Why It’s Time to Start Your Own Newsletter

[00:00:05] What are we talking about this week? We're talking about newsletters. And Rob, I'm going to rely heavily on you because newsletters are intimidating to me, if I'm being honest. I'm not a great writer. I couldn't imagine what I would write or what I would have to say that somebody would want to listen to, much less pay me to read.

[00:00:31] Much less pay me to read. But I do also recognize the fact that I should probably have a newsletter. So I'm going to let you take it from there. So we had the opportunity to talk with Charlotte Henry, who runs the edition.net newsletter. And her platform is a bunch of things, but it is a newsletter first. So she is and she will tell you she is a writer first, but she also is a podcaster.

[00:01:00] She also does a little bit of video here and there. And we were just talking about, you know, some of the things, you know, that she did when she set up her platform. She just recently moved off of Substack onto another platform. For those of you who aren't familiar, Substack is a it is a it is many things now. It is. I think I would feel more comfortable calling it a social media platform that has a newsletter component to it. It started off as a newsletter component that they kept adding social media features to.

[00:01:29] They now have so many social media features. I think it is a social media platform with a newsletter component. But, you know, to take a step back, you know, I am so bold now and I believe this. And we're talking about an event that just happened this past weekend as we're now recording this in relative real time. Tick tock is banned in the United States.

[00:01:53] And for about 16 hours from Saturday to Sunday, it actually was blocked in the United States. ByteDance, the parent company of Tick tock, shut their service down on Saturday evening and didn't turn it back on until late day on Sunday afternoon. And we've known that this is was there was a potential this could happen going all the way back until going all the way back to April of last year.

[00:02:21] That's when a bill was passed, a bill essentially that would say that if the company that owns Tick tock ByteDance, if they did not divest of their American interests, that it would be blocked here in the United States. And that happened. So over the last week or two, when people started to really feel that Tick tock might actually get banned, because I think a big issue for a lot of folks that they just didn't believe it would happen. They didn't think that it would go down. They thought that, you know, you know, a court would actually save them.

[00:02:51] They thought the Supreme Court would save them. They thought that President now President Trump, then President-elect Donald Trump could save it. And although he has an executive order in place that is saying, well, they can run for 75 days, Apple and Google and maybe Oracle are saying, well, yeah, I see that you're saying this, but the law doesn't change. And although you're going to give us cover. That doesn't mean that we still can't be sued. You know that these other things can't happen. It just means the federal government won't.

[00:03:19] So there's a state of limbo right now. And one of the things that would have helped an enormous amount of people is that if you had a way to contact your following outside of just the social media platform that they follow you on, you would be in a much better place than you are right now. And so because of that, I would say that I don't care what kind of creator you are. You know, Lamar Wilson, friend of the show.

[00:03:48] We're going to try to get him back on for another episode here in the not too distant future and get some his take on it. I hear Lamar when he's telling me that the younger generation of folks, you know, like, you know, even younger than millennials, they just don't use email. I get that. And I understand that.

[00:04:06] But if you are looking at the creative entrepreneurship arena at all, if you are trying to generate income from your creative products, whether it be a podcast, whether it be a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, a TikTok account.

[00:04:24] If you are trying to generate money off of that and live off of that, you've got to do something to where you have a way to contact the people who follow you without having to go through someone else's platform, namely having your own platform. So I will even step back and say it doesn't have to be a newsletter because a newsletter is something you're going to send out repeatedly every week, twice a week, once a month, twice a month, whatever the case is.

[00:04:50] I believe that you need to have at the very least an email list, something that you have given people the opportunity to sign up to so that if you know that there are times when you need to contact them outside of a social media platform, you just have the ability to do it.

[00:05:05] Now, I'll be honest with you. An email list is not going to have the same level of, you know, the level of people who actually open up email on an email list is not going to be the same as what open up on a newsletter because a newsletter, people are expecting it. They want to see the next thing that you have to say. An email list is kind of a blast. You're not expecting it. So it has to pop into their into their inbox.

[00:05:30] They've got to see it and not perceive you as something that they don't remember signing up for and actively open up your email. But that's still better than not being able to contact your folks independently. And so many people had these issues. I was just I watched video after video of people who are literally in tears. I don't know what to do is like I can't get into CapCut anymore. I don't know. I don't even know how to, you know, post a video on these other platforms.

