Co-founders Austin Rief and Alex Lieberman on Building Morning Brew

Founder's Journal

Morning Brew

Entrepreneurship, Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 14: To kick off the new year, host Alex Lieberman (@businessbarista) is bringing you a very special episode of The Crazy Ones featuring Morning Brew Co-Founder and CEO Austin Rief (@Austin_Rief) and special guest Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom). In this conversation moderated by Sahil, Austin and Alex recount the early days of building Morning Brew, the scrappy ways they grew their subscriber base, and the biggest mistakes and lessons learned along the way. #TheCrazyOnes #Startups #Entrepreneur Listen to The Crazy Ones here: https://link.chtbl.com/OV4W93_W Subscribe to Morning Brew! Sign up for free today: https://bit.ly/morningbrewyt Follow The Brew! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/morningbrew/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/MorningBrew Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@morningbrew Follow Our Hosts! Alex Lieberman (@businessbarista) Jesse Pujji (@jspujji) (00:51) - Intro (02:25) - How Austin and Alex handled the doubters early on in creating Morning Brew (07:18) - What Austin and Alex imagined their careers would be prior to starting Morning Brew (11:03) - How Austin and Alex met (16:39) - How Austin got involved with Alex’s newsletter (19:48) - How the original newsletter looked in its first iteration (21:06) - What allowed for Morning Brew to be successful in the early days (27:46) - The scrappiest tactics Alex and Austin used to grow the newsletter readership early on (33:40) - The marketing strategy that continues to shape how Alex and Austin approach the business today (36:40) - How Alex and Austin scaled voice as Morning Brew grew (40:20) - What sealed the deal for Alex and Austin to hire the current managing editor (43:44) - The biggest mistakes that Austin and Alex made along the way (47:47) - What led to Alex deciding to step down as CEO and Austin becoming CEO (52:19) - Alex and Austin answer whether success and wealth has made them happier Links: Chop It Off (Neal Freyman) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We said, you know what? What if Alex pitches and Austin walks around with like a printed out Excel document, basically, and
0:07.2	Basically stares people in the eyes until you they give you your email and that's what we did
0:11.6	So I would have spent 20 that's like door to door sales
0:16.4	I would walk around the the big um
0:20.0	lecture hall 500 people and I kind of stand there give me your email give me your email
0:25.0	And you get big on them like did you pop your chest up and can't it do?
0:27.8	I'm looking to the soul give me your email if I at the time if I spoke in front of 500 people
0:33.6	I was getting 500 emails because I you know there's a whole classic thing like you know
0:38.0	Number two fear in life is a public speaking and number one is is or number one is public speaking to death
0:43.1	Yeah, I'd rather be in that in the casket than speaking at the the eulogy that was me at the time
0:47.8	And so I was like well, if I'm gonna do this
0:49.8	I need those emails
0:52.4	What's up, everyone? I'm Alex Lieberman and I'm Sophia Amaruso. Yeah, this is Jesse Fuji
0:58.8	And this is the crazy ones
1:02.9	What's up everyone? This is Alex Lieberman co-founder and chairman of Morning Brew and we were back with another
1:08.8	episode of the crazy ones the best startup show on planet earth
1:12.9	We're trying something a little bit different today my co-host Jesse and Sophia are on a well-deserved break at the end of the year
1:21.2	And so if you're listening to or watching this episode
1:23.5	I believe it is January 3rd
1:25.1	So wishing you a happy new year and a ton of good things to come. So here's what we're trying today
1:31.7	My co-founder Austin and I have talked about the Morning Brew story at length on other podcasts
1:37.8	But very rarely I don't even know if ever have we talked about our story together in a moderated conversation
	...

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