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Discover how the best media brands and solo operators are winning at newsletter growth & monetization.
Hosted by SparkLoop's cofounder Louis Nicholls and SparkLoop's newsletter nerd, Dylan Redekop—we take you behind the scenes and share the strategies, trends, and tactics you need to know to build your email audience and revenue.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the smartest media experts and operators out there today. Including from the Hustle, Morning Brew, Workweek, The Pour Over, and more.
Alex Brogan (unedited)
===
Dylan Redekop: [00:00:00] The, you know, the, uh, kind of a fake introduction, um, asking the question, getting you to answer, but the pre roll will kind of bring you right into, uh, what I pre recorded, bring you into your answer. So, um, if you're good to go, you're ready to start. Okay, sweet. Um, so Alex has been, is Alex, or do you prefer Alex or Alexander?
Alex. Okay, sweet. Okay, Alex. So excited to finally have you on the Send2Grow podcast. Uh, it's great having you here. Um, we are, I'm going to talk all about newsletters. And, um, for those of you who don't know you, um, can you let them know who you are and also let them know, um, basically what, what newsletter you're writing these days and, uh, you know, what it's about, who should be reading it and that sort of thing,
Alex Brogan: which[00:01:00]
is awesome. I started two years ago, have a newsletter at the time, which mental models, concepts and frameworks. a mouthful in a lot of ways and that evolved into Faster Than Normal now and In the past, although we will touch on some upcoming changes that has primarily targeted a self improvement type audience.
So not overly discerning with the exact target, target reader. Um, however, yeah, that's in the, that's in the process of changing. So we're at about 70, 000, 70, 000 subscribers currently, and it's been a, it's been quite a journey.
Dylan Redekop: And when did you start faster than normal? [00:02:00]
Alex Brogan: So it started in technically in March 2022, but I Start of taking newsletters seriously at the end of 22 and at that point in time, change the name of my newsletter to faster than normal.
Dylan Redekop: Okay, great. So operating as fast as the normal for just over a year or so now, um, taking the newsletter more seriously in just over a year or so we're in February for, um, for anybody listening. So, you know, you've got 70, 000 subscribers, which is, um. Um, which is nothing, nothing to, uh, um, let me, let me see how it says you have 70, 000 subscribers now, which is, which is an impressive feat, especially considering the length of time you've been, you know, quote, unquote, taking it seriously.
Right. Um, I'd love to first talk to you about how you went from, you know, your original newsletter name, not really taking it super seriously, um, to, [00:03:00] you know, fast forward. Almost two years later, where you've been taking it seriously for the last year, growing it to 70, 000 plus subscribers. Um, what have you done that's, you know, caused the biggest inflection points in growth along the way?
Alex Brogan: Yeah. So I think
a lot of the newsletter growth has,
I was lucky to join, was still paying tickets and sort of growing it back to
200, 000 followers in the space of less than 12 months, I think it was. So had a lot of growth on the back of that. As many newsletter operators would have observed in the last 12 months in particular, LinkedIn has [00:04:00] become much more fertile ground for growing social media and also a newsletter on the back of that.
And conversion also seems to be greater on LinkedIn as well. So they've been central. They've been absolutely central. Specific inflection points And I'm sure a lot of other newsletter operators would attest to this was certainly when the recommendations became commonplace,
Dylan Redekop: like paid recommendations,
Alex Brogan: paid recommendations, organic recommendations of the two.
I think when, if, if you're able to partner with a highly aligned newsletter and tap into that flow, really, really powerful. And I I've certainly tapped into that with faster than normal. And. And with SparkLoop that, that was, that was an inflection point Refind as well for me has been something [00:05:00] that I've found useful from a autopilot growth perspective, given that I've been doing this as a very much a part time responsibility and put a high premium on something that's low touch, similar to spark glue and other recommendation engines.
So overall social media growth. Recommendations and Refind have been. The central figures in, in the growth story.
Dylan Redekop: Awesome. So a little bit of organic work, which obviously takes more time, um, with social media, Twitter, LinkedIn, and then a little bit of paid growth with SparkLoop and Refind, um, which, uh, I know we had Bill Kerr on the podcast, uh, a little while back.
