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Hey,

I’m not interested in product management, and I’ve never tried to learn about it either. But I am part of a community where people discuss various topics, and product management is one of them. About a year ago, while checking their conversation, I came across the person I’m featuring today.

People were praising him highly, so I had to check out his newsletter. And trust me, I’ve never seen anyone make technical concepts this easy to understand. Well, let’s say hi to…

Lenny Rachitsky

Creator Spotlight:

Lenny started his career as an engineer about ten years ago at a startup in San Diego. Then he built his startup, Localmind, which was acquired by Airbnb in 2012. He then worked for Airbnb for seven years and helped with supply growth, conversion, trip quality, and community.

He is a prominent figure in tech and product management, a mentor, a content creator, and an angel investor. His newsletter is the #1 business newsletter on Substack, and his podcast is a top-ten tech podcast globally.

How did he grow her email list?

Currently, Lenny has 980K subscribers. Here’s how he grew his email list.

A. Medium - Content traction

His email list growth started with Medium after he left his job, he wanted to share what he learned throughout his job career.

One of his posts went viral, and the CEO of Airbnb shared it with the entire company.

Though he wanted to start his company, his friend Andrew Chen told him that it’s rare to find something you love that also has strong market demand.

So he doubled down on building his newsletter by adding CTAs at the end of every post he wrote on Medium. These CTAs brought him the first 100 subscribers.

B. Deep industry research:

Lenny spent months interviewing top names from leading product marketplaces. This massive research project led to around 2,000 more subscribers and almost doubled his subscriber base from one article.

Also, he uses another amazing strategy guest posting which helped me get more traction.

C. Substack recommendations:

I believe Substack’s signup process is too lengthy, you’ve to cross 3 steps to read the content.

But…

Substack's recommendations feature (which launched in April 2022) helped him boost his subscriber count. Other Substack writers can recommend Lenny’s newsletter when someone signs up for their list. He had around 111,000 subscribers in April 2022, and in less than a year, he tripled his subscriber count to 377,000.

D. Twitter:

Lenny amazingly uses Twitter, he created a thread around each newsletter topic.

I am also planning to work on it to grow my Dark Chocolate newsletter. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, make sure to do it.

E. Immense value:

Lenny makes his content too valuable to ignore. He already figured out what people wanted and what he could deliver, and spent a ton of time creating it.

He created a publication specifically for an underserved market segment and met their needs better than any other solutions that exist in the market.

Lenny Rachitsky already had credibility, which worked in his favor.

One more thing that Lenny does is known as:

Advice column

Here his subscribers can ask him questions and he advises them. This is a great way to build a loyal audience base. An engaged community is less likely to discontinue the subscription or opt out of the list.

How Lenny makes money using email

Paid subscription

The majority of Lenny’s earnings come with a paid subscription.

He used 4 steps to work on his paid newsletter:

• Build an audience

• Decide on your price

• Create your pitch

• Seed it with people

Here’s the current pricing plan, which I took a screenshot of.

The most amazing one is the third tier, ‘I can expense it.’

It is more like a ‘buy me a coffee’, or patron where you’re supporting his work.

Currently, Lenny has 980K subscribers. According to Chenell, he converts anywhere from 4-8% of these people into paid subscribers.

So the sum is something like this (assuming the least):

980,000×4% = 39,200

And the monthly plan is $20.

So, it’s $784,000/M and yearly $9,408,000.

After this Substack and Stripe have their 10% cut and 3% rate respectively.

Sponsor deals

Lenny has a huge list and renowned names in this industry who sponsored his newsletter.

Check it out here.

Affiliate

Lenny also earns money through affiliate marketing in his newsletter. Since he has excellent distribution, he can easily profit by partnering with top brands.

Lenny's Newsletter generated around $360,000 in ARR in 2020.

Lenny's brand may make closer to $10 million per year.

Key takeaways

I’ve been following Lenny for the last 1 year, and here are 3 amazing takeaways:

1. Offer immense value. Lenny is already an expert in his niche, but even if you're not, you can build credibility by learning from others. If you’ve mastered a niche, keep sharing your knowledge and grow a community around it.

2. Always choose one audience and solve their biggest problem, better than anyone in the industry. Most importantly, play the long-term game.

3. Find people who are doing the same thing, the exact opposite, or can connect with you and collaborate by promoting each other. Simple, yet effective.

I’ve been recommending two of my friends and you can see how it works.

I am so excited about my new venture and working on it.

Okay so here is the progress:

1. I bought a different domain for cold emailing

2. Set up my Google workspace

3. Launched it in public

I will keep sharing about it on Twitter/X.

Make sure to follow my journey there.

So I will see you the next week at 10:00 AM sharp.

Till then, byeeee.

Your “email guy” Anirban.

Read my Digital Nomad newsletter here: