Newsletter & Email Growth: Growth In Reverse

VIDEO - Milly Tamati - MAIN EDIT
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[00:00:00]

Milly Tamati: I keep telling everyone that this is the elite flywheel. I'm like, it's so good. There's so much value for people. People love it. People share it because it's so good.

and it's driven like, so much growth for us for free

Dylan Redekop: You had, I think, 15,000 ish subscribers to your newsletter, and you've more than doubled that in like four months.

Milly Tamati: I think the world is drowning in actually not useful lead magnets we overcomplicate lead magnets so much when really it's just like linkedIn for me is about trust. LinkedIn is where I have , my crew. I posted every work day for over a thousand days.

Chenell Basilio: But if the content is not good or insanely valuable, they're not gonna stick around.

Milly Tamati: Tried so many different things over the years and all you gotta do is find the one or two things that work and the one or two things that you can just keep doing. And those one or two things for us is we obsess over this.

Chenell Basilio: Milly, we're so excited to have you on the Growth In Reverse podcast. Thanks for coming on and joining us.

Milly Tamati: I'm so happy to be here. I've been a fan. A long [00:01:00] time and so I'm just excited to jam.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, we're excited to have you. To start off, so you, you run the generalist world, the generalist newsletter. I'm, I was cracking up this morning 'cause I was going through your LinkedIn profile and I was looking at your work history and I was laughing so hard because it's like co-founder of hop on and off, wine tour bus thing.

Hops and barrels, and then you had like slumber party hostels move over. Bob consultant. I was like, what is happening here? Do you wanna like, give us a quick rundown of your, your history and your background and where you, how you got to where you are?

Milly Tamati: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, it's generalist 1 0 1. When you look at that LinkedIn history. I'm Milly. I am, as you said, the founder of Generalist World. I'm from New Zealand originally, and I left when I was 21 and it was meant to be for this one year trip. And that turned, I mean, I'm now 34, so you can do the math and [00:02:00] I. Really just figured out along the way that I wanted to keep moving. I was like, well, what, what do I need to do to keep moving and keep kind of funding these travels, which I've now been fortunate to, you know, slowly travel through 70 plus countries. And one of the coolest ways that I've been able to do that is to basically work for myself and either work for myself and like start a business or. Come on as a really early employee. So they're very often those scrappy generalists at the very beginning of the companies. And so that kind of took me through like a decade of these very weird squiggly experiences Exactly. From like co-owning this hostel in Thailand, co-founding cups and barrels.

It was a hop on, hop off wine tour. It was so much fun. Move Over Bob was a. Is a, uh, an organization that helps women get into the construction industry. So I was consulting for them. I was writing for Tourism Japan at one point. I just follow my curiosities and I just follow my [00:03:00] interest and it's like all culminated to this world of generalist.

And in some ways I feel like I've like created an actual, an actual world within this movement. And it's, it's been the most fun work of my life. And I, I've also got to do it from this island, I live in on, in Scotland. There's less than 200 people that live here. Yeah, that's kind of where, what brought me here today.

Chenell Basilio: That's awesome, and you just hit 40,000 email subscribers, so congrats on that. That's a huge

Milly Tamati: Thank you. Thank you.

Chenell Basilio: Uh, wait. I actually reached out to you to come on the podcast because you posted on Twitter that in one week from one TikTok video you added 3,600 email subscribers, and I was like. Oh my gosh.

Because we had you come into the Growth Reverse Pro community to talk about your quiz funnel and everything, and that was awesome. And I was like, this is really cool. But now it's like accelerating beyond like anyone's wildest dreams. Like how, how does that feel to be able to have this asset that's just growing that quickly?

Milly Tamati: [00:04:00] Amazingly exciting and totally frustrating because I keep telling everyone that this is the elite, like the elite flywheel. I'm like, it's so good. There's so much value for people. People love it. People share it because it's so good. And if you can crack, the hard bit, to be honest, is the TikTok is cracking who you are on TikTok, what your voice is. I looked like an idiot for like a year on TikTok trying to figure out. What, what that culture was and how I fit in. But then you eventually do it and then like now it takes me five to 10 minutes to make a TikTok video. It's fast and the game is you just keep publishing and a occasionally, and sometimes regularly, one will pop off and sometimes I will open my beehive and I'll be like, wow. A thousand new subscribers. Like, I wonder what happened. Oh, a TikTok video has gone bananas. It's, it is literally linked. [00:05:00] So yeah, the TikTok quiz is, something that I don't see enough people doing, and it's driven so like, so much growth for us for free.

Dylan Redekop: I want you to like. want you to back up just a little bit because like you, you mentioned that one word, which is one of the reasons why we had you in the community a few months ago. And that word is quiz and so people are probably wondering like, how are you converting newsletter subscribers from TikTok?

'cause that's, , been notoriously challenging for a lot of people. So tell us about the beginning of the quiz or the idea, the inception of it, and then how it's operating for you, what you're, what you're doing. A little bit of like your funnel, if you will.

Milly Tamati: Yeah, so I just kept getting the same question, like whether it was in my inbox or my dms at conferences, and they were like, I think I'm a generalist, but I don't really know if I'm a generalist. Like what does that mean? What kind of generalist am I? and it, the actual inception of it, I had, I had written an essay, uh, about these four generalist archetypes.

The archetypes that I [00:06:00] saw from the people I was meeting. I was like, oh, it seems like people kind of fall into these kind of archetypes. And I have a really good friend, uh, who's a community member, Ramiro, who is an organizational psychologist by trade. And he was like, you know, I think. I think we could turn this into something.

