How to become a Substack Star with Emily Sundberg
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And today I'm talking to Emily Sundberg, who runs Feed Me, her newsletter about business and fashion and consumption in New York City, and also very much about Emily Sundberg. A lot of you have heard about Emily, and some of you, like me, may have only heard about her recently because she's been getting a ton of notice in MediaLand. It's the kind of notice that generates invitations from Apple to come hang out on campus and get a selfie with Tim Cook.

But more than that, Emily is running a thriving one-person business. And maybe that's a model for some people, and maybe that's totally unworkable for lots of other folks. To me, that's a pretty interesting tension. And it's one we talk about a lot in this conversation. Also discussed here, girl boss fiction, Tucker Carlson's tobacco line, and Michael Bloomberg's fish tanks. Okay, this is me talking to Emily Sundberg.

I'm here with Emily Sundberg, who is, how do we describe you, Emily? The author, owner of Feed Me? The owner of Feed Me. Yeah, I write a newsletter called Feed Me on Substack. And

And not just a newsletter, an enormously influential newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. Profiled in The New York Times. It's been a big year. You're in vogue this spring. I just saw a selfie of you and Tim Cook at Apple Park. That was the highlight of the year so far. No, now you're on the channel's podcast. This is the culmination. Yeah, this is the new. How would we describe what it is that Feed Me is?

Feed Me is a daily newsletter on Substack. They categorize it in the business category, but I would say it covers mostly New York City business and culture news. And I started it about three years ago. I've been writing on Substack for five years, but I started this letter about three years ago. From day one, it was paywalled. From day one, it was daily. And it started because of sort of these...

These workplace conversations that I was having in the wake of covid about I just I just saw this like interest in workplace news in a more gossipy way than like Wall Street Journal was was writing about or the Times is writing about like people were interested in who. Yeah.

you know, like what the alumni of Glossier were doing after they worked at Glossier, but also who different investors were dating and the companies that they were dating in and their resumes beforehand. And there was this really conversational conversation

way that my friends were talking about it and I didn't see it reflected in the media. And yeah. I'm trying to find the, again, we'll talk about the origin story. I'm trying to find a way to describe it to readers. For me, it's pressing my nose up against the glass of a place that I kind of recognize. But again, I'm an old man, so I shouldn't really understand a bunch of the brands and people you're talking about. Otherwise, it'd be a different newsletter. Yeah.

There's business, there's fashion, some gossip, a lot of links, and you do some reporting and some essaying. Am I, I'm not really selling. Yeah, what did the, what did the, what did Jess Testa use at the Times? She said, what was her headline? It was like where gossip and where dealmakers get their gossip or something like that. I like to say. Dealmakers and strivers get their gossip. Yeah, where dealmakers and strivers get their gossip. And what I kind of say sometimes is like,

bartenders and billionaires read it, which is another way of saying that if you wanted to speak in work terms. And it's very New York City. It sort of celebrates the glamour and ambition and fun and expense of New York City and with an eye on sort of the luxury end, but not exclusively luxury. You do have a thing today in today's newsletter about what's going on with luxury hotels. And in your comments section, people say, well, I normally will pay $4,000 for a night, but that seems a little much. And I'm like,

Oh, so I don't know anyone who spends $4,000 a night on a hotel. Well, that's, I mean, that's one thing, but I would say another big part of my business and my selling point is that people spend $80 a year for this subscription. And yes, they got the newsletter this morning, but I'm sitting here talking to you and there's thousands of them in the comment section that's paywalled. And like, they also pay to access that and converse in there and spend time hanging out in like the Substack chat in the comment section, which is really hard to build.

From scratch. I mean, the only way that's happened is because of the years and years I've spent cultivating this community. But that's like a fun part of my business as well. I just want to stay on the sort of the gestalt, I like saying gestalt of the newsletter. It's the billionaires and bartenders tagline is great. If you had to divide it up between your readership, your community, what percent of them are on sort of the high end actually spending the money and buying all the stuff, the billionaires? And how many of them are the aspirants, the bartenders?

I think if you're spending $80 a year on a newsletter that's mostly about consumption and spending money, you're like, I think the main cohort of my readership is like mid-30s, probably making a good six-figure salary, and they're reading it as a service to make their work better. Like the best feedback I get is when people are like, this newsletter makes me walk into my...

