High Agency

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:00:00

Will we see more creators and media organizations popping up on these platforms that sort of act as networks? Or will you have media organizations like building their own tools? And that's like a big question for media organizations right now. Do we invest in building our own website just using like MailChimp or ConvertKit? Or do we use a tool like Beehive, which is going to connect other people with the same interests as our readers, like to our publication and vice versa?

MO DHALIWAL

00:00:30

Welcome to High Agency, igniting conversations with inspiring people, leading transformative change. Is local journalism dying? Or maybe it's transforming. In a digital era where geographic boundaries have dissolved, newsrooms have evolved from print factories into digital hubs with global reach. Yet their fundamental purpose is still unshaken: to inform citizens, to enable better decisions, and to strengthen democracy at its roots. The pandemic didn't create this transformation, but it did accelerate it. As news deserts spread across communities, we face an urgent question: What happens when local stories go untold? This digital revolution brought both opportunity and challenge, and expanded reach came with algorithmic gatekeepers. Broader audiences arrived alongside collapsing revenue models. Social connections multiplied while the line between journalism and opinion totally blurred. But necessity breeds invention, and forward-thinking organizations are crafting sustainable models that serve communities rather than merely reaching audiences. From newsletters to ultra-niche publications, content that is focusing on underserved communities is creating a loyal readership. Community-driven outlets have discovered that participation fuels both relevance and financial resilience. And local journalism's future won't mirror its past, but its importance has never been greater. As Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Overstory Media Group, William Johnson isn't just affected by journalism's evolution, he's actually been shaping it. William's driving organizational vision, strategic initiatives, and orchestrating cross-functional teams that expand Overstory Media Group's community-focused publications. His expertise in brand development and digital transformation has opened new markets and forged partnerships that amplify local voices. Before joining Overstory, William founded the Vancouver Tech Journal, illuminating British Columbia's innovation ecosystem and demonstrating firsthand how targeted journalism builds community. His talent for creating collaborative environments unites stakeholders and strengthens the vital connection between audiences and the stories that matter to them. Welcome William Johnson.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:02:53

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for joining us, thanks for that really generous introduction! I wouldn't say that I've done all those things; I'd say that I'm always working on those things and it's always a work in progress.

MO DHALIWAL

00:03:02

Um, I think you're being humble, uh, because this is our first time actually sitting down to have a I think more in-depth conversation, uh, we're gonna be getting to know each other on the screen coach, uh, but I've heard of your name for years and I've seen your work at a distance. And there was many circles in which your name just kind of came up repeatedly when it came to the startup community, when it came to tech circles, when it came to actually like uncovering what was happening here in Vancouver. So we're going to get into some of that on the media side. But I'm really curious to hear about how you got into journalism, what you're doing now and how you kind of arrived here. Because leading up to this interview, you were mentioning that. You know, not too long ago. Well, I mean, I guess it's been a decade now, but not too long ago. You were you were new to Vancouver. So what brought you here and what led to the founding of the Vancouver Tech Journal?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:03:54

Yeah, I mean, again, thanks for having me on here. I'm looking forward to the conversation. And so I've been in Vancouver for about ten years this month, actually. So April 30th, 2015, which is funny. The time has flown by and I got into tech and startups here because the relationship actually from back in Ottawa. So, I grew up outside of Ottawa, about 45 minutes out of the city in a little town called Winchester. I was a middle child. I have an older brother. I have a younger brother. I went to school at Carleton University and I actually studied political science. And political science is a Bachelor of Arts degree. And for anyone who's taken an arts degree, it's honestly just a whole bunch of essay writing, you know, 12 to 15 pages. You're working on an essay the night before it's due and you're increasing the font by one point and you're increasing the spaces slightly just to get over to the 12 pages. But I actually loved writing. So, I thought that essay writing was really fun. And I think in the first year, I kind of said, well, wait a second. What are the careers that actually allow you to be writing and that sort of thing? Okay, journalism, that makes sense. Something in the media. How do I do that? And I'm really lucky I grew up just really comfortable talking to people, going into rooms, interacting with people I didn't know. And so I called the registrar's office at Carleton University and said, 'Hey, a first-year poli-sci student, how do I get into the journalism program?' And they basically laughed at me on the phone because to get into Carleton's journalism program from high school, you basically need like a 95 average. And then after the first year back when I was at Carleton, they cut the half of the first-year class right away. So it was very, very competitive. She basically laughed and said, 'You're not going to get into this program, so try something else.' Basically, and I thought, 'Well, maybe I can't formally get into the program, but it doesn't mean like I can't learn somehow so I actually found the physical office of the student newspaper at Carlton called The Charlatan. It's in the University Center, it's on I think like the fourth floor, and I went in the room there. There were people like working on, you know, the next issue of it, like really serious journalism students. And they took it seriously. People got paid to work at the student newspaper. They had a business manager, like real advertising business, et cetera. And I just went in and said, 'Hey, how do I get involved here? Like, I want to like work on media stuff.' I think I maybe want to be journalism, not a journalism student. Am I allowed to write for you? And a woman named Julia Johnson was the first one. She was the editor-in-chief at the time. She said, 'Yeah, sounds good. Like, come on in. Like, we'll show you how it works.' And they started assigning me stories. And so I'd have to go to an event and report on something that happened. Maybe it was like a sports game or maybe it was like a there was a networking initiative where students went to Japan for an exchange. And I went to the reception and talked to students about their experience. And I wrote a story on it. And then just from that, they'd actually edit stories and they'd end up in print editions and on the website. And I was always a writer, but writing in media is a lot different. The key is getting to the core of an issue. Why does this matter? And can we say this in the most plain language possible? And so I got really a boot camp around writing in media from the students at the Charlton newspaper. And so I wrote so much that the next summer that came along, they said, we actually need two part-time news editors. And so you'll be writing, but then you'll also be editing other students' writing, people like you. I thought, oh, really? So I was really lucky. They invited me to do that. So I got paid for a summer to actually be a news editor. And fast forward a couple of years, I was graduating. And at that point, I'm trying to think when this was, it was crazy, like 15 years ago, right, or more. The media industry was in, I guess, one of its valleys, right? Media industry is always volatile. It's always evolving. And so at that point, people were saying, you know, maybe there aren't that many opportunities. And I said, well, I've got this background where I like to write. I feel like I'm a good storyteller. What else can I do? People said, maybe you should go into marketing and communications. It's another field where we really need storytellers. Oh, yeah, it's a really good idea. And they said, and you'll get paid more anyway. So I thought, oh, fantastic. When I was graduating, I ended up working in communications at various companies like not that interesting. But that was what I ended up doing when I graduated-working in marketing and communications in Ottawa. But that was what I did in the day, and then in the evening. I always loved writing, so I thought, 'How do I keep writing?' So I started blogs and I always tell people everyone knows the Vancouver Tech Journal is this newsletter I started, but most people don't know the like 75 other websites that I started that didn't go anywhere. And so I always tell people that and I always remind myself, 'That's fine,' right? Like, I all those things I put out there, I learned, and then there was one that uh really resonated with people; it was one that really hit yeah, yeah, and that era I mean, starting a blog was it, right?

