Creator Spotlight: How Flat White Grew from Instagram to Inbox

There's a new newsletter in town, and it's taking corporate Australia by storm. Flat White is the work of The Aussie Corporate (or Aussie Corp), a group with a mission to give insights into corporate Australia — with a cheeky touch.

What started as an Instagram community has exploded into so much more, and it's quickly becoming a respected source of information for business owners and entrepreneurs alike.

In this post, we'll look closely at what makes Flat White unique and explore how it grew from a social media community into a successful newsletter.

The Aussie Corporate: Business With a Bit of Cheek

The Aussie Corporate describes itself as "Your go-to for cheeky insights into corporate Australia — sourced from our Auscorp community and delivered to you without the red tape and corporate fluff."

We sat down to speak with the creators of Aussie Corp about how the Flat White newsletter started.

They told us that the company started as an Instagram community, which is where a lot of their content still resides. That community shared insights about Australian business life. As it became more popular, the creators wanted to add another dimension to their community. That’s where Flat White and beehiiv came into the picture.

Flat White: From Instagram to Inbox

The Aussie Corp creators understood that not everyone sees every Instagram post and story. So, they decided to use their best posts and stories to build a monthly email newsletter — and Flat White was born.

Aussie also said the group uses Flat White "to deep dive into certain topical matters and to bring them back to the fore. Instagram is a great platform, but there are certain things we use Flat White to unpick and unravel, so you will see us go into a lot more detail on certain exciting topics. Some topics that have been covered before are whether you are being monitored at work by your employer, advocating work to provide free sanitary products for women, and what is happening with Christmas parties.”

The creators told us the third and most straightforward reason for launching an email publication was that certain things that fit better in a newsletter format.!"

Their ultimate creation was the Flat White newsletter, "our monthly publication that provides a digest of what has been happening in corporate Australia and what has been on the minds of Australian working professionals in the past month. It contains a load of information ranging from trends in corporate Australia, insights, gossip, news, musings, and memes.”

Working with beehiiv: More Intuitive and Nicer on the Eyes

We asked Aussie Corp why the group chose beehiiv as its platform to produce Flat White. They told us, "We also looked at Substack, but found beehiiv more intuitive and nicer on the eyes. Even though Flat White is a free publication, which meant that we would never have to pay on Substack, we thought beehiiv's useability and overall aesthetics were worth the monthly price tag."

beehiiv was clearly the right choice, because Flat White "has grown wickedly fast as our followers on IG have jumped on board. We started in September (so three publications released) and now have over 4,500 subscribers (and quickly knocking on the door of 5,000)."

How Flat White Achieved Wicked Fast Growth

When we asked Aussie to share the secrets of their email growth, they told us that their Instagram community is still their main source of growth. “We occasionally post story shares to promote the newsletter. We have also included lots of exclusive content in our newsletters that our IG followers wouldn't ordinarily see, which has given many the incentive to subscribe."

Flat White's content strategy is simple. "We just think about what would help Aussie working professionals in their daily lives. The most obvious one is humour, given how grindy and dry our jobs can get, which is why we try to put a light-hearted spin on everything we do. Otherwise, we try to provide resources, insights, news, and gossip that we would otherwise find interesting.”

Most of Aussie Corp’s inspiration comes from the group members’ various day jobs and community. . “We're all in the same boat here, and the greatest part about The Aussie Corporate is how open and supportive people are of each other."

Looking Ahead

What does the future hold for The Aussie Corporate and Flat White? "We have loads in store. In 2022, we launched Grad Hub (our platform to help aspiring university students land a graduate job) and this Flat White newsletter, amongst other things. In 2023, we plan to keep rolling [out] a swathe of things on our list and continue to establish The Aussie Corporate as a more visible presence in corporate Australia. This might mean working with more big-name sponsors (hopefully) and potentially even firms that might want to be more open and transparent with current or future employees (i.e., recruitment)."

Interested in finding out what's up in the Australian business world? Subscribe to Flat White and check out Aussie Corporate on Instagram for more information.