Harry Dry told me I should focus more on the newsletter for Starter Story. As it’s nearing 50K subscribers, it may be the most valuable thing I have.

I think he’s right, but now I need to figure out the "right" way to focus on the newsletter, what’s going to be on it, and what the vision for it is.

That’s why I’m writing this right now.

The hardest part about any newsletter is the insane amount of work that it takes to make it really, really great. It’s easy to slip into making it “just OK” over time.

A newsletter takes work, every week. So what I want to figure out is: How I can sustainably create a great newsletter…?

And I think the answer is to start leveraging my writing here on my daily blog. I already write every day.

But that also means the Starter Story newsletter would be more about “me”. That is a good and a bad thing.

Good, because it would be higher quality and more thoughtful.

Bad, because it ties the Starter Story brand to me. It maybe becomes a more personal brand. 

But over the last few months, I’ve become less afraid of that. I see lots of people doing really well with their personal brands, i.e. Joe Rogan, MrBeast, Anthony Pomp, etc.

I think the only thing I can do is test stuff out over the next few weeks. This week, I tried the first "different newsletter" and it did pretty well.

We generated $1,600 in memberships from that newsletter. That alone gives me the motivation to keep working harder on the newsletter, and it justifies the work.

If you have any ideas, let me know.

I also think it’s interesting to have a "style" of the newsletter. Like, James Clear has the "321 Newsletter", which is actually quite simple.

The lesson there is that longer is not better.

I also am going to look a bit deeper into Pomp’s newsletter. What I think is interesting about Pomp is that he writes every day, kind of like me, but then shares it with a paid audience. Once a week, he does a free one.

The biggest question, for me, is how can I really enjoy doing the Starter Story newsletter? That is what is the most important piece to growth and monetization in the long run.

I think that also means the content will change. I will probably lose some subscribers. But that’s all part of figuring things out.