Wow, its been a while. At least 6 months, if not more. A lot has changed.
For a while I sent weekly, then bi-weely, then sporadically, and eventually I stopped. Well, I'm back. But what happened?
First, between running a 9 figure business as CEO, and having 2 young kids, I could say I couldn't find the time. Which wouldn't be untrue, but it's always easy to blame lack of time. We all have the same 24 hours in the day, and busier people than me write newsletters or consistently publish content.
So the reality is, in addition to lack of time, I wasn't enjoying it. I wasn't looking forward to writing it anymore; and it became something I had to do instead of something I wanted to do. I also didn't feel like I was delivering value; I felt like it was regurgitating the same basic advice over and over. How much could I say you need a lot of creative and media buying is dead?
I also felt like an imposted, and I hate that. I Was writing about marketing, but I wasn't really doing any marketing day to day. I was spending my days in meetings about product, people, and finances but people signed up to a marketing newsletter. I hate feeling like an imposted, so I just stopped.
Also, I've spent every "free" second Claudeing (and now Codexing) and didn't want to take any time away from it.
I also was going through a big transition for me. About 6 weeks ago, I formally stepped down as CEO of Jones Road Beauty. I wrote about it here. It was the right decision; I wasn't having fun and I didn't think I was doing a very good job. I was devoting almost all my time and energy to something that I wasn't enjoying so I decided to step down, focus on what's best for me both personally and professional, and find something that I was excited to wake up and build every day.
Today, I am excited to announce my new thing. We are officially launching Winks today alongside a new show called Operators Build.
I'm back in the driver's seat as co-founder of Winks in a stage I really enjoy. If you listen to Marketing Operators or spend time on x; you've seen us tease this. One feeback both Mops and Ops get is that it's not very actionable to most brands at earlier stages, and I agree. But it's also hard to talk about something you haven't experienced in a while, especially with how much the game has changed in the last few years.
So we decided to build a new brand in public do both. The other guys have been working on this for over a year; mostly perfecting the product and it's truly incredible. It's a sleep supplement with no melatonin. It has 10 ingredients, all premium, and designed to to different parts of the job of getting and staying asleep.
Matt Bertulli told me about it probably 6 months back, and I remember being jealous. I knew I was planning to step down, but wasn't telling anyone. The thought of building a new, subscription brand was so exciting to me. I tossed a few feelers out there like "if there's any way to get involved, let me know".
When I told Matt I was stepping down, he hit me up a bit later and graciously offered for me to be part of Winks, which I'm very grateful for. We've spent the last several weeks getting our site, ads, emails, etc ready. We're doing it essentially by ourselves and using AI as much as possible. We have no full time employees. We built the website, landing pages, and doing lots of ads ourselves.
So this is the exact oppositve of what I've spent the last few years doing, but I'm right where I along. It's been fun diving in like a white belt to learn what I need to about subscriptions, and cooking on AI ads plus building out the site.
The good news is, I have a lot of new stuff I'm going to be learning and I'm going to restart sharing it here. I'll try to keep it super tactical. If you have any things you want me to write about, please reply to me.
They say if you're not embarrased by our V1, you've launched too late. And that's exactly how I feel. We have the site and ads live; but it's far from our best work. But we wanted to get it out there to get data and feedback and can iterate quickly on it. That's the plan.
We are working on our initial Trybe creators, as well as Drs to partnter on our Scientific Advisory board, as well as early whitelisting and organic creators. But we thought why wait; we'll have things come in. Lets get data and start iterating.
I would love your help! I would love feedback.
If you'd like to try Winks (the product is phenomenal which is the most important thing), you can use code Cody25 for 25% off any order on Getwinks.com if you're willing to drop some feedback in exchange on any parts of the funnel and customer journey. I'll save it all and get to work actioning on the common themes.
Would love to know nay feedback, but also QA anything we might have missed while scrambling to get things live for launch (I've caught a bunch already but I'm sure there's more). Any feedback, orders, and sharing is super appreciated.
And if you want to get involved in any way and think you can help, hit me up. I'm all ears.
Thank you, and I hope you're excited to follow along. Whether you are rooting for us to win or fail, It's going to be fun to watch.