Smart Nonsense 🌈: Zero to 10,000 Subscribers in One Month on beehiiv

In one month on beehiiv, Henry Belcaster and Dylan Jardon have taken their comic-style newsletter from zero to 10,000 subscribers.

This is one of our more in-depth Creator Spotlights so here is a quick TLDR:

• Going Viral on YouTube: Discover how Dylan and Henry took over the short-form social media world less than a year ago and consistently get millions of views on their videos.

• Testing Different Content Types: Podcast to video to newsletter – how to launch into new mediums as a creator and expand your brand.

• How beehiiv Simplifies Newsletters: Learn how to leverage beehiiv to launch and grow your own newsletter as a beginner.

• Growing to 10k: Learn how they leveraged their social media to skyrocket to 10,000 newsletter subscribers in their first month on beehiiv.

• The One-Two Punch of Storytelling & Illustrations: Unpack the power of visually-intensive stories to hook readers down a slippery slope with your newsletter.

• Behind the Scenes: Uncover the exact day-to-day content creation process they use to repurpose their short-form videos into a newsletter.

• Fail-Fast Philosophy: Learn how they lean on “Perfection Through Iteration, Not Revision” to continuously evolve as they produce high volumes of content every week.

What does it take to go viral?

The right topic? The right technical expertise? The right storytelling?

How about a combination of all three?

Such is the case with two 26-year-old business partners, Dylan Jardon and Henry Belcaster.

They’re two guys you’ve probably seen on YouTube lately… And they’re absolutely crushing YouTube shorts.

1 billion views in 1 year.

Their ability to capture attention is second to none and their animations are world class.

After dominating the YouTube game, they’ve decided to step up to bat in the newsletter world.

And, they’re already hitting home runs.

In less than one month, the two have grown their newsletter to over 10,000 subscribers.

We recently sat down with Henry Belcaster and Dylan Jardon, founders of the Smart Nonsense newsletter to discuss how they’re taking over the digital content space with their captivating and eccentric animations and storytelling.

The two were happy to share how they were able to create a unique space for themselves in the short-video world and are now leveraging beehiiv to publish their “daily comic explaining nerdy stuff like you’re 5.”

If you’re interested in breaking into the creator space and aren’t sure where to start, then you’ll want to keep reading.

These two have curated original content in the big three: video, audio, and now the written word (all while running their own video editing agency).

Want to watch the complete interview with the Smart Nonsense guys? Check out the video below.

Full video interview here

Origin Story: Skipping Wall Street for YouTube

To kick off the interview, we asked Henry and Dylan where it all started, so they took us back in time.

Henry shared, “We met on like the first day of college. We were at like an admit weekend for college. Dylan came and picked me up, he was like, ‘You probably need a friend.’ And we were just kind of buds. And then, post-college, we were like the only two entrepreneur friends. Everyone else went to Wall Street. And we were like, ‘There's got to be something more out there for us.’”

He continued, “At the time, we were both unemployed. Dylan had this idea, ‘Let's start this podcast. We'll call it Smart Nonsense. The whole world will listen to it, millions of people. and we'll talk about all the things that they didn't teach us in school. Like, entrepreneurship, challenging norms, self-development, and becoming better people.’”

“Well, lo and behold, nobody listens to the podcast. Maybe 12 people — my dad, Dylan’s mom.” But let me fast forward a bit. So, the podcast wasn't working. We're like, ‘We can't be starving artists forever, we’ve got to make some money.’ So we spun up an agency called Clipt to start selling video editing services.

Dylan shared, “Our first client was Shaan Puri. So we flew out to Shaan, who has the Milk Road and set up his video studio.”

He continued, “Then HubSpot paid us a lot of money to make clips and that whole machine has kind of funded all of our content endeavors.”

Henry explained, “It's kind of a long story, but Clipt, today, is an animation studio. That is the business that kind of cash flows everything. We do a lot of video work for startups and agencies — really highly animated stuff like explainers and ads and product demos.”

Enjoying this Creator Spotlight? Learn how a Gen-Z basketball newsletter grew to 45,000 subscribers in one year.

From Video & Audio to a Newsletter

As the two of them built up their video editing agency, they kept thinking bigger. They didn’t let the results of the podcast get them down.

Instead, they continued publishing their podcast while continuing to brainstorm their next moves. For them, the video editing agency wasn’t their empire, but rather, the means to get to where they wanted to go.

Henry shared, “So as the agency is humming along, Dylan and I circle back up on the content thing. And we're like, ‘All right, this Smart Nonsense podcast didn't work a year ago, but now we've got some resources. We've got this cash flow behind us. Let's, figure this thing out.’”

