The New Era of Media with Tasteland

Francis: So this is what I was gonna connect it back to, is you're talking about playing the long game to build brand. Right? Like, I think that is what makes, like, raising capital——raising outside capital——in media so fraught is because that puts pressure on you——

Brian: Yes.

Francis: ——where you don't really have time to build the brand long game, and then and then maybe you end up a fail. What was the one, of The Messenger, like, a year ago? Right? Like, that's such a big case. There wasn't enough time to brand long term and, like, find their market fit.

Daisy: Whoa. I forgot about that, too.

Francis: But then they fail.

Daisy: Or theSkimm.

Phillip: theSkimm. Yeah.

Daisy: I'm so sorry, but how do you fumble the bag on an audience that big?

{INTRO MUSIC}: [INTRO MUSIC]

Brian: I mean, every once in a while, you just get a couple people on that you're just like, wow. How am I here?

Francis: Oh, come on.

Phillip: Pinch yourself moment. Frank Zeirer and Daisy Alioto, welcome to the show.

Francis: Thanks.

Daisy: Thanks for having us.

Phillip: It's Tasteland. It's one of my new favorite podcasts and launched in the last few months.

Brian: Dedicated listener. I'm a huge fan. I was just saying something, actually, you guys don't even know this. I don't even listen to that many podcasts. I actually really don't. I listen to, like, you guys and maybe one or two others. That's it.

Francis: Such an honor.

Phillip: His media diet is, like, expressly Dostoevsky and, uh, and Marshall McLuhan, and then you guys. That's it.

Brian: That's not too far off.

Francis: That's like a diet, healthy diet,

Phillip: And the Atlantic every so often.

Daisy: I mean, I wouldn't say Francis and I are huge podcast listeners either. I mean, we both selective listeners to How Long Gone. And, actually, I'm on a panel with Chris Black tomorrow at a conference called Brands and Culture. Two things I'm interested in, but a conference I've never attended.

Francis: I'd never listened to a podcast until five years ago, pandemic, and then I started listening to a lot of podcasts. These days, you know, it it's hard because there's the leisure and the the business, the kind of, like, keeping up on things, pods. My favorite podcast, unfortunately, comes out three times a week and has no real standing on my work, the Totally Football Show. I became a big English Premier League and, like, Champions League guy after the last World Cup. Never was a sports person in my life. I think, much to my chagrin at this point, I kind of wish my parents had forced me to play a team sport. Never did. But the Totally Football Show is so great. I try not to list like, I like, you know, Colin and Samir. I'll listen to Decoder. I'll listen to People Versus Algorithms. I like to, like, get into these things that touch on what I actually do for work.

Phillip: My biggest problem is that I have been listening to podcasts for hours a week since 2006, maybe 2007. And I have, unfortunately, an antiquated model in my mind of what a podcast is. I'm like the old, like, tech TV, Leo Laporte, you know, early podcast, you know, consumer.

Brian: What are you saying, Philip? What are you talking about?

Francis: Yeah, actually,  I don't know, to be honest with you.

Phillip: No. Exactly. I'm saying words that nobody remembers. Like the old tech journalism podcasts had a format. And then that format was really coded in early radio. There was actually this really great piece that I saw that was sort of distilled down to a TikTok. It was like a long-form YouTube about the aesthetics of podcasting and how that was carried over from radio, and why we use this microphone. This microphone being in frame and shot communicates something and the aesthetics of it, and the audio quality of it, uh, was used in radio because this particular sound had to cut through from a noisy car when you're on your commute because it has a specific frequency range and that cuts through the traffic noise. Like all of these things are, you know, anachronistic. We don't need them today because that's not the world we live in, but it's something that we've become accustomed to. And all of that was carried over from, like, old terrestrial radio. Right? And I think that's, like, really fascinating stuff. But my old, you know, my old brain, I'm 45 this year, and I've been listening to podcasts now for, like, way too long. And then I saw Kevin Rose sitting on a couch drinking beer, and I was like, "shoot, anybody could do that. I wanna do that." And and now I've been doing podcasts for a decade plus. And also now I'm doing the old man thing of, like--

Francis: Let me just say you're not drinking a beer for the listeners. You're not drinking a beer right now.

Phillip: No, no, I'm not.

Daisy: Yelling at a cloud. I know what Phil means because I interned at NPR actually twice in the DC headquarters, once in 2012 and once in 2013. And, um, I know what you mean because even at the time, like, podcasts had been around for at least five years, really, like, in a widespread way. But, people couldn't really distinguish between what was NPR and what was a podcast. Like, there was just such a strong association with public radio and the conventions of that. And I think podcasts were, like, miniature... They were thought of as miniature radio episodes that you could play on demand, not, like, ambient noise that you put on because you can't stand silence in your house and you wanna listen to, like, two guys talking. So there is a really big difference. But I will say for the people who do treat it like something that is structured, I guess, for lack of a better term, like, you can notice the difference in the approach. And it doesn't mean, like, one is more quality than the other. But I do wonder if the pendulum will swing back more towards structured radio and stories like Serial, like Us Town, because that was my entry point, or people delivering the news with a certain point of view. It wasn't, like, listen to people talk about what restaurant they went to this week.

Phillip: I guess that brings me to like, you know, I went the long way around the horn, but Francis, for instance, you sort of like a late comer to podcast in the last four or five years. You're making one now. If you don't have sort of like an antiquated model or an archetypal model of what that should look like, you come to it with sort of fresh eyes or fresh ears. I think that's really interesting. I do like the show that you guys have created. Do you think that you've tried to find your own way in making Tasteland, and do you think that you've found other inspiration?