9 a.m. meeting on Wednesdays and feel more prepared for like my pitch meetings or whatever. So you really do think it is sort of servicey as opposed to aspirational, like the way when I'm growing up in the Midwest, when I read like, you know, Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, just sort of imagining that world, like your readers you think are in this world that you're writing about. We all are. We live in New York City. It's so expensive. There's lots of New York cities. There's lots of New York cities, but...

It's pretty expensive. So let's walk through the business of Feed Me. So 50 bucks I'm paying you or am I paying you 80 bucks? You might be. I'm a recent subscriber. You did not cut me a discount by the way. There's people who are grandfathered into the 30 a year category.

If I signed up today, what's the 80 bucks for every day, which is like a few cents a letter. Yeah, you can sell it here. How many subs do you have? I have well over 100,000 now. Subscribers or readers? Subscribers. Paying you. Oh, you're asking for paid. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't share my paid numbers, but like almost 10% of that. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah, it's good. It's a great business. Yeah, it is a great business. And so that's the bulk of your business. And then there's advertising, there's other stuff. Yeah, I'd say my business right now is two-thirds subscription and a third ads. And your team is how many people? My team is me. And then I have three columnists who each write once a month for me.

And they're great. They all have day jobs and none of them are writers by trade, but they're really great at writing. So this is like the first place that they've written for, which is fun. Two are kind of anonymous, one isn't. And then I have like a part-time editorial assistant who's a student.

And then that's kind of it right now. So you write it, edit, do the events, bring in the ads. Yeah. Work out those deals. Yeah. When I see you jetting off to France or London, you've set all that up yourself. Basically, it's a one person operation. Yeah. When I was just in London, I went with the Substack team, which was really fun. Yeah. They gave you a lift there. What about I saw you again at Apple Park with Tim Cook. How did that come about?

The Apple team reached out to me and they said that they have a pretty big media section at that event. This is the developers conference. Yeah, at WWDC at the Apple campus in Cupertino. And they reached out to me a few weeks ago and they asked if I'd be interested in going, just kind of checking it out. There was no real agenda there.

So yeah. - They weren't interested on your opinions on the new iOS design or things like that. They just wanted you to sort of be in the mix. Basically, they're paying you a compliment. You're cool. We'd like some of your coolness to rub off on us. - Yeah, I think that might be right. I think they also know that I have a big audience and there are a lot of developers in that audience and people who are curious about like how these tech companies work. And I've written about Apple a bit in the past.

And I went there, my friend Rachel Carton, who I'm fourth on the business list at Substack. She's fifth. She's awesome. She was also out there. There were a few. I mean, Will Welch was out there. They brought a lot of media people out there. It was fun.

Was that your first visit to Apple? Yeah. Yeah. It was wild. It's a beautiful campus is what I would say. It is a beautiful campus, yeah. And then you got actual FaceTime with Tim. Close enough for a selfie. Close enough for a selfie. It was sort of a step in selfie. Sorry. So we've established the business. We've established the pitch. How'd you get here? What were you doing prior to starting a Substack? So I started my newsletter like in the current form while I was working at Meta.

What were you doing there? I was a creative director on like a business marketing team. So basically being like, you're a small business in Miami. You should use Instagram ads to boost your revenue at your, you know, that kind of thing. And is that what you thought you were going to be doing career wise? Oh, I think every...

every position I've ever held, I've been like one of the first people in it. So I never really had like a full vision of what my job would be when I was younger. I went to school in the city. I went to FIT. So it was the only state school in New York City. FIT is a, that's the Fashion Institute of Technology. It's a state school? I had no idea. Yeah. SUNY FIT. And I knew I wanted to be in Manhattan for college.

And while I was in college, you could take night classes at FIT, so you could work during the day because it's a trade school. So I interned at Yahoo for a while. I interned at NBC for a while.

And then I would take classes at night. My major was advertising and marketing. And then my first job after graduating was at New York Magazine. And I was their first Instagram editor for the cut. Wait, were we co-workers? Were we Vox Media co-workers? 2016. I know, isn't that funny? Welcome back. Here we go. Happy to be here.

