and I, I always felt

like, you've been on that journey, right?

Like, it's not just like Isaac

Yeah, I mean there are two things I think that have kind of made what's

happened to me unique with regards to tangle.

I mean, the first one is like, when I started TI was a nobody.

So unlike a lot of what these creators were doing are like, you know, well,

you know, I was barely someone.

But these journalists who were like.

Leaving well-known publications and they have a huge following and then they stand up a newsletter

and everybody's like, wow, that looks so easy.

Like it's easy when you're famous already or you're really well known already, but

it's a lot harder when you're sort of making your way with the piece of content or with

the idea that you're kind of executing.

Like I genuinely went from zero to 13 to a hundred to 150 to 400, you know, like I

had those early days for the first year.

so I think that is part of what made it unique.

And then to your point, like.

I recognized really early that it couldn't just be me, that like, once I had the resources, I had

to introduce some other personalities and some other people, because A, I would burn out and b.

Like, I don't want this to be the only thing I ever do.

Like I would love at some point to take a little bit more of a backseat role or,

you know, go write a book or whatever, like do stuff that will require me not

being locked in 12 hours a day every day.

and so when we started getting the growth that I.

Wanted to see and bringing in new writers and whatever.

I, I was really intentional about giving them some platform and making

sure that like we were developing a few different voices or personalities.

You know, we're doing that on our podcast.

We do it in the newsletter.

just today as a, you know, an hour before we hopped on this recording, I publish a piece

from a staff writer who just wrote a story criticizing something, an essay, criticizing

something I wrote last week and like.

I'm introducing her to the audience is like, this is Audrey, here's some of her views.

And she gets to pen this essay like, you know, taking a shot at the founder

of this news company, which is a really cool thing, I think, and pretty unique.

So, you know, I'm trying to do more of that to get the audience used to seeing people that aren't me.

'cause I am, I don't want it to be the Isaac show, like I'm worried about that.

I think it's bad business strategy and it's not sustainable in terms of

like the scale that we hope to get to.

Yeah.

So tell me about the scale you want to get to, because I think this is like something, again,

good problems to have, but when you get traction, you know, particularly with recurring revenue.

because, you know, recurring revenue, I think the last time we talked

it was almost all of your revenue.

I know you have advertising now, but recurring revenue as a base gives you a lot of optionality.

Right.

so tell me about like what the ambitions are now for, for what you t want Tangled to.

Yeah, I mean I have, I have a kind of theory of the case that I'm, I'm sort of

just starting to turn over in my head and play with a little bit, and we just had a

big team retreat in Vermont where I kind of articulated this to everybody, and I think it

looks a little something like this, which is.

Everybody in the media space is kind of bundling and adding that seems to just

be the, where the momentum is right now.

Like we're seeing media properties get bought up, you know, and like maybe the free

press type type style, but in a smaller way.

Or we're seeing the sort of puck like fine people who are doing really good work and

bring them into your umbrella and like, you know, the argument just launched on Substack

with all these different writers who are kind of like contributors but also part owners.

And there's like.

I'm not totally sure how that structure works, but there, there's just a lot of bundling happening.

and with the bundling always seems to come this like, here's more

content, new podcast, new newsletter.

I am sort of like, my mindset is that I think we're about to at a point where people want

less if we're not already there right now.

And I actually don't think it's like a super smart strategy for us to roll out.

Like.

You know, different offshoots of tangle in this moment and all these little different newsletters

and you know, new podcast shows and whatever.

I have like news outlets I'm a huge fan of, or personalities I'm a huge fan of.

And when I get like those emails or the promotions for new stuff, a new show,

they've launched a new newsletter like.

My initial reaction is just like, oh my God, I have so much already.

Like, I love what you guys are doing, but I can't subscribe to another newsletter.

I can't subscribe to another podcast.

and I think that audience fatigue, it's showing up in the numbers, in the open rates

for us across the industry, website traffic.

so I'm thinking about ways to actually create a little bit of scarcity of content

and like desire from audiences for more.

which like, you know, we're kicking around a few ideas like maybe.

Doing one fewer newsletter a week or something like that.

