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Growth In Reverse is the must-listen podcast for anyone serious about growing an email list and turning a newsletter into a thriving business. Hosted by Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop, two leading voices in the newsletter space, this show pulls back the curtain on how today’s top newsletter operators actually grow and make money.
Episodes include deep-dive teardowns of the strategies behind the most successful newsletters. You’ll hear how creators like Justin Welsh, Codie Sanchez, Sahil Bloom, and other creator founders are building loyal audiences and turning subscribers into revenue. Learn how they attract traffic, increase conversions, boost retention, and scale without burning out.
Whether you're launching your first newsletter or refining your growth engine, Growth In Reverse gives you proven tactics you can use right away. From onboarding systems and referral programs to sponsorships and paid products, this podcast helps you grow faster and smarter. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start applying what works, tune in and learn how the best are building newsletters that last.
Growth In Reverse Podcast with Sam Vander Wielen (EP 045)
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Sam Vander Wielen: [00:00:00] All roads lead to the email list. And so I always saw this as the number one ultimate priority in my business. Like literally nothing else matters to me other than this email list. Every single thing that I do. If I'm gonna show up for something, if I'm putting my name behind something, if I'm being asked to participate in some summit of some sort of whatever, I'm like, how does this support my email list growth?
Any piece of content that goes out? How does this support my email list? It's all I think about. I went to get my hair done and a light fell outta the ceiling and hit me in the face, and it broke my nose and my occipital bone, and I literally said. Don't worry, it's going to make a great email.
Chenell Basilio: Sam, so excited to have you. We got to connect at K Craft and Commerce this past June, may, June. It was June. June can confirm. Um, I'd heard about you from a number of people but never actually took the time to, to hop into your content and I'm so glad I did 'cause you have a wealth of knowledge and a ton of great [00:01:00] stuff I'm excited to cover today.
So welcome to the show. Thank you both for having me. I'm so happy to be here. So you. Lawyer and you then went from lawyer to health coach to now creator back kind of in the legal space. So how did that all come to be?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, so I was a corporate attorney for over five years and really was in this like very miserable victim place where I thought everything happened to me and like there was nothing I could do about my horrible, terrible circumstances.
And it wasn't until I actually literally got jolted awake by life by this like really scary. To me, plane incident, uh, on my way back home to Philadelphia, where I'm from. And it really shook me into being like, you know what? I might not have control of this plane, but I can figure out this whole job situation.
And within days, I, I quietly like worked behind the scenes to start an online business. And like you mentioned, like in the health coaching space. And that ultimately was [00:02:00] not for me. It was not my thing. I was not good at it. But thank goodness I did it because it gave me such an incredible opportunity to like work out all of the kinks, make all of my mistakes on such a low stakes effort, but also to like really get to know this industry and start without even trying a legal templates business.
That went very, very differently than my health coaching business. It took off right away and eight years later, here we are. And by takeoff you mean like. I think I heard $9 million from your main product. Just from one product alone and I only sell two products, so not too bad. Yeah, not too bad. It's alright.
Decent, importantly to me, honestly is that I feel very, uh, time rich and flexibility rich. So that was always more important to me. I didn't, I didn't think, I didn't think I'm like, I always joke with my customers that I'm like the poster child for not believing in yourself. So I didn't think this business was going anywhere.
I just thought, oh, if it can make enough that I can just like live and be comfortable, I'll [00:03:00] be fine. But the money part was never my thing. What ended up being really, really good about that was that I spent the first several years saving and saving and saving, and I never spent, and I don't, I, I mean, I spent on what I needed, but like, I didn't spend like crazy, I didn't really change my lifestyle and I also didn't spend my business spending, changed my bus business spending, which really ended up being like the catalyst for my business being able to grow in the long run.
Dylan Redekop: So you went, you went to. $9 million on one, two products, one main product. How big was your email list during this time as you were growing, and how much was that a part of your, of your revenue?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, so when I started my email list, I think Chenell, I've heard you say this before, there were like, I don't know, 22 people and probably 18 of which I was like, either related to or knew personally and had bullied into just like added their email.
Yeah. You know, and they were like, why am I getting these emails? So that I had a very similar startup journey. I, I hardly had any email of subscribers from my first business, so I didn't bother to carry it [00:04:00] over. I, I kind of just emailed people and were like, Hey, I'm going to start this new thing if you wanna come with me.
And I think a very small handful did. So, uh, I did that, but I. I built it to about a thousand subscribers in six months. A similar, I think a similar timeline to you using, uh, really just this one guide at first. So, I mean, this was in late 2016, early 2017. And at that time, you know, PDF's guides were very popular, really driving home this one guide, this legally, uh, protected guide.
Uh, it was kind of like a go-to all in resource people could get. And I don't know, yeah, I don't know how I figured this out, but I just thought, you know what? If I'm gonna show up online and create any content on social media, I'm just gonna talk about this guide. And that's really how I built it to that first.
Thousand. So
Chenell Basilio: you had the guidebook. Was it just from social media that people were signing up to that? Or how did they get on the list?
Sam Vander Wielen: I really took a two-pronged approach in the beginning. So I took a SEO approach. I would say first and foremost, again, time period, like time [00:05:00] specific in terms of 2017 SEO was fantastic, but I also had an early thought that for what I did in particular, like people were going to be Googling, you know, how to start an online business or legal contract for a health coach or something like this.
So I really leaned into writing content for my website that was very like Googleable. And then within those posts just linking to my, at that time, all I had were individual legal templates, like downloadable contracts and website policy. So I would link to those, or I would have. The traditional model of like a content upgrade of like a blog post with the guide in it.
And so I would try both and I would get cold sales from those blog posts, and I would also get a lot of email list signups. So I was kind of playing during that time to figure that out. So I was focusing on SEO and then also on Instagram at the time.
Dylan Redekop: Were you driving decent revenue with that small list in the first, in the beginning or what, how, what did that look like for
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I mean, so to give you an idea, my legal templates run from $97 [00:06:00] to $347 and, uh, US dollars.
And in my first month, uh, with basically, literally no one on my email list and just using SEO and who I did have on my email list and, uh, Instagram, I made $5,000 in my first month. I was like, wow, this is fair. I mean, that's a lot of legal templates for one month, right? I, I would say the other like. The other, I talk about this a lot in my book, but like, something I, I feel like people don't mention often enough when they talk about these strategies is I was very scrappy in the beginning.
So I was trying everything. Like I was in every Facebook group and I was joining groups and communities and answering people's questions and like really being helpful and then being like, oh, by the way, this is what I do and I sell. So I was like, really getting in the dirt and, and like getting involved with very individual like micro sales, right?
Responding to every comment, responding to every dm, all that kind of stuff. Nice.
Chenell Basilio: So zero to one K was like. SEO slash Instagram slash facebook groups. Is it the same to get to like 5K and then 10,000 subscribers? Or did [00:07:00] the strategy change?
Sam Vander Wielen: I would say from five to 10,000 subscribers, it became more about diversifying the freebies that I offered at that point.
So up to 10,000 subscribers, I was still only relying on freebies. I didn't have any paid traffic. I didn't have what I do now, which I call it my easy email list strategy, like right. Go directly to my email list. I didn't do any of that. I was just creating a number of different freebies. I, I would call the five to 10 K zone, then my like bloat zone where I created too many freebies.
