Step 1: Take a boring product.
Step 2: Revive it.
Step 3: Build an entire new category around a single POV (with a big personality).

Let’s dive into how c_______ became a $40M brand.

Read more

It went like this:

Step 1: Take an old product.
Step 2: Give it a new job.
Step 3: Build an entire brand around that job.

Today, we’ll explore how this company did exactly that and built a $1M/month brand. It’s pretty outrageous.

The company?

Z….

Read more

But when you look at the numbers? It’s genius.

The company? Hostage Tape.
The product? Mouth tape that helps you stop snoring, sleep better, and (their words) stay married.

Let’s break down how a scrappy startup turned a weird idea into a business on track to do $40 million this year. 👇

People don’t buy tape, they buy…

Read more

This is the story of how Moiz took an idea he found in a grocery store and built a business that he would sell to P&G for generational wealth.

Step 1: You don’t even need the prototype

Read more

Why? Because knowing how it feels to be the person at the end of the poor experience means that they’re very well positioned to solve it.

Some brands start with spreadsheets. Mad Rabbit started with a bad tattoo and a disappointing tub of petroleum jelly.

In 2019, Oliver Zak got his first tattoo. Like most people, he was told to use petroleum jelly to help it heal. But it didn’t work. The experience was bad, and so he went on the hunt to find a better solution.

Spoiler alert: there was no solution.

So he did what most people wouldn’t: he built it.

That moment became the seed of Mad Rabbit — a tattoo aftercare company. But here’s the thing: nobody was building in this space, which meant it was ripe for disruption.

Here’s how he turned dorm room side hustle into a company now valued over $56 million.

Understand the size and scale of your market

Read more

Take this newsletter and apply it to your business daily, it’ll help you build your business smarter. This is a paid post. If you’re a busy professional with an ambition to sell a product or service on the internet, consider going paid. You’ll learn the business lessons to:

Iterate *your* writing

Many subscribers expense this newsletter. It works out at about $0.50 per growth hack (a worthy investment if you’re serious about building something).

Iteration has been the cornerstone of my creator strategy for the last 3 years. It’s the process I use in my day job to iterate products and the model I always rely on.

Today, I wanted to walk you through how I apply iterative thinking to my writing process to drive better and better results.

Let’s dive in. 👇

Building fences & getting it wrong

This weekend, on top of sorting out my greenhouse, I was working on the garden fence. Disclaimer, I’ve never built a fence before but alas, I had to learn (and quickly) —my veg beds needed filling and my dogs kept stomping on all my little seedlings.

A few weeks ago, I planted some radishes in the beds (without said fence). I kid you not, after two days, bye-bye radishes. Like, totally disappeared.

I’d been growing those little seedlings for 2-3 weeks, heartbreaking.

Fence I needed, and so I ordered a load of wood and got to work. Turns out, building a fence is harder than I thought, but (finally) the posts were in, the rails were in, all I had to do was nail some slats in the right place, and jobs a good ’un as we say here.

So I started the process. I had a pocket full of nails, a hammer, and the slats. First job: to work out how big to make the gap — so I used a slat to measure the gap. It went — slat, slat-sized-gap, slat.

But I couldn’t hold the slat in place whilst I got the hammer and level. Not a bother, I grabbed a clamp. I clamped the slat in place, levelled the slat, and hammered it in.

As I hammered, the slat leaning against the fence fell. So I made a mental note, next time, when I measured the gap, I made sure to put the slat on the floor.

I also realised that hammering the top of the slat moved the bottom of the slat (because there was no clamp on the bottom).

Next slat, I hammered from the bottom, but this time I’d put the clamp on the floor, so I was stretched to reach it. Next slat, I popped it on the top rail to hold it in place (no more stretching).

I also realised I was stretching the clamp out in its entirety just to push it all the way back in, it was probably only taking 0.2 of a second, but still, it felt like a waste of time.

So I stopped doing that, and just opened it enough to pop it on and off quickly.

Then I noticed the way I was hammering the nails— the angle at which I was holding the hammer, the force I swung with, and how high up the hammer I held. When I held it lower down the handle, let the heaviest part (the head) hang down, and I swung with my arm (not just my wrist) the nail went it way quicker.

By the end of about 10 slats, I’d ironed out my process very nicely.

