How Morning Brew, The Hustle, and Milk Road Made Millions

In my research to become a better entrepreneur and newsletter operator, I stumbled across a YouTube video of three guys talking their hearts out.

At first, I thought it was just an interview with Alex Lieberman, the founder of the daily financial newsletter Morning Brew. He built the newsletter from scratch and sold a significant chunk of equity for $75M just a few years later.

But then, I realized the interviewers weren’t just podcast hosts.

They were accomplished newsletter entrepreneurs themselves.

The first interviewer, Shaan Puri, co-founded The Milk Road, a crypto-focused newsletter that grew to 250,000 subscribers in less than a year and was sold for an eight-figure sum.

The second is Sam Parr, who founded The Hustle, a business and tech newsletter that was acquired by HubSpot in 2021 for multiple seven figures.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just watching an interview… I was learning from three people who had built exactly what I envision for my Persuasive Speaker newsletter.

While I picked up a lot of insights, one in particular stood out:

They all emphasized the importance of simplicity.

If something worked, they doubled down on it.

Let me explain.

If they were making $50,000 a month with 15,000 subscribers, they didn’t reinvent the wheel to get to $100,000. They just focused on growing to 30,000 subscribers.

No overly complicated business plans. No advanced strategies.

In fact, one of them didn’t even know what an ESP (email service provider) was until their business hit a valuation of what I think is $10M. Which is something you NEED to know… or so I thought.

Another shared how Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, didn’t know how to read a P&L (profit and loss) statement until his business had already scaled to multiple seven figures if not eight!

This principle doesn’t just apply to newsletters. It applies to any business.

Simplicity.

For example, if you’re a coach or speaker trying to scale online, you really only need three things:

1. A traffic source to generate leads.

2. An email list to nurture the leads that sign up.

3. A kick-ass offer to sell to the leads you nurtured.

That’s it.

Focus on the basics.

Find what’s working. Then double down on it.

If you’re curious to hear the conversation for yourself, here’s the link to the interview:
https://youtu.be/gRxpcmMA548?si=HVvLDYm8DPBWs8YD

Until tomorrow!