'cause I was like, well, if I created one freebie that went really well. If I just create like 12 freebies, then like people are just gonna come flying. But instead, that kind of divided my attention a little too much. So that was a great, I thought that was like a great learning experience and period to, to, so I went up a bunch of freebies and then kind of came back down to these like, okay, I like, like these three freebies work really well and I'm just gonna focus on promoting those.
Chenell Basilio: Got it. And so you're, you were just selling the templates by themselves in the beginning, and then over [00:08:00] time you started doing the bundle?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yes. Right. So it was about the Ultimate
Chenell Basilio: bundle.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. It was about eight months into to selling all of these individual legal templates and talking to a lot of people.
And then I would hear from people who would say, well, I need like four of these templates, and that's gonna be, you know, $1,500 or something like this. Like, it would get expensive fast if they needed several. But also a trend I started noticing was even if people could get the contracts they needed from me or the website policies, they still had questions that wouldn't go answered by.
A legal template, like they didn't understand what the difference was between an LLC and a sole proprietorship. They didn't know when they needed business insurance. They weren't sure if they really needed that business bank account, or could they just use their personal and only use it for business?
Like they were asking me all these other things and I would, I had all of these free , what I would call sales calls, I guess discovery calls which were, you know, totally free of advice. I was not giving people legal advice or legal tips or anything like that. It was literally just for you to come tell me like, [00:09:00] I'm Chenell, I have this kind of business.
This is, these are the services I'm gonna offer. And I would literally prescribe, like, you need contract one, two, and three. I would send them the links and that was it. And so I had 1200 of those calls, but in doing so, I started learning. What everybody's questions were. And so it actually, the idea was born out of a like frustrated conversation I had with my husband where I was like, these calls are getting so annoying because I could just put myself on speakerphone and like walk around like I'm saying the same thing over and over again.
And as it left my mouth I was like, yeah, that's a course that was what I needed to run off and create the ultimate bundle, which ultimately became my bestselling product.
Chenell Basilio: So 1200 free calls.
Sam Vander Wielen: I remember so many of these people by the way, I like literally remember like names, specific circumstances, like a bunch of whackadoodles.
I remember a lot of these calls. Yeah. Wow.
Chenell Basilio: So you had like, what'd you have, like a button on your site to like book a free call to see which template is right for you kind of thing? Yeah,
Sam Vander Wielen: so I had a, I had buttons on my site. I started integrating them in those blog [00:10:00] posts too. Like, what was I thinking?
'cause some of them were getting really massive Google traffic, so people were signing up. I would advertise it on social media. I would post on Instagram stories. I would talk about it to my email list. Let's say if you have questions, book this call. If people emailed me with a question, uh, about anything, I would then be like, well, why don't you just book this call so I can talk to you more?
So it just became the go to. And because I had created a digital product, I was like, well, I have nothing else to do, so why not? Like, let's talk. Yeah. Thank God I took notes. That's yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Amazing. Yeah, I just, I wanna like hammer this home because so many people come to me and they're like, I don't know how to get people, like how to talk to my customers.
I'm not getting feedback from emails. And I'm like, okay, but you can go be scrappy like Sam did in the early days. Like people will talk to you if you make it for free.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yes. And you learn
Chenell Basilio: and figure it out.
Sam Vander Wielen: Absolute. Um, with my customers and with my audience, but I am a voice of customer nut and so I'm constantly gathering little data or the way that they talk, the [00:11:00] way they phrase things.
Like, if it's helpful for anyone listening to think of it too, that like, I've been a lawyer since I was 23. So I don't really know what the problem is. Like I, like sometimes people say to me, and I'm like, I don't understand what you don't understand, because I've never, I've never been in their shoes. And that's very unusual because a lot of people in the online business industry create businesses out of something that they've once experienced and they've resolved, and now they're helping other people do it.
That was never my experience. And so I've heard from so many people who are like, me too. Like, I don't, I never struggled with that thing or like, I, I just didn't have that experience. And so this all has been so helpful for me. In capturing their voice and in really continuing to like center myself about what they're upset about, not what I think that they should be upset about or worried about, because I very strongly believe that it has nothing to do with me, and I'm just here to like, think about, oh, that's what bothers you.
Cool. I can, I can address that. I can create something for you.
Chenell Basilio: That's so powerful because I think even people like [00:12:00] myself who have done some of this stuff and grown an email list and now talking about growing an email list, like this was three years ago. Yeah. Like, I don't remember every single thing I was going through.
So it makes so much sense to like actually talk to your customers and hear that
Sam Vander Wielen: from
Chenell Basilio: their
Sam Vander Wielen: own mouth. And it changes. It changes, right? Like now I'm hearing from so many people who have all these concerns about like AI and all this stuff, and I'm like, wait, what's going on? Like, I don't know. I'm like, I'm out of it at this point.
I'm, I'm not in their shoes anymore. Right? Like, and I'm not, I'm not in the beginner stages of. Starting a business like, like you said, you kind of forget and so Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure so much of your audience, like even if you were once in your audience's shoes, you might actually forget those early days.
Mm-hmm. Of like, oh yeah, that was really overwhelming in the beginning and Oh yeah, I remembered like that thing I was concerned about when really I should have been concerned about this. Like, you know that now, but at the time, like you have to really be in touch with what they are currently worried about now and not.
So many people in our industry, I think mess up because they preach what you should be worried about and they spend so much time educating on, like, look over [00:13:00] here, you should be worried about this. And instead of just speaking directly to what the people are worried about right now.
How often are you talking to your customers like this?
So formally we have once per quarter. We have a whole big round of customer research calls and we record them. We have a whole customer process that we go through with these. Luckily, I mean, we have like almost 5,000 people in the ultimate bundle. So you, you know, luckily we send out an email and we'll say like, can anybody book this call?
And it fills up, we take, you know, a dozen or more at a time. So they usually fill up. But then even once they're done, we're then running the recordings and the transcripts through ai. We are doing all this like really cool stuff to kind of synthesize and come up with. Um, some of the trends. I'm even tr like watching those over time.
So I do that. But my customers also know that I'm in my inbox so I answer all my emails. So I'm very like on the pulse of what they're asking, what they're saying. Um, when they write me on Instagram, I voice memo them back. They all like write to me there. They write to me on Instagram, they write on Facebook.
They, we have a Facebook community, [00:14:00] which I'm in multiple times a week with thousands of people in it. So I'm, I personally am like keeping my nose to the ground as well.
Dylan Redekop: Wow. I think that's really admirable. 'cause a lot of people would hear like, oh yeah, you've got this like, business that almost kind of runs itself to some degree, like with or could potentially if you just injected money into it for growth and create this flywheel, but you're like, still, I find it very admirable.
You're still like right in there. You're in your inbox, you're replying to people on social media, and you're spending the time to actually talk one-on-one with people regardless of the size of your email list and how much money you're making. I applaud you for that. 'cause a lot of people would just be like, I'm out.
I'm gonna go hang out on a beach. Um, my question to you is, when you do these calls, one in the beginning, did you have like a time limit on them or how did you, 'cause I could see getting bogged down or, like strapped for time if you're taking so many. So I guess that's my first question is how did you put those constraints in?
