Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / She launched a sports newsletter for women with just a few thousands dollars and now it’s doing more than 7 figures in revenue, with The GIST’s co-founder Roslyn McLarty (Part 1)

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She launched a sports newsletter for women with just a few thousands dollars and now it’s doing more than 7 figures in revenue, with The GIST’s co-founder Roslyn McLarty (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

0:00
This is Rosalyn McLarty for Female Startup Club. Welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl.
0:17
Today, we're learning from Rosalind McLarty, co-founder of The Gist, a women-led and operated digital sports media company with a mission of leveling up the playing field in sports and bringing inclusive and progressive sports updates to underserved fans. Rosalind leads The Gist's operations, finance, and audience growth, and together with her team, she's scaled the brand's audience to over 1 million Gisters across their channels.
0:44
Rosalyn and her two co-founders were named Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2020 and have been accelerated through programs with Meta and Techstars. If you've ever thought about starting a newsletter, this is your sign to do it. We talked through the blueprint in the early days when it was more of a boots to the ground, organic approach versus what's happening today and what she would do now if she was starting fresh.
1:09
While I've got you here, we have updated the grant document with a bunch of exciting new grants from all over the world that are ready to be applied for this month. Specifically, the Small Business Growth Fund that's awarding grants between $5,000 and $25,000 and the Fin Impact Women Empowerment Grant for $10,000. You can access everything in the document by going to femalestartupclub.com forward slash grants.
1:34
Let's get into today's episode. This is Roslyn for Female Startup Club. Roslyn, hi. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi. Thanks so much for having me and giving me the opportunity to share more about the Just Journey with you and your audience.
1:51
I mean, I'm so excited. I'm so excited for everyone listening. I'm really excited for myself. I feel like when I've spoken to you in the past, I've just learned so much. So I'm excited to get really deep into your story and some other learnings that maybe I haven't heard before. Yeah. How do you like to introduce your company, The Gist?
2:16
Yeah, so we're a woman founded and run digital sports media company that is all about leveling the playing field in sports, which for us means a few things. It's equal coverage on women and men athletes. It's bringing more female and diverse voices to the forefront in sports, which is obviously a very male dominated industry and just making sports more inclusive and accessible and fun and engaging for women and underserved sports fans.
2:46
Oh my gosh. So amazing. And I love your brand, your tone of voice. Everything is just so cool. Thank you. Everyone should go and check out your website as soon as possible. It's amazing. Oh, thank you. I want to go back to 2017 or maybe even pre-17 to understand how you kind of had this light bulb moment and how this became an idea between you and your co-founders and how you kind of got started.
3:17
Yeah, for sure. So it's myself and I have two co-founders, Ellen and JC. We all knew each other from business school and we're friends through that and had been working in downtown Toronto and different areas of financial services for a couple of years after graduating. I was at PwC. I'm a CPA by trade, so very different from what I'm doing today, but something that we all noticed from PwC.
3:47
working kind of in those more male dominated environments and such a big sports city was how sports are such a powerful connector and can create community and are almost a social currency in our society. But how for a lot of women or really anyone who doesn't resonate with that more traditional male dominated sports media industry, it can feel like a boys club
4:16
or it's like this community that you don't have access to, a social currency you don't have in the workplace, or it's not something you can connect with your loved ones or friends around. And when we looked into why that was, less than 5% of sports media coverage is on female athletes and less than 14% of sports journalists are women. And so it just kind of trickles down to
4:44
the end user, the sports fan. So it's no wonder that for us and so many other women that we spoke to, they just like weren't as avid sports fans as their male counterparts. And that's something that I found myself. Like I grew up playing sports and actually watching sports with my family, but I just found it didn't translate to
5:04
those years after graduating and being in the workplace. So many parallels to business and entrepreneurship and the VC world. Oh my gosh, totally. It's been like a double-double in the journey of being a female-run sports startup in the entrepreneurship world. But yeah, so me and Alan and Jacey, we came up with the idea pretty quickly.
5:31
organically, we just had gotten together for dinner and Ellen was going off like talking about a sports game the night before and her passion really shines through. She's like identifies as such a sports fan. It's always been such a big part of who she is. And we just thought about how it's so much more fun getting sports news from a friend who is so passionate about it and can also take a step back and provide context and answer your questions. And we just kind of had this light bulb moment of,
6:01
There's probably so many other women out there that are feeling this way and such a powerful consumer base. And this whole industry has basically been ignoring and underserving half of the population. So, you know, why couldn't we fill that space with something like the gist?
