The Content Contract: How Ness Labs grew to 100,000 subscribers in 5 years, all founded on one simple relationship perspective

0:00: I had to start from scratch and have a completely different approach and really go back to first principles and ask myself what it is I want people to feel and to think and what action do I want them to take.
0:12: Welcome to Email swipes, where we peek behind the scenes at the emails that catch your attention and earn their place in your swipe file.
0:19: Every other week, we’ll talk to an email expert about an experiment they ran, and in the following episode, We’ll dive into the strategies and methods used in the email so you can inform and inspire your own email work.
0:30: I’m Nikki Elvas, the copywriter behind winning emails for 8 and 9 figure sassin e-commerce brands like Shopify, For Sigmatic, and Sprout Social.
0:37: And I know that hearing the background stories to these emails will help you turn pie in the sky insights into plug and play actions.
0:43: Ready to make inspiration tactical?
0:45: Let’s go.
0:46: First, let’s read today’s email.
0:50: Hello friends.
0:51: This may be the most important newsletter I have ever said.
0:55: Today, I’m excited to announce my first book is ready for you to pre-order.
1:00: Tiny Experiments is a book about living a more experimental life, navigating challenges with curiosity and defining your own unique version of personal growth.
1:08: It’s the book I wish I had when I was stuck chasing the traditional idea of success, unable to see there was another way.
1:14: It distills years of work at Nest Labs into one simple toolkit for you to adapt to your ambitions.
1:20: And if you’ve ever dreamed of writing a book or tackling a big creative project, this special edition offers a behind the scenes look at the process of bringing such a multi-year project to life.
1:29: Enjoy the read and thank you for your support and La.
1:32: PS I’m hosting an exclusive behind the book session for early supporters on October 18th, where I’ll go much deeper into these lessons.
1:39: I’d love to see you there.
1:41: The story behind Tiny experiments.
1:43: It was a lovely summer day in 2020 and I was about to close my laptop to enjoy the sunshine when an email from a well-known publisher appeared in my inbox.
1:51: It read, I would love to have a chat with you about the possibility of writing a book.
1:55: I sat frozen in my chair, afraid that if I moved, the email might vanish.
1:59: For many, writing a book is a lifelong dream, and I was no exception.
2:03: As a kid, I helped run the largest community of young French writers and even submitted a novel to a few publishers, but at the time, I didn’t manage to remain focused on one project long enough to see it through.
2:12: So when I asked if I wanted to write a book, my answer was a resounding yes, promptly followed by it, but how?
2:19: I’ve written hundreds of blog posts, research papers, and newsletters over the years, but a book is a whole different beast.
2:25: I started asking myself, how do you overcome imposter syndrome?
2:28: Despite interest from several publishers, others reached out after that first email.
2:32: I didn’t exactly feel like an expert.
2:33: How do you manage such a big project on your own?
2:36: Without short term deliverables and regular checkpoints, staying motivated and on track is much harder.
2:41: How do you maintain creativity on the same project for months?
2:45: Continuing to see the topic with fresh eyes can become a challenge as you go deeper.
2:49: I spent the past 2 years experimenting with various approaches to answer these questions, and today I want to share 12 lessons I learned while writing a nonfiction book.
2:58: 12 short lessons for long creative projects.
3:01: Number 1, trust the intelligence of others who want to work with you.
3:04: Impostor syndrome can make you doubt your abilities, but remember that those who express interest in your work do so for a reason.
3:10: They see something valuable in what you offer.
3:12: Trust their judgment.
3:13: Number 2, create your own accountability system.
3:16: Partner with a buddy, hire a coach, or join an accountability group to keep you on track.
3:20: I personally had weekly book check-ins.
3:22: These external checks can not only help maintain momentum, but get you unstuck through creative conversations.
3:27: Number 3, except uncertainty is part of the creative process.
3:31: Throughout the book’s development, I faced numerous changes, 3 different editors, 4 title revisions, and we explored 21 different cover designs.
3:38: It felt scary at times, but embracing these liminal moments allowed me to ultimately produce a much better book.
3:44: Number 4, prioritize quality over quantity of time.
3:47: More hours spent working doesn’t equate to better results.
3:51: Sometimes the best ideas come when you’re making lunch or taking a walk.
