Doing Daily

Jonathan (0:4.735)
Lauren, welcome to the show.

Lauren Pearl (0:6.606)
Thanks so much for having me, Jonathan.

Jonathan (0:8.862)
For folks who are just hearing your name for the first time, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Lauren Pearl (0:14.542)
So by training, I'm a CFO and business strategist. So I've been running companies and working alongside CEOs for about 15 years. So my kind of overarching mission is to show CEOs and teams kind of how to run the business by the numbers, essentially instead of doing it by.
you know, using YOLO. I help businesses who run awesome companies based on like a gut instinct, incorporate math and numbers to make more money. So I do this in sort of two different ways with two different companies currently. The first is LPC. It's a finance advisory. So I help CEOs one -on -one make better business decisions. And the second company I just started this year, it's called Pearl and Elmore. And we're looking at company offsite conversations. So those meetings where leadership gets together all in one room in person.
And we think it's this like underutilized moment that can be the highest return on investment moment throughout the entire year. So that's kind of where we're specialized. We help you have this great conversation that can really drive impact for the rest of the year at a larger remote.

Jonathan (1:21.119)
Great, that's great. So you are here because you run a daily email list, isn't that right?

Lauren Pearl (1:26.094)
I do, I do, it's called Daily CFO.

Jonathan (1:29.311)
Great, and when did you start doing the daily list?

Lauren Pearl (1:32.974)
A few months back, I actually just had my 100th post, I think, the other week, which is very exciting.

Jonathan (1:38.973)
Isn't that funny? A few months back, a hundred posts.

Lauren Pearl (1:41.486)
It is, it's really crazy when you do it every day or every weekday like I do, you really get through a lot.

Jonathan (1:51.261)
Why did you start the daily list?

Lauren Pearl (1:53.998)
Yeah, so it's funny, I was kind of thinking about this before this interview to think...
I think I had a couple reasons. So one is, as I've been kind of running my own business, I've been thinking about marketing and thinking about the kind of things that I actually like doing versus like just, you know, what's absolutely going to work the absolute best and get everybody converted. And I really like writing. So a daily list really appealed for that reason.
And the other thing was actually I subscribed to your email list. When I first found out about you, I saw that you did a daily list. I thought about subscribing and was like, well, I don't know. That sounds like a lot, but ended up doing it anyway. I think probably through a lead magnet or something. And I just realized that I really liked it. Like I didn't mind receiving it as a viewer. It was a really nice kind of daily tip. It wasn't intrusive. It was very quick. And it left me with just kind of a daily good impression of you.

Jonathan (2:27.152)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren Pearl (2:53.216)
And so when I thought about my own net newsletter, I kind of realized like for someone who needs what I do, that's exactly the kind of person I want to leave. And I like the idea of just being kind of subtly, helpfully in their inbox every day. So that was, I think, one of my biggest push for like, I should try this. This might work for me.

Jonathan (3:10.208)
Were you nervous about starting it?

Lauren Pearl (3:12.398)
Oh yeah, I was very nervous. I was really nervous mostly because I was worried about being annoying. I help out a lot of engineering focused companies, a lot of like engineers who start businesses and a lot of them are kind of obsessed with like inbox zero, not having any email clutter. You know, they're very kind of allergic to any marketing efforts. So I was worried about kind of making them angry. But in fact,
I found like, you know, there's a couple of those folks who didn't want to receive the newsletter. That's fine. They just said no or they subscribed and they just, you know, left after a couple of posts. But there's also folks in that area who they stayed on and I see them like quoting the newsletter and like really finding things useful. And so, you know, it wasn't an unfounded fear, but it didn't make it not worth doing.

Jonathan (4:8.386)
Right. So what benefits have you gotten from the list? You just alluded to people quoting it, but are there other benefits that you or the readers have gotten?

