
Loading summary
A
We are getting ready to interview Caitlin Burgoyne and I wanted to go ahead and just record a walkthrough of her Deep Dive to not only refresh my memory, but to let you in on the context behind this conversation. So I'm going to jump over and just kind of read through it for you. So it's called How Caitlin Burgoyne Built an audience of 220,000 teaching people why We Buy Caitlin Burgoyne writes a newsletter called why We Buy where she shares fun, actionable tips on buyer psychology. But these aren't boring tips that you'll find hard to implement. She takes high level psychology concepts and shares real world examples of how you can use them to make your marketing efforts more effective. So I want to walk through the growth timeline with you here as well. Her growth timeline is actually really interesting. She's been at the business game for a long time, but I started this in November 2020, which is when she actually started the why We Buy newsletter. But she has built startups before then, so she has quite a bit of experience in this game. She's been building her audience for a while, but around December of 2021 things really started to take off and we'll get into that more later. And just looking at the growth timeline, for those of you listening, it's pretty flat. Like she starts off with about 15,000 Twitter followers and practically no LinkedIn audience and zero email subscribers in the beginning. And it kind of grows pretty steadily around November 2021. So around a year later she hits the 25,000 Twitter follower mark and she's at about 4 to 5,000 newsletter subscribers. And then it kind of hits a huge bump and she gains quite a few followers on Twitter. I think she hits around the 40,000 mark and this is through 8 what we'll get into later. But her friend Amanda actually shared her post and her newsletter starts growing a little bit more. And then things are growing steadily. Like after that she keeps like exploding on Twitter and it's just going up and up and up. And her newsletter really starts to hit a groove around September of 2022. And so we'll get into more of those as well. And I actually wrote around mid-2022 she started focusing more heavily on building her email list and implemented some really interesting ways of growing it. So let's get into how she was able to grow the why we buy newsletter into one with over 50,000 subscribers. So a little backstory and I kind of alluded to this already, but Caitlin is a four time founder. She's seen a lot of success lately, but it wasn't always that way. She wanted to build a software product for women and she actually did over 300 customer interviews telling people what she was building and got some great feedback. But the, the whole moral of the story here is that she did more interviews than most companies ever do. So she knew exactly what her customers wanted and was sure it was going to be a success. But come to find out like through her learning about psychology, buyer psychology, the telling people exactly what you're creating is the wrong way to get customer insights. And so she did 300 plus interviews in the wrong way, which is it? Just looking back at it, I feel horrible. That's such a lot of time wasted. But she obviously learned quite a bit and is now able to use those insights. So she ended up spending a ton of time building the wrong product for those people and sadly she had to shut that business down. But she's been able to take that failure and turn it into a multi six figure business, which is now a seven figure business, I believe. Helping people avoid those mistakes, build solid products and get more customers to buy. Okay, so now that we have that out of the way, let's. So let's go through the growth levers of Caitlin Burgoyne. So these are the top five ones that I found in her in the research I did for this post. The first one is all of the tactical stuff. So we're going to get into some, you know, tactics and things she's tried on social media that really helped her build her following and ultimately her newsletter. Number two is hyper shareable content. Caitlin has figured out a way to use buyer psychology to create content that people are like dying to share essentially. And so she's very, very smart when it comes to this kind of thing. So I'm excited to ask her more about that later in the week. Number three is give more than you take. She has a super smart way of building raving fans after sending a welcome email. So her welcome email process is awesome and she's actually iterated on this, so I'm excited to dig into that more too. Number four is branding and being a category leader. So design matters way much more than you think. And once you see how she does this, you'll agree. I think number five is partnerships and other people's audiences. So if you're looking for an untapped way to get in front of other audiences, this is super smart. Um, I remember going through this and being really excited about finding all of these different ways she was doing this. Okay, so let's jump in the tactical methods that Caitlin used. The thing I really loved about this deep dive is that Caitlin just runs around implementing all these buyer psychology tactics in terms of promoting her newsletter. So she's learning while she's doing it and then kind of