Why Bother With A Regular Email Newsletter?
It’s not like you’re not busy enough already, right? Why on earth would you want to add on another fixed commitment?
And what would you send an email about anyway?
Let’s start with the why, and then I’ll share some ideas about the what later on in this email.
There are a few reasons…
1. Boost your brain: Even if you curate interesting stuff you come across instead of writing original content, you’ll still grow your knowledge base massively.
2. Skill development: You’ll learn valuable tech skills in order to do this. You may start out using a simple email program, but even that can come in handy in unexpected ways.
3. Huge job search help: There is so much desire among students for companies to be interested in them when they apply.
The fastest way to do that is to be interesting.
Sending a regular high-value email is something really interesting and unusual for a candidate. It also lets you talk in your interviews about initiative, desire to learn and creating value for other people – and about all the content you’ve learned along the way.
4. Luck multiplier: This is the least quantifiable but likely the most important reason to do this. You have no idea what good things can come from curating an email newsletter about some topic of interest.
A high likelihood, however, is that something good and interesting will come from it.
It’s a little bit like sending a signal out into the world that says, “Hey, I’m doing something interesting over here. If you’re interested in this as well, come on over.” You never know who you’ll attract.
On a separate note, I recommend keeping this idea in mind as you consider things: the more you can grow your surface area for luck, the more good things can come your way.
Why Most People Won't Do It
I write this knowing that most people won’t do it.
This sounds intimidating. I get it.
You have to
- Figure out how to send email broadcasts
- Figure out what to send
- Get over the fear of publishing
It is nowhere near as difficult as it sounds, but there’s no question that this will be a hard no for many people.
Funny enough, that’s what makes it an even better idea. Not only will you get all the benefits of starting an email newsletter, but you’ll stand out among your peers.
Another reason people won’t do this is that it feels different, and it’s not obvious to everyone why it’s a good idea. Even folks who don’t mind the extra effort to figure it out might be put off because they don’t think it’ll be worth it.
Well, let me take one of those uncertainties off the table…
What Software Should You Use?
As you might expect there are good, better and best options available. I go through some of them below.
Outlook or Gmail: You could simply create a group or email distribution list and add people as they express interest. It’s simple and straightforward and is potentially a great way to start.
There’s very little incremental tech learning required for this option.
MailChimp: Mailchimp is a great starting email distribution platform. In the free pricing tier (as I look at it now, they can change it) you get 1000 sends a month and up to 500 contacts. Importantly, that tier includes landing pages which will let people sign up on their own.
This is much simpler than manually adding everyone to your list.
If someone expresses interest in your newsletter, send them a link to the landing page. They can sign up, and it’ll show up automatically in your list of subscribers.
ConvertKit: This is a more premium product. It’s free for up to 1,000 subscribers with limited options. It generally offers more advanced features, and I’ve noticed that many successful folks have been migrating to ConvertKit. This is also the email program that I use.
**Full disclosure: The link above is an affiliate link, which means that if you sign up using my link and opt for the paid version, I will get a small commission at no cost to you.
That's great that you know how to do it, but what do you send an email about?
What Do You Send An Email About?
So now for the million dollar question. What do you put in your email?
Ok, we’re almost there. Before that, however, you need to consider how often you should send it.
It seems to me that once every two weeks is the lowest frequency that you want to go with. Beyond that, they don’t remember signing up for your newsletter. That being said, every two weeks is not a bad way to start out, and then go to weekly if that proves easy.
There are 2 basic options: curate content or produce content. Or, you could do some combination of the two.
The next question to consider is what your topic will be. You could focus on finance, marketing, tech, space, oil, Bitcoin, AI, or anything that interests you.
I’d recommend avoiding controversial topics like politics since you’re trying to use this as an asset and not annoy half your potential employers/readers.
You may want to focus on an area where you’d like to end up working professionally since that way, everything you’re doing can help you become more knowledgeable about the industry. This will serve you well in interviews and could potentially result in you getting subscribers among the people who’ll be interviewing you.
Ok, so we’ve kind of addressed the format (written or curated) and the topic. What do you actually include?
1. Podcast summaries: One of the easiest ways to create good content is to listen to and summarize the key points of podcasts you’ve found valuable. If you’re listening to them then it’s possible people in your industry do as well. This would give them a compelling reason to sign up for your list.
2. Curate Interesting Content: If you’re going down the curation route you can share interesting articles you’ve read that week.
To do this effectively, you need to be organized. You can find the articles on blogs, news websites, or social media. Twitter is a gold mine for great content and is not only for shouting about politics. Check out this thread about how to make Twitter (X) work for you instead of the other way around.
In addition, you’ll want to keep track of what you’ve already sent so you don’t duplicate content.
I’d recommend using Notion for that and capturing articles is really easy using the Save To Notion Chrome Extension. You can create one database to collect cool stuff you come across and another one to track what you’ve already sent.
Let me know if you’d like to learn more about this and I can share more details with you.
