Running a Business Newsletter in 2024 w/ Marty Beckerman | builders podcast

0:00It's been a super interesting time to run a business newsletter. When I started, we were in the middle of the great resignation. Everyone was quitting their jobs and traveling the world and inflation was hitting double digits. And since then, so much has happened.

0:21If you are a regular listener of the Builders podcast, then you're familiar with Marty Beckerman. He pops on for 10 minutes or so in the first segment of most episodes, discussing the business trends and news that he covers in the B Newsletter. He's on today as the main guest. He's approaching his 200th issue. The first one was back in July 2022 during the great resignation and massive disruptions in the global supply chain, if you can remember back then. We talk about the changes that have occurred 200 issues in and 200 ,000 readers later.

1:01Hi, Marty. Good to see you. Hey, John. Thanks for having me on. Of course. We usually have you on for the first segment, but this time we get you for the whole episode. And I wanted to bring you on because you're the editor-in-chief of the Bee Newsletter. Our first newsletter dropped in July 2022. I think we're almost 200 issues in. And I wanted to talk about the changing landscape of business content news over the last two years. What's it been like? It's been a super interesting time to run a business newsletter. When I started, we were in the middle of the Great Resignation. Everyone was quitting their jobs and traveling the world.

1:40And inflation was hitting double digits. And since then, so much has happened. The labor market has tightened up. There was the whole culture war with companies trying to get workers back in the office, the work from home versus RTO wars. AI became a thing that was just getting kicked off a couple of years ago. And now it's like three fourths, 80 percent of hiring managers say they won't even consider a candidate who has no AI skills. um so it's been it's been a pretty amazing couple years uh and and just tons and tons of fascinating changes when you started when you published your first newsletter you're it's probably like having a party at your house wondering if anybody's going to come how many how many readers do you have now almost two years in and then kind of follow-up question after uh everything that you've that you and your team have written about, what's had probably the strongest or most interesting reaction?

2:44So we send to a couple hundred thousand people every week. The interesting thing, we actually have more email addresses, significantly more email addresses, but something I learned about the newsletter world is you actually have to sort of trim and curate your own list because if people aren't clicking on links, then algorithms say, oh, you must not have very interested subscribers. So interestingly, you can have a lot more people you could send to, but you kind of have to trim it to the ones that are most engaged. So anyway, we have a hopefully very engaged readership now. As far as the stories that have had the most traction, the most response, the biggest one was on when inflation was going nuts, was on should I raise prices?

3:35Business owners, I think, were debating, well, if they raise prices, that's more revenue. That's what business owners want. That's why they started a business. But also, they might be angering customers, losing customers if they raise prices too much. I think that at the time was a pretty big question on a lot of businesses' mindset. If we do raise prices, how much should we raise them? And what's sort of interesting in the last month or so, you're seeing more businesses lowering prices. We might have seen the end of shrinkflation. Big companies like Target are trying to make big press announcements.

4:15Oh, our prices are coming down. Come back here for the value and the affordability. Because people kind of stopped buying some discretionary things because it got too out of hand. Anyway, the other big story that we had, really, this was a video on YouTube, but it was our biggest YouTube video was on the Chipotle incident where a woman threw her burrito bowl at a Chipotle worker because she was mad. the Chipotle order was wrong through the order at the worker. And then a judge sentenced her to hard time of working in fast food to realize how hard fast food workers actually have it dealing with angry customers all day long.

4:57And that one did. That one did go viral. I think everybody loves food and food news. And I actually want to ask you a question. Yeah, right. And karma. And I want to actually ask you about food news a little bit later. We've got something funny that you're covering or funny to me. You've interviewed a lot of people, too. Who's been your favorite interview so far and why? Yeah, we've interviewed some huge people. The president of Nintendo of America, the CEO of In-N-Out Burger, the CEO of Dude Wipes, Food Network host Robert Irvine. And I think one of my favorites was maybe because I'm a new dad or maybe not so new now.