3:54: Design a creative routine and shield time for strategic focus, rather than forcing productivity during every waking hour.
4:01: Number 5.
4:02: Reflect on your past progress to fuel future work.
4:05: By looking back at what you’ve accomplished so far, you can gain insights into what works for you and what doesn’t, revealing patterns and ideas that can inform your next steps.
4:13: Number 6, learn in public and seek early feedback.
4:15: Throughout the creative process, I hosted feedback sessions, recruited beta readers, and invited newsletter readers to share feedback on the cover designs.
4:22: This Ensured my work was constantly evolving based on real world input, making the final book much stronger than it would have been in isolation.
4:29: Number 7, protect your mental health to protect your creativity.
4:33: Your mental health is your most valuable asset when it comes to long creative projects.
4:37: You can’t produce great work when you’re stressed, anxious, or depressed.
4:40: Take breaks and practice self-care to avoid creative burnout.
4:43: Number 8, be ready to think nonlinearly.
4:46: Even with a solid outline, some of the best creative decisions came from completely departing from the original plan.
4:52: I completely restructured the book and even deleted an entire chapter that was core to the original book proposal, but no longer fit the book.
4:59: Creativity requires being ready to explore unexpected directions.
5:03: Number 9, know when to let go.
5:05: There’s a point when further rewrites won’t add value.
5:08: Avoid over editing.
5:09: At some point, it’s good to move on and share it with the world.
5:12: Number 10, balanced creative input and output.
5:15: The quality of what you consume directly impacts the quality of what you produce.
5:18: Be mindful of what you’re feeding your mind and make sure it aligns with your creative ambitions.
5:23: Number 11, celebrate small wins along the way.
5:25: In long creative projects, it’s easy to get fixated on the end goal.
5:29: Don’t wait until the finish line to celebrate.
5:31: Reward yourself for both small and big milestones like treating yourself to a nice dinner for submitting the manuscript or taking a walk after solving a tricky chapter.
5:39: Both things I did.
5:41: Number 12, surround yourself with fellow curious minds.
5:44: This book wouldn’t exist without the support of the Nes Labs community, my editors, beta readers, and everyone who offered feedback.
5:50: While creative work can be a solitary activity, remember you don’t have to do it all alone.
5:55: If you’d like to know everything about the wild journey of creating this book from finding an agent to the auction with over 10 publishers, choosing the title and changing editors, I’m hosting a behind the book session on October 18th.
6:06: You’ll also get an exclusive look at the book proposal, which I won’t share anywhere else.
6:10: The 21 covers we consider, how we tested them, and how I managed the entire project without sacrificing my mental health.
6:16: Pre-order today to get access.
6:18: If you can’t join live, you can send your questions and access the recording with all the answers.
6:22: Pre-order now.
6:24: FAQ.
6:25: How can I support the book launch?
6:27: The best way is to pre-order the book and share the news with your friends and colleagues.
6:30: You can forward them this newsletter or share the Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube announcements.
6:34: And if you run a book club or would like to order for your team, just let me know by replying to this email.
6:38: When will I receive my bonuses?
6:40: You will receive an email upon submitting your receipt on the Tiny Experiments website, which will explain how to access your bonuses.
6:46: Please email tinyexperiments at nslabs.com if you didn’t receive a confirmation.
6:50: How do I join the behind the book session?
6:52: You can join the session on October 18th by pre-ordering at least one copy of Tiny Experiments by October 17th.
6:58: There will also be an opportunity to submit your questions in advance if you can’t join live.
7:02: Find out more about the session here.
7:04: Take care, and Laura.
7:05: PS, please do hit reply if you have any questions about the book.
7:08: I’ll do my best to answer everyone.
7:12: And Laura, thank you so much for joining.
7:14: Tell us who you are and what you do.
7:16: Hi, thanks so much for having me.
7:18: I am a neuroscientist and a writer, and I run a newsletter with 100,000 weekly readers.
7:26: Wow, that is awesome.
7:28: I didn’t know your number of subscribers, but I see just from this one newsletter, I’m like, I need to subscribe, this is amazing stuff.
7:35: And it seems like you have a really awesome community as well, so I’m excited to dig into all of that.