That gives us kind of a break in the middle of the week and gives us a

little more time to work on some of the premium content and just make it better.

Basically overall.

Or like maybe in the middle of the week we publish a reader essay every week or something.

Our audience contributes to us, so it just takes kind of like a workday.

Off our plate and gives everybody like a moment to breathe.

Something like that.

That's just like a change of pace and not hitting people with the same thing over and over again.

Back to back, back to back.

I mean, you've, you've expanded into a lot of things.

Like you're now, like, you, you, like, when we first talked, you didn't have

podcasts, you got podcasts, you've got, you're doing YouTube, you got the, you got

the YouTube thumbnail game going now too.

I noticed.

Like, you know, you got the surprise guy face and whatnot.

you're doing the texting service.

I don't know, you haven't gone into events yet,

have you?

we've had a few events, ever since we were, I mean, 2023.

I think we've done three or four now.

and like, you know, we're talking about it.

I think it'd be stupid not to talk about it, like, what could we stand up?

But it's another thing where it's like.

Again, you know, this isn't like my official position quite yet, but it's sort of this

idea that I'm wrestling with that like maybe the more isn't actually the answer.

Here's, here's the point I was, I was sort of setting up was that I've always felt

like there, there's periods of expansion and then there's periods of, you know,

where you need to consolidate the gains.

Like in that, like you, you need that, you end up having these periods where

you, you roll out like new things and then you have to have periods where you know,

you digest and you make them like better.

Because I think the, the risk is always.

It's like the old thing.

It's like if you wait for things to be perfect, like you'll be waiting forever, right?

And so you have to like, and, and we were talking about this before, like I think,

you know, we probably both feel this way.

It's like, we gotta be doing more, we gotta have to do, no, there's these other things that are

going on and you want the momentum, but at the same time, you know, you want to take a step back.

And probably also just coming from, you know, journalism background,

you want to do better, right?

Like, not just like more, usually the business side people were telling you to do

I mean, I, and then I think about that.

Yeah, I mean, I think about that my day to day.

Just, you know, I, I put this in my team, like as a thought experiment.

What would it look like if we just publish one newsletter a week?

Like how would we monetize it?

What, what would the content look like?

What direction would we go?

Like, just, just to like think it through and like, we're not gonna do that.

We can't do that.

We want the audience habit, whatever.

But like, you know what, what sort of doors would having four days a week,

Monday through Friday open for us?

And a lot of the answers were like, oh, we could do more long form journalism.

We could like really edit a piece for three days in a row and get opportunities to like.

You know, stress test it more versus this like insane publishing schedule we have now where

we're like turning stuff around in 24 hours.

do more exclusive interviews, sell more premium ads, things like that.

I'm like, okay, so like, I love that these are all great.

Like I think we should do all those things.

We want more premium content, we want more time with the pieces we're publishing.

Like how do we free up the team?

We have to do that.

Or like take a step towards that without, you know, crushing this awesome audience

habit we've made where people are sitting around at 12:00 PM Eastern waiting for

our newsletter to come out every day.

so like, to, to answer your question, the original question about like,

scale goals long term, I mean, for me.

We, we've doubled the size of our team in the last year, so we have 12,

I have 12 full-time employees now.

yeah, and I, I really want to see what I can do with this group.

So like, for the most part, maybe there's a chance, like on the video side, we,

we have another hire pretty soon, but I think like, generally speaking, I want to

kind of press pause there and just like.

See what this group can do over the next year.

and I am like way more interested in scaling our audience than I am scaling our team.

Like I don't want to have a 200 person newsroom.

I have no interest in building the next CNN or Fox News or whatever.

I, I want like a small, nimble team where we have tons of revenue per employee and everybody's paid

really well and we have a bunch of dogs, like the best of the best we can find in the industry.

That's

we have.

Yeah.

DAWG.

Yeah.

And we have a bunch of, you know, a, a huge audience like it.

The dream for me, you know, now after we get, I mean, I could have never dreamt of

400,000 subscribers or whatever, but now that I'm here, it's like, I want 5 million.

