COVID Revenue Evaporation

Austin and Alex share a story about how COVID-19 dramatically impacted their business revenue in early 2020.

"I remember pacing back and forth in my now in-laws' main room talking to Austin. We were talking about one of our biggest sponsors who is a financial services company that had a $75,000 sponsorship coming the next day, and the day before as COVID was starting they canceled it. So $75,000 gone in one conversation, and then basically the floodgates opened. In a few weeks, 30% of all revenue that we had booked vanished.

I remember Austin and I going back and forth being like, 'How the hell are we going to make enough money to just not fire people?' The first lever we pulled is we basically turned paid acquisition and paid marketing down to zero. We brainstormed everything from starting a Patreon and asking people to donate, all the way to our education business. We ended up launching an education business at the Brew, which we've since shuttered, but the reason that started was to bring in short-term cash. That first education thing was a partnership with Scott Galloway when he was starting Section Four."

Sam adds: "We did the same thing. We did an edge like a course and it made $300,000 in one month."