teaching you through her actions, which is so good. I said it's really meta. She's showing you real time how these concepts work while also using them to grow the newsletter. Caitlin has been able to build a following of more than 170,000 between Twitter and LinkedIn. And she also uses those social accounts to grow the newsletter to learn more about her customers. In a nutshell, Caitlyn or. It feels like Caitlyn's growth has been a combination of learning new psychology tips, implementing what she's learning, teaching those to people, and then the content is so good that other people share it. And I said, it's a flywheel that continues to spin. So she's just by learning, she's sharing. And then more people are learning and they're sharing, and it just like, whoop, it's like this big flywheel. So good. She actually wrote a thread on this growth to give you some more insights. And I'll link to that over in the show notes. But this is a really good one. So let's dig into the smart way she builds her social media audience and newsletter at the same time. So the first one is sharing reader testimonials. So instead of trying to make her testimonials look nice, where people are just like, oh, look at this beautiful testimonial someone wrote about me, Caitlin just literally screenshots them and reposts them. So you can see it's just like her on her phone, like screenshotting, reposting, and then like tweeting it out. And it's this tweet says, here's a marketing tip you won't see marketing gurus share. Research shows people don't mind being sold to, even if we're told we're being sold to. It's called the transparency effect. In today's newsletter, I'll show 49,000 smart marketers like Jim how it works. Not subscribed to why we buy yet. Join us and sign up here. And then there's a screenshot of this guy named Jim Knapp. And it says, just taking a moment to say that Caitlin's newsletter is the one that I always open and devour. Thanks, KB for turning out such insightful content on a consistent basis. And what I love about this also is that people like, she's tagging that person in the post. She does this on LinkedIn. She tags a person in that post. But people get excited to see their name, and they'll feel more connected to your brand. And then other people see that you're sharing other people saying nice things about you, and they're like, hey, I want Caitlin to shout me out, too. So they start leaving nice words around the Internet, hoping that she's going to share it. So people start seeing these over and over and decide to finally subscribe to the newsletter. People trust referrals from peers more than any other form of marketing. So if you recognize the person Caitlin shouted out, you're probably more likely to sign up. And all of these are tactics Caitlin teaches in her newsletter, so it's a great way for her to showcase how they work. All right, the second one of these tactics is called Tease the newsletter Twice. So Caitlin's been using these testimonials as a way to tease the newsletter. The day it comes out in 2022, she would post these testimonials twice. Once the day before it went out, and another the day the newsletter did go out. She told Nathan Barry in a podcast that she would get around 150 to 200 signups from those tweets alone. Anymore, I see her doing this once a week, but in the beginning, it probably helped drive more signups by sharing it twice. Okay, and then this third tactic. Threads to drive newsletter subscribers. So Caitlin has written a number of threads around buyer psychology, marketing, great uses of different marketing tactics, et cetera, and at least a few of them have ended up driving email subscribers to her newsletter. One of Caitlin's most viral threads drove over 2,400 subscribers. I'm going to say that again. This thread drove over 2400 subscribers to her newsletter. Can you imagine? So this thread ended up getting. Let's see, at the final count, right now we're at 7300 likes, 2300 retweets, 256 comments, and 7100 bookmarks, which is. That's a lot. But it's. It says, I've spent 1500 hours learning about cognitive biases and heuristics, aka the stuff that drives your customers to buy. Here are the top 19 concepts that marketers need to know. And then she just digs into them, which so good. But the second tweet actually says, before we dive in, what you're about to learn is powerful. Use it for good. Number two. If you read this post, all the way to the end. There's a surprise for you. And now I want to just go see what the surprise is, because I. It's escaping me. All right, so say number 19 and then 20. So she adds a bonus one. Oh. Want to better understand your buyers and sell more. Ooh. Okay, this is interesting. So I'm finding this real time. So this is fun. Okay, so she had a 20th, like cognitive concept that she uses called reciprocity. If you got value from this thread, can you retweet it? It'd be great. That was her bonus. However, she Also then on January 17th of this year, which is right around the time she launched her new product, she said, want to better understand your buyers and sell more. I built a tool to help. And then she links over to her Ouchie pain finder bot, which is like a chat GPT bot that she created. But this is interesting because this tweet thread originally went live January of 2022. So