[00:05:56] And if you simply just had an email list, if you simply had a newsletter, you could always go out and say, hey, these things are happening with TikTok. But I'm over here. These things are happening with TikTok. I've got my own platform in this place. These things are happening on TikTok. I'm going to be on Instagram. I'm going to be on, you know, on Reels. I'm going to be on YouTube shorts. You would just have the opportunity to let people know where you are as compared to just going dark.

[00:06:23] As in the case was when TikTok was shut down for those 14, 16 hours. The thing that and I think we should invoke Tom Merritt here for a little bit like the everybody said it was it was going to go away and they didn't have to go away. You know, Tom brings it up all the time is you just couldn't download the app or host it anywhere on on American servers.

[00:06:49] So if you were if you were trying to access it on the Web and there was, I don't know, a Brazilian server you can access it from, you should be able to still access it. Although they did shut some of that stuff down from what I understand. But you could still get into TikTok. There was an enormous amount of what I will call political theater. And I think you would actually look up the definition of political theater.

[00:07:13] What happened with ByteDance TikTok, you know, with ByteDance and TikTok over this past weekend, you know, the weekend right before the inauguration. So we're talking about I think I think they shut it down on the 18th. 18th and then it came back up on the 19th political theater, the law that, you know, there is actually a law, you know, and Bodie, I will actually look up the name of the law. So you might need to edit here.

[00:07:39] You know what, Rob, while you're looking that up, I will say the political theater behind this, because honestly, it really made me mad because there was an overwhelming support for passing this bill. Bipartisan, both major political parties. And then as we got closer, you have certain people from each political party going, wait a second. We don't want to do this. But they did it. So, yeah.

[00:08:07] So the law is called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. And we will affectionately call it the TikTok Ban Act because that's what's that. That's the primary thing that's happening right now. There is a ban on TikTok. But this is the first thing. It isn't a ban on TikTok. It's a ban on any application that we perceive to be a foreign adversary controlled application.

[00:08:35] So pretty much applications that are housed in China fall into this category. TikTok being owned by ByteDance. ByteDance is a Beijing-based company. They fall into this category. So we passed this law nine months ago. And you're right. Tom pointed this out right when the ban happened. The ban never actually said that it was going to shut down TikTok.

[00:09:02] The ban never said that you would no longer be able to use TikTok if you already had it. With the ban specifically, this is a law. This is not something that just happened this past weekend. This is a law that actually was passed back in April of 2024. What the law said was that if ByteDance does not divest itself into ownership that is not based out of China, that it would be blocked here in the United States. So here's what was blocked.

[00:09:31] If you're using an iPhone, you would not be able to go to the App Store and download it. Apple would be held liable for allowing people to download from the App Store. You could still use it if you already had it. You could go other places you can get it. Let's say you're using an Android phone. You go other places you could get it. You just couldn't get it from Apple because Apple is an American-based company. You couldn't get it from Google, so you could not download it from Google Play. Once again, if you are using Android, you can sideload apps by default. Well, not by default.

[00:09:59] You have to turn on something, but you can sideload apps. So you could go and still download new versions of TikTok if they come out, just not going to get them from Google if that is the case. So that's the second thing that was blocked. So those two App Stores were blocked. And then Oracle actually does a lot of hosting of TikTok here in the United States, based out of Texas. They were no longer going to be able to actually host it. But none of that actually shuts anything with TikTok down.

[00:10:28] Remember, TikTok is a Chinese-based company. You don't have to connect in Texas. You just could connect in Texas. That's where our data, we had an agreement where our data from the United States would run through Project Texas. But if Project Texas decides to shut down because of this ban, that doesn't mean that TikTok goes away. You would just get it from some other server somewhere else on Earth.

[00:10:52] And so that being said, the state that we're in right now, people think that, oh, the ban has gone away, that there is no more ban. No, this is what exactly what was intended to happen with the ban, because we are banned. You still cannot go to Apple and download it at the time that we're recording this. You still cannot go to Google and download this at the time we're recording it. And Oracle is no longer serving up their website at the time of recording this. So the political theater was that TikTok decided to, on their own, to shut down their service.

