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 TranscriptSteph: [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 s