The result was that the rest of the slats went in like a dream, the process was effective and efficient, and I’d got rid of 90% of the waste.

This might seem completely off topic and rather random, but the application is relevant to writing. More now than ever. The method is simple:

• Step 1: Do the thing

• Step 2: Listen for signals

• Step 3: Measure and assess

• Step 4: Review and hypothesise

• Step 5: Isolate the variable and test

Step 2: Application

Let’s apply each bit to the writing process to bring it to life.

Step 1: Do the thing

You’ll never know how to optimize the system and increase efficiency in the process if you don’t go through the process yourself. The best way to get familiar with the process is to go through the process bit by bit, at first just to learn. With writing, that means (especially if you’re starting from scratch) just start typing. Go through the process, idea, write, edit, and publish.

Step 2: Listen for signals

Ask yourself as you go through the writing process, what feels unusually difficult? Have you spent ages on the idea? Have you got stuck trying to structure your thinking? Have you spent a lifetime going back and forth in the editing stage? Which bit of it feels really quite difficult? Those are your signals.

Step 3: Measure and assess

If you write a lot, you’ll know what you’re average is, or a least you’ll get a sense for what typically happens in a given week and month. If you’re new to this, you’ll have to write a few posts on a specific platform until you have an average. My recommendation, if you’re new, write 7 pieces (get a week’s worth of data), get an average, and then you’ll know what typical response and engagement you get.

Step 4: Review and hypothesise

The next step is to review what’s working. You do that by looking at your posts and figuring out which one or two posts are sticking out above the rest. If there’s no obvious data point, either write more stuff or change the word ‘obvious’ to ‘slightly better’. Sometimes you’ll have an out-and-out winner, sometimes one post will be marginally better. Either way, both are useful.

Then it’s your job to interrogate why that happened. Like I did with the fence slats, it’s about understanding why something did better, giving it a critical eye, and asking questions. Making some hypotheses like:

• I think this piece did better because I asked a question in the subject line

• I think this piece did better because I added stats in the introduction

And then we move on to step 5.

Step 5: Isolate and test

Now we’ve made those hypotheses, the game is to test them. So I will list out what I think is the reason things do well, like I’ve done before, and then I will test that. For the example above, I will make sure the next newsletter has a question in the subject line, or I’ll make sure there are stats in the introduction. Then I’ll set some metrics around what good looks like, for example:

• 45% open rate

• 2 new paid subscribers

And then I will review the data the following day.

This masterclass is a snapshot of one of the lessons in the Medium Blueprint. Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help:

• The Medium Blueprint — used by over 600+ writers, the exact strategy I used to go from 0 to 90,000 followers on Medium.

• The Part-Time Newsletter School — used by over 100 creators, everything I’ve learned from my MSc in behavioural science, and application of my product-led strategy to turn subscribers into paying customers.

PS, if you join the founder member of this newsletter, you get both as part of your subscription :)

Step 3: The lesson

More and more, I learn that most things can be boiled down to a science. Content is no different. People will tell you what they like through their actions and behaviours, it’s your job to pay attention and see what is resonating.

The strategy is simple: write and publish, then listen and iterate.

You make good decisions on what to iterate by reviewing what is working and stress-testing why that is working.

Step 4: The review writing mini-video masterclass

Here’s a mini video masterclass of me explaining *exactly* this concept with my writing on Medium. It’s the model and system I use for Medium and for writing this newsletter.

Read more

Take this newsletter and apply it to your business daily, it’ll help you build your business smarter. This is a paid post. If you’re a busy professional with an ambition to sell a product or service on the internet, consider going paid. You’ll learn the business lessons to:

Write your first newsletter

Many subscribers expense this newsletter. It works out at about $0.50 per growth hack (a worthy investment if you’re serious about building something).

Three months ago, I shifted gears on this newsletter. Since then, it’s become a new, nearly 4-figure income stream for me.

Today I wanted to talk about how I think about delivering value in this newsletter every day to keep it growing and thriving, so you can do the same.

Let’s dive in. 👇

Slugs eating squash

I was out in my greenhouse yesterday. I’d just had a highly successful weekend finally finishing off the door, the sides and everything else that got destroyed last year in the Gail-force winds (it was an emotional but I’m over it now).

