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- [00:00]
Host 1
4.2 million views is what I see. How many subscribers do you think you got from those views in the last 30 days?
- [00:08]
Esteban
We can schedule about 110 posts per week.
- [00:12]
Host 2
Wow.
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Esteban
So it's like 12 posts per day.
- [00:14]
Host 1
You sent me this, like, screenshot of, like, the growth beforehand and then the growth after, and it was like, how
- [00:20]
Host 2
much AI are you using to generate this? Because I don't feel like this is humanly possible.
- [00:23]
Esteban
We built this app and we launched it, thought of, everyone should use it, everyone should download it, it's meant for everyone. And then no one downloaded downloaded it. Only people with ADHD did. Two months in, we actually started getting people paying for the newsletter more than what we were getting for people who were paying for the ADHD meal planner. And the conversion just went like crazy.
- [00:47]
Host 1
Well, Esteban, thanks for coming on the Growth in Reverse podcast. We're excited to chat today.
- [00:52]
Esteban
Thank you so much for having me over. It's an awesome experience. I mean, I saw you both at the event earlier this year, so it's kind of, like, surreal to now be part of the of the podcast. And so thank you so much for having me over.
- [01:05]
Host 1
Yeah, I'm so excited because the whole way this came about was that you actually sent me an email with, like, this huge document and you were like, hey, by the way, that talk you gave at the New Media Summit last month, we actually did something from that, which never happens. Just for clarity, like, no one ever sends these emails. So the fact that you, like, took what I had been talking about and went ahead and acted on it was awesome. So kudos to you. Appreciate that. It's like the highest compliment you could ever give me, so I appreciate it. So let's jump in for the ADHD Weasel is the name of your newsletter. How did you guys start this thing? How did you start the newsletter? And when was that?
- [01:45]
Esteban
Yeah, it goes actually way back. So we started working together, like, three years ago as a company or a startup. And when we started, we wanted to just do something around food waste because we were like students living by themselves for the first time, meaning that they get to actually manage their own groceries. And we were experiencing a bunch of food waste personally. And yeah, we wanted to build a startup. So it's like, okay, let's just try to fix this problem that we are currently having. And so we built this app. We actually didn't do the proper research and customer discovery problem discovery that we should have. We just wanted to build a solution and change the world. And we launched it, thought of Everyone should use it, everyone should download it. It's mean for everyone. And then no one downloaded it. Only people with ADHD did. So it was a grounding moment. But at the same time, our mentor sort of highlighted that as like, there's a pattern here. What's the thing? Who are the people downloading it and why? So we just started having calls with them. We realized that there was like a deeper issue or like a deeper problem. Not just food waste, but like food related overwhelm. It's what we ended up describing it as. And we decided to pivot, decided to try to understand what's this thing between food overwhelm and people with adhd, why did they download the app? And so that was like a year into the entire sort of like cycle. We spent like the next six months to eight months after that just talking to anyone we could and reaching out to ADHD organizations, to practitioners. And we ended up landing like 200 calls, 300 calls in that sort of like six to eight month period. We ended up learning also that we had adhd. And it's like a crazy, crazy sort of like journey and entire like cycle. And, and, and yeah, we decided to now build something specifically for people that struggled with food overwhelm that had adhd. So we launched into this ADHD meal planner journey. We did that for a couple of months and as we were doing that and talking to more of these people coming in, we realized that there was like this gap of like just talking more about ADHD for late diagnosed ADHDers in particular. And we were learning about it ourselves from our own experience. And we just thought of like, maybe this could be a good marketing channel. We were starting to use Instagram threads to find people and we were sort of like cracking different ways to get to more people. And it seemed like a good idea. Like, okay, like we see these formats were working. Maybe we can open it up and not be like super close about food and ADHD, but just late diagnosed ADHDers. And as we were shifting this tool that was our ADHD Meal Planner, which was a website, we were shifting it into a mobile app because it was just what our users were asking for. As we were doing that, we launched the newsletter as a side thing. My co founder at the time managed the entire product thing and just he's a developer, so he was doing the app and I was just sort of waiting and just, what can he do? And we decided like, okay, maybe we launched this newsletter on substack and you've been doing good on threads so let's just do the same, create a new account and just try to do a newsletter. So two months in, we actually started getting people paying for the newsletter and like, pledging on substack more than what we were getting for people who were paying for the ADHD meal planner. And we decided to, okay, let's just erase the meal planner and let's just go for all in on the. On the newsletter. So let's just like dive into it and. And another pivot later, then we're fully into the ADHD weasel. And, yeah, that's sort of how we landed. I think I gave a pretty long explanation, but it's like the entire context into our ADHD weasel journey.
- [05:39]
Host 1
Nice. I'm looking at a substack now. It looks like the first post you had on there was from February 7th of 2025. Does that sound right?
- [05:45]
Esteban
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So just over a year and a half. Almost a year and a half. Yeah. Yeah.
- [05:51]
Host 1
Wow. And you now have like 287,000 followers on threads too, which is crazy.
- [05:57]
Esteban
Yeah, yeah. That's been our main acquisition channel.
- [06:01]
Host 2
Dang. I just want to go back to your story, and it really highlights, like, a lot of people are like, I'm going to start up this newsletter and all of a sudden grow, and, you know, it's going to be a success pretty quick. And I really like that you. You started from one point and you didn't just give up. You just kind of finding these threads, these through lines, through all of the. Through all of the data you'd been collecting and the customer feedback and the research, and eventually kind of made your way. You know, a lot of people would have probably given up along the way, but you guys kept pushing through and listening to people getting research as opposed to just doing it on your own or. Or stopping. So I want to commend you for that because that's. That's not easy, and it takes a lot of, you know, a drive and willpower. So first of all, that's awesome, and I think it's a good lesson for a lot of people listening who start something, it's like, oh, it didn't work. I guess I'm going to close it down. You're proof that you can keep going and build something that's worthwhile.
