✍️ 240 Days to Raise: Creating for urgency and transparency

There are millions of creators and only one Spotlight per week — how do we decide who to feature?

I learned about today’s guest, Jade Buffong-Phillips, from a reader who emailed me after signing up for the Spotlight. I was struck by what I felt was a fresh, honest approach to the “building in public” genre, so I reached out.

When we spoke, I told Jade how I’d discovered her work. She’d never even spoken with the reader who’d so resonated with her work and shared it with me.

It’s easy to obsess over pure subscriber numbers, but remember that each of your readers is a real person choosing to spend a moment of their day with your work. That’s incredible.

— Francis Zierer, Editor

P.S. With all that in mind, please do share your feedback (either in a direct reply to this email or by completing the poll at the bottom). I read every single response.

There are more or less four reasons to start a newsletter:

• You want to fill a gap in the media landscape

• You have an existing audience you want to serve in a new way

• You want a profitable exit

• You need a creative outlet

These are not mutually exclusive. Every single one, or even none, of these reasons might apply to you (let me know what others I missed). Today’s guest was motivated by the first and fourth items listed.

Today’s guest, Jade Buffong-Phillips, is a first-time founder working to secure a pre-seed funding round. Her company, Mane Hook-Up, is a two-way beauty tech platform that both helps women with afro and curly hair find hairstylists and assists those stylists with marketing.

Mane Hook-Up was born because Jade experienced first-hand the market gap it seeks to fill; when she stopped straightening her hair five years ago, Google was useless in her search for a new stylist.

Jade started her newsletter, 240 Days to Raise, for much the same reason. When she sought advice on raising a pre-seed funding round for Mane Hook-Up, she found most resources skewed towards later rounds, serving founders further into the journey.

240 Days, like Mane Hook-Up, has a two-way value proposition. She’s building an open, transparent fundraising resource for other founders while creating a sense of urgency and a therapeutic outlet for herself.

The newsletter started on October 3rd, 2023. As we send this newsletter, there are 104 days left until the prescribed 240th day: May 30th, 2024. So far, Jade has one investor commitment, but that does not constitute a full pre-seed round.

To follow Jade’s journey is to experience the ups and downs with her. It’s a truly generous project and a strong example of what creating and sharing content can do for you. This edition of the Spotlight came about because Jade decided to write about her journey, which resonated with someone enough that they shared it with us. How incredible would it be if today’s newsletter led to her securing more funding for her business?

Creating content: just do it. You never know where it could take you.

We recently spent an hour with Jade chatting about:

• 🏃‍♀️ What creators can learn from athletes

• 🏅 Defining “success” as a creator

• 📣 Practicing bravery in storytelling

• 📧 Why a newsletter list beats a social following

Read our interview below.

Read enough? Before you go, here are a few quick lessons from Jade and 240 Days to Raise applicable across niches and platforms.

1. Done is better than perfect. Jade spent nine months writing a completely different newsletter than 240 Days. She abandoned it before eventually returning with a better, more unique concept, which has been more rewarding for her and her readers.
   

2. Spread out content creation time; don’t create a bottleneck. Jade spends between four and five hours on each issue of 240 Days, spread out from Friday to Monday. She schedules social posts in advance, too. Spreading out the work helps ensure you’ll get it done.
   

3. Figure out what success means to you. Some people build newsletters to exit. Some just want a creative outlet. Some people peg success to arbitrary subscriber counts. Jade sees a win if she helps even one person per post. Define your own terms.

Creator Spotlight: You first started a newsletter three years ago. You wrote monthly for nine months, then stopped. What motivated you to begin that first iteration, and why did you quit?

Jade Buffong-Phillips: I love writing. I always have. I studied English at university; I had no idea what I wanted to do as a job; I just thought, let me do the subject I love, and I'll figure out the rest.

Part of me always wants to help people. How can I share the knowledge I've acquired and help people? So, I started a newsletter because that was the natural format for me.

I did it once a month, a commitment that wasn't too heavy. But I ran out of steam because I didn't get enough from it. When you're committing to creating content, as much as your audience needs to gain something from it, you also need to gain something from making it.

I didn't feel I was doing anything different enough from what already existed. I didn't think there was a reason somebody would read it over another person's newsletter or blog.