And it was a really interesting time at magazines because it was the first time that you were seeing an insane amount of traffic coming through Instagram. It wasn't just a place. It wasn't just a place on the Internet for like showing pretty things. It was actually a traffic driver. So like developing a strategy, you

for driving immense amount of traffic to New York Magazine site. And the stories that year were like Weinstein, Trump, Caroline Calloway, like these really exciting, splashy stories coming out of New York Magazine. And I developed relationships with teams at Instagram and Apple and Twitter at the time, which was really exciting. Because social media, I

I think still is kind of in the sort of the publishing media hierarchy, sort of the social media managers. I still kind of look down upon on the hierarchy. It's often sort of a young person's thing.

But it seems like that's changing. Like people are sort of realize, oh, this is actually not just a flashy thing we need to do, but an important part of our business. Yeah, I think it's changing. I think like a lot of these former social media managers have also done a lot of work for it to change because it's a hard job. It's long hours. It's a lot of demands. But yeah,

It's, you know, it's like the most public facing part of most businesses. And is that what you thought you were going to do once you got into that and realized, oh, this there's I am at this nexus of really interesting stuff. I can sort of communicate between The Cut and New York Magazine and Instagram and I figured it out. No, I didn't think that I would be doing that forever. I really liked building worlds online and talking to a lot of people at once. Like I always really liked that. Yeah. I liked like scratching that itch. And I grew up spending a lot of time online. So it was very, you know.

It was my language or at least my medium. Like it was a medium I was comfortable with. And then one of my colleagues at New York Magazine was starting a cookware company that whispers around the office. It was being called like the Glossier of cookware. And I was maybe 22 or 23 at the time. And I joined there as employee one. But what I got to witness was this very specific moment in like pre-2020 work.

venture capital boom in consumer businesses, girl boss era. And I wasn't that involved, but I was witnessing everything. And I kind of put a pin in it. And I was the first in, first out at this company by choice. But

I was like, I'm going to revisit this. And I don't know how, but like something is happening with these Facebook ads and with these investors and with these shiny profiles of young women who are starting these big venture-backed companies. And I'm going to revisit this in some way. The aways and glossiers. The aways, the glossiers, the wings. We're at the runway. All of it. And the company that I worked at was called Great Jones. And the founders were Sierra Tishgart and Maddie Mollis. And I kind of just...

Was like, I'm not going to be here forever, but I'm learning a lot as an employee one at this kind of company. And I'm seeing a lot. And then after that, I was consulting for a bit and Meadow was one of my clients. And then I started working there full time for a few years. And then I started my newsletter at my desk at the Meadow office in Hudson Yards. And...

It was literally like I was getting texts from friends saying, can I put this in a newsletter anonymously and put it on this thing called Substack that I've been kind of playing around with for a few years.

I had some girl boss fiction on Substack and Matt Levine also. Wait, what do you mean you had some girl boss fiction? I was writing fiction over COVID on. Separate from the newsletter. Pre-Feed Me in the way that you see it now. It was always called Feed Me, but it was just like a newsletter where I published short, creepy fiction, kind of inspired by.

my time in consumer, like venture-backed consumer businesses. Were these thinly disguised profiles of people you admired or hated? No, it was like, I was living in Beverly Hills at the time over COVID and I was just kind of creeped out by everything and watching a lot of horror movies and thinking about like mundane horror. That's kind of what it was. And there was one about a female founder and

Matt included it on, you know, he does those links at the bottom of money stuff. How did Matt Levine find your? No idea. I saw him last week at like a tech week event. And it was like, I'm Emily. He was like, I know because I probably told this story before. But what that did for me was it made me realize that there's traffic potential from newsletter to newsletter.

And it was 2020. It was early. And newsletters were still this annoying thing that were kind of handed off to the social media manager to put together. Like, aggregate some stuff from the site today, send it to everybody. And you marked it as spam. It wasn't an exciting thing to read, except Matt's was. But one of my friends worked at Bloomberg and he sent me a photo of his terminal and was like, you're on here. And that was another moment where I kind of stuck attack in it. And I was like,

There's something to the newsletter format, and I'm not sure what it is, but I'll think about it later. Fast forward two years, started my daily newsletter, my daily gossip business newsletter. While you were working at Meta? Yeah. And was your thought, this is a side hustle for me, or I'm leaving Meta, this is going to be my life raft? Well, I was part of that first round of layoffs at Meta, which made sense because our team was spending an extraordinary amount of money. Everything that Zuck said about the efficiency of the company was completely accurate, but

He was talking about you. You know, but there was a lot of spinning around. When they had to cut back on how much food they were giving people for late night dinner. Like you think you guys have a lot of snacks. Like it was, they had a lot of snacks. And then I was consulting for more, like I was consulting for Shopify for a little bit, which was really cool. I liked the way that they were running that business. And there was a few other clients that I had. And then after maybe like a year of,

freelance and writing the newsletter, I was making more on the newsletter than I was consulting. And I stopped doing that. We'll be right back with Emily Sundberg. But first, a word from a sponsor. Put us in a box. Go ahead. That just gives us something to break out of. Because the next generation 2025 GMC Terrain Elevation is raising the standard of what comes standard.

