How to Grow and Monetize a Newsletter in 2027 (Full Strategy) | 153

[00:00:00] Chenell: I sent that first edition out to three people. Within 10 months, I had 21,000 subscribers.

[00:00:04] Nathan: Chenell Basilio reverse engineers how the biggest newsletters grow.

[00:00:08] Chenell: That’s out of thousands of subscribers to our email list. And that’s

[00:00:11] Nathan: so easy to do.

[00:00:12] Chenell: So you’re not creating anything net new.

[00:00:14] Nathan: Her work has been featured by The Hustle, Buffer, Creator Science, and more.

[00:00:18] Chenell: With newsletter growth, people only focus on one thing- Okay … which is growth tactics, but they miss the other four.

[00:00:23] Nathan: So what are those five things? Can we dive in with number one?

[00:00:26] Chenell: Insanely valuable content. This is the most important thing. All of these other things don’t matter as much if you don’t get this first one right.

[00:00:32] Number two is positioning.

[00:00:34] Nathan: Okay.

[00:00:34] Chenell: Number three is building momentum or distribution.

[00:00:37] Nathan: What is number four?

[00:00:38] Chenell: Conversion.

[00:00:39] Nathan: We made it all the way through the list. What is the fifth lever?

[00:00:41] Chenell: This is the one that I see no one doing.

[00:00:44] Nathan: Okay.

[00:00:45] Chenell: It’s .

[00:00:46] Nathan: Okay.

[00:00:47] Chenell: Examples of this.

[00:00:48] Nathan: If you say my newsletter, I’m gonna cry. I’m just kidding.

[00:00:50] We’ll get into that later. As the founder of an email marketing platform, you’d think if anyone would have their newsletter dialed in, it’d be me. But Chanel breaks down a bunch of things that even I could be doing better.

[00:01:00] Chenell: I have the actual- Do it … what it says on your-

[00:01:03] Nathan: Oh, boy …

[00:01:03] Chenell: website right now.

[00:01:04] Nathan: I’m nervous.

[00:01:06] Kara’s nervous. I’m nervous. Calum’s nervous.

[00:01:08] Chenell: Current headline on your site says, “Hello, I’m Nathan Barry.” That’s- Pretty bad. Like- That should be what you lead with.

[00:01:17] Nathan: Oh, wow. It’s a total newsletter growth masterclass. Okay, you wanna go to subscriber experience?

[00:01:22] Chenell: Do you?

[00:01:25] Nathan: Oh, here we go.

[00:01:30] Janelle, thanks so much for coming on.

[00:01:32] Chenell: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:33] Nathan: We’ve got Newsletter Growth Masterclass written up here. Yes. What are we gonna learn over the next 60 minutes or so?

[00:01:37] Chenell: Yeah, so with newsletter growth, I feel like people only focus on one thing, which

[00:01:41] Nathan: is- Okay …

[00:01:41] Chenell: growth tactics. Mm-hmm. Social media, tools, tactics, strategies, all those things, but they miss the other four.

[00:01:48] Nathan: Okay. So we’ve got five written out here. Yeah. So we’re gonna cover all of them.

[00:01:51] Chenell: Yes.

[00:01:51] Nathan: Do you think afterwards we can apply some of this to my newsletter?

[00:01:54] Chenell: Absolutely.

[00:01:55] Nathan: Okay. I think that’ll be good. And then if we have some time, we’ll dive in on monetization and some of these other categories as well.

[00:02:02] Chenell: Totally.

[00:02:02] Sounds good.

[00:02:03] Nathan: All right, so before we dive in, I feel like you came onto the scene in the newsletter space very, very quickly, doing these deep dives and breaking down, through Growth in Reverse- Mm-hmm … like, exactly how newsletters grow. And so you and I have kind of a similar seat in the greater economy of, like, s- looking and studying behind the scenes what works across, you know, hundreds of newsletters.

[00:02:23] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:02:23] Nathan: What’s been your experience of growing your own newsletter and, like, diving into this whole world?

[00:02:28] Chenell: I went way too deep into it at first. So, um, I was previously running Facebook and Google ads for clients-

[00:02:34] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:02:34] Chenell: and burned myself out pretty hard and decided, like, I needed something different. And I was on Twitter one day, and I found this guy named Mario Gavelli.

[00:02:42] Nathan: Mm.

[00:02:42] Chenell: And you had previously interviewed him.

[00:02:44] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:02:45] Chenell: Uh, Mario- The

[00:02:46] Nathan: Generalist …

[00:02:46] Chenell: The Generalist. His newsletter. Yes. He built his newsletter up. Was making 300 grand in his first year as a solo creator just writing this newsletter, and I was like, “How did you do that?” So I spent probably 60 hours researching his story, going through all the past episodes of podcasts he was on, going back through his Twitter archive and everything, and I put together this, like, 3 to 4,000 word article with screenshots and tweets of all the things he did and just showcased, like, here were the four growth levers that got him to 50,000 subscribers or more.

[00:03:16] And I wrote this deep dive, and I was like, “Maybe I should make this a newsletter.” So I sent that first edition out to three people.

[00:03:23] Nathan: Okay.

[00:03:24] Chenell: And then within 10 months, I had 21,000 subscribers just from- Wow … continuing to write these deep dives every week.

[00:03:29] Nathan: I think something that stands out is going a level above and beyond what everyone else is willing to do.

[00:03:34] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:03:34] Nathan: I actually went back to some o- of my early content ’cause people would say, like, “Oh, Nathan, when you started writing content, um, you know, you were writing much longer content than other people were, and you included a bunch of real numbers.” Mm-hmm. “And that made it stand out.” I went back and looked at it, and I was like, long back then was like 1,000 words.

[00:03:50] You know, I was like, “These aren’t nearly as long as I remember them to- being.” But putting in real numbers made a huge difference.

[00:03:55] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:03:56] Nathan: And so I feel like, in your case, taking this, like, research, analytical mind where you’re like, “I wanted to know this anyway-

[00:04:01] Chenell: Yeah …

[00:04:02] Nathan: so why don’t I distill it for everyone else?”

[00:04:04] And being willing to go deep- stands out in a huge way. And so it’s the same idea of, like, what David Sendrow does with founders or, uh, the Acquired Podcast was another thing of, like, no, we’re … This is not dumbed down. This is, this is for the person who wants to completely nerd out.

[00:04:18] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:04:19] Nathan: And the level of quality is far beyond what anyone else does.

[00:04:21] Chenell: Totally. Everyone thought I was insane because I would spend 40 to 50 hours a week just researching and writing these deep dives.

[00:04:27] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:04:28] Chenell: But it stood out, and that’s what made it grow so fast.

[00:04:30] Nathan: And so as a result, you’ve learned what works. Mm-hmm. What the, the five key levers are- Yeah … in the process. So should we dive in with number one?

[00:04:39] Chenell: Sure.

[00:04:39] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:04:40] Chenell: Okay. Kind of a great segue because it’s about content.

[00:04:43] Nathan: Okay.

[00:04:43] Chenell: And more specifically, insanely valuable content.

[00:04:45] Nathan: Insanely valuable content. All right.

[00:04:47] Chenell: Insanely valuable content is the stuff where people are just like, they can’t help but share it with friends, other people in their, in their space.

[00:04:54] Instead of just like, “Hey, I’m gonna put out this piece of content that’s, like, mediocre.” Mm-hmm. Like, no, no. Let me go super deep or give you the most value that I can.

[00:05:01] Nathan: I think the phrase that I hear people say around this is something like, you know, if you put it in quotes, “I can’t believe it’s free.”

[00:05:10] Chenell: Yes.

[00:05:11] Nathan: And you know, we’ve heard other content creators talk about this of, like, “I want my free content to be better than everyone else’s paid content.”

[00:05:17] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:05:18] Nathan: And if you do that, then you’re going to get a level of things spreading and sharing and sort of- that sort of thing. I remember when you dropped a, a Growth in Reverse issue about Sahil Bloom.

[00:05:30] Chenell: Mm.

[00:05:31] Nathan: Right? It was interesting because he was probably being talked about all the time- Yeah … ’cause he was such a prolific creator growing so fast. And so it was a timely piece, but also it was so detailed that people were like, “Oh, this is the kind of thing that I would pay for. I can’t believe it’s free.”

[00:05:44] Chenell: Right.

[00:05:45] Nathan: And so it ended up getting shared a ton and getting you a whole bunch of growth.

[00:05:49] Chenell: Yeah. It’s in. Um, it’s really cool when you, when the creators that I am studying, I don’t tell them that I’ve- Mm-hmm … created these things. They just, like, randomly find them, or a friend will share it with them.

[00:05:58] Nathan: Okay.

[00:05:58] Chenell: And so that’s always fun to have them come back and be like, “This is actually the most detailed thing about my growth.

[00:06:02] Like, thanks. I didn’t even know that I did this thing.” So those are fun.

[00:06:07] Nathan: I love that. I think when, um, Cannon Myers did a breakdown for James Clear, one of the things that he said is he was like, “Oh, that is smart. We just kinda started doing it ’cause it sounded like a good idea.”

[00:06:17] Chenell: It’s like this wasn’t strategic.

[00:06:19] Yeah. It just happened.

[00:06:20] Nathan: Yep, that makes sense. So what goes into insanely valuable content?

[00:06:24] Chenell: Yeah. So there are six ways that- Okay … I’ve seen people make something insanely valuable.

[00:06:28] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:28] Chenell: Um, the first one- I’m gonna jump over

[00:06:30] Nathan: here

[00:06:30] Chenell: and- Yeah, yeah. Go

[00:06:30] Nathan: for it … and we’ll, we’ll do a, uh, tactic and then go detailed- Sure

[00:06:34] right here.

[00:06:35] Chenell: So the first one is help someone make money. I feel like a lot of people are trying to do that these days, but it doesn’t have to be bro-y. Make money, save money is another one. Okay. And then save time. So you’re doing the research to save them 40 hours of studying this newsletter for them.

[00:06:51] Nathan: Yep.

[00:06:51] Chenell: Um, make money, save money, save time. Teach them something, giving them a framework or that kind of thing. Uh, entertain them. Make them laugh, smile.

[00:07:00] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:07:00] Chenell: Which is really important, and I think a lot of people try and skip that one. But, um, and then the last one is speed to market or- Mm … timely content. And so the key with insanely valuable content is you don’t need to try and have all of these in there, but if you can combine two or more, that is where it ends up.

[00:07:15] That’s the sweet spot for this stuff. Mm. And so for an example, um, I write deep dives. It doesn’t have to be a deep dive. And I think when I say insanely valuable, people are like, “Oh, it’s gotta be this super intense thing.” Justin Moore- Yeah … Creator Wizard, uh, he puts out a newsletter. He’s helping people get sponsorships, like creators get brand deals and sponsorships.

[00:07:34] Okay, so we’re

[00:07:34] Nathan: making money-

[00:07:35] Chenell: Right … with

[00:07:35] Nathan: Justin.

[00:07:36] Chenell: Correct. So every week in his newsletter, he’s giving you opportunities to reach out to these brands that are looking- Mm … to partner with creators. So he’s helping you make money. He’s saving you time by you don’t have to go search for these things, and he’s time- it’s timely because these are happening right now.

[00:07:51] Nathan: Oh,

[00:07:51] Chenell: okay. Like, these are open opportunities.

[00:07:54] Nathan: So that’s the… Yeah, I was just trying to find two, but you’re- Yeah … you’re saying two or more. Yeah. So make money, save time, and it’s very timely. And so I was like, “Okay, great.”

[00:08:03] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:08:03] Nathan: He also does entertain me in the process.

[00:08:04] Chenell: Totally.

[00:08:05] Nathan: But, but he’s not, like, going all

[00:08:07] Like, being funny isn’t his, his key thing. Right. Right? Whereas there might be other creators who are saying like, “Okay, I’m going to help you save money, and I’m gonna entertain you in the process.”

[00:08:18] Chenell: Right.

[00:08:18] Nathan: And you’re like, great. Let’s … You know, whether I learn something or not, I’m gonna laugh or I’m gonna feel good at the end of-

[00:08:24] Chenell: Correct

[00:08:24] Nathan: what you’ve put together.

[00:08:25] Chenell: Yeah. So that’s a good example of a not deep dive version.

[00:08:29] Nathan: Okay.

[00:08:30] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:08:30] Nathan: Who else has, like, a, a unique combination of these?

[00:08:34] Chenell: Yeah, so if we go back to Mario Gavrili. Mm-hmm. I love this example. Um- He writes for VCs and that kind of thing. And what, before a company goes public, they have to write an S1 report.

[00:08:44] Mm. And so those things are, like, 300 pages long. Oh,

[00:08:46] Nathan: yeah. And even if, like, I read them, I think of myself as, like, generally a smart person, and I understand, like, a quarter of what’s said in that.

[00:08:54] Chenell: Right.

[00:08:54] Nathan: And so someone who reads a lot of S1 reports can say, “Hey, here are the 10 things that are actually interesting or insightful.”

[00:09:00] Chenell: Right.

[00:09:01] Nathan: And so I can, I can teach you about what actually matters and save you a bunch of time in the process. And

[00:09:06] Chenell: potentially make you money or save you money- Right … from investing in something you don’t- Yeah … need to be investing in. So he would put out these, like, 27-page reports that would- Mm … distill those things, work with friends who are in the space, and actually have different insights into that specific S1.

[00:09:19] So…

[00:09:20] Nathan: As we think about maybe people in your community or others that you’ve helped along the way, any examples, anonymized or not, of someone where they, like, didn’t quite nail this, they didn’t have insanely valuable content, and you were like, “Okay, let’s make these tweaks, and we’re gonna dial up one of these six components to make it more valuable”?

[00:09:37] Chenell: Well, somebody in the community, uh, his name is Tom Orbach. He writes a newsletter called Marketing Ideas. And his, um, framework is actually just, like, here’s a quick thing. Here’s exactly how it worked. Here’s how you can do it. And then sometimes he’ll showcase other examples of it out in the pu- uh, out in public and that kind of thing.

[00:09:53] So immediately, like, he’s helping you potentially… He’s definitely teaching you something. Um, he’s saving you time, and he’s probably making you money or saving you money. Mm-hmm. Uh, you can go to your boss and be like, “Hey, we should try this, this new AB test. Like- Right … that would actually be really interesting.”

[00:10:06] And you already know it works, but your boss is like, “Oh, that’s actually a good idea.”

[00:10:11] Nathan: Yeah, that is an interesting thing of, like, often, you know, you and I run in circles of we’re, we’re making content for other creators or entrepreneurs or founders. But, like, making it so that someone who does that job inside of a company is the smartest person in the room- Mm

[00:10:27] always has fresh ideas to bring to the table. You know, you’re the little shoulder angel for them who’s like, “Hey, suggest this this week.” And it’s like, you’re gonna get a lot of subscribers who are gonna be like, “Great, thank you for making me feel smart and make valuable contributions.” Yeah. You know, ’cause ultimately, like, thank you for helping me get that promotion.

[00:10:43] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:10:44] Nathan: The other thing that I love about that angle is you’re gonna end up targeting such a narrow group of people, where if you were like, “Look, my newsletter is for media buyers at e-commerce brands spending at least a million dollars a month on, uh, meta ads.”

[00:10:59] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:59] Nathan: Right? Like, you could probably Through direct outreach, reach every single one of those people.

[00:11:05] Chenell: Totally.

[00:11:05] Nathan: Right? And you have such a, a narrow market, and then they’re g- they all know each other. And so if you get really clear on the promise, you know, and who exactly it’s for, it’ll ultimately help in growth, too.

[00:11:15] Chenell: Yeah. There’s a guy named Akash Gupta who writes a product newsletter. Yeah. And his whole thing is optimizing for the internal share.

[00:11:21] Mm-hmm. Which is like, I want this product manager to share this in their Slack with their entire team.

[00:11:26] Nathan: Right.

[00:11:27] Chenell: And then if they all sign up to his paid newsletter, then he gets all those customers.

[00:11:30] Nathan: Yeah. I, the, I love optimizing for the internal share.

[00:11:33] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:11:33] Nathan: That’s great.

[00:11:34] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:11:34] Nathan: And you think about some of these newsletters, you know, like Lenny Rachitsky.

[00:11:37] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:38] Nathan: His n- no one would have thought that you could You know, if you said, like, “Okay, if we’re trying to build a million-subscriber newsletter,” they would’ve said, “You would be great at product management.” Right. That’s the one. You would have assumed that then you needed to be in food or finance or some of these, like, very massive TAM-

[00:11:54] Chenell: Yeah

[00:11:55] Nathan: uh, topics. You know, but he’s like, “No, actually, there’s, turns out there’s a lot of people who have this job,” and then you can go one, you know, the, the founders care, the marketers care. You know, like adjacent people, it’s not just PMs. Uh, and then if you optimize for the internal share, like, it’s gonna get spread.

[00:12:09] Chenell: Yeah. I know this seems formulaic, but this is the most important thing. Mm-hmm. Like, every, all of these other things don’t matter as much if you don’t get this first one right.

[00:12:17] Nathan: Yeah. So within this, obviously, we want to choose two of those, but what else goes into leveling up content? ‘Cause I think we, we all come across these newsletters and is like, “Cool.

[00:12:26] Yeah, no, you’re, uh, you’re consistent with your newsletter” Right? Yeah. And it’s like, but is it great? Yeah. Are you super proud of this? Uh, how do you coach people through or, you know, tell them, like, “Okay, you know, if we want any of this to work, we have to level up the content”?

[00:12:40] Chenell: Yeah. I would say if you already have an email list, go get on calls with- Mm-hmm

[00:12:44] 20 or 30 of your readers.

[00:12:46] Nathan: Okay.

[00:12:47] Chenell: Um, I’ve heard over and over again, like Sam Vander Wielen does- Mm-hmm … she did 1,200 free calls with her customers. Recently, there’s a, been an example, uh, these guys who run a newsletter called ADHD Weasel, they got on calls with 300 of their customers, and they’ve just completely nailed the content thing at this point because of that.

