0:00 how long does it take to turn a
0:01 newsletter into a thriving business well
0:04 Michael Houck went from zero dollars to
0:07 fifty thousand dollars a month in just
0:09 five months if you are ambitious with
0:12 the newsletter and you have a goal for
0:13 it to be a big Revenue driver for you
0:15 and build a business around it then I
0:16 would say think big and find the right
0:18 information sources to learn that side
0:19 of the business route just try to learn
0:21 the way that founders of startups think
0:22 rather than the way that creators are
0:24 typically taught to think Michael is a
0:25 startup founder and former VC turned
0:28 full-time newsletter Creator he's very
0:30 quickly grown his email list to almost
0:32 60 000 subscribers and in this episode
0:35 of crazies and air he shares how you can
0:37 treat your newsletter like a business
0:39 yeah I actually have a bit of a contrary
0:41 intake on this so I see a lot of
0:43 creators and newsletter operators and
0:45 people who are in this space building
0:46 their business to have like the best
0:48 margin that they can have right away the
0:50 most cash flow that they can they can
0:51 keep um right away 90 margins great it's
0:54 a great business but for me coming from
0:57 startup mentality I want to have a zero
0:59 percent margin for as long as as I
1:00 possibly can afford to
1:02 interesting because if I do that then I
1:05 can reinvest a lot more into growth and
1:07 I can grow a lot faster so I see a lot
1:09 of other people making you know creating
1:11 their newsletters and trying to grow
1:12 their social media audience and whatever
1:13 it might be and it takes them a long
1:15 time
1:16 um because they're they're bringing as
1:18 much off the table as they can and you
1:20 know not everyone can be at zero percent
1:21 margin you gotta feed yourself and all
1:23 that good stuff but as low as you can in
1:25 my opinion is the best for as long as
1:27 you can because then you can just grow
1:30 faster so I've been full time on this
1:31 for a little under five months now I was
1:34 you know doing it as a side project
1:35 before then but in those you know four
1:37 or five months or so I've grown from
1:39 about 10K followers or 10K subscribers
1:41 to 60k and we're on Pace to be at a
1:45 million dollar run rate for the business
1:46 before the end of the year wow that's
1:48 insane so how do you feel what do you
1:50 think made you attract that size
1:52 audience in such a short period of time
1:54 I mean my Niche is is startup Founders
1:57 Venture Capital business building all
1:59 that and that's a niche that you know is
2:01 very valuable for sure but there's a lot
2:03 of noise in it from people who haven't
2:04 actually gone out and done it right so I
2:07 think that the credibility that I bring
2:09 based on what I built in the past and my
2:11 ability to see kind of both sides of the
2:13 equation as a former VC and a startup
2:15 founder
2:16 um has really resonated with a lot of
2:18 people
2:19 um and obviously the content has to be
2:21 good too what do you think makes good
2:23 content that has helped you to stand out
2:26 in such a crowded Niche yeah I mean I
2:29 try to just be very to the point
2:31 um startup Founders and people who are
2:33 building businesses don't have a lot of
2:34 time to get the flowery words and the
2:37 the pretty pros and all that stuff they
2:39 just want the facts the Tactical advice
2:41 that they can actually go and Implement
2:42 in their business and that's how I talk
2:44 anyway so it works for me
2:47 will actually change
2:51 five months full time what what do you
2:54 think you did differently from those
2:55 five months to before so I mean I
2:57 started the newsletter as a side project
2:59 for my last business it was to build up
3:01 my personal brand to therefore make us
3:03 more attractive to customers right right
3:05 I was putting out one of these articles
3:07 one of these deep Dives every week
3:10 um but had no Ambitions beyond that with
3:13 it I wasn't you know trying to invest a
3:14 ton of money into growth that was more
3:16 of like somewhere to point people when
3:18 they're interested in you know becoming
3:19 customers part of our business so when I
3:21 left the business earlier this year I
3:24 basically just decided to take growth
3:26 more seriously and treat it as a real
3:28 business that could grow to be pretty
3:29 big I had done some analysis and I
3:31 talked to you know a bunch of people
3:32 like Lenny richardski saw hillblum good
3:34 friends of mine and kind of learned what
3:36 the the potential scope of this business
3:38 was
3:39 um which allowed me to to make the
