The Next Media Moguls: 97 of the most successful media entrepreneurs reveal their secrets

I interviewed 97 of the world's most successful media entrepreneurs, and they walked me through, step by step, how they built their businesses. This book contains over 200,000 words and 558 pages worth of insights that you can use in building your own media business.

This book is available as a PDF.

Chapters include:

1. From MrBeast to microdramas: Scott Brown’s bet on phone-native storytelling
2. How Starter Story grew from a side project into a multi-million dollar media business (and why HubSpot bought it)
3. The playbook behind one of the fastest-growing social-first newsrooms
4. The accidental ad tech founder: Eric Hochberger’s 20-Year bet on the open web
5. How a former hedge fund analyst built a six-figure newsletter covering Asia’s overlooked stocks
6. He Shut Down Time’s Moscow Bureau. Then He Built His Own Magazine
7. How a small journalism nonprofit is holding the largest pharma companies to account
8. A couple teenagers launched a media company that now drives 240 billion annual views
9. This company wants to fix the broken economics of standup comedy
10. How a few college students bootstrapped one of the largest sports media websites in the world
11. This social-first news outlet turned street interviews into a 600,000-subscriber YouTube channel
12. Why a magazine geared toward political operatives wants to expand into a B2B media empire
13. How Living Cozy built a successful ecommerce business by reviewing furniture and household appliances
14. How Freetrail carved out a media niche for one of the country's fastest-growing sports
15. How the Sunday Long Read newsletter built a thriving membership by curating longform journalism
16. How the GameDiscoverCo newsletter launched a data product for game developers
17. How the Tangle newsletter reached 77,000 readers and $624,000 in annual revenue
18. This local news outlet carved out a lucrative niche by serving Indianapolis women
19. How Oovvuu grew its video platform to over 400 million streams per day
20. How a blog about the VC industry generated over $1 million from online courses
21. How a B2B outlet that covers the corporate travel industry built up a loyal subscriber base
22. How Man of Many grew into the largest men's lifestyle media outlet in Australia
23. How a former travel journalist built a paid membership community for the PR industry
24. How Hubspot built a massive newsletter and podcast audience
25. How two graduate students launched the leading biotech publisher in Europe
26. How a kids-focused podcaster reached 1 million monthly downloads
27. How a former Cosmo editor built Australia's largest women-focused media company
28. How a college student launched one of the most influential B2B sports media companies
29. How a podcast for entrepreneurial parents generates $200,000 a year
30. How Starter Story grew to 1.4 million monthly visitors and $500,000 in annual revenue
31. How Big Cabal Media became one of the fastest-growing news outlets in Africa
32. How an interest in whiskey birthed a thriving media company
33. How Maria Brito used Instagram to build a 7-figure art consulting business
34. How an engineering student accidentally started a thriving science news site
35. Was Randy Cassingham the first member of the Creator Economy?
36. Judd Legum proved that investigative journalism can thrive on Substack
37. How The Art of Manliness built its loyal audience
38. How Richard Rushfield founded one of Hollywood’s most influential newsletters
39. How The Discourse scaled its business model to 34 local news sites
40. Daily Detroit is proving there’s a market for local podcasts
41. How a VC investor grew her newsletter to over 100,000 subscribers
42. How Eric Newcomer scaled his startups newsletter into a $2 million business
43. How three Morning Brew alums are building their own network of niche media outlets
44. This YouTuber amassed a half million social media followers by interviewing touring musicians
45. How Jonathan Skogmo disrupted the viral video clip economy — and plans to do the same in travel media
46. How two college friends reunited to build a thriving politics podcast
47. This Stanford lecturer co-hosts one of the most popular design podcasts
48. How a PR consultant launched a thriving tech news outlet
49. How two Hollywood writers launched one of the most popular parenting podcasts
50. How a former 60 Minutes producer raised six figures in donations to launch an LGBTQ-focused media outlet
51. How a professional sailing league built massive reach on YouTube and social media
52. Why a marketing consultant bought the largest real estate trade magazine in Canada
53. This former Amazon executive generates over $200,000 a year from a newsletter he sends just once a week
54. How an IMDB co-founder achieved three successful media exits
55. How a San Francisco print zine evolved into a thriving local blog
56. How a government contractor built a media empire around his niche content
57. This local newsletter covering a Dallas suburb has the highest paid conversion rate on Substack
58. How Medium finally pivoted its way to profitability
59. Is there life after CNN? Chris Cillizza hopes so
60. How investment newsletter The Daily Upside reached 300,000 subscribers
61. How ScoopWhoop became one of India’s most viral publishers
62. Can a hit YouTube channel thrive after its founder departs?
63. How Taegan Goddard built a thriving paid membership for Political Wire
64. This YouTuber built a massive following with pop music guitar lessons
65. How Josh Spector monetizes his 25,000 newsletter subscribers
66. Inside the career of a successful ghostwriter
67. Inside Big Cabal Media’s Ambitious Plan to Build Africa’s Next Great Media Company
68. How a former USA Today columnist launched his own travel channel on YouTube
69. Why this business news outlet ditched advertising to focus entirely on paid subscriptions
70. Why a former New York Times editor launched her own women-focused magazine
71. Why Business Insider's former editor went all in on evergreen video
72. How the Kyiv Independent used global sympathy to generate membership revenue
73. How a local newsletter company is leveraging AI to cover hundreds of counties across the US
74. Why BroBible's staff bought the website back from the media company that had acquired it
75. Why the founder of a popular cycling blog sold it and then left to launch a competitor
76. How a failed horror movie director co-founded one of the most popular yoga channels on YouTube
77. How the Daily Upside grew to over 1 million subscribers
78. How TAPinto sells local ads across 90 news sites
79. How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers
80. How State House News charges $4,000 for access to its journalism
81. How Andrew Curtin built Construction Wave, a B2B outlet covering the UK's construction industry
82. How Tim Burrowes helped build Mumbrella into a $7 million media brand
83. How Alex Halperin built WeedWeek, a B2B outlet that covers California's cannabis industry
84. How Mission Local spun off from UC Berkeley and became a self-sustaining news outlet
85. How Colossus built one of the largest investing-focused podcast networks
86. How Gary Arndt built Everything Everywhere, a podcast with 1.5 million monthly downloads
87. How Jared Newman built Cord Cutter Weekly, a TV streaming newsletter with 32,000 subscribers
88. How Philip Taylor built FinCon, the leading conference for personal finance creators
89. The economics of ghostwriting books
90. How Eric Siu leveraged his hugely popular podcasts to grow his ad agency
91. How Keith Pepper turned an Atlanta newspaper chain into a digital-first media company
92. How Stacker distributes sponsored content to thousands of publishers
93. How Mignon Fogarty launched a massively successful series of online courses
94. How Dan Oshinsky used his popular newsletter to grow his consulting business
95. How Project Brazen builds huge audiences for its narrative podcasts
96. How The Future Party collaborates with the world's largest brands to host events
97. How Local News Now built its loyal audience