More with Less Media with Brian Morrissey - [Making Media, EP.36]

More with Less Media with Brian Morrissey - [Making Media, EP.36]

Author: Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts September 14, 2023 Duration: 1:01:50
Today we're sitting down with Brian Morrissey and getting back to the guts and glory days of the media industry. In 2021, Brian founded The Rebooting - a newsletter publication focused on the mechanics of building sustainable media businesses. Prior to The Rebooting, he spent a decade building Digiday and had a nice stint as editor at Adweek. We get into Brian's own experience launching his business and unpack his view that we're in a "more with less" era in media. Please enjoy this conversation with Brian Morrissey. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ----- Making Media is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Making Media, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @ReustleMatt | @domcooke | @MakingMediaPod | @JoinColossus  Show Notes (00:03:23) - (First question) - How media is adapting to the "more with less" era amidst challenges (00:06:08) - Efficiency's impact on media brand identity and content quality (00:08:21) - The benefits of niche focus in media for building sustainable brands (00:10:25) - Media companies' failure to adapt and the impact of misaligned incentives (00:13:30) - The power law effect on media business size and advocating for lean operations (00:16:22) - Starting narrowly versus broadly in the media business (00:18:57) - Leaving Digiday to build a personal, autonomous, trust-based media brand in The Rebooting (00:22:27) - Using his year away from work to strategize personal media product creation (00:23:52) - Leveraging connections to sell ads, avoiding paywall to grow faster (00:28:12) - Understanding the essence of sales and the role belief plays in it (00:30:41) - How niche markets and personal connections can serve as media business moats (00:33:43) - Valuing passion and expertise over market trends when starting a media business (00:36:53) - Why questioning industry norms can be beneficial (00:37:52) - Creators using autonomy and audiences for better deals (00:40:57) - Pat McAfee's leverage as an entity, not just talent (00:42:56) - Analyzing the Barstool-Penn breakup and its implications for the media business (00:46:27) - Why ad agencies continue to survive despite being dysfunctional (00:50:23) - Debrief (01:01:17) - Live Event

Matt Reustle and Dom Cooke have spent years analyzing companies as investors, but found themselves drawn into a new, messy, and fascinating world: building a media company from the ground up. Their Making Media podcast, from Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts, is the raw audio journal of that transition. Instead of theory, you get the real-time experiments, stumbles, and occasional breakthroughs of two practitioners who are actively trying to construct something lasting. Each conversation pulls back the curtain with seasoned media operators who have navigated these waters, offering hard-won tactical advice rarely shared publicly. Between these interviews, Matt and Dom hold themselves accountable, documenting the progress of their own ventures and breaking down the books, articles, and interviews that shape their thinking. The underlying mission gives this business and entrepreneurship podcast its pulse: a genuine fight to create substantive, long-form content in an economy increasingly optimized for fleeting clicks. For anyone curious about the operational realities of publishing, audience building, and sustainable creation, this series feels like getting a direct feed from the workshop floor, where ideas are forged into tangible assets.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 65

Making Media
Podcast Episodes
How to Start a Podcast - [Making Media, EP.31] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:26
Today, we’re answering a question we get a lot. How do you start a podcast? We’ll tell you everything you need to know, from hardware to software to thoughts on content and format. Scroll down to our shownotes for a full…
Finding Your Favorite Thing with Liberty RPF - [Making Media, EP.30] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:06
Our guest today is someone we've mentioned frequently on this podcast, Liberty RPF. It's difficult to define exactly what Liberty writes about - but that might explain why we find his work so fascinating. He is a curator…
Is Forbes Worth $800 Million? - [Making Media, EP.29] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:45
Today’s episode is a little different. Rather than bring a guest on, we’re going to break down how Forbes works. As former investors now operating in the media space, a few brands particularly intrigue us. Forbes is near…
Making Epic Acquisitions with Kevin Espiritu - [Making Media, EP.28] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:22
Our guest today is Kevin Espiritu. Kevin is the founder and CEO of the world’s most followed gardening brand and online garden store – Epic Gardening. Matt and I had been following Epic and Kevin’s journey for a while bu…
Building the Disney of B2B with Adam Ryan - [Making Media, EP.25] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:35
Our guest today is Adam Ryan, the founder of Workweek. At Colossus, we're big fans of Workweek. We've hosted the Wolf of Franchises for an excellent Business Breakdown on Orangetheory and I'm an avid reader of Adam's Per…
Nailing a Niche in Radio with Louis Timpany - [Making Media, EP.24] [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:14
Today, we speak with the founder of the UK’s fastest growing radio station, Louis Timpany. Louis started Fix Radio in 2017 after realising that the power users of radio weren’t being served at all. He was working on a co…