3. Deep dive into an interesting person: This is a fun one. It’s probably too much to do every week or every other week. However, it could be a monthly highlight. You might find that digging into someone interesting or important in your industry is valuable and it can be really interesting to other people.
I read a really interesting deep dive into Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, sometime last year, and it really stuck with me.
4. Analyze businesses: Depending on what particular area you’re interested in, you could pick something you find fascinating to analyze about businesses focused on that functional area.
Meanwhile, you’re building real-world expertise.
This can even overlap with the company research you do before meeting a company and save you some time on interview prep. In a perfect world, you’re already doing some of this work for a class, so you can repurpose your work multiple times.
If you’re really struggling at first, talk to your profs about what you’re doing and see if they have any tips or can help.
This may sound vague, so let me give you examples from different functional areas.
Marketing
Analyze a marketing campaign for each issue of the newsletter. Incorporate writings of David Ogilvy, Gary Halbert and other greats.
Investing
Ok, this one’s fairly obvious.
Analyze a company as you would if you were considering an investment in it. There are so many free data resources, and companies broadcast their earnings calls, so you’ll have plenty to work with. You’ll likely have Bloomberg access through your program as well.
This will involve some reading, but it is potentially directly relevant to your program.
Operations
There are many different areas you could explore on this topic. Shipping and logistics, examples of manufacturing successes and failures, or case studies on supply chain successes and failures are possible approaches.
You could also highlight interesting Tweets from major shippers like Maersk, rail companies, trucking companies or people who write about them.
Energy
All About Energy could be the title.
There is so much you can include, I almost don’t know where to start. You can niche down into new energy tech and renewables, fossil fuels, nuclear power, grids, EVs, developing battery tech etc.
If some or many of those interests you, that is a huge opportunity for you.
Combining Ideas
I won’t belabor this since I think you get the idea but one idea I will mention is that really interesting things can happen at the intersection of ideas. Maybe you could write about 1) energy and 2) investing or 1) marketing and 2) operations. These are a gold mine of interesting ideas.
It all depends on what you’re interested in.
5. Excel shortcuts, tips and tricks: Excel is one of the most important programs you’re likely to be using in business school.
It will help you enormously if you can get good at Excel. You’ll save time and be able to accomplish things in Excel that other people won’t be able to.
This is a great topic to incorporate into a newsletter (should I be directing this advice to you or me?).
Including this in your email or making it standalone is a win for you because
- You’ll be learning as you dig to learn more
- You’ll be viewed as an expert by your peers (you must be good if you write about it)
- It will help your job search because a possible employer will be confident you’re skilled at Excel
- You might even be able to turn it into a business by teaching classmates who need it.
6. Try and make it a business: I recently listened to a podcast with Austin Reif who founded and later sold the Morning Brew newsletter. He highlighted newsletters, including his own, that had been sold for BIG BIG dollars.
I’d recommend listening to it.
He focuses on why creators should have newsletters but I think it applies equally to business school students.
The main point I’d highlight, though, is that if you become the go-to for interesting and growing categories, you could end up making a business out of it. He highlighted space (tourism, manufacturing, mining, earth observation, etc.) and AI as possibilities.
I’m personally really interested in space, and if I wasn’t having such a good time with my business school content, I might try something like that.
If you think about it, it’s kind of a sweet spot. Space isn’t as hyped as AI, and the next 20-50 years will be filled with new growth and innovation. That’s a pretty cool opportunity if it interests you.
Meanwhile, you accrue all the benefits of starting a newsletter and maybe build a nice side hustle.
How to Build An Audience
Apologies, this is running a little long, so I’ll keep things brief here. If you’re interested in more, email me back, and I’ll be happy to share some thoughts.
I’m going to limit my thoughts here to the first 5 examples above. If you’re doing an email newsletter for a business, there will be other approaches.
I am a big believer in Josh Spector’s view that even if no one else reads it, if you write a newsletter every week for 2 years, you will reap benefits you can’t imagine right now.
But it would be nice if people could read your work, so let’s consider how to build that.
1) First off, since this is partly related to job search, make sure to bring it up in informational interviews. In fact, you should be suggesting to people you do informational interviews with that they sign up (and offer to do it for them on your phone right there and then) since you’d love their feedback, and who knows, they might find it valuable.
2) Talk to classmates and tell them what you’re doing. They may find it interesting. If you can find ways to make it valuable to them, it’ll be a sign that you’re onto something.
3) Talk to anyone you meet who it might be relevant to: friends, parents, parents’ friends, professors, or business school peers at other schools. There are plenty of people who might be interested.
4) Ask people to share it if they find it useful/interesting. If you don’t ask people, they likely won’t do it.
There are plenty of other strategies for growing an email newsletter, but they take more time, and you’re not necessarily trying to build a million-person subscriber base.
The last thing I’ll add is that you might want to highlight that you are looking for interesting opportunities, and if they see something where you might be a fit, to let you know. You could do it as a small “About Me” section at the bottom.
Check out this related article:
The Swipe File and Why It’s So Important could help you plan out and organize your ideas which you could then turn into newsletter issiues.