He's from open source CEO. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. Uh, yeah. Okay, great. And, uh, he, he was the first person on our podcast. Who's ever mentioned Refind as a. Uh, a good growth source, um, paid, paid [00:06:00] growth, but a good growth source. And for a while he said he was driving really low CPAs and, uh, really getting really great quality subscribers there as well.
So, uh, were you, was that a similar experience with you for you?
Alex Brogan: Definitely , it's the law
of, uh, shitty click throughs as they call it in the sense any new marketing channel had a very low. CPA initially, and then as people discover the channel starts to increase over time. And I think refine had that sweet spot maybe for the last, last six months of last year, it's starting to change a little bit as more, more people are aware of it now, but yeah, it was certainly a great drive off for a period of time.
Dylan Redekop: And it works. Um, for those who don't know how, how does the, we've talked, we've talked a decent amount about, um, you know, paid recommendations from a SparkLoop perspective, and I don't want this to be a spark loop promotional show. Um, But I am curious how Refind works in terms of, um, [00:07:00] in terms of like paid.
Can you, for those who don't know, can you just give us a really short, like Cole's notes on, on how it works?
Alex Brogan: We'd love to. I think the beauty of it is that it's completely self service, so you can sign up and input a link to your newsletter, the CTA, and your categories that you target, and Then you'll put in a cost per acquisition that you'd like to target and a budget, a daily budget.
And that's about all that you do aside from connecting your, your payment card as well. And then ReFind will automatically insert you into their most relevant categories that they have. And for those that are unaware of what ReFind is, it's basically a link aggregator for specific topics. You might have mental wellness, you might have finance, you might have marketing, [00:08:00] so on and so forth.
And they aggregate links from, aggregate and curate links from across the internet and put them into a nice, short, succinct, That is very readable and a good way to discover new blogs, websites, et cetera. So yeah, that's been really effective.
Dylan Redekop: Amazing. Thanks for that breakdown. Uh, I think it's the most, the most we've had it discussed on the show.
So I appreciate that. Um, what did you find in terms of while you're experimenting with growth? What did you find that you tried that didn't work as well as you thought it would,
Alex Brogan: the one that really stands out is I found that the ROI on,
and I think that is particularly the case in a world of organic recommendations and paid recommendations. There are just much easier [00:09:00] pathways to tap into other newsletters, which is a very good domain to be tapping into. It takes a lot of time to go to relative websites, to reach out to newsletters that want to do a cross promotion, to trade the copy that you're going to include, et cetera, et cetera.
And so I think that overall, whilst it, I'm sure was very effective in the past when. Recommendations weren't as popular, I think isn't, isn't as effective now. So that has probably been the core one that stands out to me. Yeah, I think
Dylan Redekop: it's a matter of, um, especially if you have, if you have the time and you don't have the budget to put into it, then cross promotions can be it can work out if you like, you're sending, you know, lots of pitches and you don't mind doing the back and forth with the other collaborator.
Um, but. If you, if you're a little more time strapped and you know, a lot of, especially at the beginning, a lot [00:10:00] of newsletter writers are also doing a full time job quite often. Um, so time isn't necessarily, um, something they have a lot of, so I could see that being. Being definitely a bit of a draining exercise that maybe you have, we'll have disappointing results.
So that makes sense on that
Alex Brogan: point, Dylan. I think it's
speaking to
ultimately you have a set of resources that you can bring to bear on your newsletter growth. That can be time that can be money, or that can be skills and knowledge of. platform. So you might know Facebook ads extremely well. You might know LinkedIn organic growth extremely well. Deciding your growth strategy, lots of conversations around growth strategy tend to be quite prescriptive in that X and Y is the [00:11:00] best way to grow a newsletter.
That's not the case in general. Of course, there are. and growth method, growth methods that can allow you to get more scale quickly, but ultimately reflecting on your unique resources is the most important way of approaching growth. So if you have lots of time to commit to the exercise, then organic social media is going to make sense for you.
Cross promotions are going to make sense for you. Awesome lead magnets are going to make sense for you. If you have capital to throw at the exercise, then Facebook ads, Twitter ads, et cetera, is going to make sense for you. And similarly, as I mentioned with. With the skills and knowledge. So it's really a matter of reflecting on your unique capabilities and the resources you can bring to bear, and then learning into those as much as possible.
