From Zero to 100K Subscribers: How to Grow Your Newsletter like a Pro with Newsletter Growth Expert Matt McGarry

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:00]

Back in 2019, a young guy named Jerome came across an ad for a newsletter called The Hustle.

Matt McGarry [00:00:06]

And so I clicked on it. I kind of dove into the founder of the business model. I thought it was really interesting. It's a really elegant business model where basically the hustle of many newsletters like it. They send one email a day to millions of people, they sell a few sponsorships in that newsletter and that's the whole business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:21]

Fast forward to 2020...

Matt McGarry [00:00:23]

Job opening happened at the Hustle. I applied, I got a job there

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:26]

Around the time Jerome joined, the Hustle was already a mature business with QUITE a sizable audience.

Matt McGarry [00:00:32]

We had around 1.2-1.3 million subscribers. We were trying to scale the newsletter to get over 2 million subscribers. We were trying to grow our premium newsletter subscription called Trends.co.

And so it wasn't quite a startup anymore. It was definitely an established media company. We were more focused on scaling.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:48]

And Jerome was the person they had hired to lead their scaling initiatives at the Hustle. At the same time, behind the scenes, something else was cooking.

Matt McGarry [00:00:57]

The Hustle had kind of been put to the side and a lot of the business was focused on growing Trends Co, which is a premium media company, or premium newsletter subscription you would call it, or research company. And um, the Hustle was actually like, declining. And so we were at 1.3 million subscribers, we were losing. When you're at that level of subscribers, you churn a lot of subscribers, people unsubscribe, people stop opening. So that the list was rapidly declining. And my job was kind of to get to grow again.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:21]

Anybody who has tried to grow a newsletter knows how difficult it is to just retain your subscribers. And here, Jerome was being asked not just to retain  their current subscribers but to stop the bleeding, reduce the churn, and get new subscribers! Talk about a tough first day on the job! The good news, though, is that Jerome passed this test with flying colors.

Matt McGarry [00:01:44]

And over time, I think between 2020 and 2022, we got from around 1.3 to one to 2 million subscribers with a lot less budget too, than we had before, actually.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:00]

Today, Jerome is considered the go-to guy for growing your newsletter. He works with some incredible clients such as Refind, The Milk Road, The Daily Upside, 1440 Media - just to name a few.

Except, you - and everyone else who's into newsletters - probably knows Jerome better by his middle name, Matt.

Matt McGarry [00:02:22]

My first name is Jerome, which surprises a lot of people. And it's weird that my parents never called me Jerome, so I'm just so used to this name. Matt or Matthew is actually my middle name. And so my parents called me this. I've always went by this, but my legal name is Jerome. It's kind of funny.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:37]

I am SUPER excited to bring you today's episode because this episode is FILLED with valuable AND actionable insights on how to grow your newsletter with one of the best newsletter growth experts in the business - Matt McGarry.

Matt McGarry [00:02:49]

I'm the founder of The Newsletter Operator, which is a newsletter about newsletters. I basically write content that helps people grow their newsletters, teach people about How to Grow their Newsletters, How to Write Content, Content Strategy, Newsletter Strategy, and How to Monetize their Newsletter, and then a big part of what I do is my Newsletter Growth Agency and so that's called GrowLetter and we work with about 20 different newsletters right now and help them grow their newsletters with Meta ads, Twitter ads, and TikTok ad and some of the clients we work with are The Milk Road, the Daily Upside, Published Press, and many more.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:23]

Jet-setters, buckle up! Because this flight is about to TAKE-OFF!

Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I am a first-generation Korean-American entrepreneur living the American dream. I started Urban EDC to cater to enthusiasts of everyday carry gear. I also own two other successful ventures: GrowthJet, a climate-neutral certified third-party logistics company for emerging e-commerce brands, and SpottedByHumphrey, an online boutique curating dog goods for good dogs. Through these three ventures, my business has generated over $20 million dollars in 8 years and I'm here to tell you how YOU can do the same!

