Growth In Reverse (Newsletter Growth & Email Marketing)

AUDIO - chenell-on-mighty-pod FINAL
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Chenell: [00:00:00] Hey friends, Chenell here today. I'm sharing a conversation I had with my friend Darrell Vesterfelt on the Mighty Network Summit. We just had a great conversation. I heard a ton of great feedback. People personally reached out and said they enjoyed it, so I wanted to share that with you here. We talked about a bunch of stuff, but.

We really dug into the exact steps you can use to go from zero to a thousand subscribers without using ads. We got real about handling rejection when you're asking for collaborations or outreach and that kind of thing, and kind of knowing how to stay the course versus when to pivot your content. Plus, of course, I can't do anything these days without talking about insanely valuable content.

You'll also hear why I was comfortable spending 30 to 40 hours a week on my newsletter before it made a single dollar for months. We just kind of sat down and talked about, you know, nerdy newsletter stuff, which I always enjoy. So I wanted to share that with you here. Hope you enjoy it.

Darrell Vesterfelt: We are gonna talk to my friend Chenell, and Chenell is a hero to me in a lot of ways because [00:01:00] Chenell didn't wait around to have a mentor who's been there before.

She didn't wait around to have somebody tell her exactly what to do. She has been spending the last several years reverse engineering some of the most successful creators and what they've done to grow their audience. And their newsletter. Chenell is the founder of Growth and Reverse, one of my favorite newsletters and one of the most popular newsletters in the creator economy.

So excited to welcome Chenell to the main stage today and excited to have a conversation. Chenell welcome.

Chenell: Hi, Daryl. Uh, that was way too kind of you to say all of that. Thank you so much.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Way too kind. It's just the truth. I only speak the truth. Chenell okay.

Chenell: I'll take your word for it.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Tell us a little bit about growth in reverse.

I wanna hear the origin story a little bit of it, because I think it's so inspiring that you basically were just like, how does this work? And you just started reverse engineering a bunch of successful creators. So tell me more about it.

Chenell: Yeah, sure. So I actually left my day job back in 2017, and at the time I was helping online course creators and other folks online.

Build their [00:02:00] businesses through Facebook and Google Ads. And so I was doing that for a few years. COVID hit my business boomed. I was doing super, super well to the point where I took on way too much work and ended up burning out really hard. So after that I was like, I don't wanna do services anymore. I'm not sure what I wanna do.

I was always interested in stuff like this. And then I found this guy named Mario Gabrieli. He writes a newsletter called The Generalist, and I've saw a post that he had written where he said that in his first year as a newsletter writer, he was making $300,000 by himself. And I was like, hold on. Wait, what?

A newsletter making 300 grand. I. I'm naturally a curious person, so I was like, okay, how did he do this? I went back, I listened to all the interviews he had done and went through all of his posts and his tweets and everything, and I put together like probably 50 to 60 hours of research into this long form article and I was like, you know what?

He wrote a newsletter. I wonder if other people would be interested in reading this. Like, why don't I send this out as a newsletter? That first issue [00:03:00] went out to three people, well, four. One was myself, my own email address. That was back in December of 2022, and since then I just kind of kept going with this whole newsletter growth thing and now we're at about 40,000 subscribers.

So it's been amazing. Been a journey, but it's been a fun one.

Darrell Vesterfelt: How did, how did you decide the topic of the newsletter? How did you decide that this is the newsletter that you would get really excited about doing? For a long period of time,

Chenell: I didn't, to be honest with you. Like I just started and I was like, you know what?

This is super fascinating. I don't know if I'll do another one of these, but I really enjoyed the process and it was cool to learn about how this guy grew a newsletter and then people started eating it up. Like I shared, I think I posted a. Thread on Twitter and like, you know, six people liked it or something.

And I was like, that's pretty good. And then thankfully Jay Klaus was one of my early subscribers and he ended up sharing it out in his newsletter. And I got to like 55 subscribers and I was like, all right, I'm just gonna keep going with this. And so every week from there I wrote another deep dive and they took [00:04:00] like 30 to 40 hours each one to write.

So it was a lot, but I'm. I don't know. It was just fun. So I enjoyed it. Other people liked it, say 30

Darrell Vesterfelt: to 40 hours to write a newsletter.

Chenell: Yeah. So I would go on these long walks and listen to podcast episodes and figure out how people grew their newsletters.

Darrell Vesterfelt: That's so crazy to me. How did, okay, so I want to, I wanna tap into that because you're not making any money for the newsletter.

You've got 55 subscribers and you're spending 30 to 40 hours doing it like. Like that, that equation doesn't make sense in my head. Tell me like how it made sense to you and why you decided to commit in that direction.

Chenell: It wasn't logical, I will say that, but I was enjoying it and like coming from this place of extreme burnout, I was like, I'm just gonna follow what I'm enjoying right now.

And like thankfully my business had done well, so I had probably a few months of savings saved up. So I was like, okay, I'm just gonna see what happens here. And I'm somebody who like picks up hobbies and drops them like three months later. So I didn't know if this was gonna last, but I was like, you know what?