He's like, I really see there's like, there's legs here with your essay. And at the same time simultaneously I had heard Daniel Priestly, who's the founder of SCORE app, um, on a podcast and he was talking about this platform he has that makes quizzes. And to be honest, I went on and I was like, yeah, this for someone. Who understands like, whose brain works like this, it would be a breeze. My brain doesn't work like this. Like I'm good at creating the idea and the content. And then I was like, oh, Ramiro, would you be interested in like, let's run an experiment. Like I hired him, I paid him, um, and I said, would you run this [00:07:00] experiment where you have control?

Here's the, here's the gist of what I'm thinking. He went and built it on score app in, I can't remember, maybe like a day or two. It wasn't long and it was almost instant that it landed with people because the question, I think we overcomplicate like lead magnets so much when really it's just like, what is the question that people keep asking you? What is the thing that, like, what is the thing that they are dying to know the answer to That you keep having to repeat, turn that into the thing that you give them because they're gonna be like, oh my gosh. Like, yes, I finally have something tangible. And if you can hit into the thing that is also linked to someone's, um, like identity or value, like, you know, the generalist quiz. Take the language and go and get jobs, or they take the language and they negotiate a higher pay raise. So there's like [00:08:00] utility to it. I think the world is drowning in actually not useful lead magnets, but if you're like, if this thing can be really useful, that's 80% of, of the battle. And the key is people then share it for you.

It's like since the dawn of the internet, people have loved sharing about themselves, like Buzzfeed, blah, blah, blah. All of those kind of quizzes. Um, so people are like, oh, I'm a systems thinker. I'm an innovator. Let me tell you about that. And so we built it into the flow that we encourage people to tell and to share it on LinkedIn.

We repost everyone. And so then the, the flywheel continue.

Dylan Redekop: So, uh, I just want to go back really quickly to when you first had the idea for the quiz and it was, you had, your community member build it for you friend. When did you discover like, oh, TikTok shorts, like short form video is the way to promote this? Like, what did you try at first? Or was it like the first thing you tried and it just went off?

Milly Tamati: I think it was like, we are not [00:09:00] on that many platforms. We're basically on TikTok and LinkedIn

and, uh. Kind of Instagram now, I realized today we have like seven and a half thousand followers on there. I'm like, oh,

Dylan Redekop: Should do

something

Milly Tamati: should like, I should put some elbow grease into this. And so TikTok was like, it was, it was something that I was playing with.

It was a sandbox that I was in at the time. And, uh, I find that if I'm ever trying to market something, if I can't turn it into a TikTok video, I don't have the idea down.

Like, I don't, I don't have my messaging, I don't have my positioning down. If I can't turn it into something that people click on in 30 seconds or a minute, um, then I need to work harder on the positioning of that.

Dylan Redekop: It's the litmus

Milly Tamati: TikTok was just, yeah,

totally. Um, TikTok was just a natural playground for it.

Dylan Redekop: Wow.

Chenell Basilio: Oh, I love that. That's really cool. Um, and the other smart thing you're doing is like, you have the URL 'cause you bought a domain just for this quiz, [00:10:00] generalist quiz.com for anybody who wants to go check it out. And so on every video you just have that sitting there while you're talking, which is so smart.

Like it's just such a good flywheel. 'cause adding a link in the description is probably gonna hurt reach, especially on LinkedIn. But if it's in the video itself, like people can just go there.

Milly Tamati: Yes, and I plug that link everywhere. So if you go into my TikTok, Insta, I think even like Twitter, like it's general, it's not generalist world. It's generalist quiz. is, it is the link. It is the link that converts. If people wanna go down the rabbit hole, they will find generalist world like, and then they can woo swing down the rabbit hole.

But the immediate thing is like, you've never heard of me. You have no idea who I am. You, you might have an inkling that you're a generalist, but this might be the first time you're actually hearing the word. Let's get you as fast as possible to having some language that, um. Reflects who you actually are. And I think, you know, you're onto a winner. When people say things like, oh wow, like it's spooky, or [00:11:00] it's like, oh, oh, how did it know that about me? Um, one thing I, I tested the other day, which you guys might like, I'm just at a, I'm basically a scientist on TikTok. I'm like, oh, like, let's just, I don't even care if it's bad.

Like, I do not care. let's

just go, let's just try. So, I don't know if you guys saw that there was that like group seven. Thing. Oh, you, you get on on TikTok. Clearly there was

Chenell Basilio: Clearly we

are not on TikTok is.

Milly Tamati: so, okay. The very short version of it is there was this, uh, there was this woman, I think she's actually a musician. She basically just created these like eight or 10 videos and she would like, if you're saying this, you're in group one.

If you're saying this, you're in group two. And

she would say basically she was trying to play the algorithm, and algorithm was grouping people, and people were getting really basically group seven for whatever reason, took off and got like millions and millions and millions. And people are like, I'm group seven.

And they're just like. [00:12:00] Psyched by being in group seven. They like, they create, it was like a little cultural moment on, on TikTok. And so when I saw that, I was like, that woman is genius. She has just told the algorithm. So I literally made a version of this myself where I was like, if you're seeing this, you're an innovator. This is what an innovator is. Go take the generalist quiz. If you wanna double check if you're seeing this, you're a systems thinker, go check the generalist quiz. If you wanna double check and. The one of them, the systems thinker is the one that took off. I think it's, I don't know, I haven't checked in a while, but like 30,000 plus, uh, people are starting to and 'cause they're like, oh my God.

