Growth In Reverse (Newsletter Growth & Email Marketing)

AUDIO - Matt Johansen V1
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Matt Johansen: [00:00:00] He represented two newsletters of over a hundred thousand subscribers and then I was over there with 12.

Chenell Basilio: You were the downsell

Matt Johansen: and I was tired with that. People used to pay me to like hack into their companies and

Dylan Redekop: tell 'em how I did it. We're pretty prolific on short form video on all the platforms. So juggling that, following the news, creating the content, like how does that all work?

It's called Burning Out. No, I'm just kidding. So

Matt Johansen: yeah, I actually dislike over edited videos. What I have found, and this is really unfortunate and I'm sorry for everyone listening, but I have found, at least in my experience, that

Chenell Basilio: Matt, thanks for coming on the Growth and Reverse podcast.

Matt Johansen: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Excited to chat through, uh, your story. I know you've been through a lot of change recently. Um, so why don't you just start by kind of explaining. Who you are, what you do, and what your newsletter's about.

Matt Johansen: Yeah, absolutely. So Macho Hanson longtime, uh, cybersecurity practitioner, kind of like been a hands-on, uh, hacker for a long time. Early in my career, people used to pay me to [00:01:00] like hack into their companies and tell 'em how I did it, and then I kind of switched to the other side of things and actually helped, like, protect companies from hackers.

So like a very long like. 18 year career at this point in cybersecurity. And I kind of realized at some point that along that whole time that I was doing cybersecurity, I was also talking about it on the internet. Like, you couldn't shut me up if you tried. And so I was like, on the earliest forms of Twitter, uh, of LinkedIn, I was like.

I ran a blog back when that was cool. Um, I, uh, I've given just hundreds of conference presentations to, and like webinars. I was on a podcast before that was cool, uh, in, in the mid two thousands. And so, uh, yeah, I've been talking about it the whole time. I've, uh, decided to take it a little bit more seriously in, uh, in the last couple of years, uh, instead of just yapping on the internet and, and realized that I was actually pretty good at it and could, uh, could kind of make a career out of it.

So here I am.

Chenell Basilio: Nice. That's awesome. [00:02:00] Um, I love that people paid you to hack into their stuff. Oh

Matt Johansen: yeah. That's great. Got lots of those stories if you want. I know that's not this kind of podcast, but,

Chenell Basilio: oh, that's awesome. Uh, so now you run a newsletter called VUL Vulnerable. You. Right. Yeah. And you have what, 30,000 subscribers at this point?

I think

Matt Johansen: I'm gonna hit 30 K today. Dang. That's a pretty

Chenell Basilio: congrats,

Matt Johansen: pretty cool odometer flip I'm gonna watch today, so sweet.

Chenell Basilio: That's amazing.

Matt Johansen: Love it. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Um, and you started this in 2023, correct?

Matt Johansen: Yep.

Chenell Basilio: Nice. So that's a pretty quick, quick growth story there.

Matt Johansen: Not as quick as some of some of the, your blogs that you write, but uh, but yeah, it's like been a good, nice, steady upward and to the right graph.

So,

Chenell Basilio: so I guess just starting out, like when you launched the newsletter, like how were you growing it in the early days? Like what, what did that look like? Yeah,

Matt Johansen: so like I said, I, I mean, I was on Twitter since it was born. Um, I've been, I've been talking on the internet since I left the womb, and so I kind of have like a bit of a, uh, a bit of an audience.

Y you know, especially in [00:03:00] my industry. I kind of had a bit of an audience. I never really called it that 'cause I was never really using it as an audience. I just kind of existed publicly. And so I kind of had some bit of like industry clout, I guess you could say, that I could lean on early days. Kind of like my origin story a little bit on the newsletter is, like I said, I, I made a lot of content, did a lot of podcasting and talking about everything for like the vast majority of my career.

But then I went and actually worked for some of the big banks. So I was the head of security for a FinTech startup here in Austin that got acquired by Goldman Sachs. So like got forced into a big bank, uh, right because of that. And then, uh, I left Goldman and because some of my friends poached me at Bank of America and I decided to stay in banking and I was like, oh look, I'm kind of doing this security at big banks thing.

The thing that no one warned me about is when you get to a big bank, the week you get hired, they basically sit you down and say. Hey, you know that whole social media thing that you do? Forget about that. You're never allowed to do that again. Oh, you wanna go [00:04:00] on stage and talk about what you do? Not while you work here, you're not gonna do that.

So they have like big scary PR teams and they're very like worried about getting sued and what their employees are saying publicly. And so. I kind of disappeared from the internet for like five, six years because I was working at big banks and I was just kinda like, I was using social media more like normal people use social media just like talking about my breakfast tacos or whatever it was.

Right? Um, but, uh, I couldn't really talk about my job much anymore. And so when I left B of A and I started working at Reddit, Reddit was like, we don't care. Go, go talk, right? We're not heavily regulated and you know, have all sorts of lawyers, uh, and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, oh, let me restart my blog.

I really liked blogging back in the day and maybe like start my podcast again or something like that. And that's when I noticed that newsletters were, were having a moment and like Medium seemed to be going on its way down. That's like what I was like, oh, maybe I'll start a medium. And it was like, ah, no one really likes medium anymore.

You know, newsletters are the new hotness. Lemme start a newsletter. And that's kind of like the origin of it, right? And so then I was able to kinda lean on, [00:05:00] like I said. Some people that were like, oh, Matt's talking in public again about stuff. Like, we followed him for a decade, you know? And so that was kinda like my early bit of my audience.

Dylan Redekop: And that was circa like 20, 23 when you kind of Yeah. Re restarted things. Okay.

Matt Johansen: Yeah. Something around there. And, um, and then, yeah, I started and, and I had a friend, I had like two friends in the industry that had started newsletters before me. One of them reached out when he saw I was maybe two additions in to my newsletter.

And he reached out, said, Hey man, I just quit my security engineering gig at Robinhood, uh, and I'm doing my newsletter full-time. Now. And I was like, wait, what? You can get paid for this? So I, I was just doing it for the love of the game, you know? And, uh, and I, from that conversation, he really kind of set me on the path of like, oh, hey Matt, this isn't a hobby.

Like take this seriously. And so since then, I haven't missed a single week of vulnerable use since I started it. And I don't think I would've had that consistency if I had not had that phone call where it was like, Hey, take this seriously. Don't just like yap on the internet. Like really kind of put your, put your nose down [00:06:00] into this.

And that's what I did.

Chenell Basilio: That's great. Yeah. So you had like that friendly advice come to you. Yeah. Um, do you think, how many people do you think joined the newsletter just from knowing you in previous times? Like what was that base like?

Matt Johansen: That's a great question. Um, I probably had about 10,000 followers on Twitter at the time, and that was one of my, you know, major kinda announcement promotional channels.

And then LinkedIn was definitely still, you know, I wasn't really using LinkedIn as like a content outlet, but I did probably have, you know, a decent. Number of followers and connections just from a long career. I, if I had to guess, I'd have to go back and like look at my stats, but I'd say in like the 1500 to 2000 was like a pretty quick jump for me.

Just from like conversions maybe in the first few months of just like, Hey, me talking about it on my social media. I think I was probably able to do that without. Really thinking too much about growth or anything like that.

Dylan Redekop: Right? So socially social growth was essentially like your number one just sharing stuff [00:07:00] about cybersecurity things, you, threats, you'd seen stuff you're tackling, and then just like tagging like a, you know, I talk about this in my newsletter, sort of, you know, CTA sort of thing, or I don't even think I did that quite yet.

Like

Matt Johansen: Oh wow, okay. Like early on I'm not even sure I was that smart, right? I think I was just like, Hey, I started a newsletter, like, you know, like, Hey, if you like me, I started a newsletter you can bio like yeah. Literally, right? And so I think if you go to my Twitter right now, I think my pinned tweet is still my announcement from when I started Vulnerable.