I'm gonna try it out and see what happens, and I just kept going with it. There wasn't like this [00:05:00] strategy, like I didn't stop at any point and be like, should I continue doing this? Because it's a good business? Like I just did it.

Darrell Vesterfelt: What, what, what kept you going then? So if you didn't like stop and be like, okay, well this is working well.

Like, what kept you going? Because A, that's a huge commitment like. Most people don't even do real work for 30 hours a week. They're like scrolling on Instagram or Facebook most of the time anyways. But like, how do you decide to do that when you're not making money yet? What was like pulling you forward still in the midst of all of that?

Chenell: Yeah, I, I was just having fun. Like I was honestly, genuinely having fun with it and being able to combine my natural curiosity with something people could read and enjoy themselves on the internet. Like I thought that was super cool and so I just kept going with it.

Darrell Vesterfelt: That's so fun. I didn't even realize that you were spending that much time on a newsletter.

Otherwise we would've maybe called this how to Spend 30 Hours writing a newsletter session. Uh, that's so inspiring to me. Rick said something here in the comment, and Rick is a legend in the creator Summit world, but Rick said like the power of doing [00:06:00] something you're passionate about or something that you really enjoy, I think is totally underrated.

I think a lot of times people think about like, well, is this a good business or can I make money doing this? And what they don't realize is that you can burn out really quickly if you don't actually enjoy the thing that you're doing along the way. And if you're gonna create a business, you might as well do something you enjoy or that you're passionate about along the way too.

Chenell: No, totally. And if I wasn't, I probably wouldn't have kept going with it because I was at that point, I just needed something fun to do. Like I just needed to get out of my head from failing at my last business. So yeah, it worked out well.

Darrell Vesterfelt: And fun to you is 30 hours per newsletter. I love that for you and I.

Oh, maybe you're a little bit different, which I love. Okay, so you started writing these newsletters, you were listening to podcasts. You go for long walks, you reverse engineering other successful folks. When did you start making money? Or like what was the inflection point of growth where you like woke up one day and you were like, this is actually gonna work and I should keep doing this.

Not because I love it, but because this is actually going to turn into a business. Like what was that moment for you?

Chenell: That's a good question. I [00:07:00] think I had seen enough people making money with newsletters that I was like, this could potentially be a thing. And then I think it was like 1100 subscribers in, so probably five months in, I had my first sponsor and I was like, okay.

Oh. That's how I made money. I followed a guy named Josh Specter and he actually had outlined this way that he gets sponsors on JLo's podcast. I just followed that to a T essentially, like add a spot at the top of your newsletter and say like, Hey, I'm thinking of potentially adding a sponsor here. Are you interested?

And then you can say, yes, no, maybe, and have people click the specific link of their vote. 98% of people said yes. One person maybe said no, and the other people were like, yeah, I'd potentially be a sponsor. So you actually have this pipeline of potential sponsors before you even launch, which is kind of cool.

And from there, all the sponsors have been inbound. Knowing Justin Moore's strategy. Now, it's probably not the best way to go about it, but it's worked out well in terms of sponsors. So

Darrell Vesterfelt: yeah. That's great. So reverse engineering the most successful [00:08:00] newsletters. And how large creators are building their audience.

This begs the question, what have you learned in the last couple of years about the people who are doing this at the highest level? What are some of the key takeaways or points that you've learned from them?

Chenell: Yeah, so I think there's three things. The first one is something everybody hears all the time, but.

Insanely valuable content. Like I just, I've outlined this before, everybody wants to gloss over it, but it is literally the thing that got me going. My content was unique. People really enjoyed it, so they were sharing it without me asking them to. If you don't have good content or something good to say, something that's gonna catch people's attention and hook them really well, you're gonna struggle.

And I hate to say that, but it's true. Every other growth hack off the back of that. Either works or doesn't based on the level of the quality of your content. So that is like foundational pillar. So mean 30,

Darrell Vesterfelt: he hence spending 30 hours.

Chenell: You don't have to necessarily, but yes, that is one way to stand out.

Darrell Vesterfelt: So begs the question, what qualifies as valuable [00:09:00] content or what makes something valuable?

Chenell: Yeah, so I, there's been like, over the years people have had some version of this, but I think there's six things. So it's either you're helping someone save time, make money. Save money, make them feel something. So whether that's like entertaining them, making them laugh, telling a great story, maybe even make them cry at some points.

And then being able to, if you can combine multiples of those, like that is where the gold is. So I took these long, deep dive articles of like saving people time, of having to go through and research the whole thing themselves, but they're also learning something, which is the fifth one I didn't mention.

And then. I think those two are good, and it's also unique if you can combine multiples of those, that is really where the magic happens.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Okay, so say those again really quickly. It was feel something.

Chenell: Yeah, so it is make money.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Make money,

Chenell: save money, save time, make them feel something, teach them something.

Or speed to market, [00:10:00] which is just like. You are the first one to talk about this thing. Okay? Now a lot of people tend to try and do that last one by itself. I don't think that works. If you're not gonna help them with any of the other ones, like it's still gonna fall flat. Yeah. So I think you need to combine multiples of those.