Dylan Redekop: Probably has to do a little bit as well. And that's a great, a great framework too. So thanks for sharing that Alex. And I think it depends on your goals and how [00:12:00] quickly you want to reach them as well, right? If you're playing a, maybe a long time horizon kind of game where you're just, you know, you're bootstrapping this thing and you're just, you're okay with it taking a little bit longer.
Then, then, yeah, you might, you might leverage your, your time. Right? Whereas somebody who's like, no, I want to build this thing as fast as I can. Like let's build this rocket ship and let's go. Then obviously you're going to leverage more of the, uh, the paid aspect because that can go a little bit quicker.
Totally.
Alex Brogan: Yeah. I think it hits on a really good point and it's a, it's a meta. Discussion that you get into around growth isn't the be all and end all. And I think as I've actually been in the newsletter space for longer, and it's easy to optimize for the headline number as it is on social media. It's the vanity metrics that everyone's obsessed about, but ultimately there are phenomenal newsletters making millions of dollars per year with 10, 000 subscribers, and if you are very thoughtful and intentional about the audience.[00:13:00]
That you target and ultimately build for and build something really great for them, then you'll be far better off than chasing just high headline numbers in a somewhat irrelevant or highly crowded niche. So I think that's really important to level set and be highly intentional about what you're actually optimizing for.
Dylan Redekop: Absolutely. We've had a number of operators on here who have Definitely well under, uh, you know, a hundred thousand subscribers closer to, you know, 30 to 50, and they're making 300, 500, 600, 000 a year, one close to a million. And so it definitely can happen with the right package of content, uh, product offerings and that sort of thing too.
So, uh, it definitely doesn't have to be a numbers game in terms of get the most subscribers as fast as possible. Cause usually that's, uh, yeah. That isn't necessarily a winning formula all the time.
Alex Brogan: So, [00:14:00]
Dylan Redekop: so no, no, it's okay.
Alex Brogan: Um, yes, please do.
Yes.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I mean, and I'm talking about a crowded marketplace and it was a bit of a first to market kind of, um, race, right? Like who, who could kind of build a. The biggest, best AI newsletter, not even necessarily best, the biggest AI newsletter, the fastest. And, um, you know, we're, we're going to start seeing the fallout of that, I think in the next little while here, but, uh, it was, it was definitely interesting to watch that whole sector explode.
Um, you know, it, it did a lot for the newsletter world as well, because there was a lot more, there was a lot more going on, I should say, um, with newsletters, people are leveraging, leveraging that for sure as a medium to, um, to capitalize on. You know, chat GPT and Dolly and all this stuff that was coming out.
That was really exciting. [00:15:00] So it was interesting to see, but you definitely saw that, uh, you know, big spend and big push to grow these huge AI newsletters. So, uh, there are some winners, but many losers in that game. So I want to know, um, Just lastly on this growth topic, what do you think more newsletters should be doing from a growth standpoint, or, or maybe what's the biggest mistake you see a lot of newsletters making?
You can answer either or both of those questions if you want. I
Alex Brogan: think the framework that on the startup
and be very sure
the value that you're providing, the job to be done, speak that your newsletter is actually fulfilling
in the most effective way possible, ultimately when it comes down to it, [00:16:00] adding new subscribers into a leaky bucket. Or an unengaged product is going to be pouring money down the drain. So the higher the engagement in your list, the more advertisers will want to work with you, the more clicks you will be getting, the more affiliate opportunities you have, the more digital course options you have, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But none of that happens without actually optimizing the product first. And I think way too many newsletters start obsessing over growth. And in the startup world, I think there's a much better understanding and approach to this, which is that anything before product market fit is basically irrelevant.
You're not spending time on customer acquisition outside of, of course, customer validation. You're not spending time on. Intense company building or [00:17:00] optimizing your profitability model or things like that. It's just been hyper focused on, on the product itself, getting feedback from your early subscribers and iterating quickly on, on the product such that when you do pull the growth, whether it's money or time, growth leaders, you can be sure that that time spent is actually going to produce a high ROI.
And. I think a lot of people, similar to the thread of optimizing for vanity metrics, get obsessed with growth too early and don't actually optimize the product and really understand what it is that, who it is they're building for and how they're fulfilling a need for them. So that would be the, that would be the biggest one there.
