How the Growth Signals Newsletter Gets Made (by Two People With No Marketing Background)

Guides · Newsletters

A lot of people ask how we make Growth Signals, my curated newsletter. Two of my team produce it, and neither had any marketing background when they started. Here’s the whole workflow, from grabbing the sources to the finished edition in beehiiv, plus why I use the newsletter for nurturing rather than sponsorships.

Two people with no marketing background make my newsletter.

They’re both over twenty. I still call them kids. When they started working with me they didn’t know anything about marketing, nothing at all.

They’ve been with me for over a year now, and they’ve learned how to put things like newsletters together. So if you get Growth Signals, it’s coming from them.

Here’s exactly how they do it.

Step 1: grab the sources in one click

We use a Chrome extension I built called Content Genesis. It can take content that’s open in lots of different tabs in one window and grab it all at once.

So if you’ve got 15 YouTube videos open (how-tos, guides, methods, case studies), one click grabs the transcripts from all of them.

It doesn’t have to be videos. You can mix sources:

• X articles and threads
• LinkedIn posts
• Blog articles, from sites like Search Engine Land or whatever your topic is
• YouTube videos

Step 2: Gemini drafts, Claude rewrites

1. Gemini drafts the edition. We send everything to Gemini first, because it can take the longer context of all those transcripts at once.
2. Claude rewrites it. We have a Claude project set up for newsletter writing. The draft goes in, and Claude rewrites it properly.
3. It goes into beehiiv. That’s where the edition is built and sent.

Step 3: images that used to take ages

People ask about our images too.

About a year ago we were using third-party platforms to generate them, and they took time. Now we generate them with AI through an API, and the quality is much higher than it was back then.

Looking at what we can do now compared to just a year ago, it feels like a long time ago.

Why I use it for nurturing

Newsletters can make money in lots of ways. beehiiv and Kit both have good growth features: you can buy growth through sponsorships, do swaps with other newsletters, or sell advertising space in your own.

Most people want to monetise. That’s up to each individual and their goal.

For me, Growth Signals is for nurturing. It’s how people get familiar with the stuff I’m interested in.

• We take the very best content posted that week and curate it into an edition.
• When I’ve made my own videos, they go in too, with my call to action. In one edition we put two of my videos in.
• I’m not using it for sponsorships, though you could quite easily.

What’s next: a newsletter AI worker

We’ve built a newsletter worker for Aha Studio. Someone on X shared a GitHub repo for a newsletter platform, so I fed it to Claude and asked it to build around it rather than use it as it is.

It isn’t published yet. We’re testing it. When it’s released, it will create the images as well, and if it’s good enough, it could do the whole job end to end.

Copy this for your own newsletter

1. Decide what the newsletter is for before anything else: nurturing, sponsorships, or selling ad space.
2. Curate the best of the week from videos, threads, posts and articles in your niche.
3. Grab the sources in bulk, so collecting them takes minutes instead of an evening.
4. Draft with a long-context model, rewrite with a second pass set up with your voice and format.
5. Add your own content and one call to action in every edition.

My Take: I’m using Growth Signals mainly for nurturing. We take the very best content that’s being posted and curate it into a newsletter, and whenever I’ve done my own videos, they go in with my call to action. The best part for me is who makes it: two people who knew nothing about marketing when they started, and who can now produce it with the right tools. That’s what I want for everyone who uses what I build. If they can do it, you can.