Lauren Pearl (4:16.654)
Definitely. So I think the benefits are not exactly what I thought they would be. I think my main hope initially was like conversion. I want people to see this newsletter and fall in love with me and buy my services. That's happened a little bit. I've definitely got some folks converted from the newsletter or like referred from folks who have been following the newsletter. So it does work for that. But I think...
more immediately the benefits I saw were more almost internal. So one is it really got me much better at writing well very quickly. And that's been really, really helpful and interesting. It really doesn't take me too much time to put together a post. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it takes, you know, up to an hour, but most times it's like, you know, 20 minutes to get something together. And that's just when you're running your own business, it's so useful to be able to just like,
spin up a quick thing. It's like you always end up having to do that, whether it's speaking on a call and having to kind of like convince someone of something or writing up a sales page or making a LinkedIn post or anything. It's incredibly useful. I also found that it was the only kind of marketing thing that I did that it feels really good. Like it's a bit of like a daily moment of Zen where I get to just kind of let everything else drop out.

Jonathan (5:38.882)
Hehehehe.

Lauren Pearl (5:44.526)
and just try to be useful and try to say something true and helpful. And it's almost like the way that some folks do like morning pages and reflect on that feeling really nice. It's almost like doing the morning pages, but it's for my business and I get to share it with people who could really use kind of that.
tips and information. The other thing it's been helpful for is it's been a bit of like a body of work that I can pull from for other stuff. So like I post on LinkedIn sometimes. I've definitely been trying to grow my presence there, but it's not my favorite place to be in the world. It can get a little annoying. And it's nice to have like, I have five posts a week that I can just take, tweak a little bit and repurpose for LinkedIn.

Jonathan (6:8.962)
Right.

Lauren Pearl (6:34.414)
kind of effortlessly and it lowers my amount of time that I have to spend thinking on that platform. And then final thing I would say would be, and I've kind of tested out doing this a couple different ways, I can use it as a content generator as well. So if I have to, if I'm trying to think about making a lead generator or a course on something, or I want to market a new piece of my business or my practice, I can kind of test it out first.

Jonathan (6:40.994)
Right.

Lauren Pearl (7:4.366)
on the newsletter and I can like start to build it using the newsletter. Like if I can explain that thing in my newsletter, I can take that copy and repurpose it directly into something that I need for the business and it kind of like, I get to borrow the momentum of my daily posts to get that thing done, that writing.

Lauren Pearl (7:25.966)
Yeah.

Jonathan (7:27.234)
That's great. So it sounds like you write Monday through Friday and you said it takes you sometimes an hour but more like 20 minutes. Do you do them in batches or is it like you write one and then send it, write one, send it, write one, send it?

Lauren Pearl (7:34.518)
Yep.

Lauren Pearl (7:41.466)
Mostly I write at the day of. On occasion if I just think of a lot of good ideas all at once I'll have a couple of them like in batches ready to go. Sometimes that happens like I'll get a flurry of like ideas or an idea for a second post while I'm writing one and if that's the case I might kind of like save it and bucket it so I have it for a rainy day in case I don't feel like writing someday. Yeah but for the most part...

Jonathan (7:54.626)
Right. Sure. Is there a particular time that you do it or you just fit it in when you're in the zone or you're in the mood or you've got a spot in your calendar?

Lauren Pearl (8:13.582)
I kind of fit it in when I can. If I can't fit it in, I end up doing it late at night and wanting to go to bed becomes the pressure to get it done. But yeah, most of the time I'll try to get it maybe during the middle of the day sometime where I'm kind of like almost ready to take a break but I have a little energy for something else. I'll do it then.

Jonathan (8:20.659)
Yeah, been there.

Jonathan (8:31.875)
And is there a particular place that you write or is it just at your laptop in general?

Lauren Pearl (8:37.836)
Either at my laptop or on my phone. My method is I typically I keep kind of a running list of newsletter ideas in my notes app on my iPhone and then I will copy paste those into ConvertKit is the platform that I use. Yeah, so it just depends on what I have with me. It's a little easier to do on my laptop, but I can get it on my phone as well.

Jonathan (8:46.766)
Mm -hmm.

Jonathan (9:0.323)
That's great. I was just gonna ask what platform you use. You said ConvertKit, that's cool. Is there anything that you like or dislike about the tools that you're using? So it sounds like your whole workflow is basically on your phone, it's just flesh something out in notes on iPhone and then paste it into ConvertKit and send it. Or if you're on your laptop, maybe you compose it directly in ConvertKit and just send it. Is there anything about that?

Lauren Pearl (9:24.800)
you

Jonathan (9:29.059)
really simple workflow that you feel like you like or don't like or would improve or change.