6:22
Oh my gosh, I love that. Thank you. And for you, like at that point in time, I mean, I know you went to business school, so you kind of had like certain toolkits to be able to build businesses and things like that. But had you actually thought, yeah, we want to start a business or was it kind of like, oh, you have an idea and you're like, oh, maybe we could try this. What was the, you know, you're working full time at this point. So what was your thought or vision around what it could be?
6:52
Yeah, I think it was just one of those things where we came up with the idea and we were all so energized by it and felt like it had such potential and like deserved to be in the world and would help a lot of people. Of course, there we didn't know how we would go from being.
7:13
CPAs and management consultants and Ellen was working in insurance to being media entrepreneurs. Like none of us had worked in sports. None of us knew anything about the media industry, startups, any of that. Um, but we just started working on it kind of like off the side of our desks. I think we each probably invested like a few thousand dollars each and that was enough to like have an initial brand identity and get the website going with some content on it and
7:43
start to like plan like what it, what it could be and visualize what it could be. And yeah, I don't know. We just never turned back from, from there once it got rolling. So in that beginning phase, you know, when you're still working the nine to five, was it just the concept was a weekly or a daily newsletter? And it's just you guys kind of writing this newsletter based on what's happening in the sports world. And like, that was it as the simplest form.
8:13
Yeah, for the first few months, even it was just kind of like conceptualizing what it was and getting like a brand and figuring out the voice. And then I think towards the end of 2017 is when we launched our like MVP newsletter just to family and friends and like just with surveys to be like, what did you like? What did you not like? What more do you want to hear about to collect that initial user research on what people were looking for out of.
8:41
It was initially just like a weekly newsletter, all Toronto sports sent out to our friends and family and eventually whoever they would pass it along to. I think once we had that initial data and felt confident enough to like put a newsletter into the world outside of our inner circles, we were kind of gearing up to this launch party where we would try and make a splashy entrance into the world, have our first like,
9:10
300 subscribers. So we planned this party. It was at like the Shopify offices in Toronto, a friend worked there and was able to get us the space. We invited like a hundred of our friends and family. I think even back then, like JC was on the phone trying to find like brands to like sponsor the drinks and food and like some prizes. And we did this big presentation, like with a PowerPoint and everything and explained like the pain point and
9:37
the solution, what the gist was. And it was really well received. Like people were really excited about it. I remember having this feeling after the event, like, oh shit, we like really have something here. And that's how we got like our first 300 newsletter subscribers, launched the first newsletter like the next day or that week. And then it was out.
10:03
in the world from there. Oh, my gosh. How exciting. So cool that you have it at the Shopify offices. I love that. Yeah. In that, you know, really early stage, had you already figured out how you were going to monetize and what those revenue streams looked like? Or was that also more a process of figuring it out and kind of organically going with the flow? Yeah, I think we had an idea that it would be advertising-based
10:32
Eventually, I think based on who we were serving, which and really the mission of the brand, which is making sports accessible to everyone, we knew we weren't going to have like a paid newsletter from the get go or anything like that. Just because people who don't identify as Avid fans are probably not going to be the people who are signing up for a paid sports news product.
10:55
And we looked up to companies like The Skim and The Hustle and Morning Brew at the time were kind of like the newsletters on the scene and we saw how they were doing it. So we like had plans to eventually earn revenue that way. But I would say the first year, the focus was really on figuring out the brand, figuring out the voice, figuring out kind of the offering, the newsletter offering.
11:22
and figuring out how to grow the audience that could get to a point where we would be able to monetize it one day. So in that first year, I'd love to talk about that audience growth and what you were doing to find people who were subscribing and kind of getting that first loyal user base and kind of where you landed in that first year at the end of the year.
11:52
like we do and are fortunate to have now or larger now. So we were just testing everything and it was very scrappy. Some of it worked. Some of it was an absolute flop. Tell us both. What worked, what didn't. So a random one that worked well was actually we like woke up –
12:12
like five in the morning and spray painted the just like website domain on the streets of like all the neighborhoods that would have kind of like millennial women and like young people and we actually got a lot of people through that I think just because people were curious they're like what is this did you go out and spray paint it like you're out there with a spray paint can oh my god I love that can you get in trouble for that
12:38
I think so. But we didn't. That's why we went early in the morning. We were like, nobody will catch us. So tomorrow, everyone, like, look out for Female Startup Club on your pavements. Going to be out there spray painting? It was effective. Graffiti artists? Totally. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Cool. Love that. Something that didn't work very well was, like, we would be...