- [06:57]
Esteban
Yeah. Thanks, Dylan. I mean, it's part of the entire drive of us just wanting to be like startup founders and then just landing in this newsletter space and finding it fun and awesome and finding a community that we related with and we wanted to, like, Connect with and solve problems to and talk to. Because the newsletter ended up being like a source for us to respond to all the things that we were hearing in these calls. Because we were having calls and it was like their entire lives is way more complex than just ADHD and food. So that's how we ended up, like, landing the topics and just talking about ADHD was like, based on what people were telling us during the calls and based on what we were trying to learn from them and from our ourselves as well. And it was a pretty awesome journey in the terms of just like, how it organically pushed us towards like, building the newsletter and what to write about and how to write it and who to write it for as well.
- [07:58]
Host 1
Yeah, I love this. This reminds me, we had Sam vanderwillen on the podcast recently, well, a couple of times. And she was talking about how she did like over a thousand free calls with customers of hers. And it's just, I'm hearing a parallel of like, get on calls with people and ask what they want, see what they are struggling with and actually just go build that thing. And that's what has driven your success, her success. And it just sounds like such a good idea for people to. Hey, if you really don't know where to start, you don't have content ideas. You're not sure what your readers actually want. Like, just get on a call with them and talk to them and listen.
- [08:32]
Host 2
Talk to people, man. Yeah, yeah, it could be that easy.
- [08:35]
Esteban
I would even push it forward, like, yeah, after the start, even like we were doing, like, we're still doing calls, like almost every week. We sort of like, stopped lately. But like, we've. That's been a constant since we started. We sort of like changed the focus of the calls, of course, but it's always such a rewarding, like, thing to do because you get to actually talk to the people who read your content. And sometimes like you create this like, articles or pieces and you like, sort of like by yourself. You send them out to the world. You probably get a comment and a like. But then you forget about like the real human reading it and just like how it impacts their life. So getting into a call with them and them saying, like, oh, you know that piece? I showed it to my partner and it changed my dynamic and it had this impact. So it's like, it's much more powerful than any other sort of like on Instagram or follower and thread. So it really pushes us forward towards like, building something that we one for people that we actually care about.
- [09:34]
Host 2
That's awesome. I love it. Let's get into a little bit of the nitty gritty of the newsletter. Now. I'd love to know sort of how big your audience is right now in terms of the newsletter. We talked about threads. You've got over 280,000 followers on threads. So let's quickly touch on how big is a newsletter. How do you drive revenue? You don't have to tell us your revenue numbers, but how do you drive revenue and that kind of stuff.
- [09:57]
Esteban
Yeah, in terms of newsletter subscribers, I think we're at just over 36,000 around those numbers. And revenue is just a substack paid subscription. Just people that paid for the content. There is some of the content is paywalled.
- [10:14]
Host 2
Quick pause. You just heard Esteban say they had 36,000 subscribers and a six figure business. Well, we wanted to know exactly how he built that. So we turned his whole content system into a free breakdown. It's called the 36K Subscriber Content Machine. His posting split, his batching processes, all of it. Grab it@growthinreverse.com Esteban that's E S T E B A N and we'll email it straight to you. Now back to the show.
- [10:41]
Esteban
Yeah, we do like two formats per week. We have the ORI Wednesday newsletter which comes with the worksheet, tackling like more of a deep dive into specific problem or a topic. And then our attempt at making our actionable section and tips into a worksheet that people can sort of like put their minds into. Because that's something we heard from the beginning. Just people with ADHD like, hey, I love all these ideas, but where do I start? Like, how do I get going? And it's like, okay, let's just make a worksheet specifically for you. We tried different formats, different designs and we ended up landing on something that most people liked. So we have this worksheet for paid subscribers, although I think once a month we still do the one that's free for everyone. And then on Saturday we do a bit more of like a personal reflection piece maybe something that we've been sort of like thinking of our own. And it's not as much of like a scientific driven like deep dive. It's more of like a reflection. And then we also have some guest writers coming in here and there. If there's a topic that we can't speak on because we're not experts but our audience is asking to learn more about, then we just look for someone who, who can actually write a good piece and we bring them over.
- [11:50]
Host 2
Can you tell us what your, your tiers are or how you, how you're pricing that out and if it's monthly or annual or how that works?
- [11:57]
Esteban
Yeah, it's a. $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year for the, for the paid subscription.
- [12:02]
Host 2
Okay. And then with the paid you get a little bit of extra content for, for subscribing.
- [12:07]
Esteban
Yeah.
- [12:08]
Host 2
Okay.
- [12:08]
Esteban
Yeah, you get to go through the pay to the paywall and then you also get the worksheets.
- [12:12]
Host 2
Okay, nice.
- [12:14]
Host 1
So it looks like you have about 36,000 free subscribers. Are you willing to share how many paid subscribers you have or.
- [12:22]
Esteban
Yeah, I think we had over 830 around those numbers. It depends on the churn and the growth, but I think it would be around those numbers. 830,000 subscribers.
- [12:33]
Host 1
So sounds like easily a six figure business, which is great. That's awesome. I like this. When did you launch the paid side of things? Was it as soon as you started? Was it a few months later? How did that go?