7:39: And just the work you’re doing is so fascinating.
7:42: I think anyone in marketing loves neuroscience, so it’s very exciting.
7:46: So tell us about this, a really incredible, very exciting launch.
7:51: I know that book launches in general are just crazy, but I love backtracking how you started it with the process of Getting that email, that exciting invitation to publish a book.
8:04: That story we already read in the email, but tell us your book launch strategy and where this email fit into things.
8:10: Yeah, for me, this book launch was very interesting because I’ve been writing this newsletter for a few years now and when you get into this rhythm of just writing a weekly newsletter every Thursday, all of them feel.
8:26: Yes, important enough, you’re going to put some effort into the newsletter, but also it’s not the end of the world if it’s not perfect.
8:34: You end up sending hundreds of them over the years and they’re not going to always be perfect.
8:40: But and I should have mentioned that when you asked me about my background.
8:43: I actually have a background in marketing.
8:45: I used to work at Google in marketing before I completely changed careers and became a neuroscientist.
8:52: I hadn’t had a big launch since I had left my job at Google.
8:57: That was part of my job at Google.
8:58: We had a big product that we had worked on in secrecy for a very long time, you know, and we needed to send that email and have the social media posts and do all of that.
9:09: And for everything to look perfect and to be very exciting so people would notice and try the new product.
9:16: When you launch a book, it’s very much like launching a product, the Google way like I used to do it, but I felt very rusty.
9:24: So this email, even though I technically send it to the same audience I send my weekly newsletter to felt very, very different, and I felt like I had to start from scratch and have a completely different approach and really go back to first principles and ask myself what it is I want people to feel and to think and what action do I want them to take.
9:47: Wow, cool.
9:48: Backtrack for a second and tell us your overall strategy.
9:51: I mean, I’m sure it changes month to month, year to year, but your overall newsletter strategy, like, how did that look different?
9:58: My strategy is very simple.
10:00: It’s just write a really good email.
10:03: People tell me that they subscribe to my newsletter and they don’t tend to unsubscribe a lot because I actually do put a lot of care into what I said.
10:12: I consider people’s inbox, one of the Most sacred places they have digitally speaking because they need to give you permission to send you an email and obviously a lot of people don’t do that.
10:26: They don’t ask for permission.
10:27: That’s what we call spam, right?
10:28: But if you’re a decent human being, you should ask for permission and you should have a way for people to unsubscribe.
10:34: And so what I love about this relationship with a weekly newsletter is that it’s very Clear, I tell you, give me your email in exchange.
10:43: I’m going to send you something interesting every week.
10:45: If at any point you feel like the quality of the content I send you is not good enough.
10:49: There’s a link at the bottom and we can part ways, say goodbye.
10:54: It was a good time.
10:55: So it’s very clear, it’s very transparent, and so my strategy has always been to create content that is good enough that people want to stay subscribed.
11:04: And I believe the content is really good.
11:06: They even want to tell their friends about it and for the newsletter to other people.
11:11: So that’s very much the only two things I’m looking at are just engagement rates in terms of how many people open and click, etc.
11:18: So this is my existing base, but also how many people actually share the.
11:23: Newsletter with others and everybody at the end of my newsletters has a little link, referral link, where they can send it to a friend if they want to.
11:31: That’s also a very good measure of how much they love that newsletter.
11:35: Yeah, that’s like much better than your classic sentiment rating of thumbs up, thumbs down.
11:39: if they shared it, clearly they liked it enough.
11:43: OK, so with this one, you had to backtrack and think, OK, what am I trying to accomplish here?
11:48: And I love the little intro at the beginning was that kind of like an output of this thought process.
11:55: The intro is something that I have at the beginning of every single newsletter, and this is also some positive feedback that I’ve received from people over the years is that even though my newsletter is about how to use neuroscience.
12:08: Research to be more productive and more creative, so it’s very much science-based.
12:12: There’s always a personal touch, and a lot of the topics that I choose are based on my personal experience.
12:17: So I would very often struggle with something.
12:20: I might struggle with procrastination or creative block, and then what I’ll do, because of my scientific training is that I’ll go and read the research and then I’ll write the newsletter and translate that in a way that Anybody can understand and use in their daily life and work even if they don’t have a scientific training.