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Rules and restrictions may apply. And we're back. So as you're writing the newsletter, are you thinking, I'm going to do this and consult and I'm going to do a bunch of different things and one of them will be the newsletter or was the thought always, I'd love, it'd be amazing if I could build this newsletter into a full-time business.

What I always say is like the data I was receiving from Substack was like so positive. Like the growth was crazier than anything I'd ever worked on before. And I was also greenlighting all of my ideas and other places that I was working for. They weren't. They weren't greenlighting my ideas. They didn't want me to... Greenlighting your ideas, meaning you're the boss. So whatever you want to do is what you do. Correct. And for so long, I'd been working in like...

slight creative but slight operational roles for the boss. And like that means some of my ideas that I knew were gonna perform well, I wasn't allowed to do them or like they weren't going to happen, whatever. And with Feed Me,

It was a lesson in like trusting myself and gut and intuition and making something in a white space that didn't exist and being able to tell the stories that I always wanted to tell for all the other place that I worked and like seeing them do well. So I was like, OK, I'm on to something. I'm trusting myself. I'm going to lean into this.

That Jessica Testa article, The Times references sex in the city. I guess it's mostly sex in the city sort of or Gawker. Did you have like a model or a person real or fictional? You're like, oh, I could be the next version of this or I want to be the digital version of that.

I felt very shaped by my time at New York Magazine, like when Adam Moss was running it. I felt very shaped by like my time at The Cut when I was working for Stella Bugbee. I think that I'm like that definitely influenced me. But then also really quickly watching how people talk talked about.

Media and workplace news was changing on Twitter and in my group texts, which were full of, I mean, I'm friends. Some of my best friends are guidance counselors. Some of my best friends work at hedge funds. So like just seeing the shared interests and not seeing those stories necessarily, like there were bigger stories in my group texts than in the news. And there was a disconnect.

You don't see that as much anymore. Like things move so quickly now that pretty much if you're talking about something on Twitter, it's going to end up on a news website like within a few hours. But at the time, I didn't see that happening. And did you think about making yourself the face slash brand slash main character of your work versus like,

Here, I'm filing dispatches, but I'm not sort of the you are the thing, right? People come to see you. They want to hear what you have to say. There's other approaches where you sort of put yourself in the background. Maybe the newsletter just makes you become the thing. Yeah, I mean, what would be an example? I have an answer, but what would be an example of a newsletter where the person isn't the thing?

I think there's a lot. I mean, I think a lot of those lousy institutional newsletters you're talking about and lots, you know, lots of folks put them out, especially from bigger publications. Right. This is the voice of our publication. Couldn't tell you who's writing it. Yeah. Successful ones are all voicy, I think. Yeah. Like, I do think people are reading money stuff.

100%.

And I don't think that, I'm not sure if like selfies were popular on LinkedIn at the time. So I do think that I got like an initial bump in traffic because people were like, okay, she's talking about the credit restructuring of Rent the Runway. And she's a young woman. And she's a young woman. And there's like sort of anime hearts around this selfie of her, like what is going on? And I think that helped at the beginning. And then last fall, almost a year ago now, or whatever, yeah, last fall,

I did like a proper branding of the letter. The selfies went away. I had too many weird interactions in the city, just like being out. And I don't... It's funny because every woman I know that works in any capacity online gets just a ton of grief and creeps and blah, blah, blah in a way that...

