One of the very common ways that people grow local newsletters is by sharing in local subreddits. And I was disappointed when some early tries at this yielded nothing for Austin Business Review.
Like… It really didn’t work.
Other writers talk abut overwhelming positive feedback, and getting dozens – even hundreds – of signups. I used the exact same format and got precisely zero.
I have two theories as to why…
The first is that my local subreddit is actually pretty dialed. The moderators watch like hawks, and posts like mine get organized into clusters so that they’re only seen by the people looking for them. So the “drive-by” traffic on Austin’s reddit feels like it’s lower than it would be for other place.
Second, and probably more importantly, my newsletter is a little more niche than typical local sheets. I focus exclusively on business owners, and they may just not be searching reddit in the right place at the right time to see my stuff.
At any rate, it was initially a bummer. But now, I’m actually glad those didn’t take off because it’s got me thinking differently about how to grow in general.
The thing that you have to constantly keep in mind when building a newsletter is that bigger isn’t always better. And getting big fast is also not automatically best.
The value of the newsletter is determined by the calibre of the audience you build, and the trust & connection you have with them. That’s it.
If you have an email that goes to ten people, but they’re the VP of merchandizing at the 10 largest retail stores in the world, and they trust you, and read you, and take action around the things that you discuss, that’s a very valuable list.
So anyways, for me, the thing I’m thinking a lot about now is how to get 100 local business owners who love this email.
That’s it.
I don’t know how to reach thousands of people. And if I did, I’m not sure what they’d want to read.
But I could literally coffee my way to 100 people, and I gotta believe that if you did that – attracted one hundred interesting people who were building serious companies in your city – it would by default lead to some very interesting opportunities.
It’s slower to build. But as one of my favorite writers and founders, Chris Scwartz, is fond of saying, “growing the business slowly ensure[s] that it would be difficult to fail.”
In the beginning, every new subscriber is exciting. They trickle in day by day, and every single one is a signal that you’re onto something with your newsletter. You were right! People want this! You’re unstoppable!
Eventually, you think, there will be a day when you will count new signups in the tens, or hundreds, or even perhaps thousands per day.
But right now, each one is a big deal.
Then comes the morning where you wake up and the list hasn’t grown at all.
Wait… has it? Did I have 43 or 44 yesterday? Did it shrink?
The analytics show it definitely hasn’t shrunk. But what the hell? What happened to my little rocket ship? Do people hate this idea? Am I a failure? Was my second grade bully right about me? And most of all…
Why bother with this?
Here’s how to keep going in the face of all this nonsense…
Think about the list, however small, as a group of people in a room. Whether it’s 1,000, or 100, or 10 – however small it is, remember those are real people sitting in a room, waiting for whatever it is you’re writing.
Then treat the work the same way you would if you had to go stand in front of those people, and share it with them face to face.
Make something you’d be proud to show to ten people in a room, and you’ll end up with something worthy of ten-thousand. Then, when you get to ten-thousand, and that no longer feels like an accomplishment, put them all in a room and imagine yourself on-stage.
You can keep going with the exercise every day for as long as you work. Because the reality is that it always comes back to the people.
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.
When Gunnar S. Holm revealed that he was paying $0.50-$0.60 per subscriber (less than half the typical cost) to grow a local newsletter in Oslo, people said exactly what you’d expect…
“Well, yeah… You’re building in Norway! Try doing that in the US and then come talk to me.”
So to prove the point, he spent a month running the exact same playbook on an audience in San Francisco (thousands of miles from where he even lived), and it worked there too.
The other day, he took me through the whole thing, and I think everyone can learn from what he did. So real quick, I’m gonna run you through…
His Content Strategy: The Reverse Lead Magnet
Launch: How He Went from 0 to 1k (and 1k to 10k+)
Monetization: What Worked and What Didn’t
He shared his exact copy, best performing ads, plus a bunch of data and we’ll get into all of it.
Even if you’re not building a local newsletter, a lot of this is applicable, and may just help boost your conversion, cut your growth costs, or add a revenue stream where you weren’t expecting one.
Let’s dive in…
1. Content Strategy: The Reverse Lead Magnet
Having grown up in Norway, the concept he picked for the local newsletter was simple and specific: “Five of the best events taking place in Oslo, delivered every Thursday.”
