Why Ethan Brooks Thinks Austin Has Room for 100 More Newsletters

This week's Founder Friday is about an Austin media founder with a quietly contrarian belief: local media is not a zero-sum game.

Ethan Brooks spent his early career writing for The Hustle, one of the biggest business newsletters in the country, then joined Sam Parr at Hampton, the peer group for high-growth founders, where he was one of the first points of contact for new members.

About two and a half years ago, he came back to Austin with a strange realization: he had lived here for six years and still didn't really know anybody. So he started Austin Business Review, a newsletter and growing media company for business owners trying to build a life in Austin.

What founders can steal from this:

• Treat competitors like part of the rising tide
• Build your wealth math around what successful founders actually spend
• Bet on putting down strong roots instead of chasing the nomadic version of success

Here's what Ethan shared about why local media isn't zero-sum, what Hampton's wealthiest members taught him about success, and why Austin has supposedly always been cooler five years ago...

What is Austin Business Review, and who is it for?

Austin Business Review is a media company. Right now it's a newsletter, but a media company for business owners who are trying to build a life in Austin. It gives people a look at what's going on in town from a business perspective, plus some social stuff. I write articles about different founders and artists too.

The main person I'm building it for, honestly, is myself. The backstory: I've been working in media for a few years. I got my start as a writer at The Hustle, one of the big tech and business newsletters. That got sold in 2021, so I went with the acquisition. As soon as the founder's earn-out was over, he started a new company called Hampton, a peer group for high growth founders, and I went with him to help start it.

While I was at Hampton, I had a really interesting experience that became the seed of ABR. I'd been living in Austin for six years and didn't really know anybody. The idea was to use my media skills to explore the city and to build a resource for other people going through something similar, realizing they want to put roots down somewhere. It's hard to create content for anybody else, so I try to write it for myself. The focus is getting to know the city better and putting down roots that can last the rest of my life.

What did you learn at Hampton that shaped how you think about success?

At Hampton we were working with some of the most successful founders in any domain. To get in, you had to have built a $3 million plus company. I was one of the first points of contact for new members, so I talked with a lot of these really successful founders.

What I found, and this is common to say but few people get a really visceral experience with it, is that money helps but doesn't solve all the problems. We had people with eight, nine, even ten figure net worths, and they're all still solving problems, sometimes huge ones. The thing that differentiated the happiest and most fulfilled people was strong family and community ties. Beyond a certain point, once the business works, you're still solving problems all the time. It's the family and community ties that make a difference.

We also ran a wealth survey there that changed how I thought about my own career. We asked members about their liquid net worth and monthly burn rate. What it showed is that burn rarely goes above about $20,000 a month, regardless of wealth. There are exceptions, New York and LA, places that are inherently more expensive, and newfound wealth, where someone exits, buys the second place, gets the plane, and then unwinds it all within two or three years because it's a headache. But once people are comfortably settled in their wealth, burn rarely goes above $20K a month. That's $250K a year. The backwards math on that is you need somewhere around $6 million invested in the market to fund that lifestyle without dipping into principal.

Before that, if you'd asked me how much money I needed to feel safe, I'd have ballparked $10 to $20 million. A lot of people land in that range. But when you take people who are effectively post economic, don't ask them how much they need, just ask how much they spend. The top end tends to be around $20K, with rare exceptions. That dramatically changes the type of business you think you can build. If you only actually need $6 million by the time you're done working, you can build a plumbing company and get there. I know closet installers who have retired with more than that. I know a concrete guy in Austin who'll do more than that over the next couple of years. Then the question is: what do you actually want to spend your time on?

How do you think about competition with other local newsletters and creators?

I'm not actually sure I believe in it anymore. You and I both came up in scenes where the competition was national or global. What I've found shifting to local is that there's a lot more opportunity, and a lot more people can be successful at the exact same things locally.

I have a list of about 8,000 tech founders in Austin. Just tech founders. Add small business owners and estimates run from another 30,000 to as high as 80,000. Conservatively, you've got 50,000 business owners. That means you, me, and a hundred other people could write about a different business owner every single week and never repeat a subject in a decade. The city is so interesting you can have multiple people doing this.

Austin really leans into collaboration and neighborliness over the transactional stuff. You can't get along by being hyper competitive. It's not part of the culture.

I look up to Joe Rogan as a content creator. Look at what he's doing with the comedy club. He's focused on making as many successful comedians as he can, because the more successful people you have in the space, the more people are used to consuming comedy. The bigger the market gets, the more intellectual horsepower in the space, the better everybody gets. Same logic for local newsletters. Five years ago, people wouldn't think to look for a local newsletter as a way of getting to know their town. The more newsletters there are, the more common that becomes, the easier it gets for everybody to find audience. Same for advertisers.

Any time you spend thinking about competition is probably better spent thinking about how to make your thing better.

Where do you want to take Austin Business Review over the next five years?

Right now I'm about two and a half years in, and I'm trying to answer for myself again where I actually want to take it. When you build, you're doing two things at once: building the thing you want in the world, and reacting to opportunities that appear. That's a balancing act, because the opportunities are not always going to align with where you want to take something. If you don't put the time into answering the bigger question, somebody else will answer it for you. They'll offer an opportunity that's too good to pass up, and the thing you're building becomes a byproduct of what other people want.