MO DHALIWAL

00:08:35

I mean, these days it's podcasts. Here we are. But back then it was blogs. I'm just curious though, political science, was that just because you couldn't get into journalism or was that like... No, I actually was really interested.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:08:45

All right. And I really mean that. uh when i was stud taking classes in the first year there were textbooks we were assigned that i had legitimately read for fun already like there were books from different like political science scholars in canada that i had actually already read um that's how interested i was in the topic but then i thought like do i want to work in the government i'm not sure but i was just always interested in politics and in high school i don't know about bc in ontario we had a class called civics and half of the year was civics and the half of the year was like this career development course and i legitimately got 100 in civics just because i was like that interested in like i don't know social organizations and or social organizations what was going on in society and then after that they were like no one is allowed to get hundreds anymore but like that's something like i can keep forever and i was like the last one that could get that

MO DHALIWAL

00:09:35

That's incredible, um, yeah, I mean you definitely, I think, kind of veered off on a really interesting path because uh poli sci going to Carleton, being in that Ottawa sort of orbit, that seems to be indicating a particular path or a particular direction, maybe in government agency policy, something. But when you started Vancouver Tech Journal, what brought you to Vancouver in the first place?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:09:59

Actually, yeah, good point. And I'll tie it back to something in Ottawa quickly. So whenever I was working in communications, at night I was still blogging. And the things that I was blogging about were like entrepreneurs. And so I was going to these back when Twitter was new, we'd call them tweet-ups where you'd like meet people that you knew on Twitter in real life at the bar. And that was like a massive thing. These days, you wouldn't want to meet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I go to these tweet-ups. I meet entrepreneurs. I thought they were the most fascinating people. So I just got interested in that that world tech entrepreneurship. And I remember back in the day. I could just email someone at Shopify, like a director-level person and say, 'Hey, I'm going to interview you for my blog.' And they would just do it. Now, like Shopify comms people won't even like respond to my emails, right? They're too big. But I remember back when they were small enough that you could just like email someone and get this done. And there were no like PR gatekeepers to stop them. And so I like had a bit of a small network in the tech world in Ottawa. And some of that was something that I knew well was this woman who you probably know, Cheryl Draper. Yeah. Right. And Cheryl ended up moving to Vancouver. And people listening, Cheryl Draper's been in the tech world forever. I actually don't know what she's up to now. Probably tech. Her husband, Andrew, he's in the tech world. He's had a couple of companies. But I met her in Ottawa. She moved here. And then me and my partner at the time moved to Vancouver. And so I reached out to Cheryl and said, hey, moving to Vancouver, you know, like what's going on there? And she was like, oh, hey, well, like I'll introduce you to some of my contacts. And so. I was lucky that she basically made her network my network. And obviously, Vancouver is a small city. Vancouver, Texas, even smaller. And even smaller back then. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Good point. 2015, tiny. Yeah. Right. And so. I pretty easily got integrated into the tech world because of introductions from Cheryl and at that time, there weren't that many like tech meetups and stuff. There were a few that would happen at like Mobify's office, and then people like Rob Lewis – he had tech vibes at one point, right? It's slightly different than what the Tech Journal does now, but he would also do these career fairs, which were they called oh tech fest Yeah, I remember TechFest. Remember TechFest? So I pop into those. And then back in the day when we still had Launch Academy. Well, there still is Launch Academy, but it was a different version of it where you had people like, you know, Ian McKinnon working in there. And, you know, he started and sold later with some other folks. Right. And yeah, it was a different world back then. But that was how I got connected. And so I got to Vancouver in 2015. I was working for the B. C. government doing marketing and communications. And I was really fortunate. I worked really hard. And I was promoted a bunch of times really quickly. But I was essentially promoted to where I was just managing people and not really doing anything interesting. I wasn't writing at all. I had three writers. And so I needed something to exercise my creative muscles. And so that's where the Vancouver Tech Journal came from. It was just this thing that I started writing off the side