3:41 decision to go all in and also come up
3:43 with a growth strategy that would
3:45 actually let us achieve that pretty
3:47 quickly so for me it was really just
3:48 like a mental shift of like hey I'm
3:50 going all in on this and so therefore
3:52 I'm going to spend more time attention
3:54 and money on ways to grow it and what
3:57 was that gross strategy so like how much
3:59 did you invest in things like ads or you
4:02 know did you put more time into organic
4:03 growth or was it everything like how did
4:05 you go about it yeah I mean I think it's
4:08 important to you know some people say
4:10 you want to focus on one channel and
4:12 just like own that channel and be the
4:14 best of that channel I think that works
4:15 for a lot of people for me I have a very
4:17 short attention span and so I try to do
4:20 a little bit of everything and then
4:21 double down on what's working later
4:22 right run a ton of experiments and then
4:24 iterate and double down on what's
4:26 working so you know I have a sizable
4:27 audience on Twitter or X I guess now and
4:31 uh LinkedIn
4:33 um it's like over 90k between the two
4:35 platforms I think uh somewhere around
4:36 there I was able to do a lot of like
4:38 content marketing on there and get a lot
4:40 of my first couple thousand subscribers
4:42 just from you know putting a CTA at the
4:44 end of my threads on X or you know in
4:47 the in the comments to my Carousel posts
4:48 on LinkedIn but after we got to a
4:50 certain point I want to say 10K or so I
4:53 started to run lead magnets where I was
4:55 like you know comment and you'll get
4:57 this resource but you'll also be
4:59 subscribed to the newsletter those added
5:01 a ton of subscribers in a short period
5:02 of time we added like almost 15K
5:04 subscribers in a couple weeks doing a
5:06 few of those those are lower quality
5:08 subscribers so like it's a you know an
5:10 open rate in the probably high 30s
5:11 rather than 50 plus so some of them have
5:14 churned out but it let us get off the
5:16 ground really quickly and get get things
5:17 moving I also invested a bunch into at
5:20 that point into spark Loop and into
5:23 um like paid ads on social too so
5:25 Facebook Instagram and also Twitter
5:26 actually Twitter's ad platform has got a
5:28 lot better uh in the past like six
5:30 months or so at least we're making it
5:31 easy to get good space at a good CPM and
5:34 so yeah that those those have been the
5:35 bigger growth that I was kind of later
5:36 on but in the early days it was uh yeah
5:39 it was content marketing and then also
5:41 newsletter swaps so I knew a bunch of
5:43 people who had similar size newsletters
5:45 were all trying to grow at the same time
5:46 we just would run like in place of
5:48 running an ad we would swap each other's
5:50 piping up each those newsletters so that
5:52 worked out pretty well too and you said
5:54 that you you know like liked to run
5:55 experiments see what was working and
5:57 then Double Down was there anything that
5:59 surprised you either you know it was
6:01 more successful than you thought it
6:02 would be or you know it's a really
6:03 popular growth hack that didn't work
6:06 well for you at all
6:07 yeah I mean on the first part the lead
6:09 magnets were were surprising I you know
6:12 they're super cringe right let's just be
6:14 honest about that one when you post
6:16 something on Twitter and you're like
6:17 comment like one word Below in all DMT
6:20 like
6:21 but when you're trying to get something
6:23 off the ground you like have to be
6:25 Shameless you have to lean into being
6:26 cringe and so
6:28 um that worked a lot better than I
6:30 thought it would I thought maybe I get a
6:31 couple hundred subscribers a week from
6:33 it but we did like five or six of them
6:35 we got almost 15K so crazy I think that
6:38 was just like the right lead magnets for
6:40 my audience really it really resonated
6:42 as far as something we did that didn't
6:43 work as well as I thought it took me a
6:46 while to get paid ads right honestly
6:48 once we started running them I'm not you
6:50 know I'm not a growth marketer I'm not a
6:51 demand generator person that's not my
6:53 background and so I was getting CPAs for
6:56 ads in like the 350 range which is just
6:58 untenable but then I started working
7:00 with uh Matt McGarry who runs grow
7:02 letter great you know Ad Agency he
7:04 previously uh did a lot of growth for
7:06 the hustle and milk Road and kind of
7:07 notice the ins and outs of newsletter
7:09 growth you know dirty secret of the
7:11 newsletter industry is that all the big
7:12 newsletters get 90 of their subscribers