[00:11:21] And this is just my opinion. I believe they did that for the reason of if people just wake up on Sunday morning and everything kind of works like it was working before, there's not going to be enough outrage to get anything to move in our favor. So let's go ahead and say we're going to shut this thing down. And the reason we're shutting it down is because we're banned here in the United States, which technically they are. And so they shut down on Saturday. And I think, you know, people in the United States freaked out.

[00:11:51] I don't know what to do. It's like, you know, people who weren't even logging into TikTok were trying to log into TikTok. Oh, I can't log into TikTok. I haven't been there in six months, but I can't log in now. So that's the political theater part of it. I say all that to go back to the position of why is it good to collect people's email addresses? Why is it good to be able to send people messages that are not based off of someone else's company?

[00:12:18] And this is because if TikTok gets banned and the only way you have to communicate with your followers is through TikTok, then there's nothing you can do. So for those 14 to 16 hours that TikTok was banned, there was nothing that people could do. Whereas if you have an email of someone, you could at least send an email out, hope that person opens up that email and says, hey, here's where I'm at. You can go check out my content in this other place. You can check out this content on my own platform.

[00:12:47] You can check out this content on Instagram, on, you know, I moved over to Snapchat. We moved over to LinkedIn. Whatever the case is, you would have the opportunity to tell people where you are. So just communicating with your followers without having to go through a third party is, to me, one of the biggest reasons why you should effort to build at the very least an email list.

[00:13:10] And then if not, you know, if you want to go further than that, you actually build a newsletter to where you are regularly sending them information that is useful to them. And that's the reason why they signed up to it. Rob, let me ask you a question. Okay. So we've talked before about the dangers, like it's a necessity to build your brand on some platform. Like if you built a website today and you started throwing videos up there, you are not going to get the same engagement as if you go to YouTube or TikTok and you throw videos up there.

[00:13:39] You're just not, there's no recommendation engine sending people to your particular website. So there's, there's a kind of a necessary evil you have to balance there. We started this conversation. You talked a little bit about Substack being a social media platform, but it's also a newsletter platform. Do people, and it's free. You can get paid on Substack.

[00:14:01] But it's not, would people find or maybe face the same kind of danger that's going on with TikTok or even Instagram or any of these other things where a policy change could change the way you make money?

[00:14:17] So here's where, even though I'm saying that I perceive Substack as much as a social media platform today, as I do a newsletter hosting platform, there is one fundamental difference with Substack in the way that it operates. And let's say, you know, even YouTube, but definitely TikTok or Instagram Reels, you know, operates.

[00:14:45] They allow you to create a list that once you have that list, you can export it out and take it somewhere else. So when, when, when you're on a platform like TikTok and I have a follower on TikTok, that is not your follower. That is TikTok followers. You're basically on borrowed land. You are in someone else's sandbox when you're playing with TikTok, because what you have is someone who says that I have a TikTok account.

[00:15:12] You have a TikTok account, and I'm going to follow your TikTok account with my TikTok account. If TikTok goes away, there's nothing you can do to contact that person. So what's important with, with, with, with email. And let's, since, since we're talking specifically about, you know, about Substack is that when you create an email list inside of Substack, you are collecting people's email addresses.

[00:15:36] Now, now the social media part of it is that, well, now you have people who can subscribe without even having to do it via email. They can do it via their Substack application. But the base level of the, of the subscription, the base level of the email subscription part of Substack is that you create an email newsletter in Substack and someone can join it with their email address. And once they join it with your email address, you now have a list, which is why we call these email lists.

[00:16:03] You now have a list of everybody who has said, here's my email. I give you permission to email me from this account. So once you have that, if you decide that I don't want to be in Substack any longer, you can move from, from point A to point B. And you still have those same people's emails, because even though you change your platform, their email is still the same.

[00:16:24] You know, so we'll talk back about, you know, one of the things that Charlotte Henry in her interview, she talked about she was on Substack, but she made a conscious decision for, you know, for various reasons that she no longer wanted to be on Substack and she moved to something else. She moved to another email provider at the time. It was called ConvertKit. Today, they're just called Kit. So she took everyone who subscribed to her that was on her Substack newsletter and just moved them over to Kit. And they never noticed that something was different.