Or did you
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I did. So they were supposed to be 20 minutes or less. It sometimes they even took less than that. Sometimes they went a few [00:15:00] over, so it, like all came out in the wash. Mm-hmm. But the best thing that I did over time, which is now something that my customers get when they buy the Ultimate Bundle, I turned this into like a templated sequence for them.
The best thing I did was write an email sequence, uh, so that once people signed up for the call, it would drip out maybe three to five emails. Like they were kind of, you know, reminder emails. But within those emails, those reminder emails, I was really setting the stage and grooming like what this call was for, what it was not for, and here's an easy way to cancel it.
And so over time those calls got tighter and tighter like. You were to come to this call already having reviewed my products. Mm. Coming with the question that you have about which one's for you and why. And like, we are not gonna discuss like your aunt's, you know, bump on her elbow and like whether she should sue the guy who hit her, you know, in the car accident.
We're not talking about that. And so like, I was very specific about all of this stuff, and we talked about like, this is to talk about which prod are the right fit for you, not answering your questions about what you're confused about. I will tell you about my products at the [00:16:00] end. I will send you links, like yada, yada.
And I just feel like then over time the people I got on the phone with were very warm. Very ready. And yeah, then the calls got shorter and it was, it was a little easier to do 10 of them in a day or something like that. Right. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: And then now when you do them, you said, um, you kinda do them in cohorts.
Is that, is that what I understood?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. So now instead of like, we don't do any discovery calls anymore. I mean, now this is also, I feel like with like, technology has just changed too. Like now people send me like a DM on Instagram and I just voice memo them back. Yeah. I'm like, Hey Chenell, it sounds like you need this contract and that contract.
And they're like, great. And they run off and get it. It's, it's a little different than when we were doing, I feel like I sound like I'm 300 years old, but you know, back in the day that's how it was. But um. Now instead of doing any discovery calls, now we're doing these as research calls post purchase.
So those are typically about an hour. Um, sometimes they can be 30 minutes if the person needs it to be. And that's primarily done with my funnel specialist and my copywriter. Okay. I've, [00:17:00] I use to sit in on them, but we actually find that they go better without me, especially when I want to like, find out like what if there was something they didn't like about what I did in my marketing, like how are they feeling about my emails and my email sequences?
Did they listen to my podcast beforehand? How did that influence their decision to purchase? Did they check out competitors? Um, that's something we talk about. And what did they not like about them and why did they go with us? Those were things that people weren't as open to discuss in front of me, which makes sense.
Yeah. So now I'm not there. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: That's super smart. Yeah. This is like. I don't think I've ever heard anyone in the online business space say that they do this level of detail with their calls. So this is awesome. Yeah,
Sam Vander Wielen: that's,
Chenell Basilio: that's only
Sam Vander Wielen: the start of it in terms of level of detail in the business.
I have the time, luckily. Yeah, the
time.
Chenell Basilio: That's awesome. Well, cool. So you, you clearly know your audience through research and you do all of that. Um, I know now your funnel is mostly like [00:18:00] focused on like. Webinar whether it's Evergreen or you do a couple live launches a year, um, how you initially started off Evergreen just because of the nature of what was happening around you, right?
Like you didn't really have a choice.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I did what everybody said, you literally cannot do, let alone should not do. And I was just like, you know what? That's what we have time for. And so, uh, which Chenell's referring to is that my dad had gotten diagnosed with leukemia and I was like, well, I was gonna take care of him.
And I was like, well, I have to, I have to figure this out fast. So I didn't have time to figure out how to run a live launch. I didn't even know how to do that. And I didn't. I've never done like a big live webinar. I never told my email list about this thing. So I was like, you know what? I'm just going to start.
I recorded this webinar in 2019. Knew by this is very important to what we're talking about. I knew everybody always asked how did you know what should go in the webinar because of what everybody said when I talked to them. Yeah. So when I spoke to people, I zoomed out and was like, okay, these are like the five kind of categories of things we usually end up talking about.
Um, that would really be like a comprehensive, like these are [00:19:00] the five steps you need to take to start an online business. And so that's what I made the webinar about. I literally put up an Instagram poll asking what everybody thought that the title should be. Uh, the one that won. I went with it. It is still the title today.
Six years later and 350,000 people have taken the webinar. So yeah, it's, uh, it was just, yeah, kind of born out of necessity. But that ended up being a great email list driver. But I also used it to my own email list. You know, even to my own list, I was writing weekly saying, talking about some legal topic and then being like, go take my free legal workshop.
And then people were buying the bundle.
Hmm. Wow.
350,000 people. Yeah, it's a lot of people. That's a lot.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: Wow. We have 5,000 people sign up for it live in February, which was crazy. Wow. Yeah. So you're aggressively cleaning your list? Yes. Once a quarter. Super aggressive about it. People are always asking me this.
They're like, oh, you must not ever, no. Once a quarter we scrub my list. I'm very proud of my email list that I, I joked the other day with someone that like, for like email list inflation, I feel like I have [00:20:00] like 10 million subscribers because I talk about legal stuff and I have 50,000 email list subscribers.
I'm like, this is guys, this is like a hundred million subscribers. It's in my mind that is, it's very hard to do.
Dylan Redekop: That is funny. Yeah. Wow,
Chenell Basilio: that's wild. Yeah. Yeah. I think I looked back last year and I was like, oh, 16,000 people unsubscribed, or I deleted that many, or however, whatever it came out to be. And that was, that was a great LinkedIn post.
So if you need content, that's good idea. I would definitely go with something like that. Yeah. People good of hearing how many people unsubscribed? So a lot of people
Sam Vander Wielen: unsubscribe and a lot of people unsubscribe and then buy from me. So I don't really care. Like, I don't, people take unsubscribes, wait, like, you just make too many stories out of it.
And so like, I mean, I always think of like, think about all the stores you shop at that you unsubscribe from their emails. It's like, I just don't want your emails. I feel very confident that the next time I need a pair of jeans, I'm gonna go to that story. Like I know that I don't need to get five times a week emails about it.
So I don't know. That's the way I they also don't provide any value, but different story. [00:21:00] So I, I, you know, I, that's the way I think about it. Like there's all kinds of reasons why people do that, but also. My customers ask me about unsubscribes all the time, and I'm like, if we waste our time thinking about that, I mean, who cares?
The bus is driving for it. We are leaving, you know, and like I am, I'm still here for whoever wants to be there. That's the way I think about it. It's always fun when someone re subscribes and then buys something. Yeah. Like, yeah thank you for coming back. Mm-hmm. It happens to us a lot. It happens to us a lot.
People will comment, uh, on something and they needed to leave. I mean, I talk about grief a lot to my email list, and people have had to leave because of that. It's like, it's okay. I mean,
Chenell Basilio: mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: It's, you never know why someone does. Yeah,
Chenell Basilio: you're naturally gonna talk about that. You've been through some things, so Yeah.
Have a
Sam Vander Wielen: lot of grief to talk about. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Okay. So in the beginning you started with like 10 articles for SEO Yes. That you decided you were gonna write and put out. Clearly it worked super well. Do you still think SEO is like a good channel? Are you still focusing on it?
Sam Vander Wielen: I am still focusing on it definitely in a different way than I [00:22:00] did in 2017.
I mean, I used to write. So many just like, uh, SEO optimized blog posts for my site, which I've pretty much stopped doing. We obviously optimize every like podcast episode. I have a podcast called On Your Terms. Every time I have an episode go out, we have a post for it on my site. And so we do, we optimize that.
