Behind the Scenes of a Free 30-Day Newsletter Growth Sprint

Summary

Growth In Reverse Podcast Summary
Episode: Behind the Scenes of a Free 30-Day Newsletter Growth Sprint
Release Date: May 7, 2025
Hosts: Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop

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1. Introduction to the 30-Day Growth Sprint

In this episode, Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop delve into the intricacies of their ongoing 30-Day Growth Sprint—a concentrated effort aimed at exponentially increasing newsletter subscribers through strategic cross-promotions and giveaways. Chenell shares her enthusiasm and initial successes, highlighting the campaign's feeling akin to a launch event with significant engagement metrics.

Notable Quote:
Chenell: “It feels like a launch event.” [00:00]

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2. Current Progress and Early Results

Chenell reports impressive early metrics, with 2,600 people signed up for the sprint and 1,250 being new subscribers to Growth in Reverse. This reflects substantial interest and effective initial outreach.

Notable Quote:
Chenell: “We have like 2,600 people signed up. 1250 of those are new subscribers to Growth in Reverse, which is super, super cool.” [00:00-00:40]

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3. Giveaway Mechanics and Prize Structure

The growth sprint includes a giveaway valued between $8,000 to $10,000, featuring prizes such as newsletter audits from Chenell and annual licenses to tools like Right Message, Senja, and Tella. The giveaway structure encourages participants to share the campaign with others, thereby increasing their chances of winning.

Notable Quotes:
Chenell: “When you sign up, you get sent into the giveaway, which has some, I think it was like $8,000 worth of prizes.” [01:40]
Dylan: “It’s probably closer to $10,000 worth of prizes.” [02:08]

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4. Marketing Strategies Employed

a. LinkedIn Challenges and Engagement

Chenell initially utilized LinkedIn newsletters and posts to promote the growth sprint. However, she observed a decline in engagement—from 50-100 engagements per post to 20-30—possibly due to algorithm changes or inconsistent posting.

Notable Quotes:
Chenell: “These are getting like 20 to 30 engagements.” [03:09]
Dylan: “Maybe we should quickly, for people who might not have heard our last episode, give a quick recap.” [00:40]

b. Email Marketing and Referral Systems

Participants receive daily emails with growth tips and are entered into the giveaway. The referral system incentivizes sharing by offering additional entries for each unique referral, with a notable 9% of participants joining through referrals.

Notable Quotes:
Chenell: “If you share it with someone using your unique link, you get more entries to win.” [04:09]
Dylan: “The top person has 52 referrals right now, which is insane.” [04:47]

c. Substack Activity

Chenell has begun posting growth levers on Substack, assisted by Dylan. Despite initial hesitations to duplicate content from LinkedIn, this move has resulted in a modest increase from 70 to 102 subscribers.

Notable Quotes:
Chenell: “I have 102 subscribers on Substack.” [09:06]
Dylan: “Maybe you should keep the same thing from LinkedIn.” [10:21]

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5. Challenges Faced

a. LinkedIn Engagement Decline

The decrease in LinkedIn post engagements posed a significant challenge, leading Chenell to question the effectiveness of the platform and consider alternative strategies to rejuvenate engagement.

Notable Quote:
Chenell: “There should be a bigger, bigger group here.” [00:40]

b. Technical Issues with Referrals Tracking

Technical glitches surfaced in the referral tracking system, causing confusion among participants and necessitating immediate fixes to ensure accurate tracking and display of referral counts.

Notable Quotes:
Chenell: “People have been emailing me saying it's not showing my referrals.” [16:09]
Dylan: “This shows zero for me.” [16:25]

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6. Ideas and Potential Improvements

a. Increasing Giveaway Appeal

To enhance the giveaway's attractiveness, Chenell and Dylan discuss introducing tiered prizes, such as mini audits or shout-outs in the newsletter, contingent on achieving specific referral milestones.

Notable Quotes:
Chenell: “What if I did like a mini audit... three things you can optimize.” [18:10]
Dylan: “A five-minute audit would still be valued over a newsletter audit.” [06:30]

b. Leveraging Testimonials

Collecting and showcasing testimonials can build credibility and encourage more sign-ups. Chenell plans to integrate testimonials into the landing page and social media carousels to highlight participant satisfaction.

Notable Quotes:
Chenell: “I have a Senja form just for 30 days of growth that I need to start sharing.” [25:02]
Dylan: “Those testimonials can be used elsewhere too.” [26:54]

c. Experimenting with Growth Tactics

Chenell considers sharing experiments related to implementing growth tactics, such as adding a welcome video or detailed case studies, to engage the audience and provide additional value.

Notable Quotes:
Dylan: “If you did a really short, interesting experiment... it'd be really cool to share.” [27:08]
Chenell: “I’ll do it like three days past and I’ll be like, in the last 72 hours, here’s what this did.” [28:17]

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7. Future Plans and Post-Campaign Strategy

As the 30-Day Growth Sprint nears its end, Chenell contemplates the next steps, including potentially packaging the sprint as a paid offering or using it as a lead magnet. The discussion emphasizes the importance of organizing content and leveraging free information effectively, inspired by successful models like Ryan Holiday’s approach.

