Getting the Gist of Sports Media: Ellen Hyslop, Co-Founder of The Gist - Sports Business Conversations

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Getting the Gist of Sports Media: Ellen Hyslop, Co-Founder of The Gist

Episode 80 • 2nd September 2025 • Sports Business Conversations • ADC Partners

00:25

Dave Almy

Hey, this is Dave Almy of ADC Partners and just wanted to take a second to say thanks for swinging by to check out this latest episode of the Sports Business Conversations podcast. As always, if you like what you hear, please go ahead and give us a follow, drop us a rating, maybe make a nice comment. I mean, you know the drill. We always appreciate that kind of thing. Now let's get started. Like if you would think back to the last time you got together with some friends after work to hang out for a bit, maybe you grab some dinner, probably have a drink or two, shoot the breeze for a while. Do you remember what you talked about? Was it say anything productive?

01:05

Dave Almy

at dinner out with friends in: 2017

02:02

Dave Almy

In our conversation we go into the launching of the Gist, growing a new media brand from scratch, the smart moves and missteps along the way, and thoughts on how she and the Gist team might celebrate their next million followers. So thanks for listening to my conversation with Ellen Hislop, co founder of the gist. Hope you enjoy. Ellen, I think if I read this right, you were an insurance underwriter before the Gist entered your life.

02:36

Ellen Hyslop

I was.

02:37

Dave Almy

Before the Gist entered your life, you were. That was not made up. That was not a fever dream that I had.

02:41

Ellen Hyslop

That is correct. I was an insurance underwriter.

02:44

Dave Almy

Now I very much would love to do an entire podcast about your insurance underwriting career.

02:50

Ellen Hyslop

I don't think we want a full podcast on that right now.

02:54

Dave Almy

People are already looking at their screens going, what else can I listen to right now? But I do want you to take us back to that point. I mean, you are doing the, I guess what we would call the traditional business career, but you'd been a lifelong fan, you'd been a competitive athlete. Had you been looking for an opportunity to work in sports, or did something just happen?

03:19

Ellen Hyslop

e original days, graduated in: 2014

04:08

Ellen Hyslop

It would have been: 2010

04:53

Dave Almy

But did you get offered, like, stringing gigs for different periodicals and outlets and things?

05:00

Ellen Hyslop

No, that wasn't even on. No, that was not on my radar at all. I was fully in the mix on the finance side of things, but sports have just always been my. And so as we entered the gist, it felt like a really nice, natural extension and really just the creating my perfect job.

05:18

Dave Almy

Let's talk about that moment of creation. Let's talk about that catalyst, because if again, doing my incredible research department that we have here at the Sports Business Conversations podcast back room, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna apologize up front because I'm about to try to say, you know, your college friends names.

05:36

Ellen Hyslop

Yes.

05:36

Dave Almy

And as we all know, I really butchered your last name a minute ago. So I'm assuming it's J.C. j.C. And Rosalyn. All right.

05:43

Ellen Hyslop

Yes.

05:44

Dave Almy

So J.C. and Rosalind, I apologize for what's about to happen in case it goes totally awry. But here we go. You launched the gist following conversations with J.C. dahoop and Rosalind McLarty. How'd it do?

05:57

Ellen Hyslop

Perfect.

05:57

Dave Almy

Not bad. Okay, so take us back to the discussion, though. Like, what were you, like, sitting around a dorm room? Were you at a bar? Were you, like, with the future offices? Like, how did it all initially unfold?

06:08

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah, so it was in: 2017

06:10

Dave Almy

All right.

06:11

Ellen Hyslop

We were all grabbing some takeout and some white wine. I had actually just really recently tore my ACL playing soccer. And normally we'd have an opportunity to be going out to the bars or playing soccer together or what have you, but weren't able to do all. You were gimping around, I was limping around. I was on crutches.

06:28

Dave Almy

What was the takeout, do you remember?

06:30

Ellen Hyslop

It was chicken.

