Ep 68: Creating Content for 3+Million Subscribers at Morning Brew | Neal Freyman (Managing Editor, Morning Brew) - a podcast by Ling Yah
from 2023-12-13T20:10:48.872461
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Neal Freyman is the Managing Editor at Morning Brew, a new media company that provides informative and digestive business news to over 3 million subscribers. He oversees Morning Brew’s flagship product - a daily newsletter, as well as the weekend light Roast edition and native advertisements.
The Morning Brew happens to be one of my favourite newsletters so I was excited to dive into the behind-the-scenes with Neal!
Highlights:
- 4:43 Studying at the University of Maryland College Park
- 7:16 Teaching geography and urban studies
- 8:07 Applying to work at Morning Brew as a writer (and being rejected!)
- 9:00 Sending a nice rejection letter
- 10:05 The newsletter industry in 2017
- 13:05 Working as a young newsletter startup out of a room in NYU
- 14:41 Morning Brew’s ideal customer and how that definition has evolved over time
- 18:12 Having readers get super pi**ed at them
- 18:45 Creating a political newsletter
- 20:18 “Write, grow and sell” as the tactic for Morning Brew’s explosive growth from 2016-2019
- 22:51 Writing continuously for 5 years
- 24:24 Milestones that contributed to Morning Brew’s growth
- 26:19 Main reasons for Morning Brew’s subscriber count going from 100k to 1.5 million in the 2018/19 period
- 27:01 The importance of Morning Brew having its own in-house referral system
- 29:40 How Morning Brew manages to get 25% of its signups from its referral program
- 32:29 Capitalising on momentum, as Alex Lieberman discussed
- 34:24 How Morning Brew launched the Emerging Tech newsletter
- 37:18 The importance of having a strong online following like Alex Lieberman & Austin Rief
- 41:44 Checks & balances
- 42:49 Becoming Managing Editor of Morning Brew
- 44:23 Maintaining a close knit working culture
- 45:43 When Neal felt that they had created a great product with the newsletter
- 47:59 Staying relevant
- 49:35 Retaining talent staff
- 51:40 Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
- 53:01 The Essentials
- 54:02 Impact of Morning Brew’s reported $75 million acquisition by Business Insider
- 54:35 Creating the podcast arm of Morning Brew: Business Casual & Founder’s Journal
- 56:23 Building in public
- 59:39 Entering the education space with the MBA Accelerator
📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/68
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