So, they started experimenting with video. Dylan and Henry had the animation team from Clipt so they figured they’d give video content a shot since audio wasn’t working for them.

Henry recalled, “Dylan starts doing these animated clips — these animated shorts — for TikTok and YouTube shorts. And so those go crazy viral.”

Soon after Dylan started publishing shorts, Henry hopped on board. In almost no time at all, the two of them were racking up millions of views on their videos.

But, as Henry and Dylan started to build their newfound social following, they started to realize something that many creators found out too late: social media is fickle. Algorithms change, reach is unpredictable, and accounts are randomly banned in a moment’s notice.

They understood that despite their rapid success on YouTube and TikTok, they were at the mercy of the social platforms. They realized if they wanted more freedom and control over their audience, they needed their own platform.

Henry shared, “We start building an audience. And then we're like, ‘All right, now we've got this massive audience, but what do we do with them?’ We want to get people off of YouTube, off of TikTok and into something that we can control, right? We're not dependent on the algorithmic gods, so what should that thing be?”

He continued, “And that's when everything kind of came back full circle. And we were like, ‘All right. We want to feed that audience a newsletter. Let's get them off of social media. Let's get them into email — this thing that we can control and call that email newsletter Smart Nonsense.”

Henry explained, “The newsletter was a repackaging of our failed podcast. With the hopes that through our kind of silly [personalities], but also smarts, we could make learning fun. That was always kind of our mission.”

He continued, “School was always really boring and lame for Dylan and me and it was never really cool to want to learn or be a nerd. So our thing was like, ‘How can we make learning really fun and something that people want to do?’”

Visual Storytelling: The One-Two Punch of Content Creation

Most newsletters are driven primarily by the written word. Whether it’s a news-based publication, hot takes on a niche topic, or tips and strategies to master a subject.

But, one area where many newsletters fall short is with their visuals – or lack thereof.

Text-only newsletters are common and can work very well. But, they’re certainly a commodity these days.

Since newsletters are becoming an increasingly popular career path for many creatives, it’s crucial to ensure your newsletter stands out – whether that’s in your written word, your branding, or your ability to incorporate different media types — as is the case with Smart Nonsense’s elaborate illustrations.

They do two things really well: they offer hilarious storytelling that hooks you in from start to finish and provide incredible illustrations to bring your imagination to life in real time.

But, what makes them special is the fact they combine both of those skills into one unforgettable and addictive experience. As a creator or aspiring creator, stacking different content skills together is a powerful way to enhance your readers’ experience.

While Dylan and Henry only started their newsletter a month ago (in July 2023), their idea for turning educational lessons into a visual experience had been brewing in their heads for years.

Dylan shared, “In college, Tim Urban, who's the guy that makes Wait But Why — was doing a little college tour practicing his TED Talk that went super viral. So he came to my school and gave that talk, and I'm like, ‘What the hell is Wait But Why?’

Dylan recalled, “So, I go down that rabbit hole and I'm like, ‘This is the sickest thing ever.’ I love the funny writing plus illustrations. I want to do that. I tried my own version, teaching personal finance, which is called Stick Figure Finances. It was basically what our newsletter is now, just applied in the completely wrong way, and with much worse graphics and writing.”

He continued, “So, the full circle is like, I've been trying to do that. I tried to do a textbook, like an AP biology version with stick figures in it which also was terrible. But we’re doing it now with proper illustrators.”

Step Aside Teachers: They’re Taking Over the Classroom

We asked the guys if they could give us a breakdown of what their newsletter is all about. And, they didn’t fail to deliver.

In Henry’s view, “It's like, you walk into class, and your boring teacher's gone, you've got these cracked-out two young guys as substitute teachers, and they've just taken the reins, and, there's no censorship.”

Dylan added, “It’s almost like the seniors, for some reason, like the teacher’s assistant, took over class, and we're just like, we don't really give a shit because we already took the course, and we're like, ‘Hey, this is what you actually need to know,’ or, ‘This is the fun stuff.”

Henry chimed in, “It’s in simple language too, right? Our thing was always like, ‘Why is it so hard to understand? What people are teaching like it's just too complicated. The words they're using are too big. The paragraphs are too big. It's like how can we make this simple, story-driven, and actually fun to read — something that you look forward to learning or reading every single day?”

It’s Not a Newsletter — It’s a Comic

Every newsletter we’ve covered on our Creator Spotlights is, well, a newsletter. But, it’s hard to categorize Smart Nonsense as a newsletter. It’s really more like an educational comic book for adults.

Dylan shared, “It's not like a comic, comic. It's like an adult picture book. I don't know what you call it. The fun thing about a daily newsletter is we can iterate each day. So we realized pretty early on we wanted to have one character for our default “you” person.”