7:14 from Paid ads
7:15 it's funny because I just had a chat
7:17 with him just before you oh no way yeah
7:21 great
7:23 um but he's been a huge help he's
7:24 brought our CPA down by more than like
7:26 half
7:28 crazy so what was the changes that he
7:31 made that you you know that you think
7:33 were most effective well his creative
7:34 was better I'm you know I'm not a
7:36 designer so my ads were pretty ugly and
7:38 then also he just understands how to how
7:42 to Target really effectively so I like
7:43 taken some advice from him and that's
7:45 you know I tried to implement it but
7:47 when he uh when he brought in it was it
7:49 was much more effective let's talk about
7:50 your lead magnets like what do you think
7:52 made them so effective at bringing in
7:55 new subscribers yeah I added like images
7:58 that were blurred out which I think like
8:00 drove fomo and like
8:02 proved it was real but two was like kind
8:05 of annoying so like you just wanted to
8:06 comment to like see what it was you know
8:08 yeah uh so he did that and then also I
8:12 required both comments and retweets in
8:15 order for people to get sent the
8:16 resource which you know is just like
8:18 exponentially better than like saying
8:20 just like this or just comment on this
8:22 to get the resource so we were able to
8:23 drive you know hundreds of thousands of
8:25 Impressions on X for each one and you
8:28 know convert a good amount of
8:30 subscribers from it and then let's talk
8:32 about how you've managed to turn this
8:34 into a business because you went from
8:36 making nothing to fifty thousand dollars
8:39 a month in five months which is just
8:42 crazy like how is that possible what did
8:44 you do yeah I think actually from the
8:46 time that I sent that to you we've
8:47 actually increased it um we're at uh I
8:50 just checked this morning actually we're
8:51 at 66k in the last 30.
8:53 um so yeah it's been crazy you know I
8:55 needed to survive right I needed to make
8:57 money to get this business off the
8:58 ground and justify it and bring in great
9:00 people like Matt to help me out so yeah
9:02 I'm a hustler I always look for
9:03 different opportunities wherever I can
9:05 find them um I think for our case you
9:07 know we get the majority of Revenue
9:08 today comes from sponsorships so we have
9:10 a couple options we have like a featured
9:12 placement at the top of the ad people
9:13 can you know get like top billing we
9:15 have a secondary ad in our Tuesday send
9:17 uh that's in like the middle of the
9:19 newsletter and then a new thing we've
9:20 been doing recently is selling like
9:22 sponsored deep Dives but they don't
9:24 they're not like structured like ads for
9:26 example I'll sit down and do an
9:27 interview with the founder of a company
9:28 and get their story get their background
9:31 uh try to understand like unique points
9:33 and unique learnings that can be taken
9:34 from their journey and then I'll write
9:36 um you know like a 1500 ish word Deep
9:38 dive on it and use that as one of our
9:41 Saturday emails but it comes off super
9:43 organically because it's about the
9:45 lesson it's not like Hey try this cool
9:47 product you know so we're seeing great
9:49 response from that uh we just launched
9:51 it a couple weeks ago we've already sold
9:52 three of them uh first one actually
9:54 comes out this week which I'm pretty
9:55 excited about so yeah so those have been
9:57 great and then you know with running a
9:59 business like this where I'm a startup
10:00 founder and
10:02 um I'm writing to Startup Founders they
10:04 want to get my expertise so there's like
10:05 a very limited amount of time that I
10:06 reserve for Consulting uh every month as
10:09 well that drives a little bit of Revenue
10:10 a few months ago two months ago we
10:12 launched a subscription plan a paid plan
10:14 for the newsletter and people pay 15 a
10:17 month or 150 a year they get access to
10:20 extra content uh community of Founders I
10:23 run a bunch of Fireside Chats people
10:25 people keep telling me that they're
10:26 getting too much value from it
10:28 I should charge more but you know I I
10:30 want to 10x the value at the at the
10:32 prices at first so
10:34 um those three streams where the
10:35 majority of their revenue comes from
10:36 today um but then I actually just
10:38 launched a few weeks ago a product
10:40 called megaphone that is a marketplace
10:42 where you can basically pay a
10:44 subscription and then pay individual
10:46 creators in the marketplace to amplify
10:49 your posts on social media I mean
10:51 there's like very legit creators like
10:52 it's not like a random Anonymous meme