of my desk just to keep me busy. And I also noticed there was just so much happening in the community here that I didn't think people were talking about. I talked to all these entrepreneurs at these different events and I'd say, well, no one's even heard of this. Or back in the day, there were some other publications and this ties to the media, right? Like the Vancouver Sun had a dedicated like digital culture reporter, like a digital reporter. Her name is Jillian Shaw. She's great. There's no one who does it anymore, right? So there were other publications that would sort of cover tech, but it was in six different places. And so the tech journal at the very beginning, all it did was sort of like I'd research, collect and curate links from other websites. And then I would add in my own commentary and then I would add in any anecdotes or stories that I would find myself while I was just out in the community. And so it just started just me sending email to five people, five friends. I said, hey, I'm just going to start sending this email. I'm putting you on the list. Let me know what you think. Some people, I'm trying to think who was on that list of them. Daniel Shalinski, he's an entrepreneur now. He runs a company called With. Really, really awesome guy. I met him in Ottawa, actually, at Carleton. There's a woman, Ritika Rakshita. She, where did I meet her? Oh, Innovate BC. Yeah. Yeah, she's a project manager. And it was just a few people in the space that I said, you're going to be on this newsletter list, and I'm going to send it, and you just have to let me know. Uh, what do I think of it? And again, I learned really quickly, like that was the best way for me to learn, like what people liked. Um, my takeaway from that whole experience growing up from like five people then the 10 and the 50 then like 100, then now we're like as part of overstory, the Vancouver Tech Journal is in Vancouver, 23, 000 Victoria, we have another few thousand Calgary, there's another few thousand so maybe it's like thirty thousand tech journal network subscribers. But then it was like to learn stuff you just need to ship stuff right that was like the whole lesson for me and I've taken that to like many other parts of my life as well. But that's how the Tech Journal started, I needed something to do, yeah.

MO DHALIWAL

00:14:50

Where did the turning point come because uh, you know it's one thing to have a hobby and you know be like okay this is a personal creative expression um at some point it turned into a real thing right uh so when did

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:15:02

That turning point comes, yeah, it's there's, I guess there's a few different turning points, and it's It's good that you point that out, right? Like you don't just make something and then all of a sudden it's like a big deal. It was like definitely like a slow process. So yeah, like five and 10 and 50, then 100. Then let's say, you know, 250. There were a few things I did to get new subscribers anyway. One was I created this ecosystem guide, which was like a list of 150 different organizations that were supporting like startups and entrepreneurs in the community. Maybe it existed, but I didn't think a good one existed. So I created one, and in order to get it, you had to subscribe. So what do you guys call that now in like the digital world? It's like content marketing. Yeah. Content marketing. Right. That was basically all it was. Right. And it was like this gated piece of content. Right. Really simple. And so that drove like hundreds of subscribers in like a day. Like once people discover that, oh, yeah. Who doesn't want this thing? Right. So I just put the work in and that drove a lot of subscribers. And then, a few different things happened. Like the tech journal at first wasn't meant to be like a media property. It was sort of what you said. It was like a lead gen tool. And then I worked in the government. I quit the BC government in August, 2020. I still work on the newsletter. So this is the middle of COVID. And I was doing some like consulting people to come to me. Hey, can you help us with writing? And so people knew me because of the tech journal. Oh, yeah, you're at the tech journal. So you're a writer and you obviously know about tech and business. Can we just hire you to write about tech and business? And so that's what was happening that year. So it was more of like a lead gen tool rather than like a media tool. But then later that year, the team at Overstory Media approached me and they said, 'Hey, like, we think this is really cool. We think you should actually make it a media property as part of Overstory Media.' And so Overstory today is about a dozen brands, hundreds of thousands of subscribers, right? Like a really solid team. And like Overstory's mission is to like bring communities together, like through dialogue and like outstanding storytelling. And we can get into that later. But back then they were like, 'Hey, we think this is cool. We think that you with more resources can like, you know, turn this into a rocket ship.' So that's what ended up happening in late 2020. I started working on a full time January 2021. That's sort of the timeline. Yeah.