On today's episode of First Class Founders, I am talking to Matt McGarry. Matt is a newsletter growth expert and runs a newsletter growth company called GrowLetter. He also writes a newsletter called The Newsletter Operator and is recognized as one of the leading experts on how to grow and scale newsletters!

Matt McGarry [00:04:24]

Hey, thanks for having me on.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:32]:

Matt just partnered up with Beehiiv to take his company GrowLetter to the next level. Over the course of our conversation, I got Matt to outline a clear strategy for building and growing your newsletter from absolute ZERO, in which I covered elements such as: What Topics to Choose for Your Newsletter, How Frequently you Should Send Out Your Newsletter, What Format Works Best for Your Newsletter, as well as, How to Acquire New Subscribers at Different Stages of Your Growth Journey.

I also spoke to Matt about How to Scale Up Your Newsletter Subscribers Through Paid Ads. We spoke in incredible detail about Vertical Scaling vs. Horizontal Scaling of audiences, What Type of Ads Perform Best, and Which Platforms you Should Use at Various Stages of Newsletter Growth. Lucky for us, Matt did not hold anything back.The insight he shared and the details he went into, frankly, blew my mind!

I'll be making ALL of these insights and details available to the premium subscribers of First Class Founders in a special segment of the episode, which can be accessed through a special ad-free version of the podcast feed. To become a premium member of First Class Founders, sign up at firstclassfounders.com/join - look for the link in the show notes!

Go ahead and open that link in a tab, while I get this flight ready for take-off!

Matt McGarry [00:05:46]

Hi. My name is Matt McGarry. Let's get down to business!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:52]

Regular listeners of this podcast know that I have been trying to grow the First Class Founders newsletter alongside this podcast. And that I document all my attempts and experiments to grow transparently because I believe in the philosophy of building my business in public.

That's why, I was incredibly eager to make the most of the time I had with Matt. The FIRST question I asked Matt was the question that torments everyone who wants to start a newsletter - does it make sense to start a newsletter now, seeing as how quickly the space has gotten crowded over the years?

Matt's response was incredibly encouraging.

Matt McGarry [00:06:27]

I think that a lot of that thought process, because the internet is such a small place. You start following people on social media and you see their post all the time. And if you follow a newsletter people like I do, your whole feed is about newsletters. But it's really not that common if you zoom out, right, if you go to your Thanksgiving dinner and talk with your family and your friends and what they're reading. Newsletters are really not that common of a content medium. A lot of people are getting most of their content through YouTube, podcast, social media. The behavior of reading newsletters every day or every week is still rapidly growing. And so I think that consumer behavior is changing and growing towards newsletters. There's really not a lot of big newsletter companies out there. If you look at the biggest ones, they're not at the same scale as a media company like Buzzfeed or Vice or the New York Times. Um, there's a lot of really successful newsletters, but the biggest ones have $100 million to year in revenue. $200 million a year in revenue. So there's still lots of room for growth and everybody's still using email. Email is not going away. It's actually growing by about three or 4% every year. So there's lots of room to, um, start a newsletter and grow it. It's not quite crowded yet.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:32]

So now that you are open to starting a newsletter, a bunch of questions might have popped up in your head. What should I write about? When should I send it? Is there a proven format that just... works?

All valid questions. Lucky for you, Matt answered all of them in great detail.

Let's tackle them one-by-one, beginning with… what should you write about?

Matt McGarry [00:08:01]

So my experience is I've worked in direct response marketing with newsletter companies since 2020 or 2019. So I started the newsletter around my personal experience. And it basically makes writing the content easier. It makes showing yourself as an expert easier, makes monetizing easier if you have that personal expertise. So that's really what I recommend most people to do, is picking that personal experience route.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:24]

In case you are wondering, there is clear precedent for this, by the way.

