Sherrell Dorsey is the founder and CEO of The Plug, a publication and community for news, insights and analysis on trends in Black innovation. The Plug features stories that show the substantive ways Black people engage with the innovation economy, including analyses of modern technologies.On today’s show, Sherrell shares about building an audience and growing The Plug. We talk about sponsorships, The Plug’s revenue model, and her background in journalism and how she brings that into her current work. We also talk about choosing a niche, staying consistent, and much more.Sherrell has worked in marketing and consulting for companies such as Uber, Tresata, MarketSource, and Build The Good. Sherrell has also worked as a correspondent for Fast Company, Essence, Next City, and Black Enterprise. She earned her master’s degree in data journalism from Columbia University.In this episode, you’ll learn:
How to grow your subscribers when first starting out
Different strategies for monetizing your newsletter
The right way to include advertising in your newsletter
Tradeoffs between having a team and working as a solopreneur

Links & Resources
Clay Hebert
Monica Melton
Farnam Street
Shane Parrish
Ryan Holiday
Daily Stoic
James clear
Uber
Google Fiber
Microsoft
Fast Company
The Root
Black Enterprise
GoDaddy
theSkimm
Signal
Bloomberg Terminal
Business Insider
The Moguldom Nation
Sherrell Dorsey’s Links
Follow Sherrell on Twitter

The Plug
The Plug newsletter

HBCU newsletter

TPinsights.com
Episode Transcript00:00:00 Sherrell:I think that we’ve gotten into this very fast pace, and this idea of constant information and voices in your head. I don’t know that more information is making us a better society. I think that this idea of community and grappling with ideas, calling things out or bringing things to attention, but having something meaningful to say really outweighs just being visible all of the time. 00:00:31 Nathan:My guest today is Sherrell Dorsey. Sherrell is the founder of The Plug, which is a newsletter, and really a publication at this point, about the black tech ecosystems and all the interesting things that black and brown founders are doing in technology and business. She started in 2016, and she’s built it up to have a full-time team of five people now.I’m so impressed with what she’s built. We get into talking about sponsorships, the revenue model, how she built the audience, her background in journalism, and how she brings that into what she’s doing now. I actually grew up in tech and some of the ecosystems that she was a part of that inspired her.We talk about choosing a niche and staying focussed there. We talk about consistency. There’s really a lot of things in this episode. I love what she’s doing and how she’s built this niche business into something that now employs full-time journalists. At a time when a lot of other publications are dwindling, she’s growing.So, let’s dive into the episode.Sherrell, welcome to the show.00:01:35 Sherrell:Thank you so much for having me.00:01:37 Nathan:I actually want to start talking about experimentation. We’re going to jump around a little bit. You like to run a lot of experiments, and you’ve taken an approach on experimentation where you’re doing it at a stage in the business where you have a lot going on. A lot is working. This is a point where I see a lot of content creators freak out and stop experimenting because they’re like, “This is what my audience likes. I have to show up in exactly this way.”So, they don’t experiment. Even at this level of success, you’re like, “No, experimentation is a core part of what we’re doing.”Could you talk about that, and some of the experiments that you run, and then your mindset around it?00:02:12 Sherrell:We’re constantly challenging ourselves as a team, and trying not to get bored. Part of our experimentation may have more to do with the attention deficit issues that we have as a team, as a collective. Maybe not as much as our audience, but we