A 4-Week Accountability Challenge
For business owners who want to start (or re-start) publishing a newsletter their target clients LOVE.
$1,000
Win your money back when you submit six newsletters and attend both check-in calls.
Next cohort starts October 1st
Imagine walking out onto a stage in front of a few thousand of your ideal customers...
...and getting five minutes to tell them all about your business.
Not just what you sell, but the things you're testing, the things you're learning, and what you think about the industry overall.
The things that make you the expert they should trust.
Now imagine looking up, and the balcony is filled with hundreds of your industry peers – people whose opinion you respect, and who have achieved as much as you, and in some cases, way, way more.ou the expert they should trust.
They’re all paying close attention, and as you speak, you see some nodding their heads.
"Finally," they're saying, "someone said it."
At the end, applause. People throng the stage with questions. For days afterward, valuable leads and interesting connections appear in your inbox.
Now imagine you get to do this every week, and every week, the room gets bigger.
That’s the magic of having a high quality newsletter.
For a brief period each week, it puts you and your ideas center-stage in the minds of the people you most want to reach.
It can open doors, grow your business, and create connections that power your career for years to come.
It doesn’t even have to be big.
Managed properly, one to two thousand email subscribers are worth more than ten thousand Youtube subs, 100k Instagram followers or even 500k TikTok followers. The connection is just deeper.
The only problem?
Sitting down to write the damn thing.
Look, it’s 2025. I probably don’t have to convince you about the value of having an email list. People have been yammering about it for twenty years.
If you don’t have one by now, it’s likely some combination of either not having time, not knowing where to start, or feeling like you just don’t have the accountability you want to make it a priority amid all the other challenges of running your company.
Today, we’re gonna fix that.
Newsletter Foundations is a six week accountability group for mid- to late-stage founders and business owners in Austin who are interested in finally starting (or re-starting) their newsletter and building consistency.
It’s not like normal peer feedback groups though.
There’s an important twist that all but guarantees you finally follow through and get your newsletter started.
It works like this…
Why $1,000?
Well, the reason this whole thing works is because of a concept called Loss Aversion.
Simply put, you and I will work harder to avoid losing something than we will to gain something of equal or greater value.
The value of having a great newsletter is way, way beyond $1,000. You know that, and believe it. And yet, up to this point, it hasn’t been enough to motivate you to get to where you want to go
(I get it, I’ve been there)
So the thousand dollars is just enough to sting, and give the extra nudge.
You earn it back by pressing "send" on one newsletter per week for six weeks. Even if it's just to one person.
6
Publish six editions during the challenge to build momentum
2
Stay accountable and get unstuck between sessions.
Bonus: 4
Live curriculum covering strategy, content, growth, and monetization.
Press send, hit your check-ins, win your money back
Session 1
How attention gets turned into money, and what makes a valuable audience. Get these right, and even a small audience can change your business. Get ’em wrong, and even a huge one won’t save you. We’ll also do a quick review of exactly what you actually need, and what you don’t, so you can finally feel completely confident about the tools you’re using, and the automations and analytics you have set up.
Session 2
This session is focused on what it actually takes to create killer content, week-in and week-out, that gets noticed and shared by leaders in your industry. We’ll talk about the five tools I use every week, how I find fascinating stories no one else is talking about, staying consistent, what to do when you don’t feel like writing, and more. Lessons here will keep you in the game longer than anyone else, which is the key to getting all the rewards.
Session 3
Newsletters don’t grow on their own. You’ll learn the three most important growth channels, and how to pick the one that’s most aligned with your personal interests and style.
Session 4
Remember, the goal of all of this is to turn attention into revenue. So we end where we began — with a deeper dive into the nuance of making money. You’ll learn the specific tracking and automations to put in place so you can recognize readers who are ready to buy, connect with them, and put the right offer in front of them at the right time.
ABR exists to help make as many Austin businesses as big and well-known as possible. So the more founders there are publishing amazing newsletters, the better. This is something I know how to do, and I’m happy to teach it to anyone who’s serious about learning.
My name’s Ethan Brooks. I’m the owner of The Austin Business Review. I’ve been building content and communities for business owners for years.
Prior to ABR, I was the first content & community hire at Hampton, and before that, I spent years writing at The Hustle, one of the biggest newsletter companies in the US. While there, part of my job was to research and write this book on how newsletter companies work and I've been hooked ever since. Newsletters and business are my obsessions, plain and simple.
Question about whether this workshop is for you?
Entry into the challenge is $1,000. And you win it back when you submit four newsletters, and make it to your check-in call.
Yes. Ask anyone. You stick to the plan, and send your emails, and you win your money back.
There are four optional group sessions. Each one focuses on a different aspect of newsletters (strategy, content, growth, etc). Sessions are each Thursday at 3PM Central via video call. If you can’t make one, recordings and slides are shared within 24 hours of the session. Attendance is NOT required to win your money back.
Nope. They’re there for your benefit, but aren’t required to win your money back. The only thing needed there is to submit your four newsletters, and make it to your check-in call (which we schedule at your leisure).
Four weeks. Four newsletters. Four group sessions. Two check-ins. One system that sticks.
Enroll Now