You right? That's like, I think I pinned it. I was just like, hey, exciting news, like I'm getting back into content creation. Um, check it out. Right. And I think I was probably able to get, you know, like I said, maybe a thousand to 2000 just from like existing and announcing, um Okay. And stuff like that.

Chenell Basilio: How did you come up with the format for what the newsletter turned into?

Or like, like you could have gone so many different directions with the cybersecurity world. You could have done like news or here's how to hack into this, or that kind of thing. That probably could have got a little dicey, but I'm just curious how that came about.

Matt Johansen: Yeah. It's not been [00:08:00] consistent from day one.

Right. So I've definitely like kind of found my footing on, uh, on the format based on just like what I see resonating with people who sign up. My thesis when I started was I'm also very passionate about mental health, especially mental health in tech workers and in cybersecurity. It's a very thankless job.

Yeah. Like hacking into stuff is cool, but like when you're on the defense side, you, you, you're pretty much invisible until something goes wrong. And then all of a sudden you're to blame. Um, and that's, so it's been a very prominent topic in the industry for years of like burnout and stuff like this. And so I have some family members that are, uh, fans of Brene Brown.

I dunno if you know Brene Brown Pub, big public speaker. Yeah. She, uh, she calls herself a vulnerability researcher. Um, and she talks about the power of vulnerability and security. We talk about security vulnerabilities all the time. And so that was like the intersection for me. And like, when I kind of thought about this, I kind of made a joke about it years ago of, oh, power of vulnerability and vulnerability [00:09:00] researcher, Brene Brown.

I was like, I'm a vulnerability researcher, right? You know what, like, what are you talking about? And so that's kind of how like the, the name came to be. And so my early format, I say all that to say my early format was I would write a blog about like kind of a traditional newsletter like you guys write of, of, of like.

Hey, here's some blog this week or some topic that I'm gonna talk about this week. And I would preview it in the newsletter. And then I would do a few like news links. And I was kind of like half and halfing, like the mental health thing and like, here's some headlines and my thoughts on the headlines this week.

And I had a bunch of other sections too, like I was like playing with, you know, early version of, of Beehive And I'd, I'd have like a community spotlight section of like someone I was talking to on social media this week and all, all sorts of sections that have since like Gone, gone the wayside, right? And then, yeah, I found that as I went, um, I even started polling my users about like, uh, my readers about like which part of the newsletter they were there for.

Like, are you here for the news? Are you here for the mental health stuff? And I found like 70 30, like. More [00:10:00] people were here for the news and my thoughts on the news and so like it, it's leaned more and more that direction as it's gone. I still try to throw in some like mental health, kind of like tidbits every now and then.

I also, we were talking about a pre-recording, I just launched like the premium version of the newsletter just last week. I always kind of had it in my head that once I crossed like 20 5K, that I would think about that. Part of my offering for the premium newsletter is to kind of bring that mental health aspect back to it and I'm gonna start interviewing people in the field and ask them some like hard questions to like tell like their low lights story and like the whole theory being.

A lot of these people go on other podcasts, tell their highlights, like, Hey, come here and get their low lights. Right? And like, they're, they're all just people just like you. And so I'm gonna try to bring it in back in that way. But the newsletter itself, yeah, it's just people, people wanted my thoughts about the headlines and cybersecurity is like a fire hose of news information in any given week about like data breaches or this or that.

People find it pretty useful to be like, Hey, here's like the, like the 10 to [00:11:00] 15 stories that like, I think were like worth. Kind of your attention right now. And also like I try to not put the ones that are like the biggest story of the week. It's like you're gonna see that everywhere. You don't need to see that with, with mine.

I, I, I don't need to amplify the absolute biggest story of the week. It's like, okay, come get my thoughts about something else. So when

Dylan Redekop: we were prepping for this interview, I was, I was going through some of your additions and I couldn't help. But see how long they were, they're full of information. It looks like you're putting a decent amount of time and effort into it.

Is this just you doing this or do you have like a team around you? Um, 'cause you're also, we're gonna get into this shortly, I think, um, you're pretty prolific on short form video on all the platforms, so juggling that. Following the news, creating the content. Like how does that all work? It's called Burning Out.

No, I'm just kidding.

Matt Johansen: So yeah, it's, uh, so it is by no means not just me on, like, my team, I have like a lot of help that I couldn't do it without at this point. But I'd say that the content creation is absolutely my like, burden to bear, right? [00:12:00] Like mm-hmm. Yeah. I am the only one writing my newsletter. I'm the only one filming short form.

I've been growing a lot on YouTube. This year is probably my biggest focus. So long form video, I'm editing my own long form videos. Like, yeah, it's, uh, it's, the content is like squarely my job where I get help is on my sponsorship relations stuff. My cal like the calendar on, you know, any sponsors. The expectation from the sponsor, can you go get that UTM link from them?

Hey, do we have a logo for this person? Hey, like, I need to. Balance. This sponsor wants me to do a YouTube ad integration this week and they have a non-compete and one of our other sponsors is a compete, so we gotta like move the calendar, like over the, all of that thankfully is not in my brain. So like that, that's what my team is like.

Very, very helpful with. I also read a book by, uh, Dan Martel called Buyback Your Time. I think I've recommended it. Um, maybe, maybe in this group. I've recommended it to a lot of people that like look like us and like yeah, kinda run our solo businesses following some of his, his advice has been extremely [00:13:00] helpful for me as well to kind of like, oh, get some of this stuff that doesn't absolutely need to be done by me.

Get it off your plate. The stuff that absolutely does need to be do done by me is looking at at the camera. And so I'm trying more and more to, to make that really what the lion's share of my time. Yeah,

Chenell Basilio: that makes sense. So you, you mentioned you started mostly on Twitter and then you've moved into other places.

So I mean we might as well jump into the short form thing now 'cause that's kind of. Where you are mostly at this point. Yeah. Uh, I know you're very prolific on Instagram, I think TikTok as well, and also now on YouTube. Um, how did that get going? Like, what does that look like for you now and how do you think about content?

Matt Johansen: Yeah, it's absolutely wild. Like, I would've never thought that A, I would've been doing this, and b, it would've worked as well as like, I'm as surprised as everyone else at how well it's worked. Uh, so really what happened was I have, uh, a family member that works at TikTok and they saw that I was going viral.

I was getting over a million views on Twitter threads. Basically once or twice a month, like [00:14:00] I would write a big Twitter thread about some cybersecurity news topic. I would write a long thread pictures kind of diving into the, to the topic. I think one of my superpowers is like translating some of these like complicated topics, very technical topics, into like, Hey, here's what it really means.

Here's like just storytelling about the actual thing, like the hack or the breach or the vulnerability or whatever it is. I've always tried to like lean into that as a superpower. And so I was doing these Twitter threads that were doing really well, and I had this family member work at TikTok that was like, what?

Like, please for the love, put this content on TikTok. Like, you're gonna go viral on TikTok too, if it's working on Twitter. And I was like, Hey, I'm basically a boomer when it comes to TikTok. I have no idea like how to do this. Like, I didn't even know how to record a TikTok. I was like, what are you talking about?

Like, I, like I have no idea how to do this. And so I kind of got bullied into it and uh, I was like, some of my early tiktoks were. Basically just screenshot carousels of my tweets. Uh, and then I learned how to do this green screen [00:15:00] thing right where I would, I think some of my first ones were literally just screenshots of my tweets behind me that I green screen my face of, and just kind of talked about the thread that I wrote mm-hmm.

On Twitter. And I think like the second one I did of those. Like went viral and got, you know, a couple million views. So it was pretty, like instantly it worked and I was like, oh, okay. I get it. And so, uh, so yeah, tiktoks kind of magic like that where you don't need the audience first. Yeah. Like Twitter, you need, you needed followers.