Darrell Vesterfelt: That's really good. Super, super clear. That was, that was the number one question. People are like, okay, so what is, what is valuable content? This is where empathy becomes a superpower. Again, it's like, I think something that I often think about Chenell is like, does this even jump over the bar of something that you would read?

And I can't tell you the number of creators who I know are sending new newsletters that they wouldn't even read themselves. Yeah. So why are you sending it out if you wouldn't even read it yourself? Why are you sending it out to a bunch of other people? It's like that has to be a framework of like, is this even interesting to me?

Would I even read this? Would I be interested in this? Totally. It's actually the lowest bar you possibly could set for yourself. Yeah. Even before you kind of get into the that framework, make money, save money, save time, make them feel something, teach [00:11:00] them something. Or speed to market.

Chenell: If you're bored with your own content, like it comes through.

So obviously on the other side of the computer screen, everyone else is gonna know you're bored. They're gonna stop reading it and the whole name of this game is trust. If you have built trust and then you all of a sudden just like deplete it, that is really hard to gain back. Please take the time and focus on this stuff.

It is like the most important thing above growth tactics, I will say, because again, it just makes everything else work better.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Okay. So interesting contents thing one.

Chenell: Yeah. What else

Darrell Vesterfelt: have you learned from the most successful newsletters?

Chenell: They're part of communities or they've built relationships. And I'm not just saying that 'cause this is like a mighty thing.

Like, yeah. This is probably the, one of the other keys to the whole thing is like you have found your group of people, you are talking every week, you're sharing ideas, you're just being empathetic towards the other person's journey. Like this stuff is so hard to do on your own. And if you can find other people to collaborate with.

On the growth side, or even just talk through the bad times, the [00:12:00] good times, it's going to make a huge difference. But collaborations are a huge part of growth.

Darrell Vesterfelt: How have you done that? Okay. First of all, I just saw you two weeks ago in Idaho.

Chenell: Yes. And

Darrell Vesterfelt: so like I know that you like go to events and I've met you at events before, but like how are you actually building those relationships and building that c.

Chenell: Yeah, so before I actually started this newsletter, I was in Jay Klaus's lab. I'm still in his lab community, which he had an in real life event on the front of Crafting Commerce. So that was fun. It was like two events in one, so I was part of that, which was great, but honestly, I was just lurking. I didn't have anything that I felt worth sharing, but I knew Jay's content was good.

I trusted him. So I joined, and even now I am in a mastermind with five other people that I met through Jay's community, and we've been in the same group for. Probably two years now. So masterminds are a big piece of that too. So that was like the beginning of my community journey, if you will. And since then I've just started reaching out to other folks.

I met Caitlyn Burgo because I [00:13:00] replied to her newsletter and then she followed me on Twitter. And then we've had this relationship. Now it's really cool to see. So it's just the small things that you don't see that might happen in the DMS or something like that.

Darrell Vesterfelt: So finding your community, creating incredible content, what are the secrets?

Tell us all the secrets of the, the best newsletters out there.

Chenell: Still on that second piece with the relationships, I think most of the growth levers I've seen sustainably work over time just come off the back of collaboration. So whether it's putting together a summit like this, or you're doing a cross promotion and you're sharing each other's work in their newsletters or you're doing like.

A podcast guesting or you're writing a guest post, like that's still a version of collaborations, and I think those are the backbone of a lot of newsletter growth.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Yeah, I've, I've seen that be true as well. The, the folks who I've known who have built their brands or newsletters just buying ads or buying their subscribers, they're never as powerful as the ones that are built in collaboration with other creators or with other people.

This kind of event is the kind of event where you can do collaborations really [00:14:00] easily. That's part of the reason that we do it. So this is like us. Practicing what we, what we talk about a little bit and creating collaborations this way as well.

Chenell: You can get really creative with them. Like I recently did a 30 days of growth where I did 30 collaborations in 30 days every day.

I had a new creator come in and share one of their biggest growth tactics, and so I would share that out to this popup daily newsletter that I launched. It was kind of like a summit. But as a newsletter, if you will. Okay. This has always

Darrell Vesterfelt: existed. When I was blogging in like 2000 7, 8, 9, we used to do this thing where we would repost each other's blog posts on our sites.

And this is like collaboration and this type of thing is massive. Yeah. If you think about it, if you just break it down to its lowest common denominator, there's an audience of people who I know are already engaged. Who are not my audience. And if we can tell our audiences about each other, like these are people who are already engaged, they're already subscribed, especially in the same medium, and so they're gonna be highly qualified to be engaging in my [00:15:00] content if it's complimentary, if it's similar, but not exactly the same.

And that makes a lot of sense. If I'm just posting out an ad on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, that person's random. They weren't even necessarily searching for what I was talking about. I just interrupted their day and in the middle of their feed and then they showed up. And so I think collaboration is a massive part of success of your, your newsletter.