- [12:47]
Esteban
No, it was like we. Our idea with the newsletter was just sort of like let's find more people. It seems like we were cracking threats for the meal planner, for the food waste. Ended up like ADHD meal planner, sort of like journey. That's how we were landing a bunch of the calls. Just like doing like shoutouts and call to actions and just dropping our calendly. Like you have adhd, you strok with food. Want to talk to students who are doing research on it. Here's our calendly and we were finding some formats that were like getting virality and just like working for us in terms of conversions. And I think at some point we did like just drop your email sort of thing. And we got like a couple hundred emails from something that went viral. And that's how we sort of like got the idea of like maybe we should send them emails. Like we should look into newsletters like this, this is a really good, like they're giving us their emails, they want to learn more. Like why don't we tell them what we learned in the research? Like why don't we like share more stuff? And then that ended up landing on the. Actually let's just talk about adhd. Like let's just keep on giving value to these people who are having calls on and just like let's see what happens. And the initial idea was just to use it as this like marketing channel funnel where we like try to sell the meal planner for ADHD years at the bottom. But then at the Top. It's just like talking about ADHD and maybe we monetize through paid advertising or. Yeah, we didn't really plan it out, we just launched it. And then I remember the day where we got a couple of pledges. We didn't know that was a thing, but a couple of people just pledged to subscribe. We didn't even have the pay tier. Someone just said, I think this is worth my money even if you guys are not like asking for it. So here's my money. And that probably changed our lives more than any other sort of like little thing because it made us realize like this is generating enough value for people to give us money. And at the time it was like similar to what we were asking for the meal planner. But it was so hard to get people to that end of the funnel of like, okay, pay us for the meal planner that it was just like, okay, let's just open the paid tier and let's try to talk to them and ask them what they want. They wanted worksheets, so we filled worksheets and asked for their money and that's how it happened.
- [15:16]
Host 1
Wow, I love that just like accidental kind of paid newsletter. That's great. Are you doing sponsorships too or is it just paid newsletter at this point?
- [15:27]
Esteban
Not yet. I think it's something that we've thought of and it's sort of like in the pipeline because of who doesn't want to make more revenue and make the best out of the newsletter space. But yeah, it hasn't been that easy. We tried using paid for a bit and using different, like having a media kit and sort of like putting it somewhere like, oh, you want to sponsor us? Here's our link and just reach out to us. But the actual effort of trying to find sponsors was time consuming and we wanted to just spend more time doing the more of the fun part, to be honest. Just like talking to people and doing the marketing and seeing how we could grow more than growing the revenue just for the sake of growing the revenue. But we're still like, that door's still open. I know. Substack just launched the sponsorship kit for bestsellers. I've looked into it barely, but yeah, hopefully within the next couple of months. It's an avenue that we are exploring.
- [16:34]
Host 2
Nice. I think one way you could go, if you haven't already thought about this, which you probably have because you're smart guys, but looking at other ADHD adjacent types of newsletters and see who's sponsoring them and just start making a list and be like, oh, these would be great brands. If they are willing to sponsor another newsletter in our niche, they might be willing to sponsor ours too. So that's one way you could go about it too.
- [16:55]
Esteban
I think that's a great idea and definitely something. I think we probably looked into it when we were trying to find sponsors, but we had to make a decision over where to spend the time, and that sort of, like, fell off the table. But I feel now we'll probably be more ready to look into it. So definitely a thread I would follow for sure.
- [17:15]
Host 2
Cool. Should we talk about the quiz?
- [17:17]
Esteban
Yeah. Yeah, let's go. Okay.
- [17:20]
Host 2
Okay. Well, tell us about. We led into it a little bit at the beginning that you started this quiz because you saw Chanel's talking about at the New Media Summit back in February about success that people were having with these quizzes. And so you guys decided, hey, let's actually act on this, which not a lot of people at conferences do. And so I guess tell us about what you created and then how it's working for you. Like, what have been the results? Yeah.
- [17:48]
Esteban
At that time, we had run this bottleneck analysis into, like, okay, what's. What's going on? Like, why is revenue not growing as much as it was growing on October or September? Like, where are the different bottlenecks, essentially, of the business and how can we grow faster? And one of the things that we realized is that we were sort of like exhausting our free subscription pool and we were not growing new free subscribers in order to then get them to convert to paid subscribers. And we also saw that the best conversion rate came from organic acquisition, which was most of our acquisition. It still is, but then the question is, how can we maximize that? Funny thing is that we ran this analysis maybe the week before going to the conference. So we were at the conference and we saw, like, all these really smart people talk and just say stuff. So we had a bunch of notes and I remember Chanel's session that I had like all these notes and I highlighted quiz like five times. And we went to like, debrief the. The call. Later, like that day in the Airbnb, me and my co founder, and it was like one of the things like, hey, I'm going to go back home and I'm going to immediately try this. And yeah, we ended up in the implementation side of things. I think what I did was like, I probably downloaded all of the slides from the presentation. I also downloaded the transcript from the presentation so that I didn't miss anything. Created a new terminal. We Use cloud code a lot for operations and just building stuff quickly and websites and yeah, sort of like dropped it all there. I'd like a four hour session into how this is going to look. Then did some research into, okay, if we do a quiz, what really is the outcome that we want to do? Because we want to do ADHD types, but I don't want to get into the science of the actual types. I want to divide the types into weasel types and where in our community do you fit? And then have all of these different sort of like subtypes and based on what the answers that they give us. Then have these quiz results. Then talk to our illustrator. Made a different card for each quiz result and yeah, after that we just sort of launched it and of course we made some iterations on it and we launched it and instead of having our soft stack link, we just added that same call to action, same threads, sort of like content and format, just changing the quiz one for the other. Of course now having a customized landing page, we could see way more stuff than what substack allows us to see. So that was also pretty encouraging. And the conversion just went like crazy in terms of like, I think it was like 7x or 6x the conversion. And at that time we were also like, okay, let's open up to to paid ads on Facebook because there was another call, another speaker that talked about it. I think it was Erica from 1440. So that was another thing that we did. And then we also realized that the quiz was converting really well for a low cost per lead on meta. So that was also encouraging. And yeah, I think I'm going to start going in circles now, but I hope that's a good journey map of the, of the quiz.
