Kansas City 'Stranger Things' Meme Success

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In this episode I wanted to open up my notebook and share a few things I am seeing across local newsletters, high ticket service businesses and software. No script. Just ideas that feel early but important. The first one is the “local MrBeast” concept. My First Million mentioned it this week. I had just written about it. So I figured it was a good time to spell out why I think this could be a huge edge for local operators who are willing to do something slightly harder than the average newsletter.

We start with a live example. Cole, a roofer in South Carolina, has been documenting his work and his community on video. One of those videos blew up. Around 700,000 views in about two weeks. It travelled through business Twitter and YouTube. That is not a small bump. That is the type of spike that can reset an entire business. I break down why his approach worked, why doing it as a media company instead of a single business could be even more powerful, and how this fits with the idea of being “creator led” at the local level instead of just being another newsletter that recaps headlines.

From there I talk through the second big theme. Local memes. Memes are how entire subcultures talk to each other. Crypto. Business. Tech. They are fast to consume and fun to share, which makes them perfect for local. I share a few specific plays. A Stranger Things themed Kansas City graphic that exploded with engagement. A comet joke that tapped into long running frustration with slow road construction and then got cloned into other markets. I also mention a tool called memelord.com that surfaces the raw templates for whatever is trending, so you can bolt your local twist on top instead of spending hours trying to be a graphic designer.

Midway through the episode I flip the screen on and walk through my software. Local Newsletter OS pulls in local news with RSS, rewrites it with your own AI prompts, collects articles from your readers through a simple form, and lets you manage ads and partners in the same place. The events module scrapes events, helps you clean them up, and sends them straight into your next issue. The Zillow integration lets you search for homes in your city, pick one, and drop a fully formatted real estate card into your newsletter in seconds. That feature alone used to eat up real time every single week.

I close with some thoughts on statewide and even countrywide newsletters. I talk about Nate Spangle’s Indiana project, why a state audience unlocks different types of advertisers, and how marketing budgets work inside larger organizations. A single town newsletter might never see a dollar from a statewide insurance marketing team. A strong state brand can. Bigger reach, bigger budgets, and a different kind of leverage. If you want to try any of this, I invite you to jump into the free Discord, get on the Local Newsletter OS waitlist, or reach out through localmediahq.com if you want help with Meta ads, backend ops or a deeper partnership.

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