Notable Quotes:
Dylan: “Sometimes you have to launch when you’re not ready.” [30:39]
Chenell: “Maybe I do like seven days as a lead magnet.” [34:00]

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8. Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Chenell: “When you sign up, you get sent into the giveaway, which has some, I think it was like $8,000 worth of prizes.” [01:40]
• Dylan: “Maybe we should quickly... give a quick recap.” [00:40]
• Chenell: “These are getting like 20 to 30 engagements.” [03:09]
• Dylan: “The top person has 52 referrals right now, which is insane.” [04:47]
• Chenell: “I have 102 subscribers on Substack.” [09:06]
• Dylan: “Those testimonials can be used elsewhere too.” [26:54]
• Chenell: “Maybe I do like seven days as a lead magnet.” [34:00]
• Dylan: “Sometimes you have to launch when you’re not ready.” [30:39]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a transparent look into the strategic planning and real-time problem-solving involved in executing a successful newsletter growth campaign. Chenell and Dylan’s candid discussion underscores the importance of adaptability, leveraging multiple platforms, and continuously refining marketing tactics to achieve and sustain substantial subscriber growth.

Whether you're a seasoned newsletter creator or just starting, the insights shared in this episode provide valuable lessons on optimizing growth strategies, managing giveaways, and navigating the challenges of digital marketing.

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Listen to the full episode here to gain deeper insights and actionable strategies for your own newsletter growth journey.

Transcript

[Chanel]

Hello and welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. Today we are going to talk through kind of how 30 days of growth has been going and how we can kind of amp up and market it better in this last like 15 or so days of it being live. Because this feels like a launch event. And Dylan, I was kind of mentioning this to you, like, I'm excited about where it is. We have like 2,600 people signed up. 1250 of those are new subscribers to Growth in Reverse, which is super, super cool. But I feel like this could be more, I don't know, more of a launch. We have a full giveaway going. I feel like there should be, it should be a bigger, bigger group here. What do you think?

[Dylan]

Yeah, I think, I think there's an opportunity definitely to make this a little bigger and really do a good, I guess, back half push on growth for the campaign or for the pop up newsletter, if you will. Maybe we should quickly, for people who might not have heard our last episode, maybe just really give a quick recap on what 30 days of growth is.

[Chanel]

Yes. So this is essentially a Chanel rabbit hole. Uh, I decided about three and a half weeks ago that putting together a 30 day daily newsletter was a great idea. Um, so essentially I'm running 30 cross promotions with 30 different creators in a 30 day period each day. If you sign up each day, you'll get one growth or optimization tip you can use to grow your email list, which is super exciting and so far, like the replies have been incredible. But yeah, if you want, you can sign up at 30 Days of Growth Co and get that for free. And when you sign up, you get sent into the giveaway, which has some, I think it was like 8, 000 worth of prizes.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah, we tallied up. That's pretty more than that because that I think only included like one newsletter audit from you or something along those lines. So yeah, it's, it's probably closer to $10,000 worth of, of prizes. So those are everything from newsletter audit from Chanel. You could win licenses, like annual licenses to different tools like Right Message and Senja for onboarding and segmentation and that sort of thing. So some really cool stuff that, that you could win just by sharing it with one person.

[Chanel]

Yeah, which is exciting.

[Dylan]

You also get a private podcast feed if you share with one person. Right. So which we need to, I think, catch up on a little bit. Yeah, there's a, there's a good 10 or 11 of those already that you can binge on if, if you like. These daily growth levers, but you maybe don't have the time to read every single one of them. You can, I think they're seven or eight minute long episodes. So you can just listen to them and then go, go into the written version if you want to check them out later.

[Chanel]

All right, so let's give a recap of what we're currently doing to promote this 30 days of growth, because I think that's going to be a good starting point. Um, so this is kind of fun because it's kind of like you and I jump on a call, we talk through this and everybody else gets to listen.

[Dylan]

Do. Yeah.

[Chanel]

How we think about this.

[Dylan]

So the Fly on the Wall episode.

[Chanel]

Yes. All right, so right now, most days, I should say I am posting on LinkedIn about this. I started off doing a LinkedIn newsletter. I thought that the LinkedIn newsletter format was capping my engagement on my posts. And then I realized that, oh, no, it's just you're not. Your posts aren't good enough. People aren't engaging with them. So I don't think it's necessarily the LinkedIn newsletter.

[Dylan]

But yeah, so what, what made you think that the posts aren't good enough and the people aren't engaging with them?

[Chanel]

Okay, so typically in a. Well, recently on a typical post, I'd get fifty, eighty, a hundred engagements. And that was, you know, the last, I don't know, within the last three or four months, I'd say. And yes, I took a break. I've taken a break before, come back and still had decent engagement like that. But now these are getting like 20 to 30 engagements. Okay, so I was thinking that it was because the LinkedIn newsletter format wasn't like, super compelling. People didn't want to, like, comment because they just clicked through and read the whole thing.