Again, it's so fucking obvious, but if you're not a woman, you can't get it until you sort of see it. But they'll share, you know, here's what I'm getting from my DMs, et cetera. So I would expect you'd get a ton of craziness online, but you're talking about people coming up to you in the street because they've recognized you. Yes. Which is a double-edged sword, right? You've attained some sort of status, celebrity notoriety. On the other hand, you have creeps coming up on the street. Maybe not creeps. You tell me. I mean, I think it's a combination, but then there's also this thing of like,

often when I'm out and I'm sitting with people, I'm getting I'm developing some kind of story. And there were a few moments or there were a few instances where somebody like at the end of the one hour meeting, the person next to me would be like, by the way, I love your newsletter. And they heard it all. And it's I'm never like I'm never, you know, discussing anything that crazy or sensitive. But it is a good thing. Yeah, it was. And I was

I'm really happy that I stopped doing the photos. I'm also learning now through, it's funny, like as I'm doing the ad sales now, I'm noticing brands are like, are you an influencer? Are we selling sort of,

like banner ads? Like, are we treating you more like a New York magazine? Or are we treating you like an influencer? Like, are we doing a photo shoot with you? Or are we putting, you know, just a big banner ad at the top of your newsletter? Like, which is going to do more bang for our buck? And I've noticed that I'm not as comfortable doing like smiling for a photo shoot. Like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to show people my house or my closet or my life like that. Why not?

I think they're a very wise person in this industry who is quite public once told me, like, once you turn certain levers on, you can't turn them back off. I'm just like, that doesn't mean you never turn them on, but you should be strategic about when you do. And I don't need to right now. Like everything's working. I don't need to give more of my personal life. It's funny because I don't, I'm just meeting you for the first time and we've

emailed a couple times but I follow you on Instagram obviously I'm reading the newsletter a couple different profiles like you're out there a bit right like I can tell you where you got married and blah blah blah and and it um

It seems like you've kind of dialed in like exactly how much of yourself you want to show and not show. But it's kind of interesting to think about, right? Like that you are sort of are you doing those calculations sort of all the time? Like this can go up on the Instagram, but this one is too personal or I can't I can't show you this person because they're not a public figure or. Yeah. I don't want you to know where I live. Yeah. I mean, everybody knows I live in South Slope because I say that a lot and I like have a favorite bar. Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, I just think that I mean, this is an interesting story. So I did write about my wedding on my newsletter, which is probably the most personal thing I ever wrote on there. And it was the highest conversion I'd ever seen in the past five years of my newsletter from free to paid readers ever, ever like ever.

Like the wedding was almost paid for after that. Like it was crazy. Sorry, you don't curse on here, I guess. Oh, no, no. Swear up. I do. I was on a show the other day and the two guys were like, we don't curse, but you can. And I'm sure a lot of people like you look at that and you're like, OK, there's two directions I can go and I can start writing about my life every day.

Or I can be like, that's weird. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to have weddings every year. I'm not going to have weddings every year. I'm not going to tell you about like, I don't really usually, I don't talk about that stuff. I don't talk about...

People didn't even know I was engaged. Which is funny. So that's why the sort of sex in the city Carrie Bradshaw thing sort of fall. Like you're not, these aren't tales from your life. These aren't, oh, I was up to some crazy escapades last night at the Soho house or sorry, Silicon, San Vicente bungalows. Oh yeah. Well, I do write that. But you'd be like, I was there, not, oh, you wouldn't believe what so and so did. I don't say like, and I was in the car ride home and I was thinking about like, these are the shoes that I'm wearing. And this is like, it's,

I think that, yeah, I think I've done a really good job of the balance that I do. And I like the amount of my life that I give to people. I think it's working. What's the trend that you've sort of highlighted, spotted, that people are most excited about when they come to you and say, oh, I read your piece about you tell me. Well, this week was a fun one. On Monday...

There was a group of writers and creators and influencers that were sent to Italy with J.Crew. And this is what we call a junket. We used to call a junket. Yeah. Yeah. Brand trip, junket, press trip, whatever. But J.Crew says you you famous ish people. Yeah. We'd like you to come to come to Italy. Come to Italy. Be photograph post photographs. And that's sort of the trade.

No, a lot of them are paid. We're going to pay you as well. Yes. We're going to give you a free trip. And I'd heard about it for a few weeks. So I was sort of waiting for the first post to come in. And a few people posted on Monday morning and I wrote about it. And I said, I think that we should all be watching this trip unfold this week. Kind of like

We're going to treat this like reality TV. And a few people there texted me and said, were you paid to write about that? A few other people were like, we just landed in Italy. Like, how did you find out about this already if it wasn't sort of planted to you? But like, that's kind of I don't know if J.Crew wanted that much attention on this press trip. I don't know if these very cool under the radar people wanted attention.

people to be dissecting J.Crew's marketing plan and thinking... But they can't be that under the radar if J.Crew aren't under there, right? They have to be the right sort of... It was a very cool group of like 30 to 40-year-olds. Like it was not your standard drunk girls on a boat influencer trip. Um...