“I thought of it like a lead magnet,” he told me. Start with one clear problem you solve, then you can expand content from there if you want.
Personally, this helped me a ton. I was getting hung up on the landing page for my own local newsletter because the content was an eclectic mix of local business events, artists, news from around town, and more. I couldn’t figure out how to describe it!
But this “think of it like a lead magnet” approach broke all those mental barriers for me. I ran with a slight variation on his hook (“5 cool events for business owners in Austin”) and sent the first issue the very next day.
Interestingly, this is a concept Matt McGarry and Ryan Carr actually explored this week on the Newsletter Operator podcast too (around 7:57).
They talk about how a newsletter is like a lead magnet people get every week. A reverse lead magnet, if you will.
Because a typical lead magnet offers readers something they want in the moment. It’s a quick hit of adrenaline, and then a crap-shoot on whether they ever open another email from you again.
The best newsletters position themselves to not just send recurring content, but solve a recurringproblem, which makes it more likely readers come back.
In the case of Gunnar, that problem was, “What should we do this weekend in Oslo?” And in less than nine months, the simple promise of five cool events each week grew the list to to over 10,300 subscribers with an average open rate of 61.6% and clicks around 9.4%.
By the way, if you’re hoping to build a local audience, starting with event curation seems like the way to go. In fact, Ryan Sneddon built a six-figure newsletter in Annapolis, and recommended something similar (live music listings) in his interview on the Newsletter Operator podcast.
I think it’s smart for three reasons:
It’s useful to readers
It’s a pretty light lift to write
People will keep opening week after week
But how do you actually get readers? Well, let’s take a look…
2. Launch Strategy: Reddit First, Then Paid Ads
Reddit: Gunnar got his first 1,000 subscribers from posting event roundups in the local Subreddits every week. He did this for both his Oslo and San Francisco experiments, and the approach/reception were similar in each.
Here’s an example from SF (screenshot below). You can see, he’s not shy about promoting the newsletter there.
I was surprised by that, and asked if anyone gave him shit for doing self-promo. The short answer: No.
“In big subreddits, like r/Entrepreneur, people are very aware of self promotion,” he said. “But in smaller local channels, they’re not as strict.”
He’d post every Wednesday, and occasionally, someone would gripe. But the moderators were happy to have some valuable posts in the group, and most feedback was positive.
Not all of his posts garnered 100+ likes. But even the less popular ones delivered a healthy number of subscribers, because Reddit is more of a meritocracy than other social channels. Posts don’t need a lot of likes in order to be seen by many, many people in a channel.
Facebook Ads: Around 1,000 subscribers he started using Facebook ads to grow the list faster. If you’re new to Facebook ads, there are a couple different types newsletters tend to use:
Traffic Ads: When you click these, it sends you to a specific landing page
Leads Ads: These can have an email capture right on the ad where people can sign up to your newsletter
He tested both and found that the CPA was roughly the same. But he prefers to send people to a landing page for a few reasons…
First, it makes it possible to integrate Sparkloop, or another newsletter recommendation service where you get paid for referring subscribers to other newsletters (more on this below).
Second, he feels it’s less likely the email addresses are coming from spam bots.
And finally, he says, people are just more likely to remember your email and engage with it if they’ve experienced your landing page, seen your branding, and maybe even read one or two past issues before signing up.
His best ad: “This is by far the best performer,” he told me, sharing the ad creative below from his SF campaign. He tested a lot of these short ads with text in the foreground, and a simple shot of the city in the background.
“The copy is based on months of testing for the Oslo newsletter,” he said. “The copy – Struggling to find things to do in {city}? – works very well in my experience.”
3. Monetizing: What Did and Didn’t Work
When it came time to monetize, there were a couple of surprises…
First Surprise – Sparkloop Didn’t Work: Gunnar runs a newsletter growth agency called GrowJoy, and one of his specialties is the Sparkloop + Paid Ads combo.
Essentially, you pay for ads to grow your newsletter, then add Sparkloop and get paid to recommend other newsletters to your readers, offsetting some or all of the money you spent acquiring them.
This chart is for a different newsletter, but the growth combo (ads + Sparkloop) is the same he tested for his local newsletters.