You know, I, I want to be in a place where.

People are waiting for our take or our newsletter to come out and it has

a meaningful impact on the dialogue.

and, and, and make some waves.

You know, like I'm, I'm jealous of the sort of, I, I guess, influence that places

like the dispatch or the free press have that aren't much bigger than us yet.

I feel like their brand is more well known and the, the sort of

impact them publishing something is.

Has is bigger and, and like I want to get us to that point, to

Well, they also have like insider brand name people.

I feel like don't, don't take it the wrong way,

but like, you know, that's their, that's their model is more like inside Washington, you know?

Jonah and, uh, and,

Steve and so, yeah, so I, I wonder if that, it just makes it, I dunno,

that probably ends up helping.

I mean, you are probably, how many, how many paying subscribers do you have?

We have over 70,000 now.

Okay.

So yeah, like you're, that, that's the thing.

It's like, I think people probably think of, the dispatch and that like, as being,

you know, far bigger, but like, that's

They're not, and that, and that's sort of like, somebody said something to our COO at

a newsletter conference, something like, you're like the biggest newsletter nobody knows about.

And I was like, ah, shit.

Like she's, it's kind of true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like.

it's better.

I, I used to ride my bike around Miami and see, and see like Ozzy ads on on the buses.

Oh God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I mean it's, so it's, it's something that, like I'm thinking about is just,

and, and to your point, like I think that dispatch free press model is really good.

It's why it's effective.

and maybe long-term, like bringing in those kinds of contributors, even if

they're not full-time staffers, is like a way to sort of raise the profile.

But I also just think it's like.

We have to raise awareness about what we're doing.

Like when we get people in the door, we're really good at turning them into

loyal readers who love our work and are curious to hear where we land on stuff.

'cause I think we're doing, I think the product's really good.

I think it's fair and it's honest and transparent and it's human and

people like those elements of it.

but like the perpetual battle for me has been.

Making it kind of a mainstream household type name without, you know, the splashy hires or

the the big acquisitions or whatever else.

So you've kept this like, incredible conversion rate.

'cause I mean, when we, when we talked before, you know, you had like a, like

a, a 16%, I think it was, like conversion rate and I was like, wow, that's

Yeah.

I think it's gone up, actually.

I think it's a little over 17% now.

Yeah.

So what is the, I don't know, what's the secret other than being amazing?

Like what is the, are you underpriced, like, what's going on here?

This is very suspicious.

It's like, you know, like Europeans, like Europeans, when they, when someone is like a, is a

philanthropist, they look at it very suspiciously.

Like,

yeah,

like, what are you

hiding?

Yeah, I ask, I, I've asked the pricing question.

I mean, we were initially five bucks a month, $50 a year as the main offering, and we bumped

that up to $59 a year, six bucks a month.

And we also now have a bundle, which is 99 bucks a year, which gets you like ad free

podcast and the premium podcast content too.

And then we have this thank you tier, which is.

Basically $199 a year and you don't get a whole ton other than some

sort of insidery business updates.

And it's framed as like, this is just a way to like throw some extra support behind our work.

And quite a few people take that.

I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but it's a couple thousand or something.

yeah, so I I think it's two things.

I think the reason we're really good at it is twofold.

One is, we.

Have really good premium content and we always send previews of it to people.

I used to be really scared.

I used to send maybe one paywall Friday edition out to our whole mailing list where they'd run

into paywall in the email like a month because I, I'd see the 50 emails come in, pissed off

about the paywall and it, it like scared me.

And then we did an experiment where we just sent the paywall every Friday and.

You can get the angry emails, but if you look at the actual people leaving

the free mailing list, it would be like a couple hundred each time we sent it.

But we would get 2, 3, 4, 500 paid subscribers.

So I'm like, oh, this is like a really easy calculation we need to

be showing like people this paid

I feel like the journalist in you probably works against you

there because like the business type person's like they don't care.

They're

like, oh yeah,

whatever.

You always get people who complain.

It's, yeah, I'm, I, and it's the same way we ended up, doing advertisements

was I had this like high-minded sort of journalistic integrity view.