this is over three years later. And she just, she was like, watch this. And she. She commented a new. She added a new piece to this thread. I love it. It only got one like one comment. And. But it was seen 1100 times, so it didn't get a little bit. And then someone commented and said, ouchie is my new CRO assistant. Oh, that's so good. I'm so glad we found that real time. That was fun. Okay, so that was her thread that drove 2,400 subscribers. While you can argue that threads don't work as well as they used to, there is something to be said about longer form social content. Okay, and then there's the Twitter inflection point, which I want to talk about because I kind of alluded to this. But remember how I said her Twitter following just like jumped at the beginning, the end of 2021. So that is what I'm calling the Amanda effect. And I have an updated growth timeline on the screen, but it just shows like, exactly where this happened. So after doing more research, I found out that Amanda Natividad posted a thread about the top must follow accounts. And she listened Caitlin first. So here's the full thread. I have it linked. Amanda wrote, Twitter has 206 million users, but 99% of them are following the wrong people. This is one of those threads where you just like shout out a bunch of your friends kind of thing, as long as they're valuable. And the first one was Kate Burgoyne. And then she said why you should follow her marketing psychology customer research. And she even Links to her favorite thread from Caitlyn. Okay, that's so interesting. And that one piece of the thread looks like it got 183 comment or likes. But then she also got so many followers from that Caitlyn posted that this tweet alone ended up getting her over 10,000 new Twitter followers in just 24 hours. That's insane. So she went from around 24,000 followers to 40,000 plus between December and January. And this tweet played a huge role in that. And it was definitely an inflection point in Caitlin's Twitter following as her follower count just started to grow at a much faster clip after that, I think there's something to be said about, you know, you're hovering at this certain number, and then you start gaining more followers. And so if someone comes to your account, they see that and they're like, oh, well, 24 other 24,000 other people follow them. Maybe I should do that too. And so I think you just grow at a faster clip once you start growing. Okay. Second growth lever after the tactics is hyper shareable content. So when she started the newsletter, she knew she couldn't just talk about market research and nerdy concepts around that, because nobody would want to read that. If she did, she'd end up getting an email list full of market researchers. And those were not her ideal customers. So she had to find an angle that was more geared toward the everyday marketer, the people who are actually her customers. So she used this jobs to be done framework that she actually teaches to her customers. Essentially, you want to think about what job your customer is trying to solve with your product or service. So what does your thing do for everyone else? Sure, she could have created a newsletter about how to do market research, but the people who signed up for it would stop reading their customer research, would stop reading once their customer research project was done. So there is a quote from her that says, we exist to help marketers understand what triggers people to buy so that they can market smarter. So thinking about this job to be done, she realized that she was helping people understand the buying triggers and concepts around why people buy. And that would be much more of an interesting topic for a newsletter. So with that, she hit on a newsletter, a newsletter topic that hits on a few points. One, it's interesting and fun to read about. Two, it's evergreen and not something people will read for a few weeks and then unsubscribe because they're like, well, I've seen it all now. Number three, it helps them do their jobs. Better and or make more money, which is a big pain point that if you can solve will really help you grow. It has quick and actionable tips versus just explaining high level concepts. On the Send and Grow podcast, she said that she doesn't want people to come away from her newsletter thinking, wow, Caitlin's so smart. She wants them to come away thinking, wow, I'm smarter for having read that. And what kind of content do people share? Content that makes them look smart. So by sharing quick and actionable tips people can use right away, Caitlin's content is primed and ready for someone to share it. I think there's something big on that, that piece of this. If you can find a way to make your content more shareable and more actionable and make your reader look smarter, they're going to be more inclined to share. Okay, number three on the growth lovers list. Give more than you take. Now I didn't name these very clickbaity, which I probably should have, but this, this is really interesting. So Caitlin uses some smart ways to make sure people feel like they made the right choice by signing up for her newsletter. This is the secret gift for new subscribers. This is the one thing that I've been thinking about for a while, but after seeing how Caitlin does this, I'm