And I think it started a lot of conversations about how influencers, whatever you want to call them, are paid, if they negotiate rates, if they're all getting paid differently, what the hell J.Crew's budget is.

And it was only 36 hours long. So it's like, who says yes to being flown to Italy for 36 hours? It's a great item because it's one just straight up gossip, right? Like, did you know that so-and-so is getting this free trip? But it also tells you a story about brands and influencers and sort of how those things are intersecting right now. All in one little item. Yeah, yeah. We'll be right back. But first, a word from a sponsor.

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And we're back. I was asking my pal Katie Notopoulos, my co-worker Katie Notopoulos. I'm going to interview Emily Sundberg. Oh, ask her about Zins. Katie is obsessed with Zins and you seem to be obsessed as well. Yeah. Are you a Zin user? Yeah, I am. And that goes against the brand, right? Are you both? It seems like it goes against. Well, you tell me. It seems like it seems like the Zin brand is.

Dudes who voted for Trump. Feed me is pro nicotine. It's definitely not against the brand. Zin is. Well, if you read my story in GQ, you'd learn that I wrote a feature for them last year about or earlier this year about Zin and the other nicotine pouch brands such as Lucy and Tucker Carlson's Alp.

And I think a lot of guys who voted for Trump, I'm sure, use it. But like a lot of chicks use it. A lot of like guys who didn't vote for Trump use it. I mean, our friend Joe Weisenthal uses it. Like plenty of people use Zin or nicotine in different forms. And yeah, that was a fun kind of beat to ride for the last year. I think I started writing about it last year. The other thing about my readership is...

It's like almost 50-50 men, women, at least anecdotally, like looking at the comment section, looking at events. Substack doesn't give you those analytics. So it's all been manual surveys and just observing. So a lot of the men were really excited about that conversation and hopping in the comments about it. And then do you know John Coogan? He has a live show on Twitter called TBPN. Oh, the technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. It went on last week.

But he was one of my sources for the story. And I kind of saw the world that he was building out was more like finance guys, not Trumpy. And then I don't know what the hell Tucker's selling point is these days. But yeah, it's just Tucker world all the time. I texted him about buying back his company.

And why he did that. And he just responded, I don't like debt or something. It's like, OK. Also got fired by Fox. Yeah. So is the other part of it. I did. I did enjoy the clip you just put out of him depancing Ted Cruz. It's great. I mean, I feel uncomfortable about how much I liked it, but I did enjoy it. That was a common text this morning. He's very good at TV. It turns out. Yeah. Yeah.

And it seems to me that there is a line that you are good at walking about. This stuff I'm doing is a little bit risque. Risque is maybe the wrong word. I'm going to straddle the line between telling you something that you can discuss at dinner with your friends and family. And some of this stuff is a little bit...

I guess risque is the right word. I'm going to push a little bit of an envelope. Or maybe you didn't think it was appropriate to talk about Zin. Or maybe you didn't think that women in their late 20s in New York are using Zin. We're going to tell you about that and just give you a little peek of a world you might not know about. Yeah, I was home on Long Island last weekend at my parents' house. My grandma was over and she was asking what was going on with the Zin stuff. I think she was a little freaked out. But

It's so normal here in New York. Like, I have friends who just kind of keep it next to their phone on the table at the bar or whatever. So maybe that's risque. Like, it's like you're saying my tone sometimes is a little brash. Yeah, I've been... I feel like... I feel like maybe it is for... Maybe it's just surprising because...

I'm a woman, like it sounds a little bro-y sometimes maybe, I don't know. - Yeah, so it's a confidence, right? - Yeah. - That you don't always see. It's very cool. We talked about this earlier. This is a one person operation.

So there's a lot of advantage to that. Every dollar you make, you get to keep, right? Except the- - Sub-sac takes 10%. - 10%. But basically- - We all know that, yeah. - But after you've paid out your fees, everything is you, you don't have investors, you're Emily. The flip side is how do you scale that? Do you wanna scale that? How do you think about that?