13:00
just like out on the streets, asking people to sign up for the gist. Like in the Toronto Financial District, we went around to different college campuses in Canada. We would like go to parks and like have giveaway freezies and be like, you can have a freezie if you give us your email. And it didn't go very well. Okay. Usually when we're like giving something away to get an email and return, people were like literally just doing it for the freezie or the whatever it was.
13:29
Right. So it didn't end up being very high quality. And it's obviously a very big investment in time for newsletter. So that's interesting. That didn't work well. What didn't work was like our referral program, which is something that we launched early on and is a bit of an investment to have some like merchant things to give away, but it's pretty efficient and like more affordable and really leverages the early people that are super into and loyal to the brand.
13:59
And with the referral, do you mean it was merch like hats, sweaters, T-shirts, or were there other kind of digital products in the mix as well? Yeah, all of the above in terms of physical merch. The first, I think one referral maybe just would get you into our Just Fluencer group, which is a Facebook group and a monthly email that we still send that just gives you the behind the scenes of,
14:25
what's happening at the GIST and the GIST HQ and team, what's coming down the pipeline. Oh, I love that. Some of that like behind the scenes access to how we're building the company. But I think, yeah, after that it was like stickers, hats, t-shirts, et cetera. I love the new merch that you launched recently, by the way, so cool. All the like really designed, has it launched yet?
14:52
Yeah. It's coming next month. Oh, maybe you showed me. Maybe that's what happened. But yeah, so cool. Oh, I'm so excited. Thank you. And in that first year, like when you finished the year, where were you at in terms of audience? Were you monetizing? Was it, you know, are you still working nine to five? Like what's the painted picture of where you landed after that first year? Yeah, so actually...
15:21
After a few months after we launched, I think we had like, I want to say a thousand, like a couple of thousand subscribers. We were really fortunate to come across this incubator program no longer exists, but it was called the digital news incubator challenge, I think.
15:39
And it was like Facebook partnered with this local incubator and the companies that got in could get up to a hundred thousand dollars in non-diluted funding and $50,000 of Facebook ads. And so we were just like, this is exactly what we need to get the gist off the ground. So we like.
16:02
Spent all of our time, like outside of work, like putting together our pitch deck, our answers to questions, had like friends working who that we knew like worked in VC or any kind of investment like to review it, give us advice, practice the pitch like a hundred times and did it and had decided like, if we get into this program, we're all gonna quit our full-time jobs and do the just full-time. And we got into it. It was like one of the best, best moments.
16:32
ever because we were all just so excited to have the opportunity to have like a little bit of funding to go full time. And so I think by the end of that year, because we had a little bit of growth budget to play with in the early days, we were probably, you know, in the like 10,000 maybe range of subscribers and we had maybe had like one, one ad partner. Yeah.
17:02
When you were in that accelerator program, did it change kind of your, not your niche, because you had already clearly defined your niche, but like, had you iterated or pivoted on the offering or the product overall, or was it very much of the same and more kind of support from mentors and other experts? Yeah, it didn't change the trajectory of, I think, our vision for
17:30
what the gist could be and what it was at that point. I think with any incubator and accelerator, sometimes at least our experience was as like a media company in the larger tech ecosystem, there's like a lot of encouragement to like, like think more innovatively than a media company. Like what else could the gist be? So we definitely were pulled in a lot of different directions which is,
17:56
tough as like a really early stage company because you just feel like everybody is smarter than you and has better ideas and knows what to do. But we ended up sticking kind of pretty closely with it and just kind of like evolved the offering like slowly and in a way that made sense for us. So
18:17
a weekly Toronto sports-based newsletter. Then it went to twice weekly across Canada. In 2019 is when we expanded into the U.S., actually because we went through another accelerator program with Techstars that was based down there and started to localize the newsletter to different cities and just like slowly increase the frequency over time to allow us to build that more like
18:42
consistent trusting relationship with our audience where they knew they could rely on us to keep them up to date on all the different sports. Also, it really helpful once we started monetizing because it gave us more inventory as we were able to bring in more ad partners. And I think the local aspect also made people more sticky because it's just...
19:03
so much more tailored to what you're looking for, which is important for sports. So is the way that it works, there's kind of like the main kind of global gist publication where it's like, here's all the things happening everywhere. And then if you're like in Toronto or you're in LA, there's like, here's what's also happening, like in terms of, you know, local games, football, blah, blah, blah. Exactly. Yeah. So right now we have like the main...