MO DHALIWAL

00:17:20

And in that period of time, like it seems like such a recent time period, but at the same time, almost kind of reminiscent because so much has changed in that time. Right. So time's all warped. Yeah. It's weird because 2015 till now, 2015 seems kind of like yesterday, but also a million years away at the same time. But good and bad. What have you what have you seen change in that time?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:17:42

Well, there's just so much in the tech world, the media world, both. In media specifically. Oh, media specifically. Yeah, man, media is grappling with lots of change. I guess that's like the headline, right? And so subscriber fatigue, right? Everyone has 100 subscriptions every month, right? Digital ad dollars have shifted dramatically. So once upon a time, all the ad dollars were going to media organizations or even advertising agencies. Do you know what I mean? And now, uh, the majority share of advertising dollars are just going to tech platforms right, so that's impacted the whole i would say media ecosystem so that's significant um because of that, in some ways media hasn't been as a you know promising career for some young people, so I would say there's even a shortage of media talent because people have people haven't gone into the in the field that's significant. I'm really fortunate though I get to evaluate journalism projects at UBC. So I was just there recently doing this. And thank goodness, the future is really bright. There's really smart students there. And journalism. Yeah, yeah. There's a journalism innovation course that this gentleman, Dr. Alfred Hermita, runs. He's the guy who launched the BBC. com website. He's an awesome professor. He's at UBC. Anyway, got to go to one of his classes and see what's being worked on. And really exciting. But I still think there's probably a shortage of talent in the industry. And the only other thing, which were my where my two worlds intersect are a lot of the top writers are just being hired by tech companies. It's like content marketers. Right. I've seen that happen locally in many cases. So the media world is, I guess, evolving and changing. But if I'd say that it is going to survive and going to do well, because journalists are, if not like. Anything they're like industrious and they're like creative and they can improvise, and like that's like what a good journalist is like; they work hard, like they they want to get a story, they get it done and right, so that's the type of people that I work with, luckily on the journalism side and the business side. Um, and I see that a lot of organizations um in town and there are a lot of big media companies now, I'd say there's a lot of smaller ones, and I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that, right.

MO DHALIWAL

00:19:57

Um, well, I mean in that regard, I think it's been kind of nice to see; Because on the one hand, of course, you know, traditional publications like there was a period of time when they had the resources and maybe even the talent pool where you could have a beat reporter that was just on the technology beat. And, you know, doing that as a as a team of journalists that might be spread across a number of topics. And with the pressure and the changes, you know, we've heard plenty of newsrooms closing, plenty of them contracting significantly. But there's also been this kind of fertilization of new ground. Right. And we see it on the technology side because there's all sorts of interesting tools and platforms for writers and creators to create channels of content and these sort of like ultra-niche subscription audiences. Right. And I'm not just talking about the sub stacks. I mean, there's, you know. The name's escaping me now, but there's a subscription platform. I think there was ConvertKit, but there was one other one I'm forgetting right now. Like a recently one, like a popular one, Substack, popular one is Beehive. Beehive, that's the one I was thinking of. And so there's tools like this that are kind of enabling people to create these alternate channels, right? So it seems to be that there's a fertilization of kind of a new wave of journalism happening. Whether it's innovation or whether it's just kind of finding new channels or new mediums to tell stories, what are you seeing for the future? What do you see as being your next move even at Overstory?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:21:24

Well, again, it's funny. I was listening to a podcast called The Grill Room. And it's this guy Dylan Byers from a media company called Puck, new and innovative. And Puck actually is an innovative model in that they've got basically just like 10 to 12. Outstanding reporters and they're all partners in this business, and it's uh subscriptions you have to pay for it um but they're the reporters and they also manage the company anyways, listen to a podcast called The Grill Room and he was talking to David Remnick the editor of The New Yorker outstanding you know media brand and David was like anytime anyone asks you what you think is going to happen in the future you basically have to defer and say no one knows and I don't know and I'm not going to give you an answer, basically. However, I think we can all talk about trends. And so you've hit on a few of them already, right? There's a book called The Long Tail, old book by Chris Anderson. Oh, you know. Absolutely, yeah. Right? And there's a few things in it. And it's funny, Chris Anderson talks about things that happened 20 years ago. And it's funny, things just repeat themselves. So there's a few ideas he talks about. One is the democratization of production. Anyone can make things now. And you touched on that. There's tools for anyone to make a newsletter website. Anyone can start a media company. And another thing he talks about is the democratization of distribution. Right. I can make a website. I can send a website out. Anyone can find it. I can start a Twitter. I can post on LinkedIn. I can launch a YouTube channel. Right. We can all do these things ourselves. It wasn't always like that. And so as a result, that's why we have all these different niche media brands is because anyone can do it. And then one of the key points he also brings up is like, but how do you find each other? Right. What's the best way for that to happen? And technology is a way that connects everyone. So, technology, but more specifically, algorithms. And then with tools like Beehive and Substack. You go on a sub-stack, you follow someone who's focused on, let's say, financial writing. It can recommend, oh, here are all the other people in this interest group that you might like. Beehive does the same type of tools, does the same type of things. And I think that's really important because, again, that's how you find like a new creator. And you're from that. And so to your question, I think there's gonna be a lot more of that. And so the question is: Will we see more creators and media organizations popping up on these platforms that sort of act as networks? Or will you have media organizations building their own tools? And that's a big question for media organizations right now. Do we invest in building our own website just using MailChimp or ConvertKit? Or do we use a tool like Beehive, which is going to connect other people with the same interests as our readers to our publication and vice versa? So there's things like that. One is a platform we pay subscription fee and then one, we have to make a really big investment, right? We pay someone like you and Skyrocket to like develop us our own platform. So I think those are the types of conversations media organizations are having. The other thing quickly is, you know, how do we pay for all this as a media organization? Right. Obviously, there's advertising. There's a lot of really innovative reader-funded models in Canada as well. And then you've got like the New York Times, which, you know. people pay for the New York Times cooking app and then that pays for their in-depth reporting essentially, right? The New York Times is a really interesting case.

