Transcript 0:00 You come to me to find out what news actually matters. You are a guy who is paid to be prickly and opinionated. I wanted this product to exist. No one was going to make it, and so I had to do it myself. 0:11 What is the ethos that's missing from the rest of tech media that The Leverage purveys? Their job is to make you feel something. I view my job as to make you do something. 0:19 If my accuracy rate dipped under 85%, I would destroy this publication and shoot myself into the sun. You shouldn't trust your mind to people who are frequently incorrect. Tell me more about your audience. 0:29 People who can sign million-dollar checks is the type of reader that I want. Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast. 0:38 My name is Francis Zehrer, and today we're speaking with Evan Armstrong, creator of The Leverage, a newsletter covering the tech industry with roughly 35,000 subscribers. 0:47 Business is made up of some paid subscriptions, some advertising, and a consulting business. So good episode. Evan is a really smart, articulate guy. I enjoyed speaking to him. I think you will enjoy listening. 1:00 [gentle music] You never thought of yourself as a writer, you told me, and then in 2020, I believe it was, you were working at Substack. 1:06 You just worked there for a few months, but you started writing to sort of dog food the product, and people liked it. I think you wrote about dating app ethics. Mm-hmm. People like it. 1:15 You say, "Oh, well, I guess I'm okay at this. I keep doing it." 1:17 Start with this sort of spark to flame of you starting to write and then that sort of absorbing your professional identity or becoming your professional identity. 1:28 Yeah, I mean, I'd mostly thought of myself actually as a math guy. Like, I spent most of my day in spreadsheets and doing analysis, um, and like I never sent anything, wrote anything longer than like a 50-word email. 1:39 Um, it just wasn't what I did. 1:40 And then while I was at Substack, I, like you said, I just dog food the product, and I found out I had this secret talent that was so secret I didn't even know about it, and I could write, and people liked what I said. 1:51 And, you know, looking back now that I'm multiple years into this journey, uh, and I read my first few essays are really bad. Um, but they felt really good at the time. Mm. 2:00 Um, and so now, like, it just kinda took over my life, and I found that after I finished my day shift doing startups, I would be writing until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. 2:09 And, um, I realized that this was, like, what I'd much rather be doing than doing startups. Okay. And you started a newsletter and- Mm-hmm... sold it. What was that newsletter? 2:19 And then, I mean, and, and kind of the next part of the chapter is then you're at Every for a few years. Is the newsletter you started, did you s- did you sell it to Every? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, so it was called [laughs] 2:30 man, I'm so embarrassed by what I made at this point in my li- in my writing career, but it was called People Speak. 2:35 And it was just, like, me grappling with the implications of technology being the most powerful sector in the world. Um, and it was more sociological and theoretical than, like, what my current writing is- Mm... 2:47 which is much more pragmatic. And so I, that was, like, what I was doing and blogging with on the side. 2:52 And then I met the guys at Every, I met Nathan and Dan, and kinda conversations just progressed, and they said, "Why don't you do what you're doing and come here internally?" 3:01 Um, and 'cause I had written a guest post for Every that had done quite well. Mm. Um, and they're like, "Oh, actually we think this guy has the juice." Um, and so they, like, bought this publication. 3:12 I mean, it was very small. But it was just- Yeah... like a little acqui-hire to bring me in. And, uh, then I was just there for the next couple years through every twist and turn at, at Every. Every twist and turn. 3:22 Was, so it was basically like a small signing bonus, just, "Come on, come work for us." Yeah. Yeah. It sound, uh, like it's... I, I, when you hear acquisition, you think Lambos. You should more think- [laughs]... 3:32 like, I, I got fancy Mexican to celebrate, you know? Like [laughs] it wa- it was not a big deal. It was more just, um, them taking a bet on me as this very unproven writing talent. And so I'll always be grateful. 3:44 What, what year was that? How many years into you writing was that? I'm gonna say I'm, I had only been writing like maybe a year, year and a half. 3:51 And, like, by writing, like, it used to be agony to publish every two weeks or three weeks. [laughs] Like, it, it was, I was very, very slow. Um, and so I was just really unproven. Um- Mm... 4:01 and they just took a big bet on me, um, to their credit, and they, they were right, uh, [laughs] with that bet. But it was a, it was a very risky one at the time. So you're there for, is it four years, three years? 4:14 Yeah, something like that. Why did you leave? You left about a year ago. Why did you leave? Um, a couple things. I, you know, I saw what was coming in, like, creator startups. Like, I knew- Mm... 4:27 what was gonna happen to creatives, where, like, if you are part of a larger publication, your content is just going to decrease in value. 4:35 Like, there's just a disintermediation of that relationship between you and your fans. It, the, the economics are going to get worse. 4:43 Um, and Every correctly identified this trend and realized, like, "Hey, we need to do media, but we also need to do software and consulting." 4:54 And I thought to myself, if I'm gonna go do software and consulting, then I'll go do software and consulting, and I'll go get, like I'll do it in a major way. 5:04 Um, but I still had this, like, pipe dream of wanting to be a writer. Like, that's what I wanted- Mm... to write more than I wanted to do SaaS again. 5:12 And so at that point, I now had the skills to publish, like you said, multiple times a week. 5:17 I had a large fan base after all these years of being at Every, and I thought if there ever was a moment to jump before AI models get good enough, uh, now's the time. And, you know, so far that bet was correct. Okay. 5:30 We'll get back into the writing in a little bit. Tell me about the process of transitioning from Every to The Leverage. 5:35 How long in advance did you know that you were gonna do this, and what did you do to prepare for that switch? Um, I th- I think some part of me always knew that I'd go independent again. 5:44 Like, you're never, uh, like, as a, if you're a media person, you're never somewhere forever. And so you have to know, like you have to have some transition plan in the back of your head. 5:53 And, um, so I always knew, and I figured that, like, the core skill set I needed was to be able to write high-quality-... 6:02 uh, posts multiple times a week, and it took me, I, I mean, it took me three to four years of hard work before I could say I could do that Hmm Um, and that was about 18 months or so ago. 6:16 And then right wh- right as I hit that point, um, we had, uh, we, we had our first, and s- my wife and I. 6:24 And so, you know, when you have your, your baby, you're just kinda, like, sitting there looking at it, and you're like, "What do I wanna do?" Like [laughs] how am I... 6:30 What kind of life do I wanna build for this little one? Yeah. And, and then the final step was this, like Every's business for the first couple years, like we'd done, we had tried a million different things. 