Matt McGarry [00:08:28]

The newsletters that I see that grow the fastest and then have the most success are usually started by people who have deep, deep expertise. So, for example, Cody Sanchez, she worked on Wall Street, she worked in private equity for north of ten years. And then she started the newsletter country and thinking that talks about all those things. And because she has that deep experience, her content is so much better and she's able to grow it so much faster versus someone who just didn't really have that experience. Right?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:51]

Another option is to start a newsletter that is about an emerging trend - take AI for example. There are tons of newsletters growing rapidly overnight that have sprung up. Since the topic itself is brand new, you don't have to worry about being eclipsed by larger newsletters because there ARE no established newsletters on the subject!

Matt McGarry [00:09:10]

Even if you don't have expertise in that, the market's growing, it's a little bit easier to grow versus a trend that's not growing or trend that's declining, or a topic that's declining in interest, right?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:20]

I must mention here that a potential downside of choosing an emerging trend is that people's interest and attention spans are fickle. That means, you run the risk of the trending industry losing steam suddenly or the trend declining after the initial high. Keep that in mind if you plan to choose an emerging trend as the topic for your newsletter.

There's a third option - figure out what makes money and reverse-engineer a path towards it. In other words, figure out what sponsors or advertisers you can target and work backwards

Matt McGarry [00:09:52]

So, for example, let's say you have an e-commerce store about EDC products and watches and knives and stuff like that. Kind of like you do. You might start a newsletter about content around EDC and, like gadgets and multi-tools and all types of things so you can market that product on the back end. So that's more of like a business objective.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:08]

Hey, I have a site like that - UrbanEDC.com! And with nearly 100,000 gear enthusiasts on the newsletter gathered over 8 years in business, let me tell you, it’s very profitable.

Oh, and quick side-bar - Matt is also an EDC enthusiast!

Matt McGarry [00:10:25]

I like pocket knives. That's probably where my most it's almost like an addiction, what I carry and I send this tick to like budget. Again, just budget stuff is I would just buy too much.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:34]

But, let's not digress too much here and get back to the topic at hand, which is, how to choose a suitable TOPIC for your newsletter.

Takeaway Number One: Choose a topic that you have deep expertise in, or choose an emerging trend, or reverse engineer a certain type of audience profile to fit into your business model.

Once you have decided on the topic of your newsletter, the next question is how frequently you should send it out. On this question, Matt is rather clear.

Matt McGarry [00:11:03]

Weekly newsletter is really the way to go for 90% of people out there. The reason is because when you're first starting out, you need to focus on growing it. You need to focus on distribution and that distribution usually comes from posting on social, posting on Twitter, LinkedIn, going on podcasts, connecting through your network. And if you're writing a newsletter every day, that's a lot of work. You almost don't have time to do the other things like monetizing it, growing it. And so weekly is a good medium where it's like enough to engage subscribers on a regular basis. It's enough to build a habit.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:34]

So, let's note this down as well.

Takeaway Number Two: A weekly cadence is the ideal frequency for your newsletter since it gives you enough time to craft a well-constructed newsletter AND gives you time to focus on its growth and distribution.

Okay, so you now have the TOPIC and FREQUENCY of your newsletter sorted.

Perfect. The last element is the type or format of the newsletter.

Here Matt referenced the incredibly popular post titled "The Five Types of Indie Newsletter Business Models" by Dan Oshinsky of Inbox Collective. In the post, Dan outlined FIVE different styles, or types, or formats, or categories in the newsletter space.

Matt McGarry [00:12:18]

The one I would like to start with, and I recommend for most people that is the expert newsletter. And that's someone kind of like me or you. We have a deep expertise in the topics that could be ecommerce marketing newsletters, watches, wine, whatever. And you write a newsletter that just talks about the experiences that you have. So most of that is usually how to content or tutorials, right?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:38]

Some well known examples of the Expert newsletter format are James Clear's newsletter on productivity or Ben Collins' newsletter about Google Sheets.