Brian: Yeah.

Phillip: Trying to recreate other inspiration in it?

Brian: I'm gonna sneak stuff into this too. Like, both of you have media companies of your own, uh, and you came together. I guess, Tasteland is the Dirt podcast. Is that correct? It's a joint. Okay. It's a joint. Alright. So explain, like, how you got into it and what the charter of Tasteland is.

Daisy: Francis and I were sort of, like, match made because I thought Dirt should have a podcast. And, like, I'm not proud of it, but, like, more so to check a box. And I think Francis had maybe a clearer vision of what he wanted, but it was also part of, I don't wanna speak for you, but, like, your real relationship to Beehiiv and their distribution, too.

Francis: I'd already been doing-- when we were introduced, I'd already been doing, um, Creator Spotlight for six months or so. I was, like, maybe 20 episodes into the podcast, and Creator Spotlight is owned by Beehive, uh, and Tyler Tyler Dang, CEO of Beehive. I was talking to him. I was like, you know, Creator Spotlight's fun, but it's kind of hard doing you know, It's just me interviewing a different person every week, and I can get into these ideas and get into the same ideas with people, but it's kind of refreshed every time. Like, I can continue the thread, but there's nobody where I can, like, really develop these ideas with over time. Um, I was like, I wanna do a podcast with another person. And so, pass it back to you, Daisy.

Daisy: Yeah. And I was, like, skeptical. I mean, I just didn't know anything about Francis. And... But I knew, like, if Beehiiv was gonna underwrite it, it would be stupid not to take the opportunity seriously because the reason we didn't have a podcast was because I didn't wanna start something that I didn't feel like I had the bandwidth to support. And, um, sorry if you can hear my cough drop. It drives my husband crazy. I was, like, literally reading in bed last night, and it hit my teeth, like, once. And he was like, no. No. And I was like, really? Not even once? Um, it's so funny. Like, well, some of us aren't married. The things that you would think are annoying aren't annoying, but whatever. Anyway, so but then I met Francis and I was like, oh, he's cool. He keeps it real. Like, I really need somebody who is willing to say, like, when the emperor has no clothes. Because the biggest problem with people who are trying to do culture, but, like, run a business at the same time is that it's so easy for this dishonesty to creep in. Because you wanna be friends with everyone, you wanna leave all your options open, and that becomes just not having a point of view. That sucks. Like, yeah. Who wants to listen to somebody with no point of view or no principles? So we did, we matched really well, but I will say, I don't-- Frances, I don't know if you agree.

Daisy: Like, since we're talking don't know. Since we're talking, like, in a meta way, I feel like we are just starting to hit our stride and be creative. I think because it was introduced after our core medium, which is our respective newsletters, although you already had your Creator Spotlight podcast, there is a danger of the podcast becoming a little bit of an afterthought for me. And I do our booking, and I've gotten smarter about the booking, just bringing on people who have a relationship with other things that Francis and I have been talking about rather than who's available. I also, in the beginning, was just not optimizing the content. Like, now I've started taking the transcripts and actually running them in the newsletter. But before, we would just, like, release it and be like, okay. Here it is. And now I feel like I'm just getting to the point where we can actually, like, take advantage of those fresh eyes and be like, well, what if we, like, did something totally different? Like, I've been threatening to do an episode that's just us sending voice memos back and forth for a week.

Francis: She's a serial voice noter.

Daisy: Stitching them together.

Francis: I'm never a voice noter...Serial voice noter here.

Daisy: Yeah. So we could have just, like, a quilt of real-time cultural observations.

Francis: Now we're gonna have to do this because they're gonna steal the idea if we don't do it first.

Daisy: Yeah. It's an arms race to do my weird idea.

Phillip: We have no bandwidth to steal ideas at this point. Like, we're too busy, uh, loaded up with ideas from six months ago. Trust me.

Francis: I'll say, though, like, Daisy, like you were saying about hitting our stride, um, I think I mean, the first time we recorded an episode, I think we'd spent maybe two hours speaking prior to that. Uh, and I...

Phillip: I love that.

Francis: I had listed I had been subscribed to Dirt for, like, three years.

Daisy: Yeah. We also didn't meet until, like, months into doing the podcast. Francis is really tall.

Francis: Yeah, we didn't meet in person until we recorded our in-person podcast, our first in-person podcast. Actually, I can say that that has been something I've been having to build up. Right? Like, I, for a long time, was a pretty private Internet user. Oh, yeah. You know, like, in the I'm I'm 30 now. In the first half of my twenties, I decided I wasn't gonna do what I ostensibly went to school for, which was some kind of media marketing journalism thing. And I worked in kitchens for a while. I was like, wanna, you know, work with my hands, learn a skill that'll take with me in life because I don't really know what I wanna do. And so it wasn't until the second half of my twenties where I was, like, in earnest trying to build a career as some sort of... In some sort of writing was what I wanted to go into. Right? So for a long time, I was, you know, private accounts, Twitter group chats, whatever. And it's only really in the past couple of years that I've been in earnest trying to, like, form my identity as a public person on the Internet, which I think the podcast has been part of. And, like, that's another thing with Tasteland versus Creator Spotlight, where Creator Spotlight, it's me interviewing people, and I'm trying to develop that a little bit. But Tasteland is fun because it allows me to have my own opinions in a way that I can't afford myself the same space to in the Critter Spotlight podcast.