So for months, my little seedings have been growing indoors—on windowsills, on the kitchen table, on shelves, anywhere I could put them. A few weeks ago I had a week off work and spent a day building a (very handmade) shelf-tower for them that, for weeks, has sat next to my patio doors.

Basically anywhere with light, a surface, and no carpet, there were seedlings.

And it’s been a mixed bag of growing. Total elation, when seedlings pop through the soil after days on end of nothing, to total frustration when, after weeks, you have to admit defeat and resign yourself to the fact that despite your best efforts, something has gone wrong.

Yesterday, though, I walked into my greenhouse and couldn’t believe my eyes.

A slug latched onto my (beautiful) squash seedling. Not only was it latched on, but in actual fact, upon closer inspection, it had munched through the entire stem.

I stood in shock for a second.

How had it gotten in?
When did it get in?
Slugs have teeth?!

So I removed said slug, booted it over the fence, and reassessed the damage.

In one hand lay the stem of the beautiful seedling I had grown for the last 2 weeks, the joy I felt when I saw it pop through for the first time, the perfectly green leaves, the curved edges, the thing was (once) so full of life.

And in the other, the little pot that housed a bunch of soil and a tiny spec of a stem with teeth marks barely peaking out of the soil.

So I headed straight back into the kitchen, grabbed the empty egg shells I’d been storing away for this very moment, crushed them up, and sprinkled them all over the remaining squash seeds.

This was war, and I was going to defeat the slugs.

That story might not seem a natural link to writing, but it is (or at least I think so and it’s my newsletter so I get to write the rules).

Writing, after all, is about understanding your readers (and their context), understanding their problems, understanding the associated pain, and solving those problems in the right way. Which means, at the right time, in a way that is frictionless and straightforward, and in a way that makes you an *only*, not a ‘better’.

Every newsletter I write, I’m thinking like this:

• Timing (part I): When in somebody’s day do they need this information?

• Timing (part II): Where in their *journey* are they, and how can I best serve them aka are they just starting or are they an expert?

• Problem: What is the *actual* problem they are facing?

• Pain: What is the associated pain? Be super specific — it’s not ‘feel frustrated because I can’t garden’ (that’s too broad), it’s ‘feel frustrated because slugs are eating my squash seeds!’

• Solution: Does it solve their problem? Eggshells, beer traps, and midnight slug picking are the options for getting rid of slugs.

• Ease-of-application: Each of those solutions above is different degrees of difficulty and requires a different thing from the person at the other end; you’ve got to think about that when you’re delivering a solution.

Step 2: Application

Let’s go through each bit by bit and how I think about it for the Part-Time Creator Club, so you can apply it to your thing.

Timing (part I):

The people I write to are busy professionals who don’t have tonnes of time but want to build something on the internet. So they might have 2 hours a day—max. I write to them in the morning (typically I try to send my newsletters at 10:43 — I’m not sure why it’s that time specifically), but it means because I write to people all over the world, it’s in most people’s inbox in the morning. So when they go to write/build before the start of their working day, they can use that as something to spark inspiration.

Timing (part II):

It’s hard to write for everyone, what you have to do is apply general themes, accepting that sometimes you won’t always get it totally on the money. I talk about different parts of the creator journey and then listen for signals. Where I’m getting more interaction, more paid subscribers, and more interest, I use that as the place to invest my time. And that is a constant battle, constantly learning, just because you’ve seen one thing one week, doesn’t mean it applies to every week.

Pain:

The pain is very important. Write from a pain and you orientate your writing, making sure you are delivering for somebody at the end of this, not just rambling on (sometimes there’s a good reason for a ramble though!) I tend to anchor myself around one pain a day, which might be positioning, inspiration, idea generation, or content quality. That is then reflected in the title, and I aim to solve that problem the best way I can.

Solution:

A solution means different things to different people. One solution for one person barely helps another, so you have to bear that in mind. But there are lots of things you can do to maximise success — and for the Part-Time Creator Club, I am aiming to improve the way people are thinking about their business. So, here are some things I do to maximize my chances of that: Actionable steps, step-by-step guides, evidence-based writing, GPT prompts for duplication, daily newsletters and mix up the sectors I talk about. «All of that stuff aims to put me in the category of the *only*.

