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Transcript

Never Post Funding Update · Never Post

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Friends, hello, and welcome to a Neverpost funding
• 0:05
  update. I'm your Neverpost funding update host, Mike
• 0:09
  Rugnetta. The long and short of the news I have for you is the
• 0:12
  following. One, we're not going anywhere yet. Two, our runway is
• 0:17
  shrinking, and we need your help.
• 0:19
  We are at a pivotal and, honestly, a little bit spooky
• 0:22
  moment in our trajectory towards becoming a self sustaining
• 0:25
  program. And I'm gonna let you all know where we are, how far
• 0:29
  your help has already taken us, spoiler alert, very, very far,
• 0:33
  the whole way, and, how we are thinking about what happens
• 0:37
  next. So here we go. Up until this point, Neverpost has had a
• 0:46
  financial runway built by client work that we all do together.
• 0:50
  The bulk of this has been covered by one client, in fact,
• 0:54
  a single contract.
• 0:56
  That contract just ended, which means that we'll need to
• 1:00
  establish a sustainable financial situation in one way
• 1:03
  or another by the end of the calendar year 2025. There are a
• 1:08
  bunch of ways that we are approaching that challenge, and
• 1:11
  we are hoping that the way we can do it is through listener
• 1:15
  support, through memberships. This is both scary and exciting.
• 1:21
  We've learned a lot working together over the last year on
• 1:24
  both Neverpost and our client work. There's a lot that we
• 1:27
  wanna do with the show, and every week, we learn more about
• 1:31
  how to do it.
• 1:33
  With the exit of our one big shared client, we all worked on
• 1:37
  this client work together. We've encountered a kind of bargain.
• 1:40
  We now have the time to try out more stuff with NeverPost, but
• 1:46
  none of us currently has a job. So this is a big inflection
• 1:50
  point. If you like us and you want us to keep doing what we're
• 1:53
  doing with the show and maybe help make it the thing we do,
• 1:58
  please consider becoming a member today.
• 2:01
  Now is the time. If you've been waiting for some any additional
• 2:07
  motivating factor, you can become a member for $4 a month
• 2:10
  on our website at neverpoe.st. While you're there, you can also
• 2:15
  tip us any amount of money one time. The links are in the show
• 2:19
  notes. We're gonna be doing a few things over the next month
• 2:22
  to help us towards our goal of making the show financially
• 2:25
  sustainable absent our client work runway.
• 2:28
  We're gonna be doing a member drive, roughly a week of mostly
• 2:31
  live streamed programming to help get some new members,
• 2:33
  introduce folks to the show, talk about how we think about
• 2:36
  and do what we do, and so on and so forth. We're gonna say more
• 2:40
  about this in the coming weeks in episodes and in the
• 2:43
  newsletter, but this is gonna be happening in late August. I hope
• 2:47
  you'll join us. We're gonna be selling our first run of T
• 2:49
  shirts, and they look red as hell. We already have the
• 2:52
  designs done.
• 2:53
  They're so, so good, so get really hype about that. And then
• 2:57
  we are also going to unarchive our old membership levels
• 3:02
  starting when this upload goes out. The $4 tier isn't going
• 3:06
  anywhere. It will still get you access to everything, but the $7
• 3:11
  and $12 a month levels will return, and they will both also
• 3:15
  have the same set of rewards. So there is no practical difference
• 3:20
  between $4.07, and $12 other than the final two are for folks
• 3:25
  who wanna help out a little more just because they can.
• 3:27
  And if you choose to do that, my god, do we appreciate it?
• 3:32
  Alright. That's the bulk of what I wanna say summarized. If
• 3:35
  you're a freak for the details, the rest of this upload are
• 3:38
  those. If you wanna bail now and go become a member straight
• 3:41
  away, I'm not gonna stop you.
• 3:43
  In fact, I'm gonna applaud you. Good work. Nice job. Just what a
• 3:53
  show. What a show.
• 3:57
  Okay. So if you missed the state of the pod episode at the
• 4:00
  beginning of the year where we talked about how we fund the
• 4:02
  show and how it's going, let me give you some backstory. We all
• 4:06
  work together at a small production company called Charts
• 4:08
  and Leisure doing client work. That means that companies hire
• 4:12
  us to make media for them. Over the last year and change, client
• 4:16
  work money has paid our bills, meaning we could do the work of
• 4:20
  Neverpost without being paid to do it, which, none of us are.
• 4:24
  The contract for our biggest client, the one providing
• 4:27
  coverage for all of us to make the show together, has ended.
• 4:31
  There was always a chance that this was gonna happen, but it
• 4:33
  happened a little sooner and a little more, completely than we
• 4:38
  expected. This effectively means we are all un or underemployed
• 4:42
  at the moment. We have enough in membership and ad money to pay
• 4:45
  for the show's direct expenses, including for occasional
• 4:48
  contributing producer segments. So we're not losing money, but
• 4:52
  the show doesn't make us any money in a meaningful way.
• 4:56
  So there's now a money vacuum in the life of the staff that needs
• 5:00
  to be filled. How it gets filled will have a big impact on the
• 5:05
  show going forward. So that's what I'm about to explain. The
• 5:08
  ideal scenario is that we become sustainable through membership,
• 5:12
  and this means that we each get paid roughly what it costs us to
• 5:15
  do the work required to make Never Post. We've made the show
• 5:19
  for a year, as something that we do between professional
• 5:22
  projects, and you've seen what we can do.