Dylan Redekop: That's a great, a really great point. And we just had Chanel Basilio on the podcast who writes the Growth and Reverse newsletter, and she kind of took. The approach you just mentioned, she really [00:18:00] doubled down on quality focused on, you know, in depth research on all of the deep dives she was writing. And she did do some, you know, she didn't do any paid growth.
Everything was organic, like being active on social media, but she, she wasn't. You know, going viral every day and growing her, her newsletter with, you know, tens, and if not hundreds of thousands of followers, it was just that her content was so good. It naturally was like, everybody was sharing it and saying, wow, I can't believe, I can't believe, you know, this, a newsletter is being written and it's free and it's like, this is amazing.
So, um, I, I wholeheartedly agree. I think that is something that we're actually probably going to see more of. In the next year, I think a lot of the, because when, when we get a very saturated newsletter market, um, in all, all, all types of topics, uh, the niche doesn't necessarily even matter. It's just, you can only read so many [00:19:00] newsletters in your inbox.
You're going to start ignoring or unsubscribing the ones that just don't, you know, do the job for you. Uh, what have that job might be, whether it's to inform, entertain, educate, whatever it is. And so I think it's really going to come down to. You know, the, the really high qualities are going to rise to the surface and they're going to, they're probably going to, you know, win at least in the short term.
So I think focusing on quality is something I think is ultra important and should be the number one focus. So very, very good point. Um, I want to go into, uh, the talk about the intelligence age and you started the intelligence age, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but did you go, was it a co yeah, you co founded it.
Okay. Co founded it. Um, and you know, we were just talking about AI newsletters. It was an AI newsletter and you did recently sell it, uh, just within the last month. So I'm really curious about that journey. Let's start off maybe with the question [00:20:00] of. Did you start the intelligence age to, with the intention to sell it, or, or was it just something out of a curiosity and interest?
Alex Brogan: Yeah. Interesting. So we were, I was founded the intelligence age with my dad and
Isaac has spent a lot of fortune building cardiovascular imaging and various, various things quite, quite deep in the space, which obviously isn't my world. Um, and so the initial idea was actually. To with, with much of a longer term time horizon about what we were interested in doing in the space. And that was likely to start, which my cousin Casey is now actually working on a AI automation agency and that having a distribution labor [00:21:00] would be very additive to that plan.
And ultimately when we combine sort of my. Year or 15 months of learnings on, on fossil and Casey and Isaac's knowledge of AI. It made a lot of sense given that, you know, so much attention was, was being given to the space and we really justify going on that journey. So. No, we, we didn't intend to, to sell it.
And as is often the case, it's very much just, uh, priorities changing type scenario. And, uh, ultimately, yeah, we were, we're happy with the offer that we got in the end and it made sense. So yeah, it was, it was quite a journey, but in the end, glad we, glad we did it. We learned a lot during the process as well.
Yeah. You know, got to take something from, from zero to, to a quiet as well, which is, uh, which is a good experience.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. No kidding. What were some of the biggest learnings you [00:22:00] had in that, uh, in that journey?
Alex Brogan: I think one of the most interesting ones from a growth perspective is, and this happens across all of media and is a really fundamental law or principle of media. And that is. Once you've built a media asset, it becomes much easier to bootstrap and launch and successfully launch new media properties.
And you've seen this across multiple different space, uh, spaces, whether it be Morning Brew launching with their business newsletter first and then expanding to different categories, whether it be Harry Stebbings releasing 20VC, expanding into different categories over time. There are countless examples.
You've seen it in the AI newsletter space with [00:23:00] folks like Zain Khan leveraging his existing audience to grow superhuman extremely quickly. Ultimately, we were able to leverage my existing audience very successfully and also faster than normal as well as a newsletter from a standpoint. Okay. Overall, that meant The assets we could bring to bear, so to speak, on growing that new set of very quickly was a lot more than we otherwise would have had.
So I think that's the first point. I think the second point is compounding and compounding in the sense that when you start to have a learnings in a space as, as I probably had in, in newsletters by, by that point in time, you just don't realize how much easier it becomes. And I think. So often you can [00:24:00] get 12 months into something and it can feel like this is too hard, I'm not seeing the traction that I want to see, et cetera, et cetera.