[00:16:54] Because they still get the emails from her in the same way that they were getting them before. In fact, they probably get even more of them now because she's got additional things she can do outside of Substack as compared to what she was able to do inside of Substack, one of the reasons why she moved. So that is just, you know, just covering yourself. And I know people are saying, well, if I have, you know, 100,000 people who follow me on Substack or excuse me, who follow me on TikTok, there's no way I'm going to get all of them to give me an email address. You're probably right.

[00:17:22] But can you get 10%? That would be 10,000. Can you get 5%? That would be 5,000. You at least now have 5,000 people that you can get that you can contact and say, hey, TikTok is God. We're no longer there. We're now over here in this other place. And at that point, you're at least not starting fresh because you're going to get at least a percentage of the people that you're able to contact.

[00:17:44] They're going to move over with you because one of the reasons that people will actually give you, and we can get into this in the second half of this episode, Bodhi, is why you would even want to create something like an email list beyond just, you know, for CYA type of stuff. People who are following you, people who want to get information from you, they give you those email lists because it's a benefit to them.

[00:18:04] So if they're following you, it doesn't necessarily mean that they, well, I'm only following you because you're on TikTok or I'm only following you because you're on Instagram or I'm only following you because you have created YouTube shorts or even used YouTube long form. They are following you because they like the content that you create and they want your content and it's inconsequential where your content exists. So when you get those kind of fans, when you get those kind of followers, we'll call them the super followers.

[00:18:31] Those are the ones that ultimately drive your business because a lot of the people on TikTok, they see your video, they follow you, they never see or pay attention to you again. But folks who give you your email address, you know, who give you their email address, they are really interested in what you have to say and the content that you create. And the reason they've given you their email address is because they want more of what you have to say.

[00:18:52] I want to be really careful with how I say this because I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but an engaged follower is worth way more than just kind of a, let's call them a tourist, right? There are certain people that I'll come across on social media that I'm like, oh, I like their content. And maybe I do follow them or maybe I don't follow them. And when I see them again, I'm like, oh, I like their content.

[00:19:16] But I'm not a very valuable viewer of their content because I'm like, oh, I like their content. And then I don't think about them again. I'm thinking of a guy that I've known for a while. I don't know very well, but his name is John Loyaya. He's out of Vegas. One track John on some of the social media stuff. But he is like a video game poster like on TikTok. He talks about video games, nostalgia stuff. It's really cool stuff.

[00:19:45] And like, I'm a fan of John's. Like, we're not friends. We know each other. We've been on I've had him on my podcast. I've been on his podcast. But the thing about it is I have a vested interest in in John. When I met him, his wife was just about ready to have kids. I had had kids like we've interacted over the last eight years, multiple times. I like him. I want to see him do well.

[00:20:12] I am more valuable to John in that instance because I'm an engaged viewer of his content versus, you know. And I'm sure there's probably people that are way more engaged than I am who interact on his posts more than I do and all this other stuff. But for I'm trying to think of somebody that maybe I'm not as engaged with off the top of my head. And I can't. But there's still people that I like. You know, there's still people that I see.

[00:20:39] Like, I think Mr. Global is another one that I like. But I watch his stuff. He talks about the oil business and political things. And he's an he's an oil person. He worked in the oil industry for a lot of years. And he kind of describes things in a way that's easy to understand for people to understand the oil business. But I'm not I'm not as engaged with him. Like, I wait until his stuff shows up.

[00:21:06] I might be following him, but I'm not actively seeking out his content. I wait till it comes to me. Right. And this is what you know. Let's take a complete step back and just talk about the benefits of of newsletters for creators in general. So I will flat out say this. If you are a blogger, if you are actively writing your content and putting it on a blog where, you know, your own blog, you're putting it on.

[00:21:35] You know, you're putting it on medium. You're putting it on some other platform. If that is the way you create content, there's no reason that you should not be creating a newsletter because your content is already created for it. Back in the day, it was create your content, put it on a put it on a website, do some search engine optimization of your website. And let's then hope that people search for the keywords that you've optimized for and then they find your content.

[00:22:04] When you think about that, that's a hard way to get a follower for someone to to find you and just keep finding you by searching for things in your content keeps coming up. Where a newsletter, if you are once again creating written content helps is that you find that person who's interested in your content and you can simply say, hey, there's more. If you like more, you can follow me here.

