Run One Thing, Not Three

I've started multiple newsletters. Here's the one I'd tell you to start.

One.

That's it. That's the advice.

I was talking with somebody this week who is producing 10 or 11 original pieces of content a week. Not repurposed stuff. Original, evergreen writing, every single day, while also running a business. Which is INSANE, and honestly it's the hardest part of this whole game and he's already doing it.

But he had three different ideas going. Three themes, three angles, three possible newsletters. And the question was, do I run all three, or do I find the thread and make it one?

Make it one. Every time.

Why one

Two reasons, and neither one is very sexy.

First is bandwidth. You already have a job. You already have kids or a business or both. So how much attention do you actually have to move the needle in three different directions? Not enough. Nobody has enough. But if it's all one thing, then every idea you come up with is moving that one thing forward. Every piece of writing stacks on the same pile instead of three separate little piles that never get tall.

Second is money. If you ever decide to run ads, it's dollars going in one direction instead of getting split three ways and doing nothing anywhere.

I'm speaking from experience here. I had a book review newsletter going for a long time because I read a ton and figured I'd just share the notes. I had other ones going too. And when I finally dialed it into one personal newsletter, it felt so much better. Not "better" in a spreadsheet way. Better in a "I actually want to write this" way.

Local is easy. Personal is not.

Worth saying out loud, because people conflate these two.

With a local newsletter, the formula is basically cut and dry. I live in Orange County, so my local newsletter targets a specific radius, and I run meta ads to that radius, and people subscribe. Done. The mission is obvious because the audience is a geography.

Personal is murkier. There's no radius. So you have to actually know who the person is that you're writing for and where they hang out. Otherwise your distribution is just... whatever social platforms you're already on, and hoping.

Which is fine! That's how a lot of great newsletters got built. No ads at all. People just liked the stuff and followed the trail back. But it means you have to be intentional. Put a call to action in your posts a couple times a week. Link it in your bio. Give people a reason, like a template or a resource, not just "subscribe to my newsletter."

Use AI for the part you can't see

Here's the move if you're sitting on a pile of your own content and you don't know what the through line is.

AI is one of the best pattern recognition tools we have. So start a project and dump EVERYTHING in there. Every post, every transcript, every note, every half-finished doc. Then just start talking to it.

Say something like: I want to produce content for the specific problems I've been addressing, but I honestly don't know what those problems are based on what I have. Can you help me identify the themes, the problems, and then the avatar behind all of this?

You'll be surprised. The thread is almost always already there in your own work. You're just too close to it to see it.

And then just keep producing

I get asked a lot if publishing daily is dilutive. If putting out that much stuff waters it down.

I'm very pro just producing. Every little piece lays a stronger foundation and stacks, and it builds an archive that people and search engines can actually find. It's just a matter of time before something hits.

The producing is the hard part, and if that's already pouring out of you, you're way ahead of most people. The only thing left is to point all of it in one direction.

Stay in the fight, Kevin