12:38: So all of my newsletters they start with like a quick snapshot of my life at the moment and things that have been on my mind and that I might have been struggling with and then I go into the scientific content.
12:50: So I kept that and I thought that was important to still have familiarity with what people would expect so.
12:58: The introduction is very much, hey, this is a very big thing.
13:01: This is probably the most important newsletter that I’ll send in my entire life, and this is the reason why, and I’m announcing the book and then for the very first time since I started my newsletter instead of a scientific article in that newsletter.
13:16: I wrote something that was very much about the creative process of bringing this book to life.
13:23: That’s so cool.
13:24: Especially that that intro, first of all, it’s such a great tease because when somebody tells you this is the most important newsletter I’ll ever send, you’re just like, wait, I need to read this.
13:32: I’m going to block off time to read this.
13:34: And also it has such a personal touch, especially when it’s not the, like the rest of this email was more on the personal side, but I could see how that is such a great strategy for when.
13:45: And it is more of a scientific email.
13:47: But yeah, I think that was a great call, keeping it in.
13:49: It’s such a good little tease and it feels personal and it’s really great.
13:54: Thank you.
13:55: See, but it’s interesting because it’s the story of it.
13:58: I guess it’s the creative process, but the brain is, that’s part of how our brain works is the creative process because like you still see the clarity of thought in terms of the 12 short lessons from it.
14:08: You’re not just telling the story of, hey, you know, they asked me to publish a book, I published a book.
14:13: Come to the launch event, you’re actually breaking it down that even if they don’t come to the launch event, you’re still giving them amazing content that they can take and use in their life, which is really cool.
14:24: Yeah, I’m so glad you noticed this because this goes back to the contract we just discussed with the reader, which is you gave me your email and in exchange, I promise that I will do my best every week to provide valuable content where You will feel like by the end of the newsletter you learn something new that you’re better off after reading this email than you were before you opened it.
14:50: So it’s very important also in this launch email for me to make sure that even if someone felt like actually you know what, this book is not for me, that’s not a topic I’m interested in that by providing those 12 lessons that are.
15:07: Really about creativity and this is something that a lot of people can use in their work, whether they’re going to read the book or not, by focusing on those 12 lessons and by focusing on providing value, I would make sure that even if someone is not interested in the book, they’re not going to feel like, oh no, that was just a marketing email, and I didn’t get any value out of it.
15:27: So I wanted to, yes, absolutely announce the launch of the book and promote it and if possible have as many people as possible purchase a copy.
15:37: But I also wanted everyone reading the email, even people who would not purchase a copy to feel good about opening that email.
15:45: Yeah, that’s so cool, especially because that is the best way to sell is when you create this amazing relationship beforehand and people just feel like the sale is an extension of the content that you’re giving them, and then it also protects the people who don’t want to buy.
16:03: They still feel like they can continue the relationship and still get great value from you.
16:07: OK, so how did you feel sending this email because this was the most important newsletter of your life.
16:12: How was hitting send?
16:14: , the level of anxiety was actually very similar to how anxious I used to feel in the very early days of the newsletter.
16:26: A few years ago when I was just getting started, every single newsletter I was sending.
16:32: Felt like the most important thing in the world and I was obsessing over any little typo and wondering how people might react and would they like it or not.
16:45: After a while, I’ve been doing this for 5 years now, weekly.
16:49: Again, I still put a lot of energy and and love really into each newsletter that I send, but I also understand that people are not going to unsubscribe because I missed an S at the end of a plural word or.
17:05: it’s completely fine and especially with consistency and always trying to deliver good content, people become more forgiving as time goes with those little things because that’s not really what they care about.
17:18: They really care about learning something new.
17:20: But when I was about to hit send on that one, that launch email for my book, yeah, that anxiety was, it’s just, yeah, it was felt nostalgic, you know, feeling that anxiety that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
17:34: That’s so sweet.
17:35: It’s like early days, yeah.
17:37: , and then what was the feedback like, were people hitting reply and congratulating you?
17:41: How was the feedback?
17:42: It was amazing.
17:43: It was so positive, so supportive.
17:46: I think because I had been sharing quite a bit about the journey throughout previous newsletters, but not so much, but I would.
