Neal Freyman is the Managing Editor at Morning Brew, a new media company that provides informative and digestive business news to over 3 million subscribers. He oversees Morning Brew’s flagship product - a daily newsletter, as well as the weekend light Roast edition and native advertisements. 

The Morning Brew happens to be one of my favourite newsletters so I was excited to dive into the behind-the-scenes with Neal!

Highlights:

• 4:43 Studying at the University of Maryland College Park
• 7:16 Teaching geography and urban studies 
• 8:07 Applying to work at Morning Brew as a writer (and being rejected!)
• 9:00 Sending a nice rejection letter
• 10:05 The newsletter industry in 2017
• 13:05 Working as a young newsletter startup out of a room in NYU
• 14:41 Morning Brew’s ideal customer and how that definition has evolved over time
• 18:12 Having readers get super pi**ed at them
• 18:45 Creating a political newsletter
• 20:18 “Write, grow and sell” as the tactic for Morning Brew’s explosive growth from 2016-2019 
• 22:51 Writing continuously for 5 years 
• 24:24 Milestones that contributed to Morning Brew’s growth
• 26:19 Main reasons for Morning Brew’s subscriber count going from 100k to 1.5 million in the 2018/19 period
• 27:01 The importance of Morning Brew having its own in-house referral system
• 29:40 How Morning Brew manages to get 25% of its signups from its referral program
• 32:29 Capitalising on momentum, as Alex Lieberman discussed
• 34:24 How Morning Brew launched the Emerging Tech newsletter
• 37:18 The importance of having a strong online following like Alex Lieberman & Austin Rief
• 41:44 Checks & balances
• 42:49 Becoming Managing Editor of Morning Brew
• 44:23 Maintaining a close knit working culture
• 45:43 When Neal felt that they had created a great product with the newsletter
• 47:59 Staying relevant
• 49:35 Retaining talent staff
• 51:40 Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
• 53:01 The Essentials
• 54:02 Impact of Morning Brew’s reported $75 million acquisition by Business Insider
• 54:35 Creating the podcast arm of Morning Brew: Business Casual & Founder’s Journal
• 56:23 Building in public
• 59:39 Entering the education space with the MBA Accelerator

📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/68       

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