Chenell: Yeah, and I think a lot of people, when they're growing something from the beginning, they're like, I'm just gonna immediately go to ads. And I'm like, that is the biggest mistake you can make, in my opinion. I think if you can't get to, let's say, a thousand subscribers organically of just like. Putting in the work, figuring out what your audience wants to read, figuring out like who they are.

You should not be running ads. I feel like it's a waste of money. Yeah. Until you hit that like bare minimum point, I don't think it's a good, a good call.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Yep. I, I agree with that. Okay, so collaborations.

Chenell: Yeah.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Great content.

Chenell: And then the last one I would say is like focus slash time. This stuff [00:16:00] just takes time.

You can't even, if you got magically lucky tomorrow and you went viral and you ended up with 40,000 subscribers on your email list, it's still gonna take time for you to build trust with those people like. It's not like this stuff just comes overnight. If you look back at any of the top creators you follow now, most of them, I would say 99.99% of them have been at this for like five plus years in some capacity.

There are people who grow newsletters faster, but again, if you go back to the years. Before that they've been in this space, they've been doing this stuff.

Darrell Vesterfelt: I think the, so you're saying that the secret is there's no secret.

Chenell: The secret is there's no secret,

Darrell Vesterfelt: there's no shortcuts. Like I'm looking for the hack, I'm looking for the, I'm looking for the hack.

I'm looking for the shortcut. You're saying that that doesn't exist?

Chenell: Not exactly.

Darrell Vesterfelt: I think you said something here that's really important is that I think you didn't say these exact words, but trust is the foundation. Mm-hmm. For building a great business. And the way that you build trust is one of the key elements of trust is time.

Right? Yeah. And [00:17:00] consistency. Tell me about the consistency piece of it. So a lot of questions are coming up about, okay, so how frequently am I emailing? Do I have to do it every single day? Can I do it just once a month? What have you learned is the right frequency for consistency to exist after for building trust?

Chenell: Yeah, it's a good question. I think it does depend, but I would say most of the time, weekly is great. Daily is very hard, and if you can't sustain that, I would start small. Maybe you move up to daily if you really wanna get there, but that's a very hard barrier to, to keep yourself at. So I would start weekly if you can.

If you can only do two, two times a month, that's fine too. But. Have the goal of getting to weekly. There are daily newsletters obviously that do well, but you have to remember like the, every time you send a newsletter, you're gonna be getting unsubscribers. So you have to like continuously grow a little faster.

If you're gonna be publishing daily, you will have a more engaged audience. So I will say a lot of daily newsletters have like that core foundation of people that stick around.

Darrell Vesterfelt: I have a friend who's been sending a daily newsletter for [00:18:00] like 20 something years. Wow. And the level of in, first of all he has like 30 staff writers, so I'll like.

This is not for everybody. And he has built this over a long period of time, but the amount of engagement that he has on a large list is insane. But it's because he is built up that repetition. He has the ability to send out really valuable content. Yeah. On a daily basis. And by the way, like I'm not a daily newsletter person.

I can't even. I can't even keep track of that myself. So it's not for everybody, but that's, that's a pretty intense thing. If you have to start slower, you can but try to, to try to ramp up,

Chenell: or at least like maybe you write a few additions before you launch and to get yourself like to a place. However, I don't like giving that advice all the time because I think people will take that and they'll be like, oh, well then I have to get to 50 editions before I send one.

And I'm like, that's not a good move either, because maybe your readers don't enjoy what you're writing and you need to get that feedback loop as well. So maybe get like. Three weeks ahead and then start publishing. But I wouldn't build too big of a ramp for you.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Okay. I like that. That feels like a very practical, getting [00:19:00] started is having three weeks of content.

How do I decide, or how do I get to that first thousand? Like talk me through the mechanisms of getting to that first thousand subscribers. You said like do that organically. Do that naturally. Like what should I be doing from zero to a thousand? Or if I'm not to a thousand subscribers at which I would bet there's quite a few folks in the room who haven't gone to that point yet.

How should I be thinking about growing my newsletter at that point? Practical.

Chenell: I would say pick one social media platform and go there first if you can. You don't necessarily have to be posting on social, but start engaging with other people. This is what I did in the early days. I was commenting on other people's posts and just like, they would then go to my profile if they were interested.

They would subscribe and you know, get one subscriber a day or something like that, and it's super slow in the beginning and it's gonna feel frustrating. But just remember, like one subscriber is a whole person reading your newsletter and those people in the early days. A lot of them will stick with you over time.

So like just it, it's okay. But I would say start engaging on other people's content. [00:20:00] Start posting eventually, but I would just start engaging if you can get a couple of articles or issues published and then reach out to someone in the space and start building a relationship with them. Being able to then reach out like months later and say like, Hey, do you wanna do a cross promotion?

Like that's gonna start helping you build that. Feedback loop and that flywheel of getting other people on there. As much as I don't love social media, it's an easier way to get started if you're willing to do it.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Let's talk about the collaboration thing for a little bit because I have talked about collaborations a lot in my career and there's a ton of objections that come up.

Yes. And it's like all of a sudden it's like people forget like how to like build relationships and they're like, well, I don't even know what to do. So let's break this down to some of the common denominators of like if you're getting started or when you are getting started, what are some of the collaboration types that you did?