Like, we'll, we'll always be independent, we'll never do ads.

And then I asked our audience, and it was like 95% of them were like, no, you should do ads.

Make as much money as possible.

And I was like.

Oh, I am like a total fucking idiot.

Like, why didn't I do this?

so yeah, I mean the, the, so that's one is I think, I just think the content's good and

we're sending people articles they wanna read.

And the free list is getting these sort of like, generous previews

with strategically placed paywalls.

And then the second thing is, I, I, I think I have a really good.

Upsell email that I send every one to two months to the entire free mailing list.

And I don't know why more people don't do this, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm almost

hesitant to just like give it away for free.

But I think I've already talked about it on a few podcasts, but it's just

being really direct with people.

Like the subject line of the email literally says.

Yes, I'm asking for your money, and the opening paragraph of the email is like, I know many news

organizations send you these kinds of emails in like a clickbait, conceal, like concealed fashion.

But I'm gonna be really direct with you.

I'm about to ask you to subscribe to Tangle.

If you love our work and wanna support us, you can just subscribe here.

You don't have to read any further.

If you need some convincing, here's my argument.

And then I frame it in like very human terms, not like, oh, what are

we gonna do with all your money?

And I'm like, here's what you get.

Like here are the really awesome additions you get when you subscribe.

And also like, here's how much money we made last year compared to what

Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow make.

And if you want journalism like this to compete with the big news organizations.

We need more revenue and 90% of our revenue comes from subscriptions, or now

it's like 80, 85% with the ads we have.

so subscribe and people respond really well to that.

I mean, I, we just sent one of those emails maybe two months ago to like 300,000

people and we got almost a thousand paid subscribers out of it in one email blast.

And like on the one hand it's like, oh, one in 300.

That kind of sucks.

But on the other hand, it's like a thousand dollars at 59 bucks a year is we just added

$59,000 to our annual recurring revenue,

that's, that's a great email to hit send on.

Yeah, yeah,

Like that's a success.

So you don't need to like do, to do too much economic econometric analysis there.

because of the LTV off that it's like, even, even like higher.

So, and I think it's interesting 'cause it's.

It's like not, but it's like you put it in human terms, right?

Like, 'cause I always think with a lot of these upsell emails, like they're clearly done

from the marketing department and that's fine.

but the really good ones, like, you know, defector does really good, you know, they

have their, you know, and it's in their style,

there's personality.

yeah.

And, and it's, it's, you know, it's organic, for lack of a better word.

but I think a lot of times, you know, people overthink it.

so tell me about the expansion into Lake.

To be multimodal, like, you know, to go into video and podcasts because like

I've always been a little bit skeptical of quote unquote newsletter businesses.

I think you can make it work, but I think if you're gonna build a real sustainable

media business, you need to, you need, you need a foot in a, in a few different areas.

Yeah, I mean I, first of all, I'll say upfront, I was really nervous about it.

I mean, I think, Most media organizations I've seen fail, have failed because they chase the new

shiny object and they get distracted by something and they stop doing what they're really good at.

We're really good at sending a good newsletter and like I, I beat this into my team all the time.

Like, this is the engine that drives everything.

And whatever we do, we can't sacrifice like the attention that this product gets.

that being said, the po, the podcast was first and it came.

Almost entirely outta reader demand.

We just had so many emails a week of people saying like, Hey, I love this newsletter, but I don't

have time to sit down and read it for 15 minutes.

I wish I could just listen while I did the dishes or drove to work or whatever.

Like I would totally listen to a podcast if you guys had it.

and so we started that, the podcast, and we got enough listenership on it

that I was able to hire an editor.

And monetize it with programmatic ads and basically break even out of the gate.

And so from a business perspective, it was pretty low risk in the early days.

today we get something.

I mean, we, since we produce six podcasts a week now, I mean we we're turning basically every

newsletter into some kind of podcast content.

we, we get a half million downloads in a month.

When you monetize, just on the ad side, can turn in anywhere from like 250 to

three or $400,000 a year in ad revenue.

Plus the people who subscribe to a membership to get ad free podcasts and unlock the premium stuff.