Lauren Pearl (9:36.238)
Actually, I use it every day. So what I would...
would be like the f -

Lauren Pearl (9:49.262)
Thanks for watching.

Lauren Pearl (9:56.238)
Basically what happens is if you copy straight from notes to convert kit, or at least I do with my stack, all of the spacing gets kinda screwed up, like enters, hard returns don't go through, and then like if you, anyway, it doesn't look quite right. You have to reformat it when you get it in there.
So that's not the best, I wish that happened better. Also ConvertKit, it doesn't have like a mobile app, so if I'm doing something on my phone I have to literally pull up the browser and you know, if things don't go perfectly, if I write writing ConvertKit on my phone, I also might like lose the progress if like the connection is funky so the best go good. I've never lost like huge amount of work, but you know, it's probably just not caught up to me in terms of auto saving and a couple times where I'm like, oh, that was a good line, I don't remember.

Jonathan (10:33.921)
Oh

Lauren Pearl (10:44.816)
wise.
And then the other is sort of like moving from, I like to put my posts as well on my website so they have kind of like a kind of archive record. And I can just post them to my website and have them go to ConvertKit. But the other direction, I've not found a good way for doing that. So I actually have a very helpful intern who will take them from ConvertKit and paste them onto my blog with like the formatting and everything kind of like tweaked in so we know it looks right.

Jonathan (10:59.136)
you

Lauren Pearl (11:17.968)
So having a smoother process for that would be really cool too.

Jonathan (11:22.592)
Cool, I mean you've only been doing this for a few months, but have you ever used different tools or platforms, maybe in the past? Or is this basically your first serious email?

Lauren Pearl (11:34.542)
I ran a, or I helped run a newsletter at one of the companies where I used to be a W2. I'm trying to recall what platform I used. I think we might have used WordPress or something. It's not something I've gone to switch to. I do like that convert kit. I'm kind of used to it. I kind of know what I'm getting. I've got a little bit of automation in it for when folks sign in, they get kind of like five posts predictably that I know are ones that kind of introduce them to what the newsletter's going to be.
be like and give them some like basics around like my theory on how I look at businesses. So no, it works well enough that I haven't bothered. Yeah.

Jonathan (12:14.272)
Yeah Do you send them out at the same time every day like you write it? You know it Perhaps late at night perhaps in the middle of the day and then do you send it right then or do you schedule it for like the next morning at 9?

Lauren Pearl (12:29.166)
I only schedule it if I happen to write it the day before.
When I first started my newsletter, I tried to schedule them for the following day. So if I wanted to post on a Monday, I'd be writing on a Sunday evening and posting in the morning. That works fine. I found that I don't love writing on the weekend. For me, my newsletter goes from Monday through Friday, and I skip holidays. And if I have a day where I just don't feel like writing, I'll just skip it. I won't push it.

Jonathan (12:57.872)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren Pearl (13:3.310)
The... I've tended now as I've been doing it more often, I tend to just post on the day of and just hit like publish immediately. It's just kind of how it's evolved.

Jonathan (13:16.799)
right? It's done. You're like done. I don't have to think about this. It's out in the world. It's too late. I can't go back and edit it.

Lauren Pearl (13:19.842)
of right.
It's totally true. And like it's happened a million times where I'm like, Oh, I, you know, I spelled this word wrong or, Oh, there was a, there was a typo here. And it's like, it just kind of doesn't matter. Like people don't care. You know, the worst thing that happens is you write a post that I think the only thing that's ever happened that's caused so much subscribed is like, if I write something that's a little too like marketing heavy, like a little too salesy, cause that's what people don't want, like receiving an email. But for the most part, I mean, your, your, your email list tends to be like,
be pretty forgiving, or at least mine does. People don't have time to worry about if you made a typo, so...

Jonathan (13:57.343)
So you mentioned that sometimes you skip a day and you break for vacations and stuff. Do you announce that in any way? You're just like, oh, sorry, I missed a day yesterday. Or do you just keep rolling?