I'm kind of writing for fun on Substack. I'm like optimizing those the best I can to like applying my SEL skills. I got really into SEO when I started the business, which helped a lot. Honestly, I am, I don't know about you guys. I'm confused because when I Google things and all that AI stuff comes up, I scroll right past it and look for the articles.
So I'm like, is it, am I the only person still doing that? I don't know. So I'm very confused about what to do, and so I've kind of been in this like holding pattern of I'm not ditching it, but I'm not prioritizing it the way that I used to. It makes me kind of sad, yeah. I'm okay to shift.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Have you seen like your traffic
Chenell Basilio: drop quite a bit from it? You know.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Our website traffic is not like I get a [00:23:00] weekly report in our website traffic. 'cause I watch that like a hawk and it's gone down. It was down like not even, it was less than 10% over this time last year, which I was like, I think considering what's going on, that's not that bad.
Mm-hmm. I've also decreased what I've been doing in ads, which I know drives a lot of traffic, which is kind of like fake traffic. 'cause people click but then they don't end up signing up. So like, they're not really doing anything. So I, I. I'm all considered, I would consider that a win, but I still get traffic from especially like some of those earliest earlier blog posts that like were kind of my core content.
I have one that's about whether online health coaches can take health insurance. And that still performs really well and like, I just got a comment on a blog post today, so it's interesting. Like I still will get those every once in a while. Um, but it, it has shifted slightly.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I have to wonder if like, Google doesn't wanna touch legal with like a 10 foot pulse, so they're like not, not putting some of the AI stuff up there.
Yeah, I've
Sam Vander Wielen: thought about it because I also see, like sometimes when I Google stuff about it, it's, it's wrong. And [00:24:00] I'm always like, well, how are other people supposed to know? Uh, this is actually content I'm working, it'll be out by the time this airs. The content I'm working on right now is where I do like a, like lawyer reacts to an AI generated contract where I'm like having it generated stuff for me and then going through and showing how bad it is.
And Oh, that's so good. Yeah. So it's like, that's kind of my point. I, but I, yeah, I'm very fu I'm like, am I the only one that's scrolling past all this stuff? And I, I just wanna read the article. It's just me. Like, I don't wanna hear your AI summary. Give me the article.
Chenell Basilio: That's awesome. Um. You mentioned paid ads I know you use them a lot.
You have used them for years now. Are you, like, what's the mix? Are you focused on like building the email list with ads? Are you, is it more for like selling products to your existing audience? Like how does that work?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, it's, it's like 80% list building. So this also was born out of necessity. I mean, so I referred earlier to like that little nest egg I built up, uh, in the beginning came really in handy once my dad especially got sick.
And so [00:25:00] that was when it was like, back then I was on Instagram stories every single day doing probably some like very good, you know, high value training directly to Instagram stories that. Disappeared in 24 hours, and that was driving a lot of traffic to my list. So I would end every single one with a pitch to the webinar or to some freebie.
So when I stopped doing that, when everything happened with my dad I realized, might as well use this capital for some Facebook ads. And so really just ran a lot of opt-in ads at the time. Then built out a sales sequence so that if people signed up for the webinar, they, you know, got tagged appropriately and then served, uh, a sales ad so that they would purchase the ultimate bundle.
Um, and that worked beautifully for a really, really long time. I started to see a downturn last year. That actually turned out to be a problem with the ads team that I was working with at the time. I let them go because of it and once I got with my new ads team, we were like back pretty much back to normal.
I've seen ads change a little bit, I would say in the last like six months. [00:26:00] I see some differences, but I've also really changed my ads strategy and approach and I think, I think it's working better now.
Dylan Redekop: I'm curious, are you running ads? And I might have missed this, so apologies if it's repeated, but, uh, running ads strictly to a webinar or are you doing like, Hey, sign up for my newsletter.
Are you advertising the newsletter at all or is all lead focus lead generation focused?
Sam Vander Wielen: So I kind of categorize the ads. So we have, uh, a lot of lead gen focus, but I break those into like freebie. So I have a eight day legal challenge, so a challenge that people sign up for in eight days. They get their business set up.
I also obviously have the webinar, so there's a whole ad set going up for that. Okay. And then we've also run one to a guide as well. Okay. And then I have a whole nurture category of ads that are running. So we run ads to podcast episodes that I've done to, um, Instagram posts that I've posted that have gone well, uh, organically on Instagram.
We don't boost them, we literally turn them into an ad. And that works really, really works better than boosting. So [00:27:00] we have done that and a lot of times those posts have calls to action to my list. Okay. So we'll run to that. Yeah. And then we have a whole, the third category are all sales ads.
So once people have signed up for one of those things, they usually then get served an ad telling them to buy like a limited time offer to buy the bundle. Okay. Interesting.
Chenell Basilio: You have a lot of email sequences, don't you? I have a lot of email. Do you know how many there are? Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: Well, so there's, it's not as bad as you would think, uh, in the sense that the, the webinar has a very specific, you know, sequence that it has to have because it goes like, it's all timed and all, and the offer and the, the whole thing.
But for all of my opt-ins, I think the smartest thing I did a long time ago was say, you know what? I'm gonna have delivery emails for all of the individual offers. Maybe there's one follow up, uh, depending on, on the freebie, there's like one more follow up that's like, Hey, did you get your guide or did you watch this video yet?
Or something like that. And then they all get funneled into a nurture sequence that goes from there. Um, so that. Helped my sanity a lot because otherwise [00:28:00] we had like 12 different nurture sequences going at once. Mm-hmm. And a lot of times people will sign up for like multiple things. So especially within kit, this just made it a lot easier to be like, you know what?
They get the delivery email and then they get funneled into a nurture sequence and then they get dropped into my email list and that's fine.
Dylan Redekop: Do you have a, like a Kit Pro helping you? Or how did that, or do you have a teammate team member on your team helping?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, so in the beginning I did it myself and it's probably why there are so many techs.
There's like 300 techs. Oh man. It's like every time I had a new thought, there was a tag. Yeah. Um, and yeah, it was a little crazy, but three years ago I made a very smart decision to hire Lindsay, my director of operations. And she came in and was like, oh my God, what's happening in Berkeley at the time?
And, uh, she cleaned it up so they, they run it. And then I also have a great tech ba Jess, who's fantastic at. Getting in there, making sure that they all run properly. Wow.
Chenell Basilio: Lindsay was the one who came with you to, she did crafting commerce, right? Yeah, she's the best. Yeah. [00:29:00] That's great. She keeps my head on.
Is she, is she your only, your only full-time person? Yes.
Sam Vander Wielen: She's my only full-time person. And then I have a customer service support person, Leanne, part-time, and then Michelle, our marketing assistant. That's really our only core. I mean, that's another thing that's really helped is just having little three like mighty people running this thing.
And we have kept it very small, pretty much on purpose, but I think we also just all like kind of own our domain and it works for us.
Chenell Basilio: This is a hell of a business. Yeah. You're like at pushing eight figures with one full-time employee and like two other like
Sam Vander Wielen: core people. Yeah. That's awesome. And we all take a lot of vacation and take a lot of time off, and I don't work that much.