So, you know, that's enough to hire a couple editors and also

make a good profit off the podcast.

And that's what we've done.

Like, it's not, you know, the, the memberships that we have through the newsletter are generating

like $4 million a year in recurring revenue.

So that compared to maybe three or $400,000 from the podcast, it's like,

it's obvious where the main engine is, but, it's a nice little revenue bump.

It gives us additional, you know, and, and, and we get to meet people where they're at.

I mean, the truth is.

There are a lot, especially younger audiences are way, way, way more keen to

subscribe to a new podcast than they are

Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure you worry about it.

I worry about those like email fatigue.

I know like they keep saying like, oh no, no email.

Peak email's been predicted forever.

I'm like, I don't know.

There's a lot of email and I'm, I'm beginning to like worry about that.

yeah.

We're we're, it's a, it, it, it is like so saturated.

My inbox is a total mess.

Even my most curated inbox, which is my work email.

I'm just marking like 300 emails as red every day.

'cause I'm like, I'm never gonna get to this stuff.

And I think like podcasts are, like, they're interesting because

they're, obviously, it's a podcast, I'm gonna have to talk about podcasts.

but a lot of it is ambient, you know?

And I think in some ways, like we're sort of, you know, drilled into, it's like, oh, we gotta

get people full attention, engagement and stuff.

There's actually a lot of power to ambient, in that.

I've noticed that when people always ask, tell me what they're doing while they're listening.

You know, which in some ways I'm like, they're distract, but then you become like

attached to, I don't know, dog walking or like

something else in their lives.

It's a habit.

It, it creates like a habit.

I mean, I, I do the same like every morning when I walk to work.

I have a 20 minute walk to work.

I open up the New York Times Daily and I listen to the daily podcast 'cause I'm like

curious what the Times is framing as the story of the day and how they're covering it.

And it's almost exactly 20, 25 minutes every day.

So it's like the perfectly timed show.

And, and that just becomes part of my routine.

The YouTube stuff is different.

I would say like a, we haven't quite cracked the code yet.

We haven't monetized it.

B, it's, our motivation is almost entirely out of capturing a different audience.

I mean, our, our newsletter audience is a little bit older.

The podcast audience is kind of all over the place.

The YouTube audience, I think, is a younger, and b, from a political perspective.

There's just like way more kind of heterodox independent stuff

happening in the YouTube space, in the

For good and bad, I gotta say.

Yeah.

No kidding.

but we wanna get those people, you know, in, in the door.

I've never been like a video guy.

I mean, I've done, throughout my career as a journalist, I've done tons of on camera

stuff, but, I've never like, run a video operation or like, you know, figured out

how to make that side of the business work.

So right now it's mostly an expense and we hope that it's a top funnel.

Eventually, you know, we're, we're really close to standing up our podcast and

video format, which everybody's doing now.

but I do think it works like clipping the podcast and getting it up on YouTube

or having full, full videos up there.

So that, that's the goal long term.

so you mentioned like 4 million in arr, so that would put you at

about like 5 million in revenue.

Yeah.

A little shy of that

Okay, good.

I mean, that's a good, and you're nicely profitable, I assume with,

Yeah.

I'm, we're, we're really proud.

I mean, our margins are like 30% or something, or they were in 2024.

I mean, we'll see how it comes out with the expansion of the team and everything.

But, yeah, we've had, we had phenomenal growth around the election last year.

Yeah.

So how do you end up thinking about like, resilience?

Like, you know, because like I did a podcast like the other week with, with Josh

Marshall from Talking Points Memo, man.

I'm like very impressed by anyone like who's, who's kept at it for 25 years and

has come across, come through multiple, like, you know, periods of, of upheaval.

And, you know, to made it to the end.

I don't know if you think about, building for resilience and, and longevity really,

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, look, I think one of the things,

you have the luxury of doing that now, right?

Like I think when you're in the, probably the last time we were talking, you know, I didn't know it.

Like I'm still in that, it's like it's things are more precarious.

I don't know.

Or maybe they just, do they still feel precarious to

I think I definitely have a little bit of imposter syndrome on like the, you

know, the success part of it where it's like.