Like how did the, how did the algorithm know? And

I mean, the, the algorithm knows.

Chenell Basilio: I saw this on your TikTok when I went there this morning, and I was like, oh, she's just experimenting with this. I didn't know the backstory behind it, so that makes so much sense. I love that you're just experimenting and following the trends there. You're a real TikToker, Milly.

Okay, so you're starting, [00:13:00] you're still seeing subscribers coming daily from TikTok and from LinkedIn too. Are you just posting videos on LinkedIn, or what's your strategy there?

Milly Tamati: Yeah, so the big difference between LinkedIn and TikTok is the shelf life. Like I feel like my shelf life of LinkedIn both are like six hours. It's like, all right. See you later and never to be seen again. TikTok is the gift that keeps on giving. Like, I mean, I have videos that just continuously pop off from months and months and months ago, and so never do, like, I will delete videos if they completely don't pop off. But if they, um, yeah, if a video was working, it, it will continue to drive subscribers for many, many months. Um, my LinkedIn strategy is more, LinkedIn for me is about trust. LinkedIn is where I have my, my crew. Um, I feel like they're this, I mean, I posted every day, every work day for over a thousand days.

It's kind of like a dear diary vibe, but this like, this is what I'm doing [00:14:00] today. This is what I'm learning. This is what I got really wrong today. And so people are like really invested in the journey. And I did experiment with video for. A little bit on LinkedIn, but I just wasn't seeing the results. I think the only videos I've really ever seen pop off on LinkedIn are by like the LinkedIn team that get promoted. I dunno if you guys

have noticed that.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. So you have 24,000, no wait, lemme go up. Yes. 24,000 followers on LinkedIn. So you've been, like you said, you've been posting there every day for like a thousand plus days.

Milly Tamati: Correct.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And, is that, is that more where people are like, I've already bought into Milly and the generalist world culture and vibe, and I'm just following her there because, you know, I'm a fan?

Or is this a place where you're also getting, um, an influx of, you know, entrant into the generous world or new subscribers to the newsletter?

Milly Tamati: It's where, it's where the, the loyal [00:15:00] fans live. It's where the, where the crew is. Um, but I mean, every single day I'm getting people that are like, I can't believe that this is the first time I'm coming across you. Like, this is completely me. This is like, I could have said exactly like what you say in my own words. So, but LinkedIn as a, like a discoverability or like, it, it's tough going because there, there it's like, oh my God, I've been posting about this forever. I dunno why you're only just saying this for the first time, to be honest, where TikTok wants you to go viral, like

TikTok is like, it is a different beast. It is different. Like where, it's almost like when someone is a podcast listener, if someone is listening to you for half an hour, it's a depth of relationship. Like there's an intimacy. They're like, okay, I, you can't bullshit for too long if you are like on a podcast in someone's ear. Kind of the same with LinkedIn.

If you're posting every day for a thousand days, like I, you, if you really good [00:16:00] at like baking it where like TikTok. It's 30 seconds. You could be anyone for the 30

seconds. Do you know what I mean? So there, there's a different level. Like I don't, I don't have TikTok friends. Um, it's just, it's just a playground.

It's like, it's, it's a wide open sea where I feel like LinkedIn, I'm kind of in like a pond, um,

Dylan Redekop: Hmm.

Milly Tamati: a lake. Yeah.

Where I'm like, I kind of like, you know, you see, I, I see both basically the same people most days. Occasionally I'll get a new one, but I feel like it's. A similar, similar group of people.

How do you guys feel? Do you feel that? Am I alone in that?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I mean, I don't post on TikTok, so I don't know the, the shelf life, but I do see a lot of old, like Instagram posts and stuff come across my feed too, so I'm sure it's similar. Um, but yeah, LinkedIn's hard. It, it's, you either play the game where you're like on it for three, four hours a day and you're like grinding,

Dylan Redekop: or

you're paying someone to do that for you

Chenell Basilio: Or you're paying someone to do that for you, or you just like [00:17:00] post what you enjoy and just, you know, understand that you're not gonna end up with 300,000 LinkedIn followers. Like, I think that's okay. I think it's a trade off, but yeah, it's a different game.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I feel, I feel the same way. And I think that I feel very self-conscious when I'm thinking about like posting short form video, especially like

maybe Instagram reels or something like that. And so I like what you've said about here, about TikTok where it's just like nobody knows you. Nobody cares if they don't like you.

They're just gonna scroll. No one's judging you. You're just like, you know, use it as a testing ground, right? Use it as a place to experiment. And so I think I need to approach it more with that, with that kind of mindset. So that's really, that's helpful actually. Thank you.

Milly Tamati: You're welcome.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Milly Tamati: Learned about each different platform is they, they have their own culture. So like sometimes I will post a TikTok to Insta knowing that it's a different culture and I'm like, Hmm, it's just not quite gonna hit. Like, Insta is a bit more like aesthetic

and polished and put together. We're actually tiktoks [00:18:00] a bit more like grunty and like raw, a bit like grungy almost, where it's

like you get, you get really penalized if you are too perfect. It's like, um, if you, you, you still have to have a really great message and be really clear, but like talking head videos, for example, work fantastic on video when it's just like me, you to the camera. I don't edit in cap cut or anything. I, I literally just film, post, forget

Chenell Basilio: I feel like your screen, like your camera almost has to be dirty to record a TikTok. Like everyone that I see, it's like fuzzy, and I'm like, oh man, come on.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Milly Tamati: a vibe. That's a vibe.