Typically when he sets up SparkLoop, he sees something like this from new subscribers…
~50% of new readers opt into other newsletters
~50% of those meet the criteria needed for Gunnar to get paid
Publishers pay ~$1.50-$2.50 per accepted subscriber
So the math looks roughly like this…
.5 x .5 x $2 = $0.50
For every new subscriber he gets to his newsletter, he can theoretically count on $0.50 from a Sparkloop partner. And since the local newsletter was growing for ~$0.50 per reader, his ads would have essentially paid for themselves…
But, alas… No!
For some reason, his local readers opted into other newsletters much less often than expected.
I asked him why he thought that was, and his theory is that there’s a mismatch between the themes of a local newsletter and some of the broader tech newsletters that pay for referrals.
People signing up for a local event roundup aren’t in the mind-space to subscribe to a crypto newsletter.
If true, it’d mean people are paying close attention to the recommendations. So if you’re going to test this, try hard to find newsletters with serious overlap.
The Second Surprise –People Were Willing to Pay: Toward the end of his experiment with Oslo, he’d grown the list to ~10k readers, and started experimenting with paid subscriptions, signing up 240+ people at $5/mo.
Here’s how it worked:
Subscribers joined the list for free
After 2 months, they got an email saying that to continue getting the newsletter, they needed to become a paid subscriber.
Anyone who didn’t pay was segmented to a marketing list that got the newsletter once a month, along with “FOMO” emails every so often, showing events they could have found if they were paying subscribers.
Overall, the response to his request to pay was pretty positive. Some thought $5 was over-priced (some people always will). But generally, people seemed more than willing to support a local creator.
4. Wrapping Up
Ultimately, he shut both newsletters down because his main focus is his agency, and a lot of these side projects are just experiments he uses to refine or prove out what he’s doing with clients.
But I learned a ton from him, and am using parts of his playbook directly to help grow my local newsletter in Austin. More on those experiments in a future email.
In the meantime, if you want to learn more, Gunnar publishes a bunch of stuff about this on Twitter. You can follow him there or check out his company.
Recently, I said that I think there’s a huge opportunity in local newsletters. Not just local news – but niche, industry newsletters designed to serve specific cities.
I got a chance to chat with him and while it’s early days for the brand, I’m convinced that in 1-2 years this can be a multi-million dollar business. Here’s why…
Background: Brett’s got some really interesting experience with newsletters already.
Back in 2020, he and his brother launched Healthcare Huddle, which they grew and sold to WorkWeek in summer of ‘21. As part of the acquisition, Brett joined WorkWeek’s core team, eventually overseeing Creator Success and helping their stable of writers launch and grow other newsletters.
It was useful experience, but being immersed in the creator ecosystem, he always knew he wanted to get back into building his own brand…
He Started with Just Events: After moving to New York, Dashevsky wanted to build connections. So in January of last year, he started hosting regular creator meetups at a local bar.
They snowballed from 15 attendees to dozens, then hundreds as word spread.
For almost a year, there was no formal newsletter. This was essentially a side project, and it was focused on in-person conection. Then, after parting ways with WorkWeek toward the end of the year, he decided the time was right to go all in, adding a newsletter component and making a real push to turn CENYC into something bigger.
Event Platform: People sometimes ask what tools are good for hosting events right now. Brett started on Partiful, but switched to Luma last year because he felt it had better features for professional community-building.
“You can build out an events calendar for people to subscribe to,” he said. “It automatically captures RSVPs emails and provides them to you, and events automatically add to an attendees calendar.”
Luma’s also a bit more email-centric, whereas Partiful is built around SMS.
Don’t Reinvent The Wheel: One big advantage Brett had when launching CENYC was experience. He’d built Healthcare Huddle, and spent years helping WorkWeek creators launch their newsletters. So he already knew a lot of the important things about how the newsletter should be built.
He leaned hard on the branding, and I gotta say, CENYC has probably got the best branding of any newsletter I’ve seen recently. Seriously, check this out.
The look is designed to mimic the NYC subway, and every section of the email is a subtle nod to NYC culture. They even hide easter eggs in each issue. It’s great.