Brian: Think that's what actually makes Tasteland so fun, is the interplay between the two of you. And this is why, actually, podcasts have trended this direction often because it's fun to just hear two people jam, especially people that are like intelligent that where you're like, oh, you're nodding your head or you're like, you wanna interject, you wanna add something to the conversation, like, that's when you know it's going well. And like, I think that's what you guys have developed really well. In fact, sometimes I'm like, I kinda just want more Francis and Daisy episodes. I feel like--

Phillip: Yeah. Same.

Brian: Yeah. That's... and there's some great guests. When the guest is ready to engage with two of you in like a conversational way, and it's not just like an interview...

Daisy: Who's been our best guest in your opinion. Let's name names.

Phillip: I mean, Katherine Dee is gonna be at our Vision Summit in June.

Daisy: Oh, great.

Phillip: I think she's unhinged online and and actually quite--

Daisy: Complementary.

Francis: She was really game.

Phillip: Yeah, very game. Emily Sundberg, I think, also is kind of the best and has built, obviously, quite the following. Also, was that our vision summit a couple of years ago? I think you sat on a panel with her, Daisy.

Daisy: Yeah. We were on a panel together. I think we definitely greatly benefited from the parasocial relationship that people have with Emily, but, uh, I can understand why she has a complicated relationship to that parasociality.

Francis: Yeah. For sure.

Daisy: It's like, it's great when you get to, like, dip in and be like, wow. People really wanted to listen to this episode, but I, like--

Francis: It's our most popular episode so far.

Daisy: I would rather go through life right now, like, under the illusion that nobody has a parasocial relationship to me, and I don't think that that illusion is available to Emily right now.

Brian: Um, Yeah.

Phillip: Well.

Daisy: I understand why that, like, as you're planning a wedding and just living your life, why that could be a bit unsettling.

Phillip: I mean, I didn't mean to just riff off a few people. I think that there's a... I think what's interesting for me, and this is the meta commentary, we could actually just, like, talk it in-depth about a few of these interviews. What's interesting to me is to look down the list and see my own algorithm reflected back at me. And it's, I think it's... Interesting because what I think I've seen develop is--and for better or worse--is, I really wonder if there's an interesting...If there's a scene that has developed of interesting people.

Brian: It's Daisy's. {Laughter}

Phillip: I know. I understand. I understand. I listen enough to know, and I've read enough Dirt. But, I think that there's a, like, a loose, like a loose group of unaffiliated people who haven't like really tried to work in concert, but who have, for better or worse, found each other through their ideas or through, you know, the algorithm exposing each other and their ideas to each other over and over again, that they wind up coordinating efforts. And I think that I find that to be, whether you define it that way or not, I find that to be a definition of a scene and that we are all working in some way together, whether we're trying to or not. Like, we're all appearing in some way or shape or form on each other's stuff, or we're intentionally coordinating in some way with each other. And I think that that could actually work if we were more intentional, could actually work to some greater value and some more commercial value for everybody's success. And maybe that's the new wave of some media in the future. Maybe that's the only way that we can all exist in some longer term, because the creator economy is probably very exhausting for everybody in some future state. But, that's what I look at. When I see your list of who you've talked to, I'm like, oh, these are all my favorite people.

Francis: It's like this maybe asynchronous salon of independent figures where, you know, when you aren't necessarily affiliated with some large organization or large media company, um, not that everyone we speak to is you know, works in media. Um, but I think these kinds of--it's not new, but these kind of connections, right, are, like, so crucial in the, you know, the so-called creator economy. I don't know. I like being part of this, like, loose web and these nodes that become bigger and the connections become more connections across them. I think it's kinda what you're talking about, where it's like, is it a scene that's locationally-based? Like, maybe maybe not, but it's kind of--

Phillip: It's a network state, Francis.

Francis: It's a network state. There you go. {Laughter}

Daisy: I have been thinking about this because, I actually stayed up. I had trouble sleeping last night. I don't... I can't remember. Maybe I had caffeine too late in the day. Um, but I had finally got my hands on a PDF of Graden's memoir. I'm sorry, Graden. I didn't pay for it. But, um, and, you know, really enjoying it so far. Um, and I was up late reading it, and I was like, wow, this is like, what you really see teased out is the development of a scene. But what it really is is, it's like, you hear these names early in the book that you realize, like, oh, like, okay. You know, Graden met this person at time. And they worked in the Puck Building, and that was named after America's First humor magazine. Okay. Now I understand. And you see the entrance of these people, like, really early in his life, that stay in his life and stay involved in his projects for decades, which is a level of loyalty that you don't really see anymore. And having worked as a consultant at Airmail and met and worked with some of these people and heard people describe, like, Graden's approach, like loyalty is a really big part of it. And that has changed as people move around jobs. But that loyalty, he moved around a lot too. That loyalty wasn't established by staying at one place for a really long time. It was through, like, meeting people that you had an intellectual alignment with and staying close to them.

Daisy: And I am very anti-scene, but as I was reading it, I was like, this is so appealing. Like, I would love to, in twenty years, thirty years, still be working with some of the people who were the earliest supporters and partners for Dirt. And I still work with, uh, our designer, David Alderman, who's done a ton of our branding. I met in college when he did the branding for my college blog. And we are still part of each other's lives. And I think what makes that different from exclusivity or a closed world that nobody's allowed to enter is that I worked with these people as intellectual and creative partners before they became my friends. They were not my default partners because we were friends or in the same social group. Right. And the group, like, the group that's coalesced around Dirt and people that are affiliated with Dirt, it's a combination of people I already knew and who came into my life, became creative partners, and then became valued creative partners. For example, like Josh Zoerner, um, I would have to look back and see, like, when Josh, who runs Night Gallery, and I first started actually texting and interacting, but I think it's been less than a year and a half. And he and I have already collaborated in such a deep way that, like, I know, like, when my memoir is written about, like, you know, if I wrote a memoir, right? About Dirt and what became of Dirt and what it looked like in the early days, like, his name's gonna be in the glossary.