6:39 It was hard to make working, but we had finally done it. Like, we had, like, we had kinda cracked the code. Like, the path forward was clear. And so it didn't feel like me leaving would completely sink the ship. 6:49 Um, and I was like, "Okay, this c- this company is on stable enough footing that I feel like I've done my duty, and I've, like, I've honored, like, these commitments I've made to my teammates. 6:58 Um, and I have the skillsets to be independent." Hmm. 7:01 And, um, Dan, who's the CEO and co-founder, like to his credit, like when I told him, was like immediately w- like wanted to support me, did, uh, went out of his way to do right by me, um, which I just really appreciate. 7:14 So how much of your audience do you think came along with you? Were you promoting, you know, "Here's The Leverage. I'm gonna be switching to this. Come follow me"? How was that transition? 7:22 That's obviously, like, the really important asset that you need to take with you. Yeah, I, you know, I think it was about 30,000 people, uh, ended up joining from over there, which was quite large. 7:32 We did, uh, uh, we did, we did, like a... [laughs] We called it the Kobe farewell tour. [laughs] You know? Like, I made an announcement. Like, they linked out to it. I tweeted. Lots of pe- you know. 7:42 Um, and it, I'm very, very grateful to, like, all the people that came and followed. Yeah. So the, your audience growth story, uh, bear with me a second. 7:50 You, you have 35,000, roughly, free subscribers now, and you wrote about this growth and contraction in your one-year anniversary post of The Leverage- Yeah... Has Yet To Die about a month ago, two months ago maybe now. 8:00 Um, basically from launch to the end of July, you grew at speed. I- the angle is very sharp. It's, you, you could not hike up that if it was, if it was a mountain. 8:10 Uh, and then it drops, and this initial growth, you said, was from lots of people sharing the newsletter, friend of the publication recommending it in the Substack network, what you were just saying about people coming from Every. 8:19 And then the audience contracted for about six months. It looked like it dropped a lot, and the, the, um, the actual numbers of subscribers are not on that chart, but it's very clear that it dropped a lot. 8:29 And then you note three things that turned contraction back to growth, which was regular posting across X, LinkedIn, and YouTube, simply locking in, as you say, and then your audience sharing the work. 8:39 You credit the audience. Can you tell us a bit about this story, this contraction to eventual regrowth? I think this is something that a lot of people experience and [laughs] 8:50 probably want to know what it's like to go through and, and, and course correct. Yeah. 8:55 I, I think it, it's interesting because, uh, on the revenue chart, while my audience is contracting, the subscription revenue is actually slowly ticking up- Hmm... and the advertising revenue is going up as well. 9:07 And so I- I kind of, like at the time, how I, like, emotionally consoled myself is I viewed it as a culling of the herd, where like- Yeah... 9:14 this initial couple months of growth, there's just a bunch of randos stopping by 'cause they'd heard about it. And, uh, they weren't actually all that engaged or that organic of an audience. 9:24 And th- th- that was how I consoled myself. But by the end of the year, I was like, "Uh-oh." Like [laughs] I mean, it, it does, I don't know if it's slowing down. 9:31 It started to just slow down, and then it kinda turned the corner in the new year. Um, which I, it really was due to lock... Like, I just got better. 9:40 I think as writers we are really good at convincing ourselves of anything because we're articulate and convincing people. Mm-hmm. And so, like, we are really good at cope. 9:49 And, like, if your product is shrinking, um, like if your users are shrinking, it's because your product isn't good enough. Like, you can't... Like, that's it. Like, your business sucks. 9:58 And it's tempting to, like, say other things. And I think looking back, like, there was this culling of the herd and, but really it was just, like, I wasn't working hard enough. I wasn't- Hmm... that locked in. 10:08 My product wasn't good enough. When you say you're not working hard enough, you weren't locked in enough, like, what, what, what, what does that actually mean? Like, you weren't working long enough hours? 10:15 You weren't looking for good enough sources? You weren't, like, asking friends and peers to, like, review your work and give opinions on it? Like, what, what tangibly does it mean to lock in more in that way? 10:25 I know this is not a useful answer, but it's probably more emotional than anything else. I, I have- Hmm... I am doing, um, more second shifts, you know, after my daughter goes down. 10:35 Like, I'll do, like, a 7:30 to 11:00 or 7:30 to midnight quite a few, quite a few nights a week. Um, and I do more of those this year than I did- Yeah... last year. But I honestly think that, that isn't the big thing. 10:48 The big thing is that I approach each piece in the right emotional state of mind- Hmm... which allows me to be more clear in my arguments, more interesting in my insights, and that's the big thing is, like, that focus. 11:02 And it's, so the time is probably more, and the effort's more, but it's also the focus. Decision-making ability too is what you're describing. Yeah, I think so. I, I, I think that's a fair way to say it. 11:12 But it, it really was just, like, I think those first six months I was so panicked trying to hold everything together. And then, um, 11:20 uh, the other thing that changed too is in December the, the models finally got good enough to really do agentic workflows. Mm-hmm. 11:27 And so I could start automating more of the things that were draining my energy that weren't net productive for the firm. 11:33 And so that, that helped a lot, was being able to, like, automate a bunch of stuff that was bu- bugging me- Yeah... that I had to do previously. 11:39 So a f- a few things to get into here, but one, a friend of the pod, former guest Matt Brown, who runs the Extra Points newsletter, he has, he had this great line when I interviewed him that was like, uh, 11:50 you know, "Audience numbers don't matter." He was particularly talking about people, like, selling newsletters on Reddit and such, and he said, "Audience growth doesn't matter. 11:57 The Stripe deposit is the only, the only metric that matters at the end of the month." Right? 12:02 Which is just to say you were saying that your audience may have been going down, but the, your, your business in terms of money in was improving and was always getting better. 12:11 Do you think there's a ceiling on your audience? Is that or, I, that's, I think I ask people that sometimes they don't necessarily think about. But do you see a specific ceiling on your audience? I mean, yeah, of course. 