I was on the phone with another local newsletter founder the other day. He’s doing 7-figures across a handful of publications, and he asked me what I thought the gap was that my Austin newsletter was filling.

It’s a great question. And to be honest, I hadn’t thought about it much. I guess the way I’m trying to go about this newsletter is I’m building the thing I think one or two of my friends would like to have.

But the longer I spend in business, the less crucial I think an actual gap in the market is. Most of the wealthiest people I know are plumbers, and closet installers, and house painters and the like. They’re not tapping into new markets, but just serving a big existing one with lots of healthy competition.

But I do think a lot about advantages, and what, if anything, allows you to differentiate yourself and stay in business, even if others are serving the same customers you do. And I’ve always liked the framework put forward by Tim Ferriss that says there are essentially three possible advantages you can have:

  • Informational
  • Behavioral
  • Resources

I don’t have millions to make the newsletter work, so I can’t out-spend or out-wait competitors.

As for behavior, I’m a default-introvert who’s quite happy (too happy, really) to lounge around at home rather than going out. Oh sure, I can be social. But there’s no compulsion I have that would make me better at writing a local newsletter than someone else.

The thing I plan to lean on is an informational advantage, and this is may be interesting to you because it’s (I think) the one thing you can choose to develop.

I’ve heard it said that a well-curated Twitter feed can be more valuable than an MBA, and I agree.

So the first few weeks of this process have been largely focused on building the kind of information flow that will allow me to curate something fascinating for readers.

The process is simple, really. Just time-intensive, and you can’t rush it.

I have an RSS feed, Twitter, and a Google doc.

The RSS feed is subscribed to a few great news sources around town, and on Twitter, I keep a list of individual people who say and do interesting things here too.

Each morning, I spend a couple hours reviewing both closely. Anything that seems like a good fit for the newsletter gets dropped in the Google doc for use later.

That’s where most of the content comes from, but the secret is that as I’m reading, I take the time to continue updating both the RSS Feed and the Twitter list.

So if I read a story about an interesting local founder, I may add them to my Twitter list to stay up to date on ideas they share in the future. If they have a personal blog, I may add that to the RSS feed too. Depending on the situation, I may also reach out, introduce myself.

With each new addition to the info stream, I get a better and better sense of what’s going on around town, and what little-known things readers might like to hear about.

It’s really very simple, but it takes time and you can’t force it, and that’s why most people never do it.

With time, you can get to a point where you’re seeing things long before most other people, or you have access to information others can’t get. Then, your audience is locked in because everyone wants access to information that’s hard to find.

This pipeline of information is one of the most important assets you can have as a writer, and it’s one you can build virtually for free.