I also candidly grew up kind of financially insecure and so I'm just like always sort

of stashing money under the bed, like worried about what the future could be.

And I do think I, I will say actually part of the resilience for me is like when we have

months where we're just like really crushing it and there's tons of growth and the growth.

The subscriptions are outpacing the team.

Like I am putting money, like we have a rainy day slush fund because I know, I've been in

the media world long enough to know that like those days come, so, you know, we have a year

of runway if like our revenue stopped, you know, Stripe does something insane and all of

a sudden our subscriptions disappear like that.

So that's part of the resilience to me.

And the other side is.

I mean, it, it's a, making sure you own a hundred percent of your audience, like that

mailing list, the texting service, having ways to contact your readers across multiple

platforms is really, really important.

we have a big Instagram following too, which has been really helpful as kind of like a top

funnel and also communicating with readers.

And B, the obvious one is just like starting to diversify the revenue, which.

We've done a little bit with the podcast and we've done a little bit with the

ads that exist in the newsletter.

but I am thinking about like, you know, what, what does that look like to not be solely

reliant on the membership revenue or what would happen if our membership revenue have

for some reason, or, you know, whatever else.

I don't have a great answer for that right now, but I think it probably looks like.

You know, a successful YouTube channel or podcast with really, with really premium host red ads.

It probably looks like, another kind of premium type revenue stream like events

or like the texting service actually being paid or something like that.

But I don't know.

I mean, it's, it's really hard to do what Josh did.

I mean, I share your, admiration.

Like it's crazy to me that he's still going.

So how do you end up thinking about like, like when, when you talk about

diversifying revenue, it's interesting because like you're in a great position.

Like you, if you wanna diversify revenue, diversifying it from, you know, 80% plus a

RR is, is the, is where you wanna diversify.

Most people in media or in the other part where they're, they're,

they're stuck in the, the, the ads.

Treadmill, particularly, you know, it's get the traffic and they get the, you

know, the programmatic going and that, that is very precarious versus, versus

diversifying from a subscription base.

What have you found, 'cause you were early on the, the, the advertising road

when we had spoken a couple years ago.

What have you found with that?

Like, I mean, it's a different, it's a different business line.

It can be very frustrating.

You're not in a category that like.

Is is has a bunch of endemic advertisers.

I mean, I would say all the things you just said, it's very frustrating.

It's less predictable.

I've been reminded of all the reasons I focused on memberships in the beginning.

you know, like our sales team will come to me and say, Hey, we, we

have X amount of sales this month.

and like, this is the biggest month we've ever had.

And I'm like, oh my God.

Amazing.

Like, up into the right, we just like, we're gonna quadruple our

right on Excel.

This is gonna be massive.

And then like the next month we're back to where we were 12 months ago.

And I'm just like, how did this happen?

And they're just like, I have no idea.

Things just drive, like the headwinds are unpredictable.

I, I, I literally can't imagine running a business.

What it would be like to run this business entirely on average, it's just so much

less predictable and less reliable.

so, you know, we do internally, we have all sorts of projections and budgeting,

and what I ultimately decided was we do literally all of that without.

Taking the ad revenue into account, and then when that money comes in, it's like this huge bonus

and cushion for some rounding error we made, or like a budget that went over or whatever.

We're like, all right, it's not a big stress.

We have this, you know, 200 grand of ad revenue from last year or whatever.

But, I lit, I literally just don't include it in the budget because, I find it so precarious and

hard to predict in like a forward-looking sense.

It's, it feels like nonsensical to me to do

Yeah, so final thing is just in.

In your lens on this, because it's like saying it's like a very practical, like, I like it.

'cause it's like, it's very practical.

It's like, here's what the left's saying, here's what the right's saying, here's

the, and you know, and we've gone through a period where, you know, that is a.

It's, there's a market for it, but sometimes I wonder about how large the market can be

for, for that, for that kind of approach.

Because we're in a very tribal era and it seems like we're almost like losing, we all have our

different versions of reality it seems like now.