Dylan Redekop: Uh,

Chenell Basilio: It's like a new filter.

Dylan Redekop: I'm,

I'd love to know Milly, because you're, for one, when we had you in the community a few months ago, you had, I think, what was it, 15,000 ish subscribers to your newsletter, and you've more than doubled that in like four months. And so that's, uh, a testament to you doing what you're doing really well on TikTok and, and figuring out what works. [00:19:00] Including your funnel. So I'm curious, once people have signed up for the quiz, what is the relationship then now in the inbox with your subscribers who have filled out the quiz? They obviously get their quiz results, and then where does it go from there? And how are you building a business now based on that?

Milly Tamati: So they take the quiz, they actually get there basically in. Results, it's like a personalized report that they'll get. Um, we then use Zapier to take them from score at over to beehive, and then we will tag them as a quiz respondent. They will then go through a welcome sequence, which I don't know how nerdy you wanna get, but there's, there's, that.

I'll, I'll do the full thing first,

and

then you can go nerdy wherever you want. So then they, they are then living on beehiiv. And from there. tried so many different things over the years and it's so funny. I realize all you gotta do is find the one or two things that work really, really simple.

And the one or two things that you can just keep doing. And those one or two things for us is, the [00:20:00] first is on a Tuesday we send out 50 jobs. And this is like a curated, like manually curated list where we're like. We sort them by location. We sort them by company size. We sort them by generalist archetype to bring it back to the quiz.

It's all part of this ecosystem, accidental ecosystem that now, now exists. So on Tuesdays it's for jobs and on Fridays we send out a podcast. And the podcast is always recorded with GW members. So that's a part of our community product. So it's a kind of a nod to both of those things. And I think how I think about those two newsletters. Is, it's all about the utility. It's like, it's, it's value loaded. It's like when people get one of those two newsletters, they can be rest assured that they're gonna be very human. We have all these little human little golden eggs along the way. Like Emily will write at the end, she's our newsletter writer.

She'll be like, where she's working from Galway this week. And there'll be a little picture of her climbing [00:21:00] 'cause she loves climbing. so there, there's these little human elements along the way, and it's very, uh, yeah. It's a, it's a, it's like here you go. We've gotta overload. We're gonna, we're gonna make sure every single newsletter we ever push is gonna be full of value. So I think that's kind of the part that not many talk about that you actually can't skip. Like, 'cause you could get the subscribers, but then if you are sending trash, you are just gonna. Lose the subscribers. So I'm really proud. I think we have like a 45% open rate and nearly a eight or 9% click through rate.

Like, and they've been

consistent, like consistent and like we obsess over this. We're like, oh my God, the click through rate's gone down a bit. Like what can we do? How can we make this more like, more and more valuable for people? Then just to kind of zoom out, what is the business? It's a great question. Uh, so I would, I kind of say that we're a, we're a media company that has a cult that has like this, like cult, like a cult like membership. And so all of our [00:22:00] media stuff is free. We publish loads and loads of content that is career advice for generalists and then. For people who are like, I want more. I wanna meet these people, I wanna get in on whatever these big vibes are. Uh, we've had a, we have a community that we've had since day one. Um, and that is a paid membership and it's a one-time fee. It's $950. Uh, we have parity auctions as well. So the only variance on price, we don't vary. We, there's, it's like, there's not different tiers of things you get, it's just, uh, a variance on parity if people need it. We're a global community. That was really important to us to have from the beginning to be able to open up. And so now that membership has over 700 lifetime members, and that is also its own flywheel where people become best mates. They go to each other's birthday parties, like they, they become like really good friends, and then they want to bring the people who would be a good fit [00:23:00] in to the community

as well.

Dylan Redekop: Wow.

Chenell Basilio: So I, I don't know if you know this Milly, but you just completely made my day because one of the things I talk about ad nauseum to people is insanely valuable content and how you can do all of the growth hacks you want in the world. But if the content people end up getting is not good or insanely valuable, they're not gonna

stick around.

They're not gonna share. Exactly. So thank you for saying that because you pointed out two big pieces of that and I think, the jobs email and the podcast email both hit on that. So it sounds like you also have an insanely valuable community. How are you like pulling in those pieces into the community?

Like how do you make it a great place to be? It sounds like you have local events. Uh, what else are you doing in there to kind of get people engaged and hooked?

Milly Tamati: Yeah, I like to think of a community as a culture. You are literally building a culture and you can't spell culture without cult. Uh, so

Dylan Redekop: Nice.

Milly Tamati: I think there, there's a [00:24:00] few, there's a few things that make GW special. Um, I think the first is that we have kind of done everything. Backward or like, not by the rule book.

So the rule book is like, get a really narrow ICP and then go even more narrow. And we are just like this crew of like generalists and it's like we don't, we kind of look the same by our weirdness. that's it. It's not like, you know, the, the classic demographics of a community. And I think that is one of the most magic parts of it.