Matt McGarry [00:12:47]

The second one that's worked really well for a lot of people is the curation focused newsletter. And some examples of those would be like the Hustle or Morning Brew or um, Ben’s Bytes or Execsum. And it's basically where you focus the content around a topic. So tech, crypto, AI, et cetera. And you're just really good at curation summaries and explanation. And so you're not writing original content, you're finding the best content in the internet and you're sharing that in a great format in a newsletter.>

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:12]

Since curation-type newsletters pack tons of content into one newsletter, they are often heavily-subscribed. Some of the bigger ones are known to easily reach MILLIONS of readers a day.

Matt McGarry [00:13:22]

There's the reporter. So if you're just someone who wants to report on an industry or on a topic, whatever that may be, those are very popular. You see a lot of those on.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:30]

The reporter-format is quite popular in journalistic circles. For instance, Skye Pillsbury runs a newsletter called "The Squeeze" which reports on the news and events in the US radio and audio fraternity.

The other two formats from Dan's post on Inbox Collective are the Writer and the Analyst. Of these two, the Analyst sounds a lot like the Expert but the Expert-type newsletters are usually free whereas the Analyst-type newsletters put some of their content behind a paywall hoping their subscribers would pay up for their expert analysis. 

As for the Writer-type, it is exactly what you think it is. Prolific writers post their works online, usually behind some kind of a paywall. You can see examples of this in the newsletters run by famous authors such as Salman Rushdie, Isaac Fitzgerald, and Robin Sloan.

And those are the five TYPES or FORMATS of newsletters as outlined by Dan Oshinsky on Inbox Collective - The Analyst, the Curator, The Expert, The Writer, and the Reporter.

I'll leave a link to Dan's post in the show notes. Go check it out!

Of these five types, Matt has a clear preference for…

Matt McGarry [00:14:40]

What I like to do is, what I like to do is combine curation and expertise. I've seen the back end data behind literally dozens of newsletters that have 50K plus subscribers. And the ones that have the highest open rate, the highest engagement, are often curated newsletters.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:55]

Curated newsletters pack a ton of different resources, links, articles, and what not in a single email - sometimes with as many as thirty to fifty links in a single email.

Matt McGarry [00:15:05]

And at least one or two or three or four of those is going to be interesting to you. And so you get some type of value from it, even if the main topic isn't interesting.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:11]

And adding the expert-type to it enhances the value even further because the expertise provides added legitimacy to the curated links. Which, in turn, ensures a better CTR for the newsletter and, therefore, better advertising rates and revenue for the newsletter!

Matt McGarry [00:15:37]

The key of newsletters is every issue you send. You want to have, um, just a small value add. Like, you want to have a big value add, but if you can have multiple small value adds that appeal to a lot of people, that keeps people opening over and over again.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:42]

Okay, let's say that you have narrowed down a suitable topic for your newsletter. Let's say you have decided that you will be sending it weekly. Let's say, you have decided to take up Matt's recommendation and build it using curation and expertise.

But that still doesn't answer the MOST important question - where do you get your subscribers?! Well, coming up in a short while, Matt outlines the EXACT growth strategies that will take you from ZERO to a hundred thousand subscribers. Yes, I am not kidding - Matt gives a STEP-BY-STEP playbook of what to do to go from subscriber number ONE to subscriber number ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:17:27]

Alright, before the break, I promised you I'd reveal Matt's STEP-BY-STEP playbook for growing your newsletter from ZERO to ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND subscribers.

So let’s start at the beginning. You have zero subscribers. Zilch.

According to Matt, this is the MOST challenging part of growing your newsletter because your task is literally creating something from nothing. And the trick, Matt says, is to literally claw your way to your first hundred subscribers.