06:32

Dave Almy

Chicken. Chicken.

06:32

Ellen Hyslop

I can't remember where we got it from, but chicken and salad and some white wine. And we really were just, you know, having conversation, chatting about a bunch of different things. And really organically, I brought up sports, and were in Toronto, so I was talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs.

06:48

Dave Almy

Sorry.

06:50

Ellen Hyslop

than others. And that year in: 2017

07:33

Ellen Hyslop

And in that conversation, I said, you know what? It's so funny. I have so many friends who will text me when they are going to a game and need to know what's happening, or they're creating their fantasy team and they want some tips. And what we dove into, really, in that conversation quickly was, why are women. Why is it that so many women and so many other underserved sports fans feel like they're left out of the community looking in? And what we really kind of settled on in that conversation is that there were three things that we really noticed in the Sports world. The first one is that the majority of content was created by men and therefore the majority of content was created for men. And oftentimes avid male sports fans.

08:19

Ellen Hyslop

Like you could look at ESPN and say that was created by men looking for avid male sports fans. And then the majority of the actual content was of male athletes. And so we thought, is there a business opportunity if we flip that business model on its head? What if all of our content was created by women? What if were really creating content for that underserved everyday sports fan? And what if we actually gave equal coverage to men's and women's sports? And where could we go from there? We honestly put all of those ideas down in a Google Doc and our initial idea was a newsletter.

08:53

Dave Almy

Still over chicken. You're still.

08:55

Ellen Hyslop

This is still over chicken. We're business girlies. We started, we started doing case on it, but we opened, the ladies got to work. Totally. We opened a Google Doc, we opened another bottle of wine and were just kind of chatting through that second.

09:08

Dave Almy

Bottle of wine is where the ideas really start flowing.

09:10

Ellen Hyslop

Exactly. And then the next morning we texted each other and were like, wait, we think that there might be like.

09:16

Dave Almy

Wait, what just happened? Yeah, you had a little bit of time to sit on it like it wasn't a fever dream. You saw, you had the presence of mind to make sure you write it down and you had a moment to reflect. And was there anything that you looked at in that initial ideation of the business, Sorry, that's terrible word, but that you maintained a through line to what you're doing today? Like can you see the gist in that original document even today?

09:46

Ellen Hyslop

For sure. The tagline that we even came up with for that night was leveling the playing fields. And that's still our tagline for the GIST today day, which is really interesting. And so there was definitely through lines, we also came up with the newsletter for that night. We were young 20 somethings who were consuming our media through our phone and through our inboxes. And were subscribers to things like the Morning Brew, the Hustle, the Skim. And so we really saw this as a way where sports could be communicated to different audiences in different ways through the gist. And so there's definitely some things that were not just you or that have evolved since then, but the high level premise I think has continued throughout.

10:29

Dave Almy

As hard as it must have been to think about leaving insurance underwriting, at what point did you go? I think this is a full time thing. Was it fairly quickly or did it have a longer Runway than you anticipated? How did that process of making this your gig and really becoming that entrepreneur, how quickly did that happen?

10:56

Ellen Hyslop

been in February or March of: 2017

11:22

Dave Almy

Poke some holes in this.

11:23

Ellen Hyslop

riends and family in December: 2017

12:12

Dave Almy

Can you talk about the. What was the format of that first distribution, that first newsletter that went out? What was the. What was the content like? And when you look at it now versus what you're doing now, you're like, oh gosh. Or is like, you know what? There it is. That's. That's the kernel of what we really wanted.

12:29

Ellen Hyslop

Oh, no. The content was horrible. Yeah. I look back and I'm like, I can't believe that we let this. Oh my God, totally. But that's startup, right? You put out your mvp, you get feedback, and you keep on iterating and iterating. And that's why we did a soft launch in Toronto with friends and family, but still it had. There was more people subscribing each and every time. We had a huge launch party in Toronto, saw a lot of organic growth from there. And what ended up happening, David, was one of our gisters. So one of our readers reached out, letting us know about this opportunity that was occurring with Facebook and the dmz, which is the number one university based incubator in the world.

