The Next Media Moguls: 141 of the most successful media entrepreneurs reveal their secrets

I interviewed 143 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 300,000 words and 882 pages worth of insights that you can use in building your own media business.

This book is available as a PDF and epub.

Chapters include:

1. How a few local meetups spawned a B2B media company that spans across podcasts, events, and a 40,000-member Slack community
2. This company is building the world's largest platform for B2B creators
3. How a niche magazine turned print into a competitive advantage
4. How an Instagram meme page became a social-first entertainment empire with 95 million followers
5. How a Yankees podcast grew into a 60-person media company 
6. Did the Washington Post finally figure out how micropayments can actually work?
7. How a former science YouTuber built an AI platform used by the world’s largest creators
8. How a newsletter for underserved sports fans reached 1 million subscribers
9. How a bootstrapped blog became gaming culture’s most influential media company
10. How a scrappy finance blog scaled into a media powerhouse with multiple revenue streams
11. How a consultant built a massive following with unscripted TikTok and YouTube videos
12. From war correspondent to media founder: how a journalist built a news business from the Ukraine front lines
13. This startup is helping local news outlets outmaneuver legacy newspaper chains
14. How a revived print magazine attracted 33,000 paying subscribers
15. How HubSpot transformed itself from a content marketer into a full-fledged media company
16. How a hockey coaching conference grew into a $1.5 million media subscription business
17. How a niche newsletter turned its reporting into a data product
18. How a weekly PDF became one of Africa’s most innovative news products
19. This former TV writer now produces prestige audio dramas for Audible, iHeart, and Spotify
20. This independent magazine publisher doubled down on print
21. This media startup is trying to reach readers exhausted by political noise
22. The 30-year-old PDF newsletter with a 98% market penetration rate
23. This product review blog pivoted to video to protect itself from AI
24. How a niche YouTube channel became a multi-platform travel business
25. How a yoga teacher turned bedtime stories into a media empire
26. How Axios Local is leveraging AI to expand into smaller cities
27. How a professional voice actor built a hit indie game studio
28. From MrBeast to microdramas: Scott Brown’s bet on phone-native storytelling
29. How Starter Story grew from a side project into a multi-million dollar media business (and why HubSpot bought it)
30. The playbook behind one of the fastest-growing social-first newsroomsv
31. The accidental ad tech founder: Eric Hochberger’s 20-Year bet on the open web
32. How a former hedge fund analyst built a six-figure newsletter covering Asia’s overlooked stocks
33. He Shut Down Time’s Moscow Bureau. Then He Built His Own Magazine
34. How a small journalism nonprofit is holding the largest pharma companies to account
35. A couple teenagers launched a media company that now drives 240 billion annual views
36. This company wants to fix the broken economics of standup comedy
37. How a few college students bootstrapped one of the largest sports media websites in the world
38. This social-first news outlet turned street interviews into a 600,000-subscriber YouTube channel
39. Why a magazine geared toward political operatives wants to expand into a B2B media empire
40. How the Kyiv Independent used global sympathy to generate membership revenue
41. How a local newsletter company is leveraging AI to cover hundreds of counties across the US
42. Why BroBible's staff bought the website back from the media company that had acquired it
43. Why the founder of a popular cycling blog sold it and then left to launch a competitor
44. How a failed horror movie director co-founded one of the most popular yoga channels on YouTube
45. Inside Big Cabal Media’s Ambitious Plan to Build Africa’s Next Great Media Company
46. How a former USA Today columnist launched his own travel channel on YouTube
47. Why this business news outlet ditched advertising to focus entirely on paid subscriptions
48. Why a former New York Times editor launched her own women-focused magazine
49. Why Business Insider's former editor went all in on evergreen video
50. How an IMDB co-founder achieved three successful media exits
51. How a San Francisco print zine evolved into a thriving local blog
52. How a government contractor built a media empire around his niche content
53. This local newsletter covering a Dallas suburb has the highest paid conversion rate on Substack
54. This former Amazon executive generates over $200,000 a year from a newsletter he sends just once a week
55. Why a marketing consultant bought the largest real estate trade magazine in Canada
56. How a professional sailing league built massive reach on YouTube and social media
57. This Stanford lecturer co-hosts one of the most popular design podcasts
58. How a PR consultant launched a thriving tech news outlet
59. How two Hollywood writers launched one of the most popular parenting podcasts
60. How a former 60 Minutes producer raised six figures in donations to launch an LGBTQ-focused media outlet
61. How Medium finally pivoted its way to profitability
62. How two college friends reunited to build a thriving politics podcast
63. How Jonathan Skogmo disrupted the viral video clip economy — and plans to do the same in travel media
64. This YouTuber amassed a half million social media followers by interviewing touring musicians
65. How three Morning Brew alums are building their own network of niche media outlets
66. This former Disney exec's podcast company generates 100 million monthly downloads
67. The nonprofit news playbook that starts with major donors, not memberships