That it's just like po. Someone has done it before. Such interesting people. I'm biased, but I think that the most interesting people on earth are the ones that have done all these different things and have like lived to tell the tale. And it's like, yeah, what did you learn? Like I recorded a podcast this morning with a member and she was like, yeah, I was like. I was like a, um, an astrophysicist and then I was a data scientist and [00:25:00] engineer, and now I'm a strategy consultant. I was like, what do you mean? Like what, how, tell me what are the curves? How does that happen? And um, I'm just fascinated by these moves that people make, which are non-traditional, which no one else has made before. I just find them like incredibly exciting. So I think the first thing is the people, same as the good content's, like. You don't have really interesting, generous, kind. I wouldn't even always say like-minded because there's such a diversity in there, but like value minded, value aligned more than value minded, not a word. Um, value aligned people. So that's a number one. In terms of like what the actual community is, it is a living, breathing, co-creation from our members. Uh, I am very fortunate that I have an amazing community lead who I hired I think six months in, and she's been with me ever since and she's now a full-time employee. And I've like, Emily, you're wonderful. And so she's [00:26:00] really helped me grow it. And our ethos with this is. This space is not me and her, it's not our space. It is our space. And it's like, so what do you guys want? What would be valuable for you? And so like, for, for an example, uh, we have right now, a two of our members came to us and they were like, we're like, we're in the early stages of building a portfolio career.

We wanna, you know, we've got these targets. We wanna get like, say two clients by the end of the year and an extra revenue stream. And they're like, it'd be so fun to do that in community. Could we run a portfolio career lab sprint? And they sent us this full document of all the, the times and the sessions and the like, the everything. And I was like, go get it. Like a hundred percent. And we also have that for job seekers. We run these regular, job search councils. We also have it for our unbox course. People come together and this is like all community led. Edgar and I are kind of the orchestrators who just, if anything, we're kind of the [00:27:00] bottlenecks sometime, to be honest, to be honest. And local meetups is something that has emerged. Uh, we, it started as a joke in the community. We were like, imagine we had a day, like imagine there was a day for generalists and. We had our first International Generalist day last year, and we thought it was fantastic. There was like 25 local hosts around the world and we were like, wow.

Like how gorgeous generalists coming together in person and we decided to run it again this year and we thought we were being ambitious with our target. We were like maybe like 40, 50 would be the stretch goal. 50 local hosts. That would be amazing. 88 local hosts around the world. We had over 3000 people in, uh, 35 different countries.

Like I was like, what do you mean we're having one in Uruguay?

Excuse me. [00:28:00] It was so cool. It was so cool. Um, and. This might all sound a little bit chaotic and it probably is. Um, but this is community. Community is not like this perfect polish SaaS. It is

this like, okay, it's like a garden and sometimes you try things, you're like, oh yeah, that didn't quite work.

Let's harvest it and like make room for other stuff.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. How many members are in your community? Total.

Milly Tamati: Over 700.

Chenell Basilio: Okay. Wow. So they invited outsiders to come to these local events.

Milly Tamati: Yeah, so for IGD, that is the international generalist, Day that's the, the one day that we allow, non-members to also host events. Typically, like we have event, regular events all across the world. Chicago, New York, London, Sydney, Melbourne, and they are always hosted by members.

Chenell Basilio: Got it. Wow. That's, that's wild.

3,600 people, [00:29:00] did they have to like, sign up to the email list to become, to like get a ticket to come?

Milly Tamati: They did happen to become email subscribers as well.

Chenell Basilio: Nice.

Dylan Redekop: I Love it.

Chenell Basilio: Love it. I love that in real life. Email subscriber

events. That's great. Here's my clipboard. Write your email address down please.

Dylan Redekop: Classic I.

So in terms of the, revenue streams for generalist world and for yourself, is it quiz and then straight through to memberships, and you mentioned lifetime memberships, so this isn't a recurring revenue stream, in terms of like, one person is continually giving you money. So what is your revenue stream or your product offers?

What, what does that look like?

Milly Tamati: so, so the quiz is free, so that's, I, I suppose that's for a, a channel

rather than a revenue stream. Um, so our membership forever was our main revenue stream. That was our main income. And I made the decision this year in May to switch to [00:30:00] lifetime membership when I realized, okay, we've now got, it was around 20,000 subscribers.

That was a number. I completely made up an arbitrary number that I was like, that sounds like a lot. I can go to sponsors and feel confident that like, that's so many subscribers. And so it coincided, it like intersected that I switched us to lifetime membership, essentially deleting our recurring revenue with this strategy, of. A, we were gonna have bigger cohorts and basically collect the, the lifetime value would go up. But b, we would now get our revenue from sponsors. And so in May of this year, I was like, "Right, Milly. You've just taken a big risk in the business. You've just deleted all the recurring revenue. The members are delighted, they're

so happy.

But you better not screw this up. You better go and get

Dylan Redekop: You can't go back, right?

Milly Tamati: you

can't, you can't be like, guys, sorry I messed up. Um,

it was a one-way door. I burned the boat, [00:31:00] but I was, I was confident, I was very confident that, what we had was really valuable and uh, I just needed to learn the skillset.

Again, a very generalist approach. I was like, oh, this is what we need to do. I need to get us to here. I need to learn the skillset of how do you get sponsors and how do you get sponsors that are awesome? That was like. Was my, my North Star. I was like, I don't, I, I don't want to. And I actually won't put anyone in front of this audience that I've like busted my butt for like two years to build.

