SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1207 How This Author Launched $800k+ Conference and Research Revenue Stream
13 Nov 2018
Chapter 1: How did the author launch an $800k+ conference and research revenue stream?
Everything is going to work out. You don't have to worry. Channel that energy and build multiple revenue streams like Dan did. Again, launched as a conference business, doing 600 grand per year. Has a research business doing 200 grand per year in the form of $30,000, $40,000 studies. Some of those studies do so well, he says, you know what, this has to be a book.
And so he's got Back to Human coming out soon here in November. Make sure you go grab it. This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich... or crash and burn.
Chapter 2: What strategies did Dan Schaubel use to build multiple revenue streams?
Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million.
I had no money when I started the company. It was $160 million, which is the size of any IPOs.
We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers. With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Dan Schaubel.
He's a New York Times bestselling author, partner and research director at Future Workplace and the founder of both Millennial Branding and WorkplaceTrends.com. His new book is called Back to Human, How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation. I'm looking around because I have a copy somewhere around here and I was jumping into it. But Dan, are you ready to take us to the top?
Thanks so much for having me, Nathan. Excited to be here. Yeah, you bet. So tell us first, like, again, you know, most of my audience are software folks. When they think about writing a book, they go, why would I ever leave my software business to write a book? So walk me through strategically, why write books?
I wouldn't walk away from any job because... You never know if the book's going to do well or not. And the art of actually doing what you're good at and what you're getting paid for can inspire these stories and experience that are captured in the book.
So I didn't, I wrote my first book when I had a full time job at EMC corporation, a very technical company, fortune 200 now EMC Dell, uh, nights and weekends. I, I was writing 12 blog posts a week outside of work. I had my own magazine. I was doing a million different things, including writing that first book. And I kept my job. My parents gave me such good advice.
They said, you stay at that job unless you're making enough money where you can leave. And you have to project that out for at least one to two years that you can sustain yourself.
What was your salary at that job? How safe were you?
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Chapter 3: Why did Dan decide to write a book while maintaining a full-time job?
No, no, no. I haven't been at that job since... January, 2010.
Okay. Now what is, so workplace trends is your current baby.
Yeah. 2010. Okay. And, and now my current company is millennial branding as well as I'm one of three partners at future workplace.
So what does that mean? Like you eat avocado toast all day and go get like Starbucks caught. Like what does millennial branding mean?
Millennial branding started off as me coaching people on how to build a personal brand. Millennials?
Or how to cater to millennials?
Well, it wasn't even that. It was really coaching. It was me with retainer clients, helping them grow their business. brand using social media because it was really in the early days. And I was one of the early evangelists on how to use social media to build a personal brand with Personal Branding Blog, Personal Branding Magazine, and all these resources I provided.
And then eventually, I turned that in and pivoted to helping companies better attract, retain, and grow their millennial talent. So I changed then and now I'm it's still doing the same thing, but you know, all my books, like everything else is under that. My whole speaking career is under millennial branding.
And then the other company, we do four conferences a year and we have an AI course that we, we sell the companies and it's a membership model. So we have over 40 fortune 500 companies that pay us annually and they get to send three delegates to each of our four events to East coast to West coast events. And these are experiences.
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Chapter 4: What is the role of Millennial Branding in Dan's business model?
So by attaching these numbers, people will keep listening, which is good.
So just because you have a hundred thousand followers doesn't mean it's making you any money. It's what comes from that. Like even in the early days, Nathan, When I had a blog, I wasn't making any money from the blog until my 600th post where people who were commenting on my blog, I turned into sponsors.
And then I launched a magazine on top of that because I already had the community driven by the blog. But most people could just stop at the blog and not seek advertising, not launch any companies on top of that. You become the entrepreneur when you leverage that platform for a business.
Tell me about, I'm reaching down here in my bag. So we are just now about, I think I showed you this when we met in person in New York over coffee, but we're about to launch this magazine for SaaS companies only, CEOs. We're doing a magazine. And I'm like, people are going, you're crazy for doing a magazine. You did a magazine. What is it like?
What are the big costs I should be expecting that I'm not thinking of?