MO DHALIWAL

00:24:38

Sorry, can you dig into that a little bit? There's a cooking app?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:24:41

The New York Times cooking app is massive. Massive, massive app. Right? Like a lot of people who subscribe to the New York Times are subscribed because they're paying for the cooking app. That's what they want, right? And then again, the New York Times has about 11 million paid subscribers. And just so I'm super clear, the cooking app is what? I have it on my phone. I open it up and there's a daily recipe and I have all these folders with different recipes and they've got like chefs and food journalists who are like creating recipes and adapting old recipes and making them more accessible to people. And it's a really, really good app. Right. And so it's like, oh, is that journalism? Maybe it's journalism. Maybe it's not. But they are generating revenue, which helps pay for their in-depth reporting. And so not every media organization is like at that scale where they can do that. But I'd say most media organizations are having the conversation around revenue streams and like, how do we diversify?

MO DHALIWAL

00:25:34

Well, I mean, you touched on something interesting there with the question of, you know, do we tap into a network or do we build something of our own? And, you know, the answer is yes. Exactly. Because, you know, there's so much possibility and the ability for us to create custom experiences, it's just gone exponential. I was talking in the office recently. I'm going to date myself here a little bit. But there used to be this thing in the late 90s called GeoCities. Yeah, I remember. It was Yahoo's, I think. Or did Yahoo buy it? Yahoo bought them later. And so GeoCities was like this democratization of HTML. People might have ideas of 'I want to build a web page', but how do you set up hosting and do all the things? It was fairly complex back then. And tools like GeoCities came along. They just gave you a URL and you could just go batshit crazy and just upload whatever you wanted for HTML. And you had an explosion of millions of hacky web pages that were homes for people for this sort of self-expression online. And we're actually seeing the same thing now for really complex. Web or mobile apps right between lovable and Replit and all these other tools, it's this kind of GeoCities moment again where everybody's an app developer suddenly, and now actually there's no real limitation to the experience you want to create, the functionality you want to provide, or you know that idea that you imagined of actually making it live. So, the thing that I'm seeing right now is actually a lot of you know again that exponential creative expression on the functionality of what sort of experiences we can create on web and these digital tools. And there's a there's a bit of a novelty to that for sure, of you know, it's just fun. So why not build an app for everything? But I wonder how much that is actually going to be sticky. Right. Because, you know, as much as GeoCities was cool, the reason why it also kind of died over time was because you had a million islands. Right. And, you know. As much as that was interesting, over time we realized that people weren't as curious about a million disparate islands as they were about actually having social connection, right? And for Facebook and algorithms and recommendations and suddenly understanding where you sit in a network of people. So I think for the journalism or the media question, I think it'd be interesting here to see what can be done through technology to create an interesting experience that is maybe unique, like New York Times, shout out to the cooking app. We'll have to approach them for sponsorship after this episode. Or showing the benefits of these algorithms, right? I think it was Jack Dorsey that was actually talking about the democratization of algorithms, I think. Where he was actually saying that the future isn't about necessarily being in resistance to these things, but actually embracing and owning them. So that the very tools, technologies, the algorithms that are shaping our experience, that we have control over them. And the sort of ethical moment he seemed to be pointing at was the fact that we're affected by these things. We're complaining about it. You mentioned Twitter or X, and we know that lots of people are lamenting the fact that there's all of these really weird sort of esoteric echo chambers that have grown up in there. But if we had control over the algorithms, if we had some say into how we're fed and how we're shaping our experience, that maybe that would be the type of empowerment we're looking for. You know, I'm not by any means proposing this as an answer because I don't think we have one, to your point. We don't know what the future holds. But I think it's such a curious moment because algorithms, the experience and the networks, this is everything that we're wrestling with in media. And on a very small level, even we're trying to figure it out. We started this podcast a year ago now. This is episode 24 or 25 or something. So similar here, we've been trying to figure out what's the experience for our guests, what's the experience for the community we're trying to create, and how do we actually build a bit of a community and a followership around high agency as a media property.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:29:52

Well, and you guys, the podcasts are posted on YouTube. And clips on Instagram, right? And it's obviously a place where I go to discover, you know, great storytelling, information, news, etcetera. And all organizations that use these platforms have to grapple with the fact that speaking of algorithms, like the algorithm, you have the mercy of an algorithm, right? Unless I'm like directly subscribed. And so I am, right? And one of the reasons why Overstory is really focused on newsletters is because emails, again, are based off of like old protocol. So like the email goes into the air box and we have your email, we have it forever. And like no one can take the email away from us. Right. Whereas YouTube can shut down tomorrow. It's not going to. Right. It's like the biggest podcast platform in the world. I think it's like bigger than Spotify. If you look at that data. Right. Same with Instagram. Instagram shut down tomorrow, change its algorithm. Media's actually dealt with that, right? There's no media on Instagram in Canada. Oh, the Canadian news. Yeah, right? So you go to like, we own the Georgia Strait. You go to the Georgia Strait, you can't see this, right? And so whenever we think as an organization, we have to think forward and say, okay, like what are the platforms that we actually are going to put effort into? Is this platform going to be here in 10 years? We think email is going to be here forever, right? And so that's another thing that we have to think about. When we're dealing with these platforms and different algorithms and where we put effort in. A lot of our brands don't really post on X. We haven't really replaced that, though. Really? So we just don't really have that sort of social network as a distribution stream for most of them right now. We have like the usernames and all that, but we're not really using it because we're still thinking really deeply about like, OK, where do we want to focus? Something else you talked about earlier was apps. You know, should there be a Vancouver Tech Journal app? Or should we just try and get all of our readers to save our website to their home screen? Which you can do. You can have a VTJ logo on your phone and just click it and it brings you to the homepage, right? Is that useful for a reader? I'm not sure, right? Maybe we should build an app. But these are the types of conversations that we're having and we don't have the answer. And again, you probably help companies with this a lot, right? You have to think about like what is your competitive advantage, what are the resources you have right now, right? How's the world going to change or you know jeff bezos's question how's the world not going to change that's the better question, what stays the same, yeah it stays the same. Right so that's the type of stuff that we have to think about.