12:22 Yeah, like I, I would very much like to have a ceiling on the audience. I'm- Mm-hmm... I'm more interested in the quality than the quantity here. 12:28 Um, we haven't talked, like, too much about the, what The Leverage's audience is or anything yet, but- Yeah... basically, I look for people who can sign million-dollar checks is- Hmm... the type of reader that I want. 12:38 Um, and these are, uh, venture capital investors, people running large organizations within tech companies, and founders. And I want to earn the right to be in their inbox. 12:50 Um, and so, so, like, what I think about who my audience is, like, there's not that many of those people on the planet. Um, and I, it's, you know, I'm not running, like, the, like, a points newsletter or a- [laughs]... 13:02 you know, pop culture. Like, uh, no. But, you know, the peers for me, like, you know, Lenny, um, he has I think over a million subscribers, and I, I'm like, "Yeah, okay, a million." I, I got a long ways to go. 13:15 Like, but, like, people who are interested in reading Lenny's newsletter are probably interested in reading mine. Um- Yeah... so, uh, I'm not super worried about top, like, top of the funnel at all. 13:24 I, the TBPN guys have a good line that I see, like, every couple weeks it feels like on the timeline, which is, you know, th- like, "Our audience is really 200,000 people, and we don't really expect to ever go beyond that." 13:36 Which I think is, I think is a smart thing to say. Um, let's talk about the business. So when we first spoke, you told me that consulting right now is about 60 to 70% of your income. 13:46 Subscriptions are about one to 2%, and it was implied that the rest is all advertising. Am I missing anything, or is that the, kind of the correct income mix? Um, it's not quite right. Um, I have essentially 14:00 three big levers of, uh, three, three big buckets of income. Subscriptions to the Substack newsletter, advertising to the subscript, uh, Stack newsletter, and then this broad bucket of consulting. 14:14 Um, and when I started The Leverage, I assumed that the first bucket of subscriptions to the newsletter would be 99% of it, and for the first, you know, it, it just has not turned that way out at all, where 14:29 now I would say subscriptions is probably about, uh, 25 to 30% of the revenue. Advertising m- is 25 to 30%, and then consulting makes up the rest. 14:44 But these consulting deals are very chunky and weird and, like, I'm, I'm not building a consulting practice. Yeah. It's just, like, things come up. And highly variable. Yeah, it's super variable. 14:53 Um, and I'd love for the day where, um, I don't have to do it anymore, or you have to pay me so much money that no one wants to hire me for it, you know? To, like, make it worth my time. 15:02 But in the, you know, I got a family, so I'm gonna obviously do what I need to do to pay the bills. 15:06 If you're a creator, you probably did not get into this to spend hours uploading files, writing tags, organizing assets, and digging through analytics. That's why OpenVideo built an MCP server just for creators. 15:17 It lets an AI agent manage the operational side of your video business from a single prompt. Uploading, tagging, organizing, and analyzing your entire channel for you. 15:26 And unlike traditional platforms, it all happens on infrastructure you control. So let AI do the busywork while you do the important work of creating content your audience can't live without. 15:37 See how you can do more with AI at open.video/mcp. That's open.video/mcp. 15:46 So your subscription product is priced at $15 a month or $145 a year discounted rate, or there's that $500 per year founding member tier. So one, you know, $15 is, I would say, more expensive than the average. 16:02 Usually, I'm seeing a five or a 10. Clearly, this maps to what you're saying about you want people who are going to be able to sign a million-dollar check. 16:10 It's, it's, like, a very small signal, but I think it does filter for that a little bit. 16:14 Um, uh, so I'm interested in how you chose that price, as well as if you get many people actually signing up for that $500 per year member tier. Yeah. 16:24 So how I chose the price was, I think at the point, Every was, uh, 20 bucks a month back then, and then I, I ha- like, the number-one thing you can do as a creator is, like, to increase your income is increase your prices. 16:37 Always, always, always. Yeah. Like, you should be charging more. That's been my number-one experience. And, uh, $10 was too low, so I just went eh, and like- [laughs]... 16:46 you know, put my finger in the wind and said, "15 sounds about right." 16:50 And, um, yeah, the, I, I, well, there wasn't a ton of sophisticated analysis, and it is, like, it's more expensive than New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. 16:58 And I decided that I'd rather have an expensive product that I know is high enough quality that people will pay for it. And I look forward to getting to the point where, like, I can charge more. 17:09 Like, I would love to charge $30 or $50, or, like, I just wanna keep raising the, the price and keep my, you know, my paid-to-free ratio at about right. Mm-hmm. 17:17 And so if my paid ratio starts getting too high, then I'm gonna increase the price and churn some people and see what happens. Um, but we're not there yet. Yeah. 17:24 And then on, on the m- the $500 founding member tier, which I think- Oh, yeah... the only difference there is it really comes with, like, a quarterly or monthly investor update. Um, have- Yeah... 17:33 people ever signed up for that? It, it hasn't, the, it, it hasn't really, uh, turned into that. Like, I thought when I started the founders tier it was like, "Oh, it's gonna, I'll do all these things." 17:40 And it turns out that's not what people really want. Hmm. They really just wanna support me, and a lot of times, um, like, the people who are spending the $500 a month, like, I'm incredibly grateful to them. I know them. 17:51 And, um, a lot of times it's people who are s- uh, wealthy enough that $500 a month feels like $15. Do- Yeah. [laughs] $500 a year feels like $15. [laughs] It's, it's all the same to them. 18:01 Um, and they just, like, support, they wanna support my work as I'm getting started. 18:04 You know, I, I'm fortunate that my reader base are people who are very passionate about entrepreneurship and building something new, and, like, uh, the ethos that I try to represent with The Leverage is something that is missing in tech- Uh, in technology. 18:17 Mm. And so people who want to see something like what I'm trying to make in the world are very supportive of me in that way. What is the ethos that's missing from the rest of tech media that The Leverage purveys? 18:27 I try to look at it, uh, in a balanced and beautiful way, in that, like, uh, most technology publications are captured by- Mm... 18:38 uh, advertiser interests or subscriber interests or, like, they, there's so much money to be had in other ways that it's really hard to just be analytically neutral. 18:47 Um, there's just not that, there's, there's just not that much to it. 18:50 And even the ones that are more analytically neutral, like, when you read their work, do you f- like, is there s- [laughs] sorry to go back to, to, like, but is there, like, this elevation of the human spirit? Mm. 19:00 Is there a strong moral stance, or is it just, like, neutral stock reports? And so I try to strike this really narrow, narrow path between analytically rigorous... 