[00:13:03] Like, if you’re struggling with this, get on calls with people. That is the fastest way to get the answer. ‘Cause then you’ll know what they need help with, what- Mm-hmm … you’re not providing at this point, and how you can change your content to do that.

[00:13:13] Nathan: I like that. Hey, just a quick note before we keep going.

[00:13:16] If you usually just catch episodes whenever they pop up in your feed, take a second to hit subscribe or follow. We’ve got some great conversations coming up, and that’s the easiest way to make sure you don’t miss them. Thanks so much for your support.

[00:13:28] Chenell: Number two is positioning.

[00:13:30] Nathan: Okay.

[00:13:31] Chenell: So this is essentially, once you have this nailed down, positioning is figuring out how to convey what’s inside of your newsletter.

[00:13:37] So like, your content might be great, but the way you’re talking about it is not helping you. Like, you might just say, like, “Join my free newsletter.”

[00:13:44] Nathan: Right. ”

[00:13:45] Chenell: Subscribe to get the weekly Tuesday edition.” And it’s like, we need a little bit more here.

[00:13:49] Nathan: Okay. Yeah. What are some examples of positioning going, you know, from, from mediocre to great?

[00:13:55] Chenell: From mediocre to great. Well, I was kinda just talking about, uh, the guys with ADHD Weasel. Mm-hmm. They, they actually didn’t start as a newsletter. They started as a, an app. Um, so they were creating an app to reduce food waste. So you could scan a receipt of h- what you bought at the grocery store, and you would know what was in your fridge and when it was gonna expire.

[00:14:12] Mm-hmm. So you do that. They figured out that that app only really catered to people with ADHD.

[00:14:18] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:14:18] Chenell: And they didn’t know that going into it.

[00:14:19] Nathan: Okay.

[00:14:19] Chenell: But by talking to all of their readers, they figured that out. Mm-hmm. And so they started changing the app, and they made it into, like, a meal planning app that was helpful.

[00:14:27] And on the side to grow this app, they were putting out content about ADHD and that kind of thing. And their readers are like, “The app’s cool, but we kind of just want the content.” And so they started the newsletter- Right … ADHD Reads Full, and now it has, like, 36,000 subscribers from 30-

[00:14:43] Nathan: How do they… Do they monetize beyond the app?

[00:14:46] Chenell: Uh, yeah, they closed the app down at this point. Okay,

[00:14:47] Nathan: so yeah, the app is no

[00:14:48] Chenell: more. Just the newsletter.

[00:14:49] Nathan: Okay.

[00:14:50] Chenell: So they have a paid newsletter.

[00:14:51] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:52] Chenell: Uh, which I know is not your favorite, but it’s work.

[00:14:55] Nathan: We, we, we’ll see if we get any newsletter hot takes. Okay. I just think, uh, there are better ways to monetize- Yes

[00:15:01] in some cases. Obviously, there’s lots of people, you know, who make a lot of money off of paid newsletters.

[00:15:05] Chenell: Yes.

[00:15:06] Nathan: You just need to be a prolific writer- Yeah … already. Like, I think someone who’s like, “Oh, I, I can put out three or four pieces of content a week, that’s no problem,” all of that, like, great, do a paid newsletter.

[00:15:15] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:15:16] Nathan: But the person who’s like, “I can… I just really struggle to hit the bar for insanely valuable content once a week”- That person should not run a paid newsletter because it, it hits your, your growth of the free content- Mm-hmm … against your monetization. Like, they’re directly at odds because you’re thinking what should be paid, what should, uh, be free.

[00:15:34] Chenell: Yeah. Totally.

[00:15:36] Nathan: That’s undecided.

[00:15:36] Chenell: It’s working.

[00:15:37] Nathan: We… I, I’ve dread that it’s working, but-

[00:15:40] Chenell: Uh, so that’s a good example of just- Mm-hmm … like figuring out how to talk about your newsletter. Tactically, that just looks like maybe a headline on a landing page- Mm-hmm … or what your LinkedIn bio says. Um- Yeah … a lot… I think a lot of people, they just don’t like talking about themselves, so they kind of just like hide it inside of that.

[00:15:55] So with positioning, if you can… If your landing page isn’t converting as well, where people aren’t, uh, as excited about your newsletter as you- Right … hoped they would be, this might be something to play around with.

[00:16:05] Nathan: Okay. So one thing that I’ve been thinking about is even how you iterate on positioning over time.

[00:16:10] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:16:11] Nathan: Like, we’ve been doing this show for 150 or so episodes and still struggle to talk about it, like, exactly the right way. And now with the book, Letters of Wealth, coming out, I’m like, “Okay, how do we incorporate more wealth, money ideas into it?” And so, like, a positioning thing that we’re trying on is saying, like, The Nathan Barry Show is where professional creators go to learn to build wealth or go to learn to build wealth or ha- Like, still playing with how to phrase it exactly.

[00:16:37] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:16:37] Nathan: But even trying to distill it down to something of like, okay, this is who it’s for, and this is what you would hope to get out of it.

[00:16:43] Chenell: Totally.

[00:16:44] Nathan: Now, my worry in that is we might be too in the weeds. You know, we’re talking like growth tactics or that sort of thing, which obviously, you know, we’re growing an audience in a newsletter so that we can make money, so that we can invest that money, so that we can build them off.

[00:16:58] Chenell: Right.

[00:16:58] Nathan: Um, so we gotta figure out the altitude. But it’s something where even doing a show for three years or more, you’re still like, “Okay, is this the right positioning? Are there any tweaks that I should make to it?”

[00:17:07] Chenell: Totally. And that’s another thing with these five is you have to come back to them over time- Mm-hmm

[00:17:11] because they don’t just stay the same over time. Yeah. So your content might change, your positioning will probably change, and that’s okay. It’s like this is why it’s beautiful- Mm … to have, like, an online business, is you can go tweak your headline tomorrow, and it’s not a big deal. Right.

[00:17:25] Nathan: Oh, there’s so many times where I’m Like, as hard as business is, and as hard as online business is ’cause we’re competing all, you know, globally and all of this, I’m like, “So glad I’m not in retail,” or what- whatever else.

[00:17:37] Yeah. You know? Like, “Oh, you wanna change your positioning? Great. You know, two minutes later- … it’s done.” Instead of, like, “Well, let’s see. If we contact our design agency, then they’ll get it to the factory in China, and then…” Yeah. You know? And in nine months, we can have new product on the shelves with new positioning.

[00:17:53] Chenell: Correct.

[00:17:54] Nathan: And even then, you won’t know how someone interacts with it, right?

[00:17:57] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:17:57] Nathan: Like, we actually get to AB test. We get to do everything.

[00:17:59] Chenell: Exactly.

[00:18:00] Nathan: I think about, there’s the line of the man who doesn’t read has no advantage over the man who can’t read. And I think of this in terms of positioning as well.

[00:18:10] Of like, we have the… In online business, we have this insane advantage of being able to get on calls with our customers, split test, you know, all of these things, look at analytics and all of that. And I would say 90% of creators and entrepreneurs don’t Take advantage of that Correct And it’s basically like being the person who, like, doesn’t read.

[00:18:32] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:18:33] Nathan: And it’s like you, you have all of this at your fingertips, and you’re insane if you don’t use it.

[00:18:38] Chenell: Yeah. And I think as newsletters grow, like once you hit 50,000, you’re like, “I got this nailed.”

[00:18:43] Nathan: Right.

[00:18:43] Chenell: Like, forget it. I don’t need to do this anymore. But it’s actually more important at that point because I think you’re getting more of a vast variety of people in your audience.

[00:18:52] And so it might change a little bit. Yeah. And that’s okay.

[00:18:54] Nathan: How would you… So b- in both of these-

[00:18:57] Chenell: Mm-hmm …

[00:18:57] Nathan: um, getting on calls with readers really matters.

[00:19:00] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:19:00] Nathan: What would you use as a carrot? How would you solicit for those calls? And are you trying to look for a particular type of reader, or is it just whoever fills out the Calendly?

[00:19:09] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:19:10] Nathan: Yeah. What do you use?

[00:19:10] Chenell: Yeah. I used to… I try and look for people who are most engaged. Okay. So if they’re opening your emails, clicking, replying- Mm-hmm … is probably the best metric.

[00:19:17] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:19:17] Chenell: Open rates aren’t super, like, like, valuable at this point. But if they’re replying to your content, that’s helpful. Um, if they’ve been on your list for a long time, you can ask them, um-

[00:19:28] Nathan: So you might filter down and say like, “Okay, I have 50,000 people on my list.

[00:19:32] Let me tag everyone who’s been engaged, who, who is, who is engaged now and has been on the list for at least three years.”

[00:19:39] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:19:39] Nathan: And then you might add a PS message to a newsletter or something like that, and say, “Hey, I’d love to meet more of my readers and learn from what’s valuable. Like, hit reply-

[00:19:47] Chenell: Yeah

[00:19:47] Nathan: if you’d be up for getting on a call.”

[00:19:49] Chenell: I actually did this last week. Um, I just sent a straight email to that segment. Uh-huh. I think it was, like, 1,300 people, and I opened up 30 slots, and within, like, seven minutes they were all gone. So I was like, “Oh, I think I picked the right- Okay. … slice of my audience.”

[00:20:00] It was great.

[00:20:01] Nathan: Turns out people wanna talk. Have you had any of those calls yet?

[00:20:03] Chenell: No, they’re next week.

[00:20:04] Nathan: They’re-

[00:20:05] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:20:05] Nathan: They’re all coming up. Yeah. Actually,

[00:20:06] Chenell: it’s Monday. Yeah. So, no, I’m excited about that. But I’ve done it before. Hm. And it’s just always so helpful to see who these people are, what actually is their pain point.

[00:20:14] Like, email’s fun, but that’s not everyone’s life. Yeah. Like, what is actually happening in their life? What’s the actual transition point they’re in right now, and how can I help get them to the next

[00:20:23] Nathan: one? Are there any shifts that either you’ve made or you’ve seen students of yours make after doing these calls?

[00:20:28] Chenell: Yeah. Um, well, uh, we were talking about Sam Vander Wielen. Yeah. Uh, she was selling these templates one-off, and she started actually bundling them together ’cause people were like, “Well, I need, like, multiples of these.” Mm-hmm. And she said that she could have actually written a full course on how to do this stuff, and she’s like, “Maybe I should just do that and make that my product.”

[00:20:46] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:47] Chenell: And so over the time with talking to people, she actually did that, and now she’s made, like, $10 million or something crazy with that one product.

[00:20:53] Nathan: Yeah, it’s insane. The ultimate bundle continues- Oh my gosh … to sell really well. She did an episode, uh, I don’t know, it’s like 10 episodes ago on this show breaking down her launch where she did over half a million dollars in the launch.

[00:21:03] At a time when everyone’s like, “Oh, courses are dead”- Correct … she’s like, “If you say so.”

[00:21:07] Chenell: Yeah, webinars are dead, courses are dead, and she’s like, “Not really, but all right.”

[00:21:11] Nathan: Yeah. Anything else on positioning?

[00:21:13] Chenell: No, I don’t think so. I think it just ties into number three really well.

[00:21:16] Nathan: Okay.

[00:21:16] Chenell: So.

[00:21:17] Nathan: What a good segue.

[00:21:17] What’s number three?

[00:21:19] Chenell: Number three is building momentum or distribution.

[00:21:22] Nathan: Okay.

[00:21:22] Chenell: But essentially, this is where people focus. This is the one that everyone pays attention to, and when their newsletter’s not growing or it’s stalled or plateaued, they’re like- Mm … “I just need to go back to

[00:21:31] Nathan: the-” What’s the growth hack-

[00:21:32] Chenell: Correct

[00:21:33] Nathan: that’s gonna get me to the next stage?

[00:21:33] Chenell: What’s the new ManyChat strategy? Mm-hmm. What’s the new social platform I should be on? Should I start yapping?

[00:21:38] Nathan: Okay.

[00:21:38] Chenell: Yeah. Um, so everybody goes to this one. And it’s important. Like, you need that distribution, but, um, I think people spend way too much time here and not focusing enough on the other four.

[00:21:49] Nathan: Okay, so l- but let’s say we have insanely valuable content-

[00:21:52] Chenell: Yes …

[00:21:52] Nathan: and it’s really well-positioned. Yes. Like, what actually makes a big difference in building momentum?

[00:21:56] Chenell: Focus. So pick one thing. Yeah. Try it out for six months. If it’s not working, move on. Mm-hmm. But I think most people try and do two platforms, three platforms, and they never get good at any of them, and then that’s where you kinda struggle.

[00:22:10] Nathan: What are the things for distribution that are working really well right now that you’re seeing across the board?

[00:22:15] Chenell: There’s a couple things. My favorite is probably quizzes.

[00:22:18] Nathan: Okay.

[00:22:19] Chenell: Uh, quizzes are working super well.

[00:22:21] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:21] Chenell: I can give you an example from, uh, my friend Charlie Dice. So Charlie had been writing a newsletter for two years about farming and, like, growing your own food and why that matters and all that stuff.

[00:22:31] And we jumped on a call in August of last year, and I was like, “You have these cute little pigs running around. You’re doing awesome stuff on the farm. You should really be on Instagram.” She was like, “I hate social media, I’m never doing video,” and I said, “Okay.” Uh, fast-forward to November, uh, mid-November, it was November 18th.

[00:22:49] We jumped on another call, and she was like, “Well, I work for the government, and October of this year- Mm-hmm … the government shut down, so I had nothing to do ’cause I was furloughed.” I said, “Okay,” and she’s like, “I started a TikTok account,” and I was like, “All right, keep going.” And, um, she actually started with a completely different topic about how she hit a million dollars in net worth by the time she was 35.

[00:23:13] Mm-hmm. And she was wr- like, creating these three-minute long TikToks, which I didn’t even know worked-

[00:23:17] Nathan: Yeah …

[00:23:17] Chenell: on that platform, and was like, “So I hit 58,000 followers in 30 days,” and I was like, “What?” And then I was like, “Hold on, you have to get subscribers from this. Like, let’s not just grow a following.”

[00:23:29] Nathan: Right.

[00:23:29] Chenell: And she was like, “Great.” And it, so I told her about Tori Dunlap- Mm-hmm … and Millie Tamati, who’s another great example of this, who are using quizzes partner or paired with TikTok and Instagram to be able to grow their subscriber list really fast. I think Tori’s quiz has now been taken, like, over a million times, which is just-

[00:23:45] Nathan: That’s wild

[00:23:45] Chenell: insane.

[00:23:46] Nathan: What is Tori’s quiz? Like, dive into-

[00:23:48] Chenell: Yeah. So her quiz, I’m not gonna remember the exact thing, but it’s about, like, how to be a better… like, how to build wealth essentially for women.

[00:23:55] Nathan: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:23:55] Chenell: Um, and so she gives you, like, four different archetypes that you end up being, and beyond that, each of those has its own different- Mm-hmm

[00:24:02] like, plan, if you will. Like, your better, best next step. And so I told her, I was like, “Do you know about Tori Dunlap?” And she was like, “I don’t.” And I said, “Great. Go read this deep dive.” Uh- Right. This girl Millie came into our, uh, community, and she was also doing a quiz on TikTok. Mm-hmm. Charli’s like, “Okay, cool.”

[00:24:19] And so she did that. She ended up with 1,500 subscribers in nine months, so she doubled what she had gotten from her first newsletter after- Okay … she was writing that one for two years. This was 90 days. Uh, now she’s at s- uh, 15,000 email subscribers in, what is that? A few months? Yeah. Like, not even 12 months, 10 months.

[00:24:38] So, uh, it’s working really well, and she’s monetizing it as well.

[00:24:42] Nathan: So, uh, what’s her quiz?

[00:24:44] Chenell: Her quiz is, um, her newsletter is called Building Quiet Wealth, so it’s just how to, like, what are the best next steps for you to build towards that $1 million net worth? Mm-hmm. And so there are four different options that you can end up in.

[00:24:57] Okay. Um, and each has a name and a different email sequence on the back end.

[00:25:00] Nathan: And then what’s the mechanism to go from short form video into the quiz? Is it just the link, or are we doing comment to DM?

[00:25:06] Chenell: Yeah. So the best part with the quiz is if you buy the URL. So it’s like Building Quiet Wealth Quiz or whatever it is.

[00:25:13] Yeah. You can show that on the screen in your video and say, like- Mm-hmm … “I put together this quiz. It’s helped 3,500 people. This person’s done a certain thing,” and you just have the URL in the back- Mm-hmm … on screen. So you can do it that way so that you’re not putting a link in the comments- Right … or in the caption.

[00:25:28] So that’s another way to do it.

[00:25:30] Nathan: Do you find that links, depending on the platform, are- Changing how the video performs in the algorithm?

[00:25:36] Chenell: Yes.

[00:25:36] Nathan: Okay.

[00:25:37] Chenell: I know some people are like, “No, no, it doesn’t matter.” I’m like, “Okay.” But I’ve talked to enough people who say- Maybe they say that … yes, it does matter.

[00:25:43] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:25:43] Chenell: But depends on the platform, but yeah, for

[00:25:45] Nathan: the- But you could also do that.

[00:25:46] You could say, you know, comment quiet wealth and- Totally … on Instagram. Does comment automation work on TikTok or

[00:25:52] Chenell: no? I think so. I don’t know if it’s- Okay … as robust as what you can do- Yeah … on Instagram, but you can do a little bit.

[00:25:57] Nathan: Okay. Yeah. So the quizzes have worked really well. And we- we’ve seen this, like, um, Gretchen Rubin with her, uh, Four Tendencies.

[00:26:04] You know, she has a book related to it and all this. I think she’s picked up, like, 500,000 or more subscribers off of a quiz.