5:40We spoke to Esther Wojcicki, the CEO. So I'm sorry, the mother of the CEO of YouTube and the CEO of 23andMe. So she wrote a book, How to Raise a CEO, since she's done it twice. And her advice was maybe the opposite of what you'd expect. like stop micromanaging your kids and trying to pressure them to get in the Ivy League. And she kind of found that letting them find their own way made them more independent thinkers. And that's what she recommends. Yeah. And it's really, it's really hard to do as a new parent. I mean, my, my kids are in, are in high school now and you, you look back at some of the things that you're kind of freaking out about with, with your kids back when they were toddlers and just mind, mind boggling.

6:27So that's probably is good, good advice. Some that I wish I had taken earlier too. I was joking around, oh, my daughter is going to be the first president astronaut who solves global warming. And maybe that's not the kind of pressure that a human being needs from birth. Well, you had a really cool interview. Is it out already with John Mackey, the CEO and founder of Whole Foods? I don't think he's the CEO anymore. Maybe he's on the board or something. I think he stepped down a couple years ago. Yeah, yeah. What was that like? You just had a new book out. And what's your relationship with Whole Foods?

7:02Let me actually start there. Put this into context. My relationship, I mean, I'll shop there occasionally. Like when my stock portfolio is doing really well, I might buy some kale. I visited Whole Foods for the first time in college. That was before the Amazon acquisition. And it was just interesting. Some items were pretty reasonable. And then there'd be tomatoes for$20 a pound. I'm like, what is this place? but interviewing John Mackey was probably the biggest interview we've gotten so far. I mean, considering the size of the business he built, sold it for billions and billions to Amazon. So it was great to hear his thoughts on building a business, on location, location, location, on his attitude toward negotiation and to get inside his head.

7:55Yeah, I want to ask you more about location. So I was at Amazon, employed by Amazon, in the grocery division when we, at that time, Amazon bought Whole Foods. So I got like a little bit of an inside story of all that stuff. And I think location was a pretty important part. If you think about where Amazon wants to deliver and Whole Foods and all these urban centers, it makes a lot of sense to me. What did he say specifically about that? I guess in the early days when he was, I think they started in Austin. What was he saying about location that makes him consider that sort of old real estate mantra?

8:39He said in our interview that they put a ton of thought whenever they open a store into, is this the right place for them? And it can be a really costly mistake if you get that wrong. And he said that even today, even with e-commerce and everything, location, location is still maybe the most important thing to a business. And then what did he say? You mentioned negotiation. What did he say about negotiation? I mean, obviously, he wasn't negotiating too hard when the tomatoes were 20 bucks a pound or whatever. But what was coming on that? He said he enjoys negotiation. He looks at it as a fun game, but he also tries to look for win-wins with people.

9:15He doesn't want to screw his suppliers because he feels like they're going to want, when you do that, they'll want revenge later. Or if he feels like someone's trying to screw him, he'll walk away from the deal. Also, by the way, I mean, Whole Foods is not the most expensive grocery store. I don't know if you've been to Erewhon here in Los Angeles. I haven't. I'm turned off by the name. It's almost like a joke here. I mean, it's, you know, I don't want to get sued for saying the wrong price, but I saw Camel Milk one time. They have all these like interesting oddball things like Camel Milk, I believe was$25 for like the amount that you'd have in a lunchbox in school.

9:58Was it organic? I guess that's all we need to know. Yeah. Camels were not treated with antibiotics. They were free range, free desert camels. What did John say if anything about keeping customers happy? He said that when they're considering which products to have, sometimes some customers might want certain products, but you have to consider who the brand is, who your audience is, and that some customers aren't going to be happy with your selections, but you have to pay attention to most of them. and what's really honoring your brand and what makes sense in the big context of the business. And if that's not working out, you have to reconsider what your brand is.

10:36Yeah, I do remember when I started shopping there and the kids would be like, no, because I couldn't get certain types of cereals and sodas that they were accustomed to. So we teased a food news item earlier. We're recording this on a Tuesday, Taco Tuesday. Are you having tacos today? Where do you rank tacos in terms of your favorite foods? Pretty high. I mean, I would say that Mexican and sushi are probably the two foods I could eat forever on a desert island if I had to pick a couple kinds of cuisine. I brought up tacos for a reason. What's the latest food news, litigious, interesting story that you're covering?