Yeah. The scaling thing is top of mind. And also, like, I don't know if a newsroom is supposed to be one person. Sometimes I get a little like, whoa, I wish I had somebody to bounce these ideas off of more during the day, like, or even a legal team or an editor. Scaling. So I think, yeah.

I feel like the newsletter is in a good place. The newsletter feels super solid right now. Like I worked really hard for the for the year sort of leading up to that Times profile to get it into a solid place. People get it. People like it. There's you get your links at the bottom if that's what you're into. And then I usually start some sort of conversation at the top with either original reporting or or a different kind of conversation.

I'm kind of interested in like, I really, I would like to play around with audio. I've made a movie before. I've made a podcast before. I had a podcast about poker over COVID with my ex and his friend. It's like pretty easy to make. I don't have. Don't tell anyone. I understand how to do it. Let's say that. I understand how to how to edit.

video, I understand how to edit audio. So I think I'd like to play around with making a podcast this year. And I'm interested in not being the face of that. Like I would like to make a, produce a podcast with a host outside of me. And why do you think you don't want to be the face of that for time or because you don't want everything that comes out of Feed Me to be the Emily Sundberg? The latter. I also don't,

I think that that's the best idea that I could put together is me saying, okay, like you just read my newsletter and now we're going to talk about it on this. Because the counter would be like, you are the product. People want to hear from you. They want to see you. You're the thing. They don't want ancillary Emily stuff. They want Emily. Which I think is totally fair, but I actually think that I'm a better producer than a host. Yeah.

We'll see. Yeah. So I think I will try to make a show later this year under the Feed Me umbrella. There is a show... I mean, my movie that I made was a documentary and I'm interested in doc filmmaking and I'm kind of curious how that translates to audio. I know that's like not as sexy of a sell for most businesses to be like, I'm going to make a 12-part doc series as opposed to like, we're going to do this every week for a year and you're going to sell a big sponsor into it. Like it's not as...

strong of a business, but I think it could be interesting. Those are all extra product lines that you want to extend and build new projects. Do you still envision that in a year from now, this is still a one person and change company? Or do you think at some point you're going to have to start hiring people or working with people full time? Substack does a lot, like on the op side. I will say like things that I would normally be hiring for, like their team is super helpful to me and the other like top newsletters on that platform.

I don't know, like maybe a chief of staff sort of more on the ground assistant kind of person could be helpful, but like,

I like to keep my overhead low. It feels very doable right now. And the billionaires and investors and business types, I'm sure, come to you constantly like, oh, I want to blow this out. Let me put X amount for 20% of Emily Inc. Not interested. I'm assuming that happens though, right? They come to you and put you? Yeah. I don't know if they're all billionaires at the V, but... People with money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. And...

And so that's been happening consistently. And I assume they all have some version of the pitch that I'm talking about with you now, right? Which is you cannot do all this on your own, but you want to grow. To do that, you need my, you can use my capital and or my resources to help you. Yeah. And the other thing that I hear a lot is like, well, what if there's Feed Me LA and Feed Me Miami and Feed Me, but I don't live in all those places and I don't know what this thing feels like with a different writer. So.

So do you have like a five year plan or can you not work out that far? And it's like, look, in a year from now, I know I'm going to have two podcasts. I don't have a five year plan. No. You had a great line, a really interesting line in everyone's talking to you. Oliver Darcy interviewed you recently. Yeah, that was fun. I would not want to start Feed Me in 2025. I would not want to start Feed Me in 2025. Why? Um.

I think part of the reason why FeedMe is working so well is because I joined the platform when I did.

You should check on when you, oh, wait, no, you started subscribing this year. So you paid 80. But like there are people who have been with me when there were typos left and right. I was working other jobs. They were there purely for like my hottest takes. I had no audience on the Internet at that point. And I don't know if they would fall in love with the product the same way as they would today. I also think starting a newsletter on Substack today has a different connotation than what it had then. What's the connotation today?

It's crowded. Everyone's starting one. Of course you are. I roll like good luck. Like it's like, oh, you started a blog or oh, you started a podcast 15 years ago, five years ago. In a lot of cases, it's you got fired from your media job and now you're starting a sub stack. That's that's the one I see all the time. Yeah, that's definitely one. And then the other thing is like if I started this in 2025, I probably wouldn't be in this seat until 2030. It took me five years to get here.

If you were at Meta today and getting laid off with this, forget the mechanics of the newsletter, but just is that idea still appealing to you or do you want to try something else? If...