19:11 Like, when you read something from me, when I tell you something's gonna happen, that shit happens. Um, and also, as you're reading it, does the prose delight you? Does each word- Mm... 19:20 like, d- feel like a delectable treat? And, like, no one, like, no one really wants that. Like, like, that's something that I want to exist in the world. Yeah. 19:29 And I just kept waiting for someone to make it, and no one did. And that was, like, ultimately, like, the, when you say, "Why'd you start The Leverage?" is 'cause, like, I wanted this product to exist. 19:37 No one was going to make it, and so I had to do it myself. This, so this makes me think of something from your, from The Leverage's About page, which I'm gonna read this, this quote in full. 19:46 "My goal isn't just analysis, it's helping you build taste. I want you to feel what comes next, the way a great investor senses momentum before the chart shows it. 19:55 That demands rigor, beauty, curation, individualism, and the kind of curiosity The New York Times or TechCrunch can't provide. 20:01 If I do my job, every sentence will be delightful, and every mote of analysis will be insightful." 20:07 And so when I read that, I mean, the question I immediately wanted to ask you was, I think, I mean, TechCrunch is maybe a little bit more commodity, but I think New York Times does have these more individualistic, curious voices. 20:18 I mean, it's obviously, it's a huge company, but there are some of these voices. So I, I just wa- I, I mean, I think you're also, like, saying, like, more broadly. 20:24 Th- those are just two names, but, like, other media companies more broadly, and I just wanna push you once more on this in, like, in as much as what you're purveying is not possible at some larger media companies that employ columnists. 20:39 Anyone who is spooky right about tech markets, like what the Leverage is trying to be, would make significantly more money doing anything else, right? 20:47 [laughs] Like, I really, like, if I decided to go join a VC fund- Yeah... or, like, I, a lot of my clients in the past have been hedge funds or large private equity groups. Like, I could just go do that. 20:57 Like, I should j- I should be deploying capital, right? Like, I should. But, um, I, I just don't care. 21:03 Like, I just, like, I wanna pay for my bills and, like, fully fund my retirement accounts each year, but beyond that, like, I j- it's just not that interesting to me. 21:09 Money is not, money is just a signal of, like, what's happening in the world and where people's values are. But, like- Mm-hmm... the idea of being, um, crazy rich and having a yacht has zero appeal to me. Zero. 21:22 And so, like, that's, like, and there's just not that many people in the world. Like, the, uh, the j- the technology reporters at The New York Times, for example, I deeply respect. They do great work. 21:32 They source interesting stuff. But they are, their job is mostly scoops. Mm. And my job is to tell you what those scoops mean. 21:41 Um, I'm, like, a, I'm a bottom-feeder on the bott- like, kinda taking the scraps from what all these other publications are creating, and I'm assembling it into something new. Like, I j- it would- So, yeah. 21:51 W- a couple things here. I wanna, sorry to interrupt you, but th- this, I mean, you were saying earlier that people pay you because they wanna support you. 21:56 And I think that's what I see among any creators, newsletter, in- indie media people that I speak to, is there's two reasons audiences tend to pay. One is for exclusive information, scoops. 22:07 The other is for, is, is really just to support this person, and obviously there are way fewer giving scoops, way fewer people giving scoops than there are people providing opinions on that scoops. 22:17 And so people will pay their favorite opinion purveyors who filter those scoops directly to them, and maybe w- they will, they will forgo paying the scoopers, if that makes sense. 22:27 You're, you're, you're, you're kind of proving this, this pattern, I see. Yeah. I, I think I w- I would probably delineate scoops from opinions from analysis, and I sell the third bucket. Like- Yeah... 22:40 I am gonna be opinionated. Like, I am going to take a stance, but it will be analytically rigorous and grounded in data and f- um, and frameworks. 22:47 Versus, like, opinion writers, like, their job is to make you feel something. Yeah. I view my job as to make you do something. 22:53 Like, you should look, you should finish a piece of my anal- like, s- any essay I write, you should finish and like, "Okay, I now need to do X and Y thing in my portfolio, in my career, in my company. 23:04 What, like, the world is different now, and I understand it because of Evan." Um- Yeah... and I have done scoops, like, tr- like, classic journalist scoops on, like, various acquisitions. 23:13 And they don't actually really change my business all that materially. Like, I'll get a lot of, uh, views. I might add a bunch of subscribers. 23:21 But, like, uh, they're not necessarily, like, that's not, I'm not trying to get a news audience. Like, new- there's better places to get your news. You know, you come to me to find out what news actually matters. Yeah. 23:32 I m- I really like the way you delineate between analysis and opinion, because I think there's also an argument to be made that, you know, analysis is just, like, opinion hedged as much as possible. No. 23:46 I, I d- I don't think that's correct. Um, because, uh, that's, that's assuming, like, oh, I, there's some truth in the world, but I use the math to, like, uh, make you believe the truth. Mm. 23:57 When actually, the math is how we determine what the truth is. Uh, like, I go in, I don't have strong opinions about most of my subjects. I just go in and try to do whatever the data says. Mm. 24:07 Um, and so, like, no, I, I, I reject that view. [laughs] This is, this is a very math background guy, uh, uh, take on this. 24:14 [laughs] Well, I- I am, I am someone who is, uh, like, I'm much more- This is, we don't have to get so deep into this, 'cause I think this is just, like, a, a different ways of viewing the world. 24:22 But for me it's like I'm a very subjectivity-minded person, and I'm always very interested in the different subjectivities of different people, rather than the hunt for objectivity. Yeah. 24:32 I mean, if I was writing about people, then I think I would be more of your view. But, but I write about companies. Yeah. And companies have a scorecard. 24:39 Uh, that's what makes them beautiful, is like they are the largest organization on the planet that are judged on universal metrics. 24:45 And so that means that we can do clean comparisons, and that we can understand them to a degree that you could never understand any other type of, uh, organization of human beings on the planet. 24:53 So that's what makes business such a f- like, my, I got a sociology degree in college. Yeah. 24:58 That's what makes business such a sociological study, is it's the only place in the world where we all agree on, like, how we define their success. 25:05 Case in point, this is why people, uh, come and pay you for your analysis. So back to the ways you make your money, the advertising business, right? 25:12 You were saying that one advantage you have of, is you're not captured by advertisers. Who are the advertisers you're typically working for or working with? 25:19 Uh, I, my sponsors have, are mostly what I would consider tasteful, high-quality technology companies. Um, places like Notion, Framer, m- uh, Mercury. Um, Box has been a recent sponsor. 