Francis: I already see, honestly, I thought you and Josh had known each other for, like, half a decade plus.

No. No. Not at all. Not at all. So, like, in the same way, Francis and I didn't know each other. So I think, like, I don't wanna be so anti-scene that I avoid creating a community because you're right. There is this network of people who are affiliated, like Nick Susi. I couldn't, I have to look back and really see, like, how did I even meet Nick? But now I could tie Nick to all these other, like, offshoots of people who have become partners and friends and mutuals and whatever. Um, and some people are just super connectors. You know, Brian, you were super connected for me because you connected us with Alex at Chantal, and that became--

Brian: Amazing, by the way. Lovely. Yeah. Lovely. Lovely.

Daisy: Thank you. I was so grateful for that because, like, I really hope we work with Chantal for a long time.

Brian: Congrats on the launch.

Daisy: Thank you. Um, and we did have we there is an article in Adweek this morning, um, that highlights the partnership, and, I'm very grateful for that.

Phillip: Alexandrine is a, you know, a longtime fan of FutureCommerce and has been, you know, in our ecosystem and in our community for a long time. So, like, we've been, you know, I think all of our respective communities, you know, can work together, without being, you know, clicky or exclusive. Think whatever you like, we don't have to give things names or terms.

Daisy: Well, like, for example, Angelica Frey. How did Angelica come into your life? Because Angelica is somebody I knew for a long time as a freelancer, she has written for Dirt. And then when I saw that she's writing for Future Commerce, I was like, "oh, was that through Dirt?" Did, like, how did that happen?

Phillip: It was through the it was through the Dirt Discord.

Daisy: Yeah. So that's, like, so cool.

Phillip: I got to know her through the Dirt Discord. Yeah. Because, you know, I had a founder pass, and we got to chat, and I love the way that her brain works. I've never met anyone who writes with, you know, the litany that she does. Like, she riffs in a way, um, that very few people write in our space.

Daisy: The reason Angelica's on my mind, though, is because she just, uh, reached out to me for a report that she's writing about oh, well, basically about, like, new platforms for link aggregation as part of this media ecosystem, especially like the Tastemaker ecosystem. She asked me some questions, and she wanted me to provide more of the meta-narrative because for the most part, Dirt doesn't aggregate links, but we do--

Francis: We do like once a week.

Daisy: Sometimes once a week. Yeah. And I told her, like, when you said, oh, when I look at the podcast episodes, like, it's like I'm seeing my algorithm. I had a moment of being like, "oh, like, is that bad?" Because I told her, like, if your media diet becomes a closed loop or network of people recommending the same things, then you've basically, like, traded one algorithm for another algorithm. And it's like, how do you avoid doing that? And to me, the way to avoid doing that is to put out media that helps people develop their own taste rather than become, like, kind of a crutch for them to never have to discover their own stuff to read.

Brian: Interesting. I think that a lot of people feel like they don't have enough time to develop their own taste, which is bad. It's bad. They use podcasts like Tasteland to help them, you know, kind of get an idea of what's going on in the world, what's coming, with how things are changing. But I agree with you, the end game. The end game is to get people to get out there and like grapple with what is meaningful to them, and like have their own set of tastes, which I think is important. It's interesting, I think about, like, sort of the charter of Dirt, which is, like, you keep releasing these different newsletters and properties that are, like, you know, tennis plus culture, uh, interior design plus culture, and so on. And I think that these are--

Daisy: I'm really lazy with those descriptions. {Laughter} Or straightforward.

Brian: Well, we're worse. Because we only have one.

Phillip: Yeah. We only have one. Commerce is Culture. We've done that for nine years, so, uh, props to you.

Daisy: Yeah. What does culture mean, you guys? No. Just kidding.

Brian: Oh, gosh.

Francis: I think, wait. This is--okay. Something I wanna say about the taste development. So I think of when I was--

Daisy: Everyone's getting interrupted on this podcast except for me. I love this. We're really, like, queering the gender stereotypes here. I'm interrupting everyone, and nobody's interrupting me.

Francis: It's very important. It's our duty as podcasters. {Laughter} Okay. But I would say regarding taste development, I think of, like, in you know, when I was in college and reading specifically with music and, like, fashion, which were things I was really interested in consuming a lot of media around. And there were the, you know, 5 to 10 specific blogs or websites I would look at for each of those things, and I would look at them every day and read, like, all of them.

Daisy: Name them.

Francis: Um. I honestly can't remember most of the music blogs. The fashion ones, I do the only one that really sticks--

Daisy: Pigeons & Planes.

Francis: I know. I did read that sometimes, so it wasn't so much my thing. Yeah. I did read Four Pins a lot. Four Pins is important to me.

Daisy: Four Pins. Oh my god.

Francis: You know, shout out the Throwing Fits guys.

Well, that's how Rachel Tashjian got her start. Did you read the Essence profile for her? Yeah. Rachel...

Francis: Not yet.

