Framework
IQ arbitrage: be the dumbest person in one room, the smartest in the next
Alex was the dumbest guy on a Morgan Stanley trading desk full of math PhDs. Simply moving into media, a field with fewer sharp operators, instantly made him one of the smartest people in the room.
“I actually think the best thing we did is like, I call it like IQ arbitrage where I was on a trading desk. Everyone was a PhD in math. I was the dumbest person on my desk, like not even a shadow of a doubt. And just by moving to media, I became not the dumbest person.”
Steal thisMove your talent from a hyper-competitive field into an adjacent sleepy industry where the same skills make you a standout.
Framework
IQ arbitrage: be the dumbest person in one room, the smartest in the next
Alex was the dumbest guy on a Morgan Stanley trading desk full of math PhDs. Simply moving into media, a field with fewer sharp operators, instantly made him one of the smartest people in the room.
“I actually think the best thing we did is like, I call it like IQ arbitrage where I was on a trading desk. Everyone was a PhD in math. I was the dumbest person on my desk, like not even a shadow of a doubt. And just by moving to media, I became not the dumbest person.”
Steal thisMove your talent from a hyper-competitive field into an adjacent sleepy industry where the same skills make you a standout.
Story
Morning Brew's 1-year investor plan took 9 years
Alex's lesson from raising: founders chronically overestimate speed. The roadmap slide they showed investors as a one-year plan actually took nine years to work through, and most of the ideas on it failed.
“And I remember we had a slide in our investor deck that showed our 1-year plan to investors. That slide, looking back on it now, took us 9 years. We tried everything in that slide and took us 9 years to try everything. And most of those things did not work. But yeah, it took 9 years to accomplish our 1-year plan.”
Framework
The standard of your business is what you allow
Alex's content philosophy: by not objecting to mediocre work, you implicitly endorse it as the new baseline. Tolerating suboptimal output silently resets the company's standard downward.
“And basically this, the standard of your business is what you allow. And so like if you allow suboptimal content to be written, that is the new standard you set. Like basically you're implicit by saying, not saying anything to something. You're implicitly saying that that is okay.”
Steal thisTreat every piece of work you wave through as the new floor; if it isn't exceptional, say so.
Framework
Grow organically to 100K before you ever buy a subscriber
Morning Brew reached 100,000 subscribers in 2015-2016 entirely organically before spending on paid acquisition. That forced them to prove the product, learn retention, and build a scarcity-growth muscle that founders who buy ads early never develop.
“So 2015 and 2016 to get to 100,000 subscribers, it was entirely organic growth. So by the time we actually were paying for subscribers, like, we knew we had a great product. We knew how long subscribers were staying. We also knew how to, like, work within scarcity of not having money, but finding ways to grow regardless. And I think that muscle, if you skip over it, is a really bad thing.”
Steal thisDon't run paid acquisition until you've grown organically enough to know your retention and that the product is great.
Resource
Traction (EOS) was the inflection-point book for both newsletters
An investor (the inventor of the Snuggie) told Austin to read Traction and adopt its operating system. It became a game-changer for Morning Brew and the moment Austin effectively took over as CEO. Sam independently read it in the same era with the same effect.
“And he goes, I use this book, Traction, and you're going to read it and you're going to adopt in your business. Austin read it and he gets back to me. He messaged me in Slack. And it's like, dude, you need to read this book yesterday.”
Steal thisRead Traction and implement EOS once you cross roughly $5-10M in revenue to systematize a working business.
Idea
EOS implementers are a digital franchising business
Alex points out that EOS implementers, who charge around $60K/year to coach companies through the Traction operating system, run an unusually good business: essentially digital franchising on top of a book.
“Which, by the way, which, by the way, is why it's an unbelievable business. It's basically like a digital franchising business. It's, it's such a cool business.”
Idea
A media company that demystifies alternative investments
Alex's opportunity: alternatives (real estate, private equity, venture) are a growing share of portfolios but opaque and hard to understand. A company that becomes the go-to source for navigating alternative-asset complexity, with high-value subscribers, will make a killing.
“Like alternative investments. So like real estate, private equity, venture, etc. Like my whole thing is alternative investments are becoming a bigger part of people's portfolios, but they're more opaque. They're harder to understand, but they're also really interesting ways to monetize, uh, people who are investing in alternatives.”
Steal thisBuild the go-to media brand explaining alternative investments (PE, VC, real estate) to a high-net-worth audience.