10:54 accounts
10:56 hours in the various places of the world
10:58 that might not be your target audience
10:59 these are like people you probably
11:00 already follow that I know personally
11:02 that's gone crazy we have we're up to a
11:04 6K mrr in just a couple weeks on that
11:07 and so that's uh that's going to be our
11:10 biggest Revenue stream by the end of the
11:11 year crazy so how did you kind of like
11:14 because
11:15 all very quickly like the space of a
11:16 couple of them so did you just start
11:18 everything at the same time
11:20 you know was it like I'm gonna do
11:21 sponsorships first see how that goes
11:23 then I mean you know like how did this
11:24 all work yeah I mean sponsorships were
11:27 the I thought the lowest hanging fruit
11:28 because I could have started the paid
11:31 plan right away but if I would have done
11:33 that a bunch of my time would have
11:34 gotten sucked into the community right
11:36 away and I would have been doing it for
11:37 like no 15 a month not a lot to like uh
11:41 you know build a business around so if I
11:43 wanted to grow quickly I had to get cash
11:44 flow in right away so that's why I went
11:46 to sponsorships first and I knew that
11:47 the founder Niche very valuable to
11:49 advertisers to sponsors so uh we were
11:51 able to charge a decent DPM right away
11:53 after that I expanded to two issues a
11:55 week from the original just Saturday
11:56 deep Dives uh so I doubled my ad revenue
11:59 from that at that point I felt like we'd
12:01 enough cash flow coming in where I was
12:02 comfortable spending time with the
12:03 community so decided to launch that and
12:05 then the idea for megaphone just kind of
12:06 happened by accident like I I texted a
12:09 couple friends one day and I was like
12:10 Hey would this be interesting to you and
12:12 every single one of them was like can I
12:13 pay for this today crazy
12:16 that's amazing and how do you know how
12:19 to price everything like you know
12:21 sponsorships deep Dives you know like
12:24 have you gone about even the membership
12:26 like some people have said that you're
12:27 charging too little like how did you
12:28 know what prices are
12:30 yeah I mean each one is kind of
12:32 different on the I mean I worked in in
12:34 pricing at Uber one of one of my teams
12:37 um for a while was the uh the driver and
12:40 eater pricing on ubereats at the
12:43 marketplace so I've been doing pricing
12:44 for a long time for the sponsorships
12:46 it's really just based on like how many
12:48 people are actually reading the
12:49 newsletter and like what the niche is
12:51 right so for me founder Niche pretty
12:53 valuable and we had you know
12:55 ex-subscribers I was able to say okay at
12:57 this CPM
12:58 um this is what the price would be but
13:00 we've iterated over time you know we've
13:01 we've tried uh various price points as
13:03 the oh do we get more uh conversion from
13:06 potential sponsors we're talking to at
13:07 different price points and how do we
13:08 weigh that against uh the results that
13:11 we're delivering so we want repeat
13:12 sponsors that's the number one name of
13:14 the game we actually got two people uh
13:16 confirmed this morning is repeating
13:17 which is awesome yeah so it's really
13:19 just like are we getting the results we
13:20 want and those results are our sponsors
13:22 getting the results so that we get them
13:24 to come back time and time again and our
13:25 ad sales process is much simpler
13:27 um so kind of more of an art than a
13:29 science there when it comes to the
13:31 community you know the way you structure
13:33 any like newsletter business
13:35 subscription is you have a front-end
13:37 offer and you have a back-end offer so
13:38 the front-end offer is like your low
13:41 price point just like get access to the
13:43 newsletter and maybe some extra stuff
13:44 this is something that people can make
13:46 an impulse purchase
13:48 um or just join because they see one
13:50 piece of content that looks interesting
13:51 to them they want to see where it goes I
13:52 launched that first um some people say
13:54 to launch that second but I launched it
13:56 first so I can talk about why but then
13:57 you also have your back end offer and
13:59 this is like your high price point like
14:01 annual pricing only you know like a
14:04 thousand dollars or more a year and
14:06 maybe for that you get like a
14:08 subscription to courses masterminds
14:10 one-on-one time with with the founder so
14:12 that's something I'm thinking about
14:13 right now maybe I'll launch that later
14:15 this year we'll see but yeah for me the