Ease-of-application:

Those things above mean that it’s easier to implement the solution, and that has led to more and more people signing up for the newsletter. The way I think about this is ‘how can I maximise the chances of someone using the information in the newsletter?’ So that’s about making it really good content and then making it very easy to apply.

And if you whenever is the right time for you, here are more ways I can help:

• The Medium Blueprint — used by over 600+ writers, the exact strategy I used to go from 0 to 90,000 followers on Medium.

• The Part-Time Newsletter School — used by over 100 creators, everything I’ve learned from my MSc in behavioural science, and application of my product-led strategy to turn subscribers into paying customers.

PS, if you join the founder member of this newsletter, you get both as part of your subscription :)

Step 3: The lesson

The competition for high-quality newsletters has never been higher.

You have to think of your writing as a product that delivers something to your reader. And all newsletters do this, even if on the surface it feels like they don’t. Even if on the surface the writing feels like a personal diary or highly opinionated writing, that is a product that solves a problem.

It’s just not a problem you can see immediately.

Writers don’t always solve in the way you think. I came across a newsletter yesterday, one post had a staggering engagement. The piece was essentially about the overwhelm and disillusionment of time. I read through the comments, and the thing that stood out over and over again?

People felt like they had finally read something that made them feel understood. Before, they had felt like they might have been the only person feeling like this. Now, they felt validated and no longer alone.

Loneliness, isolation, frustration — they’re all emotions and all problems to be solved. Of course, they’re not as straightforward as ‘slugs are eating my squashes’ ,but nonetheless, they solve a problem.

Remember, people have emotional and logical problems. You can solve one or the other — or both. But all are worth exploring.

Step 4: The newsletter writing prompt

The step-by-step positioning prompt for writing a high-quality newsletter. Of course, this isn’t everything, it’s a starter for you if you’re stuck.

Read more

Take this newsletter and apply it to your business daily, it’ll help you build your business smarter. This is a paid post. If you’re a busy professional with an ambition to sell a product or service on the internet, consider going paid. You’ll learn the business lessons to:

Sell your first product

Many subscribers expense this newsletter. It works out at about $0.50 per growth hack (a worthy investment if you’re serious about building something).

In the last 4 years, I’ve built an audience of over 100,000 people, and I never quit my 9-to-5. I think a big part of that is that I’m constantly iterating my product.

Today, I’m going to package up 5 steps to making your product *truly* unique so that you can build bigger and make more money.

Let’s dive in. 👇

It’s never been easier to start a business, but as a consequence of ease, volume increases. So many have popped up in the last few years that it’s harder and harder to stand out.

These days, to stand out, you have to be different; you have to create the ‘only’ product in your space.

Niche enough to draw a crowd but broad enough to appeal to enough people to make your business a success.

That’s a fine balance — here’s how to think about it in 5 steps.

Read more

What a week it’s been. I hope everything is going well with you! This is a paid edition. Want original models, frameworks, and mental shortcuts that make business growth faster and easier so you can sell *more* stuff? Click the little yellow button.

Click me

The Woobles is a crocheting kit that started as a $200 investment. Fast forward 2 years later, they were on track to make $7 million.

This is the story of how the Woobles went from 0 to $7 million and the writing behind their success.

Let’s go👇

Read more

Take this newsletter and apply it to your business daily, it’ll help you build your business smarter. This is a paid post. If you’re a busy professional with an ambition to sell a coaching programme online, consider going paid.

Get your daily business coach

Many subscribers expense this newsletter. It works out at about $0.50 per growth hack (a worthy investment if you’re serious about building something).

In 2021, I completed my Master’s in Behavioural Science, if that course taught me one thing it was the power of framing —the frame changes purchasing decisions.

Today, we’re going to talk about framing, specifically about finding your ‘laserbeam’ feature to make you stand out from the crowd and ultimately sell more stuff.

Let’s dive in. 👇

The laser watch

This story is directly out of Joseph Sugarman’s The Adweek Copywriting Handbook.

Joseph Sugarman = one of America’s greatest copywriters.

Joseph Sugarman was sitting in a lab of a watch company in Dallas, Texas.

Looking through a microscope, learning everything he could about how a digital watch was made.

He was trying to work out how he was going to sell the thing.