You can't just like tweet something and get views, right? Mm-hmm. Like you need followers. TikTok kind of turned the whole thing on its head, right? And I had no followers and all of a sudden it was working. And so then I started cross posting them to Instagram. 'cause I figured why not? Like a few into doing that.

It blew up on Instagram too. And Instagram is, is turned into my biggest platform. Mm-hmm. And so my, I did a whole presentation for your group about short form video. We can talk as much as you want about what I've found works and doesn't on this. I've seen a lot of people [00:16:00] try and not do it. Quite right.

Um, so I have a bunch of tips, uh, if we wanna get into it, but I will say it's been the most enjoyable content creation thing I do is, is definitely that, like the community that I've built on TikTok and Instagram is like my most engaged community. I think it helps because I still tell people to this day that I'm, that Instagram, I have however many followers I have on, on Instagram, and they're like cybersecurity content on Instagram.

They're like, what are you talking about? And I, I think that's to my advantage, right? That there's not a lot of competition, uh, in my niche. In short form video, people are either scared of it or don't do it well, or they're good at it, but they're not actually a cybersecurity practitioner. They're just good at making content about cybersecurity.

I'm kind of like one of the only people that like does this for a living, can really speak to it from a place of experience. Um, I can get as. Deep technical as, as, as we want, but I can also kind of bubble it up and tell, tell the story to the mainstream. So that's my guess [00:17:00] on why it's working is that no one else is doing it.

So,

Chenell Basilio: so you have like almost a hundred and some thousand followers on Instagram, right? 1 29 I think it is. Mm-hmm.

Um,

sounds about right. How is that translating into newsletter subscribers or is that still a struggle?

Matt Johansen: What I have found is that, and this is really unfortunate and I'm sorry for everyone listening, but I have found, at least in my experience, that every platform is its own platform.

And it's like very, very hard cross. Like get anyone to leave the platform that they're reading or watching you on and like go to another platform and like opt into that. Not to say that it doesn't happen, I got a lot of my newsletter subscribers from Twitter threads going viral, a hundred percent short form video two newsletter subscribers is definitely.

More of a trickle than like an an actual growth mechanism for me, I, I would say a very minuscule percentage of people that follow me on Instagram have like converted to newsletter subscribers. It, [00:18:00] I mean, it, it, it's, it's there like it's not, it's not nothing. Right. It's probably hundreds, not thousands.

Right. Of 129,000 followers. I probably have. Maybe high hundreds of people that have subscribed, not, not thousands. I'm not like strong call to actioning in the videos though, either. You don't want to like do too much of like cross-promoting.

Yeah. '

cause then, then you're gonna hurt the performance of the video.

If I just start talking about in the middle of my video, if I'm just like, Hey, go over my YouTube channel or like go over my newsletter, um, people are gonna swipe and then that's gonna send the signal and that's it. So like you, it's like speed of information coming out of my mouth is like the best thing that I can do to make a video do well.

Um, it's hard to put CTAs in there.

Dylan Redekop: So how do you, if you're getting all these views and you've got almost 30,000 subscribers, which is, which is no, like, that's, that's impressive for the length of time you've been doing this. What's your, like, your best growth lever then? Like how are you getting these subscribers just.

Kind of slow [00:19:00] trickle from all of these different channels that you're doing shortform or you like have some dedicated strategies kinda behind the scenes that you're using?

Matt Johansen: Yeah, at some point, well, like when I started selling sponsorships, I dedicate like some of my sponsorship revenue into paid growth for the newsletter.

Okay. Right. So and that's been by far the biggest growth mechanism for sure is like beehive boosts. I ran an an ad with Refine, which I've recently turned off. I don't know if you guys have messed with Refine at all, but it was a good growth lever. But the engagement is very, very low. Um, so my stats looked a little off because, uh, just because of that group of people, like in my subscriber base, it's a few thousand from Refin ads.

It's, uh, and, but by far my biggest growth lever is, is boosts in beehive. Um, either, either free recommendations from friends, um, is a few thousand for me for sure. Um, and then boosts from other like adjacent newsletters that I pay, you know, however much per subscriber, two bucks or something like that, uh, per subscriber from [00:20:00] a, a beehive boost.

And the best part about the boosts is the engagement is off the charts because it's like, oh, this is a, this subscriber is a newsletter reader. In my industry, right? Like they, they, they signaled that they signed up for another tech or cybersecurity newsletter. 'cause I don't accept boosts from every random AI newsletter or whatever the heck is on bhi.

I get a lot of applications that are just garbage. Right. You know, I've got a few that are just really, really top performers and I know they grow. 'cause some of them are like, I have a relationship with at this point. I know some of them grow either via meta ads or, or one of them grows a lot via LinkedIn.

Um, LinkedIn content. So like two of my best performing booths, uh, uh, boosts I am downstream of them paying for meta ads or them being very good at LinkedIn. And I just get the, uh, the recommended checkbox staying, staying lit, you know.

Chenell Basilio: That's so interesting. So how much, at this point do you think you're paying, like, on average for a subscriber through boosts?

Matt Johansen: I think it's, I think my offer is $2. [00:21:00] Yeah. Wow. That's a And

Chenell Basilio: those are, those people are like sticking around, opening, clicking. Yeah, I think I've got

Matt Johansen: like a 50 to 60% open rate. From Boost people, it's very, very good. Where, whereas refined was like 19 20% open rate right from the refine. I eventually turned that off 'cause I was like, oh, this is really tanking my stats.

I was also getting like people replying to me, being like, I never signed up for this. Like, what is this? And then I would go check where they came from and it was refined. So I'm like, I don't know what's going on over there. Um, I don't know if you guys have any insight, but I just decided to turn it off even though it was like helping pad my subscriber number.

It was like worsening everything else about. Everything right. So

Chenell Basilio: yeah, I tried it for a little bit and it same definitely got subscribers, but I don't think that they were super engaged, kinda like you were mentioning. And I don't know if that's just a function of like, me not putting in the time and effort to like figure it out.

But yeah, I was just like, I don't have time to play around with this. I'm gonna turn it off. Yeah.

Matt Johansen: I've also done like a whole lot of auto pruning of my list based on those engagement numbers. But then I started to not trust the engagement numbers because I [00:22:00] was, I was kicking people off the newsletter and then they would come back and be like, Hey, why did that, why did I get unsubscribed?

I, I read this every, uh, every week. And I was like, oh man, like my stats show that you've never done it. So, I don't know, like, maybe it's my niche too, cybersecurity. They tend to have like all the like brochures and privacy things and, and VPNs and like whatever it is. So it could have been my niche a little bit.

So eventually I just turned that off. So I've auto pruned like 8,000 people off of mileage. I think I would be at like over 40,000. If I didn't do some of that pruning. Yeah. So, and I'm like, I'm, I'm kind of bummed 'cause I don't know how many of those people were actually decent subscribers that, you know, just missed my like, hey, like I'm gonna unsubscribe you if you don't click this link email.

And then I just did. Right.

Chenell Basilio: I feel the same way. Yeah. So I just, I actually ended up turning off some of that stuff. Yeah. I'm like, yesterday, screw it. So it, I can't.

Matt Johansen: Yeah. I'm, I'm gonna keep 'em all, whatever, you know, 'cause I just can't trust it. Yeah. The open, the open rate stat is like weird. Right. So Yeah,

Chenell Basilio: it's totally unreliable.

Especially

Dylan Redekop: makes [00:23:00] sense in your industry too with like, or for an IT company. And our owner was big into like turning off all pixels and emails, like turning images off and all that stuff. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Matt Johansen: Yeah, totally. Right. And then I know Apple Mail has its own thing that everyone's talked about that like, is weird with stats too.

