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

I interviewed 141 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 284,000 words and 866 pages worth of insights that you can use in building your own media business.

This book is available as a PDF.

Chapters include:

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