He’d been there for 2 days, asking about watch technology with the watch makers.

Nothing was standing out to him.

Until he leaned into a specific feature.

Back then, a new technology meant that you could see your watchface in the dark but you had to press a button.

On this watch, it displayed constantly thanks to a radioactive substance placed in a capsule inside the watch.

It meant that you could tell the time, even at night, without pressing any buttons.

But Joe felt there must be a powerful way to present the product.

He needed something different and special that made the watch stand out.

He was scratching his head until he had a conversation with an engineer:

“Why didn’t someone think of this radioactive material for watches before?”

Read more

Take this newsletter and apply it to your business daily, it’ll help you build your business smarter. This is a paid post. If you’re a busy professional with an ambition to sell a product or service on the internet, consider going paid. You’ll learn the business lessons to:

Sell your first product

Many subscribers expense this newsletter. It works out at about $0.50 per growth hack (a worthy investment if you’re serious about building something).

In the last 2 years I’ve sold over $100,000 worth of product by writing emails, and what’s more, I never quit my 9-to-5.

Getting the positioning of my brand right was a big part of why that worked out for me. Today I’m going to tell you how to position your brand to maximize your chances of selling more stuff.

Let’s dive in. 👇

Buy more worms!

I don’t know if this story is true or not, but it explains in 2 minutes a good chunk of what you need to know about positioning.

I was mowing my lawn and I heard a story that made me run inside, kick off my shoes, and find the nearest notepad to scribble down everything this guy was saying.

The guy?

Shaan Puri.

I don’t know about you, but pretty much every episode of My First Million I gobble up. Every episode is like unlocking a new world I didn’t know existed.

And this episode was no different.

Shaan tells this story:

There were a couple of kids trying to make a quick buck.

They lived near a local pond where many fishermen would hang out on a weekend.

One day they had the idea to sell worms to the fisherman.

So they set up a sign that said ‘worms for sale’.

To their delight, they came home that day and made a handful of sales.

As luck would have it (starting to feel the story maybe isn’t quite as true as I initially thought) their neighbour was a copywriter.

So he says ‘hey boys, first rule of copywriting is to sell the benefit, not the product’.

With that, the boys raced back the next day and rewrote their sign:

‘Buy these worms, catch more fish’.

Grinning ear-to-ear, they came back that night counting their cash, they’d sold even more!

But they went back to the copywriter for more advice.

The neighbour had one simple question: Why? Why do *your* worms catch more fish?

So they thought about it that night, and realized that the fish liked these worms because they were local. Locally caught worms for local fish (not sure of the science behind this one but we’ll go with it).

So the next weekend they set up with a new sign:

‘Buy these worms, catch more fish — because they’re caught locally’

Record sales.

Shaan goes on to explain the 5 Ps of copywriting:

• P - No problem, no sale

• P - Promise benefit

• P - Proof

• P - Proposition offer

• P - Product

And I’ve added a 6th…

• P - Prospect (more on that later).

Step 2: Application

Sometimes, maybe you’re like me and you hear these stories and find it difficult to relate them to your thing. You hear the lessons, you write it all down, but then when it comes to applying it to your thing, you draw a blank.

I’ve been there.

So, I thought I would apply it to the Part-Time Creator Club so you can see it in action.

Problem:

Ambitious professionals with demanding 9-to-5s want to build a profitable side business—but they feel stuck. They don’t have time to sift through endless advice, and they struggle with focus, motivation, and knowing what actually works. They need a plug and play.

Promise:

This newsletter is your daily business coach—giving you clear, actionable insights to grow your business smarter, not harder. In just a few minutes a day, you'll get the motivation, strategy, and tactics to build a real business that fits around your career.

Proof:

"Hi Eve—your posts are so darn good!! This middle-aged Chicagoan (me) is an accountant who wants to be an entrepreneur. All this sales & marketing stuff is very new. You decipher it in a very understandable way :)" — Pamela (paid subscriber)

Proposition:

For just $15/month (or $0.51 per issue), you get a daily business coach delivering expert insights, proven strategies, and real-world lessons to help you run your business better—without wasting time.

Product:

A daily business coach for busy professionals building something on the side.

Prospect:

Busy professional working 9-to-5. They read a lot, they work hard, they have a lot of professional experience, but don’t know how to turn that into something that can make money.