I decided not to get rid of it but to park it, telling myself, "When you have come up with an idea that's good enough, then come back to it and start again." That way, I wouldn't have to start from scratch; I'd already have some subscribers interested in hearing from me, as well.

Why did you come back to your newsletter and rebrand it as 240 Days? Why was it the right time to do so?

When I first started my newsletter, I was maybe two years into my journey as founder of Mane Hook-Up. We'd built a scrappy first version of the product, and I'd learned a few things about starting a company. I thought maybe I had enough knowledge to share with other people interested in that path.

Looking back, I did know some things, but not enough to write about continuously. It was a jarring experience trying to wrack my brain for ideas to write about.

Now, I get to the end of every week, and there are 100 things I could write about it; the hard part is distilling that down to seven or eight points I think will be meaningful to my readers. The difference between now and then is I am more knowledgeable; I have more experience.

I'm going through a process many people go through that isn't openly spoken about. The more transparent I am, the more people can learn. If you're building a company and thinking of fundraising, you can learn from what I'm going through right now.

You have around 120 subscribers. How did you gain these subscribers? Who are they?

By the time I stopped the first version of the newsletter, I'd landed around 40 subscribers. Everything since then has been from 240 Days. A lot of it was trial and error.

Initially, I was sharing it with friends and family, like, "Is this interesting to you? Do you want to subscribe? Would you share it with anybody else that's interested?"

Outside of that, I was sharing it on Twitter. That was pretty much it. I tried not to spread myself too thin. With a day job, building a company, and writing a newsletter, there was only so much time I could give.

By the time I was ready to start 240 Days, I announced on LinkedIn that I was leaving the company I'd worked at for two years to work on Mane Hook-Up full-time, and oh, by the way, I'm also writing a newsletter where I'll be telling you guys what happens every week.

LinkedIn is where my audience, both founders and investors, lives. 240 Days is great information for founders, and it's great for building relationships with investors because they can see the type of person I am and what's behind the business.

The first week after my announcement, I went from 40 to around 70 subscribers. That was a big jump — suddenly, more people were interested in seeing how I would do. From then on, I post on Substack, post on LinkedIn, and people share it. I'll also drop the newsletter in WhatsApp and Slack groups full of founders, these micro-communities full of people experiencing problems similar to mine.

I love what you said about writing a newsletter needing to give value not only to the audience but also to you. What is the value you draw, on that personal level, from writing 240 Days?

What I didn't realize is how cathartic it would be. You get to the end of a long week, and it's like, oh god, what did I do? Have I done anything? Have I achieved anything? But then, I have a list of things to recall and reflect on.

I think, okay, was this a win? If not, why? What was really painful this week? Why was it painful? What lessons have I learned? How has this made me a better founder? A better leader? What have all of these things done to contribute to the person I am at my core?

Often, when you're building, you're so caught up in the act of doing that it's tough to find moments of stillness, to reflect and see what you've achieved. It's the rule of incremental gains; you start here and then shore up. People tend not to see how they improve bit by bit.

I love how writing the newsletter gives me a moment to reflect. It gives me a moment to celebrate. It gives me a moment to sit in sadness if that's what I'm feeling. Oh, this thing really upset me this week — why? Why did that feel painful?

I don't think I would have taken a moment to think through these things had I not been writing the newsletter. I'm very grateful for the process, which is why I carve out the time in any way and shape possible to make sure 240 Days goes out every Tuesday morning.

What’s your process for writing each issue?

I do it throughout the week. I have a template in my notes that I copy each week and structure the newsletter around: wins, losses, lessons, hacks, and tools. I build this list of bullets and on Friday, I start to write.

I take my bullets, condense them, shift things around. Over the weekend, I'll spend a couple of hours here and there adding to it until it's done.

Monday is proofing day; I proofread it and write the LinkedIn post. I schedule the newsletter for 9:00AM Tuesday morning and the LinkedIn post for 11:30AM that same morning, then we're good to go.

All the work is spread across a few days, and it's flexible. Last week, for example, I had a low week. By Friday, I didn't think it would serve me to write just then. I needed to re-energize over the weekend, so I took a risk and pushed writing until Monday — I still managed to get it done, but it meant I couldn't do much else that Monday.