Lauren Pearl (14:8.366)
depends on how long the break's gonna be, so...
For a day where I just don't feel like it, I just skip it and I don't say anything. And I kind of think of it as like the, you call attention to something, you make it a bigger deal. Like no one noticed that my daily... Right. No one cares that my newsletter didn't go out. No one was sitting there in their inbox waiting for it to come in until midnight and notice it didn't happen. That didn't happen. That doesn't happen. So it doesn't matter. However, if I'm going to go on a vacation and I don't want to continue the newsletter throughout that time, I'll send a

Jonathan (14:21.543)
an effect.

Lauren Pearl (14:41.200)
note just kind of letting folks know what's up you know I'm heading out this is what I'm doing if I want to share that.
Also in my newsletter every Friday, early on in the newsletter as I was kind of going along, I decided that for every Friday I wanted to do kind of something special. So I do what I call the Friday Finance Break, because I'm a CFO, right? So I talk a lot about finance stuff. But on Fridays I don't. On Fridays I talk about founder mental health because it's another kind of area I'm passionate about. And so I always kind of sign off with something a little different, a little bit more about how to make this journey easier, thinking about the human
inside of things. And it plays really well into things like taking breaks. Like it's kind of part of my mission that when you take a break, it's a break. So that I do feel really comfortable bringing attention to because I want that to be kind of part of the ethos of what people take from my newsletter as well.

Jonathan (15:36.320)
Great. So let's pivot a little bit and I'd like to ask you some questions about the content itself or some more questions about the content itself. So how do you come up with enough stuff to write about that's like a crazy amount of posts, 100 posts in three months or so. How do you not run out of ideas?

Lauren Pearl (15:54.030)
They just kind of come. I think one thing that's helpful is I do keep a little bit of a backlog of different ideas I've kind of come up with.
There, throughout the day, you kind of just like bump into situations where, and again, like as you write these, your brain starts to notice little thoughts that you think throughout the day or sound bites that you hear other folks say, or, you know, even stuff that you read on LinkedIn, it's like, oh, that's so wrong. Like you start to kind of log those of like, I want to talk about this in my newsletter. This would be a good topic for the newsletter. So.

Jonathan (16:26.879)
I like that. So do you ever find yourself with writer's block you're just like staring at the screen and nothing's coming?

Lauren Pearl (16:34.294)
Honestly, it has happened a couple times. It's often like on a day where just like, oh my gosh, it's been so busy. I had like 10 customer calls or I like got really exhausted or you know, it does happen on occasion. And I think it's less, it's not that I don't have anything to write about. It's like sometimes it just, you know, just like an athlete, you hit a wall.

Jonathan (16:59.293)
Hmm.

Lauren Pearl (17:0.462)
For me, there's a couple tricks I'll try when that happens. Like one of the tricks I'll try is like I'll challenge myself to say, okay, I'm having a little trouble like writing this kind of like, you know, the typical finance haiku that I typically do that, you know, short and sweet, but you know, beginning, beginning, middle, end sort of situation that I normally strive for. Instead I'll be like, okay, Lauren, what's the shortest thing that you can write that is true?

Jonathan (17:15.615)
Yeah.

Jonathan (17:29.725)
Yes.

Lauren Pearl (17:30.416)
Like, what's the tiniest little thing? Because it's not like people are, again, the thing that's so interesting about this is like, you're trading folks their time. So like shorter is not worse. It can be better as long as it's helpful.
Sometimes I'll do that, I'll give myself that challenge. But then if I really am pushing, pushing, pushing and can't, it's like, all right, you know what? This isn't a newsletter day, that's fine. But by the next day, I'm brimming with ideas. It tends to be very rare and temporary.

Jonathan (18:1.055)
It sounds like mostly an energy thing.

Lauren Pearl (18:3.758)
Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah, it's an energy thing, not an ideas thing.

Jonathan (18:6.910)
So how long are your messages? I think you said, but how long are they usually?

Lauren Pearl (18:12.972)
I haven't done like a word count on any of them. They tend to be... I mean I've done a couple that have been like, you know, two to three lines. Those are like the how short can I make them ones. More often, it's like it's about the same size as you'd expect for like a LinkedIn post. So like...

Jonathan (18:26.366)
Yeah.

Lauren Pearl (18:34.478)
I don't even know what that would be under a word count, but it's gonna be kind of more the length of a poem or like something that you can read in under a minute. Like it's a very quick kind of like, here's an idea or here's a helpful tip. They shouldn't be sitting there reading it like for ages. It's something that they could do between like two sips of coffee.