[Dylan]

So now you're. Now you're thinking that it might be just an algorithm issue.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Or a Chanel needs to be more consistent on LinkedIn issue.

[Dylan]

Little column A, column B, one leads to the other. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So let's put a pin in LinkedIn because I have some ideas there.

[Chanel]

Okay. So obviously, sending a daily email, I set up the giveaway, which I thought was super exciting and compelling. And yeah, I mean, we have 2,800 people signed up, which is cool. The giveaway itself is hopefully building like this flywheel of sorts. So if you share 30 days of growth with someone using your unique link, you get more entries to win. And that's actually been working well. So so far, 9% of people who have signed up, have shared it with at least one person.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

Actually, no, that's not true. Nine percent of the participants have come from referrals.

[Dylan]

Oh, okay. Okay, that's interesting.

[Chanel]

So I think that's cool. I mean, the top person has 52 referrals right now, which is like insane. But then there are a number of people with like three, two ones.

[Dylan]

And we should caveat too with the person who has 52 referrals. They don't. They have more chances to win one prize. But you only. Are you giving out prizes, multiple prizes to the same person, Is that potentially.

[Chanel]

I think, I think that's the plan for the five annual licenses. So I'm honestly not sure. And this is probably causing a question mark in people's heads of like, they don't know what they're going to get if they share it. Which means I should be more clear.

[Dylan]

Or is there much point sharing it since somebody has 50 plus shares already?

[Chanel]

Well, I haven't shared that outside of just right now. Oh, nobody know. Nobody knows that there's 50 plus. Except for surprise, surprise. So I was in my head, I was like, okay, there's me. Five top prizes where someone wins. Right. Message. Senja and Tella, which they're all giving away annual licenses. Each of them has committed to give away five of them. I didn't want to like have a winner. Just get like tela. And then they're like, I don't really want to use that tool. I really wish I would have won something else. And then it gets messy. So I was thinking, like five people get those three licenses. Do you know what I mean?

[Dylan]

Uh, yes. So it's a license bundle.

[Chanel]

Yep, license bundle.

[Dylan]

Got it.

[Chanel]

So five people. And then I was going to put the newsletter audits just random. But I don't know if that makes sense or if those top five people should get newsletter audits.

[Dylan]

I think you should keep it random for the newsletter audits for sure. I mean, for all of it, it should be random. You should be hand selecting anything. But I think if you win a. At least in my mind, if you were to win a bundle, subscription bundle, that's your prize. Somebody else gets the newsletter. Like the subscription bundle I think is valued. Even if you got all three would be valued for more than a newsletter audit. So yeah, some people might prefer a newsletter audit, but at the same time, you enter a free contest and you kind of as. As we tell our kids, you get what you get and you don't get upset.

[Chanel]

So yeah, yeah, that's True, that's true. So I guess, like the. The main prize. Two people will win the main prize, which is like the subscriptions. And then Justin Moore is giving away two sponsorship courses.

[Dylan]

His, like, which would be standalone prizes for one individual each, right?

[Chanel]

Yeah. Or do I put those in with the subscription bundle?

[Dylan]

So it sounds like you're having tiers of prizes here, like grand prize, more consolation Y type prizes. Okay. Okay, that's interesting. I think you could. You could bundle those. Hmm. Or you could give people the option, like, if you're not going to use just a Morse course, like if you don't have value, if you're monetizing with your own products, for example, you don't necessarily need to go through Justin or sponsor Magnet course. Right. Or Brand wizard course. So maybe that's when you can offer it. And if people don't want it, just let them know. Like, we have other people who may. I don't know, like, there's other people who would want to take advantage of this if you're not going to. It's. It's tricky because, yeah, these prizes can be kind of specific and not everybody needs every single one of them.

[Chanel]

All right. TBD on that. But anyway, so if you share the giveaway or 30 days of growth with your unique link, the first, if you share it with one person, you get access to a private podcast, which we kind of alluded to. And that's been going well. I'm using a tool called hello Audio to host that, which is nice because it works with zapier. And if someone refers one person, they automatically get a zap over and get access. So that's been nice. People seem to be really enjoying it. I'm trying to pull up some stats here just to see. In the. In the early days, there were like four listeners. And I was like, oh, man, this is not.

[Dylan]

This is such a lot of work for four people. Love you four people. But man, this is a lot of work for that.

[Chanel]

Yeah, yeah. But now I think. Okay, there's a lot more in here. Oh, yeah. Okay, so like 40 people are listening to the one that was a high then like 30. Another 30. So, okay, so it's decent. So that makes me feel better that people are actually consuming it. But yeah, so that was one of the marketing ways. One of the ways I'm marketing this is like having the private podcast feed. I know a lot of people enjoy those short episodes, so I thought it'd be interesting to a see if people are actually listening and like, maybe we could take those learnings onto this show at some point in the future, but also really just wanted to give away, like a simple prize that was like, automated and scalable. So, yeah, so that is that. I am also posting each growth lever on Substack, which I have not been very active on. So that's new. Dylan is helping me publish those there because it's a lot of work.