19:31
US and Canada newsletters, which differ for something like the Olympics or the World Cup, you're going to get coverage of the US teams or the Canadian teams. And then there's a section for
19:41
New York or LA or Denver, Seattle, et cetera, with all of your local sports. In the same, like the newsletter that I'm reading, is that the same one that someone in like downtown Toronto is reading? And it's just broken out by different sections or is there a different newsletter that they've subscribed to and you're doing like multiple newsletters, you know, on a Monday, for example? Yeah, it's all the same newsletter. We just like have,
20:10
It's called dynamic content in our email service provider where you can send different sections to different segments of the list. So that's how we do it. But it's all in like the same newsletter. Got it. Got it. Got it. I got it now. Cool. I love that. That's so clever. I want to talk about like what happens next after you leave, you know, that accelerator and Techstars and kind of those next few years that get you really like ready.
20:34
spiraling and snowballing to, you know, what you are today, which is a huge newsletter. What is the kind of like pivotal moments in those next few years? Yeah. Good question. I think like one of the most important things for us was just like really continuing that growth trajectory that was, um, being able to show that momentum was really important for us starting to be able to go out and monetize, um, with different brand partners.
21:03
and to be able to grow faster. Fundraising was a part of being able to do that. So we did raise some money kind of throughout this whole time of like before Techstars, going through Techstars, after Techstars, and it was never a clean kind of like traditional VC
21:25
round after round or anything like that. There was a lot of different things slapped together. There was angel investors, friends and family. We took on loans, any pitch competition or a grant that we could get. And the last like, I guess you could call it our seed round was in 2021, where we raised a million dollars. And that really allowed us to throw some gas on the fire of our growth playbook, which we'd been
21:54
testing and developing throughout that point. And that allowed us to bring on like that audience size. I think maybe after we hit the 100k mark and we're getting into the hundreds of thousands, brands really were becoming interested in that trajectory of growth and like this audience that was very unique, the female fan, and also just this movement of the growth in women's sports, the importance of the female fan and just
22:21
women in sports in this male-dominated industry, a lot of brands want to be a part of the story of leveling the playing field and equal pay and equal treatment of women in sports and whatnot. And so, yeah, that's been a really big piece too, has been being able to bring on these really big brand partners. And with that revenue, then be able to hire more team members to roll out different offerings too and expand our coverage to more channels.
22:49
Instagram, TikTok. More recently, we expanded into two new content verticals as well last year. So we expanded into our sports business vertical, which covers the business of the growing women's sports industry, which also felt like there was a really big white space for, and then most recently college sports news. Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's kind of...
23:15
It's kind of how it's evolved over time. So I have a few questions around the seed round. What traction did you have to raise that million? Like, was it, were investors interested in how many subscribers you had or it was still vision based or where were you at that point before you raised? Like, where was your, what was your pitch deck kind of about? Yeah.
23:38
Yeah, I think at the point of the seed, it really, we did have good traction in terms of subscriber growth and revenue. I don't remember the exact amount of like monthly revenue, but it was enough to show that the business model was working and it was growing. I think that was the main thing. In prior rounds, it was more about like,
24:02
the vision and the opportunity and stuff like that. And when you say like the monthly revenue, do you mean like 20,000 or you mean like 200,000? It definitely wasn't at like the 200,000 mark. It was probably like in the like low of tens. Got it, got it, got it. I don't want to say. Okay. So you're proving that you have that kind of appetite there. And if you're able to grow, then you'll be able to get bigger deals and yada, yada, yada, yada. Okay, cool.
24:31
And so once you kind of had that million dollars and you start investing in different channels and, you know, TikTok and Instagram content and the different newsletters based on college and business and all that kind of thing, is that kind of when you spiraled and you went from, how many subscribers were you at when you did the fundraise? I want to say like low hundreds of thousands, maybe like a hundred thousand.
24:59
Right. A couple hundred thousand. And then that's caused you to kind of in the last year and a half, I guess, or two years almost now, kind of go to where you are now because you're, I think you're at 600,000 or something now, right? Yeah, closer to 700,000 subscribers and a million, over a million on the total audience.