[00:22:29] And now instead of them having to actively find your content every time you create something new, you now are pushing it out to them. So every time you create something new, your newsletter goes out and you're sending that article to them or you're sending a link to the article to them, which shows up in their email. And they don't have to actually do work to find you every single time they want to see something new that you that you've written.

[00:22:52] So if you are that type of creator, you absolutely want to be creating a newsletter because you already have written the content, take the exact same content, put it into a newsletter and then send it out to the people who subscribe. Then I would move to if you are a podcaster, I believe this. I believe that every podcaster should have a newsletter because once again, when you think about the way that people consume podcasts, usually it's something it's word of mouth.

[00:23:21] You you were you were listening to podcast a you heard a guest on podcast a and then you followed them over to podcast B. But it is one of these things to where it is a lot of work on the actual listener to find the content that they want. So I believe as a podcaster, if you are creating content and you're producing your content, even if you I've had people tell me this, well, the reason I'm doing a podcast is because I don't like the right. And, Bode, you said I'm not a good writer.

[00:23:50] You know, you've actually mentioned that to me before. There are so many tools now that you can talk into a microphone and have whatever you say in that microphone transcribed and not just transcribed and the way that we talk conversationally, the way that you and I have in conversation right now. But you could have that content transcribed.

[00:24:07] Then you can load it into an LLM like ChatGPT or like Gemini or like, you know, so many other of the LLMs that are out there and say, hey, take this transcript and, you know, and then give me 15 bullet points off of the 45 minute conversation that I had. And then once you do that, you say, well, those 15 bullet points. Now I want you to order them in a certain way.

[00:24:31] And now give me three of them and format it into a newsletter that would look good on Substack. You can get that specific when you're talking about these LLMs. So even if you don't like the right, you could take content that you talk into a microphone. Bodie, I'll announce this here. I'm working on something that is called Three Minute Thursdays. And what it is, is that I want to get in front of a microphone on probably Wednesday night or Thursday early in the day.

[00:24:58] And I'm just going to go and just here's my thoughts for this particular week. And I'm not going to write that out. I'm going to talk to a microphone. I'm going to let transcription software transcribe it. Then I'm going to go to ChatGBT or Gemini and I'm going to have it, you know, put this into 15 bullet points. And then I want you to make it look like a newsletter. And then that thing is going to be sent out. It'll be sent out as an audio file. It'll be sent out as several clips.

[00:25:24] It'll be sent out as an actual newsletter based off of me getting in front of a microphone and talking into it for something less than three minutes. It's so easy to do. So once again, if you are a creator where you are writing, no excuse not to have a newsletter. You're already doing the work. If you're a podcaster, just talk into the microphone if you don't want to actually write it. Just talk to the microphone.

[00:25:49] If you are a social media creator, it gets a little different here because now you're doing something that's outside of what you normally do. But once again, if you are used to making TikTok videos, if you're used to making Instagram reels, if you're used to making YouTube shorts, get in front of your, you know, go through your process and then allow some software.

[00:26:11] You know, generally it's going to be some type of LLM software, but, you know, let AI take your creation and then turn it into a newsletter. So you now just have something to send out. And for our listeners, many of the folks who are listening to us, they're not just creating this content because they love to create content. They're creating the content because they ultimately want to run a business off of it.

[00:26:32] So if you are a business person, if you are a coach, if you're a consultant, if you run some type of service-based business where you've actually got products that exist outside of the content that you're creating, the thing for you with creating your newsletter is that now you literally can, you know, you send these newsletters out as part of your content strategy with your podcast. Because one of the things that people don't generally do when they're listening to podcasts is stop listening to the podcast to go take action on a call to action that you've given them.

[00:27:02] But when it's an email, you're already on your phone, you're already in front of your computer. You're just a little bit more wired to, oh, Bodie offered me this, you know, this cheat sheet for the top 10 electric vehicles that he thinks are going to be out in 2025. Let me go take a look at that because I'm in the market to buy one. It's so easy to get someone when you've given them something like that.

[00:27:28] And now once they do that, they're saying, hey, I want those 10, you know, EVs that you think I should be looking at. And if you're going to be sending stuff like this, like every week, definitely send me those emails while I'm in the process of buying the car. It's only going to help me. So I just use that as an example. I completely made that up, Bodie. I don't know that you've got a, you know, a cheat sheet for the top 10 cars. But if you don't and you want to create one, it's probably a good lead magnet to get someone into a newsletter for Kilowatt.