So I was just like, all right, I'm just not gonna make any action based off of these stats that I can't trust.

Dylan Redekop: That makes sense. That makes sense. So in terms of growth, we've kind of covered paid growth, some organic stuff and some trickle in from social media, short form. I dunno if you have any follow up questions on that, Chanel, go ahead.

But I was curious to talk a little bit more about like, uh, revenue and sort of how you're generating revenue.

Matt Johansen: Before, before we move off of grit. The, so the, the, I don't want to discredit how good Twitter has been for me. So like the trickle from short form for sure. But Twitter, especially in my niche, like when I break down a new story and then I can very naturally have a call to action of like, Hey, did you like my breakdown of this new story?

Like, subscribe to my newsletter. If I have a tweet, like tweet thread, like that go viral, I [00:24:00] get a ton of subscribers from it. So if I go viral on Instagram, not, not a whole lot of conversion there. If I go viral on Twitter, I absolutely get a lot of conversion. Um, it's just the nature of the call to action just kind of fitting a little bit more naturally into a Twitter thread.

So yeah, I I, I've definitely gotten a bunch from there for sure.

Chenell Basilio: So what you're saying, 'cause I feel like most creators are saying like, oh, Twitter's dead. Twitter's, like, it's not there anymore. Yeah. And I'm like, well, it probably does work for some people and it sounds like it's working great for you. Um,

Matt Johansen: yeah, it's my, I, I like, I'm, I literally mourn the loss of.

Twitter was my home on the internet for so long, and I literally grieve it because it's so different now and so many of my friends have left forever and are never looking back. Right. And I completely respect that and understand that my business is eyeballs and there's still a ton of eyeballs there for sure.

Um, yeah, it, I will say for a while it got really bad. It got really bad there for a while. For whatever reason, I feel like it's kind of showing life again. Hmm. I'd say the one thing that has gotten like irreparably [00:25:00] irreparably bad on that platform is like the spam and bot problem has just gotten out of control, especially with like the verified thing being different and like you, like verified check marks are almost like an, an a bad signal now it's like an antis signal, right?

Like, I think I have one because that's the only way you can like monetize. Like I get paid for viral tweets and the only way you can do that is if you like, are a premium person. So I, I get more out of it than I pay. So like, I'm like, all right, I'm, I'm winning on this exchange here. I don't care. Um, but, but yeah.

I mean, you, you could still get millions of views like. Uh, from that kind of stuff. And that's, yeah. It's kind of as a content creator, it's like, how can you turn down millions of views on the, on, on a platform, especially if they convert. Like I said, it does convert better than some of my other stuff, so it's rough.

And I, I, like I said, I will say the, the engagement feels to be getting better again. Like, it feels like the people that are there and are interacting are developers. They're engineers. They're practitioners, they're there. It's still a very good breaking [00:26:00] news platform, like more so mm-hmm. Than the other stuff.

And so for that, it was always hard for me to leave. 'cause I, I'm in the news business I like, and so a lot of news breaks there and I'm like, what am I, what am I gonna do? Right. Like, be slow on, on the news. So like, so yeah, I feel, I don't know, a few of us have been talking behind the scenes. It feels like it's getting, getting better, coming back a little bit.

Chenell Basilio: Okay. So how do you think about like the content mix between. Video and, and X or Twitter, if you are saying that, like you get more subscribers if you go viral on Twitter, like, but Instagram is more like consistent with that, right?

Matt Johansen: Yeah. So going back to my point about like how each platform, like I, I feel the need to create specifically for that platform in order to do well on that platform.

I have a very hard time, like, except for like short form video, I can cross post to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, it's the same video. Like that's fine, but it's made for short form. If I ever like have a long, like I have long YouTube videos that I'm making, if I try to grab a clip from that and put it on my short form.[00:27:00]

It won't do well. Mm. Like if you, if you watch my short, uh, if you watch my short form videos, you have to start basically in the middle of the most important point of your video needs to be in the first three seconds, right. Along with a visual hook, along with, you know, whatever it is. And it's gotta be fast.

So, like, I see a lot of my friends that have podcasts try to clip, you know, stuff from the podcast for short form video. I don't know if you guys do or not. I think I've, I've seen some in there. Well, no, I think

Chenell Basilio: we've dabbled.

Matt Johansen: Yeah. But I think you, you edit them in, in a way. I think some of yours have been pretty good, but some, like, I've seen some people, and they'll do like these auto clip generator tools or whatever it is from like a long form conversation.

And I'll sit with them and I'll show them like, Hey, let's watch the first five seconds of your video real quick and you tell me what it's about and that, and like, it's really hard to clip. With the energy that you need in the first couple seconds of a short form video, it's really hard to get that energy in the middle of a long conversation.

If you see some of the professional podcasters out there, I'm like a big fan of Scott Galloway, the Prof g [00:28:00] mm-hmm. Ecosystem is, is really good. Um, for me, ed Elson is like his host of the Prof G Show. Ed. Ed is like, you know, gen Z, born of this, born and bred of this version of the internet. Um, and he talks a lot about this, about how he's constantly thinking about the clip in the long form conversation, right?

He's like. Tuning the way he's asking a question or responding so that there is a moment that he can edit that the energy is high and that this clip is gonna play well. And I'm like, yeah, that's the only way to do that. Well, right, right.

Chenell Basilio: That's so interesting.

Matt Johansen: Sorry, I think your initial question was like, how I think about my breakdown is, and so like really my, my answer is each algorithm is still, is still so different is why I kind of went on that little tangent.

And so I very much like short form video, it's feel, it feels like my new home, like Twitter was my home for so long. It feels like my new home on the internet. How long you been doing it? Sorry

Dylan Redekop: to interrupt, but how long you been doing the short form? Like consistently?

Matt Johansen: Maybe 18 months. Maybe 18 months. A little after newsletter start.

So, yeah, maybe [00:29:00] like late 2023, uh, early in 2024, something like that. That's a guess. I, I'd have to go back and look, but, but yeah, like the algorithms on short form reward, consistency, and volume. Right. You, like, you'll see a lot of people that say like, how to make it on TikTok is to post like multiple times per day on TikTok, right?

Um, Twitter. Is very much like you can oversaturate your algorithm on Twitter, especially with the kind of news threads that I do. If I did one of those every day, I don't know. Some people get away with it. It doesn't, it doesn't seem to work for me. It seems like exhaustion. I think Justin Welsh, you know, I know you guys are friends, friends with Justin, or at least familiar with Justin.

He talks about this a lot, is like the long threads, like, don't do more than one or two of the, like, really deep things a week, but then just show up kind of consistently every day. And so, yeah, like that's kind of, I, I try to do my breakdown where I try to do a short form video every day. I, I probably wind up averaging about five a week just because I miss whatever, right?

I try to do one or two like long news threads on Twitter every week and then just schedule [00:30:00] out some, like, exist on Twitter and LinkedIn, um, you know, a meme or a picture or just like a headline without a long thread. You know, I try to. Uh, do that or it, you know, just some random thought that I had instead of just tweeting it at 11 o'clock at night.

Scheduling it for the next day is like a good little tweak that I made. So it's just, okay. It's not, you know, 1130 random thoughts. It's like prime time good. Like people are gonna engage with it kind of thing. Hmm. Um, I do stuff like that for sure.

Chenell Basilio: So are you scheduling out a bunch of posts ahead of time, like, or just, it just kind of happens?

Matt Johansen: I try to. I, I do. I, so we're gonna talk about revenue. I do have an agency, uh, that I, that I run and I've also, I have hired some social media help for me to run the vulnerable you social media accounts. Um, so I still run all my personal stuff, but like, I've started vulnerable. You accounts on everything like LinkedIn, right?