And then it's only in those next two or three months that things really start to take over and compound. And this is, it's the classic type of advice that you hear, which is, which you can know intellectually. Okay. But you don't feel it viscerally and live by it. And I think bridging the gap between that intellectual knowledge of the idea of compounding being a good thing and actually doing it, the quicker you can bridge that gap and live by it, the faster your results in, in general will be.
And the, The more long term success that you can have. And I think it's, it's quite ironic that, you know, the AI newsletter craze is probably the best possible example of this shiny, shiny object [00:25:00] sort of syndrome that, that, that folks have. And, you know, there's a chance that we might have fallen into that category, but there's also the, the argument that We were able to execute on that opportunity quite well, given the learnings that we had, and so it made a lot of sense, given that we were continuing to compound.
Absolutely. Too often, people jump ship or are impatient before they actually see results. Ultimately, anything can work, so long as you're willing to put in the time and be patient. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: That that makes, you know, patience is a, is a true virtue, especially when it comes to something like building a newsletter, where you, you weren't looking to even start the newsletter, looking to sell it, the intelligence age.
Uh, so did an offer come to you and, and did that, or was it something that you, you reached out to a potential buyers?
Alex Brogan: Yeah, correct. So we didn't start it with the intention of selling it. We got to a [00:26:00] point like last year where we. Started to become open to the idea. I think with these things, it's often never, uh, let's sell
Dylan Redekop: it.
Yeah. Yeah. It's more of a gradual progression. And
Alex Brogan: for us, that was a matter of our priorities changing and it becoming clear that if we were to get a, get an offer that was feasible, then we would, we would entertain it. And what that looked like was first actually thinking about who the best types of buyers for the asset would be.
And what I mean by that is. And this may be some of my sort of investment banking, uh, background coming into it, but ultimately you can have different types of buyers and the value of the newsletter can be different to those types of buyers. So if you were to sell directly to a newsletter, for example, the newsletter itself would be valued on a subscriber basis.
If you were to [00:27:00] sell it to a. AI SaaS company or a AI consultancy, for example, they would think about that asset in a very different way, mostly from a lead generation perspective. And so for us getting clear on where most of the value or who it would be most valuable to first was, was quite, quite important.
And then starting to, to reach out in a mostly a, Hey, we're considering What it would look like to sell X. Do you know anyone that would be interested? And that was really what, yeah, where we started and it delved out from there. We started conversations with a number of groups, got a few offers along the way.
Started conversations with, with the neuron in probably January and chatted over, over the course of About two months it was, and yeah, we were able to, to come to terms [00:28:00] on, on something that made sense to the both of us and he'd go. So it was relative to what a sales process can be. And particularly given Pete and Noah had been, had a bit of experience buying other newsletter assets.
In the not so, uh, distant past process.
Dylan Redekop: So you guys were acquired by the Neuron, which is another AI newsletter, correct?
Alex Brogan: Hello? How are you doing? I think I just lost you there for a couple of minutes. Oh,
Dylan Redekop: yeah, we're back. Sorry. I just, uh, I just heard right at the end there. You finished up and asked you, um, if I said you were Neuron, which is another AI newsletter, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. And so, um, I, the, [00:29:00] I was just for research for this, um, this interview, I was just looking back at your latest post on the intelligence age, um, the newsletter that you sold to the neuron.
And it looks like they have, um, kind of sent out a final email about a week ago to under the intelligence age brand to subscribers. Basically, what Letting them know it's going to be kind of wrapped into the neuron in the next newsletter they'll see is, is from them. Um, how does it feel as somebody who's like, kind of, you know, put a, put a little bit of blood, sweat and tears into a brand and a, and a list and, and all that to see it just kind of, I mean, you get, you get the revenue from the sale, but at the same time, it's like, I'm curious, cause for me, that would feel like a little bit like you're sending your child off to college, but then not necessarily coming back kind of thing.
Uh, did you have any interesting feelings over that?
Alex Brogan: A few things. I think the first thing would be, we felt the asset itself [00:30:00] was going to be in much better hands with Peter North, that has, I think, been the definition of anyone in the industry. In the space, putting blood, sweat and tears and really thoughtfully about brands more so than pure top line numbers.