[00:27:59] No, that's a good point. And there's a link inside that you have to click on versus going to 918digital.com forward slash whatever. So that makes a lot of sense. The other thing, Rob, and you touched on this just a little bit, is with the transcriptions. Not, you know, everybody has different abilities. Some people are hearing impaired. Some people are vision impaired.

[00:28:22] So having multiple ways for people to consume your content, our friend Allison Sheridan is really big on this, almost to the point of, like, it's a passion for her, for sure. Making sure that content is available for everyone to enjoy. And, you know, even with, I mentioned 918digital, Allison's been on me forever to get a website. And I finally got it. And she immediately, I sent it to her.

[00:28:49] And she immediately went through and she's like, here's things you need to change to make this easier for people to read. Actually, the website itself got very good reviews. And we'll talk about the service that I used someday. But the website itself got very good reviews from Allison as far as being accessible for folks. But, you know, she immediately was, that was her first thing is how accessible is this for folks?

[00:29:12] So if you could, if you're hearing impaired and you can read through the show versus, you know, I mean, I guess you could also do transcription or subtitles on a YouTube channel. But, yeah. I can already hear Allison as she listens to this episode before she gets to this part, Bodie, when she's 10 minutes earlier in the episode. So, Rob, you shouldn't be telling folks that they should, you know, create transcripts just so they could create an email newsletter from them.

[00:29:42] They should create transcripts because it's just an accessible thing to do and the right thing to do. So you're absolutely right. We should be creating transcripts for our content regardless of whether or not we're going to use it for a newsletter or not. So if you go, if you look at it from that standpoint, you're already doing the work to make your website accessible, to make your content accessible. You might as well just go ahead and package it up and say, I want to send it out to you every week. And, you know, Bodie, like, you know, I've got a couple of different email newsletters.

[00:30:12] And I would say one of them has a really good open rate. I probably get about 26, 27% open rate on that, which is really high. That is definitely higher than the average. Most people want to be in a, you know, if you're doing 15% to 20% open rate on a big newsletter, you're doing pretty good.

[00:30:33] But once again, if I create a podcast episode and I send it out, I can only hope that people got it, that people subscribe to it, that they remember that they're subscribed. They went and they actually listened. Another thing as a podcaster, where a newsletter comes in is that I am very careful not to just advertise my show. That gets old after a while.

[00:30:58] If you're only just sending out, hey, there's a new episode out, people are going to get tired of that really quickly. There are other things that I put into my newsletters that are not something that you're going to get from the show. So there is a reason to have the newsletter in addition to the show. But at the very least, if you're not doing anything else, just remind people that your show is there.

[00:31:21] I think that as creators, we have a tendency to want to believe that if I tell somebody about my show once and they don't do anything, it's because, well, they decided right when I told them that I didn't want to partake in your content. And that's usually not the case. People don't even realize that you're asking them to do something until they've heard it three times. They generally don't take action on doing anything they've heard until they've heard it seven times.

[00:31:48] So when you think about TV commercials, you will see the same television commercial over and over and over and over again. And you'll notice, man, I think I just saw this commercial, but you don't notice the first time you see it. You don't notice the second time you see it. It's generally going to be three, four times you've seen the same commercial that you actually start to perceive. Oh, I've seen this already. And then by the time you get to six or seven, that's when you decide that I either can't stay in this commercial anymore and I wish they would stop showing it.

[00:32:14] Or you're going to go and actually become a customer of the thing that you saw on that television commercial that you've perceived. That's generally how things work. So when you are creating a podcast, people don't generally say, I'm going to go listen to episode one, then I'm going to listen to episode two, and then I'm going to listen to three. Many people do listen that way, but most don't. Most people say, oh, I like that podcast that Bodhi was on. I like that podcast that Rod was on. Let me go listen.

[00:32:43] And they listen to whatever the latest episode is. And then they don't think about it anymore. And if you're lucky, they subscribe to it. But once again, even if they subscribe, unless they're getting a notification, which they probably will ignore, there's no reason for them to go back and listen again until there's something to jog their memory. And that's where a email list can come in. Because even though my email newsletters that I create do not just advertise my podcast that I'm on, every time I send one out, I let folks know there's a new episode of the Tech Show.