And I will keep it that way. I mean, I always say that with a little bit of like an asterisk about myself and that I'm, I, I recognize that fully, that I'm like a freak of nature. I can get more done in three hours than most people can in like three weeks. And so my friend's always like, you recorded all those YouTube videos, like all those reels wrote your newsletter for the next month, did all of these [00:30:00] substack.
I'm like, yeah, just knock it out. Mm-hmm. That's, that was like my greatest strength was the thing that was most penalized as an attorney, because being efficient as an attorney is like the worst thing you can be. And so, because my hours were low and that's not what they want, they wanted. Bloat your hours so that you charge people.
So yeah, I think it's really cool when you can create a business actually utilizing your strength and you know, this is like, that's my little superpower. Yeah. That's cool. How many hours do you think you work every week? You know, I don't know. I, I would say like maybe I work four hours a day maybe, but not, I mean, I don't even think five days a week.
Yeah. I mean then that's awesome. There are these other days where it's like you're on meetings all day and I'll say, oh, I didn't work at all today. And then Lindsay will be like, you were in six hours meetings, or, I do like, I have like 30 podcast interviews this month or something. And a lot of times I don't think of that as work, but like, I guess I'm kind of considering my like time spent head down, like doing my own stuff.
Yeah. I consider this all to be fun. Yeah. Yeah, it is fun. Yeah. I think, God, you think so? I think [00:31:00] like when you've had a really bad job, you're like, you guys call this work. Like, I, I don't know. I still, I honestly, like, I, when I left being a lawyer, I felt like I had gotten out of prison and I often say like, I, I really expected that to wear off, like pretty quickly.
I, I was trying to be realistic about it. Like, you know, the romantic side of this is gonna wear off in like six months a year. I still am like walking around on a Thursday, like doing nothing. I'm like, wow, I can't believe I get to do this. Like, I, I really love what I do and I love the pieces of what we get to do.
That's awesome.
Dylan Redekop: I'm really curious about your newsletter content and like, a little bit about like, frequency of how, how often you send not, not counting like the. The nurture sequences and stuff like that. Can you talk to us a little bit about like what you send out for your legal template, uh, business in terms of like, what are pe what would people expect in their inbox?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. So every single Tuesday you get a Sam sidebar, my weekly newsletter. Okay. That 50,000 other online creators get it is my absolute favorite thing to do every single week. And I feel like I've hit a [00:32:00] really cool groove recently. Uh, and I wouldn't say I'm going in a different direction, but like just jazzing it up a little bit.
And I, I am excited about it, but I always saw this as the number one ultimate priority in my business. Like literally nothing else matters to me other than this email list. This email list carried me through my dad being sick, my dad dying, my mom dying like me have, wanting to take time off with grief.
Like my business didn't skip a freaking beat. Like we, we grew. As my parents died, we, and I was doing so much less and it was 1000000% because of the email list. I couldn't show up on social. I couldn't do anything else. This like, I'm just telling you this because from like a priority, I think talking about mindset when it comes to email list is really important.
And I just take the mindset that this is the most important thing, this is my number one priority. This is the homework before I get to go out to play. And I really, really treat it that way. Um, and I have an internal saying in the business that I [00:33:00] say, all roads lead to the email list. And so every single thing that I do, if I'm gonna show up for something, if I'm putting my name behind something.
If I'm being asked to participate in some summit of some sort of whatever, I'm like, how does this support my email list growth? Um, any piece of content that goes out, how does this support my email list? It's all I think about, and I, it does not take me long at all seeing my earlier comment, uh, about being productive, but I, it doesn't take me long at all to write them, but they're my favorite thing to do.
They're the most successful. I can't believe the number of replies we get every single week. I can't believe how connected a community of 50,000 people can be. Through email.
Chenell Basilio: Well, and I think part of it is that you don't work all day every day, so you have time to explore. And like your newsletter, just from reading it is like a story mixed in with how it fits into business and legal ties in.
And so you're having, you're able to write it so freely because you're having these experiences every week.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. I think it's a little like going to the gym too. It's like reps, because once you, I mean, I know storytelling [00:34:00] is not everybody's, like, that's not the ultimate or best approach to writing emails.
It's just mine. Once you start doing it, you start seeing everything through that lens. So like, when I'm out and about and I see something, I'm like, oh my God, that will be a great email. You know? And so I, I don't know if I told you, but the day that my book came out on April 15th, I went to get my hair done and a light fell outta the ceiling and hit me in the face and it broke my nose and my occipital bone.
And. Literally birds that came outta my mouth because everybody there in the room was panicking. 'cause it's like it happening on your, you know, book wedding day. Everybody was panicking and I literally said, don't worry, it's going to make a great email. And it was one of my best emails for the whole year because I, I made it into this whole story about how you can like plan and plan and plan and stuff pops up just like that could happen with a little thing in your business.
And people loved it. It was like, the people were like, is your face okay? Yeah I think it's like once you start thinking about it that way, it really helps also. Pat Flynn thought this was really cool, that also sometimes I do it in the reverse. [00:35:00] That like I want to teach a tip. Like I know I want to teach people whether it's a legal tip or a marketing tip, and I'm like, what's something that's happened to me recently that would illustrate that point?
Right? So I also do it the other way.
Chenell Basilio: Are you just like out walking around with your husband and you're like, this is gonna be a great email all the time. And he is like, okay, Sam.
Sam Vander Wielen: He is like, your mind never stops. He just really believed, I found my thing. 'cause he is like, you literally look at the world in the lens of like, market, like how can that be marketed?
How can that be turned into a story? Like, I immediately see the lesson in it. I see the, the flip the switch. Like even when I see other people's content, one of my favorite thing to do is I really try not to consume a whole lot especially related to business or anything. I don't read business books. I don't listen to business podcasts.
Like, I, I really try not to, to like keep my head down and. But when I listen to other stuff, like if I listened as like a food blogger or something like this, when they do something, I'm like immediately, oh, I see how that could be translated into what we do. So I think all of this is a skill you can sharpen over time, for sure.
[00:36:00] But also you have to see what works with your audience. Like clearly my audience has come to expect like some quirky story and then they're like. They, they like, they enjoy it.
Dylan Redekop: They're like, you gotta be making some of this up. But no. Legit, no, this is, sadly I'm not, yeah, I really, that's
Sam Vander Wielen: why I ended that email with a picture in my face.
Right. Me, me sitting there with like the giant black eye and the ice on my face. Yeah. And they, uh, were like, oh my God, your face, you can't write this, you can't script this stuff.
Dylan Redekop: That's, it's, uh, it's legit. No. So you said before, when we were talking about all signs pointing to your email list, so how does that work with social media?
Because it's notoriously hard to drive on newsletter subscribers from places like Instagram. So how do you, how does that flow work for you?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, but no. So like, a lot of people will post, like, I feel like the way this has started was that people would post reels about their podcast, like just showing a little audio clip or, you know, uh, whatever.
And then they would just say like. Comment here to get the episode and, and that's kind of what we did all for like a long time and people would just send a link to the episode. [00:37:00] So I thought, again, all relative to the email list. And I was like, but this is a free episode that they can get on Apple, Spotify, wherever they go, listen to podcasts.
