Codie Sanchez

The best source of info for starting a successful newsletter

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I checked just now. I first wrote about Alex Lieberman in this newsletter back in June 2020. Here are the first three sentences of what I wrote then:

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In 2015, Alex Lieberman started sending a daily email to 45 friends and classmates at the University of Michigan. Each email was empty except for a PDF attachment. The PDF was made from an ugly Word doc template, and contained a fun-to-read summary of the top business news for that day.

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That email described the beginnings of Morning Brew, a daily email newsletter about business news.

By June 2020, Alex had managed to grow Morning Brew to about $20 million a year in ad revenue.

Later in 2020, Alex sold a controlling stake in Morning Brew for $75 million.

After finding out about Alex Lieberman and how successful he had mad Morning Brew, I got kind of obsessed.

I’d long been interested in running a magazine-like email newsletter. And here was somebody doing it, and making millions off it.

So when I found out that Alex Lieberman was actually hosting a course, all about how to create a successful Morning Brew-like newsletter, I jumped on it.

The course was called Newsletter XP.

It was hosted and presented by Alex and Tyler Denk, who was employee #2 at Morning Brew and who is now the CEO of Beehiiv.

As you might know, Beehiiv is the email service platform that makes it easy to create a Morning Brew-like newsletter, and that’s currently used by newsletter successes like Milk Road (the biggest crypto newsletter)… the Rundown (the biggest AI newsletter)… and Arnold’s PUMP CLUB (the Gubernator’s personal newsletter).

Point being, Alex and Tyler have strong credentials for talking about newsletter success.

And inside Newsletter XP, they do so. They tell you how to create a newsletter if you want to succeed, and perhaps more importantly, how not to create a newsletter if you want to succeed.

Because there have been thousands or tens of thousands of newsletters launched over the past few years. But only a small fraction have become real businesses.

The secrets of the successful are within Newsletter XP.

The course doesn’t only feature Alex and Tyler.

​​It’s also got Codie Sanchez of Contrarian Thinking (8-figure business, wrote about her a couple days ago)… Max Tcheyan of Puck News (40k paid subscribers at $16/month, $70 million valuation)… Kendall Baker (Axios Sports, ~500k subscribers)… and a bunch more people who have been behind the biggest newsletter success stories, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

I first wrote to the people at Beehiiv last summer, and asked to promote Newsletter XP then.

I didn’t hear back anything.

I wrote again. Still nothing.

But I was not deterred.

​​I kept following up.

Eventually they agreed.

The hook was in! ​​Now that they agreed to let me promote Newsletter XP, I asked to have a discount over the regular price. Because why else would anybody buy now?

Since they had already agreed to let me promote, they agreed to the discount as well. Commitment and consistency for the win.

So starting tomorrow, and ending Monday, Feb 25, at 12 midnight PST, I will be promoting Newsletter XP, at a substantial discount over what it sells for normally.

If you are interested in starting a big-success newsletter, you will want to read my emails starting tomorrow.

And if you’re not interested, you still might want to read my emails, because I will be sharing and teasing the best stuff I personally got this star-studded training.

The anti-subscription high-ticket community

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I’ve recently noticed an interesting new pricing model. As an example, take Codie Sanchez’s Contrarian Community.

As you might know, Codie is an ex-private-equity, Goldman Sachs woman. She quit the corporate world and started using her PE background to buy boring, cash-flow businesses. Laundromats, RV parks, and the like.

Codie also started an info publishing business, Contrarian Thinking, teaching players with money to do the same as she’s doing.

Codie writes a free Contrarian Thinking newsletter, in which she gets her audience of 200,000 readers hyped up on the opportunity of buying boring businesses.

And once they get hyped up enough, she sells them training teaching them how to actually buy a boring businesses, plus ongoing support and networking, inside what she calls Contrarian Community.

So far, so standard.

The part that got me is that Codie doesn’t charge for access to Contrarian Community monthly. She doesn’t charge for it yearly either. Instead, she charges a one-time fixed fee of $10k. And she’s built a 8-figure business out of Contrarian Thinking this way.

I’ve noticed this pricing model in a few other successful info publishing and coaching businesses recently. At first, this had me surprised — because I’ve been trained to think continuity offers are where it’s at.

But a one-time, large fixed ticket to join a community makes a lot of sense. It means:

1. More money per member, today instead of tomorrow.

2. Better quality of member.

3. Better results for members, and therefore easier sales down the line, and a more attractive offer.

4. A better community. Rather than people constantly churning, there’s stability. There are more members contributing, and more successful members supporting and encouraging those who aren’t as successful yet.

So this is something to consider.

If you too offer ongoing coaching, training, or a community of some sort, you can do this too.

Figure out what your LTV is per customer… round that up… or double it or triple it. And then charge people a one-time fee, instead of leaving them to constantly wonder if it’s worth sticking around and renewing for another cycle.
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​Do this, and you might end up producing a better community, getting better results for your customers, and making a lot more money yourself.

How to take trivial, possibly made up facts and turn them into influential emails

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“So what did you learn today?”