25:33 Uh, basically a- anyone who's trying to build out AI native products- Hmm... um, is, been a sponsor of the newsletter. 25:40 And part of the reason why I'm, I'm not captured by it is I would say the vast, the vast majority of my sales are handled by an agency that represents me. Oh. 25:50 Um, and it's their job to go do that stuff, and I just like, "Okay, great." 25:54 You know, as long as, like, as long as the product, like, I am familiar with the product, uh, I'll usually know someone at the C-suite of these companies. 26:03 And so, like, I w- there are advertisers I will reject if I don't, I'm like, "Actually, like, they look good but they're not good." Um- [laughs] 26:11 And, um, so anyways, so like, like, that's, uh, I, I just have a step away from it. Hmm. And, like, I would, I just don't care. Like, [laughs] I know this is funny because I write about money a lot. I just, I don't care. 26:22 [laughs] Like, my bills are paid, my retirement is funded, and, like, anything beyond that is just, like, bonus. Um- Yeah... and so, like, if it came to the point where, like, I'm just not beholden to them. 26:33 And it's why, like, I will always have a subscription product, because it gives me this baseline predictable cushion that allows me to not have to stress about, like, I gotta sell ad deals. 26:43 Now, uh, as my agency will tell you, I'm an asshole. I'm like, "What's our fill rate? Why, where's the pipeline?" Like, I, I do, I am an operator. Like, I will, I want to run this business correctly. 26:55 But, uh, as far as, like, e- editorial, uh, any insight, they, they have no idea, and, like, I'll frequently publish things that I know my advertisers will dislike, but I don't care. Like, I don't know. 27:06 D- go advertise somewhere else if you want. 27:07 Uh- So the, the answer to any questions I kind of have about your advertising business is that it's mediated with a partner, which then allows you the distance to not, to, to risk, to not risk capture so much, and 27:22 just allows you to be more truly a writer. I mean, you're still an operator, but this is just sort of put aside for you. Yeah. And so we have two advertising products. 27:31 We have the first, which, on The Weekend Leverage, is a, about 150 words of copy, an image, and a CTA button. Mm-hmm. 27:37 Where people like to use it to, you know, if they have a new launch or some assets they wanna drive eyeballs towards. 27:42 And then the second is something called What's the Bet, which is, uh, a direct send product where the company will pay me to come in and in an editorially independent way analyze what they're doing. 27:57 Because, like, right now is the most exciting time in technology in history. Like, this is the most exciting and invigorating moment in, in our life. 28:03 And so, like, founders are making the most consequential bets of their entire life. And so it's really interesting to me and to my audience of, like, what are they betting on and why? 28:14 And so what, what it'll be is the What's the Bet is, "Here's the technology. Here's the strategic components of what they're betting on. Here's what the product does." 28:23 Uh, and so, and I'll sometimes review the product as well if it's something that I find interesting. 28:27 And then I'll be like, "And here's the competition and where their competition stacks up, and here's the differentiation." 28:32 And, like, they have no editorial oversight of what I'm going to say, but they're paying me to think about their company in a rigorous way. Yeah. 28:39 And, uh, I did the first one with Notion, and I just, like, made up that format, 'cause they were interested in a direct send. And the audience loved it. 28:48 Like, I added pa- I added, I think, like, a couple grand worth of paid subscribers- Wow... from the ad. Um, and as, it was really- Wait, wait, wait. Was the, was the ad free, or was it for- Yes... only paid subscribers? 28:58 Okay. Yeah. It was, ad was free, and then people liked it so much that they then became paid subscribers, uh, to the Leverage. And I was like, "Oh, wow. I d- like, this is a real signal. People really like this." 29:10 And we have kept doing more of them, and they are just really, really performant, uh, for the advertiser and the audience. Every time I send one, the audience is like, "I love this. 29:18 This is, like, the best ad in the world." Um- Yeah... 29:21 and so it's, it's worked way better than I ever thought possible, and allows me to be, like, the whole point is that I'm editorially independent, and they don't get to say what I say. 29:29 Uh, you know, I just get to be, I get to do my thing, but I get to be paid for it. It's a great product. So this is, this is a good bridge to your consulting product, right? 29:38 Which you've said you don't really wanna be a consultant. You didn't set out to be a consultant, but it's been a good way to make money for you and your family. The newsletter seems to act as top of funnel. 29:46 You were mentioning earlier that people will come into your inbox, replies to a newsletter, asking about your consulting services. 29:52 Just a brief overview, what types of projects are you doing, what kind of companies are you serving, and what sort of problems are you being asked to solve or contribute to the solution? Yeah. 30:02 So right now the work has kind of fallen, um... The most, the most basic one is, like, uh, help me publish kickass content. Um- Hmm... 30:12 where I'll, it'll be, like, I'll be working with, uh, a managing partner at a large fund or, um, like, a founder, and they're like, "I know, I want to go direct. I want to get my word out there, but I suck." 30:25 Uh, help me not suck. 30:27 And so I- I'll come in, I'll, you know, I'll just come in for a few weeks, I'll edit a few posts of them, to help them just kind of find their voice more than anything else, and my role is in the editor realm. 30:38 Um, and those are fun because a lot of times I learn about a sector of the world, and like I've done that for everything from private equity funds that invest in sports, to large platform funds, um, in technology, to all sorts of just really interesting, uh, projects. 30:52 The second is comms work, um, where they have an upcoming launch and they need me to help them position it, to sell it, to understand it, and like, "We have this new AI product, but like we- how do we stand out?" 31:05 And so they want my editorial eye to come in, and then because I was an operator, I can also say, "Okay, you need to fix this part of your process. Here's these people." Like, "Here's what you need to do for the launch." 31:14 Um, and so I could c- I dip more into my operating tool set for those sort of deals. Um, and those are much rarer because they're more involved, um, and I don't wanna do too many of them. 31:25 But they- they're fun, what I do agree. And then the last is, like, pure strategy consulting- Mm... where like my startup has a problem, like classic McKinsey s- type thinking and work. 31:35 If you're building your whole video business on platforms like YouTube, here's the uncomfortable truth: They own the audience relationship, not you. That's where Open Video comes in. 31:43 It lets you host your videos on your own domain, under your own brand, so you control the channel, the data, and the direct connection to your viewers. 