Matt McGarry [00:17:54]

...it's really all about getting traction any way you can. And so even if you have no following on Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever you post on social, I will post there. I think Twitter and LinkedIn are the best social platforms for newsletters, because they're focused on written content where Instagram, TikTok, et cetera, is focused on images or videos. I would tell  as many friends as you can, as many family members as you can. I would add it to your, your email signature. So add it to your email signature. I would share it, like in your Slack profile. Share it with colleagues. If you have a Slack channel where you can share things at your work, I would do that too. So really, just like guerilla marketing, any way you can get it out there just to get your 1st 100 and have someone to write to, I think that's really important.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:33]

Getting these first hundred subscribers is incredibly important because it provides you with the most important element for your newsletter - motivation.

Matt McGarry [00:18:41]

So now you have a reason to show up every single week and actually write it, be accountable. And so that's why that strategy is so important.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:47]:

Once you have reached a hundred subscribers, it is time to shift gears and think a bit differently.

Use the motivation you have just acquired to not only create content regularly but also create distribution mechanisms around your newsletter. That means posting on Twitter or Threads or Mastodon or LinkedIn every single day!

Matt McGarry [00:19:05]

And so I would recommend posting, um, one tweet a day or one post a day on those platforms. And I would recommend doing one to two long form posts on those platforms a week. And by long form post, I mean threads on Twitter and long post or carousels on LinkedIn. Those are the most effective.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:21]

And soon you will find that your daily posts get you regular subscribers by the handful while the longer threads and carousels get you subscribers in larger numbers. Of course, this assumes that you are continuing to create quality content for the newsletter itself!

Reaching a thousand subscribers is a significant milestone. Because a thousand subscribers, no matter which way you look at it, is a sizable audience.

Matt McGarry [00:19:43]

So you can start to partner with other newsletters to help you. And so the two best ways to partner with other newsletters to grow are going to be cross promotions and cross recommendations.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:53]

Cross promotions and recommendations.

Both are similar in nature but slightly different in the details.

Matt McGarry [00:20:00]

And so recommendations are the feature was first popularized on substack. So after someone signs up for a newsletter, they can subscribe to other newsletter, but those newsletters can recommend other newsletters.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:10]

Almost every email service provider offers the recommendations feature and those that don't offer it yet will offer it soon.

Matt McGarry [00:20:16]

And so you want to find other newsletters that are similar in topic and size to you and contact them about, um, cross recommendations. And so, hey, I'll recommend you if you're recommending it's really that simple.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:25]

That's recommendations. Cross-promotions are when you swap slots WITHIN your newsletter. Essentially, you advertise another newsletter and they advertise your newsletter that week.

Matt McGarry [00:20:36]

And so we both drive 100 subscribers for each other. We're both growing together. the thing about this is it's not big numbers at first, right? Like 50 subscribers here, 100 subscribers there. It doesn't seem very big, but over time, as you start to grow, you can start to partner with bigger and bigger newsletters and get bigger and bigger cross promotions.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:54]

How do you find the right compliment to your newsletter?

Matt McGarry [00:20:56]

A tool that I would recommend checking out to find cross promotion partners is Lettergrowth.com, it's like a directory of all these different newsletters that are open to cross promoting with you.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:05]

Lettergrowth is the same tool our past guest Chenell Basilio recommended. And I recommended it. And now, Matt. I'll leave a link to it in the show notes.

...and that's basically how you grow from one thousand to TEN thousand subscribers. Once you reach ten thousand subscribers though, things start to get pretty serious.

Because this is where the next level of user-acquisitions comes into the picture.

Matt McGarry [00:21:29]

So, first of all, keep doing all the above that we just talked about. Twitter, LinkedIn, cross promotions, recommendations, et cetera. Do those now. You can add in a referral program. This is when someone basically shares your newsletter in exchange for a reward or a prize. You can also start to add in paid ads here. The best ad platform to use for newsletters would probably be Facebook ads or Twitter ads. Facebook is really the best by far. And then, um, you can also use affiliate marketing here, too. Basically, you set a CPA, you'll see, I'll pay $2 per qualified subscriber, and other newsletters will send subscribers to you, and you pay that amount for them.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:55]

Another technique that I have heard is paying influencers to promote your newsletter - which is a combination of affiliate marketing and paid endorsements. Some people in the industry also refer to this as influencer marketing but Matt has some reservations about it.