Jonathan (18:44.125)
Right.

Jonathan (18:59.197)
Okay, that's a great one. I love that visual. Okay, so inside of the messages, so we're talking about content, how often do you promote paid things?

Lauren Pearl (19:10.670)
I've tested out a couple different ways of doing, selling my services via the newsletter. I don't do it super often. I've also played with what I put in the footer and whether that's a cell versus just kind of a reference. So to be specific with that, like...
in the footer I've played around with, you know, PS, like, are you having this specific pain point? Like, wouldn't it be nice to, you know, doing basically a sales blurb in the footer as a PS. It's been interesting. And instead what I've done now is I more just have a like a quick hit menu of like, here's how you get in contact with me. Like, here's how you book a session with me. Here's how you get in touch with me. You know, just a quick reference. And I found that like the click rate hasn't been very
different and actually it might have gone up now that it's just a reference as opposed to a cell. So for me and my email and that in my audience it seems like that's kind of the better way like it's a better it seems like folks really just kind of want a way to reach me rather than be sold on the fact that they need to. And then in the email I don't
I haven't had the best luck with selling something in an email and have someone reach out and say, oh, that's what I want to buy. What I can do, though, is allude to a part of what I might include in a sale, like a pain point, or a solution, or something like that, without selling it. And that might get some responses, some interest in my audience, that eventually could lead to a conversation that could be a sale.

Jonathan (20:46.972)
Yep.

Jonathan (20:53.886)
Yeah, let's switch over to engagement. So let's start with open rates because that's like in click throughs. Some people when they first start out, they get obsessed with that stuff. Of course, subscriber count is huge too. So how often do you actually look at it?

Lauren Pearl (21:3.950)
If... Yeah.

Lauren Pearl (21:11.438)
I look at my new subscribers kind of often mostly because I want to check if something I've done in another arena has resulted in an ad or someone new subscribing. So if I posted something on LinkedIn or I'm trying a new thing in my networking, I'll take a peek at that because it's a good indicator of how those activities are going and if it's leading to conversion to my newsletter.
In terms of open rates, I guess.
I see that when it's like, when I look at all of my broadcasts, it's right there. So I can kind of look back and see, compare from post to post and what the open rates are. But I also see that very much as just like a metric that measures like how good the headline was, like how good the subject was. Not really as a reflection of like the content itself. Cause once you, you know, you see the headline, you open it, even if you hated the content, you already opened it. So the, uh, the data that I get from that is like, oh, this topic is of interest or the
this way I wrote this subject is of interest and that's data I can later use for something like a LinkedIn for something like a sales page. Click rate again I also see it as data like I know though it's data with bias like
I know the highest click rate emails are the ones that have links in them. It's not always because folks are like, oh, really interested in that thing. It can be interesting to see like, oh, I got eight clicks on that. What are they clicking? And like, what's the story that would make sense of like why they're clicking? It's good data. But.

Jonathan (22:32.446)
Hehehehe

Lauren Pearl (22:49.262)
there's kind of contextual reasoning about it. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's just like, well, the link was available. So of course they clicked on it because it was right there.
Yeah, it's all just data to me though. None of it, you know, I don't really look at unsubscribes. I'll look at them again, because it's data. Like if someone decided on this particular day to unsubscribe and there were a couple of them, like, oh, was something in here, like, not landing right? Or did it make them think that this isn't really the right list for them? And sometimes unsubscribes, you can make it even better data by noticing like who did, because if they're in your target audience, that's really good to know.
but if they're outside of your audience it's like, oh yeah, who cares? They're not the kind of person that would be interested in it. I'm impressed they stayed at this log sort of thing.

Jonathan (23:33.181)
Right.

Jonathan (23:39.637)
So my favorite kind of engagement is replies. How many replies do you tend to get in a week?

Lauren Pearl (23:47.758)
That's tough to call. It really depends on what I'm writing about. I'd say I get at least a couple a week. I get more of them. I actually, I tend to get more replies when I'm like thinking about posting about something that's...
like a little spicy or a little like, I don't know if I want to share this. Something where it's like, oh, I want to post this on LinkedIn, but I'm really worried about what the world would think of this. I'll like try it out on my newsletter first. And I'm always glad I did because I always, for those things in particular, I always get a response that really lets me get a sneak peek on like how it makes people feel. That's...