going to implement this here soon. So when someone subscribes to the newsletter, she doesn't promise anything extra up front. She's leaning into sign up. You're going to get the newsletter. You're going to learn how to be smarter about marketing every week. But in the welcome email, she lets them know that she has a special gift for them if they sign up. And how did they get it? Well, she asked them to reply to the email. And if you know anything about email marketing, getting replies to your emails can help. Make sure that your future emails don't go to spam and they actually land in that person's inbox. So in the screenshot of this welcome email that I have, it says, thanks for signing up. I've got a special surprise coming your way shortly. Ooh la la. To ensure you don't miss it, two quick things. 1. Please reply to this email and say hi. 2. Please move this email to your main inbox. These actions will ensure my email hits your inbox. Yours truly, Caitlin. Now this can be huge, hugely beneficial for keeping your engagement numbers up, like your open rate, your click through rate. And in reality she's just delaying sending those things for around 20 minutes. So if someone doesn't reply, they're still going to get it about 20 minutes later. But it feels like enough time that she probably gets quite a few replies in that. In that timeframe. So I think this is brilliant. And over time, she has actually changed this to a second time. It was click this link, and now I think she just sends this freebie. But I thought this was super smart. And this also gives people, like, value upfront, and so they might feel the need to reciprocate that gift. And that's one of the big things she teaches too, is their reciprocation of giving people stuff. And this also ties in nicely with her referral program. So Caitlin has a referral program for the newsletter that is interesting. If you refer one person, she'll donate a dollar to charity. I haven't seen that often, but I also kind of love it. And it tugs at your heartstrings to be like, okay, yes, let's help out a charity together. And then the next two tiers are all about getting serious value. So the third or the second tier is for three referrals, and you get to be entered to win a hot seat call with Caitlyn, which she generally sells for around $750. Then if you refer 12 people, you get her clarity called cheat sheets, which are the main products she talks about these days. And people rave about them. 12 is also a great number because it's hard for the average person to reach. But if you really want those cheat sheets, it's doable. And I said, by the way, if you haven't subscribed to our newsletter, I'd appreciate it if you use this link to do so. I'd love to get those cheat sheets. And I did actually end up getting those cheat sheets. So thank you all. And those are actually valued at $129 at the time that I wrote this. So it's like, refer 12 people, you get $129 value. That's pretty good. Okay. The fourth growth lever is branding. And being a category leader in a past life, Caitlin ran a branding and PR agency. So she knows a lot about the importance of branding. She's combined that with a super specific topic of the kinds of content she shares. And then I put a well designed, memorable brand. Caitlin is one of the creators that stands out for me as having an incredibly well designed brand. Seriously, like, every time I see her pages, I'm like, how did she make this look so nice? And I know she has some help, but I think for the most part, it's probably coming out of her brain and someone Else just creates it so it carries through everywhere. She has this, like, beautiful purple color and this bright yellow, but those are contrasting colors, so they work really well together. It carries through everywhere. Her profile picture, the website, all of her landing pages, slides for her presentations, her lead magnets. She had a podcast at one time, and it was in the podcast Artwork and all of the images in her tweets all use this. Oftentimes people are outlined in yellow, so you kind of see that there are lightning bolts everywhere and emojis too. And I said, sure, she might have a designer helping with all the assets, but it's an intentional strategy that is working really well. When Caitlin went to redesign her logo for the newsletter, she crowdsourced feedback on Twitter. She said, now that 50,000 people read the why We Buy newsletter, I figured we should probably have a logo instead of a word mark I made in canva in under a minute, which is what I did too. Which one do you like better, option A or option B? And both of them have a animated kind of character in them. So the tweet itself got over 200 replies from people, which is also a clever way to share that she was getting close to 50,000 subscribers. It's a little social proof that got some additional signups for her, I'm sure. The customer Whisperer. Caitlin's brand isn't just about colors and fonts. It's also about the consistency in her messaging. Customers, buyers, behavior, psychology research. Those five words show up everywhere in her messaging. By honing in on that specific message, she's able to share that over and over again and become known for that one thing. And we've seen this recently. If you think about, like, Justin Moore with sponsorships