25:17
Oh, yeah. Okay, great. So yeah, that fundraise was basically like, okay, let's like blast it. Let's get to this next level. Amazing. Do you think that is your plan to keep raising or are you kind of like it was the seed round to kind of get the wheels in motion and you might not raise again? Yeah, that was definitely the intention to not raise again and get to a point where we could be profitable and
25:44
self-sustain and really have that independence and control over our own destinies and where we want to take the gist. We did end up raising a little bit more actually. Partially through Alone and partially this amazing Women in Sports Accelerator program came up that was backed by Billie Jean King, who's like an icon in our space. So we couldn't say no to that, but.
26:08
We are profitable now on this year, our first like fully profitable year, which is feels like a really good place to be. Oh my gosh, that's so exciting. Love that for you. Thank you. What is like the channel that's working for you really well right now? Like how are you growing today as a VC backed newsletter?
26:30
Yeah, growth has been really important and a really big journey for us. And I have both the privilege and challenge of overseeing growth, which is an art and science, I think, because it really combines like logical, analytical, like numbers orientedness, which has been a big way that we thought about growing with also like that creative and like empathy, collaboration, intuition side of things.
27:00
Which has been fun. So I think what, on like that more logical side of things, one of the most important things that we did in our growth journey was set our data analytics up to be able to have the information that we need to allocate growth resources in a really smart way across all of our different channels and to like really deeply understand how a growth channel is performing in terms of engagement, open rates, click rates, retention.
27:27
understand what the lifetime value of a customer from a given growth channel is, and then compare that to the cost for subscribe or like CAC. And then based on what's more efficient in terms of cost, equality and the amount of time investment in each channel, adjust resources based off of that. So that's been really important for us to figure that out. But in terms of like the different channels that we are testing and,
27:57
like are in all of that equation. Paid socials and paid search are definitely a couple. Like when you think about our audience demographic, they're hanging out on Instagram and TikTok and that's where they're getting their news, their sports news if they're sports fans, spending a lot of time. So we spent a lot of time figuring out the creative and copy on those.
28:25
Newsletters are of course amazing for acquiring newsletter subscribers because they're just super high quality users. If they're already reading newsletters and clicking on newsletters to go subscribe to your newsletter, then they're probably going to be a great subscriber for you. We initially started out just doing cross promotions with other brands, which can take a lot of time for the payoff of the number of subscribers that you get from a cross promotion.
28:50
We tried newsletter ads, but we're having trouble making it work at a cost per subscribe. But more recently, there are these partner programs where, so the two that we use are Sparkloop and Swapstack, and you can essentially set like your cost per lead and other newsletters can decide to just place you in there. So it's less of a time investment and you kind of know what to expect in terms of your CPA.
29:19
And then the other one that's been working really efficiently for us is, um, giveaways and, and like sweeps, which can really span, um, the spectrum in terms of quality, but we're finding when we're more intentional about who the other brands are that we're partnering with, what the prize is, is it aligned to what the gist is about? Like, is it sports related for instance? And are the other brands like, uh,
29:48
do they have similar audiences to us or people that would reasonably be interested in the gist? The quality tends to be a lot better and it's like still really strong. Cost per subscribe standpoint. Yeah. It's kind of like you have to find that someone, maybe someone else told me this. I can't remember if it was.
30:06
I can't remember who told me this, but they were talking about – oh, no, I think it was you last time we chatted and we were talking about like having a prize that's like so amazing, but if it's so amazing that it attracts everyone that's too broad versus like if it's something quite niche and you're able to find the audience who gets it but not the broader audience, I think that's like the sweet spot of – and I think my example was like, oh, imagine if you had a prize with like –
30:33
Serena or Venus Williams or something like that. And then of course everyone would want to sign up to that because they're so well known. But if you have like a more niche sports player where only true fans will kind of sign up to that, that's going to yield better results, which I was like, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
30:51
Totally. Yeah. You know, something that was working or is working really well for me on the organic side is TikTok lead magnets. So we saw, and I didn't click onto this for such a long time, but I started posting videos about grants, which is obviously super relevant to a women-based business audience. And they would always do really well. And so, yeah,
31:16
A couple of months ago, we set up just this document where we track every live grant that's available around the world. And so we do US, Australia, Canada, the UK, and then kind of like rest of world that are more like applicable to anywhere. And we just started posting videos about this document on TikTok. And we find that everyone that comes through
31:36
that kind of sign-up link from TikTok, they're like so high value as a subscriber. And even though it's not like maybe as fast, it's still thousands of people who kind of watch the video, then you can add budget to the video so you get more views knowing that it's already performing and then people are going to click through and download that lead magnet. And that's been something that it's been a really good growth mechanism for us. And we also use that as part of our referral program.