- [21:18]
Host 1
Yeah, no, it's awesome. So just for context because I had to go back and look. So the New media summit was February 26th and 27th. You sent me this email on like April 15th, so about a month and a half later. But you implemented this like it shows the quiz launches March 6. This was like a week you guys did this in. So like just incredible speed. I love it. You sent me this like screenshot of like the growth beforehand and then the growth after. And it was like from 17 subscribers a day up to 125 was the daily average. And you said your peak single day was like 308 subscribers. And I was like, this is awesome. Like just. I like so many kudos to you for putting this into play so fast and having it work and iterate and all that stuff. Like, nobody does this. So thank you.
- [22:12]
Esteban
Thank you for the framework and all the ideas. I would have honestly had done it quicker, but Matt took some time to share the slides and I was waiting for the day that Matt shared the slides. And once he shared it, I was like, okay, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I already had a quiz sort of idea in mind, but I wanted the transcript and everything from the, from the actual session so that it could be as close as possible and I'm not like missing anything. And then I could actually implement the tool the best I could.
- [22:47]
Host 1
That's awesome. So it's Matt's fault it took so long.
- [22:50]
Host 2
It could have been faster. Yeah.
- [22:53]
Esteban
You can shorten a week.
- [22:55]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [22:56]
Host 2
Oh, man. In this graph, it shows that the Weasel quiz pulls roughly 88% of your total acquisitions for, like, subscribers. Is that correct in terms of like all new subscribers?
- [23:09]
Esteban
I wouldn't. Yeah. At least for that analysis that we did. That's right. Yeah.
- [23:14]
Host 2
Okay, that's wild. So you're essentially running through two ways, through threads, which is like organic, quote unquote free, and then you're running it through meta ads like you had talked about. And it looks like your conversion on those, the paid were a little bit higher even, or at least were, geez, what 50, 53% versus 32% like paid to organic. So it just, it's really interesting to me that even though you were. People were like getting shown this advertisement, they were still converting really well. So you really, you really hit on something. I'd be curious to know how your ads looked in matter, what you were like, how you came about that. Because you could have this really great product or lead magnet like the quiz, but if you don't know what you're doing with meta ads or you don't have good creative and that sort of thing, that's going to fall flat. So what was your process with using meta ads for. For creating that. For creating that content and that in that creative.
- [24:13]
Esteban
Yeah, meta ads was. Was an interesting journey. It was also something that we sort of like used the blueprint from Erica's talk because we didn't know anything about meta ads. So it's like, okay, we don't know anything about the quiz, anything about meta ads. Let's just download the transcript and let's just like run it through a terminal and see if we can use it as a blueprint. Meta as has an MCP you can connect to Claude. And that's how I use it. As like be my mentor. Like, imagine You're Erica. Everything that she says is like pretty much like the blueprint that we want to implement. And that's what we used at the beginning. We have now stopped, like now a couple of months in. We've stopped meta ads now because we're focusing more into the quality of the subscribers and trying different stuff. But yeah, that's pretty much how we implemented it. We were testing new creatives every eight days to two weeks, which was Erica's blueprint, and doubling down on the ones that worked, looking at what other people in the space were using for ad creatives, and just trying to implement it into our thing, a format that worked amazingly, that it was just like a test that we. That we ran was like actually trying to copy a format of threads that we know went viral, putting it into Canva and just using exactly like, almost as if it's like Facebook organically showing you a thread, but it's just an ad and it's just our ad and just using that like, thread format into it and then just pretty much using the call to action as like the quiz or anything else really. But in just in terms of like, meta creatives, that. That worked amazingly because it felt like, maybe this is my hypothesis, it's because it felt like organic to an extent, so it didn't feel too salesy. And it was not about like, okay, this is our newsletter. It's like just us saying something like, super hyper specific that we know our audience connects with something that's valuable because it's just giving them knowledge and just like information that it's valuable to them and it's something they can reflect with. And if that's interesting enough, then they'll just click on it. And then if that comes with a lead magnet that's strong enough for them to say, like, am I a weasel? What type of weasel am I? And it's like, okay, let me figure this out. And then it's like, oh, here's your weasel type. But first give us your email so that we can send you the results of the weasel type. And all of this sort of like funnel connected into this really amazing and efficient acquisition source.
- [26:43]
Host 2
And so you guys were using. You're using substack, but you did. You mentioned Beehive as well in the report for segmentation. Yeah, yeah, okay.
- [26:51]
Esteban
So, yeah, we were using Beehive because. Yeah, sorry, no, Beehive is just sort of like a marketing tool for us because it's how we are getting the. Because we built the webpage or the lead magnet. We first Actually started building lead magnets on Beehive itself because they could use like the email gates and all that stuff. But then I realized I'm not particularly technical, but just with using cloud code and just having like some idea into. Into what I want to build, it was really easy to just build lead magnets and websites and connect them to Beehive through their MCP and just. Or through their API. Sorry. And then just get anyone who's putting their email here, just send it to Beehive and then using Beehive and the custom fields to start to categorize them better. Like what were their quiz responses. And then on top of that, now that we're trying to segment our audience better and understand their demographic and trying to double down on a specific segment and niching down we can run because of this custom page, we can run different things and questions like your age range if you have ADHD or you're just curious about it or these different sort of questions. And we can use Beehive to segment our, our new subscribers and then export them into, into substack. But also like knowing who they are or like tagging them in different, at different levels.