And kinda like walk us through step by step exactly how you would approach a collaboration.

Chenell: Totally. I think the easiest thing for newsletter creators is a cross promotion to start. I won't say they're the most [00:21:00] effective, but they're the easiest to start getting like the wheel spinning. I would say go to.

Other newsletters in your space or maybe social media and find other creators there and just reach out and say like, Hey, I would love to do a cross promotion. Like here's what I write about, that kind of thing. You can also take the approach of like sharing a lead magnet that you've built with them and saying like, Hey, I know that, you know, I teach personal finance for moms or something.

Go to other people who are talking, maybe it's like a recipe blog or something, and say like, Hey, I have this thing about how moms can. Do personal finance better If you go to them and say like, Hey, I have this 10 part checklist of like 10 things you could do too. Improve your finances by tomorrow and go to that person and say like, you don't write about this, but I know your audience would be interested.

And just offer that up to their audience for free. They share it with their audience, and then some of those people come over to join your list. So it's like those small. Things in the beginning, but they can have a big impact.

Darrell Vesterfelt: So a lot of people, I'm, [00:22:00] I'm guessing this is like triggering a lot of like the ick for people.

Like I've gotta like ask people to do this. Like,

Chenell: yes.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Like get, like how did you like mentally overcome that or emotionally overcome making that ask? Because I think, again, it's actually pretty simple when you start breaking it down to the steps here. But

Chenell: yeah,

Darrell Vesterfelt: it's simple and people just don't do it. Like what's your advice for people who.

Are just getting stuck. They're not doing it. They're afraid to do it. They are afraid. Maybe I'm too small, I can't make this ask yet.

Chenell: Mm-hmm.

Darrell Vesterfelt: What, what are some advice for like the mental and emotional barriers that we might hit doing this?

Chenell: I feel you, and I think that's one of the reasons that I went so deep in my research.

'cause I knew it was good because I spent so much time doing it that I wasn't. I didn't have any like qualms about sharing it, but if you know what you're talking about is important and it's gonna help at least one person, I think you almost have like an obligation to try and grow your audience and help help those people.

But you can do it like in private. So if you subscribe to the [00:23:00] person's newsletter, who you're gonna ask for, you know, to do a cross promotion with, once they send out a newsletter, just reply and be like, Hey, really enjoying your newsletter. I have this thing. Wondering if your audience would like it. What do you think?

And if they don't answer, it's okay. Maybe they were busy. Maybe it got lost. Maybe it was a no. That's all right. Just do it again and like, don't let that make you feel any less about yourself. Your content's still important. It's still gonna help someone, but it's just maybe not that audience right now.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Yeah. I think the hard truth here is you're probably not ready to grow your business until you're ready to have the courage to make these kind of asks in your business. And I think at some point, like there's a balance of pain, like which pain you'd rather have, like the pain of doing uncomfortable things and making asks for collaborations or asking people to sign up for what you're doing or the pain of not having a business that's sustainable.

And I think it's like, mm-hmm. It sounds like I've been there before and it sounds like that's kind of where you got, where it's like, okay, this is uncomfortable, [00:24:00] but like I want this to succeed so bad that I'm willing to do this uncomfortable thing. Even though it's uncomfortable because I know that it works and it's going, it's going to make my business grow and that's a larger priority than my comfort or discomfort in this moment.

Chenell: Yeah, I think in the early days I was thinking of it more of like a game so that I wouldn't. Associate my own like self worth to how many subscribers I had. But if I'm like, oh, I had five today and tomorrow I have six, it's like not about me anymore. It's about that number. I don't think that's a good healthy strategy long term, but in the beginning it can really help you do that

Darrell Vesterfelt: well.

It helps you take it not so serious or not, not take yourself so serious along the way too. If you're playing a game, it feels more fun. And by the way, the point of a game is it's supposed to be fun. So if you can make fun out of it too, it helps. So yeah.

Chenell: Totally.

Darrell Vesterfelt: How many nos do you think you heard to every Yes.

That you heard when you were asking for collaborations?

Chenell: I would say probably 75% yeses. So there were, there were definitely some nos or [00:25:00] like just ghosts like I never heard back, which is fine. I don't know. I think there is always going to be a no. And maybe it's because there's this thing where if a creator's been around for two plus years, three plus years, however long, and they see you just coming into the space, they're like, is this person gonna be around in six months?

Like, am I gonna put my name on the line just because they want to do this thing? So some, some people are, are more close to the chest with actually doing those collaborations. But if you let the time happen and you keep going with this stuff, over time, you're gonna get more. People reaching out to you to do these things because they see that you're consistent and you're gonna be around.

Yeah. So that's a big piece of it too.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Okay, so collaborations, um, okay, so going from zero to a thousand, it's consistency, it's asking for collaborations and doing collaborations. What else should we be thinking about from going from zero to a thousand subscribers?

Chenell: I would say refining your content, making sure it's actually something people wanna read, making sure it's something you wanna read.

Like if someone had sent that to you, are you interested?