32:05
Nice. I love that. That's such a good idea. Yeah, I think once you need to try something like that. Once you hit on like the, you know, testing different ideas to your audience and you find that kind of one video that goes a bit viral and you're like, oh, this is working. How can I create something that will drive them back to downloading whatever it might be? Like that has been a really good growth mechanism for us. I love that.
32:30
Thanks. You should use it. Yeah, we definitely will. If you were starting the gist today, or actually if you were just starting any newsletter today, what would your – actually, this is a multi-prong question. What would your go-to-market strategy be, but also how much money would you kind of personally invest and where would you allocate it? Like what would your kind of like quick strategy around launching a newsletter be today?
32:59
Good question. Yeah, I feel like the newsletter landscape has changed in that it's more saturated, but also because of that, there's a lot more tools that are really useful for new newsletters. I know we've looked at Beehive and they have a lot of the tools for
33:21
you know, analytics around growth channels, for instance. They're really good. Yeah. Shout out to Tyler. Yeah, totally. Like, I mean, I'm looking at their stuff and I'm like, oh man, we invested all this stuff into like data analytics and like all of our infrastructure. And now there's like tools out there that can do it for somebody who's just starting out and doesn't necessarily have time or resources to hire team members to do stuff like that. So definitely...
33:51
take a look at the different tools that are out there at your disposal. Same thing on the growth side of things like platforms, like spark loops, you can run a referral program off of and also get early growth through that. There's, I feel like because there are so many more newsletters, you can really leverage that newsletter ecosystem of referrals of like cross promoting and whatnot. So that would be one tip would be,
34:20
yeah, look at all the different newsletter tools that are out there at your disposal and can save you a lot of time and investment kind of upfront. Take the time to really define your audience and the value that you're bringing to them and get feedback early on on
34:43
what people are liking, not liking, how to improve. Cause it doesn't matter how much money you funnel into growth if you don't have a newsletter that is resonating with people and people are opening it at like, you know for a small new newsletter, like 50% plus is definitely I feel like good to be aiming for at that size to know that you have like some great content and a loyal readership before you start growing it.
35:13
And then in terms of growing, growing it, I feel like you kind of do have to like throw a lot of different things at the wall and do like really small tests. And there's like so many different ways to be able to AB test, whether it's, you know, subject lines in your ESP or within like Facebook or Google ads. There's so many opportunities to be able to test different messaging and seeing what hits and what's resonating and then.
35:43
scaling budget from there. But you can really like cheaply and easily run a lot of different tests to see what's hitting. And then beyond that, I mean, once you start getting to the point where you want to like monetize, I know I said like, a certain size will get people interested. But if it's like really,
36:07
If you can find somebody who's like really aligned and values even just like a small amount of really engaged niche audience, they're like you're going to be able to find the right partners if you're thinking. I don't know, like creatively about who that is that you could partner with. So many great tips. Thank you so much. Love that. Thank you.
36:33
Just something else you mentioned I want to quickly touch on is, you know, the space is so saturated now. There are a lot of different newsletters. What are your thoughts on the future of newsletters, like, as a business model? And do you still see this as something, you know, in five years' time that is still going to be so relevant the way it is today? Or do you see the landscape shifting towards, I don't even know what, but let's say more like, you know,
36:57
an SMS version of a newsletter or something totally different? Like, are we still, do you see us still reading newsletters in the next like five years time? Yeah, I definitely do. And we're willing to bet on, on that. It feels like the demand for curated digestible niche news that like
37:23
each individual is interested in, like you can really curate your news experience by just signing up for the newsletters that you want instead of having to go digging for news. So I think like as the newsletters get better and better and more, more niche or more personalized to what people are looking for, it's only, I feel like people will only like more and more people will start using newsletters as their way of getting their news.
37:53
And as like a business model, I think it's like so great compared to creating content for social because you don't own that content and you don't own that algorithm or that audience because the algorithms can change kind of at any point. So building an email newsletter list is super valuable and knowing that when you send the newsletter, a certain number of people are going to open it versus when you
38:18
maybe put something up on Instagram, you don't know who's going to see it. So it's just like a lot more liable, obviously, from like a growth. And also like when you're monetizing through ads, that's like a much more reliable kind of aspect to it too. So I guess the short answer is yes. Phew. Love that for us.
38:45
Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
39:09
And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
39:32
As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
39:47
Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
40:12
And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
40:35
As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.