13:10

Ellen Hyslop

And Facebook was hosting this Facebook journalism project where 5 teams across Canada would receive 100k in non diluted funding, 60k in Facebook ad credits, 6 months office space and access to mentors. All of that being non dilutive is unheard of.

13:27

Dave Almy

Yeah. Wow. I mean, as a startup, that is the holy grail.

13:30

Ellen Hyslop

Totally. And so the three of us basically said we are going to try our hardest to try to get into this program and if we get in, we're going to quit our cushy jobs. If we fail, this is basically like getting an MBA and we could pivot our careers and go into something else. Or if it works, then we can lean in and see what happens.

13:49

Dave Almy

This was literally a lead from someone.

13:52

Ellen Hyslop

Reading from one of our readers.

13:54

Dave Almy

The gist.

13:55

Ellen Hyslop

Yes, exactly. So then were one of the top five teams in Canada that was selected. We quit our jobs and really were able to grow and I think really prove our business model at a high level, that there was something there.

14:12

Dave Almy

It's funny when you're doing this kind of thing, when you're doing the startup and you have this, you have the idea and it feels really good and you're talking to the people around you, but it feels like almost every step of the way you're getting validation on this idea. Of course you're gonna have like naysayers, like that's crazy kind of thing like that. But for the ones that really mattered to you, parents, friends, family, to have that evolve into meta evaluating, this idea must have been supercharging for the three of you and actualizing this. So that's a pretty amazing origin story. Right? You go to the meta, you find the success there, quit the day jobs and that evolves into where the gist is today.

14:57

Dave Almy

So what I'd love for you to do is just take a couple seconds to introduce the company to people, to introduce the company today to people who might be less familiar with it. Like, and what makes it distinct from all the other content, sports related that's being published out there in addition to some of the things we've already talked about.

15:17

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah. So we really are a sports media company that is challenging the male dominated sports industry by leveling the playing field in sports. As I mentioned, David, we are all about accessibility to content in a different way. And we want to be your witty sports obsessed best friend, who you are getting your sports news from. And so the way that we really connect with our audience is through our four times weekly sports news email that gives you the gist of what's up in the sports world in less than five minutes. Again, all of the content is created by women. We provide equal coverage on men's and women's sports. We really pride ourselves on being fan first and that we know what our fans are doing every single day.

16:04

Ellen Hyslop

We recognize where they're getting their news and we are serving them with content that is curated, that has context, that they can read in five minutes as they're on the go, but is also really entertaining and witty and fun. It's a nice digestible read. And then we have also expanded into connecting with our audience through social media. So Instagram TikTok X, formerly known as Twitter. And then also we have a twice a weekly podcast called the Gist of It that's hosted by myself and my best friend that allows us to dive kind of deeper into those intersectional pop culture moments in sports. But I think really they just exist in this space where if you are a sports person who feels like you don't 100% feel like you're getting any.

16:50

Ellen Hyslop

Everything that you want from something like an espn, you want equal coverage, you want a different perspective, you want a tone that is from a friend as opposed to a tone that is from a man in a suit talking at you, then the gist is the place.

17:06

Dave Almy

For you to visit Suits kind of.

17:09

Ellen Hyslop

Sorry, not for us.

17:12

Dave Almy

Was there a moment, and I want to hone in on a point that you've mentioned a couple of times here, that one of the focuses was equal coverage.

17:18

Ellen Hyslop

Yes.

17:19

Dave Almy

Was there ever a moment where you thought, you know, this is going to be women writing about women or was equal coverage? Like, we just want to make sure that we're getting everything in here to appeal to that casual fan?