14:18 front end offer was more appealing to
14:19 start with because I wanted to create
14:22 like a center of gravity around the
14:24 newsletter where people were actually
14:25 spending time meeting other Founders
14:27 interacting with each other and building
14:29 up the the brand around it and I thought
14:31 that would be the more effective way to
14:32 do that how did you decide what
14:35 that offering would be for like a
14:37 membership or a community like you know
14:39 what how much you're going to offer for
14:41 that price point I mean I just want to
14:42 I'm just offering as much as I can I'm
14:44 just layering as much on top as I can
14:46 until people are just like blown away
14:49 right like my goal is to get if you want
14:52 to subscribe for the newsletter cool 15
14:53 a month should be nothing because the
14:55 newsletter content has to be so good so
14:57 I'm always working to improve the
14:58 content and on the other side I'm like
15:00 what can I throw in here that will
15:02 really resonate with people that will
15:04 make the community side and the perk
15:05 side also independently worth 15 because
15:08 you don't want to make it combine
15:09 fifteen dollars you want to make each
15:10 part independently with 15 because
15:12 that's how people make decisions based
15:14 on what they actually want out of it
15:15 right
15:17 um so for me you know it's only two
15:20 months old the community so I'm still
15:21 trying new things right we're launching
15:23 an expert Network for people who can
15:25 help you with various tasks about you
15:27 know growing your startup or building
15:28 your pitch deck or whatever it might be
15:30 we're launching that later this month
15:31 we've launched fundraising Support
15:34 Services we've launched a weekly casual
15:36 chat you know Fireside Chats every
15:39 couple weeks I'm just testing stuff out
15:40 right now to see what resonates with
15:41 them and once we figure out what that is
15:43 we'll Double Down On It and what about
15:45 sponsorships how do you find sponsors
15:47 for your news essay yeah so we have we
15:49 get sponsors in three ways um the first
15:52 one is through our agency partners so we
15:55 work with a couple great agencies uh at
15:57 Austra madrev uh both are both are
16:00 fantastic and they send us some
16:02 percentage of our sponsors and initiate
16:04 those relationships we do a ton of
16:06 outbound and inbound though because on
16:09 the inbound side you know my personal
16:11 brand is you know decently out there on
16:13 social media so people find us that way
16:15 also our audience is business owners and
16:17 some of those business owners want to
16:19 emphasize or want to advertise to other
16:21 business owners so it becomes a good
16:23 opportunity for them to just naturally
16:25 use the newsletter for something other
16:26 than reading it uh so we get a lot of
16:29 inbound from there and then on the
16:31 outbound side we actually will look at
16:34 what uh what brands and what what
16:36 partners are sponsoring other
16:37 newsletters in our similar Niche we'll
16:40 track that I think we track like 70 or
16:42 80 newsletters every week now wow and
16:45 then we reach out we find the contacts
16:46 for them and we reach out to uh to a
16:48 bunch of them when we have open
16:49 inventory wow it seems like you have a
16:51 lot going on like you've got a lot of
16:53 content that you're creating a lot of
16:54 revenue streams you're adding plus
16:56 you're like tracking things and looking
16:57 at analytics like how are you managing
16:59 all of it
17:02 um I work a lot
17:04 the honest answer
17:06 um you know I I just focus on the
17:09 highest leverage things that I can do
17:11 right I have a I have a VA who helps me
17:13 out a lot I have a part-time Ops guy who
17:15 helps me out with Partnerships
17:17 um in particular and some other stuff
17:18 but the actual content creation you know
17:20 experiments pricing growing stuff out
17:22 growing stuff in various parts of the
17:24 business that's all me and honestly I
17:26 just do it by you know being a
17:28 heat-seeking missile towards whatever
17:29 your biggest problem or highest leverage
17:31 opportunity is yeah and I want to talk
17:34 about your recent acquisition of another
17:36 newsletter so daily dose of startups why
17:39 did you decide to acquire that
17:41 newsletter yeah so that was an
17:43 experiment I think that we're going to
17:45 end up seeing a rise in m a in the
17:48 newsletter space probably next year uh
17:51 reason for that is because you know
17:53 there's only so much ad budget for
17:55 newsletters to go around and I think