[00:26:11] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:26:11] Nathan: Uh- It’s wild … someone really good to follow through all the stuff quiz related is Daniel Priestley.

[00:26:16] Chenell: Mm.

[00:26:16] Nathan: Right? He’s got a company around it. Yes. And, uh, yeah, there’s a ton of great deta- detail there.

[00:26:21] Chenell: Yeah. And it’s still working. Like, I talked about this at a conference in February-

[00:26:25] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:26:25] Chenell: in Austin, and these two guys were in the audience. And I didn’t know who they were, but about a month after the conference I got this email, and they’re like, “Hey, we took your advice.” I’m like, “What?” Which never happens.

[00:26:37] Yeah. Like, I love this. So I open it up. It’s, like, this five-page PDF of, like, “Here’s what we did. Here’s exactly how, uh, we’re growing now.” And the ADHD Weasel guys, they took this, and they turned it into, um, a Weasel quiz. Yep. And essentially, like, what type of ADHD are you, how to do all this. And, um, they went from adding 15 new subscribers to 127 a day.

[00:27:00] Nathan: Oh, wow.

[00:27:01] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:27:02] Nathan: No big deal. Just 9X growth. Yeah. 9X your daily growth rate.

[00:27:05] Chenell: Exactly. Um, and so they are now using that for- Mm … paid ads and everything too, so they’re just, like, growing super fast. And so this is still working. Like, that, that was in April.

[00:27:15] Nathan: So- That’s awesome.

[00:27:15] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:27:16] Nathan: Okay, you said something that makes me wanna have a, you know, a direct-to-camera segue for a second.

[00:27:20] Okay, what Chanelle said is- People took her advice, which they almost never do. This is the case for so many creators, where you put out all this amazing content, you go into detail. Most people say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” You know, and they dive into little bits of it, but they don’t actually do it. If you want to get to know creators personally, dive into their content, take their advice, implement it, and then reach out and say, “You told me to do X.

[00:27:43] I did it, and here are the results.” And you immediately jump from one of 50,000 to, like, one of five people who do it. Yeah. So if you wanna meet, meet more creators, do that.

[00:27:52] Chenell: Yeah. I had him on our podcast and everybody was telling-

[00:27:58] Nathan: And it’s like, huh, the worst-case scenario is you might try something and it didn’t work, and you’re like, “Okay, that’s fine.”

[00:28:03] Chenell: Exactly.

[00:28:03] Nathan: But, like, everybody consumes all this content.

[00:28:06] Chenell: Oh, my gosh.

[00:28:06] Nathan: No one actually puts it to work.

[00:28:07] Chenell: Yep.

[00:28:08] Nathan: And so you immediately- You really stand out … jump to the top. You stand out if you do it.

[00:28:11] Chenell: You definitely stand out. Yeah. And even if it does work and you don’t- you don’t tell them, it’s like, what was… Like, come on.

[00:28:17] Just do that one last-

[00:28:18] Nathan: Right …

[00:28:18] Chenell: send the email.

[00:28:19] Nathan: And it will turn it, like, uh, worst-case scenario in that is you… I guess worst case is you don’t get a reply.

[00:28:25] Chenell: Right.

[00:28:25] Nathan: But, uh, you know, most likely you’ll get a reply back like, “Oh, that’s so awesome. I’d love to hear it.” But it’s pretty likely that someone will say, like, “That’s amazing.

[00:28:32] Can I get on a call with you to learn more about what worked? C- will you come on my podcast? Will you-

[00:28:37] Chenell: Correct …

[00:28:38] Nathan: you know, do all of these things?” Because it’s so much validation.

[00:28:40] Chenell: Yeah, ’cause nobody does it. ‘

[00:28:42] Nathan: Cause nobody does it.

[00:28:43] Chenell: Please. Please.

[00:28:46] Nathan: All right, so quizzes are really valuable. Um, while I’m thinking about it, if you were putting together a quiz, let’s say hypothetically, you had a book called The Ladders of Wealth coming out March 2nd, um, how would you structure or suggest doing a quiz around that?

[00:28:59] Chenell: Yeah. Uh, that’s a good question. I think you need to back into, like, the f- four to six people that- Mm-hmm … this would serve best, and then from there, you can figure out what questions can I ask to, like, filter those people into the buckets.

[00:29:11] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:29:12] Chenell: Um, so-

[00:29:12] Nathan: So in this case, in mine, I have the four ladders.

[00:29:16] Chenell: Right.

[00:29:16] Nathan: And so we can do a quiz to identify which ladder you’re on and, like, what skill you should move ne- uh, learn next to move to the next ladder.

[00:29:23] Chenell: Right. Okay. And so you could ask people, like, “Do you have a day job?”

[00:29:26] Nathan: Mm-hmm. ”

[00:29:27] Chenell: Are you working for yourself?” Like- Yeah … “Do you have employees?” That kind of thing, and then help them get into that-

[00:29:32] Nathan: Yeah

[00:29:32] that plan. And then they’re, like, deeply into my methodology and-

[00:29:35] Chenell: Correct …

[00:29:35] Nathan: all that.

[00:29:36] Chenell: And then they’ll probably buy the book.

[00:29:37] Nathan: Yeah, there you go. That’s

[00:29:39] Chenell: the goal. They’ll at least be on your email list.

[00:29:40] Nathan: Right. Then I have the opportunity to sell them the book.

[00:29:42] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:29:43] Nathan: Okay. So when we’re talking about building momentum, uh, quizzes work well.

[00:29:46] What else?

[00:29:47] Chenell: Lead magnets are awesome. Okay. I’ve been in the online space since 2013, and I’ve seen lead magnets for years, but that they’re making a resurgence, and they’re just- Yeah … changing a little bit. So in the past it used to be, like, a PDF or a checklist or something.

[00:30:00] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:01] Chenell: Now you can do… I mean, a quiz is essentially a lead magnet.

[00:30:03] Nathan: Yep.

[00:30:04] Chenell: But you can also do… Not to bring her up again, but Sam, Sam Vander Wielen does lead magnets where it’s just, like, buckets of episodes.

[00:30:10] Nathan: Hmm.

[00:30:10] Chenell: And so- Okay … she’ll have specific episodes around, like, money, right?

[00:30:15] Nathan: Yep.

[00:30:16] Chenell: This is my horrible handwriting.

[00:30:17] Nathan: Oh,

[00:30:17] Chenell: yeah. So she’ll have specific episodes around this, and she’ll post a video and say, like, “Comment the word money-

[00:30:23] Nathan: Mm-hmm

[00:30:24] Chenell: and I’ll send you this

[00:30:26] Nathan: playlist.”

[00:30:26] Chenell: The, the

[00:30:26] Nathan: three episodes that I did on this, or the six episodes. Correct. Yep.

[00:30:29] Chenell: Yeah. And so she said that’s added thousands of subscribers to her email list.

[00:30:33] Nathan: And that’s so easy to do.

[00:30:34] Chenell: So you’re not- … creating anything net new. You’re taking what you already have built and just packaging it differently.

[00:30:39] Nathan: Right. Okay. Well, we’re suggesting lead magnets. Another one that I’ve seen work well is AI skills, right? And you bundle up some AI skills. People want that. Yeah. And you’re just like, “Hey, what, what have you already trained your agents on, or what do you use on a day-to-day basis?”

[00:30:53] Chenell: Right.

[00:30:53] Nathan: Um, and say, “Here you go.”

[00:30:55] Chenell: Yeah. And- And if you can do these well, that’s, that really helps. Mm-hmm. We’re running a challenge right now, and I built one to make… like, for insanely valuable positioning-

[00:31:03] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:31:03] Chenell: um, to figure out, like, okay, you have this content. How do you position it? And people are loving it. So, like, it’s, it’s more work-

[00:31:10] Nathan: Yeah

[00:31:11] Chenell: but you stand out, and you’re helping people cus- Mm-hmm … like, in a custom way without doing one-on-one coaching.

[00:31:16] Nathan: Yep, I like that.

[00:31:17] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:31:18] Nathan: Yeah, ’cause oftentimes people are like, “Okay, I’ll prompt the client to do this thing for me.” Right. And it’s like, ah, but you’re gonna get the worst result back.

[00:31:23] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:31:23] Nathan: But if you just implement this, you know it’ll be way better.

[00:31:26] The other thing that I love about it is you can… We always want to do the, like, cross the, the gap from, “Let me tell you what to do,” to, “Let me do it with you”- Yeah … to, like, done for you. And in that… And lead magnets always live in this- Uh, let me tell you what to do category.

[00:31:41] Chenell: Yes.

[00:31:42] Nathan: And so, you know, in this case, we’re able to jump ahead and be like, “Okay, let me actually do it with you at scale by giving you a, an AI skill for

[00:31:50] Chenell: it.”

[00:31:50] And you can almost combine these and say like, “All right. Let me put the transcripts from these episodes into a skill- Oh, that’s

[00:31:54] Nathan: interesting …

[00:31:55] Chenell: and just have it prompt you however many questions.”

[00:31:57] Nathan: I like that. Okay, what else on building momentum or, or, um, distribution?

[00:32:01] Chenell: People aren’t gonna wanna hear this, but I would say more volume on social.

[00:32:05] Nathan: Okay.

[00:32:06] Chenell: I think a lot of us are playing safe.

[00:32:08] Nathan: Mm.

[00:32:08] Chenell: Just to continue with this story, uh, the ADHD guys, they’re putting out 120 posts on threads every week.

[00:32:17] Nathan: Oh, wow.

[00:32:17] Chenell: Yeah. As two guy- Like, it’s just two guys doing this. This isn’t like Dan Martell situation- Yeah … or Cody Sanchez or anyone. Like, just he … Every Monday, he sits down and he writes out that week’s post, and he schedules them out.

[00:32:28] And throughout the week, he’ll just look for good formats that he’s enjoying, and that kind of thing, that he thinks are gonna work. And so I feel like sometimes we play it too safe with-

[00:32:37] Nathan: So we’re like, “Hey, I did well. I put out, um, I, I posted every day on the three platforms that I care about. Like, good job me.”

[00:32:45] And it’s like, okay. To give you an idea, um, I was texting with Simon Squibb’s team the other day, and they said they’re now up to 18,000 pieces of organic content posted every month. And you’re like, “What in the world is happening?” Um.

[00:33:00] Chenell: Wow. Yeah.

[00:33:00] Nathan: And, you know, they’re cutting things up a whole bunch of different ways.

[00:33:03] They’re repurposing. They’re, they’re doing all of the stuff. But another crazy thing that’s happening on social media right now is there’s not the same benefit to, like, growing a single account as there used to be.

[00:33:12] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:33:13] Nathan: And so a lot of these creators are clipping their… And not just, you know, do I have a couple great clips from an episode, but they’re growing tons and tons of accounts.

[00:33:22] Because- You know, a piece of content is almost as likely to go viral or spread, you know, from a, a brand new, like, 100 follower or 1,000 follower account as from a 10 or 20,000 follower account. And so you’ll see people grow a huge number of accounts as well, which is kinda wild.

[00:33:40] Chenell: Wow. Okay, so they have, like, multiple Instagram accounts or multiple-

[00:33:43] Nathan: Yeah

[00:33:44] YouTube- And they might have done… So if you were to look at a popular show, like let’s take the Kelsey Brothers-

[00:33:48] Chenell: Okay …

[00:33:48] Nathan: right, with their, uh, their podcast. You- if you were to deep dive, there are a ton of Instagram and TikTok accounts posting clips from their show. Many are owned by them. Um, many more are just fan accounts and that sort of thing.

[00:34:03] But, like, it’s the same idea of h- it’s just how do you get your content out there to as many, um, views as possible? Okay. And people care less about owning the relationship with the follower. It’s a wild world. Yeah. But your point is even as a solo creator who’s just like, “Look, I wanna j- um, grow my own accounts,” you can crank up the volume.

[00:34:23] Chenell: Yeah, totally.

[00:34:24] Nathan: There’s a version of this that’s just AI slop, right?

[00:34:26] Chenell: Right.

[00:34:27] Nathan: Where it’s just like give me a whole bunch of hooks. You know, cut this 10 different ways. Uh, how do you do this and maintain the bar for insanely valuable content?

[00:34:34] Chenell: So I think it happens over time, too. Mm-hmm. And, like, as you’re posting more, you’re getting more wins, so to speak.

[00:34:40] And so you have this library of content that works. Mm-hmm. And so you can repurpose that in three months or whatnot. And then over time you just, you’re not creating as much net new content and you’re just… But in the early days, yeah, you have to build out, um, frameworks to figure out like, okay, there’s this format that’s working.

[00:34:54] Right. How do I pull this into my topic, my content? And yeah, it’s just work.

[00:35:01] Nathan: Yeah. And you know, the more you put out, then the more you’re gonna find out what works.

[00:35:05] Chenell: Right.

[00:35:05] Nathan: Laura Roeder would talk about this years ago, um, where she would say, “You should repurpose your content.” And then I feel like Nick Huber is someone who got really good at that, um, more recently, like 2021 onwards.

[00:35:19] But it totally works- Yeah … to have a spreadsheet of your top content. You don’t know what your top content is. The easiest thing is, yeah, like, if you go on X and you just search from colon Nathan Barry.

[00:35:28] Chenell: Yep.

[00:35:28] Nathan: You know, min_faves:500. And it’s like, okay, now it’s only showing my posts that have at least 500 favorites.

[00:35:35] You can scroll through and you’re like, “Oh, okay. Huh, I last posted this a long time ago.” And the other thing is if you’re like, “Okay, I grew well on X. Now I want to grow on Instagram.”

[00:35:45] Chenell: Right.

[00:35:46] Nathan: Well, there’s a… That search is gonna tell you which topics, uh, performed really well.

[00:35:52] Chenell: Totally.

[00:35:53] Nathan: So, like, when I was… I, I was writing a slightly different book before.

[00:35:57] And I sat down with James Clear to talk about, like, the positioning of it, ’cause we have to get this right. And he came back, and he was like, “The previous topic was more about audience growth and creator business and all of that.” And he’s like, “People like to hear about you for, uh, about money.” Um, ’cause he went through and he was like, “Look,” uh, it was like something like 18 of my 20 most popular X posts were about money and wealth.

[00:36:21] And so he, you know- Like- Being able to use that filter of like what does the audience care to hear about you from works really well, and then you can apply that in a bunch of other formats. So I, I still need to do this, of go back through my X posts and make Instagram videos of each one- Yeah … of one of those.

[00:36:39] Chenell: Another thing that people miss is like you comment on other people’s posts. Mm-hmm. And sometimes those comments get really good engagement, so it’s like can I take that piece of content and turn it into my own? Right. And so I think that’s where you get… you miss a lot of opportunity, too. Mm-hmm. And you kind of forget that comments count as content.

[00:36:53] And so you can take that and add that into your volume play.

[00:36:56] Nathan: Yep.

[00:36:56] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:36:57] Nathan: That makes sense. What are you doing around volume, and how do you think about that?

[00:37:02] Chenell: Great question. Yeah. This is one of those like cobbler’s kids have no shoes- Yeah … kind of thing. Uh, I’m going to start doing this more because after hearing how they were putting out- Mm-hmm

[00:37:10] 120, I was like, “This is silly.” Like, I need to be doing more. I have so many growth levers and people that I’ve researched. And even just like- Mm-hmm … saw dust from this stuff, right? Right. Of like, oh, I found this really interesting quote that they posted, or like the Jack Butcher like this is pointless meme.

[00:37:25] Uh-huh. Like all of that stuff, like I can just repurpose that and talk through those things. So, I’m gonna start building this out with Claude and be able to like pull out those levers and just build- Yeah … a spreadsheet and go

[00:37:34] Nathan: to town. Well, and it’s kind of like if you… say you do these deep dives, right?

[00:37:38] Yeah. And you have deep dives of, of, you know, thousands of words and hours of research on every creator all the way across. Well, if you do what Sam did with the money idea- Yeah … and you say like let me draw a line around, you know, like what do these five creators have in common?

[00:37:51] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:37:51] Nathan: You know, they all use this tactic or technique.

[00:37:54] And it’s not brand-new content you have to make.

[00:37:57] Chenell: Right.

[00:37:57] Nathan: You can mine it. And that’s the other thing that AI is really good for.

[00:38:00] Chenell: It

[00:38:00] Nathan: is. Is saying, “Okay, here’s the type of thing that I wanna put out. You know, help me-” Repackage still an original work

[00:38:08] Chenell: Yeah. Or even just, like, listening back to my own podcast episodes.

[00:38:11] I’m like- Mm … oh, yeah, I totally forgot they said that.

[00:38:13] Nathan: Like Yep. Something that Kara on my team has been working on a lot is a library in Notion of everything that I’ve ever put out on the internet, and then all of my flagship ideas. And we’re, we’re pulling all that together. Which ones have illustrations?

[00:38:26] Which ones should have illustrations? And then mining every time I, I go as a guest on another podcast. What are the best ideas and stories? Have we told those stories before?

[00:38:34] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:34] Nathan: And, uh, it’s very, very powerful. ‘Cause another thing that I realized, I was always trying to come up with original content-

[00:38:42] Chenell: Mm-hmm

[00:38:42] Nathan: over and over again. What is something that I could say that I have not said before? And that’s entirely the wrong lens.

[00:38:47] Chenell: Yes.

[00:38:48] Nathan: Y- like, I remember listening to Jason Fried from Basecamp, you know, someone that I’ve really, really admired and learned a ton from. And if you listen to him on 10 podcasts, you’re probably gonna hear 80% the same content.

[00:39:02] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:39:02] Nathan: Right? Or Will Guidara from Unreasonable Hospitality, right? He’s gonna tell his greatest hits, his stories, and those are gonna keep coming up. And it’s like, yeah, that’s what… People wanna hear him share the hotdog story, you know? And- Right.

[00:39:13] Chenell: And you forget about them, and so the next time you hear that thing, you’re like, “Oh, yeah.”