- [28:18]
Host 1
Yeah, I noticed after somebody goes through the quiz you ask for their email and then right after that you ask them like their age and one like their biggest struggle or one other question that you had. So it's super smart because you're just getting that first party data right away. I'm curious, you said there's six different types weasels. Does each one get a different email sequence after that? And like what are you promoting inside of each of those email sequences? Like any paid product or anything like that or is it just the paid newsletter?
- [28:50]
Esteban
Just the newsletter. But we do run different email sequences in terms of if they are the emotional amplifier type, for example, it would be more about rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria and things related to more of the emotional struggles. And even in the welcome email itself, we even link some articles that we think they're going to like. So it is as customized as possible in terms of a journey of now we know what they struggle with, where they fit within our ADHD we tool sort of like map. So let's just send them what we think is going to be the most valuable to them. And if it works out because they find value, hopefully they end up becoming a paid subscriber.
- [29:36]
Host 1
Okay, how are you? Because I know substack doesn't talk well with other tools. So like if someone does become a paid subscriber, like is it Are you able to see like. Like, tie it back to their Beehive record of, like, hey, this person took the quiz, they ended up becoming a paid subscriber? Or is that a little blurry?
- [29:53]
Esteban
Yeah, we. It is a little blurry, but it becomes more clear as we run different filters through them. And what we do is we just import everything into Substack, like manually from Beehive. I mean, they. They get the sequence. Once the sequence is over, then I just manually import them. I do it. I think it's every Tuesday and Friday. Good reminder that I have to do it today. I haven't done it.
- [30:17]
Host 2
Are you running these sequences through Beehive or the sequences going through substacks? I know Substack has recently launched subs. Okay, so the main newsletter, the weekly broadcasts, and the paid is all run through Substack, but then the specific sequences related to your weasel type with quiz are going out through Beehive.
- [30:36]
Esteban
Yeah. Any sort of acquisition. It's not only because we have different landing pages that we've trained, because we're always, like, testing new stuff. Let's test this landing page, see how it converts. All of those custom landing pages are connected to Beehive because of how it allows us to. From a marketing tool perspective, it's really awesome at categorizing and tagging and just keeping that as the source and hub data for. For the new acquisitions from the custom pages for both paid and organic acquisition. And what we do is just like we input them into Substack twice a week just before the newsletter goes out, and we import the emails that have already seen the entire email sequence. So once they're done with the email sequence, which is, I think it's 16 days, then they become like, okay, they're good to import into Substack. So what the reader sees is just like their email sequence. And then they still get emails from us, but now they're fully on track with the entire sort of like, community of weasels that are just living in substack.
- [31:42]
Host 2
Right. I think it. This opens up the maybe sort of obvious next question is, why are you not just using one platform instead of 2?
- [31:52]
Esteban
Yeah, that is a good question. It's something we've debated back and forth, and it's saying, why are we paying substack like 16% of our revenue and also paying Beehive? I think it's something along those lines. I might be exaggerating just because I feel hurt by substance.
- [32:09]
Host 2
I know they do 10, but with the processing fees, it's probably up Closer to that.
- [32:13]
Esteban
Yeah, Yeah, I think that's like, what the total of the analysis, that maybe it's a little bit lower than that. So don't quote me on that, but I might just be exaggerating. But we haven't changed because a lot of our acquisition also comes from substack nodes and Substack has proven to be really good at getting paid subscribers and discoverability. And I mean, it's an open question that we keep going back and forth on. Should we switch? Should we not switch? Why are we also now spending 200, $300 in beehive? Just because, like we have this long email list. So the one thing that I'm doing now, it's actually like a task that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks is like not to pay for Beehive, like high tiers. So when we get the, when we make the imports from the. From Beehive into. Into substack, just make a copy on like Google Sheets and with all of the data that we have on Beehive that way, it's not just that way, that's just like increasing our costs. So we can just like use Google Sheets as the hub of the tags and everything where they came from when they subscribe, their weasel type and all of that. So using Beehive only for those 16 days for tagging for the API and then that's hopefully reducing our costs by a couple hundred bucks.
- [33:41]
Host 2
So then you delete.
- [33:42]
Esteban
Haven't fully implemented it. I'm. Yeah, I'm not deleting yet. I haven't fully tested the Google Sheets enough to make sure I can delete the emails from Beehive. The email. I'm sorry the Google Sheets is working. But yeah, it's one of the tasks that's running on the back of my mind and I haven't fully.
- [34:04]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean if you're not sending other emails from there, it makes sense to just. Why would you pay for all of those people you're not even emailing anymore from?
- [34:11]
Host 2
Boris or even just unsubscribe them? Because I don't think you get charged for unsubscribes in your database in Beehive. I could be wrong. I don't kit. You don't.
- [34:20]
Host 1
But yeah, yeah, but then if he wants to go and re. Like start actually using Beehive, I don't know that he can resubscribe those people
- [34:28]
Host 2
as a point as opposed to deleting. I don't know.
- [34:30]
Host 1
That's.
- [34:31]
Host 2
Yeah, it's a good area. You'd have to look into that.
- [34:33]
Esteban
Yeah, yeah. Again I have done half of the task, so I'm still in the. I haven't done the unsubscriber deleting. So that's probably why I meant in such a great response there.
- [34:46]
Host 1
Interesting.
- [34:46]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [34:47]
Host 1
Okay, so I want to talk about Threads and Substack Notes because a lot of people are not using threads to go. But also just hearing you. Yeah, but just hearing you say that actually Substack Notes is now your biggest driver. I'm curious how you're thinking about both platforms and are you taking emphasis away from Threads now and focusing more on Substack Notes or what does that look like?