I'm not just gonna put anyone and like ruin that trust instantly. So I basically made a very, very short list, four people notion lovable gamma Zapier. And I went to all of them. This is the very condensed version and said roughly the same thing. And that is like, this is such a fit and I love you. Like I love you so much. Our audience is gonna love you. Our company runs on these products. So [00:32:00] this is not even gonna be me selling it, it's gonna be me talking about like how we run generalist world with these products. Some were easy. Some, I mean, I went through like side doors. I, at one point I was like, I was so sneaky. I'm not gonna say who, which company it was, but I replied to their support to get an email to the person. I was like, 'cause I couldn't find the person to email. So I replied to their support and um, eventually they directed me

Dylan Redekop: Ooh,

Milly Tamati: to, um,

Dylan Redekop: I love it.

Milly Tamati: it was sneaky and it worked.

Eventually. That was the person that converted. So I think, I think you have to be, if you're going up to sponsors in this way, in this way, where you're like, I, I had a very short list and I was very determined to make that list happen. You have to be relentless. But like in a like friendly way, friendly relentlessness, very following up and, and you're not following up just saying, oh, [00:33:00] I'm just following up. No, you're following up with extra value's like. Let's say you just landed another partnership. It's like, oh, I'm actually working with Lovable now, and here's what I just did with them.

And it's like, give them a proof point. Give them something that they're like, oh, okay, this person's legit. And yeah, within between, I think I started that process, and it must have been around April or May when we deleted the revenue, the recurring revenue. By, I would say like July, August, we had those four sponsors locked in.

Dylan Redekop: Wow, all

four.

Chenell Basilio: I just wanna pi like reiterate that you said you, you've replied to the support email to get this, like, I don't know if you've read the book, uh, the Third Door by Alex Banayan,

Milly Tamati: No, I haven't.

Chenell Basilio: essentially, the concept is there's the, if you really want something, there are three doors. There's the front door where nobody gets in, right the back door where you can maybe sneak in, and then there's like the cracked window down the alley, like that leads into the bathroom and you just like [00:34:00] jump in and you're in the building.

Right. And I feel like that's what you did with this sponsorship, and I think it's such an underrated thing for people in this space to do like they think, you know, you email the person you don't hear back, or you get a no and then they're done and you're like, no, no, I'm gonna go weasel my

way

Dylan Redekop: is another way in into a way to get into this, uh, place. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Yes.

Milly Tamati: Yeah. And like, how bad do you want it?

How bad, How bad, do you want it? And for me, this is like, you know, I'm not working for a big company. This is my

living. I'm like, I gotta make this work and I, I want to make it work with you. And I think it's like when people see that you'll sew. Like psyched and so jazzed to actually work with them. I mean, instantly that stands out, but still, that's not enough. I can't reiterate enough like how many times you just have to keep following up and try, try the different doors, try the the third door.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, that's great. So on the topic of like, how bad do you want it? Like, I know we already [00:35:00] talked about social, but I'm gonna go back to it because a thousand workdays in a row is a lot like, how do you get through those days where you don't feel like posting, you don't wanna do it, like, give us some inspiration here.

Milly Tamati: You are gonna hate me. It is one of my favorite parts of my job.

I don't hate it.

And I think that's the key. So I think if I was writing in a way that I was like, oh, it's a chore, damn, I've not posted on, honestly, if I could post on LinkedIn five times a day and not be penalized, I would like, there is, I have no shortage of content because everything is content when you start looking for it, everything.

I met someone at a conference the other day and she said, oh, I've got nothing interesting to say. Bullshit. I do not believe it. I do not believe it. Everyone has something interesting to say. You are just not looking at it because I think people, undervalue how freaking cool they are and they undervalue the magic.

This is a lot of [00:36:00] why the generalist quiz has taken off because we are finally giving people this language that they then start to see their magic. And so how do I, how do I keep posting on LinkedIn? Number one, I don't take myself too seriously. I don't try and be exact. I, I don't, couldn't care less if I don't have 300,000 followers. In fact, I was thinking this morning, I was like, I don't even know if I've ever had a post go viral.

Dylan Redekop: Hmm.

Milly Tamati: Like I think maybe I've had a post get like 500 likes or something. Couldn't care less, doesn't matter. That's not what I'm there for. I'm not there to sell my LinkedIn course, do you know what I mean? On how to

like grow, how to grow on LinkedIn. I'm there to build a reputation and something happened last week that, made me realize it worked because like I live on this remote island and like I see these names on LinkedIn, but I'm like, I don't really.

I don't really know if you guys are people or like if you're actually, you don't really know. I, I don't see them in [00:37:00] person, but I went to this conference Operations Nation, shout out, and it was the strangest experience because it was the first time in my life that I felt famous. I don't know how else to say that. Famous, within a very small sphere. It was like a room of operators, startup folks, like my people. It was a room of generalists basically, and people were like. You are my favorite person on LinkedIn and I follow you every day. I send your stuff to my husband and I mean, this happened all day. I was exhausted.

I was exhausted by the end. I was like, oh my, I'm not used to this. And I think it's a really important, it was a really important realization for me because sometimes I think I'm posting to LinkedIn, I'm like, oh, it only reached

3000 people.

Three.

Chenell Basilio: lot of, that's more people than live on your island.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Milly Tamati: a long way. And if those 3000 people are 3000 people who have been reading your stuff for a thousand days, [00:38:00] they feel like they know you.

Someone hugged me and they're like, congrats on the wedding. I'm like,

Chenell Basilio: Well, congrats. I didn't know that either.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Milly Tamati: thanks. Thanks.

Yeah, I think like tactically, if someone is, if someone is feeling stuck with LinkedIn, I actually think the problem is your why. It, you are stuck on the why and it's like, so why are you actually posting if you're posting, to. Like, I don't know, for, for, for a goal that isn't something that you actually like really believe in or a goal that like expires, then of course it's gonna be really hard to have longevity with that.