[00:39:16] Nathan: Oh, that was such a good one. Yeah. You know?

[00:39:18] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:39:19] Nathan: Uh, and so it’s okay to tell those same stories over and over again in slightly different ways.

[00:39:23] Chenell: Yeah. I’m getting better at this. When I go to speak, I always create a new presentation, which is, like, the worst thing you can possibly do.

[00:39:29] Nathan: That’s playing into our mugs.

[00:39:30] But, you know.

[00:39:31] Chenell: But it’s helped me come up with so much more content now- Right … because I have these different frameworks and these different examples to share. Mm-hmm. So it’s helpful, but I need to stop doing that.

[00:39:41] Nathan: That’s right. Um, what is number four?

[00:39:43] Chenell: Number four ties directly to this one, but it’s conversion.

[00:39:46] Okay. So how do we take this momentum that we’re building and turn it into subscribers? Because we’ve all seen the people who have hundreds of thousands of followers, and they’re like, “Yeah, I have 5,000 email subscribers.” And I’m like…

[00:39:58] Nathan: Kills me.

[00:40:01] Chenell: Or I don’t have an email list, which is even worse.

[00:40:03] Nathan: Okay, that one actually kills me.

[00:40:04] Chenell: Yeah. Same. Um, so this is essentially, it’s a little bit more tactical, but it’s, you know, landing page conversion rate. Mm-hmm. How many people are seeing your LinkedIn profile and subscribing to your email list? Mm-hmm. How many people are… Like, so looking at the numbers and being able to tie back like, okay, is the momentum stuff work- working?

[00:40:23] And if not, maybe it’s positioning. Right. Do we need to do more volume with the momentum?

[00:40:26] Nathan: So- So then, you know, if you’re going, I don’t know, impressions to, uh, I guess-

[00:40:32] Chenell: Yeah, like landing

[00:40:33] Nathan: page … clicks onto a landing page, and then subscribers.

[00:40:37] Chenell: Yep.

[00:40:37] Nathan: I guess engagement is probably next, and then ultimately sales.

[00:40:40] But yeah, each one of these is a leverage point. People don’t focus on that nearly enough.

[00:40:44] Chenell: No. And so I’ll have people come to me and be like, “All right, I wanna hit 50,000 subscribers in the next two years.” Mm-hmm. “How do I do that?” And I’m like, “All right. Is this really important?” And they’re like, “Yeah, it’s the most important thing.”

[00:40:54] And then I go to their website, and the signup form is all the way in the footer. And it’s like, “Join the weekly newsletter.” Mm-hmm. And I’m like, “Is this really that important? ‘Cause if it is, it needs to go in the header, and it needs to be first.”

[00:41:05] Nathan: Right.

[00:41:05] Chenell: It absolutely needs to be the first thing.

[00:41:08] Nathan: So when I…

[00:41:08] Whenever I’m working on a talk, which similar to you, I write lots and lots of new talks, and I should not do that. But the question that like Mike Pacchione or Barrett Brooks or other people that I go to for advice on this, they always ask is, ’cause I’m like, “Okay, I’m trying to cover all of this. It’s gonna be great.”

[00:41:22] And they’re like, “What is the one thing you want people to take away from this talk?” I’m like Oh, it’s this. And they’re like, “Cool. So maybe let’s re-anchor the talk around that one thing.” And you’re building up to it and reinforcing it and all that. And I think conversions are the same thing- Yeah … where someone comes to the page and z- you’re like, “Yeah, it does all these things.”

[00:41:39] Like, and you’re like, “What is the one thing you want people to do?” “Well, subscribe obviously.” And you’re like, “Okay. So now, now that we’re clear on what the goal is, uh, look through that landing page and tell me is it clear to the reader- Right … what the one thing is?” And nine times out of 10 they’re like, “Oh.”

[00:41:54] Chenell: Right.

[00:41:55] Nathan: Right.

[00:41:55] Chenell: Exactly. Uh, so this is another thing. Like, my spicy take is, like, I hate Linktree. Sorry to the company. Yeah. But, like, those types of, of platforms, they really muddy the waters. Mm. And so if you have a Linktree account in your, in your-

[00:42:09] Nathan: Link in bio.

[00:42:09] Chenell: Yeah. Yeah In your link in bio, it’s like, “Go sign up for this product.

[00:42:13] Here’s my affiliate code for this.” Mm-hmm. And then at the bottom it’s like, “Join the email list.” And I’m like, “All right. But maybe that should be first,” and then you can sell them all that stuff from the emails.

[00:42:21] Nathan: Right.

[00:42:22] Chenell: And so I think we need to change our focus here.

[00:42:25] Nathan: Okay. So if we think about a good link in bio.

[00:42:27] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:27] Nathan: Right? ‘Cause that’s a lot of people are going to see, oh, this is an interesting account.

[00:42:31] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:42:31] Nathan: I wanna learn more. I click in. I always click in ’cause I’m like, do they have a newsletter? Yeah. Do they have a newsletter on Kit? Should I DM them and see and get them there? Uh, the things that I want in the link in bio, I wanna know a little bit more detail about who they are.

[00:42:45] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:46] Nathan: And then I really wanna know what do they have to offer generally for free and, like, that, you know, that email sign-up. And that’s kinda it.

[00:42:53] Chenell: Yep.

[00:42:54] Nathan: What, what would you say? Like, what’s most important?

[00:42:56] Chenell: Same thing.

[00:42:57] Nathan: Okay.

[00:42:57] Chenell: It goes right to either the newsletter landing page or your homepage- Mm-hmm … which is mostly about your newsletter.

[00:43:02] Nathan: Right.

[00:43:03] Chenell: Yeah. ‘Cause I, I know a lot of people, they might be copywriters, and they serve clients, and so they’re like- Mm … “But I want them to book a call.” And I’m like, “What do you think the chances are of them clicking the link in your bio and booking a call from there? Probably pretty low, but if you can get them on your email list and talk to them and build trust- And then you

[00:43:18] Nathan: have the whole email sequence- Correct

[00:43:19] that’ll get them to book a call.

[00:43:20] Chenell: Right. And so it might be okay to have that- Mm … as one of your call to actions, but if growing your email list is important, then- Yeah … showcase that.

[00:43:28] Nathan: What are some examples of people really taking one of these conversion levers in here and, uh, increasing them quite a bit?

[00:43:35] Chenell: Yeah. So one of my favorites is Drew Riley from Trends.vc. Yeah. Um, so he had a newsletter, and he was trying to figure out how to grow it. And I was … I wrote a deep dive on him. This is how I found it. And he had been posting the product, um … Was it Product Hunt? I don’t know. Indie Hackers.

[00:43:51] Nathan: Indie Hackers, yes.

[00:43:51] Chenell: Indie Hackers. And he saw this other guy named Dan, who actually runs TLDR- a huge newsletter. And Dan was like, “Hey, my sign-up page converts at 40%.” And Dan, or Drew was like, “How did you do that?” Like, and you could see him just being, like, really excited about this. And then he spent the next year figuring this out, and I found 17 iterations of his landing page.

[00:44:14] Mm. And so it went from, like, really confusing headline. Yep. He changed the headline. He dropped one of the form fields ’cause he was asking, like, name and email, so he dropped the name. He added, like, social proof on it. Mm-hmm. And there were just different iterations, and now h- it’s converting at over 40%.

[00:44:28] Nathan: That’s awesome.

[00:44:29] Chenell: Yeah. And so just the consistency and, like, actually focusing on this thing- Mm-hmm … actually helped that, so.

[00:44:34] Nathan: You know, if we think about the conversion points that matter most, like the on page conversion is one of those. Yeah Like, of visitors coming through the page to subscribers. That matters really a lot.

[00:44:48] One of my pet peeves though is when people say, like, “Oh, your landing page converts at 40%, so let me copy paste that- Yeah … and tweak a few details, and that design will convert at the same rate for me.” ‘Cause they totally miss the fact that the, like, the impressions and the intent coming through the funnel matters.

[00:45:04] That’s at least half of the-

[00:45:05] Chenell: Yeah …

[00:45:06] Nathan: of the conversion. And so the two points that I would focus on- Is like the quality of the impressions that you’re getting-

[00:45:11] Chenell: Mm-hmm …

[00:45:11] Nathan: and then how you’re converting them to subscribers.

[00:45:13] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:45:14] Nathan: I think that matters most.

[00:45:15] Chenell: Well, funny enough, I stole Drew Riley’s landing page.

[00:45:18] Uh-huh. And it did convert at 40%.

[00:45:19] Nathan: Did it really?

[00:45:20] Chenell: But it did change up like the headline- Yeah … and everything. But yeah, it was the same layout. Like, it looked pretty close. There was no extra links on it. Yeah. You couldn’t do anything but sign up. And so I think people just muddy the waters, and they wanna add- Mm-hmm

[00:45:30] recent posts and all this other stuff to that page, and it’s like, “Get the email. Thank you.”

[00:45:35] Nathan: Yeah. You can do all, everything else later- Yeah … once you have the email address.

[00:45:38] Chenell: Exactly.

[00:45:39] Nathan: Yep. I like it. Um, what else on conversion?

[00:45:41] Chenell: I mean, if we’re talking about conversion, we wanna talk about free to paid newsletters or- Yeah

[00:45:45] selling products and that kind of thing. Yep,

[00:45:47] Nathan: the money side of it- Yeah. … ’cause you’re right. We’re underlining things.

[00:45:51] Chenell: Go back to this money thing over here.

[00:45:52] Nathan: Profit lets you do it again tomorrow, so.

[00:45:55] Chenell: Again, you actually talked about this, and I was gonna bring it up, but the quality of the impressions is so- Mm-hmm

[00:45:59] key with this. You can build so much momentum, but if you’re bringing the wrong person, and you’re just- Mm … trying to get views for the sake of having views- Right … it’s not really gonna be helpful. And so you can do all these new formats and, like, get not great people to- Mm-hmm … watch your stuff, and then you get to this point, and you’re like, “Why is nobody signing up?”

[00:46:16] Mm. And it’s like, so you really wanna be intentional about who you’re creating content for and not just trying to go super, super wide. It works- Yeah … to an extent, but yeah.

[00:46:25] Nathan: Okay. So something interesting on this. There’s a lot of formats. Let’s see if you did like five AI tools for this or, like, this, the versus that or, um, these are the things that feel kind of gimmicky.

[00:46:35] And I’m always, like, on the line of this because sometimes you wanna try new things, and I think you should, right? Like, it’s, uh, it’s such a low-risk thing to do. Uh, Taki Moore is someone who I think puts out the most interesting content, and I, I love his approach to all this stuff. And he hates it when Dan Martell, who’s one of his close friends, does, like, any formulaic whatever.

[00:46:55] And so Taki will make fun of Dan all the time for this. Now, Dan also has, like, millions of followers, and it’s working and-

[00:47:01] Chenell: Yeah …

[00:47:01] Nathan: whatever.

[00:47:01] Chenell: Definitely working.

[00:47:02] Nathan: But, and so I was talking with Taki, and he was like, “Yeah, this, these formats suck,” all of that stuff. And I was like, “I’ve done some of those.” And in the next conversation, ’cause we’re at an event together, next conversation is the president of one of the largest sporting goods companies, uh, in America, who was like, “Hey, I love that, like, this versus that AI one that you did.

[00:47:22] It was so good. I loved hearing your take on AI.” And it was like- I don’t know what to think. And I was like, you wa- you watch that. Um, one thing that it made me think of though is, like, don’t get … don’t let a, a particular format get in the way of just putting out volume. Mm. Like, ’cause people want to hear your take on it.

[00:47:41] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:47:41] Nathan: It’s an interesting balance of, like, you do want to teach the right things. The whole, like, audience versus crowd. I, I don’t know.

[00:47:48] Chenell: Yeah, no, totally. And, like, the, the format to volume thing, totally. Mm-hmm. Like, if I was trying to put out three deep dives a week, I would not be able to do that. Mm. Right.

[00:47:56] Like, that would be very stressful. But, um, one a week is good, and then you can break that into smaller segments for- Yeah … social.

[00:48:02] Nathan: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So diving in. Conversion for money. Mm-hmm. Uh, the audience matters a lot.

[00:48:07] Chenell: Yes.

[00:48:07] Nathan: Um, au- audience or intent.

[00:48:09] Chenell: So this all also tie … These, these kind of tie together because the positioning of how you talk about your paid product is going to- Mm

[00:48:16] really impact this as well. And so this is why I love getting these right first- Yeah … and trying to figure this out.

[00:48:22] Nathan: Does anyone come to mind of, of … or an example of someone really nailing the positioning of their paid product?

[00:48:27] Chenell: I feel like Pat Walls did this really well with Starter Story. Okay. Um-

[00:48:31] Nathan: I don’t even know.

[00:48:31] What is his paid product?

[00:48:32] Chenell: So he had … It, it’s changed,

[00:48:34] Nathan: but- Yeah. Well, I mean, and then he sold the whole business to HubSpot. True. Did quite well, so.

[00:48:38] Chenell: Clearly it worked. It was, like, an annual membership. Mm. And you just … You could read three different, uh, stories, like starter stories.

[00:48:46] Nathan: Yep.

[00:48:46] Chenell: Uh, he would put out, I think, like, 15 a month.

[00:48:48] And you could read- That’s a good amount of volume … three for free a month. And then if you wanted to keep reading more-

[00:48:52] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[00:48:53] Chenell: you had to pay. And so it was, like, gated content almost. It was kind of like a paid newsletter, but not.

[00:48:58] Nathan: Oh, but what’s interesting is he was able to have … He didn’t have to decide this one is free or paid.

[00:49:04] Right. It was each person gets three.

[00:49:06] Chenell: It was like a metered situation. Yeah. Yeah. And so over time, he started adding in more, um- Mm … things to this paid side of things. So he would add a full database that you could filter based on the different types of businesses- Right … you wanted to study. Um, or he would almost make it like a paid newsletter at the bottom.

[00:49:21] Certain things would be gated. Mm-hmm. And so I think he did this really well because all of his content was just about how do you get started.

[00:49:27] Nathan: Right.

[00:49:27] Chenell: These are ideas for businesses. This is what’s working. Here’s how they grew. And the paid product was just like, “Here’s more of those.” Right. And you can get

[00:49:35] You can go way deeper.

[00:49:37] Nathan: Something that I do like in a paid newsletter or any of this gated content is when the bulk of it is free.

[00:49:44] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:45] Nathan: And then the expert, the person who wants the deep dive, wants to go to the paid.

[00:49:49] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:49:49] Nathan: So a great example of this is Sacra. Okay. Which they do these business deep dives.

[00:49:54] And so now they rank for a bunch of things. So, like, um, a friend is interviewing for a job at Attentive, the, like, social media … or the text messaging platform. So I was like, “What is their revenue?” And it’s like Google it. And the Sacra post that comes up, like their deep dive- And they have a lot of information there for free.

[00:50:11] But if you want the graphs and the specifics-

[00:50:13] Chenell: Mm-hmm …

[00:50:13] Nathan: there’s just another, like, 20% –

[00:50:15] Chenell: Yeah …

[00:50:16] Nathan: that requires being, uh, I believe, a paying member. And maybe they give you a few for free if you put in your email address or some- something like that. But it was like they got all the top-of-funnel traffic because it is the best for free, right?

[00:50:28] I can’t believe it’s free.

[00:50:29] Chenell: Yep.

[00:50:30] Nathan: But, like- If you’re an industry professional- Yeah … you’re paying for this because you need to know the specifics and the details.

[00:50:37] Chenell: Exactly. Yeah. Uh, so the ADHD guys, they have a paid newsletter, and most of it’s free. Mm-hmm. And at the bottom there’s, like, worksheets and ways to go deeper and actually im- implement this stuff.

[00:50:46] Right. And that’s what their readers wanted. And so they did that, but they gave it to only the paid users.

[00:50:51] Nathan: Yeah, that’s awesome. And there’s still a ton of value for the free users.

[00:50:53] Chenell: Totally. Yeah.

[00:50:54] Nathan: Okay. Okay, so number five. We made it all the way through the list. What is the fifth lever?

[00:50:59] Chenell: This is the one that I see no one doing.

[00:51:01] Nathan: Okay.

[00:51:03] Chenell: Uh, it’s subscriber experience.

[00:51:05] Nathan: Okay.

[00:51:06] Chenell: You’ve done all this work, you’ve created the content, you’ve positioned it well, you’re driving traffic to it, people are converting. But then they subscribe to your newsletter and it’s almost like crickets, or the experience isn’t great. So examples of this, um-

[00:51:20] Nathan: If you say my newsletter I’m gonna cry.

[00:51:22] I’m just kidding. We’ll get into that later.

[00:51:24] Chenell: Uh, so someone subscribes. The form just says success, and then it’s like- Yeah …

[00:51:31] Nathan: cool. Okay.

[00:51:32] Chenell: These people are the most excited about your content that they will ever be.

[00:51:35] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:51:36] Chenell: And you’re showing them this little green box that says success.

[00:51:39] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:39] Chenell: Um, I highly recommend people redirect that to what I call an almost there page.

[00:51:45] Okay. So it’s like- Yeah … you’re almost there.

[00:51:47] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:47] Chenell: But actually go check your email, go reply, go do this extra action, whatever that ends up being. And that is just such a better experience for people than success. And it’s like, okay. Right. Now then they just… They might get your welcome email, but maybe they didn’t go to their inbox to check it because you didn’t tell them to.

[00:52:06] Mm-hmm. So I really enjoy this kind of thing. Mine is really corny, and it’s just like me pointing at like, “Hey, you’re almost there, but go click this thing.” Um, so that helps a lot. It also helps with deliverability- Mm-hmm … because they’re replying, they’re taking action. The other thing you can do on the almost there page, um, sometimes welcome emails take two to three minutes to actually go through.

[00:52:24] Nathan: Right.