Matt McGarry [00:22:09]

It's difficult to do it because you have to work with each creator individually. Right. And so at a large scale, it does work. But you kind of have to have a dedicated person. Maybe it could be a VA or a team that do that. It's challenging to do. It can be really rewarding if it does work. But contacting literally dozens or hundreds of influencers is a challenge. And then managing payments for all those is a challenge, too.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:28]

Essentially, at this stage you are looking at investing your money to acquire the next batch of users. But then, if things have gone right for you, by this time, you are probably making money from sponsors and have a decent income-stream going too. So, you can think of it as essentially reinvesting profits with a long-term view to compound them.

Of course, the obvious question here is - what platforms deliver the best value for your investments? Thankfully, I was talking to LITERALLY the best person who could answer this question clearly.

And he did NOT disappoint.

Matt McGarry [00:23:01]:

So I work with about 20 different newsletters, running paid ads for them to help them grow. And about 70% to 80% of our budgets are on Meta, meaning Facebook ads, Instagram ads and that's still the best platform. It's like the ad creative, gives you lots of flexibility. You can do images or videos. Ads have a really high click through rate. Um, and the CPMs are reasonable, and they have a lot of great advertiser tools. And there's, of course, so many people on those platforms. I think 40% of the Internet uses a Meta product every day, maybe it's 60%. So the audiences is definitely there, and the ability to target them is definitely there, too

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:33]

And now with Threads, that number is likely to increase even further, I suspect.

Of course, Matt doesn't spend ALL of his budget on Meta ads. He did mention that they used Twitter and TikTok as secondary sources of spend but I wonder if he will continue this strategy in the wake of the recent, erm, changes that Twitter has undergone. Or should I say the recent changes that X has undergone.

Matt McGarry [00:23:54]

The final one that may be worth exploring for some newsletters, maybe I'll say final two, is Google Ads and Quora Ads. So, Quora is a really small platform, but the ad product they have is really interesting because the ads look so much like an organic Quora post, and they're all in question and answer format.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:11]

As for Google ads?

Matt McGarry [00:24:12]

Google Ads is great for B2B newsletters or newsletters that are very niche. There's not a lot of search terms you can bid on, um, in Google Ads, but when someone's searching for a newsletter or searching for information and you're able to get them to subscribe for a low cost, the quality of that subscriber is really high. And so Google Ads has a much higher cost, but higher quality subscriber.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:30]

Let's quickly summarize all of these wonderful recommendations in Matt's own words.

Matt McGarry [00:24:35]

We start with Meta Ads, master that platform. There's plenty of scale available there. You can get subscribers for less than $2 for B2C, less than $4 for B2B. And then after you master Meta Ads, I would expand to Twitter Ads. The reason Twitter is so great right now is the costs are just so low. A lot of advertisers have moved off of the platform. Finally, our subscriber quality we're finding to be um, Twitter is higher subscriber quality than Meta, meaning they have a higher open rate, a higher click through rate, and they convert into buyers more often. And that is probably because Twitter is a text based platform and so if they're reading on Twitter, they're more likely to read a newsletter.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:11]

Speaking of alternatives to traditional advertising, there are also new discoverability platforms being created by the newsletter platforms and email service providers themselves.

Matt McGarry [00:25:21]:

Yeah, I think there's maybe at least four that I've seen in the last six months that have grown really quickly. So the first would be Sparkloop, then Beehiiv Boost. Swapstack now has a product kind of like this, and then re:find launched one in the past couple of weeks.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:37]

All of them essentially work in the same way - they allow you to acquire users by paying other newsletter creators to recommend your newsletter. Conversely, you can get paid for every subscriber who signs up to other newsletters you recommend.