Twitter threads, like, uh, whatever. So I, I have some [00:31:00] help managing those time. I just literally couldn't squeeze the time out of my day to like also create content for a vulnerable, you branded LinkedIn or anything like that. So I have hired some help there. So, uh, she definitely schedules out a ton for the vulnerable you stuff.

And then we sit every Monday and we try to come up with a plan for like me slash the brand for the week. She's only been working for me about. Two months, and I'd say maybe twice. We've like actually successfully Monday been like, okay, like let's post some stuff on Matt's account for the week. It's hard.

Mm-hmm. Uh, especially when it comes to news. You gotta be, you gotta be kind of fresh, right? Um, yeah. It's also, it's just a grind to be like, okay, let's sit and churn out a bunch of random like tweets and LinkedIn stuff for this, for this next

Dylan Redekop: hour. It's hard. I've got a follow up to Chanel's question about the short form video versus like the.

Uh, Twitter written stuff in terms of growth. And so are you driving some revenue with actual impressions on like TikTok and [00:32:00] on Instagram and stuff? Like, is that making you money? Because I, I kinda help but wonder like, that's a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of effort that you're putting into that content.

And you were saying how it's kinda like a trickle, like it's not, it's in the hundreds for your, for Instagram versus Twitter, so Yeah. What's the rationale there?

Matt Johansen: Yeah, so Instagram does not pay me for views. I missed that boat. Mm-hmm. I think some people are grandfathered into like a, some sort of creator fund that they had at one point.

They do not have it anymore and I, I, I missed it, so. Hmm.

I

do not, I do not make money. If I get a million views on Instagram, I don't make a dime from it. Right. Um, so that's disheartening for sure. TikTok, I do, I am in the creator fund on TikTok. Uh, TikTok algorithm is a bit more feast and famine for me.

I'd say Instagram, I'm very consistently high performing. My audience is highly engaged. I get a lot of dms and comments from the same couple hundred people. I like, recognize people, you know, like they're definitely part of my community on Instagram. Yeah, I love it. Um, it feels great. They defend me when [00:33:00] trolls come and like they start tearing me apart.

They'll, they'll go after. I don't even have to defend myself. It's fantastic. That's pretty good on, on TikTok. It's not like that. I, like, I, I'd say my floor nowadays on a reel on Instagram and I, I try to post one every day is like 20,000 views. That's like my floor. So like I, I do, I do very well. Right on like every reel my floor on TikTok is like 200 view.

Like I can post something and get nothing. Right? On TikTok, and it's the same video, right? So the, the algorithm over there is just very strange. Um, and, uh, it's feast or famine. So I either get like a couple hundred, couple thousand, or I get 2 million, like randomly. So if I can somehow materialize a couple million view video, like once a month on TikTok, I make, I make some decent money from views.

I think my best performing month on TikTok in terms of them paying me was like $2,000, which was like, Hey, that's a real, that's a real check from just posting a video. I'd say on average it's in the dozens to hundreds [00:34:00] of dollars. Right. Maybe a, a quiet month is like 60 bucks. And then, um, I think this month I made 600 bucks.

I had like a few get a few hundred thousand views and I made $600. It's not nothing for, for, mm-hmm. For just posting. I did recently turn on like this subscription feature for everything. So now like, I am accepting, like you can choose to subscribe to my Instagram and my TikTok now for like a few bucks a month.

Those platforms, like culturally aren't very, like, subscribed to your favorite creator. Like I know, like Twitch, that's like a big thing, right? Yeah. You're live streaming on Twitch. People are in chat, they're gifting people, subs, they're subscribing $5 a month, they're doing gif. Like that's the whole Twitch culture.

That's not the culture on Instagram or TikTok, right? So, uh, that's, I'm not seeing like a ton of people actually convert to that. I'm putting a lot more effort into it where I'm like. Trying to put subscriber only stories up. I'm like trying to do subscribe. I, I have a subscriber group chat on Instagram that if I talk about the story, I can't share the links to a lot of stories that I'm talking about.

Twitter doesn't let me put [00:35:00] links in things, so I'm like, Hey, if you want the links to what I'm talking about, subscribe and I'll put 'em in this DM for you. Right. And then I, and then I, I, I put other stories in that DM that I don't make a video about, and I try to like promote that on my stories. We're talking handfuls of people that have actually subscribed.

It's just, like I said, it's just culturally not part of the platform to be like, yeah, let's give this guy $5 a month on Instagram. It's just like, yeah. What

Dylan Redekop: about Twitter?

Matt Johansen: Twitter is not like a. Actual monetization. It maybe like 150 bucks or something like that was like the, be like some of my best months.

Like I said, I consistently make more than it costs me for Twitter premium. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that's like why I leave it on. Yay. But it's like, it's, it's not, um, it though, I see some people reporting recently that they've like changed their payouts and people are getting more, I haven't had like a super high performing viral tweet since that change.

I've just been putting less, less effort into the platform. Uh, as a whole. I'm interested to see if like. Anytime soon if I, if I go viral, if, if that changes. [00:36:00] I've seen some people get thousands of dollars, um, where they were getting dozens of dollars previously for like the same performance. So I think that they've upped payouts, but it's definitely not my main form of rev revenue.

So you, you asked how I justify the time that I spend on Instagram. I, I do sell sponsored slots. So I sell newsletter sponsorships. I also sell sponsored short form videos. I try to limit the amount. I don't want my whole feed to turn into sponsored stuff. I'm in a fortunate position that. I have a lot of demand for sponsorship so I can turn down sponsors.

So my sponsors are high quality, like, oh, I do actually believe in these companies. Like, it's not just like whoever is throwing money at me. And so that's, that's my rationale is 'cause um, currently my highest dollar sponsor is, uh, sponsor slot is an Instagram video because I have proof of conversion and it's, you know, it's my biggest audience.

And, uh, I've got customers, I have sponsors that have closed deals like B2B, SaaS security deals because of Instagram videos I have. And so the [00:37:00] fact that I can say that I can, I can command a little bit of a higher premium in, in that space

Chenell Basilio: without getting too far into it. Like what? I don't want you to necessarily give specific numbers, but I'm just curious like what, how do you even charge for an Instagram spot?

Like is it based on views? Is it based on like how many followers you have or?

Matt Johansen: So the best hire I've ever made in my life is my sponsorship sales person. I bet. So from, from back when I just had my newsletter and I was just starting to spon start sponsorships. I, I hit up, uh, this guy, he sells sponsorships for those other security newsletters that I talked, talked to you about early.

That that guy that gave me that call that was like, Hey, I quit my job. This is a sponsor sponsorship salesman for him. And, uh, he works off of commission only. So it was like a very low risk thing for me. He just takes a cut of whatever he, he brings me. And so he was just selling newsletter spots. Maybe I started selling them around 12,000 subscribers right around there, if that's like a good metric for you guys.

Okay.

Uh, and maybe I was selling and, and it's, it's hard to [00:38:00] give you guys answers on this because I know that us the cybersecurity niche of content creators, there's only a handful of us that like do this and like, make money off of doing this. We definitely don't fit like the traditional influencer CPM.

Uh, you know, conversion thing because we are so niche and that comes with like a bit of, uh, premium. So it's like the sponsors that are selling stuff in my newsletter are selling things for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Right. It's like, Palo Alto Networks is one of my biggest sponsor.

Like if you're a customer at Palo Alto Networks, you could be giving them millions of dollars a year. So this isn't, you know, sneakers like, or makeup, right? It's, it's definitely like a different relationship. And so we don't really fit into like the more traditional CPM uh, model. So we command a bit of a premium.

It's not outrageous, but like I, you know, we, we have done the numbers and it's like, oh, that's, you know, if I was slinging makeup, this would be definitely harder. How do I sell it? He, he basically has [00:39:00] kind of figured out the market. 'cause he, he represents a bunch of the biggest creators in cybersecurity, so he, he's kind of like a good person to be running my stuff.

