Own the narrative

And never spend a dollar on press.

Alright, I’ll admit it. I used to be a DocuSign guy until I realized I was paying hundreds of dollars per month simply to send and receive signed documents. Then I found Agree.com.

Agree made e-signature free for everyone… and then loaded the platform with killer features like automated invoicing, integrated payments, and revenue recovery.

Now I can send, sign, and get paid—all in one place. No more waiting around for checks or jumping between apps. Agree.com doesn’t just save me hundreds of dollars every month; it gets me to the good part faster: seeing money hit my account.

As a founder myself, I gotta say my favorite part about Agree.com is that their founders are accessible and dialed in to making the product 10x better than the alternative.

I already know you’re smart because you read Big Desk Energy. Now you can show others that you’re smart because you send contracts with Agree.

Using Agree.com is an IQ test.

At beehiiv, we’ve never spent a dollar to have our name in the news.

Despite that, beehiiv has been covered in TechCrunch, Axios, The Information, Business Insider, Forbes, Inc., Fast Money, and hundreds of other publications.

Inc. even convinced me to wear my clothes in the ocean and threw me on the cover of their December magazine.

They asked nicely… and life is more fun when you say yes

The secret is owning the customer relationship yourself. If you do that, and find some success along the way, the press will ultimately come to you. Here’s the playbook of how we accomplish that at beehiiv.

Product Updates

Today, beehiiv is one of the most robust platforms in the industry… but it wasn’t always that way.

When we first launched in late 2021, the market was hyper competitive (still is) and most of the incumbents had a decade plus head start on us. We didn’t offer a fraction of the features that our competitors did, nor did we really have a product many people would want to pay for.

So our strategy from the jump was simple: ship as many valuable features, as quickly as possible — we had a lot of catching up to do.

The initiative was aptly called Product Updates and the entire company revolved around these (and still does today). The product update itself is a newsletter (fitting) sent to all of our users, but has since evolved to also include a compilation of marketing assets that are shared externally on social media and other channels.

The purpose is threefold:

  • Educate existing users about the new features available on the platform.

  • Showcase the new capabilities externally to potential users (to entice them to move their newsletter to beehiiv).

  • Build the narrative that we are constantly improving the platform (because we are).

It worked.

We now treat product updates like drops. We don’t wait around for anyone to take notice of our work and write about it; instead we make our own news and own the narrative, always.

strategy → narrative

Company Newsletter

Every new user is also automatically subscribed to our company newsletter, which is our main distribution channel for everything outside of product updates.

We have some regular programming, like the monthly beehiiv Rewind. It’s a content series that shares some of the top highlights from the month, best practices, recap of our most popular webinars, growth tips and more.

But we also leverage the company newsletter to create and share our own news.

When we raised our Series A, we didn’t spend a dollar working with PR firms to cover the news. Instead, we shared the news directly with the people who care the most (our users).

We did the exact same thing a year later when we raised our Series B. In addition to simply announcing that we had raised capital, we also informed our users that we reserved $1M for them to directly invest alongside NEA and our other investors as part of the round.

Two hours after we hit send we were oversubscribed. That’s how you own the customer relationship.

A month later we acquired Typedream and made the announcement, once again, via our company newsletter.

👋 

All of the above examples are super relevant to communicate to our existing users. They signal that we are investing heavily into making the platform (and their experience) better. It also doubles as a direct owned distribution channel to communicate news to hundreds of thousands of people.

…and when you pair it with a coordinated push on socials as well, you can reach millions of organic impressions. Which ultimately results in other outlets coming to you for the scoop.

wassup TechCrunch

Creator Spotlight

We initially launched Creator Spotlight as a weekly newsletter to showcase some of the most successful users on beehiiv. When our users succeed, we succeed. Creator Spotlight was meant to be a weekly dose of inspiration and useful tactics to level up our entire user base.

It’s come quite a long way from those early days.

Today we have a full-time editor (shoutout Francis) and have completely transformed Creator Spotlight into a standalone asset with much broader coverage and ambitions. It’s become a lot less about beehiiv and more about the creator ecosystem as a whole.

We’ve also expanded into podcasts, video, and have a lot more coming soon (analysis, guides, courses, etc.). If this is interesting to you — we’re hiring an assistant editor to take this thing to the next level (apply here).

Educating and inspiring users is all a part of our customer journey.

Big Desk Energy

If the beehiiv company newsletter shares the news, Big Desk Energy shares the stories behind the news.

  • When we announced the acquisition of Typedream in the company newsletter, I shared the backstory and vision in Big Desk Energy.

  • After announcing our $33M Series B to our users, I shared how it all came together behind the scenes.

  • The headline from the beehiiv Media Collective was that we were launching a multi-million dollar initiative to support independent journalism. But you had to read Big Desk Energy to know about the origins and the epic launch party in New York.

Big Desk Energy is my outlet to share the founder journey and go even deeper with our users.

It’s human nature for people to resonate more with stories told by others, rather than press releases told by faceless corporations. My personal newsletter is my way of personifying the business.

It’s part tactical — I share real insights and strategies that work well for us and are applicable to other founders.

It’s part entertainment — we are making big bets that will impact the success of the company, my livelihood, and the livelihood of our entire team… and you get to follow along in near real-time.

Over time, beehiiv becomes more than just another faceless platform you use to send emails. Rather, it’s a company built by someone you “know” and understand. My goal is to take my readers along with me, so they can feel the ups and downs of the journey (of which there are plenty).

And through it all, I’m able to connect on a deeper level with tens of thousands of people, many of whom are also active beehiiv users. They send me feature requests, bug reports, success stories, and other anecdotes. And I respond to every single email reply I receive.

A reply from a Big Desk Energy reader and beehiiv user 🤝 

That’s how you own the customer relationship in 2025.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/own-the-narrative

Credit: me

The length of this office is a bit intimidating but hard to complain about the tranquil view and modern natural interior.

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Turn on, tune in, drop out. Click on any of the tracks below to get in a groove — each selected from the full Big Desk Energy playlist.

Some of my favorite content I found on the internet this week…

  • A letter from Los Angeles native and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel to Los Angeles (Snap)

  • Some learnings from Poor Charlies Almanac and other successful people (Twitter)

  • Related — I still don’t fully understand Stripe Press but they have a remarkably beautiful website (Stripe)

  • X (I still call it Twitter) launches video a day after the short-lived TikTok ban 👇️ 

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