17:57: Just kind of like mention in the the introduction, that personal introduction, I would mention where I was at.
18:04: Sometimes challenges I was facing with the book were a source of inspiration for those scientifically inspired articles that I was sharing around creativity and because I also really trust the creative taste of my community, I also used the newsletter quite often to ask for feedback.
18:26: So I sent options for the book cover, for example, with a little survey I tested titles.
18:33: I did a bunch of little things over the years.
18:35: I’m saying over the years because a book takes a long time to read.
18:39: So you know, from time to time something about the book, so they knew I was working on it, and I think for a lot of them being part of this journey and then receiving the big reveal newsletter and that’s why I called it the big reveal.
18:53: That was the subject line.
18:55: The big reveal newsletter when you’ve been part of this journey, I think, felt really like you were part of something that this project was really co-created with my readers, rather than having an announcement for something.
19:10: That you worked on with the garage door completely closed over several years.
19:15: So it was great.
19:16: A lot of people were saying things like, Oh, finally I’m so excited to read it.
19:21: I’m so happy for you.
19:22: I know how hard you worked on this.
19:24: It’s a great feeling.
19:26: That’s so beautiful.
19:27: It’s such a great insight.
19:28: It’s really true that when you involve people, they feel so much more invested and excited about it, and I’m sure that intel was amazing, you know, the book covers and the titles and getting their feedback.
19:38: That’s so cool.
19:39: So that there was no tease email beforehand, but clearly, you know, you were dropping little pieces throughout the years.
19:45: Was there a follow up email after this one?
19:47: Where you share it again about the launch event or anything like that or anything else about the book, or was this just like a standalone book email?
19:56: So I didn’t have purely dedicated follow-up emails just about the book after that, but I do have now in every single newsletter just a little insert where it says that the book Is available for pre-order.
20:10: It has a link, and I try to change the copy a little bit in that box every week so people don’t give up that repeated exposure type of blindness, you know, when you see the same ad sometimes over and over again online and you can ignore it.
20:26: So something I found quite fun to play with is to insert testimonials and quotes from people who have sent early copies to.
20:36: Fellow authors that I admire who gave me also positive feedback on it and so I insert that with a photo of the cover, a little link, but I keep it quite simple and I think I’m going to keep on doing this moving forward until we get closer to the actual launch date and the end of the pre-order campaign where I’ll probably start becoming a little bit more vocal again about the book and really encouraging people to pre-order their copy, but I’m really trying again to Balance promoting this book that I’m very proud of and I genuinely feel like it’s going to be so helpful, especially to the kind of people who already read my newsletter.
21:15: It does talk about the same topics with trying to not being already promotional to the point where people start developing some form of fatigue around the book and I’m not excited anymore.
21:28: And this is the first time I’m again launching a big product with my new setter, so.
21:34: I’m learning as I go and I feel like it’s a delicate balancing act and I’m really using the feedback I’m getting from my audience and seeing how people respond to decide whether I’m going to talk about it a bit more in the next newsletter or maybe not talk about it at all for one edition, just giving people a breather.
21:53: So it’s very organic and very fluid, a little bit like it’s a conversation really with your readers.
22:00: Wow, I can’t wait to see the actual launch because this is such a unique approach where you don’t see people so concentrated on this needs to provide value first because you put your heart and soul into this and you want people to buy it, so it’s going to be really cool.
22:16: I’m very excited.
22:18: I’m sure it’s going to be great.
22:19: I’m sure you’ll do a great job.
22:20: Thanks so much.
22:21: OK, so what was the creation process of this email like?
22:24: Was it similar to your creation process for the other newsletter where I don’t know, you block off a certain amount of time, you work in a certain space?
22:30: Was it similar or different and what was that process like?
22:34: Something that made this one very different is that it included a video, which I had never done before for any of my other newsletters and I really wanted to play with a different format where people could Actually see my face and hear my voice because, you know, when you write a newsletter, it’s just words on the screen and I think a lot of people read my newsletter and don’t even know who’s behind it, who’s the human being behind this newsletter, and I felt like this was a really good opportunity to just open the curtain and say hi, it’s just a little peek and saying hello, that’s me.
23:11: I’m the person who’s been writing this newsletter every week that you’ve been opening in your inbox, and I have this book.