Step 3: The lesson

In business, the ‘frame’ is everything.

Can you imagine if Uber came onto the market and positioned itself as the cab service on an app — yeah, no that wouldn’t have worked. Instead, they invented a ‘new way’ to do an old thing. They wrote a pitch deck that sold the new world and invited people to be part of it (you can see that playbook here - the framework is right at the end). It wasn’t ‘cab app for sale’ it was ‘get a cab this way, make your life easier and pay less.’

Can you imagine if Allbirds launched their product as ‘buy these wool shoes’? Again, who cares. Yeah, it’s kinda cool that they’re made of wool but I’m only buying them if they improve my life in some way. And that’s exactly how they positioned their launch campaign (you can see that playbook here), they created a ‘NEW’ solution to a problem.

And if you’ve got a keen eye, you’ll realize there’s a 6th ‘P’ I’ve not spoken about yet, that’s important.

The prospect is who. The who is really important. You need to have your customer in your mind, you need to know what their life looks like, how they feel, what they want, how they live. Remember the story of how Revolut repositioned the customer they were targeting and hit 50M users (that playbook is here), or how Glean scaled to $100M ARR by targeting a very specific prospect (that playbook is here).

Who you target is really, quite important. Spend more time there—Maybe tomorrow I’ll write about exactly how I think about that. But for now, let’s get onto the final piece to this puzzle.

Step 4: Business positioning prompt

The step-by-step positioning prompt for your business on the side. Of course, this isn’t everything, it’s a starter for you if you’re stuck.

Read more

This is a paid edition. Want original models, frameworks, and mental shortcuts that make business growth faster and easier so you can sell *more* stuff? Click the little yellow button.

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This morning I’ve been up since 5 am studying Glean. The $100M AI assistant that transforms the way big corporates operate.

This is that story and some of the lessons you can learn from it. On reflection, there was one thing that was key to Glean’s success. At the end of this newsletter I’ll give you a GPT prompt to do the same.

Let’s go👇

Read more

This is a paid edition. Want original models, frameworks, and mental shortcuts that make business growth faster and easier so you can sell *more* stuff? Click the little yellow button.

Click me

I’ve been up since 5 AM uncovering the writing behind LUSH. How did a tiny idea between two friends grow into a £74 million brand in 2023?

One thing’s for sure—it wasn’t by playing it safe or scaling the “usual” way.

Let’s go👇

When you create a company, you’re building an extension of yourself. The best brands start with something that frustrates you so much, you have to create the solution—or explode. (It’s why I write this newsletter.)

In 2025, brands are more creator-driven than ever. But people have always been behind brands—we just didn’t see their faces. Why do customers feel such an affinity with a brand with faces? Because a business is a relationship.

Every purchase is a confirmation of your identity. Let’s take an example. The book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’, to date, has sold 20 million copies. Do you think 20 million people have actually read the book? I doubt it. Rather, more likely, 20 million people felt like they gave too much of a f*ck about what other people thought. And so bought the book, to signal to themselves, they were rebelling against that feeling.

Remember:

❌ Customer: I’m buying this thing because it solves a problem for me*

*Although it does have to do that

Read more

This is a paid edition. Want original models, frameworks, and mental shortcuts that make business growth faster and easier so you can sell *more* stuff? Click the little yellow button.

Click me

If you’re not a paid subscriber, here’s what you missed this week:

I spent the last 6 hours delving into the internet archives and found the original ProductHunt launch of Notion.

Since then, Notion has gone from zero to a $10 billion valuation (yes, billion, with a ‘b’). So I unpacked the early days of their startup story to see what happened and what you can learn from it.

Let’s go👇

Last week I wrote ‘without a good origin story, you’re toast’, which I believe to be true. But maybe not for the reasons you think. You see your origin story is important for your customers, especially in markets where the goods are visually very similar. It’s an easy differentiator that builds trust and connection with your audience.

But in some markets, like tech for example, an origin story is less important. For software, we don’t really see the same ‘origin stories’ we see elsewhere. When it comes to software, potential customers have different expectations—they have a problem they want solved and the question: can your software solve it?

