Pre launch / Early career
Employment as learning
Joined The Hustle as an employee to learn from the inside how to grow and scale a newsletter media company. Left after ~14 months once he had the operational knowledge he needed.
→ Gained hands-on blueprint for newsletter growth and monetization before launching independently
Launch / First users
Hand to hand dms and social
Manually DMed contacts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram; posted newsletter link to Facebook friends list (~500–800 people); ran small giveaways to incentivize signups. Each micro-action added 10–15 subscribers.
→ Incremental early subscriber base built one contact at a time
Early growth — 50 day Twitter sprint
Twitter — threads
Published one marketing-focused Twitter thread every day for 50 consecutive days. Used each thread to funnel readers to the newsletter with direct CTAs.
→ Twitter followers grew from ~500 to ~40,000; newsletter grew from ~2,000 to ~8,000–9,000 subscribers
Users 9.0k users
Ongoing content growth
Twitter — threads
Continued using Twitter threads as the primary organic distribution engine. Tested different CTAs on threads and used winning CTAs as the basis for paid ad copy.
→ Sustained newsletter list growth; Twitter became core top-of-funnel for all five newsletters
Scaling — paid acquisition
Paid social ads
Ran paid acquisition campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit. Used winning organic Twitter thread CTAs as creative direction for paid ads.
→ Described as the second major growth lever after organic Twitter; specific subscriber or cost numbers not stated
Scaling — cross promotions
Newsletter cross promotions sparkloop beehiiv
Used platforms like SparkLoop and Beehiiv's cross-promotion networks to set a monthly budget (e.g. $10k/month) and piggyback on other newsletters' audiences to acquire subscribers at scale.
→ Described as a newer but significant third acquisition channel; specific numbers not stated
Monetization — sponsorships
Inbound and outbound ad sponsorships
Built inbound sponsor pipeline by making it easy for interested brands to book directly. For outbound, identified advertisers already sponsoring competitor newsletters in the same niche and cold-reached out to them. Benchmark: 10,000 subscribers can command $1,000+ per ad placement.
→ $65,000–$70,000 MRR from sponsorships across five newsletters
MRR $70k Users 160k users
Expansion — portfolio of newsletters
Niche newsletter expansion
Launched four additional newsletters beyond Marketing Examined (Content Examine, Social Examine, Landing Page Examine, DTC Examine), hiring a dedicated writer for each niche. Found writers by searching niche topics deep in Google search results (pages 2–4) to find skilled but under-discovered authors.
→ Total portfolio reached ~150,000–160,000 subscribers; additional 15–20k MRR from services/products in testing
Users 160k users