[Dylan]

We're officially caught up today.

[Chanel]

Yeah. We have 102 subscribers on Substack.

[Dylan]

How many did you have before you started this?

[Chanel]

70, I think.

[Dylan]

And that was just for having a growth in reverse account on Substack.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

So my intention was to post notes every day on Substack, but I didn't do that. So here we are.

[Dylan]

Here we are. Now, I think maybe part of the reason just to not put a pin in Substack for a second, but go a little bit deeper because I think a lot of people listening probably, obviously know about Substack, but are probably curious whether or not they should be active on it if they are not already, like, if, you know, you know, kind of thing. But if you don't, I'm. I'm wondering what would be the holdback from publishing those notes. And could you not. Because you're. You're kind of leveraging Substack as its own social network platform to some degree when you're doing this, could you not take what you've posted on LinkedIn, essentially do like a copy paste and push it to Substack as well? Or is. Or were you trying to, like, do something new and different and more original for Substack?

[Chanel]

I was trying to do something more original for Substack, but that has created friction that clearly I can't get over. So I probably should just be posting the same thing from LinkedIn.

[Dylan]

Right.

[Chanel]

Um, but I know Substack's its own, like, ecosystem. And I don't want to be that person that just comes in and tries to like, shove my other stuff down people's throats. So that's why I was hesitating with it. I honestly think I just need to be more active on Substack, like, generally, like commenting on other people's notes and all that good stuff. Cause I still see opportunity in it. I think this is actually one that I feel like I should come back to. So thinking about the future, like the next 15 or 18 days, like, I feel like I should be coming back to this. I don't know. I just feel like there's some opportunity there.

[Dylan]

I think you should do a Little like back when you were doing the LinkedIn challenge in January, we were kind of time blocking. Hey, we're going to comment and engage on posts for X amount of time, 30 minutes, what have you. Then we're going to post our LinkedIn post and then we're going to keep that comment and engagement thing. And I know that sounds like a lot of time, like, oh my God, I don't have time for that. But if you could just block out even like 15 minutes, I'm sure we can all take 15 minutes out of our day to do a little bit of engagement on those platforms and kind of surface ourselves and make ourselves more noticed and noticeable there and helpful. I mean, don't be the reply guy, but try to add some substance. But at the same time, you kind of have to show up if you want people to start engaging with you as well.

[Chanel]

So I'm gonna take this as like an action item to do moving forward. Cause it, it feels like. Do you remember on Twitter when you could like have the review thing where you it like on your profile? People could. No.

[Dylan]

Or sorry.

[Chanel]

Right. R E V U E. Yeah. So people could sign up for it. You could auto like import them into your own thing. That's kind of how substack feels right now. And I feel like I'm missing that opportunity. So this just feels like something I should do. Okay.

[Dylan]

I would say low hanging fruit at the very least to copy and paste things. And if that doesn't feel good, then just like time blocks. Some. Just some time to kind of engage with people.

[Chanel]

All right, what else do we got?

[Dylan]

Jay's on there. He's posting a lot. He can at the very least comment on Jay's stuff.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Okay. So like I told you beforehand, I did a little bit of a Dylan brain dump year and then I also had a chat GPT assisted brain dump for. For this, for some ideas for this. So there was some interesting. I always think that ChatGPT is more interesting than me. So I'm gonna say chat GBD had some more kind of out of the box ideas. Like one of that I think, I don't think we will do, but I thought was kind of interesting. That could have been fun if you had structured this differently. Was doing a basically like a bracket challenge of like vote for your best, your favorite growth growth tactic, your growth lever and then like have a. Have each of them move on every day. And it was, it was an interesting, just like kind of sort of visual or viral type of post that you could have, which could be fun, but definitely not a must have. This is more of a like, hey, that would be cool and fun to do. One thing that I thought of that ChatGPT did not was even just having kind of a. An improved welcome email for 30 days, 0 subscribers. Because what do they get right now?

[Chanel]

So it's like a regular welcome email. It says just like a background of what it is, what you get. All the published posts live here, so they have a link to the archive. And then I say, for now, hit reply and let me know what your biggest challenge is with newsletter growth. And then I say, why? Because I might end up featuring a tip that helps you with your specific challenge, which has. Has done really well. Like in the beginning, I was so overwhelmed with welcome emails that I was like, oh man, this is crazy.

[Dylan]

But like, the replies, they welcome you more replies.

[Chanel]

Yeah, yeah, so. But it's good.

[Dylan]

Okay, so. And then I seen the giveaway.

[Chanel]

I do. I say, pf, if you know someone who would love this, go ahead and get your shirt and share your unique link with them. And then there's a little link that they can click and they see the. Their unique link to share.

[Dylan]

Do they know the incentives, like the, the prizes?

[Chanel]

No, it just says, and be entered to win prizes.

[Dylan]

Okay, that's not enticing. So what we could do, just a little thing, is even just sharing that new. The latest visual of all of the different prizes or at least the, the companies from the prizes that you have as a giveaway.