- [35:09]
Esteban
Yeah, actually this week and last week I've been spending a little bit more time on Substack Notes and yeah, how I go about it. On Monday I do like an analysis of how the last week went. I use Publer, it's like the tool for scheduling specifically for threads. For Substack Notes, Substack just launched a tool for, I mean their in house like scheduling tool. So I just do the same on Monday for both. I do like, I run an analysis, I look at all of our posts for the week for both threads and Substack Notes and during the week I just like scroll through the platforms and I find different contents and formats that other creators are using that are going viral or are hitting notes for people and I just like save them. Then when I do this analysis process I sort of like share everything to this cloud terminal and I just like go back and forth into like what happened this week, what worked, what didn't, what's the breakdown of the call to actions that we used, what links did we use, what lead magnets did we use? Quiz vs. Subscribe page. Do we want to do just regular substack landing page, just like all of these different things that we're currently testing and just get a read into how they perform, different proposals into what it's going to change for the week and then for threads. Yeah, I guess bringing it back a little bit because this is sort of like the fully finished like version of like me working in it for a year now, understanding what's like the optimal sort of like velocity and framework to run threats under. But at the beginning it was just like all manual. Like it was like taking like blurbs from our newsletter and posting it in Substack Notes, taking a format that we know was going viral and applying it to like our own newsletter and our own concept and just trying it out and just doing it manually, not even scheduling, just doing five to eight posts a day, just doing it on my phone and just seeing what worked. And through that sort of trial and error process, we landed on different formats that we knew were working. We also realized that threats has this wave of being where there's different things that trends that go viral in terms of formats that then you sort of like, if you catch them and you apply them, they become viral and then you might catch up to them and then they sort of like die off. Like the algorithm just sort of like kills them off after a couple of weeks. So you need to be in this constant, like, search of like, what's working, what's not. And then also having like your backbone of like, oh, this format in particular has always worked well for me. Let me just keep on trying it. Or threats might kill it for a week or so, but let's bring it back and test it again. And it's like this constant trial and error. Now with Publer, which we started using I think around Feb or January of this year, we can schedule about 110 posts per week.
- [38:13]
Host 2
Wow.
- [38:14]
Esteban
So it's like 12 posts per day.
- [38:17]
Host 2
110 posts a week. 12 posts per day on threads, Something like that.
- [38:21]
Esteban
Sometimes it's like we're posting too much. Let's bring it down to 100. Sometimes it's not that much. Let's do 130. And it's right now it looks like that. 120. 110 posts per week. And yeah, it depends on the format. There's also like a sweet spot with the amount of links that you can put in. Like, like, that's a personal hypothesis that I have that I've been like testing. And it's like, you need some of like, some posts that are like, not links, not anything you're not like trying to sell. You're just trying to get people to resonate and like and comment, and that's it. And if you do that, then you have like this constant inflow of views and engagement to your account. And our account has between like 4 to 8 million views per month based on this sort of like, okay, we're just like posting out every Monday. I just go in, I make the post for the week, during the week, I just like, save the references that I feel will be valuable for Monday. And then that's how Threads goes. And then substack is similar, but it's different in terms of like, how quick it goes. You can't really post that much in subset because There isn't that much people as interest viewing the platform. And the algorithm just works differently in terms that it's slow rolls and it shows older posts in people's feed. So it's more of like, you know what, like just make posts a little bit longer, have more format flexibility. You can use bolding, you can use like full quotes, you can use italics. So for people with adhd, all of these like things that help them digest the text better always helps. So if you can try different frameworks of structures of digesting using a hook that's just hyper specific and relatable, then using a bit of a science bit into it into, okay, this is actually what's happening and why. This is the why of this experience to you. And then sort of like some tips. So almost like a mini newsletter in a post that works well. And then sometimes a thread goes insanely viral, like couple hundred thousand views. So I might just copy and paste it into substack note just to see like, okay, people are resonating with this. It might work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But it's part of this trial and error where substack notes is similar enough that you can feed into from threads, but it's its own little monster.
- [40:52]
Host 1
Are you repurposing anything? Like, that's a lot of content. I'm just wondering if there's times where you're like, okay, this generally does well, let's go ahead and like repost it in 30 days or whatever.
- [41:02]
Esteban
Yeah, I do have some, some winners. And there is like there are times where my Mondays are going to this rabbit hole where I'm like, what, what was that thing that I posted like two months ago that went crazy viral? Why, why am I not posting that again? Or I might feel like substack is not working. I mean, sorry, substack threats is not working as much as it was like week prior. So I run like a deeper analysis with cloud and it's like, but like what was the. How was the verbiage different? Like not only looking into the formats, but the tone and the topic and all of that. And then there are some winners to answer your questions that I tend to go back into. But it's also part of like these like trends and things that the algorithm just does on its end. And it's like you might post exactly the same post exactly the same day and time, but two weeks apart. And substack might grab it. I mean, sorry, threats might grab it and make it a hundred thousand views post or it might Just hide it and you might just get a couple of likes and then that's just the way of the platforms. That's how I look at it.
- [42:08]
Host 2
Yeah, I have so many questions.
- [42:09]
Host 1
Go ahead Delvile.
- [42:10]
Host 2
Oh, I just have so many questions around. You're, you're, you have.
- [42:14]
Host 1
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:15]
Host 2
Like the 110 posts per week just threw me for a loop. The 12 posts a day, I was just looking on one platform. So I was looking at your threads and you posting once an hour. So it's like, it's like there's like my guess is you do like a 12 hour window from maybe 5am to 5pm or something like that and you're, you're scheduling out these posts once per hour. And a lot of these posts even in threads have like a almost a thread nature to them where you're like you post the original one and then an hour later there's another attached comment below it. And what's going through my head here is how do you have the time and focus and energy to do so much of this content on social and then still run a successful weekly newsletter? Also an attached paid newsletter with additional content like how much? I guess what I'm trying to get at is how much AI are you using to generate this? Because I don't feel like this is humanly possible.