My ex (still living together) was sitting on the couch, arms crossed, looking at me sternly.

“Err…” I said, my eyes darting around as I tried to remember some new fact. “Today I learned that… supposedly you’ll be twice as productive if you block off your time for specific tasks.”

Background:

Last week, I was listening to an interview with Codie Sanchez. Codie is a newsletter operator and boring business investor. But at this point in the interview, Codie was not talking about either of those topics.

Rather, she was talking about how she makes her marriage work.

One of Codie’s tricks is that, each day, she and her husband share one thing that they’ve learned that day.

I mentioned this to my ex (still living together). She liked the idea so much that now she grills me at unexpected times about what I’ve learned during the day. I then have to think up something in a panic.

Yesterday, when she asked me this, I had been watching a video by Cal Newport of Deep Work fame. Newport now sells a notebook for planning your workday and blocking off time for various tasks.

​​Newport says — and he’s an authority so why question him — that if you block off your time for specific work tasks, you’ll be twice as productive.

I told my ex this. She again liked the idea. And it developed into a conversation about day planners and productivity and places in Barcelona to go shopping for notebooks.

Here’s the point of all this:

That thing about [time blocking = 2x productivity] is a small, trivial bit of information. I’m not even sure if it’s true. But it was enough of a kernel to start a natural and free-flowing conversation there on the couch. I guess that’s why Codie Sanchez recommends the practice.

It’s not just marriages or exes that this works with.

If you’re ever struggling for daily email ideas, then just ask yourself, “What did I learn today?” ​​Pick something small, concrete, even trivial. Then secrete a bit of personal context or opinion around that, like an oyster around a grain of sand, and within a few minutes, you’ll have something that your audience will enjoy reading and might even get value from.

That’s kind of a micro class in influential email writing.

For the macro version, you’ll have to get my Influential Emails training, which I’ll make available later this week, starting Thursday.

​​You’ll have to be on my email list to have a chance to get Influential Emails. If you’d like to learn something new on Thursday, click here to get on my list.

Chargeback inspiration

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In my email yesterday, I wrote about a chargeback I’d gotten earlier in the day. I asked for advice.

And I got it.

I got advice about possible ways to handle the current chargeback better.

I got good advice on how to prevent it in the future.

I got personal stories and experiences and consolation from others who have been there before me.

I can say I’m honestly grateful to everyone who wrote in. I can also say it’s reminder of something important:

People start email lists to do marketing. To sell stuff. Perhaps to become seen as an authority at whatever it is they do.

But if you do it right, it ends up going way beyond that.

I heard Codie Sanchez talking on a podcast a few days ago. As you might know, Codie runs Contrarian Thinking, a newsletter with some 250,000 subscribers, about buying and selling businesses. She’s built an eight-figure info business off the back of that newsletter, plus maybe several other 7-figure businesses also.

But it goes way beyond that. Codie said that via her newsletter, she’s automatically and without any extra effort also gotten:

– Unique business opportunities
– Financing
– Business partners
– Employees
– Advice and guidance
– Access and connections

My experience has been similar.

I’ve had direct job offers from people reading my newsletter. I’ve had business partnership offers.

People have shared their personal stories with me. I’ve gotten good business advice, from people who are qualified to give it.

I’ve hired people via my list, and I’ve been hired by people on my list.

I’ve gotten insider tips and tricks from people at the very top of the game.

I’ve met some of my readers in real life. We’ve gone to conferences together. I’ve even gotten nice stuff in my physical mail box from people who read these emails.

All of that fell out automatically, as a side-effect of relentlessly, mercilessly, unfailingly writing a 400-500-word email every day, and sharing something I have learned, or something unnerving that happened to me, or a bit of inspiration, or a bit of frustration, like I did yesterday.

I guess you see where this is going. But since this is a marketing newsletter, I will force myself to spell it out:

Start an email list.

Write to it regularly.

Preferably daily.

Good things will happen as a result. And if bad things happen also, you will have a powerful resource in your email list to deal with it.

I have a course about how to relentlessly, mercilessly, unfailingly write a 400-500-word email every day, and to make it interesting for yourself and valuable for your readers. If that’s something you’d like to do:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

How to become a millionaire on Five-grand-err

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I read something mindblogging via Codie Sanchez’s newsletter:

A freelance designer by the name of Brett Williams is making $120,000 per month. Not per year. Per month. All from client work.

How?

Williams has a unique business model. He charges all his clients a flat fee, $5k per client per month. Clients can quit or pause their “design-as-a-subscription” at any time. They can only make one request at a time, but as soon that is fulfilled — usually within 30 minutes to 48 hours — they can make another.

It might sound impossible that this could work. But Williams has ~20 clients at any time. He seems to be alive. He doesn’t seem to be working superhuman hours.

Again, how?

My guess is he works with good clients, does good work, and delivers it in a reasonable timeframe.

Clients are happy with what they get, and happy with what they don’t get — no full-time payroll burden, no hassle of finding a new freelancer, no opportunity cost of reaching a new agreement with a known freelancer, each time they have some niggling design request to make.