[Chanel]

Yep.

[Dylan]

And I would say a big one might be the newsletter audit with you. Although if this is a new subscriber, they might not be. They might, you might not have that. No like, trust factor quite yet with them. So that might not be quite as much value yet, but you never know. So that's definitely something you could add into the welcome email and then you can kind of turn your welcome email into more of a flywheel. Right. Because every time a new subscriber gets it, they are just going to be encouraged that much more, not only to consume and open the rest of the newsletters or the emails that they get, but they might be that much more encouraged to share it. Because, hey, I just shared this with, you know, my friend, my audience, and I'm entered into this opportunity to win these prizes. So I feel like with every new subscriber, you could be getting X amount of more subscribers just on virtue of having that in there. So that could be an easy low lift. Yeah, it might not be a huge, huge boon for growth.

[Chanel]

No but it's good. It's good to add that in there. And I think I should probably add in like phrasing. Like, here's what it is to share. Like, here's a blurb you can share.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Don't have to think. No, I think that put. Put that in for sure. Like boilerplate, almost copy. Like, and then they can tweak it if they want, but at the very least they can just copy, copy and paste it. So it's less thinking, less friction.

[Chanel]

The phrasing should probably be on the. Because I. Okay, so I also have a page where people. So when people click through to check their referral count. Now I did it this way because the tech on the back end is not perfect. And so it's going to show zeros all the way through on the email. So that's why I didn't want to do that. So now I have it going to a page where when they click on that page, it should show them the right count.

[Dylan]

Okay, how do I check that page? Let me check it live for.

[Chanel]

Yeah, so it is growthin reverse.com.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

SL30-day- referrals. And I don't even have the prizes on the sharing page, which is super fun. Now that I'm looking at that. This is like actually really good exercise here.

[Dylan]

So shows zero for me.

[Chanel]

Okay, now here's where it's fun.

[Dylan]

I may have not actually gotten any successful referrals, so.

[Chanel]

Yeah, so that. Or so I've had some people email me and say it's not showing my referrals on the page. And then I look at their referrals and I'm like, you referred yourself. And so it's resetting that cookie and showing the referral for the new email, not the original. I. It's fine. I. I'm. I'm okay with it if that happens. It's fine. I don't think any less of them or anything. It's. It's okay. However, that's why I would break is because it's going to mess up the cookies. But this page is not good. I'm looking at it now. Like, it doesn't even talk about the new, like, any of the software that we're giving away. Yep.

[Dylan]

No, it does not.

[Chanel]

So that is on my action item list now.

[Dylan]

There we go. I love it.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Yeah. Add in referral count to emails. I want to see if it works now because it wasn't working in the beginning, but maybe I can get it to work now. I don't know if this is going to be interesting for people to listen to, but I'm getting a lot out of this. So at least we have that.

[Dylan]

At the very least, you're making your giveaway a landing page a little bit better.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Okay, well, I think, I think this is the good lesson here is to. Sometimes you have to launch when you're not ready, which is totally fine. It's better than hesitating. Hesitating and never launching. And that's kind of what you did. You, you had this idea. The idea was fully baked, but the execution of the process was half baked. Right. Like you knew sort of what you wanted to do, but you're sort of figuring out as you were, as you were launching the rocket ship, you're kind of still building it. So, yeah, I think the, the lesson is to go back to these ex. These extraneous parts that you sort of set up in the beginning and make sure they are all still working like every few days or week at the very least. So maybe a good lesson just to like have a check all of the moving parts to make sure they're all still helping me fly at some point.

[Chanel]

So this is very good to see. Okay, so a couple other ideas that I had that I just want to. It almost feels like, why am I saying this out loud? Just go do it. But I'm wondering if I add in like a more exciting prize that's like if you refer 10 people, you get this thing regardless of if you win. So a couple of ideas that I was thinking about. Now, 10 referrals is not set in stone. Cause some of these are worth more. But I was thinking what if I did like a mini audit where like you send me your thing and I'll record a five minute loom video talking about your thing. Three things you can optimize or change or use. So it's not a full audit, but it's five minutes. I'll set a countdown and everything, make it fun, see how much I can get through. So I was wondering like maybe if you get 20 referrals. 20. I don't know. I don't know what that looks like because I don't. I also don't want to have like a million of these to do.

[Dylan]

Yeah, well, that would be a nice problem to have though, subscribers. Right. But I think what you would want to consider right now is how many people have already hit that 10 subscriber threshold or that whatever threshold you plan to do. So you already know you have to do X amount. Really think about the cognitive Load on that for yourself and how much that will take, will potentially take out of you. So those are a few things I would just think, you know, you know yourself better than anyone, whether or not that is going to be worth your while to have people share it for that reason. And also on, on the flip side, is a five minute audit really valuable for somebody to kind of push this to their audience again or for the first time? Some people might be like, I need something a little bit more substantial to not spam. But if somebody really, really values and respects their audience, maybe they are very hesitant to share stuff like this. So. And unfortunately, those audiences are usually the most valuable because. Because that person has done a really good job of kind of protecting their trust. Right.

