My New Business

·31 min·3 clips

Alex Lieberman lost his purpose and confidence after leaving Morning Brew, questioning if he was ever a good entrepreneur.

Alex Lieberman, co-founder of Morning Brew, details his journey building StoryArb after stepping down as CEO. He explores the emotional challenges of that transition and the strategic pivot his new company recently made. Lieberman candidly shares the operational lessons and evolving business model from launching a personal branding agency to a B2B copywriting service. After leaving Morning Brew, Lieberman felt lost and grappled with a loss of identity and confidence. He identified his passion for the early, "artistic" stages of company-building by reflecting on pivotal moments, like a successful pitch to JP Morgan. This led him to reject the idea of a single long-term venture in favor of a "personal venture studio" model. He initially launched a Twitter and LinkedIn ghostwriting agency after observing a gap in the market compared to commoditized video agencies. Lieberman validated demand with a tweet that generated 20 qualified leads from founders willing to pay $5,000-$10,000 monthly. He sourced writers through a public application, starting with one ghostwriter and charging clients a pass-through fee to learn the process. The business scaled to eight clients and roughly $35,000 in monthly revenue before he sought a co-founder CEO. He hired Abby after a unique one-month "freelance-to-full-time" trial, attracted by her agency experience and motivated mindset. StoryArb's initial service paired executives with a dedicated ghostwriter and content strategist, reaching $1.3 million in annualized revenue quickly. The company faced three core challenges: the extreme difficulty of finding exceptional writers, low client retention averaging six months, and the unscalable, hands-on service model. Lieberman realized founders often viewed personal branding as a "nice-to-have," not a necessity, which drove churn. Customer requests for broader copywriting services, like website copy and case studies, inspired a major pivot. StoryArb shifted to a "copywriting-as-a-service" model for companies, inspired by the design subscription business Design Joy. Their new ideal customer is a head of marketing at a company with $5M+ in revenue, who sees content as a core need. The service offers tiered monthly subscriptions for unlimited copy requests, moving writers from freelance to in-house roles. Lieberman argues that an audience's greatest value isn't customer acquisition but attracting top talent, as every StoryArb hire came via his social content. He learned to embrace the iterative process of finding product-market fit, rejecting the ego-driven expectation of instant success. He believes the key to early hiring is finding future founders who possess urgency, an owner's mentality, critical thinking, and deep self-awareness. The episode is conversational and introspective, blending personal narrative with tactical business advice. Listeners interested in entrepreneurial psychology, bootstrapping, and pragmatic pivots will find immense value. Those seeking a polished, final-case-study narrative might find the ongoing, iterative journey less satisfying.

As heard by us

A candid founder reset that turns a hard exit into a usable business lesson.

Alex Lieberman follows the awkward middle ground after leaving a founder role and trying to build again. StoryArb gets the clearest treatment: a service-business setup, the push to make life easier for clients and ghostwriters, the jump from $3,000 to $5,000 retainers, and the…

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If you want a founder exit story that turns into a real hiring and pricing playbook.

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