From the beginning, our goal was to share more than the highlight reel.
We wanted to grow a newsletter and show you all our failures along the way so we can learn and grow together.
You followed along as we tried scaling through our personal networks, spamming FB, Reddit, & Twitter - you laughed, we cried, it was a journey.
We tried to work past the growing pains of doing all the above through gritted teeth and manual effort. Then, we attempted - and failed - to acquire another newsletter as outlined here in our last post:
We went to buy a newsletter...
Truth is, Grow Getters was the result of three ambitious people wanting a side project that would be both fun and teach us something. But we wouldn’t be authentically ourselves if we didn’t stop and analyze whether the grind was worth it. Our other projects prevented us from dedicating the adequate time this particular project required…
So, we decided to pass the baton to one of our loyal Grow Getters.
We agreed on a few non-negotiables:
1) Whoever inherited this newsletter had to be a current Grow Getter subscriber
2) They would have to find our listing via our last post of listings to buy a newsletters
3) No affiliate plays
4) The three of us had to feel comfortable handing off our baby to someone that shared the mindset of why we started this all - to grow together.
With those parameters in mind, the first thing we did was list on Duuce - a marketplace for purchasing newsletter we mentioned.
The process was simple:
Sign up, link your newsletter, add engagement stats, set a valuation and boom, you’re listed.
Curious about how we set our valuation? We based off the number of subscribers given the high open rate of ~40% and accounting for no monetization up until this point.
Shortly after the inquiries and offers flowed in. To be honest, there was more interest than we expected and a looooot of offers over asking price. This was interesting, and an important takeaway: subscribers are worth a lot more than you might realize.
After screening through several dozen, we narrowed it down to a short list of 10 based on goals, personality, and vision for the newsletter. Affiliate plays were plenty and shot down immediately.
We asked a series of questions that gave us a better picture of intentions and then narrowed it down to five - at which point we jumped on calls with the finalize over Zoom where we chatted and discussed the acquisition. These were the FAQs from the calls:
Q: How much involvement would we have post acquisition?
A: We would remain loyal Grow Getters subscribers, but would not be involved beyond that given our time constraints.
Q: Can we take a peek at the numbers?
A: Of course, transparency being our number one goal, we shared our subscriber numbers (2,462) and open rates (40%)
Q: Would we do guest posts?
A: While we’re open to revisiting this in the future, present day, our team doesn’t have bandwidth.
Ultimately, we all unanimously agreed to move forward with Alexander Haas from Germany:
He’s 29 years old and after studying electrical engineering and economics, went on to work for a private equity firm for 3 years. He now owns and operates two boutique hotels and a camping ground and was looking for a side hustle.
He’s dabbled in online marketing projects (e.g. the proud owner of Alexa's number one sleep meditation skill) and is excited to commit to this one. Alex loved our concept of taking y’all along for the "journey" rather than preaching wisdom. Of course, he has full plans to continue that.
We’d like to pass this post along to Alex, so he can introduce himself and let you know his plans for the magic that is Grow Getters. But first, we want to say thank you for following along with us. It’s been fun and we learned a lot (and hope you did, too). We know you’ll be in good hands with Alex and are excited to read with you. Thanks friends - Codie, Olman, & Ilona
Hey all!
I’m Alex.
Bad news first: I don’t have half the wisdom of either Codie, Ilona, or Olman.
So, I do understand if you feel the urge to unsubscribe. BUT:
I promise you, I will give it my everything to grow this thing and I will share every.little.detail.
If I can grow this, you most certainly can grow your project and use my learnings (and missteps) along your journey.
Let’s make GrowGetters about growing all our projects together. Which means:
A Facebook group, so we can have a digital GrowGetters bonfire
A referral program, so your project gets shared with the rest of us (more on this in my next email)
Interviews with newsletter creators, to get a view into other niches
So, actually Ilona, Codie and Olman didn’t sell the newsletter to ME, but more so to US. I am more than excited to share this journey with you.
Make sure to sign up for the Facebook group so we can start talking!
Let’s keep growing,
Alex
PS: If you have any comments, ideas, feedback just let me know by answering this email.
Nice to meet you, Alex! And looking forward to new content! 🙌