17:31

Ellen Hyslop

Yes. So everything that we do is fan first. But I also think with us and that leveling the playing field mantra, a true leveling of the playing field is putting men and women in the same space. If we continue to separate men's and women's sports, we are separating those fans and completely making those fans go to two separate places, but also dividing up those fans. We know that people who live in New York or live in Boston are fans of the New York Liberty and the New York Knicks. They want that information in the same place at the same time.

18:07

Dave Almy

And so why would we make them go seek it from different places?

18:10

Ellen Hyslop

No. And like I am a woman, my favorite teams are men's sports teams. I still want that. It's just I want the content in a different way that matches my consumption habits. When we started the Gist, David, I think it's. It's different now. Where so many people, so many businesses have digital footprints, they might have newsletters, they might have social media. When we started the gist, that was not the case. A newsletter was this kind of new thing. Providing news on Instagram was a very different idea. And so a lot of traditional sports media was still like, if you don't have rights, if you don't have a show, you're not going to get fans. And we said, yeah, we're not going to get the avid male fans, over 45 type of fan. Exactly.

18:54

Ellen Hyslop

But if the sports industry is going to grow and if the sports industry wants to future proof itself, it needs to think about how can it be engaging with Millennial and Gen Zs in a different way? And how can it be engaging with women in a different way? And we feel like we're the answer to that.

19:10

Dave Almy

Yeah, well, the NFL and the other teams are clearly listening to you because they're changing the rules of the game to do exactly what it is you're talking about right now. But I want to pivot just a little bit because sports fans do have a lot of people vying for their attention. Right. How. And that can be notoriously difficult to grab. And worse, it can be a pretty expensive proposition to try to get in front of people. So where have you been most effective in gathering that attention in a noisy marketplace? Where have you been effective and what are some of the means that you've done so that stick out to you?

19:50

Ellen Hyslop

So what's interesting, David, is that it's a noisy marketplace for avid sports fans. It's not a noisy marketplace for. For our audience that is looking for a different POV that's more of an everyday fan and. Or that is looking for that equal coverage on men's and women's sports. And so when we survey our audience, when we look at their behaviors, we're actually their number one source for sports. And that's on top of espn, that's on top of cbs. They're coming to the gist first. And so I think where our job is, though, we still want Gisters tuning in. We still want Gisters to be watching games when they have the opportunity. We still want them leaning into different forms of content.

20:33

Ellen Hyslop

The biggest piece of feedback we get from our audience and why they come to us, though, is that there's Amazon now there is cbs, there's NBC, there's espn. They all have different days of NFL games. Then there's ESPN plus, where sometimes they're covering ausl and then they don't know when the WNBA is one night. And so they come to the Gist because they say, I can't track all this. I don't have restrictions to everything. But I know that the Gist is going to tell me what I need to know. None of the BS that I don't need to know. And so that's why we're becoming the go to choice for this everyday on the go female fan and some of those avid fans who are just like, I can't wait for everything.

21:17

Dave Almy

Can you talk about the Gist's voice? I've heard you use the phrase the Gisters and people who in the community that you're building here. And I think, you know, you hear conversations all the time about authenticity, yada, yada, and things like that. And I don't mean to be dismissive of authenticity, it's just that everybody uses it and everybody in every instance right now. But for the Gist, creating that brand voice and staying true to that brand voice, I suspect is critical to how you're communicating to Gisters. So can you talk about the development of it and how you stay true to that brand voice and how you want people to react to was really.

22:00

Ellen Hyslop

Hard to develop that brand voice in the early days. I think that it was too casual and a little bit too sassy and too fun. And we got a lot of feedback from a lot of people working in the corporate world saying, look, the content is great, but it feels like I'm texting you as opposed to it feels like I'm getting an email from you. This might work on social, this might work on text, but you need to evolve to be able to appeal to different types of people and be aspirational as well. And so our voice and tone has really evolved over the years as our audience has provided us feedback. We listen to our audience so much, David. We are in our inbox all the time. We are listening to our DMs, our comments.