MO DHALIWAL

00:32:22

I'm actually uh a little curious and interested to hear that you guys aren't that focused on X. Because aside from the, you know, trash fire of shitty opinions that is X, it also to me, I don't know, maybe it's the brand. It just kind of strikes me as the place where a lot of news is happening all the time.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:32:39

Well, I'd say a lot of people are users. But I would say personally, as someone who's used X forever and personally, but then with multiple companies from a media standpoint and from a marketing standpoint, the I feel like, again, this is sort of anecdotal. I feel like the engagement's not there just in terms of like reach of posts and like the engagement from users. And I can't really explain that besides, I don't know, it seems like Elon has broken it somehow, right? And so I'd say that's why. And also resource constraints. You know what I mean? Where do we just, we have to just decide, you know, where are we going to focus?

MO DHALIWAL

00:33:16

No, fair enough. You know, for Overstory, what do you see as being like the sort of opportunities for growth? Like coming into the office Monday morning? What are you looking at as being like the next big strategic initiative? I mean, if you can share if there's top secret stuff, of course.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:33:34

But it's so funny, like literally this whole week we've been strategic planning. And for us, we're really lucky, right? We've got outstanding talent and we have multiple revenue lines already. And so for us, it's just like turning the dial on the things that we know we do well. Right. So again, we've got great ad partners. We've got multiple publications where the readers are paying for the newsletters, which is outstanding. I mean, they really value it, right? That's how you figure out if you actually really want what you're producing, are they going to pay for it? A lot of our readers do. And then the other thing is it ties back to what's changing and what's going to stay the same. That's how we are sort of thinking about it, like where the opportunities are. So I'll give you a very specific example, one that I could talk about because it's a tech journal. The tech journal does a lot of events. People pay to go to events, right? No matter what happens in the world, you know, there's turmoil with the US, there's a recession, all these things, people are still going to want to come together. That's never going to change, right? So we know that that's something that we're going to stay focused on. How do we bring people together and how do we monetize that? So that's like something we're specifically continuing to focus on.

MO DHALIWAL

00:34:44

And it's actually increasing.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:34:45

Yeah, right. Absolutely. And actually, you asked a question earlier about like, oh, what's changed? And you were asking about media. I was thinking more of the tech scene. I would say when I came here in 2015, there were a few tech events. Now there's 8 million tech events happening, I feel like, every day. So again, we need to really think about, okay, what is our sweet spot, right? What is our white space? Where can we actually really add value in the community? And we're lucky that out of some of the small niche tech publications in town and communities, we're the biggest one. So we're lucky that we have that scale, right? Partners want to work with us and say, 'Hey, can you put 100 founders in the room?' We can say, 'Yeah, actually, we can.' Not everyone can do that. So I'm sort of like walking around your question because there's lots of things that we're focused on. But the way we think about it is like, 'Yeah, where are our strengths? And what are the things that we know work and that we can invest more resources into?'

MO DHALIWAL

00:35:44

What's the part of the Vancouver story that you think people are missing? On the technology side, especially, like you've covered a lot over the years. Yeah. But is there something that is still persistently in your mind, kind of like the open secret or the most sort of understated aspect of the Vancouver tech scene?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:36:03

Yeah, there's a lot of companies that started in Vancouver. I was just having dinner with a CEO of a company called iNetco. They do like online fraud detection. The CEO's name is Bijan Sani. And funny enough, he's the husband of Brenda Bailey, our minister of finance. So we were at this CEO dinner the other night and he was telling me about a company called Network Career that Microsoft bought. Apparently Bill Gates liked personally did the deal and it went on to become Microsoft Exchange, which was like one of the most profitable divisions of Microsoft for a long, long time. And he's like, yeah, Vancouver story. He's like, no one knows this. And so I think there are a lot of stories like that that people have no idea about. So like business decisions, crystal or sorry, crystal decisions, business object objectives sold to SAP, for example, big division at SAP. So there's a lot of stories like that. A lot of people like that that worked in this is like 30 years ago, back when there was no tech scene. Right. But these people were building companies and they're still hanging around. And so. I think that's like really hidden. People don't realize that. And even there are recent examples of that. So this guy named Dennis Pilarinos, I'm interviewing him next week at a Vancouver Tech Show event, like in person. So he built a company called, well, he worked at AWS and Microsoft, and then he built a company called Bodybuild. It's like developer tools. Sold it to Apple. Worked at Apple on like secret projects for almost three years. Now he's working on another startup called Unblocked. It's like AI dev tools. But I don't think a lot of people know he's even in Vancouver. So I reached out to him many times to be like, hey, dude, we need to do something with you live in front of people. No one has any idea that there’s these really neat stories in town. So I think there's, for all the ones I know, I think there's 50 more.

