| Aswin John

Why beehiiv?

I’ve been looking for an “in” to beehiiv.

I don’t remember if I first heard about Tyler Denk from Bryan Wish/Arcbound or Alex Lieberman/Morning Brew, but I’ve been following his projects since the “Big Desk Energy” days.

There are a only few opportunities you get in your life to join the right company at the right time. Think Hubspot in 2012, Drift in 2016, Morning Brew in 2018, or now beehiiv in 2023; An opportunity to build an amazing product with a small team of highly ambitious people.

I’ve been writing newsletters, both for myself and for my employers, for over 7 years.

I’ve sent out newsletters in Mailchimp, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, SendFox, Convertkit, Substack, and beehiiv.

If a product with the interface and support of Mailchimp can bootstrap its way to a billion dollars, I know the future for beehiiv is bright. 🤩

First Attempt

I recently got to meet and chat with Isidora and Daniel to see if I could help as a sales resource. But they were looking for someone with more experience on the sales side (whereas my background is stronger on the marketing side).

I truly do have love for the hiiv. 🥰

Another Chance + Role Alignment

I waited patiently and did my routine inspections of the beehiiv career page. I was pumped to find the Lead Editor role.

I believe my background and experience makes me a great fit based on the job description. I’d like to break it down! (You can toggle each section below.)

Newsletter Experience Required

I have written over 300 newsletter editions between my personal newsletter and weekly emails I wrote in my corporate roles.

At hatch I.T., I grew our newsletter from 100 subscribers to 400+. And that was after we did our quarterly pruning of readers who didn’t open any of our previous 20 sends.

Here’s my personal newsletter on beehiiv.

I even got some love from someone who knows a little something about newsletters.

Self-Starter / Launch Initiatives

I thrive in startup environments because I am an idea machine and can wear many hats.

Examples of initiatives I launched:

I created a community Instagram page for Indian Wedding Planning because I saw a gap in the market for my culture to find vendors who specialized in this niche.
Having no background in UX, I led a project to redesign hatchpad’s job pages because we needed to drive more applicants.

Love for Creators + Interviewing Experience

Back in 2008, I used to play Club Penguin. But more importantly, I was active on CP forums and created my own forums. It was common to have a little “title” for yourself, so I labeled myself “The Creator”.

Pretentious? Yes.

But it shows that I’ve been obsessed with people who create from a young age.

In college, that admiration was for people like Pat Flynn, Noah Kagan, and Ramit Sethi who were so generous with their knowledge and great writers. That’s why I’ve done all my consulting work for creators like Alex Lieberman, Sam Parr, and Noah Kagan.

I get energy from speaking and working with these people.

During COVID, my alma mater’s Entrepreneur Program wanted to launch a community. I was responsible for creating content and running their newsletter. I interviewed founders and CEOs from Virginia Tech about their companies, challenges, learnings, and advice.

Those conversations never felt like work because I led with curiosity and always came away with knowledge or insights that needed to be shared with the community.

Here’s an example of a newsletter I made based off an interview with Kenny Hanson, CEO and Founder of MentorPass.

Research Fiend

My friends ask me for recommendations on any new purchase they make because they know I do ~~too much~~ a lot of research on any product I buy.

Here’s a breakdown I did when I was shopping for laptops (ask me why I eventually ended up going with the M2 Macbook Pro!)

I am great at knowing how to Google things. And when it comes to researching people, I dive deep into podcast appearances, blog posts, and YouTube videos.

My goal is to be as good a researcher as Danny Miranda, Sean Evans, and Nardwuar.

Case Studies Associated with the Role Responsibilities

In addition to the “nice to haves”, here are some real examples of how I’ve done work similar to the role responsibilities.

Write a weekly newsletter focusing on the specific techniques, tactics, and stories behind the most successful content creators in the world.

I wrote a weekly newsletter that was targeted toward technologists who wanted to grow in their careers at a startup. We interviewed leaders, managers, and individual contributors to gather and share their stories, strategies, and advice for career growth.

Lead the social strategy for this media property and build a holistic strategy to grow and market the newsletter via video and audio assets across all social media platforms.

I have experience taking the concepts from podcasts and newsletters and turning them into long-form text and short-form video social content.

Experiment with a podcast component to extend the content ecosystem to be symbiotic and additive to the newsletter component.

Write monthly tentpole blog posts to further advance the growth and development of our blog efforts and content strategy there.

Lead initiatives to drive engagement with our content and elevate the stories and experiences of our users and others in the creator economy.

If you agree that we’d be a great fit, please contact me at monitormonkey@gmail.com.

Aswin and beehiiv: A Match Made in Heaven?

Aswin John