31:51 And now, with the new Open Video MCP server, you can do even more without taking your focus off of your content. 31:57 With their MCP server, an AI agent can upload, tag, organize, and even analyze your entire video library from a single prompt. Your video stays yours, the busy work gets automated, and you can focus on creating. 32:09 Check out Open Video for all the details. That's open.video. Yeah. 32:15 Okay, this brings me then to, uh, my- my read on your overall business across all three business lines here, consulting, advertising, uh, paid subscriptions, like, m- how I would describe you to somebody if I'm, you know, talking to somebody lat- later today about what I did today, is basically you are a guy who is paid to be prickly and opinionated. 32:34 And I would say, too, that even in this conversation, I interview people every week, you are articulate and efficient in the way that you communicate. You have these hard opinions. 32:44 You're good at getting them across quickly. 32:46 That we're probably gonna, I mean, you know, to pull back the curtain for a second for the listener, we're probably gonna take, I don't know, maybe like 25% less long to record this one than the average interview because you are succinct. 32:57 And then this goes back to that, um, our, you know, little conversation about opinion versus analysis, right? 33:02 Like, it's that confidence that what you're doing is analysis and is accurate analysis and is not based in opinion. 33:07 That is why people pay you across all three of these business lines, and this is why you're well-suited to this independence, too, is because it allows you, it- it- it makes your opinions feel more valid. 33:20 It makes your analysis feel more valid perhaps to your various customers. 33:24 And, um, yeah, that's basically, that's how I'm seeing this, is you are an opinionated guy who is efficient in expressing these opinions and confident in doing so. Yeah. And I would add, I- I appreciate that, thank you. 33:38 Um, but I- I would add also that I'm, uh, spooky right. Uh, I know that sounds- Mm... like an asshole thing, an overconfident thing to say, but let me convince you that that is correct. 33:47 Uh, so when I first started my writing online- Mm... it was right during the crypto craze. Yeah. And all these people I knew were like, "This is the future. We're gonna..." You know, whatever. 33:58 Like, "This is gonna change everything." And I was skeptical from the- the get-go. I- I, like I did the math and it just never made sense. 34:06 I thought stable coins were a good idea, and I was, but like all this other stuff, like the Bored Apes, all the stuff made no sense to me whatsoever. 34:13 And I watched those people make millions of dollars and they get audiences 10 times the size of mine, and that really, really bugged me. Like, it really bugged me. 34:22 Um, 'cause as like I- I value truth and accuracy above all else. Mm-hmm. And 34:29 that those guys not only made all that money, and then as soon as crypto started to wind down, they pivoted to, you know, take your pick of whatever trend, and the, like, no one seemed to care. It really bugged me. 34:41 And so I made a promise to myself where I would never do that. And so at the end of, uh, when I was at Every, I did it at the end of every calendar year. 34:50 I would call, I'd publish a post called Should You Fire This Newsletter? 34:54 [laughs] Where I would analyze every claim I had made over the past year, and I said, before I did this analysis, I said, "If I got over, uh, if I, my accuracy rate dipped under 85%, I would destroy this publication and shoot myself into the sun, um, and end it all." 35:09 Like- like I just would never do that. [laughs] Like it, it, like you shouldn't read, you shouldn't trust your mind to people who are c- uh, frequently incorrect. Like you just- Mm-hmm... shouldn't do it. 35:19 Um, and so I take that trust that my readers put in me really, really seriously. Um, and so, so far, like the publication's still here. 35:27 We've still been over 85% right, and I just did the same analysis again in that post you mentioned of like, uh, the leverage has yet to die. Well, wait, wait, wait. I- I pulled it up. I have some of the numbers. 35:36 So I'll read it off. Yeah. So I'm gonna quote you. You say, "I used Claude to grade every post since my launch on a one to five scale, where five means vindicated and one means falsified. 35:45 Weekend Leverage editions got broken out into individual claims since each one usually makes four to five distinct calls. Posts published less than 60 days ago got excluded. Not enough time to evaluate. 35:54 That left 131 graded claims across 86 essays, plus 13 Weekend Leverage editions." So you graded, or Claude graded 48 right, full five. 49, four, mostly right. Only eight, three, mixed. Two, mostly wrong. 36:12 Is really, or I mean, excuse me, it's three mostly wrong, and two is the number. W- uh, zero, totally wrong. And then 23, too recent, not a forecast. 36:20 So again, like this, this confidence and ability that in retrospect i- is proven to be prophecy is what people come to you for. I think so. 36:32 Like, I, I, if, in the post, I actually argue that, um, my accuracy is probably the least valuable thing to my readers. Like- Mm... like readers just don't think about this stuff. Like, this- Yeah... they ju- they don't. 36:43 Uh, it's more, uh, like a moral obligation to myself that I hold myself to here. Like, I just wanna be right. I wanna be right for these people. 36:51 Um, but it does not drive, I think, it d- I, I can empirically say that it does not drive additional revenue. 36:58 Like, if I'm spooky right, like, I don't see, like, some big, uh, jump in re- in, like, revenue or free subscribers. Um, it's just, uh, a long-term, like, where I want to be and, like, what I want to do. 37:10 Well, see, that's, that's the point for my argument that all analysis is opinion, is that people come to you for your opinion, and whether or not it's correct matters less. Yeah, I, I, I think that can be fair. 37:20 Like, you could say, "Hey, people aren't paying you for the analysis," which I think is right- Well, they are, they are, they are. 37:25 But, like, it's just, like, this is where it's like, is it a- they are paying you for that. But it's just a matter of m- I mean, I'm kind of half jokingly saying, like, you know, is it opinion, is it analysis? 37:33 They're paying you for that, whichever one we call it. I think they're paying for my voice- Mm... uh, and my point of view of the world. 37:40 Um, like how I am- how I think about things and how I talk about them is what they care about. 37:45 And what I choose to talk about, and whether I am right about what I am talking about seems to be less important, which I never would've predicted- [laughs]... when I started my career. 