17:57 tools like beehive and convertkit and
18:00 even like spark Looper are inspiring
18:02 people to create newsletters more and
18:03 more and more and so we're seeing a huge
18:05 rush of new newsletters in the space I
18:07 do think that more Brands will want to
18:09 advertise in newsletters as a result and
18:11 I do think other brands will increase
18:12 their budgets in newsletters as a result
18:14 but I think that the pace of newsletters
18:17 will outpace the growth in available
18:20 budget and so what that's going to do is
18:22 probably create a bubble and my
18:24 estimation is that bubble will happen or
18:26 that bubble will start to pop next year
18:27 at some point and so I plan to be in a
18:31 position where I can acquire some of
18:32 these other newsletters at relatively
18:34 affordable attractive prices and so I
18:37 want to test that out and so the way I
18:38 test that out was daily dose of startups
18:40 was just a small newsletter 2100
18:42 subscribers it wasn't very active the
18:45 guy who was running it had a bunch of
18:46 other newsletter products that he was
18:48 running too so this one had kind of
18:49 Fallen by the wayside a little bit but
18:51 had a good subscriber list it was very
18:53 specifically in the same Niche that I'm
18:54 already operating in and so what I
18:56 wanted to see was hey if I buy this can
18:58 I get it at a price that's attractive
19:00 and B
19:01 I roll those subscribers into my
19:04 existing email list and have them like
19:05 not miss too much of a beat and get
19:07 value out of the content that I'm
19:08 putting out so we did that we got it at
19:10 a price that I think made sense on both
19:12 sides uh deal closed in like 55 minutes
19:17 um and then he sent out an email letting
19:20 them know what was happening and then I
19:21 sent one out saying hey you're gonna get
19:23 your first email from me like this week
19:24 or tomorrow whatever it was and I shut
19:27 down the other newsletter I imported the
19:28 list into my beehive page and we're now
19:31 I want to say like two months maybe a
19:33 little less than two months out from
19:34 that and uh the unsubscribe rates are
19:37 way better than I thought they would be
19:39 and the engagement rates are way harder
19:40 than I thought they would be I was
19:41 expecting like you know 30 unsubscribed
19:43 or something like that but it's only
19:45 been like six percent unsubscribed I
19:47 think we have under 100 people who've
19:48 unsubscribed maybe even lower than that
19:50 so it's been really attractive um and so
19:52 I think that that proves to me that
19:53 there is the ability to do this even if
19:55 you know I just rolled the newsletter
19:57 into my own which isn't probably what I
19:59 would do next year I'd probably keep
20:00 them as standard newsletters and just
20:02 hire writers to keep them running in
20:03 most cases so it just gave me more
20:05 optionality for when that happens next
20:06 year next year interesting why did you
20:08 decide that then that you probably would
20:10 like keep those newsletters as they are
20:12 rather than immersion like what what
20:14 from that experiment did you get to make
20:16 you decide that I mean is it gonna be an
20:19 ad hoc decision Case by case decision
20:20 for sure but like I guess what I'm what
20:23 I'm trying to say is that next year I
20:24 think you know they'll be attractive
20:25 newsletter opportunities and other
20:26 verticals than just startups right so
20:28 maybe there's one in you know Finance or
20:31 maybe there's one in I don't know
20:32 politics or or marketing or whatever
20:35 else I'm just gonna optimize what the
20:36 most attractive opportunity is
20:38 um and so it might not make any sense to
20:40 roll them into house newsletter and it
20:42 might make sense for Hawks newsletter to
20:43 kind of become a holding company for for
20:45 media assets right interesting
20:48 um what you seem to be very good at you
20:50 know the business side of new classes
20:52 which I guess makes sense given your
20:54 startup background so like what advice
20:56 would you give to newsletter creators
20:58 who are very good at the creative side
20:59 but aren't necessarily good at
21:01 monetization and the business side yeah
21:04 I mean I would say to seek out the best
21:06 content to learn it
21:08 um you know first of all not everybody
21:09 is creating a newsletter so that they
21:12 can build the biggest business ever
21:13 right like we should just get that out
21:15 in the in the open air right some people
21:16 are just writing a newsletter because
21:18 they want to write a newsletter and they
21:20 have people who want to hear from them
