The Take Down
Issue #001, Welcome to the chaos
Hi, I’m Caroline.
You probably know my husband Jon from Ticker Take with Jon Erlichman, the daily short videos, the weekly long-format breakdowns, the Substack where he actually explains what the stock market is doing and why you should care. That’s his lane. He’s great at it. He also wakes up at an hour that should be illegal.
This is the other lane. The Take Down is the behind-the-curtain version. What it actually looks like to build a financial digital media network out of a home studio, with two teenage daughters, a marriage, a content machine that never sleeps, and a founding team small enough to count on one hand.
So before I get to this week, and it was a week, let me rewind.
October 2024: the all-in era
When we launched Ticker Take, Jon stepped down from the anchor chair. I shut down Rainbow Ray Society, my art and design business, and left my acting career (only to be revived momentarily with a sketch comedy show at Second City a couple of weeks ago, which is another crazy thing to do while managing a digital empire, but more on that another time). We bet the farm on an idea: financial news could actually be fun. Engaging. Something you’d want to watch, not something you tolerate while waiting for the weather.
Here’s what that bet looked like in practice:
Our older daughter was doing competitive swim seven times a week at the Pan Am Centre, an hour away.
I was driving her there and back while simultaneously editing videos in the car, learning Adobe Premiere in real time, and fighting to figure out the best sound design, mics, and everything else audio (still the toughest nut, by the way).
Jon was doing the same drives, and given his propensity for early mornings, he had the fun job of the 4:30 AM Saturdays. While launching a startup.
In between, we were building the studio. Building the set. Building the brand. Building the team.
It was unhinged. We knew it was unhinged. But we were all-in, and that turned out to matter.
This week: 3 billion views and a trip to the NYSE
Fast forward to this week and, deep breath, we hit 3 billion views on Ticker Take.
Three. Billion.
Jon flew to New York to be at the NYSE in person, where they helped us celebrate the milestone as our media partner, right alongside BNN Bloomberg, who is also a media partner and has been instrumental in helping us get to 3 billion. The story got picked up by the Associated Press, Yahoo Finance, Talking Biz News, Morningstar, KTLA, and more. A huge thank you also to our founding sponsor Global X, who has been with us since day one.
(Sidebar: I had my own NYSE moment back in February, when Jon and I were in New York for our partnership day. I rang the closing bell and signed the infamous NYSE wall. Sydney Sweeney signed it a week later. I’m choosing to believe our signatures are now neighbors forever. What a thrill.)
I stayed back in Toronto this time to run the rest of the business. Launching our video for the week, making sure it landed seamlessly on our partner BNN Bloomberg’s digital properties, managing brand deals, invoicing, production, and the many kids’ appointments stacked into the week. Dermatologist, dentist, ear doc, eye doc. One of those stretches where every single practitioner apparently colluded to be seen at the same time. So while Jon was ringing bells on Wall Street, I was in waiting rooms quietly aging, answering emails between appointments.
Glamorous on both ends, really.
Oh, and in between all of that, Jon was also writing. A lot. His weekly Ticker Take Substack. A companion news article for BNN Bloomberg that runs alongside our long-format video. A weekly piece for The Globe and Mail tied to their stock market competition, Trade Off. Market Moves for Global X. Brand scripts. Our weekly long-form video script. When he’s not on camera, he’s on a keyboard. (See: 50 emails before 7 AM.)
Jon’s AM vs. Caroline’s PM
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about husband-and-wife co-founders: we don’t actually work the same hours. We work opposite hours, and somehow that’s the secret.
Jon wakes up to 50 emails. 20 of them from me. He’s answered half of them before I’ve opened one eye. He’s a morning person in the full, unbearable sense of the word. Cheerful at 6 AM, already thinking about markets, already three steps into the day.
My brain turns on around 11 PM. (It used to be 1 AM. I’m getting old. Ha.) I’m the one spinning late, reworking a thumbnail, answering a partnership email, sketching out what next week looks like, emailing Jon the aforementioned 20 things. By the time his first alarm goes off, I’ve handed the baton.
It means the business is basically staffed around the clock by two people who love each other and happen to have complementary circadian rhythms. Romantic? Sure. Efficient? Absolutely. Sustainable? Ask me in six months.
The Juggle
This week, in no particular order:
Auditions for our older daughter squeezed between recording and editing
Volleyball pickup for the younger one
Softball for the older one
One of us working upstairs, the other downstairs, texting from inside the same house because we’re both on calls
A milestone at the NYSE
A brand shoot
Jon’s weekly writing load: Ticker Take Substack, BNN Bloomberg article, Trade Off for The Globe and Mail, Market Moves for Global X, brand scripts, and our weekly long-form video script
The aforementioned medical appointment tour of Toronto
Regular life. Dinners, homework, the laundry that apparently regenerates
Compartmentalizing marriage, business, and parenting is a juggle. But it’s a juggle we make work because we genuinely love what we’re building. Some people cannot fathom how a husband and wife co-run a company out of a home studio. Most days, honestly, neither can we. But we do.
The Wins This Week
3 billion views on Ticker Take
Jon at the NYSE, in person, representing what we’ve built together
Press pickup from AP, Yahoo Finance, Talking Biz News, Morningstar, KTLA, and more
Gratitude to our media partners at the NYSE and BNN Bloomberg, and to our founding sponsor Global X, for being in this milestone with us
The Losses This Week
Sleep: Jon lost hours of it
Gray hairs: Approximately 47 new ones, by my count
Middle age maintenance: Jon has Rogaine, I have Botox. (I fought Botox for years, by the way. Then a couple of years ago, one deep forehead line forced me right off the cliff. No regrets.) We’re fighting back middle age at the same time we’re fighting for market share.
Teenage daughters: Approximately 3 billion eye rolls (one for every view, apparently)
The great modern parenting irony: Discipline now means taking away screen time, even though our entire business is built on making content for screens.
Why I’m writing this
Being an entrepreneur means working 24/7. The content machine genuinely does not stop. There are weeks I question all of our life choices and weeks where everything clicks and I remember why we jumped. This week was the second kind.
There’s a line from the novelist Anthony Trollope:
“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”
We’re not Hercules. We’re just two people who show up every single day. A video. An article. A script. A school pickup. An email at 11 PM. Another one at 6 AM. The daily task, over and over. That’s the whole game.
The Take Down is going to be my honest take on all of it. The wins, the losses, the 11 PM rabbit holes, the parenting-while-building, the partnership that makes it all possible. If Ticker Take is the polished product, this is the footage that ends up on the cutting room floor.
Thanks for being here. See you next week.
Caroline
P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to Jon’s Substack for the actual market takes, do that too. You’ll get both sides of our brain.
Love this. Love you. Go team!