It takes me between four and five hours to write each issue.

What does it mean to be a storyteller, a contributor in the creator economy?

Everybody has an interesting story to tell. It's just a matter of being brave enough to tell it.

I don't say "brave" as a criticism of people who choose not to tell their stories, but you do have to be brave to put yourself out there and understand that people might not care.

Your work might get zero views, no subscribers. Maybe nobody will care — but I'm going to do it anyway, because I think it's meaningful. Some things don't pick up traction for a long time. Sometimes, after you've been honing that skill, learning your craft for six, seven, eight months, a year, you finally write that one thing, you produce that one video that gets attention.

To be a creator is to practice the art of being patient, because if you're not patient, you won't be consistent. If you're not consistent, you won't get the end result you're looking for, because you have to keep going to see those incremental gains.

You get a bit better, then a bit better again, and more people will talk, then more people will share. Then, by the time you've produced something really interesting, you have a big enough audience to see a ripple effect.

You’re a lifelong athlete. Do you take any lessons from that practice to your work as a creator and founder?

This is something my granddad taught me: if you try your best, you can’t be disappointed with the outcome. But your best looks different each day; as long as you can get to the end of the day knowing you gave your best, it’s difficult to be sad or mad about the result.

Learn your craft. What you do in training is a reflection of what you end up doing in a race. It’s the same as a founder; what you do day in, day out is a reflection of the way your business operates and whether it sinks or swims. Don’t cut corners. Just learn the craft.

Third, don’t be afraid to fail in public. People have very short-term memories. They’ll be thinking about something else within two days. Nobody’s attention span is that long. You believe people care much more than they actually do.

And as long as you can frame a failure as a lesson, it’s not really a failure.

Besides your love of writing, why did you create this series as a newsletter rather than just daily LinkedIn and Twitter posts? What about a newsletter is uniquely useful for you?

Newsletters give you a level of ownership of your audience. We've all seen what happens when Instagram is down for a few hours; people lose their minds.

If your audience is on a platform that can go down, where you may be unable to reach them, you can't speak to them, you have a problem. You don't actually own that space. It's just a vehicle. With a newsletter, you can export your email list and move to any platform you like, regardless of what happens to your newsletter platform.

It's about that ability to take your community with you wherever you go.

If one day I decide I don't want to use Substack anymore, if I want to move to another platform, that's a very easy thing for me to do. When you build a community on a social platform, that community is stuck there.

A newsletter audience can be more challenging to build than a social audience, in part because people are less likely to part with their email address than to click a follow button — but social platforms carry more long-term risk. An email list gives you more long-term benefits than a huge social following.

What does success mean to you, both for 240 Days to Raise as a project and within each issue?

On an issue level, if I can help one person with each post, that is a success. If one person walks away with a snippet of information they didn't know or an experience they're newly aware of for their fundraising journey, I've done my job.

I've had a couple of people reach out to tell me that a specific issue I wrote was helpful to them, which has been quite nice. People will leave comments on the posts, and I'll know I've struck the right chord.

On a project level, it’s about creating evergreen content founders can refer to again and again when they’re going through their fundraising journey. Once it’s written, it lives there, and people can refer to it at any time.

One actionable takeaway — it works for Jade; you can apply it to your newsletter today.

Bring your reader into your writing — refer directly to them.

Content we've been thinking about.

• When you know who you’re creating for and why, making decisions gets easier. Jade saw this when she narrowed her audience down to “founders raising their first funding round.” Buffer’s Tamilore Oladipo wrote a good piece on niching down last year.

• beehiiv’s Tyler Denk recently started a “building in public” newsletter of his own. This week’s issue about doing things that don’t scale is a great supplement to Jade’s work.

• Ciler Demiralp writes a great newsletter about newsletters. We loved this feature on 6AM City — it’s a fantastic look behind the scenes of a really unique and clever newsletter-based media company.

Thank you for reading.

On to next week’s issue, featuring a newsletter that’s built an audience of 500k in only 10 months.

— Francis Zierer, Editor

P.S. One small request: Mind taking a moment to complete the poll just below? Your feedback is incredibly valuable as we work to improve this newsletter.