But how am I going to get this person on my email list? So we started doing something where we use ManyChat on Instagram and we started saying like, comment, we made it a funny word. First of all, this was the biggest thing that changed and drove so much more traffic to my podcast. Instead of me saying like, comment 2 58 for episode 2 58, we started saying like, if the episode was about, I don't know, something like, like if I was related, I'd be like, comment peach, you know, and they would comment peach, we made it a funny word or a funny emoji and this has worked much better.
And then. It dms, the person, the link to the episode and then immediately follows up and says, Hey, by the way, did you know that I have a weekly free newsletter called Sam Sidebar that 50,000 creators get every single week to learn how to blah blah, blah. If you want in, click here. They click, it says, great.
What's your name? You say, Dylan. Great. Dylan, what's your email? You put that in and because it's synced with kit, it just [00:38:00] automatically is inputting them Into Kit, and so they're not even having to leave Instagram because once I got them to stop leaving Instagram and not having to leave Instagram, we got so many more email subscribers.
And then the second strategy I'm doing with podcasts. Is that I've grouped them into little like playlists around a topic. And so like I had a bunch of episodes about money and taxes, so I created like a CEO's Guide to Money playlist, and I say like, do you want this playlist comment money? They comment money.
It's like, great, what's your name? What's your email? Great. Here's the link. So we're only actually giving them the link to the playlist after they've signed up for my email address. And this has led to like thousands of people signing up. I was shocked. Oh, I love this, it, and this is free. Funny, like organic
Dylan Redekop: content too, right?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, because literally for years it was just like, comment 2 58 to listen, and then that was it. We just like drop it off. And I was like, why aren't we following up with people? And so like, yeah. Now about anything, anything I do now there's a, I build it into the mini chat sequence, and then if we give them something right [00:39:00] away, we immediately follow up with like a, by the way, you should sign up for this thing or put it behind something like, like the playlist for example.
You could find that on Spotify for free if you just search for it. But I'm giving them the link. I've created the playlist. I consider that to be worthy of getting on my emails and they know that that's what's happening. And so, yeah. And then, and then you, the thing is too, like give the person the thing right away in the dms.
Don't, don't make them go to their email. So I'm still delivering the value right there and the like, they immediately get the link to the episode or the link to the playlist, but now they've automatically, you know, through Tech Magic, they've gone onto my email list. So it's just so much better.
Dylan Redekop: Do you email them as well, the link just in case?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yes. So they get an email, uh, they get like an automatic email, uh, the start of the sequence, like I guess a delivery email of sorts being like, here's that link to the playlist that you wanted. And then in that one I te I'm testing out something that's working pretty well. That's like, if you want, this can be just like the last email you get an, you can just get my weekly email after this, or I have [00:40:00] this cool free eight day legal challenge that helps you get your legal stuff in order.
If you wanna sign up for that, just click here. So it's just like a tag, you know, a, what do they call 'em? Like auto links or whatever. So like the tag, it adds a tag to the, send them down that eight day legal challenge sequence. So now they get like more value If they don't do anything, they just start getting my weekly.
My weekly email. I love this. I need to do this. My deep dives. Yeah, that worked really, really well. And then the same, the same thing with like the easy emails. Like, uh, two years ago I just decided what if I just stop trying to push freebies period. And just, and then pushed my email actually as the freebie.
My email is the value. And so like, you should sign up from emails 'cause they're good and here's why and here's what you're gonna get and people love them and here's some proof and blah, blah, blah. And now that's probably the primary driver of people signing up. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: It's just pushing your, your newsletter itself.
Yeah, the newsletter itself,
Sam Vander Wielen: itself is the value, you know? Yeah. I just had this kind of like light bulb moment a while ago where I'm like, I'm trying so hard to get people onto my email list, because I think my weekly [00:41:00] emails are what's doing the work, right? That's really converting people. So what if I remove this barrier and actually use it as a plus of like, if you sign up for emails in this way, not only will you start getting them right away, I won't send you any down, any marketing funnel, like you'll just start getting my emails and people like that.
So they like, you know, because they're savvy, so they know that that's what's coming. So yeah that's worked. I, I just internally call it easy email. It works really well. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop: Gloss, you glossed over this really nicely about your book Launch Day, have been able to create a business that allows you the flexibility to also write a book that has been published.
Um, so why don't you talk to us just a little bit about that too.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Well y'all, I'll be happy to know that my email list is the only reason I got such a great book, deal with a big five publishers. So it's kind of funny to me to watch everybody else go out and try to like build some cachet on social media or whatever, and it was like.
My, I mean, I got a Big Five book deal. They were like, happy for you that you have some Instagram followers, but like, tell [00:42:00] me about your email list. Um, and then I would say they, I mean they really dig in. I don't know if people know that, but they require a lot of stats. Like they wanted to know about how many subs I had, and I wanna say I had about 30,000 maybe when I sent him my proposal.
So it wasn't quite as big, maybe even 25,000 because it took a long time to get it. So I had a decent sized email list, but they were. Even beyond that, they were like, tell me about opens. Tell me about clicks. Tell me about all this stuff. Like what's the community about How often, how consistent have you been?
Like all of this. And one little sneaky thing that I did was I sent an email to my list and I was like, Hey, got, I kept them in the loop for the whole process. So I documented the whole thing was like, it's my dream to get a book deal. I really wanna write this book. It's my dream to get Wendy Sherman as my agent.
I literally wrote that. She ended up seeing the email. I got Wendy Sherman as my agent. I said I wanted a big five book deal. So I talked about this, but I said, Hey guys, reply to this email and tell me if I came out with a book, would you buy it? And why? So many [00:43:00] people, hundreds and hundreds of people replied to this.
So we screenshotted all of the replies to this, and I put that in my book proposal. Hmm. So that the publisher could actually see like the power of the email list behind it, um, and seeing how engaged they were and how ready they were. To buy. That's incredible. That's awesome. So smart. Yep. It worked. I love it.
Nobody does that. It worked.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: Wow. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: How has the book impacted, um, your email list and your business? Has it driven any growth or anything? Oh
Sam Vander Wielen: yeah. It's led to a lot of sales. Something I felt very confident about, which nobody ever seems to trust me or believe me about. So I've just, I've learned now to just blow past everybody else's lack of confidence and keep going.
If I talk about other things, if I talk about non-legal things, if I talk about email list growth or funnels or whatever else I do it ultimately supports my business and my sales go up and all I do is sell legal stuff. I have learned that, I learned that early on, and I feel confident about that, and I really do truly believe it will support my business.
And so it's been kind of cool like in [00:44:00] both ways. People on my email list who were not customers purchased the book and became customers, and then I'm also seeing people who find the book through whatever means, like other people sharing it, and then they are either just joining the list or becoming customers.
So I'm seeing it. In both directions, which is kind of what I anticipated, to be honest. That's been cool. I, I, it's definitely more than anything it's changed my cachet. I would say it's opened doors for me, uh, that would just not have otherwise I don't think been available to me. I think just being able to say, you wrote this book and that you got a big five book deal, the opportunities that the publisher was able to help me with that seems to like, that just seems to have changed the most.
Like the doors I was knocking on a ton and nobody was answering. All of a sudden they're contacting me, which is, that's the biggest difference for me.
Dylan Redekop: I've heard people say that a, a published book is like your best business card in a lot of ways.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah,
Dylan Redekop: it's,
Sam Vander Wielen: I think a lot of people, like I have this kind of sleeper business, which is fine by me.