There’s also stuff in there every newsletter operator should think about. For example…
1 . Use the same intro line across each issue. It reminds people quickly why they’re there and what they can expect to get.
2 . Remember that people will forward your email to friends – drop a subscribe button up top for anyone who likes what they see.
At Trends, we used to put this at the bottom. I haven’t seen any data on whether one or the other is better, but up top makes sense to me if you have the space.
3 . Use the Rule of Three in your lists or articles. A lot of writers get themselves in trouble trying to create huge lists or round-ups each week. Three is plenty, it’s useful to readers, and visually satisfying.
Growth & Monetization: So far, events have been the main driver of growth for the list, followed by social media posting, and Beehiiv’s recommendation network. It’s early though, and I suspect this year we’ll see those shift as the newsletter becomes more of a focus.
As for sponsors, some big names have taken notice. CENYC has worked with brands like Teachable, Mekanism, Notion, and more.
At this point, many of the sponsors are helping with event logistics, paying a few thousand dollars for food or meeting space. But that’ll change too as the community gains steam and the price of tapping into it goes up.
Why I Think This Will Work: The short version is that CENYC is in a big city, targeting a professional audience. Sheer numbers are on their side.
There are ~20 million people in NY Metro area
Many people want to be creators (like… most of GenZ)
Lots of brands want to partner with creators, and CENYC is uniquely positioned to make that connection
Plus a lot of the content is valid to readers outside NYC. Similar to The New Yorker I expect a decent chunk of their audience will eventually be outside the city. But even if it’s not, the math is still on their side.
If they only ever reach 1% of readers in the metro area they’re still looking at a list of ~200k well-targeted subscribers, and that’s more than enough to build a 7-figure business on.
I think The Newsette is an interesting example to learn from here. In 2021, they did $40 million in revenue with a list of ~500k subscribers, which is incredible.
Almost half of that was ads, and the rest was agency services they sold their advertisers on the back end (e.g., “Look how well your ad worked in our newsletter. We know content. We can help with yours!”).
Creator Economy NYC will have a lot of options when it comes to monetizing – ads, affiliate deals, event tickets, paid creator communities, etc. But the trick will be finding the highest-leverage one.
A creator marketing agency might be an interesting option. After all, they’ve got an ever-growing list of up-and-coming creators. And founders like Mae Karwowski have built these kinds of agencies to incredible exits.
At any rate, this is one I’ll be keeping an eye on. If you want to follow along too, check ‘em out here:
Another benefit of running a local newsletter that I’m starting to appreciate is that it offers you (as the writer) a very neat focusing lens through which to view your to-do list.
Let me give you an example…
I need new bed sheets. Typically, that’s a trip to Big Lots, or Ikea for some no-name option. But now, as the creator of a local newsletter, my first thought is whether there’s a local brand that might be a better choice?
A little quick Googling reveals at least one option – a store named Feather Your Nsst, which has sold luxury linen in Austin for 30+ years.
If you’re wondering how a store like that could survive for three decades, through the arrival of big-box stores, the internet, and more, the answer is that they charge a truly stunning amount of money for stuff.
The prices are not listed on product pages, but a queen-size duvet cover I chose randomly (because it’s from something called The Austin collection) turns out to be $814.
Maybe that’s over-indulgent. Or maybe, it’s just the cost of fine craftsmanship. After all, when you think about the value of sleep in your life week-to-week, spending $5k or even $10k on an incredible experience (sheets, pillows, comforter, etc.) seems like it could pencil out.
Regardless, I like knowing this place exists. I instantly feel a tiny bit more connected to the area, and I think there could be an interesting interview in this.
It also transforms this thing on my to-do list from a chore of drudgery to something more interesting.
And you can do the same with lots of other things…
For example, my diet has gotten a lot simpler since I’ve started cooking more, and I’m looking for places to bulk-buy beef. What are my local options?
What about candles? I’ve been burning through these coffee candles I like too fast. I like to have them lit while I work early in the morning, or on cold winter days. At some point, I’m gonna need to learn to make them myself. Is there a local brand? Or a class I could take and write about?
Before, all these little things got ignored because they were “outside” work and I just didn’t have the time.
But when you start writing a local newsletter, at the meta level, you’re writing about how to live well in your area. So all of these suddenly become content opportunities, potential advertisers, etc.
