A Newsletter about Newsletters
this is a little peek behind the scenes.
Real John here, I have so many ideas and excitement about the world right now. AI has made everything possible in a short amount of time and it keeps getting better. Because of all of this, there is so much garbage being put out there and I’m hoping that I’m not becoming part of the noise. So, I would love your feedback and I’m going to show you how I write my newsletter and the ideas that come up. I also want to show you the ideas and maybe every week and you can vote on what topic you want for the next week. You know something a little more engaging and customized for you. So, let me explain how I setup my newsletter routine and how I get to the results that you get every week. Oh, three of hearts, if you know you know. Ok, let’s get into it.
The setup
I’m going to give you a little history of things first and how I ended up on newsletter.startupsandcode.com. I started on my blog a long time ago, I think it was 2015. It is still here: https://jmann-next.web.app/ I was playing there with infinite scrolling, and some fun 3d stuff. It was more of a playground than a blog. After 5 years or so, I realized that I was producing decent content that other people asked me about, so I wanted a little more visibility and that is when medium.com became a popular place for writers. So, like any good entrepreneur I moved there, met the requirements to make money, and setup a paywall: https://blog.startupsandcode.com (after a few domains previously, I ended on that during the pandemic when I started that LLC). I made about $7 in a few years there. It wasn’t about the money but about the connection for me, and then they stopped paying unless you earned a minimum of $10 (or something like that), and as you can see, it hasn’t grown much since 2024. Then I came across substack. Why did I move to substack? Not because it paid better, but because it had more features that I was hoping to use one day.
What did it have? It had a podcast, a chat, subscription model, a live session, and more. It had a great mobile interface, and well, it had a decent audience from other readers, so I moved everything over to substack. For the longest time, I was on their domain until probably last month. Then I setup a custom domain, which is where you are reading this right now. I made sure that I could make my posts free and there was no requirement for that. I could create paid subscriptions if anyone wanted to support me in my writing efforts (thank you both for your support). For the longest time, I had all of my writing free to the public, but with recent AI crawlers, I decided to paywall posts that are older than 90 days. That is my current setup for writing this every week. Substack, custom domain, and a paywall for posts older than 90 days.
The weekly process
Let’s get into the AI part of my process and how I do this every week. I love writing, it is very cathartic for me and well, it helps me get my thoughts out. Some people love dictating and do the speech to text, but I prefer actually writing, sorry not a whisprflow fan (shout out to Mohammad on his leaderboard usage). But the weekly process has evolved over time. I started using ChatGPT to generate ideas, and then I’d write, but if you have been reading this newsletter for a minute, you know I love Claude. So I have created a project on Claude. I gave it some of my recent posts, and gave it topics that I like to write about. Then I created a newsletter skill that gives scans the internet for recent news about one of my topics, and then it gives me a list of topics. Here is the example it gave me this week. I select one, so it won’t repeat it for future weeks.
As you can see it gives some great examples, but historically you can see that #4 I’ve already written about which is why I added the memory so it wouldn’t do that in the future. Apparently I added that after I wrote about that one… AI is not the best at remembering context without explicit instructions.
Then I write. Usually Friday night or Saturday morning (depending on energy level and Knicks schedule). After I finish writing, I ask claude to write a prompt for Leonardo to generate an image.
Here’s the prompt for today’s newsletter:Model: Leonardo Anime XL Style: Alchemy V2, cartoon/digital illustration Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Prompt: A cheerful anthropomorphic turtle wearing a tiny business suit and oversized glasses, sitting at a vintage wooden desk overflowing with scrolls of paper and glowing newsletters. The turtle is typing furiously on a mechanical keyboard with tiny clawed fingers, surrounded by floating envelopes, coffee mugs, and mini robots reading newsletters with magnifying glasses. Warm cozy office lighting, bookshelves stuffed with rolled-up newsletters in the background, a small chalkboard reads “SHIP IT.” Fun, whimsical, high detail, vibrant colors, cartoon style.
Negative Prompt: realistic, dark, gritty, horror, photorealistic, blurry, low quality, watermark
All in all, it did a good job, it didn’t have the small chalkboard, but love the turtle image.
That’s what I do. Every week, for the world to read. Now, let’s get back to your part.
I need your help
I get the ideas all the time, but I’m wondering what YOU want. What do you want to read about, is it more leadership/communication articles, more AI in action, more AI rants about the business models that don’t make sense, or something completely different, like the details of a rear-naked choke, an double-lift card tutorial, or best burger in NYC (Gramercy Tavern is the answer). I hate (yes, hate) when people do long drawn out teasers of things when they simply could tell you the answer. I know that attention is the goal for a lot of people but I would much prefer more dense content rather than fluff. Example:
Double-Lift tutorial - work on your pinky count, don’t do the thumb riffle to get the break. Once you get the pinky strong enough to count 2 cards, use your index finger at the top to keep the cards flush and flip them cleanly, slightly out-jogged so you can flip back easily.
Rear Naked Choke - It is not an air choke, it is a blood choke, your elbow should be centered on the trachea and your bicep and forearm should be on either side of the neck, secure by grabbing your other bicep, rotate your wrist to drive the forearm into the neck and the bicep on the other side, be careful, because it comes on fast, make sure they know how to tap when training. (writing this made me realize there is a LOT more detail to it then just that, so can’t really be too succinct there)
Best Burger in NYC - Gramercy Tavern (thick, juicy, and amazing bun) Runner ups: Smacking Burger (the gas station burger), Hamburger America, and a great smash burger - Gotham Burger.
See 3 topics covered in less than 100 words. Its crazy the narrative that people put together. My newsletter is generally pretty easy to read, follow and hopefully provides something useful.
Ok, so back to you… what do you want? How can I make this better for YOU.
Because I love to write so much, if I get a bunch of different responses, I may write a newsletter for YOU, not for the masses, but for you specifically. I know that is not scalable if I get too many susbscribers, but where I’m at right now, I think I can do it.
Selfish promotion above ^. Ok, that’s all for this week. A little insight for you and a request to make this a little better for you. It’s May, so let’s work together and make this amazing for you, not for the world, but specifically for you.
ok, that’s all.. looking forward to hearing from you!