Okay, up to this point, with the help of Matt’s advice, you were probably able to decide the TOPIC, FREQUENCY, and  FORMAT of your newsletter. Matt also outlined, step by step, how to grow your newsletter from zero to 100 thousand subscribers - including the part where you needed to invest YOUR OWN MONEY to acquire subscribers.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if Matt could also tell you how much money to invest and WHERE to invest it?

Well, buckle up and listen closely, because that is EXACTLY what I got Matt to tell me - in rich and exquisite detail!


BUT - and you know what's coming here - those details will be made available exclusively to the premium members of the First Class Founders community!

In each episode of this podcast, I craft a special segment for the premium members of the First Class Founders community.

For this episode, I got Matt to break down a typical ad campaign on Meta and explain how he would go about optimizing it to extract optimum value out of the campaign.

Matt went into great detail explaining how he sets up his targeting options, which are called ad-sets.

Matt McGarry [00:27:01]

You want to target a variety of different options. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:05]

Then he explained that there were TWO ways to scale the budgets for these ad-sets. One was vertical…

Matt McGarry [00:27:11]

So you increase your budget by ten to 20% if an ad set is at or below your target CPA.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:17]

...and the other was horizontal.

Matt McGarry [00:27:20]

And that's when you take that same ad set, that same audience that's working, you click duplicate and then you change one variable within that audience.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:27]

Of these two scaling strategies, Matt explained why he liked one more than the other.

Matt McGarry [00:27:33]

problem is you start to overlap and bid against yourself. And that's why it's not used as much as ___________ scaling, right?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:27:40]

But, to know exactly *which* scaling strategy Matt prefers, you'll need to sign up for the premium membership of First Class Founders, which I STRONGLY recommend you do because the knowledge that awaits you in that premium segment is something for which Matt usually charges companies $7000 dollars per hour!

Because all of this AND more can be heard in extensive detail in a special segment of the episode available exclusively to premium members of First Class Founders in the ad-free version of the podcast feed.

Additionally, the First Class Founders membership also comes with a ton of other perks. For instance, members of First Class Founders also get early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes - including the entire raw, unedited interview - the ability to Ask Me Anything, and much more!

Head on over to firstclassfounders.com/join - I'll put the link in the show notes!

And while you do that, I'll queue up the final segment of this episode in which Matt shares his advice for founders and creators who are looking to start their newsletter journey.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:47]

Matt's advice for creators and founders getting started on their journey is something you have heard from a TON of other guests on this podcast

Matt McGarry [00:28:54]

My advice would be to keep creating content consistently.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:57]:

But Matt's advice goes a lot deeper than just the basic cliche, of course.

Matt McGarry [00:29:01]:

A lot of people just write a newsletter every week on Beehiiv or Substack or wherever they write it. Um, and they expect someone to show up. You can't just build and expect people to come. You have to actually post content out there. That's really how you grow, is through social channels. So I would recommend posting on Twitter and or LinkedIn every day. I think those are the best platforms to build a media company on, or a newsletter business.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:29:22]

Matt reiterated the need for consistency by providing some harsh reality-checks for new creators and founders.

Matt McGarry [00:29:28]

At first, your posting on social is not going to be very insightful. It's not really going to get any engagement. You're going to tweet into the void. But over time, it really starts to snowball, especially as you find your online community. And so I would say post every single day. Try and make one of those posts every week a long-form value post. So that could be a thread on Twitter or a carousel on LinkedIn, or a long form post on LinkedIn where you have, like, a how-to article or tutorial on how to do something. Um, or a deeper insight.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:29:52]

And if you are wondering if this advice really works, I'd just refer you to Clint Murphy's episode. If you haven't heard it yet, basically, Clint wrote a Twitter thread every single day for seventy-five days straight and, in the episode, he explains in detail how that streak contributed massively to his growth!

