Creator Spotlight: Bryan Wish from Arcbound

Using your newsletter to drive introspection and connection

This week, Bryan Wish joins beehiiv to discuss the Arcbound Newsletter.

In this Creator Spotlight, Bryan covers:

• His personal branding platform, Arcbound.

• How he approaches writing his newsletter and brand (with a personal touch).

• Using the newsletter to create relationships and build community.

Let's get into it.

About the Creator:

As CEO of Arcbound, Bryan Wish focuses on growth and business development, hiring, public relations, and executing the company’s strategic vision.

He has built his career around mobilizing communities and bringing unique voices and perspectives to the masses. From starting a content platform with 800+ contributors, to establishing an investment fund’s global community across 30+ countries, Bryan has seen firsthand the power of content and community in fulfilling one’s mission.

Bryan saw the opportunity to build a company like Arcbound while working on a book launch for The Creative Curve by tech CEO Allen Gannett. Bryan realized Allen wasn’t just launching a book; he was building a personal brand. With that in mind, Bryan set out to build an end-to-end service to create a sustainable platform for leaders who want to unify others with their message. Four years later, Arcbound has worked with 100+ clients, from Fortune 100 CEOs to global investors and bestselling authors.

When he’s not building the future of Arcbound, you’ll find Bryan hiking in Tahoe or Yosemite, reading a book, exploring the world, or doing some deep introspection by a fire while listening to acoustic folk music.

About Arcbound:Arcbound is a personal branding platform servicing creators (CEO’s, investors, and authors) at every step of their brand journey, from developing their brand message, to building their thought leadership platform, to putting them on the biggest stages in the world.

Q&A:

You open up your newsletter differently than most platforms. Why?

Building a personal brand is a marathon. It’s not just about sharing a message but about bringing others along for the ride who align with your point of view in a meaningful way. Therefore, we are intentional in how we think about every aspect of our brand, newsletters included.

Many newsletters are functional. They speak tactically to their industry and functionally to their audience about their insights. While this is necessary and shows authority, we try to engage first with our readers and develop a more personal connection by opening up the newsletter and writing on relevant topics in our audience's lives (both personal and professional). When doing this, we make them internalize different aspects of their lives to build an emotional connection impacting how they lead their lives in a more intentional way. When you win their hearts, it’s easier for your audience to trust the more head-driven content that speaks to the “how” of what they’re sharing.

Favorite features of beehiiv?

While beehiiv has grown off product-led growth, what first brings me in is how Tyler builds a brand for himself. He’s crafting his brand in a relational way and letting users drive product features. It’s also a much cleaner experience to look at the data and interpret it than other platforms.

In your newsletter, you highlight other leaders. How come, and what have you noticed about how it has built important business relationships over the past 3 years?

How we've architected our brand has separated Arcbound from other companies in the personal branding and creator space. We aren’t just in business to create and deploy content; we are helping our clients find and accelerate their paths - hence the name Arcbound.

Part of accelerating the path is doing deep and consistent discovery work, which we pull out of our clients regularly so they can share with their audience in a connective way. Additionally, it’s about helping them build community. The more we can connect our clients to the right people at the right time, their ideas can take off faster. Therefore, our newsletter features clients, their stories, courses, products, services, and more.

Additionally, given that the newsletter isn’t just for clients and the greater Arcbound community, sharing educational resources with them is essential to us so our community can build their path faster.

What we’ve learned is that it is hard to have a community without content and content without community. We realize the integral relationship between the two and realize how it can go a long way in our readers' eyes to share great people doing extraordinary work. Long term, we also know it’s important to do a lot of “gives” before you make an “ask,” and leveraging an asset like a newsletter is a great way to give back to individuals in our extended community.

Tell us the story about how your newsletter helped you pick up new clients, refine your brand, and overcome the pandemic?

Since a newsletter is a great asset for building a relationship with readers without actually talking to them, a consistent quality newsletter creates credibility.

When the pandemic hit, we were still early in our business. We lost a few clients, which pushed us into a different mode of work ethic. We leveraged the newsletter list to conduct conversations with the people off our newsletter list who had the highest open rates. If they were engaged in the writing, we figured they’d be involved in learning more about who we were as a company and our vision.

Two things happened as a result of 100+ conversations off our newsletter list. We picked up a slew of important clients that we still have today. Additionally, many of the conversations shared how at a brand level, they didn’t quite understand what we did. This led to many hard internal conversations where we determined we needed a rebrand, and this is how Arcbound was officially born.

Without using or thinking about the newsletter as a community tool, we wouldn’t be where we are today. While it’s vital to grow the newsletter, I’d rather have relationships offline with many subscribers, as it can be a more intimate and connective experience given the type of business we are building.

What made you switch to beehiiv?

I’ve known Tyler since 2015, when he was working on his first startup, VentureStorm. While I was working on a book launch I followed his work at Morning Brew, building their growth engine. I was always impressed with his tenacity.

As he brought his platform to life, my Co-founder, Carson Morell, suggested we switch from Substack, given we were writing more than ten newsletters for clients. We were both on the same page and made the switch without much debate.

Who are your readers, and why should someone reading this subscribe?

Entrepreneurs, Investors, Authors/Speakers, who want to build a personal brand. We have built our brand with a lot of humanity and depth and want to attract people who want to build the same connectedness with their audience - not just growth, for growth’s sake.

What does it mean to build an Arc and your vision for Arcbound?

An Arc is your unique trajectory, in alignment with who you are and how you bring it out in the world. It takes constant self-discovery, relationship-building, and stepping into the path meant for you. Our team helps you build it and bring it to life.

Wrapping Up:

Thank you for reading this week’s Creator Spotlight. Be sure to subscribe to Arcbound for more.

Not convinced? Check out these posts to learn more about the publication.

• Building Relationships, Taking Risks, and Quiet Quitting.

• Storytelling, Jojo Siwa, and Being Ordinary.

• Unlocking Unicorns, Building Trust, & The Long Haul.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.