Darrell Vesterfelt: Exactly.

Chenell: [00:26:00] Some of those early folk, the early readers, they're probably gonna give you some decent advice. You might hear some bad advice. So it's kind of a tricky balance to not listen to everything, but if you start hearing something multiple times, it could be something that you can pay attention to.

Darrell Vesterfelt: That's a good one. Let's double tap into that. Okay. Because I think I've seen both of these things happen. So thing one is I'm super passionate about this thing. But if I'm objective about it, it's kind of boring and people don't really like it. And I see people spend years and years and years, and they're being true to themselves, they're being authentic, but the content's just not that good or it's not really connecting to people or.

I see people who are listening to every single piece of feedback and they're switching up too often. And the reason they're not growing is because it's like, for six months it was this, and then for three months it was that. And for like, then I stopped doing it 'cause I was sad or upset that I wasn't getting the feedback I wanted.

Talk to me about the, the recipe here for success of like. Honing my content, staying true to myself, and then finding the level of consistency [00:27:00] to really see this thing through. Like how do you think about those three things, which feel like maybe they're pulling in different directions all the time?

Chenell: That's a good question. It's a hard answer because. On one hand, I could say, if you are super passionate about this thing and nobody's enjoying it, you probably just haven't found your people yet. Mm-hmm. And there's, there's truth to that in a lot of cases, but there's also like a marketing angle and like maybe you're just not positioning it right.

And so once people get in there, they understand and they love it, but you're not able to grow as fast because you're not able to explain it well on the outside. But I think there is something to be said about like. Again, if you're passionate about this thing and then all of a sudden you start making these changes that end up with you hating what you're doing, like that's gonna carry through through the screen, like there is something about energy and like the way people can understand how much is coming through.

It's a tricky balance and I would say don't change too much, especially if you have something decent going. But if you don't have something decent going, [00:28:00] maybe try some minor changes and see if they hit, and if not, then don't do 'em again.

Darrell Vesterfelt: I think this is like, these are the real questions that I wanna be asking people because the real challenges that people have here is like, how do I know this is even good?

Chenell: Yeah. How do

Darrell Vesterfelt: I know this is worth doing and how do I keep going when it feels like. It's not working, and I am spending a lot of time doing this thing that just isn't seeing results. And so it's like knowing the balance between like, do I keep going on this thing and I just haven't found my people yet, or is my content just not good?

I need to adjust and change. I think that's the real question that I feel like a lot of people struggle with, and I, I'm curious to, to, to dive into that a little bit deeper.

Chenell: Yeah. I, I'm always a big fan of like paying attention to how many replies you get to something, especially when you're not asking for a reply.

So if you put out a piece and like you really put your heart and soul into it and you got a couple replies, like, that's a good sign. It's not easy to get [00:29:00] replies. But yeah, I think. Paying attention to replies, see what people say. Are people sharing it with others? Like one of my favorite questions to ask in my welcome email is, where did you hear about this?

And I often find like people like these little pockets of the internet will start like sharing some of these articles and I'm like, oh, this is awesome. You can kind of like pay attention to those signals as well. But it's, again, it's hard. Because it's not like quantitative data, like you're not gonna be able to go into Google Analytics and like see exactly where every person came from.

You can get some of that, but not a ton.

Darrell Vesterfelt: We've got lots and lots and lots of practical questions that are coming up, and so I wanna just kind of go through a round of these questions and see where it takes us. But we've talked about consistency and you saying weekly is probably like the right rhythm to get started with.

What about what day of the week to send it on? Is there a day of the week that's better or not to send your newsletter?

Chenell: I think there's so many articles. If you Google what day of the week to send newsletter, you could probably find some pocket of day of the week. That's best. But honestly, like I sent mine on a Sunday [00:30:00] because that's when I finished the article and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna hit send.

So

Darrell Vesterfelt: I think this is one of those check engine like questions too that I'll say, and this is, this is not to throw shade at anybody who's asking this question, but it's like sometimes we ask a lot of questions that don't actually matter a whole lot. To stop us from actually doing the work. Mm-hmm. And some of the most successful newsletters and the successful people I know who have large newsletters are like, send on Monday.

And then I have people who have equally large audiences like never send on Monday. And it's like, okay, that just proves that because you can, you can google this answer and get like, probably all seven days of the week is the right answer. Just do it when what? What makes sense for you? I think the more important thing here is like.

Create the rhythm of consistency for yourself. And so for you, it's like Sunday, okay, I'm done. Great. Hit send. And creating that consistency and creating a system for you to be consistent on that day, I think that's more important than what actual day of the week you send it on.

Chenell: Yeah, and I, I sometimes kick myself for choosing Sundays because.[00:31:00]

I'm a natural procrastinator, so Saturday rolls around, I'm like, oh, now I really have to finish this thing. It doesn't really work out well for a personal thing. So

Darrell Vesterfelt: yeah, my Mike Mike's question is, what should I wear while I'm writing my newsletter? Okay, so it doesn't matter what day, what about what time?

What time of day, morning, afternoon, evening, midnight, 2:00 AM Is that another one of these questions or does it actually matter what time we're sending our newsletter?