[Chanel]

What are you trying to say, Dylan? I'm just kidding.

[Dylan]

I'm not saying anything.

[Chanel]

Just kidding. So I think thinking through how many people have already hit that was smart.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

So the top five people have referred at least 10, but if I made it 20, only two people have hit that so far.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

But two more are like at 19 and 18, so it wouldn't take much for them to get there. But I think four or five is totally fine. I think if, if someone's going to share this with their audience and send me 20 new people, I think that's kind of worth it.

[Dylan]

I agree.

[Chanel]

The other thing I was thinking is like a shout out in the Growth in Reverse newsletter. I don't know if that's worth it. If like you refer 10 people or I just. That feels easier. I don't want to end up with like a list of like 50 links to drop in a newsletter. That feels. Yeah, weird.

[Dylan]

But it, it does. It, it kind of reminds me of like when you watch like a YouTuber and they have their Patreon supporters list at the end. Oh yeah, those and that kind of thing. But I have seen people who include every single supporter's name. And this is more so done with support, like patron patronage type of support where they'll list off everybody who has shared or what have you and whatever value you might have in that personally, that wouldn't get me to share like 10 to 10 people. What?

[Chanel]

Yeah. Okay. That's interesting though. I'm envisioning like, so you know how at conferences, because I just got back from a conference, they have a board of like their sponsors and it's like the platinum sponsor and they have like a big name and then it's like gold sponsor, silver, and then there's like bunch of logos. I wonder if I Could put, like. I guess I'd have to get approval from these people, but put, like, the top person's name at the top and, like, you can ask them. And then, like, once it's done, like, it's set in stone. Is that weird?

[Dylan]

Oh, like, they, like, they were. They were the platinum.

[Chanel]

Yeah. And then somebody ousted them. If they, like, get more just.

[Dylan]

But once it's over. It's over, though.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Once it's over, I screenshot it and I put it in the newsletter and I say, these are the winners.

[Dylan]

Yeah, that could be cool. Are you going to include the people who, like, you were doing the cross promotions with, though?

[Chanel]

Well, no, because they don't have. They have separate links to share. They're not in the leaderboard.

[Dylan]

Okay. Yeah, I think that could be cool. The permission would be one thing, though. Definitely would need to look into that.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Maybe I could just put, like. I don't know. This. This feels messy.

[Dylan]

Something to think about and whether, again, whether or not that's worthwhile for the amount of sponsors that they would share. Worthwhile on your end and worthwhile on their end. Right.

[Chanel]

Okay, last idea with this section. If you do X number of referrals, you get, like, a free workshop. Like, I'll do. Put together a group workshop and you get access to it. Like, walking through.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

Behind the scenes of how this went or.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I like that. Although we've talked about how the content for kind of your postmortem on how this went and how you did it is just going to be really great content in general. But if you so choose to gate a portion of that or keep some of that behind closed doors, then that would be very. I think there'd be a lot of people who'd be really interested in how you went about doing this whole thing, how successful it was, how much it cost you, maybe your final thoughts on if it was really, truly worth it or how you do it differently and all those things. So if that's a bit of that, it's gated and it only takes, say, three referrals to get access to it or five referrals to get access to that, I'd be definitely more inclined to try to. To try to get my hands on that.

[Chanel]

All right, I'll think more about that one. Do you have any other ideas? I have a bunch, but I'm just curious. I don't want to hijack.

[Dylan]

I think. Yeah, no, I. I don't have a ton of ideas, but I do have a few, and they're very High level, but they're things that I don't think have been fully leveraged. So I said to put a pin in LinkedIn.

[Chanel]

Yes.

[Dylan]

Earlier. And that was because I think, I think one thing that I just saw again today is that LinkedIn is still really highly prioritizing carousels. So even simple carousels are probably going to perform better than just a post with an image. So if there was a way to templatize some of these growth levers, which I mean the emails themselves are a template that you're basically copy and pasting, just filling in the, the different information for the growth lever. Right. If there's a way to really easily. So it's not a heavy lift every time. Copy and paste the content into some carousels. I think that could be engaging and interesting. It just, you got to think about how much that's going to cannibalize people to actually click through and check out the content itself.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So I did the one with Justin Moore and it did not do well.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

Which I was surprised by because he like immediately commented engaged with it. So it wasn't. Yeah. I don't know.

[Dylan]

Do you think it, do you think it didn't do well by merit of the content wasn't good or just that it didn't get like impression wise, let's say. Have you looked at how many impressions it got and what the engagement ratio was? Because a lot of times you'd be like, oh, this one didn't do well. But actually the, the algorithm buried it and it all, it got way fewer impressions than usual.

[Chanel]

Yeah, it got 1900, 1942 impressions.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

And 43 likes.

[Dylan]

That's about my, my post that hit that mine. That's like high end for me, that number of impressions. So that's, I was thinking like maybe 40 to 50 likes on a post that hits about 2,000 impressions. It's kind of where my parameter usually is. So that's kind of on par. You have a bigger audience than I do and so were you anticipating just higher impression count or were you.