• 5:24
  We were an Atlantic best podcast of the year. We won a Webby for
• 5:29
  our live show. We did a live show at XOXO Fest, the last XOXO
• 5:33
  Fest. We won an honorable mention for a best single
• 5:38
  podcast Webby. We were able to join Radiotopia, an extremely
• 5:42
  fancy storied network.
• 5:44
  We were featured on Apple Podcasts multiple times. Imagine
• 5:48
  what we could do if this show is all we did. To pinch a phrase,
• 5:54
  we are nowhere near our true power level yet. This is where
• 6:08
  you come in. If you join other people listening to become a
• 6:11
  member, if you aren't already, we stand a good chance of being
• 6:14
  able to focus more and more of our time on Never Post.
• 6:18
  And who knows next year, what sort of shenanigans we can get
• 6:22
  even more awards for. I bet I bet we can convince Georgia to
• 6:29
  sing. Tonys, here we come. Okay. So now but seriously, what are
• 6:35
  the other ways this can go?
• 6:37
  It is possible that the show's audience grows such that ads
• 6:40
  contribute significantly to sustainability, but this is
• 6:43
  unlikely. Ad rates are pretty low. Audience growth is slow for
• 6:47
  us and everyone else. I mean, don't get me wrong. Please tell
• 6:51
  your pals about the show.
• 6:52
  Share your favorite segments with them. It really, really
• 6:54
  makes a difference, but the number one thing you can do to
• 6:56
  help us in the near term is become a member. It's also
• 7:00
  possible that we pick up more client work. And if it pays well
• 7:03
  enough and doesn't demand sixty hours of work a week, we can
• 7:06
  divide our time the way that we have been up until this point.
• 7:09
  Finding new work and, you know, doing it takes time.
• 7:14
  And finding one client which can account for so much of our
• 7:17
  income as a whole team at once is really rare, but, hey, it can
• 7:21
  happen. And if any of you out there are looking to hire an
• 7:24
  amazingly talented content production team or work for an
• 7:27
  organization who might be interested in the same, you know
• 7:31
  where to find us. But the more we rely on client work and not
• 7:35
  the work of the show to support us I mean, what's to say that
• 7:38
  we're not back in this exact same situation in six months or
• 7:40
  a year? It's exhausting. It And also means that we miss the
• 7:43
  opportunity to see what we can do if the show is our focus.
• 7:48
  It's also possible a percentage of the staff go get, like, jobs,
• 7:52
  you know, like the normal kind where you're in an office at a
• 7:54
  desk, and they sort of frown on you making an unrelated podcast.
• 7:57
  It's also possible we each land our own separate client work,
• 8:01
  which could make it tough to coordinate six people making a
• 8:04
  show together. Or we land client work, but it's just it's so
• 8:07
  demanding that making the show alongside it becomes too
• 8:09
  difficult. The point being, the ideal here is we get paid to
• 8:13
  make the show that we make more and better. This, of course, has
• 8:16
  its own challenges.
• 8:17
  We have to go into fundraising mode at exactly the same time.
• 8:21
  So many other people and places and media outlets are doing
• 8:25
  exactly the same thing because, I mean, you know, you live in
• 8:31
  the world. You know what it's like out there. You know, I feel
• 8:35
  this as a consumer just as much as I do a producer. And, to put
• 8:39
  it succinctly, it sucks.
• 8:41
  It it just it sucks all around. But we also know, that, you
• 8:47
  know, you guys listen to the show, and you believe in it, and
• 8:52
  you're one of the many really incredible listeners who's
• 8:54
  engaged with us and the world around us and the Internet
• 8:58
  situation that we all inhabit and the media and information
• 9:02
  environment. And we just we hope that the things that we make are
• 9:05
  meaningful enough that, you feel inspired to help out. So we're
• 9:10
  gonna sell some t shirts. We're gonna reopen a few membership
• 9:13
  levels, and we're gonna do a membership drive in August,
• 9:15
  which we hope that you will join us for and tell your friends
• 9:18
  about.
• 9:18
  And if we're lucky, it'll all mean that we get to twenty
• 9:23
  twenty six, and we get to make the best dang version of this
• 9:27
  show that we know how to without, going bananas, been
• 9:33
  playing a lot of Donkey Kong lately, or into debt. I'm I'm
• 9:39
  crossing more fingers than I have. If you have any questions,
• 9:43
  we would love to answer them. Send us an email, a voice mail,
• 9:45
  a voice memo. Once we have updates for you on any of this,
• 9:48
  it'll be in the newsletter, in the news sections of the
• 9:51
  episodes proper.
• 9:53
  I I mean, thank you. Thanks for listening this far, to this
• 9:58
  detailed funding situation announcement. But really, like,
• 10:04
  just thanks a million for your support, and especially for the
• 10:07
  support of our members. We literally could not make this
• 10:11
  show without you, and that is only about to become more true.
• 10:17
  It's tough times, but we really believe in what we're doing.
• 10:20
  We hope you do too. We hope that we can keep doing it together
• 10:24
  the best way that we know how, and who knows, maybe even a
• 10:28
  little better. Alright. I'll see you this Wednesday, in a couple
• 10:32
  days with a full episode.