23:17: That I’ve been working on for the past few years and I’m so excited to reveal it to you, announce it to you, and I hope some of you will want to read it.
23:25: I felt like a video felt like the right format for this kind of digital interaction.
23:32: So before I even wrote the content of the email, I actually asked a friend who’s a videographer to work with me on this video, so we scripted it and we got it and we went back to my.
23:45: Lab where that’s where I, you know, do my research and just filming little B-roll videos and all of that kind of stuff.
23:53: So that was really, really fun and that’s also why I felt like I could really focus on the body of the email delivering something that was closer to what I normally do with the 12 lessons I learned while creating this book because I put a lot of the more marketing oriented content in that video.
24:14: Where I explained where to get it and why you need to pre-order now and not wait until it comes out and pre-order bonuses that you can have access to if you get your copy now and all of, all of this was in the video and so in terms of structure of the email you have this written personal introduction that you have in every single edition.
24:34: The video, which is completely new and that really is the big reveal about the book and then the evidence-based experience-based content that’s very actionable and that anyone can use regardless of whether they want to read the book or not.
24:51: That’s so fun.
24:52: That’s such a fun way to reveal it is to also reveal yourself and to introduce yourself almost even though people have been peeking inside your brain for years, now they get to really actually meet you.
25:03: That’s very cool.
25:04: So I want to ask you if you were to go back in time and perfect the email, what would you do differently, but the truth is is that you are approaching this launch now, so I’m sure you are thinking about this kind of exact sort of thing and developing your strategy for the launch.
25:19: So has this email taught you anything specific for the launch that was not necessarily going to be part of your strategy beforehand that you’re like, oh, wait, I did that and I should have done it differently, anything specific that you picked up?
25:32: I might try to do a little bit less with the next launch email.
25:37: Looking back now, I feel like there was quite a bit of anxiety around sending something different outside of the initial contract.
25:46: That we had signed with my readers and because of that, I think that I tried really really hard to deliver as much value as possible in that email and so it’s packed with content and has lots of different sections and I think that with the next launch email I’ll just feel a little bit more comfortable saying, hey, this is OK, this is a project I’ve worked on for years and it’s very important to me and I do think it has a lot of value and this is a marketing email.
26:18: You mean you don’t want to drive yourself crazy?
26:21: Yes, it’s just,, yeah, just trusting that people who’ve been reading my newsletter for such a long time are going to be completely OK with one email where I say, please buy the book.
26:32: That’s it.
26:32: So knowing myself, it’s probably not going to be.
26:37: By the book, but this is definitely something I’ve been reflecting on and I want to bring into my thinking for the next launch email.
26:45: It’s interesting because you’ve been using the language of contract and typically on the contract, there’s both sides.
26:51: So what are you gaining?
26:53: What’s the value in them giving you an email address if you can’t communicate, you know, the products and the work that you’ve been.
27:00: Really like putting your heart and soul into and having them trust that just a marketing email is also good enough and that’s that kind of exchange of value that you two are doing together and not just you giving value and giving value and giving value without them also giving you something as well.
27:16: Oh, thank you.
27:17: This is very helpful.
27:18: I didn’t expect to get a little bit of coaching here.
27:21: This is great.
27:21: Thank you.
27:24: You mentioned that you have 100,000 followers and you’ve been doing this for 5 years.
27:28: That is very impressive.
27:30: How did you grow your list?
27:31: There were several phases, I would say.
27:34: The first one was when I was absolutely obsessed with growing the newsletter and putting it in front of as many people as possible.
27:44: So every time I wrote a new newsletter, I would post it everywhere.
27:50: Indie hackers, hacking news, Twitter, Telegram groups, slack groups I was a part of, and I was very active in those places already, so I genuinely never had any complaint about me spamming or anything like that because the rest of the time I was in these communities helping fix problems, support other entrepreneurs, etc.
28:10: So I was only posting in places where I was helpful in other ways, and that really helped grow the newsletter.
28:18: A few other things I did at the time.
28:20: There’s a website called Product Hunt where you can launch products, and I decided at the time, well, a newsletter is a product, so I launched my newsletter on Product Hunt and I got, yeah, I don’t even know if it’s still possible, but at the time I did it, I created a proper landing page with a mockup of my newsletter in a mobile phone just making it really look like this is the next startup and I put it on product plan.