Daisy: I mean, Rachel... It's a great profile because it really, again, shows the trajectory and the sort of, like, you know, how something doesn't necessarily have to be a scene. But if you kind of, like, forge these ties early on, that becomes, like, I don't know. It really becomes, like, something concrete. Like, my friend John Jannuzzi, who I didn't overlap with at GQ, but I think started following when I was on a contract at GQ because they had this Twitter list of everyone who had worked at GQ, like, ever. And I just went through and followed everyone. And some of those people I'm, like, friends with now, um, but we never worked together there. But I'm like, oh, we met at GQ. Never mind, we met because I followed everyone who had ever worked at GQ. John was not at GQ anymore. John reached out to Rachel based on stuff that she was writing on, like, Blogspot or Tumblr while he was at Lucky. Rest in peace. And so I went to John's Christmas party this year, and Rachel was there. And I was like, oh, John and Rachel. I wonder how they know each other. Had a wonderful conversation with her. And then realized when I read this Essence profile, oh my god. She's at John's Christmas party because John gave her her start. And John's, like, not working in media anymore either. He's doing other stuff now. But that, like, got her foot in the door. Then she started writing for Four Pins. Then she was doing PR at Vanity Fair. She jumped from doing PR for Vanity Fair to doing editorial, I think, at GQ directly after.

Phillip: Right.

Daisy: So you realize, like, hey. This stuff isn't, like, preordained. And the right person at the right time giving you a chance and saying, I'm I'm choosing you. Like, with Greta, who's our Blank, our primary contributor for Blank, like, there are people that I'm closer to and if no longer that write about books, but, like, I wanted it to be Greta. So, when, I don't know. I hope that when, like, Greta looks back on her career, like, she would see writing for Blank as a turning point and getting deeper into this world.

Phillip: Blank is one of the new properties that you've launched at, uh, Dirt.

Daisy: Books and, this is gonna shock you, culture.

Phillip: Culture. {Laughter}

Francis: Well, no. The the one one thing I wanted to say, like, building on the not not don't need to go into the specifics of whatever blogs I do and don't remember reading, you know, thirteen years ago, but I think of Ben Dietz's newsletter, Sick Weekly. He has the daily one as well, but Sic Weekly where it's so many links. And when I first subscribed, I was like, what is this bullshit?

Phillip: Like, how is this even possible.

Francis: Yeah. Yeah. For one, how is this possible? Who's governing this?

Phillip: Why am I paying for this?

Francis: It is with his community of people who send him links. But, like, what clicked for me was when I figured out how to read it. And this is about, like, taste and developing taste and how taste is about how you make decisions and what drives your decisions and, like, you know, understanding your your instinct in which, like, just in consuming these, like, I don't know, maybe 200 links in in each newsletter. It's like, oh, I don't have to read each one, but I can read this list of links almost like a poem. Um, and then I can just click on the, you know, two that I'm actually gonna read. And then one will, like, stagnate in, you know, a window with 30 tabs, and I'll just read one of them.

Daisy: Ben has written the Jay Alfred proof rock of, uh, link aggregation. {Laughter}

Francis: But...because it's so much, and it forces you to choose.

Daisy: I literally scroll through, like, no. No. No. No. No. Yes. No. No. No. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Francis: Keep scrolling. {Laughter}

Daisy: It's, like, such a split-second decision based on vibes of, like, okay. Yes. No. Yes. No. I probably open... I think I probably click on, like, 10 things per newsletter, and that's a great ratio. Like, I think if somebody tried to read everything, they would have, like, way too many tabs and just crash their computer.

Francis: Like, all the other shit that I'm already reading in my newsletter and stuff.

Phillip: Okay. So, in the grand scheme of the, in sort of this media ecosystem and sort of loose coordination or or tight coordination, I think there is a commercial venture. Right? Like, everybody's like, we're here to make money, right?

Daisy: No. {Laughter}

Phillip: Yeah, no. Well, I would hope so, right?

Daisy: No. Yeah. 100%. Get rich or die trying, right?

Phillip: So the thing that I find fascinating, Francis, we don't know each other very, very well. I've been on a call or two with you. I'm like getting to know you. But the thing that I've respected so much in in getting to know you, Daisy, over the last few years is watching Dirt really commercialize and grow the platform. You've done very well in having a predictable and sometimes unpredictable media cadence. You have a thriving print business. I buy pretty much everything that you've put out. You've done a great job in having productized drops and collaborations. How do you bring your respective media businesses together, and maybe commercialize together and bring Tasteland together as a joint venture? And like, you seem to have your own independent operations. What do you do to bring that same sort of level together for Tasteland? Or do you? Is that a third operation that you try to grow and flourish together? Is that, or is that part of the strategy? Give me, give me some of that perspective. Well,

Daisy: It's technically an LLC.

Phillip: Okay. Well, that's a first start. Yeah.

Daisy: Francis has sort of told me, like, "Hey, like if we do like a partnership, like when we did with Josh that notes app book, like, it's cool to bring that person on Tasteland." And I don't think of it as using Tasteland as like an additional promotion arm for stuff that Dirt's doing or that Creator Spotlight is doing. I think it's just part... I think it's just another, um, vehicle for world building. And the world building, I think, is just was easier for me because the pool that I was playing in editorially was like a little bit more broad from a consumer or reader standpoint than what Frances is doing, which should be interesting to everyone, but functions as service-y for a certain type of person, which is a person who's also trying to monetize in as a creator. And so I think world building for Francis was, like, maybe, like, harder than, and as part of, like, why you wanted this other podcast to, like, just talk about the culture piece. And so I think it's, I don't wanna speak for Francis, but I think it's provided, like, a world building and a sort of, like, sanding down and more sort of casual vessel for Francis's perspective that doesn't have to be default service-y for the listener. And for me, it's, like, functioned almost as an extension of a way to have these people who are like characters in the world of Dirt come on, um, and talk more at length about their projects and their ideas, if that makes sense.

