I told beehiiv's CEO I'd never write a newsletter

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In June, I sat down with Tyler Denk, co-founder and CEO of beehiiv, in a pop-up studio at Cannes Lions. Halfway through, I made a confession on the mic: I've never started a newsletter, because I'm not a writer.

I came up on the sell side of advertising. For 15 years my job has been to get on a plane or a Zoom, walk into a room, start a conversation, and land a clear message. Writing is a different muscle, and honestly, it's one I've been dreading.

Tyler didn't let me off the hook. His point was simple: if your audience lives on someone else's platform, you don't really have an audience. You're renting one.

The newsletter exists because of that conversation. So it felt right to make it the first one written this way: less recap, more of what I actually think, and what you can do with it on Monday.

The big idea: stop renting your reach

Tyler put it better than I can:

"You could have 100,000 followers on Instagram and there's no guarantee that even half of those people will see the content that you're posting." (Tyler Denk, CEO of beehiiv)

Every feed, TikTok, Instagram, even YouTube, is moving toward showing people whatever is getting engagement, not what they chose to follow. A creator with 10 followers and one with a million are playing the same slot machine.

Email is the opposite. When you hit send to 100,000 people, 100,000 people get it. No algorithm in the middle deciding who sees what. Tyler called it an "unsexy channel" that people are realizing is a superpower.

Here's where I see it from the sales side: an audience you own is pipeline. An audience you rent is a territory someone else can redraw overnight. No good CRO would build a forecast on accounts they don't control. Yet that's what most brands, agencies and creators do with their distribution.

3 things to do about it

1. Count the people you can reach without permission

Not followers. Not impressions. The number of people you could reach tomorrow if every algorithm went dark: your email list, your customer contacts, the guests you've interviewed, the people who'd take your call.

This week: write that number down. Then pick one owned channel, usually email, and make every touchpoint feed it. Every podcast episode, every LinkedIn post, every event follow-up should end with a way to join your list. That's what I just did across all 500+ episodes of this show.

2. Cut the tools between you and the outcome

Tyler's founding thesis for beehiiv was that creators were bolting together six or seven tools, a website, an email platform, an ad tool, Stripe, a login system, just to run one business. And when one breaks, the whole thing breaks.

Sales teams have the exact same problem. Count the tools and handoffs between a first conversation and a signed deal. Every one is a place where a deal can stall.

This quarter: map that path on one page and kill or consolidate one tool. The goal isn't fewer apps for its own sake. It's fewer places for momentum to die.

3. Test wide, then go deep

The smartest thing I heard about beehiiv's ad network wasn't the scale, it was the sequence. A brand that wants to reach, say, women in their 30s into health and wellness can test across 7,000 matching newsletters at once, see which ones actually convert, and then build direct relationships with the winners. Tyler said they're seeing 80% renewal rates from advertisers.

That's how I think about prospecting. Run a broad, cheap test to find which audiences respond, then put your real time, the dinners, the calls, the custom pitches, into the handful that do.

Next campaign: before you commit budget or hours to one channel or one account list, run a small test across many. Let the data pick where you go deep.

Bonus: build around how people already work

When I asked Tyler about live video and clipping, his answer wasn't "we'll build that." It was that you can either fight shifts in how people behave or build around them. beehiiv shipped an integration so people can run their newsletter from Claude or ChatGPT, because that's where people are working now.

I'm taking my own advice here. I'm a talker, not a writer, so this newsletter starts with real conversations and turns them into ideas you can use. Same me, new channel.

Best line of the episode

"When you hit send to 100,000 people, 100,000 people are going to receive that email." (Tyler Denk, CEO of beehiiv)

Watch the full conversation

We also get into beehiiv's push into podcasting, bundling paid podcasts with newsletters through Spotify, why Tyler regretted leaving Cannes early for VidCon, and how they keep deliverability at 99.8%. It's 20 minutes, recorded live at Cannes.

Watch the full episode on Spotify. Also on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

And if you want more from Tyler, his newsletter Big Desk Energy shares what's working as he builds beehiiv: mail.bigdeskenergy.com

Want the next one? Every issue takes one conversation from The Ad Podcast and turns it into ideas you can use. Subscribe free at adpodcast.beehiiv.com.

Talk soon,Dylan