Ivan Zhao started Notion with his co-founders back in 2013. He was the only guy in his friendship group that had an interest in art and a background in coding. So, he started building websites for his artist friends. This is an important differentiation and a great starting point. If you’re friends are asking you for a thing — it’s likely other people want it as well.

Ivan had a deep belief that everyone can be a creator, you just need a platform to make it happen, and so the idea of Notion was born.

❌ Build for you and what you want

Read more

Welcome to a subscriber-only 🔒edition of the newsletter. Every week, I tackle a burning question about product growth, productivity, work, and communication, so you can learn how to apply the findings to your part-time thing. Let’s dive into this week’s newsletter.

Upgrade to Paid

Check out: Part-Time Creator Club 🧰

Read time: 5.3 minutes

The newsletter game is more competitive than ever.

2022 felt like the early days. 2025 things are ramping up—free content is x10 what it used to be.

If you don’t up your game, you’ll get left behind.

So there are two options:

• 👎 Play small — Spend time writing sub-par pieces to please the algorithm but stay mostly still, mostly doing what everyone else is doing and feeling like a 5/10.

• 👍 Go big — Invest your time in making what you’ve got 2% better every week and you’ll be surprised where you end up.

I’m guessing you want to go big, so here’s a short guide to exactly how you do that.

I’ve spent 10 hours this week researching the most impressive newsletters right now so you can leverage it for your newsletter. Let’s go.

The newsletters 🔥:

1. Tom Orbach - MarketingIdeas

2. Ash Lamb - VisualGrowth

3. Emily Sunberg - FeedMe

4. Aakash Gupta - Product Growth

5. Rachel Karten - Link In Bio

6. Between the Lines - Sara Noel

7. Mostly Metrics - CJ GUSTAFSON

8. Your Local Epidemiologist - Katelyn Jetelina

9. The Assist

1. Show your value proposition in the first 25 words

Readers have limited time and they’re here for one reason and one reason only:

To solve their problem.

Aka you’ve got all of 5 seconds to convince them that you can do that. That means every word matters (especially in the intro). I call it the S.O.V (speed of value) but first, you must offer up the bait.

So here’s the key question:

⁉️ What’s your value proposition?

(Aka what value are you willing to give them if they read).

You see, this is what Tom does right off the bat. No fluff, no extra words, no faffing about, straight into it.

The value proposition: I’ll teach you how to keep attention.

Remember, you don’t always need to spell out the ‘so that’, your audience is smart. Check out the example below, Tom’s audience is a bunch of marketers, they know why it’s important to keep attention.

He simply tells them what’s at risk if you get it wrong and then jumps straight into it.

• ❌ Fluffy - In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, consumers are inundated with messaging, making it imperative for brands to establish immediate relevance. The most pivotal consideration when an individual encounters your ad is, “Does this align with my needs?” If this core question isn’t effectively addressed within the initial three-second engagement window, you risk losing that prospect’s attention—potentially forever—diminishing conversion opportunities and brand impact.

• ✅ No-fluff - The most important question anyone asks when seeing your ad is: 'Is this for me?' If you don't answer that in 3 seconds → they're gone forever.

2. Use imagery to tell stories

Blocks of text are all over the internet. We love to read. But when faced with block of text after block of text, readers can get bored, overwhelmed, and fatigued.

So break it up with imagery, and not just any imagery.

Stock footage was ‘okay’ 10 years ago, but these days, people expect more and my favorites are people creating imagery that matters, that adds something to their stories, something that summarizes what they are saying.

🖼️ Tell your story and add imagery to bring it to life

A great example below, Ash visualizes what is hard to put into words. Brilliant. His value is helping you see ideas in new ways.

🧰 The Fix - Invest time in telling your story with visuals.

3. Inject personality everywhere

AI is here.

What is one to do but sit in the corner and cry? Well, yes —some days. But mostly no. Instead, like anything, change brings about tears and also opportunities.

What is this golden opportunity you ask? Well, it’s time to be more you.

And really you. Not like half-baked and sort of you but also hiding under the covers you. You like really, really you. All the bells and whistles (or none if you don’t like that). Inject yourself (fully) into your writing.

💁‍♀️ Don’t hold back, say things exactly as you would.

Tell the world:

• What you like

• What you do

• How you think

• What you feel

Give it both barrels. Here’s a great example.

