038: Steph Smith - Turn Your Newsletter Into a Seven-Figure Business

Steph Smith is a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. In 2019, Steph founded Integral Labs. Integral Labs supports top tech companies with technical writing, content strategy, marketing, and analytics.

In 2020, Steph became the Senior Manger of Trends.co. Trends identifies emerging patterns in business months before they become mainstream. In less than a year, Steph grew the number of paying subscribers by more than 400%.

In this episode, Nathan and Steph discuss her proven approach to starting and running a profitable newsletter. They cover everything from pricing models to avoiding burnout.

Topics from the show include:

• How to price your newsletter for explosive growth
• The best pricing model for dramatically reducing churn
• How to make your newsletter stand head and shoulders above the rest

Links & Resources

• Trends.co
• TheHustle.co
• Sam Parr Twitter
• 030: Sam Parr – Growing to 2M Subscribers and Selling Your Newsletter
• Wolfram Alpha
• ahrefs
• JungleScout
• Keywords Everywhere
• My First Million Podcast
• Toptal
• 3-2-1 Newsletter
• Exponential View

Guest’s Links

• Personal site: stephsmith.io
• Steph’s Twitter: @stephsmithio

Episode Transcript

Steph: [00:00:00]
Once you actually take the energy to write an idea down and it’s implanted into your brain, almost like a seed, it starts to grow and you start to notice other things around you that are aligned with watering that seed with different examples, with intentional research, with data, by the time you actually want to write about it or publish it, or even start a business around it, you’ve thought about it in many different ways and giving it time to breathe.

Nathan: [00:00:28]
Today’s episode has been Steph Smith who runs trends.co, which is the paid newsletter from The Hustle. So, they have their 2 million subscribers newsletter and they have their paid newsletter called Trends, which is a little smaller, but drives a ton of revenue. This is super interesting. We get into her approach to growth, to research, she’s actually a chemical engineer who turned into this whole world. So, it’s super fascinating; she’s got a bunch of tips and tricks that she shares around doing research. I love her thoughts on differentiating products. There’s so much more; she gets into business models, everything. She’s one of those people who’s basically running the show at one of the largest paid newsletters. She’s incredible. So anyway, I’ll get out of the way let’s dive in and, made stuff.

Steph. Thanks for joining me.

Steph: [00:01:17]
Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Nathan: [00:01:18]
Okay. So I’ve got to start with the question. what’s it like working for a crazy person and specifically, how are you so good at managing up? And before you answer this question, did in fact come from the crazy person that we’re talking about?

Steph: [00:01:34]
I didn’t see that question.

Nathan: [00:01:37]
And he’s like, Oh, I don’t know.

But you got to find out like how, how she manages to deal on a day-to-day basis.

Steph: [00:01:44]
Well, I think we all are on a spectrum of being so good at executing. Some people are great at executing, and logistics, and processes and all that stuff. And some people are just visionaries and just have so many ideas and it’s crazy to work with them, but in a great way. If you can just give them the space to like, be that visionary and not necessarily depend on them for certain things like processes and logistics.

And so I’ve just learned over time to not necessarily bucket people, but understand what they’re great at and maybe what they’re not so great at. And Sam loves hiring operators. And he he’s hired CEOs or presidents to work alongside him. So I actually think one of the great things about working with Sam is how self self-aware he is because sometimes visionaries or people who are like the idea guy don’t realize that perhaps they’re not so great at some of the other things.

And so I just like to give Sam the space to give his ideas and be the visionary. And it’s funny. Cause sometimes when people first start working with Sam, they’re like, Oh my God, he has so many ideas. Do I have to do all this stuff? And Sam will tell you like, no, don’t do all the things I say.

I just love sharing these ideas and getting things out there, but you have to decide what’s important, what should be prioritized. And so I do think it was a little bit of a learning curve, but now I love working with him because he does actually just give you the trust to make those decisions.

Nathan: [00:03:03]
Yeah, that’s interesting. I think so many people run into that and I’ve had the same thing with our team at ConvertKit where people are like, Okay, you said this, does this mean I need to start working on it? And you’re like, no, no,

Steph: [00:03:14]
Yeah.

Nathan: [00:03:14]
I was just talking and I’m not even as wild and crazy as Sam is on that spectrum. Sam’s off the charts, but it is a good differentiation.

And maybe I shouldn’t be more extreme that way people would know that it’s not humanly possible to do all the ideas and to just ignore most of them.

Steph: [00:03:32]
Well, I mean, Sam will tell you, like right away that he’s just throwing ideas out there. And I think that’s really great because you’re just like, okay, so we’re on the same page. I know how much of this I need to pay attention to. And then he will explicitly say, which I think is also helpful, when he does want you to do something, versus some bosses or some people you work with, it is a little more muddy and it’s hard to tell what’s important. What’s not.

Nathan: [00:03:56]
Yeah. That makes sense. Another thing that Sam was talking about that he wanted you to share more with listeners is, your process around organization and creativity. I imagine at The Hustle, there’s so much going on. There’s tons of content going into the newsletter side, that Trends side, everything.

And, I’d love to hear more about your process for keeping all that straight, making sure you’ve got nonstop deadlines, crazy ideas. And what do you use for organization? Like maybe somewhat on tools, but even more so like.

Steph: [00:04:36]
Yeah. So I think so I will candidly say that on that spectrum where there’s people who are like incredible executor’s and organizers, I’m maybe a little further ...