21:21 and maybe they'll monetize it but it's
21:23 not their primary revenue stream I think
21:25 that's great I think more people should
21:26 do that too but if you are like
21:28 ambitious with the newsletter and you
21:29 have a goal for it to be a big Revenue
21:31 driver for you and build a business
21:33 around it then I would say think big and
21:35 and find the right information sources
21:37 to to learn that side of the business
21:38 route like Matt Matt McGarry does a
21:40 great job breaking shutdown in his
21:42 newsletter uh I think it's called
21:44 newsletter operator and then
21:46 um also on his Twitter he posts so much
21:48 information for free so he's a great
21:49 resource there but yeah I would say
21:51 treat your newsletter like a startup and
21:53 think about it you know read Paul Graham
21:55 essays read y combinator content uh just
21:58 try to learn the the way that Founders
22:00 startups think uh rather than the way
22:02 that like creators are typically tough
22:03 to think
22:05 important is things
22:06 I mean the startup world you talk a lot
22:08 about product Market fit so how relevant
22:11 is that to the newsletter industry if
22:13 you want to build a business
22:15 yeah I mean it's entirely uh relevant
22:17 right you're you need to you need to
22:20 lead with your credibility you need to
22:22 make people think that hey I actually
22:23 want to read this topic from this person
22:26 right it's not enough to just say to
22:27 just write about an interesting topic
22:28 and think people are going to care about
22:29 it you need to write about an
22:31 interesting topic and make the content
22:33 great because they trust you as the
22:35 writer
22:36 um to do it so I think that just happens
22:38 with the track record over time uh you
22:41 know when I started my newsletter I
22:42 didn't know what the heck I was doing I
22:43 was experimenting with different
22:44 sections and different ways for to
22:46 engage with my readers and most of them
22:47 failed
22:49 um but once I found my groove once I
22:51 went full time on it that was a
22:52 different story so I would just say
22:55 um to you know to lean into that as much
22:56 as possible yeah what's your mindset for
22:59 growth now and you know what's next for
23:01 you as a new center creator
23:03 yeah I mean let's let's pour the
23:04 gasoline on you know
23:06 I love it I just influenced my my spark
23:10 Loop budget from 10K to 20K a month oh
23:13 wow I'm running a bunch of paid ads as
23:16 well I'm writing Twitter threads three
23:18 times a week LinkedIn posts five times a
23:20 week
23:22 um I'm all in I want this the email list
23:24 my original goal was to get the email
23:25 list of 50K by the end of the year uh
23:27 when I went full time in like q1 uh now
23:31 I'm already hit 50k so I have reset the
23:33 goal to 100K but it's trending towards
23:35 hitting that in November so maybe I need
23:38 to think bigger I I love that you're
23:40 investing so much into it but what
23:42 advice would you give to someone who
23:43 maybe doesn't have that kind of budget
23:45 you know to start investing into ads and
23:48 Spark Loop like what is the best way for
23:50 them to you know be as driven and growth
23:53 orientated as you but you know with what
23:55 resources they have yeah for sure I mean
23:58 you only reach that scale once you get
23:59 to a certain point right yeah
24:01 in the early days you know lean into
24:04 content marketing lean into swaps with
24:06 other people whether that's
24:07 recommendations after they subscribe to
24:09 your newsletter or whether it's like in
24:11 place of ads you know get your audience
24:12 comfortable with seeing quote unquote
24:14 ads but just show them other newsletters
24:16 and therefore you know have those
24:17 reciprocate by showing you
24:20 um that drove a lot of our growth early
24:21 on so I I would say follow that formula
24:24 as much as possible
24:25 um but yeah leaning into content
24:26 marketing is a great way to get started
24:29 um and you know that worked for us so I
24:31 would recommend that other thing would
24:32 be you know monetize as soon as possible
24:33 I think a lot of people wait to monetize
24:36 either because they are worried about
24:38 introducing ads or because they just
24:40 aren't prioritizing it and they're
24:41 prioritizing the content which is fine
24:42 but you know bringing in Revenue gives
24:45 leverage to your business to invest more
24:47 so I would say you know use tools like
24:49 passion fruit to set up a sponsorship
24:51 offering even if it's only a little bit
24:53 of money even if it's only just getting