Francis: Yeah. Well and and for me, it's like, so, the commerce side of it all, we've just opened Creator Spotlight up to ad sales as of last month. And--thank you--we'll also be eventually probably trying to get ads in Tasteland to self-support it. But I think Tasteland is more of, again, like a coming together, um, a place for, like, conversations rather than it being the main thing itself. We wanted to self sustain. I mean, you know, it costs money to produce it each week. Sure. And we've got the same guy who does the creator spotlight podcast producing that. But, yeah, it's like, I think Tasteland, there's less pressure on it because it's almost like a side project where we meet in the middle, whereas creator spotlight for me is like that we need to to self sustain, and we just hired an assistant editor there. So, you know, the need is even more pressing. Um, but, yeah, Tasteland itself is more like, yeah, self-sustaining, but more of, like, something that is really fun for us to do with less pressure on it.

Daisy: Yeah. And, like, to go back to what you were saying before about how could, like, this scene that's clearly organically coming about from people sharing ideas and sort of, like, going on each other's podcasts and etcetera, being linked in each other's newsletters, like, which I don't think anyone's tried to map. And I think, like, if you tried to map it, you would sort of ruin it. But, like, it's obvious that there is something here. Like, I think what you're implying was, like, maybe there's more of a role for the scene and, like, joint modernization. Like, maybe there's some way for us to sort of federate our commercial efforts.

Phillip: Correct.

Daisy: And, like, Francis and I sort of have, like, a tacit agreement that if I'm ever in a conversation where I feel like it would move the needle to say that we could also use his audience, I'm allowed to just, like, commit--

Francis: And vice versa.

Daisy: --in the moment and vice versa.

Brian: I like that.

Daisy: Or just throw the podcast in as part of the deal. And, like, that's crucial to have the understanding. And, like, I kinda have the same understanding with, like, Ben Dietz. I'm like, look. If you're in a room and you need to, like, say Dirt will participate to move the needle, say Dirt will participate, and we'll figure it out later. Honestly, he could probably do more for me than I could do for him, but you never know.

Francis: This is--wait. I wanna I wanna bring it bring up my "you can just do things" meets, like, DIY punk spirit horseshoe theory.

Phillip: Dude, yeah--

Daisy: It's a great theory.

Francis: Where "you can just do things" is this, like, kind of this tech bro, you know, philosophy that is basically I mean, maybe there's some differences we could we could hash out, but it's basically the same thing as, like, you know, when I go to, like, a DIY warehouse rave, and it's like that the the piece people set that up and they, you know, paid they got a loan for these speakers, whatever. It's the same thing as somebody just doing things like launching their new app that they vibecoded or whatever. Right? Like, some differences, but I think that's kind of the spirit you're talking about, which is something that you've said, Daisy, like, not enough people, like, are just game to do the thing and, like, have the follow through. And I think that's something that is important within this kind of community or scene idea we're talking about, is this willingness to, like, you know, not, like, overthink it too much, but just do the thing, see what happens, commit to playing it out, you know.

Brian: It's interesting. I think that the monetization piece is so important when you think about that, because if there's a bucket of money to work against, it just makes it so much easier to go after. So it's I actually believe--

Phillip: Binder's full of money.

Brian: --Sales, sales, like, in this industry is so underrated. Like, the importance of it. Like, it the the horrible, like, grinding thing that we all don't, it's, it's sort of like this side thing. It's like, actually, that's what empowers a lot of this.

Phillip: It's the whole thing. It's actually the whole thing.

Daisy: I think sales is a horseshoe as well, or maybe it's just like that, you know, the chart where it's like the mid curve is just like the mid curve. Then you have the two extremes. Like I actually don't consider myself great at sales, but I do think I'm better at one extreme of it, which is if you're gonna do sales, like in this moment, and you're gonna be against a large media company that's doing programmatic or that's dealing in programmatic buys, like you either need like a cracked, fresh-out-of-college kid sitting on LinkedIn, cold emailing firehose style, or you need somebody who has like a ton of relationships in a really thick Rolodex doing targeted outreach. I think I kind of fall on the other side. Um, it's difficult to find people like that to help you, though. And I feel like the worst thing you can get pulled into if you're a founder or an operator who also does sales is just sitting in that mid curve and never really getting anywhere, where you're doing, like, a bunch of cold outreach, but not really enough to get to hit a percentage of yeses that's, like, meaningful. And you're like wasting time that you could be establishing relationships that might not lead to a partnership off the bat. But two years from now, that person's gonna come to you and say, "I have a hundred thousand dollars left in my budget. What do you wanna do?" And so I'm trying not to get sucked into anything that's the worst of both worlds. Because sales is such a fraught role to begin with, it's, it requires, like, I think a lot of discipline not to.

Phillip: I don't think you can since we're since we're sort of in the meta inside baseball, it's sounding like people versus algorithms for a second here. But since we're there.

Daisy: Shout out to Troy and Brian? Who's the third?

Phillip: Alex Schleifer.

Daisy: Okay.