[00:33:13] Now, there's a new episode of this version of Daily Tech News Show. So they are announcements as well, in addition to the other content that I'm putting in there, which was the reason that the person signed up to the newsletter in the first place. There's definitely people out there who kind of do the same thing that we do that are more about the let's get rich quick. Like, here's how you do this. But that has a finite amount of time that it works.

[00:33:43] And then after that, you're just kind of labeled a grifter, right? So you always, no matter what you're doing, whether it's a podcast or your social media stuff, you want to provide some sort of value that can be a comedic value, an information value, whatever. But you want to provide something that people look forward to. And when you do your newsletter, when you're doing that ask, it's at the bottom. You know, it's not at the top. It's at the bottom. And you say, hey, by the way, this is the new episode of the Tech John. Here's what we talked about.

[00:34:13] Here's who was on that episode or whatever. And that way, when somebody gets to that point, that is a gentle reminder. We're not in your face. We're like, you know, I could have made – I could have a lot more listeners to Kilowatt if I was hyperbolic about a lot of the different things in the EV world or one particular company or one of those other things. But I have a smaller listenership and I think more loyal because I'm not hyperbolic in the things that I talk about.

[00:34:41] And I think that, you know, in that same way, we don't want to beat our community over the head with what we're doing. But if you provide value, they feel, you know, respected. But they also appreciate that they're getting this extra value. And there's a number of different ways to do it. And I would – we're not going to really talk about that so much on this episode, like strategies and stuff.

[00:35:05] I do want to mention again that Charlotte's website, which is the addition, A-D-D-I-T-I-O-N.net, she has a master class where she does one-to-one coaching. And then, you know, if you want something more than that, then she has a different plan for that. Because it's so vast depending on what your content is, what your personality is, who you want to reach.

[00:35:34] You know, Rob, you say this all the time. Like if there's only 10 people in the world that do what you do and you have – or do what you're talking about and you have eight people out of those 10 that listen to your podcast, that is way more valuable than having 100,000 people listen to your podcast when there's 10 million people that do what you're talking about. I remember I was listening to – I want to say it was a Grow the Show episode.

[00:35:57] Kevin Schmetland, he created a podcast where he basically focuses on helping not all podcasters. All podcasters will get something from his content, but he's specifically talking to people who have a business, someone who's actually got something that they can sell in addition to being able to just create content for a podcast. And one of the things that he was saying was he was having a conversation with someone and they were like,

[00:36:25] yeah, I'm trying to really grow my newsletter, but we just got to like 1,800 people and we're stuck. And then when he dug into, well, who are you targeting your newsletter to, there's only like 2,900 people in the nation that they were targeting. So they got over half of them. And it's like, well, that's great. You literally – half of all the people who your content could benefit are already listening to you. Those are astronomical numbers.

[00:36:54] When half of the people who can listen to you are listening to you, you're doing good. And what he did was he just changed their perception. It's like, well, wait a minute. You're not trying to create a podcast for everybody. You're trying to create a podcast specifically for these folks and you're doing quite well. And it was just a – it was just basically somebody with, you know, some fresh eyes looking on it like, no, you actually are doing pretty good because the thought of the person was, well, if I'm going to do good with this podcast, I need to have tens of thousands of people.

[00:37:23] Can't have tens of thousands of people if your target audience is only less than 3,000. So if you got over half of 3,000 people total who would benefit from your content, then you're doing pretty good. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Do you have – because we've been talking for about an hour, Rob. Do you have anything else in your bag of tricks when it comes to newsletters that we should pass on before we go?

[00:37:50] So, Bode, you and I are going to have more conversations about newsletters because this conversation, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about TikTok, which is not the only reason to have a newsletter. It's just that it is so fresh of mind. I'm seeing so many people who are now, okay, I can't have that happen again. I need to do something else. How do I start to set a newsletter up? Seems like Substack, Beehive, you know, these places where you can set up free newsletters. I'll do the air quotes free.

[00:38:15] They are having a moment right now because people are finally getting the messages that this is what happens if a social media platform goes away. You no longer can talk to the people that you were talking to before. That is one of many reasons why you should have a newsletter. So we will definitely have more conversations as to why we get into it. But I would just say this. It doesn't matter what type of creator you are.