'cause like I'm starting to wonder what is like real, like I was, I was at the

dinner with like a family member, you know, very, you know, well educated.

He runs a company and everything, and he was just like, well, these

protestors are getting paid anyway.

I mean, that's why they're out there.

I'm like, are they?

I was like, uh, really?

I'm like, I don't, like I didn't, I didn't know that and I didn't think,

I'm like, how would that even work?

Like, I mean, the, the w nines, like, I don't know.

I don't even understand that.

how do you give me the case that this is a growth market?

Yeah, sure.

first of all, it's something we

First of all, were they paid?

Are they paid?

Yeah.

No, no.

I don't think most of the, the no Kings protesters were paid.

Um, maybe there were some, I I, I'm sure you could find some organization that offered a

few bucks to get people out there, but, I know plenty of unpaid family members who attended.

I'll put it that way.

first of all, it's a question we ask ourselves all the time.

Like, you know, when our mailing list is stagnant for a week, it doesn't seem to grow.

And then the thing that we see is like.

What's actually happening is there are a lot of people unsubscribing or leaving because of

news fatigue and like we've pretty consistently always been able to bring in new and new members.

It's just sometimes they don't outpace the amount of people who are

like, I need a break from the news.

Which by the way, when we survey people, unsubscribe is now the

number one reason for unsubscribing.

It used to be accusations that we were biased left or right, but now it's,

I just need a break from the news.

But wait, do you offer like take a break?

We, we have a way to turn off the weekly and keep on the once a week Sunday

roundups, which a lot of people take.

That mailing list is now almost 50,000 bigger than the daily.

so that's

you should start like a little like shoulder business with like that just as

like, like puppy photos or something and be

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we're just gonna send you like

Funnel, yeah.

Funnel all the unsubscribes into that.

That's a good idea.

so, I mean, look, my, the.

I guess the direct way to answer the question is independent self-described independence in

America politically are now the number one group.

They're larger than conservatives and liberals, which hasn't always been true.

Not everybody who self-identifies as independent is actually independent.

A lot of them vote typically one way or the other, of course, but that is, you know, 40%

of the country who thinks of themselves as being independent minded enough to engage

with the kinds of content that we offer.

I, I definitely don't think 450,000 is the ceiling for us.

I, I, I don't think it's 40 million either, but, I think it's probably somewhere in that sort of

like seven, mid seven figure mailing list size.

Like, I, I genuinely believe that we could get to 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 million people on this mailing list.

and that's just because.

Not just because of the product and the political bipartisanship and whatever, but

just because like of email is not gonna be something that's a fit for everybody.

I think YouTube and podcasts could be equally as big if we played it right.

but your thing is like you guys are for independence, not centris.

Right, exactly.

that is different.

'cause I think a lot of times people like confuse the two or they can meld the two.

They, we, they confuse it all the time.

you know, Centrus are trying to find like a path that's really difficult to find.

saying that we're, we're saying viewpoint diversity.

It's sort of like this is the, the free market of ideas.

It's that kind of ethos I think.

which, you know, a appeals to, I think mo most often the kind of independent

Well, because the chances are like everyone eats at the ideological

buffet to some degree, right?

Like, I mean, the idea that like some political grouping could like literally every single

possible topic, like what are the chances that me and like Nancy Pelosi would agree on every

single thing, it just seems unlikely to me.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

And I mean, the, the exercise I give readers often is like the really partisan ones who come in is.

You know, what are the odds that the democratic parties write about everything?

Like how can you just live in that delusion?

It's, it's a total fantasy that one side would be right on every issue.

And like our proposition is over time, if we show you a bunch of different arguments from

across the political spectrum on all these issues, you'll realize that there's like

a lot to learn and there's a lot of nuance

Yeah, I always end up asking, I'm like, what was Trump right about?

Yeah.

if you can't name one thing, then I'm like, okay, you're not, like, you're not really

thinking too hard because you can't, if you can't name one thing, like that's a tough one.

Awesome.

Isaac, thank you for doing this.

I really appreciate it.

It was great to catch up.

of course.

Thanks for having me, Brian.

Huge fan and appreciate coming on.