And I think that they're being handsomely rewarded for that. And that will play out over, over a period of time as well. So that's the first thing ultimately we didn't feel that we could maximize the utility for subscribers, given our time commitment to it. I think it was always a side. Project for us as well.
It wasn't a full time focus. And so yeah, it didn't quite feel like a baby obviously it was something that we put a fair amount of time into but it didn't quite feel like a baby and So yeah, it was it was really comfortable and painless in the end and it just made sense It felt like the right move. So yeah, overall, I'm very happy.[00:31:00]
Dylan Redekop: Okay. Very good. Um, let's get into, uh, just for sake of time, I got some other, I had some other questions about the sale, but let's get into some revenue because, um, obviously, you know, selling a newsletter, there's gotta be quite often, there's gotta be a little bit of revenue tied to it. Um, But in terms of faster than normal, how did you start monetizing with faster than normal?
And then what was like maybe your first form of revenue and then how are you currently
Alex Brogan: monetizing it? Absolutely. So sponsored, sponsored, uh, newsletters, main advertisements started probably at around a thousand subscribers, give or take started getting inbound and how it's evolved is to add on newsletter affiliates.
Recommendations as well using sparklet and boosts and other affiliate products and services within newsletter and [00:32:00] i've recently or as of about three months ago released some digital products as well so that is starting to to play out too so yeah a few a few levers there
Dylan Redekop: Okay. Cool. And, uh, we'll talk about your digital projects really soon.
Uh, before we do, I'm curious, is there, can you give like a approximate, like revenue sort of pie chart on, on a percentage of, you know, ads to affiliates to recommendations kind of thing? Yeah. Or digital products.
Alex Brogan: Ads would be at least 60 percent digital, digital products. 40, oh, sorry, not 40, 20 to 25. Okay.
Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: Okay. So the reigning 15, 15 ish percent, the affiliates and okay. Okay, cool. Um, and you know, I'm curious since you sold one newsletter already and, and, um, seem to have a pretty good experience doing that. What are you planning on selling faster than normal at [00:33:00] some point? Definitely not actually.
Alex Brogan: No.
Okay. I see this. Okay. It's more so as my baby to the intelligence age, I think given that it's been mine, something that I have spent, you know, a lot of time on also, it's a community that I've engaged with, you know, a lot more. And so I feel quite a close connection to it. I think the other point being that where I'm looking to go personally in, in my career, a list and having a inbuilt community is a very helpful thing.
And I think more people are becoming aware of this, you know, relative to having a social media audience, actually having a list, irrespective of what you're doing in business, but it certainly allows you to go faster in, in different areas, get feedback to hire and raise money if you need to. [00:34:00] Obviously it's another income stream.
There's lots of, lots of benefits to having a good sized list. Um, Yeah. Ultimately I find it really enjoyable. I'm writing about things that I'm interested in as well. And that to me feels like a infinite game, so I don't plan to
Dylan Redekop: sell it. I love it. I love it. And one thing too, with, uh, you know, email list versus the, versus the social media audience, which, which is helpful for growth, of course.
But, um, you kind of de risk a lot of your effort when you're, you're also building a list simultaneously, right? Because, um, though you don't necessarily own. Um, I guess your, your email, because, you know, Gmail maybe could shut down or whatever ESP you're using could technically shut down, but at the same time, you, you do own the distribution to that list, right?
So, um, you can stay in communication if all of a sudden Twitter turns to X and then it turns to something that doesn't exist anymore, because who knows what Elon might've done, um, you know, you at least have that list to fall back [00:35:00] on. So, uh, very good strategy to, To a monetize and to to kind of de risk your, your time and, um, in time investment, really on growing these audiences, I wanted to ask you just to close out here.
Um, you've had a successful newsletter exit. You've seen, you know, Lots of success growing faster than normal. Uh, so you've had a lot of experience building profitable newsletters and now selling them. Um, and you've recently launched, uh, the digital product that we, that you alluded to earlier, uh, a course called newsletter mastery.
Can you tell us a little bit more about newsletter mastery? Because I think, you know, people listening to this right now, Um, could probably benefit from, from it. So yeah, uh, in lateness.