And so, yeah, we've. We started low, right? I was kind of down list for his, he represented two newsletters of over a hundred thousand subscribers were the other two guys, right? And then I was over there with 12 and, and so it was basically like, oh, can you not afford these other two or are they sold out?

Like, Hey, are you interested in Matt? Right? Was like how it started. You

Chenell Basilio: were the downsell literally.

Matt Johansen: And I was fine with that, you know what I mean? Like, I still had my day job. I was fine with that. We were proving it out. And then yeah, it started like we started to have success stories and testimonials and like we were able to kind of like place me in a specific niche within the niche, right?

Mm-hmm. Of like, Hey, Matt's got a lot of practitioners. He doesn't do like a lot of, some of the content creators out there. Do a lot of early career content. How to get into cybersecurity is like a really big, if you, if you look up cybersecurity content creators, there's a ton of content about like how to get into cybersecurity.

I've resisted the [00:40:00] siren call that. Is that because, oh man, well my subscribers go up if I do that. Those subscribers are not. In the industry yet by, by nature of them subscribing to that kind of content. And so that's not who I'm generally talking to. And it's not who my sponsors wanna reach. Not that I make a lot of my decisions based on who my sponsors wanna reach, but that, that's kinda a line that I've drawn is like, I don't do a whole lot of like, how to get into cyber content when I live stream.

That's like all of my questions. If I go live on TikTok, all of the questions are like, do I go get this certification? Do I have to go to college? Do I do, you know, whatever Matt, no longer live streams. Yeah, no, I like it. It's, it's engaging. It's fun. I, I, I joke that I need to like put a sticker behind my head that says like, I will not tell you what certificate to go get to get a job.

Like, that's not, that's not my jam. But a lot of people, if you scroll TikTok lives and you find like people in tech, a lot of it is like, oh, join my bootcamp and like, get this certification and whatever. And it's just, I'm not, I'm not slinging a course over here. So. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: That makes sense. So I [00:41:00] know you left your day job back in November.

December-ish.

Matt Johansen: November, yeah. Um.

Chenell Basilio: Congrats. Thanks. How's it been going since then?

Matt Johansen: Oh, I've got a few more gray hairs, but, uh, yeah, it's stressful as all, as all get out. It was really bad timing that I, I left and then like the deadline for buying my own health insurance was like two weeks later. So I was like just faced with the reality of like how much that's gonna cost right away.

Right. Living, living in the us That's a fun little, uh, a fun little thing. But no, it's been going well. Um, revenue is good on sponsorships. I also run an agency under the vulnerable brand that we haven't really talked a lot about, but like, again, leaning into my superpower of storytelling on complex topics, uh, I found that a lot of marketing agencies out there that cybersecurity companies were using don't know anything about cybersecurity.

They're really good marketing agencies, but they're not from the industry. Yeah. And all of a sudden I was like, wait a second. Uh, I write a lot of cybersecurity content, right? So I'm doing content marketing without calling it content marketing. So let me start calling it content marketing [00:42:00] and selling content marketing services.

And so that team's up to like 25 ish now, um, on the agency that work for me that, um, are journalists from cybersecurity practitioners that would like a side hustle to write a few blogs for me. Mm-hmm. Um, we do like social media management of cybersecurity companies, like social media stuff. We're like helping guide them into tiptoeing, into short form video.

None of, they're all terrified to do that. They don't want to do it, but, uh, but yeah, we've kind of become a like good technical, understand this industry, like arm of, of marketing teams and that's also helped kind of revenue and like day job type stuff. So I'd say my revenue is about. Um, half and half, uh, sponsorship stuff and the agency stuff right now, I think, I think both have a higher ceiling.

I've got room to grow in both. I'm not sold out on sponsorships. I definitely have room to grow on the agency, but, um, so it's exciting, but it's stressful. It's hard. You can imagine running companies while putting out as much content as I'd put out every single week, uh, yeah. [00:43:00] Is definitely difficult. But yeah.

Dylan Redekop: And wow. You've also recently launched, we alluded to this earlier, a paid subscription for vulnerable you Yeah. Yeah. I mean, three figures, a RR, it's, yeah, it's, uh,

Chenell Basilio: going well, going well. Yeah. Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Like maybe talk us through that decision and also, just so I don't forget to talk about this, we had Akash Gupta on the show.

About six months ago. And what he basically said is he figured out like, um, how to optimize what he called optimizing for the internal share. So basically getting people from big companies subscribing to his newsletter and then having a paid tier for these like corporations that can like, get their whole team sort of on it.

And I just see like an opportunity here for you 'cause you're mostly a B2B type of content, um, and newsletter. Right. And so I'm curious your, you're Yeah, a little bit, a little call made, a little call B, but I'm curious what your plan is for, I guess the paid newsletter. We just had Tom Morach on the podcast recently who just launched a paid newsletter.

Different space of course. But um, it seems like more and more people are growing this route. So like [00:44:00] maybe talk us through that decision and, and what your plans are for it.

Matt Johansen: Yeah, kind of just like, it was always in my head once I got big enough to be, to like even try to offer it. Like, I'm like, okay, like, let, let me throw something out there.

I, I've hemmed and hawed about it for a very long time because a, I didn't want to add a whole lot more work to my plate. As you could see, I'm putting out a lot of content already. Yeah. So I was like, like literally like my, my daughter knows about newsletter night. It's like, ah, it's newsletter. You know what I mean?

Like, it takes me hours to write the newsletter and, you know, I generally work all day and then I gotta write the newsletter. And so, like, you know what I mean? So it's like a thing, right? Um, so I didn't want to start a premium that then had a, I I would have to like manage a community and, and put out more content that demanded a, a, a, a paid tier.

Right? It had to be really high quality content if I was accepting money for it, in my opinion. Right. And so, uh, I hadn't thought about it for a long time to like, try to figure out what I could offer to people. A just like, I also just had people that were like, Hey, do you have a Patreon? I would love to just support pe.

Some people were just like, I would love to three or 10 bucks. I, [00:45:00] like, I read your newsletter every month. Like, whatever it is. Right. Like, I have a lot of like. Working professionals that read my newsletter that would be very happy to throw me $10, right? Like, and, and like, so I, I was like, okay, maybe I just throw something up, even if it, there's not a lot on the other side of the paywall, you know?

Um, and, uh, eventually I stumbled on in this idea, um, to bring that mental health, like part of the newsletter back in. And I talked about it a little bit earlier, but I was like, oh, if I, I've got a bunch of friends in this industry that are really, really like high level cybersecurity people, founders of companies, you know, executives at big companies.

Um, I'm still in touch with a lot of the people like that I've worked with over the past, you know, 18 years. I've got a really strong network of successful cybersecurity people. I know that if I ask them to like, Hey, come tell me, you're like. Shittiest life story. Sorry. I don't know if we can explicit tag here, but like Yeah, gimme the low lights, right?

Like, and my whole shtick is like, come get vulnerable with me. It's vulnerable. You come get vulnerable with me. Tell me some stories you don't tell on [00:46:00] other podcasts. Right? The idea selfishly is not a whole lot more work on my part. Right. I can just like kind of send out like some questions to some friends, maybe reformat it a bit, maybe record a little short video to just say like, Hey, this is my buddy so and so, he's the head of security at this thing.

You know, I, I've known him for this long, like, you know, a little short video kind of thing. But that, that would be like valuable for people to see. I've also put up there that once I hit kind of critical mass of paid subscribers, I would start a community. A lot of people asked for that. Yeah, I see that. I poll my audience, I poll my audience for a few newsletters before I launched, I poll and said, Hey, would you support if I had a paid tier?

And I had a bunch of people say yes, A whole lot more people say no, which is of course, right. Like that's mm-hmm, mm-hmm. The percentages. You're never gonna get like a, a significant percentage of people to like pay for your free content. But I had a good, and a good number of people say yes, and I was like, okay, screw it.