I don't need anybody to know anything about it. It doesn't bother me. But I [00:45:00] do think that it perked some people up to be like, wait a minute, what? What are you doing? And how did you, how? Yeah. And so I think, I think that kind of helped. But you know, selfishly, I. Want to step out of my box a bit and not, I mean, not that no one, no one's ever put me in a box, but I think mentally I have myself in a box that all I can do is talk about legal.
That's all I'm good for. I have to constantly be valuable like, and until more recently and with the book that I was like, I actually have some other things I think I'd like to talk about. And at first I would've told you like I have other things to talk about and they're very helpful to other people.
And now I'm like, I have other things to talk about and I'm not sure if they help anyone else. And that's okay. Like I think whoever needs it will find it. And I'm kind of landing somewhere in there. Just trying to spread my, spread my wings a little bit. Yeah. Spread your
Dylan Redekop: content wings.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I mean, I've talked about the same thing for eight years and legal doesn't change.
You know, like if you talk about email marketing, if you were teaching about funnels, like the way you would be [00:46:00] teaching about funnels today would be radically different than it was six years ago, or even probably three years ago. And so, like for me, I'm like, I'm still saying the same thing. So I have a podcast on your terms.
I've done almost 300 episodes of, and so it's like I've done a full catalog of probably over 200 episodes of any legal thing you can think of at this point. I can point people back if Chenell dms me with a question about a con, I can be like, oh, I actually have an episode about that. Here you go. Right?
I don't need to keep doing it in my opinion. But I also think it's really cool to hear stories from people who. I dunno who have done it. And also, like, I haven't heard a whole lot of stories about people who've done it. Not only not like me, but who going through what I went through personally. And that's hard to find.
And 'cause I know, like when I was going through that, I was like, well, yeah, but you guys like, this is you're full-time. You don't have anything else going on. So I think it's how people feel sometimes when they have kids, right? And they see other people like building businesses who don't have kids.
That's kind of how I felt with like a lot of personal drama and grief.
Chenell Basilio: And so now you're writing on substack about [00:47:00] some of this stuff too?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yes. I, that's pretty new. I've been wanting to play with Substack. The, the lofty goal was to have done that like a year ago leading up to the book. Nobody told me that before you come out with a book, it's like, there's like 300 rounds of editing, type setting, proofing, like all of the things.
Um, I kind of thought once I wrote it, we were done. So that did not turn out to be true. So we were doing things like right up until presale launched, um, just in January, and then the book came out in April. So this summer I really took a lot of time off and backed away as much as I could. Uh, I really only committed to writing my newsletter every week.
That's all I did. Uh, I've never missed a week in eight years, and I, uh, I just, yeah. Thank you. I just focused on that and, and really explored like, what else do I wanna write about? So I started writing on Substack. I'm calling it Beyond business because it, I just wanted a place to talk to people about what life is like beyond business, even when you're a founder.
So like, yes, everything's still through the lens of like, I own my own [00:48:00] business. These are the things I'm doing and thinking about, but what am I doing offline that ultimately ends up nourishing me as a business owner? I think that's what I've learned like the most over time is like that, that, that separation is very important.
Chenell Basilio: So you're writing this weekly too, so now you have two emails to write every
Sam Vander Wielen: week? Yeah. So my, my general content calendar in case anyone's interested is like, I have a, kinda like a cornerstone piece of content every Monday. So that's a YouTube episode and podcast episode. Uh, and so then the, my weekly newsletter on Tuesday is, uh, my Sam Sidebar weekly newsletter.
That's typically inspired by whatever that core piece of content was with some story. And then the call to action is to go listen or watch that thing. Wednesday is my Substack, and on Thursday I've been posting, uh, what I call evergreen carousel on Instagram with a call to action to my email list so that those are building up pretty nicely and sending nice little like consistent traffic to the list.
Yeah.
That's my little schedule. I love that. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: And so are you, [00:49:00] you're batch processing these or batch creating these? Obviously
Sam Vander Wielen: it sounds like. I create the newsletter in real time a lot. Like, so I will typically be writing it on Friday, maybe even Monday, to go out on Tuesday, uh, depending on what's going on.
Oh, you are human, Sam. Yeah. I don't like to batch them because I like to keep them very current. I don't like doing that. So I'm like, if something comes up, I'm like, I'll write about this thing. So I do, I do that. I have been, I, it's easier for me to do that with subset 'cause they're more like personal essays, so I have an idea of what I wanna write about.
But no, otherwise I'm, I am very open to playing and like being like, let's see what's happening so much. When I do flops, it's like, it just doesn't bother me anymore. I'm like, eh, that didn't work. Let's try again. Yeah. It doesn't really bother me. Yeah. That's awesome.
Chenell Basilio: I love that content, flywheel of sorts.
So it's all related to each other, aside from the substack posts. But everything else is kind of like related. And tying back to the article,
Sam Vander Wielen: one thing I like for Substack, I don't know if you've seen Liz Moody's Substack, but she talks [00:50:00] about she basically has a podcast episode. I'm not sure if it goes out on Mondays, but it's like in the beginning of the week.
And then her substack post that week is diving into one like. Point or one element of her podcast. So like, let's say she taught you five things you need to do for gut health or whatever, she'll dive into one of those in her Substack article. So it's almost like a deep dive. And then she links to that podcast episode.
So I'm kind of thinking of that. And for my own, like sometimes what I'm doing is like, here's an example. Like I have a. Podcast episodes coming out on my podcast on your terms about privacy when you have an online business, like how do you maintain your personal safety and privacy, but still be like very public online.
And so I have that. But then, so, and then my sidebar email to my newsletter is going to be kind of like an outline of these things about staying safe. That was a very popular topic I talked about last month. And then my Substack article is going to be more of like the personal side of that, of what it's been like to, like how I [00:51:00] manage my own personal boundaries.
So like, for example, some of my friends will think I share about everything on Instagram. I'm like, oh, that's so funny. I only share like a sliver of my life. Like, so you, you're like projecting your story of what you see of when I post something you don't know the half of it. And so that's, I find that like really interesting.
So it's like related. Not from like the security standpoint, it's more like what it's like from a personal. Does that make sense?
Chenell Basilio: It does, yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because I always think about like, we talk about a million things on these podcast episodes and it's like so hard to turn it into like a full blog post because there's like 10 topics.
I'm like, what am I doing here? It's feels, so maybe I'll have to try that angle. Really Pick one. I
Sam Vander Wielen: really, yeah, I like that. I think that's like a really great strategy and I don't know how she goes about picking it, but I know for me personally, there's often like one point that I, there's like a lot of more nuance to it and I wish I could get into it.
Or maybe something I wanna visually display or something that has a lot of links to it or something like, so I think I'm gonna kind of pick it that way. Like if there's one [00:52:00] aspect of it that's gonna be the thing I dive into.
Chenell Basilio: I'm gonna have to try this out. Yeah. Thank you. Tell me how it goes. I wanna know.
Yeah, I'll, because I have so many people who are like, I don't listen to podcasts, so thanks for turning this into an article, and I'm like, great. But like it's so time consuming to like take a long form piece like this and turn it into a written
Sam Vander Wielen: piece of content. Yeah. Also, I have seen people, like, I saw Vanessa Loud did this with her Substack, like she'll take a really long YouTube video and just turn it into like a substack outline and it just doesn't.