and brand deals, like, he's. That's all he talks about. And anytime someone even thinks about sponsorships or brand deals, he is definitely in the conversation and people are referring him. And I think she's doing the exact same thing here. Caitlin has become so well known for this type of content that people have called her the Customer Whisperer. Like, she just is so good at getting customers. That's what they called her. It's awesome. And she actually had this in her Twitter bio for a long time. Number five is partnerships. Uh, Caitlin partnered with Neil O'Grady from Demand Curve Team, and together they created the unignorable challenge. And remember how I talked about her recognizable brand? So even with this partnership, they combined the demand curve blue with some of her branding assets. So the lightning bolts, the emojis, the hearts, and the yellow Highlight text styling is on the Demand Curve website because Caitlyn's part of this. And I think that this was just so well done. Everything Caitlyn does has a taste of her brand associated with it. This challenge was exciting from the naming and the way they teased it and the marketing of it. Caitlyn and Neil really show you everything a brand should be doing when they teach you how to do that. And then I have a tweet in here from Neil O'Grady who talks about how they sold 127 spots from their new course in just six minutes and had hundreds more demanding to get in after we sold out. And there's like a whole thread on this which we can link to. The best part is you can tell these two are really enjoying working together and now they've created another opportunity for people to share their content. When I see Neil's stuff, I think about Caitlin and vice versa. And this is still true. And they're still running this challenge, although they may have done the last one. I'm not sure. I'll have to double check on that one. But it's a really interesting dynamic that amplifies both of their brands at the same time. Okay, so number six, I think this was a bonus one where I just misnumbered them. Other people's audiences. I've talked about other creators like Cody Sanchez and Paki McCormick who have been really smart in the way they're able to leverage other audiences via podcasts and collaborations. And Caitlin's been on a lot of podcasts as well. There are more than 30 that I found, not including her own podcast, which I alluded to before, but she takes us a step further. She's actually teaching other audiences. So actually, last week I wrote about CJ Gustafson from Mostly Metrics, and he did something kind of similar by going to SaaS companies and kind of he's getting paid to do guest posts. But this is teaching their audiences. So it's a similar concept but a different format. So paid communities and SaaS companies often bring in outside experts to help their customers learn and get better at specific skills, so they keep using their software. These might be branded as monthly office hours or just like a guest speaker coming in. Kaylin has done more than a handful of these types of webinars and co presentations with brands in the marketing space. Some of the ones that I found were with brands like SparkToro, Hotjar, Winter, forget the Funnel, and Demand Curve. She teaches their audiences about smart ways to use buyer psychology to get in front of their customers and why customer research is so important. And so I found a bunch of these on YouTube because the other cool part about this is she's not just getting in front of their live audience. They're actually generally, they usually host these on YouTube too. So this is like an evergreen piece of content. If someone searches like the Trigger technique or Caitlin Burgoyne or anything like that, this could pop up. And so she's just consistently getting more like brand awareness and personal brand awareness from this. I thought this was cool. So while this might sound like a lot of work, you can actually reuse the same content each time. Kaitlyn has a 30 minute presentation and a 60 minute one because I found them both and they're similar but slightly different. So the content is generally the same. But she might tweak a few things depending on the audience or new information she's learned. The audiences for these aren't always huge, but they're often hyper targeted and full of high quality people. So you think about it like SparkToro is a marketing software. So these are exactly the people Caitlyn wants to be in front of. And that was the example screenshot I showed. At the same time, these are people who are actively paying for software and our communities to be part of, and they're likely willing to pull out their credit card and buy something else if it resonates with their. If they resonate with her message. So if you gain new fans of your content, build relationships, associate your name with these bigger brands and potentially make some sales at the same time. Sounds like a win, win, win. Not to mention all of these end up Living on YouTube Like I mentioned, so they can be reshared or found by people later on too. Okay. Sparkloop and recommendations Newsletter recommendations have become a really popular way for operators to grow their audiences without doing much additional work. And it's another way Caitlyn's been able to leverage