Public Speaking Is Dead, Zoom Apps, Economics of Games

Howdy –

Welcome to the only business newsletter that feels reading the WSJ on your 7th coffee.

Newsletter goal: You get one "aha" moment to make more $$$ or have a better life.

👆 If I don't accomplish this, the unsubscribe link is at the bottom.

Today's Outline (Since this one is longer than normal):

• How To Write Better To Earn More 💰

• Zoom Apps 📸

• Digital Games ♟

• Email Swipe Files 📧

📚 1 Business Lessons:

Three days ago I heard that "More People fear public speaking than they fear death."

They idea of stepping on stage is more frightening than the idea of getting in a casket.

Damn.

Well, I have good news.

With remote work... your need to be the charismatic spokesperson at the head of the boardroom table is... way less important.

I'm not saying it's not important.

Communicating effectively is arguably the #1 skill anyone can develop in business or life.

That hasn't changed. What has changed is the medium.

Writing > Speaking

(especially when we spend most of our days in Email/Slack)

And if you can communicate well, you'll make a lot of 💰

I'm not an expert but I've been getting much better at copywriting over the last 2 years.

Here are 3 quick tips you can steal to level up your writing:

1. Write To An Audience of One – This is the easiest hack you can do by literally just using the word "you" more in your writing. I have the word "you" written 37 times in this email alone.

2. Actually, use more pronouns in general – We, you, your, we’ll, our... you get the point. It makes your writing feel much more personal.

3. Write like you talk – Before you send your next email, try reading it out loud. If it sounds like a robot, it's probably because we've been taught to write that way. Skip the jargon and write like you talk.

Bonus: The average American reads at a 7th grade reading level. Want to reach more people? Write at a 5th grade reading level. 🙂

💰 2 Business Ideas

1. Zoom Apps –

It blows my mind I haven't heard of people building big companies in this space yet (in my bubble at least).

Zoom's numbers are insane:

• 300 million users on Zoom.

• 10 million daily users.

• In 2022 they had 504,900 paying business accounts

• 3.3 Trillion meeting minutes in 2020 (I know that year was an anomaly, but still)

Today Zoom has 2,141 apps on their marketplace.

Compare that to 6,000+ Shopify apps, or 188,620 Google Chrome extensions... you have room to run.

And these companies can get BIG

OK so here's how I'd think about it:

Reposition The Best Zoom & Slack Apps

I think the best approach is to figure out the top performing Zoom & Slack apps and reposition popular ones to sell to a sales or marketing department.

Selling to HR & Product sounds fun... until you realize they have ZERO budget.

Scroll through the top Zoom apps (note taking, transcription, follow up emails, etc.) and top Slack apps and use the 2 as your base to determine what's worth repositioning.

Connor's Opinion:If it was me, I'd pick 1 of 3 things.

• Focus on B2B – they have budgets - gams are cute but zoom happy hours are dead.

• Focus on Cost Savings – Most companies largest expense on their P&L is payroll. Assuming 100k/yr salaries, a 1 hour meeting with 4 people costs a company $200. Save time = Save money = You Get Paid a % of that

• Go To Market with Direct Sales – Once you build the product, get your first few sales immediately with direct outreach to customers.

2. The Digital Game Business –

I was reading Michael Girldey's newsletter last month when he shared a business for sale

This money-printing digital crossword business.

To recount some of the craziest stats from it:

1. 87% profit margin

2. $5.5mm in 2021 top-line revenue

3. 78M monthly page views

Digital game businesses are exploding, in fact they are quickly becoming the core of New York Times business model with $22M+ in annual subscription revenue.

How can you profit on this?

There are so many ways.

This year Hubspot's CTO literally built a Wordle competitor that has 3.5M weekly users.

But if you aren't the founder of a billion dollar company, I'd recommend finding an evergreen game and niching down.

Use keyword tools to help you here.

For example:

"Crossword Puzzles" gets 562,000 monthly searches and is impossible to rank for. But look at the keywords beneath that:

• "Disney Crossword Puzzles" – 800 searches/mo

• "Sports Crossword Puzzles" – 800 searches/mo

There are more evergreen games & niches but the economics of these businesses at scale are beautiful.

😎 3 Cool Internet Things:

1. Milled – I spend a lot of time in the Facebook Ad Library. It's the easiest way to build your swipe file with others creative. 2 weeks ago I found Milled which is a public swipe file search engine for some of the biggest brands emails.

2. Dream-lining – An old Tim Ferriss worksheet I found myself coming back to. One tough part about having success in business and taming an ever growing ambition. This spreadsheet can help you understand what is your "enough" and help you focus more on living.

3. 5 Phases of Content Marketing – I'm a big fan of Alex Hormozi and the content he puts out. I think if you're interested in promoting yourself and your work more, this is an amazing video to pull from. (here's the Apple podcast link)

✌️

-Connor

PS – I'm blocking off a day next week to meet cool people who subscribe to this newsletter. If you're building cool stuff and want to chat, HMU!