• ❌ No, no, no - ‘These events raise concerns about their effectiveness and prompt a broader discussion on the allocation of marketing budgets in consumer brands.’

• ✅ Yesssss - ‘These parties look bad and make me seriously question marketing spend at consumer brands.’

4. Stacks reader problems and write about them

Content = Pick a problem, and

solve it.

You and I both know this.

But there is a new creeping realization I’ve had that I’ve called ‘problem stacking’. Here, writers are not solving one problem, they are solving two problems that relate to one another. 🤯

When you write content, your best bet (if you’re trying to come up with content ideas on the reg) is to write out all the things you want to know as your target reader.

So for this newsletter, here are some problems I want to solve for me (and you):

• How to research with readers.

• How to improve my landing page.

• How to improve the customer journey

• How to create a buzz about the stuff you’re doing.

• How to build a product or service that works for your schedule.

For Aakash, he’s a Product Manager helping other Product Managers get better at the Product Manager thing. But he’s not simply writing, ‘How to be a Product Manager’, he’s problem stacking:

Read more

Answer: Is this (your product) going to fix my problem?!

And how do they figure that out before submitting their email/payment details…

They look for credibility (to reduce uncertainty) —potential buyers are looking for evidence that you can solve the problem they’ve got.

It’s your job to increase confidence quickly (before they click away).

So if you want to up your credibility in 3-words, let’s get into it. 👇

Here’s how you can increase your credibility in 3 words or less:

Here’s an example of what we’re talking about, consider example 1 and example 2, which works better?

• ❌ Most popular podcast in the world < example 1

• ✅ The #1 Most Listened-To Podcast for New Freelancers < example 2

Example 2 is the winner.

But why…

Everyone wants to be a best-seller, top-rated, or most-listened-to.

But what if you’re not #1 overall?

The trick is to use category-based positioning, which frames success within a specific niche. This makes your brand more authoritative, gives potential buyers more confidence, and increases conversions.

Here’s how to do it (in 2-steps):

Step 1: Identify Your Niche Audience

The first part of this equation is thinking about who (really who) you are talking to. Think about 4 different aspects of your potential buyer:

• ✅ Who are your audience (e.g., professionals, creators, dog owners)

• ✅ Add an adjective (e.g., busy, indie, smart, hardworking)

• ✅ Give them a place (e.g., in the UK, in the world, in tech)

• ✅ Add the time horizon (e.g., new, expecting, first-time)

🧩 Here are some examples…

• 1️⃣ Busy first-time mums

• 2️⃣ Smart founders in tech

• 3️⃣ Indie Creators in the UK

Step 2: Find the Right Data

Then, the ‘easy-to-say-hard-to-do’ job of adding the right data.

Why does it work?

Data shifts a subjective claim (just your opinion) to an objective claim (facts). And people rely on facts to reduce uncertainty…

Remember what I said at the top?

They look for credibility (to reduce uncertainty) —potential buyers are looking for evidence that you can solve the problem they’ve got.

Here’s how to add data to increase credibility:

❌ Without data: "Our course helps people grow their business."
📈 With data: "92% of students saw a 2x increase in revenue within six months."

Another example 👇

Some things to think about when it comes to adding the right data to your landing page:

• ✅ Rankings/top spots on specific platforms (Amazon, Spotify, Substack, Medium)

• ✅ Growth metrics (fastest-growing, most shared, most engagement)

• ✅ Audience demographics (most read by startup founders, most popular among new writers)

Aka don’t just use any old data, unrelated, unbelievable data with have the opposite effect.

🧙‍♂️ Words of wisdom

The trick is, don’t BS your audience. They’re smart. A claim like: ‘No.1 podcast for new mums in tech, managing a team and building on the side’ is a little too specific.

Keep it real:
📌 Specific – Avoid broad claims like "best in the world."
📌 Believable – Use real data that backs up your statement.
📌 Aspirational – Position yourself as an authority in your niche.

Create your position, speak to your target audience

You don’t have to be the best—just the best in your category.

Simple: Pinpoint your audience + add the right data = improved credibility

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

That’s all for today :)

Much love,

Eve

PS If you liked this show it some 💛 below :)

P.P.S The smart reader who shares (and restacks) this post the most in the next 48 hours gets a prize 🏆