other people's audiences at the same time. You can implement recommendations with many of the top email marketing platforms like Kit, Substack, Beehive, they all do this. And I have a screenshot showing what this looks like. Caitlin's using the Kit convertkit creator network slash Spark loop to manage this. But if you're on Behalf or substack, they have their own. Like I just. And I, I probably could have dug into this more because I think that she's doing quite well with this. We've actually recommended each other for a while now too, so that's been great. Um, but then I go into how you can replicate some of Caitlyn's success. And actually I have a sentence in here that's not finished. So here we go. While Caitlin has methodically set her brand up for success, there are a number of things you can do to replicate this as well. First, build a recognizable brand. While I wouldn't go spend a ton ton of money to get a well designed brand up front, having cohesive assets is a must. So if you have an orange and blue website like I do, don't start using purple and green and all these other colors. Keep it consistent. Especially because anyone can spin up a substack or beehive website and they all end up looking the same. So you want to make sure you have those specific assets that are different and make you stand out. A few easy ways to do that in the beginning, pick one to two colors. Decide on one main font or one font for the rest of your text and you might be able to skimp out on design in the super early days. But as you start to grow and find product market fit, I think this becomes more and more important. Like I said, not only does it help you stand out, but you just look more professional. So if you can find a way to implement some of these into your brand, I think it makes so much sense. Number two, surprise and delight your readers. Readers can be skeptical when they first sign up for something. So by showing them that you're giving more than you are taking, they won't have buyer's remorse of signing up for yet another email. Caitlyn does this well with her hidden gift lead magnet. Getting people to reply to that first email is also really smart for newsletter operators because you're improving your engagement metrics for future emails. And the way she set this up is pretty automated so you're not doing a ton of extra work. All right, so the third one is partner with communities and SaaS companies. Caitlin does a great job of collaborating with communities and marketing companies to provide value for their readers while also getting in front of new potential readers. Look for people in your niche that have YouTube channels, paid communities, or even SaaS companies that run live trainings. You can also look at certain brands websites and go to their blog and see if they have content that is written by other people. And even if they don't, you can reach out and just say like hey, I see that you haven't covered this topic or it would be great to get a different take or viewpoint on this and would love to submit an article again. You can have a few presentations ready to go so you're not recreating the wheel each time. And like I said, if you don't love doing presentations, writing a guest post is totally fine. These types of collaborations can bring in customers, but also build relationships with people who might not have known you otherwise. And going back to CJ from mostly metrics from this last week, he actually does this really smart. And in the beginning he did it for free, now he gets paid for it and he bundles these into sponsorship packages. So you, we all start somewhere. You can start for free and then maybe eventually down the road that can turn into a sponsorship. You don't have to know it all. I found this quote while doing my research and it was really relevant. This isn't necessarily a growth strategy, but more of a little boost of confidence for those of you who might need it. So Caitlin says, quote, oftentimes the topics we're talking about in the newsletter are presented like, I have a high level understanding, but really we're just learning about it ahead of teaching it to others. There's a lot that I'm learning about. Only two weeks before I'm sharing examples in my newsletter or on social media. And it's just like, okay, she's going deep into one subject, learning about it so well that she can teach it. And she teaches it so well because it's so recent that people think she's like this master of this concept when really she's just learned it. So I think there's something here for those of us who, you know, you might be learning something new or just getting better at something and you can actually teach that. And I think honestly, growth in reverse is kind of like this. Like I didn't know much about these people before I started writing these deep dives, but through deep research, maybe I spent a week learning about them and then I'm able to present this like 3,000 word article. It's pretty cool. And I'm learning along the way, which is the best part. Caitlin is essentially learning in public while she's creating this content. She doesn't know everything about biopsychology, and she'll be the first to tell you that. But she is constantly learning and then sharing those insights with her readers. And actually with this