[00:38:41] If you are, you know, if you're creating any type of content that you want people to consume and you ultimately are going to be generating fans of that content. Give those fans the ability to receive information directly from you as compared to having to go through a third party company whose business model is keeping those people that you've collected, those people who follow you, keeping them on their platform at all costs.

[00:39:10] That is the thing you have to remember about a social media platform. They never want anyone to leave it. Those social media platforms make money by you staying on their platform for as much time as humanly possible. So if you want to be able to have the conversation with someone outside of that platform, if you want to send something and get a, you know, a 15 to 20%, you know, open rate, then newsletter is the way to do it. You may be thinking, well, that doesn't sound that great. But when it's social media, it's like two or 3%.

[00:39:41] When you send a message on your social media platform, maybe two, three, two, 3% of the people that follow you are ever going to see it. When it's email, it's going to be significantly higher than that. So if for no other reason just to make sure that more people are getting more of your content more of the time, that is the reason that you would want to look at a newsletter or an email list. Set it up so that you have a way to contact the people outside of going through social media platforms.

[00:40:10] Yeah, that's a really good point. It is so hard because in some cases, you know, it's kind of overwhelming doing this stuff. But the more that you do it, the more you practice it. I'm learning this. I'm getting way outside my comfort zone with a lot of things that we're doing thing with beyond the post. The more we're the easier it gets, I should say.

[00:40:33] So if it feels daunting in the beginning, just know that it becomes less daunting. It becomes more of habit. And like right now, I'm talking directly into the camera. Like I'm looking directly into the camera. When we started this, I would look everywhere but the camera, you know. And the same thing goes with a newsletter. The same thing goes with creating social media content. The same thing goes with, you know, doing interviews or whatever it happens to be.

[00:41:03] You have to flex that muscle to grow that muscle. Or you have to work that muscle to grow that muscle. Otherwise, you're just going to be in the same boat for as long as you're thinking about it but not acting on it. Absolutely. Absolutely. You and I would cringe if we go back and listen to the first episodes we created. They will sound horrible to what we do today. Nobody will hear those episodes. They will sound horrible. So, yeah. So it's like this.

[00:41:32] If you just improve 1% every time you do something in the course of a year, you are significantly better than you were when you started. Yeah, that's good. So, like I said, I am a fan. I know I preach this. I get on a soapbox about newsletters. But I'll say this, Bodhi. Email is the single biggest contributor to my checking account in this creator world that I've seen.

[00:42:01] Nothing comes close to it. I've made more money off of email than anything else. In fact, I would say I've made more money off of email than I have made almost off of – I'm not going to say everything else combined because I have done a lot of things. But email is – it is so – I would give everything else up. There's nothing I would give up for email.

[00:42:21] I would rather have, as a podcaster, 1,000 people subscribe to a newsletter than I would 1,000 people subscribe to my podcast, the thing that I am known for doing. Why? Because I don't necessarily know everyone who subscribe to my newsletter. I don't have a way to directly contact everyone – I keep saying newsletter – but everyone who subscribe to my podcast. I put my podcast out, and I hope that they will actually get it.

[00:42:47] But when it comes to my newsletter, I know that I can send an email out to a list of – if it's 1,000 people on it, I know I'm going to get 220 of them that are going to see it. And then I'm going to get another 50% or 60% of them that are actually going to take action on something that happened inside of that newsletter. And podcasting doesn't even come close to that. And podcasting is really, really good. But it doesn't come close to that. So, yeah, I am an avid fan of it. I've been podcasting for 19 years.

[00:43:16] I've only been in the email for probably about 15 of it. I wish I would have started four years before because that would just get me four years beyond where I am right now. All right. I think that's a good place to end it. But, Rob, I don't know if everybody knows this or not, but we had a whole conversation before we actually started the show that we recorded that we give out to our patrons.

[00:43:34] If you want to learn more about what we have for the end of Season 3 for Beyond the Post, and I give a little preview of a friend of mine's podcast, which – it's all in there. It's all in the behind the post part. Yes, come and check us out. Head over to beyondthepost.fm, and you'll be able to find out everything there.

[00:43:58] And if you want to get to our Patreon, it's beyondthepost.fm forward slash Patreon, where you can get all of those patron exclusives. So come and hang out with us on our Patreon. That's where we conduct our business.