Well, mine was an online magazine, so it wasn't print. The print cost would have been much more expensive. And back then I was 22, 23 years old. And so I was just doing it. My main intent for the magazine was as a learning experience. The magazine became my NBA, if you think about it, because I was here's everything I did for the magazine that no one knows is I was managing 100 contributors.
I did the format of the magazine. I did the design of the magazine. I distributed it through the blog. And I got everyone who was part of the magazine to promote it on their blogs. And back then, blogs actually had a lot of traffic. People would get a lot of traction that way. I did the marketing. How did you incentivize 100 contributors?
Back then, I created such enthusiasm and excitement around personal branding because I myself loved it and knew the value of it. And so people who I caught, I commented on their blogs, I reached out to them. And over time I had built up this massive roster of contributors who contributed like Lewis house is one of the early contributors. This is a long, long time ago, right?
Where a lot of these people who contributed have gone on to build remarkable careers, but they started because everyone starts with nothing. That's what people don't realize. Like every business I've started, I've done the initial work for free. to gain the experience and to get case studies and traction so that I could sell my services as a premium cost.
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Chapter 5: How does the conference business generate revenue for Dan's company?
So if you do 200 grand, Dan, if you do 200 grand in research per year, does all of that go to basically into your bank account or do you have expenses?
No, that goes into the company's bank account and we have employees who help. Got it. How many employees? So we have three employees right now, full time. And then we outsource the event business. They handle the logistics.
Got it. And walk me through kind of more of the events there. So how many folks do you typically get at these events? And is it invite only or no?
Great question. So there's two member driven events. So these are events that only the people who pay, only the companies that pay us annually get to go to. And then the other two events are public. So this is another way we make money is that we have people who go to our events who are part of our members, our membership.
And then we have other people who are in the HR community that can go to our events. And our goal is to convert those people into members. Yep. How many people show up to the free ones? If we don't have, you know, an HR leader from Facebook and they come to our events and on our event, we want to convert them to a member, for instance. And then we have sponsors. Wait, hold on, Dan.
Before you go to sponsors, how many people show up to those events, the free events?
The free events... Free public events, we get upwards of, we've had up to about 200. So anywhere from 80 to 200. Okay. And then the sponsors. Depending on location and timing. And then at the member only events, those are probably 70 to 120. Got it. Depending on timing, location.
Like we had one in Toronto, we had about 70 or 80 people, but a lot of big companies have cut their international travel budgets and if you can believe it, Canada is international, even though it's so close.
That's funny. And you mentioned a sponsor revenue stream.
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Chapter 6: What insights did Dan gain from conducting research studies?
And I'm like, I'm like you, I'm hardcore. Like I reached out to over a hundred companies. Everyone said, no, Jim Levine, our, our literary agent who I dedicated the book to. He's like, Dan, I believe in you. You got this. And then I had like two weeks left and American Express signed on to do it, which was awesome. Sorry, they signed on to do what? Signed on to fund this study for my second.
Yeah. So Jim Levine, he's the best.
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, back to human, when does it come out?
November 13th.
November 13th. Great. And, you know, name something surprising you learned in this study that most people, you know, believe, but you actually found the opposite.
Awesome. Great question. So like I work from home, I'm sure you work from home at least sometimes. What we've always heard and what I've researched in the past is that people want to work from home because it offers them freedom and flexibility. You can do what you want when you want. Just get the work done, right? But the research that we did with Virgin Pulse revealed the opposite.
revealed that if you work remote, you're much less likely to want to long-term create your company without the social interactions that you get in a physical office space. And if you aren't using, you know, video conferencing, if you're not going to the office at all, your relationships are weaker and you're less likely to want to be productive and stay at a company longer.
So we have intrinsic needs, you know, With Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you need shelter, you need food, and then you need love and friendships. If you're not getting that, you cannot be self-actualized. You cannot be the best employee you can for your company. And research shows by Gallup that if you have friends, especially best friends at work, you're going to stay at that company longer.
You're going to work even harder for that company. And especially for people our age who have corporate jobs, not like us. they view their team as their work family and they view their manager as their work parent. And it's pretty hard to leave a family, but it's pretty easy to leave a bunch of acquaintances.
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