The Biggest Benefit Of Starting A Local Newsletter

When I decided to start a local newsletter, I did it because I knew it’d force me to grow in ways I wanted to. To be successful, I’d need to put roots down somewhere, build meaningful relationships, and really become a part of the city.

So far, that’s been every bit as fulfilling as I hoped.

But what I didn’t expect was that it’d also allow me to let go of almost everything else.

My work requires that I stay up to date on what’s going on in Austin, and I’ve updated my Twitter, Linkedin, and newsletter diet accordingly.

But that means almost nothing makes its way onto my radar unless it’s happening within a few miles of me, and that is very nice.

Life’s so much less noisy now. So much less frantic too.

I don’t worry about building global audiences, or competing with creators half a world away. I don’t get distracted by the opinions of people I’ll never meet.

I still stay up to date on the important things – developments in AI, economic trends, even political stuff – but only insofar as they affect the people living and innovating near me.

And of course, there are very few trolls when everyone bumps into each other in person at the coffee shop.

I think we’ll see more of this in the coming years.

As AI makes it harder to trust what you see online, people will naturally tune out and return to local. Not because we’re smart and make wise decisions, but because we’re lazy, and don’t want to scrutinize everything.

Local is easy to verify. You just stick your head out the window.

It also happens to be more satisfying, with real connections to real people you can really see and spend time with.

The difference is like the difference between tomatoes you buy at a big chain supermarket versus ones you grow at home.

You can live for a long time eating supermarket tomatoes, thinking everything is fine and that you’re getting all you can out of life.

But once you taste home-grown, the jig is up. And there’s just no motivation to go back.

A Few Great Links

• Four Strategies For 5M+ Subs: Matt McGary did a fantastic training on scalable growth strategies. If you don’t know him, Matt and I worked together at The Hustle, and his company has worked with most of the biggest newsletters out there now. Few people in the world have seen as much as he has when it comes to newsletter growth. Highly recommend

• Why Culture Feels Dead: I’m really enjoying this interview with Ted Gioia. I’d never heard of him before, but David Perrell (based here in Austin 😉) hooked me with this clip about beating writer’s block

• “Do not write a crock of shit”: This was magnificent. A short memo from David Mamet, the creator of my all-time-favorite TV show, The Unit, to his writers. We need more memos like this. Favorite line 👇