28:46: And I got like 2000 subscribers in one day out of that, and I think that more than doubled the number of subscribers that I had at the time because it was still tiny.
28:56: And the last thing I did was that again I’m very big fan of sharing my journey, learning in public and getting feedback from people.
29:03: So I would also post screenshots of my Google Docs drafts and just.
29:09: headlines and different outlines that I was thinking about on Twitter and other places on social media, really involving people in the process again, co-creating with people instead of just posting the newsletter.
29:20: So I would say that that was the 0.1 of the newsletter where that was obsessive sharing, connecting, trying different things.
29:32: After a while, so something I also did is that every time I posted the newsletter, I put it on my website.
29:38: And I made sure that it was, I’m not an expert, but at least not terrible in terms of SEO and slowly but surely I started getting more and more traffic coming from search engines and I had a pop up on the website where anyone who was reading those articles coming from any search engine could subscribe.
29:59: That started contributing quite a lot to my growth.
30:03: That’s the 3rd phase I would say right now that’s where I am at.
30:07: There’s a bit of a snowball effect that I think it’s time to get to, but I have a lot of readers who recommend the newsletter to other people.
30:15: I also have other newsletter authors who like my newsletter and who recommend it.
30:21: There are more and more email management systems now that offer a recommendation platform.
30:28: Whether that’s kits that used to be convert kit,, Beehive, a lot of them offer this, and so something that’s completely game changing now is that you used to only be able to go viral on social media, on TikTok, on YouTube, right?
30:45: There was no algorithm for newsletters.
30:48: Now with those recommendation platforms you can technically go viral because all of us.
30:53: And then you wake up and there are 5 other newsletters that decided to recommend you and that has happened to me.
30:58: That’s such a cool insight.
30:59: It’s true.
31:00: Wow.
31:01: Because email has always kind of, yeah, stood in its own little silo, and now it’s becoming social.
31:06: That is such a great insight, true.
31:09: So those are the things, and I fully expect to have another cycle where it’s a different source of growth depending on how the landscape evolves.
31:18: Trying to be flexible and open minded when it comes to these things.
31:22: Oh, but I love how also it’s just been through your efforts.
31:25: It hasn’t been through like some hack that you read that it’s like by my, you know, let’s growth course for, you know, X amount of money, and I’ll give you my hack, you know, this is just you giving great content and working to share it.
31:37: So it’s inspiring.
31:38: Thanks.
31:39: OK, so what emails do you like to get to inspire you?
31:43: A lot of people are probably already subscribed to his newsletter because I think he has a few million people reading it, but I think it’s such an amazing source of inspiration and it’s James Keir’s newsletter, 321.
31:56: The reason why I love it is also because he’s allowed himself to evolve as well.
32:03: His newsletter has changed so much.
32:05: It used to be long form and with a lot of research, and now it’s very short and there’s this bite-sized content where you get insights very quickly that you can apply straight away and instead of feeling stuck into a format that had worked for.
32:19: Him for so many years, he decided to experiment and see what else could work and it’s still excellent and there might be another iteration of it in the future.
32:29: So to me, not only I love reading his emails as just a regular reader, but as someone who writes a newsletter, I find him a great source of inspiration in terms of how to run a newsletter in general.
32:43: Yeah, that’s cool, and knowing that, OK, I can make shifts and changes if I want to because he did it, so so can I.
32:50: This was amazing.
32:51: There’s so many fun things to dig into here.
32:53: I can’t wait to record the takeaways episode.
32:56: So yeah, thank you for your insights and your time and your story.
33:00: Thank you.
33:01: Thank you so much.
33:02: It was really fun.
33:03: It’s really not the kind of podcast I normally do, so it was really fun to explore different questions.
33:09: Cool.
33:09: Normally they’re like on neuroscience.
33:11: Yeah, exactly.
33:11: So that was totally different for me and very fun.
33:15: Thank you.
33:16: Thanks for joining me for story time.
33:18: If you enjoyed today’s story, give this podcast a review so email marketers like you can have more fun with email.
33:24: See you next week when we dig into this story’s takeaways.