68. The unlikely local media giant you’ve probably never heard of
69. How a mortgage newsletter became a modern B2B media company
70. The subscription strategy behind one of Britain’s fastest-growing local news startups
71. How a Colorado Springs food critic built a sustainable one-man media business
72. How 1440 built a 4-million-subscriber newsletter empire by obsessing over unit economics
73. How a former institutional investor built a six-figure media business — and then pivoted into fintech
74. How Eric Newcomer scaled his startups newsletter into a $2 million business
75. Is there life after CNN? Chris Cillizza hopes so
76. How Eric Siu leveraged his hugely popular podcasts to grow his ad agency
77. How Keith Pepper turned an Atlanta newspaper chain into a digital-first media company
78. How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers
79. How State House News charges $4,000 for access to its journalism
80. How Stacker distributes sponsored content to thousands of publishers
81. How Mignon Fogarty launched a massively successful series of online courses
82. How Andrew Curtin built Construction Wave, a B2B outlet covering the UK's construction industry
83. How Dan Oshinsky used his popular newsletter to grow his consulting business
84. How Tim Burrowes helped build Mumbrella into a $7 million media brand
85. How Project Brazen builds huge audiences for its narrative podcasts
86. How Alex Halperin built WeedWeek, a B2B outlet that covers California's cannabis industry
87. How Mission Local spun off from UC Berkeley and became a self-sustaining news outlet
88. How Colossus built one of the largest investing-focused podcast networks
89. How The Future Party collaborates with the world's largest brands to host events
90. How Gary Arndt built Everything Everywhere, a podcast with 1.5 million monthly downloads
91. How Local News Now built its loyal audience
92. How Jared Newman built Cord Cutter Weekly, a TV streaming newsletter with 32,000 subscribers
93. How TAPinto sells local ads across 90 news sites
94. How Philip Taylor built FinCon, the leading conference for personal finance creators
95. How the Daily Upside grew to over 1 million subscribers
96. The economics of ghostwriting books
97. How Salesforce Ben built a 20-person media company around enterprise software
98. How Joe Pulizzi built a media business servicing the Creator Economy
99. How Brad Hargreaves turned a real estate newsletter into a six-figure media and data business
100. How Austria’s biggest explainer podcast built a sustainable independent media business
101. How a cloud computing consultant built a community-first media business focused on Microsoft software
102. How a CFO turned accounting jargon into a 75,000-subscriber media business
103. Inside the rise of Australia’s biggest social-first news brand
104. How a teenage gamer built a 60-million-reader media empire
105. How Cityside turned a local news blog into a scalable nonprofit journalism network
106. How a former travel journalist built a paid membership community for the PR industry
107. How Living Cozy built a successful ecommerce business by reviewing furniture and household appliances
108. How Freetrail carved out a media niche for one of the country's fastest-growing sports
109. How the Sunday Long Read newsletter built a thriving membership by curating longform journalism
110. How the GameDiscoverCo newsletter launched a data product for game developers
111. How the Tangle newsletter reached 77,000 readers and $624,000 in annual revenue
112. This local news outlet carved out a lucrative niche by serving Indianapolis women
113. How Oovvuu grew its video platform to over 400 million streams per day
114. How a blog about the VC industry generated over $1 million from online courses
115. How a B2B outlet that covers the corporate travel industry built up a loyal subscriber base
116. How Man of Many grew into the largest men's lifestyle media outlet in Australia
117. How a failed consulting strategy led to a successful B2B media business
118. How a freelance tech journalist turned a niche Android newsletter into a thriving media business
119. How a former MSN.com editor built a sustainable local news startup from his living room
120. How Hubspot built a massive newsletter and podcast audience
121. How a kids-focused podcaster reached 1 million monthly downloads
122. How investment newsletter The Daily Upside reached 300,000 subscribers
123. How a former Cosmo editor built Australia's largest women-focused media company
124. How a college student launched one of the most influential B2B sports media companies
125. How Starter Story grew to 1.4 million monthly visitors and $500,000 in annual revenue
126. How Big Cabal Media became one of the fastest-growing news outlets in Africa
127. How an interest in whiskey birthed a thriving media company
128. How Maria Brito used Instagram to build a 7-figure art consulting business
129. How two graduate students launched the leading biotech publisher in Europe
130. How an engineering student accidentally started a thriving science news site
131. How ScoopWhoop became one of India’s most viral publishers
132. Judd Legum proved that investigative journalism can thrive on Substack
133. Can a hit YouTube channel thrive after its founder departs?
134. How The Art of Manliness built its loyal audience
135. How Richard Rushfield founded one of Hollywood’s most influential newsletters
136. How The Discourse scaled its business model to 34 local news sites
137. Daily Detroit is proving there’s a market for local podcasts
138. How a VC investor grew her newsletter to over 100,000 subscribers
139. How Josh Spector monetizes his 25,000 newsletter subscribers
140. Inside the career of a successful ghostwriter
141. This YouTuber built a massive following with pop music guitar lessons
142. How Taegan Goddard built a thriving paid membership for Political Wire
143. Was Randy Cassingham the first member of the Creator Economy?