11:15Oh, yeah. I think this was in Indiana. a local restaurateur had signed on to local guidelines that were really trying to prevent national fast food companies from moving in. And one of those guidelines was that everything served in this one area had to be handmade sandwiches. It's the idea that it can't be factory line burgers, handmade sandwiches. But it was a Mexican restaurant. He decided to serve tacos. And the city council was like, this is not what we agreed to. We didn't agree to tacos. We agreed to handmade sandwiches. And he fought it in court. And I think this lawsuit was going on for a couple of years.

11:58And he won because the court decided that tacos were in fact Mexican sandwiches in the judge's words. So tacos came out ahead. Although people have pointed out there's tortas, which are probably closer to sandwiches. Maybe a taco is kind of a wrap. I mean, a burrito is a wrap too. I'm not a lawyer. I didn't go to law. I should have gone to law school, but what do I know? Tacos are Mexican sandwiches and that's the law. Well, I'm glad that our judicial system is ruling on such important matters. Something you also have coming up is an interesting story in crisis management, I thought. What was the crisis that this game company went through?

12:41Oh, yeah. This was a story late last year. Rockstar Games was releasing Grand Theft Auto 6, and their trailer somehow got stolen. Actually, as our writer noted, pretty ironically, that if any game trailer gets stolen, Grand Theft Auto. Oh, that's funny. And so it was leaked. And the way they responded was they released officially on YouTube like the next day and weeks earlier than they had anticipated releasing it. They're like, well, it's out. People are seeing it in a way that we don't want them to see it. So let's go ahead and make this legitimate. They put it out on their own channel early and it wound up getting the Guinness World Record for the most YouTube views in 24 hours and millions and millions of views on their social media channels.

13:27So the fact they kind of owned, all right, this isn't how we wanted to release it, but it's out. And instead of denying that it's out there and just waiting till our original date, we're going to put our stamp of approval and release it officially wound up working in their favor. Last thing I wanted to ask you is, I guess it's officially summer or almost summer, kind of summer season. We're coming up on Memorial Day here. What are some of the trends you imagine covering this summer in the newsletter? Sure. We're going to be talking about AI more. We're going to be talking about when to sell your business.

14:00We've got a new recurring segment coming up called Exit Stage, which we'll really get into why and when to exit. Are you emotionally prepared to sell? Who should you sell it to? Where do you find a buyer? And we'll be looking more and more at some of the kind of emerging generational differences as Gen Z becomes more and more of the workforce. I think people seem pretty fascinated by now that millennials are the old people. And Gen Z seems to have a pretty different mentality since they didn't come up in the Great Recession. Really, if anything, the COVID years were their formative, leaving college and entering the work world experience.

14:39millennials are now the middle managers and it's sort of this interesting thing. Well, we thought we were the laid back ones, but now the people we're overseeing want to come to work in pajamas. Everyone beats up on Gen Z and it's not fair. At the same time, Gen Z does have a very entrepreneurial attitude because they sort of saw what happened to millennials who are their older brothers and sisters, saw what happened to them in the Great Recession. You know, I think for us, we were sort of told, oh yeah, go ahead and get that English degree, study philosophy, whatever. As long as you have a college degree, it's fine.

15:14And Gen Z kind of came up in a very different world where they're considering their futures much earlier and their career paths and whether they want to start a business. And I think they have a much more ambitious and pragmatic worldview. Like I was saying, everyone beats up on Gen Z and everyone says, oh, they don't want to work that hard and they want to wear pajamas. But in a lot of ways, numbers show that they actually have a very aggressive mindset. And so we want to explore those generational differences and represent everybody fairly. Well, as you are comparing and contrasting millennials and Gen Z, I sit here as a proud member of Generation X cackling because, you know, if millennials are the old people, what are we?

16:03When I was in college, there was, I think it was a Time Magazine article came out called The Slacker Generation about basically how lazy and unmotivated Gen X is. And then it just keeps going down. Then, you know, whatever keeps rolling downhill. You know, then we complain about millennials and we complain about Gen Z. And whatever we call the generation that succeeds, I think that's the right word, succeeds Gen Z, we're certainly going to complain about them too. Yeah, back to Plato and Socrates and they're saying the kids these days are so lazy. They don't want to study. This is just kind of a perennial human thing, probably.

16:39Kick the people coming up. Well, Marty, as always, thanks a bunch for joining and good to see you. Thanks a lot, John.

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