Matt McGarry [00:30:10]:

And then along with your posting every day, I would try and find your community online and look into write down a list of five to ten or 15 different accounts on Twitter or LinkedIn and try and engage with their content every day. Comment on it. Actually be authentic here. Like, you want to find people you're actually interested in. So comment on their post, add a comment, DM them a compliment. Don't ask for anything, but just get involved in the community. And over time, they'll start to notice you and maybe share your stuff. And you'll develop a relationship or a subscriber or even a customer over time.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:39]

Again, this is advice that almost every guest on the podcast has shared - build your tribe. Find your ride-or-die partners. Connect with people and jump into video calls with them.

As an entrepreneur, a founder, a creator, your job is to solve problems for your tribe. The success and wealth that results from it is simply a byproduct of the amount of value you provide to your audience…

Before we wrap-up today's episode, let's quickly recap the main takeaways of the episode.

Throughout the episode, Matt described the various strategies to build out the different components of the newsletter, which I will recap here.

1. Takeaway Number One: Choose a topic that you have deep expertise in, or choose an emerging trend, or reverse engineer a certain type of audience profile to fit into your business model

2. Takeaway Number Two: A weekly cadence is the ideal frequency for your newsletter since it gives you enough time to craft a well-constructed newsletter AND gives you time to focus on its growth and distribution.

3. Takeaway Number Three: There are five TYPES or FORMATS of newsletters as outlined by Dan Oshinsky on Inbox Collective - The Analyst, the Curator, The Expert, The Writer, and the Reporter. Of these, Matt recommends newsletters that are a combination of the Expert and the Curator-type.

4. Takeaway Number Four: Matt outlined several different strategies for growing your newsletter at different points of the growth journey.

From 0-100, use guerilla marketing tactics - that is, promote your newsletter to everyone you meet and interact with - online AND offline. From 100 to thousand, write posts on social media. Matt recommended Twitter and LinkedIn, since they are also text-based which resonates well with a newsletter audience. From a thousand to ten thousand, use recommendations and cross-promotions to grow your audience. Collaborating with other newsletter creators helps you get in front of each other's audiences, which is key to growing at this stage. From ten thousand to a hundred thousand, you need to invest money into paid user acquisition methods. Matt highly recommends Meta ads, followed by Twitter, TikTok, Quora, and Google ads. He also spoke about a few other discoverability platforms such as affiliate marketing and influencer marketing.

Matt also outlined, in great detail, a strategy for deploying and scaling ads successfully to grow your newsletter beyond ten thousand subscribers on Meta ads. And you can listen to this strategy in a special segment of this podcast episode available exclusively to premium members of the First Class Founders community.

You can reach Matt via his newsletter...

Matt McGarry [00:33:32]:

..newsletteroperator.com. And the second best way is Twitter. That's where I'm publishing the most often on social. And then my Twitter handle is JMathewMcGarry.

And now, we also know that the J in that twitter handle stands for Jerome!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:33:41]:

Alright, that wraps up today's show! 

In the next episode of First Class Founders, I’m sharing my learnings from studying all the top creators out there: patterns, habits, and things that I’ve noticed. If you want to grow your audience, you definitely don’t want to miss out on next week’s episode.

And, one last thing before I go... If you're a new listener and you enjoyed this episode, you can follow the show by going to FirstClassFounders.com and clicking on the link that matches your preferred podcast player - like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, you can also add YOUR voice to the show by leaving a message on firstclassfounders.com - for example, what did you think of this episode specifically?

And, when you get a chance, could you also head over to FirstClassFounders.com/review and leave the podcast a five-star review? It really helps boost credibility for the show which means more incredible guests for you! And why wouldn’t you want that? I’ll leave a link in the show notes to leave us a 5-star review. Thank you so much!

If you wanna connect with me, you can hit me up on Twitter @YongSooChung. I’m pretty active there and would love to connect with you. You can find links to all my social accounts in the show notes.

I'll see you on the next episode of First Class Founders.