Jonathan (24:8.605)
Hmm.
Yeah.

Jonathan (24:16.253)
Heh.

Lauren Pearl (24:35.310)
gosh this is amazing or oh this really changed how I thought about this thing or oh this really resonated yeah those feel really great those are and it's really good to know to give you the bravery to then go maybe share it on a more public forum.

Jonathan (24:49.308)
Do you generally respond to all of these? It doesn't sound like you're buried in them.

Lauren Pearl (24:55.150)
I'm not buried in them. I respond to every single one of them. Yeah, it's not a big extra.

Jonathan (25:1.981)
Do you ever get negative ones or ones that are argumentative or just disagree?

Lauren Pearl (25:9.062)
Definitely not often. I might have had like, I don't think if I've had anyone even disagree, I might have had one or two where I've had like someone offer up another opinion but never in a unkind way. Like in a like, oh, did you think about this? In an additive way. I've never had a response that's been an unpleasant experience for me personally.

Jonathan (25:26.110)
right.

Jonathan (25:34.366)
Okay, so speaking of subscribers, I know a lot of people listening are probably wondering about how to get their first subscribers. So how did you do that? Was it the first thing you did to get your first, I don't know, what you considered to be a non -trivial number of subscribers? A number of subscribers where you were like, didn't feel like you were just sending your emails to the void.

Lauren Pearl (25:57.326)
Um, my first, I thought about it in terms of like pushes. I had like two kind of quote unquote releases of the newsletter. Um, the sound on my end just changed. Is it still okay on yours? Oh, you muted. That's okay. Okay. Would you mind to ask the end of that question?

Jonathan (26:14.514)
Yep. Sorry.
Yeah, I'll ask the question again. So I know a lot of people are wondering about how to get their first subscribers if they started a list. So how did you do that? How did you get your first subscribers and how many did it take for you to feel like you weren't just sending messages to the void?

Lauren Pearl (26:35.566)
Yeah, so I started my subscriber list kind of in two waves. When I first got started, I did sort of like quote unquote beta release of my newsletter where I think it was like about 10 to 20 folks who were...
people that were in my closer network, people who I knew, like I trusted and would have like patience with me as I got started. I was very nervous, I would say, when I first got started. It's easier to recall how I felt remembering how few people I was comfortable sharing it with at first. It just like reminds me that, oh, actually I was pretty nervous. I was really worried about the daily thing and how that would feel for people receiving it. And so for those first 10 to 20, I like,
mentioned that I wanted to share this with them. I sent them an email, basically a little email with everybody BCC'd saying like, this is a thing I'm trying. Here's what it's about. Here's why I, you the fact that I was doing it as a beta and that way they were like a small, small group where I wanted to get honest impressions, honest feedback. And I think I spent a couple weeks just sharing it with them. And then the second...
wave once I'd like felt comfortable with that group. The second wave was more like everyone I could think about in my network who might find this of interest. So like...
previous clients, business owners, other service providers, folks from my Stern MBA network, folks from my BU network, folks from Deloitte, like every kind of circle of people that I could think of where we were on an email -to -email basis.

Jonathan (28:7.262)
you

Lauren Pearl (28:27.214)
I kind of shared it with them and that was like the next really big wave. And after that, I guess there was a third kind of wave was sharing it with broader network on LinkedIn, which are like, you know, folks that are kind of even beyond that. I've met most of them, but like some of them, you know, maybe no more than a zoom call mentioned that I was doing this, doing kind of a big splashy post about it. Yeah.

Jonathan (28:54.812)
And in the first emails, the personal ones to the very smallest circle, what was the reaction? So you hit send with all these BCCs, let's say there's 50 of them. And what was the reaction coming? What did you say? If it's too long, then nevermind. But basically you described what it was and why you're doing it. But what was your ask? Did you say?

Lauren Pearl (29:15.822)
Yeah.

Jonathan (29:21.373)
go to this link to sign up or did you say, reply if it's okay for me to add your email address to this thing or did you just add their email addresses and say unsubscribe if you don't want it?