[Chanel]

Yeah, my other carousels in the past and maybe that format that I did wasn't good, but my other carousels in the past have done a lot better. The welcome email one got 68,000 impressions.

[Dylan]

Yeah, that's.

[Chanel]

And 370 reactions.

[Dylan]

Right.

[Chanel]

Maybe I should do like a recap one where like each page is a new growth lever that I've shared.

[Dylan]

Why not? Why not? You could do or just do like you could even just do the first five days or the first six days or the first week?

[Chanel]

All right, we'll see. I'll think about it. So the other thing, because LinkedIn is. Drives me crazy sometimes. I like it, but it drives me crazy. Um, so moving on because I feel like people are gonna get bored with this testimonials. I have not collected very many testimonials for this. I actually reach out today and let's. My friend Kat sent me a text message and said this 30 day thing is incredible. Keep going. And I said, can you put that in a testimonial? So I sent her the link and so now I have a Senja form just for 30 days of growth that I need to start sharing. And I wanna do the Eddie Schlanger model of just like auto putting them on the landing page for 30 days of growth just so people can see like this is a cool thing. You join the party. Although that landing page seems to convert, right now that form is converting at 74% which is wild. I don't know. Beat that.

[Dylan]

I don't know if you can. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But those testimonials can be used elsewhere too.

[Chanel]

Yeah, like maybe I have a carousel of testimonials. I'm just gonna start posting everything as a carousel and see what do it.

[Dylan]

The LinkedIn algorithm is like, is like my kid's appetite is like you just keep throwing stuff at them and see what they will actually eat.

[Chanel]

It's like I want an applesauce. And then it's like I don't want an applesauce.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah. It's like I like that yesterday, but today not having it.

[Chanel]

20 minutes, I wanted. 20 minutes ago I wanted that. Now it's too late.

[Dylan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chanel]

That's pretty funny. Okay, here's my. One of my last ideas. What if I start sharing experiments of me adding each of these growth tactics to my thing. So like I'll add a welcome video to the welcome email for growth. For 30 days of growth.

[Dylan]

Yep.

[Chanel]

Like, like Jay Claus did add the testimonials like Eddie Schlaner did.

[Dylan]

Four hour email.

[Chanel]

Yeah, four hour email, exactly.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

So I wonder if I could just start sharing that on LinkedIn.

[Dylan]

I love that and I, I think it'd be really cool if you're just like, if you did a really short, interesting experiment and basically like here's what I did. I added the four hour email, here's what I got. And it's like one. Just seven days. Whatever, whatever that might be. That's something you could Experiment with and do that'll be interesting content. I'm more of an experiment kind of person that I find that stuff really interesting and I like doing it because the content creates itself to some degree. Either it works or it didn't. But either way you can share doing it. The only thing would be like, did it have any results for you? Like that would be why I'm thinking more about the experiment sort of thing.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I'll do it like three days past and I'll be like, in the last 72 hours, here's what this did.

[Dylan]

Okay, I like that.

[Chanel]

And then I can post those on LinkedIn and then link to them in the 30 day, the Daily things and say like, hey, if you want to see my experiment from yesterday, go over to LinkedIn, create a little growth loop.

[Dylan]

I like it. I like it. Yeah. Also not leveraging, you know, the. With the hairy dry double post growth loop either, which is a lot of work. But that's another thing that you could do for the last two weeks of this. Just try to live on that a bit more. Fortunately, I don't think you have any more conferences. Oh wait, yes you do. You're going to another one before this is over.

[Chanel]

Why am I like this? Dylan?

[Dylan]

Oh my God. How many conferences have you gone to this year so far? At least three. If not four.

[Chanel]

1, 2, 3, 3. And then this will be the. The next one will be the fourth and then I'm going to craft and commerce, which will be the fifth and then CEX is the sixth.

[Dylan]

Either way, it's funny, you'll be gone to two. You'll have gone to two conferences just while the 30 days of growth is happening, but it's during the last week. Anyway, my point in bringing that up and kind of bugging you is that we can get ahead of. I was going to say we can really get ahead of these. Since you don't have any more conferences to go to, at least. Hopefully we can get ahead of them for the most part by the time you leave for the last one, because it's in the last week, then these will be. Some of these ideas will be more fleshed out and easier to execute once the content's written, scheduled, so on and so forth.

[Chanel]

I like it.

[Dylan]

I had just a few other really high level sort of strategies. One thing that, that we've never talked about one is paid ads. Because people are probably wondering, are you doing paid ads with this? Would you do paid ads with this? How would that look? How would that work? So I'm I'm bringing it up more as a topic of conversation because I don't think you have any intention or desire to, to dump money into this because it is more of a viral collaboration style of approach. But let's say you wanted to spend a bit of money. How would you, would you consider it and how would you go about it?

[Chanel]

Yeah, I'd probably do Facebook ads or something.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Um, if I had already had like an account set up and it was easy to just like add this as an option, I would do that. But I don't because I haven't run those for this newsletter. But I think I was thinking about this this morning. I was like, that would be a no brainer. Like it would be so easy and maybe I can, you know, repurpose this in the future as like a lead magnet and then run paid. Paid out for that.