MO DHALIWAL

00:38:00

Yeah, that's incredible. On the Microsoft Exchange side, yeah, that was news to my ears. I feel like there’s a handful, the obvious ones, like Slack is everybody's favorite. I love telling that story, but I’m sure there’s many more that are hidden. There’s a kind of narrative around Vancouver being small, scrappy, but also under-resourced, not for a shortage of talent, but a shortage of investment. That’s been kind of a recurring theme. Is there something that you think people are still getting wrong about Vancouver in regards to starting companies here or what's happening in the technology scene? Yes. I'm like, how do I answer that without pissing off too many people?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:38:47

So we have a very low audience right now. So I feel like now's the time to say it. I'm in so many conversations like this. And I talked to a ton of entrepreneurs on a weekly basis. And then there was a year where I was at Overstory for three years, from 2021 to 2023. And then I left for a year. And during that year, I was working specifically in angel investing. And so I had a whole bunch of other conversations that were like really touched on this topic around investment, like where is the money? You know, a lot of startup founders think no one's going to invest in me. Vancouver sucks. I had to go down to the valley to raise money. That's what I'm talking about.

MO DHALIWAL

00:39:25

Vancouver sucks. You know, you have to leave here to make it. As much as there's success stories, as much as like freaking web summits coming here, there's still this sort of undercurrent. And I'm wondering if it's still justified.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:39:38

So I understand both perspectives. I talked to a lot of founders that say like, like one of my good friends went to talk to a lot of investors locally for his company. And like ridiculous deal terms didn't make any sense. Very conservative mindset. But that's like Canada. That's not a Vancouver thing. It's a Canada thing, right? Went down to the valley, met an investor, had like a term sheet in four days, you know, $2 million deal, right? And now this company is U. S. investors. And if he wants to grow, he's probably not even going to look for investment in Canada, right? So Canada misses out on this founder or this company, right? And whatever, you know, prosperity it generates, essentially. Same time, I like. I see a lot of startups. Whenever I was doing that year working for a company called Startup TNT, which does angel investing, I looked at 100 startups and four of them were investable. So there's truth on both sides, which is founders have a hard time raising here. And then there are a lot of entrepreneurs that shouldn't be raising. People need to get that out of their head. You can build a company with customers paying you. And to your point earlier. There are so many tools which makes it so much possible to build so much more without taking outside capital. And I think people have still not really figured that out as well. I was talking to another woman, Christine Stewart. Her and her sister had a company called Alicadia. And they sold it for like $200 million. And so, I was talking to her recently and she said, you know, we could have done so much more with that company before we took money if we were building it now. Now we wouldn't even think about getting outside money. We wouldn't need to, right? There are so many tools that exist now to build. Again, there are all these like SaaS software products, like a lot of that stuff you can build yourself. And I actually just saw a really interesting tweet the other day that was essentially like the new startup nowadays is like four people. It's like a CEO, one to two engineers, and then like a designer. Right. And the CEO does sales and partnerships and marketing. You've got like the designer makes all the front end stuff look good. And you've got two engineers. You don't need anyone else. And here are all the tools that will enable you to do that. Right. So you have to think about company building, I think, in a totally different way now. And so I'm just tying that to the funding thing, which is like a lot of founders think they need money. They don't need money. They need customers.

MO DHALIWAL

00:41:53

Yeah, I wonder how true that story is, because I've heard that, you know, the new flex is how long you've gone without. Taking money was, you know, like a very short time ago, the flex was how much money did we raise and how quickly? But yeah, I think if somebody has an actual value proposition, they can get a lot a lot further along.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:42:15

Well, if I can tie this to media really quickly. So the tech journal, that team has to struggle with that, right? Because it's. They want to write stories that drive engagement and views and new subscribers and high numbers and add dollars and all that in. Do you know what does that mean? X company raised $50 million, right? And the company that has 50 million ARR bootstrapped, we don't know where they are. They haven't told us about it. So how do we tell that story? Yeah, because they're not putting out press releases. Yeah, they're not putting out news about it. So that's not figured out yet, but it's something I think about and I want the team to improve on.

MO DHALIWAL

00:42:51

So there you're kind of pointing at a pretty massive cultural shift, right? Because the cultural shift was to pay attention to those press releases. And also because. So much of that activity was tied to the investment cycle. You hear from many investors and many that I've talked to that talk about that sort of phenomenon of almost like delegating the due diligence to the press release, right? So when a press release came out that so-and-so company raised $20 million, it's like subsequent rounds and subsequent partners, investors, et cetera, they're on some level kind of delegating and deferring their own due diligence to that press release and saying, 'Well, it's obviously been validated and it's always been looked at because they got to this point.' And now we're not going to necessarily take as close a look. We're just going to move forward. And that's a very different thing when you're actually doing things right, which is getting customers, bootstrapping and building on your own. Yeah.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:43:46

I mean, if you're saying investors can be lazy. Yes, absolutely. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This company got the seed round and then now you're on the radar of all the Series A companies, right? Or Series A investors.