What's most fun to me is the in person knowledge sharing. There are so many interesting people in Austin who are so humble that you don't realize you're talking to interesting people until after they've left the room. Somebody will say, "I sell sandals for a living," and you look them up and they own Crocs. I want to find those people and tell those stories, whether through the newsletter or live events. Real connections, not super short form content. That probably means long form, very detailed profiles, and less but better content. There's a magazine called Colossus that I look up to a lot, and Arena Magazine is similar. I'm thinking about how to keep pushing the quality so it becomes the best expression of what I want to be making.

What's your most controversial take on Austin?

If you hang out in Austin, you'll hear people say, "It's a really cool city, but it was even cooler five years ago." As I've studied the city more, what I've found is that that claim is the most Austin thing about Austin. It's the timeless claim. It doesn't matter what period you go back to. Austin was always "cooler" five to 10 years ago, before it got popular.

Two examples. I was doing a piece about Vintage Wine and Books on East 11th Street, a wine bar and bookshop in an old antique building. The building has been around longer than the Capitol. On some of the oldest maps of Austin, this place was already there, and the Capitol is depicted as under construction. It's almost always been somewhere you could get a drink. In the 80s and 90s it was a place called Shorty's Bar. Back then, East 11th had a huge crime problem. A guy was once stabbed to death in the street out front of that exact shop. The police are on record saying, "Even if we got businesses to move there, we don't have enough cops to protect the people who would shop at them." Now East 11th is amazing. There's a great story of how that happened, very grassroots, a handful of people from the local community spent the last 30 years overhauling the East Side. But if you go back and read the reporting from when the area was first getting attention in the 90s, people were saying, "I'm glad it's getting attention, but Austin was really cooler 10 years ago."

Another one. Austin's nickname is the City of the Violet Crown. The Historical Society will tell you that came from an O. Henry poem. But I found a reference older than the O. Henry poem in an old Statesman article where a guy is writing about all these people coming here from New York and California, and how Austin was cooler 10 years ago, and how we're going to have to show them why this City of the Violet Crown is so special.

The most Austin thing about Austin is the idea that it was cooler 10 years ago. But there's something in the DNA of this place that keeps it cool. Ignore everybody who says it isn't cool anymore. They're wrong.

What advice do you have for people trying to make their impact on Austin?

I'd give it hesitantly because I'm far from an authority. But one thing I've observed is that Austin is a very easy city to get connected in. It's also easy to live here a long time and never get connected. That was my story.

As soon as you make an effort to go out, even just reading the events coming up in the local newsletters and going out once, what you find very quickly is that there are about 20 people hosting most of the events in town. They're all more than happy to help introduce you around. It's probably one of the most welcoming cities in the world. It really doesn't take long to get extremely well connected here, because a handful of people have made it their business to invest in the community and organize stuff.

If I was going to give business owners specifically one piece of advice, it'd be: just lean in. Stop thinking about Dubai or wherever else. Lean in in Austin.

Where do you see the biggest opportunity for entrepreneurs right now?

There's a guy in town, big time tech founder, multiple successful seven figure tech companies, recently got into concrete as a calling. He's six months in. The company is already doing more than seven figures in revenue and profiting something like $2,000 a day. He started by putting his tech skills to work doing lead gen for other local concrete companies, and now he's building out his own crews, so it's even more profitable. He created a seven figure trades business in six months with the skills he had from being a good internet marketer.

That opportunity is open to a lot of people who are good internet marketers. There are a lot of trades businesses that don't want to learn the internet marketing side. They want to do the thing they're good at. All these people trying to AI proof their jobs right now could do that by learning to weld, or they could just start landing jobs for welders on commission. There's a community starting up called Groundwork specifically for white collar tech people who want to AI proof their careers by getting into trades.

Why do you think a community-rooted business beats a higher-revenue, disengaged one?

There's a wealth multiplier on being involved in the community at some level. Say you got a local media business to a million dollars a year, which is not unheard of. Maybe 20% margins, so you're taking home healthy six figures. But you're deeply embedded in the community. You're going to local events. You're sitting down with the mayor or helping contribute to things the city needs. I really think that leads to a richer life than somebody making 10 times more who's completely disengaged on the local level. That's part of the theory behind ABR.

When I was young I wanted to be a travel writer. That was my ambition, and I spent a lot of time pursuing it. Now I don't go anywhere on purpose. I specifically write about the same place every week, and I enjoy it a lot more. I've stumbled on something important about the value of actually building a life somewhere instead of constantly traveling. Austin is a hub, so I talk to a lot of people who are in from out of town or still in the nomadic phase, and I have this sense of, "I hope they figure it out," because the rewards of putting roots down are so much higher. And I'm not even talking about financial rewards.

Who in Austin has been most supportive in building ABR?

Chris Taylor at The Red Fridge. Chris is doing probably the best job of anybody I've seen building community, particularly for later stage founders. Austin does a really good job of the early stage stuff, but there's less support for founders who are later in their journey. The Red Fridge Society is a great social club, co-working space, and events space for people in that domain, and Chris is a tremendous community builder.

Jay Boisseau is another. He's the founder of the Austin Forum on Tech and Society and the Austin AI Alliance, and he hosts a lot of great events. He also has a bar on the west side called Remedy that he opens up as an event space.

Marc Nathan is a huge connector who has made a lot of intros for me and for thousands of other people in town. If you've been to any events in Austin, you've probably met Marc.

There are many others. The reality is, because this is such a community oriented town, no matter what you're focused on, you have your heroes.

How can the Austin community help?

Ethan wants to meet more ATX founders, VCs, and business leaders.

Where can people learn more?

Connect with Ethan on LinkedIn and subscribe to The Austin Business Review.