If, wait, sorry, what's the question? You were saying, look, to start this in 2025, it's a crowded pool. It'd be hard to build up. It would take me that much longer to get on. But are you still as intrigued with, you sort of backed into this business, right, in a way? By writing scary fiction. By writing scary fiction and you just discovered an audience and it's a cool story, right? But if you were starting from scratch today, would you go, oh, the newsletter, it's

space is attractive to me still? Or do you think there's something else coming down the road or something else that you're looking at? I think if I was in this position today, I probably would not be doing like the same sort of format. Like an idea I've had forever is trying to get like an anonymous person who works at Sephora to write a newsletter, like something more...

Dishy.

I like this whole little web of connecting people in a way. And for me, that's a daily business and culture newsletter. But if I was I think there's a million ways to do it. And I don't know, I probably have like another movie in me, like a scripted sort of thing.

that will be influenced by the work that I've been doing with Feed Me. Like I could see that as. You've got a lot of options. Explain the TSA part. I missed that. Oh, people like take photos at the airport. A lot of my merch, people wearing sweatshirts, like because people wear them in the airport. There's been like three or four of those, which is fun. It's a good airport sweatshirt. OK, but you're not advertising it. It's not like when I go through the Yahoo. Yeah, I haven't seen those ads for a while.

Yeah, I think a lot of beauty brands do them now. Okay. Like in the trays. The trays. Yeah. It's great real estate. It is great real estate. If I ever see you on a gas station TV thing, I'll know something is probably wrong with the branding. What is that, a gas station TV? Luckily, I don't see them that often, but apparently I just was refueling in Boston and just blaring TV as you're refueling. It's the worst. They...

I'm kind of interested in advertising on menus. Like, you know, I didn't add in the East Hampton Star once. That kind of did well. Okay. This is all good. Yeah. You've got a plan. What is the story that you want to report out, you want to talk about, and you haven't been able to pull off yet?

Either for access, resources. My White Whale story is in process right now for a magazine. So I'm really happy about that. And I've been working on it for a bit. Oh, God. No, I have another one. Somebody listening to this is going to be able to help me. I really want to talk to Michael Bloomberg about his fish tanks.

If anybody can help me with this, I would really appreciate it. Michael Bloomberg's personal fish tanks or the ones in Bloomberg offices? Both. He was sending people into the offices with hazmat suits during COVID to keep these fish alive. I think, you know, he writes about the fish tanks in his books about, you know, a Zen vibe in the office. But I think there's also something about

building a world and managing that world. There are definitely Bloomberg listeners. Yes. They will reach out. People have said they would be able to help and it hasn't happened yet. Don't just reach out to Emily. You've got to deliver. Please. Don't reach out if you can't actually do it. Last thing on the mechanics of the business. What?

There's a recurring conversation about how long can not just solo substacks work, but all the subscriptions work. And aren't there going to be bundles and we've unbundled and now we're going to rebundle? Are you interested in being part of a substack bundle or someone's bundle of you're going to get Emily, but you're also going to get Joe Weisenthal or Matt Iglesias or five other substacks? No, but I would be.

I don't want to. I can... You don't need it. I don't need it. But I would be interested if there are writers who are writing on Substack and they're like, I wish I was part of the Feed Me universe. I would be interested in putting them under the Feed Me umbrella if they're great. That's like out there. And I've talked about this with a few writers on Substack. So we'll see how that shakes out. Yeah.

But I'm not interested in like some startup being like, and we're going to do that. Or what if Substack comes to you and just says,

Hey, actually, we figured it out and you are going to lose a little bit from your top line or, you know, you're going to make a little less per sub, but we're going to expand you. You're going to have way more subscribers. You're going to by being part of this bundle, it will work out for you in the end. You're going to generate more money by being part of this group. It just seems like I'm growing too quickly right now to say yes to something like that. Fantastic. Yeah. OK. What's the worst part of your job right now? Time management. Time management.

You're saying you need to leave this podcast. I understand. No, this is great. This is fun. Okay. Emily Sundberg, you're great. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. This is a blast. Thanks again to Emily Sundberg who came into the studio for a real live in-person conversation. Thanks to Charlotte Silver for producing and editing this show. Thanks to our advertisers who bring it to you for free. And thanks to you guys for listening and reading and writing and texting and telling other people about the show. I'm very appreciative. See you soon.