MO DHALIWAL

00:43:59

So I'm going to take some liberties here just because I've got you here as a captive on this episode. High agency as a media property. If you were to look at us today and you've been following us for a little while, what advice would you give on how to grow this, how to find our audiences and how to actually turn this into a media property?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:44:23

I'm asking for some free consulting here, Seamus. Totally. And my favorite thing is when people ask me stuff, I'm pretty good with remembering all the books I've read. I'm a pretty good consumer of knowledge.

MO DHALIWAL

00:44:35

No, not only a consumer, but I've read some books. But your recall is incredible because I can't name a book. I can't name a person.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:44:41

Yeah, I will say if I can. That is probably my secret power, my superpower-like recall, like I know most books; like I can go through them like here's what this is about and so when people ask this question about like because I've been asked this before, obviously it's oh what can we do better and the answer is you just need to keep doing it that is the answer always uh and you know who gives that advice, Mr. Beast; people come to him and they say 'hey can you help me with my video' and he says 'go shoot 100 videos' and then come talk to me and what happens is some people won't do the 100 videos and it's like well you shouldn't be in this game; And then the ones who go do the 100 more videos, they've learned what they need to know from just the volume of the work they've done. And they don't need to go back to them. They figured it out. They figured out what works. So that's typically what I say to people. But I'll try to be more specific. That's like my general advice. You just got to keep shipping, right? Yeah, I have followed the podcast. I follow you guys on YouTube. I follow you on Instagram. I honestly don't know if I would do anything differently. I think you just keep doing it.

MO DHALIWAL

00:45:47

Well, the commitment we made internally was that we were going to get to 100 episodes and then make some decisions about whether we keep doing this or not. But I've got to tell you, I'm having a lot of fun personally because I get to talk to interesting people. And that was actually even the genesis of this thing because over the course of running Skyrocket for 12, 13 years. Early on we were working with a lot of startups and then even later on we're working with a lot of company leaders and they tend to be pretty fascinating people, right? Because they've had a lot of career experience, they've led teams, they've led and managed change. So I think even as a hobbyist, this has been a lot of fun, but it's been a pretty great channel of learning for me.

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:46:26

Well, and again, I often, sometimes I stumble with questions like this because I don't know what, yeah, what were your internal goals? Like, it's like, why are you doing this? Right? And so, for me, whenever I've done, like when I was writing before in the newsletter, like I was, it was like a personal thing. I was doing it for myself. And so, regardless of the number of subscribers and readers, like I was doing it for myself. So I was having a great time. So at least it sounds like you are too. And I was on a creator panel two weeks ago. And one of the themes was from everyone was, you know, if you're actually interested in this work, it makes it so much easier. Yeah. Right. Like the numbers and all that will come if you're actually really passionate about it.

MO DHALIWAL

00:47:03

Well, the thing is, you know, the painful, somewhat painful and also enjoyable story like telling is that, um, I get a lot of anxiety leading up to the recording dates and then a huge sort of high in the moment of catharsis afterwards. So it's a lot of fun. I really, really enjoy it, but I'm also filled with anxiety as we lead up to it because it's a, it's a, you know, it's, uh, it's a new thing for me still. Right. And we're pretty early into it. Um, so, you know, So knowing what you know now, if you had to kind of go back to William Johnson circa 2015, or we'll even say circa 20-10, what advice would you give? What do you think you got right? And what do you think you got wrong?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:47:41

So good question. What advice would I give to myself, I guess? Is that what you're saying? Funny enough, like people know me as being like pretty out there and I post a lot and all that and all that type of stuff. But I would do it even more back then, right? Because I would say I put something out into the world and maybe I would tell a handful of people. Um, but I would just be way more like obnoxious about it because it's like doesn't matter right most of it gets like lost right and so if I could go back I would be way more um yeah just loud about whatever projects I was working on like any of my old blogs I would have posted way more I would have sent it to more people that that's what I would have did because again most of it gets missed anyway but I think the more you do that the more you can connect with the people that it will resonate with and I always say to other people like creators right it's like like I think we all underestimate how much like other people actually do want to see us win and so like you're gonna like have like people like cheering you on uh so that's what I would say to myself yeah 20 years ago let's say it's it's like just be even more obnoxious about all the stuff you're doing like there's nothing wrong with it it's fine you're gonna find your people that way I think that's the advice I'm gonna take right now actually I'm gonna be just completely way more obnoxious than we've been to. Date Yeah, honestly, I think people are afraid, oh, it's going to seem annoying. It's like, no, no, no. People want to see people hustling and doing well and succeeding. Awesome.

MO DHALIWAL

00:49:06

Well, William, I really appreciate you joining me today and sharing some aspects of your story. If somebody wants to learn more about you and what you're up to, where can we send them?

WILLIAM JOHNSON

00:49:17

The easiest actually is my website, williamjohnson. ca. So I just write about what I'm working on. What I'm thinking, doing, and what I'm learning just in work and life generally. So that's that's a good spot to to just figure out what I'm working on. I actually share like what events I'm going to on a monthly basis because sometimes they're just like interesting, unique ones. So it sounds like there's a lot. Yeah, there's yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot going on. And then, of course, like I always invite people to follow me on LinkedIn. I'm really active on that. Amazing. All right. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it. Hey, thanks for having me on. This is a ton of fun.

MO DHALIWAL

00:49:50

Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about. That was High Agency. Like and subscribe, and we will see you next time.

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