018: Anne-Laure Le Cunff – Building a Loyal Audience & Growing Your Newsletter

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the founder of Ness Labs, which applies neuroscience research to productivity and creativity. In addition to writing articles and running a growing community, Anne-Laure also writes a newsletter subscribed to by over 25,000 “mindful makers”. 

In this conversation, we talk about building up a newsletter audience from zero. Anne-Laure tells us why newsletters grow differently from other platforms, like YouTube channels, and why you shouldn’t get discouraged when your subscriber numbers hit a plateau—often, if you just keep writing and sending great emails, the next wave of growth is right around the corner.

We discuss the difference between Twitter and SEO as channels for gaining new subscribers, and the importance of saying “no” to all the things your business shouldn’t focus on right now.

Anne-Laure also explains why she’s not pursuing brand awareness for her newsletter, and why she’s focused on maintaining the contract with her readers first and foremost.

Links & Resources

• Chris Guillebeau
• Tropical MBA Podcast
• Product Hunt
• Hacker News
• Quick Chat with Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs - The Indie Hackers Podcast
• SparkLoop & ConvertKit
• The Nathan Barry Show e017: David Perell – Mastering Twitter to Grow Your Newsletter and Make Money - Nathan Barry

Anne-Laure’s Links

• Website: Ness Labs - Make the most of your mind
• Twitter: @anthilemoon
• Subscribe to Anne-Laure’s Newsletter

Episode Transcript

Anne: [00:00:00]
Saying no. And always asking yourself, why am I doing this? And is it the right thing to do? That’s the most important thing I think

Nathan: [00:00:13]
In this episode of Art of Newsletters, I’m joined by Anne-Laure, talks about her journey from a product marketer at Google to running a very popular fast-growing newsletter. We talk about how she’s earning a living her fresh products and so much more. So let’s dive in. Anne-Laure, thanks for joining me today.

Anne: [00:00:30]
Thanks for having me, Nathan. 

Nathan: [00:00:31]
So I would love to start with just why you started a newsletter. You’ve got a newsletter that’s quite popular now, you know, you’re, well-respected in, uh, all of our friend groups and all of that got a course that came out a ton of things. But going back to the beginning when you’re like, all right, I’m going to create a MailChimp account.

When I get going, like, what was the impetus behind that? 

Anne: [00:00:54]
Initially that was more of a personal challenge. I went back to university a couple of years ago to study neuroscience and I wanted to have a forcing mechanism to write about it. And I’m someone who actually feels quite uncomfortable with disappointing people.

So publicly committing to sending a weekly newsletter about the topics I was studying at school was a way to force myself. To keep on doing it. I didn’t want people to be like, where’s the newsletter. I should say she would have it. Right. So that’s like, that’s where I was just, I just told people, Hey, every Thursday you can expect an email about when you were a science for me.

Nathan: [00:01:35]
Yeah. So were you able to hit the every Thursday? Did you stay on that? 

Anne: [00:01:40]
Actually pretty much. So I only missed three newsletters. In one year, two of them were planned. The other one is when was when I lost my grandmother and that was on the day I was supposed to send a newsletter. And what’s crazy is that I almost went like, okay, I don’t want to think about it.

I’m going to keep on writing. And then I was like, that’s like, no, that’s not healthy. Are you doing stuff? Writing? This is okay. And, um, the two other times, I actually announced it in the, the edition before, because I read it out about mental health and balance and mindful mindfulness. And this is part of it too, knowing when it’s better to just skip one newsletter so you can stick to it over the long run.

Rather than burning out because you’re trying to be overly sustainable to a point where you’re hurting your own mental health. So I did skip a few ones, but I’m okay with it. I think what’s more important is to be able to stick with it over the long run. 

Nathan: [00:02:37]
Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. And I like your point about being intentional about it and saying.

I’m not missing a newsletter, I’m taking a break. And I think that’s something that, um, Paul Jarvis has done really well where, you know, he’s had his newsletter going for many, many years, and then he’ll say like, okay, I’m taking December off or I’m taking the summer off, you know, something like that. And it’s just, uh, a good way to give yourself that break so that you can, you know, have the consistency and then, you know, readers know what to expect.

We are consistent with newsletters, so that. Readers can check in and know, uh, you know, really consistently what to pay attention to. I remember one of the, the first people that I followed is Chris Guillebeau. Uh, he wrote the a hundred dollars startup and a bunch of other great books. And he would post every Monday and every Thursday at like 10:00 AM or 9:00 AM on the dot.

And I, for whatever reason, I wasn’t on his email list. I don’t know why. But I would actually just be like, Oh, it’s Monday at 10. Like, and I would go and like, look for the poster. And if it was there on nursery day, it would go read it. And it’s just interesting how like, well, you can get trained to, you know, go to the place where the good content is.

If the creator sticks to the schedule. 

Anne: [00:03:51]
Absolutely. And you see that in lots of areas of content creation, right? Some of the most successful YouTubers are also following a pretty strict schedule where they tell people they’re very similar to what you just mentioned. Two videos a week one on Monday at this time one on Thursday at this time, same for newsletters, uh, same for blogs in general, any kind of.

And they’re very worried. The person is trying to build an audience. You need to have some sort of contract with your audience where you tell them, Hey, you’re giving me your email address. You’re giving me access to the most intimate part of the internet for you. You’re giving me that that’s precious in exchange what I’m giving youthe contract is going to be—is that you’re going to receive. One or two newsletters a week from me on these days and I’m not going to break that contract. So I think it’s quite important to be consistent if you want to build that loyalty with your audience. 

Nathan: [00:04:50]
Yeah. It reminds me of, um, one other podcasts that I listened to a lot, uh, called the tropical MBA.

And I’m ev...