But I'm like, I'm here to build a reputation. LinkedIn for me is, I live on this island. I don't have a reputation unless I like shoulder budge my way into people's psyche. And the best way to do that is a professional network and, um. So I think it's about really understanding why are you posting it? Why are you posting every day and not caring so much.

Like I don't sweat the analytics [00:39:00] of a single post. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. What I'm really doing is building that reputation and I think people totally underestimate how many opportunities come through LinkedIn. Like that is where peop, that's where my speak. Speaking career. That's another re revenue stream, which is in the last year.

Hilarious. I just posted on LinkedIn one day. I wanna be a speaker. That was it. Like I, I didn't have anything strong behind me except for, I think I have kind of a cool story and, um, it looks really fun and I'd like to spread the word about generalist. I think it's an efficient way to do that as a speaker. I'm like on this like speaking tour, I was away last week. I'm going back next week to speak in, in London at the portfolio career summit that I'm gonna go mc at Web Summit. Do you think I could be MCing Web Summit if I did not post on LinkedIn for a thousand days?

Maybe, but like. I don't see the world where that [00:40:00] happens.

'cause all someone does know is they look at it, they look me up and they're like, oh yeah, she's legit. 'cause she's like really consistent and people engage a lot and it seems, it seems legit. And what else can I say? I think it is about finding your voice. So I think there's, like, there is the LinkedIn voice, uh, which we all know. We all know the LinkedIn voice. It's very like rigid and it's like the short lines, short sentences, and it's probably written by chat gt and we can, we can all see it. So it has actually never been easier to stand out on LinkedIn. If you have an ounce of humor about you, like a Bone of funniness, use it because everything is so serious and so you will instantly stand out. I think my favorite, I could go on about this little day. I'm gonna end with my favorite, um, piece of advice, which is, uh, by someone called Courtney Johnson. We had her in for a Masterclass inside gw, and she said, [00:41:00] just be more honest. And I was like, that's it. That is what works with my LinkedIn every day.

It's so easy to write because I'm just honest. About, I'm honest, and then I turn the honesty up a little bit and when you turn the honesty up a little bit, people go, wow. She said the quiet thing out loud.

It's like, Yeah. we're, we're all thinking it. We're all thinking it. I will

pause or I could keep going.

Dylan Redekop: How often are you worried about your hooks or how you're formatting your posts or how you're like signing off or your call to actions? Like does any of that really go through your mind when you're writing or are you just like, blah, like I'm just gonna write what I'm writing or what I'm thinking? Okay.

Milly Tamati: hook hooks really matter. I'm into the hook. I'm

into the hook. Um, that really matters. No doubt about it. The CTAI am insanely inconsistent. Sometimes I remember to write one, sometimes I don't. Sometimes they're like, oh yeah, I'm Milly. Follow me. You

know, I'm very inconsistent with that, but I'm very [00:42:00] consistent in, I think if you get the hook wrong, it's actually just like science.

Like it's not gonna get shown to anyone. People aren't gonna read it.

So do focus on the hook. The formatting, I'm more flexible on, um, I think it's more about the, um, having the message that like either really resonates or really surprises or really like connects with people.

Chenell Basilio: I'm a big hook person too. If I could just write hooks instead of posts, I would do it, but

Dylan Redekop: do on Chenell just.

Chenell Basilio: Just write hooks and put like a little read more label and there's nothing below it.

Uh, that'd be so good. So you recently, you mentioned that your latest cohort of joining, of people joining the community was 120. Which was the, the most you've had join.

Uh, so it sounds like you have three-ish times a year you let people in, and then this time you're, you upped it to four if I remember correctly.

Milly Tamati: So this year was actually still three. I think

next year we might do four. Um, I think to do [00:43:00] that, we, we need an extra community person. I think EDA is kind of at her, her, she's stretched as it is. And we, we, we give such a shit about when people come in making that community experience like a 20 out of 10.

Like I still send everyone a personalized video. To this cohort that was a hundred and over 120. I was like a puddle on the floor, but I was like, we gotta do it. It's tradition like, and people love it. They're like, I've been waiting for my personalized video.

Chenell Basilio: That's amazing.

And it, it, you probably think it's like not a, a waste of time, but like people would probably tell you that you could scale it away or do something different. Um. Yeah, I mean, I do welcome videos with people welcome calls, I

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Calls.

Chenell Basilio: So yours is a little bit more lightweight.

Maybe I should take a take a page outta your book.

Milly Tamati: I used to do welcome calls with everyone, but then it did. It did get, I mean, I [00:44:00] would just be doing welcome calls.

Dylan Redekop: yeah.

yeah. Wow.

Chenell Basilio: I might be getting to that point soon, but we'll see.

Milly Tamati: I think, I think I got to, I, I was around a hundred. I think I welcomed the first 100 with a welcome call and then I was like, okay, not sustainable.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

That's awesome. What else are, like, what's next for generalist World? What's, what's coming down the pipe?

Milly Tamati: You know, that, like, that concept of compounding,

I've, like, I've heard of people talk about compounding, but I never have experienced compounding. We are in this insane compounding time where, I feel like for two years we were trying really hard and we were growing really slowly and I was like, man, I'm doing all the things.

And it's just like, it's just like it. Brute force, brute force to get in front of people, to try different experiments, to fail. Lots and lots and lots. Uh, but we're in this beautiful period in the last six months, as you said, the last time we spoke, there's, it was in May and now [00:45:00] there's 20,000 more subscribers.

