Hi! This is Moby.

Doing things others don’t do works.

I want to share what’s driving real pipeline and other people aren’t doing.

What you can expect in this email:

Enjoy!

Also: If this is useful to you, please consider forwarding it to someone who might find this helpful.

If you go on LinkedIn, you’ll see people proclaiming:

Bullsh*t. Email is 100% not dead.

You’re reading an email right now.
Another 1400 people read this very email.

If you have the capacity to execute an email newsletter and treat it like a long-term nurturing channel, it’s a worthwhile investment.

A business owner I just met says he gets a 70%+ open rate on his newsletters to Ecom CEOs and CFOs, and he wants to scale his subscriber count to add more target decision makers to it.

My 5 recommendations for email newsletters:

3 reasons most companies f*ck up newsletters:

Also: If you want help with your newsletter, Ethan Brooks from Austin Business Review is the guy. Here’s where to contact him, and if you’re in ATX, he’s hosting a live talk on it.

Since COVID (remember that, folks?), the pendulum has swung.

Less people are doing virtual events.
More people want to meet others IRL.

People want to “meet their people”

I personally joined Red Fridge Society, a IRL founder’s club + coworking space, and it’s been awesome:

I’m not an events expert, but I have run many many networking mixers.

My 10-step mixer process:

Some mixers I’ve hosted 👇

Collin Mayjack, Head of Product Marketing at Sybill, just ran, attended, or sponsored 15 events in one quarter.

That’s insane, so I interviewed him on how to create unique experiences they wanted to be a part of.

Here’s what Collin said:

You stand out if you do something unique. One of our most popular events was a ping pong bar takeover in San Francisco. People loved it. The one we just ran in Austin was an eight-course chef's pairing dinner in a secret backyard in South Austin. We had people tell us, "I've been to 20, 30 dinners like this. This was bar none the best one I've been a part of."

Yes, filling seats is always the hardest part. You can find the great venue, nail the theme, do all of that, and the actual work of building the list, getting invites out, chasing RSVPs, and getting people to attend is by far the hardest piece. That's why we leaned on partners for a number of events. We partnered with Sales Assembly a few times where we basically walked in and owned the room as the sponsor while they filled it with 30 people in our ICP. There's a tradeoff, though. A Sales Assembly dinner sponsored by us doesn't feel the same as a Sybill dinner. You want a blend.

Some markets are brutal. San Francisco was tough. People are oversaturated with invites. If you're in the Bay Area, you're probably getting an invite to some tech meetup every week. We showed up in Denver and got a totally different response. Our CEO dropped an invite in a Pavilion channel, connected with the chapter head, and 10 people showed up just because no one does anything in Denver. Austin had similar enthusiasm. The growing markets haven't hit San Francisco's saturation yet.

Don't do a blended audience. Our ping pong takeover was popular with the people who came, but we made the mistake of opening it up to anyone in go-to-market. It was so broad that everyone showed up feeling like, this probably isn't really for me. When you say "this event is for VPs of Sales" or "this is for RevOps," people self-identify and show up. People want to be with their people. We got better turnout every time we got specific.

Nurture and follow-up is half the value. Filling the seats is the hardest part, but the most time-consuming part is what happens after. I would not run 15 events in a quarter again. Not because events aren't valuable (we're putting more money into events for Q2 and Q3) but because you need a couple weeks after every event to actually follow up with everyone who attended. If they come to a great dinner and you can't convert that into an ongoing conversation or pull them into your audience, you spent $8000 on a dinner. That's it. It's just a dinner.

Also: Collin makes really solid content on LinkedIn. He’s 1000% worth a follow.

A few years ago, I was really into podcasting and had interviewed 100+ people in four years.

That turned into a growth hacking play where I would:

IRL result: I took on a software development company and used the same playbook for them. They weren't expecting much because previously they had spent $16,000 on a cold email agency and it got zero meetings.

But we got 100+ responses within 90 days:

And other campaigns also delivered VERY high positive results:

It works.

What to say in an interview invite: Hey [name], I’d love to interview you for [podcast name]. It’s for [ICP] and shares [what it’s about]. Open to talking about it?

You WILL get responses.

But there’s obvious drawbacks:

Go try it!

At 2PM everyday, Claude reads my email, Granola, Gemini notes, and automatically creates tasks for me in Notion. Saves a lot of time.

After 6 months in full-time business, and years and years of part-time business, I still don’t have a site yet.

So I just went full Claude Code.

How’s this for a above-the-fold? Anything I should change?