Let's do it. And I had them say, Hey, if you were gonna pay me, what would you want to see for it? Uh, I asked them that in the poll, and a bunch of people said, community. Um, and so [00:47:00] my plan is to launch a community, even though, like I said, I didn't wanna like, manage that. I figure once I get to some sort of critical mass where it's not like six of us staring at each other in a Slack channel or something like that, uh, that, that I would, I would launch something on, on the back end and start to kind of run that.

So, yeah, that, that's kind of it. I, I, I turned on all the subscriptions across the board in the same week, so I was like, you wanna subscribe to me on Instagram, YouTube? TikTok has a subscription button, premium newsletter, wherever you want to give me like a few bucks. I appreciate it. My accountants appreciate the less bumpy revenue from sponsorship stuff, so Yeah.

Right.

Chenell Basilio: It would be so cool if there was like a feature where you could like have people sign up to subscribe to you and they get access to all of your premium accounts, whether it's Twitter, substack, you know, Instagram everywhere. It'll never happen, but no, that would be awesome.

Matt Johansen: Yeah, I think you could do like coupon codes.

I was thinking about this, right? I was like, if I set everything at 10 bucks right? And it's basically just like, hey, yeah. Could I, if you subscribe one place, could I give you like a free sub across the [00:48:00] other places or whatever? I, I've thought about it. Yeah, for sure. Right now there's not an overlap. The, like I said, like the communities are very much their own communities.

I have very little overlap. Mm-hmm. Um, I kind of turned it all on. You do the math and it's like I've got, you know, a, a good amount of subscribers. If I can get one or 2% of them to subscribe, really good baseline salary for me to like just have in the back of my head as like a safety net. If who knows what.

World War II button gets pushed and, uh, and, and a advertising revenue dries up or whatever it is. So, yeah.

Dylan Redekop: I I have a couple short-ish questions. What is Matt Johansen's newsletter philosophy or mantra?

Matt Johansen: Consistency is like the number one thing I tell everybody, right? I have a lot of people in my bubble, in my niche that have started newsletters and then like, who knows when the next newsletter edition's gonna show up, right?

And, um, and so it's really hard to like subscribers or like build a community when they have no idea when they're gonna like, see the next thing from you For newsletters, it's like, Hey, every week I [00:49:00] write it. The other thing, like, I see a lot of like AI generated newsletters, just like, Hey, that's not gonna, like, people can sniff that stuff out.

Yeah. Like, you know, so if you want to like do it, you have to show up every week and connect meaningfully with your audience and like, give them something. They're trading their email for something. You, you, what's Gary v's. New book called It's like Day Trading Attention or something like that. Like, I think that we're all in that business.

We're all in the day trading attention business. And this was like, what? A lot, some of the responses, going back to the premium newsletter poll that I ran, a lot of people said, no. They were like, I literally do not want any additional content in my inbox. Like, please no more content. Right? Yeah. Right. Like, that's how a lot of people feel and I get that, right.

It's like, you know, I happen to be a newsletter consumer and producer, so I do like, consume a lot of this stuff, but I, I try to stay on top of it because it's kind of my job at this point and it's, it's a lot of, you know, it's a lot to consume, so I get it. So yeah, my philosophy is make it worth it and show up constantly, constantly.

If you're gonna have a break, announce it. Like, I'm all for people taking their time, but be [00:50:00] like, Hey, I'm going on vacation for two weeks. Be back, or better yet, get like a guest writer for those two weeks. Do not miss, do not miss the time. Yeah. Like, if you need to take a break, hire help, or, something's

Chenell Basilio: always such a good break in the consistency of like, oh, they have like this friend that's gonna write it this week.

I always love those. Yeah, it's fun, right.

Matt Johansen: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And you get to find new creators and that kind of thing.

Matt Johansen: You see it on like late night tv, right? Like they, you know, oh, who Jimmy Kimmel's off this week? Who's, who's sitting behind the desk, right? Mm-hmm. It's fun. It's like, wait, some comedian, a new comedian is hosting.

Great. Yeah, I mean, I think just consistency is like the number one thing that I see most people fail at. It's just like I, I, I, I gave the short form presentation to the growth reverse community, and I, I challenged everyone. I said, Hey, make a video every day for the next seven days. I don't think a single person did it.

You know what I mean?

Chenell Basilio: I think some people started it and then they were like, no. I think some people started

Matt Johansen: making short form videos after that. I've seen them, right. Um, but no one did seven days in a row. Like from the time that I was like, Hey, this is the most important thing you could do. No one [00:51:00] did it.

It's hard. Consistency is so hard, right? Um, life gets in the way. It's really rough, but that's my philosophy, is my, my success on social media is the fact that I have not shut up. Yeah. I

Chenell Basilio: like it. I was gonna ask you next, like what do you think the biggest opportunity is? Do you think it's literally just showing up on short form?

Is that like the biggest opportunity right now? Or do you think there's something else that people should be paying attention to?

Matt Johansen: Yeah, I think Shortform, especially in niches, shortform is so under tapped right now. Like generic short form is, there's a ton, right? There's a ton of people making TikTok videos every day about like them trying their new food truck in their city or whatever.

Like, I get a ton of like food influencers and stuff like this, right? There's a ton of that. And like, you could, but still do it. Like I see, I see new ones pop up and be successful all the time. It doesn't matter, but, oh my God, in niches, no one's doing it. Everyone's terrified. Of it for some reason. Right?

Not for some, I understand. It's hard, it's very vulnerable. Like everyone hates the sound of their own voice. Like no one wants to do it. Everyone thinks that they've gotta edit, they've gotta like, you know, whatever it [00:52:00] is. I don't know if you've seen, like I've showed you my show from video. I don't edit them like I actually.

Dislike over edited videos. That's like my whole philosophy on YouTube right now too. I started YouTube, or we barely talked about YouTube on this conversation. It's what I'm putting most of my effort into right now because I think it's got the highest ceiling for me. Right? You can make, you can make good money on YouTube from ad revenue and YouTube pays out better than all these other platforms too.

Right? The the over edited YouTube, I start, what I was saying, I started over a year ago. What I would do is I would write my newsletter Thursday night to go out Friday morning. Friday morning. I would record a YouTube video about the newsletter that I just wrote. So I was basically just trying to like make an audio and video version of my newsletter.

Turns out, that's a dumb idea. That's a really bad idea because, because then I, by the time I edited it and put B-roll in it, I couldn't really get the YouTube video out till Monday. I hired an editor to help and all this kinda stuff. I really couldn't get it out till Monday. So I'm writing news on Thursday to go out Friday morning.

Is already borderline, maybe a few days [00:53:00] old. I'm not breaking news in my newsletter. I'm aggregating news in my newsletter. Now you wait till next week. It's like, what? Everyone already heard about this stuff, right? Mm-hmm. First of all, second of all, YouTube rewards evergreen content. It's like if, if you stumbled on this six months from now, it is a completely useless video.

This is not interesting at all. 'cause I'm like giving you a minute of 10 news stories that were, that were valid then. And I was like, putting so much effort into like editing and b roll and popping up and trying to do this whole news story. It was dumb. So my new philosophy on YouTube is take a current event that's like, uh, you know, prevalent.

Maybe it is a news story, maybe whatever, but zoom out, go deep. Like what? Like what is, what is this saying about the whole, like this whole thing going on. What can people learn from this six months from now that would still be valid? Uh, and that's working way better. And I got rid of all of my editing tricks.

I'm breaking all the YouTube rules. I'm like, screw this. You're looking at it. This is my YouTube studio. Right. And I don't do, I don't do any animations. I don't do anything. I use this tool called DS Script [00:54:00] to like cut out the, you know, me speaking misspeaking or the dead air while I think about what I'm saying next.