[00:52:25] Chenell: And so what I have been doing is using Brendan Dunn’s Right Message! and asking questions on that page. Mm-hmm. And so like, do you have a newsletter? How many subscribers do you have? And so getting that first party data to be able to then help them further down the line. Yeah. And like 80% of people finish those questions, and then I’m like- How do

[00:52:46] Nathan: you end up using that data later on?

[00:52:48] Chenell: So that’s how I can get on calls with people, ’cause I’m like- Oh … all right, you have a newsletter. I wanna talk to people who have a newsletter generally. Um, how many subscribers do you have? How long have you been doing this? And so I can use that to get on calls. I can also use that to segment people and sell them products later.

[00:53:03] Right. Or say, “Hey, I have coaching open. You should- Mm-hmm … book a spot.” And so that’s really helpful. And you’re giving them something to do right away, and you’re not just like- Dropping them out into the ether.

[00:53:15] Nathan: Yep. Yeah. I like that. What else matters in subscriber experience?

[00:53:19] Chenell: So once they get to your inbox, you wanna ask them to reply, obviously.

[00:53:24] Okay. Get deliverability signals going. Um, the welcome email is super important, and I think people just kinda phone it in and write it once, and then don’t think about it again for three years.

[00:53:34] Nathan: But- What makes a great welcome email?

[00:53:37] Chenell: Uh, it depends on what your goal is and what you’re trying to do. But generally, like, “Hey, thanks for subscribing.

[00:53:42] Here’s some great content.” Or simple, I like to do a two-step welcome email. So it’s like, “Hit reply and let me know how you found the newsletter.” So then I’m getting them to reply. Mm-hmm. It’s an easy question for someone to answer. And then an hour later or two hours later, I’ll send like, “Hey, here’s how to get started,” or- Right

[00:53:59] “Here’s this thing.” If I’m sending a lead magnet, I can say, “Did you get it? Did you open it? Did you engage with it?” That kinda thing. Um, and just kinda getting people into…

[00:54:08] Nathan: Something that we’re playing with, because, uh, reply automations work so well on Instagram-

[00:54:14] Chenell: Mm-hmm …

[00:54:15] Nathan: we’re playing with doing that in email as well.

[00:54:18] And so actually automating, you know, “Hey, I wrote this…” You know, say in a broadcast, y- I might say, “Hey, I wrote this guide on career growth,” or something.

[00:54:26] Chenell: Yeah. ”

[00:54:27] Nathan: Just reply ‘guide’ and I’ll send it to you.” And obviously you could just have them click a link.

[00:54:32] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:32] Nathan: But, like, it’s a different level of engagement of like, oh, I’m actually interacting.

[00:54:36] And then you could send the automated email. Uh, and then you can tag people as having replied.

[00:54:42] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:54:42] Nathan: Um, it obviously helps your deliverability. Yes. Our, our deliverability team was already doing this. When someone brings over a list that in Google Postmaster Tools is, like, mid health, you know, or something like that like, okay, well, we’re gonna have a strategy to generate replies.

[00:54:57] Chenell: Right.

[00:54:57] Nathan: Um, another thing, one of the lead magnets for, uh, the Letters of Wealth book- is an email course on how to build your audience. ‘Cause, you know, chapter 19 in the book is all about how an audience helps you build wealth. And so it’s like, okay, well, let’s break that down. And so it’s a seven-day email course, but if at the end of any email cour- a- any email, if you don’t wanna wait till the next day, you can reply, and it will then send you the next one right away.

[00:55:23] And so like, ooh, am I just generating, able to generate like seven replies, seven votes in, you know, in Google and all of that to be like- Yeah … no, this is a good newsletter. It should then, it should be in the primary tab. It should be-

[00:55:34] Chenell: Totally …

[00:55:34] Nathan: you know, not marked as spam.

[00:55:36] Chenell: That’s awesome. ‘Cause I’ve just been doing this with Zapier.

[00:55:38] Uh-huh. So if someone replies, it tags them as replied. So then I can, like, in Kit say, “Oh, yeah, this person’s more engaged or whatnot.” So- Yeah …

[00:55:46] Nathan: it’s exciting. Yeah, there is, there is an app in the Kit app store coming out that will do exactly this.

[00:55:49] Chenell: Awesome.

[00:55:50] Nathan: Anything else in subscriber experience?

[00:55:52] Chenell: Um, yeah, I mean, there’s a million things here.

[00:55:54] Mm-hmm. So as nerdy as it sounds, I think the internet needs to be a more fun place. And so- … let’s, like, just scrap everything that everyone does right now as like- Yeah … oh, let’s just do the norm. So, uh, there’s a million things you can do. Uh, Caitlin Burgoyne does a good thing where it’s like a reverse lead magnet, so she’s, like, surprising you with something free after you sign up.

[00:56:14] Mm-hmm. Um, I like, there’s a newsletter called 1440.

[00:56:17] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:56:18] Chenell: And, um, after 30 days they’ll send you… Is it 30? No, it’s 14 days ’cause they’re a daily newsletter.

[00:56:23] Nathan: Okay.

[00:56:23] Chenell: They send you an email, and they’re like, “Hey, we’re the founders. We just wanna make sure you’re having a ex- good experience. Like, here’s this extra content or whatnot.”

[00:56:30] And so it’s just, like, coming into the space with surprising people instead of just- Yeah … phoning it in and being like, “Here’s my newsletter.” And so when you can just, like, surprise people, I think that really helps.

[00:56:40] Nathan: One of my favorite books is by Derek Sivers, and it’s Anything You Want.

[00:56:43] Chenell: Okay.

[00:56:44] Nathan: And so he was the founder of CD Baby, which was the first way that musicians could sell music online, basically.

[00:56:50] And they had this incredible, like, post-purchase email, and it w- it just, and if, if anyone Googles it, they can find it, but it’s all about how, you know, they lovingly took your CD off of the shelf. And, like- … people had a moment of silence as it was packed in, and they had a parade through the streets of Portland as they brought it, you know, like, as they brought it to, uh, the post office and all this.

[00:57:12] It’s just, like, this moment of delight.

[00:57:14] Chenell: Right.

[00:57:15] Nathan: And so if you’re like, “Okay, could I add these things all the way through?” And some is gonna be through being unique. Some is gonna be through humor.

[00:57:22] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:22] Nathan: You know? Or all of the… Like, a, a humanness would be another element of- Yep. Um, my friend Jason Gaylord does a really good job of, in a lot of his outreach other things, he just sends videos when other people would send emails.

[00:57:34] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:35] Nathan: And it’s just like- You, you connect with him. Yeah. And so even, you know, on the thank you page or the almost there page, if there’s a video of you saying like, “Hey, I’m really excited that you joined. When, when I started writing content about growth deep dives years ago, I didn’t think anyone was as nerdy about this as I am, but now there’s 50,000 people reading it.

[00:57:52] I’m love that, you know, you’ve decided to join this community. And so go to your inbox, click the link.”

[00:57:58] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:57:59] Nathan: You know, “I’m so excited you’re here.” Like, like just that humanness goes a long ways.

[00:58:02] Chenell: Totally. Especially in a world of AI, like this is where it’s really gonna stand out, and I think if we can do more of this.

[00:58:07] Yeah. Like just sit down and map out like what would I want my s- my subscriber to go through? Mm-hmm. And it sounds like a lot of work, but once you realize that you can pretty much set it up once- Mm-hmm … and like it runs for every person, it’s not like you have to do it every single time, that’s kind of important.

[00:58:21] Um, another thing with this, James Clear.

[00:58:23] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:58:23] Chenell: His first thousand, I think he said, uh, subscribers, he would actually reply personally to each one. And so you would never expect that- Right … from an author or a writer. And so how can you build in those moments of delight?

[00:58:35] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:58:36] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:58:36] Nathan: Yeah, and I think James learned that from Chris Guillebeau-

[00:58:38] Chenell: Okay

[00:58:38] Nathan: who did that all the way along. And it’s also thinking about like what’s an advantage that you have? ‘Cause obviously you think like, “Okay, James, James Clear today has so many advantages that I don’t have.” Yeah. And it’s like, okay, but what advantages do you have that he doesn’t? It’s like, okay, well, he gets 3,000 new subscribers a day, and I get three.

[00:58:57] Chenell: Yeah.

[00:58:58] Nathan: So I could send personalized videos to every single person.

[00:59:02] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:02] Nathan: Right? Or I mean, Chris Guillebeau sent individual emails welcoming, uh- Wow … all of his subscribers up to 10,000.

[00:59:08] Chenell: Okay.

[00:59:08] Nathan: Uh, and so he did it for quite a while. But also if you’re like, okay, you get three a day, eight a day. Yeah. It’s like, um, Justin Walsh was teaching a LinkedIn class at, uh, Mashup-

[00:59:19] Chenell: Okay

[00:59:20] Nathan: um, a couple years ago. And you know, he was talking about how every single day he spends 30 minutes in the comments replying to things. And people were like, “Even on Sundays?” And he was like, “Yeah, man, like- I’ve stumbled in this weird world where I can teach business and marketing and all of that to all of these people and make millions of dollars a year.

[00:59:41] And yeah, no, if the trade-off that I have to make is seven days a week I talk to my community for 30 minutes, even on Sundays, like, yeah.

[00:59:49] Chenell: Yeah. Goes back to, like, volume kind of. It’s like- Yeah. … just do the work. Like, it’s, it feels like a lot, but it’s really not when you sit down and think about it.

[00:59:56] Nathan: Yep.

[00:59:57] Chenell: Uh, something I did recently was go back to, uh, some of the first subscribers that I have and actually sent loom videos to say like, “Hey, thanks for still being here.”

[01:00:04] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:00:04] Chenell: And so, I mean, that just kind of builds that loyalty, too.

[01:00:07] Nathan: There was this moment at Craft and Commerce, uh, I guess a year ago, where I heard a conversation going around of everyone was talking about what their Kit account ID was. Oh. Because the few people, I think John Meese probably started this, who have three-digit account IDs, you know, they’re the, the in the first 999 people to create an account were kind of flexing that on everybody else.

[01:00:28] And so our team was like, “Why…” You know, at the, like, genius bar setup, “Why is everyone, like, asking us to, like, look up what their account ID is?” Someone would be like, “Oh, I’m number 812.” Take that. To think about what’s the time that you’ve done to re- reward your most special customers? Like Justin Jackson, the founder of Transistor, is the longest continuously paying Kit customer of all time.

[01:00:50] He’s at, like, 13 years all the way through. Wow. There’s other people who might have joined before him but stopped paying or keep come back. But, like, he’s the diehard fan. I, I, probably like four years ago, I told him that and like, you know, said thank you in a big way. But, like, what else have you done? You know, of the first thousand customers, I should look this up.

[01:01:08] Of the first thousand-

[01:01:09] Chenell: Yeah …

[01:01:09] Nathan: who signed up, how many are paying today? And like, we should reach out to all of them. And you can do that with your newsletter subscribers and everyone else.

[01:01:17] Chenell: Totally. And again, like, this stuff goes back to figuring out what they need and- Mm-hmm … building content. And so it all just like, it’s not a flywheel- Yeah

[01:01:24] but it all pulls back together, uh, in that way. So yeah, just like- Right … trying to figure out, like, reverse engineer that, like, ideal experience. People think about, like, product onboarding and all that stuff, but rarely do I see people thinking about this with their newsletter.

[01:01:37] Nathan: Another one that I think is gonna happen a lot more is now that Kit has subscriber signals, right?

[01:01:42] You’re getting so much more information-

[01:01:44] Chenell: Yeah …

[01:01:44] Nathan: where you can actually personalize it based on if someone has 10,000 followers or more. You could change the emails that you’re sending. Or you could say, oh, actually, say I’m getting 20 new subscribers a day.

[01:01:56] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:57] Nathan: Well, I’m going… Everyone’s gonna go through a flow that I’ve curated and made really good, and then, you know, but the three people or the two people who have o- over a certain follower count, like, I’m going to send them a personalized video.

[01:02:09] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:02:09] Nathan: And you’ll probably make a lot of friends.

[01:02:11] Chenell: Probably.

[01:02:12] Nathan: I think another thing you can do on subscriber experience that’s really, really simple, if you’re just looking for a simple action item, is go subscribe to your own newsletter.

[01:02:20] Chenell: Yes.

[01:02:20] Nathan: And see what the experience is. So I had an experience recently where my son comes and goes, “Dad, you don’t really play soccer.”

[01:02:29] And I was like Yeah, I mean, I used to, but I, I don’t. I haven’t in a long time. I’m a little more into volleyball now than soccer. And he’s like, “Huh, okay.” I was like What, what made you buy that? He’s like, “Oh, I just, I signed up to your newsletter and it says you play soccer.” And he… I went back. Like, in my welcome email, it had, like, things I’m into and all of that, and I said in that, like, I’m really into soccer and all this.

[01:02:52] And then, um, a little while later he goes, um, “I don’t hear you trying to learn to play the piano.” It’s like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yeah, and I- you sent me an email talking about how you were learning to play the piano.” And I was like, “What? Oh, during COVID I, you know, I was stuck at home.” And I was like, “Oh, let me learn.”

[01:03:09] You know, I spent like three months learning to play the piano, and that dropped off and whatever else. But he was referencing the welcome emails that I had written four or five years earlier, and they were still there, and they were unchanged, and they were totally out of date.

[01:03:20] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:03:21] Nathan: And so you’ll catch all of those things, and you can catch them be- you know, yourself-

[01:03:24] Chenell: Mm-hmm

[01:03:24] Nathan: before your 14-year-old son catches them and uses it to make fun of you.

[01:03:28] Chenell: It’s nice to know that the founder of an email marketing company- … has this issue, too. Yeah,

[01:03:32] Nathan: exactly.

[01:03:33] Chenell: But yeah, I think the reply piece of this is so key because at a certain point years in, people are like, “I’m not getting replies anymore,” and like, “My newsletter- Mm

[01:03:41] feels like it’s dying.” And I’m like, “Have you… Did you ask for these from the beginning?” Right. Because I think if you can set that precedence early on, then people will be more likely to reply. They’ll know that- Mm … you’re, you’re there reading it on the other end. And so it’s just, like, really important to do this in the early days.

[01:03:55] Nathan: This was brilliant. I am so excited. But what if we make it a little more tangible? And do you have any notes on how we’d apply this to my newsletter?

[01:04:04] Chenell: Oh, do I?

[01:04:05] Nathan: Oh, fuck, okay. Maybe I wrote a little word that I have. Hey, if you wanna master the skill of making money, make sure to pre-order my book, The Ladders of Wealth.

[01:04:12] It’s gonna help you learn exactly what skill you need next to go from earning a living to building wealth. The book comes out March 2nd, but if you go to ladders of wealth.com right now and pre-order the hardcover, I will send you the full e-book and the audiobook for free, and I’ll get them to you early.

[01:04:28] So go to ladders of wealth.com to learn more. I’d love to get you early access. All right, my newsletter.

[01:04:34] Chenell: You have really good content already. Okay. I don’t… I’m not- You

[01:04:37] Nathan: don’t have to lie to me about

[01:04:38] Chenell: it. No, I think you do. Um, the one thing that I would say is that in your newsletter sometimes you’ll wr- you’ll share a podcast episode- Mm-hmm

[01:04:46] and you give, like, two paragraphs on, like, what’s in the episode.

[01:04:49] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:49] Chenell: The thing is that podcast people and newsletter people are not- Are not the same … the same person. Yeah. And so if you can actually give the newsletter reader-

[01:04:57] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[01:04:58] Chenell: almost as much value as the podcast listener.

[01:05:01] Nathan: Ooh, okay.

[01:05:02] Chenell: So what I’ve seen work really well, uh, for me and some of the people I work with is taking your podcast episode and almost turning it into a blog post or something super valuable that people can get all of the notes and everything from right there without- Yeah

[01:05:16] having to watch the episode. I know YouTube growth is important to you. However, not everybody wants to watch YouTube videos. Right. Um, or listen to a podcast for that. So I think you can really do better with this version. Almost could be taking something out of the episode, writing a full post about that.

[01:05:32] You don’t have to, like, break down every single thing in the podcast- Mm-hmm, yep … but maybe the most important one.

[01:05:36] Nathan: Yeah, ’cause I’m summarizing the whole thing and just saying, “Go watch this.”

[01:05:38] Chenell: Correct.

[01:05:39] Nathan: And Do you feel like that, that detracts from the quality of the newsletter as a whole?

[01:05:45] Chenell: Well, if you put it in there as, like, the main piece of content, I don’t think so at all.

[01:05:49] Nathan: Right. Okay, what do you think about in these issues? So if I flush out the podcast section-

[01:05:55] Chenell: Yeah …

[01:05:56] Nathan: what I could end up with is different topics, right? Yeah. Where I’m saying, “Here’s the, what the main newsletter’s about, and then here’s the second topic.” Yeah. “And then here’s a couple qu- a couple quick links.”

[01:06:06] Does that become too much at that point?

[01:06:09] Chenell: It could be. Yeah. It depends on how it’s done. But I think you send twice a week anyway, right? So maybe once-

[01:06:14] Nathan: Uh, I send once a week that is… So every Tuesday I send a live broadcast.

[01:06:19] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:06:19] Nathan: And then all my automated, like, greatest hits emails go out on Thursday. Got it.

[01:06:23] So eventually you’ll run out of the Thursday emails.

[01:06:25] Chenell: Okay.

[01:06:26] Nathan: Um, but that’s kind of the format to get to twice a week.

[01:06:28] Chenell: Yeah. So I almost wonder if one of them is just the podcast. Mm-hmm. And then the other one is your hot takes or whatever, um, as you’re growing this large company and, like, meeting all these creators and seeing- Right

[01:06:38] behind the scenes.