Phillip: Right. The Airbnb guy who always, by the way, on the podcast is always the third guy out. So it's funny that we're also like, well, "what's the guy's name?" So, you know, what's interesting is, so on the bell curve meme, I don't think you can bro outreach your way to brand, which I think is really the big unlock. I mean, I don't I don't want to, you know. I hate to talk about brand because everyone says brand just in the same way you say culture, and nobody really knows what it means. But I think brand is really the thing that, after nine years of Future Commerce is like really starting to pay dividends because it's the thing that people pay, you know, a multiple on that they'll pay additional money to partner with you that they won't pay for other people with other people. It's the thing that people will give you gratis, you know, space at a trade show and like a shocking amount of space for free because they want your name there. And that brings you additional opportunity. It's there's a level of the brand that an investment in brand that is that you just can't like, you know, bro your way into. And I think that you if you're on the left side of the bell curve, and the longer you stay on the left side of the bell curve with a bunch of your, you know, ad dudes doing cold outreach, you actually wither away your ability to get to the right side of the bell curve. And I think that, like, to me, it's about the long, long, long, long game. And the longer you can stay in the long game, the better off you are. So, and I know, like, capital models actually dictate a lot of this. So, like, the more money you raise the, like, the less likely you are to be able to stay in the long game longer. Like, you kinda have a fate that's sort of decided for you.

Daisy: For fail fast.

Phillip: Yeah.

Francis: This is something when Daisy came on Creator Spotlight around the turn of the year, she was talking about this idea of the primordial soup. And how as a media company specifically--

Daisy: I forgot about the primordial soup.

Francis: Let me, I'll bring it--

Phillip: Yeah, tell me what the--I love this already.

Francis: Okay. So her idea was that as a media company, especially right now, you are in this primordial soup, and the game is to stay in it as long as possible without evolving too much in one direction such that you can't kind of re-evolve. And I remember you said, Daisy, like, if you--

Daisy: From a distribution standpoint, not a brand standpoint.

Francis: From a distribution standpoint. Yeah.

Daisy: Which is the same approach that Bob Iger takes to Disney, by the way.

Francis: But yeah. Yeah, that, like, if you are, you know, Conde Nast and million requires millions a month to run your company versus, like, a small media company where it's, $20,000 a month to run your company, uh, you're kind of more more advantaged if you're the $20,000, uh, because you only have to come up with that each month. But so there's something you were saying that I was trying to connect this back to. What was it?

Daisy: He was saying, like, brand is about survival. Like, brand is really where the attrition like, that's the war of attrition. Like, the longer that you're around, the more attached people are to you. Like, this was the amazing thing about collaborating with Chantal. Like, because I knew that they were a really high-quality brand, but I did not know until we started working together that they were family-owned and they'd been around since the late eighteen hundreds, and every single inflection point in women's lingerie, they were there. Like making corsets more comfortable, they were there. Making bras, like, seamless. And I mean, you're men, but like, you know, so you don't--you know when you have a t-shirt tag in the back of your neck? Like, that's what bras used to feel like all the time. But imagine the t-shirt tag is, like, a piece of metal. And every moment where there was like a shift in how women wanted to wear their clothes, they were there. And so when we were reaching out to people to do this, like, I kept hearing, "oh my god. I love Chantal. I love Chantal." And it's like, you know, they're not in the news all the time like Parade, but look what happened to Parade.

Phillip: Yeah. Right.

Francis: So this is what I was gonna connect it back to, is you were talking about playing the long game to build brand. Right? Like, I think that is what makes, like, raising capital, raising outside capital in media so fraught is because that puts pressure on you.

Brian: Yes.

Francis: Where you don't really have time to build the brand long game. And then and then maybe you end up a fail. What was the one? Oh, The Messenger? Like a year ago? Right? Like, that's such a big case that there wasn't enough time--

Daisy: Whoa.

Francis: --to brand long term and, like, find their market fit.

Daisy: I forgot about that, too.

Francis: And then they fail.

Daisy: Or theSkimm.

Phillip: theSkimm. Yeah.

Daisy: How? I'm so sorry, but, like, how do you fumble the bag on the audience that big?

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: Right.

Phillip: But, here's the--and for those who aren't familiar, theSkimm just sold for... They had, like, how many millions of subscribers?

Daisy: Less than they raised. Right?

Francis: Millions of subscribers, it was like 7,000,000 or something.

Phillip: 7,000,000 subscribers.

Francis: Adam Ryan in his newsletter made a really good argument that partially what they why they failed is they started trying to become a tech company. And that is has too much overhead.

Phillip: The issue is everybody--this is, this is the, maybe this is the bell curve meme again. It's like, the the middle of the bell curve is that you have the group think that piles in, and like the, you know, the capital model dictates your business for you. And, you know, at some point you start having to do what the capital model dictates. And so, this is where, for better or worse, and maybe this is not forever, Brian and I own 100% of this business, and we do what we want. And I wish that our monthly costs were only $20,000 a month. God, I wish that we were back in those days. But like, you know, we've grown a bigger business, and we're operating at a greater scale, and we're doing awesome things. And we have people knocking on our door now, which is awesome. It didn't used to be that way. But that's also like only in the last eighteen or twenty-four months. So that's new too. And we're pinching ourselves, but that could also change tomorrow. And that's also the great thing about the model that we have is that, like, we're masters of our own fate, we can also change that and we can we can control it. We're the ones with the foot on the gas. And that's, that is...like when we talk to our audience, which primarily up until a year and a half ago or two years ago, when we really started investing in Visions as a summit or print, which has really enlarged our charter. Right? It's come out of commerce and sort of touching all these adjacencies, which like design, media, advertising, brand. We have all these people that are starting to flood in and see what we're doing. It's really enlarged the tent. But commerce is this really interesting hub, which touches all of culture, it really does, right? So like, that's where this commerce is culture thesis comes from is that like, all of culture is really impacted by commerce because it's like the Western societies, all of them just commercialized. What we're really talking about--

Brian: Even if it wasn't commercialized, it would still be impacted by commerce.