37:54 'Cause that, that's the thing that matters to me. Like, that is the number one thing. Like, if you- Yeah... are, if you are c- constantly making false calls or, or dis- deceiving your audience, I hate you. 38:04 And, like, I really d- I, I, I hate you, and I don't think you should be a creator. And, um, like, a- anyways, like, and there's a lot of people like that, in tech- Yeah... and elsewhere. Mm-hmm. 38:14 Um, and so, like, I just, uh, my business is worse for it, but I just have, like, a moral obligation to try to do right by these people who have trusted me with their inbox and with their attention. I respect that. 38:25 Um, so you used Claude to create this grading system, and I'm a little interested in that. 38:30 But, uh, another quote from this, one of your reflection piece, you write, "In my own work, I've been very, very selective about how I use AI. 38:37 I use Claude as a research companion and copy editor, but it is never generating pieces wholesale. It allows my pieces to have more depth and quality while still being 100% my ideas." 38:48 I also use Claude for some research and editing, and, um, I'd, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you use it specifically, maybe starting with the, the skill you made for this grading system. Like, how... 39:00 Is it, is it going out and searching the internet for proof of these claims? Start with that. I'd honestly, to tell you about that one, I'd have to go back in. It's been two months. I don't quite remember how I made it. 39:10 That's okay. Um, but I can tell you, like, the general, like, how I use it for a piece. I think that's probably more useful- Yeah... uh, like 'cause I do that workflow much more frequently. 39:21 How, how does a piece come to be? Uh, typically, like, I start each day, I'll examine the news. I'll look at, uh, th- things that I'm thinking about. I'll exa- I'll answer e- readers', uh, emails and questions. 39:34 And during that, I'll just have, like, a thought bubble up, um, where I'm like, "This seems like this is an interesting question. Has someone answered this before?" 39:43 And, uh, more frequently than not, it has not been answered before or not been answered to my satisfaction. And I'll just start doing research, and so I'll work with Claude. 39:53 And I actually use ChatGPT a lot for this because I find that search function is- Hmm... right, at least right now as of, what is today? I actually haven't used it in a while. May 20th. Uh, May 20th- Mm... 40:02 ChatGPT is better at search, but that might change May 21st. Who knows? Um, um, so I'll, I'll use that to pull various sources, read through analyses. 40:10 Um, and then, uh, uh, th- like that's how I'll pull the research more efficiently. 40:16 You know, I used to do it, like I started writing and it was just like Google, and so this is just a much more efficient Googling process. 40:22 Um, I always have it pull the primary sources, and I read through the text myself. I don't, like, just trust whatever Claude says, 'cause it always misses nuance p- uh, on topics. 40:31 Um, and, and then I just get to work writing. Like, I, by that point, once I read all the sources, I know what I need to say. Yeah. Um, how about for editing? 40:40 I, I'll tell you quickly how I, how, like a basic way I use it. 40:43 I have like a, a Claude project that has a style guide, a few examples of, like, exemplary issues, the, a description of the audience, the goals I'm trying to achieve with each one. 40:53 And I'll, I'll put in a piece frequently while I'm writing it and just ask, like, "Is there anything in here that's redundant? 40:58 Any threads I'm missing from, like, the transcript of this interview that, you know, the audience will like?" Um, and, and then I'm, I'm never, like, taking, copying and pasting copy. 41:08 I'm, I'm just looking for like a, like a quick opinion. It's like a, it's like a poor man's actual editor telling me that this is bad or that I'm missing something, and then it's just something to react to. 41:17 So that's a b- a quick overview of how I'm using it as an editorial assistant. I, I don't quite do it for that. I'll sometimes, like, if I have, um... 41:27 Like the big- the biggest weakness I have as a writer is I am very poor at paywalls, which is ironic because I run a paywall publication. 41:33 [laughs] But, like, there is just some trick of the mind, of the soul to make someone good at, like, teasing and then, like, making you click the buy button, and I, I just don't have it. Like, I just don't. 41:45 I've accepted that that's who I am. And so what I did is I found a blog post by OnlyFans creators- Hmm... 'cause I figured who's the best people on paywalling on the planet? And I was like, cam girls. 41:56 Like, that's- Absolutely... that's who... Th- they're great at this. They can monetize anything. Um, and she talked about, like, her, how she thinks about paywalling and, like, what to make free and what to make paid. 42:07 And so when I finish a post, I will typically, like, try to write the paywall and put the paywall in where I think the argument makes sense, and then I, uh, created a skill on the basis of this blog post- Mm... 42:17 that I've edited and kind of adjusted over time. But I, then I'll apply the skill and say, "Does this paywall strategy fit the, um, like my paywall skill? Like, what have I written? Does it match the skill?" 42:28 And then I'll adjust the piece accordingly. And since I've done that, I've seen a material lift in my [laughs] paywall conversion rates. Um- That's awesome. Yeah. Shout out cam girls. Uh, like [laughs] 42:39 you, you have made this B2B, uh, analysis publications, uh, p- rate much higher. So, um, th- that's, that's like the... And I will, like- The, I, I won't... 42:50 Like, uh, what I'll do is typically is I'll, like, suggest a paragraph near the end- Yeah... of, and I'll go through. And like the writing is never good enough, but I can tell what it means to do. 43:00 And so, like, I'll change a word or two here, I'll remove a sentence, add a sentence, whatever. Um, and that's like the primary, like, editorial input I'll use, uh- Yeah... when I'm writing with, with this stuff. 43:11 That's really good. 43:12 Um, when we first spoke about doing this episode, you brought up sort of unprompted, you're like, "I don't know if I'm gonna be a good guest for this, 'cause my advice to anyone who's considering working as a creator, working in indie media is don't. 43:23 It sucks. It's too hard. It's not for everyone." You said, "If you have the skills to build any other type of company, do that." Mm-hmm. Which is funny because what you just provided was some good advice. 43:32 But also, I found this issue of Napkin Math from 2021 where you write, "You probably shouldn't work at a startup." 43:38 The TLDR, to quote is, "There's a romantic vision of startup employment that doesn't hold up under close scrutiny. Business model risk is extreme and the financial opportunity cost is significant." 43:48 So you seem to be implying that don't work at a startup, but even more, don't work as a creator, don't work as an indie media operator. Mm-hmm. All that being said, why have both of these types of work been so for you? 44:02 Uh, 'cause I'm a sicko. Like, I- [laughs] 'Cause like, you know? [laughs] I love this stuff. And, um, I think I'm just a fiercely independent person, and I s- I have done the big company thing and I was miserable. 44:13 I was just- Mm-hmm... miserable. So that's why I was attracted to startups, it's like I wanted to remake the world. I wanted, I wanted more of independence. 44:21 I didn't care about the financial risk because I had no children. I hadn't, I didn't have a... I wasn't married at that point. 44:26 I was just like in my 20s in the Bay Area, like, and I lived in a cheap place and I was like, "Yeah, let's, let's go for it. Let's, let's try to figure some stuff out." Um, so like I really... 