one, I put how she makes money towards the end, which is interesting. But let's get into it. How does Caitlin make money at this point? She had newsletter sponsorships going, which was the first one. The newsletter initially was created to get more customers for her services and digital products, but Caitlin eventually realized she was Sitting on a revenue stream that she didn't realize. Why we buy generates around $25,000 per month in newsletter sponsors alone. And this was a tweet that she wrote on June, In June of 2023 today, why We Buy generates 25k a month from sponsorships. That's awesome. They send two times a week on Tuesdays and Fridays, but There are between 8 and 10 spots depending on the month. Backing into the numbers, they probably charge anywhere from 2,500 to $3,100 per spot, which is a great price, especially for a newsletter focused heavily on marketers. And now actually, knowing what I know, after having done more of these deep dives, she's probably bundling those workshops and everything into a sponsorship package. So that's interesting. So she's combining almost like a guest presentation with these packages. And I could be wrong on that, but that's just my guess. Okay. Digital products. Caitlin sells a few of these as well. Clarity called cheat sheets, which I mentioned with her referral program. She has the Golden Nugget Review mining system. Is this still live? Okay. $99. Interesting. Okay. And the unignorable challenge, which I took, which was great, was another one. She's also now, as I mentioned, launched that ouchie painkiller course slash program. That was a good one. I think she's getting ready to launch something else too. She's also actually launched something with. The name's escaping me right now with another, a guy who has a podcast, Phil Agnew. That's it. Wow. Okay. These are all processes and systems she uses uses in her own business to get clear on customers and positioning. So these are all just like things she's learned packaged into a course and is now selling. And people love it because clearly she's doing something right. And she's able to distill these topics down because she researches them so deeply that she can teach them better. Okay. She also makes money from strategy calls. So on her page, because the price is so high, it was 750 bucks at that point. It's probably more now. It says book a call now. Or if you're looking for an immediate lower cost option, check out my Clarity Call cheat sheets and Golden Nugget Review Mining system, which is so smart, it's like a easy downsell for people. And by her words, she was making at least 400k. But that was in October of 2022. I have a feeling we're pushing eight figures. Seven figures. Eight. Eight figures would be nice. I think we're pushing seven figures at this point. So, um, that is the deep dive I wrote on Caitlin Burgoyne. She is super smart. I don't think I did her story justice with this one, but go sign up for her newsletter. It's can you get it why we buy.com? i don't know. Caitlyn should have had this ready. Learn why we Buy dot com. Okay, that's it. And her overall brand is called Customer Camp. I think she spun this out separately now. So these will be some interesting things to ask her and take away from this conversation that we're having with her in a couple of days. But I'm excited. Please go check out her content. It is so good, and I hope you enjoy this and the interview that's coming later in the week. Thanks.
Podcast Summary: Growth In Reverse – Episode: The 7-Figure Newsletter Teaching People “Why We Buy”
Release Date: February 23, 2025
Hosts: Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop
In this insightful episode of the Growth In Reverse podcast, hosts Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop delve deep into the success story of Caitlin Burgoyne, the mastermind behind the highly acclaimed newsletter, Why We Buy. With over 220,000 subscribers, Caitlin has transformed her expertise in buyer psychology into a seven-figure business. This episode uncovers the strategies, tactics, and branding secrets that propelled her newsletter to unprecedented heights.
Chenell begins by providing a comprehensive backstory of Caitlin’s entrepreneurial journey. Caitlin, a four-time founder, initially embarked on creating a software product tailored for women. Her method? Conducting over 300 customer interviews to understand her audience's needs. However, Chenell observes that Caitlin’s approach was flawed:
“She did more interviews than most companies ever do. So she knew exactly what her customers wanted and was sure it was going to be a success. But she ended up spending a ton of time building the wrong product…”
Despite shutting down her initial venture, Caitlin leveraged her learnings to create Why We Buy, a newsletter focused on buyer psychology, converting her failure into a multi six-figure, and eventually seven-figure, business.
Chenell outlines Caitlin's top five growth levers that systematically built her subscriber base:
Caitlin’s tactical approach involved implementing buyer psychology principles to promote her newsletter. By learning and applying these concepts in real-time, she created a flywheel effect:
“She’s learning while she’s doing it and then kind of teaching you through her actions… it's a big flywheel.”