He continued, “So we created this character. We call him “Durd.” He's got one smart side and one dumb side So, the first thing we do to get attention is a GIF of him doing whatever the newsletter is about. Then, usually, it's a couple-minute read. Every three or four lines we pepper in some illustration just to keep our Gen Z audience entertained.

Henry shared, “And, hopefully, you actually come away learning a nugget or two. But, not always.”

Dylan added, “Definitely not always. But that's the goal.”

Henry shared how sometimes they’ll write an entire newsletter, get to the end, and think to themselves, ‘‘What was the lesson here?” and they’ll ditch the idea entirely.

Dylan explained how one thing that helps their writing process is that they’re really writing to themselves.

He shared, “One thing audience-wise — we really don't think of who's reading or listening or watching. So that was always built for us as the viewer. We just wanted to make videos we'd watch.”

He continued, “It’s the same thing with our email. We don't really think of, ‘Who's the target audience?’ We don't try and get demographics because the demographics are just us. It's like 26-year-old dudes that tend to be a little bit smarter than average or into this stuff.”

Entering the Hive: Launching on beehiiv

So, just how long has the Smart Nonsense newsletter been live? About one month. And, as of a few weeks ago, Henry explained the two of them “knew nothing about newsletters — at all.”

In Henry’s view, beehiiv made it easy to launch even as a beginner.

He shared, “It was just like if you want to make an email that you send to a bunch of people, you're going to do that in beehiiv. We had started hearing about it from others in the space. But, I didn't know where else you would go, other than MailChimp, I guess. But that seemed too fancy.”

Like many other creators, they launched on beehiiv after seeing the success of Milk Road on the platform.

Henry shared his perspective, “‘Oh, their email looks pretty. I want to make a pretty email. Who made theirs? Oh, beehiiv. Okay, we'll use beehiiv.’ That was pretty much it.”

Dylan chimed in, “beehiiv is just easy to use for anyone that's as dumb as we are. It's like, right out of the gate, you almost couldn't fail with it. Just put your email in here and blast it out. I'm like, ‘Okay, that's easy enough for us. That's awesome.’”

The Goal: Build First, Monetize Later

We asked the guys what their goals are for Smart Nonsense and they shared how they’re taking a different approach than most newsletter operators. Rather than trying to monetize as fast as possible to start generating recurring revenue, their goal is to focus everything on audience growth and having the freedom to do what they love.

Henry shared, “Maybe this is different for newsletters, but most creators in the space are artists first, so they make their art and then they try and figure out a business later. Dylan and I were always entrepreneurs first and artists as a byproduct. So for us, we have Clipt — this cash-flowing thing.”

He continued, “We never had to answer to anyone else like sponsorships or like anything. So we had the benefit of exploring things we like and then just making stuff for fun.”

Henry explained how they don’t necessarily have a “grand monetization scheme” when it comes to the newsletter.

He shared, “I guess in our mind (and without making too long-term of goals) we just want to build as massive of an audience as possible. Have those people's attention. Those folks trust us because we're not shilling anything else.”

Henry continued, “And then when that audience is huge or cult-like, then we can go on and do anything together. We can release any product. But because we have the cash flow, we kind of have the time to just be in audience-building mode and not really think about anything else.”

Dylan added, “Whatever we want to build, we build. With the videos, we just had extra animators from our company and we were sort of like, ‘All right, let's try animating videos of ourselves.’ I'm like, ‘Oh wait, that worked really well.’”

Why Listen to Me? I’ve built several newsletters from the ground up over the years. My latest publication is The Level Ups business newsletter. I also run support at the fastest-growing newsletter platform, beehiiv.

Focusing on the Product Over Everything

One crucial element in the Smart Nonsense strategy is to focus everything on the quality of their content and the user experience. They knew the only way they’d add on a newsletter is if it would be just as good as their videos.

Dylan shared, “With the newsletter, we're like, ‘Oh, we tell these stories. But, sometimes they're kind of convoluted in the visual form or, you want to go deeper. Let's just make an email that's really freaking sick.”

He continued, “Our whole thing is like whatever we do we want to be the best in the world at it. So when we talk about shorts, I think we make the best shorts in the world (at least like animated entertaining shorts). So we're like, ‘Okay, if we're going to do the written form of this, that's going to be the best in the world too.’”

A major part of their success as creators is because of the animation and illustration team behind them.

Dylan explained, “In the last two weeks, basically one thousand illustrators applied with a three-hour test for our newsletter. We whittled that whole thousand lists down to one person — like the absolute best of the best like the Navy SEAL.”

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