Or when I switch my, my screen or whatever it is. I use Dscr to. Cut all that out. So it soup to nuts maybe takes me two to three hours to put out a YouTube video now, where it used to take me days. Right. Wow. Till I turn it all around. And that's been working wonders, right. I think people are a little burnt out with like the over editing, you know?

Yeah. Like the, when, like the tiktoks of two years ago that had like all the like emojis popping up and you know, like all the like crazy animations. Like those don't do well. What does well is like, it looks like you're FaceTiming your friend while they're walking to work like that does better than anything right now.

Right. It's like everyone wants to just connect with people. So

Dylan Redekop: I see your most recent longer form video on YouTube has been one of your most successful, at least of recently. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Johansen: Yeah. It's doing well. Do you have

Dylan Redekop: any idea why,

Matt Johansen: um, this is totally off

Dylan Redekop: topic, but I'm just curious.

Matt Johansen: It's so hard to figure out what's gonna do well and not on, on YouTube.

It's definitely over-indexed on thumbnail and title [00:55:00] and I'm very bad at thumbnail and title games, but it, it definitely is like the simpler I can make the thumbnail and title the better. The more information I try to squeeze in there, the worse it does. So I think that there was a, probably a pretty good hook on that one that drove some engagement.

Dylan Redekop: What the hell is going on with extensions during, or turning into malware is the, is the title. Yeah. And I'll lowercase too, which is interesting.

Matt Johansen: Yeah, yeah. See, like I'm, I'm trying to break every rule on purpose. Yeah. I'm trying to, I be aggressively casual

Chenell Basilio: for context. Like right now it's five days ago and it has 51,000 views.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is pretty wild.

Matt Johansen: Yeah. It's, it, I I'm definitely, it's slow growth on YouTube, but it's spiky. So like e every, every couple of I, I considered 10,000 views a video that, that did well, right? Mm-hmm. On, on YouTube at my current size, that's like a, okay. I did, I I made a good video. Yeah. In three of your last four of you have hit that.

Yeah. Yeah. So like, it, it's, it's, it's snowballing, right? Um, mm-hmm. Yeah. So this whole new format is going way better. And [00:56:00] like I said, I, like, I look at, there's some other channels. If you look at, um. You can take courses about doing well on YouTube and like they'll talk at length about lighting and cameras and editing and, and hooks and thumbnails and all this kinda stuff.

And then you go, look, go pull up this channel. There's a guy called some Ordinary gamers. I dunno if you've ever heard of this guy. I

Chenell Basilio: think you told me about this guy. This

Matt Johansen: was an unlock for me last time we had to crawl, right? This was an unlock for, I, I looked at some ordinary gamers, right? He's tangentially in my niche.

He talks about cybersecurity every once in a while, right? He's more like generic tech. Live streamer talks about video games, talk about technology, talks about like security. Every once in a while when it's like, you know, overlaps with more general public interest, he gets like a hundred thousand to millions of views on every single video he posts every day, which is like what they tell you not to do on YouTube, right?

That's like a TikTok thing, right? Don't post 20 minute videos every day. No way are people gonna watch that, right? He posts every day, his thumbnail is just his face sitting in his [00:57:00] studio most of the time. Yeah, his lighting is atrocious. His audio sometimes in, sometimes he's way back here and he's like walking into the screen and then he is like on, like he breaks every single rule that they would teach you in like a YouTube academy and he's killing it.

Uh, I think the rules are made up and the points don't matter for you whose line fans, but it's like, uh, it's just can you show up authentically? And I'm almost trying to break the mold from like the Mr. Beast in your face. Oh my gosh. Look at this bright colored thumbnail. Look at all this edits I'm gonna throw at you in the first 30 seconds of this video.

I'm gonna treat you like a little cat with a laser pointer and like change the screen every two or three seconds. That's literally like, I've taken some YouTube courses, they say. Do not like leave the screen stale for more than three seconds. They like, you have to change something. You gotta put something up, you gotta zoom out, you gotta zoom in, you gotta like switch to B roll.

You gotta do whatever every three seconds. You know how long it takes to edit something where you have to change it every three seconds. It's insane. Right. And I also think it's like you're treating your audience like [00:58:00] little a, DD children, right? Which may, maybe a lot of them are if, you know, they're consuming some of the more popular YouTube content, but it's not the audience that I'm going after, right?

Mm-hmm. So I'm just trying to like, connect authentically with my audience everywhere. Now at this point, I threw out, I, I, I threw out my editor. I was like, screw it. We're gonna sit, we're gonna hit record, and we're just gonna jam on a topic that's a little bit more evergreen than, uh, than the news story.

And it's paying off, it's doing really well. And so these, are you just editing yourself with Descrip? Yeah, descr, yeah. I just cut out the, cut out the dead space and that's pretty much it. Wow. It's,

Chenell Basilio: well, so I see the, uh, I see in your description, the first line is just like, subscribed to the newsletter. Are you getting subscriptions from YouTube?

Yeah. Not because they're working better than Instagram.

Matt Johansen: Uh, I'd have to check. I'd have to check on the comparison. My, my gut says similar. Maybe slightly better. Maybe slightly better. Okay.

Chenell Basilio: Interesting.

Matt Johansen: Because the call to action, like you said, is right there. Um, yeah, and I can't do that on Instagram videos.

I can't put a link somewhere. What I should do more of, and, and this does work on Instagram, I should do more stories where [00:59:00] I say, Hey, write, I've done this a few times where I'm like, I'm up late. I'm at the studio. It, you know, I'm here, I'm reading this new story, I'm writing it for my newsletter. Here's a link.

'cause you could put a link in a story. Mm-hmm. I say, Hey, subscribe it, you know, it'll be in your inbox tomorrow morning. I should do that every week. And I don't, um, because yeah, I do get a few when I do that, uh, I'll get, you know, I'll get a handful of subscribers if I, if I strongly pump it like that. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: I think there's only so much time in the day though, so,

Matt Johansen: so much time in the day. And also like, I'm very sensitive to like, exhausting my audience on like, calls to action. Yeah. Like I, I. I, I am like endlessly just trying to pour free value onto the internet, right? It's just like newsletter's, free, Instagram's, free TikTok, like just, I'm just trying to show up every day and just like, give, give, give.

And then it's like, all right, let's, you know, figure out the subtle ways in the funnel. To like, make this worth my time. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Well, maybe you can come back in a few months and tell us how you've improved your newsletter game from social. 'cause you clearly have the short form video, [01:00:00] the long form video figured out at this point.

It's, it's a matter of like, time of just continuing to do it. So, um, this is awesome though. I'm excited to, uh, get this out into people's hands. Yeah,

Matt Johansen: I'm excited. I'm, hopefully I've got like, you know, a good story in six months to share how the premium newsletter's going. Maybe the community has started, you know, stuff like that.

I'm hoping that that kind of turns, turns real. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Um, yeah. Well, if people wanna find you, uh, where should they get? Like, what's the best place?

Matt Johansen: Um, literally anything we talked about. Uh, I'm, I'm everywhere. So I'm Matt Jay on a lot of platforms. M-A-T-T-J-A-Y. Uh, 'cause there's always another Matt.

Um, yeah, if you're, if you're a male in the US from the nineties, there's, there's always another mat. Um, so, uh, I was Matt Jay my whole life, so yeah. Matt j on Twitter and Instagram. I think I'm my full government name on YouTube,

but you can find my,

I think you can find my link tree on most of my bios that have mm-hmm.

Kind of everything. And then vul u.com. VULN u.com [01:01:00] is my, is my newsletter. Well,

Chenell Basilio: thanks for joining us on the show. I appreciate it, Matt.

Matt Johansen: Yeah, it's always fun to talk. I, I'm usually talking about security stuff, so this is always fun to like, talk about why I spend all this time on socials. So.