Chenell: I think it might matter more than the day, just because if you're naturally like trying to speak to people who live in North America or like on the East coast or something, it's probably a good idea to send it like in the morning or.

Early afternoon versus like midnight. 'cause it's gonna get buried by the time they wake up. So I would say during the day of the time of the people you wanna reach, but there's not like a 7:00 AM versus 8:00 AM is better. Although again, there probably is data to back up multiple times. So yeah, I would just say like a, a reasonable hour for people who are.

In your audience, but if you're like speaking to gamers who are up until two [00:32:00] in the morning, like it probably doesn't matter. You could probably send it at midnight and that's a better time than others. So

Darrell Vesterfelt: yeah. That's good. Okay. We keep giving this question a lot. What platforms do you think are best for, for sending newsletters and I'll, I'll caveat, especially if you're just getting started and you're trying to grow to a thousand subscribers.

Yeah. Which one or which ones do you think are best?

Chenell: I think it depends if you have a website or not. If you don't have a website, I'd probably start with a Substack or a beehive just because it's easier. Kit is getting to a place where it's working with like landing pages and stuff, but I still don't think it's great yet.

However, if you have a website, I love Kit. It's like that's what I use. But yeah, if you don't have a website, I would say the other, one of the others is a great place to start.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Awesome. The next biggest question in consistency is what do I write about? And so historically somebody was asking about content pillars.

Hmm. Is that a thing? Do you think about content pillars or do you like just have one thing that you talk about all the time? How do I know what to write? Because writing a newsletter, [00:33:00] 52 newsletters a year, if I'm doing weekly, it's a lot of newsletters. So how do you think about what to write? How are you ideating?

How are you creating a list of ideas? Are you thinking about pillars or are you just kind of doing one thing over and over again?

Chenell: Yeah, I'm still really not thinking about pillars, but for me it was just like, okay, I have to pick a new person, and then I just researched that person. But it's the same concept, like it's still how did they grow their email list?

How did they grow their audience? So I think it depends on the topic and like what you're doing. Like if you're a service business owner and you're trying to grow a smaller email list just to keep potential clients. I'm interested. I think maybe a content pillar strategy could work well of like, here are the three big things that I talk about, and then there's smaller topics on the bottom of that.

If you're just getting started and you are just picking a topic out of thinner that you're hoping is going to be like your thing, I would say sit down. Create a empty Google Doc and try and hit 30 bullet points of topics you can write about. And if you can't get to 30, it might be a sign that maybe it's not the [00:34:00] right thing for you.

But if you're gonna have to write 52 in a year, getting to 30 should be kind of easy. Just remember, that's going to be a hard exercise over time, you will come up with more ideas just naturally as you're writing. Things if you can't hit 30 Exactly. It's okay. But try and get close to that.

Darrell Vesterfelt: I love that.

That's a piece of advice I've never heard before. Whatever your topic is, sit down and if you have 30, if you can't even get to 30 ideas, like it may be the not the right thing for you. Like that feels super practical. And this is a case where AI is actually not your friend. Yeah. Because AI could cause you to get really lazy and I could give you 50 ideas in three seconds, but if you don't actually have the.

Passion or the understanding or the empathy to write 30 ideas down about whatever the topic is that that maybe is a good telltale of why you should maybe choose something else or go a different direction.

Chenell: Yeah, and I think that exercise can also help you distill like the actual topic. So maybe you're thinking of like these big chunks.

Topics. But as you start writing that list of 30, you realize like, oh wait, that one is [00:35:00] actually five different articles that I could write. Mm-hmm. And so then you have like a little series that you could write. And so I think it could help you actually formulate your topic better.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Yeah. And the other thing I'll say is just keep going.

We have a, a mutual friend, Matt, and this was on YouTube, not on his newsletter, but it was like, he was writing about productivity, was was his whole thing. And it was like lots about productivity, lots about productivity, lots about productivity. And then he did something on the bullet journal and it took off.

It was like, went crazy and it was like, oh, like I found, like as I'm writing, I'm actually finding out like what's resonating with people and what's not resonating with people. And it's like sometimes it takes you. Doing the work and having responses and getting replies or the lack of replies, and that helps you kind of hone in the content and what to write about along the way.

Chenell: Yes, totally. Matt's great. I'm glad he found his, his little niche there. Same,

Darrell Vesterfelt: same, same thing. So your newsletter is free.

Chenell: Yes.

Darrell Vesterfelt: And monetizing a newsletter a couple of [00:36:00] different ways, but yes. Talk to us about how you like, or first of all, why newsletter, and then how to monetize it as, as like as you're trying to sustain this long term, but what ways are you monetizing.

Chenell: Yeah. Why a newsletter like it just in general for people? I just, I mean, email is just like the, it's never gonna end. People have been saying email's have been dead since, like the day it came out. So I just think it, it's going to morph if it's going to change, but there is something. Awesome about being able to just like send an email to a friend or send an email to 40,000 people and be like, Hey, saw this thing this week.