22:42

Ellen Hyslop

When people call into the podcast, we really want to understand. I think the biggest thing, David, where we've evolved is that we have grown as a business to hire fantastic people on our team who have way more experience and are way smarter than me to help craft our tone, to help craft our voice, to help figure out how we're going to approach these stories. And we've developed really this style guide where I would say in the last two to three years we've really come into our flow on what exactly that brand voices across the newsletter, social podcast and everything else where we are that Approachable, witty, sports obsessed best friend who's keeping you in the know.

23:25

Ellen Hyslop

And we want to be positive space for people to get their sports news and to feel like they're getting their news information in a fun way in comparison to kind of what we're seeing right now in the broader news landscape too. So it was hard, but I feel like we've really hit it. We've hit the nail on the head in the last couple years.

23:45

Dave Almy

Did you have to really suppress some of that more cheeky parts of your personality a little, take the sass down?

23:51

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah, there's like. And then there's some areas where I'm like, crank it up. I think that social media gives us a little bit more space to crank it up. I think too, when we're thinking about our voice to give more examples, our team is our audience. We are on TikTok. We are watching the trends, we're watching Love island while we're also watching the UEFA Euros, you know, and so we're able to incorporate all of these pop culture references at the same time that we're speaking about sports. And then the audience is like, oh, I. I feel like I'm talking to my friend. I see myself in the gist.

24:23

Dave Almy

But don't you think that's one of your superpowers? I mean, the line between pop culture and sports now is very permeable. Right. There's not really even a border anymore. So being able to have that conversation now also provides a level of distinction from, I'll use the word legacy brands who are focused on that. Oh, the avid fan just wants sports casual fans more open to Love island way finals kind of conversations, aren't they?

24:49

Ellen Hyslop

For sure. And I think what we've really found, and I think what some other emerging properties have found is that intersection of sports, pop culture and storytelling, that's when a story really does well.

25:02

Dave Almy

Can you give an example of that intersection right there that has been demonstrative of that for the gist? Is there some story that's recently that you've experienced that? Boy, that's the center of the bullseye for where we're finding success.

25:21

Ellen Hyslop

You know, I think there are so many examples off the top of my head. I think the. A great example that we can kind of think of is how do we use pop culture or memes to then bring into sports? And so two things recently would be Love island and when there's that meme where she's like, that's my dream date. Cute. And so we would do things like a full meme carousel there of, you know, watching the Blue Jays win 11 straight games. That's my dream date, whatever. Or the Coldplay meme where it's something like me and all of my sports merch, stuff like that. But then there's, but then there's also the storytelling of, you know, the intersection of celebrity and culture and sports and how we intersect and make reference to someone like Russell Wilson might be Sierra's husband.

26:12

Ellen Hyslop

Like there's different ways in which it intersects. And what I will say too, David, is that our Sunday newsletter, we recently relaunched it and renamed it called the Group Chat. So we have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday sports news email, gives you the gist on what's happening in sports. And then our Sunday newsletter is more lifestyle forward. And it's really a space where we talk about the intersectionality between sports and culture and how it applies to our gisters everyday life.

26:40

Ellen Hyslop

And so this upcoming Sunday, for example, David, ours is talking about fashion and style and the influence in sports and in particular, deep diving into track and field and how that sport has done an amazing job of allowing its athletes to share more of their personality and their values through what they're wearing, how they're styling their hair, their jewelry, their manicures, all that sort of stuff. And what it's done to drive fandom and what it's done to drive business too. And, and those are the stories that are interesting to someone because then they're also seeing themselves and say, okay, this is what Carrie Richardson wore. Now I am going to go out and try to have my nails look the same way or I'm going to go out and buy the same necklace that she was wearing when she won the gold medal.

27:28

Ellen Hyslop

So I think that there's continued intersection opportunities for us with this type of fan who we're speaking to.

27:34

Dave Almy

Any startup has moments where you think nailed it and other moments when you think, oh man, that was a misstep. Shouldn't have done that. What are some of the ones, both success and missteps, that stand out to you as you've continued to breathe life into the gist.