Alex Brogan: Yeah, the course itself wasn't something I,
it became clear through conversations in the early stages. Starting then there wasn't necessarily [00:36:00] one stop shop for zero to one, and then to scale for newsletters and really having that delivered in a succinct and very actionable way. And frankly, a lot of the, a lot of the playbooks. that I was able to include in the course ultimately were things that I have spent a lot of time working on and had sort of readily available to leverage to put into the course.
So that's the first thing. Um, the idea is that, and actually further on that, I was lucky to actually partner with, uh, Matt McGarry, who has been responsible for the growth of a lot of awesome newsletters, including, uh, Milk Road and. Uh, several others, he was happy to produce the growth, uh, units in that core, the pay growth units at the very [00:37:00] least.
So that's, that's awesome. And then demand curve actually included a short module on deliverability aspects, which is a little bit more technical and complex in that job. So it was really happy to partner with those guys who got a lot of. Relevant experience in those areas and the course, I think something, someone at all stages could get something out of it.
Maybe you're already a hundred thousand subscribers and heavily monetized. You won't, but if you're starting off, it goes through everything from finding a proper niche, which we spoke about, um, at the beginning of the conversation, the importance of building a brand, really understanding your job to be done, setting up your newsletter, design wise, et cetera, and how to think about growth, the framework I mentioned, and then all the growth [00:38:00] channels you can actually be considering, um, which ones are worth your time and how to think about setting those up and actually executing them.
And then in the monetization section, it goes into all the different ways you can monetize a newsletter, which ones are to specific newsletters the most and how to execute those as well. So, I didn't hold back as far as everything that I had had learned and also resources and, um, all, all, all sorts of stuff.
And yeah, the early feedback has, has been really good. Um, had some early success stories from, from newsletter mastery and yeah, really excited for, for what that can do for, for more folks going forward.
Dylan Redekop: Very cool. And just for people listening, We have, if they are interested, um, by, you know, how you've explained it, if it sounds like it's something they're interested in, you have a 50 percent discount code, correct?
Yeah.
Alex Brogan: Yeah. So 15 percent discount, uh, newsletter [00:39:00] mastery. And if you head to the website, faster than normal. co, you should be able to find it and then just plug that code in and check out.
Dylan Redekop: And this would be a very good, um, opportunity to go into our show notes to find that code because we will, uh, we'll include the link and the code in there.
So, um, thank you for sharing that with the audience, Alex. That's awesome. Um, one last thing before we, we close out, uh, we're two months into 2024. I'm curious. We've talked a little bit about, um, you know, newsletter mastery and digital products, but if we had you bought back on this podcast in what year? Um, what would you hope you'd be talking about or what would you love to be talking about?
Two
Alex Brogan: things. One is a successful transition to version 3. 0 of faster than normal. And that will be very much aligning with my, what I consider infinite game [00:40:00] and interest, which is very much entrepreneurship. So I'd like to serve CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs as best as possible. And the initial way that I'm planning on doing that is in a profile manner of prolific people and companies and really deep, uh, doing deep dives into those people and sharing their stories and also what we can learn from them along the journey.
So that's been an interesting exercise and I've got, got some good early feedback so far from folks who have seen some of the content and Yeah, I'd like to keep growing, but growing purposefully and growing the right audience and those that are really going to resonate with the content as well. So yeah, hoping that that goes as well as possible and excited to continue compounding the learnings.
I
Dylan Redekop: love it. Good note to end on purposeful, uh, maybe intentional growth as opposed to just, you know, [00:41:00] growth for growth sake. So, uh, that's a great point to end it on. So Alex, it's been awesome having you on, uh, maybe quickly share on social media where people can find you.
Alex Brogan: At underscore Alex, still haven't found out the Alex Broaden username, but hopefully that's possible.
Alex
Dylan Redekop: Broaden on
Alex Brogan: LinkedIn as well. Great.
Dylan Redekop: And we'll, uh, link those too. So when you're going to grab the, the, uh, link in the discount code, you can check those out too. Alex, it's been great having you on. Thank you. Maybe we'll have to have you back in a year's time to see if we are talking about, uh, purposeful, intentional growth and stories.
So, um, all the best to you in 2024 and, uh, we will be watching. Thanks man.
Alex Brogan: Thanks for having me Dylan. Thanks.