I really enjoyed it. Thought you would too. You actually land in people's inboxes and aside from other places like Instagram or even YouTube, like you might have 40,000 followers, but only like 0.2% of them will see that post, which is very frustrating. As someone who's creating these long form pieces, I would say email is just like a pillar.

Darrell Vesterfelt: One more. I'll say here, you mentioned this, I'm gonna double click into this, which is like owned versus borrowed. [00:37:00] I think this is super huge. I know a lot of people who have spent so much time building their social channels, and I think there's a place for that. But at the end of the day, if uh, email not changing an algorithm, we're only.

10% or 5% or 2% of people are seeing the emails that you send out. It's going directly into somebody's inbox so you can communicate with somebody, and no matter what changes happen in email, you still have the ability for somebody to see it. The other thing that I think is a low key that not a lot of people talk about is social media is often seen as a communication form of one to many.

Email can be written one-to-one. Even though you might send it to 40,000 people, you're communicating from me to this one person's inbox. And so it's one-to-one, even though you're sending it out in mass, it's a one-to-one communication and so you can just communicate at a more personal level than you can on social or other platforms.

And I think that one to one connection actually creates. A foundation of trust that I think is super important.

Chenell: And there's a thing where Justin Walsh had this huge audience on LinkedIn, right? He [00:38:00] had hundreds of thousands of followers and he was getting great engagement. And then one day he went to log into his LinkedIn account and it was gone.

He couldn't open his account, so he actually started a newsletter right after that and diversified over to Twitter. So he realized that pretty quickly. But you just don't have control over that with email. You could take your list and download it from Kit and go somewhere else, but yeah, you can't really do that with.

Threads or Instagram or anything like that.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Okay, so monetizing, so that's the why of the newsletter, why that is a thing.

Chenell: Yeah. So

Darrell Vesterfelt: monetization, and you do it a couple different ways, but talk to me about how you wanna monetize.

Chenell: Yeah, so I mentioned sponsorships before. Affiliates are great. I naturally write about creators who might have a course, so I'm like, I'm gonna talk about this course anyway.

I might as well sign up for their affiliate program. So that's adds a little bit into the revenue mix. And then last August, I also launched a community for other folks growing a newsletter. So that's been the bigger piece as well.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Yeah, and that's what I love. It's like when you have this owned audience, it's like you can do sponsorships.

That's a great [00:39:00] way to get started. It's really low lift, but then like creating things that are yours and you own is really great. So it's like, I think you started the exact right progression, which was like, alright, sponsorships, really low lift. All I have to do is like, have the audience and people pay me money.

And then it's like. Affiliates as I can sell other people's stuff. Yeah. And make money from it. And then it's like, now I can own my own thing. And we're gonna talk to Jeff Walker tomorrow, and Jeff's one of my online business heroes. Oh. And he talked about like, this is a thing that's been in my mind for years and years and years.

It's when you have an email list. It's kind of like a money printing machine because you've just gotta ask them what they want and need and you gotta go make it for 'em and give it to them.

Chenell: Yeah.

Darrell Vesterfelt: And it's like just doing that over and over and again, like that is such a sustainable, defensible business when you have an audience in email form in that way.

Because just ask 'em what they need and they'll give it to 'em and you can do that over and over again. It's such an easy way to monetize your audience is basically just serving people. All right, we've got a couple minutes left. What have we not talked about that feels really important when we're thinking about newsletters?

What haven't we, we broached it that you feel like is really [00:40:00] important for us to hit on?

Chenell: I think I'll just come back to creating good content. Like it just does not go outta style. This is like going to be, as AI gets even more and more ingrained into everything we do, it's going to be the way that you can stand out like period.

Like I think if there are so many people who are looking to just build. Audiences and you know, send out like a curated list of links that AI put together for me this morning. Like you have to be able to stand out and create something unique that other people are interested in and are going to keep reading.

Yeah. So I don't know. I will harp on that until the day that I die, I think.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Yes. Like laying in bed tonight thinking about. 30 hours for a newsletter, you've gotta create something that is worthwhile for somebody. This is something that the Mighty founder Gina talks about often is like, so much stuff in this world is generic and like we try to be so allergic to generic.

If you. Are not even wanting to read your own [00:41:00] newsletter. That's the first red flag. If you're not even looking at your content, reading your own newsletter, if you wouldn't even read it. That's step number one. And I just think reading compelling content is the basis for all of it. And what a waste of time and energy and like attention.

If you're spending all this time writing a newsletter that like isn't even interesting to you, and if it's not interesting to you and you care as much as you do, how is it possibly gonna be interesting to other people?

Chenell: Totally. I saw someone asked if you can just send out like a video in your email of you talking.

Yeah, I think that can work. I think you can also transcribe that video and turn it into like a short blog post as well. I recently launched a podcast and I'm learning that podcast folks and newsletter folks are not necessarily the same people. So I've been taking transcripts of the podcast and turning it into a blog post, and a lot of folks actually really prefer the blog post version, which is super interesting.

So I would do both if you can.

Darrell Vesterfelt: Well, Chenell, thank you so much for your time today.

Chenell: Yeah.