Phillip: It still would be to some degree. So what we have found is that over the last couple years is that everyone we're talking to is they have the same, we're having the same conversations over and over again, which is the the lack of our ecosystem is overwrought or overrun with trade media organizations who've been doing the same thing for so long and really lacking, I think, first of all, sex appeal, independent voices, right? Everyone is sort of right in any sort of like point of view, like you said, not really not having a bold stance or a take, they're beholden to a lot of the, you know, particular points of view. I think we are, like, the creator economy outlet in this space. But now I don't know that we even have a space. Really feel like we are our own thing, and we're hard to define. And the number one question that Brian and I get everywhere we go is, what is Future Commerce? And how do you make money? I get that every day. Because people don't know how to define us, because we don't really serve a very specific audience anymore. And I don't know that people are clear on how we make money. And I don't know. I think that it's more I think we're more akin to a creative collective, to be honest with you. I think we are very much a creative collective that found a commercial audience, but we're very much a media brand. But I don't think that people understand what a media brand is in our ecosystem. So that's what's... We're in a, we're in a weird position. I'm just having a crisis now in front of you guys. {Laughter}

Francis: {Laughter} Something I think that I like about what you guys do: i was just thinking about our conversation with Trey Taylor the other week. And, you know, perfume terms, sillage. I didn't know what sillage meant until I looked it up, like, a week ago, but it's like the staying power that the scent has. Right? It's like the particles that are left over. If you leave the room, how long does the scent stay in the room? And I think that is a really good way to think of brand. And I think the fact that when you start talking about Visions and you start talking about the books that you guys put out, like, that is brand sillage. Right? Like, that is something in the real world that sticks around and that, you know, is kind of unchangeable.

Daisy: You should trademark that, Francis. That's really good.

Francis: Well, people here in the deep end of this podcast, they can, um, you know, you can hire me maybe to tell you on brand stuff.

Daisy: Well, Francis you already have a job. {Laughter}

Francis: I do. I do have a job. And I don't freelance, actually. So you can't hire me, but, um, you can credit me. But, anyways, anyways. I think I think when we talk about brand, like, think that silage idea is is really, is really powerful. And, like, whether or not people ask you guys what you do because the silage is so strong, they're like, what is that scent? I love it.

Brian: I like that analogy. Yeah. I really enjoyed that episode, actually.

Phillip: It's minute 52. No one's gonna hear this.

Daisy: Brian and I did a really good job making this, like, impossible to tape. We we took turns going off camera to blow our noses. Just making this, like, the worst possible episode for Sarah.

Phillip: No. This is why we have a full-time video guy. He's gonna spend all day on this. It's gonna be great.

Brian: Actually, I did wanna hit that point, Francis, you made. I think that hiring people forces you to do more because you have to take on the responsibility of full-time people. And like Yeah. You usually love your people. So you're like, I wanna keep working with this person. I gotta find a way to make this happen. And so, I actually think hiring people is one of the best ways to force yourself--

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: --to keep, like, pressing forward, because you wanna you wanna keep working with the people you hire. And so Yeah. My vote is, like, get a little over your skis and just keep going.

Phillip: Not a lot.

Brian: Not a lot.

Phillip: We've done that.

Brian: A little. A little over your skis. Yeah.

Daisy: I mean, I will say, like, I for people who have I've worked with long term on contracts for Dirt, like, have been so patient with the uncertainty of it, where it's like sometimes I'm like, "Hey. We can renew for six months." Sometimes it's three months. I've just tried not to, like, take that for granted. Like, there's been times where I'm like, "Hey. Like, I'm still waiting to hear about this grant or this big advertising deal, so I actually can't renew your contract. But here's a thousand dollars as a Christmas bonus for, like, having come this far with us."

Phillip: Yeah.

Daisy: Um, and it makes sense to do that because, A, it like, it gives them a cushion. B, like, the thousand dollars is less than I would be spending if I did renew their contract out, and it allows us to part on good terms, where if, like, we do have a big influx of capital in the future, I can say, hey. I can bring you back on contract again. Because nobody wants to fire people. And so, but if you treat, like, having people who are on contract with you long term, I was in those relationships when I was freelance as like something that you don't, somebody you don't have an obligation to, or that you don't owe them anything. I think that's really like, it's really messed up and that's really like short-term thinking. So even though Dirt doesn't have any other full-time employees, I do have long-term relationships with people who have been incredibly patient with the ups and downs of the startup. And I try to like, be there for them in as many ways that I can because of that. So I think that that has also strengthened the world around Dirt, that like, we try to take care of our people, even though we have fewer resources to do it than a lot of other places.

Phillip: That's a really astute way to say it because I think wanting to be with people and wanting to work with people, having a long-term relationship, trumps everything. Um, because, well, I mean, for obvious reasons, I think, number one. But number two, over time, when you get the shorthand and easy things come easy and then hard things come easier over time, especially when you get good working relationship together. And to your point, we have somebody starting on Monday who it took us four years. Four years, we've been on contract back and forth, talking about a full-time role, big deal hire, press-release-worthy hire. We're like, we've been going back and forth, and it's finally happening. Monday's her first day. And, you know, it's like, be patient. We're it'll happen. We're gonna do this. All right. Here's the cliffhanger. I have I have I have to know what you guys think of the Ghibli memes. Have you covered this on the Tasteland podcast yet? Have you?

Daisy: No, we didn't, no.

Francis: It's in my notes to ask you guys about it.

Phillip: I need to know. Alright. So, we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about it over on the Tasteland feed. And if you wanna hear what Daisy and Francis think about it, we're gonna cover it on part two, and hit it over on their main feed. Thanks for joining Future Commerce.

Francis: Thank you for having us. This was so fun.

Brian: It's awesome.

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