A few more monetization ideas occurred to me while I was out walking the dog this morning. Like the others, I don’t know if any of these are good (in fact I think some are distinctly bad).
But no wrong answers at this point:
Product Collabs: Rambler branded cigars, bourbon, etc – partnering with cool brands in the area to do limited runs
Swag: Could do a line of hoodies, T-shirts, drinkware, etc.
Coffee Table Books: This one would take a while, but after a couple years of publishing recipes from local restaurants, or interviews with local founders, you could bind them all together into a nice book
“Best of” lists: Sort of like the Inc. 5000 (which is a racket). These ranking things PRINT money, but are kind of lame
Of course, I don’t think we’re going to have to get too cute with the monetization. After today, I’m. more convinced than ever that there’s a viable ad market for a high end business + lifestyle local newsletter.
I was at Whole Foods today and picked up every magazine I could get my hands on that had the words, “Austin” or “Texas” on the cover. Luxe. Texas Highways. Austin Home. And of course… Chip and Joanna’s Magnolia.
They’re packed with ads. Architects. Realtors. Builders. Furniture makers. Even super niche things, like bespoke safe-makers, or local plant nurseries. It looks like tourism boards of cities even shell out for ad space.
It would take a week to comb through one issue for all the prospective advertisers and story prospects.
Every issue has several competitors in it, page after page. Which has me thinking, I may be able to compensate for a smaller audience by limiting each issue to just one ad spot for each industry.
So you pay more, but you’re THE realtor ad, or THE architect ad. And we can offer click data too, so that’s worth something.
Look at me already saying “we.” Blegh.
Another cool thing — at the back of many of these magazines there’s something called a Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation that tells exactly what the audience is, and even breaks down how much of it is paid subscribers vs other methods of circulation.
Apparently, this has something to do with the USPS. They have something called a Periodical Permit (which somehow affects mailing rates) and in order to maintain it, publications have to fill this thing out.
Magnolia has one. It says their average copies of each issue over the last 12 months have been 1.65 million.
I have a theory that in order to run a successful local publication, all you need to do is get to know a handful of interesting movers and shakers in a city.
The people who are already planning events and building communities.
If you find a few of them that you really get along with, they can introduce you to everyone you’ll need to know, and keep a fresh supply of stories coming your way.
I think to find them I would search social media for hashtags related to your city. I’d look for…
Okay, so we know there are essentially three ways to monetize a media business:
Free publications (monetized via ads and affiliate deals)
Low priced paid offerings
High priced paid offerings
The thing that makes me nervous about Rambler is that the path to monetizing is a little less clear than it would be for a typical tech/business newsletter.
The mechanics are the same. But early in the process, I’m wondering if I could ever get a big enough audience, or a valuable enough audience to make significant money from this project.
After all, there has to be a reason no one’s really cracked local media yet.
Actually… I take that back. I’m not sure if someone’s cracked it. I shouldn’t assume they haven’t.
Anyways, off the top of my head, I have a few ideas…
Ads: If I target a higher-income audience, ads may still be viable. Local attorneys, realtors, architects, co-working spaces, conferences, etc. I should look through the other Austin lifestyle magazines to see who advertises.
Affiliate: Similar to the way Newsette highlights 4 Amazon products per week, there will be opporunities to add affiliate product revenue. Should test different programs to see what works best.
Paid Drips: An interesting concept I’ve seen someone talk about on Twitter. Basically you set up drip campaigns to fire to all new subscribers. Then charge advertisers to be in the drip somehow (either in an email, or the dedicated subject of an email). Dunno, but worth thinking about.
Job Listings: Similar to ads. This might be worth it if it’s relatively hands-off.
Local Listings: Similar to an Angie’s List – round up recommendations for certain services, and drive lead-gen to them in exchange for a fee. This feels like kind of a volume play though, and I’m not sure I’m interested in that.
Referrals: Similar to the above, maybe just a more bespoke version. Build partnerships with a few key service providers in town – marketing agencies, executive search, realtors, etc. Connect readers 1-1. Not sure if all those industries can even pay referral fees, but since I’d be talking to so many people, it feels like there’s some opportunity to connect them.
Events: Could think up some cool events, organize, and sell tickets. That’d be fun.