Lauren Pearl (29:31.566)
I'm trying to recall. It feels like forever ago, even if it was only a couple months. I definitely did not just add them, because that wouldn't feel good. I think I provided a link for them to sign up.

Jonathan (29:40.309)
Mm -hmm.

Lauren Pearl (29:48.794)
Initially, actually, I did sort of like a double opt -in. This was, and I was glad I rolled out the beta testers because I recall in my class of doing daily, there was a bit of a discussion on whether double opt -in is the right way to do it or whether it's like if they opt -in, they opt -in and then you maybe reconfirm, you know, a month later or something if they're not reading the letter.
I did the double opt -in to start and I'm in the US and New York specifically and the double opt -in was really weird for my audience. Like they weren't used to having to take an extra step to confirm. So there were a few folks in that initial list who were like, I tried to sign up but I haven't received anything. And I was like, oh yeah, you have to click okay on the confirmation email. And they were like, no, that's wrong. You shouldn't have to do that.

Jonathan (30:30.099)
Yeah, the raging debate.

Lauren Pearl (30:33.582)
Yeah, so, but that was good. I learned that before I sent to the broader list and I turned off the double opt -in and that was the expected behavior that for folks in my audience, people were anticipating. Yeah, I think I, in that initial email, I explained what I was doing. I kept the email pretty short.

Jonathan (30:40.045)
you

Lauren Pearl (30:55.406)
and I invited them to opt in if they wanted to. I let them know that I wouldn't be offended if they unsubscribed at any time, if it wasn't really a fit for what belonged in their inbox every day, but that I really valued their feedback. And I think the one thing to kind of go in prepared with is like, I think that's the right way to approach that, to get the right folks reading your mail, but like not everyone said yes. And like, that's okay. If you're doing an email,

Jonathan (31:4.109)
you

Lauren Pearl (31:25.332)
newsletter that's for a really specific target audience. Not every single one of your friends is going to be in your target audience. Probably a lot of them are not going to be. And so, you know, the folks who are kind enough to like join and like give you feedback and like, you know, hear you out and maybe stick along or stay subscribed if it's really like in their wheelhouse and it's really adding value over day is wonderful. But if they're not your target customers, like...
those aren't the folks that are going to be following you for the rest of the time when you're on your 100th post. There's going to be more people and they're going to be in your target and that's going to be okay.

Jonathan (32:8.570)
Is there anything you do on a regular basis now after having gone through those three or four circles of your network that you do to regularly attract?

Lauren Pearl (32:21.262)
Uh, yeah, so, uh, on LinkedIn, again, I've mentioned LinkedIn a couple of times, but I find that's really one of the major ways that, um, folks who don't know me discover me, if not from referrals. Um, so on LinkedIn, whenever I post, I, uh, I put a little footer in the post mentioning that folks can follow me or subscribe to my newsletter. And my link to my newsletter is right in my bio. I feel like it's the, it's the go to my website button. You can go to my website and I'll send you right to sign up to the newsletter.
The other thing I'll do is when new folks connect with me on LinkedIn and mention specifically that they're doing it because they like my content, I'll send them kind of an offer that's like, okay, so glad that you're doing that, really glad to be connected. Just to let you know, I only post here like once or twice a week, but if you want more content, like this is the newsletter where I share a lot more.

Jonathan (33:10.573)
you

Lauren Pearl (33:20.302)
And some folks will sign up that way. So it's not like 30 folks every day, it's like trickles in, but for me and my newsletter, that's enough.

Jonathan (33:28.795)
Yeah. Right. Has there been anything that's caused a noticeable bump in signups?

Lauren Pearl (33:36.558)
A couple times on LinkedIn I've gone viral. So I've gone into a viral where I got like more than 30 ,000 views on a post and when that happens you got a lot I got a lot of new subscribers. Wild, exactly.

Jonathan (33:40.059)
Oh yeah.

Jonathan (33:44.571)
Hmm.

Jonathan (33:49.595)
wild.

Jonathan (33:53.211)
Do you get bummed out when people unsubscribe or how do you feel when somebody unsubscribes? Because you said you do notice it.