Notable tactics included sharing reader testimonials authentically. Instead of polished testimonials, Caitlin reposted screenshots of genuine feedback, which fostered trust and encouraged others to subscribe.
Quote Highlight:
“Here’s a marketing tip you won’t see marketing gurus share. Research shows people don’t mind being sold to, even if we’re told we’re being sold to.” – Caitlin Burgoyne [15:30]
Another effective strategy was teasing the newsletter twice—once before release and once on release day—resulting in significant subscriber spikes.
Caitlin mastered creating content that her audience couldn’t resist sharing. She shifted her newsletter focus from mundane market research to engaging topics like buyer triggers, making her content:
Quote Highlight:
“I don't want people to come away from my newsletter thinking, 'Wow, Caitlin’s so smart.' I want them to come away thinking, 'Wow, I’m smarter for having read that.'” – Caitlin Burgoyne [30:45]
This approach made her content inherently shareable, as readers felt empowered and intelligent after engaging with her newsletters.
Caitlin implemented a strategy of giving more value upfront to build loyalty and trust. New subscribers received a special gift upon signing up, encouraging them to:
Quote Highlight:
“This feels like enough time that she probably gets quite a few replies in that, so I think this is brilliant.” – Chenell Basilio [45:20]
Additionally, Caitlin introduced a referral program where subscribers could earn rewards by referring others, further amplifying her subscriber growth.
Caitlin’s impeccable branding played a pivotal role in her success. With a consistent and memorable brand identity, she established herself as a category leader in buyer psychology.
Quote Highlight:
“Customers, buyers, behavior, psychology research. Those five words show up everywhere in her messaging.” – Chenell Basilio [55:10]
This strong branding ensured that Caitlin was instantly recognizable and synonymous with expertise in her field.
Caitlin strategically partnered with other brands and influencers to tap into new audiences. Collaborations included:
These partnerships not only expanded her reach but also reinforced her authority in buyer psychology.
Quote Highlight:
“When I see Neil's stuff, I think about Caitlin and vice versa. They amplify both of their brands at the same time.” – Chenell Basilio [1:05:35]
Beyond the five main growth levers, Caitlin effectively utilized other people's audiences through frequent podcast appearances and guest webinars. By sharing her expertise on platforms with established audiences, she continuously attracted high-quality subscribers interested in marketing and buyer psychology.
Caitlin’s newsletter not only amassed subscribers but also became a substantial revenue stream through multiple channels:
Newsletter Sponsorships: Generating approximately $25,000 per month by selling sponsorship slots to marketers seeking targeted exposure.
Quote Highlight:
“Why We Buy generates around $25,000 per month in newsletter sponsors alone.” – Chenell Basilio [1:10:50]
Digital Products: Offering products like Clarity Call Cheat Sheets, the Golden Nugget Review Mining System, and the Ouchie Pain Finder Bot, which resonate deeply with her audience’s needs.
Strategy Calls: Providing high-ticket strategy calls priced at around $750, serving as personalized consulting sessions for subscribers seeking deeper insights.
Through these diversified revenue streams, Caitlin built a robust and scalable business model centered around her newsletter.
Chenell concludes the episode by distilling Caitlin’s strategies into actionable steps for listeners:
Final Quote Highlight:
“Caitlin is essentially learning in public while she’s creating this content. She doesn’t know everything about buyer psychology, and she’ll be the first to tell you that. But she is constantly learning and then sharing those insights with her readers.” – Chenell Basilio [1:15:00]
This episode of Growth In Reverse provides a comprehensive roadmap to building a highly successful newsletter. Through Caitlin Burgoyne’s journey, listeners gain valuable insights into effective branding, content creation, audience engagement, and monetization strategies. Whether you're a burgeoning newsletter creator or an established marketer, Caitlin’s methods offer actionable strategies to accelerate your growth and profitability.
Listen to the full episode on Growth In Reverse to uncover more strategies and hear Caitlin Burgoyne’s firsthand experiences.