24:54 started and you know you can't work with
24:56 every sponsor in the world yet I would
24:58 say monetize as soon as possible yeah I
25:00 love that advice I've already asked you
25:01 you know what's something you've taken
25:03 as a startup founder that you've applied
25:05 to being a Creator but now I'm going to
25:06 ask you what's something that surprised
25:08 you or you know something you've learned
25:09 entering the Creator world that you know
25:12 has helped you grow
25:15 hmm it's a good question I I think that
25:17 honestly the thing that surprised me the
25:19 most is how similar it is to being a
25:21 startup founder honestly it's you know
25:23 I've approached it pretty much the same
25:25 way but I didn't think I was going to do
25:26 that when I started
25:28 um but just treating it more like a
25:29 business has been
25:31 um has been usually beneficial in a
25:32 short period of time for us so I would I
25:34 would recommend that another thing
25:36 though is just that like you know when
25:37 you're a startup founder you're in the
25:39 weeds you have like crazy crisis
25:41 meetings all the time you know your
25:43 product is breaking whatever it might be
25:45 your users are complaining whatever
25:46 happens and you have to just be super
25:50 available for all these calls all these
25:52 teams syncs sometimes and things like
25:53 that being a Creator I really like it
25:55 because if I don't want to have meetings
25:57 I don't have to right I literally own
26:00 schedule 100 and if I want to go to the
26:02 park at 3 8 3 P.M in the afternoon I can
26:05 do that yeah no I like that okay so I'm
26:07 gonna end with a quick fly around now so
26:08 I'm gonna ask you five questions that I
26:10 ask every Grace that comes on air
26:11 starting with and you've kind of already
26:13 answered this what's your favorite thing
26:14 about about being a greater
26:17 um yeah probably just the probably just
26:19 the freedom of getting to
26:22 um you know run my own uh business or
26:25 Creator business or whatever it is uh
26:27 exactly how I want to uh owning 100 of
26:29 it and uh just setting up setting up my
26:31 life exactly as I want to yeah also I
26:34 would add on to that too because my
26:35 Niche is startup Founders it really lets
26:37 me keep on like The Cutting Edge the
26:39 bleeding edge of where technology and
26:41 businesses in the world is going
26:43 um so that energizes me keeps me super
26:45 passionate every day and I love that and
26:47 what's something that gives you the most
26:48 inspiration for what you create
26:51 my readers
26:53 um you know I ask all my readers all the
26:55 time you know what topics am I not
26:56 covering what problems are you having
26:58 right now I think the best content comes
27:00 authentically like that and so I try to
27:03 spend as much time talking to my to my
27:04 readers as possible to to get that oh I
27:06 love that and what's one tool that helps
27:08 you the most as a Creator I mean there's
27:10 a lot I I use a lot of different tools
27:12 my community couldn't exist without
27:14 Circle my newsletter wouldn't be half as
27:16 good as it is without beehive I wouldn't
27:18 have made as much money as quickly
27:19 without passion fruit so you know
27:22 triumvirate there is uh is powering a
27:24 lot of stuff for me I love that and
27:26 what's something that helps you with
27:27 your creator work-life balance my wife
27:32 I'm not good at work life balance on my
27:34 own I work all the time so having uh
27:36 having someone to to make me remember to
27:38 enjoy the rest of life is uh is good and
27:41 what's one piece of advice that you'd
27:43 give to other creators treat your you
27:45 know Creator business like a business
27:46 right think about how to grow it invest
27:49 as much as you can without putting
27:51 yourself at risk
27:52 um yeah just treat it like a business
27:54 amazing thank you so much Michael I feel
27:56 like this is such a great conversation I
27:58 feel like especially for people who feel
27:59 like they can't turn it into a business
28:01 I think this is the conversation that
28:03 will really help them change their mind
28:04 especially how quickly you manage to do
28:06 it so thank you so much for coming on
28:07 air yeah thanks so much for having me
28:09 this was uh this was a lot of fun you
28:11 can find Michael on Twitter LinkedIn and
28:13 his newsletter and if you are a Creator
28:15 and one of your revenue streams is
28:16 sponsorships check out passion fruit we
28:19 help you to streamline your entire
28:20 workflow
28:22 I'll see you in the next one
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