My Second Year at the Brew (and the path from media company to audience company)

Last July, I published a recap of my first year at Morning Brew. The Rev Org had 19 employees, and we were just starting to see marketing spends really come back after an incredibly difficult Q2 at the start of the pandemic. As I write this recap in July of 2021, I am proud to report that we’ve exponentially increased our headcount, revenue and products. And in doing so, we embraced the challenges that came with that growth and excelled. The TL;DR results from July ‘20 - July ‘21:

• 89% increase in the Revenue Org FTE headcount YoY (we will be close to 45 FTE by EOY/FY'21)
• 157% increase in booked revenue YoY (we will exceed $40m by EOY/FY'21)
• As of the 7/19/21, Morning Brew has over 3m subscribers and 121 total employees.

Headcount

We’re now at 36 FTEs in the Rev Org. And, we have 8 more on the job board). Here’s how we got there:

• As part of last year’s re-org, we hired three all-star Senior Directors in Brand Partnerships to oversee our new “pods” (categories) covering Consumer (Jackie Ruggiero), B2B (John Sills) and Finance (Alex St. Cin). Reporting directly to me, each of these sales leaders now has a full team of sellers doing incredible work. 
• Hired serious talent across the org to fill out pod-based teams in both Brand Partnerships (under Jackie, John, and Alex, respectively) and Account Management (under the leadership of Brew veteran Brittany Kaplan), as well as those with specific expertise in building out, packaging and producing branded content, sponsored content and everything in between. More on that below.
• As we looked at the burgeoning size of the creative side of the org, as well as the opportunity therein, we established the Creative Studio, and brought in the incredible Elyssa Starkman as VP, Head of Creative Studio. That part of the org now houses integrated marketing, content strategy, copywriting, branded content and production teams and capabilities, and is producing amazing award-winning work for our clients. 

We’re not done growing - make sure to keep an eye on our jobs site! 

Revenue

We continue to renew partners and bring in new ones with a relentless focus on our three uniques. These are quality, partnership, and results*. Some specifics:

• We survived last year, and thrived. We beat our (pre-pandemic) FY’20 revenue goal of $20m, and are on pace to eclipse $40m for FY’21.
• Our renewal rate has held strong at 70%+.
• Our CTRs have remained consistent alongside our audience growth.
• Our advertising and sponsorship revenue has never been more diversified, as the team continues to close and execute deals outside the inbox at an increasing rate.
• Thanks to the addition of Matt Resnick and his org to partner with mine, we implemented a ton of governance around pricing and inventory, which made a huge difference in our strategy and success.

Products

• We’ve sold into new Morning Brew franchises (Sidekick, Money Scoop), content initiatives (virtual events, B2B guides) and mediums (social, video) with great success.
• We absolutely crushed it in the sponsored and branded content spaces. If you haven’t already, please check out some of our work**, spanning B2C and B2B, listed at the bottom of this post.

If you want a deeper dive, our Director of Branded Content, Blake, capped off last year with a great rundown of some of our best performing ads in 2020 and why we’re good at advertising.

On a more personal note, I tried to increase the quantity and quality of my own thought leadership and content production. I’m particularly fond of the following:

• Podcast Interviews: with Dalia Strum and Pablo Henderson on the Law of Attraction vs Action, with Jacob Donnelly for IPG Media Lab’s Floor 9 show with Scott Elchison and Adam Simon on the Business of Newsletters and with Ben Fanning – How to Become a Thought Leader.
• Videos/Presentations: A video presentation I gave about "DTC Media and the 'Era of Delivery'", along with an accompanying Twitter thread and A Searchspring webinar on Branded Content Marketing.
• Twitter Threads/Posts: Thoughts on hiring and recruiting, B2B advertising done differently, On becoming a dad, Morning Brew having a “quantity of quality” in audience scale, The opportunity that comes with the evaporation of cookies in the ad industry, What I learned from failure (in receiving a PIP and wearing my heart on my sleeve).
• LinkedIn Posts: Collecting Dots series on LinkedIn, Thoughts on there being a better way to use content as advertising.

There is rarely good without bad. In our case, we saw adversity, banded together and emerged stronger. 

• We struggled with virtual, asynchronous and often text-first communication. But, we recognized we are all biologically programmed to experience negativity bias, and with that awareness, are all actively practicing better empathy and positive thinking when it comes to our communication and collaboration.
• We learned to be better managers, delegators and expectation-setters. Thanks to a great training by David McClements, we have new and better frameworks in place to ensure nothing is lost in translation and that managers can be the coaches that the team needs to succeed.
• We said goodbye to some teammates. This is incredibly hard to do, whether it’s their choice or yours, and especially when they are amazing people. However, not all people want to, or can, grow at the same rate in the same direction as the company. This is OK, and this type of attrition is natural. Approaching this with empathy is paramount.
• We found the right opportunities to say to say no. We’ve stopped working with some partners that didn’t align with our values and we’ve stopped working with others that were solely looking for scale and efficiency. We learned to lean into our audience being a “quantity of quality,” and truly valuable and worthy of a premium.

While we’ve certainly accomplished a lot, we’re still at the beginning of something unique and special. Opportunities, teams and products like ours do not come around often. We are ready. 2022 is going to be something special.

As always, reach out if you want to get in touch. I’m at jason@morningbrew.com.

-Jason

*Morning Brew’s Revenue Uniques

• Quality. We work hand-in-hand with all of our advertising partners to create and translate messaging so that it lives as natively and impactfully as possible on our platform. The work is all done in-house. 
• Partnership. All of Morning Brew employees care so deeply and completely about not only our purpose and mission, but also our partners and the people on the other side of the table/phone/computer screen. This shows in our follow-up ("flup") notes, relationships, client service and renewal rates. 
• Results. All would be for naught if our products, solutions and campaigns didn’t perform well for our partners. I believe this speaks to the power of our audience and creative as much as anything else.

**B2C & B2B Branded and Sponsored Content Highlights

• Walk in the Park (H&R Block; Pressboard’s winner for Finance branded content)
• Your Guide to Taxes in a Transformed Economy tax hub
• Fresh Invest custom podcast (Fidelity)
• A behind-the-scenes look from our Creative Director, Blake
• The Art of the Sign—Selling in a Digital World (DocuSign)
• Smooth Sailing: How We Soared to over 2.4 Million Subscribers (Sailthru) 
• There's A Gap In Your Revenue—Close It (Listrak) 
• The Less-Is-More Approach to HR (Paycom) 
• Four Tips to Better Your Brand's B2B Ads (LinkedIn Marketing Solutions)
• M1nute Money Masterclass (M1 Finance)
• Grind and Unwind with Alex Lieberman (HOKA) 
• The infamous “Butt Bulge” ad (Ridge Wallet)
• The infamous Slack B2B ad (Slack)
• Fact Vs. Fiction: Investing Edition (The Motley Fool) 
• A Quick-Hit on Marijuana Investing, Part I (The Motley Fool)
• Believe It or Not, Bitcoin Could Be Better Than Gold (The Motley Fool)  
• The funniest insurance ad you’ve ever read: (Policygenius)
• Behind the scenes Twitter thread on our Jobs Ohio partnership (Jobs Ohio)
• A very funny ad for high end furniture (Herman Miller)
• Sponsorship of Overlooked/Overhyped (Hubspot)
• Breaking down Silos (Asana)
• Kind words from Electric.AI’s founder & CEO about how well our ads work