Translate. Like to me, like I, it's not these, these me, I take this all pretty seriously with like whatever medium you're going to approach, make it the best thing for that medium or just don't do it. And so it's like, for me, like my newsletter, I'm going to make it the, I'm not gonna transcribe my YouTube video to be my newsletter.
Like I'm going to make it the best written form of content. And then on YouTube I'm always thinking about like, what's the best visual display of whatever I'm talking about. So I really try to think of it from that perspective. So it's hard to find that balance on Substack. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Well it seems to be working for you, [00:53:00] so
Sam Vander Wielen: we'll see.
We figured it out. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah. I have not dragged anybody over from my main email list. People ask me that all the time. I have not. I have not done that. I've kind of just tried to let it go organically and be its own thing.
Dylan Redekop: Yeah. We'll see. Is the Substack thing ultimate goal? Like just to share what you're feeling, what you're thinking, not necessarily any business revenue generation there?
Or is that just kinda like a expression of things you've learned and things you wanna share?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I think. Part of it is trying to get in touch with something I've very much lost, which is the ability to create something, not to be perceived like to, to not, to not be performing for other people, essentially.
Mm-hmm. Like, and to be like, I hope that you guys all like this. So I think honestly I'm doing it. I'm like forcing myself to write those before I see how well or not, well one that I've written before. So like today I sent one out, I've already written the one for next week. So I can't chicken out to be like, I'm not gonna send it now because nobody liked the one I did today.
So I'm really trying [00:54:00] to get myself and like break that habit that oh, no one liked this, so I should do, I have also admittedly had a really hard time and like something I'm working on is trying to figure out like. When you get a lot more eyeballs on you, you start to self edit and you start to think like, I'm a very sensitive person and I am very worried about how everybody else feels all the time.
And I, I am like a caring, empathetic person. So I, when I go to write about something, I like disclaim six ways to Sunday. Like, well, I know it's easy for me to say because I do this and I know, well, I know my husband gave me health insurance. So that's the reason why I was even able to start my business And like it, it's too much.
It just like, it waters it down. And as a girl from Philly who is very opinionated, I have gone so far from. This like ability to say what I really think 'cause I'm so worried about how it's gonna be perceived. And so, I don't know, maybe like we talked about earlier about how like I came up with one freebie and then like 10 freebies went down.
I feel like I'm in that period of like deep [00:55:00] bloating, a bit of like I had to be so careful maybe for a bit. 'cause I got so many eyeballs and I get so much feedback and so many people telling me you should be doing this and not this and what about that? And like, stick to your lane and don't do that. And so yeah, I'm kind of in that period of figuring out like, I don't know, like getting that confidence back to say, and not have to constantly disclaim and water down what I'm thinking.
Yeah. So I think that's what my substack is trying to do is like, even today I wrote a piece about a morning routine I had to come up with on like really bad grief days. And I was so worried to write this because I was like, people are gonna judge the crap out of me for seeing this being like. That sounds so depressing.
Or like, oh, you need help. Or like, there's something wrong with you. And I'm like, well, there kind of is something wrong when you're going through this. It's like why you need to do this. But yeah, I, yeah, I was still worried about it and I really just was like, I'm going to write this. I'm going to just publish it.
And I'm sure I still self edited, I'm sure. Yeah. So subconsciously, I thought the post was
Chenell Basilio: great. Oh, thanks. I read it. I've, yeah. [00:56:00] Where's your comments, Chenell? Get on it.
Sam Vander Wielen: Well, it was right before this. Okay. After. I'll get the words. Just kidding. No, no enforceable comments.
Chenell Basilio: I'm excited to have you lean more back into your, your own personality, like you are still doing that, but I, like you've said, like you watered it down just because you felt some kind of way.
So I'm excited to see you kind of lean back into that and take ownership of that. And just like. Do your own thing, like you're a badass like this, you've built this incredible business, like you can do what makes you feel good, like
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: I don't, not that you needed permission, but thanks.
Sam Vander Wielen: Just putting it out there.
I mean, I don't, I don't believe, like, it's not that I don't believe it, like I don't walk around thinking that or feeling that about myself. So it's, uh, it's hard, but it's funny, like when you start a business and there's no one want, you do have those 22 people you're half related to on your email list.
It's a lot easier to write about a bunch of stuff and not really care. And I would really pour my heart out and I don't know. [00:57:00] Then I think as the audience grew and the email list grew, like I remember I got an email from this lady calling me a sick f word for writing about my dad having cancer and she really laid into me and went on and on and on and yeah, it's just like moments like that or I get a lot of antisemitic, uh, stuff, especially through my ads.
I get a lot of antisemitic comments and it just starts to, it's not even like the exact comment itself. It just. It really starts to train your brain of like, oh, I'm being perceived all the time. Like when I just like popped up and created that reel really quickly. 'cause I thought I had something funny or cute to share.
Somebody was thinking about how I look and somebody was thinking about what religion I look like I am. And so then that starts to be in your mind all the time. So now you start changing how you look, you start changing what you say, somebody pokes at the privilege. And so then you start saying, oh, well I know that I am, you know, blah, blah.
And you start Yeah. Trying to like, uh, get ahead of it, I guess. And so it can, it can miss, I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else and like if anyone else feels [00:58:00] this, but it was very, very real for me. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I mean, I'm not on Instagram much and we're newer to YouTube, so thankfully it's not a ton of formal comments.
Stay away from that. Well stay small on purpose.
Sam Vander Wielen: No
Chenell Basilio: trolls Ill. Yeah, thankfully I don't write a ton about like personal stuff on my newsletter, so I think it helps. I'm just writing about other people, which is probably part of the reason is like,
Sam Vander Wielen: yeah, you should ask them. I hate talking about
Chenell Basilio: myself. You should ask them about what they get.
That would be interesting. Yeah. Oh yeah, that would be interesting. That'd be a whole podcast by itself.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, it's, but um, it keeps a lot of beginners from growing, to be honest. I, I get like emails from people a lot being like, that's something I'm afraid of. So they're like, not even, they won't even put themselves out there because they don't want to experience that.
I'm like, I didn't even think about it. I thought no one would ever be listening or reading. So I just created and then all of a sudden it was like, whoa, people are looking at this. That's creepy. Geez. Well, hopefully [00:59:00] Substack is a little kinder to you. Substack is kind. Yeah. My email is very kind. It's, you know, one, one weird person can ruin the whole bunch, but they, uh, yeah.
Substack does seem very kind and, and considerate, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Except to, um, Glennon Doyle. Oh, I missed that one. I'll have to go dig in. Yeah, I did too. I too, yeah, everybody go look into that. That's a juicy one.
Chenell Basilio: Well, Sam, I know we're over time here, so I just wanna say thank you for coming on the show.
Um, hopefully we can do this again in the future. This is fun. Thank you. Always enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much for having me. I hope it was helpful. Yeah. Great. So what's the best place for people to kind of connect with you and find more about yourself?
Sam Vander Wielen: Come sign up for Sam Sidebar, my weekly newsletter.
We'll make sure you have, uh, the link down below. And since you like listening to podcasts, come check out mine. On your terms, I have a new episode every single Monday on how to grow your online business and all my marketing strategies, um, that I use in a very chill [01:00:00] way.