Selling Fine Furniture: Let’s say you can build a desk that sells for $20-$30k. Ten of those per year could be a pretty great income.
Newsletter Advisory: If my readers are mostly business owners, some may be interested in consulting for their brands’ own newsletter.
Course: Let’s say I find a reliable way to get ads up to like $250k per year. Rather than doing that in multiple cities, I could license the playbook. Longer term, but that’s probably how this gets big. Similar to Hormozie’s gym play. But he had a ton of reps in launching gyms. I’d need to find some way to prove to myself the model really works reliably.
Mystery Box: I have this suspicion that every new type of media model that really succeeds, succeeds because they find a completely novel way to provide value. I’m not sure what this is yet, but I don’t think the key is to just replicate the normal media model on a local level. Something about the economics of that feel shaky to me. Instead, I think there’s something slightly hidden, like the way Craig Fuller has found a way to monetize outdoor sport magazines via insurance products.
X-Factor: Merely by publishing on a regular basis, you open yourself up to unforsee-able opportunities.
I’m heading into my last week at Hampton, and for the last few months, I’ve avoided thinking too hard about what’s next.
I was never good at the “crossover” technique of starting one thing during my spare time while keeping a full-time job.
When I have a job, all of my time goes to that. All my focus too.
In some ways, that’s part of the reason I decided to leave in the first place. I still love the company and the people. But I just realized that I’ll never do my own thing as long as I have a job. And I want to do my own thing.
I just haven’t known what.
Two ideas have tugged at me though.
The first was a general newsletter for D2C founders. The idea was to write case studies of D2C brands going from 6- to 8-figures, and then monetize via affiliate partnerships with a handful of agencies I like. Maybe even with Hampton.
I know how to do that type of writing, and I know the business model can work. That’s exactly how YouShouldTalkTo makes money. There was just one problem: I have zero background or clout in the D2C world. I also don’t have much passion for it.
I like to see D2C founders win. But when I sat down to research a few brands I just didn’t feel compelled to keep digging.
So to me, that idea would have been easy to monetize, but hard to write. And somehow, that felt like a mistake. There’s never any guarantee a business works out, so why waste your time building one just for the money? It should be something you like to do.
Which brings me to my second idea…
Recently, I’ve been getting into woodworking, and part of me thought that after leaving my job, I’d start making and selling furniture.
I’ve never done either of those things, so to get an edge, and learn faster, I thought I’d start a local newsletter all about craftsmen here in Austin. I’d interview them. Highlight their work. And in the process, build both a network of knowledgable teachers, and an audience eager to buy handmade stuff.
For a long time, these two ideas jockeyed back and forth in my mind.
The D2C concept seemed the most likely to work. But the woodworking thing felt like it had more soul.
I thought of doing both – D2C writing as my “day job,” and then woodworking for fun. But I knew I had to pick one. Part of the reason for leaving my job was to be less of a workaholic, and starting two different publications didn’t seem in line with that.
Then there were all these other interests I had – HoldCo’s, and regenerative farming, cooking, and competitive shooting, hunting, travel, media companies, advertising, and local restaurants.
I want time for all of those.
This has been the constant battle of my life – hopping from place to place, thing to thing. Never spending long enough for any of them to take root.
Today, I feel like it all crystalized.
Rambler will be an upscale business & lifestyle newsletter for adventurous founders and tech employees living in Texas.
It’ll be focused on the things I’m most interested in – like adventure travel, interior design, business, and living well.
Building it will force me to put roots down here in Texas. It’ll also be interesting because it’s a new type of media challenge I haven’t worked on yet. It gives me a cool reason to keep learning from other writers and media founders too.
I’m pretty sure I can make it a viable business. Maybe not a multi-million dollar behemoth like Morning Brew.
But then, does it need to be?
One of the reasons people try to make so much money is because they believe it will help them lead an interesting and fulfilling life. And it seems to me that if you put yourself in the middle of all the cool stuff going on in your town, and write about it – you pretty much guarantee the same thing, regardless of the money.
In a lot of ways, I think local media is the most interesting opportunity young entrepreneurs are overlooking right now. I’m gonna help unlock the model, while building a cool brand in this cool state, and getting to know other cool founders.