27:54

Ellen Hyslop

Oh my gosh, we make missteps every single day. David, I think probably most people who come on your podcast say that mostly.

28:02

Dave Almy

The mistake of coming on the podcast. We'll see what you're saying.

28:06

Ellen Hyslop

Oh my gosh, that's so funny. I, I think that like from a success standpoint, I mean, just existing is awesome.

28:15

Dave Almy

Yeah, yeah.

28:16

Ellen Hyslop

Being able to have started the gist and now Gainfully employ team of 25 full time people and then a handful of part time people on top of that, the majority of which are women in this very male dominated industry. That really makes us proud and really makes us excited to be in this space. And so I think overarching, seeing the gist be a place where we could do that and not having a lot of funding either and seeing us have that success is always great. I think in terms of major missteps, I think I wouldn't necessarily call them major missteps because we go into a lot of things going, we don't know if this is going to work or not. Let's throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. We tried things in our, I don't know, totally in our early days.

29:03

Ellen Hyslop

We did things like live chats through Facebook messenger during Monday Night Football where people could click different messages and do all these. Did things live Facebook messenger chats during the NBA championship or the NHL final. And those worked and they did really well. But we did them way too early. We did them when we had an audience of like 3,000 people. So then to monetize that and to grow that, not the right time, the right idea that seven years later we might actually be implementing in Q4. So there's a lot of, I would say things that we threw at the wall very early and very quickly to figure out, does this make sense now? Are people responding to it? Can it make us money? Is it scalable? Is it worth our time?

29:50

Ellen Hyslop

I'd say Probably starting in: 2022

30:16

Dave Almy

It's one of the fascinating things about being digital business focused in the standpoint of it really doesn't cost a whole lot to get a new idea up and running. Right?

30:24

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah, you can try it, you can.

30:25

Dave Almy

Try it, you can throw it against the wall. But what I think you hit on is the essential point. Yeah, okay, it works and people are enjoying it, but can we scale it?

30:36

Ellen Hyslop

Totally.

30:37

Dave Almy

And it sounds silly, but can we make money from it? I mean, right?

30:41

Ellen Hyslop

I mean, just because it's fun and interesting.

30:44

Dave Almy

Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, it's. Just because it's fun and interesting doesn't mean that it's going to be something that's going to help this business become what it needs to be.

30:51

Ellen Hyslop

Totally. And just because, like, we might be interested in it or we might think the content is cool, our audience doesn't or people aren't responding. Like we really, really listen to our audience and we really, really listen to our brand partners and we try to find they're saying the same things.

31:09

Dave Almy

So let's talk about that. You've said a couple times, the point here is to provide equal coverage to men's and women's sports and to fans of both. And I'm interested in someone who talks to their fans a lot and is listening to them a lot. I wonder if you've been able to detect a difference or differences between the way that a fan of men's sports consumes that product versus a fan of women's sports consumes that product. Do you find distinctions between those kinds of fans?

31:41

Ellen Hyslop

I would say that it's not as overarching as that. I would say it's more on a team basis or it's more on a sport basis. So they might be fans of women's basketball and the NFL and F1 where they might be fans of the NWSL and NFL and the NHL. And so there's lots of places to.

32:02

Dave Almy

Park your fandom these days.

32:03

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah, there's. There's so many places to park fandom. There's definitely more passionate women's sports fans, especially over the last three or four years. That's prob. Probably been the most exciting thing to be part of is were in the early stages in one of the first companies to be like, we are standing tall on women's sports. You will be hearing about women from the gist and now we've seen so much growth and interest from our audience in the WNBA and nwsl, especially over the last few years. In comparison to our early days where we had some of our subscribers be like, what is the nwsl and where can I watch the wnba? Right. Like, the landscape has changed so much in the last few years. So I wouldn't overarching say men's sports versus women's sports.