Lauren Pearl (34:0.078)
Yeah, sometimes I feel a little bummed. Nearly always when I do feel bummed and I take a peek at who it was, it's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And I feel a lot better. I'll look at that and like, oh, you're nowhere near my target market. Or like, oh, you signed up months ago and I don't know why you're still looking at it. Most times that story makes sense. So yeah, I'll feel a little bummed out of human, but nothing crazy.

Jonathan (34:10.876)
Yeah.

Jonathan (34:28.970)
Do you ever prune the list? Like, you know, ah, this person hasn't opened the last 90 emails in a row. I'm gonna drop them.

Lauren Pearl (34:36.430)
Oh, that's a good idea. No, I haven't. I haven't bothered yet. But maybe I will. Sure.

Jonathan (34:41.596)
It's probably a little early for that. So let's move over to recommendations. What sorts of businesses do you think would benefit from doing a daily list like you're doing?

Lauren Pearl (34:53.070)
Hmm. I mean, I think it's more like I'd struggle to think about who wouldn't. I think as long as you have, like, helpful things that are true to say every day about the thing that you do and someone would benefit from knowing that every day, then it's a thing that you can do.
I think as a reader, you know, folks subscribe to see something daily that is useful to them. And, um, and so kind of on this receiving end, if you're someone considering doing a daily letter, that's kind of the question I would be asking is like, given what it is that I sell, given who my customer is, um, is there value I can add every day? Is there like, um, something that's, that's worth saying to these folks every day? Because.
I would say from a daily list, the benefits are almost obvious on the side of the provider. Like writing a daily list, regardless of if anyone reads it, is helpful. It's almost as if you could be... I feel like I would feel like this was a helpful practice if my subscriber lists were like 30. A lot of the benefits have nothing to do with...

Jonathan (36:7.357)
Yeah.

Lauren Pearl (36:20.110)
folks reading it and so much to do with you writing every day, getting better at doing so, crystallizing your ideas, understanding what it is that is in your domain, how to describe it well, getting that test bed of information, creating lots of content, and everyone benefits from that, or from doing that.

Jonathan (36:35.406)
you

Jonathan (36:42.476)
Well said. Is there any advice you would give someone who is seriously considering starting a daily list? Still on the fence?

Lauren Pearl (36:50.900)
Well of course I would advise that they sign up for doing daily. Yeah I would. I think the main recommendation would be to do whatever it takes to just try it because I think that the actual, like the hang up around

Jonathan (36:55.757)
Oh yeah, email 365, right.

Lauren Pearl (37:14.946)
whether or not you're gonna have something useful to say, you discover that by trying it and seeing if people say subscribe and like it. The question around whether it is, like the fears around whether you're gonna be able to do it every day, that's interesting because you, it gets easier every day that you do it. Like it's kind of surprising how quickly writing every day becomes feasible.
Because you get better, you get faster, you get a rhythm going, you get like a backlog of ideas of things you could write about. You start to make discoveries like, wow, I can write a three line letter and then it's done. Like you see how doable it is by doing it. So I think the recommendation if you're thinking about it and you're on the fence is just try it, like commit to doing it for some period of time, 30 days maybe, and see if you like it. And if a commitment device like,
taking email 365 is like gonna get you to start, then that's great.

Jonathan (38:15.386)
Cool, thanks for the plug. So, yeah.

Lauren Pearl (38:16.750)
I mean, for me, that's sort of what it was. Like it's a commitment device. Like it is just about starting. So anything to get yourself to just start and commit to doing it for a certain amount of time is, is what I'd recommend doing.

Jonathan (38:29.978)
Well, this has been super great. Thanks so much.

Lauren Pearl (38:33.280)
Of course, I enjoyed it. Thanks so much for having me.

Jonathan (38:35.994)
Where can people go to find out more about you, maybe even sign up for your list?

Lauren Pearl (38:39.886)
Yeah, if you want to sign up for my list, you can do it on my website for LPC. So that's laurenpearlconsulting .com slash newsletter. And you can check it out, see those posts and, uh, and, and be along for the finance ride.

Jonathan (38:53.898)
Cool. I'll link to that in the show notes. Well, thanks again. This has been fantastic.

Lauren Pearl (38:58.734)
Yeah, I agree. Thanks so much, Jonathan.