[01:06:38] Nathan: Something that I think about is… I thought you were gonna go harder on the valuable content, which if you have more takes, I wanna hear them. Scoring my content based on how excited I would be to read it- Mm-hmm … as if it was from someone else. ‘Cause there’s often times where I’m, like, trying to hit Tuesday at 10:00 AM.

[01:06:52] And so I’m like, “It’s good.”

[01:06:54] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:06:55] Nathan: You know, or like, uh, uh, sometimes I’m like, “That’ll be valuable to a beginner,” you know, and hit send. You’re like, “No, but is this something… How often do I hit the I can’t believe it’s free or I would be excited to, to hear this?” Like an episode that we did with, uh, Ben Greenfield.

[01:07:10] Mm. You know, in that episode he breaks down, like, his $5 or $6 million a year business in detail, every revenue stream. How he’s like, “Oh, that’s the small business. Let me tell you about the big business that I’m actually building. Oh, and let me tell you about the business that’s an order of magnitude bigger than that.”

[01:07:26] And, like, that’s the kind of thing where I’m like, “I can’t believe this is on the internet.” And I’m like, I don’t know how often I hit that with the newsletter.

[01:07:32] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:07:33] Nathan: And so trying to recenter on what’s the content that you could only get here that other people aren’t putting out there? ‘Cause I, I think that’s something that works really well for you of, like, growth deep dives on that level just don’t exist out there.

[01:07:44] Chenell: Yeah. And so I almost wonder if, like, the podcast is something you can have live on your website too. Mm-hmm. Like, that full blog post. And you don’t have to put the whole thing in the newsletter. Right. And you can just say, like, “Go read the whole edition.” ‘Cause I actually love doing that. A lot of people don’t give links for people to share with friends.

[01:07:59] Like, I am not- No … someone who would forward an email.

[01:08:02] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:08:02] Chenell: But if you have it living on your website somewhere, I’ll take that link- Mm-hmm … and share it with friends.

[01:08:06] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:08:06] Chenell: And so that could be an option. You, you

[01:08:07] Nathan: would drop it into the group chat or- Yeah … whatever else. Or

[01:08:09] Chenell: link to it from my newsletter in, like, the bottom section- Right

[01:08:12] with like, “Hey, cool” I

[01:08:13] Nathan: hadn’t thought about that of like, “Hey, you’re actually making this harder-”

[01:08:15] Chenell: Correct …

[01:08:15] Nathan: for me to promote your content.”

[01:08:17] Chenell: Yeah. ‘Cause I don’t ever wanna drop somebody into a YouTube video. Mm-hmm. Um, and I’ve, I’ve gotten a lot of replies of people saying like, “Thank you for actually putting this into a blog post format, ’cause I was never going to listen to the podcast episode.”

[01:08:29] Nathan: Mm.

[01:08:29] Chenell: I’m like, “Okay. Thank you.”

[01:08:30] Nathan: But then I, I got hooked, and I got into it, and I might have either gotten the most value or- You know, I was like, “Oh, I’ll click the link to the section-

[01:08:38] Chenell: Yeah …

[01:08:39] Nathan: where they talk about that live.” So we, you were very much in my target demographic. Okay. For, uh, the podcast and, uh, the newsletter.

[01:08:47] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:08:47] Nathan: What else would you like me to cover?

[01:08:50] Chenell: I think if you surfaced some of the learnings of like- Mm-hmm … you were in the room with whoever.

[01:08:56] Nathan: Right.

[01:08:57] Chenell: Here’s, here’s what you’ve learned. And you talk about these- Yeah … on other epi- like, podcast episodes or just, like, randomly in Nathan Barry Show episodes. But if you can actually pull those out into standalone pieces, I think that would be killer.

[01:09:09] ‘Cause I always find out about them, like, happenstance. I’m like, “Oh, I heard, you know, Nathan said this thing.”

[01:09:14] Nathan: Right.

[01:09:14] Chenell: But you’re always in these cool rooms and doing interesting things, and I think if you can showcase that more, that would be really insightful.

[01:09:20] Nathan: Okay, so one thing that we could do with the podcast is we could split it out to a totally separate email.

[01:09:26] Yeah. And send that on Thursdays as well. Like, how would you think about doing that?

[01:09:30] Chenell: I-

[01:09:31] Nathan: Or would you do that? And then if so, how would you implement it?

[01:09:33] Chenell: Yeah, I, I would definitely do that. I think the podcast has so many insights in it- Mm … that are only valuable to the person who’s listening right now.

[01:09:41] Nathan: Yeah,

[01:09:41] Chenell: it’s lost.

[01:09:41] And so if you can break them down into a written piece, like, people who read newsletters generally prefer written word. Mm-hmm. Not always. There are some crossover and outliers, but I think a lot of people who read a newsletter want the written piece. And so if you can share that in a full edition of the email, you could break it out, put it on your e- your website, and then link to it from there.

[01:10:03] Um, yeah, I would definitely do that as a standalone piece. And then you can add, like, interesting links at the bottom- Yeah … or whatever you wanna do, but …

[01:10:10] Nathan: Or graphics, tie it in.

[01:10:11] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:10:12] Nathan: Uh, and all that in more areas. Okay, so that could end up being a, a, an additional email. And you do that as another email, not, like, a separate newsletter.

[01:10:21] Chenell: I would do it as, yeah, an additional email. And then you could split it out, let people unsubscribe from one if they want.

[01:10:26] Nathan: Yeah, that’s a good one of, like, using link triggers or the email preferences to say, “Hey, I wanna get both the highlight or, like, the, the regular Tuesday email and the podcast deep dive,” or opt out of one but not the other.

[01:10:37] Chenell: Yeah. And as a consumer, like, I’ve read podcast breakdowns, and then I go listen to the episode anyway. So it’s not just detracting necessarily from views- Right … or anything. I think if anything, it’s just getting me more excited to go listen.

[01:10:48] Nathan: Okay, so then going back to the The core newsletter.

[01:10:52] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:10:52] Nathan: You wanted to, you know, add more insider lessons.

[01:10:56] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:10:56] Nathan: Um, what do you think of the, like, the longer email that hits on a few different things versus just saying, like, “Here’s what I wanna teach you today,” and that’s it?

[01:11:04] Chenell: I like ha- adding more things- Yeah … because not everyone’s gonna be interested in that main piece. Mm-hmm. And so if you can give people different options in a newsletter, then you get higher click rate and all that stuff- Yeah

[01:11:15] and people are engaged and they’re gonna stick around. So I would, I’d give people more options. But if you do, like, for someone that’s been doing a longer edition and that’s working, like, keep going. Right. Like, stick with the format that is working, but I do like giving people choices.

[01:11:29] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

[01:11:31] Okay, what else would you add to make the content of the newsletter more valuable, or what would you change?

[01:11:36] Chenell: Well, I think this is gonna go into- Okay … subscriber experience, but, um, you have a book coming out.

[01:11:41] Nathan: Yes.

[01:11:42] Chenell: And I feel like Right now when someone subscribes for the book newsletter, they just get dumped into your main list.

[01:11:50] Nathan: Mm.

[01:11:50] Chenell: And there’s no extra anything.

[01:11:53] Nathan: Yep.

[01:11:53] Chenell: Um, so this is actually gonna conflict with having two emails. Got it. But it… Maybe you add snippets for people who have joined the wait list-

[01:12:01] Nathan: Right …

[01:12:01] Chenell: that say, “Hey, this week I had a call with James Clear.” Mm-hmm. “We talked about promoting the book this way.” Like, I think you undersell how interesting your life is sometimes.

[01:12:10] Yeah. I mean, you’re doing all this travel. You might as well- Right … take advantage of it. Um, so you can have snippets for people who join the wait list, and actually showcase behind the scenes or give them a story from the book, and just kind of keep that through line so that-

[01:12:24] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[01:12:24] Chenell: over the next 24-ish weeks until the book launches, there’s…

[01:12:29] it’s staying top of mind for those people.

[01:12:30] Nathan: I guess I could also… It, it doesn’t even have to just be for people who signed up for the book. I can do it for everybody.

[01:12:36] Chenell: You can do it for

[01:12:36] Nathan: everybody. ‘Cause it is the… You know?

[01:12:38] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:12:38] Nathan: So yeah, even what’s happening with the book this week.

[01:12:40] Chenell: Right.

[01:12:41] Nathan: Um, ’cause yeah, I’m, I’m proofing, uh, illustrations, and we’re talking launch strategy, and we’re doing all this.

[01:12:47] We’re planning the largest newsletter tour to promote a book that has ever happened in the history of the internet. So, like, maybe we should talk about that.

[01:12:54] Chenell: Yeah. And, like, you are doing this, and you have all these behind the scenes things. Like, showcase that. Right. You’re trying to get- Mm-hmm … more authors to j- sign up for Kit- Yeah

[01:13:02] I think I’ve heard you guys say. Oh,

[01:13:03] Nathan: yeah.

[01:13:04] Chenell: So start talking about the stuff the authors would be interested, interested in. Right. Which is like, “Hey, we were… We spent six hours picking the paper for the book yesterday.” Or

[01:13:12] Nathan: like- My publisher hates me. ‘Cause that is in fact true.

[01:13:14] Chenell: Yeah. That’d be a great subject line.

[01:13:16] Nathan: Is, my publisher hates me. Yes.

[01:13:18] Chenell: So I think that would be so interesting. Like, I’m not writing a book currently, but I would

[01:13:22] Nathan: read that subject line. In their Asana project, which I’m not in, but Chelsea, who runs everything for me, is, uh, they had a task that said, “Deal with Nathan slash paper.” In case anyone’s wondering like, “Must be great to work with Nathan.”

[01:13:37] It’s not.

[01:13:39] Chenell: Top vote.

[01:13:41] Nathan: Okay.

[01:13:41] Chenell: Oh my gosh.

[01:13:42] Nathan: I like that. All right, where do you wanna go next?

[01:13:44] Chenell: Uh, positioning. I guess we’ll move on from content. Hold on. I have the actual- Let’s do it … what it says on your-

[01:13:51] Nathan: Oh, boy …

[01:13:51] Chenell: website right now. Okay. So-

[01:13:54] Nathan: I’m nervous. Cara’s nervous. I’m nervous. Calum’s nervous.

[01:13:58] Chenell: Current, uh, form and, like, headline on your site says, “Hello, I’m Nathan Barry.

[01:14:03] I’m a creator, author, speaker, designer, and the founder of Kit. Subscribe to get my weekly newsletter and latest articles.”

[01:14:09] Nathan: Mm. Yeah, I would tell people that’s terrible.

[01:14:10] Chenell: That’s pretty bad. Like- You have all of this happening.

[01:14:16] Nathan: Yep.

[01:14:16] Chenell: And you’re leading with, like, the least interesting pieces of it, or at least making it sound the least interesting.

[01:14:24] Um- ‘

[01:14:24] Nathan: Cause you’re right. I’m, I- Lead kind of a crazy life.

[01:14:28] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:14:28] Nathan: And I talk to, on a regular basis, the biggest creators on the internet. Yeah. And there’s some that you’re like, “You know, what can I talk about?” Or that sort of thing. But I do have things where I’m like, “Ooh, Stephen Bartley called me last night, and he…”

[01:14:40] You know, and you’re like, “Okay.” “Well, maybe we could talk about that.”

[01:14:44] Chenell: Yeah, exactly. Um, so I think that is a big piece of it. I often find with positioning, creators bury the most interesting piece- Yeah … like, halfway down the page. And so yours is the same way. Right. It’s actually in your welcome email. It says, like, “I’m building this $60,000,000 company.

[01:14:59] Like, here are the insider insights,” or whatever it says. Yeah. That should be what you lead with.

[01:15:03] Nathan: Right. Like- Yeah.

[01:15:07] Chenell: So I think if we can just make it more compelling, you’re gonna- Mm-hmm … impact the conversion a lot more. Right. Because someone’s not gonna wanna subscribe for, like, “Get the Tuesday newsletter,” or whatever it is.

[01:15:15] Nathan: Nobody cares. And I would tell every creator-

[01:15:17] Chenell: Yes. … that.

[01:15:20] Nathan: Now, my team, it would be, like, quick to jump in and say, “Yes, we’re redesigning the whole site.” You know, we just signed the contract for a new design so that the timing is perfect to fix all of this.

[01:15:29] Chenell: Okay, great.

[01:15:31] Nathan: What other, so positioning things. Yeah. You know my content quite well.

[01:15:35] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:35] Nathan: Um, how would you position it? And, like, you know my content well, and you’re in, like, the target market that I’m trying to reach of professional creators and, and all of that. What would you say is the, like, positioning or h- or how would you describe, you know, my content to someone else- Um … if they’re trying to get signed up?

[01:15:53] Chenell: Yeah. I think it would be something like insider lessons from- Mm-hmm … the CEO building a $60,000,000 email marketing company or-

[01:16:00] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[01:16:00] Chenell: something along those lines. And you can A/B test these and figure out which one’s actually working better.

[01:16:04] Nathan: Right.

[01:16:05] Chenell: Because some are gonna resonate- Yeah … and some won’t. Um, so I think A/B testing is a really powerful thing when we’re thinking of positioning.

[01:16:12] But, yeah, just lead with the most exciting pieces of it. Yeah.

[01:16:16] Nathan: What’s your reaction to the where professional creators go to learn to build wealth? Does that resonate with you or not really?

[01:16:22] Chenell: I don’t… Not really. It doesn’t.

[01:16:23] Nathan: I think it’s one of those things where it’s either, it’s either a yes, like, or, like, a hell yes or-

[01:16:27] anything less than that is like, “No, I don’t think so.”

[01:16:29] Chenell: Yeah. I think the concept behind it is good, but the actual phrasing is not. The

[01:16:34] Nathan: phrasing, yeah.

[01:16:34] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:16:35] Nathan: Okay. We’ll work on it then.

[01:16:36] Chenell: Okay.

[01:16:36] Nathan: I like it. I think another thing that to tie in, this is hard for a lot of creators who don’t want to brag or they’re not, you know…

[01:16:45] There’s, like, the category of the, like, the Lamborghini in the library garage, you know. What’s that? Tai Lopez. Tai Lopez. Oh. There we go. Right. You know, people don’t want to… They’re not trying to create that.

[01:16:56] Chenell: Yes.

[01:16:57] Nathan: And, and so then they end up saying like, “Oh, I don’t want to have the photo reel of me with famous creators or the, um, you know, flaunting wealth or success in some way.”

[01:17:07] And so then they end up downplaying it so much.

[01:17:09] Chenell: Right.

[01:17:10] Nathan: But, yeah, that’s the thing that I’m trying to figure out of the balance of, like- Have done a lot and have a lot of success. Also, I’m just a guy from Idaho who has a farm and- Right … you know, likes to build random projects with his three boys, you know?

[01:17:24] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:17:24] Nathan: And so walking that line I think is difficult.

[01:17:27] Chenell: I could see that. I think if you can just position it in a way of like, “Hey, I’m also human, but-”

[01:17:31] Nathan: Right … ”

[01:17:31] Chenell: yesterday I was on the farm and today I’m in, you know, New York-” Yeah … “at Kids Studios with X person.”

[01:17:37] Nathan: Right.

[01:17:37] Chenell: I think that’s kind of interesting, and it, like, humanizes you in a way.

[01:17:40] Yeah. I

[01:17:40] Nathan: like that.

[01:17:41] Chenell: But it is true, like positioning can go wrong. Mm-hmm. Like, you can make it sound so good, and then on the back end you don’t actually deliver on that promise, and that is a recipe for disaster. So yes, I’m glad you brought that up.

[01:17:53] Nathan: That’s good. I was talking to my son yesterday, and, uh, we were just talking about expectations.

[01:17:57] You know, like it’s a… I don’t know if it’s a great quote or whatever, but the, uh, the secret to happiness is, um, low expectations. Which is not actually, ’cause if you have low expectations you probably have low ambition, and that’s not a good recipe. But that promise and expectations versus what’s delivered is such an interesting thing of like you want to make big promises that you can very clearly exceed and over deliver.

[01:18:21] And that’s what you’re saying of like in the subscriber experience, the reverse lead magnet or the extra thing of going above and beyond.

[01:18:27] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:18:28] Nathan: It’s an interesting balance where you have to say like, “No, you really wanna subscribe ’cause I’m gonna give you this,” and then you have to make sure that you can exceed that bar by a lot.

[01:18:36] Chenell: Totally. Yeah. So under promising and over delivering is- Mm-hmm … is a great way to be. Yeah. All right. So momentum. I think-

[01:18:42] Nathan: Yeah …

[01:18:42] Chenell: my biggest note is right now at the end of every podcast you’re like, “Hey, if you love this episode, go to YouTube and subscribe- Yeah … and comment.” I have personally heard that so many times, like I don’t even realize it’s- Right.

[01:18:54] ‘Cause

[01:18:54] Nathan: it’s, it’s almost exactly the same every time.

[01:18:56] Chenell: Yeah. It’s just bla- I don’t even hear it anymore-

[01:18:59] Nathan: Yep … ‘

[01:18:59] Chenell: cause I’ve heard it so many times. I think if you really want to build out your email list- Mm-hmm … like you should probably be link- linking people to the email list. Um- Yeah … something that’s working super well, when I was doing podcast episodes on YouTube, we would create a custom lead magnet.

[01:19:14] Now, you don’t have to do this for every episode, but we were creating a custom lead magnet. And six minutes in I would jump in and be like, “Hey, did you just hear them say that thing? Go subscribe and I’m gonna give you the full breakdown of how they did it.” Um- Yep … and those are-

[01:19:27] Nathan: Right. I don’t run ads in my newsletter.

[01:19:29] Or, sorry, in my… Well, newsletter. I don’t run ads in my podcast. Right. And so I can run ads for my own newsletter. Correct. Yeah.

[01:19:37] Chenell: And so those are converting, like, it was 3.5% of views would become subscribers. And so, I mean, your channel at this point has, like 1.2 million views on YouTube. Mm-hmm. If you converted some of those, that’d be like 30 something thousand subscribers easy.