- [43:08]
Esteban
Yeah, no, I mean to answer your question, question like the reply threats on threats itself. That's part of why I chose Publer. Because something that I realized is that if you put a link on the post right when you post it, threat sort of like hides it because it's like okay, this guy's like selling something,
- [43:28]
Host 2
trying to get him off. They're trying to take people off platform.
- [43:30]
Host 1
Right?
- [43:31]
Esteban
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I put like a condition on the last post on the last comment or the last thread where it's like wait 10 minutes or wait 30 minutes and then after those 30 minutes post the link and or post like the actual thread that has the link and that's how we manage it. Again it's just a factor of popular. And for the actual content on the newsletter, that's where my co founder comes in. He's like the one that gets like the product side and he's actually doing like the product, the writing the thing and like the. There's also part of the threads which doesn't happen weekly but happens monthly is that my co founder schedules the entire posts for the, for the month in advance. So he has all of the drafts ready. I download the drafts as PDFs and based on formats that we know that work to lead people into newsletter articles. Specifically, I run a similar sort of like content creation session where I create 4 to 5 threads posts that all lead only to that newsletter. And those posts are like hyper specific, like very, very like tailored for people to read that thread and then say like, oh, I actually want to read more about rsd or I want to read more about task initiation and how, how to do that. So we write like five to four posts that come out the day of and directly lead to that article on substack instead of leading to the lead magnet. And that's part merging that acquisition and also making us feel like there's a newsletter article coming out, let's make content for it. Because there's this pressure of, okay, we created this newsletter article, we're creating all these posts, how we make sure that we're creating content for each article. So each article is getting its fair shot. And yeah, that's part of it. Something that I have in mind as well. It's to create more of these posts that we know have done really well in terms of conversions and getting people to, to the platform and making them a little bit more evergreen. So trying to implement something of like, okay, once a month we have two to two to three posts for this newsletter. And it's something that I haven't implemented, but it's in the back of my head.
- [45:50]
Host 1
This is awesome. Okay, wait, so back to the formats you said you were going through. Are you just like going through, whether like on substack notes or on threads and like going through the feed and seeing what posts are doing well, maybe outliers for a smaller account or like, how are you like honing in on these trends that you're seeing or that are working right now?
- [46:11]
Esteban
Yeah, it's all pretty organic. I guess that the core of it is like our own formats that we worked like manually for almost a year, since Feb until November, December, when we actually started scheduling the posts. I personally that ran the threads content manually. I had a lot of experience of just like, oh, this doesn't work. This does work because I was like manually posting them, each and every one of them. So that gave me a lot of experience into what formats were things that were working recurrently and what things were more of a trend that would die in a couple of weeks. So through that, it gave me a good edge and a good eye into just scoping the platform and just finding different options and different ideas and then in the content creation process. I would say there is like a core, like 60% of things that we know how they're going to look like. And then the other 40, 35% are just like tests that we're running based on formats that we saw that week or tests based on things that worked in the past that might have died off and we just want to retry again. So there's like a core 60% and there's weeks where threats just loves us and just throws a bunch of people our way. And we might get like a million views that week and scattered through like all of our posts, or we might just have more of like a flop week where it's like only like a couple hundred thousand and which is still awesome and we're pretty grateful for. But yeah, it's just part of the tweaking and altering and it's part of like why we like to do it once a week because it's like, it gives us the flexibility enough to iterate on it and learn from what happened last week. But at the same time, it's not as tedious as doing it daily or multiple times a week.
- [48:03]
Host 1
Okay, so I'm gonna ask a question. You might not have the answer, but I'm hoping you have some estimate. Okay, so over the last 30 days on Threads, 4.2 million views is what I see. How many subscribers do you think you got from those views in the last 30 days on threads specifically? And then I guess conversely, like, how many? Because your posts on substack get a lot, quote, unquote, less engagement, still doing really well. But I'm sure because the subscribe button is right there, it's like you're probably getting a higher percentage of those people. So I'm just curious if you know what the conversion rate is. In a way.
- [48:38]
Esteban
Yeah. It's hard because if you would have asked me this like a month ago, I would have been able to tell you the exact number because I was running everything on threads to beehive. So I had like a really clear number. Now we having like different call to actions. And I did this bottleneck analysis on marketing based on the quality of the subscribers, which led me to just kill like every other link and just try getting people to the substack link. So that is gonna mess things up for this month. But yeah, I don't know if I.
- [49:13]
Host 1
I can probably, I mean, less month's numbers too. I'm just curious, like, because 4.2 million is a lot and you would think, you know, you'd probably get a good Chunk of those. But it sounds like maybe it's a smaller like maybe a few hundreds or thousands every month from Threads versus Substack.
- [49:32]
Esteban
Yeah, I'm actually going to pull the number off so that I'm not.
- [49:36]
Host 1
Sorry to put you on the spot. I'm just so curious.
- [49:40]
Esteban
No worries. Let me see what week would be a good week to analyze. Week of May. Okay. On May, the week 14th that I've been running these analysis, May 4th to the 10th, we had 124 posts. We had 9,960,000 views that week and 57,000 engagements and engagement rate was about 6%. We increased 2,000 followers only on the platform. And then in terms of acquisition of how many people converted into was above 1600 from those the threats organic.
- [50:30]
Host 1
Okay.
- [50:30]
Host 2
So 1600 new subscribers based on 2200 followers. And you could even maybe assume that some people who followed you or sorry, some people who subscribe maybe didn't even follow you potentially.