Do you think you might do something similar?

Of course not. It’s outlandish. But just pretend.

Think of a Fiverr-able skill you have. And instead of offering it for $5 on Fiverr, imagine offering it for $5k on your own site.

If you have Williams’s kind of luck, you will be able to make a cool million in under a year. If you’re less lucky, it might take you two or even three years to get there.

But still, what else you got right now? If that’s not so hot, might as well start moving towards that million-dollar service business today.

In related news, the deadline for my 9 Deadly Email Sins training is nearing. The training happens next Monday, August 7, the deadline is the day before, Sunday the 6th.

I’ve given away a lot of valuable info over the past few days, in the form of hundreds of copies of my new Simple Money Emails course.

Simple Money Emails shows you how to write effective sales emails.

9 Deadly Email Sins shows you… how to avoid writing ineffective no-sales emails.

I realize that might sound like a promise nobody wants. The only thing I can say in my defense is that I have been paid to critique 100+ emails over past year. Including by people who have had all the email marketing and copywriting education in the world… including pro copywriters… including people whose entire businesses run on email.

​​And yet I find these people, who should know better, repeatedly commit these sins, and repeatedly pay for it, in the form of lower sales, bored readers, and shrinking engagement.

You might wonder how this 9 Deadly Email Sins offer is possibly related to the Brett Williams thing I told you above.

I can think of two ways:

You can use Simple Money Emails + 9 Deadly Email Sins to actually learn how to write effective sales emails, and avoid the mistakes that plague others. There’s plenty of demand for that at Fiverr, and might be legit demand for it on Five-grand-err. I’ve personally been paid much more than five grand per month by some clients, just to write effective daily emails for them.

Or if you have no interest in selling email copywriting services, but you have another skill that clients might want, then you can use daily emails to sell that. The only real difference I imagine between Fiverr and Five-grand-err is the Five-grand-err clients are likely to need a bit more trust and softening up, and daily email is the perfect format for that.

But you make the choice. If you decide that effective daily emails are something that’s worth knowing, and knowing well, then here’s where you can sign up for my training next Monday:

https://bejakovic.com/sme-classified-ty/

Invest in your 1000 true high-paying fans

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On February 1st, I got an email with the subject line, “Invest in your newsletter.”

“I sure like the sound of investing,” I said to myself. “And I do have a newsletter.”

The background is this:

I had recently signed up for Beehiiv, which is something like Substack, only you have to pay a monthly fee for it.

Beehiiv was created by Tyler Denk, who was an early employee at Morning Brew. Morning Brew is now a $75+ million business, based around a daily email that covers the day’s business news.

I signed up for Beehiiv because I’ve started a Morning Brew-like newsletter. It has nothing to do with marketing or copywriting, and it’s in a different format than what you are currently reading.

So that’s the background. Now that we’re caught up, let’s get back to that February 1st “Invest in your newsletter” email.

Tyler of Beehiiv was writing me that email to give me the opportunity to pay him $499 for his course on starting a newsletter.

So I did.

​​I sent Tyler $499 and I got access to this course, called Newsletter XP. And I got to listen to a bunch of big people in the newsletter space, including Morning Brew’s founder and CEO, share their ideas experiences on content strategy and growth and newsletter monetization.

People in this “newsletter operator” space don’t seem to be as miserly as people in the direct marketing space about sharing ideas that are normally behind a paywall. In fact, Tyler encouraged people to tweet the most valuable ideas they got from his Newsletter XP course.

I don’t tweet, so let me email you the most valuable idea I got from this course.

This most valuable idea came in the next-to-last session. One of the guests in that session was Codie Sanchez.

​​Codie runs Contrarian Thinking, a newsletter with some 250,000 subscribers, about buying and selling businesses. She’s built an eight-figure info business off the back of that newsletter, plus maybe several other 7-figure businesses also, plus I guess even the newsletter itself pays her well since she can promote relevant money-related offers.

And maybe most impressive of all, Codie has done all this since corona started.

Anyways, here’s what Codie said that I found most valuable:

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I sort of believe your 1000 true fans — Kevin Kelly talks about this — they’re actually the fans you should charge the most to. Because they are your biggest fans. And where most people screw up when they do paid products is they launch their first product for $10 a month. Their 1000 true fans buy it for 10 bucks. They have cultivated this group of people who buy too low priced of products, which doesn’t allow you to create a real business which can further serve them.

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That’s it. That’s the most valuable idea that stuck with me from the first time going through Newsletter XP.

I’m thinking about it as I work on building up, and monetizing my other newsletter.

Maybe it’s something you too can think about if you are creating an audience, a list, a newsletter, whatever. Maybe you can think of it as the difference between salting the soil in your garden, just because salt is cheap and easy to get, or investing a bit of time to plant a walnut tree that actually takes root and provides shade and fruit for you and yours for years to come.

But enough of the Magic of Channeling Warren Buffett.

Unrelated to the core of this email, if you want to invest in copywriting skills, which can help if you are building up an audience or an email newsletter, I have a quick, compact, exercise-based course on that. For more info on it:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/