[01:19:53] And you already have-

[01:19:53] Nathan: I could use another 30,000

[01:19:55] Chenell: subscribers. That’d be good. I… Yeah. I think we all could.

[01:19:58] Nathan: Yeah, so the in-episode promo. The other thing that you could do is obviously a new lead magnet every week would be insane.

[01:20:04] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[01:20:04] Nathan: But we c- you could work towards Or lead magnets, probably with content that I already have- Yeah

[01:20:10] because I’ve been doing this for a minute.

[01:20:12] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:20:13] Nathan: Um, and then, then within categories, right? So there’s one about growth, there’s one about wealth, there’s, you know, w- like you get to four of them.

[01:20:21] Chenell: Yep.

[01:20:22] Nathan: And then just decide which one you wanna promote. And then the other key thing I would, I think would be recording different intros talking about them.

[01:20:31] So maybe I have the one about wealth. Maybe I record five different-

[01:20:36] Chenell: Yeah …

[01:20:37] Nathan: times of me talking about it. ‘Cause you can totally… The moment the g- the, or the host launches into the exact same words about the exact same thing, you’re like, “Plus 30 seconds.”

[01:20:43] Chenell: Yeah. ‘

[01:20:44] Nathan: Cause I’ve heard this before.

[01:20:45] Chenell: Yep. Yeah, exactly.

[01:20:47] Nathan: Versus the, oh, you’re talking about the thing I’ve heard about, but in a new way. I’m listening. Maybe I do actually want that this time.

[01:20:53] Chenell: Yes, exactly. And so you could also, not to make more work, but you could do different ones for people listening on Spotify and Apple versus YouTube. Mm. And so if they’re on YouTube, you could say, like, “Go comment.”

[01:21:04] But if they’re on podcast, you can say- Right … “Actually, you should go-”

[01:21:07] Nathan: I mean, it’s like 10 more seconds of work for me to read off a teleprompter and talk about it. It’s way more work for the editors, but, you know. That’s what we pay them for.

[01:21:16] Chenell: But yeah, I think this is your biggest piece of leverage. Okay.

[01:21:19] And then Instagram.

[01:21:21] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:21:21] Chenell: Yeah. I’m just gonna reiterate what Gannon said about like- … hey, we should have, um, many chat automations happening. You’re already on Instagram. You have almost 20,000 followers there.

[01:21:32] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:21:33] Chenell: Probably should be driving people to the email list or a specific podcast episode, whatever it is.

[01:21:38] But-

[01:21:38] Nathan: Right …

[01:21:38] Chenell: yeah, I think.

[01:21:39] Nathan: Yeah, I mean, that… I could do a reel about, like, taking a page out of Sam’s, uh, playbook.

[01:21:44] Chenell: Yep.

[01:21:45] Nathan: Do a reel about, you know, a particular topic and just say like, “Oh, here’s the, the biggest money lessons that I’ve learned. Comment ‘money’ and I’ll send you the playlist-

[01:21:55] Chenell: Exactly …

[01:21:55] Nathan: of those episodes.”

[01:21:56] Chenell: Yeah. You could go a step deeper and actually turn it into, like, a post and just link out to the episodes from specific- Oh, that’s true … sections.

[01:22:03] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:22:03] Chenell: A little more work, but I think it’d be more valuable. But then

[01:22:05] Nathan: that makes it very shareable for someone else-

[01:22:07] Chenell: Yeah …

[01:22:07] Nathan: who would then say, “Oh, I dove into this.

[01:22:08] Let me put it in the group chat. Let me post it on X.”

[01:22:10] Chenell: Right.

[01:22:11] Nathan: Or that kind of thing.

[01:22:12] Chenell: The other thing, um, you have an interesting backstory, which I didn’t hear until, like, more recently when you were promoting the book and stuff, um, of, like, being homeschooled and graduating- Uh-huh … when you were 15 and, like, that should…

[01:22:22] You, you should have a start here post.

[01:22:24] Nathan: Okay.

[01:22:25] Chenell: That’s like, “Hey, I’m Nathan.”

[01:22:27] Nathan: Yeah. ”

[01:22:27] Chenell: Here’s where I started. I’m writing this book. Comment ‘wealth’ and I’ll send you the link to sign up for the waitlist,” or whatever.

[01:22:34] Nathan: Right.

[01:22:35] Chenell: Or go pre-order it.

[01:22:36] Nathan: Um, yeah, no, I, there’s a lot of things that I do that people are like, “I’m sorry, what?

[01:22:42] You you were 17 when you dropped out of college?” I’m like, “Yeah, but I got two, two full years in.” Yeah. You know? Like, this does not make sense.

[01:22:49] Chenell: But it’s like, I’ve known you for a little bit, and I had no clue of that. Mm-hmm. So I think that’d be interesting to do.

[01:22:53] Nathan: I love those. On to the momentum. I’m gonna go implement those.

[01:22:56] Let’s talk conversion. I feel like you might have some, some thoughts here.

[01:22:59] Chenell: So it just ties back to the positioning with, um, the headline. I have a feeling you could convert a lot more people-

[01:23:06] Nathan: Mm-hmm …

[01:23:06] Chenell: into subscribers from the homepage. Yeah. You don’t have a dedicated newsletter page that you can drive people to.

[01:23:12] Nathan: Yep.

[01:23:13] Chenell: And then inside the articles and stuff that you’re writing, there is an- another, like, join my newsletter type of form. I don’t even think it says the, “Hey, I’m Nathan.” It just says like, “Get the weekly newsletter.” Oh, you have a lead magnet. It’s like audience building episodes or something.

[01:23:31] Nathan: Yeah. That sounds right.

[01:23:32] Chenell: Yeah. But in the form it says, “We’re dropping a video that has all of these in there. Sign up to get it. It’s not gonna be on the feed, but sign up to get it,” like the private viewing of it- Yeah … or whatever. And I feel like that was a while ago.

[01:23:45] Nathan: A while ago maybe. I haven’t delivered on it. So- I think I was trying to do like a podcast to email-

[01:23:49] Chenell: Yeah

[01:23:50] Nathan: situation.

[01:23:50] Chenell: I imagine.

[01:23:51] Nathan: Yep. Okay. Yeah. So revisit the lead magnets. Yeah. ‘

[01:23:54] Chenell: Cause I was like, “Oh, they have a lead magnet. That’s awesome.” And then I was like, “Oh, okay, maybe not.”

[01:23:58] Nathan: Didn’t actually get it. Coming soon, for three years.

[01:24:01] Chenell: So that could be improved, but, um, if you have, like, conditional lead magnets on different posts- Mm-hmm

[01:24:07] like maybe you have three or four lead magnets like we were just talking about with the different email or the- Yeah … podcast episodes. Um, if you can create those as lead magnets, and then in a post that you’re talking about wealth, like either, “Hey, go sign up for the book,” or, “Get this, uh, lead magnet,” or a mix.

[01:24:24] Nathan: Yep.

[01:24:24] Chenell: Um, so I think if you can do that you’ll increase the conversion there too. Yeah.

[01:24:28] Nathan: Sounds good. Okay. You wanna go to subscriber experience?

[01:24:31] Chenell: Do you?

[01:24:34] Nathan: Oh, here we go.

[01:24:36] Chenell: So I know as the founder of Kit, um- … you wanna showcase all of the things that Kit can do.

[01:24:41] Nathan: Yeah, exactly.

[01:24:44] Chenell: Uh, you definitely are using, like, when somebody subscribes it’s just like,

[01:24:48] Nathan: success.

[01:24:49] Success. There we go. All right. The thing that we’re talking about, oh, we would never do that. Yeah, no. I’m doing it. Yeah. Okay. Look, I just really care about success.

[01:24:58] Chenell: Yes.

[01:25:00] Nathan: It’s a subtle hypnotism thing that I’m doing with the audience where they … I just want them to a- associate my content with success.

[01:25:07] Chenell: Is that right?

[01:25:07] Nathan: No. Okay.

[01:25:10] Chenell: Okay.

[01:25:10] Nathan: Yeah. So, uh, implement the almost there, uh, page.

[01:25:15] Chenell: Yeah. Which would be perfect for launching your book.

[01:25:20] Nathan: Right. ‘

[01:25:20] Chenell: Cause you can say-

[01:25:21] Nathan: We can do a survey. We could…

[01:25:22] Chenell: Oh. Who are you?

[01:25:23] Nathan: Yep.

[01:25:23] Chenell: Like, are you working full, are you a professional creator? Are you just getting started?

[01:25:28] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:25:29] Chenell: That kind of thing.

[01:25:30] You’re gonna learn so much more about them. I know that Subscriber Signals is awesome, but it’s not gonna give you everything.

[01:25:34] Nathan: Yep. And so- And you can have both sources.

[01:25:36] Chenell: Yeah, totally. And so if you can figure out what their biggest pain point is right now- Mm-hmm … that’s gonna be huge, because then you can promote the book, or you can promote the podcast.

[01:25:44] Right. Or Kit or whatnot. So I think getting that information from them right then is gonna be really impactful. Right now after they see Success, then they see the- Important, confirm your subscription email

[01:25:57] Nathan: Oh, it’s the default one.

[01:25:58] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:25:59] Nathan: Oh, no.

[01:25:59] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:26:00] Nathan: Oh, no. That’s terrible. Okay. Um-

[01:26:05] Chenell: Custom welcome email, I would say.

[01:26:07] I mean, you have the welcome email after that point, but you’re also using double opt-in.

[01:26:11] Nathan: Right. So actually use it.

[01:26:13] Chenell: Right.

[01:26:14] Nathan: Yep.

[01:26:14] Chenell: So we had, uh, me and Dylan had Dave Kline and his wife Mara on the podcast, and they… I was talking to them about double opt-in, and they had 45,000 subscribers on their email list, and in their pending list it was 57,000 people.

[01:26:27] And so their pending subscribers- Yeah … ’cause they had double opt-in on, was almost double. And so it’s like, yeah.

[01:26:33] Nathan: And the way… And we have, um, automation templates inside of Kit for this.

[01:26:37] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:37] Nathan: Just what you do is you just look for a certain success or engagement mea- metrics. Yep. And then if they don’t hit that within two weeks, you unsubscribe them.

[01:26:45] Chenell: Yep.

[01:26:45] Nathan: The only downside of that is you will end up sending emails to more, uh, typos, or you’re a little more open to list bombing. But Kit has two things built in. One, it will autocorrect your typos and suggest that to the subscriber of like, “I don’t think you meant gmail.con.”

[01:27:01] Chenell: Yeah. ”

[01:27:01] Nathan: I think you put an M in there instead.”

[01:27:03] And then the other thing is for list bombing. So as long as you’re using Kit forms, it will detect any bot behavior and try to prevent that as well.

[01:27:11] Chenell: Yeah. It’s- So I like to use a, a false double opt-in after. Mm-hmm. So it’s not a real double opt-in. It still looks like it. You’re still asking them to click- Mm-hmm

[01:27:17] or reply or get that engagement metric going. But if they don’t click that one email, you can still email them again. Yeah. Whereas with double opt-in, you’re kinda like dead in the water and you can’t really do anything. Right. So that’s big. I think that-

[01:27:29] Nathan: Yeah …

[01:27:30] Chenell: would impact some things. I’ll write that down.

[01:27:31] Nathan: Um, you do need to make sure in your subscriber, in, in your intent around it, that you’re, from a GDPR perspective or whatever, you’re getting your, your permission basically. Your consent. Right. There’s the word. Oh,

[01:27:42] Chenell: yes. There you go.

[01:27:42] Nathan: Uh, a lot of times people will use the double opt-in email to get that consent.

[01:27:47] Okay. And so you would need to make sure that you’re getting it somewhere else in the flow, either earlier on or all that. Or segmenting based on country. But it’s… You c- there’s a lot that you can do there.

[01:27:56] Chenell: Yeah. There’s a big piece of this, and having the welcome email come up and say like, “Hey, I’m Nathan.

[01:28:02] Here’s all…” You know. Yeah. Like a better welcome email. Uh, with the Letters of Wealth list, we have double opt-in on there too. And when you sign up, you’re supposed to get a free chapter of the book. When you click that link, you do get a free chapter, but then you never send it again. And so what I would recommend is probably sending it four hours later or the next day and say, “Hey, did you read the chapter?

[01:28:24] If not- Mm … you might have fallen off or closed the tab.” Yeah. “Here’s the link again. Hit reply and let me know what you’re thinking about it,” that kind of thing.

[01:28:32] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:28:32] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:28:33] Nathan: Okay. That’s good.

[01:28:35] Chenell: Yeah. And then like we talked about, just like getting snippets for book readers- Mm-hmm … or getting them that behind the scenes.

[01:28:41] Like, you do live an interesting life, and I think if you can convey the- Yeah … behind the scenes of trying to get the bestsellers li- list or whatever- Yeah … it’s gonna be big.

[01:28:49] Nathan: Right.

[01:28:49] Chenell: So like it all just like comes full circle back here.

[01:28:53] Nathan: Yep.

[01:28:53] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:28:54] Nathan: I like that. Well, I think it goes to show that, uh, no matter how much ti- how- however long you’ve been in the game, however much expertise you have, like you have to go, like, secret shop your own stuff.

[01:29:06] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:29:06] Nathan: Otherwise, you’re… There’s just so many opportunities.

[01:29:09] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:29:09] Nathan: And so that, I mean, that gives me a lot of confidence that every single person watching this episode could go through and be like, “Can I do it all? Oh, God.”

[01:29:17] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:29:17] Nathan: Okay. You know? And-

[01:29:19] Chenell: Yeah …

[01:29:19] Nathan: find a lot to fix.

[01:29:21] Chenell: And this is only if we’re pretending that we only have one form on our email.

[01:29:24] Sometimes you- Right. Yeah … duplicate a form, and you don’t end up putting all the automations linked back to that.

[01:29:30] Nathan: Yeah.

[01:29:30] Chenell: So you could be, you know, checking every single form, and it’s a lot of work. Right. But you might be missing some things.

[01:29:36] Nathan: It’s also a good time if you’ve been creating for a while. It’s a good time to go through and clean up a bunch of stuff, ’cause often an automation or a workflow that was really important five years ago just doesn’t matter to you now.

[01:29:46] Yeah. And you’re like, “Oh, they could actually just go right into the main sequence.” Yes. That’s fine.

[01:29:49] Chenell: Exactly.

[01:29:49] Nathan: Okay, so the last thing that I wanna hit is monetization. All right. What are some of your favorite ways that you’ve seen from studying all of these creators on how people monetize?

[01:29:57] Chenell: One of my favorite ones was the most innovative that I’ve seen which was how Sahil Bloom is- Mm-hmm

[01:30:03] turning all of his cost centers into profit centers.

[01:30:05] Nathan: Yes.

[01:30:06] Chenell: And so he was paying someone to help grow his newsletter. And now, you know, that business exists of like, let’s actually do this for other people. And now we don’t have to pay, and we’re making money from that. And so he has this huge audience of, some portion of which are gonna wanna grow an email list as well.

[01:30:22] And so he can now turn around and be like, “Hey, if you wanna grow your email list, we have, uh, Paperboy Studios-” Yep … which does paid ads and all that stuff for newsletters. I think that’s just like a huge piece of it.

[01:30:32] Nathan: The thing that I love about services, I’m just gonna put three dollar signs here. Because the average revenue per customer is really, really high.

[01:30:39] And so you don’t actually need that many customers.

[01:30:41] Chenell: Right.

[01:30:41] Nathan: Um, they need to be a high quality customer.

[01:30:43] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:30:43] Nathan: But um, you know, that can end up being really good. I’ll throw out one of mine that’s also a high dollar sign one, um, and that’s Deal Flow.

[01:30:52] Chenell: Okay.

[01:30:53] Nathan: Um, and so if you think of- Like some of these newsletters in the investing startups, um, space like, like that.

[01:31:01] To a venture capitalist, getting the right startup in that wants to take on funding is worth really a lot. And so if you think about a lot of these VCs like, um, uh, Tomas Tunguz or, um, Jason Lemkin or others, by putting out all this content they’re getting attention, and that gets them deal flow that no one else has.

[01:31:19] They’re able to invest in these startups and, you know, with their reputation and everything else. And so they’re, you know, they end up owning, you know, 10% of these massive companies or these things, and it came down to how they monetize their content. Uh, and so that also, you, you, you brought up, um, Mario with The Generalist, right?

[01:31:37] Yeah. As he’s investing, he has deal flow that others don’t. Uh, Packy McCormick is the same thing. Yep. Right? With Not Boring. Um, and so that’s also a very high, high dollar one.

[01:31:46] Chenell: Speaking of Packy McCormick, I actually love taking the content you’re already creating and- Mm-hmm … turning that into, like, a sponsored piece.

[01:31:51] Mm-hmm. So Packy does these sponsored deep dives, which he can charge 5 to 10X a regular sponsor spot, and he’s essentially creating the content he already enjoys creating, but now he’s getting paid five to 10 times more for that.

[01:32:05] Nathan: Yep.

[01:32:06] Chenell: Instead of it just being, like, a free piece of content. And he’s still keeping…

[01:32:09] Like, he has guardrails to say, like, “You don’t get say in what goes in here.” Right. “You’re just buying the piece, and I get to do the content.”

[01:32:16] Nathan: I’ve seen a lot of companies before they go out and raise funding go do Pa- have Packy go do a deep dive on their business.

[01:32:21] Chenell: So smart.

[01:32:21] Nathan: And I, I think the numbers on it, like, like, it’s way more.

[01:32:25] When I heard it, I… And I probably shouldn’t say publicly how much they cost, but it was, like, five times as much as I would’ve guessed.

[01:32:32] Chenell: Okay.

[01:32:33] Nathan: Like, like, whatever number you’re thinking, put a zero on the end.