44:36 But looking back, you know, my friends who made not that choice and all worked at Google, uh, are many multimillionaires now, and they're in their 30s. They'll be retired by the time they're 40, uh, if they so choose. 44:47 [laughs] Um, and like that's painful in some ways, but I, it was just like what wa- was right for me and what made me happy. But the math is very, very clear that you shouldn't work at a startup. Very clear. 44:59 Um, and, uh, as far, like when we're talking about why you shouldn't do indie media, uh, it's structural. Like media companies are like the restaurant business of the internet. Like it's just structurally bad. 45:13 And the only reason that, like, you see indie media businesses talk about like, "Here's how much money I made," is because it's interesting and you, you can envision yourself. 45:21 It's good content, but it's not actually g- uh, sound content, if that makes sense. That, I mean, shots fired and shots received. 45:29 [laughs] No, I mean like it's good con- Like you make good content that people are engaged with. Yeah. But like you, I mean, how many guests have you had on your show over time? Over, like, 115 or so. Yeah. 45:39 So you've had 150 people. I would imagine that the corpses of the companies that those 150 people have left along the way number in the tens of thousands, right? There are so- [laughs] So... 45:50 Uh, like, so you're, you're just taking the cream. It's like saying, "I'm gonna go work at startups and I'm gonna be the next Uber." Yeah. Or, "I'm gonna be the next OpenAI." 45:57 It, it, the odds are so far against you that like you can't- It's a power law thing that you're saying is even worse in indie media than it is in, in the startup ecosystem. Correct. 46:05 'Cause in the startup ecosystem you have the natural filtration mechanism of venture capital dollars. And so if you h- you know, you can just get de-risked along the way. 46:14 And when those businesses hit maturity, they are structurally superior. Like they're just, they, huge cash flows, great gross margins, the best businesses in the world. 46:22 When a media business hits maturity, it's still a shitty business. It's still low margin. It's still, it's a commodity complement to these big tech platforms. 46:32 Like there's a lot of reasons why this is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad business. Yeah. 46:36 Um, and like r- I choose restaurants as a comparison deliberately because there's low startup costs, everyone thinks they can do it, and, uh, the failure rate is over 99%. It's horrible. Um- Yeah. 46:48 Fitting, fitting bridge to the title of your one-year anniversary post from a few weeks back, which was The Leverage Has Yet to Die. Were it to die, what would be the cause of death? Uh, burnout. Uh- Mm... 47:02 like the business works, like it really does work, but I, I, requires because I make a lot of sacrifices to make it work. And, you know, I can envision myself doing this, 47:12 uh, in, for another year or two at this pace, but like the idea of t- still working at this pace in my 40s, you know, it's hard. That, that's really hard for me to envision. Um, so I would say that like 47:24 the biggest thing that fails is me. Like I- Mm... it's all key man risk. And a- another reason why indie media- Yeah... 47:29 indie media business is a bad key man risk, like if I burn out or like if I get depressed or if I get like really into like a TV show, the business hurts, right? 47:37 Like, I, like I am everything that makes this business great and terrible. And so like the, the company fails if I fail, which is not... 47:45 Like a good company should, uh, Warren Buffett has this quote where like a great company can be run by a ham sandwich. And like, uh, indie media requires you to operate at the very top decile of performance always- Mm... 47:57 in everything. And that's just, like that's very hard to run in the long term. Yeah. No, certainly. Last thing. Um, were it to live and thrive for let's say the next two years, so you make it- Mm-hmm... 48:08 to year three, what have you added? What have you changed? What are you doing that brings the leverage to the three-year mark? I think we could just keep doing it as is today and it would provide. 48:21 Um, I think the big thing is if you s- y- you know, listeners may think I'm an asshole and like ig- uh, reject this premise, but if you accept this premise that what I write is interesting and accurate, like the next, the, what you would wanna do is get more, get that interesting and accurate thoughts out to more people. 48:39 Mm-hmm. And, uh, newsletters are just not a very good format to like grow a media company. They're a middle or bottom funnel product. 48:48 And so like The Leverage, like we're just trying to figure out what the right top of funnel product is for me. Uh, we talked, I think we talked about YouTube on this call, but like we're doing YouTube now. 48:58 I would really like- The ends, like how I envision year three if this goes right is the YouTube channel is averaging, you know, 100,000 to a million views per video. 49:08 That acts as a, a generic top of funnel, like how, this is how the broader world learns about Evan is these video essays that I'm creating. 49:16 The middle of the funnel product is the newsletter where there's subscriptions and ads, and at the bottom of the funnel is consulting or some sort of like, some, some product where I can, uh, make the most amount of money per hour that I can possibly think of. 49:32 Most of my peers will start a venture fund. I don't know if I really wanna do that. Um, but maybe that's what it is, or it's consulting, or I don't know. But there'll be some bottom funnel high price SKU. 49:42 Um, that would be how it looks. 'Cause right now it's just like a newsletter that kinda like anemically grows, you know? Like, it's not very fast. Um, and so I, I'd really need to figure out like the top of funnel. 49:53 Now that like monetization works, we know people love it, like I'm getting asked to speak and consult l- with the right type of people. 50:00 So we, we have the bottom two figured out, and we need to figure out that top of the, of the funnel, um, which is the exact inverse. Most creators I think have the opposite problem. 50:09 Um, and so I need to get people, like how do I get this, all of this [laughs] in front of more people? Distribution. You need better distribution. You've got the product, you need better distribution. Correct. Correct. 50:19 Yeah. Which is the inverse. Most creators are like, "I'm d- a distribution king or queen, and I, I can't monetize well." And I monetize too well, and I have too little time to focus on distribution. 50:29 There you go making it harder for yourself yet again. Yes, always. Well, we'll end it right there. Evan, thank you so much. Okay, thank you. And listener, we'll see you next week. Hi there. My name's Tom. 50:41 I'm the producer of the Creator Spotlight podcast. I've just made a playlist on our YouTube channel of our top 10 episodes. 50:47 So whether you're new here or you've been watching and listening for a little while, check out that playlist to make sure you've seen and heard our top 10 most popular episodes. 50:56 I'll keep the playlist updated as the top 10 changes. If you're on YouTube, just click on that box over there. That's our top 10.