32:47

Ellen Hyslop

What I will say is on the men's sports side, David, to your point, there are so many more options, but there is also the fandom is different because there's history there's context there. If you're a Red Sox fan, you might be a Red Sox fan since you were five years old and that's the house that you were brought up in versus if you are a Boston Legacy fan, you just became a Boston Legacy.

33:10

Dave Almy

Yeah. You can actually be part in crafting that brand.

33:12

Ellen Hyslop

Exactly. So it's a really different way that we approach and speak to those fans too.

33:18

Dave Almy

Okay.

33:18

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah.

33:18

Dave Almy

It's expectations of what it is to be a fan of the Boston Red Sox versus what do you want to be as a fan of the Boston Legacy? There is no template involved right now. So let's take a look down the road a little bit. Right. We've talked about newsletters and podcasts. You're remarkable. And active social media position. How many, how many. How many members do. Are you currently speaking today? Like how many. How many folks are like in that ecosystem of the gist?

33:46

Ellen Hyslop

Yes. We hit over 1 million newsletter subscribers last September, which was a major. Thank you. It was a major.

33:52

Dave Almy

How did you celebrate that?

33:54

Ellen Hyslop

Oh my gosh. We probably didn't celebrate as much as we should have because we.

33:58

Dave Almy

Chicken and white wine.

33:59

Ellen Hyslop

I hope we're a remote team. Yeah, exactly. Chicken and white wine. We're a remote team. And so we celebrate it with our team. We host two off sites every year. So we celebrated with our team at the off site and just celebrated online together. Enjoyed a really nice article in Forbes and outstanding. Cool is that we saw a lot of gister support too. We put together our social team's amazing. They put together this really amazing video where it. We sent them our old emails from people, mostly men that we got like, no, we're not going to invest in you. No, we don't think this is a good idea. And they.

34:34

Dave Almy

Cargo wallboard material.

34:36

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah, exactly. They put all that together and then we're like, we told you so, basically. And so that was really cool. And I think that really galvanized our community because our community feels really tied to the gist of like, we are proving the sports industry wrong. We are proving we're helping make it. Yeah, they're helping make it. They're being like, we're female fans and we care about sports, period. Like, please listen to us. And so that was really cool. And then across social media we have over, I think 550,000 followers and on a monthly basis, we drive over 50 million impressions across our entire ecosystem with the way different things go viral and the views and impressions that we're getting across socials. So it's been really cool to see the business grow.

35:16

Ellen Hyslop

And I think, David, for us, for, for us, we always thought of, okay, the gist of starting on the media side because we have to prove that there's an audience here. We have to prove that there's a business model here. But now that we feel like we've proven that, it gives us the authority to be able to say, okay jesters, what do you want next? So what you see from the just right now is really scratching the surface because now we get to build again but for our existing community and now we get to build again to super serve them and anticipate their future needs as consumption habits change.

35:51

Dave Almy

Do you have a sense of what it's going to take or what you want to focus on to get to that next million subscribers? What are you seeing right now that represents again scalable and monetization? What are those things that are on your desk right now that you're going. This is what we're going to do to get to that next place.

36:15

Ellen Hyslop

So in terms of the next million, I think that we definitely want to continue to grow our newsletter base and that's something that we're working on. But we also have to be really aware of how consumption habits are changing and how monetization is changing and what our gisters want. And so we'll continue to grow our newsletter. But I think what we're actually most focused on now, David, is community. And that's really based off of our audience feedback. We've been doing a lot of research lately, hosting a lot of focus groups, doing a lot of one one interviews and phone calls. And what our audience is now craving from us is how are they able to connect with each other.

36:56

Ellen Hyslop

We've done a really great job of having this one to one relationship through the newsletter with our gisters or this one to many relationship with our new with our gisters over social. But what they have said to us is that they find the gist as this like really safe space to be able to talk about sports. When you look at our comments section in comparison to another legacy comment section about men's or women's sports, it's very different. And so they want to be able to connect with each other because basically being a gister is like this blue check mark essentially to them. So what can we be doing to cultivate this community where they can connect with each other? We can connect them irl. We can be super serving them with and this is I think what you were kind of getting to before.