- [50:43]
Esteban
Yeah, exactly. And then also the. I actually have a good number here that you might like. The Weasel quiz that week led to 752 only from organic and the Whistle Quiz from Meta paid led to 146 new subscribers. And the Whistle Quiz organically was the biggest source of new subs that week.
- [51:10]
Host 1
Interesting. And then on Substack, are you seeing similar numbers like subscribers?
- [51:15]
Esteban
They're way lower. But the thing about Substack Notes is the quality of the subscriber because it's just showing the content to people who already have newsletter subscriptions. They probably already have their cards on the platform. So for them it's just like they might be like two clicks away from becoming a paid sub. Like if they really like your note. We've actually had this couple of notes that lead to paid subscribers. Like they see the note and they pay from the note, which is crazy.
- [51:46]
Host 2
That is crazy.
- [51:47]
Esteban
And that's where we're trying to spend more time. On Substack Notes, I felt like they were being a little bit underused and then I did the bottleneck analysis and then all of my beliefs were confirmed. I had to spend more time on Substack Notes. So that's what I'm doing this week.
- [52:05]
Host 2
Well, yeah, it sounds like one subscriber on substack is worth 10 subscribers or followers or whatever that metric is on threads or other platforms. Maybe even a multiple of more than that. Maybe one subscriber front substack is worth like, you know, 25 threads.
- [52:22]
Esteban
Yeah, yeah. I can actually look for that number up as well for that Bottleneck analysis.
- [52:28]
Host 1
The one thing I've, I'm noticing throughout this whole conversation is like the, the amount of times you're using the word analysis and I don't think so many creators do this and it's awesome. You're like, oh yeah, I'll just, every week I run this analysis and it's like, what, like, what does that look like? How are you like. And I'm sure you have this templated now through, you know, your AI tools and such where you can just say like, hey, go analyze this thing and give me a new report. But it's just, it's fascinating to hear that. So that's interesting for me.
- [52:56]
Host 2
It's like if ADHD was all for, you know, hopefully it does, but if it doesn't work out, man, you could get a job with like a, a decent sized media business running their growth and their strategy with this. Like just with what you've taught yourself. Like, this is, this is really epic. It's, it's really awesome. Should be proud.
- [53:10]
Esteban
Yeah, I appreciate it. It does give me some peace of mind knowing that there's, there's value on the, on the word analysis and on the processes. But yeah, I do run them because they do give me a bunch of piece. It's like voice is not working the way I want it. So it's like I just need the data and I just need to see it. And we just like, we firmly believe that it would just run analysis all the time and we just are really tedious with the way we put them against each other and just see how these change across time. Then we're able to take the better decisions. And it's been like that so far. Sometimes not so much. Of course there's some things that you just deem to fail on, but yeah, that's just part of it. And, and yeah, we love our analysis at the ADHD Weasel.
- [53:59]
Host 1
That's awesome. If you're ever bored and you want to jump on a call and share your screen and walk through what you're doing, I would love to see.
- [54:05]
Host 2
Yeah, absolutely.
- [54:07]
Esteban
I didn't really come prepared with all my analysis set up and I'm feeling like, where is that bottleneck? Because I want to read the numbers properly. But yeah, if you want to do that. Of course I'm always like, I'm a big nerd for, for looking at the numbers and the subscribers and the dashboard that substance gives us is not detailed enough for me. So you just have to build it ourselves.
- [54:30]
Host 1
Yeah, totally. Thank you for coming and sharing all this. This has been fascinating and awesome to see. Very much appreciate it.
- [54:38]
Host 2
Yeah, man.
- [54:39]
Esteban
Thank you for the spot. It's been awesome. It was great to see you both in Austin. I know. I got to chat a little bit with Dylan.
- [54:47]
Host 2
Yeah, it was awesome.
- [54:48]
Esteban
And one of the networking sessions and. Yeah, thanks for the spot. It's been really fun and always open to share more about what we're learning. And in terms of acquisitions and analysis and getting feedback and looking at these numbers with people is always good because it's not just me in my room with my dad next to me, just staring at me, waiting for me to throw the ball.
- [55:10]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [55:12]
Esteban
Feels more human.
- [55:15]
Host 1
Well, maybe we can get you to come hang out in the growth reverse pro community for a second, talk all about this stuff and go even deeper.
- [55:22]
Host 2
I was gonna say, if you're up
- [55:23]
Esteban
north, that would be fun.
- [55:24]
Host 1
We would love it.
- [55:25]
Host 2
If you're blowing our minds a little bit with this stuff. You would. You would definitely like. There would be brain splatter all over the place.
- [55:31]
Host 1
They would love it.
- [55:31]
Host 2
There'd be so many minds.
- [55:33]
Esteban
Yeah.
- [55:33]
Host 2
Sorry to be graphic about that, but
- [55:35]
Esteban
that would be fun. That would be fun. For sure. I'm down for that.
- [55:40]
Host 1
All right, so if people want to go check out everything you're doing ADHDWeasel.com is that the best place?
- [55:45]
Esteban
Yeah. Yeah. If they want to look at threat is the ADHD weasel. And yeah. Atwheaselet.com you should find all of our content that goes straight to our newsletter on Substack.
- [55:56]
Host 2
Sweet. If anybody has questions for you about this stuff, do you have any personal profiles that people can reach out to you or do you not want to share that?
- [56:04]
Esteban
Yeah, sure. I can share my email. It would be EstebanRockle app. That was the initial app for the food waste that failed.
- [56:13]
Host 2
Oh, nice.
- [56:16]
Esteban
Our way of honoring our humble origins. And. And yeah, they can reach out there.
- [56:21]
Host 1
Thanks again for joining us, Esteban. This is great.