And, uh, I believe that this is the effect of compounding and just sticking with something. Um, so. What the actual impact of that compounding means is, it means that, um, we now have stability to really take big swings. So generalist world as a team to be like, okay, what are the things that we couldn't do when we were still kind of in the survival phase?

What can we do now that we're at the stable phase? And one of the, our big bets is in person. So next year expect. A whole load of more in person. I think it's like the Antit trend, right? So like when you've got like everyone going all ai, it's like, okay, you've got community, um, which is digital and there's so much value in it, and if we can bring more people together in person.

So that's kind of gonna be a focus of next year. Um, but the, the vision is to [00:46:00] build a workforce. It's to build an entire workforce of people who are happy, thriving, generalists as we call 'em. We've got this archetype of a happy, thriving generalist, someone who's making great money, getting paid to do great work that lights them up, and getting paid to be a generalist.

They're not having to squeeze into the rigid boxes. That's the vision to build an entire workforce of these people.

Chenell Basilio: I feel like you can just take Lenny Rachitsky's playbook and just like keep

Milly Tamati: Mm.

Chenell Basilio: compounding on it. 'cause it's the same thing but in a much different space and like. I, I just feel like everything I see from you, I'm like, oh, Lenny, it's like one-to-one almost, but just like in a, in a different space.

Milly Tamati: I mean,

Chenell Basilio: that's pretty cool.

Milly Tamati: I, I hope I can become Lenny. That would be sweet.

Chenell Basilio: Uh, and now, I don't know if you saw this yesterday, he's posting about fitness and I was like, okay, me, you do you,

Milly Tamati: You do you? He could do whatever he wants. Who's

Lenny?

Dylan Redekop: I, I mean that he's, he's built his business to the point where, yeah, he can make those calls if you wanted to talk [00:47:00] about fishing or, you know, whatever

floats his

Chenell Basilio: People will be interested.

Milly Tamati: Absolutely.

Dylan Redekop: Wow.

Chenell Basilio: That's amazing. Um, Dylan, do you have any other questions you're, you wanna ask or anything like

that before we wrap

Dylan Redekop: yeah, I think I kinda like to ask generally, like what would be your main advice to somebody who's trying to grow a newsletter, who might be going through this, like this struggle that you just described, like all this work, this grunt work. It's not, doesn't feel like it's moving in needle, this might sound like a cliche question, but like, yeah. What would you, what would you tell somebody, um, or tell yourself maybe your two year ago or three year ago self?

Milly Tamati: Yeah. That if the why is important enough, you'll keep going. Um, I think the, the flip side of that is it's never been easier to start a newsletter.

It's like, oh, there it is. Now I have a newsletter and, uh. It will absolutely take you longer than you think. It will absolutely take, you might be the tiny TV exception who has that like breakout success out the [00:48:00] gate, but probably you are actually gonna be grinding.

So it better be something that you care about and it better be for an audience that you actually wanna help. I think newsletters are so freaking cool. You get to like help so many people at scale. And I would also say if you. Like writing is never a bad skill to learn. Like if you can become, even if you're just writing for a small group, it doesn't have to be an enormous newsletter list. Even if you are writing for a small group, that skill, that craft of being able to like, think through an idea, translate it and like make it like accessible, make it enjoyable, that's a great skill to have . There'd be different arguments for this, but I think particularly with ai, if you can be a strong writer and a strong communicator, um, so what I would tell Milly two to three years ago, I think it would just be around like that it matters because. The people who are reading it need this. And it's like, it matters [00:49:00] because the people who are reading it are gonna get jobs through this. It matters because the people who are reading it are gonna listen to that podcast and go negotiate a higher salary. So it's like the, the newsletter is just a vehicle to reach people. If you have a really strong why of why you want to help those people, why you wanna reach those people, it's an amazing channel.

Dylan Redekop: Wow,

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

That's

amazing. it's,

like set your, set your ego aside and just pay attention to the impact that you could have on these people's lives.

Dylan Redekop: can. You can. change lives, which sounds kind of wild and crazy, but is actually legitimately what you are doing. That's

Milly Tamati: Thank you.

Chenell Basilio: Amazing. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast. Um, if people wanna check out more about what you're doing, where should they go? What's the best place

Milly Tamati: Generalist world generalist quiz.com. Go take the quiz tag D in it on LinkedIn

and I

will amplify it for you and you'll find me on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Milly Tamati,

Chenell Basilio: And you'll find her on TikTok as well, which

Milly Tamati: [00:50:00] find me and about 50 clones on TikTok, so

please go. Yeah. It's, it's a battle. I've stopped fighting. I don't know what to do. There's so many clones. Um,

so I'm the one with like 40,000 followers. Go to that one.

Dylan Redekop: wow.

Milly Tamati: And I'm not trying to sell you

crypto. I prob

Dylan Redekop: It's that big biggest form of flattery though, right? Like when people start cloning you and, and that sort of thing, right? Yeah.

Milly Tamati: Yeah, I suppose.

Dylan Redekop: Uh,

Chenell Basilio: Uh, well, thanks for, thanks again for coming on the show. This has been great.

Milly Tamati: for having me!

Dylan Redekop: Thanks Milly.

Chenell Basilio: Well, Milly, we're excited to have you on the Growth River. Oh my gosh. Can we talk

Dylan Redekop: Rewind.