[01:32:36] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:32:36] Nathan: And that’s, um,

[01:32:38] Chenell: yeah. But he’s built an audience of, like, 300- Oh, yeah … 500,000 plus people.

[01:32:41] Nathan: And it’s worth every penny.

[01:32:42] Absolutely. People talk about how it made their fundraising process or whatever all so easy. Uh, and they’ll link to it. Think about, um, like, a conversion point. If you’re doing outreach, let’s think about, like, building a company, the most important conversions would be getting customers, uh, recruiting a team, and probably getting investors.

[01:32:59] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[01:33:00] Nathan: So particularly in recruiting a team and investors, it’s one-on-one of like, “Hey, we’d love to have you join the team. If you wanna learn a little bit more about the business…” Aki McCormick did a full deep dive on the company, and you can… Like, your conversion rate of closing that candidate, like, just probably went up 10, 20%- Yep

[01:33:15] off of that one thing, and so that’s, that’s worth a lot.

[01:33:18] Chenell: Totally.

[01:33:19] Nathan: Another one that I’m seeing really a lot, you know, we’re in the high dollar value one, um, is group coaching. ‘Cause that’s where, you know, you can get, whether you’re charging $1,000 for a 90-day, um, accelerator or, um, even way more than that.

[01:33:33] Like, a good example of this, um, would be Dustin, uh, who, uh, Seven Figure Leap.

[01:33:39] Chenell: Yes.

[01:33:40] Nathan: Right? And so he’s teaching people how to grow their brand and audience and all that through guest posting. I think he charges $10,000 for a 90-day-

[01:33:49] Chenell: Yep …

[01:33:49] Nathan: accelerator. Does that sound right?

[01:33:50] Chenell: That’s exactly right.

[01:33:51] Nathan: And we were joking about, at the last Craft and Commerce, about how…

[01:33:56] We, we had made a comment about, like, once people hit about 3,000 to 5,000 subscribers, that’s when they typically can build it into a business and all that. And he’s like, “You know, man, I, I hope to make it to that one day and prove that this is a business.” Everyone knows that Dustin’s making millions of dollars a year- Yeah

[01:34:11] off a 3,000 subscriber email list because of his, like, group coaching accelerator offer.

[01:34:17] Chenell: Yeah. And similarly, like, you, you just talked to Layla on the podcast. Mm-hmm. And so she’s kind of hybridizing. It’s like- Services and- … asynchronous services, but it’s also the same dollar price of, like- Right … “Hey, I’m gonna get on a call.

[01:34:28] I’m gonna show you exactly what to walk through in my content.” Yeah. Instead of giving them a course, she’s like, “No, no, go watch these lessons.” And so she’s just, like, tripling the revenue- Right … based on that.

[01:34:38] Nathan: Um, I’ve seen more and more people take that approach. It’s actually a joke. There was a creator years ago.

[01:34:43] He, he doesn’t put out as much content, um, anymore. It was Patrick McKenzie. And you… Uh, his handle online was patio11. And he ended up working for Stripe for a long time, and, um, really brilliant guy. But he put out a whole course on, like, pricing and packaging. And I don’t know, it was 500 bucks to buy. And if you ran a software company, like it was very, very worth your, your money.

[01:35:04] And people would bring him in and pay him like $30,000 to do a consultation on that. And he’s like, “It’s basically like a dramatic reading of the course, but like personalized,” you know? But they were thrilled to do it.

[01:35:15] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:35:16] Nathan: And so like that element is, is so important. And I’ve seen it over and over again where you become known as the person in the industry.

[01:35:23] And it’s like, “Oh, well we’re not getting random advice from a podcast on how to grow a newsletter. We brought in Chanelle and we paid her $25,000 to do a deep dive with us for a day-

[01:35:32] Chenell: Right …

[01:35:33] Nathan: you know, on how to do that.” And a lot of companies are happy to pay that.

[01:35:36] Chenell: Yeah. ‘Cause it’s custom- Mm-hmm … and you’re able to like pull off your experience of what you’ve seen.

[01:35:40] Like I’ve seen thousands of newsletters. Right. So off the top of my head, I can generally say like, “Actually, you should go do this thing instead of this other thing.”

[01:35:46] Nathan: Yeah. And we can also… We can say, “Okay, I wanna do this.” And you’re like, “Yeah, here’s why I wouldn’t.”

[01:35:49] Chenell: Right.

[01:35:50] Nathan: And dive in. All right. Um, what are some of your favorite monetization methods that are a lower ticket?

[01:35:56] You know, if we’re, if we’re talking, you know, in the 10 to $100 range or, or sub $500.

[01:36:00] Chenell: I was gonna go with like memberships and community- Mm-hmm … but they’re generally not that low.

[01:36:05] Nathan: Yeah. Well, well let’s… What’s wrong with that one? Um- Okay … how would you price it? Or what are you seeing?

[01:36:10] Chenell: Well, with memberships and community, I feel like if you can charge around 1,000 to $1,500- Mm-hmm

[01:36:16] I feel like that’s- Per

[01:36:16] Nathan: year?

[01:36:16] Chenell: Per year. Yeah. Okay. For-

[01:36:17] Nathan: Why that price point?

[01:36:19] Chenell: Because it’s high enough that you’re not gonna bring in the people that shouldn’t necessarily be in there. And again, this is contextual. Like maybe- Yeah … you need a lower ticket for the starters in your audience- Yeah … and that’s great.

[01:36:28] But-

[01:36:29] Nathan: Or if we’re teaching knitting, it might be a different price point than if we’re teaching like-

[01:36:31] Chenell: Correct …

[01:36:32] Nathan: Facebook ads for large e-com brands.

[01:36:34] Chenell: Right. Right. Right. But I feel like if you can get somewhere around here, it makes it as exciting for you as the creator to keep putting- Mm-hmm … money into it and investing your time.

[01:36:42] And for the person actually paying for it, they’re actually gonna put their time and energy into- Yeah … utilizing the space- Mm-hmm … and being a good member and those kinds of things. Uh, when they’re like $200 a year memberships, it’s like, well, it’s just kinda like one of those line items that you can write off and just-

[01:36:55] Nathan: Yeah

[01:36:56] Chenell: “Well, I’ll just… I’ll try again next year.” Right. But keep paying for it, so.

[01:37:00] Nathan: Yeah. And you’re not making enough money to really, as the creator or the c- you know, the person running the membership or community, to really dive in and invest in the success of each person.

[01:37:09] Chenell: Right.

[01:37:09] Nathan: Whereas here, you really could.

[01:37:11] And you could say like, “Oh, this-” This group of people are kind of falling off. Like, I can send personalized video messages to them.

[01:37:18] Chenell: Right.

[01:37:18] Nathan: Or I could suggest, “Hey, this piece of content that was posted in the community the other day, like, I think this is relevant for you.”

[01:37:24] Chenell: Totally.

[01:37:25] Nathan: Yep. What else?

[01:37:26] Chenell: Paid newsletters, should we talk about them?

[01:37:28] Yeah.

[01:37:28] Nathan: We can do-

[01:37:28] Chenell: do it. I, I feel like they are good for a s- the right kind of business. If you are heavily invested in the content that you’re creating and that is the thing, I think a paid newsletter can be a great way to monetize.

[01:37:40] Nathan: Yep.

[01:37:40] Chenell: The other piece of this is that most paid newsletters are, well, for creators, are on Substack.

[01:37:46] Mm-hmm. Tom Orbach, the guy we were talking about with marketing ideas, he has a paid newsletter. He started it when he was at 50 or 40,000 subscribers, and he said once he flipped on paid, his growth for the free side of things doubled. Oh, interesting. And so I think Substack is just, like, heavily investing in the people that are- Mm-hmm

[01:38:02] making them money. ‘

[01:38:02] Nathan: Cause yeah, it’s the only way they

[01:38:04] Chenell: make money. They take 10%, and so he is now showing up higher in- Mm-hmm … some of those recommended feeds and that kind of thing. So his newsletter has exploded. He went paid, um, in April of 2025, and now he- that was at 40,000, now he’s at 101.

[01:38:16] Nathan: Wow.

[01:38:17] Chenell: And so he’s just

[01:38:18] Yeah.

[01:38:18] Nathan: So yeah, I think that we touched on a few important elements of this, and I think that if you There’s one format that I hate and one format that I love. So if you are… I- if it’s, like, the free newsletter and the paid newsletter, and they’re two different options, and you’re always trying to decide, is, does this, this is my best piece I’ve written all month or all year, so it should be paid.

[01:38:42] Chenell: Right.

[01:38:43] Nathan: Like, well, that’s, that’s gonna hamper your growth.

[01:38:45] Chenell: Totally.

[01:38:46] Nathan: Or it’s like, this is so good, I want it to drive growth, and so it should be free, right?

[01:38:51] Chenell: Yep.

[01:38:52] Nathan: Uh, and so you’re like, you have this back and forth. And so I think if you can find a format, if either one or two things are, are true. You either are very prolific, and so you’re like, “Please, I’m gonna put out lots of great content, and this is not my one shot at growth.”

[01:39:07] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:39:07] Nathan: And I’ve got tons of great stuff that’s free, and stuff that’s r- that’s great that’s paid. I think that works really well. Or if you do kind of what we talked about, where there’s, like, lots of really good content, and then some additional thing is paid only.

[01:39:24] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[01:39:25] Nathan: Right? And so it’s like, it’s 80% free.

[01:39:28] Oh, but you want the d- you want the template to do it? Yeah. Well, obviously, that’s for the paid newsletters.

[01:39:33] Chenell: Yes.

[01:39:33] Nathan: Or the paid subscribers. Yeah. Then I think that works really well. ‘Cause my, my whole issue is just when people put growth and monetization at odds with each other.

[01:39:42] Chenell: Mm-hmm.

[01:39:43] Nathan: Which most paid newsletters do, but you don’t have to.

[01:39:45] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:39:46] Nathan: I should do a whole thing on how you can do paid newsletters well, and how they’re actually great, because this is on the surface, they suck.

[01:39:52] Chenell: Yeah. The other thing I also… This is kind of aside, but when people have just, like, the main free newsletter- Mm-hmm … and the whole thing you can’t see unless you’re subscribed.

[01:40:02] Mm-hmm. I… That drives me insane.

[01:40:04] Nathan: Okay.

[01:40:05] Chenell: Like, when you go to a post and you try to scroll, and it’s like, “Log in or subscribe” or whatever.

[01:40:10] Nathan: Mm-hmm. And

[01:40:10] Chenell: it’s locked. I hate that. Yep. I immediately leave, and I’m like, “I’m not coming back.”

[01:40:14] Nathan: Just on principle.

[01:40:14] Chenell: Yeah. And so I think people cap their growth that way, too.

[01:40:18] Mm-hmm. And they think it’s driving more subscribers. It probably is to an extent, but I think you’re also missing out on a lot of traffic that you would’ve- Mm-hmm … otherwise converted.

[01:40:25] Nathan: And so it’s like deliver, you gotta deliver enough value. ‘Cause if you’re locking it after three sentences-

[01:40:31] Chenell: Right …

[01:40:31] Nathan: then, like, there’s n- I don’t know that it’s-

[01:40:34] Chenell: Right

[01:40:34] Nathan: valuable yet. Um, I have subscribed to newsletters ’cause I’m like, “I really w- want this thing,” and you know what? Sure, it’s an email address.

[01:40:42] Chenell: Yeah. Sometimes it can work- Yeah … but most of the time I’m like, “Oh, no.”

[01:40:44] Nathan: Yeah, playing a long-term game.

[01:40:45] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:40:46] Nathan: That’d be different.

[01:40:47] Chenell: Exactly.

[01:40:48] Nathan: Okay. Price point on paid newsletters.

[01:40:50] We probably see a whole range. I feel like that’s the other thing that I hate is when someone’s like, “Five bucks a month.”

[01:40:55] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:40:55] Nathan: And I’m like- Nope … either make something valuable- … or make it free.

[01:40:59] Chenell: Yep, exactly. Uh, it’s gonna depend, and sometimes I think paid newsletters, if you’re not, like, helping someone invest in the stock market, like- Right

[01:41:06] it’s pretty hard to charge a high premium. But if you can do, like, a $200 a year situation- Mm-hmm … and then get the volume-

[01:41:12] Nathan: Yeah … that’ll

[01:41:12] Chenell: work.

[01:41:13] Nathan: Then that’s good.

[01:41:13] Chenell: But there are finance newsletters charging $1,000 a year or more

[01:41:18] Nathan: for that. I think it’s super interesting to ask a question of, like, what would have to be true to charge $1,000 a year for this content?

[01:41:23] Chenell: Right.

[01:41:23] Nathan: And like, oh, well, it’d have to be great. It’d have to be something that’s so good they’re not getting other places. And you’re like, okay, that’s probably where the bar should be anyway. Right.

[01:41:30] Chenell: Exactly.

[01:41:31] Nathan: And then if you need that as a forcing function to say, like, “Oh, every newsletter that I send out, people should…

[01:41:37] My audience, not everyone, my audience receiving it should feel like this was worth $50.”

[01:41:44] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:41:44] Nathan: Just this one thing. And if you hit that bar, then you’re gonna go really, really far.

[01:41:49] Chenell: Yeah. The one thing I will say with paid newsletters is you wanna add other features to it so it’s not like I’m getting four emails, it’s $200 a month- Mm-hmm

[01:41:58] or $200 a year, so it’s X dollars per email. If you can add other things into it to make people not be able to back into the numbers as easily- Right … that’s gonna really help with retention and-

[01:42:07] Nathan: What are some other things that you would add?

[01:42:09] Chenell: Um, well, if we’re talking about Substack, you could do, like, a private chat- Yeah

[01:42:12] or AMAs or have… I think Justin Walsh was doing this for a while with, uh, his paid newsletter on Substack where he was having, you know, monthly calls where he would bring in outsiders to teach stuff. It almost became like a membership. Yeah, I

[01:42:24] Nathan: got one of those. Right. Mm-hmm.

[01:42:25] Chenell: Um, so I think you can add stuff like that into it.

[01:42:27] There could be templates. Um, Tom Orbach, who wrote the Marketing Ideas, he, he wrote a full book that was, like, his best marketing ideas in this- Mm. Yep … really well-designed PDF.

[01:42:36] Nathan: Yeah, I’ve also seen people take their past issues and bundle them up with good design and say, “Oh, you’re getting this.” And it, by switching formats, it feels like the value increases.

[01:42:48] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:42:48] Nathan: Um-

[01:42:48] Chenell: You could go the Lenny route and give away, like, software deals.

[01:42:51] Nathan: Yep.

[01:42:51] Chenell: That’s a crazy business right now.

[01:42:54] Nathan: That is. It’s just because there’s so much money flowing into AI right now. But yeah.

[01:42:58] Chenell: It’s working.

[01:42:58] Nathan: That’s wild. I think the last thing, um, that still works quite well, I feel like people don’t talk about it as much, is these, um, guides, checklists, like, any of these things at the 10, $20 price point.

[01:43:12] I see people like Maria Went doing really, really well selling inexpensive items, you know? And this is where you’re hanging out in the- Well, let’s call it 15 to $50 range. Yeah. Um, and the price point is low enough that you can often get a big audience. Uh, a lot of people can make their, their ads profitable on this.

[01:43:31] They can get, get a good payback.

[01:43:33] Chenell: Yeah.

[01:43:33] Nathan: Uh, they’re getting that. Especially if there’s a, if a $15 product with, like, a, an order bump upsell at the end. Like, it does well.

[01:43:40] Chenell: Totally.

[01:43:41] Nathan: And so even as everyone’s focused on this higher end and you hear, you know, stories about Dustin or whoever else, like, there’s still a lot in the inexpensive range.

[01:43:49] Chenell: Yeah. And I think just right now we’re seeing a, a move back towards services. But- Mm-hmm … the pendulum will swing back. Yeah. And so I think if you’re well-positioned in that space, it’ll work out.

[01:43:57] Nathan: Yeah. I love that. Chanelle- Yeah … this has been amazing. So we… And we’ve covered so much. I’m sure people have taken a lot of notes.

[01:44:04] I’m sure they, uh, enjoyed my public embarrassment, and then went like, “I won’t give him a hard time because, you know,” “I think mine is, you know, just as bad.” I, I think the, the tangible, like, diving in and saying like, “Oh, the exact mistakes that are made,” not theoretical, but, like, in an actual newsletter. This is the kind of thing you obsess over.

[01:44:23] Chenell: Yes.

[01:44:23] Nathan: You talk about this all the time.

[01:44:25] Chenell: Yes.

[01:44:25] Nathan: If people wanna come into your world and say like, “All right.” Yeah. “Like, I got a taste. Now I wanna go deep,” where should they go?

[01:44:31] Chenell: Yeah. So we did talk a lot about this, the five pieces of this. And it can be hard to figure out which one’s working and what- Mm-hmm … you should focus on first.

[01:44:38] So I actually created, um, an assessment that gives you a score- Oh, nice … at the end. And so it’ll tell you which one to focus on and kinda, like, the next step to take.

[01:44:46] Nathan: Mm-hmm.

[01:44:47] Chenell: And so you can go to growthinreverse.com/scorecard and grab that for free. Nice. Yeah.

[01:44:51] Nathan: Sounds good.

[01:44:52] Chenell: Great.

[01:44:53] Nathan: Well, thank you so much for coming on.

[01:44:54] Chenell: Thanks for having me.

[01:44:55] Nathan: Chenell just walked you through the five levers behind a growing newsletter. And if you wanna see them running at scale, check out episode 126 with Sean Devlin. Sean grew Nice News to 800,000 subscribers before Encyclopedia Britannica acquired it. And now he runs All Healthy at 1.3 million subscribers and a 52% open rate.

[01:45:15] There’s a lot of good stuff in the episode, and I think you’re gonna love it. So if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like it and hit subscribe on YouTube or wherever you’re listening. And thank you so much for tuning in.