37:42

Ellen Hyslop

How do we super serve them with content that is potentially more personalized to them. How do we give them some behind the scenes looks and also how do we monetize that? Right. Is that something that's supported by a brand or is that something that just there's themselves are paying for? And so that's really where we're going and what we're thinking. And then we also have some. I can't share right now, unfortunately.

38:03

Dave Almy

Oh, come on, break the news here.

38:05

Ellen Hyslop

I'm not allowed. But we have some really exciting partnerships coming up that I think will continue to extend the impact that we have across the industry with some major players in the sports world.

38:18

Dave Almy

So what you're saying is keep your eyes peeled on this space for future announcements.

38:25

Ellen Hyslop

That's what I'm saying.

38:25

Dave Almy

That aren't going to be broken here even?

38:27

Ellen Hyslop

No, unfortunately, yeah.

38:30

Dave Almy

Grumble, grumble. All right, I'm with Ellen Hislop. She is the co founder of the Gist. Ellen, I really want to say thank you for spending the time today. But before I let you go, I'm going to put you in the lightning round of a series of unanticipated unexpected questions. Your job here is to give me the first thing that pops into your head. Are you ready to go?

38:50

Ellen Hyslop

Let's do it.

38:52

Dave Almy

All right, we're off. You are, as we've established, Canadian. Your initials are EH which is also a favorite Canadian suffix. Coincidence?

39:02

Ellen Hyslop

No.

39:03

Dave Almy

No, I didn't think so. Snack time. You're going with poutine or ketchup potato chips?

39:07

Ellen Hyslop

Poutine.

39:09

Dave Almy

Okay. Probably not a surprise there. What's your favorite piece of owned sports memorabilia?

39:14

Ellen Hyslop

I have signed Antropov jersey.

39:20

Dave Almy

That's pretty good. What is your PWHL expansion market?

39:27

Ellen Hyslop

Detroit.

39:28

Dave Almy

Oh, yeah. Good one. Most vehement sports disagreement you've ever gotten into?

39:36

Ellen Hyslop

Female athlete pay.

39:38

Dave Almy

Really Seems like a pretty straightforward one, but okay, that's just me. Go to concession order when you're going to a game.

39:46

Ellen Hyslop

Hot dog. But outside of the baseball stadium.

39:50

Dave Almy

You buy the hot dog outside the baseball stadium and walk it in or consume it before either.

39:57

Ellen Hyslop

It depends on the. It depends on the stadium that you're in. But most of them that you bring in food but the. You have to have the stadium sausage or hot dog outside in my opinion.

40:07

Dave Almy

All right. Best stadium hot dog outside you've ever had?

40:13

Ellen Hyslop

Fenway.

40:14

Dave Almy

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. There's no surprise there. As a Red Sox fan, I can speak to that. Okay, last one. It's a fantasy pick em. I'm gonna give you two scenarios. You can only choose one.

40:25

Ellen Hyslop

Okay.

40:25

Dave Almy

Right. Help Canada win the World cup as a soccer player or the gist growing bigger than espn.

40:34

Ellen Hyslop

The just growing bigger than espn.

40:38

Dave Almy

That was a no revenue that turned out to be more of a softball than I thought.

40:42

Ellen Hyslop

No, no. Canada needs a lot more help than what I could bring in, that's for sure.

40:46

Dave Almy

But you would win with them.

40:49

Ellen Hyslop

It would be sick.

40:51

Dave Almy

But you're sticking with your original answer.

40:53

Ellen Hyslop

Yeah, no, I'm sticking with the original answer. More of an impact. More of an impact that way.

40:57

Dave Almy

Ellen, I appreciate the time. Thanks so much.

40:59

Ellen Hyslop

Thanks for having me.