[Dylan]

Exactly.

[Chanel]

There's not the giveaway aspect of it, but I still think it could be pretty valuable.

[Dylan]

The other one was where, where were we? Oh, earned media pr. So you talked about how people at the newsletter conference that you were just at last week were like, all there. You had more mentions about the 30 days of growth than anything. Right. It's, it's kind of buzzworthy, it's interesting, at least in our circle. Has there been any thought or would you be interested in trying to reach out to any kind of sort of tangential publications or media businesses with, with what you're doing or for either to set up an interview or to talk about it a little bit more?

[Chanel]

I don't know if this counts, but my friend Nick Looper with side Hustle Nisha reached out and he's like, do you want to come on and talk through this on the podcast? So I was like, yes, let's do it. So I guess that's like an earned media.

[Dylan]

Oh, that is amazing.

[Chanel]

He's great. He's one of the first people I met at fincon and I think, I think we just like connect. We, we do well together because we're both super introverted. So we kind of just like stand there with each other and like, we'll say interesting things like randomly, but we just like rather quiet people in the crowd. I think he like, appreciates that I'm also the same way.

[Dylan]

Yeah, that's awesome.

[Chanel]

Other than that, I'm curious what you're like, do you have any in mind for this like, PR earned media thing that you're talking about?

[Dylan]

You know, I started typing out some ideas off the top of my head and they're all newsletters that probably have, if not already shared your newsletter, have probably already shared 30 days growth. Like, you know, I was thinking, like, who sponsors stuff? And, you know, John over at Creator Boom. And Dan Barry from revenues, Matt McGarry. Like, all these people who probably have mentioned it and. Or their audience probably knows about you or knows about. Knows about this to some degree. But that being said, it can't hurt to reach out and let them know. But then I struggled to be honest, without, with a bit of a time crunch, trying to put this together. I didn't really get really deep into more. The more adjacent sort of categories. So what newsletters those might be.

[Chanel]

But so I forgot to mention I am going on Matt's podcast next. No, the 15th.

[Dylan]

So.

[Chanel]

Next.

[Dylan]

Oh, yeah.

[Chanel]

I'm a. Yeah.

[Dylan]

Dropping these PR bombs here. Just like, oh, I'm going on the side hustle show that's got.

[Chanel]

We've been trying to make it work for, like, months. And then I was finally like, okay, I don't think I have anything crazy going on. No more conferences right now. But then I. Yeah, yeah, right.

[Dylan]

But you're not talking at that conference, so it's just like, you're an attendee.

[Chanel]

Right, Right.

[Dylan]

Lower level.

[Chanel]

So, yeah, the 15th, so that'll be good. I don't think that'll be live before 30 days of growth is over, but it's still gonna be a fun little thing to share on that. So.

[Dylan]

So maybe to put a bow on this episode if people are still listening as we've been rambling on, how. What are you gonna do with 30 days growth when it's 30 days are up? Like, how are people gonna be able to access this? Can they still access it? Like, talk us through what. What the plan is? Cause there's. There's a chance somebody's gonna be listening to this, and it's like, 30 days of growth ended, like, two months ago.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Or longer. It's a good question. I don't know. I kind of, like, started this on a whim, and so I'm still trying to figure this out. At the conference, I had a number of people tell me that I need to be charging for this, but it feels weird because I'm using other people's tactics. So I don't. I don't know what that looks like. I'm sure it'll still be active somewhere. It might be a lead magnet. Maybe I do. Like seven days as a lead magnet.

[Dylan]

Question for you, though. Did Ryan Holiday come up with. Oh, crap, now I can't even think of the philosophy, but you know what it means. Yes. No, he did not.

[Chanel]

That's true.

[Dylan]

He just. He just. He curated that content, wrote about it, and just like you did, and turned that into millions and millions of dollars. So, yes, you are using other people's. Other people's content, but they've also made that free and available for people to. To see and read if. If you're able to find it. Right. It was discoverable. So I like thinking that instead of charging for the information, you're charging more for the organization of it. Right.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Like, maybe I could organize better and make it like, here are the 30 days of. I don't know, like, follow these in order. In order to, like, level up your newsletter. And maybe it's like a $47 thing or something.

[Dylan]

Yep, exactly.

[Chanel]

That's interesting. I'm not sure. We'll see.

[Dylan]

We shall see.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

It's free for now.

[Chanel]

Free for now.

[Dylan]

Do it while you can.

[Chanel]

30 days of growth. Cool.

[Dylan]

Yeah. And it ends. If you're listening to this in the future, it ends on May 23, I think is the last day. Yes, right. Of 2025. So May 23, 2025 will probably be the last day that you'll find it easily on the website.

[Chanel]

I like it. Cool. Well, this is fun and helpful. It's almost like auditing my own stuff in real time.

[Dylan]

So I promise. Is that the pod?

[Chanel]

That's not the pod.