✈️ How the Top Newsletter Creators Are Skyrocketing Their Growth

Featuring Chenell Basilio of Growth in Reverse

Author

Yong-Soo Chung
July 05, 2023

First-time traveler? Welcome aboard, Jetsetter! 👋🏼

Before we take-off, there’s one thing you should do:

Join 3,900+ entrepreneurs by subscribing here.

📢 Presented By: Riverside

Jetsetters, I’m excited to introduce Riverside as our sponsor for First Class Founders!

I love using Riverside to record all my guest interviews for my podcast. My favorite feature is how each recording is done locally to ensure that the sound quality is the best that it can be.

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Welcome to First Class Founders, your favorite destination to learn proven strategies to grow your business.

Want to know how the top 0.1% of newsletter operators grow their newsletter?

Yeah, me too.

Today, we’re joined by Chenell Basilio, the creator behind Growth in Reverse.

Growth in Reverse is a newsletter that deep dives into newsletter creators with over 50,000 subscribers. Chenell spends over 40 hours per week researching one creator each week.

I’ve been a religious reader (like many others) of Chenell’s newsletter to pick up bits and pieces of intel to grow my own newsletter.

During my conversation with Chenell, she didn’t hold anything back.

One thing that stood out to me was how she thinks that only 5% of these newsletter creators’ success was sheer luck and the remaining 95% was carefully calculated.

On today’s episode, you’ll learn:

  • 📑 What Chenell’s Research Process Looks Like

  • 💻 How to Build Your Tribe of Like-Minded Creators

  • 🛞 How Chenell Has Built Her Audience Growth Flywheel

  • 📜 5 Types of Newsletter Formats That Chenell Recommends 

Jetsetters… let’s get down to business!

🏷 Lost & Found

Did you miss these? Each week, I round up all sorts of interesting things I found on the internet that you missed. Enjoy!

🎛 Metrics Dashboard

I'm building First Class Founders in public. Each week, I share my numbers exclusively through subscribers of this newsletter only.

Newsletter:

  • Subscribers: 3,930

  • Open Rate: 36.4%

  • Click Rate: 4.4%

👍🏻 Recommendation: Thinking of starting a newsletter? I use and recommend Beehiiv with powerful features like boosts, recommendations, segmentations, automations, and detailed subscriber metrics.

Podcast:

  • 90-Day Downloads: 6,872

  • 30-Day Downloads: 2,334

  • 7-Day Downloads: 572

👍🏻 Recommendation: Best AI tool for podcasters? I use and recommend Castmagic for show notes, transcripts, and excerpts.

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💺 Jetsetter of the Week

The Keyword is a newsletter run by my friend Kole, a creator sharing the latest growth strategies in digital marketing. It’s packed with amazing insights for marketers.

Here's the pitch:

“Get Smarter at Digital Marketing with the 3-minute daily newsletter keeping 1K+ Marketers in the loop. Across the latest from Google, Meta, TikTok, Amazon and more.”

You can subscribe here.

✈️ Travel Further With Me

Here are 3 ways I can help you:

  1. Join First Class Founders Membership:

    • Early access to new episodes each week

    • Uncut extended guest interviews that never aired

    • Private ad-free podcast with bonus episode segments

  2. Get In Front of My Audience:

    • 17k+ Twitter followers

    • 12k+ Podcast subscribers

    • 3,900+ Newsletter subscribers

  3. Work with Me:

    • Broader strategies on a particular topic

    • Dig deeper into specific tactics on a topic

💬 Final Word

Happy 4th of July! 🎇

Hope you enjoyed some well-deserved time off with your family and friends this week.

Last Friday, I had the chance to meet Justin Gordon this week in real life, who was a past guest on my podcast.

And guess who introduced me to Justin? Chenell, our guest for this week’s episode.

The internet is a magical place.

Here’s a photo we took at the meet-up:

Thank you all and see you next week!

Yong-Soo Chung — Serial Entrepreneur, Podcaster

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